Vegetarian Star

Rory Freedman, vegan author of the “Skinny Bitch” book series was recently on “Issues” with vegan Jane Velez-Mitchell on HLN where the two were discussing diet and health and tying everything into Jessica Simpson’s publicized weight gain.

Here’s a bit from the show:

VELEZ-MITCHELL: You talk about controversy, Jessica has put herself in the center of controversy over her diet in the past. She appeared in a t-shirt that said real girls eat meat; that provoked a scolding from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals…

Rory, your book is called “Skinny Bitch.” It sold well over a million copies. It`s helped a lot of women lose weight. What advice would you give to Jessica right now?

RORY FREEDMAN, AUTHOR, “SKINNY BITCH“: You know, I have to say, I think Jessica is a beautiful girl. I think she has a gorgeous body, curves or no curves. And I feel sorry for her that she`s having to hear about her body. Nobody wants to be scrutinized.

However, if we are talking about a healthy diet, I don`t think Jessica should be giving any diet advice by saying real girls eat meat. Unfortunately meat is definitely not something you want to be eating if you want to be skinny. It`s got lots of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol. People who are vegetarians have lower incidents of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and these are our nation`s top killers…

If we`re all so hung up on our appearances, we can see by the crisis that we`re having, everybody`s overweight. People care about how they look; it`s not making a difference. So you`ve got to get another motivator to help you lose that weight. And unfortunately, how you look is not going to be enough. You`ve got to care about your health. 

Read the entire transcript for more on what Rory had to say. The segment is towards the end, so you’ll have to do some scrolling. 

Big Thanks for the Tip: Tracie from Lifebeginsat31.com.

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Food writer and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman once said that “if pigs were raised in prison”, he “wouldn’t care as long as they tasted good.”

Ten years later, he tells what is seemingly a more caring storing about animal welfare.

“I don’t know if that means they’re subhuman or just different than humans, but there’s certainly no reason to mistreat them as badly as we do,” he told Josh Hardow and Michael Rau at the Library Journal.

“I guess if you’re going to kill them and eat them, you’re mistreating them to some extent anyway, but there are degrees of that.”

One has to question some of his motives for better animal welfare, as he added that if anything would affect the taste of meat, it would be the industry’s disregard for both animals and the environment through their mass production methods of bringing it to the supermarket.

But you must give him credit, as he’s including fewer and fewer meat meals in both his personal diet and his cookbooks.

While by no means a vegetarian (yet), in his newest book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes, he’s advocated switching to a more plant based diet.

It all started while he was revising one of his How To Cook Everything books (one of which is vegetarian) in 2005-2006. “If I’m eating less meat, and I think everybody should be eating less meat, maybe I don’t need 600 or 700 recipes including meat,” he said of his revisions.

While going all the way is ideal, part time vegetarians or flexitarians still have much to gain in terms of reducing food costs and improving health, not to mention lessening environmental impact and animal suffering.

And Bittman seems to agree.

“It was going to be called The Food Matters Cookbook, but if I could get people using the word “lessmeatarian,” I’d be ecstatic.

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Some artists are so multi-talented they can write, direct, and even star in their own scripts. Talk about attention hogs.

Anyone who’s watched Twilight and knows what the author of the book series, Stephenie Meyer, looks like, remembers seeing her cameo in the coffee shop where Bella and her dad are having lunch.

Earlier reports had mentioned Stephenie was going to order a vegetarian platter during her appearance.

IFC

But as any fan knows, her scene was reduced to one shot sitting at the counter.

But Meyer isn’t what you’d call an attention hog, as she was reluctant to even do that scene.

“It was not my idea to do the cameo,” she said. “They talked me into it. They thought it would be, you know, cute for the fans because most of them would recognize me. I was thinking it was going to be more like a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ thing. Like I walk by for one second in a crowd and if they can find me, cool. That’s the one scene in the movie I would happily cut — the first five seconds, and the one that I had to watch like, I mean like this [covering her eyes], ‘Ah, is it over yet?’ It was really hard for me.”

Source: IFC

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There are different reasons a person decides to go veg, including witnessing the brutality and killing of beings.

In Karen Campbell’s new book, After The Fire, a British firearms officer, Jamie Worth, shoots and kills an unarmed teenage girl on Glasgow’s south side.

The event is so traumatizing, he stops eating meat and eggs because those objects were once alive, thus reminding him of the life he took.

To do her research for the book, Campbell interviewed real life British firearms officers who had suffered some of the same psychological events.

Campbell herself was a vegetarian in college and participated in animal rights marches.

After serving in law enforcement, Campbell returned home to raise her daughters and launch her novelist career. 

Source: Sunday Herald

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“Don’t let it overwhelm you or make it bigger than it is. Just pick a date, get organized (food shopping, etc.) and pledge to do thirty days meat-free. (Visit GoVeg.com for a free vegetarian starter kit.) And remember to take it one meal at a time. If you approach it like, “I can never eat meat again?” of course you’ll struggle. But if you just tell yourself, “Right now, for this meal, I’m going to eat something else,” you’ll make it through with flying colors.”
—author Rory Freedman, in an interview with Ecorazzi on how to get going towards vegetarianism.

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Note to self: Bitch status of Rory Freedman-negative. 

People have expressed mixed feeling about the vegan diet book, Skinny Bitch, by authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin.

Some say it’s the greatest book on the shelf for going vegan, keeping healthy, and looking trim. Others have criticized it because they think it will give people the idea that going vegan is about losing weight or every person should aim to be skinny.

Freedman agrees people do have their assumptions, but says they’re usually not correct.

“I guess people who haven’t read the book might assume that I think women should be skinny, or that I’m a bitch, or that I’m hung up on my own weight,” Freedman told Ecorazzi.

“I’d want them to know that I could give two shits about how much I weigh, that I think full-figured women should rock their curves with pride, and that I’m generally a nice person. (When I have PMS, not so much.)”

Hilarious!

What the gals were trying to get across in a spunky way was that a proper vegan diet can make anyone healthier, thus allowing them to reach the appropriate weight for themselves, which doesn’t always correspond to a size four.

Most importantly, they wanted everyone to know that Soda really is “liquid Satan” and only a “total moron” would do the Atkins diet to get thin.

Skinny Bitch launched several other Skinny Bitches, including Skinny Bitch in a Box, Skinny Bitch in the Kitch: Kick-Ass Recipes for Hungry Girls Who Want to Stop Cooking Crap (and Start Looking Hot!), and Skinny Bitch Fitness: Boot Camp to name a few.

And get ready for a booty call! The Skinny Bitch Dance workout DVD, Skinny Bitch: Booty Bounce, is set to be released in April.

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Maya Angelou is one of the most respected and brilliant poets and speakers of her time. A chance to see her speak live is truly an extraordinary experience. Which is why it’s so disappointing to learn the motivation behind her Health-Food Diner poem.

The poet and author who’s been involved with human rights certainly doesn’t crusade for animal rights. Or at least not when she’s ticked off or offended.

Angelou, who was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton on the recent Presidential campaign trail, walked into a vegetarian restaurant in the 80s where smoking wasn’t allowed. However, there were no visible signs that said, “No Smoking,” so Angelou decided to light one up. It was then when a waitress scolded her for endangering the health of the other patrons.

So Maya wrote Health-Food Diner, praising meat:

Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal)

Ouch! Not only is she praising eating animals, she’s praising eating baby animals taken away from mom just days after being born.

Really, Maya, how cruel can you get?

Wouldn’t it have been better just to write about annoying, granola biting, skinny, health food nuts and wished a bad case of bloating and gas on them from eating too many fibrous foods?

Luckily for her, at least she hasn’t smoked in two decades. 

Source: Chron.com

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New Orleans is alive and kicking and according to the New York Post, “the place for upscale travelers to visit this winter.”

The Big Easy certainly provides warmer weather than what many of us are experiencing now and the variety of food and culture rich spots such as the French Quarter, make celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Martha Stewart, and Brad Pitt all repeat fans.

Like any traveling adventure, a visit to New Orleans for vegetarians and vegans requires planning in terms of where to eat, and hip hop mogul Russell Simmons admits to the temptation of all the non vegan goodies.

“It’s the most difficult place to be vegan in the world,” he said. “I have found a lot of vegan food and vegan jambalaya, but the other food is so attractive!”

Not to fear, as online guides such as VegGuide.org, give you the rundown on every veg and veg friendly restaurant in New Orleans or anywhere else.

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