A Response to AskMen's Anti-Vegetarian Article

For reference, here's a link to the article: http://www.askmen.com/money/how_to_400/477_how-to-argue-against-vegetarians.html

Dear AskMen,

I'm really unsure of where to begin. Should I begin with the horrendously chauvinistic advertisements on your page which include degrading, objectifying photos of women and topics such as "2012 Olympics Sexiest Countries," "Top 99 Hottest Women," and "How To: Break Up With A Girl"? (Real men only care about women's looks, right?) Maybe a better place to start would be with the disgustingly cheesy tag-line "Become a Better Man." (Join us and you, too, can be an over-testosteroned sexist!) Perhaps I should begin with the article's implications that it is unacceptable for men, themselves, to be vegetarians. (Who doesn't love a healthy dose of hegemonic gender role reinforcement?) At any rate, the purpose of this post is really to comment only on the article entitled "How To: Argue Against Vegetarians," so I'll do my best to put your other offenses out of thought.

I must commend you on your ability to jump right into making offensive, generalized statements toward a group about which you clearly know nothing. Your readiness to label vegetarians as "righteous," and your assumption that every vegetarian and vegan lives solely to tell others how to live is almost as shallow the research that went into your article. Your claims that vegetarians and vegans must supplement their diets with Vitamin D, B12, and iron is almost laughably wrong. These nutrients can easily be acquired through a variety of fortified plant-based foods, as well as many nuts and legumes. [Vegan Nutrition] Omega-3 fatty acids are also found in a variety of plants: English walnuts, chic-peas, broccoli, kale, chard, cauliflower, and tons of others [Dietary Sources]. Further, your claims that vegetarians and vegans have weaker bones, "attributed to the fact that many vegetarians and vegans consume very little calcium due to the limitations of their diets," is like saying that people who choose not to shop at Office Max can't buy paper - it's simply not true. Most healthy vegans and vegetarians are easily able to get their daily recommended amounts of calcium from things like tahini (a common ingredient in hummus - a staple in a vegan diet), kale, broccoli, soy-based products of all kinds, and many other staple vegetables and fruits [Mangels]. Granted, I do recognize that you may not have actually been aware that any of these are edible - believe it or not, you actually can eat these green things called vegetables and get nutrients from them instead of from popping processed dietary supplement pills. The final thing I have to say on the nutritional note is: before you start throwing around accusations of personality disorders, I think you might want to check yourself for one - although, unfortunately, I suppose that arrogance and self-inflicted ignorance are not technically personality disorders.

You next moved on to an argument against moral reasons for being a vegan or vegetarian. I'd like to first point out that if your article is read by anyone who follows any monotheistic religion (be it Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or any other religion that believes in one, and only one, deity), your statement about "god's creatures" would be incredibly offensive. If you're going to make a generalized 'religious reasons' statement, you should at least know that people who would argue that reason in the first place would never in a million years use the lower-case version of the word god, as it's considered very sacrilegious. A second thing that I'd like to point out in regards to this statement is that I actually don't know very many vegans who believe in the God that you tried to reference. Now let's move on to your argument that "plants are living organisms that respond to stimuli like gravity, light and touch." Well, guess what - besides the "living organisms" part, so are rocks. If I drop a rock, it responds to gravity. Many rocks will alter their color, or sparkle, or have a variety of reactions based on exposure to sunlight. If I move a rock, it has responded to my touch. So, I guess you'd better re-think that apartment you were going to rent. Also, if you're really going to try to make this moral counter-argument you'd sure as hell be better to get the response that most people who are vegetarian or vegan for moral reasons follow their diets because what they actually have a problem with is supporting the killing of beings with a conscience controlled by the synaptic reaction chains begun by ATP production during digestion and resulting in an awareness of what is happening in the world. This would not actually include plants [Khakh]. And further, you must understand that the degree to which people follow diets based on their moral beliefs varies with what their morals allow. There is no set "prototype" for what you eat if you are vegan for moral reasons. It's just simply naive to think that way.

As for your argument on the "humane ways" that exist to kill animals for food, I offer you this scenario. From each continent I will randomly select 10 households with couples expecting to have babies in the next week. I will take all 60 infants (since I doubt that Antarctica has any, much less 10, households expecting babies to be born) and split them into two groups: 5 infants from each continent will go into Group A and 5 will go to Group B. Group A will contain 30 infants, all to be raised in the same playpen with one caretaker for all of them. Group B, on the other hand, will be raised in a luxurious country estate with a separate nursery and two caretakers for every child (one for during the day and one for during the night). One year from now Group A will be put to death by having their throats slit. Group B will be put to death on the same day by lethal injection while they are sleeping. For which group would you like to volunteer your next child?

While I admit that the rest of your article did use somewhat nearly factual information - you did use research from recorded and cited sources of some amount of credibility, no matter how flawed the logic you used or questionable the twisting of the sources - it is in the environmental arguments section in which you really outdid yourself in presenting false information as support for poorly construed arguments. I present to you, Exhibit A: "These dangerous chemicals also frequently leach into water supplies where they can cause harmful neurological effects when consumed by humans and animals alike." This is true, and is also the reason that the EPA controls the usage of these pesticides, thereby limiting their exposure to human drinking water sources [Regulating Pesticides]. Moving on! Exhibit B: "Speaking of water, the cultivation of vegetables requires vast amounts of it, which in turn can cause water shortages and, in extreme cases, drought." Brace yourself, because honeychild, I grew up on a dairy farm and there is a lot that needs to be said about this disgustingly false statement! It is an established fact that an average dairy cow produces about 8 gallons of milk per day while using about 12,450 gallons of water per day. That's just a single cow! Most dairy farms in North America have herds numbering from five hundred to a couple thousand. That's a little over 1500 gallons of water used for every gallon of milk produced. (If you're interested, I'll post the actual number crunching part of this after the sources at the bottom.) To produce one pound of beef is roughly the same amount of water per animal per day. Compared to the 45 gallons of water that you put out to make a pound of traditional garden vegetables, the amount of water used to produce milk (nearly 34 times the amount to produce vegetables) is an absolute atrocity. While producing eggs and poultry does use less water than dairy and beef (after all, they're smaller animals), it still takes about 10 times as much water to produce these products as it does for vegetables [Bluejay]. What it comes down to is that your claim that water shortages are caused by vegetable farms and orchards is completely bogus. I can tell you from personal experience that when rural areas start to get low on water over a dry summer, it's not their vegetable stands or their orchards that worry about business - it's the dairy farmers that get nervous.

On to Exhibit C: "Fruit and vegetable farms also harm the environment through the burning of agricultural waste and the production of oxide emissions from nitrogen fertilizer." About this I have three things to say. First, in the Western world dairy farms not only produce the fertilizer you're condemning here, but also use the same exact fertilizer on their own fields for the crops they grow to feed their livestock. Second, the amount of waste that gets burned on a dairy farm, again I am telling this from 18 years of personal experience, is ludicrous! Third, dairy and meat farms in North America are responsible for nearly all the continent's atmospheric methane emissions (as well as third only to automobiles and factories in carbon dioxide emissions, and second in production of atmospheric hydrogen), and serve as the second highest source of global methane production. Atmospheric methane, it just so happens, is not only one of the biggest contributors to global warming, but is also one of the shortest lived greenhouse gases in our atmosphere (about a third as long as carbon dioxide). This means that it is one of the few greenhouse gases about which we would be able to do something and actually see a direct result or change in the atmosphere's make-up in our lifetime [Vallis]. This brings me to Exhibit D: "vegetarians produce more gas than meat-eaters." Honey, even if that is true, the source of your steak produces so much more than any person ever could that it's not able to be compared. (No, really! The units in which human gas emissions are measured and the units in which cattle emissions are measured have never been compared because the difference is so great that only a fool would even try to argue that people have any affect on the atmosphere in comparison to our bovine counterparts [Vallis].)

In conclusion, all I can really say is this: you need to check your attitude, your sources, and your ego! It's absolutely absurd that you would assume that every vegetarian or vegan is "righteous" or running around with the ulterior motive to change the world's mind about dietary practices. Furthermore, you really should never try to make such poorly constructed arguments in regards to the environmental impact of vegetable agriculture versus dairy and meat farming around someone who was raised in a self-sufficient household (meaning that we grew all our own vegetables and fruits) that lies within a dairy farming region where people are outnumbered by livestock 20:1. (Trust: It's really not going to get you anywhere other than shamefully put in your place.) Finally, it may be that salads never won you any friends, but that's probably because while the people were eating your salad, you were busy opening your big mouth to say something as unintelligent as the contents of the article I just read.  

Sincerely, 

Bee

P.S. Since you so kindly listed your sources (in a format that was not anywhere near acceptable for a professionally researched article, might I add), I will gladly return the favor:  

Sources:

Bluejay, Michael. "Google_ad_client="pub-7948311637472652";google_ad_slot="4405980076";google_ad_width=336;google_ad_height=280;Vegetarianism and the Environment." Want to save the Environment? Go Vegetarian. Vegetarian Guide, 2012. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/environment.html>.

"Dietary Sources of Omega-3 Fatty Acids." DHA/EPA Omega-3 Institute. DHA/EPA Omega-3 Institute, 2012. Web. 11 Aug. 2012. <http://www.dhaomega3.org/Overview/Dietary-Sources-of-Omega-3-Fatty-Acids>.

Falk, Dean E. "Fresh Water Needs for Dairy Farms." Fresh Water Needs for Dairy Farms. One Plan, n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <http://www.oneplan.org/Stock/DairyWater.asp>.

Khakh, Baljitt, Daniel Gittermann, Debora Cockayne, and Allison Jones. "ATP Modulation of Excitatory Synapses into Interneurons." N.p., 23 July 2010.

Kostigen, Thomas M. "Environment / Environmental Policy." Everything You Know About Water Conservation Is Wrong. Discover Magazine, 28 May 2008. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jun/28-everything-you-know-about-water-conservation-is-wrong/>.

Mangels, Reed. "Calcium in the Vegan Diet." -- The Vegetarian Resource Group. The Vegetarian Resource Group, 28 Mar. 2006. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/calcium.htm>.

 "Regulating Pesticides." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 12 June 2012. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/>.

 Vallis, Geoffrey K. "Chapter 3." Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics: Fundamentals and Large-scale Circulation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. 43-56. Print.

 "Vegan Nutrition." Vegan Nutrition & Healthy Vegan Diets. The Vegan Society, n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <http://www.vegansociety.com/lifestyle/nutrition/>.

CRUNCHED NUMBERS FOR DAIRY FARM WATER USAGE:
1 cow drinks 20 gallons of water per day
1 cow requires about 30 gallons of water per day for sanitation purposes needed to keep a farm running
1 cow eats about 80 pounds of wheat-based feed every day
Growing 1 pound of wheat-based feed takes about 155 gallons of water
155 gallons per pound x 80 pounds per cow per day = 12,400 gallons per cow per day
12,400 gallons per cow per day + 20 gallons per cow per day + 30 gallons per cow per day = 12,450 gallons per cow per day