Vegetarians and people who want us to eat only a plant-based diet often look down their noses at the rest of us, thinking they’re morally and politically correct. It’s elitist thinking. They don’t believe they owe a debt to the energy we all share in nature. They want to remove themselves from the real world so they don’t have to participate.
But in the real world, you have to participate and play the game.
It’s the same game we’ve played successfully for millions of years until they wanted to change it. You borrow energy by eating meat. Then one day you get eaten, and you give it back.
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Of course, you can avoid being eaten by a predator in modern times. But in the end, you’re going to be eaten by something. Eventually, your carbon, nitrogen, and your energy are returned back to the earth.
We’re not really at the top of the food pyramid when we eat meat. Because it’s not a pyramid at all. It’s a circle. And you’re a part of it.
Vegetarians who convert back to meat eating have matured. They’ve stopped clinging to childlike arguments and wishful thinking. They act with what the ancients call “adult knowledge.”
Adult knowledge is what our primitive ancestors knew instinctively. That we’re indebted to nature from the moment we’re born. We’re dependent on other living creatures.
It’s Not “Nice” to Avoid Meat
The argument that it’s somehow kinder to eat a plant-based diet because you don’t want to be cruel to animals is a very simplistic, immature, emotional and uneducated response to eating meat. And it tugs at people’s hearts, that you would prefer not to have to butcher anything to survive. The problem is, you can’t.
Almost every creature ends up as some other creature’s dinner. As I said, it’s a circle, and even the animals at the “top” aren’t at the top. Look at the lion. King of the jungle. Most feared predator in its domain… yet at the end of its life, it becomes food for a pack of hyenas.
Do vegetarians want to put a stop to that, too? It’s hypocritical thinking. Why do animals – who are apparently deprived of their “rights” if they become our food – have the right to survive in the wild at the expense of other animals, but humans don’t?
The truth is, vegetarians, vegans and people like the NY Times author of the article “A Chicken Without Guilt” that I mentioned in the Health Confidential letter above are drawing an arbitrary line when deciding which fellow-creatures are worthy of protection.
Most of us wouldn’t eat another human being even if our lives depended on it. But that’s arbitrary as far as nature goes. Other animals do eat their own. It seems to me that vegetarians are simply making an arbitrary stand at some point on the “cuteness” spectrum.
Even if you were to become a vegetarian you cause more animal death. Because meat on your plate is just one life. But what you have to think about is all the animal lives it costs to put annually grown crops on your plate.
You’re Killing Off… Everything
To be a vegetarian means that you are going to rely on grains. Grains are annual grasses that cause the worst devastation to an environment and require the annihilation of the every other living thing in that ecosystem except that crop, which no amount of meat consumption does.
If you’re eating something like pasta, that came from a field of wheat, you killed off all the wolves, all the foxes, all the rabbits, half of the birds, all the insects, all the small animals that eat the insects…
And because there are so many people who eat so much of that stuff, you killed off whole regional ecosystems. Gone, because you thought that eating corn and wheat was better than eating the deer and the rabbits that live there now, naturally.
For example, take Kansas and Illinois, two states that have both forest and prairie, and compare the animals that used to roam free there with what they have now.
Did you know that the Illinois listing of endangered and threatened animals goes on for four pages? It includes the timber wolf, more than 30 kinds of fish, butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, snakes, crayfish and owls.
The Kansas list looks similar. And do you know what the Kansas state animal is? The American buffalo. Buffalo and Indian in their hunter-gatherer societies existed together for thousands of years, with negligible impact. I think you know the rest of the story there.
And if you look at other places around the world where people remain hunter-gatherers, their effect on the environment has been negligible, too.
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When I visited the Batwa in Africa, I found them living much as they have since the Stone Age… and with no adverse effect on their forest environment. Because they are a part of it. |
I’ve seen it for myself, with the Batwa tribe in Africa and the Ashaninkas in South America. Their environments have been relatively stable for thousands of years. They still look much like they always did. Because the people and animals are all a part of it.
The truth is, there’s nothing wrong with being indignant about the practices of commercial meat production. There’s nothing wrong with being indignant about seeing those chickens in a giant barn. It’s terrible and it need not happen.
Where to Find Fresh, Pure Poultry
The commercial farming industry is a travesty. But eating meat is not ethically wrong. Eating ethically wrong meat is wrong.
This should be a rally cry for converts. Former vegetarians who now eat meat understand this concept. When you purchase grass-fed meat from small, independent ranchers, it’s sustainable.
And much healthier than commercial meat – or no meat at all. For example, the eggs from pasture-raised chickens are incredible.
I helped my friend A.N. convert her farm in Loxahatchee, Florida – a few miles from my clinic – over to producing soy feed-free, organic eggs.
Pretty soon, the hens she and her husband tend started producing the most delicious eggs I had ever tasted. Then she started bringing them to my staff by the dozen.
Not long after her eggs became such a big hit, I decided to have a study done on them. We had a lab in Chicago test them and measure to see how they compared to eggs you can buy at a grocery store.
The organic eggs my staff and I eat have:
- 65% fewer carbs than a regular egg
- 10% more protein
- 20% more iron
- 72% more vitamin A
- 211% more of the vision-sharpening carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin
- 319% more omega-3s
- 1,664% more calcium 3
You can tell right away organic eggs have more carotenoids because the yolks are more yellow. It has a lot to do with the fact that A.N.’s hens are allowed to run around in the warm sunshine instead of being caged up like commercial chickens are.
And that’s just the eggs. Free-range chicken is healthier, too. More protein per serving, and more B vitamins, especially B12, which we’re already deficient in.
The answer, then, isn’t to make the barn into a giant machine that produces fake chicken “meat” from grains and soy. The answer is to take the barn off the chickens, and take the grains and soy out of their diet.
The good news is, free-range eggs and pasture-raised poultry are becoming more popular, and so farmers are responding by supply more of them to the market. You can now get them both locally and over the Internet.
You can buy pasture-raised chicken from sites like:
- greenhillspoultry .com – soy-free chickens raised at a family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, sustainable farm in Texas.
- shadygroveranch .net – all animals get certified organic feed that is GMO-free and soy-free
- garciafarms .com – small, family-owned farm has been raising chickens for over 40 years.
- maryschickens .com – pasture raised in California and living a lifestyle and environment that is closest to their natural state.
- rayfamilyfarms .com – the birds are never caged and raised outside in the sunlight
You can find out more information on local pasture-raised chicken at:
- American Grassfed Association (americangrassfed .org) – Certifies farms and ranches around the country, works with the USDA to standardize what pasture-raised means, and has news and even recipes.
- US Wellness Meats (grasslandbeef .com) – A resource for naturally produced meat, with videos and insight from experts.
- American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (apppa .org) – Nonprofit educational and networking organization dedicated to encouraging the production, processing, and marketing of poultry raised on pasture.
- Chicken Feed: Pastured Poultry (lionsgrip .com/pastured.html) – Recipes, articles plus links and other resources on all things pasture-raised poultry.
- Local Harvest (localharvest .org) – A complete index of farms near you.
1. Endangered Species Protection Board. Illinois Department of Natural Resources. www.dnr.illinois.gov
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Threatened and Endangered Species. Kansas Dept. Of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism. http://kdwpt.state.ks.us.
3. Siliker Labs, Dec 23, 2010; Certificate of Analysis no. CHG-34190924-0.