May 2000

MARV’s end-of-April activity was the Earth Day event, which I wanted to report on in the May newsletter and therefore waited to write this on May 1 instead of the end of April as usual. It went well, we thought, despite some chilly winds that ulti-mately caused everyone to leave about 6 PM instead of staying until 7 as the organi-zers had originally planned. Attendance was light but steady, and we had the chance to talk with many people, about 30 of whom signed up for further contact and so are receiving this issue of our newsletter as a sample: welcome. Thanks to Jody, David, Barb, and Jan, as well as Chuck who heroically sat with us in a jet-lagged condi-tion and nonetheless also helped our table.

If you like this newsletter, you now have two ways to get it regularly. One is to sub-scribe for $9. a year for 12 monthly paper-and-snail-mail issues; the other is to find it on the website that Mohan Embar has set up for us. The website’s address is: http://www.marveg.org As time goes on, we hope to also have some of our infor-mational flyers on the website as well as each month’s MARVelous Times.

Speaking of publications, my book, Food Pyramid Feast, is now out and available. All who prepaid for copies will now be receiving them. Those who didn’t but are interested should come to potlucks, where they will be available for sale, or call me at (414) 962-2703.As the title might suggest, the book explains the use of the USDA Food Guide Pyramid, with particular focus on how it can be used to eat a vegetarian, semi-vegetarian or vegan diet, and all the dozens of recipes are vegan.

Meanwhile, our great monthly potlucks continue.

Saturday, May 13, 6 PM, regular potluck at the Quigleys’, 2201 E. Jarvis St., Shore-wood, corner of E. Jarvis and N. Maryland Ave., 1 block north of the corner of N. Maryland and E. Capitol Dr. 962-2703

Saturday, June 17, 6 PM, regular potluck at the Forgach place in Brown Deer

Sunday, July 9, regular potluck – we need a host

Sunday, Aug. 6, CUFA picnic in Grant Park

Sunday, May 21, 5 PM, Roberta Bass’ place, 4013 N. Downer Ave., Shorewood, (414) 963-0605

Sunday, June 25, 5 PM, the Rodiecks’ house, W271S4136 Overlook Ln., Wauke-sha, (262) 521-0411

"He despised the honours, renounced the pleasures, and discharged with incessant vigilance the duties of his exalted station… One of his most intimate friends, who had often shared the frugal simplicity of his table, has remarked that his light and spar-ing diet (which was usually of the vegetable kind) left his mind and body always free and active for the various and important business of an author, a pontiff, a magis-trate, a general, and a prince."

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describing Julian, last pagan emperor of the Roman Empire.

In April, Medicare started enrolling vol-unteers for its first-ever study of critically ill elderly people: they are being recruited to test whether Dr. Dean Ornish’s program can work for everyone, rather than the rela-tively small numbers he has worked with in the past. Dr. Ornish has published studies showing that his program of strict vegetar-ianism (almost veganism), exercise, and stress reduction can successfully and regu-larly heal people with heart disease to the extent that they can avoid heart surgery and still end up healed of their coronary condi-tions. Critics (especially the American Heart Association) have insisted that Dr. Ornish’s program is too restrictive, and that the numbers of people reported on in his studies do not make clear how well it really works. But Medicare is trying to move away from a crisis-care model of medical care and into a more prevention-oriented kind of health care, and has selected the Ornish program for a 3-year test intended to involve about 1,800 elderly heart patients.

On the subject of non-foods and politics, a town in France wanted to ban Coca-Cola, in retaliation for the U.S. decision to tax luxury goods imported from Europe, which resulted from the Europeans’ refusal to buy U.S. hormone-fed beef. When informed that a ban would be illegal, the village of Ste.-Marie opted to triple the price of Coke to about $4.50 a drink throughout the town.

Meanwhile, the eating of animal foods is continuing to be bad for everyone, in vari-ous ways. A long-term study of male doc-tors raised the possibility that eating plenty of dairy products may add to the risk of prostate cancer. Those who reported eating at least 2.5 dairy servings per day had 30% more prostate cancers than those reporting less than half a serving daily – yet the re-searchers stated that results were not con-clusive and that people should not change their eating habits.

On April 27, the Associated Press repor-ted on four different incidents of serious infections or food poisoning due to nasty microbes that didn’t used to be a problem. Three of the four incidents involved meat or animal-raising practices, including steady feeding of antibiotics to farm animals.

A different study found that people with a particular gene might be developing sto-mach cancer from an overreaction to the presence in their stomachs of the helico-bacter bacterium (but isn’t this bacterium transmitted to people through meat-eating? – the news report didn’t mention that pos-sibility).

Then there was the report about an area in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Sou-thern California, where DDT and PCBs were discharged for many years and which is now so polluted as a result of that dump-ing that fish swimming in the area are too contaminated to eat. Apparently, these fish are still being widely found in local markets despite a decade-long ban on fishing those waters, so now the EPA wants to cap the dump site with concrete. Thank you, Mon-santo (maker of both PCBs and DDT).

And speaking of fish, a report in the May 1 New York Times dealt with the contro-versy over gene-spliced salmon, which are bioengineered to get bigger faster than nor-mal salmon, and which when they accident-ally get loose from their fish-farm pens could wreak havoc with normal salmons’ gene-pool (see the Dialog section).

Several studies came out in the last few weeks challenging the usefulness of various supplements thought to enhance health. Vitamins C and E are antioxidents, which are believed to clean up damaging free radical forms of oxygen and nitrogen from the body. Selenium is a mineral needed by the immune system. Fiber was thought to help prevent colon cancer. And in recent years many people have been taking large doses of these nutrients as supplements in the expectation that doing so will keep them healthy. However, science does not at the moment seem to support taking pills. In 3 out of 4 recent studies on vitamin E and heart disease, for example, taking the vita-min had no preventive effect. Studies of cataracts and macular degeneration of the eye did show that people with higher blood levels of antioxidents had better protection, but could not find that taking antioxident vitamins was of any use. Also, a different pair of studies found that eating either fiber supplements, or diets low in fat and high in fiber, were useless in preventing colon polyps which are often precursors to colon cancer; researchers described themselves as stunned by these results. Much of this was in a report by the Institute of Medicine, which is a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. The report did positively identify diets high in the foods that supply these nutrients as protective against disease; it was only supplement pills that they were unable to recommend: as one doctor put it, "there’s a lot of power in food, and … we have a lot more data on [proving the protec-tive value of] food than we do on supple-ments." It is to be noted that diets high in many vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and nuts and seeds are the ones that make sure of getting these important health-protecting nutrients.

While you’re eating foods, a study repor-ted in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a diet which uses peanuts and peanut butter can help the heart. One group in this study ate a 25%-of-calories-from-fat American Heart Asso-ciation diet, while the other group ate higher levels of fat but got them from pea-nuts instead of saturated fat (equals animal foods). Guess what? Yes. The peanut and peanut butter eaters lowered bad LDL cho-leserol and triglycerides while maintaining their good HDL cholesterol, in contrast to the animal-food eaters whose triglyceride levels stayed high and whose HDL levels dropped. Conclusion, as far as I can tell: just eat the right foods.

Organizers of a talk by Dr. Joel Fuhrman asked us to tell you about it. Dr. Fuhrman is a family physician and author associated with the American Natural Hygiene Soci-ety; he has written a book entitled Fasting and Eating For Health. He will give a lec-ture discussion followed by a book signing on Friday, May 5, at 7 PM, at Walden Books in Southridge mall, will be on Mil-waukee public access TV channel 96 at 10 AM on May 6, and will give a lecture that afternoon at Serb Hall, 5101 W. Oklahoma Ave, at 1 PM, on: "The Standard American Diet: the Key Factor in Rampant Degene-rative Disease in Modern Society."

As we’ve mentioned before, the subject of bionegineered crops is significant to any-one who eats, and especially anyone who eats soy, and the news is that the battle over this issue is now heating up in the U.S.

A foundation which is a shareholder in Kellogg Corporation organized a share-holder action demanding that Kellogg stop using genetically modified ingredients in its products at least until long-term testing proves them safe; Kellogg’s European ope-rations are already phasing them out.

A National Academy of Sciences panel issued a report cautiously upholding the bioengineering of crops – but one part of the news here is that many of the panel members are working in or funded by the biotech industry; the other part is that even so, the caution in their report is a change from previous gung-ho enthusiasm.

The problem with gene-spliced salmon is that the fish farms such fish are raised in are always having fish escape from them into the wild through damaged nets, and since female fish mate preferentially with the biggest males they can find, it is virtually cer-tain that the gene-spliced fish will start mating with normal wild salmon and spreading their altered and (in the second generation) less fertile genes, thus endangering the real species. These fish have been developed but not yet licensed, partly because of some confusion as to what agency should regu-late them. Personally, I’ll be writing to my congresscritters on this one.

Good news, though, is that it looks like U.S. farmers will be planting significantly less bioengineered corn, soy, and cotton this year than last year. And McDonalds has just followed Burger King in asking its farmers to avoid gene-spliced potatoes, so there will be much less of that.

We report at whiles on vegetarian dining that Chuck has discovered through work all over the world. This time, he had to spend a day in Chicago renewing his expiring passport on short notice, so we checked out Blind Faith Café while we waited.

Blind Faith is near the eastern end of Dempster St. in Evanston, just north of Chicago and easy to find since Dempster is an exit off of I- 94. It’s all-vegetarian and macrobiotic-oriented, with both counter service and seated dining. The menu offers 9 appetizers, 14 entrees, 6 sandwiches, 6 salads, various side dishes, and desserts both vegan and dairy, plus a breakfast menu which is served until 3 PM and includes both vegan and ovo-lacto options. Dishes seem derived mostly from Asian and Mexi-can cuisines. All our selections were gene-rous, well-presented, and delicious. Décor is friendly, and prices not bad for a big city.