The other day, I was speaking with a devout vegan and she was explaining to me all the usual reasons for being a vegetarian – also why dairy or animal byproducts were not ethical. Now then, although I disagree and would cite evolutionary history of the human species to combat such ascertains, I quietly agreed to listen without comment for as long as I could asking pertinent questions to really hash out the whole argument without condemning her POV (Point of View – a politically correct term and abbreviation). Still, in the end I suppose I did offend with some sharp and hard hitting points of contention by way of rhetorical questions.
Okay so, even though I disagree with the logic of the vegan religious-like displacement, I have considered the reality that once we set off to places of extreme scarcity, such as off-planet colonies we need to be perhaps studying these vegans here on Earth and their way of life because it is doubtful we will be able to raise animals in a Lunar or Mars colony to feed all the colonists. Do you see that point?
Now then, there will always be challenges with humans which limit their diets, for all the good that the vegans may enjoy in the way of health, they also will have a problem through limiting their diet in other aspects. If we don’t know what these are before we send people to off world colonies, we may find ourselves challenged, or even have a situation where the humans are unable to perform their tasks because of their modified diets.
Yes, there have been lots of studies and a quite a bit of research on vegetarians, vegans, their diets, and the health hazards, as well as the attributes of such a way of life. Still, we better know of these are, way ahead of time, because as it stands the colonists will most likely be vegans, and they will definitely be vegetarians. Whenever there are limited resources, it just takes too much to raise livestock for meat to eat.
In Jared diamond’s book; “Collapse,” and also in the book entitled “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” there was made mention of the reality that many religions forgo meat, perhaps because the livestock would eat up all of the resources back in the day when such rules were actually made, or because there did not have proper refrigeration procedures to prevent food borne diseases from decaying animal meat and fat back then.
Perhaps, the same challenges outlined in those books will be the very challenges we face in off world colonies. Therefore to answer the question, which is also the title of this article; Will Space Colonists Be Vegans? The answer is probably; yes. Indeed, hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
