If you don’t know a Vegan here is what I want you to do. Fall on your knees, raise your hands toward heaven, and cry out; “THANK YOU, LAWD!” Really.
Not making this the question of the day, but ….. do you think Veganism is a healthy choice?
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The battle over the next global emergency, the environment, will make Covid-19 state authoritarianism look like a walk in the park
It’s easy to laugh when middle-class greenies write about their eco-anxiety, under headlines like ‘Can you drink milk and stay ethical?’, but there’s a deadly serious side to this that threatens to curtail our freedoms.
The world of the eco-warrior is a gloomy one indeed. Just as the rest of us are starting to enjoy the first loosening of government-imposed lockdown and pondering the post-Covid-19 world, they, while drinking their barista-quality oat milk lattes, are preoccupied with highly moral dilemmas most of us don’t have the time or money to think about.
What follows is not made up, but is a shortened version of Guardian columnist Emma Beddington’s moral dilemmas facing the post-Covid-19 world.
While anxious to minimise her part in transforming the Earth “into a flaming wasteland,” she has a major dilemma with milk, well, multiple problems. Why? Because milk is apparently, “bad news for the planet: three times worse in greenhouse emission terms than any plant milk.” (We’ll come back to the moronic concept of ‘plant milk’ below). But her dilemma is that while knowing this for “ages” she has pretended it is not. And why? “Because tea is horrible with oat milk.” Who would have thought? (We’ll come back to this equally moronic concept below too).
According to Beddington, the horror of this complex dilemma is earth-shattering, or scorching, depending on where you place your carbon footprint. Her solution is to seek out what she terms “the least bad dairy”: she gets her milk from “cows fed on seaweed, which reduces bovine belching.” Apparently, research has recently found this can cut methane emissions by up to 82%.
But before you can breathe a sigh of relief (while perhaps pondering whether feeding cows seaweed does not constitute abuse and animal cruelty), it gets even worse. Her ‘good’ dairy comes in plastic bottles, not glass ones, which makes it bad. Because her household finishes two pints of seaweed milk precisely six days after the weekly delivery, ordering another two-pint bottle, would mean “most of it would end up down the sink” – obviously a no-no for sustainability. So, her instinct is to hold out. But this results in an even greater moral dilemma because it means imposing her “eco-guilt” on her younger son, who, bless him, “has the smallest carbon footprint of any of us, and just wants milk on his cereal.” The result? She ends up buying a pint of “Bad Milk from the corner shop.” (The horror!).
At the very least, this suggests her son has something she lacks: namely, the ability to recognise that Bad Milk tastes good while Good Milk is, in her own words, “horrible.”
But who would have thought that living ethically was so complex and difficult? Milk is just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. Every consumer decision is laden with moral dilemmas: how to shop without contributing to “flat-pack landfill waste.” What’s the point in recycling “like a demon, sorting, flattening, rinsing and parsing the council’s opaque and inadequate recycling policy” when no-one “will take plastic takeaway boxes” (an admission that Beddington and her fellow eco-warriors have spent lockdown dealing with their eco-dilemmas while eating takeaway food delivered by people who, in all likelihood, are relying on food banks for their survival, not struggling with the pros and cons of seaweed-fed bovines).
But for the virtual signalling eco-middle class every choice is bad and carries a heavy burden. The weight of having to balance “one harm against another” is causing them mental health problems. So, what is her solution? Well, she says, “as in so much of life…I just want someone authoritative to tell me what to do.”
This is where eco-anxiety ceases to be a source of comedic brilliance and where virtue signalling becomes a serious political issue.
What Beddington and the Guardian are advocating, in reality, is that we should all succumb to the dictatorship of experts – but only the experts that accept misanthropic eco-anxiety, not those who might question it.
The concepts they use, like ‘plant milk’ already indicate the type of conformity they expect and demand. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘milk’ as “a whitish fluid, rich in fat and protein, secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals (including humans) for the nourishment of their young, and taken from cows, sheep, etc., as an article of the human diet.” As such, it reflects human ingenuity and how mankind has transformed nature to meet human ends. This is precisely what nonsensical misnomers like ‘oat milk’ seek to undermine.
The assault on language is just the thin edge of the wedge. ‘Tell me what to do’ is the political rallying cry of the middle class. They have really loved Covid-19 and the lockdown that was imposed by the state on the word of politically unaccountable experts who apparently knew what’s best for the rest of us. And they’re expert at that.
The moral complexity of eco-anxiety, expressed so comically by Beddington, should not lull us into a false sense of security. As bonkers as it is, it serves to strengthen the idea of the need for expert diktat.
This has been the message of the high priest of environmentalism, Greta Thunberg, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. She has not tired from drawing out the lessons that acting on the advice of scientists “should be applied to the climate crisis.”
As we move haltingly towards freedom in the post-Covid-19 era, eco-anxiety is set to fill the authoritarian expert gap that will follow. The battle over the next global emergency – the environment – will make the Covid-19 battle for debate, contestation and anti-state authoritarianism look like a walk in the park.
But it is not all bleak. As one reader, ‘Donercard’, humorously referring to the ‘Ian Rush Accrington Stanley’ milk advert by the Milk Marketing Board in the 1980s, puts it: “You (Beddington) can drink milk and be ethical but you will never play for Accrington Stanley.”
Exactly!
SOURCE: Russia Today
“Don’t bait the Vegans.
They don’t have enough on their plate anyway” — John Cleese, on twitter two days ago
Emma Beddington’s Tips on Livestock Management is sure to big seller.
I mean look at her, does she not have experienced farmer written all over her…what is that exactly?
Meat eater.
Vegan.
Gross. Heroin chic?
That is Angelina Jolie. No wonder Brad took off. What is it with these neurotic women who feel the need to starve themselves in order to be attractive? Anyone who finds that appealing is beyond nuts.
As to vegan? I’m a vegan, a very proud vegan. I’m a staunch vegan, most of the time. Generally I temporarily stop being vegan when I eat a steak but I only eat steak from seaweed fed cattle so I’m only half a hypocrite. As to feeding seaweed to livestock, in Ireland and other places where seaweed is available, it actually makes a decent feed if there is nothing else for the animals to eat. Seaweed or starvation, that’s the choice.
Really?? THIS Angelina??
Holy Shit! I had no idea. WTF, man??
Yup, seems she’s down to 83 lbs and looks like death warmed over. She’s punishing Brad by starving herself. Her boobs are fake, she had the real ones removed because she didn’t want to get breast cancer, ditto for uterus and ovaries. She’s a neurotic, self-absorbed female.
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R34dd7eb5b07d6a7cf037ad4b53ce9272?rik=vvPN0az%2fB1nHaQ&pid=ImgRaw
Modern Court Jesters, still the bottom of the barrel.
Seaweed fed cattle? Ya, that’s pretty natural. How about fucking grass and not corn. Move to Ireland, you’ll be happy in your mask.
Prepping for a Schindler’s List remake no doubt.
That’s got to be a photoshop, right?
Ughh.
Luckily I had never found her truly hot to begin with…
Meat eaters.
No, those eat babies, aborted fetal tissue and fetal blood. Why do you think Planned Parenthood is so protected?
No that is a Twinky eater.
Meat and anything else he can inhale.
Nope… VEGAN… corn chips, doritos, krispy kreme, soda by the gallon to wash it down.
All he’s missing is the “I survived anorexia” T-shirt.
Alien hybrid?
Emma has a head shaped like a guitar pick….
Yep. She’s definitely on the Plectrum Spectrum
Mental Note: No more vegetarian/vegan articles. Meanwhile, a slice of Bacon wrapped around a Donkey Dick would get 50+ comments.
Too many carnivorous fatfuks here.
Chortling ;0
We could talk about that face.
No wonder she doesn’t want anyone to be happy.
stucky,
if you’re still monitoring this,i heard an astounding statement today–i was flipping channels while driving & found a talk station i had never heard–it turned out to be the local catholic station & the host was interviewing the author of a book about how the food industry manipulates the taste of food to get people hooked–
he stated that 42% of americans are now obese,not just overweight–
You can’t make this shit up. Mental illness over make believe issues. Vegans worst nightmare: When SHTF some real issues will melt these snowflakes into a brown, methane-emitting soup. Many experts will likewise melt away along with their diktats. Problem solved. As soon as FAKE world fades, REAL world has no room for such tripe.
Some of us understand that plant eating animals and bugs need to be part of a successful system. I live within a few miles of a 10,000 cow dairy. There are aquifer issues. And, manure is pumped for miles and injected into surrounding farmland. The grower getting the injected manure has to pay for the manure and the machine. The process seems to work, for now. I see a future where this (abuse a cow) industry no longer works. Drinking seaweed milk is idiotic, burning up a living and breathing cow in two (yes 2) years is insane and there are moral concerns also. Ask the Farmer, back a few years, a cow was named and had a productive life of ten years and maybe more. It’s difficult to be pro milk Stucky. It’s difficult to be pro anything, anymore.
No matter who you are, you should have grave concerns regarding the treatment of animals on the factory farms that feed most of the western world. It is those overcrowded conditions, poor nutrition, overuse of antibiotics, etc. that lead to poor quality food, excessive numbers of food poisonings, the movement of viruses from animals to humans (yes, very rare), and other problems in our food system. Notice I have purposely singled out factory farming, as distinctly different from the rest (most especially, great farms like HSFs that work in harmony with nature). This type of farming also drives the monoculture practices of huge farms (that supply the CAFE farming industry, etc.). Overall, this type of farming of crops and animals is deeply harming the planet. Sadly, most fail to recognize the massive role GOVERNMENTS play in encouraging and sustaining these practices.
Pic of factory farmed chickens…where your supermarket eggs come from…
And this is how your bacon is treated….entire short lives in tiny cages…yummy
and this is where your milk fed veal comes from….
and this is where your unwanted horses go…
And this is what happens when cows are shipped for slaughter…
https://th.bing.com/th/id/Rb110b1de2f63d5f681b5dfb39354b815?rik=FvRAETaQAbfr0A&pid=ImgRaw
But, you still eat steak. Why?
I walked up to the top of the back pasture this morning to look at our first calf of the season laying there with his mother on the early grass. We walked them back to the big barn- a front is coming through with an expected foot and a half of snow- and he pranced up there right alongside her the entire way.
And we had hamburgers for lunch. We feed and care for them them and they feed us.
The use of animals for sustenance isn’t the issue, it’s the way that the animals live and are treated while they are here that matters. Industrial agriculture that “feeds the world” is inhumane, toxic and just plain evil. If you participate in it you’re part of what keeps it in operation. Those images above are horrific to me because I know that there is a radically different approach that doesn’t come at the expense of the animal’s quality of life while it is here.
Stuckey…
What HSF just wrote as an explanation of why I eat steak. I don’t eat much meat, no pork at all and chicken doesn’t ring my chimes either. The only meat I like the taste of is beef. Humanely raised animals are a far cry from factory farmed unfortunates.
I have friends who raise goats, chickens, turkeys and meat sheep. I get fresh eggs from chickens who run around and eat bugs and weeds. As I get older I find I eat more plant based foods just because that’s what I want to eat. My only real animal vice is butter.
Unfortunately h f , most of the western world has no other option reasonable option.
I would disagree old whitey. Factory farming is all about profits and it matters not an iota the destruction you make to get those profits.
The alternative to factory farming would be to make family farming a viable alternative again. Its where our food all came from before the corporations saw the niche and jumped in.
But like everything government and corporations do, once they get control of the strings they don’t let go. If more people just family farmed, everyone would be healthier and probably a lot happier too. It can be hard work and you won’t get super wealthy, but the lifestyle is imo worth it. On our small acreage we supplied food to about ten families year round.
Here in canukistan we could, alone, feed ever man, woman and child on this planet with grains and animal products. So we do have the capacity to comfortably feed the global population in a humane manner. But like the extended family back in Saskatchewan today grow little to no grains and raise no animals except horses, couple dogs and a few cats. They grow birdseed. more profitable. Its all about profits.
Now why would anyone downvote your question? Seems there are some really ignerent folk out there….
Probably that Joo I insulted a few posts ago.
OTOH, I estimate that I’ve gotten 30,000+ down votes since I’ve been here. Coulda been one of those fuckers.
Careful! Jesus was a Jew.
Jesus was Canadian, possibly even French.
Those pictures are slightly misleading.
The one of the laying hens is not a normal laying cage, those hens look like they have been euthanized or something. The hens do not normally look like that in a laying house.
The hogs are NOT raised in cages like that for their entire life. They are in pens in a hog house. They are put into cages for a period of time before and after birth to prevent laying down on their babies and crushing them.
I cannot provide input on the veal, as I have never been directly involved with that industry.
If horses were not commercially slaughtered we end up with way too many horses, to the point that they can’t be given away, and people just end up releasing them, which results in many cases of the horse dying a long, slow death, among other problems.
I’m not saying that I completely agree with the way that animals are raised in industrial agriculture, but your pictures are not an accurate portrayal. I have many years of experience working in and around the poultry and hog industry, along with formal education, so I do know a little something about those industries.
I’ve seen how horse butchers operate. The horse slaughterhouses were shut down in the states and moved to Mexico, a country NOT known for it’s humane treatment of animals. Go educate yourself on how horses are treated prior to butchering in Mexico.
Maybe your operations were kinder but to state that those practices pictured are exception is disingenuous. Do you think keeping hogs in those factory cages is humane?
Pic of hens in egg factory…
These are NOT farrowing cages…
This is a farrowing cage….
Downvoters have a problem with the truth here, don’t you. Poor babies, bet you think meat comes from shrink wrapped packages at the supermarket.
Won’t be a problem when the covid vaccines do their intended depopulation. The earth can sustain 500,000,000 easily.
I tried all the alternative milks because SWMBO had convinced herself they were “bad”. Almond milk gave me horrendous gas, as did the pea milk. Soy milk constipated me. So no moar of non-milk milks.
Then SWMBO, after almost a year of oat milk and almond milk and the rest, finally used my 100% dairy cream in her coffee. I asked why, and she said, “Those other milks seem to brealkapart when they hit hot coffee, and they taste funny.” Well, at least I got an admission on that – they also don’t do as well in recipes without adding in other things to “punch up” their missing fats…
So now we are back to cows milk. I even have her going to get fresh milk from a local dairy for about a buck more for a half gallon. Even more interesting is that she has LOST weight by switching back to full cream and whole milk – probably because you just can’t drink as much due to how rich it is..? And anything she bakes I canot eat as much of it – too rich to have a giant piece of cake and a glass of whole milk!
My daughter, a former full vegan and university swimmer, is now back to normal. She went vegan her senior year and was having huge problems with stamina in her 200m races, so her coach begged her to add fish and dairy back. Her final performances were back on par, but she went back to the vegan thing after graduation. Then she got married and pregnant, and was actually LOSING weight in her 2nd trimester – and she relented and added protein back. After baby #1, she let go of the vegan thing.
As long as you have a do-nothing job that does not require any physical effort, vegan may work for you. But all I can say is that I simply don’t know any vegan farmers or roughnecks longshoremen, and my personal experiences tell me if you are all concerned with factory farms, then take the time to simply find a local dairy and make the trip to buy your milk. You can actually freeze whole, unpasteurized milk and it will keep. If chicken farming bugs you, then buy local chickens and butcher them yourself. Same for the rest – buy fresh and butcher them yourself.
If you can’t do that to assist in reducing cruelty in your own mind, then you’re just virtue signaling. A lot of that goes on in the comments in most places; people talking the talk but unwilling to exert a bit more effort and expense for a viable solution.
Be the guy or gal or (insert alternate gender here) that asks for the paper bag at the grocery and refuses to buy bottled water – most people will just itch about it and do their virtue signaling without changing their choices. Don’t bitch – put your money where your gob is…
Keep eating almond milk and farting.
I consider myself a vegan as I eat vegetables and animals that eat vegetables.
I tried the vegan lifestyle once. It was the worst two hours of my entire life!
Grass fed beef, organic chicken etc, and organic veggies. CAFO meat is evil. We all know this.
Killing animals for food is one thing. Making them live hell for our benefit is another
Killing animals for food is one thing. Making them live hell for our benefit is another
Yup….
damn wish I had the time to ponder such things as my bills continue to skyrocket
The BBC aired an hour long documentary by Saint Greta last week in the prime time slot at 9pm. Didn’t watch it as don’t have TV and wouldn’t even if I did. First of 3 programmes. Even rolled out Sir David Attenborough to give it some gravitas. Only managed 1.08m viewers out of a population of over 60m.
There were allegedly 600,000 Vegans in the U.K. in 2019, only 1% of the population.
Both these things show the support for ‘green’ issues is minimal which is why They will struggle to get people to eat bugs or any other fake food.
Ironically, in the same slot on BBC1 the week before Greta’s sermon, it was an episode of Masterchef which managed over 3m viewers. Not many vegans on that show, let alone watching it.
One’s gut bacteria is what really determines the health, sanity, personality ,and longevity of the human body.
If you’re really serious about correcting any present or potential health problem you may experience, start researching gut health and which type foods feed good gut bacteria and which type feed the bad. Hint. You do not want the bad.
Also, look up something called TMAO, if you’re serious or continue on with you inane gibberish if you’re not. It’s your health. Good luck and good health.
Um, seems the heart needs a bit of animal product to stay healthy.
Substantial evidence from recent studies shows that lean red meat trimmed of visible fat does not raise total blood cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol levels. Dietary intake of total and saturated fat mainly comes from fast foods, snack foods, oils, spreads, other processed foods and the visible fat of meat, rather than lean meat. In fact, lean red meat is low in saturated fat, and if consumed in a diet low in SFA is associated with reductions in LDL-cholesterol in both healthy and hypercholesterolemia subjects.
Lean red meat consumption has no effect on in vivo and ex vivo production of thromboxane and prostacyclin or the activity of haemostatic factors. Lean red meat is also a good source of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B12, niacin, zinc and iron. In conclusion, lean red meat, trimmed of visible fat, which is consumed in a diet low in saturated fat does not increase cardiovascular risk factors (plasma cholesterol levels or thrombotic risk factors).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15927927/
A little tidbit about TMAO…
Numerous studies in the past of the human microbiome have shown that a more diverse population of gut bacteria is linked to lower incidence of disease – read more about the gut microbiome and human health here.The present study’s results suggest that without a certain population of gut bacteria, which appear to be associated with a lack of microbiota diversity, nutrients from eggs, fish, and meat would not be transformed into TMAO, and these people would not be at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease for eating these foods.
and…..
A dietary compound called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is found in foods like eggs and meat and has been associated with heart disease. In the past, scientists have warned people to eat less of these foods because of their TMAO levels, but a new study from Cornell University provides evidence that TMAO might not be the root of the problem.
https://www.labroots.com/trending/health-and-medicine/3829/eggs-meat-tmao-s-true-role-heart-disease#:~:text=A%20dietary%20compound%20called%20trimethylamine%20N-oxide%20%28TMAO%29%20is,might%20not%20be%20the%20root%20of%20the%20problem.
I don’t think diverse means what you thing it does.
“To lower your TMAO levels, consider minimizing the consumption of full-fat dairy products, including whole milk, egg yolk, cream cheese, and butter; both processed and unprocessed red meat (beef, pork, lamb, and veal), as well as nutritional supplements and energy drinks containing choline, phosphatidylcholine (lecithin), and/or L-carnitine. Vegetarians and vegans, who avoid meat products, for instance, produce little TMAO.”
In general, consuming a diverse diet rich in plant foods and fiber may be helpful. ”
https://www.clevelandheartlab.com/blog/the-gut-the-heart-and-tmao/
It starts in the gut
Past research spearheaded by Stanley Hazen, MD, Chairman of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, has established that bacteria in the gut is a key player in red meat’s effect on heart disease risk.
Gut bacteria produce a compound called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) when they digests choline, lecithin and carnitine, which are nutrients that are abundant in animal products such as red meat and liver, as well as other animal products. High levels of circulating TMAO in the body have been shown to be a powerful tool for predicting future heart attack, stroke and death risk.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/link-between-red-meat-and-heart-health-happens-in-the-gut-study-finds/