The Davis Square Community

Do they do "normal" mozzerella pizzas? I thought they were mostly like curries and things served on a pizza crust.

From:

whaler.livejournal.com

1) Cheap mozarella cheese often isn't made with rennet but with some kind of citric acid and it's just curdled, versus cultured.

2)I am a nerd and this got me reading on the issue according to wikipedia In 1999, about 60% of U.S. hard cheese was made with genetically engineered chymosin[3] and it has up to 80% of the global market share for rennet[4]. By 2008, approximately 80 - 90% of commercially made cheeses in the United States and Great Britain are made utilizing GMO-based rennet. One example of a commercially available genetically engineered rennet is Chymax, created by Pfizer.

Today the most widely used genetically engineered rennet is produced by the fungus Aspergillus niger.

So GMO rennet doesn't come from baby cow stomachs, but from a delightfully modified fungus...however this of course could get you out of the frying pan and into the GMO fire if you are also avoiding those foods as well!

Edited Date: 2009-06-28 09:33 pm (UTC)

From:

stellasirius.livejournal.com

well, they make gourmet pizzas, so the crust is not your typical pizza crust (it's more like flat bread). but they do have a couple on their menu that are a fairly classic tomato-mozzarella combo.

From:

findingthegirl.livejournal.com

TJ Scallywaggles is a completely vegan pizza place, but they're in Allston.
http://www.scallywaggles.com/index2.php

From:

Cows milk isn't a vegetable.

I'll second TJ Scallywaggles and Veggie Planet for their vegetarian (plants only, herbivore) selections.

From:

I eat so much soy already I guess I'm already in the GMO fire. Still I don't really want to eat cheese that has a 10-20% chance of being non-vegetarian.

From:

thanks. I've been to TJ's a few times. I like it okay, although usually if I'm in allston union sq and want food I can't resist going to Yoma's

From:

It's true that cows milk isn't a vegetable, but I do consider it vegetarian. I realize vegetarian means different things to different people, and for you it may have a stricter definition than the ovo-lacto one I go by.

I ended up going to veggie planet tonight and getting the oddlot. It was really busy though.

From:

Yeah, someone really needs to come up with a term that refers to people who "don't eat things that require killing animals to get". :-)

I try to stick to the scientific definitions of things, to keep things clear, which is why I consider vegetarian to mean "one who eats vegetation".

The lack of clarity makes it really difficult when I ask for a vegetarian meal and I end up with people thinking that all sorts of things are plants, as you can imagine...

From:

You'd rather support the pro-deforestation, anti-environment Monsanto empire than harm a calf even if it's in the most painless way possible?

From:

We're getting a bit off topic here, but...

I don't like Monsanto any more than anyone else. I buy organic tofu, etc, but GMO soy and corn is snuck into everything. It's pretty hard to avoid.

The rennet thing is more about the thought of eating calf guts grossing me out than anything to do with the calf itself. Even if an animal lives a good life and gets killed "humanely" or whatever it still grosses me out to think about eating it.

The smell of meat cooking makes me gag a little, too. I don't know exactly why, but eating dead animals just seems wrong for me, so I try to avoid it wherever I can (again though it's snuck into everything so it's hard to avoid completely). I realize everyone is different though.

From:

Well the prefix "veget" in vegetarian actually comes from "vegetus" not "vegetation". Vegetus is latin word that has nothing to do with plants. It means "lively" as in "full of energy and life" and "not killed"

Anyway, as we all know, words are defined by the people who speak them not their etymology (the whole prescriptive versus descriptive language debate). I think at this point most people generally mean ovo-lacto-vegetarian when they say vegetarian and most people would call your definition "vegan" or "strict vegetarian"

From:

Not to be overly dramatic, but if hundreds of animals die as a result of the habitat destruction associated with the cheeses that do not contain rennet, is that really preferable?

From:

What I really want is a term for people who will only eat things produced in the most ecological way possible, whether of plant *or* animal origins.

From:

I've been working on a political philosophy that starts from a concept of "existential rights", in which the two platforms are something like:

1. If something exists it has a right to exist (by universal law!), and has a right to try to do whatever it needs to do to stay existing.

2. As an individual, take only what is necessary for you to continue to exist in the most good, true, and beautiful way, whenever possible.

This political approach would allow for carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores of all species to be most ecological, sustainable, healthy, and compassionate to themselves and their environment.

I don't, however, have a name for a person who practices this philosophy. "Existentialist" isn't quite right, I'm afraid... :-)

From:

If we went with what "most people" think of when they hear the word "vegetarian" the dictionary would define the term as something like: starving hippy freak. Thankfully words aren't always defined by the people who speak them, and are sometimes defined by the people who care most about what they mean.

As you probably already figured out, the term "vegetation" is also derived from the word "vegetus" which means "full of life" or "lively" as you pointed out, which is what people who eat vegetation become... :-)

As for processed cooked cow's milk, I don't think anyone would equate it with being "full of energy and life". It's damn dead, and stolen from a baby who is taken from his or her mother at birth and fed with synthetic "milk" formula so that you can have your pizza.

From:

1. If something exists it has a right to exist (by universal law!), and has a right to try to do whatever it needs to do to stay existing.

I agree so long as you acknowledge that farm animals exist *because* we farm them, and that if all of humanity were to become vegetarians tomorrow, then farm animals would cease to exist.

2. As an individual, take only what is necessary for you to continue to exist in the most good, true, and beautiful way, whenever possible.

I would add "sustainable" way, as well.

My general feeling is that attitudes of "eat no plants" or "eat only plants" are both too simplistic. A truly ecological and sustainable diet is going to have to adapt to season, locality and overall ecology, and it's short sighted to believe that this can mean never eating any animal products, ever, imho.

From:

Not sure I follow. You're saying that rennetless cheese destroys more habitat than cheese with rennet? Are you talking about cheese curds made from fungus and milk, or soy cheese?

Note, I never said I was a vegetarian for ethical reasons. To be honest I don't know that I have a rational reason for being vegetarian. It's just what feels "right" for me.

The thought of eating animals grosses me out in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't always true, but it's definitely true now. I couldn't tell you why.

From:

Not sure I follow. You're saying that rennetless cheese destroys more habitat than cheese with rennet? Are you talking about cheese curds made from fungus and milk, or soy cheese?

Not inherently, no. Basically I'm questioning the logic of choosing a more factory farmed cheese over a small-farm cheese simply on the grounds that the factory farmed cheese uses a synthetic rennet alternative where the small-farm cheese uses real calf rennet. So far as I know, most of the synthetic rennet cheeses are not produced by small local farms, although there may be some that I am unaware of.

The thought of eating animals grosses me out in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't always true, but it's definitely true now. I couldn't tell you why.

If you can indeed find a small-farm cheese that is made using animal rennet then I'd say go for it. But if I were you I'd think twice about the number of animal lives truly at stake if you have to decide between a small-farmed calf rennet cheese and a mass produced synthetic rennet alternative. You may ultimately be saving more lives with the small farm cheese AND you'd be helping the environment at the same time.

From:

It's damn dead, and stolen from a baby who is taken from his or her mother at birth and fed with synthetic "milk" formula so that you can have your pizza.

Not true! It's full of live bacterial cultures if it's not pasteurized!

From:

Well "farm animals" is more of a political term than a scientific term. There are indeed many animals that would have a difficult time reintegrating into the wild if completely abandoned by human society (humans being at the top of that list!), but that's ok. No one is suggesting anything so black or white as instant irradication of all factory farms. It will be a slow process, allowing the species to either die out naturally, or to adapt into a new niche in the planet's ecosystem. Some might stay on as friends of humans, just like dogs and cats, perhaps.

Sustainable is a great word, and I would say that this whole process results in a "sustainable" way of living. As for my "good, true, and beautiful" selections of terms, they are based in ancient wisdom of the three main (so far) elements of human nature, the good is the best of the physical stuff, the true is the best of the intellectual stuff, and the beautiful is the best of the emotional stuff, Those three elements physical, emotional, and intellectual cover pretty much any motivation we humans have in normal life. (One can make an argument for something like "spiritual" or "universal" or something that relates to the idea of us being a part of something really, massively big and vast and mindblowing, but I tend to keep that element out of polite conversation, lest people get too overwhelmed, but you seem to be the kind of chap who can probably handle it :-)

From:

I forgot to mention that clearly different bodies are designed for different diets for maximum health. I seemed to have been born a vegetarian (plant eater), as even when I was a little kid I refused to eat meat, and had health issues when I ate other animal products. So I'm pretty sure that the most good, true, and beautiful food for me is plants.

And while it seems a bit unusual for a single species to have more than one body design when it comes to food, it appears that humans do vary in their basic food requirements, so that some humans might actually need some animal products, while others don't. But it's hard to tell as we don't really have a way to do controlled studies on this sort of thing. However, if there is any sign of disease, removing animal products from the diet has been shown in many cases to be the fastest way to cure the disease. So it's possible that all humans really are designed to eat plants as the ideal diet. But we may never really know, because we're likely to create some kind of Star Trek technology where we simply replicate food from raw energy and simple matter really soon...

From:

Which is why I specifically said "processed, cooked", which all milk sold in stores and probably all milk that goes into cheese that any pizza restaurant would ever be able to afford to carry...

From: