As long as I can remember, there’s been Sanitarium Weetbix in our cupboard for breakfast. Well not any more – Vita Brits only from now on. Nestle may not be 100% Australian owned, but at least they’re not pushing vegetarian propaganda onto the general public. And guess what, Vita Brits are usually cheaper anyway.
A Courier Mail (Brisbane) newspaper ‘Vegetarian Week’ article quotes a Sanitarium survey. On the Sanitarium website there is a link on the home page to: ‘Eat less red and processed meat to live longer’. The page states, ‘A new study has found that people who eat larger amounts of red and processed meat die younger.’ It says it’s a ‘new study’, but it’s dated 2007 down the bottom of the page, so I presume it’s a two year old study. Apparently it was ‘funded by the U.S. government’ so presumably it’s a survey of U.S. citizens, not Australians. There’s no website link to the study, which is a blindingly obvious omission (hey they wouldn’t want us discovering that it was also funded by U.S. corngrowers or other grain growers, a ‘health’ food manufacturing company like Sanitarium or even PETA or Animal Liberation, would they?!).
Apart from who exactly ran the study, readers are left with a raft of other unanswerable questions. What socio-economic groups did they study? Did these people also drink, smoke, take drugs, live in rural or urban areas, and did they exercise a lot or not at all? Above all, it quotes people who ate ‘a lot’ of red and processed meats. ‘A lot?’ How much exactly is ‘a lot’? Are we talking daily breakfast lunch and dinner here, and/or are we talking about the famous/infamous massive American steaks that hang right over the edges of plates, that if you manage to finish eating, are recorded with a photograph on the restaurant wall? And what else did these people eat (corn syrup or ‘mayo’ on everything on their plates, perhaps?) The average Aussie knows that enough meat to cover the palm of your hand is sufficient for a daily balanced diet, but I get the impression the average American likes to tuck into rather more in the one sitting. The average Aussie also knows that while they may eat it every so often, McDonalds hamburgers etc aren’t good for you, along with other takeaway rubbish high in salt, sugar and fat (most of which was invented, and imported here, from the U.S.). Were they talking about mostly good quality meat, or poor quality meat (eg high in fat)? And how was all this meat being cooked? Fried in fat, or grilled on a barbeque? And what about the surveys that show that iron deficiency is implicated in the development of alzheimer’s disease, for example.
For a large company ‘proudly’ proclaiming itself to be fully Australian-owned, to be so blatantly pushing the anti-livestock barrow, by using a study that wasn’t done here, there is no link to, and with no details to back up the sweeping claims, is astonishing. Steering your customers towards your product is one thing, but this is several steps beyond that.
It gets even more interesting. A web search digs up a sheet of ‘Healthy Eating Tips’ on the ‘National Vegetarian Week’ website. The original page has been removed, but the cached version may still be viewable here. On it we have references to just one brand of products – you guessed it, Sanitarium. The virtues of Sanitarium products such as weetbix, fortified soymilk (So Good) and Vegie Delights are extolled, complete with thoughtfully provided links for more information. Sanitarium are listed as sponsors of ‘National Vegetarian Week’, along with the ‘Australian Vegetarian Society’ and ‘Ausveg’. Ausveg is the national peak body for vegetable and potato growers. I wonder how they’d feel about the Meat & Livestock Corporation funding a ‘No veges’ week (studies have shown that eating too many potatoes means you’ll die younger! I reckon I could do a study that would prove that hands down…) The Australian Vegetarian Society? Let’s just say they don’t get facts get in the way of pushing the barrow the way they want it to go. For example, on today’s home page it is stated that ‘tens of thousands’ of sheep will die on live export ships ‘each year’. Maybe they mean cattle as well, but either way, it’s an astonishingly ridiculous exaggeration.
Just how dumb are vegetarians? The National Vegetarian Week website (the address was www.vegetarianweek.com.au, but it disappeared in April. The cached page may still be readable, here) says:
Better for you! Better for the planet! Better for your wallet! I think it should more accurately read: Better for us! (Sanitarium) Better for our wallet! (Sanitarium’s).
And do you know who owns Sanitarium? The Seventh Day Adventist Church – and Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarians (or supposed to be so, if they follow the teachings of their particular church to the letter). Curiously, while there is a ‘Sanitarium history’ page which mentions founder Edward Halsey, there appears to be no mention of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, except for on the page which discusses whether Sanitarium pays tax. As it happens, because it is church-owned, they don’t pay any company profits tax. There’s a long justification spiel about how they support worthy causes (as do a lot of tax-paying companies) and how they employ a lot of people (so do a lot of tax-paying companies). Other churches don’t pay company tax either, but then I have heard of many of the charities they run (aged care facilities, rural support services, help for homeless and drug addicted people, etc). And I don’t know of any other church organisations that own a multi-million dollar health food company that promotes vegetarianism, either. It’s interesting to contemplate that Sanitarium pays no tax on the company profits, which are then used to promote National Vegetarian Week – in conjunction with an extremist animal rights organisation. Most Australians wouldn’t view National Vegetarian Week, which is actually anti-meat eating week, as a charity.
I’m all for genuine charities having a tax-free status. But to promote anti-meat eating? Certainly not.
Tags: Conservation and the environment, Kooba station, Vegans & Vegos