What my esteemed colleague here fails to explain, however, is why I should care whether or not my food can feel. I feel like I shouldn't. Hyuk hyuk.

Anyone who eats a lobster in the preferred method is the worst of all.

Craig, you've taken a page from wordplay masters such as Oscar Wilde, mixing up different senses of a single word (in this case, feel) to humorous effect! You're using the sense in which feel replaces think, producing statements such as "I feel that the faith of Kwakamatu is the revealed Truth, and I also feel that there's no reason that I shouldn't eat steak. I don't need evidence for these things, it's just what I feel." But of course, all the while, Seabiscuit is using the more classic sense of the word, which produces statements such as "If you tear the esophagus out of either a cow or a human, they will feel it." The unexpected switching of the two senses is what produces that classic witty repartee pop! 

Indeed, Joseph. I've broken new ground in the world of dialectic witticism. Still can't subscribe to what you've said, Jewish law withstanding.

And I don't see what's so bad about killing lobsters the normal method. It's fast and, probably, painless. Not that I care.

According to one website, they actually do feel pain:

'Lobsters suffer from the minute they are trapped until the last agonizing seconds of their lives. Like other animals used for food, lobsters are torn from their natural habitat and transported long distances. “They come up alive in the traps,” Wallace writes, “are placed in containers of seawater, and can, so long as the water’s aerated and the animals’ claws are pegged or banded to keep them from tearing one another up under the stresses of captivity, survive right up until they’re boiled.”'

 Hmm. Gross.

Of course animals can feel. I merely used the apple as an example, or was that beyond your comprehension? It cannot feel once it's dead, but if you don't eat it, it won't get killed and therefor, it will be able to live it's life in the uninterrupted way Nature planned. Do not forget, Animals were here before even we were.

The "horses thing" was not a joke, it was an example, as wasthe apple. Sometimes a comment does not have a hidden meaning, and you seem to be forgetting that.

Also it's disgusting to kill lobsters that way, and I'd like to see how you like it.

<i>"every one who tries to diverge from it must work hard to compensate
for what is missing in the diet."</i><p>

Not true at all. The most widely used argument that is used against vegs is that they don't get enough protein. This is stated with the idea that protein only comes from meat. There's soy protein, protein in peanuts, and many other items, and it's not difficult to have those in your diet. The other fight is vitamin D, which is found in most cereals if nothing else. You don't have to eat any freaky foods to be healthy when you don't eat meat.

(don't mind the fact that the codes didn't work and it just spelled them out and made me look silly)

Empathy!

Certainly not that we are not best adapted to eating overtly animated organisms (animals if you like)?

Certainly
not that it is in some way intrinsically wrong to eat all animals while
all more subtly animated organisms are fair game?

The
only diet that might possibly claim not to be destroying life to
continue life is the pure fructarian one that only eats fruit that has
evolved to be eaten.

The argument that eating meat kills
sentience and/or causes suffering are arrogantly empathic. What this
argument is doing is saying that when an organism responds to damage
and death in a manner similar to me then I will feel that doing so is
bad. This to me is like saying that if your can't understand a
foreigner's pleas for mercy then it's ok to carry on torturing them,
but as soon as they scream 'mercy' then I feel bad. Different eukaryotes different survival mechanisms. Who's to say my mechanisms, and those similar to mine, are in some way more valuable?

<> OK,
so it's empathy? Can I empathise? Yes of course. However, just as some
seem to have been alluding to the idea that just because we ate meat in
our evolutionary past we do not need to in these enlightened times, I
feel that I can put asside my base instinctive feelings and rise above
them to act more morally than a savage beast.

<> So what do
I do? I cannot photosythesise so I'm going to have to ingest something.
There are no magic pills, so it will have to be organic tissues. Fruit
alone will not sustain me, even with unfertilised eggs and other
'non-harming' foods, and I don't want to starve (that's one instinct I
am going to give in to for now). So my only option is to eat
everything, without prejudice, that is edible and will provide me with
sustinance.

P.S. I made up eukaryotism, it's an extension of racism - speciesism - genusism and so on.