Beware the Cartoon Diet.
There are often news stories promoting causes like animal rights, whaling bans, or vegetarian diets. The tone of these reports attempts to place advocates of these issues on a higher moral and ethical plain than those who believe that both plants and animals have been given to people as food. But using plants and animals for food isn’t only supported by the Bible (Gen. 1:29; 9:3), but by biology as well.
The biological truth is that all animals live off the death of other living things, be they plants (herbivores) or other animals (carnivores). Death is essential for life because death provides the building blocks and fuel for life. Unlike the Disney version of nature, where animals speak English and eat only fruits and nuts, real animals routinely kill and eat each other just as they are designed to do. And whether they are a cat or a shark, they kill without any ethical or moral anxiety over the rights of their prey. This was sharply illustrated when I watched our pet cat catch, kill, and devour a wild rabbit, something he does instinctively and regularly.
Evolutionists typically view people as just another type of animal. Oddly, some of them also believe it is ethically and morally wrong for people to kill and eat animals when this same practice is essential for the survival of all animals on earth. In its place, some suggest that people eat only vegetables and grains—as if this practice does not involve the death of a living organism.
It is possible to live a healthy life on a vegetarian diet. However, one must be careful to eat the right combination of vegetables because particular vegetables lack some of the amino acids people need. By contrast, red meat and fish are the richest, most complete individual sources of all essential amino acids in the human diet.
Fish are a particularly healthy dietary choice because so-called “oily” fish like tuna, sardines, salmon, mackerel, and herring contain an abundance of polyunsaturated fats called Omega-3 fats. The American Heart Association currently recommends eating oily fish at least twice a week for the prevention of heart disease.1
Despite the health benefits of eating fish, Disney continues to promote a fictitious view of nature. In the animated film Finding Nemo, Bruce is a great white shark with a “problem”—he eats other fish for food. To change this unacceptable behavior he attends a self-help group with two other sharks. Together they repeat the mantra “fish are friends, not food” and support each other on the seven-step road to recovery. But real sharks are designed to eat other fish, and one wonders what Bruce would eat if he did not eat fish.
While humans are not animals, human life is dependent on the death of plants and animals for survival and this is consistent with both biology and the Bible. So we—and Bruce—can eat up with a clear conscience because fish really are food, not friends.
1 W.S. Harris, “Fish oil supplementation: Evidence for health benefits,” Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, vol. 71(3), 2004, 208-221.