Secondly, humans do not need to eat meat to survive. I know many vegetarians/vegans that have stayed away from animal product and has been in extremely good health for decades. Humans are not carnivars, i argue that we are not even omnivores, but humans are herbivores by nature. Humans are apes by definition. Apes do not need meat to survive, but we eat it anyway. Our bodies closely resembles herbivores and not carnivores.
There's no such thing as "Us humans" vs "them animals". Humans ARE animals pretending to be something else. If you want to see what your body is designed to eat, just take a look at your digestive system.
We don't digest plant's main protein, cellulose, but we can use vitamins and fiber (and other nutrients from them), nor we have a mouth filled with funny looking teeth like deers or cows, but we don't have all pointy teeth like carnivOres do either. We have a mix, meaning we are designed (if you "believe") or evolved (if you're predominantly rational-inclined) to eat a variety of food to have a decent nutrition. Don't take my word for it, just study a bit of human metabolism. BTW, you can feed your body a lot of bad/non-optimal things and it'll try to change some metabolic pathways to cope, but that doesn't make it healthy -ie. alcoholics' metabolism is skewed towards alcohol so much, that after a drinking binge eating 'normal' food actually damages their livers (and puts their pancreas at risk too). That's why a vegetarian will feel bad if he tries to eat meat. Okay, this is the part about it being natural. It's not. We're a different species of ape, but not bonobos or gorillas, same as most bats eat fruit, but a few need blood and you wouldn't try to feed them apples, because that'd be cruel (and would also kill it).
I am seeing so many misconceptions here about how humans need meat, or how early man ate meat and how not eating meat is not healthy.... not true. But If someone would think about how it might be immoral to mistreat another sentient life, i would ask you to at least think of that, and approach a delicate topic like this with some consideration
There isn't really much to debate, really. I like (other) animals, but I won't keep tigers from eating other animals ALIVE (how cruel!) and feed them carrots instead. Or maybe sharks or fish, that also eat other animals alive (where's the compassion?). As to the "we're suppossed to blah blah", we're
not suppossed to be higher than other animals, that's a human distorted self-conception. Would you feed an evil lion carrots because you know better?. No. What's really really wrong is human's irresponsible over populating and consuming of resources. That alone leads to unnatural systems to procure food, like those horrible [chicken|cow|pig|whatever] breeding farms, or the highly processed "food" products most people love to eat.
It's OK if you want to believe things, but you cannot make them real just because you do. Just because I want to believe that eating rocks is healthy and natural and it's the true nature of my digestive system, doesn't mean it'll work out in the end. BTW, I have vegetarian relatives. They're "healthy", except they don't look so healthy compared to my healthy relatives that eat a balanced diet, and no artificial stuff like processed sugars and flours (yes, those things aren't natural, we're not made to eat them), but if you put them side by side with my overweight/unhealthy relatives, then yes, they look healthier, even though most of them have receding gums (a common vegetarian's ailment, from malnutrition). By the way, I love sweets and pies and all that stuff, and a part of me wants to believe that it's ok to eat that. Except it's not, and I KNOW it, therefore I seldom eat a portion of that and it tastes like glory (but it's neither natural or nutritious or healthy).
