After close observation, I am clearly healthier, happier, sexier and more energetic when I include regular servings of eggs and salmon, and a-once-a-year homeopathic serving of venison or grass-fed, free range beef.

I’ve tried veganism for years, and it mostly leaves me struggling with weight gain, hair loss, and mild to severe depression due to a lack of whatever it is in the animal protein that my body needs for optimum health.

I have many friends who are hard-core vegans. Some are the epitome of health, others are weak and ghostly. Some are rich, some poor. Some angelic, and some can be total assholes sometimes. Veganism is not a pre-requisite for health, wealth or happiness.

Obviously inhumanely factory farmed meat, eggs, and dairy is a horrible travesty. It’s disgusting, in my opinion.

However, because corporations go about killing animals in a grotesque way doesn’t mean that it’s consequently always a bad thing to sacrifice and eat animals.

The most nourishing medicine I can remember in recent years is when a beloved friend spent weeks hunting a giant buck and made stew out of it and shared it with us on a freezing, rainy winter evening. I’ve never ingested anything so warming and nourishing. My body wisdom (used to vegan raw meals) exclaimed loudly “Now THIS is Real Food!” It’s SO nourishing on every level of being.

I observe my cat when she stalks a bird or rodent. In the thrill of the chase, she is at her most vital, primal, spirited power. She couldn’t care less for sprouts. Some of the most powerful, intelligent, muscular, quick and magical animals are carnivorous - however, vegans have an evolutionary advantage of being more prolific because they generally have easier access to more food.

Why is it generally accepted by vegetarians that it’s okay for canines, felines, snakes, etc. to hunt and eat meat, but not humans? While I cringe at even hurting an ant, when it comes to nourishing the carnivore inside of me, I honor the sacrifice of life force an animal that has lost it’s life to nourish mine.

Another question I pose to the anti-violent argument against vegetarianism: at what point to you draw the line in hurting or maiming a living thing: mammal, avian, piscean, fungal, vegetable? Who’s to say a carrot doesn’t suffer when it is killed for a carrot juice? Just because it doesn’t have eyes or a brain doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t have consciousness.

I too will be devoured by the world at the end of my days. In the meantime, I am following my conscious, high-wisdom intuition and eating as I am guided to in each moment with full consciousness and gratitude for the abundance that the World has to offer. That’s the best I can do.

Life feeds on Life feeds on Life feeds on Life…

By “politically motivated” I was referring only to the USDA, not to vegetarians. Apologies if that was unclear.

It IS possible to acquire all necessary amino acids from non-animal sources. It does, however, require more knowledge than the average, lazy, coasting-through-life person is willing to gain or apply.

If vegetarianism is only about eschewing flesh, and not also about replacing each and every amino acid easily afforded by flesh, with a plant source, there will be some consequences to health. As far as I know, specific amino acid requirements aren’t even addressed by the USDA, probably because there is no L-Arganine lobby, no L-Lysine lobby, and so on. Maybe I should spearhead … nevermind.

We are fortunate in our region, too, to have excellent sources for pasture-fed, free-range livestock. Since I don’t want to eschew animal protein as long as I have finicky, growing children to feed, I’m glad to pay the higher price for some animal proteins, which, can run to three times as high as the mass produced stuff. This is not to say that I never avail myself of the convenience of the grocer’s meat department. I can be pretty lazy, and sometimes even a little bit arrogant, often-times self-contradictory. As thrilled as I am to have recently purchased a share in my county’s community supported farm, I will continue to buy California produce until harvest, because by this time of year locally produced stores of just about everything have dwindled. You should have an easier time eating well and within your bioregion, if that’s among your goals.

I’m very interested to hear how you feel as the transition progresses. I’m curious to know what will take the place of flesh, and if you’ll include any pre-packaged stuffs, and if you develop any cravings; whether or not you’ll omit refined and enriched in favor of whole. Depending on what you’ve been eating previously, and what you replace it with, you might have some mildly unpleasant symptoms at first — I encourage you to ride those out. I also hope you have friends & family support in this endeavor, as it sure makes things a lot easier. Again, good luck, and please keep us posted!

Thanks for an extremely thoughtful and well-put comment, Z. I always value your input on the topic of nutrition (among other things) because it’s clear that you do your homework and are wise in the ways of gastronomy.

I want to address a very important point that you bring up, which is the fact that people have cuspids and cuspids are meat-eating teeth. There is no doubt that it is natural for humans to eat other creatures. There are also virtually no limiting parameters to the “argument from nature” for any human behavior, essentially because of the philosophical “problem” of free will.

It is the mind and not the teeth which determine what is ethical. Therefore, I fail to see how the presence of cuspids can provide any sort of ethical justification for carnivorism (not that one is needed unless one consciously decides that one is needed; and until that point, there is no need for an individual to consider vegetarian practices for ethical reasons.) Because human beings have cuspids, we are evolutionarily outfitted to eat meat. Because we have intelligence, we are ethically outfitted to choose otherwise.

You are right to question the notion of what I’ve termed “animal servitude” as truly symbiotic, in the biological sense. I could invoke the example of ants and aphids as a sort of precedent, but that would be the argument from nature again! (And an unsophisticated argument, at that.) I’m fortunate to live in an area where it’s not impossible—albeit difficult—to get eggs and milk and even some kinds of meat from local sources which do not engage in the so-called “factory farming” practices. I would say that the relationship between man and not-man which underlies this kind of production is more symbiotic than that which informs the industrial production of animal byproducts, and so I think it is a rational and ethically sound choice to participate in the micro-economics of cheese ‘n’ eggs for more than one reason. But, definitely, the issue is more arguable than one in which an animal must be slaughtered in order to produce goods.

I also think it’s a little misleading to qualify vegetarian ethics as a political topic. It can be a political topic, but I think at its root it is a question of ethics which is extremely personal.

It’s definitely wise to look to nutritional science for answers, but nutritional science cannot answer to the ethical aspects of carnivorism. I don’t think you would argue that carnivorism is necessary for good health—but then again, you know a lot more about nutrition than I do, so maybe there’s something I’m missing! Also, I’m a little skeptical of government regulations and requirements simply because the regulatory agencies involved in the U.S. agriculture and health bureaucracies are informed by interest groups with vested economic interests in continuing the large-scale production of animal products. And grain products—it’s a frequently cited statistic that it takes eight times as much grain to feed a cow as a human. $$$!

Extremely thoughtful comment. Much appreciated. Beets? Well, I’ll give them one more try. :-/

Is it because once domesticated, these animals started to enjoy artificial safety from predation by quadrupedal carnivors? Is the protection from danger traded for milk or wool truly symbiotic?

Let’s look at the most common example of symbiosis: the oxpecker bird of Africa, and it’s most recognized mutual symbiont, the hippopotamus. The bird benefits from eating parasites and dead skin; the hippo benefits from better health through the reduction of parasites and perhaps — what? the comfort of fewer dead skin cells? What does the exchange cost either symbiont? Nothing comes to mind.

What does it cost a man to maintain a cow or a sheep? Money, labor, time. What does it cost a cow or a sheep to serve a man? Only her freedom, which is perhaps the most highly valued human right in American society.

I’m not being judgmental about your intentions or your reasons behind them, nor am I attempting to poke holes in your logic in order to persuade you to omit dairy and eggs; nor would I ever demand absolute consistency in ethics from anyone who tries to eat thoughtfully and sensitively.

We ate buffalo for dinner last night and tonight’s menu includes salmon. When I’m out of soy milk, I will add a splash of skim cow milk to my morning coffee, without guilt. My choice isn’t due to an absence of respect for my own faculties or the natural order of things. I was born with cuspids, just as wolves and coyotes were born with cuspids, and this indicates to me that it is natural for me to eat flesh.

When it comes to food, there is really only one thing a person can do that’s clearly, for lack of a better word, wrong: to live to eat, as opposed to eat to live. Meaning, whether it’s plant or animal, consuming more than is necessary for optimal health does not serve self, nor does it serve community, nor does it serve our long ailing planet.

Clearly, if it is only ethical to eat only for utility, I have all of the ethics of a common toad, assuming toads have the biological impetus to eat at any opportunity and are incapable of ethical thinking, that is.

George Bernard Shaw lived between 1856 and 1950, becoming a vegetarian at age 25. 94 years speaks volumes for his preferred diet, although his reasons for becoming vegetarian were purely ethical — “A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.” The reasons for Shaws choice aside, certainly, much has been learned by nutritional scientists since Shaw made his choice.

I do aplaud those who endeavor to consume ecologically with good health in mind. But being the sort who tends to revere intelligence as enthusiastically as some Seventh Day Adventists revere spirituality, I intend to keep looking to the nonpolitically, nonspiritually motivated intelligentsia for nutritional guidance.

Harvard thinks we should consume less dairy, and disregard the USDA’s recommendation that only half our grains be 100% whole, and they maintain that some animal proteins are better than others while leaning toward nuts and legumes is wise. Plus, as you probably know, I’m thrilled that they do not disallow wine :-)

I hope you’ll post on this topic again after you’ve made the transition to lacto-ovo vegetarianism. Good luck with it! And eat your beets!

You’re right, PG—vegetarianism makes a great deal of sense environmentally. I like this theme a lot, too. We’re in agreement there! And I look forward to tasty recipes.

Turtle, that’s welcome encouragement and sound advice.

Haven’t seen the film, Tuco, but I’m glad to check it out and I’m enjoying your new blog. Thanks!

the way factory farming treats animals is very like the way humans were used in the matrix films.