“IT TASTES GOOD”

Whenever I have a discussion with a meat eater about eating animals I will bring up facts about how animal eating causes extreme animal cruelty, global warming, drought, water pollution, and world hunger. I will also point out how unhealthy it is and the diseases it causes. Nine out of ten times the animal eater will respond, “But it tastes so good”, as if taste is more important than vicious animal cruelty, (yes Temple Grandin—meat production is vicious and cruel. Despite your propaganda, there is nothing humane about the meat industry.) our planet, and the future of our children. I have been doing a lot of research lately on the subject of taste, and it seems that people have been conditioned to like the taste of animal flesh, just like we have been conditioned to accept the animal cruelty that goes with it.

Remember the first sip of coffee you tasted, the awful bitterness, that would not go away no matter how much milk or sugar you added. Remember your first sip of brandy, scotch or beer? If you are a smoker, remember your first cigarette?  Now you probably drink coffee on a regular basis (I don’t), and love beer or brandy or scotch. Why? You were conditioned to learn to like the tastes. Everyone drinks coffee and beer, so you must too. Back when cigarette companies could advertise, you weren’t cool if you didn’t smoke.

It is the same with eating animal flesh. People have been conditioned to like the taste. Our tastes are acquired through societies expectations and advertising.  Children, like my own, who have never tasted animal flesh, find the smell repulsive. Just looking at it “grosses” them out. They will not even try to eat it.  I have not eaten meat in over thirty years, and even though I grew up in a meat eating family, I too find the smell repulsive and cannot look at a package of raw flesh.  Many studies have been done on this subject and the conclusions are the same—our tastes are part of our conditioning.

We learn our tastes from traditions. For instance, in Japan people enjoy eating live baby octopus. Here in America, we would probably vomit as the wiggly tentacles went down our throats. We learn tastes from comforting memories, like food our mothers made or food served at family functions.

In addition to being conditioned to the taste of eating meat, there is also evidence that it may be addictive.  Food companies will add ingredients to food to make it addictive. Chemical additives for food is big business. McDonalds spends millions every year to keep their customers coming back. Some of the ingredients added to food is as addictive as nicotine in cigarettes.  Many people will suffer withdrawal symptoms if they do not have their daily coffee.

Dairy products contain casomorphins, which is very addictive. Casomorphin causes the calf to want to nurse and come back for more. It effects humans the same way. Studies have shown that human children who are breast fed are more likely to become vegetarians or vegans.

Corporations will go to great lengths to keep you buying their product. Pharmaceuticals have a big stake in keeping you eating animals. 80% of the antibiotics they make are sold for use in farmed animals to make them grow fast and big. Then they make billions more when people contract diseases like cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc. from eating those animals.

 Nasty habits should never control your life. We have the ultimate weapon to take control of our own lives. It’s called thinking.

http://www.eufic.org/article/en/health-and-lifestyle/food-choice/artid/how-taste-preferences-develop/

http://www.alternet.org/5-unhealthy-foods-engineered-be-addictive 

http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/_pdf/research/clf_reports/CLF-PEW-for%20Web.pdf

A FISH'S TALE

A FISH’S TALE    

 

71% of Earth is covered in water. The oceans make up 96% of Earth’s water. Our oceans are in trouble. They are slowly dying. The main cause of this destruction is animal agriculture (meat, egg, dairy industries).

Animal agriculture is responsible for 7000 square miles of a dead zone off Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Dead zones are areas so polluted with nitrogen from fertilizers and manure, nothing can exist in them. Animal agriculture produces 116,000 pounds of manure in the US alone. This manure runs untreated into our water systems.  There are currently 146 dead zones in our oceans. This number is increasing every year.

Our oceans need sea life for their health, their ecosystem. What strip mining does to land, commercial fishing is doing to our oceans. Endangered species are being killed along with the fish. 300,000 sea turtles are killed every year by commercial fishing. Whales, seals, dolphins and sea birds are dying because their main food sources are disappearing or are toxic from pollution.  A side note, the Government of Japan blames the fish depletion on dolphins, hence the dolphin holocaust there. The Governments of Norway and Canada blames it on seals, hence the baby seal holocaust there.

Because fish in our oceans are rapidly depleting, animal agriculture has turned to factory fish farming as an alternative. This is even more unsustainable than commercial fishing.  Fish are jammed into overcrowded tanks, where the water becomes very toxic very quickly. They like farm animal ag produce tons of waste that gets dumped into our water systems. Scotland’s caged salmon (for example) created untreated waste water equivalent to 8 million people. Just like farm animal ag, factory faming of fish wastes tons of food.  It also takes 5 pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of factory farm fish.  It takes 20 pounds of fish to make just one pound of shrimp.

Many vegetarians think it’s ok to eat fish, that fish have no feelings. This is not true. Fish are very intelligent; we just do not spend enough time studying them. From a personal experience, I have taught goldfish tricks. Everyone who has goldfish will tell you they race to the end of their tank whenever you enter the room.  We do not often think of the suffering fish are put through in the name of a meal. Over 3 trillion fish are killed every year. 80% of that kill goes into feed for farmed animals. Fish get their “oxygen” from water. When you pull a fish out of water, it is the same effect as if we were to be suffocated. Just the way they toss and flounder when pulled from water shows suffering and pain. Peta has a video showing the horrible way crabs and lobsters are caught and killed for food. This video is very hard to watch as crabs scream in pain. http://www.peta.org/videos/lobster-crab-slaughterhouse-investigation/  Even so called “sport” fishing causes extreme pain to fish. 60% of “catch and release” fish die within a few hours from the injuries caused by hooks and suffocating.

Many people consider fish healthier to eat than land mammals. This is also not true. Fish is high in saturated animal fat, cholesterol and animal protein—all harmful to our bodies. Because fish live in water, often polluted, fish are more toxic than most land mammals. They breathe the toxins in and it builds up in their body fat. When you eat fish, you eat high amounts of toxins. Many State Natural Resource Departments have guidelines stating how much fish you can eat without poisoning yourself.  That alone is a red flag that fish is not healthy to eat.

Fish deserve the same consideration we give to dogs and cats. They are living earthlings. We should cherish the gifts this planet has to give us—the air, water, trees, land, and other earthlings. The only true way to save our planet and our oceans is to go vegan.

Sources:

 World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle

 Food Choice and Sustainability by Dr. Richard Opperlander

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

 

Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a learning process in which an innate response to a potent stimulus comes to be elicited in response to a previously neutral stimulus; this is achieved by repeated pairings of the neutral stimulus with the potent stimulus. (definition from Wikipedia)

 

In 1901 Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate at the sound of a metronome. This is called classical conditioning or respondent conditioning.  We as consumers have been conditioned by corporations our whole lives. We believe their advertising to be true, even when it isn’t. We believe the government would remove ads that aren’t true to protect us. 

Can we reverse conditioning? Yes, we can. If we repeatedly sounded the metronome and did not feed the dogs, gradually they would stop salivating at the sound. Likewise, as consumers, if we are aware of what advertisers are doing and seek out the truth, we can reverse our conditioning.

Advertisers like to use an advertising technique sometimes called “the warm fuzzies”, especially at the holidays. This technique is used to target your heart, and make you buy a product because it reminds you of your mother, or your dog, or your childhood, etc., Once you are aware of this, the “warm fuzzy” commercials actually start to seem nauseating.

Likewise, with the meat, dairy, and egg industry. Once you see the truth behind them, once you see what they don’t want you to see, once you learn what they don’t want you to know, it’s easy to overcome their conditioning.

Take the dairy industry as an example.

In 1974 the dairy industry promoted milk as being healthy and needed to build strong bones. The FTC told them to stop as the ads were false, but they still imply that today, even though almost 80% of the population has milk allergies or are lactose intolerant. Studies have shown people who consume dairy are at a higher risk for bone fractures. Yet they continue to imply that milk is needed by the human body to build strong bones. They try to show people that dairy cows are happy cows. They even try to fool people into thinking that a cow will give milk without having calves.

Dairy cows are one of the most abused animals in the industry. The dairy industry will show you cows in a field eating grass on a small family farm, but that is far from the truth. Most of our dairy comes from huge factory farms. The industry will call a factory farm a “family farm” if most of the stock is owned by a family.  Organic milk isn’t any nicer to cows.

The industry would like you to believe dairy cows live a stress free life. Nothing is further from the truth.

Dairy cows are repeatedly raped because the only way they can give milk is to have calves.  The industry will call this “artificial insemination”, but they have to use equipment to hold the cow still. This equipment is referred to as a “rape rack.”

Shortly after giving birth, the calf will be taken from its mother. After all, the milk is for consumers not for calves. There isn’t any profit in giving milk to calves. These calves are either killed for their skins, used in rodeos, used to make cheese (cheese is made with rennet, which is a calf stomach) or used for veal. Veal calves are chained in small crates so they can hardly move. They are fed a very unhealthy diet. This makes their flesh pale in color and brings a higher price for the corporation. They are killed in just 6 short months.

Cows naturally live for up to 20 years, but in the dairy they average 5-7 years. That’s 5-7 years of repeatedly being raped, having their babies stolen and killed, being fed massive amounts of hormones and chemicals, and having the life milked out of them.

Once you learn the truth about dairy, you will never look at a glass of milk, or a piece of cheese the same. You will be repulsed by the very presence of dairy. Dairy ads will make you angry as you become aware of how they are trying to fool the public.

I encourage you to research your food. You only have one body for your life. Know what you put into your body, where it comes from, how it’s made, and what it contains. I encourage you to be AWARE. Make educated choices for how you spend your money.

Once you learn the truth about dairy, meat and egg industries you will become outraged at how they are trying to brainwash us. Once you see how they are not only destroying people’s health and torturing animals, but also causing planet destruction and world starvation, you will become more outraged.  Once you see how they are keeping these secrets from the public you will become outraged enough to stop buying their products. Then and only then will you know that your choices are your own and not the product of conditioning. Then and only then will you know true freedom. Veganism isn’t extreme, it’s informed and being aware.