As a (former?) physicist, I very much prefer to try to imagine what would need to be changed in our rules so the presented world would be possible, rather than "ok I accept this little change but everything else has to work as close as possible to our own universe"
Agreed. In this case we could infer that perhaps members of this alien species are either not all super intelligent, not super knowledgeable or at least not super knowledgeable in all areas. In this case, however, the the usage of "meat" here is intended to be a commentary on humanity of some sort. If the idea is that "aliens would just see humans as meat" then I do in fact think that point is somewhat diluted by GP's comment. "Meat" is not really an accurate word here, unless we take it as it's broader meaning of "food"[0], at which point "food" itself would be a better word.
