Yes, eating lower on the food chain is, in general, the easiest way to make your diet more eco-friendly. Thus, some info on having a tasty Thanksgiving celebration, veg style:
>> Vegan or vegetarian — and don’t want to cook? In the LA area, you can order fully-cooked vegan Thanksgiving meals from Vegin’ Out, Real Food Daily, and Native Foods.
>> Earth First has tips on how to be a vegetarian during Thanksgiving.
>> Of course, a vegetarian and vegan diet isn’t de facto eco, especially if all you’re ingesting is diet Coke, heavily packaged Snackwells cookies, and processed soy products. Writes April McGreger in Grist: “we have to reconsider our reliance on industrially produced soy burgers with lengthy ingredient lists full of words we can’t pronounce.” The post ends with a recipe for Sweet Potato-Cardamom Monkey Bread.
>> And more proof vegan isn’t necessarily eco: PETA’s got fake plastic wishbones so vegans can make wishes on a dinky piece of plastic crap that’ll forever stay in our environment instead of having to touch a real, biodegradable turkey wishbone.
>> And here are more tips on an eco-friendly Thanksgiving, with less veg info.
Update, 11/24/08: In Plenty, Nicole Solomon offers up yummy vegan recipes for use with your community supported agriculture delivery.
Image via realfooddaily.com
PETA is full of crap generally. I’m vegan but I think they are very poor at making the case for veggie living, and if they are really promoting plastic wish bones, then that is further proof of their incompetence.
We need to move past always pretending like it’s still meat eating with fake wishbones and turkey shaped tofu. Thanks Giving is about sharing food, family and community, it’s not about turkey as much as we like to plaster turkey cut outs on everything.
My personal favorite main dish for Thanks Giving is a nice big stuffed portobello mushroom.
Comment by Gary Kavanagh — November 20, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
Yum — mushrooms! I totally agree about PETA. That org thinks anything — including blatant sexism — is okay if it might get them attention. Totally fucked up. Vegans deserve better advocates.
Comment by Siel — November 21, 2008 @ 8:52 am
Yeah the sexism thing was when I completely lost all respect for them as an organization. You don’t make friends with those who are liberal and possibly considering a veggie lifestyle by objectifying women and raising red flags for feminists. PETA goes for shock value and I think mostly ends up shocking people into thinking vegetarians are bunch of ass holes. They get more media attention because of it, but it’s not the kind of media attention that benefits the cause.
Comment by Gary Kavanagh — November 21, 2008 @ 10:25 am
I tend to get bummed out around Thanksgiving when I think about all of the turkeys.
Gary is exactly right about PETA. Shock value can be effective but you aren’t going to change anyone by bashing them over the head with your point of view. I’ve found a gentler method works better – have people try to reduce the amount of meat they consume, have them read about how it’s better for the environment, etc. To me PETA are like the crazed religious fundamentalists who rant at you but only end up turning your away rather than changing your mind or making you think.
Comment by Kim Woodbridge — November 23, 2008 @ 7:04 am
It’s a little sad that PETA’s so closely tied to veganism in the public imagination. Is there a more sensible org that vegans can organize around?
Comment by Siel — November 23, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
I haven’t really been following the vegan org thing, but here is one besides PETA called Vegan Action, that is a lot less antagonistic.
http://www.vegan.org
Comment by Gary Kavanagh — November 23, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
Interesting! It’s a little unfortunate I’ve never heard of Vegan Action until now –
Comment by Siel — November 24, 2008 @ 10:16 pm
There is a couple different ones, like Vegan Outreach is another, but they are mostly low key, while PETA is obviously very loud and controversial. PETA gets the media attention, but I don’t know how good that does when it mostly makes people afraid of us.
Comment by Gary Kavanagh — November 25, 2008 @ 10:09 am