The Observer has a great two-part article about Ingrid Newkirk, one of PETA’s founders. It’s a great read, a very balanced article that really focuses on the sometimes crazy passion that Newkirk has for animal rights. Sure, PETA’s “extreme” (but not nearly as extreme groups like ALF or SHAC), but hey… real change would never come if everyone was a moderate, right?

On a semi-related note, PETA is currently running their sexiest vegetarian poll for 2003. Man, their list of celebrities is exhaustive… everyone from Jeru the Damaja to Apu from the Simpsons to G. Gordon Liddy (!). I was particularly surprised that there were so many more men than women on the list… the general perception is that there are more female vegetarians than male (which may be true).

Arby’s sandwich had blood on it, man says

“Schapson, 43, said Tuesday he did not notice the blood until after eating the entire sandwich.

“I looked down at my hand and my hand is covered in blood, the wrapper is covered in blood.”

When you’ve eaten a whole sandwich without realizing there’s blood in it, it might be time to give up meat.

After visiting my family in New Jersey on Father’s Day weekend, my wife and I stopped off at Singapore Vegetarian Restaurant in Cherry Hill, NJ (they also have a Philadelphia location). I ate there about nine months earlier and was dying to order some more of their faux shrimp. After my second visit, I can say that Singapore is a simply amazing restaurant and my wife, who isn’t vegetarian, agrees.

Singapore serves up a kosher vegan menu that can only be described as “extensive.” Do this: imagine a full service Chinese restaurant that has a couple hundred options on their menu… beef, pork, chicken, seafood. Now take that menu and you know what they serve at Singapore. Over 150 vegetarian options are offered including Kung Pao Chicken, Lychee Crispy Duck, Pork Ribs, Sizzling Seafood Delight, Beef with Satay Sauce, and Roast Pork with Black Bean Sauce.

During my first visit, I had pineapple chicken and split a plate of shrimp with a friend. The chicken was very good, but the shrimp were unbelievable. The “meat” slightly resembled shrimp, looking a little more like crab meat, and though the taste was close to shrimp it wasn’t exactly the same. But you know what: it tasted a hell of a lot better than I remember shrimp tasting. Apparently, the fake shrimp are made from a combination of tofu, seitan, honiaku (?), potato, carrot, and yam, and despite how weird that sounds, you’d be totally blown away by these delights.

This time around, I ordered the Golden Lion’s Head lunch special with miso soup. I didn’t quite know what to expect from the Golden Lion’s Head, but it sounded so good: golden mushrooms, tofu, five spice bean curd and tofu skin, and a Peking ginger sauce. Man oh man… good stuff. The sauce wasn’t too thick, like some Chinese sauces tend to be…. a wonderful texture and complex blend of flavors. My wife had the Seafood Combination lunch special (which included the shrimp!) and shark fin soup. We ended up ordering another plate of shrimp to go and it was a good addition to our lunches over the next few days.

If you’re travelling route 295 in New Jersey, I encourage you to take exit 32 and stop by Singapore for an excellent meal. They don’t have a web site (this one doesn’t really count), so here’s some information from their menu:

Singapore Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant, located in The Centrum Shoppes, 219-H Berlin Rd, Cherry Hill, NJ 08034 (856-795-0188). They’re open every day except Tuesday. Their Philadelphia location is at 1006 Race Street (215-922-3288).

And here are some scans of the menu:

• Cover
• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3
• Page 4
• Page 5

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks about yet another health benefit related to tea: it can help lower your cholesterol.

While I don’t think that going on the Atkins Diet and taking some tea extract capsules is going to even out, for vegetarians (whose high-fiber non-meat diet can significantly lower cholesterol), this could help those with a family history of high cholesterol.

They divided [220] people [with elevated cholesterol who had been put on a low-fat diet] into two groups. One group got the pill, which was a soft gel capsule with the tea extract. The other group got just a placebo, a sugar pill, and they found that the capsule group, the people who are getting the tea, actually had an 11 percent increase in total cholesterol and a 16 percent decrease in the bad type of cholesterol. Again, that’s just over 12 weeks. So pretty significant results there.

Are there any Veg Blog readers that live in or around Ithaca? A while back, I bought the best sea salt I’ve ever used from Greenstar Co-Op and was wondering if someone might be able to pick me up some… I’ll even buy you a bag for the trouble. Drop me a line…

MSN has a story on—of all things—agar-agar, the seaweed-based vegetarian gelatin alternative. It’s a surprisingly substantive article, considering the obscure topic.

(The article originally appeared in the Washington Post.)

Have you heard about the three-legged chicken? I’ve got to say, I agree with VP on this one: why is it that the deformed animals are always spared death at the slaughterhouse? Wouldn’t it be nice to read once, “And because they were so touched by the three-legged chick, the family decided to not only let their entire flock of chickens live out their lives on the farm, but to stop eating meat all-together.” Instead we get: “In about 14 weeks, the 99 other chickens will have their their heads lopped off and their feathers plucked.”

Chefs Bite Back: In Some Cases, the Customer Isn’t Always Right

This Washington Post article discusses how some chefs won’t change their dishes at the request of a patron, whether it’s for dietary reasons or simple preference. Though the article doesn’t mention vegetarians, this is something that we deal with anytime we’re eating out at a non-veggie restaurant.

I’m of the mindset that if you’re extremely picky (close-minded) about your food and how it’s served, you shouldn’t be eating at a restaurant. Especially nice ones. If you have well-trained chefs, trust their taste and try what they has to offer. At the same time, I also believe that chefs should have a little bit of flexibility, when it’s reasonable.

For instance, if a dish comes with a meat side, then it’s not unreasonable for a vegetarian patron to request a vegetable side in its place. It won’t ruin a dish’s artistic integrity, it’ll please the patron, and it has the added benefit of saving the restaurant money (a bowl of lightly seasoned steamed broccoli will be cheaper than almost any meat-centric side).

As vegetarians, though, I think we need to be conscious of how we come off when we visit a restaurant. It’s one thing to ask whether a particular dish is cooked with chicken broth, it’s quite another to ask a chef to replace the chicken broth with vegetable broth, leave out the Worcestershire sauce, and add tofu in place of chicken chunks. I also don’t think it’s reasonable to ask that your meal be cooked on a surface separate from where meat is cooked… again, if you’re worried so much about personal purity or unavoidable traces, you probably shouldn’t be eating at a restaurant that serves meat. Of course, that’s also a compelling argument for supporting vegetarian restaurants… these things aren’t nearly as much of an issue.

Yes, restaurants and businesses in general strive to be customer-centric. However, visits to restaurants are more enjoyable when the customers themselves aren’t too customer-centric. As vegetarians, we’re automatically labeled by many as a hassle not worth dealing with (remember this article where chef Anthony Bourdain referred to vegans as “a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn”?). It’s in our best interest to be friendly—not confrontational—and flexible without compromising our beliefs.

The ADA has issued their new position statement on vegetarian diets. This is one worth getting familiar with, as you’ll surely see it quoted many times in the coming years.

The two that will surely get the most press:

“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”

… and …

“Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence.”

Poultry in Motion: With Invention, Chicken Catching Goes High-Tech

Convincing chickens to go to slaughter ain’t easy. Imagine that! It’s a job that’s done by hand and seriously stresses out and injures the birds along the way… in addition to the stress and injuries they receive just existing in a factory farm environment, of course.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a new $200,000 machine that looks like “a combination airport baggage carousel and tank” is now being used in many plants to capture up to 150 birds a minute, without causing the birds pain or stress. Animal rights groups, including PeTA, are supporting the machine, as it reduces “the panic, fear and horror of chickens.”

The title of this entry isn’t a joke, interestingly… apparently earlier (failed) devices to do a similar job included a chicken vacuum “which sucked up birds and shot them through tubes to waiting trucks.” Birds frequently got caught in the vacuum, died, and clogged it up, so it wasn’t a reasonable solution.

Of course, while this more “humane” way of slaughter eases some of the suffering of the birds, there are two things that will remain true: 1. the birds will still live their lives up to that point in miserable, disgusting, filthy conditions, and 2. the birds still end up dead and on someone’s plate.