5 Movies that will make you go vegan!

1. Earthlings: This is a graphic, disturbing and powerful movie. It covers our complete dependence on animals raised as pets, food, clothes, entertainment, and for scientific research. The film shows footage from hidden cameras in factory farms and various other industries who are all exploiting animals and making a profit from them.

2. Super Size Me: Morgan Spurlock explores the consequences of only eating McDonald's food for 30 days straight.

3. Food Inc.: This movie explores where the food we purchase comes from.

4. Forks Over Knives: This film gives information as to why sticking to a plant based diet is the best route for human health. The movie is based on much of the information found in the book, "The China Study" and other findings that examine the claim that most degenerative diseases can be controlled or reversed by changing our diets to a plant based diet.

5. Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 days: This documentary follows 6 people with diabetes who switch to a diet consisting entirely of vegan, organic, uncooked food in order to reverse disease without pharmaceutical medication.

Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

1 cup peanut butter

1 tsp baking soda

1/3 cup applesauce

1/2 cup flour

you can add chocolated chips if desired

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a bowl cream together the sugar and peanut butter.

3. Add baking soda and mix. Add in applesauce until well combined. Add in flour. If the dough is still a little oily add in more flour.

4. Roll into 1 inch balls. Place onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten by using a fork. (I make an x)

4. Bake for 9-12 minutes or until golden brown. Let them cool before removing. (They do harden up a bit)

Eating Animals

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer is an extraordinary book!!! It is not one-sided. He looks at ethical farms and good farmers. If there were more ethical and family farms, I would be more likely to eat meat. However, factory farming has taken over. It's all about the money and how to produce as much meat as possible with as little money as possible. Animals are not treated as living things but as mere objects. Here are some notes I took while reading:

1. The lights are turned on 20 hours a day so that the egg-laying hens think it is Spring.
2. Peta would rather euthanize a dog than have it living its life in a kennel.
3. "When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it's corrupting."
4. Every turkey sold in every store and served in every restaurant was the product of artificial insemination.
5. KFC chickens are almost always killed in 39 days. That's how rapidly they're grown.
6. How much suffering will you tolerate for your food?
7. On average, Americans eat the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in a lifetime.
8. Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol, and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins c and e, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids, and phytochemicals.
9. Excess animal protein is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract and cancers.
10. Vegans have lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure, lower risk of hypertension, lower risk of type 2 diabetes, lower BMI and lower cancer rates.
11. The highest rates of osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods.
12. In the National school lunch program more than half a billion of our tax dollars are given to the dairy, beef, egg and poultry industries to provide animals products to children.
13. Nearly 1/3 of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock.
14. Animal shit seeps into rivers, lakes and oceans killing wildlife, polluting air, water and land in ways devastating to human health.
15. Farmed animals in the US produce 130 times as much waste as the human population.
16. Less the 1 percent of the animals killed for meat in America come from family farms.
17. What kind of crime is animal agriculture, which uses 756 million tons of grain and corn per year, much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion humans who are living in dire poverty?

Vegan for ethical reasons

The way we are killing animals is absolutely discusting!!! Many people don't want to know how animals are killed. Once you know the process, you will be less likely to eat that burger again!

Birds:
1. Chickens are crammed into densely populated sheds where waste accumulates. The resulting ammonia levels commonly cause painful burns to the birds' skin, eyes, and respiratory tracts.
2. To cut losses from birds pecking at each other, farmers remove a third to a half of the beak from chickens, turkeys and ducks. This causes severe pain and in some cases they are unable to eat and starve.
3. Rapid growth rate has been accompanied by painful skeletal deformites and ascites.
4. Egg-laying hens are packed in cages and can become immobilized and die of dehydration or asphyxiation.
Pigs:
1. The pigs get depressed and won't care if their tail is biten off. To solve this problem, the tail is snipped off. It is now more sensitive and the pigs will now care if another pig is nipping at it.
2. The ends of their teeth are snipped off with pliers.
3. Males are castrated.
4. Because of improper stunning methods, many pigs are still conscious when they are dumped into scalding-hot water.
Dairy Cows: 
1. Dairy cows are killed once thier milk production declines.
2. Dairy cows are usually unable to nurse their young. Most calves raise for veal are males from the dairy industry.
3. She is kept constantly pregnant.
4. In the wild a cow would live 20-25 years but on a dairy farm they are lucky to live 4 years.
Veal Calves:
1. The calf spends most of it's time in complete darkness in a small crate, in which he cannot even turn around. Darkness keeps calves quiet and reduced the restlessness and boredom of standing in a bare wooden crate.
2. The calves are deliberately kept anemic so that their flesh is will be pale and tender.
Cattle:
1. Castration of young males is a common procedure. Branding is also a common practice.
2. Dehorning is another painful procedure. Horns just take up room in the feedlot and allow for the dangerous possibility of the cattle attacking each other.
Free-Range Farms:
1. Poultry meat may be labeled free-range if the birds were provided an opportunity to access the outdoors. This could mean 20,000 birds crowded inside a shed with a single exit leading to a muddy strip, saturated with droppings.
2. The cage-free label for eggs is not regulated by the USDA, nor does it guarantee that the hens were provided access to the outdoors.

Many people ask me why vegan and not vegetarian. In my opinion it would be better to eat meat than eggs and dairy because dairy cows and egg-laying hens are treated the worst. They have to live longer....no freedom, little movement, darkness. If you drink milk you are supporting the veal industry. Milk is meant for the young. Do we drink our mother's milk when we are 40?


*Information from Vegan Outreach, Vegetarian Society of Colorado, PETA

Vegan French Toast

I was a big french toast fan before becoming vegan. I found out that you can substitute bananas for the eggs. The bananas give the french toast a great flavor!

Ingredients:

2 bananas

3/4 cup soy milk

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

oil (I use olive oil)

bread, any kind is fine!

1. Blend bananas, soy milk, cinnamon and vanilla in a blender.

2. Pour into a wide bowl.

3. Dip bread slices in the mixture, coating both sides.

4. Fry in the oil on medium high heat until golden brown.

5. You can put whatever fruit you would like on top:) I love blueberries and strawberries. Top with maple syrup if desired.

Vegan for Environmental Reasons

1. Nearly 1/3 of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock.
2. Animal waste seeps into rivers, lakes, and oceans killing wildlife and polluting air, water, and land in ways devastating to human health.
3. Farmed animals in the US produce 130 times as much waste as the human population.
4. Livestock are responsible for 18% of greenhouse emissions measured in CO2 equivalent.
5. Livestock are responsible for almost two-thirds of anthropogenic ammonia emissions which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of eco systems.
6. Livestock accounts for over 8% of gloval human water use.
7. Expansion of livestock production is a key factor in deforestation.

Facts from "Eating Animals" and "Vegan Outreach"Facts from "Eating Animals" and "Vegan Outreach"

Why humans are not meant to eat meat

1. Humans have small mouths suitable for softer plant foods while carnivores have wide mouths suitable for swallowing large chunks of meat.
2. Human teeth are similar to those found in other herbivores. Our canines are flat and small. Our incisors are flat and spadelike, useful for peeling and biting relatively soft materials.
3. Our nails are not claws. 
4. We find rotting or raw flesh gross. (Isn't it interesting that we have to cook and season the meat to make it taste better? No other animal does this.)
5. We have an intestinal tract 10-12 times our body length while carnivores have an intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that they can rapidly pass decaying meat.
6. Humans have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a carnivore making it harder to break down meat.
7. Humans have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains while carnivores don't.

This gives evidence as to why humans are not supposed to eat meat. We are conditioned to eat meat. It is what we have known since our parents fed us meat. We can easily live without eating meat. It is even healthier!!!

Where I got the information:
The Face on Your Plate by Jefferey Moussaieff Masson
"How humans are not physically created to eat meat"