Tag: Not Vegan

Michael Pollan, author of an Omnivore’s Dilemma has annoyed many vegans.

In that well written book, Pollan, an omnivore, does his research, learns, and admits what vegans have been saying all along about the ethics of food choices.

Vegans are annoyed, because after finally being heard by someone out of the mainstream we are still, irrationally, shunned.

In this article in the The Atlantic Monthly B.R. Myers writes a review of Pollan’s book

Hard to Swallow
The gourmet’s ongoing failure to think in moral terms
by B. R. Myers
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200709/omnivore

The essential quote of B.R. Myers’ criticism of Michael Pollan:

“One debates the other side in a rational manner until pushed into a corner. Then one simply drops the argument and slips away, pretending that one has not fallen short of reason but instead transcended it. The irreconcilability of one’s belief with reason is then held up as a great mystery, the humble readiness to live with which puts one above lesser minds and their cheap certainties. As Pollan writes:

 

“‘I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian, the blamelessness of the tofu eater. Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.'”

 

“How arrogant, in other words, how pitifully close to mental illness, to want to be a better person!”

In other words, Pollan is very rational, does a lot of research, follows logic all the way to the conclusion that morally he should become vegan. Then he decides that he simply doesn’t want to, he shuts his reasoning faculties off and calls vegans unrealistic.

This is one of those situations where someone is caught up in their feelings, they know it, they know it is not rational, but they don’t want to let go and instead of admitting that they pretend like there is some issue which you are too dense to get that mitigates their irrationality. The old “if I need to tell you, then you can’t understand it” BS.

Some people want to call Pollan an “excuse-atarian”.

I think there is a word that better fits someone who does a lot of research and a lot of thinking to arrive at an ethical conclusion who then chooses not take the ethical action: hypocrite.

I don’t mean that as insult to Pollan.

I’m still gratified that an omnivore has learned…..and told other omnivores….what we vegans have been saying all along. I am just taking the same spirit of logic that Pollan took with his book, that is, adding everything up logically and seeing where it comes out.

Reason is reason. Emotion is not reason. Emotion is a physiological response to our perceptions. Not feeling right about an action does not negate very impressive reasoning. Impressive reasoning negates impressive reasoning.

Michael Pollan, get honest with yourself and then GO VEGAN!

I thought I would pass on a warning to Vegans who like to eat at the Soul Vegetarian restaurants.

I read a message on a web board from someone in Tallahasse Florida about their local Soul Vegetarian. He discovered that their barbecue sauce contains honey, even though it is labeled as “vegan”.

That doesn’t mean that your local branche(s) of this restaurant do the same, but if you are concerned about avoiding the use of honey you might want to ask about the ingredients of what you are interested in ordering.

The word “vegan” was coined by Donald Watson and his wife in 1947 to refer to the belief ( and practice ) that it is wrong to exploit animals, including food production. Insects, as well as fish, other sea creatures, chickens and other birds are animals.

Granted nobody owns a word, but I think if a word is only 60 years old it is too new for people to redefine it away from its original meaning.

I think if vegans politely ask about the ingredients of food at Soul Vegetarian restaurants and politely educate their local branches about what veganism is, that these restaurants will comply. They tend to be very respectful about people’s beliefs in addition to being talented cooks.

On that same web board I read this information someone mentioned that a similar situation existed in Chicago ended with Soul Vegetarian dropping non-vegan ingredients after local vegans communicated with them.

FYI, FWIW

Nina Planck is a “food writer” without any known credentials in nutrition or medicine.

Back in May, Planck published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about the starvation death of an infant in Atlanta. Planck did not mention in her editorial that Charles Boring, the Fulton County prosecutor for the case convinced a jury that the parents intentionally starved the infant. Instead, Planck blamed the death on a vegan diet, claiming that it was not safe for children or pregnant mothers.

Below are some quotes from a new New York Times Op-Ed piece by an editor for the New York Times who comes pretty close to claiming that Planck’s earlier piece was BS

From:
The New York Times

The Public Editor
The Danger of the One-Sided Debate

By CLARK HOYT
Published: June 24, 2007

THE op-ed page of The New York Times is perhaps the nation’s most important forum for airing opinions on the most contentious issues of the day — the war in Iraq, abortion, global warming and more.

“We look for opinions that are provocative,” said Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page. “Opinions that confirm what you already thought aren’t that interesting.”

But some opinions provoke more than others. Two very different columns by guest contributors, one last week and one last month, caused enormous reader outcries and raised important questions. Are there groups or causes so odious they should be ruled off the page? If The Times publishes a controversial opinion, does it owe readers another point of view immediately? And what is the obligation of editors to make sure that op-ed writers are not playing fast and loose with the facts?

< snip >

Op-ed pages should be open especially to controversial ideas, because that’s the way a free society decides what’s right and what’s wrong for itself. Good ideas prosper in the sunshine of healthy debate, and the bad ones wither. Left hidden out of sight and unchallenged, the bad ones can grow like poisonous mushrooms.

Rosenthal and Shipley said that, over time, they try to publish a variety of voices on the most important issues. Regular op-ed readers have seen a wide range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have a lot of other information to help judge Yousef’s statements.

This wasn’t the case, however, with a May 21 op-ed by Nina Planck, an author who writes about food and nutrition. Sensationally headlined “Death by Veganism,” Planck’s piece hit much closer to home than Yousef’s. It said in no uncertain terms that vegans — vegetarians who shun even eggs and dairy products — were endangering the health and even the lives of their children. A former vegan herself, Planck said she had concluded “a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.”

Her Exhibit A was a trial in Atlanta in which a vegan couple were convicted of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty in the death of their 6-week-old son, who was fed mainly soy milk and apple juice and weighed only 3.5 pounds. The column set off a torrent of reader e-mail that is still coming in — much of it from vegans who send photos of their healthy children or complain bitterly of being harassed by friends and relatives using Planck’s column as proof that their diet is dangerous.

If there was another side, a legitimate argument that veganism isn’t harmful, Planck didn’t tell you — not her obligation, Rosenthal and Shipley say. But unlike the Middle East, The Times has not presented another view, or anything, on veganism on its op-ed pages for 16 years. There has been scant news coverage in the past five years.

There is another side.

Rachelle Leesen, a clinical nutritionist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me that Planck’s article “was extremely inflammatory and full of misinformation.” She and her colleague Brenda Waber pointed me to a 2003 paper by the American Dietetic Association, the nation’s largest organization for food and nutrition professionals. After reviewing the current science, the A.D.A., together with the Dietitians of Canada, declared, “Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence.”

Planck said she was aware of the A.D.A.’s position but regarded it as “pandering” to a politically active vegan community.

I won’t rehash the scientific dispute in a case in which Planck has her experts and the A.D.A. paper cited more than 250 studies, but I think The Times owes its readers the other side, published on the op-ed page, not just in five letters to the editor that briefly took issue with her.

I even question Planck’s Exhibit A, poor little Crown Shakur, who was so shriveled at his death that doctors could see the bones in his body. His death, she wrote, “may be largely due to ignorance. But it should prompt frank discussion about nutrition.”

Maybe, if by nutrition you mean a discussion about whether you feed a baby anything at all.

The prosecutor argued — and the jury believed — that Crown’s parents intentionally starved him to death. News coverage at the time said that the medical examiner, doctors at the hospital to which Crown’s body was taken and an expert nutritionist testified that the baby was not given enough food to survive, regardless of what the food was.

Charles Boring, the Fulton County prosecutor who handled the case, told me it was “absolutely not” about veganism. Planck and Shipley said they were aware of the prosecutor’s contention. Shipley said, “We were also aware, though, that the convicted couple continues to insist that they were trying to raise their infant on a vegan diet.”

But the jury didn’t believe them, and leaving that out put Planck’s whole column on a shaky foundation.

Op-ed pages are for debate, but if you get only one side, that’s not debate. And that’s not healthy.