Should we be eating animal flesh? It's a huge, vast topic to which books, organizations, videos, websites, careers, and life purposes have been devoted. The diversity of opinions expressed among them is as wide as it could be, from "lots of meat or dairy every day" to "avoid animal products whenever possible." Of course, there are some half-baked ideas out there, but even among the well-researched works and well-credentialed experts the recommendations are widely diverse.

Some vegetarians jumped ship for the "eat right for your type" concept promoted by Peter D'Adamo, ND, which says people with type O blood must consume animal products for good health, though denouncements of it point out that it has all the traits of the latest fad and no good science behind it. Still, some vegetarians say they feel great when they add back meat and dairy. (Consult Eat Right 4 Your Type or www.dadamo.com for more explanation; opposing views by Michael Klaper, MD, at www.earthsave.org/health/bloodtyp.htm or in John Robbins's The Food Revolution.)

Some in the vegetarian camp are rethinking a protein staple, soy, given evidence it could be harmful unless fermented (though its safety is also being defended). Fermented foods figure strongly in the recommendations of Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. Part cookbook and part erudition of why grass-fed meat and whole-fat dairy foods are essential to good health, Nourishing Traditions is based on the works of Weston Price, DDS. Price found those foods abundant in traditional societies with superb health around the world. His recommendation of whole grains and unprocessed, fresh foods speaks to vegetarians, too (www.westonaprice.org).

Still, going without consuming animal products, or doing so only rarely, is alive and well as a dietary choice. Research-and-documentation rich works like The Food Revolution and Diet for a New America by John Robbins (and at www.earthsave.org) and others, as well as ethical, spiritual, and ecological considerations, continue to argue for a vegan or vegetarian choice. Locally it is manifest in restaurants, organizations, websites, events, and residents.

So, should we be eating animal products? This article doesn't propose to answer that thorny question. Instead of point-counterpointing through that discussion, recounted here are snippets of real-life "dietary journeys" from area residents who shared their stories with me. I thank all of them and apologize for the brevity herein of their much richer stories. Apologies, too, to all you readers with equally interesting tales.

Like many of us, Kirk Weiler of Red Hook was brought up on meat and potatoes. But he became a vegetarian at college. "My freshman year, many of my friends were experimenting with vegetarianism. So, I did it as well. My sophomore year, someone had me read Diet for a New America. It was very instrumental in my decision to become vegan for two years." But he says he "wasn't eating all that healthfully—lots of potatoes and ramen noodles." And while he believes it is possible to eat well as a vegan, he had little free time to be creative with it and a limited budget. He added a little dairy, then, as a graduate student, "started learning more about the role of animals and, more importantly, animal nutrients in sustainable agriculture. I started to realize that eating locally produced beef was probably healthier for the environment than eating bananas produced in South America." Eventually, he says, "seafood was my downfall. That led to eating more types of meat—locally produced, mind you." He adds, "I could see becoming a vegetarian again" at some point.

Meat was central to Jerry Cook's childhood, too. "A typical day would include animal products for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a dairy product for late night snacks." Cook is a health counselor, nutritional therapist, and cohost of the Meat Free Zone website with its founder and creator, Andy Glick of Woodstock (www.meatfreezone.com). Cook now attributes recurrent physical problems he had to the animal products. "They were making me feel sluggish, bloated, constipated, and I had abdominal pain, and still felt nutritionally unfulfilled." At age 45, his declining health coincided with meeting "several diet gurus who seemed to appear just as I needed them. As I learned about the harmful effects of flesh eating, I quickly changed to a vegetarian diet, and a few months later I removed dairy and eggs from my plate. I felt more energy than I had in years. Living a vegan lifestyle has been one of the best decisions I have made for myself." Cook's choice also reflects a deepened respect for animals. "I would never consider going back to eating a sentient being."

Judi Gelardi of Milan has been vegetarian, sometimes vegan, nearly all of her life (she's a grandmother). "As a young child I just could not eat meat. Chicken was the first thing that disturbed me because it looked like part of your body—a wing looked like an elbow. My parents never forced me to eat it, and being Italian, we had a lot of pasta and a good selection of vegetables. It wasn't like I didn't have foods to eat." She does understand, though, that people might feel they are giving something up to go without meat. Today, she keeps a vegan household because of "the cruelty involved in eggs and dairy" as well as in factory farming to produce meat. "I can't imagine eating flesh from an animal that suffered so much." Her 14-year-old son agrees and has always been vegan (except for a rare slice of pizza when among peers). She hasn't any nutritional worries about him. "He takes a daily regular multiple vitamin, that's it. He's a very healthy kid."

As popular advice about dietary choices sway back and forth like seaweed in the current, proclaiming one thing, retracting another, what are we to do? Just go with our gut?

Well, yes, and our whole body's wisdom. "Each individual has to figure out for themselves what kind of foods work the best," counsels Marie Lumholtz of Olivebridge, trained as a live food chef and food counselor. Her dietary choices progressed from "not being conscious about what I was eating" years ago to vegetarian, then vegan, then to only raw/living foods, to now: "I don't really believe that one way of eating is better than another. It's better that you hone in on listening to your own body. When I got pregnant, I had to totally revisit how I ate. I was primarily eating vegetarian, but started craving meat to an extent I couldn't believe. Rather than fighting it with my mind, I went with it, eating a lot of things I hadn't for years."

Lumholz, who now does a short meditation to perceive what she needs at a meal, acknowledges that's unusual. "We're not taught to listen to what our own bodies need," she says. Instead, "we look elsewhere—the low carb diet, the high protein diet, finding comfort in foods we grew up with. This country is a big meat-eating country—no wonder Dr. Atkins is so popular. He gives us permission to eat the foods we did as children." As for other popular diets, "They might be tuned to your body's needs at some times, but not others. I don't think any of them holds the truth, really, for everybody."

Barbara Banfield opened her popular restaurant, In the Raw, in Woodstock about a year ago to serve vegan organic foods—nearly all raw (cooked below 110-115 degrees). Once a meat-eater, Banfield as a child "ate more meat than anybody in my family—and raw meat back then, too." But about 25 years ago she learned how veal calves and other meat animals are treated. "I couldn't eat meat anymore after that," She didn't miss it at all. But during an exhausting phase in life—finishing graduate school, working, doing an internship, trying to get pregnant, then going through a divorce—she consulted a naturopath, who encouraged her to eat meat, because Banfield had type O blood. Reluctantly, she did so. "I gave a lot of thanks to the animals [that she ate] to regain my health. But after a few months it just didn't feel right ethically." She had seen cattle farms in the Midwest during a drive across the country. "It was horrific to see the cows all piled in together in the heat—it was the first time I had seen it in person, and there is no way I could eat meat again." Now she is nearly vegan (she enjoys goat's milk cheese on occasion) and chooses raw foods because "live foods have intact enzymes that aid our own digestion" and she "feels clearer and lighter, not just physically but mentally and spiritually."

Some vegetarians don't envision going back to meat unless their lives depend on it. "When I was 34, after 15 years of being vegetarian, I was dying of spine, liver, and uterine cancer," recounts a friend, Pamela. "I refused medical treatment because I was just so bad [she weighed 62 pounds]. Then I met a man who cured himself of cancer by eating everything raw, including fresh raw meat and fish." Pamela was willing to give it a try. "During the first year I ate pretty much only fresh ground beef and oranges." That's all her body could handle. Gradually she could eat more. "I ate three pounds of raw meat a day for six years. In seven years I was completely well."

She's in excellent health now, 17 years later. "I eat a lot of protein, fresh salads, fruits, lightly steamed vegetables, my own fresh farmer's cheese from goats' milk. But I have made a very important effort not to be rigid about what I do. That wasn't my point." Pamela's earlier choice to be vegetarian was an ethical one, but she recalls "I craved meat all my life, three times a day, even as a child. To be vegetarian, I forced my body to do differently." Pamela has come to accept that she is a carnivore by nature and still eats her meat raw most of the time—about half a pound a day. "Most of the time I buy it at Whole Foods or local organic meat," she says, "but I've eaten raw meat all over this country from many different sources [including ordinary supermarkets], and I've never had any problem"—except she eats only organic poultry and eggs.

Roberta Schiff, President of the Mid-Hudson Vegetarian Society (www.all-creatures.org/mhvs), invites people to join them and experience a vegan meal. "You don't have to be a vegetarian to belong, just eat like us when we eat together." She has been vegetarian for 12 years, vegan the last five. "I'm type B [blood group], one of the ones who is supposed to eat meat, but I would never go back. I feel so much better." She originally went vegetarian as she "learned that many of the chronic diseases of developed countries—cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity—are more prevalent among meat eaters. As I learned more, I discovered that the way animals are factory farmed today is done with a lot of cruelty, in overcrowded conditions, using an unnatural diet, and the slaughterhouses are horrific. I made the choice not just for me but for animals."

Debra and Peter Maisel opened Luna 61, a vegetarian restaurant with many vegan foods, over nine years ago in Red Hook. "We felt animals did not have to suffer for our simple enjoyments," says Debra. "You can make complete proteins with rice and beans. Tempeh, seitan, and tofu are excellent choices for any high protein meal. Luna 61 has endured the Atkins craze, eat for your blood type, and all the other high protein fads." She knows people diagnosed with illnesses such as cancer who are told to eat a plant-based organic diet, free of the hormones in meat. "There is life after meat," Debra adds.

For Andy Glick, founder of the Woodstock Animal Rights Movement and creator of Meat Free Zone, studies of Eastern religions and cultures during college sparked his interest in veganism. "I tried it on and off over the years but didn't get really serious about it until around 1989. From that point on I became a strict vegan for ethical reasons. Over 10 billion animals a year are slaughtered for food in the US alone (not including marine life) and even those on organic 'free range' farms may live a slightly better short life but end up at the same gruesome slaughterhouses. I have never looked back or wavered," he says about his vegan choice. "Also, for the past 16 years I've followed closely all the medical and nutritional aspects to a plant-based diet...and I'm fully convinved that a 100 percent plant-based diet is by far the healthiest." Glick now is a certified Health Counselor specializing in Vegan Lifestyle Coaching.

Allow me this final comment: Consumers of meat and eggs from most sources—factory farmed cows, pigs, and chickens—are party to a massive system of animal abuse. Sounds harsh, but there is just no way around that reality. Many pro-meat advocates point this out, too. The evidence is available in books (e.g., Mad Cowboy; Slaughterhouse; Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs), on video (Meet your Meat; Peaceable Kingdom), and online (www.factoryfarming.com; www.bancruelfarms.org/meatrix—this last is a clever cartoon).

Vegan Outreach, an organization devoted to reducing animal suffering, seeks to reduce that by promoting veganism. But meat consumers could become the strongest advocates for humane treatment of food animals. If they knew how their meals grew up and made it to the table, perhaps their outrage would derail the system, demand its remodeling in a more compassionate incarnation, and make the flesh of the day easier to swallow.