Great comments going on Alexandra’s L.A. post below, with lots of you guys weighing in from all over the country. Meanwhile, in midtown Manhattan, I’m at a loss. I forgot my lunch today and don’t want to go out in the rain so I did a search for vegan food nearby that delivers and came up with ONE spot. An Indian place with a separate vegan menu. I ordered, and am hoping it’s legitimately vegan, not full of ghee and just vegetarian.
In any case. New York, where you at? Share your vegan tips!
As of this past Saturday I am on the vegan plan! And since I have every intention of sticking with it for the duration of the vegan-for-a-week challenge, I’ve been tapping my memory for favorite veggie spots around Los Angeles.
Most days I’ll likely eat at home since my cooking skews largely vegetarian as it is, and I’m already a vegan cappuccino convert. But restaurants are a whole other story: I tend to go for French and Italian when out—as in butter, cream, cheese, and maybe some dried salami (guh). So in an effort to be ready for curveball plans—like an unforseen lunch meeting (or better yet—an unforseen date!)—I will put these spots on speed dial.
I think it’s super important to go into a challenge like this prepared, not least of all because cheese and salami are hard to resist if the rest of the menu has slim plant pickings. So here are some great vegan-friendly go-tos. Be sure to share favorites in your city in the comments!
M Cafe: It’s an obvious choice for a reason: This popular place has an amazing selection of macrobiotic food. And while not everything is vegan, there is a more than ample selection. The peanut butter kale will not soon be forgotten.
Elf Cafe: This is probably one of LA’s best restaurants, period. (And also one of its best kept secrets). Elf is like the most amazing home-cooked meal you’ve never had.
Real Food Daily: If you’re craving something like nachos or pizza, this is your joint. Is it your first foray into meatlessnes? Well then I highly recommend you head to RFD to ease you in.
Kind Kreme: Welcome to heaven for anyone who is vegan, lactose intolerant, or just tends to get tummy aches from regular ice cream (that’s me!). I can’t believe that Sunday was my first time trying this stuff. Most of their ice creams—and there are many to choose from—are coconut based (without the coconut flavor) and sweetened with agave. They. Are. Bananas. I had the coffee chocolate chip one with a some raw salted caramel sauce. I could weep thinking about it.
Vegan Express: This unassuming little spot has shockingly good Thai curries. It also has French fries, faux chicken nuggets, breakfast burritos, and the best coleslaw I’ve ever eaten (they won’t tell me the secret recipe). Something for everyone, and super cheap too.
Agra Cafe: If you like Indian food, you’ll be golden this week. And while LA isn’t known for its Indian, this strip mall restaurant in Silver Lake offers up some of the best I’ve had (including an actual trip to India). It’s also super affordable, and makes for great delivery food (and even better leftovers).
Okay, L.A. peeps—what other great spots am I missing? As for the rest of you, please share your picks in the comments section so that challenged readers in your city have some guidance too.
Image of a vegan restaurant In LA that I have yet to try via
So you want to do our vegan challenge, but you’re not sure how? Well, there are some great resources out there (and lots of mouth-watering recipes).
We have a big crush on Kim Barnouin of Skinny Bitch, and her website Healthy Bitch Daily is an awesome place to visit if you’re looking for vegan inspiration. Just yesterday, HBD posted about how to do vegan on a budget, and they have an entire section devoted to their favorite recipes. YUM. Kim also just published a cookbook this year, so there’s no shortage of ideas from this lady and her team.
Alicia Silverstone’s site The Kind Life has a great recipe section too. And if you need more motivation you can read The China Study, listen to Bill Clinton talk about his new vegan diet, read this recent article about billionaire David Murdock’s plant-heavy plan to live until he’s 125—or just revisit our post about how veggies make you glow.
And we’re barely scraping the surface here—there are so many sites and books to help get you get excited about eating plants (whether you’re going for the full challenge or not).
Next week we will post about some of our favorite vegan-friendly restaurants too… And look forward to hearing yours. In the meantime do you have any other resources to share?
Do you live in New York? If so, have you seen those ads on the train by the National Peanut Board that say peanuts—which have had a bit of a PR problem due to recalls and that whole salmonella thing—have more antioxidants than broccoli, carrots and green tea? Obvious follow up question, of course, is: Based on what? Servings of the same size? Because that makes sense: peanuts are tiny and nutrient-dense, whereas broccoli is, well, larger, but also nutrient rich. And one would never eat equal amounts by volume of peanuts and broccoli, no matter how much they like nuts. You might have a cup of broccoli, and a handful of peanuts—say an eighth of a cup. Both may be good for you in their way, but knowing what we know about the disease fighting powers of green tea, broccoli and carrots—not to mention their low caloric values—it seems a silly comparison to make. Which isn’t to say peanuts aren’t good for you, because they are! But, yeah.
In any case, that’s an overly long wind-up to the real news here, which is that when it comes to nuts, walnuts have been named antioxidant champion of the world.
From the wires:
In a report here today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented an analysis showing that walnuts have a combination of more healthful antioxidants and higher quality antioxidants than any other nut.
Congratulations, walnut.
What’s your favorite nut? And do you make sure to eat antioxidant-rich foods every day?
Image via
Oh boy, looks like our food is going to the lab and getting a new name: medical food. What’s that, you say? Oh, just a sketchy-sounding new industry that doesn’t have to be accountable to anyone. In fact, it’s reminding us a lot of another made-up category we love to hate: cosmeceuticals!
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nestlé just bought a U.K.-based pharmaceutical company in a move to create foods that address diseases. The first one in the works? A chewing gum to help kidney-disease sufferers. The catch? Food (gum included), like cosmetics that use drug-type ingredients, will not be subject to the same screening process as drugs themselves.
And that, my friends, just doesn’t bode well. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Some doctors worry that medical foods don’t face the same regulatory scrutiny or rigorous testing as pharmaceutical drugs. They warn that food companies have a bad track record of trumping up health claims on products to gain a marketing edge.
Last July, for example, an FTC complaint led Nestlé to drop a claim that its Boost Kid Essentials milk-shake drink protected children’s immune systems.
“With many of these food companies, the claims of managing illness, preventing illness, boosting immunity, boosting immune function—all of those things—are very difficult to prove using the standards that the FDA or similar agencies would use to judge safety and efficacy,” said Michael Starnbach, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School.
To us, this just looks like a new way for companies to lie to consumers, make false claims about their products’ health benefits, play around with drug-like ingredients that we know little about, and possibly put people in danger due to lack of pre-market testing. What do you think?
We are verrrrrry excited to announce this event next weekend in New York City. On November 20, I will be participating in a day of natural beauty at the raw and vegan heaven that is Organic Avenue. On hand will be nutritionists, holistic therapists, herbalists, detox experts, and natural beauty mavens such as myself, Tata Harper and Spirit from Spirit Beauty Lounge. It’s going to be an amazing day and we’d love for you to come.
The focus of the three-hour workshops is inside-out and outside-in beauty and we’re going to answer your questions and talk about food, supplements, juicing, beauty products, makeup, skincare regimens and more. Plus, you know, we’ll all get facials like the one Alie—that’s code for Alexandra—had a few weeks ago, and we’ll get our makeup done.
Seriously, it’s the kind of thing that, if I wasn’t going to be speaking at it, I’d definitely want to attend. I can’t wait to learn from the other amazing women on the schedule.
Here’s the rundown:
INSIDE BEAUTY
* Which foods to eat to enhance beauty from the insides. And which foods to avoid.
* You will learn easy to prepare recipes including different ways of juicing, and what you can do when you need something fast and on the go.
* Which supplements to take daily to support skin health, energy and vitality.
* Ways to detoxify your body for optimum well-being.
OUTSIDE BEAUTY
* Latest natural technologies for real skin care results. What skin care products to look for.
* Which harmful ingredients to avoid and ways to find them.
* Skin care regimens and what to for your skin daily, once a week and once a month.
* Different personal techniques you can do at home
* All-natural make up application
It does cost to attend, but it’s not for nothing. You’ll get a free facial, lots of freebies, amazing advice, and more. You can get your tickets now!
Speaking of high fructose corn syrup—oh, excuse me, I mean “corn sugar”—we have our suspicions about what it might do to skin. Is there proof? No. But dermatologists love to say that food has nothing to do with your complexion as they hand you a prescription for industrial-strength benzoyl peroxide.
Don’t get us wrong—we love our french fries as much as the beauties in this pic, and we don’t think they’re to blame for our breakouts. But with all the weird chemicals pumped in food (and you know, all the nutrients stripped out), we know people are having reactions left, right and smack in the center of their faces. Some friends we know break out from wheat, others from dairy or nuts, some from sugar…
So have you noticed any correlation between what you eat and how your skin looks?
Image of hot and hungry gals via
You guys watch football on Sunday night? Us too (first time for everything) and we were giggling to ourselves when this dramatic ad came on with sweeping shots of corn fields and music and a disembodied voice then there it was: The words “corn sugar” crossed the screen.
It was inevitable, no? People have been slinging crap at high fructose corn syrup for a couple of years now—and for good reason. And now the corn lobby is fighting back!
They want us to call HFCS by the natural-sounding “corn sugar,” and they want you to know that while it may be just as bad for you as any other sweetener out there, it’s not worse (ha). (Except that it is!)
It’s a classic move, rebranding. It’s what Blackwater did after their rogue soldiers got into trouble for (allegedly) killing 17 civilians in downtown Baghdad, it’s why we refer to rapeseed oil by the more friendly “canola,” it’s why Prince went with that symbol for a bit.
Anyway we don’t go near the stuff now, and we definitely won’t once it’s rebranded. What about you? Do you stay away from it, or do you not care?
Hey guess what? The FDA is probably going to approve genetically engineered FISH for sale in the United States. As in, whole live salmons, made out of a “genetic cocktail of genomes taken from other fish.” They say they have been testing the salmon for ten years, and told the Washington Post that: “In characteristics, physiology, behavior, this is an Atlantic salmon. It looks like an Atlantic salmon. It tastes like an Atlantic salmon.”
The catch? The testing has been done in a particularly non-transparent way, which has environmental groups—and lots of chefs—miffed. It seems problematic to us, too, obviously—as does the fact that it’s unclear if the people making frankenfish will be required to label their food as genetically engineered. I’m also curious about the nutritional profile. Will it be loaded with the same Omega-3 goodness of, say, wild Alaskan? And what are the long-term environmental implications?
If approved, it will be the first genetically engineered animal approved for human consumption.
The company is called AquaBounty, and here’s how they describe their little lab creatures:
AquaBounty is developing advanced-hybrid salmon, trout, and tilapia designed to grow faster than traditional fish. AquAdvantage Salmon reach market size twice as fast as traditional salmon … [They are also] reproductively sterile … [and] grow faster and reach mature size earlier than standard salmon.
How much faster? Eighteen months to full size.
OK the mic is yours. Would you eat it? What do you think the larger implications are here?
Image of non-genetically engineered salmon via
We like where this is going, even if it’s not quite there yet: A group of researchers from Sweden and Seattle have created a tool by which to measure nutrient density by carbon footprint. Essentially they’re dividing the first by the latter to come up with a rating—if I’m understanding the math. It’s called the Nutrient Density to Climate Impact index (NDCI).
I came across this on Monica Reinagel’s blog for Nutrition Data, which now curiously lives on Self’s site. That’s a coup for them because this blog is an awesome resource for all things food and health. From Monica’s post:
Interestingly, even though cow’s milk produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than soy milk, its higher nutrient density resulted in a higher NDCI (0.54 for cow’s milk versus 0.28 for soy milk). In other words, you get more nutrition per unit of greenhouse gas from cow’s milk than from soy milk.
Whodathunk. I bet there are all kinds of surprising revelations with this tool though. Would you use something like this to make healthier slash more eco choices in your diet?
