Domino's Australia Offers Vegan Pizza

Normally when vegans eat pizza, they order a vegetarian pizza and then remove the cheese, but for me a pizza without cheese just doesn't feel right. Thankfully, Domino's Australia now has vegan pizza, which it released on 8 January 2018. I was alerted to this after watching the YouTube video below.

It is quite simple to order. Just install the Domino's app on your phone and then when ordering a pizza simply scroll down all the way until you find the "vegan menu." Alternatively you can simply select a vegetarian pizza and then press a button that allows you to replace the dairy cheese with vegan cheese.

According to the video above, the vegan cheese used comes from Follow Your Heart. The key ingredient in these vegan cheeses are coconut oil, which is interesting because many vegan dairy products nowadays seem to use coconut, e.g. coconut yoghurt.

Is Almond Milk Unhealthy? Sustainability of Milk and Chemophobia

When I googled "almond milk," near the top was a Sydney Morning Herald article titled The Unhealthy Truth about Almond Milk, which would make anyone think that almond milk is bad for you. When I read through the article, I realized that the article mainly focuses on the environmental problems with almond milk production. Growing almonds uses a considerable amount of water. That being said, dairy milk production results in significant water use as well, and all the deforestation issues linked with soy production also apply to dairy milk because dairy cows eat soybeans, and most soy is grown not for human consumption but for the meat and dairy industry:

Another impact of the dairy industry on the Australian environment is by its massive use of water and land area. In 2004-2005 the dairy industry was responsible for 19% of all the water used in Australian agriculture. This is more than 12% of all the water used in Australia. Cows need a lot of land to graze on (if they get the opportunity) and the production of their feed also takes up a lot of land area. The production of cattle feed is a major reason for deforestation and is putting pressure on nature both in Australia and overseas.

In terms of the environment, dairy milk is not ideal not only due to water and land use but also due to methane and manure produced by cows. Cows consume a considerable amount of feed (soybeans). A more sustainable option includes eating insects (e.g. Exo cricket bar) because, unlike cows, insects are cold-blooded and therefore don't require energy to keep their blood warm. Insects can also be stored in trays that can be piled vertically making it more space efficient. Another option is algae (e.g. Thrive algae oil), which is being used considerably now in Soylent. The latest Soylent iterations use algal oil or algal flour. Algae is a very efficient converter of simple sugars into protein and fat. Unlike animal products that convert plant sugar and plant protein into animal protein and animal fat, algae plants are clean and sterile areas where bioreactors convert simple plant sugars into algae protein and algae fat. There is no need to kill animals or wipe away their blood and manure.

Focusing back on the Sydney Morning Herald article, the article mainly discusses the environmental issues facing almond milk. It does, however, briefly mention health issues:

Even the watery carton version can be a good source of vitamin E, which helps with cell regeneration in the body. It's also full of omega 3 fats, which are handy helpers for balanced mental health and cholesterol levels. That's about it, though.

Some brands only contain 2 per cent almonds, while the other 98 per cent of your expensive "milk" is water with some emulsifiers, and sometimes the odd sweetener thrown in, along with nutrients such as vitamin A and D that have been artificially added. Nutritious.

Basically this says nothing. The first paragraph states that almond milk contains vitamin E and omega 3 fats and then says "that's about it, though" suggesting that almond milk has very little nutrition. But this is not a huge problem. For example, pure filtered water contains no vitamins in it. It just contains water. But is this a problem? No, water is important. Furthermore, if we are to eat or drink based on nutrient density, we wouldn't drink milk because all milk has little nutrient density as measures by the aggregate nutrient density index (ANDI). Almond milk's ANDI score is 19 and soy milk is 31. Simply put, green vegetables have the highest nutrient density as measured by the ANDI score. Green vegetables have ANDI scores of around 900 or more whereas all milks have ANDI scores below 50. The bottom line is that if we wanted high nutrient density we'd drink a green smoothie. However, most people who drink coffee do so to get caffeine, and the milk is designed to mask the bitterness of the espresso and to cool the beverage down. Dairy milk, soy milk, almond milk, and coconut milk all achieve this.

The second paragraph about how almond milk contains only 2 per cent almond is, in my opinion, not a big issue. If you put a handful of almonds into a blender and only put in a little bit of water, the resulting mixture will be extremely thick and creamy. It would not mix well with coffee and would be very high in calories. The almond milk content in almond milk varies from 2 to around 15 per cent, but the bottom line is that you cannot put too much almonds in almond milk otherwise it would cease to be an almond milk and would become almond butter.

When the article states that almond milk is mostly water with emulsifiers, sweeteners, and vitamins artificially added it, it is appealing to chemophobia. RationalWiki defines Chemophobia as follows: "Chemophobia is the fear, distrust, or dislike of anything seen as 'chemical.' Like various other 'phobias,' its use is non-clinical as it is not recognised as an actual irrational fear, but rather describes a set of prejudices against chemicals." Basically everything is made up of chemicals, and adding emulsifiers, sweeteners, and vitamins to almond milk doesn't make it unhealthy. To read out the ingredient list of almond milk and announce that it contains many complicated sounding chemicals is completely irrational and appeals to the prejudice that many hold against science and scientists.

The Aeon article aptly titled ‘Chemophobia’ is irrational, harmful – and hard to break describes it best:

[E]ven as much of the world became cleaner, the anti-chemical movement became so polarised that all artificial chemicals are now considered tainted. This false assumption has led to a popular demand for products that are ‘natural’ or even ‘chemical-free’.

In reality, ‘natural’ products are usually more chemically complicated than anything we can create in the lab. To demonstrate, I broke down the components in an ordinary banana. (For brevity’s sake, I omitted the thousands of minority ingredients, including DNA.) Here is the result:

INGREDIENTS:

WATER (75%), SUGARS (12%) (GLUCOSE (48%), FRUCTOSE (40%), SUCROSE (2%), MALTOSE (<1%)), STARCH (5%), FIBRE E460 (3%), AMINO ACIDS (<1%) (GLUTAMIC ACID (19%), ASPARTIC ACID (16%), HISTIDINE (11%), LEUCINE (7%), LYSINE (5%), PHENYLALANINE (4%), ARGININE (4%), VALINE (4%), ALANINE (4%), SERINE (4%), GLYCINE (3%), THREONINE (3%), ISOLEUCINE (3%), PROLINE (3%), TRYPTOPHAN (1%), CYSTINE (1%), TYROSINE (1%), METHIONINE (1%)), FATTY ACIDS (1%) (PALMITIC ACID (30%), OMEGA-6 FATTY ACID: LINOLEIC ACID (14%), OMEGA-3 FATTY ACID: LINOLENIC ACID (8%), OLEIC ACID (7%), PALMITOLEIC ACID (3%), STEARIC ACID (2%), LAURIC ACID (1%), MYRISTIC ACID (1%), CAPRIC ACID (<1%)), ASH (<1%), PHYTOSTEROLS, E515, OXALIC ACID, E300, E306 (TOCOPHEROL), PHYLLOQUINONE, THIAMIN, COLOURS (YELLOW-ORANGE E101 (RIBOFLAVIN), YELLOW-BROWN E160a), FLAVOURS (3-METHYLBUT-1-YL ETHANOATE, 2-METHYLBUTYL ETHANOATE, 2-METHYLPROPAN-1-OL, 3-METHYLBUTYL-1-OL, 2-HYDROXY-3-METHYLETHYL BUTANOATE, 3-METHYLBUTANAL, ETHYL HEXANOATE, ETHYL BUTANOATE, PENTYL ACETATE), 1510, NATURAL RIPENING AGENT (ETHENE GAS).

This exercise illustrates a larger point. The distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals is not merely ambiguous, it is non-existent. The fact that an ingredient is synthetic does not automatically make it dangerous, and the fact that it is natural doesn’t make it safe. Botulinum, produced by bacteria that grow in honey, is more than 1.3 billion times as toxic as lead and is the reason why infants should never eat honey. A cup of apple seeds contains enough natural cyanide to kill an adult human. Natural chemicals can be beneficial, neutral or harmful depending on the dosage and on how they are used, just like synthetic chemicals. Whether a chemical is ‘natural’ should never be a factor when assessing its safety.

Am I Vegan Enough?

I've run out of almond milk. It's night and I'm about to go to bed. At night, I always drink milk because I cannot sleep with an empty stomach, and my tummy rumbles in the middle of the night.

I used to drink dairy milk at night, but since I've become vegan I now drink almond milk, and I don't drink unsweetened almond milk because I like to drink something sweet (sweetened almond milk still contains less sugar than dairy milk). I really don't like the taste of soy milk by itself, so even though there's plenty of soy milk in the house, I didn't want to drink it, so I decided to just put on some jeans, walk out of the house, and go to the local Woolworths to buy some almond milk.

It takes me less than five minutes to drive to my local Woolworths, so it wasn't a big deal. While there, I saw many people doing late night grocery shopping, and many of them were buying dairy milk, which disappointed me. I hate the dairy industry. I wish I could destroy all dairy farms on earth.

While at the supermarket, I not only purchased two cartons of almond milk but also purchased two boxes of Linda McCartney vegan sausage rolls, which were discounted. I love these sausage rolls! They are super delicious.

While shopping, I kept thinking about veganism. Veganism is always on my mind. I think I've become absolutely obsessive about it. I think about it all the time. It's the only thing that gives me any meaning in life now. I have nothing else to live for. Nothing else matters when there's a holocaust happening. The scale of animals being killed is so enormous that it eclipses any possible trivial issue I as an individual may have, whether it's me caring about what other people think of my clothes or my car or whether I should get married or not. Veganism gives you perspective on what really is trivial in your life. 

I need to do everything I can, which of course means I should be a good vegan and consume lots of vegan products, from vegan food to vegan clothes. I need to boycott the industries that exploit animals.

But is this enough? What else can I do? Should I do something political? Should I start a vegan business? If something matters so much to me, I want to do it to the extreme. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing to the extreme.

Message to Dairy Farmers: Make Almond Milk Instead

Dairy farmers in Australia and Britain are complaining about not being paid enough. It turns out that the dairy business is not that profitable.

My advice to any dairy farmers is that they should sell their farm right away and get out of the dairy business. With the proceeds of their sale, they should move into a different business, such as making almond milk.

Making dairy milk involves handling cows, which means artificially inseminating them, feeding them, killing their babies, extracting their milk, and cleaning their feces. The dairy business involves very difficult and costly torturing and slaughtering of cows and all that evil doesn't even pay the bills because dairy milk only sells for $1 per liter.

Almond milk, on the other hand, is easy to make. Just buy almonds, mix it with water, put calcium, emulsifiers, etc in it, and sell it for $2 per liter (or more).

With the rising popularity of the vegan and paleo diets, demand for dairy is only going down. Jump off the leaking ship before it sinks!

Google Trends results for "paleo" (in blue) and "vegan" (in red) as of May 2016

Human Cattle Are Victims of the Conformist Consumerist Narrative

Don't be gullible. Don't buy into the conformist consumerist narrative that, to be a normal person, you must get married, get a mortgage, and have children.

Of course you will be fed the lie that if you have a spouse, a mortgage, and children, these status symbols show that you have conquered in life and have dominated, but in reality these expenses are huge (it costs $400,000 to raise one child) and you will be in debt up to your eyeballs. You will be forced to work a 9 to 5 all day and every day until you are very old, and then you retire and shortly thereafter you will die.

Even if you think you are lucky because you have found a spouse who financially supports you, being financially independent on someone means that you are their slave. There are many women who marry rich men only to find that they are financially dependent on the man. They spend no time at work thereby having no skills, which means if the man leaves them, they become unemployed and on the streets, which means they endure any abuse the man imposes on them.

Just like a cow in a dairy farm exploited for its milk and slaughtered thereafter so too human cattle are fed the narrative of marriage, mortgage, and children, and rather than giving up milk they give up their labor, their time, their effort, their freedom, their lives.

Work hard. Invest for yourself. Retire by 35. 

Whey Protein Expensive? Try Pea Protein

Many bodybuilders drink whey protein to increase their calorie and protein intake.

The problem is that the price of dairy products (including whey protein) is rising. It is getting more and more expensive.

Rather than pay more and more for whey protein, my suggestion is that bodybuilders (or anyone wanting cheaper protein in their diet) instead switch to pea protein.

At many websites, a comparison of pea protein against whey protein shows that pea protein is much cheaper.

At bulknutrients.com.au, whey protein concentrate is $540 for 30kg = $18 per kg whereas pea protein isolate is $319 for 20kg = $15.95 per kg. Furthermore, pea protein isolate is 82.4% protein compared to whey protein concentrate, which is only 76.5% protein. To make the comparison fairer, pea protein isolate needs to be compared to whey protein isolate, which contains 87.7% protein. However, WPI costs $810 for 30 kg = $27 per kg, almost double the price of the pea protein.

Bottom line is that WPC is 13% more expensive than PPI but contains less protein.

Bulk Nutrients is an Australian company shipping protein to Australians. Those outside Australia should look at local retailers or look for pea protein from websites that ship internationally, e.g. pea protein from iHerb.

Some people will claim that pea protein is lower quality than whey protein, but this is not the case. The study below shows that for increasing muscle mass, pea protein works just as well as whey protein.

If you can get the same quality protein for lower cost (and not support the dairy industry), then why not opt for pea protein?

RESULTS: Results showed a significant time effect for biceps brachii muscle thickness (P < 0.0001). Thickness increased from 24.9 ± 3.8 mm to 26.9 ± 4.1 mm and 27.3 ± 4.4 mm at D0, D42 and D84, respectively, with only a trend toward significant differences between groups (P = 0.09). Performing a sensitivity study on the weakest participants (with regards to strength at inclusion), thickness increases were significantly different between groups (+20.2 ± 12.3%, +15.6 ± 13.5% and +8.6 ± 7.3% for Pea, Whey and Placebo, respectively; P < 0.05). Increases in thickness were significantly greater in the Pea group as compared to Placebo whereas there was no difference between Whey and the two other conditions. Muscle strength also increased with time with no statistical difference between groups.

CONCLUSIONS: In addition to an appropriate training, the supplementation with pea protein promoted a greater increase of muscle thickness as compared to Placebo and especially for people starting or returning to a muscular strengthening. Since no difference was obtained between the two protein groups, vegetable pea proteins could be used as an alternative to Whey-based dietary products.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25628520/