It’s All About Food

It’s time for the Best Of 2012 IT’S ALL ABOUT FOOD podcasts. There were 80 interviews this year with doctors, nutritionists, athletes, chefs and authors, all of them about food! I read a lot of books this year for my IT’S ALL ABOUT FOOD interviews. Below are my favorites. My next post will be about my favorite cookbooks of 2012.
 
 
Atina Diffley, Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works.
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12/11/2012: Part I: Chad Sarno Crazy Sexy Kitchen

Chad Sarno is a chef, consultant, speaker, and committed plant activist. He has brought his unique culinary style to projects spanning public education at some of the world’s premier wellness retreats, and culinary expos to the launch of an international boutique restaurant chain from Istanbul to London.

Chad has been contributing chef to numerous recipe books as well as featured in many national publications. He has been a guest on dozens of morning shows, and food focused programs on television and radio internationally over the years. Through the intersection of clean food and culinary education, Chad continues to share his passion for helping others achieve their health goals, starting in the kitchen.

In his most recent project, Chad has teamed up with New York Times Best Selling Author Kris Carr of Crazy Sexy Diet to write Crazy Sexy Kitchen: 150 Plant-Empowered Recipes to Ignite a Mouthwatering Revolution.

Chad is currently the senior culinary educator for Whole Foods Market’s healthy eating program, and resides with his beautiful daughter in Austin, TX.

12/11/2012: Part II: Fran Costigan Irresistible Chocolate Vegan Desserts

Native New Yorker Fran Costigan, the “Queen of Vegan Desserts,” is an internationally recognized culinary instructor, author, consultant, recipe developer and the pioneering vegan pastry chef who marries healthy eating with sumptuous tastes. The “Fran Factor” is her unique ability to transform traditional desserts into modern, healthful, and luscious vegan desserts that satisfy vegans and omnivores alike. In Fran’s recipes, ‘nothing is missing except the dairy, eggs, white sugar and excess fat.’ She is the authority on all things related to vegan baking and desserts.A graduate of the New York Restaurant School, the Natural Gourmet Institute, and Nick Malgeri’s Professional Pastry Intensive, today Fran teaches her unique courses at the Institute of Culinary Education, the Natural Gourmet Institute (including her always sold-out Vegan Baking Boot Camp Intensive®), and at other venues throughout the US and Canada. Fran’s second cookbook, More Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts Naturally (Book Publishing Company, 2006), is designed as a complete course in vegan baking.

Fran’s recipes feature organic whole grains, fair trade natural sweeteners and chocolates, and clean seasonal ingredients. Fran’s third cookbook, Irresistible Chocolate Vegan Desserts for Everyone: Unapologetically Delicious, Decadent, Dark, Organic and Fair, will be published by Running Press, fall 2013.Fran and her decadent modern vegan dessert recipes have been featured on Discovery Health Channel Show Get Fresh with Sara Snow, on Better TV, and on ABC’s Nightline. Her work has been profiled in numerous print and online publications such as The New Yorker, VegNews, Veg Family, Vegetarian Journal, Vegetarian Voice, Café Sweets Japan, and Organic Spa Magazine. Fran is an advisory board member of New York Coalition for Healthy School Foods. She also also promotes her message through her professional affiliations,which include the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance (NYWCA), International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), Women Chefs and Restaurateurs (WCR).

LISTEN HERE to the 11/17/2010 interview with Fran Costigan on IT’S ALL ABOUT FOOD.

TRANSCRIPTION

PART I:

Hello everybody! I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Hope you’re having a very happy 11th of December 2012. And we’re in that happy holiday season. It’s Hanukkah and I want to remind you to visit responsibleeatingandliving.com. We have a great food show up for Hanukkah right now: it’s my baked potato pancakes/potato latkes. I’m so in love with this recipe. Read more »

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11/27/2012: Part I: Michelle McCabe Food Policy & Obesity

Michelle McCabe is a Research Assistant at the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. She works with Roberta Friedman, Director of Public Policy, to research and create policy briefs and maintain the Legislative Updates.

Michelle advocates for a healthy school food environment in her town. She is in her second term as chair of the Fuel for Learning Partnership, a PTA council standing committee that serves on the Wellness Coalition, organizes educational events around nutrition and local food, and seeks to improve school lunches and school food policy.

Michelle received her Bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and her Master’s degree from the University of Texas, Austin, both in art history.

11/27/2012: Part II: Noam Mohr Global Warming

Noam Mohr is a physicist at Queens College with degrees from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked on global warming campaigns for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and EarthSave International, publishing a number of reports on climate change including A New Global Warming Strategy, Flirting with Disaster, Pumping Up the Price, and Storm Warning.
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11/13/2012: Part I: James Colquhoun HUNGRY FOR CHANGE

From the producers of the documentary films “Food Matters” James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch say that everyone on a diet ought to get “Hungry for Change” instead. Their first film, “Food Matters” has been seen by millions who have rediscovered their health with the core message of the film: you are what you eat. On the heels of that success, the couple began receiving scores of messages from people eager for them to turn their attention to weight loss. A prescriptive companion to the DVD, the book HUNGRY FOR CHANGE: The How-to Guide for Breaking Free from the Diet Trap combines the expertise of top medical doctors and nutritionists with proven strategies to prevent and reverse disease, and more than 100 recipes to lose weight simply by adding better food to your diet and avoiding harmful ones.

Here is VIDEO of James and Laurentine discussing HUNGRY FOR CHANGE.

11/13/2012: Part II: Courtney Meder PURE, CLEAN WATER

Courtney Meder works at her family’s business, Pure & Secure (home of the original Pure Water Distillers) in Lincoln, Nebraska. She and her family have dedicated their lives to spreading awareness about toxins in the water supply and how distillation is the best way for a family to protect their loved ones from these harmful toxins. They are committed to purity and quality and truly believe there is no compromise when it comes to one’s health.

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10/16/2012: Part I: Melanie Joy Carnism

Melanie Joy, Ph.D., Ed.M. is the founder and president of Carnism Awareness & Action Network (CAAN). Dr. Joy is a Harvard-educated psychologist, professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, celebrated speaker, and the author of the award-winning primer on carnism Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. She has written a number of articles on psychology, animal protection, and social justice and she has been featured on programs including the BBC, National Public Radio, PBS, ABC Australia, and Good Morning Croatia, and in Slovenia’s Jana, the Austrian Der Standard and the Italian Le Scienze. Dr. Joy has given her critically acclaimed carnism presentation across the United States as well as internationally. Dr. Joy is also the author of Strategic Action for Animals.

10/16/2012: Part II: Dr. William Davis Wheat Belly

William Davis, MD, is a preventive cardiologist whose unique approach to diet allows him to advocate reversal, not just prevention, of heart disease. His book Wheat Belly is a #1 on the New York Times Bestseller. He is the founder of the TrackYourPlaque.com program. He lives in Wisconsin.

TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Hello everybody! It’s time for It’s All About Food. I am Caryn Hartglass, the founder of the nonprofit Responsible Eating and Living (REAL). I wanted to tell you that October is the time for our REAL Appeal at Responsible Eating and Living. We are a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Read more »

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10/9/2012: Part I: John Robbins No Happy Cows

Groomed to follow in the footsteps of his father, John Robbins chose a different path for himself, becoming a social activist and fierce advocate for plant-strong diets and compassionate living. John Robbins is the author of The Food Revolution, Diet for a New America, Reclaiming Our Health, Healthy at 100 and The New Good Life. His life and work have been featured on the PBS special Diet for a New America, and he has won numerous awards for his pioneering work, including the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award, and Green American’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives with his family in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

10/9/2012: Part II: Mark Reinfeld Taste of Europe

Mark Reinfeld is the winner of Vegan.com’s Recipe of the Year Award for 2011 and has over 20 years experience preparing creative vegan and raw food cuisine. Mark was the Executive Chef for the North American Vegetarian Society’s 2012 Summerfest, one of the largest vegetarian conferences in the world. He is described by VegCooking.com as being “poised on the leading edge of contemporary vegan cooking”. He is the founding chef of the Blossoming Lotus Restaurant, winner of Honolulu Advertiser’s ‘Ilima Award for “Best Restaurant on Kaua’i”. Mark is also the recipient of a Platinum Carrot Award for living foods – a national award given by the Aspen Center of Integral Health to America’s top “innovative and trailblazing healthy chefs.

Mark received his initial culinary training from his grandfather Ben Bimstein, a renowned chef and ice carver in New York City. He developed his love for World culture and cuisine during travel journeys through Europe , Asia and the Middle East . In 1997, Mark formed the Blossoming Lotus Personal Chef Service in Malibu , California. To further his knowledge of the healing properties of food, he received a Masters Degree in Holistic Nutrition.

His first cookbook, Vegan World Fusion Cuisine, coauthored with Bo Rinaldi and with a foreword by Dr. Jane Goodall, has won several national awards, including “Cookbook of the Year’, ‘Best New Cookbook’, ‘Best Book by a Small Press’ and a Gourmand Award for ‘Best Vegetarian Cookbook in the USA ’. In addition Mark coauthored The Taste Of The East, The 30-Minute Vegan and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Raw.

He currently offers online vegan cooking lessons at CookingHealthyLessons.com as well as vegan cooking and raw food preparation consulting, cookbooks, recipe development, cooking classes, workshops, chef training, intensives and retreats in both North America and Europe. If you would like to learn more about Vegan Fusion Cuisine and Mark Reinfeld please visit veganfusion.com.

TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello everybody, I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Here we are, October 9, 2012. I wanted to let you know that during the month of October, which is vegetarian awareness month and also a lot of other things, Read more »

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9/25/2012: Part I: Maia Kobb Dowe Recovery From Autism

Maia graduated from Russell Sage with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Upon graduation she took a position at the New York Hospital / Cornell Medical Center (now New York Presbyterian Hospital) where she worked in the Burn Trauma Unit / ICU becoming a Charge Nurse after 1 year. Working on the Burn Unit, she became interested in research and subsequently worked with Johnson & Johnson as a Clinical Research Associate, in Medical Immunobiology, where she stayed for 15 years, moving to Quality Assurance and Training for Clinical R&D.

Maia is the mother of a 22 year-old son who is recovered from Autism. He is now a senior in college, an Honor student in Physics, and an accomplished jazz guitarist. He has many close friends and is a charming and compassionate human being. Her son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at age 2 1/2 in 1993 — before the Internet, before the DAN protocol, and before people were really making the bio-medical connection with the Autism as a significant piece of the puzzle leading to the cause and the cure for Autism. Understanding the biology behind the disorder, and remediating her son’s developmental deficits piece by piece, bit by bit, became Maia’s all-consuming life’s passion.

9/25/2012: Part II: Jonny Hinds Monkey Bar Gym

Jon is a Master Trainer and business founder with over 30 years of global training experience. With his broad knowledge of human physiology and simple training philosophies, Jon has mastered the art of healing and strengthening the body. His dedication to these disciplines has yielded numerous patented training tools and a unique training methodology that continue to attract Olympic and professional athletes from all over the globe.

Jon is also an exceptional motivational speaker and has toured with the famed Tony Robbins. His frank and direct demeanor allows him to quickly disarm and connect with his clients making the efficient progression he’s widely known for look simple.

Jon can leverage his abilities to motivate and inspire any who are willing to listen. Jon is as equally compelling from the confines of an elevator as he is in the expanses of a stadium. His lifelong pursuit of better approaches, regardless financial implication or trend, have galvanized a truly uncommon integrity in him. His endorsements and practices are carefully watched by a diverse community of elite trainers, athletes and coaches.

Jon is currently the Owner and Founder of the Monkey Bar Gym franchise. He is also the Vice President of LifelineUSA, a global leader in fitness innovation and product distribution. Jon is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, the National Academy of Sports Medicine and is certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Jon is also a writer and contributor to a variety of major sports publications and periodicals.

TRANSCRIPTIONS

PROGRAM TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello. I’m Caryn Hartglass, and you are listening to It’s All About Food. It’s September 25, 2012, and here we are in the studio in Manhattan, New York. It’s a beautiful day. The air is fresh, the sky is clear, and it’s really lovely to be alive. So, I’m thankful for that.

So much in the news about food. I just wanted to mention a few things: Arsenic in our rice, and genetically modified organisms in our corn that are making tumors in rats, and who knows what else they’re doing. All these things are exploding this week in the news, and the question is, where can we go to get food that is not only good for us but not contaminated with things we don’t want to eat? Honestly, I don’t know that I have the answers because everything is connected on this planet, and when people are doing things in one place, it affects our water, it affects our air. The best that we can do, and there are a few things: One is we can buy from farmers and stores that have organic produce, but in this latest study that came out about arsenic in rice, we know that even organic rice is affected. So that’s kind of daunting. In addition, and I always like to say this because I think this is really important, even though it may seem very undocumented and trivial, is that whenever you eat and whatever you eat, enjoy it. Don’t worry about it when you’re eating it, and tell your body to take the good from the food, and leave the things that aren’t good for you out and let them pass through. Just let your body know that, and it will listen. We have really powerful minds if we use them correctly. So don’t panic, but certainly, if you have an opportunity, write your congress people. Let them know that we don’t want to have arsenic in our rice, and how do we do that? Well, we stop using toxic herbicides and pesticides in agribusiness. We get rid of factory farms because they are giving arsenic to chickens because they are unhealthy, and the arsenic kind of keeps them going until they are slaughtered. Then there is arsenic in their excrement and that is used as manure which is put on all the fields growing all the plants, and that’s how the arsenic gets into the ground, where we don’t want it.

Okay, so, that’s just a little bit of food for thought to get started, and now I want to bring on my first guest, Maia Dowe. She graduated from Russell Sage College, and she received a Bachelor of Science in nursing. When she graduated, she took a position with a New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center, which is now New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she worked in the Burn Trauma Unit, ICU, and became a charge nurse. After that she worked with Johnson & Johnson as a clinical research associate in medical immunobiology. She worked with J&J for a total of 15 years in Quality Assurance and Training for clinical R&D as well. What we are going to be talking about today is what she experienced while being the mother of her son who was diagnosed at a very early age with autism, and this is a really fascinating story. I think we have a lot to learn from it, so let’s just jump right in. Welcome to It’s All About Food, Maia.

Maia Dowe: Thank you, Caryn. It’s really wonderful to be here today. Just listening to you speak a little bit in your intro about toxicity in food brings me back. My son is actually 22 years old, now, and he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was only 2 1/2, and that was back in 1993. So, there was no internet, we’ve talked about this, and autism wasn’t blown wide open like it is today. We didn’t know everything we now know about food, about gluten, dairy, and large proteins that get in the way of the immune and mental processing for children with autism.

Caryn Hartglass: Even with the internet and everything that’s available to us today, there are so many people that don’t have this information, and many people struggle with autism. Now, how did you know that your son had a problem at 2 1/2 years old?

Maia Dowe: Well, you hear so much about children where they had, pretty much, normal/ typical development until the age of two or three and then started to lose their words and their functions. In our case I think there was potentially some toxicity or an environmental viral trigger, maybe, going on much earlier because by the time Brian was one, it was clear to me that something was a little different. He had trouble crawling. He had a couple of words leading into age two but never put two words together, which is one of the things you do look for. By age 2 1/2 he had lost that. I was working, and he was in a nursery program. He was not interacting with the other children, not following directions, kind of going off by himself. The reason I found out at age 2 1/2, even though I was suspecting things, which my medical doctors were not supporting, my older sister, believe it or not, who had three boys of her own, came to watch my son over Christmas, and she made the observation which she shared with me. This was a lucky thing because when you have a child with autism, the sooner you know and the sooner you start limiting their foods and giving the right supplements and right behavioral teaching, the better chance you have of helping them.

Caryn Hartglass: Early diagnosis for everything is so critical, and it’s all about paying attention.

Maia Dowe: Exactly.

Caryn Hartglass: So, then what did you do?

Maia Dowe: The most important thing was to get a full, what they call, differential diagnosis by a hospital. In our case, we already suspected autism. I live in New Jersey, and there are, in the Princeton area, a couple of very well-known and expert programs in autism, and so we brought Brian directly there to Eden Institute. They did an observational diagnosis where they are trying to interact with the child, watching his interaction with the parents, and then doing some very specific, problem solving, coordination testing. Mostly, it was the connectiveness, and he didn’t have language, and I guess that was the biggest thing. He avoided eye contact, he didn’t have language, and he would scream because he couldn’t communicate.

Caryn Hartglass: Now, did you see a difference, because at 2 1/2 years old it’s really hard to know, but do you think there was something that triggered it, an event, and could you, maybe, tell a difference. I know when kids are older and they have already started to develop, their parents see an on-off difference. Their child just changes, they are never the same, and they try to figure out what it was that triggered it.

Maia Dowe: In my case I’m not sure if it might have been the oral polio vaccine. My son got a second dose of it, and I did see more of a regression following that. Also, I was always watching children at the park, watching the way they moved, used the swings, their motor coordination, eye contact and connectedness, and although my son was always very cuddly and there wasn’t that missing piece, those other things were never what they should have been. He was very sick from a very young age and had a lot of problems with digestion. He was breast fed, but at times when my milk supply wasn’t the best, we tried infant formula and he would projectile vomit the formula. He had a lot of chronic diarrhea as a baby, and so I think there was a digestion absorption problem going on from the get go. So, maybe our story was a little bit different because of that, because you need those proteins and nutrients in order to develop proper neurological function.

Caryn Hartglass: Autism is a word that is used all of the time today, and it covers a wide range. There is no blood test for autism, so it is a subjective kind of diagnosis, and people don’t always fit into a particular mold. I think this is because there is a lot more to it. We may attribute autism to a lot of different problems, and there may be more than just one or two to three or four things, but a lot of different things. It’s convenient, in some ways, to be diagnosed as autistic because then you can benefit from some state aid with schools and help. So, some parents may want to have this diagnosis for their children. We still don’t know a whole lot about it, and I think many different things could have triggered some of the symptoms that your son had. That’s what makes it so hard to figure out what to do about it because there are probably many different causes. Some people believe it’s vaccines, even though the scientists are trying to dispute that all of the time. I’m fascinated with this concept that the eggs in our mother’s womb were formed in our grandmother’s womb so that our DNA started two generations back and could have been affected by so many things a long, long time ago. So, it is really hard to keep track of what might cause developmental problems.

So, you were on a path, and you did a lot of different things. So, what are some of the key things that you did that helped?

Maia Dowe: I do want to say that we followed the theory of autism being multifactorial and that there were many different things contributing to the problem. So in order to heal a child you have to look at it from many different angles as well. So the first thing we did was to put my son into a one-on-one behavioral teaching program. He was very fortunate to be accepted into the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center at Rutger’s University in New Jersey, and he was in their outreach program almost right away. That early intervention everyday makes a difference because there is that window. Even though we now know that neuroplasticity exists well into adulthood and all of our lives, the brain is much more plastic between the ages of two and five. That is a window for recovery, re-teaching, and establishing that connectiveness. In our case, because I worked in medical immunobiology and I was looking at all of these various studies in my work, I started to see some parallels with certain immune deficiencies and what I observed going on with my son. Low and behold when we had him tested, he did have immune dysfunctions. So, the other piece was that it was very difficult for him to gain weight. We found a connection between wheat and dairy before the big studies came out of Scandinavia, establishing the connection between wheat, gluten and autism. The way we saw it, Caryn, was that he would wake up in the morning and he would be the best he was all day. As soon as he would start putting things in his mouth, it would be downhill from there. If he got a bagel with cream cheese, one of our favorite things to eat in my family, he would start spinning himself in the middle of the floor, toe walking, kind of going off more into his own world. So in a certain sense, it was very obvious, even at two, that something in the food he was eating was, at the very least, making this problem worse.

Caryn Hartglass: Good for you for paying attention. Most people don’t. We see such subtle things like, teachers probably know this, when kids have birthday parties in their classroom and the parents wanting to celebrate bring in cupcakes and candy. Then afterwards they leave their children in the hands of the poor teachers who now have to deal with this sugar overload and the behavioral changes in the kids.

Maia Dowe: Then people love to say those don’t exist. Yet those of us who are observant know they do.

Caryn Hartglass: Yes, absolutely. Okay, so you found this connection. Now what is this leaky gut thing that happens? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Maia Dowe: Yes. So it’s hard to know which comes first, the horse or the cart. Does the leaky gut come first and then you have the problem with the gluten, dairy, and other large proteins, or do the large proteins assault the gut lining and then you have this hyperpermeability. I believe, in my son’s case as this was observable almost from birth, that it had to do with toxicity. I ate a lot of tuna fish all my life, almost everyday when I was pregnant, so I think I had a high mercury burden myself. I know there is a lot of controversy surrounding Thermisol, the mercury preservatives used in the vaccines 20 years ago and in almost all of them when my son was diagnosed. I do believe that the toxicity from our environment is disruptive to the gut lining. Children that are experiencing this are having those large molecules get through the leaky gut and they circulate as toxins to the nervous system, neurotoxins, and to the immune system. These kids tend to get sick a lot. They are on a lot of antibiotics that leads to fungal overgrowth and an imbalance of the friendly bacteria in the gut, and it just goes on and on and on like a snowball making everything worse. So for a parent to try to unravel all of this, it is a lot of pieces to put together, and it’s not easy.

Caryn Hartglass: The thing about the wheat and dairy for a lot of people, I think, they just don’t believe it will work. It takes a tremendous amount of effort for parents raising a child to monitor that and make sure they keep, what they aren’t even sure are problems, out of the diet.

Maia Dowe: Right. It’s hard to commit to something that is so difficult to do when you are not sure, really, where it’s going to get you and your child regarding improvement in their communication, their eye contact, and their ability to learn.

Caryn Hartglass: The other thing with autistic children, I understand, is that they are finicky eaters.

Maia Dowe: You are so right. They are amazingly finicky eaters, and the reason for this is because they have a hypersensitivity to touch, the texture of the food, and it relates to their processing problems. There can be a hypersensitivity to sound or, what we call, tactile defensiveness, to being touched on the skin, and it is the same thing with the textures of food in the mouth. One thing I can say is that it is so worth doing, and it is so much easier to do today, to eliminate the gluten, which is the protein in the wheat, and the casein in the dairy. These products are available in Shoprite and everywhere you go. I was sending away for brands from Canada about 20 years ago. When the children are little, if you have the luxury of having a child who is diagnosed early, it is so much easier to control them. The hard thing is when they go to school and they are out of house. They feel different and see other kids having things that they can’t have. One thing, since I know we don’t have a tremendous amount of time, I do want to get across to parents is that if you try the GFCF diet that is widely known about in the field of autism now, please be aware of the following: When you have a leaky gut lining which means large molecules are getting through the intestinal lining which shouldn’t be getting through because that semipermeable membrane is now more wide open, more permeable than it should be like a sponge that is wearing out, be aware that if they can’t break down one large protein like gluten, for instance, chances are they can’t break down a lot of large-chain proteins. So you tend to see a better result if you can take all of them away at once, and so by that I mean soy, corn, eggs, any large molecule that you know about. That part sounds harder to do than it is because now, with all of this awareness, you can find cookies, shakes and drinks that will say on the label no wheat, dairy, corn, soy, eggs.

Cary Hartglass: The top allergens.

Maia Dowe: Right!

Cary Hartglass: So it’s easier now, but there still are a lot of people struggling for some reason. We all need some sort of “Spock mind meld” or something so we can all come to the same place at the same time. A lot of doctors don’t know these things, as well, and certainly a lot of parents don’t know about this. A lot of parents struggle financially and with their jobs, and how much time do they have to look on the internet or do research. So it can be really overwhelming. I’m sure your nursing background helped you a lot in understanding what you were reading and where to go to look for information.

Maia Dowe: It did help me a lot. I was very fortunate, not just in my nursing background, but in the job I had at the time in clinical research with Johnson & Johnson where I was lucky enough to be exposed to information that made me wonder if this was a factor for my son and to look into it. One of those things was digestive enzymes, for instance. I was looking at a study with children with cystic fibrosis who were taking digestive enzymes because they didn’t make them and were digesting food very well doing that. So I sought out enzymes for my son, and now we know that anybody that doesn’t digest and break down foods well can be helped by taking enzymes with their foods so that you can get those smaller building blocks that our bodies need to make things like neurotransmitters, antibodies, or hormones.

Caryn Hartglass: An interesting thing is that nature is smart in that nature has figured out a lot of things for all life on earth, and she has figured out what humans need but we’ve kind of gone in our own direction and reconfigured things so that we are eating all of the wrong things. So I find that a lot of things that work for one chronic disease or one illness will work for another. That is the magic of this plant-based diet because when you eat it you are reducing your risk significantly for all the chronic diseases. The diet that works for cardiovascular problems works for diabetes, works for cancer, works for multiple sclerosis, works for all the autoimmune diseases. It works, works, works, and a lot of the nutrients we are lacking are because we are not getting it from our food like we should. Right now vitamin D is the sexy vitamin because everybody is saying it prevents this and that and everything else, and everybody works indoors and we are afraid of skin cancer.

So what supplements were you giving your son?

Maia Dowe: I brought my son to nutritional doctors, and it was very difficult in the beginning, 22 years ago, to find physicians who were interested in being a pioneer in this area with children with developmental disabilities, but the doctor who has been with my son for 13 years and really made one of the biggest differences for us is Dr. Kenneth Bock. He is up at the Rhinebeck Health Center. Dr. Bock practices integrative medicine, and I think he actually was the president, or head, of the Integrative Medicine Association for a number of years. What is good about that is that when you have a child that is dealing with a critical situation, sometimes you need to get a bandaid on it, and that bandaid can be a pharmaceutical or a dietary change that might mean we do have to include certain things for a while that ultimately you wouldn’t want. So I had a lot of medical guidance for Brian, and got many of his supplements directly from his doctors, but I love Kirkman Labs. They are based out of, I think, Oregon, and they have many special supplements that have been specifically designed for children with autism, developmental disabilities, children that can’t have wheat, dairy, and many of the allergens. They were one of the first companies to come out with an enzyme called dipeptidyl peptidase-4. We like to call it DPP-4 for short, and this is the enzyme that many children with autism and related disorders don’t have and don’t make well themselves. You take this enzyme with food. You can open the capsule and sprinkle it on the child’s food. That way they are not developing these, what I call, intermediate break-down products. For instance, when you eat wheat and dairy together and it’s broken down only half way, that forms a morphine-like substance called casomorphin, and that can make you completely disconnected with brain fog, hard to concentrate and all those other things.

Caryn Hartglass: Pizza!

Maia Dowe: Exactly! Pizza, macaroni and cheese, cereal and milk, like what do kids love to eat? So, it is putting them in this fog almost all the time, and the actual reaction from the gluten can be a delayed reaction, so it can be hard for parents to observe. So it is important to take those enzymes, and it is such an easy thing you can do. You want to avoid wheat and dairy as often as possible if you are trying this diet approach, but sometimes with kids you can’t or it is hard, and that’s where the enzymes come in. They help tremendously, and they help to break down the food into usable subsets that their bodies can regulate themselves naturally the way they need to do.

So, I know I’m getting off on a tangent, but I just want to say even though my son was in one of the best one-on-one programs–teaching the applied behavior analysis, ABA, which is the standard one-on-one therapy–as we began to unravel the medical side of the autism, clean up his diet, and heal the leaky gut, he became so much more teachable. So, instead of running a program 500 times, we could run it 15 times or 5 times, and he would have it. He could generalize skills easier. So, I just feel that the idea of a puzzle piece being a symbol for autism is so perfect, and we need to use that to remember that there are many pieces to this puzzle.

Caryn Hartglass: And the more you put it together, the easier it is solve the rest of this puzzle.

Maia Dowe: And, each time you put a piece in you don’t take it out when you look for the next piece. All of the pieces have to stay in. I’m doing my one-on-one teaching, I’m taking those large proteins (wheat and dairy) out of the diet, I’m adding enzymes. At the same time I’m doing some vision therapy, if the child needs it. My son had trouble with every processing system. He needed auditory training, and as he got older and he was declassified, actually, from his primary diagnosis of autism at age 7, he still had residual processing problems with vision, motor coordination, and processing auditory directions. So, what you need to know is to keep adding those pieces in and doing those therapies, but don’t take the other pieces out. Don’t forget what got you to that point. You have to maintain the diet.

One thing, I don’t know if we have time to talk about it, is toxicity.

Caryn Hartglass: Sure, just briefly.

Maia Dowe: So you were talking about eating a clean diet, vegan diet, and this is where it is difficult for children that have textural problems, but I’ve seen so many great recipes you have for making juices, and you can actually make fun cookies gluten-free and add vegetable juices and other good nutrients which is a wonderful thing to do. You also want to be careful to avoid the processed foods that have so many additives and toxins in them. Not only that, but we need to be aware of toxins on our skin, products we put on our children’s skin, and what’s in our water at home.

Caryn Hartglass: There is a lot to think about, and it all matters.

Maia Dowe: Right, and it is so far reaching, but you need to be aware of toxicity and just eating clean and close to the earth which really helps these children so much because it is hard to be reading the labels on every single thing.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. The good news is that your son has done very well. He is an honor student in physics and a senior in college. He is a jazz musician, has many close friends, and he is doing well. So I congratulate you for that.

We are going to take a break now and we will be back with my second guest, and, Maia, stick around and you can join me in the next half. I’m Caryn Hartglass. You have been listening to It’s All About Food. Check out my web site ResponsibleEatingAndLiving.com where you can find a lot of information, and send me an email at info@RealMeals.org

Transcribed by Ann Dungey, 2/17/2013

TRANSCRIPTION PART II:

Caryn Hartglass: We’re back! I’m Caryn Hartglass, you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Okay, we’re gonna change things up a little bit, and I’m gonna bring on my next guest, Jon Hinds. Read more »

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Episode #165

9/4/2012: Part I: Del Sroufe Forks Over Knives Cookbook

Plant-based chefs are no longer a novelty – there are lots of people who have learned to make fabulous vegan dishes – and many are so good that most people don’t notice that the food is prepared differently. The problem is that many of the dishes produced by these chefs, while made with plant foods, are unhealthy because of the fat content. Del Sroufe is the best chef in the U.S. at creating dishes that are not only plant-based, but low-fat and oil-free; most are compliant with programs like the McDougall Program, Dr. Esselstyn’s program and many of the other plant-based gurus who are achieving incredible results with their patients. Del has mastered the art of captivating the new convert to a plant-based diet with mouth-watering dishes that seem like they are just too good to be healthy. But they are! Additionally, he has developed a diverse repertoire of hundreds of recipes that guarantee that no one will ever get bored with or tired of the food. Let’s face it – humans spend a lot of time eating, and eating should be enjoyed. Converting to a program of dietary excellence with Del’s help means that you are not giving up anything – in fact you’re going to have a culinary experience better than you ever imagined!

9/4/2012: Part II: Sebastiano Cossia Castiglioni Sustainable Biodynamic Farming

Born in Milan, Italy in 1966, Sebastiano has been a vegetarian and an animal rights activist for nearly thirty years. He is the owner and chairman of one of the most renowned and pioneering wineries in Europe, Querciabella, where organic viticulture implemented in 1988 led to a complete conversion to strict biodynamic practices in 2000. His Tuscan wines have garnered worldwide acclaim, including “Best Italian Wine” in 2004. Sebastiano is an industrial designer and the creator of a multinational business network encompassing fields as varied as agriculture, financial advisory, advanced technology, and real estate. He currently lives with his family in Northern Europe.

TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello everybody, I’m Caryn Hartglass, and it’s time for It’s All About Food. It’s September 4th, it’s a Tuesday in this year of 2012, and we’ve moved, and it was easy, no sweat or anything! We just changed days, so instead of Wednesdays from 3 to 4, we are now every Tuesday from 4 to 5. Read more »

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Episode #163

8/22/2012: Part I John Schlimm Grilling Vegan Style

John Schlimm, a member of one of the oldest brewing families in the United States, is the international award-winning author of several books, including The Tipsy Vegan and The Ultimate Beer Lover’s Cookbook. He holds a master’s degree from Harvard and lives in Pennsylvania.

LISTEN to our first interview with John Schlimm on 12/7/2011 talking about THE TIPSY VEGAN.

8/22/2012: Part II Jenny Brown Lucky Ones

Jenny Brown is the cofounder and director of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary—a not-for-profit organization and farm animal shelter—a vegan animal rights activist, and previously worked as a television producer until 2002.

LISTEN to our first interview with Jenny Brown on 10/27/2012 talking about The Woodstock Animal Sanctuary.

TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello, it’s time for It’s All About Food. It’s all about food because it is all about food, everything, I think anyway. Health, environment, animals, everything on Earth is connected to the food we make and the food we eat, and I like talking about food. I’m Caryn Hartglass and I am the founder of a non-profit called Responsible Eating and Living because I think food should be not only delicious and fun and beautiful and good for you, but I think it should be good for all life on Earth. And, I believe we can have our cake and eat it too. We can have great, delicious food, feed the entire world healthfully, and not do very much damage as a result or any at all. Unfortunately, today, there’s a lot of crazy things going on with our food production, and it’s effecting our environment in terrible ways. But, there’s a lot of things that we can do everyday, three meals a day (if we have three meals a day) with every bite. And it can be really, really fun. So today we are going to talk about how fun it can be. Especially with barbecues and summertime. Today it’s August 22, 2012 and there is still plenty of summertime left for those of you on the part of the planet where it is summer in August. I know here in New York it is very much summer, and it’s a beautiful day today. But, there is plenty of time left for enjoying outdoor barbecues and all kinds of fun eating and partying, and you can do it with food that’s kind to you and kind to the planet.

So, we are going to bring on John Schlimm. He’s been on It’s All About Food before. He’s a member of one of the oldest brewing families in the United States. He’s an international award-winning author of several books including The Tipsy Vegan and The Ultimate Beer Lover’s Cookbook. He holds a masters degree from Harvard, and lives in Pennsylvania. And, we are going to be talking about Grilling Vegan Style. Welcome to It’s All About Food, John.

John Schlimm: Hey Caryn. It is so exciting to be with you and your listeners again. How lucky am I to get to do this again with you?

Caryn Hartglass: Well I am all fired up to talk about your 125 fired up recipes.

John Schlimm: Me too. It’s going to be so fun getting to add a little civil to summer here with you.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, I’ve looked at your book and played with a few recipes. This is a winner. This is a good one. What I love about it is most of the ingredients are so simple. It’s just a lot of beautiful, fresh, summer-grade food.

John Schlimm: Well, with The Tipsy Vegan and now with Grilling Vegan Style, it was important to me to first create books that I call “parties in a book,” and parties that everyone is invited to. But I was also determined to make these two books what I call “small town friendly.” Because I live back in my small hometown, and I want my friends and neighbor, here, to be able to go to our supermarkets, and our farmer’s markets and find all the ingredients.

Caryn Hartglass: I like it. There are lots of products out there, fortunately, in the market today for vegans. But in this book, you don’t even have to get those special products. You can make your own vegan sour cream, you can make your own vegan mayonnaise, and also Worcester sauce. You have a great recipe for that too.

John Schlimm: Yeah, I think it’s so important for me to blast through these silly myths that vegan eating and the vegan lifestyle is mysterious and how blah eating food is and how these are specialty ingredients you can only get in health food stores on Mars. Maybe that’s the case in some books and in some places. That will never be the case in my books because my books are all about fun and easy eating and cooking because I really believe that the cooking should be just as fun as the eating.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay. In your book you start out talking about all the different kinds of grills that you can buy and use in order to grill, and there’s a lot of choices out there.

John Schlimm: It can really be overwhelming, and that’s why I tried to really explain it for the beginners out there as easily as possible. To really say, “You do have a lot of choices. So this is a decision and investment both in money, of course, but also in time and future fun.” So take your time with this decision. Go around. See what’s out there. See what you specifically need. Is this something you are going to do in the back yard? Is this something you are going to want to take with you on the road? Or maybe you live in an apartment with just a little balcony. There are grills that fit that. There are grills that go on boats. So, lots of choices, talk to fellow grillers. Find out what they like or don’t like about certain types of grills, and then, you can make decision based on that. Whether you want a charcoal grill, an electric grill, a gas grill, or there are these big fancy ones out there that are hybrid grills. They combine both charcoal and gas. Those are a little pricey right now, but I think in the years to come we are going to see those come down to a range that the rest of us can afford.

Caryn Hartglass: Can I ask you what kind you use?

John Schlimm: Well I actually like either a charcoal or a gas. And I’ll tell you what. I’m currently looking for a new grill. Mine has gone caput after experimenting with all of these recipes. So, I am going out and looking. But all of my friends, I go to their houses, they have a variety, whether its charcoal or gas, electric. My mom has a little Foreman grill that you can fit maybe two veggie burger patties on. She loves it. She plugs it in, uses it in the kitchen. She makes stuff for herself and my dad all the time. So, again, look for what you need and go out and make your choice.

Caryn Hartglass: I think it’s important to note in this book that it’s a party book, and it’s certainly great to go out and enjoy yourself at a barbecue. And there are all kinds of options in this book for that. But, you can use these recipes indoors, as well, and just for yourself.

John Schlimm: Absolutely. There is this amazing invention, and I would love to know who actually invented it. It’s the grill pan. You probably have one, and a lot of people might already. If not, run out now and get one. It is just a pan. It has all the little ridges. You use it on the stovetop. You might not get that smoky flavor, but guess what? That’s where our imagination comes into play. But especially during the winter months, if you don’t have a grill or it’s not easily accessible during the winter, grill pans are amazing. I use my grill pan all the time.

Caryn Hartglass: I’ve got a cast-iron, its rectangular, it goes on my gas oven burner top, and I turn two burners on underneath it. One side’s for pancakes, the other side’s for grilling. It costs nothing, and it’s fabulous.

John Schlimm: Yeah, it’s just absolutely brilliant. Kudos to whomever out there invented that.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, good, so now we have our tools all taken care of. Now we’re going to jump in and make some food. As I was telling some people earlier, you should not be looking at this book when you are hungry. Very, very dangerous because everything is so good and tempting looking. So, I just want to talk about a few things that popped out. Oh, it’s just everything. I was recently at a pizza party. We were making all of these different pizzas and one of the things that we had there were these roasted or grilled peppers. And you’ve got this great Shishito Heat-Wave.

John Schlimm: Shishito peppers are really coming into their own. I’m really excited that I’m getting to introduce them to the few people out there that haven’t heard of them yet, but they are in most supermarkets now. They’re really this great marriage of jalapeño and green pepper because they’re not really hot, maybe every eighth or ninth one will be hot, but they are so good. You pop them on a grill and you get that brown, sort of blistery effect on them. Oh, yum.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, they are really simple. This recipe that you have just uses a little bit of oil and salt and pepper. There’s really nothing to it. And yet, they’re beautiful and they’re really, really yummy.

John Schlimm: Yeah. They’re really a showstopper at a party.

Caryn Hartglass: Absolutely a showstopper. And they are just peppers. That’s the amazing thing about vegetables, and I think they are finally getting some of the attention that they deserve. I just wanted to mention before we go further that the pictures in this book by Amy Beadle Roth are really, really lovely.

John Schlimm: She is just a brilliant artist with an impeccable eye. She shot all of the photos for The Tipsy Vegan, which was the very first book she’s worked on. So it was so wonderful. It was my first vegan cookbook, and we could sort of travel down that road together. But, yes, her photos really make the food jump right off the page and make you feel like you can just reach right in and grab them. If only we could.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, you want to like the pages here, there’s now question about it. So what I like is you have so many different things. You’ve got popcorn that you can make on the grill. Why not?

John Schlimm: I really wanted to push the limits with this book. I couldn’t believe that there hadn’t been a vegan grilling cookbook done before. There certainly have been a few vegetarian ones done, but those leave out a chunk of us that can’t enjoy all of those dishes. I really wanted to put a book out there that was going to break some new ground and contribute something to this whole wonderful discussion we are having and move it forward. So I put recipes like the popcorn in there. Another one that’s getting a lot of buzz from people on twitter and facebook is the tattooed watermelon salad.

Caryn Hartglass: Oh, I was going to bring that up.

John Schlimm: People are like, “What? You can put watermelon on a grill?”

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, we were just talking about that before the show started. Crazy.

John Schlimm: It’s another really, totally simple recipe. My thought process is you can put everything on a grill at least once and try it. Maybe not everything works, but we found a lot of things that do work like the watermelon, like the popcorn. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich for all of those finicky little eaters. And especially now with back-to-school, maybe not everyone’s so excited about back-to-school, but have a back-to-school party for all of your little ones and grill up some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Caryn Hartglass: I haven’t made it, but I was just thinking about having that gooey peanut butter melting in your mouth. It just sounds so good.

John Schlimm: Yeah, another show stopper. And guess what? The adults will like it just as much as the kids. Because isn’t that one of the ultimate comfort foods, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

Caryn Hartglass: I’m looking at the romaine holiday. All of these (most of these) are really simple. This is just romaine leaves that you haven’t prepped really very much. It’s just a long…almost like you cut a head of it in half, and then you sprinkle it with some really great flavorings. I like this for a lot of reasons. One is sometimes when I go to a restaurant I order a salad like this because, as a vegan, that way I know, I can see all of the ingredients they have put it in that might be suspect. But I imagine for a picnic or an outdoor party this is terrific because if you don’t cut up the lettuce ahead of time it really holds its own, it stays muscly, the presentations great. People don’t think about this, but this is a good one.

John Schlimm: And I am all about easy entertaining. I love to entertain as much as the next person. I think that you realize this, because I’m sure that you entertain a lot. The host and hostess so often are stuck in the kitchen having to do all the work while everyone else is in the other room or in the backyard having all the fun. So to have dishes that are easy, especially like the romaine holiday, what a great luncheon dish if you are having people over for lunch. You can easily prepare it, and really spend time with you guests and not in the kitchen or at the grill.

Caryn Hartglass: You have a string bean and arugula salad, and you say that you can use yellow or green beans, but the yellow beans really pop in this recipe with the arugula. I was really surprised to see that. It’s gorgeous. Go yellow string beans.

John Schlimm: One of a million different things that I love about working with vegetables, and of course there’s a lot of fruit that we’ll talk about that you can grill as well. They really are works of art. No artist on the face of the planet comes close to Mother Nature when she is creating these beautiful fruits and vegetables for us to work with. The work’s already taken care of for us as far as making these plates look beautiful. We are just the middle person preparing them and putting them on the plate. That dish really is a great example of just how beautiful and, again, simple that a dish can be.

Caryn Hartglass: I don’t know why anybody would choose a beef burger, a turkey burger, a crappy frankfurter over some of these gorgeous recipes that you have in here. But, some people will. What is a cedar plank?

John Schlimm: Well it is what it says. It is a piece of cedar that has been prepared. You can certainly get it in a specialty store.

Caryn Hartglass: Like a specialty food store? Or what kind of specialty store?

John Schlimm: Well I’ve seen them in specialty food and kitchen stores. That’s one of those things that you might have to look around a little bit for. But, it’s really worth it because that comes with the cedar smoked mushroom recipe in the book. And certainly after you use it on that recipe, I’m sure you’ll find other things that you can also use that cedar plank for.

Caryn Hartglass: So it’s just a piece of cedar wood?

John Schlimm: Yes.

Caryn Hartglass: Like the kind that I would use in my closet to keep the moths out.

John Schlimm: Yes, more or less, but for a different purpose.

Caryn Hartglass: Good. I like multipurpose things. And the other really interesting ingredient, which is brilliant, in this recipe is the mushroom crust. Did you come up with that or did you see it? I’ve never seen that before.

John Schlimm: Over the course of, I think this is cookbook number nine or ten for me, I’ve really developed a great team that I work with, and every cookbook author does this, and a really good test kitchen because, naturally, these recipes need to be tested and sampled. People have the luxury of walking into the book store and, “Oh, there’s this great cookbook, I’m gonna buy it.” A lot goes into it so I really worked closely with my team, and we developed this recipe. Again, pushing the limits to give people not only simple, delicious food but a few things in there that they might not have heard of before, and the mushroom crust is certainly one of those. And, it is something you can use with other things once you try it once with this recipe, and that’s some fun.

Caryn Hartglass: Yea, well all it is is dried mushrooms that you pulse and make a coarse-ground of in a food processor. Mushrooms have so much flavor, I’m just so excited to try this.

John Schlimm: Mushrooms are so underrated among vegetables, and they are some of my favorites, and there are so many different kinds, and you can have so much fun experimenting with them. And certainly those people out there that have trained themselves to go out there to pick wild mushrooms, which you do need to be trained to some degree because there are some out there. And that is one of my goals to learn exactly how to do that. Think about using some of those delicious wild mushrooms. Or maybe find someone who does that and ask them if maybe you can have some.

Caryn Hartglass: Let’s just take a moment here and talk about the mighty mushroom. I remember people thinking that there wasn’t anything of nutritional value in a mushroom, and mushrooms are amazing. I like to call them natural chemotherapy sometimes because there are so many immune system boosting things in mushrooms and anti-cancer fighting things that people are now starting to take, concentrated mushroom supplements. Not the ones that we eat, other mushrooms, but all mushrooms are really packed with really good stuff so eat up.

John Schlimm: Absolutely. We as a society feel like we need to load down our foods, specifically vegetables, with all these different sauces and butters and seasonings. Of course some of that can be really good, but I love to just take a raw or lightly cooked vegetable and just have a mindful moment where I plop it in my mouth, I chew it, and I really concentrate on the flavor. I think if you do that with a mushroom. Corn on the cob does not need all this butter and salt and all that fat. I have two grilled corn on the cob recipes in the book that have really great sauces, but I often love just eating it as is. When you really focus on the flavors just as it is without anything on it, you’re going to be surprised. You know this, I know this, I’m sure a lot of your listeners do. You’re going to be so surprised at how flavorful all of these vegetables are.

Caryn Hartglass: Corn can vary depending on where you get it and what farm and what time of the season it’s from. I picked up some corn recently from our brand new farmers market in my neighborhood, and I thought, “Did they add sugar to the soil?” This corn was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted. It was crazy.

John Schlimm: We are at the pinnacle of our farmers market here, of course. We have a very short growing season in [Pennsylvania]. We just had corn from our farmers market on Sunday at a picnic, and I thought the same thing. I’m like, “This is like candy.” And again, all on its own. What was great is that, of course I don’t use butter anyway, but the others around the table, my cousins and aunts and even my parents, who always have to slather up their cobs, they forgot to bring the butter out. And I said, “Just try it without anything on it.” They couldn’t believe it, they couldn’t believe it. They ate it without any butter or anything else. But you’re right, corn is one of those things that you can get corn that is really, really bad. So if you get a bad cob, don’t judge corn based on one cob.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, but definitely eat it when it’s fresh and in season. Speaking of fresh and in season, let’s just talk a moment about tomatoes, which should only be eaten fresh and in season. Unfortunately, I talk a bit, probably too much, about tomatoes from time to time, but they grow tomatoes all year round in Florida, and they don’t have any flavor and they’re grown really horrifically. The thing is, catch them when they’re in season and ear as many as you can and then move onto something else.

John Schlimm: Absolutely, which of course this brings me, and I’m sure you, to my grilled tomato suns recipe on page 78 of the book. Super, super easy. Cut the tomato into halves crosswise, scoop out the seeds and some of the pulp. And then, with just a little salt, a little pepper, a little olive oil put it cut-side down on the grill for a few minutes and you have an amazing, amazing, simple dish. A side dish, a luncheon dish, whatever you want. Yes, the tomatoes right now are really in season, and we are just enjoying them by the mouthful from the farmers market and from all different relatives, whose gardens are overflowing with them. And if people don’t understand the difference in taste, I challenge them to have one in season and then, in January, find one, and you’re going to notice the difference big time.

Caryn Hartglass: I used to live in the south of France, and this was a dish that you found in many restaurants, and I would make it at home a lot, but it’s just so simple and amazing. Grilled tomatoes.

John Schlimm: And talk about health benefits of tomatoes. Oh my goodness, we just keep learning about those, don’t we? Amazing.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, we just have a few minutes left so let’s go to the sweeter side. I think most people don’t realize that they can grill fruit and how spectacular it is.

John Schlimm: It really is. We talked about the watermelon, which is fantastic. But strawberries and peaches, there’s a party on south peach salsa. It’s just so yummy. Just peaches grilled on their own and combined with a great sauce. Even different berries, other than strawberries, you can grill. Coconut, the grilled coconut recipe. Pineapple rings. It just goes on and on. Again, if you find some fruit that is strange and mysterious to you, pick it up and toss it on the grill. Put a little oil and just throw it on the grill and go with it. I think a lot of this is about experimenting and having fun. Especially with grilling, every grill is different so you have to stick close by, but you can have so much fun transforming dishes. I like to think with Grilling Vegan Style and the vegetable and fruit dishes in there, it’s just a starting point.

Caryn Hartglass: Have you heard of this? I heard that the first bite of anything you eat is the one that’s most flavorful, and then, as you continue to eat it, you don’t get all of the flavor of that first impression. I’ve read it many times, and I don’t believe it because when I’m eating delicious fruits and vegetables, every mouthful is spectacular. I’m wondering is it just because I have a clean palate, and maybe this is only true of the people that are eating all the wrong things, that the first bite is only interesting. But, every bite of a good, grilled vegetable or any of these things is spectacular.

John Schlimm: I have to say and admit that I am a great observer of the way people eat, which I can say because not everyone at a dinner party with me is going to be very self-conscious. Now, if you’ve ever noticed most people, it’s no wonder the first bite is the only bite they taste because five minutes later they’re done. I don’t think they even chew anymore, they just gulp it and swallow it whole. I’m always the last one done. I always chew, chew, chew my food, which really is the healthy way to do it because our stomachs don’t have teeth. So I think you and I are, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners are very mindful eaters and really appreciative of what their eating and the flavor and where it came from. Eating, to me, is almost an exercise in meditation sometimes. I think people need to slow down and make every bite count and really be grateful for that bite of the delicious food that they’re having. The flavor will then follow.

Caryn Hartglass: John, thanks for joining me on It’s All About Food. I really love what you’ve done with fruits and vegetables. Spectacular. Grilling Vegan Style, these recipes really are fired up and worth celebrating.

John Schlimm: Thank you so much. I can’t wait to do it again with you.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, thank you. I’m going to take a break now, and we’ll be right back with Jenny Brown from the Woodstock Animal Sanctuary. She’s got a really beautiful story to tell in her book, The Lucky Ones. We’ll be right back.

Transcribed by Steven Lee-Kramer, 2/13/2013

TRANSCRIPTION PART II:

Hello I’m Caryn Hartglass you’re listening to It’s All About Food. I talk all the time about food, about how plant foods can be delicious and literally save your health, save your life. I talk about the environment and about how factory farming of animals is so devastating. Read more »

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Episode #161

8/8/2012: Part I Nava Atlas Wild About Greens

Nava Atlas is the author and illustrator of many books on vegetarian cooking, most recently Vegan Express, Vegan Soups and Hearty Stews for All Seasons, The Vegetarian Family Cookbook, and The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet. The Vegan Holiday Kitchen will be published in the fall of 2011, and a book on leafy greens will be on the shelves in the spring of 2012.

In addition to cookbooks, Nava also produces visual books on family themes, humor, and women’s issues, including The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life (2011), exploring first-person narratives on the writing lives of twelve classic women authors, and commenting on the universal relevance of their experiences to all women who love to write. Secret Recipes for the Modern Wife (2009) is a satiric look at contemporary marriage and motherhood through the lens of a faux 1950s cookbook.

8/8/2012: Part II Alan Goldhamer Bravo! Health Promoting Meals

A New Dietary Paradigm for Transforming Health! Book Publishing Company is delighted to release a dynamic new cookbook that offers a revolutionary and holistic approach to healthful eating. Most of us would balk at the idea of a SOS-free diet—one completely void of salt, oil, and sugar. And trying to prepare meals without these basic ingredients would be daunting. With BRAVO! Health-Promoting Meals from the TrueNorth Kitchen, executive chef Ramses Bravo has successfully mastered the art and science of healthful cuisine and delivers palate-pleasing food that also serves as the optimal diet for health. Read more »

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Episode #159

7/25/2012: Part I: Christy Morgan Blissful Bites

A vegan macrobiotic chef, Morgan offers environmentally-conscious eaters a variety of easy, palate-pleasing, healthy, and environmentally-friendly recipes in her cookbook, Blissful Bites: Vegan Meals that Nourish Mind, Body, and Planet. Also known as The Blissful Chef, Morgan helps home cooks make healthy, delicious meals with seasonal produce, many of which cater to raw and gluten-free diets.

Passionate about helping people change their lives and helping save the planet through a healthier, plant-based diet, Morgan’s work has been esteemed by bestselling authors of Skinny Bitch, Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Dr. Neal Barnard. Blissful Bites has also been featured in VegNews, Diet and Nutrition Magazine, Green Child Magazine and on Martha Stewart Living Radio and PETA.org.

7/25/2012: Part II: Rich Roll Finding Ultra

Rich Roll has been featured on CNN and has been named “one of the world’s 25 fittest men” by Men’s Fitness Magazine. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Cornell Law School. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and four children and, when he isn’t training or competing, manages the entertainment boutique Independent Law Group, LLP.

TRANSCRIPTION PART II:

Hello I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Thank you for joining me and it’s time for Part Two of today’s show, July 25th, 2012. I’m going to bring on my next guest, Rich Roll. He has been featured on CNN and has been named one of world’s twenty-five fittest men by Men’s Fitness Magazine. Read more »

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Episode #158

7/18/2012: Part I: Jay Rosengarten EVOO

Jay is the President of Olisur Inc. He is responsible for the marketing and distribution of the companies extra virgin olive oil in the US and Canada. He is the founder and President of The Rosengarten Group. He has over 35 years of hands-on management experience in the retail and food distribution industries.

He has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Shopwell, Inc., where he was responsible for the development and implementation of the company’s long range strategic plans. This included the creation of the Food Emporium store format. Jay has served as President of Springfield Sugar and Products Company, a large wholesale food distributor.
In addition, Jay was the President and CEO of several small retail companies. He is a featured speaker for NASFT, National Grocers Association and FMI, as well as other industry forums. Jay speaks on a variety of topics relevant to the food industry foods.
Jay is a graduate of Fordham University Law School where he received his Jurist Doctorate, and is a graduate of the University of Denver. He practiced labor and corporate law until his career change in the mid 70′s.

7/18/2012: Part II: Dara Lovitz Muzzling The Movement

Dara Lovitz is the author of Muzzling A Movement: The Effects of Anti-Terrorism Law, Money, and Politics on Animal Activism (Lantern Books). She is an Adjunct Professor of Animal Law at both Temple University Beasley School of Law and the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University. She was selected by the Super Lawyers Magazine as a “Rising Star.” Ms. Lovitz earned her B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law, at which she was the recipient of both the Law Faculty Scholarship and the Barrister Award. She was selected by her classmates to be the class speaker at Temple’s graduation ceremony. Ms. Lovitz was appointed Special Prosecutor by the Lancaster County District Attorney to prosecute the pivotal Pennsylvania case, Commonwealth v. Esbenshade, in which the Elizabethtown district court determined the criminal liability of a battery-cage egg production facility owner and supervisor under Pennsylvania’s animal cruelty statute. She is a board member of Four Feet Forward, an organization that helps grass-roots animal advocacy organizations with their legal and media campaigns by offering professional services at no cost; President of Peace Advocacy Network, an organization that promotes veganism, social justice, and respect for the Earth’s inhabitants and resources; and Legal Advisory Board Member of the Equal Justice Alliance, a coalition of animal protection and other social justice organizations formed in November of 2006 to defend freedom of speech and assembly. Ms. Lovitz has written extensively in law journals and trade publications on various animal law topics with a focus on eco-terrorism and frequently presents such topics in television, radio, and podcast segments as well as at conferences across the country.

TRANSCRIPTION PART II:

Caryn Hartglass: Hey, I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Welcome back! It’s July 18th and this is the second part of our show.

Right now, I’m going to bring on our next guest, Dara Lovitz. She is the author of Muzzling A Movement: The Effects of Antiterrorism Law, Money, and Politics on Animal Activism. She is an adjunct professor of Animal Law at both Temple University Beasley School of Law and the Earle Mack School Law at Drexel University. She was selected by Super Lawyers Magazine as a rising star. Ms. Lovitz earned a BA Magna Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania and her JD from Temple University Beasley School of Law, at which she was the recipient of both the Law Faculty Scholarship and the Barrister Award. She was selected by her classmates to be the class speaker at Temple’s graduation ceremony. Ms. Lovitz was appointed special prosecutor by the Lancaster County District Attorney to prosecute the pivotal Pennsylvania case, Commonwealth vs. Esbenshade, in which the Elizabethtown District Court determined the criminal liability of a battery cage egg production facility owner and supervisor under Pennsylvania’s animal cruelty statute. And there’s so much more about Dara Lovitz; you can read it on responsibleeatingandliving.com website. But I just want to get talking to the amazing Dara Lovitz.

Thank you for joining me on It’s All About Food.

Dara Lovitz: Hi, Caryn! Thanks for having me.

Caryn Hartglass: Hi! So all those lawyer jokes do not apply to you.

Dara Lovitz: They don’t apply to anyone. I do take offense to all those lawyer jokes. I don’t find them fair.

Caryn Hartglass: No. But you are one person who is doing wonderful things for the world and I thank you for that.

Dara Lovitz: Oh, I appreciate that. Well, thanks for what you’re doing to educate the public on responsible eating.

Caryn Hartglass: Yup. And living.

Dara Lovitz. And living.

Caryn Hartglass: Because it’s all one package. So I’m really curious. I know about this law that came into being a few years ago and I was hoping you could kind of enlighten us a little more about it, the animal antiterrorism … actually, how does it go?

Dara Lovitz: It’s the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

Caryn Hartglass: There we go, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. I did read the law not recently but I found it a bit confusing. And I understand that there’s some kind of loose misinterpretations in it that has led to some problems.

Dara Lovitz: Yes, exactly. Generally, the law prohibits the disruption or the interruption of animal enterprises, specifically causing damage to them, either economic damage or causing fear in the workers at the animal enterprise. And animal enterprise is a very, very broad term. It includes any entity that, I guess the way I would define it is any entity that exploits animals, whether it’s for their flesh for food, their bodies for science, their skin for fiber, for leather and fur, and even entities that exploit animals for entertainment purposes; entertainment in air quotes, of course: circuses, rodeos, zoos. And technically, because the wording is so broad, it could include almost any company because almost every retail business in the United States, in some way, exploits animals or has some connection to animals so it is very broad and whom it protects. And it’s broad in the sense that it’s attacking anybody who opposes these entities for their exploitation of animals.

Caryn Hartglass: Do you know the history of how this law came about?

Dara Lovitz: It has so many iterations that go back to the late ‘90s. Originally, Congress was focused on environmental quote unquote radicals. And they started some laws, eco-terror laws, to combat the environmental radicals. At some point, they started to become fearful of a new burgeoning movement. And I wouldn’t say it was a new movement but it became more known, the animal rights movements specifically, when animal rights activists started to liberate animals from mink farms and fox farms. And when that happened, and economic damage started to become more widespread against animal entities, Congress put together a statute that then included animal rights activists in these eco-terror laws. So it’s had several different iterations: the Farm Animal and Research Facilities Protection Act, and then the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, which became the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. So the history goes back. But the most offensive and most constitutionally insufficient statute is the current one: the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. It has become so much more restrictive; the penalties are harsher; it protects so many more entities, and it really prohibits the free speech rights of animal rights activists.

Caryn Hartglass: We live in a world that does a lot of exploitation and unfortunately, there are laws that encourage it or at least don’t prevent or discourage it. A lot of people accept it as day-to-day activity but we know what goes on in the factory farms is … I don’t even like to use the word humane because I don’t know what it means anymore. But what goes on in factory farming is horrific. What goes on with animal testing for a variety of different purposes is horrific; so much of it is unnecessary. And so we’re dealing with something that is considered acceptable to some degree in our society and so it’s really hard to fight against it and get the law on your side.

Dara Lovitz: It is. And you’re absolutely right. The way the laws are written, it’s really to protect facilities that do this. And we have animal cruelty codes; in every state there’s an animal cruelty law. And it’s really good if you’re a dog or a cat but if you’re any other animal, those animal cruelty codes do very little to protect you. In each animal cruelty code across the country, there’s a common farming exemption, which basically says that while you can’t rape a dog, and that would be animal cruelty if you did so. If you rape a cow, that’s okay because it’s part of a common farming practice; that’s what they do on farms and that’s okay. So usually livestock, agricultural animals, are protected, I mean, are not protected under these animal cruelty laws. So yeah, the laws are written with a very species-ist slant and a very industry protective slant and that’s something we’re battling and we’ve always had to battle. But this Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act takes it a step farther by saying not only do these laws protect these entities that exploit animals but if you oppose the law, if you speak out against them, if you cause economic damage to these entities that are exploiting animals, now you’ve committed a crime of terrorism. So it’s really bring this … it raises it to a very scary level with regard to civil rights.

Caryn Hartglass: Now, I don’t believe in violence to achieve an end. And I know that lots of wonderful things have happened as a result of violence and lots of horrible things have happened as a result. Personally, I kind of take the Gandhi route. But there’s more to this act. It’s not just about violence; it’s about speech.

Dara Lovitz: Exactly. And you’re right to bring up violence because it does, technically, cover violence but it also covers speech; it covers economic boycotts, which is civil disobedience, non-violent civil disobedience. I would say most of the people that would be harmed by the statute are those that are part of the non-violent movement to educate the public about what happens on these facilities, what these entities are doing. The problem with it, the Constitutional problem with it, is it covers non-violent speech activities, which are Constitutionally protected. And technically, the animal rights movement has been a non-violent movement in principle, the principles of our hymns and like you said, the Gandhi route. It really is about non-violence; it’s non-violence to all creatures, human and non-human. So this definitely targets more so a non-violent group for non-violent activities.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay. Now, since the most recent revision of this law came into place, ha sit been used?

Dara Lovitz: It has been applied. The big one that’s been applied and … it was applied in California, in the Buddenburg case. And that was challenged and ultimately, those charges were dismissed because the police and law enforcement and, I guess, the district attorney or the U. S. attorney who was filing the charges, wasn’t specific enough. So it was thrown out not because the AETA is un-Constitutional but because the charges against the alleged criminals, the animal rights activists in this case, were not specific enough and you have to be very specific when you’re filing criminal charges. More importantly, the big case is the Animal Enterprise Protection Act’s application to the Shack 7 Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty, a non-violent animal rights group that was trying to expose the horrors that were taking place behind closed walls of the Huntington Life Sciences, which is the largest animal testing lab in Europe and had a branch in New Jersey of the United States. So that was where it was the most offensive because six activists, six animal rights activists who are non-violent and did nothing … well, there was no direct evidence that any of them did anything illegal. They were thrown in federal prison for an aggregate of about 23 years so each one served a couple of years in prison.

Caryn Hartglass: But wasn’t there some … I am remembering this goes awhile back. I remember there was some explosion or something in a parking lot or something in California?

Dara Lovitz: Oh, possibly.

Caryn Hartglass: Some pharmaceutical company or something like that related to this case? I’m digging into my vague memories.

Dara Lovitz: I’m wondering if it was part of the Walter bond. Yeah, and I’m not sure. I don’t know what happened with the prosecution because I didn’t hear anything further about that. Yeah, there were bombings and then there was an arson attack but again, I don’t know much about the prosecution and I don’t believe the AETA was challenged on a Constitutional level for that. The AEPA, its predecessor, was challenged Constitutionally and made its way to the Supreme Court for the Shack 7 case but the Supreme Court denied … in other words, they said, “We’re not going to hear this case and we’re not going to decide on it” and that basically upheld the highest court, which is the 3rd Circuit of the United States, their affirmation that the AETA was not un-Constitutional.

Caryn Hartglass: So is there anything happening to change this law or things we should really be concerned about with regards to it at this point?

Dara Lovitz: I think the concern is what I stated, that the Constitunion being rewritten to prevent equal rights for animal rights activists. As far as what to do to change it, the Equal Justice Alliance is a great nonprofit that working to undo the harm of it. I think a Supreme Court challenge would be a good route. We wrote a position paper for Dennis Kucinich, who was very supportive of repealing the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and unfortunately, he’s no longer able to help us in that regard. So it would be great if we could find another Congressperson who would be willing to spearhead the effort to repeal it.

Caryn Hartglass: I guess we just don’t know because it’s out there so broad. We just don’t know when someone might decide to use it against something really innocent.

Dara Lovitz: Right. And honestly, a lot of people say, “Well, I’m scared because I’m trying to get people to stop buying this product and will my economic boycott result in a conviction under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act?” I truly believe that if they used it against us in a very obvious way, in a way that’s very obvious for us that we have free speech protection, then it would get knocked down. So I think the police and law enforcement will be selective and are going to be selective in how they use it; they’re not going to convict us for standing outside and passing out flyers and causing economic damage in that way. So I think the more it looks like free speech activity, the safer we are. While the AETA technically might apply to the activity, if law enforcement actually uses the AETA to convict us I think that would be a huge PR problem for them and it would give a really good Constitutional challenge to the AETA. I don’t know if law enforcement will want to present that opportunity for us to then challenge them Constitutionally and say, “See, this is why it’s unacceptable.”

Caryn Hartglass: Free speech.

Dara Lovitz: Yeah.

Caryn Hartglass: And then the other one are these Ag- Gag bills. Boy, that’s almost a tongue twister. Ag-Gag. Ag-Gag bills. Agriculture Gagging bills. Can we talk a little bit about that because they seem to be cropping up all over the place?

Dara Lovitz: Yeah. And for years, a couple of states had similar laws. Ag-Gag Bills, that’s what we call them; obviously, they’re not known by the industry that way. They basically prohibit the recording, or they criminalize, the recording of video or pictures at an agricultural facility, where animals are being used or raised or killed for food. And it just creates a new criminal act; a new code specifically for people who do this and it obviously targets animal rights activists who have made a good history of going on to factory farms and other facilities to take video footage and then disseminate that footage to the public, or use that footage in an animal cruelty case against the actual facility. So it’s really targeting, again, the animal rights movement. So a couple of states have had them on the books for a while. And most recently, Utah and Iowa added Ag-Gag bills and other states try all the time to get them passed and they don’t pass. So thankfully, we’re only dealing with maybe about five states total that have them.

I think the issue is twofold. I hate the fact that it targets the animal rights movement. Again, here’s another law that says animal rights activists can’t do what they’ve been doing in the way that they need to educate the public and stop the harm that’s happening to animals in facilities. The other issue is that it is a public health concern. I think … I hope you find with your audience, generally, people want to know the origin of their food, where their food comes from …

Caryn Hartglass: Well, let’s just stop right there. I mean, that’s part of the problem in the food industry today because most Americans don’t care what’s in their food.

Dara Lovitz: Is that what you found?

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. I think my audience cares but I don’t think most people care.

Dara Lovitz: Yeah. Or they don’t want …

Caryn Hartglass: Anyway, I interrupted your train of thought there. I’m sorry.

Dara Lovitz: Oh, no, that’s okay. Maybe I’m more optimistic about it. I think people want to be educated, generally. You know, with that pink … was it the pink slime?

Caryn Hartglass: Pink slime. But that’s just because all of a sudden the media was harping on pink slime. People have no idea what’s in their food but they started getting hysterical about pink slime because the media told them about it. But if they cared, they would know that it’s not just pink slime. Pink slime’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the horrible things that are in people’s foods.

Dara Lovitz: Yeah. I guess I was hoping that the public outcry about that was proof that the public does care. But I don’t know; you’re in a better position than I to know that. I guess, in the end, I was hoping that … What I don’t like about these bills is they prohibit more information from getting to the public. So any videos that support the pink slime argument or any videos that support that pigs are cruelly treated before they wind up on your plate as ham, those videos would not be disseminated to the public. I, personally as part of my journey to become a vegan, videos were huge for me; seeing the suffering. And I could hear about it but I’m a visual learner and that’s just the way I roll. But seeing the images, in pamphlets, and then watching videos, was so instrumental in my transition from an omnivore to a vegan. I think it’s important. I think those videos are important. So it’s not just important for animal rights and for veganism but also just for public health; making the public aware of where their food is coming from. It can’t hurt.

Caryn Hartglass: Oh, I really believe in those things. I think they’re very important. And I think we need to se them more frequently and then maybe people would be more concerned. But they’re not as concerned because they don’t hear enough. Occasionally, they’ll hear something in a 5-second sound byte or something on television. But if they heard it everyday, all of a sudden it would kind of be elevated in their list of things to worry about.

Dara Lovitz: Definitely. And if we get the right video produced the right way and we can disseminate it on Facebook or something and have people watch it. Or let the Today Show cover some 2-minute segment that we can show. But again, those videos would not be published because the those videos won’t be taken because of these Ag-Gag bills.

Caryn Hartglass: Now, I know the people are still doing undercover footage of different facilities. Have these bills, do you know, have they been used to prosecute anyone?

Dara Lovitz: Not that I know of because I actually don’t think anyone’s been caught yet in the states where they exist. And let’s hope that we keep it that way.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. Interesting, I was speaking with Sue Coe a few weeks ago and she’s done a lot of incredible artwork. She said that her … One of her strategies, I don’t even know if she realizes it’s a strategy, but she’ll talk to people and ask if she can … people who work inside these facilities with animals and she’ll ask if she can draw them. And is there anything in the law that says you can’t do paintings or drawings of what’s inside?

Dara Lovitz: Is she … Is she drawing … Oh, I thought … I’m sorry I misunderstood. Is she drawing the people that work there?

Caryn Hartglass: No. She’s drawing anything she sees in the facility.

Dara Lovitz: Let’s see … Yeah, that could technically … It depends how broadly the statute is written. But if it’s … A lot of the time it’s saying things like, “Recording images.” Technically, by writing it down you’re recording the image.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s a recording, yeah. But it’s not clear, I guess, which particular facility it’s in because it’s artist rendering but it’s really an interesting way the way she gets into these facilities because they basically just invite her: “So, are you just drawing?” And she says, “I can show you what I’m doing.” I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the images that are in her newest book, Cruel, but very fascinating work.

Dara Lovitz: Oh, that sounds great. And that might be a little different; if they’re inviting her into the premises for the purpose of recording then I think she would be clear.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, sometimes we have to be a little clever this way rather than …

Dara Lovitz: Exactly.

Caryn Hartglass: Anyway, what’s going on is horrible. And clearly the laws, in many instances, do not support what I think is really right and just.

Dara Lovitz: Right. We’re battling a bunch of people and lawmakers who just don’t see it the way we do and that’s tough; they have power. And frankly, the lobbying industries, the lobbying groups who represent these industries that’s tough on animals and exploit animals are so powerful and have so much money; unfortunately, that money goes a long way with influencing lawmakers.

Caryn Hartglass: I’m just curious. You teach animal law at two schools, two schools of law. What does that consist of, animal law?

Dara Lovitz: It talks about the conflict between laws that take into consideration the interests of humans and how they can balance the interest that’s non-human, animals.

Caryn Hartglass: Now, I’m imagining that people coming from different perspectives would present these courses in varying different ways.

Dara Lovitz: Yes, there is a lot of variation. The Animal Legal Defense Fund has a wonderful resource for animal law professors. We could technically all teach the same course the way we’d want too. But there’s a lot of leeway and I think we all put our personal spin on the way we teach the course. I know some animal professors don’t show videos; they don’t show videos of animal cruelty. They feel like it’s imposing horror and violence on the students and putting students in an uncomfortable position, having to watch them as part of the class. I’m the other way. I think videos are so powerful. I show them in class. I usually give them warning. But I also ask my students in the beginning of the class whether they’ve watched any violent movies like Gladiator, Saw, or Hostel. My feeling is, if they’ve been able to expose themselves to human suffering in these fictitious movies, of course; but if they’re okay watching blood and guts in the human context, in the movie, then they should be, in my mind and maybe my logic is flawed, but they should be okay with watching blood and guts on video when it’s about animals. Now, the difference is one if fictitious and one is real. And it’s hard for me to logically get over that issue but …

Caryn Hartglass: I think that’s part of the problem. I think because we view so much violence, fictitious or otherwise, it makes us really numb to the reality of it.

Dara Lovitz: It really does; we’re very desensitized. However, I find that people seeing video images of animal suffering are affected by it; they’re not desensitized to it. And that’s …

Caryn Hartglass: That sounds hopeful.

Dara Lovitz: That is; it’s hopeful. So anyway, the point is I do show videos to my animal law students and not every animal law professor does it. So we really do teach our classes with a very personal touch. But thankfully …

Caryn Hartglass: Do you know, are all animal law professors vegans or are they coming from different points of view?

Dara Lovitz: No. Yeah, they’re not. And you know, I battle this all the time. I’ll be invited to speak at animal law conferences and the lunch, the free lunch that’s given to faculty, has turkey wraps and tuna sandwiches and it’s … look, I’ll speak personally from the Pennsylvania perspective. The Pennsylvania Bar Association or the Pennsylvania Law Bar Institute has me speak and their position is animal law isn’t animal rights law. It’s animal law so technically, it includes lawyers who are defending farmers and lawyers who are defending breeding facilities; and technically, that’s true. So no, animal law is not animal rights law and animal law professors are not all vegan nor do they all teach from an animal rights perspective. And I, personally, am not allowed to teach animal rights. The deans in both law schools have been very specific that I’m to teach a very neutral animal law.

Caryn Hartglass: Now, that was my next question: how do the deans handle what you’re doing?

Dara Lovitz: Yeah, that’s it. They see who I am and they read my biography and that’s the first warning I get is “This is not a chance for you to stand on a soap box and preach.” And it’s very important that you allow … And I think that’s important because the students, and this is what the deans have said, they want to feel comfortable; they don’t want to think, “I’m not a vegetarian. I’m not a vegan; therefore, if I attend this class and speak in class, the professor will penalize me for my views” and that cannot be. I’ve been very careful about teaching the course very neutrally. The grading is completely anonymous. And in class, I do bring in our industry arguments. I realize that when I talk, I talk with a bit of an advocacy slant. I know that it comes out; it can’t not come out. It’s so a part of me; it’s so ingrained in me the way I discuss things.

Caryn Hartglass: Oh, we all do.

Dara Lovitz: Yeah. And that might not be fair to the other students who don’t necessarily agree with me on that position so I always make sure that I have the industry perspective represented, either I have students go to their websites, the Animal Agriculture Alliance website, or I’ll have a speaker come in who can give a position opposite of mine. So I try to make it as balanced as possible.

Caryn Hartglass: Have some of the students come to you outside of class to find out more about being vegan?

Dara Lovitz: Yes. I also, and this is a little … I hope you don’t think this manipulative but I always come to class with vegan cookies or vegan cakes, something that I’ve made. Because it’s a night class and my justification is, “You’re tired; you need sugar. You need something to stay up.” So I usually bring vegan desserts.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, manipulation; I support it. Why not?

Dara Lovitz: Yes. So a lot of times students are asking me for recipes or they want to know how did I get this to taste like this without butter or dairy. So there’s a little bit of vegan outreach that I try to do subliminally. And …

Caryn Hartglass: The most effective vegan outreach is by mouth. Vegan people make delicious food.

Dara Lovitz: I think so. I think it’s been helpful. And honestly, the videos have really helped the students see what they’ve never been exposed to before. I usually have at least a student or two go vegan after the course, which is so validating for me. And again, because I’m teaching the course from a very neutral position, it’s them just taking information and taking it a little bit further.

Caryn Hartglass: Do you have some favorite videos? Favorite may not be the right word but the videos that are the most provocative, most compelling.

Dara Lovitz: I’ve used Farm To Fridge the past two semesters, which I think is a Mercy for Animals DVD. It’s about 12 minutes long and I show most of that. I used to show Earthlings but one of my students pointed out and it didn’t even occurred to me but there’s a science portion of Earthlings and the scientists look like they’re from … the video footage must be from the ‘70s. The scientists are wearing Coke bottle glasses and they look so dated. The students’ interpretation of that was, “Well, if there’s no modern footage, how do we know this stuff is still going on?” So yeah, I didn’t think about that. And I like the ’70s style so maybe … but after I realized so I stopped showing that. I also show a lot of clips from sharkonline.org. Shark the group has some good clips on rodeo cruelty. I find little clips here and there that I find that are effective for the students. I try not to make it too long; it depends what the issue is. And honestly, Jon Stewart, the Daily Show, has some funny clips. I like to show them as well to lighten the mood so the students don’t think that every time I turn off the lights in the classroom something horrible is about to come on.

Caryn Hartglass: Right, that’s important. All right, we have about 10 minutes left and I thought we could touch on the things that you’re working on. I know in New York City we have one of the tourist attractions. Mayor Bloomberg, of course, thinks it’s a very important tourist attractions and that’s the horse-drawn carriages. Do you have them also in Philadelphia?

Dara Lovitz: We do, unfortunately.

Caryn Hartglass: How do you feel about that? Have they been there a long time? I don’t remember seeing them.

Dara Lovitz: Yeah. That’s a good question because people who defend them say, “It’s part of our tradition.” In fact, it wasn’t until the late ‘70s, with the Bicentennial Celebration, that the mayor brought them back to Philadelphia; otherwise, they weren’t part of our quote unquote tradition in Philadelphia. They weren’t a historical part of Philadelphia. And of course, that was the way of transportation centuries ago. That was how they transport, I understand that. We have very narrow streets in some parts of the old city, which show little … there are these little metal iron things where you wipe your foot from the horse dung. This clearly was a horse-traversed town but not for years and years. And the horse-drawn carriage industry as a touristy thing in old city just came in the late’70s. But they are a pretty big part of the old city, Independence Hall, in that area.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. Well, when I think of New York City horse-drawn carriages don’t come to mind; they’re not on my list of anywhere near the top. I’m thinking about culture, Broadway, the arts, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Opera, all of the great museums, all of the great food, the Statue of Liberty and on and on and on. Horse-drawn carriages are just like some little speck that isn’t really important. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal and yet it is. In the grand scheme of things I, personally, prefer talking about the factory farming of animals because there’s so many more that are involved. It’s true that there aren’t many numbers involved when it comes to horse-drawn carriages but it’s something that’s very visual and definitely unnecessary. And where are we in this movement of getting rid of it?

Dara Lovitz: Getting rid of factory farming?

Caryn Hartglass: No, getting rid of horse-drawn carriages.

Dara Lovitz: Okay. Yeah, and to your point it is a single-issue campaign. My nonprofit group, Peace Advocacy Network, generally avoids this. We really do try to promote veganism and educate about veganism. But it’s so obvious in Philadelphia and frankly, we’ve been able to get a lot of people to read our literature on veganism, who show up to our horse-drawn carriage demos. So we’ve used it as a way to do vegan outreach as well. I know that sounds a little counter-intuitive but there are a lot more Philadelphians who are opposed to the horse-drawn carriage industry than are vegans. So we can interest them in horse, to understand why it’s cruel to horses, and then educate them about animals that are also subjected to cruelty. In Philadelphia, we had this Councilperson who is very supportive of the industry. A lot of his campaign dollars came from the horse owners. There are two main companies that run these horse-drawn carriages. He is now out of office. And we have someone new who is pretty liberal and progressive and we’re so hoping that our letters and our efforts are going to be instrumental here. We’ve already drafted a ban. We have legislation at the ready. We have dozens and dozens of signatures from business owners because we know that’s where the money and the tax paying comes from, the business owners in old city Philadelphia. So we have letters from them, supporting our efforts to ban horse-drawn carriages; we have constituents. So we really are trying to create a very strong campaign to get this ban passed. And we recently have an accident, where a horse got spooked, surprise surprise, and bolted and then a car hit the horse and the horse became injured and the car driver was injured, which really is what gets the media’s attention, when the human is injured. Horses are injured everyday that they’re out there on the street and nobody covers it but the second a human is involved then the media get on to it. So we have a demonstration scheduled this Sunday to bring light to that accident and why horse-drawn carriages are just unacceptable and unwelcome in Philadelphia anymore.

Caryn Hartglass: Oh, I’m just taking a big deep breath here. There’s so much that we need to do and I never understand why people support exploitation, pain, suffering, and cruelty. So let’s all breathe together.

Dara Lovitz: Yeah, these are the things that keep us active as activists.

Caryn Hartglass: Yup. I mean, what else would we do? Gosh. I like to think about that. If we weren’t doing this work, what an incredible world this would be. And let’s see. So you have a nonprofit, Peace Advocacy Network. What’s going on there and who takes advantage of that?

Dara Lovitz: We have a couple of missions and we believe they’re all interconnected. One is to promote veganism; another is to promote social justice; and the third arm of it is protecting the Earth’s resources. We believe environmentalism, social justice, and veganism are all interconnected. And we have separate campaigns. We have an LGBTQ campaign for social justice. We have a human trafficking campaign and feeding the hungry. But they’re related to veganism. They’re related to compassion, and peace, and non-violence. And I think the environmental connections, I don’t need to explain as much with veganism. So we have a bunch of different campaigns running at the moment. We try to … People will show up at our gay rights demonstrations and they have no exposure to veganism and we’re able to give them some literature to help them understand or we’ll have a social event after the demo at a vegan restaurant. We connect all these issues because again, it has to do with compassion. Species-ism is not so far from homophobia and it’s not so far from these other social justice issues out there. With regards to feeding the hungry, we have contributions of fruits and vegetables to lower income neighborhoods because we believe we need to give them access. Right now, they have access to Burger King and the McDonald’s and that’s about it.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. About racism and homophobism and species-ism, sexism, I get it; I get that they’re all connected. But unfortunately, I think those who decide they’re being exploited under one of those somehow tend to want to slip into some hierarchy and feel that their issue is not the same as another issue and that you’re insulting them by saying that it is. I remember protesting at a Ringling Bros. circus event outside Madison Square Garden and there were people that were really annoyed when we tried to connect the issue of human slavery to animal exploitation and they were really insulted.

Dara Lovitz: I run into that too, with circus demos and we have a big placard that does make the comparison. I understand that it’s a very deep and personal topic and the people who are offended are usually ones who don’t think about animals very respectfully and they think that they’re being compared to animals, which to them is an insult. I, personally, would love to be compared to these brave sentient creatures, whom we’ve exploit and they love us unconditionally for some reason.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, isn’t that amazing? That’s what they do and how do they do that? Love unconditionally? It’s just something we really need to learn how to do.

Dara Lovitz: Yeah.

Caryn Hartglass: Is that why the animals are here to teach us that?

Dara Lovitz: I don’t know. They’re here to teach us something.

Caryn Hartglass: We’re not getting it.

Dara Lovitz: Yes, we’re not getting it. And yeah, I do find that once in a while. And you have to be very careful because I don’t want to lose audience members. I don’t want to lose people who might be open to our message otherwise, if we didn’t use that rhetoric. So we try to be very careful when we’re toeing that line.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, we just have a few minutes left and I’m just looking in things I might talk to you about. And one of them that’s talking to me right now is breed discrimination. What is that and what are the animal laws related to that?

Dara Lovitz: Breed discriminatory laws are typically laws against certain breeds in towns; they’re really not, for the most part, they’re not statewide. It’s a town ordinance that says you can’t have a pit bull or you can’t have a Rottweiler within the city limits. And sometimes, it’s not saying you can’t have them but it’s saying that if you do, you have to have them muzzled in public or you can’t let them out, you can’t let them out of a leash in a public area. There are all kinds of restrictions and they’re specific to the breed of the dog, as opposed to just saying if your dog has bitten someone, regardless of its breed, then you have to muzzle the dog. That’s different; that’s the dog law and it’s pretty accepted across the country but it’s vague as to the breed; whereas these bred discriminatory laws say that if it’s a pit bull, if it’s a Rottweiler … and there are about, a lot, maybe a dozen different dog breeds that are criminalized specifically. And what’s ridiculous is that law enforcement has no clue what a pit bull is versus another non-pit animal. They’re so bad at identifying. There are so many studies done showing them images and the officers have to identify what’s a pit bull and what’s not and the fail rate are ridiculous. So it’s not even enforceable; these laws aren’t enforceable but they’re also just so harmful to pit bull owners. And they think people with pit bull would agree they’re such generally friendly dogs. There are pit bulls that attack just like there are Jack Russell terriers that attack. It all has to do with behavior and discipline and background, the history of the animal. It’s so ridiculous that a whole breed should be discriminated against one that’s…. It’s really dog specific not breed specific as to whether a dog is violent.

Caryn Hartglass: Sure. We have the same problem with human beings, okay? There are some who cause a lot of problems. What do we do about them? Okay, we just have a minute left. Anything you want to share with us before we sign off?

Dara Lovitz: Well, I really appreciate the time to discuss these issues. I encourage people to check out the Equal Justice Alliance and learn as much as you can about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Anytime that there’s a broadcast, an email, saying, “Contact your Senator. Contact your Congressperson. Now’s the time,” do it. I think those things go a long way. And I just hope your listeners take action when they have opportunities to do so.

Caryn Hartglass: Yup. It’s up to each one of us individually; do as much as you can.

Thank you so, Dara Lovitz, for joining me on It’s All About Food.

Dara Lovitz: Thank you, Caryn. Take care.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, have a great day. And thank you to all my listeners for joining me today. I’m Caryn Hartglass. Check out my website, resopnsibleeatingandliving.com. And have a very delicious week and please stay cool.

Transcribed by Diana O’Reilly, 3/29/2013

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Episode #156

6/13/2012: Part I: Will Tuttle World Peace Diet

Dr. Will Tuttle is an award-winning speaker, educator, author, and musician. His music, writings, and presentations focus on creativity, intuition, and compassion. Dr. Tuttle presents about 150 events yearly at conferences, retreats, and progressive churches and centers throughout North America. A former Zen monk with a Ph.D. in education from U.C., Berkeley, he has worked extensively in intuition development, spiritual healing, meditation, music, creativity, vegan living, and cultural evolution.

For more insight from Will Tuttle listen to the last year’s interview on June 8, 2011 HERE.

6/13/2012: Part II: Victoria Moran Main Street Vegan

Victoria Moran writes life-enhancing books. “Self-help” is the genre and one of her passions to make self-help literature, too. In addition, she does keynote speaking and is a certified life coach, with in-person clients in New York City and telephone clients from all over. She hosts an Internet radio show, “Your Charmed Life,” on www.HealthyLife.net, and she does a daily blog on Beliefnet.com. She’s also been a guest on Oprah! twice — with her books Shelter for the Spirit and Lit from Within. Her best-selling book to date is Creating a Charmed Life—it’s in 29 languages and quoted on boxes of Celestial Seasonings teas—and it has a brand new sequel, Living a Charmed Life: Your Guide to Finding Magic in Every Moment of Every Day. For the first thirty years of her life, she struggled with overeating and dieting; she overcame that (from the inside out) and shares what she knows in her books Fit from Within and, newly revised and updated: The Love-Powered Diet: Eating for Freedom, Health, and Joy. You can keep in touch by subscribing to her newsletter, The Charmed Monday Minute at www.victoriamoran.com; follow her on Twitter or join her Facebook Fan Page .

TRANSCRIPTIONS

PART 1:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello, I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. It is Wednesday, June 13, 2012. And here we go with another hour, talking about something that I think is really very important: food. And I know that so many of us out there feel so frustrated. Read more »

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5/16/2012: Part I: Ruby Roth Vegan Is Love

Ruby Roth is an artist, designer, and writer living in Los Angeles. A vegan since 2003, she was teaching art in an after-school program when the children’s interest in healthy foods and veganism first inspired her to write her first acclaimed book “That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals,” which gained international attention and garnered multiple translations. Roth’s latest book, “Vegan Is Love: Having Heart and Taking Action” hits stores April 24th, 2012–just in time for Earth Day, though the author notes, “Every day is Earth Day when you’re vegan!” Complementing her degrees in art and American Studies, Roth has researched animal agriculture, health, nutrition, and the benefits of a plant-based diet for nearly a decade. Roth continues to share her special brand of gentle candor as a vegan consultant and speaker.

5/16/2012: Part II: Aaron Bobrow-Strain White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf

Aaron Bobrow-Strain, associate professor of politics at Whitman College, writes and teaches on the politics of the global food system. He is the author of Intimate Enemies: Landowners, Power, and Violence in Chiapas.

TRANSCRIPTIONS

TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello, I’m Caryn Hartglass, and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. It’s May 16, 2012, and in the next hour, we get to talk about my favorite subject, food: and it has so many impacts on our everyday life here on Planet Earth. Food – who would think that every morsel we put in our mouth makes a difference? Read more »

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4/18/2012: Peter Seidel Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the Damage We Inflict on the Planet and Ourselves

Before obtaining a MS in Architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology as a student of architect Mies van der Rohe and planner Ludwig Hilberseimer, Seidel worked as a farmhand, factory worker, Alaska salmon fisherman, and carpenter. In 1957, while working in Chicago on the most environmentally damaging office and institutional buildings, he read a book entitled “The Challenge of Man’s Future,” by Harrison Brown. It described the dangers of excessive population growth, food and mineral shortages, and over consumption that threatened our future.

It was clear his work bore a heavy impact on these problems, he changed direction and became a committed environmental architect planner. During this period, and after, he spent time teaching at five tuitions of higher learning including one in China and one in India. His work at the University of Michigan on directing urban expansion into a system of pedestrian oriented new towns led to his being hired as the master planner for an environmentally sound socially integrated community of 80,000 to be built outside of Cincinnati. When this failed to materialize, he took to developing, designing, and building eco-friendly, urban infill condominiums in Cincinnati.
Peter Seidel, environmentalist

When Ronald Reagan became president, and the Arab oil boycott was call off, public interest in conservation evaporated. It was clear that his efforts, and those of others, were directed toward a dead end. A question kept haunting him: “When we see that our future is threatened and we know what we can do about it, why don’t we act?” Thinking about this led to another abrupt change in his career. He turned to writing. After failing to obtain production funding for a television documentary, “Invisible Walls” addressed to this problem, in 1998 “Invisible walls” came out as a book . Since then Seidel has devoted his time producing books and articles, related to examining this problem of inaction.

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4/11/2012: Part I: Jennifer Cockrall-King Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution.

Jennifer Cockrall-King (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) is a freelance journalist and food writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, National Post, Canadian Geographic, Maclean’s, and other major publications. She blogs about food and her research trips at foodgirl.ca. You can also join her at facebook.com/FoodandtheCity and twitter.com/jennifer_ck.

4/11/2012: Part II: Erica Meier National Veg Week

Erica has served as COK’s Executive Director since 2005, after having been actively involved as a volunteer since 2000. Since taking the helm, Erica has taken the organization to new heights with continued growth and accomplishments for animals that include ending the egg industry’s use of the misleading claim “Animal Care Certified” and successfully working with BOCA foods to stop using eggs. Vegan for nearly 20 years, Erica has been working in the animal protection field since college. Before working at COK, Erica spent several years as an animal control officer in Washington, DC where she rescued sick, stray, and homeless animals as well as enforced anti-cruelty laws. National Veg Week

4/11/2012: Part III: Alejandro Junger, M.D. CLEAN

Alejandro Junger, M.D., is board certified in internal medicine and cardiology, having trained and now practicing in New York City. In addition, after completing his medical training, Junger studied Eastern medicine in India. He was the medical director of WE Care Holistic Health Center in Palm Springs, a world-famous center for fasting, cleansing, and detoxification. Currently, he lives in Los Angeles with his family, is writing his second book , CLEAN For LIFE and sees patients privately.

TRANSCRIPTION PART I:

Hello I’m Caryn Hartglass and you are listening to It’s All About Food, and guess what, it IS all about food. We hear so much gloom and doom with the economy and energy resources and things are difficult and everybody has less and there are too many people on the planet and so on and so on. We don’t’ talk about that here. What we talk about is all the wonderful things that we can do to make this world a better place and it’s all about food. And today I am really excited because we are going to be talking about some, I don’t want to say simple, but maybe they are kind of simple solutions that can make a difference on this planet and I want to introduce the author Jennifer Cockrall-King who is the author of Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution: Food and the City. I think I said that in reverse, Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution. Anyway, the message is important. She is a freelance journalist and food writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Sun Times, National Post, and Canadian Geographic, McQueens and other major publications. She blogs about food and her research trips and www.foodgirl.ca from Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Welcome to It’s All About Food.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, I just finished your book and I really enjoyed it. You know, we hear so many things about what’s going wrong and I wish more media outlets, more news, would focus on these things that real people are doing that make a positive difference on the planet.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Good news stories rarely get the attention they deserve but I think there is a lot of enthusiasm about urban agriculture and gardening and food production in cities. So it seems to be getting out there, which is great.

Caryn Hartglass: Well what’s crazy is the fact that plants will grow just about anywhere and you have so many stories of that. You know, I live in New York City and you can see green things popping up from cracks in the concrete. Plants want to grow!

Jennifer Cockrall-King: You cannot let Mother Nature down.

Caryn Hartglass: With a little smarts and a little planning, we can all work together and do good things.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: You know, growing food is not as complicated as we have been led to believe. There is a lot of marketing spin out there that food needs to be very complicated and that it’s best left to the experts, and yes we definitely need farmers and we definitely need specialists in some areas of our food system, but seeds have everything that they need to do their thing. Nature has made it really easy for us to actually become gardeners. We tend to over complicate things and what I like about gardening is that it just strips it down. It’s just easy. It’s about sunshine, water, and seeds.

Caryn Hartglass: I primarily want to talk about all the good news, but before we get to the good news, just a little history because your book opens up with the history of how we got to where we are today and I think it’s important to touch on. One of the problems certain is the population. We wouldn’t be experiencing the problems we are experiencing today if there weren’t seven billion people on the planet.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Right. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

Caryn Hartglass: If there were just a million it would be a whole other story but I don’t think that makes things impossible and we just need to be smart about it and one of the things that I thought was interesting in your beginning history was all the things that were said decades ago about the problems we were going to have and how we wouldn’t be able to feed people and here we are decades later and we’re still not at that doom period.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Right. The world has been ending for quite a long time.

Caryn Hartglass: Since the beginning maybe?

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Since the beginning of time, exactly. Since recorded history it’s been the end of the world that’s been coming. We certainly can be a lot smarter about using the resources that we have and we’re starting to see the consequences of our diet and eating the wrong types of foods and just the stress that it is putting on the environment and the planet and our own bodies.

Caryn Hartglass: Absolutely. One of the scary things that I find about our food system is that there are very few that really control most of our food supply today.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: That was a major issue for me. Not only do we have a handful of global corporations that control not just our food supply but our pharmaceutical supply and they are all rolled into one company but we have this illusion of abundance of food in cities because we can go to the grocery store and they look very well stocked and they are but grocery stores don’t carry a lot of inventory and they have become very good at just-in-time restocking of the shelves because that is where they are able to make a profit. If there was a problem getting food into the city for whatever reason, any major modern city in North America and Europe has about three days worth of food in it and then the shelves would start go to bare. It’s a real wakeup call that we have allowed just a few distribution chains to become so tightly controlled and if there was a problem we would all be scrambling in about three days.

Caryn Hartglass: The other concern is that, not just in the supermarkets, but our stores of emergency grains, we don’t seem to have that either like we used to.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: No. It’s anti-competitive apparently to look after our food security. Because what it does, it allows countries to not have to buy grains and food at the current market price if you have a reserve amount. There was a real push to have countries dismantle their grain reserves and some of their food stock reserves. It’s definitely something we’ve sort of opened ourselves to fragility within many different levels within our food system.

Caryn Hartglass: I’m not a religious person but I learned a biblical story a long time ago about Joseph’s dream and how the famine was going on and he dreamt of seven fat cows and seven lean cows and knew that they would have years of abundance and then years of famine and you need to prepare for that. I guess we never learn through history but hopefully we have a solution right here and it’s all in this book Food and the City. So let’s talk about Urban Agriculture. It’s hot. It’s sexy.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: It is. It’s like agriculture is the new little black dress right now. It’s kind of exciting. I think people have just started to realize the pleasure they can get from growing a bit of food in cities and I also think we let our cities become these fairly wooden, dead places where we weren’t out on the streets anymore and we were driving around in our cars a lot and we weren’t interacting with our landscape in a very healthy way and I think people just decided that if you can plant a garden and soften those sharp lines in the cement of the city, it really improves your quality of life on a block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood scale.

Caryn Hartglass: Absolutely. I’m just looking out my window and I love just to see the seasons go by and you can only see that from the plant life that is outside.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Right and what I love about food gardens on street level is you see kids walking to school or walking with their friends and they are picking up on this seasonality. You don’t really think about the fact that they are absorbing all of this information but if they walk by a community garden every day throughout the summer they will actually learn about the seasonality of foods and they will start to taste some of and try to get some of the peas or raspberries or strawberries and they will learn that you have to wait until they are perfectly ripe.

Caryn Hartglass: Well this was one of the things that I was wondering about when I was reading the book. Now, I’m a vegan and I love my vegetables. There is no question about, that but there is a big part of the population, especially in North America, where they don’t know where their kitchen is, they don’t know how to prepare food and they are not interested in fresh produce.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: They are missing out.

Caryn Hartglass: This is another piece. I am all for urban gardening and I want to see more and more of it and I want to see more life but I am also kind of wondering if other people will jump on the band wagon as it becomes more hip? I hope so.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: I hope so too and I refer to tomatoes and basil as sort of your gateway drug to a better diet, frankly. If you start to grow food, you will eat it. If you grow fava beans, you will search through the internet and recipe books to figure out a recipe to use those fava beans.

Caryn Hartglass: Oh God I love them with garlic and oil.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Yeah. It’s a great way to rebalance your diet because you realize that it is a lot easier to grow vegetables and to harvest them than to be tracking down a chicken for dinner every day or other products that are a lot more complicated.

Caryn Hartglass: So people are finding little nooks and crannies. There is a whole variety of different ways that people are growing food that I read about in your book either in an old parking lot or these vertical farms and old buildings. It’s really quiet fascinating. Where does this fit in with what we are allowed to do and what we are not allowed to do. Do we just get started and do it and see what happens?

Jennifer Cockrall-King: That’s usually the way public policy tends to change. It reacts to what people in the community are doing. Certain cities already have bylaws that allow urban chickens or urban bee keeping or for you to dig up your front lawn and plant vegetables. Some cities have bylaws against it but you just find there are usually a few people who push the envelope and if there is enough public support for, that’s what elected officials do. They govern hopefully according to the will of the people so it takes a while and sometimes it is frustrating but I am actually finding that city councils across Canada and in the US are really picking up on this energy and they are actually trying to facilitate this change. They see it as a huge positive. They are usually worried about garbage budgets and crime patrol among other things. This is actually a positive bright spot in their day when they can facilitate a community garden.

Caryn Hartglass: Absolutely. Our schools are so strapped financially and I love to hear when schools start to incorporate community gardens and classes in learning about food.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Children are natural gardeners. They love the tactile nature of gardening and planting food and they are quite patient and quite nurturing. I think that it is just a really good, natural fit. It almost seems crazy that we haven’t been teaching food and gardening in schools up until now.

Caryn Hartglass: So what percentage of food do you think we can grow in an urban environment and we still of course need farmers as well?

Jennifer Cockrall-King: You’re never going to grow wheat fields in the middle of cities so if you want your bread, we still depend on farmers. In the Second World War, so in the 1940’s, the victory gardens movement…so when people were really engaged in home food production and canning and being self-sufficient, they estimate that 40% of the fresh vegetables were grown domestically in home gardens. So we can do a lot better than we are now. We think urban agriculture is hot now, but it was really hot in the 1940’s.

Caryn Hartglass: Unfortunately, as you have gone over in the beginning of your book, a lot has changed since the 1940’s and some of it has come out of chemicals and technology from those wars. I was so fascinated reading in the beginning of your book the history because you know I lived through a lot of it, at least the last five decades and you don’t realize what is going on when you’re in the middle of it. I was never really interested in history as a kid but now I am kind of fascinated by it and it’s like “Oh! That’s how we got here!” but it is amazing.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: When I think about even in my life time too, my grandmother used to can peaches and pears and apricots and it was a real treat to go downstairs in her house into the cellar and there was this rainbow selection of these beautiful fruits and we just don’t do that anymore. We shop twice a week and the fridge goes bare every couple of days. We’re just not very much in tune with planning ahead year to year or even week to week.

Caryn Hartglass: I think urban gardening can really solve so many problems and not just food security related issues although that is certainly obviously a big piece. So many people today are not fulfilled. They are depressed and they are not happy with their lives and we live with so much abundance and things are so convenient and so easy. People just eat because they are bored. You quoted Voltaire in the beginning of the book and I remember I performed in the musical “Candide” a few times which is based on his book and my favorite piece, the Leonard Berstein piece, Make Our Garden Grow. It is a beautiful song but the words are so meaningful to me and it is so important to work and to see the accomplishment, the food that grows up to nurture your body for yourself and your family and I think a lot of people are really missing that and it creates an emptiness in them.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Everything is so convenient and there is nothing wrong with convenience, but you are right. We have lost that personal satisfaction of being self-sufficient and about seeing a project through. Just in terms of our healthy, you mentioned depression. We are not getting enough exercise and we are not outside enough and there is a direct link between the types of food we put into our bodies and our mental state because it is all connected. When you can have one solution that solves so many different problems, you just want to run screaming through the streets telling people, “Plant a garden! You can ditch your expensive gym membership and you can probably lose some weight. You can be happier and healthier and maybe get off some of the anti-depressants.” It’s all about building a social scene in your community too. I was talking to somebody last night and we were discussing how we just don’t walk up to a stranger and speak to them. That happens all the time when you are out puttering in your yard and your garden. It’s just an opportunity to engage with somebody in your neighborhood that you don’t know yet and that’s just the ice breaker. All of the sudden you have made that connection and you have a much more safe neighborhood too. If you have people out gardening in the early morning and late at night, criminals don’t really like that.

Caryn Hartglass: I like the way you talked about how drug dealers don’t like flowers in gardens or parks and they will stay away from that.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: It’s drug dealer repellant basically.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s hysterical. It just provides a pretty happy atmosphere and they just don’t feel like that is the place for crime?

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Exactly. There is too much activity that is not drug related. There is too much gardening activity.

Caryn Hartglass: Too many eyes on them! You have so many great stories in this book where we read about Paris and London and Los Angeles and Detroit and Chicago. There are lots of very different places and really great stories all along. I think my favorite though, and you saved it for last, is Cuba. I would never wish this on anyone where all of the sudden we are out of food.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: They went through Peak Oil in a very drastic way in the early 90’s and Peak Oil and no oil actually lead to a real food crisis on the island with 11 million people. So it was a very, very serious situation but they got out of it. They avoided mass starvation essentially through urban agriculture and through organic, low-tech but high skill, and heavy use of human labor food production.

Caryn Hartglass: Every culture has good things and bad things. Like last week, I was talking to this woman who was talking about how the French teach their children how to eat and it is so much better than how we raise our kids here in North America because we are so focused I think on empowering kids at two years old to make their own choices that we don’t teach them what the right behavior is. There are good things from every culture and not so good things. Not that I want to live in Cuba, although I hear there are some lovely things about it, but we definitely can learn from what they did. We don’t have to do everything that they are doing.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: They have a very difficult situation there still. Life is not easy in Cuba and they have a lot of challenges that are brought upon them and that they bring upon themselves, but what is nice about Cuba is that they almost have this little cottage industry of bringing people over who are interested in urban agriculture and sustainable technologies. They are also moving quite quickly into solar power, wind power, bio gas, and all sorts of alternative energy sources. They are really making lemonade out of lemons frankly and they have figured out how to create a social situation where farmers are extremely well respected. They are well paid and that is definitely something we could learn from.

Caryn Hartglass: Could we underline that because you said in your book that farmers were paid more than doctors and lawyers in Cuba? That’s crazy! That’s great!

Jennifer Cockrall-King: There is not nearly the economic disparity that we have in North America where we have certain segments of the population that get paid a lot more and teachers and other very important people like farmers are kind of low on the totem pole of pay. So they have their priorities in that sense kind of better aligned than we do and it doesn’t take a lot to give farmers more respect. It doesn’t cost us any more. We tend not to treat our farmers with a lot of respect and I think that that goes a long way towards making us feel better about paying our farmers more as well. Most farming families in North America rely on off-farm income.

Caryn Hartglass: We really need to change things in this country and I hope that it doesn’t require us to go hungry before we make those changes. We need to get back to the small farmer and they need to be supported with government assistance to grow the right kinds of food organically and I don’t like the idea that corporations are growing these mass fields of mono-crops and not even a lot of people involved per acre in those situations. A lot of things are automated and more people can get back to work taking care of the earth. It’s so obvious to me, why isn’t it as obvious to everyone else?

Jennifer Cockrall-King: It’s having a huge effect. We could talk about colony collapse disorder in bees. This is a huge problem in North America and Europe because of mono-crop fields and heavy chemical use where they dose the crops with pesticides and insecticides. Lo and behold, bees will actually die because they are also insects. When we have one in three mouths depending on bees pollenating our food we have to really think carefully about some of these choices that we make that give us lots of cheap food. It might not be Peak Oil. It might not be something else or we may fall into food crisis because we’ve killed the bees.

Caryn Hartglass: Everything is connected.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: We’re back to the doomsday scenario.

Caryn Hartglass: there we go! But that’s not going to happen because we are going to get all of these hot urban farmers coming in and saving the day and we are all a part of that and we all need to make our gardens grow. So do you have a garden?

Jennifer Cockrall-King: I do! I do! I’m not an expert gardener and certainly when I was writing the book I was working very hard and my garden never looked worse so I was a bit of a hypocrite. I am looking forward to this growing season because I’ll finally get some time to spend time in the garden. I like to grow things that push the limits of what I should be able to grow in my climate!

Caryn Hartglass: You’re in Canada. I was really interested to hear about some of the things people are growing up there. So what pushes the limits in your neighborhood?

Jennifer Cockrall-King: One of the things as you move further North, you get extremely long days. We get 16-17 hours of sunlight in a day in July and August so we have a long growing season in that sense because the plants can really grow a lot longer than in Southern latitudes. We can get ripe tomatoes in the garden to artichokes…I had some pinot grigio grapes growing and they even survived the winters. Now, I would never get grapes because there was always a late frost that would get the flowers but I had grape leaves and I made Dolmades all summer long. It was fabulous. It’s quite incredible and I visited a community garden up in Yellow Knife which is near the Arctic Circle quite frankly and they get 24 hours of sunlight in the summertime. The gardens up there are so incredible. It is so astonishing to see what true Northern farmers can grow. They have everything from quinoa, to kale, to brussel sprouts to beautiful turnips and lots of root crops and beautiful leafy greens.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s really inspiring. I’m glad to hear they can grow quinoa because I heard that was a very difficult plant to grow on our side of the equator.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Yes. I think it likes extreme latitudes and I think it has to do with elevation more than anything but where there’s a will there’s a way and I think that’s why we have always escaped these little doomsday scenarios because we are self-destructive to a point but then we smarten up.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s right. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining me on It’s All About Food. Thank you for your book Food in the City. It is very inspirational and I really enjoyed reading it.

Jennifer Cockrall-King: Thank you. It’s been my pleasure.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay. Take care. Bye Bye. I’m Caryn Hartglass and you have been listening to It’s All About Food. We are going to take a quick break and be back in a moment.

Transcribed by Erin Clark, 1/29/2013

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On this show I celebrate 3 years of hosting the weekly IT’S ALL ABOUT FOOD program with the Progressive Radio Network. I started on March 25, 2009. Since that time I have hosted 145 shows, interviewing 155 unique guests. I am so grateful for this experience, I have learned a great deal and have been inspired by so many wonderful people, authors, activists, chefs, teachers, athletes who are doing so much to make this world a kinder, gentler, better place. I go over some of the highlights from these 3 years of programming.

Archives to all the shows, with information that is still NEWS and quite current, can be found HERE.

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3/7/2012: Eric Weltman Food And Water Watch

Eric Weltman is Senior Organizer for Food & Water Watch in New York. He has over 20 years of experience leading social justice campaigns and building progressive power. Eric has helped direct ground-breaking coalitions, organize high-visibility media events, write influential publications, and manage successful initiatives to pass legislation, fund programs, and elect candidates. Eric also has extensive experience conducting trainings on media outreach, advocacy, organizing, and public speaking. He has taught urban politics at Suffolk University, and written for such publications as The American Prospect, In These Times, and Dollars & Sense. A native of New Jersey, Eric graduated from the University of Michigan and earned an M.A. in Urban & Environmental Policy from Tufts University. When he’s not changing the world, Eric enjoys being with his wife, Sarah, and son, Zach, reading history books, taking walks around New York City, watching “Burn Notice” and “House,” juggling, and eating Thai food.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Caryn Hartglass: Good day! I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Thank you for joining me today and thank you for listening. And for those of you who have sent me little notes via e-mail at info@realmeals.org or posted something on Facebook, thank you! It’s always great to hear comments and they’re all good so thank you for that. Read more »

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2/29/2012: Part I: Donna Beaudoin Sister Vegetarian

Donna Michelle Beaudoin is an Author and Motivator who inspires and puts the burning passion in you to lead a healthy, drama-free lifestyle as a vegetarian or vegan.

She is the author of Sister Vegetarian’s 31 Days of Drama-Free Vegetarian and Vegan Living. She is a 45 yr old Vegan who knows how it is to try for years to become a vegetarian and then a vegan. She is a a vegan who incorporates 20% to 50% raw vegan meals weekly into my vegan meals for optimum health benefits. She is a Certified Raw Vegan Lifestyle Coach and Raw Vegan Chef through Raw Vegan Network-Ekaya Institute of Living Food Education. She uses her certifications to help people transition to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle by illustrating the importance of adding to weekly meals raw vegan and whole foods for increased health benefits.

2/29/2012: Part II: Doron Petersan Sticky Fingers Sweets

Doron Petersan opened Sticky Fingers Sweets & Eats in 2002 drawing on her dgree in Dietetics from the University of Maryland and years of experience working in restaurants. She lives with her husband, Peter and their recued companion-animals in Washington, D.C.

TRANSCRIPTIONS

PART I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello! This is Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Hello and how are you today? We have a great show coming up. I’m looking forward to both of my guests today.

This whole vegan thing, it’s been going on for a long time. And what we talk about on It’s All About Food is certainly food and how food affects our personal health, the health of the planet, and certainly the animals that we choose to either eat or not eat. What’s really wonderful is we’re gaining a lot of momentum and people are thinking about vegans differently than they used to, thinking about vegetarians differently than certainly when I got started, seems like centuries ago, maybe 30 some-odd years ago. The thing that we find is that everyone’s on a different journey. And we discover the vegetarian diet, the vegan diet, in a unique way, each one of us, we react to it in a unique way. And some of us decide to eat this type of diet, some of us choose not to. But each one of us has a different life experience and a different journey and so our decisions to do certain things are different, and how we do things are different. Okay, difference is the theme here. But some people find changing diets very easy, most people have challenges. And different people’s stories and message will resonate with certain people and not with others. And so that’s the great thing about what’s going on right now because there’s so many vegetarian voices out there that are going to connect with certain people and help them move to a better place in the food continuum. And we’ve got one of them today. We’re going to be talking to Sister Vegetarian. We’re going to be talking to Donna Beaudoin. Or you could correct me if I didn’t pronounce it correctly but she’s the author of a new book, Sister Vegetarian’s 31 Days of Drama-Free Living.

Welcome to It’s All About Food, Donna!

Donna Beaudoin: Thank you, Caryn! How are you doing?

Caryn Hartglass: Good. How do you say your last name?

Donna Beaudoin: Beaudoin.

Caryn Hartglass: Beaudoin! Okay. I was trying to make it French, like Boudoir or something.

Donna Beaudoin: That’s fine, that’s fine. Just call me Donna.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay. I just realized when I made some posts on Facebook and Twitter today that I made it Sistah Vegetarian, and not Sister Vegetarian because I was confusing it with Sistah Vegan and I apologize.

Donna Beaudoin: That’s fine. I call myself sister vegetarian because I see vegetarians and vegans as a part of the same family. We all want to get healthy, we want to the environment, we want to save animals. So I thought of sister as “I’m just a part of your family,” I’m your sister, I’m your aunt, I’m like a mother-figure. We’re all part of the same family so that’s why we’re all sisters.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, I like it. Because people may not realize it but we’re all one family on this planet, we’re all connected, all of our actions, however insignificant they may seem, are significant to everyone else on the planet. We breathe the same air. It’s really powerful. I was watching a Deepak Chopra video just this week and he was talking about this concept. It really was profound, down to the cellular level, how deeply connected we all are.

Donna Beaudoin: That is true. Yes. And that’s why my book speaks to vegetarians and vegans. A lot of us start as vegetarians and moved to a vegan but it speaks to everyone in trying to help people to become a vegetarian or become a vegan. The recipes are vegan with a vegetarian twist, if that’s what you want to be.

Caryn Hartglass: A vegetarian twist, or with a vegan twist. Or a little lemon or lime.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay. The challenge is people have a hard time on diets, period. I’m always saying it’s not a diet; it’s a lifestyle. Or at least this particular path.

Donna Beaudoin: I agree. I agree.

Caryn Hartglass: And that’s part of the secret to having stability and success when it’s not something you’re going to do for a short time to lose a few pounds; it becomes your life.

Donna Beaudoin: it is a part of your life. It is a journey. It’s a lifetime journey.

Caryn Hartglass: But as you mentioned throughout the book there, it’s all these drama!

Donna Beaudoin: It is. And some people go through being a vegetarian and vegan easily and some don’t. It’s based upon my experiences alone, not being a medical physician or in the medical field, I base on my experiences and talking a lot to people. We go through different types of societal mess and things we hear, maybe among friends or family, at work, that when we start out being a vegetarian or vegan, good intentions, and we hear that little buzz in the ear and then we stop.

I mentioned in the book someone was a vegan for six years and then they just couldn’t deal with all the emotional things going around and then they just stopped being a vegan. So my book is addressing all the drama that we come across because I realize there are so many cookbooks out there and how to be a vegetarian, eating vegetarian or vegan but nothing really addresses the societal mess and drama we come across from friends and family and co-workers and just society alone. It’s just out there to address it, to help you to become strong. Because in the book, in the beginning of the book, I mentioned that you have to have a strong will; you have to have a strong mind. And that’s what you really need along in this journey.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, you need that to succeed in everything.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly.

Caryn Hartglass: I think that’s what I hear about most, the societal pressures that people have. I’m continually thinking that it’s not necessarily the diet or this lifestyle that really the issue; it just sort of brings out or magnifies everything going on in someone’s life. So if there are issues with relationships, or with the family, or with a co-worker, this is just an opportunity to make it work or bring it out, bridge the way.

Donna Beaudoin: Yeah. The recipes of being a vegetarian are wonderful. I’ve never hear anyone complain about eating the foods. It’s always just the little issues they have to deal with and maybe being the only person that they know who’s a vegetarian or vegan. That’s why I came up with 30 days, to try to help people through the different situations that they come across. Because as I said, we need to have a strong mind to know that we can do this, we can get over the mountain. We can climb up and just be on the top of the mountain shouting, “I am here forever! I’m a vegetarian or vegan forever!”

Caryn Hartglass: Whoooo!

Donna Beaudoin: So changing …Just because some person buzzes into our ear. So I wanted to make people strong, men and women, strong in being a vegetarian and vegan. I know they can dust themselves off. Everyone falls down but you have to know that you can get right back up. Dust yourself off and get right back up and keep walking.

Caryn Hartglass: This is a positive, motivational book, disguised as a vegetarian journey. But it really is something that we should apply to everything, kind of re-scripting those crazy voices in our heads.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly, exactly. And towards the end of the book I give ten energy bars, I called it: powerful tips to help you along your way.

Caryn Hartglass: Very good. You might even market them as in the shape of an energy bar.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly.

Caryn Hartglass: People can put them in their wallets. When they want to eat something, “No, read one of these.”

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. I thought of energy bars because I run races and my husband hike, and energy bars give us energy in between the meals. And I’m thinking, “You know what, we need some energy, just little tidbits of energy to keep us going through the day in between our meals.” And that’s how I came up with those 10 energy bars, or 10 powerful points, to get us started.

Caryn Hartglass: Can you remember or did you have particularly difficult social situations, either with your family or work, that you might share?

Donna Beaudoin: Just being the only vegetarian, initially, mainly at work. So it is kind of difficult, initially, and then I started to convert maybe two people at work and people were starting to realize that, “Hey, this is a wonderful lifestyle.” I think my family was more accepting. My husband took awhile and he was very supportive though and now he’s a vegetarian.

Caryn Hartglass: I was going to ask you that because that wasn’t clear in the book.

Donna Beaudoin: Yeah, he’s a vegetarian now. He became one in June.

Caryn Hartglass: Congratulations! Tell him I congratulate him.

Donna Beaudoin: He’s very supportive but I think it was more so the outside. He spent a lot of time outside the home, in work situations and other types of groups and you get more pressure from there.

Caryn Hartglass: I think it’s the hardest in a relationship if you’re not eating similarly because eating is such an important even everyday.

Donna Beaudoin: It is. It’s definitely important.

Caryn Hartglass: And when you’re in a relationship, sharing…that’s such a great way to share.

Donna Beaudoin: That’s true. Initially, before he became vegetarian, cooking two different meals and it got kind of hard sometimes. And a lot of people asked me, “Well, if you’re spouse is not a vegetarian and you are, how do you work that out?” I mean, you still eat together; you still cook together. It can be done. A lot of people don’t want to become vegetarian or vegan as their spouse or their significant other is not, I say go for it. Just do it. A lot of people like to wait for the other person but if you do it, the other person is more than likely follow your lead also. You have to be the person that starts it.

Caryn Hartglass: I think …I’m on to something here and it’s not coming out. But I think you can definitely get on the vegetarian path and if your partner isn’t interested, you can ultimately prepare one meal but the other person who isn’t interested in being vegetarian can add the animal products.

Donna Beaudoin: That’s true.

Caryn Hartglass: You can always grate cheese on top of anything. And you can crumble it or put some grilled chicken on top of anything. You can ultimately eat the same thing.

Donna Beaudoin: That is true. I find out that with me and my husband, he’s a vegetarian and I’m a vegan, so we’ll have, maybe let’s say I’ll put out something easy like a pasta dish. And he, maybe, will, on his plate, grate cheese and I will probably have nutritional yeast, maybe on top of mine. But sure, you can add little things.

Caryn Hartglass: I lived in France in the early 90s and I used to make a lot of vegan dishes. That’s cheese country. Many of my friends, before even eating or try what I would offer, they were just grating all the cheese all over it. Okay, fine, that’s fine.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. I used to be a cheese nut too. That was one thing that was hard to give up, switching from vegetarian to vegan, and it was hard for a lot of vegetarians to give up.

Caryn Hartglass: It’s addicting.

Donna Beaudoin: It is addicting.

Caryn Hartglass: There’s a lot of evidence now that shows that it does stuff in our brains that has addictive properties.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. And I’ve felt so much lighter and just so … I don’t know what the word for it but just on top of the mountain when I gave up the cheese and just became a vegan. Just felt so much more alive.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, you’re tiny. I caught some of your videos on YouTube and you can really see how fit and trim and slim you are.

Donna Beaudoin: Thank you, thank you. It didn’t start that way.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, that’s what you described in the book.

Donna Beaudoin: Yes. I was always small and then I hit 40. About five years ago, I started to gain weight and in three years I went from a size 4 to a size 14. And couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I started to have a lot of stomachache problems too and I would say, probably, even before that in a 10-year period, I was hospitalized for a time for stomachache problems. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me so I put matters into my own hands. Last time I was sick I just said, “I’m just going to do it myself.” I gave up meat. I became a vegetarian. It was actually more so probably 90% vegan I was eating. And all my stomachache problems of over 10 years disappeared. My weight dropped immediately. That’s why I said it’s not a diet; it’s a lifestyle change. I didn’t even do it to drop weight; it just ended up dropping. And my stomach problems stopped. I went from a size 14 to a size 4. I always did love to hike and exercise. And I never had back pains until I started to get heavy. I no longer have back pains or stomach pains. I mean. It’s just great.

Caryn Hartglass: It’s magic.

Donna Beaudoin: Yeah, yeah. I healed my body. Yeah, it’s great.

Caryn Hartglass: One of the things people often talked about losing weight is making smaller portions and eating less. I scream when I hear this because it’s hard for people to do that and to feel unsatisfied, not feel full, and yet when you’re eating correctly, and when I look at the plates of food that I eat, it’s ridiculous. I can’t get a bowl that’s big enough sometimes for the salads or the soups that I eat.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. Yeah. And people can’t believe how much I eat but yet won’t gain weight because I’m eating healthy foods and my body is being provided with nutrients and healthy foods that is just helps me to sustain my weight at what it should be.

Caryn Hartglass: Whole, minimally processed foods are so full of fiber, especially when they’re raw, they’re filled with water, and that makes the belly feel full and makes the brain satisfied because you’re getting the vitamins and nutrients that you need.

Donna Beaudoin: That’s true. And I eat a lot of raw foods. I incorporate raw foods in my meals everyday. Usually, I eat a lot of greens, I eat a lot of raw greens: collards greens, mustard greens, and turnip greens, beet greens. I eat a lot of raw greens everyday, rather as a part of a lunch like a wrap or a salad. Sometimes I’ll eat a raw vegan lasagna or raw vegan pesto. Or I make the pesto …

Caryn Hartglass: I like the mustard green pesto recipe in your book.

Donna Beaudoin: Thank you. And sometimes I put the mustard green pesto on top of shredded, raw collard greens. Collard greens act as a more of like pasta, instead of using a pasta.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. They have a good chew.

Donna Beaudoin: Yeah. It’s delicious.

Caryn Hartglass: I can’t say enough about eating greens. I really think that’s the secret to life.

Donna Beaudoin: It is. I’m not a physician and I tell you, I have not been sick in three years since I switched from eating meat to being a vegetarian, now vegan. Never had a flu shot in my life. And in three years, I haven’t had any colds, flu. Nothing.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s pretty good.

Donna Beaudoin: Nothing whatsoever. I don’t even take supplements or vitamins. So it’s something about living a plant-based diet.

Caryn Hartglass: Now you live in North Carolina.

Donna Beaudoin: I do.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. There’s a lot of problems in North Carolina. There’s a wide ride of lifestyles, from very rich to very poor, and lots in the middle. And there are areas that are called food deserts. And there’s a lot of animal agriculture that goes on there, most of it hidden. It’s a very interesting place. It’s got a lot of things going on.

Donna Beaudoin: It does. And solely the vegetarian/vegan community is rising, mainly in the Durham, Chapel Hill, Raleigh areas. In the Asheville area also, which is towards the mountains. Still lot of ways to go. We’re not similar to the communities more up north, maybe above Virginia but we still have a lot of ways to go. And North Carolina is still more so of the rib capital. They still love their ribs and barbequed meat. But we’re working on it.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. There’s a lot going on there. One of the problems people have if they want to eat better, some people are in neighborhoods where it’s really hard to access food. I think you even …. Did you mention something like that in the beginning of the book? I think I was reading where you were buying from a store near where you work …

Donna Beaudoin: Yes, one of my local stores near my home.

Caryn Hartglass: Oh, now I remember what it was.

Donna Beaudoin: They did not have a great selection of, I’ll say, vegetarian/vegan products. The produce was good but they need a little bit more. They used to have, actually they still have it, it’s called “Talk To …”, I won’t say the grocery name but it was “Talk To That Grocery Store.” You email them after your grocery experience and write them and give comments. The next week I was going to the store, I was like “Wow, they added this!” I remember I mentioned it in my email. And then I emailed again because … I would give them positive feedback also. My husband and I have been shopping in that store for years. And I give positive feedback on the staff also. But another week, I mentioned something and they have something else there.

Caryn Hartglass: Nice.

Donna Beaudoin: So the grocery stores do listen to you. If you’re in a food desert areas, don’t think the stores won’t listen to you; they will. Email them, call them on the phone, and talk to the manager in person. They will listen; don’t think they won’t. You should have what you want to have in that store. They’re servicing you; you’re not servicing them.

Caryn Hartglass: There’s so many good points there. It’s so important for us to act as individuals because we do matter in everything we do.

Donna Beaudoin: That’s correct.

Caryn Hartglass: Make a difference. Just by simply asking. Ask and you shall receive.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly, exactly. And the great thing is, it’s so funny, after coming in all the time, the manager even posted something to the staff to say, “Hey, people are commenting on the email about the stores. Keep up the good work.” So they do listen. The stores do listen.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s nice. Okay so we have, I don’t know, about eight more minutes. One of the things about the recipes in your book, they’re really very straightforward; they’re pretty easy. It’s a really good beginning for diving in here. It’s based on beans, vegetables, and spices. All of this stuff is really flavorful.

Donna Beaudoin: And I love world recipes. I wanted to just put a lot of recipes in there that I enjoy and people throughout the world eat. There are many countries that are vegetarian-based and I put these recipes on here to make it not so hard. As a working person myself I know how hard it is to work all day and want to come home and cook a nice meal for your family. But in the middle of that, you both can, and everyone in the family can, just sit down and talk and enjoy. I have an Ethiopian dish there that is easy to make when you come from work that’s less than 15 minutes. You can have it on your table right away and with leftovers. It’s just meals that everyone can enjoy and introduces you to the world of vegetarian or vegan.

Caryn Hartglass: I was in …when was it, last year? I went to Argentina. Buenos Aires. I was always looking for the veggie healthy places. And I was in one, I think it was a Mediterranean restaurant, and I ordered hummus; I eat a lot of hummus. And it tasted okay but it tasted different. And then I realized it had peanut butter in it, not tahini. And I had never that before. I kind of chuckled because you mentioned in your book if you can’t find or don’t have tahini, you can use peanut butter. You certainly can but you should know because if you’re expecting one and getting the other, it’s like “Whoa!”

Donna Beaudoin: Yeah, it is a different taste. And then a lot of places don’t have tahini. Especially in the South parts, shopping, it is hard to find but you’ve been there, so that’s a good substitute to use. And then also I love hummus. I tend to make it every week. And I also let people know, experiment with hummus. Do different things. Just don’t do the basics. I love to experiment in making foods so one time I put beets in it and, oh my god, it turned out perfect. It had beets, smoked sauce and it was creamy; it was great. Another time I tried adding some raisins, giving it a little sweetness to it. Just experiment with hummus. Have fun with it.

Caryn Hartglass: Well, you can experiment just with the basic hummus, a base of garbanzo beans, chickpeas, or you can use other beans too.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. You can.

Caryn Hartglass: So the idea is that it’s a bean of fat and some flavoring.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. I have used navy beans, red beans, to make hummus, black beans. You can experiment with so many different beans.

Caryn Hartglass: And then what’s great about it is it’s so versatile. People don’t even realize how simple the variety to be. So it can be a great spread on a sandwich. And the variations are infinite based on the beans that you use, the spice that you use, the fat that you use, or no fat. Some people just like to make a garbanzo bean, seasoned, and mashed.

Donna Beaudoin: Right, right. Sometimes I do it as a spread on one of my vegan sandwiches. I’ll grill a Portobello mushroom and use it as a spread.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. Instead of mayonnaise or something, you could use this flavored bean spread. It’s infinite. Or you could thin it a little bit more and then it becomes a dip or a dressing.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. You’re making me hungry, girl!

Caryn Hartglass: Or it could be even as is like a pâté or something.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly.

Caryn Hartglass: I’m nuts over beans, or beans over nuts. Or something like that.

Donna Beaudoin: I am too. You can’t catch me without some type of bean stew on my stove, usually on a Sunday.

Caryn Hartglass: I don’t know what it’s like in North Carolina but here in nyc, the greatest city in the world, we have everything and more.

Donna Beaudoin: You do. Yes. I grew up in New Jersey, actually.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. There you go. And because there are so many different cultures here, there are so many different stores with different foods. One of my favorite is this Indian store in Queens, in Flushing, the Chinatown in Flushing. And there are so many beans that I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to try them all. They all have different sizes, colors, and shapes. They all have different subtle flavors, texture differences. It’s a celebration.

Donna Beaudoin: It’s wonderful. I love it. I love it. I love finding new variety of beans and trying them out. It’s great.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. And the other thing is the colors are phenomenal.

Donna Beaudoin: They’re beautiful, yes.

Caryn Hartglass: And we have glass jars. We don’t have a lot of covered spaces so they’re all out on display in glass jars and they’re just lovely: yellow, orange, and pink.

Donna Beaudoin: That’s true. The cranberry beans are beautiful. The azuki beans, oh my gosh, yes. Like I said, you make me hungry! I’ll have a pot of bean soup on.

Caryn Hartglass: And you compare that with, I don’t know, a burger on white bread and it’s kind of a gray-brown food.

Donna Beaudoin: Exactly. I love just putting varieties in my beans, such as in a stew. I use a lot of greens, different varieties of greens in a stew just to thicken it. Yeah, it’s great.

Caryn Hartglass: Right. Okay, we have just a couple of minutes left. So you mentioned you’re eating more raw food. I think I read somewhere that you’re becoming certified as a raw food …

Donna Beaudoin: I just finished a certification in raw food. The purpose was mainly, because I do eat probably about 50 or more percent raw food a week, and just to show vegetarians and vegans to try to incorporate raw foods such as raw greens into their meals, either on a daily basis or every other day in some part of their meal, just for added nutritional benefits. Because like I said, I’m not a physician, but I tell you, in three years, in just eating vegan and some raw meals I really have kept colds and flus at bay. I haven’t caught anything. So it really does help us to stay healthy.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay. Well, thank you so much, Donna. Thanks for writing Sister Vegetarian’s 31 Days of Drama-Free Living.

Donna Beaudoin: Thank you, Caryn. Thanks for having me.

Caryn Hartglass: My pleasure. And keep doing it. You’re helping so many people.

Donna Beaudoin: thank you so much. And thank you everyone for supporting me, reading my blog …

Caryn Hartglass: What is that blog? Sister vegetarian….

Donna Beaudoin: It’s sistervegetarian.com or you can go on the blog directly sistervegetarian.blogspot.com.

Caryn Hartglass: Great! Thanks you so much.

Donna Beaudoin: Thank you, Caryn. You have a great and beautiful day.

Caryn Hartglass: I’m Caryn Hartglass. You’re listening to It’s All About Food. We’re going to take a quick break and be back with sticky fingers sweet Doron Peterson. We’ll be right back.

Transcribed by Diana O’Reilly, 2/17/2013

PART II:

Hi, I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. OK, now we come to the really yummy part of the show. We’re going to be talking to Doron Petersan who is the owner of Sticky Fingers Bakery and has a great, delicious new book out called Sticky Fingers Sweets: 100 Super Secret Vegan Recipes. Welcome to It’s All About Food. Read more »

2/22/2012: Part I: Barbara Gates Lean & Green Kids

Barbara Cole-Gates is the Director of Lean & Green Kids. She is the mother of two smart and spirited teens, Jack and Lucy. She earned her BFA from San Diego State University in drama/acting, and now and again works as a professional actress in Southern California (barbaracoleacts.com). She has been working to teach kids about healthier foods since her son entered kindergarten – Jack is a Jr. in high school now!

2/22/2012: Part II: Dr. Milton Mills Rethinking Food

Dr. Milton Mills is the Associate Director of Preventive Medicine with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and co-author of PCRM’s report on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. Dr. Mills serves as the Race & Nutrition Specialist and Board Advisor for A Well Fed World. Whether internist Dr. Mills is practicing at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia or at free clinics in Washington, D.C., his prescription for patients is likely to include some dietary advice: go vegetarian. “Medical research shows conclusively that a plant-based diet reduces chronic disease risk, so that’s something I absolutely encourage my patients to move toward,” says Dr. Mills, a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Mills doesn’t limit his message to his patients. He takes it to audiences around the country as well, speaking at hospitals, churches, and community centers.

TRANSCRIPTIONS

Transcription Part I:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello, I’m Caryn Hartglass, and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Thank you for joining me today, and I am really looking forward to today’s show because I have a couple of people on that I really enjoy talking to, so I hope you will enjoy listening. I think it’s going to be fun for me. Read more »

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2/15/2012: Molly Phemister Eatcology

Molly Phemister is the founder of eatcology.com, a blog focused on the nexus of ecology, design, and community food systems. She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia, as well as a Master of Education and a BA in Art. She is a published author, most notably “Designing a Landscape for Sustainability” in ActionBioscience, the online journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and “The Biggest Picture: Global Food and Hunger Issues” for Planning magazine, the flagship publication of the American Planning Association. Other articles include “The Beets Out Back: Bringing the Local Food Movement Home” for Joyful Dissent, and smaller pieces for Ecoagriculture Partners and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello, I’m Caryn Hartglass and welcome.  It’s time for It’s All About Food. Repeat after me.  It’s all about food.  For the next hour we are going to talk about food and connect the dots a bit because it is all about food.  There are just so many thing that go in our lives everyday, and when we think about our food and where it comes from, and what it does to us when we eat, and what happens to it while we’re growing it and shipping it all around the world, it touches just about everything.  We’re going to be talking to someone who writes quite a bit about it.  I’m going to bring on Molly Phemister, the founder of eatcology.com, a blog focused on the nexus of ecology, design, and community food systems. She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia, as well as a Master of Education and a BA in Art. She is a published author, most notably “Designing a Landscape for Sustainability” in ActionBioscience, the online journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and “The Biggest Picture: Global Food and Hunger Issues” for Planning magazine, the flagship publication of the American Planning Association.  Welcome to It’s All About Food, Molly.

Molly Phemister: Hi, I’m so glad to be here.

Caryn Hartglass: Me too.  I recently discovered your blog, and I love it, and I just wanted to talk to you because I love the concepts you are bringing up and the important issues you’re bringing up that we need to be talking about.

Molly Phemister: I need to hear that.  I’ve talked about that cross-connectivity.  We’ve gone through this age of intense specialization.  People whose medical focus or law practice or whatever it is, they’ve focused down, narrowed in on some tiny piece, which is a wonderful way to really hone in on something and explore that topic and learn more about the connectivity of how it all puts together.  I believe we are entering an age of generalists, of people being needed to connect the dots to put the various things together.

Caryn Hartglass: That’s such an important theme for me.  I’m glad we are going to be talking more about it.  I don’t know very much about you, but one of the things that I like is that you bring art to whatever it is you’re doing or you have an appreciation for it, and I think that’s also part of connecting the dots.

Molly Phemister: I think it is.  I went to college as a pretty promising young person, who writes pretty well, can do these various things, and I was a major in art.  Luckily my mother is a musician and taught piano for years while I was growing up.  She believed in her own musical capacity enough to major in music going through college.  So she let me major in art, but I continuously got from various people, “What are you going to do with that?  What is that gonna teach you?”  They can’t tell you how valuable an art education is, especially when it comes to something like painting an intense scale or sculpture.  There’s so much problem solving that goes on.  There’s so much thinking about issues from a variety of angles.  The initial art classes that most people take just scratch the surface.

Caryn Hartglass: Art is really important.  Unfortunately, we have so much artistic void these days because we are so focused on making profit and money and don’t realize how important it is.  We’ll get to ecology and all that, but I just wanted to create a few basic brushstrokes here.

I was just listening to the show just before us, and they were talking about farms briefly and how people are upset sometimes because they think that wind farms are ugly.  There’s a way we can create beauty in everything we do.  Nothing has to be ugly, and if it has a benefit, we can put beauty into everything we do.  That should be an important part of it.  I talk about food all the time and when food is presented on a plate, it can be the simplest food or even the most extravagant, but why not make it lovely, it just makes the entire experience much more gratifying.

Molly Phemister: Yes, it appeals to all the senses.

Caryn Hartglass: The last think I wanted to say, and then I’m going to let you talk for a bit, is that I studied art.  I studied color, and what always fascinated me was when you took one color and put it in a background of another color and changed the background, that same color would look completely different.  We cannot ignore the whole picture because it is all connected.  Not just from an artistic point of view, but from a health and sustainability perspective.  It’s all connected.  Specialization is great, but we have to keep in mind everything else around it because we can do something specific and not realize the repercussions and there could be a horrible domino effect.

Molly Phemister: Yeah, and you often do it completely accidentally.  I like the color theory metaphor that you brought up.  It’s orange surrounded by blue versus orange surrounded by red and how they look like two totally different oranges even though they are the exact same shade.  And I take that back to the wind farm idea.  In addition to the form of the wind turbines, which at the moment we are use to these airplane propeller tops, and that’s not necessary.  There are other forms that will catch the wind and generate power.  What’s also not a given is the scale.  Everybody who’s working on wind farms, well I shouldn’t say everybody because somebody out there is bound to be doing what I’m about to suggest.  Right now, most of what I’m seeing is being done on a very large scale, but we can shift that scale.  We can take that same idea, surround it with a different context, and come up with a very different answer.

When power grids began to be interconnected, they took them out of the cities, they put the power generation in a separate spot, they called it centralization.  Well, it was centralized for the power generators, not for the cities, it was out of the city centers.  As we are re-localizing food, why not also re-localize power generation.

I remember I was living in Washington D.C. for a while and if you come up out of the metro stations, anytime you come up the escalators it’s a constant wind tunnel.  Why not have a micro row of wind turbines right there.  The pressure differential between being at the surface and being underground by the trains naturally automatically creates electricity.  So why not catch it?  Why not light that station with that?

I’m seeing that happen with food too.  People are trying to solve issues.  It’s the scale jumping that’s causing a little bit of problems because people want to work on urban stuff, and they want to get bigger.  They’re like, “Oh, we gotta feed more people.” So I would see architecture students working on skyscrapers that were intended to be large, multi-floor hydroponics gardens.  They would ask me what I thought, and I would take a look at their picture and inevitably, I could find somebody and say, “You know, farmers don’t wear lab coats.”  They would inevitably somebody standing there in a little white coat and I would say, “No, no, no.  Farmers don’t wear lab coats.  This is not how these people dress.”  But it’s not what that job requires.  But the students were looking for it in their attempt for solutions to those issues.  Going back to some of these 1960’s ideas of building new structures to grow food.  Meanwhile, look out of that structure, look across the city.  We had a plethora of rooftops.  There’s no shortage of rooftops.  Why not figure out how to combine the local food movement and the green roof movement to extend food production in urban areas?

Caryn Hartglass: We have this bigger is better concept that touches everything, and we are learning slowly, now, that bigger is not always better.  We definitely need to bring things to a small scale, and what I love about it is that it brings the importance of change is somebody individual.  How we are all part of the solution.  How we can all participate and make a difference, and that’s all beautiful.

You have a post on your site, eatcology.com, about things going on in other countries like in Cuba and Venezuela.  I thought we could talk a little bit about that because it is somewhat related, going back to the small scale and how that benefits in so many ways.

Molly Phemister: What happened with Cuba was amazing, and really I hope doesn’t quite happen this way to anybody else.  They can get to the same place without taking the same path.  But when the Soviet Union dissolved, Cuba didn’t have any oil coming in.  Literally, there was no gas to drive a tractor with.  There was no ability to move fertilizers and chemicals out to the fields.  There was no ability to take what grew in the fields 150 miles from the city to the city.  Everything ground to a total halt.  It was horrible.  The average calorie consumption (between 2500 and 3000 calories a day) was down to between 1400 and 2000 calories.  This was way inside the zone where the U.N. starts to pay attention to figure out if they need to start shipping food in.  This is really tripping on famine territory.  And they went through it, and somehow we were all just ignorant to the fact because we are so blind to what’s happening down there.  But they very quickly figured out how to do organopónicos, is what they call them.  They are these in-city farms.  They can be very small farms.  It used to be that a farmer didn’t feed 600 people; a farmer fed a dozen.  There were many more farmers because there were many more farms.  But each farm was smaller, and in an urban area something like that makes more sense.  And into it they developed various systems of the farm and the market being right there, and you would go up and ask for whatever it was you wanted, and somebody would trod out into the field and pick your order for the day and bring it back to you.  Just incredibly fresh.  If somebody didn’t want that squash today it could sit on the vine for another week and be okay.  But if I pick it, suddenly the clock’s ticking.  How long is this gonna last?

Well they took the knowledge from Cuba and the folks from Tanzania too, whom the U.N. had worked with, and the U.N. had developed this system that is incredibly dignified and respectful when they talk about [south-south relations] where various countries, who are not the first world countries, who are not the totally industrialized developed nations, talk to each other about how to solve the problem. They figure out how to transfer their knowledge from one person to another, from one community to another.  So they brought books from Cuba and books from Tanzania into Venezuela and used [ ], Venezuela as a test site to see if the idea was transferable and if it was scalable to cover a whole city.  Could it be done a little more intentionally?  And it did work.  It definitely worked, and they took, I’m going to forget off the top of my head how many hectares but a lot in the city and made organic farms right there in the city.  They were run, a lot of them, by cooperatives so that the income was shared amongst the greatest people doing the farming, which brought jobs to neighborhoods that didn’t previously have jobs.  It brought healthy foods to neighborhoods that didn’t necessarily have access to healthy food.  In addition to those larger plots dug into the ground there, they developed a system of tables, kind of these micro-farms.  No more than a one meter square.  They were happening on rooftops, in backyards, on balconies, by a south-facing window.  So the people could grow food in a much more proximal way.  Something that they had control over, something that they had attachment too.  Now that in particular, the micro-gardens, need nutrient additives to keep it going, it’s a little closer to a hydroponics situation.  And right now, to the best of my knowledge they are still working on a large “we will send you the nutrients you need” situation.  These are compost based gardens taking the food waste that would have gone to the landfills and sending it to places to be composted and turning it into stuff.  We need to localize that a little bit more.  Give the local farmers a little bit more capacity to develop their own.  But I think it’s along the lines of the worm compost heap so it should be very doable.

Caryn Hartglass: Well I’m just hoping that when we get through this current economic crisis that we come out better human beings, and we change the focus a little bit.  Right now, businesses and things pop up with a profit motive, and I don’t think that is ever going to change, but I think we can change where we add more parameters to what we consider success in a business.  There needs to be this social parameter in addition to profit, and then we won’t concentrate entirely on squeezing whatever we can out of a business.  So by making it larger, the profits are bigger, but it may devastate the environment, it may not be as practical.  If we can get back and put more incentive on making these smaller farms profitable, not just financially but socially, that’s what we really need to have.  And we are seeing it here and there, and I hope that it’s not something urgent that makes us really go to it.  I hope that it’s just a natural, comfortable transition, but it’s very inspiring to see it working in different pockets.

Molly Phemister: It is inspiring, absolutely.  There’s a couple of factors that need to happen with that.  It’s not that a one acre farm or a ten acre farm or something very small like that is the ideal, it’s that various products, various methodologies, have appropriate scales to them.  So it makes sense that in and around cities, in and around urbanized areas there would be more farms that would be smaller farms that would be focused on producing things that don’t ship well, and that things like grains would continue to be grown a little further out.  What I’m trying to say is that there are different scales that are appropriate.  A 500acre lettuce farm is not appropriate, but seven cows on five acres is also not appropriate.  There’s a jump there that needs to be thought about for folks.

I have a map from an upcoming post talking about places that are local to nowhere.  If we define local food as a 100 mile radius from an area, that works pretty well.  There’s an awful lot that can be done within 100 miles.  But if you make 100 mile circles around all of the large cities, all of the cities with any size in the countries, there are places that do not have a major city, or even a minor city, within 100 miles.  There are places in this country that are local to nowhere, and it’s important that we think in terms of both a local food movement and a regional food movement.  That we understand that there are some things that make sense to come from a little further away, and I propose a 500 mile radius for a regional food movement.  That scale gets pretty far.  A local food movement for Washington D.C. would duck into southern Pennsylvania just a little bit and swing around the eastern shore a lot.  But when you get into a regional food movement you are able to pull from New York.  I think it ducks down into the Carolinas, maybe even clip a little piece of Georgia.  This greatly extends stuff.  To give you a west coast example, everybody’s thinking that we are still getting it from the same place because it’s still California, but D.C. to Atlanta is about the same as San Francisco to L.A.  So on the east coast you change four states and on the west coast it’s still California so it doesn’t count.  Sorry guys, we’ve busted you.  To make it a little bit larger allows you to pull from further away so that a 100 mile radius around the Bay Area, you’ve barely gotten down to anything resembling affordable housing, let alone places to grow much in the way of the foods that work best at larger scales. But by running a 500 miles radius, then you begin to broaden that and there become places that are more appropriate, and crops that are more appropriate, and scales that are more appropriate from across that larger zone.

Caryn Hartglass: Well the idea is just not to be rigid, and to be open to all kinds of possibilities, and that there’s not one solution. We are always fixed on one pill for one disease and one solution for one problem.  There’s a range of solutions for food.

Molly Phemister:  Absolutely.

Caryn Hartglass: I love technology, and I think we’ve really come along in the last few years.  When you think about it, it’s just awe inspiring.  But, it comes with good things, and it comes with not so good things.  What I don’t like is when we are trying to cram technology down the throats of developing countries when it’s not appropriate.  And you talked about that the farmers don’t wear lab coats, and we do things here, in terms of producing food, and we have genetically modified food, and our favorite companies Monsanto and Dow.

Molly Phemister: Yeah, those are mine.

Caryn Hartglass: She says sarcastically, of course.  We are coming up with a notion that we are going to feed the world with these high tech foods.  The first thing that needs to happen is that the lab coats need to come off because (I don’t believe in these high tech foods to begin with) even if they were superior in one environment, they don’t work in other environments.

Molly Phemister: They don’t.  A lot of what their actual goal is at the scale of companies and profits is dependency.  Their goal is to create dependency.  This is why they have the suicide seeds that won’t regenerate.  They even grow the crop but that the crop itself will be infertile.

Caryn Hartglass: That is the scariest thing to me.  That whole concept is so scary.

Molly Phemister: Oh yeah.  It’s so contradictory to natural logic.  A lot of the problems that technology is attempting to solve either aren’t problems or they are trying to get one thing to solve somebody else’s problem without looking at the larger picture.  A couple of examples come to mind.  One was the push to develop rice that had vitamin A in it because there were areas that didn’t have vitamin A easily accessible.  And I always wondered, “What did they used to eat?”  Because before you turned all of this to rice monocultures, wasn’t there something they were eating before?  Wasn’t there vitamin A available in that food system that you simply have squelched?

Caryn Hartglass: Exactly.  What have humans been doing for hundreds of thousands of years in that region?

Molly Phemister: Yeah, there is a solution already there.  The other one that comes to mind is the example from the [Mekong Delta] over in Asia, and several countries got together and began to figure out how to work on damming various portions of the delta and controlling the flood and water cycles a little bit more.  The goal was to clear more land to create more rice paddies because rice has this wonderful ability to feed a population for about nine months of the year.  There is a stretch there when you run out of rice.  So the goal was, “Oh, we gotta make more rice because then we can bridge that three month gap.”  Well, the IUCM, which is a major international ecology player went into the [Mekong Delta], did some studies of what was happening in these areas that were being slated to be dammed and turned into rice paddies, and they realized that, actually, there was more food present before they were putting rice paddies into these areas then after because the people were collecting wild plants.  They were getting not just the wild plants but the wild protein.  The wild protein source was the ducks and the frogs and whatever else was around.  They weren’t asking for their rice to be their protein, they were asking for there to still be wild lands where this can happen.  And the country took that into account.  They really changed and backpedalled on what they were trying to do and began to realize the value.  It is one of the things that is marvelous about Asia, is that there is so much wild food collecting.  It is a totally common concept there, whereas in America it is absolutely foreign.  It is part of why you see these warnings in San Francisco, in Golden Gate Park that say, “No, no these mushrooms are poisonous.”  It’s because these Asian immigrants come over, and they are expecting to do wild foraging because that is what they have always done.  Then they go combing through the park, and there’s a mushroom in San Francisco that looks very much like an Asian one.  The one is Asia is very tasty, and the one is San Francisco will kill you.  So that transferring of environment, that subtlety is very important.  It comes from this cultural history, the cultural heritage of gathering, foraging for food.  It’s one of the totally viable options for becoming a well-fed person in these areas.

Caryn Hartglass: Whereas today, in America, if the food hasn’t been covered in toxic chemicals and then shipped all around here and there and back again through twenty different steps where all of the nutrition is taken out, and then a few are sprinkled back in, and then cook it up into some shape, and package it in plastic, and put it in a box, and then ship it around a little more.  That’s food.

Molly Phemister: Yeah, I don’t think a lot of folks know how much gets pulled out just at the stage where you say, “I need all the tomatoes put into packaging crates and not bruise easily, and ripen on the way to market but not be ripe too fast.”  That the breeding that goes down, and the narrowing in selection to get those fully ripe tomatoes, we’ve already lost huge chunks.  Even if we took those same tomatoes and grew them organically, we’d still have lost a huge swath of what makes tomatoes tomatoes if we’re working with the ones that were made to be round, to ripen on the way to market, not bruise, not rot.

Caryn Hartglass: The whole tomato story, I don’t know if you are familiar with Barry Estabrook’s book Tomatoland, it’s just a whole nightmare what’s going on with non-organic tomatoes coming out of Florida.  It’s just crazy, and makes me think that every vegetable has another story of what we do to it that’s crazy all in the name of profit.  Then the result food, which isn’t the way nature intended it to be, isn’t quite as good for us, unfortunately.

Molly Phemister: Part of it is that we want to eat the same things all the time and everywhere.  I think it is going to be an important element of the local food movement that people begin to diversify their diets.  You have got to give our farmers more options than just cabbages, tomatoes, and peppers.  They need more things to be able to grow.  They need a variety of harvest times.  We can’t just keep eating the same things.  It is incumbent on people to learn a new food, try something new, pick something else up, begin to experiment so that you are adding burdock, you’re adding rutabaga, you’re adding tatsoi.  So various new things are coming into your diet, which gives farmers in your area new flexibility and more capacity to find what works for them in their microclimate on their farm.

Caryn Hartglass: Well isn’t variety the spice of life?

Molly Phemister: Oh, so much of this stuff is so good.

Caryn Hartglass: And eating with the seasons is really important and can really be fun.  Where we are kind of spoiled at this point, and it ruins the joy in some things.  If we can have everything all the time, what’s special?

Molly Phemister: Yeah, and you lose the ability to taste the difference.  I didn’t like tomatoes growing up.  I think it was because I could taste the store-bought quality, but once I got into local tomatoes and growing my own, it was a whole different ball game.  They had the same name and that is about all that they had in common.

Caryn Hartglass: So many people are not interested in fruits and vegetables because they don’t think they taste good and their tongues are so used to sugar, salt, and fat.  Part of that is that we have gotten to this convenient, commercialized business of food, where tomatoes need to be perfectly round and look exactly the same so they fit on a burger perfectly at the expense of flavor.  And people don’t know what fruits and vegetables are supposed to taste like.  So it is important to go organic, local, seasonal, fresh, variety, fabulous.

Molly Phemister: I think one of the things that is behind what you are touching on right there is the concept of the local food infrastructure.  We have gotten to the point where we have a pretty good farmer to consumer connection developing.  That wheel is turning, that train is moving.  It’s picking up its momentum, it’s doing what it needs to do.  The next step is going to be to develop the infrastructure.  The grain mills come to mind, a little bit of food processing, local canneries.  Part of that is going to be local kitchens because not everybody has the capacity to figure this stuff out.  A lot of people are working two jobs.  For a lot of people it’s totally new.  The learning curve is very steep, and if you’ve grown up on canned green beans and frozen corn then how do you learn the next step?  How do you move it forward?  We are going to need community kitchens where people are bringing stuff from the farmers market to the kitchen, there are cooking classes happening, there are canning workshops.  You take your jelly home.  You go there and the farmers have dropped off a pound of strawberries per person, and everybody learns how to make strawberry jelly and then you take it home.  It’s a whole re-education.  Bill McKibben had a book a long while ago, at this point, about the age of [“you see information”].  About how so many of us know so much, but collectively what we know is often the same thing.  We have to branch that out a little bit.

Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, that’s really good.  I want to talk about that.  I want to talk about a bunch of different things like site analysis, preparing an area to grow food.  And I want to take a quick break.

—Break—

Caryn Hartglass: Hello, I’m Caryn Hartglass and you’re listening to It’s All About Food.  My favorite subject, food, and I’m talking with Molly Phemister, the founder of eatcology.com, the blog focused on the nexus of ecology, design, and community food systems.  Molly we were talking just a few minutes ago about how all of us seem to know the same things in this world of all of this information.  And yet, there are so many things that have gotten lost like how to make food, how to grow food.  Can we talk a bit about, you have a blog post about site analysis, which I thought was rather interesting, and I guess that’s part of your skill in landscape design.  I remember a couple of years ago, when Michelle Obama was talking about the White House garden.  We’re not hearing about that very much anymore because they discovered that in the Clinton administration time period that garden had been fertilized with sludge, and there seems to be a significant amount of lead in the soil, unfortunately.  What should people be doing when they start to create a garden or an area for farming?

Molly Phemister: Knowing the history of the site is pretty important.  Something as basic as the White House grounds ought to have really good records.  Lead doesn’t preclude growing anything.  Lead precludes growing and eating certain things.  Lettuce, for example, bad choice.  There are tests for everything, but nobody that I know can afford tests for everything.  So if you know your sites history a little bit then you can begin to narrow it down a little bit.  It’s a good bet in an urban setting that until you have a test that says there’s no lead in the soil that you probably have lead in your soil.  We had enough years with leaded gasoline driving around in the cities, the exhaust fumes put it into the ground, plus all of the paint chips and things like that coming off of the old buildings.  If you are in a newer subdivision, you’ll have other issues, but you won’t have those ones.  If you’re downstream from an old shoe factory, if you’re, believe it or not, at an old rose cutting place, one of the most polluted sites.  If you’re near a gas station, if you’re living next to a place where they used to grow roses to cut, you better test your soil for some of the intensive chemicals that were used in floriculture.  So knowing the history helps a lot.  There are a variety of options.  There are ways to build beds up.  You can either trust that the soil below is going to be able to amend itself or you can just put a fresh bottom on and start anew with some of that so you are not getting crossover between the pollutants and what’s on top.  There are crops that are better at it.  Things with shallow roots will pick up the pollutants in the top layer of the soil much better than something like corn that ends up having very deep roots.  Things that grow close to the ground, that pollutant doesn’t have to travel very far to get into the leaves.  So not only does your lettuce have shallow the roots but it has got its leaves right there that the lead only had to go two inches and it’s in the leaf.  Then you are going to eat the leaf.  A lot of plants will collect stuff in their leaves, but won’t necessarily collect stuff in their fruits.  So although the leaves of a tomato plant may be gathering the toxin from the soil, the tomato itself is very likely to not have had that stuff cross the barrier, to cross into the fruit itself.  There are some nuances to that, but that’s the gist of it.  There are things you can do.  There are always options.  You are never completely out of luck.

Caryn Hartglass: Then there’s not just the soil that’s a concern but water and sun and wind.

Molly Phemister: Yes, microclimates. Knowing not just generally I live in Arizona or generally I live in Minnesota, but then knowing the microclimates of the whole thing.  A south-facing wall, a south-facing brick wall is very different than an exposed north-facing section.  Your getting very different climates, very different light.  It’s holding heat differently.  The south-facing brick wall, meanwhile, may even have a dead zone right in front of it because it is holding heat too well.  It is burning off whatever’s in front.  It doesn’t have the capacity to grow there.  So those kinds of things can be really fun.  Knowing who will put up with what, beginning to understand what kind of site you’ve got.  A lot of the most common mistakes that I see folks will forget entirely to look at where their downspouts are.  Their gutters coming off their roof will be dumping water down onto a part of their yard, and they will forget entirely that it is dumping water into their yard.  They’ll plant something there that doesn’t want that much water.  Rosemary next to a downspout is not a good idea.  On the other hand, if they plant mint by their downspout, but then they’ve attached one of those black hoses and actually have sent the water further under the ground into the culvert.  Then their yard is getting none of the benefit of the rain that fell on the roof.  So the mint by the downspout, even though it is right next to the water going past, the water is in metal and plastic and will never get to the mint, which will be thrilled to have it there.  So you’ve got to look at where your water is.  Take advantage of what’s naturally given to you.  If you’ve got a depression in the yard, find some water friendly plants, find some things that can handle having their roots soaked, having their oxygen depleted for a few minutes, for a couple days while the water soaks into the ground.  The other really common mistake is that it is so much more pleasant to work on your garden in the summer when the sun is high.  Even if you are going out in the morning before the heat of the day sets in, you’re still setting stuff up in the summer, you’re looking at the sun patterns of the summer.  So they put in their fall garden and then come October they are totally disappointed because nothing’s growing.  The garden is completely in the shade now because the sun has tipped back down and then the angle totally makes a difference.  So that’s the second common mistake.  A fall garden is going to have to be open to the south.  It is going to need the sun to come in at a much steeper angle, and the same with a spring garden.  It won’t fit where the summer gardens grow.

Caryn Hartglass: Right.  So where do you live?

Molly Phemister: I am currently living in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Caryn Hartglass: And do you have a garden there?

Molly Phemister: I have a porch with a really great balcony.  That’s what I can afford at the moment.

Caryn Hartglass: I’ve got a terrace and I grow whatever I can on it.

Molly Phemister: Exactly, exactly.  I have friends in town, who are very much into permaculture.  They let me dabble in their yards as well.  But a lot of what I’ve been doing the past several years has been helping people out, coaching.  I don’t know if folks are even familiar with this, but there is a movement, a new profession evolving as garden coaches, who are people who can come to your yard, spend an hour with you, tell you what you’ve got, what you inherited from the last homeowner, and then help you make some plans.  They give you some suggestions for what could be and what should be done first, help you prioritize what the next project will be, but with a larger picture in mind so that each of your little projects builds into a coherent whole.

Caryn Hartglass: I haven’t heard of that, but I like the concept.  There’s certainly a lot of coaching going on with life coaching, and I think people need a lot of nutrition coaching for food changes.  Why not garden coaches?  That seems like something that a little bit of time upfront could really make a difference for the whole season.

Molly Phemister: Yeah, it really can.  Some folks want continual lessons through the season to figure stuff out, and other folks just want to check in to figure out why their fall garden didn’t grow, just little details.  Everybody’s got their own place.

Caryn Hartglass: I want to talk about the word “weed” for a minute because we choose to, by the words we use, to downgrade things that actually are quite beneficial.  Some of the things that we call weeds are actually nutritious foods.

Molly Phemister: Oh, quite a few.

Caryn Hartglass: And some of them now are kind of getting a comeback and we are seeing them pop up in farmers markets at big prices.  What are some of those unfriendly pests that are actually good and tasty foods?

Molly Phemister: There’s quite a few out there.  I would say purslane is a really common one that I see around.  It’s a really small, ground cover.  It has a tendency for fat little leaves like you would see on a succulent plant.  It will bloom in the summer.  It’s the best in the spring.  That’s before it’s gotten bitter.  The spring’s a lovely time to trick with purslane because it is a ground cover it is frequently planted or appears (plants itself) along sidewalks.  And you need to find a spot where it’s coming over the ledge of a wall.  What you’re looking for is higher than the height of a dog because you don’t want to eat what’s been the neighborhood restroom.  So you’re looking for something coming over somebody’s retaining wall or something like that that wouldn’t have been affected by those natural forces.  Another one that’s really common that’s really good in the spring is lamb’s-quarters.  Lamb’s-quarters are part of the goosefoot family.  Their leaves look kind of like geese feet.  It’s actually a relative of quinoa, and if you let it go to seed you can really see that in the [seed heads].  In the urban areas, lamb’s-quarters unchecked can sometimes go, if they’re really happy, six to ten feet.  Most folks don’t ever meet lamb’s-quarters that size.  Most folks are only meeting about two or three feet tall.  They’ll have sort of a bluish green quality, but then there will be sort of a white dust on the leaves.  This is a very common weed.  I’ve seen it all over the country.  It is very tasty.

Caryn Hartglass: I get it all the time in my terrace beds.  It just blows me away how it grows and how well it grows.  But you can eat the seeds as well?

Molly Phemister: I don’t think you can eat the seeds.

Caryn Hartglass: You said it was a relative of quinoa.

Molly Phemister: I eat the leaves.  I chop it up and pop it into salads and things.  There’s  a number of other ones.  I’m not a fan of Russian olive, autumn olive.  It’s Elaeagnus angustifolia, or something like that.  It is a very common shrub that you’ll see around.  It will have an orange-red berry in the fall.  It grows in a lot of places that are difficult to get things to grow, a lot of roadside areas and highway medians because it is one of the nitrogen fixer that is not in the legume family.  Mostly the legumes handle nitrogen fixing in the soil.  The Eleagnus is a weed plant, it is a relative of one that I like much better, the goumi berry, and I’ve heard a couple of pronunciations on that.  Those are kind of all over the place.  You can definitely eat the berries of the ones that are all over.  If you were going to plant it intentionally in your yard, I would go ahead and get the one that’s actually the goumi berry instead of digging up something from the side of the road because it is more likely to stay contained within your yard.

Caryn Hartglass: Are there sites where we can see what these things look like that you would recommend?

Molly Phemister: I tried to put pictures up of them when I talk about them.  I did a little bit of weed discussion.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay, so somewhere at eatcology.com.

Molly Phemister: Yes, the article title itself is Glinda the Good Weed.

Caryn Hartglass: Are you a good weed or a bad weed?  I’m not a weed at all.

Molly Phemister: Exactly, Glinda the Good Weed. I grew up a fan of Dorothy Gale.  It’s actually eatcology.com/Glinda-the-good-weed.  I’ve got images there of purslane and lamb’s-quarters.  I also have some other ones on there.  I have dandelion and onion grass.  Onion grass again is tasty, and it has the dog issue.  I use onion grass as a pH indicator.  If I see onion grass growing near a lilac shrub I need to adjust that pH higher because onion grass will only grow in acidic soils, and lilacs will only bloom in non-acidic soil.  So if I want my pretty lilac blossoms, and there’s onion grass near by…

Caryn Hartglass: And you do.  That’s my favorite fragrance, lilac.  That just drives me nutty they’re so good.

Molly Phemister: Oh yeah, and the butterflies too.  They’re wonderful.  Because I use them more as an indicator than as an edible.  There is a variance on clover, the sour clover.  It will bloom in with the other clovers, but where the other ones have white and purple heads, this will have much, much smaller, little yellow flowers.  It tends to be a bit stemmier, and the stems themselves are what’s so tasty.  It’s a sour lemony taste like you would get from sorrel.  That’s very good in salads.  Little violets themselves are tasty.  The flowers are perfectly edible.  I remember walking down the street once, there was a band of day lilies growing beside us.  I was walking with a woman, who, I kind of was aware, had a crush on me.  It wasn’t reciprocated in this particular case, but I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing so when I picked a day lily flower, and was aware of some motion on her side.  I think she was thinking, “Oh my gosh, she’s picking me a flower.”  And I picked it, and I pulled the pollen out of the center, and I ate the flower because it’s like a very juicy lettuce.  She was absolutely flabbergasted.  She was like, “Woah, woah, woah, what just happened?”  But day lilies are marvelous.  They are very tasty.  I tend to like the tall orange ones.  I like the yellow ones also, but they tend to be shorter and again get into the dog issue.  The red ones are a little powderier to me, but I’ll pull out the center stems where the pollen is, and the rest of it is just like a juicy lettuce, wonderful.

Caryn Hartglass: Well I think there is something in our DNA, and that’s what’s enabled us to survive, but the idea of being able to roam and nosh and eat is important as scavengers.  I love it when there are berries growing, and I can just stay there for an hour and pick berries.  It is just such a lovely thing.   We are so far away from that, and I would love to see that come back.

Molly Phemister: I think it I making a comeback.  Phoenix, Arizona has some scavenger maps available.  I’m not really sure how much of those ones are findable.  Portland, Oregon has scavenger maps.

Caryn Hartglass: Molly, the music means we are at the end of the hour.  Thanks for talking with me.  I really enjoyed it.  This was Molly Phemister and eatcology.com.  Please visit it.  There’s lots of great information.  Thanks so much for joining me on It’s All About Food

Molly Phemister: Caryn, bye.

Caryn Hartglass: Okay.  I’m Caryn Hartglass.  You’ve been listening to It’s All About Food. Thanks for joining me.  Have a delicious week.

Transcribed by Steve Lee-Kramer, 3/9/2013