On the issue of whether we can get all the nutrients we need by abstaining from meat-eating…first, meat is the only single source where we can get all the essential amino acids required for a healthy body. I believe you can get them from corn and beans–if eaten together–and possibly from other sources when eaten in combination, but meat solves that problem for you all at once. And the food we eat is about more than just the macro-nutrients they contain. Food is complex, so it’s hard to really know whether we get some sort of essential, undiscovered micronutrient from meat that we can’t replace with plants. We just don’t know enough about food science to understand all the complexities that go on when we eat certain things in combination with others, or abstain from eating certain food.

Your comment about continuing to rely on the same industrial food system despite switching to vegetarianism rings true for me, too. I hate that I’ve simply replaced meat with soy beans grown in unsustainable ways. I try my best to eat local, but haven’t perfected that yet.

Good luck on your quest, Ian! I recommend any and all Moosewood cookbooks for new vegetarians. They make the transition quite tasty! (Simple Suppers is my favorite.)

http://www.holisticwithhumor.com/meat-eaters-vs-vegetarians-round-1-kangaroos

And it’s great that you decided to write this post. A wonderful opportunity for discussion.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/674/are-humans-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-by-nature

I do appreciate everyone weighing in on this issue.

At some point, I think it’s highly likely I will go back to being fully vegetarian. My desire on this article was merely to chronicle where I’m at right now.

Actually it doesn’t. I’ve also never taken supplements and have been vegan for 12 years (veg for 4 years before that). Always get a clean bill of health from the doctor.

The only nutrient that it easiest to get from meat is B12, but I’ve never taken B12 supplements and blood tests show that I have healthy B12 levels. Not sure where you got this information, but the American Dietetic Association announced recently that vegetarian and vegan diets are completely healthy for all life stages.

All-in-all, though, this was a nice post about flexitarianism. Nice work!

My decision is based on a few factors:

1) eating veg doesn’t mean suddenly animals live forever. in nature, animals are killed all the time (often gruesomely). the “killing” in a slaughterhouse, when done quickly and humanely, does not cause an animal more suffering than they would experience in nature. as michael pollan points out in “the ominivore’s dilemma” (after actually killing chickens with his own hands), they appear to have no pre-cognition of their demise. they don’t think of death before they are in the process of dying.

2) eating veg means that we’re relying on the same industrial food system that gives us mono crops (corn, soy) and relies on polluting transportation to get it to our plates.

3) soy and other veg products are often heavily processed, causing me to wonder whether they are actually healthy.

4) the human diet needs a variety of nutrients it can’t get outside of meat. yes, you can take supplements, but to me that’s an indication of a universal relationship between animals and ourselves.

Since we don’t need to eat meat to survive (and living in Vancouver it’s ridiculously easy to eat veg) any killing of an animal is unnecessary.

At what point do you decide that it’s necessary? When it causes uncomfortable social situations?