A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .

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."

A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .

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?

One of the many blogs we love, Civil Eats, has reviewed Sistah Vegan. The writer of the review, Andrea King Collier, labels the anthology's contributors "fearless." Read the whole review here.

Will Tuttle's #1 Amazon Bestseller, The World Peace Diet, is reviewed and excerpted in the May/June issue of Macrobiotics Today.

Read an interview with Will Tuttle, and check out Will's event schedule.

I've been out of the country for a couple of weeks, and I had the pleasure of returning from vacation, this time, to more than just lonely cats and dirty laundry.

A new raw restaurant opened in my town! Unlike Brooklyn, Beacon, NY isn't a hotspot for vegetarians and vegans, so this is an exciting development. Beacon's carnivorous and my hungry statuses are changing with the opening of Superfood Citizen Cafe.

I went to check it out, of course! While munching on a delicious lunch I paged through the Hudson Valley's arts and culture mag, Chronogram, and was thrilled to find a short review of Myriam Miedzian's He Walked Through Walls in its pages.

In my absence, my 'hood got a little hipper.

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."

You could be reading Sistah Vegan right now.

For a full list of Lantern's titles available for Kindle, click here.

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 shows are worth a listen!
Part 1 | Part 2

While promoting the excellent DVD Food, Inc. on Oprah on January 24, Michael Pollan made the following statement: "The Inuit in Greenland you were referring to [have a] 75% fat diet — no type II diabetes, no heart disease."

The implication that the Inuit's high-meat diet is healthful is almost certainly wrong. The Inuit have a reduced life expectancy, and indigenous people on a similar diet in Alaska suffer from rampant osteoporosis. Moreover, the "Inuit" diet — huge amounts of animal products — seems to contradict Pollan's principle of "mostly plants." The most recent incarnation of the high-meat diet, the Atkins diet, is now universally discredited.

Is this just an isolated slip in an otherwise creditable presentation? Alas, I'm not sure.

A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .

Last year, shortly after Lantern published it, I bought a copy of How to Eat Like a Vegetarian Even If You Never Want to Be One, by Carol Adams and Patti Breitman. The authors adopt a friendly, laid-back tone to meet readers right where they are in their eating habits, and exert no pressure to make sweeping dietary changes. "We aren't inviting you to go for a PhD in vegan cuisine," they write, "we're inviting you out to the playground!" I've since discovered how helpful the book can be, especially to those who are just beginning the path toward more veg meals. If you are such a person, or have some on your holiday gift list, I urge you to get and give this book.

A co-worker who had never expressed any interest in vegetarianism asked me one day how she might incorporate more vegetables into her diet. "I've got just the book," I said, and lent her my copy. Months passed; I thought maybe she'd forgotten it. I asked, "Have you had a chance to look at that book How to Eat Like a Vegetarian?" "Oh, yes," she replied, " and it's great! I've already tried several of the recipes. Can I keep it longer? I want to learn about tofu." Later, when her birthday rolled around, I gave her the book, and bought more copies.

Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns and author of many books, including More Than a Meal and The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale, wrote an editorial in the Iowa City Press-Citizen in response to their article on the popularity of backyard chickens. The text of the editorial is below.

It’s nice that real live chickens are making a comeback in some people’s minds and yards, but urban chicken-keeping involves significant problems. With the increased popularity of urban flocks, animal shelters are being flooded with calls to take in unwanted birds. How many municipalities are prepared to “develop facilities to shelter abandoned chickens” (“Urban chickens gaining traction nationwide,” Nov.11)?

Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals doesn’t have a subtitle. But if it did, it could be "The Two Faces of Livestock Agriculture." Well written and well researched, it describes both the violent reality of the factory farming of animals, as well as a more humane form of livestock agriculture practiced by a few small operators.What should we make of this book? Should we read it and recommend it, or not?

Eating Animals invites comparison with the much older classic, Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. Foer’s style is more journalistic; he doesn’t just lay out the facts, as Singer does, he tells a story. Foer relates the intensely violent reality of factory farming, including a clandestine visit to a factory farm with an undercover animal activist and conversations with slaughterhouse workers. But he also talks about his encounters with the various small operators attempting a more humane form of animal agriculture.

Be warned; some of the descriptions are extremely graphic. Am I the only one who is bothered by this sort of thing? Certainly we should be informed about the awful violence of factory farms, and should take action to stop it, but how many scenes of graphic violence do we need to see before we are informed and can take action?

How can livestock respiration contribute to global warming — a key conclusion of the recent WorldWatch article on livestock and global warming?

It’s confusing because we’ve learned that in a "natural state," carbon dioxide breathed out by animals is balanced by carbon dioxide taken up by plants. There is no net effect on greenhouse gas emissions from respiration by livestock, and everything is in balance, right?

To see the fallacy here, let’s back up to the time before you add that cow to the landscape. There are wild animals and humans breathing CO2, but also a lot of plants taking it up, so you have a balance. Then, along comes the cow — and boom, there goes your balance. With livestock agriculture we have bred so many animals that we have upset this natural balance. We have too many animals and not enough plants.

Many people will find this hard to believe. Don't the livestock just replace wild animals, who also breathe out CO2? And if we had too many animals, wouldn’t plants be eaten and start to disappear?

NY's rainy start to summer has delayed this year's fruit and vegetable growth. I'm not complaining—that's why we're still enjoying the abundance of juneberries from the neighbor's yard in July.

Juneberries are one of those fruits, like mulberries, that are underappreciated. Birds and squirrels love them, but people complain that they "make a mess" when the berries drop. The easiest way to solve that problem is by eating the fruit. This isn't quite wild fruit, but it may as well be, since they've have fallen out of fashion, and out of use. (We don't discriminate, and have our eyes on the figs and pears, too.)

Shared interests are just one reason it's a pleasure to work at Lantern: after recently learning about juneberry trees, I came into the office to find a bowl of berries being eaten, and juneberry smoothies for all. Tasty local food. Keeping resources from going to waste. Purple mouths. It's all good.

I attended a party last night that made me proud to be a part of my radical Hudson Valley community. The party was the launch of Lagusta's (of Lagusta's Luscious) new line of artisan, feminist, vegan chocolates, Bluestocking BonBons. The organic, fair trade chocolates are incredibly tasty and luxurious, made even better by the fact that each variety is dedicated to an inspirational woman, with her picture and story printed inside the box. Lagusta lives in New Paltz, and creates her food just north of there in Rosendale.

Buzzy from so much richness, I didn't get to taste all the bonbon varieties, but of those I did, the Furious Vulvas were my favorites. There's something about salt and chocolate that really does the trick. (The spicy Vandana Shivas were a close second.)