PUMPKINHEAD

What can we do to stop aliens from eating us?
How about swearing off from eating meat?
There seems to be a common bit of vegetarian propaganda that goes something like “if you eat animals how can you expect intelligent aliens not to eat you?”
Let's think about this for a moment. We detect the sin of hypocrisy, which for our species seems to be the ultimate sin. Eating animals and yet asking not to be eaten ourselves on the grounds that we are sentient animals strikes us as in some way a form of hypocrisy. It probably is. So what? Is hypocrisy the ultimate sin recognized by all sentient lifeforms everywhere? If if it then surely acting like hypocrites would make us less attractive dinner table fare, wouldn't it? We would be less likely to eat a “sinful” species that ate dung and its own young than one that just ate grass, hung around in fields and went moo. Acting like hypocrites would make us appear less tasty and nutritious. Acting like hypocrites is probably a good survival strategy. Do we eat “wicked” weasels, hyaenas, snakes and tapeworms in preference to “noble” animals like deer and salmon?
Which species do we refuse to eat on moral grounds?
Do we avoid eating all peaceful herbivores? Hardly! In fact if we can see any patterns at all here it is that the more animals an animal eats the less likely it is we will want to eat it ourselves. The only carnivorous species that we eat on a regular basis are fish, animals that some people who call themselves vegetarians even try to redefine as some sort of vegetable. I've news for you veggies, haddock are animals that eat other animals, being cold bloodied, small-eyed and ugly doesn't change anything, fish are not vegetables. If you eat fish you cannot be a vegetarian.
Spot the vegetables
We prefer to eat peaceful herbivores, we actively give preference to those animals that eat a 100% pure vegetarian diet of grass. Why do we assume that aliens will prefer to eat old, evil, bitter, twisted and hypocritical animals like us rather than the nice innocent tender baa lambs that we like to eat? It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
Why don't we eat carnivorous animals?
There is no reason why we don't eat carnivorous animals apart from the fact that they are too expensive to farm economically. When dogs are raised to be eaten they are not fed on meat, they are given the cheapest food that will do the job, usually grain, vegetables and kitchen scraps, just like pigs.
I read in a newspaper recently (or was it The Sun?) about a man who regularly dines off roadkill. He made no distinction between herbivore or carnivore and enjoyed stoats and weasels quite as much as squirrels and badgers. His finest meal was roast labrador, which apparently tastes just like lamb.
The only problem with eating carnivores is you have to avoid their livers, which can contain dangerously high concentrations of vitamin A. The higher an animal (and yes fish are animals) is up the food chain the higher the concentration of poisons such as heavy metals the flesh may contain. Certain chemicals such as DDT and PCBs also build up in bodies and accumulate as you go up the food chain, the most effective way of riding them from the body is to breastfeed...
If aliens did have a desire to eat people which people would they want to eat?
It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to work it out. Or a fully qualified butcher. The best cuts would come from young people raised on a pure Vegan diet, especially if they could be certified as Organic. Aliens would give preference to young hippie and Goth chicks raised on beansprouts, lentils and tofu not McDonalds and KFC. Card-carrying members of PETA would fetch a premium price.
If you really want to avoid being eaten by aliens the best thing you can do to ensure they don't fancy the idea of eating you is to eat meat, ideally the meat and offal of diseased, evil, old, poor and hypocritical aliens. Or failing that, sausages.
Being a vegetarian is as effective a remedy against hungry aliens as is being a conscientious objector in the face of hordes of Nazis.
What does this aliens eating hypocrites argument remind you of? God? Yes, we seem to be very good at inventing fictional entities which can make the evil ones among us feel bad if only we can get them to swallow a line of bull.
Are aliens likely to be able to eat us?
There is a fair chance that we will actually be poisonous to aliens, and they could be poisonous to us. Elements that are rare on our planet tend to be poisonous to us, for example heavy metals such as lead, uranium, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and so on. They are poisonous largely because we have not evolved to cope with them. There is a reasonable chance that to aliens we will contain unacceptably high levels of elements that they are not able to cope with even if they find our alien proteins and fats attractive. We may be protected by traces of selenium, copper, chromium or zinc which could be absent from their biological systems and so be poisonous to them. Likewise they may have a biological system that requires an element that we cannot tolerate such as arsenic or lead as a nutrient. Perhaps alien children are told to eat up their vegetables because they contain lots of healthy cadmium (essential for healthy tentacles) while they would look on a Whooper, Big Mac or indeed a McHuman with Cheese as loaded with quite deadly levels of poisonous calcium and zinc and enough sodium to kill.