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So You Want to Go Vegan? Here Are 5 Books to Help

Heather Dale — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:12:52 PDT

From full-blown meat eaters to even vegetarians, once you decide you want to adopt a vegan diet, there's a lot of learning that takes place. Being a vegan not only requires a shift in your food selections, but it also requires a lifestyle change. An extension of vegetarianism, a vegan refrains from consuming animal products and avoids products that contain any ingredients from animals. Whether you're going vegan for the betterment of your health, for the environment, or because of your love for animals, here are some books to help you in your quest.

Foodie Friday Link Time

FitSugar — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:30:40 PDT

Yummy Summer lunch where seasonal produce takes center stage - Eat, Live, Run
For the love of eggs! Jason Mraz gives up veganism - FitCeleb
Ways to make your morning meal a fat-blaster - Health
Cool yourself down with avocado gazpacho - Tone It Up
Flaxseeds: this tiny food packs quite a nutritional punch - That's Fit.ca
Add some garbanzo beans to your cherry tomatoes for salad success - Snack Girl

Yummy Links: From Burritos to Rhubarb Bread Pudding

partysugar — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:50:08 PDT

Learn how to build a burrito bar. - Chow
Everything you need to know about Grüner Veltliner. - Eat Me Daily
Five superfoods to incorporate into your daily diets. - The Epi-Log
Meet the 50 worst restaurants in the world. - Huffington Post Food
One man claims he has not consumed any food or drink in over 70 years.- Good Bite
David Chang and Michael Pollan are two of Time's most influential people.- Grub Street NY
Michael Ruhlman discusses his new book and his feelings for Starbucks.- Eater
Must make: rhubarb bread pudding with whiskey sauce. - Serious Eats

What Do You Know About Our Food Systems?

YumSugar — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:50:58 PDT

With Earth Day on the horizon, I've been giving a lot of thought to eating less meat and greenifying my kitchen. I also recently rewatched the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc., which brought to light even more harsh realities about our country's food production and consumption. Since I was so inspired to make changes in my food purchases, I decided I'd put together a quiz on some of the statistics I learned while watching the movie. What do you know about commercial food production and consumption in America today? Find out when you get started on our game below!

Take the Quiz

Yummy Links: From Gail Simmons to Michael Pollan

partysugar — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:15:16 PST

Gail Simmons's guide to packing. - Travel + Leisure
An inside look at New York City's illegal beekeepers. - Chow
Does it really matter if you forget an ingredient? - The Epi-Log
Catch up with some of Top Chef 6's cheftestants. - Grub Street NY
10 new things to put in your drink. - Endless Simmer
Taste test: vegan burgers. - Serious Eats
Michael Pollan and Oprah discuss seal blubber and cow's blood. - Eater

Michael Pollan Schools Us on Eating Well

FitSugar — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:00:11 PST

A great way to start off the new year is to pick up Michael Pollan's latest book, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual ($7). Food Rules contains 64 rules to live by when it comes to eating, like rule number 19: If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.

Each rule goes back to Pollan's basic tenet, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," and is humorous, simple, and memorable. Pollan is a must read if you're interested in changing your dietary habits, and Food Rules is a quick and accessible peek into the food guru's larger manifesto. Recently, he shared a few of his rules with The Huffington Post - give them a look before you sit down to your next meal.

Source: Jupiter Images

Michael Pollan's Food Rules to Live By

FitSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:00:47 PDT

I've had a crush on Michael Pollan for a while now, and though the specifics of his food manifesto may be hard for everyone to adopt, I think his basic rules are ones to live by: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (And processed food is not food.)

Whenever finishing a book or essay by Pollan, I always walk away with a new food rule myself. I was excited to see that in this year's annual New York Times Magazine food issue, Pollan turns the tables, asking what food rules we the readers live by.

There were thousands of submissions, and of those, Pollan picked the ones he felt made the most sense for a healthy life. What I found interesting was what he said about the ones he didn't use, "a banquet of food policies that even when they made little, if any, nutritional sense . . . nevertheless opened a window on our current thinking about food: the stories we tell ourselves, the games we play and the taboos we invoke to organize our eating lives."

I've been guilty of this myself - eating something "healthy" when it was nothing more than processed crap.

Learn a simple rule when you

Must See Movie: Food, Inc.

FitSugar — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

With the amount of food recalls seeming to grown annually, it is easy to feel that our food system in the US is broken, and after watching the 94 minute documentary Food, Inc., you learn that it truly is.

From the opening shots of the supermarket, we begin to learn how corn and the fast food industry have changed the way Americans both grow and eat food. While the movie repeats many of the facts from Michael Pollan's informative book, In Defense of Food, the facts are just as interesting the second time around. Food, Inc. also delves deeper into the chemical giant Monsanto and its role in destroying the family farm from the seeds on up. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation shares the narrator role with Pollan, and these two tear down the food industrial food system starting with corn and moving quickly to the meat industry. The film is peppered with interviews with farmers - chicken, corn, and soy - whose lives have been dramatically altered by multinational corporations' interest in commanding the food chain. The film is disturbing to say the least, but it ends with tales from Polyface farm, a family operation that makes food seem wholesome again. I left the theater charged up to make changes not only in my daily diet, but to petition the government to give power back to their regulatory arms, the USDA and FDA, to help keep our food supply safe. The Food, Inc. website has a petition to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. After watching this documentary, you may never look at food the same way again.

Check out the trailer after the break.

Food, Inc. Film Exposes Problems With US Food Consumption

YumSugar — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:00:20 PDT

In addition to being captured in photos by National Geographic, the sustainable food crisis is also the focus of a new documentary. Magnolia Pictures' Food, Inc. is a call to action to change the way America eats. It discusses food consumption today, its heavy dependence on corn, its ties to national policy, and its inevitable impact on our nation's health.

Based on the book Food, Inc. (and similar to The Omnivore's Dilemma), the premise of this film appears to be similar: the country's food system, with its focus on making food bigger, cheaper, and faster, is making America sick. The movie also addresses the contamination issues plaguing the nation and the enormous power wielded by US food corporations, with sustainable food poster boys Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser making appearances in the documentary.

If you haven't seen it yet, below is the trailer for the film, which debuts in select cities June 12. Do you think this documentary will prove to be as influential as proponents are hoping it to be? Will you go see it?

Source

Will Obama Change the Country's Food System?

YumSugar — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:15:05 PST

With President-Elect Barack Obama taking office in two months, changes to our country's economy, national security, and foreign policy are imminent. But will America's agricultural system change with Obama in the White House as well? In an interview last month with Time magazine's Joe Klein, Obama commented on a recent article in the New York Times written by Michael Pollan, the country's preeminent critic of modern factory agriculture, saying:

Our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the meantime, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs.

With Obama in the process of selecting new members for his administration, activists have begun circulating a petition for the new president to appoint Michael Pollan as the country's new Secretary of Agriculture. Do you agree with Obama's remarks that the country's food system is in need of reform? Do you believe this is the beginning of a new agricultural era for the United States?

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