The Vegetarian Myth, written by a former vegan of twenty years, is a detailed examination of the fallacies behind the three most common reasons for being a vegetarian. The book is full of references to research and studies. The three main points addressed are moral vegetarianism, political vegetarianism, and nutritional vegetarianism.
The most interesting chapters for me were those on moral and nutritional vegetarianism.
In moral vegetarianism, I was fascinated to learn how it is monocrop agriculture — growing of annual crops, particularly grains — that is truly the morally indefensible choice as far as killing animals. Life requires death. Even plants require the fertilizer of dead animals in order to live. Predators must eat their prey to survive. Ecosystems that have lost their balance of predator and prey result in starving animals and even destroyed habitats. An omnivore, such as we are, eating is meat, is just part of this cycle.
But agriculture, particularly the mass production of monocrops, which is what fuels human life and which is the staple of vegetarian diets, kills off whole ecosystems. Animals have gone extinct for us to eat grains.
In fact, it destroys topsoil, which is required for all life to grow. The great plains of the midwest have gone from measuring topsoil in feet to measuring it in only inches because of agriculture. And what happens when topsoil runs out? Well, the desert that is the Middle East used to be called the Fertile Crescent until it was ruined by agricultural practices. When we run out of topsoil in the world (which is in the foreseeable future), we’ll start starving. It takes dozens, even hundreds, of years to build even an inch of topsoil, more or less a foot. If that’s not enough, modern agriculture requires fossil fuels, both for fertilization and for transportation, and we know that that’s a limited resource.
We want sustainability — and in light of the above, modern agriculture isn’t sustainable.
It’s true that factory farming isn’t moral, or even really sustainable. There is an alternative: pastured animals. They’re fed their natural diet, which is not corn, but is instead things like grass and hay for cows and insects for chickens. They don’t have to be loaded up with antibiotics because their diet isn’t killing them. They’re healthier. They’re healthier for us to eat than factory farmed animals. In fact, they contain pretty much every essential nutrient humans need to be healthy. They’re happier. And guess what? They’re building up topsoil with their manure.
So, if I buy the meat of a whole grass fed cow, it will go a long ways towards feeding me for a whole year, with the essential nutrients I need. One animal dead. If I live off of primarily grain and produce that had to be shipped to me, I’m supporting killing off entire ecosystems. Thousands of dead animals. Polluted rivers. Severely depleted topsoil. So…which is more moral? Obviously, Lierre Keith (and I) would argue that the first is the more moral choice.
As far as nutritional vegetarianism, she surveys much of the information I’ve already learned from books like Good Calories, Bad Calories and The Paleo Solution. Or, if you want an easier way to get a primer on that information, watch Fat Head on Netflix.
Anyways, one of her biggest points is that natural animal fats are really, really good for you and the carbohydrates from a high-carbohydrate diet, which vegetarianism and especially veganism usually are, isn’t nearly as good for you. For instance, saturated fat from animals is the best and, in some cases, only source for some essential vitamins. And even if you get it from other sources, saturated fat is required to absorb the vitamins because they are fat soluble.
She also looks at the fact that hunter-gatherer tribes, which are very healthy in ways that most “civilized” cultures aren’t — diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, cavities, cancer — all eat animals. Often most of their calories come from animals, and they certainly don’t eat refined carbohydrates, or even really grains.
I wish she’d addressed the claims against animal protein, but I think the survey of the health of people who eat a lot of animal products — in some cases, almost exclusively — does a lot to answer that. There is a lot more evidence in favor of eating meat than against it, in my opinion, and she does do a good job at pointing the way in that direction.
Keith also has a scathing examination of soy that made me want to run the other way from any product that has even a hint of soy in it. I can’t imagine giving my baby soy formula. Did you know that having a lot of soy can be pretty much the equivalent of taking the birth control pill? And do you know what sort of processing that stuff has to go through to be edible to people? There’s a reason it was used as an ingredient in paint before it ever was introduced into the American diet. And as far as Asian cultures that we seem to think eat tons of it; they don’t. It’s mostly a condiment. No more than a few grams of soy a day.
Obviously, the Standard American Diet (SAD) isn’t good, but that doesn’t make vegetarianism the solution. Why? Because it’s not meat that’s so bad for us, especially if it’s pastured or wild-caught meat. In fact, that’s great for us. It’s the grains and preservatives and all sorts of other high-sugar, high-carbohydrate crap we eat. It’s the bun on the burger, not the patty.
Oh, and another interesting point; children of vegans can literally get neurological damage and other issues from their parents’ vegan diet. Seriously. How can something that causes damage to children be ideal for humans? The answer is: it’s not.
I did have a hard time with some of the other ideological points the author made. She’s a radical feminist, for instance. I am similarly outraged that women who must cover up from head to toe have literally died from lack of vitamin D, but she went beyond what I think are reasonable bounds in her apparent disgust for masculinity and in its apparent link to agriculture. I also couldn’t fathom how someone who apparently was devastated at the idea of killing the slugs who ate her garden and who cried when she disturbed an ants’ nest could think that women should have access to abortion as a right. Let’s save the slugs, but not the human babies? I also don’t agree with her on her spiritual beliefs, as she looks very negatively at Christianity and it’s Father-God who isn’t a part of nature but instead the creator of it. She looks very negatively at God giving Adam dominion over the earth and animals, interpreting it as a negative thing rather than the loving, harmonious stewardship it should have been and that God meant it to be, until the Fall corrupted mankind and their relationship with nature.
However, I don’t think any of that detracts much from a lot of the information she gave, so I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the problems with vegetarianism and/or with the sustainability and morality of agriculture and factory farming.
The Life of Lee 