Sadly, the Ellen DeGeneres website didn’t get this video up right away, so I didn’t post it in time for the Super Bowl. But here’s last Friday’s segment featuring Ellen’s personal chef, Roberto Martin, teaching Ellen how to cook up a dish of vegan chili-cheese nachos. Super easy and very yummy looking, and Ellen and Roberto clearly have fun making it. This is some great party food, with or without a game on TV. Link.

The Humane Society of the United States has just introduced its own line of dog food called “Humane Choice.” The product is aptly named, as it contains no meat, milk, or eggs. Plus, it’s all-organic.

If I had a dog, this is the stuff I’d buy. Not only is it cruelty free, 6 percent of the purchase price goes to HSUS. Some nitwits on Twitter have been griping that some of its vitamins may be animal derived. But, as I’ve written elsewhere, it’s impossible to make the case that animal-derived vitamins fund animal agribusiness in any remotely significant way—the quantities of animal matter involved are too miniscule to get worked up about.

Put another way, fifteen minutes spent leafletting undoes a lifetime of trace ingredient karma.

Good news also for people who are owned by cats: they say in the FAQ that they’re exploring the possibility of coming out with a version of this product for felines. Link.

When you combine tater tots with kale, they annihilate one another, releasing pure energy.

Uploaded by: One Day Never

This is exciting; a food science engineer has focused on discovering a way to process soy-based ingredients to replicate the texture and mouth feel of chicken. It looks like he’s quite far along in achieving this goal.

I’m going to write him and ask to be kept in the loop if this process gets commercialized. I’ll revisit this topic as I hear more. (Thanks, Mahi!) Link.

Link to Video.

Food Rules author Michael Pollan was interviewed on today’s Democracy Now. I just sat through the entire interview so you wouldn’t have to. If you’ve read any of his books, there’s little here that will be new to you. But if you’re new to Pollan, give it a listen.

At one point, he says:

I eat much less meat than I used to. And I don’t think the answer is, you know, giving up meat.

He goes on to talk about why “well run rotationally grazed” cattle on grass is “a way to organize meat production that will reduce its carbon footprint dramatically.”

But what about the animal suffering and slaughter? As usual, Pollan shrugs off the benefits of meatless eating without bothering to address these topics. It’s a shame Amy Goodman didn’t press him on this point.

Pollan is at his best when talking about the National School Lunch Program:

The School Lunch Program, I think, is one of the most important programs we have and tools we have to basically change American health and change the food system. Right now, that program is, in effect, a disposal system for surplus agricultural commodities.

Not a bad interview, but ten minutes of Jonathan Safran Foer beats an hour of Pollan any day. Link.

My apologies to everyone who tried to visit Vegan.com today and couldn’t get the site to come up. We had some server problems for nine hours.

This was the last straw for me. The audience for this site has grown too large for unreliable shared hosting to be an acceptable option. I am investigating how to move to a rock solid setup as soon as possible.

A vaccine that can dramatically reduce the presence of E. coli is about to enter large-scale testing. The trouble is that it costs between $3 and $10 per animal, a price that some industry participants may decide is too much to pay for safer beef. Link.

Marvelous photo.

Uploaded by: iheartmuseums

Swine flu has not yet vanished into that good night—if you come down with the flu right now, chances are it’s swine flu. And the CDC is still recommending Americans get vaccinated. The agency’s most recent estimate is that the disease has killed between 7,880 to 16,460 Americans.

All dead because of the pork and chicken industries. Link.

For the second time this winter, Sea Shepherd and Japanese whaling ships have collided. The first occasion occurred barely a month ago, when the Shonan Maru 2 bore down on the Ady Gil and sliced the tiny ship in two.

This time around, the Sea Shepherd is saying that the Yushin Maru 3 rammed the Bob Barker, tearing a one meter gash in its hull. But, as with last time, the collision was caught on video. It looks to me like it was the Bob Barker that did the ramming, although I think that different camera angles will create different impressions of the event.

Regardless of who rammed who this time around, the stakes keep going up. Link.