Flesh Food vs. Veganism (or Somewhere in Between)

Estimated reading time: about 19 to 22 minutes at an average reading speed.

Part One

In order to understand a plant based diet, it helps to separate the conversation into a few silos. The first silo is health because that is what most people care about before anything else. The second silo is the ethical issue, which is usually the last thing people are ready to talk about because it forces them to look at suffering, sentience, and personal responsibility. The third silo is the impact of animal protein on the environment and the global economy. This includes the staggering healthcare costs tied to diseases that are strongly associated with diets rich in animal protein.

The fourth silo is more abstract and most people never go there. It is the question of what all of this killing does to a collective consciousness. If survival for most of the world depends on the daily cycle of breeding and slaughtering sentient animals, how could we expect our societies to be free of larger forms of violence. We are already desensitized by the bloodshed of billions of beings every year. When a culture accepts constant killing as normal for its survival, it is not a stretch to imagine how that normalizes conflict over land, religion, and resources. Violence gets woven into the operating system.

The fifth silo is even harder to talk about. It is the long arc of human eating patterns and how they shaped our psychology over eons. There are a lot of ridiculous arguments in favor of animal protein and just as many silly arguments for going vegan. I have been vegan for many years and I can tell you that it is not a difficult lifestyle once you understand how to get your calories. Many people try it from the wrong mindset. They cut out animal foods completely but do not replace the calories with enough whole plant foods. They feel weak, flat, or emotionally off because they are under eating. It has nothing to do with veganism and everything to do with not eating enough.

If you approach a plant based lifestyle, you have to learn what you are doing. Historically, cultures that ate mostly vegetation lived in regions where plants grew year round or where farming was possible. They learned how to gather seeds, save them, plant them, and replant them. They learned pollination, irrigation, crop protection, and storage. Farming was complicated and weather dependent. One season of floods, frost, insects, rodents, or drought could wipe out an entire food supply. Farming communities were also vulnerable to invading tribes because once you become agrarian, you cannot just pick up and flee. You are locked to the land. So yes, being a plant based society was difficult and often required some supplement of animal protein to survive harsh seasons or cold climates. In colder regions there simply were fewer plant calories available.

But plants have been part of the human diet from the beginning, not only for food but also as medicine. No one can argue against the value of eating plant matter. Modern science supports this completely. Human metabolism is driven primarily by carbohydrates. That is our preferred and most efficient source of energy. Protein comes next in line and it does not have to come from animals. We can meet protein needs easily from plants. The same is true for fats. Animal protein, on the other hand, contains almost no antioxidants or phytochemicals, which are essential for long term health and cellular protection.

Here is the simplest truth. If we do not get enough carbohydrates from plants, we get sick and eventually die. Humans are carbohydrate burning organisms. Plants deliver the carbohydrates, the fiber, the antioxidants, and almost every protective compound the body uses to heal and repair. Once you understand that, the conversation around protein becomes a lot clearer.

The sixth silo gets even stranger and almost nobody talks about it because the research is thin and the conversation makes people uncomfortable. What if part of the human attraction to eating animals comes from the way we were shaped as children. Many of us were desensitized to violence early on. Some of us lived through emotional or physical harm in childhood. Some of us absorbed it from movies, news, games, and culture. What if that desensitization connects to a buried pleasure in feeling like the dominant species. The apex animal. The creature that gets to kill and eat whatever it wants. I am not saying people sit around thinking these thoughts consciously. I am saying it may live somewhere deep in the psyche. What if part of the emotional association with eating is the knowledge that something died so we could live. Whole cultures are raised inside that narrative.

I did not become vegan because I was thinking about any of that. I did it because it made sense for my diet at the time. I write about this often. I stumbled into veganism almost by accident. During the years I was fighting competitively, I needed to stay in a weight class that was far below my natural weight. I trained at my real weight to keep my strength, then had to cut dramatically before fights. Someone told me the simplest way to stay light was to eliminate animal protein and live on juice, smoothies, fruit, and salads. It was practical. It worked. I recovered well, I had energy, and I kept my weight stable. I am not claiming science, I am telling you my experience.

It took years of being vegan before I even started thinking about the ethical side. Running a vegan restaurant put me face to face with more vegans than I ever planned to meet. One person in particular changed me. He is my food mentor. He is ninety six years old at the time I write this and has been plant based and mostly raw for more than sixty years. I asked him once if he ever missed animal protein. He told me he would rather die than eat an animal. He said it calmly, with conviction. His clarity made me look at my own wishy washy attitude.

Over time, as my recovery deepened, as I grew through meditation and nervous system work, I became more sensitive. Sensitive to people. Sensitive to the environment. And eventually sensitive to the animals whose lives make up this world. Life is unbelievably precious. I like being out of the food chain now. I spent most of my life inside it and I do not judge myself for that. I do not judge anyone else either. I never preach veganism. I do not feel superior. I do not feel the need to convert people. I teach the lifestyle only if someone is genuinely interested.

The truth is many people are simply drawn to flesh based foods. That is the culture they grew up in. My job is to be an ambassador, not an enemy. If someone wants to eat animal protein, I teach them how to do it in a better way. I do not shame them. I do not stress them out. I do not give vegans a bad name by being judgmental.

I tell people something very simple. You can live an extremely long and healthy life even if you eat some animal protein. You just have to stack the odds in your favor. You have to reduce it. You do not need it every day. You do not need it at every meal. You are not eating it for survival. You are eating it for calories and satiation, and that is where the mistake is. Animal protein should be a supplement at most. A few days a week at the max. When you give yourself wider boundaries, your diet gets easier.

There are foods to eliminate and they are not controversial. The over sauced, overcooked, nutritionally empty debauchery foods. Anything that is basically a sauce delivery system. Snails, shellfish, pork, poultry. These creatures are bottom feeders in the food chain. They get their calories from eating things you would never touch. Whatever toxins or contaminants are inside them become your problem when you eat them. Your body has to process everything in that organism at the moment it is killed.

I am not denying that there are substances in animal foods that people often talk about, like collagen. But collagen is just one type of protein and it is not the only thing that affects hair, skin, nails, or joints. Plants supply compounds like silicon found in peppers and leafy greens that are just as important. For every rare thing you cannot get easily from plants, there are a hundred protective compounds plants have that animals do not.

Dense foods are harder to digest whether they come from animals or from processed plant sources like pasta and bread. You want to limit all of that. You also want to allow yourself imperfections because the body is adaptive. It does not need perfect eating. It needs consistent, supportive eating. The digestive system is a filtration system with the liver, kidneys, and lymphatics working constantly to keep you clean. But if you overload your filters with poor diet, heavy stress, environmental toxins, bad sleep, and bad hygiene, you push the system past its natural capacity.

Vegan or not, the principle is the same. You stack the odds for or against yourself with every habit. The less violence, stress, toxicity, and heaviness you put into your system, the more you give your body a real chance to thrive.

If we want to be totally unbiased, we have to say this clearly. Anyone who tells you that you cannot eat animal protein and be healthy does not understand how an omnivore works. The human digestive system can wade through a lot of garbage and still keep us alive. That does not mean it runs optimally. It just means the machine is tough. If we eat the wrong way for decades, we do not usually drop dead tomorrow. We just quietly reduce our chances of living a very long and vibrant life.

Nature shows us clearly what each creature is built to eat. We know what a horse eats. We know what a tiger eats. That part is simple. The only animal that is confused about its food is the human being. We are confused because of our fears, our addictions, our culture, our families, our holidays, and all the emotional baggage wrapped around food. Most of us were indoctrinated as children long before we were old enough to question anything on the plate.

I also admit I never really understood why someone who is strong, lean, and not sick would suddenly switch from a high animal protein diet if they did not have to. I am actually impressed when people come into veganism only for compassion. That was not my entry point. I think it is beautiful that some people have that softness wired in. But that does not mean they will have an easy time with the diet. If they do not know what to eat instead of animal protein, they will suffer. You cannot have a successful vegan diet without fruit and starchy vegetables, especially if you train or move your body a lot. You need calories. You need carbohydrates.

Part Two

If I had to pitch the cleanest, most direct case against eating animal protein, it would be this:

Animal flesh gives you zero fiber, a lot of growth signals, a lot of oxidative stress chemistry, and it usually comes packaged with fat, heme iron, hormones, and cooking toxins that push the body toward heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. A whole food plant based pattern does the opposite. It calms inflammation, feeds the microbiome, and still gives plenty of protein without the baggage.

What animal protein does in the body, in simple terms.

Common issues across all animal categories:

1. No fiber at all: Fiber is what feeds gut bacteria, moves waste, and dilutes carcinogens in the colon. Meat has none. Whole plant foods are loaded with it. Epidemiology and meta analyses show that shifting from animal to plant foods reduces risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and early death. 

2. Heme iron and advanced cooking toxins: Heme iron in meat can drive oxidative damage and formation of N nitroso compounds in the gut, both tied to colorectal cancer.
   High heat cooking of meat, especially grilling and pan frying, produces heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which the World Health Organization calls carcinogenic or probably carcinogenic.

3. Growth signaling and chronic disease: High intake of animal protein tends to raise IGF 1 and other growth signals. Observational data repeatedly show that people who eat less animal protein and more plant protein have lower all cause and cardiovascular mortality.

4. Crowding out the good stuff: Big portions of animal protein displace beans, lentils, whole grains, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and fruit. In the major cohorts, people with more plant dominant patterns have less ischemic heart disease and some cancers.

So the argument is not “meat is poison in one bite.” It is that, gram for gram, animal protein is a high risk, low value way to meet protein needs when you zoom out over decades.

BY CATEGORY

Red Meat And Processed Red Meat

1. This is the easiest part of the case.

2. The World Health Organization’s cancer agency classifies processed meat (bacon, sausage, deli meat, hot dogs) as Group 1 carcinogen, meaning there is sufficient evidence it causes colorectal cancer. Red meat (beef, lamb, goat, pork as a meat) is in Group 2A, probably carcinogenic.

3. Every 50 grams of processed meat per day is linked to about an 18 percent higher risk of colorectal cancer.

4. Red and processed meat intake tracks with higher rates of heart disease and some cancers in prospective cohorts and meta analyses.

Punchline: If you wanted to remove one category of food that is clearly connected to colon cancer and heart disease, processed and red meat are the first things to throw off the boat.

Pork

Pork is technically red meat in the WHO definition.

1. So all the same problems apply. Heme iron, nitrites in many processed pork products, high sodium, and often high temperature cooking.

2. Bacon, ham, and many deli meats sit right in the processed meat category with the cancer warning described above.

Punchline: “White meat pork” was a marketing line. Biologically it behaves like other red meats.

Poultry

Chicken and turkey look cleaner on the surface, but:

1. They still contain animal protein, cholesterol, and little or no fiber.

2. High heat cooking creates the same heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that form when you char red meat.

3. Industrial poultry often carries contamination and requires heavy disinfection and overcooking to be safe. That cooking style is itself part of the problem.

In the big plant rich cohorts, people who eat little or no meat, including poultry, still come out with lower ischemic heart disease rates than straight meat eaters.

Punchline: Poultry is less bad per ounce than bacon, but it does not belong in the “health food” column when you compare it to beans and lentils.

Fish

Fish is where people always say, “But that is the healthy protein.” There are real upsides and real issues.

Upsides:

1. Some fish provide long chain omega 3s that are protective for heart disease.

2. Fish eaters in cohorts often look better than heavy red meat eaters.

Issues:

1. Biomagnified contaminants. Many fish contain mercury and persistent pollutants like PCBs and dioxins. These accumulate up the food chain and get stored in human fat tissue.

2. Fish protein still raises TMAO when gut bacteria metabolize choline and carnitine. High TMAO is linked to atherosclerosis.

3. Wild stocks are collapsing in many parts of the world, and aquaculture comes with its own chemical and environmental mess.

Punchline: If your only question is “Is fish safer than bacon,” then yes, usually. If the question is “Do I need fish to be healthy,” the best data say no. You can get omega 3s from algae based sources and keep the protein coming from plants.

Seafood and shellfish

Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, and other shellfish:

1. Often high in cholesterol and sometimes contaminated with heavy metals and industrial waste, especially from polluted waters and farmed operations.

2. Frequently fried or cooked in butter, creating the same fat and frying problems as other meats.

Punchline: These foods are often delivery vehicles for butter, breading, and fryer oil with a side of microplastics. Hard to build a health argument for them.

Wild game

People imagine wild game as “paleo clean.”

Yes, it tends to be leaner and not factory farmed. That is better ethically and sometimes metabolically. But:

1. It is still mammalian or bird flesh, so the same heme iron, high temperature cooking toxins, and lack of fiber.

2. Depending on the environment, game can have lead from bullets and environmental contaminants.

Punchline: Better than feedlot beef on ethics and fat content, but not some magic exception to the animal protein problem.

Dairy

A helpful thing to remember is that humans are naturally programmed to become lactose intolerant. Infants produce the enzyme lactase, which allows them to digest breast milk. As children grow and begin weaning, lactase production naturally declines in most of the world’s population, which leads to lactose intolerance. Only certain genetic groups, mainly in Europe, developed lactase persistence through evolution. This is why dairy causes digestive problems for a large portion of humanity, far more than most plant foods. After early childhood, dairy consumption is linked with common issues like bloating, gas, diarrhea, and some forms of inflammation, especially in people who lack lactase. It is not the root of all disease, but it is clearly one of the most commonly problematic foods in the adult world.

If You Must Consume Dairy

If someone absolutely insists on consuming dairy, the safer path is to choose it from smaller animals like goats and sheep, and to lean toward aged cheeses rather than fresh milk. The reason is simple biology. A cow produces milk designed to take a sixty pound calf and turn it into a one thousand pound animal in roughly a year. That milk is naturally loaded with growth promoting compounds, bioactive peptides, and hormones meant for a creature far larger and faster growing than a human infant. Goat and sheep milk, by contrast, are formulated for much smaller animals, so their growth signals are milder, their fat and protein structures are easier to digest for many people, and their lactose content is often lower. Aged cheeses go a step further because fermentation breaks down much of the lactose and alters the proteins, making them less reactive for many adults. None of this makes dairy a health food, but if someone is going to eat it, choosing these gentler forms respects both physiology and common sense.

Understanding Plant Food Sensitivities Without Panic

The goal is not to worship plants but to understand them. Every living thing carries both medicine and poison. We just have to learn how to eat wisely. People who do not have celiac disease do not need to avoid gluten. What they should avoid is the junk food that often contains gluten. That is a very different issue. If you are not allergic to nuts, eat them. If you are not sensitive to broccoli or other foods with goitrogenic compounds like potatoes or cabbage, they can be part of a healthy diet. If nightshades do not bother you, they are nutritious. The fact that some people react to a plant food does not mean the entire species is allergic to it.

The Junk Vegan Trap

You already know this, but it is important to say it clearly.

If you shift from steak and chicken to:

1. Fried Seitan And Soy Nuggets

2. Vegan Cheese Piled On Refined White Bread

3. Deep Fried Potatoes

4. Coconut Oil Loaded Desserts

5. Plant Foods Cooked Constantly In Very High Heat Oils

You did not “solve” the health problem. You just switched teams on the same battlefield.

Problems with Junk Vegan:

1. Ultra processed: lots of refined starch, sugar, salt, and industrial oils. These drive weight gain, insulin resistance, and inflammation, regardless of whether the molecule came from a cow or a coconut.

2. High heat frying: deep frying plant foods still creates acrylamide and other nasties. You are just changing the flavor of the carcinogens.

3. Portion delusion: people eat way more calories of “healthy” vegan food because the moral halo makes them relax.

4. So the honest line is:

A sloppy vegan diet full of deep fried, refined, and over salted food is in the same sick category as a sloppy meat diet. Different ethics and different environmental footprint, but from a blood chemistry standpoint it can be just as brutal.

The real move is whole food plant based: beans, lentils, intact grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, minimal oil, sensible cooking methods, sensible portions. What do the biggest studies actually show?

There is no single perfect randomized trial that locks this forever. What we have is a tower of very large observational studies plus smaller trials. Here are the pillars.

The China Study

The “China Study” is not just a book. It is based on the China Cornell Oxford Project, a massive ecological study of diet and disease in rural China, plus other animal and lab work.

1. Collected diet and health data from sixty five rural counties with very different patterns of animal and plant food intake.

2. Communities that ate more whole plant foods and very little animal protein had much lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and many cancers than communities that ate richer diets higher in animal fat and protein.

Limitations: it compares regions rather than individuals and gets criticized for over interpretation. But as a map of what happens when whole populations live on very low animal food intake, it is powerful.

Adventist Health Study 2

If you want clean human data with a lot of real vegans and long follow up, this is the heavyweight.

1. More than 96 thousand Seventh Day Adventists in the United States and Canada, with a huge spread from vegan to heavy meat eaters.

2. Vegetarians as a group had lower all cause mortality, especially men, and lower cardiovascular and renal mortality than non vegetarians.

3. Recent analyses from the same cohort show vegetarians and vegans have significantly lower overall cancer risk. Vegans came out with about a 24 percent lower risk of all cancers compared with meat eaters, with specific drops in prostate and some digestive cancers.

If you forced me to name “the most extensive” human study on plant centered patterns versus meat heavy patterns, I would point you here and to its sister cohorts.

A large European prospective cohort that purposely recruited thousands of vegetarians and vegans.

1. After about eighteen years, vegetarians had about a 23 percent lower risk of ischemic heart disease, a.k.a. coronary artery disease, compared with meat eaters.
   

2. Vegans and vegetarians also had lower risk of some cancers compared with non vegetarians.
   

There is some signal of slightly higher hemorrhagic stroke in vegetarians in one analysis, which reminds us that no pattern is perfect and nutrients still matter.

Substitution Studies and Meta Analyses

These do the most direct “what if we swap protein source” question.

1. In two large US cohorts, replacing just 3 percent of calories from animal protein with plant protein was linked to about a 10 percent lower risk of death from all causes and from cardiovascular disease. Benefits were strongest when the animal protein was processed red meat.
   
   

2. Meta analyses show that substituting plant based for animal based foods is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and all cause mortality.
   
   

3. Newer analyses of global data find that in later adult life, higher plant protein and lower fat intake line up with better survival, even if animal protein appears helpful in very early childhood in low income settings.
   
   

So the big picture: The more your calories come from whole plants instead of animal protein, the lower your risk for heart disease and a range of cancers, especially colorectal, prostate, and some hormone related cancers. Not zero meat versus some meat, but direction and pattern.

How To Say The “Absolute Best Argument” Out Loud

It is rarely productive to argue face to face with someone who is deeply attached to eating flesh foods. It becomes a debate of identities rather than facts, almost like arguing theology with someone who has already decided what they believe. Opposing viewpoints tend to harden, not soften, and both people usually walk away more convinced of their original position. It is far more effective to write, to teach the people who are actually curious, and to let the message reach whoever is ready for it. Holiday barbecues are not disappearing anytime soon. Humans will continue eating animal protein until something shifts in our collective consciousness, and that will happen slowly, over generations, not overnight.

Some flesh food eaters will find that statement snobby, but the science is clear. Arguments in favor of making animal protein the center of the diet are emotionally charged, culturally reinforced, and often disconnected from modern nutritional evidence. The real reason these debates become so heated is that changing food habits is frightening and difficult for most people. We are biologically wired to prefer calorie dense, fatty, salty foods because they soothe the nervous system and reduce anxiety in the short term. These foods are everywhere, they taste good, they are tied to memories and family rituals, and they are incredibly easy to access. Becoming vegetarian or vegan requires a real learning curve. It forces us to rethink what a meal even is. It can feel socially awkward, it can separate us from old habits and social circles, and it demands a level of nutritional understanding that many people have never developed. This is why education matters more than confrontation.

Look, animal protein is a loaded gun pointed at the long term. Every time you make meat the center of the plate you get zero fiber, heme iron, growth hormones, saturated fat, and chemistry from high heat cooking that pushes you toward heart disease and cancer. Red and processed meat are now in the official cancer playbook. Processed meat is in the same carcinogen category as tobacco. At the same time the biggest human cohorts we have show that people who eat mostly beans, lentils, grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds with little or no animal protein have less heart disease, less diabetes, and less cancer.

If you swap animal protein for plant protein, even a few percent of calories, your risk of dying early drops. If you go all the way into a whole food plant based pattern, the benefits get bigger. If you just move from steak to fried fake meat and oily fries, you did nothing. The real upgrade is not “vegan” as a logo. It is clean food from plants, cooked gently, eaten in sane portions. That is where the numbers line up.

Here is my conclusion. When you approach a vegan lifestyle, be humble. It is not easy in the culture we live in. Supermarkets and restaurants are built for meat eaters. You would think we were wild cats based on the menus. Look at what we serve children in schools. The marketplace is geared for the carnivore, not the vegetarian, and definitely not the vegan.

Animal protein is not going away. It is here to stay for a long time. So it makes no sense to scream at people or argue endlessly. The best we can do is educate, live the example, and let time and new information change things generation by generation. Over time we may finally understand how much our diet is beating up the environment and how that might make the planet unlivable for creatures like us. We are smart enough now to think about this. A few decades ago we did not have the motivation, the information, or the global pressure we have today. Now climate is changing in real time. Leading scientists who are not trapped in politics are warning us. Anything we do to take better care of the planet and leave a kinder version of it for our descendants is a sign that humanity is growing up.

So think about this deeply and research it for yourself. A simple way to test a vegan pattern is to do a week or two of big salads, cooked vegetables, fruit, and some clean starches. If you want some bread or simple carbohydrates to get through the transition, fine. The point is to step away from the constant hit of animal protein and see how you feel. Animal protein is stimulating. It is dense, it is rich, and it lights up the reward centers in the brain. That is why it feels intoxicating. It hits taste, smell, memory, and pleasure hormones all at once. Of course we go back to it. Of course we crave it.

The detox period from animal protein is less about flushing poison and more about sitting with the mental and emotional shifts. You are changing routines, identity, comfort foods, and the way you reward yourself. Your job at that time is to stay awake, to breathe, and to redirect the discomfort into curiosity instead of panic. Treat it as an experiment, not a prison sentence.

Good luck, it’s a zoo out there. More to come on egg consumption and the data linking animal protein industry lobbyists to the development of the original USDA food pyramid and the now-improved USDA food plate.