Vegetables in Heaven, Twinkies in Hell: A Peculiar Neurosis of Western Civilization

Raw vegetables enjoy an uncontested position in the Western world as the healthiest of foods.  The reason: a quick glance at a chart shows that these foods have the highest concentration of nutrients/calories.
Yet only the most dedicated of health nuts have the fortitude to include huge portions of uncooked vegetables in their diet.  Eating a small amount of veggies with meals can be a refreshing side dish.  Making veggies the focus of one’s diet however, is singularly unpalatable.
The reason:  Large quantities of veggies are very difficult to digest.  They are leafy, tough, and fibrous; they fail to satisfy the stomach even as they disrupt its function.  The body nearly spends more energy processing these veggies than it gets from them.  Very soon, one is famished for something substantial; junk food becomes irresistible.  In polar opposite and cruel irony, the energy dense snacks that replace rabbit food are often all but devoid of nutrients.  Thus one of the peculiar neuroses of Western society:  perpetually switching between dieting in a joyless heaven and binging in a decadent guilt-ridden hell.
Strangely, it occurs to very few that the body has its desires for a reason.  In fact these desires were an excellent guide to what should be eaten until many critical elements of manufactured foods were replaced by highly processed imitations of the originals to cut costs and improve shelf life.  Every fiber of one’s body sends a clear message, it is not good for you to eat tons of vegetables.  Yes, they have vitamins, but they contribute no energy to speak of and getting at those vitamins is a hard task.
 
Clearly, glancing at the chart and ranking foods based on volume of nutrients alone leads to no good result.  There are other, equally important considerations.  Bioavailability is a key matter to consider here.  Raw spinach may have a lot of nutrients, but eating a meal of it would just result in an upset stomach.  Even from the most superficial examination one can ask: does it matter if this vegetable is #1 on the vitamin K chart if I can’t even digest it in any quantity or get any energy from it?
Strangely, it occurs to very few that the ‘decadent’ cravings they experience would go to rest if they ate substantial, digestible foods that also were nutrient dense.
 
These foods are generally have one or more of these traits:
-high in carbohydrates
-high in sugars
-high in fat
 
All of these attributes are of course the modern dieticians nightmare; lean meat and salad are the trendy foods right now.  However, these are the foods that nourish the body and satisfy the appetite.  These foods are not among the highest on the nutrition charts because of their high calorie content and are often actually demonized because of their high energy value.  Yet the very criterion of nutrients/calories reveals the sort of wrong headed dieter’s thinking that nutrients are good and calories bad.
The charts themselves address problems created by eating according to the charts.  Eating excessive calories is not a critical concern if one eats the right calories.
 
The right calories most generally speaking are dense in readily usable energy.  From this comes the correct criterion: maximum usable calories, and dense in nutrients, for the least digestive effort.  Digestion is metabolically costly, thus the more easily digested, the less one needs to eat.  The right foods are not only valuable for their nourishing qualities, but because they improve the digestion of foods they are eaten in combination with.  This is why it is easy to eat vegetables in combination with potatoes covered in butter and sour cream, but difficult to eat them exclusively.

The right fats, sweeteners, and carbs are wholesome in their own right and help unlock the potential of other foods.

For instance, olive oil makes an otherwise tough and heavy salad quite enjoyable.  The oil forms an ideal medium in which the digestion of tougher foods can occur.

A good example of one of the right foods is butter.  It is a healthy saturated fat that is an excellent source of Vitamin A.  It is one of the best sources even though carrots have far more per calorie because in butter it is far more readily available.

Vitamins and supplements frequently have many times one’s daily needs of a given vitamin yet they are made that way because even those who make them are aware that the human body can’t efficiently use their product.  A lesson that Western civilization has yet to learn is that the human body does not absorb its resources in isolation, but in combination.  The materials the human body needs are most usable when present in a food within a particular structure.  Eating a nickel is clearly not the best way to get dietary zinc, so it should easily follow that eating multivitamins or basing one’s diet on tough raw vegetables is not the correct way to nourish the body.

It is true raw vegetables may lose some nutrient value once they are cooked, but by so doing, the increased ease in processing makes up for it.  Furthermore, one can have the best of both worlds by eating fermented raw vegetables.  Cabbage, one of the most heavily touted of all vegetables, can be much more easily digested and enjoyably eaten in the form of sauerkraut or kim chi.

For every craving or concern there is a constructive non-guilt way to deal with it.

When planning a healthy meal, one should be conscious not only of getting the right nutrients, but eating a highly enjoyable, satisfying meal with digestion aiding combinations in mind.

Sugar is Good For You

It is an unchallenged maxim of mainstream dietary thought that sugar is ‘bad.’  This convention, like the aversion to fats, is terribly misguided and ill-conceived.  The very word ’sweet’ is often used to describe those things which are best in life, so strong is its appeal.  Yet guidelines set down by a multitude of well educated and intelligent individuals routinely exclude foods that satisfy one of the human body’s most essential cravings.  Once again Puritanical thought dominates:  if humans crave it, it must be temptation.  It is self evident, however, by means of basic reasoning that the human body has its cravings for a purpose related to survival.  Surely sweet substances ought to be good.

Indeed, this is true, but as with fats, the proliferation of highly processed products in the industrialized world has resulted in the problems that are blamed on all sweets.

Refined sugar for instance, has been stripped of the nutrients that would have been present in the original cane juice.  This common table sugar is sucrose.  The body must break it down into fructose and glucose to be able to process it.  Thus, the body must spend energy processing food that returns no nutrients.  Eaten in quantity it actually depletes nutrients from the body.

Corn syrup, contains fructose, one of the basic fuels of the human body.  The problem lies in the fact that corn syrup consists of 90% or more fructose, a ratio far beyond the 40-50% that the body is able to handle.  Eaten in quantity, it quickly outstrips the ability of the body to process it and causes insulin resistance.  High fructose corn syrup is used ubiquitously in the United States and its long term excess consumption naturally results in increased occurrence of diabetes.

Glucose and fructose are basic sources of energy for the human body, but what form they are consumed in and in what ratios is of critical importance.

People are attracted to sweet foods because, in nature, such sources of energy are especially close to already being in a usable form.  They require minimal processing for maximum gain.

Fruits are often the typical answer to this primal desire, but human beings are still left with a craving for sweetness in its purest form.  Honey, dates, figs, maple syrup, sugar cane juice very are sweet, gooey, extremely energy dense foods.  They are the epitome of what highly processed sweeteners have been designed to imitate.

To give some idea of their importance, glycogen is derived from the glucose we eat.  It is the short term reserve of quickly accessible energy as fat can only be tapped into slowly and steadily by comparison.  In endurance sports there is the term ‘hitting the wall.’  This is when an athlete reaches a point where they can literally no longer move.  Their glycogen stores have been depleted.  Such an extreme case illustrates the important of glycogen: it is the instantly available energy that allows to move about at will.  The sweetest non-industrial foods provide the components for glycogen formation not only in abundance but in a readily usable form.  It is therefore no surprise that human body tells one that sweet foods are particularly desirable.

The universal vilification of sweet foods is an immense misunderstanding.  These dense foods are among the most valuable of all because they replenish the body’s stores and they do it quickly.  Like the best fats, they have a way of putting the body’s appetites quickly to rest and thereby actually reducing the amount of calories one feels the need to consume.

Part of the travesty of industrial sweeteners, especially those without calories, is that they deceive the body into expecting an infusion of quick easily processible energy.  When the body’s expectations are not satisfied, one’s cravings go through the roof, impelling one to consume even more of these sweeteners.

Drinking heavily sweetend soft drinks along with sweet snacks is a frequent phenomenon in the USA, yet a similar binge on dates and honey would be unthinkable.  The stomach would quickly feel full to bursting and the body’s desires be satisfied in a way that is altogether foreign to regular consumers of junk food.

There is a great distinction that is not being made: tastes can be imitated, but when it comes to food, one should put even greater value on how such foods make them feel and how they affect the body.

Fat Is Good For You

The avoidance of dietary fat has for decades now been considered essential for good nutrition.  However, this approach is sadly mistaken.  The assumption that fat goes ’straight to our rears’ is misguided.  Food is broken down into its constituent parts before being distributed and then consumed.  Whether dietary fat or any other energy gets stored as fat in our bodies is dependent on any number of variables.
The truth is that fats are eaten in abundant amounts by virtually every traditional culture, yet widespread heart disease and obesity are a phenomenon that has existed only since the 1940s and 50s.  It was in this time period that processed fats largely replaced natural fats and oils.  Margarine replaced butter and hydrogenated vegetable oils and soy oils replaced all others.
Thus, most of the supposed ill effects of fats are a byproduct of eating the wrong kinds of fats.  Butter, far from being bad for health is a healthy source of vitamin A.  Meanwhile, margarine is among the harmful fats.  It is made like so many products from hydrogenated oils.
This means oils that have been heated at high temperatures, often for long amounts of time.  This process causes the molecules of the oil to begin to dissociate.  The substance is then removed from heat while still in a state of transition from one substance to the other.  Thus, the result is known as a trans fat.  These substances are not found in nature and are widely used in the food industry because they do not spoil.  The trouble with consuming these substances in food is that the fats are still in transition.  The reaction never completed, so when one eats these fats, they are taking a proliferation of reactive species of molecules into their bodies which proceed to wreak havoc.
One striking example of the difference is the Pima Indians in Arizona, USA are the most obese population in the world with a 50% incidence of diabetes in their population.  They have adopted a Western diet and sedentary lifestyle.  Meanwhile, Pima Indians on the other side of the border live off of potatoes, corn, and lard.  However, they are lean, fit, and physically active.
Another example is the South of India where highly processed vegetable oils are a staple in cooking.  Malnutrition and heart disease are pervasive throughout their population.  On the other hand, peoples from the North of India who use ghee(butter oil) as their staple fat have few of the same problems.
 
Clearly, mainstream nutrition has been shallowly reactive in its efforts to all but obliterate fats from the diet.  Only in recent years has there been progress in the recognition of the virtues of mono and polyunsaturated fats.  Even these efforts have led to new mistakes, however.  Newly promoted products such as canola oil are often just as highly processed as their vegetable oil counterparts, and in less processed forms have the strong toxins occurring in the rapeseed plant from which the oil is derived.  Perhaps most pervasive of all is the craze surrounding products made from soy.  In traditional East Asian cultures, soy was eaten in relatively small quantities or in fermented form.  Now, soy products are pervasive among ‘healthy’ and vegetarian foods.  While soy has good properties, it also is a natural thyroid depressant and contains compounds that mimic human(especially female) hormones.  Eaten unfermented in large quantities, its toxins can be quite damaging.  Depressed thyroid function causes lethargy, loss of muscle tone, and weight gain.  The hormone imitators reinforce these effects, sending the body’s metabolism out of synch.  It is these very effects of soy that makes it highly desirable as animal feed.
Though soy has become a centerpiece among ‘healthy’ foods, it is used even more extensively in highly processed food.  A quick look at ingredients for many products will reveal the presence of soy oil.  While soy beans are beneficial in moderation, eating a concentrated essence derived from them is beyond excess and among one of the most harmful substances in highly processed food.
To progress into further error: many health trends encourage the use of many mono and polyunsaturated acids in cooking.  In many cases, such as with flax oil this is a bad idea.  Many of these oils break down quickly under environmental stresses.  This phenomenon is escalated at high temperatures and forms many harmful and carcinogenic substances of the sort found in highly processed vegetable oils.
 
At this point I have addressed many errors in popular nutrition.  Use of Omega 3 oils does, however, generally prove to be beneficial.  Oily fish, nuts, and olive oil are examples of excellent foods.  However, the irrational stigma against saturated fats continues.
Butter, especially ghee(the oils derived from butter) are conducive to good health.  Coconut oil is another saturated fat is especially healthy and possesses anti-bacterial properties and lauric acid, a substance also prevalent in mother’s milk.  Coconut oil is almost pure saturated fat yet its regular consumption often results in the loss of weight.  Rich coconut milk is a staple food in much of Southeast Asia, yet the locals are typically quite slender.  Cocoa butter, the fat of the cocoa bean is a major component of chocolate, yet varieties with low or no sugar and high cocoa content are packed anti-oxidants and conducive to weight regulation.
Oily fish, nuts, and olive oil, great sources of omega oils, are also copious sources of saturated fats, yet they are still quite healthy for the human body.
 
‘Health food’ in the West is typically thought of as being ‘light’, unappetizing, and unsatisfying.  This is in large part because of the exclusion of saturated fats.  These substances are important aids for digestion, especially when eating foods with high fiber content.
Plentiful fat is what makes a meal feel truly satisfying and puts the stomach at rest.  Ironically, a ‘healthy’ diet tends to leave one hungry and ironically leads one to grasp for foods drenched in trans fats to put these monstrous cravings to rest.  It is a diet high in fat that leaves the stomach sated and which eliminates the desire for grasping for snacks.  A high fat diet eases digestion and the frequency with which one needs to eat.  One may generally observe across cultural and political boundaries:  peoples who eat plenty of the right fats have much smoother complexions, healthier hair, and less signs of aging.  The protective effects of the right fats are becoming evident as people who eat ‘healthy’ have begun to contract cancer and heart disease at higher rates than peoples of many third world countries.  One of the tenets of Western health culture is that one must triumph against temptation.  Perhaps such views have proliferated to such an extent in the anglosphere because of the way in which they mesh with the Puritan concept of this world as a transitory plane designed to divert us from everything that is good with worldly delights.
However, any endurance athlete knows to listen to his or her body and the subtle cues and signals it is constantly giving.  It is no different when it comes to eating.  Engaging in righteous masochism when it comes to providing the body with nourishment is self defeating.  In fact, restriction of fat intake actually causes the body to slow its metabolism and retain every bit of fat it can extract from the limited diet it is given.  Forcing the body to constantly strain to compensate is of course painful and unhealthy.

Perhaps the best visible representation of what people should want to eat can be seen in children who in an earlier stage of socialization are therefore closer to acting according to their most natural tendencies.  Kids prefer pizza to celery and salad and crispy chicken skins and lard to the actual meat it’s attached to.  These parts are dense in nutrients, and more importantly easiest to digest and thus conducive to the digestion of other foods.
 
Western culture is flagrantly backwards in respect to its attitude towards nutrition, but it has shown some progress, and increasingly, there is input from organizations such as the Weston A. Price foundation that are guiding people back towards the proper eating habits that were obvious to generations of healthy people across thousands of years.  The sad part, is that what was once a matter of common sense has been transformed into an often misguided mysticism often as flawed as the profit making interests that don’t care what their food does to people so long as it sells.  Too often, the mystics and the unscrupulous food manufacturers are one and the same and in the face of such opposition, it will be long and difficult to reverse the current, destructive trends.

Vegetarianism: The Elitist Idealism

Those who are vegetarians for ideological reasons are typically brimming with good intentions; to lessen the amount of suffering in the world for animals and sometimes, for human beings. Their movement addresses aspects of human society in which there are genuine issues to be considered yet it founders and remains confined to a narrow group of liberal, highly educated, middle to upper class citizens in Western democracies. While their intentions are good, they pursue their goal with an incredible naïveté that could only arise from disconnection with temporal realities. They focus on emotional appeals before well-reasoned arguments to support their cause, propose alternative strategies that are detrimental to or simply not feasible for the rest of society, make deeply mistaken assumptions concerning human physiology and diet, and alienate those who disagree with them by adopting a moralistic fervor, or sometimes even an air of downright rudeness and snobbery.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a restaurant where a huge, beautifully prepared roast hung on a spit in plain view. Customers could order a slice of meat from what they could see right there, a great setup. One person at my table, a vegetarian referred to it as “that carcass over there.” I was a bit taken aback at this. It is not very polite to comment on other people’s food preferences during a meal. Certainly, it was a piece of dead animal, but the word ‘carcass’ implies it is rotting, laying out in the open, fit only for vultures. It was demeaning, insulting, inappropriate behavior. It can perhaps seem justified, though, when one’s culinary regimen is also part of a moral crusade. If one views eating animals as moral wrong, then it is not only proper, but a matter of civic duty to educate, criticize, and even chastise the rest of the world. It’s a rather simplified way of approaching a complex issue. No doubt there is a certain thrill in adopting morally exclusive eating habits while everyone else is living in the dark ages. Thus, one who lives in such a way is quick to point out to others the error of their ways.

It is common for vegetarians to argue that meat is unhealthy, unnatural, and unnecessary to the human diet. They therefore contend that such foods should be replaced with plant substances. It is indeed well established that people can live without animal products, but should they? A vegan(one who uses no animal products whatever) must rely upon a profusion of exotic beans, nuts, seeds, and even supplements to get enough protein and all the necessary amino acids. Any unenlightened lout can get all of that from one piece of meat. Clearly, for fulfilling certain nutritional requirements, meat is overwhelmingly superior to plant products. If one thinks about the matter in terms of common sense: what is an outstanding source of stored energy and certain building blocks for a creature of flesh and blood? Answer: flesh and blood taken from another creature. The common claim of vegetarians that meat is unhealthy and even poisonous is quite simply a flight of fancy. I would suspect that they are simply reacting to the typical Western diet in which an excess of meats and other fatty foods combined with a sedentary lifestyle leads to an unhealthy result. This doesn’t do any good for the vegetarian argument because an excess of anything is bad and a sedentary lifestyle is unhealthy no matter what one eats. Meat is a perfectly healthy food and an excellent contribution to the human diet.

Meat may not be necessary for human survival, but neither are plant products. The Mongols, Colonial Argentina, the Inuit are all examples of cultures that depended predominantly if not exclusively on animal products for their survival. The Inuit, Laplanders, and other Arctic peoples in many cases lived on such a diet until well into the 20^th century. They were found to be in perfectly good health and without vitamin deficiencies. In fact, maladies such as tooth decay were virtually unknown among these peoples until sugar and starches, both derived from plants entered their diets with the coming of modernization. Indeed, consuming plants and their derivatives comes with its own possibilities of malnutrition and illness. In parts of the world where people live predominantly on rice, vitamin deficiencies are a real problem, particularly when subsisting on polished grains. Vegetarians may point to meat borne diseases and high profile recalls as proof of its unhealthiness, but vegetables come with some of the same problems. Leafy greens, especially spinach have undergone several recalls in the last few years. Even with recalls, the meat experience is overwhelmingly safe, especially with systematic regulation. Every now and then a few people die from eating bad meat. I honestly find this statistic incredible. A food eaten by hundreds of millions of people and it cannot be connected to substantially more deaths than occur from tipped vending machines! When one examines vegetarian claims that eating animals is dangerous for humans, one finds a supremely impressive record of safety. The probability of dying from or even being poisoned by meat is negligible in comparison to the risks of everyday life.

Ideological vegetarians are fond of taking ridiculous claims even further by insisting that eating meat is an unnatural part of the human diet. They look back to prehistoric times when people supposedly traipsed naked through the forest hugging trees and gathering up acorns.(No vegetarian or vegan hunter gatherer societies have ever been found) One of their silly arguments is to point out that human hands are not particularly well suited to killing living things. This is irrelevant considering that hominids used tools long before sapiens existed and considering that meat eating is thought by paleontologists to have started out as scavenging. It is hard to know exactly what hominids ate in prehistoric times, but examination of teeth generally furnishes researchers with a pretty good idea. Location is also important. Hominids were best suited for living on the plains not in the forest. In that sort of environment, plant sources of food are not incredibly abundant while animals are often present in gigantic herds. By the time sapiens actually showed up, people were not only indisputably eating meat, but actively hunting it down as well. To claim that meat is unnatural for humans, an unfortunate result of domestication, is moronic when one considers the many species such as woolly mammoths, giant sloths, and North American camels that were all hunted down to extinction in the prehistoric past. Eating meat can in no way be said to be bad or unnatural for human beings; it is not only one of the original human foods, its consumption predates our species.

Ideological vegetarians rely on these poorly reasoned justifications as inspiration for an elaborate menu full of foods that are difficult to obtain and in many cases impossible to afford for the average citizen, even in a wealthy country. Organic foods, a staple of the vegetarian table are an excellent example. Many items instantly double in price the moment the organic label is slapped on them. Most people already have enough expenses to take care of without paying enormously more than necessary just to put food on the table. For people who do not read extensively about food products, ‘organic’ doesn’t even make much sense. Certainly almost any food product is organic in the sense that it contains biological substances. Even when one learns it’s about returning to older agricultural practices, one who is unindoctrinated might stop to wonder why that’s a good thing and why it’s worth paying more for it. Other typical mainstays of a vegetarian or vegan diet have to be imported at great expense from foreign countries or simply rank among the most expensive of fresh items at the supermarket. Fresh items in general are indispensable to the ideological vegetarian. Baby spinach is an instant hit, but canned spinach is liable to remain untouched. Fresh food of course is much more expensive than canned food and only lasts a few days. To be able to live a lifestyle full of costly foods that are delicate and spoil quickly, one must have both lots of money to buy them and lots of leisure time in which to plan out their consumption and to prepare them. Yet another requirement is constant trips to the health food store, a feat difficult to pull off for those who don’t live in the big city. The diet that ideological vegetarians adhere to and expect others to adopt is impractical for all but the rich and idle. Altogether, it is inherently hostile to the poor, the busy, and the rural. Ideological vegetarianism is by nature elitist.

Vegetarians insist their way of eating is ‘natural’ albeit with lack of evidence and in the face of glaring contradictions. When the reasoning is this flimsy it becomes clear that many of the proponents of the system must have other reasons for subscribing to it. Sophisticated, educated, urban are all images that come to mind when one thinks of common stereotypes associated with vegetarians. It is a trendy behavior associated with the wealthy. People in every age and place have a tendency to attempt to imitate the most ‘successful’ members of society. When only the rich could afford enough food, it was fashionable to have some extra body fat(look at Venus or Eve as portrayed in old paintings). Now, when only the rich can afford lots of time for physical activity, it is fashionable to have as little body fat as possible. When only the rich could stay indoors all day, it was fashionable to be pale(the classic Victorian look, the classic Geisha look). Now, when only the rich have time to be outdoors all day, it is fashionable to be tanned. When only the rich had frequent access to meat, it was fashionable to put anything that could be killed on the table.(venison, peacock, pigeon, pheasant…) Now, when anyone can cheaply buy enough meat to feed a family, it is fashionable to live on only exotic vegetables. Although ideological vegetarians have multiple motivations for their eating habits, class consciousness is certainly among them. Not only does ideological vegetarianism allow its subscribers to feel sophisticated but it comes with lots of added bonus points for moral superiority. Whether their diet makes sense or not, vegetarians can still make the big claim that killing animals for meat, clothing, gelatin, or medical research is a violation of their rights and therefore immoral.

The whole notion of animal rights is ridiculous. To participate in a system of rights, one must be able to hold their end of the bargain. This cannot be done unless one is a moral agent and conscious of one’s actions. Of all species on earth only human beings meet this criteria. Animals cannot be expected to participate in such a system and humans have only one moral responsibility to them: not to cause harm and suffering without cause. There are cases in animal husbandry when humans may sometimes overstep moral bounds, but this does not justify running around telling people that eating meat is intrinsically immoral. Undeterred even by this shortcoming, vegetarians turn to emotional appeal before argument, routinely showing footage from slaughterhouses in attempts to inspire knee-jerk reactions. Such grand theatrics seriously undermine their position when there really are serious issues and legitimate grievances associated with the sometimes murky world of factory farming. The ideological vegetarians, however, are their own worst enemies, however, in adopting fallaciously justified elitist diets combined with hysterical moral crusading and lightweight tactics that shy away even from honest discussion.

One of the biggest problems of factory farming is the treatment of workers in the meat industry. Conditions are often unhygienic, conducive to any number of diseases, musculo-skeletal disorders from repetitive motions, and injuries inflicted by moving machinery or the animals. Furthermore, these workers are usually paid poorly and have very little in the way of benefits or injury compensation. It’s not the sort of job that most people want and meat producers of course wish to keep wages and thus cost as low as possible. Therefore they turn to illegal immigrants, even going to great pains to have them smuggled into the country. Once present, the immigrants are virtually slaves because they can be threatened with being revealed to the authorities if they do not cooperate with the company’s every demand. Vegetarians do sometimes address this issue concerning the human beings involved but usually as a footnote to their larger concerns for the animals. More often, people only enter the discussion as the terrible tormentors of the poor creatures.

Then, there is the issue of pollution. When thousands of animals are kept concentrated on one small piece of land, the amount of waste produced is enormous. Factory farms produced more waste than can be used as fertilizer and end up storing the extra on site. If there is any breach of the storage containers, the local ground water, lakes, or rivers can become seriously polluted. Furthermore, ammonia fumes and gases escaping from waste storage are also dangerous contaminants. Clearly, there needs to be better technologies and more regulation for dealing with the waste.

A further problem are defining and identifying possible abuses of the animals in factory conditions. A particularly popular example might be gestation crates. These are metal boxes in which breeding sows spend most of their lives. It serves a cause of producing as much pork as possible, as cheaply as possible, but the pig spends most of its life in a space too cramped to turn around in, living in its own feces. Certainly, measures should be undertaken to find a way of generating the desired product that is better for the animal while negatively impacting the good of humanity as little as possible. In fact, it is even feasible for humans to pay slightly more for pork so that breeding sows at least have a space that can be moved around in. Indeed, some European countries and state governments in the US have already passed laws prohibiting gestation crates.

The meat industry like any other has the potential to move to excesses. Laborer treatment, pollution, and animal abuse are all potential problems but the solution is to introduce regulations that ensure the best possible situation for producers, animals, and the consumers. Reacting with inflammatory aversion and proclaiming that the solution is for no one anywhere to eat meat ever again is laughable. That is a textbook case of excess. It is likewise overreaction to insist that overcrowded animals be completely turned out of buildings and made into ‘free range’ livestock. Sows ought not to be made to suffer every moment of their lives in cage they barely fit into, but a small pen with room for walking is probably all that’s necessary to solve the problem. A popular refrain of vegetarians is “What if you were ____?” This is a question that exhibits a critical lack of understanding and represents yet another low emotional appeal. Animal desires and psychology cannot be considered synonymous with human needs. So long as animals feel safe from predators, have food to eat, and water to drink, they are perfectly content. Thus, one might ask whether factory farms compare unfavorably to being ‘free’ out in the natural world. In nature, starvation is a constant threat, the search for food takes up every minute of every day for all of life. As if that’s not enough the slightest mistake means death by predators. In this, there is no stunning shock administered nor is the animal killed within moments with a single slice of the jugular. In many cases, its intestines are ripped out while it’s still fully conscious. The weather can turn for the worst and keeping warm or cool is essential to keeping alive. All these stresses together make the task of raising young supremely difficult and draining. Chances of surviving to reproduce more than once are not terribly good. The lifespan is typically quite short, if the said specimen beats the odds and actually survives infancy. After a closer examination of what a life out in the wild actually means, it could be said that humans actually carry out a moral good by both benefiting themselves and saving animals from a brutal life at the mercy of nature.

The needs of animals are based on the requirements of survival. Concerns of dignity and fussing over living arrangements are simply not part of their psyche. Vegetarians frequently criticize the meat industry for treating its animals like production machines, as if it were somehow demeaning to the animals. Animals have no concept of machine or industry let alone the ability to associate such abstract concepts with their own state of being. Once again the vegetarians rely on an emotional appeal. Worrying whether animals are happiest in building or in a field is immaterial; they really don’t care so long as their basic needs are fulfilled. Pigs are the one agricultural animal that might merit special attention due to their high level of intelligence and as is indicated by worldwide responses to gestation crates, that problem is receiving considerable attention.

Vegetarians’ focus on hysterically emotional vilification of factory farming is so prevalent that they do not address, let alone try to refute some of the benefits of factory farming.

-Every animal can be overseen at all times and kept always fed and watered.

-Every animal is indoors and proteceted from predators and the elements

-Meat is produced more cheaply on less land.

-Without free range livestock related problems such as overgrazing, erosion, driving out native species avoided.

-Complete control over every animal at all times ensures unprecedented power in upholding set quality standards.

Factory farms are an extremely efficient and effective means of providing meat, perhaps the only way to supply millions and even billions of people reliably on a regular basis. Fortunately, vegetarians at this point actually start submitting arguments again:

-If only people ate more plant products instead, factory farms would not be necessary.

-If only all the land used for livestock were turned into green farm fields instead…

-Farm animals are fed more food than they produce. Net loss. Bad for all the starving people.

-As for the first point, the vegetarians are not able to persuade everyone that their way is the only way to eat. Likewise they also are not able to convince everyone to cut back on meat consumption. Therefore, for people to all reliably eat less meat and more plant products, world governments would have to enter citizens’ homes and tell them what they can eat in what quantities. This program would not only violate basic freedoms, it would be exceedingly difficult and expensive to enforce even in a totalitarian state.

-Grazing land is typically made into grazing land because it is unsuitable for agriculture. Furthermore, factory farms more or less solve this problem by eliminating the need for grazing land.

-Farm animals are fed great quantities of foods such as soybeans and sorghum in a minimally processed form. The land growing these foods is not needed in countries such as the US which have gigantic crop surpluses. In countries where it is not practical to grow feed, animals are grazed in non-arable land. There already is more than enough food to feed the entire world, but it is not readily transportable from wealthy countries to poorer lands because the local leaders cannot be relied upon to distribute donated food to their people. Wealthy countries possibly could invent huge and expensive replacement bureaucracies to distribute food to millions, but the local leaders would certainly shut down any entity competing with their power very quickly. The only option would be to invade every poor country in the world and force food to be distributed with a massive government imposed by the conquerors. With the fighting, chaos, sectarian violence, and uprisings countless thousands would die in the constant warfare. Infrastructure would break down and the goal of supplying food to the starving remain out of reach. In fact, there would probably be more starving people than before.

The net loss of food cannot be as great as vegetarians seem to think. Besides meat, there are also dairy products and eggs to consider. Furthermore, one may be losing crude grains unfit for human consumption in return for some of the best sources of protein, amino acids, calcium, and the elusive vitamin D. That certainly does not seem like a good description of a loss.

The ideological vegetarians have their arguments concerning the economic and political factors of meat, but they typically spring from total ignorance of the world and its basic realities. The very fact that they believe farm animals should no longer be killed for their valuable products is the ultimate testament to their astounding lack of comprehension and sheer depth of disconnection. Farm animals are domestic animals. As domestic animals they cannot survive if people do not give them food and protection. People will no longer feed livestock if they serve no function. Therefore several species and all their hundreds of sub-varieties would quickly starve to death en masse. If ideological vegetarians are to attain their goals, they must be in favor of massive extinction. A few strains would perhaps be preserved in zoos and nostalgia ranches, but their once great range and population would be a thing of the past, their continued existence a rarity and a curiosity. They would for all practical purposes be gone.

Only a few animals could be retained if they served no practical function and produced no profit. The rest would starve in countless millions. There would be far too many to euthanize, shock, shoot, or gas within a short period of time. The animals would waste away, suffering every moment until death. Their meat, hides, hooves, organs, milk, and eggs would go unused; they would be suffering for no cause. Therefore it would be the most egregious case of immoral treatment of animals in human history. I suppose I could pretend I was a vegetarian for a moment and propose a scenario in which the government imposed additional taxes on the populace to support millions of useless farm animals until they died of old age. This is so far on the side of the absurd I feel the need to stop its further consideration.

Ideological vegetarians are typically brimming with good intentions, but they do little more than create unfounded moral quandaries from the top of their exclusive ivory tower. Their case is a powerful example of how well-meaning people made overzealous by emotionally driven, reckless idealism can easily come to formulate solutions and reforms with disastrous implications. They end up creating worse problems than the ones they attempt to solve and even end up with results that are opposite of what they intend. If those who are vegetarians for ideological reasons were allowed to enact the reforms they so naively and stridently attempt to impose on others, they would cause the mass extinction of the very animals they are attempting to save and worst of all, bring about the greatest immoral suffering humans have ever inflicted on animals.

Being ideological is not a bad thing. It is good that humans are able to dream about a better world even if it is not consistent with the present reality. In conjunction with measured reason and careful consideration, an idealist’s dream can become a shining accomplishment. These are people who really change the world and who many people look to as role models. Not one of them could have succeeded, however, had they not also been denizens of the earth who understood how to integrate their visions with the realities of life.

Dieting Is Not the Answer

Dieting is probably the single most popular method of ‘shedding the pounds’ even though it is one of the least effective ways of doing so.  I would guess that this popularity comes from the fact that it seems such an easy way out.  Supposedly all one has to do is eat a little less food and change around the content of one’s meals.  This small step, unfortunately, never seems to really work out.  The ubiquitous sorrow of dieters is the constant craving to return to the foods they used to eat, the unending desire to eat just a bit more, and despair at seeing the pounds quickly return with any lapse of discipline.  These are all signs of the truth; that dieting is a fundamentally wrong-headed and short-sighted approach to achieving good health.

            The downfall of dieting is above all its obsessive focus on changing the purely cosmetic in as little time as possible.  More often than not, it is about trimming the waist down for swim suit season, and not about leading a healthy lifestyle.  Motivating dieting is a fundamentally flawed ethic; the perception of one’s physical wellbeing as just another annoying dilemma, like electric bills, to be solved with a quick fix.  The truth is that a healthier body is achieved through a consistent lifestyle based upon regular exercise and sound nutrition, not through painful rituals of self deprivation that last until the individual loses their will to endure.  Strangely enough, though, dieters seem to take almost perverse satisfaction in the pain they undergo as a cause of their arcane eating habits.  They seem to have a concept that stems from the fundamental flaw in their approach—that eating must be paid for with sufficient atonement and guilt as electricity is paid for with money.  The end result for each case in theory is that the problem is swiftly dispensed with and gone until it is next brought to the individual’s attention.

            The human body, however, cannot be deferred until next month.  It is the constant vessel of our existence and the decisions made every day shape its rhythms and tendencies.  Good health and the leaner body that results is not the product of a month, but of a lifetime.  Deciding to change months or years of precedent within a short period is like trying all at once to stop the inertia of a moving ship and then immediately change its direction.  Thus, dieters have the sensation of tugging against an overwhelming force.

           

            Any solution to the issues of body weight and health must be established on a correct understanding of the human body.  To bring real change, one must gradually leave behind a sedentary lifestyle.  It is true that beginning exercise will be painful to those who are unaccustomed to physical activity, but the human form is far more capable than most people realize.  Within a month, a sedentary person can reach the threshold where exercise no longer feels awkward and painful.  A month might seem like a long time to endure, but once surmounted, the way is open to achieve years of good health and enjoyment.  In comparison, an awful month of dieting invariably ends in guilt and failure.  Even in the rare and temporary instance of success, one is changed in only the most superficial sense.  The old system remains, struggling always to return to its normal state; the body is scarcely any healthier than before.  Ultimately, the very practice of cutting back on calories is a self-defeating behavior.  The body responds by conserving energy and storing up what it can; the status quo resumes the moment the fasting is broken.

            Regular exercise, on the other hand, changes the very way the body processes energy.  The body well-cared for craves nutrient rich, hearty foods.  Empty calories, excessive sweeteners, and grease become repugnant.  Dieters like to cut out carbohydrates and every form of fat, trying to live off of lettuce and low calorie shakes.  The very materials they attempt dispense with are essential for a healthy, physically active person.  In fact, many endurance athletes observe a practice known as ‘carbo-loading’ the night before a competition or challenging workout.  Gaining excessive weight is simply not a concern for someone who frequently gets out and moves around.  For the physically active, eating healthy portions of good food is an enjoyable daily necessity.  Overeating loses its appeal with increasing fitness and fades from one’s lifestyle.  People who work out have fine-tuned bodies that give warnings when the balance is disrupted; they suffer acutely from abuse that a sedentary person might be able to ignore.  Once a regimen of fitness is adhered to for a time, it is as though a ship has gained inertia in a desirable direction—it is a course that requires great force to change.  The very principle of the human body that frustrates dieters is the ally and aid of one who pursues fitness.