A nation’s average life expectancy is a crude but useful way to measure whether health is improving or deteriorating. In the United States (and most developed nations), fluctuations in average life expectancy have been almost entirely upward <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/">for the past 150 years</a>.
But not anymore. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf">published</a> shocking data: U.S. life expectancy has declined three years since 2019. This followed marginal declines in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The projected lifespan of an American – 76.1 years (and 73.2 years for males) – is now at its lowest point since 1996.
Why the decline? The CDC attributes half of it to COVID, while the other leading factors were unintentional injuries (16%), heart disease (4%), liver disease (3%), and suicide (2%). The remaining 25% of the decline was chalked up to “residual” factors. Curiously, there’s no mention of dietary patterns, which underlie so much of the chronic disease and early death that may also contribute to Americans’ lagging life expectancy.
COVID was a global phenomenon, of course, so it’s instructive to look at how other countries have fared over the past two years. The answer? The United States has done worse – much worse.
Let’s start with other developed countries. Their life expectancy only declined modestly from 2019 to 2020 (0.55 years). It then increased modestly from 2020 to 2021 (0.26 years), according to research <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.05.22273393v4">published</a> in June. (Even pre-COVID, U.S. life expectancy was <a href="https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-life-expectancy-compare-countries/#item-le_total-life-expectancy-at-birth-in-years-1980-2017_dec-2019-update">nearly four years lower</a> than other similar countries, and it’s also <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/">below several developing countries</a>.)
Now let’s look at the COVID mortality rate, among countries of all income groups. Here, the United States has the world’s <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality">sixteenth-highest COVID mortality rate</a> (per 100,000 people). The list of countries with much lower mortality rates is long, spans the globe, and includes places with much less developed health-care systems, including Bolivia, India, Iraq, Libya, Russia, and Zambia.
Why is the United States an outlier?
The answer is not, as <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-covid-death-rate-in-the-u-s-is-so-much-higher-than-other-wealthy-nations">some have asserted</a>, simply the low vaccination rates in the United States. About 79 percent of Americans are fully or partially vaccinated against COVID, which is on par with other high-income countries. (See the world’s vaccination rates in <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations">this nifty chart</a>.)
It seems that something more fundamental must be handicapping Americans, and – curiously – it’s something most media coverage has glossed over: the poor health of the U.S. population.
When a country is saddled with extremely high rates of chronic disease — <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2020/20_0130.htm#:~:text=Research%20has%20shown%20increases%20in,27.2%25%20had%20multiple%20chronic%20conditions.">more than half of all American adults have such a disease</a> — it shouldn’t be a surprise that an agent like COVID would ravage the population (particularly when <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2022/05/10/the-five-pandemics-driving-1-million-u-s-covid-deaths/">we know</a> that the most vulnerable populations fit into one or more categories: old, poor, and rural). Among Americans, obesity — the underlying cause for so many chronic conditions — is 40% or higher in all three of those categories.
Research <a href="https://now.tufts.edu/2021/02/25/study-estimates-two-thirds-covid-19-hospitalizations-due-four-conditions">published</a> last year by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science at Tufts highlighted the magnitude of chronic disease risk. The study showed that 64% of COVID-related hospitalizations were a product of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure.
Amid that gloomy outlook, a key question facing policymakers and the public health community in the United States is what to do about the ongoing deterioration of Americans’ health.
David Choksi, a former health commissioner of New York City, looks to history to identify two different responses to health crises. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/opinion/us-life-expectancy.html">Writing recently</a> in The New York Times, Choski suggested that following the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918, there was no wholesale response to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.
He contrasted this with “a great sanitary awakening” that followed the 19th century outbreaks of typhus, smallpox, dysentery, and cholera, which he described as having “changed the way society thought about protecting health as a public responsibility.”
He has a sobering assessment of the U.S. response so far, saying it is akin to the Spanish flu experience. “We are at risk of a similar collective amnesia after Covid-19.”
That doesn’t bode well for reversing the life expectancy decline of the past two years. But even when life expectancy begins to rise again, the U.S. population will remain dramatically unhealthier than people in other peer countries (and many developing countries).
The best way — and perhaps only way — to reverse that trend, and prevent most of America’s <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm">leading causes of death</a>, will be through a dramatic improvement in the abominable U.S. diet.
Americans get <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/3/e009892">nearly 58% of their calories</a> from ultra-processed food products, which are typically very high in salt or sodium — think packaged snacks and pre-prepared foods — and very low in nutritional value. And people with diets high in processed food consumption have a 79 percent higher risk of developing obesity than those whose diets are low in processed food consumption, according to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-020-02367-1">one study</a>.
The most sobering dietary data point may be that 99.4 percent of Americans consume more sodium every day than what the American Heart Association recommends, according to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3417219/">federal data</a>. No wonder 47 percent of Americans are afflicted with high blood pressure, or are taking medication for it, according to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/facts.htm">the CDC</a>.
Alas, improving the American diet is all but absent from the national public policy agenda. That’s good news for the major food and beverage companies, and fast food chains, given that high-profile scrutiny of the products they’re peddling (and the ways in which they’re peddling them) would trigger calls for greater regulation.
Until dietary patterns change, American waistlines will continue expanding and American life expectancy will continue declining.
Matthew Rees is a former White House speechwriter and the founding editor of <a href="https://www.foodandhealthfacts.com/facts1">Food and Health Facts</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

business collapse

‘Lowest Since 1996’: Life Expectancy Plummets Thanks To Abysmal American Diet

COVID

Food

Health

Obesity

Organic Food

Readers Pass

Since 1961, the American Heart Association has <a href="https://drcate.com/cholesterol-what-the-american-heart-association-is-hiding-from-you-part-2/">recommended</a> we eat more vegetable oil because it lowers cholesterol. But how much do doctors actually know about this oil?
As a family physician, and I can tell you that, back in 2002, I had no idea what vegetable oil — or corn, soy, canola, or other factory-refined oils — were or how much of it I was eating. I had no idea that they were in most of the foods I didn’t make from scratch. I didn’t care to know because they were supposed to be healthy. What could be bad about oil made from vegetables? The name itself is intentionally misleading, since these oils are not made from broccoli or tomatoes, as sometimes depicted on the labels. 
They’re made from eight different types of seeds, including soy and canola, but two of them &#8211; cottonseed and safflower &#8211; are both byproducts of the textile industry. So they’re more properly called seed oils.
I was not the only one living in ignorance; none of the doctors I knew had a clue about them either — nor did any of my patients. But by 2003, I’d grown convinced that, in spite of their cholesterol-lowering effects, these oils <a href="https://time.com/4291505/when-vegetable-oil-isnt-as-healthy-as-you-think/">promote</a> heart attacks. By 2015, I’d discovered that cutting these oils is the first — and sometimes the only — necessary step to lasting weight loss.
We all hear that junk food is supposedly unhealthy because it’s high in <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-questionable-link-between-saturated-fat-and-heart-disease-1399070926">saturated fat</a>, but if you check the ingredients list on your favorite sack of chips, chances are you’ll find vegetable oil early in the list, hiding somewhere in tiny print, often below the nutrition label. Vegetable oil has very little saturated fat and an abundance of polyunsaturated fat — although, you wouldn’t know that either. Nutrition labels do not usually list polyunsaturated fat. Suffice it to say that if you don’t know how much of these oils you’re eating, neither does your doctor. 
I can tell you that, if you eat like the typical person, constantly on-the-go, then you might be dining out once or twice a week, making some of your dinners from scratch and, for the other meals, grabbing a mix of leftovers, ready-to-eat foods, or takeout. If that lifestyle is anything similar to yours, then you’re probably consuming about a quarter of all your calories from vegetable oils.
<h4>The First Calories You Should Cut</h4>
There are experts who do know quite a bit about these oils; they are the scientists studying how something called oxidation chemically alters our food. This group of scientists has been trying to warn doctors about vegetable oils for many decades. These experts use high-tech equipment and speak in highly technical terms about how polyunsaturated fats react with oxygen to form “highly significant” concentrations of toxic compounds, like acrolein, crotonaldehyde, malonaldehyde, and 4-Hydroxynonenal, in our foods. These toxins are also found in cigarette smoke, Hazmat management manuals, and the World Health Organization’s list of known carcinogens. Additionally, they are found in tissues of people with complications of obesity as well as inflammatory and degenerating diseases like fatty liver, peripheral neuropathy, diabetic kidney disease, retinal disease, heart disease, psoriasis, Parkinson’s, and chronic pain — and that’s just the short list.
The medical community really should know that eating foods cooked in seed oils means consuming myriad “highly significant” toxins, but most have no clue what constitutes a “vegetable oil.” It’s not that doctors don’t care about nutrition. It’s that they’re not hearing the right message. Doctors read articles published in medical journals, many of which are published by the American Heart Association, Harvard, and the Ivys, a small group of elites with ties to the edible oil industry and who also have a lockdown on the nutrition conversation as well as plenty of media access. In contrast, these experts publish in journals doctors do not read, they lecture at conferences doctors do not attend, and they often speak in technical terms that doctors do not understand — neither do members of the media who might help to bridge the gap.
Because of this disconnect, doctors have no idea that eating foods cooked in vegetable oils is the most logical answer to the mystery of what’s causing our obesity and inflammatory disease epidemics. They’ve not even considered these oils as part of the equation.
I say mystery because, while it’s not mysterious to those of us who have decided to think for ourselves on this subject and actually talk with our patients about their diets, it’s still a mystery to medical authorities. A recent <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/115/6/1445/6572830">article</a> by one of these figurehead MDs started out with a surprising confession, “It is time to share a striking, and not widely appreciated, secret: we do not have a clear explanation for the obesity epidemic.” His article went on to explain that people have been consistently eating around 2400 calories per day for each of the last 20 years. Yet in that time, adult obesity ballooned from just 14% to 42%. I checked his numbers, and they are correct. He offers a few thoughts on what might be making people seemingly defy the laws of physics, but he never once mentions that, during the years 2000 through 2020, Americans <a href="https://priceonomics.com/america-runs-on-vegetable-oil/">nearly doubled</a> their vegetable oil consumption while cutting down refined sugar and carbs. 
<h4>Modern Obesity Is Different From 100 Years Ago</h4>
You may not know this, but sugar and carb are stored as body fat, normal body fat. Thanks to a steady diet of foods made with vegetable oil, modern body fat is hardly normal. Today, the average person’s body fat is six times higher in polyunsaturated fat, a remarkable chemical difference compared to generations ago. This change in our diet and the composition of our body fat has made obesity itself an inflammatory disease. For reasons that have to do with the fact that cells can’t always convert these polyunsaturated fatty acids into energy, our sixfold-increased polyunsaturated body fat makes our cells crave an alternative fuel. In other words, when your cells can’t use your body fat for energy, they need sugar. When they need sugar, it makes it harder to burn the body fat one desires to lose, and sugar cravings become difficult to control. This was not true 100 years ago.
Modern obesity is a new kind of disease, and that means people who want to lose weight need a new strategy. Cutting back on calories in a general way does not work — neither does cutting carbs, if your cells are now metabolically addicted to sugar. (You can download my <a href="https://drcate.com/fbf-quiz/">free FATBURN quiz</a> to help figure this out.) If you want to lose weight, or if you’re a professional wanting to help others, focus on cutting the calories doing the most harm first: the foods made with inflammation-promoting, toxic-laden heated vegetable oils.
It’s more important to cut down on seed oils than it is to cut down on sugar. I’m actually a big fan of the keto diet, but if keto feels too limited to you, don’t bother with it. You don’t need to go keto to burn your body fat, and, besides, your cells may still be metabolically addicted to sugar. Start with this simple, common sense approach: don’t eat foods full of toxins; do eat foods full of nutrition. It’s worked for my patients and thousands of others who’ve read my work.
So does it even matter that these oils lower cholesterol?
Thats the topic for next week’s article. 
<a href="https://drcate.com/">Dr. Cate Shanahan</a> is a board-certified Family Physician whose revolutionary approach to nutrition targets the underlying problems causing metabolic damage and inflammation. She is the NY Times bestselling author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fatburn-Fix-Great-Weight-Using/dp/1250114497/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1660575621&amp;refinements=p_27%3ACatherine+Shanahan+M.D.&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-2&amp;text=Catherine+Shanahan+M.D.">The FatBurn Fix</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Nutrition-Your-Genes-Traditional/dp/1250113822/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1660575496&amp;sr=1-1">Deep Nutrition</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Food-Rules-Doctors-Healthy-Eating/dp/1452861382/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=eItP2&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.91202c6f-1c11-4e3d-b51a-3af958cedd30&amp;pf_rd_p=91202c6f-1c11-4e3d-b51a-3af958cedd30&amp;pf_rd_r=3P0BZ5Q1YDTBVK6JSXWV&amp;pd_rd_wg=Q8Vux&amp;pd_rd_r=1e132346-179e-45ce-981a-e36967ecc481&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk">Food Rules</a>. Her work has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Men&#8217;s Journal, and Prevention Magazine among others and she’s been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher and The Megyn Kelly Show. Follow her at @DrCateShanahan
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Readers Pass – Shanahan – Could Heart Healthy Seed Oils Be Making Us Fat_16x9

Seed Oils: The Hidden Toxins In Vegetable Oil Making Us Sick And Fat

Doctors

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) posted a video Monday, explaining how her &#8220;Green New Deal&#8221; would work in action, focusing on community gardens in her home district. But, she cautioned, growing just any leafy green food in a communal plot would be unacceptable to GND overlords, and that wanna-be urban farmers should steer away from &#8220;colonial&#8221; approaches to gardening.
The Washington Examiner snagged the video.
<iframe loading="lazy" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PUJ6o4tqwyM" width="560"></iframe>
In it, Ocasio-Cortez, on a tour of local urban farms, suggests that communal vegetable gardens are one way to take a personal approach to alleviating the carbon footprint of industrial farming. She&#8217;s, in some ways, correct; urban gardens help people who live in so-called &#8220;food deserts&#8221; get access to cheap, fresh produce, and they cut down on how much produce needs to be trucked in from larger food-growing operations.
But at its heart, the Green New Deal is less about environmentalism &#8212; a recent study even showed that, fully implemented, Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s plan would reduce carbon emissions by a number &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46421/study-green-new-deal-would-have-no-effect-climate-emily-zanotti">barely distinguishable from zero</a>&#8221; &#8212; than it is about a complete restructuring of the American economy designed to address perceived inequality and to meet the goals of &#8220;intersectionality&#8221; by eliminating &#8220;oppression.&#8221;
Which is why, Ocasio-Cortez says, even a successful urban garden can&#8217;t grow cauliflower.
&#8220;What I love too is growing plants that are culturally familiar to the community. It&#8217;s so important,&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez says on the video.
&#8220;So that&#8217;s really how you do it right. That is such a core component of the Green New Deal is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context, and it&#8217;s an area that we get the most pushback on because people say, &#8216;Why do you need to do that? That&#8217;s too hard,&#8221; she adds.
Then she gets to the meat of her point.
&#8220;But when you really think about it &#8212; when someone says that it&#8217;s &#8216;too hard&#8217; to do a green space that grows Yucca instead of, I don&#8217;t know, cauliflower or something &#8212; what you&#8217;re doing is you&#8217;re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism,&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez says. &#8220;That is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements because they come with the colonial lens on them.&#8221;
It&#8217;s not clear whether Ocasio-Cortez means &#8220;yuca&#8221; or &#8220;yucca,&#8221; and is just pronouncing the former wrong (which is kind of an example of colonial behavior). &#8220;Yuca&#8221; (pronounced as &#8220;you-kah&#8221;) is a root vegetable that&#8217;s native to Asia and Africa and can be found in certain parts of South America; it&#8217;s sort of similar to a potato. &#8220;Yucca&#8221; (prounounced the way Ocasio-Cortez says it) is a desert plant that is mostly ornamental.
If she&#8217;s talking about &#8220;yuca,&#8221; she might have a point. Native Africans and Asians may, in fact, want to grow familiar tubers in their community gardens. But growing a &#8220;yucca&#8221; would entirely defeat the purpose of a community food garden designed to assist locals in getting fresh produce and alleviating &#8220;food deserts&#8221; where delivering fresh produce could be expensive and carbon emission heavy. Because it&#8217;s basically just a giant, spiky bush that takes up a lot of room that could be better used to grow food.
Want to make an impact on agricultural farming? Don&#8217;t plant yucca.

Ocasio-Cortez: Growing Cauliflower In A Community Garden Is A ‘Colonial Approach’ To Food

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Some avocado growers are warning that if President Donald Trump makes good on his threat and seals the southern border between the United States and Mexico, the United States will be left with only enough avocados to satisfy our avocado toast and guacamole consumption for three full weeks.
But, fear not, avocado fans, the estimates are a bit hyperbolic.
Steve Barnard, the president of Mission Produce, the single largest grower and distrbutor of avocados in the world, according to its website, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump-consumer/avocado-shortages-virgin-margaritas-border-shutdown-would-hit-american-palates-idUSKCN1RD1XA">told Reuters</a> Monday that Americans who support shutting the border should prepare for tough, avocado-deprived times ahead.
&#8220;You couldn&#8217;t pick a worse time of year because Mexico supplies virtually 100 percent of the avocados in the U.S. right now. California is just starting and they have a very small crop, but they&#8217;re not relevant right now and won&#8217;t be for another month or so,&#8221; Barnard told the news outlet.
Reuters was also quick to point out that Americans are heavily reliant on Mexico for fruit and vegetable imports during the winter months through April or May, when the growing and harvesting seasons begin in the warmer parts of the United States.
&#8220;Nearly half of all imported U.S. vegetables and 40 percent of imported fruit are grown in Mexico, according to the latest data from the United States Department of Agriculture,&#8221; the outlet claims. Border shutdowns would also immediately impact our supply of &#8220;tomatoes, cucumbers, blackberries and raspberries.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2019/04/01/dont-worry-youll-still-be-able-to-buy-avocados-but-supplies-could-be-slimmer-than-normal/#82074c8bc662">But, as Forbes Magazine points out</a>, even if the supply of Mexican avocados dwindles, that doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean that they&#8217;ll no longer be available. As with previous bacon shortage and chocolate shortage scares, the price of avocados would simply rise to match demand, and the avocado shortage would be temporary. Right now, it seems, avocados are uncharacteristically cheap, thanks to a bumper Mexican crop that followed a 2018 shortage &#8212; the result of a national avocado pickers strike.
The most likely people to be impacted by the border closure would actually be the growers and distributors of Mexican avocados. &#8220;We&#8217;ll be out of business for a while,&#8221; Barnard added in his interview.
&#8220;Along with Mexico, U.S. consumers also get avocados from California, Peru and Florida,&#8221; the magazine reports. &#8220;The 2019 crop of California-grown avocados has just begun to appear in stores.&#8221;
&#8220;The estimate for the 2018-2019 California avocado crop is 175 million pounds, according to the California Avocado Commission,&#8221; they add. Although California avocados are only sold in a small number of states during the late spring and early summer, they become more widely available later in the summer.
President Donald Trump did threaten to close the border last week, telling lawmakers that if they do not come up with a solution to the burgeoning border crisis, and if he cannot find the money to begin construction on the border wall in earnest, that he may call a halt to all immigration and trade across the U.S.-Mexican border as early as this week.
Department of Homeland Security officials don&#8217;t appear to be complaining. Last week at a congressional hearing, DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielson told lawmakers that Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement anticipate intercepting thousands of illegal border jumpers this month &#8212; far more than in 2018 &#8212; and could handle as many as 100,000 asylum claimants.

Holy Guacamole! Avocado Growers Say U.S. Will Run Out Of Avocados In Three WEEKS If Trump Seals Border

Illegal Immigration

Southern Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Vegans are rather miffed that they became the butt of a Super Bowl joke Sunday night, and they&#8217;re taking it out on Korean carmaker, Hyundai.
Hyundai&#8217;s Super Bowl commercial, which aired in the first half of the game, features &#8220;elevator operator&#8221; Jason Bateman, who directs his passengers through a sort-of &#8220;purgatory:&#8221; they go up in the elevator to life&#8217;s more pleasurable experiences, and down to those experiences people might want to avoid, like jury duty, or a &#8220;vegan dinner party.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2019/02/04/vegans-are-beefing-with-hyundai-over-super-bowl-ad-that-made-fun-vegan-dinner-parties/?utm_term=.009dfc3ba8ee">The Washington Post reports</a>:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Vegan dinner party,&#8221; Bateman says as the doors ding open. &#8220;Is that even a thing?&#8221;
&#8220;We&#8217;re having beetloaf &#8212; Sergio&#8217;s specialty,&#8221; says the smiling host as she approaches her guests while extending a purple gelatinous concoction.
Sergio takes a bow while one of the dinner guests retches.
</blockquote>
The passengers are then &#8220;rescued&#8221; and whisked off to &#8220;heaven&#8221; &#8212; the process of buying and owning a Hyundai vehicle.
Vegans, known for their thick skin and ability to self-deprecate, were immediately incensed that a vegan dinner party was portrayed as an option for those forced to atone for their sins after death. They would prefer, they told The Washington Post, to have been on the &#8220;up&#8221; side of the elevator&#8217;s journey.
&#8220;The trend of 2019 is taking the elevator UP to vegan dinner parties (and an Earth, heart, &amp; animal-friendly lifestyle),&#8221; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals &#8212; also not a particularly humorous group &#8212; tweeted. &#8220;Instead of buying a car from people with outdated ideas, we suggest a vegan Smart car by Mercedes. great mileage &amp; acceleration, turns on a dime.&#8221;
PETA was also incensed, separately, at Big Boi of Outkast, who wore a giant fur coat during his halftime show performance. They asked Big Boi for a generous donation to animal charities and to swear off fur altogether. Big Boi did not respond.
Vegans involved in the backlash seemed particularly angry that Hyundai suggested vegan food is somehow unappetizing, and that a vegan dinner party would involve a gelatinous mass of beet-flavored goo in place of a true meat-substitute loaf. So in response, vegans Tweeted photos of their meat- and dairy-free Super Bowl spreads, not all of which were more appetizing than &#8220;beet-loaf.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Yep, <a href="https://twitter.com/Hyundai?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Hyundai</a>, no one likes vegans or vegan food. Way to show you&#8217;re tuned out of the future and don&#8217;t care about the environment or animals or the health of your customers&#8211;or the fact that it&#8217;s possible to do better.
Guess I&#8217;ll go eat my grass now. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SuperBowl?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SuperBowl</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/punchdown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#punchdown</a> <a href="https://t.co/KENOdu1x6H">https://t.co/KENOdu1x6H</a>
&#8212; Molly Elwood (@mollyelwood) <a href="https://twitter.com/mollyelwood/status/1092209254381932544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 3, 2019</a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Look, I can take a joke. Honestly. But <a href="https://twitter.com/Hyundai?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Hyundai</a> trying to drag vegans for eating gross food? 1993 called and it wants its joke back. Veganism has consistently been a global top food trend the last three years running. Hope your cars are better than your marketing department.
&#8212; Ari Solomon (@VeganAri) <a href="https://twitter.com/VeganAri/status/1092230714806853632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
The response became so prickly that Hyundai was eventually forced to apologize.
&#8220;We actually love vegan food and are glad it&#8217;s going more mainstream,&#8221; Hyundai said in a statement to its vegan detractors.
&#8220;We are responding in social media that we totally respect veganism and are happy that it has become mainstream,&#8221; a Hyundai spokesperson also told The Washington Post. &#8220;We also hope that vegans have a sense of humor just like the dentists, parents, judges, flight attendants, doctors and even car dealers, the others stops represented on &#8216;The Elevator.&#8217; &#8221;
They even offered up their recipe for the now infamous &#8220;beet loaf,&#8221; in the hopes that some vegans might have suggestions on how to improve their dinner party fare.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Awesome! If you go to one, here&#8217;s a recipe you can try. Glad you loved your Santa Fe. We think you will love the Palisade, too. <a href="https://t.co/Xw2X8rKmnR">https://t.co/Xw2X8rKmnR</a> <a href="https://t.co/3yx34QE7bB">pic.twitter.com/3yx34QE7bB</a>
&#8212; Hyundai USA (@Hyundai) <a href="https://twitter.com/Hyundai/status/1092204892020662272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 3, 2019</a></blockquote>
Other than with vegans, the ad reportedly played well. It was judged the fourth best ad of the night by independent auditors.

Vegans Are Angry That Hyundai Made Fun Of ‘Beet Loaf’ During The Super Bowl

Super Bowl

Vegetarian

On this special edition of &#8220;Daily Wire Backstage,&#8221; god-king Jeremy Boreing discusses how a disagreement over Brussel sprouts got him placed in internet prison and almost banned from the social media giant Twitter. Video and partial transcript below.
It is true that today I was banned by Twitter for twelve hours, although it wound up being for about forty-five minutes. I was banned because Daily Wire senior editor Emily Zanotti made the biggest news tweet of 2018 coming in right down to the wire on (December) 31st.
She said that the best recipe for Brussel sprouts, maybe if you&#8217;ve grown up not liking to eat vegetables, then the best recipe for Brussel sprouts is something with olive oil, butter, and honey&#8230; disgusting.
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I retorted that an even better recipe for Brussel sprouts a little salt, a dash of pepper, a dash of paprika, then you do a splash of Worchester sauce, brown a little bacon in a cast iron skillet, then you throw it all away, and then sear your face off because that would be better than eating Brussel sprouts.
I wake up this morning with an alert from Twitter saying &#8212; and I&#8217;m not kidding &#8212; that there are people in this world who care about me and that I am not alone. (It included) a link to a suicide hotline because they had determined that I was a danger to myself and was advocating that people harm themselves over this tweet.
KNOWLES: I always thought you were a danger to others, but not yourself.
BOREING: Absolutely a danger to others. Have you seen me in a kitchen?
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BOREING: Why Twitter Banned Me

Andrew Klavan

Ben Shapiro

Conservatism

Jeremy Boreing

Michael Knowles

Ted Cruz <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/35772/pope-convenes-synod-bishops-discuss-how-protect-emily-zanotti">was only joking when he suggested</a> over the weekend that his opponent, Democrat Beto O&#8217;Rourke, could mandate Texas barbecue serve tofu BBQ, but one aspiring vegan chef on Twitter brought the nightmare to life Monday night, tweeting a photo of his latest masterpiece: the &#8220;vegan brisket.&#8221;
Kevin Biegel, who is a writer for TV shows like &#8220;Cougartown&#8221; and &#8220;Scrubs,&#8221; unveiled his Franken-brisket to the masses &#8212; and the masses weren&#8217;t very happy about it.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Vegan brisket experiment was a success! 18 hour smoke over oak. Is it beef? Nope. But the taste/texture are pretty great. Mix of jackfruit, seitan, miso, beer, Franklin BBQ sauce made w extra sugar so it carmalized to a crust &#8212; and it did! Plus I don&#8217;t feel gross after eating it! <a href="https://t.co/BivCMm4D3c">pic.twitter.com/BivCMm4D3c</a>
&#8212; kevinbiegel (@kbiegel) <a href="https://twitter.com/kbiegel/status/1039250488481394688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2018</a></blockquote>
Biegel isn&#8217;t a vegan but he&#8217;s taken to finding healthier food options since being diagnosed with heart trouble. The vegan brisket is the latest in a series of food experiments Biegal has reportedly conducted. He also frequently tools around with real barbecue; he said in a later tweet that he&#8217;s working on perfecting a non-vegan brisket too.
His vegan brisket is a combination of jackfruit and seitan (a meat substitute made from wheat gluten), bathed in miso, beer, and sauce from the Austin, Texas barbecue staple, Franklin&#8217;s BBQ.
Twitter&#8217;s food critics didn&#8217;t pull punches.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
My ancestors didn&#8217;t fight to get to the top of the food chain to eat jackfruit and miso! Hell I don&#8217;t even know what that is. My brisket better look and taste like brisket with some juice!
&#8212; Chris Liuzza (@CLiuzza) <a href="https://twitter.com/CLiuzza/status/1041095565528973312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 15, 2018</a></blockquote>
Indeed.

Was Ted Cruz Right? ‘Vegan Brisket’ Melts Social Media

Actress-turned-gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon has made a lot of questionable choices in her campaign, but none appear to have dutifully united everyone in America as her decision to put lox, capers, red onions, and tomato (a &#8220;full load&#8221;) on a cinnamon raisin bagel.
The incident, <a href="http://gothamist.com/2018/09/10/nixon_bagel_order_barf.php">captured on video by Gothamist</a>, seems to have fomented more concern for Nixon&#8217;s well-being than, say, her suggestion that New York must pass single-payer health care to find out how to pay for it.
In a campaign appearance at Zabar&#8217;s famous deli, Nixon selected the sweet cinnamon raisin bagel, then asked the attendant to load it up with savory treats, including smoked salmon. The order disgusted a passerby who immediately questioned Nixon&#8217;s sanity. She responded by defending her &#8220;sweet and salty&#8221; breakfast choice.
WATCH:
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But while everyone agrees Cynthia Nixon&#8217;s bagel is gross, not everyone can agree on exactly why. For most New Yorkers, it&#8217;s the mere choice of a cinnamon bagel that makes her order problematic. For others, it&#8217;s the act of putting fish on bread. For still others, its a combination of the two; can you imagine getting some fish and a raisin in the same bite?
Hatred has united typically warring factions.<a href="https://nypost.com/video/cynthia-nixons-gross-bagel-divides-the-new-york-post-staff/"> Both the New York Post and Food &amp; Wine</a> agreed that her combination was criminal. Eater NY tried to defend Nixon, but just <a href="https://www.eater.com/2018/9/11/17845952/cynthia-nixon-cinnamon-raisin-lox-bagel-zabars-new-york">couldn&#8217;t bring themselves to endorse</a> the combination. Gothamist, to its credit, tried the bagel and was barely able to stomach it.
Fortunately for Nixon, food-based faux pas rarely have big electoral impacts. Several New York politicians eat their pizza with a knife and fork. Donald Trump has made it his life&#8217;s mission to convince Americans of the benefits of shoe-leather steak. But at least we know, in these trying political times, that somethings &#8212; like smoked salmon on a raisin bagel &#8212; can still unite us all.

Cynthia Nixon Unites America In Condemning Her Choice Of Lox And Capers On A Cinnamon Raisin Bagel

New York

New York City

Britain&#8217;s butchers say they&#8217;re &#8220;living in fear&#8221; after a spate of violent attacks they say were committed by militant vegans who are unhappy with their meat-based businesses.
According to <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/27/butchers-living-fear-vegan-attacks-rise-says-countryside-alliance/">The Telegraph</a>, &#8220;attacks on small businesses by vegan activists are on the rise.&#8221; The attacks include what farmers say are threats of violence and death, &#8220;stoked by social media and encouraged by international groups of activists.&#8221;
Small businesses, like Marlow Butchers in the town of Kent, have been vandalized with red paint. Other butchers say vegan activists have <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5499147/violent-vegan-hate-campaigns/">threatened to burn down their homes</a>. Farmers who cultivate livestock for slaughter say they&#8217;ve been threatened, and even truck drivers who haul live animals to meat processing plants have had their windshields cracked by marauding groups of animal rights activists clad in black face masks.
&#8220;It has got ridiculous &#8212; activists from as far away as Australia are getting involved. &#8230; The internet is the worst thing as not only are they threatening to physically destroy our business, but they are also trying to ruin our reputation online, too, by leaving negative reviews and comments,&#8221; the owner of Marlow&#8217;s told a local news outlet. He added that he&#8217;s even recently received warning that vegan activists are planning to &#8220;petrol bomb&#8221; his shop.
It doesn&#8217;t even matter if you&#8217;re an &#8220;eco-friendly farmer&#8221;: eco-friendly dairy farmers Jonathan Crickmore, 37, and wife Dulcie, 35, were subjected to [five solid days of death threats after he posted a picture of his new triplet calves on Facebook. Along with hate mail, they were sent &#8216;some unpleasant messages&#8217; regarding their two children,&#8221; reports The Sun.
Only one butcher shop has, so far, fought back. In March, chef Michael Hunter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/12/ethical-eating-vegan-protest-meat-canada">butchered a deer leg</a> in his restaurant&#8217;s front window in front of a group of animal rights activists after the London establishment, called Antler, was threatened, attacked, and vandalized by militant vegans. Activists attempted to &#8220;spare&#8221; passersby from the sight by covering Antler&#8217;s windows with propaganda posters.
The British Countryside Alliance which handers farmers&#8217; complaints says they&#8217;re working on formulating a game plan to handle the militant protesters, but that much of the vegans&#8217; initial planning and most of their harassment happens online where it isn&#8217;t easily controlled.

British Butchers Are Now Living In Fear Of Violent Attacks From Militant Vegans

PETA

After a bizarre meme encouraging adults to eat laundry detergent pods took the internet by storm last week,<a href="https://www.kshb.com/news/national/doctors-concerned-about-online-laundry-detergent-pod-memes-?utm_content=buffer24e4f&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer"> doctors and laundry detergent manufacturers are begging Americans</a> to please stop eating laundry pods.
Laundry pods have been the subject of intense legislative debate for years, and Congress has routinely attempted to address the scourge of the colorful, pre-mixed, pre-measured detergent packets, with none other than Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) leading the legislative crusade to regulate the household convenience.
But the assumption always has been that children, and not adults, were attracted to the pods, and legislative efforts have focused on placing warning labels on bags and instructing parents to keep the pods out of reach of small children who could mistake them for candy.
Last week, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/laundry-pods-can-be-fatal-adults-dementia-n773366?cid=par-twitter-feed_20170616">however, NBC News revealed that it&#8217;s actually adults who have been eating the pods</a> &#8212; many more adults have died or been disfigured from ingesting the pods than children. For those who haven&#8217;t died of poisoning, injuries range from stomach discomfort to second degree esophageal burns.
Much of the problem has to do with adults, who have dementia, living on their own and mistaking the pods for food. But a statistically significant number of injuries result from intentional ingestion of laundry detergent pods spurred on by <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/eating-tide-pods">internet memes that &#8220;challenge&#8221; social media users</a> to consume the pods and document their resulting symptoms.
<a href="https://www.kshb.com/news/national/doctors-concerned-about-online-laundry-detergent-pod-memes-?utm_content=buffer24e4f&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">According to a local Kansas NBC affiliate</a>, &#8220;Online &#8216;memes&#8217; feature photos depicting the laundry pods as a pizza topping or breakfast cereal. Videos posted on Twitter appear to show people biting into the detergent pacs and spitting them out.&#8221;
This has led both medical professionals and Proctor &amp; Gamble, who manufactures the most popular &#8212; and, apparently, delicious laundry detergent pack, the &#8220;Tide Pod&#8221; &#8212; to issue a stern warning to users that consuming laundry pods is harmful to your health and well-being and that laundry detergent should be used to clean clothes and not internal organs.

Doctors, Laundry Detergent Manufacturers Beg Americans To Stop Eating Laundry Pods

A chef in England is now facing death threats for supposedly spiking a vegan dish by inserting an animal product into the food.
According to the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-shropshire-42552755">BBC</a>, Laura Goodman, co-owner and head chef at Carlini in Shropshire, made comments in the Facebook group called &#8220;The Boring Group&#8221; pertaining to a &#8220;pious, judgmental&#8221; vegan who irked her so much that she spiked their food. Behold:
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If there&#8217;s one thing about the vegan community that chefs do not want to mess with, it&#8217;s their zealousness for transparency. Just ask the owners of <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/la-vegans-go-war-death-888271">L.A.&#8217;s top vegan restaurant Cafe Gratitude</a>, who also received death threats when revelations surfaced of their &#8220;harvesting&#8221; of animals at their Northern California farm.
According to Goodman&#8217;s fiance and business partner, Michael Gale, chef Laura has learned this sobering message the hard way and has indeed had her life threatened over possibly inserting a scoop of butter into a vegan dish. People have also publicly described her comments as &#8220;spiteful&#8221;, &#8220;mean&#8221;, &#8220;terrible&#8221; and &#8220;disgusting.&#8221;
Obviously, the move was disrespectful and unprofessional, but death threats?
Gale told the BBC, &#8220;She recognises she needs some time away from the business to clear her head and think about what happened.&#8221;
Gale also maintains that Goodman&#8217;s use of the word &#8220;spike&#8221; was a poor choice of words and that no meat was used in any of the dishes. He maintains that Goodman designed &#8220;a special vegan menu for a party of diners, one of whom then ordered a pizza containing cheese,&#8221; reports the BBC.
A spokesperson for the restaurant said, &#8220;Laura Goodman has today tendered her resignation from Carlini and the board of directors are currently considering their options.&#8221;
Goodman will not be working while the board puts the situation under review.

Chef Gets Death Threats For ‘Spiking’ Vegan Food

Political Correctness

Actress Zooey Deschanel has released a new web series on Facebook with Attn called &#8220;The Farm Project,&#8221; expressing her scholarly views about the dangers of chemicals in food, and it&#8217;s a smorgasbord of detritus masquerading as scientific knowledge.
Where to start with Deschanel&#8217;s false claims that have garnered her over seven million views on Facebook with her <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thefarmproject/videos/vb.772593006212128/1596183040417149/?type=2&amp;theater">chemicals video</a>?
Let&#8217;s begin with her leftist fear-inducing addled quote: &#8220;Processed foods in America contains chemicals that are banned in Europe. You might assume that the government oversees everything we can buy in the grocery store and makes sure they&#8217;re safe. But you&#8217;d be wrong. The only thing stopping big corporations from putting sketchy chemicals in our food is the honor system.&#8221;
Bethany Mandel, writing for<a href="https://acculturated.com/zooey-deschanel-knows-nothing-food-science/"> Acculturated</a>, writes that she spoke to food scientist Linda Minkow who pointed out, &#8220;GRAS stands for generally recognized as safe. Companies convene a panel of recognized experts in chemistry and toxicology, who evaluate the published literature on the proposed food additive. Even if a GRAS assessment isn&#8217;t submitted to the FDA (also known as a self-assessment), the FDA can show up at the company&#8217;s door and demand to see it at any time.&#8221;
Deschanel claims: &#8220;Sodium nitrite &#8230; as I like to call it &#8216;science salt.&#8217; It&#8217;s found in hamburgers and hot dogs and according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, it&#8217;s probably cancer-causing to humans.&#8221;
Mandel quips, &#8220;Here is an unfortunate newsflash for Deschanel and her fans: Everything is probably cancer-causing to humans. Minkow told me, &#8216;And you know what IARC classifies as a known carcinogen, not just a probable one? Alcohol.&#8217;&#8221;
Mandel notes logically that Deschanel conflates the fact that chemicals are used in food as well as other things in order to condemn the chemicals. Mandel quotes Minkow: &#8220;Just because a chemical is used in something OTHER than food, doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not safe for human consumption. Pickle brine and beet juice are used to pretreat roads before snowstorms. Vinegar is used in many homemade cleaning solutions and weed killers.&#8221;
Mandel concludes:
<blockquote>
What, exactly, is the goal of Deschanel&#8217;s fear-mongering? At the video&#8217;s close, Deschanel implores viewers to &#8220;Share this video if you think we have a right to know what corporations are putting in our food.&#8221; It&#8217;s not a push to force the FDA or food companies to adopt standards; those already exist. It&#8217;s instead yet another avenue to attack &#8220;big corporations&#8221;&#8212; a vague but easy target for pampered Hollywood celebrities, perhaps, but not a rational way to do anything useful to improve what Americans eat.
</blockquote>

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