Sorry, Vegans, But A Herbivorous Diet Won’t Save The Planet

@becci_wright Sorry, vegans, but a herbivorous diet will NOT save the planet #vegan

Vegans love to argue that their diet and lifestyle is morally, ethically and environmentally superior, that it is ‘evil’ carnivores who are responsible for global warming and climate change but, because they believe themselves to be morally superior, they never stop to think of the impact their own diet and lifestyle is having on the environment and climate. It’s very easy to spot a vegan in the wild, because they never miss an opportunity to advertise the fact on social media.

The very first issue is, of course, is that veganism puts humans ‘above’ animals, vegans do not think of Homo sapiens as an animal, it’s ‘us and them’. This is, of course, utterly nonsensical, of course we’re animals, we’re apes. Okay, that’s a rather overgeneralisation, I have met vegans that do acknowledge we’re animals, but they then go on to argue that, because every other species of Great Ape is ‘vegan’, that is ‘proof’ that humans shouldn’t be eating other species. There’s just one small flaw in this argument - every other species of Great Ape DOES eat meat; chimpanzees hunt colobus monkeys, and have even been known to engage in cannibalism; orangutans have been filmed fashioning sticks into spears and using them to catch fish; bonobos eat eggs and chicks, as do gorillas, and every species eats insects. These are uncomfortable facts, but facts they most assuredly are.

The second argument put forward by vegans is that humans are omnivores and can eat anything; this is very true, we are omnivores but, just because we can eat anything, doesn’t mean we should. Every omnivorous species must eat meat to be healthy. This is an irrefutable physiological fact, omnivores lack the correct enzymes for extracting nutrients from plants because, all omnivorous species are basically carnivores which have added plants to their diets over time (even pandas still have the physiology of carnivores and, due to this, they cannot extract much nutrition and energy from bamboo, which is why they only have one shot at reproduction every couple of years), and humans are no different, and diet and physiology-wise we are really most similar to bears (although not all bears are omnivorous, of course; a polar bear is, of course, solely carnivorous, and sloth bears eat mainly fruit, ants and termites), I’m referring to brown bears, whose diet is comprised of at least 90% meat and fish. Could a brown bear survive on nothing but berries, if it could find enough of them…? Sure, it could, but would it be healthy…? Most certainly not.

And thus it is the same for humans - there is a reason that those countries where people can’t afford to eat meat are those where malnutrition is endemic; they have no choice but to eat a plant-based diet, but the lack of nutrients eventually kills them. It is only in the affluent West we can afford to adopt such an unhealthy diet because we can simply pop supplement pills to counter malnutrition (and, I would therefore, argue that any diet which requires supplementation isn’t healthy).

Thirdly, in the practice of agriculture it is impossible to not cause endless suffering to many living creatures. One could argue that the most suffering of all is caused by annual agriculture, the cultivation of vegetables, including grains, beans, and rice, that only take one year to grow from seed to food. We displace countless wild animals from their homes and lands when we cultivate annual crops. Not only that, we also kill thousands of creatures when we till the soil.
A perennial agriculture, on the other hand, based on trees, shrubs, and livestock, allows nature to thrive.

Fourth, vegans never seem to think about the effect their diet and lifestyle has on global biodiversity; vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest is being cleared to grow soybeans, a vegan’s primary source of protein (I should mention that plants are an extremely poor protein source, not only are they incomplete (ie they lack one - or more - of the 9 essential amino acids) they are extremely poorly assimilated, only around 10% of protein from tofu, whilst you assimilate 100% of the protein from steak). The Amazon is home to at least ⅔ of the world’s endangered and critically endangered species (both animal and plant), and millions are being killed and displaced every year to satisfy your need for soybeans - and there you all are on social media boasting about not killing animals! It is an absolute truism to state that vegans kill many, many, many more animals than those of us who eat the diet we evolved to eat, in harmony with nature. If humanity stopped eating meat, it would wipe out every other land species on the planet.

Fifth (and this is something I’ve asked every vegan I’ve met and I’ve yet to have any kind of an answer): if we were to do as you propose, and we stopped eating meat

and animal products, what do you suggest we do with the:

* 1.6 billion cattle
* 1.2 billion domestic sheep
* 1 billion domestic pigs
* 1 billion goats
* 24 billion chickens

that there currently are on the planet (plus their offspring (and their offspring, and their offspring, etc., etc.) or do you think they’re magically going to stop reproducing and disappear if we stop eating them…?

Oh and as for it “not being that hard” to stop wearing animal skins and fur, are you proposing that the indigenous peoples of the (sub)Arctic die of hypothermia,…? You’re proposing that the entire human race becomes herbivorous, so surely you must’ve thought about this, yes…? The people of the (sub)Arctic hunt whales, seals, polar bears, moose, walrus, wolf, and reindeer - plus they have domesticated reindeer for dairy. They’re very economical, they ensure that no part of an animal is wasted (although they don’t eat polar bear liver as it contains toxic levels of vitamin A). What they don’t eat themselves, they feed to their dogs, and they fashion tools from the bones, and jewellery from walrus ivory. If a cow (female reindeer) is lactating, they will sometimes put their infants to suckle from her udder (reindeer milk is extremely nutritious, and has the highest fat content of any milk).

The best way to save the planet isn’t to change what we eat, but how we farm, and that means feeding our food its natural diet. Cows and sheep allowed to graze will produce no methane (they do so because the corn and soymeal they’re fed on feedlots ferments in their stomachs), and chickens and pigs are healthier and happier if they’re allowed to forage naturally. I don’t want to live on a planet which has been completely stripped of its biodiversity, which is why I eat meat, but I am careful about where the meat I eat comes from. Humans are not - and have never been - herbivores, we have always eaten meat (we didn’t domesticate plants until after the end of the last ice age, that’s a few seconds in evolutionary terms, no way long enough for our bodies to adapt to a plant-based diet (even pandas still sometimes eat meat). It’s taken the panda around 2.4 million years to adapt its gut flora to a largely herbivorous diet - you really think ours is going to adapt in 10,000…?!