Before quinoa became the sacred grain of the smug and Whole Foods the cathedral of self-righteousness, humans were scavengers, scrappy little survivalists gnawing on bones and bitter roots like mangy mongrels at a medieval feast, evolution didn’t hand us a curated menu with kombucha pairings, it chucked scraps at us and said “figure it out you half-witted apes,” and we did, thriving on desperation more than design. And let’s kill the heroic mammoth hunt fantasy, because most hunts failed miserably, more like a blind drunk with a toothpick than a precision strike, and when that happened we scavenged—rotting carcasses, marrow bones, maybe Uncle Ogg if things got desperate—so before you sit there with a burrito delivered to your doorstep talking about what you’d never eat, remember Uber Eats wasn’t an option, it was eat or be eaten, and sometimes the family dog didn’t make it.
Even the fruits and veggies people romanticize weren’t the picture-perfect produce you see at Trader Joe’s, bananas were rock-hard seed bombs, strawberries were tiny sour bullets, carrots looked like Satan’s fingers, and every sweet bite you think is “natural” today is the result of humans messing with genetics for centuries, turning bitter scraps into sugar bombs, so no, your seedless grape isn’t wild, it’s a lab project wearing a fig leaf. Then there’s milk—our weird evolutionary kink—because about 10,000 years ago some lunatic got kicked in the chest by a wild auroch and decided to squeeze the udder anyway, and boom, dairy. Not everyone adapted—some got the A2 gene and digest it better, others got stuck with A1 and paid in gas and regret, but humans being humans we guzzled it anyway, the only species dumb enough to keep drinking milk after weaning, and evolution laughed while lactose intolerance turned bathrooms into crime scenes.
Nutrients? Don’t get me started. B12, essential for nerves and blood, doesn’t come from plants at all, it comes from bacteria in animal products, so back in the day before supplements vegans had the resilience of a soggy crumpet. Iron? Meat gives you heme iron that absorbs like butter, plants give you non-heme iron that needs vitamin C as a wingman just to be noticed, and calcium in plant milks? Half the time it’s powdered rocks from ancient crustaceans, less bioavailable than dairy, maybe even tied to arthritis, so spare me the smug almond latte sermon. And the gorilla argument? “Gorillas are vegan and strong,” sure, but gorillas have cellulase-producing bacteria to process 50 pounds of greens a day, cows have four stomachs to chew grass twice, and humans? We have one gut that throws a tantrum after a kale salad, so unless you’ve got the microbiome of a cow, stop pretending we’re built for it.
And then there’s the ethics card, where vegans climb on their kale-covered high horse, but industrial farming is an apocalypse too, rainforests torched for soy, billions of pounds of pesticides dumped into rivers, millions of rodents, birds, and insects killed to protect “ethical” crops, and soil stripped to dust until farmers spray chemicals just to limp through another harvest. Unless you’re growing your own or buying local, you’re not saving the planet—you’re just cosplaying as a savior while sipping oat milk. And meat eaters, don’t laugh, because factory farming is a nightmare of hormone-injected misery and shit lagoons, so the real villain isn’t meat or plants, it’s gluttony, because our ancestors didn’t gorge daily, they ate what they could, balanced it with plants, survived, and moved on. Balance isn’t boring, it’s survival—source your food sustainably, stop pretending it’s a religion, and admit both sides are hypocrites.
Life is just an energy exchange, a cosmic recycling program where nothing is wasted, a fallen animal becomes soil, plants feed on it, insects feed on the plants, we feed on both, energy passed hand to hand forever. Even plants aren’t passive, they release stress hormones when attacked, they wage chemical war, they use underground fungal internet to feed their young, they’re not props in your salad, they’re active players in the drama. And here we are, humans, the so-called pinnacle of evolution, arguing on Twitter while sharing 60% of our DNA with bananas, 85% with zebrafish, and 99.9% with chimps, that sliver of difference just enough to let us invent TikTok and war crimes while chimps swing in peace. We’re molecular cousins to pine trees, fungi, even rocks, all of it forged in dead stars, particles aware enough to change when they’re watched, and yet we think we’re running the show? Life isn’t a ladder, it’s a web, and every time we cut a strand we weaken ourselves.
So maybe it’s time to stop with the self-righteous posturing, admit we’re just another thread in the tapestry, and respect the damn cycle. Eat, yes. Live, yes. But stop acting like you’re morally superior because of what’s on your plate. You’re not enlightened because you picked quinoa over steak, you’re not holy because you bought soy milk, and you’re not a barbarian because you ate a burger. You’re a human in a messy system trying not to screw up the cosmic dance, and the truth is balance, not bullshit, is the only diet that’s ever kept us alive.
-Written by Steve Caprio
