4-H stands for "Head, heart, hands, health" and apparently a fifth - for "haters."

To many, 4-H Clubs are all about nurturing sweet little calves, adorable children winning ribbons, urban garden patches and proud future farmers grooming prized pigs for show. To others, it's a calculated system for turning the youth of America into cold, unfeeling animal killers.

When Eatocracy ran a 5@5 feature with chef Kelly Liken on the topic of Five Reasons to Buy from Your Local 4-H earlier this week, we quickly identified within the comments two distinct perceptions of the organization - which was originally set up by the United States Department of Agriculture to train the rural youth of America in hands-on skills like agriculture and raising animals. One was that 4-H promotes responsible animal husbandry and the cultivation of food resources in a responsible, ethical way and the other was that it serves to desensitize children to the suffering of animals.

Here's what our commenters had to say:
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World Vegetarian And Vegan News announced on April 1 that the upcoming royal wedding would be entirely free of animal products due to cultural, health and environmental concerns.

“Celebrity vegan cook Sarah Kramer is being brought over from Canada to advise on ingredients for the reworked royal wedding cake,” the post said.

The report was, of course, just an April Fools’ Day hoax. While Kramer won’t be crafting an egg-free, dairy-free cake for Prince William and Kate Middleton this coming weekend, she will be taking part in the in the third annual Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale along with more than 140 groups across six continents from April 23 through May 1.

“My favorite thing in the world is to watch someone who isn’t vegan eat a vegan cookie and watch their eyes open,” Kramer says. “I’m changing people’s minds one tummy at a time.”
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The nation’s leading vegetarian news and lifestyle magazine has admitted it “screwed up” by attempting to pass off meaty recipe photos as meatless in the pages of its magazine and online.

VegNews issued a mea culpa last week after a blogger outed the publication for using images of chicken and hamburgers from a royalty-free image service to illustrate recipes such as “veganized” Brunswick stew and “Magical Meatball Burgers.” The VegNews team defended its actions, attributing them to a lack of images of vegetarian dishes and the high costs associated with image-gathering, especially for an independent publication like VegNews.

This week, the magazine went a step further, vowing to never again let images of cooked animals carcasses grace its pages and promising to host a photo bank of vegan stock images.
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Many salivate over the mere image of a juicy hamburger or a glistening rack of ribs, but vegetarians aren't usually among them.

But apparently, that's what the readers of VegNews, the nation's leading vegan magazine, have been doing for years without their knowledge.

With the help of an anonymous reader tip, the author of the vegan blog, quarrygirl.com, accused VegNews of using food images of meat in its magazine and website and passing them off as meatless. The allegation prompted the San Francisco-based publication to confess that it had, "from time to time," used stock images that turned out not to be totally animal-free.

"The pictures we've been drooling over for years are actually of MEAT!" she charged.

Read Vegan magazine in a stew over meaty stock photos

Eatocracy has saddled up in Austin, Texas, all week not only to cover the annual South by Southwest music, film, and interactive conference, but also to prep for the third edition of our Secret Supper. And now, it's officially supper time in Texas.

This go-round, the man behind the burner - or in this case, the smoker - is Zack Northcutt, executive chef at Mulberry and Haddingtons.

He's well-known around town for hosting the "Meaty Monday Madness" gathering for his chef friends around the capital city. From there, they gather round and do what they do best: cook and eat. Chefs from fancy white tablecloth places to vegan food trucks to farm-to-table trailers. There is a sense of coexistence, despite varying types of cuisine, and we wanted to bring that same crossroads to the table.

To assist in tonight's meal and in that same spirit of delicious harmony, Chef Northcutt enlisted four of his chef-est friends, including John Galindo, owner of Izzoz Tacos and chef at the Red House Pizzeria; Mat Clouser of Rabbit + Hat Supper Club; Philip Speer, the executive pastry chef at Uchi and Uchiko restaurants; and Plinio Sandalio, the pastry chef at Congress Restaurant.
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Read more about Forks Over Knives and Jane Velez-Mitchell's vegan crusade

Visit Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell

Louise Morgan wishes she'd known about "plant-based" diets when she raised her family in rural Georgia some 40 years ago. Maybe, she says, it would have saved her husband's life.

"We didn't have things like that back then. Here in the South we feed our men their Southern food. He loved his fried chicken and ribs, and that's how I raised my family," says Morgan, an 80-year-old retired biologist from Big Canoe, Georgia.

He died at 52 of a heart attack while watching TV, she says. "During a Braves game. Killed him instantly."

"If I had to do it again, I'd do it differently. But we just didn't know about that stuff back then."

Morgan's zeal for a different way of life prompted her to pile into a car with friends from her retirement community and drive 50 miles south to Atlanta for last month's screening of the independent documentary, "Forks Over Knives."
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CNN: Tell me about being vegan.

Simmons: I've been vegan for more than 10 years. It's maybe the worst disaster in human history - 15 billion suffering farm animals. And I don't want to participate in it. I'm 53 years old, and do I look sick to you? I don't eat animal or animal products, and I feel fine. I feel pretty healthy.

CNN: What are your favorite dishes?

Simmons: I like this spicy tempeh dish. I like that a lot. People ask my favorite stuff, and I say the thing in front of me a lot. Right now if I weren't on a liquid diet, if I had an avocado roll and some soy sauce, it would be that.

Stephanie Chen talks money, bliss and much more with the hip-hop mogul

We went on a bit of a tear earlier this morning, exhorting the 94 percent of men and 96 percent of women who reportedly don't eat enough vegetables to belly on up to the greens bar and get cozy with some winter cucurbits.

People have a litany of excuses why they don't get their RDA of the dirt candy - veggies are too expensive or too hard to cook, they're intimidated by the food police, prep time takes too long, ad infinitum. But we said it then and we'll say it now - just try your best. Don't get all fussed about the food police or fret about messing 'em up. Just get some into your gullet and eventually you'll find the variety and cooking method that makes your whole body smile.

Vegetables. Eat them. Here's how.

On the first day of 2011, our Facebook and Twitter feeds were glutted with friends' New Year's pledges to graze through hectares of leafy greens, ferry home wheelbarrows of winter roots and bunk down with Brussels sprouts and broccoli.

Celebrity chef and Meatless Monday booster Mario Batali publicly resolved to make and eat dinner with his kids, and "master more vegetarian dishes, like simple bruschetta, that are fun to cook as a team." By January 3rd, the Wall Street Journal aided George Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee Co. in dubbing it yea and verily to be the Year of the Vegetable.

Yet within days of the work week commencing (or the Champagne finally wearing off) that fervor wilted, giving way to an apologetic trickle of, "Yeah...I give up. Vegetables are too much work." "Too...cold...for...farmers...market..." "zOMG the organic stuff is sooooo expensive!" and "#resolutionfail Back to Lean Cuisine. I don't know what to DO with vegetables."
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