Harvard's New Food Guide: A Victory for Whom?

The Hype

Animal rights activists, welfarists, cookbook authors and bloggers have been sharing a link to a recent Care2 article for the past couple of days with a sort of fervent jubilation. Maybe it lies in the hope so many animal advocates have that a new year will, ultimately, bring about real change. Maybe it's also a reflection of our willingness -- or eagerness -- to assume that information presented to us from familiar sources is accurate. The article ("Harvard Declares Milk NOT Part of Healthy Diet") by Michelle Schoffro Cook is the sort of thing I've come to expect over the years from the predominantly welfarist Care2 which, with very few exceptions, mostly features short and poorly-written opinion pieces. Schoffro Cook's piece, designed to do little more than to promote her own work and to obtain hits (Care2 has a pay-per-hit / comments policy for to compensate its writers), contains a very simple yet crucial bit of misinformation. This misinformation was published regardless of the string of letters following her name (i.e. MSc, RNCP, ROHP, DNM, PhD) and regardless of the rumoured existence of editors at Care2.

The Dirt

The title of the article hollers out Schoffro Cook's big news. In the short piece itself, she then proceeds to tout Harvard's release of its latest "Healthy Eating Plate" food guide as a sort of nose-thumbing response to the USDA's not-so-long-ago release of its "MyPlate" guide, meant to replace the horribly outdated food pyramid previously used. Although she mentions Harvard's criticism of dairy products for their high levels of saturated fats and their link to cancer, Schoffro Cook's mistake is in elaborating that the "greatest evidence of [Harvard's] research focus is the absence of dairy products" from the guide. The diagram used for the guide states quite clearly that milk/dairy -- even if restricted to what I'm guessing she must think is the infinitesimally small amount of 1-2 servings a day -- is one of several beverage options provided by Harvard. Animal rights attorney and advocate Doris Lin pointed this out on Facebook today and it's raised in several of the comments left directly in response to the Care2 article, itself.

Less Muddy

It's a shame that so many vegan advocates have been misled into passing around a link to this article, calling this new guide some sort of victory for veganism -- a victory for cows and other animals enslaved and exploited for their milk. It is most certainly not. It is also confusing to me how some could think that even if dairy had been omitted, that this new Harvard "Healthy Eating Plate" is in any way all that significant when it comes to making serious changes to the lives of nonhuman animals, since although some non animal-based alternatives are listed in the Harvard poster's protein section, they're buried among the usual animal-based sources: "Choose fish, poultry, beans and nuts; limit red meat; avoid bacon, cold cuts, and other processed meats."

So I'm left asking amidst all of this, in response to assertions that it's somehow a victory: "A victory for whom?" Surely it's not for the animals who will continue to be raised for human consumption -- a good portion of it with Harvard's stamp of approval.

Bits and Blurbs About Veganism in the Media

First, we had one college student's diatribe against her vegan friend for refusing to eat animal products while along on a family camping trip, insisting that politeness trumps ethics. This morning, I stumbled across a piece from Washington University's paper ("The delicious flesh of animals") in which its Senior Forum Editor proclaims that "there is no real 'meaning' to a cow’s life, other than to be killed for the cow’s meat". According to AJ Sundar, taste buds trump ethics. Reflecting the sort of muddled thinking that results when proponents of welfarism around the world turn the question of the treatment of nonhuman animals into the main question with which we should concern ourselves (i.e. while ignoring the ethics of using them in the first place), Sundar writes:

Perhaps animals ought to be treated in kinder terms, and I want to be very clear about where I stand: I do think that factory farming, or any other inhumane method of slaughtering and breeding animals, should be replaced by more humane methods of raising and killing animals. But I don’t think there is an extra obligation to refrain from killing animals altogether­ [...].

Sure, animals might lead a hard life on the range, what with the neutering and branding and penned-in spaces. But is it really that much worse than the average human’s life? Sure, factory farming is cruel, but surely raising animals in a free-range environment would be far kinder to the animals than in nature: Remember that it takes a wolf roughly half an hour to kill a cow, and the poor cow stays alive through most of this time as it gets eaten alive.

Is this what happens when too many well-meaning former-hipster profs throw books by guys like Michael Pollan on the syllabus for "Arts & Humanities 1000" classes?

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An article in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania's Weekender this morning ("Just say no to meat") was a good reminder of why advocating for anything less than veganism as a moral baseline when promoting the interests of nonhuman animals will, invariably, perpetuate serious moral confusion. Weekender's General Manager, Rachel Pugh, describes herself as a supposed vegetarian of "15 years" who, while having "dabbled with the vegan way of life", has also purportedly "dabbled" with eating animals, allowing "fish in and out of [her] diet for the past eight years". Following in the Jonathan Safran Foer mode of thinking, by which knowing and thinking about how animals are raised for us to use somehow nudges us up the moral ladder in terms of our own consumption ethics (i.e. regardless of our follow-through), Pugh claims to be "conscious" of what she eats and where it comes from and insists that after having watched the movie Food, Inc., she's "even more conscious than ever".

Hmm... So what does it mean to be "even more conscious than ever"? Apparently not a single thing. She writes that "others’ choices to consume meat and animal by-products has [sic] never been a concern of [hers]". Furthermore, her own use of animals isn't really a concern of hers, either:

I think I’m somewhat in the vegetarian minority due to the fact that I could care less about others’ meat eating habits. It just doesn’t rattle me. Perhaps this is because I wear antique fur, which makes me a total hypocrite. And I’m fine with that mainly because I love mink stoles from the 1940s. In my book, if it’s been dead for over 30 years, it’s fair game. I just wouldn’t kill anything now for an accessory. I should add, of course, if it dies of natural causes today, this is also fair game which is the case with my recently purchased water buffalo bone ring. See? There are exceptions to every rule but a girl has to have standards.

Lesson learned? If you think that we should not exploit other sentient creatures because they have interests of their own, say so. And say why. Shrugging and suggesting that every little bit counts gives credence to the sort of wishy-washy half-hearted messages spread by people like Pugh, where lifestyle choices involving whether or not to be complicit in the use and slaughter of other sentient creatures are described as "dabbl[ing]" and where participating in this dabbling is written off as "personal preference".

Don't we really owe nonhuman animals more than that?

Veganism and Moral Confusion in Mainstream Media This Week

In an interview in Springfield, Missouri's News-Leader.com today, Registered Dietician Adam Pruett, describes veganism as a class of vegetarianism and when asked how children fare on vegetarian or vegan diets, he states that

[t]ypically, children following a vegan diet if they are under 5 years of age can obtain enough nutrition to maintain growth, but it will be slower and in the low-normal category.

I'd like to find some more information on this since the anecdotal evidence I've received over the years from vegan parents generally shows that there isn't much difference, or, that the overemphasis on fitting kids into very rigid growth ranges to assess how they're doing has become less of a focus over recent years. Since he cites no sources, I'll have to guess that his own evidence is anecdotal or a guesstimate and since the sample of vegan kids in that age range is probably small (particularly in Missouri) that he may very well just be perpetuating a myth about veganism more than anything. Furthermore, even if the statement were true, I'm not even sure it's relevant; it may amount to some scaremongering, though. In the interim, if someone can find some stats on this, feel free to share them in the comments.

ETA: After a brief exchange on Twitter, Virginia Messina, MPH, RD, had this to say about the article ("Vegan Issues in the News: Meeting Nutrient Needs and Growth of Vegan Kids").

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The New York Times had an article in its "Fashion & Style" section on Friday about the rising trend of DIY butchering classes. According to the article:

DIY butchering [...] allows self-conscious carnivores — who in the past were candidates for vegetarianism — to justify their flesh-laden dinners. By learning to slaughter and butcher, they say, they can honor their pigs and eat them, too.

Also, according to PETA's 2004 Proggy Award winner, Temple Grandin,

[p]eople who slaughter their own animals can spare the animals the horrors of the factory killing floor, where animals often meet their end in a state of panic.

So, then, the best way to deal with an urge to dis-involve oneself from animal exploitation and the cruelty inherent in it is to slaughter an animal yourself? And by getting your own hands bloody, you're not only saving the animal from a frightening and grizzly slaughterhouse death, but are purportedly "honoring" this animal whose life you've taken to prove that you can "face the ugly realities of eating meat"? This is nonsensical and disturbing, at the very least.

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Speaking of PETA...

We've become used to single-issue campaigns by animal welfare groups such as PETA targeting designers who incorporate fur into their fashion shows or fashion lines, this will surely be getting a bit of attention from animal people (and even squeamish ordinary folks) on the interwebs this week. The only thing that sets this apart from other forms of animal exploitation is that the juxtaposition is a little out of the ordinary.

We're used to seeing people wearing leather, wool, feathers and fur; we're used to seeing raw animal flesh on little styrofoam trays or in big frozen chunks at the supermarket. The general population doesn't react to this. Let the two overlap and there'll surely be a fair amount of indignation (or even outrage) voiced concerning this over coming days, by vegans and (somewhat ironically) non-vegans, alike.

The Vegan News

A vegan I know, Adam Kochanowicz, has recently launched a site called Vegan FM which is devoted to showing video and audio podcasts produced by vegans (albeit not necessarily dealing with vegan or animal rights issues). One of the features of the site is The Vegan News, a news show hosted by Adam and focused specifically on stories of interest to vegans. Check it out and get involved!

Random Veganism Bits in the News

Chrissie Hynde's VegiTerranean restaurant, along with Standing Rock Cultural Arts and Kent State Dining Services hosted the first annual Vegan Iron Chef competition at Kent State to kick off a weeklong celebration of Earth Day. Two Kent State Teams competed against three University of Akron teams in the first half of the competition which involved preparing an appetizer, salad and entrée. Two of the Akron teams took first and second place. The second half of the competition involved seven professional chefs.

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Last month, Newsweek senior editor David Noonan outed himself as being a "vegan". His article focuses on what he should really be calling a "strict vegetarian" diet, however, since no mention is made of the consumption of animal products other than food and his reasons for embarking on it were solely weight-loss related. It's nice to see the eschewing of animal products being promoted in such a mainstream new source, however, Noonan's using the term "vegan" becomes even more problematic when he inadvertently outs himself as actually being a non-vegan: "I have strayed a bit myself—I don't believe it's possible or even proper to eat a baked potato without at least a dab of butter."

Quite Possibly One of the Most Stupid Things I've Read Today

Taken from Princeton's newspaper, The Daily Princetonian:

“The dining hall is the reason why I’m not vegan anymore,” said Jones, who is now independent, adding that she subsisted mostly on peanut butter, soy milk and fruit when she had a meal plan. “I basically couldn’t eat a varied diet and get all the nutrients that I needed,” she explained.

As the University requires all students to sign up for meal plans during their freshman and sophomore years, Jones said she felt she wasn’t getting her money’s worth. “I was being forced to pay for everyone else’s meat, which I normally wouldn’t support,” she said. As a result, she gave up veganism. “I decided to eat [meat] anyways since I was paying for it,” she explained.

She decided to "eat meat anyway" since she was paying for it? Plus, the article goes on to state that more than a third of the meal options in her dining hall at any given time were actually vegetarian or vegan. Once again, convenience trumps logic.

B12 and More Scaremongering About Veganism in the News

There are articles spreading across the internet this week about a recent study in Ireland linking neural tube birth defects to vitamin B12 deficiency. The study pointed out that a) women who consume little or no animal products, as well as b) women who have intestinal disorders that prevent them from absorbing B12 properly, are at highest risk of being B12 deficient and that it's this B12 deficiency that increases the chance of the development of neural tube defects. At least some of the articles mention the B12 absorption issue, but not all of them do, which is unfortunate, since awareness should be raised of this condition. Furthermore, not mentioning the absorption issue leaves all of the negative attention focused on veganism.

One example of this is the UK Telegraph's article, which has me particularly irked since along with omitting the mention of the absorption issue, it states flat-out in its title that a "Vegan diet increases the risk of birth defects". Like some of the other articles I scanned, it makes a reference to supplementation, but fails completely to mention the wide range of foods that are fortified with B12 already. All of the 4-5 articles I scanned that covered the study emphasized that B12 can "only" be found in meat, eggs or dairy; few of them made more than a slight reference to supplementation, and none mentioned the absurdly high percentage of foods like soy products and cereals that are already fortified with B12 -- foods that aren't, in fact, animal-derived. (See this article from the Vegetarian Resource Group for more information on how to get B12 in your diet from non-animal sources.)

What concerns me even further is that Telegraph's article (along with a few others) fails to mention what this one does, which is that

[f]or the study, the researchers analysed stored blood samples originally collected during early pregnancy from three groups of Irish women between 1983 and 1990. During that time, pregnant women in Ireland rarely took vitamin supplements.

So, these articles are now going around, associating veganism with birth defects. This, in and of itself, is what's going to be kicked around in mainstream media for the next little while, since villifying veganism seems to be the trendy thing these days. This study, however, was conducted using women who weren't taking any vitamin supplements at all at a time when the B12-fortified foods so readily available and plentiful now were probably incredibly scarce. Vegans today live in a completely different context, yet if clarification of these significant facts in these articles about the study isn't provided, yet another myth about the (gasp!) dangers of being vegan will be perpetuated -- possibly for years to come.

Veganism and Animal-Related Bits in the News

If you need another reason to not eat eggs, consider that according to the Windsor Star:

[a] study just published in the journal Diabetes Care (2008) has found that eating seven or more eggs per week -- that's just an egg a day, a number probably quite common in Canada -- increases your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 58 per cent if you are a man and by 77 per cent if you're a woman compared to people who don't eat eggs.

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First of all, I had no idea that Fangoria magazine (provider of the lining of many a junior high school locker of mine) was still around. They had a blurb on a figure of Tofu the Vegan Zombie that's now available for purchase.

From the official website fo the computer animated short film from which the character hails:

Vost didn't notice the dark shadow rising behind him. The mess in front of him consumed his mind. The dark shadow rose higher and higher.

Vost picked up the bag of groceries from the floor and turned around. The boy, with outstretched grabbing hands stood face to face with the professor - his stitched mouth gnawed hungrily in the air. The boy lunged at him. The professor dropped the grocery bag and fell instinctively to the floor, imagining a painful and ghastly death.

The cowering professor peeked through his cupped hands and saw the boy kneeling on the ground in front of him- the bag of groceries ripped apart and food littered across the floor. The boy attacked the fruits, and veggies with fury and vengeance. Lifting his head from the battle below, he let out an intelligible sound from his reddened and gooey face: "GGGGGRAINS!"

For more information on Tofu the Vegan Zombie, check out the site. Here's the trailer:

Veganism in the News

In a guest article for the Globe and Mail, "Vegan diet has surprising stick-to-it-iveness", dietitian Leslie Beck discusses the recently published results of a PCRM study on losing weight and reducing bad cholesterol levels by following a strictly plant-based diet. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but within the context of her article, I can't help but feel that a more accurate way of describing what she calls a "vegan" diet would be to call it a "strict vegetarian" diet. Veganism isn't just about what you put into your mouth; it's a way of life wrapped around an ethical belief system that concerns itself with not using or consuming non-human animals.

In the last third or so of the article, she juxtaposes achieving the same the same health benefits as those touted by PCRM, but by following a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet (she mentions "other studies" without actually citing sources). The positive side of the piece is that it drills home that it's not hard to follow a plant-based diet. The negative is that it presents veganism outside of any sort of ethical context, which inevitably waters down the actual meaning of the term.

Without Soy, Are We Really Just Left with Fritos?

I read over at the Vegan Freaks forum that The Atlantic's Megan McArdle, previously a mainstream media advocate of veganism, has officially thrown in the towel. Seems that after a year of veganism, she has a bum thyroid and that since her endocrinologist has told her that soy has to go, she's decided that she can no longer survive as a vegan. She labels her blog post "The End of an Era" (humble, no?) and waxes on defiantly about how cutting out soy is necessary for her condition, and, that by cutting it out, she feels she can no longer get sufficient protein with her busy schedule. She claims that there aren't any restaurants in DC that serve seitan, so therefore, by going soy-free, she's ended up getting sicker since she "was basically living on Fritos and peanut butter every time [she] left the house". So for want of seitan, one is left with Fritos and peanut butter??

That's sort of sad. If I leave the house for the day, it's usually with a packed lunch and a couple of fruit. I also carry almonds, sunflower seeds or trail mix with me, most of the time. At my desk, I frequently keep organic brown rice cakes or a Luna bar. If I eat out in my tiny not-so-veg-friendly city, I hit a salad bar or opt for a veggie stirfry, veggie wrap, a hummus plate -- there's always something healthy to eat. And it seems that Washington, DC does indeed have tons of vegan-friendly restaurants. I'm actually envious at the choices McArdle has when eating out and am quite sure that at least a few of these places don't include soy in each and every single dish on their menus.

This whole thing is just laziness spooned over a whopping bowlful of misinformation. You don't need to substitute meat with something if you stop eating it. A varied diet of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grains is all you need to be healthy. Some even argue that too much emphasis is placed on legumes and grains and that we get sufficient protein without those, never mind bothering to eat fake meats. And where is it written that vegans need soy or seitan, specifically, to fill that meat void? The Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) has a great piece on how ridiculously easy it is to obtain your daily requirements from non-animal sources. PCRM does too, in an article on "The Protein Myth". Some of the foods they list that are high in protein are soy-based, but most aren't.

McArdle basically posits that it has to be all or nothing. If she can't have soy, she can't be a vegan; if she can't be a vegan, she has to go back to meat eating, altogether. There's no grey area for her, so she's decided to return to eating what she calls "certified humane animal products" (i.e. that mythical "happy meat"), including dairy. And just to make her position clear in terms of any possible ethical reasons she had for being vegan for a year, she throws in that she's only a "moderate on animal rights" and that she believes "in animal testing". So I guess it's pointless to suggest to McArdle that just because she's chosen to go back to eating animals, that it doesn't mean that she has to go back to promoting their consumption.

It's one thing for McArdle to make decisions about her own diet that are based on misinformation. Unfortunately, by presenting her case the way she has, she's left herself looking, to those who know better, as if she's too attached to convenience to look for other options. Worse, to those who don't know better, she's left herself looking like a poster child for how veganism is too inconvenient, too complicated and just plain old too unhealthy. That's what irks me the most.

(Please note the accompanying photo of Ms. McArdle by David Shankbone that brings to mind an expression about babies and bathwater. Couldn't help myself.)

What Tofurky Day Means for Animal Rights

With Thanksgiving being just around the corner for my American friends, I've been doing some nosing around through some of the articles that have popped up about it -- at least those from an animal-friendly perspective. I found a nicely written piece about the holiday on the Columbia Spectator's student paper's website. Eric Risser talks about what Thanksgiving traditionally means to most -- getting together with family and friends, a chance to look back at the year behind you... Risser, of course, addresses the meat-centric nature of Thanksgiving. More than any other US holiday, it pretty much revolves around eating an animal. That being said, Risser points out that in terms of what it means to animals, it's really not that different from most other days. Sure, around 46 million turkeys are slaughtered every year in the US for Thanksgiving, but around 23 million chickens are slaughtered every other day of the year.

What Risser suggests is to use Thanksgiving to test out vegetarianism and he writes about the annual vegan Thanksgiving dinner that the Columbia Students for Animal Protection put on as having been a great opportunity for people to do this -- to see that all of the other aspects of Thanksgiving can be enjoyed without having to sacrifice having a delicious (in this case vegan) meal. I wonder how many of you out there are hosting Thanksgiving dinner for family and friends this year and sharing scrumptious animal-free dishes while taking part in this traditional American holiday?

Veganism in the News

Switzerland issued new rules for enlistment in its army around a week ago. It seems that although you can serve in the Swiss army if you "smoke marijuana, take Ecstasy or drink regularly" as long as you can prove that you're not addicted. However, you can't be a conscript if you're a vegan.

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PANOS brands is recalling their Vegan Rella Cheddar blocks with a sell date of 12/09/2008 because they may in fact contain a milk protein not listed on the label. Click here for more info.

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New Brunswick's own Mount Allison University came out on top of PETA2's list of most Vegetarian-Friendly Universities in Canada. Mount A. apparently offers students a fully-vegan dining station with more than 100 vegan dishes from which to choose.

Veganism in the News

The Baltimore City Paper printed an article in its Eats section by a woman called Violet Glaze (I think she usually covers entertainment). She starts off by asserting that she's a vegan, "but not a very good one". She refers to her "ravenous, carnivorous muscles" sending "red alerts" to her subconscious when she purportedly becomes protein deficient (perpetuating the myth that vegans don't get enough protein). She quips that her skimping on seitan leads to dreams of animal flesh, and that although she knows that she can get sufficient protein from vegetable sources, that it's animal flesh her body craves anyway. She presents veganism as a struggle against these sorts of cravings.

She uses this as a diving board to plunge into -- you guessed it -- an argument for the ethical superiority of eating animals grown and slaughtered locally, versus eating plant-based foods that are shipped in from far away. She quotes Barbra Kingsolver, who mused that opting for plant-based foods and meat alternatives from great distances leads us to "overlook the suffering of victims of hurricanes, famines and wars brought on this world by profligate fuel consumption". Therefore, we're left with an either / or situation where you can either eat local animals and their products or be a vegetarian and have your animal-free food shipped in from far away, which apparently leads to great human suffering. The assumption is that all meat and animal products are local and that everything else has to circle the globe to get to us.

Glaze accepts this either / or scenario and refers to the "rug of vegetarian moral superiority" being "yanked out from under" her feet (perpetuating the myth that vegetarians are, by default, smug and holier-than-thou types). So her solution to what she feels is a true ethical dilemma left in her lap by Kingsolver? To eat insects, since (as she puts it) "an insect is practically a plant, right?". In the end, she asserts that her experiment has likely left her a more "dedicated" vegan, but she continues by saying that if she ever sees insects on a menu in the future that although the "saint" in her won't order them, the "omnivore" in her might.

(Photo of the article's author from the Baltimore City Paper)
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In other news: Time magazine recently featured an article in its "10 Questions" series that allowed readers to ask Ingrid Newkirk of PETA some questions. I liked her response about the whole Ben & Jerry's breast milk campaign that left so many people outraged and ranting. Newkirk essentially points out that it was indeed a joke to get people -- as well as the media -- talking about how cow's milk is meant for calves. I didn't quite like how she answered the question concerning how one could fight for animal rights in a world filled with poverty and starvation. She focused on the unhealthiness of meat, when so much more could have been said.

I'm not a huge fan of PETA, but in all, I guess that this bit by her in as mainstream and conservative a publication as Time wasn't all that bad.

Sarah Palin and Matthew Scully Part II

I found this article online today that takes a different look at vegetarian-anti-hunting-Scully having written obsessive-hunter-Palin's speech:

These two Republicans are working together to trounce Obama-Biden ticket, even when that ticket has the endorsement of the Humane Society and PETA. So whatever else you might say about Matthew Scully, he's got his priorities straight. Imagine Democrats of such divergent views collaborating. I can't. A big tent indeed.

I think that it's the one positive reference to Scully's having written the speech that I've seen in the press so far. It's no surprise that it's from such a conservative source, and of course the article then goes on to thrash Scully quite soundly, praising hunting and then completely denouncing veganism as unnatural. You can't have a conservative article mentioning veganism without throwing in the obligatory myths and misinformation (e.g. you can only get B-12 in meat).

Wayne Pacelle on the not-so-vegan-friendly skies

The New York Times had a fairly light piece yesterday -- an article (a one-sided phone interview?) "by Wayne Pacelle, as told to Joan Raymond". Pacelle is, of course, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The piece was about the serious lack of vegan fare offered by airlines these days, particularly for frequent flyers who fly at a moment's notice and don't have sufficient time to make advance meal arrangements.

Veganism in the news

'K, so I don't usually read tabloids or follow entertainment ''news''. I've been living cable-free for over two years and generally care more about my cats' relationships than Brad and Angelina's. That being said, I read a blurb on the only entertainment site I do read from time to time, Ecorazzi, that turned my head a little, 'cause good press is just plain ol' good press. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi were married this past weekend. Back in October, Gray Francione had addressed the big ''to do'' over Ellen's adopted dog Iggy, taking a bit of a reasonable look at what customarily happens when people adopt from rescue groups. At the time, he'd also taken issue with the fact that Ellen had sobbed on national TV over a dog, while happily reporting this or that animal-based meal on her blog. Which, brings me back to the fact that DeGeneres and de Rossi were married this past weekend. After they exchanged rings, an all-vegan meal was served to their guests -- including a vegan wedding cake. As far as I know, neither DeGeneres or de Rossi is even vegetarian, but I think the gesture was swell.

Deconstructing the anti-veg formula in today's oh-so-trendy opinion pieces

The Miramichi Leader (OK, decidedly not so trendy in and of itself) featured an opinion piece yesterday -- a glorified blog post, really -- that's essentially just an immature, ill-informed and condescending dig at vegans. (What's up with all of these newspapers reprinting blog posts or hiring on their own volunteer bloggers, anyway? Are they just too cheap to pay people to write about news anymore? Is it that so many more people are relying on blogs for their information these days that the newspapers are just desperate to stay hip and cling to their readership?)

These post-Pollan anti-veg pieces, in particular, are becoming so commonplace and so formulaic. Here's what I mean: There are the obligatory references to how scrumptious meat is (e.g. ''if they started selling Raisin Bran with two scoops of bacon bits, I'd be sorely tempted''). Since all omni dishes purportedly revolve around a fleshy bits centerpiece, an assumption is presented that vegan dishes should also, by default, revolve around a meat substitute (e.g. ''as I can tell, the main staple of their diet is tofu) and then, a description is put forth of how inedible that obligatory meat substitute actually is (e.g. ''it tastes just like gym socks''). There is also, of course, the token quote from some sort of food ''expert'' to back this or that aspect of the writer's dismissal of veganism, usually from a non-veg chef, cookbook author or nutritionist who either a) knows little or nothing about vegetarianism, or who is b) known to be prejudiced against it:

I called my son-in-law, who is a chef, and asked him for some vegan recipes. He just chuckled. "Good luck with that," he said. He asked what kind of vegan she was.

Add to that the general mocking of veganism simply based on an ignorant assumption or bit of misinformation the writer perpetuates (e.g. ''maybe vegans only eat vegetables that die of old age or something'') and then, of course, the old slap on the back and ''hey buddy, can't you take a joke?'' ending (e.g. ''I'm kidding, of course, and I hope all you tofu-lovers won't throw your healing crystals across the room in anger'') that never fails to bring to mind every unimaginative and transparent passive-aggressive former co-worker I've ever had. Presto! You have today's typical trendy anti-vegetarian newspaper blurb. Am I not right?

Philadelphia City Paper article claims rising fuel prices are making it harder to eat vegan

The article is a bit misleading and seems to be a whole lot of writing just for the sake of writing. Rising fuel prices are making it more expensive to eat anything. The article perpetuates the myth that veganism is complicated and requires special food substitutes that are only available in specialty stores.

A quote from the article:

Vegans, according to Widener University professor of economics Joseph Fuhr, have been particularly hard hit by increasing food prices, driven up by the price of gas. "They have less flexibility in terms of what to buy," he says. So when one item increases in price, it's that much harder to find a substitute.

"When you're cooking for a vegan person," says Rachel Klein, who runs Miss Rachel's Traveling Fare, a local vegan and vegetarian catering service, "you can't get everything you need from one store. ... I'm going to Whole Foods, I'm going to Trader Joe's, to Wegmans, to ShopRite. I'm going to the Vietnamese market." Gas prices on these errands add up.

Things are especially difficult for restaurants. "People are expecting a certain level of quality that we're not going to sacrifice," says Rich Landau, owner of Horizons restaurant in Bella Vista. "At a restaurant like ours, it's got to be about freshness ... We need trucks in front every day." With new fuel service costs, that can cost Landau an extra $10 to $15 per day — which he is eating, rather than passing along to his customers.

As for the first two paragraphs of this quote, these people being quoted seem to be making the assumption that vegans require specialty processed foods that can only be found in health food stores (which means having to burn more gas driving around). That's grossly misleading. I get most of my stuff from one of the two major supermarkets in town, and most of the foodstuff that I get is pretty basic -- legumes, produce, whole grains, tofu, et al. -- and is pretty much available almost anywhere I'd shop. Even the specialty processed vegan foods (e.g. meat subs) are generally available most anywhere now, as well.

As for the last paragraph in the quote -- I'd hope that this applies to any kind of restaurant, not just vegan restaurants, and it does nothing to support the article's claim that vegan diets, specifically, are dependent on cheap gas in any way. At least no more than any other diet.

Read the rest of the article here.