> i eat them bc i dont want to gave to take unregulated supplements to make up for nutrtional deficiencies you wouldnt have if you just ate meat.

B12 isn’t reliably absorbed from meat. Everyone should be taking a b12 supplement unless they eat b12 fortified cereals or get regular blood work but supplements are the cheapest method for most.

“ A careful look at 3,000 men and women in the ongoing Framingham Offspring Study found 39 percent with plasma B12 levels in the “low normal” range--below 258 picomoles per liter.

While this is well above the currently accepted deficiency level of 148 pmol/L, some people exhibit neurological symptoms in the higher range, said study leader Katherine Tucker... The researchers also expected to find some connection between dietary intake and plasma levels, even though other studies found no association. And they did find a connection. Supplement use dropped the percentage of volunteers in the danger zone--plasma B12 below 185 pmol/L--from 20 percent to 8. Eating fortified cereals five or more times a week or being among the highest third for dairy intake reduced, by nearly half, the percentage of volunteers in that zone--from 23 and 24 percent, respectively, to 12 and 13 percent.

Oddly, the researchers found no association between plasma B12 levels and meat, poultry, and fish intake, even though these foods supply the bulk of B12 in the diet. “It’s not because people aren’t eating enough meat,” Tucker said. “The vitamin isn’t getting absorbed.””

https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2000...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10648266/

>...reality that existing implies devouring and consumption

I don't understand why it implies that. Eating meat probably did play a big role in human evolution. But that's actually a really good reason to avoid meat!

Evolutionary adaptations almost universally trade long-term fitness for short term reproductive success. That's an inevitable consequence of natural selection. This principle is called Antagonistic Plieotoropy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antagonistic_pleiotropy_hypoth...).

The same thing applies to meat-specific adaptations. Which could explain why high-meat diets seem so bad for longevity in a lot of studies (Not this one because this is just a bunch of cross-sectional studies with virtually no adjustments, and they used GDP as a proxy for socioeconomic status. Far better nutritional epidemiology studies are out there).

But my main concern is the ethical issue. The conditions in which factory-farm animals are kept is absolutely abhorrent.

Watch Dominion on YouTube. It's heartbreaking and i don't think most people are aware of what animals go through to come to your plate.

https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko

(Joaquin Phoenix is one of the narrators btw)

> but i put my health above that of chickens, fish and the occassional cow.

> i feel for them but theyre not people. i barely am capable of processing the horrors that happen to people on this earth.

I'm not asking you to personally save every animal suffering out there. I too value humans more than animals and would give priority to humans problems.

I'm just asking you to consider minimising your personal contribution to it as far as practically possible.

I just haven't heard of any valid justification for why slaughtering an animal for food is ok but slaughtering humans would be wrong. Every argument I've heard leads to a contradiction or an absurdity.

If it's because humans are more intelligent than animals, then is it morally acceptable to kill a mentally disabled human being? (Most people would say no, thus entailing a contradiction since they're fine with killing the animal of equivalent intelligence).

If it's because humans have moral agency, then is it ok to kill babies and severely autistic people?

If it's because we gain some unique health benefit from eating animals (not convinced of this btw), would it be ok to kill humans if studies showed eating humans also conferred a unique health benefit?

> Your moral finger wagging, BTW, isn't a way to win hearts and minds...

I wasn't trying to :)

Just expanding on the ethical implications the parent comment brought up.

I don't think you can avoid the ethical implications here.

I won't press you on this but I just want people to consider the externalities of their consumption habits.