Vegan Food Porn

By now you've probably heard about all the hub-bub over the VegNews scandal. If not, here's a short summary: turns out this vegan magazine has been using stock photography to illustrate its recipes, and on occasion this means that they've had to photoshop out the -- gasp! -- meat. This caused quite an uproar in the vegan community when the magazine was outed by Quarrygirl. While I don't agree with those who think using stock photographs of meat contributes to animal suffering (when it's used to promote a vegan lifestyle, doesn't that mean the opposite?) but I do agree that if you're going to show a picture of a recipe it should actually be that recipe, not some generic one containing completely different ingredients.

I've bought VegNews at Whole Foods a few times -- a guilty pleasure for me -- and had been considering getting a subscription when my current Vegetarian Times ran out. But now I'll probably stick with VT, since it seems like a much more professional organization all around. (And includes recipes like this one, which was a big hit last Thanksgiving.) Although they include a lot of recipes with dairy/eggs, the more I learn about vegan cooking, the more I think it's not really so hard to convert a vegetarian recipe into a vegan one. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, the whole controversy got me thinking about photography, and vegan photography in particular. You don't have to look very hard to find food porn -- it's everywhere these days. Not just in gourmet mags like Food & Wine, but even in places like Shape magazine and the good old Sunday Times. (All of the links go to vegan recipes on these sites.) But my own experience has been that it's not as easy as it looks to capture beautiful food on film (digital or otherwise). I'm still working on it.

I'll leave you with a few photos of some recipes that I've tested for the Happy Herbivore's newest cookbook. I can't share the ingredients (yet), so it's kind of a tease. As you can see, I'm still working on my form. But I can guarantee you, these pictures were made without harming any animals or innocent sticks of butter.

Chocolate pancakes, rising on the skillet.

Vegan frittata with Kale (plate by the fabulous Mudpie)

Chickpea tikka masala with a side of lemon-garlic asparagus

Channa Saag, with vegan yogurt