vegan pies + Lierre Keith = LULZ

lierre keith, the lady who wrote the vegetarian myth got pied at the anarchist bookfair.
it was pretty much awesome and full of lulz.


some people who i know thought the pieing was lame, but none of them really knew who she was or what her book was about. so here is the low-down.
she was a vegan for 20 years, did it in a really unhealthy way, and now blames veganism for her health problems. it's stupid, you can be a healthy meat eater or a unhealthy vegan. just because chocolate cake is vegan doesnt mean it's healthy!
her book is weird, because a large chunk of it is about how industrial farming and monoculture is bad, something most vegans i know agree with.
she makes some faulty claims and most of her sources are from internet websites. the internet is not exactly a reliable resource. if you are going to write a book about environmental science, nutrition and health, and moralism, you should probably use a lot of peer-reviewed journals, not websites.
there have been a number of factual errors in her book, such as the ridiculous claim that a glass of soy milk contains 60 grams of protein. go read the label of any soy milk product and you will see it is 1/10th to 1/5th of that amount. when someone makes such blatantly false claims, I'm not very likely to take the rest of their arguments very seriously.

one thing in the book that did give me worry was that it is impossible to have organic sustainable farming without animal products and animal manure. apparently, the Veganic movement shows otherwise.
nor is grass fed beef all that great for the environment.

i, along with most of the vegans i know agree that industrial agriculture is not sustainable. it would be awesome if we lived in a world with a sustainable amount of people and in a society with a sustainable food production process. but in todays industrial capitalist society a vegan diet is more humane, (when done right) more healthy, and better for the environment than one that includes meat. buying local fruits and vegetables is better than buying local meat. her book made me look up a few things, but in the end it is very unconvincing and disingenuous.

the way she writes of vegans in her book is really condescending and mean. she says vegans are all naive and veganism is an eating disorder which causes anger problems. this is super offensive and reason enough to get pied for. she lumps all vegans together, and assumes that all vegan diets are the same (she seems to have no idea that there are plenty of vegans who dont eat soy.)

the worst part of her book is that a lot of people who dont know any better might read it and turn away from vegan/vegitarian diets which would be better for the planet, better for their health and better for the animals.

finally, a lot of people claim that even if they disagree with her, the pie throwers should have let her speak. this is silly. there are plenty of people who i would not give a platform to. especially at an anarchist event. i might have been more into it if it was an actual debate between Keith and an informed vegan, and both were given equal time, but im not interested or sympathetic to giving Keith half an hour of time to speak without any kind of opposing point of view. oh, and fuck anyone who calls the police and gives them a 20 minute statement because someone threw a pie at them.

basically, her book is going to do a lot of harm to the planet, people's health and the animals of the world. her getting pied was hella funny.