This week we are joined by Kimberly Renee Barnes, an amazing activist that gets the work done. Kimberly is a self-taught private chef, on-air personality, and the founder of Might Be Vegan.  She’s also the creator behind the​ national #FromMeatsToBeets Challenge, web series “Might Be Vegan presents The Trap Kitchen, and the world’s largest vegan-only tailgate, #VeganAtTheGame, which served more than 1500 people at no cost in the city of Atlanta during Super Bowl LIII.

For today’s episode though, we wanted to talk to Kimberly about Food Love, a national, direct-to-door hunger relief effort providing families in need with nutritious, plant-based food at no cost to them, to strengthen health outcomes and work towards greater food justice in the U.S.   The program has a strong focus on BIPOC and other historically marginalized communities. We’ll talk about how the program works, what place it serves within the larger movement for food soveriegnty, and what it took to get brands to actually say yes to providing food to the program. 

Then we’ll discuss her work under the Brands Behaving Badly moniker, in which she is working to hold brands accountable for taking advantage of content creators. Additionally, we’ll learn about Kimberly’s impressive online sleuthing which has exposed multiple brands fraudulently claiming to support social justice movements.

A full transcript of the episode can be found here!

Contact us:
Email TheBeardedVegans [at] gmail [dot] com
Call (323) 7BEARDO
Visit TheBeardedVegans.com
Support the podcast and get bonus episodes and merch HERE.
Follow on Instagram and Facebook

The Links:

Food Love – Website / GoFundMe 

Kimberly Renee – YouTube / Instagram / Patreon / Ca$hApp / PayPal 

Brands Behaving Badly – Website 

Might Be Vegan – Website / Instagram / Facebook 

Referenced in this episode:

Why I No Longer Support Bob’s Red Mill (Part One) 

EXPOSED: How This White-Owned Brand is Preying on Black Folks | Made With Melanin Co Scam 

Not referenced in this episode, but we recommend signing this petition To Require Ownership Transparency in Shopify Stores To Prevent Scams & Fraud.

It’s mailbag time, where we respond to your questions, comments and concerns, as well as do a little housekeeping. Topics covered include the future of vegfests, how to talk to someone about adopting instead of purchasing a dog from a breeder, whether or not factory farms can be considered natural, why we don’t plan to do an episode about zoos, the moral worth of “future animals”,  is our sobriety connected to our veganism, and much much more!

Contact us:
Email TheBeardedVegans [at] gmail [dot] com
Call (323) 7BEARDO
Visit TheBeardedVegans.com
Support the podcast and get bonus episodes and merch HERE.
Follow on Instagram and Facebook

A transcript of this episode is available here!

For as long as we’ve been vegan, lab grown meat has been touted by some as the best chance to saving the most animals, while others staunchly oppose using or advocating for it. Up until now, discussions around cell based agriculture have largely been theoretical, but the announcement that Eat Just has been approved to sell their cultured meat to the general public (in Singapore, at least) has turned sci fi into reality. Although we have had an extensive discussion about the ethics of lab grown meat in the past, the abundance of internet arguments on the matter had us thinking that this would be a prime time to revisit our views on the topic. 

We’ll also discuss David Perdue attempting to dunk on John Ossof for eating at Slutty Vegan and take a look at Million Dollar Vegan’s latest makeover. 

Transcript available here

Contact us:
Email TheBeardedVegans [at] gmail [dot] com
Call (323) 7BEARDO
Visit TheBeardedVegans.com
Support the podcast and get bonus episodes and merch HERE.
Follow on Instagram and Facebook

The Links:

Sen. David Perdue mocks Jon Ossoff for eating vegan burger (Fox News)

Million Dollar Vegan website 

Ep 24: Should vegans be excited about Lab Grown meat? (Feb 23rd, 2016)

Eat Just to sell lab-grown meat in Singapore after gaining ‘world first’ regulatory approval (Tech Crunch)

No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time (The Guardian)

‘CULTURED MEAT’ IS ON THE MENU AT THE CHICKEN RESTAURANT IN TEL AVIV(Globe Trender)

Hey beardos, this week we take a moment to catch up on some news stories that caught our interest over the last month but we just couldn’t find a space for them in the episode. We’ll try to make sense of the bizarre food labeling law developments in the EU: Vegan Burger good! Plant based milk bad? But also Oatly can’t copyright their claim that their product is “like milk, but made for humans” because everyone knows cows milk is bad? It’s enough to make your head spin! Plus attempt to sort out our feelings over an interested marking tactic from This, and do some extensive follow up on the Denmark mink situation.

A transcription is available here

Contact us:
Email TheBeardedVegans [at] gmail [dot] com
Call (323) 7BEARDO
Visit TheBeardedVegans.com
Support the podcast and get bonus episodes and merch HERE.
Follow on Instagram and Facebook

Support the podcast on Patreon 

The Links:

Danish Government May Exhume Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dead Minks And Burn Them(Washington Post)

EU lawmakers vote for ‘veggie burgers’, take hard line on dairy labels(Reuters)

Oatly trademark rejected(World Trademark Review)

This commercial (YouTube)