{"id":17684,"date":"2021-07-15T10:00:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-15T14:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=17684"},"modified":"2021-06-22T12:26:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T16:26:03","slug":"promoting-veggie-diets-at-the-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2021\/07\/15\/promoting-veggie-diets-at-the-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Promoting Veggie Diets at the Library"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several months ago, The Vegetarian Resource Group got an\nemail that said, \u201cI\u2019m a programming librarian for the San Jose Public Library\nlocated in California. I was wondering if you would be interested presenting a\nfew programs with us. From your website, I believe that you could inform people\nhow to become a vegetarian, the benefits, how to manage it, answer questions,\nand other things. I’m thinking that you could provide information for teens and\nadults. Let me know if you would be interested in doing 2-4 programs for our\nlibrary.\u201d The email went on to explain that they wanted to do virtual programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This sounded like\nan exciting opportunity to talk about vegetarian diets. After chatting with the\nlibrarian in charge of program development, we agreed to present a total of 8\nprograms \u2013 3 for families, 2 for adults, and 3 for teens \u2013 all with a focus on\nbeing or becoming vegetarian. Each hour-long program was sponsored by a\ndifferent branch of the library. Programs were free and open to anyone who\nsigned up but were especially promoted to patrons of each branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     We decided to\ncover basic information \u2013 nutrition, reasons for becoming veg, easy ideas for\nmeals and snacks \u2013 and to have a relaxed, conversational format. I took the\nlead in developing an outline and possible talking points and Power Point\nslides. Some weeks we went through all the slides; other weeks, we let the participants\u2019\nquestions guide our presentation. What did people want to know about? Food\nideas were the most commonly requested topics. Participants wanted ideas for\nquick-and-easy meals and snacks. We got questions about low-cost eating, about\ntraveling to other countries, and about whether or not vegan meats should be a\npart of veg diets. Teens wanted to talk about being the only vegetarian or\nvegan in their family and about going to friends\u2019 houses or out to eat with\nfriends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     One or more\nbranch librarians joined us for each program. Some were vegan, some vegetarian,\nsome-veg-curious. They helped with the technical aspects and often added their\nown questions and ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Wendy Gabbe-Day,\na vegan parent with 2 vegan children and the founder of Santa Cruz (California)\nVegFest joined me for the 3 programs for families. She used her personal\nexperiences to address questions about kids with allergies, strategies for\ngetting children to eat vegetables, and feeding vegan kids. VRG interns Lucia\nRivera, Nina Lehr, Clarissa Hauber, Hannah Etman, and Rachel Eldering joined me\nfor adult and teen programs and talked about their experiences with vegan\ncooking and eating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Sometimes\nparticipants chimed in to share ideas for their favorite vegan dishes or to talk\nabout products that they liked. We made sure to mention the library as a great\nresource for vegan cookbooks and encouraged people to visit VRG\u2019s website for\nmore information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Thank you to the\nSanta Jose Public Library for making these programs possible!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD Several months ago, The Vegetarian Resource Group got an email that said, \u201cI\u2019m a programming librarian for the San Jose Public Library located in California. I was wondering if you would be interested presenting a few programs with us. From your website, I believe that you could inform people how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17686,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684\/revisions\/17686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}