New York Fashion Week has come and gone.

There was a push for more diversity on the runway by the Council of Fashion Designers of America but did it deliver?  Designers and celebrities worked to make the fashion’s takeover of the city mean more than pretty clothes. Tastemakers used their talents to bring awareness to causes that affected everyone on or off the runway.

New York Fashion Week has the reputation for being a shallow, exclusive affair. While it still attracts the elite, the definition of the insider crowd has evolved. When a star walks the runway, it does more than sell clothes. When a new supermodel is crowned, she may not look like what you expect. While the industry will always love the beautiful people, they just might be talking about what’s inside, not just the outside.

So how did New York Fashion Week make beauty further than skin deep?

1. Desigual’s star model

One of my favorite fashion shows to shoot each season is the Desigual runway. The Spanish brand’s signature esthetic involves lots of colors and patterns. They embrace the customer who is atypical and unique. The model they hired to represent that ethic was Toronto native Chantelle Brown-Young. She has a skin condition called vitiligo which causes skin pigment to disappear. She was mocked for her appearance as a child but now has the last laugh from the end of the runway.  You might have watched her compete on America’s Next Top Model after being scouted by Tyra Banks personally. For years, it was difficult enough to find models of color cast in major designer fashion shows. While progress is still slow, how great is it to see a model that represents multiple colors?

2. Go Red for Women

The American Heart Association’s Red Dress Collection hosts one of the most popular fashion shows each season. The event for Heart Truth opened with Rosie O’Donnell making us laugh while her personal experience having a heart attack moved us emotionally. She stressed the importance of knowing the symptoms of a heart attack for women, which are noticeably different than men.

The models that walked the runway included celebrities of all ages, cultures, and shapes. Each woman shared how she was personally affected by heart health. Models included everyone from “I Dream of Jeannie” Barbara Eden to Donna Mills. YouTube star Bethany Mota, fitness guru Tracy Anderson, divas Thalia and Ciara graced the catwalk. “Orange is the New Black” stars Dascha Polanco vamped it up and her co-star, transgender actress Laverne Cox, gave the best twirl of the night. The fashion industry’s top designers collaborated to outfit each star in a gorgeous red dress. Fans attended in their own red frocks in support.

3. Thrive Causemetics

I encountered beauty makeup artist and founder Karissa Bodnar backstage at the Charlotte Ronson fashion show. Thrive Causemetics provided the lashes for the models. Karissa conceived the premium cosmetics brand after losing her friend to cancer. She developed her luxury false eyelashes so that for each pair purchased, a pair would be donated to someone being treated for cancer that had lost her lashes through her collaboration with the Look Good Feel Better organization. Each style in her collection was named after someone affected by cancer.

4. Naomi Campbell’s Fashion for Relief

The supermodel gathered her top designer and celebrity friends to host a fashion event to raise funds for the  Ebola Survival Fund. The organization works with community-based groups in Liberia and Sierra Leone to help those affected by Ebola. Singer Mary J. Blige, Paris Hilton, Michelle Rodriguez and a group of other celebrities were cheered on by their most passionate fans. Naomi Campbell established Fashion For Relief back in 2005 to inspire the fashion industry to produce events in cities around the world to support timely causes in need.

5. FTL Moda’s diversity casting

The Italian manufacturing promoter worked with Models of Diversity, a London agency that works with physically challenged models to work the finale of their Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week show. The runway presentation included a range of designers for handbags, evening wear to the avant-garde. Gorgeous models with prosthetics, amputee or wheelchair models drew cheers from the photographer’s pit and audience as they displayed the fashion beautifully. I am happy to say this has not been the only fashion show featuring models overcoming physical challenges. Over the past year, I have seen shows around the world featuring models such as this in what I hope is not just a trend.

Related on EcoSalon

New York Fashion Week Features Models with Down’s Syndrome, Models in Wheelchairs

Is Haute Couture the new diversity in Fashion?

Native American Fashion Week Happened: Here’s Why You Probably Had No Idea

Images: Mariana Leung and David T.W. Leung

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No shame with this figure-friendly vegan cheese dip.

Dips and sauces are dangerous territory. Sure, they seem harmless in that they are technically only condiments, but they often contain too many fats and calories to warrant another tablespoon. One of the biggest party-time offenders is cheese dip. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the kind you squeeze, pump, or ladle onto popcorn, burgers and nachos. It has a tacky light orange color that you know can’t be natural, but despite it all, you’re addicted.

This recipe is a great way to enjoy a classic cheese dip without the hard-to-digest dairy and the overload of calories and fat concentrated in a small serving.  And with the simplicity and lightness of this recipe, you don’t have to feel guilty about being a cheese dip hog. Cauliflower is a great source of vitamin C and manganese, which help protect from free radical damage and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Cauliflower is also a rich source of the anti-inflammatory vitamin K as well as omega-3 fatty acids. It promotes brain and heart health, is packed with fiber, and is also a good source of thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, folic acid, proteins, phosphorus and potassium.

Feel free to garnish the dip with chopped scallions, herbs, or spices. It’s a basic recipe that is open to experimentation. Have fun with it!

Vegan White Cheese Party Dip

Servings vary

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cauliflower
• 2 tablespoons vegan butter (Earth Balance)
• 2 teaspoons mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

Directions:

Remove the florets and their stems from the cauliflower. Over medium heat, simmer them in water for about 15 minutes. Drain the cooked cauliflower and rinse under cold water. Combine it in a food processor with the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth.

Serve this dip aside tortilla chips or crudités or dollop a few tablespoons into a burrito or on top of nachos.

Bon Appetit!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

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A colorful salad you make in a bowl, not in the sink.

Some call this the kitchen sink salad; I call it the perfect salad. It is fail proof and fails to bore, even if you have it everyday! Packed with nutrition and flavor and with enough substance to keep you full for hours, this recipe is a great way to get the most from produce rounding its last leg in the fridge.

You could virtually use anything on hand, as long as you satisfy each of the four elements – vegetable, green, grain/legume, and fat. I added grated beets, carrots and zucchini as the vegetable, chopped kale as the green, cooked lentils as the legume, and avocado and an olive oil vinaigrette as the fat. Regardless of the nature of the components you choose, the result is the same: a colorful salad with a bite!

I tend to use lentils in my version of the kitchen sink salad for a reason. They’re not only made up of energy boosting carbs, but also are full of protein, which is especially important when salads are a daily diet mainstay.

Lentils are an excellent source of soluble and insoluble fiber and effective in helping to prevent digestive and cardiovascular disorders. They also contribute to lowering cholesterol and maintaining blood sugar levels. Low on the glycemic index, lentils release their sugars slowly, keeping you fuller and more balanced for longer.

Kitchen Sink Salad

Serves 1-2

Ingredients:

• 1 cup green lentils
• 6 kale leaves
• 1/2 cup grated carrots
• 1/2 cup grated zucchini
• 1/4 cup grated beet
• 1/4 cup chopped avocado
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

In a medium-sized pot, add 2 cups of water to 1 cup of green lentils. Cover with a lid. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for approximately 15-20 minutes or until the lentils have absorbed all the water. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Stem and chop the kale leaves, grate the carrots, zucchini and beet, and slice the avocado.

Add the vegetables, kale and avocado to the cooled lentils in a medium sized bowl.

For the vinaigrette, whisk together the olive oil, lemon, and salt and pepper. Fold the dressing into the salad and give the entire mixture a good toss so that all the ingredients are spread evenly.

Serve and enjoy!

Bon Appetit!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

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The benefits of mango with a recipe to add to the love.

Mango is a meaty fruit that holds its own quite well in more complex dishes. It is a nutrition powerhouse with some major benefits – it lowers cholesterol, regulates sex hormones, boosts sex drive, improves concentration and memory, treats acne, fights diabetes, and prevents cancer and heart disease. It it also helpful for women going through menopause or who are pregnant.

The parsley adds an earthy tone to the citrus from the grapefruit and sweetness from the mango, and the cayenne gives the salad an additional edge that will not only taste great but also boost your metabolism.

Spicy Mango Citrus Ceviche

Serves 1

Ingredients:

• 1 mango
• Juice of 1 grapefruit
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley or cilantro
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• Dash of sea salt

Directions:

Julienne the mango and place on a serving tray with the grapefruit juice. The longer the mango sits in the citrus, the more tender and infused with flavor it becomes.

Add the sea salt, cayenne and chopped parsley or cilantro.

Toss and serve.

Enjoy!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

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Did you know that the human heart and planet earth are more alike than different? Both are extremely fragile, constantly ticking to produce miracles and sustain life, and both are put at high risk for demise if not cared for properly. Heart disease is the number one cause of death for American women, but the good news is, there are many ways to improve heart health that are under your control. Even better news for eco-conscious health buffs… some of the tactics you can employ to boost your heart health will also help improve the earth!

1. Turn the Great Outdoors into Your Personal Trainer

This tip helps save your heart, the planet, and your wallet. “Heart disease is almost twice as likely to develop in inactive people than in those who are more active.” Skip the pricey gym membership and proceed to the great outdoors for your workout. The heart is a muscle that needs exercise, and optimum cardiovascular health is dependent upon activity and your heart’s ability to thrive and perform. Walking and bicycling are two great ways to keep your ticker in its prime and these modes of transport can do double duty by getting you to and from work and help you run errands while saving the fuel and the fumes of a car commute.

2. Unplug and Chill Out

We may be drowning in the digital age, but our hearts aren’t interested in electronic trends, or the copious amounts of stress and anxiety that go hand and hand with always being plugged in. When you unplug your computer, PDA, and cell phone, even for a short amount of time, you give yourself permission to breathe deeply, relax and unwind – all healthy breaks for a heart that is always working. You’ll also help conserve electricity by shutting down your digital connections!

3. Buy and Eat Organic Foods

In addition to being pesticide-free and less damaging to the earth’s air, water and land, organic fruits and vegetables are also higher in antioxidants than their chemically grown counterparts. Antioxidants play a vital role in neutralizing destructive free radicals, and diets rich in antioxidant foods have been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Organic blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries are some of the highest antioxidant containing fruits, and organic kale, spinach, brussel sprouts, broccoli, garlic and red bell pepper are some vegetables containing high levels of antioxidants.

4. Switch to a Vegan Diet

High cholesterol and heart health don’t mix. Consider, even temporarily, switching to a vegan diet to cut back on consuming red meat, animal products and saturated fat, which are all cholesterol contributors. Greenies have brought ethical eating to the mainstream, and if you’re trying to reduce your cholesterol, why not do the earth a favor at the same time by helping reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from the “burning of fossil fuels during food production and non-carbon dioxide emissions associated with livestock and animal waste?”

5. Make Meals from Scratch

You’ve probably already kicked fast food to the curb, but are you still reaching for frozen meals, canned soups and pre-packaged foods that are high in sodium? High-sodium diets are linked to an increase in blood pressure and a higher risk for heart disease and stroke.” Shop the bulk section and make your own beans and soups to avoid the high sodium inherent in the canned varieties, as well as the BPA in the lining of the cans. Making homemade food from scratch also helps drastically cut back on wasteful, superfluous packaging.

Image: eyalz67

The post 5 Ways to Help Your Heart Health and Give the Earth a Boost, Too appeared first on EcoSalon.

Cheese is my weakness. Camembert and cheddar, stilton and swiss, mozzarella and mascarpone, gouda and goat’s cheese, feta and fresh quark – I love them all. And while it may not be great for my waistline or as environmentally pure as organic lentils, at least I can eat it knowing that it’s a more eco-friendly choice than, say, tucking into a juicy slab of steak. Or can I?

My vegetarian friends certainly seem to think so – many of them seem to subsist on cheese. Trust me, I can understand why – it’s an easy source of protein, calcium, vitamin B12 and other nutrients that omnivores typically get from meat. It’s easier than boiling up lentils from scratch and, let’s face it, for most people cheese just plain tastes good.

These same vegetarians might feel confident, or even a little smug, that they are making good dietary and green lifestyle choices. After all, going vegetarian is better for your health, the welfare of animals and the environment. Isn’t it?

Maybe not. Actually, cheese is pretty much just as bad as meat on all counts. Here’s why.

1. Animals die.

You are drinking the milk of the cow rather than eating its flesh, but all the same animals die. Maybe you already know that most cheese is made with animal rennet and you take care to buy vegetarian cheese. Sorry, but you’re not off the hook!

How do you think the mother cow (or sheep or goat) gets milk? She has babies and since after six months her milk production declines, she needs to keep having babies. What do you think happens to the bull calves? They get killed. And since dairy cattle and beef cattle are generally different breeds and there’s little value in raising the male offspring of dairy cows for meat, this happens when they are still babies.

Often, the calves are slaughtered immediately or just left to die, then added to the farm’s compost heap. Otherwise they may be raised for veal, which is usually a cruel process where they are kept in a confinement in semi-darkness and denied proper food, so their flesh stays white.

However, there are varieties of veal that are more humanely raised, allowing the calves to stay with their mothers and eat grass. Surely the ethically consistent position is either to cut out meat and dairy, or to eat the “humane” veal along with your dairy? Oh and by the way, mama cow will likely only live until she is five to seven years old – instead of the 20 years that is her natural lifespan.

2. Animal cruelty.

Most EcoSalon readers will be familiar with concentrated animal feedlot operations or CAFOs. These factory farms are not just prevalent in the rearing of meat animals but in the dairy industry, as well. The book The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason cites a Cornell University Study predicting the number of dairy farms in the United States to decline from 105,000 in 2000 to 16,000 in 2020, while the number of cows per farm and the total milk production both increase.

Many cows are confined to a single stall where they are fed and milked for a single year and if they do get to move outside, it’s usually on a dirt lot rather than on pasture.

The modern dairy cow produces three times more milk than its counterpart from 50 years ago, as a result of breeding, and many cows in the United States are injected with bovine somatotrophin (BST), a genetically engineered growth hormone banned in Canada and the European Union. This boosts milk production by 10% but the site of the injection can become swollen and tender and the injections can increase problems with mastitis, a painful udder infection that affects one in six dairy cows in the US.

The natural lifespan of a cow is 20 years but most dairy cows are killed between five and seven years because they cannot withstand the unnaturally high rate of milk production. By “killed”, I don’t mean euthanised – the process of dealing with “downed” animals involves dragging and winching them by the hoof with a tractor and taking them to a truck to deliver it to the slaughterhouse.

3.  Cheese has a huge environmental impact.

Slate had a great article on the environmental impact of cheese, just before Christmas. The truth is that rearing dairy cows or goats is a carbon-intensive process – and for some reason, sheep are even worse. They need to be fed and most dairy cattle are not exclusively grass fed, so that requires grain to be grown and shipped in. If they are kept in CAFOs, there is a huge manure problem that can pollute local waterways. (If the untreated waste doesn’t go directly into streams and rivers, it’s sprayed onto fields through an irrigation system, but often in quantities too great for the soil to absorb, and then in heavy rain it runs off into the creeks).

According to a local environmental group in Michigan, Lake Erie’s new “dead zone” is linked to runoff from livestock waste. Finally, there’s a problem that sounds like a joke but really isn’t – dairy animals are ruminants that fart and burp a lot of greenhouse gases, specifically methane. Scientists are working on reducing this problem by improving the diets of cattle, but it’s a long haul. All this is just to get the milk – to get cheese, it requires further processing and storage at just the right temperature.

4. Cheese isn’t healthy.

I know many people who go vegetarian – or simply cut out red meat – for health reasons. Yet they eat cheese. This makes no sense to me. In what universe is cheese a health food? I want to move there!

I’ve looked up the nutritional statistics on Fitday.com and generic cheese is 27% fat. A whopping 62% of that is saturated fat, while only 22% is protein. Admittedly you do get a decent serving of calcium with your fat, but there are 84 calories and a heart-stopping 20mg of cholesterol in just one slice.

By contrast, a typical cut of beef compares favourably with 26% protein and 20% fat, of which just 39% is saturated fat. You don’t get so much calcium, but that’s more than compensated for by the fact that 20% of your meal is iron, something many women lack. There is also less cholesterol in beef than cheese.

So pound for pound, beef is healthier than most cheese. Unless of course, you are eating low fat cottage cheese, in which case it’s only 1% fat and 12% protein. But then you could be eating healthier meats as well – lean cuts of beef or lamb, low-fat poultry and fish with healthy oils.

All this is not to make anyone feel guilty. But I do think there is little point in going vegetarian and then making up the shortfall with cheese. Sure, you can eat organic dairy in moderation from small family farms with good environmental and animal welfare practices – such as Straus Family Creamery in Northern California – but you can do the same thing for meat. I know plenty of ethically minded omnivores who eat meat and dairy in moderation and source both with equal care.

I believe if you are going to cut out meat, you need to fully embrace cooking with and eating beans and lentils. There are some great recipes – I am a meat-reducing omnivore myself but one of my favourite all-time recipes is vegan – a Lebanese eggplant moussaka with chickpeas that comes to me via Nigella Lawson.

Free-range and organic eggs are another good source of protein in moderation as well, though caged eggs still account for 98% of US egg production. (In Europe it’s a different story – sales of free-range eggs were due to hit two billion eggs a year in 2009 in the UK, exceeding battery egg sales in value terms, while from next year eggs from battery hens will no longer be sold in German supermarkets). You may want to check out Vanessa’s post on how much protein the human body actually needs.

Images: Joi, fklv, smoodysarah, orinzebest, TheBusyBrain

The post Think Cheese Is More Eco + Humane Than Meat? Think Again appeared first on EcoSalon.