The increase in veganism-full or partial†-continues to rise. Miyoko’s has gone mainstream, and that’s a good thing. These days, you can find the products on Amazon, at other e-tailers, and at 10 stores in my Manhattan zip code alone! We also are a proponent of sustainability† and try to watch our cholesterol (vegan foods help both).Īt that time Miyoko’s Creamery had no e-commerce, and distribution only in California. While not a vegan, we were on top of the sweeping trend. Our colleague Hannah Kaminsky, a vegan food writer and photographer who lives in Northern California, told us several years ago: You must try Miyoko’s vegan cheese and butter. Toss vegan cheese with hot pasta to create a creamy sauce. Serve Fresh Loire Valley cheese with figs and membrillo (quince paste). Shown here: Sundried Tomato Garlic cheese wheel. Spread Miyoko’s roadhouse cheeses on bread, crackers or pretzels. Serve a Loire-style soft cheese wheel with crackers and wine. Spread Miyoko’s vegan cream cheese on a bagel. In 2020, she published Living Lively, a combination cookbook and manifesto about strength, self-care, and the importance of building healthy, resilient communities.Ī post shared by matcha thomas □ who labels herself a “wellness and compassion activist,” previously founded The HAPPY Org, a nonprofit that has already worked with more than 90,000 youth.Melt Miyoko’s vegan cultured butter and toss it with popcorn (all photos © Miyoko’s Creamery). We spoke with her about how she made the connection between food and empowerment and what she’s learned from her first decade of activism. Recipe: Make Haile Thomas’s Islander Lively Bowl. You became interested in cooking really young. And so I was taught to cook really early on, around five years old. And so just being in the kitchen has always been very natural to me. I’ve just always been a foodie, loved trying new things and getting to just have those different experiences. And I was inspired by Food Network and watching all the classic shows with my mom! That was my favorite pastime. Both of my parents are from Jamaica and I just always grew up with this really expansive view of food, or an expansive experience with food. When did that shift from just being a kid enjoying great family meals and starting to think about health and nutrition? Just through our culture, I was really already very accustomed to bold and different flavors and using, quote-unquote, ‘unique’ ingredients, and just having a mature culinary experience, I guess. The health and wellness aspect didn’t come into my life until my dad was diagnosed with type two diabetes when I was around eight years old. Due to his diagnosis, he was prescribed this medication that just had terrible side effects, internal bleeding, and potential death. And even if he did take that medication, it had no guarantee to really heal him from his condition or to reverse it. So our family really took it upon ourselves to do some research and see if there were any alternative healing options. And that’s really when I became fully became aware of food’s potential to heal or harm us.īefore that, for the most part, we ate for flavor and just whatever really tasted good. Some of the traditional dishes that we enjoyed weren’t typically the healthiest, and they didn’t really center vegetables or whole grains. It was a lot of white rice and meat and gravies and sauces. And while it was all delicious, of course, health was not at the center of our plates, for sure. Learning about this incredible healing power of food and of plant foods specifically, really led us down this path of learning together as a family. Within about a year of working on swapping out different ingredients, eating more vegetables, reducing red meat significantly, we were able to completely reverse his condition within that year. Once you saw that success within your family, how did you then take the step of sharing what you were learning with others? And so I was just blown away by really having this real life example of just how powerful it is to care for your body and to cook with intention and also to have this awareness of food education. I thought, “Oh my gosh, everybody needs to know about this. And all of my friends need to know about this.” And I was confused why it wasn’t an essential thing for me to learn in school. I was lucky enough to even have physical education class in elementary school, but there was never any mention of eating healthfully or anything like that.
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