Vegan Vs. Paleo Debate
Vegan/Paleo Debate featuring Lierre Keith
Archeological Evidence Shows Paleo Diet Never Existed
1) I am a female.
2) I give the idea of this book 5 stars, but its execution 1.
3) I have been a radical vegan, a rabid meat-eater and everything in between (currently in the in-between)
4) I am working on an archaeological PhD on hunter-gatherer diets, subsistence, hunting and transition to agriculture.
I picked this book up after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals". I thought it would be interesting to read a different perspective on the vegetarian debate. I found Safran Foer's book to be much more geared towards the inhumane practices of meat while Keith's book is geared more towards diet/health.
I admit that it took a very long time for me to get through this book, for several reasons. I purchased this book hoping to get something out of it. I am not an upset vegan who wants to hate it and I am not someone who bought it knowing Id love it. I was just neutral. There were two main reasons for my disappointment with the book. One minor, one major. First, I found the second agendas (specifically the radical feminism) distracting and unnecessary. I have nothing against the feminist agenda, but this wasnt the place to put it. Second, I found the book absolutely riddled with bad information, faulty facts and just plain lazy research (if you can call it 'research'). As someone who intensively researches these issues on a daily basis, I found myself underlining items on nearly every page that I knew were just plain untrue or were 'cherry-picked' facts slanted to give a certain perception. This is such a disappointment as a really great case could be made for the author's view if she had only put the real work into researching the book properly. Once you lose the reader's trust that you are providing factual information what do you have? Ill provide examples:
1) pg. 140: The author states that "Carbon-13 is a stable isotope present in two places: grasses and the bodies of animals that eat grasses". She goes on to suggest that since there is no evidence of grass "scratch marks" on the human teeth found, that they must have been eating animals. There are many flaws in this thought process. First, I cant even begin to explain the preservation and degradation issues present in examining three million year old teeth for 'scratch marks'. Second, carbon-13 is an isotope found in ALL terrestrial and marine plants, not just grass. Finding high levels of C3 or C4 (which are what carbon-13 breaks down into) in human teeth only means that that human was eating large amounts of SOME plant, seed, nut, etc. (not JUST grass) or the animal that ate those. It is not as simple as GRASS OR COW.
2) pg. 142: The author states that there are no bacteria in the human stomach. This is simply untrue. In 2005 Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won a Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering a stomach bacteria that causes gastritis and ulcer disease. There are currently over 130 known stomach bacteria.
3) pg. 146: The author states a "rumor" authored by RB Lee about hunter-gatherers getting 65% of their calories from plants and 35% from meat. She states that this "simply isnt true". First, this rumor-spreader is one of the most well-respected anthropological/archaeological researchers in hunter-gatherer studies who edited what is considered THE tome on hunter-gatherer theory, 'Man the Hunter'. He isnt some random hack. Second, saying those numbers 'simply arent true' is simply not true. Hunter-gatherers did and do inhabit a huge range of environments and likewise their diets cover a wide range. Some do follow the 65/35% number. Some eat much more meat. Some eat much less.
These are only three examples from a span of six pages. This pattern continues throughout the entire book. Fact is the authors 'facts' just arent believable (which, again, is a shame because a factual book on this topic could be powerful). She writes as if the anthropological and archaeological evidence she quotes is written in stone, when in fact many of these topics are constantly under revision or not well understood yet. Most importantly, I just believe that writing a book and promoting it as a factual, scientific account of a subject when it is not is doing a great disservice to your (mostly) unknowing readers. If you are not willing to put in the real research effort, write a book that is touted as a personal account and nothing more. Selling flubbed facts to people who are truly searching for answers, inspiration or (insert what you are looking for here) is just bad journalism.
Ill end this review with some facts and encourage any readers (whether you liked the book, hated the book or havent read the book) to always question whether what you are reading is true and to do some research of your own.
The author cites 207 references in this book.
62 of those references are websites (~30%)
18 are newspapers and magazines (~7%)
32 are journals (~15%)
95 are other books (~46%)
First of all, think about that. 30% of the references in this book come from website information. Five of those 62 website references were Wikipedia. Wikipedia! One was Google Answers. I wont let my freshmen students use Wikipedia as a reference in their papers, why would it be acceptable for a book? Like websites, newspaper and magazine information needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Of the 32 journals less than half come from well known, peer-reviewed sources. The remaining 46% are books, which can truly say anything the author cares to print (as this one does) and only show that the author is getting her information from another source (and another opinion) aside from the primary one. The point of this is to make clear that this is a book that is sold as (and which many positive reviews hype as) providing scientific, factual, intellectual knowledge on the vegetarian/diet/health debate. In reality less than 8% of the book is coming from peer-reviewed, fact-checked sources which can provide unbiased, neutral information.
If anything I hope this review encourages people to get away from the bias on either side, find factual scientific sources instead of second-third-fourth hand knowledge, check information for yourself instead of blindly believing an author, and to question published material and push for it to actually be factual if it presented as such.
Grammar and Spell Check: Find the Errors in the Following Paragraph
Jeffrey Masson would have us embrace his vegan ideology, however, such an ideology; which entails eliminating all animal products, requires a commitment that few of us our willing to muster. Although, I applaud Masson's compassion for animals; I must repute his strict vegan ideals, indeed, a strict diet is actually harmful for our health. Especially children and the elderly, moreover, the sickly are at a particular risk when implementing a vegan diet. Because the vegan diet lacks essential amino acids for maintaining the human immune system. We must not; however, dismiss everything that Masson writes, after all, he is correct about the environmental pollution rendered from factory farming, therefore we should not mock Masson instead we should look carefully at the legitimate aspects of his reasoning.
Refutation Thesis Example That Refutes the Meat-Eating Diet
McMahon’s thesis
While I concede that the vegetarian diet can be refuted on biological, evolutionary, and nutritional grounds, I cannot accept the reckless barbarism and cruelty that many meat-eating arguments try to ignore or sweep under the carpet. That we may need to eat meat doesn’t excuse our torture and brutality against animals. We must fight to reform the meat industry. That the vegetarian, and especially the vegan diet, may be lacking in vital nutrients does not excuse our woeful treatment of animals. That we are dependent on animal products in so many ways does not excuse the cruelty we inflict upon them. Any legitimate arguments against the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle in terms of nutrition do nothing to dissuade me from believing that our current slaughterhouse system is a moral abomination in four ways: The current slaughterhouse factories for chickens, cows, pigs, and other livestock are built on moral relativism, mindless denial (willed ignorance), dishonest language, and outright sadism.
Example of a Thesis That Refutes Vegetarian Diet with mapping components (the reasons you use to support your argument)
While we must struggle to minimize animal abuse, we must not be persuaded to become vegetarians, or even worse vegans, for diets excluding animal proteins violates our evolution and optimum nutrition.
First Research Point: Most vegan diets are embraced by adolescents who suffer eating disorders.
Second Research Point: Entire families who "go vegan" become ill.
Third Research Point: A vegetarian diet is contrary to human evolution.
Fourth Research Point: Cooking meat gave humans an evolutionary advantage according to Catching Fire.
Research Point 5: Some sects of vegetarianism, especially veganism, are like shrill religious cults in which even vegetarians who don't embrace the vegan orthodoxy are demonized.
Part Two. Pro-Vegetarian Argument: Moral Relativism as a Logical and Moral Fallacy in the Way We Treat Animals
1. Moral relativism means we change the rules whenever we deem a rule change suits our purposes. For example, we’re kind to our dog, we feel sympathy when our dog or other pet suffers, we would not cook our pet, but then we brutalize and cook other animals. There’s no consistency here. We choose to have empathy for one animal and not another. Pigs are smarter than dogs, but we subject pigs to a life crammed in a pen where they gnaw the cage, cry, weep, and then cry like babies as they’re slaughtered, skinned, dunked in boiling water while they’re still alive, etc.
2. Moral relativism leads to abuse of power. If a man demands fidelity from his wife but changes the rules for himself so than he commit infidelities, then he is abusing his power. Likewise, if we say decency demands laws against abusing and neglecting pets, to abuse livestock for our eating is an abuse of power. Failure to be consistent compromises our integrity as human beings.
3. Moral absolutism establishes a clear difference between fair, rightful power vs. abusive power. Treating animals like unfeeling commodities to make the “bottom-line” or maximize profits is a clear abuse of power. To make more money, chickens and turkeys are fattened with drugs so they can’t walk or reproduce and kept inside dark cages where they cannot move for their brief lives.
4. Our moral code for many of us teaches moderation over excess. But the way we treat animals, so terrified of their torture than most of us DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM BEFORE THEY SHOW UP ON OUR PLATE, that we can only eat animals through willed ignorance. A clean, quick kill might be acceptable, but the well-chronicled abuses in the slaughterhouses are excessive and therefore contradict any absolute moral code.
Part Three. Mindless Denial as Logical and Moral Fallacy That Supports the Mindless Killing of Animals
1. If we have to live in darkness to continue with our life as it is, something is wrong. Say a man knows in his heart that his wife is cheating on him but he forces himself to “not know” so he can stay married and not confront her, for he’s afraid that a confrontation would cause her leave him. Or parents may know their son is taking drugs but they will ignorance because to know the truth is too painful for them. To live in darkness is fueled by moral cowardice. The hunter who quickly kills his animal and prepares his own meat does not live in darkness. He knows what his meat eating entails. But the average consumer buys packaged meat and does not want to know what happens in the slaughterhouse. This is willed ignorance and it is the result of moral cowardice and laziness.
2. Children can’t will ignorance like adults can, according to Jeffrey Masson, author of The Face on Your Plate. When a family eats chicken, and someone says “Pass me a leg,” or “Pass me a thigh,” children recognize they’re eating an animal and often become disgusted.
3. Bill Buford says people don’t want to think of “meat” as an animal, a beast that was terrified before death, struggled during its butchering, was skinned, bled out, and chopped up. They want to see “meat” as an abstraction.
4. Tamara Murphy, a famous chef, delivered eleven freshly killed piglets to her restaurant. She adopted the piglets at birth and made sure not name them so she wouldn’t get too attached before she took the piglets to the slaughterhouse. The piglets trusted her and greeted her with joy when she visited them so that when she took them to the slaughterhouse, she felt she had betrayed them. Her denial won out, however, for she wrote an article for her blog titled “Celebration of the Life of a Pig.” What do we learn from this? Never underestimate the power of denial.
5. Many of us have deep love, care, and sympathy for companion animals and wild life, but we cut off that sympathy for farm animals. How? Some, like Jeffrey Masson, argue this cutting off of sympathy requires denial.
6. In the documentary Food, Inc.we see a crippled cow, called a “downer,” being bull-dozed by a tractor into a slaughterhouse and it moans and cries. Some of us could not eat that cow’s slaughtered flesh. Some of us could go into denial and enjoy its meat.
7. Familiarity, being used to something all of our lives, seems “normal” so we can deny its brutality. Think of someone who grew up with dog fighting or cock fighting. These brutal, barbarian “sports” would seem “normal.”
8. Denial is often used because we’re too lazy and apathetic to disturb the status quo, which means “the way things are.” We say to ourselves, “Why should I inconvenience myself? I want my life to roll along just the way it is.”
9. Many meat eaters become hostile and defensive when asked to discuss slaughterhouses. Defensiveness is a sign of guilt from a person who is in denial and who lacks a “clean conscience.”
10. Denial is a form of disassociation. Many children cannot associate or link their McNuggets with the “cute” little chick they see on TV.
11. The denial of animal suffering rests upon keeping the slaughterhouses remote, distant, and hidden. No meat company allows filming of what goes on. It has to be kept secret. Any video footage we get is done undercover. This is strong evidence that there is something bad that has to be hidden.
Sample Thesis That Counter-argues common arguments in favor of vegetarianism.
While the vegetarian argument is built on noble aspirations and makes a convincing case for reforming the cruelties and abominations that take place on factory farms, the vegetarian diet does not provide optimum nutrition. First, we must consider we have evolved into omnivores and as such we have a biological/evolutionary need for some animal protein; second, we must consider that there is an abundance of evidence that points to malnutrition and even death that infants suffer who are forced by their parents to eat a vegan diet; third, we must consider there is a strong link between the vegetarian diet and obesity and related metabolic syndrome as a result of relying too much on agricultural, carbohydrate-laden foods.
Sample Thesis That Counter-argues an Anti-Vegetarian Position
While I concede that there are many advantages to a meat-eating diet, these advantages are off-set by several factors, which include the inevitable cruelty that animals suffer as we try to feed a world of billions of people; the environmental devastation that occurs when we reserve the Earth’s land for grazing livestock animals; the environmental damage that occurs from the animal waste that cannot be adequately refined at factory farms; and the myriad of diseases that are spread from farm factory animals.
A Third Example
The brilliant lecturer Jeff McMahon has apprised us of the intractable conflict between the dangers of the vegetarian diet and indiscriminate meat eating as he successfully shows that the only solution to this conflict is to eat organic, sustainable animal protein. Such an eating program is the only viable way to eat because _____________, _________________, _______________, and ___________________.
Thesis 4
Is McMahon "brilliant"? Balderdash. His argument for killing animals in an "organic setting" rests on so many illusions that he has been stripped of any intellectual credibility. His illusions are too numerous to cover in their entirety, but we can begin by focusing on McMahon's most egregious critical thinking lapses, which include the fact that it is impossible to feed the world with the organic process; _________________, ______________, _________________, and _____________________.
Class Activity:
Write a thesis that refutes the vegetarian diet or one that includes eating meat. Then write a list of 4 or 5 reasons for supporting your thesis.
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