Lierre's Lies of the Limberlost Swamp

On page 42 of The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith tells a rousing version of the story of the Limberlost Swamp:

"I've driven across Indiana four times and had no idea it was once part forest and swamp. Who would look at Indiana and think swamp? It wasn't until I read Gene Stratton-Porter's The Girl of The Limberlost - a children's novel about a determined girl who uses her knowledge of the swamp to pay her school fees - that I found out. The Limberlost swamp was 13,000 acres, protected by another 12,000 acres of wetlands. The Limberlost State Historic Site gets over 10,000 visitors a year, and two-thirds want to see the swamp. Becky Smith, the curator, has to tell each and every one, "The swamp does not exist." 

Soil, species, rivers. That's the death in your food. Agriculture is carnivorous: what it eats is ecosystems, and it swallows them whole."

Thus, Lierre Keith grossly misrepresents what actually happened to the invaluable, species-rich Limberlost Swamp: before agriculture arrived at the site of the drained Limberlost, the land was logged, and then sold to oil companies.

Who was among the first people to sell the Limberlost for its mineral wealth? None other than Charles Porter, husband of Gene Stratton-Porter. Was Charles Porter's wife, the author of The Girl of The Limberlost Swamp, distraught at the selling-off of the swamp? Apparently not. According to the Indiana Historical Society:

"After oil was discovered on Charles D. Porter's farmland, his wife, Gene Stratton-Porter, used the wealth to design and build a new home in Geneva near the Limberlost Swamp."

Furthermore, Stratton-Porter decorated her large home with furniture made by Grand Rapids - a company that, as Stratton-Porter herself wrote in Moths of the Limberlost, "stripped the forest of hard wood for fine furniture".

I can't help but compare Gene Stratton-Porter with Beatrix Potter. The two women - both born in the 1860s; both talented naturalists who also wrote much-loved children's books - superficially share much in common.  But Stratton-Porter's apparent enthusiasm for profiting from the destruction of the Limberlost Swamp contrasts sharply with Potter's active preservation of her beloved Lake District.

As for Lierre Keith having the gall to blame the loss of the Limberlost Swamp on vegetarians: what glorious bullshit!

The Limberlost Swamp was turned into furniture and drained for its oil, which Lierre Keith should think long and hard about next time she finds herself driving across Indiana in  oil-guzzling motor vehicle.

How much forest is there in Indiana?

On page 41 of The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith writes plaintively about the forests of Indiana, which (she says) have been lost because:

"Now, instead, we have agriculture. Indiana was once home to over two million acres of praririe and forest. Only a thousand fragmented acres are all that remain. There were also thousands of acres of tupelo gum [...] Tupelo gums are crucial [...]"

Initially, I took Keith's emotional narrative about the forests of Indiana at face value. I've never been to Indiana, whereas Keith has "driven across Indiana four times". Hence, I accepted that Keith knew what she was talking about. Then I read the following comment in a customer review on Amazon. The reviewer wrote that Keith's assertion - as quoted above - is:

"mind-numbingly stupid: a trivial Google search reveals that Indiana has a land area of 22,955,000 acres, of which there are currently 4.5 million acres of forestland and 4.3 million acres of timberland. These represent 38% of the entire state!"

Who should I believe: the published author, or the amateur reviewer?

I've never set foot on USA soil, and I don't know anything about Indiana's forests (or lack thereof). But a quick Google search took me to a page on the USDA's Forest Service website, titled Forests of Indiana: their economic importance. On that web page, the Indiana State Forester writes:

"Almost 200 years ago, forests covered 85 percent of the state. By the early 1900’s, most forestland had been cleared to make room for farms, industry, infrastructure, and the growing number of Hoosiers. In 1922 State Forester Charles Deam predicted that Indiana would be treeless in 15 years. I’m pleased to report that as we enter the 21st century, forests have rebounded and now comprise almost 20 percent of the State (4.5 million acres)."

So, it seems fairly safe to say that there are currently millions of acres of forest in Indiana - not "a thousand fragmented acres", as Keith claims.

And, on the subject of the "crucial" tupelo gums (whose botanical name is Nyssa aquatica): according to Wikipedia, who in turn got their data from Elbert Little's Atlas of United States Trees, the tupelo gum's range doesn't actually extend to Indiana. Given that Elbert Little has a Ph.D in botany, and has published many books about trees, I think I'll take his word over Lierre Keith's on the subject of tupelo gums.

Below is a map, with the tupelo gum's range shown in green, and the state of Indiana shown in red:

Religious vegans are not "nutritional vegetarians"

In her book, The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith divides vegetarians into three categories, with a lengthy chapter dedicated to each group. They are:

* Moral Vegetarians,
* Political Vegetarians, and
* Nutritional Vegetarians

On page 241, in the "Nutritional Vegetarians" chapter, Keith waxes lyrical about how harmful veganism (not vegetarianism) is for babies and children. I've already addressed the disgraceful and misleading nature of one reference that Keith uses to support her claims.

Another anti-vegan reference that Keith digs up is this one:

"In one small community of vegans, twenty-five infants had protein and frank calorie deficiencies, anemia from a lack of both iron and B12, rickets, zinc deficiencies, and retarded growth. One baby died, weighing at five months less than when she was born. 292"

The relevant reference, as provided in The Vegetarian Myth, is as follows:

Brody, Jane. "Personal Health." The New York Times. March 15, 1987

Keith's citation is actually incorrect - the correct date is March 25. Nevertheless, you can read the entire article here.

There is a highly relevant fact in the quoted case of malnourished infants, which Brody points out, but which Lierre Keith fails to mention. The relevant fact I'm referring to is that the "community" in question was (and, indeed, still is) a religious community, known as the Black Hebrews, also known as the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem.

According to their own website, the Black Hebrews are vegan because of a "Biblical law", described in Genesis 1:29, which reads:

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." 

The Black Hebrews reportedly refuse to take crucial vitamin B12 supplements because:

"If the organism of the cow subsists by eating plant foods only, why should the human organism need artificial vitamins, animal foods, and drugs?"

There's a very clear scientific answer to the Black Hebrews' alleged question: plants do not produce vitamin B12. Rather, B12 is produced by many different species of bacteria. However, cows can subsist on plant foods because cows have a specialised ruminant digestive system which (among many other things) hosts the bacteria that produce vitamin B12. Humans have a very different digestive system, which is why we need to eat B12.

Most Westerners who choose a vegan diet are well aware of the importance - and sources - of vitamin B12. For example, the UK Vegan Society states that:

"The only reliable vegan sources of B12 are foods fortified with B12 (including some plant milks, some soy products and some breakfast cereals) and B12 supplements." 

It seems abundantly clear that the Black Hebrews are not (as Lierre Keith claims) "Nutritional Vegetarians". On the contrary, they are anti-scientific religious vegans.

If Lierre Keith wants to address the myths in the Bible, then I wish her luck. But I take exception to her lumping religious fundamentalists in with "nutritional vegetarians", when these two groups of people are as different as chalk and cheese.   

Lierre Keith, and experiments on starving children

Plenty of what Lierre Keith writes in The Vegetarian Myth is not only wrong, but also inflammatory. For example, take one of Keith's hand-wringing statements about the babies of vegan mothers:

One researcher put it bluntly: "... when women avoid all animal foods, their babies are ... developmentally retarded ... There's absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans" (page 241)

It is inaccurate and hysterical to claim that all children of all vegan mothers are "retarded", and that all vegan mothers are "unethical".

In fact, the claim is so ridiculous that I was very curious to know who this supposed "researcher" was. Surely no scientist worth their salt would make such an unequivocal pronouncement? It turned out that the researcher in question - Professor Lindsay Allen - was rather more equivocal than Lierre Keith would have her readers believe.

The BBC news article quoted by Lierre Keith continues:

Professor Allen stressed that although the study (which was supported by the National Cattleman's Beef Association) was conducted in a poor African community that was malnourished, its message was highly relevant to people in developed countries.

She accepted that adults could avoid animal foods if they took the right supplements, but she said adding animal source food into the diet was a better way to tackle malnutrition worldwide than quick fixes with supplements in the form of pills.

However, Professor Allen's study was, in my opinion, both unethical and flawed in its methodology - and not least because the study was funded by the Cattleman's Beef Association.

The study by Allen, et al, titled Animal Source Foods Improve Dietary Quality, Micronutrient Status, Growth and Cognitive Function in Kenyan School Children, involved feeding extra food (in the form of meat, milk, or vegetable oil) to hundreds of malnourished Kenyan school children.

The "Control" group of children - who were also malnourished Kenyan school children - received no food supplement.

It would come as no surprise to anybody that the health of these malnourished children improved when they were fed a daily supplement of meat for two years.

The health gains were not as significant for the children who received the energy supplement in the form of vegetable oil. However, the children in this so-called "Energy" group were actually consuming fewer calories per day than the children in the "Meat" and "Milk" groups, and the daily oil supplement for the "Energy" group amounted to just 3g of oil (containing approximately 27 calories, including 3g of fat).

By contrast, the children in the Meat group received a 60g supplement of meat (containing approximately 127 calories, including 7g of fat), while the children in the Milk group received a 200mL supplement of milk daily (containing approximately 132 calories, including 8g of fat).

When it comes to the ethical treatment of children, I think the average vegan is way ahead of Professor Lindsay Allen.