Apr
Martha’s Vegan Show
Posted in Advocacy, In the News | 1 Comment »I found the video from Martha Stewart’s vegan episode! Unfortunately, Martha is stingy with her clips and I’m not able to post them here, so you’ll have to go old-school and actually click this link:
Video Clips from Martha Stewart’s Vegan Episode
There’s a clip of each segment there. I’m not sure what order they aired in, but on the site it starts with Martha and Twitter cofounder, Biz Stone cooking up what looks to be a mean Seitan Bourguignon. This recipe’s going on my list.
Next up, she and Biz whip up a parsley-leaf salad – lil’ yawn-worthy if you ask me. Then Martha shares a presumably vegan recipe for granola snack bars with Kathy Freston (back to that in a minute) and the vegan segments close with an interview of Farm Sanctuary founder, Gene Baur. LOVE.
You may recall that in yesterday’s post, I briefly mentioned that I’d heard some grumblings about the Kathy Freston segment. All I knew before I saw it for myself was that Kathy was catching heat for featuring a recipe on the show that included honey as an ingredient. Now having seen it, it turns out what actually happened was that in her segment, Kathy was being shown a “vegan” recipe by Martha. It seems Martha, or rather, her producers, didn’t realize that honey isn’t vegan.
To be fair, honey isn’t quite as obvious as some other non-vegan products like milk and eggs. And even among vegans themselves, there isn’t total agreement about the use of insect products. That said, this seems like something that someone should have caught before the show aired. I’ve seen several comments on Twitter that seem to admit as much, but still fault Kathy for not having corrected Martha on-air. I’ve gotta say, I totally disagree.
I have no idea if Kathy had advance knowledge about the details of the recipe that Martha would be sharing, but I suspect she didn’t know until Martha was pouring honey in the bowl. There was nothing she could have said right then, however politely, without coming off looking stereotypically judgmental and militant. Is that the vibe we want to send over national airwaves? I don’t think so.
I’m not sure how much of what actually aired is missing from the video clips, but from what I saw, this ended up being a pretty positive showcase for veganism. Unlike the Oprah episode – which, don’t get me wrong, I think was super effective as well – there was no one on this show to rain on the parade…(yeah, I’m looking at you Michael Pollen). Overall, two thumbs up.
