My cultivated meat argument is that it is very new. Feels like a frankenfood to me. Hence I am skeptical around putting it into my body. It is a bodily autonomy issue. Yes, people are making a buck off of meat, and they are inclined to increase the profit at the expense of the quality of the product. And yes, cows are fed grains. But again, that is why I'm pointing to regenerative agriculture as practiced at White Oak Pastures. My point only is that I could eat a grass fed steak from there and there could be fewer overall animal deaths in the production of that steak than the average "vegan" meal. In my opinion, veganism is too often focused on whether the food itself is an animal product, and *not* on how many animal deaths occurred to make that meal. I constantly hear vegans claim that their meal is cruelty free, when they have not done any checking to make sure all the food came from the highest standard vegan farm. To be honest, I am not even convinced one can make food without some form of animal product or death.

But it sounds to me like we are agreeing somewhat on grass-fed (and finished) beef.

I wish Matheny's paper were open-source. I'd rather not pay the $40 to read it. What is the argument? Is it a land problem?

As for quantity of meat eaten today, I believe the quantity varies widely historically based on location. Take the Maasai of Africa. They eat more meat TODAY than the average person in the U.S. does. I have seen vegetarian sources saying that Native Americans took in less than 2% of their overall calories from meat, but I would point out that it is a biased source of information, and that is assuming all Native American tribes ate the same. Sort of like the water arguments I hear from vegetarians, but then they neglect to remove the quantity of water that would have been used anyway. It is very easy to manipulate numbers and cherry pick.

My understanding is that eating meat is evolutionarily what allowed our brains to grow in size, due to the high density of calories. Do you agree? Or do you think there is an alternate story?

Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. Looking forward to learning more from your perspective.