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One of the arguments I've often heard in favor of vegetarianism is "Humans are not meant to eat meat." The reason put forward is, we lack the iron sickles like incisors (front teeth) meant to tear down meat and our stomach and intestines are not receptive to a carnivorous diet.
My way of looking at it is, there are a lot of things humans were not meant to do. Had we stuck with the original set of Commandments we would not be anywhere near where we are now. For example, we were not meant to fly since our anatomy lacks the primary equipment for flying i.e the wings. We were not meant to do bone marrow transplant (which in fact is a type of stem cell transplant), but luckily we do. In the daily life of a twenty first century homo sapien, if s/he does 100 things, at least 75 of them are from the not-to-be-done-by-human beings list. As far as I am concerned one more or less won't make much of difference(explains why I’ve never been called a perfectionist.)
If the above statements give you the impression that I am a hardcore non-vegetarian, you got me wrong. I have never been much of a meat eater. Growing up we had meat (chicken) once a month. Fish would be on the menu two or three times a month, but I never liked the taste of fish so it was just gravy for me. The existence of beef, pork and other myriad meats were conveniently overlooked. Even today I am not much of a carnivore, the raison d’etre of my non-vegetarianism is the spicy succulent middle eastern and Indian kebabs which I cannot resist myself from having, if they ever cross my field of vision.
Now for some tech support :-
London based anthropologist Leslie Aiello and her colleague Peter Wheeler(Current Anthropology, Issue #36) suggested that early ancestors of human beings needed to eat meat to facilitate brain growth. They also argue that the parallel reduction in size of human intestines, as shown by an alteration of the shape of the ribcage in Homo ergaster (one of our forerunners), is evidence for a change to eating more meat than vegetables. In other words, the oldest true humans had lost the vegetarian pot-belly so characteristic of australopithecines, thus causing two roads to diverge in the evolutionary woods and our predecessors took the road less traveled – the meat route.
Studies also show that smart primate hunters (conducted on our nearest living primate relative the African chimpanzee hunting colobus monkeys) reveal the social significance of co-operative hunting and their higher success rate compared to carnivores like lions in the same location. Like us meat is not an essential part of their diet, it is more a prestige than a survival strategy. Thus anthropological records and comparative studies on human evolutional history shows an already intelligent, large brained order of forest-based primates who were greatly flexible and adapted to their changing habitats and food availability. They preserved the dexterity of the five fingered hand and in most cases their teeth got smaller rather than larger (So much for the absence of sickle-like incisors.)
All researches and religions have their own agendas. Vegetarianism is a choice, in case of many Indians – a choice they were born in to, which became an informed choice, later on in their adult lives. What I have narrated above is some more related information, from the book, "The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa." (I've just started reading the preface and so much controversy already! Haha, seems like my kind of book ;-))
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