How to make a case against vegetarianism... (no offence to vegetarians: this is just in the spirit of debate) :P

This was just a kind of an intellectual response to all those people who kept bugging me with all sorts of reasons of why non-veg is bad, evil, heartless, and impure; nothing personal here,just light hearted jousting but my take on this is this: each to his/her tastes; one man's meat is another man's posion. (pun intended). Most of the arguments I get against non-veg is pretty ridiculous, not very well thought-out, and can be defeated in debate. This is how to defend yourself when confronted by guilt-inducing activist-vegans/PETA-ans:

Warning: Do respect other people's beliefs and restrictions: Just as you have a right to eat meat, so do they have not to. My take on this is this: Moderation at all levels in the right way. A vegetarian diet can be just as healthy or unhealthy as a non-veg diet. There are many non-vegans who are just as healthy as vegans, and just as happy. It all boils down to having a healthy balanced diet which provides all the necessary nutrition for you to stay healthy, with plenty of exercise as well. 

Please do feel free to engage in creative and friendly debate in this: I love a passionate debate, well-fought and argued, with the opponents parting as friends, not enemies.

How to defend yourself against activist-vegans' seemingly iron-clad arguments:

1. Question its effectiveness: One popular Utilitarian argument is that even if I, a single individual, were to stop eating meat, this would not reduce the number of animals killed at all. The meat market is far too large for the meat producers to register a single person's consumption or lack thereof.
2. Don't let emotional appeals sidetrack you. A vegetarian might ask 'Well, how would you feel if you were slaughtered and eaten?' How you would feel may not be comparable to how a lower life form feels. Similarly, using excessively graphic descriptions ('misleading vividness') to evoke a negative reaction is a fallacy.
3. Don't let overly-broad generalisations stand. You may be forced to admit that some farms or slaughterhouses treat the animals with unnecessary cruelty. But not all do. There are plenty of ways to make sure you eat well treated animals. What if you just ate free-range chickens? Why isn't that okay?
4. Consider less extreme measures. This is related to previous step. Consider: It's widely accepted that most Americans eat more meat than is healthful, but this does not mean the best option is to eat no meat at all. What if we just ate half as much? Or a third? Having too much of something doesn't mean you should have none; just that you should have less.
5. Attack tenuous hypotheticals. Consider the point that the grain it takes to feed one cow can feed a hundred people. With all the starving people on the planet, it would make sense to have them eat grain and not meat. The problem with this statement is that those people aren't starving because there isn't enough food--they're starving because they don't have access to the food. When the vegetarian says 'We could feed all the starving people with the ', respond with 'but would we?' One recent study found that half of all food in America goes to waste. If we had twice as much, wouldn't we simply waste the increase too?
6. Use the 'circle of life" argument. When you get down to it, most animals, including humans, are naturally suited for eating other animals. It is clearly possible to have a healthy diet without any meat, but it's often a lot harder.
7. Blow apart the animal rights argument. When a vegetarian claims that you're violating animal rights, remember them that many researches can prove us that plants have some level of awareness of their environments. How can one argue about animal rights without knowing how much does a single plant can feel(or how much is a plant aware of what it feels) at all?
8. Point out their use of other animal products. Most vegetarians still use animal products in things like leather, glue, gelatin, and some pharmaceutic capsules. Question their hypocrisy in using some animal products despite claims to the contrary
9. Describe the biological case for eating meat. If we were made to eat only plants, wouldn't we have multiple stomachs, like cows? Our stomach's production of hydrochloric acid, something not found in herbivores. HCL activates protein-splitting enzymes. Further, the human pancreas manufactures a full range of digestive enzymes to handle a wide variety of foods, both animal and vegetable.

• One argument is that being a vegetarian is healthier than eating meat (all things being considered). This requires proof; beef is packed with B12 and tons of healthy stuff. The key is not to eat it all the time and preferably not in cheeseburger and fries form. Further, chicken is not all that fattening. Now if you deep fry it in trans fat and smother it with sweet and sour sauce (essentially a tablespoon of sugar mixed with a tablespoon of salt with BHT to preserve freshness) then you might not be reaping any benefits.
• Anyone who has studied anthropology would know that early hominids that had meat in their diet had larger brains than the early hominids that had an exclusively vegetarian diet. There are a lot of theories about this finding, one of which is that meat provides more calories than vegetarian fare which allowed our ancestors to spend more time thinking and less time foraging. The ones that had the larger brains and could fuel those brains with meat survived better and passed those brains on to the next generation. On a side note, it's been hypothesized that early humans weren't necessary hunters, they were scavengers, so saying it is natural for us to eat meat might not be accurate but it may have helped make us smarter.