Showing posts with label vegan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegan. Show all posts

February 10 - World Pulses Day

Posted on February 10, 2020


When I hear the word pulse, I think of a blood pulse - the rhythm you can feel in your wrist as your heart beats out blood and the blood beats that rhythm all through your body.

On second thought, I also think of music pulsing - music with a good, strong beat, that is!


But! - I didn't know that the word pulse also means the edible seeds of various plants: chickpeas, lentils, beans, peas, etc.

It is that completely separate meaning of the word pulse that we are celebrating today in this United Nations event. Pulses are important foods, globally, especially nowadays. 

Beef farming is so inefficient, it
represents a 96% loss of food production!
Raising and eating meat is a problem for several reasons: religious reasons, health reasons, and especially environmental reasons. It takes less a lot less energy, land, and water to produce plant-based foods than to grow livestock we use as meat. And some livestock (ahem, cows, looking at you!) add global-warming-causing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

If a country didn't add any acres of land dedicated to agriculture, not even one acre, but only grew plants, they could grow 2 to 20 TIMES more food. (Read more about this here.)

Since there are A LOT of people in the world, including a lot of hungry people who regularly don't get enough to eat, it's important to get as much food from ever acre of agricultural land as possible. And pulses are especially wonderful foods among all the other great plant-based foods, because they are high protein and high fiber, with lots of vitamins and minerals (including iron!). Pulses are also low fat. 

(People on low carb diets often limit how many beans, lentils, etc., they eat, because these nutritious foods do have carbs, but again, much of the carbohydrates are dietary fiber, which is a necessary part of a healthy diet.)

Check out this website as you plan your World Pulses Day celebration. Eat pulse-based meals and photograph them for social media, using #LovePulses and #WorldPulsesDay hashtags.
Black bean salad
Chickpea curry
Potato lentil soup

Maybe next year you can plan a community event promoting pulses and eating low on the food chain!?!







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November 28 - Turkey-free Thanksgiving

Posted on November 28, 2019

A tofu "turkey" with stuffing!

There is a lot of talk, these days, about eating less meat, or no meat. Many people are vegetarians (people who eat no meat, including fish), pescatarians (people who eat no meat except for fish), and vegans (people who eat only plant-based foods - so no meat, fish, dairy, or eggs). 

There are three main reasons to eat less or no meat: (1) for your own health, (2) for the sake of the environment, and (3) because the meat, dairy, and egg industries are cruel to animals.



All of those folks no doubt skip turkey at Thanksgiving - either as an entire family or as an individual vegetarian in a meat-eating family.

Many people who eat meat just don't love the traditional turkey meal. They'd rather have a leg of lamb or a prime rib or...?




For those who complain that we should stick with turkey because it's traditional, there is ample evidence that the original Thanksgiving featured lots of things alongside boiled or roasted wild turkey - IF there was turkey at all! Other waterfowl, such as ducks, geese were apparently more popular with the Pilgrims. Swans and even passenger pigeons are also likely. Venison (deer meat) was there for sure, and it's probable that lots of seafood was served - eels, mussels, lobster, and clams.


Of course there was a lot of other food as well - corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, turnips, carrots, chestnuts, walnuts, beechnuts, onions, garlic, corn-based porridge, and cornbread.

This "traditional" Thanksgiving meal
is mostly foods that were added
to historical tradition somewhere
along the way. These upstarts were
far from traditional when they were
first included!
But there definitely were no mashed potatoes, sweet potato casseroles, or cranberries. And there was no wheat-flour based bread, nor any pies at all. So making an argument based on tradition is a bit silly - because all of today's traditional foods were add-ons or instead-ofs to what WAS eaten. So all of us can still add-on or instead-of, all we like, and help grow the various traditions of Thanksgiving!

How about some of these lovely yummies:

Stuffed acorn squash with pecans



Pumpkin-sage stuffed shells


Veggie pot pie






Thanksgiving:


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October 1 – World Vegetarian Day and Vegan Baking Day

Posted October 1, 2017

There are entire cuisines that revolve around meat and / or fish. Traditional Kazakh cuisine, for example, revolves around lamb and horse meat. Sami cuisine focuses on meat, fish, and more meat - trout, ducks, moose, cod, and more. The cornerstone of Norwegian foods is fish, smoked fish, fish soup, and pickled fish. 

And then there are some people from every nation who choose to eat no meat and zero fish!


Vegetarians may skip meat because of health concerns, or because of their religion, or because they do not like how animals are raised and butchered to produce meat. But a huge reason for many modern vegetarians to "eat low on the food chain" is to help make the environment better!

Did you know...?

Raising animals for food creates more greenhouse gas than the emissions of all of the world's cars, planes, and other forms of transportation combined.

Remember, when we raise animals for food, we also have to use land to raise crops to feed those animals. The result is that raising animals for food uses almost ONE THIRD of all of the Earth's land mass!

Getting enough land to graze cattle has caused an enormous amount of deforestation - which leads to more climate change and other bad consequences.




If most of us skipped meat most of the time, we could feed a lot more people. To produce one pound of animal protein, vs. one pound of soy protein:
  • We use 12 times as much land...
  • We use 13 times as much fossil fuel...
  • We use 15 times as much water!
Remember, if you are not skipping meat and fish for health or religious reasons, you can still have the occasional hamburger or salmon steak. Every meal you choose to make vegetarian helps!



What about vegans?

Some vegetarians will not eat eggs or milk or other dairy products. Yes, that means no ice cream or cheese pizza (although there are soy ice creams and soy cheeses, of course - you might like them just as well as the milk-based versions)!


Again, there are many reasons why people become vegan, including concerns about health, the environment, and treatment of animals.

If you are vegetarian or vegan, have a good one today! If you aren't, here are a few resources you might want to check out:

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