No question about it, MARV’s next big event needs to be the Great American Meat-Out, and it’s high time we started having some conversations, making some decisions, and getting a move on about what we’re going to do.

The first day of Spring (according to the sun – it will surely be a winter weather day around here, as it always is) will be Sunday, March 20. So we could either do something on that weekend, and/or on Friday the 18^th just before.

FARM (Farm Animal Reform Movement), is the group that began the Meat-Out in 1985 and still organizes it – and is proud that the Meat-Out is the world’s biggest single event raising consciousness about eating more plants and less animals. This year FARM proposes that groups find ways to feed people good vegetarian/vegan food as a specific sub-theme for the observance. It might be useful for us to focus on trying to do that, as a way of narrowing down the possibilities of what we might do, and opening up our creativity on this subject.

So, if we want to feed people, who would we try to feed, and how would we go about it? Should we find out if we can bring Mayor Barrett and his staff a meal, and then try to get the press to cover it? Should we look for a well-trafficked (indoor) public space and set up a free food give-away there? How about hospital lobbies? Or places where environmentally-minded folks might be found?

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sunday, Feb. 6, 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 Meat-Out action(s). There may or may not be any attention to a certain simultaneous athletic event.

Other veg-friendly potlucks

It looks like there will not be a macrobiotic potluck in February.

The Urban Ecology Center’s vegetarian potluck will be on Thurs., Feb. 17, 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

“[P]lan to eat vegetarian just one day a week. If every American ate meat-free one day out of seven, we’d save the same amount of carbon dioxide as taking more than 8 million cars off the road.”

-- From Delicious Living’s “16 Sustainable Resolutions” for the New Year

“Eating vegetarian is a wonderful way to tread lighter on the Earth, and it feels better physically and emotionally for me. Nothing I could think of would taste as good as that feeling.”

NEWS

Animal foods are still not good for you. Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn got an article into the American Journal of Cardiology pointing out that surgical treatments for heart disease are less effective than putting people on a low-fat plant-food diet. And a JAMA article reported that giving fish oil to pregnant women does not in fact help either their babies’ cognitive development or help the new mothers themselves to avoid postpartum depression.

This month also saw a number of stories on contamination of animal foods. A Consumer Reports come-on that arrived in our mailbox included the information that they had tested 382 chickens from 51 brands and found salmonella and campylobacter contamination in all 3 major brands; Tyson Farms and Foster Farms were the worst. Wisconsin State Farmer reported on German findings of illegal dioxin levels in that nation’s poultry. Food and Water Watch claimed that only its lobbying efforts helped maintain a ban on Brazilian meat after samples were found to have residues of a neurotoxic veterinary drug. And our own FDA has found that older dairy cows sent to slaughter, especially those from a certain few dairies, had more antibiotic residues in their bodies than is legal to sell, and proposed to test milk from the suspect farms for antibiotic residues – but was stymied by the outcry that the tests would take too long for the milk to be sold as still good if the tests came back negative. So some of the milk being sold out there is probably full of antibiotic residues and no good for you – no telling which. It does not raise one’s confidence to read in Wis. State Farmer that our state holds the “dubious distinction” of having the highest level of drug residues detected in meats. And if that does not worry you enough about your milk supply, our federal government just approved genetically modified alfalfa, which will make it extremely difficult for organic dairies to be certain that their feed has not been contaminated by GMOs.

Then there’s the ongoing Taco Bell flap: the fast food chain is being sued because chemical analysis revealed that there is very little actual beef in their beef taco filling. Taco Bell responded with a full-page ad in the NY Times refuting this claim, but the science does not support their insistence that their “beef filling” is mostly beef. It does, however, show that a significant portion of the “beef filling” is actually soy – so maybe this is good news after all.

Meanwhile, an EPA plan to clean up Chesapeake Bay so that major estuary could again be full of fish and wildlife was objected to by the area’s farm lobby on the grounds that it would cost “farmers” too much money. Speaking of illegal dumping of manure into waterways (which is what those “farmers” want to keep doing), an Iowa cattle lot was fined $30,000 for illegal wastewater discharge into a nearby creek. And more immediately tragically, a 4-year-old drowned in his farm family’s manure pit on New Year’s Day.

In other news, Japan has seen a new avian flu outbreak in its wild birds. A talk show segment I heard on WUWM featured a segment on the nasty environmental impacts of meat-eating/ livestock-raising. And the Government Accountability Project is proceeding with its new campaign to protect food industry employees who challenge unsafe, unhealthy, and inhumane practices.

In news for the better, WalMart announced a five-year plan to reduce salt, fats, and sugars in its processed food offerings – and to lower prices on fruits and vegetables. And on the one hand, archaeologists reported finding residues of wine-making from 6,100 years ago, while on the other hand, a trial of the health benefits of isolated resveratrol (the component of red wine believed to be healthful) was halted for lack of any evidence of the drug’s usefulness. Red wine and dark grape juice are still apparently good for you, though. This would not be the first time that an isolated supplement of something known to be good in itself was found – as an isolate – to be bad. It also happened infamously with beta-carotene as a cancer preventative (carrots do protect you, but beta-carotene pills are bad news). And speaking of carrots, exposing sliced carrots to ultraviolet UV-B light was found to increase their anti-oxidant activity threefold.

Carrots are of course not the only plant food that’s good for you. A new study of the Mediterranean diet, with its heavy component of produce (as well as olive oil, fish, and moderate red wine), found some evidence that it may help prevent cognitive decline in the elderly. And a NY Times op-ed article even pointed out that in African-American tradition it is considered good luck to eat black-eyed peas at the New Year – along with collards or other greens to symbolize greenback dollars and promote prosperity.

Two items in Good Medicine, the publication of the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, reported on studies finding that soy foods and produce (especially cabbage-family vegetables and carrots) help prevent breast cancer risk and reduce recurrences.

Vegetarian Times ran an article on “Feel-Good Foods,” based on a Nutrition Journal report of a study that vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists are less depressed, stressed, and anxious than meat-eaters. Mood-boosting foods include the omega-3 fatty acid suppliers (flax seeds and oil, hemp seeds and oil, dark green leafy vegetables, walnuts). Magnesium, found in pumpkin seeds and dark green leafies, also helps. So does tryptophan, which you can get from tofu, and serotonin (found in whole-grain pasta and brown rice). Folic acid (dark green leafies again, and also lentils and whole

grains) may affect mood, while vitamins C (fresh produce) and E are brain preservers.

Delicious Living named napa cabbage (aka Chinese cabbage) as a specialty of the month, high in vitamin C and K, folate and protein, and good in slaw, salads, stir-fries and even tacos. Another article pointed out that in winter, dried and freeze-dried berries and fruits retain most of their vitamins and can hold us over until Spring. Cayenne is another healthy food and a good seasonal warmer-upper, with positive effects on circulation, heartburn, and ulcers; it may even be beneficial against pancreatic cancer.

Organic Gardening reported that fruit of the baobab, a strange-looking African tree, is both delicious and extremely nutritious, with large amounts of calcium, vitamin C, and other antioxidents. It is being grown organically and harvested sustainably, and should start being available by the end of the year.

A commoner tree product that got attention this past month is the walnut: Vegetarian Times mentioned research which found that daily walnuts might help keep blood pressure from spiking when you’re stressed, and Prevention magazine featured walnuts as an in-season superfood full of omega-3 fatty acids.

CONNECTIONS

DIALOG

I expect that some of my vegan readers get mad at me on a semi-regular basis when I report on the health benefits of using honey. After all, honey is made by bees, and is thus an animal product which we can only have if we exploit those insects to some extent; its use is therefore clearly not part of the vegan lifestyle.

On the other hand, no one can deny that there are a ton of health benefits in using it. Honey is sweet and tastes good, and this is something that many plant foods can do just as well. But honey also has antimicrobial functions that are unique to this substance, and have in fact been used by humans since ancient times: there is a mention in Homer’s Iliad, written about 600 BC, of using honey as a wound dressing to prevent infection. The research mentioned above which found that honey greatly reduced symptoms in children with upset stomachs would certainly get my attention if I had a sick child and had to choose between honey and drugs: I’d go for the honey.

Some have objections on principle against any human use of any animal. Others are concerned because a few bees can be killed in colecting honey from a hive, and of course the bees have made and stored honey as a food for themselves to which they might arguably be entitled. On the other hand – and I think that there is an other hand – bees as hive insects have genetics which are satisfied by the hive’s survival rather than individuals’ survival; bees would not be “programmed” to sting even though it kills them if this were not the case.

As with all human-animal interactions, how it is done makes all the difference. Industrial beekeeping, in which bees are trucked around the country to pollinate orchards, is arguably as abusive as any other industrial animal agriculture (and because it is so unhealthy and unnatural, this is where almost all the colony collapse is occurring). Small scale backyard beekeeping, on the other hand, works with the bees’ needs and nature, guards and protects the hives, and is responsible for there being more bees and hives than if it were not practiced – is that a bad thing? I believe one could make the argument that when human-animal interactions have a net effect of there being more healthy animals living natural lives with greater genetic diversity than if the interactions were not happening, then that could be justifiable as a symbiosis: humans provide breeding and food and protection and in turn take food and fiber and transportation.

So I do not have a problem with honey.