Are Vegetarians Healthier?

Recommend (0) Comments (10)

Okay.  Seeing that I'm the author of a book called THE SHAMELESS CARNIVORE, you might be inclined to think that I'm a rabid meat-devouring proselytizer of tasty, delicious animal death, and to hell with vegetarians and their whiny, self-righteous moral imperialism.  And you'd only be mostly wrong.

Truth is, as much as I'm passionate about all things meaty and delicious in this world, I take the subject damned seriously, and I'm an ardent supporter of discerning, temperate, conscientious meat-eating.  So when I get into a debate about being a flesh-eater, I like to do so in a measured, rational way, because, let's face it: our dietary choices are rife with philosophical and ethical nuances that have been debated for thousands of years (Pythagoras, for example, felt that eating beans was just horrible).  It's complicated stuff, and for the intelligent, open-minded and logically rigorous, there are rarely any easy answers.

That said, let's take a closer look at the question at hand.  It's pretty vague.  Firstly, which vegetarians are we talking about here?  And who, exactly, are they "healthier" than?  Are vegans healthier than ovo vegetarians, or lacto vegetarians, or ovo-lacto vegetarians?  Are vegetarians healthier than people who eat meat four times a year, or four times a day?  Red meat-eaters, or fans of fish and foul?  Hunters, or consumers of mechanically separated, processed supermarket meats made from cows that were pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones?  And what, exactly, does "healthier" mean?  In any decent debate, you have to define your terms.  So this is pretty tricky.  Unless we know exactly who and what we're talking about, it's difficult to come to any conclusion.  Hence, I'm compelled to say "No."  It's just too ambiguous to affirm.

But I'm only getting started...