(via CBC)

Looks like you really don’t make friends with salad. In another vegetable-related salmonella case, lettuce from Tanimura & Antle Inc. seems to have been tainted with a nasty little uninvited guest. The company has issued a recall on 22,000 cartons of romaine lettuce, but to be safe I will avoid eating all products that could be related to lettuce. Specifically, all vegetables.

(via AP)

(via Times Colonist)

In an incident unrelated to the last alfalfa attack, there is now a food company in Culver City, California recalling their alfalfa.

This time it’s from Kowalke Organics. They say it isn’t safe to eat a few of their products, which can be found here. Interestingly enough, they are primarily sold in the fancy grocery stores like Gelson’s and Whole Foods.

I am of the opinion that it’s never entirely safe to be eating raw vegetables, but when salmonella is involved, it just gets that much worse.

(via LA Times)

Environmental Graffiti recently posted an awesome entry about vegetables that look decidedly un-vegetable. In fact, they look like they could be animals. It should serve as a warning to all unvegans out there that things are not exactly as they seem. Just like vegans can make tofu taste pretty similar to a turkey, these vegetables can look a lot like animals, but they will never be a substitute for the real thing. Check the rest out here.

Until today, the thought of alfalfa brought a smile to my face. Of course, I’m not referring to the strange green plant, but the strange little boy from The Little Rascals. His hair always inexplicably stuck up right in the back and for some reason I always found that entertaining. Now, however, the thought of alfalfa gives me chills that make the hair on my arms stick up.

The reason is salmonella. A disease that has been recently linked by the FDA to alfalfa. They are recommending people avoid raw alfalfa sprouts until further notice (or until the end of time if you read between the lines in the way I do). Supposedly other sprouts are safe, but I wouldn’t rule out some sort of a sprout conspiracy.

In the long line of vegetable attacks, we unvegans now just have one more compelling reason to avoid those deadly and diseased vegetables.

(via Serious Eats)

According to the calendar:

• The average lifetime production of poo: five tons.
• 150 grams of stool per day x 365 days per year x 80 years = 4380 kilograms (9656 lbs.) of stool.
• A vegetarian diet can produce fifteen to twenty tons over a lifetime!

That’s a lot of extra vegetarian poo, which obviously has disastrous personal and environmental consequences. All those extra hours spent sitting on the toilet when they could be out spending time with the family or searching for protein supplements? And imagine just how much extra water the vegetarians use to flush their abnormally persistent bowel movements. Not only that, but the amount of waste generated by the said vegetarian movements must reach monumental heights.

Is it really worth saving the edible animals, just to see Earth’s ecosystem suffer? Remember, if there is no world, there won’t be any plants or animals.

Oh yeah, bonus points go to Fi for getting me this wonderfully disturbing calendar.

Los Simpsons sing such truth.*

On a recent sojourn down to Cancun, Mexico, I decided to be a little adventurous. Some may say foolish, but I prefer adventurous. For days, I had spent my time at the resort happily eating meats, cheeses and fruits. I was in bliss, and for my final meal, I sat down to order something fancy. In doing so, I committed a great sin against my fellow unvegans. It is a moment I scarcely remember, and I almost feel as if some sort of vegetable demon took possession of my body and held on just long enough to force me to spout the words required to ask for a salad to accompany my utterly meaty main course.

No sooner than an hour after my meal concluded, I found myself pacing around my hotel room, pondering the volatile chemical reactions occurring deep within the confines of my belly. I headed to the bathroom, to find that Montezuma had decided to exact his revenge upon me through an intense case of the runs. When I had completed my initial bowel cleansing, I went back into my room to consider whether the recent movement was due to the salad. As if to answer, a wave of nausea swept over me and carried me into the bathroom for a vomit full of salad. As the lettuce left me, I also felt as if I was exorcising myself of the vegetable demon. I had made a most terrible mistake and was paying for it tenfold. It is a mistake I never plan to make again.

*Thanks to my buddy and one-time euchre partner over at the protean pantry for reintroducing me to such a marvelous clip. I took the liberty of further researching and came upon a most glorious Spanish rendition of the clip.

The forest looks like a starving man’s dreamland; a virtual cornucopia of food. Greenery and growth is everywhere. It is so alive, and seemingly so edible. Sure, there are plants in the forest that can be eaten and potentially digested, but the taste alone should be enough to drive anyone away.

Now there is even more cause to fear wild plants: death. According to the AP, a man recently passed away after eating wild (amanita ocreata) mushrooms in Santa Barbara.

While tragic, this just goes to show that vegetables are out to kill. To make matters worse, he had picked the mushrooms so he could eat them with a steak. This certainly ruined what could have been a perfectly good (and safe) meal.

In the wild, as in the real world, vegetables must be considered a dangerous threat. How many more lives do they have to take before we all join together and say “Enough!”?