After three years of being a vegetarian, I chose to eat meat again. Initially I did it because of health reasons. But as I reflect and research more, it has now become an ethical decision.
Yes, ethical. I am choosing to eat meat again because I believe it is more ethical.
In this essay I want to highlight why I believe eating meat is more ethical. Not factory farmed meat, but meat from animals raised in nature, on pasture. I want to challenge the automatic assumption of vegan = ethical. I argue that if the motivation for vegans or vegetarians is to do the least harm and protect all life on Earth, being vegetarian or vegan is not the way to go.
But first, I’ll start with my personal story.
Watching Earthlings
I went veggie near the end of 2015. I watched Earthlings, which opened my eyes to the horrific world of factory farming – something I was oblivious to. I felt shocked and found myself in tears at various points in the film. At that time I was also spending a lot more time with other veggies and was dating someone who was vegan. I then did Veganuary which helped with the shift.
But in 2019 my gums started bleeding. I had gingivitis, an inflammation of the gums and when I went to the dentist she also told me I had several cavities in my teeth. I wasn’t convinced about what Google and my dentist told me, that it was caused by poor oral hygiene. Something else was up. Before I went to the dentist I had a week of incredibly vivid dreams where I ate very specific things – fish heads and bone broths. I felt my body was sending me a message that it was lacking in something.
The short story is I reintroduced animal products (in particular cod liver oil) and my teeth started to remineralise. In a separate post I’ll share the details of how. My gums improved, calculus (hardened plaque) fell off and inflammation went away.
The Questionable Ethics of Vegetarians
I thought being vegetarian or vegan meant far fewer animal deaths. It makes sense. After all, if there was meat on my plate, I knew at least one animal had to die. Naively I thought if I ate rice with vegetables, no animals died. I was wrong.
In Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture, the authors conclude that as many as 7.3 billion animals are killed every year in the US from plant agriculture. For comparison, I put below the figures for cows, pigs and chickens slaughtered in the US every year:
| Number of Annual Deaths | |
| Plant Agriculture | 150 million to 7300 million |
| Cows | 40 million |
| Pigs | 120 million |
| Chickens | 9000 million |
The authors express how difficult it is to come up with an accurate figure. The 7.3 billion is their higher estimate, which they worked out from 100 animal deaths per hectare. The lower estimate is 1.27 deaths per hectare. So the range is very large. But even at the lower range, it’s still about the same as the total amount of cows or pigs slaughtered every year.
Note: the figures above are for animals. It does not include reptiles, amphibians, fish or insects. For the latter, the authors say:
“… a conservative estimate is well over 250 million insects per hectare, and some judge that it’s over a billion per hectare. Even if we stick with the lower number, make the supposition that only 1/100 of those insects are candidates for sentience, make the further supposition that the odds of the candidates actually being sentient are only 1/10, and finally assume that pesticides only manage to kill 1/10 of the candidates for sentience, we’re now talking about an additional 20,000 deaths per hectare.”
There is about 127.5 million hectares of cropland in the US that is harvested. 20,000 deaths per hectare equal size 2,550 billion insect deaths.
From other sources I learned how unethical almond farming can be, even though it would be labelled “vegan”:
According to Scientific American, up to 80 billion domestic honeybees are estimated to have a hand in the Californian almond industry each year, up to half of which die during the management process and the long journeys to and from the large almond orchards,”
Source
Mike Archer, a professor at the University of New South Wales, stated that 25 times more sentient beings are killed to produce a kilogram of protein from wheat versus a kilogram of protein from beef.
In a paper by Steven L. Davis on the Least Harm Principle, he compares the total number of deaths in a vegan world compared to an omnivorous world that uses a pasture-ruminant model for food production. His estimates are 1.35 billion animal deaths in a pasture-ruminant model compared to 1.8 billion deaths in a vegan model.
While writing this essay I came across this tweet:
It brought greater nuance to the discussion. Vegans often compare their way of eating to a standard American diet, but how does it compare to a meat-only, local diet? When I was veggie, chia seeds, avocados, bananas, raw cacaeo, quinoa and other exotic vegan foods were every day staples. These came from all over the globe using a ton of fossil fuels. There were also other side effects from crops like quinoa:
“… there is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder. The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper.”
Source
It seemed to be a case of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. When I was a vegetarian, I had good intentions. But how many unintended consequences did I contribute to with my way of eating?
A vegan diet, although rooted in a motivation of ethics, appears to contribute to more animal deaths than eating a diet of large ruminants like cows.
There are philosophical questions that come up at this point. Is the life of a mouse equivalent to the life of a cow? If they are not equivalent, how many mice is equal to a cow? Is it more ethical to eat one cow, or a thousand mice (or whatever would be equivalent in weight)? I won’t cover these questions in this essay, but they are not easy ones to answer.
Do No Harm
When I first ate meat again, I said to myself, OK I’ll eat meat until I got better. Then I’ll go back to being vegetarian. But as I did the research into the ethical arguments, it started to fall apart.
The numbers I cite above vary a lot. So I asked myself, what if the numbers are wrong and it was proven that a vegan diet was responsible for far fewer deaths, even when compared to a large ruminant meat-only diet? Would it then be worthwhile to remain vegan or vegetarian?
I came back to the first precept in Buddhism: do no harm. This precept must start with myself. Otherwise I am a walking contradiction. If I cause myself harm, I ripple harm outwards. So I asked, am I causing myself harm by eating a vegetarian or vegan diet?
The answer from my three years being veggie is yes. Being veggie wrecked my health. I lost nearly 10kg during my time being veggie. I gained it all back after about three months eating meat again. My gums inflamed, my teeth were decaying. I reversed all of this, including remineralising my teeth cavities with cod liver oil, bone broths, organ meats and shellfish.
By experimenting with a meat-only carnivore diet for a month, I also found out that my haemorrhoids, which I had suffered from on and off over the years, disappeared after I ate only meat. It’s embarrassing to admit I have something like this, but it feels important to share. Don’t ask me how it worked. I don’t know. All I know is it disappears when I eat only meat. Then if I eat non-meat foods like grains or vegetables again, it comes back. I wouldn’t believe it myself either, but I log my poops. For years now. I know an all-meat diet is helping, despite all the warnings from my dad that it would do the opposite. I’ll write another post when I learn more about what is actually happening.
I also reflected about my future children. I don’t know if I want to have kids yet. But if I do, I know my health (and my partner’s health) will play a huge role in the health of our kids. When Dr. Weston Price asked the tribes he studied why they sought out special foods like oysters or fish eggs, they always replied, “To make perfect babies.” Eating isn’t just a personal choice. It’s a generational choice.
In the end I saw that even if a vegetarian diet might lead to fewer animal deaths, I could not responsibly eat in that way because of the negative health consequences. I do not wish disease to anyone. But by eating a vegetarian diet, I advocate for it. I send a signal to my circle of connections, who will undoubtedly be influenced by my decision. If I knew eating veggie was not healthy for me, would it be healthy for my friends? Likely not. It was not a way of eating I could continue to advocate.
The Potential Health Risks for Vegetarians
I’m not a scientist. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a dietician or nutritionist. And I don’t even know if what I share below would even be helpful given how I believe science can be like a mercenary – it works for whoever can pay his salary. But, here were some health issues I researched beyond the common Vitamin B12 issue in vegans:
- Vitamin K1 vs. K2 MK4 vs. K2 MK7. No known vegan sources of K2 MK4 (the form we absorb best). Most people might not convert high doses of MK7 to MK4.
- Retinol (Vitamin A) vs Beta-carotene. The latter is found in vegetables like carrots, but conversion rates are very low. Children or people with diabetes cannot make the conversion at all.
- Lack of Vitamin B12 in a vegan diet.
- Vitamin D3 vs D2. D3 is five to ten times more effective than D2. Sunlight is the best source. But for people living in countries with dark winters the only dietary sources of D3 is in animal products, mainly fatty fish. Make sure vitamin D supplements are D3, not D2.
There are no non-animal sources of D3 supplements.EDIT: you can get D3 supplements that are sourced from lichen. - Omega 3’s ALA, EPA and DHA. ALA is found in vegan foods like flaxseed, but conversion to EPA is low and then to DHA even lower. EPA and DHA are found in fatty fish. If you are vegan you must supplement with algae substantially and avoid seed oils with high PUFAs to maximise conversion rates.
There were also issues with Vitamin B6 pyridoxal versus pyridoxine, heme iron versus non-heme iron, the bio availability of proteins and the amount of tryptophan available in a veggie diet, relating to serotonin and depression.
Most people going vegan have a lifetime of eating meat. The body can store reserves of vitamins and minerals that last for years. But those reserves deplete if they are not restored. Gram for gram, the most nutrient dense vegan foods do not compare with the most nutrient dense animal foods.
Likewise bio availability is a big deal. Plants also put out toxins as a defence mechanism. Plants can’t run like animals do. But that doesn’t mean they want to be eaten. Many plants have anti-nutrients like oxalates, lectins and phytic acid. They bind to nutrients our body needs and prevent us from absorbing it. Most grains you cannot eat raw. But you can eat most meat raw.
Agriculture was invented 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Jared Diamond gives a compelling case for agriculture being humanity’s worst mistake. Health plummeted when humans gave up hunting for farming. Meat consumption dropped and we ate a lot more grains. Two quotes:
“Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunter-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5′ 9″ for men, 5′ 5″ for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B.C. had reached a low of only 5′ 3″ for men, 5′ for women.”
and
“Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 percent increase in [tooth] enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a threefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. “Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was about twenty-six years,” says Armelagos, “but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years.”
Having said that, I don’t doubt that it is possible for some people to maintain excellent health on a vegan or vegetarian diet. People’s bodies are very different. Conversion rates of various vitamins and minerals vary. Some people can absorb supplements well, others not so well. But a big issue with figuring this out is what Chris Kresser calls the “vegan honeymoon”. People may experience good health going vegan because their previous diet was crap, not necessarily because the vegan diet is superior. The symptoms of malnutrition can also take several years to develop, even a decade or two. The body has reserves that can last several years, so finding out that a vegan diet is not giving you the nutrients necessary can take a long time to figure out. It took Lierre Keith the brink of death before she admitted she had to change what she ate. She was a vegan for over 20 years and wrote a very powerful memoir about it.
There have been no hunter-gatherer societies that were vegan. It was not even possible until the B12 supplement was manufactured in the 1950s. Compared to over two million years of human history eating meat, a 70 year radical food experiment to not eat meat is no longer something I want to take part in. There were some vegetarian societies in India, but they depended on high quality raw milk from the water buffalo. Raw milk is illegal in the US. In the UK it cannot be sold in shops. Pasteurisation destroys a lot of the benefits of milk. Interestingly I am able to drink raw milk but not store bought milk, even though I am lactose intolerant.
Protect All Life
In Buddhism, the first precept is do no harm. But it also has a positive angle to it: protect all life.
I’ve shown how a veggie diet is responsible for a lot of death. I’ve highlighted my own personal story of not being able to maintain good health on a veggie diet. I’ve given reasons why health can be difficult to maintain on a veggie diet. I now want to highlight the role eating meat plays in protecting life on Earth.
First, it’s important to clarify again that meat does not equal factory farmed meat. I agree with vegans about the horrors of factory farming. But factory farming is not the only way to raise animals. In the UK for example, almost all sheep are raised on pasture. I don’t know the numbers for cows but the number of CAFOs here are nowhere near as high as in the US. Grass grows year round in the UK and there is a lot of land that cannot be used for growing crops that animals will happily graze on.
So how does eating non-factory farmed meat protect life?
Something amazing happens when ruminants are managed holistically in a way that mimics nature. Nature flourishes. This short video about the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park is a beautiful case:
There is an interdependence of life and death. No death, no life. Likewise, no predators, no prey. There is a sacred matrix between predator and prey. As counter intuitive as it sounds, prey need predators, as much as predators need prey. If a prey species have no predators, they overpopulate, overgraze and kill the ecosystem on which they depend.
Humans are predators. That is where we fit in the food ecology. But we’ve forgotten that role. I believe the work of people like Allan Savory is starting to bring that wisdom back with amazing results.
Just like how the wolves brought back the rivers, we humans can also play a similar role, if we re-align with nature once more. Through holistic management, Allan Savory has been able to re-green deserts using animals. Even though a lot of soil degradation comes from overgrazing of livestock, through mimicking nature Savory has been able to generate soil instead. Conventional agriculture methods of ploughing and digging with massive tractors and combines also destroy the health of soils very rapidly. It is estimated that we have just sixty harvests from our soils left.
When we forget our role in nature, we also forget basic things like plants also need to eat. Soil needs to eat. And what the soil loves eating are bones, manure, and decaying flesh. NPK. Nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. These things can come from animals, or they come from fossil fuels.
The work of Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm is another example of regeneration in partnership with animals. On his farm he produces super local, super nourishing food for the local community and he creates inches of topsoil every year. Other farms are stripping it away and depleting the health of the soil. Salatin does the opposite. Cows graze a field and are moved to a new field. The eggmobile with the chickens then comes through, happily eating all the insects from the manure rich field. Then turkeys come through and then pigs. The design mimics nature, and the result is an abundance of life.
These are obviously not simple issues to solve. Many factors are at play, beyond the scope that this essay can cover. But given the dependence humans have on animals for our health and the regeneration of our soil, to dream of a vegan world is to dream of a world devoid of animals. When you move towards a world that breaks the sacred matrix of predator-prey, you destroy species and ecosystems.
One example is algae bloom. Massive monoculture fields of soy, corn or wheat that stretch for thousands and thousands of acres are not natural. When you plant the same crop again and again each year, then strip them all out during a harvest, soil depletes. You’re not letting anything die there. Nothing returns to the Earth. The symbiotic relationship of bugs, fungi, diverse plant species and animals that create a natural living soil is no longer there. To keep our monoculture crops growing, we then have to pump in fertiliser from fossil fuels After a harvest, the soil is left bare. Rains come, topsoil erodes away and all that fertiliser pours into the rivers and out into the ocean. The sunlight hits this concentration of fertiliser and huge algae blooms grow. This algae takes in huge amounts of oxygen which creates a dead zone. No fish or other living creature can survive there.
Another example happens when we follow through with the logical implications of a vegan diet diets. In The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith writes:
A vegan flushed out his idea to keep animals from being killed—not by humans, but by other animals. Someone should build a fence down the middle of the Serengeti, and divide the predators from the prey. Killing is wrong and no animals should ever have to die, so the big cats and wild canines would go on one side, while the wildebeests and zebras would live on the other. He knew the carnivores would be okay because they didn’t need to be carnivores. That was a lie the meat industry told. He’d seen his dog eat grass: therefore, dogs could live on grass.
No one objected. In fact, others chimed in. My cat eats grass, too, one woman added, all enthusiasm. So does mine! someone else posted. Everyone agreed that fencing was the solution to animal death.
When I first read that, I thought she was joking. I tried to find the online post but couldn’t, instead I found this article titled To truly end animal suffering, the most ethical choice is to kill wild predators":
The authors of that article write:
If we believe that we should protect animals from unnecessary suffering and death, then it seems that we should be focusing much more on reducing the non-human causes of animal suffering and death that occur almost continuously in the wild.
Not all vegans think like this. But this is one of the implications of veganism. If you follow through with the logic you eventually come to an answer that says, “death is wrong”. But you run into problems very quickly because such a conclusion goes against nature. The authors continue:
By killing predators, we can save the lives of the many prey animals like wildebeests, zebras, and buffalos in the local area that would otherwise be killed in order to keep the animals at the top of the food chain alive. And there’s no reason for considering the lives of predators like lions to be more important than the lives of their prey.
The next step will be to replace predators with humans. Already within the vegan community there is a big emphasis on not having children. The next step is this:
But that will be for another essay…
The point I want to make here is that death is part of life. If we try to reject death – whether it is death of prey animals, death inevitably comes up in another situation. No matter how hard you try to avoid death, death is a natural part of life. Vegans might not eat meat, but they still contribute to the death of animals. Plants might not be seen as sentient to some but what about the fish that die in algae dead zones? The death of zebras and wildebeests by predators is unacceptable, yet it is acceptable to kill predators by the logic of one author.
Humane Slaughter, an Oxymoron?
When I was vegetarian, I used to think the phrase “humane slaughter” was a complete contradiction. Later on I heard the phrase “ethical omnivore” which I also scoffed at.
But there is such a thing as humane slaughter. If humans are not the ones slaughtering animals, it doesn’t mean the animals live happily ever after. In the wild, animals often die brutal deaths like this:
They are eaten alive. Or they freeze to death, starve to death, fall sick and slowly die.
We shouldn’t idealise the wilderness. Yes, it’s majestic, beautiful and breath taking. But it is also raw, brutal and unforgiving.
Farmers protect their animals from other predators. They offer a reliable food source. They provide medicine when needed. They offer shelter in cold winters. And in the end, they can give their animals a swift death, as free from pain as possible.
This in a way is like a partnership animals have formed with humans. Think of the number of dogs versus wolves in the world. The number of cats versus mountain lions or other feline species. Think of the number of bison versus cows.
You might argue what kind of sick partnership is this where one side kills the other. But would a dairy cow prefer to live her life out in the wild, or with her farmer? I ask this seriously. Remember, I am not talking about factory farmed cows. A dairy cow might live for five to seven years. She would have access to pasture, medicine and shelter during the winter. Her male calves will be taken away from her, but she might see her female calves grow to adulthood.
Mindful Meats is a company that works with farmers who raise “dual purpose” cows – they live first as dairy cows before they are slaughtered for meat. Their cows live on average six years, which is three times longer than conventional beef. They also produce over 80,000 pounds of milk, butter, cheese and beef over their lifetime, compared to 600 pounds of beef from conventionally raised cows. A six year old cow is equivalent in age to a human who is 66 to 72 years old.
What if vegan activists campaigned for longer lives for farm animals, instead of trying to eradicate meat eating completely? Would you be OK eating meat if you knew the animal lived a happy, healthy and long life? That it died a swift and as pain-free death as possible. That it generated topsoil, sequestered carbon and produced milk that supported the health of many people?
Conclusion
I became a vegetarian in 2015 because I wanted to lessen the suffering of animals. In 2019, as a meat eater, I still want that. I avoid buying factory farmed meat. But avoiding all meat does not equal killing fewer animals. I showed above that a vegan diet might actually be responsible for more animal deaths. A vegetarian diet was also not the best for my health. It doesn’t look like it is the best for most people either. I also showed that vegan food does not magically grow, it needs inputs. The best way to have regenerative input is with animals. Animals can help heal our soils and ecosystems.
Death brings more life, which brings more death. We cannot have one without the other. We human beings are a predator species. We are dependent on the animals we prey on. When we eat an animal, consciously or unconsciously, a part of us knows we are utterly dependent on this animal. And so we take on a pledge. To protect all life on Earth. And to protect life is to come back into alignment with nature again. As a Lakota elder once said to me, “Mother Earth misses you.”
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I used to see things as very black and white when I was vegetarian. I wrote this essay to remind me that it isn’t. For now, I eat meat again. But things change and I continue to hold the question. If you’ve read this far, please leave a comment. I wrote this so I could get more clarity on the subject. Your comments would be incredibly valuable to me.
Very enlightening, thank you for sharing your findings! I guess “going veggie” is a relatively simple lifestyle change which allows a lot of us to feel as though “im doing my bit for the environment”. It sounds like the most ethical path may be more complex than that.
Thanks for the comment Christian.
Ya, complicated for sure. There’s a reason I think why “ethics” is considered a training in Buddhism. There’s no black & white answers and it requires training to figure things out.
Very interesting. I definitely agree with a lot of points – although not so much with the “would a cow prefer to live in the wild or with a farmer?”. I think all beings would always prefer to be free.. even if there is a chance of a brutal death.
I believe humans need some meat and eggs to remain healthy,I don’t think dairy is necessary at all and the whole premise is cruel.
You’re right that we need to return to nature. I think what we need is a complete food revolution. Farming isn’t natural in any way. Breeding and keeping animals purely to kill and eat will never be ethical in my view.
All beings should be truly free. I think the hunter gatherer way of life is the only way that truly respects nature and all beings and also is a healthy lifestyle. Or if not that exact way of life then something very similar- growing our own fruit + veg and hunting any animals we may need (animals who are free in the wild). Plus eating seasonally and locally.
Capitalism and agriculture has made our whole world out of balance,so almost any way we choose to eat will have it’s issues. So many changes are needed on Earth!
Hi Gabriella,
Thank you for taking the time to write your comment! Interesting points you’ve brought up here.
What would you say is freedom in this context?
Bear in mind I was comparing non-factory farmed dairy cows, who would have access to big open fields all year round, moving to new fields regularly. As opposed to being in a box, fed grains, a ton of antibiotics and barely able to move.
I know a dairy farmer who has 180 cows. He says each cow needs at least an acre of pasture, so he has also around 180 acres of land. They stick as a herd together and move through the 180 acres as they graze.
Very curious to hear you expand more on this. How do you view the ethics of breeding/keeping animals vs. hunting animals?
Would you consider the latter as unethical also, but perhaps the lesser of two evils?
Mmm I generally agree with you here. I don’t believe it’s possible for all humans to go back to that way of living. But each individual can choose to live in that way – growing their own food, hunting, eating locally and seasonally.
Hi again 🙂
Thanks for responding!
Hmm well I think I mean freedom as in just not being kept or bred by anyone. Obviously the farm you’re describing sounds much better than a factory farm but I still don’t think it’s right.
In terms of hunting vs farming – I think if we went back to hunter gatherer ways then it’s a more a matter of survival. For example, native Americans would hunt buffalo on the plains and they would treat the whole hunt as something spiritual and pay respect to the animals etc. Plus the population of buffalo was very large so hunting a few now and then wouldn’t have had such a huge impact. I think in that context it’s not so unethical- it’s purely survival.
And I also think it’s more in balance with nature since hunter -gatherer humans were also at the mercy of other predators in the area. There was no human dominance and so everything fit neatly into the predator /prey cycle.
You’re right I think it would be very hard to go back into that way of living especially consisting there’s pretty much no wild animals left ( at least not in england). Although I do think it would be possible if there was a true revolution in every sense of the word (which I think is very needed).
But overall, yes I think the slaughtering of any animal whether it’s done via farming or hunting is ultimately not ideal or very ethical. I think it’s possible for humans to transcend the need to eat meat, but I think you have to be in quite an enlightened state. I’ve been shown some interesting things in visions and meditations regarding the consumption of meat and how it fuels fear and disharmony on the planet (even animals eating other animals) but that would be a whole essay!
Interesting! Thanks for sharing more. Especially about the visions during meditations. It would be an essay I would read :-).
Yes the relationship native Americans had with the bison seemed very sustainable and wholesome. Given what we humans can do now though – our weapons and technologies – I don’t know if that balance will return. I think what Allan Savory is trying to do night be the closest balance we could find. Thousands, even millions of herd animals roaming in large swaths of lands – helping regenerate grasslands, build soil and sequester carbon.
Here then there might not even be a “farm” anymore. Maybe still a boundary, but the size of a large National Park. Where humans doing things on purpose to mimic nature so the animals move in that same rhythm.
Like Thannissaro Bhikku says; “interdependence, should more accurately be called inter-eating”. And so he argues, the only compassionate thing to do for everyone involved, is to leave samsara behind.
Personally I eat some meat, once every month or so on average. I believe the dalai lama does something similar based on the advice of his doctors. And I’m nowhere near dalai lama’s levels of peace and relaxation, so I probably need a bit more physical support for my wellbeing than he does! Therefore I can live with this choice.
Fascinating read – you make a compelling case my friend!
I’ve been in two minds about whether to go back to vegetarianism myself purely due to the typical ethical perspective, but as you’ve clearly demonstrated, it’s a lot more complex and nuanced than the straightforward ‘no meat = less suffering’ approach. I was even considering foregoing my own health for the ‘greater good’ but again, as you mentioned, doing no harm needs to start with ourselves, and I agree. My whole worldview around this topic has changed considerably, much like yours, in the past couple of years, and discovering the Weston A Price Foundation and all the stuff they talk about has been mind-blowing, such as how no hunter-gatherer tribe has a completely animal-free diet and how the bone structures of those people are considerably different to your typical modern Westerner etc.
You summed it up nicely as well by saying that ultimately we need to realign with nature, although with the incessant ploughing forward of the corporate machine it’s gonna take a major revolution! Although I guess that starts with us as individuals.
Again, fascinating stuff bro, would be great to chat more to you about it next week! See you then 🙂
P.s. I really hope the “let’s eat the babies” woman was playing a practical joke, although I’m not too sure she was…