A recent debate with a vegan convinced me that I haven't been eating enough red meat.

Last summer, on a quest to better understand the fast food and meat-packing industries, I read Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation.” The book chronicled the rise of the fast food system, from its humble beginnings as an innovative restaurant style to the world-enveloping industry it is today. Since then, I’ve had trouble purchasing meat from supermarkets without understanding its origin. In short, I’ve been interested in — and terrified by — the world of food politics.

"Food politics?” Stand aside, restaurant critics — there’s food news to be told.

Wonder why consumers weren’t immediately notified when the peanut butter supply went awry? Is there merit to organics besides the higher price tag? And why the heck were strains of E. coli found in raw spinach? Welcome to the world of food politics.

Before reading Schlosser’s novel, I held a fairly stereotypical view of vegans and vegetarians. I thought of them as do-gooder animal lovers and PETA activists who wouldn’t eat meat because they couldn’t condone the killing of an innocent animal. I had also heard stories of vegans who were purists and didn’t want to put anything but untainted fruits, veggies and grains into their bodies. Others, I had been told, decided to forgo meat for religious reasons. A friend of mine, meanwhile, complained that vegans held themselves morally superior for their pro-animal choices.

While some vegans fit these claims, there is an entirely different point of view of veganism concerned with environmental issues, America’s overconsumption, worker’s rights and consumer health.

In short, environmental issues concern the state of the land and animals. As the fast food industry has grown, early “home-on-the-range” farms have given way to larger factory farms. More similar to chemical processing plants than grazing pastures, these “farms” have been known for raising animals in tight, uncomfortable conditions before sending them to slaughterhouses.

Aside from the strain put on the animals, the factories and the transportation involved in connecting them have had increasingly negative effects on the environment as the popularity of meat has grown. Factory-farmed animals are often raised on grain. Instead of the animals roaming for food, energy must be put into growing and harvesting their grain.

Another problem vegans and vegetarians try to combat is the overconsumption of meat products. Where we once sat down to one serving of meat or fish per day, facets of our culture have encouraged larger portions, like 12-ounce ribeye steaks. We’ve also been encouraged to dine on meat more frequently. McDonald’s thinks it can sell us a chicken biscuit sandwich for breakfast, and apparently it can.

Still, others are concerned with workers’ rights. If you’ve ever read an excerpt from Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” you know about the calamities involved in the meat-packing business. There’s an entirely different debate concerning minimum wage pay and the mishandling of unions by the fast food industry.

Finally, some consumers are just genuinely concerned about health. They are worried about the well-being of animals raised conventionally in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Animals raised in CAFOs are under more stress and thus more susceptible to disease. Some factory farms have been known to supplement their animals’ diets collectively with growth hormones and antibiotics. This raises even more debates; what effect do the hormones have on our bodies and what happens when bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics?

These views could not exist without attention to the other side of the vegan/vegetarian debate. Is it even sustainable to move from conventional farming back to individual farms? How much would the price of food rise? Never mind the price of food; would we even be able to produce enough food to feed ourselves?