Dr. Mehmet Oz welcomed Howard Stern's sidekick, Robin Quivers, on the Aug. 14 episode of the Dr. Oz Show. Quivers discussed how she healed herself from endometrial cancer with the help of a vegan diet. Quivers, 62, overcame her endometrial cancer with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Robin also said a vegan diet healed her cancer and aided her 80-pound weight loss. She detailed her remarkable recovery in her book, The Vegucation of Robin. She was certain she too would fall prey to poor health in middle age, but said adopting a vegan diet completely changed her life. "My plant-based diet was helping my body heal," Quivers wrote in her book. "I couldn't believe the difference I saw. I'd never had such a dramatic shift in my health — not when I was taking medication, not when I was wearing a neck brace, and certainly not when I was eating whatever I wanted. I no longer had to rearrange my entire life around being sick." (examiner.com)

Put down that burger if you care about the environment! That is the concluding message from a new study that shows beef has the largest environmental impact out of any other animal product consumed by humans. According to the study published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce one calorie of beef, 11 times more water and six times more nitrogen fertilizer are used than the other animal products. Not that pork, poultry, dairy and eggs are innocent in the process. They have relatively similar levels but beef still uses more resources and produces more greenhouse gasses than all others. Fish was not included in the study for the lack of comprehensive information available and because it only constitutes about 0.5 percent of the average american diet. (ecorazzi.com)

Kids who spend time cuddling up with Fido or Fluffy are more likely to turn their noses up at meat later in life, a new study suggests. Those children who have formed attachments to their companion animals may develop empathy toward other animals, too, which can result in greater avoidance of eating meat, the researchers suggested. "Once an individual feels empathy toward animals, it makes it harder to eat animals," study author Hank Rothgerber, a professor of psychology at Bellarmine University and a vegetarian for more than 12 years, told Live Science in an email. In the study, Rothgerber and colleagues asked 273 people if they ate meat, and, if they did, how much meat they normally ate, as well as whether they owned an animal in childhood and how attached they were to their animals. (foxnews.com)

Subway is once again leading the way in making fast food chains vegan-friendly. The sandwich restaurant has introduced the all-vegan "Malibu" sub to selected menus in California as a test to see how well received the meat-free option is with customers. So far, the response has been positive. Sandwich artists at the Hollywood and Los Angeles locations have stated that in the week the "Malibu Garden" has been offered, customers have raved about it. The ingredients of the vegan sub do sound delicious even to meat-eaters: a veggie patty with whole grains such as brown rice and rolled oats, as well as veggies, a dairy and egg-free creamy "fire roasted tomato sauce" and the usual pick-and-choose veggies. Customers can also order it on the vegan Italian bread. (ecorazzi.com)

It's a good time to be a vegan. Meat prices are up 9.4% in June from a year earlier, and pork, fish and eggs are more expensive, too. Prices for the food Americans buy in grocery stores were flat in June and up 2.4% from a year ago, the Labor Department said Tuesday. But that comes after a run-up in prices earlier this year, when what Americans pay for food at home rose between 0.4% and 0.7% over the past six months. "In general, we are still seeing higher inflation among the foods located in the peripheral of the grocery store — meats, produce, dairy, etc.," said Annemarie Kuhns, an economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Non-perishable foods have had lower rates of inflation in recent months, she added. Food prices have been ticking higher after a series of factors that, when taken together, dramatically reduce supply. (blogs.wsj.com)