Taste Better

Piven demonstrates the Big Scare

Actor Jeremy Piven had a mercury scare a while back, which was so bad that he had to leave the theatre production he was working on - apparently his blood mercury levels were 6 times what's considered "normal" (and don't you think it's weird that we've gone from "acceptable in an imperfect world" to "normal"? I mean, ideally shouldn't the normal level of mercury be about zero?), attributed to the fact that he ate fish twice a day for 20 years.

Anyway, he hasn't had fish since.

And that, sadly, is how things work: Big Change usually comes from a Big Scare.

For a lot of us, the Big Scare came from a (gradual or sudden) realization of how our food choices were affecting the animals or the planet. For others, we got The Talk from the doctor. Sure, many of you just figured things out on your own and realized that a plant based diet was simply a better way to go, but Big Life changes often require significant motivation.

And some people never get scared enough. Some people make it to age 102 smoking cigars, and never mind how many thousands of people die at 50 from the same lifestyle, everyone holds onto the hope that they'll win the lottery.

I'm not suggesting that we start scaring the bejeezus out of people to effect change, but simply that we need to realize how hard change can be.

Oh, and I found this via Mark Hawthorne's Twitter account. You are following Mark on Twitter, aren't you? For less exciting stuff, you can find me at @jasondoucette and this site at @tastebetter.

Is fast food vegan? Who cares?

Wow, check out this excerpt from the VRG mailing list about the KFC "Unchicken Sandwich" that we apparently have in Canada - I'm just going to paste it in in italics here without much preamble, form your own thoughts and then you can see what I think after.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) announced in June 2008 that KFC Canada would be offering a vegan mock chicken patty in 461 Prizm-owned franchised stores and some corporate-owned stores who chose to offer it. The Unchicken Sandwich is intended to be a permanent part of the menu according to Matt Prescott of PeTA. He told us that a Canadian company would be supplying KFC Canada with the patty but that the restaurants would do the battering. Prescott said that no KFC in the United States, (or anywhere else in the world), carries this product at this time.

The VRG interviewed the president of the company selling the unchicken patty to KFC Canada. He informed us that his company would be manufacturing the patty and breading it. Both the patty and the breading are all-vegetable. He stated that the bun used by KFC Canada contains milk products. He was not sure of the cooking method used by KFC Canada, but told us that the patty could be prepared by microwave or toaster.

The VRG called KFC Canada and was told by Rick, a customer service representative, to call its Public Relations firm because he had no information about the Unchicken Sandwich.

Yvonne, A PR representative for KFC Canada, did confirm for us that the patty in the Unchicken Sandwich is all-vegetable. She wasn't sure about the breading ingredients or who prepares the breading and how, but told us that she would ask KFC Canada and get back to us.

Yvonne told us that the sandwich can be ordered without mayonnaise. She could not confirm whether the bun contains milk products, whether the patty could be ordered without the bun, or with an all-vegetable bun (or even if there were any at KFC Canada used with other sandwiches). She also did not know about the cooking method of the patty (whether it was microwaved or cooked in oil along with meat products).

In January 2009, the last time that we spoke with Yvonne, she reiterated what PeTA told us: the Unchicken Sandwich is offered in over four hundred restaurants throughout Canada, mostly Prizm-franchised restaurants and in some of the corporate-owned restaurants as well. Yvonne could not say that the product is considered a permanent menu item. She said that only permanent menu items are listed on the website and acknowledged that the Unchicken Sandwich is not listed there.

The VRG has called the PR firm several times since July 2008, always with the same questions. We are always told that no further information is available because KFC Canada is not responding to their emails requesting more information.

OK, I'm back. I couldn't help but read this with a sense of nostalgia. I've tried chasing down ingredients and processing information before from companies and this is often how it goes. It's what inspired me to post the ingredients list is dead and why we aim to supply multiple reader-submitted responses for each product on Barnivore, our vegan alcohol directory.

At the end of the day, the average big company doesn't care about your dietary (or other) preferences. The political games between marketing, product development, and logistics teams take up about 95% of the average day, and they're a much more entertaining way to fill up the 40 hours a week needed to qualify for a paycheck. There are good people in every company, and if you phrase the question right, of course they want to make a difference and bring cool things to the people, but the organizational structure makes it hard for that intent to show through.

There was a time in my life where I would have thought we as vegans had a responsibility to purchase crap from companies that was remotely vegan to "prove there was a market." I now believe that these are transition foods that are being purchased by people who are curious about different diets, and they outnumber vegans by a wide margin. They're the ones who are going to cause a product to sink or swim, and you know what? They're going to be a better judge of whether or not the product is actually any good, because that's what they're going to care about. "Supporting the market" is the reason we still have crappy veggie burgers with peas and corn in them (I know, it's nice to have something that doesn't look like meat, but calling those things burgers makes us an easy target for mockery from just about everyone else.)

I'm glad KFC's doing some experiments in new markets. Frankly, they're going to have to do more of this, because we're going to win eventually, dammit. However, I don't feel like I have to be a part of this one. Is the Unchicken sandwich vegan or even vegetarian? I don't personally care. Is it going to be the first stepping stone for an omnivore to make the transition to a plant-based diet? To me, that's a much more interesting conversation that doesn't require accurate information from any food producer.

(By the way, if you didn't get the VRG report directly from them in your inbox, you should send an email to listserv@listserv.aol.com with the following message: SUB VRG-News {your first and last name} (without the {} brackets.) They send out a ton of interesting stuff once a month, and it's well worth your attention. I love how old school VRG is with their aol.com list - it's not a sign that they're behind the times; it's more like they've got an institution with ancient marble columns while their peers work out of glass skyscrapers. History, eh?)

Photo swiped from Consumerist's post about the same topic. They got it from Getty.

Is every book an activism book?

Mark Hawthorne (activism expert and author of Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism, which we reviewed over here) has a new post up about the recent explosion of animal activism books that's occurred over the past year, and it fascinates me for (at least) two reasons.

First of all, wow, there are a lot of books coming out on this topic! I'm trying to figure out if it's the whole "niche-ification" thing in action, where it's simply not enough to publish a general purpose activism book anymore, or if it's an example of Mark Evans' theory of the onset of DIY creation culture where, as he says, "people who would have never thought about writing a book are now getting the opportunity to do so because they been working on their writing chops for the past few years, built an audience, and shown publishers there may be a market."

Secondly, I think Mark's headline of "Activism Guides for Everyone" is an apt one. These books are suitable for anyone who wants to do what's in the title. The thing of it is, though, that while these books are all relatively new, every book I've read in the past 10 years has been about animal activism. No kidding: when I read something, a part of my mind tries to apply it to outreach. There are the obvious matches like business books etc., but even fiction triggers this effect in my brain, like when a character says a line of dialogue that doesn't have anything to do with veganism but makes me think about human nature and how people are wired and how best to approach the psychological buttons that we all have.

Thankfully TV doesn't hit me the same way or I'd never get anything done :)

All that said, I'm really glad to see this trend. It's a whole lot easier to get key concepts without that translation layer in between, and the titles alone are enough to inspire action in people who spot them on the shelves, so it's a clear win. And hey, maybe I'm an outlier on this one, or maybe not - what happens when you read? Do you have any books that you think are great for activism even if they don't say so in the title?

The best, final, ultimate anti-troll vegan response

Update: unfortunately, the video was removed by the author... He's posted something new that gets into the vegetarian vs vegan debate (he's on the vegetarian side), but I don't want to post it without some counter points, and don't have time to get into it now (which is the lamest "I'm right, dammit but I can't prove it at the moment" line ever, I know...)

Original post, minus video:

Who says everything on this site has to be about me?

I found this via The Twitter on Elaine's site, and if you've ever done any outreach work of any kind, online or off, you'll watch this and enjoy it and feel better, and then you'll go back to whatever it was you were doing. It's 10 minutes long, but there are some gems in there.

This is the video to embed in any forum as soon as a troll comes along. It probably doesn't help in the long run if this is someone's first exposure to a vegan, but damn if this isn't my new audio wallpaper.

Coffee plus cancer equals crap science

So I was reading this story about a scientific study and it made me so frigging angry, but I'm not going to tell you why, because:

a) I want to take 3 minutes and 19 seconds of your time,

b) I'm still frigging angry, and

c) I didn't write this one ahead of time. Just went and did it. See, earlier ones I wrote and then read, but I didn't like the way my eyes tracked the page. So this time I spoke freestyle, which was always the plan once I got better at speaking, but wow, my eyes are all over the place on this one. Watch and have a laugh...

Maybe the next great vegan book should be called Staying Vegan

Erik Marcus has a new book out! It's called The Ultimate Vegan Guide: Compassionate Living Without Sacrifice, and as far as I know It's only available on amazon.com. I haven't read it yet, but it looks to be a great book on how to go vegan.

I don't if we'll ever see a book that's the last word on how and why to go vegan. A lot of the basics stay unchanged but just like you can guess the year a book was published by its cover design, I think the sales copy inside (trust me, if you're trying to persuade someone, it's sales copy) needs to be updated to fit each generation of prospective readers. This looks like it could be a good one for the next few years, more if it gets updated.

Veganism has pretty good coverage for "going vegan" books. But here's the thing: we've got books like Becoming Vegan: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-Based Diet, but where's Staying Vegan? Sometimes it seems like once you've got the basics down all you've got left are cookbooks. Do we need more than that? I don't know. Maybe all we need are reminders of the key animal rights, health, environment, etc arguments from time to time, and a guide to going vegan probably has all of that. Then again, if we're doing all this work to transition people to veganism and the overall numbers are staying pretty much the same, it seems like there's a market out there to keep people on the path for more than a few months.

I don't have any immediate answers, and I don't feel like I'm about to eat a steak anytime soon, but if a book called Staying Vegan came out, I'd buy it in a heartbeat just to see some new ideas.

Update: Lots of great ideas in the comments, but looks like someone's (independently of anything in this post) going ahead with something interesting: http://stayvegan.blogspot.com/

Remember VP?

It's Christmas today, and I don't know if that's got any special signifigance to you or not, so let's just say I hope you're having a great day, and for whatever reason, I'm working on a special present for you.

Some of you might remember a site I used to run called Vegan Porn. No, it wasn't porn. The simplest way to describe it would be Taste Better with a forum.

I've been doing a lot of thinking this year about the need for community on a lot of levels, and there are a bunch of things I want to try out in 2009. A new VP is one of them.

So.

We're going to do a beta soon, which will be invite only. How do you get an invite? Well, I'm not making any guarantees, but the first thing you need to do is let me know you want one. I love comments, but that's not the way to do it - go to the contact form on TasteBetter.com and send me a mail. If you were on the old site, let me know what your username was so it'll save me the trouble of looking it up.

That's pretty much it for now. If you want in, send me a mail and we'll take it from there.

Surviving the Big Holiday Meal as a Vegan

It's Christmas Eve day here, and I'm hanging out at Stately AngelA Manor waiting for the Big Family Dinner tonight.

You may or may not celebrate around this particular holiday, but chances are you've got one or two occasions your life that come up from time to time where you've got to go to a big social gathering involving food where the majority of the people there eat meat.

I'm not going to talk about restaurants today; this is all about the Big Dinner at someone's home, and how you can make it a little more bearable.

First of all, if you've got the chance to bring food, do that. The trick here is to make sure you clear it with the host first. Don't just show up with a casserole, it wrecks whatever plans your host has made and comes off as pretty much insulting.

If you've got some lead time, say, around the time of the invite, just ask if you can bring anything. (Oh, and it's probably also a good time to make sure your host knows that you're vegan.) In a lot of cases, this is going to be really helpful.

If you end up bringing food, bring twice as much as you're planning on eating. Don't bring enough for everyone to have a full meal - that'll just replace the host's cooking, which would be a faux pas, but make sure you've got enough so if someone's interested they can give it a try. You never know, maybe someone else at the table is a closet vegan who hasn't heard this advice yet.

Don't expect that you'll be converting anyone at this dinner. The key messages you'll be delivering are that vegans eat tasty food, and social gatherings aren't a big hassle. If someone wants the recipe, get their email address and send it to them, along with maybe a few other links, but make them links to recipe sites. Don't do the strong sell on veganism, just get them more interested. You can follow up later with something like a link to the Veggie Challenge, where people can get help going meat free for a week.

If you can't bring food, another thing you can do is eat something light before you go. It's the holidays, there are a lot of gatherings going on, and it's not out of the ordinary to have back to back meals, so if you explain that you're actually just having the salad because you're still stuffed from lunch, or even that you're trying to cut back on the holiday weight gain, it's not that unusual.

When you're eating, don't get dragged into a debate about veganism. A holiday meal is probably the absolutely worst time to try to convert someone to a plant based diet, there are way too many emotional ties to food and tradition going on and people can't imagine breaking any of them most of the time, let alone while the food's right in front of them. Just be polite, and say you don't want to get into it here, but if they want to talk about it later on (maybe at your local veg restaurant...), that's cool.

Finally, a quick reminder that if you want to bring some wine over to the get together, we've got hundreds of listings for vegan-friendly alcohol over at Barnivore.com.

Holiday meals can be a bit of a pain, but with a little bit of planning and knowledge of what you're getting yourself into, they can work out alright. Hopefully these quick tips help. What else are you doing to make the Big Holiday Meal more fun?

Professional commentary. Do not attempt!

So I've been away for a while - not really away, but out of the public eye, I guess - and for those of you who had a betting pool of what I've been up to, here's the answer:

I've been watching television.

OK, that hasn't really been the core of my activities, but I was out with the flu a week or two ago, and watched more TV than I'd normally consider healthy. I usually watch shows on DVD or other means (cough downloads cough), so I don't get exposed to as many commercials.

I've seen a lot of commercials lately.

So here's what I noticed: every car commercial, and this happens in a few other industries, but mostly cars at this point, they all have a little disclaimer like "closed set, professional driver, do not attempt" even if the car's just driving down the street.

Meanwhile, I can watch any number of fast food commercials, and I don't see anything like that. Where's the "professional stunt person" disclaimer on, say, Maple Leaf Foods' ads? They're the guys who had a huge listeria outbreak this year that killed 20 some-odd people. We've got deaths and illnesses related directly to a product, which is more than what happens in a basic car commercial (people driving like jackasses cause accidents, but the cars themselves are pretty simple machines), and people can eat these foods on camera without any worry from legal?

That's weird.

I know we don't get a lot of TV airtime for vegan advocacy, but I'd love to see one that's for a fake fast food or meat company, and make everything look legit, except for the new disclaimer that shows up at the bottom throughout the spot. I know, ads for a fake company are probably fraud, but maybe we can find one that's on its way out, owned by someone who's gone crazy from eating so much beef over the years and merge with them.

Or hey, isn't the internet supposed to make everything accessible to everyone and give everyone a voice? How about one of you, or a few of you, get together and put something up on YouTube? My birthday's in April, so you've got plenty of time.

Introducing Barnivore.com!

What, did you think we've been napping these past few months? OK, maybe a little, but we've also been working on a new strategy that downright... strategic.

Our handy vegan alcohol guide has moved to a brand new standalone website over at www.Barnivore.com (get it? Omnivore herbivore barnivore? Clever yeah?), check it out and let us know what you think!

And that's a wrap, for now...

As of April 7, 2008, TasteBetter.com is going on hiatus. The site will stay online, and the Vegan Booze Directory will continue to be updated, but regular updates will cease for the time being while the publisher takes a break and works on developing some new perspectives on activism, both online and off.

Thanks to everyone who had a part, however small, in nearly 7 years of online adventures here on The Better and VP before that. I've learned a lot and really enjoyed collaborating with you. If you want to stay in touch, the contact form still works, and if you subscribe to the newsletter you'll be in the loop for what I'm up to when I come back (but I'm looking forward to some time off, so if you're planning on waiting eagerly by your inbox, pack a great vegan lunch or two.)

Thanks,
Jason

The Colour of Money digs into the world of gift baskets with Vegan Divine

In the latest installment of our vegan business and finance section The Colour of Money, we talk with Santamrit Violet & Simran Khalsa, who are sisters and co-proprietors of Vegan Divine, an online vegan gift basket shop.

I really enjoyed doing this interview, particularly where they said "...it's in direct alignment with how we live, so it's not something that we felt was a burden to do, it's exciting for us to find these things for ourselves and then share these things with others." There are all kinds of great opportunities out there for people to match what they do for a living with how they live every day, and I got a great feeling talking with these two. Check it out and see how it all comes down.

An Animal Friendly Life: The Domination Dynamic

In his latest An Animal Friendly Life column, Eric Prescott continues taking us along the path towards, as he puts it, "a sustainable, morally consistent foundation for achieving animal liberation." This month, Eric examines the relationships between animals and humans in today's society, and how it pertains to advocacy and outreach. If you've enjoyed his past columns, this one will fit right in. If you've been wary of his writing for some reason, this is a good chance to give it another try: check it out here.

Vegan University: What�s the Deal with Honey?

Hooo boy, back when we had a forum this was one of those things where you needed a pair of fireproof underwear, but here we go: Laura's just gone and done it: what's the deal with honey?

I'll admit, I didn't understand the honey thing at first, and eventually went along with it as part of the package, while acknowledging at the same time that I couldn't enjoy, say, almonds without the help of bees. It's a complicated issue, moreso now with the increased commercialization of beekeeping. Check out what Laura thinks and see how it vibes with your philosophy.

Hezbollah Tofu takes Anthony Bourdain down a peg

I admit it - I'm a closet foodie. Deep in the closet, anyway, since I don't get the Food Network and don't subscribe to Fancypants Magazine or anything, but I like watching and reading about chef stuff when I have time - while they might not be vegan, there are a lot of simple tricks that adapt well to vegan cooking.

I read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential a few years back after watching the short lived TV show, and I managed to learn a few things, although I had to get through the occasional shot at vegans, like, oh, this one: "Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."

Know your enemy, folks, know your enemy. Or, better still, mock the hell out of him!

Hezbollah Tofu is my new favourite food blog: they're veganizing Anthony Bourdain recipes. They run the vegan filter so you don't have to! (Though they are accepting recipe submissions)

(via Vegan Bits)