Food, justice and sustainability
Saturday, October 3, 2009 at 11:24AM 
This is the holy trinity around which Lierre Keith's new book The Vegetarian Myth revolves. I have to say, that I have read a dozen incredibly good books this year alone, but none of them matches the importance of this one. The Vegetarian Myth is not only a joy to read, but its message should be heard by anyone who eats.
Keith was a vegan for 20 years, driven by compassion and her drive for kindness and justice towards all living creatures. In the process, however, the vegan diet destroyed her health: Six weeks from becoming one, she had hypoglycemia. Three months into it and she stopped menstruating, was constantly exhausted and cold. Her "skin was so dry it flaked, and in the winter it itched so badly it kept [her] up at night." In two years she developed a degenerative joint disease which eventually reached her spine, and later gastroparesis which lead to fourteen years of constant nausea. On top of the physical ailments there was also depression and anxiety, for which she puts most of the blame on the vegan diet.
You would think, that the book is about what the vegetarians eat, but I would say its main focus is on how to grow food that is rich in nutrients, sustainable and with compassion towards other living creatures. And, as Keith constructs piece by piece, that the vegetarian assumption that agriculture can feed the world is a misconception.
One of the carrying themes of The Vegetarian Myth is that agriculture is actually the most destructive thing humans have done to this planet. Entire ecosystems have been destroyed to obtain more land for annual monocrops (wheat, corn, soy...), and the real heart-wrenching issue is that growing annual monocrops cannot be done sustainably: it destroys topsoil, and without topsoil, rich in nutrients and bacteria, plants won't grow and eventually the land will turn into a desert.
This is an acute problem, too. According to Keith the topsoil in North America is only inches deep, down from the twelve feet it used to be. And the only reason why agriculture is still possible to such extent is through the use of fossil fuel, turned into fertilizers. When we run out of oil, there will not only be an energy crisis, but a food crisis as well.
Keith also discusses the history of agriculture and the related politics. How this situation of factory farming has come to be, how it is controlled just by a couple huge companies, how it destroys societies in developing countries etc. All of which proves interesting reading about what happens behind the scenes of getting the food on your plate.
In fact, even the modern dietary guidelines such as the food pyramid - built to endorse low-fat diet and complex carbohydrates - are simply serving the business interests of large corporations producing cheap grain. According to Keith, hundreds of millions of public dollars were spent on five huge studies that tried to link dietary fat intake and coronary heart disease. All of them failed to prove causality. Did this stop the endorsement of low-fat, complex carbohydrate diet? No.
Phil Handler, the president of the National Academy of Scientists even asked Congress, "What right has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good?" Yet here we are. Low-fat craze has spread from The U.S. to the rest of the world and obesity related illnesses such as diabetes are on the rise.
Although the majority of the book is about sustainable and morally justified food production, as well as the nature of nature - how nutrients flow from plants to grazers to carnivores and back to the plants - it also contains a very good chapter about nutrition, explaining in detail what is wrong with the vegetarian diet and what kind of food humans have evolved to eat.
This chapter provides a great starting point if you just want to find out more about how different foods affect your body. The Vegetarian Myth was published in 2009 so it contains very recent information. This chapter is heavily based on more recent research about nutrition and on bestselling books such as Protein Power Lifeplan and Good Calories, Bad Calories. After reading just this one chapter you will know more about nutrition than 95% of people, and from there it's easy to move into more specific books in case you want more information.
In my opinion the only drawback of The Vegetarian Myth is its last chapter about how to save the world. It is the weakest one in argumentation and heavily colored by feminist ideology. However, all the other chapters make reading this book more than worth your while.
I understand, that this book can and will cause strong resistance especially in vegetarians, but it could have been also written from any other point of view, without diminishing the importance its message; that agriculture is not sustainable and that something has to die for another creature to live. It is only natural, that Keith uses her own experiences as a vegan to carry the narrative forward.
I can't recommend enough that you read this book. And to get a bit better idea of its contents, check the below clip from Keith's book tour talk, and read the first few pages of the book.
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Reader Comments (9)
Mielenkiintoista. Ottaako kirja kantaa siihen, että suurin osa viljelypinta-alasta on käytössä eläinten rehuntuotantoa varten? Sama maa-ala voitaisiin hyödyntää suoraan ihmiselle kelpaavan ravinnon tuottamiseen. Viljan ja soijan kierrättäminen eläinten ruuansulatuselimistön kautta vasta tuhlausta onkin!
Aika naurettavaa muutenkin syyttää vegaaniruokavaliota terveysongelmista. Vegaaniruokavalio, kuten sekaruokavaliokin, voi olla epäterveellinen ja vaarallinen jos ei yhtään katso mitä syö. Paskaa ruokaa syömällä saa itsensä ihan varmasti sairaaksi, oli sitten vegaani tai sekasyöjä.
well, as we both realize that most of those grain grown in american soil are used to feed the cattle and getting them ready for a non-vegetarian. Agriculture is indeed unsustainable, but meat eater accelerate the process.
Hello Elina and wiza, I'll answer both of you here in English:
It is true, that a large amount of grains produced by annual monocrops are used to feed factory farmed animals, yet this does not change the fact that agriculture is unsustainable. Grains are also slowly killing those animals from the inside, as they have evolved to eat different foods in nature, but that is a matter of different discussion.
Both Lierre Keith and Michael Pollan (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view.html) make an example of Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm, in which meat is produced not only sustainably, but in a way that actually builds the topsoil and increases fertility year by year.
One example of what happens in this farm is that cows go to a fenced pasture, grazing and eating the grass. Then 3 days later Salatin brings 350 chickens to the same pasture. The chickens will cluck around, eating the larvae and maggots in the cow dung while also spreading around their own feces as well as the feces of the cows. This fertilizes the soil and causes the grass to grow so quickly, that just in a matter of few weeks he can do the process again using cows or any other ruminants to eat the grass.
Another thing that happens is, that grasses need to keep some kind of balance between the size of their leaves and roots. And when the leaves are eaten by grazers, the plants will shed their roots. These dead roots are then eaten by bacteria, producing new soil.
This farm is not only sustainable, but also very efficient: A 10-acre farm in mid-Atlantic climate could produce 3 000 eggs, 1 000 broilers, 80 stewing hens, 2 000 pounds of beef, 2 500 pounds of pork, 100 turkeys and 50 rabbits (Keith, p. 101).
So the take-away message is, that growing meat can be done sustainably and efficiently. The reason why it's not done is mostly related to business, politics and subsidized production of grains.
When it comes to a vegan diet, I cannot see how it could be healthy at least without the use of supplements. First of all, vitamins A, D, E and K are all essential to human health, and they are fat-soluble, meaning that they won't absorb very well without the presence of dietary saturated fat, which is not easy to come by on a vegan diet. Also, there are no plant sources of vitamin A to begin with. Same is true with vitamin D. In the west vitamin D deficiency is highest amongst vegans and their children. Another thing is, that fat is needed in order for our neurotransmitters (read brain) to function properly.
Dietary cholesterol which is also difficult to come by as a vegan is essential for the brain's serotonin receptors, which explains why anger, anxiety and depression are more common amongst those on vegan and low-fat diets.
Apart from moral objections to eating animals, this sounds just too good to be true. If growing animals is really more efficient and sustainable than grains - and healthier too! - someone should tell those billions of subsistence farmers slaving away in rice paddys in Asia and grain fields in Africa. They could be feasting on steak and omlette!
In terms of the damage that agriculture causes; You seem to be comparing the efficient and sustainable animal-farm with the horrible practice of monocrops argriculture. How about comparing it with sustainable farming practices - surely such a thing exists - with a similar system of crop variation and rotation. In that case, how is clearing a piece of land for animal grazing any different to clearing it for (sustainable) crop growing. In both cases you have to kill some stuff initially (to clear the land), BUT in the case of the animal farm you are breeding (read: creating lives that would otherwise not have come into existence) lots of more stuff that you will then kill over and over again.
I keep thinking of the rice paddys in asia. They are clearly sustainable as they have been like that for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Interestingly, they use the buffalos to "fertilize" the field, but in the end, the bulk of the communities energy still comes from the the rice. Meat forms a VERY small part of the diet. Again, if its so efficient, why dont they just not bother with the rice and just farm chicken and buffalo exclusively? I dont think anyone is subsidising them to grow rice! So i dont think the argument of 'big business and politics' holds up. Are you telling me that all those societies/civilizations that for thousands of years lived of crops, could have lived of animals more efficiently, but didnt, because of 'business and politics'? In other words, if animals can be grown more efficiently than crops, you have to ask youself why agriculture developed in the first place, rather than animal farming.
Hi Dominic! Plenty of good points there. Thank you for the thoughtful comments.
I am also aware of the more sustainable farming practices involving crop rotation etc. but according to how much Salatin's farm produces on a similar amount of land, you end up getting much more nutritionally rich food that way as opposed to using the land to just grow grains.
The Vegetarian Myth does not suggest that land should be cleared for animal grazing, but that the land should not be cleared at all. So instead of drying wetlands, chopping down forests and turning prairies into cornfields those ecosystems should be left as they are - optimized to the conditions in that particular location and climate, and we should use the animals and plants that are natural in those ecosystems as our own food, e.g. bison in prairies, deer in forests, cows in grasslands and plains etc.
About the sustainable rice paddys, do you have any link about information on how the amount of soil has changed over the years in those places? It's not sustainable unless the farming practices there are building more new soil than what is being used. I'd like to see the numbers.
I have been wondering the same thing, that why did humans ever start agriculture in the first place. There is a lot of discussion about the history of agriculture in the book - and a lot of it IS related to politics and human power structures that existed already more than 10 000 years ago - but writing about that would warrant a blog post on its own. Yet it is these same power structures that can be blamed of the "billions of subsistence farmers slaving away in rice paddys in Asia and grain fields in Africa" that you mention.
Agriculture was the first step that allowed accumulation of wealth in the form of storageable food, and as we know wealth is and has been in the hands of the few. Even in the year 1800 80% of the world population was in slavery or serfdom.
The "societies/civilizations that for thousands of years lived of crops" have destroyed the land in the process. Think about Middle East and Persian Gulf, the area that was the birthplace of agriculture, the so-called "fertile crescent". It's mostly a desert now.
Agriculture has enabled us to temporarily increase our numbers beyond the carrying capacity of the nature by taking away land that supported millions of different creatures, and changing it to support only thousands.
Sami, A-vitamiinin esiastetta, beetakaroteenia, jonka ihminen kykenee muuttamaan A-vitamiiniksi, esiintyy melkein kaikissa kasviksissa, eikä sen saaminen kasvisruokavaliossa ole mikään ongelma. E-vitamiinia puolestaan on runsaasti kasviöljyissä, joten monipuolisesti kasvirasvoja syövä henkilö saa myös aivan riittävästi E:tä. K-vitamiiniakin esiintyy melkein kaikissa kasviksissa. Rasvaliukoiset vitamiinit eivät suinkaan tarvitse imeytyäkseen tyydyttyneitä rasvahappoja - mistä ihmeessä tällainen tieto on peräisin?
D-vitamiini onkin sitten ainoa "ongelma", mutta se ei suinkaan ole näillä leveysasteilla pelkästään vegaanien kompastuskivi, vaan lähes kaikki suomalaiset kärsivät talvella D-vitamiinin puutteesta. Aurinko on kesällä tärkein D-vitamiinin lähde, talvella vegaanin (kuten sekasyöjienkin) kannattaa syödä paljon metsäsieniä ja ottaa D-vitamiinitippoja. Suomalaisten D-vitamiinitasot eivät olisi edes tällä tasolla, jos maitoon ei lisättäisi D-vitamiinia (vegaanin vaihtoehto on tietysti D:llä rikastettu soija- tai kauramaito.
Hello Elina, I'll try to keep this short:
The proto-vitamin A substance you mentioned that exists in plants can be converted to vitamin A by our bodies, but the problem is that even healthy adults cannot do this efficiently, and the young and the old may not be able to do it at all.
In my previous response I did not argue that E and K vitamins would not be found in plant foods. Perhaps I did not make myself entirely clear, but according to Keith quoting Enig; A, D, E and K vitamins are fat-soluble, meaning that they can be transported only when they are attached to fat, and that without the presence of dietary fat the absorption of these vitamins is partial at best (Mary Enig, Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol).
My mistake in the above comment, the word "saturated" slipped through, so yes dietary fats from vegetable oils will work too.
Vitamin D can be either synthesized from cholesterol with the help of sunlight, or ingested by eating animal products such as cod liver oil, egg yolks, fatty fish and butter. In Finland the problem during winter is then two-fold; not enough sunlight and not enough good edible sources for vitamin D. Here is a terrific article about vitamin D: http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/vitamindmiracle.html
Sami,
Beetakaroteenin imeytymishäiriöt lienevät kuitenkin aika harvinaisia, eikä normaalihenkilön tarvitse siitä olla huolissaan. Toki jos on jotain tällaisia ravintoaineiden imeytymiseen vaikuttavia sairauksia, niin tietysti se täytyy ottaa vakavasti.
Eli siis yhteenvetona voitaneen todeta, ettei A-, E-, ja K-vitamiinien saanti ole mikään ongelma vegaaniruokavaliossa, eikä myöskään sen imeytyminen jos ja kun syö rasvaa. Vegaanit eivät suinkaan syö ituja ja porkkanoita kaiken aikaa, vaan ruokavalioon kuuluu monipuolisesti kasviöljyjä sekä rasvaisia pähkinöitä ja siemeniä.
Voi ei muuten ole mikään mainittava D-vitamiinilähde, sillä se sisältää sitä vain 0,3μg/100g.Voita saa siis popsia aika tavalla, ennen kuin päivittäisen vitamiinitarpeen saa tyydytettyä.
Vegaani tarvitsee lisäravinteina B12 ja D-vitamiinia, mutta mitä sitten? Jos ruokavaliota saa eettisyydestä tinkimättä täydennettyä parilla hassulla lisäravinteella (joita sekasyöjätkin käyttävät!), niin en kyllä näe siinä mitään ongelmaa.
Minä en voinut sekasyöjänä kovin hyvin, mutta en silti lähtisi kirjoittamaan kirjaa aiheesta "sekaruokavalio tekee sinut sairaaksi" En väitä, etteikö nuo kirjan kirjoittajan ongelmat olisi olleet todellisia, mutta on aika naiivia yleistää noin. Itsekin olen ollut vegaani pian 10 vuotta, voinut erinomaisesti ja veriarvot ovat kohdallaan.
"We found that even when we fed beta-carotene to healthy adult men under ideal conditions, beta-carotene absorption was poor and variable. Once beta-carotene was absorbed, it converted to vitamin A well. So, these experiments proved that beta-carotene absorption is the problem (instead of its metabolism)."
- a USDA study (http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/Publications.htm?seq_no_115=155273)
The amount of vitamin D in butter as well as other animal sources apart from naturally grown (not factory farmed) fish can vary greatly, and is largely dependent on what the animals are fed. Butter coming from grass-fed cows contains more vitamin D than that coming from grain-fed factory farmed cows. Same thing with eggs. Vitamin D content is greater if the hens are able to eat their natural foods (both plant and animal sources).
I hope you did not miss the point I tried to make about The Vegetarian Myth; it's not a book about nutrition per se, but about agriculture, topsoil and sustainability; topics that cover the majority of the book.