May 2009

GREETINGS

Welcome to those of you who are receiving this newsletter for the first time – and there are quite a few of you, due to two very nice Earth Day events that MARV participated in this month. Both were at the Urban Ecology Center, at the Riverside campus on April 18 and at the Washington Park campus on the 25^th. Both events were well attended, and MARV’s tables were frequently visited, loaded as they were with handouts on the crucial ecological importance of people learning to eat less animal foods and more plants. We had any number of good conversations, some with vegetarians interested in MARV and some with people who were interested in learning to eat a more plant-based diet. If you gave your snail-mail address on our “further contact” sheet, this newsletter issue is a freebie; after this, you can either subscribe to the paper version ($9. per year) or just visit our website each month (see page 3) to read it online.

Looking forward, we have determined the dates for the next half-dozen potlucks. And it is not too soon to start thinking about the date and site of this year’s PreThanksgiving Feast in November – the sooner we choose a place and date, the more likely we are to have that date available at our chosen site. The last two years we’ve been at Wil-O-Way in Wauwatosa; what about this year using the similar Wil-O-Way building in Grant Park in South Milwaukee? Come to a potluck to join the discussion, or email chuckgyver@aceweb.com or call Louise and Chuck at 414-962-2703 or David and Jody at 414-764-7262.

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sunday, May 3, 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 is sprouts and raw foods – bring something on theme or anything else.

Subsequent regular potlucks will be on June 7, July 5, Aug. 2, Sept. 6?, Oct. 4, and Nov. 1.

Other veg-friendly potlucks

There will be no macrobiotic potluck in May (but there will be in June, July, and August).

The Urban Ecology Center’s May vegetarian potluck will be on Thursday, May 21, at 6:30 PM 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 May events, check the Vegan Meetup website.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“Dr. Popkin, an epidemiologist at Univ. of North Carolina, said that a reduced dependence on livestock for food could help save the planet from the ravaging effects of environmental pollution, global warming, and depletion of potable water. ‘In the U.S.,’ Dr. Popkin said, ‘livestock production accounts for 55% of the erosion process, 37% of pesticides applied, 50% of antibiotics consumed, and a third of total discharge of nitrogen and phosphorus to surface water.’ “

-- NY Times Health section, Apr. 29, 2009

NEWS

Breaking news as I write is the swine flu outbreak that started in Mexico but has already spread into many parts of the US, including Wisconsin, Canadian provinces, Spain, Scotland, Germany, Austria, Israel, New Zealand... It has killed at least 150 people in Mexico, where there are thousands of cases confirmed, and one Mexican toddler visiting Texas, but most cases in other parts of the world have so far been mild. Unlike the bird flu of recent years, this flu can spread directly from human to human, greatly increasing its chance of causing a true epidemic. Multiple nations have banned US pork imports, which is silly, since you can’t catch this one by eating pork. But if pigs were not being raised for food, there would be no chance for a pig disease to become a human one.

Other ways that meat and meat-raising are bad are more common. A NY Times op-ed piece reported that pastured pigs have a slightly greater chance of carrying trichinosis than confined ones – leaving no good options for people who want lightly-cooked pork.

A manure spill from a farm near headwaters of the Kewaunee River leaked 100,000 gallons of the filthy stuff into wetlands, though an Iowa manure spill due to a ruptured pump line was controlled before it caused a serious fish kill. Iowa environmentalists are still fighting a proposed law that would make it easier to overapply manure to frozen ground. And a Wisconsin dairy farm was ordered to pay $85,000 in fines for its improper manure-control methods.

Speaking of fish and water issues, so few Chinook salmon returned to the Sacramento River last year that California Chinook fishing for this year has been called off. And water cutbacks to California’s farms (due to below-normal precipitation) led to protests and less acreage planted, and scientists warned that the Colorado River is unlikely to continue supplying water to 7 Western states at former levels.

On a different note, government regulations to control the spread of mad cow disease are now requiring changes in the rendering Industry which are increasing costs to cattle farmers. Maybe they could farm something else??

And animal foods are also still bad for the people who eat them. Good Medicine, published by Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, reported on several studies. One, published in Diabetes Care, found that daily egg eating was associated with substantially higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Another, published in Circulation, found that people who ate the most fruits and vegetables had lower heart attack risks, while those who ate the most meat, fried foods, and salty snacks had the highest. A Tufts University study of low-carb/ high animal protein diets found such diets to impair test subjects’ memory. And a paper in Intl Journal of Dermatology found a correlation between dairy products and acne.

There was also a new report of problems with a plant food; this month it was pistachio nuts that were recalled due to salmonella contamination. How the suspect processing plant developed a salmonella problem was not clear. That processed (including prewashed-and-bagged) foods are more worrisome than plain inconvenient clean-it-yourself produce is becoming clearer by the day.

Another food issue is the organic versus commercially-grown question. In fact, the evidence is still piling up that organically grown produce has higher levels of health-enhancing antioxidents than chemical-sprayed produce, and also that techniques for minimizing pesticide residue on nonorganic items tend to include getting rid of the skins – which often have the highest level of vitamins and minerals. Organic is looking better and better.

A different controversy is that between raw foodists and those who prefer to cook some foods. Raw foodists believe that we are meant to eat (vegetable) food in its natural state, and that produce has the highest level of good enzymes and undamaged nutrients if not heated. On the other hand, there seems to be some evidence that certain foods, like carrots and tomatoes, actually have more nutrients available when cooked than raw. And one researcher interviewed in the NY Times feels that cooking food was what helped humans evolve from naked apes into newsletter writers (for what that’s worth), by increasing both the range of foods we could use and also our social interactions in getting and eating them.

And awareness of food choices continues to develop. The NY Times food section ran an article on the author of a new book promoting veganism, and also a series of letters to the editor that all decried the suffering of food animals. And on Earth Day, NPR news reported that some 400 university and corporate cafeterias served by one caterer all went beefless and cheeseless for a day as a way to raise people’s awareness of the environmental impacts of beef. It was only for a day, and in at least one place they served turkey burgers instead of beef burgers, but it is another step.

And of course, plant foods are still good for you. A NY Times health section Q-and-A confirmed that even after many years of a heart-damaging high fat and cholesterol/low-fiber and produce diet, switching to a low-fat vegetarian diet can indeed help clear arteries up again. A new study found that a vegetarian diet slows the progress of prostate cancer; another found that free radical damage is reduced by a vegetarian diet for older women (and presumably everyone else as well). Happily, therefore, yet another study found that vegan diets were easy to adopt (contrary to many people’s beliefs).

Regarding specific foods, coffee is still being praised as full of health-giving antioxidents, as well as increasing brain function and protecting against kidney stones, gallstones, and gout (drink it without milk to gain the most benefits). And broccoli sprouts were reported as potentially protective against the germ that causes most peptic ulcers and is associated with stomach cancer. Prevention magazine reported on a study that found hibiscus tea to lower blood pressure. Another article warned that veggie snack crackers do not actually contain enough vegetables to be useful: eat real vegetables instead, whether fresh or dried.

An integrative cancer treatment physician’s ad named certain foods that can help keep you well: legumes, tomatoes, turmeric, green tea, broccoli, garlic, blueberries, flaxseed, brown rice, and almonds. And Vegetarian Times praised papaya’s digestion-aiding enzymes, folate, vitamins A, C, and E, and other antioxidents, and potassium and magnesium.

A Prevention article suggested combinations of foods that can maximize their nutritional advantages. Combine dark-green leafy and red or orange vegetables, which supply beta-carotene/ vitamin A, with zinc-supplying protein foods like nuts and seeds. Add some sort of fat or oil to a salad to maximize availability of sight-saving antioxidents; avocado works as well here as oil-and-vinegar dressing. The health advantages of a traditional Mediterranean diet (full of fruits, vegetables, beans, olive oil, and whole grains) can be enhanced by adding nuts. And add a vitamin C source to iron-supplying vegetarian foods like beans to enhance absorption.

CONNECTIONS

If you are interested in subscribing to a Consumer Supported Agriculture farm but have not yet done so, this is the time to do it. If you have not considered using a CSA, perhaps you should.

CSAs are farms that sell each subscriber a share of their projected harvest, then deliver a box of whatever was ready each week through the season – around here, the season usually starts in June and runs into November. It works for the farmers because they are guaranteed a certain income. It works for subscribers because you get a great variety of produce as fresh and local and seasonal as can very well be, and you help keep a local small farmer in business. Chuck and I have been doing this for years, with great satisfaction – and we’ve significantly expanded our cuisine through having to figure out what to do with things that showed up in the boxes. Caveats include the fact that if your farm has a bad year for some crop, you get less of it than you might have expected; on the other hand, you can also end up with more than you can eat at once (we bought a rather large freezer to hold the overflow – and we eat out of it until spring). In our experience, it all tends to even out. We do spend some time in the summer and fall processing food – but oh, the convenience come winter! In short, CSAs are a great way to support the environment, support our local economy, and get lots of great vegetables. And after all, a vegetarian should eat plenty of vegetables! Subscriptions usually

cost around $500-600 for a full share, and $300-400 for a half share. This is less than you would pay for the same amount of produce at the grocery (if you could find it).

Luddite though I am, I went on the internet and came up with the following list of local CSAs for this year: