The Brain

Processed game meat is carcinogenic, like cigarettes, asbestos, or arsenic, as the World Health Organization WHO also confirms.

Editorial Wild beim Wild — 18 August 2023

Time and again, claims are made from within the hobby hunter milieu that, upon close analysis, turn out to be half-baked ideas, wild fantasies, hunting literature, and similarly unscientific sources.

This is due primarily to the often inadequate training in hunting examination courses, which are conducted predominantly by at times militant fanatics with cult-like ideologies and require no regular proof of qualification. After completing their training, hobby hunters move exclusively within the echo chamber of the hunting press, which continuously repeats its distorted and often false representations.

Within hunting clubs, members then mutually reinforce one another's worldview. This has given rise to an insular sect that is barely receptive to new information. The fatal consequence is that the local press and politicians still believe that expertise is to be found beneath the hunter's hat, and consult the local hobby hunter on all matters relating to nature. In this way, these problematic hobby hunter sects then also contaminate the public sphere.

Meat consumption played a decisive role in human evolution. Meat proteins were what first enabled the enlargement of the brain. This is one argument repeatedly put forward by hobby hunters.

However, it fails to answer why other, purely carnivorous animals did not develop larger brains. Dogs, cats, and other predators visibly do not possess the largest brains.

Current science now knows, however, that vegetarians live longer, and that when meat is fed to animals that naturally live on a vegetarian diet, mental illnesses develop — for example, BSE.

Genetically speaking, humans are primarily foragers of nuts, vegetables, fruit, legumes, and roots — that is, plant-eaters rather than carnivores. Naturally, civilised humans can eat anything, but they are not a waste bin. The gathering activities of our ancestors were generally more important than hunting and covered the greater part of their raw material and caloric needs. Among chimpanzees, the situation is similar.

The Indian physicist and philosopher Vandana Shiva reminds us that humanity would not have survived if the productivity of the male hunter had been the basis of his livelihood. The contribution of men to survival amounted to approximately 20% of food intake. Women as gatherers and cultivators in hunter-gatherer societies accounted for over 80% of total food procurement.

Traces of ancient bacteria on the teeth of Neanderthals suggest that our ancestors consumed carbohydrate-rich plant-based foods at least 600’000 years ago in order to meet the energy demands of their increasingly larger brains. This is the conclusion of a published study by a research team including anthropologists from Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena.

Modern science still knows little about the evolution of the brain. Researchers produce new theories on the subject on an almost annual basis.

The size or weight of the brain also has nothing to do with intelligence quotient. Intelligence is generated through neuronal connections in the brain. A man's brain is larger than a woman's, yet on average both have the same number of neuronal connections — in men they are simply longer.

The evolutionarily driven growth of the human brain was most likely far more closely connected to the discovery of fire, which made a wealth of newly available energy accessible.

In recent decades, meat consumption has risen to unimaginable heights, yet the human brain and human intelligence are not growing — as the thesis of the hobby hunters would suggest. Unlike chimpanzees, which are generally herbivorous, the human brain is now actually shrinking according to current studies and intelligence is declining as well. This at a time when meat consumption is dominant. The brain also contracts, for example, during prolonged periods of depression.

From a neuroscientific perspective, it is noteworthy that violent acts such as hunting alter the brain. The balance between intellectual faculties and lower animalistic drives is disrupted. Hobby hunters frequently lack respect for fellow living beings. Their inner demons react with hostility to restrictions, advice, and criticism from the general public. Citizens can repeatedly observe this for themselves in conversations with hobby hunters, when the latter speak candidly from personal experience.

At the point where violence is discharged, damage is caused just as much as at the point toward which it is directed. And this in a decidedly concrete sense at the neuronal level.

Neuropsychologists confirm: The amygdala, the emotional sorting center of the brain, is noticeably underdeveloped or impaired in violent individuals such as hobby hunters and psychopaths. When this central part of the brain is defective, the sense of disgust, among other things, is switched off. The amygdala is also referred to as the almond nucleus.

When humans hunted out of necessity, and cannibalistic-minded hobby hunters now claim that meat was the essential food for the development and size of the brain, this is, true to the nature of hobby hunters, simply rather short-sighted.

Meat also invariably contains a high proportion of toxins and makes one extremely susceptible to illnesses of a physical and mental nature. This does not change with the label fraud perpetrated by hobby hunters; that game meat is organic or a refined natural product, and so on.Game meat is by no means as natural and organic as hobby hunters would have the public believe. In particular, game meat is contaminated with residues of pesticides, herbicides, liquid manure, antibiotics, and so on, from the feed and water of the fields, in addition to the potential heavy metal contamination from ammunition particles left by hobby hunters.

Liquid manure also contains large quantities of heavy metals, as animals in factory farming are fed feed containing zinc and copper. These heavy metals are found in the excrement, which enters the soil via the liquid manure. They inhibit plant growth and damage valuable microorganisms and important soil organisms such as earthworms.

It is essentially a form of bodily harm, and thus a criminal act, when hobby hunters persuade in particular children to consume meat.

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