Should you be a vegan?

I'm a carnivore, meaning I eat meat. Or, to use the term Michael Pollan would use, I'm an omnivore, meaning that I can choose to eat whatever I like: vegetables, meat and lots of other things. In looking at what I eat and how my diet affects the environment, it's been fascinating to learn how much more being a meat eater pollutes the air than being a vegetarian.

Sooner or later, anyone who confronts this reality that the meat we all love so dearly is an exponentially more polluting dietary choice will face another reality: Should I go vegetarian for the environment? What about vegan?

I don't think I could do it. Every so often I hit a single, particular vegan restaurant nearby and afterward I leave, always thinking, ok, that was good but I'm glad I don't have to do it all the time. Suffice it to say that I will not choose to be a vegan on my own.

Kristin at Food Renegade wrote a fantastic and thought-provoking post on the choice. For her, it's not a decision about the environmental impact as much as it is a decision about the nature of life and death. She breaks down the bare minimum fact that all life comes from death. For example, dead people, animals and plants become the soil that is teeming with bacterial life which will then give rise to the plants that will feed the animals, all of which/whom will end up back in that same soil.

We are part of the cycle forever. Death makes life possible. Kristin's point is that choosing to be a vegan simply to avoid causing harm or using animal products as part of the food process is, rather than compassionate, avoiding the true fact of life. I would agree with her.

I would also extend her line of thinking to say that while humans may not be required to eat meat to survive, we did require eating meat to get us to where we are evolution-wise.

In the end, the choice is yours. Vegans out there, why did you choose it? Non-vegans, what keeps you omnivorous?

Image courtesy of reidab via flickr