Over the years, restaurant servers have suggested fish when I told them I’m vegetarian, and many vegetarians have told me they eat fish. Are these people genuinely confused? Do they not see the fish as animals because they look so much different from cows, chickens and pigs? Or do they want the “vegetarian” label without having to give up fish? Whatever their reasons, can we all agree that fish aren’t vegetables?

Unlike vegetables, fish are sentient — able to feel things. When caught on a sharp hook that pierces their faces, they experience pain. When dragged out of their home in nets or by hooks, they suffocate — just as we would if someone held our heads underwater. Why would we inflict that kind of pain on someone? For sport? For a plate of food? Is it really worth it?

While hunting evokes a negative response among many people, fishing does not. In fact, many view it as a wholesome family activity. But it is far from wholesome. Fishing is a blood sport; it is hunting in the water. So, if you oppose hunting, then shouldn’t you oppose fishing and consuming fish? If you’re not convinced that fishing is inhumane, please read more.

Cheese! We’ve all heard it before, and many of us have said it ourselves: “I could never give up cheese!” Why the hell are we so addicted to cheese?

You’d think it was the fat and salt that trigger the cravings, and maybe they play a role. But the real culprit is a secret ingredient unknown to most: morphine. Researchers say that a protein in milk called casein creates pleasurable “opiate effects” when it breaks down into “casomorphins” during digestion. It’s the morphine that draws babies to boobies and grown ups to cheese.

Ethical vegans don’t eat cheese from the milk of dairy cows for humane reasons, but that doesn’t mean we don’t like the taste. In fact, plant-based cheeses that melt, stretch and mimic conventional cheese have become cash cows for the companies that recently launched them. But one group of vegans, engineers and computer scientists is taking cruelty-free cheese to the next level — creating dairy cheese that’s vegan. Isn’t that an oxymoron? How is that possible? Here’s the explanation:

“Through synthetic biology, we engineer our yeast to become milk-protein factories, churning out real milk proteins (known as caseins). These milk proteins are then combined with water, vegan sugar and oil to make a kind of milk which is ultimately converted into Real Vegan Cheese using the age-old cheese-making process.”

If vegan dairy cheese replicates conventional cheese with the same precision that Just Mayo and Beyond Meat have replicated mayonnaise and chicken, then we will be able to say with even more conviction, “You don’t have to give up cheese.” In the meantime, health food stores already have cruelty-free, plant-based cheeses, such as Daiya and Treeline, that would satisfy almost everyone who eats cheese, if they’d only give them a try. There’s even a non-dairy cookbook!

The best part about vegan dairy cheese? Tens of millions of cows could be unhooked from painful milking machines and reunited with their babies who were kidnapped at birth.

If you want to learn more about and/or support this endeavor, please visit their Indiegogo page.

On Monday, TheirTurn reported that the online grocery giant Fresh Direct, which serves the NYC metropolitan area, is making home deliveries of live lobsters, and we suggested that people ask the company to stop. In response to my email asking them to deliver frozen lobsters in order to reduce the amount of time they suffer, Fresh Direct wrote:

“I can definitely understand your concern. We do not send them frozen, as lobsters are considered fresher when cooked alive. The meat tends to be tougher when eaten any other way.”

Is avoiding “tougher meat” an acceptable justification for prolonging a lobster’s suffering through live transport before boiling him or her alive? How can anyone think any of this is okay? Novelist David Foster Wallace once said, “Is it possible that future generations will regard our present eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Mengele’s experiments?” Of course they will. If you haven’t already, please do yourself, the planet and the animals a favor: go veg.

Many of us are so focused on the unthinkable end of a lobster’s life – being boiled alive – that we forget that the journey that he or she takes to the pot is just as bad. After being caught in traps and dragged out of their homes onto boats, lobsters are transferred into restaurant or grocery store tanks where they suffer from hunger, low oxygen level, stress, confinement and overcrowding.

Fresh Direct summer promotion

In a summer promotion, food delivery giant Fresh Direct is selling live lobsters. Please contact Fresh Direct by phone or email to encourage them to stop prolonging the misery of lobsters by transporting them alive in delivery trucks. When TheirTurn subscriber and Brooklyn resident Rina Deych brought the cruelty of live lobster delivery to our attention, she added that the end of their lives is awful too — when they thrash around and attempt to escape the pot after we drop them into boiling water: “We are quick to demonize people in other cultures for boiling puppies and kittens alive, yet in our society, people think nothing of dropping a sentient creature of another species into a pot of boiling water.” Thank you, Rina. 

Gretchen Wyler, the late Broadway actress and advocate for animals, once said, “We must not refuse to see with our eyes what they must endure with their bodies.” If you think that’s fair, then please watch and share this new 60-second video about bacon. You and the pigs will be glad you did.