The Rumpus Interview with Dr. Neal Barnard
I love cheeseburgers. How they smell and how they taste. With fried onions and lettuce and tomatoes and lots of ketchup. I love the memory of eating them in the bar in Baltimore where my husband and I went all the time early in our marriage–the place that served them big as saucers in red plastic paper-lined baskets, with cold National Premium on tap and ’80s hits by Donna Summer and Joe Jackson on the jukebox.
I don’t eat too many cheeseburgers these days. Middle age, caring for my once-vibrant mother after her heart attack and stroke, and decades spent counseling my patients about the dangers of saturated fat have sobered me into moderation.
But lately I’ve been wondering if moderation is enough.
Reports of the cruel treatment of animals raised for food, such as a recent undercover video leading to shutdown of a California slaughterhouse, force me to face the fact that eating animals always involves, well, killing animals. Information, presented in the popular documentary Forks Over Knives, about the health problems caused by even “healthier” versions of animal products, such as lean meat, fish, and low-fat dairy products, makes me wonder about avoiding all animal products—going vegan.
Change is hard—especially when it involves food, so deeply tied to identity. Who would I be if I never had another pastrami on rye, hunk of cheddar, or Thanksgiving turkey? But who would I be, as a person and as a doctor, if kept eating these things?
I discussed my quandary with author, medical researcher, and activist Dr. Neal Barnard. Dr. Barnard has advocated for animal protection and veganism for the past thirty years. Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the nonprofit he founded in 1985, works to educate clinicians and the public about the benefits of veganism, and to end animal experimentation. Dr. Barnard also conducts research on the effects of vegan diets on diabetes, chronic pain, and other conditions, and lobbies the U.S. government for changes in agricultural subsidies and healthier school lunches.
I met with Dr. Barnard in the Washington office of PCRM. He’s 58 but looks…I was going to say “younger” but I really mean healthier. He’s lean and energetic and makes you realize how flabby and lethargic most Americans of all ages look these days.
He’s an excellent advertisement for a vegan diet.
Dr. Barnard had much to say about what motivates people to adopt veganism, about the idea that humans are natural carnivores, about what’s really involved in producing animal-derived food, and about Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign.
Though he was open to discussing any aspect of his work, I was most interested in how people decide not to eat animals and then stick with that decision. I told him that—like the average Rumpus reader, I imagine—I’m not blind to animal cruelty, not blind to the health effects of eating animal products, or to the relation of meat eating to global warming. And yet I’ve found it hard, over the years, not to slip back into denial about these things and start eating meat again.
I began by asking Dr. Barnard about the moment when he, born into a family of cattle ranchers, decided to become a lifelong vegan.
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