I have found that red meat has helped me out. I was vego for 8 yrs, vegan for two of those. Weakness ensued. long story. You probably know it already.

A few points while realising this is not a philisophical debate about the benefits of red meat or conversely the benefits of vegetarianism:

It is extremely important that this idea of eating red meat to regain and maintain health expands to the notion of responsibly eating red meat. This includes responsibilty for your own body, through avoiding hormones and additives, responsibilty for the animal that feeds us by choosing a fair life for it free from pain and sufferring, and responsibility for our own future and the generations to come by supporting an industry that is sustainable and responsible for itself.

It’s pretty clear that we as a race need to drastically reduce our reliance on factory farmed meat of any kind and also our destructive farming habits. It is destroying our natural systems and getting us to the point where we will have no option but to go veg if we push it too much further. Bee populations are dying off in massive numbers and we have somehow caused this with conventional farming for instance. The point here is that with no bees there will be no red meat due the the long line of effects that lack of plant polination will have on our ecosystem. Look up bee extinction if you are interested in learning more on that.

If we choose to accept the gift of the life of an animal and eat red meat, we should do it responsibly and fairly and buy at the very least, free range hormone free meat (not much more expensive than factory meat). The next step for those that can afford is buy locally farmed organic or biodynamic meat. This is often double the price but it tastes so amazing and is so high in the correct proteins and nutrients that is outweighs any negatives on the wallet.

Someone already mentioned Kangaroo. Excellent call. It is a very cheap option for what is essentially free range, hormone and chemical free red meat source. It’s cheap because it’s plentiful and naturally free of any need to pump it full of junk to get it big and meaty as quickly as possible. It is adapted to our environment and it roams free so there is a greater resistance to disease. Kangaroos also damage the land very little, unlike cows and sheep which utterly destroy the already spearse foliage (due to drought) under their hooves, which causes untold erosion and degredation of our farmland. Kangaroo meat can be a bit gamey, but learn to cook it right and it can be amazing.

I bought an organic chicken last week for the first time in a year (I usually buy free range) and it was the best chicken I’ve had in my 32 years on this earth. These chickens are beyond description…I urge anyone who hasn’t to at least try. Same goes for organic and biodynamic red meat. By the gods, what an experience. And the same argument as before, the nutrient levels are so high that the cost is fair (and the more that buy it, the lower it will come down over time!).

Lets not even start on the ethical ramifications of factory meat or MRM because we will go on forever.

Really, I’m not the hippy I used to be, and I am occaisionally guilty of slipping and choosing the cheapo convenient option at the supermarket, but seriously, I have a strongly rooted belief that it is for all our sakes that we make the right choices about meat consumption and not just think about ourselves and our own recoveries and journeys beyond drugs.

thanks for reading! All the best with your chops.

This yogi told me that to do all the things I needed to do in life I would be fine on a Vego diet. If however i wanted to pursue the sensual gratification and pursuit of the material things I would need meat. Meat sustains a system that is not living in harmony better than a vego diet, all be it that I may not live as long or have optimum health.

As little as 300 gm of red meat has been shown to dramatically increase a womens chance of breast cancer.

I have chosen to change my patterns of living over the past 30 year s and twenty two years ago i developed a daily meditation routine. Daily living while observing the push of my ambition let me give up meat and not only not want it, but live a healthy life without it.
I agree one size does not fit all. We do however need to look at what we do with the lives of the animals we take when eating them. Do we add to the struggle in the world or do we find that our potential has little to do with achievement and more to do with our integrity.

Thank you for stimulating the discussion

hari om

Keep Rockin!

There was a time in college when I ate red meat nearly daily. I also smoked a decent amount of marijuana. My energy levels were strong and my mind was very clear (despite smoking). In fact I went from a B/C student to an A/B student when I started eating more red meat. Life was good. Then just before graduating I quite smoking and wanted to purify my body and try to “heal” the damage I’d done over the years. I started eating small amounts of meat and supplementing with soy protein. My energy levels dropped, anxiety levels went way up and had a terrible time concentrating. My grades dropped back down to the B/C levels I thought I’d overcome. I told myself this was my withdraw from not smoking, but my other friends eating whatever they wanted (usually lots of meat) didn’t feel this way when they stopped smoking.

It’s been about 5 years of very very rarely smoking marijuana and I still find that when I don’t eat much red meat my energy levels drop. In fact my curiosity about this led me to this website tonight. I ate a lean burger and steamed broccoli and within an hour I felt more energy, more clarity and started laughing with more energy at the Family Guy episode I was watching. There is absolutely something very real about red meat and increased energy. In fact, my manager eats 7-9 burgers a week and has more stamina, a better memory, is more focused and stronger than most people I know at his age. I know that sounds absolutely crazy based on what we think we know about red meat … and maybe he’s an oddity!

Thanks again Jost for the great article!

-Justin

A few years ago, I was worried that I had diabetes as I had problems with my energy levels, plus other relevant symptoms. I got a full blood test and when the results came back, the doctor thought I was taking drugs because everything was depleted and low.
Not too long after that, I tried out the Fit-For-Life diet, food-combining, and going vegan! I must have been crazy, because after a couple of short months, I looked like I was going to die. My weight got down to about 47 or 48 Kg (I was a 6 ft or more, 19 year-old male!) and needless to say my friends and family were worried. After 6 months or so in, (I had already broken the rules of the regimes before this in various ways like spontaneously eating entire chocolate cakes in what I can only assume was my body’s reaction to put some weight and energy back in, and no I wasn’t bulimic either) my closest friends at the time basically said I needed to eat some meat… even though they were good spiritual New-Agers, some vegetarian themselves.

I must say, I can’t see what the big appeal and advantage is of going vegetarian or vegan, or in particular, how it’s spiritually better. I myself got roped in with all the nonsense about it being so much healthier for everyone (OK, it would be for some health conditions, not everyone though); and that meat wasn’t necessary because we could get everything we needed from plants (again, I do not believe everyone can). I figured non-organic meat was laced with chemicals so it would be healthier to avoid that, and besides the animals wouldn’t have been treated very well either. I figured that you shouldn’t eat meat unless it was organic, and at the time, I felt organic food wasn’t a possibility for me: financially, and because my family was set in the ways of conventional.

I sometimes get a bit cheesed-off now when people start espousing the benefits of being vegetarian, their usual reason being because they are against killing. What about plants though?! They just ignore the fact that plants are living beings too! I have heard of studies showing that plants have communication, memory, and recognition capabilities! Then there are the issues with typical farming of any crop or commodity, like clearing forest/wildlife habitat to grow food; disturbing soil ecology and organisms by ploughing up paddocks; farmers shooting rabbits, birds, foxes to protect their crops or stock; and then in the case of chemical-dependant agriculture, the spraying of everything to kill weeds, bugs, moulds… plus the effects of the chemical run-off. As long as anything is farmed without consideration of the wider ecology, plants, animals, microbes and invertebrates will be killed in innumerable quantities, whether all of society is vegetarian or not.
I have even read (the author was a yoga teacher) that the vegetarian people of India actually consumed various invertebrates because their grain was always contaminated with various pests. Invertebrates are actually very rich sources of protein, fatty acids and calcium, and feature in the food of indigenous tribal cultures (like witchety grubs and mangrove worms eaten by Australian Aborigines), and can be used in survival situations. And don’t forget that keeping animals for meat actually ensures the survival of the species as we want/need to reproduce them regularly. Today, many breeds are becoming extinct and the way to preserve them is to get people to eat them! Individual lives are lost, yet genetics, diversity and culture are preserved. Besides, animals in the wild eat other animals. Are some humans so divorced from nature that they think it is not OK for human animals to eat other animals?

I heard from a long-time vegetarian (20 years or so) who was an experienced therapist, well-exposed to Chinese culture and TCM, that to be vegetarian successfully, you “need to eat vegetarian meat”. And he meant powerful supplements, not tofu or lentils. He pretty much said it can’t be done without such supplements, but was still pretty proud of himself for living such a full-on life working so hard and doing physical activity while being vegetarian. Seems to me like a bit of a contradiction to say that we don’t need to eat meat, but that we actually do need to eat meat because plant food doesn’t cut it… just don’t eat real meat. And it doesn’t seem sensible or sustainable to rely on a supplement company to supply this recourse to you to live your vegetarian lifestyle.

Given that the body needs approx. 1 gram of protein for every Kg of your body weight each day, it seems a bit of a stretch to say you can get away with never eating meat. Meat itself may be say 17% protein, so if you eat 100 grams of meat, that’s still only 17 grams of protein, which means for a 75 kg male, that’s still a long way to go. Of course there’s some protein in everything you eat, but when you consider how much bulk has to be processed by the body to get protein from plant sources, some meat is a good idea. Sure, some grains like quinoa and millet or the ever-used soybeans have some impressive protein profiles, but are they produced any more ethically or sustainably than meat? Especially now with the rise of GM? Could you produce enough to live off? Soya beans are also apparently detrimental to health when consumed in the form of soy-milk or Australian-made tofu, particularly if feed to to children or pregnant women, according to articles I have read. What about nuts? Well, some health professionals think people shouldn’t even eat them, let alone rely on them for protein! I don’t have a problem with eating nuts, they just can’t replace meat.

So back to me. My health started to improve when I started eating more meat. One day I went to a noodle box restaurant, where the kind old asian man made me a huge pile of combination noodles (ie combination of meat) and served them with a knowing look.

In more recent years I have raised my own animals in backyard and small acreagre living situations. I have cared for them, cuddled them, slaughtered them, and gutted them with my bare hands. I can honestly say that they had a good life. I also feel a lot closer to nature in holding and eating a piece of meat, than on a vegan regime. And like the indigenous cultures of the world, which all consume meat and/or animal products and/or invertebrates, I honoured the animal and tried to use as much of the animal as possible - eating all the meat, plus organs (rasining you own animals give you organs clean enough to eat!), keeping feathers, examinging bones to study anatomy, and using everything left over in the garden. No waste. No death in vane. As wild predators do, I also selected the animals that weren’t “perfect”, eg: small, injured or more aggressive so that the healthiest animals can continue to breed.

These days, the earth has become over-populated by humans and farming methods so bazare that we cannot sustainably produce enough food following those practices. But if going vegetarian/vegan to “save the planet” is not a healthy option for many people it is not a real option. Permaculture design, better food distribution (preferably produced and distributed locally), and less waste, all offer a real alternative to the mainstream food production systems. Using Permaculture principles, plenty of food can be produced from a small space, ethically and sustainably, and that includes meat if you so desire.

I think that it says a lot, when the indigenous tribal societies, the true sustainable and spiritual cultures of the world, eat meat.
And I reckon if you’ve read this far you must be keen!

Thanks for your post. According to my observation marijuana can mask a protein deficiency, in particular if the deficiency is affiliated with lack of red meat. In my book “Drug Repair That Works” I actually discuss a case study of a Polish-Russian woman who developed a marijuana addiction as a result of wanting to be a vegetarian. Her constitutional background stopped her from being a vegetarian, but as long as she had her daily smoke she didn’t feel the need for meat. Every time she stopped the dope her ‘red-meat-deficiency’ symptoms came forward which she thought were marijuana-addiction symptoms. Tricky stuff eh?