As of the time of writing this post, a review of this book is the most read item on the UK Guardian Newspaper blog, Comment is Free.
While I find a lot to agree with in the underlying arguments, I have a lot of problems how both George Monbiot author of the review, and Simon Fairlie author of the book in question, present their points of view.
First Mr. Monbiot, apparently never a vegan himself, first says veganism is the only ethical diet, then changes his mind some months later. Now he claims not only was he wrong before, but in fact veganism promotes factory farming by way of being left out of the debate. What a load of rubbish.
I am not vegan, nor have I ever been, but how can you possibly claim in any way being vegan promotes factory farming? The simple fact is we live in a world where non factory farm animal products are all but totally unavailable except to a small handful of people, like those that live on the very disfunctional sounding permaculture settlement Mr. Fairlie describes in his book. If ethical animal products are unavailable, and buying any animal products at all means purchasing those of factory farm origin, how can you say it’s unethical to not buy or use them?
Next the suggestion the fat and protein from animals is somehow necessary for a healthy diet is seriously flawed. The vast majority of vegans and vegetarians live happy and healthy lives, without the need of any animal products or food supplements. The fact that people living on Fairlie’s permaculture settlement were purchasing such outside food suggests other problems than a lack of animals.
In fact, while his argument that animals are a critical part of the permaculture cycle is certainly true, this cycle could be maintained by raising animals and composting the dead carcases and by-products. There is nothing in the animal products themselves that would have improved their diet or in any way reduced the need to import external food items.
The argument can certainly be made that there would be little harm in consuming animal products made under such circumstances, and like Fairlie points in roughly half the quantities currently consumed by the average person now. The problem of course is that not everyone is willing to cut their meat in half, and given this some people will have to stop eating meat for the numbers to balance out. There will likely always be the need for some people to be vegan and vegetarian, and these people are not ethically wrong.
Finally there are Fairlie’s comments about the UN report on climate change that showed meat contributed 18% of global greenhouse gasses. Fairlie himself concludes this must be 10%, which is still a lot.
It’s clear there were some problems with how the figure of 18% was arrived at. In fact it’s amazing any figure was quoted at all. Apparently this was not a formal part of the report, but rather a number cited privately by the committee chair, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Since he is the committee chair, his comments are a little more than informal, and have to be (and should be) considered official.
What sort of climate report would have omitted this figure in the first place?? The very fact this figure had to come out in the way it did suggests contrary to what Fairlie says about some strong initial bias against the meat industry, rather there was intensive lobbying on their part to keep these figures out of the report entirely. In the end, even if 10% is what emerges, it’s a very damning figure. Dr. Pachauri did the world an enormous favor by raising awareness and starting debate over the issue at apparently great personal expense.
Dr. Pachauri has received an enormous amount of criticism over his use of non peer reviewed information in the UN report, and I think this is very unfair. It’s true, we depend on science to learn the truth on these matters, and peer review is a very important way of arriving there. At the same time we live in a world where small groups of people control the funding that drives modern science, and the interpretation of facts can be grossly distorted with simple denials of fact, that lead to conclusions based on the lowest common denominator of what can be agreed or proved. It’s important in these cases that peer reviewed science be used to enhance our understanding of the world, and not to stifle the truth. In the absence of truly independent and unbiased science, it’s important the whole of what’s known be available for people to debate and discuss, and a best effort of truth be achieved with information from all reasonable sources, then documented for what it is.
Hi Patrick
I have not yet read the book but have read some of Simon Fairlie’s other work i.e. Can Britain Feed Itself? I have also met Simon few times at the West Country Scythe Festival. My interruption of the review is slightly to yours. From a self supporting point of view the use of meat, dairy and egg at a fraction of the current rate makes sense, at least in a temperate climate like the UK. I would expect the benefits are of an ecological, social justice and food security nature. I don’t think there would be any suggested health benefits.
Your blog has help me become a more informed (hopefully more ethical) consumer and a more active producer. I grow all my own garlic, a wide verity of potatoes and this year for the first time have grown potatoes from true potato seeds. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the nice comment padraic!
I hope I haven’t led you astray too much… I also hope your TPS do well, please let me know how they do.
Patrick you are very wrong about the nutritional benefits of oils and fats from animals vs plant oils. For one the essential long chain fatty acid omega-3’s EPA and DHA are not in any plant on earth. The only source is from algae in the ocean and eaten by crustaceans and fish which we then ingest. We can eat foods rich in the short chain omega-3 ALA such as walnuts and convert them at 5% efficiency but need 158g per day to get even close to our recommended daily intake – bit like the inefficiencies of energy dense grains into cattle. Pasture reared ruminants such as sheep have a reasonable level of the long chain omega-3’s EPA and DHA within the intramuscular fat due to them eating short chain omega-3 ALA rich grass every day and are a great land based source of LC omega-3 in a healthy balanced diet that the majority of the population eat. People do not eat enough LC omega-3 in the western diet and “default livestock” do provide a dietary source of long chain omega-3 as no plant in the world can produce them. So animal oils do provide essential nutrients and fatty acids that plant oils cannot produce. Sure you can get short chain from plants but it comes back to the debate about efficiencies and land usage – the arguments against biofuels prove that plant based oil production isn’t that efficient and our conversion at 5% isn’t that great is it? Every plant species has a unique fatty acid profile and so does every animal species which we can use to nourish our bodies and animals fats contain essential nourishment that plants cannot, that is a peer reviewed fact!
Will,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Since the beginning of civilizations there have been vegetarians and vegans. Before WWII and the growth of the meat industry that followed, the majority of the world’s population was arguably vegetarian.
Even today, a very large portion of the worlds population, especially in Africa and Asia, eat very simply compared to western standards.
It’s not uncommon in Asia for example to find people living almost exclusively on rice or potatoes supplemented with small amounts of legumes like beans and vegetables. This is true in Africa too, but corn is also common there.
While there are sometimes nutrition related problems in the developing world, there are virtually no problems related to a vegetarian or vegan diet and there never have been. It’s not necessary, or even possible in most cases, to pay attention to what they eat and eat more of something or less of something. It’s also just not necessary for these people to know what’s in their foods; protein, calories, fatty acids, B12 and so on.
Statistically speaking vegetarians and vegans live happy healthy lives, without any special health problems or diseases. On average, vegetarians live slightly longer and tend to be slightly healthier than meat eaters.
This is all there is to being vegetarian or vegan. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, you just are, and there are no special requirements. Contrary to popular myth, vegetarians do not feel unwell or hungry or want to start eating meat. Almost all vegetarians enjoy what they eat.
Why do we pay so much attention to what our food contains?
The reason we pay so much attention is because that’s how the food industry makes much of their profits. When people pay attention to what their food contains, the go out and buy food that has more of one thing or food that has less of something else. We’re supposed to be afraid of sugar, so we buy Nutrasweet products, and so on. In this way people stop paying attention to the overall quality of the food they eat, and focus instead on processed foods.
This past year in Europe there was quite a big controversy over food labeling. The food industry spent €1 billion lobbying the European parliament, a record amount of money, to pass legislation requiring them to label the nutritional content of foods.
Why would the food industry spend so much money on a law requiring themselves to label foods? It’s because Europeans have a long tradition of caring about the quality and source of their foods, and the food industry wanted them instead to start thinking about calories, sugars, fat, unsaturated fat and sodium.
The food industry has also spent huge amounts of money paying traditional European news outlets to carry ‘infomercials’ on the nutritional aspects of foods, like not eating too much salt or connecting weight gain to calories.
In other words, the food industry is trying to teach the European consumer to eat more processed foods, something they’ve already been pretty successful in doing in the US.
there are virtually no problems related to a vegetarian or vegan diet
Lack of B12 can be a problem if one believes that B12 can be found in plants. Contrary to rumors, there are no reliable, unfortified plant sources of vitamin B12, including tempeh, seaweeds, and organic produce. The overwhelming consensus in the mainstream nutrition community, as well as among vegan health professionals, is that plant foods do not provide vitamin B12, and fortified foods or supplements are necessary for the optimal health of vegans, and even vegetarians in many cases. Luckily, vitamin B12 is made by bacterial fermentation such that it does not need to be obtained from animal products.
If someone wants to chase the B-12 in plants “truth”, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/gquery?term=b-12%20plants is a good place to start.
Regards,
Mike
Hi Mike,
The issue with B12 is not if it’s present in plants, I think this is pretty widely accepted not to be the case.
The issue with B12 is if it plays any important role in health or if it is of any concern to vegans and vegetarians or any one else for that matter. Yes, I know, there are lots and lots of people who say it’s important, but there’s not a lot of real evidence.
It exists in almost all animal products, and it stays in the body a long time. Some people seem to need it more than others, some people store it longer than others, and the need for it seems to depend on lots of things. The very rare disease that goes along with it ‘Pernicious anemia’ is not even always successfully treated with B12 supplements, and sometimes even occurs in people with high levels of B12 in their bodies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pernicious_anemia
Statistically speaking there’s not a lot to suggest vegans are more likely to get this disease, and in any case they’re probably more likely to get run over by a car. I have not personally seen anything I would consider credible evidence to suggest there is any true importance of this in people’s diet.
Like I said above, people have been vegetarians and vegans for thousands of years and there has never been any disease or health problem linked specifically to them as a group. Also like I said, statistically they live slightly longer and slightly healthier lives. This was going on way before modern food science told us we had to pay attention to the components our food was made of.
You can make a similar argument I make here with everything people talk about associated with being vegetarian; protein, fat, omega-3, omega-6 or whatever. Vegetarians simply don’t need to eat more or less of anything.
Similar arguments can be made of non-vegetarian foods. A good one is calories. Supposedly calories are bad for us and eating too many will make us fat.
Measuring calories goes back to 1824. The amount of calories in food is determined by burning food, and measuring the heat that’s given off. There’s absolutely no evidence that this is in any way has anything to do with human health. There’s no reason to believe your body breaks down food in a way similar to burning it, or any reason to think you can compare those two things.
Yes, we know if you eat a low calorie diet you will probably lose weight. Especially since we know that virtually no one can keep weight off in the long run with such a diet, there’s no credible evidence that eating fewer calories has anything to do with health.
Supposedly we must be afraid of sugar, because it contains calories, and we are supposed to believe all sugar is the same. There is simply no credible evidence that moderate amounts of normal sugar is bad for you in any way. On the other hand, the obesity epidemic and soaring incidence of diabetes in North America is directly related to the introduction of high fructose corn syrup and factory farm meats.
As intelligent and free thinking people, we don’t need to pay attention to what components make up our food. We only need to make sensible choices, not eat too much obvious garbage and avoid eating too many processed foods. Like Michael Pollen said ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’
The only reason to pay any attention to any of the components of food is to make the food industry richer and learn how to eat processed foods. It’s the food industry after all that provides nearly all funding for ‘modern food science’.
It’s this need to pay attention to the components of food that’s causing this epidemic of food disorders. People who are afraid of food, or sometimes binge on others. There’s no reason for anyone to be afraid of what they eat, if they are eating sensible foods.
Hi Patrick,
there are lots and lots of people who say it’s important, but there’s not a lot of real evidence.
Yes, there is – In addition to the peer reviewed references in the veganhelath.org link that I provided, there’s http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=(b12%5BTitle%5D)%20AND%20deficiency%5BTitle%5D
Vegans tend to have less calcium in their diet and, as a result, have a higher bone fracture risk. (Appleby P, Roddam A, Allen N, Key T. Comparative fracture risk in vegetarians and nonvegetarians in EPIC-Oxford. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2007; 61(12):1400-1406.)
I’m not vegan nor vegetarian although what we’re doing in the garden is tending towards a vegetarian diet. In our climate where winter fodder is required, a vegetarian diet requires less land under cultivation since you are not cultivating to feed your animals. Less land under cultivation means less complexity means more robustness. Sadly, discussions involving vegetarianism and, in particular, veganism tend to be polarized. B12 is often a flashpoint.
Mike
Mike,
With 1140 articles to go through, it’s a bit much.
On the first page I don’t see anything that suggests B12 deficiency is any sort of systemic problem for vegans. Lots of drugs with B12 deficiency as a side effect. It looks like a few known genetic problems interact with B12 deficiency. I see a few rare conditions can be caused by B12 deficiency.
Lots of the article titles are very extreme sounding, and 1140 is a very impressive number!
Do you care to go through them all and point out something that supports the the idea that B12 deficiency is an unusual problem with vegans, or that they have significantly higher health problems?
Do you want to give a link to the article about vegans and calcium?
With both B12 and calcium, it’s not enough to just say vegans diets have less and there are diseases associated with deficiencies, therefore vegans are at risk. Where is the evidence that vegans have unusual health problems that others don’t have?
Calcium deficiency has also been found in non-vegans, and one of the reasons is excess protein blocks absorption in the body. There was some controversy a number of years ago in the US, and dairy companies were prohibited from advertising their products were a good source of calcium because in fact some studies suggest there is a net loss of calcium when you drink milk.
I’m not vegan either, but I have never known one who was sick, unhealthy or should in any way be worried in a serious way about what they were eating.