Long time no see!

I thought I’d record a short video to let you know about what I’ve been up to over the past couple of years, and to tell you about two incredible projects I’m involved with.

• The first — “The Human Unleashed” — has just gone live. You can check it out at https://thehumanunleashed.com/
• The second — “Holistic Marketing” — will start very soon! Watch this space.

Cows and Carbon for Dummies

It is popular to claim that cattle are bad for the environment, and the best thing we can do for the planet is to eat a plant-based diet.

So let’s look at the carbon cycle, specifically as it applies to grazing cattle, and try to see how cows can be a net GHG emitter. I’m not going to throw out statistics and numbers (which can easily be manipulated), but instead apply a little basic science and a big slice of good ol’ common sense.

Vegan YouTuber Fail Leaderboard

“Five Mile Restaurant” Regenerative Business Concept

My wife and I have been kicking around the concept of a “five mile restaurant” for a couple of years now. At its core, it’s about hyper-local eating: a restaurant where every single ingredient has been sourced from producers within a five mile radius.

Choosing local and seasonal food is one of the most beneficial things we can do with our diets: having a far greater impact than eating plant-based for example. If someone’s eating plant-based it’s practically impossible to get all the various foods they need for a balanced diet in any one locality year-round, which means much of what ends up on their plate brings with it thousands of food miles.

I believe the concept can go much further than simply cutting down food miles, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Meat & the Appeal to Nature Fallacy

The “Appeal to Nature” fallacy comes up frequently in debates about the rights or wrongs of human diet. It is used by those on both sides, but what is it, is it valid, and what light can it shed on the ethics of our dietary choices? More…

Thoughts on Killing Animals for Meat

I’ve been pondering the ethics of meat, which inevitably involves taking life (unless we’re talking lab-slime, which we’re not).

If you have read my previous blog posts, you’ll know that I think the argument for/against any diet rests on three “legs”…

• What’s good for my health?
• What’s good for the environment?
• What’s good for animals?

Note, I’ve focused the first question on the individual, because I realise that various diets suit each of us differently. Some people genuinely seem to thrive on plants alone (not many, long-term, from what I can see), whereas others are intolerant to plants’ defence mechanisms, most often grains and beans. (Yes, it seems plants don’t want to be eaten either.) It’s the responsibility of each person to figure out what diet works for YOUR body.

In this post, I want to focus on the third issue only: What’s good for animals? Can it be “good” to take another animal’s life just so we can eat? I’ll make the case for why I think it’s perfectly okay. More…

Veganic Agriculture, is it Sustainable and Viable?

In a recent online discussion, someone claimed that “farms everywhere are turning veganic” (i.e. growing food without using any domesticated animals or animal products like manure, blood, or bonemeal.)

He directed me to this video by vlogger “Mic. the Vegan” as proof that veganic farming is both economically viable and sustainable. I agreed to check it out, because I’m interested to know how a veganic model can possibly compare to the best organic, no-till systems that incorporate animals. I’ll post my analysis below. More…

Conventional Agriculture Will Kill Us

So-called “conventional” agriculture is literally destroying the basis of human life – which is the soil beneath our feet. I believe this constitutes the greatest single threat to the survival of today’s civilisations, and addressing it should be humanity’s #1 concern.

Look at the two photos I took today of a field near me. It is the 23rd of April, springtime in England, and everywhere life is literally bursting out… everywhere, that is, except for fields like this.

You can easily see the boundary between the living and dead zones

No visible life. No plants, no animals, this land is rapidly turning into desert.

There are practically zero visible signs of life in this field! And this is the norm. This is what we call “conventional”. This is what we’re told will continue to feed 8+-billion people. It will not! More…

Fact-Checking Moby’s Vegan Propaganda

This piece of vegan propaganda came up on my Facebook feed today, via Moby, the awesome music producer and well-known advocate of veganism.

(Side note: I actually tried going vegan while working away in Sydney, Australia, after reading the sleeve notes on Moby’s CD “Play”. I lasted about 48 hours.)

The post immediately looked suspicious to me, so I thought I’d fact-check it, or at least offer some alternative information to help people make up their own minds.

More…

You Don’t Eat Enough

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you: You don’t eat enough!

This is totally an opinion piece. I’m no nutritionist, I’m just fascinated with food and thinking about how we can feed the world without further screwing everything up beyond all recognition.

We all know something’s terribly wrong with the Western diet. Most of us are overweight, many are obese. We have type 2 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, lactose/gluten intolerance, addictions, behavioural problems… blah di blah di bloody blah.

All this creates a wonderful environment for nutritionists, dieticians, and healthy living writers to make a good living out of telling us what to eat next. One month it’s Atkins or keto, then it’s juicing, then it’s plant-based, vegan, raw-vegan, then paleo, then seaweed, then quinoa, and that’s not even mentioning the Harry Potter realm of “superfoods”.

Surely life isn’t meant to be so complicated. Our ancestors were fitter, stronger, and healthier than we are. Yes, they were. And before anyone starts arguing, “You know, people 500 years ago were lucky to live to 35!” let’s just say this:

We in the West are not living longer, we’re dying longer.

Who wants a life that’s mostly defined by stress? We worry about money, debt, bills, life, love, career, whether we’re living our potential, whether we’re being a good enough parent, whether our parents were good enough parents… all fuelled by endless advertisements showing us new ways that beautiful people are having a great time.

And, of course, on top of all that, we worry about our food. What food will give us vitality, what food won’t kill us, what food will make us better in bed, what food is carcinogenic, what food is killing the planet… AAAAAAGH!!!

If our hunter-gatherer ancestors were perfectly healthy (until they got killed by something with scary teeth), and we, with all our books and Internet and technology and labelling, can’t manage it, where did we go wrong and – more importantly – how can we put it right? More…