November 2011

GREETINGS

Jody and I did, as planned, do a food demo and tabling at the Fondy Farmers’ Market on World Vegetarian Day, Oct. 1. Many people who do eat produce but do not usually go to vegetarian-oriented events got to taste Jody’s vegetarian southern style chili and (often in surprised tones of voice) pronounced it good. Thus is a seed planted in people’s minds, which hopefully will grow into a new openness towards eating less animals. The organizers of the market were also pleased, and suggested that we might want to do something like that again, which we heartily agreed we should – although probably next summer.

Our other news is of course the countdown to the PreThanksgiving Feast. It will be on Saturday, Nov. 19 and the time is NOW to get your preregistration in!!! Those of you who receive this by snail-mail will find a flyer herewith. Those who take this on the internet should print out the form below or find it on our website (marveg.org) or find a flyer at a health food store (i.e., Outpost, Beans and Barley) or similar venue. We still need a couple of volunteers, so have that in mind as well if you’re interested. The deadline is only a couple of weeks away – too soon for any further delay! Get that form in immediately! The Feast (as I might remind you) is our annual fundraiser as well as a great feed and a real good time – but only if people actually register and come!

If you want to volunteer, call Jody and David at 414-764-7262, or Chuck and me at 414-962-2703, or come to the November potluck, or email us at chuckgyver@aceweb.com

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sun., Nov. 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). Food theme is vegetarian and vegan pizzas.

Subsequent regular potlucks will be on Dec. 4, Jan. 8, Feb. 5, March 4, Apr. 1, and May 6.

Sat., Nov. 19, PreThanksgiving Feast at 10602 Underwood Pkwy., Wauwatosa. Doors open at 5 PM (volunteers for set-up and early kitchen crew come earlier). Preregistration required.

Other veg-friendly potlucks

There will not be a Nov. macrobiotic potluck.

The Urban Ecology Center’s vegetarian potluck should be on Thurs., Nov. 17 at 6:30 PM at 1500 E. Park Pl., 414-964-8505. Bring plate and fork as well as your meatless dish.

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

QUOTES OF THE MONTH

“Raising cattle for beef uses about 70% of all agricultural land yet provides only about 6 to 11% of humanity’s food.”

-- article on tropical deforestation in the Union of Concerned Scientists magazine

“Q: What actions must we take now to pass along a liveable world to our grandchildren?

A: The first thing we have to do is stop eating animals, including sea creatures. This is a great cause of many environmental ills currently destroying the planet. We could turn it around if more people would become vegetarians.”

-- Natural Milwaukee magazine interview with entrepreneur and author Russell Simmons

NEWS

They think that they finally figured out where the salmonella came from that poisoned all those cantaloupes we reported about last month: a truck that delivered culled melons to a cattle farm probably brought the germ from the cattle farm back to the melon farm. Why are we not surprised? In other salmonella news, now several people in Minnesota may have gotten sick from eggs from an organic egg farm; remaining eggs from there have been recalled. And a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases reported that nearly half of all meat and poultry products in US grocery stores are contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria.

In other proof that eating animals may be a bad idea, a 21-year-old Australian man got terribly ill from eating raw slugs on a dare: the slugs were apparently infected with a rat lung-worm parasite.

In other ways that animal foods can be unhealthy, a new study found that consumption of both transfats and animal-derived saturated fats can raise the risk of depression. A different study (still underway) seems to be finding that giving cow’s milk protein to at-risk babies raises the likelihood of their developing type one (insulin-dependent) diabetes.

Raising food animals is bad too. This month saw a huge and nasty manure spill in central Wisconsin and another that killed fish in a wildlife area in Iowa.

Speaking of water and fish, a NY Times article reported on offers to farmers in California’s Imperial Valley to idle land so that the irrigation water they would have used can be sent to thirsty cities instead: water scarcity is starting to be felt, to the detriment of both the environment and the food supply. And the virus that devastated Chile’s open-water salmon-farming industry has now shown up in wild Pacific salmon – it’s not as if there hadn’t been warnings of this very possibility. It’s less clear why shrimp are scarcer than usual in the Gulf of Mexico this year, but whatever the reason, it’s another good reason why people should not be eating them. But eating fish is not that good an idea anyway, as a new study found a higher risk of prostate cancer in men with higher levels of DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish and fish oil.

These issues all dovetail with increasingly frequent reports of both higher demand and higher prices for food. The latest casualty here is peanut butter, which will be more expensive following a smaller-than-expected crop this year.

One might think that these facts (especially given the still-growing human population) would start generating some real interest in getting the most food from the least land – which would surely mean eating less animal foods. Yet there is still a very mixed bag of things going on in this regard. And anti-cheese billboard put up by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Green Bay found both attackers and defenders. A new study found that either whey or soy protein can help with weight loss. The University of North Texas – of all places – has opened a Mean Greens dining hall where the food is vegan, and the USDA suggests adding meat substitutes to soups and stews to boost protein without adding saturated fat and cholesterol. But France has now required that all institutional meals have some animal food as the main protein source, which will make it very hard if not impossible for French schoolchildren, convicts, hospital patients, and people in retirement homes to be vegetarian. The European Vegetarian Union issued a condemnatory press release; whether it has any effect remains to be seen. On the other hand, the NY Times offered an article on how to host a vegan dinner party in its Dining section, and published leading chefs’ vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes in its online edition; also, Carnegie Mellon University researchers reported that going vegetarian even just one day a week cuts the carbon footprint of your diet more than buying all food locally. And the Occupy Wall Street List of Grievances against the corporations included poisoning the food supply and profiting from the torture of food animals.

With all this controversy, it is notable that there is no dissension on the fact that plant foods are good for you.

New research from England found that women who eat a lot of garlic (and its relatives, onions and leeks) have less osteoarthritis. A study in Diabetes Care reported that vegetarians have lower blood pressure, slimmer waistlines, and healthier blood sugar levels than meat-eaters, leading to lower risk of heart disease and diabetes. Two new studies found that taking a lot of vitamin and mineral supplements not only fails to make people healthier, but even correlates with higher death rates – leading one researcher to conclude that what people should do is simply eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible, since they provide the nutrients with no risk at all.

Another Diabetes Care item suggested that substituting just 2 oz. of nuts for carbohydrates per day could improve blood sugar without causing weight gain. An article coming out in the November issue of Stroke reveals data showing that women within five years of menopause who eat soy protein show less progression of clogged arteries. An article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggested adding pureed vegetables to soups and stews to make them more filling (and nutritious) while decreasing caloric intake – a ploy that might be of particular note to parents of fussy kids. Another article in that journal reported that getting 25 g of fiber per day can help reduce breast cancer risk; fiber of course is only found in plant foods (including legumes). And a new study from the National Institutes of Health and AARP also found that higher fiber intake is associated with a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, infectious and respiratory diseases, and some cancers in men.

There’s good news again about chocolate: consuming small quantities of one of its active ingredients helped mice perform treadmill exercises 50% better.

Finally, apples are in season again, full of soluble fiber, vitamin C, and antioxidents. So are potatoes, winter squashes, cabbages, Brussels sprouts, carrots, pears, cauliflower, collards, late spinach, persimmons, onions: a whole rainbow to enjoy.

DIALOG

The squeeze is starting. Human-caused global climate change is creating floods and droughts that are equally effective in reducing food crops. This increases food prices, leading to increased hunger among those who can least afford to buy food. Another cause of food shortage/ higher food prices is the crunch of needing water both to irrigate crops and to keep our growing cities going. Then there is the fact that using agricultural land for other things than food – corn for ethanol, peanut acres for cotton – pays better than growing the food crops. And much of fish farming is part of the problem, both when it uses many caught fish to feed fewer carnivorous fish, and when it causes disease outbreaks (as reported above); both result in the steady loss of fish in the seas. And to cap it all off, the human population just reached 7 billion hungry mouths, the biggest number of us ever. And growing.

Something has to give. If we are to avoid widespread starvation and despoliation of the Earth (through shortsighted attempts to grow a little more food for a while at the expense of long-term sustainability), there must be major changes in how humanity feeds itself.

One part of the solution is reducing waste of food.

Another has involves agricultural policies. Government policies regarding which activities receive subsidies can make all the difference in whether people are growing corn for ethanol and high-fructose corn syrup or vegetables for people; tobacco or peanuts; CSAs or huge factory farms; grass pastured animals or confinement operations. There will be a new 5-year Farm Bill in 2012, and there needs to be a lot of citizen input on changing policies away from favoring industrial agriculture and towards policies that favor urban farming, small farming, and the raising of those crops that give the most nutrition directly to the most people.

Which means that the other part of the answer has everything to do with changing people’s mindsets away from heavy use of animal foods. Food animals, especially cattle, consume huge amounts of water – which we can no longer spare them. Food animals, and especially cattle, take far more land (either for grazing, or for growing crops for confinement feeding) than producing the same number of humanly-edible calories from plant foods. Farming carnivorous fish is helping deplete the oceans, as are industrial fishing trawlers. Animal agriculture, including growing commodity crops for feed, accounts for a huge proportion of human-caused greenhouse gasses, which are the root cause of the climate changes that are damaging crops. As the situation trends towards dire, the need for decreased levels of animal-food consumption grows increasingly and starkly urgent for all the people on our planet.

Vegetarians can no longer afford to just be role models. We really need to step up efforts to get the word out there that eating little or no animal foods can be healthy, delectable, and satisfying. We need to really push towards policies that favor less animal agriculture and more plant foods for people, while simultaneously working to make plant-based diets attractive and desirable. The time has come.