Bear Grylls announced that he was embarrassed by his veganism days and that he’s now returned to a meat-filled lifestyle devoid of vegetables similar to how ‘how our ancestors survived’. The TV presenter has chosen a unique diet of red meat, blood, bone marrow, as well as salted butter, eggs, fruit and honey.
The former UWE student then claimed that being vegan wasn’t good for the environment, a statement so devoid of facts that it’s now left the already red-faced adventurer looking even more of a fool. Grylls believes though that “one of the worst things for the environment” is food that contains palm oil and soy oil: “It’s terrible for the environment, strips rainforests, and kills a ton of animals in the process.”
Read more: New vegan pop-up coming to Bristol pub next week
The truth is that around 80 per cent of all soya produced is used to feed, yes you guessed it, livestock.
Grylls also makes the bizarre claim that his current diet of binging on red meat, is similar to our ancestral roots. Again, if he bothered to read up on what hunter-gatherers ate before preaching to the nation about the benefits of his vegetable-less new diet, he would have known that our historic relatives feasted on meat relatively minimally compared to other food groups. Depending on seasonality and resources, meat would make up as little as 20 per cent of their diet - which works out as being consumed around once a week.
I hope the dad-of-three has contemplated, while he’s stuffing down his platefuls of red meat, the impact it will have on his kids’ future.
Julia Steinberger, professor of ecological economics, says: “We are without exaggeration facing a trajectory and impacts that will obliterate the possibility of human civilisation by the year 2100 and that is not an exaggeration and the fact that that is not widely known, that the stakes are so extraordinarily high, I think is something that really should cause a lot of people, from media to scientists, to hang their heads in real shame and real horror.”
And she’s not alone in her uncomfortably bleak predictions for our civilization. The great Sir David Attenborough said: "We are today perilously close to tipping points that once passed will send global temperatures spiraling catastrophically higher. If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security."
The famous presenter also said "The planet can't support billions of meat-eaters. If we all ate only plants, we'd need only half the land we use at the moment."
As for his diet, he added, "I do eat cheese, I have to say, and I eat fish. But I've become much more vegetarian over the past few years than I thought I would ever be."
Read next:
- Weston owner suffers ‘hate campaign’ after turning café into vegan venue
- Bristol's first ever all vegan Indian restaurant opens this weekend
- Vegan activists to stage protest outside Costa Coffee shops this weekend
- I tried the world's first vegan steakhouse less than an hour from Bristol
- First look inside Bristol’s new vegan restaurant Pastan
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