I’m working on a big vegan nutrition project -more on this soon- that has me researching topics I haven’t looked at in years. It’s a strong reminder of the amount of misinformation in the tubes of the interwebs. I hate to say this, but most of the influential vegan info I found when I ‘went vegan’ in the mid-90’s was exaggerated or simply not true. My profession as a public health dietitian, which I do not discuss often on this blog, is to disseminate accurate, reliable knowledge to the public. I see my training and education most useful as a filter between this mass of dis/information in the world and what people really need to know.

Here are a few of my colleagues’ blogs that I recommend if you want more info about veganism, nutrition and cooking.

Jack Norris, RD has a blog he describes as ‘news for vegan advocates and those eating a plant-based diets.’ He is the co-founder of Vegan Outreach (one of my favorite animal advocacy organizations) and also runs Veganhealth.org.

Virginia Messina, MPH, RD has a blog called Thoughts On Being Vegan: A Dietitian’s Viewpoint. She’s the author of The Dietitian’s Guide to Vegetarian Diets which is my go-to-book when I have a question that I can’t answer.

Dina Aronson, RD runs veganrd.blogspot.com which has accessible nutrition information as well as recipes. I have worked with Dina through the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietary Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association, of which we are both active members.

For recipes I mainly use the cookbooks I already have, but tend to peruse both Isa Moskowitz’ Post Punk Kitchen and www.vegweb.com.

For the new year you should check out the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine’s 21-Day Vegan Kickstart.

When I went vegan at 17 my Italian mother was not happy at all. Mostly she feared I’d starve to death without manicotti, ravioli, lasagna or pizza. In the mid-90’s vegan cheese consisted of only tofutti slices that are about as similar to cheese as the package they come in. But I was motivated by the likes of Chokehold and Earth Crisis (though maybe not enough to have Firestorm karaoke at my wedding) and was committed to never eating these foods again.

My how times have changed. ‘Which vegan cheese do you use?’ is now a normal question at pizza places. Just got back from a short trip to NYC and ate more ‘cheese’ pizza than I have in years. Pretty stoked though I hope people still work on developing great recipes that aren’t dependent on vegan cheese. On some levels that is happening as is evident by my friend Gian’s vegan pizza blog. I recently sampled some and was quite pleased. Since I developed my lasagna de bartolomeo vanzetti recipe (as seen in Please Don’t Feed the Bears) I have not played around with Italian recipes nearly enough. Will do though. Thanks for motivation, Gian.