Chef-authors heat up the exhibits floor

Cover of To Get Healthy, Go Vegan

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Libraries and foodie culture have an obvious tie: cookbooks. All weekend long, the Cooking Pavilion in the Exhibit Hall will be celebrating that relationship with cookbook authors showing their chops with live demos and talks. I caught the first session, on healthy living through veganism. Dr. Neal Barnard and Robyn Webb talked about the state of veganism today (it’s not just for tie-dyed hippies, they assured) and the health benefits of avoiding meat while discussing their book To Get Healthy, Go Vegan.

“If you change the way you eat,” Barnard promised, “big things can happen.” His studies have shown that a vegan diet can be an effective treatment against diabetes, for example.

An obvious first step into veganism often involves substituting fake meat like soy-burger patties for meat patties. The vegan diet is perceived, as Webb described, as “brown food and more brown food,” referring to soy- and wheat-based meat substitutes. Webb argued that going vegan is not really about that: “Our book teaches healthy food, easy food, food you can feed the entire family.” She shared some basic kitchen tips and techniques while preparing a black bean salad with fresh cilantro, fresh-ground cumin, yellow bell peppers, and mangoes for the audience. She noted that in the absence of oils, the fresh herbs and spices fill in for the mouth-feel and body that the presence of fat achieves in similar types of salads.

Introducing the 2010 Cooking Pavilion with a presentation on veganism gives it an air of Other healthy, almost new-age-y approach to diet, but to be fair, presentations run the gamut: regional and ethnic cooking, everyday cooking, cakes and desserts, bread, and “Good Stuff“ like shakes and fries—a literal soup-to-nuts spread of food books.