Is vegetarianism the future of humanity?

Question

"According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people die of starvation every day" (Wikipedia, "Starvation")

"One acre of land can produce 40,000 pounds of potatoes, or 250 pounds of beef." (http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/2062/argu.HTML)

Imagine if grew potatoes (and other vergetables, which produce simillar results to potatoes, in the thousands of pounds per acre) instead of meat. We'd EASILY have enough food to wipe out starvation.

So my question is, as the population of the world increases, and starvation increases, will more people have their eyes opened to this fact, and will vegetarianism ever be the default diet to humans as an omnivore diet is now? Will meat eating be looked down with with scorn, even disgust, by future generations? Many sci-fi writers have foreseen it, and I think its very likely. What do you think?

So, someone has brought up the myth that humans are carnivores by nature. Read the following:
"A ninth and most compelling argument against meat-eating is that humans are physiologically not suited for a carnivorous diet[...]
"Here are seven facts in support of this view:
"Physiologically, people are more akin to plant-eaters, foragers and grazers, such as monkeys, elephants and cows, than to carnivora such as dogs, tigers and leopards."
"For example, carnivora do not sweat through their skin; body heat is controlled by rapid breathing and extrusion of the tongue. Vegetarian animals, on the other hand, have sweat pores for heat control and the elimination of impurities."
"Carnivora have long teeth and claws for holding and killing prey; vegetarian animals have short teeth and no claws."
"The saliva of carnivora contains no ptyalin and cannot predigest starches; that of vegetarian animals contains ptyalin for the predigestion of starches."

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/2062/argu.HTML#IV

Answer 1

I totally agree that vegetarianism could keep our world from starving. But I don't think it will happen anytime soon. People just aren't going to give up the steak, burgers, chops and other things. I am a vegetarian and people are hasseling me all the time, why don't you eat meat, you need meat to survive, what do you eat, you can't just eat veggies, you'll die, etc. It gets very annoying and it just shows how ignorant many people are. A vegetarian diet when done properly is a million times healthier then hormone injected meats. It personnally grosses me out when I see people eating meat, it didn't when I first became a vegetarian, but now I do look down on it, but I am careful not to insult people, I basically ignore their comments, the only person I hassle about a healthy lifestyle is my boyfriend.

Answer 2

I'd think it was unfair people were being forced to live a way they did not choose. I doubt I could do anything. Maybe protests. I do not need to defend my health, as vegetarianism is not unhealthy. I don't see how vegetarianism affects the gene pool, diet choices are [arguably] not genetic. I'm already vegetarian, eat 95% vegan, so I'm already part of 'the herd'. As far as I would go, I don't quite know what you mean by that, but I'd go as 'far' as to make slaughterhouses more humane for animals and workers and try to decrease animal farming's effect on teh environment. Like I can control that.

Answer 3

Here's the thing (and this is coming from a Vegan, not a disgruntled meat eater), We already have enough food to feed the world, even with our wasteful production of animal products. The reasons we have starving people in the world are not supply or production based, they are political. Grain rots in silos wile governments pay farmers to let it do so. Controlling the food supply is one of the oldest political tools. Wile everyone going Vegan (or even vegetarian I guess) Would solve or improve a lot of the worlds problems, this is not one of them unfortunately.

Andy B: I agree with you when you say we have enough food, However I take issue with the part about the people not buying food from their own food industry's. third world food industry's almost exclusively export to first world country's. Very little of this food is left for the producing country. The new trade laws established with the formation of the WTO has made this even more of an issue. India had a problem with this very thing, one of their staple crops went bad recently and they made the decision to keep more of it for themselves. This is the exception, not the rule, as many country's have been known to export product anyways and let their people starve. Anything after that, well you know what I think ; -)

Answer 4

Because of Newcastle, Mad Cow,
Mercury Contamination, Camplo-
bactor, bird flu, growth hormone,
antibiotics, dioxin, dies, and meat
cloning I believe that over the next
100 years 50 to 75% of the
popu-lation will be veg or flexaterian.

An interesting development to come
will be how meat eaters respond to
laboratory grown meat. It may reduce
the amount of animals breed-ed for
slaughter and spare the omnivore
population from triglycerides and toxins.


Most people in our lifetime won't be
switching for ethical reasons. That's
probably centuries down the road.
Future generations will probably
look at the factory farm the same
way we look at the wretched slave
plantations of the Antebellum South.

But for now and the near future
the meat-eating population isn't
intellectually ready to
make that type of comparison.
It's inane to think that any species
are as valuable and entitled to life
as humans but that will fade out
as humans evolve.

Answer 5

It is true that more land is required for meat production per head than for veggies.

I'm an arable farmer. We also have a pet cow that requires about 7 acres to live off. 7 Acres would keep a village of people in veggies, fruit, nuts and cereals for a year, the same can't be said of one cow.

So yes, and i've had this view for many years, the vegetarian population will increase as the meat-eater model is not sustainable as the population grows.

I guess Darwin was right.

We don't need to rely on science fiction, the facts are plain to see.

Answer 6

Definitely Byron, Veggies and Vegans are the future!! How about the scary cloned meat deal in your country ??? Urgh! I can only imagine how deep that rabbit hole will go.......!! Potatoes not meat patties !!!! I don't know weather we will reach a stage of a 100% vegetarian world. I think some little toerags will be illegally breeding animals for meat somewhere and selling it on the black market. I think as time marches on we will see more veggies and vegans and that, at least is something to hope for!!!

Answer 7

People will come around and realize we've been eating wrong for centuries,or we'll kill ourselves trying to down 20 ounces of dead animal a day. ...then regardless,only the vegetarians will be alive,-anyway-. So it won't matter so much.

Answer 8

you are right, when we over populated the world, which we did, and it is now, more people will die from hunger, so the solution is to eat vegg, and share the food

Answer 9

I don't know about you, but that link doesn't work for me.

Vegetarianism wouldn't be able to solve world hunger, even though more food could be grown on that land currently set aside for animal farming.
The thing is there is ALREADY enough food to feed the world, and some more, and huge amounts go to waste every day. The reason world hunger exists is that the people in famine struck countries can't afford to buy this food.
Of course, I hear you say, that's rubbish because it food were going to waste we would just give it to them on the cheap at no loss to ourselves! But no, because giving a country free food would destroy their economy. You have to understand that in LEDCs (Less Economically Developed Countries) the food industry is the major industry, employing the most people.
If there was suddenly loads of free food around, yea there'd be no hunger, but people would stop buying food from their own food industry, which would promptly go bankrupt, with the loss of jobs for millions of people and the worlds poorest countries would promptly get poorer with the loss of their biggest employer and money maker.

Because of this, it isn't a good idea to give poor countries free food unless it's absolutely necessary. The fact remains though, that vegetarianism wouldn't be able to solve this. All having more food would mean is that more would go to waste.

Also bear in mind much land which would be unable to sustain crops can be used for animal farming, which only require grass. Most of the land used to grow animals probably wouldn't be able to grow good quality crops due to poor soil, climate or relief. Without animals very large areas of land would be unfit for any agriculture. In the UK about one third of our land is moorland, unfit for anything but sheep, which usually are reared extensively. That one acre of land can produce 40,000 pounds of potatoes, or 250 pounds of beef may be true (although from what I've heard it's an exaggeration), but the assumptions made from that ignore that, firstly, not all pastoral land could be made into arable by a long shot and, secondly, that a pound of beef it vastly more nutritious than a pound of potatoes, meaning it is more nutritionally valuable.

And finally, although it doesn't really have anything to do with the original point you made, is very interesting that article you quote mentions carnivora rather than carnivores. Carnivora is an order of classification which contains bears, cats, dogs, etc. It contains most mammalian carnivores, but many of it's members are omnivores, like bears.
Our order is Primates, and I don't think it's any surprised the closely related members of carnivora all have things in common, as they are closely related to each other and we aren't related as closely to them.
Things like sweating through the skin, lapping water and panting all have nothing to do with diet, and that most carnivores to those things is because, as stated above, they are all closely related and there are going to be similarities.
On the other hand, like all carnivores we have forward facing eyes, unlike most herbivores. This of course has nothing to do with diet, but it is to do with that we are descendants of tree dwellers who needed forward facing eyes to judge the distance of the next branch, but it makes just as much sense as the other arguments that article is throwing around.

That we do not have claws, talons, or incisors to hunt proves nothing. When early hominids ate meat they scavenged it, as vultures do, using their fingers to get the sinews and meat other animals couldn't. It was only after that that they began to hunt the meat themselves, and only much later they began to cook it.
The last few million years of human evolution have revolved completely around tools. We used advanced stone tools long before we began to hunt our own meat, and as such there was no need for evolution to bestow us with large claws or teeth to kill prey.
Most animals with large teeth have them as weapons, either for defence or attack. Humans do not attack with our mouths, and we do not hunt in the same way. Again I said meat became a large part of our diet when we were scavengers who don't need to hunt, and in fact large teeth get in the way a bit when eating a carcass. Our teeth are adequate for eating meat and that is an end to the matter.
It is also worth pointing out the plethora of herbivores with fearsome weaponry, like hippos and gorillas, which illustrates why whether or not something has big teeth has no bearing on diet.

That our saliva can pre digest starch betrays that, in fact, we are plant eaters. Oh God, now I eat my words and realise that we really are meant to eat plants.
Go and look omnivore up for heaven's sake.
The same can be said of the jaw motion point, we need to chew plants as we are omnivores.

I could come up with lots of reasons we are meat eaters, but I'll just say apendix, B12, meat splitting enzymes and cellulose and leave you to try to work out what those words have to do with anyting.

Answer 10

We can only hope.