Speaking of vegan diets, Regina Wiltshire has a great post about the fallacies behind the meat eating/global warming connection. Her point? It's not meat eating - it's the industrial farming complex, silly, and that includes the large scale corn, soy and wheat operations.
Of course her post was blitzed by vegans calling her a "killer" and spouting the same old information - information that her post specifically dealt with. Guess no-one bothered to actually read it before they attacked.
I have nothing against vegans. I just get righteously irked when people - any people - respond to something out of pure emotion, and don't provide any factual information. Calling people names isn't very nice either, but apparently low cholesterol levels can lead to aggression and violence, so perhaps, in this case, they couldn't help it. (Note that it's low HDL, the "good" cholesterol, that has this effect - and saturated fat, in conjunction with a low carbohydrate diet, increases HDL. Oh, and lowers triglycerides to boot.)
Weight of the Evidence: The Solar Powered Plate
4.24.2008
Weight of the Evidence: The Solar Powered Plate
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7 comments:
I found an interesting article on this subject that you might enjoy.
http://chetday.com/vegmyths.htm
It's called "The Myths of Vegetarianism".
Jessica
www.practicalnourishment.com
Man, that post proved that both vegan and meat-eaters can be crazy wingnuts.
I won't agree with or refute the points Regina makes except to point out that only a very teeny tiny percentage of meat-eaters go to the trouble of tracking down pastured meat. The majority of meat eaten in North America does come from factory farms, and as Regina points out, is contributing to environmental destruction. We can't even get organic or free-range meat in supermarkets, let alone environmentally-friendly pastured meat.
It's not you few folks who are knowledgeable and concerned and are making the effort to track down pastured meat that are cause for concern. It's the millions, maybe billions of folks who buy industrial meat from the supermarket who are the problem.
Right - so it is the consumers who are the problem, or the industry itself? Does it come down to economics in the end? Availability? Industrialization in general? It's not easy for a lot of people to buy from farmers, especially in lower income urban areas (and there are movements to change this, cross fingers they succeed).
Organic produce is becoming more widely available, ie at Walmart. However, there's concern that Walmart is lowering the standards used to define an item as organic. What's available in the mainstream tends to depend on cost/profit - how much will the seller have to pay the provider, and what profit will they then make from the consumer?
Replacing meat consumption with vegetable/grain consumption, using the same economic model and distribution channels, won't address the issue. My opinion. I think "meat" is being used as a straw man here - co-opted for the cause, if you will. And that never helps.
Jessica, thanks for the link!
And yeah - crazy wingnuttedness knows no boundaries ;)
Some of those comments are so ignorant it boggled my mind. Spinach is 50% protein?
My local supermarket offers organic meats that are getting to be reasonably priced, and I've heard rumors that Costco may start offering organic meats. We do have a farmer's market here as well, but ... well, dammit, sometimes it's just easier to go to Food Lion.
I know. According to FitDay, spinach is 32% protein, 13% fat, and 57% carbohydrate, with a whopping 10g protein in an entire bunch. Never mind that the oxalic acid in it can cause kidney stones, unless you eat a source of calcium with it to avoid absorption. Sigh.
Uh, why would calcium block the absorption of oxalic acid?
BTW, very little meat in this country is raised on grass/pasture. Most of it grows on soy/corn/etc., and it's not completely efficient, so yes, it is more environmentally destructive. I would love it if everybody ate humanely raised grass fed meat, but then all would have to eat much less of it.
Julie: oxalic acid binds nutrients, such as calcium, in the food it contains. On the other hand, "calcium supplements taken along with foods high in oxalic acid can cause calcium oxalate to precipitate out in the gut and drastically reduce the levels of oxalate absorbed by the body (by 97% in some cases.)" (Wiki/PubMed)
I agree, there's no simple solution. I just wish ppl would focus more on the root causes - so, industrial farming practices, for instance - than on the meat-eating aspect. Blaming the consumer is short sighted, IMO. I suspect the demand for cheap meat is much higher from food manufacturers, seeking to make large profits on their hot dogs, deli meats and frozen entrees (or, say, fast food chains on their burgers).
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