From The 2019 News — The Meat-Free Edition!

I recently posted news items from 2019 that didn’t make it into a From The News post. There were quite a few, so I set aside items dealing with our pals the vegans for a separate post.

Meddlin’ Mayor’s Meatless Mondays

What have I been saying over and over about The Anointed? To solve what they identify as problems, they constantly dream up Grand Plans that require spending more of other people’s money or restricting more of other people’s freedoms. Because they are so supremely confident (despite often being wrong), they feel no obligation to provide evidence that the Grand Plan will work – yet despite the lack of evidence, they will happily impose the Grand Plan on others.

The administration in New York City provided another perfect example:

There will be no mystery meat (or any other meat) on Mondays at New York City public schools. That’s because the city is expanding its “Meatless Mondays” program starting in the 2019-20 school year.

“Cutting back on meat a little will improve New Yorkers’ health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio in a press release. “We’re expanding Meatless Mondays to all public schools to keep our lunch and planet green for generations to come.”

Headline from 2030: Americans are slimmer and healthier than ever as planet finally reaches correct temperature. Scientists credit Meatless Mondays.

There’s no evidence that going meatless will make children healthier – in fact, a whole lot of us who tried vegetarianism gave it up because our health went downhill. And good for the planet? Hogwash. You want to see some real environment damage, go see how soybeans are raised.

“Meatless Mondays are good for our students, communities, and the environment,” added Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza. “Our 1.1 million students are taking the next step towards healthier, more sustainable lives.”

Uh, no, they’re not taking the next step. You’re pushing them and telling them they’re walking.

“Our students and educators are truly leaders in this movement, and I salute them.”

I salute those true leaders too … but you’d best not count how many fingers are in my salute.

Super Bowl Ad Made ‘Em Super Mad

Seems every Super Bowl Sunday, my wife and daughters insist the ads are more entertaining than the game. Normally I disagree, but last year’s punt-fest between the Patriots and the Rams was such a bore, I actually looked forward to the commercials. If you watched the Super Bowl, you may remember this one:

The metaphor at the center of Hyundai’s Super Bowl commercial was simple: An oversize elevator operated by a wisecracking Jason Bateman took passengers up to pleasurable experiences and down to life events everyone wants to avoid.

“Okay, six-hour flight, middle seat,” Bateman says as the car opens onto a cramped plane full of obnoxious passengers guffawing at video screens or sneezing loudly into tissues. “Who’s got vitamin C?”

At another point, the doors open onto a courtroom scene as a grizzled defendant stands up, glares at the man ushered off the elevator and growls.

“This stop: jury duty,” Bateman declares. “Remember, innocent until proven … well, he did it, right? We all agree he did it?”

But one stop in the otherwise innocuous elevator bit has ruffled some feathers, or at least some 100 percent recycled polyester down equivalents.

“Vegan dinner party,” Bateman says as the doors ding open. “Is that even a thing?”

“We’re having beetloaf — Sergio’s specialty,” says the smiling host as she approaches her guests while extending a purple gelatinous concoction.

I had a good chuckle over that Hyundai ad. Needless to say, many vegans weren’t laughing.

But vegans felt personally attacked. Why should their decision to live a planet-friendly, animal-cruelty-free lifestyle be comparable to a colonoscopy or a root canal or a teenager getting “the talk” and hearing about how “even Grandma’s body changed.”

Well, I can think of two reasons: 1) their diet isn’t actually planet-friendly or free of cruelty to animals, and 2) most of us would rather have a colonscopy than adopt a vegan diet.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights organization more commonly known as PETA, chided the car company on Twitter. “The trend of 2019 is taking the elevator UP to vegan dinner parties (and an Earth, heart, & animal-friendly lifestyle),” the organization said.

Yeah, veganism is trending up, up, up! That would explain why vegan restaurants are closing (more on that later).  I think Hyundai should have ignored the ginned-up outrage entirely, but they didn’t:

“We are responding in social media that we totally respect veganism and are happy that it has become mainstream,” said Michael Stewart, a spokesman for the car company. “We also hope that vegans have a sense of humor just like the dentists, parents, judges, flight attendants, doctors and even car dealers, the others stops represented on ‘The Elevator.’ ”

Well, you can hope as much, but I wouldn’t count on it.  I’m reminded of a joke:

Q: How many vegans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: That’s NOT FUNNY, you ANIMAL MURDERER!!

Vegan YouTubers Trigger Vegans By Not Being Vegans

Q: How many vegans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: That’s NOT FUNNY, you ANIMAL MURDERER!!

Just thought I’d tell that joke again before quoting from this article in The Daily Beast:

Last Sunday, a five-second video clip of vegan YouTuber Yovana Mendoza single-handedly brought down the luminous 28-year-old’s entire career. In it, you can see the raw food advocate, who goes by the name “Rawvana,” smiling at a restaurant in Bali as she prepares to tuck into her meal. But in an instant, the health guru’s face changes, as she realizes her friend’s camera is trained on her plate. She moves to cover it, but it’s too late. Internet sleuths watching the 10-minute vlog later would quickly deduce what Mendoza was trying to hide: a piece of fish.

Mendoza rushed to upload a video claiming she had only been eating fish for two months, as a remedy to the health complications she developed after six years as a vegan.

Wait, what? Her vegan diet caused health problems?! And eating a dead animal was the remedy? No, no, no … that can’t be true.  People are healthier if they don’t eat animals.  Just ask Mayor Bloomberg.

Former fans descended on her YouTube channel, Instagram and Twitter, posting emojis of fish and taunting her as “Fishvana.” Dozens of fellow vegan YouTubers posted horrified reactions to the scandal, unimaginatively dubbed “fishgate.”

“I felt like someone had died,” Mendoza told The Daily Beast. “It was one of the worst days of my life.”

Hmmm, lemme see here … you got caught eating fish, and it led to one of the worst days of your life. I can think of two explanations: 1) members of your vegan fanbase are roughly as tolerant and open-minded as members of ISIS, or 2) that was a really bad piece of fish.

In recent months, several of the most prominent vegan YouTubers have announced they are eating animal products, setting off a torrent of online outrage and abuse, but also posing a philosophical question: What becomes of a vegan YouTuber who isn’t vegan?

She develops colon cancer and dies a horrible death as a result of eating meat. I know this because vegans tell me it’s true.

In a Jan. 14 video titled “Why I’m No Longer Vegan,” YouTuber Bonny Rebecca set the tone for a mass of defections to come: rambling, half-hour-long videos in which the former herbivores apologize to their fans and breathlessly explain the health issues that caused them to start eating meat.

Health issues?! From a vegan diet? No, no, no … becoming a vegan can only make you radiantly healthy. I know this because vegans tell me it’s true.

From there, the dominoes began to fall. Stella Rae, a former adherent of Freelee’s diet plan, announced she was quitting veganism due to bloating and digestive issues.

Digestive issues?! From a vegan diet? No, no, no … humans have the same digestive system as gorillas and can live on the same diet. That’s not what any of the actual diagrams show, but I know it’s true because vegans and Walter Willett tell me it’s true.

Tim Shieff, a YouTube star and former vegan athlete, declared that he ejaculated for the first time in months after eating raw eggs and salmon.

I hope he wasn’t eating in a crowded restaurant. These reactions can be misinterpreted.

Whether one accepts Mendoza’s reasoning or not, the backlash she has experienced is objectively horrifying. Commenters have called her “disgusting,” a “fraud” and a “hypocrite,” and others have told her to kill herself.

We’re vegans because we love all creatures and refuse to take a life. But if you give up being a vegan, please kill yourself.

Her mother used to have a public Instagram account, but decided to go private after getting messages that said she should never have brought Mendoza into the world.

Yeah, Mom really screwed up on that one. She should have had one of those ultrasounds that tells you the child will likely grow up to become a vegan and then go back to eating animal foods. Then, of course, she should have done the right thing …

“One of the things that I loved about going into the vegan lifestyle and diet is that I felt that it was very welcoming and very inclusive,” Mendoza said.

All true-believer cults are “very welcoming and inclusive” when you join them.

“But as soon as you decide to make a change, they turn against you, which is really sad. It doesn’t make people want to go vegan when they see all this hate,” she added.

Ya think?

A Not-So Baffling Connection

Perhaps this article in Psychology Today explains “all this hate”:

I was surprised to learn from a new review article by Daniel Rosenfeld of Cornell University in the journal Appetite that reported vegetarians are more likely to be depressed than meat-eaters. Intrigued, I took a deeper look at this body of research. I located 11 peer-reviewed papers on the topic published between 2007 and 2018. Rosenfeld was right. Here’s what I found in each of them:

A longitudinal study of 14,247 young women found that 30 percent of vegetarians and semi-vegetarians had experienced depression in the previous 12 months, compared to 20 percent of non-vegetarian women.

Investigators from the College of William and Mary examined depression among 6,422 college students. Vegetarian and semi-vegetarian students scored significantly higher than the omnivores on the Center for Epidemiologic Depression Scale.

A study of 140 women found that the odds of depression were twice as great in women consuming less than the recommended intake of meat per week.

The article lists several similar studies. As the author noted, none of these studies prove that giving up meat causes depression. It could simply be the case that for whatever reason, people drawn to vegetarianism are also more likely to be depressed.

Anecdotally, I can tell you that while my factory setting is to be optimistic, I absolutely, positively felt depressed more often in my vegetarian days.

Q: How’d you die, Piglet?  A: I was cuddled by a vegan.

When we were kids, The Older Brother and I built model rockets and shot them into the air. One rocket had a capsule, so we put a frog in it and boldly sent him where no frog has gone before (as far as we knew, anyway). Unfortunately, that was the one time the rocket’s parachute didn’t open. After the crash to earth, we opened the capsule and the frog hopped out, apparently dazed but very much alive.

Our younger sister, who professed a love for all animals, came running over to see if the frog was okay – and accidentally stepped on him.

Kinda reminds me of this article from the U.K. Telegraph:

A farmer has accused vegans of crushing two piglets to death after causing a stampede during their efforts to cuddle the newborn pigs.

200 vegans from the group “Meat the Victims” stormed a farm in Lincolnshire in order to protest against pork. Farmer Sylvia Hook, from Sandilands Farm on Newark Road in Laughterton, said the vegans terrified her family and caused damage to the farm.

She told Lincolnshire Live: “About 50 of them all piled into a farrowing house, immediately the sows are jumping up and down. It’s caused the death of two young piglets through being squashed and two other piglets I’ve had to be taken away to get up and running again.”

“They were picking piglets up, cuddling them – there was a lot of screaming going on. Piglets don’t want to be cuddled. Then unfortunately, they were putting the piglets back in the wrong pens.”

As someone who once carried two piglets from a trailer to a pen, I can assure you the farmer is correct: they don’t want to be picked up or cuddled. Our two piglets screamed like banshees until I put them down. Fortunately, I didn’t attempt to cuddle them, so they lived.

One of the protesters, who calls himself ‘Earthling Ed’, commented: “You cannot love animals and kill them. You cannot love animals and pay someone else to kill them.”

Riiiight. Because if you don’t eat meat, no animals are killed to produce your dinner. Keep reading, Earthling Ed.

Death On Your (Vegan, Cruely-Free) Plate

Check out the death figures listed in this article from ABC in Australia:

A growing number of Australians are embracing veganism as they attempt to move toward a more ethical diet. But while the goal might be worthy, the truth is a little less easy to stomach, says author and farmer Matthew Evans.

The food critic-turned-restaurateur and pig farmer has spent the last few years researching Australia’s food industry and has come to an uncomfortable conclusion: animals will die in our name regardless of whether we choose to eat meat.

Wait, they’re quoting an actual farmer? Farmers don’t know anything about food production and death and icky stuff like that. To get the real scoop, you have to ask a vegan sitting at a Starbucks in a big city.

In fact, he found billions of animals are deliberately killed every year on Australian farms purely to protect fruit and vegetable crops for human consumption.

Mr Evans outlines the impact in his new book, On Eating Meat — which challenges both carnivores and vegans to consider their choices — and cites a number of examples, including:

• About 40,000 ducks are killed each year to protect rice production in Australia
• A billion mice are poisoned every year to protect wheat in Western Australia alone
• Apple growers can kill 120 possums a year to protect their orchards

“So a duck dying to protect a rice paddy for me is not much different for a cow dying to produce a steak,” Mr Evans said.

Well, I suppose the vegans at least cuddle the billion or so mice before killing them.

Dear Vegans: Please Just Stop At Cuddling

Apparently one vegan took his love for animals a bit beyond cuddling, according to an article in the New York Daily News:

A man who has dubbed himself the Sexy Vegan – and even changed his legal name – has taken the notion of puppy love a bit too far, according to charges filed against him in Los Angeles.

Hansel DeBartolo III, 37, who has legally changed his name to Sexy Vegan, was charged with sexually assaulting his dog, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. DeBartolo, of West Hollywood, pleaded not guilty after being charged with one misdemeanor count each of sexual assault on an animal and posting obscene matter.

Good lord. What kind of pooch did this nut-job sexually assault? A nervous, cowering little poodle? A cute, helpless shih tzu?

On Sept. 5, “Vegan posted a video on his social media account allegedly depicting inappropriate behavior with a pit bull,” the prosecutors said.

A put bull?!! I guess the vegan diet isn’t exactly enhancing Sexy Vegan’s decision-making and risk-assessment abilities.  I hope for his sake he doesn’t go to prison. He’d likely walk up to the biggest, meanest dude in the exercise yard and introduce himself with something like, “Hi, I’m Sexy Vegan. I’m going to make you my bitch. Now go get me a carrot.”

Seems to me this guy could use a visit with a shrink.

Sexy Vegan has appeared on the “Dr. Phil Show” twice – once being escorted off by security, scantily clad, after an expletive-laden rant, and a second time when he apologized for said rant.

Ahh, too late. Well, perhaps the authorities can at least get him into some kind of group where ranting and raving and demonstrating a questionable grip on reality won’t make him the odd man out.

He has described himself as a 2020 presidential candidate, reported KTLA-TV.

Perfect.

Go Meatless And Stand Up For Love

Perhaps Sexy Vegan’s capacity for reason was simply overwhelmed because he had a raging … uh, was in an uncontrollable state of excitement. Because according to a (cough, cough) very believable study featured in Game Changers and reported in the New York Post, eating meat will reduce your capacity to love your pit bull. Or something like that:

Eating meat might make your erections shorter and weaker, according to a scientific experiment in Netflix’s “The Game Changers.” Meanwhile, eating more plant-based meals might work wonders for your wood.

To show the impact of meat versus a plant-based diet in sports, three college athletes wore penis rings to bed for two nights and tracked details about their erections. On the first night, they ate a meat burrito, and on the second, a vegan one.

The results were stiffening: The jocks’ erections lasted longer and were reportedly stronger after the veggie burrito, Metro writes.

My, my, how the propaganda has changed. Dr. Kellogg, a eugenicist, created Corn Flakes because he believed eating meat provoked the “animal instincts” in men. Now the vegans are telling us meat will soften our desires.

Admittedly, this experiment wasn’t wildly scientific.

I see.  So the “scientific experiment” wasn’t wildly scientific.  That explains why it was featured in a vegan-propaganda film.

I Went Vegan And Now I Have Cotton Mouth

I sincerely doubt a vegan diet increases sex drive. But if this vegan food becomes popular, it could cause cotton mouth:

Vegan protein made from GMO cotton that could meet the daily requirements of 600 million people could be on the horizon – and, apparently, it tastes like hummus.

Fortune reports that the USDA has given the green light to the commercialization of a cotton plant with edible seeds made with biotechnology.

Protein made from cotton grown from seeds made with biotechnology. How long before it shows up in “natural” food stores?

The new crop was created by scientists at Texas A&M University, who have been working on its development for 23 years.

It took 23 years for scientists to develop? Yup, sounds like a natural food to me, all right.

“It’ll taste like hummus. It’s not at all unpleasant,” said Texas A&M professor Keerti Rathorne, who holds a Ph.D. in plant physiology.

That’s exactly how I describe all the foods I crave: not at all unpleasant. Excuse me, waiter, is tonight’s special not at all unpleasant?

Over the course of more than two decades, Rathorne learned how to “silence” a gene in GMO cotton plants that produce a toxin called gossypol.

A not at all unpleasant-tasting protein made from cotton grown from seeds in which the gene that produces a toxin has been “silenced.” And we’re going to feed it to humans. What could possibly go wrong?

White Men’s Diets Are Destroying The Planet

You knew this was coming, right? Name pretty much any problem (real or imagined) these days, and sooner or later the postmodernist simpletons will explain that it’s caused by men, or white people, or especially white men.  (In the postmodernist mind, that’s how you prove you’re opposed to sexism and racism: blame one gender and one race for everything.)

We’ll start with how men are causing climate change through their food preferences:

Irate farmers have labelled a State MP a ‘green communist’ after she blamed ‘meat-eating’ men for climate change while praising vegans.

Lisa Baker, the Labor member for Maylands in Perth, told the State Parliament her Government should promote reduced meat consumption. She went onto state meat-eating men tend to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than vegan women.

Actually, I produced far more gas in my vegetarian days. And after being married for nearly 20 years, I’ve concluded that women produce just as much gas as men, but are less likely to provide an audible warning so you can leave the room.

Anyway, it turns out the problem isn’t just with what men eat. White people in general are ruining the planet by eating incorrectly:

Caucasian populations are disproportionately contributing to climate change through their eating habits, which uses up more food — and emits more greenhouse gases — than the typical diets of black and Latinx communities, according to a new report published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

Sounds like a journal that insists on publishing only the most rigorous science.

“The food pipeline — which includes its production, distribution and waste — contributes significantly to climate change through the production of greenhouse gases and requires significant amounts of water and land, which also has environmental effects,” says Joe Bozeman, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who helped author the study.

The EPA provided data on per capita food consumption rates for more than 500 foods groups, including water, plus estimates from the NIH on individual diets.

The study, written by a student, relies on estimates from the NIH on individual diets. Oh yeah, we’re talking solid science here.

Data showed that whites produced an average of 680 kilograms of the CO2 each year, attributable to food and drink, whereas Latinx individuals produced 640 kilograms, and blacks 600.

I see. So those estimates from the NIH on individual diets produced highly specific figures for different racial groups. Yup, that’s how good science is done.

They also found the diets of white people required 328,000 liters of water on average per year. Latinx used just 307,000 liters, and blacks 311,800. Both black and Latinx individuals used more land per capita with 1,770 and 1,710 square meters per year, respectively, than white people with just 1,550.

So let me get this straight: diets preferred by blacks and Latinx people produce less CO2 and require less water, but somehow use more land. Okay, then.  This paper is sounding more and more scientific.

Nevertheless, white people still made the greatest overall contribution to climate change.

I’m consumed by guilt after reading about this rigorous scientific study, and I briefly considered switching to a black or Latinx diet to save the planet.  But then I realized that would be cultural appropriation.

Vegan Restaurant That Charged Men More Going Belly Up

Remember the vegan restaurant that charged men extra to make up for discrimination, or the fact that men are ruining the planet, or to stick it to the patriarchy, or something like that? Surprise, surprise, it turns out pissing off half your potential customer base isn’t a good business decision:

A restaurant that declared it would charge men 18% more than women for the same service will close its doors at the end of the month.

Handsome Her, a vegan café in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, will close its doors on April 28, writing on Facebook that the two women responsible for running the business “are off to our next adventure up north where we will be doing some hands-on work, something we have missed sorely whilst being at 206 Sydney Rd, Brunswick.”

Let’s hope the hand-on work doesn’t involve cuddling piglets or getting romantic with pit bulls.  The animals have suffered enough.

There is no indication that the restaurant is closing as a result of charging men more than women – a policy that was implemented back when the restaurant opened and only applied one week a month.

Okay, so the charge-men-more policy may have had nothing to with the restaurant’s failure. It may have had more to do with …

Vegan Restaurants Going Belly Up

According to PETA, veganism is trending up, up, up!  According to countless members of The Anointed, people (especially men, and especially white men) need to cut way back on their meat consumption to save the planet!  And by gosh, more and more people are doing exactly that, according to articles I cited above.

Which makes this development reported in the U.K. Telegraph a bit hard to explain:

Vegan restaurants are closing down across the country because of a lack of interest in solely plant-based food, analysis has found.

While there was a much-publicised vegan “boom” over the last two years, with chain restaurants launching animal product-free dishes, outlets which serve only plant-based food have struggled.

Perhaps they should try some bold new strategy, such as charging men extra, charging white people extra, and charging white men extra-extra. They’re ruining the planet, ya know.

Kate Nicholls, Chief Executive of UK Hospitality – which represents the restaurant, bar and hotel sector – said some vegan restaurants could be struggling because they don’t appeal to the wider market.

I believe that’s industry jargon for “the food sucks.”

She said: “Although veganism is gaining prominence and demand for vegan products seems to have soared, actually only a very small percentage of people identify as vegans, just 1.16 per cent in 2018 according to The Vegan Society.

So veganism is going up, up, up and soaring … it’s soared so much that just 1.16 percent of people identify as vegans – and that’s according to a society of vegans who wouldn’t exactly be tempted to underestimate.

Miami Burger – which sold 100 per cent vegan burgers – has closed in Reading after only opening in January. Founder Tom Bursnall said: “When we started we had the full intention of being permanent and long term. Three months in we were getting a very loyal base of customers, but it was too narrow to sustain the very large rent.”

A spokesman for The Vegan Society said: “Veganism has entered the mainstream, which may mean some independent businesses have sadly had to close as large companies are catering for vegans better and taking a big chunk of the profit.”

I see. So veganism is soaring and going up, up, up and has entered the mainstream … but only 1.16 percent of people identify as vegans, and vegan restaurants are closing because large companies are catering to that soaring, mainstream population.

Sounds perfectly logical to me. Either way, I hope vegans don’t go away. They’re a constant source of comedic material.

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