October 2010

GREETINGS

The problem of where to hold this year’s Pre-Thanksgiving Feast was discussed at the September potluck. As I mentioned in the last newsletter, our first idea of going back to North Shore Presbyterian Church (where we were last year) was thwarted by that pretty hall being ruinously flooded in July, so we need a different venue for this year. At the potluck it was decided to go back to South Shore Park Pavilion, which we have used in the past even though it is much more expensive than North Shore Presbyterian – but it’s also a very pretty space with plenty of capacity and good electrical wiring (necessary for all our Nescos). Jody made inquiries, and the place was available for Sunday, Nov. 21. So that is the site and date for this year’s Feast. Those of you receiving this newsletter by snail-mail will find a flyer enclosed, which you can use to pre-register; there is also a form also on the website. And please pre-register promptly: last year we actually filled up and had to turn away several people who contacted us too late.

We will also, as always, need volunteers to pull it off: jobs include publicity/ flyer placement beforehand, help make bulk foods ahead of time, set-up on the day of (including prepare table decorations), kitchen crew, clean-up. It takes all of us to make this work – but it’s fun. Come to the potluck or phone Jody and David at 414-764-7262 to volunteer. The sooner you act, the more choice of jobs you have.

Also note that October is World Vegetarian Awareness Month – and that’s a great excuse to bring up the subject of eating less animals to anyone you want to enlighten about it.

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sunday, Oct. 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). Discussion of alkaline/acid diet and health.

The next regular potluck will be on Nov. 7.

Sun, Nov. 21, PreThanksgiving Feast at South Shore Park Pavilion; doors open at 5 PM, set-up starts earlier.

Other veg-friendly potlucks

It looks like there will not be an October macrobiotic potluck.

The Urban Ecology Center’s veg potluck will be on Thurs., Oct. 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.

Vegan Meetup: to find out about possible October events, check the Vegan Meetup website.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH
 

“It may seem naïve to argue that a mere change of diet could be a potent prescription for many of today’s worst crises, but sometimes complex problems do yield to simple solutions. As most vegetarians already know, if humans were to stop consuming… animals … and switch to a plant-based diet, it would have a tremendously positive impact on human health, environmental sustainability, world hunger and… animal welfare. What is much less well-known are the facts and figures about how such a dietary shift would fight climate change.” -- Vegetarian Voice (publication of North American Vegetarian Society)

NEWS

The salmonella egg scandal has continued to make news. Several news stories revealed that the DeCoster “farm” eggs had been involved with previous salmonella outbreaks over the years – going back all the way to 1987; additional illnesses from this outbreak have topped 2000; and when DeCoster was called to testify before a Congressional committee he did not enjoy a warm reception. An article in Wisconsin State Farmer suggested hopefully that the recall of factory-farm eggs might help small egg producers with more humane operations. And the American Egg Board established a web site to try to reassure consumers, while the FDA announced a plan to inspect all of the nation’s largest egg “farms” by the end of next year. Whether such damage control efforts will actually improve anything remains debatable.

In other ways too, animal foods and animal food farming remain part of the problem. A new study out of Simmons College in Boston found that people using a low-carb diet for weight loss who replace bread and pasta with animal foods may lose weight but may face an increased risk of early death from cancer and heart disease, while people who replace simple carbohydrates with plant proteins such as beans and nuts remained much safer. The cause of a fish kill in central Illinois is still being investigated, but a dairy farm near the affected creek was a prime suspect. A new case of mad cow disease turned up in the Netherlands in a 10-year-old animal, prompting a Montana-based cattlemen's group to again ask that the USDA stop allowing import of Canadian cattle that are over 30 months old.

Another issue involves antibiotics in animal feed. The September Delicious Living ran a piece about the dangers of multi-drug staph resistant (MRSA) bacteria in meat. 70% of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are fed to factory farmed animals to keep them alive in inhumane conditions and to make them gain weight faster, but the result is already being seen in the breeding of disease organisms that are resistant to many antibiotics, and therefore when they sicken people who’ve eaten that factory-farmed meat, there may be no effective treatment: 17 million Americans end up in the ER annually now just from MRSA, and 19,000 of them die. Alas, the article suggested that people buy organic meat (not fed antibiotics) and handle and cook meat carefully, not that they consider ceasing to eat it. But the issue is gaining attention: the NY Times ran a long article on use of antibiotics in hog factory farming, which mentioned that drug-resistant salmonella and campylobacter are caused by these practices, and reported that the FDA finally seems ready to at least try to ban the routine use of antibiotics just to make animals grow faster.

An unrelated food issue was Russian Prime Minister Putin’s extension of his ban on grain exports from Russia, due to Russia’s weather-related poor wheat harvest. On a different note, the NY Times Dining section reported that some restaurants are starting to serve insects as food (you can’t make this stuff up!). If that catches on, it would make a whole new category of edible things for vegetarians to avoid…

Salt is not an animal, or even a vegetable, but a mineral that people often eat too much of. Another Delicious Living article addressed the fact that salt is not only implicated in some people’s high blood pressure, but can also cause puffy eyes, headaches, and cravings for calorie-laden drinks, as well as contributing to osteoporosis, stomach problems, and kidney stones. One of the main problems is that you can’t control the amount of salt in processed and restaurant foods. The article recommended reading labels for the percentage of “daily value” of sodium that a serving of a packaged food supplies, and trying to buy only items with less than 5%, and also trying to eat more potassisum from foods like orange-colored fruits and vegetables, bananas, artichokes, bok choy, spinach, Swiss chard, and potatoes with skins.

Another food news item was an article in the NY Times Health section which commented on a vegan chef who won a Food Network cupcake contest even though she was head to head with chefs who used eggs and dairy; the judges were quite surprised to find that the vegan cupcakes were actually better than the conventional ones, and the article commented that the win gave vegan eating “a much-needed public-relations boost.” On the other hand, though, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that people are still not eating enough vegetables or fruits.

Meanwhile, of course, plant foods are still good for you. I caught an NPR story on kidney stones and diet, which reported that when 3500 people’s diets were analyzed, the best ways to prevent kidney stones were found to be getting plenty of fluids and low-fat calcium-rich foods, while also eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes and less red meat.

A Vegetarian Voice item reported on a National Cancer Institute study which found that eating Brazil nuts (contain selenium) and soy nuts (contain genistein) help prevent prostate cancer; either suppresses prostate cancer cell growth but the combination does even better. And another item reported that eating brown rice helps reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes – while eating white rice increases the risk.

A Prevention article on avoiding cancer included several dietary items: coffee protects against brain cancer; the selenium in Brazil nuts also protects against bladder cancer; the darker green your leafies, the better; and several less usual foods are better protectors than more common ones: sweet potatoes have more beta-carotene than carrots; papaya has more beta-cryptoxanthin than oranges; cooked kale has more lutein and zeaxanthin than spinach; raspberries have more ellagic acid than strawberries; and Brussels sprouts have more glucosinolates than broccoli.

Speaking of lutein and zeaxanthin, the current Healthwise had an article on vision which pointed out that foods high in these antioxidents and zinc do seem to help prevent age-related macular degeneration, according to preliminary results from a National Eye Institute study, while other studies suggest that vitamins C an E can help prevent cataracts. Foods recommended were leafy green vegetables, nuts and seeds and oils for vitamin E, brown rice and nuts and seeds for zinc, orange as well as green produce for vitamin A, and all kinds of produce for vitamin C.

Another article discussed the health benefits of various spices. Turmeric is protective against cancer, diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease; cloves help fight joint inflammation , environmental pollutants, and some cancers; cinnamon has antioxidant and antimicrobial effects and may help control blood sugar; pepper’s capsaicins seem to have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer effects; oregano is antimicrobial; peppermint helps with stomach pain; ginger helps control nausea; and garlic helps protect against heart disease.

Finally, a Prevention article praised the gut, which not only digests our food but also is a major player in disease prevention as well as mental/emotional function. Feed it with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and pro-biotics from yogurt or soygurt that contain active bacteria.

THE VEGGIE TABLE

We do not normally review restaurants that have no vegan items on their menu, but Chuck and I had a delightful experience in just such a venue last month.

We went to an exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and finished seeing it at lunchtime, so we wandered down stairs to the chic little restaurant there and asked to see the menu. There was not one dish that did not involve animal foods. Yet we were hungry, so we asked the waitstaff whether portions of certain dishes might be recombined into something we could eat. They got the idea, went and consulted with executive chef Thi Cao, and came back to offer us seats and promise that the chef would create something for us. And he certainly did!

Tomatoes were hollowed out and stuffed with a cornbean-seasoning mix, served over roast potato, with slightly spicy sauce as decorative garnish… It was vegan, delicious, creative, and when we sent our compliments to the chef he came out and was eager to tell us how he goes to farmers’ markets and uses local seasonal ingredients. It proves what we always contended, that really good chefs can come up with great vegan food if they’re asked.

The restaurant is on the lower floor of the Colatrava section of the Milwaukee Art Museum at the south end of Lincoln Memorial Drive; the restaurant phone is 414-224-3859. If you decide to try going there, it might be best to phone ahead or email thi.cao@mam.org, since it would surely be that much easier for him to create vegetarian delicacies with a little extra warning.

DIALOG

I’m reading a new book, Pandora’s Seed, about how the agricultural revolution put humanity on a path of no return: once the Ice age started ending there was more grain for hunter- gatherers to gather, so the population increased and became less nomadic; then when there was a 1,200-year chillier period people had to find a way to maintain the new level of grain production to feed their new numbers and so had to invent farming, which further increased the population (especially when it warmed up again), so agriculture had to keep expanding to keep up – including animal agriculture since larger numbers of village dwellers would quickly overhunt the animals in a given place. Yet author Spencer Wells points out that because we invented agriculture we now live in large cities, woefully disconnected from the natural way for humans to live, causing all kinds of disease and discontent.

Factory-farming of animals (and industrialized agriculture) lie right along the trajectory Wells describes, including both the unforeseen problems thereof and modern people’s lack of awareness of what our food is and where it comes from. And we do need to analyze the roots of a problem in order to figure out how to deal with it.

Wells notes how human numbers are bumping the limits of what Earth can support, and also that we must make fundamental changes in how we behave in order to adapt and go forward. A switch to plant-based diets is part of that adaptation. Vegetarians need to help our fellow-humans see that and do it.