Health & Wellness

Why vegetarianism and high-carb diets have destroyed the health of people and planet - Interview with Lierre Keith

Déborah Donnier
Prévention Santé
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 12:32 UTC

The following is an excellent interview by Deborah Donnier, journalist and entrepreneur, with Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth, during a health conference in Reims, France, on November 21-22, 2015.

At times labelled 'radical' and 'militant', Lierre Keith is trying to open up people's eyes to the ecological disaster affecting humanity and all life on the planet. According to her, the balance between living creatures and the land is being destroyed, and it is time that people become aware of that fact.

During this interview, we clarify the ideas developed in her book, The Vegetarian Myth, which attempts to warn society about the inherent unsustainability of its modes of consumption via modern agriculture.

Comment: For more information on Lierre Keith's research, and the dangers of vegetarian and vegan diets, see:

Reader Comments

treedirt · 2016-01-26T13:49:29Z

Probably why I'm twice as healthy as all my age counterparts around me. 1. I love fats, from butter to the chewy stuff hanging onto the side of my meat. 2. I don't eat a lot of carbs, never have. 3. Fresh veggies and fruits, the only veggie I don't eat is mushrooms. Just don't like the taste.

of course all of that would be fairly pointless without 4. Exercise. I actually do it, not just buy the clothing to look like I do.

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-26T14:31:22Z

I try not to eat vegetables. It's unethical. They can't run away or fight back. LOL.

Cousin Scootie · 2016-01-26T15:31:15Z

Uggh, who on the SOTT review board digs up this anti-vegetarian pro-meat garbage? A 100% healthy diet can be whipped up entirely from flora or entirely from fauna if you understand the nutrition behind it.

Factors that make for good lifelong health:
1. LUCK
2. Exercise
3. Diet is a distant third and maybe not even third place compared to positive thinking and stress reduction.

I'd love to see one of these "bread is bad!" folks go back in time and slap the morning bread from a Roman Legionnaire's hand. Now there's a choice that could get you killed...

Niall · 2016-01-27T13:13:05Z

Good point, they did eat carbs. But then, they weren't sedentary!

Cousin Scootie · 2016-01-27T16:19:30Z

@ Niall
Far from it!

On the march they were estimated to burn approx 6000 calories a day - in the realm of an Olympic athlete in training today. And like today's high output athletes the recommended way of filling out those extra calories is with additional carbs, not fats or protein. In practice the Legionnaires probably ate anything they could carry off, in addition to their famous morning loaf of bread - when you're working that hard the body will efficiently burn anything that goes down the hatch.

With luck and exercise one can stay pretty healthy on darn near any diet that supplies basic nutrients, the more variety the better but gut microbes are pretty adaptable, as is the rest of the human digestive system.

I appreciate the author has found a better way for her and is intent on speaking out, but the science doesn't support a lot of her assertions.

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-27T19:53:28Z

One thing's for sure: The Romans were very serious about the quality of their water, hence the amount of "spa towns" littered all over Europe.

Kenny · 2019-10-11T11:00:56Z

Cousin Scootie Diet is the most important thing. Sufficiently salted. And Iodine. Rest is just free to do.

LauraLee · 2016-01-26T15:37:10Z

The Low Fat Heritage...

Anybody notice what the incidence of Alzheimers has done since the low-fat fad became dietary wisdom?

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-26T15:42:17Z

Ughh. Vegetables are disgusting. I wouldn't feed them to my dog. LOL.

IcelandEyes · 2016-01-26T15:45:01Z

"It's who you are..."

"The thing about being vegan is, it's not just what you eat, but who you are." Lierre says this in the video lecture at Berkeley linked to in the blue comment box.

I totally agree. And I believe it's one of the things that adds to the trauma of being a vegan. The vegans I knew and knew of in my years in Santa Cruz California carried around a chip on their shoulders, a suppressed righteous anger at everyone who *wasn't* a vegan. They maybe didn't start out that way when they first started dabbling with it, but over time it was almost a sure thing. Non-vegans became the Other, at best good people who needed to change their ways, at worst ignorant world destroyers. Over time they seemed to sour, become nit-pickey and judgmental. Their skin would go wan and lifeless, they'd get thin in a kind of depleted (deflated?)looking way. They'd group together, and you'd feel awkward inviting them to brunch or dinner any more. Food became the center of their existence. My cousin says that's a form of eating disorder just like any other...

I agree with treedirt: I eat what my forefathers and mothers ate: simple country foods, real butter and fatted milk from grass-fed cows (the only kind we have here in Iceland), lamb meat from very free-range sheep, plus the classic northern-region root veggies and greenhouse-grown tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce. There's a vegan/veg movement gaining momentum here though, and so once again I'm watching people I know turn that special kind of righteous and resentful that I witnessed decades ago in SC.

My bottom line: I think the negativity that's attached to so many foodstuffs by vegs is often as unhealthy for them psychologically biologically as Lierre notes their diet is overall.

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-26T16:02:02Z

"The vegans I knew and knew of in my years in Santa Cruz California carried around a chip on their shoulders, a suppressed righteous anger at everyone who *wasn't* a vegan."

Sure, but that's now been transferred to a large extent onto people who righteously self-identify as "paleo", which is more proof that anything can be turned into a 2D religion, and it really don't take much.

I wouldn't say I was paleo. It's more that I've inherited the palate of my Scot/Irish/Northern English forebears.

IcelandEyes · 2016-01-26T16:25:39Z

Mhmm.

My ancestors (and yours as well? Scots, are you?) barely survived on this blasted clump of North Atlantic lava, so being food-choosy wasn't really an option. Every other century, like a quarter to third of the population died in volcano-induced famine or shipped-in plague. The crops and grasses died under volcanic ashfall, so the four-legged beasts who didn't get blasted or poisoned right away died of starvation.

You ate what was left.

All I can say is I have a deep, deep respect for the food I eat, and feel privileged to have it at all!

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-26T21:47:41Z

Are you a science fiction writer or something? I was actually referring to my grandparents.

Rick Pisces · 2016-01-26T17:14:34Z

Experience Tells the Tale

I was a strict vegetarian from 1970-1976. (age 24-30). It became very obvious that it wasn't working. I came within an ace of death from depression. I have gone full circle and am basically following a high-fat, low-carb, no-sugar diet. I am very healthy, and can still do a weekly run of more than 5 hours on the trail. I am very lean by today's standards. I have watched the vegetarian thing for all this time and have never seen anyone improve their lives in any way on a non-meat diet. The first thing that goes is the mind. It's like alcohol and the vegetarians don't pick that up. Then comes the connective-tissue injuries, that won't heal. Saturated fat is so important to human health that the human body tries to make its own, but it is not very good at this and fatty liver disease is the reward. Lastly, dementia and Alzheimer's is the final result. And, yes, they are all angry; very angry. It's a religion and if you aren't with them, you are against them. It makes me very sad to see this self-destruction, all fomented by the mainstream media that glamorizes this lifestyle. Listen to your body, not the media.

Mac · 2016-01-26T20:08:57Z

Vegetarianism

Well, this is simplistic. There are more motivations for vegetarianism and there are more kinds of Vegetarianism than she is even acknowledging. Including, the periodic vegetarianism practiced by Orthodox and Coptic Christians, There are festal periods when they eat everything and then days that are fasting--no meat, no dairy, no oil. And days that fall in between--allowing fish, for example but not meat or dairy. And the monastics eat no meat and outlive the laity in most cases. Over all, half the days of the year (including 4 lents as well as the Wed. and Friday fasts are fasting. For the Copts, there it is more than half the days of the year. This is actually a very balanced and healthy way to eat. The Mediteranian diet is based on this religious practice.

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-26T22:01:40Z

Re: Vegetarianism

"This is actually a very balanced and healthy way to eat. The Mediteranian diet is based on this religious practice."

Well that all sounds very holy, but it's actually nonsense. A mediterranean diet is probably about right for if you live in the mediterranean.

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-27T08:41:08Z

Lierre Keith looks like she could do with a couple of weeks holiday loafing about on a nice sandy beach in Greece. LOL.

Although what she's saying is basically true, it's incomplete information. Listening to her talk, you could be forgiven for thinking she thinks she lives in a universe with no sun, no water and no electricity.

It's important that people who are interested in these kind of subjects maintain an awareness that we have incomplete information, and that any source you can turn to has incomplete information too.

I was struck by an interesting remark on Jack Kruse's latest blog post about the supposedly deleterious effects of UK cloud cover (lack of UV) and I realised that once you start getting into that stuff about "the only reason we eat food is to gain electrons which originate from the sun" then you really have to make your parameters a little bit wider than "it's all about the UV" and try and understand weather influences from an electronic universe point of view. One of the biggest suppliers of electrons to the Earth is rain. Directly and ambiently. Which is why as far as agriculture goes, rainwater is far superior to irrigation water. The water used in irrigation doesn't have enough electricity in it. Cheap air travel has only been around for a short time and successive generations of people who've lived in the shadow of the Pennines (where it rains a lot of the time) don't seem to have suffered unduly because of lack of UV.

Tune....[Link]

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-27T12:14:33Z

Mutter Mutter

Just thinking out loud....

So basically, if Lierre Keith is right about everything, why does she look like a talking corpse?

If Jack Kruse was right about everything, The Beach Boys would have been much bigger than The Beatles.

I can see what Kruse is trying to do. He's trying to construct his own Montsalvat out of DHA, EZ water and UVB. A problem with that though is that water, light, magnetism are, to pull a phrase from Gurdjieff, 'mechanical influences' so there's going to be a point where he bangs his head on the ceiling.

There's also this issue about making arbitrary decisions as to what does and what doesn't constitute "circadian behaviour". You can't on the one hand say "You shouldn't eat out of season Australian strawberries in December when you live in Canada", and on the other hand say "Decking your apartment out with UVB lights is just a cheap equivalent to a holiday in Barcelona".

Decking your apartment out with UVB lights is very far from being like a cheap holiday in Barcelona. It's a bit more like putting a record on. Turning the volume up full. Pulling out all the bass, and whacking the high-mids up to eleven and a half.

The good thing about being a bloke as opposed to a physicist is that you have no professional reputation to defend, you run little risk of getting all snagged up with some mistake Max Plank or whoever made way back when, and you're always at liberty to change your mind.

I've just received a huge 12.5KG tub of non-Fukushima, African Whole Kernel Virgin Coconut Oil. Delicious. That should keep me going for a while.

lysna · 2016-01-27T13:08:48Z

Hi HFL. Where did you get the non-Fukushima Coconut Oil from.. I'm very interested

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-27T13:33:04Z

African Coconut Oil

All the commercially available coconut oil comes from the Fukushima-scary areas of Philipinnes/Sri Lanka/Pacific Rim. The African stuff was ridiculously difficult to get and I had to wait about a month. I hadn't realised how much of a cornerstone of my diet coconut oil had become and I was quite at a loss without it.

I got it from a guy called Frank at Coconoil. I think they have a limited stock of the African stuff, so if you want some, swift action might be a prerequisite....[Link]

lysna · 2016-01-27T13:44:16Z

HFL..Thanks HEAPS for the link..I'm onto it.

Highland Fleet Lute ·

You're welcome.

· 2016-01-27T16:50:35Z

Highland Fleet Lute · 2016-01-27T17:47:51Z

P.S. The African C.O. gets a good review from me. Most vivacious.

blockade-runner · 2016-01-28T23:15:27Z

nonsense after nonsense

So, hmm... agriculture is destroying the planet, she says, and then advocates: "keep eating your burgers, folks", when (roughly) 90% of today's agriculture is destined to feed cattle. OK. Cool.

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Why vegetarianism and high-carb diets have destroyed the health of people and planet - Interview with Lierre Keith

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