I am a Meat Eater

I love to eat meat. Whenever I am given the choice of meat or salad, I almost always choose to eat the meat. In David Foster Wallace's piece, "Consider the Lobster," the question on the morality of eating other animals arose. He said, "Do you think much about the (possible) moral status and (probable) suffering of the animals involved? If you do, what ethical convictions have you worked out that permit you not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather that mere ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)?" (Wallace 680). This got me thinking, what makes me feel so entitled to eat them, what makes me feel so much more important than the other 8.7 million species in the world, and what makes me feel so good while eating it. After doing some research on the topic, I discovered the main arguments for both sides; the anti meat-eaters claim that there is no need to hurt other animals and that we can survive entirely on fruits and vegetables while the meat-eaters claim that humans are omnivores and should eat both meat and vegetables and that meat is a better source of certain nutrients than vegetables are. However, after thinking about both sides, I came to a pretty humorous thought. Why are plants and fruits discriminated from the topic of pain? Research has actually shown that plants, such as grass, release chemical signals as a cry for help when they are being cut. In fact, Michael Pollan, an author who writes about plant science, says, "[Plants] somehow [hear] what is, to it, a terrifying sound of a caterpillar munching on its leaves." Also, fruits are seed-bearing structures which means they are, in a sense, plant babies, so every time we eat a fruit we are a killer. So I've come to the conclusion that eating meat isn't so bad after all, and I will be sure to keep eating it.