February 2001

Plans for the Great American Meat-Out are underway. Discussion at the January potluck resulted in agreement that our last year's Outpost event was worth repeating. The actual Meat-Out Day, March 20, falls in the middle of the week this year, so we'll be doing our event the following Saturday, March 24, and we will again be present at both the Capitol Drive and the State Street Outpost stores. The Outpost, to placate its meat departments, will be billing this as "Vegetarian Awareness Week" and doing things throughout the week to promote vegetarian awareness. I felt that we can work with this; in our press releases I'll be talking about the event as a MeatOut activity which we do in conjunction with the Outpost's vegetarian awareness effort, and we will have Meat-Out Pledge sheets for people to sign if they wish.

The plan to do an event necessarily produces the usual annoying plea for HELP – we will need warm enthusiastic bodies to talk to people at both stores between 11 AM and 3 PM (you can do all four hours or just two, whichever works for you). The Outpost events coordinator has asked me to let her know the names of our members who will be participating, so please sign up as soon as possible, by phoning me at (414) 962-2703.

In other group news, there is a movement afoot to try to have little presentations on various appropriate subjects at our future potlucks, and also to plan far enough ahead to get them listed in the Outpost Exchange Calendar of Events (as well as other community calendars). We're hoping that better and more consistent publicizing of more interesting potlucks might pull in more new attendees.

Sunday, Feb. 4, 6 PM, regular potluck at the Quigley place, 2201 E. Jarvis St., Shorewood, SE corner of E. Jarvis and N. Maryland Ave., 1 long block north of the intersection of Maryland and E. Capitol Dr. 962-2703

Sunday, March 4, 6 PM, regular potluck. We need a host for this one!!! Call 962-2703 to volunteer!

Saturday, March 24, 11 AM to 3 PM, Great American Meat-Out Event at both Outposts

Sunday, April 8, 6 PM, regular potluck – this one also needs a host.

Sunday, Feb. 25, 5 PM, Roger Warner's 8668 N. 51st St., Brown Deer, 365-1987.

Sunday, March 18, 5 PM, Pat O'Neill's, 2431 N. Bartlett, 964-9759.

"Enjoy your food."

-- first recommendation of the French Dietary Guidelines

"The obvious solution to the concern that unnecessary antibiotics are being ingested by eating animal flesh is simply not to eat any."

-- Elizabeth Forel, letter to the editor of the New York Times, Jan. 15, 2001(in response to a news item on that subject)

Mad cow disease has continued to make headlines for yet another month, starting with the news in early January that two German cabinet ministers were forced to resign over the scandalous revelations that they had failed to keep mad cow disease out of Germany while issuing false reassurances. It hadn't helped that the health minister favored ecologically sound farming practices while the agriculture minister was an industrialized-age beef farmer, resulting in the two of them failing to cooperate....

Other European mad cow news included Italy's and Austria's first cases of suspected mad cow disease, new cases found in Belgium, and a European Union statement that it's the new testing which was recently begun that has started turning up cases where none had previ-ously been found. Spain and France both saw protests by cattle farmers demanding help from their governments in the face of sudden loss of consumer demand for their products, while Ireland (whose cattle-breeding industry has been especially vulnerable) announced a plan to slaughter older cattle in order to prevent the spread of the disease, and to test all younger animals.

This whole mess has gotten so noticeable, in fact, that the Wall Street Journal ran a frontpage article about Britain's difficulties in getting rid of all the cattle carcasses. And closer to home, the NY Times ran a report about the FDA's discovery that many animal feed manufacturers in this country are failing to comply with regulations meant to prevent the development and spread of mad cow disease here. Officials hasten to reassure us that our meat supply is actually quite safe, and that being scared off of beef is a panicy overreaction – but the Red Cross announced plans to ban blood donations from anyone who has lived in Europe since 1980.

Other various episodes from the meat industry include a judge's finding that Smithfield Packing, one of the world's largest pork companies, had abused workers as well as animals by illegally preventing a unionization effort, while a report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists again warned that antibiotics are dangerously overused on factory farm animals. The animal food industry is not quite having it all its own way, though. A NY Times op-ed piece on Jan. 12 explained in full detail what's wrong with intensive-confinement hog farming, and hog farmers voted to end a federally supervised porkpromotion campaign on the grounds that it wasn't really helping them.

Meanwhile, there is as usual much happier news regarding foods of vegetable origin. Discussion continues about the report from the Harvard Nurses Health Study which stated that vegetables and fruits did not help the study subjects prevent colon cancer. It turns out, in fact, that there was not enough difference in that study between the nurses who ate the most versus those who ate the least vegetables and fruits, such that the apparent finding has little validity – especially since it contrasts with over 200 studies that do show that eating very large amounts of those foods is indeed protective. In addition, a study just published in Nutrition reports that whole grain rye reduces levels of the bile acids which may promote colon cancer. And while a vegetarian diet apparently can thus help prevent colon cancer, other cancers can not, according to a new Danish study, be successfully treated with shark cartilage.

Garlic in various guises also continues to be good for you. A study reported over the past months found that eating garlic, as a tactic by itself, only lowers cholesterol a little bit – but it does lower it, and of a course garlic eating can be a tasty and helpful part of a combination of tactics and strategies which work very well. And some American Psychosomatic Society researchers reported that when test families were served garlic bread along with dinner, they were measurably pleasanter to each other.

When Prevention magazine gave easy steps to help curb diabetes, their advice about adding fiber to the diet mostly involved substituting vegetables, fruits, and whole grains for more processed foods. And a substance called quercetin which is found naturally in onions, apples (especially the skin), berries, peppers, black tea, garlic, and purple grape juice, has been found to help men relieve the pain of chronic prostatitis. Generally speaking, in fact, quercetin can help boost the immune system and thus help fend off winter colds and flu. Other nutrients and their sources that can help with this effort include: copper (roasted soy nuts, navy beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, some vegetables, and chocolate); zinc (refried beans, whole grains, seeds, and legumes); vitamin E (sunflower seeds, peanuts, wheat germ, whole grains, spinach, nuts and seeds); folate (spinach, asparagus, broccoli, orange juice, dark green leafy vegetables, legumes, peanuts, sunflower seeds, and whole grains); and vitamin B-12 (take a supplement if you don't eat dairy and eggs). Other vegetable-kingdom substances that can help one's health were listed in a guide for using herbs to stop pain. One is eating turmeric as a seasoning (often found in curries) to aid digestion and relieve heartburn. Another is eating ginger to keep blood vessels from dilating or using rosemary tea to help them dilate, as ways to prevent headaches (depending on what's causing the headache). And a remedy for the chills of a cold is to combine 1 broken-up cinnamon stick, 1 oz. sliced fresh ginger, 1 tsp. coriander seeds, 3 whole cloves, 1 lemon slice, and 1 pint water, simmer for 15 minutes, strain, and drink a hot cupful every 2 hours.

FARM (Farm Animal Rights Movement), the people who coordinate the Great American Meat-Out, is also holding their second Animal Rights Conference this year. It will take place on June 30 through July 5 at the McLean Hilton hotel near Washington, D.C. and will feature about 100 speakers and presenters, including Howard Lyman, Erik Marcus, Alex Pacheco, Robert Cohen, the Baustons, and many others. Activities will include presentations, exhibits, training sessions, and a Congressional Lobby Day, and the food will of course be vegan. If you're interested in attending, contact Norbert (preferably by Feb. 15) at 1-888-FARM USA or: register@AnimalRights2001.org

There is still an effort underway to get the Wisconsin legislature to pass a Family Farm Protection Act which would eliminate special treatment for large-scale livestock operations, ensure adequate environmental and public health protections from agricultural pollution, and make small farms more economically viable so as to promote healthy local rural policies. Since this measure would both deter animal "factory farms' and also encourage the kind of vgetable farming which is ecologically sustainable and productive of healthy produce, it is worth supporting. Letters to your state senators and assemblypeople would be highly useful; for more information, contact Lisa Nett of WISPIRG at Imnett@hotmail.com or phone her at (608) 251-9501.

A new study came out recently about salt and blood pressure, and so far from settling any-thing it makes an excellent example of the quite messy manner in which scientific research often plays itself out.

The gist of the study's findings is that people who lower their salt intake can decrease their blood pressure – and so can people who switch to a healthier diet of mostly fruits, vegetables, and low-fat products (including low-fat dairy) while either cutting back on salt or not.

What's known is that we do need sodium, but not nearly as much as most Americans get. It's also known that for a significant fraction of people, blood pressure is quite sensitive to salt intake. This has obvious implications for preventing strokes and heart attacks by trying to use salt restriction to control blood pressure.

But of late there has been a series of experiments called Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), which used a diet higher in vegetables and fruits, lower in meat, and much lower in fat than most Americans eat, though it did use substantial amounts of low-fat dairy. People placed on this diet succeeded in drop-ping their blood pressure as much as blood pressure drugs would have done, and this was considered a breakthrough. However, a follow-up experiment put some people on the DASH diet and others on a standard diet, and then alternately restricted and permitteded salt, and in this experiment the DASH diet lowered blood pressure for everyone on it, while restricting salt also lowered blood pressure no matter what one ate. As a result, researchers who push salt restriction conclude that restricting salt is a simple, effective way to lower blood pressure, while other scientists (who feel that salt restriction is not very important) point to the lowering of blood pressure from dietary improvements alone as proof that this is the way to go.

Complicating the picture further is the fact that when study participants were broken down into various demographic groups, study results differed for men versus women, blacks versus whites, those over 45 and those under 45, and people with high versus normal blood pressure at the start. Furthermore, extreme salt restriction can only really be achieved by avoiding all prepared foods, which is not very practicable for most of us, while at the same time the amounts of various foods in the DASH diet might be equally objectionable to normal American vegetable-haters and to vegetarians or vegans who avoid the low-fat dairy and meat that the DASH diet includes. Add to this that enzymes produced in the body in response to really severe salt restriction may (or may not) narrow blood vessels or damage their lining and so undo the benefits of lowered blood pressure, and the level of scientific confusion and dissent over what dietary recommendations to promulgate becomes understandably high.

So the bottom line is that the more we learn about salt and blood pressure, the more complex the picture becomes, such that simple guidelines which all can use only recede as knowledge advances. Welcome to the wonderful world of science!