At the August potluck we discussed the possibility of participating in the Vibrant Life! Healthy Living Fair at the state fairground in October. I had received an invitation to participate; the event will be from 3 to 8 PM on Friday, Oct. 22 plus 9 AM to 4 PM on Saturday, Oct. 23, and a 4-foot table would cost us $199. It would be a great opportunity for us to promote vegetarianism (and our PreThanksgiving Feast) to what would probably be a pretty large crowd, and we do have enough money in our coffers to swing it; however, we would need some volunteers in addition to Jody and me to pull off that many hours of tabling. So we weighed pros and cons at the August potluck and came to no decision. We do need to make a decision soon, so it will come up again at the Sept. 5 potluck. Come with your opinion, or phone Chuck and me at 414-962-2703 or email us at chuckgyver@aceweb.com or phone David and Jody at 414-764-7262 with your two cents’ worth.
Before that comes Oct. 1 and World Vegetarian Day, and here too we have not yet decided on any activity. This would be a good chance to get the word out about eating plants instead of animals, but MARV has not in the past figured out how. Any ideas? Again, come to the potluck or contact us as above.
We also need to start gearing up for the Pre-Thanksgiving Feast (only three months away). We discussed going back to North Shore Presbyterian, but I just learned that their beautiful basement hall was devastated by the floods and is unavailable this year. Any ideas for an alternate venue?
Sunday, Sept. 5, 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). Theme is summer salads.
Subsequent regular potlucks will be on Oct. 3 and Nov. 7.
Donna Moberg is considering hosting a macrobiotic potluck in late Sept. or early Oct. at her Shorewood home. Phone her at 414-962-9358.
The Urban Ecology Center’s veg potluck will be on Thurs., Sept. 16, 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 September events, check the Vegan Meetup website.
Walk for Farm Animals: the Walk for Farm Animals is a yearly fundraiser for Farm Sanctuary. The Milwaukee Walk will be on September 25. Sign-in at 11:30, walk at 12:00. Location: Bradford Beach at North Point; 2400 N. Lincoln Memorial Drive. The registration fee is $15, which will give you a Walk t-shirt. Pre-registration is required and can be done at this link.
-- Meatless Mondays educational material
“If there were a poster boy for the ills of factory farming, Jack DeCoster [salmonella eggs] would be it. DeCoster has a lifetime of flagrant violations against state and federal laws, including labor, human rights, environmental, and animal cruelty violations.”-- Food Democracy Now email
The big news this week is the massive egg recall of over half a billion eggs due to salmonella. Over 1000 illnesses in at least 22 states have been reported from them, and the outbreak was traced to the factory-“farm” operations of one Iowa man, Jack DeCoster, plus one other such operation, Hillendale, with which he is closely associated. As our quote of the month indicates, DeCoster has a long history of such serious abuses that Iowa finally refused to let him build a factory hog farm – so he went into eggs instead. The mess has brought issues of how eggs are produced into the public eye, both as regards humane and safety concerns. The NY Times reported that the British have reduced salmonella poisoning by vaccinating hens, but is this part of the solution or part of the problem?
Salmonella infections in toddlers, meanwhile, have been traced to dry pet food, and people in the U.S. and Great Britain who feed frozen mice to pet reptiles were hit by a recall of millions of frozen mice that turned out to be carrying salmonella and sickened over 400 people.
In other bad microbe news, raw poultry was identified as the source of listeria in commercial chicken cooking plants, and a Louisiana company recalled sausages and hog head cheese due to possible listeria contamination.
The problem of factory farmed animals getting sick and carrying germs relates to the problems of antibiotic use and overuse by those operations, and this is coming under scrutiny. Congress held a hearing on the subject of routine antibiotic use as part of consideration of a bill to ban the practice. And also on the subject of factory farms, farmers in Ohio feared losing a fight against a planned November referendum and therefore have agreed to rules for that state which will sharply restrict close confinement of hens, hogs, and veal calves. On a different note, the Wisconsin DNR is still working on trying to control chronic wasting disease (the deer and elk equivalent of mad cow disease).
Different matters still involve water. As the BP oil spill’s first effects dwindle, shrimping season has begun amid lingering concerns about whether Gulf seafood is really safe to eat; dare we hope that this will decrease seafood consumption over the long term? Nor is it only the Gulf of Mexico that is affected. A NY Times article addressed pollution of Cape Cod’s waterways and how that could affect shellfish beds there. And although no fish are involved, another article discussed a spring of water in New Jersey that is much loved by hikers but now polluted and fenced off.
Milk is another liquid still in the news, as efforts are still ongoing to try to find ways to allow those who want raw milk to drink it safely. And butter, a milk product, has been successfully turned into a biodiesel fuel recently, although fortunately no one has suggested that it actually be much used as such.
The almond pasteurization debate is back in the news. A 2007 USDA rule required that U.S. almonds sold as raw had to actually be pasteurized, but now a court has ruled that small almond farmers who were hurt by this ruling can sue to overturn it. Stay tuned. (And meanwhile, raw almonds from other countries are still really raw.)
In other good news, the idea of promoting Meatless Mondays is gaining traction. An E Magazine article traced the idea from the world wars, when civilians were asked to eat less meat so there would be more for soldiers, to its modern incarnation, with Meatless Mondays being promoted both for health and increasingly for environmental reasons. Institutions and municipalities from Ghent to Baltimore and San Francisco, universities including Tel Aviv Univ., Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia, and countries from Britain to Brazil and Japan are all starting to promote the idea. I caught a radio interview with Madison Ave. ad man Sid Lerner (of squeezable Charmin toilet paper fame) who is now pushing Meatless Mondays from a small non-profit. And a new UN report is recommending veganism.
Another aspect of the picture is the promotion of eating fruits and vegetables irrespective of other choices (although obviously related to focusing one’s diet on them). Wisconsin State Farmer ran an article on UW Extension nutrition specialist Sherry Tanumihardjo and her efforts to promote the eating of produce (“The bottom line is all things in life in moderation, except vegetables.”) And the NY Times had an article on a Massachusetts program to have doctors prescribe eating produce and supply coupons for farmers’ markets.
For of course plant foods are still good for you. Delicious Living ran an article on Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s development of an Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) which rates nutrients per calorie of many different foods. One standout conclusion: dark leafy green vegetables filled all the top spots on the list. There are some caveats to this listing: foods with the fewest calories and any nutrients ranked well just because of the ratio, and he was not able to quantify phytonutrients even though we know they are good. But generally speaking, vegetables, fruits, beans and legumes, and some whole grains (tops spots were oats, brown rice, sprouted grain bread, barley, and quinoa), and nuts and seeds are recommended, with caveats about animal foods and recommendations to minimize them.
The NY Times Science/Health section reported on a Swedish study which found small intakes of dark chocolate to have health benefits, but that large amounts did not add more.
Prevention had items about green tea helping prevent depression, and also about coffee’s benefits: one cup per day lowers risk of death from all causes, 2 reduces risk of death from heart disease, 3 decreases risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s, and 4 lowers diabetes risk.
Garlic can help fight colds and flu, according to Dr. Andrew Weil. Another article pointed out that potato skins contain about half a potato’s fiber, apple skins are the source of cancer-fighting quercetin, kiwi peels have vitamin E and flavonoids (including them in a blender puree was suggested), orange peels help fight cancer (use zest for flavoring), broccoli stalks contain vitamin C, and carrot peels are full of beta-carotene. I’ve been scrubbing but not peeling vegetables for a while now.
Another article pointed out that herbs and spices are an especially good source of anti-oxidents. Cloves, oregano, turmeric, and cinnamon, as well as tarragon, thyme, and sage were mentioned as good sources of both taste and nutrients.
Spinach was mentioned as a superfood: a dark leafy green full of vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals; its calcium is bound up when eaten raw but I have read that cooking makes even that available. And it will be coming back into season as the weather cools.
An E Magazine article on prostate cancer listed prevention tactics that were mostly dietary: eat cooked tomatoes, onions, garlic, walnuts, red wine, green tea, and spinach and other dark green leafies, as well as getting vitamin D.
Another green that may be edible again soon is dandelion greens. I’ve eaten them in the Spring before they start to flower, but shunned them after that as too bitter. But a leaflet at the Outpost mentioned that after frost they become palatable again. Can’t wait to try!
The first two weeks of September will again see an Eat Local Challenge. Events will include : a Westown Market Celebration of local food on Sept. 1, 10 AM to 3 PM, at Zeidler Union Sq. on Michigan between 3d and 4thSts.; a Friends of Real Food meeting focused on local eating at the Urban Ecology Center on Sept. 8 from 6 to 8 PM; a Local Food Festival at the Fondy Market, 2200 W. Fond du Lac Ave., 9 AM to 1 PM; and a book discussion of Plenty by Alisa Smith and J. B. Mackinnon at the UEC on Sept. 14 from 7 to 8 PM.
Whether you attend any of these events or not, everyone can participate by seeing how much of one’s food can be gotten from local sources. For myself, while I refuse to give up my very healthy (see above) coffee and tea, I was pleasantly surprised last year to note how much of my food was locally sourced, either in the growing or the processing.
The recent Vegetarian Voice, the magazine of North American Vegetarian Association, ran an article on what to tell people who object to vegetarianism on the grounds that “You care more about animals than you do about people.”
The gist of the suggested response is that in fact eating meat and thus contributing to livestock raising causes a great deal of suffering for humans as well as for the animals involved.
First, by contributing to climate change, livestock raising contributes to such human disasters as worse Gulf hurricanes and Pakistani floods.
Second, humans are threatened, sickened, and sometimes killed by animal-derived viruses and factory farm pathogens.
Third is the problem of dwindling supplies of clean water for human use due partly to the incredible amount of water that livestock consume; in addition, livestock-raising can pollute water with e. coli and hormones.
There is the point that factory farms cause such terrible air pollution that people living in their vicinity often suffer asthma and other respiratory ailments, not to mention the way in which their property values drop as a result.
And then there is the whole set if issues involving the toll on human workers in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Since these jobs are horrible and low-paid, they are often filled by illegal alien workers, who are in no position to protest conditions or try to improve them. These jobs are also the most dangerous kind of employment on record, with far more deaths and serious injuries than any other kind of work, not to mention exposure to the same bad air and chemicals and germs that sicken factory farms’ neighbors. In fact, conditions are so dehumanizing that a recent study found slaughterhouse employment to increase rates of violent crime committed by those employees.
And of course, there are so many ways in which eating meat is not good for the health of human consumers.
If anyone ever challenges your vegetarianism on humanitarian grounds, now you know what to tell them.