Vegetarian Star

Photo: Phil Cavali

Leilani Munter is an environmentalist and race car driver who races in both Indy Lights, the development league of IndyCar and ARCA, a development league of NASCAR.

Is anyone else in your family vegetarian?
As far as family members go, I have two vegetarian nieces right now. All three of my sisters have at one time been vegetarian and my sister Natascha was vegetarian throughout both of her pregnancies and during breastfeeding, which is interesting, because those are my two nieces that are now vegetarians. She told me that she had read that whatever you feed a child from zero to three is what they will crave for life. So she did not feed them meat and both of them are vegetarian by their own choice. Also, when I was a child, I never craved sweets, my mother told me that I always would refuse cookies and ask for parsley instead and to this day, I don’t crave sweet foods.

Is Craig (Leilani’s husband) vegetarian too? Did you have any eco features about the wedding?
Craig is not [completely] vegetarian but I would say he is about 95% vegetarian now. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw him eat meat and we never, ever bring meat into our house. We had a small seaside wedding in New Zealand (where Craig is from) and we had an eco conscious cruelty free vegetarian meal. Our wedding invitations were printed by Green Field Paper on tree free paper that you can plant and wildflowers will grow!

You volunteered at a wildlife rescue and rehab center in college. What were some of the best parts about working with these injured animals?
The best part was when we were able to release them back into the wild, where they belong. Nothing is more magical than giving an animal its freedom. It is a truly beautiful moment.

In the future, do you see yourself being just as active and public with vegetarianism as you are with environmental issues?
Yes, I definitely would like to be just as active with promoting vegetarianism as I am with speaking out about environmental issues. They go hand in hand. [When] I give speeches on a regular basis, I am often discussing the environment and I always talk about the fact that the meat industry contributes more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere than all the planes, trains, cars, trucks, ships, and all other forms of fossil fuel based transportation in the world. Besides the obvious animal cruelty issues, going vegetarian can do wonders for our environment and for world hunger. Vegetarianism is one of the most important issues that is not talked about nearly enough. We hear a lot about alternative fuels and clean energy, but we need to be talking a lot more about our meat consumption. I know that it’s not realistic to think everyone in the world is going to become vegetarian, but if everyone could just start by reducing the amount of meat they consume, it would change the world for the better.

Learn about Leilani’s Eco-Dream team and her love for cooking with fake meats after the jump… (more…)

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When vegetarian professional race car driver and environmentalist Leilani Munter first started talking about environmental issues on her racing website, she got mixed reactions.

Some were excited to embrace the discussion of being eco-friendly. Others said she was “brainwashed by Al Gore,” because she promoted An Inconvenient Truth.

But the important thing was at least they were talking about it, something that wasn’t happening before.

Like it or not, race car driving is one of the biggest spectator sports in the country and to leave millions of fans in the dark about what’s going on with the earth would just be plain irresponsible.

She recently appeared on NPR, discussing her 2009 plans to put together an Eco-Dream Team where the race cars will show a public service message to race fans, promoting greener actions, such as using energy saving light bulbs. She also wants to set up eco-education centers at the racetracks.

Listen to Leilani’s interview on NPR.

Photo: Nzcowboy13 on Creative Commons

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