Vegetarianism is increasingly popular in Western countries. People can become vegetarians for a number of reasons. Some just don't really like meat so much. Others think that it is healthier not to eat meat (we will see below that the opposite is true). Modern sensitivities have also led people to give up their carnivorous habits simply because they cannot bear the thought of killing animals for their own survival. The most common reason to be a vegetarian worldwide is still religion, namely Hinduism and Jainism, who have close to a billion followers.
Not all self-confessed vegetarians are strict vegetarians. Many do eat fish or white meat like chicken. This is also the case of Hindus and hard-core Buddhists. In fact, apart from animal lovers who attach nearly as much importance to a chicken's life as to a human one, there aren't many true vegetarians.
Strict vegetarianism amuses me because most of its followers have never asked themselves where is the limit between plants and animals. It isn't as easy as one thinks. If an animal is a life being with a brain, then clearly scallops or jellyfish aren't animals. The reason animal lovers refrain from killing animal for food is to avoid causing them suffering. It isn't about the sanctity of life itself. Plants are just as alive as animals. So if suffering is the factor, why not eat primitive animals that lack a pain centre in their brain, like most mollusks, crustaceans or even fish ?
Being a true vegetarian isn't the same as being a vegan. Veganism is the more extreme approach, which prohibits the consumption of any animal product at all, even milk and eggs. I cannot help but see it as a caprice rather than a reasonable life-style choice, since it is not healthy for human to live with low protein diets or avoid any animal products. If someone doesn't eat meat then they should eat a lot of dairy products, eggs, beans, etc. to compensate.
The vegetarians' argument for their choice of diet is that eating too much meat leads to high cholesterol and cardio-vascular problems and cancer, the two biggest killers in post-industrial societies. In my eyes, fear is what motivates a lot of Westerners to cut down on meat consumption. It seems like a reasonable, even rational way of life. But is it really justified ? Are vegetarians healthier than people who have a balanced diet including meat and fish ?
Western vegetarianism started around the same time as the hippie and environmental movements in the 1970's. It is in Northern European countries, as well as the North-East and West coasts of the USA that these movements have truly flourished. The most fertile ground for vegetarianism in the developed world is without a doubt the UK. Surveys estimate that between 7% and 11% of the British people are vegetarian, and an additional 23% are 'meat-reducers'. But did this confer an advantage to Britons in term of life expectancy, compared to heavy meat and fish eaters like the French or the Japanese ? The answer is a resounding 'no'. The French have the highest life expectancy in Europe, and the Japanese the highest in the world (well, actually after Macau and Hong Kong, two other meat-addict cultures). British people live on average 2 years shorter than French people, and 3 years less than the Japanese.
I will attempt to find an explanation as to why eating a variety of meat, fish and seafood is healthier than not eating any or not much.
Let's not forget two essential differences between the Ice Age (which had alreday started when Homo Sapiens appeared 100,000 years ago and ended only 10,000 years ago) and now :
1) big mammals were much more common during the Ice Age than now. Many of these species are now extinct, like the mammoth, the auroch or the tarpan. Gazelles, elephants, lions and other animals now confined to sub-Saharan Africa could be found in the Middle East, North Africa and southern Europe even after the Ice Age, until the antiquity. Bears and wolves were quite common until a few centuries ago because there was enough game to feed them. During the Ice Age, humans would have been just one of the carnivorous predators among a plenitude of big game. It was a very different world.
2) Most fruits and vegetables that are now common in our diet either did not exist yet, or were confined to a small region of the world. Before the widespread use of agriculture a few thousands years ago, cereals and vegetables were virtually absent from human diet. Many were developed through cross-breeding and selective breeding, like most cabbages and cereals.
We now eat bananas, mangos, lychees or Sharon fruits as if they had always been there, but only a few decades ago such tropical fruits were almost impossible to find in Europe. Many people assume that apples, pears, peaches, oranges, plums or cherries are the true native fruits of Europe that Cro-Magnons could have picked up in trees when they were hungry. Too bad, there weren't any for most of them. Apples and cherries both originated in Anatolia, and were not widespread around Europe until Roman times. Peaches and apricots both originated in China, while oranges came from Southeast Asia. They only reached Europe in historical times. As for pears and plums, the varieties we know today are recent artificially cross-bred species. Gages for example were developed from a tiny wild plum in 16th-century France.
The only fruits that prehistoric Europeans would have eaten are nuts and berries (though not the huge modern strawberries but the wild variety no larger than a raspberry). In winter, their diet would have been almost exclusively meat.
Our bodies are not designed by evolution to eat the fruits, cereals and vegetables we eat nowadays. We are carnivores who became omnivorous due to the recent invention of agriculture, and the even more recent spread of fruit and vegetable varieties across continents. Many human allergies are caused by plants, pollens, cereals (gluten allergy) and fruits (e.g. peanut allergy), not meat (except some seafood, which our ancestors didn't eat).
One clear proof that humans need meat is that pregnant women have strong cravings for meat, even if they have been vegetarians for years. A foetus, or indeed a child, just cannot grow healthily without meat or fish. Children deprived of meat or fish, due to a vegetarian upbringing or due to poverty do not grow as tall and healthy as those who eat meat regularly.
So, is vegetarianim good or dangerous ? It is certainly not recommended for pregnant women and children. Exchanging meat for fish may have benefits for older people who are at risk for cardio-vascular diseases, but that is not vegetarianism.
