Through the Twitter-sphere (not quite sure if that's a word...yet) I heard that Dr. Colin Campbell was going to be on Larry King Monday night so I set up the DVR. It wasn't until last night that my wife & I sat down to watch it. Actually, my wife watched a little bit Monday night and was anxious for my reaction to some of the comments.

The show was based on the "need" to eat meat (ground beef morely) in light of recent (and not-so-recent) deaths caused by e. coli. Larry had a panel conisting of two mothers, a grandmother and a lawyer (for one of the mothers). They were urging for more public awareness about what (harm) e. coli can do and how some producers of ground beef contribute to e coli becoming present in peoples' "food".

I had no real problems with what these people shared and feel bad for their loses.
What drew my interest was the dialog provided by the additional guests: Dr. Colin Campbell, Dr. Nancy Rodriguez, Chef Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Safran Foer.

Now I know that these people are restricted in the time in which they can answer questions, but out of the 4 I'd have to say that Dr. Campbell provided the clearest, most rational statements (and yes, I am biased...so what?).

Dr. Rodriguez appeared to be reading the same teleprompter over and over and over offering the public not much in information...just possibly causing some people to speculate who exactly funds her research.

Chef Bourdain, on the other hand very clearly spoke from his heart and offered nuggets of wisdom such as these:

BOURDAIN: I think we're -- if you look at our basic design, we are designed -- our design features are we have eyes in the front of our head. We have fingernails. We have eye, teeth and long legs. We were designed from the get-go, we have evolved, so that we could chase down smaller, stupider creatures, kill them and eat them.

BOURDAIN: Well, first, it's a silly argument. Cargill is America's largest single company, I believe. To blithely talk about, well, we can replace it with lettuce growing I think is a little ridiculous.

BOURDAIN: That said, I would counter Jonathan's argument just with one word: bacon. It's so delicious.

There's nothing I could possibly add to his argument...

I wasn't really that surprised that the ethical reasons for not eating meat weren't touched upon. I find that the mainstream media is real hesitant to even broach this subject. What does amaze me is that with all of the evidence that not only supports a plant-based diet being healthier for you and but clearly indicates that a diet "enriched" with animals leads to many types of disease, that people still just...don't...get it.