Oprah's 7-Day Vegan Challenge

There was a recent Oprah show (2-1-11) featuring the benefits of 'leaning toward' Veganism along with a tour through one of Cargill's meat-processing plants. The guests were authors Michael Pollan, author and 'The Veganist' Kathy Freston and a representative from Cargill. 378 of Oprah's Harpo staff also tried a vegan diet for 7 days...meaning no meat/fish, eggs or dairy.

Like many Oprah shows, there's a shocking lack of experts and criticism. Kathy Freston seemed like the Jenny McCarthy of diet, and Michael Pollan, while much more reasonable in his 'reform the meat industry' approach, is a meat-eater himself albeit with discretion.

First, there's a vast divide between an omnivorous, meat-based diet and 'veganism', as this leaves out the more common vegetarianism (which doesn't exclude dairy products). The whole show is somewhat based on an excluded-middle fallacy.

There was no mention of veganism and the potential health-risks to humans who are by nature omnivores, as in, humans evolved as omnivores. This is not a naturalistic fallacy (as some of you might claim), but simply a fact any evolutionary biologist would verify. We already know that there was an offshoot of early-humans (Australopithecus robustus) which was thought to be vegetarian (based on dentition studies), and died off. Our closest living modern relative, the Chimpanzee, craves meat and eats it when possible...and even uses it as a form of currency to curry favor with allies and potential mating partners*.

What we do know about humans is that we are supremely adaptable, and eating a more varied diet (including meat) is objectively superior to having a limited diet (without meat) when a lack of food can mean starvation. Why on Earth would we want to have a specialized diet when we have one of the most adaptable diets of any mammal?

The fact is, humans *are* omnivores, whether individuals choose to be or not. We are here today because of meat, but I am all for the reform of the meat-industry. I am also for reform of vegetable farmers who abuse their staff or hire illegal aliens. ;) Reform against abuse has nothing to do with the argument for or against eating meat.

There are inherent risks with a vegan diet for the unresearched, as no vegetable/nut/seed is a complete protein (and this was not mentioned on the show). All vegetables with protein have to be carefully paired with other vegetable proteins to get 'complete' proteins the body needs, where complete proteins are conveniently found in all meat products. There's a reason why eating meat is healthier for developing children eating solid food, and why they're likely to grow more easily on a meat/fat-based diet. From the health-side of the vegan argument, children can handle a much larger calorie load than adults and calorie-restriction is a non-issue for most. It's shocking to think some parents will deprive their children of nutrition because of their own unresearched ideology applied to diet.

Some intake of fat is also necessary for the human body and especially the brain. How do we know this? There's a phenomenon called 'rabbit starvation' or 'lean starvation', whereas consuming only lean-meats can still have a person starving, which can lead to death in extreme cases. Why? Lack of fat. Some fat is not just healthy, but necessary, and we find fat in meat (and some other foods), which contributes to the flavor meat-eaters enjoy.

Satiety (feeling full/satisfied) is also an important benefit of meat and fat. Some of the staffers at Harpo complained of feeling hungry and irritable, and this is probably due to the lack of satiety triggers in a vegan diet. Of course, sheer quantity of vegetable matter can help, but there's a reason herbivorous animals have to eat *constantly*, such as the gorilla or cow. There's more protein in a rat than a root, and thus, more energy from less mass. There's a reason most professionally-designed diets include a meat-protein in nearly every major meal since meat helps us feel satisfied. Without meat, people would feel hungry and binge-eat, and the diet would fail. The way these diets help people lose weight is through better food choices, satisfying meat/fat and flavor, and portion control.

Evolution was not mentioned on the Oprah show, nor was the fact that humans evolved to be omnivores (even if some modern humans choose other diets). The fact is, our bodies are designed to digest a wide-variety of food, including meat. Our teeth sport sharp incisors and a variety of cutting/grinding tools for a varied (and flesh tearing) diet. We have the binocular forward vision of a predator, instead of the greater field of view of prey animals who need to worry about being a meal (rabbits, cows, horses, etc.).

Most humans generally love the taste of meat with its marbled fat, complete proteins, and efficient calorie-fuel. Evolutionarily-speaking, it's thought that eating meat promoted bipedalism and better supports a modern, calorie-hungry brain (which uses 20% of our total calorie intake all by itself). Since meat is calorie-efficient, it also freed us of lots of time having to eat low-nutrient vegetation constantly and allowed more time to do other things, such as invent, innovate, sleep, mate, talk, etc.

In my view, veganism is a casual dalliance for the privileged (similar to the whole 'organic' food quasi-religious movement). It's easy to talk about ideology when we can waltz into a Whole Foods, buy organic-greens and feel superior to our meat-loving counterparts at a steep cost premium, but what do we do about people starving in India? Wouldn't they be better eating all those cows instead of worshipping them as they wander the streets at will?

Religion arbitrarily screws with people's diets...forcing all kinds of silly restrictions on them and for no good reason: observant Muslims can't eat pork, Hindus avoid beef, Jains are vegan, Jews won't eat pork or mix certain foods, and Catholics eat dead prophets disguised as crackers. There are enough restrictions on diets without being browbeaten by vegetarians/vegans, at least, there should be some solid reasoning behind dietary recommendations.

If vegans of the world were forced to fend for themselves in the wild, instead of living in a world powered by a majority of meat-eaters who create and deliver their vegan products to stores conveniently nearby, how would they fare? Would a vegan in the wild be so quick to forage for greens with incomplete proteins when they could simply kill a few rabbits, roast them up and have energy for hours....hours which could be spent improving survivability?

Let's not forget, all vegetarians/vegans today are riding on the backs of an omnivorous evolution, with our modern bipedalism, calorie-loving brains, efficient digestion and binocular vision. None of us would be here in the form we are today, with highly-evolved brains capable of sending people to the moon, without meat. I am not saying we couldn't have evolved as vegetarians, but evolution already tried that route with humans and it ostensibly failed and we have the fossils to prove it. Again, even our closest-living modern relatives (the chimpanzee) eat meat. Gorillas are vegetarians, but humans are more closely related to chimps than chimps are to gorillas.

Here's a little joke I made up a few years back: 'How do you know humans are omnivores? Because wild prey animals run from us'. Indeed, and they run just as fast from vegans as a meat-eating omnivore. Even if we think we're ideologically superior in eschewing meat entirely, prey animals still treat us as the predators we are.

Yes, I've read 'Fast Food Nation' and watched 'Meet Your Meat', and have let vegetarians attempt to convince me to go veggie. I even lived with a vegetarian girlfriend for about a year and tried her diet, and it expanded my taste for hummous, tabouli and other veggie fare. I definitely understand the love for animals and not wanting to hurt them, but I think we can be omnivores and still be humane. As for dietary arguments from vegetarians, I think they're mostly groundless, and a vegetarian diet is risky if not done correctly (anemia, low-energy, lack of satiety and some necessary fat, etc.). I once met a vegetarian who also claimed to be anemic and hadn't considered her diet as a possible cause. That's the first thing I would suspect.

I am all for reform and I am against any mistreatment of animals with regard to suffering, but if an animal has 'a good life and one bad day', as Michael Pollan put it, I can live with that.

Be an omnivore or even a vegetarian or vegan, but, I urge people to stick to the facts, verify all claims, consider the companies you're supporting and their practices and perhaps strive to be a more conscious eater. I believe we can be omnivores (as we evolved to be) and still be humane without starving ourselves (and others) by ideology verging on religion.

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*Source (book): 'Significant Others: The Ape-Human Continuum and the Quest for Human Nature' by Craig Stanford, Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences.


References: Evolution Rx: A Practical Guide to Harnessing Our Innate Capacity for Health and Healing, by Dr. William Meller
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