If it makes you feel well and happy, I'm all for it!
Me, I like meat and I'll carry on eating it. One of the perks of being an apex predator. If we all turned vegan, we'd still be apex predators, we're already preying on the animals' territories to grow our food.
Psychological damage? Of course!
Consider, group of unhealthy, frightened people armed with crude spears and clubs, setting out to try and find something to feed their tribe on. Because it's summer and there are no seeds, berries, fruits and nuts to be had. Because humans can't digest grass at all, and only a few leaves and flowers are edible. They knew that any animal bigger than a rabbit is more than a match for a human. That they were in competition with other predators who were as likely to eat them as not. They knew that any even slight wound or injury would leave them dead or crippled. If they were lucky, they'd find something that died not too long ago of old age or accident, or the not-too-rotten leftovers of another predators' kill. If they weren't so lucky, they'll have to track and kill something, and that likely meant that at least one of them would die or be crippled. It's not something to be undertaken lightly or often. They'd hope that Grandpa, who'd lived for thirty winters, now, and was getting a bit past it, would drop dead because that'd keep them in food for a while.
Compare that with someone killing endlessly, day after day. Far more than he or his family need to eat. Even though he's safe, even if the slaughter is 'humane', the old fears are still there, as they are in all of us. Fear that the prey, larger and more powerful, will strike back. Fear that another, more ferocious, predator will come to drive you off. All still there in the reptile brain. Of course it does damage! The kill without the hunt is only half the experience. The hunt without the driving necessity is unnecessary risk.
I don't have issues with vegans, except the rare preachy one. I've eaten vegetarian, but it was stringy and the sandals got stuck in my teeth.
I do have issues with 'health professionals' who prate at me about my weight, (apparently I should weigh around 12 stone, not the 14 I am), about my smoking ("We can get you help to stop!" spoken more like a command than an offer) and interrogate me about drinking alcohol. They also complain about how much meat I eat. "You'll shorten your life!" they say, "It leads to early death!"
FFS! I'm 64, so no longer able to have an 'early death'! If it doesn't hurt, these days, it's because it no longer works! Do I want to live into my 80s, to sit in my chair staring at nothing, mind gone, talking to long-dead relatives like my mother? Or lying in bed being spoon-fed after having my nappy changed, like my father? No. Thank. You. Pop off with a nice, quick, clean heart attack or stroke some time in the next 15-20 years, aided and abetted by a DNR order, that's how I want to go. Mind intact, not a burden on my family, still with some dignity.
Thus my choice. I'll have my meat and my veggies (sweetheart cabbage and chantenay carrots, love it!) and a bit of fruit when I fancy it (pineapple and mango -yum!), and I'll wash it down with black coffee, Coke Zero, Merlot or IPA and round it off with a ciggie and the Grim Reaper can come for me whenever he wants - as long as he has the decency to wait until after dinner!
