Your Turn to Try

I have to say this: We vegans first tried our hardest to get people to go vegan for justice for animals and animal rights. When that didn't work we talked about compassion for animals and how much we have in common and how they feel just like we do. When that didn't work, we talked extensively about people's health and how almost all aspects of health will be improved with a vegan lifestyle. When that was ignored, we talked about the environmental reasons to go vegan and how animal agriculture ruins just about everything on this Earth. We even talked about how eating animals makes climate change worse! When that didn't work, we talked about how large farming corporations are taking all your money and your taxes are paying for their bailouts and their subsidies and even their Wifi. When that was ignored, we pointed out that all these viruses come from animals and that, in order to stop most viruses in the future, we must stop eating animals! I know that is being ignored too.
People who eat meat and dairy in this age are ruining the lives of others - animals, humans, our future generations, and all life on Earth.

There are vegan recipes all over the Internet. Your supermarkets are wiped out, but, as you always point out to me, there is some food in the "vegan section." Go there and get some! First read the labels, because some of it is just vegetarian or even "organic meat." (Boo.) Try the vegan sausages I recommend over and over. I will not tell you the brand, because I have said it so much, I have been accused of being paid by the company! (But the initials are F.R. and the types of that F.R. brand that I like are the apple sage sausage and the Italian sausage.)

Make an effort. Eat some grains, some vegan meat, some vegan cheese, some vegan sour cream, some vegan mayo, some Oreos, some potato chips, some vegetables, some fruits, purchase some plant milk, some vegan ice cream, and other vegan junk food if that is your desire. We have great food!

So try it.

Save this planet now!

You Know

For years, I have had discussions with people about animal rights, but a new idea hit me today.  My discussions used to go something like this:

Other Person:  It’s the circle of life.  We are supposed to kill animals.  We are predators.  Animals in slaughterhouses don’t know you are going to kill them.  Animals don’t have a sense of themselves, so it doesn’t matter.

I would usually argue back that we are primates and are most suited to eating grains, fruits and vegetables; that we were not born with tools in our hands; that animals do know fear and can smell blood and feel terrible pain when they are slaughtered; that most animals do have a sense of themselves because they react to pain, want love, and a few do look at their reflections and realize it is them.  I end up writing a lot of information on all these topics in order to try to prove each aspect.

What I thought of today is that it does not matter whether it is the circle of life, whether you think you are supposed to kill animals, whether you are a predator, whether animals don’t realize they are about to die, or whether animals have a sense of themselves - YOU know they are about to die. 

You know this is their only life – this is their only chance to live on planet Earth.  Why would you take that away?  Why would you categorize them as “livestock” or “food” when you could eat something else and allow them to live their lives? Why betray them?  Why be “The Devil” to them?  As long as they aren’t threatening your life, why take theirs?  Why not live as morally and kindly as you can?  Let them experience life for as long as their natural lives will last and help make every animal’s life as good as possible! 

Australia Fires and Animal Deaths - a Short Comparison

The Australia fires have killed 1/2 billion animals so far, and I hate to imagine their deaths. However, the United States has killed 59 billion animals this year for our choice of food consumption and I hate to imagine their lives and deaths. In addition, wild animals are killed to make room for cow grazing and crops for farm animal feed due to our choice of food consumption and I hate to imagine their deaths.

There is that word: choice.

Does Peace on Earth Mean Anything?

Peace on Earth. I feel like this phrase has no power anymore.  Does it mean anything to anyone? Is peace seen as an unattainable wish that has become a meaningless phrase, or is anyone still working toward a peaceful world? 

We know most humans have the biological capacity to be violent because it is a survival mechanism.  But we want to cooperate because that is so much easier than fighting our way through life.  We should have made more progress with world peace by now.  Instead, we still have wars, kidnappings, unspeakable violence, and world leaders who can’t talk things out without threatening each other.  

What about our daily lives?  Nothing is really peaceful, as we have intentionally hidden violence in our culture.  Therefore, saying “Peace on Earth” is ingenuine unless we work toward it.  Our food system is based on unnecessary violence, yet few people seem to want to change to a peaceful way of eating, when it is as simple as choosing only non-animal products to put into your mouths each time you eat.  Don’t you “choose to eat this and choose not to eat that” every day?  If you can easily make choices, then why is it so difficult to keep dead animals out of your mouths? 

Looking at it as written, it seems so easy to convince others to do, yet humans get offended and defensive.  You would think they would jump excitedly at the idea of saving animals from immense suffering and to help come closer to peace on Earth. Few even realize it should be a goal.  

I think most people are just stuck in their culture, and don’t want to change anything – they want others to change everything for them.  Change would happen a lot quicker if everyone were helping.  Instead, humans just accept that “this is the way it is,” which is exactly why this is the way it is – and we are no closer to Peace on Earth. 

Stamps Show Our Subconscious Christian Nationalism

At our work, we have two different types of stamps for our holiday cards – secular and religious.  Of course, the religious stamp is of the Christian religion, with Mary holding baby Jesus.  The religious stamps were for certain clients, but I never saw us purchase Jewish stamps for our Jewish clients or Kwanzaa stamps or Eid stamps!  Did you ever notice we never show what our politicians claim – that we have “Judeo-Christian principles?”  We didn’t buy any stamps with Menorahs on them! 

We did run out of our secular stamps and we were told to put religious stamps on the cards.  As I slapped on Mary stamp after Mary stamp, I thought, if I had bought some Menorah stamps for the office, I bet we would not have used them; the cards would have been metered or stamps with the American flag would have been used. 

This is just another example of how Christian nationalists have gotten into our brains so that we do not even realize we favor Christianity.

THE PEACEFUL WORLD OF YOUR DREAMS

What kind of world do you imagine when you think of a perfect world?  Is it one where all beings are respected and treated well?  Is it a peaceful world?  Is it a safe world where everyone works toward the good of society?  Is it a clean world, with sparking lakes and rivers?  Is it a world where people are happy?  

If children were raised to respect the rights of all beings on Earth, and to believe that animals are not property and should not be eaten or used for entertainment, there probably would be no racism, because the child would be raised to respect everyone and every being.  People and governments would be peaceful, and wars would not be the way to solve problems.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could stop fighting people with different cultures?  

Right now, our society runs on speciesism, where we think we are superior and have the right to use other beings, and deeply conditioned racism is why we make up so many excuses to continue to eat animals.  We will never have the world of our dreams if we continue with our species hierarchy, because animals make waste that pollutes rivers and lakes, the huge farms are put in areas that disproportionately affect people of color, our factories and our trash are located in areas where people of color live, the animals we breed into existence require monocrops and pesticides which end up poisoning us in many ways, and our society is structured to favor a few people over the rest of the beings, with throw away beings and disposable animals, and strangers who are enemies.  Getting rid of speciesism will topple that structure.  

My Rant When "Well-Meaning" Friends Challenge the Facts I Present about What they Eat

When I post about how you can avoid heart disease, I write about a diet that is very low in fat and has little to no oil. I do that because it is the only diet that can reverse heart disease. Why would I post a diet that would keep you at risk of dying? 
Most people in heath professions still believe in "moderation" and when I show that meat is too high in cholesterol and saturated fat, they use a pat phrase, such as "correlation doesn't equal causation." It was used against me a few months ago regarding cholesterol, but let me make it clear - eating cholesterol causes raising of cholesterol in your blood. 
We have 50 years of evidence that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease, but rather than being skeptical when in 2010, a meta-analysis came out saying "eat butter," saturated fat won't harm you, they happily believed it!
The meta-analysis was quickly debunked - the results spread around did not mention the deaths that resulted from the study; and the results spread around only compared people in countries where the fat amount in diets were similar so they could say, "eating beef in the United States didn't make cholesterol worse than other diets in the study." 
Also, studies on cholesterol were done where they first fed vegans large amounts of coconut oil for a few weeks before they compared them to "meat eaters eating a lower fat diet than they usually do" so they could say that low fat, carbohydrate rich diets were no better than high protein, high fat diets. Coconut oil is one of the few vegan foods that has saturated fat and raises cholesterol. I don't eat coconut oil and never recommend it.
In another study, they made people eat cholesterol, then they did not take their blood in the four hours after the cholesterol was ingested, and they made the subjects fast for 12 hours after they ate the cholesterol. After nearly all the cholesterol had left their bloodstream, they took their blood! Their conclusion was that eating cholesterol doesn't raise cholesterol because it wasn't in their bloodstream!
Do you see how they cheat? Do you see how a person looking at their results would not know and would fall for their faulty studies? They would think it was fine to eat meat and butter! That is what happened.
I don't put studies up that support the "Standard American Diet" because that diet can make you sick. I don't show you what is currently the diet of the American Diabetes Association or the American Heart Association, because their diets can still give you diabetes and heart disease. I tell you a total cholesterol level has to be below 150 in order to be heart attack safe, when your doctors and most health professionals are still touting the diets that say "you are healthy" if your cholesterol is under 200. People have heart attacks at that rate, and about half of American adults are walking around at risk of a heart attack at any time. 
My goals are three-fold - to help you have great health, to help the environment, and to help animals. Since no one wants to address the suffering of farm animals and people unfriend if I show the animal abuse that is on farms, I show you how to improve your health. It is met with criticism by people who do not study nutrition nearly every day like I do. Time will be on my side, but will time be on your side - all those people my age and younger who are already going in and out of the hospital? My Facebook home page is a mass of sick people due to what my friends are eating! Will time be on your side? Will it be on the side of all the farmed animals being tortured at this moment? 
Make a change in your diet. Drop the fatty meat with fat in the muscles. Drop the dairy. Drop the glob of fat called eggs. I'll keep posting until I convince you, or until you get sick of me and unfriend me. Then it will be another activist down the line who will convince you of the truth.