In praise of meat
Or, in this benighted day and age, it might be more appropriate to say “in DEFENSE of” etc etc. Which, as the title of the article shows, the author knows well enough.
In Defense of Steak: Listen to Your Body, not the Bug People
There is a particular smell that quiets a room or backyard: beef hitting heat, butter melting, fat crackling over open flame. Conversations pause. Children wander closer. Adults become very present, childlike in their eagerness. Something ancient has briefly reclaimed priority.This response appears across cultures, centuries, and cuisines, persisting despite decades of scolding lectures about moderation, sustainability, and restraint. No one salivates at the thought of cricket flour. No one waxes poetic about lab-grown protein slurry. Even people committed to eating less meat tend to speak about steak the way one speaks about a lost love. We are told this reaction, this anticipation of pleasure, reflects indulgence, weakness, or conditioning, but a simpler explanation exists.
Pleasure can be information.
Indeed so, and there’s every bit as much solid, useful information in this piece as there is pleasure in eating a fat, juicy filet mignon. For example:
Meat is often treated as interchangeable with whatever happens to meet a protein target, as though nourishment were merely arithmetic. This misses what meat actually is: an exceptionally efficient nutritional delivery system shaped by evolution to meet human needs with minimal friction.
Animal protein arrives complete, providing all essential amino acids in proportions the body immediately recognizes and uses. Absorption is high. Muscle repair is straightforward, using precisely the amino acids our meals just provided. No pairing, combining, or supplementation is required. Fat, so long maligned, provides stable saturated and monounsaturated fats that slow digestion, stabilize blood sugar, support hormones, and carry fat-soluble vitamins. Speaking of fat, humans did not spend thousands of years figuring out how to obtain more fat because it was harming them.
Then there are the nutrients rarely discussed in fashionable debates but central to human function: vitamin B12 for neurological health, heme iron that the body absorbs efficiently (iron in supplements or vegetables is poorly absorbed), zinc for immune function and growth, creatine and carnosine for muscle and brain performance, choline for liver and cognitive health. These are not optional extras. They are foundational for good health and a properly functioning body.
Claims that humans do not “need” animal protein hinge on a technicality. With careful planning, supplementation, fortified foods, and modern logistics, it is possible to assemble these nutrients without meat. That is not equivalence. It is compensation. A diet that requires constant vigilance to avoid deficiency is not revealing a hidden natural balance; it is leaning heavily on modern intervention and often industrially manufactured frankenfood.
I repeat: indeed. Butbutbutbut…but…WAIT, they whine. What about Eating Ze Bugs, shitlib fascists snivel. Wilson outs paid to that codswallop with a quickness.
Insects are often presented as the logical successor to meat, reduced to the claim that they “contain protein” and are therefore interchangeable. Biology is less accommodating.
Insects contain chitin, the substance that forms their exoskeletons, which humans do not digest well. Chitin inflates protein numbers on paper while reducing absorption in practice because it resists breakdown and in fact interferes with nutrient uptake. From a nutritional standpoint, counting chitin as protein is a bit like counting fingernails as food: it contains nitrogen, which looks impressive on a label, but the human body cannot do much with it. Edible, yes. Nourishing, not really.
Digestive discomfort after eating bugs is common enough that most insect products are heavily processed into powders, undermining both nutritional and environmental claims. Amino acid profiles vary widely by species, but they all tend to be lower in key amino acids such as leucine, which plays a central role in muscle maintenance and repair, particularly as people age.
Micronutrients present further problems. Vitamin B12, heme iron, and creatine are unreliable or absent, requiring supplementation to compensate. Allergy risks are also underplayed, as insects share protein structures with shellfish. Insects are edible, certainly, but edible is not the same as optimal, and bug protein is not in any way an upgrade over beef, chicken, or fish.
Annnnnd bingo, there you have it. Myself, I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck about how smart the person telling me to switch from steak to cricket paste thinks he/she/it is, I simply ain’t gonna do it.
There’s only one song I can think of that will suit.
Tell it true now, Jim.
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