June 2000

We’ve started setting up our summer schedule, which involves a CUFA picnic at the beginning of August as well as regular potlucks. MARV’s June and July potlucks are spoken for, but we need a host for the one in August. Call 962-2703 to volunteer for this delightful job (on the one hand, you probably want to make your kitchen and living room presentable, but on the other hand, you do not need to drag your dish from home to the potluck, and you can put off cooking it so that it’s just com-ing off the stove at potluck time).

Looking further forward, the Outpost will be doing a health fair in early Septem-ber, at which MARV will plan to be. And the date of the Pre-Thanksgiving Feast will be November 18 this year, since that is the Saturday before this year’s Thanksgiving – mark your calendars now so you can be sure to be there.

Many people have asked me whether my book, Food Pyramid Feast, is in book-stores yet, and the answer is, not yet. If you want to recommend it to anyone, have them call me at (414) 962-2703 to order a copy, or you can use or photocopy the order form on the book’s very last page.

A number of our readers tried to attend and speak up at the hearings about hunting mourning doves – fruitlessly, since the hearings were chaotic, overcrowded, and basically stacked against anyone except hunters having a say. Consequently, plans for a mourning dove hunt are now being made; we’ll let you know about counter-measures being taken as we hear of them.

Saturday, June 17, 6 PM, regular potluck at the Forgach house in Brown Deer, 8362 N. 49^th St. Get to Brown Deer Rd. and 51^st, go south to Dean, then go back east two blocks to 49^th, turn south and look on the left. 355-4089.

Sunday, July 9, 4 PM, regular potluck at Jody and David’s in South Milwaukee.

Sunday, Aug. 6, CUFA Picnic in Grant Park. Details next month.

Saturday, Aug. 19, 6 PM, regular potluck – we need a host for this one.

Sunday, June 25, 5 PM, at the Rodiecks’ house, W271S4136 Overlook La., Waukesha, (262) 521-0411.

Sunday, July 16, noon, site forthcoming

Sunday, Aug. 20, 5 PM, site forthcoming

"A study of 45,619 male health workers by Harvard School of Public Health found that men with the highest intake of potas-sium, contained in fruits and vegetables, reduced the risk of kidney stones by 50%, while those who ate the most animal pro-tein increased their risk by 33%."

-- New England Journal of Medicine, 3/25/93

One big victory that we never even saw in the newspaper involved cattle grazing rules. It seems that one environmental action which the Clinton administration did take was to change the way Western cattle ranchers get grazing rights on public land: new rules enable the Bureau of Land Management to grant rights to rangeland to high-bidding environmentalists who don’t plan to actually graze cattle, and allow the BLM to review and revoke grazing rights if a rancher’s practices degrade the land environmentally. Ranchers had sued to have these new rules invalidated, but in May the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unani-mously (of all things) that the administra-tion was within its authority to make these new rules, and they therefore stay in full effect. This will significantly reduce the ecological destructiveness of cattle ranch-ing and maybe even raise the price (and so lessen the attractiveness) of meat. Yet we only heard about it once on public radio, and then got details off the internet; the report never showed up in the NY Times.

Another veg-friendly National Public Radio (NPR) report, this one on May 17, focused on food industry "research." It started by quoting Dr. Neil Barnard of the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) as he criticized the way the food industry pays for research into nutrition. He cited as an example the noto-rious studies funded by the egg industry , which determined that eggs do not add to dietary cholesterol – by studying people who were already utterly saturated with cholesterol before starting to eat the eggs, and therefore didn’t show the eggs making much difference. Various physicians and researchers were then quoted on both sides of the issue of whether it is possible to do scientifically honest and sound research when funded by an interested party. The report concluded with anti-dairy cam- paigner Robert Cohen decrying the con-nections that members of an important USDA committee have to the food indus-try, and prominent dietician Marion Nestle responding that there aren’t any resear-chers who possess enough knowledge to make up such a committee but who are also free of such connections.

Meat contamination is still chronically in the news. Canada has an e. coli poisoning situation as I write, with at least 7 people dead, and there was a recall of Curtis Packing Company hot dogs in 7 southern states due to potential contamination with listeria. In general there have been more meat product recalls since new regulations requiring better testing went into effect last October. Yet a federal judge in Texas ruled this week that the new more stringent testing was unfair to packing plants since the meat may have been contaminated when it arrived at the packers, and that therefore packing plants could not be closed due to a determination that the meat emerging from them is bad.

Other bad-meat news involves ongoing blips about mad cow disease. Another case was discovered in France, while an international conference on new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (i.e., mad cow disease attacking humans) was held in Miami in May. A NY Times report indi-cates that prions are now generally accep-ted as the cause, and that there are indeed serious concerns about nvCJD getting to humans in the U.S. who eat deer and elk meat from animals affected with the equi-valent disease of those animals.

Happier news arises from various ways in which meat-free diets are good for people.

The American Natural Hygiene Society’s magazine reports on a study done by Georgetown University and PCRM, which found that women who ate a low-fat vege-tarian diet very significantly reduced the amount of premenstrual discomfort and menstrual cramping that they experienced. It was thought that the lower-fat diets helped reduce the amount of estrogen produced, and therefore the amount of symptom-producing prostaglandins, while the higher fiber content of the vegetarian diets may have increased a blood protein called sex-hormone binding globulin which would also decrease the effects of the symptom-producing hormones. Some women in the study were so pleased with their new diet, which gave them relief after only a month or two, that they refused to go back to their old ways when asked to (as a double-check) afterwards.

A high-fiber diet (i.e., fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains instead of refined ones, and beans instead of meat and dairy) also turns out to be helpful for diabetics. A study done by researchers in Texas and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine had 13 adult-onset diabetics fol-low an ADA diet for 6 weeks, then switch to a higher-fiber diet for another 6 weeks, with the result that the high-fiber diet sig-nificantly dropped their daily plasma glu-cose concentration as well as improving other indicators of their condition.

In different but similar news, a study of over 400 people with high or high-normal blood pressure, which was reported on at a meeting of the American Society of Hypertension, found that lowering salt while in-creasing fruits and vegetables (and low-fat dairy) had significant success in lowering blood pressure. Participants ate diets with varying amounts of salt and produce; the best results in lowering blood pressure were found in those eating the lowest sodi-um levels (about half the U.S. average) and 5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day.

This makes it a bad thing that, according to the American Journal of Public Health, the number of people actually eating 5 veggie-and-fruit servings per day is still less that a quarter of Americans.

Another reason to eat certain vegetables is the finding by a Veterans Administration vision researcher that a pigment in dark green leafy vegetables can help reverse age-related macular degeneration, which causes vision distortion and even blindness in older people. 14 patients with the dis-ease ate ½ cup of cooked spinach 4 to 7 times a week for a year – and 13 improved or completely healed their sight.

Prevention magazine (which is always pushing supplements) reports that most Americans don’t get enough copper, which helps prevent unnecessary aging – and shockingly (to them), most multi-vitamin and -mineral supplements contain a form of copper that is not absorbed. They sug-gest you do what I’ve always advised: eat actual food that contains the mineral, such as nuts, whole grains, leafy greens, and beans.

A single-again reader wonders whether MARV would be willing to run a singles ad. Any other singles out there interested? Meanwhile, we are advised that singles might find connections at:

http://www.concernedsingles.com

http://www.greensingles.com

Don’t automatically knock this stuff: Chuck and I met through Concerned Singles (though using the snail-mail version of their service)!

It’s so exciting when you take an action, and it works – even if it takes a while.

Chuck and I used to buy Yves soy-based "deli slices" by the case, until much of American soy became bioengineered/ GMO, at which time we wrote to the com-pany asking for GMO-free products and explaining that we would not be buying their foods again until that was available. We’ve been suffering from the withdrawal ever since, so imagine our joy when we saw the "GMO-free" label on Yves Deli Slices and Veggie Canadian Bacon this week. Acording the the printing on the inside of the package, the company has developed sources of non-GMO soy for all their products from now on. They can be found at the Outpost. Thank the company at yvc@yvesveggie.com or Yves Veggie cuisine, 1638 Derwent Way, Delta (Van-couver), BC Canada V3M 6R9.

If you have not yet written to the USDA about the proposed organic standard, you still have a chance if you scramble, since the deadline for comment is June 12. It’s very important that the final rule close a few loopholes, and necessary to encourage the USDA to hold fast to what’s right about the new proposal.

Especially needed are emphasis that genetic engineering, irradiation, and sew-age sludge must be totally and permanently banned from being included as organic, without any future review of this; requir-ing genuine pasture-based systems and outdoor access for all farm animals whose products will be labelled organic; prohibit-ing routine antibiotic use and mutilations such as debeaking in these animals; hold-ing the companies that make and profit from bioengineered seeds responsible for genetic pollution rather than organic far-mers; finding ways to make organic certi-fication economically feasible for small farmers by lowering their fees and giving them help in switching over to organic practices; and maintaining the indepen-dence of current certifiers including their ability to de-certify and to label with a higher standard than the USDA’s.