So what's for lunch today

Nutritious and delicious plant based lunch ideas.

Thai salad with a black rice base, shredded super food blend, edamame beans, pistachio nuts, and tofu, with a lime, sweet chilli, sesame oil, tahini and a splash of maple syrup dressing.

Gado Gado salad, with a toasted peanut, soy sauce, lime juice, garlic, chilli and macadamia nut oil dressing. Come back soon to see what’s next on the plant based lunch menu.

"<" vegan, vegetarian, plant based, animal rights, vegan and vegetarian food "/>"

A vegan in Bali

What amazing vegan food, juices and cocktails in Bali. They know how to cater for a plant based diet

Food Porn

                                     

Can you be a feminist and not a vegan?

In view of the oppression of cows in the meat and particularly the dairy industry and hens in the egg industry, both females of their species, can any human feminist not be vegan?

Although I am male, I still have an opinion on this subject and will be putting my thoughts down in due course.

There are probably still people out there who believe that dairy cows are effectively milk machines, and simply have to eat grass to produce a daily quota of milk. No, the reality is that in the same way as lactating humans have to have a baby to produce milk, a milk supply that eventually dries up, cows too have to give birth.

Unfortunately parenthood is not the celebration that in most cases, it is for humans. Cows are effectively raped and artificially impregnated with humans having a hand in the process. I will leave the logistics of this process to your imagination, but in short, semen needs to be obtained from a bull and it is then forced into the cow. The cows are restrained in what the industry refers to as "rape racks" whilst she is artificially inseminated.

Some farms still use the old fashion method of leaving the cow with a bull or two to have their merry way with her. There is no magic and as we grow ever more conscious of how sentient and intelligent these animals are it surely is time for this to stop. Rape can start from as young as 15 months of age, and is repeated  over and over again until the cow is no longer deemed to be productive and then she is sent to the slaughterhouse. A cows natural life span is around 20 years, but this is usually cut short at about 5 years when she is no longer profitable to the farmer.

After giving birth the calf is often physically dragged away from its mother so that it does not take her precious milk destined for coffee shops, and the cheese board. This is an extremely distressing time for both mother and calf who will cry out in desperation as they are torn away from each other.

For one moment put yourself in that cows position.  You have been raped, you have just given birth and your child is physically removed from you and you can do nothing about it.  You have no say in the matter and no rights. To rub salt into your inflamed wounds, you will shortly be raped again and the whole process will start again as the milk you are producing for your offspring is taken from you everyday until it dries up, by which time you will be giving birth again. Your only release will be to be carted off in a lorry to a slaughterhouse and stunned with a bolt through your head before being hung up by a chain and having your throat cut. A cows life is far from dignified and as a man it makes me weep, so quite how it makes a female feel who I am sure can relate to the cow to a greater extent than I ever could as a male.

I am very interested to obtain views from women on this issue, so please provide your thoughts in the comments section below. I haven't even covered the exploitation yet and terrible system of pain and torture that hens are put through so that humans can consume their eggs. Do we simply overlook the fact that these non human animals have emotions, feel pain and fear and the females of the species have their bodies and reproduction systems violated for the greet of human animals.

Presentation by my teenage daughter

Veganism and vegetarianism

Now I’m not going to say hey omnivore you doing the wrong thing you have to convert to vegan or vegetarian, as that’d be enforcing my beliefs upon you and everyone has a right to their own opinion. I’m not trying to convert you I’m just telling you the truth about the human race so please listen. People may say yeah yeah vegan/vegetarian; you’re weird. Have you ever thought about their views of your diet? So you’re not confused I’m vegetarian and I wanted expand my knowledge on veganism.

How humans are designed

First, we need to look back to human evolution. Our ancestors were mainly eating a plant-based diet and when fire was discovered and there was a shortage of plants they would occasionally kill and cook animals for survival. 100 years ago, only wealthy people could afford animal flesh, compared to today with meat being fairly cheap due to overproduction. Meat eaters have a 32% higher risk of developing heart disease due to the high cholesterol in meat. Human teeth are not designed to rip animal flesh as we don’t have sharp canines. They are in fact blunt like a herbivores. A true omnivores (an omnivore eats plants and meat) jaw is only capable of moving up and down- a mouth that is supposed to eat meat. As you know humans can move their jaw up and down and side to side and have flat molars (unlike omnivores) just like a herbivore as herbivores grind vegetables and fruit in their mouths. A human’s intestinal tract in not suited to the digestion of meat. An omnivore has a short intestinal tract compared to humans who have a long intestinal tract, so your digestive system has enough time to break down fibre and absorb the nutrients from plant-based foods. It saddens me that people care so much about animal testing but then they don’t care about killing and eating them. It’s mad to me. It’s like adding 2 and 2 and equalling five, it doesn’t make sense.

If so I can safely say that you are human and are capable of compassion. It is common for humans to be repulsed by the sight of blood and have no desire to kill another being. Animals like humans have feelings and experience fear.  Their main purpose in life is to be safe, to protect and raise their young and to reproduce.

Could stop world hunger and damaging the environment

40% of the worlds crops are fed to livestock and not the 800 million people dying from starvation. The current growth rate of crops is enough to sustain 10-11 billion people. 51% or more of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture according to a report by The Worldwatch Institute. According to the US environmental protection agency around 500 million tonnes of animal waste is produced by the US farm factory animals each year. This waste can often end up in rivers and lakes causing pollution. It takes around 20 times less land to feed a person on a vegan diet, vegans eat the crops directly, so this would save food from being fed to overbred animals. This results in less land for humans and less food for starving people. It takes 4.5 kilos of grain to produce 450 grams of meat. Over 90% of the land cleared in the Amazon Rainforest since the 70’s is used for grazing livestock. Each of you directly contribute to the killing of 7,000 animals throughout your lifetime. These animals include 11 cows, 27 pigs, 2,400 chickens, 80 turkeys, 30 sheep and 4,500 fish which all are dooming our planet. 82% of the world’s starving children live in countries where food is fed to animals that are then killed and eaten by people in developed countries like the US, UK, Australia and in Europe.  A quarter of all grain production in third world countries is now given to livestock, in their own country and out.

Oceans

Fishing boats are clearing all life from the ocean floor destroying coral reefs, destroying sea life habitat. The fishermen kill thousands of dolphins, sharks and sea turtles unintentionally catching them whilst catching fish.

Thank you and I hope I have given you food for thought

Antioxidant rich muesli bowl

Great start to any  day

Home made muesli,with organic almond milk, a medley of antioxidant rich fruit, a generous serve of vegan coconut yoghurt and a dusting of magical cinnamon 

The early days of transitioning to veganism.

After a month following a completely plant based diet, I really can't believe how easy it has been, so far as food is concerned. OK it has helped that I had been vegetarian for over 30 years, so you kind of know what the potential pitfalls are, and what to be aware of.

What I hadn't anticipated is how mindful you become about food and cooking. You literally have to consider every ingredient.  I do not see this as a burden - what better way to be aware of everything that you are putting into your body. 

But it doesn't stop there, you start being more aware of products that you are using on your body, such as shampoo and body wash. You start thinking about things like where do all of the used toothbrushes go? I estimate that there must be around 5 billion or so toothbrushes disposed of every year.  This is a guesstimate, but could even be a conservative one, if you consider that the world population is over 7.5 billion and around 1 billion plastic toothbrushes are disposed of in the US alone. Even here in Australia with a population of around 25 million we are disposing of 30 million a year. I have taken into account the fact that unfortunately there are many people throughout the world who do not have access to a toothbrush.

It is the little things such as this that start to weigh on your mind.  It is not just the cruelty to animals, the needless slaughter, the waste of natural resources such as water in producing meat and dairy, not even the deforestation of the rain forests, but the combination of all of these things and the many other related environmental issues, too numerous to mention. It really does concern me how little thought must be going into our daily lives.

It is not a reason to not follow a plant based diet, it is the realisation that this is surely the only way for compassionate, mindful, emphatic, and caring humans to live their lives. What is so amazing is the extent of the massive anomaly between those that have made the choice and the rest of civilisation who continue to mindlessly partake in the meat and dairy industries elaborate, brain washing marketing campaigns. Unfortunately the budget for endorsing broccoli for example is no where near that afforded by the meat and dairy industries and their government subsidies funded by tax payers-yes even vegans are paying towards this.

Once you have made the decision to turn your back on the barbaric and unnecessary treatment of animals for human consumption those very animals that human beings appear to adore, it is.almost impossible to understand why everybody doesn't feel the same way. You want to shout from the roof tops, engage in conversation with everyone who still consumes meat and dairy to discuss the error of their ways. 

BUT you know this is not realistic, it is not going to achieve anything and you will simply be ridiculed and face the same old, same old uneducated, unresearched arguments about protein and it being natural for humans to eat animal flesh.

What is reassuring is the amount of medical evidence that backs up the benefits of a plant based diet and the negatives of consuming meat and dairy.

It will undoubtably be a slow process, and there will be a lot of counter arguments made by the meat and dairy industries that have so much to potentially loose if the trend does start to move in a plant based direction. I do believe however that things will start shifting towards plant based, I have to believe this, not least because the planet cannot continue to sustain the current volume of meat and dairy consumption. 

I am also slightly puzzled as to who is actually eating the annual 315 million tonnes of meat globally, as all the meat eaters I seem to speak to say, I hardly eat any meat, just a couple of days a week. Perhaps this is another example of cognitive dissonance.