The Trouble With The Vegan Society & Vegans

The Vegan Society has rebranded itself as a charity that likes to say 'Yes'

Vegan Diets - Sustained growth in interest - Vegan trends

Many many years of blood, sweat and tears with volunteers or frugally paid staff at the front end of cutting edge veganism is reaching it's climatic end. Vegan Cheese? you got it! Vegan caviar? you got it!

The Vegan Society has gone from a charity obsessed with what it is against to one that stands up and speaks out about what it is for.

Some would ask what is it for? A membership organisation dedicated to providing information about veganism and how to be vegan when now you can just google the word and have your ipad spew out 39 million pages in less than a second?

But someone or some body has to be guardians and keepers of the word 'vegan' , defend Donald Watson's definition of the word vegan in the face of those who argue that honey is vegan or that breast milk isn't vegan or those who just generally miss the point. Some body has to be caretaker for the history of veganism and curate the volumes of scientific research that support the case for veganism and a vegan diet.

To be brutally honest The Vegan Society is now, on an every day, day to day level, at street level , largely defunct, almost redundant as a support network because the job of making a case for a vegan diet and a vegan lifestyle  is almost done. Veganism has been well and truly unleashed from Pandora's box, the cat's out of the bag, Being Vegan is almost normal. Big supermarkets such as Tescos are now labeling products vegan and trialling vegan shelf talkers, Ocado has a whole vegan section online. Big investers such as Microsoft's Bill Gates and Twitter's Biz Stone are investing in vegan meat free alternatives and vegan cheeses. Scientists and biochemists are genetically engineering yeasts to make true dairy free vegan cheese.  TV moguls such as Oprah Winfrey and Hollywood gentry such as James Cameron speak out for sustainable healthy veganism. Doctors, physicians and health professionals prove that a health vegan diet can cure heart disease and reverse diabetes. Even McDonald's chomping presidents of the USA such as Bill Clinton now follow a vegan diet.

A normal person , on a normal day could read in The Daily Mail that a vegan diet is good for your heart problem or good for diabetics wander into a  supermarket and fill up their trolly with vegan ice cream, vegan pancake mix, vegan cakes, vegan cheese, vegan sausages, vegan chicken, vegan chocolate, vegan mousse and spend half an hour trying to choose which dairy free vegan milk to buy - soya? Henp milk? oat? almond? flax omega 3 milk? coconut? rice milk? tigernut milk? hazelnut ? the list just keeps growing. Then they can go recover and pick up a Soyaccino at Costa Coffee or Pret a Manger. They could even pop into Ikea on the way back and pick up some vegan caviar.

There will inevitably be those animal rights extremists who morn the day their little niche, quirky organisation with it's 5,000 members turned into a mainstream organisation with millions of supporters but lets face it - Wallmart, McDonalds, Unilever, Kraft, Pizza Hut, Kentucky fried chicken, Coca Cola, Pepsico, Doritos, Subway, Krispy Kreme Donuts, Burger King, Nestle - they don't care about the thousands - they think in millions.

Now there are millions of customers of vegan foods they are listening.

Donald Watson would be very pleased indeed that so many people now agree with his logical philosophical thoughts over 70 years ago a great way to mark 70 years of veganism.

Vegan Chef Tony Bishop-Weston can be found on;

Twitter
https://twitter.com/BishopWeston
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/TonyBishopWeston.Author
Linked In
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonybishopweston


See also
http://www.vegfest.co.uk

PLANEAT Movie Health Secrets

PLANEAT:

We were invited to the premiere of PLANEAT last night in London. Another in a long line of movie length documentaries that shines a spotlight on the links between diet and the plague of preventable chronic disease that blights western society.

Planeat talks a about the plight of the planet and the links to diet but mainly about health.

Unlike most of the other films in this family such as supersize me , Foodmatters, a Delicate Balance, The End of The Line, Earthlings , Forks over Knives ,  and Food Inc Planeat the Movie pretty much skips the animal welfare issue and focuses predominantly on health

bonobo.tv

The two main Doctors interviewed at length in the Planeat film are the ones responsible for Mr President Bill Clinton's trial adoption of a vegan / plant based diet to heal his heart following an operation to insert two stints in his diseased arteries.

I congratulate the producers of this film for sticking to their two main points
1) We have a world food crisis
2) We have a world health problem.

Both problems can be tracked back to too much meat.

Both problems can be sorted by buying and eating more plants.

I suspect vegans won't openly adore this film because Dr Colin Campbell's original research was based on rats - but like he said it would have been even more unethical to deliberately give human subjects the same cancer and then switch it on and off with a plant or meat based diet. He was lucky to get an opportunity to study the complete Chinese society with his renowned China study and gather evidence that his theories were correct - animal protein and fat feeds cancer cells - it seems animal products don't give you cancer they are just one of the most effective natural tumour fertilizers that nutritional science has so far come up with.

Vegetarians viewers will probably be squirming as 'the cheese issue' raises it's ugly, carbon negative, saturated fat filled head again. At one point it's claimed that an egg and chicken based diet is better for the environment than a cheese based diet having already highlighted that dairy is implicated in a deterioration of heart health and increased risk of cancers.

Vegans will also no doubt whinge that the film doesn't openly advocate a vegan diet. It's not enough to simply avoid meat and dairy you must eat a greater variety plants too. One of the Planeat's team's new best friends is a data cruncher who works at WWF. He has a big chip on his shoulder and says veganism is NOT the answer.

He alleges that even the 'V' on restaurant menus puts people off and that a million people following Meat Free Monday has way more impact than a handful of reactionary hardcore vegans getting up people's noses. He seemed however sadly devoid of any practical solutions on the way forward other than emailing WWF members about the film.

The WWF's belief that people don't care about animal welfare flies in the face of the way consumers and supermarkets got behind campaigners such as Jamie Oliver's efforts to banish battery eggs from supermarket shelves. Research show's 70-80% of consumers care about animal welfare they just have other priorities such as taste, value for money and convenient availability that in practice rank even higher than family health.

Until vegan food matches consumer expectations in taste, value for money and convenience, no amount of leaflets, documentaries, demonstrations, arguments and celebrity endorsement is going to convince them to go vegan.

Messages of "eat less meat" and "meat free mondays" are logically the most likely ways to encourage people on the road to self discovery - just waking up one morning as a vegan is simply too scary for readers of the Daily Mail and The Sun - it's hard enough of a concept to grasp for the Guardian and Independent's contemplative and pondering intelligentsia. They require gentle steps. The Vegan Society has been around for 66 years, Vegetarianism is thousands of years old yet The Vegetarian Society has less members than ever (although that could be because it's now so easy to be vegetarian with thousands of labeled products and v stamped menus to choose from)

Paul McCartney and Meat Free Monday is probably right on the button - one step at a time in bite sized chunks despite the urgency of the ticking clock and big guns like President Bill 'every day is meat free Monday' Clinton proving us right all along.

Leading UK Nutritionist in London Yvonne Bishop-Weston said today "There's no doubt that we need more vegetables and fruit in our diet to protect us from self inflicted diseases."

"If you know anyone suffering from any of the major chronic diseases that plague our modern western society we urge you to take them to see Planeat the movie!"


Visit www.planeat.tv or www.planeat.me to sign up for latest screenings

Bill Clinton vegan for heart health + Weight

Bill Clinton goes vegan to reverse heart disease (VIDEO)

Bill Clinton reveals he's trialling a vegan diet for health reasons to protect his heart and lose weight in an effort to enjoy seeing his grandchildren grow up.

He quotes success rates of over 80% for trials he's seen that started in 1986 on plant based diets used to reverse heart problems