I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. And, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do what I can. — Edward Everett Hale

I feel like I started out ahead of the game when we started this odyssey, because I already felt that eating meat and dairy was very unhealthy for humans. We had done a lot of research into optimum nutrition during our attempt at a raw diet, and so I was familiar with the concepts of what is “missing” from a vegan diet since it was discussed at some length in that community. Since, by all appearances, people eating raw are usually or mostly doing it for their health, there wasn’t much tone of defensiveness or hostility in the discussion. Everyone just wanted to know what is best in human nutrition, and how do we get it? And since everyone doing it pretty much believed that eating raw is the pinnacle of superior nutrition, no one was accused of sacrificing their health for “animals,” which is one of the ways vegans are ridiculed and/or dismissed.

I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just that the tone of the conversation is different. For example, let’s say you’re discussing calcium in a raw forum. Your discussion will probably revolve around which leafy green has the most calcium bang for the buck, and there will probably not be anyone explaining that trying to get calcium from dairy may be inefficient because your body is pulling calcium from your bones in order to balance its ph. (The research suggests that animal protein makes the body too acidic). It’s just understood that you can get better calcium and osteoporosis protection from a plant-based diet, so what plants/nuts/seeds in what combination are optimum? (Protip: we get ours from regular consumption of sesame seeds and tahini, leafy greens like spinach, kale, collards, mustard greens, chard, and legumes like garbanzos and other beans….we eat all of those on a weekly-to-daily basis.)

But what I found out back then, trying to learn about optimum nutrition, is that it’s difficult to find information that makes sense. For some reason, there’s so much contradiction and very little consensus. And what consensus there is has been formed, informed, paid for, and provided by the meat and dairy industry. There’s a disconnect in what we’re being told and what we’re being sold, and it’s confounding. And finally, there’s the misinformation… myths and unsupported nutritional advice being perpetuated by everyone, from medical professionals to people on message boards and blogs. It is daunting. (p.s. The italics are a hint to follow up on any of this yourself, don’t ever take my word for it. The choices I make based on what I’ve been able to glean are not set in stone. I’m not trying to be pure, I’m trying to cause the least amount of suffering possible.)

However, I know people can be concerned about vegan nutrition, especially those macro and micro nutrients that we’re used to getting from meat and dairy. So, here’s what I’ve learned about B12, one of eight known B vitamins.

Before all that, though, let me make it clear: we take a supplement for B12. It seems a common misconception that the only source of B12 is meat and dairy, but there are factors that make B12 supplementation a good idea for all people, including vegans.

The following info comes from wikipedia. The article has citations for further research.

• B12 comes from bacteria. It can only be biosynthesized by bacteria.

• The term B12 may be properly used to refer to cyanocobalamin, the principal B12 form used for foods and in nutritional supplements.

• The total amount of vitamin B12 stored in body is about 2,000-5,000 micrograms in adults. Around 50% of this is stored in the liver.

• Due to the extremely efficient enterohepatic circulation of B12, the liver can store several years’ worth of vitamin B12; therefore, nutritional deficiency of this vitamin is rare. How fast B12 levels change depends on the balance between how much B12 is obtained from the diet, how much is secreted and how much is absorbed. B12 deficiency may arise in a year if initial stores are low and genetic factors unfavourable or may not appear for decades.

• Vitamin B12 is found in foods that come from animals, including fish and shellfish, meat (especially liver), poultry, eggs, milk, and milk products.

• Ultimately, animals must obtain it directly or indirectly (meaning supplementation) from bacteria, and these bacteria may inhabit a section of the gut which is posterior to the section where B12 is absorbed. Thus, herbivorous animals (who are ruminants: cows, goats, sheep) must either obtain B12 from bacteria in their rumens, or (if fermenting plant material in the hindgut) by reingestion of cecotrope feces.

• Eggs are often mentioned as a good B12 source, but they also contain a factor that blocks absorption.

• While lacto-ovo vegetarians usually get enough B12 through consuming dairy products, vegans will lack B12 unless they consume multivitamin supplements or B12-fortified foods. Examples of fortified foods include fortified breakfast cereals, fortified soy products, and fortified energy bars. According to the UK Vegan Society, the present consensus is that any B12 present in plant foods is likely to be unavailable to humans because B12 analogues can compete with B12 and inhibit metabolism.

• Vitamin B12 is provided as a supplement in many processed foods, and is also available in vitamin pill form, including multi-vitamins. Vitamin B12 can be supplemented in healthy subjects also by liquid, transdermal patch, nasal spray, or injection and is available singly or in combination with other supplements.

• The sublingual route, in which B12 is presumably or supposedly absorbed more directly under the tongue, has not proven to be necessary or helpful.

• The Dietary Reference Intake for an adult ranges from 2-3 micrograms per day. Vitamin B12 is believed to be safe when used orally in amounts that do not exceed the recommended dietary allowance.

• The Vegan Society, the Vegetarian Resource Group, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, among others, recommend that vegans either consistently eat foods fortified with B12 or take a daily or weekly B12 supplement.

• Fortified breakfast cereals are a particularly valuable source of vitamin B12 for vegetarians and vegans. In addition, (omnivore) adults age 51 and older are recommended to consume B12 fortified food or supplements to meet the RDA, because they are a population at an increased risk of deficiency.

OK, WHEW. So, knowing all that, I am comfortable and confident that I can safely supplement and store sufficient B12 on a vegan diet, and that I’d probably want to supplement even if I were eating meat and dairy, because I’m not sure I’d want to entrust the animal production industry to guarantee I’d get adequate B12 from their products. And finally, that I’d have to start supplementing in about 10 years anyway, no matter what way I eat!

I’m up way past my bedtime, but I didn’t want to let the day pass without saying something about Howard Zinn, the legendary historian and progressive activist, who died today of a heart attack at 87.

For those who may not be familiar with Zinn’s work, he’s probably best known for his book A People’s History of the United States, a kind of alternative take on American history from a perspective that’s rarely (if ever) taught in schools. If history is written by the winners, Zinn’s book is a history written on behalf of the “losers” — from the native Americans exploited and murdered by Christopher Columbus’s crew to the workers crushed beneath the boots of the Robber Barons of the 19th century, through the labor and anti-war activists of the 20th century.

It’s a brutal, but completely factual and matter-of-factly delivered overview of American history, that exposes the grimy reality behind the burnished romantic glow of the rah-rah “official” history we’ve all been fed. I first encountered the book in my 20s, and it absolutely blew my mind. I have no idea what they teach in elementary and high schools today, but back in my day, the American history we received was very much of the patriotic, “greatest nation on Earth” perspective, with the less-savory bits sort of gingerly and briefly dealt with as unfortunate aberrations in an otherwise heroic and noble saga.

It was Zinn who opened my eyes to the ways in which the history of America is a history of wealthy, powerful forces consolidating and cultivating their power and undermining the forces of social justice. As an immigrant to this country who will forever be grateful to have grown up with all the resources and benefits of living in the United States, it was hard to face the unpleasant truth about the horrible things this country has done in the name of its citizens. But I feel I’m a wiser and more enlightened citizen for that knowledge. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

I pay tribute to Howard Zinn on this weblog because, although I have no idea whether or not Zinn was a vegetarian or what his views on animal rights were, I do know that Zinn and those who support animal rights share a common value — speaking truth on behalf of the powerless and voiceless. Zinn was an iconoclast who championed positions on civil rights and pacifism that were, at the time, deeply unconventional and unpopular. Most of all, though, he was a person of compassion and generosity, who inspired legions of admirers.

To me, Howard Zinn represents everything I aspire to be, as a vegan and as a human being. Anyone else who, like Zinn, spent a lifetime immersed in the most depressing, inhumane aspects of human history, speaking out against towering forces of injustice in front of a mostly apathetic, unaware populace, would likely end up a discouraged cynic. But Zinn was never cynical or hopeless. As disappointed as he could be with the failures of our political leaders, he held steadfast to his belief in the ability of ordinary people to make a difference in the face of overwhelming power:

The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth. Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson — that everything we do matters — is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.

Howard Zinn also left us this, some of the most moving and inspirational words I’ve ever read:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

I can’t think of a better summation of the moral impulse that underlies veganism. We live in a society dominated by industrial animal agriculture, an institution that is easily as vile and inhuman as anything this country has produced in its history. When I think about the fact that factory farming continues to expand, that global meat production is expected to double in the next ten years, I feel depressed.

But Howard Zinn reminds me that we can choose how we live our lives in the face of cruelty and the worst of human nature. Zinn embodied that truth, as an example of the good people can do when they choose to live the way they think human beings should live.

Every once in a while, I feel a twinge of desire for some kind of meat-based product. It usually happens when I’m watching TV. I see someone eating a hamburger, and I remember how much I used to love hamburgers. (Of course, then I imagine ammonia-soaked ground beef patties, and the feeling kind of passes.) And of course, cheese.

This impulse is mostly emotional: it’s about habit and gratification. The habit part, for me, is fading quickly; once animal products are no longer part of your daily life, they lose their hold on you. It’s like being hooked on a TV show. Eons ago, when Friends was still on, I was addicted to that show and watched it religiously. At some point I decided I was spending too much time watching TV, and resolved to go cold turkey. The only hard part of that decision was giving up Friends. The idea of not watching it anymore made me feel panicky. How would I find out what happened to Ross and Rachel? But I did it, and it only took a few weeks before whatever connection I had with that show completely faded. I thought about how anxious I felt about giving it up, and how it was that notion, not the notion of giving up the show, that was incomprehensible to me.

Gratification is harder to deal with, because it’s tied to pleasure/stimulation seeking, which we are hard-wired for, but also to personal happiness, which is a thorny landscape of entitlement, guilt, and all kinds of punishment/reward issues from childhood. For me, the way to deal with issues of deprivation and self-medication through food (“my happiness in life depends on being able to eat this cheeseburger”) is to focus on physical and emotional well-being.

When there’s a void in your life, it’s tempting to fill that void with stimulating food, because food is one of very few pleasures in our culture that is also an absolute necessity for existence. Even if you’re at a low ebb of self-esteem and don’t feel you deserve any other pleasure or joy in life, you can allow yourself food, because everyone needs to eat, right? (Just make sure it’s the most unhealthy, cheap, crappy food available.) So, when Hannahbee and I embarked upon this vegan journey, one thing I was absolutely adamant about was that our mental and spiritual well-being had to be right up there as a top priority in our lives.

We live in a stressful society that seems engineered to make people unhappy. Stressed-out, unhappy people turn to familiar comfort foods — which, in our culture, means things like hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza. So, as people who grew up around those things, it’s critical for us to circumvent situations that might lead us to want them, at least until new habits and new comfort foods take hold. When people say that they couldn’t possibly give up eating meat, I think most of the time what they’re really saying is, “Don’t take away my security blanket.”

A year before we became vegan, Hannahbee and I went on a raw food diet. (I hate using the word “diet,” because it wasn’t a weight loss plan, but just a diet in the sense of a way of eating.) It was, in practice, a vegan diet, but we didn’t frame it or think about it that way. We weren’t specifically trying not to consume animals — that was just a side benefit of our plan.

It was a positive period in our lives. We both felt pretty good, mentally and physically, and yes, we lost weight. But we couldn’t sustain it. Eventually we went back to eating cooked food, including animal products. And there was never a point where I didn’t crave all those comfort foods.

Now, living as vegans, I might feel the occasional impulse, but it never develops into a full-on craving. The temptations that spring up are pretty easily dismissed. One reason, of course, is that a typical vegetarian diet is nowhere near as restrictive as a raw diet. If you’re cooking your food, you have access to all kinds of familiar dishes.

But I’m convinced that the main reason I don’t get seriously tempted anymore is that, this time around, our intention of not eating animals is not simply a dietary self-improvement plan, but an ethical, moral, and spiritual change in our lives. If I were doing this strictly for health reasons, I wouldn’t stick with it. For one thing, I don’t have a high enough self-esteem — at least, not yet — to sustain a “my body is my temple” attitude. And for another, good physical health, while a laudable goal, is hard to maintain as a motivating force in my life, because, while the idea of it is certainly pleasurable, it’s not actually a pleasurable sensation.

(I’m not talking about physical fitness, which is pleasurable — it feels good when your muscles are strong and you can move easily — but rather nutritional health, which, if it’s in order, is pretty much invisible, and defined mostly by what’s not happening in your body, namely cancer and heart attacks, or even just noticeable discomfort, like stomach problems.)

What does feel noticeably good, though, is my spiritual well-being. One thing that happened when I went all in with veganism and committed myself to living a life of compassion and nonviolence, is an enormous sense of liberation. I felt freed from my guilt over contributing to the suffering of animals and humans by participating in the factory farm system. Food honestly tastes better when you can appreciate it with your whole heart, without having to block out any unpleasant knowledge of the implications of what you’re eating.

So now, when I receive those familiar cues to eat whatever animal products are being marketed to me, there’s a lot happening on my side to fight against that pressure. I have the positive reinforcement of living a life that produces vitality and joy and a defense against stress. I have the awareness that I’m living a life that reflects my ethical and moral values, and there’s no food pleasure that is worth going back to a life of denial and moral blindness. And if nothing else, I have the knowledge of the unpleasantness of our food production system, and of everything that gets imparted to our food that would make us nauseated if we could clearly perceive it.

I would feel tempted to return to my old life if there was anything about that life that was remotely appealing, aside from the temporary pleasure of eating something that I’ve already eaten thousands of in my lifetime, and which never even made me all that happy to begin with. If you think about it that way, where’s the temptation at all?

Let me say up front, so you know where I’m coming from, that I’m not the child of San Francisco hippies, raised on sprouts and tofu. I’m a lifelong meat eater. Veganism is something that has not come naturally or easily to me.

As a little kid, I loved hamburgers. Now, I know it’s nothing special for a kid to love hamburgers. But how many kids do you know who, in first grade, had their teacher call their parents in for an emergency conference because, when they were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, said they wanted to work at McDonald’s?

So, when I became a vegan, it wasn’t because I hated the taste of meat and cheese. In fact, I’d say that my love of dead animal flesh motivated me, in a big way, to find reasons to not give it up.

Believe me, I’ve gone through all the arguments.

I went through the whole “animals exist for us to eat them” argument and the “farm animals would go extinct if we didn’t kill and eat them” argument. I went through the “let us honor the majestic beasts by raising them with love and hugs before we slaughter them and pray and weep over their roasted flesh with a side of creamed spinach” argument.

I tried to think of any plausible rationale to keep forking the flesh into my gullet, and none of them could stand up to the facts.

In the end, it wasn’t a great epiphany that finally brought me over. Not that there haven’t been epiphanic moments over the years. By the time it finally happened, I was primed to switch. Ultimately, what it came down to is that I just plain ran out of excuses.

Bottom line: there was no plausible rationale. There was only my desire, built into me from birth from a hundred different directions. And my fear of change.

And in the other direction, the direction towards veganism and compassion for animals, there were dozens of good reasons, reasons I couldn’t deny.

We live in a world that is in pretty shitty condition. Polluted air, water, and earth; global climate change; a society rotting to death from cancer, heart disease, and other “diseases of affluence;” global hunger; and a nation in which big business keeps getting bigger and more powerful while the poor schmucks who work for big business keep getting shafted.

The realization I came to, after I stopped looking for reasons not to give up meat and started looking to find out what could happen if I did, was that giving up meat was the single most effective action I could take in order to improve the world and my own physical and emotional wellbeing. This one simple act, of not eating animals or animal products, could achieve more than any number of other things I wasn’t doing to save the world.

And, you know, I’m a compassionate guy. I care. I hate the fact that the world is going down the tubes. But I’m also an extremely lazy guy. I am not the kind of guy who installs solar panels on his roof, or builds his own electric car from a mail-order kit. I am not the kind of guy who goes to save-the-planet rallies or stands around college campuses handing out leaflets. I am not an activist.

So, when I discovered that I could, in fact, make a significant difference just by — get this — not doing something, my heart leapt (well, lurched) for joy. Now here was something I could get behind. How often do you get to ease suffering in the world and improve the lot of your fellow Earth-based organisms by just sitting there in your underwear? (Shocking answer: not often.)

I helped save the world today. I did it several times, in fact. I saved the world when I drove by Whataburger and Wienerschnitzel and didn’t drive through and buy a burger or hot dogs. I saved the world when I went to the supermarket and walked past the dead animal aisle to buy a sack of oranges. On the way home, I figured I’d save the world one more time and didn’t stop at 7-11 for a bucket of nachos.

Here’s what I did: I didn’t contribute to the suffering and death of animals. I didn’t put money in the bank accounts of industrial animal agriculture companies that are drowning the country in toxic waste and paying desperate humans low wages to work in hellish conditions until they lose their minds and souls. I didn’t help suck every last living thing out of our oceans. I didn’t ingest substances that corrode my body until I have to seek treatment I can’t afford from a broken health insurance system run by evil, greedy assholes.

All that, just by not doing one simple thing.

Veganism: It’s What’s for Dinner, for Lazy Sacks of Crap…Who Care.

I’m not an ass, honest. I’m just passionate. I’m very aware that I was a full-on meat eater not that long ago. Even when I knew better.

I know that if it’s to be anyone’s path, it will happen for that someone when it is time for it to happen.

I’m not trying to force vegan food down someone’s throat. I’m not trying to punish anyone with images of the horrors done to animals.

I just want to tell my truth. I just want to speak for the animals because they can’t speak for themselves. I just want to open someone’s eyes to the truth, to make that lightbulb go “klink” like it did for me. As I mentioned, I have ideas about why it’s so hard to stop believing we need to eat animals. And it’s hard. I have considered what I think are great explanations for why we think we need only concentrated protein and calcium and vitamin D (and to a lesser extent, B12) to live, which, coincidentally, are pretty much the only real nutrients in animal flesh or fluids. I’ve made great leaps in my appreciation of food, real food, that my body recognizes as food…leaps that were impossible to make when I was eating animals.

But I’m starting to realize that I want to share all of this for one reason…wait, there are many “causes,” many “reasons” to be a vegan, that’s not what I mean. What compels me to share is this: I was set free. I’m set free. I didn’t even know I wasn’t free, until I became so. The joy and beauty and freedom and lightness and abundance — no one ever told me about those things being possible by becoming someone who doesn’t eat animals.

Being a vegan seemed like a puritanical sacrifice, one that a truly “good” person would undertake (lie back and think of the chickens). But that’s not how it is. I’m one of the most selfish persons I’ve ever met. If this way of being didn’t make me feel better than I did before, I couldn’t sustain it. I mean, yes, I feel for the sick people, and the drugged immigrants, and those living with polluted groundwater, and for the animals, the poor sad animals whose lives are a platonic ideal of brutality and suffering. But I don’t know if I could keep it up if my soul was suffering instead of rejoicing. But it is. Rejoicing. I’m set free.

I can barely watch this video. Keep in mind that poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, rabbits) and fish are exempted from the “humane slaughter” act, which is, itself, shockingly impotent. They are exempted from the requirements that they be handled in life and in death in anything close to a humane fashion. Not that the animals who are “covered” by the “humane slaughter” act get slaughtered very nicely, either.

When we eat animals, we’re paying those “farmers” and other “workers” in this video to do those things to animals. They do it for us, so we can eat the cut up bodies.

I’ll admit it up front, I am the Bad Cop of this blog. I will probably be the Mean Mom who ends up sounding hard and unforgiving. I don’t mean to be this way, but I am kind of a stern person in real life. My normal relaxed facial expression makes people think I’m angry or contemptuous. I don’t smile much, I guess. I can be lectury bordering on hectoring, and I suffer fools poorly. I lack humility, but can at least, after all this time, admit when I’m wrong, and apologize when I’ve hurt someone. I used to not be able to do that. So I have hopes for my personal growth, that I will some day be the warm and comforting force I long to be in the lives of others — instead of the unflinching voice of rational critique that lacks all compassion and empathy.

So how, you might wonder, did I decide to become a vegan for….MORAL reasons? How did my heart swell and break for the animals waiting for me to eat them? Why did I weep and weep in my grieving over all the animals I’ve already eaten? I guess I don’t know, I’m mysterious. Alls I know is that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t be complicit in mass torture and slaughter of innocents. And that’s what it is. Let’s not kid ourselves. The facts are out there. The anecdotes are out there. The videos, the eyewitness accounts, the company reports, the worker confessions, they’re out there. I’m not making this up. Therefore (here comes the Bad Cop) I will not be sugar-coating any of my posts. I don’t know how to speak the truth and not sound harsh, because I feel harsh about this topic. I feel like shaking and slapping people. I wish I could go back and time and shake and slap my own foolish rationalizing intellectually dishonest sleeping self.

I am convinced that there is no need for humans to eat animals or their fluids or secretions. No need. I guess I can respect people who acknowledge that though they know the truth, they simply prefer to continue paying others to kill and prepare the bodies of animals for personal gustatory pleasure. But I have a harder time respecting people who swear that there is a need or requirement for human animals to eat other animals, their fluids, or their secretions. I get frustrated because I believe it is absolutely not true. Whether it was true in prehistoric times of famine does not apply today. We are not cavemen, and the quantity and condition of the animals we choose to eat today, in this country, cannot reasonably be compared to whatever had to happen thousands of years ago.

In future posts I’ll go into why I think we believe we need to eat animals. But I have to start unwavering on this point. We do not need to.