Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.
As of this summer, the most recent period for which data is available, more than 49 million birds, or over 80 percent of the depopulated total, were killed in culls that used VSD+ either alone or in combination with other methods, according to an analysis of USDA data by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, a veterinary adviser to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), an animal advocacy nonprofit. These mass killings, or “depopulations,” in the industry’s jargon, are paid for with public dollars through a USDA program that compensates livestock farmers for their losses.
Good for you for working towards eating less meat, and caring about your heart health! Meat is definitely not good for the cardiovascular system, but it’s important to keep in mind that these meat alternative products are not healthier, even though they’re plant-based. Those products should still be eaten in moderation, just as with red meats, because they’re both really high in saturated fat and sodium. They, like meat, also tend to char when cooked, and char is loaded with carcinogens and oxidants. (even though that taste can be divine…)
Anyway - for me, meat alternatives were a helpful introduction to the plant-based/vegan diet, and emboldened me to try out other plant based recipes. “Vegan” can be such a loaded term, but there are a lot of good recipes out there with the term. Search for recipes incorporating tempeh as the protein source - it’s a bit easier to cook than tofu, which often gets a bad rap for being bland when it’s usually just been cooked incorrectly (it requires some preparation/a good marinade and sauce/specific handling and patience to cook it well, but I digress). Tempeh is more forgiving, in that it carries more flavors/textures of its own, which are complimented well by many sauces.