March 2010
48 posts
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Agave: Health Fraud →
According to Jeff Novick, and possibly Jack Norris, it’s time to add agave nectar to the list of vegan foods that vegan dietitians recommend avoiding.
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“This of course doesn’t diminish the vegan diet in any way. Just because no...”
– RawForLife
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Interview With an Ex-Vegan: Laurel Long
Laurel Long became vegan as a teenager and was soon active in animal rights activism. Spreading the good vegan news became one of her most valued pastimes; she wrote letters to the editor and columns to encourage people to go vegan, including this one, in which she explains why she chose the compassionate diet:
I suppose my activism “career” began when I developed adequate enough ...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
RawForLife: “In my second year of raw food, I was excited to be contacted by a journalist who wanted to write an article about me for a women’s magazine and possibly make a TV series too. He was very enthusiastic about raw, and we chatted about various things, finding lots of common ground, until…the subject of garlic came up.
“I happened to say that, after being raw for a while,...
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There's A Pill For That: Taurine →
Vegans often wonder what magical nutrient (besides B12) is found in meat but not in vegan foods. Melissa at huntgatherlove.com argues that taurine is one of them.
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Vegan Police Brutality →
The Vegan Police pulled me over for blogging while against veganism. Click the headline for the transcription of their interrogation.
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Interview With an Ex-Vegan: Valija Evalds
Valija Evalds is currently an Art History professor at The University of Kansas. Before that, she taught at Yale as a grad student, and at Smith as an adjunct lecturer. Going even further back, her vocational attempts have included children’s book illustrator, nun, revolutionary and museum tour guide.
But the main reason I interviewed her is that she was veg*an for about 15 years, from 1981...
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“We do need to kill in order to live. But I don’t kill as much as you, and...”
– “Rob”
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Maria’s Advice – Vegan Ethics During World Travel →
Maria from Vegan World Trekker ponders some common moral dilemmas vegans may face once they venture out of the safety of their hometowns. Such as:
As a vegan, you may come across some situations during your vacation that challenge your ethics. For example, in certain parts of the world they do not understand veganism at all. Many people, especially in Africa and Asia, feel that a guest is...
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Interview With an Ex-Vegan: Kaleigh Mason
Kaleigh Mason was Veganadian for eight years (for anyone unfamiliar with the term, that means a vegan in Canada).
Initially her avoidance of any food with even trace amounts of animal products was for health-related reasons. But lest you think, “Aha! She was vegan for the wrong reasons! No wonder she wasn’t committed at all and thus gave up after 8 years instead of 80,” Kaleigh...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
Supervegan: Guys! My boyfriend Matt is a finalist in PETA’s Sexiest Vegetarian Next Door contest! Besides being intelligent, funny, and strikingly handsome, Matt is sexy by virtue of his washboard ribs.
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The Vegan Response to the Insect Eating Movement?
One of veganism’s competitors in the “save the world by changing your consumption habits” realm is entomophagy — eating insects. Proponents of bugs as food say that insects are a much more resource-efficient source of protein than larger animals, that they are nutrient dense and low in saturated fat, that they are arguably lower on the food chain than plants, and that you...
The PPK Didn't Do It. But if they did it... No,...
I’ve spent some time lurking on the Post Punk Kitchen message board. I can’t really deny it at this point. Remember all those “Vegan Quotes of the Day” I used to do? (By “used to do,” I mean that I haven’t posted any today yet.) Well, I was following the links on some of them recently, and I noticed something — a disproportionate amount of them seem...
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“What you hear is the passion that I have for the plight of these animals that...”
– Your Daily Vegan
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FBI Raids House of Man Who Coined "Animal... →
Will this finally put an end to Holocaust comparisons in vegan rhetoric?
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Vegan Quote of the Day
missmuffcake: One time I met another vegan who did not care for me because my cat ate meat-based food. However, she wore wool, which I would never do.
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Veg*ans Against Throwing Pie
Though a lot of vegans have reacted with glee at the news that Lierre Keith was pied in the face while criticizing factory farming, some vegans are not entirely comfortable with the assault:
Eppy: “It’s a little frustrating to see anarchists doing this sort of shit, actually. It’s a horrible invitation. ‘Hey, come join our lawless utopia where every time I disagree with...
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"Animal Holocaust Denier Pied at Book Fair" →
I have to admit, I’d never heard this one before. Peter Young of “Voice of the Voiceless” refers to Lierre Kieth as an “Animal holocaust denier.” He continues:
“A disrupted speech is trivial in comparison to the billions of deaths this woman promotes, but yesterday’s resistance to this death-merchant will undoubtedly give Keith some (vegan) “food for...
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Indybay Commenters Debate the Judiciousness of...
Indybay: “Bound Together Books and PM Press continue to try to prop up and foist veg*n antagonist Lierre Keith onto the radical community in the Bay Area. Today, at the 15th Annual San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair, where she was scheduled to be a featured speaker, Keith was served her just deserts for her obnoxious attacks on veg*ns in The Vegetarian Myth. …
“The insults and...
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"Vegans Assault Author of Vegetarian Myth to... →
Though she was vegan far longer than most make-believe herbivores last, Lierre Keith is now public enemy number one in the vegan world because of her anti-veganism book, The Vegetarian Myth. She is higher on the vegan shitlist than seal clubbers, higher than whale hunters, and maybe even higher than Anthony Bourdain.
This must be one evil, hateful, destructive screed she’s written. It must...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
hespedal: Aspartame is not vegan — it’s processed with pig enzyme.
bathsheba: Great. Not only am I going to die from all the diet soda I’ve consumed in my lifetime, I now feel really guilty about it too.
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Eating Animals: A Book "That Matters"
This isn’t my actual review of Eating Animals. I’m going to try to write that within the next couple of weeks. This is just a minor linguistic quibble that I have with the book.
It’s hard to miss Jonathan Safran Foer’s theme of storytelling in Eating Animals. But “[Something profound] is a story we tell ourselves” isn’t the only trope overused here.
Did anyone notice how often Foer...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
VegeTexan: I am not a polite vegan. Sometimes my scorn shows through the thin veil of what may seem to be tolerance. I kicked my boss once for making a snide remark about killing animals. He picked the wrong day to piss me off.
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“What unmitigated, speciesist nonsense.”
– Gary L. Francione
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Is Veganism "The Next Logical Step"?
When I went from vegetarian to vegan, I often told people that “Going vegan was the next logical step.” I guess I visualized meat-abstaining life to be a two-stepped staircase. Once I was on that first lacto-ovo step, what was I going to do, just stare stupidly at that second vegan step forever?
Apparently, I’m not the only one who visualized ever-increasing dietary restrictions...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
Sniveling Child: I find that almost offensive that you compare a woman who chooses to end a fetus’s life out of some need to someone who eats a clam. What good reason could someone possibly have to “need” to eat a clam?
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Interview With an Ex-Vegan: Elise Kendall
Elise Kendall was born into a vegetarian family. She was lacto-ovo vegetarian for most of her life, vegan for two years, then vegetarian again, and now an omnivore for the past year and a half. You can read her blog entry about it here.
Not to be confused with here, which is where you’re about to read her ex-vegan interview.
Some vegans think that being raised vegetarian or vegan is the...
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Vegans React: UK Anti-Discrimination Law May Treat...
Is veganism a religion? Adherents.com categorizes it as such. And at least one vegan has sued for religious anti-discrimination protection. But as Vegan Outreach explains, this is a line that vegans must walk carefully:
Because “religion” is a sort of trump card in areas of law, under certain circumstances, it could prove beneficial to have the courts and government respect...
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Customer: Does this honey baked ham contain real honey?
Employee: Yes, it’s a honey glaze.
Customer: Oh, I won’t get it then. It was for my daughter, she’s vegan. She can’t have honey, as she doesn’t believe in eating any animal products.
— The Customer is Not Always Right
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“Food is so many things: it is vital to life, it is a source of nourishment and...”
– grist.org
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Lunch with the FT: Jonathan Safran Foer →
Kind of a hilarious description of a journalist’s lunch with the author of Eating Animals. Culled from the vegansaurus link-o-rama.
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Vegan Quote of the Day
Provoked: Tomorrow is my best friend’s birthday. Tradition: Every year we go out to eat - her husband/mine/me. I was vegetarian for a long while but now as vegan - I doubt seriously there’s much on my plate at all. Compound this with my husband who is now vegetarian AND her husband on this low/no carb atkins diet. What a pickle, huh? At this point, with what I now know (which made me...
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Why Eating Meat-Shaped Vegetarian Food Is Like... →
I found this through Soul Veggie. Based on the title, I thought it would just be a rant against mock meats, but it’s actually an interesting and well-researched article. I particularly liked its take on growing up vegetarian:
As the Analogue Epoch rolls into its second generation, more and more babies are being born into meatless households. They grow up never having tasted the stuff,...
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Are Humans Carnivores, Omnivores or Herbivores?
I’m going to estimate that at least a slim majority of vegans believe humans are omnivores. Obviously that doesn’t mean they think that humans must eat animal products along with plants. Just because humans can eat meat doesn’t mean they should. Carnivores have no choice — they have to be blood-thirsty, evil bastards to survive. Omnivores on the other hand can get away with...
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"Why I Will Not Advocate Vegetarianism" →
A vegan blogger spells out why lacto-ovo vegetarianism is a worthless compromise that is, at best, equivalent to “part-time murder or part-time child abuse. … Thinking that shuffling out this or that animal product is ‘enough’ is like telling onself that it’s alright to beat the hell out of one’s child on Tuesdays as long as one refrains from doing so the rest...
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“This sucks massively: the New York Times just published an article glamorizing...”
– Vegan.com
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“I became a vegetarian because someone from Vegan Outreach came to my college...”
– Vegan Outreach infomercial
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How Being Vegan is Like Being Pro-Life
In my ex-vegan interview with Stella today, she compares vegan ideology to pro-life ideology:
If you truly believe that killing animals (or even “exploiting” animals for their eggs, say) is categorically wrong, then you must speak or act against it. A parallel would be the way in which religious anti-abortion activists believe that a human zygote or fetus, at any stage, is morally a human...
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“One approach Julie’s been having success with is to focus on how much her family...”
– Vegan Children, Meaty World
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Interview with an Ex-Vegan: Stella
If you leave veganism and then post a blog entry about it, I will find you. Well not really, but if your omnivorous re-birth entry includes the phrase “brain fog,” there’s a good chance I’ll stumble across your blog one day.
But that’s not how I found Stella’s blog. In her leaving veganism entry, there was nothing about brain fogs, mind clouds or even cerebral...
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Vegan.com: Walmart’s Sustainable Sour Cream... →
Just yesterday I was thinking “Erik Marcus’ Vegan.com sure is predictable.” Then today Marcus went and wrote something unpredictable.
In the above entry, Marcus links to a video about Walmart’s attempt to produce a more environmentally friendly sour cream. I would have expected a cocktail of dairy, Walmart and nonvegan sustainability to be a potent magnet for vegan scorn,...
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Red Meat/Beano Allergies Linked to Tick Bites
Vegan blogs are heralding new research showing that more people may be allergic to mammalian meat than was previously thought. Vegan.com linked to this Reuters article and ActiVeg linked to Medical News Today.
However, a Washington Post article that ran last October was more informative than either of these recent ones.
The new articles say that people with sudden and unexplained anaphylaxis...