Need to be smoother than cherry and heavier . <| sep |> Time to pray the Metal Gods again <| sep |> to bigveinyrichard Really interesting to point to raise ! Thanks ! Here ' s an excerpt from the attached article , offering evidence to support the role of an omnivorous diet in evolutionI ' m not quite sure why you included that , when I basically conceded the point that it was plausible that eating animal products could have helped humans reach our current level of intelligence . It hasn ' t been proven , but let ' s say for the purposes of argument now that it ' s true . As well , I would argue against your example of modern context , in which people in developed countries experience an increased danger from consuming too many calories . I think you may have interpreted my point more broadly than what I was aiming for . All I was getting at is if the benefits of eating meat were because of being able to take advantage of a nutrient dense food source in times where food was scarce then in times where food isn ' t scarce , this benefit would no longer apply . Arguing that there ' s something specific in meat that drives brain growth or evolution is a thing you ' d need to actually use evidence to support . As for the answer to is it morally permissible ? I don ' t even see that as a question worth asking anymore . If the benefits of animal consumption include perpetuating the evolution of our species ' by giving our expanding brains the nourishment they need to continue to grow , I say keep on keepin ' on . Just showing a correlation between eating meat and evolving larger brains at some time in history isn ' t sufficient to justify saying something like Eating meat causes the evolution of larger brains . I ' m sure you ' ve heard this saying before Correlation is not causation . There are alternative explanations for why that correlation may have existed , such as it simply being an extra source of caloriesnutrients when those things were scarce . If you can already get the calories and nutrients you need in other ways , then eating meat isn ' t going to make your brain or your childrens ' brains grow more . Therefore , it is definitely not shown that the benefits you talk about result from meat , and justifications based on this also would be problematic . I think it ' s also debatable that growing our brains is necessarily a sufficient justification . For example if I could increase my IQ by 10 points for each other human I killed and ate , surely I wouldn ' t be justified in doing so ! We could stand for drastic improvement in terms of the treatment of these animals we raise to consume , but consume them we must . There are a lot of other negative effects , purely from a humanselfinterest standpoint 1 . 90 % of food energy is lost per link in the food chain , so running food energy up the food chain is very inefficient compared to simply eating plants directly . In many countries US included , a large percentage of agriculture goes to raising crops that are then primarily fed to animals . This compounds all the harms of agriculture . 2 . GHG output is almost always greater when eating high on the food chain . 3 . Increased risk of creating zoonotic diseases . 4 . Increased risk of creating antibiotic resistant bacteria . 5 . Animal wasterunoff issues . Even if it was true that eating meat had beneficial effects , it could well be the case that the negative effects caused it to be a bad proposition overall .