Stars that are vegan..

....personally I hate it. You hear "Oh so & so is vegan", then the next minute you read something completely the opposite..like this. it's an interview with 'alleged' vegan Natalie Portman read down about a third of the way & you'll see & I quote:

Quote :

GYLLENHAAL: Okay. What’s your favorite food?

PORTMAN: Well, I don’t think you can really improve upon Carvel ice cream cake.

GYLLENHAAL: I’m more Baskin-Robbins style myself.

PORTMAN: Oh really? I am so Carvel. Did I just bring us back to 1985 Long Island?

Just about sums up my views on famous people & them being vegan. The trouble is to be a famous actor or musician you tend to have to be very self-centred as a rule & always obsess about success & clinging to that fame, which makes it hard to really think in a broader sphere. To an extent we all suffer this condition, but it just seems more developed in the famous among us.

I don't know when that interview was from but there is this article quite recently where she says she's gone vegan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natalie-portman/jonathan-safran-foers-iea_b_334407.html

But anyway, I get your point. I think related, that to be famous is very similar to being popular, just on a larger scale. For either you've got to be trying to fit in, trying to please the majority of people. And that wouldn't mean things like being vegan so much.

Also virtually no one really deserves to be famous. The concept of celebrity is so anti-egalitarian.

Also I liked the book by Jonathan Foers she's advocating in that article. Although it he doesn't talk much beyond vegetarianism or even really making a hard case against welfarism, the information he gives is plenty to take someone to those conclusions.

Yea, I have read a few pieces about her going vegan again. I didn't really write it as an attack against any individual. I meant it more as a general "I'm a bit angry that people often need to follow famous people to decide if something's right or not", when in truth these people, as a rule, seem the shallowest people in our society. You can take as an example all the anti-fur models that PETA have had ever -are any still not wearing fur? Countless people like Oprah & her vegan cleanse, & 101 other actors & singers who go vegan, or make any ethical stand & the next week, or month are doing the complete opposite. It just annoys me that people can't just look at the arguments for & against & make the decision based on that, not on how popular a particular diet is.
To be honest I'm more impressed when I meet a super fit old person who's managed to keep their strength & health into old age (you meet a few of those if you go to vegan fayres), those are real stars. Or if it's a famous person look at Jim Morris who's vegan & super fit in his 70's, or Bill Pearl (veggie & ultra-fit), Joe “the Great” Rollino (over 104 & the oldest bodybuilder in the world & yep you guessed it he doesn't eat any meat either!). I think you can rate people who have truly walked the walk, gone through life & kept up their strength into old age, now that does deserve respect. I think it's a shame that these people don't get the recognition they deserve, these should be our role models, man, they've achieved strength & kept it, often for 50 years or more! That deserves respect, they know what it means to train hard & think about what they're eating. Even if you don't agree with every item they eat, or have different views about how to achieve your own goals.
I'd love to spend some time picking those type of peoples brains. I'd hardly want to go & see..oh I don't know..let's say Madonna & pick her brains about ideal diet & train, yea she does look ok at the moment, but she simply won't have the knowledge I'd want. Talk about training with Bill Pearl & you'd get decent advice, talk to 'a star' & you'd get today's fad. Talk to Jim Morris about diet & you'd get a way to build & maintain a muscular physique, talk to you fave celebrity & you'll get diet of the week from the magazines.
It's a real shame that these older guys really don't write enough about how they got where they are, they trod a road we all want to tread.. when we are younger we want to look awesome & be as strong as possible, & as we get older we want to look & feel youthful. They've done it & go around virtually unnoticed while Oprah gets millions following her diet of the week...it makes no sense to me?

I went on a super-rant then didn't I...you can tell I'm a little bit tired...better crash out as I'm testing out that new vegan powerlifting belt tomorrow, so better be fresh if I'm lifting heavy!

Yes, I became vegan finally thanks to reading Scott Nearing's autobiography. He lived to be 100 by the way.

...a type of celebrity that does actually really matter with regards to veganism though is professional athletes. And here's two guys that are both at least vegetarians who both have been so for more than a year now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Fielder#Vegetarianism
http://vegetarianstar.com/2009/11/25/ricky-williams-restaurant-proof-vegetarian-can-be-main-dish/

Both are known for their strength. Fielder is one of the best home run hitters in professional baseball.

While Ricky Williams is probably still one of the top ten best running backs in US style football. And he's 32. That's ancient for a professional running back as US football is a truly brutal sport. Good to see they've both stuck with it despite constant teasing and ridicule from their teammates.

I suppose living in the UK it shouldn't be that surprising I'd never heard of Scott Nearing before. Sounds like an interesting character (just 'wiki-ed' him)

Oh... okay...
This hasn't anything to do with the original thread, but what thu heck...
I own the printing press that Scott Nearing's brother, Guy, used to print a book of his own poetry on.

What's this got to do with vegan?
Well, Guy once invited me to lunch at his house where the menu consisted of fungi that he had picked in the woods.
I declined.
...but the Nearings were an interesting family.

Yes, that's interesting. I'd love some fungi with the Nearings.

Pete, I've only (previous to Grayfox just this moment) met one single person who had ever heard of Scott Nearing and that was also online. Probably the same as most nations, America just censors the people it unfairly persecutes. At the same time that Nearing had his career destroyed they threw the socialist candidate for president in jail (and he had gotten more than a million votes in the previous election). I doubt 0.1% of high school students in my state know that or who Scott Nearing is.

Hi all,
Here is a couple of articles of high profile athletes (at least here in the US) turned vegan. I think it takes a lot of guts from these guys as it seems they took some heat from the media and team-players. On the positive side it will show the larger community that a person can be vegan and a successful athlete as well:

(ESPN) Who says you have to eat meat to be a successful athlete?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=keri/080616

(Wall Street Journal) NFL star Tony Gonzalez is out to answer a question: Can a football player live entirely on plants?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120122116182915297.html

Happy Holidays to all!

Yes Tony Gonzalez is a flexitarian. That's still something positive. To be honest if I were a professional football player I definitely would have been too afraid to try something different. Gonzalez I think did so in part because he had already had a long successful career. He was the best tight end in the league for many years. Most guys are constantly worried they're going to get cut. Most guys, even if they were vegan they'd probably keep quiet about it because they'd be afraid they'd get cut just for being different. Football has a psuedo-military (conformist) attitude to it.

Ricky Williams though, I'm pretty sure is actually vegan. Or at least nothing has yet come out saying he went to flexitarian. And he is one of the best running backs in the league. Also a guy who's been in the league a long time, already had a pretty long and successful career.

And anyway I'm vegan. And to be honest at my best I was almost as good as Tony Gonzalez. It's pointless to brag about such things on the internet of course. But I am 6'4" 235 and had similar agility at least on the basketball court as Gonzalez. (360 slam dunks, etc long ago.) But if I had had the opportunities to become a professional athlete I probably would not have risked millions of dollars by experimenting with such a different diet. And it's no wonder that so few football players do.

But Gonzalez actually could have stayed just as strong on a vegan diet.

I've split the protein talk to here
Wow my first split of a post & it went Ok. I wasn't sure that was going to go right