Happy new year! More people than ever have chosen to give Veganuary a try this year. Others, who perhaps aren’t quite ready to take that step, will at least have resolved to reduce their meat intake. It’s encouraging to see so many people willing to challenge and change their food consumption habits, whether it be for health, environmental or ethical reasons, or all three. Sadly, world governments continue to show […]
To kick off the new year on this blog here’s a healthy, quick and delicious dish of pak choi and broccoli with soy sauce and garlic. This is a time of year that is full of good intentions, when many of us making resolutions and many of those resolutions are about improving our diet. Whether you are someone who has signed up for “Veganuary” (a month of meat-free and dairy […]
The weather has been warming up of late, which makes for a great excuse to revisit some unusual but delicious vegan ice creams from the Circus Gardener’s Kitchen archives, as well as to share some great vegan ice cream recipes from other bloggers. There are one or two technical challenges involved in producing a good vegan ice cream, particularly around getting the right fat content to give it a creamy […]
Buddhism began to take root as the principal religion in Japan during the seventh century AD, and since Buddhism prohibited the destruction of life, the emperor issued a decree in 675 AD prohibiting the consumption of meat. Those caught breaking the decree faced a range of penalties, including death. Over the ensuing centuries, reinforced by this royal decree, the Japanese ate a mostly vegan diet (dairy produce did not feature […]
Occasionally I am told that one of the “problems” of a vegetarian or vegan diet is that we humans can only obtain “complete protein” from eating meat and fish (a “complete protein” being one which contains the nine “essential” amino acids). This claim is wrong on two counts. Firstly, it is factually inaccurate: there are several plant-based foods that not only contain traces of the nine essential amino acids but […]
If you’re looking for an ethical reason not to eat meat, then it’s hard to better the words of the ancient Greek historian and philosopher, Plutarch who, in his work Moralia wrote: “but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy” Human beings […]