COLUMNIST
SEEN THE DOCUMENTARY ON NETFLIX? MARK LAWS HAS, AND IT’S SAFE TO SAY HE’S NOT A FAN. HERE’S WHY…
BEWARE OF THE GAME CHANGERS
S
o I’m going to make reference to a certain nutritional documentary that can be seen if you subscribe to a very famous website on the Net which allows you to Flicks through all sorts of programmes and movies. However, I shall NOT be criticising the documentary. Well, not much. I will not pretend to know everything there is to know about nutrition and I certainly won’t encourage you to change anything about your nutritional approach. To be perfectly transparent, I do enjoy eating meat. I also think that too many people consume too much processed meat, and that too many people consume too little veg. I am conscious of environmental factors and, as an animal lover, I am not 100% happy with the fact that they are bred purely to be eaten…but I do bloody love a good burger, a steak, a rack of ribs, a mixed grill… you get the point. The most important thing for you all to know is that you don’t HAVE to turn vegan if you don’t want to, but you are more than welcome to turn vegan if you would like to. You can even experiment with veganism for a short/medium/long period of time and change back if you feel like it. The reason I am saying this is because I have seen so many people being pressured into changing to a vegan diet, either by
outspoken/misinformed friends or thanks to the plethora of one-sided celebrity/media influence, and it should not be that way. In no realm of society is it acceptable to dictate which football team someone supports or what style of clothing they wear, nor is it acceptable to look down on anyone for the decisions that they make on these topics. Yet somehow it seems ok for meat-eaters to be pressured into giving up the sausage, which is not fair. It is even less fair when the rationale for giving up all animal consumption comes from a ‘documentary’ with very obvious bias towards one side of the debate. Repeatedly showing some vegan athletes who have competed at the highest level in some different sports does NOT prove that being a vegan is somehow advantageous in terms of sporting performance.
There is no doubt whatsoever that you can perform in the upper echelons of any sporting arena as a vegan athlete (apart from most pie-eating contests), but there is no evidence to say it is BECAUSE of the vegan diet. If the ‘documentary’ is correct and Nate Diaz beat Conor McGregor because of the superiority of his plant-based diet… then how did McGregor win the re-match on an inferior meat-based diet? The logic of the argument is embarrassingly poor. We are told that there is a strongman who is pretty good and is a vegan… but there are dozens of World’s Strongest Man winners who are meat-eaters. We are told that there is an Olympian who is pretty good and is a vegan… but there are thousands of Olympic champions who are meat-eaters. Then there is the ex-bodybuilder, the Formula 1 racing driver, the tennis player, the actor, the NBA basketball player and the Hollywood film producer all involved in the production of the programme, who will all personally profit from more people turning vegan. To be clear, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with becoming a vegan or experimenting with veganism, and it absolutely IS possible to be an elite athlete on a plant-based diet, but there is also nothing wrong with eating meat and you can also perform exceptionally well on a meat-based diet.
