Elisa's Green Scene

The PCRM is starting another 21-day Vegan Kickstart tomorrow

If for nothing else than the many awesome recipes they'll introduce you to, I hope you'll give it a shot!

Jamie Oliver at TED

I actually don't think Jamie is saying something revolutionary or new in his TedTalk this year...all about teaching children about real foods in order to save our lives...BUT:

1. He has a passion that is, hopefully, infectious
2. He's actually gone out and done something about it in a community in our unhealthiest state, West Virginia. And it seems replicatable.

Check out his 20 minute talk:

Will "organic" finally start to mean "humane"?

As more and more people begin to pay attention to how the food they consume is produced (as evidenced by the popularity and widespread media coverage of documentaries like Food Inc, and books like Eating Animals, The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation), more and more people are beginning to realize some disturbing facts:

-Many words applied to animal food products are marketing, not meaningful. Words like "cage-free", for example
-Other words have meaning, but not to the extent that, again, the marketing might have you believe. Words like "organic", for example

In other words: Cage-free has no regulation tied to it, and is, essentially, meaningless. Organic may mean something about what an animal is fed, but not how. Organic does not equal Humane, and this has become clearer in the last two years or so.

Well, hat tip to the Whole Foods blog for pointing me to the breaking news that the USDA has announced new guidelines for how much access to grazing and pasture cows must have in order for their dairy or meat products to be called "organic". 

Does this mean the Dairy Industry's Happy Cow campaign is now total truth in advertising?

Well, not really. There are still plenty of exemptions and exceptions. You can peruse the FAQ about the new guidelines yourself to see what some of them are.

Mostly, the big glaring exception is that there is what's called a "finish feeding period". And this can last up to 120 days. So the last FOUR months of a cow's life can still be miserable...off-pasture and fed unnaturally. You know. Before slaughter, which may still more likely than not be painful and terrifying.

But while my personal choices are based on an animal rights view, I am not one of those who thinks we should forestall animal welfare improvement until some perfect day arrives.

So, I hope these guidelines are a good step, even as I think they don't go nearly far enough!

What do you think?

Have you thought about your make-up brushes lately?

And no, I'm not actually talking about whether you replace them often enough. Over on my vegan blog I do a quick run-down of a new vegan make-up brush I was sent. Why vegan make-up brushes? You''ll have to read and see:

http://elisac.vox.com/library/post/vegan-things-you-dont-think-about-make-up-brushes.html

Paul McCartney guest-edits on Gwynyth Paltrow's Goop

And it's all about Meat-free Mondays. It's a start, eh?

http://goop.com/newsletter/68/en/

10 Green ways to celebrate Valentine's Day from BlogHer:

http://www.blogher.com/10-green-ways-have-fun-valentine-s-day

How do you "disrupt the system"?

Tara Hunt from Horse Pig Cow has a great post from a couple of days ago entitled: 15 Things You Can Do Every Day to Disrupt the System.

Her suggestions run the gamut form conscious consumerism to personal behaviors to calling out others on their behaviors. It's a great list, and it's a list that's bound to make us all uncomfortable at least once. It's easier to support the status quo, after all, than try to disrupt anything.

What really surprises me, though, is the reaction she's getting to one of her suggestions that hardly seems radical to me:

Flip around your pronouns when storytelling, especially where they have been heavily gendered. Refer to a man caring for the kids/doing housework, refer to a woman as the CEO, etc. Not only are you breaking the cycle of bias in the brains of your listeners, you will get their attention. Like Chip and Dan Heath say in Made to Stick, the #2 way to make your idea stick is through unexpectedness.

In her comments two different commenters (both men) take exception. One by playing international grammar police, and one by saying to just let it go and let people do what they're comfortable with...don't take ownership of their issues. Of course, he doesn't offer this same response to her suggestion of calling out stereotyping or blatantly racist etc. comments. By his rationale it would seem we should let that go too...it'll all work out in the end, or some other complacency.

But why, of all things, would this give anyone pause?

Of all things disruptive, this would hardly strike me as the highest on the scale.

What do you think of her list? And what do you think of switching up pronouns?