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jrf's picture

what is human nature?

I don't think human nature can be defoned so specifically that it includes the act of killing animals/eating their meat. I understand the concept of human nature on a grand scale to mean "things groups of people will tend to do"-- general patterns in human behavior. I don't see our eating habits as something enduring enough to be classed as "natural." We used to hunt animals and forage for plants; now we flake and reform our food into whatever shape we want, and let other people kill our animals and grow our plants for us. We've eaten meat that came from real animals for a long time, yes, but I'm not sure that fact makes it "natural" for us to continue doing so.

A question that makes more sense to me: is the added layer of artificiality that fake meat inserts between us and our food harmful to us? As Pollan has made very clear, we're already pretty far disconnected from our food sources; synthesising meat might contribute to that problem.

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