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E-PrinceIn my last column, I described the 12-year journey that led me from being a meat eater to becoming a vegetarian and ultimately a vegan. Though I knew that I believed in veganism, I needed someone to give me that ...(back to the article)
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I liked your article. Nicolette Hahn Niman has an entrenched agenda and pulling the soy card is quite common by "happy meat" promoters. The whole localvore argument really doesn't stand. A list of articles on this can be found at:
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/locavore-vs-vegan/
which includes links to articles on nytimes, forbes, newscientist, pubs.acs.org among others.
What puzzles me about claims like Nicolette's is that most brands of tofu and tempeh and milk use American grown organic non-gmo soybeans. There are companies like gardenburger and boca such that might not be. And these products are crap anyway -- made from mostly soy isolates. Eat organic fermented soy foods instead and look for veggie burgers made from other vegetables -- there's lots of them out there.
Very thoughtful column. Whether we are concerned about diet for health reasons or the reasons listed here, and whether or not we are vegan, thinking through the implications of various options and using our market power to be able to live by the option we prefer is good advice.
A decent article, except for it strikes me as irrelevant since I don't care about environmental concerns. Basically, in my opinion it is morally reprehensible to be a vegetarian, since it is exceedingly unhealthy and unnatural, and thus reduces the individual's ability to be a valuable member of society. Essentially, vegetarian diets, unless you manage to stick to a diet of vegetables and eggs, which is suboptimal but not that bad, you're probably consuming epic quantities of bread, pasta, and other carbohydrate-loaded empty calories.
Likewise, being a vegan is, in my humble opinion, bordering on insanity. If you somehow manage to subsist on a diet consisting of only plant-based foods, power to you, but more likely than not you're consuming absurd quantities of carbohydrates and damaging your own health in an ill-conceived attempt to try to help society as a whole. Basically, most arguments I've heard for being a vegan are akin to arguments supporting Communism - being a Vegan is good because it supposedly helps everyone around you, except yourself. This whole dietary communism nonsense seems pretty ridiculous to me; why should I consider anything other than my personal health and satisfaction when I'm considering my diet?
L: Based on your comment, I don't think you actually know much ABOUT veggie diets... please try not to speak from a position of ignorance. Eat how you want, but don't talk about what you don't know. Rather than high carb 'empty calories,' most veg-heads basically follow the diet most recommended by health care professionals: lots of whole grains, lots of different kinds of fruits & veggies, lots of whole/ unprocessed foods, lots of lean protein... which is why veg-heads have lower incidence of so many health problems, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, & cancer.
To the author of this article: good work! I think you're an ecovore (http://www.ecovore.org/blog/?page_id=71) like me...I'm not a vegan myself -- I'm sort of a quirky pescetarian -- but I find the 'beef as eco-friendly food' extremely weak. I'm glad there's a movement among mammal & bird eaters, demanding less abusive/ ecodamaging animal agriculture: 'bout d*** time! But sustainable cow protein production will never be as ecofriendly as sustainable veg protein production... that's just the nature of meat: the further up the food chain you eat, the less of the energy makes it onto your plate ('cause the animal uses it for its own bio processes).
People should make their own choices, about food; but based on reason, not blind convenience or rationalization... good to see folks thinking about this issue; but if you eat meat, say, 'I want to, 'cause I like it, and that's the most important thing to me.' Don't rationalize by saying 'it's better for the environment than other diets'... it's simply not.
A vegan diet is the healthiest diet so i dont know what L is talking about. This article sounds good to me
@L
"A decent article, except for it strikes me as irrelevant since I don't care about environmental concerns."
I agree, let's not care about anything besides our own immediate desires. Let the future be damned! Anyone who disagrees with me is communist!
If eating meat is so bad for our bodies and for the environment why did our ancestors develop the ability to catch and eat it?
khurtwilliams: The way animals are factory farmed and food is processed, along with sedentary lifestyles and huge portion sizes, makes meat-eating a very different proposition for us than for our ancestors who hunted animals living in the wild, and ate smaller and unprocessed quantities, while getting considerable exercise in the activity of hunting as well as in other the activities of everyday life, I think.
Yay! I'm glad we agree.
khurtwilliams:
In a nutshell, humans started eating animals regularly vs occasionally when the weather got cold and we outgrew our environment. For most of human evolution, we were temperate (primarily herbivorous) creatures, where there was plenty of forage for primates: mostly plants, with meat every now & then but not as a dietary staple. That's why we have the teeth, intestines, and stomach acids of a herbivore. Weather changes and rapid growth in human populations caused changes in dietary habits: for the first time in our evolutionary history, humans had to survive without a steadily abundant supply of veggie foods -- either due to ice ages, migration to colder climates, or (in places like Egypt)just too many d*** people for the wild plants to support. The advantages to animal foods for subsistence-level farmers are that you can eat them when it's too cold to grow anything, if you don't have the technology or resources to 'put food by' during the warm part of the year; and if you're trying to draw food from a large piece of land with a small number of people & no outside support, it helps to not have to cultivate ALL of it at once (cows turn grass to protein/ chickens turn bugs & kitchen scraps to accessible human food, while you & your family plow 40 vs 80 acres).
So... do either of these situations apply, for most Americans? Are you living through an Ice Age? Are you trying to support a family of 2 adults/ 4 kids on 80 acres with no outside support or supplies?
The factors that led to humans eating some meat have NOTHING to do do with today's conditions, within industrialized nations (where sustainable veggie production will always be more efficient than sustainable animal protein production). At no other time in human history have people eaten such a high proportion of animal foods in their diets; and at no time in human history have we faced such 'epidemics' of diet-based health problems (heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, etc.)or such pervasive environmental destruction... Whatever human needs were in at different points in the past (or whatever subsistence-level farmers in third-world nations currently need), what we're doing with food production/ diet in the Western world is just silly! We can do better, I'm pretty sure.