Archive for the 'Health' Category

February 18th 2008

Meat recall.

This recent recall of school meat makes me laugh a little.  The only reason they’re doing it is because of the video released.  I’m fairly certain the USDA knows that practices such as those displayed in the video have been ongoing for quite some time, with relatively little obvious harm to humans (at least, by their standards… I would beg to differ).  However, they choose to act when a video is released.  Why?  Because now we know about it.  They want use to think they’re doing a good job, but do they really think we’re that stupid?  That we wouldn’t know that these practices are nothing new?  That school children and adults alike have been eating totally deranged animals for years?

What also makes me laugh is that they’re calling it cruelty.  Not the fact that its a massive killing operation, just the fact of how they’re treating the animals during the fact.  They’ve got to be insane.  They’re so worried about how that animals feels in an already dismal, terrifying situation.  The hell do they want, to see it prancing through a field of roses?  That video is what slaughterhouses look like, and that is how they are run.  Its not an isolated situation.  Anyone who thinks so is, quite frankly, stupid.  If you eat meat, guess what, you’ve got problems, not least of which is the fact (displayed by the video) that your meat comes from ill-treated animals that have essentially gone insane from being forced into cannibalism and then processed in really terrible conditions (to put it nicely).  Even if your meat is “organic” and “grassfed” and whatnot, while I’d like to give you props for trying, it still doesn’t change the fact that meat is bad for you.

Now I know a million people who are going to ask me about protein, or say “but everyone is different, you can’t say that!”  Well, yes, I can.  And I just did.  And I don’t regret it.  And I don’t think people will die if they eat less, or no, meat.  In fact, I think they’ll find that if they cut meat out (and dairy, please) they’ll feel much better after the initial withdrawal period. And quite frankly, I cannot believe the idea that “everyone is different” when it comes to our food intake and what’s healthiest.  Granted, I don’t know about the Inuit (thats been a source of debate in my own mind for some time), but as far as most people are concerned, I can really confidently say that we’d all be better off on a raw vegan diet (80/10/10 to be exact).

For starters, this implies that meat recalls would be of no use to us.  It also implies that we would be eating a lot of plants.  I know this might scare some people, but it would serve you well to know that 1) there’s no such thing as a protein deficiency… a caloric deficiency and starvation will always precede any possible protein deficiency, and 2) we can, and are better able to, get all of our nutritional needs from fruits and vegetables.

I’d like to elaborate on this, but really, I’ll be dedicating whole blog entries to this in the future.  Right now, let that just spark your mind and get you to do some reading.  You’ll find a lot of evidence that says I’m wrong (its really abundant), but I encourage you to find evidence that says I’m right… and then ask yourself — your common sense — what really sounds right to you?

Lia Cross

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February 16th 2008

One and the same.

I just saw a commercial for the S.C. Johnson product Windex. The commercial appeared to claim that they reformulated the cleaner to be safer for both people and the planet. At the end of the commercial they said something to the effect of, “Here at S.C. Johnson, we care about your family and the planet.”

Now, I don’t know about these claims. I’m not claiming to be for or against S.C. Johnson or Windex. However, that last statement got me thinking. What’s the difference? If something is polluting to the environment, it is also polluting to us, either directly or indirectly. For instance, if bleach is a bad thing to feed a plant, its probably also bad for us because 1) it will burn us and 2) its killing our source of food.

So, anything that is bad for the environment is bad for us because of those two reasons. This brings us to the rather obvious conclusion that if we are polluting the planet, we are polluting ourselves because we both live in that environment and consume products of that environment (plants and, in some cases, animals).

Thus, when someone claims that they do not care about the planet, what are they really saying? They’re saying they don’t care about life. No, this is not an exaggeration. This person can be deemed as extremely close-minded for the simple reason that they do not understand the basic principle of “poison in the waterhole”. If you poison a source of requirement for life, everything down the chain from it will also be poisoned. Simple enough.

Usually people claim not to care about pollution and environmental problems for the reason that they’ll be dead when it gets too bad. I guess they don’t realize that pollution done now is (duh) polluting now, not later. Or, they don’t accept the basic principles outlined above (poison in food / environment = poison in consumer).

Either way you look at it, if you pollute, or if you don’t care about the environment, you are polluting / don’t care about life. Human life, animal life, all life. Your life.

Lia Cross

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