Indeed, not only the majority of human civilizations but no evidence of a single paleolithic pre-"civilized" group that didn't consume meat or seafood.
Choosing a vegetarian diet is something we can do now, and is always an ideological or religious choice. It was not a choice for our ancestors, even if they often ate way less of it.
The way these groups did it and the way we do it aren’t even comparable.
They didn’t keep animals in piss poor conditions where they can’t even turn around in their cages or are so deformed they can’t stand up (battery chickens are engineered that way so their breasts are more meaty for instance)
Seafood eating didn’t involve dragging dozens of kilometers of net across the sea floor destroying everything in its passage to throw most of it away (dead) because we can’t eat it anyway/it sells too cheap.
I don't have an argument with you there but that is an entirely different topic from claiming meat eating itself as an aberation or vice.
The problem is agricultural meat eating doesn't scale to industrial levels without abject cruelty. To be frank, industrialism itself requires abject cruelty towards humans, too. I feel worse about humans labouring in brutal factory conditions in China making trinkets than I do about chickens in cages..
FWIW I like chickens. We have two pet chickens who stopped laying a long time ago and just live a life of leisure hanging out under a couple very large mullberry trees. I like humans more.
Considering how much environmental damage and how much suffering our modern day meat eating generates, it’s not that much of a leap to see it as a vice: it’s unnecessary and does a lot of collateral harm; mostly benefiting the individual who indulges in it at the expense of everyone and everything else. Isn’t that what a vice is?
