FFTB 3-2-1 Response: Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

I attended a Fall For the Book event for the author Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, who specializes in vegan cooking and baking, and living compassionately and healthfully through veganism. Rather than being bombarded with criticism for m ethical implications of eating meat and animal by-products, she explained through emotion and through ration the reasons why veganism is not only a compassionate way of living but a healthier way of living. I am by no means a vegetarian or vegan, but the points she made were valid and new to me. She made an important argument that we use animals as a "middle man" in terms of justifying our consumption to get the proper nutrients we need. For example, we get calcium from cow's milk; this calcium, however, comes from the minerals cows eat, or the synthetic minerals that 3 of 4 cows are given to produce calcium-enriched milk. The omega-3s we consume through fish like tuna and salmon are in that fish because of the algae, or photo plankton, they consume during their lifetime as well. There are more ways of consuming the nutrients we need without using animals as the middle man. We could very well get our daily calcium needs through deep leafy greens such as collards ad bok choy, and one of the best sources of omega-3s are flax seeds, which can be consumed ground, in oil-form, or whole.

Another important point Patrick-Goudreau made was that many of the diseases we face today like heart disease, high cholesterol, and cancer me from the saturated fats in meat and the casein, the number one carcinogen we consume, from milk. Generally speaking, we give ourselves the sicknesses that lead to our demise through our consumption of meat and meat-based products. We rarely see cases of protein deficiency in the world, or at least in America, because we eat too much of it. There are no health benefits that we get from meat that we cannot get from plants. Many of the people who claim that they love meat too much to give it up don't really crave meat. The author explained that when we see roadkill, our first instinct is to feel disgust, and then sympathy, but we never think "lunch".

The third point I found very intriguing was her explanation of a female cow's life in terms of her ability to provide people with what they want. A cow, like humans, must be pregnant to lactate, and she will take nine months to care for her baby in her womb as humans do as well. Once her calf is born, it is taken away from her, and she is stripped of the milk she produced during her pregnancy. If the calf is a female, she will go through the same process as did her mother; males, however, are put to good use: veal. Either their first day of life, or after 16 weeks, a male calf will be slaughtered for its meat because it cannot provide dairy.

I really enjoyed hearing this author speak, and I was more worried than confused about some of the things she spoke about. In general, she gave no leeway between an omnivorous lifestyle and veganism/vegetarianism. I wish she could have touched on the transition process between the two for those who might need adjustment or reinforcement during the process of eliminating meat from the diet. Another thing I wish she clarified was the biological process of how we stop producing the enzyme that digests lactose after age 7. If so, how do our bodies so well-adjust to our every-day consumption of dairy? and why is lactose-intolerance so much of a rarity than is should be, considering it is technically natural for our bodies to reject dairy after we should be weaned from milk as children.

A question I have for the class is whether or not the decision or the idea of being vegan is more of an ethical implication that affects your moral and conscience, or if it is a biological decision that should be made to improve your health and overall well-being? How do we decide between the two, and are many people put off by veganism because they feel their morals and ethics are being put into question if they do not commit?