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On this “recycled” episode, I am joined by Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. Lierre shares her story about becoming vegan and the struggles to “do it right.”
As Lierre’s health started to deteriorate, she became more steadfast in trying to make veganism work. She looked for answers in anthropological literature and increased her efforts in creating the perfect vegan diet. Nothing worked.
Finally, her search for answers to her health problems led to a Chinese medicine doctor who convinced her to eat meat.
Listen in as Lierre candidly talks about:
- How she became a vegan
- Her degrading health concerns that led to a doctor’s visit that changed her life
- The struggle with her first bite of meat
- The loss of identity that happens when you stop being vegan
- How slugs taught her important lessons about life
- What Lierre’s eating now
This episode is a must-listen for anyone who is considering becoming vegan or is struggling to make their vegan diet “work.”
Resources:
Connect with Lierre:
Website: Lierre Keith
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.
If you’re ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level, join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon. You will have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, a discussion community, and much more. Go to sustainabledish.com/join to support my work.
Today’s podcast is sponsored by Alec’s Ice Cream, the first and only verified regenerative, organic ice cream and the best-tasting ice cream I have ever had. They are Certified Humane and use 100% A2 dairy, so even for those of you who are sensitive to dairy, you may find that Alec’s is a treat for your tastebuds and your insides. Check it out by going to sustainabledish.com/icecream and use code DIANA for 20% off your order.
Join me September 29 – October 2, 2022, for a fun and informative weekend getaway at White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia. You’ll learn about regenerative farming and nutrition, plus participate in farming activities and enjoy incredible food. To learn more, visit sustainabledish.com/events and get your tickets today before they sell out.
Quotes:
“For something to live, something else has to die.” – Lierre Keith
“That’s the thing about being a vegan, it’s not just what you eat, it becomes who you are.” – Lierre Keith
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hi, everyone, Diana here, and because I’m doing so much travel for the Global Food Justice Alliance, I’ve dipped into the archive and selected some of my favorite shows for you in order to keep my content flowing on a weekly basis. If you’d like to keep up to date on the travel and advocacy work I’m doing, please join my growing Patreon community. You’ll get access to a discussion community, ad-free podcasts, exclusive interviews, and you’ll be helping to spread the word about the importance of livestock to our global food system. Visit sustainabledish.com/join, and thank you so much for your support.
(Alec’s Ice Cream Ad) Diana Rodgers, RD
Today’s podcast is sponsored by Alec’s Ice Cream, the first and only verified regenerative, organic ice cream and the best-tasting ice cream I have ever had. They use Certified Humane, 100% A2 dairy so even for those of you who are sensitive to dairy, you may find that Alec’s is a treat for your tastebuds and your insides. So if you want an out-of-this-world, delicious, and creamy ice cream that’s also earth and gut-friendly, give this stuff a try. My favorite flavor is the Matcha Chocolate Chip, but they also have a bunch of delicious options. So go to sustainabledish.com/icecream and use code DIANA for 20% off your order. That’s sustainabledish.com/icecream, and you can get 20% off with my name D-I-A-N-A. And now, on to the show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m so happy to have everyone here. Today I have with me Lierre Keith, the author of The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. I have read this book so many times and in so many different sections that I couldn’t even tell you what’s in it all together because I just keep referring back to all the different pieces of it. Lierre, thank you so much for being with me.
Lierre Keith
Well, thanks for having me on your show. And thanks for such a warm introduction.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So let’s just talk first of all about you. Were you a vegetarian before you were vegan?
Lierre Keith
No, I went straight hardcore vegan.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Okay, and what, forgive me if it’s in your book, and I read that part 10 years ago or something? But will you let folks know kind of what spurred you to be vegan, and I know you were vegan for quite a long time, and had some pretty devastating effects on you.
Lierre Keith
So I became vegan the way that most people become vegan, which is that I met another vegan. I was 16 years old, I was a very impassioned and engaged teenager, cared very deeply about the state of the planet, and human justice and sustainability, and all that good stuff. So you know, you’re a teenager, you’re kind of scrambling around to figure out who you are and what your place is in the world and what it all means and what explains all the terrible things that you say. And I was very aware of how bad things were on the planet. So I met this other teenage girl who was – their family, they were all vegans. And so, of course, she had a whole framework that explained exactly what was wrong. And, you know, with this one simple act, you could put it all right. And it made so much sense. And, you know, she talked about factory farming, which is horrible. So, of course, the moment I found out about that, I was like, “Well, I don’t want anything to do with it.” And, you know, she sort of walked me through this, you can, if you just take animal products out of your diet, you can save the planet, save animals, save starving people, save your health. So it’s a complete package, you know, and at 16 years old, I suddenly didn’t know any better. I had no alternate information and no real avenues to get alternate information. You have to remember this was 1980, so it was long before the internet.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, but even today, on the Atlantic, a new article just came out if everyone ate beans instead of beef, how we could save our health and the planet. Today.
Lierre Keith
It’s ridiculous. At this point, we should know better. So I didn’t know, and I grew up in a very kind of urban-suburban environment I had never seen – except for my grandfather’s tomato plants, I had never seen food, I had no idea where anything came from. I knew nothing about soil. I had no idea what the natural world was supposed to look like, I just had these tremendous longings for the wild, really. I mean, I always I just didn’t as a small child, I was like, I want to live with the trees, you know. I just had this longing to be in a forest somewhere. And that was really it. I just knew that I wanted deers and wolves and trees and things like that. So, you know, here she came and she presented all this stuff to me. And it seemed to make sense. It all fit together. And so I did it. Within two weeks, I was absolutely convinced as a vegan, and I took it up and basically did not look back for 20 years. And at that point, my health was a wreck. But I did it. I mean, it’s and I really hope that anyone else who’s considering this, you really are allowed to learn from our lives because an entire generation of us really did try this with all our hearts and souls. We threw ourselves into it. And it does not work long-term for human, you know, for repair and sustenance of the human body. It’s just it’s not the template that we evolved. It’s not what we evolved eating, and it just doesn’t work. But I didn’t know that. So I tried it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And what in particular, other than the factory farming? I mean, were you fed any sort of information about traditional cultures eating a vegan diet?
Lierre Keith
No.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Okay, so that myth is not really part of the story.
Lierre Keith
It was not the later you know, as I got a little bit older, I, of course, desperately tried to find evidence that this was true. Because of course, there’s this vegan, you know, kind of origin stories, sort of the creation myth of vegans that, you know, this was sort of the Garden of Eden essentially, right? Once upon a time humans were, you know, we were fruit eaters, or at least we were vegans, but, you know, whatever it was, it did not involve exploiting the poor animals and did not involve eating meat, and that’s a recent innovation and has made us all sick, and it’s all terrible. So, you know, when you believe this, you have to find some evidence that it’s true. So there’s always this sort of search in your mind for “Okay, well, who are these vegan people? Where are they?” And of course, there’s no evidence because they never existed. Like, they would be dead. Like, it doesn’t work for humans. So you’re desperately trying to find them and alright, you can find some Hindus that are vegetarians, and that’s really about it, you know. And they have so much -you look into their health. They’ve got terrible health problems. The highest diabetes rate in the world, you know, obesity, all these things. It’s been noted in the literature for 200 years how bad off they are. But you know, you’ve got to find something. So there’s like it’s s sort of myth “Oh, somewhere up in Nepal, there’s somebody living in a cave just on water. So that’s what we should all be trying to do.” I mean, it just, it’s not there. I mean, there’s just no anthropological literature. There’s no current group that’s vegan that’s been around for 10,000 years. I mean, it’s just, it’s a myth, and you want it to be true. So you keep looking, but it just, it’s not true. So…
Lierre Keith
And were you one of those vegans that just went – like I know some young people they’ll just, you know, eat like cheese and or sorry, just not even cheese. Cheese would be the vegetarian version of that – cheese and bread, right? I’m gonna go vegetarian, and the parents are gonna support them. And so they end up just eating carbs and cheese. A lot of young vegans I see will just eat white processed foods to. What type of vegan did you start out being, and did that change?
Lierre Keith
I was always a very health-conscious kind of vegan. So I mean, I had like amino acid charts on my refrigerator. You know exactly how to combine my brown rice with my lentils and all this. I did not touch white flour ever. It had to be right. If I was going to eat it. I wouldn’t even eat like ketchup or jelly if there was sugar in it. Like that’s how hardcore I was. So you can’t say to me, “Oh, you didn’t do it right.” Because I did it right.
Lierre Keith
Yeah. And did you supplement as well? Did you take like B12 and stuff?
Lierre Keith
Every once in a while I would take B12. Because you know, you would hear these terrible stories about what’s going to happen if you don’t get the B12. And I actually researched that quite a bit. Even as a college student, I wrote a big paper on it for a biology class because I was terrified about it. Right? And there didn’t seem to be any way out of it. Like you really did have to eat B12 You had to get it from somewhere. So then the question is, you know, well, brewers yeast, doesn’t that have B12 in it? And no, it doesn’t, you know, it has B12 analogs, which are only going to make it worse, but you really just need to take the supplement. So I would on occasion, take the supplement, which I think saved me from a lot of problems. And then there would be times when I’d be like, This can’t be true. Veganism is the natural diet. There’s got to be a way to do this without taking a you know, industrially produced supplement. And then there’s people like John Robbins, who say, “Oh, well, once upon a time, people clearly ate enough dirt on their carrots.” That just makes me so angry. He’s just helping people destroy themselves. At least like own up and say, “Take the B12.” Like encourage people to at least try to do the right thing for themselves.
Diana Rodgers, RD
It would only make your movement look better if you had healthier people in it.
Lierre Keith
I know, and there’s literally people – vegans who have damaged permanently damaged their hearing, their eyesight you know…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh all kinds of brain damage from being vegan.
Lierre Keith
Yeah, it’s not a joke people like it least tell your followers to take the damn supplement. Because this kind of silliness: “Oh, you’re gonna get it from eating dirt?” It’s just ridiculous.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And then at one point, you did stop menstruating? Is that correct?
Lierre Keith
Oh yeah, almost for that whole 20 years. It was really patchy. Yeah, it was bad. And that one, there’s no way that wasn’t – between the soy and not having enough fat because when I reintroduced meat, it got a little bit better, but it was still kind of patchy. And then, of course, like so many of us, I found the Western Price information. And I started reading about soy because that’s like, that’s like the treasure trove of you know what soy is going to do to you all that information is there, and I had never seen it before. And I was just horrified. So I spent about two weeks just researching everything. At that point, the internet existed, so I’m learning everything I could about soy and, you know, that sort of cold chill of horror. What have I done? Yeah, so I went about after about two weeks, I went completely cold turkey on the soy. I wasn’t eating that much soy at that point. But I still had some, and I took it all out of my diet. And this is not an exaggeration. Two weeks later, I got my period and I have not missed one since. It was insane. It was it’s been like clockwork, and it was the soy. I mean, on top of, you know, not having the cholesterol to make the hormones and all that. It was so dramatic.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And so will you talk about some of the health effects that you suffered and what made you want to eat meat again and then how’d you do it?
Lierre Keith
So yeah, real quick, I mean, I have a huge laundry list of things that went wrong, but the major ones were, so I definitely did that kind of number on my reproductive organs as well as you know, the lack of menstruation. I ended up with really bad uterine fibroids, which I had to have removed, but luckily I found a surgeon who was willing to try that I did not end up having a hysterectomy, so I’m at least grateful I got to keep all my organs. My sister not so lucky. She also was a vegan long-term, and she ended up with horrible endometriosis and did have to have a hysterectomy. So yeah, it didn’t end up so well for her at the end. There’s no question that was the soy. I mean, we have absolute… when you track her history, what she ate, what she didn’t. It was the soy that pushed that over the edge. So a big warning people
Diana Rodgers, RD
And that’s a really big deal for folks that don’t know. Like having a hysterectomy is a huge… I mean, they used to do it all the time. My mom had one right after her third child like, oh, well you don’t wanna have babies anymore, okay, we’ll just do a hysterectomy. But they don’t want to do that.
Lierre Keith
Not unless there’s no other choice. You know, it’s, there’s so many things, you know if you’re going through medical menopause, which is no fun. She has to be on hormone replacement therapy because of it. And also, you know, your organs actually support each other inside your abdominal cavity. You need them all. Right, they all take up space and hold the other ones in place. And one of the things that can happen long-term if you don’t have one like if your uterus is removed, your other organs then get sort of distended and malformed because they’re not being supported the way they should by that blank space. So over time, women can end up with really serious bowel and bladder problems.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I never thought about it like that.
Lierre Keith
Oh, it’s gonna be really hard.
Diana Rodgers, RD
You’ve got a void in there.
Lierre Keith
Yes. So your bladder and your bowel can end up very misshapen, and then they’re not going to work correctly. They’re not going to empty correctly. I’m 52. So lots of my friends are now going through problems like this from a hysterectomy. So it happened 10-15 years ago. And it’s no fun incontinence is no fun. And this is something that can happen. So it’s – this is not a joke. Even if you’ve had all the children you want to have, you still want to try to keep your organs if you can. You can also it can also affect your sexual response. If it’s not done carefully, you know that all those nerves in the clitoris extend up behind the uterus, and it’s you know, if they’re not careful, you can have trouble with sexual function, which is not something many of us want to lose. Sex is a fun thing, right? So you can have long-term problems from having a hysterectomy so…
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Diana Rodgers, RD
And you had some bone and dental issues as well.
Lierre Keith
So my big problem was my spine started to degenerate. I have degenerative disc disease, so the joints in my spine, I’ve lost five of them now. And once that process is set in motion, there’s not really any stopping it because the biomechanics of the spine are such that if you lose one on the bottom, the one above it then has a lot more pressure on it. And then when that one goes, the one on top of that, it’s going to go. So it just kind of keeps going. And you know, your joints are not well-vascularized. So any damage to the joints, it can be a very long, tricky process to repair. And a lot of times, it’s just over. And for me, it’s just over. So I will always be in morphine-level pain. There’s no surgery that can do anything for me. It’s just generating. So you know, I live with a lot of physical constraints on what I can do and what I can’t do, and I’m always moderating my pain level. The thing is, you know, it’s a one-way ticket, but you know, 1999 was my last year of being vegan. And at that point, I was in so much pain I pretty much lived on the couch; everything that I did – standing up was judged in 3o second increments because I could really just barely stand and I could only sit up for about 20 minutes at a time. That’s how much pain I was in. And, you know, eating a more appropriate human diet with well-sourced meat and good dairy products, I have, you know, at least reversed it somewhat. I, at least, now I can sit for many hours without even much thinking about it. I still can only stand up about 30 minutes at a time. But that’s a much bigger life than lying on the couch. I want to tell you every minute that I get, I’m very grateful that at least you know, I got some relief from this. It’s never gonna go away. I will always be in pain. But it did work, you know, eating a more appropriate diet, especially, you know, taking out the canola oil and all those polyunsaturated fats, adding saturated fats, it calms the nervous system, it or at least a lot of the inflammation went down. I don’t think it’s actually that I’ve repaired the actual, but the inflammation absolutely was reduced. And that’s half the pain there. So I’m just you know. I’m lucky I stumbled upon the correct information, and that at least there was some response. So I’m not on morphine anymore. You know, I was able to get off the fentanyl and all that horrible stuff. But, you know, I’m in a lot of pain. That’s just that’s my life now. So I did it to myself. And again, I just want other people to understand this diet has serious consequences. When you see a movie like Cowspiracy or What the Health that has consequences in people’s lives. Young people especially are going to take this up, right. And if they are as fanatic as I was, this is where it’s going to end. There will be permanent damage.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and I think, you know, in our disconnected culture, everyone’s sort of looking for a tribe and veganism definitely gives them that right. It gives them a sense of community. And that’s really how at all they feed off each other.
Lierre Keith
Absolutely. And then of course, it becomes a very hard decision when you decide it’s not working because you will lose half your friends. That’s the thing about being a vegan. It’s not just what you eat, it becomes who you are, and a lot of the other vegans will turn on you at that point. You’re going to lose people who are really important to you. And it’s hard that everybody knows it. I mean, I get these emails every day. And it’s really scary for people and I just tell them, “Look you can you can make new friends. I know it hurts. But you can make new friends. You cannot make a new body. And if you know this is damaging you, these are not people who are on your side. You’re going to have to leave them.”
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. And they can be quite nasty.
Lierre Keith
Oh, it can be horrible. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
To say the least. Right? I know some of the things you’ve gone through. And I know some of the things other people have gone through when they’ve tried to leave. So definitely a hard thing. So what at what point in your – was it your your health pain? Or did you kind of have a dream? Or what was it again, that brought you to trying some meat? And then I actually get a lot of questions from people. How do I start again? And it’s probably different for everybody. But I was curious how you started.
Lierre Keith
So I was almost at the 20-year mark of being a vegan, I almost made it 20 years. And I was, I mean, I just I was so exhausted, I could barely stand up. Besides the pain it was, I mean, there was just nothing left. And I ended up going to see a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, a chi gong healer, who had been, I mean, he’s been a doctor for 50 or 60 years in that the Chinese medical system and very, very wise, you know, very skilled and he, you know, they do a very different kind of diagnosis, obviously, than Western medicine. But he essentially put his hands right over my body, and then just looked at me with so much compassion. And he’s like, “What are you? What are you eating? What are you doing to yourself?” And I was like, “Oh, I’m a vegan.” He’s like “this, you cannot do you’re gonna kill you, you’re gonna die.” I mean, this is, this is basically insane. Like, it’s this can’t go on, you know, this. And at that point, it’s like, I didn’t know it. And I knew when I went in, he was probably going to say that, but there’s still… you’re holding on. Maybe there’s some way I can still make this work. But I was just ground to dust at that point. And I needed to hear it from somebody like him. I mean, most of my friends at that point had already moved on from this. I was kind of the last holdout. And every once in a while, they would try to talk to me, you know, you really will feel better if you eat a little fish, you really will feel better if you just eat a burger. And I just couldn’t do it, you know, and but him somebody that I really respected, who was older than me. Now who, you know, been here a lot longer who had seen this a million times for him just to look at me with such love and such, just such compassion and say, “It’s just not going to work, you’ve got to stop.” And I knew he was right. And I first started crying, you know, and he was just so kind about it. But he’s like, “It’s this is just life, you know, it’s just life eats life. It’s what it is. You’re not different. You’re not special, you’re not out of that cycle. It just, it has to be done. This is what will keep you alive. And you’re gonna have to accept it.” I mean, in somebody’s words, that’s what he said. And I was like, All right, well, I kind of knew this was coming. And I’m so desperate, I’m going to try, and I figured is ended one of two ways. If I tried it, and I felt better, well, then I’d feel better. Right? So that’s a positive. And if I tried it, and it didn’t work, I could at least say to everybody, okay, I tried it, and it didn’t work. So guess what? I can still be a vegan. So I figured it was Win-Win, even if it was a really unpleasant few minutes. So for me, it was tuna fish because I didn’t have to cook it. I could buy it in a can and came very discreetly, I could throw it out when I was done. And I could eat it with a plastic fork and the icky meat would not have to touch any of my dishes. This is when you realize like food taboos are fascinating because it felt unclean. And I really understood all the bizarre food taboos around the world and you know, people who eat halal and eat kosher and eat this and don’t eat that. And I was like, I realize I’m really in that world where I’ve got almost OCD, you know, about like, this insane thing about food purity, like, I didn’t want it to touch my dishes. Like it was gonna contaminate my fork. It’s like it’s a fork, you can wash it, like, it didn’t matter. And I didn’t want it. So that plastic fork, I’m going to do this open a can over the sink, plastic fork, like it’s not going to touch anything that matters. It really was that intense, you know, so I sat down, and I ate that bite of tuna fish, and it was a one-way ticket. Like, I felt within two seconds. I’m not exaggerating, I felt it in my mouth, down my throat into my stomach. Like it was like being plugged into a wall socket, like this just current of life of energy that I had not felt for two decades, just vibrated through me and I was alive again. And I know not everybody feels that, but a lot of us – the long-term people pretty much we all have that story. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow. I have a nutrition patient right now that I’m working with who is… she came to me knowing that I was going to tell her to start eating meat and she’s still having such a hard time with the sourcing of it. She’s just so obsessed with the sourcing of it and which I fully support right. I think it should all be good but it’s crippling her.
Lierre Keith
Of course. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, it’s amazing. So should there is some things she’ll cook at home, but she’s got like texture issues too. So I’m always curious to hear how people like if they started with chicken broth or just went for a burger, you know, but it seems to me like either eating out at a restaurant and ordering something or like you did with the tuna, like something that you didn’t have to handle and cook yourself seems to be a really… because I’ve never been a vegan before. So I live on a farm and grow lots of animals. So for me, it doesn’t gross me out at all. So it’s hard for me to get in that mindset a little bit.
Lierre Keith
It just takes time. And honestly, it was the hardest day of my life. It was just, as a one-off kind of action, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And then did you… would you do like was at lunch? And then for dinner? You just went crazy? Or was it kind of slowly? And did you have any problems with like your HCl, you know, like digestion issues at all because I know that sometimes is a complaint.
Lierre Keith
I did not have any more trouble eating meat than I have trouble eating anything else. But I have gastroparesis from the many, many years of blood sugar issues that came with being a vegan. So I have to take betaine hydrochloride with every meal, okay. But at that point in my story, I did not know that. I only knew I felt nauseous every time I ate so it was a few years later that I discovered the betaine. And that was actually an interesting story too. Because I was on at that point, I discovered Weston Price. And I was on a bunch of different – at that point we had listservs we didn’t have Facebook. So I was on a really great group of pro-Western price people and it was really friendly, supportive group, like probably half the group was recovering vegetarians. Everybody was wonderful. So and everybody’s putting up all their questions and problems and health concerns. So I was like, I’m just going to try this thing with my stomach. Because I don’t know what’s wrong. None of the doctors seem to be able to figure it out. So I said something about, Oh, I feel nauseous all the time after I eat and it never goes away, and blah, blah. And this doctor from halfway across the country I never met to this day, I’ve never met him. He private sent me a private message. And he’s like, “Oh, you’re the one that was the long-term vegan, right?” I was like, “Yeah, 20 years.” He’s like, “I can tell you what’s wrong with you. You’ve destroyed your body’s ability to make hydrochloric acid. Go to the local natural food store, buy this stuff called betaine hydrochloride. Take for with every meal and talk to me in two weeks.” And I was like, alright, I’ll bite. I mean, it’s a supplement over the counter. It can’t really hurt me. Right. So when I bought it, and it was like, it was a miracle. I mean, it was just day and night, I had the nausea go away in two hours, I had been nauseous since I was like 23 years old. He was completely right. So anyway, at that point, I didn’t know that everything I ate made me feel sick. So it didn’t hurt me more than anything else eating the fish.
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Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. And you also at the same time, around the same time, right? Maybe right before your transition you describe in your book, how you started to try to grow your own food, and have a really great story about slugs. Will you share that?
Lierre Keith
Oh yeah, no, this is the thing you know, it’s alright, I’m gonna grow my own food, I’m gonna do all everything right, I’m gonna, uh, you know, I’m gonna have zero food miles, no fossil fuel, everything is going to be vegan and sustainable. And all this and you just run smack into the biological reality of this, that your garden cannot be vegan. Like, that’s not how the world works. The natural world is everybody eating everything. And plants eat animals. And that’s what soil is, is dead plants and dead animals digested by bacteria recirculated back into more living plants and living animals, and then they eat each other again, and that’s what it is. You know, and like, you can’t take animals out of the picture. That’s what we’ve been doing for so long on this planet, you can’t change evolution. So here I am trying to make a garden and pretty quickly start to realize, you know, because I’m reading all about organic gardening, and it’s like, oh, well, where am I going to get all this stuff that the soil needs. And you know, you’re faced again, with one of these, well, I can just go to the feed store, and I can buy the thing that says organic, and I can pretend and not read the label, but I’m not that person. So I’m gonna read the label. And what’s in it? It’s bone meal and blood meal. So of course, I’m horrified as a vegan. Well, what can I do to get around this and there’s not really an answer, I can exhaust my soil. Or I can find some friends who have goats and they have a giant barn filled with manure, so maybe I could get some of that, which is what I did the first year. So I got the manure, but okay, I am not the one who made my hands dirty with the exploited domesticated animals. But somebody somewhere had to have those goats for me to get that manure, right. So I knew that I was, you know, I mean, I’m kind of lying to myself, right? But I did that. So of course, it was a beautiful garden. I had all this goat manure, it couldn’t get better, right? So everything grows, but I realize it’s like, okay, I’m hitting a wall here between, it’s not a closed loop. And to make it a closed loop, it’s, you know, I’m gonna, there’s gotta be animals somewhere. So am I going to face this or not? So then the other problem is that everything wants to eat that food, not just me. So there’s rabbits, there’s, you know, groundhogs. There’s, of course in New England, there’s deer. Oh my god, the deer are insane. Right? So like, what am I going to do? And then you’ve got the little tiny creatures there animals too. But you got all these insects. All of them are sentient. All of them have faces if you look, so that was always my thing. I won’t eat anything that has a mother or a face. Well, they all have moms, they all have faces. So then there were the slugs, and every single night I kept planting lettuce. Every single night the slugs devastated it was gone by morning, and I would go and try again. I’d get some more starts put them in the ground and then the slugs would eat them again. And I went through about five cycles of that. Just ridiculous. I’m never gonna get any lettuce. So what do I do? I’m gonna have to kill them. What how do I do this? And it was horrifying to my vegan soul the slugs mattered. They had lives they wanted to live Why did I get to kill them? Right so I put out beer because of course beer they’ll they love it. They come from miles when they smell it and they get drunk and they drown essentially is how they die. It seems like a horrible death like at least they die happy because they’re drunk.
Lierre Keith
So I put out the beer. This is like a, you know, tried and true organic trick. But in the middle of the night I woke up and I just was like in this cold sweat of I’m about to murder these animals. How can I do this and call myself a vegan? So I ran outside. I dumped out all the beer. There was already slugs that were dying, you know? Now what do I do? I still don’t have any lettuce. I still have no way to control the slugs. So I would go out in the night and I would collect them off the lettuce. But what do you do with them? Like what then? Like, where do you put them because they’re just gonna come back. So I took them on my bike down the street to this area that was you know, more wooded, and I kind of just dumped them out. And I sat there for a while. And you start to get this awareness which, you know, I should have had this information on when I was maybe four and here I am at age 38 or whatever trying to figure this out and I’m watching the slugs kind of slowly make their way. And I’m thinking this is kind of crazy, because it’s not like the world is infinite. I mean, there’s this little tiny patch of forest here where I’m releasing these slugs, but there’s already slugs here. So all I’m doing is starving some other slugs by releasing these slugs here. Yep, sure, but the slugs have managed their population. They know how many they can support here. Most of them are dying because they’re getting eaten by animals. But there’s some kind of balance point here that nature has reached between slugs and predators on slugs. And all I’m doing is messing that up by dumping 20 more slugs into it. These slugs cannot live here or there already would be 20 more slugs here. So what am I doing like I’m just pretending that these slugs aren’t going to die of starvation or get eaten by opossums tonight, but it’s a lie like the slugs have to die one way or another for me to have that lettuce. And at that point I gave up because I couldn’t stand it like my life has to be possible without dead animals. And it’s so clearly wasn’t the moment I got my hands on the dirt. So I gave up. I won’t have lettuce this year. I just I just stopped thinking about this because it was so overwhelmingly horrible to my vegan soul. And then I took my bike and I went to the store and I bought lettuce and I was so happy like, “Oh my god, there’s no dead animals. I’m so excited. I can just buy some lettuce, I can just eat my lettuce.” And I stood there in the store holding that lettuce. And I swear to god, that was the moment I grew up. Because I thought Who are you fooling? Whoever grew this lettuce killed those slugs. If this lettuce is worth eating, it was on soil that was healthy enough that there there was some kind of biotic community. And that means there were slugs nearby. And they came in the night and they tried to eat it and whoever this this organic farmer was killed those slugs one way or another those slugs had to die for you to get this lettuce. So you paid somebody else to do it for you. But those slugs still died, your hands are still just as bloody, you are still not a vegan because those slugs had to die. There’s no other way for you to get that food. And it was like it was this incredibly bittersweet moment because it’s like face the truth. Your life is supposed to be about facing these hard truths. To this moment, you have not faced the truth, you’re gonna have to face it. And what it means is some animals are going to die for you to live. And that’s the nature of life. That’s the nature of life. And it was like, it was astounding. It was like profoundly spiritual. It was horrifying. It was beautiful. And I felt like an adult finally, like you’re not running anymore, you turn in your face it this is what it is to be alive.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well. And it’s such a great story because I feel like I hit people over the head with information like like, I’m like, well life, you just you have to have death in order to have life period. I would never… I would you know, like, I couldn’t even dream up a story about the slugs. And it’s just such a wonderful illustration of it. I mean, one thing I did think was, you know, if I told you because intent and least harm right, are always sort of these arguments. Well, it’s all about intent. And I’m like, Okay, if I told you that every time you drove to Whole Foods to buy your tofu, you would drive over a family of chipmunks. And you knew it every single time would happen. Does that make it okay to go buy the tofu? Like that’s the best I could come up with. But your story is so much better. I love it.
Lierre Keith
And then I remember telling what am I a friend of mine who’s Native American, this whole story and she just looks at me just sort of half pity have compassion and just point blank said, you know, for something to live, something else has to die. And that’s why it’s become one of my just favorite sentences because it was like, Thank you for saying that to me. And again, like she got taught that as a tiny child, right? Like, this is just what life is you say thank you, you do it. Well, you do it with, you know, all the love that you can you do it gracefully, and you’d be humble about it because your life is dependent on all these other creatures. And, you know, we need them. And this is the web of life. And it’s the cycle of life. And it’s, you know, that transformational moment is sad, and it’s hard, but it’s also good, because here we are. And all of that is woven into her mythology that she grew up with. And I didn’t have any of that, right. I’m just stumbling along in the dark, trying to do my best as a teenager in modern America, you know, so for her to say that was just it was so beautiful and so profound, but also such a relief, like, Oh, thank you. Yes, that’s the sentence I’ve been looking for, you know, for 40 years.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your diet these days. What what is a typical day look like for you?
Lierre Keith
Well, I at this very moment, I don’t have any of my own food-bearing animals on my property for various reasons. But I am very much looking forward to have having chickens and ducks again. And goats. I had goats for a while too, and they weren’t really wonderful. So probably, at some point again, they were little goats. I had the the dwarf Nigerian.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh, those are my favorite. Adorable, there’s so cute when they’re babies.
Lierre Keith
Oh, they’re so cute. Also, they’re small enough, you can get them in a car, if you have to. If you have to go to the vet or something like a livestock trailer, they actually do fit in the backseat. So I get really good eggs right down the street from me from a pasture-raised kind of, you know, backyard kind of people. So that’s really easy. And there’s ducks and chickens as well. So that’s generally breakfast is eggs. And then I also have access to really good quality grass-fed beef that’s made locally. So that’s generally lunch with some vegetable matter. And then I tend to skip dinner, but I’ll usually have a snack around three o’clock, and that’ll be, I don’t know, just kind of whatever’s hanging out around the house. So I also live in a town that has a really great cheese factory, which is a bizarre thing to say because it’s a tiny little town, but our cheese factory is so good. They went to a cheese competition in Devon, England. Yeah, it was like dairy Central, right. And they brought home a blue ribbon. So this is good cheese.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, what kind of cheese is it?
Lierre Keith
So it’s Rumiano. It’s just the brand and the one that one is the Colby which is really good. But most of their Cheese is actually it’s made from locally sourced milk that’s pasture-raised. And it’s because it’s right here in town, you can get it super cheap. So I have really good cheese right here. So there’s cheese. And then also sometimes I eat yogurt and like, you know the kinds of things that are fermented dairy products as well. And then also in California, where I live raw milk is legal. So you can get it on the farm. You can also just go to the store and get it which, honestly is so easy. It’s expensive that way, but I don’t drink a lot of just plain milk. I tend to just put it in my tea. So for me, it’s really that’s the thing. So I get raw milk for that. And I do really great with dairy. I know it doesn’t work for everybody. But I have I mean it’s you know, I’m Northern European by extraction. So we’ve been eating dairy products, starting with reindeer milk for a long time. And it really I feel great on dairy. It really especially my spine, it really helps with my pain level. So it’s the thing that works, which I’m very lucky because I love it too. So it’s happening. So I ate that, some that’s not a lot- kale. Kale’s okay, broccoli. I eat a lot of salads. A lot of lettuce for lunch is a legacy thing. Oh, so I live around the coast so salmon is easy to come by. There’s also tuna that comes to the dock really regularly you can get that. So crab, the crab in season is really yummy. I really do like seafood. It’s hard though because I know the oceans are really struggling right now. So it’s hard to make sure you’re doing it sustainably.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, seafood is definitely my favorite too.
Lierre Keith
It’s yummy. Something about it. It’s just so good.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, well, Lierre, what’s coming up for you anything you can share? Where can people find you online?
Lierre Keith
It’s kind of a joke, right? It’s really easy. I have a website. And the reason that’s a joke is because I have a very strange name, so you have to spell it. So it’s lierrekeith.com. The easiest thing, though, if you don’t have a pen and paper, or if you’re driving or something. If you go to Google, and you just look up The Vegetarian myth, there is only one book called that and I wrote it. And so that will lead you to me. So it’s probably the easiest thing – Vegetarian Myth. You’ll find my blog. On my website, you’ll find I’ve lots and lots of lectures on YouTube. If you’re curious about anything I’ve said it’s lots of things that I have to say on YouTube so you can find all my different talks there. And yeah, all my other books and everything. And you know where I’m going to be speaking next and all that my website has not been updated recently, but I swear to God, I’m gonna get to it soon.
Diana Rodgers, RD
All right. Well, thank you. It was such a pleasure to talk to you. I know I hope to be working with you soon on this other project we were talking about offline. So I’m excited.
Lierre Keith
Yes. Exciting.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, have a great day. And, folks, I highly recommend The Vegetarian Myth. For anyone who’s even squeamish about meat. I meet a lot of moms who know that meat is good for their kids and they maybe don’t eat it themselves, but they know they should feed their kids. I just think it’s just such a wonderful reinforcement of why meat is so important. So it’s really just such a great contribution. Thank you so much.
Diana Rodgers, RD
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