Anyone seeing what I buy at the grocery would very likely conclude that I eat almost no fruits or vegetables. That’s because I’m growing most of them and buying much of the rest direct from the farmer.
At the standard grocery I also buy very little meat because I’m buying most of that either direct from small farmers or from a coop which carries only products certified by humane standards which have some teeth in them.
You can see what people buy at your store. And that tells you something about what they’re eating – but it doesn’t necessarily tell you what they’re not eating.
I’ve known a lot of people who are vegetarian or were vegetarian for a while and then started eating meat. Almost all the peope who stayed vegetarian for the long-term never liked meat all that much to start with.
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– The biodynamic people have one thing right: they say “Mother Nature never attempts to farm without livestock.” I have a farm and don’t keep livestock; but I do use animal-derived fertilizers; and there are assorted animals all over the place, including, in some fields at some times of year, my neighbor’s dairy cattle.
Much of modern livestock raising is horrendous, in various fashions. Not all of it is. Some livestock graze on and are fed hay from rain-water fed pastures on land not suitable for row crops, and/or on land being improved by being pastured some years in a crop rotation. And a whole lot more wild species survive in a properly maintained pasture than in a monocrop soybean field.
But in general: you can’t take death out of the system and keep anything alive in it. It’s possible to modify what kind of death, and what kind of life. But ecologies don’t work with nothing dying in them; death is an essential part of being alive. And somebody, whether micro or macro, whether human or not, has to eat the bodies; in order to turn them back into life again.
And also: Different diets suit different people. There’s actually a lot of variance in how people’s digestive systems work. Some people are healthier on a vegetarian diet, some on a diet including meat. I’ve known entirely healthy vegans, also.
This. This is the major thing.
To be fair, humans can eat dent corn, and other grain corns. We just need to grind and cook them first.
You’re correct, of course, about the grass. We can swallow it, but we can’t digest it.
I’ve known a few of those also, as well as a lot of vegetarians and also vegans who aren’t like that at all. And I’ve known some of the “preachy, screechy, righteous kind that love to get in peoples’ faces about it” who were omnivores screeching at vegetarians and vegans. Some people are just like that. If they’re not harassing others about what they are or aren’t eating, they’ll be on about something else.