News and Announcements

Quote of the Every Once in a While:  “It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”  Voltaire

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Personal Note Much to everyone's surprise, not least my own, I graduated. So, apparently, my views on diet and health are sound. One last hurdle: State Boards. Then, perhaps, I can devote a little more time to this page. Assuming I pass them on the first go, that is. JM

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Humane Society Endorses Obama   For the first time in their history, the Humane Society has endorsed a presidential candidate, and their choice is Barack Obama. The organization cited Obama’s long and consistent support for animal protection, a position that seldom excites much media attention, but which can win the enmity of powerful animal enterprise interests, interests with deep pockets.

The Humane Society joins the Defenders of Wildlife, currently soliciting funds to run the ad seen here, attacking Sarah Palin’s support of the practice of strafing wolves from planes.

Ms. Obama’s been criticized for fronting for a hospital with an animal lab, but we vegans and animal rights folks gotta practice a little Realpolitik.

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© Learning and Teaching Scotland

New Member Joins the Self-Aware Club Until now there have been eight members of the self-aware club, species generally believed to be the most intelligent based on the rare quality of individuals thereof recognizing that they are entities separate from the rest of the universe. Contrary to the pronouncements of certain TV pseudoanthropologists who proclaim, without a shred of evidence or even theoretical basis, that our ancestors could not have evolved the sapiens brain had they not taken up meat-eating, six of the previous eight are herbivores (I’m including man, evolutionarily, in that group); the cetaceans are the exceptions. The new (to us) member is the first true omnivore and the first non-mammal: the magpie. We will have to reconsider the phrase “bird brain” as an insult. Parrots are being considered for future membership. The others of our exclusive club so far, if you were wondering, other than ourselves, are the common chimpanzee, the bonobo, the orangutan, the dolphin and the elephant, with gorilla and killer whale being most recently added. Expect many to react violently, especially creationists and psychologists, both groups very prickly when their superiority is questioned.     It has been suggested that a sub-species, Homo televisionus, be removed from this classification.

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Veggie Fighter Shields is Welterweight Champ Lifetime vegetarian (and Tennessee born) Jake Shields has become MMA World Welterweight Champ. Well, one of ‘em, anyhow; MMA is a fairly newspectator sport and there’s still a shakeout period going on as to leagues. But Shields is now the Welterweight champion of one of the MMA worlds, Elite XC (I’m guessing XC stands for eXtreme Combat, but that’s just a guess), broadcast on CBS Saturday Night Fights (once the province of boxing) on July 26. If even one vegetarian or vegan succeeds at MMA the delusion that you need meat to be tough is shattered. But there are a growing number, some featured on our Manly Vegetarian™ page. These stalwart warriors are, of course, in the best tradition of the gladiators. Also vegetarian. Check it,

Regretably, Shields’ triumph comes at the expense of Nick “The Goat“ Thompson, another fighter I admire for not taking himself too seriously; his nickname comes from Thompson’s lack of success early on - he’s done well lately - and the “fainting” breed of goat. The Fainting Goat is a totemic figure to some of Knoxville’s most prominent vegetarians living along legended Reed Lane. Turn at the “Fainting Goats for Sale” sign.

© 2008 Dan Piraro - Used with Permission

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Dan Piraro’s Bizarro Outrage You probably won’t be surprised to learn the cartoon seen here has provoked yawps of indignation from both meat-eaters and, presumably, some who genuinely felt past crimes against humanity were being trivialized. Those who think of animals as mindless commodities were especially outraged that their mindless self indulgence should be framed in terms of moral lassitude. Some feel cruelty to animals is entirely divorced from cruelty to humans, more approaching a mere lack of decorum, like, maybe, littering or like a youngster pulling the head off his sister’s doll. But most vegetarians believe that cruelty is a continuum with no clear demarcations. The nation of Spain has determined, for example, that chimpanzees are genetically so similar to us that treating them as though they were laboratory petri dishes is unconscionable. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, says in the forward to Marjorie Spiegel’s The Dreaded Comparison, “the animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men." It may be wrong to equate the suffering of animals with the suffering of black people, but through much of our nation’s history black people were equated with animals and, as Ms. Speigel’s book reveals, many of the same justifications now being used to excuse various forms of animal cruelty were used to justify the mistreatment and enslavement of a race many liked to believe were ”sub-human.” Jewish author and Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, who fled the holocaust to the US, made a similar and equally controversial comparison in his writings between cruelty to his people and to animals. In “The Letter Writer” the hero says: "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." So, Dan, you are, at least, in the very best of company. And thanks for expressing your own sense of outrage over the treatment of animals. Your strip was a highlight of the Knoxville News-Sentinel; I hope another local paper will pick it up.

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Old School is Best for Strength Perhaps this will settle the long-running debate down at the gym: free weights are definitely better than machines (I knew the Y was wrong to replace their old weight room with its kettlebells and squat racks with a Spinning room. Damn yuppies!) At the Nutrition and Fitness link.

Sorry I’ve neglected that page, but I’ve been in school studying nutrition and fitness. And stuff. Mostly stuff.

Rights for Apes  We have long known - those of us who believe in science, anyhow - that the great apes are our closest living relatives, the bonobos being >98% us. The fact that that hasn’t resulted in any great outpouring of protection for them probably shouldn’t be suprising, considering how badly some humans treat others, disgracing our primate ancestors. And there is the case of Oliver, the human-like chimp that many respectable scientists thought might be a human-chimp hybrid, something science has not shown to be impossible. So how was our possible half-brother received? He was exhibited to the public for a while, then sold to an experimental lab. Now Spain , through the efforts of The Great Ape Project, has become the first country to legislate rights for our taxonomic kinfolk, one of only five animals, including us, currently known to be self-aware. And Barcelona has become the fifth Spanish city to condemn bullfighting, no more cruel than our own rodeos. Perhaps it's time to put Spain on your itinerary of countries worthy of your compassionate tourist dollars. Say thanks to their embassy here.

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Deadly MRSA Found in Pigs, Farm Workers  Even though I’ve not yet begun my health care career, I’ve already encountered the threat of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus); it’s one of the resistant organisms of greatest concern in hospitals, where it was, until recently, regarded as a nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infection. Now it’s of even greater concern; it’s loose in the wild, and infecting livestock workers and the meat Americans are eating. And factory farming is probably the major reason MRSA even exists. More on our Meat and Labor page.

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The High Cost Of Shrimp  So, is it really bad to eat shrimp? How sentient could they be? Where’s the harm? Well, shrimp are scavengers, and rather high in cholesterol as seafood goes. But more to the point, the ones you’re likely to be served just might be the product of slavery or child labor.

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Rider on a Black Horse Bringing High Prices to Your Foodmart

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ~ V. Vasnetsov, 1887

“The Book of Revelation” speaks of the end of the world, presaged by the coming of the four horseman; the third, riding a black horse, is often thought to represent Famine. The Worldwide English translation says "four cups of wheat for bread will sell for a day's wages.” Signs that we are living in the last days, whether or not you accept a literal interpretation of The Bible, are all around us. We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving bounty as that tradition of a festival of gluttony may be coming to an end. Forget about peak oil; we may have passed peak food. Gwynne Dyer in “The End of Cheap Food” warns that a burgeoning population, the equivalent of a new nation of Turkey every year, is overwhelming land and water resources, and the short-lived good old days of plenty, when our food cost us only a tenth of our income in the US, are now behind us and not likely to return within our lifetimes. Not only are there more mouths to feed, but more of them are demanding meat, meaning more grain is going to feedlots instead of breadbaskets. The increasing demand for fuel means that agricultural production is becoming more expensive, and, part of a vicious cycle, much of the grain being grown is now also being used as fuel. And global warming is reducing harvests; a modest 2° rise in temperatures this century, near the low end of predictions, could mean a 20% drop in food production. Has your your grocery bill gone up noticeably? Americans will begin paying a larger and larger share of their income for food, quite possibly up to 25% within ten years. The people of poorer nations will try to address the problem by dying. Other populations may decide to take measures less accommodating to our interests.

What can we do? Well, we can begin to shop local farmers’ markets, increasing the incentive for local production. We can encourage our friends to eat lower on the food chain. We can urge our government to relax its restrictions on exporting family planning. And we can revisit the concept of the Victory Gardens of World War II. “V for Victory; V for Vegetarian."

The folks who made the Meatrix films, though not vegetarian ("organic" meat and dairy are still bad for you), are anti-factory farm and pro local farmer. Visit their Sustainable Table page.

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Danzig Does It Again  Dropping two weight classes in his first bout as a UFC Mixed Martial Arts professional, Mac Danzig once again gives the lie to the myth that you have to eat the corpses of farm animals to be tough. Apparently not. The match we linked to earlier has been taken down, and that’s for the best. After all, our boy makes his living from people buying his tapes. I used to be an artist, so I totally believe in intellectual property. But here's a link that is of at least equal interest, wherein he touches briefly on his diet. Note also the PeTA clip. How about getting together for a vegan fight night next time one of the vegan or veggie competitors takes the ring?

The Beginning: The Vegan vs. the Beef-Fed Farm Boy  The Ultimate Fighter on the Spike network follows a number of young mixed martial arts hopefuls through a training regimen, elimination matches, and a final battle between the two finalists. On the season just ended vegan Mac Danzig bested every meat-eater that came before him and won the final contest agaist a larger, beef-fed farm boy. See the Manly Vegetarian™.

The producers of the show are not entirely to blame; their anthropological consultants share the preconceptions that many of us have. Plainly, the role of men in bringing home the bacon was essential to our survival; the women were useful, too, in staying home and changing fur diapers. Maybe this long-held myth helps fuel the attempt to feminize vegetarianism (see our Manly Vegetarian™ page).

However, as a sub-theme in their book Man the Hunted Donna Hart and Robert W. Sussman make a convincing case that meat was a very small part of primitive diets, acquired opportunistically, and that the role of the gatherers - women, as evidenced by the study of primates and primitive cultures - was what kept the tribe alive. Men served as lookouts. They also point out that primitive man was not a hunter; he was meat.

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Chimps Eat Dirt; B12 Link?

Photo by Aaron Logan, Wikimedia Commons

Eating dirt - or, less often, other indigestible substances like starch - is a not uncommon behavior of humans, especially, in the US, in underprivileged or isolated populations. The conventional wisdom is that the disorder, called pica, is an instinctive effort to supplement nutrients missing from our diets. Eating dirt, in particular, is known among other species as well and is called geophagy. Now researchers, reporting in Nature, have spotted chimpanzees in Uganda eating dirt, and have offered a number of theories as to the survival value of such behavior. A Mayer Hypothesis Allow me to offer one, which I hearby clearly label as my own speculation. True, I have no expertise in primatology, but scientists currently have conflicting theories, so I will be no more wrong than several of them. One of the great conundrums of veganism is, if we were born herbivores, where did our ancestors get B12. Most vegetarians believe they got all they required - a miniscule amount - from unwashed plants. All B12, including that in animal products, originates in bacteria, which are found in abundance in dirt. Enough said?

Hamburgers: Cholesterol and E. Coli  Hamburger isn't just bad for your heart; thanks to lax health standards it often also harbors infectious organisms like E. coli. 16 cases this year, a big increase from previous years, have warranted massive recalls of hamburger; the largest to date was the recent recall, by Topps Meat, supplier of Wal-Mart and others retailers. An article in The New York Times (free signup required) says that a number of red flags were ignored by the Agriculture Department which seems to have a sweetheart deal with the industry it is supposed to regulate. And now the agri-business giant Cargill has just announced the recall of 1,000,000 pounds of potentially tainted beef. That's a lot of cows who have died in vain. Unless, just maybe, the increased attention to the health hazards of meat persuades a few more thoughtful people they can live without it. And less assuredly with it. A couple of other points to consider: you may have thought we'd quit importing beef from countries clearing rain forest for beef ranches, but Topps imported much of its meat. Also, if the USDA isn't watching out for diseased meat that can kill American people, how much attention do you think they're paying to humane slaughter laws? Read Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz to gain some insights into that.

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Veganism/Global Warming Connection Gaining Attention  As concern over global warming at last begins to grow, one of its leading causes, meat-eating - the number one cause as far as consumer action is conerned - is also attracting new scrutiny. Common Dreams columnist Bruce Friedrich gives a pretty good synopsis of the issue.

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China Study Author Online  I’d heard of the China Study itself a few years ago, the book its director wrote about it only recently. Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s credentials as Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Chemistry are so impeccable and his own study and review of the literature on veganism so controlled, measured and accessible, that this has become my go-to book in arguing the scientifically established health benefits of a vegan diet. You can hear Dr. Campbell speak on the science of veganism in free downloads at the Climate Health website. [Thanks, Kathie, for the pointer.]

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Standing Up to Amazon  Having grown up on a farm I never understood how “chicken” came to mean cowardly. I’ve seen roosters stand up to my Dad, a man six feet tall, while, as they thought, attempting to protect their flock. (Actually, I guess the danger was not illusory; we did, after all, kill their wives and eat them.) Now we must stand up to mighty Amazon in protecting roosters from corporate indifference and private viciousness. Vegetarians, I fear, are few in number, but the numbers of animal-lovers who have not yet made the veggie connection are great. If we can call to their attention the fact that Amazon, by being the only national vendor of cockfighting magazines, promotes animal cruelty, I think our combined numbers may force Amazon to reconsider. (To add injury to insult, they’ve also begun selling pate de foie gras.) Amazon does not make their Customer “Service” number easy to find, but your crusading VSET editor has it for you, along with an account of my own frustrations in trying to communicate my displeasure to them.

It’s important to note that I am opposed to censrship in almost all cases; I don’t thnk the government should forbid such magazines from being published. But I also don’t think that  a private entity like Amazon has any obligation to facilitate the promulgation and practice of cruel and criminal activities, any more than… well, you get the idea.

By the way, the largest cockfighting bust ever took place here in EastTennessee a short while back, ironically enough, in Cocke County; cockfghters refer to the event as Black Friday, the End of an Era. One hopes. East Tennssee’s famous forensic anthropologist Bill Bass and his cowriter (as Jefferson Bass) decribe a major cockfight in the novel Carved in Bone, in fictitious Cook County.

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Fish Oil  In the 20’s “banana oil” was another word for “nonsense.” (I know I don’t look old enough to remember the 20’s, but I’m a vegetarian.) Could “fish oil” acquire a similar meaning. An acquaintance once informed me ruefully that his doctor had advised him that he could thrive only on omega-3 oil from fish, never from flaxseed. The American Heart Association, which, in spite of recent findings, says “Keep eating those omega-3’s anyhow, for now,” reports that plant sources may be even better, walnuts, for example, having a significant effect on cholesterol in addition to the other benefits more commonly ascribed to omega-3. But the British Medical Journal questions whether we really require omega-3’s at all and whether it might actually be harmful. We must wait, now, for others to become motivated to further this research.

Judging by our cousins the bonobos, which are 98% us, our ancestors probably got on with very little oil in their diet. One source pointed out (sorry, I forget who) that three boxcar loads of normal chimp diet would not have the fat content of a single Big Mac Double. And, clever as they are, no one’s ever observed chimps in the wild fishing.

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The Vicious Circle of Meat  Every vegetarian knows that meat is an extremely wasteful way to produce protein; meat production takes 10 to 20 times as much land, includiing pasture, as a plant-based diet, and about half the world’s grain and soy beans are fed to cattle instead of people. It is estimated that even a decrease of 10% would mean food enough for everyone, at current population levels. Ironically, a new estimate by an umbrella group of international agricultural researchers has released estimates that show that meat production, through its massive contribution to global warming (as previously reported on ABC and, more recently, in a study by the University of Chicago), actually will reduce the world’s grain harvests at the same time as more grain is required to produce more meat for increasingly affluent countries. And, of course, to create ethanol to reduce global warming. If nothing is done to reverse our direction the future looks very bleak (see last year’s Time article on Global Warming titled “Be Worried! Be Very Worried.”) In a sense, we’re devouring our children.

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Apologies to Classics Illustrated

Vegan Monsters   Suddenly, a number of news items in the US and abroad have depicted vegan parents as heartless lunatics willing to sacrifice the lives of their own children to advance their irrational theories that a plant-based diet is healthiest. Headlines such as "Vegan Couple Starves Child” and “Vegan Parents Convicted of Child Cruelty” ignore the fact that these parents, at least some of whom seem to have been irrational indeed, practiced dietary strictures that went far beyond those of veganism. In some cases “authorities” have confused soy milk with soy formula. And never do these news items point out the future health problems that the feeding of cow’s milk to one’s infant is almost certain to cause, though this is well-known to pediatricians. Even vegetarianism has been condemned in such articles as “Vegetarianism as a Form of Child Abuse.” The most recent attack came in an editorial in the New York Times* by Nina Planck whose expertise, it seems, comes not from academic studies in nutrition but from the fact that she sells “free-range” and “grass-fed” beef and other meats in her chains of markets in the US and England. Whether this sudden flood of anti-vegan venom is simply a matter of a Paris-weary press jumping on a new bandwagon, or a concerted disinformation campaign by the nation’s meat producers is open to question. See a response to Planck’s diatribe in the Houston Chronicle, or my own  >ahem <  humble efforts in my honors paper for my obstetrics and neo-natal course.
Is Vegetarianism a Form of Child Abuse? by John F. Mayer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
*Free sign-up required                     

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Are We Natural Born Killers? This is one of the most critical points for vegetarians to contemplate: are we willingly sacrificing a bit of our human nature in order to make the world a better place when we give up meat, or are we realigning ourselves with our true natures? In response to popular request (depending on your definition of popular), I am posting my article on that topic from a 2004 copy of Vegetarian Voice*. It's linked to the entry We did not evolve to eat meat on our Vegetarianism 101 page. (I hope that title doesn't spoil the surprise as to my conclusion.) And, no matter what my detractors say, I don't think it's a bit like a text book...

*Originally with the slightly less compelling title Of Vegetarianism, Meat Eating, and Potato Washing

   Of Men and Monkeys, Memes and Meat by John Mayer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Animal Tests Don't Work This is the assessment of Dr. Jarrod Bailey of Corbridge, Northumberland, project development coordinator for the University of Newcastle's School of Population and Health Sciences. And he's not one of your namby-pamby, bleeding heart, oh-please-don't-hurt-the-fluffy-little-whale do-gooders so despised by medical researchers; no, Dr. Bailey's objections are far more pragmatic. He says the tests just plain don't work, are a waste of time and money, lead science down too many blind alleys, and have, in fact either harmed humans or set research back by decades. Speaking as scientific director of Europeans for Medical Progress he said, "We want an end to vivisection because of its lack of relevance to human medicine. There are historic examples, like penicillin, the introduction of which was delayed by 10 years because it was given to a rabbit and didn't work. Even after thalidomide had harmed about 15,000 people, they still struggled to show similar birth defects in animals."

Dr Bailey urges researchers to move into the 21st century with more reliance on new technology that would allow the same experiments to take place using human tissue rather than mice or apes. Dr. Bailey seems to be suggesting that animal experiments are nothing but work-fare projects for unimaginative scientists.

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Veggie Spiderman  Spiders are obligate carnivores, but humans, and Spiderman actor Tobey Maguire are not. Tobey, though, had no trouble maintaining his spider strength through the three instalments with a vegetarian diet. For example, he says he had no problem buffing up for his Spiderman role, trimming down again for Seabiscuit, then muscling up again for the first Spiderman sequel. "I'm a vegetarian so I did have to concentrate on eating enough protein and I would get that through soy and nuts and beans and shakes." Tobey Online