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Does Meat Rot In Your Colon? No. What Does? Beans, Grains, and Vegetables!
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March 8, 2013
12:39 pm
Dave
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@ Eddie Watts,

Thanks! I spent many years with an ever expanding gut that I assumed would stay with me until I died. Now I'm in my 40s and have a 29 inch waist! The best part about it is that I'm eating foods that I love (not tasteless, hard-to-prepare, low-fat 'whole plant foods'), and I don't have to 'exercise.'

Hmmm. It's about time to read my copy of The Gnoll Credo again...

March 9, 2013
4:12 am
eddie watts
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wow sabrina wins the most wacky post award!

ph2 in the stomach before food goes in. once you add anything into this the ph will change, much like adding water to cordial or squash.

March 9, 2013
9:07 pm
AardeMan
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Brilliant discussion and epic article!

Keep up the good work!

March 10, 2013
11:30 pm
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Attention, all commenters!  Please keep these points in mind when replying:

1. The purpose of this article is to address one very specific topic: the claim that "meat rots in your colon".  Making the general case for veg*anism vs. omnivory is not only a non sequitur, it's beyond the scope of one article -- and most certainly beyond the scope of a comment.

2. Please read, at the very least, my responses to comments before asking a question (or making a statement).  I have previously answered many of these questions: asking them again says, to me, that you're not interested in productive dialogue and are just spouting off.

Yes, there are a lot of comments!  Deal with it.

Live in freedom, live in beauty.

JS

March 11, 2013
1:40 am
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Chad:

First, only 35% (appx.) of Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarian.

Second, the lifestyle differences between Seventh Day Adventists living in Loma Linda and the average American are, to put it mildly, not limited to their dietary choices...so ascribing the difference to vegetarianism is optimistic.

Third, Paleo is not generally an all-meat diet.  (Though it is within the template, it's very infrequent.)

Fourth, the only groups who ate a Paleo-compliant diet during a period of history recent enough to have good records (e.g. the Inuit, Hadza, Ache, !Kung, etc.) did not have access to antibiotics, or any medical care at all -- let alone live next to one of the premier medical clinics in the world (Loma Linda Medical Center)!  Comparing lifespans of people who live in the wilderness and must hunt for their food to people who live in temperature-controlled houses, whose every need and want is paid for by the government, and who are treated by some of the best medical care in the world any time they suffer so much as a sniffle, is patently silly.  Drop a Seventh Day Adventist in the Kalahari Desert with the !Kung, and let's see how long he lives.

It'll take many years before we have robust statistics on the lifespan of First World residents following a Paleo template.  However, in contrast to the average vegetarian, fruitarian, or other low-fat zealot -- most of whose diet gurus tend to die well before the average American -- the older Paleo gurus seem to be doing quite well, e.g. Art Devany, S. Boyd Eaton.  (And the proto-Paleo diet advocates seemed to do well, too: Dr. Wolfgang Lutz lived to 97, while R. Buckminster Fuller lived to 87.)

Ellease:

"Man is driven by desire, fear and greed. He simply eats meat because he finds it delicious and has no respect for the animal because he thinks he is above them. And the very fact that you take pleasure out of eating meat yourself prove you wrong, man is hedonistic."

As I've said many times in my series on hunger, our tastes for food exist for a very good reason: humans that didn't desire the foods that were most nutritious for them tended to die out over time, and be replaced with those who did.  (Recall that we didn't co-evolve with Cheetos, Oreos, and microwave burritos...we co-evolved with animals, tubers, and in season, fruit, nuts, and vegetables.)

We don't desire meat because we're "sinful" or "hedonistic".  We desire meat because, for millions of years, humans that desired meat survived more frequently than humans that did not.  And there is ample fossil evidence for this, beginning (as of today) 3.4 million years ago at Dikika.

 

eddie:

It's a fundamentally religious argument: don't expect it to make too much sense.

 

Mattias:

"You kill/eat dead animals and call that freedom and beauty and life will show you the results! You numbnuts!"

Yes, I do.  Why do you suppose humans have such big brains?  It's not to dig potatoes or pick fruit...warthogs and monkeys are quite capable of that.

My results?  So far, they include being in the best mental and physical shape of my life, at an age where most people are rapidly sliding downhill.  And while the details are no one's business, I can confirm that eating more dead animals has produced anything but numb nuts!

 

More soon...this one caught fire, probably from being linked from veg*an forums.  (And these questions are grandfathered in because they were asked before my warning above.)

JS

March 12, 2013
1:42 am
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Serena:

"The answer is not to avoid fat, but to discover and heal the cause. "

Absolutely!  And the number of people who genuinely have fat absorption problems is very low.  AFAIK, even people whose gallbladder has been removed usually do fine if they increase their fat intake slowly.

 

Mary:

I hate to break it to you, but a pesco-anything isn't a vegetarian.  (Fish aren't vegetables.)  However, most fish (and shellfish) are quite healthy to eat -- and a fish-based version of paleo is perfectly reasonable, if often somewhat expensive.  So feel free to adapt the paleo template to your own needs and desires in that regard.

Paleo doesn't eschew vegetables...far from it!  We do, however, eschew beans and grains...both of which are incredibly nutrient-poor relative to fresh, whole foods like meat (including organ meats, fish, and shellfish), eggs, vegetables -- and even most tubers.

As far as fiber, insoluble fiber (the kind you get from "whole grains") actually increased mortality by 20% in the only controlled study ever done on it (DART)...and zero-fiber diets dramatically reduce or eliminate constipation in controlled trials!  The idea that eating things we can't digest is good for us is both bizarre and unsupported by the evidence.

The reason some studies associate vegetarianism, high-fiber diets, etc. with health is most likely the Boy Scout Effect.  We've been telling people for decades to eat more whole grains and fiber, less meat, etc.  So anyone who ignores that advice probably doesn't care much about their own health, and does lots of other unhealthy things that decrease their lifespan more than the fiber.  (Read this article for more ways in which statistics are used to obscure the truth, not reveal it.)

Re: the blood type diet, I know of absolutely no evidence that stomach acid levels are tied to blood type! Biochemical individuality is quite real...but it generally doesn't change the optimal diet.  It changes our ability to cope with suboptimal diets.

 

Paul:

Exactly.  We've been brainwashed for so long to believe that "vegetarian = healthy" that most people who try to clean up their diet call themselves "vegetarians", even when they eat fish...and sometimes chicken!  (Over 2/3 of self-identified "vegetarians" eat meat.)

 

Vicki:

The pH in a healthy human stomach is 1.5-3, depending on what we eat.  Our stomach secretes more acid when we eat meat, so eating meat actually helps us digest other foods!

Yes, soaking and sprouting beans does decrease their quotient of toxins and indigestible sugars.  And soaked and sprouted beans are far less offensive to the gut than grains!  However, it's a lot of work to produce something that is still nutritionally inferior to paleo foods, so I don't bother...except on an occasional trip to the local Indian restaurant, where I'll sometimes indulge in a bit of dal.

"Anyone who eats mainly meat will tell you they have bowel problems"

No, we don't.

"How can something sitting in your colon for a a week not be rotting"

Because meat doesn't sit in your colon for a week.

"Herbivores do not require cholesterol intake (because they make their own), where carnivores do require eating it because they do not produce their own."

Untrue.

"Plowing down the forests for fields? What do you think the fields are for?"

Grasses, flowers, bushes, trees, elk, deer, cattle, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, cougars, rabbits, mice, squirrels, raccoons, thousands of species of birds and beetles and insects...and they're all killing and eating each other or being killed and eaten.  We're just another part of that circle...if we do it right.

Or GMO soybeans soaked with Roundup, and nothing else. 

It's our choice.

And if you had read more carefully, you would know that corn and soybeans aren't the natural diet of cattle any more than they are the natural diet of people.  My freezer is full of a half beef that ate nothing but fresh, green grass its whole life, from unfertilized and unweeded pasture (turns out cattle do that better than chemicals).

 

Chase:

"Whoever created this is a dumbass and needs to be put in jail for spreading corporations lies and propaganda."

Really?  I'd sure love some corporate sponsorship...I bet it pays better than selling life-changing novels and T-shirts!

Unfortunately, articles like Real Food Is Not Fungible and You Are A Radical, And So Am I have most likely torpedoed any chance I have of getting fat checks in the mail from Big Ag.  (The veg*ans pushing veggieburgers and soy milk have a much better chance at that...)

"How about we eat you?"

Like most predators, I'm tough, stringy, and difficult to catch.

 

Ian:

"i would need a lot more evidence to convince me that eating meat is better for us than eating fruit and vegetables."

So would I!  That's why I've stated repeatedly that such evidence is far beyond the scope of this article.  I provide a long list of references at the end of Eat Like A Predator, and quite a few in the text...feel free to dig around there and make your own decisions.

 

More soon...it's going to take a while to catch up with all of this!  (And these questions are grandfathered in because they were asked before my warning above.)

JS

March 15, 2013
12:09 am
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eddie watts:

Exactly.  Constipation is often caused by a change in diet...possibly because it takes one's gut flora time to adapt to the new foods you're giving them.  And the only time I have such problems on paleo is when I'm dehydrated from intense activity...which makes sense, as one of the main functions of the colon is to recycle the water used in digestion.

 

ian:

Yes, there are a lot of comments.  Suck it up.

"i would also be interested in knowing what this guys average daily diet consists of."

Today was reasonably representative, so here it is.

Breakfast, lunch: nothing.  I fasted.

Dinner: the Asian variant of this recipe, with three eggs, about 1/2 pound of steak, a bunch of peppers and onions, and a small amount of white rice, cooked in coconut oil.  And a mixed baby green salad with olive oil/balsamic vinegar and about 1/3 of an avocado.

About an hour later: one pound of Dover sole, poached in butter.  (Usually I would eat more red meat, but the fish was on sale.) 

Dessert/cheat: handful of Sweet-Tarts (which are basically pure dextrose).

I may or may not eat again before bed.

"i also empty my bowels 2 or 3 times a day."

Bummer...that's a lot of running to the toilet!  I average once a day, which seems about right.  You might be eating too much indigestible fiber.

"cooked meat on its own is very bland, it is not until you add seasoning and condiments that it becomes what we call "tasty" and raw meat tastes absolutely horrible."

Speak for yourself!  I eat raw hamburger (grass-finished, from a local rancher) frequently...and really good, dry-aged cuts of meat require, at best, a hint of salt and pepper.

Of course, most people overcook their meat until it's bland and tough, because of their mistaken belief that it's terribly dangerous.  (No one has ever died from any store-bought cuts of meat, even hamburger...the only deaths are from factory-processed lunch meats or Jack in the Box.  Meanwhile, 30 people died from cantaloupes in 2011 alone...here's the list of all deadly foodborne illness outbreaks, so you can see for yourself that vegetables, cold cuts, and dodgy Mexican cheese are what kills people, not meat.)

"it is obvious that fruit was meant to be eaten by us because it tastes so good to us and right off the tree, no need to add anything else just pick it off the tree and eat it."

I have no problem with eating fruit, in season, and as dessert...but our teeth can't withstand the acids of regular fruit consumption, and that has been the case for at least four million years.  (Paleolithic hominins didn't have toothbrushes.)

All that being said, we probably agree on more than we disagree: our diet should be based primarily on foods that can be eaten raw, even if we prefer them cooked.  Add meat and eggs to your diet, and it probably looks a lot like mine!

Jen W:

It's true that fruits and veggies out of season are either shipped from a long way away at ridiculous expense (e.g. Chile) or grown in hothouses, and simply don't taste as good.  Even store-bought produce in season doesn't taste as good as local, fresh produce bought directly from the farm!

And yes, that Dr. Briffa article is great!  (I should read his blog more.)

 

Dave:

"Interesting to see how many new people have shown up in the last couple of months. Also interesting that many of them apparently don't take the time to read all of the comments before posting theirs."

There's something about extremely restrictive diets that seems to cause their adherents to become evangelistic without regard to social norms.  You wouldn't just walk into someone's party, shout a long rant about how everyone there is killing themselves, and leave -- but that sort of behavior is disturbingly normal for long-time vegans, particularly the raw foodists and fruitarians.  ("I didn't bother to read the other comments, but I know mine is more important, so I'm going to subject you to it.")  I think the resulting nutrient deficiencies may be seriously impairing their ability to reason, and even to pick up on basic social cues.  Brains are mostly made of cholesterol and saturated fat, after all, and B12 is required for nerve myelination AFAIK...

"if viewed from the perspective of my pre-agricultural ancestors, just what kinds of calorie dense fresh plant food would be available during winter anyway (in the northern hemisphere)?"

That's why I don't stress about vegetables.  If I'm hungry for them, I'll eat them.  If not, no big deal.

Congratulations on your excellent progress!

 

More soon.

JS

March 15, 2013
12:32 am
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vicki:

"Where is this person getting their info? People do not have a ph of 2 with food in their stomach!"

Yes, they do.

Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2011 Dec;34(11-12):1269-81. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2036.2011.04874.x. Epub 2011 Oct 17.
Systematic review: the use of proton pump inhibitors and increased susceptibility to enteric infection.
Bavishi C, Dupont HL.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21999643

"Parietal cells secrete hydrochloric acid at a concentration of pH 0.8 and maintain a median daily pH in human stomach around 1.4."

You'll have to get some basic facts correct before I take any of your other claims seriously.

 

Alex:

Quite true.  And as I said before, ingesting meat causes your stomach to secrete more acid, so you'll actually digest anything you eat along with the meat much better!

 

we:

Go read this article, which rationally evaluates the claims made in Forks Over Knives:

Forks Over Knives: Is The Science Legit?

And for good measure, read this one about the book "The China Study" (a fraudulent misrepresentation of the data contained in the actual China Study):

The China Study

"Compare the human digestive system with meat eating animals versus plant eaters other than cows and horses!"

Our digestive system is much closer to a carnivore's than an herbivore's.  The fact that we can't digest cellulose, whereas we have specialized enzymes dedicated to breaking down connective tissue and other meat proteins, should clue us in to the fact that meat, not plants, is the foundation of the natural human diet.

Do I eat plants!  Sure!  In fact, my diet is probably closer to a raw vegan's than to the Standard American Diet: just add meat and eggs!  But after a while, you'll find that it's not enough to avoid food…you have to eat some, too. 

 

Dave:

You can also spend some time at Healthy Diets and Science.

And it's always a good time to read The Gnoll Credo again, as the reviews demonstrate.

 

AardeMan:

Thank you!  I was surprised that no debunkings of this absurd claim existed…so I had to write my own.

 

Wow!  That was a lot of comments...if the logs are to be believed, I got linked by McDougall's forum and a share-storm on Facebook.

Future commenters, see my warning above: these questions were grandfathered in, and I won't respond so politely to anyone who hasn't read the comments and is just here to spout propaganda.

JS

March 20, 2013
9:58 am
DJ
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JS... wondering if you've see this video yet:

Basically, Alan says that if we have MORE livestock eating what they're naturally supposed to eat... we can reverse desertification of our planet and slow down climate change. It would also provide enough meat for our growing population.

March 20, 2013
10:31 am
Madison, WI, USA
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@DJ,  that video has been linked here in several posts.

"Often we forget . . . the sky reaches to the ground . . . with each step . . . we fly."  ~We Fly, The House Jacks

March 20, 2013
11:11 am
DJ
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Ahhhh... thanks Jen. I haven't looked around on many threads, so it's quite easy for me to have missed it. I just thought it was relevant here because of all the comments talking about Paleo being sustainable.

March 21, 2013
5:54 pm
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DJ, Jen:

Yes, it's been posted several times before.  It's a great video, though, and I'll leave it here because the topic has come up so much in this comment thread.

JS

March 22, 2013
6:00 am
Kat
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All this vegan vs. meat eaters wars is so boring. This article is just as inconclusive as all other "studies". Every human is different and their body responds to food differently based on external and genetic circumstances. PLUS, every food product differs in nutritional content and modification according to what it is and where it comes from. The term "meat" is used so loosely here as if the facts would equally transcend across all meat products and variations, as well as the multitude of grains, vegetables and pulses. Articles like this are so destrucive because you're just getting another group of people riled up on limited information and opinion adding to the already totally misinformed debate about health, nutrition and diet.

March 22, 2013
6:25 am
Kat
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lol...you cant make all of your assumptions based on "science". Humans are not machines and everything we do is circumstantial. Go to northern Russia where you still find Inuits living on a diet of frozen whale blubber, seal, reindeer and vodka only, nothing ever cooked and no vegetables for their entire lives. Then travel to California to visit a man of the same age who eats pure vegan and they will probably share the same multitude of health. Although should they wish to swap diets, their body would find it very difficult to adapt and would struggle over a long period of time.
You are not appreciating the fact as it is. Diet contributes and is a factor of so much more in a person's life than just nutritional value and physical performance and each individual responds to their diet in a separate way, this is also heavily affected by their social circumstances.
If you are going to make a claim like: "This fact alone proves that humans, while omnivores, are primarily carnivorous"...you really ought to do more anthropological research, which im sure would take much longer than it did to decide to produce this on the net. You might also want to look into the faeces content of fossiled humans, as there are some incredible findings there.
Lay out your facts, but also realise that you are missing a lot of information to make any claims.
Personally, I think that this debate is ridiculous and will never be answered, as it is so inconclusive and fuelled by nothing but opinions. If we all just diverted our attention to what is happening to our food before it reaches our plates, instead of a stupid diet debate, then we would at least be able to make a more informed choice on what to eat having the access to clean, healthy food regardless of what it is. Meat or veg, our food is contaminated in so many ways through the process of commodification, and this is the real issue that needs to be addressed as this will affect our digestion more than anything else.

March 26, 2013
11:07 pm
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Kat:

As I've said before, the purpose of this article is to debunk one specific myth: that meat is not digested and rots in your colon over a period of days (or weeks, in some versions of the story!)

The facts are not inconclusive, nor are they subjective: that does not happen.

"If you are going to make a claim like: "This fact alone proves that humans, while omnivores, are primarily carnivorous"…you really ought to do more anthropological research, which im sure would take much longer than it did to decide to produce this on the net."

If you had looked at the index to this site, you would notice that I already did!  I've written a long article series on the subject, which reviews the archaeological evidence for hominin diets...and while I'm not yet finished writing the articles, I've spent enough time with the primary research to make and substantiate such claims.

Furthermore, nutritional relativism is a seductive concept, but it's clearly untrue.  Vegan diets are deficient in any number of essential nutrients (no, you won't get enough B12 from dirt or other vegan sources unless you eat your own poop), and the reason many are healthy is because they cheat or take supplements.  (Recall that roughly 2/3 of self-described vegetarians ate meat on one of two days their dietary intake was surveyed.)  Even vegans admit that vegan children require supplementation in order to grow and develop correctly.

Yes, the average vegan is probably healthier than the average consumer of the Standard American Diet, because for all its faults, a low-fat vegan diet eliminates many frank toxins: PUFA-laden seed oils (and the trans fats that inevitably accompany them), all fast food, and most industrially-produced junk food.  But the classic paleo diet is closer to a raw vegan diet than it is to the Standard American Diet...just add meat and eggs.

"Meat or veg, our food is contaminated in so many ways through the process of commodification, and this is the real issue that needs to be addressed as this will affect our digestion more than anything else."

I wrote that article too!  Real Food Is Not Fungible: How Commoditization Eliminates Nutrition, Impoverishes Farmers, and Destroys The Earth.

JS

March 27, 2013
11:41 am
Kat
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I will have a read at the requested articles...but...

"Furthermore, nutritional relativism is a seductive concept, but it's clearly untrue."
WRONG. I think you should travel more.

March 29, 2013
9:20 pm
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Kat:

"WRONG. I think you should travel more."

To where?  I've been on all the continents except Australia. [Edit to add: and Antarctica.]

Let me use my observations of Japan as an example, both from cities and from more rural areas.  Yes, older Japanese are skinny and tend to live a bit longer than we do.  They're also amazingly short (stunted by post-WWII malnutrition) and frequently suffer osteoporosis.  The younger a Japanese person is, the taller they are on average…and the more likely they are to be obese.  There were a few Japanese kids who were of Western height: many of them were also chubby, similar to American teenagers.  So while we can learn some things from the Japanese diet, they're not the apex of health, either.

That being said, I agree that I should travel more.  If people bought more books and T-shirts, maybe I could!

JS

April 1, 2013
8:20 am
AJ
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well first of all congratulations on this interesting article and great website!
i just want to say that while i, too, think the statement 'meat rots in your colon' is BS (of course, too much meat kinda does, theres a limitation to everything and too much of anything can be bad for you;humans can digest up to ~30grams of protein per meal),
and im thinking highly of paleo concepts myself,
what bothers me here is this:

"Grasses, flowers, bushes, trees, elk, deer, cattle, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, cougars, rabbits, mice, squirrels, raccoons, thousands of species of birds and beetles and insects…and they're all killing and eating each other or being killed and eaten. We're just another part of that circle…if we do it right."

actually, we're not.we might have been a long time ago, but humans evolved. humans developed something called 'ethics' and are actually proud of not being slaves to their instincts and not having to act like animals anymore.

im not trying to start this old debate again and im well aware this is not in the scope of the above article. im just genuinely wondering if you are ever having (or had) this kind of thoughts since im struggling with those issues myself and am switching back and forth between paleo and veganism (i know that sounds crazy). and while i do think theres absolutely no reason not to eat meat (in appropriate amounts ofc, most average people eating probably too much living an inactive lifestyle not being able to metabolize it) from a health perspective, the ethical aspect makes me think pretty much.

Sometimes i think of killing and eating animals (which almost no human absolutely has to do to survive these days!) as some kind of racism since you descriminate another species by saying their right to live is less important than your right to taste something good.it doesnt seem to be concurrent with our humanistic existence.

You wrote: "and the reason many [vegans] are healthy is because they cheat or take supplements."
...so what? if thats the only price to be paid to spare other lives wouldnt it be worth it? i really dont know!

April 5, 2013
8:41 am
eddie watts
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the "30g protein is the maximum you can absorb in one meal" is possibly the most stupid thing that has caught on in nutrition.
(AJ this is not aimed at you a LOT of people believe this!)

it was started by Joe Weider from what i have gathered around the time the company released a product that contained.....30g of protein!

if a person was to eat a 20 ounce steak every bit of protein would be absorbed. if i was at home i'd link a video by biolayne (PHD in protein synthesis) explaining all this.
(there is also an amount to get maximum effect pwo which is often where people get confused too)

as to the humane sid eof things: there is nothing, literally *nothing* that humans do that do not kill animals.
computers? made of fossil fuels (plastic) all components are made of materials that are finite and we have to destroy the natural world to get them. (metals i'm thinking here)

any food bought from any supermarket chain supports their many non-ethical practices (the least of which imo is actually killing animals for food)

personally i think we can afford now to raise animals in a free range and organic manner and afford to feed the world in that way.
we won't due to money.

April 6, 2013
1:01 am
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AJ:

If we limit the ethical conversation to the immediate death of the animal we eat, of course meat-eating appears to be immoral.  However, the point I was making (perhaps far too subtly) is that meat-eating is an absolutely necessary part of any functional ecosystem, and therefore not just morally justifiable -- it's morally mandatory.  

Think about agriculture for a moment: we kill all the other plants and animals in an area of land so that it can be devoted entirely to growing and harvesting a crop humans eat.  Add the destructive impact of fossil fuels necessary to make the fertilizer (3-5% of world natural gas production goes into the Haber process to make ammonium nitrate fertilizer), the pesticides and herbicides, etc.  

Then remove all that biomass each year and feed it to humans, who digest it and flush it down the nearest toilet.  Plants aren't magic: they're made of soil and water.  What do you suppose is happening to the topsoil here?  Answer: it's disappearing, and that's why ancient agricultural regions are now deserts (see: "Fertile Crescent")...agriculture destroys the land in the long term, which is a permanent death sentence to all the animals that used to live there.  As I said in this article:

"...Industrial grain production impoverishes our farmers, destroys our soil and our water, and leaves barren landsalt flats, and dead ocean deltas in its wake. It demands unimaginable amounts of fossil fuels to create nitrogen fertilizer, toxic herbicides and pesticides, and giant sowing and harvesting machines, and to transport the grain from the Midwest to where people actually live. It demands giant, river-killing dams to fill irrigation canals. It strip-mines fossil water, pumped fromunderground aquifiers that took millions of years to fill—all to grow corn, wheat, and soybeans on land best suited for grazing livestock on perennial grasses."

In contrast, all the "waste" from grazing animals (all that "inefficiency" in turning cattle feed into cattle flesh, which the vegans endlessly trumpet) is returned to the land as urine and feces.  In other words: fertilizer.  (Think about it: if grazing destroyed the land, the Great Plains and the Serengeti would have blown away into dust millions of years ago from the millions of herd animals grazing on them.)

That is why grazing animals are carbon-negative -- they fix more carbon than they emit, and well-managed grazing actually restores the land.  Here's Allan Savory demonstrating how:

Allan Savory: How to green the world's deserts - YouTube

Summary: agriculture destroys land and life, meat-eating (done correctly) restores land and life.  I'm killing one animal, which will be replaced by its kin.  Agriculture kills all the animals that could ever live on that land.

Those are my ethics -- and I've got a rapidly-diminishing grass-finished half beef in the freezer, from Hat Creek Grown, to back them up.

Meanwhile, go check out eatwild.org if you're interested in finding sources closer to where you live.

I wish you the best on your journey. 

eddie:

You're right: the "30g limit" on protein is a broscience myth.  I didn't know it originated with Weider, though!

JS

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