Things like meat, butter, milk, cheese and lard. Things humans have eaten for centuries. When did they become the health worlds evil incarnate?
To me, everything (fruits, vegetables, dairy, meat, bread, sugar), is good in moderation.
How did we go from turkey to Tofurky?
I like 'em.
Here’s a walkthrough of the timeline of different events:
It looks like the anti-fat thing was principally the result of this 1977 committee:
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/report/html/G5_History.htm
The first probably-not-made-up references we have in writing to a vegetarian diet date from 6 BCE, in Greece and southern Italy colonized by Greeks. You may have heard of one of the great proponents of a vegetarian diet, dude named Pythagoras, fond of triangles and not eating things with souls.
India and China have their own long history of vegetarianism, some of which are vegan, some not.
Many early Christians and many monks during the Middle Ages were vegetarian for religious reasons.
So…there have literally been vegetarians for as long as we’ve had written history, and quite probably long before that. I don’t think your impression that this is a new fad is borne out by the evidence.
The OP does refer to “the health world”. When he talks about animal-derived foods being “bad” he is doing the usual puritan thing of moralising health outcomes. It’s fairly clear that he is not asking about ethical vegetarianism; he is asking about the belief that animal-derived foods are detrimental to human health.
I suspect that the answer has to do with our changing diet and lifestyle. Few people think that animal foods are inherently unhealthy in the way that, say, tobacco is. Nearly all of the health concerns relate to dietary imbalance; that we derive too much of our nutrients from meat and animal fats. And my guess would be that those concerns are a reflection of the fact that we are eating more and more meat and animal fats, as they become relatively cheaper, while increasingly living lifestyles in which this is less and less appropriate to our dietary needs.
You’re essentially correct that things like fat, sugar and salt are fine, even beneficial, in moderation. You’re also right that people have been eating meat for centuries. The difference is one of scale. For most of human civilization, meat was not readily available because, frankly, it’s difficult and inefficient to produce meat (there were, of course, localized exceptions to this). Now that industrialization has allowed for mass production of meat (and butter, and cheese…), we are eating more meat than in previous time periods. In other words, it’s become easier than ever to be immoderate.
Combine that with increasing life span, which allows more time for the damage of an animal-heavy diet to accumulate, and you have significant growth in health challenges like high blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.
I can understand moral vegetarian or veganism - honestly, more power to you if that is the way you roll. I admit that while I have [and would again] eaten all sorts of critters including dog and horse [love horse, would love to get it in the US, dog was tough and stringy, only a seige/famine food IMHO] it would break my heart to have to eat my pets. [I would probably arrange a pet swap with someone in an emergency in that case.] However I am an omnivore, and actually do understand that meat/animal products in the store do not magically appear and there is a karmic cost in how they are treated. If given the honest choice and resources, I would farm all my critter products [currently have poultry, have previously raised my own sheep.] I can guarantee their ethical treatment.
And I am fat, diabetic and handicapped [my form of handicap and living out in the sticks means I really have no ability or access to exercise, so everything I have is dietary control.] My A1C is a steady 6.6, my assorted blood labs tend to be midline average including lipids, and my last echocardiogram showed an almost textbook standard healthy heart [which drives my cardio nuts as he can not figure out where my extreme malignant hypertension of 210/190 unmedicated comes from. I am firmly in the believe it is neurological.] Yup, my labs are better than my marathon running vegan cardiologist … [I eat normal and sensible amounts of real milk, butter, eggs and avoid the non planted on earth by whichever deity you choose. We evolved to eat it, and by damn I am going to eat it but I am going to be sensible about it.
I don’t get it either!
For context, I’m a petite, slightly overweight woman. I’m a grad student, and we always have a lot of vegetarian groups on campus trying to show their way. I appreciate that factory-farming is bad, but honestly, I’m more concerned about worker exploitation in the processing plants- conditions are terrible and injuries are rampant.
However, I can’t be a vegetarian- doing so would increase my risk of getting very, very ill to the point of being disabled. I know that meat has its own health concerns, but about a year ago, I had anemia so badly that I could barely walk the 200 yards to school each day, and at the end of the day, I almost couldn’t stand up. Because of heavy periods and an absorption of iron problem, this deficiency is not an issue that will just “go away.” There are some vegetables with lots of iron, but it’s most easily absorbed from meat and eggs. So I just hate it when health freaks glare at my frequent consumption of animal products, or even make comments when I get a fast-food burger. Okay, I’m no model, but that burger is the cheapest, fastest, and most convenient way for me to get iron quickly, so I don’t, you know, end up passed out on the kitchen floor in a puddle of drool (which actually happened).
What pro-veg people also fail to consider on campus is that many of us don’t drive, and that the area around us has tons of restaurants and fast food, but no grocery stores accessible by public transport unless you like a 40 min trip each way. In a “food desert” like this, being a vegetarian would not be healthy or sustainable- without access to healthy, fresh, affordable food, it’s totally unrealistic.
I think demonizing animal products is kind of elitist- it doesn’t consider the above (access, affordability, health problems, etc.)
No need to derail this topic onto veggie-hugger bashing. There are other topics for that. Original question was when animal based foods become “bad”. There were some good answers and I also believe that this was when (and where) meat become abundant and cheap enough that significant part of population started to behave in well to known abusive patterns. Nothing new. It happens with a lot if not most of consumer products.