Veggie Goes Vegan

Starbucks ends use of cochineal extract in response to furor

 As I first shared on March 29, we’ve learned that we fell short of your expectations by using natural cochineal extract as a colorant in four food and two beverage offerings in the United States. Our commitment to you, our customers, is to serve the highest quality products available. As our customers you expect and deserve better – and we promise to do better.

via blogs.starbucks.com

Online activation and agitation works.

End of story.

A vegan barista forwarded a picture of the changed ingredient formulation of Starbucks's strawberry frappucino mixture to a vegan bloggers. Firestorm ensued. Starbucks reviewed and is changing their change.

if you ever wonder if it's worth it to raise your voice, wonder no more.

SOPA
Komen-Planned Parenthood
JC Penney-Million Moms

Just these last few months real online outrage has spurred real offline change.

This is, IMO, inarguably awesome.

Martha Stewart on Factory Farms

Marths Stewart is not a vegan, but her daughter is, and she has incerasingly found ways to spotlight vegan and vegetarian food and issues. Last year she had an entire vegan episode, which I've saved on my TiVo.

Now she has recorded a video message on behalf of Farm Sanctuary, deploring the conditions for millions of factory farmed animals.

It's a simple powerful message: We should say "no" to cruelty, no matter what we eat.

Sure, I could be a purist and say that any animal you eat eventually experienced some cruelty. That being vegan is the only way to eschew cruelty, but I would rather every meat eater *care* about the conditions the animals they eat are raised in, and that they'd change their purchasing habits based on caring. 

Some change is better than no change. 'Cause the animals in this Martha Stewart video need a lot of change.

Today at the Farmer's Market: Beautiful Radichio

I didn't buy any produce this weekend at the market, because I'm traveling this coming week, and I still have some beautiful greens to try to use up tonight and tomorrow before I leave.

But Icouldn't resist taking this shot of beautiful radichio. It seemed darker than typical, and I think Project Runway should do a challenge to make me a dress out of this gorgeous stuff:

Did you buy any beautiful food this weekend?

QuarryGirl is now Twitter-only :(

Just found out via SuperVegan that QuarryGirl, an L.A.-based vegan blog, has stopped posting. Now this isn't like Erik Marcus over at Vegan.com, who merely stopped posting daily on his blog, but still posts regularly (far more regularly than I, I should point out). No, QuarryGirl is now only Twittering.

QuarryGirl is probably most famous for doing the in-depth analysis of local vegan restaurant food and revealing that many items that were prupotedly "vegan" were anything but. That was called Operation Pancake. I think QuarryGirl also broke the story about VegNews using stockphotography of real meat dishes to accompany vegan recipes.

But mostly she created the ultimte guide to being a Los Angeles vegan, and traveled quite a bit too.

Hers was a strong, determined blogging voice that definitely went above and beyond the usual vegan blogger's approach.

Twitter is not, in my opinion, the same kind of venue, and her move to Twitter indicates she won't be doing the same kind of substantive original content she was doing. And that's a shame.

Thanks for all your work, QuarryGirl, you'll be missed. 

Happy Vegan Holidays!

Here is what I'm bringing to my mom's house tonight for family dinner:

 

This is my go-to dish all autumn and winter long. It is:

Yukon Gold potatoes
Yams
Golden Beets
Turnips
Brussels Sprouts
Butternut Squash
Cauliflower

Cut all of the above into similar sized chunks and pieces. Slather on olive oil, sea salt, fresh ground pepper, garlic powder and cinnamon.

I get in there with my hands and make sure every piece is coated. The cinnamon is the KEY ingredient.

Roast in a 375-400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes. It's ready when you can pierce the pieces with a fork and everything is bubbly and seems almost caramelized.

Happy Everything to Everybody. Enjoy your day! I'll be digging into the above and quite happy, I can assure you :)

Vegan MoFo Day 6: An update on Bob's Red Mill

As I wrote last week, vegans were up in arms over a planned bequest from Bob and Charlee Moore to OHSU, an institutition know for its animal research.

I thought I should update that story, given both the Moores and the university responded.

Here is the statement from the Moores, including this excerpt:

I assure you that no part of our donation will be used to fund animal research. It was never our intent that any of our gift be used in that way. We have discussed these concerns with OHSU and reaffirmed their commitment that our donation will only be used to improve nutrition and wellness in a manner consistent with our intent. 

And here is the accompanying statement from the university, including this excerpt:

We understand that there have been questions about how funds from the Moore gift will be used, and we would like to offer this additional information.

We will honor the intent of their gift explicitly — as we do with every philanthropic commitment. We are at the earliest stages of identifying those specific activities that best meet their philanthropic intent — and that will have the broadest community impact in the shortest timeframe.

I actually find the full university statement kind of squirrely.

They list how they will use the money, but they never explicitly say how they won't use the money, namey on animal research.

And of course some folks are pointing out that with their non-animal research more fully funded they have more money to spread around to other intiatives, including animal-based ones.

But this is certainly more clarity and provides more comfort than we had last week, don't you think?

 

Vegan MoFo Day 1: My interview with Clean Food's Terry Walters is live

I met Terry Walters last month at the BlogHer Handmade/The Creative Connection event, and right away asked her if I could interview her for BlogHer. She said yes, a week later we were on the phone, and we decided to publish the interview as a kick-off ot both World Vegetarian Month and VeganMoFo.

Read the whole thing...lots of great information about food, health...and also self-publishing!

Bonus, in case you missed it: I also got to interview Kathy Freston a couple of months ago.

Hearing the warm wonderful perspectives of these two great ladies is a great way to kick off VeganMoFo.

Enjoy!

Updated: Bob's Red Mill Deals a Blow to Their Vegan Customers

Update: Statements have been issued by both the Moores and the OHSU. You can find links and excerpts here.

====================================

I recently toured the Bob's Red Mill facility in Portland. Being with a group of vegans, the tour leader made much of the vegan options in their restaurant and their vegan-friendly offerings in general. Vegans, in turn, give Bob's Red Mill and its products a lot of love in their cooking and baking...especially gluten-free vegans, given Bob's healthy line-up of GF supplies.

So, there's disappointment in VeganLand this week as Bob Moore  and his wife Charlee have made a massive donation to an Oregon university is notorious for doing animal research. There's ongoing debate, including someone form the university itself weighing in over at The Informed Vegan.

It brings up a classic dilemma: How do you state your displeasure if you purchase Bob's products? The money isn't earmarked  for animal testing, but nor can they state it will not be used for it. Bob and his wife are no longer sole owners of the company, having sold shares to employees, but they are clearly a significant part of the operation AND his name and face are the primary branding element the company still employs. Sure, they're donating their personal money, but that money comes from Bob's Red Mill, the company.

A similar dilemma arose for me personally a few years ago when it was divulged that the owner of the Century and CineArts movie theatres in our area was a huge Prop 8 proponent and donor. That year we took the company out to a movie as a holidy outing, and we purposely chose a different theatre chain.

While it would seem the answer is simple...avoid giving your hard-earned dollars to companies who values do not align with yours...it's actually a complicated matter, involving several big questions:

1. Can you apply your decision consistently, or can you only apply it in those rare cases when we learn about a company (or its founders) charitable or political donations? Does it matter if the answer is that you only find out, and therefore act accordingly, only rarely? Does that make you a hypocrite, or just doing the best anyone can expect?

2. When an "owner" is really someone who has a stake, but not the sole stake, and they are putting in "personal money", is any action you take against the company even impacting the right people?  People who could forestall future such donations? Or are you harming employees, even management employees, who can't effect change anyway?

3. Wouldn't the boycott approach mean that you shouldn't buy the vegan products put out by companies that also sell non-vegan products? Quite the opposite of my usual approach, which is to encourage more mainstream companies to make vegan options by buying the ones that exist.

You could certainly say "This is such an outlier...it's such a large public donation; he's the face of the brand. No, I can't possibly keep track of every possible shenanigan I don't agree with happening behind the scenes at every company, but I do know about this one, so I have to act!"

And that probably is what I will say. (And admittedly, easily so, given I don't bake a whole lot.)

What will you say?

Hat tip to JL Goes Vegan and her weekly vegan news round-up.

Cross-post: The Final Bullfight In Barcelona

It's today, according to the Daily Mail.

Good.

 

Link: Excellent Jonathan Safran Foer interview

As always Jonathan Safran Foer expresses himself with a rare blend of petry and pragamtism when it comes to the subject of Eating Animals.

You'll enjoy this interview in the Sydney Morning Herald.

These two quotes, particularly, are thoughtful and inarguable:

''Do I think there is any chance in the world that half of Americans will be vegetarians in 10 years? I would say there is virtually no chance in the world of that. Do I think there is any chance that half of the meals eaten in America will be vegetarian in 10 years? I think there is a good chance of that. And that would have the same impact on the world - whether it's half the people or half the meals. It's just that we are not used to thinking about that second way because we've become so convinced that it's a question of identity or lifestyle as opposed to the end that we want.''

and

''It gives the appearance of being incredibly profitable and efficient, even though it's not. It's not profitable if the costs weren't externalised. If you simply made them pay for their environmental clean-ups, they would all go out of business tomorrow.''

And here's one more. Another example of how he states radical propositions so calmly:

''We have to eat much, much, much less, just because there isn't enough earth on Earth. And the other caveat is we pay the real cost - and people would eat a lot less.''

Is that such a bad thing? Given our losing battle with obesity in First World countries such as Australia, eating less seems like a positive. Foer says: ''The bad thing is the rich people would get to eat what they want, the poor people wouldn't. But that's already true.'' 

That last sentence makes you cringe; it's an "ouch" moment. But it's true. And if we were all eating better quality food that was less damaging to the planet, theoretically we all would benefit too.

Foer has turned quiet persuasion into an art form.