Is Vegetarianism the Answer?

I just read an article yesterday that outlines the horrors and travesty of our current animal food product production system in this country. The article claims that vegetarianism is the answer to all of this. I am not at all convinced.

I am not a vegetarian. I think this surprises many people because vegetarianism seems to be touted in recent years as the most “natural” way to eat. It surprises them even further to learn that I did in fact used to be a vegetarian (although not a vegan) but eventually went back to my meating eating ways when I decided that it was not in the best interests of my health to give up nutrient dense animal products. I was happy to find another who came to the same conclusions recently when reading Full Moon Feast (an awesome book BTW).  IMO the problem is not that we eat meat or animal products but the volume we consume and the way we go about producing those foods. A good book that kinda goes into that is Full Moon Feast which talks about eating according to the phases of the moon and eating the way we did hundreds of years ago. Interestingly it mentions one researcher a lot that traveled the word finding isolated tribes and groups of people that still ate and lived the way their ancestors did and he could not find one group that was vegetarian. All groups ate animal products of some sort and were among the healthiest individuals he had ever seen. Their bone health was amazing in comparison to so called progressive societies.

I always admired vegans and their dedication because I could not fathom living without things like delicious raw milk, and farm fresh eggs. But this book makes a good case for the fact eating animal products is a natural and healthy way to eat just not the industrialized stuff that is massed produced today.

Here is a quote from Full Moon Feast:

As far as I know, there is no evidence of a thriving, vegan culture that has been able to provide adequate nutrition to its people generation after generation. Every group Price studied not only valued animal products for their nutrient density, but also made special arrangements to ensure that all members of the community had at least periodic access to them that would not be interrupted by war or weather.

The stuff mentioned in that article (above) is appalling but it is just means that we cannot trust or eat the products of industrialized farming. I don’t think vegetarianism is the “solution” like that article says. IMHO the solution can be found in books like Full Moon Feast and The Omnivores Dilemma. We must make the move to small scale, local, organic, and sustainable food production.