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alexandrabree's review against another edition
3.0
I am firmly on the fence with this book.
I really wanted to love it, so much. Because as a farmer and having heard her speak she said so much I agree with, but then she’s goes full agriculture and hence civilization are evil or at minimum destructive and should be eliminated full stop. Which is where she lost me, and while she’s does some OK citing, it’s not great. She needed to argue more pro sources on the vegan team and promote the other side a little less.
A really good editor could have worked wonders but might have changed up the personal stuff, which would have admittedly made if more clinical and less personal.
Mono-crop large scale farming is horrible for the environment. She got that right
There are better smaller scale varied farming practices that involve less chemicals and artificials BUT the total number of world farmers would have to increase (not drastically but more than marginally) and in order to make it more “green” the biggest solution that I don’t think was mentioned is not shipping food into moderate climes, which is “unfair” and unlikely to happen for lots of reasons, this would mean no more out of season imports to year round food sustainable areas and the shortest distance possible for “food deserts” that are too cold or too dry for year round farming (this means bananas, avocados, pineapples.. tropical foods can only be bought in the tropics) eliminate shipping and flying food, if you can’t truck it, it can’t be on the plate.
Another truth, vegetable/grain farmers kill a lot of animals and bugs, rabbits, voles, mice, squirrels, birds, deer.. you get the idea
I am all for ethically killing cows,sheep,pigs, chickens, goats, fish and anti-factory farming which is where I find the L. Like so many conflate vegan diet and vegan lifestyle, which can be conjoined but don’t have to be. She obviously embraced both and that didn’t do her much good, I don’t think a vegan diet is for everyone, and i don’t think it can be accomplished without artificial supplements and additives
I really wanted to love it, so much. Because as a farmer and having heard her speak she said so much I agree with, but then she’s goes full agriculture and hence civilization are evil or at minimum destructive and should be eliminated full stop. Which is where she lost me, and while she’s does some OK citing, it’s not great. She needed to argue more pro sources on the vegan team and promote the other side a little less.
A really good editor could have worked wonders but might have changed up the personal stuff, which would have admittedly made if more clinical and less personal.
Mono-crop large scale farming is horrible for the environment. She got that right
There are better smaller scale varied farming practices that involve less chemicals and artificials BUT the total number of world farmers would have to increase (not drastically but more than marginally) and in order to make it more “green” the biggest solution that I don’t think was mentioned is not shipping food into moderate climes, which is “unfair” and unlikely to happen for lots of reasons, this would mean no more out of season imports to year round food sustainable areas and the shortest distance possible for “food deserts” that are too cold or too dry for year round farming (this means bananas, avocados, pineapples.. tropical foods can only be bought in the tropics) eliminate shipping and flying food, if you can’t truck it, it can’t be on the plate.
Another truth, vegetable/grain farmers kill a lot of animals and bugs, rabbits, voles, mice, squirrels, birds, deer.. you get the idea
I am all for ethically killing cows,sheep,pigs, chickens, goats, fish and anti-factory farming which is where I find the L. Like so many conflate vegan diet and vegan lifestyle, which can be conjoined but don’t have to be. She obviously embraced both and that didn’t do her much good, I don’t think a vegan diet is for everyone, and i don’t think it can be accomplished without artificial supplements and additives
11corvus11's review against another edition
1.0
Eta: if you'd like an accurate review of this book with actual nutrition info from an actual registered dietician, read this.
A book of lies about nutrition in all of its forms including vegan nutrition, full of resources from a pro-dairy front group who claims liver fried in lard is good for babies, from a TERF who has rallied alongside eco-bro Derrick Jensen against trans women to the point that most activists have separated from her and him. Yes I am reviewing both the book and her character. Sorry not sorry.
A book of lies about nutrition in all of its forms including vegan nutrition, full of resources from a pro-dairy front group who claims liver fried in lard is good for babies, from a TERF who has rallied alongside eco-bro Derrick Jensen against trans women to the point that most activists have separated from her and him. Yes I am reviewing both the book and her character. Sorry not sorry.
cm636's review against another edition
4.0
Great book and good discussion. There are some things that I don't agree but I still recommend to shuffle through it. Lot of interesting views.
I'm an agronomist and I feel that a lot of knowledge could have had easier access but everyone to their own. I'm glad this hard experience for the author turned out as a book.
I'm an agronomist and I feel that a lot of knowledge could have had easier access but everyone to their own. I'm glad this hard experience for the author turned out as a book.
cintain's review against another edition
4.0
After a few struggles with the seemingly scattered writing and the author's political outbursts, this book finally grabbed hold and wouldn't let go. Awesome, important read that brings a ton of information from vastly different sources and scientific disciplines to bear on the point that vegetarianism isn't an option for any sane person on this planet who wants to be healthy, environmentally conscious, or a part of the circle of life. The implications of the ideas presented, the conclusions and the reasoning, and the bibliography of sources, are stunning for their scope. I wish more people would read this book and allowed themselves to be truly affected by its message. Amazing read, I give it four stars for the aforementioned scattered beginning and occasional political outbursts. In all, fulfills its main goal of asking vegetarians some hard questions, and both them and the rest of us the really difficult ones about whether or not we want to live on this planet. Highly recommended.
iamcurie's review against another edition
5.0
Gourgeous book about how agriculture is damaging our ecosystems and annual monoculture are both a hazard to our health and our planet.
Sadly her whole approach of „why veganism is bad“ is given in a very hostile tone, she confuses her personal experiences with evidence (while curiously, at other parts she points at bad sience and correctly identifies small sample sizes as a reason why studies are not meaningful...) and seems to be rather ignorant towards many well reknown publications on the topic. Wish she would have just split up these two topics into two books - because the part on agriculture is very right and very important
Sadly her whole approach of „why veganism is bad“ is given in a very hostile tone, she confuses her personal experiences with evidence (while curiously, at other parts she points at bad sience and correctly identifies small sample sizes as a reason why studies are not meaningful...) and seems to be rather ignorant towards many well reknown publications on the topic. Wish she would have just split up these two topics into two books - because the part on agriculture is very right and very important
girl_in_glasses's review against another edition
3.0
The first word that came to mind after reading this was: scary.
Yes, it's a scary future we've got coming if we don't change things. Although Keith has some solutions to the agricultural problem, they simply won't be possible. Well, not until we're forced into them, really.
I really found the discussions on soy, plants as sentient beings, and the lack of nutrition in the vegan diet to be the most interesting. The agricultural discussion was fascinating from an anthropological perspective as well.
If you're at all interested in nutrition, sustainability, and the future, this is a book to read at some point.
Yes, it's a scary future we've got coming if we don't change things. Although Keith has some solutions to the agricultural problem, they simply won't be possible. Well, not until we're forced into them, really.
I really found the discussions on soy, plants as sentient beings, and the lack of nutrition in the vegan diet to be the most interesting. The agricultural discussion was fascinating from an anthropological perspective as well.
If you're at all interested in nutrition, sustainability, and the future, this is a book to read at some point.
calynnali's review against another edition
4.0
Brings together a lot of points I have been collecting and trying to fit together for years.
breenmachine's review against another edition
4.0
I learned a lot reading this book. Even basic concepts like nitrogen and what plants need to grow. The author writes very well and mostly in elegant prose. I would highly recommend this book, but it is dense and takes some investment to read. Worth the time.
19paws's review against another edition
1.0
(I reviewed this book back in the fall on my blog. This is a slightly tweaked version of that post.)
Lierre Keith suffers from numerous chronic health problems. Unable to secure a diagnosis for most of them, she decided that the vegan diet she had followed for twenty years was to blame. But she wasn’t content to add a few animal products back to her diet. Instead, she set out to prove that healthy diets require copious amounts of animal foods and that small-scale animal farming is the answer to sustainability. To prove it, she has cobbled together information from websites (yes, she actually cites Wikipedia!) and a few popular pseudoscientific books.
I read the section on nutrition first. Since it’s my area of expertise, I figured it would give me some idea of the quality of her research and analysis. But quality isn’t at issue here because there is no research or analysis. Keith doesn’t bother with primary sources; she depends almost exclusively on the opinions of her favorite popular authors, which she presents as proof of her theories.
For example, when she writes about evolution as it affects dietary needs, and suggests that “the archeological evidence is incontrovertible,” she is actually referencing the book Protein Power , written by two physicians who have no expertise in evolution or anthropology. It’s a neat trick, of course, because we have no idea where the Protein Power authors got their information. By burying all of the actual studies this way, she makes it laborious for readers to check her facts.
I doubt she did this on purpose. And I don’t think she was being sloppy or lazy, either. She just doesn’t understand how complex the research is and she certainly doesn’t know much about basic nutrition. Worse, her conclusions are indebted to the Weston A Price Foundation, a non-credible group that bases its recommendations on the opinions of a dentist who wrote up his observations of indigenous populations in the 1930s.
As a result, we get page after page of contradictions, fabrications, and misinterpretations. For example, Keith is woefully confused about fats, believing that saturated fat is needed for absorption of vitamins and minerals and that humans have a dietary need for cholesterol (Neither saturated fat nor cholesterol are needed in diets; there is no RDA for either.)
Like most anti-vegetarians she is vehemently against soy, insisting that it reduces testosterone levels and therefore male libido (there is no evidence of this) and she speculates that African-American girls reach puberty faster because they are more likely to be enrolled as infants in food assistance programs like WIC and therefore, to be fed soy infant formula. It’s true that African-American babies are less likely to be breastfed, but I couldn’t find any indication that they consume more soy formula. And, it’s not soy that produces abnormally fast growth in kids; it’s animal foods. Recent research has linked animal protein to earlier puberty, and cow’s milk to excessive growth in children. In contrast, preliminary research suggests that soy could slightly delay puberty in girls and also reduce their lifelong risk for breast cancer.
On page 227, she notes that “Mark Messina, a champion of soy, thinks the Japanese eat 8.6 [grams of soyfoods] per day,” or less than a tablespoon. Really? Well, I happen to be married to Mark Messina, so I have a fairly good idea of what he “thinks” about soy intake. But even if I didn’t know him, I could read his 2006 analysis of soy intake data that was published in the medical journal Nutrition and Cancer. Apparently, Keith didn’t or she would have seen that Asian soy intake is the equivalent of 1 to 1 ½ servings or more per day. (She gets this wrong because she doesn’t understand the difference between grams of soy protein and grams of soy food.)
I’m less able to evaluate her discussion of the environmental consequences of animal farming, although it seems reasonable to assume that she gets as much wrong in this section. Notably, she points out that ten acres on Polyface Farm (much lauded by Michael Pollan as an example of sustainable animal agriculture) can produce enough food to feed 9 people for a year. But on his blog Say What Michael Pollan, mathematician Adam Merberg performs calculations which suggest that Polyface requires more calories in feed (for the chickens) than it produces in food. The numbers aren’t nearly as egregious as those for factory farming, but they suggest that there is no such thing as truly sustainable meat production. (For more on environmental questions associated with Polyface, I highly recommend Adam’s review of the Omnivore’s Dilemma)
But Keith didn’t give up veganism because of concerns about the environment; she gave it up because she didn’t feel well. And she mistakes her cravings for animal protein for an actual need for animal protein. When she decides to eat her first bite of tuna fish after 20 years as a vegan, she says “I don’t know how to describe what happened next. […] I could feel every cell in my body—literally every cell—pulsing. And finally, finally being fed. Oh god, I thought: this is what it feels like to be alive.”
This, more than anything, shows that Keith’s conviction about her need for meat has to do with something other than nutrition—-because food just does not work like that. Eating a bite of tuna—-no matter how deficient you might be in a nutrient that it supplies-—does not cause all of your body cells to start pulsing. It wouldn't cause you to feel too much of anything. (At the very least, you’d have to digest and absorb it first!)
It’s true that some vegans are not healthy. They don’t eat enough fat or enough protein or calories or they refuse to supplement with vitamin B12. There is tons of bad nutrition info out there for vegans, some of it from pretty popular sources. But Lierre Keith insists that a vegan diet will damage us all--she is 100% certain of this--and it is simply not true. It’s not supported by nutrition science and it isn’t supported by simple observations of long-term vegans, not to mention vegan from birth kids.
Interestingly, she never tells us what she ate when she was vegan or what she eats now that she is an omnivore. Except to say that she used to eat “all carbohydrates” (All? No wonder she was sick) and that she now eats mostly animals and their secretions. And while she thinks she understands “moral vegetarians,” she reveals her total disconnect from a vegan ethic with three short sentences in the closing paragraphs of the book, “I have looked my food in the eye. I have raised some of it myself, loved it when it was small and defenseless. I have learned to kill.”
This is ultimately a sad book. Lierre Keith was desperate to find an answer to her health problems; she landed on vegetarianism and then spun a tale to support her theory. Her intent seems heartfelt; she sees herself very much as a savior of vegetarians and wants us to learn from her mistakes. And the book has been widely embraced by those who want to believe that meat-eating is healthy and just. The problem is that there is truly nothing in this book that accurately supports that conclusion.
Lierre Keith suffers from numerous chronic health problems. Unable to secure a diagnosis for most of them, she decided that the vegan diet she had followed for twenty years was to blame. But she wasn’t content to add a few animal products back to her diet. Instead, she set out to prove that healthy diets require copious amounts of animal foods and that small-scale animal farming is the answer to sustainability. To prove it, she has cobbled together information from websites (yes, she actually cites Wikipedia!) and a few popular pseudoscientific books.
I read the section on nutrition first. Since it’s my area of expertise, I figured it would give me some idea of the quality of her research and analysis. But quality isn’t at issue here because there is no research or analysis. Keith doesn’t bother with primary sources; she depends almost exclusively on the opinions of her favorite popular authors, which she presents as proof of her theories.
For example, when she writes about evolution as it affects dietary needs, and suggests that “the archeological evidence is incontrovertible,” she is actually referencing the book Protein Power , written by two physicians who have no expertise in evolution or anthropology. It’s a neat trick, of course, because we have no idea where the Protein Power authors got their information. By burying all of the actual studies this way, she makes it laborious for readers to check her facts.
I doubt she did this on purpose. And I don’t think she was being sloppy or lazy, either. She just doesn’t understand how complex the research is and she certainly doesn’t know much about basic nutrition. Worse, her conclusions are indebted to the Weston A Price Foundation, a non-credible group that bases its recommendations on the opinions of a dentist who wrote up his observations of indigenous populations in the 1930s.
As a result, we get page after page of contradictions, fabrications, and misinterpretations. For example, Keith is woefully confused about fats, believing that saturated fat is needed for absorption of vitamins and minerals and that humans have a dietary need for cholesterol (Neither saturated fat nor cholesterol are needed in diets; there is no RDA for either.)
Like most anti-vegetarians she is vehemently against soy, insisting that it reduces testosterone levels and therefore male libido (there is no evidence of this) and she speculates that African-American girls reach puberty faster because they are more likely to be enrolled as infants in food assistance programs like WIC and therefore, to be fed soy infant formula. It’s true that African-American babies are less likely to be breastfed, but I couldn’t find any indication that they consume more soy formula. And, it’s not soy that produces abnormally fast growth in kids; it’s animal foods. Recent research has linked animal protein to earlier puberty, and cow’s milk to excessive growth in children. In contrast, preliminary research suggests that soy could slightly delay puberty in girls and also reduce their lifelong risk for breast cancer.
On page 227, she notes that “Mark Messina, a champion of soy, thinks the Japanese eat 8.6 [grams of soyfoods] per day,” or less than a tablespoon. Really? Well, I happen to be married to Mark Messina, so I have a fairly good idea of what he “thinks” about soy intake. But even if I didn’t know him, I could read his 2006 analysis of soy intake data that was published in the medical journal Nutrition and Cancer. Apparently, Keith didn’t or she would have seen that Asian soy intake is the equivalent of 1 to 1 ½ servings or more per day. (She gets this wrong because she doesn’t understand the difference between grams of soy protein and grams of soy food.)
I’m less able to evaluate her discussion of the environmental consequences of animal farming, although it seems reasonable to assume that she gets as much wrong in this section. Notably, she points out that ten acres on Polyface Farm (much lauded by Michael Pollan as an example of sustainable animal agriculture) can produce enough food to feed 9 people for a year. But on his blog Say What Michael Pollan, mathematician Adam Merberg performs calculations which suggest that Polyface requires more calories in feed (for the chickens) than it produces in food. The numbers aren’t nearly as egregious as those for factory farming, but they suggest that there is no such thing as truly sustainable meat production. (For more on environmental questions associated with Polyface, I highly recommend Adam’s review of the Omnivore’s Dilemma)
But Keith didn’t give up veganism because of concerns about the environment; she gave it up because she didn’t feel well. And she mistakes her cravings for animal protein for an actual need for animal protein. When she decides to eat her first bite of tuna fish after 20 years as a vegan, she says “I don’t know how to describe what happened next. […] I could feel every cell in my body—literally every cell—pulsing. And finally, finally being fed. Oh god, I thought: this is what it feels like to be alive.”
This, more than anything, shows that Keith’s conviction about her need for meat has to do with something other than nutrition—-because food just does not work like that. Eating a bite of tuna—-no matter how deficient you might be in a nutrient that it supplies-—does not cause all of your body cells to start pulsing. It wouldn't cause you to feel too much of anything. (At the very least, you’d have to digest and absorb it first!)
It’s true that some vegans are not healthy. They don’t eat enough fat or enough protein or calories or they refuse to supplement with vitamin B12. There is tons of bad nutrition info out there for vegans, some of it from pretty popular sources. But Lierre Keith insists that a vegan diet will damage us all--she is 100% certain of this--and it is simply not true. It’s not supported by nutrition science and it isn’t supported by simple observations of long-term vegans, not to mention vegan from birth kids.
Interestingly, she never tells us what she ate when she was vegan or what she eats now that she is an omnivore. Except to say that she used to eat “all carbohydrates” (All? No wonder she was sick) and that she now eats mostly animals and their secretions. And while she thinks she understands “moral vegetarians,” she reveals her total disconnect from a vegan ethic with three short sentences in the closing paragraphs of the book, “I have looked my food in the eye. I have raised some of it myself, loved it when it was small and defenseless. I have learned to kill.”
This is ultimately a sad book. Lierre Keith was desperate to find an answer to her health problems; she landed on vegetarianism and then spun a tale to support her theory. Her intent seems heartfelt; she sees herself very much as a savior of vegetarians and wants us to learn from her mistakes. And the book has been widely embraced by those who want to believe that meat-eating is healthy and just. The problem is that there is truly nothing in this book that accurately supports that conclusion.
rookline's review against another edition
2.0
some really beautiful writing in here, especially about the sacredness of death. the underlying argument against liberal solutions to ecocide is