Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Zvonimir Atletic

Most of what I do up here on unvegan.com is all in good fun. Yeah, I love my meat and while you might think vegetables are the thing I hate most in the world, they are not. In fact, I hate a lot of things more than vegetables (usually Ohio State). Right now, one of those things is Monsanto.

By now you’ve probably heard of genetically altered foods, also known as GMOs (genetically modified organisms). It sounds like something from the future, but in fact GMOs are in many common foods we Americans eat every day. Foods like corn and soy are common forms of GMOs and these crops can be found in all sorts of other food items like beef, bread and chips.

But why is this a problem? Shouldn’t genetics be creating new, awesome superfoods?

In theory, yes. GMOs have been used to make crops resistant to weed killers (so that you can spray down a crop without worrying about killing the crop itself) and to make tomatoes stay firm while ripe. These seem good, but at what cost? This isn’t like Gregor Mendel messing around with peas in his backyard. Instead, methods like gene guns (which literally penetrate the nucleus of a cell), viruses and bacteria are exploited to alter the DNA of species. Better yet, a method of genetic modification involves incorporating antibiotic resistant genes into DNA. The result is that all cells reproduced from the original will be resistant to that antibiotic. Antibiotics, by the way, are used to make some of our most important medications (think penicillin). If I told you that your Doritos were created using a virus or an antibiotic resistant gene, would you want to eat them? Probably not.

This is the fundamental issue that has confronted Vermont, where a bill has almost passed that would require labeling of genetically modified foods. I say almost because a threat from Monsanto, also known as the agricultural devil, to sue the state of Vermont has slowed the bill down. This is quite literally a case of a massive corporation threatening to kill a bill with popular support. Monsanto claims that their foods are tested, and surely they are. Yet, so are foods containing peanut products and companies still have to label them as such. Vermont is not kicking Monsanto out of the sate or banning GMOs, all it is doing is attempting to inform consumers of what they are about to eat. It is no longer enough to say that corn is an ingredient, because “corn” is no longer descriptive enough.

And just to be clear, Vermont is not the one at fault for distinguishing GMOs from more natural foods. In fact, it was a man working for GE who opened up the floodgates. In the case of Diamond vs. Chakrabarty, the US Supreme Court ruled that Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty could patent the crude oil-eating bacterium he developed to treat oil spills. In case you’re a bit lost, this meant he quite literally owned the organism and any use of it. This paved the way for a slew of big agricultural companies to patent their seeds and crops. If a patented seed somehow blows in the wind to a neighboring farm, all crops that grow from it are property of whomever owns the patent. While the right to possess the rights to life is scary enough, this really comes down to the fact that big agricultural companies are distinguishing their crops as far as patents go – why not take it a step further and make them distinguish these crops on food labels? They’re asking for it anyway. I won’t get too much into the affect this patenting has on small-scale farmers of the world, but just know that like most corporate controversies, the little guys are getting the short end of the stick.

All moral and health implications aside, the issue really comes down to the fact that Monsanto is flexing more muscle than the state of Vermont. The best way to help is by spreading the word. Tell your friends (especially if they live in Vermont), boycott companies that use GMOs. Sadly, without labeling it is hard to tell who is using them, but if you buy any specific product pretty often, contact them to find out. Most companies are happy to tell you if they use biotechnology (a fancy word for GMO), they just don’t want them on their labels. Finally, you don’t have to be in Vermont to make a difference in this. Contact your state or national representative and let them know your concerns. If enough people make a stink about something, wheels get turning (it worked in the Trayvon Martin case, even if Zimmerman isn’t convicted).

If you’ve made it this far, odds are you’ll be fascinated and frightened by this documentary, The Future of Food:

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Say cheese and eat!

We humans have a luxury of constantly trying to make ourselves happy. I say luxury, because we are pretty much the only species to do so. All those other suckers are busy trying to survive and reproduce. Fortunately, red meat is one of those things that makes us happy.

This may come as a surprise, as red meat has been sustaining a lot of bad press lately, mostly due to a flawed report saying it is unhealthy. Rather than diving into the flaws of that report, which has already been debunked numerous times by much better writers than myself, I would love to get into the connection between meat and happiness.

I have long noticed a relationship between meat and happiness based on how freaking happy I am when I bite into a juicy burger or steak at the end of a long (or short) day. Leave it to the Australians to prove me right, as they found “…women who consumed less than the recommended amount [of meat] were twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety than those who regularly ate beef…” It is interesting that the study only included women, but I see no reason why the logic can’t extend to men.

There are only two issues I have with the study. First is that chicken and other non-red meats don’t seem to affect mental health. They don’t hurt it, but it is sad (no pun intended) to know they don’t especially help it either. Also, Australian meat is straight up better quality than American in that their cattle eat grass like they should and our American meat eats grains.  This lower meat may not have as much of an impact on mental health as the Australian meat does, but I’m willing to bet it still makes people happier than those on foolish beef-free diets. Also, we Americans can certainly seek out grass-fed beef if we are like me and really want it.

So with all this recent negative press about red meat, it is nice to know that it really has some good benefits. If you are silly enough to believe in the bad press, you seem to have a choice between long life and happiness. But note that that happiness involves chowing down delicious meat. For all you know, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow and die prematurely anyway, so you might as well die full. But if you are like me, and think the negativity around red meat is nonsense, then there is really no choice because I get to live on with both the physical and mental health that come from consuming red meat. It’s a good life, and I plan to enjoy it for a long, long time.

(via The Week)

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Drink up!

What’s that you say? You’re not getting enough beef in your diet? Join the club! But luckily, there is hope. We all know you can’t just go around eating steak all the time. Sure, it would taste delicious and you would live a long life, but it’s expensive at restaurants and tiresome to cook all the time. Fortunately, there are now beef straws!

Yes, these straws are little more than hollowed-out Slim Jims, but after Macho Man Randy Savage’s tragic death, someone had to revolutionize the cured beef industry. Enter Ben Hirko and Nathan Klostermann – two men who should surely be featured on Bud Light’s Real Men of Genius. The straw was developed mostly for use in Bloody Marys, but I don’t see why she should have all the fun. I wouldn’t exactly throw it in a Sprite, but perhaps milk or a Jack and Coke.

To get some for yourself, or to buy me some, head over to Benny’s Bloody Mary Beef Straw and get drinking.

The best part? When you finish your drink, you got yourself some beef to eat!

(via Gizmodo and Glasspiegel)

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More meat, Mr. Khan?

While some people still try to claim that meat is bad for you, I think just about everyone across the spectrum of vegetarianism can agree that meat is unquestionably healthier than cigarettes.  So when I read an article entitled “Meat Displaces Cigarettes from Bulgarians’ Diet,” I was nearly as happy as Khan Krum must have been when his Bulgarians defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Pliska.

The story goes on to describe other changes in the Bulgarian diet between 1999 and 2010, but the most important part to glean is that Bulgarians are now a healthier people, and it all comes down to meat.  I don’t have any statistics to prove it, but I’ll bet the Bulgarians that avoid meat are still smoking down cigarettes nonstop.  But let them smoke, we all know that the world will be rid of them soon enough.  If the smoking doesn’t kill them, their diet certainly will.

(via Standart News)

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Sitting on a pile of food.

What’s your favorite type of meat?  Is it beef, chicken or pork?  Or maybe it’s something cool and exotic like venison or rattlesnake?  What about horse?  Didn’t think about that one, did you?  Not exactly exotic, but also not exactly meat to most Americans.  Now, though, thanks to a little slip of legislation, the slaughter of horses for meat has been legalized in the USA.

Of course, just legalizing the process doesn’t mean people will start to eat horse meat.  It’s still thought of as pretty taboo, but why?  The French eat it, as do the Kazakh and other sweet Central Asian people.  Let’s not forget how much the Japanese love their horse meat.  Raw.  Or even as ice cream!  And if you want to get all high and mighty and say you’ve never eaten horse, I want you to prove to me that you never shoved a wad of dried up glue in your mouth as a kid and swallowed.  Yeah, that was horse.

Aside from the rite of passage of eating glue, I’ve gotten pretty close to eating horse meat by chowing down on the other half of the mule: donkey.  It was weird at first, but once I got down to eating, I found it to be an enjoyable experience.  You can read more about my donkey-eating here.

Plus, are horses really good for anything other than racing and movies about horse racing?  We have cars now.  And our own feet if we want to go somewhere cars can’t.  Or what about bikes?  Maybe they can’t go everywhere horses can, but they also don’t take giant dumps and you can walk behind them without fear of getting the crap kicked out of you.

So, government, I must commend you for allowing the slaughter of horses.  Bring on the meat!

(via CNN.com and the Holzmaniac)

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How could you kill a thing like this?

It’s happened before, and once again the vegans have used their love of vegetables to kill a baby.  Last time, it was the French, but now the vegans have brought baby killing into America.  Now, the baby-killing may have occurred in 2004, but just last week the killers were convicted of their heinous crime.

But how did they commit the crime?  By feeding the baby a diet of nothing more than soy milk and apple juice.  What do you think happens to a baby subsisting on such foods?  I’ll give you a second to guess…

If you guessed bronchopneumonia, emaciation, starvation and death after six weeks of life, you win!

So what will it take to teach these crazy vegans how to feed their babies?  The parents will serve life in prison, which will prevent them from killing anymore babies, but I don’t know if that is enough.  Maybe the Georgia Supreme Court should invoke the Code of Hammurabi and force an eye for an eye upon these people.  Food them only spy milk and apple juice and see if they can last longer than six weeks.

Now do yourself a favor and send this on to all the vegans you know to ensure they they don’t repeat the mistakes of their imprisoned brethren.  Only you can help save babies from vicious baby-hating vegans.

(via Yahoo)

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Is this the face of unvegan hatred?

It began with a simple Twitter @ reply.  You know the kind that happens every day.  But soon it spiraled into something no one could have ever seen coming.

It all started so innocently...

While perusing Twitter one evening, I found that a tweeter called @DrEthan725 had written “unVegan??! Oh no…. ” and I playfully replied, “You mean oh yes, right?”  Hours later, that playful message sent me into the unvegan trenches as I found myself facing an onslaught of vile vegan vitriol.  DrEthan725 had taken up arms against my way of life, and I needed to defend unvegans everywhere.

DrEthan725 began with the old schoolyard trick of name-calling, saying “Corspe-munching [sic] is for vampires, not ethical humans with morals.”  I, being an ethical human with morals, took the higher road and simply defended myself by stating, “Damn, my morality keeps my from eating defenseless plants. I guess it’s cool with you to kill them.”  He then tried to defend his claim by once again calling my beloved meat “corpses,” and managed to spell it correctly this time.  He also sent me a Huffington Post article to defend his point of view.  We all know about the unbiased blog known as the Huffington Post, yet I was able to counter with another Huffington Post article, which defended my point of view (and in a much better-written article, if I do say so myself).

And he simply dismissed the article like this.

Sadly, his militant veganism had resulted in a little something called small-mindedness.  This came as no surprise to me, since research has shown that meat enabled our brains to evolve to their current sizes.  Therefore, it would stand to reason that removing meat from a diet would cause a little shrinkage.  He summarily dismissed the well-written article and claimed his way of life was about “JUSTICE.”

Seriously, an Animal Rights Abolitionist Vegan.

It seemed we had reached a stalemate, so I sent off what I expected to be my final tweet, “I disagree with everything you’ve said, but I respect your right to say it. Hope your veggies don’t come from clear-cut forests.”  But as I was sending it off, I noticed a little something about DrEthan725′s profile.  It was something that screamed out to me like a head of lettuce when you cut into it.  In describing himself, DrEthan725 wrote, “I am…[an]…Animal Rights Abolitionist…”  Now I’m no doctor, but I do know that that simple line means “someone who wants to abolish animal rights.”  I called him out on this and he was quick to correct me, saying the full description is “Animal Rights Abolitionist Vegan.”  Again, I’m no doctor, but I do know that adding a noun like “vegan” to the end of a description such as that does not change the meaning, it only tacks on an additional meaning.  He could have put “robot” on the end of that description and it still wouldn’t have changed anything, except to make him about 17 times cooler (man, robots are awesome).  As it is, he is simply “someone who wants to abolish animal rights and chooses not to eat any animal products.”  Yes, it is somewhat oxymoronic, but who am I to judge?  I dare anyone with a marginal command of the English language to tell me I’m wrong.

Ok, I was annoyed, but I had a point.

Finally, although his description had convinced me he was a very confused vegan and English-speaker, he took the war of words to another level by tweeting, “…My veggies come from my garden & don’t scream in terror for their lives when being ‘killed.’”  This wasn’t the bad part, in fact I was glad to hear of his gardening skills and acute ability to perceive the supposed lack of pain his vegetables experience when being slaughtered.  No, what did it was his hashtag, which read “#YouPayPeopleToMurder.”

Dude. Not cool, who told you I have hitmen?

This was over the line and I could not stand for it anymore.  Questioning my way of life is one thing (and is highly encouraged), but saying I pay people to murder is another thing entirely.  I realized that explaining the logic of life and death to a fanatic rarely has positive results, so I sent off what was truly my final tweet to DrEthan725 and decided to spend the rest of my afternoon experiencing life.  It read, “Hmm, you took it to a new level. Bored now. Enjoy your garden of malnourishment and denial.”  Sure, it was a little trite, but the guy had basically called me a murderer.  DrEthan725 continued to tweet, but the war was clearly over and his North Korean army still maintained power north of the 38th parallel.

No matter how much logic you put into a conversation, sometimes you just have to realize crazy just doesn’t adhere to logic.  Yet, I do feel like I achieved victory.  If nothing else, DrEthan725 learned that unvegans do not simply roll over when faced with fanaticism.  We do not sit back and listen quietly as they spew propaganda, and ultimately we live much better and healthier lives.  Plus, as long as the vegans have DrEthan725 on their side, subconsciously plotting the abolition of animal rights, I can sleep soundly.

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Crime doesn't pay. Except in burgers.

I don’t do drugs, but if I did I wonder how upset I would be if I were Timethy Delarrance Morrison.  Morrison recently attempted to buy some pot, but when he opened his bag of contraband he instead found a bunch of hamburger meat.  Maybe the dealer accidentally swapped his bag of munchies with pot, but Morrison was not amused.

By the time Morrison discovered the meat, his dealer was driving off.  I would have celebrated the surprise meat, but Morrison did the opposite.  He shot at the car and was apprehended by the police.  Then they found pot on him and tossed him in jail for possession and attempted murder.

Clearly, drugs don’t pay, but this made me wonder a little bit about myself.  If I purchased a bag of hamburgers and opened it up to find pot instead, I’m not sure what I would do.  If I had a gun on me, I like to think that I wouldn’t shoot it at my burger dealer, but who is to say?  I don’t do well when deprived of meat, and I would be one unhappy unvegan.  Fortunately, I don’t think the scenario is very likely.

But as for Morrison, I think he learned a valuable lesson:  When life gives your burgers, eat ‘em, don’t shoot at the hand that feeds you.

(via UPI)

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Save us!

Debt ceiling got you down?  War and instability in the Middle East making you feel unloved?  Casey Anthony getting away with murder pissing you off?  I get it, the world is having some problems, but such problems are nothing compared to the biggest problem the world is currently facing:  Bacon Prices.  Cue the wailing.

That’s right.  According to a report from CNBC, “Bacon prices are expected to soar this summer…” and this isn’t some terrible joke about pigs flying.

The report appears to be mostly concerned of the crisis’s impact on BLTs, but I’m really only concerned about the Bs.  The cause of the problem seems to be the price of whatever it is they feed pigs to make them taste amazing.  I just think this is some kind of vegan conspiracy and I’ll tell you why.  Pigs eat the same food vegans eat and I think vegans are eating so much pig food that pigs are running low on supplies.  The higher demand means higher prices and that means less tasty meat.

So, vegans, stop eating the food that pigs eat.  If you fail in this, you have been warned of the wrath of not just hungry pigs, but hungry unvegans everywhere.

(via CNBC.com and Slanny Dilverperson)

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Moo!

I’ve reported on on in-vitro meat before, and now it seems that dream of death-less meat is closer than ever.  According to the Times of India, this lab meat could even be ready in a year.  Yeah, that’s pretty soon.  Apparently the key is stem cells.

And no small number of stem cells.  It seems that it will take 10,000 of these glory cells to produce a hamburger.  The team producing this burger comes from Maastricht University in the Netherlands and I think working towards a burger is a good step.  First off, burgers are delicious.  Secondly, a burger just seems easier.  If the beef isn’t grown perfectly, odds are any weirdness in texture probably goes the way of the dodo when the fake meat will be ground up.

Yes, it seems the burger would be the perfect gateway in-vitro meat.  The key is that it has to taste right, though.  I’m all about doing away with the slaughter of animals, but only if my burger tastes like a real burger and gives me the vitamins only real meat can give.

(via Times of India)

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