Podcast: 10 arguments against going vegan & how to respond

What is the most common argument you’ve heard against going vegan?

As a vegan organization, the Vancouver Humane Society regularly advocates to make plant-based eating more accessible and reduce the demand for industrial animal agriculture. Plant-based advocates often hear arguments from people who disagree with veganism. This episode will delve into some of those arguments and ways to respond to them in a manner that is reasoned, thoughtful, and kind.

Plant-based whole foods

Amy: The first argument is that plant-based foods are overly processed.

Chantelle: Yeah, I hear this one a lot. I think sometimes people mistake the term plant-based foods for commercial plant-based meat substitutes or dairy substitutes.

But when we use the term plant-based, we’re really just referring to any foods that are made from plants without animal products. That includes things like vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds.

Of course, you can also find processed plant-based foods, just as you can find processed animal-based foods.

Why do people eat processed plant-based foods?

Chantelle: Processed foods also have their place. Some people enjoy them as a treat or as a quick option. Some people use them as they’re transitioning from an omnivore diet to make the shift easier.

I personally really enjoy some of the meat alternatives; they’re one of the proteins in my meal rotation. And so are lentils, and so are beans, and tofu, and nuts, and seitan, and soy curls, and all those other whole foods.

I basically eat how I ate before I went vegan, but thinking a little more now about getting all my nutrients. I also have a little bit more variety in my diet, just because there’s more plants out there than there are animals that humans eat.

I find that generally when someone shifts to a plant-based diet, if they ate processed foods made from animals, generally they’ll also have some processed foods made from plants in their diet. And if they ate mostly whole foods as an omnivore, they’ll do the same as a vegan.

Switching to a plant-based diet almost never looks like switching from an organic chicken breast and steamed vegetables and organic brown rice on a plate to like a plate of imitation meat and Oreos.

“Processed” doesn’t mean “bad”

Chantelle: I think it’s important to note that processed foods are not bad foods. There are some foods that feed your soul more than they feed your body, but also a lot of imitation meats have a nutrition profile that’s comparable to the meat that they’re imitating.

We have a really good blog post about understanding meat alternatives on our Plant University website that looks at a nutrition profile breakdown of meat alternatives.

Learning what nutrients your body needs

Amy: Personally, I like to think of food as a spectrum. So from eating raw vegetables to a processed plant-based burger, they all have a place in our diet.

There’s a few things that I’ve been surprised to learn as a vegan. There’s just myths out there about food.

Microwaving vegetables has been tested as keeping more nutrients in them than boiling them. Cooking method and ingredients in food can impact the amount of nutrients your body gets from the foods.

Focus on a variety of foods you enjoy

Amy: Variety really makes the biggest impact on nutrient intake. I try to think of that in terms of how I eat.

In one day, I might eat cereal and oat milk that’s fortified with vitamins and minerals. I might have a smoothie with fresh frozen fruits, hemp seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, maybe even a plant-based collagen booster powder to strengthen my tendons that has greens and probiotics in it. I might have chips with pre-made salsa, an avocado, and then homemade cashew queso made with raw ingredients like nutritional yeast, lemon juice, salt, chili powder, and then maybe some vegan chocolate to make sure I get all my iron.

Half of that is processed, half of it isn’t, but my focus is on foods that taste good, promote muscle and tendon strength, are really easy, and promote brain and blood health.

The other day I had a microwavable vegan gluten free lasagna from Amy’s Kitchen, and another day I bought vegan pizza and pre-prepared samosas, and another day Daiya vegan pizza because I don’t necessarily have a lot of time in my day.

They’re all quick, they tasted good, and that’s what keeps me enjoying plant-based foods. So as long as I’m not eating the same thing every day and I try to switch it up and include fruits and veggies here and there, I know I’m doing alright on nutrients.

Make plant-based eating fun

Amy: When folks are thinking about this and talking about this, I think it’s about acceptance. I think it’s about making eating plant-based foods fun and enjoyable and easy and having less judgement on like what that looks like for an individual person; because that’s going to change over their lifetime, given their mental health, time capacity, energy levels, activity levels, all of those things.

Chantelle: Yeah, I think that’s a really good way of looking at it.

It takes more crops to feed animals than humans

Chantelle: We talk about how plant-based eating is better for the environment, but sometimes we hear from people that they believe veganism is bad for the environment, particularly because it drives monoculture crops.

A lot of people talk about the impact of growing things like soy as monoculture crops. We know that’s a key protein that you can eat on a plant-based diet, but more crops are needed to feed animals for human consumption than would be needed to feed humans directly.

The demand for meat and animal products is actually a driving factor in the use of monoculture crops because the vast majority of animals grown for food spend some or all of their lives in an industrial farming environment or a feedlot. It’s not all grazing on pastures.

• In Canada, corn is mainly used for animal feed and ethanol.
• In the United States, 12% of corn is used to feed people, but 60% goes to feeding animals raised for foods.
• About 77% of the world’s soy is used for animal feed.

So we’re seeing that by and large, more of these proteins and grains are being used to feed animals than if they were feeding humans directly.

Amy: It’s amazing how much farmland is being used to grow food to feed animals, which in any kind of logical way of thinking is a huge inefficiency when it comes to feeding a population of more than 7 billion people.

We’d be doing a lot better for the environment if all those fields grew food directly to feed people.

Approach with curiosity

Amy: I think if this is brought up and someone is talking about it, the best way to meet them is with compassion, kind of sharing, I hear that you care for the environment and you’re concerned about monoculture crops. And I’d love to learn more about this alongside you because I’m not an expert in it.

And then going someplace you can trust the output of it and research it together and come at it with that idea of learning and growing alongside them, rather than trying to prove that they’re wrong or make it seem like they have no idea what they’re talking about.

It’s okay to walk away

Chantelle: There’s two different sides of this coin of people using these arguments. There’s people you might be talking to in real life who often are speaking in good faith using arguments where they really feel they’re making the best decision for the environment or for what they really care about.

Sometimes there’s people on the internet saying these things who are really just going to throw whatever spaghetti at the wall they can to dispute your point. And sometimes you just have to walk away from arguments like that as well.

Eating local helps, but pair it with other changes

Amy: This next one, I think it’s a really good argument. I’m really curious to hear what you have to say about it, Chantelle. The argument is that shipping plant-based foods from far away is bad for the environment. You should just eat local, humanely raised, animal-based foods.

So I imagine this is things like palm oil and coconut coming on planes from places far away.

Chantelle: One thing people talk about is the impact of shipping plant-based foods a long distance as opposed to eating local animal based foods. And they’ve done a lot of research on this.

It’s certainly important to prioritize local, sustainable plant agriculture. I think we can all agree on that.

But, the research shows that ending all international food transport would only cut food miles emissions by 9% worldwide. Researchers have said that other choices like eating seasonal produce and reducing meat consumption could have a greater impact in reducing the climate impact of your food.

We can’t move to local, more “humane” animal foods while meeting current demand

Chantelle: Another thing is that eating local the way that some people talk about isn’t possible for most people. A lot of people who use this argument are talking about rural communities where they’re picturing a small scale animal farm with animals out on the pasture, and you can walk over to meet your local farmer, and then you can buy some meat from your local butcher, and that’s not what’s really happening.

The reality of the world we live in is the vast majority of people are living in cities, and we don’t have the space to be raising animals like that to feed all those people.

If we go farther out into nearby rural communities, we don’t have the space to have every animal roaming the pasture to meet a really high demand for animal products for every person who lives in the world right now.

That’s why industrial animal agriculture developed: to fit more animals into a smaller space for a lower cost and meet that really high demand for our growing population.

We don’t have a world of Old McDonald farms. We have a world where about 90% of farmed animals and 74% of farmed land animals are being raised in factory farms.

Locally raised animals can still be transported long distances to slaughter

Amy: With how few slaughterhouses there are, animals, even ones that are raised locally, are being transported huge distances to be killed.

For example, something I learned when I lived on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia is that animals have to travel in vehicles, on a ferry, and then on the highway again, going to the Lower Mainland.

Then the meat, after the animals are killed and processed, goes back on the highway, on the ferry, on the highway again.

And that’s a short distance compared to some of the really long distances animals are being shipped. That uses just so many greenhouse gases, not to mention the suffering of the animals.

Plant-based foods skip the slaughterhouse

Amy: So the benefit of plant-based products is they skip that in between step. They’re going to on farm or nearby processing facilities and then they’re getting to the consumer more directly.

This is an argument that can be shared and at the same time it’s something that can be researched together, discussed together, and making sure that you hear where someone’s coming from.

Absolutely, coconuts are shipped from far away, but what are some other things we can consider? It’s all about having that conversation and building trust with the other person who’s putting that argument forward that you understand where they’re coming from.

Chantelle: Yeah, that’s a really great point. The animals are shipped from the pasture to the feedlot to the slaughterhouse and the crops to feed the animals are shipped from wherever they’re grown to the feedlot. There’s a lot more steps involved in animal agriculture than there are in plant-based.

True: Wild animals die as a result of agriculture

Chantelle: Another argument that we hear is veganism causes more animal deaths than animal agriculture.

I have a really hard time with this one, but I think a way to approach it compassionately is just to kind of lay out the facts.

First of all, do animals die from growing plants? Yes. Some animals die unintentionally from the machinery that’s used to grow and harvest crops, and some animals are killed intentionally to protect crops.

Some animals are also killed intentionally to protect farmed animals raised for food; that’s just across the entire farming system.

More crops are needed to feed animals than to feed humans directly

Chantelle: First of all, it’s not just vegans eating plants. Every human needs plants to meet their nutrition requirements.

But it’s not just humans eating crops; crops are used for animal feed.

About 36% of the world’s crop calories are used for animal feed compared to 55% feeding humans directly. If we look at the calories consumed globally, about 17% of the global calorie supply comes from animal foods, and then plant-based foods make up the other 83%.

When you look at the fact that animals are eating almost as many crops as all humans, you see that it takes far more crops to feed animals for humans to eat than it would to feed humans directly.

So while it’s not possible to eliminate all animal suffering entirely, plant-based diets are the best option to dramatically reduce it.

Respond with understanding and empathy

Amy: Yeah, this one’s interesting. I mean, animals die from all aspects of human existence.

With the need to protect crops, pesticides and rodenticides are being used.

Going to a restaurant, there’s likely rat and mouse traps set up all over the place. Grocery stores as well.

These are existing with any kind of food. It’s not a problem specific to veganism.

The best thing to do when someone brings this up is not to deny it, but to acknowledge it. It’s sad. It sucks a lot that animals are dying so that humans can live and can consume plants, but eating a vegan diet still has a far less impact on animals in the environment overall.

You can get all the nutrients you need from plant-based foods

Amy: This next one I think is a really common one that comes up, and it’s that plant-based foods won’t meet all your nutritional needs.

Chantelle: Yeah, I think that we’re getting to a place where there’s a broader scientific consensus that eating more plant-based foods is healthier for you.

When we look at the specific nutrients, you can get all the nutrients you need from plant-based foods.

There are a few that are more difficult to get or that only come in fortified plant-based foods. If you don’t want to keep track of all the nutrients you’re consuming directly from foods every day, you can take a supplement. I personally take iron pill and a B12 gummy every day. I sometimes also take omega 3 gummies.

But I get plenty of protein and calcium and iron from plants. And those are the ones that I see people worry about the most often.

You can’t get all the nutrients you need from animal foods alone

Chantelle: Another thing to note is I see carnivore only diets popping up sometimes where people are just eating animal-based foods. And you cannot get all the nutrients you need from that.

You can only get fibre from plant-based foods. So people on a carnivore only diet are getting zero fibre.

Nutrition is no mystery

Chantelle: One of the first things you learn as a kid is you’ll be healthier if you eat your veggies, and it holds true.

There’s this impression that nutrition is such a mystery, and everything is just a trend. But really, the vast majority of nutrition experts have reached a consensus that eating a wide variety of whole plant-based foods is good for your health, and it’s a good idea to limit red meat intake.

Amy: Absolutely. And just to add to some of those things you said, Chantelle, oat milk has a lot of B12 added into it already. Dark chocolate is so full of iron. Beans have a lot of calcium, but so do fortified plant milks, figs, leafy greens. Potatoes have a bunch of potassium and vitamin C.

Nutrition education has been influenced by industry

Amy: I’ve realized that most of what I’ve learned about nutrition growing up was influenced by food manufacturers and producers such as the dairy industry.

We know now that kids can thrive on plant-based diets.

The beauty of scientific research means that we understand it isn’t dairy milk that’s preventing osteoarthritis. It’s the combination of consuming calcium and a magnesium together in good quantities. You can get those in combination together from greens, seeds, beans, brown rice, quinoa. The list goes on and on.

So this is one of those myths that I find really fun to chat about with people because they start to realize how much what they grew up with is not the reality and how much opportunity there is to learn about what a body needs to thrive and be well.

And again, the most important part is to approach it with excitement and intrigue and compassion.

Talking about these topics with a judgment or know it all attitude will just sour someone’s experience and have the opposite impact.

Chantelle: Absolutely. That is always something really important to keep in mind.

Soy does not increase estrogen levels

Chantelle: We’re keeping in the trend of health related topics; sometimes you hear that soy is bad for you because it increases estrogen.

Desiree Nelson did a great job debunking this on our Plant University blog post called 10 Tips for Getting Started on a Plant-Based Diet Today.

Soy gets a bad reputation because it has something in it called phytoestrogen, which is a naturally occurring compound in plant foods that has a similar chemical structure to our body’s natural estrogen, but it behaves differently and it’s about a thousand times weaker.

According to research, phytoestrogens don’t increase our body’s estrogen, and some experts have suggested they may have a balancing effect on our body’s natural hormone levels.

But if you are worried about extra estrogen in your diet, your real concern should be dairy, which is the source of about 60 to 80 percent of estrogens consumed in Western diets.

Soy is does not increase estrogen or decrease testosterone levels

Amy: This was actually a really big one that came up when I was dating someone who was concerned about veganism. The bottom line that I figured out after researching it is that soy foods are a good source of protein and a healthy part of a balanced diet.

The concerns I heard most are related to men and children. So I’ll speak more to that.

As far as men, research has shown that eating soy foods does not lead to increased estrogen levels or decreased testosterone levels in men. Some studies have even shown that soy consumption may have a significant health benefit for men, such as lowering the risk of prostate cancer and improving heart health.

Soy has many nutrients for healthy development in children

Amy: As far as children goes, soy is a really great source of protein, providing all the essential amino acids required for growth and development. Soy foods contain fiber, vitamin K, folate, some B vitamins, iron, calcium, and magnesium. It also contains polyunsaturated fats, including omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids, which are important for brain development.

So knowing these facts and more about plant-based nutrients can really help when those challenging questions come up from parents who think a vegan diet is abusive to children.

Dairy calves are removed so their mothers’ milk can be used and sold

Amy: The next argument is that the dairy industry takes calves from their mothers so that the mother cow doesn’t accidentally kill them.

Chantelle: Dairy farmers and sanctuary owners have spoken out against this myth, but it’s still one that persists.

Dairy is produced by impregnating cows and then the baby calf is typically removed within a few hours so the milk can be used by humans.

And then the calves are fed milk, which is sometimes waste milk from the dairy industry or a milk replacer. And then they go on to be killed for veal if they’re male or raised as dairy cows if they’re female.

Are the calves removed for their own safety? No. They’re removed because the human animal agriculture industry wants to use the milk. They would be removed regardless, because we have a dairy industry and humans want to use milk for their own consumption.

Dairy cows and calves suffer when separated

Chantelle: But even if dairy cows had lost some of their maternal instincts through the years, through generations of having their babies removed, it wouldn’t be an excuse to continue breeding them and continuing the cycle.

We see that cows mourn when their babies are taken away. They cry. They chase after them. They try to stop the farmers from taking the calves.

The dairy industry continues to do this so the milk can be used and sold for humans, and it doesn’t need to be. We have plant-based alternatives for this.

Cows and calves form a close bond

Amy: I’ve spent quite a bit of time with mama and baby cows. And it’s so incredibly far from reality, I’m not even sure how it got spread as a myth.

The bond between cows and their babies is one of the most beautiful motherhood bonds I personally have ever experienced.

I’ve noticed that cow moms are just so protective of their little ones. I got to be around just a couple day old calf and mama put her horns around me. I was providing some supplemental milk to the calf to make sure that he was getting enough and she watched me every second of the time I was there with him.

They feed calves from their udders for years, not just one year, but sometimes more. Past the point where the calves start to be painful and annoying and they bother their mums. Their mums still keep feeding them and giving them love. It’s pretty special.

The dairy industry is emotionally painful for animals

Amy: I’ve heard the call of calves and their mums calling for each other on multiple different farms who are separated from each other. And it’s really sad.

If you really think about the dairy industry and how it’s all set up, to me, this is in a way the most emotionally painful and complex animal industry.

And yet it’s the one that people love cheese and they have a really hard time giving up milk because they just like how it tastes and it’s addictive.

And yet this is the one that has such a massive emotional burden on so many. It’s something that we can move away from and, and take a stand for the mamas and the babies and what they deserve.

Chantelle: I hear a lot from people who say they would have a hard time giving up cheese. I was one of them once, and I think a lot of people who are vegan now were once that person.

And once I gave it up, I honestly didn’t find it difficult. But I find it really difficult to see the realities of the dairy industry.

Selective breeding in modern farmed animals poses welfare concerns

Chantelle: So this next argument is when I have a really hard time believing that people are making it in good faith, but maybe they are. The idea is if we stopped farming animals, those animals would go extinct.

I don’t know where this idea came from, that animal agriculture is some sort of conservation movement. Keeping animals alive so that we can use and slaughter them at a fraction of their natural lifespan is not about conservation.

Modern farmed animals have also been selectively bred for the maximum meat production or byproduct production, like eggs or dairy, and that has been detrimental to their health. It leads to so much suffering.

• Broiler chickens raised for meat grow so large that their legs cannot support their bodies.
• Egg laying hens lay eggs far more often than they would in the wild, which uses up the calcium they need in their bodies, and it leads to bone fractures.
• There are genetic defects in cattle and sheep and pigs from selective breeding for growth and from inbreeding.

Animal agriculture is harmful to wildlife conservation

Chantelle: If we’re talking about conservation, industrial animal agriculture has also been extremely harmful for wildlife.

• Wild animals are killed to protect farmed animals.
• We see habitat loss for raising and feeding animals.
• Agricultural runoff is harmful to waterways and to animals who live in them and depend on them for drinking water.

When we look at all of the mammals on earth, farmed animals make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass, whereas wild animals are just 4%. Farmed animals are really not struggling to be conserved right now.

How grazing impacts conservation

Amy: I appreciate this one because I think it comes up really commonly with the beef industry. Particularly it’s one I’ve seen the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association put forward a specific version of it, which is that there’s areas of the North American plains that only cows are able to graze to maintain, and that it would be problematic if these areas were not grazed.

There’s truth to this statement. And I think that’s important to acknowledge. It’s true that there are benefits to grazing. There used to be huge amounts of bison ranging the land and grazing.

Well managed grazing mimics the natural processes that once involved those wild herbivores. It maintains plant diversity, supports soil health, and regulates species composition.

But on the flip side, we’re talking about well managed grazing. And when it comes to the volume of animals being produced for farming, there’s often overgrazing or poor management of that land, which can degrade the ecosystems.

So, if cows were to stop grazing in many of these areas, there’s benefits that could be experienced such as without the pressure of domestic livestock, the ecosystems could be more natural. There could be new plant diversity and more wild animals coming back into the spaces. And then it can also improve the soil structure, reduce erosion, and increase soil carbon sequestration, which benefits the ecosystem and climate change mitigation.

So, there’s sort of this, this nuance and this balance, but when it comes to wild animals, they move differently than farmed animals over sections of land and these areas were really intended for wild herbivores to travel across them.

The shift to a plant-based world is gradual

Chantelle: I think this one is kind of a different side of the same coin, which is if we all go vegan, the farmed animals would all be killed, or would take over, or would have nowhere to go.

And first of all, a lot of these questions come from the idea that everyone on earth will somehow go vegan all at the same time and that all farmed animals will suddenly be rendered economically redundant. I do not see that happening.

I think it’s much more realistic that people are going to gradually shift toward a plant based food system and fewer animals will be bred for food over time.

A compassionate world would not make life worse for animals

Chantelle: But even if we did have this suddenly vegan world, farmed animals are already headed to slaughter. Farmed animals are already regularly being culled because of things like shifts in the economy or disease spread.

So a world where all people suddenly care very deeply about animal welfare and are doing our best for the animals can’t be worse than the system we have in place right now.

Animal consumption continues to grow

Amy: This myth sounds like it’s coming from someone who was on their last limits of trying to have an argument against veganism.

The consumption of animals is continuing to grow on our planet. Which makes me really sad, as someone who spends my life trying to advocate for these animals.

Even with the number of people going vegan and vegetarian growing, it isn’t enough to match the population growth. The volume of animals being killed and consumed is still larger than ever.

It’s remarkable how much change is going to be needed to make a drop in the bucket when it comes to reducing animal consumption.

That degree of gradual change is not going to have any of the suggested impacts listed in this myth.

As the food system shifts for humans, we work on solutions for pets

Amy: And we’ve got one more. If we all go vegan, what will dogs and cats eat?

Chantelle: I think that’s a good question. I think as we move toward a plant-based food system for humans, we’ll also be working toward a similar shift for animals.

And it’s an important question to ask what our companion animals who eat an omnivore or carnivore diet can eat besides other animals.

If our goal is to end farmed animal suffering, two important steps are shifting human diets toward plant based foods and then working on solutions for non-human animals who eat meat to not be relying on food from other animals.

Some ways we can do that is to support researching nutrition needs and developing cultured or lab grown meat. We talk more about what pet food looks like in a vegan future in our episode, Is my pet happy.

Cultured meat (lab-grown meat) and plant-based options

Amy: I would love to see cultured meat become affordable and available for pet food. I think that is the absolute way of the future. It’s unfortunate that we’re just in a time right now where it’s still in development, but I think it’s going to become the norm very soon.

And there’s also vegan pet foods. Which many animals right now are thriving on and enjoying. I just think how great would it be to lower our impact and consumption of animal products because of continued technological innovation. And to me, that seems like something everyone can get on board with.

Next episode

Please join us next month as we hear perspectives from people who operate farm sanctuaries.