Vegetarian propaganda dressed up as science - welcome to joyless food academia

There is an especially joyless tendency in the world of food academia. This is a world where food is made into a problem - causing cancer and other disease, 'promoting' obesity or destroying the planet. And the main reason for this destruction of any pleasure in food rests with a particular sort of vegetarian - often vegan - activist academic:

"We do not expect everybody to become vegan," said lead author Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Program on the Future of Food.

But if they did, they'd live longer and help reduce the changes that are skewing the climate.

"What we eat greatly influences our personal health and the global environment," Springmann said.

Got that folks? You don't have to be vegan but if you want to live longer and save the planet into the bargain then you jolly well ought to be. And the reasons are set out in Dr Springmann's well-funded research:

If everyone ate less meat and other animal products and followed guidelines already recommended for healthy eating—more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains and less meat, salt, and sugar—it would reduce global mortality by up to 10 percent and reduce food-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 29 and 70 percent, based on predictions for the year 2050, write Marco Springmann and colleagues in their paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Not, leaving aside that I'm always dubious about research that has very broad ranges ('between 29 and 70 percent') and memorable round numbers ('up to 10 percent'), we need to get into the truth of what Dr Springmann is saying about the economics of food production to understand why he is pulling a whole load of vegan-approved artificial wool over our eyes. The first of this is what we count as part of the contribution from livestock farming - the veggie activists claim anything up to 30% of anthropogenic greenhouse gases from livestock farming making it a bigger contributor than the world's entire transport system.

A more measured figure is:

Recent estimates by the United States Environmental Protection Agency [EPA, Hockstad, Weitz (2009). Inventory of U.S. greenhouse gases and sinks: 1990–2007. Environmental Protection Agency] and the California Energy Commission [CEC—California Energy Commission (2005). Inventory of California Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990 to 2002 Update] on the impacts of livestock on climate change in the United States and California have arrived at much different GHG estimates associated with direct livestock emissions (enteric fermentation and manure), totaling at less than 3% of total anthropogenic GHG and much smaller indirect emissions compared to the global assessment.

The problem is that things such as deforestation are being included in the calculation as is the use of nitrogen fertiliser to produce cattle feed when we know that the alternative crop would also use said fertiliser - unless we plant trees (an approach that is possible given farming intensification but not with the extensive organic methods preferred by our veggie academic activists). Indeed levels of fertiliser use in arable farming are significantly higher - up to four times greater - than for livestock farming which suggests that levels of Nitrous Oxide would rise under a shift to a diet based on vegetable proteins.

We're told that, of the greenhouse gases produced by agriculture (Nitrous Oxide, Methane and Carbon Dioxide), Nitrous Oxide is by far the most significant in terms of impact:



So the slightly glib assumption that reducing livestock numbers would reduce emissions is, at the very least, open to question as is the oft-repeated statement about the degree to which livestock is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

Which, I guess, brings us to health and our veggie academic activists who are terribly imprecise with their 'up to 10%':

For their study, the Oxford scientists “used specific food groups” Springmann told Civil Eats. “Each additional serving of fruit and vegetables reduces chances of heart disease and diabetes,” he explained. “Add more meat and you go in the other direction. It’s almost linear,” he said. Such data, Springmann explained, is found in so many studies that it’s now “basically an agreed fact” that high fat, meat-heavy diets are associated with poor health outcomes.

Now there's a bit of a problem here because we're all living a whole lot longer despite this 'high fat, high meat' diet of ours with some of the highest level of longevity being in the very Western nations that are singled out for vegetarian opprobrium. Indeed the problem is that every one of the world's most long-lived societies has above average consumption of meat. We shouldn't be surprised about this because the thing all these countries share is being relatively rich.

It's true that there's a well-established correlation linking eating red meat and processed meats with bowel cancer. But the increased risk is so small that it simply wouldn't show up in overall mortality statistics:

We know that, out of every 1000 people in the UK, about 61 will develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives. Those who eat the lowest amount of processed meat are likely to have a lower lifetime risk than the rest of the population (about 56 cases per 1000 low meat-eaters).

If this is correct, the WCRF’s analysis suggests that, among 1000 people who eat the most processed meat, you’d expect 66 to develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives – 10 more than the group who eat the least processed meat.

The 'scientists' go on to link meat with diabetes, stroke, heart disease as well as the bowel cancer. The problem, as with every claim of this sort is that, while there's plenty of evidence showing high meat diets correlate with diabetes, this evidence show the increased risk is tiny alongside other risk factors such as being obese. And, as we know, the main factor in the increased incidence of diabetes is mostly down to how we define having the condition and longevity plus incentivising medical professionals to diagnose the condition in the first place.

In the case of stroke and heart disease, the problem is that these problems have been declining pretty consistently for several decades despite an increased consumption of meat. The rate of decline may indeed be faster for vegetarians but there simply isn't a case for saying that a million more early deaths would be avoided if everyone became a vegan. Which isn't really a surprise at all since there's plenty of evidence telling us vegans are less healthy:

Vegetarians have twice as many allergies as big meat-eaters do (30.6% to 16.7%) and they showed 166% higher cancer rates (4.8% to 1.8%). Moreover the scientists found that vegans had a 150% higher rate of heart attacks (1.5% to 0.6%). In total the scientists looked at 18 different chronic illnesses. Compared to the big meat-eaters, vegetarians were hit harder in 14 of the 18 illnesses (78%) which included asthma, diabetes, migraines and osteoporosis

The truth in all this is that we are able - through the careful selection and manipulation of statistics - to show how almost any individual element of diet is either good for us or bad for us. And this results in the sort of crank science presented in this argument (in the case of Springmann et al supplemented by some equally dodgy climate change science and batty economics).

Our food system is not destroying the planet nor is it making us ill. Agriculture and the food industry it supports is, in fact, responsible for the amazing achievement of feeding over 7 billion people using a declining proportion of the world's land and with ever greater efficiency. And as for diet, the right advice is to eat a properly balanced diet - with or without meat. More to the point - and there's plenty of evidence that this too leads to a longer life - enjoy the gathering, preparation and consumption of all the foods nature and human ingenuity provides.

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Some stuff worth reading...on open borders, Bowie, vegans and High Street robots (plus other goodies too!)

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The Islamophobic Case for Open Borders

"In America, 77% of those raised Muslim, are still Muslim, according to Pew. That’s a fairly high retention rate, but Islam in the West still loses about one-fourth of each Muslim-born generation. At that rate of member loss, less than half of the descendants of Muslims would still be Muslim after three generations. Germany’s assimilation of Turkish migrants seems to illustrate how this process plays out. Less than 2% of the German population self-identifies as Muslim. Almost twice as many people in Germany are of Turkish descent, and there are also substantial numbers of Arabs. Since Turkey’s population is almost exclusively Muslim, it seems that Islam must have lost roughly half of the natural increase of its emigrants in Germany to apostasy."

Bowie was an entrepreneur before he was an artist or performer

"I wanted to be thought of as someone who was very much a trendy person, rather than a trend. I didn’t want to be a trend, I wanted to be the instigator of new ideas. I wanted to turn people on to new ideas and new perspectives. And so I had to govern everything around that. So I pulled myself in, and decided to use the easiest medium to start off with -- which was rock and roll -- and to add bits and pieces to it over the years, so that by the end of it, I was my own medium."

Why councils are shutting down 'stop smoking' services

'Councils remain committed to helping smokers quit, however they face significant cuts to public health budgets this year, and spending large volumes of money on a service people are not using will fast undermine the cost-effectiveness of providing it.'

The powerful state damages society - always

"Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power."

People promoting meat don't like vegans much

"A provocative advertisement encouraging Australians to eat lamb has been criticised for discriminating against vegans and portraying excessive violence.

The advertisement, which has gone viral on social media and been viewed more than 250,000 times on YouTube, depicts a military campaign to bring Australians home from overseas so that they can eat lamb on Australia Day.

In a controversial scene that has reportedly sparked more than 60 complaints to the advertising watchdog, a team of special agents break into an Australian man’s apartment in New York and ignite a blowtorch after he reveals he has become a vegan."

You can watch the ad here.

Donald Trump and Bernie Saunders are mining the same seam of dissatisfaction

"While the white working class is shrinking in the US, it remains the largest voting block in the country. That may be why leaders of both parties are concerned that white working-class voters, especially in the Midwest and South, are supporting populist candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. They don’t understand that many of these voters blame Wall Street, corporate leaders, and politicians – the East Coast establishment –for destroying their jobs and communities over the past few decades."

Robots will save the High Street

"Through all these varying examples, we see an automation of retail that develops itself in full speed. Whether it are new types of vending machines that help increase consumptive convenience, offering fresh and healthy products 24/7, or technology that changes our traditional ideas of ordering and preparing food in restaurant — it’s clear that retail landscapes and practices of consumption are strongly influenced by a sense of automation."

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Some thoughts on the ethics of squirrel pie

I had a squirrel pie for my lunch today. It was really tasty and I can recommend Pots 'n' Pies products on the basis of this experience!

I was also delighted to see the product on sale openly at the Bingley Fine Food Fair. It suggests that there is a little hope for us yet. After endless hectoring by vegetarian lobbyists and generations of dressed rabbits in books, film and on TV, we may at last be growing up. We may finally realise that not eating something because of some misplaced concept of ethics is stupid.

I don't mind at all if you want to be a vegetarian. It doesn't bother me in the slightest if you prefer not to eat fois gras or tuna. I'm quite content for you to worry whether your food is fair trade, organic, shade grown and lacking in food miles. I'm quite OK (although they won't thank you for it) for you to make your own children conform to your faddist behaviour. You can even sign up to the more bonkers fringes of food faddism such as being a vegan.

But I do mind if you foist your squeamishness, your fads and your obsessions onto others. If I want to shoot and eat wild fowl, squirrels and deer, that's my business and nothing to do with you. If I want to chase down wild boar and deer with dogs (a pretty efficient way of hunting these animals), that should be my business - nothing to do with you.

So I'll go on eating squirrel pie, freshly trapped rabbit and shot game birds. And I'll also enjoy goose liver pate wherever it's produced. Animals don't have rights but I do - and one of those rights is to eat what I want to eat, drink what I want to drink and smoke if I want to smoke.

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The Friday Fungus: Vegetarian? Don't eat mycoproteins, eat real mushrooms!

There’s always been one thing about vegetarianism I don’t understand – why some veggies seem dedicated to searching for something that, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, tastes almost, but not entirely, completely unlike meat. My advice – if you’re going to be a vegetarian for whatever reason – is to eat mushrooms instead. One’s like chicken-of-the-woods (pictured above) are substantial, protein-rich and so much tastier that artificial meat substitutes. And you can grow your own!

Which brings us to the vexed matter of mycoproteins – industrially-produced meat substitutes derived from the mold-like fungi fusarium venenatum. And, more or less, this is how it is turned into a meat substitute:

“Fusarium venenatum A3/5 was first chosen for development as a myco-protein in the late 1960s. It was intended as a protein source for humans and after 12 years of intensive testing, F. venenatum A3/5 was approved for sale as food by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the United Kingdom in 1984. Today, myco-protein is produced in two 150,000 l pressure-cycle fermenters in a continuous process which outputs around 300 kg biomass/h. The continuous process is typically operated for around 1,000 h.” Wiebe, Applied Microbiology & Biotechnology, 58/4

What vegetarians also need to know is that the actual meat substitute is only possible through use of egg albumen – so you can’t feed mycoprotein-based products to your vegan mates. In the USA a vigorous campaign a few years ago against the leading mycoprotein product Quorn suggested that it can cause violent stomach disorders. This piece by science writer Charles Hirschberg in Vegetarian Times sums up the selective and partial nature of this campaign and concludes that there’s no evidence suggesting any health risks associated with mycoproteins – or at least none that compare, for example, to the risks linked to eating nuts for some people.

My beef with mycoprotein isn’t that it’s bad for you but that it makes boring meat-substitute products when there is a great choice of natural foods out there for the vegetarian.

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