And in unrelated news: water is wet, winter is cold and the sky is blue. Of course vegetarians have smaller brains, how else to explain their insane diet? According to an article on Signs of the Times, written by Unvegan Hero Barry Groves, so much of brain size is determined by fat intake. As he says, “About half our brain and nervous system is composed of complicated, long-chain, fatty acids.” Plants don’t have these fatty acids and our bodies aren’t exactly capable of making them ourselves. But you know what are capable of producing these fatty acids? Dumb herbivores.

They are the key to our brain size. By eating them, we not only incorporate their souls into our bodies, we also get their fatty acids. Mmm fatty souls.

This explains why we have such bigger brains than our primate cousins. They don’t eat meat. Are vegetarians attempting some sort of reverse evolution (devolution?) to become more ape-like? I like to think that we have become something better than lesser apes and prefer to keep it this way. If it weren’t for eating meat, we might still be swinging from trees and slinging our poop at each other. That sounds like fun on occasion, but as a way of life, I prefer living the unvegan way, with a big, fatty brain.

(via Signs of the Times)

Once upon a time there was a group of people called vegans. Among other things, these people claimed that their diet was better for the environment than eating meat. Had they been right, the world would be a much different place, but luckily for us, they were wrong. In fact, they eventually learned that their diet was actually worse for the environment than eating meat.

Ok, so maybe the vegans haven’t learned yet, but new research shows that vegan staples like soy, chickpeas and lentils are doing more harm than good. It’s enough to make you want to sing “Killer Tofu,” by The Beets. Remember that fictional band from Doug on Nickelodeon? If not, here’s a refresher:

But I digress. The WWF found that in Great Britain, since most of the land is unsuitable for growing soy and other vegetarian crops, these products have to be imported from thousands of miles away. This transportation itself is bad for the environment, but to make matters worse, these crops are grown in countries like Brazil, where they are clear-cutting the rainforest. I won’t get into all the details of the effect this clear-cutting has on the environment, but it’s pretty terrible.

So next time you opt for the vegetarian option in a meal (which I’m sure you would never do), make sure you think about the environmental implications first.

(via Times Online)

What do you get when you mix a huge dose of recovering vegan with liberalism and some over the top feminism? No, not Roseanne Barr on Atkins. You get The Vegetarian Myth, by Lierre Keith. Flashpoint Press was nice enough to send me a copy of this eye-opening book and although it took me a few months to get through, it has been an enlightening read. In it, Keith combines her own personal experiences with some good hard data to help debunk the vegetarian myth as we know it.

Interspersed throughout the story is Keith’s description of all the trauma her body went through as the result of 20 years on a vegan diet. The pain she went through sounds even worse than the taste of vegetables, and it was all because she wasn’t getting the nutrients she needed. Her spine degenerated, she experienced hypoglycemia and even depression. Some of her medical problems still linger to this day, despite turning back to eating a healthy meat-based diet. This is unfortunate, but to prevent people from suffering the way she did, she methodically debunks the vegetarian myth.

First, she tackles “moral vegetarians.” These are the vegetarians that slip over to the dark side of the eating spectrum because they are against killing. Keith says, “If killing is the problem, the life of one grass-fed cow will feed me for an entire year. But a single vegan meal…will involve hundreds of deaths. Why don’t they matter?” Who decided that plants suddenly wanted to sacrifice their lives to sustain ours. They don’t want to die any more than animals. But if people are still concerned about the lives of animals, Keith notes that, “A square meter of topsoil can contain a thousand different species of animals.” And agriculture kills these animals. Why are they less important than cute animals? I could go on, but suffice to say, she backs up her words.

Then she takes on “political vegetarians.” These are the people that think they are helping save the world by not eating meat. They make claims that the corn fed to a cow only makes a little meat, but could directly feed a lot more people. They don’t realize that feeding corn to cows is wrong and they are meant to eat grass, which humans can’t digest. Keith says, “[the political vegetarians] don’t know that cows eat grass anymore than they know that soil eats cows.” In the chapter she shows how terrible factory farms are, while also exposing that the vegetarian diet is no better for the world. She fixes the water myth and attacks agriculture’s use of water and oil.

Finally she turns to “nutritional vegetarians,” those who simply think the vegetarian diet is healthier. Again, she proves them wrong by first comparing our bodies to those of carnivores, which are quite similar. Her biggest attack is upon soy, which may very well be the worst thing ever. It’s enough to make me look at all the food I eat and consider cutting all soy products out. Read the book if you want to know why.

In the end, the book isn’t simply complaining about vegetarians and dropping data. Keith actually offers some solutions, although the biggest would require the total restructuring of the civilization we have come to know and love.

I found the book to be an interesting read, although it was quite long-winded. It probably could have been half the length, while still making the same points and doing them just as strong. I liked how she wove in her experience as a vegan, but at times she seemed to be following a feminist agenda rather than an anti-vegetarian one. I would recommend this book for anyone looking into different eating lifestyles, but prepare for some scary stuff. This book also makes for a good response next time a vegetarian tries to attack you with propaganda, just don’t offer up this book until they attempt to slam you first, because then you are no better than them.

Buy the book here and see the light for yourself.

It’s always good to hear about a celebrity returning from the dark side of foodery known as vegetarianism. The newest celebrity to do so is none other than Hilary Swank.

As the star of films like Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don’t Cry, Swank showed what it meant to be tough. In fact, being tough is the reason she has given up vegetarianism. According to Marie Claire magazine, Swank “…just started withering away.” That’s not good news for the Next Karate Kid. You can’t be the praying mantis without eating meat.

For being a truly gifted and bad ass actress, but mostly for leaving the world of vegetarianism behind, Hilary Swank, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via Ecorazzi)

It’s not like it really matters anyway, the only people that will be celebrating are actual vegetarians, and no one really pays attention to what they’re doing unless they’re half-naked.

In response, though, I’d like to point out the many days which celebrate unvegans. In the USA, Labor Day, Independence Day and Memorial Day are all celebrated with a nice BBQ of glorious meats and Thanksgiving is celebrated with a big fat turkey.

All over the world, dishes associated with countries are filled with meat. Germany has schnitzel, Poland has sausages. Brazil has churrasco and Greece has gyros. Even India, the country with the highest percentage of vegetarians, has chicken curry as one of their signature dishes.

Instead of having a World Vegetarian Day, I think it’s important to recognize that the world is a very unvegan place and celebrate with a World Unvegan Day.

Any ideas for what day it should be?

From The Wizard of Oz to The Lord of the Rings, talking trees have been a part of fantasy for a long time. Well, perhaps these thoughts should finally be freed from the land of myth. I recently discovered an old article thanks to this article in The Huffington Post.

It is entitled “Do Trees Communicate for Mutual Defense?” by Larry Gedney and although it’s from way back in 1986, the article cites a lot of research I had never heard of before. According to the research, trees under attack are able to communicate to each other to warn them about the danger. Once warned, the other trees can then defend themselves, such as by producing a chemical to ward off attacking insects.

To me, this throws so many vegan arguments out the window. If vegans are worried about the pain they cause animals, then what of the pain they cause to plants? If trees can recognize danger, pain is hardly a stretch. And if this happens in trees, who is the say it doesn’t happen in all other plants? Perhaps the plants don’t communicate their pain through sound like the animal world does, but through chemical reactions that other plants can feel.

Plants may not have the cute little beady eyes that animals do, but they are just as, if not more innocent. There are numerous plants that move during the course of the day to be able to get the most sun. This is no different from a sheep in the pasture searching for the best patch of grass, except that sheep, at some point in their evolution had the mobile ability to escape being eaten.

Hell, some plants, like the venus fly trap and pitcher plant are carnivorous. Why, then, is it wrong for humans to be?

If vegans and vegetarians want to tell me that eating animals is wrong, then they have a lot of research to do and a lot to learn themselves.

(via The Huffington Post and Alaska Science Forum)

Sadie Nardini is a big-time yogi (for my loyal readers, this is someone who practices yoga). Typically the thought of yoga people makes me sick. They often carry a holier-than-thou attitude and usually a vegetarian diet comes along with it. Nardini, however, has recently outed herself as a meat-eater to buck the trend.

In her article in The Huffington Post, she calls out all the pretentious yoga studios who almost force their teachers and students into a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. She recounts a particularly depressing story:

Students come to me all the time afraid to tell me about their darkest, dirtiest secret: they are omnivores. One even cried when I told her I eat meat too. She had been so traumatized at a top studio by having to watch unannounced Meat is Murder videos before being taught her yoga class.

Some things just aren’t right. Being a reformed vegetarian herself, Nardini knows how tough life is for vegetarians. Lucky for her, she has since given herself a new life that includes meat in her diet. On eating meat again after six years as a vegetarian, she says, “I felt vitality surge back into my body.”

I may not have lived a life of vegetarianism in the past, but I surely feel that way every time I bite into a delicious meaty meal.

For showing the world that not all yogis are absorbed in radical vegetarian tendencies, and being proud of it, Sadie Nardini, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via The Huffington Post)

According to an eye-opening article from WHL, Namibia sounds like a paradise on Earth. It is entitled Namibia: A Truly Meat-Loving Country, by Rachel Harlech-Jones. In the article, Harlech-Jones writes about how the country didn’t even seem to know what a vegetarian was when she first went to Namibi (apparently they now know what a vegetarian is, but “still do not really know why vegetarians exist.”) This has nothing to do with a bad language exchange since their official language is English. Rather, they are just my type of people, constantly confused by people who don’t want to eat meat.  To drive the point home, she recounts the following story:

Having ordered some kind of vegetarian salad, I discovered it had bits of bacon in it. When I queried this, the waitress and chef seemed confused. In their minds, bacon, particularly small bits of it, did not constitute meat, and the chef had only added them to make the salad edible.

It sounds like some sort of fantasy land. A place I had only imagined in dreams. As a bonus, they don’t limit themselves to boring livestock, but eat a lot of game meats caught out in the wild. Strange meats galore!

The climate of Namibia is simply not made for growing vegetables. I love the diversity of climates available in the US, but sometimes I just wish none of them were compatible with growing vegetables. What a wonderful country this would be. Instead, I can only hope for the day that I make it to Namibia, the unvegan wonderland.

(via WHL)

[mappress]

I can’t say that I’m too surprised. Malnourished vegetarians certainly do not get enough of the foods their body needs. If I ate salad and kale for every meal, the first opportunity I had to eat food with nutrients would definitely send me into a food binge.

Balancing out their diets with meats and other happy animal products would probably be a good way for them to decrease their risk of eating disorders. Meanwhile, to those who have this kind of disorder may consider going to a treatment center. Clementine Fairfax for adolescent girls is a residential eating disorder treatment center. You can visit the online webpage if you wish to know more.

Now, I’m happy knowing that my unvegan diet is keeping eating disorders at bay.

(via Medical News Today)

But that sounds harsh, in my mind she is not a failed vegetarian, but an accomplished unvegetarian. According to The Times of India, she attempted to become a vegetarian after adopting pet chickens and becoming close with them.

Fortunately, she soon returned to happy carnivore form. Her craving for meat was just too much. Don’t worry, though, she didn’t eat her pet chickens.

For bringing to light the intense desire for meat even after one has become a vegetarian, Shakira, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via The Times of India)