V to the Vth Degree

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• @Buck Rogers

  @RedRanger That video is the fuckingly funniest thing I have seen in ages! Foock me. I am still dying over it. Too funny.

  That was hilarious!

• @Nate

  @DerHoggz Spot on. I like my meat but it's quality before quantity. We had a local butcher open in the neighborhood recently and when meat is on the menu that is where it comes from.

  Very interesting write-up, Brett. I'm kinda in the same camp as @DerHoggz and @Nate, I think - I eat meat very rarely (about once every second week, at a guess), but when I do, I'll pay good money for the best quality I can get - and it actually means something to me that it's locally produced (and preferably from animals that have had at least a semblance of a life - yes, I'm that much of a softie, at least off the bike...) 

  One thing that has really started to freak me out about the meat-industry (and it IS an industry) is the use of antibiotics as preventive medicine (or so it is claimed) but also, more importantly, as a growth promotor. Have a strong feeling that one day in the near future, this will be the final straw that turns me off meat altogether

• @minion

  My father in law works for Foster Farms (which for non-Americans is where a metric to the nth shit ton of our chicken comes from).

  He oversees the "grow out ranches" where the chicks go from fluff balls to dinner in 43days. I went to work with him one day to check it out. Crazy amount of chickens on those ranches. And it's able to be called "natural" because they're not in cages, tho they are packed into those barns pretty tight.

  Then, as a bonus, I went to the processing plant where they went from alive to chicken nuggets in something like 8min. And the worst part was that absolutely nothing is wasted. What doesn't get turned into food for us, gets mixed with and fed back to the chickens.

  I didn't eat chicken for a couple months after that, and now only raise my own.

• @scaler911 as you know I worked in the meat industry for 5 years. Went from a live cow to steaks. my main issue with the animal cruelty take is no one ever cares about the people working the line. I've mentioned this to Brett before. I'm all for transforming the way the industry Operates. Read The Jungle, it hasn't changed much.

• @RedRanger

  @scaler911 as you know I worked in the meat industry for 5 years. Went from a live cow to steaks. my main issue with the animal cruelty take is no one ever cares about the people working the line. I've mentioned this to Brett before. I'm all for transforming the way the industry Operates. Read The Jungle, it hasn't changed much.

  Oh yeah, The Jungle, amazing book.  Had to read it in high school and I have not eaten a hotdog since.  Although the VMH meakes a mean Tofu-Pup! 

  I grew up on a small dairy farm in northern Vermont and the only meat we ever ate was what we butchered ourselves from our stock of less than 100 cows and the two pigs we raised each year and the deer we shot and the fish we caught.  We did not have much money so it worked well to be able to have it all from the farm and surrounding land as we could not really afford to buy meat at the store.  Very healthy stuff.  We would always sit around and say, "Who are we eating tonight?" and be like, "Oh this is Daisy, she was a good cow".  Maybe that is why I am so warped?

  Now the meat my family eats is 95% from the local Farmers Market.  Way more expensive but oh so worth it.  The flavor is not even comparable to store bought meats, esp the chicken.

• veggie tales or whatever floats your boat is fine

  I am not prejudiced to kill a vegetable either, so i equally kill chicken, pork or beef and enjoy them all

  The crux of the arguement it appears to me to be that we all want to perform like the Ferrari's we are, and what we feed ourselves undeniably does contribute directly to that.

  Listen veggies, you can eat as much processed crap as the rest of society, and that is a big problem.  Organic and local farming (like i do for me and mine) makes a difference, in health and wellness.  It hasn't made me a damn bit faster on the bike and i don't climb better, but I feel good, and know where my chicken and turkey come from, as they range in the back yard now.  Just cut brocholi, lettuce and the miss's is picking strawberries right now.

  Its about falling for the marketing and shit out there that you can eat shit and feel and be well.  You can't.  Processing foods, (listen veggies) mostly carbs are literally foreign bodies much of the time.  Corporate owned farms and their marketing of this crap and delivering modified foods to market are what are seriously growing our obese population.  theres so much out there to read on this, its mind boggling

  nonetheless, that is something that we can all kick to the curb

• The Jungle?  Warped?

  Y'all want to change your relationship to food (and almost everything else) read Cows by Matthew Stokoe.  Better yet, don't as I do not want any of the Velomonati to associate me with that writing.

• Really enlightening the variety around here, not a day goes by without further education. Just as kit appears many feel justified by supporting locally grown butchery, I'd implore anyone consuming tofu or other soy products to research where they come from, if you've not done so already. GMO crops, such as glyphosphate resistant soy, can only be good for Monsanto, rather than the naturally evolved soy plant, and therefore what goes through us. It appears the mighty dollar can cause a shit ton of fun, no matter how socially responsible we'd like to be!

• "Erebus," the first book by Greenpeace co-founder Robert Hunter, had a similar influence on me. A very dark, disturbing, experimental novel drawing on his experience working at a Winnipeg abbatoir. Long overlooked and out of print, unfortunately.

• Reminds me of an old joke:

  How can I tell if my friend is a vegetarian?

  Don't worry, he'll tell you.