When you’re vegan/vegetarian you will always have people giving you presents or trying to lend you animals items, it does n’t mean you have to buy them yourself. Not everything is in your control. Probably the car Leona drives or the bus she catches contain animal ingredients. But she is still making a significant contribution against cruelty unlike the people who like to criticise and do nothing themselves.

Good article.

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.

I see what you mean on each personal make up being different. The women in my family all smoke, myself included. I am not a heavy smoker(less than a pack a day unless I am drinking and that’s not an everyday thing), especially compared to my 86 year old grandmother who has outlived most of her doctors and doesn’t have a thing wrong with her. She’s hardcore. Unfiltered. Chain smoker. But that’s how it’s worked for all the women. The men, not so lucky. As healthy as they have been, diabetes or prostate cancer has hit them all, and only one male relative in my memory has lived to see 80. I myself am pre-diabetic and paranoid enough to at least eat right and exercise because I am a female version of my diabetic gramps not only in personality but in blood sugar patterns, as I am discovering now that I am in my thirties. I would argue that having meat in one’s diet is best for the majority, though. That study should not be the only thing one looks at. Conversations with health professionals, as well as reading material one of my doctors was fond of running off for me all point to the same result. Obviously, your B12 issues and family history are good argument for avoiding or at least cutting down on meat.

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.:)