“We could feed the world” is the anthem of everyone who supports the proliferation of massive mono-cropping of wheat and other grains. Vegetarians and vegans use this phrase as if it were the exclamation point ending every sentence. The theory is that if we didn’t feed so much grain to livestock, we could feed the world with those grains. That’s fine with me, because I don’t consume products made from grains nor from livestock raised on grains. All livestock animals, including cattle, sheep, goats and even chickens didn’t evolve to eat a grain based diet and their health suffers as a consequence. Feedlot animals require antibiotics to stay alive and render inferior food products. The reason grains are fed to livestock is simple – to fatten them up for slaughter quicker. Yet, somehow TPTB have convinced people that these same “Heart Healthy Grains” that make livestock fat and sick will somehow make humans lean and healthy. How’s that working out for us so far?
So if we were to allow livestock ruminants to thrive on their natural diets of grasses, would we truly feed the world with all that extra grain? We actually produce enough food now to feed the world, even in spite of the grains fed to farm animals. Excess grains are purchased to produce tons of processed foods, snacks and other confections. Corn is processed into high fructose corn syrup for sodas, juices and a whole host of processed swill. Wheat is used for the baking of snack cakes, cookies, pies, donuts and every other baked goodies you can think of. Tons of grains are used annually in the brewing and distillation of alcoholic beverages. Funny, I have never heard anyone reciting; “If we just gave up junk food, sodas and beer, we could feed the world.”. And it goes far beyond edible products. Grains have thousands of industrial uses. Wheat is used to make industrial adhesives, soaps, cosmetics and many other products.
So much grain is produced in the world, that inventors stay up nights designing more products that can utilize them – we even burn them as fuel. Why are they not being used to “feed the world”? The answer is simple economics. Selling grains to the impoverish is less profitable than selling Little Debbie Snack Cakes to people with money to burn. We also have the problem of dictatorships. Many starving people live in nations where their leaders are the cause of their starvation. These dictators and warlords can use hunger as a weapon to control their populace or sell grains on the world market in exchange for weapons, fuel or any other commodity that will empower them, rather than distribute the food to their people.
When first world nations, such as the U.S., have sent tons of grains into starving countries, the cheaper cost of the imported grains only served to put the local farmers out of business. The poverty-stricken farmers cannot afford the huge tractors, combines, irrigation, petroleum fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides that make agriculture more abundant in the U.S., not to mention the government subsidizing, which lowers the cost. They are often times driven out of work and have to abandon their farms. This huge inflow of grains to the market has historically proven to only cause more starvation and disruption of the local economy.
Some people live in a fantasy world, where simply reducing or abstaining from animal products will somehow “feed the world”. This is a pretty anemic effort which may somehow boost their self-righteousness, but does nothing to solve the problem. If there is no profit in raising grain crops, growers will simply stop raising them and go into a more lucrative venture. Plenty of U.S. Tax dollars go to shipping grains to third world nations only to make their governments fatter, not the people. How is dropping meat from your diet going to change that? Are those people suggesting that we overthrow every rogue government in the world and occupy their country? Should we behave as an empire? Truth is, such idealists have never given it enough thought to understand why there are starving people. They are the masters of “soundbite recital” and it becomes that much more laughable when it comes from a rotund individual.
According to William Davis M.D., in his book “Wheat Belly”, geneticists created a new hybrid of dwarf wheat that could yield more grain per acre less than 50 years ago. The mission statement of these scientists was the promise that it would “feed the world”. They were successful in creating this frankenwheat and it increased the production of wheat in the western world. Did it feed the world? No, it only drove down the wheat prices and made flour cheaper and readily available for more junk food and confections. It was also successful in creating new strains of gluten protein, causing a quadrupling in celiac disease and a multitude of other gluten related illnesses. I’m not against feeding the world – it’s a great idea. I just don’t believe that abstaining from meat and increasing grain harvests will accomplish that. It will only create more products for consumption by the richer.
World hunger is more of an economic and political issue than the lack of food. Excess production of grains only led to cheaper food prices which made it possible for people to gorge themselves into obesity. Maybe we could liposuction all the fat from overweight westerners and feed it to the poor. People are always more willing to give up their extra fat than their snack cakes and chips. Hell, I imagine even saturated human fat is healthier than grains. These foreign nations would most likely become more robust on human lipids than our lardbutt, sickly, grain-eating society and turn around and kick our ass. As far as I’m concerned, we can send every last grain grown here to the starving people of the world – I have no use for them.
Sadly due to high omega-6 / vegetable oil intake, human body level has very high levels of omega-6 which make it less healthy than you’d expect, it’s more than doubled!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W1ytkwstPQo/TzCsybul7HI/AAAAAAAAA2g/kPMiyc7epJo/s400/LA+in+body+fat.jpg
Thanks for the chart. This is a huge problem today. Every doctor knows that the high omega 6 intake in the American diet causes a lowering of HDL and inflammation to the arteries, but rather than recommending that people lower their seed oil intake and hydrogenated fats in so many snack cakes and such, they simply tell people to eat more fish oil in an attempt to balance the n6 to n3 ratios.
It’s quite insane. There is not enough fish oil in the world to offset all of the omega 6 fats from seeds and seed oils consumed, nor is there any evidence that you can offset the tremendous seed oil intake by elevating the omega 3 intake to insane levels. The fact is, people are just consuming far too much plant fats high in omega 6, which the human body produces on its own anyway, as you pointed out. People can stop gagging down tons of fish or krill oil by simply reducing the amount of hydrogenated vegetable oils they eat. But that would mean giving up all those processed foods and snack cakes and chips – you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Americans will continue to believe that they can have all that processed seed oils and be safe as long as they take a couple of fish pills – it’s kind of laughable, but unfortunately, the idiot advice that their doctor will give them. And as a result, heart disease will continue to be the highest killer of humans in the U.S..
Funny how the French consume far less vegetable oil and threes times the amount of saturated fat (mostly as butter) and have far less heart disease than the U.S. and U.K., where seed oils are the oil of choice. Have you read my article entitled “The Truth About Soy“, where I cover the liver damage sustained by TPN patient as a result of the choice of infused soy lipids in the U.S.; as compared to the choice of Omegavin (made from fish oil) used in Europe. Patients on Omegavin sustain no liver damage, yet the FDA will not permit the usage of Omegavin, except to children who have already sustained liver damage from the soy lipids. Shows how much power the soy industry has over the FDA. I hope you get a chance to read the article here.
I have also heard veg*n’s saying raising cattle destroys topsoil. Um, it was grain production in the 1930’s that caused the dustbowl.
Amen, Tracy. Massive monocropping of beans and grains has done more to deplete our topsoil and turn gardens into wastelands than any properly grazed livestock ever could. It is feedlot raising of livestock that is problematic.
I believe that the experiments conducted over more than twenty years by Allan Savory have proven that livestock are the only hope of bringing back the wastelands that agriculture have created. Here is a link to a fantastic lecture by Dr. Savory where he shows the garden lands he had converted from wastelands by proper use of herding livestock. It is amazing and well worth the time to watch. (Link)
Thanks for your comment.
It’s one of the most common lies that PETA and others tell to convince people to become veg*n.
It gets me that you have these kids (teen or younger) impulsively choosing to stop eating meat and they have no idea what they are doing to replace the nutrients they won’t be getting from meat. And all they do is bitch and moan that their parents won’t buy or prepare them veg*n food.
On another site gnolls.org it says that teen girls have such low self esteem that they think an animals life is more important than theirs. I think that any kid who wants to become veg*n because they love animals should have to help take care of animals, the dirty smelly jobs and figure out if maybe they really just love looking at cute animal pictures on the internet. They are living in a Disneyfied fantasy world.
Just because I eat meat does not mean I don’t love out cats and dogs. And it does not mean that I don’t think that cattle and pigs etc. should not have the best life possible and the most painless quick death possible.
Yes, Tracy. Show me a vegan and I’ll show you someone who has never lived on a farm. Anyone who imposes “self awareness” onto any farm animal has never spent time around any. Of course all animals want to live when chased by a predator, but very few actually can understand the concept until the point that the predator is nipping at their ass and then it’s simply instinct to run, “fight or flight”, but no actual contemplation of being.
I have seen my chickens run up and attempt to snatch the crumbs from around my dog’s whiskers, and certainly not because they are starving. They simply lack the understanding of life to know that they are leaping to the jaws of a predator. But, the young and the simple rather like to fantasize about little Bambies having deep philosophical conversations with a skunk. Only dolphins, whales and great apes have any knowledge of ones self and life and preservation on an individual basis.
Then again, a lot of veganism is purely unadulterated snobbery at it’s best on some occasions. Some people just need to manufacture some artificial grounds with which to feel superior to others and many of those choose veganism. It also runs along the lines of a pseudoscience for others, so I guess there are a variety of reasons when you consider the source. There are many reason for this ridiculous belief, but health and science are not a realistic one.
And another thing, I think many of these young veg*n’s are more concerned with calling themselves one than actually being one. Why else would they say can they still call themselves veg*n if they accidentally eat meat or if they still own leather shoes, belts, etc.
I have seen so many questions like this on the Yahoo Answers Vegetarian section. I went there looking for recipes for my cousin who became vegetarian. And I started reading some of the Q and A. Some of these people have such bat-shit crazy ideas it’s not funny. One person asked what should she do with some leather boots she had. Most people sensibly said donate them but one person said she should bury or burn them with reverence.
Another thing that I think is false that they say is veg*n food is dirt cheap. Dry beans and rice and vegetables in season are, I agree on that point. But if you have to have something shipped in from somewhere else, it isn’t. A lot of nuts are not cheap and a lot of spices are not cheap. They might not be as expensive as meat, but it’s misleading to say it’s all affordable. Especially more exotic things like spirulina or whatever the heck it’s called. I think it’s some sort of seaweed.
Also they say people are not supposed to eat meat because we don’t eat it raw or unseasoned and that people only eat it for taste or convenience or laziness. I think both statements contradict each other, especially if they are in the same answer.
Great post. Vegans are nuts. Arable farming is intrinsically destructive to the soil and the ecosystem that depends on it. It produces vast oceans of one species of plant that is totally alien in nature and which cannot support life beyond the heavily maintained crop. Good pasture on the other hand provides a home for countless species of plants, insects, birds, small mammals etc. I wonder if vegans take all those deaths into account when they tuck into their bowl of lightly steamed soy beans. The vegan mentality is so denatured it believes it can sustain life without death. NOTHING in life exists without death – even plants. Nuts the lot of them. Keep up the good work!
Amen to everything you wrote. Every vegan that I have met is an inner city dweller – life long. They have absolutely no experience with animals at all, except for through Disney movies, which is why they impose human attributes and emotions on to animals.
I have been around livestock all of my life and have a far greater understanding of their capacity to think. I have also been around plenty of farms where mono-cropping is practiced and I cannot see how anything could be worse on an environment – including to the local wildlife. There is little danger of cows, chickens or hogs going extinct, but massive mono-cropping destroys many endangered and threatened species.
Here in Florida, farmers are simply fined a thousand dollars for each gopher tortoise hole they plow under. Though the tortoise is not endangered, it is a “keystone” species which has over 400 other animals that depend on the holes that they burrow – many of these animals are endangered, like the indigo snake. Vegans just ignore this, because snakes aren’t furry and cuddly. I have plenty of gopher tortoise holes in my cattle fields and they are not disturbed in the least.
It just doesn’t seem right to me to wipe an entire species of animal off the planet so you can have a soyburger,, which quite frankly, isn’t very healthy for you anyway.
And if you point out that small animals are displaced, maimed or killed in harvesting or poisoned to keep them out of stored grain. They come back with the following argument: they say that excess grain is used to fatten livestock instead of being used to feed the hungry of the world, so therefore they are causing less of this collateral damage.
What they fail to realize is a lot of stuff used to fatten cattle is not fit for human use and also just because enough grain is available for people does not mean they will get it if the countries they live in won’t give it to them. It’s politics and overpopulation as much as anything that keep people starving.
You are absolutely right Tracy. The grain raised for livestock is not lawfully allowed to be sold for human consumption. We already grow enough food to feed the world – starvation is a political issue, something that feel-gooders know nothing about.
All of the junk food and snacks in this country are made from grains that could feed the world, but how do you get it to them? You can’t and when our corporations do flow cheap food into those countries, it puts their farmers out of business, which is what most people in poor countries do for a living. Then, no one has jobs to buy the cheap food you are offering.
I could care less about the grains fed to cattle, because all of the cattle that I eat have been raised on their natural diet of grass. The grains which are earmarked for cattle cannot be sold to humans because it has been sprayed with more chemicals and breeds not fit for human consumption. By eating the cattle that was fed on grains, you are eating the sprayed toxins second hand.
This reminds me of another problem most people do not realize. Because cotton is not considered a food product, it is allowed to be sprayed much heavier than products grown as food. Problem is, those cotton seeds are sold to food manufacturers who make cottonseed oil, which many snacks are cooked in (read the labels). There is no telling how much toxins are remaining in that oil? This is simply one oversight in our food policing. There are many more. Thanks again for writing.
And even the manufacturing of clothing is not without cruelty if they are made in countries that do not have child labor laws. I remember a comment I’ve seen where a vegan said something about it was not always convenient to buy clothing that had not been produced at the expense of children in poor countries. Well, you know what, it’s not convenient for everybody to be vegan either.
I also saw an article in NatGeo. Some country in Africa was mining a mineral needed for electronic devices like computers and such (I don’t recall what it was). Children were mining it and other children were holding guns on them forcing them to keep working.