By Rory Freedman on June 4, 2009
Rory Freedman, photo by Ariel Sinson
How did you change the delivery of your message for a male audience in Skinny Bastard?
What’s good for the bitch is good for the bastard, so basically, the men get the same tough love, straight talk, and compelling info the women get in Skinny Bitch. They also get male-specific bonus info about the prostate, erectile dysfunction, muscle-building, and how diet effects all three! (And I’m not gonna lie: there are multiple hilarious euphemisms for wang-doodles and jis in the book. We’re talking laugh-out-loud funny.)
What do you say to men who equate manliness and physical strength to eating a meaty diet?
Get with the times! There are professional athletes in every sport who are fueling their bodies with plant-based diets. Meat is high in cholesterol, fat, and saturated fat and can cause cancer! Carl Lewis, one of the greatest athletes of all time said the year he adopted a veg diet was his best year ever on the track.
What would you cook up for a skeptical non-skinny bastard to show him eating healthy and vegan is hot?
Vegan food is so amazing; there is something for every palate. There are vegan “meat” and potatoes-type meals that taste exactly like the real thing; exotic, ethnic foods; gourmet, high-end cuisine; and everything in between. So whatever a man’s favorite dish is, it can easily be veganized!
If you could share one tip with our readers what would it be?
Start somewhere! You don’t have to go vegan overnight, but today, pledge to change something! Pick a date in the very near future, make a challenging but attainable goal, and start planning for it. For example, take a 30-day veg pledge—dedicate yourself to trying one meat-free month. Don’t be a pussy! You’ve likely eaten meat your whole life but never tried being a vegetarian. Give it a rip! It’s just 30 days!
What are you working on now?
Vacation plans! Five books in five years (plus three workout DVDs) is a lot. I’m ready to unplug for a few months and recharge my batteries. There’s nothing like being in a new place around new people experiencing new things to get creative again.
Channeling the genius of James Lipton from Inside The Actor’s Studio, we would like to ask you a few of his famous interview questions:
What is your favorite word?
Vegan
What is your least favorite word?
Veal
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
LOVE!
What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Stress.
What sound or noise do you love?
The little clippety sound of my dogs’ nails on the floor when they’re playing.
What sound or noise do you hate?
My own voice, when I’m talking too much or complaining.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
80’s aerobics instructor!
What profession would you not like to do?
Dentistry.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
You did it! You veganized the whole world!
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By Guest Blogger on May 19, 2009
Recently on Extra, Kathy Freston, CSL Blog Posse member and author of Quantum Wellness Cleanse, interviewed Dr. T. Colin Campbell and his son, Thomas M. Campbell about the benefits of a plant-based diet and the many myths surrounding meat and dairy. The Campbells are co-authors of the book, The China Study, which provides an in-depth, long-term analysis of the effects of a plant-based diet compared to the standard American diet on our health. Check out the video for more…
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By Guest Blogger on May 18, 2009
1. What has been your inspiration for becoming a raw foods chef?
Lately, it’s our kids. With obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other health issues on the rise in the USA, I feel it’s important to start kids on a healthy track from a young age. All of my recipes are designed to be fast, simple, and easy enough for a child to create in the kitchen. I encourage everyone to invite kids into your kitchen. Have them help you make my recipes. This is real play food, and it’s fun for kids to use their hands to mix and form uniquely shaped cookies and treats. Kids begin to learn how to prepare foods, while learning about healthy ingredients. They’ll also love eating the food they’ve helped create.
2. What are the essential tools that you would suggest for someone just starting to experiment with a raw food recipes?
A food processor is not necessary, but will make your processing time a snap. If you don’t have a food processor, you can always chop by hand with a knife, but it will take you much longer. A high speed blender is also a great investment. A food processor chops and processes dry ingredients into a powder or pudding texture, while a blender mixes ingredients together with more water than a food processor to form a cream or liquid.
3. If you were making a dessert for someone unfamiliar with raw food dishes (and maybe a little skeptical), which recipe would you suggest to knock their socks off?
All of them, but if I had to choose, the Raspberry Ganache Fudge Cake. The frosting tastes like any you’d buy in the cake mix isle of the grocery store. But it’s made from avocado and dates. It’s delicious and beautiful too.
4. Summer seems like the perfect time to take advantage of fresh produce for your dessert recipes from Ani’s Raw Food Desserts! How does eating raw food desserts compare to baked goods and dairy desserts when it comes to our waistlines and our health?
Let’s take my Raspberry Ganache Fudge Cake as an example. The cake is made with walnuts, considered a superfood by the FDA for it’s high levels of omega-3. Walnuts provide amino acids, vitamins E, A, calcium, iron, and have been found to keep our blood cholesterol levels in check. Walnuts are mixed with raw cacao powder, which is defined as a superfood by the FDA for it’s high levels or antioxidants, which fight free radical damage, premature aging and illness. I use dates, a whole food fruit, to sweeten and to bind together the nuts and cacao powder into a flourless cake texture. Dates are full of fiber, potassium, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. All of the ingredients in my cake are good for you superfoods.
On the other hand, the baked version uses bleached white flour that’s been stripped of any nutrient value. It’s sweetened with refined white sugar and empty calories, and uses eggs and butter, which contribute to high cholesterol levels. The baked version doesn’t offer much nutritional value.
You can actually enjoy my desserts as a whole food meal on their own because they’re super healthy and nutritious. By substituting more of my delicious desserts for traditional baked versions, you’ll loose weight and feel healthier on the inside, which will translate on the outside as healthy, radiant skin, and a healthy glow.
5. Any other new projects that you would like to share with our readers?
I’m currently writing my next book, which will have over 200 recipes including chapters on dehydration and pickling, due out in spring 2010. I’m also about to launch a new product line of Ready Mixes, which should be ready for order in about 1 week. Please visit my website, AniPhyo.com, for more info. The first Ready Mixes will enable folks to make their own superfood gourmet chocolate truffles and also their own Raspberry Ganache Fudge Cake. The kits contain pre-measured ingredients to make shopping easy, while avoiding spending lots of money to buy mass quantities of ingredients.
6. Channeling the genius of James Lipton from Inside The Actor’s Studio, we would like to ask you a few of his famous interview questions.
What is your favorite word? Compassion
What is your least favorite word? Can’t
What sound or noise do you love? The sound of leaves rustling in the wind, and birds chirping
What sound or noise do you hate? Early morning beeping and clanking of the garbage trucks on garbage day
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Helping and inspiring people
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By Guest Blogger on May 5, 2009
Our friends at HSUS help set the record straight on Swine Flu (link to the original article)…
Michael Greger, M.D., is the director of public health and animal agriculture for The Humane Society of the United States. His book Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, which is available full-text online, explores the risk of avian influenza, which has many parallels with the current swine flu outbreak. He answers common questions about the burgeoning pandemic.
Is it still even called “swine” flu?
To protect pork exports and deter countries from indiscriminately killing pigs, many have dropped use of the term “swine.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has decided instead to call it “swine-origin” influenza now, which is accurate, but people have been raising pigs and chickens in their back yards for thousands of years before the triple hybrid mutant ancestor of this virus was first detected on U.S. factory farms. “Factory farm flu” might therefore be more accurate.
If I properly handle and fully cook pork, is it safe?
From an influenza standpoint, pork is probably safe, but how that pork was produced can be anything but. When thousands of pigs are overcrowded into cramped stalls and pens inside massive, unsanitary, warehouse-like sheds, it’s a veritable breeding ground for disease. As the former executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Farm Production described, “Industrial farms are super-incubators for viruses.”
Where did swine flu come from?
The genetic fingerprint of the virus was just published, and the main ancestor of this deadly virus is a triple hybrid mutant first found on factory farms in the United States in 1998.
What are the conditions on factory farms that contribute to emergence of these diseases?
Factory farms can be considered viral breeding grounds for many reasons:
The sheer number of confined animals: With so many animals—stressed, deprived and suffering from poor welfare—overcrowded in today’s factory farms, a pathogen can run rampant and mutate among so many confined “hosts.” As Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Professor Ellen Silbergeld put it: “Instead of a virus only having one spin of the roulette wheel, it has thousands and thousands of spins, for no extra cost. It drives the evolution of new diseases.”
The unnatural stocking density: Swine flu is transmitted like human flu, via infected nasal secretions and respiratory droplets. So, when pigs are intensively confined on factory farms, the large viral loads considered necessary for the emergence of rare flu mutants can rapidly transfer from animal to animal.
The stress crippling their immune systems: Breeding sows confined in gestation crates can’t even turn around and their health can suffer immensely. According to veterinary scientists, crowding more pigs per pen “allows more opportunities for direct nose-to-nose contact or for aerosol spread of the [swine flu] virus between penmates. Furthermore, a large number of pigs per pen creates physiological stress, which in turn can alter the immune system and predispose pigs to infection.
The lack of adequate fresh air: The dankness helps keep the virus alive.
The decaying fecal waste: The millions of gallons of excrement produced by a typical operation decompose and release ammonia, burning the pigs’ respiratory tracts, which may predispose them to respiratory infection in the first place.
The lack of adequate sunlight: In factory farms, there may be no sunlight. The UV rays in sunlight are quite effective in destroying the influenza virus. Thirty minutes in direct sunlight completely inactivates the flu virus, but it can last for days in the shade, and weeks in moist manure.
Pharmacological crutches: Just as the U.S. pork industry jeopardizes the public through the mass feeding of human antibiotics to pigs to offset the effects of intensive confinement, the industry vaccinates its herds for swine flu. This minimizes the virus’ impact on production, but may not significantly reduce viral shedding. Instead, it immunologically pressures the virus to mutate by acquiring novel human virus surface proteins, as has happened in Eurasia and north America, which may increase its pandemic potential.
Preponderance of disease-carrying rodents, flies, and other vectors: A 2006 study found evidence that flies may be able to pick up flu viruses from factory farms and carry them for miles.
Put all of these factors together and what you get is a “perfect storm” environment for the emergence and spread of new “superstrains” of influenza, which long-distance live animal transport can then rapidly spread across the country.
Have there been other diseases related to factory farming?
Swine flu is not the only deadly human disease traced to factory farming practices. The meat industry took natural herbivores, such as cows and sheep, and turned them into cannibals by feeding them slaughter plant waste, blood and manure. Then, people were fed downed animals—those too sick even to stand or walk—and, as a result, people have died because of mad cow disease.
In 2005, China experienced the world’s largest and deadliest outbreak of an emerging pig pathogen called Strep suis, causing meningitis and deafness in people handling infected pork products. The U.S. Department of Agriculture blamed “[s]tress due to poor housing conditions, such as crowding and inadequate ventilation…” and the World Health Organization similarly blamed “‘intensive’ conditions that can cause stress and subsequent immune suppression.”
Pig factories in Malaysia birthed one of the deadliest of human pathogens, the Nipah virus, a contagious respiratory disease causing relapsing brain infections and killing 40% of people infected. Its emergence was again blamed on factory farms.
The pork industry in the United States feeds pigs millions of pounds of human antibiotics every year just to promote growth and prevent disease in such a stressful, unhygienic environment, and now there are multidrug-resistant bacteria and we as physicians are running out of good antibiotic options. A study published last year found that half of pigs tested in Iowa and Illinois were positive for MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which now kills more people than AIDS in the United States. As the United Kingdom’s chief medical officer put it, “every inappropriate or unnecessary use in animals or agriculture is potentially a death warrant for a future patient.”
How do other public health scientists feel about these factory farms?
The largest association of public health professionals in the world, the American Public Health Association, called for a moratorium on factory farms more than five years ago.
In 2005, the United Nations said, “Governments, local authorities, and international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory farming,” which, combined with live animal markets, “provide ideal conditions for the [influenza] virus to spread and mutate into a more dangerous form.” These factory farms can be thought of as the original incubators of dangerous strains of the flu.
Just last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released its final report after a two-and-one-half year investigation. Commissioners included a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, a former Assistant Surgeon General and the Dean of the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and was chaired by a former Kansas Governor. The Commission concluded in no uncertain terms that intensively confining pigs in veal crate-like metal stalls where they can’t even turn around poses “unacceptable” public health risks.
What needs to happen to decrease our risk of future swine flu pandemics?
The industry needs to immediately move towards a carcass-only trade. Long-distance live animal transport has been implicated in the rapid spread of swine influenza viruses throughout North America.
We also need to start giving these animals more breathing room. One study showed that measures as simple as providing straw for pigs so they don’t have the immunosuppressive stress of living on bare concrete their whole lives can significantly cut down on swine flu transmission rates. In the long run, though, we need to follow the Pew Commission’s recommendations to abolish extreme confinement practices like gestation crates, as they’re already doing in Europe, and to follow the advice of the American Public Health Association and declare no more factory farms.
How bad do you think this is going to get?
The goal is to be prepared, not scared. There are pandemics and then there are pandemics. We must remember that the last two pandemics—in 1957 and 1968—were relatively mild, only killing about a million people each. If you’re 52 years old, you’ve already lived through two pandemics, and odds are you’ll almost certainly live through the next.
Nearly everything you need to know to survive a pandemic you likely learned in kindergarten, such as proper hand washing and basic respiratory hygiene. Also, getting up to speed on social distancing, appropriate stockpiling of essential supplies, taking care of flu victims, and the proper use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers and masks/respirators may be helpful should the current swine flu virus evolve into a more serious threat.
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By Corinne on March 24, 2009
1. In your new book, Entertaining In The Raw, you write “On my own journey with raw food, I found challenge, excitement, flavor, health, and a new sense of creative direction.” What are the main differences you’ve noticed in your health since discovering a raw food lifestyle?
The principle difference is the lifestyle itself. Raw food introduced me to new worlds on both a personal and professional level. In these past few years, meeting and working with so many talented and inspiring people that I’ve come to know through my association with raw food has been life changing. I’m also incredibly thankful to have found a renewed passion and creative energy for my work, which all came about through being so personally connected to what I am doing.
2. You write about the influence of the seasons on the types of raw dishes you prepare. What types of dishes are you most excited about preparing this Spring?
I’m really interested in modernized techniques that allow us to enjoy raw vegetables that are easier to digest and full flavored. With Spring arriving soon, I’m thinking about fiddleheads, asparagus, leeks, ramps, Spring lettuces…among other methods, I am researching Sous Vide, low temperature cooking to create new dishes.
3. We read in your blog about a project that you are involved with in Oklahoma City. Can you give us the scoop?
105degrees is a dream project for a chef like myself. It has every element that I could ever wish for in a raw food venture – a beautiful, modern structure, great location, and what will be an extraordinary, state of the art facility. There are 3 components to the business – an upscale raw food restaurant, outdoor cafe and wine bar, a boutique living foods culinary academy, and a retail shop, which will also host an e-commerce site. I have amazing partners, Mandy Canistelle and Dara Prentice, and couldn’t be more excited about our September opening. This will be the most advanced raw food project I’ve ever been involved in by far.
4. In the last section of Entertaining In The Raw you write, “Over time, my style of raw food has become influenced by three factors: seasonal ingredients, various forms of art, and history.” We’ve already picked your brain about the seasons, but we are curious about how art and history have influenced your raw food recipes.
History and food have always interested me – I once opened a restaurant in New York called Monzu, which was inspired by the Italian Chefs who were taught French Cuisine after Napoleon’s invasion of Sicily. Without an understanding of where food originates (and this means not only historically and geographically, but also understanding the procurement of the ingredients themselves), I don’t believe that food can reach its highest level of potential. Art is another story – in the past, I would look to great chefs and restaurants for inspiration. However, most of them now promote food and a lifestyle that is hard for me to relate to, so I look where I can for inspiration. I find it in art, nature and all sorts of places actually. The freedom found in the work of great artists is something I aspire to achieve when writing about, or creating, food.
5. Lastly, what special tips can you give our readers on integrating raw food recipes like yours into their everyday lives?
Raw food, like any other cuisine, is really two-dimensional. There are everyday recipes that work for busy days when we’re on the go, and more upscale ones that are better suited for special occasions or entertaining. Smoothies, juices, salads and quick preparations like hummus and guacamole are the best for those hectic times – they are easy to make and still delicious. I find it really helpful to have a lot of staples, crackers, bases and even desserts, on hand at all times, just like one would with any other lifestyle. That way, its always easy to put together a quick meal, a travel picnic or a snack. I won’t pretend that great raw food comes easy – its still more work than fast food, but worth it in so many ways.
6. Channeling the genius of James Lipton from Inside The Actor’s Studio, we would like to ask you a few of his famous closing interview questions.
-What is your favorite word? “challenge”
-What is your least favorite word? “problem”
-What sound or noise do you love? birds in the morning
-What sound or noise do you hate? alarm clocks
-What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? formula one driver
-What profession would you not like to do? bus driver
-What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? My creative juices flow best when I am working on something so original that I know for a fact its never been done before. That represents most everything I do these days, so I’m quite satisfied on this level. Spiritually, I’m finding many lessons in patience, my own and that of others. Emotion turns me on, period. It didn’t always.
Thank you, Matthew! We’ll be giving away Matthew’s new book, Entertaining In The Raw to the winner of our Monthly Recipe Contest. Send your recipes to info@crazysexylife.com by Friday, March 27. We’ll announce the winner on Monday!
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