The Great Subway-Halal-Fiasco of 2014

Since the sandwich chain announced last month that a select number of it's stores would be offering halal meat only, the entire online world has lost it's shit.
Here's the thing.
Meat, the flesh of a dead animal that you are willing to consume, is exactly that; the flesh of a dead animal.
Kosher, Halal, Blue, or Well Done; meat is meat.

This isn't a post about multi-cultural Britain. It's not that kind of blog, and quite frankly, we live in 2014, it worries me that some people are still so afraid of diversity, (I mean, c'mon people, a drag queen just won Eurovision, the world is a more tolerant place than hateful, racist online rants... we're better than that).

 I think the people getting their knickers in a twist over Subway serving halal meat (those disgusted that the chain would support such a 'cruel' practise) in a HANDFUL of it's stores should face that fact that no piece of meat has come to be on your plate in a humane way. If those crying out that halal is cruel, whilst still happily tucking in to their chicken fillets, are putting themselves on some sort of humane pedestal, I am here to swiftly knock them off it.

Truth be told, when you wander around your local supermarket and you buy 5 steaks for £10 or an entire chicken for a fiver, you're buying torture. I'm not gonna sugar coat it, folks. There is no humane way of killing, skinning and plucking an animal. Those that go out there and raise animals for their own consumption may possibly be excused from this, but meat for sale on the mass market IS NOT HUMANE. It doesn't matter if it's corn feed and organic, or free range, when you buy bargain meat (and I get it, it's a tough economic climate and we're all looking to save a little dollar where we can) you buy that animal's bargain death.

You can rant and rave and throw your racist slurs wherever you please, but it doesn't change the fact that when an animal's life, (one who has been raised to be slaughtered), is up, halal or not, they don't do it humanely. As a society we are eating more meat than ever before, humane killings take time and time is money. Stunning, electrocution and pits of boiling hot water that animals are dipped into, kill the animals en masse. Just because halal doesn't allow the animal to be stunned prior to it's slaughter, does not make the practise any more or less cruel than the slaughter of animals for regular meat.
Yes, you're free range and organic dinner probably did live a FAR happier life than it's factory farmed friends, but in death, they all go the same way. It's just a sad fact.

If people are really that concerned and outraged that Subway would support such practise, I would suggest they sit down, shut up, put their money where their tweets are and go vegetarian.

This article by the BBC may clear a few things up for you too: click here.

Got Milk?

I am now three weeks into my vegan adventure and I've come to one definite conclusion.
I will not go back to drinking milk.
I'll be honest with you, the entire reason I decided to try this vegan thing was Milk. When I watched 'Vegucated' the way in which Dairy Cows work (if you can call it that) was what shocked me the most. Having been veggie since forever, I already knew about the horrendous ways factory animals are bred, reared, farmed and slaughtered but milk had never occurred to me.

Bare with me whilst I go over some very basic points here:

• Cows are mammals.
• Humans are mammals.
• Female mammals (all female mammals) only produce milk when pregnant/having just had a baby.
• In order to produce milk, female cows have to have just had a baby.

Mind. Blown.

It's probably just a sign that I should have paid more attention in my GCSE Biology classes, but I always just thought that cows made milk. That's what they were here for. Cows made milk. They didn't have to have babies to do it. Male or female, cows made milk...

Alright, so it wasn't exactly my brightest moment, but I'd just never thought about it, you know?

So, now that I've (we've) established that all Dairy Cows are females, and that they have to have babies in order to give us that delicious white stuff we put in our drinks or over our cereal, I have a few questions.

Firstly, isn't that a lot of cows getting jiggy?

Well, no, no its not. It's not because these female cows are almost always artificially inseminated with frozen sperm. That's right folks, some male cow has been wanked off (pardon my French, but imagine the job title), have his sperm frozen and then some farmer has to stick their hand up the female cows lady bits and baste her with the male cows frozen junk.

Yum.

Secondly, (and my understanding of biology isn't that bad) pregnant cows = baby cows, right?

Yes, baby cows are a product of us obtaining milk and it's not exactly great news for them.

As mammals, female cows have that same basic instinct to look after and nurture their babies that female humans do. Unlike humans however, mother cows have their babies taken away from the 48 hours after birth. Males are sent off to be reared as either veal or beef and the females are raised to be dairy cows.

Ok, so what about when the mummy cows are too old to be mummies any more?

Usually, they're slaughtered for low grade meat. You know, all that cheap shit the papers bang on and on about? Yup, that stuff.

And how old are the cows when they become Mummies for the first time?

Despite not actually reaching full maturity until the age of 4, many female cows give birth to their first calf at 2. Which is kind of, sort of, horrific. Like when a 13 year old gets up the duff and is on Jezza, but in cow form.

Obviously, a lot of my information is from organisations such as PETA, who only show one side the argument, so I took to the internet and came accross a very interesting website called thisisdairyfarming.com, which is all about dairy farming in the UK. It's a very clean, clear, happy looking website, check it out here, which looks to answer all of your questions on dairy cows, their lives and the milk they produce.

It's good to see that dairy farmers are standing up for themselves, but it also makes me sort of sad. One of the questions the site answers is 'How long do dairy cows live?' and its answer is 'the average lifespan of a dairy cow is six and a half years'.

Makes you think that's quite a long time, doesn't it? But when you consider that a cow who is just left to live it's life as a free animal can live for up to 15 years and that most dairy cows end up succumbing to various infections and diseases (thanks to over milking and cramped conditions) many don't actually live past 4.

I could ramble on, and on, and on about milk for days and weeks and months and years, but I'm really trying to prove that you can live life as a vegan without becoming a bigger preacher than most American Ministers. Instead, I'll leave you with this picture, that says more than this entire (ranty) blog post.

-xo

One Week Down

So, I have now been vegan for an entire week, and surprisingly, it's been far less painful that I thought.
Here's some stuff I've learnt in my first week:

1. Veganism essentially means that you can't be lazy with what you eat. You have to think ahead.
2. Cheese. I really bloody miss cheese.
3. You have to check that you're wine is Vegan... So yes, that girl in Sainsbury's is me. Not sorry.
4. Alpro Soya grows on you, and I will probably never go back to grim, grim cow juice.
5. Being Vegan is not an excuse to live off Oreos, but damn it I will try anyway.
6. Re: #5, Oreos are vegan, as are Jelly Tots. Praise the Lord.
7. Giving up Quorn has been harder than giving up chocolate.
8. I can actually cook.

It's actually been quite fun, so far, apart from tofu. I've decided that unless I'm eating at Wagamama's where the Tofu dishes are always on point, I am not attempting tofu again... I always mess it up.
Overall though, it's been making me feel like a Vegan Gordon Ramsey (minus the wrinkly forehead but with just as much swearing). I've been instagramming away like a goodun because, sometimes, selfies get boring and I'm on a mission to prove that no, I haven't just committed to eating leaves for 40 days.

Mixed veg & Tofu stir-fry with wholemeal noodles.

My first big culinary step was the vegan stir-fry. Stir-fry's are quick and easy, despite the fact that I asked my housemate about a million questions as I went along. All the Blue Dragon products are clearly labelled vegan and vegetarian, which made life so much easier as i seriously cba (can't be arsed) standing around the aisles of Sainsbury's reading food packet after food packet.

Three Bean Vegan Chili

My next step was to make a chili. Having been a veggie for almost 11 years, I make a good Chili sin Carne (see what I did there?), but thought that making a vegan chili would be horrendous since I haven't found any soy mince yet, and I can't use Quorn mince since that contains egg (*weeps*). However, throw in a can of mixed pulses (kidney beans, broad beans and chickpeas), some onion, some garlic, a few chilies and some tomatoes and I created something edible and tasty. Mixed it in with some Uncle Ben's Mexican Rice for good measure. T'was da one.

Not cheesy deliciousness but it was 3am and I was shitfaced.
Who cares?

Now, obviously I am a student (and for those of you who know me, a Devlin), so drinking is integral to my mental well being and after a night out there is nothing better than having the drunk munchies. My favourite 3am snack? Cheesy Chips. There is no one dish more delicious but, since I've committed to going vegan, cheesy chips are off my menu. Even just plain old chips are off my menu, since the oil the takeaway's use probably doesn't even qualify as vegetarian. So, in the early hours of Saturday morning, as my friends piled into one of Fallowfield's many takeaways and ordered themselves some post-night out treats, I just waited patiently until we got home. Once in, I made myself some toast with olive oil and hummus.

Did I feel boring as fuck, whilst my friends tucked in to their greasy delights? Of course!
Did I feel bloated, ashamed and regretful of by drunk-time snacking the next morning? Absolutely not!
Plus, picking toast over my beloved cheesy chips probably saved me from consuming an extra 80 million calories, which can't be a bad thing really.




On the whole though, breakfast has by far been the easiest meal to go vegan with. Porridge made with AlproSoya instead of cow's milk, banana & almond butter milkshakes (again with Alpro) and toast with almond butter (I'm big on almond butter, it's the Peanut Butter of 2014) have all been helping my start mornings...


Well, if I've been up in time!

-xo

So I'm Going Vegan...

It's that time of year again, stuffed my face on pancakes and now it's time to give something up for 40 days and 40 nights. Raised Roman Catholic, I've pretty much attempted to give up everything possible (expect alcohol... Never alcohol), so this year I thought I'd actually challenge myself and give being vegan a go.

I know what you're thinking, vegans are freaks. They come from some other world where they don't eat bacon OR cheese and are obviously not the full tin of buscuits. Having been a vegetarian since I was 10 or 11 years old, I'm already half way there and after watching 'Vegucated' last week, it's something I really want to do, just to see if I can. 

Life has pretty much been all change over the last few months, so I figure why the hell not. 

I'm hoping it's not going to kill me and I'm hoping that it's going to teach me a lot. So many people just write us veggies off as Eco-weirdos without actually understanding where we (or that steak you love so much) come from. 

Giving up meat was always easy. I don't actually like meat, I find it kind of repulsive. Chicken I loved, but after really trying to put it back into my diet last year, I just can't do it. Morally, I can't cope with eating a clucky, rather unintelligent animal... I have too many feelings- I know.  

But I love eggs, and I love cheese, and I love chocolate. I'm giving up cheese and chocolate. Everytime I remind myself of that fact it feels like a punch in stomach all over again.

So, this challenge may kill me off and if anyone mentions it to my Italian Grandmother, it may well kill her off too (she already struggles with me not eating meat, imagine how she'll feel about this!), but I want to try and hope to live to tell the tale. 

Wish me luck.

-xo