Oprah Vegan Challenge: Kathy Freston's New Book Inspires Oprah And Staff To Go Animal-Free

From One Green Planet:

The Oprah Winfrey show aired an episode today where she and her 378 Staffers go vegan for a one-week challenge. The special guests on the episode included Michael Pollan and Kathy Freston, who shared their thoughts on what you should know about the food you eat, and Lisa Ling gave the audience a look inside a beef processing plant.

As some of you may recall, Oprah flirted with a vegan diet back in 2008, when she went on a 21-day vegan cleanse that not only excluded animal products from her diet, but also caffeine, sugar, alcohol and gluten. Just as Kathy Freston's book Quantum Wellness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Health and Happiness was the inspiration for her 2008 attempt at a plant-based diet, Freston's new book plays a key role in inspiring Oprah (and her entire staff) to embark on this one-week challenge.

Regardless of whether the show and the one-week challenge leads Oprah and her 300+ staffers to adopt a vegan lifestyle for good, we're glad the Oprah Show is being used as a platform to spread a positive message about veganism. We're also very excited about Kathy Freston's new book that touches upon why a plant-based diet is not only good for the animals and the environment but also for your physical and spiritual well being.

Enter One Green Planet's contest to win a FREE copy of Kathy Freston's Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World by visiting the One Green Planet website.

About One Green Planet: One Green Planet is an online destination for the ecologically ethical generation. We deliver ecology, environment & vegan lifestyle related content.

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Comments

[thoreau101]

03:02 AM on 02/27/2011

Oprah gives veggies a bad name; she will even use food for cheap publicity. Maybe on her next show, she should interview a tomato, since they share similar shapes.

[thoreau101]

08:13 AM on 02/27/2011

Some one should tell O that she won't lose weight if she follows up a big plate of veggies with bigger plate of fries, even if she eats them off camera.

O, please close your mouth. You'll lose weight and spare the world all the nonsense that flows from it.

[Norma Desmond]

04:08 AM on 02/11/2011

I'm 100% vegetarian - eating animals is disgusting...

[maslin]

12:14 PM on 02/07/2011

Can we please institute an English-wide ban of the non-scientific use of the word 'Quantum', at least in book titles?

Quantum physics is confusing enough.

[aznurse]

12:25 PM on 02/06/2011

Okay, so something about the 16 billion number struck a chord,so I decided to try this for one week. It's been a couple of days and I admit to a dollop of cream for coffee and a small sprinkle of feta, but besides that I'm doing pretty good.
and I do believe my skin feels better and my sinuses feel clearer because of almost no dairy.
Is it my imagination?

[Rassie]

05:46 PM on 02/07/2011

Yes.

[aznurse]

08:41 PM on 02/07/2011

pooh.

[diversenp]

03:48 AM on 02/06/2011

I forgot to include this suggestion in the last post.
Recently I discovered a meat substitute called Gardein. It taste really good. I wonder if there are any experienced vegans who have tried this. If so, let me know what you think.

[diversenp]

03:46 AM on 02/06/2011

Its going to be hard to give up fish and all eggs. Other meats won't be too much a problem for me.

[seehowtheyrun]

05:57 PM on 02/05/2011

I ate a vegan diet for a few years and I liked it. I felt great and I lost excess weight. However, I had trouble getting enough protein because I was not always organized well enough to prepare things ahead of time: I'm celiac and cannot eat gluten which means I cannot eat many of the processed vegan meat replacements and it can be very difficult for me to find food that I can eat when I'm away from home. I eventually added some meat back into my diet. I eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and legumes, and locally raised grass fed, organic/heirloom meat and poultry. I have eggs once in a while but I never went back to eating dairy which I don't miss at all.

I think Oprah's challenge is good. I just wish it didn't focus so much on vegan convenience foods. I think of them as vegan junk foods ! I would have liked to have seen more recipes for things made from scratch.

[Mirabai305]

09:59 PM on 02/05/2011

Agreed. If the point is to be healthier, they badly miss the boat with all the heavily processed GMO soy products. With meat or without it, fake food is fake.

Eat real. No pesticides. Grass-fed, free range. No antibiotics or hormones. No GMO. You have to do a bit of research to figure stuff out, but avoid the foods that aggravate your health, like not eating nightshades when you have arthritis. Do this and you will feel good, whether you eat meat or not.

[wyophil]

11:16 AM on 02/05/2011

Veganism is not necessarily green, nor healthy. Almost no other aspect of humane life is full of more crazy views than nutrition.

[phoebequeen]

05:58 PM on 02/04/2011

Can someone tell me when you go vegan that means no eggs, milk or meat. But, what happens to the chickens that would be normally laying the eggs? Same thing for the cows. What would the farmer's do with them? I'm not being facetious, I just don't know enough about the subject and have wondered about it lately.

[Vickster]

11:14 PM on 02/04/2011

If the past is any indication, these animals will go extinct. Since World War Two, more than half of all known farm breeds have disappeared and half of the remaining breeds are now endangered. This is because farmers have replaced them with more commercial breeds (Holsteins, for example, instead of Brown Swiss). This also applies to crops. The fruits and vegetables in your grocery store aren't heirloom varieties. And what's lost when these breeds and varieties disappear is genetic diversity.

[SpoonPlayer]

11:42 PM on 02/04/2011

Well, my guess is that with any 'commodity' - as demand tapered off, so wouldn't production. There is no chance of everyone (or even a large number of people) going vegan all at once, so farmers would adjust by breeding less animals as a reflection of a smaller market for their products.

Let's say that some day in the distant future everyone stopped eating chicken. Would we keep a few chickens on 'heritage' farms as an example of the past or for their genetic diversity? I don't know. The chickens we eat today have been bred to grow so quickly and so large that their own bones can't support their weight and their legs break under their own weight by the time they reach their adult size. I'm not sure that maintaining that 'genetic diversity' would be in the best interest of chickens in general.

[Vickster]

01:19 AM on 02/05/2011

That's why you should support the local farmers who raise heirloom chickens instead of boycotting all food that comes from animals. Genetic diversity is a good thing.

[Cathy M Rubin]

06:37 PM on 02/03/2011

Coincidentally I read a heartbreaking article on the famine in Niger before stumbling onto this blog story - if Oprah's staff have any problem eating 'animal free' for a week I'd be happy to connect them with people in desperate situations all around the globe who'd just like to eat - something! Sorry but whether to eat Vegan or not suddenly sounds trivial.....Okay stay on point! - My freshman went Vegan - so I joined her during the trial - loved it - especially as I suffer from constipation but during the Vegan trial guess what - constipation disappeared. Lessons learned - be grateful that we have food to eat - be even more grateful we can make choices and finally Vegan is healthy eating and it's really no big deal. www.cmrubinworld.tumblr.com

[YOKEL13]

04:51 PM on 02/03/2011

I'll go vegan if Oprah will lend me her chef.

[mytakeon]

03:45 PM on 02/03/2011

Is it possible for Oprah to disappoint? Well, I think she fell short on a recent episode titled “The Harpo Vegan Challenge”. In the episode, Oprah Winfrey challenged over 300 of her staffers to eat animal-free for one week. I love how she touched millions to think differently but I think she missed the mark on what exactly a healthy diet can be. In one clip, Kathy Freston, author of The Veganist, took an executive producer on a shopping trip at Whole Foods to learn how to shop meat-free. In the end, her grocery cart was filled with packaged, processed, meat alternatives and not one vegetable or legume was in sight! It was a huge, brown pile of soy products. Where were the whole foods?!?

[Mirabai305]

11:59 PM on 02/03/2011

I was eating at a restaurant int he Bay Area called Herbivore - vegan place. I asked the waitress why, if the whole point of the restaurant is to promote veganism, do they serve things like BBQ 'chicken' sandwiches? Her head pretty much exploded trying to grasp the concept.

[seehowtheyrun]

06:02 PM on 02/05/2011

I've wondered the same thing when I see vegan chicken nuggets, or vegan burgers in the grocery store. Why would vegans want to eat anything called a chicken nugget?

[phoebequeen]

06:00 PM on 02/04/2011

I thought the same thing. I include lots of beans and veggies in soups during the winter and in pasta dishes in the warmer months.

[DavidMG]

11:51 AM on 02/03/2011

Some people find the vegan diet hard to stick with. If that is so for you, you might want to try a traditional vegetarain diet that includes organic dairy and eggs. People have been relying on a cookbook "American Wholefoods Cuisine" since 1983 for its 1300 meatless recipies. Dubbed the "vegetarian Joy of Cooking." Amazing reader's comments

[Subsoil73]

09:58 AM on 02/03/2011

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith...Speaking lies in hypocrisy...commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving...For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving. From Timothy 4:1-5 KJV

[grn1]

11:57 AM on 02/03/2011

and yet when those proclaiming abstention recognize that it is infallibly giving instead of receiving, a truth in connectivity of spirit can be proclaimed and instead of purging God's gift, it is recognized. Grn1 8:56 F11

[Jeanne Duvall]

12:33 PM on 02/03/2011

What does your God say about feedlots?

[mssreader]

02:11 PM on 02/03/2011

Jeanne, great question! And how about "thou shalt not kill."

[lilpeg]

07:39 AM on 02/03/2011

I wonder at all the "meat-like" products. Without those and eggs and dairy, how do you go about ensuring enough B-12? Just take a vitamin?

[IndianaJohn]

12:34 PM on 02/03/2011

Red Star nutritional yeast is a high fiber, high vitamin food that includes vitamin B-12. The "meat-like" products can serve as quick food when you're pressed for time, but you can make your own "burgers" or "sausages" for which you control the ingredients. You can also just throw together some beans, grains, pickles, lettuce, onions, mustard and ketchup and eat them out of a bowl, if you don't want to go to the trouble of shaping and frying patties so they look like hamburgers.

http://www.vegan.org/going_vegan/eating_vegan/index.html