Page 68 - Summer2009

All Thumbs Book Reviews

The Vegetarian Myth: should feed starving humans), and nutritional
Food, Justice, and Sustainability vegetarians (those who believe that animal food
By Lierre Keith is detrimental to human health). These chap-
Flashpoint Press/PM Press, 2009 ters are bookended by an introduction (“Why
This Book?”) and a conclusion (“To Save the
Lierre Keith spent almost twenty years as World”).
a dedicated vegan, “succumbing to weakness”
by eating fatty dairy products only on rare oc- MORAL VEGETARIANS
casions. Her book is a moving account of how In addressing the argument that it is wrong
that diet destroyed her body and how she came to kill animals for food, or even to oppress them
Despite her to realize that vegetarianism was not the answer for their milk or eggs, Keith makes it clear that
catastrophically to the problems of environmental destruction, she is in no way excusing the horrors of fac-
animal suffering or Third World starvation.
tory farming. But there are humane ways to
failing health, She did not come to this knowledge eas- raise animals for food. And what’s more, just
she was ily. Despite her catastrophically failing health, because there is no dead animal on your dinner
certain it she was certain it could not be due to her diet. plate doesn’t mean many animals (and birds,
Didn’t everyone know that animal foods with insects, microbes, prairies, rivers) didn’t die so
could not be their saturated fat and cholesterol, not to mention that you could have that plate of rice, beans and
due to her their growth hormones and antibiotics, were the tofu. The worldwide expansion of grain-based

diet. Didn’t cause of all our modern health woes? And wasn’t agriculture has destroyed ecosystems, drained
LW REYLRXV WKDW &$)2V &RQ¿QHPHQW $QLPDO wetlands, caused extinctions, killed the life in
everyone Feeding Operations) and slaughterhouses are the soil. Several hundred small animals die in or
know that institutions of torture, as well as environmental XQGHU WKH PDFKLQHU\ HYHU\ WLPH D ¿HOG RI JUDLQ
animal foods disasters, that the grain and water used for ani- is harvested. And insects, and bacteria, and the
mals should feed the starving masses instead? plants themselves. Death is inherent in every bite
with their Wasn’t it morally wrong to kill a sentient creature of food that keeps each of us alive.
saturated for food, when it was clearly unnecessary? As Keith tried to raise her own food, she
So she dragged her weary body through each became aware of and involved in nature and
fat and day, her life a testament to her desperate, noble its cycles, and learned that plants eat, and that
cholesterol, commitment to life, justice and compassion. As what they eat is animals—whether in the form

not to VKH VWUXJJOHG WR ¿QG DQVZHUV WR KHU GHWHULRUDWLQJ of fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers or today’s blood
mention their health, she also took another step along her path and bones. The soil eats too, a million tiny organ-
as an environmentalist and began trying to grow isms in every spoonful of topsoil, all doing the
growth her own food. As she puts it, these two quests producing and degrading that make life possible
hormones and led her to an adult knowledge of the world that for the rest of us. The insects needed to eat, and

antibiotics, she had never learned before. It’s that knowledge if she was to rescue any of her vegetables from
that she shares in her beautifully written book, them, she had a choice between chemicals and
were the which is organized into three main sections birds. Could she bear to “exploit” some chickens,
cause of all addressing moral vegetarians (those who are even if she didn’t eat them in the end, by putting
our modern vegetarian because they believe that killing/op- them to work eating bugs in her garden? Would
pressing animals is wrong), political vegetarians she personally be culpable for the death of those
health woes? (those who believe that the grain fed to animals insects, having put the chickens in proximity to
66 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2009