Anjali Sareen: The Accessibility Problem in Food Politics

I agree entirely. I'm vegan as well and recognize that in order for us to be good advocates for animals, we have to be friendly and open-minded. Even if we've heard the same arguments a thousand times before, it's important not to lose your cool. A saying of mine is "you catch more flies with agave than vinegar".

Truth be told, we don't know if vegan diets are healthy are not. Frankly, we don't know if any diets are healthy or not, because we don't study healthiness. We study illness and pretend that lack of illness signifies healthiness. Unhealthiness is not in the dictionary, because healthiness is not in the dictionary. Someday, maybe we will study healthiness. Someday we might learn that optimal health comes from a vegan diet, or a meat diet, or a mixed diet - or maybe we will learn that the way to obtain optimal health is to switch between diets on a frequent, or infrequent basis - to clear out the bad side of any specific diet, or maybe the optimal diet for health is one of the above, combined with fasting periods. Vegans do not adopt a vegan diet for their health, they adopt it for moral reasons - and generally justify it on moral reasons. That could indicate that a vegan diet leads to a 'healthy spirituality', however it might also indicate that a 'healthy spirituality' leads to a vegan diet or perhaps an overly strong (eg. unhealthy) spirituality leads to a vegan diet. But how a vegan diet affects, or is affected by other factors in the hierarchy of healthiness (http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/2011/10/hierarchy-of-health-primary-and.html) has not been studied. Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. to your health, tracy http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html

Everytime I read one of these vegan advocacy pieces I'm always astounded at the dishonest, condescending presumptions. Do you really presume to say that animals are not harmed in vegetable, fruit, and grain farming? Do you really presume to say that the only thing keeping someone from going vegan is a childish refusal to eat their veggies? Do you really presume to say that the only alternative to a vegan diet is one loaded with pizza, junk food, and feed lot meat? Do you really presume to say that plants don't feel pain, or at least something resembling fear of pain...in other words, suffering?