Humans Are Predators

You certainly seem to have a thorough grasp of the workings of the universe, James. Still, let’s see if we can cast a little light on some of the issues not quite covered in your 15-word exposition of how the universe was “set up”, and what that means for the human diet.

Let’s start at the (very literal) beginning. The universe wasn’t “set up”. The prevailing scientific theory on the origins of our universe is the Big Bang Theory. I think we’ll struggle to explain it in 15 words but here goes: around 13.8 billion years ago, all the matter in our universe was compacted into a very hot, very small ball, even smaller than a pinhead. This is called a “Singularity” and it exploded with unimaginable force, expanding outwards. In a fraction of a second, it went from being smaller than an atom to bigger than a galaxy, and it’s still expanding even now.

We sense your attention span is not what it might be, and so we’ll fast-forward through a few billion years, until animals came into being, with different species emerging, evolving, branching off into new species and subspecies, and often dying out.

Don’t blame us, James, you started this.

Different species look and behave quite differently from one another. Some animals eat plants, some eat other animals, some eat both. The fact that humans, like vegetarian animals, manufacture B12 in our guts (though there was some faulty evolutionary wiring and we cannot absorb it) suggests we have descended from a long line of vegetarian ancestors. But like other animals, we evolved and ate meat. Then we started mass farming animals. Then we ate a lot more meat. Then we got sick from eating it. Then we poisoned the planet by farming animals to produce it. Then we heated the climate with it. And killed off most of the wild animal populations.

And then, fast-forwarding some more, some of us evolved to know better, to eat plant-based foods so we can live longer, healthier, happier lives in harmony with our world, and to stop jeopardising our own future on this planet.

We know lots of people still eat meat, and a few of those still like to roar I AM A PREDATOR! (Grrrr.) But in most parts of the world, humans are not predators. As you (surprisingly correctly) say predators hunt prey, they don’t pop down the corner shop to pick up some small piece of flesh, seasoned to make it palatable, pre-cooked for our convenience and wrapped in plastic.

We hate to break it to you James, but you are not a predator. You are a bloke who pushes a trolley round a supermarket.

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