This Is Vegan Propaganda (& Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You)

by Ed Winters

‘The consumption of animal-sourced food products by humans is one of the most powerful negative forces affecting the conservation of terrestrial ecosystems and biological diversity. Livestock production is the single largest driver of habitat loss.

Alarmingly, one study reports that 96 per cent of mammal biomass is now just humans and farmed animals.39

somewhere in the region of 7565 to 80 per cent66 of all the soya that is produced globally is used as animal feed. Looking specifically at South America, 90 per cent of soymeal produced in Brazil is used as animal feed,67 and 96 per cent of all the soya produced in South America is used as animal feed or for cooking oil.68

Somewhere between 50 to 80 per cent of all the oxygen production on Earth comes from photosynthesis by bacteria and marine phytoplankton – tiny ocean plants.97

‘A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.’

Whenever a vegan falls ill, non-vegans always blame it on their diet. Have a cold? It’s because you’re vegan. Stomach bug? It’s because you’re vegan. Are you looking tired today? It’s because you’re vegan. Someone even once told me that several work colleagues in their office had come down with the flu but that when they also got it, they were told by co-workers that it must have been because they were vegan.

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.1

The first thing to note is that a healthy plant-based diet should be a wholefoods one – which means a diet centred around minimally processed plants, such as fruits, vegetables, wholegrains, pulses, nuts, seeds and legumes.

Protein is made up of amino acids, nine of which are considered essential, meaning they must be acquired through diet. All of the essential amino acids our bodies need can be found in plants, with some plants such as soya (which includes foods such as tofu, tempeh, soya milk and edamame), quinoa and buckwheat being ‘complete’ sources of protein, meaning they contain all the essential amino acids.

Healthy sources of plant-based protein include: Legumes, such as beans, soy, lentils and chickpeas Wholegrains, such as oats, farro, brown rice and wholewheat pasta Nuts and seeds Vegetables, such as broccoli, green peas, Brussels sprouts and asparagus Seitan

There are vegan bodybuilders and strongmen, such as the Olympic weightlifter Kendrick Farris and Patrik Baboumian, a strength athlete who holds the world record for heaviest yoke (a bar or frame that goes behind the head and across the shoulders) carried over ten metres.

Healthy sources of plant-based iron include: Seeds, such as pumpkin, chia, flax and hemp Soya, including tofu and tempeh Wholegrains, such as quinoa, oats and wholegrain bread Nuts, such as cashews and almonds Legumes, such as beans, chickpeas and lentils Leafy green vegetables Dried herbs, such as thyme and parsley Dried fruits, such as apricots, dates and prunes

Healthy plant-based sources of calcium include: Fortified plant milks Vegetables, such as kale, broccoli, bok choy and cabbage Legumes, such as beans and lentils Nuts, such as almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios and Brazil nuts Seeds, such as chia and sesame (including tahini) Wholegrains, such as oats Dried fruits, such as figs, raisins, dried apricots and prunes

The best sources of plant-based omega-3 fatty acids are: Ground flaxseed and flaxseed oil Chia seeds Hemp seeds Walnuts

Choose unsweetened and fortified plant milks – soya and oat are my favourite for their taste, nutritional profile and sustainability Take one or two tablespoons of ground flaxseed a day Avoid refined grains and opt for wholegrains, including wholewheat pasta, brown rice and brown bread Eat a Brazil nut daily for selenium Eat the rainbow – meaning eat a variety of different coloured fruits and vegetables (especially berries, dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables, such as cauliflower and kale) Limit processed foods and salt Drink plenty of water (about eight glasses a day)

However, according to one major analysis of 195 countries, diet is the largest risk factor when it comes to heart disease, with the findings showing that approximately 70 per cent of ischaemic heart disease deaths across the world could be prevented by people adopting healthier diets more focused on fruits, vegetables, nuts and wholegrains.40

A wholefoods plant-based diet does not contain any dietary cholesterol – a major study comparing the effects of plant-based diets and omnivorous diets on cholesterol levels found that plant-based diets are associated with decreased total cholesterol.41

While there is no proven way to reverse it, there are some preventative measures that can reduce the risk. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, they include regular exercise, not smoking, limited alcohol intake, cognitively stimulating activities and a healthy diet.52

To illustrate my point, let’s say the next time you are out walking, you see someone attacking a dog with the intention of killing them. What do you do? Do you try to intervene? Do you call the police? Do you try to save the dog’s life? What if instead of a dog the animal being attacked and killed in front of you was a pig – do you still try to save their life? Now let’s say you are walking home and a pig is being attacked and killed, except it’s not happening in front of you but is instead taking place in a room in a building we call a slaughterhouse – does that remove the need for you to intervene? Is unnecessarily killing a pig always wrong or just when it’s happening right in front of you?

‘if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarian’ expresses a significant idea. We are so detached from what happens that we never think about it.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological concept that was identified by Leon Festinger in the 1950s. It is described as the psychological stress that occurs when a person’s beliefs, values or ideas contradict or go against an action or behaviour that they are engaged in.

So, why do we consider it right to save animals from unnecessary suffering in one situation but not in another, when they would wish to be saved in either case?

Animals are not inanimate objects; they are living beings, and the language we use to describe them is important.

It’s interesting that millions of people sign petitions condemning dog-meat consumption in Asia, but if a vegan questions their consumption of other animals, the vegan is forcing their views on them.

confirmation bias, where our brains view information that agrees with our preconceptions as being more important than information that contradicts them.

Confirmation bias also means that we are more likely to look for information and read articles or resources that agree with our pre-existing beliefs or opinions,

There’s also false-consensus bias, whereby we believe that something must be acceptable because the majority of people do it.

This is why one of the most important aspects of the growth and normalisation of veganism is that as more people go vegan, it becomes viewed as less of a ‘fringe’ belief, and the fear of being detached from the collective will be removed.

the biggest regret many of us feel is that we didn’t go vegan sooner.

If the idea is that eating meat is manly because men used to be hunters, then really the conclusion should be that providing for your community and looking after those around you is what makes you a man.

some men who feel the need to assert their masculinity, or who feel their masculinity is being threatened, will use red meat as a means to make themselves feel more manly.

If men were truly comfortable with their masculinity, they wouldn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone.

To think of animals being abused and killed while listening to my own family defend why they eat meat is something that fills me with great sorrow.

the fact that many of us are in awe of animals and wouldn’t want to kill them ourselves but are instead happy to pay for someone else to do the killing for us, as that way we can pretend we are less accountable for the act of taking life.

It didn’t seem right that a day of celebration should be marred by the suffering of others.

This is the balancing act that vegans face: we either voice our objection and get labelled as extremist, militant, awkward or abnormal, or we stay silent and smile through the image of a cow having their throat cut that passes through our minds as we watch our loved ones bite into beef burgers.

We either feel like we are betraying our morals out of fear of causing upset or find ourselves being labelled as preachy, forceful vegan extremists.

‘The thing that’s annoying about there suddenly being a lot of them [vegans] is the nagging suspicion that they might be right. When there were hardly any vegans, I hardly ever had to think about that.’

Being empathetic doesn’t mean agreeing with what someone says or not challenging them. It means understanding why they say the things they do and recognising that there are significant cultural, personal and psychological reasons why people might respond in a certain way.

I strongly believe that what we do to animals is something that future generations will look back at in horror.

We currently treat the lives of others as being expendable and worthless. ‘It’s just a pig,’ we might say. Or, ‘They’re only a chicken.’ But to that pig and that chicken, their life is everything to them.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that every single being in the world is negatively impacted by our consumption of animal products.