THE VEGETARIAN
MYTH
Being a staunch proponent of the Paleo/Primal lifestyle seems to automatically put me at odds with a particular segment of mankind.... I am speaking of vegans, vegetarians, fruitarians, and raw foodists....
I feel the need to once and for all address certain "arguments" that have been presented to me over the years (time and again)....
1) I don't want to eat meat because it means killing another living being...
ANSWER: I don't know how to break this to you but, those plants that you are eating, they are just as alive as the animals you speak of...
2) Well, plants aren't conscious beings...
ANSWER: Oh contraire, YOU may think plants aren't conscious, but that is because you don't know any better...
3) Ok but, they don't feel pain or suffer...
ANSWER: You have obviously never heard the celery scream when it is harvested...
4) Plants are inferior to (not as important as) animals...
ANSWER: Why, because you say so...? That's just a little arrogant, don't you think? There would be NO life on this planet if there were no plants...
5) Plants are healthier for you than meat...
ANSWER: You need to do your homework. Our earliest ancestors were not farmers, they were hunter/gatherer/scavengers. "Modern" agriculture is very recent in our history, the last 10,000 years or so. Humans are OMNIVORES, and always have been. That means we are designed to eat both plants AND animals... and we do not digest complex carbohydrates nearly as well as herbivores, not to mention the fact that our body runs more efficiently on ketones (from digesting animal fat) than it does on glucose (which is why half of America is overweight). Just consider the simple math, one gram of carbohydrate provides four calories of energy, while one gram of fat provides NINE calories of energy to the body.... now WHICH is a more efficient fuel source ???
6) Farming plants is more economical than farming meat...
ANSWER: That all depends on how you look at it. From an acreage point of view, vegetables are more economical. BUT, if you look at it from a perspective of caloric availability, then meat wins. And I do not expouse a pure meat diet....
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=webber-more-efficient-foods-less-waste (please read comments !!!)
7) Animals are more evolved than plants...
ANSWER: Define "evolved".... there are trees that live a thousand years or more, that is TEN TIMES the lifespan of most humans, and far more than any animal lifespan. Plants survive under the harshest conditions on the planet, whether in vast deserts or undersea toxic thermal vents where there is no light.... they can survive forest fires and twenty feet of snow cover, can you ?
8) Animals raised for food contribute more to worldwide pollution, and are heavily loaded with toxins...
ANSWER: I'm guessing you've never heard of GMO's... or that the rice you eat is loaded with arsenic, the lettuce with E.coli, the cantaloupes with salmonella, and the strawberries with norovirus, just to name a few...
9) Animals raised for food are often routinely mistreated...
ANSWER: ABSOLUTELY. On this point you will get no argument from me, BUT, I am a staunch animal rights activist, are YOU ???
...And two more things, there is no such thing as "cruelty-free" vegetarianism... whether you are talking about the death of microbes, earthworms, insects, or even animals killed by harvesting crops (and that are NOT at least consumed by us, so die for no good reason), and if you "abhor" the thought of eating animals, why do vegetarians always make their vegetables LOOK like meat ??? What is that all about ? We don't make our meat look like vegetables... who would want a steak that looked like a squash ?
Talk about mind-numbing denial...
NOTE(1): My own personal first-hand experience working as a nutritional consultant in functional medicine, has been that vegetarians (et al) will show propensity for auto-immune disorders, hormonal imbalances, adrenal fatigue, thyroid disfunction, etc., after a sustained period of being vegetarian, say 10 to 20 years or more.... PARTICULARLY females over the age of forty-five, and those consuming soy/canola/low-fat foods.
NOTE(2): There are NUMEROUS articles like this on the internet... http://www.bulletproofexec.com/steve-jobs-dr-dean-ornish-and-vegetarian-cancer/
NOTE(3): EVERYTHING comes to this planet to eventually die... if you were a cow, how would you like to die ? Slowly, from malnutrition, like in India ? Being mauled to death by a predator, like in Africa ? Or a quick bullet to the brain, as in Mexico ? Me, it would be in Japan, as a Kobe cow... Belief systems are just that.... "beliefs".
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