Food Rules
author Michael Pollan was interviewed on today’s Democracy Now. I just sat through the entire interview so you wouldn’t have to. If you’ve read any of his books, there’s little here that will be new to you. But if you’re new to Pollan, give it a listen.
At one point, he says:
I eat much less meat than I used to. And I don’t think the answer is, you know, giving up meat.
He goes on to talk about why “well run rotationally grazed” cattle on grass is “a way to organize meat production that will reduce its carbon footprint dramatically.”
But what about the animal suffering and slaughter? As usual, Pollan shrugs off the benefits of meatless eating without bothering to address these topics. It’s a shame Amy Goodman didn’t press him on this point.
Pollan is at his best when talking about the National School Lunch Program:
The School Lunch Program, I think, is one of the most important programs we have and tools we have to basically change American health and change the food system. Right now, that program is, in effect, a disposal system for surplus agricultural commodities.
Not a bad interview, but ten minutes of Jonathan Safran Foer
beats an hour of Pollan any day. Link.
My apologies to everyone who tried to visit Vegan.com today and couldn’t get the site to come up. We had some server problems for nine hours.
This was the last straw for me. The audience for this site has grown too large for unreliable shared hosting to be an acceptable option. I am investigating how to move to a rock solid setup as soon as possible.
A vaccine that can dramatically reduce the presence of E. coli is about to enter large-scale testing. The trouble is that it costs between $3 and $10 per animal, a price that some industry participants may decide is too much to pay for safer beef. Link.
Swine flu has not yet vanished into that good night—if you come down with the flu right now, chances are it’s swine flu. And the CDC is still recommending Americans get vaccinated. The agency’s most recent estimate is that the disease has killed between 7,880 to 16,460 Americans.
All dead because of the pork and chicken industries. Link.
For the second time this winter, Sea Shepherd and Japanese whaling ships have collided. The first occasion occurred barely a month ago, when the Shonan Maru 2 bore down on the Ady Gil and sliced the tiny ship in two.
This time around, the Sea Shepherd is saying that the Yushin Maru 3 rammed the Bob Barker, tearing a one meter gash in its hull. But, as with last time, the collision was caught on video. It looks to me like it was the Bob Barker that did the ramming, although I think that different camera angles will create different impressions of the event.
Regardless of who rammed who this time around, the stakes keep going up. Link.
It’s looking more and more as if there will come a national day of reckoning in America about whether it’s OK to eat animals. Witness yesterday’s article in the New York Times by Roger Cohen:
I’m not happy that I ate dog. But I’m happy China eats dog. It so proclaims both a particularity to be prized in a homogenizing world and its rationality. Anyone who doesn’t want China to eat dog must logically embrace pigs as pets.
Lots of muddled thinking couched in ten dollar words. But I think that the longer this topic is engaged directly, the likely more a compassionate view of the situation will prevail. (Thanks, Larry.) Link.
It’s been just over three months since the HSUS investigation of Vermont’s Bushway veal calf slaughterhouse made headlines. HSUS just issued an update on what’s happened since. The good news is that the investigation prompted some top figures in agribusiness and the USDA to speak out against the cruelties, and the slaughterhouse remains shuttered.
The bad news is that even after such clear documentation of systematic cruelties, Vermont’s Attorney General has still not filed charges. (Via Shapiro.) Link.
Get a load of this: VegWorcester held a vegan Mac & Cheese contest, which drew seventeen contestants, and they’ve just posted the winning recipe online.
Now, no kidding around here, this is one complicated recipe. It’s like something you’d find in The Millennium Cookbook
if they were into classic American-style comfort food. But I can’t think of anything I’d rather try, especially after a taxing day in the middle of winter.
Those VegWorcester people really have it going on; every time I catch up with what they’re up to, they’re doing something fun and cool to promote vegan eating. Link.
If you made one new recipe a day for an entire year, you’d still have 135 recipes to go before you exhausted this ginormous book
.
The layout is nice and the pages are oversized. Paper quality is mediocre, and I would have preferred two-color printing. But at Amazon’s price of $13.59 with free shipping, this is still a great deal—less than three cents a recipe.
And maybe I’m in a generous mood, or maybe I’m just hungry, but it seems like every recipe is unusually appealing. Here are a few:
- Sun-dried tomato sauce
- Blooming onion rolls
- Warm chili con queso dip
- Pumpkin spinach ravioli
Please remember to use any of our Amazon links whenever you are about to visit Amazon.com. Every item you purchase, even if it’s not something we’ve linked to, will generate commissions for Vegan.com—which enables me to keep doing my best to irritate the meat industry.
