The Vegan Argument

I’m as surprised as you are that you’re reading this in the mainstream press. I suppose the this paper’s decision makers can see the writing on the wall and are beginning to understand that there is a worldwide, irreversible trend and that many of their readers are quite comfortable supporting this movement. So, what’s the trend?

Well, first before I tell you, throw away any preconceived ideas or biases you might have. Just for a minute, be a clean slate. Ready….it’s called Vegetarianism!

I can hear the collective groan. “Not you guys!”.

Oh, come on, you could have done better than that. I said get rid or your biases. I even asked nicely, I thought. Remember clean slate?

I know, it’s got to be hard to do. You know, getting rid of a mindset that has been reinforced your whole life, most of your friends and family think the same way, it’s gotta be tough.

Okay, stick with me here. Let’s move things along a bit with…a pop quiz!!

Ready…with the first answer that comes into your head aaaand…

1. Quick, is the meat alternative section in your grocery store getting bigger or smaller?

If you answered “bigger” you got one right. Five years ago you’d be hard pressed to find tofu, veggie dogs, veggie burgers and those little “chicken” nuggets but now the place is lousy with them. I guess that means that, hey!! More people aren’t eating meat? Why the heck would that be?

Ready for the next one? It’s a multiple choice.

2. Not eating meat will:

a) make you weaker

b) make you dumber

c) make you unhealthy

d) give you a bad sense of humour

e) none of the above

If you are feeble, stupid, sick and dull you’ll most likely have to blame something else because Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses (they’re famous athletes if you didn’t know) don’t eat meat. Leonardo Da Vinci and Albert Einstein were vegetarian. The guy who started veganism (that’s no meat, dairy or eggs) just died at age 95. Bill Maher, John Cleese and (depending on your sense of humour) Weird Al Yankovic don’t eat meat either! So, none of the above is the correct answer.

Here comes another one. Remember, true or false, the first answer that comes to mind, aaaand….

3. Not eating meat will shorten my life expectancy.

False!! Food industry types work very hard to make you think otherwise but peer reviewed medical journals have been saying very emphatically for many years that cutting meat out of your diet will make you live longer, decrease your chances of many kinds of cancer, decrease your chances of diabetes and heart disease, increase the years of a healthy sex life and end world hunger. Ha, ha, ha. Oh yeah, the ending world hunger part. That’s a good one. It gets people aaaall the time. It’d be funny if there wasn’t true!

Hey are you like me? Do you notice that there is this upswing in support for conserving the environment, attacking global warming and just generally using less energy wherever you can? You noticed, too, eh? Well, whether or not you adhere to that tree-hugger doctrine this much is true:

Factory farming is depleting the water supply in the U.S. When their aquifer runs dry they’re coming for Canada’s water and they don’t take too kindly to the answer “no”.

Heard this one?

The grain that is produced to feed factory farmed animals could feed the worlds hungry. What a line of crap, right? Wanna really find out if this is bull? Confront a factory farming advocate like Maple Leaf…you know the “We Take Care” people. That’s their line, not mine. Run this by them and see what they have to say.

Ask them how it would make sense to open your refrigerator, pull out 20 plates of pasta and toss them in the trash, and then eat just one plate of food? How about levelling 55 square feet of rain forest for a single meal or dumping 2,500 gallons of water down the drain? Of course you wouldn't. But if you're eating chicken, turkey, pork, or beef, that's what you're doing—wasting resources and destroying our environment.

Agriculture uses an enormous amount of our natural resources, in large part to produce animal products. Half of the world's grain harvest in the 1980s was fed not to people, but to livestock. HALF! Even during the famine of the mid-1980s, Ethiopia was exporting grain to the West for livestock that could have been used to feed its people. Now that doesn’t make sense.

Farmed animals produce about 130 times as much crap as the entire human population of North America and since factory farms don't have sewage treatment systems as our cities and towns do, this concentrated slop ends up polluting our water, destroying our topsoil, and contaminating our air. And meat-eaters are responsible for the production of 100 percent of this waste—about86,000 pounds per second! Give up animal products, and you'll be responsible for none of it.

Converting feed into animal products is notoriously inefficient. It takes 16 pounds of grain and soy to produce just one pound of beef, from cattle raised in a typical North American feedlot operation.

And by doing so, 90 percent of the nutrients, 99 percent of the carbohydrates, and 100% of the fibre is lost. The amount of grain fed to farm animals could feed seven times as many people if they were to consume it directly rather than in the form of animal products.

Okay, is that ending world hunger? Well, it’s heading in the right direction for sure.

Alright, enough of the environment. What about your health?

You ever seen the cigarette pack with the limp cigarette? Why don’t you see that on a bag of pork rinds, or head cheese, or pork butts?