Socrates, Environmental Working Group: Eat Less Meat!

The Environmental Working Group brought out a report recently that definitively showed the high cost of meat. Not the cost in the store, but to the planet, and to our health. (Indeed, the one statistic I wish the report had that it didn't would be the full calf-to-plate cost of meat.) Much remarked was the report's central graph, showing the cost of types of meat in terms of emissions:

Overlooked was the report's discussion of the health effects of eating meat, which focused on red meat, but may actually have been a little too kind. In The China Study, medical researcher T. Colin Campbell makes a compelling argument not against just red meat, or against saturated fat from animal products, but against animal products, period. His numbers show real harm to health from eating meat, period, not just red meat, not just butter, but animal protein — including chicken, fish, and shellfish.

Damn. 

But as Campbell points out, this dietary issue has been debated for centuries, going back to Plato's Republic. Socrates touts a simple civic life, of foodstuffs of wheat and barley, with relishes of salt, olives, cheese, onions, cabbage. What we might call a Mediterranean diet. His debate partner Glaucon wants to eat meat, but Socrates points out that this will require land, not to mention a great number of "medical men," and will result in diseases, war, and litigation. 

Instead, Socrates argues, if citizens eat a bread and plant-based diet, with nuts and fruits and wine in moderation, their lives will be far improved, in many many ways.  

Passing their days in tranquility and sound health, they will, in all probability, live to an advanced age…

Campbell's numbers back Socrates up — 2500 years later.