November 2002

We’re getting into gear for the Pre-Thanks-giving Feast. A few of you have even pre-registered already. A few is not enough!! This is IT!! If you’re planning to come and haven’t already registered, NOW is the time! We do indeed understand that with everybody’s very busy lives, it is so easy to be meaning to do something as soon as you "get around to it," while the days slip by – but Nov. 24 is less than four weeks away as I write this, and you need time for your check to reach me before that date. Your "Round To-It" is therefore provided below, as well as a mini-registration form in case you lost the one in the October issue (or in case you read this on the internet and didn’t get the form). A re-reminder: all registration must be pre-registration this year.

Jody reports that we could still use one more Nesco or large crockpot in addition to offers al-ready received. Also, all volunteers are asked to bring serving spoons, salt-and-pepper shakers, and cutting implements labeled with your name, so we can get them back to you after!

We still need volunteers to help prepare food (I think) and for set-up, serving, and clean-up at the event. Call Jody at (414) 764-7262 to join the party in any of these capacities. If you have some interesting places to place some flyers, phone me (962-2703) or Jody and David as soon as possible.

Click here for the Pre-Thanksgiving Feast Registration Form.

Print out and mail the form and check to MARV, 2201 E. Jarvis St., Shorewood, WI 53211

Sunday, Nov. 3, 5:30 PM, regular potluck at the Friends’ Meeting House, 3224 N. Gordon Pl. (from Humboldt Blvd. in Riverwest, go east on Auer a few blocks to the parking lot). Subsequent potlucks will be at the same time and place on Dec. 8, Jan. 5, Feb. 2, March 2.

Sunday, Nov. 24, 5 PM, Pre-Thanksgiving Feast, 2900 S. Shore Dr. (= S. Superior St.) in Bay View area.

Sunday, Nov. 17, 5:30 PM, at Jerry O’Connor’s place, 3007 N. 88^th St., 445-1099.

In last month’s Dialog, the description of a healthy human diet should also have included a few handfuls of nuts each week, and just a little bit of added healthy oil such as olive, hemp, flax seed, canola, or walnut, plus a B-12 supplement for vegans.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"I try to respect nonhuman animals. I don’t eat them. I don’t wear them…But you do grow up with certain things. Sometimes I’ll be walking on a street and I’ll smell roast beef, I’ll simultaneously feel attraction and repulsion."

-- Steven Wise, prominent animal rights lawyer, as reported in a NY Times interview

The biggest Meat Is Bad news in the past month was some really huge meat recalls. Be-sides the 200,000 pounds we reported the recall of in our last issue, another 400,000 pounds of ground beef produced by Emmpak, a meat packer in Wisconsin’s Menomonee Valley, was recalled in late September (its sell-by dates were Aug. 29 through Sept. 2.) At least 50 ill-nesses were attributed to e. coli therein. Then in early October, nearly 300,000 pounds of ready-to-eat turkey and chicken were recalled by Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.; this load of meat was believed responsible for the east coast’s cases of listeriosis this summer (including several deaths), though it was distributed nationally under the Wampler foods label. This recall was then expanded to over 27 million pounds of products, making it the largest meat recall ever (the ConAgra recall this summer was "only" 19 million pounds). For some reason, the whole business seems to have annoyed consumers: the NY Times reported on public complaints by environmental and consumer groups – including the Consumer Federation of America and a group of parents of food-poisoned children who call themselves Safe Tables Our Priority – to the effect that the federal government should stop permitting obviously unsafe factory farming and slaughterhouse practices. The USDA publicly disagreed, while the National Meat Association tried to cast blame on consumers who fail to cook meat properly. (!)

Other meat-is-a-problem news includes a Canadian Food Inspection Agency finding of alarmingly high levels of carcinogens like furans, dioxin, and PCBs in beef, pork, and eggs sold in Canada, while the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice asserts that Americans are at serious risk of birth defects, immune system damage, lowered IQ, depression, and hyperactivity from dioxin in meat and dairy products. And a study by Harvard University and Dutch scientists found an increased risk of type 2 diabetes in men eating large amounts of hot dogs, bacon, salami, or sausage.

And then there is the continuing flap over chronic wasting disease in Wisconsin (the deer equivalent of mad cow disease). A recent Sun-day Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel report lamented the danger to a hunting tradition so embedded in and economically important to our state, while acknowledging that it was human activity and game farms that probably created the state’s problem. A fourth game farm, in Dane County, was quarantined.

On the other hand, good things happen too. U.S. sales of soymilk have risen from $1.5 million in 1980 to nearly $550 million in 2001, and women who eat a diet rich in soy have a 60% lower chance of developing breast cancer. A Canadian Federal Justice ruled that vegetarian prisoners have a right to vegetarian meals, while inmates in a trial program at a Thai prison responded so well to a routine of vegetarian meals and morning meditation that Thai authorities plan to expand the program nationwide. And the USDA Organic label is coming into use this month, reflecting an ongoing increase of interest in safe food and environmentally sound agriculture. One point to make here is that everyone who wrote to the USDA in favor of a strong standard can now congratulate themselves. The other point is that it’s expensive for a farmer to become certified, so it’s still important to look for local and small-farmer produce (which may be uncertified organic or nearly so) as well as certified-organic. Finally, FARM (the group that organizes the Meat-Out) is restarting an effort to affect and improve healthy options in children’s education (i.e., help get the vegetarian message to school children). See the Connections section below for further information.

And of course, various vegetarian foods continue to be Good For You. This month saw special attention to seasonal apples and cranberries. Apples, though their vitamin C content is modest, are an especially good source of fiber. The soluble fiber helps absorb various toxins and pollutants from the digestive tract and eliminate them, while giving you a nice feeling of fullness without any fat; at the same time the insoluble fiber, found mostly in the peel, cleans the intestinal tract and helps pre-vent diverticulitis, constipation, and hemorrhoids. The skin also contains quercetin, which has been shown to reduce the risk of many cancers; according to Health Science, something in apple skin looks particularly promising against colon and liver cancers. Quercetin is a flavonoid, and all highly-colored berries are very rich in these healthful substances, which seem to lower risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, lung cancer, and asthma – and cranberries of course are in this category. The Thanks-giving cranberry sauce is therefore actually healthy as well as traditional; in addition, cranberry juice (in large quantities, with either minimal sweetener or stevia) is a traditional and now-proven remedy for urinary tract infections.

Health Science also ran an article on calcium, and especially on which foods you get the most actual absorbable calcium from; when absorption and serving size are factored in, kale and bok choi win out over milk, while broccoli is a pretty even match for the moo juice. Speaking of broccoli, the recent Prevention reported that a substance in broccoli and broccoli sprouts, sulforaphane, kills the bacteria which cause stomach ulcers much better than antibiotics do.

New uses are being discovered (or rediscovered) for spices. University of Rochester re-searchers are investigating turmeric (the yellow seasoning in curry) as a way to fight cancer while alleviating some of the side-effects of radiation treatments – it’s been used tradition-ally to treat burns in India. And oregano turns out to have huge amounts of antioxidents, which help fight heart disease and stroke by destroying free radicals in the body; it also turns out that oil of oregano may be a powerful antibacterial agent. Speaking of antioxidents, we’ve long known that our bodies use beta-carotene, named for carrots, to make vitamin A; it now turns out that carrots are high in anti-oxidents as well.

Delicious magazine ran an article on ways to fight the diseases that are likeliest to kill women; not smoking, getting exercise, and eating a low-fat diet rich in vegetables, fruit, and fiber kept coming up. At the same time, Prevention’s "top five foods" to improve the immune system included 1) sweet potatoes, 2) shiitake and maitake mushrooms, and 3) anti-oxident-rich black and green tea (as well as fruits and vegetables). Beef (4) was included simply as a source of zinc; vegetarians can find zinc in sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts, and even a little in whole grains. The article also named kefir (5) as a source of helpful bacteria if you have to take antibiotics; soy yogurt with active cultures does the same job.

CONNECTIONS

First of all, Wellspring, a local teaching farm and CSA, is holding its annual Pre-Thanksgiving banquet and concert. The banquet is vegan, which I understand is their usual. It will take place on Saturday, Nov. 9, at 6 PM at Well-spring, 4382 Hickory Rd. in West Bend (just west of Newburg off Hwy. 33). There will be live music, and guests are invited to come early if they would like to help make a Thanksgiving meal with no animal products. The charge is adults $15, couples $25, and $5 for children under 12; responses are requested by Nov. 4 to (262) 675-6755.

As mentioned above, FARM is restarting a program called CHOICE (Consumers for Heal-thy Options In Children’s Education). Interested activists, parents, and school officials are invited to contact Susan Wieland at PO Box 2038, Alachua, FL 32616, (386) 462-2306, sudharma@alltel.net

At the same time that the World Food Summit was meeting in Rome in June, there was a parallel gathering of non-governmental organizations called the Forum for Food Sovereignty. The Global Hunger Alliance presented much information on the hazards of factory farming and the promise of plant-based solutions to hunger at both of these events, and the Forum for Food Sovereignty Action Plan now identifies factory farming as a cause of world hunger and calls for a reduction in worldwide consumption of meat and dairy. To get involved, contact Pattrice Jones at 13981 Reading Ferry Rd., Princess Anne, MD 21853, (410) 651-4934, info@globalhunger.net

DIALOG

The mail brought a Wall Street Journal clip-ping of a column which argued that nothing is really wrong with trans-fatty acids and even saturated fats in food, along with a plea for clarification: is there a link between heart disease and eating trans-fats and/or animal fats?

The answer is a simple yes.

The columnist had questioned our now being advised to avoid trans-fats in margarine, after people were told for years to eat margarine in-stead of saturated-fat butter. Well, right. Scientists, and government officials who rely on them, can only learn new facts at the rate at which they learn. When saturated fat was found to be bad for the heart, margarine was looked to as an alternative; when we later discovered that trans-fats are bad too, the government modified its advice in light of new knowledge.

The columnist also used very selective quoting from the Framingham Heart Study and one Harvard researcher to suggest that eating fat and saturated fat has no bearing on heart disease –even though most impartial organizations (like the American Heart Association) read the body of studies to date as indicating that, over-all, eating meat and dairy fat does indeed pro-mote heart disease – even if we don’t yet fully understand just how much or how it happens.