The Vegetarian Myth’s many inaccuracies and misleading claims

The Claim (by Lierre Keith): "...there are no good plant sources of tryptophan. On top of that, all the tryptophan in the world won’t do you any good without saturated fat." And later Keith blames the lack of tryptophan in vegetarian diets for depression, insomnia, panic, anger, bulimia and chemical dependency. (P. 10) In Reality: A cup of roasted soybeans contains nearly three times the adult RDA of tryptophan and a cup of pretty much any other bean will get you between 50-60% of the RDA. Two tablespoons of coconut oil more than meet the adult saturated fat RDA. Nuts, dark chocolate and avocado are all rich in saturated fat.

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Except from IndyBay.org: We don’t need pie to humiliate Lierre Keith. As anarcho-primitivists and Weston A. Price followers condemned all vegans as violent psychopaths after Keith’s recent encounter with a spicy pie this weekend, a handful of animal rights activists were peacefully distributing leaflets that strongly disputed some of The Vegetarian Myth’s many inaccuracies and misleading claims (available below). Her book is a dangerous collection of straw man arguments, poorly-sourced pseudo-science, and outright lies. Discrediting the book will be easy, but it will work best with many people working together. To accomplish this, we have purchased the domain www.VegetarianMyth.com and will soon be launching a closely-moderated wiki (or similar site) to crowd-source the vegan critique of the book.

I thought the vegans who threw the pies were brainless zealots. I am no longer calling myself vegan or quasivegan. I think I will call myself an agent for the vegetable lobby. Come to think of it, where are all those kale lobbyists on Capital Hill?