March 2001

Our Great American Meat-Out and Outpost "Vegetarian Awareness" event is now well into preparation. I'll be sending out press releases shortly, and we have several volunteers to help table – although if anyone out there still wants to get in on the fun, we could certainly use you (phone 962-2703 if you're interested). Even if you don't want to table, you could still drop by either Outpost on March 24 to say Hi and to try their free vegetarian product samples.

We are also continuing to organize having little presentations on various topics at our potlucks, thanks to Jody Johnson, who is doing the organizing. This will serve two purposes. One is to make our gatherings even more informative and fun. The other is to help us publicize our potlucks better, since the effort to determine in advance when the potlucks will be held and what we'll be doing at them will both inspire and enable us to get them listed in the Outpost Exchange Calendar and other community calendars.

Last but very important, please note a date change for the April potluck, which will be on April 1, NOT April 8 as previously indicated. This is NOT an April Fool's joke! After I did the last newsletter, I took another look at my calendar and realized that the weekend of April 8 is Passover weekend, when Chuck and I will be in New York with my family. Unfortunately, the following weekend is impossible since that weekend is Easter, and in fact April 15 is Easter Sunday this year. Rather than move further forward into the month, we decided to move the date to the beginning – so make note now for April!

Sunday, March 4, 6 PM, regular potluck at the Forgach place, 8362 N. 49th St., Brown Deer, 355-4089. From Brown Deer Rd. and 51st St., go south a couple of blocks, then east to 49th St., turn south and look on the east side of the street.

Saturday, March 24, 11 AM to 3 PM, Great American Meat-Out tabling at both Outpost Natural Food Co-op stores (100 E. Capitol Dr. and 7000 W. State St.)

Sunday, April 1, 6 PM, regular potluck at Pat O'Neill's in Riverwest area.

Sunday, May 6, 6 PM, regular potluck. This one needs a host (call 962-2703 to volunteer).

Sunday, March 18, 5 PM, Pat O'Neill's, 2431 N. Bartlett, 964-9759

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

" 'I want to show that French cuisine based on vegetables is possible,' said [award-winning premier Paris chef Alain] Passard, in a statement quickly taken as blasphemy. 'I'm rethinking everything because of the turn our food is taking. French cooking is modeled on meat, but I have given up eating meat, so I don't want to go on cooking it.' "

-- New York Times, Feb. 9, 2001

Our quote of the month is emblematic of a trend: the mainstream press is beginning to mention the V-word and report on vegetarianism more often these days, and is starting to treat us more matter-of-factly and with less of a "look at those fringe-group nuts" slant. Almost every week, now, there seems to be another vegetarianism-supporting letter-to-the-editor in the NY Times, suggesting that either that newspaper's letters page editor is a radical vegetarian, or (more likely) that the paper is getting a lot of such mail. Either possibility suggests that our numbers and support are growing.

And not a moment too soon, if so, since meat-eating continues in various ways to be problematical. The U.S. General Accounting Office recently reported that less than half of seafood companies are actually following safety standards designed to keep seafood safe – and they are not being controlled by government inspectors. And in a related story, I heard a report on National Public Radio recently about research findings which showed that fish farming – often touted as helping preserve ocean fish stocks – actually depletes them; it seems that farmed fish are fed fishmeal which comes from ocean-caught fish, so that fish-farming uses up two to three times as much weight of ocean-caught fish as it produces in farmed fish. On a more general note, World Resources Institute, a food policy research group in Washington, issued a report blasting all intensive farming (which especially includes intensive confinement livestock practices), asserting that these practices are destroying the world's long-term agricultural prospects for short-term profits. In this light, it is not good that Tyson Foods, the giant poultry corporation, is planning to acquire the huge meat-packing company IBP, to create the world's largest meat packer and processor.

Then there's the continuing mad cow disease flap. A NY Times op-ed article used the mad cow scandal, which has now involved virtually all of Europe, to exemplify the problems of European unification. Chuck pulled a news article off the internet which reported with some amusement on the plight of the Germans who are now really afraid to eat not only beef but (for various reasons) most other agricultural meat products – yet still resist going meatless. In mid-February, the European Union's farm policy director proposed long-term changes in European agriculture in order to deal with the financial and biological upheaval caused by mad cow disease, including permanently cutting back on beef production and promoting organic farming of animal feed. But in the short term, over 2 million head of cattle are scheduled for slaughter throughout Europe in the attempt to both control mad cow disease and boost beef prices (thus easing the impact on farmers). In the U.S., meanwhile, the National Cattlemen's Association is worried enough to be asking the government and feed producers to increase efforts to keep potentially dangerous animal products out of cow and sheep feed, and for good reason, since there was a recent report of an instance of about 1200 Texas cattle found to have eaten feed containing these banned ingredients (but the FDA decided that the amount of contaminants eaten by each cow was too small to be a problem, and anyway, those cows will now be used for animal food, not human consumption). And just in case you think that not eating meat makes you safe, the British health department had to inform British hemophiliacs that they might have received blood from a donor who later died of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (the human version of mad cow disease), while U.S. regulators discovered last year that 5 drug companies did make 9 widely used vaccines using material from cattle raised in countries where mad cow disease is a risk, despite having been asked not to.

Other food-related news is just strange. A NY Times report on our new president's call for using religious charities to do public social work, for example, featured a halfway house run by Hare Krishnas, whose recipients are very happy with its services generally except for the vegetarian cuisine.... Another news story happily announced the decoding of the e. coli genome – and of course explained that this could lead to vaccines, diagnostic tests, and treatments for e. coli infection (mentioning nothing about avoiding the meat and animal husbandry which is the source of the problem).

The action also continues on the bioengineered food scene, where the genesplicers are not having it all their own way, though they haven't given up. This month's news included a European Union decision to drop a moratorium on bioengineered food and seeds – but to institute really strict controls and testing and tracking rules on any such crops and foods, Monsanto announced its plan to introduce a bioengineered wheat variety – and opposition was in evidence immediately, from Japan, Europe, and the Middle East to the state legislatures of Montana and North Dakota. This may be viewed in the light of a NY Times article that analyzed how Monsanto 's big push to force its gene-spliced food on the public has thoroughly backfired, with enormous loss to American farmers of both markets and money. See the Dialog section if you want to get involved.

As always, there is good news about the healthfulness of various vegetarian foods.

A Healthwise article mentioned the immune-boosting and other healthful nutrients to be found in sweet peppers: plenty of vitamin C, beta carotene (which is present even in green peppers but much more so in red and yellow ones), other carotenoids, potassium, and even a little folate and calcium. And the capsaicin in hot peppers has use as a pain reliever for arthritis and cluster headaches, and may help fight cancer.

Eating whole grains instead of refined ones may reduce the risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and breast cancer, according to a Prevention magazine article. That issue also recommends using broccoli sprouts instead of lettuce on sandwiches, since 3-day-old sprouts can contain as much as 50 times more than mature plants of a substance which is common to cabbage-family vegetables and is believed to protect from cancer. The jellyish substance that surrounds tomato seeds may help fight blood clots, so don't deseed tomatoes before using them in recipes. And a study of people who had lost substantial amounts of excess weight and maintained the loss for over a year found that 99% of them did it by eating a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, while only 1% of long-term successful dieters did it on a high-protein diet –while a Texas researcher found that high-protein diets do put people at risk for kidney stones. A Prevention study compared 1,200-calorie-a-day diets involving 30% protein versus ones getting only 15% of calories from protein and found no difference in weight loss: it's the number of calories, not where they come from, that seems to make the difference, and some folks are now even recommending eating peanuts and peanut butter as part of a calorie-limited weightloss diet, on grounds that the peanuts' richness gives satisfaction enough to avoid feelings of deprivation.

We have actually tried a couple of new vegetarian restaurants recently.

One was in Cork, Ireland, where the Quay Co-op Whole Foods store includes a vegetarian restaurant on its premises, open for breakfast, lunch, and a very tasty cafeteria-style, low-priced dinner with both ovo-lacto and vegan options that varied each day (we went twice).

The other was closer to home, in Madison, WI, where Chautara restaurant is located right near the State Capitol on 334 State St., phone number (608) 251-3626.

Chautara's food is Tibetan/Nepalese (though like much current Asian cuisine it prominently features potatoes – which originated in the Andes). Both lunch and dinner menus feature a variety of vegetarian offerings in addition to various meat dishes. Chuck and I each found dishes which would satisfy our palates, and the staff readily made a substitution in the side dishes accompanying Chuck's selection so as to avoid something he couldn't eat. We found the food quite tasty, although much richer/ fattier than we're used to. We probably would not drive to Madison specially to go back there, but we might well go there again – or try Chau-tara's sister restaurant, Himal Chuli, two doors down (but closed for vacation the day we were there) – when we find ourselves in Madison again for some other reason. Decor was attractive and related to the area the recipes derive from; prices were quite moderate; the wine was nice, too.

We reported a while back on attempts to allow the hunting of mourning doves in Wisconsin. As follow-up, one of our readers wrote to Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen asking that the hunt advocate, state rep DuWayne Johns-rud, be blocked from leadership of the Natural Resources Committee (where he could push for the hunt). Unfortunately, Jensen's reply stated that Johnsrud has done other things which are good for the environment and therefore would get the post – though acknowledging that there is a lot of concern and expressing hope for a productive dialog on the issue.

On the subject of bioengineering the food supply, which is of such interest to vegetarians since soy and in fact all the GE crops are plants we would otherwise eat, there remains a need and opportunity to act. Greenpeace, responding to U.S. government agencies' refusal to require labelling of GE food, has published a list of non-GE boxed foods, ones which clearly do have genetically engineered ingredients, and ones whose manufacturers have promised to phase out the GE ingredients. Find the list at www.truefoodnow.org/shoppersguide

And the Organic Consumers Association asks people to call, fax, or e-mail 15 corporations that are still using GE ingredients in foods, especially Kellogg's and Campbell Soup Company. Contact OCA at 218-226-4164 or info@organicconsumers.org or www.purefood.org