Re: The vegetarian/vegan versus meat-eater debate

I decided to become a vegetarian last year because of the environmental impacts of animal agriculture, but as time goes on I've become more committed to the animal welfare and human health arguments as well. Recently, I'm trying to eat a mostly vegan diet except for when it's not possible due to not wanting to turn down my mom's cooking, and having to eat at restaurants. When I became a vegetarian I didn't want to become one of those annoying, preachy ones. And yet, here we are today. If you don't die a hero you live long enough to see yourself become a villain, or something like that.

So, today I want to respond to a few of the really annoying things meat eaters say and do.

(Just a warning, this is incredibly bitter because I am a militant vegetarian.)

Also, these are all things I've actually seen and heard people say, to me or to others! I am not fighting a straw-man here!


1. The plants die too! They can feel pain.

This is ridiculous for a lot of reasons. First of all, no. Plants do not feel pain. They don't have a nervous system. The animals you eat, however can feel pain. Not to mention, the animals you eat eat plants (and other animals who also ate plants and other animals, and so on). Plus, I really, really hope that you've been eating plants as well. If not, I'm really concerned and you should definitely stop worrying about dead plants and start eating some goddamn vegetables.


2. It's better for us to eat the animals then for them to suffer and die in the wild.

I have really, truthfully seen this argument made. And I think this person is very confused because they think that if we weren't eating cows and chickens and pigs that they would still be on this earth, but living in the wild. If the entire earth were to stop eating animal products, we would phase out all of our livestock, and then there wouldn't be any left, or more likely a small population to feed our carnivore pets, like dogs and cats, and zoo animals.

Right now at any given moment there are 70 billion animals raised for human consumption on the planet. This is absolutely nuts, and they do not need to be here, using up our precious resources that humans and wild animals need to survive.

However, I will say that hunting deer and other overpopulated wild animals for human consumption is totally fine, and actually does help the population as a whole. As long as hunting is actually managed, and doesn't harm the species. Wolf hunting, for instance, should never be legal. But it is legal thanks to (guess who!) the animal agriculture industry! If we didn't have cows, wolves would not be a problem, and they could be allowed to thrive, and our ecosystems would return to balance.


3. I guess you care more about animals than the migrant farm workers who pick your vegetables.

This one ticks me off like nothing else. Actually, I do care about migrant farm workers more than animals. Which is why I try to buy tomatoes such as Bushel Boy, grown in Minnesota, or produce from a farm that I know uses ethical labor, such as a CSA farm.

Also, I have to say: when people say this I get very concerned for their health because I take this to mean that they are practicing what they preach and are not eating any vegetables or fruit that are handpicked. Please, sir. Eat some vegetables.

And last, but definitely not least, it's pretty transparent that you are only concerned about the plight of migrant farm workers when you want to make yourself feel better for eating meat. I could come right back and ask you if you care about the terribly mistreated workers in slaughterhouses, who aren't even allowed to leave the floor for a bathroom break and work in filthy, incredibly dangerous conditions. But I won't ask because I know you don't care about people's wellbeing at all. Thank you for your time.


4. You won't get any protein.

Yes, and neither do elephants or rhinos, some of the largest and strongest animals who -- surprise! --only eat plants (sarcasm if you didn't notice). There's tons of protein in all leafy greens, a lot of grains, beans, etc. There's actually protein in virtually everything. It's not difficult to get the amount of protein you need.

Protein deficiency, called kwashiorkor, is not very common. Hence why you have never heard of it, and are inventing it as a problem to harass vegetarians. Kwashiorkor has only been seen in cases where people are starving (it causes the protruding bellies of starving children), or people who are anorexic-- who are also starving. Since protein is in virtually all foods, the only way to not get enough protein is to not eat enough food. In which case, you have a lot more problems than not building muscle.

I'll say this again: Protein deficiency doesn't exist in people who eat enough food.

Period. Stop talking to me about this.

Most people actually eat way more protein than they actually need. And these people aren't just the strong body building type. The average American consumes about twice as much protein as they need, and as we all know, the average American isn't exactly a poster-child for good health.

Eating a varied, plant-based diet provides all the necessary protein without the additional fat and cholesterol. It's really not that difficult to get all the needed nutrients as a vegetarian. Not to mention, just because you're eating meat doesn't mean you automatically have a more balanced diet. So many people seem to think this is true, and it drives me crazy.

Another point: Meat is not a more "complete" or "high-quality" protein than plants. 

You don't have to pair rice and beans for instance, to create a "complete" protein. This is a myth. The person who originally wrote this was not a nutritionist. Frances Moore Lappé wrote this in her book Diet For A Small World, because, being indoctrinated in American nutrition ideas, she believed it must be true that plants are not "high-quality" proteins. She has since stated that she had no evidence for this claim, but it was too late-- it has caught on, not only among omnivores, but even sometimes in the vegetarian/vegan community.

If we follow the logic that animal meat is more complete because it more closely resembles our own muscle structure and omega-3 balance, then maybe we should eat human meat. That would be the most complete, high-quality protein out there.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to eat a wide variety of plant foods, but it's not necessary to "complement" your proteins as a vegetarian. This is not even a real thing, and all it does is convince people that being a vegetarian or vegan is too hard and takes too much thought-- and that it's easy to mess up and end up protein-deficient or iron-deficient or anything like tha.

It doesn't. It's pretty simple, I promise.


5. Humans evolved to eat meat (and dairy).

This is true! However, it's always presented as a "gotcha" argument. Just because we evolved to be able to do something doesn't mean we should. Besides, we evolved to eat meat sparingly, and usually after great physical exertion from hunting. Not after sitting in a drive through. Human's ability to eat meat has been most beneficial in extreme climates, such as the Arctic and deserts, where plant life is not available much of the year. This is not the case for most people on earth anymore. It's true that we are able to eat small amounts of meat as part of a healthy diet, but factory-farmed, processed meat is not a part of our evolutionary heritage.

The bottom line is: we don't have to eat meat, and since it's hurting our planet, we shouldn't. There are really too many people on this earth to take an "in-moderation" approach anyway. 7 billion people eating meat in moderation, in a healthy way, is still too much for the planet to handle.

As for dairy-- the majority of people on earth (75%) never got that gene. Basically, only people of European and northern African descent are not "lactose intolerant" because they lived in cold climates or deserts where milk was necessary to survival.


6. Dairy is a good source of calcium. 

I get very worked up when people claim that dairy is an essential food group and the best way (or even a good way) to get calcium. It is not a good way to get calcium, if you want to help your bones. Dairy (and meat) is acidic so it actually leaches your bones*. Calcium, an alkaline mineral, ends up in cow's milk because they eat grass (or corn and soy supplemented with calcium powder by farmers), and calcium, like all minerals, is found in the earth. You know, where grass, and other plants come from. Go right to the source and eat some dark green things. Those have tons of calcium in them.

*More on leaching bones: This happens because in the body's attempt to balance out the acidity from meat and dairy, calcium, an alkaline substance, is drawn out of the bones, and then it exits the body through urination. At best, you can maybe offset the calcium loss through milk, but isn't a net gain better? Places (such as the U.S., Australia, and Scandinavia) where dairy is a big part of the diet are the same places where we see high rates of osteoporosis.

Besides, the majority of people on earth (75%) can't consume dairy once they're adults, and they're just fine. Obviously, dairy is not essential, or even beneficial, to our health.

The fact that milk is the only included beverage option in a lot of school cafeterias (at mine, you had to pay extra for water-- but sugar-filled chocolate milk was free!) speaks to the power of the USDA and Dairy industry. Our school cafeteria was lined with "Got Milk?" posters. They really had me fooled.


7. Growing vegetables uses and harms the land, too.

Yes, this is true. All farming has an impact on the land, most of it very negative. However, as we stand, the majority of our crops go to feeding animals. If we were directly eating crops, instead of eating what eats our crops, we would need far less land to satisfy the world's need for food. Some estimates say that it takes less than an acre to feed someone a vegan diet. (It takes about three times that to feed someone a vegetarian diet, and 20 times that to feed someone a standard American diet with high meat and dairy consumption.) This right here has a huge impact: less deforestation, less water use, less pollution.

Besides eating land- and water-intensive crops, animals also pollute a lot more than crops. They produce a, well, shit-ton of waste, that is not treated and allowed to soak into the ground (and ground water) or flow into the rivers and oceans, creating nitrogen dead zones. This waste also contributes to global warming, because it produces carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen oxides, which are all greenhouses gases, the next only more harmful and potent than the last.


8. You think you're better than me!

If you are concerned about the environment, about your own health, about animal cruelty, about the oceans, about wildlife, about global warming, about human starvation, about public and childhood health problems --

If you are concerned about any of these issues, and you are aware about the impacts of animal agriculture, then you can choose to ignore what you know and live in willful ignorance -- or you can practice some restraint and live up to your values. Food tastes so much better when it represents what you really believe in and care about.


9. Do you only eat salads?

I eat basically anything you eat, except without or replacing the meat. You eat vegetarian meals more often than you think, I promise. It's not hard.


10. Don't tell me, I don't wanna know about animal cruelty :(

If you can't handle the truth of what happens on factory farms and slaughterhouses, if you don't think you could kill an animal to eat, then honestly... I don't think you deserve to eat meat. Don't be a hypocrite, and don't be willfully ignorant.

If you truly don't care about animal welfare, well, no judgement but I don't totally want to hang out with you. And I'm not talking about animals getting killed. I understand that animals get killed, and it doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that the slaughterhouses are running at such overcapacity that these deaths are absolutely barbaric.

It's standard procedure to render an animal unconscious first, then hook it up to the conveyor belt thing, then kill it, then start skinning it and dismembering it as it moves through the line.

However, things go wrong far too often. Countless slaughterhouse workers can testified that animals often regain consciousness somewhere along that line, and are killed while conscious. Or worse, they aren't killed, and are skinned and dismembered while alive and conscious.

I hope some part of you might not want a sentient being going through this.

If you want to hunt and kill a wild animal, if you want to quickly kill an animal yourself on a farm-- I have no moral dilemmas. The industrialization is the problem. There is no way to humanely kill about 10 billion animals per year in the United States alone. There just isn't. Many of these animals will suffer unspeakably before they end up on your plate. (And that's just the slaughterhouses, we're not even talking about factory farm conditions here.)

So yeah, you didn't want to hear about animal cruelty to upset your delicate sensibilities, but if you're making the choice to eat meat I think you should know the full extent of what that means.


11. I'm a vegetarian, I only eat fish and chicken, and sometimes red meat.

What? No! Do you even know what "vegetarian" means? Pescatarians make me mad, too, because fishing is far more destructive than land agriculture. For every pound of fish caught, 5 pounds of bycatch (non-target sea life, including sea turtles, dolphins, sharks and other fish) are caught and killed by nets or suffocation. For shrimp trawling, the ratio is 1 to 20.

Farming fish and shrimp is not the answer either. This simply concentrates the amount of pollution, in the same way that land farming does, and this pollution often harms wild populations. Also, farmed fish need to eat. They usually eat grains, requiring a lot of land and water and energy input, or they eat wildcaught fish. Wildcaught fish are fed to our farmed animals, including fish, chickens, and pigs, in greater quantities than they are fed to humans.

As far as land animals, cows use the most land between grazing and their feed crops. They eat the most, and produce the most waste, including methane gases. Even if they graze on land that is not suitable for mass agriculture, they still degrade the land by overgrazing. Chickens comprise the majority of farmed animals and we can't underestimate their impact. Chickens and pigs are fed solely feed crops that use a lot of resources to produce, and are grown on land that could be used to feed humans.

However, I'm doing some research to validate what I've heard about mussel and clam farming as being highly sustainable. If it checks out, I will eat these myself and encourage others to do the same! These critters don't require many inputs, and don't pollute the water. Quite the opposite, in fact. Again, I want to do more research before I start eating these again. But I always was a big fan of shellfish!


12. But meat just tastes so good.

This is true. And I do cry a little when I think about chicken tenders, and grilled brats. I wasn't the biggest fan of meat, though, so it's not as hard for me as it might be for others. However, there are great alternative for almost any meat product you can think of.

Besides, I will argue that what you miss about meat isn't really the meat itself but the texture and flavor of how it was cooked. (This sounds like a "duh" moment but let me explain!) There are ways to replicate these flavors and textures pretty easily! Use the same marination and spices you use on meat on your veggies or tofu. Grill them, deep-fry them, char them up. Whatever your vice is, you can beat it.

For me, I really missed sausages and salami. But what I miss, really, is the spices. So, just put those same spices in your veggies.

Okay, but cheese.

The reasons why I'm not a vegan yet are:
1) it's been inconvenient as someone who largely doesn't cook for themselves -- a college student, living on campus or at home
2) dairy and eggs are in all kinds of processed foods that are hard to avoid sometimes
3) CHEESE

Dairy has opiates in it, so that's why giving up cheese seems like such an insurmountable task. Someday, I will atone for my sins, but at this point (where I've been a vegetarian for less than a year) I'm just not quite ready to stop eating all dairy.

When I gave up meat, however, I was surprised how quickly I stopped craving it. I would say, after a month, eating meat became unthinkable. I'm sure the same thing would happen with cheese if I just quit cold-turkey.


13. Meat is a big part of my culture. 

Meat is a part of everyone's culture. I get that. How about we compromise? Is eating turkey on Thanksgiving a really important thing to you and your family? Then go for it. But no culture is built upon eating meat every day, even three times a day. Settle for eating meat maybe two or three times year on special holidays. It will make those holidays even more special, and you won't have to give up a type of food that is important to you completely.

No matter how angry I seem in this post, I'm not advocating for everyone to suffer and make huge sacrifices. In fact, I think that people view vegetarianism/veganism as a huge sacrifice until they do it themselves, and they realize it's pretty easy. That's all I want from people-- to give it a shot.


Some resources:

Forks Over Knives (documentary)

The Sustainability Secret (book by Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn) 

Vermicomposting: Getting Started

One of my goals for this year was to start a vermicomposting bin. This is the technical term for composting with worms. I have been researching this for a while, after seeing a classmate's worm bin in the fall. Last week, I got the bins and started collecting food waste. This week, my worms arrived in the mail! I've only been doing this for a couple days, but I've already managed to make several mistakes!

If you haven't started vermicomposting, read this to avoid my mistakes. If you have a lot of experience, please read this anyway, and maybe let me know any helpful tips or tricks!

My bin set up is a medium-sized bin inside of a larger bin (to catch drainage). The worm bin has holes drilled in the sides, bottom, and lid. They are dark gray so they don't let in light. About a week before my worms arrived, I started collecting food waste and adding it to bin, between layers of damp newspaper for bedding.

The two-bin, lidded system -- with tons of ventilation holes.

The problem I believe is that I added too much food waste, and it was too compacted and dry when the worms arrived.

As soon as I added the worms, instead of burrowing into the bin, they all started crawling up and out of the bin. This was obviously a problem since my bin is indoors, and I had about 1,000 worms. Yikes.

I went into troubleshooting mode. I drilled some more ventilation holes in the lid, added a lot more bedding, sprayed it until all layers were damp, and fluffed the old, compacted layers with some tongs. This allowed the food waste to get aerated, and it also reduced the smell after some time. Win-win.

One of the luckier escapees being rescued from the floor.

However, even with these changes, every time I checked there were always between 10 and 20 worms crawling up the sides. We lost about 30 worms on the garage floor during the first night. Not nearly as many escape attempts as there were during the first few hours however!

I think at this point, since they are new to their environment they are restless and just wandering about. The majority of worms have burrowed to the bottom happily, and have started working on the food scraps.

So far, I have added several banana peels, an apple core, some bags and coffee grounds, mushroom stems, lots of strawberry tops, and a couple kale stems. I added a tiny bit of an orange peel, probably about one square inch. I doubt this is causing a problem, but I might try fishing it out if the worms don't calm down since I've heard citrus can be really bad in high quantity.

For bedding, I'm using shredded newspaper and paper towels rolls, and a few shredded wet/food-stained napkins and paper towels.

In order to encourage the worms to burrow down, I sprayed down the bin again, shoved all the crawlers back down the sides, and put a bunch of dry shredded newspaper on top. I'm going to leave the lid off for a while, which I've heard is okay as long as there is protection from light in the form of a layer of bedding. The whole deal is probably about a foot deep at this point so they should be able to get out of the light.

The lidless system has successfully discouraged escape attempts.

Damp bedding (and worms!) underneath the dry layer.

Then I will try to leave them alone for a while so they can situated now that I think I've troubleshooted well enough. I've collected quite a bit more food waste, but I popped it in the freezer so I can store it for later. I don't want to overwhelm them, especially since I'm sure I added too much food to begin with. Plus, freezing will aid in the break down of the food, and kill any pests in the food. I don't want a fruit fly infestation!

(I'm already worried about flies, since I've left the bin outside for a few hours and there were some flies buzzing around when I checked on it.)

If there are any experienced vermicomposters out there with suggestions, or you've noticed something I'm doing is seriously wrong, please let me know! I've done a lot of research on this over the past several months, but doing something firsthand is always a lot different than just reading about it or watching YouTube videos.