From telegraph.co.uk
By Dr. Chris Smith
The student union is aiming to remove animal products from its cafés and canteens – a well-intentioned move, but not the best for everyone
I gather trigger warnings are in at the moment, so here’s mine: this article may contain opinions that vegan students find hard to swallow, much like my last brush with a nut burger.
Yesterday we learned that – in response to “climate and biodiversity crises” – Cambridge University student union has voted to: “initiate talks with central catering services about removing all animal products from its cafés and canteens.” The aim, they say, is to create a sustainable and 100 per cent plant-based menu. Almost three-quarters of students who voted backed the plan.
As a doctor I find this worrying on many levels. Freedom of choice aside, I’m married to a GP who tells me that she regularly sees young people – especially girls – who have embraced faddy diets, including veganism. As a result, they end up tired, anaemic and underperforming. Is this the outcome we want at one of the world’s best universities?
The irony that they’ve chosen to announce this at a time when some supermarkets are rationing cucumbers, lettuces and tomatoes probably hasn’t escaped the majority either.
Nevertheless, many are justifiably more concerned that such basic decisions are being made for them. There’s also the gross assumption that a comprehensive vegan diet for all is a good and healthy idea, and automatically addresses the climate biodiversity crises. Clearly the students advocating for this are not studying natural sciences, else they would be better versed in the discoveries of a former Cambridge meat-eating academic and founding father of evolution, Charles Darwin.
I’m paraphrasing, but the insight of this great biologist was that selective pressure from the environment moulds a population to make it the best fit for the space it inhabits. We, and our human ancestors, have been evolving in this way for millions of years. The structures of our teeth, and those of our close animal relatives, speak volumes on this, telling us that we are adapted to consume a range of foodstuffs, including meat, and not just nuts, quorn and quinoa.
Consequently, our bodies rely on some sources of micronutrients that we just cannot get in reliable quantities from non-animal sources. So eschewing a whole raft of foodstuffs that we are genetically dependent upon is like feeding tofu to a tiger and expecting it to lap it up and be happy and healthy. It won’t.
Let’s take a related example of a way in which fighting against our genes has significant and well documented health consequences. With a few exceptions – most of them probably students – humans are generally not nocturnal. We wake up when it gets light and we go to sleep when it gets dark. But some jobs dictate that we work night shifts, essentially fighting against what our genes have programmed us to do. The result: higher levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, stroke and heart attacks, as well as breast cancer, among regular shift workers.
This is obviously an extreme example, and I’m not saying that going vegan carries all these risks, but eating what is a grossly unnatural diet is most certainly not risk-free. Yes, the majority of us in the West probably do eat a bit too much meat, but many who launch themselves down the vegan dietary track unwittingly become deficient in a range of key vitamins and iron, potentially robbing their cognitive and physical performance.
There are also the more nuanced arguments over whether a vegan menu really is better for the environment. Done wrong, it can be worse for the planet than serving up roast chicken, because the carbon footprints of much of the plant produce we pick up in the supermarket to make meals less monotonous can vary enormously. Just because it’s plant-based doesn’t make it ‘green’. Crops are forced out of season in heated greenhouses. The water footprint of many common, popular plant foodstuffs is also shocking and environmentally destructive: avocados can require up to 140 litres of water per kilo to grow. Crop yields are also sustained by fertilisers that have significant carbon costs attached, and some plant food items have more air miles under their belts by the time they end up on your plate than Prince Andrew.
So while considering our impact on the environment is a laudable and essential aim, virtue-signalling knee-jerk diktats controlling cafeteria menus may cost the Earth in other ways, and not just because of the quinoa.
Fortunately, the student union plan doesn’t include the dining halls of individual colleges. And if the queues at the kebab van on the Market Square, and the greasy spoon near Trinity College are anything to go by, I’m sceptical of the true depth of feeling among the student body. For now, Cambridge meat-eaters can probably relax.
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