© Copyright Graeme Churchard and licensed under this Creative Commons Licence.

Are you an absentee hunter or gatherer? If you don’t truly “live off the land” and buy your food from the local supermarket, then you are. But don’t worry, we all (or at least 99.999 percent of us) allow others to act as our proxies in the hunting and gathering of our food. And on one hand, it’s not a bad thing. If those proxies didn’t have economies of scale in their favor, we’d still be digging out roots and tubers and shooting squirrels and anything that moved to ensure we had something to eat. There would be very little time for art, quantum physics, and watching Survivor.

On the other hand though, allowing proxies to act on our behalf means our best interests may not be properly addressed. Cue processed foods, salt overload, no fat bullshit and all the myriad things food companies do to try to bolster their bottom line. Even giving food companies the benefit of the doubt that one of their goals may be to provide healthy food to people, that goal is often de-prioritized next to other corporate goals (like shareholder return).

Your proxies can take different shapes and don’t have to be large food companies. For instance, I’ve been lucky enough to benefit from in-laws that like to hunt. As such, since getting married, my family has had access to all sorts of wild game such as deer, elk, and moose. This has allowed for augmenting our diet with extremely healthy food that you know has come right “from the wild” and not endured umpteen layers of processing.

But me being me, I decided that wasn’t good enough. I was still hiding behind proxies who were doing my hunting and gathering for me. I decided I needed to be as close to the source as possible in at least one instance so I could better understand and appreciate where my food comes from.

So I did it. Yesterday, Bambi died and was processed by me. Was it fun? No. Was it challenging, interesting and exhilarating to be plugged into something more primal than figuring out whether you should get a latte or a cappuccino? Damn right it was. And I think it makes a difference in how I view my food. I felt remorse and sadness in the moment, but it didn’t stop me because my family and I have to eat. It was me or the deer. And yes, you make that choice every time you buy meat in the supermarket. Buy a steak? You confirm the need to kill another cow. So don’t get uppity on me. Unless you’re vegan, don’t bother arguing that this was the wrong thing to do. Any meat eater that does, only demonstrates how far removed he is from the truth about where the meat on his plate comes from.

Will I do it again? Probably. Circle of life man, circle of life.

copyright iStock/IakovKalinin

I recently took the recommendation of a co-worker and watched the documentary “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret”

I am immediately suspicious of anything touting itself as an expose on a conspiracy, but I resolved to approach it with an open mind. After all, the recommendation came from one of my favourite co-workers (who just happens to be a dedicated vegan)

When I head the title of the doc, I have to admit that I thought that it was about the flatulence of cows. The film admittedly has some strong points about our lack of awareness of the serious contributors to global warming, backed by a substantial body of research and facts and investigative journalism. However the doc has some fairly obvious flaws as well. Not critical flaws necessarily, but points worth our consideration.

Most notably on the plus side, the filmmakers go to lengths to talk about how damaging animal agriculture is the environment on a number of different levels. The film is predicated on these few top level facts that should give everyone serious pause for consideration (well worth the 30 seconds it will take you to read them). Here are the top level facts:

• Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation.
• Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.
• Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame.
• Methane has a global warming potential 86 times that of CO2 on a 20 year time frame.

The main drawback I saw with the film was the constant references to the uses of water to bring our bovine friends to maturity, or for example how much water goes into making a block of cheese. Water is a critical resource for all life, but we do live in a closed system, so it’s not like water is falling off the planet when someone eats a pizza

As the title of the film suggests, the film is baked with a flavour of hidden agendas and profit from big agribusiness, and of course government. However if you look past the seasoning and think about the meat of the film, it does make a lot of horse sense. Even if you avoid thinking about the deforestation aspect of farming animals on large scales for human consumption, there are a lot of other unwanted side effects like ocean dead zones and the copious amounts of water that are required to sustain and grow animals for us to munch on.

We all know (or should know) that too much red meat is not good for you, so it begs the question: if too much is not good for you, why would you want to consume it at all? We obviously simply love the taste. If you think about something like smoking, you can probably delay or avoid getting cancer by smoking less as opposed to more, but why would you want to smoke at all if you know that smoking at any level is bad for you? Likewise with eating red meat – if you know that eating too much is bad for you, why tempt fate by eating it at all.

It’s no surprise then that the film leads the viewer to the inevitable conclusion that we are all better off as individuals, as societies and as a planet if we adopt a vegan diet. I enjoy eating animal protein as much as the next guy. However in recent years I have steadily moved away from red meat, and towards healthier alternatives like turkey, chicken and pork. As I adopt less expensive (and very tasty) protein alternatives like beans, the more I am moving towards eating less meat.

Regardless of your personal views, the film is a sobering and sometime humourous production, and is well worth the time to watch and digest it.

Download for $4.95, or see it on NetFlix, iTunes or HULU.

The ingredients shown in this image are the perfect combo for making 6 x 2 cup salads that you can prepare ahead, and make a week’s worth of French kissing the devil.

Each salad has:

3/4 cup Black beans
3/4 cup Romano or Kidney beans
1/2 cup of chopped red onion
3 Stoplight peppers (chopped and split evenly between 6 salads)
2 Chipotle peppers with Adobo sauce
1 heaping tablespoon of minced garlic
1 Serrano pepper
1 Jalapeno pepper
3 Red Thai Chili peppers
1/4 cup of dried cranberries

The important part of this salad is to use olive oil as the dressing (instead of eating the salad with nothing at all). Some fresh ground black pepper tops it off.

My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Makes a great lunch all by itself and will power you through the whole afternoon. Add or substitute your own favorite ingredients to make it your own.

Next stop: Habanero peppers

I came across these little numbers in the grocery store the other day. Chocolate Banana Storm and his little mentally challenged sidekick, Strawberry Storm.

The first thought that crossed my mind was, ‘why the hell would someone want to turn real wholesome fruit into an organ-destroying puree’? It made me think I had just had a stroke. Bananas and strawberries are perfect just the way they are – why would you want to process them with this powdered crap? The demonic concoction will do you more harm than good.  It’s a lot like saying, ‘your Grandma is perfect just the way she is – how about making her into a hooker. No? But why not?

At least the packaging accurately depicts the cold, icy chills you will get before you have a violent bowel movement after consuming either one of these products. The frothy brown diarrhea that will result from ingesting the Chocolate Banana Storm is nicely displayed on the front of the package.

Expect nothing less than painful, bloody diarrhea from Strawberry Storm brew.

If you hate your internal organs and digestive tract, these products are just the thing for you. I hope you enjoy sitting on corks.

The name of these taco shells in English is ‘Cheesy Blasted’, but I think the French translation is much more apt. Not what it will taste like necessarily, but in terms of what kind of weapon it is that will drop on your pancreas, liver and kidneys. Kind of like lobbing a grenade into a small room.

Old El Paso strikes again

Yes, I just said that.

Most people know that you can simply add bacon to bacon and it makes it better. I love my meat, but this breakfast is so awesome it stands up to the old ‘does adding bacon to it make it better?’ test.

This breakfast is so packed with whole nutrition that it powers me for a brisk 40 minute walk to work and a solid 4 hours of work without needing a snack.

Some of the ingredients may seem a little different to you, and if they do I encourage you to be a bit curious. You can pick most of the ingredients up easily at any grocery store. For a couple of the ingredients, you might need to visit your local commie-pinko community health food store. Running the gauntlet of people with dreadlocks and hemp clothing is well worth the quest to get the magical foods that you can’t pick up in your local grocery store.

I have tried many variations on the mix below, with varied results. You will no doubt want to tinker with it to and make it your own.

Without further ado, I introduce you to my Super Terrific Breakfast Mix

2 tbsp ground flax seeds
1.5 tbsp raw cocoa nibs
1 tbsp hemp seeds
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 cup whole walnuts, pecans, pine nuts, or almonds
1 cup fresh fruit (blueberries, raspberries or cranberries are best)
100 g Greek yoghurt

Stir everything above together in a small bowl with water* and enjoy!

*You need to add water to this bad boy; otherwise it is too thick, like paste.

Unless you like paste-like substances.