Worrying about whether we eat plants or animals exclusively is a modern luxury, an intellectual indulgence of sorts.

For the majority of human history, we have been opportunistic omnivores.  When plants were the only thing that was available, we would eat them.  When we could, we would chase down an animal to get the protein we need to thrive.  We never had to worry about nutrient density because the foods we ate grew in fertile soil without pesticides.  The animals we ate were eating their natural foods which were also nutritious for them.

Humans thrived and were able to populate the world because we learned to hunt, store, cook and process food.  We became very good at getting the nutrients we needed with the minimum amount of effort. Unfortunately, we have now become too good at processing food.

Many of us are now fantasising nostalgically about Paleo times.

It’s one thing to worry about saving animals, but ultimately we need to save the planet and our human race from accelerated extinction.

Our newfound ability to harvest fossil fuels enables us to move around in cars and grow a massive amount of food with chemical fertilisers.  These foods grow quickly and give us plenty of energy, but few nutrients that we then process and feed to animals or humans.

Take a moment to think about how your life would be different if we had never discovered fossil fuels (e.g. coal or oil).  For as long as it lasts we are gorging ourselves on stored energy that is making us lazy and obese and driving not just us, but life as we know it to an early grave. If you want to care about something it should be the sustainability of the global environment (including animals and humans).

If you want to care about something it should be the sustainability of the global environment (including animals and humans). While humans are probably the biggest threat to the long-term sustainability of earth as we know it, most of us aren’t willing to volunteer ourselves or our family as the first ones to check out to save the planet.

[If you want some challenging thoughts on this topic you should check out Daniel Vitalis’ Why I Hunt podcast.]