A Big Week for the Vegan Diet

The vegan diet is alive and well on mainstream TV this week. Both Oprah and Ellen have some interesting things going on.

First, Oprah has started a 21-day cleanse (which is all vegan), based on the book Quantum Wellness by Kathy Freston, who was her guest on Monday. She’s blogging about her experiences with it and, so far, so good. This is fucking huge, people…especially if she hangs in there and gets great results.

My only concern is that the stuff she’s eating seems like it might be fairly rich vegan food, given that a vegan chef is preparing much of it. I’m sure it’s delicious, though, so this is great news where her enthusiasm for the “cleanse” is concerned, and it will serve to enlighten folks as to how tasty plant-based food can be. But, in terms of her maximizing the 21-day opportunity to truly cleanse and possibly drop some of that extra weight that I know she’s always struggled with…the jury is out.

I would hate for her to say, “Yeah, this vegan food was great…but I gained 5 pounds over these past 21 days!” And this kind of thing is possible if you’re picking up a lot of extra calories because you’re eating a lot of oil and nuts.

But…let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The bottom line is, this is great exposure for the least understood and most underrated lifestyle philosophy on the planet! Scope out her blog here:

http://www2.oprah.com/foodhome/food/cleanse/blog/blog_main.jhtml

Also, my friend Rory Freedman (author of the NY Times bestseller, Skinny Bitch) will be on Ellen this Friday, May 23rd. Again – this is big. Skinny Bitch is a very entertaining, in-your-face, unconventional “women’s diet book” that promotes a plant-based (vegan) regimen. The fact that it’s been topping sales charts around the globe for so many months now is phenomenal news! And now, it hits mainstream TV. I’ve heard that Ellen’s been following the Skinny Bitch diet since reading the book, but I don’t know that for sure. I imagine we’ll find out on Friday. So set that Tivo and have a look…