Swap Meat

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By Jennier Brown

Published in the Syracuse New Times March 18, 2009

Spring rolls around on Friday, March 20, and thousands of people around the globe plan to put down the burgers and chicken in favor of greens and grains. It’s not that they’re ravenous to chew up the first signs of life the second the frozen hell known as winter finally thaws. Rather, they’ll be getting their veg on to celebrate Meatout Day, an event that calls for people to step up and kick the meat habit for 24 hours, and then hopefully work toward cutting back or completely eliminating animal products for the rest of their lives.

Activities around the world—which the Meatout organization helps local volunteers coordinate—include festivals, cooking demonstrations, lectures and feed-ins. In Syracuse, Alto Cinco and Strong Hearts Cafe will provide an information table at their venues during the day. And in Cicero there will be an information table as well as a vegetarian/vegan or “veg” meal and lecture at Speedy Greens Organic Vegetarian Restaurant from 4 to 7 p.m.

“It’s a very festive day,” says Dawn Moncrief, Meatout’s executive director, from her Bethesda, Md., office. “We have it in all 50 states and two dozen countries, and people get to celebrate the joys and benefits of a veg diet. So a lot of people focus on the health and environmental benefits, and, of course, there are a lot of people concerned with the animal side of things.”

Founded in 1985 by the non-profit organization FARM (Farm Animal Rights Movement), this will mark the 25th annual celebration of Meatout Day. While it is a huge event for the organization, Meatout doesn’t go into hibernation for 364 days waiting for the next anniversary. Instead, the group pushes year-round for people to exist meat-free, conducting around 1,000 events worldwide including an Earth Day event on April 22, which educates the masses on how destructive meat production is to the environment.

Beyond the events, Meatout also provides tools like a free Veg Kit and a weekly Meatout Monday e-letter, a fun missive providing recipes, inspiration and veg product information, to aid people with their transition to a plant-based diet. Folks can sign up for both the kit and the e-letter at http://www.meatout.org/ or call (800) MEATOUT.

While Meatout’s main priority is giving animals a voice and protecting their rights, it also concerns itself with the negative health and environmental effects that go along with eating meat—the increased risk for high cholesterol and any number of cancers, and the depletion of water, grain and land to raise livestock—and fully supports all reasons behind adopting a plant-based diet.

For Moncrief, Meatout’s executive director for the past seven years, one of those reasons was a way to protect animals and become proactive about reversing world hunger. A vegetarian from the age of 19, Moncrief had the basic idea of what it meant back then, but she didn’t fully understand the implications of not eliminating all animal products. While in graduate school studying world hunger issues, someone clued her in that cutting out meat alone isn’t enough to stop animal suffering.

“{My friend} says, ‘Oh, if you really care about the animals you should go vegan, because the things they do to animals for eggs and dairy is worse {than just slaughtering them}.’” As Moncrief delved deeper into her friend’s claim, she discovered just how bad industrial-farmed dairy cows and hens have it. According to the Action For Animals Web page both industries keep their dairy cows and hens constantly impregnated and boarded away in cramped stalls and cages until they’re no longer of use to the farmers. The hens and dairy cows then join the fate of other cows and chickens and are sent off to the slaughterhouse to die at a fraction of their natural life expectancy.

Moncrief also discovered that in order to feed all of these farm animals, food is taken from the poorest of countries to sustain the livestock. “{That got me} wondering, ‘Why isn’t anyone talking about how food can be more accessible to the poor if we weren’t outfitting it to create food for the wealthy?’” Moncrief says. “And so that became my mission to get the United States in particular, but also globally, to reduce their meat consumption, preferably to eliminate it.”

Things have shifted toward a more veg-friendly world, a trend Moncrief has been pleased to witness. Veganism is no longer a foreign word or casual lifestyle; more and more people want what they eat to be a reflection of their ideals and morals. People realize the benefits of fueling their bodies with pure foods. According to the Meatout Web site, more than 30 million people have at least tested the waters of a meat-free diet and U.S. consumption of beef and veal has gone down by 20 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

“We’ve seen a lot of progress,” Moncrief says. “A lot of younger people are exploring new ideas and {becoming aware of} the cruelty that goes on in meat processing. The global awareness movement that’s going on is really pushing a lot of people to go vegetarian and vegan because {according to a November 2006 United Nations report called “Livestock’s Long Shadow”} meat production is the No. 1 contributor to greenhouse gasses—even more than all transportation combined.”

Still, a common concern is whether or not vegs get a sufficient amount of protein. Sudha Raj, an assistant professor and graduate director of the nutrition and hospitality management program at Syracuse University, specializes in vegetarian diets. Raj assures that while there are certain kinds of proteins specific only to meats, you don’t need as much of them as you probably imagine, and you can easily substitute certain greens to get enough protein.

“People have this impression that a large amount of protein is needed, but a small amount of protein at every meal is sufficient,” Raj says. “Also, too much protein is a disadvantage to the body. Plant proteins are a different makeup than animal proteins, and so there are some advantages to plant proteins and some disadvantages. They don’t have all the essential amino acids, and that’s why people have the idea that if you’re eating plant-based food you’re not getting enough protein. But there are definitely ways of getting enough protein if you follow the right combinations.”

As people take more personal responsibility for keeping the environment intact, protecting animals and staying healthy, it would seem that the current increase of people branching into veg lifestyles is just the start of a big wave, and many of the local restaurants in Syracuse are catching it now.

Strong Hearts Café

Going vegetarian or vegan can be the culinary adventure of a lifetime, and finding restaurants around town is part of that adventure. Of course there are the Syracuse staples that carry a large vegetarian/vegan section on their menus, such as the Middle Eastern restaurants Munjed’s, King David’s and Aladdin’s, and Alto Cinco, which dishes up delectable Mexican, vegetarian and seafood meals. However, Strong Hearts Cafe, 719 E. Genesee St. (478-0000), the new kid in town, has become a force to reckon with and is proving just how good a purely vegan restaurant can be.

Located near Syracuse Stage, and thus near SU and downtown, this hip little cafe breaks the idea that vegan food is a concoction of strange, unrecognizable chow by offering a full breakfast menu with waffles and pancakes, “chicken” and grilled “cheese” sandwiches, and pizza on Fridays. But the big draw is the 28 flavors of “milk”shakes, ranging from chocolate to pina colada.

“Once you have one of our milkshakes you’ll be hooked,” claims Joel Capolongo, co-owner of Strong Hearts. “And to be honest, I think there are people who come here and don’t realize we’re a vegan café. They’ll have a chicken salad sandwich and not realize they’re eating a soy chicken salad sandwich.”

Strong Hearts has been open for only nine months, but people have stormed the doors since day one. As the lone 100 percent vegan restaurant in Syracuse, its popularity seems somewhat of a given for people looking for solely vegan options. However, many of the clientele, Capolongo says, wander in looking to taste something different and end up having a tasty meat-free meal.

For Capolongo, a longtime vegan himself, getting non-vegans to dive into the animal-free waters and taste what life’s like on the other side is an important part of his job, because even though the concept of veganism is now mainstream, grasping the idea that you cannot only survive but also thrive on a vegan diet is still somewhat murky to some. He wants to take the mystery out of people’s perception about vegan diets.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Well, if you don’t eat meat or dairy, what do you eat?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, what don’t I eat? I eat so much more food than you do,’” Capolongo says. “So many doors were opened to me once I stopped eating meat because you have to find different things to eat: Mediterranean food and Chinese food and Thai food and all these ethnic cuisines I’ve never tried before because there are a lot of non-meat dishes in those cultures. I really see it as gaining a whole new experience of food and culture rather than losing meat and dairy.”

While Capolongo chose to become vegan for ethical reasons, he believes that a lot of people make the switch for the health benefits, which is gaining more and more scientific credence. A study published in April 2007 by the Clinical Nutrition & Risk Factor Modification Center at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto followed subjects on a cholesterol-lowering, plant-based diet for a year and found that the subjects’ blood pressures had lowered, therefore decreasing their risk of cardiovascular disease. The Preventive Medicine Research Institute in California published a study in February 2008 that found that after a year eating a very low-fat vegan diet, the early-stage prostate cancer patients they studied had significantly increased their intake of protective dietary factors and decreased their intake of pathogenic dietary factors, suggesting that the diet can help prevent chronic disease. These cases are only a small sampling of studies highlighting the benefits of a plant-based diet, but ultimately they show how a veg lifestyle can be an integral part of holistic healing.

“I think also, as veganism becomes more prevalent, there’s a lot more known about the health benefits of a vegan diet,” Capolongo says. “I mean, a lot more studies have been done by the medical community—there’s actually a group called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that endorses the vegan diet and says it is the healthiest way to live. And they’re doctors, not some weird punk rock kids with Mohawks telling you this; it’s people that practice medicine and they know what they’re talking about. I feel like that’s helped it gain acceptance. There’s a whole lot of medical and health benefits behind the whole ideology.”

Speedy Greens

For Cathy Kelly, discovering how the mind, body, soul and the food we replenish ourselves with all work together has been a passion of hers for more than a decade. A holistic nurse practicing energy medicine such as Reiki and reflexology at her company, Holistic Horizons, Kelly realized there was a crucial ingredient missing from her offerings.

“My clients and I were all getting healthier and we were looking for a healthier place to eat,” Kelly says. “I was finding it difficult for me with different allergies and sensitivities to eat out, and I wasn’t eating much red meat especially, so it was more and more difficult to find a place to eat. So I was like, ‘OK, it’s time to add the holistic food section for me.’”

With that, Speedy Greens Organic Vegetarian Restaurant, 8169 Brewerton Road, Cicero (752-0333), was born just over a year ago. Kelly rented a home and moved Holistic Horizons upstairs as she and her cooking staff whipped up an almost all vegetarian/vegan menu (they do offer a turkey loaf, tuna salad and tuna burger) and turned the downstairs into a warm and homey dining area. Some of the restaurant’s highlights are the greens and feta quiche, homemade soups, which change daily, and the fresh, unbaked blueberry pie offered in the summer, which Kelly describes as “to die for.”

However, as much as she loves making food that entices the senses, her biggest concern was to create food that works with the body. “You are what you eat,” Kelly notes. “You are your thoughts, you are what food you put in your body, you are what thoughts you think when you’re putting that food in your body. It’s all connected and people are starting to figure it out.”

For Kelly, that motto rang all too true years ago. When she was in her 30s, Kelly suffered from an ulcerated bowel due to Crohn’s disease and asthma, among other crippling ailments. After much searching, she discovered homeopathic treatments and also found she was severely allergic to eggs and yeast. After eliminating those foods that were making her sick, she hasn’t experienced any of the symptoms from the ulcerated bowel or asthma since. Kelly sees her customers’ health improve bit by bit as they start to cut out meats and other animal products from their diets as well.

“There are just so many more people who maybe don’t consider themselves vegetarian or vegan and they’re learning to eat less and less meat,” Kelly says. “They’re starting to feel that difference and they tell other people, ‘Oh, this symptom went away,’ or ‘I lost this much weight,’ or ‘I just feel better,’ or ‘I can tell in my body when I go back to eat this other food it just doesn’t feel right anymore.’ People are really becoming conscious on a different level of how things feel in their bodies. What’s funny is when you stop eating one thing and then go back three or four weeks later it doesn’t taste as good or feel as good anymore. It’s an interesting balance, and your body gets used to certain things, then it gets used to the new things.”

When done properly, a vegetarian/vegan diet is usually the healthiest way to go. For people wanting to make the switch to a veg lifestyle or just cut back on their meat-eating ways, taking small steps at a time can add up to a lot when vegetarian options are implemented consistently and increasingly in place of meat. Sometimes, though, taking that first step is the hardest, and finding veg alternatives that can satiate even the biggest meat-and-potato eater’s palate can be the rub.

Sugarpearl

For those looking for an easier conversion from an animal-based diet into a more plant-based one, Sugarpearl can help. With its dedication to delectable vegan and vegetarian food and the recent addition of six sandwiches made with deli meat, this bright, quirky coffeehouse works hard at making all their meals an unforgettable experience. Located at 600 Burnet Ave. in the Hawley-Green neighborhood, Sugarpearl (422-7427) has attracted a wide variety of customers with their “insanely fresh” coffee beans, vegan pumpkin/zucchini pannycakes and their ridiculously flavorful seitanic sausage. The real crowd-pleaser, though, is their Farmacopia Power Burger, a veggie burger stuffed with carrots, zucchini, brown rice and black beans, crowned with roasted red peppers, lettuce and red onion.

“We’ve converted a lot of people,” says Phyllis Vadala, owner of Sugarpearl. “We have a lot of blue-collar workers who come in asking for the Power Burger, Power Burger, Power Burger! It’s funny.”

A big part of Sugarpearl’s appeal is that they’re not afraid to experiment with foods and come up with original concoctions, courtesy of chef Deborah Sorrentino, who came aboard six months after the shop had opened as just a coffee shop. Before joining the ladies at Sugarpearl, Sorrentino had owned her own café and honed her artistic and adventurous style of cooking, which she liberally applied as she was creating the mostly vegetarian/vegan menu at Sugarpearl.

“I think that there are a lot of complex flavors in our foods,” Sorrentino says. “I use a lot of Indian spices and I like that deep rich flavor in food, so our veggie burger is rich with flavor. It consists of lots of protein, low fat, fresh vegetables. I wanted to keep the integrity of the way I knew how to cook, and bring that into the whole vegan and vegetarian way of doing things. To me it’s always been about the quality of the food and what we’re presenting to the public.”

Because of some of the wild, exotic foods on the menu, Sorrentino says some patrons are still a bit gun-shy about trying some of the less-mainstream items, particularly if it’s meatless. Part of it, perhaps, is a somewhat subconscious fear of the unknown, thinking that by going down that strange path you may lose what you already have. For those customers, Sorrentino gives advice we’ve all heard since we were 2, yet it still resonates no matter how old we get: Just try it, because you never know.

“Some people are just like, ‘Oh, not me, I’m a meat eater,’” Sorrentino says. “Well, I eat meat on occasion too, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy other things. No one’s asking you to give it up, just try different things and see if you like it.”

Ultimately, there’s pretty much no excuse for most people not to go veg if they really want to, which is sure to make Moncrief and Meatout happy campers.