Posted on 06/18/2013 3:00:14 PM PDT by grundle
Are vegetarians humorless? It’s the question being asked this week after a Red Robin television ad offended herbivores by touting its 24 types of burgers and then noting, with an implied eye roll and mock whisper, “We even have a Gardenburger—just in case your teenage daughter is going through a phase.”
More on Shine: Mountain Dew Under Fire For 'Most Racist Commercial in History'
The commercial, part of a new campaign ad series, aired for about a week before being rotated out, as was planned from the start. But it prompted outrage among activists and on social media outlets, with a slew of horrified vegetarians taking the eatery to task for its condescending approach.
“Though I applaud any fast food chain that offers a veggie burger, and I hope that more do, the idea that not eating animals is reserved solely for teenage girls going through a phase is obviously meant to insult both vegans and girls,” Jasmin Singer, executive director of Our Hen House, a New York-based multimedia vegan activism organization, told Yahoo! Shine. “Why is Red Robin insulting the very customers it's reaching out to?”
More on Yahoo!: What's Behind the Recent String of Tasteless, Offensive Ads?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) echoed Singer's concerns with an official statement on the matter. "PETA is thrilled that Red Robin has veggie burgers, and we agree with the many comments that the one-liner in the commercial is a bit outdated," it said. "Thirteen percent of the U.S. population now identifies as vegetarian or vegan [according to Public Policy Polling], which is one reason why more and more burger joints and other restaurants continue to add a wider variety of vegetarian and vegan dishes to their menus, including Red Robin, Johnny Rockets, Fuddruckers, Smashburger, and Denny's."
(Excerpt) Read more at shine.yahoo.com ...
Hey, were you at my inlaws’ cookout? They had Angus burgers also! I had mine with lots of mustard and onion.
Vegetarians have an IQ 20 points lower than normal people, according to a British study.
I hear ya. I think some of us do eat too much meat, could cut down. Still, I think some meat is good.
LOL!
It’s funny. As a vegetarian, I meet a lot of ex-veggies who tried it for awhile and gave up.
As for Red Robin, most of them are like Chuck E Cheez without the mouse. I disliked the food even when I did eat meat. The burgers still had the whip marks from where the jockey hit it.
It tasted vile, even with bacon and cheese.
Isn't the idea of a veggie-burger with bacon somewhat, I don't know, self-contradictory? :=)
That’s half the fun.
I use that story to help distinguish who’s got half a clue and who’s brain dead.
Ha... are they in North Carolina?
My teenage daughter would probably take offense - although I think she IS going through a “phase”. She quit eating bacon from about 10-13 years old, then started again and “forgot how great it was”. Now at 15 she hasn’t eaten meat for about 6 months. She says she would, but she can’t stand the taste of it. (Who knows?!) But if you mention it as a “phase” she’ll get all mad.
We ARE having a hard time getting her enough protein. Peanut butter, cashews, protein bars and grilled cheese sandwiches only go so far. And she won’t eat beans and rice. I’m guessing if she goes on much longer we really need to get serious and making sure she has a proper diet as a vegetarian. Any books/ resources that you might recommend?
“I think the writers of these kinds of articles go looking to find people who are offended.”
I dunno... It might be revealed later that the company’s ownership is conservative. You know, so they can be destroyed.
Could it possibly be that the craving has something to do with the biological need? I think so. Teenage boys might crave meat because they need meat.
I say give a teenage boy as much meat as he can consume and don’t force him to eat a salad or vegetable unless he wants to. When he is fully mature his needs will likely change and so will his diet. “Making sure that they get” certain foods goes too far for me. Make them available, but let them eat as they are compelled by need.
Government food fascists will try to force us to eat what they think is good for us, but that is only an expression of their need to control other people. They seem to have a “one size fits all” idea about what people must eat.
Some years ago I read a story about the “oldest man in California” dying. He was 109. He subsisted for decades on a diet almost exclusively of pork sausage and waffles. Meat and carbohydrates. A bean or piece of lettuce might have killed him at 95. Too young to die at that age . . . . Stay away from that poison.
-——What’s Behind the Recent String of Tasteless, Offensive Ads-——
tasteless offensive women with perpetually wadded panties need a come uppance
The staff at Famous Dave’s BBQ have t-shirts with various quips on them. My favorite is “we like vegetarians, they make us laugh”. Never saw anyone raise a fuss over them, either.
Or as the joke goes:
Q: How do you tell who the vegetarian at the table is?
A: You don't, They'll tell you.
There are quite a few good online resources such as http://www.vegsource.com/. There is an article just posted that talks about how just being a vegetarian isn’t necessarily healthier. You have to focus on eating plant based food. When I became a vegetarian, a friend gave me a book called “Vegetarianism for Dummies”. It was a joke gift, but it also has some good info.
Getting enough protein is important, but so is B12, calcium and Omega 3 fatty acids. I take spirulina pills for protein, a multivitamin and flax seed oil pills.
Yes and no. Yes, teen boys crave meat and carbs because they need them, but they also need vitamins and other goodness found in vegetables and fruits. An extreme version of this is rarely found in boys, is a mild form of scurvy, from a lack of vitamin C, usually because they completely control their own diet and shun vegetables and fruits.
But these are subtler dietary deficiencies in their youth that can cause problems for them down the road, such as rotten teeth.
The problem is that cravings are “macro”, for the things they need *most*. But they don’t crave “micro”, the things they only need a little bit of.
And this has its own twists and turns. That is, they are far less likely to become deficient in fat soluble vitamins, because they are stored longer in the body. But water soluble vitamins are eliminated within hours or a day or two, so need replenishment.
The same with some minerals, like iodine. Nobody craves iodine, ever, but unless you live next to a sea coast, there is likely very little in your food. Which makes you deficient, though mostly only women develop goiter because of it. This is why iodized salt is common.
Other deficiencies seem almost irrational, like why people in Arizona have almost endemic vitamin d deficiency, and why most people in the US have low levels of manganese and magnesium.
Men, however, tend to have a surplus in iron, which can be bad, and women not enough iron.
Niacin deficiency used to be endemic in the South, for an odd reason. There wasn’t very much meat in the southern diet, and the primary staple was non-limed corn. Though corn has some niacin, if you are deficient in protein, the priority for the body is protein, and the niacin was unused. So the niacin deficiency disease, pellagra, was very widespread and harmful, mostly among men. (Liming corn made the niacin more available.)
In any event, a cheap solution was found in brewer’s yeast pills, which were issued to all white schoolchildren at intervals.
Yes, I can identify with that scene.
Virginia.....close, LOL.
“The problem is that cravings are “macro”, for the things they need *most*. But they don’t crave “micro”, the things they only need a little bit of.”
Thank you very much for your reasoned and explicit response! The quote above (and the rest of your post) makes a lot of sense to me. I will take it into my consideration of the entire subject. You are a reasonable and responsible correspondent.
But, in that event, should we not allow the macro cravings to take care of themselves (let them eat what they want) and back fill the micro? In other words, should we be telling an 18 year old male (maybe burning 4000 calories a day) that he is “eating unhealthy” because he is eating a double cheeseburger with fries? If you look at the propaganda you know that this is exactly what the guys are being told. “Eat a salad which is healthy.” The screaming from the food fascist about how “unhealthy” a cheeseburger is makes me sick. In my opinion it is part of the femininization of American culture. Let the guys eat as many cheeseburgers as they want, as long as they take the vitamin pill on the plate. Men, that is males of every age, need to eat meat and animal fat, as much as possible!
I grew up largely before my family was influenced by the food fascists, but I was subjected to the usual eating ideas (which I think were wrong). When I was a young boy I hid peas, carrots and other vegetables under the table rather than eat them, and I faked drinking milk. I could not stand it then, and I hate milk even now. However, I was drawn to eating meat and animal fat, with some carbohydrates. When I was 18 I weighed 138 pounds (5’10”). Today, at 62 I weigh 150, at max. I still crave meat and animal fat (I stress ANIMAL) because I think that vegetable fat as a substitute is what is behind (pun intended) the obesity problem.
Human beings must eat fat (contrary to what food fascist might imply) and animal fat is vastly superior to vegetable fat.
I think that because the food fascists have made eating meat and animal fat a mortal sin we now have an obesity problem. Normal human beings, sensing the need for real fat, crave ANIMAL fat (real butter, not “diet margarine” or real bacon grease or lard, not “vegetable oil”). They end up substituting vegetable fat for animal fat and the body does not properly respond. People continue to eat and eat the vegetable fats to make up for the lack of real honest to goodness animal fat. They get fat, and fatter, and fatter still, all the while eating only vegetable fats. I say let them eat only, YES ONLY, lard sandwiches. Only animal fat! They will get less fat all the time.
There are a ridiculous number of twists and turns to oil and fat nutrition. Here are some of the ones you might find interesting.
To start with fats and oils. With mostly animal fats, there is an important ratio of fatty acids, Omega-3 and Omega-6, that are optimal for fat nutrition. The ratio is important, because most land animal meat has a lot of Omega-6, which is slightly inflammatory to the immune system; but cold water ocean fish is the primary source of Omega-3, which is slightly anti-inflammatory. So if you almost exclusively eat land animal meat and fat, you get *less* nutrition than if you also eat some fish. Plus, you tend to be a little more prone to auto-immune diseases like arthritis.
The really odd man out among fats and oils is coconut oil. Most vegetable oils have fairly small molecules, and animal fat tends to large molecules, but coconut oil is right in the middle, with medium chain oil.
When people eat fats and oils, after absorbing them, they go to the lymph system, a very roundabout route to the liver. But coconut oil is unique, because it is absorbed into the blood. So it is vital to people who cannot absorb other types of oils and fats, who would otherwise waste away.
The stomach is sometimes called “dumb”, because it is so easily fooled by its contents. However, it has different modes of digestion, depending on what is being eaten. So if you combine two different foods, that are digested differently starting with the stomach, it tends to get confused, and not digest either as well.
For this reason, neither eating meat and fat alone, or eating complex carbs alone, will tend to make you gain weight, compared to eating them at the same time, which seems to be the formula for fatty weight gain.
So far this is fairly simple stuff, because it is all about what is going into the system. But once the gut bacteria get involved, everything gets odd. Bile starts breaking down oils and fats in earnest, along with bacteria. And the mix of bacteria and other organisms has a lot to say about how much nutrition you get from your food.
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