There are significant differences between the three and variations within them. For my purposes, I will differentiate the vegetarian from the vegan as someone willing to eat dairy. Omnivores, which include the majority of Americans, partake in the consumption of dairy, meats and plant products.
Before we examine the arguments for veganism, which can be both intellectually lazy and canting, I will state that as far as I have researched vegetarianism appears to be the healthiest diet. A well-balanced omnivorous diet is a close second, and veganism is a sad and desperate third
place.
Let’s begin with the ethical argument for veganism that notes the “inhumane” treatment of animals in their processing and consumption. Note that, according to Dictionary.com, to be humane is to have humanity — the condition of being human and thereby having
compassion.
Many vegans I have spoken to state explicitly that they are uncomfortable devouring sentient beings. Their notion of what is sentient, however, is remarkably ambiguous and is incorrectly applied to some species and not others without any clear distinction as to why.
For example, if the definition of sentient requires that you have power of perception through the senses then plants are included since they can sense and react to stimulus. But if you state that an organism must have both perception of the senses and be conscious (self-aware), then many animals fall short, such as with cows, chickens and insects. Few animals are in fact sentient in the fullest sense of the word. Cows, chickens and many other barnyard creatures are not among them.
The other hypocrisy I find common to vegans is their focus on animal pain and a general disregard for human suffering.
A valid argument against the meat industry may be that human lives are injured in the process but vegans and vegetarians often cite only animal mistreatment. It is a strange arrangement of priorities. The same could be said of the clothing industry. Vegans tend to note the evils of these industries as per how they affect animals, disregarding entirely the people.
Slaughterhouses have among the highest on-the-job injury rates of any profession, and the clothing industry exploits millions of children around the globe for clothing processing. Yet it is still rare that I hear vegans and vegetarians express concern for people over animals.
If one is distraught by the treatment of cows or chickens in the food industry and your argument is predicated on the inhumane treatment (lack of compassion) of living beings, does this compassion not extend to human beings mistreated in the same industry? A similar comparison could be made to the clothing industry and the child labor that is exploited in the creation of apparel. I wonder how many vegans are conscious of where their clothes came from. Whether you bought it first or second hand you are potentially wearing a symbol of immense oppression.
Another argument made for veganism and against eating animals is that human beings have no part to play in the global ecosystem; that we are apart from the natural world. These ideas are never explained by vegans — they are simply stated as self-evident. Since the genetic code is largely universal, meaning the genes of lions and tigers and humans share much in common and are redundant in function and expression, one cannot say that human beings are outside of the natural world since our genetic material spawns from it. To conclude, human beings are entitled to participate in the natural world in the same fashion as other predators — to prey without regret or guilt.
Vegans often make the claim that people would not starve if we relied on their mode of diet exclusively. This is based on largely bogus studies that do not take into account governmental corruption, limitations of the environment, habitat destruction and cultural preferences.
Veganism is a luxury of the developed world because people in the West have access to the very broad selection of plant foods one requires to be a successful vegan. Indeed, grocery stores in America provide options to food not normally found in our geographic region or even hemisphere of the world. We also have the means to purchase such options and live under a system making certain that we are granted equal access to the foods we don’t just need but desire — which is why it bothers me when yuppie, well-to-do, white, middle class vegans have the expectation that the global community, or even national community, follow their persnickety dietary lead. It is not only morally presumptuous, but also arrogant, and it is a product of their over-privileged lifestyles that leads them to the ignorant conclusion that the world can afford to be vegan.
While it may be true that a vegan world would require less space for food it would not necessarily mean that there was any less habitat destruction. I might argue that more food means more people that require more space to live and thus less space for animals — you know, the creatures that vegans are so concerned about.
I might also argue that meat’s connection to starvation is incidental and it has less to do with meat and more to do with corrupt systems of government unwilling to provide for their people.
I might then further destroy vegan notions of a world-of-plenty by pointing out that to provide the battery of plant species one requires for a healthy vegan diet would demand climate controlled settings not viable in many countries. Geographically speaking, all plants cannot grow everywhere. That greatly limits what plant material you can grow in a given area. This means global shipping would still be required, biotechnology would remain a must, and insecticides and pesticides would have to remain because a local community cannot provide all vegan necessities or provide the world over with its dietary demands.
There is then the cultural issue. Cultures around the world have an intimate connection with the act of hunting and eating meat products. It is unrealistic and not within anyone’s authority to say that their cultural mores are more responsible than another’s, especially when you are a community as dishonest as vegans who state things such as, “vegan diets are universally healthier than omnivorous counterparts.”
While it is true that there are some benefits to veganism, they are not universal or consummate by any means.
According to the American Dietetic Association, vegan diets, if poorly balanced like any other diet, can cause serious health problems.
Among them are anemia, rickets, cretinism, osteomalacia in children and hypothyroidism in adults. A deficiency in vitamin B12, which is very difficult to come by in plant products, can cause neurodegenerative diseases. If stores of this vitamin are not sufficient before becoming a vegan, problems could ensue. Studies show that vegetarians willing to eat dairy products are in much better shape than vegans when it comes to this kind of vitamin build up.
Even the Vegan Society and Vegan Outreach organization state that vegans must take fortified foods and vitamins to maintain a healthy diet of B12 vitamins. What is more unnatural than taking a man-made vitamin? How do vegans get off discussing the “nature” of things when their diet dictates that they pop a pill to avoid malnutrition?
Iron is another issue. It is poorly absorbed in vegetarian and vegan diets, because human beings are not meant to be strictly herbivorous — so says our vestigial cecum and our inability to digest cellulose.
Calcium and vitamin D supplementation are yet another unnatural route vegans must take to compensate their deficient diets. It is exceedingly difficult for these individuals to get the vitamin D they need from a strictly veggie diet, especially in the winter.
The bottom line here is that a vegan diet is no different from any other diet in its greatness or efficiency, or benefits. If it is improperly conducted it can lead to malnutrition, just like how an omnivorous diet can lead to complications if imbalanced as well.
Vegans need to wake up and smell the coffee. They also need to stop pushing their agenda like religious fanatics. People who eat meat are not murderers nor are they unnatural. The only thing unnatural here is having to take a man-made dietary supplement because your nutrition is not up to par.
Human beings have both plant-eating and meat-eating teeth, molars and canines respectively. We are genetically set to consume both materials.
Now that you have some facts about veganism you might understand why everyone is not jumping on the bandwagon. Vegan diets can be expensive, flavorless, culturally unattractive, dangerous, monolithic and inaccessible. It is for these reasons that most vegans, in my experience, tend to be middle- to upper-class people who have access to the needed resources to make such a diet possible, and even then they do not have the facts about healthy veganism.
Talk to a professional nutritionist if you choose to go vegan and get the facts about what you need to do to maintain a healthy diet.