Vegetarian/Vegan
Welcome to Episode 9 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, this is my first episode to do with animals. Through different episodes in my podcast, Im planning to cover topics about movies, computers, video games, music and animals.
In this episode I'll talk a little bit about why you should really think about being Vegan, the history of not eating animal products, health benefits, and about how cool it is to whip out the line, "yeah, Im vegan because I care about animals, they have feelings and I really respect that", that little beauty is better than any date rape drug, you're going to get some serious action. That's why I'm vegan of course.
You should know by now that I love cutting sound clips from other media, in this episode I have a lot of snippets from other podcasts, and even some stuff from Metal Gear Solid 4, one of the best Video Games ever. It talks about animal abuse ingame as little easter eggs really. Its great to see such a manly, James Bond spy kinda game bringing up the idea that strong men can be nice to animals too.
I also have some YouTube audio to play, and links to the videos I used are included in the notes for this episode, as always you see them in "Lyrics" however you bring that up depending on how you are listening to this podcast, if on an iPod you go through the info for rating, skipping through the audio, and Lyrics should be there. You can see the entire script of this episode, with my sources at the very bottom :)
I do have some videos featuring celebrities, such as Moby, a musician, and Carl Lewis , one of the all time greatest athletes, he dominated world records for a considerable amount of time. Ok, so the fastest man in the world right now isnt Vegan, but one of the very top of all time is, and Carl Lewis says that being Vegan helped his performance.
Mixed in are some clips from No Agenda, my favourite podcast after the NZ Vegan Podcast of course :) Knuckles, the host from NZ Vegan was kind enough to record a clip to use in this episode. I'll have her on later.
No Agenda often bring up anti "green", anti "vegetarian/vegan and "VAY-GUN" as Dvorak likes to pronounce Vegan, he also thinks They're trying to put AMY WINESTEIN into rehab, and she says no no no, and that George Michael, and the band, was the lead singer of Queen.
When I listen to No Agenda, I'll write down funny quips, I grab a piece of paper and scratch out "NA Episode 40, 1 hour 40 minutes 14 seconds" or whatever, and at home extract the clip to use later.
I love when they talk about Vegetarians and Vegans, they joke as if we are some huge terrorist network invading america, poisoning people with our ideas about cutting out meat. I have read a lot of people tying in Veganism with Global Warming, how meat needs many times more resources and pollutes far more than plant crops do, but I dont like that spin either, Global Warming politics is a very messy item, No Agenda often will point out a lot of things about what politicians are trying to do with it, all sorts of crazy taxes, and human rights getting taken away, all to save some supposed animal on the other side of the world. When you think about it, Global Warming, now called Climate Change when it turns out a lot of places are getting colder, not hotter, Climate Change is a lot like Y2K, remember how upset people got over that? It was going to be anarchy remember, nuclear power plants would go off, killing millions, planes would drop from the sky.....nothing happened. On No Agenda, they often give the idea Climate Change is another way of creating a new economy, a new way for the elite to rule over the working classes.
I dont deny that Climate Change is occurring, and its another topic, so I'd better get on track!
I'll start by talking about Vegetarianism.
Vegetarians are people who generally dont eat meat, but they may or may not eat eggs, and diary products. Some really weird people dont think fish are animals, so fish dont count as meat, um, so what, they are minerals are they? Vegetables with eyes, fruit with brains? Steve Jobs, Apple CEO is said to be pescetarian, he eats fish but not other animals.
I personally think that pescetarians are kinda funny, I mean they go so far as to cut out practically all animal's, but then go and eat fish, so they dont get to use my killer pick up line about caring for the cute little animals and their really important feelings.
Vegetarians may also eat honey, and wear leather. When I ate things with milk in them, I had Vegetarian Cheese, which still has cows milk, ugh, but is free of Rennet, rennet is basically baby cow vomit, its used to break down the milk in cheese. I guess they kill baby cows just for the rennet as its called, vomit. Vegetarian cheese uses an artifical kind of rennet, it can come from other sources, I guess it must be more expensive than baby cow vomit, so mainstream people eat rennet containing cheese without having a clue whats inside. People really should start looking into ingredients.
Vegans are different to Vegetarians,
Donald Watson coined the term Vegan, he took the start of Vegetarian, and the end, to form Veg an, pronounced Ve-gun.
Heres a sound file I took from YouTube, asking people in San Francisco what they thought the word Vegan meant. Most are very fat americans.
Vegans dont use any animal products whatsoever, I now call myself Vegan, although I dont like the term as to me, it sounds like a Japanese sex toy. It is a very useful term though, as if you order food thats vegetarian, it could have milk in it, or eggs, or even fish, who knows what the chef's idea of vegetarian is, Vegan is very easy to define, nothing belonging to an animal, so I'm starting to get used to the word.
Vegans also shouldnt like leather, its nothing more than preserved skin. Its gross what has to be done to the skin to make leather goods, I feel sick when I see gorgeous women, and then the scaly hide handbag they have.
Now, being vegetarian or vegan is not a religion, I get very annoyed about people who call it a "lifestyle", a "personal decision", I dont see it as anything more than a choice somebody makes, because they care about their health, and the lives of animals. I myself was put off the idea of being Vegetarian, I didnt even know what a Vegan was until only a few years ago, because Vegetarians are portrayed as freaky people, weirdo hippie chicks, always women really, skinny, whiny, bitchy, always lecturing and handing out pamphlets on the street. If a guy is vegetarian, hes either gay or insanely effeminate, its not a manly thing to do. I had known some vegetarians, some family members living in Christchurch, vegetarian capital of New Zealand, and a family friend, but I saw them as female, and different people, they ate different things to normal people and were just weirder!
I guess it was the stereotype stamped in my mind from where I grew up. I knew I didnt like eating meat, I hated the bones in KFC, I could never pick the last bits of flesh from them, my parents would literally suck the bones to get the marrow, I never would eat cold meat, I didnt like cutting meat from the bone. But I ate meat, and ordered medium rare steak, I would have Meatball Subway sandwiches, and meat lovers pizza. I guess it was trying to be a man really, trying to fit in. Through the internet I learnt about more people who cared about the lives of animals, and it started sinking in, I mean, I wouldnt eat a cat would I? of course not, because you dont do that, not to cats, but its ok to eat cows , um, right? Online, I found out more and more about animal rights groups, like SAFE here in NZ, Save Animals From Experiements, and PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It started to affect me more and more. One of the final things for me was learning about really smart men who were vegetarian, people like Nikola Tesla, who invented practically everything to do with electricity, radio, and magnetism, Albert Einstein, Mr Scientist himself, and Adolf Hitler, the baddest man in history. I began to see Vegetarians more as normal people, people like me, who cared about animals, who didnt want to hurt them ,to eat them, I couldnt ever kill an animal and strip all its organs out, its not me, so why would I pay someone to do it for me, while I shut my eyes? It was about being logical, about doing the right thing. Now that I had my own vegetarian role models, it seemed like something I really wanted to do.
Now I'll play the Metal Gear Solid 4 stuff, the first is about the tough James Bond type hero, Solid Snake getting help from his rat friends,
and the second clip is what happens if you shoot a wolf that appears during the game, you can hear a second guy, Otacon get upset straight after, he was in love with Sniper Wolf who was a female boss who you killed in the same location years early on Shadow Moses island....um, well I'll skip the Metal Gear Solid story, its really good, look it up sometime :)
Here are some recordings from YouTube, the first is about a Vegan guy who wont date meat eaters. Have a guess if hes straight or not.
Did you guess that he was gay? Well, he is, his name on youtube is Gay God, he has a photo of him with his boyfriend, and its kinda obvious! Good for him.
This clip is a response to the last clip, now a woman who wont date meat eaters.
On youtube, people just have to add their opinion, normally in some hastily shot video.
finally, a meat eater who wouldnt date vegetarians, his clip sucks compared to the Vegan versions, it doesnt have any thought put into it.
< meat eater response clip>
It was fairly easy to be vegetarian, apart from the first month, where I kinda felt weird not eating what my dad ate. People generally didnt even know, you dont have to eat meat every meal, its not like you have to be seen eating live chickens as you walk down the street. I starting being vegetarian when I was 19, for 2007, 7 the lucky number, and for 2009 I've decided to start being Vegan, all I had to do was cut out things with milk inside. Things with milk as an ingredient are harder for me to avoid than meat, I'd never thought about it, but chips, baked beans even bread can all have milk hidden away. Suddenly, things I'd been eating every week for years were the devil, and had to be replaced, quickly!
To hear about someone elses perspective, heres my friend Knuckles, from the NZ Vegan Podcast, she was wonderful enough to record this for my little old podcast
No, thank you Knuckles! You can find the NZ Vegan Podcast on iTunes by searching for "N Z Vegan" in the iTunes Store.
My average meals now have a lot of beans, rice, pasta, fruit and vegetables in them, more than when I ate meat. I hate even thinking about eating meat now, I wish I could forget about it, just delete my past. I even feel angry at my parents a little for how they ate around me when I was little, I feel like I was cheated out of thinking about not eating animals when I was younger. Ultimately its a personal decision, not something I can blame on everyone else, but I really wish I'd never eaten animal products now. I've heard about people being angry at vegetarians who bring their children up that way, they say its like brainwashing, depriving them of dead animals all hacked up, but that works both ways, and I think that you could use the term brainwashing more for people who are told to pat the kitty, because some animals feel pain, but to be quiet and eat the chickens legs, "because its normal dammit!"
Some of my friends act like I'm weird, they've joked that I've had some spiritual awakening or something, like im a weirdo hippie now ,sometimes they will say "right, im off to KFC" in front of me. It doesnt bother me at all, no skin off my back ha. Their little words dont cut me to the bone, I'm on a roll!
So once I got past the idea that vegetarians were weirdos, I felt great being vegetarian, and now vegan, for my health, and for the lives of the animals. Screw anyone who wants to put down someone else for caring.
Some famous Vegans
Jermaine Jackson, Michael Jackson's brother, Dennis Kucinich, he ran for President, his SUPER SEXY red haired wife , Elizabeth, half his age, shes also Vegan, Joaquin Phoenix, he narrated Earthlings, Moby, Techno artist who made music for Earthlings, Weird Al Yankovic, who makes all the parody songs, Billy West, voice actor on Futurama and many other shows, Pamela Anderson, Ellen Degeneres, Tobey Maguire, Daniel Johns of Silverchair, Prince, Shania Twain, Andre 3000 of Outkast, Ingrid Newkirk, founder of PETA, and Donald Watson, founder of the UK Vegan Society, the man who came up with the word Vegan by taking the start and end of the word Vegetarian to make " Vegan"
Phew. And thats just a tiny list, from memory.
Moby is a famous popular musician, and Vegan. Heres an interview he gave.
Heres the rest of the clips from No Agenda that I've gotten so far. I'm sure Vegans will come up in future.
Its a little difficult sometimes to find out if historical figures were Vegetarian, and ate diary and eggs, or if they were fully Vegan, as my friend Knuckles points out, the word Vegetarian really encompasses alot of stuff, some people who just stop eating red meat will call themselves vegetarian, its also become a trendy fad, something that famous people do, like scientology, and something that Oprah did for 21 days to "cleanse" herself, ugh. Oprah said so much great stuff about being Vegan, she also stopped caffine, sugar and other things, she said how great it made her feel and how easy and tasty the food was. But then she goes and gives it up still. It really makes it seem like a trendy diet you do for a month, and then give up.
This clip was on CNN, its some womans day type story, womens television I guess, ugh, its awful to listen to them! They talk about veganism as being "hard", they dont think about the animals, its about giving up non vegan Chocolate cake. It also makes Veganism to be like a new fad diet, like the aitkens diet, something you do for awhile and then give up once you grow out of it. It does have an interview with Russell Simmons at the end though, and has a huge figure that they claim is the number of vegans in america.
Theres many international groups that promote being Vegetarian, most people today will have heard of PETA, People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA have been mentioned quite a few times on mainstream television like The Simpsons, they put out huge billboard ads, they have had advertising spots during the SuperBowl over in america.
Lots of PETA campaigns are well remembered, they almost all end up causing controversy, many use violent imagery, showing blood and cages, saying that eating meat is like the holocaust,
That really annoyed Jewish organisations in America, even though it was also defended by famous jewish animal rights campaigners, in America mentioning anything negative about Jewish people seems to be instantly bad, you get sued for using the J word.
Other campaigns PETA has run target KFC, Mcdonalds and other huge fast food companies, for using abused animals in their food byproducts. These campaigns often result in the targeted company introducing some token vegetarian option like salads, along with a little pr speech saying "Company X is all for animal rights and we try to have our animals in the largest cages ..." blah blah blah.
PETA have also shown animals being used in experiments, they have hidden cameras on as they visit places where horrific acts occur. Some I've seen are about animals in experiments, such as having their bodies strapped into a machine, and "snapped" upright, to test the effects of pressure on living bodies. Other experiments that are performed on animals include isolation tests, vivisection, and testing chemicals on animals, many large companies put chemicals into rabbits eyes to test how they react badly.
A well known PETA discovery was the case of Britches, a monkey who was kept at the University of California, Riverside. Poor Britches was taken from his mother, his eyelids were sewn shut with really thick string, and a bizarre "sonar device" was strapped on his head. Britches, and another 23 animals were to be kept isolated from other animals for three whole years, apparently to see if these animals could learn to see with the sonar device or something.....Its just sick. Theres plenty of photos of Britches online, eyes all bandaged up, and this crazy device on his head that made a high noise every so often. Britches was found with a warm device with fake nipples, which he cowered around, probably thinking it was his mother. Close to 500 animals were "liberated", stolen, from the labs, and now Britches lives with other monkeys, without any experiments performed on him.
Many famous celebrities campaign for PETA, Pamela Anderson is probably the most well known.
I wasnt sure about what PETA's actual goals were, if they were into whats called animal welfare, where companies that use animals such as slaughterhouses, they are asked politely to use less painful methods of killing animals, or abolition, which is ending all animal use period. Practically all the anti meat pamphlets I've seen from PETA use the word "Vegetarian", not Vegan, I asked if they would clarify PETAs position on animal use, and got this statement.
I thought it was quite a good ready to send response, but I do wish PETA would use the word "Vegan" more often.
Heres a clip from Ingrid Newkirk, a co founder of PETA.
Theres a very good interview podcast with her, if you search for Time 10 Questions on iTunes, you'll find the Ingrid Newkirk interview, where she answers questions Time Readers have sent. I hope you decide to listen to it, its not very long.
However, there has been lots of criticism of PETA, they operate animal shelters where they do kill unwanted animals, its kinda shocking that some of their statistics show they've killed up to 85% of all the animals given to them. There are "no kill shelters" where animals are not put to sleep forever, killed, but PETA says these dont work out and are cruel because they basically keep the wounded and sometimes dangerous animals in cages forever.
PETA workers have been caught before hurting animals.
And one more point, PETA have been criticised by abolitionist groups, who call PETA welfarest, that PETA is willing to work with KFC etc to still sell meat, as long as the animals lives are made a little less horrible first. Abolitionists think that thats selling out, and is harming the Vegan message to leave all animals alone.
An interesting Vegetarian to bring up is Adolf Hitler. I love reading about wars, history in general is awesome, but war is really the best of it, Politics by other means, as the quote goes. Hitler is a famous vegetarian, or he said he was Vegetarian, hes known to have eaten blood sausage and other gross german offal meals at times, and his personal chef is known to have snuck bone marrow and other guts into his meals if she thought he wasnt getting enough "healthy food", like blood and bones.
Hitler personally thought that being Vegetarian was a great thing for the human race, and could help his own stomach problems. At the time of Hitler, being vegetarian was seen as more to do with your own health, to get the health benefits, rather than for ethical reasons like caring about animals.
From that we can see that he also ate eggs, so he was certainly not Vegan, and because he was known to eat meat, was not a very good Vegetarian either.
In other countries being Vegetarian or Vegan is quite acceptable, in India many people are vegetarian, some surveys show as high as 40 percent of India is vegetarian. In India, its very common for vegetarian products to have a green circle in a green square, products that have animal products should show a brown circle in a brown square. I wish all New Zealand food were labelled this way, although there are a handful of things with the Vegetarian Societys label.
Many Athletes are also Vegan, because of the health benefits. A very famous Vegan is Carl Lewis, heres a clip featuring him.
In America, almost 1 out of every 200 children and teenagers are Vegetarian, its more common among young women.
To finish, I'll mention the Brown Dog Affair. Its about experiments performed on a small brown dog in 1903, in London. The dog, a small brown terrier, was used in an experiment, then kept in a cage for two months, where he howled loud enough to upset people. For the second, most well known experiment, he was brought into a lecture theatre, strapped on his back to a board, his legs and head tied to the board, his mouth muzzled to try to silence him. His throat was cut into, apparently to show something to do with saliva, he was electrocuted inside his throat or mouth area to try and make spit, it didnt seem to be working. The main experimenter kept trying to make saliva appear for thirty minutes, I guess he had this dog cut open, still quite conscious, and shocking glands inside the mouth, for thirty minutes. A student came up, cut out the dogs Pancreas, and then killed the dog with a knife. This whole awful affair was taken before court, and became a well known news story at the time. Much protest happened about vivisection,performing experiments on living animals. The National Anti-vivisection Society made a memorial to the Little Brown Dog, the over 2 metre monument was made from stone, with a bronze dog at the top. It had a waterfountain for people to drink from, and a lower trough for dogs and horses to drink from.
An inscription on the memorial said
"In Memory of the Brown Terrier Dog done to Death in the Laboratories of University College in February 1903, after having endured Vivisection extending over more than two months and having been handed from one Vivisector to another till Death came to his Release. Also in Memory of the 232 dogs vivisected at the same place during the year 1902. Men and Women of England, how long shall these things be?"
Medical students were annoyed by the memorial, they didnt see anything wrong with experimenting on living animals. At first the memorial was safe, but in 1907 the area was protested often. Over time, groups of medical students would attack the memorial with weapons, and many people were arrested.
During one protest, street vendors sold hankerchiefs with the date of the protest on them and this small slogan
""Brown dog's inscription is a lie, and the statuette an insult to the London University"
A good passage from the Brown Dog Affair wikipedia page,
"Coral Lansbury writes that the causes of feminism and women's suffrage became closely linked with the anti-vivisection movement. Three of the four vice-presidents of the Battersea General Hospital that refused to allow vivisection were women.[63] Lansbury argues that the Brown Dog affair became a matter of opposing symbols, the iconography of vivisection striking a chord with women. The vivisected dog muzzled and strapped to the operating board blurred into images of suffragettes on hunger strike restrained and force-fed in Brixton Prison; women strapped into the gynaecologist's chair by an all-powerful male medical establishment, forced to have their ovaries and uteruses removed as a cure for "mania," or strapped down for childbirth.[64] Richard Ryder writes that the dog represented the vulnerability of women; the medical students the machismo of science.[2]"
In 1910 the memorial to the Little Brown Dog was taken down. Over 75 years later, a new small memorial was put up elsewhere, near the end of 1985. It repeats the previous inscription, and adds
"This monument replaces the original memorial of the brown dog erected by public subscription in Latchmere Recreation Ground, Battersea in 1906. The sufferings of the brown dog at the hands of the vivisectors generated much protest and mass demonstrations. It represented the revulsion of the people of London to vivisection and animal experimentation. This new monument is dedicated to the continuing struggle to end these practices. After much controversy the former monument was removed in the early hours of 10 March 1910. This was the result of a decision taken by the then Battersea Metropolitan Borough Council, the previous council having supported the erection of the memorial. Animal experimentation is one of the greatest moral issues of our time and should have no place in a civilized society. In 1903, 19,084 animals suffered and died in British laboratories. During 1984, 3,497,355 animals were burned, blinded, irradiated, poisoned and subjected to countless other horrifyingly cruel experiments in Great Britain"
I think most people now would think it was wrong to experiment on animals like what happened to the Little Brown dog, and countless other animals. Some say that there was no evidence the dog even had painkillers. I personally think that we dont need to experiment, to hurt animals, to find out ways to help people. There are now many animal rights groups worldwide, one that I like in New Zealand is SAFE, Save Animals From Experiments, they protest animal abuse of all kinds in New Zealand, and they promote vegetarianism/veganism. I've been to meetings here in Invercargill of SAFE, and I was only the second Vegan, there were a few vegetarians. I'm told in Auckland all the leaders are Vegan though.
I think that many people can agree that hurting animals is wrong, and I hope that they investigate whats done to animals for themselves. Theres a saying, you cant be a meat eating environmentalist. I hope anyone who eats animal products, and who's listened to this episode of my podcast will decide to listen to more Vegan podcats, and google for more information about animal rights.
I hope its been an interesting little toe dip into the world of Vegetarianism, and more importantly Veganism. If you want to listen to more podcasts to do with animal rights, I cannot stress just how great the NZ Vegan Podcast is, you can easily find that by searching on the iTunes Store for " N Z Vegan", Knuckles even translates her show into spanish!
Thank you very much for your time.
If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.
Have a super happy day, bye.
<--End song You Can't Say No To A Soldier plays-->
Written for: Iceland (1942)
Lyric: Mack Gordon
Music: Harry Warren
Year: 1942
Original publisher: Twentieth Century Music Corporation, rights controlled by
Mayfair Music Corp
Listen, little lady, it's the order of the day,
Issued by the highest of authority;
Fellows in the service simply can't be turned away,
You know that defense must get priority.
So, if you're patriotic'lly inclined,
Heed the call to arms, and keep this thought in mind:
Chorus 1:
You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,
If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he's not your type, then it's still o-kay,
You can always kiss him in a sisterly way,
Oh, you can't say, "No,
No, you gotta give in,
If you want him to win for you.
Chorus 2 (from movie)
You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,
If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he says it's cold on those submarines,
You can knit a sweater, but that's not what he means;
Oh, you can't say, "No,"
No, no, no, no, no, no;
No, they're not made of tin,
So, you better give in
If you want him to win for you.
Sources
------------
NZ Vegan Podcast, number one source of course!
Youtube videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1se0ZM6Gy8 what is a vegan video by Vegvideo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOTETXwfIaY Carl Lewis vegan video by headveg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FytZI6EEXvQ moby vegan video by epicuriousdotcom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYX18NGTwls Vegan revolution video by hazelwhisper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JANxeJI07Zo wont date meat eater gay guy gaygod
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxgrrgfmvGk wont date meat eater 2 woman by kimxxxyyy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTYXJZgirGY wont date veg response video by ParodyPlus
