Meaties, or Wheaties? Vegetarianism Passes the Nutrition Test. Can Carnivores Pass the Moral One?

Nov. 9, 2009 | By Patt Morrison

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Maybe all the carnivores were at their favorite burger spots, but we heard from loads of vegetarians and even some vegans calling about a new study by the American Dietetic Association, finding that not only can a vegetarian diet give you the same nutritional values as a diet with meat and poultry in it, it can even have health benefits, especially when it comes to heart health.

The study also found that children brought up as vegetarians -- meaning eating real vegetarian foods, not just snack foods and sodas -- can actually be better off than their peers when it comes to childhood obesity. Reed Mangels, the co-author of the paper, is a dietitian and nutritionist who's raised her two children as vegans, and spent a good hunk of time answering your questions about varieties of protein from vegetarian sources, especially for kids.

The other ''trigger'' to this topic, besides the study, is Jonathan Safran Foer's book, ''Eating Animals.'' As he told me, the book isn't so much about turning people into vegetarians as it is about making sure people know just what happens to put that chicken breast or burger on your plate.

Raising animals for meat is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gases -- bigger even than driving cars -- because it takes up space, and uses up water in vast amounts, and animal waste is a huge polluter of rivers and groundwater. Pound for pound, it is far more expensive and exponentially less efficient as a protein source than vegetable protein.

As for the creatures themselves, a lot of people would rather not know what it takes to get it to your plate. It isn't just the ten minutes of ''torture'' that animals suffer as they die in the slaughterhouse -- that's Foer's word, describing the animals who are sometimes being skinned and cut to pieces while they're still alive. It's the ``factory farming,'' a phenomenon that didn't exist until 1923, that circumscribes the cruelty of their lives -- chickens get their beaks cut off, and live stacked six cages deep in wire cages the size of a sheet of paper; cows never set foot on grass but are locked into stalls and fed remains of dead dogs, cats and even other cows; piglets, which have the intelligence of two-year-old children, are ''thumped'' to death on the floor.

As hard as these things are merely to read, Foer argues, imagine what pain and suffering these creatures have to endure. He argues that if you eat meat in any form, directly or in products that use meat by-products [and they show up in places you don't suspect], you cannot refuse to know these consequences of your purchases and eating habits: that every time you down a piece of meat or poultry, you cannot dodge your moral or ethical role in that meat, as a citizen, a consumer, and a sentient being.

Next time, Americans spend $34 billion a year on alternative treatments and remedies. Do they work, and are they safe?

-- Patt Morrison

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