TIME magazine recently proclaimed some heartening news in "Where's the Beet?: How Big-Name Chefs Are Shrinking Their Customers' Carnivore Quota." Six top chefs were interviewed, all saying they are preparing less meat in their restaurants. Two of them, Mario Batali and Jose Andres, say that meat is boring. "After four bites of a big steak, I'm tired of it," says Batali, who plans to open his sixteenth restaurant soon, this one in New York City and entirely vegetarian. Andres, with six restaurants in Los Angeles and Washington, describes a combination of fruits and vegetables as "a rainbow of possibilities. It's more interesting than any meat."
In a world that values sunshine over the saturnine and hope over harrumphing, it's hard to be a professional curmudgeon. In the animal rights community (where the competition for Chief Grouch is fierce), that vital role was ably handled by the late Cleveland Amory, whose dyspepsia was a key component of the barbs he so effectively aimed at hunters and other animal exploiters. The banner of bile is now waved by Kim Stallwood, a.k.a. the grumpy vegan, who first refined discontent and dysphoria into an art form in his editing of The Animals' Agenda magazine, and then in two books he edited for Lantern: Speaking Out for Animals and The Primer on Animal Rights.
Actually, I'm kidding. Those two books are inspiring and thoughtful examinations of how one can help animals in distress and through policy changes rather than belly-aching about how awful everything is. Plus, Kim is distressingly sweet-tempered when you get to know him (which, of course, you are thoroughly discouraged from doing), and now that he is back in his native England after doing time in the U.S. for many years, he's distressed to find unwelcome shafts of sunlight brightening the winter of his discontent.
Fortunately, this being the world we live in and our exploitation of other animals showing no sign of stopping any time soon, Kim retains a measure of grouchy glory, blogging and helping to run the excellent Animals and Society Institute. In all these and other endeavors, of course, Lantern wishes him luck, and hope that we don't see him around.
Ever needed a detailed guide to sprouting microgreens? Mark Braunstein, author of Radical Vegetarianism, comes to the rescue with his detailed microgreens online resource.
Why is Bruce Friedrich willing to go up against debate teams at the brainiest schools in our nation over and over again? Because his argument (that eating meat doesn't make sense if given even a few minutes of thought) is watertight.
My friend Lagusta is a vegan chef, chocolatier, and blogger who never beats around the bush. Here is her review of Breeze Harper's anthology Sistah Vegan. (While on her blog you may also find fantastic recipes, outrageous up-hairdos, and rants on every topic under the sun.)
In the current (July/August) issue of Mother Jones, Associate Editor Kiera Butler questions the "greenness" of eating plant foods vs. eating meat in "Get Behind Me, Seitan: Why the vegetarian-equals-green argument isn't so cut-and-dried." Right out of the starting gate, Butler tells us that until recently she had been a lifelong vegetarian. Wow, lifelong--that's unusual and, among longtime committed vegetarians and vegans, enviable. Yet Butler tells us this in the context of being in a restaurant ordering a burger, that is, a dead-flesh type burger. What gives?
Stephen Batchelor spoke at the Tattered Cover Bookstore on March 16 plugging his book, "Confession s of a Buddhist Atheist." I was intrigued by his interest in the question of the "historical Buddha," which has rarely been investigated. I asked him whether he (Batchelor) was a vegetarian, whether the historical Buddha was a vegetarian, and how this all related to the first precept (not to take the life of any sentient creature).
"...there is a huge non-white group of people in the USA who are vegans, vegetarians, and raw foodist, but their politics around why they do it are are significantly different from white middle class AR/Veg."
The March/April 2010 issue of VegNews has run an article about veganism and race, in which Breeze Harper, editor of Sistah Vegan is quoted and the book mentioned. Breeze has responded to this article and what was attributed to her here. You can follow and comment on the discussion on our Facebook page and on this page as well.
You can also see Breeze give a talk at AK Press in San Francisco, here.
Back in the early 1980s, being a vegetarian was a lot harder than it is more than thirty years later. If you don't know, just ask Alex Hershaft, founder of FARM, and Mark Braunstein, author of the newly revised Radical Vegetarianism, a book as nuggety, nutritious, and nutty as some of the meatloafs that no doubt graced the tables of veggies back then.
Actually, Radical Vegetarianism makes a strong case not simply for vegetarianism, but for raw foodism, and for all of us, however we might name our diet, to examine our food choices playfully but profoundly, for none of us is pure. Another book to do just that is Sistah Vegan, which examines a diet in the context of race, class, women's body image and gender as a whole, and a raft of other issues that remind us that being vegetarian or vegan can never simply be simply about which animal products you leave out of your diet.
Bitch Magazine reviews Sistah Vegan: "Go grab a copy of the book to support awesome intersectional work that explores everything from the environment to animal welfare to racism."
Sistah Vegan editor Breeze Harper and some of the book's contributors were interviewed on a call-in show at Howard University.
It took a while to get going in the first half, since Breeze had to describe what vegan meant, insist that there really are Black women who eat/live this way, and address the fact that it is possible to eat vegetarian and still be overweight. Apparently Sistah Vegan is sorely needed!
On the second evening, with Breeze joined by Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo, Angelique Surya Shofar, and a medical doctor all crowded into the studio, there was a lively discussion of Black women's reproductive health (specifically the all-too-common fibroids), about being in touch with one's body, the erotic side of food, and much more.
The other night I went to a meeting of the local group of progressive Christians. We heard a lecture on the subject of what we can know about the historical Jesus and what this means for progressive Christianity. The thesis put forward was that progressive Christianity supports inclusivity. Jesus believed in inclusivity — he hung out with tax-gatherers, prostitutes, and other disreputable characters. This is all very good, and very much to the point, because the presence of gays in the church (and the ministry) is very controversial in some circles.
But it doesn't go nearly far enough. What would Jesus say about the spectacle of the richest country in the world wantonly destroying the environment and polluting the atmosphere, conducting aggressive wars which kill hundreds of thousands of people, and rescuing the rich during a financial crisis the end of which we cannot foresee? And what would Jesus think about a society that allows all this to pass without apology, remorse, or accountability, or a church that thinks that this is too controversial a topic to speak about openly?
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