Category: Health

vegan word on wood background and vegetable

Meat Diets Are More Extreme Than Vegan

5 Ways In Which Your Meat Based Diet Is More Extreme Than The Most Extreme Vegan

I’m vegan.

I know what you’re thinking. You only buy grass-fed, well-loved, free-range organic dead animals. And veganism is extreme. But I’m here to tell you that no matter how extreme the most extreme vegans are, our lifestyle choice makes us automatically less extreme than you are.

Here’s why.

1. You can live perfectly well without hurting animals, but you’re choosing not to

You can get everything that you need nutritionally from a vegan diet.

On average, we have a lower BMI than animal-eaters, we eat less saturated fat and we have a lower risk of heart disease.

If you’re paying for people to slice an animal’s neck open so that you can eat them, you’re not doing it for nutrition, you’re doing it because you like the taste.

Killing a living being is a pretty extreme thing to do if you don’t have to.

2. You probably pet your dog whilst you’re eating a bacon sandwich

Little Dog Dressed as a PigThe average pig is as smart as a three-year-old human child, so please don’t kid yourself that pigs don’t understand what is happening to them when they are forced into the slaughterhouse.

They see their friends die and they know that the slaughterhouse man is coming for them next. They cry and try to run away. They scream.

If slaughterhouses were really ‘humane’, then when your dog got old and needed putting to sleep, you’d send him or her to the kill floor. You would never do this. In fact, you probably pet your dog whilst you eat your bacon sandwich on a Sunday morning.

Vegans find this hypocrisy abhorrent. We genuinely cannot believe that people can sit and eat one animal, whilst loving another so steadfastly.

3. You’ll turn your tap off to save water, but you won’t just give up eating meat and dairy

It takes 1,799 gallons of water to make one pound of beef. If you’re concerned about the environment, you should be cutting your meat and dairy intake drastically.

We’re officially gorging to the point of over-indulgence on the bodies of animals, and it’s destroying the planet. An area 1.5 times the size of the European Union would be saved if people in the Western world lowered their meat consumption to eat only what their bodies actually need, instead of just eating whatever we want whenever we feel like it.

You’d save 219,000 gallons of water a year if you went vegan. Continuing to eat meat when you know it is destroying the only planet we have to live on is particularly extreme.Washbasin and water

4. There are people dying of starvation, but we’re giving an unbelievable amount of grain to animals

If the USA gave the grain it feeds to livestock to humans instead, we could feed 800 million people. There are 795 million people in the world who don’t have enough to eat. We could effectively cure starvation if the USA went vegan.

We’re feeding grain that could be used to feed the starving to animals, so that ‘rich’ people like you and me can eat hamburgers. We’re letting people die when we could just stop growing animals and eat something else.

5. Meat causes cancer

The World Health Organisation classes red and processed meats as carcinogenic.

According to their research, red meat probably causes cancer, and processed meat most definitely does.

Hot dogs, ham, sausages and corned beef are of the same carcinogen classification as tobacco and asbestos, both known as substances to avoid if you don’t want to get cancer.

But you’re still eating meat, and that is extreme.



hummus

15 Foods You Might Not Realise Are Vegan Friendly

15 Foods You Might Not Know Are Plant Based

Vegans often get asked where we get our protein from, with the next most common question: “What do you actually eat?”

If you’re thinking of transitioning to a plant-based diet, you’ll be pleased to know that the following food items are all vegan – always double check the labels in case recipes and ingredients change over time.

Crisps generally

Lots of Walkers flavours, Salt and Vinegar McCoys, Skips and Pringles are all vegan. In fact, most of your favourite brands have vegan options. You can even eat most bacon, steak and BBQ flavours.

McDonalds chips, hash browns and apple pies

Absolute fast food, road-trip essentials – although we’ll leave it to you to decide on the ethical implications of supporting McDonalds.

Hobnobs

The best of all of the dipping biscuits. The plain and chocolate chip varieties of hobobs are both accidentally vegan.

Most pasta

Not the fresh, eggy kind, but the dry, semolina stuff you always make too much of? That stuff is usually vegan.

Most bread

For reasons most of us have never fathomed, some bread has milk in it. Other varieties have egg wash on the top to help with the sticking on of seeds, but you can get really great vegan bread from Warburtons, Hovis and Tescos.Bread

Vegetable pasties from the West Cornwall Pasty Company

Delicious, nutritious and cruelty free!

Hummus

Packed full of protein and as delicious on bread as it is with carrot sticks, hummus is a staple part of most vegan diets.

Ketchup, brown sauce and mustard

Beware of anchovies in cheaper brands, but most condiments like these ones are vegan.

Jam, peanut butter and sandwich pickle

We love a good *something* on toast. You’ll be pleased to know that these popular *somethings* are vegan. You can also get vegan butters from Vitalife, Flora and Pure.

Skittles, Millions, Starbursts

Who doesn’t love a good sweetie? There are tonnes of accidentally vegan sweets. Some Haribo varieties are also vegan. Watch out for gelatine and beeswax, neither of which fit in with a plant-based diet.

Mr Kipling Treacle Tart

Vegans can also eat Mr Kipling apple and blackcurrant pies.

Co-op jam and custard doughnuts

Everybody loves a good doughnut!

Oreos originals

This is the one nobody seems to believe, but it’s true! Oreos original biscuits are vegan friendly.

Baked beans

Most of your favourite baked bean brands are vegan, though you should watch out for reduced sugar Heinz baked beans. It was recently revealed that there’s something in these that vegans can’t eat.Baked Beans on Toast

Instant noodles

Our favourites are Sainsbury’s Chicken Flavour Instant Noodles. Made with the only type of chicken flavour you need – the fake stuff!

 

Things you might think are vegan that aren’t…

Beer – Not all beers, lagers or ciders are vegan. Stay away from Kopparberg, Rekorderlig, Fosters, Carling and Stella.

Cereal – Lots of cereals are vegan, but some are not, and it might not be obvious from the ingredients. Kelloggs use a vitamin D3 derived from sheep wool in their cereal, which means that even the innocent looking cornflake is not vegan.

Tattoos – If you’re taking it really seriously, then you need to be careful who is inking your arms. Lots of tattooists use ink that is not vegan.

Orange juice – Sometimes they contain Omega-3 derived from fish oil or gelatin, whilst others contain vitamin D from sheep’s wool. Look for the 100% orange juice brands.Orange juice splash

Protein powders – Often made with whey, you’ll no longer have your pick of the protein powders if you go plant-based, but luckily there are lots of delicious vegan flavoured shakes to choose from by Sun Warrior.



The secret to a healthy life

I was definitely one of those first year university students strumming an invisible guitar, mime roaring one of Queen’s greatest hits, one vision. I was full of beans, idealism and conviction, and I really wanted to be part of the world as a solution. Of course real life takes over and soon I began to realise that change is a very, very long, slow process and life is…well, complicated.

More recently, a friend of mine told me about a man called Jason Vale. Frankly I was a quite tickled by her enthusiasm. To begin with his motto of one life-one disease-one cure sounded as ridiculous as Queen’s song especially if like me you’re already half way down the slippery slope of cynicism and middle-age. I mean how can anybody boldly state that there is only one disease and one cure in the world? All you have to do is glance at the shelves at your local pharmacy, or simply google the A-Z list of diseases and medicines to think that perhaps Jason Vale is a lunatic whose ideas would have been more suited to the 60’s.

juice-artmuso

Image copyright: Sahua D https://www.flickr.com/photos/sahua/

And then there he was on my screen on Ted Talks, strumming something in me that I hadn’t felt in quite a while. I didn’t have to look too far to find his website and his recent documentary, Super Juice me – Jason Vale’s big juice experiment. I have to say it was both touching and illuminating to watch an experiment that took 8 people with 22 diseases on a 28 day journey that brought them both physical and mental healing in ways that they had not been able to achieve through their prescribed medications. You name it, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, lupus, food addiction, pulmonary sarcoidosis, asthma, atrial fibrillation, diabetes, sleep apnoea…I could go on.

My mind-sense about disease shifted significantly. Excuse the analogy, but of course it is far easier, cheaper and more efficient to service your car and feed it with petrol than to get it towed everywhere instead. In the same way, Jason argues that the most powerful cure for our bodies is to remove the toxins and address the deficiencies, rather than lean on drugs to treat the symptoms for the rest of our lives. In other words, drugs should assume their original place as the short term remedy and not the way of life.

And so every year thousands of people flock to Jason’s juicing retreats in Portugal and Turkey to renew themselves with the world’s densest form of liquid nutritional fuel, a.k.a vegetables and fruit.

Now apart from badly wanting to go to Portugal, I have begun to relive a kind of excitement, a kind of heart spilling over that I had stopped feeling about any world issue for a long time. That feeling of I’ve got to tell them, THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THIS, followed by thoughts of ‘amazon.co.uk, find juicer, live life of abundant radiant health’. Jason Vale will be hosting the world’s biggest detox 13th-17th January 2015.

To find out more about the juice revolution visit Jason’s website http://www.juicemaster.com/