Vegetarianism

My mother is now vegan!!!! I'm not alone no more hehe.

World Vegan Day Health Appeal to Pasta Pizza Hut Restaurants by Nutritionists

As Pizza Hut changes it’s name to Pasta Hut, Nutritionists have re-launched a World Vegan Day campaign to encourage pizza restaurants to make a healthier, vegan pizza. Big incentives are offered to the 1st high street Pizza chain to step forward.

“It’s not more nutrient depleted carbohydrates we need its more fruit and vegetables!” says Yvonne Bishop-Weston London Nutritionist from Foods for Life in response to Pizza Hut's Pasta plans.

“A recent study showed only 12% of the UK reach the UK Govt. minimum target of five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. We need to replace more of the saturated animal fat in our diets with plant based foods rich in essential fats. It’s especially important we find creative ways of getting our children to eat more fruit and vegetables. A healthy pizza is a super idea.”

Nutritionists have called for a delicious and nutritious, healthier vegan version of the popular pepperoni pizza in every town throughout the UK. They suggested it should ideally be totally free of saturated animal fat, have a whole grain and herb base, with a rich tomato and vegetable sauce, perhaps meat-free plant protein pepperoni and a good dairy-free bubbly vegan cheese topping.

An online World Vegan Day poll revealed that around a third of respondents believed that better choices on menus would be the primary incentive for more of their friends to adopt a vegan lifestyle.

Although vegetarians and vegans choose a veggie lifestyle for ethical reasons most of the nearly, almost, demi-vegetarians and flexitarians do so predominantly or only for health reasons.

The nutritionist reveals “The average Pizza is one of the unhealthiest fast foods you can eat. High in nutrient stripped simple carbohydrates, drenched in animal fat, often high in salt and sugar and low in protein. At around 730 calories a typical pepperoni pizza has nearly as much fat, even more carbohydrates and less protein than a McDonalds double Quarter pounder with cheese. A 6 slice medium pan Pizza Hut Pepperoni Pizza has 2112 Kcals, 117g of fat, 164g of carbohydrates, 10g of salt and 101g of protein.”

Research shows over 40% of UK consumers are eating less meat, are choosing vegetarian options more often and have a preference for healthier, more environmentally friendly, more ethically sound products.

Tony Bishop-Weston a Vegan chef and author from Pea PR “A quantitive survey in May 2008 of 3,200 respondents accessed that vegetarian and vegan market has the potential to grow to nearly six times its current size, which would bring the total number of such consumers to almost 18 million adults in the USA. The market in the UK could potentially be as high as 30 million.”

The United Nations environmental report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” (recently lauded by Sir Paul McCartney) and reports from the World Health Organisation on preventable chronic diseases have left many readers in no doubt that balanced vegan diets are undeniably better for the planet and better for people and their health.

There are big incentives offered for the first high street Pizza restaurant chain to launch a healthy Vegan Pizza.

1. Foods for Life have created a World Vegan Day 64 ingredient healthy pizzaz pizza recipe – one ingredient for every year of veganism since it’s creation in November 1944

2. TV Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston has offered her services to promote the UK’s first nationally available truly healthy Pizza

3. PEA PR have offered free marketing support and consultancy for a healthy Pizza launch

4. Vegetarian Guides have offered to provide free entries in their European, UK and London Vegetarian Guides for a restaurant serving a healthy vegan pizza

5. www.worldveganday.org.uk have offered free banner advertising on their website for a healthy vegan pizza.

Editors notes:

Contact Foods for Life via www.optimumnutritionists.com for more information or comment.

Admin wrote:My mother is now vegan!!!! I'm not alone no more hehe.

woohoo!!!!

It's fun!! hehe. I feel like veganism has brought us even closer... even though we're already close LOL She's my best friend... *shy* hehe.

awwwwww....too cute!!! *tear*

That's awesome though. Nothin' like feeling more close to momma.

How's your friendship with your mum?

Usually very good. We're super close. But currently everyone's on my damn nerves. It's not anybody's fault though. I just need to have some fun right now. Might have something to do with having trouble sleeping lately, also. But yeah, I need to go shopping or something. Go see a movie. Something! I'm sick of studying. BLAH!

How's your sleeping patterns now, darl?





The Cruel Fate Of Cows

Research conducted by Professor Christine Nicol at Bristol Uni in the UK showed that cows have a strong, complex, emotional life, feeling pain, fear & anxiety & also worrying about the future just as we do.

The study also found similar results for other animal co-inhabitants, including chickens & goats. Professor John Webster also of Bristol Uni, has documented how cows form friendships with one another.

In modern times, to obtain optimal efficiency, the cow has been turned into a piece of machinery, whose sole purpose in life is to produce milk.

To produce milk, a female cow must be made pregnant so as to lactate to feed her offspring. Thus at the tender age of 15 months, female dairy cows are forced into pregnancy through artificial insemination. This process is extremely painful for the animals, as inexperienced farm workers often place the animals in a rack & use a metal rod to forcefully inseminate them. An even more painful method of inducing pregnancy that has become increasingly popular is embryo implantation, in which embryo implantation, in which embryos are grown in 1 cow & physically implanted in another.

A cow's gestation period is 9 months, the same as that of humans.

After a calf is born, if it's female, she's raised as a dairy cow; if it's male, he may be slaughtered on site with a sledgehammer & then its blood is drained or it's taken away to be turned into veal.

The separation of mother & calf is extremely distressing to both. Cries are often heard as mother & child call after each other. The lactating mother cow is then chained by its neck & kept in a confined shed that allows it virtually no movement. There's no grazing on green grass, but instead the natural herbivores are fed high-protein pellet mixtures containing material from other dead animals including cows. So not only are dairy cows turned into carnivores but cannibals as well. This roughage-free & pathogen-free diet often causes cows to become malnourished & can cause brain-rotting diseases such as mad cow disease or BSE.

Young dairy cows then have vacuum machines attached to their tears or udders, & their milk is painfully sucked out. Dairy cows are milked 365 days a year & in order to get Holstein dairy cows to lactate year round, they are continually kept pregnant, meaning that 2 to 3 months after giving birth, they are painfully impregnated again & this process continues for the rest of their short lives.

To boost production further, the cows are also injected with bovine growth hormone, which could cause birthday defects & even various cancers in humans.

Current methods mean that Holsteins produce 10 times as much milk as they would normally, or approx. 100 pounds per day. This inappropriately high level of milk production & the methods of obtaining it leave the animals extremely sick & prone to both bacterial & viral infections. Other conditions that the cows often suffer from are milk fever caused by lack of calcium, which also leads to osteoporosis, meaning that the cows often suffer from broken bones just from walking or slipping. The most common affliction affecting 50% of all dairy herds is chronic mastitis, a painful, sore infection of the udder. However, the cows are still milked, causing blood & pus from their infections to end up in the milk consumed by humans.

Up to 750 million pus cells per liter have been measured in milk products. To try to reduce this condition, the cows are pumped full of antibiotics. Also, the udders of dairy cows get so disproportionately large that their hind legs are permanently spread, causing lameness.

The animals are continuously prodded with electrical rods in order to get them to move back to urinate & excrete in gutters. Thus dairy cows' living conditions are extremely unhygienic & cause foot rot & other diseases.

The natural life span of a dairy cow is 25 years under normal conditions, but under current factory-farming methods, this span is reduced to 3 or 5 years. So what happens when a dairy cow is no longer useful? The answer is, it's turned into ground beef for burgers & other such reconstituted meat products.

After dairy cows have given their all for us, humans continue to take from them. The non-productive cows are separated from the herd using electric prods to be loaded onto trucks. This experience is very frightening for the animals, which many being so weak that they don't survive the ride to the slaughterhouse & others end up with broken legs or spines. Cows that cannot walk off the truck are dragged out using chains & just simply left to die, distressed & writhing in agonizing pain. The rest of the herd is forced in single file onto 60 - meter ramps.

Inside the slaughterhouse, a cow enters a stunning box where her head is restrained & then a metal bolt is fired from a gun into her skull. This method of stunning is often ineffective & may have to be repeated 2 or 3 times. The cow is then hoisted upside down onto a moving belt & then bled to death by the slitting of the carotid arteries in the neck. Often cows that are electronically stunned regain consciousness & are fully aware as they bleed to death. While they are suspended, their blood often fills their nasal & throat cavities, causing them to choke.

Some cows that are slaughtered are still pregnant & due to their distress give birth prematurely. The fetal calves are then pulled to the side & slaughtered separately, with their skin sold as suede, which fetches a premium price for it's softness. The fetal calf blood is also extracted & used by the pharmaceutical & related industries to create cell cultures for experimentation.

What most consumers don't realize is that one of the by-products of the dairy industry, veal, is probably one of the cruelest meats available. After a dairy cow gives birth, the calf or baby cow, is immediately removed from the mother although some producers wait a day before tearing offspring away. The calf may then be raised for either beef of veal. If it's to become the latter, it's kept in a veal crate, an extremely restrictive box measuring 2 feet across, where the calf cannot stand, move or turn around. To further restrict movement, the necks of these young creatures are restrained with chains. These methods prevent muscle growth so that the meat is tender. The calves are also fed on a milk substitute lacking in iron & fiber, so as to induce anemia, meaning that the flesh will be whiter & thus more desirable when sold to restaurants. Typically, a calf sold as "white" veal will be slaughtered at the young age of 4 to 6 months. Some calves are killed after only a few hours or days & this is known as "Bob" veal.

Operations conducted on young calves include castration of males, disbudding or removal of the horns & tail docking, a process by which the tail is cut off so that they don't get chewed.

The treatment of cows for beef production typically covers many of the methods that are used on dairy cows & calves. The cattle are branded repeatedly with a searing hot iron which inflicts 3rd degree burns. Not only this, but males are also castrated & de-horned, usually by untrained individuals under unhygienic conditions without painkillers to keep the costs down.

The cows live crammed together in feedlots, walking around in their own waste. They are fed on a mixture of corn & fillers, which include discarded animal parts, excrement & even saw dust. This diet often leads to sickness but again they are pumped full of medicines & antibiotics to keep them alive until they are big & meaty enough to be sent to the slaughterhouse to suffer the same fate as dairy cows.

No one part of the cow is discarded: the lips, tongue, fat, tail, organs, esophagus & other parts are used for humans food. The tonsils & trachea are used in pet food. The fat & bones are used to make gelatins & glues while the tendons, adrenals, uterus blood, gall bladder & lungs are used by the pharmaceutical industry. The placenta is used in cosmetics while the skin is cleaned, treated & turned into leather for clothes & bags.



There is a way to stop this needless cruelty & allow these beautiful sensitive co-inhabitants to live happy, fulfilling lives. The solution is to choose a compassionate, plant-based diet. Each year, more people around the world are being vegetarian or vegan. For example, in the UK alone, more than 7% of the population is vegetarian & thousands more switch to the alternative diet each week.

Please help to protect all life by eating a vegetarian diet that is not only beneficial for the animals & your health, but also good for our shared planet.

wow wow wow

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my sleeping pattern's gone to shit again. But I'll fix it......for the fifty millionth time.

Word!!

I celebrated my 1st year anniversary of going vegan 5 days ago... I'm celebrating it next Tuesday! Gonna go to an all you can restaurant! haha!

Congratulation Lisa!
Are you a fan of the Morning Star products?

Thanks, Olivia! <3

I've never tried the Morning Star products... I don't think they're imported to Australia (they're American?).

I use Nuttelex (vegan margarine).

Oh ok, yeah it's american. I think you'd love it... this is the website for it: http://www.morningstarfarms.com/

Thanks for the link, girl!! Sounds really popular!