by Jason on January 5, 2007
Kirk notes that a UK television regulator has classified cheese as a junk food. As such, nobody’s allowed to advertise cheese on children’s shows or on programs that attract a large percentage of children. I don’t have cable, or even live in the UK, but this news makes me want to string a cable across the ocean. Once again, because it’s still not sinking in for me: in the UK, cheese is considered a junk food. Dairy farmers are complaining that the 100g serving used for the ruling is too large, and if it was 40g they’d have passed no problem. While I haven’t seen the methodology, I suspect the farmers picked 40g because it happens to pass. In Canada, 50g is considered one serving, and nobody has a clue what that means, so a “normal use” portion would probably be around double that, or, surprise, 100g. Hey, did I mention that in the UK, cheese is considered a junk food? Link.
by Jason on August 16, 2006
Dave Noisy reports that overweight people now outnumber hungry people, and not just in across the street from you – we’ve apparently hit a global milestone, with 800 million malnourished people facing off against a billion overweight folks. Hmmm, a billion overserved… Sounds familiar… As per usual, researchers are citing cheap food and poor fitness habits, but nobody’s come up with any real out of the box ideas for dealing with the problem yet, like, say, potato chips armed with lasers, or pants with built in treadmills. I need to start an institute to address this shortage of creativity. Link.
by Jason on August 14, 2006
kunsjoi sent in word of a vegan bodybuilding conference that just wrapped up in Portland. Yep, Portland again. Will Vancouver beat me up if I call Portland the Toronto of the USA? In the spirit of this post, maybe we can have a posedown to settle things. Anyway, while the particular event covered in the article (a workout session) only attracted six people, the organizer claims that some events drew over two dozen, and to be fair, this was a week-long event, which is a bit more of a commitment than a weekend. Do we have any vegan bodybuilders on VP? I always find it interesting that omnivores who fantasize about “getting ripped” think that going vegan takes too much discipline, while I imagine that serious bodybuilding is a much bigger commitment. Link.
by Jason on July 27, 2006
Screw the health benefits of a vegan diet. It’s time to get dangerous: Dagda Samildanc sends word of vegan organic kosher fair trade cotton candy. Better still, these guys seem to be in Toronto. I demand my factory tour! Link.
I should probably apologize in advance, but I’m just the messenger – blame sparkalina for the discovery of this step by step guide to making vegan Twinkies. Yes, making them. That’s right, now you can binge without the shame of bringing 5 cases of the things to the counter. Sure, the grocery clerk might wonder why your diet consists of nothing but shortening, flour, and sugar, but you’ll probably blend in nicely with the rest of the degenerates in the checkout lane. Link.
by Jason on April 6, 2006
One of the common rebuttals to Atkins-style diets that I hear is that we don’t have any long-term studies to prove that a high-protein, low-carb diet is a very bad idea. Well, mleavitt just sent one in: researchers have just taken a look at children born to women who were told to eat lots of red meat and few carbohydrates during pregnancy, and they found that they had higher levels of stress hormones when asked to do stressful tasks like public speaking. The kicker: this was 30 years later. On the bright side, this can only mean that the next generation of Atkins (tagline: it was good enough for my parents) will be worse on the debate floor versus the cool-as-cucumber vegan hordes that we’re unleashing (no mom, we’re not pregnant, it’s just a general plan). Link.
by Jason on April 3, 2006
There’s a post on Zaadz that’s making the rounds lately: How to have a 36 hour day. It’s a bunch of optimization tips that will help you save time and get more done, and check this out: one of the tips claims that you can effectively get an extra 1.5 hours out of each day by optimizing your diet. By eating foods that give you energy but don’t take a lot of effort to digest (hint: we’re talking about plant based foods that don’t rhyme with “regan ronuts”), the tip claims that you’ll need less sleep and have more energy that you can use to get things done. About a week or so ago I started tweaking my diet and paying attention to how I felt after each meal, and I still have a long way to go, but I’m looking forward to my extra hour and half each day for porn. Er, Vegan Porn, anyway. It’s been 5 years and that still doesn’t sound right… Link
by Jason on February 8, 2006
Baggy sends word of the latest contender for the world record in fingertip pushups – he claims to have done 114 of them in 60 seconds. The Guinness people are verifying the claim, but here’s a bit of trivia that nobody’s questioning – during training for the feat, Bibhuti Bhushan Nayak followed a vegetarian diet. This guy also has the record for most concrete slabs broken on his groin (“on”, not “with”), and man, how cool would it be if a vegetarian diet contributed to that? That’s not a rhetorical question – I actually have no idea what it would mean for veg*nism if the diet could be linked to concrete-shattering groin power. Whatever happened, the world would never be the same, for some of us, anyway. Link.
by Jason on January 6, 2006
kunsjoi reports that schools in Cardiff are facing a price hike on the food menu, and supposedly “special meals” are to blame. According to the administration, it costs 19p more to prepare a meal for someone who can’t/won’t eat the regular fare – we’re talking about options including nut-free, gluten-free, and yes, vegan meals. This isn’t the fault of the customers, it’s clearly a management problem – by choosing to treat meals that can be easily accommodated by all as an exception as opposed to the norm, the school board has really brought this problem on itself. Special meal requests are on the rise (up 500% in the past 5 years), and while I’d like to think that the rise of veganism is responsible, I imagine that allergies play a larger role – it’s just a shame that the school board doesn’t recognize that vegan meals for everyone can be an important part of the solution. The VRG has done a lot of work on vegetarian cooking in quantity, now if we could just get administrations to read about it… Link.
by Jason on September 14, 2005
Dave Noisy sends word that changes in diet can lead to hair loss, particularly when it’s a “lose weight fast” kind of diet. While Atkins is featured prominently in the article, vegetarians also get knocked. The key difference here: people who are desperately trying to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks are less likely to notice the initial signs of vitamin and mineral deficiencies than someone attempting to adopt a healthful plant-based diet, or if they do notice, I’d imagine they’d be less likely to act on it right away, as long as the scale keeps saying nice things to them, and by then, it’s probably too late, and their hair may take years to recover.
