Sarma Melngailis, who ran an upscale vegan eatery, was charged with stealing $2 million from the business. She went on the lam with her hubby but was caught when she — Egads! — used her credit card to order a Dominos pizza. Vegan swear off all animals products. If she’d used cash to buy meals featured in these mags, chances are she’d still be out there.
Vegan Food & Living
British magazine, Vegan Food & Living, covers the basics with dozens of mind-boggling recipes like beetroot pizza (hear that, Sarma?) with almond feta or fudgy beetroot brownies. But it also attempts to cover broader lifestyle issues, including travel (like if you were running from the law) and social activism. Readers will learn how to travel to culinary destinations like Rome and maintain the strict no animal byproduct diet. Hint: You’ll need to know how to say, “I am a vegan” and “please use olive oils and not butter” in Italian. There’s also news about progressive businesses like Scottish craft brewery BrewDog which eschews using dried fish bladders in its beers. Who knew? For the non-vegan, the book could be the basis for a bad reality TV show. Think “Kitchen Impossible.” A photo of a quinoa and chia bread looks like a brick designed to keep you full for a week.
Vegetarian Times
Vegetarian Times declares that outdoor venues are embracing vegetarianism — but it seems like a stretch to us. Still, it has discovered a trend at least at ballparks across the country. Washington Nationals’ fans have been clamoring for meatless options at their home field, which has an all-veggie vendor offering up portobello reubens, veggie dogs and burgers — while Fenway Park has had an organic rooftop garden for a year that sells kale salads and wraps. Even cheese steak-obsessed Phillies fans have meatless options at Citizens Bank Park like the wild mushroom and tofu cheesesteak and the vegan three-bean chili nachos seasoned with broccoli rabe.
VegNews
VegNews takes the second half of its title seriously, serving up a fact-filled, six-page report on the cozy relationship between fast food operators and hospitals. Apparently, hospitals have lucrative contracts with McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Tim Hortons, Chick-fil-A and others that are opening outlets on hospital campuses, paying the institutions a percentage of their revenues. The report jabs the hospitals — like the University of Mississippi Medical Center, which has a McDonald’s next to the Batson Children’s Hospital — for the inherent hypocrisy of promoting good health while offering unhealthy choices. The mag offers interesting nuggets as well, like Vegans’ role in persuading Tesla Motors to make a synthetic leather option in its Model X sport utility vehicle. VegNews tracked down Brian Swette, the former chairman of Burger King, who is now an avowed vegetarian and operates, with his wife, Sweet Earth Natural Foods in California. He offered his take on why fast food chains have been slow to offer vegetarian options: “The core customer that they usually target is a younger male with a need for a lot of calories at a low price point.”
Vegetarian Living
Vegetarian Living gets an A for photography that is enticing enough to impress even the staunchest carnivore. This British mag combines gorgeous meals with features on gardening — there’s a guy who shares tips on elderflower foraging and a feature on organic soil — with recipes on how to make ricotta and savory cheesecakes. Mmmmm! This smart title keeps you turning the pages, not only to ogle beautifully presented food but also to glean tips on choosing and preparing the right in-season produce like asparagus.
New Yorker
The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik keeps the liberal mag’s head in the sand amid Donald Trump’s rise with a paean to President Obama. Likening Trump to a “meteor hurtling toward Earth, threatening an extinction event for incremental economic improvement of all kinds,” Gopnik glaringly ignores the distinct lack of incremental improvement felt by millions over the past eight years — the same folks who have been ignored by Obama and, well, most other traditional politicians, left or right.
New York
New York’s Jonathan Chait, meanwhile, is impressed by the parallels he sees between dimming Dem hope Hillary Clinton and Harry Truman. The unpleasant-sounding voices, the corruption allegations, the self-pity, and the formidable rivals to the left and right. By rejecting the latter, Chait oddly asserts that Hillary “has reminded us that she has always been a creature of the middle,” as if anybody needed to be reminded of that for half a minute. Chait further asserts an “Uber-Establishment president leading in anti-Establishment times” could command “something like an American consensus,” as if the lie of an American consensus, concocted by Bill Clinton, isn’t exactly what’s now upending Hillary.
Time
Time’s cover story on capitalism declares “the markets are choking our economy” and promises tips on “how to save it.” The “financialization” of the economy has indeed boosted Wall Street at the expense of small businesses, and that is posing a dire problem for the US economic outlook. Still, the piece concludes weakly, saying, “there are no silver bullets” as it pleads with business-school professors to give up “the gospel of efficient markets” that has favored hedge funds over corporate innovation and jobs. Elsewhere, check out the profile on the struggle to fix the DC Metro, and what it tells us about the US infrastructure problem.