Why we are villainizing meat

There's a fair bit of confusion about if it's bad for health, for the environment or just plain unethical. Snacking on animal sources has long been seen as one of the cornerstones we need to maximize our nutrition, so it's worth investigating how meatshaming became a thing.

Before we talk about if meat is bad, we must put some time into defining the word. What is meat, is it fish? Insects? Eggs? Some talk about the flesh of a fruit! Meat is too wide of a word in this context.

The term meat is not always defined

Technically, meat is in all animals including insects and includes not only muscles but intestines and ligaments and so forth. There is not a clear-cut definition, but certainly fish, birds and other game are just as much meat in a dietary sense, as say pigs, chickens and cows.

A lot of people who say "meat is bad" are actually referring to only one kind of meat, namely beef, which is known to have the biggest "carbon footprint" out of the standard red and white meats we often eat. And in these climate-aware times, red meat is of course put right in the crosshairs.

When talking about beef, however, another distinction needs to be made: the meat that is often portrayed as the bad guy is, in fact, processed and produced on an industrial scale.

There's a fair bit of confusion about if it's bad for health, for the environment or just plain unethical. (Or everything at once.) Let's first zoom in on if it's a good food choice and if it benefits us to eat it.

Industrial meat is one kind of meat

Snacking on animal sources has long been seen as one of the cornerstones we need to maximize nutrition. Vegans usually are told to add certain vitamin supplements that are supposed to essentially give them what a meat diet provides naturally.

From a health and wellness standpoint, meat definitely seem to bring something good to the table because it adds nutrition that the common plants seem to be lower in.

It's really hard to argue that a varied wholesome diet is not good for us health wise - especially considering all the recent findings on gut microbiome and its importance to our health. And the most varied wholesome diet surely would be defined to be inclusive to meat.

Let's be clear on the culprit

When people are saying to “avoid meat”, they are usually talking about not contributing to the excessive meat eating that goes on in the westernized world which is enabled by the food industry. For environmental (or climatical) reasons.

Eating all kinds of animals has not been seen as an issue until we entered the modern era with global mass production, abundance of food choices and the industrial way of cheapening the meat and ship it from company to company, making the footprint of each product unnecessarily huge.

Quality and dosage

The key to get both the nutrients, benefits AND preserve the environment is to simply manage the dose and quality of meat.

If you only buy locally produced organic meat (or hunt and fish yourself) the problem is no longer there. Because you will likely not afford nor have the capacity to acquire and eat excessive meat anymore.

The most natural way of eating is for countries to have different types of foods, because of seasonality and local conditions.

The idea that you can get food from the other side of the globe at your doorstep is certainly contributing more to the "carbon footprint" than if you eat a locally sourced animals or not.

Let’s rewind a hundred years or so. If we went back towards locally produced high quality protein sources, we would in that process naturally decrease the amount we could afford on a daily basis. We would avoid many of the modern problems.

It's obvious we don't need to eat meat every day - we don't even need to eat every day at all.

If we all just ate a little more according to basic needs and not devouring lust, half the battle with health and environment is already won. So why think black and white and villainize "meat" and still keep the entire fire going by rewarding the food industry in other ways?

Everything, no matter the source, that is refined, packed, and shipped takes a toll on the environment, including all the vegan or vegetarian products you find in the aisle of the supermarket.

Now, when we are realizing what the real problem is (amount and quality) we can see a much simpler solution to the endless diet and environmental debates; the meat solution is supporting locally produced food, using way less portion sizes and a decreased eating frequency. These are things I would like to see be the new "hip" personal choices to be made and brag about.

Shifting the debate from "what" to "how"

Bottom line - the debate should shift towards the food industry practices instead of dropping hasty remarks on "meats".

More debates should be had on food industry practices instead of dropping hasty remarks on "meats".

I do wanna say that am not really in favor of prohibitions though. People like freedom of choice, and we tend to close our ears when we are prohibited to do something. Likely, we would want the forbidden fruit even more if we are suddenly deprived of things we like.

But where are all the healthy and local meat options? We partake in a rigged game most of the time.

The way forward is for everyone who is knowledgeable to educate others about food quality and to normalize terms like 'fasting' and 'locally produced food.

If the culture and debate shifts from pointing at one food group to the bigger picture, those who like meat might get to continue enjoying it and feeling better about it as well.