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The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability Paperback – January 21, 2013
| Lierre Keith (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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- Print length480 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherReadHowYouWant
- Publication dateJanuary 21, 2013
- Dimensions7.75 x 1.09 x 10 inches
- ISBN-101459611314
- ISBN-13978-1459611313
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Product details
- Publisher : ReadHowYouWant (January 21, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 480 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1459611314
- ISBN-13 : 978-1459611313
- Item Weight : 2.04 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.75 x 1.09 x 10 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,747,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,181 in Sustainable Agriculture (Books)
- #1,204 in Vegetarian Diets (Books)
- #65,532 in Engineering (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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The vegetarian diet is thoroughly discussed, but somehow almost seems secondary in importance to the topic of agriculture. Since this book was written, much has been learned to further understand the sub-optimal nature of a vegan diet. Nevertheless, the standard nutritional advice continues to be to avoid meat. Even now we hear that meat causes diabetes, prostate cancer, heart disease, etc. But humans evolved since the beginning to walk upright, developed the endurance to outrun big animals, and a brain to make to make spears so we could find and hunt animals (full of saturated fat) on a daily basis. After millions of years, that is who we still are today, and that is what defines what our body requires us to eat. Disease only results when we ignore our evolutionary needs of diet and daily exercise (spears are no longer needed). Deny evolution at your peril.
I did not appreciate the activist feminist attitude of the author. She apparently wants to change the nature of men, who evolved as hunters, to be more like women, who evolved as gatherers. I did not read this book to be told that I am the problem. In fairness, she also wants to change the nature of women by telling them not to have babies (but blames that on men too).
Nothing has improved regarding destructive agriculture and unhealthy diet in the 15 years since this book was written. (Low Carb/Keto is just now starting to catch on.). We are running out of time to save the planet. This book is a wake-up call that so far has been ignored.
The section on nutrition was the lengthiest but perhaps the weakest part of the book. Instead of arguing that a strictly plant based diet is unhealthy for many, if not most, people, she makes an impassioned attempt to convince us that a diet high in animal products and low in grains is the only healthy option for anyone. She quotes 2nd hand sources, some of questionable reputation, championing a paleo type diet. She dismisses mainstream medical research as junk science conducted by simpletons who never think to question Ansel Keyes' claim that coronary heart disease correlates with high fat diet. She fancies a conspiracy of sorts, between the grain industry and medical associations. This is ironically reminiscent of the sort of conspiracy theories about the meat industry that some vegans flap about when confronted with any sort of evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that suggests a plant based diet might not be healthy for everyone.
Too bad Keith didn't bother with actual reports from peer reviewed journals, and look into some of that mainstream medical research herself. If she had, she would have discovered that the issue of dietary fat, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, is exquisitely complicated, with results of some studies suggesting a connection between diets high in saturated fat and increased morbidity and mortality.....as well as other studies that do not.
But why bother to take on mainstream medicine at all? In my years as a health care provider, I never knew a single physician or nutritionist to recommend a vegan diet, and I never recommended it myself. A varied diet of lean animal products, fresh fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed grains is what most doctors and nutritionists suggest. It's as if Keith feels that in order to show that a plant based diet is unhealthy for at least some people, she has to prove that a predominately carnivorous diet devoid of grains is the only healthy diet for anybody. There is no need to paint such a black and white picture, and there really isn't evidence enough to back it up.
I think she would have done much better to use anecdotal evidence, based on her experience with her vegan friends over many years, to argue that veganism is unhealthy for many people. Anecdotal evidence is entirely appropriate in this case, because no systematic study on the health of vegan adults or vegan from birth children accounts for the fact that many others have given it up, due to deteriorating health. And in no study is it possible to verify that people aren't cheating just a little bit, eating animal products from time to time. Cheating is not uncommon -- I have seen this myself, but don't take it from me: Google "ex-vegans" and read some of their accounts.
The section on moral issues was somewhat better. She points out that production of vegetable crops results in direct killing or injuring of myriads of small creatures, and that large annual monocrops cause soil erosion and destroy huge expanses of wildlife habitat, along with various and sundry flora and fauna which depend upon it. Thus, even a vegan diet necessarily causes suffering individuals -- there is no such thing as "cruelty free" eating. Large annual monocrops also lead to extinction of entire species, not just suffering individuals. A vegan world, then, would be a rather lonely one, impoverished of species and habitat. However, her claim that plants "don't want to be eaten" was completely unnecessary and only weakened the argument by exposing her limited understanding of anatomy, physiology, and evolution, in my view. Here, she seems to confuse the results of natural selection with deliberate intent. Plants have no nervous system, and therefore lack the cerebral structures necessary for emotion, desire, or future planning.
This brings us to the final section, To Save the World. Keith envisions locally based permaculture, in which animal and plant food production are integrated to mimic natural food webs of producers and consumers, prey and predator. In this system, animal wastes are used to feed the topsoil, and the animals convert cellulose into food that humans can digest. This is in sharp contrast to industrial agriculture, in which production of animal foods is separated from production of plant foods. The result is that animal waste is poisoning our wetlands and the many species that inhabit them, and greenhouse gas producing fossil fuel combustion is used to produce the chemical fertilizers needed for vegetable monocrops. In the end, though, she doesn't completely convince me that sustainable vegan permaculture is impossible. She does convince me that veganism is unhealthy for at least some, perhaps most (all?), people, and therefore some animal foods will always need to be produced, and we must find a more sustainable way to produce them.
She makes a brief but compelling argument for local economy: if people depend on the resources in their own backyard, they are more likely to steward them appropriately. She makes the intriguing suggestion that deforestation in New England resulted not from the demand for animal products, but from the use of coal, rather than wood, for fuel. This is probably true: if New Englanders had had no option but to burn wood to keep warm, they would have maintained their woodlots. Hunters have been trying to tell us this for years: they are highly motivated to protect the species they depend on for food, and have done a better job at conserving wildlife than non-hunters.
To sum up, this book definitely has some remarkable weaknesses, but these are outweighed by its strengths, in its synthesis of a huge amount of information from a wide variety of disciplines, and, in some instances, in its originality. To my knowledge, she is the first to liken veganism to a cult (which has been exactly my experience with vegan friends). She crushes the knee-jerk vegetarian notion of eating low on the food chain to save the environment, and, while she fails (in my opinion) to prove that a diet high in animal protein is the only healthy one, she at the very least casts serious doubt on the healthfulness of a plant based diet. All impressive accomplishments, especially for someone without a degree in ethics, nutrition, medicine, or ecology.
If you are a vegan suffering from deteriorating health, a conscientious omnivore or vegetarian thinking of "going all the way", or if, like me, you have helplessly witnessed vegan friends reduce themselves to emaciated, anergic ghosts of their former selves, then read this book.
Hopefully Keith will continue her research and eventually achieve a more nuanced view of health and nutrition, and continue her personal journey towards a less absolutist and self-righteous perspective on life. She still has a ways to go. I wish her well with it.
Top reviews from other countries
The author beautifully and eloquently describes how our ever-growing dependence on grains and agriculture is creating a world which is stripped bare of life at all levels (from top soil and the necessary microbes and bugs that live in it, to plants, wildlife, other animals, and ultimately us humans), leaving an infertile stony and sandy rock in its wake. She shows how complex and intertwined our ecosystem is, and how each species affects each other to the benefit or detriment of us all. Death, ours included, the bones and blood of animals, humans and every other living being on this earth are crucial to life on Earth, without which life itself would not exist.
Yes, the book feels anecdotal at times (it is in reality well researched and referenced), and I wish she hadn’t started with arguing for the sentience of plants, and that killing plants may be equal to killing animals. You don’t have to agree with all of it, or even any of it, to benefit from reading this book. This book is not an endpoint for understanding the impact our diet has on ourselves, and the Earth, but a start from which further research can be made.
It is comprehensive and holistic in its treatment of food, health, the life cycle, the ecosystem, the environment, and climate change. Anyone who claims to be an environmentalist, and care about the sustainability of life on Earth must understand and consider these arguments. Don’t buy into ideologies of any kind, vegan or otherwise, look at what’s real, and question your beliefs. Life on Earth depends on it. If you are afraid of reading this book, isn’t that already a sign that your identity and belief system are somehow tied up in an ideology? Read, and come to your own conclusions.
Some topics discussed in this book are:
1. Why agriculture is the most destructive thing humans have done to this planet (agriculture destroys entire ecosystem)
2. What do plants eat? Animals. Or fossil fuels.
3. The necessity of holistically managed grass fed animals for our ecosystems and health (the author is vehemently against corn/grain fed factory farming of animals)
4. The fallacy of “2,500-6,000 pounds of water per pound of meat” argument (commonly stated as an argument against eating meat and growing livestock) - this is true ONLY if you feed the livestock grain. This means, the water is actually used to grow GRAIN not animals (grass fed animals only use about 122 pounds of water per pound of meat)
5. Importance of a healthy alive top soil for plant life and growth, and how, without top soil, land becomes decertified and infertile rock and sand
6. Why herd animals (such as cows) are essential for maintaining top soil (without animals to disturb the land, and contribute nutritious poop, life in soil dies away and is eventually washed away by rain) - to find out more about this, check out Allan Savory’s TED talk
7. How rivers are sucked dry, fish disappear, and ever increasing farmlands are left unusable through salinisation, as a direct result of grain agriculture
8. Who profits from grain production and agricultural consumption? (this includes companies such as McDonalds); the conflicts of interest in agriculture/grain industry (which to me, reminds the conflicts of interest in medical and pharma industries)
9. Difference between carnivore/omnivore and herbivore digestion (hint - humans have the former kind), and what happens to your health when you eat too many plants
10. Importance of animal fats to human health; how grains perpetuate food cravings, and conditions such anxiety, depression and more.
There is much more in this book, many of which you may not agree with. But approach this book with an open mind, and you will benefit both yourself, and our planet.
If you want to know more on what this author writes about, check out Allan Savory’s wonderful TED talk and related book “The Grazing Revolution”, and his work on healing dry infertile desertified environments with livestock, and the importance of grasslands (grazed by livestock) to absorbing carbon dioxide and reversing climate change.
It gives very deep analysis of veganism and why following it kills the planet more than meat eating - biologically, politically, morally.
Some call her a feminist, I agree but unlike the vegans do, she arguments her points very well in smart and respecting manner.
One of the best "what to and not to eat" books explaining pros and cons of plants based diets I read in years.






