Well....first, I don't appreciate that "vegan" is not considered a diet, it is a politics. So if you happen to have a "vegan" diet with some sustainable, free-range, organic meat when you feel your body needs it, it's extremely strange to say "I'm vegan but eat meat."
I am not extreme in my beliefs; I like the idea of veganism, but in practice, it doesn't work for my system.
Some of the side-effects for me of being vegan (for a year):
1. overate trying to get ...whatever it is.
2. brain didn't work as well--stupid.
3. very low energy compared to what I was used to (particularly stamina was vastly decreased).
4. depression
5. dream about eating meat.
I'm not willing to sacrifice my energy, mind, and body to an ideal. (I don't know that it *is* an ideal, since soy is usually such a high portion of the diet). I think it can work for some people, but it doesn't work for me. So now, I eat sustainable, grass-fed, pastured, humanely raised, organic (fed what they are meant to eat) meat whenever I feel I need it. I wish exclusively, but there aren't many sources of pastured (Marin Sun Farms, & Prather Ranch have them) and humanely raised. The funny thing about all this "sustainable, grass-fed, pastured, free-range, organic, humanely raised" is that this used to be taken for granted. And with marketing, the words are being taken over to mean something else. For example "free-range" often means that there is a door for the chickens to go outside of the huge chicken coop--which they never use, because they aren't allowed out as chicks...etc.
As far as sustainability, I don't like how soy & corn monocropping is destroying the farmlands in the midwest. Mono-cropping is when you have hundreds of miles of one crop. And then you get pests, because, well, YUM! Then you have lots of pesticides, which flow into the riverways & pollute our water. I suppose we'll see what happens, but I don't want to support those.
It's the same with cattle and pigs, and chickens. The Concentrated Feedlots (mmmm, doesn't that sound healthy) are mono-cropping with animals. I strongly feel that Americans' demand for meat must go down. It used to be a chicken a week was enough--meat every single day for every meal is not normal, and as we are seeing with the obesity (among subsidized corn and other factors), it is not healthy!
The Concentrated Feedlot Operations (CFOs) for cattle/beef production as well as other animal CFOS are destroying our environment--the poop is concentrated in such form that it is toxic and flowing down to the rivers and our waterways. From the air this is particularly obvious. We really need to push for sustainable food sources--polyculture farms. And our demand for meat needs to decrease to reasonable levels. The cattle & chicken waste, for example, are necessary to replenish the soil, when it isn't so concentrated as to become toxic.
