Today WNYC talk host and LenLo counterpoint Brian Lehrer did a 15-minute listener-suggested segment in response to Nina Planck’s sharp-tongued opinion piece in The New York Times last month. Lehrer pitted vegan dietician and book author Vesanto Melina against Planck in what resulted in a pretty boring piece of radio. Melina got some good facts in edgewise, but her soft-spoken-hippie delivery sometimes made the issues seem cloudier than a hemp-bulgar-carob smoothie. While Melina did a decent job dispensing basic vegan-nutrition facts, it would’ve been nice if she’d been more aggressive in addressing some of Planck’s main claims: that raising a vegan child is, besides being dangerous, irresponsible, etc., also basically unnatural and (hah) “untraditional”, because “humans evolved as omnivores.” Once again, Planck provides basically no science to back up her assertions–but at least WNYC gave air time to the opposition, unlike the Times.

1 Comment

1. 
   Comment by

   frank language

   on June 23, 2007 at 8:12 pm #

   Re: “Vesanto Melina means well.”

   You know what they say about the road to hell…