It’s one of the world’s biggest businesses, yet it harms the planet and our health. Why do we love meat so much?

One day chickens may be replaced by plant or lab-grown alternatives Baris Karadeniz/Alamy

YOU probably know people who follow a more or less vegetarian diet and are fit and healthy, not lacking in any nutrients and do not feel they are missing out. You may even be one.

Most educated people know that eating meat is bad for the planet, potentially harmful to their health and cruel to animals. But the meat eaters I know can rarely come up with a better reason for consuming it than: “I just really love to eat meat.”

Our ancestors’ transition from herbivory to omnivory was, initially, a positive move. As Zaraska explains: “It enabled us to grow bigger brains, encouraged sharing and politics, and helped us move out of Africa and into colder climates.”

Her journey takes us around the world, from the lush green fields of a Welsh beef farm to a steakhouse in India via the Smithsonian Institution and a research slaughterhouse at Pennsylvania State University. Along the way, she meets colourful characters who help answer her meaty question. Perhaps the most exciting is the cultural expert she meets during a bloody ceremony of chicken sacrifice at a temple in Benin: “Paul Akakpo, my guide to West African voodoo, adjusts the large python that is wrapped, jewelry-like, around his neck.”

Zaraska’s tone is light and she does well putting facts and figures to ideas we are familiar with – such as how powerful the meat industry is. “In 2011, in the US alone, the annual sales of meat were worth $186 billion,” she writes. And she has a truly alarming figure up her sleeve: “During the 2013 election cycle, the animal products industry contributed $17.5 million to federal candidates.”

So how much protein do we need each day? The daily dietary allowance recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. And how far back does the habit go? Zaraska cites the oldest undisputed cut marks, which show humans started to butcher savannah animals as far back as 2.6 to 2.8 million years ago.

“Our ancestors’ move from herbivory to omnivory was, initially, positive – for growing bigger brains“

Normally a pescatarian, Zaraska describes sampling meat, fake meat and insect dishes in the course of research for this book. She enjoys the “enticing” Philly cheesesteak sandwich, but not so much the cricket she tries in an upmarket Parisian bar. “Once on my tongue, the thing collapses into greasy ash,” she writes. “I chew and chew, the wings scratching the insides of my cheeks. I certainly wouldn’t like to repeat the experience.”

Even so, Meathooked is sometimes a little judgemental of meat eaters. It makes the case for vegetarianism, though Zaraska avoids straight-out preaching until the very end. Learning the facts is an important step to giving up meat, she says, “we should… become aware of meat’s many meanings – only then can the hooks be released one by one”.

But non-vegetarians can take heart: her vision of the short-term future is not entirely meat-free. After a whole book exploring our “addiction”, she concludes that going cold turkey (pun intended) could backfire. “Even though I do believe that in the future humanity will eat mostly plant-based foods, I also believe that pushing for dietary purity is not the way to go,” she writes.

Even after reading the book and confirming the sordid details about my destructive habit, I’m still not ready to go vegetarian – I just really love to eat meat.

Meathooked: The history and science of our 2.5-million-year obsession with meat Marta Zaraska Basic Books

This article appeared in print under the headline “Nothing quite like it?”