The Vegetarian Myth

Over the past two decades, I've tried to get vegetarians, and especially vegans, to rethink their diet. I've told them that humans are adapted to eat eggs, fish, shellfish, and meat; that if they didn't eat these foods, they were threatening their future health and well-being. I don't think I was at all successful, perhaps because I've never been a vegetarian myself. I hadn't been a true believer. And vegetarianism/veganism is a belief system.

Then I read Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth: food, justice, and sustainability. It is a clarion call to vegetarians and vegans from a former vegan who followed their dietary tenets religiously for 20 years,and in the process destroyed her health and probably reduced her lifespan.

But this book is not just for vegetarians. It is written for all of us because it is about food and what our diets, no matter what we eat, are doing to the soil of the Earth, which is also the soul of the Earth.

Lierre Keith is a passionate writer who makes you feel her pain and despair.  She desperately wanted the vegan lifestyle to be the salvation not only for herself, but for Earth and all its living organisms.  But after 20 years, and near death, she finally realized that her diet was killing her.  And when she began to really study the process of food acquisition, Keith also realized that the vegan diet was killing the Earth.  Instead of being Earth's salvation, it was Earth's doom.

This may sound overly dramatic, but once you read her book and digest all the research she has done, you will realize that I have only stated the basic facts.

As a biological anthropologist, I can state that we have known since at least the mid-1980s that the origins of agriculture began a destructive process which is only accelerating.  Humans are not meant to live on a grain-based diet.  When grains are the primary source of nutrition, health is compromised.  Just this week (6/18/2011), another study was published detailing the decline and fall of health with the rise of agriculture: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110615094514.htm

Keith approaches the reader as a fellow traveler who wants to do the right thing, and who guides the reader to see the truth even when it conflicts with deeply held beliefs.  The major divisions of the book are directed at Moral Vegetarians, Political Vegetarians, and Nutritional Vegetarians.  She concludes the book with a plea to Save the World. 

As a Moral Vegetarian, Keith states that, "...I had bet my whole moral system--and built my whole identity--on the idea that my life did not require death."   Factory farming of animals is a terrible, destructive process.  But so is destroying marshes, grasslands, and forests to grow more grains.  What about all the killing of those ecosystems to provide the wheat and corn and soy for the vegan's diet?  What about the destruction of topsoil?  Is that really morally better than eating eggs and fish?

"Find a small wild spot somewhere, the edge of a parking lot, the tree outside your window, and watch.  Really watch.  This is what you will see:  everything is eating and then being eaten, and through it all life endures.  This is no hierarchy, only hunger.  And it's through our hunger that we participate in the cosmos, in an endless cycle of life, death, and regeneration."

Political Vegetarians believe that their diet will preserve resources to feed the world's hungry.  If there are no cows to feed, then more people can be fed.  They believe things like: "...a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only two producing cattle."  Keith responds, "Set aside the fact that a diet of soy, wheat, or corn will result in massive malnutrition--along with fun stuff like kwashiorkor, pellagra, retardation, blindness--and ultimately death."  Such a farm will also destroy the soil.

"It is not my project to try to feed every human being that we can produce while we chew the planet to the bone.  I'm not asking, How many people can be fed? but a very different question: How can people be fed?  Not, What feeds the most people? but What feeds people sustainably?  We need a full accounting.  The absolute bottom line is: what methods of food production build topsoil while using only ambient sun and rain?  Because nothing else is sustainable." [italics in original]

As for Nutritional Vegetarians, "The first myth of the nutritional vegetarians--that we aren't meant for meat--is another fairy tale filled with inedible apples."  This myth is the result of research on foraging populations misclassifying all gathered foods (primarily collected by women) as plant foods.  Much of what was gathered were actually animal foods: fish, shellfish, "insects, grubs, reptiles, small mammals."  The plant foods were primarily nuts, fruits, berries, and tubers.  Grains?  Not so much.

As Keith points out, citing the extensive analysis of the physical and dental health of foraging populations done by Weston Price in the early 20th century, populations eating a traditional foraged diet were extremely healthy.  When they switched to a grain-based Western diet, their health, and especially that of their children, declined.  "Of course the food with the most minerals are marine foods, which is why the healthiest people Price found were coastal-dwelling fishing peoples."

Lierre Keith concludes her book with a radical plea to change the world.  This may be the most difficult chapter of the book since it requires the most of reader.  Keith does not believe that small, incremental change will be able to solve the food production problems.  It will require massive, radical change.  Since even small changes disturb most individuals, I have grave doubts that the radical changes Keith wants such as the end of agribusiness, the revival of small family farms, eating locally, and massively reducing the human population, will occur until we are left with no choice.  At which point, it probably will be too late for us.

I strongly urge everyone to read this book.  If nothing else, it should make you think about dirt, our precious topsoil, in a whole new way.

Teens and the BioSocial MisMatch

Teens in the 21^st century are at a point of extreme mismatch between their biological maturity and their social maturity.  The mismatch for girls actually begins in the tween years (9 – 14), while for boys the mismatch may not become a problem until age 16 or so.  The mismatch is easier to track with girls because they have a definite biological landmark: menarche.

In the 19^th century, girls did not reach menarche until they were about 16.5 years old.  By the time they were 18 or 19, they were probably married with their first child on the way.  Biological development was in sync with social development.  [Girls do not become fully fertile until around 18 months after menarche.]  

Beginning in the 20^th century, the age at which menarche occurred gradually dropped, while the age at which a teen was considered an adult rose.  Now in the first decade of the 21^st century, girls reach menarche at an average age of 12.5 years, fully 4 years younger than 150 years ago, but they are generally not considered to be adults for another 8 years or so.  And the current average age at first marriage for women is 26 years.

While the average age at menarche is 12.5 years, the range is about 9 – 14 years: those same tween years.  It should be no wonder that younger and younger girls are dressing and acting like their older peers.  A girl who reaches menarche at age 10 is fertile by age 12.  Her hormones are pushing her to mate and reproduce, with unfortunate consequences given how out of sync she is with the currently-accepted age for social maturity.  

The mismatch is just as difficult for boys.  In the 19^th century, a boy often would have been apprenticed by age 13, learning to do productive work.  By the time he completed his apprentice-ship in his late teens, he would have been able to support himself, and maybe also a wife.   In the first decades of the 20^th century, many young teens left school early to help support their families, despite compulsory schooling laws mandating attendance until age 16.  However, the enactment of child labor laws in 1938 in the United States made it difficult for young teens to do productive, paid work.   

As with girls, a boy’s age at biological maturity was declining at the same time that the age at which society considered him socially mature was increasing.   Gluckman, Beedle, and Hanson (Principles of Evolutionary Medicine) believe “…this mismatch plays a role in teenage depression, acting-out behavior, drug abuse, and suicide.”  [p.237]

The psychosocial mismatch of the 21^st century is the result of unintended consequences of what were otherwise positive changes.  Age at biological maturity declined because children are healthier and better fed.  Enactment of child labor laws protected children from exploitation.  Age at social maturity increased because our society has become more complex, requiring more years of education to achieve success. 

Our educational system has changed little since the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Yes, students now learn keyboarding instead of typing, but the overall structure and content has changed very little.  The result is that biologically mature teens are locked into a structure that treats them as if they were children because society is not yet ready for them to be adults.  In fact, the current educational structure may actually encourage social immaturity, thus exacerbating the problem.  Biologically mature teens behave like children because we want them to still be children.  The result is that due to this mismatch, many teens make unfortunate decisions with life-changing consequences.

The Greatest Legacy

Today, August 26, 2009, Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy died. Senator Kennedy spent his entire career attempting to make the United States (and the World) a place where everyone, not just the privileged few, would have a bright, healthy future.

The United States has become a much better, more open society thanks to the efforts of Senator Kennedy. A society where everyone has the opportunity to make contributions is one that is more creative and dynamic. One that will be able to continue to lead the world in the 21st century as it did in the 20th.

Unfortunately, there is a segment of US society that wishes to limit access; that wishes to maintain their status quo. Sadly, they do not appear to understand that societies that do these things stagnate, wither, and die. Creativity and change are necessary for a dynamic, growing society.

If the United States is to be the world leader that it has been in the past, more change, more opportunities for all its citizens will be required. The greatest legacy that Senator Kennedy would wish to leave to all citizens of the United States would be universal health care.

Tens of millions of Americans have either no or limited health insurance which means they receive inadequate health care. Failure to provide adequate insurance and health care to all of it citizens means that the United States is failing to reach for the future. As much as some of us might wish to hold on to the past, it slips away. If the United States is not to slip into the past, and become a has-been, a backwater, changes must be made.

The Greatest Legacy will be when the Congress passes the health care bill championed by Senator Kennedy. Then all the citizens of the United States will be given the opportunity to achieve a Bright, Healthy Future.