Vegetarian Star

Mario Batali is on board and ready to embrace a life with less meat. He’s observing Meatless Monday is his restaurants, has plans for a vegetarian cookbook and made one of his New Year’s resolutions for 2011 to learn to cook more vegetarian meals.

Making vegetables the center of his plate is how Batali lost a significant amount of weight and continues to maintain a lighter figure.

During one of Grubstreet’s regular “a week in the food life of [insert famous person],” Mario gave an an example of how he keeps Meatless Monday.

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Bonnie-Jill Laflin Thinks Tofu Scores A Slam Dunk
• Linda McCartney Food Range Adds Four New Products
• Meatless Mouthful–Meagan Duhamel Scores Gold Medal With Diet
• Dr. Oz Welcomes “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Plant-Based Nutrition” Author
• Rory Freedman To Emcee LA Premiere Of “Vegucated”

After a successful launch of its Meatless Monday initiative in almost 1,000 hospitals, Sodexo, one of the U.S.’s largest corporate suppliers of food services, is expanding the program to 2,000 more clients, including Toyota, Northern Trust Bank and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Bonnie-Jill Laflin Thinks Tofu Scores A Slam Dunk
• Linda McCartney Food Range Adds Four New Products
• Meatless Mouthful–Meagan Duhamel Scores Gold Medal With Diet
• Dr. Oz Welcomes “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Plant-Based Nutrition” Author
• Rory Freedman To Emcee LA Premiere Of “Vegucated”

Those who weren’t familiar with Steve Ells before tuning in to America’s Next Great Restaurant were probably at least familiar with his Mexican restaurant chain, Chipotle.

Ells is trying to make Chipotle as sustainable as possible, sourcing local ingredients and aiming for organic when available.

Ells, a meat eater, is concerned with the destruction large scale farms have done in terms of both environmental impact and animal cruelty. That’s why not only is he sourcing Chipotle’s pork from a network of smaller farmers who pledge to treat animals better and do not use hormones or antibiotics, he’s also working to lessen the amount of meat he eats.

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Bonnie-Jill Laflin Thinks Tofu Scores A Slam Dunk
• Linda McCartney Food Range Adds Four New Products
• Meatless Mouthful–Meagan Duhamel Scores Gold Medal With Diet
• Dr. Oz Welcomes “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Plant-Based Nutrition” Author
• Rory Freedman To Emcee LA Premiere Of “Vegucated”

“Cute animals are treated better than uglier ones. What gives? It’s not like we’re sleeping with them. Most of us, anyway.”

–Graham Hill, founder of green site Treehugger.com and Weekday Vegetarianism, a flexitarian eating plan that only allows meat on the weekends.

Besides being “saved” in terms of adoptability at shelters and not ending up on the dinner plate, depending on the country’s culture, cute animals may also be hogging all the conservation dollars meant to save all threatened species. In the past, the cuter ones have received protection from more non-government organizations and more funds from the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Slate discusses a paper in Human Biology by David Stokes that examined the cute traits of penguins and found small differences like a shading around the eyes determined what animal walked the cute and ugly line. Stokes suggested that conservationists take the “ugly” animals and focus on their cuter parts to draw attention to them and hopefullly, generate efforts and funds to protect the species.

Sounds like a good, simple idea. Let’s start practicing with one of the uglies. How many cute features can you find in the adorable Aye-Aye below?

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Emily Deschanel Is Walk For Animals 2011 Spokesperson (Video)
• Ellen DeGeneres Is Farm Sanctuary Adopt-A-Turkey Spokesperson
• Bar Refaeli Got A Mouthful Of Fur Lies At Bel Air Photo Shoot
• Kesha Asks McDonald’s To Switch To More Humane Slaughter Practices
• Toronto Maple Leafs’ Mike Zigomanis Talks Vegan

Jonathan Safran Foer‘s non-fiction book on his investigation of factory farms is so convincing, even his publicist doesn’t cook as much meat as she used to. The Eating Animals author recently interviewed with Edible Manhattan where he shared the fact that although one of his most popular books is all about food, he can’t go anywhere near it to be productive.

“I have to go somewhere where there isn’t food or I wouldn’t get anything done,” Foer said.

Here are a few other highlights:

Farmers Won’t Eat The Hotdogs They Helped Create:
“I talked to many, many different kinds of farmers while doing my research and one constant, whether they were a small farmer or a factory farmer, was that they all said they would never eat a hot dog. It seems to me a pretty good idea not to eat things that farmers wouldn’t eat.”

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Bonnie-Jill Laflin Thinks Tofu Scores A Slam Dunk
• Linda McCartney Food Range Adds Four New Products
• Meatless Mouthful–Meagan Duhamel Scores Gold Medal With Diet
• Dr. Oz Welcomes “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Plant-Based Nutrition” Author
• Rory Freedman To Emcee LA Premiere Of “Vegucated”

“It’s not, ‘If I can’t be a perfect environmentalist, I’m not going to do anything. Being hypocritical is better than not doing anything. Unfortunately, it’s framed ‘You’re this or you’re that.’ ‘The light switch is on or it’s off.’ You make a choice three times a day. If you’re using one meal to excuse 1,000 meals, that is just crazy.”

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Bonnie-Jill Laflin Thinks Tofu Scores A Slam Dunk
• Linda McCartney Food Range Adds Four New Products
• Meatless Mouthful–Meagan Duhamel Scores Gold Medal With Diet
• Dr. Oz Welcomes “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Plant-Based Nutrition” Author
• Rory Freedman To Emcee LA Premiere Of “Vegucated”

“If it’s an anything-movement, it’s a common-sense movement. I do think the worm has turned and people are understanding that the diet that is the most prevalent and easiest is not the diet that’s best.”

–Mark Bittman, author and food writer at New York Times, on how more people should adopt a diet that consists of less meat and more plant products. Bittman was featured in an article in the Fargo-Moorhead Forum that discusses the popularity of people who reduce their meat intake without officially declaring themselves vegetarian.

Vegetarian Times, a magazine devoted to recipes and all things food and veg related, has estimated that up to 70% of its readers are flexitarians, looking for meal ideas to replace meat dishes during the day, week or month.

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Bonnie-Jill Laflin Thinks Tofu Scores A Slam Dunk
• Linda McCartney Food Range Adds Four New Products
• Meatless Mouthful–Meagan Duhamel Scores Gold Medal With Diet
• Dr. Oz Welcomes “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Plant-Based Nutrition” Author
• Rory Freedman To Emcee LA Premiere Of “Vegucated”

A recent USA Today article lists appealing to those who flex eat as a top marketing trend in 2011.

Under a heading titled, “Flexitarians R Us,” the online component to the newspaper states that 47% of consumers are trying to reduce their meat intake and explains who the most flexible people are.

According to Cathy Schneck, vice president of marketing at Kellogg Frozen Foods, which produces MorningStar Farms vegetarian frozen foods, it’s women in their mid-forties.

(more…)

Possibly Related Posts:

• Bonnie-Jill Laflin Thinks Tofu Scores A Slam Dunk
• Linda McCartney Food Range Adds Four New Products
• Meatless Mouthful–Meagan Duhamel Scores Gold Medal With Diet
• Dr. Oz Welcomes “Complete Idiot’s Guide To Plant-Based Nutrition” Author
• Rory Freedman To Emcee LA Premiere Of “Vegucated”