Well, as a blogger, I'm very opinionated as you all have observed from my posts. But, I don't want to be thought of as a negative nelly who doesn't see the good in anything. So, let's start off with the benefits of the Oprah episode before I rant about why I got annoyed watching it:
- Publicized veganism
- Showed your everyday people losing lots of weight in a week and feeling really good about themselves
- Advertized that you don't starve when you're vegan, and you have many delicious vegan options, more than most people know about
- Kathy Freston is sooo rad
- Showed a slaughterhouse
There you have it, the cool things about the episode.
This part of my post will explain why watching this episode made me roll my eyes every other minute.
Michael Pollen
Congrats for being one of the most influential people in the world, and for showing us basically impossible ways for average Americans to eat to try and eat right. (Oh, and for having your own section of this post.) I mean in this economy how are working class families going to afford to drive to who knows where to buy super expensive meat and other animal products you can so live without! Must be nice to sit on your high horse (and you looked like it the way your were sitting on the show so arrogantly) and spew that to the Amercian public. The truth is..There is something wrong with eating animals. 99.9% are not treated like the cattle they showed or like the animals you so lovingly care for before you eat them.
I did, however, love the remark he made about the footage,"If you can't watch it, don't eat it." But, that was the one thing that I appreciated from his mouth. In my opinion, Pollen only agrees with himself. Pollen is a wealthy author who isn't exactly easy to relate to about diets. So for him to put his own spin on the perfect diet was super lame and ridiculous.
Way to go, Cargill, for making yourselves look like the nicest people and slaughterhouse ever. And way to go Temple Grandin for designing their wondeful, peaceful place where cows are packed in to be hung upside down and killed. Peaceful.
Obviously, that's sarcasm. This footage really bugged me. Not because it was hard to watch, it was very easy to watch compared to other footage I've seen, like the dairy farms. The catch was was that Cargill wouldn't allow footage to be taken of the actual killing or the bolt being shot into their heads supposedly rendering them brain dead. You didn't see that cow get hung upside down, have it's throat slit and being bled to death. You only saw Lisa Ling's reaction which is certainly not going to change meat eaters, especially after hearing that Lisa Ling continued eating meat after that.
How do you even freaking know those cows are brain dead?! We don't.
We saw a carefully orchestrated show for the public in a very clean slaughterhouse. The vast majority are not so nice and clean with a friendly lady showing you her sparkly house of murder.
Cargill mentioned that they feed their cows corn. Hello! Cows don't eat corn in a natural environment!
"We take a lot of pride in the work we do in the facility."- The general manager of the Cargill slaughterhouse. Yeah. Because you should have a lot of pride in murdering these innocent animals.
Where's the dairy and egg footage?
The whole episode was vegan themed! So why didn't they show dairy and egg footage? Like Kathy Freston said on Oprah, 9 out of the 10 billion animals are chickens and turkeys! And they didn't show the footage there?!
So many people cannot live without cheese, or so they think, so why didn't they show dairy farm footage and hear some clarification on how cows produce so much milk for us to basically breast feed off of?
If I was a vegetarian who saw dairy and egg farm footage, I'd so make the conversion to veganism. And I think many others would, too.
The End...
In the end, this episode pissed me off more than anything. Hearing Pollan's annoying remarks, and Cargill's general manager's lies and her wanting to be friends with vegans B.S. was just lame.
That being said, hats off to Kathy Freston for pushing veganism, you go girl! It must be hard to sit there with a pretty smile hearing the other guests say there is nothing wrong with eating animals.
Oprah, just friggin go vegan.
5 comments:
Veganism on Oprah has done wonders for the vegan community. Almost outweighs all the stupid new age stuff she does on her show.
I'm not sure if you were making a jab at Temple Grandin but you must realise she has done so much to further animal rights in factory farms and to entirely discredit her work is completely unfair. Just because she is not vegetarian doesn't mean she doesn't love animals. She knows her stuff and understands animals. Things aren't always black and white.
PS Glad you hate Pollen too and I love your blog.
I watched this yesterday, too, and was amazed at both how good it was for the cause and how much it wasn't ideal. My son, who is about your age, was very angry at some of the statements but I felt it was a realistic portrayal of how the average American feels, so it is probably good to acknowledge it might not be easy. I really liked the angry woman who threw her veggie burger away ... but then pressed on to complete 21 days because she believed that she might be addicted. That was huge! Just the exposure to Meatout Monday along will bring this so much closer to the masses.
Clara, this is my first comment to you, but I have followed you for a while, being a friend of a family member. You are so smart and you are wonderful and it is your generation that is going to make a difference. It must be so frustrating to watch "grown ups" make such a mess of things, but we are old and set in our ways. But people like you are going to change things, they are going to make it happen. Thank you, honey, for making the world a better place. :)
Sorry Raeschel, but Temple Grandin has not furthered animal rights. She has served as a publicity tool for the animal exploitation industry. She may "love" animals, but not in any kind of way you or I would ever want to be loved. So please understand that it is unlikely any non-human animal really wants to be "loved" by Temple Grandin either. She has done more to injure the animal rights cause than further it by giving corporations a way to sell the idea that their killing is done "humanely," something you would never accept if it was being said about human beings destined for a dinner plate. I would also point out I think it is very exploitative the way the industries use her story and disability to promote their killing machines.
Thanks Clara for this great post!
I agree about the orchestrated slaughterhouse show. Immediately after the Cargill general manager said "I believe that this is the natural way of things" they went on to say that the only part of the process they cannot show us is the actually killing of the animal. If it's the natural way of things, then why can't they actually SHOW that to us? Why is it so hard to watch if it's the way things are supposed to be?
Temple Grandin reminds me of the Nazis who designed the most efficient and least stressful ways to kill the Jews. They accomplished this by tricking them from understanding what was about to happen. They would tell them they were just going to take showers and then they poison gassed them so they end up in a big heaping pile of naked corpses...SURPRISE! same thing Grandin does. This just makes the killing EASIER on the killers. Nazis were all about efficiency, so is the slaughter industry. A clueless calm cow, clueless calm human is easier to kill. It's all very sick.
Grandin is little more than part of a complex killing machine. She is employed by an industry that murders millions of animals in order to make their task more efficient and therefore more profitable.
And, I believe that humane meat is a myth. Even if we all tried to eat like Michael Pollon, it would not be possible for us all to keep eating the massive amounts of meat we eat today. We just don't have the land and resources. I respect Michael Pollan and agree with many things he is doing, but promoting "humane" "free range" meat doesn't solve anything in my opinion.
This show definitely didn't show as much as I hoped they would. You definitely don't get the whole picture of the problem just by watching this show... there are so many other reasons to go vegan that Kathy didn't get to touch.
Hahaa Clara You are hilarious. I totally relate to your humour and sarcasm.
I haven't watched that oprah but from what you said i would be pissed too!
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