Oprah announces Vegan Challenge

Talk show host will spotlight how she and 378 staffers went vegan for a week.

Sun, Jan 30 2011 at 2:29 PM

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Healthy Eating, Vegetarianism & Veganism, Celebs, Michael Pollan, TV Shows

Photo: ZUMA Press

Television's most popular personality is set to highlight veganism — again.

Oprah Winfrey announced that the Feb. 1 program will feature The Vegan Challenge, specifically how she and 378 staffers ate animal-free for an entire week.

Special guests will include Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore’s Dilemma," eco-author Kathy Freston and journalist Lisa Ling will take the audience on a journey through a beef processing plant.

This isn't the first time the talk show queen has embraced an all-plant diet. Back in 2008, she embarked on a 21-day vegan cleanse that resulted in the 57-year-old saying that it made her think less about calories and more about what was happening to her well-being.

Sadly, she didn't stick with it, but I'm happy to see it back on her radar. It's also commendable that she's sending Ling back into the slaughterhouse to report on how our meat arrives at the table. My only caveat? I hope she learns something this time.

Back in '08, Ling did a special on chicken factory farms, taking Oprah's more than 10 million viewers behind the scenes of an industry known for its abuses. The special even helped earn the media mogul PETA's 2008 Person of the Year honor.

Seven months later, Winfrey shocked animal rights activists by partnering with Kentucky Fried Chicken, a well-known PETA target, to give everyone in America a free chicken sandwich. Juxtaposed with the recent factory farming special, it seemed like her effort to consciously enlighten consumers on food sources had been thrown out the window.

So let's just hope there's no Taco Bell giveaway this summer.

Look for Oprah's vegan special on Feb. 1.

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Comments: 4

Guest May 23 2011 at 8:10 AM

Aren't humans amazing? They kill wildlife - birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed. Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing

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and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and then call for Peace on Earth. ~Revised Preface to Old MacDonald's Factory Farm by C. David Coates~ _____________ Anyone can break this cycle of violence! Everyone has the power to choose compassion! Please visit these websites to align your core values with life affirming choices: http://veganvideo.org & http://tryveg.com "Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

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Parris Lane Jan 31 2011 at 9:38 AM

That partnering with Kentucky Fried Chicken fed a lot of homeless people out here in Vegas. We have over 14,000 homeless people. A lot of them living in our undgerground city. So for me, what Oprah did ... is what a person with a lot of integrity would do.

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Mary Jo Jan 31 2011 at 1:38 PM

There is no nutrition in what they serve at KFC. The products are made of of fat, toxic chemicals and sugar which contribute to heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, mental illness and cancer. Feeding homeless people that garbage only hurts them, it does not help them. If she really cared about them, she should have given them free salads from Field of Greens. She can afford to do that.

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Terrence Jan 31 2011 at 1:27 AM

I had no idea that Oprah partnered with Kentucky Fried Chicken - how disappointing. I usually think of her as a person with a lot of integrity. Well, it will be an interesting show. Michael Pollan is someone whose writing I thought I would enjoy - but he was just so disparaging in his comments about vegetarianism and veganism in The Omnivore's Dilemma that I lost a bit of respect for him as well. I guess he is as just another American food pundit with a myopic world view that ignores other cultures

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and their centuries of culinary and spiritual practice of vegetarianism.