Veganism

Vegetarians are people who do not eat meat. Their diet consists mainly of plant foods but they will often consume animal products like milk, cheese, yoghurt and eggs. Some of them are pescatarians and they will include fish in their diet. Vegans take things a step further and exclude all animal foods. They only consume plant foods and some will also refuse to use any animal products like wearing leather shoes or belts. There has been a surge of interest in veganism in recent times. Reports in the media suggest that a vegan, or plant-based, diet is more healthy than an omnivore diet; it is kinder to animals and it is better for the environment. Are these claims true?

No, they are not true. An important aspect of this site is to demonstrate the benefits of animal-sourced foods for our physical and mental health and the necessity of correctly managed livestock for environmental health. An entirely plant-based diet leads to nutrient deficiencies, especially in children. The intensive farming of single plant crops involves herbicides and pesticides with devastating effects on biodiversity. Vastly more creatures die in the production of grains and vegetables than die for the meat on your plate. This section of the website concentrates on why the pro-vegan story is a fallacy.

How did veganism begin?

We evolved into the people we are because, for millions of years, our ancestors ate the meat and fat of large animals. Our species is the most dominant species on the planet and we have adapted to life in all the extreme climates that exist on Earth. Indigenous tribes, unaffected by modern life, still exist around the world from rainforests and deserts to the Arctic Circle. Their diets vary but none of them have adopted a meat-free, vegan diet.

The avoidance of animal-based foods began in America in the 1850s within an illogical, religious sect called the Seventh Day Adventist Church. I call them illogical because, although they believe that God created them, they believe that sexual arousal is a sin. (Surely, if God created us, God created arousal so we ‘would go forth and multiply’.) Their leader, Ellen White, also believed that eating rich foods, like meat, stimulated sinful passion and bland foods diminished it. She preached this doctrine with great determination and convinced everyone in the Seventh Day Adventist Church to accept this idea as part of their belief. (John Harvey Kellogg was a member of this church and you can read about him here.)

In Britain, veganism began with a man called Donald Watson who founded the Vegan Society in 1944. He is credited with coining the word ‘vegan’ which he created by joining the beginning and end of the word vegetarian. He was an animal rights campaigner whose interest in veganism began when he witnessed the slaughter of a pig on a farm. He campaigned for a meat free diet because he thought farming was cruel to animals.

A plant-based diet, without the animal foods that our ancestors ate for a million years, was invented in America to reduce sexual arousal and was copied in Britain because one man thought it was cruel to animals. In neither case did it have anything to do with improvements to human health or the environment. Both of those false ideas have been added later in a cynical attempt to persuade unsuspecting people to avoid the most nutritious foods available to us, namely meat, fish, eggs and dairy.

There is no Climate Crisis.

We are told that increasing concentrations of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will lead to ever increasing global temperatures. The United Nations’ Secretary General warns that we have reached the stage of ‘global boiling’ and we are at a ‘tipping point’ where temperatures will accelerate causing floods, droughts, famines and pestilence. None of this is true because the ability of CO2 molecules to slow down the escape of heat to space becomes saturated at modest concentrations. The chart below looks complicated but the description below it explains it well.

This next chart shows the same phenomenon as above but in a less complicated visual format. This is important to understand because increasing CO2 levels are very beneficial for plants. It is totally wrong to refer to caron dioxide as a ‘pollutant’. It is the molecule of life; without it there can be no life on this planet.

But we are constantly shown graphs of rising temperatures aligned with rising CO2 levels. And we are told the global average temperature has risen by 1.5 degrees since the late 1800s. It is very difficult to know what the global average was over 100 years ago because there were very few accurate weather stations anywhere in the world other than North America and Europe. Previous global temperatures are an estimate at best and it makes more sense to look at the changes in those locations which have extensive thermometer records.

If there is a crisis of higher and higher temperatures, it makes sense to examine the maximum temperatures over a long period of time, rather than the average of all temperatures. The chart below shows the maximum summer temperatures across the US Corn Belt, which covers the mid-western states of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, eastern Nebraska, and eastern Kansas. The highest temperatures occurred during the 1930s. There is clearly no relationship between maximum temperatures and CO2 concentrations and there is no new extreme of maximum temperatures.

We are told that climate change is causing an increase in dangerous fires, but the evidence says the exact opposite. Total area of land burned by wild fires in the USA has decreased considerably since the 1930s.

The climate change alarmists have been predicting a wide range of disastrous consequences for many decades. These predictions of doom have a 100 per cent record – every single one of them has failed to materialise. To keep people believing in the ‘Climate Crisis’ the authorities have resorted to some very dirty tricks. The graphic below shows the USA temperature record from 1880 to 1999 as published by NASA in 1999 (grey graph) and the exact same thing as published by NASA in 2019 (green graph) Except it is not the same; the hottest temperatures of the past have been ‘adjusted’ downwards and recent temperatures have been ‘adjusted’ upwards in the 2019 version. NASA and the rest of the climate change cult need to Stop Feeding Us Lies.

[This graphic is courtesy of Tony Heller at realclimatescience.com, where you can find many more examples of changing the past to fit the climate agenda.]

Cows and climate

Henry Mencken was an American journalist, satirist and cultural critic, who lived from 1880 to 1956. He may have been from a different era, but I find some of his observations are still entirely relevant: The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The imaginary hobgoblin I wish to discuss here is the instruction to ‘eat less meat to save the planet’. There is a strong, well-financed, global anti-meat agenda which is constantly pushing us towards a 30% reduction in meat-eating. Some European Governments are intending to force farmers to cull large numbers of their herd in the name of the ‘Climate Emergency’. Call me old-fashioned, but I have always believed the food we choose to eat should be based on nutrition, rather than the weather. (Blaming the digestive system of cows for extreme weather sounds to me more like medieval witchcraft than science.)

‘Eat less meat’ seems so unscientific; it is advice for everybody whether you eat meat every day or once a week. It feels much more like an often-repeated nudge to slowly alter our behaviour. The ‘save the planet’ part of this slogan is surely designed to be make us feel guilty. Who would want to be the person who brought about a climate catastrophe because of their over-indulgence in animal protein?

The idea behind this is simple: cows and sheep burp methane; methane is a greenhouse gas; eating less meat will result in fewer cows and, therefore, less methane; if we eat less meat we will save the world from over-heating. This is the story being pushed upon us, but it is nonsense. Ruminant animals have been burping methane for about 50 million years without any effect on all the ice-ages and warm periods throughout that vast timescale. It is impossible for cows and sheep to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. They simply recycle a few of them in the Carbon Cycle. The plants they eat grew by taking carbon dioxide out of the air in the first place via photosynthesis. The methane produced by their digestive bacteria is oxidised to carbon dioxide within 10 years, ready to be absorbed by plants again. (More details here)

We are told that the methane cows burp is a very potent greenhouse gas and we must reduce it. Whenever I hear this I remind them the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is 0.00018%, which is less than 2 parts per million. When I ask them ‘at what lower concentration of methane can you guarantee colder weather’, they have no idea. (George Monbiot of the Guardian blocked me on social media for asking him that very question). Nobody ever tells us to eat less rice to save the planet, despite rice paddies producing considerable levels of methane.

Whenever we are told what to do by self-appointed experts, I always wonder who is going to benefit from the actions we are advised to take. If we all reduce our meat intake by 30% it will make absolutely no difference to the climate, but it will make a big difference. Small family farms throughout the country will be forced into bankruptcy if they lose 30% of their turnover. Then the land will be bought cheaply by large corporations, who will probably obtain taxpayer-funded subsidies to put wind farms and solar panels in the fields. Our nutritious meat will be replaced by lab-grown, ultra-processed, synthetic meat, produced by a small group of global companies. These are the people pushing the anti-meat agenda because they foresee huge profits for themselves. People like Patrick Brown, the head of Impossible Foods, which makes plant-based meat substitutes like the Impossible Burger. He has said, “I want to put the animal agriculture industry out of business. It’s that simple. The goal is not because I have any ill will toward the people who work in that industry, but because it is the most destructive industry on Earth. In their place, my company’s scientists and food technicians will create plant-based substitutes for every animal product used today in every region of the world.” Do you like the idea of a megalomaniac having total control of the world’s food supply? One man who does like that idea is Bill Gates, who is heavily invested in lab-grown fake food. He is also a huge investor in land. He has already bought huge areas of American farmland, taking it out of production.

Of course, the attack on meat, and the farmers who produce it, is not coming from just one man. It is part of the UN’s Agenda 2030. This agenda talks about cosy ideas of sustainability and biodiversity, but those words are a cover up for a global power grab, and control over our lives, by an unelected few. The farmers of Europe are protesting and blockading roads because the dictats of European bureaucracy are so stringent they are going to drive the farmers out of business. This, it appears, is precisely the purpose. If we do not support our local farmers and resist this tyranny we will all be eating insects and ultra-processed fake food form a factory before we know it.

Meat is the most nutrient-dense food we can eat and we need our local farmers to keep producing it. (More details here)

Coercion is immoral

Over the last few days the mainstream media has produced a huge and co-ordinated assault on the ‘unvaccinated’. These are just two of the headlines from 14th of December.

This comes at the same time as the Government is pushing hard to ‘Get your Booster’. The letters pages of many newspapers contain multiple examples of people suggesting that ‘the selfish, unvaccinated should be excluded from all public places and from treatment on the NHS’.

This divisive, coercive, unscientific and unethical attack on an individual’s right to choose what is injected into their body has reached extraordinary proportions. Do people really believe that the vaccines they have had are rendered useless by contact with someone has not had the same injection? Do they believe that every unvaccinated person is a vector of disease? Surely, if the unvaccinated have caught a deadly disease they are not going to be sitting next to you in a restaurant; they will be at home in bed. Why do they think the double or triple dose of vaccines they have had will not protect them from the virus? This argument makes absolutely no sense. Not only that, the latest research on the Omicron variant shows that it is the vaccinated who are spreading the disease.

This is from The Telegraph 14th Dec.
The Centre for Disease Control in America has announced that 80% of Omicron cases are in the vaccinated.

We are being lied to over and over again. There is an agenda at play. I do not know what it is, but this is not how you improve the health of a nation. They are trying to blame a section of society who have not complied with their every whim. They are trying to turn people against each other. Their only response to Covid has always been vaccines but it is the vaccinated who are catching this new variant. They are not being honest; they need to Stop Feeding Us Lies.

Covid Conundrums

Have you ever wondered why some people do not want to be ‘jabbed’? Or do you need to explain to others why you do not want to be ‘jabbed’? We live in strange times when people who have chosen to be ‘protected’ from Covid19, by having two ‘jabs’, are worried about meeting people who have not been ‘vaccinated’. If the vaccines work, what do they have to fear? If the ‘so-called’ vaccines do not work, why should anybody have them? We seem to have reached the extraordinary situation where the ineffectiveness of these vaccines is blamed upon the people who have not had them. I do not claim to cover all the angles but in this post I list many of the points which I believe should be open for discussion. The mainstream media, however, never allows any of these topics to be raised.

[All the references in this post can be found on the Covid-References page]

1.Falsification of numbers. The daily reporting of deaths was used to scare everybody into believing SARS-Cov-2 was an extremely deadly virus. But the totals were for people who had died ‘within 28 days of a positive Covid test’. This has never been done previously for any other disease. It includes all the people who died of cancer, heart disease, road accidents and suicide as long as they had a recent positive test. Nobody knows how many have died specifically of Covid because this is a deliberate falsification.


2. The Government listened to the advice of Prof Ferguson, who predicted a death toll of half a million people. A cursory glance at the history of Ferguson’s previous clairvoyance shows a constant, reliable record of enormous over-exaggeration. He has never come close to being correct. [Ref 1] The Government used a totally unreliable source to guess at the possible severity of the disease and caused panic by giving it credence.

 
3. The media fearmongering was enhanced by the daily reporting of ‘case’ numbers, which were determined by the PCR test. However, the PCR test was not designed as a diagnostic tool. The polymerase chain reaction is a method of replicating a segment of genetic material and when the process is repeated sufficiently often there is enough material for it to be detected. Detecting a fragment of viral DNA via this method cannot possibly tell you if it came from a living, active virus or the remnants of a dead virus, which has been destroyed by the individual’s immune system. To suggest that all PCR positive results are from infectious people is false. [Ref 2]


4. During the first wave, the median age of death was 82, which is slightly older than the national, UK, median age of death at 81 years of age. [Ref 3] Figures issued by the ONS (Office for National Statistics) showed that 95% of the people who died with Covid had pre-existing disease. [Ref 4] It was clear from the beginning that this virus was only dangerous to the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Not one person in the Government or Sage has recommended steps to improve metabolic health and our immune systems. They have totally ignored all the evidence that deficiencies in vitamin D, zinc and selenium are closely linked to a weakened immune system. [Ref 5] The correct diet, or appropriate supplementation, cannot carry a downside and, for most people, will help. This has never been mentioned by the people employed to advise on our health.


5. Lockdown. The quarantine of infected, ill people has been shown to reduce the spread of infectious diseases. The quarantine (lockdown) of millions of healthy people has never been used before and has no medical history to recommend it. The Government enforced this experiment on the nation without any attempt to perform a risk-to-benefit analysis. If Boris Johnson worked for a private corporation and had introduced such draconian, expensive and experimental measures without any attempt to calculate the unforeseen consequences, he would have been sacked for dereliction of his duty. The idea that lockdowns worked and should have been implemented earlier has gained widespread acceptance, without any evidence for their benefit. Data from each of the States in America shows no significant difference between the states which locked down and those that did not. [Ref 6]


6. A considerable surge in early deaths occurred in care homes. This was caused by the incompetent, and Government led, removal of large numbers of hospitalised, unwell people back to care homes which were not equipped to deal with them. Many of these unfortunate people had Do Not Resuscitate notices applied to them without their consent. [Ref 7] There is some evidence that many of these were ‘finished off’ with the excessive use of Midazolam injections, stocks of which were ordered by Matt Hancock. [Ref 8]


7. The Strategic Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) is a committee whose members change depending upon the nature of the current emergency. The Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, and The Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, chose the people they believed are best suited to help the Government to make appropriate decisions. The group they assembled contained no expert immunologists but it did contain several mathematical modellers and behavioural scientists. As a consequence, the country has been subjected to a grotesque series of psychological stresses and fears. [Ref 9] Professor Sheldon Cohen of the Carnegie Mellon University is an expert in the effect of stress on immunity. He has shown that prolonged isolation and fear are hugely detrimental to our ability to resist respiratory viruses. [Ref 10] It is as if lockdowns were designed to make us all less able to fight off viruses with our natural immunity. If Sage did not know this, they are negligent and if they did know but still proceeded with lockdown, they are corrupt.

8. The Sage group also contains an extraordinary number of conflicts of interest tied to the Pharmaceutical Industry and especially to vaccine manufacturers. They have constantly promoted vaccines and ignored all other possibilities. It is well known that natural immunity after infection provides better and longer lasting protection from reinfection than that provided by vaccines. But Sage and the Government have continually insisted that everyone must be vaccinated regardless of whether they have naturally produced antibodies or not. This makes no medical sense but makes huge financial profits for vaccine producers. [Ref 11]

9. For several months in the spring of 2020 Sage told us there was no reliable evidence to support the wearing of masks to reduce transmission. However, masks were made mandatory in July 2020 precisely when the prevalence of this seasonal virus had reached its lowest level of the year. Boris Johnson tells us he is following the science but clearly nobody is. The logical reason for implementing a mask mandate in summer is to maintain the fear already created by lockdowns. [Ref 12]

10. I referred to ‘so-called’ vaccines earlier because these ’jabs’ are not strictly vaccines. They are a type of medical device, which creates a protein in the body and this protein elicits an immune response. A typical vaccine consists of a dead or harmless virus which directly produces an immune response to the entire virus. A typical vaccine is also expected to prevent an individual from contracting the disease and from transmitting it. The Covid jabs allow you to catch Covid and transmit it. Their only claim to benefit consists of a promise that a Covid infection will be less severe than if you had not had the jab. How can they quantify that? How do they know how one individual would have reacted to Covid with or without the jab? This is not a deadly disease; the chance of survival is exceptionally good. [Ref 13]

11 These ‘vaccines’ are pushed hard on to absolutely everybody but they have not finished their trials yet, and do not do so until 2023. They have received ‘Emergency Authorisation’ which is not full approval. To obtain Emergency Authorisation, a medicine must be the only viable option during a clear and obvious emergency. The only health emergency in the UK is metabolic syndrome, which consists of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. [Ref 14] Sixty-four per cent of the population are overweight and we know, from 4 above, that metabolic disorders greatly increase an individual’s risk of serious Covid complications. Metabolic diseases are the reason the NHS is constantly under pressure. Throughout their tenure, neither Whitty nor Vallance have done a single thing to improve the nation’s metabolic health.

Emergency Authorisation cannot be granted if there is an alternative therapy. Sage, the Government, and the media have ignored all other treatments and disparaged any that have been mentioned. Ivermectin is a safe and cheap drug which has been taken by millions of people for years. There is considerable evidence from around the world that it is effective against Covid19. [Ref 15]

12. We have already seen that Covid poses no danger to healthy young people, but the age group at which people are ‘invited’ to have a ‘jab’ continues to fall. When it reached schoolchildren, the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) decided to recommend against ‘jabbing’ such young people because the benefit did not outweigh the risk. Chris Whitty and the other home nation CMOs decided to ignore expert advice and proceed. (We have already seen that Whitty has serious conflicts of interest when it comes to the promotion of vaccines.) Before having any medical procedure, an individual is supposed to give informed consent. It is also contrary to the Nuremburg Code to use coercion to persuade someone to have a medical procedure. The Government’s entire campaign of persuasion towards young people has involved coercion, with constant reference to ‘getting your freedoms back’ and without any mention of the undeniable risks involved with this ‘vaccine’. The Government’s actions are unethical and immoral.

13. Covid jabs have a terrible safety record. [Ref 16] All previous vaccines have been withdrawn when they displayed harm to recipients of lesser degree than these do. The latest VAERS report shows extraordinary levels of damage, but it receives no publicity in the mainstream media. These results would normally cause a vaccine to be banned from use. Why don’t they? Government data on ‘variants of concern’ from August 2021 shows that you are more likely to die from Covid if are double vaccinated than unvaccinated. See [Ref 17]

14. Since the emergence of Sars-1 and MERS many years ago, the pharmaceutical industry has been trying to produce an effective coronavirus vaccine. All attempts have failed during the animal trials because of a reaction known as ADE (Antibody-dependent enhancement). [Ref 18] The vaccines initially created antibodies but when the animals were challenged by a wild virus, the disease was made worse by the over-reaction of the immune system. (This may be what is happening with Ref 17.) What many sceptical people find truly sinister is the desire to ‘jab’ every single person in the world with a ‘vaccine’ that has not been through any animal trials and was rushed into use via Emergency Authorisation. The unvaccinated are, in fact, performing the vital role of a control group, which is something the authorities do not want. Why would that be?

15. The ‘vaccine passport’. Scotland has already introduced a mandatory vaccine passport, creating a medical apartheid that most of us thought could never happen in the UK. England will no doubt follow soon. This will bar all unvaccinated people from their inalienable rights and all normal gatherings for theatre, sport and social events. If Covid19 was a deadly disease and the vaccine prevented infection and transmission, it might make sense. But it is clear that Covid is not particularly dangerous for the vast majority of healthy people and the vaccine neither protects from infection nor transmission. So vaccinated people can gather and possibly infect each other but unvaccinated people will not be allowed to gather even if they have recently tested negative. Does this sound like they are following the science? Or does it sound like Covid is being used as an excuse to introduce a system of digital control over our lives, where we all have to ‘show our papers’?

Do you think any of the points I have raised are, at least, worthy of a civilise debate on television? If so, why do you think that debate never happens?

Covid References

Reference 1

Six questions that Neil Ferguson should be asked | The Spectator

Reference 2

Landmark legal ruling finds that Covid tests are not fit for purpose.

Reference 3

Reference 4

Reference 5

Vitamin D and Its Potential Benefit for the COVID-19 Pandemic – PubMed (nih.gov)

Potential health benefits of zinc supplementation for the management of COVID-19 pandemic – PubMed (nih.gov)

Selenium and selenoproteins in viral infection with potential relevance to COVID-19 – PubMed (nih.gov)

Reference 6

Reference 7

Age UK response to DNR forms during Covid-19 crisis

Reference 8

CARE homes have been accused of using powerful sedatives to make coronavirus victims die more quickly.

Reference 9

Reference 10

 Psychosocial Vulnerabilities to Upper Respiratory Infectious Illness: Implications for Susceptibility to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) – Sheldon Cohen, 2020 (sagepub.com)

Reference 11

SAGE conflicts of interest

Reference 12

Reference 13

Reference 14

Reference 15

Health Professionals Resources – British Ivermectin Recommendation Development group (bird-group.org)

Reference 16

Reference 17

BOMBSHELL UK data destroys entire premise for vaccine push – by Chris Waldburger – Chris Waldburger (substack.com)

Reference 18

Two Different Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) Risks for SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies (nih.gov)

A perspective on potential antibody-dependent enhancement of SARS-CoV-2 – PubMed (nih.gov)

Reference 19

The ‘Green’ Expert

After the publication of the IPCC’s ‘Red Alert’ for humanity, the media has been full of ‘experts’ telling us what we can do to mitigate our role in the doomsday scenario. According to some of those who call themselves ‘Green Experts’, the most important thing we can do is to eat plants and stop eating animals. Here is a example from The Times:

First of all, I did not know there is a qualification which endows one with expertise in ‘green’. It would appear, from the first two advised changes, that a ‘green expert’ has no need to supply references for their numerical claims. Apparently, we each produce an average of 12.7 tonnes of CO2 each year and this is equivalent to eating 1,000 steaks. Why would you compare total CO2 emissions to a single food item instead of how many miles we drive in a car, or how much fuel we burn to heat our houses? I think the only reason you would do it is because you have an anti-meat agenda. It is a pointless comparison; nobody eats 1,000 steaks per year. I will explain why this statement is nonsense later.

The ‘Eat Plants’ recommendation suggests that we can reduce our carbon footprint by 73 per cent by switching to a plant-based diet. Is that 73% of our dietary carbon footprint or our entire carbon footprint? It is not clear. How does anybody come to the figure of 73%? How can a cow fed on grass in my local farmer’s field and sold by my local butcher be compared to green vegetables flown from Kenya and driven 200 miles by truck? These are the sort of calculations, full of assumptions, which are used to measure the ‘carbon footprint’ of different foods. Even the author, Lucy Siegle, warns about the poor environmental profiles of some of the most popular vegan foods like avocados and almonds. Despite this she states that ‘a careful switch to plants is the biggest change you can make’. Green experts always make these broad claims without any reference to nutrition. It should be illegal to recommend, in print, a plant-based diet without warning the readers of the dangers of vitamin B12 deficiency.

I regard the entire realm of ‘dietary carbon footprints’ as a complete waste of time. All foods, whether plant or animal, obtain their carbon from the air. Plants grow when the process of photosynthesis uses the energy from sunshine to convert atmospheric CO2 into cellulose and other carbohydrates. Whether we eat the plants directly, or the animals that ate the plants, or the animals that ate the animals that ate the plants, the carbon in the food came out of the air. How can it be regarded as adding to greenhouse gas when it is simply recycled. It is absurd to compare the carbon burped by a cow with the carbon from coal or oil, which has to be dug out of the ground.

The argument against cows is always based on methane. The bacteria in the rumen of cows and sheep digest plants by fermentation and a by-product of this process is methane, which is produced at a rate of 5% of the food eaten. Methane is said to be a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and laboratory tests suggest it is 23 times more effective at capturing heat. This is the main reason cited by most climate-based, anti-meat proponents. The important thing to remember is these are laboratory results; they are not real measurements from the atmosphere. In a lab gases are tested individually but in the atmosphere they are mixed with all the other gases.

Methane can only absorb heat radiation in a narrow band of wavelengths. Methane exists in the atmosphere as a rare trace gas with a concentration of less than two parts per million. Water vapour is by far the most important greenhouse gas. It absorbs heat over a wider range than other gases and exists in the atmosphere as at least 10,000 parts per million. This diagram shows the infra red absorption spectrum of all the greenhouse gases.

The red lines in the diagram denote the wavelengths at which methane, CH4, is able to absorb heat radiation, and is taken from Methane, the Irrelevant Greenhouse Gas. These specific wavelengths are already being absorbed by water vapour, H2O. Because water vapour is almost 10,000 times more concentrated in the atmosphere it absorbs almost all the heat at those specific wavelengths. Consequently, there is almost no heat for methane to absorb and reducing it by avoiding meat (and having fewer cows) will make no difference whatsoever. Green experts need to Stop Feeding Us Lies.

B12, obesity and pregnancy

According to a study published by the Society for Endocrinology a deficiency of vitamin B12 is linked to obesity during pregnancy. Vitamin B12 is only found in animal-sourced foods and is not present in an entirely plant-based diet. These are the conclusions of the study:

“Low levels of vitamin B12 impair fat metabolism, which could increase the risk of obesity during pregnancy. Pregnant women with low levels of vitamin B12 had metabolic markers indicative of increased fat production and reduced breakdown, which suggests that low vitamin B12 levels could predispose pregnant women to obesity.

Vitamin B12 is a micronutrient found in seafood, meat, and dairy products that is essential for many metabolic reactions that keep our bodies functioning normally. Diets high in carbohydrates and highly processed foods provide poor nutrition and can lead to vitamin B12 deficiency. Approximately 25% of pregnant women worldwide are vitamin B12 deficient, as an even higher intake is needed for the growth and development of the baby. Previous studies suggest B12 deficiency increases the risk for metabolic complications such as obesity or diabetes, but the underlying mechanisms affecting fat metabolism remain poorly understood.


In this study, Jinous Samavat from the University of Warwick Medical School investigated how low vitamin B12 levels affect fat cell function in cultured cell samples and in samples taken from pregnant women. Markers of fat metabolism in both lab-grown fat cells, low in vitamin B12, and in samples from vitamin B12 deficient pregnant women, indicated increased fat production and reduced ability to breakdown fat for energy. There was also increased inflammation, which causes further damage.


Jinous Samavat comments, “Taken together, our data indicate that low B12 levels can impair fat cell metabolism, which may lead to increased fat accumulation, impaired fat metabolism, and inflammatory damage, all of which predispose to weight gain.” Although these findings suggest how fat metabolism may be impaired in vitamin B12 deficiency, particularly in pregnant women, larger studies are needed to confirm this and further explore the underlying mechanisms, to identify intervention strategies and help prevent obesity.

Samavat says, “Our findings reinforce the need for vitamin B12 supplementation during pregnancy and make a strong case for funding further studies and introducing public health policies to help tackle obesity.”

It is interesting that vitamin B12 has a role in fat metabolism as well as all of its other functions. It is also interesting that University academics nearly always end their studies with the suggestion they need to do more research, which they hope will bring more funding to their organisation. It is also curious that they recommend “vitamin B12 supplementation during pregnancy” instead of a vitamin B12 rich diet, which would necessarily include the consumption of plentiful meat and seafood.

Cows and Gas

The following is a small excerpt from Chapter 11 of Stop Feeding Us Lies.

“Grass grows by taking CO2 out of the air. With the help of energy from sunshine and water from rainfall, grass converts atmospheric CO2 into molecules of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Some of these carbohydrate molecules, called cellulose, are used to create new blades of grass and some, which are more simple sugars, are passed down the plant and into the roots. To keep the arithmetic simple let’s assume a blade of grass absorbs 100 molecules of CO2 and that 80 of them are used for growth and 20 of those carbon atoms go down to the roots, where they will stay if the ground is left undisturbed.

            Constance the cow comes along and eats all of those 80 carbon atoms in the grass. The bacteria in her rumen get to work and convert plant cellulose into the fatty acids and proteins that Constance needs to grow. A by-product of this process is methane gas which is produced at a rate of approximately 5% of the food Constance eats. Therefore for every 100 molecules of CO2 absorbed by grass, cows return 4 or 5 of them to the air as methane. Simple arithmetic and basic biology show it is impossible for cows, or sheep, to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. They simply recycle a few of them.”

Toxic seed oils

The NHS directive on healthy eating is known as the Eatwell Guide; never has an official document been so incorrectly named. One of the many fallacies it contains is the recommendation to replace natural fats like butter, lard, dripping and ghee with polyunsaturated ‘vegetable’ oils

This is from the NHS website, Choose unsaturated oils and spreads, and eat in small amounts. Unsaturated fats are healthier fats and include vegetable, rapeseed, olive and sunflower oils. Remember all types of fat are high in energy and should be eaten sparingly.

They make the claim that ‘unsaturated’ fats are healthier (than what?) without providing any evidence. They also make the mistake of suggesting that we should limit fat intake because it contains more calories (than carbohydrates). [This fallacy is debunked elsewhere on this site.] The quoted list of ‘healthy’ oils includes vegetable which is a misleading catch-all term for oils which do not come from animals – it is not a specific oil. Bottles in the supermarket labelled Vegetable Oil are usually blends of cheap seed oils. Rapeseed and sunflower oils are extracted from seeds with an industrial, high temperature and solvent process. Olive oil comes from the fruit of the olive tree and can be obtained by simply pressing the olives. Olive oil has been consumed for about 6,000 years, whereas industrial seed oils have been eaten for only the one hundred years since their extraction method was invented. The last one hundred years coincides with the greatest decline in human health that we know of.

What is wrong with seed oils?

There is nothing natural or healthy about the way in which they are made;

  1. Seeds are gathered from the soy, corn, cotton, safflower, and rapeseed plants.
  2. The seeds are heated to extremely high temperatures, which causes the unsaturated fatty acids in the seeds to oxidize. These oxidised by-products that are harmful to human health.
  3. A petroleum-based solvent, such as hexane, is used to maximize the amount of oil extracted.
  4. Seed oil manufacturers then use chemicals to deodorize the oils, which have a very unpleasant smell. The deodorization process produces trans fats, which are well known to be quite harmful to human health.
  5. Finally, more chemicals are added to improve the colour.

The first edible seed oils were made in America by two soap manufacturers called Proctor and Gamble. They started making soap with cottonseed oil, which was regarded as a toxic waste product from the cotton industry. They soon realised that cottonseed oil could be ‘hydrogenated’ into something resembling lard and they sold it as a substitute for traditional cooking fat under the name Crisco. They had managed to turn ‘toxic waste’ into a food substitute. ‘Vegetable’ oil was not a scientist’s health promoting discovery. It was a heavily advertised profit opportunity, which soon went from just cooking oil to the butter substitute margarine. Proctor and Gamble were now a big company and they gave large sums of money to the recently formed American Heart Association. In return, the AHA promoted P&G’s seed oil concoctions as ‘heart healthy’, without any genuine evidence to prove their claim.

What else is wrong with seed oils?

  1. They do not fit with our evolution. Our bodies evolved over millions of years in response to our environment and the food we ate. Seed oils contain a high proportion of a fatty acid called linoleic acid. It is estimated that the average diet now contains 8 times as much linoleic acid as our distant ancestors used to consume. Our genetic make-up and biological systems cannot cope with such a large dose of this one ingredient.
  2. The omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is wrong. There are certain essential fatty acids that we need to thrive but cannot make. We have to eat these in our food and they are known as omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-6 acids give rise to inflammation and omega-3 acids are anti-inflammatory. Our ancient diets had a ratio between these two opposing actions of approximately 1 to 1 and our bodies were, therefore, in balance. Seed oils contain considerably more omega-6 relative to omega-3 and many western diets have a ratio of up to 20 to 1. This imbalance produces a state of chronic inflammation that contributes to numerous chronic diseases.
  3. The polyunsaturated fatty acids in industrial seed oils are highly unstable. They oxidize easily upon exposure to heat and light, creating two harmful substances—trans fats and lipid peroxides. Trans fats are well known for their role in the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes; in fact, for every 2 percent increase in calories from trans fats, your risk of heart disease is nearly doubled. Lipid peroxides are toxic by-products that damage DNA, proteins, and membrane lipids throughout the body. The accumulation of lipid peroxides in the body promotes aging and the development of chronic diseases. Restaurants, fast food outlets and fish and chip shops fry their food in seed oils. Every time the oils are reheated they create more toxic by-products.
  4. They contain unhealthy additives. Because the fatty acids in industrial seed oils are so unstable, synthetic antioxidants are added in an attempt to prevent the oils from turning rancid. These chemicals are not healthy. They have hormone-disrupting, cancer-causing, and immunity-disrupting properties. One of them, known as TBHQ, has been found to increase the risk of food allergies.

The NHS tells us to replace the naturally occurring, animal-derived fats like butter and lard with these unnatural, industrial, toxic, inflammation-inducing concoctions because they are the ‘healthy choice’. Our population has never been more unhealthy. The NHS Eatwell Guide is wrong.