Not everyone can be a vegan, even if they want to. It’s not a matter of will-power. It depends on your biochemical make-up. The brain requires long-chain omega-3 fatty acids like DHA which only occur in animal products (and a few sea weeds). Some people, especially those with type O blood (half of the population), are unable to convert the short-chain omega-3 found in plants into DHA, as well as EPA, needed by the heart. Many well-meaning people try to be vegetarian or vegan, only to find that they become sick, weak and have trouble thinking. Other people, especially blood type A and AB (40% of the pop) thrive on a vegetarian diet. There is no vitamin D in a vegan diet – they could get it by spending a lot of time naked in the sun! Also no vitamin B12, needed to prevent nerve degeneration and anemia. There are no primitive people who lived on a totally vegetarian diet, according to the research of Dr Weston Price, a dentist who traveled the world in the 1930’s, documenting the diet and health of people on their native diets. He found that people still eating their native diet, which always included some animal products, were very healthy and had perfect teeth, while the same people, after being contacted by Europeans, and eating the white man’s white food: white bread, sugar, rice, became sick, stunted and had rapid tooth decay. (see Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.) It is certainly true that the wild game eaten by Paleolithic hunters and Native Americans, accompanied by a lot of exercise catching it, had nothing in common with today’s high fat supermarket meat, laden with pesticides, synthetic hormones, and fed on genetically modified grain. Cows shouldn’t be eating grain or corn anyway – they are meant to eat grass. Those who eat meat and dairy should choose organic, grass-fed products. It is also true that a mostly plant based diet is better for the earth than meat fed on corn grown by fossil fuel-based mechanized agribusiness using chemical fertilizer and pesticides and GM seed from MonSatan. I think we should try to eat a diet of mostly plant foods, with as much clean animal products as we individually need to be healthy. But people should not feel guilty or failures if they are unable to be totally vegetarian.