Myth Busters. Big, Strong… and Vegetarian

The cov­er sto­ry in the cur­rent edi­tion of The Big Is­sue mag­azine fea­tures Up­roar’s ve­g­an tank Noah Han­ni­bal talk­ing about his strength train­ing in an ar­ti­cle that busts some of the big myths about veg­e­tarians and ve­g­ans.

The fea­ture by Re­bec­ca But­ter­worth starts out:

“It’s inau­ga­ra­tion day in the US, 2001. It’s cold and wet. The pho­to­graph shows Noah Han­ni­bal, a young Aus­tralian, wear­ing noth­ing but box­ers, flanked by dozens of Amer­i­can po­lice of­fi­cers in full ri­ot gear, be­ing led away from Presi­dent Bush and his wife. Han­ni­bal got three steps from Lau­ra Bush be­fore the Se­cret Ser­vice buried him.

What re­al­ly stands out, though, are Han­ni­bal’s legs. Thick, hard mus­cles bulge from his knees and dis­ap­pear in­to his stars and stripes satin shorts. His calves are solid lumps of meat. Even among the tough­est cops, Han­ni­bal is the clos­est thing to Su­per­man in that pic­ture.

Noah Han­ni­bal is the reign­ing Aus­tralian Bench Press Heavy­weight cham­pi­on, a com­mitt­ed ve­g­an and an an­i­mal-rights ac­tivist. His protest was about Lau­ra Bush’s fur stole. Han­ni­bal is one of many peo­ple help­ing to bust pop­u­lar myths about veg­e­tarians and ve­g­ans. And if you want­ed a myth bust­ed – or any­thing else, for that mat­ter – Han­ni­bal is your guy.

Myth Num­ber One: Veg­e­tarians are weak­lings. Bust­ed.”

The five page fea­ture goes on to tack­le and busts a num­ber of myths in­clud­ing that ‘all an­i­mals grown for food live on sun­ny, grassy farms’, that ‘ve­g­ans can’t get enough pro­tein’ and that ‘free range is free range’. It’s a great read and a very worth­while publi­ca­tion, grab your copy now!