With answers come more questions..

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While wwoofing at the Main Street Market farm in Kingston I spent some time working with a 28 year old intern named Landon. He is an incredibly interesting guy due to the range of experiences he has had throughout his life. He has played drums in a punk band and stand-up bass in another. He has played shows in Europe and has been coast to coast in Canada for various reasons. His dreadlocks have been growing for 10 years and therefore go all the way down his back. Needless to say he doesn’t look like the typical agriculture enthusiast, and definitely not the type that gives tours at the Sisters of Providence (nunnery) seed sanctuary.

As we were weeding the garden we got talking about correct eating and how incredibly insane, in the true meaning of the word, the food industry has become. Though I haven’t had time to research some of the main points he made I believe that his arguments are obvious once contemplated, and I’ve added to them based on my own interpretations of them. I still eat meat, but am going to drastically cut down if not eliminate it from my diet in the future.

** I feel it’s important to mention that food, as well as many things we come across on a daily basis, is technically addictive and I fear anyone reading this will become defensive of their way of life. Please take the points of our discussion into consideration while acknowledging that life is a journey full of constant beliefs we believe to be true. We know no truth, only theories based on empirical knowledge. I’ve purposely kept my research to a minimum so I can avoid any bias, and I know that your inherent qualities as a human being will encourage you to form your own opinions based on whatever information you’d like. With that said, here are some of the points he made:


Let’s start from the beginning of the process which is hunting. Unlike carnivores such as many types of sharks or wolves, humans do not have the physical capacity to chase and kill wild animals without using what separates us from these animals. This is of course our intellect. Though tools like spears or arrows are considered primitive by any modern standard they are still tools. I think it’s important when comparing humans to the animals we mimic by eating meat to admit that realistically we would not be able to chase and kill a wild boar or hare without using a fairly advanced level of thinking. To say that because cavemen ate meat it must be right is like saying in hindsight 200 years from now that our generation was correct to burn as much oil as possible in order to have constant economic growth.

Another factor to consider is our requirement to cook the majority of the meat we eat in order to.. simply not die. I’ve heard of studies throughout the years that suggest cooking pork more than the typical person would to kill off the microorganisms that stay in your digestive tract and eventually cause cancer. I’ll talk about this shortly, but for now think of what would happen if we did what all other meat eaters do when they kill their prey. We wouldn’t last long before a bad case of food poisoning was the best case scenario. Our stomachs do not have the correct enzymes to break down raw meat and subsequently we became the only species on earth to cook meat.

Another brief important point to consider is our teeth. While carnivores have developed sharp teeth used for tearing throughout evolution, humans have developed molars for grinding and two tiny little canine teeth in the front.

Continuing on after a struggle to hunt the wild animal, cooking this meat to avoid dying and grinding it down with molars that aren’t present on other meat eating animals, we should consider the digestion process. To remain consistent I won’t include lengths of typical intestinal tracts or any numbers at all, but it is true that our digestive systems have incredibly long intestines compared to carnivorous animals. Because of this, meat that is readily decomposing will remain inside our bodies for much longer than carnivores, and this has been linked to colon and other tract cancers in numerous studies. Prostate cancer is out of control and I haven’t met many men who don’t subscribe to the meat and potatoes lifestyle. This whole digestion factor is, to me, the most alarming of them all as well as the most convincing. There just can’t be anything natural about meat decomposing in your intestines for days when you think about what meat left in a warm place looks like after only a day or so.

One of the justifications I always make is that vegetarians and vegans don’t replace their lack of protein intake with anything. What I never considered is that our life force derives from the sun which through photosynthesis produces plants, and these plants feed every organism in the food chain in some manner. Even the massive cows we eat only eat grass themselves, and if we eat a carnivorous animal then somewhere down the food chain there has to have been a herbivore. Many studies have shown that people generally eat too much protein anyways which leads to many diseases in itself. A documentary I’m looking forward to seeing called Forks Over Knives touches on this, and a blurb from the website is: “The feature film Forks Over Knives examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.”

Reducing my meat intake scares me, not only because I’ve grown up loving the taste and texture of it but because the effort to replace it with something feels substantial. When I heard the meat industry adds sodium nitrite (a really bad carcinogen) to red meat and a lot of other meats I remember being really bummed out about that too, but I successfully reduced my intake during the remaining time I was buying my own groceries at school. I feel my next challenge is to experiment for weeks or months with little-to-no meat consumption for the same reason I choose to get out of bed every morning. We’re constantly searching for truth; to better ourselves, others, and the situations we’re faced with. To hear this information I’ve recapped in this article and not explore it myself is a contradiction of my whole being, because what is life without growth. Yes, these arguments against eating meat are very convincing and I feel I’ll have failed without trying if I ignore what I’ve learned. However, in absolutely no way shape or form am I suggesting this is true for you or anyone else and this, I feel, is one of the beautiful things about life. Our freedom to choose our paths and the eternal acceptance of everyone else’s is not only necessary but remarkable, and one of the major factors in what I’ve come to accept as the evolution of consciousness.

I’m somewhat tired of posting the majority of my experiences on this trip because I have trouble finding them interesting myself, so I can only imagine how you readers must feel. I hope this information Landon passed onto me was at least intriguing if not influential and that you’ll read my next post which won’t be as dry. Take care,

Ryan

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