On fake meat and hexane

If you read Food Babies, you probably also read other food-related things, or the news. And boy oh boy has the whole "veggie burgers are filled with toxic chemicals" story been all over the news in the last couple of days. It's great ammo for meat eaters to tell vegetarians to get off their health-conscious high horses. But I don't think everyone should be so quick to panic, and I especially don't think it should be reason to call it quits with soy all together. Yes, fake meat isn't the best for you food in the world (it is after all still a processed food with lots of preservatives, and processed foods are a little removed from being real food even when they aren’t pretending to be a “beef” burger or a “pork” hot dog.

First, the soy that’s in these veggie burgers is isolated soy, which processed in a different way than the soy that’s in soy milk or tofu which is whole soy. Whole soy, btw can actually be very good for you. Also, it’s unclear if hexane cooks off, or if the amounts in the products are large enough to be harmful or not.

I think there needs to be a whole mess of change and regulations in how our food (of the meat and non-meat variety) is produced. But I don’t know that raising the flag of panic around fake meat is necessarily a good way to go. For a lot of people just starting out with vegetarianism, or life-long meat eaters who need to cut their cholesterol after a heart attack or other life-threatening illness (like many in my family), fake meat can be an easy and tasty alternative. Not that we should tolerate anything hazardous in our food, but I’ll still take trace amounts of hexane over life-threatening amounts of e coli any day.

Mother Jones on the topic

Gothamist on the topic

(cross posted on Food Babies)

Hypocrisy Now!

I became a vegetarian over 16 years ago, and it remains a decision I’m proud of and that I’ll stand by for the rest of my life. And while in recent years I’ve become more concerned with human rights, I will always think that animal rights are an important issue; far to often over looked.

However I think I officially hate PETA. I don’t want to, but they really make it difficult for anyone at all to take them seriously. Their ridiculous “Sea Kitten” campaign is just the tip of the wasted money and effort-iceberg that gives vegetarians and animal right supports a bad name. Last week was doubly embarrassing: first the most ridiculous non-story (the president kills a fly) becomes the most pointless offense PETA has ever railed behind.

Then the announcement that Che Guevara's granddaughter Lydia has decided to start a "vegetarian revolution" by posing for PETA with "the torso naked, covered only by a sling loaded with carrots as bullets."



Because nothing says a respect for the life of all creatures like a half naked lady co-opting the image of a man who led a very bloody revolution. (A man who said: “I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.” And “In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm”)

It all just so woefully misses the point, especially when you add on the reports that since 1998 PETA has killed more than 17,000 animals, nearly 85 percent of all those it has rescued.

I’d like to see an animal rights organization that can maintain a profile as high as PETA and put their resources to good use: finding homes for stray animals, aiding with controlling the pet population in humane ways, improving the conditions and treatment of animals used for food (as well as the industry’s impact on the environment) and encouraging people to choose vegetarianism in a more realistic way.

Just saying.

PS. Best thing I’ve read about the whole trend of hipsters (and their babies!!) wearing shit with Che’s face on it without knowing what they are saying:

“If you believe in the freedom of the press, the right to belong to a political party of your choice, the due process of law, and/or private property, then Che Guevara was a monster, plain and simple. These T-shirts send a message, which effectively boils down to this: I have vague left-wing sympathies but don't read history. I am educated enough to want nonconformity but not intelligent enough to avoid conformity. I believe in supporting the wretched of the earth but happily purchase products from multinational corporations.”

And dressing a child who can't even go to the bathroom on his or her own to align with your vague uninformed political leanings is even more offensive forcing them to wear your favorite band's shirt.

What's Wrong this Week

There’s a lot wrong with the world. A LOT. Here are just two things this week that are particularly f-ed up:

America’s Next Top Model
Okay, so it’s been common knowledge for a while now that Trya Banks is bat shit crazy. Which is probably a large part of ANTM’s success (that and equally bat shit crazy half naked anorexic 20-year-olds). And I am a religious guilty pleasure watcher of the show. But lately I have started to feel like I must be watching the show for masochistic reasons because every episode just leaves me slightly confused/annoyed. Like this week, where they wore necklaces and underwear made out of meat and then posed next to buckets of innards and 100s of pounds beef. Because…models sometimes have to do gross stuff?? Aside from the fact that the factory farmed meat industrial complex is totally whack, wasting 100s of pounds of perfectly good food on meat panties is a more than a little pointless. I mean there are starving people that could have used those panties…

Crazy-ass women blaming Elliot Spitzer’s wife for him spending $80,000 on a hooker.

So first I was annoyed by Silda for doing the Hilary Clinton move of standing by her slezzeball husband. But why do people have to give these backwards crazy women like Laura Schlessinger and Cindy Adams a mouthpiece to set back women’s progress a couple hundred years. (Their respective views: A) He wouldn’t have done it if she would have treated him better and B) Sleeping with a hooker is really doing her a favor, it’s like getting takeout so you don’t have to cook dinner..) You have to be fucking kidding me.