My take on eating meat:
1) If you eat plants, you're not killing, but you are raping and pillaging the food source and/or homes of other animals and insects.
2) By eating higher up the food chain, you can extract more energy per creature eaten. Do you know how many vegetables you would need to eat have to consume same number of calories in a single cow?
3) It's nutritious and healthy.
Finally someone pointed out a few valid points.
Also it isn't that unhealthy to eat meat.
1) Many plants have a symbiotic relationship with people, we make sure their offspring thrive; market based corporative evolution at play. We kill pests at our expense, the more we do it the more we need to manage the process. Here diversity and sustainable growing techniques like horticulture is your friend.
2) Calories come from plants, for every 10 calorie fed to an animal you get 1 calorie back, if you are into consuming just calories, go eat high fructose corn syrup, it is plant based and more rich in calories than any meat.
3) Meat is nutritious if you are among the unlucky who don't know any better.
On health coming from a meat and potatoes diet and just cur out meat, that is unhealthy, or substituting meat protean with refined carbohydrates that is unhealthy, but if you take the effort to balance your diet vegetarianism is way healthier. If you are malnourished, meat is a good food substitute, when you trade off the higher levels of consciousness you can enjoy at the expense of the lower levels animals.
1) The point is simply that vegetarians aren't exempt from the moral landscape.
2) Again, animals are going to eat plants regardless of whether we kill them for food or not. And to the previous poster who mentioned the number of cows on farms is likely larger than the number of cows capable of being naturally sustained in the wild is starting to veer off-topic. The question is whether it's wrong to eat meat, not which methods of global food production/distribution are most efficient.
3) I trained as an amateur bodybuilder for four years under the direct supervision of a former Mr. Universe champion who also had experiences training the Detroit Lions minor league football team, etc. My diet during those four years consisted of eating ~300-400g protein per day of which about 80% came directly from meat, and most of the rest came from oatmeal. During those four years, over 95% of my daily caloric intake came from steak, tuna, oatmeal, and nothing else. At one point, I had integrated about 16-24 oz. of mixed vegetables per day into my diet, but the difference it made, though noticeable, wasn't all that significant. I'm still in great health and am able to do 100 consecutive push-ups, 35 pull-ups, and run 8.5 miles in just under an hour. I have not had any vegetables in my diet for about two years excluding a few salads and asparagus sides at restaurants.