@NigelNoFriends There are two concerns here: the first is that growing children need plenty of protein in order to grow properly. I understand that it is possible, if difficult, to get plenty of protein on a vegan diet, but a regular vegetarian diet supplemented with fish and eggs would be better. (A chicken lays eggs most of her life, regardless of whether any are ever fertilized or not. Commercially sold eggs are unfertilized, so there is no question of taking a life, here.)
The other issue is getting enough of the right kind of fat. The brain is mostly fat, and a high percentage of that fat is cholesterol. Plant sterols cannot substitute for cholesterol, which is an animal fat. Cholesterol is essential for the formation of cell walls (this is true of every cell in the body), it is the precursor for important hormones, including testosterone and progesterone, and it is the precursor of vitamin D and many other important chemicals used in the body. Cholesterol also plays a role in the immune system. But the main reason lack of cholesterol affects the brain is that it is essential to the formation of the myelin sheath of neurons, and it plays a role in the transmission of nerve impulses.
The Seventh-Day Adventist reasons for avoiding meat and eating only vegetables are based on the idea that men who eat meat become lustful and sexually out-of-control. I suspect Ellen White may have had some unpleasant experiences as a girl, from which she drew the wrong conclusions. Her position also echoes the neo-Platonist strain that runs through Christian theology (i.e., spirit good, body bad) and ignores the mainstream of Judaeo-Christian thinking (God created the material world and called it good).
The moral argument that eating meat involves the taking of life ignores the killing of the many small mammals whose homes are destroyed when land is tilled. That mono-cropping is an ecological disaster is also well-known, and the soil depletion from cropping requires the use of fertilizer made from fossil fuels, which needs to be considered in the carbon footprint of growing crops.
The inhumanity of the current industrial meat-production practices is undeniable. We definitely need to reform our methods. Along these lines, Alan Savory and Peter Ballerstedt have some very useful points to make. But I see no moral wrong, as long as we treat our animals humanely. We can’t escape the reality that all life lives off other life, but we can at least treat our animal’s sacrifice reverently and with respect.
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