Eating Meat is Not Necessary to Live

Meat consists mostly of water (60-85%), proteins (16-22%) and small amounts of other nitrogen compounds (free amino acids, peptides, nucleotides, creatinine, etc..), Fat (2-13%); carbohydrates, lactic acid, vitamins and minerals. Meat has been, for many years, an essential part of the diet of humans. At the beginning of mankind, when man was basically herbivorous, when humans evolved noticed they need to eating meat. Over time humans discovered that provided greater amount of nutrients that if they only consumed fruit and vegetables and found another way to provide themselves with it. Anthropologists say that man began to domesticate animals to meet this need since 9000 BC. Meat, is a essential food in the diets to obtain different nutrients and it was one of the most important elements in the evolution of the human. Until the 70's it was believed that man's ancestors were hunters only, without considering the possibility that he had actually been originally a scavenger. Today we know that early hominids ate any food available in their environment. The scientists have different opinions about the consumption of meat, because the emergence of new food trends, that would prevent animal abuse, while still getting the same nutrients, proteins and vitamins. It is the reason why our position paper is “Eating Meat is Not Necessary to Live”.

According to some nutritionists, meat contributes between 16% and 22% protein, a higher proportion than other kind of food. These proteins, like all those that come from animal foods (milk and dairy meat, fish and eggs), are considered of high biological value for its quantity and it is content in essential amino acids (those that the body cannot synthesize themselves and whose only source is obtained through food) these substances are essential for growth, defenses and tissue regeneration. For this reason they are considered one of the cornerstones of nutrition in many developed countries. The World Health Organization says that meat is incomplete from the nutritional point of view, lacking vital nutrients like carbohydrates, antioxidant vitamins (A, C and E), and calcium, and the few it has, it has in very low percentages, meat proteins does not bring any amino acid that cannot be obtained from vegetables. In fact, herbivores animals whose muscles are also essential amino acids derived from vegetables they eat.

HEALTH


Fats from animal flesh increase by 40 percent more likely to have cancer and are at increased risk for heart disease and many other diseases such as a heart attack, obesity, appendicitis, osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes and food poising. Do you expect to have a disease to find a solution? Meat contains large accumulations of pesticides and other chemicals (hormones, penicillin). For example, it would not be possible to maintain the reddish appearance of the meat for days considering the rapidity of the putrefaction. If we learn we see that our digestive system shares more characteristics with the herbivores than the carnivores. We certainly need proteins and meat is a rich source of them. However, there is variety of healthy foods richer in protein, such as the diversity of vegetables, cereals, quinoa, soybeans and their combination.




ANIMALS


It is known that animals in factory farms are treated like machines, we can find different information or videos that show the reality in these places . Gary Yourofsky, activist for animal rights, who has been arrested more than 13 times as a result of sporadic acts of kindness and compassion after watching and documenting such events. Gary narrates how people abused animals with different techniques,all these animals spend their short -plan- lives in crowded and full of faeces. Many cannot even breathe fresh air until they are pushed and hits to put them in trucks and give them a ride to the horrible slaughterhouse, often at extreme temperature and always without food or water.

WORLD HUINGER AND THE ENVIRONMENT


Calculating our supply of grain and we gave it to humans malnourished, instead of giving it to cattle, it could easily nurture all chronically undernourished people on the planet. Approximately to produce one kilogram of grain to feed a cow are necessary at least 150 liters of water; Also 90% of oats, 85% corn and 80% of soybeans produced in the United States are given to livestock. The food that would be saved if all humans consumed only vegetables is enough to finish several times with the current world hunger. Many developing countries have expanded their animal production for export while a lot of people are starving. For example, In Guatemala, nearly half of children under 5 years go hungry while this country is exporting millions of tons of meat to the United States each year.

A third of all staple (basic) foods consumed in the United States are used in the production of meat diets, and more than half of the water consumed in the country. A person who does not eat meat can be fed with less than 10% of the water needed for a carnivore. Farming techniques needed to produce meat diets have caused erosion of much of the earth's surface. Millions of hectares of productive and diverse forests in both temperate and tropical areas have been cleared and are intended to pasture for livestock, thereby altering ecosystems-rich lungs of our planet. Meat is the food that most wastes environment, the most cruel and inefficient that we ingest.

ETHICS


What right do we have to take the life of animals unnecessarily? 
It is true that animals do not know their rights and do not always respect us. A child is often found in a similar condition. Therefore, it is irrelevant to justify cruelty. If humans are intelligent and know the reality, why not change our behavior with the animals? It is impossible to live life without causing any damage, but that does not entitle us to intentionally cause unnecessary harm. Just because you might accidentally hit someone with your car is not reason to hit someone on purpose. And if everyone runs over to others,do you need to do that? Is it not more courageous thinking and being conscious rather than blindly follow the mass?
The murder, child abuse and animal cruelty are all immoral behavior. Today our society promotes eating meat and the cruelty of factory farming, but history teaches that society once fostered slavery, child labor and many other practices that today are recognized globally as erroneous.

Restating our argument we already know that the animals do not have suitable conditions like hygiene, space, natural food, etc. To grow up and develop, that is defining in our days like abuse and cruelty. Over time we have learned that slavery, violence, and bloody deaths are wrong in reasoning specie, the one we presume belong to. Afterward, our body does not have carnivorous characteristics; we cannot digest appropriately the animal proteins (meat), that is why we get a lot of chronic illnesses. It is not a secret that many people in the world does not have the same conditions or possibilities to feed themselves, and the healthiest food for them are vegetables, cereals, soybeans.This kind of food are natural, that means it does not have chemicals to grow fat people, this food is rich in nutrients necessary to human body.
Humans have reasoning; do you know the feelings of animals?