- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Actually, you do [need to eat meat]. We are made as omnivores, and as such, we cannot produce all 20 of the vital amino acids needed for survival. We get the remainder that we cannot produce from outside sources. Now, it is true that up until the 20th century, anyone attempting a vegan diet would slowly die of serious health issues without vitamin B12, which is now in fortified tofu.
Maybe this isn't worth responding to because your point is all over the place and a bit non-sensical, but it is important to refute the myth that people need to eat meat (or other animal products). So, your claims at face value:
(1) We cannot produce all 20 amino acids. True, obvious, and completely irrelevant. "Essential" amino acids are the ones we can't produce and therefore must consume, but they are all easily found in both plant and animal products; this pseudoscientific argument doesn't say we need to eat meat, it just says we need to eat.
(2) Vegan diets used to lack B12. True, and relevant, but how did we get on vitamins all of a sudden? I thought you were going to tell us we couldn't get all the amino acids from plant foods. Why did you bring up amino acids at all? But anyway, vitamin B12 defeciency is one of the risks of a vegan diet, but (in my opinion) is far outweighed by the risks of an omnivorous diet (heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, the list goes on and on, due to the high saturated fat and LDL cholesterol content of animal foods). Also, your assertion that B12 is now found in fortified tofu is true but misleading; it's found there, but not only there. It's also found in lots of other vegan foods including soymilks, breakfast cereals, margarines, yeasts, veggie burgers, and of course multivitamins. So it's not like you have to eat fortified tofu in order to get your B12.
Also, and this is important, everyone who argues for an omnivorous diet seems to be so concerned about B12, but in reality the typical American (omni) diet is more fraught with vitamin and mineral deficiencies than the typical vegan diet, so if vitamin deficiencies are really important to you (and they are important), you should eat more vitamin-rich whole plant foods and take a multivitamin anyway. Everyone should take a multivitamin, really, and if we all do that then none of us has to worry about B12 or any other vitamin deficiency, vegan or omni or anything in between.
Reply to Silenced
I've never heard anybody argue that there is no obscure medical condition that would necessitate an omnivorous diet. In your specific case you may be right (I don't know), but for 99% (or whatever) of the population, that doesn't apply.
