Today on #LunchBreakLIVE, Lisa Karlan is featuring Switch4Good, a national campaign with Olympic and National Championship Athletes, whose athletic abilities were enhanced when they eliminated dairy products from their diets. Now these athletic leaders are standing up to the dairy industry and letting the public know via this national campaign. Lisa recently attended the Switch 4 Good Dairy-Free Summit, hosted by Asher Brown of Pollution Studios, and she was able to meet many athletes and others involved in the campaign.
Watch their groundbreaking commercial on the home page of switch4good.org, see videos of Rebecca Soni, 6-time Olympic swimming medalist, Dotsie Bausch, Olympic silver medalist in cycling (at nearly age 40) and Kendrick Yahcob Farris, 3-time Olympic weightlifter. These athletes gave up dairy and they thrived as a result. They ran faster, swam faster and all together performed better! They are proud to be dairy-free now and they want everyone to know. The Switch4Good website includes many great dairy-free and meat-free recipes, and Lisa is sharing a couple of those recipes with us!Â
Today Lisa is making a vegan mock tuna salad and a watermelon salad. The tuna salad is comprised of mashed white beans, red pepper, old bay seasoning, mustard, dill, hearts of palm, red onion, and celery. Vegan mayo is optional if you want the salad to be more moist, or you can use the broth from the white beans from the can. It’s very easy to mix it all together and enjoy a healthier tuna-like salad without the overfishing and cruelty!
Next, the watermelon salad is easily made with chopped watermelon and beautiful heirloom tomatoes. Add some shredded fresh basil, top with a balsamic glaze, and sprinkle vegan ricotta or almond cheese. Mix it all up and you have a gorgeous watermelon salad. Don’t forget tomatoes are a fruit because they have seeds. Lisa uses an optional pink salt today but she warns us to make sure you use iodized salt to avoid iodine deficiency. Lisa is full of fun facts!
And she is also full of shocking facts. She shares that cows are a product of rape, child abduction, and murder. The calves are taken away from mother cows so we can use their milk for human consumption. Calves are usually left to die or used for veal. Then farmers try to impregnate cows as soon as possible using the “rape rack” where they are forcibly impregnated. After they aren’t producing enough milk to make them profitable, the dairy cows are sent to slaughter to become hamburgers. If this happened to a human, we wouldn’t stand for it, so why are we supporting practices that are cruel to any being.
If that was not enough reason to quit, dairy also makes you sick. The cholesterol and saturated fat from dairy makes it a leading contributor to heart disease. Cholesterol is only found in animal products and it is terrible for the circulatory system. Dairy consumption has also been correlated to brain disease and strokes. Alzheimer’s disease is correlated to the consumption of saturated fats along with metals that are all found in milk. The bottom line is milk is not made for us. It is full of hormones that are meant to grow a baby calf into a full-grown cow in a matter of months.
Drinking another species milk and drinking human breastmilk past infancy is not natural. So why not stop? You would think it would be common sense, but tradition would have us believe otherwise. Thank you Switch4Good and Lisa Karlan for helping promote the elimination of the consumption of dairy! Live better and be better without animal products today!
Ingredients
– 1 15 ounce can of Great Northern white beans – drained, rinsed, and patted dry
– 3 large palm hearts – coarsely chopped
– ½ red bell pepper – finely chopped
– 1 large stalk of celery – finely chopped
– ¼ cup of finely chopped red onion
– 2 tablespoons of minced fresh dill
– 2 teaspoons of Old Bay seasoning
– 2 tablespoons of German style mustard or creamy Dijon mustard – for best results avoid stone ground mustard
– Ground sea salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
1. Mash the beans in a medium bowl until you don’t see any whole beans. Add the chopped palm hearts, bell pepper, onion, celery, dill, Old Bay seasoning, mustard, and salt and pepper and stir to combine. Add more seasoning if you like.
2. Eat as is or make a sandwich out of it.
3. Enjoy!
Everything you need to make this vegan tuna salad without the cruelty!
Refreshing Watermelon, Heirloom Tomatoes and Fresh Basal Salad
Total time:Â 20 mins
Servings: 16 (¾ cup each)
Ingredients
– 8 cups cubed seedless watermelon
– 2 large Heirloom Tomatoes, halved lengthwise and sliced
– 1/4 cup minced fresh basil
– 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
– 1/4 cup olive oil
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– ¼ cup baked almond feta, made ahead of time with recipe below
– 1/2 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
1. In a large bowl, combine watermelon, tomatoes and basil.
2. Cut almond feta into smaller pieces (you can serve it warm or cold, as you prefer). Add desired amount to the salad.
3. In a small bowl, whisk remaining liquid ingredients.
Ingredients
– 1.5 cups of blanched almonds (200 g/7 oz)
– 2 cloves of garlic
– 1 tbsp white miso
– 1 lemon, juice
– 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
– 2-3 tbsp olive oil (optional)*
– ¼ – ½ cup of water
– salt**
Instructions
1. Add feta ingredients to a blender and blend until creamy. Try to use as little water as possible, to make a thick cream.
2. Transfer almond mixture to a silicon or an oiled oven-proof dish.
3. Bake in preheated oven at 180°C/360ºF for 40-50 minutes, until the cheese is firm and the top turns golden-brown.
Notes
* The more oil you add, the creamier cheese you get. But it also works perfectly without any oil. I personally don’t add any oil to my feta, however this way it’s a bit more dry and crumbly.
** Don’t be shy with salt here. Regular feta cheese is really salty, so feel free to add a good amount to your almond feta.
*** Store leftover almond feta in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-5 days.
The summer weather is not quite finished so make this refreshing watermelon salad on a warm day!
Lisa poses for a picture with the dairy-free creations she made for us!The group of athletes and attendiees who attended the Switch 4 Good Dairy-Free Summit.
Jane Velez-Mitchell is an award-winning TV journalist and New York Times best-selling author. She is the founder of UnchainedTV and the host of several shows on the network.
