intellectual properties

food-democracy:now

Nicholas D. Kristof: Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’? (NYT)

As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”

A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat.

Renaming the department would signal that Mr. Obama seeks to move away from a bankrupt structure of factory farming that squanders energy, exacerbates climate change and makes Americans unhealthy — all while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

…

Modern confinement operations are less like farms than like meat assembly lines. They are dazzlingly efficient in some ways, but they use vast amounts of grain, as well as low-level antibiotics to reduce infections — and the result is a public health threat from antibiotic-resistant infections.

An industrial farm with 5,000 hogs produces as much waste as a town with 20,000 people. But while the town is required to have a sewage system, the industrial farm isn’t.

“They look profitable because we’re paying for their wastes,” notes Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. “And then there’s the cost of antibiotic resistance to the economy as a whole.”

One study suggests that these large operations receive, in effect, a $24 subsidy for each hog raised. We face an obesity crisis and a budget crisis, and we subsidize bacon?

…

An online petition that can be found at www.fooddemocracynow.org calls for a reformist pick for agriculture secretary — and names six terrific candidates, such as Chuck Hassebrook, a reformer in Nebraska. On several occasions in the campaign, Mr. Obama made comments showing a deep understanding of food issues, but the names that people in the food industry say are under consideration for agriculture secretary represent the problem more than the solution.

Change we can believe in?

get in shape girl

i’m 32 now and when they say your body starts changing in your 30s, they aren’t kidding. for the past year or so i’ve really noticed a change in how easily i gain weight, and that my body fat levels seem to have increased despite the fact that i don’t believe i’ve changed anything in the way of how much exercise i get or what or how much i eat. it’s been pretty frustrating, because all the little ‘tricks’ i used to do when i was younger that would easily melt away 5lbs or so gained on vacation or during a holiday weekend like thanksgiving weekend no longer work.

so, we got our asses in gear and recently jay and i have been really good about going to the gym consistently for the past month or so - 4 or 5 days a week - and i’ve also cut a few more things out of my diet and started paying attention to things i didn’t before, like fat content. it was easy for me to go vegetarian; once i made that choice i’ve rarely struggled with ever wanting to eat meat. it also hasn’t really been hard not eating processed or junk food; we keep almost none in the house, and pretty much the only time i eat things like cookies or potato chips is when i’m at a party or something. that hasn’t bothered me much either. but cutting down on fat in my diet - whew. it feels like i can’t eat so many of the things that have been LEFT in and are staples in my diet. salad dressing=bad. indian food=bad. cheese=bad. guacamole=bad. fake meats=bad. oils/sauces=bad. i’m down to a more or less macrobiotic diet, which feels pretty difficult to maintain, but maybe i’ll adjust to this eventually too. although i will never stop eating indian food. ever.

i’m sure it could be suggested that i try cutting out sugars instead of fats to try to create a larger calorie deficit, but given that a very LARGE percentage of my calories come from fruits and juices, i feel like that would be even more impossible since i’m already not eating much bread or processed sugar to cut out to begin with. this morning my co-worker, who’d just sat and ate a pile of bread and cheese that i abstained from, refused to drink orange juice because she said “it’s just sugar! it’s all just sugar!” i’m sorry, but when i’m basically living on beans, salad, sauerkraut, pickles and fruit juices, there’s no way in hell i’m giving up my Superfood.

anyway, this morning i finally felt like i could see a change in the shape/feel of my body. i know that it’s only been about a month since i REALLY started hitting the gym and watching what i eat and that these changes take a long time, but like i said, in the past when i’d put on a few pesky pounds i’d just eat light for a couple of days and dance a little harder over the weekend and it would easily go away. now i have to sweat my ass off at the gym and forgo some of my favorite foods for a month before i feel any different.

for years i belonged to a climbing gym in berkeley where all they had was climbing (which i never did), cardio machines, weights, and a little big of yoga. now we go to the YMCA, which in addition to all that has a pool, classes, and networked weight machines that provide you with a customized tracking program, and the variety is much better. if i’m too tired to do one thing, i can do something else. tonight i had a lot of energy and i did a step-aerobics class for the first time (the cardio didn’t kill me; my complete lack of hand-eye coordination did) followed by a buns/abs class that was rather brutal. i’m pretty sure i’m going to be sore as hell tomorrow, but it felt good to kick it up a notch and really push myself. i think when you’re in pretty good shape already and not really trying to lose a lot of weight but just a little bit and tone up your body, it’s a bit more difficult in the beginning to see any results, and really working out as hard as you can is basically the only way to kick in your metabolism. next i think i’m going to try a spinning class, which i’ve never done, and, of course, there’s always running. blah. hopefully i can keep up the habit and not get derailed like i have in the past (e.g. get the flu and don’t go to the gym for weeks afterward and basically lose all benefits and have to start over), and maybe in a month or so i’ll be able to wear some of the clothes that have been sitting in the back of my closet for a while again. that would be nice.

i voted. *finally*

this.fucking.election.com - a visual retrospective of the political memes of the last 20+ months. reading that list made my head hurt; it makes it seem like american politics have more entertainment value than political value. le sigh.

and better late than never: fuck.john.mccain.com

even so, i admit, despite all my political disgruntledness, i felt a small rush of glee handing over my ballot this morning (i get an absentee ballot, fill it out at home and walk it over because i don’t want to deal with shit like this). i think more than anything it was because everyone working my polling station was african american and the mood in the room was positively joyous, and i felt happy for with them.

voteVOTEvoteVOTEvote

halloween was fun and all, but because prop8 was my pet issue this election, i failed to voice my opinion earlier on some of the other things on the ballot that i think are super important and/or i’m passionate about and i think i should blog about those first.

Proposition 2: Fair Treatment of Farm Animals: as a vegetarian for almost 10 years out of concern for animal welfare and the environment, i’m in full support of prop2. this measure will give farm animals more room to do things like lie down that unfortunately many animals don’t already have because industrial farms will do anything to maximize profit, even cruel, disgusting things. also, smaller, better managed farms protect your air and water which are polluted by huge factory farms, which is not only good for the environment but helps family farmers. mostly though, if you vote no on this, you are heartless and cruel.

Proposition 4 aka “Sarah’s Law”: Waiting Period and Parental Notification for Abortion. the third time’s a charm, people. VOTE NO, AGAIN. while i understand the stated fears of repercussions for very young girls (not getting proper aftercare, sexual crimes not reported properly), i think the repercussions the other way (like minors going to people who are NOT doctors for abortions instead so their parents won’t be notified) far outweigh the few instances wherein this might make a difference. this essentially will create a black market for non-parentally-notified abortions, which will cause more problems than it will solve, guaranteed.

and while it might seem intuitive to vote YES on alternative energy propositions, the fact is that both Prop 7 and Prop 10 are flat-out greenwashing that will only result in certain groups/people making tons of money with little benefit to citizens or the green energy market. specifically, vote NO on 7 because it “Caps price impacts on consumer’s electricity bills at less than 3 percent” and “Utilities entering into contracts with alternative fuel providers will be required to sign 20-year contracts.” caps the price? 20-year contract? since when has the energy market stayed stable for 2 years, let alone 20? why is it a good idea to cap and control prices on something that should fluctuate with market demand?  hell, even the UTILITIES are against it, and they’re the ones who probably stand to profit most! the only backers of this are some billionare dude - something is sketchy here. likewise, prop 10 is being funded by one petroleum billionaire who just wants to make a fuckton of money. oh, and it’s expensive and not actually very feasible.

for information on things on YOUR ballot, wherever you live in the U.S., visit Ballotopedia. For info on CA ballots, click here for statewide or here to find your city/county. for a local SF cheatsheet, i suggest the False-Profit 2008 Voter Guide.

food politics

michael pollan discusses what no candidates have talked about yet:  food.

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention… 

…In addition to the problems of climate change and America’s oil addiction, you have spoken at length on the campaign trail of the health care crisis. Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in 1960 to 16 percent today, putting a significant drag on the economy. The goal of ensuring the health of all Americans depends on getting those costs under control. There are several reasons health care has gotten so expensive, but one of the biggest, and perhaps most tractable, is the cost to the system of preventable chronic diseases. Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.

…The impact of the American food system on the rest of the world will have implications for your foreign and trade policies as well. In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food…

–Farmer In Chief

it’s a 9 page article, but very important to read since most of our politicians and the media have been completely ignoring the food issues at hand. i’ve said repeatedly that the food shortages and still-constant increases in prices (have you noticed yet?) have been scaring me way more than this whole wall street thing. the real shit hits the fan when the world’s food supply fails. it’s amazing to me that no one talks about something this important except for every few years when the farm bill comes around.

(h.t. to trix for the heads up)

ready to-go

i’m excited to get a to-go ware bamboo utensil set to carry around in my purse, as while i try to keep at least a spoon in there for the occasions of eating food on the go, i admit i often forget to put it back in after washing. sure, keeping a ziplock bag with a regular metal fork and spoon in it functions just as well, and i generally like to avoid “eco-consumerism” (buying some new “eco” thing to replace something you already have, which generally defeats the purpose in terms of conservation), but these are things i would use a lot, and purchasing these sets also supports workers and humanitarian in other parts of the world. i’m going to get the black one (with the action pack, which is great because i’m always scrounging for food containers), the cover made by a women’s cooperative on the Thai-Burma border, a region suffering from ongoing war and strife that escalated last year. i also like the newsprint one, which supports CONSERVE, an NGO project in Delhi. “It is made entirely of recycled plastic! CONSERVE employs ragpickers to collect discarded plastic bags and repurposes them into incredible designs and products.”

btw, you don’t have to order them online and have them shipped, as they are sold at numerous retailers (including Whole Foods), including many near me in berkeley, so i’m also going to go support a local retailer to get mine.

i might also have to get myself a hand blown glass straw to put in my utensil set, as i always cringe when i find myself needing a plastic straw.

many thx to fake plastic fish for the links!

save me, granola!

fascinating….

During the early 19th century, most Americans subsisted on a diet of pork, whiskey, and coffee. It was hell on the bowels, and to many Christian fundamentalists, hell on the soul, too. They believed that constipation was God’s punishment for eating meat. The diet was also blamed for fueling lust, laziness, and rampant masturbation. To rid America of these vices, religious zealots spearheaded the country’s first vegetarian movement. In 1863, one member of this group, Dr. James Jackson, invented Granula, America’s first ready-to-eat, grain-based breakfast product. Better known as cereal, Jackson’s rock-hard breakfast bricks offered consumers a sin-free meat alternative that aimed to clear both conscience and bowels.

While Jackson’s innovation didn’t appeal to the masses, it did catch the attention of Dr. John Kellogg. A renowned surgeon and health guru, Kellogg had famously transformed the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan into one of America’s hottest retreats. Socialites from the Rockefellers to the Roosevelts flocked to “The San” to receive Kellogg’s unorthodox treatments. But shock-therapy sessions and machine-powered enemas weren’t the only items on the agenda. Kellogg also stressed such newfangled ideas as exercise and proper nutrition. It wasn’t long before he started serving bran biscuits similar to those of Dr. Jackson—only now with the Kellogg name on them. To avoid a lawsuit, he changed the name of the cereal by one letter, dubbing it “Granola.”

–read more @ How Cereal Transformed American Culture

health, wealth and $inequality$ in the land of opportunity

in addition to going back to work and catching up there, a couple of other things have been on my mind/occupying my time more than thinking about or writing about burning man since we got back, which is why i haven’t yet. well, that and i’m not sure what to say really about my burning man experience this year; it’s still gestating. and maybe not that interesting.

the first thing is that i started not feeling well on the playa around thursday afternoon, but attributed it to the heat and the general physical stress that everyone experiences while out there. a general persistent state of lightheadedness/dizziness combined with little or no appetite. even after we left the playa and i got 2 solid nights sleep and plenty of food and water in reno/tahoe, the state persisted and i have really not feeling been right since returning (still lightheaded/dizzy/head hurts in weird ways/vision is funny. it’s sort of psychedelic, but not in a good way). i have more or less been going straight home from work and lying down (haven’t cleaned the dust off of anything; house is a total mess). recall that i had a similar problem a couple of years ago which the dr. diagnosed as a balance/inner ear problem, and perhaps the elevation changes etc going back and forth over the mountains to burning man/tahoe is the culprit. this feels sort of the same, but slightly different, and i think me worrying about it is also causing anxiety issues. i’ve been experiencing weird physical stuff for a while now and am not really functioning well at the moment. i am feeling slightly better today but have a dr. appt on monday AM, so we’ll see.

more than likely, it is probably that these are symptoms of general physical anxiety due to the fact that my situation at home is more than a little unnerving, and i haven’t been sleeping well and have been spending a lot of time paranoid and freaked out.

recall that the morning we were leaving for burning man, we packed up the car and left it parked outside the backdoor - which is on the street and not inside our gated lot, but is way closer for loading stuff - we left it unguarded for approx 5 minutes while we went inside and went to the bathroom before hitting the road. during that 5 minutes at 9 am in broad daylight someone smashed the window on our rental minivan and stole jay’s laptop and all of his DJ equipment. we ended up just going to burning man with a busted window, our auto insurance will maybe cover getting it fixed, and our renters insurance will theoretically cover the cost to replace most of his stuff, but it put quite the damper on our moods.

so………we figured it was just us being stupid white people leaving a fully loaded car on the street (but still - wow - 9am?), but when we got back we found out that several people in our building had their cars broken into INSIDE our lot, that more than one unit had attempted burglaries (mostly units with doors that open onto the street), and that there had been several other incidents while we were gone, one involving a guy with a knife.

then thursday morning (48 hours ago) at around 2:00am, 2 guys came into the lot and 2 more cars got broken into. it was caught on camera, and to watch them case the parking lot is really creepy. when we heard this when we got home last night we went to take everything out of our cars. while we were doing this, we heard some yelling and saw the guys from the steel mill across the street run out chasing someone down the street with 2×4’s. the guy dropped a duffel bag full of stuff into the middle of the street and ran.

and then, an hour later, while people were in the garden talking about all this with our building manager, some guy came striding through the parking lot making a beeline for the open door (when people are sitting in the garden they usually leave the door open cuz it’s right there), walked past the people in the garden into our hallway, and they all went in to ask what he thought he was doing and he said he “just needed to take a dump” and took off running.

so our building has become a major target and the thieves are bold as hell. we have a gate that opens and closes when cars come in and out, and that’s presumably how they get in and out, although in the video they didn’t follow a car in. there’s a locked door on the gate they were picking; that or they are climbing the fence that we share with the cement company next door, we’re not sure.

i honestly don’t feel safe at home right now and am super paranoid and it totally sucks, and we are probably going to try to move soon, which also sucks, and the stress of even thinking about moving is more than i want to deal with right now.

more globally, this problem also makes me really depressed, and all the way to burning man i couldn’t stop thinking about it. we aren’t the only people living in our neighborhood, and i’m sure that many families, businesses, and residents are also feeling paranoid and on edge, afraid to let their children out, afraid to go about their lives without looking over their shoulders, guarding themselves and their property. we aren’t the only community that is suffering from a crime wave, and that makes me very sad, thinking that so many people are suffering from this right now. at least no one has been shot in my neighborhood — yet.  that is my worst fear.

what is the community discussion on the other end of the spectrum, i wonder?  what do they sit around and talk about after breaking into our cars and homes?  what is their frame of reference? how do they feel about and justify all of this?  is it a Robin Hood mentality, or selfish and drug-fueled? movies like Boyz in the Hood have attempted to portray this mentality in terms that the rest of our culture can understand, but i don’t think we ever really will.

a couple of months ago i had a work meeting at the west oakland library, just a few blocks from my house, about air pollution problems in the neighborhood. the meeting had coffee, tea, cookies and other snack foods for the participants. about halfway through the meeting a young man snuck into the back of the room, and at first i was the only person who saw him, but i didn’t want to get up in the middle of the meeting and make a scene asking him what he was doing. he was just a hungry kid. another woman saw him, sat him down in a chair, gave him an agenda, as if he was there for the meeting, trying to get him involved in this community issue. he sat down next to her, but the whole time he sat there he kept looking over his shoulder at the food table. again and again. she finally encouraged him to get some refreshments, and he filled up his hands with as many cookies and sodas as he could carry and walked out. i felt bad for that kid. i’ve been there.

this idea that even poor americans have it better than, say, poor africans or poor sri lankans and therefore they have no excuses for bad behavior is ludicrous. our consumerist culture has created this problem, and besides, wealth is relative:

Economic libertarians argue that this growing inequality is unimportant: aren’t the poor of 2008 still far better off in terms of real income, health, life expectancy, and material comfort than even the richest citizen in 1900?

The fallacy of this argument is that human beings do not measure their well-being by absolute real income or longevity — but rather in relative terms…

…extreme income and wealth inequality alone may hinder growth. After all “respect for property rights” is really, in most cases, shorthand for “respect by the have-nots for the property rights of the haves.” If those on the bottom rungs do not feel that they are getting a fair shake, the very bedrock of our prosperity crumbles into social and economic apartheid as millions of Americans flee to gated communities, millions more are required to staff the burgeoning private security industry, and yet more millions fill our prisons.
–how big of a deal is income inequality? (freakonomics)

income inequality and the associated classism and division between the “haves” and the “have nots” is a much larger cultural problem than racism at this point, IMO. of course, they feed into eachother, especially in a neighborhood in west oakland, but in a capitalist society, it’s money that solves and creates problems. what matters more is not what color you are, but how rich you are. this has been ingrained in the urban youth of america, and thus, when the acceptable ways of gaining wealth are not accessible to them (for various innumerable reasons) - education and employment - they resort to the other ways to get rich: selling drugs and stealing.

so then i also don’t know how to feel about these thieves who are making my life miserable, these thugs who are living their lives this way, these people who feel pushed to the fringe and have been corrupted by the realities of being poor in a rich man’s world. i’ve been poor, and yes, i have also stolen, and used the same justification for doing so that i assume many of these theives do too: i want what everyone else has, but i can’t afford to buy it, so i’m taking it from someone else who can.

right after our stuff got stolen (which literally brought jay to his knees when it happened, and if there’s anything that will make me angry and defensive it’s seeing someone i love feel totally helpless and violated), i said something to the effect of “they’ll get what’s coming to them. in a year, that guy will be dead, shot in the street” and afterward i felt really bad about saying that. i felt bad about wishing bad karma on someone, wishing they’d “get what’s coming to them”, forgetting that their families probably worry about them day and night and their mothers would cry just as hard if they got shot as mine would. i brooded about that for a while. am i letting fear and anger change my morality? am i a white liberal racist? do i have so much white guilt i won’t allow myself to be as rightfully angry as i should be?

i was thinking about these things a lot while sitting on the playa at burning man, watching the predominantly white crowd of people go by in their silly costumes on their silly bikes having a silly time; people who have the luxury of spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars to take off for the desert for a week creating art and taking pleasure in the drugs that come up through the violent channels that fuel so much of this violence at home and abroad. what part of that is the american dream? the NIMBYism, the escapism, the privileged and sheltered world view? how does the way of life where i live in west oakland fit into the same america as burning man? is the common thread “the land of opportunity” - taking advantage of the opportunity to steal or the opportunity to create? or creating opportunities to meet your wants and needs, whether that means taking free food from a meeting when you’re hungry, breaking into someone’s car when they’re not looking, walking naked through a dusty city, or creating your art in a free-expression forum?

these, combined with tracking all of the GOP convention/election bullshit and the fact that the hurricanes in the southeast are affecting our september meeting schedules and work projects and causing all sorts of logistical problems, are the things i have been occupied with since coming back, so much so that my burning man experience seems rather unimportant to think about right now, but i will get to it eventually, if only for the sake of the record.

right now i could use a real vacation.

organic = fad = bad?

this NYT article recently reignited the debate about the growing pains of the organic movement, and whether it’s becoming too much of a fad for its own good:
A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss

i’ve always maintained that the expansion of the organic movement is a good thing. sure, in the case of the article, having an organic garden “installed” and maintained in your back yard is lazy, but it also means that yards in urban areas won’t be lawned-over and that people will pick up the organic food habit and spread it around. it will probably also build community since people will invite their neighbors over to share their bounty.

in a broader context of the “commercialization” of the organic movement, i think we all have fears that these things can “go bad”, but they can also cause a whole shift toward the better. i’d like to think this is one of those shifts. what if there were people in every town in america who did what the guy in SF is doing? think of how many people would suddenly have access to fresh produce, and what a new kind of workforce that could be. not everyone has the time or the green thumb to garden, but the thought of small gardens all across america is incredibly appealing.

and bringing organic food to regular supermarkets = bringing better food to poor people and those who don’t live in the bay area bubble where farmers markets are plenty all year round. i understand that the ‘corporatization’ of organic food has some downsides (many of which are at this point still quite speculative), but isn’t the organic food movement about human health and the environment as much as it is about community building and economics? thankfully organic farming doesn’t allow for the kind of agribusiness conventional crops do, and some people will always prefer the quaintness of a CSA over going to a supermarket, so i don’t see the small organic farm being impacted the way agribusiness has affected conventional family farms due to market expansion. for those who are rich enough to not shop at Safeway to begin with, they can still go to their boutique grocery/Whole Foods/farmers market if they want to, and for those who have to shop at major grocers due to location and/or income, they have better food options on their shelves. i know this debate has gone round and round, but as someone who lives in a neighborhood where the ONLY grocery for several miles is a Safeway, i’m glad there’s organic food on the shelves, not just for me, but for all the people who live in my neighborhood who don’t have anywhere else to go.

however, there is a new book out that makes an interesting point about organic food i hadn’t really considered before, in the context of other “inverse quarantine” consumer behaviors: Shopping Our Way to Safety by Andrew Szasz

“But this is a book about social consequences, not how to dodge the latest designer pesticide, and his logic about the downside of organic food is hard to fault. Szasz argues that the combination of growing wealth inequality, with the expense of organic food, means there is “a class dimension” to eating right.

Those shut out of the organic food market because of cost represent the bulk of the population, and it is a sector that likely will increase. This will result in “two agricultural systems side by side: a large conventional sector that grows affordable, if slightly contaminated, food stuffs for the majority, and a smaller one producing organic alternatives for a minority, largely made up of affluent health seekers.”

This two-tier system for what we eat, drink and breathe creates a kind of “anesthesia” that, according to Szasz “impedes the development of public sentiment that would support a broader reconsideration of the toxic mode of production in general.”

– from the Berkeley Daily Planet book review

so the argument here is that once the upper-classes feel safe, they stop caring about how everyone else might be affected (”anesthesia”). they send their kids to private schools (which affects public school funding), buy expensive organic food (but don’t care about how that affects the food sources of others), build fences around their mansions and practice NIMBYism (while poor neighborhoods lack public services), and as long as their world seems good, the people with the power don’t put up much of a fight to help or protect others.

so is the organic food movement so totally elitist that this would be true? so much of what i see going on in the organic food movement here in the bay area is about helping and protecting EVERYONE, not just the foodies at chez panisse, but this idea that the movement being largely for the affluent weakens broader public support is an interesting aspect to consider. i suppose i should read the book to see if there are case studies presented to support this, but it seems to me that eventually there’s always a “trickle down” of preferences in consumer culture, from fashion to food, and that organic food showing up more and more at Safeway is evidence of that, which, to me, is a good thing.

CNN reports on the rise of veganism

vegan revolution on CNN

i love how the weird emphasis on words they always do with newsspeak makes it seem so dramatic. “but can vegan food TASTE GOOD?!”

includes a pretty good interview with Russell Simmons, although the youtube video cuts off when he starts talking about yoga. you can watch the rest of his interview in which he talks about veganism, yoga, and Obama here.

~via