Why I'm Not a Vegan - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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we still have much to learn about the composition of plants and the aspects of them that are good for us[3] , although it’s becoming clear that they’re beneficial not so much as a combination of nutrients but as the right package of nourishment, which we might as well call real food. In other words, you’re better off eating a carrot than the beta-carotene that was once thought to be its most beneficial “ingredient.”[
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there are non-dietary reasons to eat fewer animal products. Even if their nutritional profile were unambivalently beneficial, they use too many resources: land, water, energy and — not the least important — food that could nourish people
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there are two other factors to consider: the industrial production of livestock is a major (if not the leading) contributor to greenhouse gases, and the rampant and nearly unregulated use of antibiotics in that production is making those drugs less effective while encouraging the development of hardier disease-causing germs.
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“why not go whole hog” (forgive me) “and advocate a strictly vegan diet?” Isn’t being a part-time vegan, the more strident demand, like being a little bit pregnant?
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You might think of patterns of eating as falling on one point or another along a spectrum, and moving toward the plant-based end of that spectrum — as opposed to the end represented by Morgan Spurlock’s “super-sized” diet — is almost always beneficial.[7] It is about eating better, or well, not perfectly, and it must be said that “perfectly” has not yet been defined.
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This much is known, now: We produce most animal products in deplorable conditions, and some of our health and environmental problems can be traced both to dominant production methods and our overconsumption. But we like to eat them, and they’re a pleasurable and even healthy part of many traditional diets and even sound agricultural practices.