Celebrity Chef Eddie Huang Goes Vegan Overnight In Response To Amazon Forest Fires

Celebrity chef, restaurateur and author Eddie Huang has taken a vow to go vegan. The owner of NYC’s BaoHaus restaurant and author of the memoir Fresh Off The Boat took to Instagram to share the news. Said Huang, “After watching videos of the Amazon on fire this week, I've decided that this corned beef I ate at Junior’s last week will be the last piece of beef I ever eat.”

At last count, the post has over 40,000 likes. He also went on to highlight that veganism isn’t a privileged lifestyle fad or “uppity white girl thing,” but a way of living that has been practised for generations by Asian Buddhists and certain Hindu sects, adding that going vegan was a way of going back to our roots.

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After watching videos of the Amazon on fire this week, Ive decided that this corned beef I ate at Junior’s last week will be the last piece of beef I ever eat. I love beef, I love ox tails, I love Peter Luger’s, I loved growing up in a steak house cutting NY Strip on xanax. It was soothing but beef is fucking us. Actually, we are fucking ourselves on multiple levels and we need to make changes. Im going to go vegan because it takes 20 times less land to feed a vegan than a meat eater and over 90% of the land cleared in the amazon rainforest since 1970 is used for grazing livestock, but if all of us just stopped eating BEEF it would solve huge problems. Eat fish, eat chicken, eat pork until the next crisis but if all u can do now is quit beef, please do it. I know a lot of ass backwards people think vegetarianism or veganism is some uppity white girl thing to do but its not. There have been Asian Buddhist Vegetarians for thousands of years, Ital Rasta, Hindu as well, this is not some new age thing to laugh at. We are getting back to roots, healing the Earth, and ourselves. Ive eaten my last bite of meat. I wish I had planned this better and ate my mom’s ox tail soup but fuck it. There really isnt time to waste. Some things have to start today. I started to get these feelings shooting the last season of Huang’s World and fasted for 5 days because my producer David’s mom said I looked sick. She was right. The 5 days not eating fundamentally changed me and I shot the second half of the season while intermittent fasting. Ive made a lot of food videos because I love food but more than anything because food was fertile ground for exploring difference, but I dont love what food tv and more importantly what food has become in our culture: a drug. I had a really rough 2018- early 2019, got high and just ate myself to sleep watching Harry Potter a lot lol but Im getting back on my shit. Take a moment, think about it, and reexamine your relationship with food because it’ll make the Earth and ourselves very very sick if we keep abusing it.

A post shared by Eddie Huang (@mreddiehuang) on Aug 23, 2019 at 5:44am PDT

A majority of the land cleared in the Amazon is used for grazing livestock, which ends up as beef on our plates.  As per data from the WWF, extensive cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in almost all countries in the Amazon. It accounts for 80% of current deforestation and is responsible for 340 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually, which equals roughly 3.4% of current global emissions. By simply making the switch to a vegan diet, we are saving land and water resources, as well as cutting down emissions.

Huang echoes this in his post, adding, “it takes 20 times less land to feed a vegan than a meat eater…” He concluded the post by encouraging is 300k+ followers to adopt a vegan diet, saying “re-examine your relationship with food because it’ll make the Earth and ourselves very very sick if we keep abusing it.”

_{*Feature image courtesy GQ}

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