vegan | The Casual Blog

May 15, 2024

Visiting big birds in Florida, healthy eating, and some thoughts on Nazism

I went down to St. Augustine, Florida, a couple of weeks ago to photograph some of the big wading birds there. I took a lot of photos at the Alligator Farm, where there’s a rookery of nesting great egrets, snowy egrets, cattle egrets, little blue herons, tricolored herons, wood storks, white ibises, and (my favorite) roseate spoonbills. The birds hatch their chicks in trees over a big pond area full of alligators. Apparently the birds feel safe and protected from tree-climbing predators there.

It really was quite wonderful to see all these creatures flying, fighting, mating, working on their nests, and feeding the chicks. I haven’t had time to go through all the thousands of pictures I took, but I did make one pass through the ones from April 26, when we had some beautiful light. These ones were all taken that day.

At times I feel a bit of an odd duck for caring about birds, but I was reassured by a great little essay in the NY Times on how birding can change your life. The essay is by Ed Yong, who wrote An Immense World, a fine book about the sensory worlds of non-human animals.

Yong describes describes some of the nuts and bolts of learning how to identify birds. But the really interesting discussion was how he found himself changed by birding. He discovered a new connection to nature and new appreciation for the small wonders of life. He found himself living more in the present, and with a greater appreciation for his own life, just as it is.

I’m not as serious a birder as Yong – I don’t keep a life list or take on arduous travel to see one new species. But I’m still studying up on resident species when I go to a new place, and working to identify birds I’m not familiar with. I heartily endorse Yong’s view that birds make life better.

Speaking of animals, we saw a recent documentary series on Netflix that I recommend: You Are What You Eat. It centers on a nutrition study at Stanford University of identical twins. The idea was to discover how much different diets affected genetically identical people.

The big takeaway was that a plant-based diet was generally much more healthy than other options. The series also notes, without hammering on, how animal agriculture is terrible for the climate and for both farmed and wild animals. Despite the serious content, the filmmakers managed to leaven their presentation with some humor.

Finally, I want to recommend a good podcast series called The Rest Is History. The format is a conversation between two Brits, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, about a historical period or incident that they’ve gotten interested in. They are funny and smart, and some of the subjects are fascinating.

I found their series on the rise of German Nazism particularly interesting. Holland and Sandbrook investigated how an ideology that they (and most of us) regard as bizarre and inhuman could have seemed exciting and completely valid to many Germans of that time.

Discussing Nazism is a delicate business, since it understandably arouses strong emotions. It’s uncomfortable, and we tend to think it’s not worth the bother, assuming that we know everything worth knowing about it anyway. Of course, that’s unlikely, since like all mass movements, it was complicated. But it’s possible to be clear that the systematic mass murder of Jews and other groups by the Nazis was horrific, while also wondering about what German leaders and ordinary Germans were thinking as crimes against humanity took shape.

As Holland and Sandbrook note, the Nazis believed they were acting based on science, and were addressing an existential threat to their nation. Some of such thinking is still with us. Eugenics, the “science” of superior and inferior races, was integral to their thinking, and it was then considered actual (rather than crackpot) science in many other places, including the US.

The Germans of the 1920s and 30s feared for their future, based on widespread poverty and the postwar economic crisis. They sought to explain their problems by identifying scapegoats, including especially the Jews. Their anger and fear of supposedly inferior races and cultures is not so different from the hostility towards immigrants that is now a central feature of politics in the US and Europe.

The Nazi leadership effectively used the modern media of the time, including radio and film, to amplify their message. Holland and Sandbrook point up a program to get a radio within earshot of every German so that they could not avoid hearing Hitler’s speeches. The incessant repetition of lies about Jews and others made it hard to keep contrary views in mind. Our social media is different, but likewise tends to create information bubbles that can separate us from reality.

Holland and Sandbrook suggest that the impulses of Germans who supported Nazism, like the desire for excitement and hostility to out groups, is pretty normal. Humans are social animals, and our behavior is powerfully influenced by those around us. Once Nazism attained a degree of popular support, doubters were more inclined to go along with the crowd, as people normally do. And once the movement was strong enough, dissenters were either squashed or silenced themselves.

From time to time, I’ve wondered what I would have done if I’d been a German in the 1930s as the Nazis rose to power and took over the country. We know from studying Germany’s experience that most people were swept along without dissenting, and it’s possible that I would have been one of that herd. Of course, I like to think I’d have been unusually independent and courageous, but it’s hard to be sure.

Anyhow, the Rest Is History podcast series on Nazism is thought provoking and timely. We know from Germany’s experience that facism can happen to countries populated by people who are generally sane and decent. I dearly hope the US is not headed in such a direction, but it’s clearly not impossible. It’s worth taking the time to look closer at Germany’s history, and do everything we can to go in a better direction.

April 17, 2023

Our vegan safari trip to southern Africa

In March Sally and I went to South Africa and Botswana for a safari adventure. It was a great trip in many ways, though the air traveling was grueling. I wanted to share some of the photographs I made, and an overview of the experience.

The trip was organized by World Vegan Travel (WVT), which puts together novel and elegant trips with vegan dining. For years, we’ve struggled to match our plant-based eating preferences with our adventure travels. It was wonderful to find that problem was solved: the vegan meals ranged from very good to amazing. Our fellow travelers were mostly vegans who had interesting life stories. Seb and Brighde of WVT were excellent leaders — thoughtful, cheerful, well organized, and resourceful. The trip photographer was Jennifer Hadley, a friend from Raleigh, who shared a lot of good ideas on how to make better images, and was generous in helping solve equipment and other problems.

Our trip involved two segments: 1. the Garden Route of South Africa, which runs along the coast east from Cape Town, and 2. safaris at two camps in Botswana. We found Cape Town lively and beautiful, and enjoyed exploring the Garden Route to the east of it by bus. One of the highlights was a two-day safari at the Gondwana Reserve, where we saw a cheetah and a two-week-old rhinoceros. The baby rhino was about the size of a pig, and frisked about like a new puppy.

After returning to Cape Town, we flew to Botswana and stayed at a camp in the Savuti area of Chobe National Park. We traveled in Toyota Land Cruisers and saw all the iconic species – lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, impalas – and quite a few others. We had our own spacious and pleasant cabin with all the modern conveniences (shower, toilet, electricity) except internet. It turned out to be therapeutic to get off the net for a while.

After Chobe, we flew in a small plane to the Okavango Delta, where we walked from the grass airfield on a raised boardwalk through the forest to our camp. Here, too, we had a pleasant cabin, and nice common areas for dining and relaxing. As in Chobe, we were strongly encouraged not to walk by ourselves in the camp at night, but instead to get a staff member to escort us, in case of animal encounters. Also as in Chobe, the hospitality of the staff was outstanding. In addition to great service, they shared with us singing and dancing.

The highlight at Okavango were boat trips in the channels, where there were a lot of hippopotami. These huge and strange animals can be aggressive, and kill more humans than any other large animal in Africa. We kept a respectful distance, and drew back a few times when they approached us.

We also did walking safaris on a couple of the islands, where we saw elephants, buffalo, impalas, and beautiful birds. One morning on a walk our guide saw fresh lion tracks. We were in tall grass, sometimes as high as our necks, and the guide began carrying his rifle with more purpose. I realized the lion could be a few feet away and invisible to us. We didn’t locate the lion, though it was the most exciting non-sighting ever.

On this trip, I became more conscious of grass. There were vast grassy areas, with many grass species. I finally understood why there were so many animals, like impalas, springboks, waterbucks, kudus, wildebeests, zebras, and buffalo, that subsist mainly on grass: there’s a lot of it! We saw most of those species in sizable herds. Grazing is a successful survival strategy. (By contrast, there are only a few species that eat other animals, and there aren’t very many of those.)

Of course, it’s exciting to see the rare animals, like leopards and cheetahs; they’re beautiful. But a lot of the joy I got from our safari experiences was watching the more common grazing animals living their lives. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to be an impala or a zebra, eating some grass when hungry and hanging with the herd.

I particularly loved the elephants, who are also plant eaters, and who generally live with family members. The herds we saw always included little ones, who were very cute. I realized that a lot of what gives the elephants purpose is taking care of the young. That’s true of many species, including us.

Being with so many remarkable animals can be a life-changing experience. It gives a different perspective on what life is for and about. It is more varied and vibrant than we usually see.

I’m planning to share a few more pictures from the trip soon, along with some stories of our air travel challenges. But first, I’m heading to St. Augustine for Florida’s Bird and Photo Fest. I’m hoping to get some good photographs of the big birds at the rookery there.

December 1, 2022

Starting to miss Antarctica and its animals

Looking back through the photographs I made on my Antarctic trip, I’m still reflecting on how challenging the voyage was. But I’m starting to think about how much I want to go back. It was uniquely beautiful, and thought provoking.

I came away with an enriched conception of non-human animals, and how humans can relate to them. It reinforced my view that there’s no inherent right for us to use them without considering them as communities and individuals. Even though it’s generally accepted, there’s something deeply misguided in our conception that non-human animals are inferior to humans such that they may be exploited as we see fit.

In rough Antarctic waters, the cooks and wait staff of the Ushuaia did a surprisingly good job of feeding us three meals a day, including providing something for the vegetarians on board. Both lunch and dinner included dessert, which I and my shipmates ate, sometimes because it tasted so good, and sometimes just to pass the time.

Anyhow, this all added up to a lot of desserts. The result was that now, weeks after the end of the trip, I still have no interest in anything sweet. My life-long sweet tooth has changed, which is probably a good thing.

Eating involves a lot of choices. I continue to think that a plant-based diet, involving little or no killing or exploiting animals, is best. It seems self-evident to me that needlessly and cruelly killing other creatures is wrong – fatal to them, and also demeaning to us.

The health benefits of a plant-based diet are also well documented. These include looking and feeling better, and lower risk of the common major diseases associated with eating animals, including heart disease, colon cancer, and Type 2 diabetes. If decency and health weren’t reasons enough, it’s becoming more widely understood that animal agriculture is a major contributor to global warming and all the destruction that comes with climate change.

These facts seem vitally pertinent to me, but most people manage to ignore them. It’s strange, but then again, it’s extremely common for people to carry around beliefs that have no relation to reality, and to tolerate risks that seem to me very worrisome. Fortunately, most of the time, an individual’s ideas don’t do much harm to the individual or to others.

However, I think our ideas about eating animals are more consequential, which is why I think they’re worth discussing. At the same time, I don’t want to pointlessly add to the general angst and feelings of hopelessness. Fortunately, the situation with animals is far from hopeless. In fact, moving away from eating animals and eating a healthier plant-based diet is not that hard. Lots of people are doing it.

Apropos of animals and food, this week I heard a new podcast with a focus on the lives of farm animals and industrialized farming. Leah Garces, president of Mercy for Animals, speaks with Ezra Klein about how the low cost of meat is not really such a good thing. The system is extremely profitable for a few producers, subsidized by taxpayers and protected by law, miserable for most of the farmers involved, and of course, horrific for the animals.

This food system seems fully entrenched, long supported by political and economic power. But, as with our changing climate, the chickens are coming home to roost: industrial animal agriculture is causing more deadly pollution, increased antibiotic resistance, animal-based pandemics, exhaustion of arable land, loss of rainforests, and of course, the psychological trauma of complicity in massive animal suffering. Again, the word is getting around.

On a different note, I’m continuing my project of reading “classic” novels that I encountered as a youth, and just finished one that intersects with issues of animals and food: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.

This is a book some of us were forced to read in high school as one of the “great books.” I finished it last week, and didn’t think it was exactly great. The writing was sometimes clunky, and the shape ungainly. But it was undeniably powerful and brave in its account of industrialized animal slaughter in early 20th century, and the brutal exploitation of the immigrants who did most of the dirty work.

Is The Jungle still relevant? Well, the meat industry has gotten a number of states to pass “ag-gag” laws, which make it a crime to document what goes on in the slaughter houses that supply our grocery stores and restaurants. It makes you wonder what they don’t want anyone to see. I’d bet that they think, rightly, that a close up view of modern industrial slaughter operations would be very bad for business.

Of course, I very much doubt our modern slaughter houses are anywhere close to as filthy and disease-ridden as what Sinclair described, but, as Leah Garces explains in the recent podcast, they are still full of misery. Garces’s organization is working to help animal farmers transition to growing other products. She thinks (and I agree) that if we don’t like the system, criticizing it is not enough: it’s important to find and support better alternatives.

July 23, 2021

Growing plants, and hopefully, fixing our food system

It’s been hot here in Raleigh, though we haven’t been having massive fires, storms, droughts, or floods, unlike some others. For this I’m grateful, but the heat and humidity have kept me inside more than usual. I did get up to Raulston Arboretum one afternoon, and was happy to see these flowers and insects.

Happily, it’s peach season here, and I got some peaches at the State Farmer’s Market. It was good seeing the farmers and their good looking fruits and vegetables. The peaches were juicy and quite delicious.

Getting satisfying, nourishing food doesn’t have to be complicated, but in fact, for many, it’s not happening. Eating well is surely the most important thing we as individuals can do for our health, and irresponsible food production is among the worst things we as a society do to the planet. But with so many other problems to worry about, food usually doesn’t get much attention.

So I was pleased this week to see a major new report from the Rockefeller Foundation titled True Cost of Food: Measuring What Matters to Transform the U.S. Food System. The Rockefeller report takes a wide-angle view of the costs and benefits of the food system as it stands, and how it could be improved.

The report makes clear that the existing system does a poor job in providing healthy and affordable food, but also fails in other key respects — providing unlivable wages, unsafe working conditions, inequitable treatment of minority communities, wasting natural resources, hastening climate change, and hurting biodiversity.

The Rockefeller researchers found that the out-of-pocket cost Americans pay for food is about a third of the true cost. That is, we spend $1.1 trillion a year directly on food. But the true cost of our food comes to at least $3.2 trillion, once we take account of rising health care costs caused by our food, low wages and lack of benefits, the system’s contribution to climate change and pollution, water and land degradation, and other losses.

The total costs just from diet-related conditions and diseases, including health care for obesity, hypertension, cancer, and diabetes, cost us $1.145 trillion — that is, considerably more than the out-of-pocket cost of our food.

The Rockefeller report effectively brings into view some of the worst problems of our food system, but, as it acknowledges, it does not account for a number of other costs, like impaired military readiness, poor mental health, and lower educational achievement. It also leaves out the cost of animal suffering, which, it says, could not be monetized.

This is worth discussing more. According to the report, more than 10 billion farm animals are killed each year for food. It’s possible to think about this suffering not just in ethical terms, but in monetary terms. For example, for governmental purposes, officials calculate the value of human lives at around $10 million a piece.

If we valued animal suffering at much less — say, .001 percent of a human life for the suffering of a cow, pig, or chicken — the total yearly cost of suffering for each executed animal would be $100. By this measure, the total annual cost of all the animal suffering caused by our food system would be an additional $1 trillion.

However you decide to do the math, our food system causes enormous animal suffering. Faced with the scale of such a horror, it’s easy to lose heart, but the Rockefeller report also reminds us that there are viable ways to start remediation. One is, as it politely puts it, “decreasing animal protein consumption.”

On another hopeful note, there were a couple of worthwhile interviews last week with one of my heroes, Jane Goodall. Goodall, now 87, started her career as a primatologist, making pioneering discoveries about the intellectual abilities and social organizations of chimps which ran contrary to what most scientists then believed. She helped change the boundaries of our thinking about the intelligence and emotional lives of these and other animals, helping us understand that they are not as different from us as we’d thought. There’s a Vox interview in which she talks about some of this here, and a NY Times interview here. I

In recent years her work has focused on conservation efforts. As much as anyone, she understands the dire environmental situation that all living beings now face as a result of human activity. Yet she refuses to give up hope. That’s now a big part of her message: we’re running out of time, but there’s still time for us to make a difference. She has a new book coming out in the fall, and has no plans to retire.

May 1, 2021

Animal friends and victims

This week I visited the birds at Sylvan Heights Bird Park in the little town of Scotland Neck, NC. There were a lot of them, doing pretty much what we do — eating, cleaning, preening, playing, mating, fighting, resting, exploring. The emu (the second largest bird on the planet) took a strong interest in me, pressing against the fence as though wanting to be petted, or perhaps to kick or peck me. The sandhill cranes also seemed affectionate — so much so that it was hard to get far enough away to photograph them. Several of the birds seemed to like it when I talked with them softly.

Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and dissident, was featured in the NY Times last week discussing his cats. I like Ai’s art and his courage, and I like cats as well (though they should not be loose near birds, which they will kill).

Ai said:

I’ve learned so much from animals. It’s important to be around another species that has a completely different set of instincts and intuitions. Humans are so rational. We are defined by our knowledge, and that blocks our emotions and understanding of ourselves. But anyone who opens their mind or heart to cats can experience something that can’t be found in human society. They teach you that you can have a happy life without knowing anything at all. They take care of themselves, and they make their own fun. To be an individual, to be self-content — those are nice qualities for a life.

I’m with Ai on learning from cats, though I think he may overestimate the overestimate how rational (as opposed to emotional) humans are. Our little cat, Rita, is both a friend and a teacher. I’m sorry she dislikes being photographed, since she’s also strangely cute, and quite a good dasher and leaper for a 13-year-old.

In other animal news, Ezra Klein’s new piece proposes that we include as part of the big Biden technology and jobs plan a program to speed the development and bring down the price of artificial meat. This idea has merit. As Klein’s points out, some of our biggest problems, including greenhouse gas emissions, the coronavirus pandemic, and antibiotic-resistant disease, are in significant part the work of industrialized agriculture, and especially the meat industry. There’s also the massive cruelty, which could be stopped or reduced by substituting meat grown from animal cells, rather than hacked from slaughtered animals.

Of course, it’s possible right now, without a new government program, to replace the meat we eat with plant-based food. But most of us have been taught from a young age that we need to eat meat to be healthy, and the lesson got lodged deep. There’s plenty of evidence that it simply isn’t true. Indeed, it’s widely accepted that eating meat is not necessary to get adequate protein and other nutrients, but it increases your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and other illnesses.

It is both sad and bizarre that the right wing has spun up a lie that the Biden administration wants to outlaw hamburgers. But the quick spread of the hamburger lie in the right-wing subculture is also telling. Our early intensive training in meat eating, constantly reinforced by advertising, rituals, and habit, makes it hard to change how we nourish ourselves, or even to think about changing. Indeed, even raising the subject of such change causes some to experience anger, fear, confusion, and detachment from reality.

An irony of the new hamburger lie is that historically, and still today, the US government has subsidized and actively promoted raising and consuming animal products. This is the subject of a new lawsuit brought by, among others, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, one of my favorite charities. The suit challenges the US Department of Agriculture for its dietary guidelines encouraging heavy consumption of dairy products, which cause health problems for the significant part of the US population that is lactose intolerant. (The complaint apparently does not discuss other health risks from dairy products, including heart disease and certain types of cancer.)

The government’s guidelines require that schools offer children cow’s milk, and generally forbid offering them plant-based alternatives. The lesson that children or others need cow’s milk for calcium and other nutrients has been thoroughly debunked by science. Even those unwilling to think about the dairy industry’s torturing of cows may be disturbed to learn that, to increase agribusiness profits, the government is endangering the health of many schoolchildren. This is not right.

February 27, 2021

The worst idea in history: animals and us

Canada geese at Shelley Lake near sunrise

I’m recovering just fine from my neck surgery, and the weather turned nicer, too. For a couple of days, it felt like spring, though after that, it cooled off. In the pleasant interval, I took my camera out to see the birds at Jordan Lake, and also stopped in to check on the bald eagles nesting at Shelley Lake. These are some of the pictures I took.

Spending some time with the animals, or even just standing by the water hoping they’ll show up, is very therapeutic. Walt Whitman got it right in his famous poem; being with them is moving and soothing. When I get out around sunrise or sunset, I’m always a little surprised when there are few or no other people looking at them, but not sorry.

Great blue herons at Jordan Lake near sunset

Apropos, there was a lively short essay in the NY Times this week on something I’ve hoped others were thinking about: the disconnect between what we know about animals and how we treat animals. Crispin Sartwell, a philosophy professor at Dickinson College, wrote that western philosophy has labored mightily to establish that humans are different from and superior to animals, and failed. Perhaps this is starting to be noticed.

Everyone who stayed awake through high-school biology learned that homo sapiens are animals, with close physical similarities to many other animals. But most of us still think of ourselves as not actually animals, but rather, better than animals.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is untitled-6143.jpg

As Sartwell notes, we’ve also been taught to regard humans as distinctive and superior on account of their consciousness, reasoning abilities, and moral systems. Comparisons of humans and other animals generally focused on the things humans did best, such as human language, rather than areas where animals outperformed us, such as sight, hearing, smell, strength, speed, endurance, and memory. Where animals showed sophistication in their communications and culture, we learned to avoid thinking about it.

The essential lesson pounded into all of us was that human intellectual qualities justified treating other animals as mere objects to be dominated and exploited. This idea is so familiar and deeply entrenched that it is hard to see it clearly as an idea subject to discussion.

In my student days at Oberlin College, we used to debate the extent to which ideas could affect human history. We were thinking about whether the philosophies of canonic thinkers like Aristotle, Locke, or Marx were primary drivers of cultural change.

We didn’t even think to consider the effects of the idea that humans are separate from, and far superior to, animals. The idea has no known author and no supporting reasoning. If examined with any seriousness, it falls apart as nonsense. Yet, as Sartwell suggests, it is almost certainly the most important idea in human history.

Sartwell raises the issue of how thinking of humans as fundamentally superior to other animals relates to other hierarchies. To justify slavery, colonialism, or other violent oppression, the groups to be dominated are characterized as beastly, wild, savage, brutal, fierce, primitive, uncivilized, inhuman, and so on — in short, “like animals.”

Even today, discrimination follows this same basic pattern in addressing people with African ancesters, other disfavored nationalties, women, religious minorities, and LGBTQ people. That is, these groups are defined as something less than fully human, and therefore not entitled to the highest degree of privilege.

The hierarchies that stem from treating animals as inferior have caused enormous harm to the humans who are denied full human status. Slavery is a dramatic example from our past, but there are many others that are very much still with us, like suppressing the votes of minorities, lower pay for women, and violence against LBGTQ people.

As Sartwell notes, this hierarchical, exploitative way of thinking divides us both from each other and from nature. Indeed, it has led to an existential crisis for nature. A couple of articles this week highlighted aspects of this.

According to a new study, about one third of freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction. Climate change, habitat loss, and pollution caused by humans accounts for much of this dire threat. Meanwhile due to these same factors, the populations of large animals (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish) have fallen by 68 percent since 1970. More than two-thirds of these animals. Gone. Since 1970. Holy camoly!

Part of our unfolding catastrophe has to do with our view that animals are so inferior that they can properly be treated as food. A new piece by Jenny Splitter in Vox sums up some of what’s happening. Meat production through factory farming — that is, raising and slaughtering billions of animals each year — accounts for more than 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and also for vast losses of habitat for wild animals. This food system is raising the threat of extinction for thousands of species.

Our meat-based food system is not only deeply immoral, but unsustainable. To continue along this path likely means ecological and human disaster. Splitter’s piece notes that we may get help from technology, like lab grown meat, and from requiring more responsible farming practices. But cutting back on eating meat and moving toward a plant-based diet is something we as a species will have to do eventually. And we as individuals can do it now.

If you are either on board with plant-based eating or interested in experimenting, or even if not, I recommend trying Guasaca Arepa on Hillsborough Street. They have some outdoor picnic tables, where I ate my first ever arepa this week. It’s a Columbian speciality that involves putting various fillings in a sort of cornmeal cake. Guasaca has many fillings on offer, but I tried the vegan. Though a bit messy, it was delicious!

Pied-billed grebe at Shelley Lake near sunrise

December 17, 2017

Precancerousness, Eno hiking, Dolci paintings, some Debussy and Liszt, and support for a plant-based diet

The Eno River, by the Eno Trace trail

This week I got a one page report that said the polyp removed during my recent colonoscopy was precancerous. I’m not exactly sure what that means. It sounds better than cancerous, but definitely not as good as non-cancerous. Do they really know when something will become cancerous, or is it more like, we aren’t exactly sure, and don’t want to say there’s nothing to worry about? The net seemed to be, it’s good they removed it, because it might not have been harmless. In any case, it’s gone. But instead of the usual ten-year interval for the next colonoscopy, they want me to come back in five. So I’m twice as valuable as the usual patient.

On Saturday morning I drove over to Eno River State Park and hiked in the Fews Ford area. There was frost on the grass, and some ice on the river, but it was sunny and calm. A flock of robins was hunting for breakfast. I stepped carefully on the rocks and didn’t get wet or twist an ankle, and got these pictures.

Afterwards I stopped in Durham at the Nasher Museum to see the Carlo Dolci exhibit. Dolci was a favored court painter for the Medicis in Florence in the 1600s. Apparently he fell out of favor among art critics in the 19th century, and this is the first major exhibit of his work. Dolci apparently was a pious Catholic, and in his work mostly focused on the popular religious subjects of the time, usually with close attention to two or three figures. He had a great color sense, and fanatical attention to detail. And amazing commitment and endurance: some of these paintings took several years to paint.

Self portrait of Carlo Dolci

The Nasher also had a fascinating exhibit of the large bird’s eye view of Venice made in 1500 by Jacopo de’ Barbari. The general accuracy of the aerial view has been confirmed by satellite imagery, so we know this work as a stunning feat of imagination and technical wizardry. The Nasher did a state-of-the-art presentation using several large touch screens that allowed further exploration and play.

Dolci’s St. Matthew Writing His Gospel (1640s)

That afternoon I had a piano lesson with Olga. At her suggestion, I’ve been working on Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse, and contrary to her suggestion, I’ve continued working on Liszt’s Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude. The Debussy work is about atmospheres, and has some unusual technical challenges, but I can already see that with practice it can be played. The Liszt piece is a labor of love — lots of labor that could only be justified by love. The harmonies are deliciously rich and full of surprises, but it requires a big investment of practice time.

It being the holiday season, we’ve been eating more with friends recently, and the subject of why we’re eating a plant-based diet comes up regularly. It’s always a bit awkward to discuss this at meal time, since the background facts are likely to produce a less cheery vibe for the animal eaters in the group.

But I continue to think a lot about the relation between our food, our ethics, and our health, and I’m always glad to find others willing to discuss those issues. There seems to be growing awareness of the extreme cruelty of industrial animal farming, of the enormous environmental damage this system causes, and of the damage that eating animals and animal products does to human bodies. We recently saw two documentaries on these issues on Netflix, and found them well worth watching. Live and Let Live is a pithy overview of the ethical and health issues involved in eating animals. What the Health focuses on the health benefits of a plant-based diet, and the seemingly willful silence of mainstream health organizations regarding the health problems associated with animal products.

December 7, 2014

Sorry to be difficult, but — why I’m going vegan

While I’ve been a vegetarian for going on 20 years, I’ve been fine tuning my approach over time, and getting my habits aligned with my health needs and values is still a work in progress. Cutting out eating animals, starting with cows and pigs, was a significant step, but only part of the story. Just as important, for health purposes, was cutting out foods that taste good but are actually bad for you, like sodas and chips. More challenging has been increasing the percentage of foods that are really nourishing, including some that I’ve long resisted.

From persistent testing and trying, I’ve finally gotten comfortable with some healthy foods I used to detest, like beets, peas, and Brussels sprouts. I’m eating lots of dark green veggies (like kale, spinach, chard, turnip greens, and dandelion greens) and fruit in my breakfast smoothies, and I’ve been getting vitamin rich cold pressed juices to sip for snacks. My repertoire of tastes has expanded.

Recently I made the shift from vegetarian to aspiring vegan. So it’s goodbye to dairy and eggs (with the understanding that there will be occasional emergencies and slips). This is partly a matter of getting healthier, but even more a matter of values. The more I learn about factory farming, the more persuaded I am that we can’t go on like this.

It is truly horrific for the farm animals, to our great shame. It’s also sickening for us (E. coli, salmonella, antibiotics, steroids). Cutting cheese from the lineup is especially challenging, both because it’s tasty and it’s everywhere. And I will miss the wonderfulness of ice cream. But I will also feel better not supporting this unconscionable cruelty and heedlessness.

Our individual eating choices may seem trivial compared to our epic social problems, like global warming, but I think they are related in a couple of ways. Industrial farming of animals is a major part element of global warming, because of the huge emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2 and methane), not to mention pollution of surface and groundwater and other environmental problems. To the extent we don’t support factory farming, we’re working on those problems. In addition, by getting ourselves healthier, we improve the chances of having the clarity of thought and strength to take on our big social and environmental problems.

So I don’t think it’s completely self-centered to focus on the physical self. But I admit my own motives are not purely altruistic. I’m also interested in feeling good now and functioning well for a long time to come. Exercise is also an important part of this, of course. So I’ll report briefly on my current cross-training system, which I’d say is working well. I feel good.

This week I’ve done two long gym work outs (cardio and resistance), lap swimming, two yoga classes, a spin class, a visit to my personal trainer, and outdoor running. For gym cardio, I’ve done the elliptical machine, rowing, treadmill running, stairs, and jump rope. I have a wide range of functional movements in the rotation, from lunges to box jumps to balancing to shuffles, and a variety of core work, as well as stretching of the major muscle systems.

It’s strange, I know, but I actually look forward to getting up around 5:05 a.m. Every day is always a little different, with a new challenge. I enjoy being with people in the classes, and I enjoy listening to music and reading when I’m working out on my own. And getting up early isn’t as hard as I once imagined, because it has become a habit. I don’t have to think whether or not to get up, because it’s just something I just do. But it’s also fun.

On Saturday night, Sally and I tried our first vegan pizza at Lilly’s, and saw The Theory of Everything at the Rialto. The pizza wasn’t so great – there was something a bit off with the non-dairy “cheese” — but we really liked the movie. It’s basically a biopic on the British physicist Stephen Hawking, with particular focus on his marriage. As Hawking, Eddie Redmayne’s performance is a nuanced and remarkable tour de force. His gradual loss of control of his muscles is noted without mawkishness, and his courage and perseverance are noted without huzzahs. Having lost my own father to ALS, I’m particularly conscious of the brutality of this disease, and particularly amazed that Hawking managed to become a path breaking scientist while it ravaged his body and threatened to kill him.

Unconnected to the movie, early this week I read an interesting story in the BBC en espagnol web site regarding Hawking and artificial intelligence. I was surprised to see him saying in an interview that he expected AI would eventually not only surpass human intelligence, but would threaten it. I can see that our AI creations may eventually begin to improve themselves and leave us behind in terms of IQ, but they will not carry the emotional components that drive humans to compete for resources and domination. So why would they threaten us?

2 Comments

January 30, 2010

Green smoothies

For the past few weeks, most mornings I’ve created a green smoothie for breakfast. A green smoothie consists of a couple of cups of a fresh raw green leafy vegetable, a couple of cups of fresh fruit, and a cup or so of fruit juice mixed for a minute or so in the blender. This morning I combined spinach, pineapple, blueberries, orange juice, cranberry juice, and soy milk. It was shockingly green, but delicious.

Making the smoothies has been an adventure. I’ve focused new attention on the leafy vegetables available at Whole Foods, and tried ones like kale, collards and dandelion greens that I previously knew almost nothing about. At the market I’ve sniffed and smelled various exotic fruits and learned how to deal with some of them, like pineapples, mangoes, and papayas. I intentionally make each one with different proportions of juices and other ingredients, so each one is a little surprising. My success ratio keeps improving. Even the ones that turn out less well (sometimes they taste a bit too much like grass) involve some amount of satisfaction in the exercise of creativity and the knowledge that they are incredibly nutritious.

My relationship to food continues to evolve. It has come a long way since my days as a beginner vegetarian about 15 years ago. Recently I cut milk and seafood out of my normal rotation. This is more consistent both with my personal ethics and with what I know of nutrition science. And so I’ve reached a state that I would have thought of in years gone by as a true health nut.

Is it worth it? Definitely, but not just for the obvious reason. I feel very healthy, but after having seen various loved ones, friends, and colleagues battling cancer, I realize that some disease could strike me as well with sudden and brutal force no matter what I’m eating. It is satisfying to be more consistent with my ethical principles of respect for animals, but I doubt I’ll ever achieve perfection beyond all question.

The most unexpected dividend of my plant based diet has been how much more sensually satisfying eating is. The tastes and textures of plant food are unendingly varied and complex. This approach to food leads to trying new foods and new restaurants. It inspires experimentation and discovery.

Last night, for instance, we ate at Zely and Ritz, one of the most interesting restaurants in Raleigh, which is about two blocks from our place. I ordered sweet potato gnocchi with rutabaga sauce. I’ve never cared for sweet potatoes or rutabagas, but it was the dish they offered that was most consistent with my rules. And it turned out to be very tasty. I had no room left for dessert.

Tag: vegan