Vegan virtues - Letter to the editor from the 2/3/05 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch... stltoday.com

Regarding the Jan. 22 article, "The challenge of being vegan," I was happy to see a full article on the subject, but I was disappointed by the overall tone. I realize it can seem to be a challenge to forgo many of society's traditional foods and products. But any change in a person's lifestyle can be challenging, even frightening.

It doesn't need to be a full-time job, though. My husband and I have no trouble finding a great variety of vegan products, and he actually enjoys shopping because he looks forward to seeking out new items to try. Many companies are creating healthy and cruelty-free alternatives. We aren't sacrificing anything.

By comparison, think of the work people on the Atkins diet do. Searching for the all-important "net carbs" and counting protein grams and so forth. But at the end of the day, they haven't helped anyone. In fact, their high meat intake has harmed the environment, the animals and themselves.
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I am writing a reply to this letter, and will post it here for your comments. I

Why do people who practice the vegan religion insist on taking swipes at the rest of us?

I am thinking about sending this letter to the Post Dispatch.
I do want to inflame anyone, just inform and defend my lifestyle.
I would really like to read your comments.
-niudog
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I am writing to take exception with Mary Chipmans’ letter “Being vegan is not a full time job”. If she wants to practice veganism, good for her, but don’t take a swipe at us low carbers? After reading her letter again, I realized it was nothing more than a cheap slam on Atkins and the low carb lifestyle.

If she truly understood Atkins and the low carb lifestyle, she would know that the basis of our diet is fresh meats and fish, a wide variety of fresh veggies, dairy products, and some fruits and nuts. I am living proof that this way of eating is very healthy. After losing nearly 60 pounds on Atkins, my high blood pressure is now in the normal range and my blood cholesterol readings are all excellent. This way of living is very healthy, and people who tell you otherwise are just uninformed.

She writes about our “high meat intake”, but my meat intake is not any higher than it was in my diet before I started Atkins. However, I do eat a lot more veggies than at any other point in my life. This includes one Lenten season a few years back when I tried to give up meat and eat vegetarian for those 40 days. I did allow myself to eat fish and dairy, so I never truly ate vegetarian during that time. It was a very difficult way of eating for me, so I can appreciate the sacrifices that vegans make.

She writes that “My husband and I have no trouble finding a great variety of vegan products, and he actually enjoys shopping because he looks forward to seeking out new items to try. Many companies are creating healthy and cruelty-free alternatives.” These lab created convenience foods or frankenfoods, are not really all that healthy to eat. While I do eat some man-made low carb foods and snacks, they are an occasional treat, not a daily staple in my diet.

This is a great big world, and no one way of eating is correct for all people. So I’ll end my letter with this question, “Why did she have to end her letter taking a swipe at people who do not practice veganism?”

You might find some good points to back up your argument in this article. It's a good rebuttal to the "meat eating destroys the world" concept.

(Edit) Read your letter and it's good. I would have added that her claims about veganism saving the environment are bogus. We need to control population growth, not feed everyone a diet to which we are NOT evolved.

niudog

Very Good!

THE RHETORIC OF VEGANISM

There is an eating disorder called orthorexia in which the sufferer links food with spiritual purity. Orthorexia is pandemic among vegans, and it is clearly in evidence in the original letter by the vegan couple. Notice the focus on "cruelty free." In the vegan imagination, meat production is a system of cruelty. Vegans maintain their innocence and purity by not participating in it. You and I, however, by being inveterate meat-eaters, are tainted by the system of cruelty. The more meat we eat the more we participate and the more impure we are.

There's a very interesting non sequitur in the letter. After bashing Atkins dieters for counting carbs, etc., the letter says: . Wait a minute? Why is a food choice supposed to help anyone? What kind of emotional baggage is being laid on food? The letter goes on to catalogue all the bad things Atkins dieters are doing simply through their "high meat intake."

In some respects, veganism is a form of Puritanism. Vegans are on a crusade to make the world more pure, and the touchstone for impurity is meat. That is why they can't simply leave Atkins dieters alone to make their own food choices because, in their eyes, we are not only impure, but defenders of the system of cruelty. That explains the vitriol and self-righteousness of PETA and the PCRM people.

Having said this, I do not mean to argue that there are no problems in the system of producing meat. No one should defend keeping animals penned their entire lives and force-feeding them growth hormones and antibiotics. But these problems stem from producing meat for profit, not from the mere fact of raising animals for food. Vegans, however, make no such distinction.

As far as the environment is concerned, growing plants for profit through intensive monoculture, requiring tons of pesticides and chemical feritilizers, is far more injurious than producing meat.

Well I appreciate your comments and have rewritten my letter using some of your ideas and words. I hope you dont mind. Now I have to see if I have the guts to send it to he paper. The last thing I want is a PETA rally in my driveway. Here it is...

I am writing to take exception with Mary Chipmans’ letter “Being vegan is not a full time job”. If she wants to practice veganism, good for her, but after reading her letter again, I realized it was nothing more than a cheap slam at the low carb lifestyle.

She writes, “By comparison, think of the work people on the Atkins diet do. Searching for the all-important "net carbs" and counting protein grams and so forth.”

Actually, counting net carbs is really no harder than counting fat grams as you would on a low fat diet, nor is it more difficult than checking labels for animal products as a vegan would do.

She goes on to say, “But at the end of the day, they haven't helped anyone.” I'm eating food, providing fuel for my body, and pleasure to my taste buds. Sometimes I make good food choices, sometimes I don’t, but I'm not trying to help anyone with my food choices.

She ended with, “In fact, their high meat intake has harmed the environment, the animals and themselves.”

If she truly understood Atkins and the low carb lifestyle, she would know that the basis of our diet is fresh meats and fish, a wide variety of fresh veggies, dairy products, and some fruits and nuts. I am living proof that this way of eating is very healthy. After losing nearly 60 pounds on Atkins, my high blood pressure is now in the normal range and my blood cholesterol readings are all excellent. This way of eating is very healthy. I have not harmed myself and people who tell you otherwise are just uninformed.

My meat intake is not any higher than it was in my diet before I started Atkins. However, I do eat a lot more veggies than at any other point in my life. This includes one Lenten season a few years back when I tried to give up meat and eat vegetarian for those 40 days. That was a very difficult way of eating for me, so I can appreciate the sacrifices that vegans make.

As far as the environment is concerned, isn't it possible that growing plants for profit using modern farming practices, requiring tons of pesticides and fertilizers, may be far more harmful to the environment than producing meat.

Having said all of this, I do not mean to argue that there are no problems in the system of producing meat. No one should defend keeping animals penned their entire lives and force-feeding them growth hormones and antibiotics. But these problems stem from producing meat for profit, not from the mere fact of raising animals for food.

This is a great big world, and no one style of eating is correct for all people. So I have to ask, “Why did she end her letter defending her vegan lifestyle by making negative comments about my low carb lifestyle?

I think it is a good letter and I would encourage you to send it. The only thing I would change is the first paragraph where you use the phrases "good for her" and "cheap slam." Depending upon how you read it -- and I am sure that people who are critical of low carbing will read it as critically as possible -- this could come off as a snide comment against veganism/vegetarianism. How about replacing it with, "I full support her decision to practice veganism, but after reading her letter again, I realized that her letter focused as much on criticizing the lowcarb lifestyle as on explaining the vegan lifestyle."

Sorry folks, sounds like I am the odd one out. I would hesitate in reacting to this comment. To do so confirms that the author's views have upset some of us (which, of course, might be true) but I would not give the author, nor anyone else, the satisfaction of knowing this. In this instance, discretion is the better part of valour.

If the letter is examined objectively the first question that arises is why the author needs to say what's been said, and the answer reflects the author's insecurities with which the author is finding difficulty in coping. In order to absolve oneself of the blame of harbouring such inadequate feeling the author finds it easier to project those 'imposters' outwardly and on to others. (It's not me boss, it's them)!

It is easy for those less discerning to pick-up this transference in feeling and to counter-transfer it, and so become engaged in the spiral of bitching!

The author is seeking attention and to provide it would serve only to feed her prejudice.

Finally, a small personal anecdote. For 18 years I was a vegetarian believing it to be a healthy diet, but, ended with having to have a quadruple by-pass! Streaky-bacon and eggs almost every morning fried in beef-dripping cured my cardiac problem but no one desires to hear of this.

A concluding 'PS'. While we breed animals for slaughter we also, incidentally, give life to more animals than would occur in the wild.

Thank yo all for your comments. Maybe it was just theraputic for me to write the letter???

I agree with Duparc that the pro-vegan letter writer was probably looking for attention, so I've opted not to send the letter.

Thanks again!!!

The point of sending the letter would not be to send a message to the original vegan letter-writer. You could use e-mail or snail mail for that. The point of responding in a public forum is to inform a public badly in need of information. Your letter would perform that service.

Why is wanting attention a bad thing? Why is that justification not to respond to complete nonsense? I've never quite understood that one.

Feeding the Vegan's prejudice is one thing, but by allowing the Vegan's nonsense to go unchallenged, we allow all the readers of her letter the impression that we have no answer to her spurious claims, or worse.

But let's talk some more about feeding the Vegan.

Clearing an acre of land for farmland kills hundreds of thousands of animals - insects, mice, voles, and songbirds at a minimum, and other wildlife as well, all the way up the food chain. This killing proceeds as long as the farmland is in service. If this acre could produce about 20,000 lbs of edible vegetable flesh a year, enough to feed about 100 Vegans for that year, then we can conclude that each Vegan causes several thousand animal deaths per year. (200,000 animal deaths divided by 100 Vegans equals 2,000 animal deaths per Vegan.)

On the other hand, killing a free-range cow for food kills one animal - the cow. One cow can be used to produce about 600 lbs of muscle meat, plus a wide variety of other potential foodstuffs (organ meat, marrow, gelatin, etc.) The nutrient-dense muscle meat alone could easily feed 3 people for a year. So, each meat-eater causes less than 1/3 of 1 animal death per year. Even if the meat-eaters ate the same weight of meat as Vegan's eat of vegetables, each meat-eater would still only need to kill one animal per year, compared to the thousands of animals that would need to die to feed the Vegan.

Okay! Let's reconsider this approach, of sending a letter, from another vista. Why the urge or indeed the urgency to preach to the public at large that your beliefs (not those of Niudog) are the only ones that are gospel?

Can't you see what you are doing?

If low-carbing has any merit, which current research is indicating, then its message will percolate along the 'jungle-drums' and the public will accept it when it is ready to do so and not through preaching by the converted.

If Joe Public and his family were to believe what the letter extolled they would readily abandon their delicious diet of cakes, cream, and apple crumble, and all become vegetarians, but, they don't, because he and his family use their own discretion, so leave them in peace.

Try to ask yourselves, why this published letter upsets you?

Duparc, as I understand it, your prior erroneous beliefs resulted in dietary practices that almost killed you - and furthermore, eating meat saved you.

I do see what I am doing - saving the lives of people like you once were. If my life were hanging the balance, I'd say that would be pretty damn urgent.

Low carbing has been around for decades, but I only learned about it a couple of years ago. If I can spare even one person the problems that caused me, then my urge would be justified.

I lost a fiancee to diabetes in the 1980's. Adopting a low-carb diet could have added years to her life.

It upsets me because it sounds so phony. It reads like a television advertisement for veganism. Imagine Neal Barnard standing in front of a camera reading it. I almost expect a request for donations at the end. Yuck.