We are the Ones

By : Richard Deboo

Posted on Vegetarian Friend By Debbiedeboo

The following is the text of the speech that I gave at the TW VegFest event in Tonbridge Wells,  England on Saturday 19 November, 2011.

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone

Those words of course are the opening lines to Edgar Allen Poe’s masterful “Alone“, one of the finest, most lyrical short poems of the 19th century.  I sometimes feel, as someone deeply committed to the protection, the welfare, the rights of my animal companions in this world, that I am somewhat different, somewhat …alone.

It is only when coming to an event such as this that one realises that … I am not alone, that … we are not alone … we are not alone in the universe, there are other, similar life-forms just like us out there … there are, in fact, lots and lots of us but even so, our differentness is often exaggerated by the indifference of a society that refuses to play its part in the beautiful drama of compassionate living.

Here are but a few telling tales from my own recent past.  Last year when the football World Cup was on in South Africa, a few of us decided to go to the pub after work to watch one of the games – 16 of us went in total.  As it was after work, people wanted to get some food as well; 15 of us ordered a burger and chips.  I didn’t order the burger; I didn’t even order the chips – they looked a bit rank to me!  I subsisted that evening entirely on the nutrients to be extracted from a large number of bottles of Peroni, and I think that I rather well really… but the point was made, that I was the different one…

At Christmas time, we had a party at work and much was made of the catering that was going to laid on for us – on the evening there were great long tables filled with food, people eagerly picking at the goodies on offer … except that there was nothing there for me.  One of the catering staffcame over and said, “oh – you’re the one.  Your food is out the back, I’ll go and get it.”  Apparently I was the one … but not, unfortunately, in the same way as Keanu Reeves in The Matrix… back she came with a plate, looking quite pleased with herself.  I took the plate and looked at … well, some soggy green things (it was difficult to tell exactly what they were) not so much drizzled but drowned in oil, limp leaves hanging over the edge of the plate, looking for all the world like the melted clocks in Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, except that this was no work of art … my mate sniggered and snorted as he drank from his beer and yes, once again I was the different one…

A few years before that I was working at a major investment bank in the City of London and as an investment bank they of course had great wads of cash to flash around spending it on whatever they liked.  This was before the credit crunch … and I find it interesting that following the credit crunch they’ve ended up with even more cash to splash now for failing than they ever had when they were apparently succeeding … such are the mysteries of global capitalism…

Anyway, back then the bank decided to throw some cash down at the lower orders who workedthere, such as myself, and they sent us on a ridiculously expensive 3-day residential training course at a terrifyingly posh hotel out in the Kent countryside … I’m sure this hotel had never had to put up with the likes of me before and if I hadn’t have had my company pass I’m sure I’d have been shotat the gates as a peasant intruder… but I did have my company pass so there was nothing they could do about it and they had to let me in…

We did the training during the day and that was all very boring, but it was in very fine, oak-panelled surroundings, every detail a deliberate expression of a place luxuriating in its own exclusivity and opulence … but it was in the evening, at dinner, that the hotel really wanted to impress …

From early evening drinks we were ushered through to the dining-room, a space perfectly dressed in exquisite finery, the other guests already making delicate chinks of sound as cutlery met china under the murmur of soft conversation… a piano player made gentle tones at the grand piano … a full grand piano, no baby stuff for this place … we were seated at a long table for the eight in our group, plus our two trainers.  I had, of course, explained my dietary needs to the hotel beforehand – as a vegan one learns very quickly to seek to pre-empt any major confusion at the mere mention of that apparently alien-sounding word…vegan.  Even so, when the hors d’oeuvres when brought through mine was a piece of a fish … I explained this problem to one of the waiters who said, “oh you’re a strict one?” before taking it away.  Maybe I didn’t want a starter anyway.

Then the main event.  The main course.  This was where the chef was going to demonstrate his creative brilliance, his culinary genius… and this was full silver-service.

We each had a waiter dedicated to us with the maitre d’ in full command of his staff.  Each of the waiters stood at our side, holding the silver platters in their hands, the silver domes sparkling in the evening light.  With a nod the maitre d’ gestured to the pianist who paused his playing, the room fellsilent and the waiters placed the platters before us.  A moment to savour as we waited for the revelation of what was in front of us.  With an orchestrated wave of the maitre d’s finger the waiters reached over in perfect synchronisation and lifted the silver lids – my colleagues to a one “ooh-ed” and “aah-ed” and “wow-ed”, gasps of delight as they looked on in wide-eyed wonder at their plates.  I looked at my … risotto in something less than wonder.  “Is that it?” one of colleagues said as she gazed across at the sorry-looking damp rice splodged on my plate.  What could I say?  At least the chef had managed a vegan risotto.  But they feasted well, my colleagues, that evening on their varieties of so-called “game”, the chef’s speciality, naturally, the hotel’s speciality, naturally, and I was once more “the one”…

The second evening we had the same service, the same dedicated attention to our needs, the same sliver platters, the same nod to the pianist, the same ritual with the team of waiters, the same revelation of the chef’s virtuosity and remarkable talent … and I had the same risotto.  And I saw the same, pained sorrowful looks from my colleagues.

The final evening after a third day’s training, and for the last time the ceremony unfolded as before, themaitre d’ ushering us through to the dining room for one more meal … one more example of the chef’s magnificence, one further chance to sample the pleasure of his genius; one further pause by the pianist as the waiters raised the polished, silver domes one last time and once more the same “oohs” and “aahs” and “wows” from my colleagues and .. oh yes, once more the same risotto for me!  Once more I was singled out, I was different, I was alone.

I complained of course although the hotel was completely unconcerned; they make plenty of money by filling plates with plenty of so-called “game” birds, reclining afterwards in the rich rewards from so much praise from so many well-fed, well-satisfied guests.

I mention these incidents not because I felt bad about any of them, not because I felt embarrassed by what happened, and not because I felt that I was in any way wrong for being “the one”, for being “singled out” in that way … on the contrary, the very opposite was true then and is still true now …

I seriously could have cared less about being “the one”, and I would only have preferred more “ones” to make us into a many… but I was fine without the burger and chips in the pub that day, looking around the table and seeing their hands greasy with the stain of flesh dribbled with oil to burn away the blood; I was fine, really, with those limp leaves at the Christmas party – how else could I ever enjoy a party, a festiveoccasion, if I had corpse parts on my plate?  And I was massively unfazed by the pained looks of my colleagues in that hotel as they looked sadly at my plate, and I looked at them and saw their cheeks fat with the torn shreds of the violently slaughtered, their faces reddening and bulging with the stuffed remnants of an eviscerated life.

They may have laughed and joked at the table, at the party and in the pub but when I smile I do not have the tattered flesh of the slain hanging from my teeth, my skin does not ooze the rotten grease of death and when I breathe I do not exhale the swallowed scream of the viciously killed.

There was nothing wrong with being “the one” … but the one thing that is wrong in all of this is that it is the wrong way around – it is the one who rips into the bodies of the dead who should be singled out; it is the one who demands that others die for his or her gratification who should be the one who receives the quizzical, confused glance as we ask, “but why would you want that?” and it is the one whose pleasure is found in the sufferance and destruction of the weak and undefended who should feel isolation from his or her peers, the silence that folds like a shadow that comes from being the odd one out.

There should have been fifteen in the pub that evening who were uninterested in any flesh-based burgers, the xmas party should have been heaving, swinging with the many who could eat whatever they wanted from the long tables, crowded with vegetables, fruits and all manner of non-animal cuisine, and below those silver domes should have been riches aplenty for those whose appetites are sated not by blood and death but by the plant-based offerings of a world of food bursting with goodness, and so they would have been if that chef was worth even a fraction of the cost of a meal held under the glittering light of the chandeliers in that dining room.

So why is it not the right way around?  Why is it so wrong?

Because we are led to believe lies.  The world is warped, the truth is twisted, the facts are falsified, and the lies are laid out before us for our delectation and consumption – if we choose the lazy way and ask no questions, challenge no assumptions, and suppose that every presumption is promoted for the best of intentions, for the noblest of reasons, with everyone’s best interests at heart.

No.  This is a dark heart of corruption and distortion; the truth is crushed and lies roll over us; we are led to believe not only that animal body parts and their secretions are essential to human health – despite the irrefutable scientific evidence that disproves this categorically, but also that it must be so hard to live as one who has no animal products in the diet; people are made to feel that it’s just too difficult to change, that it’s just so hard to adapt to a life free from meat and dairy.

We should not be surprised that this is so.  The animal farming industry is worth billions of pounds in profit and those companies – whether producers, distributors or retailers – engaged in “feeding the masses” have a vested interest in everything remaining the same, in keeping the population pacified and docile, the mass of humanity leaning backwards, eyes rolling, tongues lolling and mouths agape as tons of rubbish is poured down their throats.  But we don’t have to take their rubbish, we don’t have to fill our bellies with the bloody remains of the cruelly killed, we don’t have to stain our lips with the stolen milk of worn-out, run-down traumatised cows bellowing for their calves, now lying dead with a bullet in the head, shot within hours of being born.

We don’t have to do any of that and stopping doing it is one of the easiest things we can do … as well as one of the most profoundly compassionate and beautiful acts we can ever perform.

All that we have to do is to see them, those farmed animals, and see them all for who they really are, and see ourselves for who we really are and then just to modestly adjust our behaviours and live our life slightly differently, so that we can live a life whose every moment is devoted to compassion.  This is all that we have to do, to adapt to a life of kindness and consideration for others.

We are an adaptable species.  We can adapt to anything.  You’d be surprised what people can get used to, you would.  It’s amazing really, our ability to adapt.  There were men, and it was only men, who were taken as prisoners to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the Second World War and were forced to “work” in the murder chambers and crematoria as what the Nazis called Sonderkommando, a “special” team whose task it was to remove the dead bodies from the gas chambers, remove any gold teeth and jewellery – including intimate examinations for any hidden items, and then burn the bodies, either in open pits or in the crematoria.  Often, these men saw and had to deal with the bodies of their families from whom they had been separated only hours before – and now they had to destroy them, utterly and completely.  Some of those men “worked” in that horror, that abyssal nightmare, for months even in some cases years.

Even under this most extreme of psychological tortures and trauma they survived, they maintained their decency and their dignity … they … adapted.  That is a testament to their courage, the strength of their humanity and their determination to bear witness to this most grievous of evils.  But they adapted.

All that I ask is that we all adapt to soya milk instead of cow’s milk, adapt to tofu instead of ham, adapt to … letting other lives live.  I ask only that we all live without the factory farm with its cages and chains, live without the weekly livestock market selling animals to their death, and that we all live without the slaughterhouse as the backdrop to our daily rituals, its walls running with blood, spilt just for us.

We can have Weetabix for breakfast instead of sausages and bacon; we can have pizza, curry, burgers just the same … just without the animal pieces, and we can have life all around us not death in us and surrounding us.

We can so easily live in a way that harms no-one, that causes no-one to suffer, no-one to feel pain, no-one to die, to lose their life just for us.  From the moment we raise our head from the pillow in the morning until we rest it down again at the close of evening we can live and we can know that everyone else lived and no-one died because of us … no-one was shot because of us, no-one was stabbed in the heart because of us, no-one was anally-electrocuted because of us, no-one was kicked in the face, and punched in the eye, and beaten on the head and burned and scalded, and yelled at and cursed and hated and pushed and pulled and thrown and … … no-one screamed in pain because of us, no-one bowed their head and cried and died just because of us …

And we can live so well!

There’s a reason why heart disease, and diabetes, and obesity and dementia and cancer and so many other desperate afflictions are so rare amongst those who have no animal-based foods in their diet – certainly when contrasted with the meat-eaters in our society.  Even taking everything else into account – lifestyle, exercise, age, gender, ethnicity, family history – all of the medical data all point the same way: that a plant-based or vegan diet is not only a healthy choice but the healthiest choice …

It allows us as human beings to live long and healthy lives, with a much, much lower risk of so many diseases that terrify so many.  It is not inevitable that 1 in 3 of us must contract cancer as is suggested by so many cancer charities; heart disease is not an inevitable fact of life that can only be held at bay at best by surgery and a lifetime of popping pills; we do not have to spend the majority of our later years debilitated, in chronic pain, with worn and diseased bones, bereft of energy, vitality, the very life sapped from us even as we live … and wheeze and stagger, bent-double towards a cold, early grave.

The one who is considering, but hesitating, about whether to make that choice and absent all animal products from their life – from their food, their clothes and furniture, cosmetics and household products, should ask themselves the simple question – what’s the worst that can happen?

Will their arms fall off?  It seems unlikely.  Will their eyeballs boil in their heads and explode outwards in a shower of tissue and membrane?  That’s not expected to happen.  Will their stomach erupt in a spasm of fiery rejection of fruits and vegetables, and be ripped asunder in a bloody horror of self-evisceration?  That’s doubtful too.

The worst, the very worst that can happen is that going shopping might take a bit longer as they scan the ingredients list of items on the supermarket shelf … that’s how bad it will ever get …

Now what’s the best that can happen?  The person will feel healthier, more full of energy, and will know that their new diet is one that is most definitely more friendly to the environment, knowing that the precious limited water and food available on Earth is not poured into the mouths of livestock animals but is still there for the billion humans who are desperately parched and hungry.  And they will know too that they are not responsible for any pain, any suffering, any violence, any cruelty, any beating, any bloodshed, any killing…

They will know that they are living a truly compassionate life, one that respects all life, one that cherishes life, one that really offers hope to those who hunger and thirst in our world, and offers safety and sanctuary to those who deserve our mercy, and protects and cares for the natural world, that safeguards the rainforests, the mangroves, the coral reefs, the rivers and seas and oceans, the savannahs and the forests, the fields and the wetlands, all secured for future generations to treasure the richness of the variety of life lived therein, and one that offers care and kindness to those who are undefended, that looks after the weak and the fragile, a life that expresses love in fullness and without hesitation, concession or compromise, a live of love lived completely and absolutely, a life of goodness, decency, kindness and compassion offered to all without exception…a long, healthy, wonderful life of joy and love …

That’s how good it can be.

And we can all do it. We can all live that life.  The power is ours, to change our lives and the lives of so many others.

We do not have to wait for anyone to tell us what to do; we do not have to wait to be given permission to do what we want to do; we do not have to wait to change the world.  We can do it now.

We are often made to feel powerless, by lobbyists, by Governments, by big business, but they’re wrong  -they don’t own this world; we do.  They’re not in control; we are.  They don’t have the power; it’s ours.  In truth, they’re running scared from us, terrified that we won’t show our loyalty by always shopping at the same supermarket, always buying the same brands, always voting the same way … if we take away our loyalty, if we refuse to buy into what they want us to do, then there’s nothing that they can do about it … and they know it.

They want us to feel weak, but we are strong; they want us to feel helpless and hopeless but hope is ours to offer and help is ours to give.  They want us to feel that we can change nothing, but we can change everything.  The power is ours; we are in control – of our destiny and the destiny of those billions of others in our world … and we can change the world … by thinking differently, by acting differently, by choosing to live differently, we can change the world.

It doesn’t matter that we get “singled out”, that people regard us as “the one”, because we’re the ones that are taking a stand, we’re the ones that are making a difference … and we are the ones that the world has been waiting for!

Some People Refuse To See Fact

By : Lauren Woods

How come even when you present people with fact about the vegan lifestyle, people don't believe? It is so frustrating! I don't push it in anyone's face, because I'm fresh as a vegetarian and still learning myself- but the more I learn, the more I want to share.

All those years I was drinking milk I was feeling so good about it... I just can't see how myself, and so many people remainignorant about nutrition.

http://saveourbones.com/osteoporosis-milk-myth/

The milk myth has spread around the world based on the flawed belief that this protein and calcium-rich drink is essential to support good overall health and bone health in particular at any age. It is easy to understand that the confusion about milk’s imaginary benefits stems from the fact that it contains calcium – around 300 mg per cup.

But many scientific studies have shown an assortment of detrimental health effects directly linked to milk consumption. And the most surprising link is that not only do we barely absorb the calcium in cow’s milk (especially if pasteurized), but to make matters worse, it actually increases calcium loss from the bones. What an irony this is!

Here’s how it happens. Like all animal protein, milk acidifies the body pH which in turn triggers a biological correction. You see, calcium is an excellent acid neutralizer and the biggest storage of calcium in the body is – you guessed it… in the bones. So the very same calcium that our bones need to stay strong is utilized to neutralize the acidifying effect of milk. Once calcium is pulled out of the bones, it leaves the body via the urine, so that the surprising net result after this is an actual calcium deficit.

Knowing this, you’ll understand why statistics show that countries with the lowest consumption of dairy products also have the lowest fracture incidence in their population (there’s more on this later).

Source: Vegetarian Friend

Vegan as Fuck

By : Richard Deboo

Posted on Vegetarian Friend By Debbiedeboo

The image, a logo if you like, that accompanies this note represents an ethical philosophy made manifest in the visual form, and is something newly made from a design on a t-shirt promoted by a pop band way back in the day, way back in the late 1980s.  That design pictured a cow with the slogan above it reading “cool as f**k”.  At the time, people thought that it was a cool t-shirt, lots of people liked it, and lots and lots of people were wearing that t-shirt way back in those days.

This image creates something new from that design.  It is a “readymade”, in the conception of Monsieur M Duchamp, which is why I have “signed” it R Nott, because we (the collective “I”) are not “copying” something, but creating something new; this is transformative, emblematic of the power of art to convert by subversion one thing into something else; it is new because I say it is.

And this image is created to be deliberately provocative.  It can be seen as being quite offensive, casually swearing like that.  So why do it, and what on earth does “vegan as f**k” mean anyway?

It is for both vegans and non-vegans to see.  But let’s deal firstly with the non-vegans.

It’s a deliberately challenging statement, it’s supposed to be a bit in-your-face, and in a very real way, I really do not mind if it is seen to be offensive, I am content to offend non-vegans with it.

Why?  Well, it’s only words, it’s just a phrase, it’s merely a logo, simply an image, and if people can be offended by that, then why are they not offended by all of the cruelty, bloodshed and killing done to non-human animals in their name every moment of every day of every year?

If someone is not a vegan (and the desperate truth alas is that the sheer, overwhelming majority in society are not vegans), then these people are the consumers of the products that I despise so much, they are the supporters of the practices that make my blood boil so intensely, and it is they who provide profit to those companies and individuals who directly commit the acts that shatter my sensibilities so comprehensively.

If someone is not a vegan then that person is for the violence in the slaughterhouses, for the brutality of the dairy industry, for the horrors of the poultry industry, for the ferocious violence of the factory farms,for the devastation of the seas and the emptying of the oceans, they are for the destruction of the rainforests, for the filthing and pollution of the land and marine environments and they are for the appalling waste of scarce water and food when a billion people are profoundly parched and malnourished, on the brink of starvation… and, finally, they are for the vicious killing of billions upon billions of suffering, pained and fearful individuals year after year.

Now that is something that I find offensive.

When I walk down the aisle of a supermarket and I see the serried rows of freshly packed sliced dead flesh, knowing full well the horror and the misery, the fear and the pain endured by those animals in their deliberately foreshortened lives and violent deaths, and I see people absent-mindedly browsing the tidy packaging, casually, indifferently, selecting their cuts of “meat”, then I find that offensive.

When I go to my local tube station on the London Underground first thing in the morning on my way to work and I see the local shop selling sandwiches listed as ham, cheese, ham and cheese, chicken, turkey, and prawn, and the bored commuters lazily making their casual purchases of bits of the dead and their drained fluids, then I find that offensive.

When I read in the morning paper that all of this damned nation’s five favourite sandwiches contain “chicken” as an ingredient, then I find that offensive.

And because I have allowed myself to know the staggering cruelty behind all of these simply packaged products, so ubiquitous, so easily and readily accessible and available, with their names (“ham”, “pork”, “cheese”, “lamb”, “beef”, “veal”) and pictures so nonchalantly displayed everywhere I turn, everywhere I look, shops, newspapers, television, and I see and I watch so many buying into it, perpetuating – by their very and every purchase – that shattering cruelty against those defenseless animals, then I find that offensive.

So really, I’m quite happy to go on the “offensive”, and to be deliberately provocative; I really do not mind if non-vegans are offended by the wording on this image… I am tired of having to tip-toe oh so delicately around the issues, to be all quiet and meek and mild about why I am a vegan and must instead be careful to protect and not offend the soft sensibilities of the meat-eater; and I am tired of having to be apologetic about it, a “mistake” of mine, apparently, a bit “weird”, this being a vegan.  But I’m having none of it.  No more.  The abuse, torture and killing of billions of non-human animals is a horror of searing proportions; it’s disgusting, it’s sickening, and I’m frankly appalled that so many people can be so damned casual about it, can act like it’s no big deal at all, and don’t seem to be offended by it, at all, not a bit of it, at all.

And so.  By mixing the word vegan with the word f**k, I want to shock people, I want to shake them out of their slumbering complacency, to rouse them from their idle docility.

I know that for people to be so unmoved by the intense horror, savagery and waste of the so-called “animal product industry” should not surprise me and it does not surprise me; too often too many have behaved in this way.  In a very different situation, but for very similar reasons, Wilfred Owen, the great poet of the first World War, was compelled to write:

“But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man”

(Wilfred Owen, Insensibility, 1918)

He was compelled to write that because he was shocked and deeply morally affronted that people “back home” in the UK were utterly unmoved by the carnage, the horror, and the waste of the war on the Western Front… this jarring fact that many were left untroubled, untouched and indifferent to the torment, the violence, and the hell endured by men in those trenches was for Mr. Owen nothing less than the complete debasement of humanity.

And now, in a very different situation but for a very similar reason must I state the stark, bloody fact that, by choice, the non-vegans in our society have made themselves immune to all of the extreme, vile violence done daily to millions of non-humans in the name of profit, of pleasure (“I love a bit of steak!”) and the alleged pursuit of knowledge (in the barbarity of our “bio-medical research” institutions).  To satisfy the desire for a bite to eat, for a new pair of shoes or a coat, or a new version of an old pill, people choose to remain as dullards, as stones, in the face of the cry of agony – they have no pity.

I do not understand the value systems of those who remain immune to the suffering of the innocent, the defenseless, those animals who are utterly at our mercy and are shown no mercy but instead get a kick in the face and a knife in the throat.  I do not understand how those people can sanction and be satisfied with such horror.  So: if anyone were to see this image and be offended, I seriously could care less.

But this is also there for vegans to see too.  What message does it convey to vegans?

What I hope is that it serves as to signify who vegans are, and what we can and do represent.  For too long the media image of the vegan, and the stereotype that most carry around in their heads, is of someone who’s a bit scatty, possibly terribly middle class or a tad “alt” with black clothes and dyed hair, someone with too much time on their hands so that they meddle their minds and fiddle their fingers with twee little things like a thousand and one recipes for lentil soup.

As far as society in general is concerned, vegans are bit daft; a bit weird, best left alone, too odd and dull for company, people who spend too much time thinking about little fluffy rabbits, who would be tedious killjoys at parties and would drink only carrot or orange juice whilst stood in the corner flowering the wall, smiling weakly and dreaming wistfully of hemp clothing.

But they’ve got it all wrong.  We’re cooler than that.  We’re far, far cooler than that.

We don’t go around supporting and lapping up the spilling of blood on a global scale, the violent confinement and beating, punching and kicking of the innocent, we don’t accept and nod our heads at the slashing and stabbing of throats, the boiling and grinding up alive of conscious, sentient, pain-sensitive beings.  We’re too cool to go along with crap like that.

We don’t sit back and let ourselves be pacified by a foul pack of lies about how farming is now so good for animals, or swallow wholesale the mind-vomit alleging that organic farming is so welfare-centered and the animals are so happy; we’re not taken in by corporate lies and the lies of food industry lobbyists about how we should all be eating so much fish or other “meats”, and drinking so much milk and gobble up so many eggs, because it’s all apparently so good for us, whilst those who tell us to do so line their pockets with money as people line their hearts with cholesterol.  We don’t fall for a word of it because we’re not that stupid.

We don’t stuff our faces and over-fill our bellies with the foods that we know are the single biggest cause of climate change and are the number one reason why we’re tearing down the rainforests and burning them and all who live within them into oblivion; we don’t obsess at the desire to rip up the ocean floor to grab every living thing that swims and crawls below the waves, leaving only a desert bereft utterly of the abundance and magnificence of life that once thrived there and survives no more either there or anywhere.  We’re far too smart to trash the only planet that we have.

We don’t slop and slurp at the lactation fluid of ruminants, salivating over milk designed for a new-born whilst that new born is slashed and slaughtered for cheap meat and the grieving mother is impregnated yet again in an unending cycle of reproductive misery that all too quickly crushes the life from her, done to death for the sake of a splash of liquid in a bowl of cereal or a cup of tea.  We don’t do that because we’re just not that heartless and cruel – to steal the life-food of infants and tear the young from their mothers, and the mothers from their new-born young.

We don’t believe for one minute the outrageous untruths peddled by the medical and pharmaceutical industries, who’ve got billions of pounds in profits riding on perpetuating the old lies about how useful to human health are those millions of animal experiments whilst at the same time, despite those millions of animal experiments, the fourth biggest killer in the country is people dying from popping animal-tested pills.  Sorry, but no: we’ve read the research, we’ve analyzed the data, we’ve counted the staggering number of animal and human corpses, and we can work out the truth for ourselves.

We’re too smart, too independently minded, too aware, too ethical, too moral, too caring, too compassionate, too decent, too radical, too revolutionary, too damned cool to be suckered into any of that crap.  We’re vegan, and we’re vegan for literally bloody good reasons.  We’re vegan and we’re vegan as fuck.

What 2012 Means to My Diet

By : Lauren Woods

I was so happy to find this site :)! Everyone has been sowonderful and supportive.

Up until around 2011, however, I was a HUGE meat eater. It was all I had ever known, growing up. The only veggies I knew were: salad, kiwis, maybe broccoli every once and a while. Focus at breakfast lunch and dinner was always meat meat meat.

My grandma had diabetes, and as she began to struggle with cancer, I heard that a raw diet can reverse diabetes, possibly even cancer. Then my mom began to develop diabetes, along with a whole round of other health issues, just like HER mom... I decided right then I wasn't going to be the same. She constantly disobeys her doctor's orders as to her diet- and watching her health decline is very sad.

I got REALLY fat eating all that meat. By cutting back on meat and exercising (No one moves an inch in my family lmao) I lost 55 lbs. This year I hope to get down to 118. I ran from obesity, toward the light! Lol. It wasn't until 2012 when I made my resolutions, that I began to make some BIG changes.

January 1st, I became a pescetarian. At first, I was orbiting all my meals around fish, overeating fish- compensating for all the other meat I was ripping clear from my diet. As of today, Jan 30th 2012- I am lacto-vegetarian. Though really- I haven't had sushi OR eggs for two days, but I made the conscience decisiontoday. I still drink milk- but this week I'm going to buy a milk substitute at the store, and begin my transition to dairy free. I haven't put cheese on anything in days, hoorah.

My birthday is in July, and by then I'd like to be vegan, and bake my own delicious vegan cake :)!! I'm finally excited about foods again... And since my diet change, MY INSOMNIA IS GONE!! I couldn't believe it. I'd suffered from insomnia for years, and was diagnosed very young. I'd tried everything, from pills to rigorous exercise- but even 3 hours at the gym wouldn't wipe me out, or at least give me a FULL night's sleep. It was as simple as changing my diet.

2012 for me is the year of regaining my life back- the life I SHOULD have, but has been denied to me through my family's bad habits. I'm also beginning volunteering at the Humane Society, so wish me luck!

Source : http://www.vegfriend.com/profiles/blogs/what-2012-means-to-my-diet

PS. If every one of us inspired ONE person to go meatless imagine the difference we could make in ten years time. I am going to collect inspirational vegetarian/vegan stories to share with everyone. If you think your story will inspire others, please share with me by sending it to info@veglov.com. I will post your stories on this www.veglov.com blog. I believe everyone has his/her own story, I think it must be great when we can share our stories and inspire others. Let’s make the world a better place. ~ Xiao Kang.

More Fruit, More Veggies, More Happy

A new study reveals that a higher daily intake of fruits and vegetables results in a greater sense of happiness and mental well-being.

Feeling blue? Perhaps you need more reds, greens, and yellows in your diet. According to a new study from the University of Warwick and Dartmouth College, upping your fruit and veggie intake to seven servings daily from the typically recommended five servings promotes happiness and improved mental health.

Researchers studied the dietary habits of 80,000 people in Britain and surveyed participants on life satisfaction, mental well-being, history or presence of mental disorders, nervousness, feelings of depression, and personal self-reported health and happiness.

As subjects' daily intake of fruits and vegetables increased, so did their sense of happiness and well-being. The dose-dependent pattern peaked at seven servings per day; eating more yielded no additional mood enhancement.

Though experts recommend five servings of fruits and vegetables per day for optimal health, the authors of the study report that 25 percent of British people consume one or no servings each day, and only a tenth of the entire British population meets the seven or more a day goal.

And according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 14 percent of adult Americans eat enough fruits and vegetables, with 33 percent getting the recommended two or more daily servings of fruit, and 27 percent meeting the recommended three or more daily servings of vegetables.

“The statistical power of fruit and vegetables was a surprise. Diet has traditionally been ignored by well-being researchers,” says Sarah Stewart-Brown, MD, professor of public health at Warwick Medical School and study co-author. However, she stresses that there is still more to learn regarding the link between serving size and its effect on mood and well-being.

Source: Everyday Health

Eat the Baby

No Body wants to eat meat after reading this Heart Wrenching Poem except If one is heart-less

When mum gave birth to a baby,

All chorused, 'Well done mum!'

But mother didn't say a word

Because this mum was dumb.

When baby was a few days old

Their mouths began to water

The innocent little baby would

Very soon be gone for slaughter.

When baby was but two weeks old

They put her on the scales

From there into a wooden box

Made fast with iron nails.

They took the baby to a place

Which had a crimson floor,

The walls were coated too of course

With crimson guts and gore.

They dragged the baby from the box

Onto the bloody ground

And when the shocks were sent through her

She didn't make a sound.

They hung the baby by her feet

Onto a moving chair

But no one stopped to ask about

The excruciating pain.

The baby traveled upside down

And met a bloody knife

And when the knife plunged into her

She parted with her life.

The baby hung there motionless,

Her entrails swam below

The reason for her violent death?

The lamb would never know.

They ripped the skin, clean off her back

And hacked her into two

The reason for the baby's death?

was simply HOT LAMB STEW!!!!

Source : Vegetarian Friend

Compassion and Kindness to Animals

I’m having a day where I’m just fed up with the defensive nonsense people come up with.

I can understand people not knowing, we were all there once. We’ve all been conditioned to eat other animals flesh and milk and see it as normal.

I can understand people finding it hard to change, that’s not always easy and it’s a process for everyone.

People who are acknowledging the obvious suffering and trying to change, are sane kind people doing their best to overcome a lifetimes indoctrination and habits, and respect to you for that.

But the people who can look at these images, see the footage of what’s happening to animals on factory farms and slaughterhouses, find out that they don’t have to eat animals to meet their nutritional needs, once you know these things combined, to continue to justify your violence towards these innocent animals – I’m sorry, you’re subhuman. You’re a psychopath. A culturally sanctioned very normal psychopath, but here, this page, is not the best place to come and share how much you intend to continue with your violent tendencies.

Animals need help and compassion is not another way of saying - unless they’re animals who you particularly like the taste of – then you can abuse, mutilate, confine and stab to death all you like.

What someone else just said on another thread was to see this kind of behavior in people as a ‘shortcoming’ to be forgiven and accepted. I don’t forgive or accept your violence, this is not a ‘shortcoming’ some idiosyncratic characteristic which I am to tolerate, any more than if you took my cat or dog, or my grandmother and hacked them to pieces would be.

This is brutal horrendous violence. This is having your throat slit open and bled to death. Or rather, not you, but these innocent gentle animals who have done you no harm who have no voice to protest and who suffer as much as you would in the circumstances.

If you can’t empathize with that suffering enough to stop paying someone to do that to innocent gentle animals – honestly you need therapy.

What you don’t need, is to be coming on this page and expressing your opinions. They won’t be welcome here, and arguing with us is only another way of defending against seeing your own violence. That’s not what we are here for either.

This page is about compassion and kindness to animals, and we show a great deal of respect to one another, those of us who genuinely care about animals and avoid harming them wherever possible.

Those who don’t care, or pretend to care whilst still gratuitously slaughtering them, will get no such respect from me. You’ll get the cold hard truth, and I can help you find a good therapist if you’d like. Whenever you are ready to stop being violent, you have my friendship. But until then, you’re a violent lunatic and not one I want to hang out with.

Source : Loving Animals, Healing Our World