Hand me my meat cleaver
We are all familiar with The Church of Health.
Their creed is fairly simple to understand – if it’s pleasurable or enjoyable that it must be banned. Anything that may remotely cause any kind of health problem within the next hundred years of your life is forbidden. Anyone who isn’t an adherent is labelled an addict, or obese, or alcoholic and should be shamed and punished onto the Path of Righteousness.
But now there is another team in the league.
The Vegan Church.
I’m not quite sure whether they are a branch of the Healthists or a new religious movement in their own right. Certainly the two have one huge thing in common and that is that they know better than us and We Must Obey. There are however significant differences. One is that they clearly state precisely what we can and cannot eat. Anything that has ever drawn breath cannot and must not ever grace our meal table. Another great difference is that they are not just content with giving us little labels and trying to have us ostracised by society. Oh no. They call us as murderers and rapists.
I’m not particularly worried about this as I am already classed as a filthy smoker who damages every child within a mile or two. I am also a male of the species and are therefore de facto a serial rapist, misogynist and a paedophile. I am white and therefore am also racist. So adding murderer to the list [I’m already a rapist as I just explained] really isn’t going to make any difference.
If someone doesn’t want to eat meat then that is absolutely fine by me. They can eat their lettuce and soya mince and I shall have my fun informing them that plants have feelings too. By the time I finish, they’ll be on a diet of solid rock [but not limestone as that was once living creatures]. I had enough of selective diets back in the day when Catholics weren’t allowed meat on a Friday [not good enough for Vegans as fish was allowed]. I never understood the reason for that.
Last night I had chicken for dinner. The night before, I had beef curry. Non-Vegan figures largely in my diet and seeing as I do the buying and cooking then it shall remain that way. Tonight I plan on having slices of pig, accompanied by pulped pig mixed with pig’s blood and a couple of unhatched embryos of a chicken. I like my fries. I shall eat with satisfaction knowing that the ingredients come from a nice cold supermarket shelf. Where they were before that is no concern of mine. If I worried about where everything came from I would probably go mad anyway.
The trouble with Vegans is that they are too fucking simplistic. They overlook two essential facts – homo sapiens is an omnivore and a predator. We are designed to hunt and to eat that spoils of that hunt. The fact that we have removed the necessity to actually chase around the woods and fields with pointy sticks is neither here nor there. And if we didn’t eat animals then something else probably would.
But of course we live in an age of Causes. Suddenly everyone sees themselves as the Righteous and they demand that we all think as they do. They demand that we all see the light and the reason they are right is because they got a few “retweets” on Twitter and a few “likes” on Farcebook.
If anyone ever comments on my purchasing a breakfast fry-up down the coffee shop they shall get a very swift response.
And it won’t be as humane as an abattoir.
I was a vegetarian and then vegan for a few years (all the girls in our mileu were,which is probably a more valid reason for veganaterianism than most). Until I collapsed at work from vitamin deficiency. So much for the whole ‘healthier’ lifestyle. I learnt my lesson and went to work in a salami/cold sausage/hot dog factory where you could devour your own body weight and more in processed meats in the canteen for FREE.
homo sapiens is an omnivore and a predator.
The Higher Ups in the cult will explain-at great length- that they are perfectly aware that we are omnivores BUT we have a duty to ‘evolve’ to a higher level of being…in the same way (and I quote) we no longer brain females with lumps of rock before mating. Or even that we ‘no longer send children down the mines’.
Take it from me, it is easier to persuade a Jehova’s Witness that he is infact being duped by an American publishing giant than to show a vegan the flaws in his beliefs.
Evolution should be left to nature. Any human involvement is likely to be at best a failure and at worst a total disaster. The concept that we have a “duty” to evolve is a pile of bollox. Not braining females with lumps of rock has fuck all to do with evolution and is purely a question of morality [and anyway Rohypnol is more efficient?], as is sending kids down mines.
If a Vegan called to my door trying to convert me, they’d get precisely the same response as a JW.
Evolution gave up on us ages ago. Right at the moment we started caring for our sick and injured (who previously would have been left to die) and our elderly (who previously would have been left behind to die). So is it wrong to care for our injured, sick and elderly? Of course not. So, if not evolution then what? Simple.The human race is waiting to grow the hell up is all.
Humans are basically omnivores that can survive on quite wildly varying diets, as long as we get energy and quite a varied set of vitamins that we have lost the ability to synthesise ourselves.
Our ancestral diet was probably fairly heavily plant-biased on the grounds that plants don’t run away and as long as you can remember what isn’t poisonous and how to process other stuff so it isn’t poisonous any more, then you’ll do OK. Most hunter-gatherers do a fairly simple split of labour: women gather food, men hunt other food, generally the stuff that runs away.
Humans are also highly unusual in that we are by far the smallest animal in the world to sweat to lose heat, and unusually for something that evolved in Africa, we have no water loss prevention systems. So, it is likely we originally evolved in riverine habitats, gathering from local vegetation and hunting anything tasty that crossed our path.
A very few people still practice persistence hunting, whereby a prey animal is chased down over a very long time. Most hunter-gatherers use ambush hunting, trapping, poisoning, fishing and other easier ways to obtain food. We need meat for essential B-vitamins, and for the short-chain oils that our brains are mostly made of, and we need vegetation for vitamin C and for starches.
We’re omnivores.
So are most so-called herbivores, to be honest. Horses quite often like the taste of meat, especially oily fish. Cows have been seen hunting and eating chickens. Crocodiles are known to eat fruit. Dogs and cats eat grass.
Nature seldom falls into neat categories, and nor do we; we are omnivores.
Being an omnivore is more than just having a suitable set of gnashers [which in humans is ideal for cutting, tearing of flesh and crunching nuts and the like]. We need all the various vitamins, oils and elements in our diet to lead a normal life [I refrain from using “healthy” but you know what I mean?]. So even a Vegetarian, let alone a Vegan will have to be careful to supplement their diet to make up for the lack of essentials.
I really have nothing against anyone who wants to go Vegetarian or Vegan. It’s their body, their choice. What really boils my piss is when they go an a fucking crusade and expect the rest of us to fall in line.
You are, of course, quite correct. Very few, if any, animals survive on a 100% plant based diet. After all if you are eating the plants you are also eating the little beasties that live on the plants. An example of this is sheep. Sheep are wet land animals. The grasses they eat are well supplied with, for example, snails. When sheep in Australia and New Zealand began to show signs of calcium deficiency it was the result of farming these animals in semi arid conditions where the snails were not available.
Q. How do you know a vegan when you meet one?
A. It’ll be the first thing he tells you.
And there’s a lot of truth in that. Vegans tend to be evangelists. I’m not sure why – perhaps it’s that they constantly have to justify to themselves the rightness of their choice, and hearing themselves pontificate on the subject reaffirms their belief system.
If there was anything detrimental (in evolutionary terms) to the survival of Homo sapiens by being an omnivore, that trait would’ve died out long ago. It didn’t. Case closed.
I can’t see the problem, personally. Lots of the animals I eat are vegetarian.
😀
Long time ago I was enthralled when they came across Otzi, way up in the mountains between Italy and Austria. Even did a write up on the chap when I learned he was infertile, though that essay was to do with how smokers are denied infertility treatment. Oh and he was also lactose intolerant, so bugger all new with either. Our ancestors had ’em, we’ve got ’em.
Their analysis of his stomach:
“Analysis of Ötzi’s intestinal contents showed two meals (the last one consumed about eight hours before his death), one of chamois meat, the other of red deer and herb bread. Both were eaten with grain as well as roots and fruits. The grain from both meals was a highly processed einkorn wheat bran,[14] quite possibly eaten in the form of bread.”
So took me a look at something closer to home.
Old Croghan Man
He was found in a peat bog in Ireland and this is what they had to say about his last meal:
“His last meal (analysed from the contents in his stomach) was believed to have been wheat and buttermilk. However, he was shown to have had a meat rich diet for at least the 4 months prior to his death.”
What I find ticklish about our ancestors is their sheer practicality. Rabbits have a fondness for all things leafy and green, indeed your average kitchen garden is as much a banquet to them as it is to the owner.
So they trapped rabbits, kept some to breed, then used them as a food source.
Same with pigeons. They just love seeds, especially the ones that have just been sown. So the same fate befell then. Kept for food or just trapped and eaten.
And the Mexicans, they love the way Guinea Pigs reproduce, so they too keep ’em for food. It just so happens to be something passed down to them from Inca days.
However our species has some very odd people that simply do not fit into the vegan rhetoric. The Eskimo people eat nothing but meat and the Yaghan people, they too lived almost exclusively on animal protein. Given their location, that’s understandable. Bear in mind both people’s need(ed) well in excess of 5,000 calories per day, so blubber is pretty good for that purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaghan_people
Then there’s the Maasai, they drink cow’s blood and use its milk. Oh and they kill the beasts as well. Kind of difficult doing farming if you’re a nomad in Africa, you simply have no choice than follow the rain to graze your livestock.
Of course all the farmland we have today didn’t just present itself; it’s all artificial, certainly in the EU it jolly well is. Zillions of trees and noble things had to be cleared to make them. And they need constant maintenance, like ploughs and tractors.
And we use pesticides because bugs and things can wipe out crops. And we cull rabbits, hares and such because they too compete for our crops. It may look real nice, but there’s a constant battle raging in our countryside.
So no, the vegans may have wonderful digestive systems, but what they’re advocating is not the “green” alternative they think it is.
And the final nail in their coffin is the fact that much of what they consume is not native grown. Oranges, avocado, raisins, grapes, banana – to name just a tiny handful, are transported to our dull, damp climate by ship, or aircraft, while most of the meat we eat is locally produced.
Back to our ancestors. If they thought a vegan life was practical, they’d have chosen that in a heartbeat. They didn’t, they knew jolly well that they felt a whole lot better with animal protein coursing through their body. That’s why they were awful big on seafood, especially critters that don’t move too much clams, mussels, snails, frogs. And why they were so fond of little things that could be kept in a very small area, rabbits, chickens, turkey, pigs and boars, to name but a few.
But let’s not overlook the sheer guts it took to kill some of the beasts they had in ancient times. Yes they preferred ambush, but that still meant exposing yourself to real danger. Otzi ate Chamois, which is about the size of a goat, however a wounded male could quite easily rip you wide open with its horns, lethal things. Pity the peoples who hunted the Musk Ox; a pissed off herd of those would trample dozens – and frequently did. Our lot in the UK went after the Woolly Mammoth, by scaring them with fire so they fell off cliffs. You do that because you must, to survive a winter.
Should you guys ever be assailed by one of them, now you’ve got all the ammo to nail ’em real quick. Or like me, have the knowledge to be quite certain they’re facile twits, so no need to engage, stare them down.
A very wise doctor I heard on the radio some years ago (it must have been some years ago, because “very wise doctors” no longer exist – they’ve been usurped by narrative-conforming, parroting fools now), when asked in one of these “alternative diet” discussions what kind of diet was the best diet, replied: “The best diet is a VARIED diet.” i.e. a little bit of all of it, and not too much of any of it. And yes, that did include all the “baddies” – sugar and salt and (back then) fat, on the basis that if a reasonable amount of those things made all the good things more enjoyable and palatable, we’d eat more of those, too. Made sense to me.