I often compare my switch to vegetarianism to someone finding religion – you experience joy and peacefulness, and you just know in your heart that it is right. And just like with anything that makes you feel great, you want to share it with others. So I did. I’d often spout off horror stories of animal abuse, or disgusting tales about filthy meatpacking plants. I’d readily give out facts on cholesterol, heart disease, and cancer, unsolicited. I’d lecture on the link between the meat industry and environmental destruction. Every chance I got, I’d step up on that soapbox and give my vegetarian sermon. Without even realizing it, I had become the preachy vegetarian.

As I became aware of my newly acquired annoying habit (thanks in large part to my boyfriend who pointed it out to me every time I opened my mouth about anything related to vegetarianism), I realized that this approach was not going to work and might even turn people off of vegetarianism.

[I actually started this blog so I could still have my soapbox, but in a less obtrusive, less in-your-face kind of way. When someone asks me why I'm vegetarian (which nearly everyone does), it's easy for me to give them a simple answer then point them to my url.  And though I still preach quite a bit here, everyone has the choice of whether they want to read it or not.]

Even with my blog as an outlet, it’s still so hard to keep quiet when I see friends chowing down chili-cheese covered hot dogs, double bacon cheeseburgers, or worse, veal.  I want so badly to tell them how cruel and unhealthy their meal is, but I don’t want to perpetuate the stereotype that all vegetarians do is try to convert meat-eaters. I know that many vegetarians struggle with this same issue – how to inform people without sounding preachy.

What’s a vegetarian to do?

1. Don’t bring it up unless specifically asked

This is the approach I’ve chosen (for better or for worse). I know you’re dying to tell everyone everything, but the reality is that not everyone wants to know everything. And unsolicited vegetarian propaganda can actually repel people from vegetarianism, so until someone asks, zip it! The good new is that, inevitably, plenty of people will ask.

Caveat: There are a few really close friends and family (boyfriend, mom & dad, very best friends who aren’t especially carnivorous) who I can rant to, without them asking first, because 1) they will love me no matter how much I annoy them with veggie-talk, and 2) they understand how important this is to me and therefore truly want to hear all I have to say about it.

2. Keep it short

If someone does ask, limit your answer.

I’ve found that the most common question is simply, “Why?” Yes, this is the perfect opportunity to plant a seed of thought in someone, but don’t preach!  Keep your answer to a single (or a few) heartfelt sentences then STOP. Although there are tons of reasons to go vegetarian, choose the one that compels you the most (or the one that you think will resonate most with the asker) and briefly state it without going into gory details.

My response is usually something like this, “I read a book about how the animals are treated and it was really disturbing. I decided that I didn’t want to contribute to that anymore.” [Other examples: "At first I did it to lose weight, and then I realized that it was better for the environment, so I stuck with it." "I heard that going vegetarian was greener than switching to a hybrid vehicle, plus it helps prevent cancer."]

The second most common question I’ve encountered is, “How do you get enough protein?” While I’d love to rant and rave about how the Standard American Diet (SAD) actually has too much protein and that’s causing issues from obesity to osteoporosis, (and why don’t you worry about your own cholesterol intake instead of my protein levels!), I refrain my urges and politely say something like, “All vegetables, and believe it or not even fruit, has protein in it! I make sure to eat plenty of high-protein ones like, beans, nuts, peas, and spinach, and I can get more than enough of my daily value.”

If they continue to ask questions, of course continue to answer, but I still recommend you be conservative on the amount you spout out. Try to keep answers to a few sentences and only continue when another question is asked, or when someone seems genuinely interested in learning more.

Occasionally I’ll follow-up with people if they truly seemed interested (and if it’s someone I know well enough that their first impression of me won’t be ‘preachy vegetarian’!). Maybe I’ll shoot them an email with something like, “Since it came up yesterday, just thought you’d be interested in this article about free-range eggs. (link)”

3. Be positive

Nobody likes a Debbie Downer (even if you’re discussing something as morbid as clogged arteries). It is better to discuss how vegetarianism is good, rather than how eating meat is bad. This is as simple as changing “meat-eaters are five times more likely to die from a heart attack,” to “you can reduce your risk of heart attack by 90% by giving up meat, dairy, and eggs.”

Instead of complaining about giving up beef ravioli, share how much you love spinach-artichoke ravioli.  Don’t talk about how hard it is to find a tasty vegan cheese (even though, yes, this is a very hard thing to do), talk instead about how easy it is to use meatless crumbles in place of ground beef, and how good they taste (especially in spaghetti sauce, sloppy joes, and tacos… mmm) .

If the conversation starts to go down the doom-and-gloom path (like animal abuse, slaughterhouse filth, or environmental destruction), don’t hang around in the “meat is murder/do you know how much fecal matter you’re consuming?/the planet is doomed” area too long.  Be sure to make it clear that vegetarianism is a solution. “A vegan saves 100 animal lives per year.” “Going vegetarian is greener than switching to a hybrid vehicle.” (Can you tell I like this factoid?)

4. Don’t condemn

Do not, under any circumstances, imply that someone who eats meat is bad. (After all, you probably ate meat at one point in your life as well.) People will become defensive and shut you off if you tell them that something they are doing is wrong. Remember that most people are not intentionally eating animals to be cruel; they just haven’t learned any better… yet.

5. Practice what you preach

The best way to preach vegetarianism is to set a positive example. Actions speak louder than words. As Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The following is inscribed on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in Westminster Abby (1100 A.D.):

When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world.As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.

But it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family.

From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world.

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Any other tips on how not to be a preachy vegetarian?

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Breakfast: Amy’s non-dairy burrito
Lunch: Cabana bowl from Taco Cabana: rice, black beans, lettuce, pico, guac, salsa (no meat, no cheese, no sour cream)

Dinner: A failed attempt at vegan mac & cheese. I ended up overcooking it, so it turned out to be a big gooey mess that didn’t even taste cheesy. But I ate it anyways!

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Inspection reports released by the Food and Drug Administration described — often in nose-pinching detail — possible ways that salmonella could have been spread undetected through the vast complexes of two companies. Barns infested with flies, maggots and scurrying rodents, and overflowing manure pits were among the widespread food safety problems that federal inspectors found at a group of Iowa egg farms at the heart of a nationwide recall and salmonella outbreak.

The recall, which began Aug. 13, involves more than half a billion eggs from the Iowa operations of two leading egg producers, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. About 1,500 reported cases of Salmonella enteritidis have been linked to tainted eggs since the spring — the largest known outbreak associated with that strain of salmonella.

It was difficult to gauge from the report how extensive the problems were. Both companies operate vast facilities housing seven million hens.

The report on Wright County Egg also described pits beneath laying houses where chicken manure was piled four to eight feet high. It also described hens that had escaped from laying cages tracking through the manure.

Officials last week said that they were taking a close look at a feed mill operated by Wright County Egg, after tests found salmonella in bone meal, a feed ingredient, and in feed given to young birds, known as pullets. On Monday, officials said for the first time that they had also found salmonella at a Hillandale facility. The bacteria was found in water that had been used to wash eggs.

Wright County Egg is owned by Jack DeCoster, who has a long history of environmental, labor and immigration violations at egg operations in Maine, Iowa and elsewhere.

Both companies have stopped selling shell eggs to consumers from their Iowa facilities and instead are sending all their eggs to breaking plants where they are pasteurized, which kills the bacteria. The eggs would then most likely be sold in liquid form, possibly to food manufacturers.

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The website Animal Visuals has created a graphic regarding the salmonella outbreak. Here is a small section of it:

You can see the full image here.

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Breakfast: Toast with cashew butter. I didn’t especially like the cashew butter – it’s too sticky and doesn’t have as much flavor as peanut butter.
Lunch: Vegetarian chili and a salad from The Garden Spot

Dinner: Taco salad

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• 8 Reasons to Beware of Eggs
• Meet Your Meat: Eggs
• Meatless Monday #30: More Delicious Tofu Scrambles

Vegan Caesar Dressing

In a food processor, combine:
3 garlic cloves
2 tbs nutritional yeast
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbs sesame tahini (this stuff is a tad expensive at $6-7, but I had some from making my own hummus)
1.5 tbs balsamic vinegar (I thought the dressing turned out a bit too vinegar-y. I’ll only use 1 tbs next time)
1 tbs water
1 scallion, white part only (about 1 inch long or so)
1 tsp capers
1/4 tsp try mustard powder
salt & pepper to taste

On first taste, this dressing wasn’t an exact match for Caesar, but it still was a good dressing. I decided to add some bacon-flavored bits which for some reason made this taste even more like a Caesar salad to me. I even went back for seconds!

Apologies for the poor picture quality. Since unpacking in Austin I still haven’t been able to find the battery charger for my camera (which is dead) so I’ll be using cell phone photos until I come across it.

Cajun Potatoes

When we were in New Orleans, one of the restaurants served red potatoes boiled in Cajun spices as an appetizer (instead of bread). They were so delicious that I wanted to recreate them. This isn’t even really a recipe since it’s so simple, but you should definitely try this at home!

Add one bag of Zataran’s Crab Boil to your pot when boiling small red potatoes. It will give them a little kick. And if you like, you can follow the directions on the Crab Boil package, which tell you to add lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper to the water as well. Unfortunately, this didn’t have quite as much spicy punch as the potatoes we ate in New Orleans, but the Cajun flavor was definitely there. Next time I’ll try adding more cayenne pepper.

Okra Spears

Again, this isn’t really a recipe, but it is very tasty. I just steamed some whole okra spears in a pan with olive oil, chopped onion (I actually used both purple onion and green onion), and pressed garlic. It turned out really great!

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Join the Meatless Monday movement! One day a week, cut out meat to reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel.

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Over 500 million eggs have been recalled due to an outbreak of Salmonella that sickened thousands of people across the country (and many cases go unreported because Salmonella infections, which cause diarrhea and stomach cramps, often go undiagnosed). This is one of the country’s worst food safety recalls, stemming from only two farms in Iowa. These two gigantic producers distribute their eggs under brand names such as Lucerne, Albertson’s, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Boomsma, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms and Kemp (this list might not be comprehensive as the recall seems to expand daily).

The American egg industry was already battling a movement to outlaw its methods as cruel and unsafe, and was adapting to the Obama administration’s drive to bolster health rules and inspections. According to the FDA, the cause of the infections has not been pinpointed, but it is likely that lax safety procedures and animal overcrowding are to blame. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) wrote in a letter to the Iowa Egg Council, “Confining birds in cages means increased salmonella infection in the birds, their eggs and the consumers of caged eggs.”  A single barn may house more than 150,000 birds in tight proximity, allowing infections to spread quickly and widely.

This month, the HSUS released a new white paper addressing the threat that cage confinement of laying hens can pose to food safety, as well as assessing the probabilities of Salmonella contamination among different housing systems:

Egg producers have watched in dismay as the political winds seemed to turn, largely because of growing concern about animal rights. The European Union will bar small cages for egg hens as of 2012. By public referendum, California will ban small cages in 2015, and the state will not allow the sale of eggs produced in other states in small cages. Michigan, Ohio and other states have also placed limits on future caging of hens.

But even with new legislation, there are still plenty of reasons to be concerned about eggs. Here are eight:

1. Petri Dishes for Disease

Joel Salatin, a farmer whose farm Polyface is featured in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food, Inc., tells why conditions in factory farms are ideal for the spread of infection: “The propensity for a problem is magnified under the fecal particulate air in these industrial egg farms. What it does is it breaks down the immune system and creates openings for pathogens. If you were trying to design a pathogen-friendly system, you would go to a single species, crowd that species together, deny it fresh air, exercise, and sunshine, never give it a rest time—have it there 365 days a year, and feed it a diet that maximizes a minimal standard of performance, rather than maximizes nutrition or feed that is nutritionally superior. What I’ve just described is Egg Factory Farming 101. This is just symptomatic of the pathogen-friendly nature of industrial agriculture.”

2. Massive Farms Magnify Any Disease

Further compounding the risk is the tremendous centralization of the factory farm system. As Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat, points out, “these large industrial producers where if there’s a problem, it’s going to get magnified over many states and many people.” Salatin agrees, saying that “Whereas a problem in the local food system only affects a few people, a problem in a factory farm can infect, for instance, hundreds of millions of eggs and tens of thousands of people.”

3. Infection Is More Common Than We Think

When you have such massive farms, each distributing its eggs to dozens of grocery chains, any problem gets compounded. In the case of the current outbreak, William Marler, a prominent foodborne-illness litigator, points out that the CDC’s rule of thumb is that 38 people are sickened by salmonella for every case that’s reported, so the number of people infected by the current outbreak could potentially number in the tens of thousands.

4. Free-Range Eggs Are No Healthier

Many people think that free-range eggs are healthier, and they provide more peace of mind, than factory-farmed eggs. But, the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t even have a definition of “free-range” for laying hens. Factory-farmed chickens are often labeled as free-range. In the end, no one knows exactly what they’re eating. As Jonathan Safran Foer writes in Eating Animals, “I could keep a flock of hens under my sink and call them free-range.”

5. Companies Avoid What Little Regulation Exists

According to Marion Nestle, legislation would help, but companies are determined to skirt regulation and the FDA lacks the clout to enforce what rules it has: “We’re dealing here with a company that’s not very interested in following rules, and they cut corners in lots and lots of ways. One of the ways they cut corners is safety. The other part is the FDA still doesn’t have the tools it needs to enforce the rules it has.” William Marler points out that legislation that might have prevented this outbreak languished for eight years during the Bush administration before being implemented on July 8, just as the outbreak began. Even then, Marler says, most of the “Egg Rule,” known officially as “Federal Register Final Rule: Prevention of Salmonella Enteritidis in Shell Eggs During Production, Storage, and Transportation,” is common-sense testing and should have been followed voluntarily.

6. Healthy Eggs Are Expensive & Cheap Eggs Sell Better

Marion Nestle, Joel Salatin, Michael Pollan, and other food activists agree that the consumers must start demanding healthier eggs, even if it means paying more. Says Nestle, “The rules that are in the FDA’s egg legislation will require producers to do things differently, with some hope that they’ll move into more sustainable, reasonable practices. But as long as this country insists on cheap food, as long as that pressure is there, it’s understood that we value food for how little it costs, as opposed to how it’s produced or how it tastes, and there isn’t going to be a lot of pressure on producers to change things.”

But for those of you hoping that voting with your dollar will encourage producers to be cleaner and more humane, the polls bode ill: According to recent data from Information Resources Inc, which tracks checkout scanner transactions from 34,000 grocery stores in the U.S., we’re still buying eggs from cage housing systems 92% of the time.

7. Farms Lack Transparency

According to Michael Pollan, industrial egg farms are the worst sort of factory farms. So bad, in fact, that journalists are rarely allowed inside them. When Carole Morison let a camera crew in for Food Inc., she lost her contract and went on to co-found the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance.

8. Cruel Farm Conditions

Jonathan Safran Foer, in his book Eating Animals, writes of an often-overlooked trend in factory farming: food and light deprivation. One farmer described it to Foer this way: “As soon as females mature—in the turkey industry at 23 to 26 weeks and with chickens 16 to 20—they’re put into barns and they lower the light; sometimes it’s total darkness 24/7. And then they put them on a very low-protein diet, almost a starvation diet.” The result: Birds lay up to three or four times as many eggs as in nature. “After that first year, they are killed because they won’t lay as many the second year,” the farmer said. “The industry figured out it’s cheaper to slaughter them and start over than it is feed and house birds that lay fewer eggs.” Foer’s conclusion: “After learning about it, I didn’t want to eat a conventional egg ever again.”

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Breakfast: Bagel with Tofutti vegan cream cheese
Lunch: Salad with cucumber, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, hearts of palm, avocado, and vinegar and oil

Dinner: Black bean tacos from Taco Cabana (there’s no cheese on these)

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Breakfast: Smoothie with a banana, frozen cherries, spinach, and almond milk
Lunch: Veggie sub from Thundercloud, with hummus, guacamole, sprouts, tomato, cucumber, olives

Dinner: Large baked potato with olive oil (instead of butter), garlic salt, and rosemary flakes

A man walking on the beach after a storm comes upon a person picking up starfish on the sand and flinging them back into the ocean. The man looks around.  Starfish litter the sand all up and down the beach. “Excuse me, don’t you realize that there are miles of beach, and starfish all along it? You could work all day and not make one tiny bit of difference here.” The other stoops, picks up another starfish, flings it into the ocean.  “Well,” she says, “I made a difference to that one.”

All of us have the power to make a difference, no matter how small it may seem. Our actions undoubtedly effect much more than we realize. The Butterfly Effect is an idea rooted in chaos theory (the study of sensitive dynamic systems) that one small difference initially can lead to very large changes in the long term. For example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll down into any of several ending positions, depending on slight variations in the initial position of the ball. The differences in the final resting positions of the ball could vary greatly due to very small differences in the starting positions.

Something that may seem very small or inconsequential to us, like giving up meat, can actually have a very profound effect in the long term. The obvious consequence of going vegan is saving the lives of animals. It is estimated that a single vegetarian saves 50 animal lives per year and a single vegan saves 100 lives per year. While one single vegan working for compassion alone may not move mountains, the collective power of all the vegans together will. According to a Vegetarian Times study, 7.3 million Americans are vegetarians, 1 million of these are vegans. With, 6.3 million vegetarians saving 50 lives a year and 1 million vegans saving 100 lives a year, that gives us (6.3m * 50 + 1m * 100) 415 million animals saved in the US every year! There is no disputing that this is a phenomenal number.

And don’t forget the profound effect vegetarian and vegan diets have on the environment. (I know I’ve used these facts a few times before but they’re so powerful so here they are again.) The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reports that overall, livestock production is responsible for a bigger share of greenhouse gas emissions than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, buses, trains, ships, and planes in the world combined. Researchers at the University of Chicago have found that going vegan is more effective in countering climate change than switching from a standard American car to a Toyota Prius. The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook points out that “refusing meat is the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.” Even Environmental Defense, a group that was called George W. Bush’s favorite environmental group for its less-than-radical stands, calculates that if every meat eater in the United States swapped just one meal of chicken per week for a vegetarian meal, the carbon savings would be equivalent to taking half a million cars off the road.

But, the true Butterfly Effect doesn’t come in the form of individual animals saved or reduced units of carbon in the atmosphere. It comes in the influence you have on others around you. Whether you realize it or not, you are inspiring others with your compassion. It may be something as simple as someone asking you why you decided to go vegetarian (which we get asked again, and again, and again). Your answer just might light someone’s candle of thought. I once had a co-worker say, “I’ll order whatever you order because I know you eat healthy.” Just my daily act of eating a vegetarian lunch had inspired this co-worker to go meatless, even if only occasionally. I recently received an email from a friend saying, “I just wanted to let you know that I only eat meat once a day now.”

In fact, it’s likely that you were inspired to go vegetarian by another vegetarian, either through their book, or website, or by talking with them.  Someone out there will be motivated by your actions to take action themselves. (But they likely won’t tell you about it. Think about it: how many great teachers did you thank? I didn’t thank any! Even the ones that inspired me to pursue my current career! Inspiring others to do great things is often thankless.) Imagine what happens if the current 7.3 million American vegetarians (who are saving 415 million animals a year) each inspire just one other person to reduce their meat intake. That’s one heck of a Butterfly Effect.

Now consider the inverse: what happens if you don’t go vegan. It is precisely the “I can’t make a difference, so why bother” attitude that allows horrendous factory farming practices to continue. As Nobel prize winning author Elie Wiesel said, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” By not opposing, you are supporting. Your hard-earned money is now funding this abuse. You are contributing to the problem, fueling the cruelty, condoning the abuse.

Let’s just say you’re still not convinced that your actions make a difference. You think that 50-100 animals per year, tons of carbon offsets, and influence over a few others can’t possibly matter in the grand scheme of things. Then look at it this way: do it for yourself. You know the old saying, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?” Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t make it right! Even if you think your choices have absolutely no effect on anything, you should not do something that you feel is wrong, or contribute to something you think is inhumane, or finance something you believe is destructive. When I first made the switch to vegetarianism, I felt an unexpected and unbelievable sense of happiness. Whether or not I was actually saving the lives of animals, I didn’t know, but just knowing that I was no longer personally contributing to the pain, suffering, and death of other living beings felt like nirvana. I know in my heart that the way these animals are treated is cruel and wrong, so even if I were the only vegetarian on Earth, I would still choose not to eat meat. I feel that I am living a better, more compassionate, more humane life, which makes me happy.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” -Anne Frank

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Breakfast: Smoothie with frozen pineapple, a banana, spinach, protein powder, and almond milk (can you tell I’m on a smoothie kick?)
Lunch: Veggie rolls from Whole Foods. SO YUMMY!

Dinner: Zucchini & squash “pasta” (raw zucchini & squash, shredded like pasta) with raw, vegan pesto sauce and veggies, also from Whole Foods.

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I stumbled across a great blog today: Know Thank You. It focuses on making a positive difference in the world. I thought this post was fantastic and wanted to share it here.

Why I’m Vegan by Know Thank You

Being vegan means you’re walking the talk. You’re not just dreaming of a more compassionate world, of healthier people, and of a cleaner environment, you’re actually doing something to make a difference. Being vegan means you’re rejecting decades of mass marketing and deception, and you’re instead embracing truth, science, and compassion. Being vegan means you care more about impact than about balance sheets, and more about long-term vision than about short-term return. Being vegan means you understand that you are an animal too, and that only a very small percentage of your DNA differs from that of other animals. Being vegan means you understand that you are a part of nature rather than separated from it, and that you are in nature right now, no matter where you are at this moment. Being vegan means you see the beauty in the world around you and in the plants and other animals that we share it with, and feel that this beauty should be nurtured and protected rather than exploited. Being vegan sometimes means embracing that beauty in the face of insurmountable odds, and in the faces of people we were disappointed to find we couldn’t count on. Being vegan means knowing that no matter how different you may feel, every reason you need to carry on can be gained by looking into a cow’s eyes. Being vegan means you know that you are the cows’ advocate; you know that you are their voice; you know that you are their insider. All they ask is that you help enlighten humans, and help bring about changes that lead to the peace and beauty all animals enjoyed before we started interfering in their lives. Being vegan means you’re already a part of that enlightenment process, just because of your dietary choices. Being vegan means you are an active participant in the restoration of peace and beauty.

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Breakfast: Smoothie with frozen cherries, a banana, spinach, almond milk, and a scoop of protein powder
Lunch: A cashew butter sandwich and raw green beans with hummus
Dinner: Soy chorizo tocos with lettuce, tomato, avocado, and salsa verde – If you recall, I’m obsessed with Trader Joe’s soy chorizo. Since there aren’t any Trader Joe’s in Texas, I stocked up on it before leaving DC. I literally hauled an ice chest full of soy chorizo from DC to Texas. Yes, it’s that good.

And on a related note, the restaurant downstairs from us, Tacos and Tequila, has soy chorizo!  The soy chorizo tacos there are delicioso and they can add the soy chorizo to their queso.

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John Robbins could have inherited the well-known Baskin Robbins ice cream chain, but instead he has dedicated his life to advocating for a more compassionate, just world. Through his books, Robbins is inspiring readers to shift their focus from acquiring wealth to living compassionate, sustainable lives.

It’s important to be thrifty and save. But a truly fulfilling life requires more than frugality. It also requires, I believe, a sense of purpose that is connected to something greater than ourselves. For me, this means living with gratitude and respect for all life, caring for others, and being part, if I can, of restoring the earth.

For the ten years that my wife, Deo, and I lived on an island off the coast of British Columbia, we grew 90 percent of our own food. Everything we grew was entirely organic. Although the phrase “carbon footprint” didn’t exist back then, ours was very small.

We had no livestock because we didn’t want to kill animals for food, since there was other food we could grow or buy that provided all the nourishment we needed. Some may think I am overly sentimental, but I’ve known too many animals who’ve felt like family to me. When I see a wild bird in flight, my instinct is not to grab a gun to shoot and kill it. My desire is to appreciate its beauty and understand its place in the web of life.

In the years since our time on the island, I’ve learned a great deal about how animals are treated in modern factory farms, and what I’ve learned has changed me yet again. I won’t describe it in gory detail, because you’ve probably seen pictures or heard stories of how bad it is—of the concentration camp conditions these animals are forced to endure. But I will tell you that in reality it’s every bit as bad as—or worse than—you’ve heard.

All of the animals involved in modern meat production—cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and so forth—are kept in conditions that violate their essential natures, that frustrate even their most basic needs, that cause them incomprehensible suffering. You don’t have to be a vegetarian, nor even a particularly compassionate person, to be disgusted by the level of cruelty that takes place every day in modern meat production. Julia Child, the famous chef, author, and TV personality, used to dismiss vegetarians as sappy. But when, late in her life, I took her to visit a veal production facility, she was horrified by what she saw. “I had no idea it was so severe,” she told me.

All this leaves me with a question that I think we need, as a society, to ask: How is it that we call some animals “pets,” lavish our love on these animals, and get so much in return—and yet then we turn around and call other animals “dinner” and feel justified, by virtue of this semantic distinction, in treating these animals with any level of cruelty so long as it lowers the price per pound? The cruelties inherent in modern meat production are so intense that it’s hard to eat these products and honor compassion at the same time. If you eat any kind of meat, you might want to purchase products that you know to be truly free-range and organic, such as those with the “Animal Compassion” logo from Whole Foods Market.

Because I so deeply deplore cruelty to animals, and I’ve been publicly active in bringing attention to the systematic cruelty in modern meat production, people often ask me if my reluctance to eat meat stems from ethical reasons. Yes, it does, and yet over the years I’ve learned something else that has also affected me greatly. As a concerned citizen of our beautiful but endangered planet, I want to do whatever I can to help protect the fragile biosystems on which so much depends, so that your children and mine, and all generations yet to come, might have a chance for a viable future.

What does that have to do with eating meat? A lot more than you might think. In 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations released a seminal report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow.” The report states that meat production is the second or third largest contributor to environmental problems at every level and at every scale, from global to local. It is a primary culprit in land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, species extinction, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Henning Steinfeld, a senior author of the report, stated, “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is needed to remedy the situation.”

As Ezra Klein wrote in The Washington Post in 2009, “The evidence is strong. It’s not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it’s that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.” In his influential documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore presents a compelling argument for the seriousness of human-induced global warming. But for some reason he asks us to change our lightbulbs while never asking us to change our diets. Seeing this omission, I’ve realized how deeply we are conditioned to think of meat eating as the reward for affluence and how difficult it can be to question it. Meat eating has held such a central place in the old good life that it can just slip by, unquestioned.

But question it we must if we are going to take seriously our responsibility to the planet. Cattle are notorious for producing methane, which is one of the four primary greenhouse gases. You may find it difficult to take cow burps and flatulence seriously, but livestock emissions are no joke. Methane comes from both ends of the cow in such enormous quantities that scientists seriously view it as one of the greatest threats to our earth’s climate.

And there’s more. The FAO report states that livestock production generates 65 percent of the nitrous oxide (another extremely potent greenhouse gas) produced by human activities. The FAO concludes that overall, livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, buses, trains, ships, and planes in the world combined.

Similarly, a 2009 report published in Scientific American remarked that “producing beef for the table has a surprising environmental cost: it releases prodigious amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.” The greenhouse gas emissions from producing a pound of beef, the study found, are 58 times greater than those from producing a pound of potatoes.

Some people thought the Live Earth concert handbook was exaggerating when it stated that, “Refusing meat is the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint,” but it wasn’t. This is literally true. Even Environmental Defense, a group that was called George W. Bush’s favorite environmental group for its less-than-radical stands, calculates that if every meat eater in the United States swapped just one meal of chicken per week for a vegetarian meal, the carbon savings would be equivalent to taking half a million cars off the road.

People have begun comparing eating little or no animal products with driving a Prius (”Vegetarianism is the new Prius”) and likewise compared eating meat with driving a Hummer. But this comparison, as striking as it is, actually understates the amount of greenhouse gases that stem from meat. In 2006, a University of Chicago study found that a vegan diet is far more effective than driving a hybrid car in reducing our carbon footprint. Scientists who have done the calculations say that a Prius driver who consumes a meat-based diet actually contributes more to global warming than a Hummer driver who eats low on the food chain.

Then, in late 2009, Worldwatch Institute published a seminal report that took things further. The thoughtful and meticulously thorough study, written by World Bank agricultural scientist Robert Goodland, who spent 23 years as the Bank’s lead environmental adviser, and Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist for the Bank, came to the conclusion that animals raised for food account for more than half of all human-caused greenhouse gases. Eating plants instead of animals, the authors state, would be by far the most effective strategy to reverse climate change, because it “would have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations-and thus on the rate that the climate is warming-than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

I often see very well-intentioned people going to all sorts of lengths to live a greener lifestyle. It’s sadly ironic that they sometimes ignore what would be the single most effective thing they could be doing. If we are really committed to saving the environment we need to know where our leverage is. We need to focus on where we can get the most benefit. Eating lower on the food chain is a real boon to the whole earth community. The good life doesn’t have to cost the planet.

The question we will collectively answer with our lives in the coming years is this: Are we going to take the earth’s needs into account, or are we going to indulge our appetites without regard for the impact we’re having on the environment?

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released at the end of 2007, was the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken. Its authors included thousands of scientists from dozens of countries. It unequivocally predicted serious risks and damages to species, ecosystems, human infrastructure, societies, and livelihoods in the future unless drastic action to reduce warming was taken.

Summarizing our current predicament, the Worldwatch Institute says that if we do not radically change course, “Children born today will find their lives preoccupied with a host of hardships created by an inexorably warming world. Food supplies will be diminished and many of the world’s forests will be destroyed. Not just the coral reefs that nurture many fisheries but the chemistry of the oceans will face disruption.”

And one more thing: We all know that everyone needs to eat, but we tend to overlook the fact that it’s not efficient to cycle grain through animals. The production of a pound of feedlot beef requires sixteen pounds of corn and soybeans. That’s why the noted author Frances Moore Lappé called modern meat production “a protein factory in reverse.” From the point of view of world hunger, if you feed corn and soybeans to livestock, you’re actually wasting most of the protein and other nutrients that you’ve grown. If you think about the vast numbers of people who are starving on our planet, it begins to look like a crime against humanity to take 80 percent of the corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. today and feed it to livestock. But that is exactly what we are doing, so we can have cheap meat. Cheap, that is, if you don’t count the human suffering that is and will be caused by climate deterioration, the cruelty to billions of animals, and the unmet food needs of hundreds of millions of people.

It’s striking to me how much correlation there is between the food choices that are the healthiest, those that are the least expensive, and those that are most socially and environmentally responsible. It is a fact of singular significance today that eating lower on the food chain—eating more plants and fewer animals—addresses all of these goals in a positive way.

While efforts to use government as an agent of social change don’t have the best reputation, this could be an instance in which such an approach might be useful. Since we have taxes, why don’t we tax the things that are bad for the world and use some of that money to lower the price of things that are good? This would be a revenue-neutral way of fostering a better world. For example, what if we taxed agrochemicals and used the revenue to subsidize organic and other safe forms of growing food? What if we taxed junk food and used the income to subsidize fresh fruits and vegetables? What if we taxed white bread and used the revenue to lower the price of whole wheat bread? What if we taxed products that are responsible for a disproportionate share of greenhouse gases, such as meat, and used the money to subsidize vegetable gardens and fruit orchards in every school and neighborhood in the country?

The results would be impressive: We’d have genuinely happy meals, because we’d be eating far better and at far less expense. We’d be so much healthier as people that what we’d save in medical bills would go a long way toward solving the crisis in the health care system. And we’d dramatically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and thus have a more stable climate.

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Breakfast: Smoothie with 1 peach, frozen mango, spinach, and soy milk
Lunch: Brown rice medley (some fancy mixed rices from Whole Foods) with pinto beans and a cucumber and tomato salad
Dinner: A large baked potato with olive oil, garlic salt, minced onion flakes, and fresh rosemary – this was really delicious!!

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Most people don’t think of ducks and geese when they think of cruelty to farmed animals, but over 25 million ducks are slaughtered each year on factory farms. Ducks and geese are both severely abused by the meat and foie gras industries. Kept in small cages, often unable to even move, inside dirty and dark sheds, these birds often suffer from disease and injury, just as chickens and turkeys in similar conditions do.

Ducks and geese raised for foie gras (which literally means “fatty liver”) have a pipe shoved down their throats three times a day so that two pounds of grain can be pumped into their stomachs to produce this “fatty liver” that some diners consider a delicacy. Foie gras is the liver of a duck or goose who has been force fed to the point where his liver is over 10 times its normal size. Only male ducks/geese are used, and females are discarded by the industry, similar to the egg industry. (And by “discarded” I mean: killed either by being suffocated in a garbage bag or by being thrown alive into a grinder.)

Foie gras production has been deemed cruel and inhumane by experts worldwide, including the Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare.  The state of California passed a law banning foie gras because of the cruelty involved. (The city of Chicago banned foie gras in 2006, then devastatingly lifted the ban in 2008.)  California proudly joins a list of 15 countries that have banned this cruel practice.

Dr. Ward Stone, the senior wildlife pathologist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, has conducted necropsies on ducks who died during force feeding at Hudson Valley Foie Gras and writes, “I eat meat including ducks on occasion. However, the short tortured lives of ducks raised for Foie Gras is well outside the norm of farm practice. Having seen the pathology that occurs from Foie Gras Production, I strongly recommend that this process be outlawed.” You can read his reports here and here.

Nearly everyone has gone to the park as a child to feed the ducks and geese. We still gaze in awe when we watch their perfectly shaped formations fly overhead. Little do we realize that these formations are strategically designed to reduce the air (or water) resistance for the birds in the rear. Ducks and geese fly hundreds of miles each year to migrate. Ducks live in close-knit family groups and geese choose a single partner and mate exclusively for life, even mourning for a significant amount of time when a partner dies.

If you want to help these fantastic birds, boycott their meat and foie gras and encourage others to do so as well.

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Breakfast: Fresh fruit smoothie with 1 peach, 2 bananas, almond milk & ice
Lunch: Amy’s non-dairy baked ziti
Dinner: Spaghetti with tomato sauce

Related Posts:

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The move from DC to Austin was a success!

After my last day of work in DC, I jetted down to Palm Beach, FL for some between-jobs-R&R.

As soon as I got back to DC, the movers came to pack up our stuff and our friends threw us an AMAZING Texas-themed going away party, complete with: a death row inmate and sheriff, a Texas flag button-down + tie and a televangelist’s wife, a hillbilly and a Texas park ranger, lots of boots and cowboy hats, and “I heart DC” garb for Ed and I.

For our last meal in DC, we enjoyed one of our favorites – Ethiopian – in one of our favorite neighborhoods – U Street.

And on our last night, we walked down The Mall one final time.

Monday: Washington, DC to Knoxville, TN

Road trip begins with a drive through Shenandoah National Park

And day one ends in downtown Knoxville.

Breakfast: Bagel & cream cheese from Starbuck’s in DC
Lunch: Burrito bowl from Qdoba somewhere in Virginia

Dinner: Veggie burger from Downtown Grill & Brewery in Knoxville

Tuesday: Knoxville, TN to Tuscaloosa, AL

We stopped in Huntsville, AL to check out the NASA Rocket Museum (which was awesome)!

After a few hours at the museum, we met up with friends in Huntsville for an early dinner, then drove through Birmingham to see the Vulcan Statue (Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good picture because it was so dark outside), then on to Tuscaloosa to crash for the night.

Breakfast: Bagel and cream cheese from the continental breakfast at our hotel in Knoxville
Lunch: Veggie fried rice at PF Chang’s in Huntsville

Dinner: Tofu and veggie panang curry at Surin with friends in Huntsville

Wednesday: Tuscaloosa, AL to New Orleans, LA

Our hotel in New Orleans was adorable.

We enjoyed good drinks and great music on Bourbon.

Breakfast: “Loaded” (with tomato, jalapeno, and onion) hash browns and a biscuit at Waffle House in Tuscaloosa

Lunch: Two bean burrito frescos from Taco Bell somewhere in Mississippi
Dinner: Eggplant muffaletta at some tourist trap on Bourbon in New Orleans

Thursday: New Orleans, LA

We stayed one more day in NOLA to really soak it up. We spent the day shopping, eating, and touring (french market, garden district, drove down to the 9th Ward, blackjack at Harrah’s, etc.)

I love that there are Mardi Gras beads stuck everywhere!

Brunch: Veggiecherros (lots of veggies inside tortillas) at Slim Goodie’s in New Orleans

Afternoon snack: Beignets at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans

Dinner: Fried artichoke hearts, house salad, and a children’s menu cheese pizza (literally the only 3 veggie items on the entire menu) at Deanie’s in New Orleans

Friday: New Orleans, LA to Austin, TX

We arrived late Friday night then the movers came with our stuff on Saturday and we’re currently trying to get things unpacked and in order.

Breakfast: none
Lunch: Red beans & rice, mashed potatoes, and a biscuit at Popeye’s somewhere in Louisiana

Dinner (Inaugural Austin meal): Freebirds burrito

It’s good to be home.