Tag Archives | Vegetarianism

Queens Elementary Becomes The Nation’s First Public School To Serve Only Vegetarian Meals

By on May 2, 2013 in News 0

vegetarian lunch

A preview of days to come in which families will choose between regular and meat-free public schools. The New York Daily News reports:

Public School 244 in Flushing is the first public school in the nation to serve all-vegetarian meals for breakfast and lunch, according to city education officials.

Chefs at the Active Learning Elementary School have swapped chicken, turkey and ham for black beans, tofu and falafel, and kids are digging in with delight. “This is so good!” squealed 9-year-old Marian Satti, devouring her black bean and cheddar cheese quesadilla Tuesday at lunch. “I’m enjoying that it didn’t have a lot of salt in it. ”

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who often crows about maintaining a fit lifestyle, said the launch of the vegetarian food-fest should be duplicated in schools across the city and country.

PS 244 partnered with nonprofit New York Coalition for Healthy School Food to design recipes for appetizing plant-based grub.

… Read the rest

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Oxford University Study Shows Vegetarian Diet Reduces Heart Disease Risk by up to a Third

By on January 31, 2013 in News 60

If you’re at all concerned about heart disease, you need to consider making plant foods most your diet. The film Planeat from Disinformation affiliate True Mind highlighted the groundbreaking work of doctors T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell Esselstyn, in which they demonstrated the benefits of plant-based diets for treating heart disease (not just reducing risk). Now Channel 4 News reports that in the biggest ever study of its kind in the UK, researchers from Oxford University have found a vegetarian diet dramatically reduces the risk of heart disease:

Fancy a burger tonight? A new report might make you think again about your dinner. Researchers from the University of Oxford have analysed the diets of almost 45,000 volunteers in England and Scotland, to compare the rates of heart disease in those who do, and don’t eat meat and fish.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that vegetarians had a 32 per cent lower risk of falling ill or dying from heart disease.

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SpaceX Founder’s Colony On Mars Would Be For Vegetarians Only

By on January 10, 2013 in News 118

A previously-unmentioned wrinkle in the most feasible plan for humanity to reach a second planet: meat eaters will be left behind to languish on Earth. Russia Today writes:

A US billionaire and co-founder of PayPal, Elon Musk, has made plans to build a settlement for 80,000 people on Mars when technology makes it possible for man to live there, for a price of $500,000.

Musk is a considered one of America’s most respected private space entrepreneurs and was in charge of creating SpaceX, a space transport company that produced the Falcon 9 rocket that delivers NASA cargo to the International Space Station. The billionaire’s estate and prominence in the space industry could make his plans [for a city on Mars] feasible, but the California-based engineer has not left behind his personal ideologies: Musk will only allow vegetarians to live in his settlement.

… Read the rest

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McDonald’s Opens Its First Meat-Free Restaurants

By on September 5, 2012 in News 21

I’m frankly speechless. This seems as if it symbolizes something –  but what exactly? The true end of the American century? Russia Today reports:

The McDonald’s restaurant chain is to open its first vegetarian-only outlets in India. The move is not so much about the hamburger chain going vegan due to a revelation, rather an aspiration to win over the lucrative fast food market of India. The company’s signature product is taboo in India because cows are sacred and beef-eating is prohibited by religion.

Two vegetarian McDonald’s are due to open next year in the Indian pilgrimage centres in the city of Amritsar, home to the Golden Temple, and the town of Katra. “A vegetarian store makes absolute sense in the places which are famous as pilgrimage sites,” Rajesh Kumar Maini, a spokesman for McDonald’s India told AFP.

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Food Shortages May Force World Population To Go Vegetarian

By on August 26, 2012 in News 35

Drought Swimming HoleCould this be a conspiracy against freedom-loving, red meat-eating Americans? I have a feeling there will be those in certain quarters who claim just that. John Vidal reports for The Guardian:

Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.

Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world’s leading water scientists.

“There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations,” the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.

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World Must Be About To End: USDA Promotes Meatless Mondays

By on July 26, 2012 in News 4

A searingly hot summer that’s affecting 88% of the United States’ corn crop has the government forecasting meat prices up to 5% higher next year. Perhaps that what caused the USDA, normally a staunch meat booster, to promote Meatless Mondays. This seemingly sage advice (vegetables are farm crops too, remember) to take a weekly day off from meat has many Americans even more hot and bothered. Amy Harmon reports for the New York Times:

The message seemed innocuous enough, coming as it did from the federal agency tasked with promoting sustainable agriculture and dietary health: “One simple way to reduce your environmental impact while dining at our cafeterias,” read a United States Department of Agriculture interoffice newsletter published on its Web site this week, “is to participate in the ‘Meatless Monday’ initiative.”

Thousands of corporate cafeterias, restaurants and schools have embraced the idea of skipping meat on Mondays in favor of vegetarian options, an initiative of the nonprofit Monday Campaign Inc.

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Human Ancestors Were For The Most Part Vegetarian

By on July 24, 2012 in News 38

Looking to free your diet from the perversions of modernity and eat paleo-style? When our ancient predecessors were developing their digestive systems, they did so on a steady ration of plants — which are what most primates eat to this day, writes Scientific American:

An entire class of self-help books recommends a return to the diets of our ancestors–Paleolithic diets, caveman diets, primal diets and the like. But what did our ancestors eat?

A paleo diet is an arbitrary thing. Which paleo diet should we eat? The one from twelve thousand years ago? A hundred thousand years ago? Forty million years ago? I would argue that, IF we want to return to our ancestral diets, we might reasonably eat what our ancestors spent the most time eating during the largest periods of the evolution of our guts. If that is the case, we need to be eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables—especially fungus-covered tropical leaves.

… Read the rest

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Tick Bites Turning Meat Eaters Into Vegetarians

By on June 21, 2012 in News 23

Have animals finally found a way to stop us eating them? Katie Moisse reports for ABC News:

There’s a new weapon in the war on meat: a tiny tick, whose bite might be spreading meat allergies up the East Coast.

A bite from the lone star tick, so-called for the white spot on its back, looks innocent enough. But University of Virginia researchers say saliva that sneaks into the tiny wound may trigger an allergic reaction to meat — agonizing enough to convert lifelong carnivores into wary vegetarians.

“People will eat beef and then anywhere from three to six hours later start having a reaction; anything from hives to full-blown anaphylactic shock,” said Dr. Scott Commins, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “And most people want to avoid having the reaction, so they try to stay away from the food that triggers it.”…

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Shark Becomes Vegetarian (And Eats Lettuce Now) After A Near-Death Experience

By on May 19, 2012 in News 6

LettuceNote to self, a near “death-by-fisherman” experience makes you hate meat. Stephen Messenger writes on TreeHugger:

Sharks have garnered a well-deserved reputation as the ocean’s most ferocious killers, capable of sniffing out a single drop of blood in the water from miles away — but for one nurse shark at an aquatic center in the UK, the taste of meat seems to have lost its luster.

Three years ago, a six-foot-long shark named Florence grabbed headlines by becoming the first of her kind to undergo a groundbreaking ‘out of water’ surgery to remove a rusty fish hook lodged in her gut. Although she made a remarkable recovery and was later put on exhibit at the Birmingham National Sea Life Center in England, Florence would eventually prove that being a good patient wasn’t her only distinction.

As it turns out, the Florence’s close brush with death-by-fisherman seems to have left a lasting impression on her — namely, that meaty treats mean trouble.

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Eating Less Meat Is World’s Best Chance For Timely Climate Change

By on April 30, 2012 in News 16

Santa GertrudisAccording to some “experts,” as reported by Michelle Maisto in Forbes:

Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be a vegetarian diet eating less meat, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine. (While I’d happily nudge the world toward a vegetarian diet, the report authors are more measured and simply suggest diets containing less meat.)

“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote in an April 18 blog post on the report.

A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.

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