All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 14, 2015 - Louder with Crowder
36:41
Vegan MYTHS Debunked with Lierre Keith || Louder With Crowder
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
We are back with a guest who actually, it's funny, I'm a big fan of some of the stuff she's written and she's done.
We certainly don't agree on a lot.
But on some things, she's incredibly informative.
And I'm really glad to have her on Author of The Vegetarian Myth.
Right off the bat, we're bound to get some letters.
Leah Keith, thank you so much for being on with us.
Oh, well, thanks for having me, Stephen.
Well, good.
So, listen, this book I've been reading for a while now.
I'll be honest, you know, I've probably read about two-thirds of it, two-thirds of the way through.
You make some, first off, for the audience who may not be familiar with you, why don't you tell them your story as to how you came about writing this book?
Right.
So I spent 20 years as a vegan.
I became a vegan when I was 16.
The way that most people become vegans, which is I had a friend who was a vegan.
And she and her family were really into being vegan.
And within two weeks of knowing her, I was completely convinced that I had to do this.
And I was one of those people who did not give up.
Most people actually who try it give up in three months.
That's what the studies show.
And I did not give up for 20 years.
And in the process, it completely destroyed my health.
It was just an utter collapse.
So when that happens, especially when you have clung to an ideology that strongly, it's really hard.
Your whole world sort of collapses around you because nothing makes sense anymore.
And you don't even know who you are anymore at that point.
So I spent a good four or five years after that trying to figure out what had I done wrong because I hadn't done the diet wrong.
So why did this go so wrong?
So I had to look at a whole bunch of information that I had shuttled aside in service of this ideology.
And then a whole, just a huge realm of information was then open to me.
There were all kinds of things I could explore.
It's crazy because, listen, it's no secret with people listening here, whether online or terrestrially, that I have a...
I have a passionate disdain for veganism, but sometimes for different reasons.
I mean, let's be clear here.
You were a little bit nervous about coming on the show because obviously I'm one of those right-wing kind of nutjobs.
You are certainly not by any means a right-winger as you write this book against veganism.
No.
I mean, I come at this from a very sympathetic perspective.
I was in that world.
I understand the values of that world.
And I don't intend to give up the values of that world.
And this is why the vegans hate me, is because I still claim the same moral ground.
I won't give it up.
And they're really mad that I could come to different conclusions.
And this is where you bump into the fundamentalism of any ideology.
You cling so tightly that it becomes wrong, even if it starts out in a good direction.
You can't hang on to anything that tightly and have it turn out okay.
Well, you know, I really hate that, and this is kind of where we can find some common ground.
I hate this idea that if you eat animals, you hate animals.
I mean, we have a dog.
He's actually sitting right here.
We'll bring up the hopper cam for people watching online.
We adopted a 90-pound, looks like the world's biggest, meanest pit bull who was balding.
He had alopecia, broken leg, Lyme disease.
Because we love it, we're animal lovers.
But I don't see it as something that is unnatural or goes against nature or in any way displays hatred because of the way we are designed as human beings.
You talk about that a lot in your book.
Tell me a bit about that, and as someone who is really more of an environmentalist and more of an animal rights person, how you sort of rectify that.
So I have a 90-pound dog, too.
Oh, there you go.
What kind of dog?
I have a Great Pyrenees.
Oh, well, you know what?
This is a Doggo Argentino, and if you're familiar with the breed, Great Pyrenees gives them the big square head.
Absolutely, yeah.
No, I mean, I got my dog for protection, so she's fabulous.
Anyway, I put her outside.
Wait, wait, protection from vegans?
Yeah, well, yeah, I get a lot of death threats.
I mean, they're not going to be able to follow through.
Listen.
They're too exhausted, I know.
They're too exhausted, and they're not necessarily pro-Second Amendment people.
I mean, I tell everyone, listen, I don't even invest in an alarm system.
I have shotguns out the wazoo and a 90-pound dog, but, you know, I get death threats from the...
You're looking at my alarm system.
That's my alarm system.
I want them to see that.
And I have a dog and I have a permit to carry.
I'm a big believer in the Second Amendment as well.
I think people have a right to defend themselves.
Especially when you live under this kind of constant Harassment.
There's a point past which you just have to take it seriously.
Sure.
And I do.
So they're crazy people.
Absolutely.
I was telling you about the last comments I got on YouTube right before I came on.
I can't even repeat it on air.
That's horrible.
Yeah, very anti-Semitic, very homophobic, even though I'm not Jewish or gay.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
They can at you and hope that some of it sticks.
That's what they want is just to hurt you.
And I've read the most horrible things about you to the point that honestly when I first heard about you...
I thought like, oh, this has got to be like a right-wing Sarah Palin, a hunting wolves kind of chick who the vegans are just furious with.
That's not the case at all.
How did this transition occur?
And do you think that even makes them more mad because it's kind of like a Muslim convert who needs to be executed?
I'm an apostate.
Yeah.
That's exactly it.
So, yeah.
All right.
So you had this other question, a real question, that it was about environmentalism.
So the thing that I did not know when I was 16, there's two parts to this.
One is that agriculture is the most destructive thing that people have done to the planet.
And I can walk you through that if you want to hear about it.
So I thought that I was eating this peaceful, loving, sustainable, you know, totally compassionate diet.
And it's not true.
It is the most destructive human activity.
And those were the foods I was eating as somehow thinking that this was peaceful and compassionate.
It's not.
It's biotic cleansing is what it is.
And we've wiped out 98% of the all-growth forests and somewhere around 90% of the world's prairies have been destroyed, mostly in the service of agriculture.
So for anyone to say that wiping out the massive amounts of habitat for every living creature that needs a home, there's nothing that's environmentally sound about this.
In fact, I've got all kinds of wonderful quotes from very serious people about the fact that this cannot be done sustainably, that it's an absolute oxymoron to call anything sustainable agriculture.
The only thing that sustains it is petrochemicals, plows, and fences and subsidies, federal subsidies.
That's what keeps the whole system going at this point.
And so there's nothing environmental about this.
It's been sold to us as the way to eat green, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Now, the part where we can disagree is about factory farming, because I think everybody can see that, A, these poor creatures are just living horrible lives.
And B, it is absolutely just a total waste of everybody's energy, from calories on up, to feed bizarre things to animals that were not designed to eat them.
And it is very energy intensive.
Cows are not designed to eat corn.
They should not be eating corn.
It kills them.
It makes us unhealthy when we eat them.
I hate to cut you off, but I want you to hold that thought because I'm with you here.
Lotta with Crowder will be right back after the break.
We are back with who I think is a fascinating guest, Leah Keith, who is talking right now just about factory farming.
So, to be fair, a lot of problems with the other things that you said, but I agree with you on the federal subsidies and the factory farming.
Listen, I just wrote a piece in the Blaze magazine that went up this week.
The scam of the FDA and USDA, or first off, supplements, it was an all-encompassing piece, but also the organic food scam.
I actually went down, and I buy locally from farms.
I buy lamb, I buy eggs, and they will never be certified organic because they can't afford it.
The subsidized mega farms can afford the right fence posts, or they use the right chemicals, even though there's plenty of pesticides and chemical fertilizers that are used in organic food.
Tell us a bit about that and the sort of the shell game that is factory farming and why people of all political walks should know about it.
Okay, so back and way up, 1950, factory farming is invented because they took all the ammunition plants from World War II and they converted them to nitrogen fertilizer.
Since that point, we've been eating oil.
Okay, that's what the entire thing is based on.
And what that created was a mountain of corn, just a vast amount of corn.
There was no way to sell that much corn, to eat that much corn.
What were they going to do with all that corn?
And the answer was, hey, let's put animals in really hellacious conditions and Essentially make them live in cities on concrete floors inside steel buildings, and we'll force feed them corn and make them get really fat really fast, which makes the meat cheap, but it also makes the animals really sick, and it makes us really sick.
This is not the meat we were designed to eat, and it's not the native diet of a cow.
And the only reason this is possible is because of the farm bill every year that subsidizes the growing of that corn.
There we go.
And what it's meant is that all of these poor farmers are essentially serfs to the six corporations that control the world food supply.
So they're hand in glove, and that's our tax dollars are going to pay for this stuff.
And by making those subsidies every year on things like corn and wheat and soy, it means that the cheapest calories out there are this crap carbohydrate.
And that's why America's got fat, especially poor people, because it's all they can afford.
And the only reason they can afford it is because that's what's subsidized.
We're not subsidizing the real food.
We're not subsidizing the farmers.
We're subsidizing corn that's grown with fossil fuel.
Well, there are so many points there to even get it to.
Firstly, I will tell you that half the world's corn supply is consumed by French Canadians when they have a big corn roast.
Literally, all it is is bowls of corn.
You roll it in a stick of butter and put salt on it, and people will eat literally 20 ears of corn each.
It's a cultural thing.
But, you know, you're right, and it's funny because I know you would obviously align yourself more to the left.
But I couldn't be more against subsidies for farmers.
I hate it when politicians on either side, and of course what they do is they do it under the guise of, oh, we have to help the American farmer.
The poor little American farmer, you know, weather is so volatile and seasons change and they don't know their crops aren't so consistent.
We have to subsidize them because we have to save the American farmer.
And that's not the case.
Whether you're a vegetarian, a vegan, or liberal or conservative, I think it's a point that's missed on a lot of people.
Just like with banks, the Federal Reserve, when you pick winners and losers in any industry, and it's a centralized power from the federal government, it always favors the big guys.
And in this case, like you're talking about, in the United States, it favors the big farms who can afford the lobbyists who can manipulate policy.
And you've talked about that in your book, and that's something that I can completely agree with and I'm on board with.
So, you know, and the other environmental problem, of course, is that none of this is ultimately sustainable.
You know, every single civilization that's ever sprung up around agriculture, it's the basis of civilization is agriculture, collapses, and it's because it wears out the topsoil.
You can't clear all the life off the land.
Plan it to nothing but what humans are going to eat and expect that to last.
So civilizations last between 800 and 2,000 years, and then they collapse.
Because that's the exact point when the soil gives out.
I mean, you can predict it.
It's been 800 and 2,000 years.
The soil will not last longer than that.
And, you know, they die essentially eating each other.
You find human remains in the cooking pots, and that's the end of it.
You know, it just returns to dust.
Because this is an activity that cannot be sustained, that's the problem.
So basically, if we go vegan, fast forward a couple hundred years, we're Lord of the Flies, smacking chubby little piggy for his glasses to create a fire.
Yes, we are.
That's a very bad place to end up.
Let me ask you this.
So you consider yourself, I don't want to misrepresent you, but you consider yourself an environmentalist.
Yes.
So pro-Second Amendment, good.
Pro-meat, good.
Now you talk about these problems as far as environmental sustainability.
So let's go with that premise.
I have some problems with it, but let's go with it for time.
Here's my main issue.
Having been to the climate summits, Copenhagen, Cancun, watched the speeches from Ted Turner, do environmentalists see, or let me just ask you, do you see an irony in obviously condemning big government and their cozy relationship with big business, completely on board, but then a lot of the solutions that are offered by people that tend to involve the government or needing some sort of government policy if we can't trust them right now with their food supply if we can't trust them right now to enact sensible food policy
why would we entrust them to you know save the planet well i think the only way we ever get a government that works is by just constant pressure applied constantly it's You can never be not vigilant in the case of people in power.
So I don't think we can ever give up.
It's not like, oh, here, fix this for us.
It just means constant struggle against those in power to try to get them to do something right.
And I think that at this point the problems are so gigantic and so systemic that we need every solution anybody can think of to try to turn this around before it's too late.
But do you really think that solution can come from the government, or even if we bring it to the government, that they wouldn't screw it up?
I mean, that's my endgame.
Listen, I think we all want a cleaner Earth, and I just certainly don't want to get off into the areas that we disagree too much, but I'll just leave it at that, then.
It's one of those things where I do not trust the government with something as mammoth as saving the planet.
If I can't trust them with a checking account, I don't know why I would trust them with the ozone layer.
But back to the meat thing.
So, you know what's funny?
I've got a personal story with that.
I got convinced.
To do the green smoothie thing for a while.
And, you know, a good friend of mine, actually, is Rob Wolf.
He'll be on the podcast radio show.
That's great.
Yeah, a few weeks from now.
And he's just, like, hardcore libertarian, so I'm kind of between you and him.
But he was one of the first guys that said, like, ooh, yeah, you should stop doing that, right?
And we see it everywhere right now, you know, greensmoothieblog.com.
Well, I also happen to have hypothyroidism, which is very rare for a young...
Me too.
Yeah, it's unusual for a man.
Exactly.
Usually pre-diabetes.
It's a sign of that.
And my doctor said, well, yeah, you know what?
If you're doing all the raw spinach and the kale, which we've all been told is the best thing for you in as much as you can stuff in a blender, it's not.
Tell us just, if only to save one thyroid gland out there, why the whole green smoothie, green juice thing might not be as good for you as you think.
Yeah, a lot of those vegetables are really hard on your thyroid.
They just are their goitrogens, and they're going to do damage really hard on your thyroid to deal with all the compounds that are in those vegetables.
A lot of vegetables are not particularly edible until you cook them, first of all.
Right.
You know, a lot of people want you to believe, a lot of those sort of vegan, raw vegan people, oh, if they cook it, it's bad.
It's not actually edible, so you apply heat, because you have to destroy what are called anti-nutrients.
Right.
And anti-nutrients, that's one of the ways that...
Plants fight back.
Plants don't really want to be eaten either.
They can't run and they don't have teeth and claws like animals.
So their only defense are chemicals and they are the original chemical warfare people.
They know how to make chemicals that can hurt you and that can protect themselves and protect their babies essentially.
So seeds are really hard to eat.
You have to do all kinds of things to trick them, to make them edible.
And most of the plant as well doesn't want to be eaten.
That's why it tastes bitter.
That's why it's poisonous.
And we have no way to digest cellulose anyway as humans.
You need multiple chambers in your stomach, tons of bacteria that can do the work, like a cow can do that.
We can't even do it.
So most of the plant matter on this planet is never going to be food for us.
But even the things we can sort of semi-digest tend to be a lot more edible when heat is applied and those antioxidants are destroyed.
I know.
And it's one of those things.
It is just one of those things.
That nobody believes when you tell them.
I'm like, I heard the raw food diet, you know, because Andy Dick's doing it.
I'm going, does Andy Dick look healthy to you, you shmohawk?
Literally.
I remember him, he was on Conan going, I'm doing the raw food diet.
I'm like, well, I'm going to avoid that.
That's actually what spurred me to look into why I thought maybe the green smoothies were bad and Rob educated me.
And now, you know, it's funny.
I do a lot of raw egg yolks and I do the fermented cod liver oil.
That's local.
Good, good, good.
Those are very good things to eat raw.
Some things are very edible raw, some things are not.
Raw organ meats, you should eat a little of those every week too.
I know we are very grossed out in this culture by this, but around the world, across human history, those are the foods that are considered sacred.
And it's for a reason.
Some of the nutrients are destroyed when they're heated.
And so raw liver, raw kidney, raw heart, a little bit every week goes a long way.
Yeah, it's amazing to hear you say this, obviously, knowing your history.
So you were vegan, right?
And then you go into this.
And you're not just, by the way, you're not just no longer vegan.
For those tuning in right now, we have Lear Keith with us, who was a former vegan, wrote The Vegetarian Myth.
great book.
You're doing like bone broth and organ meat.
They're just picturing you like 28 days later carving into a carcass.
So a pretty big 180.
Yeah.
What do you say to someone who might argue, obviously vegan, like you said, is ideological extremism, and now you've kind of gone the other way.
Do you think that maybe people who do what you do either just have a fascination with sort of self-experimentation or more extreme personalities?
Because it's pretty drastic change.
Yeah, you know, it took me five or six years to come around to all of it.
So I went really slowly.
I think, you know, when you're young, you tend to be more idealistic and the world is more black and white.
And I like to think that I've learned from my mistake, especially after the permanent damage that I did to my body.
I move very slowly now when I make a change in my diet and I really investigate it.
I do a lot of research, and not just on sites that agree with me, but all over.
And I've tried to make myself scientific just to be literate in a scientific way.
I don't have a background in science, but you have to be able to read studies and understand what's going on.
And that's not an easy thing.
We don't get good science education in this country.
And now with the Internet, you know, you can just stick to your little bubble, find people who agree with you and never get challenged.
And that presents its own problems.
So I try to be very careful as I have shifted my diet over the last few years.
But everything that I've done makes sense to me.
It makes sense from just a historical...
Just look at the scope of human history, 2.5 million years.
And there's no question to archaeologists what we ate.
There's no question.
The only people who come up with these just-so stories are people who are very ideologically driven.
Everybody else agrees.
And the evidence is just overwhelming.
You can see in the bones and the teeth of the skeletons, you can see that these people ate mostly meat.
You see the tools that they left behind.
You see the pictures they drew about it.
And then their campsites are filled with these remains.
And there's just no question what we ate.
And you can also look at contemporary hunter-gatherers.
There are still 46 tribes remaining of hunter-gatherers, and we know what they eat.
So there's no question at all.
And then you just look at how our teeth, our jaw, all the way down.
We've got one stomach.
Really quickly, because I know a question that a lot of people will have there, and I think I know the answer.
If you look at tribes hunter-gatherers, obviously their life expectancy is significantly shorter.
How would you explain that to people who would just look at those numbers in a sheet and explain context?
Yeah, the number that you actually need, and this is going to get technical, is the mortality rate doubling time.
And what that does is it factors out all the environmental reasons that people die at very young ages.
So throughout most of human history, if you live to be five years old, you actually live to be about as old as we are now.
But early childhood was a hard time to be a human being.
Right.
And so you have to factor that out and say, okay, so if you got over all the environmental factors that made being a baby really hard in prehistory, in fact, past that, you had really, really good solid health.
That changes when people take up agriculture.
Their health declines rapidly.
It was actually a complete disaster for human health when people switch from these nutrient-dense diets based on animals to diets based strictly on carbohydrate.
And the archaeological record could not be clearer.
Their bones just crumble, their teeth fall out, and they shrink six inches almost immediately.
It sounded like National Treasure 18.
Nick Cage is going to show up because he has to pay his taxes.
Let's keep you on for one more segment because I'm fascinated.
Lear Keith, stay tuned.
We're back, Ladder with Crowder.
See, this is the thing where I am fascinated with these guests.
And I know we do mainly politics in the show, though we'll have professional athletes or actors.
But Lear Keith wrote this book, The Vegetarian Myth, which the way I found her was I thought that she was somebody very different than who she turns out to be.
And who she turns out to be is very interesting.
Lear, thanks so much for being back with us.
So you were just talking about how catastrophic agriculture can be to human health.
And listen, I'm a moderate.
I tend to believe that mainly meats and then some veggies and fruit, and I don't think oatmeal's going to kill you.
But I can understand the argument for the paleo crowd.
But I do think, like you said, it's undeniable that a lot of this, like a lot of things, is influenced through those in political power or those who can...
Those who have the most amount of cash, let's be honest, you were talking about super farms earlier.
So that's a big influence.
I mean, it has accelerated right now.
If you look at the American diet and the food pyramid, human diets have changed at a rate.
Really, would you say it's fair for me to say in the last hundred years more than they did in the thousands of years preceding it?
Yes, absolutely.
And in the last generation, most of all.
And it's exactly because of those government recommendations and the way that they put those policies forward and changed the way everybody ate.
And it was a huge experiment on public health.
And it didn't happen without protest.
There were many, many doctors who came forward and said, you cannot do this to the American people.
There's no evidence that this is going to help.
We have plenty of evidence that it might not.
And the government did it anyway.
And now everybody is sick and fat and stupid and dying.
And all of these diseases have absolutely exploded.
They've got diabetes now and children under 10.
They can't call it adult onset anymore because so many children have it.
It's horrible what's happening up there.
I mean, it's changed.
Well, they told everybody to stop eating fat and concentrate on eating grains, and that's what happened.
They switched from fat and protein to eating a diet of carbohydrate.
And we were not designed to eat a diet that's essentially sugar.
Right.
And so everybody got sick.
Well, what about people like Rob Wolf out there, some paleos who say, you know, tubers and root vegetables, things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, uh, for high performing athletes, it's actually better to have a higher carbohydrate intake provided they're not coming from processed grains.
Would you say that's a, that argument holds water or are they off base?
I would agree.
But I do think it depends on how much damage you personally have done to your insulin receptors.
I did a lot of damage to mine.
I cannot tolerate that load of carbohydrate on a daily basis.
So I have to be really careful.
I eat a lot of cinnamon.
Yes, that can help.
It's supposed to be good for you because I read it once and I think I'm a doctor.
It's funny how quickly it's accelerated.
And here's one thing.
Like I said, I don't agree with you on everything that you've brought forward.
But I do hate it when people on the other side just make simplistic arguments like, well, life expectancy is a lot longer.
Well, you know, people used to have 19 kids because 12 of them would get kicked by horses.
The difference is now they're being taken out by a few boxes of Froot Loops.
So the cause of death is very different.
And obviously there were acute, I guess you can say, environmental consequences.
The reasons is the term you used earlier, or acute causes of death were much more common, right?
But nowadays, the chronic disease is definitely a problem that I think everyone kind of acknowledges.
Just everyone tries to solve it a different way.
And the misinformation out there, I want to get back to your book, The Vegetarian Myth.
You do realize that you are considered, like you said, an apostate, but not only by vegans, but by general mainstream health right now.
You should be going to a Jamba Juice and getting a smoothie.
A majority of your plate should be salad and fruits.
How does that make you feel when you know what you've done to your body, you know the research you've put into it, and for some reason a majority of the country is just flat out wrong?
Well, you know, a lot more doctors are coming around.
This is pretty much every day in the news you can find, okay, another study that shows, gosh, saturated fat actually doesn't hurt people.
We were wrong.
It was even on the cover of Time, you know, where they're like, oops, butter isn't bad, you know, and it's coming round because they did try this terrible experiment on us all and it failed.
So, you know, they're having to retrench.
And I don't know how long it's going to take for the really big institutions like the USDA to come out.
The thing to know about the USDA is that they are not charged with protecting public health.
They are charged with selling commodity agriculture.
So they're going to keep pushing that food pyramid basically until they're dead.
Because that's what's the most money for those giant corporations.
So follow the money.
Let's always remember that one, too.
This is true.
I often talk about that.
And that's where...
I don't know if you want to get into disagreements.
We don't have to.
But that's where I have a disagreement.
You know, everyone points to the Koch brothers or Big Oil.
And if you look at where the actual money comes from in politics, obviously, like you said, these subsidies for farms are a big one.
But some shocking numbers that it's, you know, we've been told it's always Big Oil and Big Pharma.
And that's not always the case.
A lot of people don't think Big Farms, although their connections are obviously still to Big Oil and ethanol with corn.
A lot of people don't think Big Unions.
15 out of the top 20 donors are Big Unions, namely public sector unions.
So I've railed on that for a long time.
If you follow the money trail, and you know how you solve the money trail?
And this is where you can tell me if you think I'm out of line.
You solve the money trail by eliminating the crony capitalism, the relationship between government and big companies.
I always say everyone plays identity politics.
We're the party of small business.
We're the party of big business.
The same thing applies to food and farming.
I'm not a guy who's a small business guy or a big business guy.
I'm an honest business guy.
And if you're running an honest business, you don't need the government to step in with my tax dollars to funnel it to you.
Right, and especially with the big banks.
Yeah, I completely agree.
If they're too big to fail, let them fail.
I've had it.
No, you're right.
Well, listen, the West Indies Trading Company, I always talk about this, employed a fifth of population earth.
They were making over 20% on their dividends, and they went bankrupt.
And that's one thing, too.
I remember when people coming out saying, and this is, see, we're learning about each other.
We're finding common ground.
Everyone said, the occupiers are the first people to do this.
I was at, and I'm not a tea partier, I was at the first tea party rally.
And, you know, you may disagree with them on a lot.
The biggest signs they had from the get-go.
We're down with Wall Street and no more big banks, no more bailouts.
So this idea that leftists are the only ones against big banks, and I don't know a single conservative, not one, not one, who is a fan of the Federal Reserve or big bank bailouts.
It's one of those things, I feel like it's been pushed for some reason just this false political narrative, and I think it's maybe, I don't know why people would want to malign one world view as being with big banks when it's not the case, but We agree on that.
I think pretty much everyone in the country agrees, yeah, we need to do away with big banks.
Yep.
Anyway, sorry, that was completely irrelevant.
It had nothing to do with meat.
So let's go back.
One thing I find very interesting that you talk about, and I don't think you claim it as original, but you do articulate it, I think, in a way that is better than most people.
So you talk about animals and the domestication of animals.
Mm-hmm.
And you made a good point.
I have it written down in my book here.
I don't have the exact quote.
But you talk about how people say, you know, animals weren't designed to be this way.
And you use an example of, I think it's 10 million domesticated dogs versus, or maybe it's 50 million domesticated dogs versus 10,000 wild wolves.
It's sort of funny that we don't see that as evolution from an animal perspective.
These dogs have evolved to make themselves useful to human beings, and they live longer, healthier lives.
So this idea that domestication of animals is inherently against some animal moral code could be backwards.
Am I misquoting it?
I know the actual numbers, but I thought the point was fascinating.
Yeah, and you can say the same things about plants, that most plants don't want much to do with us.
But there's a few that figured, you know, if we work together, it's going to go better for both of us.
And it's true.
We've carried them all over the world.
We've essentially conquered, you know, the forests to plant the annual grasses that, you know, were willing to be domesticated.
So in the service of corn and soy and wheat, we've pretty well conquered the planet.
So that was very successful for corn and soy and wheat.
Most grasses aren't willing to do that.
They're not willing to change their genome enough to make themselves interesting to us.
But some plants have been.
You could look at the potato.
It's the same thing.
Michael Pollan talks about the apple.
You know, like wild apples are basically inedible, but they were willing to shift their genome enough to make themselves sweet enough that we decided we really liked them and we've planted them all over the planet again.
And it's the same with animals.
There's a few, not a lot, but a few that were like, let's give it a try.
And it's not, you know, us doing something horrible to them or them doing something horrible to us.
These are interdependent relationships.
And everything in nature is that kind of relationship.
That's really my point.
I mean, we wouldn't have plants all over the planet if it wasn't for the insects that actually do the pollinating.
They work together.
The insects get some sugar out of it and the plants get fertilized.
And when that revolution happened in nature, when plants Went ahead and decided to try sexual dimorphism as a reproductive strategy.
The world turned green overnight.
I mean, before it was lichen sort of creeping along at a really slow pace.
And all of a sudden, you've got insects that fly, and you've got plants making flowers, and the world just blossoms, like literally just turns green very, very quickly.
So it works, but it's because they work together.
Everybody gets something out of the arrangement.
And it's the same thing with domesticated animals and humans.
We get something out of it, they get something out of it, and we all live longer.
Sure.
Well, it's funny that you say that.
You know, you were talking about plants and sort of their process.
And I don't want to say motive because it makes it sound like we're watching a Disney film, you know, Fern Gully or something.
Someone's going to come in here and paint with colors of the wind, whatever that means.
But what I do find fascinating, this was an actual conversation with a vegan.
She was talking about how she hated meat and it was, you know, it was cruel.
And then she goes, plus, I just don't want whatever's on your plate, because that's just dead.
My food is living food.
And to me, I was thinking, you don't see the irony that your food dehydrator is the Auschwitz of asparagus.
You're right.
Yeah.
And this is dead.
You're right.
It's dead.
And it was actually picked up from the local farmer's market, and I knew it lived a good life.
I mean...
Could one argue that if you're going to sort of create this moral equivalency between animals and humans, which I don't believe in.
I don't believe that animals are on the same playing field as humans.
I believe we're smarter.
I believe we have a space program and light bulbs.
So let's start with that.
Isn't it pretty easy to then create the moral equivalency between, if we're all the same, why would plants deserve any less consideration than the animals above them or humans?
Well, this was a problem I had when I was a vegan because I didn't want to make those hierarchies, and yet I was.
So meat eaters would sort of taunt me with that question about, well, what about the plants?
And I never had a good answer because I didn't want to be the person that said, well, you know, animals count, but plants are just dead matter.
They're just insensate salads, and I'm allowed to just help myself because I didn't want to put forward those kinds of hierarchies.
I mean, this really goes back to ancient Greece.
And their belief was that there's no sentience at all in stone, and then there's dirt on top of that, and that's not really alive either.
And then you've got plants, and they're sort of alive, but not really.
And then you've got animals, and they're more like us, so they sort of count, but then finally at the top you've got humans.
That's not how nature works, in fact.
It's a cycle, and we all have a play.
And if you take one piece out of that cycle, the entire thing collapses.
If you destroy the soil, everybody dies.
If you don't have enough predators eating the ruminants, they will turn the place to desert.
Every single being in that cycle has a role to play in terms of making life more abundant and giving the entire community more resilience.
So I don't make a hierarchy.
I just say we all have a role to play and we should do that very gratefully because life is an amazing thing.
But I'm an apex predator.
That's the role that humans play, just like wolves, just like bears.
And, you know, our job is to do that well.
Well, especially if you've got your conceal and carry permit, you are at the pinnacle of an apex predator.
You're going to go Jodie Foster in that, what was that movie, Jared?
I don't know.
It was basically Death Wish with Jodie Foster where she was off in guys in a subway with a revolver.
The Brave One.
The Brave One.
I saw that movie.
You know what I hate about those movies?
I want to get to the part where they're killing bad guys, and I know people are like, how dare you?
All life is valuable.
As far as I'm concerned, you rape a woman, you forfeit your right to live.
I hate that I have to go through Jeff Goldblum raping an innocent lady so that I have to get to Charles Bronson killing them.
And the same thing with the brave one.
I hate that I have to watch a guy get beaten up just so I can watch Jodie Foster kill them later on.
I like the revenge part, but they make those scenes so brutal because you have to hate the bad guy.
I know I'm a bit of a...
I'm too weak-hearted to watch that stuff.
No, no, no.
Don't apologize.
You should claim your heart.
It's a good thing that you feel that.
Because it's horrible that we make this into entertainment.
I'm going to push this deep down inside!
No thoughts that everyone will make fun of me for...
Listen, I know.
And I know you're a feminist, but I have to sometimes let my man card show sometimes.
There's no way if I tell my friends that I can't.
I hate 300.
I think 300 is the worst film ever put to celluloid, and I know my man card deserves to be revoked.
How many slow-mo decapitations can you take?
I'd rather watch The Wedding Singer.
I'm not even going to lie.
Anyway.
Claim it, Stephen.
Claim it.
Claim it.
Like I said, not a lot of people would think this.
I'm not an anti-war guy.
I'm an anti-war 90% of the time guy.
I believe we should be slow to go to it.
I believe we should be slow to be violent.
I've never been in a street fight.
I don't need to watch it.
Although I watch Mixed Martial Arts.
We just had Chael Sonnenon.
We'll have George St.
Pierre on.
We have a very eclectic mix of guests, but I think a lot of people think if you eat meat, you love meat, you have a concealed carry, that you're inherently a violent person.
And it's just not true.
You are walking proof of that, Leah.
So, there was one more note that I wanted to get into there, but I don't think we're going to have time now.
So, if people want to find you and read more about your point of view, your work, where should they go?
So it's actually really easy.
It's just my name, lierekeith.com.
That's a joke because my name is really strange.
So it's L-I-E-R-R-E. If you can't remember that, honestly, you can just type vegetarian myth into Google.
I'm the only one with a book by that name.
You will find my website right away.
So you'll see upcoming appearances, all my books.
You can write me email if you want, all that.
I don't read hate mail, so don't bother.
But if you really have questions or you're intrigued by some of this, I can give you more resources, lots of good information.
I mean, we barely scratched the surface, obviously, in a half-an-hour interview.
But there's so much information out there that I really want people to have, both for their health and for the health of the planet.
Yeah.
Well, it is probably an even harder name to spell or find if you're on a vegan diet and you're not getting enough saturated fat for your brain.
Brain fog!
What is it?
Kierre Leaf!
That doesn't make...
Leaf!
No!
She doesn't like Leafs.
I can imagine.
I will say a lot of fat has definitely helped my brain.
So, very interesting stuff, Lear, and we appreciate it.
And even though we disagree on a lot, I always like finding common ground.
And hey...
If nothing else, right?
You are a feminist, environmentalist, but we both like a good steak.
And we certainly don't disagree on as much as I did with the previous guest, an actual terrorist who openly called for my death.
So there's that.
Oh boy.
Yeah, no, I would never call for your death, so.
Well, thank you very much.
But if I invade your house, your Great Pyrenees will probably take care of that for me.
That's what she's for.
I mean, they don't take prisoners.
It's like, you're done.
Yeah, well, 90 pounds, actually, I would have thought the Great Pyrenees was a little bit bigger than that, usually.
She's a girl.
The boys are 120 pounds.
So the girls top out at about 90.
But they're not aggressive, but they're very protective.
So they don't start the fight, but they will finish it.
If somebody is being aggressive toward me, she's on it.
But if it's not coming toward me, she's like, you people are crazy.
What are you doing over there?
She won't just run and start something.
It's more, if you're coming at me, she just turns instantly from 90 pounds of fluff into 90 pounds of fang.
Man, I could talk about dogs all day and then our audience will shut off the dial.
They're not talking about policy!
Although I just nailed Hopper.
So, you know, he sneaks up on me and I was just taking a sock off.
You know, when you take the sock off, it gets stuck.
So there's that momentum and it flung.
And I hit him in the head so hard and I felt so bad.
And he was fine.
He came up and he licked me and he thought I was going to wrestle with him.
So he wanted to start wrestling and growling.
Yeah, but I felt...
I felt so bad, man.
Jared here is a producer.
He heard it.
It was like a...
But that's the same with those great Pyrenees.
They are durable dogs and they love the rough and tumble.
They're very noble.
They are very noble.
Very smart.
Very noble.
We have to let you go.
The vegetarian myth, Leah Key, thank you so much.
We hope to have you back sometime.
Thank you.
Subscribe is what I would tell you if I knew that you liked this video.
▲
Export Selection