I recently listened to the podcasts on the linked-to F-Word blog article and was disheartened, though not the least bit surprised, to find Carol Adams once again putting forth veganism. Some of us have heard all the arguments and don’t need to be “educated” about the supposed reasons we should go vegan. Some months ago, I wrote to Adams telling her about my experience going from veganism and being an insider in the AR movement to meat eating, but not surprisingly, I never heard back from her. What do you say to someone who doesn’t fit your conception of how the world functions? You put them, or at least their ideas, to death, in much the same fashion Galileo was executed for stating the Earth was not the center of the universe.
In her podcast, Adams suggests serving “vegan propaganda meals,” where upon the unsuspecting eaters are served vegan food but don’t know it. The idea is that once folks learn how delicious vegan food is, they will convert, or at least eat more vegan meals. Of course, this does nothing to change what they think about animal rights. But at a more root level, it continues the untruth that people can and will become vegan if only provided with the means of eating tasty vegan meals. Yet, what do vegans think that our ancestors did during the ice ages?
Until vegans face up to the reality that veganism is unsustainable for all inhabitants of the planet because it was start of agriculture that began a war on the planet, the movement for animal liberation will not get anywhere. Now, I know it is commonly said that grains are fed to (factory-farmed) animals, and thus it is really those eating animals that are the problem. Let me say this one more time: there was an overabundance of grains, soy and corn, and thus was easier to begin feeding these to animals than the real foods their bodies need to be healthy. Similarly, the overabundance of grains has led to major nutrition organizations, funded by the federal government, to say that humans need to base their diets around starchy foods. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let’s stop hiding from this planetary disaster humans have created. After all, when you’re in a ditch, which humans and all our fellow creatures surely are, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
The following is a YouTube clip of a woman’s amazing recovery from MS. She calls herself a “canary in the coal mine” for the effects of the modern-day, starch based, diet on humans.
In the summer, I eat the vegan equivalent of the diet she outlines (omega 3, co-enzyme q, and other nutrients she discussed that are in organ meats are also in nuts, oils, and other non-meat sources). I have a garden with berries, mushrooms, plethora of greens, etc, and interestingly I don’t grow potatoes or corn. Seems as if I intuitively left those out of my garden. I eat very little other starch during that time either. I feel fantastic. I run my best races and can’t get enough backpacking done.
In the winter, however, I have limited access to quality, organic fresh vegetables, and my rather addicted bread palette clicks in…. I also resort to eating some “faux meats,” which should be left out of any diet. I definitely feel a decline. It’s much harder to keep up with the 10 mile+ runs (ice and snow make it difficult, too
).
Regardless, I keep perfecting my vegan diet, and will eventually end up with the vegan equivalent of the “paleo” diet. I get really annoyed, no fully ticked off, at vegans who proclaim that going vegan in itself is “the best” diet. Nonsense. A vegan diet can make you just as sick as a meat diet. It depends on how informed, and how much access (including in many places in the world how much $) you have to creating a healthy diet. I am the most motherly nag to younger vegans I know about getting their B vitamins…That’s the one set of vitamins that I do take a supplement for. I just don’t trust that a vegan diet can compensate for that.
I am going to forward this video to my former sister-in-law, who has been living with multiple sclerosis for a very long time. (She’s a meat eater, so she won’t need to make an adaptations if she decides to give it a try.)
“Nonsense. A vegan diet can make you just as sick as a meat diet. It depends on how informed, and how much access (including in many places in the world how much $) you have to creating a healthy diet.”
Agreed, mostly. It is doable on a low budget – I feel I can say that after a few years of practice – in fact I was healthier on less money because the temptation to buy fake meat and crisps was lowered by having to go without something more useful to get them. A tin of chickpeas costs about the same as a loaf of sliced white bread though.
On the idea of veganism as a panacea for illness, well, there I can see where PS and the rest of the ex-vegansphere are coming from. In my experience the health benefits come from actually having to cook food and think about what you’re eating, sometimes for the first time if you’ve been used to eating what is put in front of you by your family or a canteen. That doesn’t mean it is automatically healthy, doesn’t provide instant immunity from the random colds and other minor illnesses that most people get (especially if your workplace is the ideal breeding ground for them) and certainly does not cure cancer or make you able to fly.
Well, Paleosister, you got me with this one! I loved this video so much I’ve been planning on how to grow fresh greens all winter long, in a fairly northern and very cold-winter climate. My farmer friend gave me lettuce starts that had self-sown in late September, plus some herbs that would not overwinter, and I plopped them on my back porch under the grow lights we use for plant starts. I’ve been eating the lettuce ever since. So why not spinach and other greens? Color is easy; sulfur is a little trickier, but I can buy cabbage and it goes a long way.
I want to try to do pastured animal meats. Here it’s tough to find that, but it’s possible, and that’s where my food dollars should go — to support local(ish) vendors who do what needs done. I’ve been reading “Righteous Porkchop” by Nicollete Hahn Niman (who is vegetarian, by the way, married to someone who does great-practices pork farming). It’s excellent, and it’s also impetus to do a lot more for good local foods than I have been.
That is such an excellent post, Paleosister! Thank you so much!
I know so many who have damaged their health by being vegan and vegetarian. Some have recovered after being omnivores, but some haven’t.
Just a small but important point: Galileo was certainly not executed, he was put under house arrest. And it was not for “stating the Earth was not the center of the universe” but for arrogantly intruding into theology on the basis of, at the time, his unproven theories about the earth and the universe. Many great minds of the time, were receptive to his theories, but asked him to provide better evidence for them, to exercise restraint in promoting them. The same people were offended by the arrogant way in which he insisted that theology must be changed in light of his theories. He was rather intemperate and impatient, and had a bad habit of offending his allies. Wikipedia discusses this quite reasonably.
This is also an excellent and fair article on the subject.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0005.html
Hey Robert,
Thanks for the correction. I actually researched Galileo before putting that sentence in because I wanted to be sure I had the correct information. Indeed, I remember coming across that very article you posted!
WordPress must have saved what I originally wrote and I did not go back and re-read it before posting.
Don’t you hate it when that happens?!