Can Flexitarians Save the World?

Mark Bittman thinks so. He’s the author of the popular New York Times food column “The Minimalist” and the best-selling book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating. In the book, Bittman proposes a simple plan for eating healthier and saving the planet at the same time: VB6 (which stands for “vegan before 6 p.m.”).  In other words, eat all vegan meals (and also hold the white flour and sugar) before dinnertime, after which you can eat pretty much whatever you want. But he believes that if you get into the habit of eating healthier foods most of the time, you’ll eventually start eating better after 6 p.m. too.

Bittman’s mantra is that we should all be eating more whole, fresh, seasonal, homemade foods—and we should be eating lots and lots of fruits and vegetables and other plant-based foods too. His epiphany came when he read the U.N. report Livestock’s Long Shadow,  which lays out in no uncertain terms just how devastating the meat industry is to the environment.  “It’s not sustainable to raise all the meat we raise now,” he told the Toronto Globe and Mail. “No matter which way you raise it, it’s not sustainable.”

At the same time, the 57-year-old foodie was battling a variety of health problems that are all too common among middle-age people today: He was overweight, he had sleep apnea and tricky knees, and his cholesterol and blood sugar levels were too high. He decided to do something about it, and the result was VB6. After eating a mostly vegan diet for several months, his health problems largely resolved themselves: He lost 35 pounds, his cholesterol and sugar levels returned to normal, and his sleep apnea disappeared.

If you’re like me, you may be thinking, “Why stop at 6? Why not go vegan around the clock?” As PETA director Kathy Guillermo puts it, “Being a flexitarian is like smoking two packs of cigarettes instead of 10, beating one pig down the slaughter ramp instead of two, and pouring a pint of gasoline down a drain instead of pouring down a gallon.”

For some people, the idea of going vegan “cold turkey,” if you’ll pardon the expression, is daunting. But they can wrap their heads around the idea of eating vegan most of the time. Along with Michael Pollan, who perhaps inadvertently got the whole “flexitarian” movement rolling with his influential book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma,  Bittman seems to have captured the imagination of people who, shall we say, have commitment issues.

Perhaps coincidentally, vegetarian and vegan meals seem to have leaped headlong into the mainstream. It’s hard to open a women’s magazine nowadays without finding more than one—and sometimes more than half a dozen-vegetarian recipes. Heck, even tofu seems to be enjoying the spotlight.

Could this be the work of Bittman, et al? Or is it just the culmination of years of hard work by PETA and other pro-animal and pro-vegan groups? Or could it be a combination of the two?

What do you think? Is flexitarianism a good thing or just not quite good enough? Share your thoughts below.