Can One Be Both Vegetarian and Primal?
Greg’s interview with Lorette Luzajic generated a couple comments from Brian, a vegan, requesting that instead of beating up on vegans and vegetarians, perhaps we should be helping them be better vegetarians. So it got me to thinking, is it possible to be vegan or vegetarian and still follow a Paleo-style diet?
What Is Most Natural?
I think it’s startlingly obvious that a vegan diet cannot and is not natural for humans. Our digestive tract is much closer to that of obligate carnivores than to that of herbivorous animals. Certain vitamins can only be obtained from animal foods. Without these animal foods, supplements are a requirement, meaning that the human race could never have survived on such a diet. Given that, let’s look at what I view to be the arguments for and against vegetarianism and explore some ideas on how vegetarians can implement more healthy principles into their diets.
Exploring The Reasons For Vegetarianism
There seem to be three main reasons for “Going Veg”: health, environment, and ethics.
Health
Many people adopt a vegetarian diet, at least initially, with the intent of improving their health. The studies all say it’s healthier and vegetarians live longer. When you look at where most people are starting, it’s easy to see why their health improves. When one moves from a Western diet of processed carbs, sugar, little fruits and vegetables, fast food, etc to a diet full of vitamin-rich foods, health should improve. Vegetarians also tend to be more health-conscious in general.
But that doesn’t make it the best way, which is what we are each pursuing in our own way. Remember that the comparison is not typically of a vegetarian diet to a Paleo diet. And most any diet is healthier than what most Westerners eat.
The Big Vegetarian Issue: Soy
Here is where I think most vegetarian diets go off the rails. In their quest for health, many vegetarians ditch processed food products in favor of…processed food products. The source of the ingredients may change, but the end result doesn’t. One only need walk through the refrigerated section to see what I’m talking about: Garden Burgers, Tofurkey, soy “cheese,” soy milk.
Is this what vegetarianism is about? Garden Steak Ingredients:
Water, red onion with natural sauteed onion flavor, cooked brown rice (brown rice, water), roasted red peppers, roasted yellow peppers, cooked split peas (water, split peas), carrots, garlic, parmesan-type cheese (pasteurized part-skim milk, salt, enzymes, cultures), rolled oats, couscous (wheat flour), natural gorgonzola cheese flavor (contains milk), parsley, contain two percent or less of natural butter flavor (contains butter), modified vegetable gum, sea salt, sesame seeds, natural onion flavor (onions, sunflower oil), spices, soy lecithin.
Now, we could question why someone would give up meat, then eat products that are intended to taste like meat. One could even argue that the desire to eat something that is meat-like probably means that there is an underlying desire to actually eat meat, a desire that is not being met. But that brings us no closer to reconciling a primal diet with a vegetarian diet.
Environmental
Meat production requires a lot more resource usage than a vegetarian diet. On a calorie-to-calorie basis, a low-fat vegetarian diet is more land efficient than the diet most Americans are eating. But a report from Cornell shows that a diet that includes some meat and dairy is a more efficient use of resources.
What I’d really like to see is a resource-per-nutrition estimation. While a plant-based diet may produce more calories from fewer inputs, we have to presume a high intake of grains, which means that on a calorie-to-calorie basis, a diet heavier in meat is going to produce more vitamins. We already have plenty of calories and most of them aren’t from fresh meats, regardless of what the data says about our “meat-heavy diet”. What we lack in most of our foods is vitamins, particularly the fat-soluble ones.
Ethical
The ethical and moral arguments against eating meat are much more difficult to overcome. I think there are few of us here that are for the mistreatment of the animals that we call food. Along with the health benefits of grass-fed meats, proper treatment is another reason that we choose meats not raised in confinement operations. For me, the key is about making sure the animals I eat are treated humanely and allowed to live the lives they should live.
As Brian pointed out in his comments (comment excerpt below), not everyone adopts such a diet for health reasons and in fact, some adopt a vegan or vegetarian diet in spite of health.
I’m not under any illusions that veganism is “natural” or the healthiest diet on the planet. I’m a vegan for ethical reasons. There are a lot of people like me, who for ethical reasons refuse to eat animal products even though it’s not the healthiest thing for us.
Now this is a tougher nut to crack. How does one convince someone that it’s okay to eat an animal so long as that animal is treated properly, especially if one is willing to sacrifice a bit of health for their ethics?
Understanding “The Least Harm Principle”
Vegans often cite the desire to not kill animals as part of feeding themselves. But it’s an incorrect assessment of reality. A vegan diet is obviously very high in plant matter. Everytime a field is plowed, disked, planted, fertilized, and harvested, machines run through the field. Machines that invariably kill countless small animals and destroy burrows and nests. One argument I’ve read is that it’s inadvertent death versus deliberate death, but that just seems like a convenient excuse. The reality is that a vegan diet kills far more animals than a meat-eating diet. In fact, how many people can eat from one cow? And how many animals die to harvest enough plants to feed a single vegan?
And can one really say that the life of a field mouse or a mole is of less value than the life of a cow? Is the life of a lamb of more or less value than the life of a human? The other reality is that death is part of life. There is no life without death. Creatures die so that others may live. That’s the bottom line. The death of those animals should at least be used as food for some creature. The key factor is making sure the death is humane (which is probably far more consideration than the lion gives the antelope as he eats him to death).
Merging Vegetarianism With Ethical Treatment Of Food
Let me go ahead and get this one out there: I cannot advocate a vegan diet. I cannot wrap my head around adopting a diet that forces someone to supplement. I view supplements as insurance policies, not as requirements. And with a vegan diet, certain supplements are a requirement, which pretty much means it’s not natural. However, I can see ways to adopt a vegetarian (or nearly vegetarian) diet without turning to a diet of refined vegetarian soy products, improperly cast as being “the healthy alternative”.
So what foods are available to someone that wants to avoid eating meat, but is still willing to eat the animal foods that are necessary for health? Well, eggs are a good start. They are packed with vitamins, especially the yolks (the healthiest part of the egg), protein, and fat. And since the eggs we eat are unfertilized, you’re not actually killing anything.
Dairy products have long been a way to get essential animal foods without killing animals. Instead of raising a cow or goat for food, a family could raise a cow and keep it for years, getting several gallons of milk per day. This milk was either consumed raw or turned into other products like cheese. The cream could be churned into butter. But as you know, I’m not a fan of pasteurized milk and cheese. Stick to raw to get all of the nutritional properties of grass-fed cows.
Now here’s an interesting one mentioned by Brian and one that requires some mental gymnastics: entomophagy. Yeah, bugs. Of course, we’re talking about killing bugs so that one doesn’t have to kill animals and yes, I consider that to be mental gymnastics. If it’s not okay to kill a bird or mammal for food, why is it okay to kill a bug? Anyway, insects are supposedly a delicious source of protein and have a very high conversion ratio, up to 20 times higher than that for beef, if one has environmental concerns.
My Final Thoughts
Meat is good. Meat is very nutritious. Meat should be part of the diet in some form, even if its not a staple. I think we’re better off devoting our energies to changing the system of food production rather than trying to develop a vegan diet that goes against what the body requires. Vegetarians that use the foods listed above (eggs and dairy, and possibly bugs) can probably achieve all of the body’s nutritional needs and be quite healthy.
And finally, stick to grass-fed/pastured, properly-raised meats, eggs, and dairy products. By raising the animals properly, we avoid the worst of the ethical concerns of rearing animals. The animals are happy and are killed in the most humane way possible. They are not abused while being raised, aren’t treated solely as food producing units, and have the chance to do the things animals do rather than standing around in a crate, being fed “foods” that destroy their bodies and riddle them with disease.
Of course, the decision of whether to allow death to maintain life is one you have to answer for yourself. As I see it, there is a natural element to the food cycle. Plants eat sunlight and soil nutrients, animals (including humans) eat plants, other animals (including humans) eat animals. As plants and animals die, they decompose and contribute their nutrients back to the soil, where plants combine them with sunlight to start the cycle over. In the end, animals are just concentrated plants anyway.
So there it is…a way to be both vegetarian and somewhat primal.
About Scott
Scott Kustes loves to cook and loves to eat. He started Real Food University to help you get maximum enjoyment out of the meals that you eat. To find out more about how he has rebelled against the fast food culture and counting calories or carbs, join the Real Food Revolution.
57 Reader Comments
Feel free to leave a comment below... and as always please keep it in good taste. Comment spamming ONLY to promote your website is NOT allowed. So please use your real name in the field below otherwise it may be edited or removed. Constructive discussion is always welcome, personal attacks or useless bickering is not. Not all comments may be answered directly by editors/writers.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Haha. Love the concluding sentence Scott. I’ve never really looked into vegetarianism in great detail because I am a meat eater myself. Your article does make a lot of good points and I agree with what you say on the fact that people giving up meat and then eating products that taste like meat is questionable. However, I don’t think that many vegetarians will buy the line “Animals are just concentrated plants anyway”.
I like the way you approach this topic. Most of fitnessblog’s writers treat vegan like they are the dummest on earth and with such a strong propaganda (yes, it’s vica versa). I think the best reason for being vegans is the environmental issue. For example one cattle can drink 100 liter water (about 30 gallon?) in the summer. This is why I don’t advocate pure paleo diet with tons of meat. I think the sustainable way we eat is a moderate meat consumption with full respect to the animal. I mean we should eat the whole animal with all its organs. And I think a moderate dairy and grain eating is not that bad, especially the soaked rice and the other non-wheat grains.
I forgot one thing: if everybody turn into vegans, what happened to all of the domesticated animals…?
I am a vegetarian and have been for quite some time. But, the whole time that I have been a vegetarian I have known that it wasn’t quite the healthiest even when I told people that it was.
However, I have been considering eating meat in the past couple of weeks. I was wondering what you think I should eat.
I plan on eating only one serving of lean meat per day, but I’m not sure which meats are the healthiest.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
From an ethical point of view, it’s funny how vegetarians / vegans have no problems killing plants. If someone wants to get philosophical about what constitutes life, plants undoubtedly are living. If people can get upset about trees being killed for lumber, I’d think they could be equally upset about lettuce being killed for dinner.
SOMETHING has to die in order for human beings to eat, whether it be vegetable or animal. People also seem to have no problem killing pathological organisms in order to ensure human health. Trying to define “ethical eating” for humans by what life is respectable vs. what life is acceptable to kill ends either in hypocrisy or malnutrition/death.
Since everything dies eventually, the real issue in ethical eating is honoring the life force/cycle of whatever it is one needs to eat, in the most efficient manner possible. For plants, that is organic agriculture. For animals, it’s whatever husbandry ensures their ability to thrive. Animals and plants whose life cycles have been honored are much more nutritious for humans than food processed through industrial means. Since the “honored” food is efficient in providing nutrition, “honorable” agriculture and husbandry is not wasteful.
(I realize this is basically a restatement of most of the points you made, Scott, but I wanted to include plants as deserving humane treatment, because they are life, too.)
I’ve been vegetarian for more than 10 years, am reasonably healthy and relatively fitness conscious. Since my girlfriend has gone on primal(ish) diet and I read up a little bit on the subject I have been struggling about what to eat. Below are few thoughts I on the subject:
1. I personally think to get primal+vegan+tasty food at the same time is rather hard. To get a diet that would be literally primal will be hard. Instead, you will probably have to go for diet whose composition will model roughly the stuff that hunter-gatherers ate (e.g. nutrients).
2. I assume that as a vegan, you already eat plenty of greens and fruits so the main thing to get the meal composition closer to primal diet will be to top up on protein, which basically means eating lots of pulses. This is not primal, and some meat eaters out there will argue it is more dangerous than eating meat (as it affects your hormones in funny ways), but I think it is as close as you can get to primal as a vegan. If there was a measure of primal-ness, pulses will be definitely closer to a hunter gatherer diet than processed vegetarian protein such as tofu, mycoprotein or seitan. I personally eat all of these (except for soya-based stuff) in order to get variety that is imho important part of a sustainable diet. A word of caution: Pulses and other vegetable-based protein may not as easily digestible as animal protein so you probably need to experiment a little to see how your body reacts to different kinds of protein-heavy vegetables.
3. After all the reading I did recently, I added some more sources of omega 3 oil. (walnuts, avocados, etc) Look at the vegetarian society website that has a page on omega 3 for more details.
4. Evan as a vegan, you can do the primal-style exercise.
5. Your life gets easier if you are vegetarian since you can add eggs, cheese and other dairy products as sources of protein (as mentioned by Scott in his post), getting you a step closer to the ‘true’ primal diet
Scott,
Great, great article and great writing, once again–this is the one I’ve been waiting for, because as a self-described ‘carnivore’, I’ve struggled for quite awhile with the ‘ethical’ and ‘moral’ issues associated with eating animal foods, to the point where I sometimes can’t enjoy my steak or chicken–but luckily (or selfishly perhaps?) my rememberance of past vegetarian life attempts as well as instinct (perhaps plain old hunger) has kept me on a basically omivorous track, and now after reading your straight, simple logic, I do feel slightly better. I just wish my fellow humans who work in these areas of food production would treat these animals better, and like you mention, give the critters the life they deserve before slaughter. I’ve heard the Japanese have it right with their Kobe beef production–those animals get massages and beer to drink, right? What could be better?
Adam
Yes, and the kobe beef costs about 250 dollar per pound:).
One more thought: I’m always feel a bit weird when a carnivore angry about people who eat dogs or other pets in Asia. So what the difference beetwen chicken and dog eating? The dogs are cute so we don’t eat them?
Interesting article today. I noted that you put “soy” as one of the problems but focused more upon the problem with Gardenburgers than soy in general. This is one of those things where I’ve seen how soy might not be the best for people but at the same time have a hard time reconciling with my family and extended family as soy is a pretty large part of their diets usually in the form of tofu, soy milk…etc. For the most part I’d say they are more healthy than the majority of Americans. My grandmother will be 100 in February and other than some issues with cataracts has been pretty free from any health issues. My parents are both vegetarians for religious reasons (Buddhism) and soy is a staple in their diet and while not uber-fit are more than holding their own at almost 60 years of age. I’ve had a few concerns as they have only become vegetarians in the last decade and I wonder if they are getting everything they need, but they seem to be doing better than most vegetarians I’ve known in American society.
As there are so many Asian and people that have Asian genes around is soy ok for them? I’ve seen some things from Charles Poliquin proclaiming so, but we both know that he talks a lot but backs up none of it (doesn’t make it wrong, just hard to swallow I guess).
I have been a vegetarian for about 3 years now for ethical reasons, and I’d like to explain those ethical reasons in an attempt to clear up the “what’s the difference between killing a plant and an animal?” argument.
1. I love my dog. She is clearly capable of complex thought and is a very smart animal. I could never eat her or think of taking away her life. This ultimately lead me to becoming vegetarian because I couldn’t justify the killing of a cow or pig just for a tasty meal because they are capable of having a beautiful life like a dog.
2. I do not feel bad about eating plants. They are not capable of the same kind of life as a cow. I also don’t feel bad about shellfish, fish, or even poultry sometimes, though I do not eat them because I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know how anyone can argue a clam or a muscle is equal to a cow in mental ability.
3. I will not deny that meat does not taste good. I do eat veggie burgers because I did like the taste of meat.
4. In regards to primal eating – I do not think wrong of the native Americans and early humans who hunted and ate meat. They HAD TO hunt to live. I do have a problem with the factory farm machine that produces meat today. In California, they recently passed a law that will require pigs and chicken must be able to turn around and sit in their living spaces. It blows my mind that this WAS NOT a requirement before. I wish animals could have a free life before they died and that they weren’t just brought into this world to be killed.
Because I can live in this modern world without causing suffering to animals capable of smart, happy lives, I choose not to eat meat.
Allen Y,
The fact that your parents are healthy is in line with epidemiologic research showing that both vegetarian and primal diets are healthier than a standard western diet. I think it is an important thing to keep in mind in all the veggie v meat discussions as it is something that is easily forgotten in the heat of the argument.
The way I see it is that until someone funds proper large randomised sample research comparing either diet against one another and against standard diet (and isolating other lifestyle factors), soy v meat may be fun but more a matter of opinions rather than undisputable facts. Until then I will be personally more inspired to learn the good stuff a vegetarian can learn from the primal/paleo crowd (ie, managing their carb intake, incorporating things like IF, primal exercise etc) than getting into a p***ing contests.
I seriously considered veganism for environmental reasons until I read “Becoming Vegetarian”. This is a fantastic book that convinced me that it *is* possible to design and maintain a healthy vegan diet. I actually recommend it to meat-eaters as well (but skip the chapter on reasons to become vegetarian if passionate vegetarian ethical arguments raise your blood pressure), since it’s such a great resource on the nutritional characteristics of plant foods. However, the book also convinced me of several other characteristics of a healthy vegan diet that in the end led me to the conclusion that such a diet does not fit my personal ethics, particularly when compared against a “localvore” omnivorous diet including pastured animal products. My first concern was that the mileage on my food — particularly if I were to leave California — would be quite a bit higher on a vegan diet. When comparing a vegan’s foods’ travels vs. a diet based on CAFO-finished meat I suspect the meat-eater does more damage to the environment, but with local, pastured animal products (and wild-caught seafood from non-threatened populations) I could find no evidence that this was still the case. I was also concerned with dependence on processed food products and supplements; several vegetarians of my acquaintance who didn’t attend to supplementation have ended up with B12 deficiency neuropathy, so I take this pretty seriously. It’s also somewhat worrying to me that any given food allergy or intolerance makes the diet more precarious: can one be vegan and gluten-free? Probably, but it’s a pretty fragile position to be in.
Allen Y – The soy eaten by most Asians are minimally processed, either through grinding, precipitation, or fermentation where little of the soy ingredients are altered in soy milk or tofu. Whereas, there is more processing done on a gardenburger. That is where the difference lay in terms of soy in a Western diet and soy in an Eastern diet.
I think this statement, “I do not feel bad about eating plants. They are not capable of the same kind of life as a cow. ” from a reader’s comment is patently ridiculous. Just because it is a life experience different than your own, doesn’t make it less important, vital or intense than your own — or for god’s sake, a cow’s. Plant’s may not have central nervous systems in the same way a mammal does, but it’s clear (through science and direct observation, do some research) that they have feelings, experiences and most of all, deeply desire to live.
To create a hierarchy of human-like consciousness as a basis for who deserves to live and who gets to be eaten/killed/massacred is part of the perspective that has put our ecology (and species) into the sad state it’s currently in.
To not recognize and honor the intense life energy gifted to us by plants (and animals) as food is something like primal sacrilege, and certainly a sad testimony to how separate modern human are from their food, environment and the planet we call home.
I also think that someone should point out that the introduced species of cows (or even chickens) are not the only meat source for most americans. There’s a huge deer overpopulation problem in many parts of the country, thanks to our brilliant removal of their natural predators. More hunting, or at least eating or roadkill (all that food, already dead, left to rot on the side of the road in many places) seems like a very ethical way to eat meat to me, certainly more so than digging up wild land to farm with petro-chemicals, imported plants and mono-crops. I don’t eat bugs (yet), but they do have a huge amount of potential as sustainable food sources. Generally though, I feel better about taking the life of one large animal like an elk or deer and making it last rather than often taking many lives of small animals, like birds or rabbits. In the ecology I live in, it is kinder to the land as a whole to take large animals (of where there are many, often more than the land can support, thanks to those missing predators) rather than harvesting large amounts of wild plants (of which there is not so much, more so up high where the elk graze though) or worse, promoting agriculture (and thus the large scale manipulation of water and land, almost sure to do more harm than good).
And maybe the real ethical travesty is the rate at which we humans reproduce, and thus, how MUCH we eat.
All this from a former long term vegetarian (and shorter term vegan and raw foodist), now devoted primal eater (foodist?). Thanks Scott, for a balanced and generous perspective.
It all boils down to ethics. I was a vegetarian for two years. Beans were the staple of my diet and I maintained a decent figure. I understand the positions of vegetarians and got into it because I was simply appalled by factory farms. I actually found out through Howard Lyman’s Mad Cowboy, a pro-vegan book from a former cattle farmer. He spills out the sorry state of factory farms but also tries to convince us that a vegan diet is the most optimal for man. It was absolute nonsense, but it really shocked me and stirred an epiphany inside of me. I looked at my cat and realized that as much as I love him, he is probably delicious. It was an interesting time in my life, and found out about a very interesting community. It all came down about 1 year ago when I was asking just how wrong it was. I thought about it and thought about it. It was actually last christmas that I bit into meat after a long hiatus and actually felt really good for the first time in a good many years. I realized that meat is necessary. One day I came upon the Weston A. Price foundation website. This article sealed the deal, and put everything swimming around my mind regarding life, ethics into a nice little piece. http://westonaprice.org/healthissues/ethicsmeat.html
Bravo Scott! This is one of those very difficult topics to tackle and you did it with poise and precision. I won’t lie, sometimes (not always) I’m just so exhausted with arguing on the topic I’ll say go ahead and don’t eat meat. What do I care? But the fact is, I do care and I want to help people know that it’s healthier to eat meat. Your take on the moral issue is very interesting, and I happen to agree with you. If you draw the line at what constitutes a life worth saving and what is not, you are acting hypocritical.
Thank you for the post!
All the Best,
Andrew R
Great Post!!!! Really enjoyed it with lots of good advice. I think you covered the issues well. I am also very glad you didn’t mention anything about eating fish. I cant stand it when vegetarians say Im a vego but I eat fish. Hello fish is an animal with pain receptors. Just because they cant scream in pain doesnt mean they don’t feel it. Great post keep it up.
One just needs to look in nature and see that it is full of animals surviving on animals, it’s part of a natural design bigger than just one person. Each has it’s own role in the survival of another. Is a tiger immoral because it eats an antelope? While I do not like the mistreatment of animals, I eat meat because it’s natural…there is no right and wrong in nature’s design, it just is. There’s nothing natural about soy burgers or trying to get 3000 calories worth of plants, it won’t happen. Funny too how when people used to eat the whole animal (liver, brains, etc) they got all the necessary vitamins, minerals and amino acids to live on. Some of that has been lost in our modern eating and fear of saturated fat. It’s when people try to change of perfect the natural design of how we were meant to eat and live that creates all the health problems.
[...] Thought For Food [...]
One also has to remember that honeybees, which vegans say that they don’t want to exploit by eating honey, are exploited anyway to pollinate crops. Nearly all fruit crops are pollinated by the bees rented out by professional beekeepers, and most vegetable crops are as well. That leaves only grains as wind-pollinated crops. Most beekeepers make their money from pollination, not the sales of honey, which often does not break even.
IMHO not going to happen. You can be vegan if that is what floats your boat… I won’t eat your lunch for that. That is your choice. BUT you can’t be primal. Fact of the matter is people ate meat. No matter how much of a problem you have with that… we evolved eating meat. The only branches of humans that were vegetarian… unfortunately went extinct. I am a big proponent of choice and freedom of will. If you want to jump of a bridge… that’s your prerogative, same with going veg/vegan. Does not mean that I will personally cater to it.
Hate me.. but I love biting into a cow’s juicy plump ass.
The SoG
Good Post!!’
supplements were created for vegans and vegetarians! Think about all that land the buffalo use to roam in the midwest….full of grass…buffalo supported the healthy strong native americans for years. Now look at the midwest…lots of agribusiness farms, supplying us all with empty calories…wheat, corn, etc etc…Some of the most fertile land in the world demolished.
Animals have been stolen from for years now…they are supposed to eat grass, plants, insects, and bugs…then turn it into a fat soluble food for humans…wether it is milk products or meat and organs.
If you want to be a vegan or vegetarian have fun destroying your intestines…
Tom, that line about concentrated plants was somewhat sarcastic.
Peter, agree with you definitely about grains…wheat seems to be the worst offender. Also agree with you about what animals each culture eats…dog and cat would just be red meat, though perhaps with a different texture.
Matthew, I prefer red meats like beef and lamb over chicken and pork. But any of them are good as long as you eat the entire thing. For beef and lamb, that means the fat, which are rich in fat-soluble vitamins. With chicken, eat the skin, which is where the vitamins are. Organs are particularly rich in nutrients.
Allen, fermented soy seems to be okay. As others pointed out though, most of the soy in the diet of American vegetarians isn’t fermented. I don’t know if Asian genes make a difference or not.
Great discussion all. Lots of good points.
Cheers
Scott
[...] one be both vegetarian and Primal? Modern Forager does a good job of tackling this meaty subject. And also, check out these vegetarian [...]
For individuals who are vegetarians for ethical reasons, I ask the question: what is more likely to effect change in the meat factory industry, boycotting all meat production or supporting the producers of ethical meat?
A similar question would be, if you don’t want to eat a prime cut of meat, would you consider eating the offal? The liver, etc. are the most concentrated source of nutrition from the animal yet are considered unpalatable to the Western diet and hence are essentially wasted in the vast majority of slaughtered animals. If you choose to eat organs, your health would be enhanced and your consumption would _never_ be responsible for slaughtering an additional animal.
Thanks for discussing this topic. It’s one I’ve been hoping would be addressed for quite a while. I’d just like to add a few new points to reasons for vegetarianism, as well as reasons why , for a select few, it is healthier.
1)I’m a vegetarian for health reasons, but not the typical ones. I have a whole slew of digestive and immune disorders as well as countless allergies and sensitivities that make it VERY hard for me to digest most meat. For example, my gallbladder is very sensitive, so only white meats that are very carefully prepared don’t hurt it. I am extremely sensitive to anything artificial, so if it is not absolutely natural I will be sick for days. Even with supposedly grass-fed, cage free chicken or farm-raised all natural fish, it seems to not be a guarantee. even with the most natural high quality stuff…I seem to be sick in one way or another for hours if not a day or 2,or 3. so for people like me, vegetarianism, or being *mostly* vegetarian, IS healthier.
2)I do believe we need certain animal products to live, and I have no qualms whatsoever about using those that don’t actually directly harm a life.And I also understand that just because you aren’t eating meat, doesn’t mean you ARE eating healthy. So I do eat farm fresh eggs, but the only ones I trust are those raised by a friend of mine, and I know exactly what he feeds them. (although I still can’t eat them often.)I also do NOT eat any grains except for a very occasional serving of rice or millet, and I include some soy, but only whole beans or soy milk(the good kind, only water and cooked beans sweetened with stevia.) I include as much cow dairy as I can stand, which is about a serving a day, usually cottage cheese. And I drink raw goat’s milk. The main part of my diet is from vegetables,then fruit, then healthy oils, then everything else I listed as well as nuts and beans.Oh yeah, and protein shakes from hemp or egg protein:) I also supplement with creatine and amino acids( which I would normally get from meat) as well as a good quality multivitamin, and extra B12 and magnesium. This is all with the guidance of health professionals.
3) sometimes trauma can lead to not wanting to eat meat. I have had a problem with eating beef for a long time, even though I don’t see anything morally wrong with eating meat that is properly raised. Just for me , even if I could eat it, beef would be out of the question because when I was little, my family raised cows, and I got emotionally attached to one. I named him, played with him….he was like a dog. and then he was butchered , and my parents pretty much forced me to eat him. My conscience still bothers me over it.:(
anyways, rant over, and all in all, I very much liked this post!
[...] one be both vegetarian and Primal? Modern Forager does a good job of tackling this meaty subject. And also, check out these vegetarian [...]
I love meat, but sometimes I consider giving it up because of environmental contamination. I already forgo many foods traditional to Norway, where I live, like whale because I worry about them, but there are also toxins in domesticated animals like dioxins.
Awesome article. I have the same conversation with my veggie friends and it never goes well. I will refer them to this article from now on and save myself the grief.
Vegetarianism does not kill more animals than omnivorism. Yes, grass-fed meat is better, but guess what? If everyone replaced grain-fed meat with grass-fed (for cows, at least), there wouldn’t be enough land for everyone to eat the amount of meat they are eating! It would have to be drastically scaled back (and it will be). We aren’t living in a hunter-gatherer world where humans are just a few million. We are many billions.
Meat is fed grain for a reason. It is cheaper, but it also requires less land than grazing animals do. Meat consumption has got to go down; high meat consumption is just not sustainable at current population levels and never will be.
Also–just because death exists does not mean we can not limit the suffering we inflict. Let’s not create a false dichotomy.
http://www.veganoutreach.org/guide/beingvegan.html <–a website that lays out a clear ethical argument for reducing meat consumption (unlike PeTA).
Isn’t making an argument from nature kind of frivolous? We ceased to be a part of nature centuries ago, and the fact is that we have grown so far beyond the constraints of nature that we have become a force of our own. Until we start producing meat in a way that’s ecologically sustainable, we’re going to have to come to terms with not being natural.
It’s especially baseless to make a natural argument for meat, since most of the the meat available to us has been unnaturally grown, unnaturally saturated with growth hormones and antibiotics, and unnaturally processed and shipped to supermarkets.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a vegan, there are just an awful lot of holes in your argument here. Like it or not, the vegetarians ARE right about the environmentally unsustainable manner in which we feed ourselves. And hatin’ on the vegans won’t make that go away, it just makes you a part of that whole antagonistic dance between the different schools of thought.
I think the opinions of Barb and Jay are highly debatable, and are shared by many if not most vegetarians and vegans. The grains, legumes, vegetables and fruits that vegetarians (and meat eaters) subsist on are mono-crop agriculture just like the feed grown for livestock. This agricultural method strips the land of beneficial topsoils and introduces tons of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers onto the land, which find their way into our water bodies and water supplies. Untold millions of voles, mice and other burrowing animals, in addition to many others such as racoons, foxes, coyotes, deer, etc., etc. are killed each year by the typical modern methods of agriculture. So you are technically right, meat eating kills all these animals plus one for the final meat product. But how many plants must you “kill” to make up for the space in your diet that would otherwise be occupied by meat?
The real dichotomy here is that many vegetarians/vegans apparently adopt a condescending view of omnivorism and that they are above such base nutrient needs and the ugly aspects of obtaining these needs (i.e. killing animals for food). You cannot escape from the web of life and the fact that the life of all organisms, whether you like it or not, is dependent upon the death of many other organisms. The only way to truly minimize your impact in this matter is to remove yourself from this system – that is, to die. Yet even an organisms’ death has the potential for contributing to the death of other organisms – disease transmission, for instance.
Believe it or not we are most definetely part of nature and we will never escape from that fact. Unless we somehow develop the technology to control the weather, geological activity, microbial life, insects, and the very movement of the earth, we will always be a part of and at the mercy of nature.
In my opinion the main issue here is not whether to eat or refrain from eating meat, but that our current method of agriculture, much like many other aspects of industrialized societies (use of fossil fuels), is unsustainable and must change immediately. I think most vegetarians and meat eaters can agree with this.
In fact, I will always believe that vegetarians and those interested in “primal” living have more in common than not. I have and always will support a person’s right to choose what they wish to eat or wish to refrain from eating. If you feel you are doing better for yourself and the world by choosing vegetarianism/veganism, then God bless you. But I also reserve my right to eat the way I wish and that I feel is best for myself and my family. I wish everyone the best of health no matter what their lifestyle choice may be.
Great comment, Brett. However, I’m going to have to disagree with you about being “a part of nature”. We do in fact affect the weather, geological activity, microbial life, insect life, plant life and animal life of this planet. We are not a part of nature, we are a force of nature, the only thing in the natural world capable of consciously directing the natural world, and the only force capable of bending it to our will.
To the point: this article is confusing “natural” with “biological”. The only way to optimally satisfy our biological nutritional needs is to do so through wholly unnatural and unsustainable means. A paleolithic diet will massively damage the planet. The only way to optimally satisfy our position within nature is to do so by compromising our basic biology. A vegetarian diet is not biologically sound.
Both diets fail the litmus test of “natural” by a considerable margin.
To position a paleolithic diet as more natural than a vegetarian diet is to willfully disregard the realities of our world. To position a vegetarian diet as more natural than a paleolithic diet is to willfully disregard the realities of our biology. And doing either does nothing but fuel the animosity between the two.
Jay, I think you’re setting up a false dichotomy. The thing about eating Paleo is that it IS our natural diet, whether we are part of nature or not, a point I’ll get back to in a second. But you’re arguing against it because it’s not feasible to feed everyone that way. However, that isn’t a concern…cause most people aren’t going to give up their high-carb ways to adopt Paleo anyway. Basically, I think you’re making an argument based on semantics when you know exactly what I meant by the use of “natural”.
As for ceasing to be part of nature, that’s a rather arrogant attitude that many have adopted. But frankly, our ability to control the climate and such is very limited in scope…namely to our own buildings with climate control. And here’s where the fun comes in…Mother Nature is constantly pecking away at the things we build that we think are so impervious. Two nights ago in Louisville, it was 0 degrees. A coworker lost power due to a fire at a nearby business. How impervious to nature do you think he felt as the temperature plummeted in his house? We merely THINK we’re not part of nature. Sure, we can control some aspects of our own lives, but in the end, Nature will shake us off like a wet dog shakes off water. No matter what damage we may do to the earth, we’ll only succeed in killing off ourselves and other animals…the Earth will go on, incorporate new elements, and evolution will likely proceed again. Check out my review of The World Without Us.
I think you also missed the part where I specifically mentioned getting sustainably grown meats and vegetables. I don’t support factory farming in any way shape or form and will eat less meat before I eat cheaper meat. Your argument really only points out the unsustainability of ever increasing population numbers.
As Brett points out, the argument from the vegan camp is that a vegan diet kills fewer animals and is much kinder to our furry friends. I think the logic of the situation makes that absolutely untrue. In fact, if one cow yields about 600lbs of meat, how many carnivores can eat off that one animal while numerous small animals are killed harvesting the grains and vegetables. I’d also consider the way your average beeve is killed more humane than being gored by a plow or harvester, but what do I know?
Great discussion all. Keep it coming.
Scott
“Jay, I think you’re setting up a false dichotomy”
I disagree, Scott. Your comment “I think it’s startlingly obvious that a vegan diet cannot [be?] and is not natural for humans.” set the framework for discussion. I am merely disagreeing with this statement, and any statement that seeks to conclude what the “most natural” human is. Claiming that a paleolithic diet is natural only examines human biology, and claiming that a vegan/vegetarian diet is natural only examines environmental impact. Neither is right, and any positioning of a diet as “most natural” is the height of hubris.
“As for ceasing to be part of nature, that’s a rather arrogant attitude that many have adopted.”
I don’t think there’s anything arrogant in accepting the reality of our global situation. We are simply too many and the Earth too small to accommodate a human race on a paleolithic diet, even with sustainable farming practices.
“No matter what damage we may do to the earth, we’ll only succeed in killing off ourselves and other animals”
I’m afraid I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to make here. We should disregard the environmental impact of our actions because the earth will continue on without us? I’m somewhat of a fan of the human species, I would like to see it stick around.
“As Brett points out, the argument from the vegan camp is that a vegan diet kills fewer animals and is much kinder to our furry friends.… I’d also consider the way your average beeve is killed more humane than being gored by a plow or harvester, but what do I know?”
That’s only one argument from the vegan camp, and certainly not one I’m making (and I am not a vegan anyhow).
To summarize: I don’t think there is or can be at this junction a “most natural” diet, and I think if everyone accepted the shortcomings of their own dietary choices instead of being stuck on everyone else’s, we’d all be a lot more able to co-exist.
This debate really is largely about semantics and definitions, so it almost seems frivolous but here I go anyway. “Natural” has a number of definitions according to any dictionary you might pick up (online Merrian-Webster in my case). What Scott is saying, Jay, is that humans, by their “nature” (humankind’s natural or original condition), are omnivorous. Therefore the suggestion that a “primal” (omivorous) diet is more “natural” than a vegan (which is considered herbivorous) diet is accurate in that context.
What your argument seems to revolve around, Jay, is that our typical agricultural practices are not “natural (growing without human care),” and with this I think everyone in agreement. Most, if not all, of the food consumed by a typical citizen of an industrialized nation is grown in a human prepared setting not likely to occur without human intervention. Few foods are gathered by such society from the “wild,” or without human intervention.
As for not being a “part of nature,” I suppose this is dependent upon the definition as well. If you mean nature as a creative and controlling force in the universe, then I would agree, since humans are neither a creative nor controlling force in the universe (we did not create the earth, nor the life within it). If you mean nature as the external world in its entirety, then I don’t see how you could argue that we are not a part of that. Either way, if we are a “force of nature,” wouldn’t we need to be “part of nature”?
You are probably being somewhat sarcastic/satirical, and that doesn’t sometimes come across very well in the written word (I often do the same thing). But there’s a big difference between controlling nature (the external world), which we cannot do and impacting nature, which we clearly do. Let’s just say we have a definitive and often adverse impact on nature/our environment and dispense with the semantics.
It seems the real question that stems from this debate is “can one be primal (primitive) at all in an industrial world?” The answer is “highly unlikely,” and not only has Scott touched on this topic in a number of previous posts, but the name of the website itself suggests as much. The idea is to attempt to incorporate what would be deemed “primal” practices into our industrial world. That means to consume wild or whole foods (game and plants) or a reasonable facsimile thereof (pasture raised meat, dairy, and organic produce), be active and/or exercise, and get outside to get fresh air and sunshine.
As a bit of a footnote to my last post, something I find interesting is that vegans cannot truly and completely avoid animal products. We consume an estimated 2 pounds or more of insect parts, animal hairs, and who knows what else, as these cannot be completely removed from the act of food processing (wish I could find the reference).
Well, feel free to shoot back, I am enjoying this discussion and hope it can continue as respectfully as it has so far.
Very good and thought provoking post Scott!
Stellar post, Bret.
You’re right about it being a largely semantic argument, although you didn’t quite hit the point I was making. I’m not defending veganism/attacking paleolithic diet (or vice versa), I just think that any arguments made about what is “most natural” need to be kept in very clear context or avoided all together. Positioning diets as the “most natural” just feeds into the animosity between the diehard of each diet group.
“We consume an estimated 2 pounds or more of insect parts, animal hairs, and who knows what else, as these cannot be completely removed from the act of food processing (wish I could find the reference).”
Bugs are delicious.
You as well, Jay. Thanks for a thought provoking debate. There certainly is a great deal of animosity not only between certain vegans and meat eaters, but between some groups whose ideas are really not all that different from each other.
I agree that bugs are fairly delicious. In fact, I just sampled my first a few weeks ago at a public museum. They are called “Crikettes” and come in a small package will a variety of different seasonings. They were whole crickets and there was no mistaking or covering up what I was about to consume. Once I got past the fact that it was a bug, it really was not bad at all, even quite tasty. Reminded me of sunflower seeds. My 5 year old daughter and I tried them together, and we were both a little hesitant. After she tried it she really enjoyed it and soon finished off the rest of the pack. They sure aren’t cheap, though! I suppose it’s best to raise your own if you have such an affinity.
Anyway, good discussion
So many flat out falsehoods in this article that I have troubles getting past the first few paragraphs! It was like 100 years of marketing drivel spewn out yet again in the neverending campaign against plant-eaters.
You should read the China Study. It might change your perspective just a little bit.
Mike, I understand The China Study. Fortunately, I also understand that T. Colin Campbell played fast and loose with his facts. Here are a couple links for you:
The Truth About the China Study
Response to T. Colin Campbell
Beyond that, I’d love for you to enlighten us all as to the “flat out falsehoods”.
Cheers
Scott
Mike – Robb Wolf also tackles that same question about the China Study and has very good relative points:
http://robbwolf.com/?p=300
and
http://www.norcalsc.com/index.php/post/norcal_nutrition_are_we_crazy/
and if you want some great lengthy debate reading on it as well…..see the “protein debate” between Cambell and Cordain that was done 2-3 years ago:
http://www.hacres.com/healthtipArticles2007/478_proteinDebate.pdf
More plants and tiny furry animals are killed to feed the animals that humans eat–so vegan still causes the least harm. Please make honest arguments! And don’t forget that the VAST majority of meat comes from factory farms. With the high demand for meat from the increasing human population and limited land, factory farms are completely necessary and will continue to be the main source of meat. And with factory farms comes high use of soy and grain, cruelty, and environmental problems. This is an important point to not gloss over.
I don’t care what is considered natural (is murder of other humans natural because it has been done? rape?) and I don’t care what is delicious, I care what the right thing to do is. Many vegans are interested in IF and different forms of eating. You can ignore us, but then you are ignoring a potential audience. Why not be inclusive?
Anna – although we are not a vegetarian based blog, we don’t intentionally ignore or put down vegetarians for their personal beliefs. All we do is try and get the facts out there so that “everyone” (Paleo, vegetarians, or anyone in between) can be healthy and get results. Everyone has a right to their own opinions, and we just encourage people to look at all the facts and then take it from there. We all want to be healthy, and that is the main focus…as we welcome all types of people here, and we all learn from each other as well.
Barb pointed out, quite rightly, that “we aren’t living in a hunter-gatherer world where humans are just a few million. We are many billions.” Over population is clearly a problem with regard to all resources, barring one: humans.
Is cannibalism the answer? Which type of human would be the best option for the dinner table? The vegetarian who consumes dairy? The classic vegan? Or how about the 100% beef raised ‘paleo’? Hmmm, choices, choices, I just can’t decide which would go best with some fava beans and a nice chianti
Barb,
Grass-fed beef does not use more land than grain-fed–it uses less. You left out of consideration the land needed to grow the grain. Environmentally, grain farming on the massive scale needed to feed cows and people alike is a catastrophe. Erosion, massive inputs, and the escape of carbon to the atmosphere characterize grain farming. Sustainable grazing, by contrast, locks carbon in the soil helping remedy global warming, though admittedly methane is also given off by cows. Yet the cow population in the U.S. is supposedly roughly what the buffalo population used to be, which suggests that sustainable grazing on a larger scale would be possible at an impact similar to baseline pre-agriculture. Grazing can also be done on marginal land not suitable for agriculture, and even integrated better into surrounding wildlife ecosystems. Modern corn and soy farming have to take the best land and simplify it–the net primary productivity is drastically produced. The overall reduction of biodiversity and soil erosion are possibly bigger problems than even global warming in terms of their implications for long-term sustainability–and these are more impacted by grain agriculture (and CAFOs) than by grazing.
Some of us grew up vegetarian, and simply cannot eat any kind of meat, the taste/texture/smell is, not to put too fine a point on it, disgusting.
I never see this point of view addressed, everyone just assumes that eating meat is the default and that for someone to be a vegetarian, it must be due to ethical or environmental reasons, and then proceed to debunk those reasons, and even suggest non-meat alternatives that taste like meat!
It is also a fact that animal based life must be considered a higher class than plant, so you can’t really equate ‘killing’ a plant to killing a sentient animal.
McCrispy, I’ve known vegetarians who became meat eaters. Just as one can become a vegetarian, one can overcome their disgust at the thought of meat and acquire the taste for it. A friend went from 25 year hardcore vegetarian to “if it has a face, I have a recipe.”
Though, I have to wonder is it an actual fact that plants are a “lower class” than animals or is it just a fact in your mind because you want it to be? If it’s an actual fact that animals are a “higher class” than other lifeforms, does that also mean that humans are a “higher class” than other animals? I mean, we do have the most sentience. Who exactly is defining these classes?
Cheers
Scott
“Understanding ‘The Least Harm Principle’
“In fact, how many people can eat from one cow? And how many animals die to harvest enough plants to feed a single vegan?”
lol. Where did all the calories in the cow come from? The majority of grain grown in this country, especially corn, is to feed livestock.
It takes 7 lbs of grain to produce 1 lb of beef; the ratio 4-to-1 for pork and 2-to-1 for poultry.
“The reality is that a vegan diet kills far more animals than a meat-eating diet.”
I usually don’t comment here, but I couldn’t resist; this gave me a chuckle all day.
In all seriousness, though, thanks for at least approaching the topic. Always happy to hear some thoughts on how to eat primal as a veg-head like me.
I got a bit cross-eyed reading all the posts, so skipped a few in the middle somewhere. But nobody seems to have mentioned that plants do not have a nervous system and that is what distinguishes them from animals. Also, quite often they ‘regrow’ – you cannot raise the ‘dead’ though.
Also, on articles I’ve read over the years, I’m of the belief that the so-called hunter gatherers were more likely to be mostly gatherers – ie the women brought in the food from gathering as most of the time the men didn’t bring back the bacon! Which is possibly why the body stores its B12 because it didn’t get any very often.
The point I’m trying to make is that why do meat eaters think they need to have their 6oz at every meal? The human race needs to cut back on its consumption of a lot of foods including meat – westerners eat way too much, and waste too much. It’s the same for grains etc, way too much is cooked and thrown away. And I do not think it’s clever for anyone to say things like ‘if it has a face, I have a recipe’ that is just stupid and ignorant. I do not eat meat, but each to their own. The world has gone mad when it comes to food, and it will only get worse if we keep breeding like rabbits and then hoping to live till we are 100.
Factory farming IS cruel, regardless of your dietary preferences. So is intense fishing. Field kill/road kill? Bit of a side issue really and an unwarranted distraction from some of the valid points made. Humans have lost their sense of belonging in nature. Something’s got to give! Maybe all countries should adopt a max limit on number of children a man or woman can have.
Troy, dec 2008, I had to have a colonoscopy last summer and the nurses there said that they hardly ever had vegetarians in for this procedure, in fact they had to look up what I could have to eat in the proceeding few days as it was so unusual.
I have been told that my colon is in perfect health, and the specialist said that that is usually the case with vegetarians. The problem that I was having was due to an arterio-venous malformation which is something I will have had all my life.
I am not young and I have had plenty of time for vegetarianism to mess me up if indeed that would happen.
Interesting article. I’ve been a vegetarian for going on 19 years now (not that long in the grand scheme of things) and agree that veganism might be a bit much to be able to live on a “primal” diet. However, there were some comments left regarding vegetarians being incapable of a primal diet that i fond it hard to accept. Now, I don’t identify myself as a “primalist” (i feel that is a foolish statement for almost anyone in our society to make, but i’ll address that in a moment), I garden and forage all of my food during the warmer months (aside from rice and lentils and such), preserve almost everything i eat during the colder months, and farm my own eggs and dairy. I believe that meat eating is ok, but only ok if you are willing to, or do, kill the animal yourself. This concept seems to fit the idea of a primal diet quite well since our ancestors would have indeed had to kill whatever meat they would have been eating (the nearest ‘wholefoods’ wouldn’t have been an option). My question to those vocal few who were starting to mount their high dietary horse, what percentage of the food that you eat is truly “primal”, or do you think that for MOST people, it’s just a semi-pretentious label created by americans looking to show off?
I realize I’m probably in the minority as a vegetarian here, so I’ll just say my part knowing that you probably won’t take it to heart.
I can’t believe you actually say that vegans kill more animals than omnivores. You really believe that? It’s a silly argument that is just picking at whatever it can come up with. The environmental argument of vegetarianism is a very strong one, sorry.
I’ve always believed in the idea that Anna talks about, above – maybe eating meat is ‘natural’, but so is rape and murder. The greatest thing about humans, in my opinion, is our capacity to adapt and rapidly innovate technology. It has come to the point where we have the CHOICE of how we want to live, in our society which has an overabundance of pretty much everything. Now, our human brains have naturally evolved the ability to feel empathy, are you going to go against that and blind yourself to factory farming and the unnecessary suffering of animals? That’s your choice, but I can’t do it.
Exactly. I respect my father’s meat-eating because he can look an animal in the eye and still kill it. He feeds my entire family (not just my nuclear family of five, but my grandparents and his brothers’ and sister’s families) for the year on the deer he will kill. He can skin them and cut them up in our house, and use almost the entire animal in the process, without flinching. (Needless to say, if I step into our kitchen during this, I want to vomit from the smell of it or seeing organs and face-parts in the sink.)
I know so many “meatatarians” who would NEVER be able to do this. When some friends or family members discuss our deer-killing, they say to me “I just like to pretend I don’t know where my steak comes from.” I have a good feeling that this is how most Americans feel. I know there is a group who don’t, but I believe that they’re in the minority. Maybe the primal movement is part of this group, but indeed I think they’re getting their meat from Whole Foods.
This is MY interpretation, so it may be different for other people…let me answer your question now and just say that an individual can define the classes for himself.
So anyway, I know that for myself, and I think the majority of vegetarians, I will not eat something that has a central nervous system. I don’t believe that plants suffer in the same way that a cat or a pig suffer, so I will eat plants.
I am a vegetarian and have chosen this path for ethical reasons. My father and brother both hunt, and, although I wouldn’t participate in it, I do not look down on it. The way I see it is that that deer had as fair a chance to get away as my father or brother had to kill it. I do, however, look down upon an industry that tortures, abuses, and slaughters animals. I am horrified that our country’s ethics has come down to mere convenience. Most of the meat put out is also pumped full of chemicals and hormones, and many of the animals are fed pesticide laden food, if their food is even from plants, which is not the case. Most of animal feed comes from ground up bone meal and “leftovers” from the other animals…again, cheaper…, increasing the spread of disease. I have no problem with meat when it is done the RIGHT way, but in this American industry that values profit over health and ethics, I feel that I am better off being a vegetarian.
I do not think that “rape” and “murder” are natural. I think you can not quantify that, especially not in the same manner that meat consumption as a part of evolution is natural. I think we should all learn to have opinions and respect them, but be careful that our town does not attempt to mislead people into believing our faulty opinions are facts.