March 2009

GREETINGS

We will definitely be spending some time at the March potluck writing letters to editors about using the Great American Meat-Out on March 20 as a reason for everyone to consider eating a more plant-based diet. Paper, pens, addresses, envelopes, and ideas for what to write about will be provided. The more people who can send a letter, the higher the likelihood of one or two of them actually getting printed.

If you cannot make the potluck, you can still participate in this action, since this newsletter includes addresses and guidelines for writing a letter (or more than one).

We may or may not also be tabling at Alverno again. And if anyone has any additional bright ideas about things we could do to promote vegetarianism for the Meat Out, get in touch with us at the potluck or very soon by calling Jody and David at 414-764-7262, or me and Chuck at 414-962-2703, or email us at chuckgyver@aceweb.com.

Moving on to April, it looks as if the Urban Ecology Center will indeed be having resource tables at their Earth Day events, so we are probably going to be participating in that. I noticed in my UEC newsletter that they will in fact be doing Earth Day events twice, once on Saturday, April 18, at the Riverside campus, and again the following Saturday, April 25, at their Washington Park site. Should we look into asking to be present at both of these events? After we discuss this at the March 1 potluck, I will call the UEC to make arrangements.

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sunday, March 1, 5 PM, regular potluck at the Friends’ Meeting House, 3224 N. Gordon Pl. in Riverwest (from Humboldt Blvd., go east on Auer a few short blocks to the parking lot).

Food theme will be “Eating of the Greens;” and we will be writing letters after eating.

Subsequent regular potlucks will be on April 5 and May 3.

?April 18, noon to 4 PM, tabling at UEC Earth Day at Riverside

??April 25, noon to 4 PM, tabling at UEC Earth Day event at Washington Park???

Other veg-friendly meetings

There will not be a macrobiotic potluck in March.

The Urban Ecology Center’s March vegetarian potluck will be at 6:30 PM on Thursday, March 19 at 1500 E. Park Pl. – bring plate and fork as well as your meatless dish. Phone is 414-964-8505.

To find out about Vegan Meetup’s possible March events, check the Vegan Meetup website.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH (OY!)

“I am disgusted by the baseless allegation that I am a vegetarian and that my personal eating habits should somehow be construed as opposed to the economic interests of Montana’s livestock industry.”

Montana State Senator Roy Brown, quoted in Vegetarian Times. We still have work to do.

NEWS

The main food news of the past month was still the peanut product recall stemming from salmonella contamination at a Georgia plant, which has caused hundreds of reported illnessses and at least 8 deaths. As reported earlier, all kinds of peanut-flavored processed food products were involved. This past month the list of products continued to grow, the company was banned from doing business with the federal government, a second plant in Texas owned by the same company was closed, and a Connecticut congresscritter publicly suggested splitting the FDA to separate oversight of food from that of drugs. No one seems to be looking at exactly out how the salmonella got into the peanut paste.

Meanwhile, alfalfa sprouts packaged by Wisconsin grower Jack & the Green Sprouts were also recalled due to a positive test for salmonella; no illnesses were reported. Also, irradiation, pushed for by the food industry as a way to kill such pathogens, is not being used much despite limited government permission because consumers are extremely leery of it. It is being used on a lot of animal feed, though…

Bird flu turned up on a turkey farm in western Canada. And a nasty virus continues to devastate Chile’s salmon fishery. Yet despite meat’s problems, last year China became the largest importer of pork in history.

On a different note, researchers on the large and long-term Women’s Health Initiative reported that taking vitamin pills seems to have no real effect on the risk for heart disease and certain cancers. This reinforces other findings in recent years, to the effect that although foods containing certain nutrients are known to be protective, eating the nutrients in isolated form has little or no (or even negative) effect on disease prevention. Scientists are finally starting to identify whole foods rather than isolated nutrients as the sources of health. And they are also starting to see whole foods, rather than refined ones, as the healthy things to eat: an abcnews report on things that will age you included refined white flour bread and pasta, and white sugar. Similarly, an invitation that arrived in our mail to subscribe to “Nutrition Action Healthletter” included a handout featuring 10 super foods and 10 unhealthy ones; the bad guys were all heavily processed fat-salt-sugar-meat-and-dairy monsters, while the healthy items were sweet potatoes, whole-grain crispbreads, grape tomatoes, broccoli, brown rice, citrus fruits, butternut squash, kale and spinach, and only two animal products: skim or 1% milk and wild salmon.

And plant foods are still good for you. Green tea is still being touted as helping keep the heart healthy, lowering blood pressure and bad cholesterol, and containing immune-system-helping antioxidents. Other old news involves the benefits of yogurt (or soy yogurt) that has live/ active cultures in keeping the digestion and immune system functioning well. And a Prevention article recommended 1.5 ounces of tree nuts per day to reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Good seasonal foods include root vegetables – not just potatoes and carrots but beets, burdock, celery root, daikon radishes, Jerusalem artichokes, jicama, parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas. Leeks also are good keepers that are great in salads, soups, and stir-frys. Spices, which are typically grown in summer and dried for later use, are full of antioxidents that can help keep you healthy; another Prevention article suggested trying cloves, allspice, sage, marjoram, cinnamon, oregano, and thyme.

And a Vegetarian Times article on heart health pointed out that vegetarianism not only bars unhealthy saturated fats, but also fosters eating produce, whole grains, and other healthy foods. The article’s refreshingly vegan list of heart-healthy foods was apple, avocado, beans, banana, bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, cocoa/ dark chocolate, olive oil, dark leafy greens, oats, potatoes, red wine, sweet potatoes, soy, tomatoes, walnuts, and whole grains.

MEAT-OUT ACTIVITY

Our plan is to send as many letters-to-the-editor as we can, each a bit different but each suggesting that March 20, the day of the Great American Meat-Out, is a good time for people to consider eating a more plant-based diet than most Americans do. As already discussed, we will have all necessary materials on hand at the March 1 potluck, and hope that lots of people will come and stay long enough to write a letter there.

Since we are a Milwaukee area group, our prime target should naturally be the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The address to send such a letter to (in case you can’t make the potluck but still want to participate) is: Letters to the Editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, P.O. Box 371, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0371.

If anyone is interested in writing more than one letter, whatever other newspapers or news magazines you regularly read would be appropriate recipients of your missives. The Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, U.S. News, etc. would all be possibilities. Somewhere on the page on which letters to the editor appear, you will find the address to which to send yours.

Your letter should include your name, address, and phone number (if they want to use your letter, they will want to call you and confirm this with you). If you submit a letter by email (as you can do to the NY Times, for instance), you should still include your phone number. If you send more than one letter, each one needs to be a bit different, since papers do not like to publish a letter that also appears elsewhere.

Your letter should be short and to the point: more than about 200 words will not be published. And each of us should write a letter in our own words: if people copy my language, so that the editor gets a whole bunch of identical letters, they will all be discounted and ignored. Nonetheless, I can offer some suggestions about possible content.

You could start by mentioning that Meat-Out day is a good time for people to think about plant-based diets. You could then mention reasons why eating less animal food is a good idea. These could include personal health, environmental impacts of livestock raising, social justice issues, and/or human considerations. You might want to name all these concerns, in about one sentence each, or alternatively you might focus on only one of them and expand on it for a paragraph. You might add that a plant based diet can indeed be nutritionally adequate, and/or that it can be very tasty and satisfying. You might mention that people who are uncertain about the possibility of a plant-based diet can start with just a single meatless day (like March 20) to try it out, and/ or go meatless one meal a day or one day a week, and then decrease their meat-eating gradually from there. You might mention resources for further information such as MARV, Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, North American Vegetarian Association, and magazines available at Outpost and Whole Foods. And that’s about all you’ll have room for.

THE VEGGIE TABLE

Chuck and I met friends in Madison this past month, and they took us out to a restaurant that I’m already drooling to go back to.

Himal Chuli specializes in authentic Nepali cuisine, with a specialization in vegetarian food. Although the restaurant is not exclusively vegetarian, only about 8 dishes have meat, while over 20 are meatless; this includes 8 seasonal specialties. And of the 20 regular offerings, only three include yogurt; the rest are vegan. Diners have a choice of either white or brown rice for dishes that contain it (which is naturally many of them). The menu explains the ingredients of every dish. Side orders are rice, flat bread, bean soup, vegetable stew, or yogurt. Beverages include a yogurt drink called lassi, Nepali tea or coffee, water, herb tea, soft drinks, juices, milk, lemonade, iced tea, and a selection of beers. And out of a selection of (mostly dairy) desserts, two or three are available each day. A smallish place, the restaurant is bright and comfortable, with colorful painted designs. Prices are reasonable.

Chuck ordered the Tuck-Pa, a spicy Tibetan herder’s soup. I got the Seitan Kabab, suggested as a vegetarian substitute for lamb lovers. Both were absolutely delicious. And the portion sizes were reasonable, so that I was actually able to order a dessert after my main course for a change; it was excellent too.

Himal Chuli is located at 318 State St., Madison, Wisconsin, 53703; phone number is 608-251-9225. The restaurant is open from 11 AM to about 9 PM daily.

Highly recommended.

DIALOG

Food safety is much in the news these days. And vegetarians can no longer ignore the issue, since it’s not just about rotty meat any more: now it’s peanuts and spinach and sprouts and chili peppers that are getting contaminated. A great deal of public brouhaha is occurring as a result of the peanut paste salmonella, but it all seems to be about safety regulations for food processing plants rather than looking at where the contaminants actually come from.

Food costs are becoming a concern for many people. As the economy tanks, there’s less reliance on restaurants and take-out, and people are looking for ways to eat more cheaply – such as cooking at home again.

Nutritional value of food is also in the news, in the sense of some of the news items reported above about whole foods being nutritionally useful in ways that supplements and refined foods are not.

I see a way to “solve for pattern” here – that is, to find a single tactic that addresses several concerns. It is simply to buy whole foods and cook “from scratch” yourself. It was bagged spinach and lettuce that was contaminated, not fresh leaves from the field that you wash in your own sink. The peanut butter and Taco Bell pepper problems involved foods processed in factories. If you buy a potato, boil, and mash it, you don’t have to worry what got into the instant mashed potato box – and you can eat the whole potato. Cooking whole foods your-self doesn’t even have to take that long. And it’s cheaper, safer, and better nutrition than what many Americans have been doing.