Us carnivores usually deride what we call the ‘ghass phoos’ eaters, the vegetarians and vegans. How on earth can you develop enough muscle mass eating leaves and grass and seeds? You need good red meat to give you enough protein and though dals claim to be protein rich – how much of them can you have? Besides, legumes like rajma can make you sound like a backfiring Bullet! Really, it’s only lean red meat, with streaks of delicious fat that cut the mustard. Steak and sausages, bacon and ham, spare ribs and ‘backstraps’, juicy crisp pork belly, especially sizzled on wood or coal-burning barbecues – these put hair on the chest. I still remember the fizzing ‘sizzler’ I had, served on a slab of teak at Bombelli’s in Bombay aeons ago; a man needs his red meat.There’s a serial on TV these days depicting a hunter going out to shoot and kill deer and sheep cook himself a delicious meal. He stalks his prey, say a magnificent stag, like a commando and finally (after a few failed attempts) brings it down with an arrow. He skins it and carves it and then cooks it. Done rare and red, it’s the ultimate macho meal running with meaty juices. Of course, it is accompanied by a host of ‘veggies’ but it is the main item on the agenda. And it does make you salivate rather a lot.What is a bit disquieting is that he admires his kill as a ‘magnificent beast’ – perhaps not so magnificent now that it lies dead at his feet, its eyes glazed and unseeing. But it has been ‘harvested’ so that it can make way for others, which in time might suffer the same fate. Whatever.The mass consumption of meat around the world has caused problems because all the beef and pork depends on bovines and porcines livestock. Tropical forests worldwide have been cleared so that these bovines can get enough ghaas-phoos to eat and that ghaas-phoos has to be cultivated on a massive scale.There, in the jungles it is the carnivores – tigers, lions and leopards – that sit on top of the food chain, not deer and antelope. They need their red meat; cauliflowers and broccoli won’t do. In fact, it’s the only thing they can eat! And in doing so, these ‘apex predators’ keep the jungles and forest ticking over. Keep the tiger in good humour and it will look after the entire forest ecosystem.So yes, we fear these animals, in case they decide to make us a part of their diet. But go to a sanctuary or national park on a safari and what are we inevitably told? The animals we (and even the forest department staff) must fear the most are elephants, who subsist on a diet of 150 kg of green stuff a day. Elephants trample and kill more people every year than tigers do, not because they want to eat them but because they feel threatened and because we have deprived them of their normal fare. Javanese ginseng (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)In fact, every large bovine or vegetarian wild animal is to be regarded as extremely dangerous. Rhinos are notoriously short-tempered and can toss your vehicle into a ditch and trample you with a single flick of its fearsome horn. In Africa, hippos kill more people than all other animals combined, and do not eat them. And even lions are wary of the mighty Cape buffalo that can disembowel them with a single swipe of its massive horns and will deliberately seek out and trample their cubs. Here, in India, the wild water buffalo is not to be trusted as it sneeringly regards you and tosses its head, adorned with its three-metre span of horns. And all of these live on ghaas-phoos!Story continues below this adALSO READ | Why we are trying to copy insectsEven in the cities, where cows and bulls roam around, one has to watch out in case a bull gets it in its head to take you between its horns. No tiger or leopard will dare to enter a busy location and try something like that. And you don’t even need to be a five-ton giant armed with tusks and a trunk, or a two ton rhino to inflict that kind of damage. The other day I was lamenting the lack of desi palak in the garden, thanks to the depredations of the monkeys and peacocks when the gardener came up with an option. What he called angrezi palak, which was also growing in the garden. The leaves looked green and healthy and fresh and there was a bed full of them. It even tasted identical to normal desi palak. I was elated. Except that it sent me to the loo four times at night, deep cleansing me as if preparing me for an endoscopy. I lost over half a kilo overnight and was good for nothing for the next two days. I dug around and discovered that the so-called angrezi palak was something called Javanese ginseng, which is a medicinal herb, also available in capsule form.It has many beneficial properties but can also cause insomnia and diarrhoea if consumed in excess. I had probably overdosed grossly! The gardener said he had brought it from his village. There, they had no problems with it and made pakoras with it. So plants can be definitely dangerous for your health – when I informed my doctor about it, he dryly commented ‘Don’t be a guinea pig’. When fish and meat go off, they pong to high heavens. This ‘leafy green’, masqueraded as Popeye’s favourite food and scammed me!