Last night I casually mentioned on Twitter that my cuts and bruises from a bike accident two weeks ago were reaching the “Itchy” stage of healing. Wasn’t expressing concern, wasn’t asking for advice, etc. 

But I received two private replies suggesting that I’d heal faster if I ate meat. 

?!

What I think is so interesting about being told regularly that I should eat meat whenever I mention any kind of health issue, no matter how minor or unrelated to any possible nutrient that could be derived from consuming animal flesh, is that no one ever tells me to eat more cooked food, no one ever tells me to eat cheese, no one ever tells me to drink milk, and very few people have ever told me I should eat eggs (and those that did were talking more about the ability to produce them locally with urban chickens, which is a whole other messy subject). 

To put it another way, no one ever says I should eat fewer vegetables

So why the stubborn insistence that meat, of all things, is some kind of cure-all health food? It’s bewildering. 
“You should eat meat.”
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6 thoughts on ““You should eat meat.”

  • November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
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    I’m guessing because they’re jerks? Hell, I busted a knuckle in mid-July, and it still hurts a little now. Took over three weeks for the scab to finish its work. Apparently I wasn’t eating enough meat, right?

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  • November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
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    Basically, people are insensitive – that’s the problem. If meat actually made you healthier, we’d have lots of healthy people running around as opposed to overweight peeps with clogged arteries. I’m not a vegetarian or vegan, but I can appreciate that diet/lifestyle and generally think it’s healthier overall than meat-eating, especially red meat.I’m guessing that people who say these things to you probably have given you grief for being a vegetarian in the past? Oh well, don’t worry, you’ll outlive them. 😉

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  • November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
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    I think it goes beyond "insensitive" or "jerk," though. It seems like it’s a defensive reaction on some level, as if people’s security in their dietary decisions are threatened, so they try to justify their own flesh-eating ways by loudly claiming meat as the baseline. And in doing so, they set up this framework where if I, the dietary deviant, have any sort of health anomaly, it must be due to the diet, and not to genetics, environment, or just dumb luck. You may reiterate that that’s insensitivity or jerkiness or whatever, but I think it’s more systemic than that, and unfortunately reinforced by our cultural norms. Kind of like the "you just haven’t met the right woman/man" approach to homosexuality, you know?

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  • November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
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    I think you’ve got it exactly right. Omnivores seem to be threatened by veg*ans. As if, since we are growing in number, we are encroaching on their lifestyle and will eventually force them all to become vegetarian as well.

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  • November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am
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    I, for one, agree with them…there is no better cure-all than synthetic growth hormones and no better source than the consumption of USDA approved All-American red meat. ;)After all, any product that can get a calf from 80lbs to a slaughter-ready 1,200lbs in 14 months should be able to cure/kill anything biotic…

    Reply

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