witty vegan cartoons

December 29, 2006 at 2:57 am | Posted in Health & Healing, humor, Vegan, why vegan? | 11 Comments

ever found yourself unexpectedly having to defend the “freedom to choose your own diet”? found a witty cartoon of animals (probably from animal farm) promoting a vegan diet to save their own hides…enjoy!

update: i’ve put links to the meatrix 1, 2 & 2 1/2. update 2: there is an interesting discussion happening in this post’s comments. i’m including a few links to articles that discuss opposing sides of the meat-eating and human evolution theory. read & come comment. books/articles: meat-eating & human evolution, meat-eating and human evolution(critique), evolving to mush: how meat changed our bodies, hunter-gatherer diets -a different perspective, human adaptations to meat eating: a reappraisal, what is meat?, meat eating is an old human habit, food and human evolution.

update 3: for those of you interested in learning more about”shady” business tactics and social implications of the meat & diary industrial complex check out the critically acclaimed books: fast food nation and hungry for profit and don’t forget the must have dvd super size me.

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Good stuff. Some reading material to follow should you be so inclined:

http://www.celsias.com/blog/2006/12/11/the-cow-public-enemy-number-one/

http://www.celsias.com/blog/2006/11/22/save-the-world-with-your-fork/

Comment by Craig— December 29, 2006 #

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I’ve heard a lot about how primates evolved to smart primates by increasing protein in their diet. Would we have evolved to homo sapiens if we had not at some point given up fruit picking for hunting?

The argument that meat eating is a social habit doesn’t jibe with evidence of eating meat for survival. Not too many cave drawings of rutabagas and parsley.

Comment by Timothy— January 3, 2007 #

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hey tim, thanks for dropping by.
your point about rutabaga cave drawings is funny. maybe not cave, but there has to be some ancient art that depicts local veggies. i, too, have heard of the meat and human evolution theory. i’m not exactly sure how accurate it is but i do know that in certain areas where climate and other ecological changes lessened nutrient-rich vegetable/fruit availability inhabitants added animals into their diet and thus developed tools and other means to trap & kill animals for food. would our ancestors have “evolved” if they had not changed there diet? hmm…not sure, but i seriously doubt that all climates “forced” inhabitants to incorporate animals into their diet. (i’m updating the post with some articles because i think you raise a critical question.)

from what i understand, the main idea behind that theory is that eating animals was a “quicker” way of getting more vital nutrients and it also complimented a (low nutrient, but) calorie-rich root/plant diet which fueled “brain expansion”. i will have to agree with you on the incongruity of modern social habits & prehistoric survival needs. at one point in time, for certain populations, eating animals was clearly a means of survival –as much as those geico commercials like to show intelligent neantherthals, there wasn’t much biochemical research happening then to show alternatives. today, eating animals is unnecesary, making the habit a social choice. in addition, the amount of “meat” eaten at that time in human history was probably much lower –there’s no record of high cholestrol or heart disease for the homo erectus. i wonder what other people could add to this discussion.

Comment by blactivegan— January 5, 2007 #

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this is an abstract from the human adaptations to meat eating: a reappraisal originally in human evolution journal volume 17, numbers 3-4, july 2002:

“In this paper we discuss the hypothesis, proposed by some authors, that man is a habitual meat-eater. Gut measurements of primate species do not support the contention that human digestive tract is specialized for meat-eating, especially when taking into account allometric factors and their variations between folivores, frugivores and meat-eaters. The dietary status of the human species is that of an unspecialised frugivore, having a flexible diet that includes seeds and meat (omnivorous diet). Throughout the various time periods, our human ancestors could have mostly consumed either vegetable, or large amounts of animal matter (with fat and/or carbohydrates as a supplement), depending on the availability and nutrient content of food resources. Some formerly adaptive traits (e.g. the “thrifty genotype”) could have resulted from selective pressure during transitory variations of feeding behaviour linked to environmental constraints existing in the past.”

Comment by blactivegan— January 5, 2007 #

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a quick (probably the quickest ever) interview between science today and katherine milton. milton is known for her research in physical anthropology, particularly her work in the meat-eating and human evolution theory.

Meat-Eating May Have Been Essential For Human Evolution
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new study suggests meat-eating was essential for human evolution. Katherine Milton, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, says by routinely adding meat to their plant-based diets, proto humans roaming the African savanna about 2 million years ago were bolstered by high quality nutrition.

Milton: So I sort of see meat as satisfying many nutritional demands and then letting early humans use their plant foods primarily as an energy source.

Narrator: This would be an ideal diet for fueling brain development and may have led to selective advantages.

Milton: Perhaps they were healthier, they had higher reproductive output than all the other members of their species who were not getting this little increment of meat every day. And little by little, this behavior of eating meat began to spread through the population until finally, it became a habitual behavior of that particular organism and translated ultimately, into being human.

Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

Comment by blactivegan— January 5, 2007 #

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hey maurice interesting cartoon on meat eating funny, informative with facts that will raise other questions and comments. the part about digestion, intestines and body waste was good. and i do agree that years ago the raising of animals in respect to feeding and caring for them was extremely different. they were feed natural food stuffs; no antibiotics no food enhancers and no chemicals. when you ate chicken. etc. it did not give you heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes etc . keep it up! i am having fun reading including comments from others. NO MORE GREASY GREENS ! MOMMY

Comment by mommy— January 11, 2007 #

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The stance of the animal-murder apologists wearing a scientific mask is a bit grotesque:

Imagine a scientist arguing that because we’ve evolved to communicate through cell-phones, it’s perfectly ok to make obscene phone calls to random victims.

And another error in Darwinistic reductionism: Just because we _can_ do something or able to do something, is it actually _OK_ to do that in modern society? For example, males primary interest is to spread their genes to as many females as possible. The most _efficient_ method to achieve this would be rape, and in war situations where men are feeling uninhibited by social restrictions, that’s what they actually are doing. Men have evolved to be _able_ to do that. But does that mean it’s OK for them to do it?

So the pseudo-scientific debate on the evolution of murder and ingestion of animal persons has a strongly perverse foundation, since no other perverse behavior gets justified by the use of pseudo-science, one can wonder whether what we’re seeing here, is really just a propaganda campaign to address the rising popularity of veganism. The primitive using the tools of distortion available to them…

Comment by Ava Odoemena— April 23, 2008 #

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What I can add to this discussion, is that I refuse to discuss any theories with nonvegans, in which the consumption of animal persons is placed into a positive context.

The reasons for doing so should be perfectly clear to anybody. It’s not the historical interest or scientific curiosity, but merely a vested attempt to justify the continuation of the industrial murder and exploitation of animal persons.

The rhetorical approach of using past human behavior is as brute and primitive as the act it seeks do defend, imagine someone stepping forward claiming that past Homo Sapiens benefited from genocide.

See, that is the benefit of the ethical stance of veganism, which outweighs all other motivations to become vegan (or vegan dieters, who have nothing much in common with vegans). All attempts to diminish or undermine the vegan stance can be crushed by our ethics. It’s a very powerful tool, it’s so unfortunate that so few vegans are aware of it, but that is a different subject alltogether.

Comment by Ava Odoemena— April 23, 2008 #

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The debate around “meat” eating and human evolution is just another of many rationalizations and justification attempts to continue doing so today.

Humans are omnivores, *vegans* are omnivores. BECAUSE we are omnivores being vegan is so easy. Just because we CAN eat everything does not mean we MUST eat everything.

Our hands are complex systems which evolved to manipulate our environment. We can either build a house or strangle a child to death with it… It does not make killing a child acceptable.

Comment by Ava Odoemena— December 10, 2009 #

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Wow, I’ve written comments here before in 2008, it’s like I’m spamming the subject, lol.

Comment by Ava Odoemena— December 11, 2009 #

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Truly no matter if someone doesn’t understand afterward its up to other visitors that they will help, so here it takes place.

Comment by one heart— June 1, 2013 #

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