Mark Reinfeld–award-winning vegan chef, author, educator–discusses his colorful career path and cultural shifts in attitudes about veganism

Share
Mark Reinfeld (courtesy of Reinfeld

Mark Reinfeld— the award-winning vegan chef and author of numerous books, including “Healing The Vegan Way: Plant-Based Eating for Optimal Health and Wellness”—returns as a guest on “Talking Animals,” this time offering more early biographical information than we’ve discussed in past conversations.

This includes growing up in Stony Brook, Long Island, where he and his family ate a pretty standard (if not standard American) diet—“not plant-based,” Reinfeld recalls, dryly.

He shares details of his younger years, including extensive travel, going to school for a year in London, working in a commercial cooking operation in L.A., briefly attending law school, and a stint at a San Diego health food store, which proved pivotal, in that he left there to launch his own culinary and consulting enterprise.

Reinfeld recalls that his interest in food and cooking was spurred by his grandfather, a chef, master ice carver, and generally a colorful, illustrious figure in South Florida. He explains when he began to recognize that working in the vegan cooking realm might be a calling. And given the years—decades, really—that Reinfeld has been ensconced in the vegan culinary world, he’s particularly well positioned to observe any cultural shifts that may have occurred regarding attitudes about vegan food,  and offers those observations.

Some of those observations extend into the medical field, where the progression of  certain diseases and conditions (including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure) can be halted or reversed, while more and more medical schools are altering their nutrition curriculum to include the virtues of a plant-based diet.

Reinfeld describes the cooking workshops he’s presenting this summer, including the Virtual Four-Week Vegan Cooking Immersion (four-plus hours per day, five days a week, additionally featuring guest instructors, including Miyoko Schinner of Miyoko’s Creamery), Nourish Your Life Through Food: A Six-Part Introduction to Successful Plant-Based Living (Ashley Boudet, ND, and Reinfeld, aka “The Doctor & The Chef,” co-lead this virtual workshop on creating a healthy and balanced plant-based lifestyle), and the Three-Day In-Person Vegan Culinary Jam Session (This workshop is in person, with participants traveling to Colorado, near Boulder, to join Reinfeld in the kitchen to develop, and share, more sophisticated techniques).

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

You may also like

Hurricane season preparedness checklist fpren noaa
Here’s how to prepare for hurricane season even as no tropical systems currently threaten Florida

In past years, Florida would have completed its tax-free week...

Barbershop talk to deal with mental health of boys

Jarvis El-Amin and Gannette Stewart from The Children’s Board of...

No Kings Trump
What WMNF saw at No Kings protests in the Tampa Bay area

Photos from the No Kings protest against the Trump administration...

The Chaotic Morass Of Wrong

Why are so many of us wrong about so much?...

Ways to listen

WMNF is listener-supported. That means we don't advertise like a commercial station, and we're not part of a university.

Ways to support

WMNF volunteers have fun providing a variety of needed services to keep your community radio station alive and kickin'.

Democracy Now!
Player position: