Why are those here who eat meat so defensive?

[jeff47]

73. Sigh.

If you actually want to convince people to change, demonstrably false lies is not a good way to go.

First, leaded gasoline did "get the knock out". "Knocking" is pre-ignition, where the gasoline explodes before the piston is in the proper position. It happens because gasoline is a mixture of mostly heptane and octane and heptane explodes when compressed in an internal combustion engine, causing "knocking". Lead stabilized the heptane so that it did not explode until triggered by the spark plug.

We used lead because it made the gas MUCH cheaper. Unleaded gasoline requires much more refining in order to get the heptane down, and to shape the molecules for more stability. That makes the gas much more expensive, but it's also why "leaded" gas cars could burn unleaded. If the driver wanted to pay more for gas. It's not propaganda or marketing. It's chemistry.

Second, lead is extremely toxic. Meat isn't toxic at all. Too much meat can cause problems. Just like too much of virtually any food can cause problems - you can die from drinking too much water.

Third, our bodies demonstrate that we did not evolve as vegetarians. We don't have a digestive tract designed for only plant eating. Compare ours to cows or horses - herbivores have much more complex digestive tracts than we do. And we've got teeth for ripping meat - there's no reason for us to have canines if we only ate plants.

Plus we've found prehistoric tool markings on bones - why would they have gone after meat if meat eating is caused by industry and government when we hadn't yet invented industry or government?

It appears we evolved with a diet that contained a mix of plants and meat. Far less meat than the typical American diet, but meat nonetheless. And studies are showing such a diet appears to be among the "healthiest" diet as measured by longevity. Whether or not it actually is the healthiest is unclear - mild starvation (~90% of required daily calories) seems to actually result in the longest life, but not terribly healthy while living it.