This is awesome. Thanks, nice farmer!

We vegans get so high and mighty about our lifestyle, and our cause. Is there a chance that we are a bit misguided? Maybe it’s a little silly to combat animal cruelty by abstaining from granola with honey in it. Bear with me here. You can probably guess what conclusion I’ll come to, given where this blog is being posted. But I think it’s worth it to take another look at ourselves and figure out if we’re making the best choices, or if there are other movements out there that have just as much merit.

A goal of mine since going vegan has been to show others how normal, sensible, and easy it is. A plant-based lifestyle makes perfect sense to me, and it has never been about being punk, being different, or a looking cool. I do have some counter-cultural leanings, but that is not my motivation for making solid ethical choices every day. I consider myself a thinking man. I do my share of finger-pointing, but I believe we should all take responsibility for our consumer choices. If there’s a big floating island of plastic in the Pacific, we shouldn’t just whine and say this government or that corporation should clean it up- we should each make an effort to use less plastic and put it in the right bin when it’s useful life has passed. Same thing for veganism. While we need to do everything we can to make the system better, we can’t just go on consuming animal products and hope Big Food comes to its senses. Our food system is a big steaming mess. My personal solution is to opt out whenever I can: buy organic, local, and independent, and avoid animal products altogether. That feels good to me. It feels like the right thing to do. But maybe it’s not the only route?

Read the rest of this entry →

An open letter to dudes who think it’s manly to eat something that somebody else killed… (language NSFW)

Dear dudes,

What’s so manly about paying a few bucks to have a giant corporation torture and dismember peaceful herbivores? OK, OK… biased question. But you see what I’m getting at. How long are we going to let this myth go on that eating meat somehow makes you more of a man? I realize that you don’t really think about this much, but maybe you should? Frankly, when I see a man who so easily submits to his evolution-based cravings for fat and salt, I see a weakling. When I read about Americans getting fatter every year, while meat gets cheaper, I see a bunch of sheep. When I think about all of these frat-dudes drinking beer and eating Big-Macs, I think they must all be gutless followers of advertising campaigns.

What is manly about meat? Seriously. It’s 2011. None of you steak-eaters are out there stalking and hunting for your prize. And how hard would it be to kill a fat cow anyway?

Read the rest of this entry →

Mark Bittman is a food writer for the New York Times. He enjoys corned beef and says he’ll never stop eating animals. But he gets it. We should not be eating as many animals as we do. Meat and junk food are killing us, and their production is needlessly polluting and warming our planet. He may not worry too much about animal cruelty, but even a food writer is begging: eat less meat, eat more plants.

Video from the TED talks series at www.ted.com – a lot of good stuff up there.

The RIGHT kind of food porn. And chock full of tempeh bacon - see, no pigs necessary.

It’s time for Saturday STFU, a round-up of things we’re sick of this week!

(Ok first, I’m not promising that this will actually be a weekly thing, since that would require dedication and work ethic and shit; and second, why yes, this IS a blatant ripoff of Vegansaurus!’s WTF Wednesday feature!  Don’t read their blog?  Go, read, now.)

Read the rest of this entry →

What is wrong with me? Why do I keep posting these things in favor of the meat-eaters? I’m supposed to be a veganism advocate, not a meat apologist. I just can’t help myself. I guess the reason I check out these headlines is the same reason I ended up becoming vegan: I like to know all the angles.

Really, I love to read articles defending milk, meat, eggs and whatnot because I love to see how flimsy the arguments are and figure out how they even made it to print (what Big Ag lobby is behind this?). I also like to be honest with myself and explore my lifestyle choices fairly and realistically. So I was excited to see that NPR aired a story on Monday about how our ancestors’ foray into eating meat made us the intelligent creatures we are today. I can just see the “ethical meat” eaters salivating at the sight of the headline: Food For Thought: Meat-based Diet Made Us Smarter.

2.3 million years ago, our ancestors got around to gnawing on carcasses. Getting such a concentrated dose of calories and fat turned out to be advantageous. Eating meat made it possible for pre-humans to develop larger brains and smaller guts because they needed less time, energy, and stomach-girth to get their calorie needs. But it was cooking that really made things better for our ancestors.

Heating up foods made them easier to digest, killed pathogens on the food, and set our ancestors up to evolve into the amazing animals we are today. So I guess that’s that. We should be eating meat. Ethical meat eaters, you win… At least that would be a closing argument for some people. Not me.

I don’t deny that eating meat got us to where we are. That is as true as the fact that diets high in processed food and animal products are now making our lives shorter. It’s just not the point. We are intelligent beings now because we figured out how to make tools, kill animals, and harness fire. But how does that justify eating meat now? It doesn’t. NPR’s story doesn’t argue that, of course. Nobody who has really put any thought into it could even come to that conclusion. Even the scientist in the story is a vegetarian.

We are past the point of needing meat. We don’t need it to survive, get smarter, save time, or make a leap in evolution. These days, it is just a taste thing. We are wired to want to eat the salt and fat found in meats because that drive to eat calorie-dense food gave us an evolutionary advantage. Despite this natural urge, we can do just fine without dead animals. I honestly think I am better off without them.

Meat is easier than ever to get. It is also easier than ever to get fat. Despite goals to decrease the incidence of obesity in the U.S., it is still increasing in every state. With obesity come higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer. Certainly, meat products are not solely to blame. But I have a hunch they are a big part of the problem, not the solution.

What do you think? Is there still a case for meat?