Take the worst possible breakfast foods you can imagine and put them together in your head. Chances are it’s about only half as bad as the Hungry-Man All Day Breakfast. In this 1 1/2 lb. monstrosity of a meal you get three sausage links, two hash browns, some seriously foul looking bacon, three pancakes, and eggs.

But the nutrition facts are what are truly astounding: 1030 calories (over half of them from fat), 64 grams of fat (98% RDA) of which 21 grams aresaturated (104% RDA), 2090 mg of sodium (87%), and 22 grams of sugar. Ready for the kicker?

This “All Day Breakfast” has 690mg of cholesterol. If you’re keeping track, that’s 231% of the recommended daily allowance (which most people agree is already too high of an allowance). Perhaps the “All Day Breakfast” should be called the “2.3 Day Breakfast.” I think a diner breakfast would be like health food next to this mess of meat and greasy sludge.

The above linked article sums it up well: “Holy shit. Holy holy HOLY shit.”

(thanks, Paul)

Vegan Outreach is an outstanding resource with some of the most convicing arguments for veganism, presented in a non-judgemental, non-confrontational way. I recently subscribed to their e-mail newsletter Vegan Spam, which I look forward to every week. It provides some great tools for activists or those just looking for for information… the Vegan Starter Pack is especially useful.

Definitely one of those sites that will suck away a lot of your time away… and that’s a good thing.

The SPCA found 128 sickly, neglected pigs on an Ashford, NY farm recently. The kind folks at the Farm Sanctuary are footing the bill until the pigs are nursed back to health and can be adopted (potential adoptees are being screened to make sure the pigs don’t end up at the slaughterhouse). Nine of the pigs had to be killed because they were in such poor health and another five died within a few days. The farm’s owner, Gerald Robert Nason Jr., is being charged with 120 counts of animal cruelty, each count carrying a maximum fine of $1,000 or a year in jail.

Sixth-graders learn about mummification

And how do they learn about mummification?

By stuffing chickens.

My reaction was, “What a waste.” Seriously: couldn’t they have found an alternative? Interestingly, they did find an alternative for a vegetarian student. The student, with the help of a vegetarian teacher’s aide, stuffed a squash.

I bet that student didn’t end up saying things like:

“It comes out the butt,” Arliene Posno, a sixth-grader in Everhart’s second-period class, called out to her teacher. “How are we supposed to stuff it if it comes out the butt?

Young Arliene was then told by her teacher that it was coming out of the neck and that “she was actually stuffing the chicken via the butt and not via the neck.”

Too weird.

One of the comments I get frequently is that “humans are meat-eaters by nature, or else we wouldn’t have the sharp teeth we have for tearing flesh.” This particular argument’s always been flawed because our “sharp” teeth are really far from a true carnivore or omnivore’s equivalent. Nonetheless, for all I know, we could be “meant” to eat meat by our design, but none of the arguments I’ve heard have really swayed me. Not that it ever mattered to me anyway, and not that it would change my mind about how I, personally, want to eat.

Herbivore, Omnivore, or Carnivore? by Milton R. Mills, M.D. outlines the traits of typical plant-eaters, meat-eaters, and ominivores versus our own. His findings are interesting and summarized well at the end of the article. I’m not qualified to verify or debunk any of his logic, but it’s worth taking a look at.

The Morning News comes through again, as they take the time to imagine the discussions that go on behind closed doors during the evolution of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s hilarious Cool 2B Real site.

NCBA Rep: So I ordered some surveys. We found that well above one percent of pre-teen girls, are questioning a lifestyle rich in beef. To the point that they don’t eat meat at all.

Salesperson: That’s vegetaria…

NCBA Rep: We don’t use that word. We use “terrorism.” This is cattle country.

After seeing this VegSource.com article about Taro burgers, I was a bit intrigued. I hadn’t heard of them, but apparently they’re very popular elsewhere in the world and are pretty healthy, too, providing 3g of fiber and 20% of the RDA for vitamin A with only 2g of fat (0 sat fat). The ingredient list is simple: Taro, Luau Leaf, Brown Rice, Carrots, Corn, Onions, Sunflower Seeds, Oats, Tomatoes, Canola Oil, Garlic, Sea Salt, Natural Herbs & Spices (from the Hawaii Taro Company). Sounds good!

Has anyone tried a Taro burger before?

And one final quick news story: “It’s amazing”: Cat missing for seven years comes back.

If you want a good laugh, check out this Time article about the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s attempt to make meat eating “cool” amongst teen girls. As you might expect of a cattlemen’s attempt to look “cool” to a young crowd, their site, Cool-2B-Real fails miserably. Apparently, you can only be “real” (and healthy) if you eat beef.

I would have loved to sit in on the meetings between the NCAB and the site’s designers… imagaging the archetypal Texas cattleman, donning a cowboy hat, telling the designer, “No, no, son… I think we need lots more pink. Yeah, pink. And girls building pyramids. And don’t forget the flowers!”

I guess it’s only natural to feel frustrated sometimes when you’re part of a minority of any sort, whether it’s one by birth (race) or by choice (diet/beliefs). I mean, while articles like Is the meat-free diet for the chop? (an article about the decline of vegetarianism in Scotland which includes choice quotes like “There is a feeling that vegetarianism isn’t such a big deal any more. I’ve noticed a lot of people turning back to meat.”) are a dime a dozen and just serve to show that if you look at vegetarianism as a trend or a quick-fix diet rather than a life-long change, you’ll eventually “get tired” of it. Whatever. Articles like this one are just nonsense filler with no real point or, forgive the term, meat.

What really gets me frustrated is in-fighting. I’ve been seeing in it amongst all sorts of groups, including some you’d never expect there to be such anger being tossed around. An appropriate example to share here is the hot topic in the vegetarian movement: the disbursement of money from the McDonald’s beef-flavored-fries lawsuit amongst “vegetarian groups.” The long argument made short: some vegetarian activists were angry at how the money was being distributed, with certain organizations getting a lot and some other worhty organizations getting none. There’s also controversy about the ethics of the lawyers involved, but I’ll leave it to you to read the full story on the link above. The VegSource folks have struck hard at McDonald’s and groups like the Vegetarian Resource Group (one article VegSource wrote was titled “Sleeping with the Enemy”) for their stance in the issue and their own willingness to accept such a large sum of money for themselves.

I get frustrated because all this fighting, mudslinging, and name-calling takes away focus from what’s really important: getting information out to the public that speaks well for the vegetarian movement. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not taking sides here. I think Jeff Nelson has a point and he articulates it well, and I also think that the manner in which the lawsuit was handled is shady. But when I visit web sites to read about vegetarian food, animal rights issues, or battles against big business, I don’t want my attention to be drawn to in-fighting amongst groups that should be on the same side, you know?

Anyway.

As all that was getting me riled up, Erik posted a link on Vegan.com to a well-written op-ed piece in a University of Texas at Arlington school paper titled Thought Food: Alternative eating habits not only save animals but save on the bottom line. Taking a pro-vegetarian stance in Texas takes some guts. Of course, when the rebuttal uses the incredibly tired “animals exist for human use and consumption, which is simply proven by the fact that every human being possesses carnivorous incisors in their mouth” argument, a pro-vegetarian stance will make sense to all but the most staunch meat-eaters.

So do me a favor: find some “happy news” or share some information about good food you’ve been eating. Let’s brighten things up around here…