The Internet is a virtual hotbed of vegetarian singles websites
that boast inspiring success stories of happy couples who’ve found
veggie love online. Many people have memberships with several
sites. Here are some of the most popular:
executivevegetariandating.com
offers personalized one-on-one service based on traditional
matchmaking techniques intended for serious professional
individuals who are searching for a friendship, relationship,
committed or lifetime partner, or marriage.
greenfriends.com, ‘where
vegetarian friends and singles feel at home,’ touts itself as the
‘best place in the world’ to find both platonic friendships and
romance.
greensingles.com, one of the
first green-dating sites on the Internet, lists personal ads for
progressive singles in the environmental, vegetarian, and animal
rights communities and for those who love the outdoors, holistic
living, personal growth, and spirituality.
vegan.meetup.com has more than
9,000 members differentiated by category-straight edge, raw
foodists, and environmentalists among them-and includes listings in
major cities for a variety of vegetarian events and gatherings.
veggieconnection.com has about
10,000 members from all over the world. With hundreds of new
members each month, Veggie Connection was voted ‘top spot to find a
veggie mate’ in the 2005 VegNews Veggie Awards.
veggiedate.com provides a
dating service for vegetarians, raw foodists, macrobiotics,
Adventists, Bahais, Taoists, Scientologists, Buddhists, and Hindus.
More than 16,000 ads are posted on this site, which offers a free
two-week trial.
veggielove.com is a
vegetarian-owned and -operated singles community where ‘single
vegetarians, vegans, raw foodists, and others who seek and value a
plant-based diet can meet and network for friendship, dating,
marriage, and the exchange of information and ideas.’
Reprinted from VegNews (March/April 2006).
Subscriptions: $20/yr. (6 issues) from Box 320130, San Francisco,
CA 94132; www.vegnews.com.
Organic Labeling and Beyond
Recent legislation has eroded the meaning of the ‘organic’ food
label in the United States. What’s more, conscious consumers have
become aware of important considerations-local production,
biodynamic harvesting, humane work conditions, fair worker pay-in
addition to organic growing processes.
The independent Dutch foundation Nature & More has created a
labeling system for organic produce that consumers use to trace a
product’s history.
‘Nature & More strives to continuously increase
transparency, mutual awareness, and shared responsibility of all
stakeholders in the food supply chain with regard to food quality,
ecology, and social justice,’ the foundation explains on its
website (www.natureandmore.com/English.cmt).
The system works like this: A signature purple label with a
four-digit code is affixed to, say, an organic kiwi. Consumers can
enter the code on the Nature & More website and get to know the
individual grower, learn about the orchard, and check the
ecological, social, and product quality of the fruit (all rated on
a five-star system).
With data available on most major European organic labels,
Nature & More is expanding worldwide but has yet to reach the
United States. –Laine Bergeson
