MEAT-EATER OR VEGAN? The Danger of the EITHER OR FALLACY

Part 5 Moving Toward Vegetarianism


There are many health reasons and moral reasons for all humans to become non-meat eaters. (See my previous blog articles on this controversy for the reasons.)

So, ideally, not eating meat would be good for humans.

But it all gets more complicated—like so many controversies--when one gets down to the real daily level of life for specific humans.

For instance, years ago, I decided to try out being a vegan like Murray Rose, the famous Olympic gold medals winner. I read a biography on his amazing life.

Very bad, tragic results however! I lost 50 pounds and suffered malnutrition! Was put under a health doctor’s care who was a vegan, and she tried various methods to help me. None worked.

Another medical profession, head of the hospital in Pennsylvania where I worked told me that veganism wasn’t beneficial, for me at least, but the entire hour she talked to me, she chain-smoked!

Clearly, it seemed lucidly obvious that I shouldn’t take her advice. Why was she smoking cigarette packs a day as a medical professional?!

HOWEVER—HERE is a vivid CASE of the EITHER-OR-FALLACY!

Just because, the hospital chain-smoker wasn’t wise in her choices didn’t automatically mean that then my vegan health doctor was correct her views.

It turned out that both were drastically wrong.

While the famous Olympic star Murray Rose won gold medals as a vegan, that didn’t mean that everyone else ought to follow his views.
Some humans can’t digest plant protein well, some can’t get enough protein from vegetables, fruits, and nuts alone.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone ought to go whole-hog in meat eating, either. And then there is also, ‘foul’ food.

I’m am still a work in progress, especially after the very severe stroke of the spine I got 4 years ago.

While I quit pork years ago (how can anyone continue to eat a sentient animal smarter than dogs and cats?!)...
And in the last 15 or so years ago, I stopped eating beef.

Not that I am harming beef raisers. I grew up in rural southeast Nebraska where we got ¾ a cow every year from my grandparents and have worked on a huge ranch as a cowhand in Montana, so I’ve done my bit for cattle owners and for being from the Beef State (though I am still a Corn Husker;-)—that’s the other mascot of my childhood home. Go Big Red!

At present, I am a cheesy-fishatarian, on my way to get back to the Garden;-)

More in the next section...

In the LIGHT

Dan Wilcox

"Get Back to the Garden"--moving toward vegetarianism

Murray Rose won six Olympic medals, including 4 Gold, 1 Silver, and 1 Bronze and held the world records in 3 different swimming races.
Because of his vegan lifestyle, he was nicknamed the “The Seaweed Streak.”

And according to a biography written by his father, the meatless health food diet was largely responsible for Murray’s athletic success.

As a young adult, I was deeply impressed—I wanted to be very healthy and strong, too. How could emulating an Olympian’s health regimen not lead to a robust healthy life?

Furthermore, the main person who opposed my new way of eating was a chain-smoking hospital RN. Despite her medical degree and position, she seemed to be an unreliable judge, since she abused nicotine.

I didn’t like to see animals suffer. So why have animals killed so that I could eat supper?

And, besides that moral reflection, and the testimony of Rose, the Olympian Gold-Medalist, another significant motivation for me to move to a health food diet was that a brilliant young woman, who I liked, had just embarked on the vegetarian life. Why not follow her lead?

Plus, didn’t Genesis speak of a meatless Garden before humans chose to do wrong?
“And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1:29-31ESV

Yes, “got to get us back to the Garden” like Joni Mitchell wrote and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young sang.*

So I launched pell-mell into a healthy program of nuts, fruit, vegetables and grains, ostracizing ham, chicken, and beef.

Did I become an Olympic star? Hardly.

I lost about 50 pounds, dropped down to 112 pounds at 6’3’’—looked like a pale, bony, lethargic Gandhi...actually became malnourished...

I had to quit my job and be put into a doctor’s care.

Oops...I learned the hard way, just because one side of a controversy is wrong, doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite side is right.

So I eventually forsook “health foods’ living. Oh, and the girl quickly quit vegetarianism after only several months, long before me, and dropped out of my emaciated life. So much for youthful error and illusion.

But then how had the Olympic star Rose achieved the opposite?
Who knew?
Maybe he a very different physical body to begin with. While I came from a genetically skinny family background, maybe Murray Rose’s family tended to be heavy set.

-- Fast-track 35 years forward and I again decided to move down the food levels toward the Garden. Because of a transcendent quest to become more and more moral in how I lived.

Only this time, I was going to do this slowly, not become, again, a fundamentalist convert to “health foods,” like in my disastrous past. Move toward ethical living carefully and quietly.

So, I mostly eat grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, again, but also fish, shrimp, eggs, and cheese. I’ve become a fish-atarian this time around:-)

Since, my recent stroke of bad luck at the age of 72, our doctor and my specialists think it is very good that I eat salmon, not red meat.

Now if I gave up cookies, they would be even happier.

To be continued

*”I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road
And I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:
(He) said, I'm going down to Yasgur's farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, and set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

by Joni Mitchell

In the Light and the Kind,

Dan Wilcox