Not So Sweet: Top Chef Finale Features Foie Gras Dessert

In last week's finale episode of Top Chef All-Stars, Richard Blais beat out Mike Isabella for the title. Blais won with an array of dead animals: from raw oyster to veal, from pork belly to beef short rib.

As a vegan, there isn't a thing I'd eat from that meal, but what really got my goat was Richard’s dessert. Blais whipped up a foie gras ice cream for the finale.  A blogger for Time magazine said that the dish "looked like cat food — at some point after the cat had eaten it."

I'm disgusted over the dish, and not because of its cat food-like consistency. Nothing makes me madder than when someone ruins dessert with animal cruelty.

Foie gras is an extraordinarily cruel product, produced by force-feeding waterfowl several times a day to create a fatty and diseased liver. The force-feeding process, known as "gavage," involves jamming a metal feeding tube down the bird's throat, sometimes resulting in holes in the bird's neck.

Top Chef's decision to put foie gras into dessert shows that it just isn't paying attention to the ever-evolving culinary scene. People are becoming increasingly interested in eating in a way that is kinder to animals.

This compassionate way of eating is evidenced elsewhere on the small screen, where we've seen sweeter, more animal-friendly television. Ellen DeGeneres, a vegan herself, frequently talks vegan food on her talk show. Oprah and her entire staff went vegan in February. And just last week, Martha Stewart devoted an entire episode of her show to veganism.

Over at The Food Network, we've seen a bevy of vegan desserts. Vegan baker Chloe Coscarelli won a Cupcake Wars competition last year, and there's been several more vegan contestants on the show this season. There was even a vegan-on-vegan Cupcake War between Doron Petersan from D.C.’s Sticky Fingers Bakery and Kim Garr of L.A.’s C’est La V Bakeshop.

And just to prove that vegan cupcakes are in fact taking over the world, Animal Planet will air its first food-related show this summer, featuring a vegan baker. The show, Sweet Avenger, focuses on Danielle Konya, owner of Vegan Treats bakery in Pennsylvania.