Do you sometimes feel you are watching a different movie than other people are?
While you are both sitting in the same room.

I don’t know whether it is a screen problem or a communication one, so today I want to show you how I got here.

In 2013 I was living in Auckland, New Zealand. Back then I was vegetarian and I used to live in this beautiful flat right behind K Road (iykyk).

My flatmate back then was an architecture’s student and a delightful conspiracy theorist. She was urging me to read some fliers on the effects of fluoride on the brain (and it just took 11 years to be recognised as a neurotoxin that, among all the effects, it impairs cognitive development in growing children) and she kept telling me to watch a documentary on how animals get on our table, which I eventually did.

I remember physically cringing on the couch while watching the documentary, which essentially was a set of videos collected from activists sneaking into big (and sometimes notorious) slaughterhouses.

It’s a tough and visual watch, but if you have the stomach, this is it: Farm to Fridge

‘Not my meat’ you might think. Well, maybe.

But a) activists don’t have an easy life exposing these things because they get backlashed by court orders when trespassing and for damaging the company’s sales (it always happens) and b) the only reason animals (specifically cows) are treated decently today is because of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman that could feel animals’ feelings (and she was mocked for it at first) and used her ability to revolutionise the livestock industry by making the whole process more ethical, and less costly.

But this is not the section for being morally schooled (we already went through that during Covid) but an analysis of the main misconceptions around veganism (or better, eating a plant based diet, which DOES NOT mean processed food).

To be the least biased possible I always try to be open minded and look into the things I feel the most drawn and aligned to AND to the opposite side too (like listening to a podcast on the carnivore diet and following Carnivore Aurelius and Paul Saladino, and still, not being sold) because let’s be honest, it’s easy to believe into something and turn it into cognitive dissonance.

The following will serve anyone that:

• is thinking of upgrading (or downgrading) to a plant based diet

• is often questioned on their dietary choices by a random improvised nutritionist

• is a strict carnivore foaming from the mouth and hearing a ring in their ears each time someone in their proximity starts spelling veg—

  
  

A PLANT BASED DIET MAKES YOU SICK

I know some of my friends have experienced negative effects on a vegan diet (due to lectins) and I have a personal story in my family: my cousin turned vegan for few years back in the year 2000, that back in the days left the family in a shock similar to what Marilyn Manson relatives might have felt when he showed them his stage makeup.

One day though she was stung by a mosquito (I’m quoting a real story here) and her face got covered in red pimples all in a sudden. My whole family saw that ‘I told you so’ opportunity and capitalised on it faster than a single mum in a Mall during Black Friday. And my cousin believed them. Core memory acquired.

Now, I am not saying it was not the vegan diet that dropped her immune system defense, but today we have access to a wider spectrum of information:

• You are a human being living in an environment (which can be polluted through the air, water, food) and like a mushroom, you absorb from it.

• The average woman is exposed to 168 unique chemicals, daily.

• 27% of the teens aged 12/19yo used a prescription drug in the last 30 days

• 80% of women use contraceptive pills (starting at age 13-15) which according to some of the doctors that are not afraid of speak their mind and female friends that never took it, is one of the biggest scam of out time, meant to have women as efficient as men (instead of resting when their body requires to) and the main reason why, when menopause hits, women that have been for long time on the pill experience hot flushes (backed by wikipedia as a normal thing to happen, which is not).

• Non organic Vegetables are exposed to any kind of chemical (from pesticides to glyphosate) that stays in the body.
  Industrial cows are raised with corn which, if you are a cow, you cannot ruminate so it starts decomposing in the stomach and you need rounds of antibiotics to not die. Plus steaks have to look appealing, so carbon monoxide is used to make them of that tantalising red.

  Same with chickens (arsenic is administered to avoid bacteria spread) and down to pork and fish. Unless you buy certified organic grass fed pasture raised from a trusted farmer. Not everyone can raise their cows on macadamia trees like Zuckerberg, I get it.
  
  You might not be able to change the world, but you can make changes to Your world at least. Maybe what you associate with one thing is the result of many factors in plain sight.

  
  Regardless of your dietary choices, everyone, either omnivore or plant based, can learn how the environment and food interact with their unique body and invest in those.
  
  Talk soon,
  
  Prometheus