SupremeMasterTV: Hi, I’m reporting for Supreme Master Television, during National Vegetarian Week here in the UK. I’m outside Lush, the vegetarian and vegan cosmetic store, where we’ll be talking to Mr. Tony Bishop-Weston, the author of “Vegan.”

VOICE: Tony Bishop-Weston, an award winning vegan chef, co-authors the cookbook “Vegan” alongside his wife, Yvonne Bishop-Weston, a well sought after expert nutritionist. We were honored to join Mr. Bishop-Weston at his book signing in May 2008 where our talks range from luscious foods to how we can save the environment through veganism.

SupremeMasterTV: I’m joined by “Vegan” author, Mr. Tony Bishop Weston.

W: Hi, how are you doing?

SupremeMasterTV: Hi Tony, good, thanks. Can you tell us a bit about your new book?

W: Actually, the new book still isn’t finished, but when it comes out it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be compilation of a lot of different vegan recipes, it’s going to be called “The Complete Book of Vegan Cooking.” But meantime, we’ve still got this one, which is the original one. Our concept was basically to do healthy vegan food.

SupremeMasterTV: So what are the health benefits of a having vegan diet?

W: Well, the obvious one is you’ve got more energy and you feel more vibrant. Your digestion works better, you can think more clearly, your skin’s better, your heart’s better. If you’re eating more fruits and vegetables, then you’re getting more polyunsaturated fats than saturated fats, which come in animal foods. You’re certainly getting more fiber since there’s no fiber in meat, but all fruits and vegetables have fiber. You’re getting loads of anti-oxidants because if you eat a colorful diet with different fruits and vegetables which we recommend, then you’re getting all these different types of antioxidants and phytonutrients that your body needs to fight disease and support the immune system. So, you just can’t lose.

SupremeMasterTV: What would you say to people who have concerns about getting enough nutrition?

W: Well, that’s one of the things we do with our book. It’s not just the food and the cooking; it’s also all the nutritional backup as well because my wife is a nutritionist. She put all the information at the front of the book that says, “This is the source of all the nutrients that you need to be healthy.” We list all the different places you can get vitamin B12, where you can get vitamin D, where you can get iron, where you can get zinc, where you can get your protein, and the right ratios as well. The misconception that vegetarian food is a bit boring really, is when you just take the meat off the plate and leave what’s left.

So you’re left with pasta with tomato sauce and it shouldn’t be like that, because you’ve got hundreds of different ingredients that you could use instead. There is no reason, absolutely no reason, why you should be missing any nutrients because nature provides all those nutrients; you can get vitamin D from the sunshine.

Even for treating certain conditions when your body can’t make things, there’s even a solution in nature for that as well. We’ve now got things like long chain essential fatty acids from algae, and you can get vitamin B3 from algae as well, and a lot of different kinds of amino acids from algae. I think the solution is to really go back. If you go back far enough, you can find that humans had solutions for all these things a long time ago. And we, just in the last hundred years, we seemed to have forgotten so much. It’s only in the last so many years that the way we produce meat has made it so cheap that we’re having it too much and we’re damaging the planet in the process.

SupremeMasterTV: Tony, there’s a lot of talk around at the moment about diet and how it affects the environment. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

W: We went to see a new film on Monday at the beginning of National Vegetarian Week. I think you’ve covered it. And the facts that they came out with were incredible. It was a Dutch political Party for the Animals and they gathered together all these fantastic facts. Really interesting because they broke it down into days. Even if you go vegetarian or vegan just for 1 day, and then to 7 days, and what the effects would be. So, starting on 7: if all British people didn’t eat meat for 7 days a week, they would save 91 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions.

This would save as much as 254,000,000 return flights from London to Ibiza. A lot of people don’t realize, if you ask people on the street: What are the biggest causes of greenhouse gases? They’ll just tell you it’s airplanes, it’s cars and transport; quite often they won’t think about the vegetarian angle. So going back to this list here: if everyone went vegetarian for 6 days, they would save 78 megatons of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. This will be more than if all the cars in the UK are taken away from the roads. So, that’s incredible.

If we went vegetarian for 5 days, we’d save 65 megatons. This would save more than the total emissions reduction than when abolishing the total electricity use of all the households the UK. If we went vegetarian for 4 days, that would be more than 20 million cars in the UK were taken off the roads for the whole year; that’s like 70% of all UK cars or 41.7 megatons of CO2. That’s just an incredible amount! If we all went vegetarian for 3 days, we would save 39 megatons of emissions. That would be the same as replacing all household appliances like fridges, freezers, dishwashers, and washing machines with an energy efficient one, a different version. If we all didn’t eat meat for 2 days, that would save 26 megatons.

That’s the same as 3,000,000 return flights from London to Ibiza. So even on 2 days, it’s an incredible savings for carbon. And even if we only did it for 1 day, it says here if all British ate no meat for 1 day, they would save 13 megatons of CO2. This would be more than if 5,000,000 cars were taken away from the roads. So you can see, it’s criminal that it’s not mention more and people aren’t thinking about that, and it isn’t publicized more.

People talk about having a smaller car or a greener car, or a greener fridge, not doing long haul flights, but this stuff is so much more important. Because the effect of all of the cows and calves and the animals on the environment is just huge, it really is huge. It’s not just what they’re eating and the waste of resources because obviously you’ve got to grow food for them to eat in the first place; cows and animals don’t get fed grass anymore. So most of the soya we grow, when people talk about chopping down the rainforests to grow soya, that’s not soya for people to eat, that soya to go to feed animals; it’s incredible wasted to resources.

Then, you’ve got all the water it takes to get a cow to be the size of a house, you’ve got all the electricity, you’ve got all the processing cost, when you add it all up. So, all in all, it just makes more sense. So go vegan, for the planet and for your health!

VOICE: We’ll return shortly to discuss delicious eats with renowned chef and cookbook author, Mr. Tony Bishop-Weston.

VOICE: Nowadays, vegetarianism has become widespread and a welcomed way of compassionate living around the world. Mr. Tony Bishop-Weston reminds us that transitioning our diets to an animal-free one does not mean sacrificing our taste palette.

SupremeMasterTV: Is it hard to go vegan?

W: No, no, I think it’s really, really easy. Especially if you living in somewhere like the UK, the US, Europe, and most developed countries, it’s really, really easy because there is so many vegan alternatives to anything. We’ve got vegan chocolate, we’ve got vegan ice-cream, we’ve got vegan sausages, they out in the back there tasting the sausages, we’ve got cheese here today that’s dairy free, and it’s pretty anything you like. I sort of found out actually there is nothing really I am going to miss. I can’t justify not being vegan anymore because there’s really nothing I got to give up. I can have cheese, I can have pizza, I can have chocolate if I want it.

You don’t need to kill animals for health, you don’t need to kill animals to have delicious food. It’s just not right. For me, that’s the way I feel about it.

If you go vegetarian, you could save 100 animals in a year, so that’s a huge amount of animals in your lifetime. It’s just so easy, there’s no reason to kill things and have another being suffer for fun; that’s what it equates to.

So even if as a vegan, you can have delicious fantastic things like a really lush moist chocolate cake, with no eggs, no dairy, all food is possible.

As time goes on, you just find more and more replacements for your food. Then, the next level is to actually eat more fruits and vegetables, and to eat more naturally. I went to a restaurant the other day. It was just fantastic because it was not only vegan, it’s raw food. The guys who’ve come over from Manhattan and they’ve set up this restaurant in London. And it’s just the most fantastic food. And you’re left thinking, not only with no reason not to be vegan, but you’re even left wondering why should you even bother to cook when food can be this delicious and this good. For years, I agree with the principal of eating raw, I think it’s the natural thing for the body, but you just think oh that’s just a bit boring, you know?

But the chef that they’ve got there, he just makes the most incredible things. You go there and the menu’s just got things like lasagna and ravioli there, and you think, “Oh, usual vegetarian options.” And then when you have it, it’s just the most fantastic, exquisite food! It’s all fresh and vibrant and raw food ingredients, and you still got that intensity of flavor. And each plate is a picture, it’s like art, but then it tastes delicious. It’s just incredible. I think that’s the level that we’ve gone to now.

I just heard today that Oprah Winfrey she’s gone vegan, for three weeks. She is only on day 3, something like that, and I was reading her blog and she said, “This is just incredible! When I started, I was thinking about all these things I was going to have to give up, and now, I am just eating this incredible food. I’m on a totally different plane. I’m just thinking, ‘What’s next? This is fantastic!’ It’s completely turned it around.” And that’s most people’s experience once they really get into it. It just changes you. It’s just all these things you didn’t realize existed, all these delicious flavors, delicious foods, and you just feel so much more vibrant, full of energy; it’s just great.

SupremeMasterTV: Have you got any ideas on how we can promote veganism and vegetarianism?

W: Yeah, I think we just got a responsibility to be really, really healthy and look so fit that everyone’s coming up to us and asking, “My goodness, how old are you? What are doing? How are you staying so fit? How are looking so great? How is your skin so clear?” And I think that’s the best thing we can do; you don’t have push it down by people’s throat, just lead by example. It’s going to be obvious; people are going to want what you secret. People can’t believe how old I am; that I’m nearly fifty and that I’ve got grown up kids who are teenagers. They say, “What’s your secret?” So apart from a beautiful wife, it’s just a good diet.

SupremeMasterTV: Do you have a website where people can find this information or buy your book?

W: Yeah, our main website is http://www.optimumnutritionists.com/.

VOICE: We would like to thank Mr. Tony Bishop-Weston for spending time with us and sharing his insights regarding vegetarianism. Indeed, it is high-time to adopt a plant-based way of eating. We can enhance our lives and the livelihood of our world simply by altering what we choose to put on our plates. Good health and a clear conscience are more added benefits of an animal-free diet. We’ll return again tomorrow to Lush to discover what attracts so many people to this vegetarian cosmetic store popping up around the globe. In addition, we’ll see what motivates every day people on their paths of vegetarianism. For now, we bid you a warm farewell with well wishes for a fruitful and blessed tomorrow. Please stay with us for Between Master and Disciples, coming up shortly.

W: So go vegetarian, even better go vegan, and save the planet, save your health, save people, and save animals!