In this interview, host Maximus Mark introduces Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth, and explores her 20‑year experience as a vegan who ultimately abandoned the diet due to severe health deterioration. Keith explains how she initially adopted veganism at 16, motivated by ethical, environmental, and health arguments presented by peers, but later discovered chronic deficiencies that made the diet unsustainable. The conversation then shifts to soil biology: Keith describes soil as a densely populated living system, citing figures such as over a million organisms per tablespoon and billions per handful, and emphasizes that healthy soil requires a symbiotic relationship among plants, animals, and bacteria. She differentiates topsoil from deeper layers, noting that topsoil (the upper six inches) is the critical zone that supports plant growth, oxygen production, and ultimately all terrestrial life. Keith warns that modern agricultural practices are destroying this vital ecosystem, echoing indigenous perspectives that view soil and plants as kin. The interview sets the stage for deeper discussion on the moral, political, and nutritional critiques presented in her book.
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This podcast is proudly brought to you by maximusmark.com. Hey, hey folks, it's Maximus Mark. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Lierre Keith. Lierre is the author of The Vegetarian Myth, which is not just about vegetarianism, but the whole farming and agricultural system. It's an unbelievable book. Lierre has broken up the book into 3 main parts: moral, political, and nutritional vegetarianism. It is an amazing read and I highly, highly recommend it. Thus the reason I've been pumped all day, all week for this show. Lierre has spent a whopping 20 years as a vegetarian. Her actual experience experience with vegetarianism is why many consider her to be the world's leading authority on vegetarianism and its problems. 20 years is enough time to know if something works. Lierre has always stood for justice and compassion, and after writing The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre has been able to study the broader picture of the world's food supply. She offers insight and wisdom. I believe she definitely has some of the answers in regards to what should be done in the world with the world's food supply, a very important topic for anyone who eats. So with that said, let's welcome today's guest, Lierre Keith. Welcome to the show.
Well, thanks for having me on. I wish I could meet that amazing person you just talked about. That's very sweet.
You're too humble. All right, well, first question, probably the most obvious. Can you please share with our listeners your background, your story, why you're a vegetarian, and why after 20 years you found it unsustainable?
Right, well, first of all, I was a vegan. I was never a vegetarian. It was all or nothing for me. And I became a vegan when I was 16. And I think like a lot of people who decide to try that out, the reason is because I met some other vegans and they had some very compelling arguments about why this was a good thing to do. So it seemed, you know, from this package that I was presented that if I simply removed animal products from my diet, I could do all this great stuff. I could improve my health, I could save the planet, I could stop animals from being hurt, and I could provide food for hungry people. So it seemed like a really simple thing to do to solve all of those problems. So I took it up with, you know, the fervor of a teenager, and I did it for 20 years. The reason that I stopped was because my health failed catastrophically. And that is, you know, where the road ends if you do this long-term. There's just way too many deficiencies and there are way too many problems with this diet for it to be sustainable long-term. And I found that out to my great detriment. So that's one of the reasons I wrote the book book is that I really don't want other people to have to suffer the way that I did. It's really not for any good reason at all. You're not doing any of the things that this diet claims that it does, and you will in the end damage your body.
Awesome. Well, before we get into, I guess, the meat and veg of the interview, I just want to get some background on a few topics. One of the topics, not a lot of people obviously think about this all that much, but let's start with the soil. A lot of people don't realize that soil is very, very alive, or at least should be alive. People often don't think about this, but what does soil eat?
Soil, well, you know, soil is not, we think of this as being this sort of insensate, you know, dirt, and it's not. I mean, 1 tablespoon of soil can contain over 1 million different living creatures, and a handful of soil can contain over 1 billion living creatures, and a meter of topsoil can contain over 1,000 different species of animals. So, Well, yeah, it's hungry. And, you know, depending on which little critter you wanna look at, they eat all kinds of different things, but, you know, all of this together makes healthy soil. So you need plants, and at this point you need animals, and you need both of those to make healthy soil. And it's, you know, the bacteria that break that all down. And there's a great quote by James Nardi, who's a soil scientist, who says, "It's to the work of, it's to the bacteria of the world that," I don't know, I'm gonna get this exactly right, but he basically says that it's the bacteria of the soil that are constantly renewing our earth, and that without them, you know, there would not be life. And yes, they need to be fed. So, you know, they're eating all the other biological matter that falls upon them. And a lot of that is cellulose from plants, but you know, also animals. And we all play a role in that cycle, keeping that soil fed. I mean, the thing is that we owe our entire existence to 6 inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains. So when you take away that soil, it means that land life is essentially over, you know, there's nothing for us, you know, all those biological processes will grind to a halt and there will be nothing left. So no plants, no animals, no bacteria, and that means a dead planet. Well, life of the oceans might be able to continue, but certainly all land life, you know, that would not be possible without soil. So this, I think, is why a lot of indigenous people have these concepts of, you know, the soil and plants as our parents and our grandparents and our beloved kin, because that's what the soil did. The plants and the soil together created the topsoil, and they also created that, oxygen-rich environment that were really a cradle for animals like humans. So it's true, I mean, they worked on it for millions of years and, you know, finally the planet could support animals. So, you know, our lives are very precarious, it's really, we're dependent on these, you know, millions of other creatures that we can't even see. And by doing agriculture, we've been destroying all of that, and that's one of the big problems right now.
So just, just for so we can get some definitions for our listeners who might not be familiar, the difference between, I guess, normal soil and topsoil, could you just kind of differentiate the difference between the two?
Yeah, topsoil is like the top inches, like usually 6 to 8 inches of soil, and that's where almost all the biological activity happens. Beneath that, now topsoil can be a lot deeper, like in a prairie situation and grasslands. I mean, those are incredible plants. And they do an amazing job at building topsoil. So that topsoil can be 8 feet deep, 10 feet deep, 12 feet deep. In forest, it's a lot thinner. And of course, in things like, you know, tundras and other kinds of polycultures, it would be even thinner because there's not a lot of biological activity going on. But underneath that is just the subsoil, and that's mostly just kind of minerals and clay and rock and stuff like that, not a lot of biological activity, but it's in that top chunk, that's where everything's going on. And that, of course, is part of the problem, because when we do agriculture, we're destroying that, which means we're destroying all that biological activity.
