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Victoria Moran is the author of twelve books, including Main Street Vegan, the best-selling Creating a Charmed Life, and the plant-based weight-loss classic, The Love-Powered Diet: Eating for Freedom, Health, & Joy. Victoria has appeared twice on Oprah and she’s one of the celebrity coaches for the PCRM 21-Day Vegan Kickstart. She is a certified holistic health counselor and holds the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies/eCornell Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition.
Her articles have appeared in Huffington Post, Yoga Journal, Mothering, Natural Health, Woman’s Day, VegNews, and Vegetarian Times. Her work has been noted in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Self, Elle, Glamour, Allure, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Victoria is host of the popular Main Street Vegan podcast, and founder and director of Main Street Vegan Academy, training vegan lifestyle coaches and educators.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caryn Hartglass: Hello Everybody, We’re Back and It’s time for the second part of It’s all about Food. I`m Caryn Hartglass thanks so much for joining me. I wanted to say hello cos I’ve been gone for two weeks and it’s so good to be back. As I mentioned before, I`m in California for the month and in some ways that impacts how I’ve been eating. So we’re not really cooking cos we’re in this little pool house cottage which is absolutely delightful. I`m eating a lot of rolled oats with fresh fruit, a little soy milk big salads and then we go to restaurants. I`m not a big restaurant eater not only cos it costs money but I like to make my own food and I like the way I make it. I find it is healthier with less salt, sugar and fat. But I am enjoying some of my favorites in the south bay area like the veggie grill, tofu com chay, vegetarian house these are some of my Favorites. I love these big Pho Noodle soups.
This morning on my oatmeal I had a treat, we put mango in the oats today. I love mango but I am always conflicted you know every food has a story. Mango has its story. You know what I think of when I eat mangoes I think I’m a number of things. One of the things I think about is the nuclear technology because you may have remembered or not it was almost 2006, 9 years ago. George Bush opened the U.S market to the Indian alphonso mango kind of as a bonus for India accepting U.S nuclear technology & policy. So mangoes, nuclear technology connect the dots. I kind of get a little disappointed when I think about that. Of course all the fruit that we import into this country has to get a little zapped. So the mangoes are irradiated and I prefer to buy local fruits. Fruits that are grown in my area or at least in the U.S that are organic. But I do love mangoes and if I`m not in Costa Rico when the mangoes are ripe and dripping from the trees. Occasionally I`ll indulge in organic mango. So we got some and they were on my oatmeal today. So that’s my mango story.
I hope there was some good karma in those mangoes and that’s what we’re going to talk about next with my next guest Victoria Moran, who is the author of the new book The Good Karma Diet: Eat Gently, Feel Amazing, Age in Slow Motion. She’s the author of 12 books including main street big and the bestselling Creating a Charmed Life and the plant based weight loss classic The Love–Powered Diet: Eating for Freedom, Health, and Joy. She has appeared twice on Oprah and she’s one of the [3:22] coaches for the PCRM 21 day Vegan kick start, we’ve talked a lot about that on our show. She’s a certified holistic health counselor and holds the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies/eCornell certificate in plant based nutrition.
Caryn Hartglass: Hello Victoria.
Victoria Moran: Hey Caryn, how are you out there from California? Lucky you.
Caryn Hartglass: We go out here couple times a year because my partner Gary is from San Jose but this is has been the best trip ever. We’re here for a month and we’re staying in this beautiful little pool house right by a pool and I`m swimming and getting my vitamin D and I`m feeling very very fortunate.
Victoria Moran: That sounds heavenly.
Caryn Hartglass: I’m feeling like I must have done something right, my Karma is pretty good
Victoria Moran: Good Karma, see there’s proof.
Caryn Hartglass: Anyways, I`m not complaining. I wasn’t complaining about the mangoes, I love mangoes. But every food has its story.
Victoria Moran: That’s an amazing story about mangoes for Nuclear technology. My goodness gracious. I have a mango story. It’s not nearly as political but a really long time ago when I got into this world of being Vegan, probably about the time that you did. It was a very different world, much smaller. I really came in through the American Vegan Society, it was founded in 1960. I didn’t get into it that early but Jay Dinshah did. He was also a practitioner of natural hygiene. Which was us being really healthy but kind of philosophy of being really healthy but aesthetic. I remember they used to have a speaker, his name was Jack Duntrop. He would go to their conventions every summer and talk about the sensuality of mangoes and how you should always peel them in the shower with someone that you love. So every time I eat a mango I always think are there any children watching, I should probably keep them away.
Caryn Hartglass: Haha! I am now re-scripting my thoughts about mangoes.
Victoria Moran: They are weighted for ravishing, raw and give me another one really good.
Caryn Hartglass: Well, it’s always exciting. I don’t know what the season is but I visit Costa Rica a lot and when the mangoes are ripe and like I said before they are literally dropping from the trees and I don’t know why but locals aren’t going nuts for eating them. I`m like bathing in them, showing in them.
Victoria Moran: I think it’s the idea that anything that’s too close or too available loses its value. I think of some of the museums in New York city that are 15 minutes from where I sit that I have yet to visit after 15 years. Yet people come from far away and have those very museums on their list the first day. I guess museums and mangoes have something in common too.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, that’s a good point. So I’m going to ask you have to been to Neue galerie in Manhattan.
Victoria Moran: No, what is that? Where is that? Why should I go ?
Caryn Hartglass: It’s my favorite. There are some museums in Manhattan that are free on Sundays. Not that I don’t want to support them, but it’s easier on my budget. Friday night the first of the month after 6 pm the Neue galerie it’s on upper east side around 86th street and 5th ave. They are open for free and they are not usually open in the evening so this is nice and they have a line that wraps around the block to get in. So the Neue Galerie is owned by Ronald Lauder. The philanthropist who is the son of Estee Lauder. I learned about it first when I was going through my romp with the advanced ovarian cancer back in 2006. You can read about it on my personal website CarynHartglass.com, my cancer story. I had these dreams with Gustav Klimt painting in it The Adele Bloch-Bauer, there actually was this hidden message related to my treatment if you want to believe it, I do.
Victoria Moran: I do. I just heard it and I believe it.
Caryn Hartglass: There’s a new movie out called ‘Women in Gold’ with Helen Mirren which is about The Adele Bloch-Bauer and the terrible story of the Nazi stealing it and not wanting to give it back and then finally giving it back to the family. Ronald Lauder purchased it for 137 million dollars back in 2006 and it now rests proudly in the Neue Galerie. The Neue Galerie features German impressionist paintings and there recently was this Egon Schiele exhibit. I love this stuff and it’s a small little gallery so you don’t get overwhelmed. I recommend it to everyone.
Victoria Moran: Wow, well you know this just shows that it’s not all about food but we feed ourselves with all this other things. I`m going to share with you my favorite little gallery in New York city and that is the Nicholas Roerich museum. Have you run into that one?
Caryn Hartglass: No.
Victoria Moran: It’s on the upper west side. I learned about Roerich when I was a wee less of 19 and was living and working at the headquarters of the theosophical society New Chicago. I actually had run away to work there because I had gained a lot of weight and I was too embarrassed to stay home. So I thought if I ran off to this place where everybody was vegetarian and spiritual, I would lose lots of weight and would go home all slim and trim. Well that didn’t happen, I gained another 15 pounds. But that’s the back story. I learned about Roerich because he was a highly spiritual painter in Russia at the time of the revolution. And because his family had means and they were considered the bad people by the Bolsheviks. They escaped and they ended up in the high Himalayas. Somewhere in the Nepal Tibet Bhutan kind of region. He could paint colors and scenes that were just so delicious. So bright and sparkly and yet there was so little available in terms of pigments. Many of his works when you go to museums, some of this earlier works were say on canvas but a lot of them once he got to the Himalayas were all on cardboard.
Caryn Hartglass: I guess we lost Victoria unfortunately, are you back?
Victoria Moran: I`m back. I didn’t go anywhere on purpose.
Caryn Hartglass: You know I love the cyber space and technology but you can’t depend on everything or anything so we lost you for a moment but you’re back.
Victoria Moran: That’s alright, I was just giving you the website.
Caryn Hartglass: You were talking about how he painted on cardboard.
Victoria Moran: Yeah, he painted on cardboard. As that was all he could find in the far off Himalayas in 1918 and so forth so Roerich.org tells about this work. Quite fascinating.
Caryn Hartglass: I can’t wait, I love art. Almost as much as I love food and food is art, or it should be.
Victoria Moran: And as should life, I think that’s really the key and when people talk about I don’t know if I want to change my diet, I don’t know if I want to eat hippie food. Remember it’s not hippie food, Hippies didn’t eat like we eat. They just didn’t want to work. So they ate a lot of brown rice. But beyond that if you really consider this change in what you eat as another artful part of life, then it makes such an adventure and such a joy. Sometimes people will say don’t you miss and then they’ll name some food or other. The truth is I really don’t and if there’s some flavor or some texture that I do miss, these days you can just find all that stuff. I was at a veg fest this weekend in Rehoboth beach Delaware and one of the vendors had some kind of fish fillet. So I must say that was a flavor and texture that I do remember enjoying. I had a couple of bites of that on a toothpick and it’s just like well what you know. All this and fish fillets too but no fish of course.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah. I wanted to ask you a question or just applaud you for how you are always everywhere. I don’t go to all of the veg events in New York. But the ones that I go to, you’re always there. So I’m thinking statistically you must be at all of them because it wouldn’t work co-incidentally that you just happen to be at when I’m there. I look at your facebook page and you are always somewhere. It’s not just in New York, it’s all over the place. You are sponsoring you main street vegan academy, you gave a lovely donation to my non-profit organization for our recent fundraiser. You are ever present everyday so supportive. Thank you and how do you do it?
Victoria Moran: Well that is really kind to say because you know I don’t like out after dark. I think it’s this ancient pre-historic thing that humans have, some more than other but once it gets to be dark especially in the winter time you’re just not supposed to go out. So sometimes it’s really kind of a stretch. There’s an event tonight Rich Roll and lovely wife Julie Piatt are having a book party for their wonderful new cookbook. So many people wanted to go that they changed the venue at powerhouse arena in Brooklyn because they needed bigger space. The bookstore is in Dumbo. Its really far from the train and I did something at the gym yesterday which has shown me two muscles that I didn’t know I had. Muscles that are very important for walking and every step was like oh my god how could I have lived this long and not known these muscles were there. So until you said what you said I was thinking I can’t go all the way to Dumbo tonight but you know with Caryn Hartglass in your life saying gosh you’re everywhere, you can’t very well not go to something.
Caryn Hartglass: Well I’m sorry that you’re suffering a little bit, I don’t think you deserve that and I don’t think that’s your karma.
Victoria Moran: Oh, that’s so kind. But you know its happy suffering. It’s like you know injury suffering from if you’re looking at and you do something wrong that’s unfortunate. But the oh my gosh new muscles that’s the kind of yeah something good is happening.
Caryn Hartglass: What did you do to discover these muscles, where are they?
Victoria Moran: These muscles are in the very front of my upper thighs, so if you follow it all the way up where I think it no longer goes cos it doesn’t hurt that high its right at the pelvic bones. It’s both legs and I think what I was doing was some sort of step up thing. I’ve actually found this interesting new gym which is super cheap cos I belong to a gym that was very nice and I thought if I belong to this nice gym and I pay a lot of money for it then I will be more likely to go. But of course I wasn’t.
Caryn Hartglass: That’s cos you’re always going to all the other veg events.
Victoria Moran: That’s it, I work at it veg fest. But no I discovered aerial yoga. Which is the most fun ever. If you liked money bars as a kid, you’ll love aerial yoga. And I did and I do. So I thought I don’t want to pay the retainer to the big gym and to aerial yoga. So I got rid of the fancy gym and I joined this gym for people who don’t want to spend any money on the gym. But the trainers are sensational. They’re reasonably priced too. I am working out this lovely charming trainer who does not let me get by with anything and sometimes I want to look at him and say I’m old enough to be your mother and I know he would say yeah, do it again, give me another 20. So I don’t know it was something he told me to do that has me feeling it.
Caryn Hartglass: Well it’ll feel better soon and you’ll be all the better for it.
Victoria Moran: That’s right. I’ll be hanging upside down again tomorrow.
Caryn Hartglass: ok, so you’ve written another book. I don’t know how you do this but you do. It’s a very happy book.
Victoria Moran: Thank you for sensing, because that’s exactly what I was aiming for. Because I wrote Main Street Vegan back in 2012 and that’s a very friendly book. Very wide open, all come everybody lets be vegan, let’s make it really easy just come on in and we’ll be nice and you’ll have fun and life is good. But then I heard from some people saying ok I’m in now what do I do to really ace the health aspect of this thing. I thought why do people eat food that they themselves would call junk food. That they themselves know isn’t good or in quantities that they themselves are saying I really shouldn’t do this. Cos they think somehow it’ll make them happy. And then why do at least some people follow that up with some real punitive thing, they’re going to go on some sort of diet or some sort of cleanse and tough it our cos they think that after that they’ll feel happy they’ll feel good about themselves. I thought why not just skip the middle diet and go straight to happy. What I’ve observed over many decades is that being vegan makes people happy because you put good out into the world and you can’t help but get that back and then the people that take it up a notch and really make a point at eating fresh colorful natural foods for the most part instead of the more processed and treat kind of foods. Although certainly few of those now and then aren’t going to hurt you. But generally speaking the really great healing kinds of foods, then they get good karma with physical health. So why not put those together and just the best life can offer.
Caryn Hartglass: Why not? Why not, it’s just so simple and mindboggling to me and so many others that so many people don’t get it.
Victoria Moran: It’s against the culture, this is not how I was raised, not how my mother fed me, the teachers didn’t tell me this, the clergy didn’t tell me this. There must be something wrong with it. But you know what is interesting Caryn is that we’ve been so brainwashed by food producers, pharmaceutical companies, everybody who can afford television commercials. That the things that we think are normal and good and right aren’t necessarily that.
Caryn Hartglass: You know I was just talking at the beginning of the program at 4 o’clock about this new FDA release saying that they’re going to ban trans fats. It’s going to take about 3 years to manufacture foods and this is really great news but this food came into our food supply as Crisco in 1911, it’s been here for more than a 100 years. We can’t rely on the government to tell us anything or do anything right. We have to rely on ourselves and there is so much stuff in our food system that is just not healthy.
Victoria Moran: Right and some people get kind of on their high horses about the many vegan processed foods that are available, that you can find a doppelganger for any kind of food that you once loved. But I’m not quite like that about those foods. I don’t eat very many of them at all cos I really have come to the point where I actually prefer great big salads and streamed vegetables and wonderful beans and that kind of things. But I’m so glad that they’re there because if the whole world went junk food vegan tomorrow I don’t know how much health would improve. Maybe it wouldn’t improve at all. But global warming would stop dead in its tracks and there would be so much less suffering on this planet. We would probably end up with peace on earth and all kinds of other wonderful things so let’s just come in and let’s just know that if we really need a marshmallow those exist these days. But if we really care about ourselves it’s going to be fewer marshmallows, more broccoli, life is good.
Caryn Hartglass: Life is good! Life is good and you know we just have a few minutes left, I can’t believe the time has flown. You mentioned earlier, I don’t know if you used the word depravation, but this is not a diet of depravation. You are nuts about our food, I am nuts about our food and there are so many stories about people moving from fat and thick and whatever and finding this place of joy and good karma.
Victoria Moran: Yup that’s the thing. It’s total joy, it’s not depravational joy. It’s not like watch me over here in my box not doing anything fun. Lots of fun, lots of flavors and lots of stories. One of the fun things in the good karma diet is 17 stories from people who believe that changing what they ate gave them good karma in all kinds of ways.
Caryn Hartglass: Yeah, Victoria I think we need to go, I’m hearing little music cues in the back ground.
Victoria Moran: I hear music too. Art and music on this show.
Caryn Hartglass: Thank you for joining me on It’s All About Food. I love you and your book, thank you for all that you’re doing to create good karma on this planet.
Victoria Moran: Back at you, Caryn, Enjoy your time out west.
Caryn Hartglass: Okay, Thank you. I`m Caryn Hartglass you’ve been listening to It’s All About food. Send me comments to info@realmeals.org and visit me and my blog What Vegans Eat at Responsibleeatingandliving.com. Have a delicious week.