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Eat for your health, the planet, and your values.

Become a Sustainavore!

Eat for your health, the planet, and your values.

Am I Less “Pure” Because I Eat Meat?

  • Update: The original title of this post used the work “woke” instead of “pure”. After learning more on the history and evolving usage of the word, I can see how a white woman using the word “woke” in this context is inappropriate and I have changed it. My usage of the word was meant in the virtue signaling way, several times removed from the origins of the word.  Now that I fully appreciate the backstory of the word woke, I will be more cautious in my use of it in the future.

Yesterday I posted a great article on my Instagram feed by The Guardian about how veganism isn’t the answer to saving the world. I’m really excited this concept is getting more mainstream attention!

A vegan blogger decided to troll my feed:

…and since she blocked me on instagram, I’d like to follow up with a detailed reply here.

  • First, I’m a dietitian and feel that meat is a healthy food. If you don’t want to eat it, that’s cool, but it’s just basic scientific truth that when compared to plant-based proteins, meat is superior. More on that here.
  • I also address the water argument very well here, citing that avocados, rice and walnuts require the same water as typical beef, and grass-fed beef is even better.
  • In this post, I analyzed the feed it takes to produce a pound of beef. It’s not as inefficient as many like to make it out to be. It’s also important to understand that we can’t grow crops everywhere. The majority of the Earth’s surface is only suitable for grazing, due to water scarcity, topography, poor soil, etc. Cattle and other ruminants can convert food we can’t eat (grass) on land we can’t grow crops on to nutrient-dense human food (beef) while having a beneficial impact.

I want to dedicate the rest of this post to the “Hmm Ethics.” comment, which particularly irritates me. It takes a lot of balls to go troll someone else’s feed and declare your moral superiority just because you have no idea how food is grown. I’ve lived on a working organic vegetable farm for the last 16 years and can assure you, there is no possible way to grow food without causing death. It’s impossible.

[Tweet “Death happens in plant agriculture, let me count the ways…”]

First, you need to make a field. Crop fields aren’t “natural”. When you fly over the United States and look down at all of the squares and circles down there, that’s not “nature,” that’s man. Lots of things had to die to make way for that perfect square of only one crop to be there.

Step two, once all trees are cut down and life is removed, it’s time to plow up the soil. This releases carbon and further kills lots of life living close to the surface. Small critters that had their dens underground are decapitated and chopped up. 

Next, time to plant and don’t forget, you need to fertilize. How should the fertilizing be done? There are chemical methods, but I’m sure my blogger friend only eats organic vegetables 100% of the time, right? Ok. How do organic farmers feed their soil? On our farm, we use compost (a mix of dead animals and plants) and other organic tools like blood meal, bone meal, and fish emulsion. There are “veganic” options that use algae, but the production of this has it’s own issues. Life cycle studies of the production of algae for fertilizer shows that they’re not as “green” as many assume, requiring lots of energy to make and and producing greenhouse gasses and other waste. Plus, you then have to transport this to a farm with… algae biofuels?

Another problem that happens when we strip away an ecosystem to plant grains and vegetables is that we’re removing the natural cover that  animals like field mice have, making it much easier for a hawk to swoop down and pluck it’s lunch. Exposing that mouse was the result of human interventions.

If we know a death will happen as a result of our actions, but we didn’t directly intend for that death to occur, is the death still our fault? 

Are fish, insects and birds less significant life forms than mammals? Are animals that look closest to humans more important? Is it only important not to kill animals that are considered sentient? Is sentience the only value a being can have? Does death harm some beings more than others?

We need to take responsibility for both intended deaths and unintended deaths due to our impact on the land.

A new paper looking at the number of animal deaths caused by plant agriculture looked at deaths per hectare per year from various different angles. Depending on what you consider “valuable life” and how the animals were counted, deaths could either range from 35-250 mouse deaths per acre to 7.3 billion animals killed every year from plant agriculture if you count birds killed by pesticides, fish deaths from fertilizer runoff, plus reptiles and amphibians poisonings from eating toxic insects. Whether or not you agree with their math is not the issue. I think the issue is, if death happened for your food, then are you morally better than me because you didn’t drink milk or eat a steak? 

Finally, I take huge issue with the statement, “I don’t feel someone can be spiritual and eat slaughtered animals.”

This is basically insulting every human on the planet. The place of privilege that this comes from is incredible.  Are you more “woke” than Ghandi, the Dali Lama, and all the people whose traditional food culture includes large amounts of animal products like the Maasai in Kenya or the Inuit, or any First Nations People? Is it your right to tell cultures that have historically eaten animal products that you have deeper spiritual life because you eat highly processed Beyond Burgers at A&W with your root beer? Should all people give up eating meat and instead bend the knee to the vegan way of life to obtain your moral approval? We’ve already imposed our Western diet on the world, how’s that working out for those cultures who have abandoned their traditional food ways?

When you say you “love and respect all” does that really mean you only love and respect all sexual orientations and not honor individual choice and traditional culture in food? As you sit in your perfect white room looking pensively out the window, do you meditate on how much better you are than 99% of the rest of the world? How wabi sabi is that of you?

I’d even take this a step further and say it’s racist to claim spiritual superiority over others by pushing away nutrient dense meat, especially when animals may be the only food their land can sustainably support. Is it ok to live in Canada and tell me that your diet including imported, water-hogging avocados likely harvested in Mexico by someone in poverty is morally superior to me growing and eating my own animals? Who was kidnapped and trafficked so that you can eat your vegan, gluten free, chocolate donut? Is all chocolate vegan because only human children are exploited, no direct animal deaths? Where is your forbidden rice bowl from, and how much water and fossil fuels did it take to bring you some much needed, post yoga “me time”?

The fact is, we have about 60 years of harvest left at the rate we’re going, and cattle are one of our best solutions to regenerate our soils. And just because grass-fed beef is a small percentage of the meat consumed, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive for more production. Organic vegetables used to be a fringe food too, and have never been more popular. We must consider regenerative agriculture practices which include ruminants in order to save our future. So while you’re instagramming about how your personality traits line up with a typical Aries, and telling others how much better you are than them, I’ll be over here helping people recover their health with foods like bone broth and meat, regenerating soil and trying to save the planet.

Read the original post in the Guardian, “If you want to save the world, veganism is not the answer

  • I want to make it clear that I think vegans and those of us interested in regenerative agriculture have much more in common than many assume. Clearly animals being abused or raised in large CAFO operations is wrong, but I think regenerative agriculture practices need to get more mainstream attention. I feel it’s fine to avoid eating animals, but even those who don’t want to eat them should care about how they’re raised because the world will not stop eating animals tomorrow – we should all be fighting TOGETHER for better animal management. I wrote more on the concept of sentience here, and in this post I write about why I feel eating animals can be an important part of living a sustainable life. I recorded this podcast with Matthew Engelhart, founder of the vegan restaurants Cafe Graditude and Gracias Madre on how he transitioned from vegan to omnivore after learning about regenerative farming.

For an interesting conversation surrounding the moral defense of a plant-based diet, listen to my podcast with Dr. Andrew Smith, philosophy professor at Drexel University who wrote, “A Critique of the Moral Defense of Vegetarianism.” I also recorded a podcast with Lierre Keith, author of “The Vegetarian Myth.”

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48 thoughts on “Am I Less “Pure” Because I Eat Meat?”

  1. Thank you for articulating this with strength and care. I am an ex-vegan who made my way back to eating omnivore for health reasons a few years ago. Your content helped me lay to rest my ethical concerns. Thank you.

    1. Neither Ghandi nor the Dalai Lama ate meat. Slaughtering animals is the most cruel thing you can do. Stop justifying it.

  2. Sounds like that comment really got your goat! There will always be some folks who really want to believe they are superior to others, so that they can feel good about themselves. They are annoying as hell!

    As an omnivore and a plant-lover, I like to remind vegans that plants are people. too. Plants are sentient, they have their own precious and unique intelligence. There is NO WAY to eat without killing something. Life feeds life, that’s how it works on this planet.

    Thanks for your passion and intelligent thinking!

  3. I have had the distinct pleasure of getting to deeply know many of my patients that abstain from red meat as well as other animal foods. One thing is for certain, the world needs more people like you… the world needs more people that make such seemingly conscientious decisions, with such principle-centered compassion, and such regard for all walks of life. I have no doubt that this, in part, is why I’ve developed such kinship-like bonds with many of my vegetarian patients… patients that have become wonderful friends… friends that I deeply care about. This is why it breaks my heart to see the devastating consequences of abstaining from our most basic nutritional needs… the critically important fat soluble vitamins (A, D & K — especially MK-4 because it is what fuels the body, down to the mitochondrial electron transport chain but it is also involved in creating the vitamin K dependent proteins, activating specific genes and making testosterone (and other hormones)) and others.

    With over 20 years of treating patients, I have come to the definitive conclusion that the poorest of oral health is categorically presented by that of vegans and vegetarians. Their oral health is almost always worse than that of the chain smoker, candy addicts and even the chemo patient. In the early stages, these patients present with tooth sensitivity and gum recession (which is actually early bone loss). In the moderate stages, the presentation includes deeper decay, exposed root tips and the shifting of teeth. Advanced stages include chronic and recurrent infections (root canals and abscesses) and some tooth mobility. That which presents in the mouth is an indication of what’s going on in the body and brain. Commonly, these patients also present with anxiety, malaise, eczema and a growing list of other issues.

    I learned long ago that I couldn’t help this patient population unless they changed their diets. To do so, many of them need to change what they see in the world… what they believe. To do so, we need more compassionate education from more courageous people like Diana Rodgers here. Thank you Diana for the care, leadership and heart that went into this article. I’m a fan and I will follow you.

    1. Thank you so much for this supportive comment. If only there were more dentists with your wisdom! It’s nearly impossible to find a dentist who understands the role of nutrition in dental health and knows how to support oral health without resorting to mainstream methods that do more harm than good. I’ve been trying, but so far no dice.

      1. My wisdom grew from a deeper, innate, inner-wisdom to nurture my sick little boys. When they were tiny, they didn’t thrive and it was literally heart breaking… they were allergic to everything (food, environment, life). Every doctor we took them to gave us the same prescriptions for allergy medicines, benadryl and an epi pen. After reading Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price, DDS, we took matters into our hands starting with organic, pasture-raised and wild caught nose-to-tail foods with varied organic, in-season fruits and veggies. This was many moons ago. My boys haven’t been back to a doctor’s office since and they’re as healthy as any boys could possibly be. Epigenetics is this exquisite, elegant thing… it means that we all have the ability to express the healthiest version of ourselves.

        Everyday, I’m faced with that same challenged in treating patients, but they are not my tiny babies and I can only do so much. As such, I teamed up with my husband (owner of Ancestral Supplements) to write an article about dental health entitled ACTIVATING AN ANCIENT PATHWAY [FOR DENTAL HEALTH]. If you can’t find a functional, holistic dentist, start here… www dot Ancestral Supplements > Products > Bone Marrow and scroll down towards the bottom of the webpage where it reads ACTIVATING AN ANCIENT PATHWAY [FOR DENTAL HEALTH]. If you don’t want to go there, at least start eating pastured liver and bone marrow twice a week… it makes such a world of difference.

        I’ve had a whole lot of help and hugs along this journey… my sincere hope is give a little help to others.

        1. Barbara, this is a most beautiful and heart-felt posting. I am so with you! I have recently discovered the work of Dr. Zach Bush. Here is a link to a talk he gave in Burlington, Vermont, last June. I wish I had been there! He is a true visionary, is breaking open the paradigm of health and disease.

          I look forward to reading your article and hope you will look up Dr. Zach Bush, if you don’t know of him already.

          with love,

          Caitlin Adair in Vermont

  4. Hi, I am curious about the methane aspect of livestock and how that contribute to global warming. That is one of my concerns as a meat eater, that I am contributing to climate change one cow fart at a time!

  5. I was vegetarian or mostly vegetarian for many years. I started eating red meat about 15 years ago after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and realized that all my reasons for avoiding meat (health, environment, animal welfare) were not a concern if I sourced my meat locally from responsible farmers. I am continually frustrated by the assertion and assumption that vegetarians are more virtuous and that they are living more lightly on the earth. In our lounge at work, the majority of my lunch often consists of food produced within 20 miles of my house, while my co-worker’s veggie burger is made of processed soy protein, grown in a monocrop, produced in a factory, packaged in plastic, and transported thousands of miles. Who is living more lightly on the earth?

  6. Thanks, Diana, for your passion and for addressing this question. I can hardly believe that some would consider us “less spiritual” for eating meat. I believe that we are both spirit and flesh and perhaps those who consider themselves “more spiritual” wish we were only the former, but we are not. Eating meat means humbling ourselves and accepting the fact that something had to die for me to live. I, for one, embrace the “baseness” and carnality of being made of flesh and bone, while also embracing a spirituality and humility that connects me to all living things–seen and unseen.

  7. “Woke” is a concept rooted in black American culture. To “stay woke,” in its undiluted form, means to be cognizant of and vigilant about racial injustice and its many manifestations, and to be wary of those who uphold the racial status quo. The phrase “stay woke” is believed to have been first used in “Master Teacher,” a 2008 song by Erykah Badu. The phrase was dormant for a few years after that, but then Badu and others began to use it to refer to a general awareness of social and political injustices. Fast forward, and these days the phrase has been co-opted and diluted, used to describe the bare minimum of justice-mindedness. Some even use the phrase mockingly.—Deesha Philyaw.

    http://www.maximummiddleage.com/back-in-the-day/white-people-cannot-be-woke

  8. Can we talk about the spirituality of chopping down flowering plants and vegetables? Or taking a fruit off the tree to eat it when if left alone, it can possibly feed other animals or drop to earth reseed? How about eating herbs before they flower when they could dry up and reseed for regrowth? And lettuce you’re eating that was taken away from bugs to survive on?

    Plant-based diet kills, not just the plants but the animals you took away their food supply from. So yea, let’s talk about spirituality of being a meat eater but if you do, you’ll have to talk about spirituality of eating, period. Because in the process, you’ve killed more than you can imagine. I see this in my little backyard garden every day. And as a former vegetarian/vegan, the guilt was real but as a responsible omnivore, it’s a lot more manageable since I know where and how my food was raised and slaughtered.

    And don’t get me started on how much resources it takes to grow vegetables and how much of it gets wasted in the industry and in people’s homes.

  9. Thank you, Diana, for an expert articulation, as always, of a topic so many people are so clueless about. It is truly maddening to continue to listen to the idiocy of the “veganism will save the world” crusade. Can’t wait for the movie to come out!

  10. Thank you! Some weeks ago I had this argument with two colleagues. I told them that being vegan for saving animals is a lie. Be vegan if you want to, but for the right reasons. I told them just what you explain: you have to eliminate life to cultivate. And one told me: but it’s more sutainable.

    What? Why? He couldn’t tell me a reason or some data. It’s just because it sounds better and modern.

    So thanks for explaining it sooo good.

    Greetings from Spain!

  11. Hi,
    So the Guardian article missed a few pointers, 1-that most of the grain grown is actually consumed by the animals people eat. It takes more grain, plants essentially everything to feed an animal. The majority of the forest and trees are being cut down to house and create monocultures to feed animals, not humans. It takes 0.32 acres per The US LAND Carrying Study to feed a Vegan a nurtitiosly balanced diet and five times that to feed an omnivore. So the little animals dying as a result of industrialised monoculture (Single Crop Farming) thanks for bringing that up because you can add that to the list of dead racked up by meat and dairy consumers & Producers. Even regenerative farming that claims to be the answer has it’s limitations in that it’s strategic farming and can only feed a limited number of animals all through the year. This is why there are very few 100% grass fed cattle and lets not forget over grazing also destroys soil and leads to carbon emissions.

    1. You’ve missed a few points in my post and my other articles that I link to.
      1 – chicken and pigs eat “grain” – cattle can eat grass and even if they are feed-lot finished, their diet contains lots of crop residue that would need to be biologically broken down anyway, very little of their actual diet is “grain”.
      2 – if we all transitioned to a plant-based diet, we’d need to destroy TONS more ecosystems to support the amount of land to grow enough food and nutritionally, in order to get enough protein, it’s virtually impossible to do this without really expanding your caloric intake. To get 30g of protein, you can eat about 130 cal of cod, 200 cal of beef or 400 cal of lentils, 700 cal of peanut butter.
      3 – I live on a farm that raises animals and we’re able to feed them in the winter, too. I’m not sure what you mean by saying you can’t feed animals all year.
      4 – overgrazing is a MANAGEMENT issue, not inherent in grass-fed cattle. It’s not the cow, it’s the how.
      5 – do you live on a farm and raise food? Are you a dietitian helping people recover their health? Better protein is the answer to both of these issues, not more beans.

      1. So if cows eat grass only it’s odd that you can find articles all over the internet the USDA, and other government cities talking about how to introduce grain to a cow diet like here: http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agriculture/livestock/beef/feeding-and-nutrition/hints-on-feeding
        Here’s another one: http://www.thecattlesite.com/articles/4343/harvesting-cereals-for-beef-diets/
        I could post more there are 100’s if not 1000’s of them.
        Very few cattle are actually are a 100% grass fed of that most of them are grass finished as opposed to a 100% grass fed.
        I know this because I’ve spent two years learning from regenerative farmers.
        It’s takes 4-9acres worth of grass to consistently feed a single cow per year, we could feed 12.5 humans a fully balanced 2100 cal meal in 4 acres of land. And with new farming techniques that DO NOT involve monocropping or industrialised farming we could feed more 28.12 people In 9 acres. Plants loose nutrition in the presence of too much carbon, plants need carbon but like anything too much of a good thing is not so good anymore. All this aside then there’s the methane that ruminants release which is also bad for the environment as Methane when relied is a 150 times worse than CO2 after a while it breaks down into carbon and water vapour which are still green house gasses.
        We need less land to feed everyone if we move away from industrialised farming and meat and dairy, we ca regenerate our grasslands, and forests. This has been researched from top to bottom, left to right and all around. Anyway you slice it, meath and dairy are bad for the environment and most meat eaters I know are the unhealthiest and most depressed souls I’ve every seen. Sue there are vegans who eat poorly too, but If athletes can win an Olympics as vegans I’m pretty sure vegan protein is just fine. Have you worked with Olympic Athletes as a nutritionist Diana?

        1. Athletes can also do well with meat in their diet. This is a fact. You don’t even know what you’re talking about when you say grass-finished isn’t 100% grass-fed. That’s just false.
          We’re done with this thread. Please go do some reading or try growing some of your vegan diet without any animal inputs.

  12. You’re absolutely right to bing up industrialised monoculture propped up by companies like Monsanto and their ilk, we need to overhaul the entire agriculture system to poly-cropping and permaculture where we work with a small number of animals that gently and strategically graze and poop on land to enrich the soil. We need animals to work synergistically with humans to heal the earth but we don’t need them as a food source. Inorder to feed 7-9 billion people we need to repurpose our land and fight climate change i.e regenerate forests, wetlands, and essentially use less land to grow more. This leaves almost no land for the meat and dairy industry. Don’t meat eaters believe humans come first, not some humans, all humans, and all humans need to eat equally, so we need to reserve the land to grow plants that are capable of more bang for a buck. “New research, published in Nature Climate Change, puts the massive scale of these nutrient deficiencies into stark perspective. We found that, as concentrations of CO2 approach 550 parts per million by midcentury, hundreds of millions of people are likely to become newly susceptible to chronic deficiencies of protein and zinc. And billions more are likely to suffer from a worsening of their existing nutrient deficiencies.
    So there is no point sequestering that much carbon into soil because beyond a point even grass lands become less nutritious for the animals who survive 100% on grass, and this means they need to eat more, and more to themselves be good sources of protein. This means over grazing and that is bad for the environment. Anyway you slice it, Meat and dairy are not sustainable forms of food anymore.

    As for your expertise as a nutritionist, we’ll take our cues from Long time Hollywood Action doubles, and Olympic winning athleats and champion boxers who are vegetarian or Vegan. I bet they work closely with nutritionists who clearly know what they’re doing, i.e, showing you how to win and be at the top of your game while being vegan. The list of examples is ever increasing but this video is super entertaining.
    https://youtu.be/R6xxRrmUTlo

    1. Again, you are not understanding the land use issue – MOST land cannot be cropped. We have very little cropland left and we’re ruing large amounts of it. It needs to be REGENERATED and this cannot happen with MORE plant-based agriculture. The largest nutrient deficient worldwide are Iron and B12. Guess what the best sources of that are? Red Meat. You’re so incredibly wrong about grasslands being less nutritious for animals grazing on them. You are not understanding basic biology or ecology or anything about regenerative agriculture. Feel free to follow your hollywood heroes who didn’t grow up eating vegan and would likely thrive on a wide variety of diets. They are outliers but I understand how uninformed people would think it’s got to be that they gave up meat that “made” them olympic, on top of their game. It’s absolutely unrealistic to believe this or to think that everyone will give up meat tomorrow. There are lots of people for whom vegan definitely does not work. I’m sure you’re aware of this.

      1. Again you’re not understanding we don’t need to crop most land, it takes 0.32 acres to feed a vegan a 2000 cal nutritionally balanced diet. WE NEED 5 TIMES LESS LAND TO FEED A VEGAN THAN A MEAT EATER. We just need to stop using land to house cattle, use a little to feed humans and reforest/ re-eild the rest. Grasslands do fine with wild animals, If you watch any of the early talks on which regenerative framing is based, they all say grasslands do well with multitude of wild ruminants, occasionally, stomping, grazing and pooping. The more mixed the sources dung the better. Regenerative farmers have of course twisted this to their benefit but the truth is grasslands need wild ruminants of all kinds not just cows. IT TAKE 4-9 ACRES TO FEED A SINGLE COW FOR A YEAR DEPENDING ON HOW NUTRITIOUS THE GRASS IS. The more carbon the grass or plant life receves the less nutritious it is for the cow and the more the cow needs to eat. Ofcourse carbon is good for plants but too much carbon isn’t. Grass lands occupy a very small part of the earth. As for plants, they grow in enough places. If you’re talking about Tibbetian Monks and people that, that live 16000’s of feet above sea level, sure they’re exempt, they have a pretty low carbon foot print anyway but everyone else, can most certainly go vegan. Do you live 16000’s of feet above sea level? It takes a MAXIMUM 1/3 of an acre to feed a vegan and 5 times that to feed someone who eats meat. Considering how many people are starving that is just not fair. All humans and living beings have an equal right to this planets resources.

        1. “Grassland occupy a very small % of the earth” please cite. Please show me that you can crop more land than you can graze. Also please show me that the starving people are from lack of food vs. a food distribution problem, because last time I checked, we actually overproduce and waste a lot of food that is produced, and there is way more food waste in the farming of plants than in the farming of animals.

      2. As I’ve said even a vegan needs to make sure they are eating a nutritiosly balanced meal, If one eats vegan magnums all day clearly they’re not going to win the olympics but as far as the small amount of Olympians there are and when you calculate how many of the medal holders are vegan in the last ten years, they’re quite a significant number and increasing every year.

  13. Cruelty, torture, imprisonment, extreme confinement, bred so large you can not stand up, forced impregnation, calves taken from their Mothers and force fed formula, suffocating urine in the air inside no sunlight, sleeping in feces, government subsidies, slave labor, forced to wear diapers on the kill line to keep up. Sounds very sustainable, like maybe child labor, women as property, slavery, holocaust. Who is funding your “work”? Lions though, canine teeth, protein deficiency (how many cases of protein deficiency have you witnessed?) a huge first world problem. Obesity is good as are heart disease, diabetes, cancer and so on. Very logical if you work in the CAFO industry or of course the pharmaceutical companies. and are subsidized by the government. Please do some actual research. You are the new tobacco industry.

    1. I have no idea where grass-fed beef or regenerative agriculture fits into the picture you’re painting. I actually live on an organic vegetable farm, so I must be funded by “big KALE”.

  14. Thanks for your article! I’ve worked to promote regenerative agriculture and understand the benefits to the planet of grass-fed meat. I still choose to follow a vegan diet for personal reasons and feel this article could have done without some of the assumed stereotypes about vegans, who at bare minimum, are doing their best to eat conscientiously. So few people are trying to change the world by how they eat that I think we need to find common ground wherever we can rather than pointing fingers. For me, this means accepting that many people will always choose to eat meat, and encourage those friends/family to choose sustainable grass-fed options.

    1. I actually say, right at the top of the post, that I have no problem with adults wanting to eat vegan. What I do have a problem with is people coming onto MY feed and telling me that they’re more ethical and spiritual than me and nearly every other human on the planet. Not cool. And the “stereotypes” are all things pulled DIRECTLY from her IG feed. I made none of them up. If you look at her feed, each thing I mention is from her comments/photos: the avocados, the chocolate with no mention of fair trade, the wabi sabi (hysterical, considering that she is claiming to be better than I am), and the horoscopes. If someone wants to do that to me, I have every right to call them out on all of their ridiculousness.

  15. Anybody who push their food philosophies on others is not “woke”. I’m an RD and people are surprised I eat meat, but as a Navajo woman, meat and animals are part of our culture and heritage. We need to provide options to people to support their own health endeavors, and not bully them. Thank for your post!

  16. While we won’t completely embrace a carnivore diet, we’re very close. Still omnivore with strong leanings to meat – at practically every meal (variety is important to us).

    We’re been pharmacists since the earliest 1970s and still work full time in our compounding pharmacy (no commercial drugs).

    Our motto has long been “Too Many People Take Too Many Drugs.”

    Keep up the great work, Diana.

  17. Thanks for posting this. I think it an important discussion especially for those on the fence as to whether we are making a difference by not eating meat. My partner is an environmentalist and feels that in the short term, eating local/grass-fed/small farm meat is good due to not supporting factory farming, but that in the long run, we have more impact by decreasing our footprint by eating vegetarian/vegan. I definitely identify with the argument you make for regenerative farming, but you do talk anywhere on what we can do about factory farming and the problems we have created by having the overcrowding of “wolves”? It’s hard because I would love to be able to go back to the days where we could all farm and live off of our own land, but being in a city limits that option for me. Thanks for your time in educating us and for advocating for better living!

    1. I don’t think that a diet free of meat is a good solution. It’s not optimal from a human nutrition perspective, tilling of soil to grow crops releases tons of carbon and is much worse than methane emissions from cattle, so I don’t think this is a better solution to increase your plant intake and eliminate meat. We are much more limited in crop able land vs. pasture for grazing animals. I’m not sure what you mean about “do you talk anywhere on what we can do about factory farming” – the solution is more of a better system (regenerative agriculture). I talk about this in nearly every post I write. By overcrowding of “wolves” do you mean too many people? Yes, humans have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet but as a dietitian, I don’t feel it’s within my wheelhouse to suggest means of population control, other than educating women, which to me seems to be the best option. Living in a city doesn’t limit your ability to seek better meat, there are so many options for good meat via delivery, markets, a monthly trip to a farm, etc.

  18. I don’t know how I missed this post before. It may be the best thing I have ever read. So sick of vegans claiming moral superiority. Thanks for the poignant and very entertaining response to an a-hole!!!

  19. What exactly is “plant agriculture”? You do understand that 80% of plants are grown to feed livestock. So all those aweful things you are attributing to plant growing is to feed the growing population a meat based diet. It’s growing their waist line, the cancer rates, the diabetes rates, along with it.

    1. Love how you come criticize me with no citations. According to the USDA’s website, corn, barley, oats and sorghum are used as major feed grains in the U.S., with corn “accounting for more than 95 percent of total feed grain and production use.” In the U.S., 36 percent of corn crops being used to feed livestock. However, I advocate for grass-fed beef.
      Have a great day.

  20. My only problem with your argument is that I have NEVER met a meat eater who ONLY eats grass-fed beef. If a meat-eater “slips up” every once in a while and eats grain-fed beef, they will very quickly indirectly consume far more monoculture grain than a vegan does. (Even if they avoid corn, soy, etc in the rest of their meals, which is also unlikely)

    This is my limited experience, but all my meat eating friends who really care about the environment and always try to buy grass fed when they cook at home are inevitably THE FIRST to order the steak at a wedding without checking where it came from and they’re THE FIRST in line at a new halal cart ordering the steak gyro and they’re THE FIRST to order a fancy steak while on vacation. It really worries me that arguments like yours fill them with false superiority because they don’t think about all the meat they eat when they can’t see the label/farm.

    If people lived the way you argued they should, then all my conscientious meat eater friends would be ordering the vegan options at the local bar, at festivals, and at weddings. This just never happens among my liberal, environmentalist, meat-eating friends.

    So it’s that slipperiness that I worry undermines your argument. I actually agree with you. I just don’t think people reading this will realize the behavior changes that actually eating like you propose would require. Maybe I just have friends who are crummy environmentalists. But somehow I don’t think so.

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