http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/what-not-to-eat-442073.html

For eggs, the term “free-range” or is not regulated at all, though one might assume that a free-range egg must come from a free-range chicken, the USDA has not specifically said so. Tons of people buy free-range eggs thinking they’re getting a superior product that comes from chickens who are out running around in the grass (since that tends to be the picture on the cartons), and it’s just not true in many cases. I think that’s wrong, because those people are getting ripped off. They pay more for something that isn’t better, or they pay more thinking they’re ensuring a better life for those chickens, and they’re not.

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/FactSheets/Meat_&_Poultry_Labeling_Terms/index.asp

Let’s enjoy those cookies and our truce while they last, because I did look into that study you cited and I’m afraid I’m gonna have to raise the BS flag on that particular one — regardless of who paid for it or what Ms. Allen’s affiliation is. This is what the BBC has to say about how the study was conducted, please correct if you see inaccuracies:

“The 544 children studied had been raised on diets chiefly consisting of starchy, low-nutrition corn and bean staples lacking these micronutrients. This meant they were already malnourished.

Over two years, some of the children were given 2oz supplements of meat each day, equivalent to about two spoonfuls of mince. Two other groups received either a cup of milk a day or an oil supplement containing the same amount of energy. The diet of a fourth group was left unaltered.

The changes seen in the children given the meat, and to a lesser extent the milk or oil, were dramatic. These children grew more and performed better on problem-solving and intelligence tests than any of the other children at the end of the two years.

Adding either meat or milk to the diets also almost completely eliminated the very high rates of vitamin B12 deficiency previously seen in the children.”

Alright. So, my issue with this study, if this is how it was in fact done, is quite simple. What we have here is 4 groups of children who were eating nothing but corn and beans up until the start of the experiment. During the study, they ate like this:

Group 1: Corn, beans and 2oz of meat
Group 2: Corn, beans and a cup of milk
Group 3: Corn, beans and a cup of oil
Group 4: Nothing but corn and beans

I’m sorry, but “corn and beans and nothing else” does not constitute a “vegan diet.” What she should have included was a fifth group that eats something somewhat in the vicinity of a balanced vegan diet — including tofu, soy milk, fruit, grains and vegetables — and see how they did. Of course children who eat nothing but corn and beans will improve when you add meat or milk to their diet… I would assume they’d improve from adding just about anything to their diets. Even if it’s only oil, apparently.

You won’t hear me deny that meat is an easy way to get a lot of what we need (assuming one can process it correctly), and that getting the equivalent nutrients from a vegan diet is more work, although it’s not nearly as difficult as most people think. I’ll also concede the B-12 issue for the sake of the discussion (it’s more complicated and not entirely true that it can only be had from animal products, but you already know that). But feeding someone only corn and beans and calling it a vegan diet just doesn’t cut it. Sorry. That’s like that situation with the baby who died because s/he was fed nothing but soy milk and apple juice… and people say, see, eating vegan is bad. No, starving your child and feeding it only soy milk and apple juice is bad. And the ignorant vegans who did that to their child are murderers.

Look, I don’t know enough about baby food and breast milk because I don’t have children. But I can tell you that if I ever did I would make sure I fed him/her what s/he needed, even if it included animal products. Simple as that. I may even play it safe and do that anyway — why take the risk, this is your CHILD, right? I feed my 2 cats meat too. They’re carnivores, they need it. It does not make sense to jeopardize the health of one animal to “save” another, and it’s criminal to jeopardize the health of a human child to adhere to vegan principles. We can agree on that, I think.

And we can agree that PETA takes its agenda much, much too far, and that their tactics leave a lot to be desired (to put it mildly), though some of their positions are actually more nuanced than what is echoed on sites like these (no offense, everyone, please, no egg-throwing). It gets pretty emotional on both sides of this argument, and the same sort of alarmist attitude permeates the anti-vegan crowd. “If you eat vegan you will be protein-deprived and you will DIE and your children will all be RETARDED!!!” You know what I mean? It’s so counterproductive. I can’t tell you how many people were suddenly so very concerned about my protein intake when I became vegan, though they never batted an eye when my diet consisted of a mixture of ramen noodles, fast food and lean cuisines.

I do wholeheartedly agree with your “sort of off-topic” statement. I have much more respect for people like you who have actually done their share of chicken neck-wringing and fish-cleaning and would be prepared to do it again, than I do for people who have never been closer to a cow than when they pick up the cellophane-wrapped package from the supermarket, and cover their ears to avoid finding out what gelatin is really made of.

Okay. I hope I haven’t just trashed our carefully brokered peace. I’ve enjoyed our back-and-forth, although it had very little to do with Leona’s bag. And I’d be happy to continue the novel-writing, but we may just be too far apart on this one. I don’t know. I’ll leave that up to you. I’m going to check out that chicken thing now. I only glanced at it briefly the other day.

Not to drive the environment thing into the ground given we’ve agreed to disagree, but just another point to make. I don’t believe vegan diets are ever going to impact the environment. Even buying free range, local foods aren’t going to make a huge impact because too many people can’t spend the money on the more expensive option, just as too many people would rather jump off a cliff than give up meat. I don’t think that going vegan is necessarily competition at its very core, to be honest. My only problem with the argument is that when the radical groups push it, they act as though the entire planet depends on it and nothing else, and that’s just inaccurate. I think we both know that. In their arguments, they are making it a competing interest and riding it into the ground in the most alarmist way possible, effectively stating that the poor kid in Africa should starve rather than eat meat that Charity X ships into his village. And that’s where my outrage at the whole thing comes in. I don’t trust a group that on one hand tells me that it’s healthier for me to be a vegan when their tactics are based on the central idea that humans are not worthwhile animals. After all, PETA would rather see children die of cancer than sacrifice rats to test for the drugs that might save them, so if we are so worthless as a species, it would follow that they don’t have humanity’s best interest in mind when they go off about raising kids vegan and saving the environment. I get a little hot under the collar about it when these groups target people on an emotional level and they make this the entire reason for going vegan. It’s the whole “ethical” aspect of it that makes me roll my eyes and wonder why people don’t dig deeper.

Not off topic, but sort of, I believe that people would have a greater appreciation for the meat on their plate if they knew where it came from. In the modern age, we get our meat cleaned and wrapped neatly in cellophane. It’s all very clean and clinical. A lot of kids think a hamburger is…ham. Hugh Fearnely Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver, along with Gordon Ramsay did a week’s worth of programming on this concept with the Chicken Out campaign here in the UK. Results have been mixed and are ongoing, but Tesco reported that the free range chickens were outselling battery chickens the week after. I don’t know if you’ve checked it out or not, but it was graphic without being preachy, and the social experiment involved was fascinating, though again, it achieved some interesting results. Hugh is still at it, though, and fast becoming both loved and hated throughout the UK. I would get into it here but I’m nearly writing a novel at this point.

Anyhow, I am happy we could have a calm debate about all this, and have to thank you as well.:)

Of course I will gladly accept your apolology, though I don’t think anything was said here that was so egregious that one was due…

I will look into that study you mentioned. I personally believe that each individual has a unique makeup and that a diet or lifestyle that works well for one may not work for the other. I think this becomes most apparent when you see people who live a “healthy” lifestyle die from liver cancer at age 47, when others who smoke and drink and eat junk every day can live to be 92. Both my parents have heart disease, and my brother had a heart attack at 47, so keeping my cholesterol and blood pressure low is very important to me. A plant-based and low-sodium diet works well for me in that regard.

We can agree to disagree about the environment. I was going to propose that in my last post but I didn’t want to drag that old cliché out and have you wag your finger at me for not addressing the issue. The only thing I’d still like to share with you about that — not trying to convince you, just giving you my point of view — is that I don’t see human health and caring for the environment as competing interests. Once again, I think we can do both, and I think a healthy living environment is essential for humankind to thrive. The way I see it, it’s in our own interest to care for our surroundings and use our resources responsibly, as you said.

I’m glad we were able to work past our differences and calm down the rhetoric. Thank you for that. If I could send you a cookie, I would.

I’m not going to argue the environmental issue because we will have to agree to disagree. I find that human health is more important, and that we have to protect our meat resources as much as we do any other by using them responsibly. I do not feel it a waste to raise grain for livestock when we have more than enough grain to do so, and when the Amazon rain forests are being used for vegetable crops that feed people as well.

I would like to direct you to a study by Lindsay Allen, of the US Agricultural Research Service. While part of her study was funded by some cattle association and it even made me suspicious at the outset, the results over a two year period were clear. Using 544 African school children, she saw that a certain portion were fed 2 tablespoons of meat per day, while others were on a vegan diet, and yet others were kept on the same diet they had always been on, which was a poor one, but just enough to live on. I know it’s lame that I do not have the bookmark at the ready, but this isn’t something I keep in my favorites to be honest. The study confirmed what the majority of doctors have said all along. Meat is vital for a healthy diet. Those that did not eat animal products did not concentrate in school as well, were smaller, and had a host of vitamin deficiencies. From personal experience, I can tell you that my doctors (I moved from FL to TX during the time I was a vegetarian) urged me to start eating meat despite my otherwise healthy diet (I’m not a junk food person), as much as they urge me to quit smoking. The reasons were all the same. In the news recently, we have two examples of how horrible a vegan diet is for a child. I won’t get overly redundant, but that girl in Scotland was just one example of the rising number of vegan children who develop rickets due to a bad diet. Nursing mothers who do not eat animal products have been shown to produce inferior milk. It goes on. Again, it’s lame to not provide some links, but I am sure that they are easy enough to dig up if you are interested. Many adults that are strict vegans, this according to my doctors and the People Eating Tasty Animals web site, will develop eye problems.

When I became a vegetarian, it was a knee jerk reaction to my grandfather’s death from diabetes. I suffered for that decision, especially because there was nothing wrong with my diet to begin with. I went from being strong as an ox healthy to weak bones (I slipped a disk in my neck during this period), and having some sort of cold or flu at least once a month. I never felt well. I also gained weight like crazy. I wasn’t eating junk food, but I might as well have been. I’ve always been thin, and during that time, I put on twenty pounds. When I introduced meat back into my diet, I lost it fast, recovered more quickly from my injury, and ceased to get sick on a monthly basis. It’s been two years now, and I think the closest I’ve been to a cold was after climbing Snowdon on a spring day with the weather changing every five minutes from hot to cold and back again.

I love animals, and I understand your revulsion at eating something you could befriend. However, I come from farming and fishing families, and I was wringing chicken necks and cleaning fish at five years old. I was taught that some animals are there to feed us, and though it was never an excuse to mistreat them, they were not there to be pets. In fact, they deserved our respect all the more because they were dying to nourish the family. I feel strongly that food should be prepared properly and never wasted because of that. My dogs, when I was a child, were guards or helpers in the hunt. I am not on a farm now, and I am not as extreme as my grandparents were in the idea that if you can’t eat it don’t feed it, but I recognize the difference between a companion and a potential meal and treat them as such. This is why I don’t mind leather, or other animal products.

I would have a leather couch if I didn’t have a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a Beagle that would leave talon marks in it. It doesn’t get hot where I live.
Anyhow, I’ve rambled and I am ready for bed. Have a good weekend.

I stopped eating meat because I realized one day that I was choosing to keep some animals as companions, yet eat others, and that I couldn’t really explain (nor was I comfortable with) why I made that distinction between the two. I know I could never catch & kill a pig or chicken any more than I could eat my cat, and raw meat and eggs thoroughly gross me out. So that’s a big part of the reason why I stopped eating meat. The B-12 deficiency only made the decision easier, because I was already in a position where supplements were a necessity, not a choice. For clarity’s sake: I have no “health issue” with eating meat, my stomach just cannot absorb B-12, so there is really no point for me to eat it.

I could have left it at that but I stopped eating dairy as well because like you, I have a problem with battery farming. A big problem. I want nothing to do with it. Your solution is to find animal products that do meet your standard, mine is to avoid them as much as is possible and practical. Where I live, the latter is easier to do than the former.

You’re absolutely right when you say the world doesn’t want to reduce its meat intake. It also does not want to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. And it’s not going to, until it becomes necessary (not in our lifetime), or someone figures out a way to make more money with alternatives, whichever comes first. But there is a green movement that is growing stronger and wider, and I personally am happy to see that.

I also understand and agree that there are many political, economic and other reasons why the world’s food supply is not reaching the hungry, but that doesn’t take anything away from the fact that yes, it IS wasteful to feed that much grain to animals. We just don’t need to eat that much meat. If we ate only that which was “vital,” or even a little more just because we like it, there would be no need to mass-produce it, and all the abuse that comes with it.

Deforestation, all I can say about that is that it comes back to common sense for me: as the world population grows and its desire for meat grows with it, we’ll need to produce ever more grain to raise that meat, and we’ll need to get the space to do it from somewhere, yeah? Is it reason to panic? Not yet, but in cases like these where I just can’t be sure how bad it is or is going to be, I tend to err on the side of caution and do my best to conserve. It’s not like it costs me anything to do that. On the contrary.

Regarding a, b and c, please tell me where you found this proof. I’m serious. I’ve done my homework on this too, and to the best of my knowledge, there are no scientifically/statistically significant studies available that have looked into the long-term effects of eating an all-vegan diet. There are some, but their scope is rather small and they are not conclusive or representative for the population at large. If you have access to better information than I’ve been able to find, please share.

I can agree with you on d and e if, but only IF, you are getting that kind of an attitude from someone. However, I have to say that I feel you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about this issue and are quick to make assumptions. Please don’t paint all vegans with the same brush and try to give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove you wrong.

Leather/pleather, again, it doesn’t have to be an either/or thing. I’ve got several bags and shoes that are neither. Leather shoes may feel better on my bare feet but I don’t want to sit on a leather couch on a hot day. I personally like bags made out of fabric, and shoes with wooden soles. Yeah, I lived in Holland for a while.
Have a nice weekend!