The Ketovegetarian Solution: a food story

Folks are beginning to see through the federally-mandated madness of demonizing fat consumption in favor of carbohydrates. All it takes is a week-long conversation with one's body to realize that consuming high-quality fats tells your body to shed fat, while consuming sugars tells your body to store fat. Eating them together tells your body to store fat and provides plenty of it to store! We cannot look for answers from the food science community, a young field that struggles to bridge the gap between fundamental biochemistry and human metabolism, not to mention the resistance of the federal government, the USDA, the American Heart Association etc. to any research that suggests reductions in carbohydrate consumption (how could they sell you statins if your arteries weren't full of plaque???) It is certainly progress that folks are learning to reject misleading recommendations from industry lobbyists and embrace a more somatic, empirical, and heuristic understanding of their relationship with food. Still, I worry that as Americans realize that ketogenic diets are the way, we will turn to factory-farmed meat products to satisfy this latent demand. This trend is certainly problematic from an environmental perspective, as the greenhouse gas emissions associated with animal agriculture constitute the largest contribution to global climate change, not to mention the degradation of air, water, and soil quality in the vicinity of factory farms. Indeed, it has been suggested that if every human turned to this diet, at least four Earths would be required to satisfy the increased demand. We are on the verge of curing our obesity and heart disease epidemics at the expense of the environmental systems that provide us this nutrition, this fitness. There is another way!  

When I was an undergrad, my Aunt Carolyn keyed me in to the paleo literature (used here in a non-dinosaur context). I read Nora Gedgaudas' Primal Body, Primal Mind and a companion text Primal Tightwad: Maximing your Health on a Minimal Budget. I went on to read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the Botany of Desire, finding a pleasant middle ground between the hardcore primalists and the status quo. As I moved on to grad school, I started to learn more about the horrors of factory farming, industrial agriculture, and crony capitalism in Meatonomics and other animal economics literature, and quickly stopped purchasing animal products. I spent about a year in hardcore veganism, even purchasing Vitamin B12 supplements! Finally, I moved into a vegetarian co-op with a mandatory food plan that embraces the cow products: butter, milk, cream, cheese etc. as well as eggs. In this past year, I have converged on a diet that suits my body and my conscience: the "ketovegetarian solution." 

Recent research suggests that switching from a meat-based diet to the traditional "lactovegetarian" diet is associated with a negligible reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (Heller and Keoleian, 2014). The authors offer the explanation that reductions in demand for meat are generally substituted with increases in demand for dairy products, supporting the same unsustainable cattle industry. THIS IS HUGE!!! Folks throughout the country colloquially turn to vegetarianism as the healthy, environmentally-friendly solution, when in reality, it is neither of those things. Note that this paper comes from the mature field of "life-cycle analysis" rather than the food science community. 

As it turns out, there are plenty of plant-based products that offer high-quality fats! Think seeds: sunflower, flax, hemp, pumpkin, chia. Think nuts: almonds, walnuts, cashews, brazil nuts. Think coconut: coconut oil, coconut milk, coconut cream. Think olive oil. I'll avoid discussing avocados, because apparently avocado toast is the root cause of millenials' shared economic immobility...gross. I am a lover of all things plant, so I'll likely never ditch the black beans and sweet potatoes (probably the least inflammatory "treats" you could possibly consider). 

We've come a long way! Folks generally seem to recognize that sugar is the root of all evil. Folks generally seem to recognize that white bread makes them feel like shit. These are good things. Still, my primary concern is that folks will get as far as the grossly oversimplified, Americanized "eat-only-meat-all-the-time" bastardization of the paleo diet, and simply purchase more cheap factory-farmed beef from the grocery store. This would benefit neither their health nor the environment! Need a rule of thumb? Ditching the beef, pork, and dairy is a no-nonsense, health-conscious, environmentally-friendly choice. There is certainly a case for purchasing pastured poultry products in moderation (Figure 1); I definitely splurge on Alfalfa's smoked salmon on occasion. Since the human body cannot get vitamin B12 from a purely plant-based diet, eggs are another great choice!  Again, I worry that folks simply do not have the time, energy, or mental bandwidth to be investigating the sources of their animal products. 

Figure 1. (Figure 3 of Heller and Keoleian, 2015) Annual greenhouse gas emissions per capita associated with producing the 2010 U.S. food availability. 

Finally, I think we as educated liberals need to be more choosy with our buzzwords and causes célèbres. While GMOs are very much concerning from a long-term biodiversity and evolutionary standpoint, there is nothing to suggest that these are unsafe from a nutrition perspective. In fact, GMOs are likely safer than the cocktail of pesticides that we would eat otherwise. By focusing on the fact that our corn and soy products are GMO, we forget that we are eating corn and soy. It doesn't matter whether your high-fructose corn syrup comes from GMO or non-GMO corn! Monoculture is the problem. "Cheap" food is the problem. Sugar is the problem. Industrialized agriculture is the problem. 

References: 
Heller, Martin, and Gregory A. Keoleian. (2014) “Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimates of U.S. Dietary Choices and Food Loss.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 19(3): 391-401.