I challenge Portland Press Herald readers not to judge the rise of the plant-protein sector by the supposed fall of the animal-protein sector. I found Avery Yale Kamila’s Dec. 20 Vegan Kitchen column “Is meat-eating around the world trending down?” to be presumptuous.

The world’s problems (disease, climate change, etc.) cannot simply be solved by eating more vegetables and less meat and seafood. Name-dropping celebrities and politicians and trivializing farmers and processors, as Kamila does in her 1,600-word column, distracts readers from the real challenge: “How do we feed 10 billion people by 2050 in a sustainable manner with limited resources?”

We need better food, including animal protein, produced where it’s needed most, in places like sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where food security is most in question. Westerners switching to a vegan diet contributes nothing to the global food crisis, nor does it address disease and climate change if we ignore the food gap in the developing world.

Steven Hedlund
Saco

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