Month: December 2014
The Unbearable Wrongness of Farmed Chickens – A Factory Farmer Comes Clean
Saving the planet, one meal at a time
My attitude toward becoming a vegan was similar to Augustine’s attitude toward becoming celibate—“God grant me abstinence, but not yet.” But with animal agriculture as the leading cause of species extinction, water pollution, ocean dead zones and habitat destruction, and with the death spiral of the ecosystem ever more pronounced, becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species. It is one that my wife—who was the engine behind our family’s shift—and I have made.
Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all worldwide transportation combined—cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes. Livestock and their waste and flatulence account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock causes 65 percent of all emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 296 times…
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Andrea Germanos: To Avert Climate Chaos, Meat Consumption Must Drop, Study Says
There is an “awareness gap” amongst the global public of the link between eating meat and climate change, and that presents a real obstacle to keeping global warming under the 2-degree threshold, a new study finds.
From the London-based policy institute Chatham House, Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector: Global Public Opinion on Meat and Dairy Consumption explores how the livestock sector’s contribution to climate change—14.5 per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions—is failing to get the attention it warrants.
To assess public attitudes on the issue, Chatham House commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct a multi-language, multi-country online survey. The results showed that 64 percent of respondents said exhaust emissions were a major contributor to climate change compared to just 29 percent who said livestock production was. Yet the two sectors’ actual contribution to emissions is roughly the same.
From the paper: “Despite the scale and trajectory of emissions…
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no bake vegan peanut butter banoffee pie …
I thought the raw chocolate chunk cheesecake with peanut butter and coconut was the best raw vegan pie that existed … until this one! Those who know me know that my favourite dessert is banana caramel pie. Imagine how excited I was to find a healthy version! (Actually my mum found it on Pinterest and sent me the pin. Thanks mum!)
This recipe is courtesy of The Clean Dish.
It’s a simple recipe. No baking involved. Gluten free. Vegan. Refined sugar free. Amazing.
Ingredients
Crust
2 cups raw cashew nuts
2 tablespoons shredded coconut
¾ cup chopped dates (approximately)
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of sea salt
Filling
2 cans full-fat coconut milk, refrigerated for at least 8 hours (ideally several days)
3 tablespoon maple syrup
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
3-4 medium bananas
fresh squeezed lemon juice from ½ lemon
1 cup peanut butter
Method
Crust
1) To make…
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London Vegan Bird’s Christmas Gift Guide
Why don’t we care?
It is so blisteringly obvious that fish feel pain that I just don’t understand why we don’t care more about their suffering. Surely if more people were urged to watch videos like this and confront the reality of their suffering they would think again before opting for the catch of the day…
This video from thekillingoftuna.org is another brutal reminder of why fish should not be on any menu!
Could you go vegan for the weekend?
This article was recently published in the Telegraph… Lot sof people have complained that you can’t ‘go vegan’ for a weekend as it is a much more serious commitment than that. I have to say I don’t really care if people go vegan for an hour, a week, on Mondays or forever – anything is a step in the right direction and should be encouraged and not disparaged!
What To Eat Now: a vegan diet
While the world celebrates World Vegan Month, our expert resident nutritionist Ian Marber turns vegan for the weekend
BY Ian Marber | 03 November 2014
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Perhaps I was swayed by the words of film director James Cameron (of Titantic, Aliens and Avatar fame) who says that one can’t be an environmentalist if you aren’t a vegan. Or perhaps it was simply that I have become lazy about what I eat, favouring the same lean meat and poultry with vegetables most of the time, but in recognition of World Vegan Month I tried my hand at a vegan diet for the weekend. Now I realise that one weekend isn’t going to save the planet or do a lot for my health but I wanted to see what it was like, and what I could eat.
Five reasons to become a vegan
1) Health – because veganism leads naturally to eating more fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. By cutting out things with animal fat in, it makes it more difficult to eat badly.
2) The EPIC study was a vast piece of work that can’t easily be summed up. However, it confirmed that vegans were at least as healthy as the healthiest omnivores.
3) Veganism celebrates its 70th birthday this year and its founder, Donald Watson pointed out the irony of feeding our crops to animals for us to eat rather than eating the crops themselves.
4) The cost in terms of energy to maintain livestock – from electricity to water – isn’t sustainable for the planet in addition to the additional methane gas that livestock produce adding to potential global warming.
5) Traditionally vegans feel that it is morally wrong to exploit and kill animals for food when eating meat isn’t necessary.
Bishop-Weston suggests that an easy way to transition to a vegan diet is to take a practical approach, replacing meals here and there with increasing frequency. Here is the menu that we put together for my weekend:
Breakfast
Porridge or museli with non-dairy milk such as soy, rice, hemp, almond, oat, flax, hazelnut and coconut milk
Handful of berries
Chia/ flax/ hemp seeds
Smoothie or green drink, including algae and seaweed
Snack
Apple and a banana, green tea
Lunch
Falalafel salad wrap with hummus or,
Buck wheat noodles and vegetables with tofu and Miso soup
Snack
Toasted seeds or Brazil nuts in dark chocolate
Kale crisps (Pret have them now)
Water/tea
Dinner
Stir-fry with beansprouts, broccoli, shitake mushrooms, peppers, cashews, black beans, kale, carrots, butternut squash, red cabbage and mangetout
Dessert
Vegusto Swiss cheese with oatcake or
Booja Booja cashew nut chocolate ice cream
Hoorah for more vegan options…
This article was published in The Guardian last week – good news for vegans!
Are there chicken sheds in heaven? 