Tag Archives: vegan humor

animal activism, animal rights, DXE, humor, vegan, vegan psychology

WHY THE VEGAN HEALTH ARGUMENT DOESN’T WORK

2 Comments

By Leslie Goldberg

It’s the old pitch: “heart disease, blah, blah, blah, diabetes, blah, blah, blah, cancer, blah, blah, blah, cholesterol, blah, blah, blah, obesity, blah, blah, blah, saturated fat, blah, blah, blah, arthritis, blah, blah, blah and on and on and on.

Their eyes glass over and then they say, “Protein, blah, blah, blah, calcium, blah, blah, blah, omega 3’s, blah, blah, blah,” and/or “My uncle ate eggs, steak and cheese every day of his life and he lived to be 117.”

And, maybe, maybe, maybe, “OK, OK, OK, I’ll try it.”

Another ex-vegan is born.

Actually, when you think of it, why would anybody think they could persuade anyone to do anything based on health? Have you ever gone to a birthday party and said, as the cake was being cut, “You know we shouldn’t eat this because it’s bad for us.” Or maybe, you’re at a ballgame and your friend is just about to bite into a hot dog and you say that could give you cancer or a heart attack.”

What about saying to someone who has just settled into a little TV watching that they should really be out there running?

I changed my eating because of the animals. I just couldn’t be a part of the holocaust. But I didn’t think other people would be moved to go vegan because of that. I pitched to friends’ and family’s self-interest. I talked about health and weight and I talked about health and weight some more. Talk, talk, talk, until it was suggested that I do something that is anatomically impossible.

The reason the health argument doesn’t work is that it depends on human will-power. Is there any power on earth weaker than that? Cheese, which contains an opiate called casomorphin, is actually physically addictive. It takes about 10 pounds of milk to produce one pound of cheese. “Like it or not, mother’s milk has a drug-like effect on the baby’s brain that ensures that the baby will bond with Mom and continue to nurse and get the nutrients all babies need,” said Dr. Neal Barnard, founder of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Cow’s milk is “mother’s milk,” folks, just not your mother’s milk.

In addition to addiction, animal rights activists are up against an inescapable, 24-7 barrage of milk, meat, dairy and fish advertising and lobbying. (Remember, if those stupid and insulting ads didn’t work, they wouldn’t spend billions on them.)

Recently I found another clue as to why the vegan health argument doesn’t work in an article by New York Times columnist Jane Brody. In it, she wrote about a new book by Michelle Segar called “No Sweat: How Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness.”

Segar, who is the director of the Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Center at the University of Michigan, told Brody, “Health is not an optimal way to make physical activity relevant and compelling enough for most people to prioritize it in their hectic lives.”

Brody went on to write, “Though it seems counterintuitive, studies have shown that people whose goals are weight loss and better health tend to spend the least amount of time exercising.

“Rather, immediate rewards that enhance daily life – more energy, a better mood, less stress and more opportunity to connect with friends and family offers far more motivation, Dr. Segar and others have found,” she wrote.

Doing the right thing, i.e., stopping the exploitation of animals in our daily lives is also something that offers immediate rewards. Suddenly a weight of guilt is lifted. Nothing offers a better sense of well-being than knowing you’re living in accordance with your deepest values.

Esteemable acts create self-esteem.

It’s not rocket science: When you’re doing shitty stuff, you feel shitty.

Animal agriculture is torturing and murdering animals – you would have to be living under a rock to not know that. It takes a lot of energy to keep trying to push away awareness. Become truly aware and whoosh! Feel the energy.

Yet, standing up for animals can be a lonely job in this society. And you might not feel that great arguing with family and friends. You might not feel that great not arguing with family and friends and keeping everything inside yourself.

Perhaps, try not arguing AND speaking up for animals. Something small. A friend of mine, Mike, works at a place where the management serves lunch. There’s nothing for him to eat so he goes out and gets his own food. When his co-workers would ask him why he did that, he used to say, “because I’m vegan.” Now he says, “I don’t eat animals.”

Mike has also found that the very best solution to the “Lonely Vegan Syndrome” is finding friends who are also working for Animal Liberation, ideally an animal rights group that gets together for not only protests, but for fun.

Last week I went to “Pizza Night” at the Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) House. I had several kinds of pizza including some chocolate, banana and brown sugar pizza (I hate that expression, “to die for,” but in the case of that chocolate pizza it seemed right on.) The get-together was fun and a lot of friends were there as well as several newcomers.

It made my day. Well, that and going to the gym.

P.S. I once chatted with one of the godfathers of the vegan health movement Dr. John McDougall. McDougall has been in the trenches for decades. He knows what plant-based doctors are up against. He knows the truly depressing recidivism rates among people who try a vegan diet. I was talking with him about some animal rights activism I was doing and he said, “It’s you guys (meaning the animal rights acitvists) who are going to make this whole thing happen.”

– A Vicious Vegan blog post –

(By the way, my new book of humerous drawings, The Sex Lives of Cats, has just been published. Check it out here.)

animal activism, animal rights, vegan

PETA SEDUCING VEGANS

1 Comment

By Leslie Goldberg

Why does PETA insist on using exhibitionist hotties in its campaigns? Is it to prove that animal rights activists aren’t stuck-up, no-fun, prudes? Is it to show how unbelievably sexy and attractive it is to eat plants? Is PETA trying to suggest that if you go vegan you’ll probably get a date with Pamela Anderson?

Yes, PETA is saying you will get to know Pamela personally if you go vegan! Or, if you like, you can become Pamela Anderson (try THIS green smoothie). At the very least you’ll certainly get to trade jokes with Ricky Gervais if you give up eating meat.

After I went vegan I got to stay at Paul McCartney’s house in England (yes, he paid for me to fly over there.) Whoa, was that fun! But maybe my most exciting plant-based experience was getting to go on Ellen DeGeneres’s show. Was that better than having dinner with Morrissey? Hard to say.

I like Morrissey and I like Tobey (Maguire). Still I did get kind of bored hanging out on the set of “Spiderman” eating vegan cupcakes. He made up for it, by giving me a mint copy of the first Spiderman comic.

Who cares about saving animals, lowering your cholesterol, losing weight, saving water and mitigating climate change? I want to go on a cruise with Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton – is he really a vegan? Well, not totally, which is why PETA will not hook us up. He says he occasionally eats salmon and sometimes eggs.

When you think about it, it’s a little scary – the once most powerful man in the world can’t be counted on to say no to eggs and fish. While you might want to applaud his efforts at going vegan, he’s also sending a message out there that being vegan is just too hard – even for the once most powerful man in the world.

I’ve come to realize celebrities aren’t always solid when it comes to pushing veganism. It’s really disappointing. I so wanted to go hiking with Reese Witherspoon! She was nominated by PETA to be the 2005 World’s Sexiest Vegetarian. It was lucky she lost, since the next year she was on the Ellen Show, cooking up some chicken flesh mess, saying “Everything’s better with bacon.”

The sketchiness of celebrity vegans or vegetarians gives me pause. That’s why when I get down to it, I tend to prefer some of the dead vegan/vegetarians for idolatry and advertising – Tolstoy and Einstein for instance. You’re not going to see them blowing it on “Dr. Oz.”

– A Vicious Vegan blog post –

animal activism, animal rights, humor, vegan

VEGAN MYTH BUSTED!

2 Comments

A popular vegan argument against dairy consumption has been revealed to be false!

The myth often repeated by die-hard vegans including myself is “Man is the only species to consume the milk of another species.”
Wrong.

A careful analysis of YouTube cute animal videos shows that there’s a whole lot of interspecies nursing going on. It’s not just cows nursing people!

If you’re online, you can see cats nursing baby squirrels; dogs nursing kittens; goats nursing foals; cats nursing puppies; dogs nursing fawns; cats nursing, yes, ducklings.

We’re not alone in our love for the milk of a different animal! (And who said YouTube animal videos are a waste of time?)

Not so fast. Several animal advocacy groups have already clarified the statement, pointing out: We’re the only species to consume the milk of another species as adults, on a regular basis.

Those tiny squirrels were in an emergency situation. Their mother, for some reason, wasn’t there. The cat took over, protecting them from starvation and death.

Especially for human grown-ups, milkshakes and Cheezits are not the only remedies protecting us against starvation and death. There ARE other things to eat in America. After all, we’re not baby squirrels, alone in somebody’s backyard, crying for Mommy.

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —

animal activism, animal rights, art, humor, vegan, vegan psychology

LETTUCE-MUNCHING DESPOTS

1 Comment

When it comes to image, Obama’s got the same problem as vegans.

One day, Fox news says he’s a dictator bent on closing down churches, taking everyone’s money and forcing kindergarteners to watch gay porn and the next day, he’s a namby-pamby and the secret owner of a pink sweater.

Same with vegans: one day we’re overbearing assholes trying to take over the world, giving the vote to cows, pigs and chickens and forcing everyone else to eat nothing but tofu and spinach. And the next day, we’re yoga-fied, space-cadets in need of hospitalization due to protein deficiency.

A friend of mine, also an activist, asked me, “Why did you call your blog, Vicious Vegan?”

“Oh, it was because I wanted to try and make veganism seem more cool – less New Age hippie and more punk.” I said, off the top.

Actually, Vicious Vegan is a joke, poking fun at the idea of vegans as cruel sanctimonious fun-killers or as militant threats to people and property. It’s also poking fun at the idea of the 90-pound, aroma-therapy sniffing, lettuce-munching vegan air head.

So the mystery remains: what IS the most ideal “vegan image?” Wow, that is such a Guy Debord kind of question!

Don’t know Guy Debord? I don’t really know either, but from what I understand, the French philosopher argued that our whole society is based on image. Even when you fight the pressure to have an image – you’ve got one: “the person who fights having an image” or “the rebel.”

Hopeless, huh? Oh those depressing French!

Well, the image thing is kind of important, according to Nick Cooney who wrote the super book, “A Change of Heart” where he argues that activists embrace a kind of image flexibility. If you’re talking to a group of stuffy businesspeople, put on a suit or a nice dress, for godssakes! Banish “fuck” and “shit” from your vocab. If you’re, say leafleting at a Warp Tour concert, that cut-up black T-shirt should work fine and you can say “shit” all you want.

Cooney insists that activists best to avoid an “us versus them” scenario, if you possibly can. So far, that tactic hasn’t worked very well for Obama. Maybe vegans will have better luck ducking the negative images society has for us.

Right now, though, I better stop writing. I’m feeling weak from protein deficiency. I think I should lie down and eat some soy nuts before I faint.

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —

art, humor, vegan

PROTEINISM

1 Comment

Wherever you go, vegan, you’ll hear the same question:

In Turkey: Nerede sizin protein, alabilirim? Or in Holland: Waar je je eiwitten? Or in Mexico: De donde obtiene su protein? WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR PROTEIN? There are so many smart-ass answers to that question, the mind reels:

From beer.

I chew on my fingernails.

It’s amazing how much protein there is in tree bark.

From drinking my own urine.

Bragg’s Aminos

Hershey’s dark chocolate.

Mostly from TV.

From licking my windshield in the morning.

Perhaps a better response would be to answer a question with a question, Socratic style: How much protein do you think you need?

Of course, practically nobody knows, but most people think they must eat some meat or cheese or fish or eggs with every meal in order to get enough protein. It’s the terror that has swept America: not having enough protein.

It’s been estimated that most Americans get about half of their calories from animal foods and about half come from highly processed foods like chips, cookies, sodas, candy and oil. So if that’s everybody’s diet, what are you, Ms. “plant-based, low-fat, whole foods diet,” eating, for god sakes?

Figuring out what a vegan might eat on a daily basis defies most people’s imagination. So they figure we vegans must be starving.

But wait a minute, we don’t look like we’re starving. Then we must secretly be suffering from an invisible lack of protein possibly coupled with a lack of junk food. Maybe vegans have kwashiorkor, which is the medical term for protein deficiency. (So far, there’s no medical term for ‘lack of junk food.’)

The thing is, the symptoms of kwashiorkor are anything but subtle – the skin and hair turn a reddish orange. People with the ailment also suffer from diarrhea, weakness, apathy, fatigue. When you see pictures of starving children with their stick-like legs and their bulging abdomens, you’re seeing kwashiorkor. The children are suffering from a severe lack of calories first and foremost.

If you’re consuming enough calories it is most likely that you’re consuming enough protein, even if all those calories are coming from plants.

Back to the original question: how much protein do you think you need? The answer kind of depends on who you ask. If you ask the United States government, you will hear 56 grams for men and 46 grams for women. If you ask the World Health Organization, you’ll hear 38 grams for men and 29 grams for women.

A generous bowl of cooked oatmeal will give you 12 grams of protein. A piece of whole wheat bread will give you 4 grams. A cup of cooked lentils will give you 16 grams. Two tablespoons of peanut butter will give you 8 grams. There are 8 grams of protein in a cup of cow’s milk and 8 grams of protein in a cup of soy milk. See where I’m going here? It’s not hard to get enough protein eating plants.

Whoa! you say. What was that about plant protein being an incomplete protein?

While both animal foods and plant foods have all the essential amino acids, some plant foods are low in specific essential amino acids. http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/protein.html The Center for Disease Controls recommends that vegans and vegetarians combine different plant foods, such as rice and beans or peanut butter and bread. Dr. John McDougall explains that combining is fine but it doesn’t have to happen at once in the same meal! Bread on Monday and peanut butter on Friday is fine, he says.

The National Institutes of Health has said that most of us Americans eat more protein than we actually need. The NIH cautions that consuming animal protein means consuming saturated fat and LDL (the bad kind) cholesterol which is a risk factor for heart disease.

They also note for those with kidney disease, a low-protein diet is often recommended.

So there’s really no worry about protein, as long as you gnaw on some tree bark on Tuesday and lick the windshield by Friday.

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —

animal activism, animal rights, art, humor, vegan

SLIMY VEGAN FOODS TO AVOID

Leave a comment

A lot of carnivores got pretty upset when they found out they’d unknowingly been eating so-called “pink slime,” (scraps from the slaughterhouse floor “sterilized” with ammonia). Some even wanted to go vegan after that…but, alas, they found slime in vegan food too!

Blech!

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you don’t have to eat slime to be vegan. Just avoid these foods:

1) TOFU. Yes, tofu, that white gelatinous stuff that sort of wobbles on its own has probably turned off more people to veganism than anything else. Once my dad was happily scarfing down tofu lasagna made by my sister-in-law. “Wow! This is great,” he said. “You like it?” she said. “I made it with tofu.” My dad swallowed seemingly with great difficulty and set his fork down.

Nobody has to eat tofu to be a vegan. Really, it’s not in the vegan rule book.

If slimy tofu turns you off, you’ll really want to avoid so-called “Silken tofu.” They should just call it “extra slimy tofu,” because that stuff will slide across a counter on its belly to the floor if you’re not careful.

I’ve used Silken tofu to make chocolate mousse. But if you don’t like sweet, chocolaty, light as a feather dessert that could compete with anything you’d get in France, have an apple.

Speaking of fruit. The slimiest of the slimy has to be the MANGO. Rich golden orange and as sweet as cotton candy, mango practically does the hula. But again, you don’t have to eat it. Have some watermelon.

Moving on to vegetables: don’t eat the OKRA. I don’t care if it’s fried, it’s still gotta an extremely high slime content.

2) Some would argue that ALL vegetables are slimy. No they’re not! Just eat the damn vegetables. Vegans, like everybody else, need them. (We also need whole grains, potatoes and beans.)

3) CHIA SEED DRINKS. Yup, they’re extremely slimy. Unfortunately, when chia seeds get wet they get slimy just like flax seeds do. First of all there’s no need to get them wet and make a slimy “drink” out of them or a slimy breakfast Jello out of them. You can eat them dry and maybe you should eat them dry: great source of omega-3’s.

4) NATTO. Fermented soybeans. You can not find vegan food more slimy than this, yet it’s a favorite in Japan. Definitely not a hit in America. Some American food writers charitably call it “an acquired taste.” Yet, Anthony Bourdain, a food writer not known for his graciousness or his charity, spat it out: “an unbelievably foul, rank, slimy, glutenous and stringly goop…if the taste wasn’t bad enough, there’s the texture. There’s just no way to eat the stuff.” There you have it. Americans who don’t like slime: Enjoy a great bowl of lentil chili instead.

5) COOKED MUSHROOMS. Nothing like chia seed drinks or Natto, but somewhat slimy.
Only a die-hard slime-a-phobe, would worry about them.

Yes, we vegans and vegetarians have our share of slimy foods, but at least ours aren’t made from the body parts of suffering cows, hosed down with ammonia and hidden in other foods. Gotta give us that.

Go veg!

– A Vicious Vegan blog post –

animal activism, animal rights, art, environment, vegan

THE BACON CLUB

4 Comments

With so many vegans and vegetarians running around these days, a lot of meat eaters are feeling really isolated and alone. So Smithfield Farmland, a pork producer, has come up with an idea to benefit one of the most beleaguered but growing segments of the population: bacon eaters.

“Bacon has seen its status in pop culture continue to rise,” said marketer Erin Turley to the New York Times recently. “Yet, up to this point there has not been a community to gather and share the love.”

But now we have the “Farmland Bacon Club!”

Smithfield Farmland, the creator of the club, is one of several pig killing companies owned by Smithfield. Yeah, yeah, that was the company that was recently bought up by the Chinese.

Anybody can join the club for free; just go to the website, Farmland Bacon Club. But brace yourself for a whole lotta fun. Not only are there all sorts of bacon ads to look at, but bacon games to play, bacon T-shirts to buy, bacon contests to enter, bacon slogans to chuckle over and, the best, bacon videos to watch.

One bacon video was of the world’s first “bacon wedding,” where a slightly debauched looking bride carried a bouquet of bacon. Wearing a bacon tie, the groom looked to be her perfect match. The background music? Heavy metal, of course.

Wow!

“We definitely see this as a long-term way to add value to our customers’ lives in a really fun way,” said another one of the Smithfield corporate types quoted in the article.

I wonder how eating bacon and sucking up bacon advertising would “add value” to anyone’s life. Studies show that eating processed meat like bacon actually shortens people’s lives. Maybe the knowledge that you’re not going to live that long makes you enjoy more what you’ve got left. Or maybe the exuberant eating of bacon makes you forget the animal abuse and the pollution caused by the industry.

Or maybe… eating bacon and laughing at those whimpy vegan types, makes one feel more like a man. “The bacon-lover demographic traditionally skews male,” said another pork marketer who was yacking to the New York Times, adding that the Bacon Club website also “aimed at women.”
Nice words: “aimed at.”

It’s a big bacon tent, folks. Smithfield not only invites women to join the club and spend money on bacon they even welcome vegetarians’ spending power! One such vegetarian, “Marla H.” was dubbed the June member of the month and crowned with the title of “vegbaconterian.” It was explained that Marla “revealed (on the website) that she’s a vegetarian who makes an exception for bacon. If that’s not love for bacon, we don’t know what is!”

Ok, I used to like to eat bacon, especially if it was kind of burnt. In a way, bacon is the perfect junk food: sweet, salty and greasy. It’s the kind of food that people get sort of addicted to, so addicted they start putting it in everything: chocolate, ice cream, peanut butter cookies. Or they start wrapping all sorts of food with bacon. County fairs sometimes sell bacon on a stick.

Maybe you’re thinking the Farmland Bacon Club is sort of like AA. That would definitely be a stretch.

“The Farmland brand is to pork what Tyson is to chicken,” said yet another suit talking to the Times. “We’re about every single piece of the pig.”

Except “the piece” that cries.

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —

animal activism, animal rights, art, environment, humor, vegan

ON THE “DON’T READ” LIST

2 Comments

Food activists, if you feel your positivity slipping a bit, here’s some books you don’t want to read:

1) “Meatonomics: How the Rigged Economics of Meat and Dairy Make You Consume Too Much” by David Robinson Simon.

2) “Whitewash: The Disturbing Truth About Cow’s Milk and Your Health” by Joseph Keon.

3) “Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry” by Gail Eisnitz

4) “Green is the New Red: The Inside Account of a Social Movement Under Siege” by Will Potter

5) “Comfortably Unaware: What We Choose To Eat Is Killing the Planet and Us” by Richard Oppenlander.

Each of these books in their own ways can scare and depress almost anybody in the veg world, or, for that matter, in the “real world.”

Let’s start with “Meatonomics,” which is not so much scary or disgusting as it is infuriating and frustrating. This jaw-grinder shows how the animal foods industry is totally ripping us off. You think the oil industry has it good with the feds giving them $10 billion in subsidies every year? Well, the animal food industry gets $38 billion in annual federal subsidies and that price tag doesn’t include all the environmental damage they cause.

Part of those tax-payer dollars go (of course) into corporate coffers. But another part of those tax dollars go to keeping the cost of animal foods relatively low. And those cheap prices for meat, dairy and eggs and relatively high prices for fruits and vegetables help keep the whole meat-eating thing in America going strong.

If you read that book (which I don’t advise) you will realize, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is the $1 hamburger.”

Another book which should be strictly avoided is the dreaded “Whitewash,” which is about the horror we euphemistically call the “dairy industry,” and how drinking milk, eating cheese and the rest can impact human health. A definite “don’t read,” unless you’re still eating cheese.

Next is “Slaughterhouse.” That book has been sitting on my shelf in the living room unopened for about two years. The reason I’m scared to look at it is that the very worst, most disgusting animal abuse described in “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer came from Gail Einitz’s “Slaughterhouse.”

“Green is the New Red” is another book that should be blacklisted by depressed vegans. In this book you’ll find out how animal rights activists who have engaged in nothing more than protesting, making speeches and property destruction have been tried and convicted in federal court as “eco-terrorists,” and are, as I write this, serving sentences in prison – some as long as 20 years!

“Comfortably Unaware” is a devastating book if you worry about the habitability of the planet. If you (stupidly) read this book the way I did you’ll acquire such handy information as “During every one second of time in just the United States alone, 89,000 pounds of excrement is produced by the chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, goats and cows raised and killed for us to eat.” You’ll learn how a big portion of global warming is caused by the livestock industry (more than the transportation sector.) You’ll also get the troubling realization that there’s actually no such thing as “sustainable livestock production” and that grass-fed cows produce twice as much methane as factory-farmed cows.

Ok, so maybe you’ve already read these books and you’re depressed as hell. What to do? As a person who is now Uncomfortably Aware, you’d be perfect to leaflet for Vegan Outreach! If you happen to live in a big city, it’s quite possible that they have a group of VO pamphleteers in your area. If not maybe you can start a group.

The great thing about leafleting is you’re actually doing something. Once you’re out there handing out leaflets you’ll quickly learn that the most successful leafleters are happy and if they’re not happy, they act happy. Acting happy can often lead to the real thing and it can lead to spreading the vegan word.

Another thing you might try is drawing vegan cartoons and posting them on Facebook. It can put you in a good mood. Well, it can also put you in a bad mood if nobody likes them. OK, don’t draw vegan cartoons.

I think the best joy-generator (besides large checks for money arriving in the mail) is exercise. I love, love, love that. Of course, there’s always vegan chocolate cake (Thank you Colleen Patrick Goudreau), vegan pizza, avocado sushi roll, lentil enchiladas, tofu lasagna and on and on and on.

Go vegan!

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —

animal rights, environment, humor, vegan

A YOGA STUDIO WHO BUTCHERS

Leave a comment

I don’t trust yoga studios. You never know what they’ll do – turn up the heat to 110 degrees or make you stand on your head. Now a New Hampshire yoga studio has come up with something way more heinous than a simple heat wave: a chicken slaughter demonstration.

The Be Well Yoga Studio has joined with a grocer, “The Local Grocer,” to do a “chicken processing class” at Mountain Flower Farm.

Doesn’t Mountain Flower Farm and the Be Well Yoga Studio sound like the nicest places in the world? How about “The Local Grocer?” Just so sweet. Just so local.

Oh no, it’s the “it’s-fine-to-kill-them-as-long-as-you-do-it-in-the-backyard” crowd. But first make them into pets and then kill them. Sort of realizing the horror of that scenario, one urban farmer I know trades her chickens to slaughter with another urban farmer friend. Voila! Nobody’s killing their own pets.

Some bloggers have gotten wind of the yoga chicken killing plot and are asking, hey what about ahimsa, the Hindu/Buddhist/Jainist principle of “Do No Harm?” And what kind of ghoulish yoga studio are you?

I guess they just couldn’t resist the new trend: butchering classes, the rage in quite a few places.

United Poultry Concerns, a group that is, well, concerned about chickens, turkeys and other feathered friends has joined in the protest, circulating this petition. Please sign!

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —

animal rights, art, environment, humor, vegan

CARNIVOROUS COOKING

1 Comment
My mom to my dad: “You can just stuff it.”

We never ate turkey at my house; we only ate “damn turkey.” The “damn turkey” was the one my mother cooked for various holidays.
Of course, it never occurred to anyone that we actually didn’t have to buy, cook or eat turkey at all. That option was not on our radar.

My mother hated the damn turkey because 1) It was huge; 2) You had to thaw it out in the bathtub; 3) It always needed to cook about two more hours than you thought it did and 4) Probably at a semi-conscious level she realized it was a dead animal.

She was disgusted with the damn turkey’s gizzard and neck and disgusted by the idea of stuffing its body. I think she would have filed for divorce if my father hadn’t agreed to stuff it.

Somehow I remember him sort of wrestling with the damn turkey in the kitchen sink with his arms up to the elbows covered with greasy anonymous gunk. It’s such a truly bizarre idea – putting food into the body cavity of a deceased bird.

I’ve never cooked a damn turkey. Probably my most hated Susie Homemaker experience was making meat loaf: putting the hamburger meat into a bowl, cracking an egg over it, adding some mustard and bread crumbs and squishing up the whole thing with my hands, with the meat mixture oozing out from between my fingers. I’d mold it into a “loaf” or whatever and blanket it with about a half a bottle of ketchup. I couldn’t wait to wash my hands and wash the bowl.

It was appalling but I never allowed myself to fully acknowledge appalling it was. Or to allow myself to think deeply about what I was touching – the ground up flesh of a cow, a cow who was an individual and a cow who had suffered unimaginable pain and fear.

The other meat cooking I despised was chicken. In my pre-vegan days, I would rinse off the chicken breasts with cold water and pull off the skin and the visible fat. But knowing what I know now about how unbelievably filthy chicken meat is, I probably would have wanted to put on a Hazmet suit and use straight bleach to disinfect it.

I don’t know if eggs are as dirty as chicken flesh, but they certainly are nasty. Am I the only one who’s noticed they smell like farts? Even during my meat-eating career, I had little inclination to eat eggs. The only time I liked them was when they were safely disguised in a chocolate mousse or in a crepe.

These days as a vegan, I eat honest chocolate mousse: melted dark chocolate chips, a drip of vanilla and silken tofu blended up in the blender and I’m a happy person for it.

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —