In this video-gone-viral (the original has almost 2 million hits), we get to witness the very instant a child discovers that the food on his plate was an animal. I know this scenario is one that you might often approach (avoid) with supreme reluctance, unsure whether the moment of truth will teeter toward revelation or meltdown.

Watch before continuing (it’s only 2 minutes):

Wipe off the tears!

Like I did with my elementary school students, this mom gently stated the facts—without emotion, hesitation, or sugarcoating. You’ll hear me say this over and over again: when we speak frankly to children, they pay attention because they feel like they’re being let in on a secret. And when we give them the information they need to make educated choices, they choose wisely.

Little Antonio wasn’t scared, overwhelmed, or disturbed. The truth empowered him to take action and DO something—”a beautiful thing.”

These books are here to help you find the words to share your views with a little one (copies are on their way to Antonio in Brazil now!).

Best!

Ruby

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Ready-to-go shareables for Twitter and Facebook:
“When we give kids the info they need to make educated choices, they choose wisely.” @ruby_roth #vegan #provethepoint youtu.be/BRwj6LEiUys

Over 8 years of weekly trips to the farmer’s markets, our little one has developed a radar for the few cherished weeks out of every year, happening now, when Persian mulberries come into season.

So prized are these long, delicate, garnet-beaded fruits, it is rumored that they are often bought up seaside by savvy members of the Persian community as they come into harbor from import.

For good reason.

Not only is the mulberry’s flavor other-worldly, they are complex organisms. We have 46 chromosomes, the mulberry has 308—making it a highly adaptogenic plant—it can survive in harsh climates and is thought to help us do the same, physically and emotionally. Get that in your belly! (Read more about the benefits here). You probably have mulberries in your neck of the woods. FIND THEM.

Rare access to this mysterious heaven-sent fruit has provided our family a yearly ritual of extra special farmer’s market food-worship. Together, we’re aware and appreciative of the seasons and our farmers. We share the excitement and beauty of the find with friends. Akira can articulate the flavors we taste (I’ve met kids who don’t know their last names, let alone how to analyze flavor!). We feel lucky all together for the bounty we experience and relish this almost entirely unexamined food! Is that not worth $8? It’s cheap when you think about the exchange!

Veganism is often called “restrictive,” “limiting,”—even “traumatizing”! But what we experience is utterly the opposite—and only with a fraction of the fruits and vegetables that exist in the world!

Last week, vegan firefighter Rip Esselstyn appeared on CBS Morning News to talk about his new book My Beef With Meat. The first thing Gayle King says is, “All I can say to you, Rip, is you’re taking away my happy.”

Clearly, she’s never had mulberries.

What fruit or vegetable brings your family joy, and why? Leave a comment below and MEMORIZE it for the next time a Gayle-King-a-like comes at you.

Best!

Ruby

Rescued cow at Animal Acres/Farm Sanctuary, CA

Happy, happy Mother’s Day to all of you mamas (whether to kids or kittens) for you enduring love, which reproduces the day, every day, for those who depend on you.

Now, I know…flowers are dandy, but you’d prefer a revolution. I’m with you. In that spirit, here are some radical thoughts…

A mother cow carries her baby for 285 days—that’s even longer than the long human gestation period of 260 days. On Sunday, when we celebrate the mother archetype—the nurturer, the maker, the mender, the powerful and loving source of life—let’s hold a thought for the 9+ million dairy cows in the U.S., whose sole existence—creation, birth, and death—is premeditated for the purpose of extracting fluid from their postpartum bodies.

Imagine the life force it takes for a cow to produce an 80-pound baby in nearly the same amount of time it takes us to produce a 7.5-pound child. Imagine being repeatedly impregnated for the entirety of your adolescent and adult life; consider the chemical load that makes you produce twice the amount of milk a cow did 40 years ago. Your babies disappear, your milk is extracted by man or machine and then, whether you’ve lived on a grassy field or in a dark shed, you’ll be slaughtered once you’re spent.

These mothers endure an existence not unlike the one from which Ohio kidnap victims Amanda Berry, Gina De Jesus, and Michelle Knight just escaped.

Chains, ropes, life indoors, deprivation, isolation, rape, multiple pregnancies, fear, and beatdowns—as the facts emerge on the news, the nauseating descriptions are familiar—in a different context, they are the reasons we’re vegan.

If you’ve not yet gone vegan, Mother’s Day 2014 might be a great one-year anniversary to celebrate the day you did.

Take a deep breath! Forgive yourself any regrets and focus on the present and future. Mamas, have a dinner prepared by someone else. See the mess in your house as a happy sign that your loved ones are alive and within reach. Celebrate that your passion and love raises each new generation to do better than the last. Now please take action and share. Copy and paste any of the following to Twitter (or @ That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals on FB):

#MothersDay: Thinking of 9 million US cows whose sole existence is premeditated 2 extract fluid frm their postpartum bodies. Via @ruby_roth

A mama cow carries her baby for 285 days—longer than the long human gestation period of 260 days! #GoVegan #MothersDay via @ruby_roth

If you’ve not yet given up dairy, #MothersDay 2014 might b a great 1 year anniversary to celebrate the day you did. #GoVegan via @ruby_roth

Chain rope life indoors deprivation isolation rape multple pregnancies beatdowns: kidnap victims or the burger you just ate? via@ruby_roth

Love and protection to you and all mamas everywhere,

Ruby

From my window seat, I felt a heart-pang of pride in America—not only for the stunning beauty of her drastically differing terrains, but for the people who actually—ACTUALLY!—care to be her proper stewards. Fresh from having met crowds of vegan moms, dads, kids, aunts, uncles, teachers, and librarians, democrats and republicans, people of all races and ethnicities, the feeling was truly heartfelt. Sometimes I feel like no one cares at all—in other moments, I am stunned by just how much people care.

As the sun set, I snapped the picture above through my window—a tiny moon rising above the fray of so much good and evil. If we can all rise above the ruckus to be our highest selves (everything is much clearer from that angle), if we can picture our home from highest point in the sky, maybe we can bring a little more of that heaven down to earth. Happy Earth Day…every day.

When I meet someone new, it’s inevitable that just past introductions, we end up talking about healthy living. It’s not just L.A., I swear. I see guys I never imagined would give two shits about inner health suddenly buying juicers!  Everyone is seeking a higher quality of life through the simple intangibles—health and personal development, namely.

I think with our economy in the gutter, we’ve shifted our priorities and we’re seeking control where we can find it—in our personal lives. Like I imply in my children’s books, we’ve arrived at a time that holds profound potential since the only way to change the public realm is through individual agency anway! We’re over chanting “hope” and “change” to our politicians. We’ll just do it ourselves. If a broken economy is what it took to get our priorities straight, then it needed to break.

So with interests and markets shifting, I am really excited to be the May 2013 curator for a resource that allows anyone to make healthier choices with ZERO effort…meet Conscious Box!

This affordable service delivers a boxful of products to your doorstep every month. The first time I got mine, I received raw vegan chocolate bars I’d never heard of, chemical-free laundry detergent, a biodegradable non-toxic toothbrush, and other items that have become pantry staples. Sign up now (you pick the frequency) and you’ll get some of my personal favorite products in the May vegan box. Or if you’re like me and you’re constantly recommending healthy products to your family and friends? Just have a box sent to their doorstep.

Know someone who would love Conscious Box? Send them this link: http://cbox.co/rubybox

Happy receiving!

This is my favorite lecture yet! I promise you haven’t heard one like this. I can’t wait to meet all the vegheads in Michigan and find out what work you all have been up to…so be there! Let’s make this the largest VegFest Michigan event ever! Early tix available at a discount.

Is your kidlet the only vegan in his or her class? Could the teacher use a reminder? These “V-Man” wristbands by Allermates, (originally designed for kids with allergies) can help day guardians remember that your little one doesn’t eat meat or dairy! Drop me a line and tell me why you NEED this! Winner will be contacted via email 4/13/13.

Do you own Vegan Cooking for Dummies? No refunds!

The confession letter I would have preferred from vegan expat author Alexandra Jamieson:

•I’m no longer vegan.
•I believe in the good of veganism but I’ve decided to oblige my cravings for meat.
•The values I have preached can not be reconciled with the violence required to take the life of an animal on my behalf.
•I accept the contradiction.
•I will be donating the royalties from Vegan…for Dummies to Farm Sanctuary in perpetuity.

Instead, her letter hit me with—this is the only description I have—a tsunami of whiteness. A boatload of faux-spiritual, pop psychobabble about her “truth” and happiness, along with an “it’s-not-me, it’s-my-body” argument to displace any agency in the matter. It’s Manifest Destiny, it’s eugenics, it’s fundamentalist religion—everyone’s got God on their side. Except those being preyed upon.

I accept that some people depart. I don’t accept the justification. Even if you want to, you can’t die on a  diet of nutrient-dense natural foods. It can’t be the protein or the texture of meat that Jamieson missed—because by all measures those can be replicated to a level of placebo—I suspect it was the idea, the culture, and the “forbidden” that was nagging at her. If, in the wake of her cravings, she had written a public letter in which she confessed her cravings for meat, asked for ideas, or promoted ways to deal, she would have been overwhelmed by the support and compassion she implies her now-critics lack. That level of candidness would have been a better qualifier of the “honesty” Jamieson is being lauded for now. But she didn’t decide to keep it real during her cravings for a reason—she really didn’t want any advice or encouragement to stay vegan. She wanted to do what she wanted without interference. Same story from dominant classes throughout history—and no amount of soft-spoken, aha-moment, self-congratulatory rhetoric hides it.

When Jamieson advertises “Lose the Cravings” on her site, I guess she means give in to them (I’m sure she would still draw the arbitrary line at Twinkies, however). Great coaching for addicts.

Sometimes our vegan passion gets mistaken for aggression. It’s only because we’re urgently trying to share what we know with you! If we didn’t care, we’d do what meat companies do—we’d keep you in the dark. When news like the #horsemeat found in Tesco’s Spaghetti Bolognese hits, guess who isn’t surprised? Vegans. What have we been trying to tell ya?! Your meat isn’t what you think it is. Eat animals? Get played. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

As an artist, graphic designer, writer, and someone who slips into “the zone” and stays there all-day-what-happened-it’s-4pm-I’m-still-in-pajamas, I can easily be on my butt for eight hours at a time. I love what I do, but our human bodies are designed for far more than small finger-extensions. We are built for survival in the wilderness—for reaching, bending, picking, twisting, climbing, squatting, ducking, walking, and running (although, I know, who even wants to survive this Earth without Instagram?).

Some days I just don’t make it to dance class or yoga…and I end up feeling like a squished marshmallow walking on two toothpicks. With a sunburn from the computer screen.

But who doesn’t sit too much these days? Every freakin’ part of life runs through the computer, it’s crazy. I can’t take it anymore. So, inspired by friends who came before me, as well as a chiropractor’s advice, I did something to change.

I raised my desk. I am writing to you while standing, looking ever-so-slightly up at my monitor, my keyboard comfortably on a riser at my fingertips. Suddenly, I have a spine. My legs are moving, my core is engaged, my neck is long(er). You can do this too, don’t argue! It is an option, whether you work in an office or at home. Start a revolution where you work. Let me tell you, this is a life-changer. Now I take breaks to sit or even squat (easier in pajamas) instead of breaks to stand. At the end of the day, I feel all around solid—more carrot-like than marshmallow.

So go. Stand up and browse the heck out of Pinterest for “standing desk” ideas. Google automatic desk options, search for risers at office supply or home-organization stores (in the cabinet and closet areas), or build your own raised contraptions using boxes, cinderblocks, or inexpensive wood planks from a hardware store. I don’t need to list the benefits, you can imagine them—from your heart, spine, and neck, to your core strength, neurological systems, and fat-enzyme efficiency, your whole body will benefit from getting up offa’ that thing. Stand and deliver!