Melanie Joy Day

Well what an exciting day it’s been! Melanie Joy is touring Australia, speaking about carnism, so H and I took the day off to go and see her.

She was speaking at the National Herbarium at around lunchtime, and I knew there was slim chance of any vegan food at the Botanic Gardens cafe, so I made the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip-Walnut Cookies from Veganomicon to keep us going. (Not a healthy lunch…but they do contain flaxseeds, walnuts…and dark chocolate!) I highly recommend them—can’t go wrong with that much chocolate in one cookie. Anyway, we made up for the bad stuff with a healthy fix later on.

Kids get it

Remember that viral video that did the rounds a few weeks back? The one with the adorable little boy who refused to eat his octopus for dinner?  It was a scene that was probably familiar to a lot of us—the moment when the truth hit us, that our dinner was made of dead animals’ bodies chopped into bite sized portions. Here’s my experience as a 4 year old.

What made this little boy’s situation special was that the camera captured his moment of realisation—at about the 60 second mark, when he says, “Nobody eats chicken…those are animals!” Then you can see him thinking…and realising (oh, I remember that feeling!)…and then he agrees to eat just his potatoes and rice. (I was going to embed the video, but since last night it has disappeared from YouTube…what a pity. Well, I’m sure you’ve already seen it anyway.)