Imagine turning on the tap and having nothing come out. Now, imagine having no tap at all. For so many families, clean water is a luxury. Women walk miles every day to gather water for their families to drink and use for cooking.
We’re so fortunate to have ready access to water that it’s easy to forget that so many live with water scarcity. How would your life be different if you had to expend so much of your energy walking to a far off water source and lugging full containers home for yourself and your family?
Oxfam America is working hard to help increase access to clean drinking water, and they’ve produced a video talking about how this access would benefit families and communities:
Right now, Oxfam is fortunate enough to have a Matching Gift fund. Supporters are matching up to $25,000 in donations to help bring clean water to communities in need. If you’ve got some spare cash, you might consider making a donation.
Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by rachelfordjames
Lots of attention is being paid to improving our children’s diets, both in and out of school. We have control (mostly) over how our children eat at home, but what is being done in the schools? A new documentary is coming out, “A Recipe for Change”, that examines the Baltimore school system’s plan for improving school nutrition.
New Orleans chef Tony Geraci was hired to remake the Baltimore school lunches. He says in the trailer that he wants to concentrate on local, fresh foods in the menu. Some of the food shown looks exactly what I remember eating in school – the “mystery meat”, beef meatloaf patties, even the vegetables look the same.
It sounds like it will be a big job. In the trailer, one of the kids says the milk is sour and the bread is moldy. If that’s true (and I realize that kids exaggerate sometimes to make their point), then food storage and refrigeration will also need to be overhauled, along with the quality of food.
“A Recipe for Change” will be released later this year on the web.
School lunch photo by Jamie Buscemi, used with a Creative Commons license.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the FDA and the USDA participated in a raid on Rawsome, a raw, organic food club in Venice, California.
Here’s a video with security camera footage of the raid. The voiceover is from the store owner:
Unpasteurized milk is regulated in many areas because of safety concerns, and places like Rawsome go to great lengths to skirt these regulations. As the owner describes in the video, they are not a store but a private club. If you want to buy raw dairy, you have to become a member and put in writing that you’re “taking your health into your own hands.”
While dairy (raw or otherwise) is not my thing, I think that a guns-drawn raid is a bit over the top when it comes to enforcing restrictions on food policy.
Retail sale of raw milk is still legal in California, but the health department is insisting that Rawsome needs a retail food business license. The owner sent a written letter contesting that they are not a retail store, but he never heard a response until agents barged into Rawsome with guns years later.
Raw dairy is pretty controversial. Advocates are looking for pure, unadulterated food while regulators and large farming groups say its safety concerns outweigh any benefits.
What are your thoughts on this raid? How do you feel about raw dairy in general?
Source: L.A. Times
Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by chiotsrun
Last week my husband was lucky enough to stumble upon these hard-to-find wild mushrooms while doing ecological field research.
I’d been dying to try the elusive black trumpet, and it didn’t disappoint.
Black trumpets are closely related to chanterelles, but much harder to spot because they are perfectly camouflaged on the forest floor. Occasionally black trumpets grow in moss patches like in the photo above, which makes them much easier to see!
These dark brown or black mushrooms are funnel-shaped and as delicate as flowers. They’re in season summer through fall in North America, except in California, where they’re found in winter.
The black trumpet has no poisonous look-alikes, but is sometimes confused with the inedible Devil’s Urn. As always, it’s best to go foraging with someone who knows their ‘shrooms before you head out on your own.
Black trumpets are wonderfully fragrant and have a potent woodsy flavor. Their earthiness intensifies with dehydration, making them a perfect candidate for dried mushroom powder. Dried mushrooms are a delicious way to add umami to vegetarian and vegan dishes.
If mushroom hunting isn’t your thing, you can order dried black trumpets on the web or find them in specialty stores. If you’re lucky, you might even see fresh black trumpets at your local farmers market.
My fiance and I made this linguine with our black trumpets and dehydrated the rest for winter stews and vegan gravy. What a find!
Image courtesy of ressaure via a Creative Commons license.
I’m in love with my vegetable garden again. After moving to my current house, I chose to focus on ornamental plants instead of planting a vegetable garden like the one I had grown to love while living in Pennsylvania.
This year, with my perennial beds bursting at the seams, I decided to begin developing a vegetable garden. Not as grand or well organized as I had hoped; it still hasn’t disappointed me with its steady supply of tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and squash.
I feel satisfyingly self-sufficient coming in with a basket full of goodies that I use to whip into something delicious.
This is the time of year when I see my canning friends busily putting up their canned tomatoes. My small garden will never produce the abundance I’d need to be able to satisfy my weekly vegetable cravings and the extra I’d need to make canning worthwhile. While I’m sure I’d enjoy the taste of my own tomatoes or spaghetti sauce during the winter, there’s nothing remotely attractive to me about an all day canning event in my small kitchen and the mess I’d have to clean up after. I plan on enlarging my vegetable garden next year for greater variety, but still don’t plan on canning.
If you would like to liberate yourself from non-canning guilt along with me, you may want to try this amazing, better than canned raw pasta sauce. The beauty in it is that the two main ingredients (tomatoes and basil) are easy to grow in any sized garden.
Salsa Cruda
To prepare:
Chop half of your tomatoes into bite sized pieces and place in a large serving bowl. Add basil and red onions. Coarsely chop your remaining tomatoes and add to a blender with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and garlic, and puree until smooth. Add to serving bowl and toss to mix. Tastes great over pasta.
About the author: Lisa Ueda offers home gardening tips at The Frugal Garden. Her aim is to inspire, awaken and motivate new gardeners into discovering their inner green thumbs.
We’ve talked about responsible coffee consumption and toxins lurking in that cup of joe, but all that is moot if growers can’t produce the beans that make our favorite morning beverage.
Hotter Temperatures Threaten ProductionEthiopia and Latin America have traditionally grown the Arabica beans that are common in coffee. According to Yale Environment 360:
It requires just the right amount of rain and an average annual temperature between 64 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 degrees Fahrenheit to prosper. As temperatures rise — Ethiopia’s average low temperature has increased by about .66 degrees F every decade since 1951, according to the country’s National Meteorological Agency — and rains become more variable, Ethiopian coffee farmers have suffered increasingly poor yields. Last year was especially bad, with exports dropping by 33 percent.
Moving to higher elevations has helped, but that’s hardly a permanent solution. If temperatures continue to increase, we’re going to reach a point where that doesn’t work anymore. They can only go so high, right?
Coffee Berry Borer Beetle Thrives in Warmer TemperaturesCoffee berry borer beetle. Say that three times fast! More troublesome than a tongue twister, the coffee berry borer beetle is a pest that’s become more and more widespread as temperatures have increased. It used to live only in Central America, but it’s now popping up in coffee-growing regions all over the world.
The beetle causes over $500 million in damages to coffee crops every year.
Juliana Jaramillo from Kenya’s International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology has been studying the borer beetle and found that as temperatures rise, so does damage from these beetles:
Not only did the female beetles lay more eggs at higher temperatures, but they also drilled deeper into coffee berries, causing more physical damage. A follow up study, published this year in the Journal of Economic Entomology, found that higher temperatures also caused the female beetles to travel from berry to berry earlier.
This is worrisome news for coffee drinkers! I think Jaramillo’s quote from the Yale Environment 360 article gets it right: “I think the coffee industry has two options,” she said. “Either they start investing in climate research, or they educate the consumers to drink something else.”
What do you think?
[h/t: Yale Environment 360]
Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by riot
When British farmers were faced with a salmonella outbreak similar to the American egg industry’s current crisis, they began vaccinating their chickens against the bacteria.
The vaccine works by reducing the number of hens that get infected with salmonella, and also by inhibiting transmission of the bacteria from an infected hen to her eggs. It has dramatically reduced the incidence of human cases of salmonella in Britain over the past decade.
Now, amidst an outbreak that has sickened thousands of people and led to the recall of a half billion eggs, the American egg industry is being pressured to begin vaccinating hens to reassure consumers.
While the vaccine might help prevent human illness, it does not address the larger problems of industrial egg production.
Industrial egg operations jam up to 100,000 chickens into tiny cages or crowded sheds. The chickens live in downright toxic conditions in close contact with out-of-control rodent populations that can transmit salmonella. They eat a strict diet of corn, soy, and animal byproducts. They’re often de-beaked and force-molted to increase egg production.
It turns out that tortured chickens living in unsanitary conditions are pretty susceptible to diseases like salmonella.
Instead of figuring out how to fix the disease, wouldn’t it be nice if regulators looked at why these problems arise in the first place?
Image courtesy of MrTopher via a Creative Commons license.
Biosolids are a class of fertilizers and composts made from treated sewage sludge. It has been shown that biosolids contain heavy metals and other toxic chemicals, yet these make their way onto crops year after year. There is not enough evidence to suggest that biosolids pose a hazard to humans, but there has not been enough research either. The lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t a problem, but the EPA hasn’t learned this yet in science class.
Biosolids is basically a euphemism for giving people their own waste back to them in the form of fertilizers and composts, with the bonus of additional toxins.
Don’t get me wrong, I love euphemisms. They make unpleasant things sound so much more pleasant. One of my favorite euphemisms is when my grandmother calls the room with a toilet and a sink in her house the “powder room.” Ladies don’t use the toilet, they go to powder their noses.
The powder room is an example of a cute and harmless euphemism, but other times euphemisms can pretty close to lying, and the term biosolids is basically that.
Using waste in cropsIt is quite common to put animal waste in soil to grow crops. It sounds really gross, but the bacteria in the soil break down the waste products to make nice healthy soil. This is the beautiful cycle of life. Most scientists agree that uncontaminated human waste makes great fertilizer, because it is rich in phosphorus and nitrogen.
Humans sort of ruin everything in this cycle by flushing the toilet. We flush our waste down the toilet, then this natural waste water gets mixed with toxic waste water from other industrial and commercial processes. Anything that was possibly beneficial for the soil in our human waste is now mixed with industrial chemicals.
Problems with biosolidsThe Food Rights Network found non-negligible concentrations of contaminants with endocrine-disruptive properties including, but not limited to polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants, nonylphenol detergent breakdown products, and the antibacterial agent triclosan within biosolids.
The biggest problem is that there hasn’t yet been adequate testing to determine whether there is an issue with using biosolids on crops. There are plans to do so, but this has been going on for years before someone gets around to testing it.
You can read for yourself how benign the EPA makes biosolids sound here: http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/wastewater/treatment/biosolids/genqa.cfm. No where do they mention that it contains heavy metals and endocrine disruptors.
This is just another example of where it is assumed that lack of evidence is the lack of an issue, and where a massive experiment will be run on unknowing citizens. The American way – do whatever you want until someone with power notices and cares that people are getting sick. Maybe biosolids are fine and no one will get sick, but can’t it at least be studied first?
San Francisco’s sewage sludge give awayWastewater treatment plants strike deals with private companies to haul away their solid waste and turn it into “high-quality, nutrient-rich, organic Biosolids Compost.” It seems like recycling at its finest, but this is where the euphemism comes into play. It wouldn’t sound so great if it were labeled “high-quality, nutrient-rich, toxic sewage sludge.”
It’s just a cheap way for municipalities to discard of their waste.
The residents of San Francisco are given biosolids for free by the city’s Public Utilities Commission. Now San Francisco is not only busy banning happy meals, but they are trying to keep this toxic concoction out of their food and gardens.
Note about the photograph from the photographerImage credit: Flickr Creative Commons by robbie1
This is a photograph of “the drying bed for the sludge from a small sewage treatment plant. The slurry is pumped onto a sand filter and the water drains back into the treatment tanks.”
Sources:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8885
http://www.werf.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=9825
The average American uses 2000 gallons of water each day. What’s surprising is how much of that is hidden in our lifestyle.
Only 5% of that 2000 gallons is actually used as water in the home – drinking, washing dishes, bathing, watering the yard and garden, and other things. The rest is embedded in the things we do, the food we eat, and goods we buy.
National Geographic has put together a water footprint calculator that can help each of us understand where we use the most water and how we can cut back. Through a series of questions, like how many loads of laundry do you do each week, how long are your showers, and what sort of plants grow in your yard, the calculator determines how much water you use.
The cute duck illustrations and the water meter that measures your use against the average American household make this a good one for kids. But adults can learn a lot from this.
At the end of the calculator (it takes maybe ten minutes), National Geographic shows a comparison of how much water you use versus the average American in four categories. There are tips for water usage reduction and interesting facts about how much water certain activities use.
Image by Cyron, used with Creative Commons license
We do our very best to touch on as much of the health- and environment-related news that we can from across the web, but there are always stories we don’t get to. Here’s a quick roundup of food news from the last week or so that we didn’t manage to hit on:
Have you run across any cool food-related stories this week? Tell us about them in the comments!
The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) is sitting in the Senate right now. It’s already passed the House and with the giant egg recall, the risk of typhoid in ice pops, and a deli meat recall at Walmart involving 1.5 million ready-to-eat sandwiches, now would be a good time to get this one passed.
The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act is intended to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to the safety of the food supply. It’s actually a fairly short bill with only 278 pages, but it does an excellent job of addressing the weaknesses of the current system.
The FDA Should Have the Power to Prevent Outbreaks, Not Just React to ThemCurrently, the FDA does not have the power to prevent an outbreak of foodborne illness. The FDA can only react to a suspicious rise in illnesses. Only after more than 1300 people fell ill from salmonella poisoning and the FDA limited the possibilities to a very few egg suppliers could the FDA inspect Wright County Egg and later Hillandale Farms. Likewise, only after a typhoid outbreak occurred in California and Nevada could the FDA move to inspect production plants.
The bill would require food companies to maintain uniform records showing they have considered possible hazards and the steps they have taken to prevent these hazards and the bill would allow the FDA to examine these records at any time.
The FDA would also be given the power to shut down any food facility that is not in compliance with science-based regulations designed to prevent foodborne illnesses. Right now, the FDA cannot shut down a facility that is spreading salmonella. Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms issued the recall voluntarily. The FDA also cannot force them to clean up their facilities. Wright County Egg is a repeat offender and there’s no reason to expect them to work to prevent future outbreaks.
Who Pays For Improving Food Safety?Which brings us to the next part of the bill. Everything in the bill – inspections, creating science-based standards, food recalls – is paid for by the companies being inspected. If the FDA has to perform repeat inspections because a company is not cleaning up its act, the company foots the bill for the inspections.
Won’t Food Safety Regulations Shut Down Small Farms?The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act was held up in the Senate while the effects on small farms, organic farms, farmers market, and the like were being determined. The aim of the bill is to clean up factory farms. With the consolidation of the food supply, only a few companies control most of our food. One company taking a few shortcuts can sicken thousands of people. The record-keeping and inspection schedules required by the bill, while necessary in the day-to-day operations of a large corporation, would prove onerous to a small family business.
A manager’s amendment was recently added to protect small farms. An exemption has been added for small food businesses. Basically, if a business (farm, restaurant, roadside stand, etc.) did not have to register under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 as a food facility, then the business will not be affected by this bill.
Organic FoodsThe science-based minimum standards that will be established by the FDA cannot conflict with organic regulations. The FDA must consider different growing, production, and harvesting techniques and can exempt small businesses that grow or process that pose very little risk of foodborne illness.
Let your senators know what you think of this bill.
Image by IronMal, used with a Creative Commons license.
Does the egg recall have your breakfast routine thrown out of whack? Are you desperately searching for that perfect substitute breakfast to start your day off right? Although the incredible edible egg is a morning favorite, other foods can be just as filling and nutritious (and right now, less contaminated.) Try some of these meal ideas to fuel your brain and body without risking it with the eggs.
Hearty OatmealOatmeal is a quick, easy, hot breakfast. It can easily be modified to your individual taste and the flavor combinations are never ending. My favorite oatmeal mix has whole oats, cinnamon, brown sugar, flax seed meal, chopped walnuts and a small banana. The banana and flax seed thicken the oats up and it ends up tasting more like a banana cookie than oatmeal. Yum! Try other combinations of fruit, nuts, seeds and spices.
Oatmeal is not only tasty, but extremely healthy. With my favorite oatmeal mix, your breakfast will be packed with fiber, protein and healthy fats. You will not be hungry for hours. This meal will truly last you until lunchtime.
Super SmoothieIf you need breakfast on the go, try a smoothie. They are easy to make and can be consumed on the way to work. If you plan on replacing your nutrient dense egg breakfast with a liquid meal, make sure you put nutrient dense ingredients in your smoothie. Try my favorite: plain yogurt, chocolate soymilk, frozen strawberries, and sun-butter. The frozen strawberries act as the ice. You may need to play around with the proportions to get the consistency you desire. The soymilk, yogurt and sun-butter add lean protein for a healthy start.
Breakfast Burrito HashIf you have more time in the morning, this breakfast is for you. Breakfast burritos do not have to have eggs, and bacon, and saturated fat filled cheese and sour cream. Again, any combination of fresh food will work for a burrito. My must have ingredients are black beans, tomatoes, green pepper, sweet onion, minced garlic, and yukon gold potatoes. You may not even want the tortilla! Cook everything up in a pan with a little olive oil and enjoy. The beans are a great protein source and the fresh veggies give you fiber to fill you up.
Everyday Breakfast Must-HavesRegardless of the egg recall, every breakfast should be well balanced. Try to find a happy medium between carbs, protein and fat. You should eat enough food to feel full, but meals should not leave you bloated and unable to move. Try to drink a serving of milk (or milk substitute) and have a piece of whole fruit with each meal. Milk and fruit have vitamins and minerals to help with energy and brain function.
Do you have a favorite egg-less breakfast? Share it below, thanks!
Image credit: Flickr Creative Commons user: thebittenword.com
As far as oriental medicine goes, the key to health is food. Of course, exercise is also important, especially practices like Tai Chi and Qi Gong, as well as medical care, like acupuncture, which my mom (an acupuncturist) sometimes calls “lazy man’s yoga.”
But paying attention to what you eat is critical to a balanced system and good health. Knowing why you are eating a food can be fun, too. White foods (i.e. turnips and fennel bulbs) are good for the lungs, and thus for the liver as well. Fennel can also help the liver when it is unbalanced (when there’s too much of the wood element). Turmeric is also an excellent food for the liver. So,… here’s a recipe to nourish your wood and metal elements, your lungs, and your liver, that also tastes delicious! Sautéd Veggie and Shitake Mushroom SaladIngredients:
Making the meal:
A delicious meal that will keep you healthy and strong, naturally.
Photo Credit: In Praise of Sardines via flickr
Frozen fruit bars under the brand Fruiti Pops with UPC number 763734000097 are the ones affected by the recall.
This recall is due to one earlier this month from Goya Foods, Inc. On August 12, Goya recalled contaminated mamey pulp after an outbreak of typhoid fever in California and Nevada.
Fruiti Pops have not been linked to any illnesses yet, so hopefully they got the recall out in time to avoid another outbreak.
Between this and the egg recall, there have been some serious food safety issues popping up lately. This is yet another food contamination issue linked to large scale agriculture.
Buying local, organic food is a great way to make sure your food is safe. The more you know about your food’s origin and ingredients, the better!
Rather than picking up packaged, processed, food, you can make your own frozen treats. It’s easy as pie to make popsicles at home from organic juices or even make your own sorbet in the blender.
Source: ABC Local.
Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by joshb
Cows are one of the foremost producers of methane gas – a gas that that has over 20 times the potential of carbon dioxide to cause global warming.
Researchers at Penn State University spent nearly six years examining herbs and natural solutions to the methane problem, and they have finally found that oregano may reduce methane production. To put it bluntly, oregano may reduce greenhouse gas producing cow farts.
When a cow digests its food, fermentation breaks down the food into usable nutrients, with by-products of carbon dioxide and methane.
When an oregano-based supplement was given to the cows, it was shown that methane gas production was reduced. This is great news for the planet, but there is also another perk: the amount of milk that the cows produced increased.
The increase in milk production makes sense, because even though methane is a by-product, it still takes energy from the cow to produce it. Without the production of excess methane, the cows seemed to be able to use the extra energy to produce milk.
There appear to be no ill-effects associated with the oregano supplement. It is planned to continue with the research to verify the results and also to determine exactly which compounds in oregano are reducing methane. The aim is to be able to produce pure substances (rather than feeding the cattle oregano directly) because pure substances are easier and cheaper to produce commercially.
If commercialized, this product could be a viable option for reducing pollution caused by livestock.
Source: http://live.psu.edu/story/48055
Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons by JelleS
It wasn’t until recently that I became a tempeh fan. The grainy texture always sort of put me off, and it just never occurred to me to pick it up at the store. Tempeh has a lot of health benefits, though, and lately I’ve been running across excellent recipes featuring this vegan protein star!
The key to tempeh is to steam or simmer it before you start prepping. There was a subtle taste that put me off of the stuff, but simmering in just enough water to cover for about 10 minutes really lets the tempeh goodness shine through without any strange taste in the back of your mouth.
These tempeh recipes make me hungry just looking at them!
Do you have a favorite tempeh recipe? I’d love to hear it in the comments!
Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by megabeth
We talked yesterday about eating better on a budget, which I’m sure is something a lot of you have dealt with. How can I be so sure? We got some wonderful, thoughtful comments with even more ideas on food and budgeting!
Commenter Jennifer said she would add:
…eat seasonally (that out of season asparagus from Chile doesn’t taste good anyway), and do whatever you can to reduce food waste — no sense in paying for food you don’t end up eating. Also, if you’re at the farmers’ market near closing time, you can often score some great deals on organic locally grown produce. My spouse and I (both vegetarians) eat healthily and well for under $50 a week.
I’m so glad that someone brought up eating local, seasonal food! Not only is local food often less expensive and tastier, it’s better for the environment than food shipped halfway around the world.
Full disclosure: this next comment was actually from another writer here, but Rachel Shulman’s thoughts on budgeting for food were too good not to share:
I do what many cultures in the world do: cut back on everything else before I cut back on food.
My feeling is, why cut your food budget first when food is so crucial to your health and so pleasurable?
Instead of eliminating pricey (but healthful) items like good olive oil, nuts, and wine, I cut back in other ways, like living without cable television.
Such a simple idea – I love it! She raises an excellent question: why do we look to our food budgets first when times are tough? If you’re in a situation where you’ve trimmed the other budgetary fat that you can, it’s a different story, but most of us probably have a few expenses that could go before we resort to a mac and cheese diet.
Vines N Cattle had this to say about my recommendation to cut back on meat to save money:
Cut the meat? Nah, buy half a beef, or some pork, lamb, or chicken from a local farmer. It’ll save you in the long run, and keep your dollars local. Plus it will taste better!
If you are going to have meat in your diet, I agree that this is probably the best way to not only save money but ensure that the animal was humanely raised and cast your food dollar vote against industrial agriculture.
Thanks for the thoughtful, insightful comments, everyone! If anyone else has tips for maintaining your healthy diet when money’s tight, I’d love to hear them. Share away!
Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by Corey Templeton
Since news first broke about the massive egg recall, eggs seem to be all folks are talking about. The big questions are: how did this salmonella contamination happen, and what can we do about it?
Factory FarmingThere seems to be agreement that factory farming conditions are largely to blame for the salmonella-related recalls. Industrially raised chickens live in terrible, unsanitary conditions crammed into “battery cages” where they have little room to move and disease spreads easily.
Not only are these conditions unsanitary, they’re cruel. Battery hens endure debeaking, where workers literally cut the tips off of their beaks, since there’s a danger that hens will peck each other in such close quarters.
An investigative report from East Bay Animal Advocates highlights what life is like for these hens:
Egg Free LifeOver at OpEd News, Kathy Malloy wrote an excellent piece about how factory farming has gotten the egg industry where it is and even suggests some ways to keep factory farmed eggs out of our kitchens. I totally agree that if you’re going to eat eggs, looking to raise your own or finding a local farmer you trust are fine ways to do that.
The thing that got me about Malloy’s piece was the long introduction that made egg free life sound so horrible:
Without eggs and their amazing properties of stabilization and emulsification, there would be no chocolate chip cookies, no birthday cake, no ice cream, no hollandaise sauce, no chewy macaroons, no fruit-filled pavlova, no souffles, no lemon meringue pie,no crepes, custards or cream puffs! Our diet would be pretty sad without these perky little delicacies.
I can’t think of anything on her list that requires eggs. There’s no way I would have considered veganism if it meant giving up chocolate chip cookies!
Part of the reason factory farming is so widespread is that demand for eggs is incredibly high. If we’re going to reduce that demand, we need to cut back our dependence on eggs, and that’s a lot easier than many folks make it out to be.
If you’re looking to replace some (or all!) of the eggs in your diet, Jeannie Moulton wrote some excellent tips on vegan egg replacements. She explains the egg’s purpose in different sorts of recipes and how to substitute appropriately.
Has this egg recall changed your thinking about the eggs on your plate? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the recall in the comments!
Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by Farm Sanctuary
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