Her take on vegetarian cooking is refreshing, as you might expect.

One of the cool things about the interview is the way she encourages vegetarian parents whose kids may not be 100% on board with vegetarian eating. That would be most of us at one time or another, especially if we’ve come to our vegetarian lifestyles later on during our kids’ childhoods. Even Paul McCartney took some crap from his kids, but what he taught them stuck.

Dad would pick a turnip and slice it through and say, ‘Taste this turnip, it’s so sweet,’ ” she recalls. “And we’d be like, ‘Oh, Dad, whatever.’ We’d just make fun of him.”

But now the McCartney kids are vegetarians and Mary has even published her own vegetarian cookbook.

As the New York Times says,

Although her recipes for dishes like Lip-Smacking Minestrone, Asparagus Summer Tart, Ice-Cream Celebration Cake and Cauliflower Cheese never involve meat, they don’t necessarily shy away from eggs, butter, sugar or cheese, and dollops of piety are, mercifully, kept to a minimum.”

I love that she describes her cookbook as “food that’s healthy but doesn’t feel righteous.” This kind of agenda-free attitude seems to be her style all the way around, including when dealing with meat-eaters. She says she avoids getting into any kind of a debate with carnivores, either during social situations or otherwise. She wants her wishes to be respected, so she respects those of others. That wasn’t always the case, but she learned to adopt this attitude after doing too much battle in her youth.

I was shocked by how many debates I’d get into when I had dinner,” she recalled of those days. “ ‘Excuse me,  I just met you, I’m having dinner — why are you on my case?’”

McCartney comes across as charming, laid back and witty and her cookbook seems to follow suit.

It’s low-key, delicious but beautiful, vegetarian but far from boring. Her comments throughout the book make it seem like you’re with her in her kitchen, just having some nice conversation while she whips up something to eat. For me, that’s the best kind of cookbook.

I knew I would like McCartney when at the end of the interview (during which she makes a gorgeous eggplant dish) she tells the reporter,

You know what would be good is to get a bit of bread and butter and dip it into that. It might be our duty to do that.”

Yeah. Loved her dad when I was a kid. I think I like the daughter, too.

As Kayal explains,

Not so long ago, there was a certain image associated with being vegetarian. It usually involved Birkenstocks, lentil loaf and an agenda. There still are plenty of all three in the meatless movement, but a growing number of Americans are finding they can have cauliflower and kale at the center of the plate without a side of ideology.”

Kayal says this is because more people are eating meatless meals in an effort to improve their health, without treating those meals as motherless children. Cooking shows, cookbooks, restaurants and other venues are showcasing vegetarian cooking without making a point of the vegetarian part. Not too long ago, vegetables were considered an accompaniment for meat. Now meat is becoming a garnish for vegetables.

Movements such as “Meatless Mondays,” as well as concerns about food quality and a tighter economy, have more Americans treating meat as the side dish. And it shows in how we shop. The number of farmers markets has more than doubled during the last 10 years, and meat consumption is down 12 percent since 2007.”

Attitudes toward what makes a meal also have an awful lot to do with the vegetarian lifestyle’s new, more mainstream identity.

The idea of a ‘center of the plate’ — a large piece of meat surrounded by a starch and a vegetable — has loosened. Many Americans happily graze on Mediterranean tapas, indulge in sushi or slurp Asian soups like Vietnamese pho, where meat is an afterthought.”

As Kayal explains, this shift in our definition of a meal has also created changes in what is offered in restaurants, cookbooks, food magazines and supermarkets, widening vegetarian options and pushing the market to keep coming up with more delicious, more affordable and more accessible vegetarian fare.

Twenty years ago, vegetarians were hippies. Ten years ago, we were tree huggers. Now we’re trendsetters. I can live with that.

Ischemic heart disease or IHD, is a reduced blood supply to the heart caused by coronary artery disease.

According to this new study, eating a vegetarian diet can help prevent this very common cause of heart attacks.

The study reports that people eating a vegetarian diet are 32% less likely to develop IHD. It also found that vegetarians had a lower body fat content, lower systolic blood pressure and lower non-HDL cholesterol levels.

The study was conducted by Francesca L. Crowe and her colleagues at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University in Cambridge, England. According to the article, the authors analyzed data from almost 45,000 men and women over a period of almost 12 years. 34% of the participants were vegetarians.

The researchers concluded that,

Consuming a vegetarian diet was associated with lower IHD risk, a finding that is probably mediated by differences in non-HDL cholesterol and systolic blood pressure.”

The article also reports that Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor of nutrition at Cornell University states that a vegetarian diet is

associated with lower risk for all types of Western diseases, including heart disease and stroke, cancers such as breast cancer, prostate cancer, coclorectal cancer and liver cancer as well as Type 2 diabetes, automimmune diseases and obesity.”

If you needed even one more reason to commit to being a vegetarian, I should think this new study would do it.

According to Ecorazzi.com, Bill Gates’ post focuses on the fact that the current diet on this planet is not sustainable and accurately points out that since no one expects every person on the planet to become a vegetarian, we’ll have to come up with some alternate solutions.

As Gates points out, our meat consumption rate has doubled in the last twenty years and is expected to have doubled again by the year 2050.

All of that meat consumes an awful lot of feed and water while it’s alive and that’s the problem.

Put simply, there’s no way to produce enough meat for 9 billion people. Yet we can’t ask everyone to become vegetarians. We need more options for producing meat without depleting our resources.”

No one will argue that Bill Gates is a smart man when it comes to economics and he has a solution that not only preserves our resources but also boosts food manufacturing.

Gates suggests that we produce far more vegetarian meat (indeed, says we’ll HAVE to) and also talks about two companies that are already doing a great job of that.

Companies like Beyond Meat and Hampton Creek Foods are experimenting with new ways to use heat and pressure to turn plants into foods that look and taste just like meat and eggs. I tasted Beyond Meat’s chicken alternative and was impressed. I couldn’t tell the difference between Beyond Meat and real chicken. Beyond Eggs, Hampton Creek Foods’ egg substitute, doesn’t contain the high cholesterol of real eggs.”

I think that a lot of companies take Bill Gates seriously and I hope that his post will resonate with companies that have the capability to create new vegetarian options and also make them appealing to non-vegetarians. I agree that vegetarian meats are a possible solution to the predicted food supply and resource issues.

What do you think?

Yonan explained to the interviewer that he was eating so much meat on the job that he started eating less and less of it on his own time.

His switch to a vegetarian diet was a gradual one, and his evolved along with his diet.

It was partly health, probably initially health-driven, and then certainly a sense of environmentalism a bit, too,” Yonan says. “But I really didn’t set out to tell other people what they should or shouldn’t do.”

Yonan follows fellow food journalist Mark Bittman into the public vegetarian arena. Bittman, a food columnist for the New York Times, decided a few years ago to eat a vegan diet all day until six o’clock at night because of his doctor’s concerns over his diet. Now he has a cookbook out, called “VB6″.

The meals that we food people get into can sometimes be way over-the-top of the kinds of things that normal people eat,” Yonan says.

Yonan says that he’s gotten pretty favorable feedback from the public since his “coming out” and adds that the only real negative feedback is from vegans who gently suggest he hasn’t taken his diet far enough.

I think it’s terrific that more professional foodies are switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet.

They’re in a great position to bring the diet’s benefits and foundations to a wide circle of people who might not otherwise read or listen to any “propaganda” on vegetarian eating.

Besides, they know where all the really good vegetarian restaurants are and they get paid to tell us.

Here are some of the cool vegetarian food trends that we can look forward to this year:

According to Supermarket News Magazine, we’ll be seeing a lot more “alternative” proteins in the grocery stores this year. They mention tofu, legumes, nut butters and beans as examples of products they expect to be more popular this year. According to their report:

A major shift is anticipated in the nation’s protein food supply away from meat-based proteins and shifting to meatless proteins.”

They also think that more vegetarian and vegan products will start showing up in markets and that more Baby Boomers will shift toward meatless meals or vegetarian and vegan diets.

Restaurant Magazine says that more plant-based meals will be showing up on menus this year.

As more diners discover the joys of occasional meatless meals, the flirtation with vegetarian fare evolves into flexitarian fascination with actual vegetables. … Vegetables at the center of the plate are welcomed by diners–who continue to seek fresh, local, healthful fare–as well as operators squeezed by rising costs for proteins.”

The Sterling-Rice Group, a food consulting firm, agrees. They say that veggies will be the main course, instead of the side dish, for many diners and that restaurants will start offering more inclusive menus, with more choices for all diets, from gluten-free to vegan.

I think 2013 is looking like a good year for vegetarians, don’t you?

Now, PETA has just announced its new Sexiest VEGAN Next Door and you have just about a week to enter to win a trip to Maui!

According to a press release for the contest, PETA felt it was time to launch a Sexiest____Next Door Contest just for vegans, since they have their regular annual contests (for the celebrities) split up into vegetarian and vegan.

In previous years, the contest was open to both vegans and vegetarians. But because more people are going vegan these days than you can shake a carrot stick at, this year’s contest is limited to vegans.”

I think this is a great way for vegans from every walk of life to make a point, have some fun and get a chance to speak out on behalf of the vegan lifestyle.

While winning a trip to Maui would be wonderful, anyone who enters can be proud of their participation and their choice.

Compassion for others is not only a sign of strength but also a big turn-on,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Everyone who enters is already a winner because they know that the best thing that anyone can do for animals, the planet, and their own health is to go vegan.”

There are just nine days left to enter, so head over to the website and enter yourself or nominate someone you know. You will need a photograph to upload and you do need to be at least 22 years old.

What do you have to lose? Maybe I’ll be posting about YOU next!

One terrific post that I found on paleo vegetarians is from Susan Lacke at NoMeatAthlete.com, which I think is a great name for any blog, don’t you?

Susan does a great job of explaining what a Paleo vegetarian is, athlete or otherwise.

Though the stereotype of a caveman with a club and dead animal seems to be synonymous with ‘Paleo,’ it’s not quite accurate. The Paleo diet actually mimics an overgeneralized assumption of what hunter-gatherers ate during Paleolithic times, before the Agricultural Revolution: lean protein, healthy fat and oils, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Dairy, grains, legumes, alcohol, and refined and processed food are to be completely avoided.”

This sounds like a pretty healthy diet, especially since she mentioned “lean proteins” rather than meat. In fact, it sounds a little bit like a gluten-free vegan diet. As Susan goes on to explain,

The Paleo diet is not really about meat. Instead, the unique focus is on restricting inflammatory foods such as grains and legumes while getting calories from fat – more specifically, Omega-3 fats.”

So what do Paleo vegetarians eat?

They eat mainly vegetables, fruits, healthy fats such as coconut, walnut and olive oils, and substitute wheat and grain-based flours with nut flours such as hazelnut, walnut and coconut flours. Refined sugar is out, but raw honey is okay. Alcohol is out, although I have seen some Paleo diet that allow the occasional glass of wine or beer. Processed foods are out, as they should be in pretty much any diet.

According to laura, after a couple of weeks adjusting to the diet, she felt a real resurgence of energy and endurance.

I feel badly now, for laughing when I first heard the term, “Paleo vegetarian.” I honestly thought it was a joke. But Paleo vegetarians do exist and they don’t appear to be any crazier than the rest of us.

The article, “Vegetarian Diet Cuts Heart Risk By 32%“, has some interesting tidbits from the study, even for those of us who already knew a vegetarian diet was good for our hearts.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition, followed nearly 45,000 adults, 1/3 of them vegetarians, for an average of 11 1/2 years and allowed for things such as age and whether the participants smoked, drank alcohol or exercised.

Probably most of the difference is accounted for by the fact that the vegetarians had lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure,” Francesca Crowe, one of the authors of the study and a nutritional epidemiologist at Oxford, said in a telephone interview. “Diet is an important determinant of heart disease.”

Since heart disease is still the number one cause of death in this country, this study should make many people consider the vegetarian diet even if they never have before.

We switched to a vegetarian diet because of my husband’s health problems and it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made for either one of us. I don’t wish fear on anyone, but fear of health issues can be a great motivator.

There was another study done recently, too, that came to the same conclusion as this one.

Another study of more than 31,000 people who had been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease or diabetes, published in the journal Circulation in December, found that those who ate a diet that favored fish, vegetables, fruit, beans and nuts over meats and eggs were 35 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease.”

You may recall me mentioning Dr. Michael Greger of NutritionFacts.org a few weeks ago. According to the data he presented, just eating fish or eggs once a week greatly increased heart risk beyond that of a strictly vegetarian diet.

If you know someone who is worried about their high risk for heart disease, pass this article on to them. It may help them to make a great decision they wouldn’t otherwise make.

As the article explains, the trendiness of vegetarianism has made the definition of it harder to pin down.

One must feel sorry, then, for dyed-in-the-(artificial)-wool vegetarians who must share their space with those “veggies” who just happen to eat fish, the lacto-ovo-pesce-pollo-vegetarians (AKA the “two legs good, four legs bad” school of nutrition) and the reported 37% of American “vegetarians” who responded positively when asked if they’d eaten red meat in the past 24 hours.”

Funny, but can we deny that it’s true? We’ve all seen the interviews with celebrities who are “vegetarians” for about ten minutes or had friends that are “sorta” vegetarian. While there are different types of “real” vegetarians, the temporarily vegetarian are making it harder to be taken seriously.

Then, as the article points out, there’s the difficulty of explaining WHY we’re vegetarians.

When you start to search for a vegetarian raison d’être, you’re spoiled for choice. There’s the obvious “thou shalt not kill stuff” reason. Then there’s the “being nice to animals” reason – a most tricky subject that seemingly requires in-depth knowledge of the meat-production business, dairy trade and a comparative study of the nervous systems and psychologies of all beast, fowl and swimmy things in order to make an informed decision.”

I know I’m not the only one who has had to go into an in-depth explanation of my moral stand against eating meat. It was a lot easier when my decision was based mainly on the health benefits of a meatless diet. Even then, it can be hard trying to convince people that the research on the dangers of eating meat isn’t just some scare-tactic propaganda.

Now we also have all of the scientific evidence that a vegetarian diet is better for the planet, which may make it easier to justify our diets, since being green is often more widely accepted than being vegetarian.

As the article says, increasing research shows that raising livestock for food does incredible damage to our lands and promotes global warming, something to note to our environmental friends.

The article ends with a nice, upbeat note for vegetarians to share some good carnivore-friendly recipes, as that may do more for the cause than any of our lengthy explanations.

And for the sake of vegetarians at dinner parties everywhere: do please share your vegetarian recipes that drive meat-eaters equally wild. A thousand mushroom risottos beg for your mercy.”

Nothing wrong with a little vegetarian humor, especially when it makes a few good points.