You may or may not know that I just recently moved to San Francisco, California from Washington, D.C. I made the drive with my Dad last week and you can read about what I ate on the road as a vegan.

What you probably don’t realize is that I now officially have my first two vegan friends living in the same place I live!

While I have a few vegan friends and family members in other parts of the country, none of them lived in DC with me.

That’s ok, I’m used to being the only one refraining from eating meat.

But I didn’t really consider what it was like to have friends that ate the way I did too.

This past weekend me and some of my friends here in Cali rented a car and drove up to Santa Rosa, CA to watch the Tour of California bike race and do a hike. It was me, my buddy, his girlfriend, and his roommate.

My buddy and his girlfriend are both vegan, which means that we actually outnumbered his non-vegan roommate 3-1. I have never experienced that before. I’m always the 1, never the 3.

So we looked up a vegan plant-based cafe in Santa Rosa and had an amazing lunch. We stopped at a vegan Chinese restaurant back in San Francisco for dinner. And even dropped by a soft serve ice cream shop with vegan flavors for dessert!

It was great that we just did these things and didn’t have to worry. It was funny — my friend and his gf were constantly checking with his roommate to see if he was OK with where we were grabbing food, another role reversal, as most people usually have to check with me to make sure I can eat!

Of course he isn’t a carnivore so he found plenty

It was funny how totally normal it felt to have a full menu at my disposal TWICE in one day and have friends eating the same type of food as me.

It was only in retrospect that I remembered that as a vegan my life isn’t usually like that anymore, and it was reminiscent of what it was like to be an omnivore.

If you are vegan, seek out other vegans. Of course don’t only hang out with other vegans. But do find them. Do yourself a favor and make some like minded friends, it goes a long way. Meetup.com is a great place to start. Search for vegan groups in your area. You’ll be sure to meet some good folks that don’t think it’s strange when you order the tofu bowl

Memphis has great vegan food.

Seven days ago my father and I loaded up a Dodge Minivan with all of my worldly possessions and we set off across the country, driving from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, California.

There are several routes you can take, the most common (and quickest according to Google Maps) is the northern route — through Chicago, then Nebraska and Utah and eventually to California.

I’ve driven several stretches of this route many, many times, so we opted to go the slightly longer Southern route.

This took us through the great state of Tennessee, across Arkansas, through Oklahoma, and criss-crossing the hot desert heat of New Mexico and Arizona.

While this route took us to states I’d never been and places I’d never seen, one thing I didn’t consider was that it was likely the far less “vegan friendly” route.

I mean — the South isn’t exactly known for their plant-based cuisine.

So how’d we do?

Let me just say that 2016 is a great time to be vegan. Through the assistance of the app Happy Cow, we had little trouble finding vegan food in any of the major cities we passed through. The smaller towns were tougher, however we got a nice assist from Yelp. So let’s take a look at what we were able to find out there on the open road:

Day 1: Washington, DC to Nashville, TN

Our first stop was a Greek cafe in Lexington, VA called “Niko’s Grille.” We found this spot with the Happy Cow app and it was a great first meal! They had listed on the menu a vegan sandwich that was super tasty. I always appreciate when a menu flat out labels something as vegan, no need to ask for special requests or how it was prepared!

For dinner we stopped in a tiny little Tennessee town, also at a place we found on the app. They had a separate vegan menu, a surprise for a town of less than 5,000 people! Delicious food too.

Day 2: Nashville, TN to Oklahoma City, OK

Imagine Cafe

For lunch we stopped in Memphis, Tennessee, a town known for their barbecue. Finding a vegan option felt like a tall order, but we ended up finding what was, for me at least, my favorite meal (and restaurant) of the entire trip!

The menu

I cannot recommend highly enough Imagine Cafe in Memphis, TN. A fully vegan restaurant, they made a killer vegan barbecue sandwich platter, and the atmosphere of the whole place was just awesome! This was the only fully vegan restaurant we found on the entire trip, and I can’t tell you how nice it is to have an entire menu to choose from. Definitely check this place out if you’re ever on your way through Memphis.

For dinner we leaned on Yelp to find us Happy Cafe in tiny little Henryetta, OK. I
ordered the orange tofu and the cook who made it personally came out to ask me how it was, I suspect because not many people in small town Oklahoma are ordering the tofu dish! Well she was pleased to learn that it was delicious!

Day 3: Oklahoma City, OK to Holbrook, AZ

We stopped in Amarillo, TX for lunch on day 3, and Happy Cow couldn’t find much for us, so we went with the old reliable, Chipotle, for lunch. One of my favorite restaurants, because not only is it delicious, but it’s uber easy to order vegan!

For dinner we stopped in Gallup, NM for our most interesting restaurant of the trip — an Indian restaurant at a truck stop! Not what I expected to find at a truck stop, but they were more than happy to make me a vegan chickpea dish that was delicious! We found this hidden gem with Happy Cow as well.

Day 4: Holbrook, AZ to Bakersfield, CA

Since we were making such good time and were ahead of schedule we decided to take a few hours off driving and go for a hike in Flagstaff, AZ. We bought some PB&J supplies and had a picnic on the trail. PB&J is one of those meals everyone forgets is vegan when they say “I don’t like any vegan food!”

And for dinner we stopped in Barstow, CA at an authentic Mexican place! Happy Cow gave us no listings, so I had to rely on a trick with Yelp that’s helped me out many times in a bind. For any restaurant you can search keywords in their reviews. I knew we wanted to find authentic Mexican, so I picked a few spots and searched for the word “vegan.” For Lola’s I found a review that someone had posted about how they were more than happy to accommodate and make her a vegan meal, so I walked up confidently to order, and voila — a vegan burrito was delivered and it was delicious!

Day 5: Bakersfield, CA to San Francisco, CA

We routed through Mountain View, CA for lunch so we could stop at Veggie Grill — the all vegan fast food chain! It’s always fantastic — I can’t wait for it to expand nationwide.

And for dinner we ate at Plant Cafe on the Embarcadero, right next to San Francisco Bay, a perfect end to a wonderful (vegan friendly) road trip through the south!

Download Happy Cow today, and don’t forget that Yelp trick! If I could find a tofu dish in Henryetta, OK, you truly can eat vegan anywhere in the country! You just have to be willing to put in a little research

What if I told you there was a single word that could encapsulate the entire production method of a product?

This word was so descriptive and ironclad in its definition that a product, once graced with its letters, would immediately be elevated to a more optimal choice.

What’s better — this term could be applied to products that were made not only in your community or region, but all over the country and even the world, by big companies and tiny mom & pop shops, mass produced and artisanally created.

Essentially, this term would tell you that a product made by your local shop AND by a Fortune 500 company were equally valuable and worthy of your purchase.

Think that’s possible?

Probably not.

Why? Because the manner in which a product is produced matters. And it’s incredibly complex.

How a Fortune 500 company — let’s say Target — makes a shirt, will be vastly different than a shirt you might find at your local farmers market. The former might use methods and labor that you would find appalling. The latter likely crafted their product themselves with care.

Now I am not saying either product is better than the other, I am simply trying to point out that in both cases the shirt-maker has the right to use a particular term that is quite popular these days: organic.

If Target used organic cotton, they get to use that label, even if they used cheap foreign labor to produce it. Likewise, your local shirtmaker can use the term organic too if they used an organically grown textile to make the shirt.

Two wildly different processes, same exact term.

Does organic sufficiently describe the value of the good, then, in this case?

The same holds true for food.

Organic food sales are booming across the country. And while there may certainly be some merits to some of the practices used by these farms, it is equally true that not every organic farm uses every best practice or sustainable method.

Some organic farms are simply behemoths — giant corporate run industrial farms that can use the term organic because they fit the label.

But those giant farms resemble a conventional farm more than they do the image you have in your head when you think “organic.” They’re typically not your small, local, diversified farm run by a nice family with a dog.

They are monocultures.

Organic is just a word, and it tells you very little about the type of system in which your food was grown.

Local

Ok so maybe local food is the answer.

The benefit of local food is that it is produced in your community, typically speaking. The actual definition of local food can vary depending on who you ask.

Here in D.C. we have a “local” grocery store that attempts to only carry locally grown or produced products. They define local as anything grown or produced in the states of the Chesapeake watershed.

In practice this means something grown as far away as Massena, NY (529 miles from D.C.) can be sold at their store as a “local” product. Half a thousand miles doesn’t feel too local…

Now I’m not at all knocking their definition of local food — I am simply pointing out that this term, like “organic,” is a bit loosely defined. Local does not necessarily mean the farm 30 miles down the road that you can visit on the weekend. It may be much further away than you think.

Similarly to the word “organic,” something labeled as “local” doesn’t actually tell you anything about the production methods. The only thing it tells you (and this is even debatable) is that the product likely didn’t travel as far to get to you, compared to other products in the store.

That’s it.

It doesn’t tell you anything about how the food was produced. In a post from several years ago I joked about the fact that if you happened to live in a town with a Coca Cola bottling plant that you could sit back and enjoy a “local Coke.”

Including where ingredients were assembled in the definition of “local food” is a bit dubious. At best, the benefit is keeping money in the local economy. “At least Martha down the street is getting my chocolate chip cookie money instead of Nabisco!”

Is that a benefit? Absolutely. But was the cacao in the chocolate chips grown locally? Unless you live in the tropics, probably not. So assembling products from around the planet down the block is hardly a local food, in my opinion.

The point of all of this is not to disparage “organic” and “local” food. It is more to point out that both of these terms probably mean a bit less than you realize.

I think the hope is that each of these words are synonymous with “sustainable.” But when corporate mega-farms can technically use both of these words without issue, I think we’ve elevated them a bit more than they deserve.

What should we eat, then?

It’s at least partially due to these issues that I’ve firmly planted my flag in the vegan and plant-based movement. If we want to work toward a more sustainable food system we have to take the 30,000 foot view.

Sure organic and local food have their place and their benefits. But the far bigger line must be drawn between plant foods and animal foods.

It is simply a law of thermodynamics that growing plant foods for human consumption will ALWAYS be more efficient than raising animals for food.

We can either go

Plants -> Humans, or

Plants -> Animals -> Humans.

When we insert animals into the middle of our food chains we lose A TON of energy in the process. That is inefficiency. That is the reason animal agriculture currently uses more than 50% of ALL land in the contiguous United States. That is the reason you can feed a vegan for a year on just 1/16th of an acre of land while a meat-eater needs 18 times as much land. That is the reason the carbon footprint of a vegan is half that of an omnivore. And that is the reason for 91% of Amazon deforestation — clearing land to feed animals and then us, instead of us directly.

Organic and Local may have their place in a sustainable food system. I am not here to say they are worthless terms. But make no mistake about it — if you want to make a real, measurable impact on the planet and create a new sustainable food system for the future, EAT MORE PLANTS (and less meat).

That’s where the clearest line must be drawn.

Friday is Earth Day.

I say it every single year.

I say it every single year because it is that important, that staggering, and sadly still that unknown.

Going vegan is by far the most important choice you can make to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and improve the health of the planet.

Animal agriculture accounts for anywhere between 18-51% of total greenhouse gas emissions — ALL transportation combined accounts for 13%.

So you could NEVER take another plane, train, bus, boat, or taxi again in your life.

Or you could just eat plants for the rest of your life.

One is completely unfathomable. The other is a nice way to live. It’s healthier. It doesn’t harm animals. And the impact of the going vegan would be far greater anyway.

If you still need convincing on the environmental benefits of a vegan diet, watch the documentary Cowspiracy. It’s streaming on Netflix right now. It’s amazing. When you’re done, sign up for their Thunderclap campaign to promote the message to your social network online.

So drive less, use less water, buy solar panels, plant a garden. All great things to do for the environment this year. Just know that what’s on your plate is and will always be the most important choice you make for the environment. So choose plants.

Happy Earth Week!

Let’s do a quick thought experiment.

Why do two different products have different prices? What determines the price of a thing?

How about we make it more specific. Take chocolate.

You may have noticed that there is a difference between a Hershey Bar and that $4 artisanal bar of organic fair trade dark chocolate that supports Amazon Rainforest protection.

Not only is there a difference in quality, but there is a BIG difference in price. That Hershey Bar is made in a factory, in an industrial process that has used every modern tool to create efficiencies and reduce costs. The least amount of resources are used to maximize profit.

That artisanal $4 bar was likely made my hand in a much more traditional, lower tech way. It was less efficient to produce and thus costs waaaay more.

What does this have to do with cows?

Well there is this notion that many environmentalists have that grass-fed beef is somehow better for the environment than industrial beef.

Now before I go any further let me be clear: I am not saying anything about the ethical or nutrient differences between the two products. Those can be discussed in later posts.

Why was industrial animal agriculture created? Why has it done so well to the point where 99% of animals raised for food in the United States are raised on industrial farms?

If it’s one thing industrial agriculture does well it’s efficiency.

It treats the farm like a factory.

That certainly leads to some pretty nasty unintended consequences (this is where the ethical conversation applies), but treating animals like inputs and outputs in a factory has created a very efficient system.

Meat can be delivered for cheap.

That’s why you get 12 nuggets for $0.99 or two burgers for $1.49.

Use pasture raised chickens and grass-fed beef for those items and you’d be paying 5-10 times as much for your lunch!

So what does this have to do with the environment?

In terms of the environment efficiency is usually a good thing. A more fuel-efficient car saves you money and also emits fewer greenhouse gases per mile on the road.

A more efficient air-conditioner does the same, just like a more efficient thermostat, heater, laptop, or refrigerator.

Well from a greenhouse gas perspective cows are no different, and in this analogy believe it or not, industrial cows are the hybrids.

They use fewer inputs (energy) to produce the same output as a grass-fed cow.

That’s why it’s cheaper.

Grass-fed cows also need far more land than industrial corn-fed cows. It’s another inefficiency of grass-fed cattle, and another reason why their meat costs more.

This means that most people cannot afford grass-fed meat, making it a less viable solution for meeting current demand for meat. There’s no question that switching to only grass-fed animals would have some benefits, but one outcome would be far reduced meat consumption.

Don’t get me wrong — neither are a good way of feeding 8 billion humans and growing. Cows are inherently inefficient converters of solar energy. Solar energy converted to plant energy can feed billions of humans.

In fact, the food fed to the world’s cattle would feed an additional 8.7 billion humans if we fed people directly instead of through a cow first.

But at least when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, the grass-fed cow is more like the Cadillac than the Prius.

Even given the constraints of a French menu, they have several vegan options and many who work there are vegan. Upon request they can accommodate a vegan with many delicious meals.

That wasn’t enough to stop one particular vegan from tearing into them with everything he had the other day. While dining with some friends, this vegan was hurt and offended that they couldn’t make him the precise meal he was looking for and weren’t “quote” sensitive to his dietary needs.

It sounded like the dude had a straight up temper tantrum, causing a scene, and writing a scathing review on the restaurant’s Facebook page demanding an apology.

Vegans — this is NOT the way to act.

Years before I went vegan I was vegetarian, and for the longest time my last major holdout was cheese.

The stuff is admittedly delicious.

And even though I knew it was horrible for my health, the environment, and the cows, I felt as though I was addicted.

Knowing this and wanting to be vegan, I tried to find good substitutes. After all, veggie burgers weaned me off beef, almond milk was more delicious to me than cow’s milk, and even other fake meats sufficed in times when I was really jonesing.

So one summer on Cape Cod, my friends and I picked up a package of “rice cheese.” This was 6 or 7 years ago and this seemed to be the best available option on the shelf.

We took it back to our house and opened up a few slices to try.

And it. was. disgusting.

Truly gross. Terrible flavor, awful texture. Just unpalatable.

We tossed the slice out onto a trail in the woods (we lived on a nature sanctuary). Over the next few days I’d pass this slice everyday on my walk to work, and after a week it hadn’t been touched.

Not one bite, nibble. No insect or ants swarming. Nothing.

It was clear. Nature had decided. THIS IS NOT FOOD.

In that moment I declared “I guess cheese is just the one thing they can’t replicate.”

I resigned myself to needing to simply give up that flavor altogether in order to be vegan, and it took me a few years before I could finally let it go.

Well, the funny thing is a lot has changed in the last 6 or 7 years. Not only have meat substitutes become so good they trick meat eaters (I just tricked an entire Final Four party with Gardein Chik’n Tenders — no one could tell they weren’t meat!), but cheese substitutes have officially arrived.

There are a few brands I’ve tried and actually enjoy. Daiya was the original brand where I started to think “ok maybe they’re onto something…”

The latest is Follow Your Heart. My parents love this stuff and while I’m staying with them I have to say I indulge as well. The flavor and texture is spot on.

More artisanal options are popping up everyday as well. In Minneapolis the world’s first vegan butcher shop, The Herbivorous Butcher, sells incredible vegan cheeses that I promise you would fool your most diehard cheese addict.

And in New York and L.A. vegan cheese shops are popping up everywhere.

It appears 2016 is the year to surrender to vegan cheese.

As an illustration of just how good these alternatives are, I present the case of my father.

Growing up he and I shared a Sunday afternoon tradition where we would make what he dubbed the “perfect lunch,” which was a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.

Long after I went vegan he kept this tradition alive, and I was bummed I could no longer participate.

Those days are over.

Today his perfect lunches are entirely vegan! He’s switched to Annie’s vegan tomato soup (which he claims is better than his beloved Campbell’s!) and his grilled cheese sandwiches are now entirely made with Follow Your Heart vegan cheeses!

Wow!

Incredible.

If he’s making vegan grilled cheese sandwiches and still calling in the “perfect lunch,” you can bet this stuff is good.

If cheese is your last holdout before going vegan, or maybe ditching dairy is your first step into veganism, explore the world of vegan cheeses. We are lightyears away from the days of rice cheese rotting on a wooded trail. This stuff is good.

Can you picture it? A vegan world? When will it come?

A lot of people ask me this when they find out that I am vegan.

“Do you really think all human beings will give up meat??”

“How will you convince everyone to give up meat?

I think I have an answer:

Make meat unappealing.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking that’s kind of obvious, and you’re probably thinking I mean increase the awareness over the animal rights, environmental and health disaster that is animal agriculture.

And while I do think all three of those things are incredibly important to educate people about, that’s not what I mean.

Maybe I’ll put it differently: make alternatives the appealing choice.

Yes, I’m talking about fake meat.

Here’s the deal — meat from animals is inefficient. You pretty much can’t argue this. It’s just physics. It’s ecology. Eating higher on the food chain is inherently inefficient. Eating lower on the food chain will always be more efficient.

Why? Because things higher on the food chain require more inputs (water, food, fertilizer, antiobiotics, etc). Those inputs cost money and resources and are thusly inefficient.

Plants are lower on the food chain and are more efficient, both from a resource perspective and a cost perspective.

So alternatives (yes, I mean fake meat) outperform meat from animals in cost and environmental efficiency. They also obviously outperform meat from animals from an ethical standpoint. No dead cows means a more ethical burger.

The remaining question: taste.

Well if you haven’t tried fake meat in awhile, they are damn good. I’ve fooled many meat-loving peers of mine with fake meat products. I’ve served them without telling them what it was and they’ve been floored. I’ve asked them “if fake meat tasted identical or better to the real thing would you eat it?” I’ve never had a friend answer anything other than “yes.”

Then there’s this: a vegan burger just won Best Burger in the World.

Note: that didn’t say “Best Veggie Burger in the World.” Meat burgers were in the running, but one made from plants won the day.

So if plants can be cheaper, better for the environment, more humane, more nutritious and tastier???

We may not have to convince anyone to go vegan, we merely have to continue to work to make alternatives win in all these categories. If it’s cheaper and tastes just as good, this will be the end of meat and no one will miss it.

For more meat-free products check out Gardein, Beyond Meat, Tofurky, and many others. If you live in the Minneapolis area you can check out the world’s first Vegan Butcher for artisanal vegan meats and cheeses at The Herbivorous Butcher.

*That burger is 100% vegan. It won Best Burger

If you follow current health trends online — subscribe to a blog, follow a nutrition “expert” on social media, etc — you may feel like there is a ridiculous amount of conflicting evidence pointing one way or another on diet advice.

There’s the classic divide between paleo and vegan, but then there’s low-carb, low-fat, high-fat, Zone, South Beach, etc.

There’s a lot to be confused about.

Or so it would seem…

The reality is there is far more consensus on what we should be eating than you probably realize. Why might you not know this?

Controversy sells books.

The next study showing a previously heralded food is bad for you will be music to the ears of book publishers. They can’t wait to sell you the next greatest thing in to the diet crazed public.

Don’t buy the hype. Literally. Save your money.

Healthy eating is simple, and a few weeks ago leaders from all walks of nutrition, paleo advocates and vegan plant-based advocates alike, all met to discuss common ground.

And while many topics were discussed, this is where they landed:

“The foods that define a healthy diet include abundant fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, legumes and minimal amounts of refined starch, sugar and red meat, especially keeping processed red meat intake low.”

Nothing too inflammatory there. Honestly nothing that would make for a New York Times Bestseller.

And that’s how you know it’s true.

All leading experts agree — paleos and vegans — that our diets need to be centered around whole plant foods and not animal or processed foods! It’s really that simple.

They went on to also agree on another key, interesting point:

“Food insecurity cannot be solved without sustainable food systems. Inattention to sustainability is willful disregard for the quality and quantity of food available to the next generation, i.e., our own children.”

And even a paleo die hard, Boyd Eaton, stated: “Red meat is incompatible with environmental health in a sustainable world. We need a diet that equals the nutrition of our Paleo ancestors, but is sustainable.”

The message is clear and simple, and still, to this day, best summed up by Michael Pollan’s seven simple words: “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

If you’d like to read more about this meeting of the minds, as well as see who was on the panel, check out the write up by Forks Over Knives.

SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/20/us/noaa-2015-warmest-year/
SOURCE: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/20/2015-smashes-record-for-hottest-year-final-figures-confirm
SOURCE on 51% claim: https://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf