Why Have We Declared War on Farm Animals?

I've finished reading Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet, and let me tell you, this girl is anything but clueless. She has this incredible way of summarizing every single reason why going vegan is the best thing for you to do and for the planet (and I don't even believe in global warming, but I do believe factory farmed food is doing lots of harm to it and our animals.) Unless you have the heart to slaughter your own cow, I don't think you should be eating one. And yet the U.S. slaughters more than 90,000 cows a day. 90,000 divided by 24 hours equals by the time you have finished that hamburger and washed it down with a coke, 3,750 cows were mercilessly murdered to appease our ceaseless, misdirected hunger.  By the time you take a few bites of hamburger in one minute, about 63 cows get hanged. As Jonathan Safran Foer says in Eating Animals, that's war. We have declared war on all cows, pigs, chickens, and fish everywhere.



They have no defense, no say, and for some reason cats and dogs are spared. Why don't we eat our dogs?  Foer and Silverstone challenge. (Actually, euthanized dogs and cats get converted into livestock feed. Didn't know that, did you? Those cats and dogs are being eaten by cows, so we are pretty much eating euthanized cats and dogs if you want to be technical about it.) So please, if you don't think you could kill the animals you eat yourself, then you probably shouldn't have any business eating them. Oh, but they're so healthy for you, our government proclaims. You gotta have meat and drink milk to be strong. That's hogwash, though, and it only takes a little digging to find out the truth. The establishment uses fear-mongering to make us worry about how much protein we're getting. We're all so obsessed about where our protein is going to come from. If you don't eat meat or dairy, then how can you get your protein? Well, as Silverstone brilliantly points out, the official term for the clinical disease of protein deficiency is called kwashiorkor. Never heard of it? That's because it's obviously not a danger. As The China Study clearly points out, what is a danger is the exact opposite: having too much protein in the system is what can kill us and does kill us daily. While my dad was visiting us here, he perused the book and was convinced. He was worried about having too-low of a cholesterol, but after reading The China Study he saw there was no reason to worry and that eating eggs and dairy was also a lose-lose proposition.



Forks Over Knives just came out in theaters and covers all of this as well. The evidence about the dangers of eating animal protein is irrefutable. Even if animal protein was good for you, declaring war on these animals is our modern-day, post-war tragedy. Don't think for one minute that an animal before slaughter does not feel any fear. And that very fear stays right there in the meat. Cortisol levels get jacked up just before slaughter, and then we eat them. It's scary meat. We are eating fear. There are much better things we can eat, many more kind foods out there. Please take the time to learn about them so you can make the right choice at the dinner table.

Eat B(right),
Veggie Daddy

Overconsumption of Animal Protein Leads to High Blood Pressure

"Researchers say the pace of weight gain was both dramatic and disturbing."


No kidding.

What this article does not say is that eating and drinking too much animal protein is the main cause of this. You can read all about why in The China Study.

Why We Eat Crap: The Luciferian Bling-Bling

I don't usually go to the grocery store but I happened to yesterday, and I am just in awe of all the non-food that tempts us on just about every aisle in the store. It is so easy to just walk up and grab anything off of the shelf that promises to give us enormous benefits if we eat them. You have spaghetti that is reinforced with Omega 3's, packaged, sugar-laden cereal that promises to have loads of fiber and Vitamin C, Kraft Peanut Butter that is not peanut butter at all, and too many other non-foods to mention. But that is what they are: non-foods. And they are very attractive. And we are throwing them into our grocery carts day after day, hour after hour. We are completely buying into the bluff.

But can we really be blamed? Of course not. We're only human after all. Who can resist a nice, cold Nestle Toll-House ice-cream sandwich on a hot day when offered? Not me...I love ice-cream, cookies, wine, beer. The list goes on and on. When tempted with the de-lish, it is so hard to resist. Especially when it is staring us in the face as we hungrily stroll up and down the aisles of a well-stocked grocery store. We are dazed, shocked, really, by all the "good" food we can eat. But it is not food at all. It is imitation, fake food. But it looks so good, so yummy for the tummy, we want to eat it anyway. We even (and this shows just how far gone we really are) want our kids to eat it, too. Not just that, but we think our kids should eat it. We think this food is actually good for them.

Let's call this phenomenon the Luciferian Bling-Bling, the art of razzling and dazzling your innocent subjects into dutiful submission as they blankly and thoughtlessly reach out for whatever it is that's being sold. It's not that we are stupid. We know deep down that buying Oreos and Pepsi for our kids might not be the best thing for them. Stocking up on chips, soda, and frozen, antibiotic-laden, dead red meat with nary a real food that awaits us in the produce section to be found in the cart--we know this isn't the best for us. So why do we do it? Because of The Luciferian Bling-Bling. We simply can't help it. Or can we?

We clearly aren't thinking. We are not conscious. We are forgetting that these food giants like Kraft and Del Monte really are jolly green giants, relative to us. They hold an exorbitant amount of power and wealth. And we buy into the shit they are selling. And though we know deep down the food they all but shove down our throats is killing us, we give them our money, every single day. Why not just cut the middle man out and pay them to kill us directly, scratch the food altogether.

But the Luciferian Bling-Bling goes even beyond the giant food companies. If you look closely (and most of us don't want to) you will see the L.B.B. is what threads the fabric of our modern civilization together, it is the lubrication that keeps the cogs, gears, and motors turning--in the name of progress. It goes all the way down to the meat and dairy boards, the F.D.A., the U.S.D.A., the history of North America, the history of big agriculture, Monsanto, global food shortages, big Pharma, jobs, jobs, jobs, wealth, wealth, wealth, power, power, power. And we are little peons getting crushed in their hands.

It's not a conspiracy. The knowledge is out there. Read The China Study to get a real good look at how consuming animal protein leads to disease and cancer. Read In Defense of Food. Read Fast Food Nation. Watch Forks Over Knives. Watch Earthlings. Watch Food Inc. and King Corn. The knowledge is out there. It's just that so many of us want to stick our heads in the sand and pray to God we don't get sick, though we know deep down the odds are becoming ever greater against us. It's that so many of us are razzled and dazzled by the Luciferian Bling-Bling. We have all but lost the trail back to Eden, a land rich with fruits and vegetables that had met all our needs. Now we have to be fed by Kraft. We feed our kids Kraft as well. We'll come up for air every once in awhile, reading the news headlines of how 1 out of 4 commercial meats are tainted or mad cow, or hog farm waste run-off. Three year-olds have high blood pressure now. We get briefly alarmed, but it isn't long before the Luciferian Bling-Bling takes a-hold of us, and we stick our heads back into the sand and eat crap. Thank god the crap we eat tastes so good or we'd be really screwed.

Eat B(right),
Veggie Daddy