Clueless, Ranting Vegan Tells Me I Am Wrong, Compares Meat-Eating to the Holocaust. Seriously.

You all know what happens next...

I recently received the following email - twice - from a rather shrill vegan called Sheldon, who took offense to my recent reply to another anti-meat dogmatist, Michael Corthell of The Vegan Dispatch Substack.

Sheldon claims "I’m a big fan of your work and agree with the majority of the things that you write about," but assures me I have it all wrong when it comes to vegan diets.

He claims to "greatly respect my work", then proceeds to insult my intelligence by repeating the same tired and untenable cliches I've already debunked.

He even accuses us meat-eaters of being “wannabe carnivores” and taking part in a “holocaust.”

As is always the case with dogmatic fanatics, he ignores the key points and studies I raised, acting as if I never mentioned them. Like Michael, he assures me there is abundant research to "prove" the health and environmental benefits of a vegan diet - then proceeds to cite exactly none of this alleged research.

It's not hard to work people like Sheldon out; I've seen this all before.

I'm guessing Sheldon agrees with my stance on the COVID con, and no doubt loves it when I debunk low-carb stupidity.

Which is ironic, because he suffers from the exact same problem as the low-carb crowd: Crippling cognitive bias.

Many years ago, when I was debunking the hell out of the nonsensical cholesterol and saturated fat theory, the low-carb crowd thought I was cooler than Elvis. When I turned my analytical bent towards the mythical low-carb "metabolic advantage,” and subsequently showed it was a load of bollocks, all of a sudden I wasn't so cool any more. In fact, some of those keto-brained drongos carried on like I was the Son of Sam.

"Colpo is normally very good, but he's lost the plot on this one!" said the flabby people who smelt like unwashed feet and pissed on Ketostix every morning.

Intermittent fasting proponent Martin Berkhan also made a similar comment after I wrote an article challenging the prevailing IF dogma. When I asked him to back his contentions, he suddenly decided he was too busy.

What all these people were really saying was: "Colpo was great when he was telling me things I liked to hear, but now that he's challenging one of my cherished beliefs I can't stand the bastard!"

People who get disappointed and angry when I write something that conflicts with their beliefs need to accept that I apply the same rigorous process of analysis to all my research, whether it is cholesterol, veganism, low-carb, antidepressants, intermittent fasting, whatever.

Truth be told, I suspect that is exactly what makes them so angry. It's not just that some guy is disputing their beliefs; it's that a guy who knows his stuff and is fastidious with his research is disputing their beliefs.

So the real question people like Sheldon need to ask themselves is: "Did Anthony really trip up and get this wrong, or am I experiencing a knee-jerk emotional reaction to something that hits a raw nerve, something that challenges one of my ingrained beliefs?"

For the answer to that question, let's take a look at Sheldon's email, and my reply.

Sheldon writes (email reproduced as received, with original spelling and grammar):

Hi Anthony,

I’m a big fan of your work and agree with the majority of the things that you write about.

However, in this article you’re 180 degrees wrong. Your article is too long to respond to each point you made (all of them can easily be refuted btw), but I’ll just touch on the high points.

Firstly a ‘vegan diet’, (misnomer since veganism is not a diet but rather an ethical Philosophy), at any rate, the scientific studies prove that a ‘whole food, plant-based diet, (NOT a’Twinkies, Doritos and Diet Coke vegan diet mind you), is the best diet for human health and well being at all stages of life, a cleaner more sustainable environment and of course animal rights and welfare.

As for B12, animal ‘foods’ contain NONE but their feed is supplemented with B12; most plants don’t contain it with the exception of Duckweed and a few other possible ones; do ALL people, vegans & ‘omnivores’ alike should be supplementing with B12.

(Vitamin B12 in nature is produced by soil bacteria).

B12 is the only nutrient lacking in a WHOLE FOOD, plant-based vegan lifestyle which is easily remedied with B12 supplementation or fortified foods which are also required for non-vegans.

As for needing to grow massive volumes of plants to support a vegan lifestyle and that vegan agriculture kills gophers, rabbits, insects etc etc., the plants grown to feed farmed animals in ONE DAY, dwarfs by exponential orders of magnitude the amount of plants grown to feed all vegans throughout their lives in history!

Vegans do all that is possible to mimimize harm to all beings, human, animal and insects, but the horrendous holocaust caused by intentionally murdering over 60 BILLION land animals and up to 3 TRILLION sea animals every year to indulge the unnecessary, selfish appetites of wannabe ‘carnivores’, let alone the untold numbers of birds, insects, rodents and reptiles killed by animal feed crop farming, not to mention the environmental devastation cause by animal agriculture is beyond measure and comprehension.

If a fraction of the plant crops that are raised to feed animals were repurposed to feed people, there would be no starvation in the world and the rainforests could be regrown.

I could go in indefinitely. As a former hunter, fisherman, trapper and organic family farmer, believe me when I say that know all the ‘carnist’ bogus arguments against veganism.

There are only five reasons for people in our modern technological society to eat innocent intelligent beings and their secretions:

1. TASTE

2. Tradition

3. Habit

4. Convenience

5. Conformity

I would be happy to address any issues that I haven’t covered.

Again Anthony, I have great respect for your work and share your articles widely.

Sheldon J.

My response:

Dear Sheldon,

I guess I should thank you for the compliments you’ve included, but I have to be honest: I find your email somewhat disturbing.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me about ignorant people is how remarkably cocksure, proud and confident they are despite not having a damn clue what they are talking about.

Did you honestly think that sending me an email making wild claims, citing zero studies and likening meat-eating to the Holocaust would win me over to your way of thinking? Does it surprise you to learn that not only has your email failed dismally in this regard, but that it leaves me with serious doubts as to your mental coherency?

Your email reminds of the famous Dunning-Kruger experiment that found poor-performing students had the tendency to overestimate their test results, despite their scores placing them in the bottom percentile. They were literally the dumbest of the bunch. Students who performed better at the tests, meanwhile, underestimated their results (to all you ladies out there who love a "confident" man, you've been warned).

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."

-William Shakespeare.

You write "the scientific studies prove that a ‘whole food, plant-based diet, (NOT a’Twinkies, Doritos and Diet Coke vegan diet mind you), is the best diet for human health and well being at all stages of life, a cleaner more sustainable environment and of course animal rights and welfare." (sic)

Utter nonsense, and I addressed this in my article. Like Michael, you blissfully ignore the research I discussed.

Is proving you can blissfully ignore contradictory evidence part of the initiation ritual to diet cults like veganism and keto?

And just like Michael, you wax lyrical about the plethora of scientific research that allegedly shows vegan diets to be more healthful, sustainable and compassionate. But like Michael, you are very reluctant to share this massive volume of research. All the points in my article can be "easily refuted", you assure me, but you fail to carry out this ‘easy’ task, citing none of the research that allegedly shows vegan diets to be such a magnificent leap forward for humankind.

That's because the research is non-existent (just to clarify, propaganda and marketing hyperbole is not scientific research; it's agenda-driven hogwash).

I should also let you know, Sheldon, that Twinkies contain beef tallow, egg, and whey. Doritos contain ingredients like lactose, whey, skim milk, cheese and buttermilk.

So not sure why you mentioned them in your junk version of a vegan diet. Then again, I'm not sure why you vegan activists say most of what you do. None of it makes any sense.

"As for B12, animal ‘foods’ contain NONE..."

Wow. That statement is not just 100% wrong, but 1000% insane.

The meat of wild Spanish deers contains around 6 μg of B12 per 100 g.

You know how many B12 supplements or fortified feeds wild deer eat, Sheldon?

None.

The meat of wild kangaroos contains around 2 μg of B12 per 100 g, similar to beef.

You know how many B12 supplements or fortified foods kangaroos eat, Sheldon?

None. They're feisty buggers that would probably eye gouge you if you approached them with offerings of B12 pills or fortified foods.

Interestingly, Greenpeace has advised eating kangaroos to help save the planet from the mythical bogeyman of global warming, which is so powerful it is causing record cold in places like Alberta, Calgary, China, India, Siberia, Nova Scotia, UK, New Hampshire, Maine, Boston, Rhode Island, Albany, Rochester, Sydney, Finland, Antarctica and South America.

For those who want a real reason to eat kangaroo, it is about as free-range as you can get, and roos are often culled by farmers anyway to prevent them from invading and damaging their crops. May as well eat them instead of wastefully leaving their carcasses to rot.

"...but their feed is supplemented with B12."

Oh please. How, then, do you explain the presence of B12 in wild game and grass-fed meat? The Easter B12 Bunny?

"B12 is the only nutrient lacking in a WHOLE FOOD, plant-based vegan lifestyle..."

Spectacularly wrong again. Plant foods do not contain carnosine, carnitine, creatine, vitamin D3, long chain omega-3 fatty acids and heme iron.

Co-enzyme Q10 is found in some plant foods, but animal foods are by far the richest sources, especially organ meats.

Taurine is near absent from plant foods, except for esoteric items that virtually no-one eats, like red algae.

Selenium and iodine are interesting. The richest known food source of selenium is Brazil nuts, otherwise animal foods tend to be the best sources. You vegans clearly aren't eating many Brazil nuts, because selenium deficiency is a common finding in vegans.

Primary sources of iodine are meat, eggs, fish, dairy and iodized salt. Lo and behold, iodine deficiency is also common among vegans.

A recent study by Schüpbach et al found a median urinary iodine concentration of 56 μg/l in vegans, far below WHO guideline of 100 μg/l - and this occurred despite salt iodization.

Looks like vegans need to be supplementing with a heck of a lot more than just B12, Sheldon!

"ALL people, vegans & ‘omnivores’ alike should be supplementing with B12."

Correction: Omnivores should take supplements as a top-up and as a form of nutritional 'insurance'. Vegetarians and especially vegans need to supplement with a host of nutrients, because they have decided - bless their hearts - to improve their health and save the world by embracing an inherently deficient diet.

The research shows time and time again that a far higher portion of vegans and vegetarians are B12 deficient, when compared to omnivores. From the EPIC-Oxford study (run by vegan activists, BTW):

"Mean serum vitamin B12 was highest among omnivores, intermediate among vegetarians and lowest among vegans. In all, 52% of vegans, 7% of vegetarians and one omnivore were classified as vitamin B12 deficient (defined as serum vitamin B12 <118 pmol/l)."

Pawlak et al reviewed the literature and found B12 deficiency rates of up to 90% in vegans.

When 20 omnivores in their early twenties decided to go vegan, researchers observed that all of the 10 who eschewed supplementation or fortified foods experienced a marked decline in their B12 status. Abnormally low B-12 levels were detected in two of the 10 subjects - and that was within 5 years.

"As for needing to grow massive volumes of plants to support a vegan lifestyle and that vegan agriculture kills gophers, rabbits, insects etc etc., the plants grown to feed farmed animals in ONE DAY, dwarfs by exponential orders of magnitude the amount of plants grown to feed all vegans throughout their lives in history!"

That's because vegans only make up a tiny portion of the population. And one of the reasons they comprise such a small portion of the population is because their diet is nutritionally inferior and routinely leads to health problems. Which I've written about in detail and which of course you blissfully ignore.

In the 2018 UK Food Standards Agency’s ‘Food and You’ survey, 3% of participants self-identified as vegetarian and 1% as vegan. Based on the results of a 2014 Faunalytics survey, 2% of the U.S. population 17+ is a vegetarian or vegan.

"Vegans do all that is possible to mimimize harm to all beings, human, animal and insects..."

You mean like systematically killing healthy, adoptable pets like your 'ethical' buddies at PETA, threatening to slash people's throats/relentlessly cyber-stalking/sexually preying on young girls like your 'compassionate' mate Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone, issuing virulent abuse and death threats when a vegan announces they are quitting the diet due to health problems a la the online vegan 'community', and exposing yourself to strangers on subway stations like Dan Hoyt?

Thank you for again ignoring the abundant evidence to the contrary, which I cited in my article.

Then there is your repugnant, hysterical comment about the "horrendous holocaust caused by intentionally murdering over 60 BILLION land animals and up to 3 TRILLION sea animals every year to indulge the unnecessary, selfish appetites of wannabe ‘carnivores’, let alone the untold numbers of birds, insects, rodents and reptiles killed by animal feed crop farming, not to mention the environmental devastation cause by animal agriculture is beyond measure and comprehension."

"Holocaust," huh? You reveal so much about yourself in that comment that I'm sure you'd prefer we didn't know. No disrespect, but you confirm yourself to be a shrill, overly emotional alarmist utterly incapable of looking at this topic from a rational and logical stance.

The Holocaust was an event in which an insane, ranting man - who, it behooves me to note, was a vegetarian - took a strong disliking to a particular ethnic/religious group. He had his goons round them up, imprison them, and force them into concentration camps. Many died in those camps.

What the Holocaust was not was the systematic breeding of animals, known as animal husbandry and which originated around the same time as grain cultivation. Animal husbandry is the transformation from hunting that was necessitated by the switch from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary agrarian society. Unlike the Holocaust, animal husbandry involves breeding (creating life), for the ultimate purpose of killing animals and obtaining their meat for the necessary nutrients they contain, nutrients that - despite your pigheaded denial to the contrary - are either absent or found in low amounts in plant foods.

Animal husbandry is not based on hate, racism, megalomania and delusions of grandeur. It is based entirely upon the human nutritional need for meat.

Curiously, dairy and eggs don't involve killing, but you vegans still won't eat them no matter how ethically they are obtained, because ... you're irrational?

Just out of curiosity, would you also liken ruthlessly efficient killers like lions, tigers, snakes, sharks to Adolf Hitler?

Sheldon, you claim you have "great respect for my work," then effectively call me a “wannabe carnivore”! You accuse me - and all my meat-eating family and friends - of being party to a "holocaust"!

Rest assured I'm not feigning indignance when I say that is a disgusting and idiotic remark. This is how you talk to people you "respect"? I'd hate to see how you talk to people you hold in poor regard!

And vegans like you wonder why us omnivores tend to regard you as unhinged extremists?

As stated in my article, there will be a Part 2 where I address untenable environmental claims like yours, using science as opposed to hysterical ranting. Maybe keep a lid on your premature evaluation problem and wait for that installment, and actually read and consider the information it contains, instead of going off half-cocked like a B12-deficient fundamentalist?

“If a fraction of the plant crops that are raised to feed animals were repurposed to feed people, there would be no starvation in the world and the rainforests could be regrown.”

Do you ever say anything correct and factual?

There already is enough food being produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet. As to why some populations are still going hungry, that’s a question you need to ask the war-mongering globalists who pull your strings, without you even knowing it. They’re the ones who are really behind the war on meat, along with other monumental scams that make their believers feel enlightened and superior, including climate change, feminism, the transgender agenda, hating Russians and standing with a corrupt, coke-snorting deviant like Zelensky (interesting how none of these virtue-signalling muppets seem to stand with the Yemenis, who continue to suffer the world’s worst humanitarian crisis) and, of course, the Great COVID Con.

"I could go in indefinitely." (sic)

I'm sure you could. You vegan activists are clearly in love with the sound of your own apoplexy.

"There are only five reasons for people in our modern technological society to eat innocent intelligent beings and their secretions."

What does cannibalism and oral sex have to do with … oh, wait, by “secretions” you mean milk. So I guess human babies suckle on their mother’s bosoms, not for the nutrients milk contains, but for your fantasmagorical Big 5 of “TASTE, Tradition, Habit, Convenience, Conformity”?

No worries, Sheldon.

Now let me tell you the one main reason why intelligent human beings eat meat, despite the increasing pressure to conform to the anti-meat paradigm, and despite it not being a particularly convenient food as it requires refrigeration, preparation, cutting, and cooking:

Nutritional necessity.

"As a former hunter, fisherman, trapper and organic family farmer, believe me when I say that know all the ‘carnist’ bogus arguments against veganism."

Sheldon, no disrespect, but it wouldn't matter if you were a former brain surgeon, rocket scientist and quantum physicist - you'd still be every bit as wrong as you are now.

As someone who - unlike yourself - has researched this topic inside and out, believe me when I say that I know all the bogus 'plant-based' arguments against animal foods.

If you have studies - valid studies from real scientists, not heavily manipulated epidemiological tripe from religious ideologues from Loma Linda or vegan activists from Oxford - refuting my contentions on veganism, please feel free to forward them. If not, then I ask with all due respect that you please refrain from writing to me again. I'm in no mood to argue with people who tell me I’m a “wannabe carnivore” and who liken meat-eating to the Holocaust. If you can't understand why I find that so offensive, then that in itself is confirmation you have no business writing to me.

As someone who has been debunking this nonsense for decades now, believe me when I say I am well and truly over people who refuse to provide actual data and instead keep reciting cliches and arguing around in circles.

Your email is confirmation that you dietary sectarians tend to just go ahead and believe whatever the heck you want, reality be damned.

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

― Harlan Ellison

Before signing off, I’ll make one last request to you, Sheldon: Please, for heaven’s sake, don’t give nutritional advice to anyone. Your ignorance is truly dangerous.

Kind regards,

Anthony.

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