Category: food

The Green Sheep in the Family

Herewith a set of considerations introduced more than four year ago. It is, therefore, well-neigh time to tie a few strings in the midst of many threads. Encouragement  from the inimitable Katrina of New Zealand.

A Bold Woman who has brought us a grand thought issued by David Bowie: Katrina.

“Aging is an extraordinary process, where you become free to be the person you always should have been.”

— David Bowie

Full disclosure first — I am the green sheep in the family: one of “those vegans” who have the temerity to speak up for “others” — more similar to us than not — who have no voice in determining their own destiny. Today I focus on the multiple billions  living in camps

green.sheep

By this time next year 70 billion will have lived from birth to death in one of those facilities. Factory friendly farms.

Well there must be a good reason then.

Many reasons, but each is specious, spurious and tawdry. We deny inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to “the others.” Is that ethical behavior? Do animals volunteer their own destruction?

Bill, they outnumber us 10 to 1. So it looks like we are the ones endangered here. Do you call that fair? Let us tell you something. life isn’t fair and freedom fries aren’t free. It’s a wonder that any of us are left standing, actually. So it’s self-defense, us or them.

But can we talk about something a little less depressing?

Sorry. Let’s talk about optimal health, vibrance and well-being. In short: those habits that produce a healthy body. There are many ways to become ill: some involve luck, some are viral/bacterial, some are self-induced. I’ve tried many ill-advised styles of life.

Vegan protein icons

To quote my own father “I would rather be rich and healthy than sick and poor.”

Majority rule then. You vegans comprise 3% of the eating public. Why force bunny-salads down our throats? We are not geese. We are designed to eat meat. Some call it stewardship in a dominion over all life. What’s wrong with being top dog? Beats low dog.

3% of human eaters are vegan, 3% of human scientists deny climate-change, 3% is a good guess at the percentage of lifeforms that would survive an extinction event — asteroidal, nuclear or climatological.

Detox is tough because meat is a powerful addiction that is socially acceptable and culturally sanctioned. Secreting toxins is wearying — so is withdrawal from other addicting chemicals. We are living and breathing chemical factories, walking bags of chemicals.

Some very good news: craving for meat and meat byproducts metamorphoses into revulsion.

Why are you vegans always so negative?

We aren’t. And being a green sheep is a very good thing.

Thanks for reading.

Veganism vs. Cannibalism

There comes a time — quite often actually — when a reader’s “like” inspires me to craft a post from a comment.

Bill, you have a highly overdeveloped sense of your own importance. Is that not a superfluous sentence you’ve just written?

As a vegan, I join with non-such at a restaurant, open the menu and bite my (own) tongue at the overwhelming quantity of non-vegan fare that tastelessly adorns the menu — beef tongue is but one. Hey, why is tongue not among the lurid photographs of dismemberment, decapitation, mutilation and third-degree burns?

Vegetarian_Dating

Wonder no more my friend, you do exactly the same thing with produce — dead on arrival at the supermarket.

Tongue bite: What is the difference between cannibalism, eating body parts from a fellow specie, and consumption of any other highly evolved sentient creature? “Meat” cuts come from an animal with a highly developed central nervous system.

 

It is societally sanctioned. Call it an appetizer, entree, craving, tradition, custom, rite, blessing, a dominion-over thing. We’re talking about a nutritionally healthy and balanced diet. Humans are hard-wired…

vegan.meat

You see, it’s OK — those animal remains on our plate did not have four fingers and an opposing thumb, did they? Nor did they have vocal chords that produce words. So it’s OK, OK? It is OK, Bill. By the way, have you ever heard of the Natural Law? 

Look here, Bill. We’re getting a little tired of vegans trying to stuff kale down our throats all the time. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Do you? Well let me tell you about the Natural Law. It’s what gives us dominion over all the beasts. Scripture tells us that man has an immortal soul, all other animals have mortal souls.

If that isn’t enough to stop your insane raving, we have saved the very best argument for last, so please, if it’s not asking too much. Might you leave us these two words — CANINE TEETH.

canine.teeth

Thanks for reading.

Crows Head Soup & Vegan Anarchist

I recently discovered Crows Head Soup, a site for the perplexed among us who do not view fellow sentients as simply human resources. What happens when every molecule of flesh and bone is exploited at a mega scale? Does it even rate a half-hearted shrug?

crows-head-soup-original-recipe

Poetry strums and strikes here, it’s what poetry does.

Crows Head is a site gracious enough to allow rants that dare question the horror of the status quo. The Vegan Anarchist is a related site that is quite new, it appears on FB: a shorter vegan venue.

vegan.anarchist

This evening I read one of many pieces here that pierces the heart. It encapsulates the reality of daily existence in the confines of Butchertown, an historic town near Louisville. Some thoughts:

Visiting any supermarket in the country suggests the enormity of this flesh industry and the banality of its volume. How many tons today? How rapidly are the store shelves emptied? How many shelved products contain factory extermination camp content?
Twice as many chickens on earth as people. I won’t do the math here, but more than one in every pot by rough estimate.
Yes, man’s inhumanity to man sadly exceeds the ability to imagine, but fatalities among homo sapiens does not run into the multiple tens of billions per year of fellow sentients today.

bison.skulls.1870s
Bison skulls on the fruited plain

 

 

 

Remain humane, and thanks for reading.

Surprised by a Vegan Diet

 

This morning our friends at Google returned replies to my inquiry “What is a Vegan Diet?”:

About 11,500,000 results (0.54 seconds).

Return here after reading those there.

vegan.compassion.nonviolence

What happens to your body at the molecular level as it recovers from animal fat? Eating animal byproducts such as cheese just keeps clogging up your entire system.  Cleansing takes time but it’s worth the investment. IMO it’s a better return than the perfunctory “You’ve got to die from something” explanation for the inexplicable.

meat.eating.contest
Source claiming that “it was for a good cause though.”

Dairy products may not kill a cow, but its life in a factory-farm-fresh environment starts at her first milking and ends…RIP. Advanced technology makes  pink slime a reality.

What about craving and sluggishness?

Craving steak, cheese and calf milk is temporary, that sluggish feeling is your body going through withdrawal. Don’t blame it on organic fruits and vegetables.

I visited a mega supermarket just up US 27 It’s like a laboratory facility for headquarter employees conducting research at Cincinnati’s new magnet for the Ohio Valley of Freneticism: the brilliantly located Newport Pavilion in Kentucky. About a mile from the headquarter building, but on the other side of the Ohio River.

kroger

I took notes for billziegler1947 in order to get my facts straight and not stray from the vegan theme or become overwhelmed by enormity.

billziegler1947 does not have ads with creepy gifs on the 7 foods you should never…, so here is an unpaid PSA.

At the top of my notes for 5 March 2016 I wrote “Department of What-Gives?”

What gives with those 400 tons of palletized and borg-sized sugar fluids that extend for 30 yards in the middle of the store? Bordered in this case by a cooler case of energy drinks to one side of the sculpture that commemorates the discovery of sugar water flavorings and high-fructose corn syrups.

Coca-Cola_Truck-pos
Here we have a mash-up of images on a theme of the wonderful world of sugar-water flavors.

What gives with those plastic SUVs with a freely spinning steering wheel? It is also not steerable by the shopper tailgating from behind. The shopping cart is physically attached to a theme in plastic. I saw one flanked on both sides by two, perhaps three, toddlers.

What gives with plastic crap-toys on a peg, strategically located so a future shopper in the cart can push the peg downward and watch the crap drop right into the cart.

I searched Google for images to accompany this post and arrived at this rather brilliant article through pure serendipity. Its theme: Why am I so sluggish? Is it the fruit, the vegetables or both?

 

sad woman sitting near plate with vegetables and tired from diet
sad woman sitting near plate with vegetables and tired from diet

Reading crap on the Hollywood Homestead can be detrimental to your health.

Thanks for reading.