Giving up animal products entirely may not be a feasible option for many of us, but more people are eating less meat and cheese – and really making it count when they do. While I may never be a full vegan, it is important to me that I try to match my behaviors to my values, and that means eating less cheese more often.
For years I’ve incorrectly believed that sheep cheese has a lower carbon footprint than cow cheese because sheep emit far less methane than cows. They also produce far less milk, which balances the scales. In reality, cheese has an extremely high carbon footprint, higher than some meats. For that reason, it seemed like time to reevaluate whether my actions are still aligned with my values.
Foraging can be risky business, especially when the ingredients in question contain toxins. With that said, I generally have fun cooking with invasive or aggressive plants from my garden, and milkweed was no exception. I recently learned more about this versatile plant and its historic medicinal applications while learning how to cook the seed pods that start to appear mid-summer.
The hateful phrase “good enough” always feels like a cop-out to someone who strives for perfection in all aspects of her life, but I’m learning to live with it during what has been a very difficult year. Knowing I wouldn’t achieve a perfect Thanksgiving dinner, even if I tried, my goal shifted to something far more important: spending time with my dad.
Many people associate monosodium glutamate (MSG) with Chinese food, but it’s actually in a lot of what we eat, whether it is added to processed foods or naturally occurring in more umami foods, like cheese, fish, and mushrooms. While it gets a bad rap, recent studies indicate that it’s probably not the villain it has been painted to be over the years.
It’s been a long year, and I was feeling too burned out for resolutions (of which I usually make at least 10). But what if I made a resolution to have more fun… and backed it up with my own data on how to do that… and employed a color-coded spreadsheet? I’m embarking on something I’ve never done before: committing to one single resolution.
To celebrate the third anniversary of the Radical Moderate Blog, we will take a closer look at leather. A booming beef industry combined with waning demand for leather means that many animal hides simply go to the landfill instead of being put to use. Meanwhile, real leather is being overshadowed by vegan alternatives that are commonly made from plastic, which carries its own environmental impacts.
I arrived at vegetarianism 20 years ago to support animal welfare; I upped the stakes to vegan this month to decrease my carbon footprint. Cutting animal products out of your diet is one of the best things you can do for the environment, and more people are taking steps in that direction for just one meal a day or one day a week, rather than going cold-turkey.
A vegan diet can be healthier than one high in animal products, but it isn’t inherently healthier. There are a lot of nutrition factors to consider when removing animal products from your diet, which is why this second installment on vegan health was an unexpected overflow from the previous week and still only represents the tip of the iceberg of nutrition information for vegans.
The first question any vegan or vegetarian is likely to hear is “where do you get your protein?” During almost 20 years of being a vegetarian, I got sick of that question, but when going vegan for the month of January, I had to ask it of myself in earnest. Turns out there are more protein sources in the plant world than I ever knew.