Will and Madeleine Tuttle, and The World Peace Diet!

 looking forward by madeleine tuttle

Not all nourishment is of the edible variety. 

We were thrilled to be able to spend the afternoon yesterday with Will and Madeleine Tuttle, and some friends new and old. Will was kind enough to have lunch with us and share his World Peace Diet lecture at an event at our home in Brooklyn, Michigan. The World Peace Diet is the book that inspired me to become vegan. I read it in one sitting, and have been vegan ever since.
 

Will’s lecture, like his book, is centered on compassion … a philosophy of “radical inclusion,” where no one is beyond the reach of empathy and compassion; from the sentient beings we keep and kill for food, to the slaughterhouse worker, to those in the world who go hungry so others can have meat.

He also cogently presents the cold, hard facts of animal agriculture and the devastation it has caused to the health of our communities from the local level to the global. There were also questions about vegan nutrition, which Will deftly explained. Kathleen Ruhl (my new friend and fellow Raw Food Rehabber!) asked an excellent question about common misperceptions surrounding the need to combine proteins. Will was able to address that worry as a myth originating from experiments done on rats in the 1920s, which have since been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.

The nutrition part of being vegan is actually very simple. Plants use energy from the sun to make carbohydrates via photosynthesis and also create amino acids (i.e. proteins) from carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen. And their roots draw minerals up from the soil. Animals don’t themselves generate nutrients any more than we humans do, they get them from the plants. We humans can get the energy from the sun and the minerals from the soil in the very same way ~ directly, and far more efficiently ~  by eating plants. 

The takeaway message for me was that we reap what we sow. We can’t logically expect to keep and kill billions of animals, starve half the world, overfeed the other half, poison our land and water, and ask our children and ourselves to emotionally disconnect three times a day and still somehow live happy, peaceful, healthy lives. It would be like planting a carrot seed and expecting a tomato. It’s simply not ever going to happen.

If we want freedom, and peace, and health for ourselves and our children, we absolutely must give it to others. We’ll certainly never get it by depriving billions of others of the very things we so desperately long for.

We keep and kill 10 billion land animals every year in the United States alone. It can be difficult to even imagine what a billion is, it’s such a large number. Here’s an exercise that helped me put that huge number into perspective. If I were to stack a millions dimes on top of each other, they would reach just under a mile, going from my front porch to the gas station on the corner. If I were to stack a billion dimes one on top of the other, the stack would be just under a thousand miles long. A billion stacked dimes would stretch from my Michigan porch to the state line of Florida. Imagine how far it would reach if those dimes were, instead, chickens or pigs and there were ten stacks. Those are the kinds of astronomical numbers we must use to describe what we do to other animals.

The event turned out really nice for those who were here, and I was able to get excellent video for the local channel. I had the local metro paper reporter out for it, and I’ll do a story myself for our town paper. I was really, really happy to have the opportunity to spread the word. This kind of grass roots involvement is so exciting. I think I’m even inspired to start a local vegan meetup.

There’s a short article here at MLive.com, as well. Please join in the discussion, if you feel so inclined. Have you read The World Peace Diet? Are you vegan? You don’t have to be from Michigan to comment!

 

Hummus Tapenade
serves 8 ~ $.64 per serving

hummus
1/2 pound dried garbanzo beans, cooked and drained ($1.00)
4 tablespoons olive oil ($.40)
juice and zest of one lemon ($.50)
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon salt (to taste)
1 teaspoon lemon pepper seasoning

lemony tapenade
1 cup sliced black olives, drained ($.50)
1 tablespoons lemon juice ($.20)
1 tablespoons olive oil ($.20)
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 scant tablespoon capers ($.30)

capers for garnish
french bread, sliced and toasted ($2.00 for homemade)

I haven’t accidentally left out the tahini in this recipe! I never seem to have any when I get the urge to make hummus, so I’ve always used olive oil instead. This is the recipe I’ve come to use nearly all the time.
.
In a food processor fitted with an “S” blade, process all the hummus ingredients until very smooth and creamy. This takes several minutes.

To make the tapenade, finely chop all the tapenade ingredients together. I used a food processor and whirred it just once or twice to avoid over processing, but a “slap chop” kind of chopper would work. I’ve also seen it made with a mortar and pestle.

I toasted some homemade bread slices in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, then topped them with a heaping tablespoon of hummus, a teaspoon of the tapenade, and a few capers.

calories: 294
carbs: 39
fat: 10 gr
protein: 12 gr

I had some leftover toast and this is what I made this morning. I’ll have the recipe for you tomorrow!

The Faces of Vegan PROJECT is a collaborative photo/video project intended to put a face to veganism. If you’d like to participate, just take a photo of yourself with some sort of sign that says, “I am vegan.” That’s it. I’ll compile them into a video which will be online first thing Thanksgiving day (something to share with relatives who may be curious about your veganism!).

Submit your photo to lisaviger@yahoo.com by November 1st!

If you need them, more details are available on my website linked here (just click the cartoon!):