AntoniMaroto.com

This blog remains online, but it's not being updated anymore.

Instead, further updates are only taking place on my new website AntoniMaroto.com.

See you there!

Thank you,

Antoni Maroto

Fish Are Not Plants

On my post "Vegetarian," I spoke about the existence of certain people calling themselves vegetarians: they eat a plant-based diet, but they include fish on it. These people are known as pescetarians. Thus, I thought I was going to be one, but that changed when I learned that fish are actually not needed as food.

First of all, a vegetarian is a person who does not eat animals. As far as I am concerned, fish have always been cold-blooded water-dwelling animals. Indeed, since they have a nervous system and pain receptors, fish feel pain and suffer like all other animals.

Why Go Veg?

In 2007, I chose to become a vegetarian. Many of you may know, since I have already written about it. If not, I invite you to follow the previous link.

Today, I would like to speak about the different reasons to choose vegetarianism in our lives:

Warding off disease. Vegetarian diets are healthier than the average American diet, particularly in preventing, treating or reversing heart disease and reducing the risk of cancer. A low-fat vegetarian diet is the single most effective way to stop the progression of coronary artery disease or prevent it entirely. Cardiovascular disease kills 1 million Americans annually and is the leading cause of death in the United States. 

However, the mortality rate for cardiovascular disease is lower in vegetarians than in non-vegetarians. A vegetarian diet is inherently healthy, because vegetarians consume less animal fat and cholesterol; vegans, indeed, consume no animal fat or cholesterol. Instead, we consume more fiber and more antioxidant-rich produce.

Keeping your weight down. The standard American diet—high in saturated fats and processed foods and low in plant-based foods and complex carbohydrates—is making us fat and killing us slowly. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a division of the CDC, the National Center for Health Statistics, 64% of adults and 15% of children aged 6 to 19 are overweight; and are at risk of weight-related illnesses, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Overweight people who start following a low-fat, vegetarian diet will lose an average of 24 pounds in the first year and keep off that weight 5 years later. Therefore, one can actually lose weight without counting calories or carbohydrates, and without measuring portions or feeling hungry.

Living longer. If you switch from the standard American diet to a vegetarian diet, you can add about 13 healthy years to your life. People who consume saturated, four-legged fat have a shorter life span and more disability at the end of their lives. Animal products clog your arteries, zap your energy and slow down your immune system. Meat eaters also experience accelerated cognitive and sexual dysfunction at a younger age.

For instance, Residents of Okinawa, Japan, have the longest life expectancy of any Japanese; and likely the longest life expectancy of anyone in the world, according to a 30-year study of more than 600 Okinawan centenarians. Their secret: a low-calorie diet of unrefined complex carbohydrates, fiber-rich fruits and vegetables, and soy.

Slaughterhouse

I wrote "Slaughterhouse" in 2008 for Go Ape - a band in which I was the lead singer.

These next words describe the miserable life of animals in factory farms:

Welcome to your worst nightmare... reality!

I cannot hide it

I can’t be quiet

About your values

About your acts

I am gonna try it

You gonna crack

Enter this cage

Spend all day

In this position

Fulfill my mission

Forget emotions

Insane corrosion

Oh, you’re just an object

Of my possession

C’mon now feed my obsession

Free me, free me now...

Time to go out

To slaughterhouse

You’ll see the light

Paradise

Brothers and sisters

Ahead and behind

I smell the fear

The pain of death

Try to resist

You may escape

Upside down

Screaming loud!

Oh, I feel the knife

Through my throat

Oh, I feel my blood

Pouring down...

Someday you will pay

Someday you will suffer... your desires

If you follow the link above, you will be able to listen to a demo of this song.

Lastly, I would like to stress that I do not mean to be judgmental, even though I believe in raising awareness when it comes to knowing how food is currently being produced.

READ: Vegetarian

Vegetarian

Not long ago, I wrote an entry called "Books, Mayim and Vegetarianism", in which I mentioned that for this year's World Book Day I was given as a gift a Mayim Bialik book called "Mayim's Vegan Table".

This post, though, is not going to be about that awesome book, but about how I chose a colorful and tasty life as a vegetarian in 2007.

At age 9, I learned at school that vegetarians are those people who abstain from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, fish, seafood and the flesh of any other animal), and may also include abstention from by-products of animal slaughter - By the way, I do not intend to be bitchy, but all of you who eat a plant-based diet including fish and call yourselves vegetarians need to stop it: the term for you is pescetarians. Remember, please, that vegetarians do not eat animals.

Books, Mayim and Vegetarianism

Today, April 23rd, is a Catalan holiday called La Diada de Sant Jordi (Saint George's Day), also known as El dia de la Rosa (The Day of the Rose) or El dia del Llibre (World Book Day).

It shares some similarities to Valentine's Day. Indeed, the main event is the exchange of gifts between loved ones. Historically, men gave women roses, and women gave men a book to celebrate the occasion. In modern times, though, the mutual exchange of roses and/or books might be performed anyway regardless of the gender.

While roses have been associated with this day since medieval times, the giving of books is a more recent tradition originating in 1923, when a bookseller started to promote the holiday as a way to commemorate the nearly simultaneous deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare on April 23rd, 1616.

Catalonia exported this tradition of the book and the rose to the rest of the world: in 1995, UNESCO adopted April 23rd as the World Book Day.

This year, my gift was a book I had been waiting to own for some time now: