Vegan Soul Chef Bryant Terry talks the new Afro-Vegan cookbook

Photo: Paige Green

Chef, author, educator, and 'food activist' Bryant Terry's delectable follow up to groundbreaking cookbooks Vegan Soul Kitchen and The Inspired Vegan, launches next week. With an emphasis on bold flavors and fresh ingredients, Afro-Vegan, brings tastes from every corner of the Pan-African pan. From Atlanta to Jamaica, Senegal to South Carolina, he's left no yam unturned. We caught up with man himself to chat books, food and tunes. 

Bestselling cook book, Vegan Soul Kitchen, is full of influences from southern and creole cuisine. And Inspired Vegan has lots of family focused stories and feasts. For your latest book, 'Afro Vegan', you've pulled inspiration from throughout Africa, the Americans and the Caribbean. Where have you found the richest flavors?

In the book I illuminate many of the similar food traditions seen throughout the African Diaspora, for example my Coconut Rice Pudding with Nectarines is a nod to dishes of rice cooked in milk on the African continent, in South America, and the American South (i.e., gossi from Senegal, arroz de viuva of northeastern Brazil, and the rice pudding that my maternal grandmother used to make). Afro-Vegan is a celebration of the rich flavors in many of the places that our African Ancestors touched throughout the globe.

So is plant based cuisine something that is new to these communities?

These are the communities that originated “farm-fresh” and “plant-centered” cooking. While animal products are eaten throughout the African diaspora, there are clear patterns of diverse diets centered around nutrient-dense leafy green vegetables, tubers, fruits, whole grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts. I’m simply trying to help everyone remember.

Courtesy of Ten Speed Press

You've been campaigning for food justice for more than 10 years now with community gardening projects, educational programs like Nourish Life and on this year's 'Afro Vegan World Tour.' How have the challenges changed since you began this work?

I first started working around health, food, and farming issues around 2002, and things have dramatically shifted since then. Before I started writing books, I founded an initiative in New York City called b-healthy; it used cooking as a way to politicize young people from the lower economic strata of the five boroughs around food issues. It was such a struggle back then to convince funders of the importance of this work. 

Nowadays, everyone is talking about food issues - from the grassroots to the White House. It is also so exciting to see so many people open to moving meat to the margins of their plates and consuming more fresh, whole, seasonal, and local plant-based foods. 

What role does a plant based diet have to play in tackling these issues?

One of the most important lessons that I try to impart is that we need to listen to our bodies. There is no one size fits all diet or panacea; when contemplating the best diet, I encourage people to consider a number of factors: age, bodily constitution, health status, ancestral foods, season (eating seasonally is so important), and the like. That being said, more mainstream medical institutions have been acknowledging that the over consumption of animal protein puts people at increased risk of preventable, diet-related illnesses such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension. So I see plant-centered diets as another tool for addressing the public health crisis among the communities most impacted by preventable, diet-related illnesses.

After the food of course, the playlists peppered throughout are one of my favorite ingredients in your books - nothing like a little Al Green with your collard greens - do you feel that music and food are particularly connected?

I want my books to facilitate multi-sensory experiences. I have always understood the power of food as a means of building deep connections among people. So I encourage people to not only eat together, but also to make meals together - all while listening to good music, drinking, and talking to each other. 

Finally, is this a book that you'll be able to enjoy even if you don't have an organic veg patch in your back yard?

I emphasize fresh, local, ingredients in all my cooking, and I encourage people to support small farms by shopping at farmers’ markets and joining Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). And if people have the space, I encourage them to grow their own food. I actually invited my colleague Michael W. Twitty to provide tips in a section called “Think Like You Grow.” But I understand the barriers that many people have to growing food and getting locally grown food in many communities. So I try to craft most of my recipes to work for folks who might only have a conventional supermarket as their only option. I also encourage people to use my recipes as a guide and modify them to suit their needs. So if a recipe calls for collard greens and one is growing swiss chard in their garden, it only makes sense to use that leafy green instead.

Bryant Terry's 'Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean and Southern Flavors Remixed' (Ten Speed Press) hits the shelves on 8 April.

Michelle Obama and the FDA Get Real on Serving Sizes with Proposed Changes to Nutrition Facts

Source: Clutch

I spend hours in the supermarket reading boxes. Going over ingredients, costs per gram, country of origin, and nutrition, on everything I buy. These shopping trips take a long time and though my fascination with back of the box literature drives my partner insane, I make the time because I like to know what I'm getting.

Michelle Obama and the FDA recently released proposed changes to US nutritional labeling that are intended to make it quicker to size up your goods and make an informed decision before purchase. The main updates from the original 1993 format are to emphasize calories, make serving sizes more realistic and highlight added sugars.

source: FDA

The bold over sized calorie figures follow on from what we've seen recently on restaurant menus and are arguably a simplified tactic to fight obesity - but hey, it's a start.  And as far as the effort to make serving sizes more realistic and easier to understand, I am totally with them on that and will gladly put my calculator away.

Source FDA

But I'm not completely sold on the plan to remove the  to remove the 'calories from fat' information. A spoke person said that this was done because they think that the 'type of fat' is more important than the amount. There is definitely truth to this, but lots of people struggle with 'good fats' just as much as 'bad fats', thinking they can eat all the cashews they want because it's vegetable fat. The thing about it is though that 'good fat' works the same as 'bad fat' when you're trying to get in your jeans. Still it's a start.

It's all under review at the moment, with the FDA seeking feedback for 90 days and plans still in the works for when it will come in practice, but if it does, it will effect more than 700,000 products on a shelf near you.

Badu does Dallas Veggie Fair

Source: stylishthought

Texas native, long time vegan and all around inspirational individual, Erykah Badu, has been announced as a keynote speaker and DJ at this autumn's Texas Veggie Fair on Sunday 20 October. She will be in good company with likes of the Black Vegetarian Society of Texas, Carol Adams, author of the ground-breaking 1990 book, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and  Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram, of FullyRaw.com, who runs the largest raw, organic produce co-oprerative in the US. Should be a mighty fine shin-dig as rumor has it that vegetarians throw down in Texas.

Source: Black Vegetarian Society Of Texas Facebook

Serena Williams Killing it a Wimbeldon 2013 on a Raw Food Vegan Diet

Number One ranked and easily one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Serena Williams, is currently treading the grass at Wimbledon 2013. After more than 10 years in the game and five Wimbledon plates on the mantle, just about anyone who's watching knows that she's flipping fantastic with the racket. But what a lot of people don't know is that this year, her power serve is powered by a raw vegan diet.

Back in November 2011, Serena joined sister Venus in a raw vegan diet in order to fight symptoms of Venus' Sjogren’s Syndrome.  Since then, pundits and opponents have been noticing that she's been leaner and keener on grass, clay and concrete, playing some of the best tennis of her life. As of writing, she's on a 34 game winning streak and in 2012, she won 'the most WTA singles titles of the season with seven titles which included two grand slam titles at Wbimbledon and the US Open. She also won the WTA Championships and her first singles Olympics gold.'  So far this year, she's been killing it on the WTA tour with 6 titles including the French Open and is looking in fine form at Wimbeldon, strolling into the 4th round without dropping a set.

Obviously, 18 years of professional tennis and countless hours of practice with a superstar sister go a long way, so it cannot be conclusively said that her raw food vegan diet is the secret to her latest her competitive edge BUT it is clear that it ain't hurtin' nothin either. With simply fabulous private raw food vegan chef, Lauren Von Der Pool, in tow we wish her all the best in this year's tour. 

Celebrity Chef Lauren Von Der Pool

Sister goes vegan: Tia Mowry's New Vegan Photoshoot for PETA

Tia Mowry's Vegan Photo shoot for PETA

Tia Mowry, one half of twin stars of 90s American TV show Sister Sister and former star of BETs The Game, has teamed up with PETA for a campaign to promote her new found veganism. She looks amazing in the photo shoot wearing nothing but a gorgeous apron made of live veggies—specially designed by costumer Mia Gyzander. Tia was ecstatic at the press launch on Monday.

Tia announced that she and her husband Cory Hardrict had become vegan earlier this year. Tia adopted a vegan diet for better for health, to boost energy, and cleanse mind and body. While she was welcomed by some, she was also met with a bit of bullying from others on twitter.

Any vegans out there? Do you get bullied for being vegan? I sure am...
— Tia Mowry (@TiaMowry) March 21, 2013

She bounced back with a frank and endearing Google Hangout and this brand new campaign. Tia was especially moved to advocate vegan eating to her friends and the African American Community as some of her family members have suffered from diet and lifestyle-related health ailments.

Tia joins a number of black celebrity women who are embracing a meat free lifestyle in order to keep fit and combat illness like heart disease which affects black women at a rate that is twice as high as white women. According to the Black Women's Health Imperative, Black women die from heart disease more often than all other Americans. Vegan and vegetarian diets have been proven to reduce the rate of heart disease by as much as a third so Tia is sending a welcome message.

Check out the behind-the-scenes footage from Tia's tantalizing photo shoot and her interview with PETA about how going vegan has changed her life!

Huffington Post Reports: A Vegan Diet (Hugely) Helpful Against Cancer

Bell Peppers at the Las Vegas Farmers Market

Bestselling vegan author and wellness activist Kathy Freston, recently reported some pretty conclusive information the benefits of Vegan and Vegetarian diets in The Huffington Post. It seems there's more than just vitamins behind the health benefits of a vegetable diet.

Source: The Huffington Post 

If you're anything like me, the "C" word leaves you trembling. But today there is very good news to report: Research suggests you can improve your odds of never getting cancer and/or improve your chances of recovering from it. Not with a drug or surgery, although those methods might be quite effective. This is all about the power on your plate, and it's seriously powerful.

A 2012 analysis of all the best studies done to date concluded vegetarians have significantly lower cancer rates. For example, the largest forward-looking study on diet and cancer ever performed concluded that "the incidence of all cancers combined is lower among vegetarians."

That's good news, yes. But what if we're looking for great news? If vegetarians fare so much better than meat-eaters, what about vegans? Is that an even better way to eat? We didn't know for sure until now.

A new study just out of Loma Linda University funded by the National Cancer Institute reported that vegans have lower rates of cancer than both meat-eaters and vegetarians. Vegan women, for example, had 34 percent lower rates of female-specific cancers such as breast, cervical, and ovarian cancer. And this was compared to a group of healthy omnivores who ate substantially less meat than the general population (two servings a week or more), as well as after controlling for non-dietary factors such as smoking, alcohol, and a family history of cancer.

Why do vegans have such lower cancer risk? This is fascinating stuff: An elegant series of experiments was performed in which people were placed on different diets and their blood was then dripped on human cancer cells growing in a petri dish to see whose diet kicked more cancer butt. Women placed on plant-based diets for just two weeks, for example, were found to suppress the growth of three different types of breast cancer (see images of the cancer clearance). The same blood coursing through these womens' bodies gained the power to significantly slow down and stop breast cancer cell growth thanks to just two weeks of eating a healthy plant-based diet! (Two weeks! Imagine what's going on in your body after a year!) Similar results were found for men against prostate cancer (as well as against prostate enlargement).

How may a simple dietary change make one's bloodstream so inhospitable to cancer in just a matter of days? The dramatic improvement in cancer defenses after two weeks of eating healthier is thought to be due to changes in the level of a cancer-promoting growth hormone in the body called IGF-1. Animal protein intake increases the levels of IGF-1 in our body, but within two weeks of switching to a plant-based diet, IGF-1 levels in the bloodstream drop sufficiently to help slow the growth of cancer cells.

How plant-based do we need to eat? Studies comparing levels of IGF-1 in meat-eaters vs. vegetarians vs. vegans suggest that we should lean toward eliminating animal products from our diets altogether. This is supported by the new study in which the thousands of American vegans studied not only had lower rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, but significantly lower cancer risk as well.

This makes sense when you consider the research done by Drs. Dean Ornish and Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn; they found that a vegan diet caused more than 500 genes to change in only three months, turning on genes that prevent disease and turning off genes that cause breast cancer, heart disease, prostate cancer, and other illnesses. This is empowering news, given that most people think they are a victim of their genes, helpless to stave off some of the most dreaded diseases. We aren't helpless at all; in fact, the power is largely in our hands. It's on our forks, actually.

The Good, the Bad and the Grapefruit: Mixing Pills and Pomello is a Dangerous mix

Souce:  BBC.co.uk

All my life grapefruit has been one of the those foods that 'healthy' people eat. You know, when you go to the breakfast buffet they have those pink halves all ready to go for the skinny ladies with the will power to resist the waffle maker and the omelette bar and even the chocolate croissants? I always thought there was a special reward for those who could make such a sacrifice in the name of health and beauty, but apparently it's a bit more complicated than that.

Turns out that `grapefruit contains the compound furanocoumarin, which blocks the enzyme cytochrome P450 3A4, used to metabolize many drugs.` If the enzyme is blocked, the potency of certain prescription drugs can quickly reach toxic levels in the blood stream causing a real health risk. Canadian researchers found that up to 85 different brands of medication were affected.

5 Things I Learned from watching Food Inc

Food, Inc is easily one of the most successful food documentaries in recent times. The film looks at all aspects of industrial farming including commercial meat processing, genetically modified foods, pollution, and genetically modified foods. It's like Industrial Farming 101 and I learned a lot.

1. McDs is the US's largest purchaser of beef in the US

Those golden arches get a lot of bad press. Supersize Me, Fast Food Nation and McLibel all spend lots of time talking about the food effects your health and how voracious the company is about defending it's reputation. After watching these films many people talked about boycotting the franchise. But bearing in mind the fact that McDonald's is the single top purchaser of beef in the US - almost 1 Billion lbs per year - is that enough? Should we not be pushing more at the other end? If McD's are the single biggest purchaser, than doesn't that mean that their buying meat on behalf of a bunch of other people that are too busy or lazy to buy it themselves? Should we also be looking to change ourselves?

2. Salmonella is not just for meat eaters

Consideration for the environment was one of the reasons that I became vegetarian. I am concerned about climate change and I'm not a big fan of the methane from cow manure or the pollution from the meat industry as a whole, so I've decided to take myself out of the loop and disengage from the whole thing. But that doesn't mean that I'm immune to the goings on of the slaughterhouse floor. In industrialised farming areas like The Grapevine in central California, massive dairy and meat farms are locate directly beside even larger tracts of arable land used for growing things like spinach, cabbage and bell peppers. When the run off from industrialised slaughter houses mixes with the water supply for growing these vegetables we end up which a situation that is ripe for cross contamination.  Maybe there's a reason why some vegetarians are preachy?

3. Diabetes is not a joke.

The film highlights an Hispanic family who have to make the decision between the money the have available and the food that they should feed their children. They are on a tight income and so they eat a lot of fast food full of fat, sugar and carbohydrates. As a result, the father and has Type II diabetes and the youngest of their two children is well on the way. And they're not the only ones. According to the film, '1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will contract early onset diabetes...among minorities the rate will be 1 in 2'. Children should not be dealing with these things and parents should not me have to make these decisions.

4. Angry Vegans are illegal?

One of the most interesting segments in the film is when they talk about 'Veggie Libel Laws', that is, laws put in place to protect the meat industry from people saying mean things about them that they don't like. It might sound silly but it's very serious. Back in 1996, Oprah Winfrey was taken to court by Texas cattlemen for saying on one her her shows that, information about Mad Cow disease made her “Stopped (her) cold from eating another burger.” While they were not successful in their suit, they are able to tie up vital resources and discourage people from speaking out under food disparagement laws that operate in 13 states in the US.

5. Corn is insane

I knew all about High Fructose Corn Syrup and Ethynol, but I had know idea that corn was the source of all those chemically sounding ingredients that you see on the backs of most pre-packaged food. Food Inc mentions 30 corn derived chemicals including technical sounding things like xantham gum, inosital, and di-glyceride, ethyl lactate and xylitol. These things seemed vaguely familiar to me, and I was sort of expecting to see a few chemical compounds, but the list also included counter intuitive corn products like Citric Acid which I always though came from citrus fruit....Vanilla Extract which I assumed was extracted from vanilla...and baking powder, which I'm not sure I ever though about the origins of but I never would have guessed corn!

Food Inc's full list of Corn derived food additives and chemicals is as follows:
Cellulose
Xylitol
Maltodextrin
Ethylene
Gluten
Fibersol-2
Citrus Cloud Emulsion
Inosital
Di-Gycerides
Fructose
Semolina
Sorbic Acid
Margarine
Vanilla Extract
Starch
Zein
Calcium Stearate
Saccharin
Sucrose
Sorbital
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Citric Acid
Semolina
Alpha Tocopherol
Ethyl Lactate
Polydextrose
Xantham Gum
White Vinegar
Ethel Acetate
Fumaric Acid
Ascorbic Acid
Baking Powder

PETA's list of Sexiest Vegetarians Celebrities 2012 lacking in Black Beauties

Leona Lewis, former winner of PETAs Sexiest Vegetarain Celebrity

PETA has announced its list of the 100 Sexiest Celebrity Vegetarians of 2012. While every starlet is a contender, I was struck by the lack of black women on the list. While black men make up 14 out of dreamy 50 male nominees, only 4 black women are listed amongst the 50 veggie vixens. So what gives?

I mean Leona Lewis, Serena Williams, Robin Quivers and Angela Simmons are all gorgeous, but there are lots of other black female vegetarian celebrities that could have been listed this year.

If they'd have asked me, I would have included some of these sexy black vegetarian female celebrities.

Erykah Badu - Musician, Actress and Vegan

Angela Bassett - Actress and Vegetarian

Joy Bryant - Actress, Animal Rights Activist and Vegetarian

Tina Turner - Legend and Vegetarian

Nia Long - Actress and Vegetarian

Alicia Keys - Singer and vegetarian

India Arie - Singer, Song Writer, Vegetarian