February 2010

GREETINGS

I did attend that Green Fair I mentioned in the January issue, and during the Q-and-A segment at the afternoon symposium I did raise the issue of plant-based diets as a “green” tactic. I was met, alas, with defensiveness before the discussion moved on. See Dialog section below.

Also, the January potluck did include a discussion on making a one-time special donation to the Friends, since MARV s in funds, in appreciation for their giving us a real break on using their facility for our potlucks, and I was designated to take care of that.

New business has to do with the Great American Meat Out, which is looming only seven weeks away!! We have not made much of a splash for the Meat-Out in the last two or three years; it would be nice if we can do something a bit more newsworthy this time. This year the first day of Spring, March 20, is on a Saturday, so if we’re going to do something at places where people work/go to school, we should aim at an activity a day or two earlier, while an activity where people go when they’re off should be done on the Saturday itself. But what should we do? Tabling (again)? Some sort of food give-away? Where would we do either? A special meeting at someone’s house where a bunch of people all write letters-to-the-editor of our local newspaper together in the hope that a whole lot of them will convince the editor to publish a couple? Library exhibit(s)? Put vegetarianism-promoting literature all over town? Come to the potluck, or contact us with ideas: chuckgyver@aceweb.com, or phone Chuck and me at 414-962-2703 or Jody and David at 414-764-7262.

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sunday, Feb. 7, 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 Curries and Dal (Indian foods).

Subsequent regular potlucks will be on March 7, Apr. 4, May 2, and June 6.

?Great American Meat-Out activity in late March?

The February macrobiotic potluck will be at 5 PM on Sun., Feb. 21 at Pat O’Neill’s place, 2431 N. Bartlett. Phone 414-964-9759.

The Urban Ecology Center’s vegetarian potluck will be on Thurs., March 18 at 6:30 PM at 1500 E. Park Pl. – bring plate and fork as well as your meatless dish. Phone is 414-964-8505.

QUOTES OF THE MONTH

“…the kind of diet most closely linked to a low risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke and dementia… should emphasize plant-based foods over the meat and other products that come from animals that eat plants.” – Jane Brody, NY Times Science/Health section

“The detrimental effects of animal agriculture on the environment, climate, human health and deforestation are expanding … These effects can never be adequately addressed through technology [for handling manure]. Should not science have a broader vision that is connected to ethics?”

– Irene Muschel, in a letter to the NY Times

NEWS

Animal foods continue to be bad in various ways.

Some 300 tons of ground beef produced by Huntington Meat Packing of California – some produced in 2008 – was recalled in 2010 due to concerns about e. coli. And the NY Times published an article about how a company called Beef Products was given permission by the USDA under Bush to try to deal with tainted meat intended for school lunches by injecting it with ammonia; only now under the Obama administration has it come to light that many tests of this meat found it tainted, and only this past July were school officials banned from buying the company’s products (which are still for sale to the rest of us). It was concerns about mad cow disease, however, that caused Taiwan legislators to vote to ban imports of U.S. ground beef despite a deal their government had negotiated with Washington. And yet other studies found links between eating red and processed meats and increased risks for prostate cancer and type 2 diabetes.

A recent survey found that not just trichinosis but tapeworms and toxoplasmosis are common among aboriginal peoples living in the arctic as a result of their eating the meat of certain animals that live there.

For the third time in a month, Chinese authorities removed additional dairy products from store shelves due to melamine contamination, and shut down a Shanghai dairy (melamine was the contaminant involved in China’s tainted-food scandal of 2008).

Chicken is not so good either. Tyson Foods is working to settle a lawsuit that accused it of untruthfully labeling its chickens as “raised without antibiotics.” And a news article documented Russians’ reluctance to buy U.S. chickens due to the perception that “Americans raise their chickens on chemicals… They’re all fat. There’s no taste.” The article was prompted by a new Russian ban on importing U.S. chickens that has just taken effect.

Then there’s raw milk. Advocates of drinking raw milk point out that pasteurization (and homogenization) alter the physical and nutritional makeup of milk to the point of making it not only less tasty but also unhealthy. Public health officials and the National Milk Council point out that pasteurization was started to prevent people from being infected by milk-borne diseases like tuberculosis and brucellosis that are still real threats and do cause illnesses in people drinking raw milk today. Kind of makes drinking milk at all a no-win situation.

An article in Wisconsin State Farmer detailed discoveries that large honey companies have been importing antibiotic-laced Chinese honey through Russia and India, and selling “honey” heavily laced with cheaper sugars. A bill now in our state senate would create a voluntary state certification to guarantee against such practices; until then, either buy honey from locals you know and trust – or don’t buy honey.

Climate weirding is impinging on food news in California, where ongoing drought may decrease this year’s harvests, and in Florida where a bad freeze damaged citrus and many other crops. Yet in Australia, where a new law attempts to control climate change by barring new clearing of vegetation for grazing, farmers are angrily supporting a sheep grazer who is on a hunger strike in protest of the law.

Another food issue in the news lately is salt. While a vegan-usable mineral and needed nutrient, there is now much evidence that Americans consume it in unhealthy amounts, causing tens of thousands of heart attacks, strokes, and heart disease cases each year. The case against salt is now so clear that government agencies are seriously considering requiring limits and label warnings.

Meanwhile, plant foods are still good for you.

It is definitely apple season, so it is nice to note a Wisconsin State Farmer article explaining that, while apples have long been seen as helping protect against cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and type 2 diabetes, there is now also evidence that eating them improves brain health and helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease. “An apple a day…” as they say.

Another seasonal food is parsnip, which a Prevention item pointed out is full of good fiber and vitamins K and C.

The Outpost Exchange ran an article on dietary advice for fighting off colds and the flu. It recommended eating all the colors of fruits and vegetables, avoiding sugar and food additives, and defined the “best” immune boosting foods as including apricots, purple and blue colored berries, garlic, broccoli, green tea, turmeric, Brazil nuts, ginger, oats and barley, shiitake mushrooms, and fermented foods including yogurt/soygurt. Instead of beef as a source of zinc, vegetarians can eat seeds. Also, a Vegetarian Times item mentioned that peppermint not only relaxes the digestive tract and therefore soothes many stomach woes, but also helps thin mucus when fighting a cold.

A Prevention article on keeping blood pressure down recommended getting potassium from tomatoes, oranges, baked potatoes with skin and bananas, getting calcium in the diet (from dairy and/or supplemented foods and/or dark green leafy vegetables), eating more whole grains, and limiting sugar.

A Vegetarian Times item mentioned that oats are full of B vitamins, calcium, iron, and the heart-healthy fiber beta-glucan. Another item named whole grains as good sources of anti-oxidant polyphenols; Prevention went further with a piece on hidden antioxidents, which not only found them in whole grain pasta and popcorn, but also found lutein in eggs (for those who eat them; otherwise get it from dark green leafies), phenols and flavonoids in canned beans, canola oil, such sweeteners as (real) honey, molasses, brown (but not white) sugar, and maple syrup, organic milk, and noted the presence of the antioxidant helper riboflavin in yogurt.

Good Medicine (the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine publication) ran various items about good foods. One reported on the finding that eating soy protein helped reduce cholesterol in diabetes patients. Another concerned a study that found a lower risk of type 1 diabetes in babies whose mothers ate the most vegetables. Another was about a large study which found that eating fish did not in fact reduce the risk of heart failure. Two studies found that eating a high-fiber, high-fruit-and-vegetable diet lowered risk of pre-cancerous polyps (the precursors of colon cancer); a different study found that a plant-rich diet showed promise as helping prevent breast cancer.

Finally, another Prevention article looked at folk-medicine cures that turn out to be effecttive. Lemon balm, traditionally used for soothing the mind and heart, turns out to really help calm a person and encourage sleep during tense times, and may also help Graves’ disease and fight viruses. Use tincture or tea. Onions, considered cure-alls in many cultures, do in fact reduce diabetes symptoms, protect against cardiovascular disease, stomach ulcers, and colon, esophageal and breast cancers, and enhance endurance (ancient Olympians ate and drank them and rubbed onions on their bodies before competitions). And cayenne, it turns out, really does help relieve arthritis pain – and also helps control blood sugar and appetite.

DIALOG

On the one hand, my experience at last week-end’s Green Symposium shows how much resistance there still is to giving up the idea of placing animal meat at the center of people’s diets. Especially among those who have made a point of finding ways to raise animal foods in ecologically sustainable and/or humane ways, the idea that what they’ve made such an effort to accomplish may not really be ideal is just not very acceptable. A cogent example: one symposium speaker was James Godsil of Sweet-water Organics, the company trying to make an economically viable operation out of Growing Power’s scheme of using worm-composted food waste to grow plants to feed freshwater fish, and he just could not hear what I said as anything but an attack.

This is too bad, because that was not my intent. I merely asked whether plant-based diets should not be discussed and given attention among green eating strategies, given problems of animal-raising such as methane production, huge water use, and inefficiency in producing edible calories; I didn’t even use the V-word. And there are diets in which most of the food is plants but which still include small amounts of animal foods, and which could greatly improve animal welfare while greatly aiding the environment, provided that they really used animal foods only from creatures raised humanely and naturally. Nor would a prevalence of such diets stop anyone from being vegan if that is what their health or beliefs require. But such a prevalence would vastly decrease the number of animals raised for food and eliminate factory farming with all its inhumaneness and environmental evils.

The problem with this idea for ethical vegans is that they are upset by any human exploitation of animals, no matter how relatively humane. But it seems to me that if we hope to convince people like Godsil to listen to our suggestions that eating little if any animal food would be good – if we want to get mainstream eaters to be able to hear about plant-based diets at all – we need to be as open-minded to their feelings and concerns as we want to convince them to be towards what we’re saying. It does not matter how convinced some of us really are that a vegan diet is the right way to eat nutritionally and/or ethically. The only way to make any inroads at all into the status quo of skyrocketing meat consumption is to go easy on people, suggest small feasible changes that can help them start to contemplate larger ones later, provide nutritional information that can help promote eating more plants and less animals: help a long slow process begin. This is why the Great American Meat-Out invites people to go meatless for just one day, as a way to start the ball rolling in the right direction. It’s the single step that starts the long journey.

This is very frustrating, because the need for our society to make that journey is very urgent indeed. And there’s a long way to go. But politics is the art of the possible, and of compromise. Going for the small steps which may be all that’s possible at the beginning is the practical act that opens the way for further steps next year or month or week.