June 2003

May was a quiet month for MARV; the highlight was the potluck with a presentation on macrobiotics that attracted a good crowd of us and a long and productive discussion/ question-and-answer session following the initial presentation.

I do want to remind you that in June we will have both a regular potluck at the Friends’ Meeting House on June 1, and a potluck party to celebrate Chuck’s first 21 years as a vegan. The latter will be on June 14 and all our MARV friends are invited. But do please call me or talk to me if you plan to join us: a few of you did RSVP verbally already but not when I was able to write it down, so I still need to hear from you (again, if necessary) so we can know how many people (roughly) to expect. We’re at (414) 962-2703.

We mentioned in last month’s Connections that FARM is planning its Animal Rights 2003 conference at the end of June. We got a phone call from them to the effect that any group can receive one half-price registration if we will help publicize this event. So if you want to go the conference and are willing to disseminate some flyers, give me a call (962-2703).

By the way, I do remind all readers that our email address is now on the masthead, and for those of you who take the newsletter on the internet I will add it to the text as well, so that if anyone has questions or feedback regarding anything we print, you can respond by email if you wish (MARV’s snail-mail address is the return address on the paper edition).

-- Louise Q, chuckgyver@aol.com

Sunday, June 1, 5:30 PM, regular potluck at the Friends’ Meeting House, 3224 N. Gordon Pl. (from Humboldt Blvd. in Riverwest, go east on Auer a few short blocks to the parking lot). Topic will be a smoothie demo.

Saturday, June 14, extra potluck to celebrate Chuck Quigley’s "coming of age" as a vegan. 5 PM, 2201 E. Jarvis St., Shorewood – on the SE corner of E. Jarvis and N. Maryland Ave., 1 long block north of the intersection of N. Mary-land with E. Capitol Dr. RSVP 962-2703.

Subsequent regular potlucks will be at the Friends’ Meeting House on July 6, Aug. 3, and Sept. 7.

The next macrobiotic potluck will be at 5:30 PM on Sunday, June 22 at Pat Courtney’s house, 2177 N. 70^th St., Tosa, 258-0620. Due to redecoration, please bring a lawn chair.

"’The Prime Minister of France [on an official visit to Canada] will have beef today – Canadian western beef,’ [Canadian Prime Minister] Mr. Chretien told reporters. ‘I had it yesterday and look how healthy I am this morning.’"

-- reported in the NY Times on May 23, as part of a report on the discovery of a cow with mad cow disease in western Canada a few days earlier. Incubation time for the human version of mad cow disease is 5 to 30 years.

As our quote of the month indicates, the big "bad food" news since May 21 is the discovery in Canada of a cow with mad cow disease. A vet who noticed how thin she was had her slaughtered and sent her head for testing (the rest of the carcass was rendered, probably for feed and pet food since she was 8 years old and had had 5 calves). The flap when the test came back positive was predictable: the U.S. and other countries have temporarily banned import of Canadian beef, cattle, and animal feed, and Canadian officials are scrambling to track down the cow’s previous whereabouts and quarantine farms she had been at, yet officials and other "spin doctors" are also working hard to convince us that the food supply is perfectly safe. We have heard repeatedly that since U.S. cattle are slaughtered before they’re symptomatic of the disease (i.e., while still incubating it if they have it), eating them is safe. Do they really not know that it doesn’t work that way? Meanwhile, a Florida man proved that you don’t have to get mad cow disease/ nv CJD in order for a cow to be fatal to you: he hit one with his motorcycle, and died of the impact. The cow had wandered out of a hole in its fence. Rural Florida apparently has trouble with people cutting holes in cow pasture fences to get at the psychedelic mushrooms that grow in cow manure (NY Times, May 6, p. A25).

Other animal foods are also bad, though not necessarily nutritionally. Less than a week after reporting on a deal that the EPA was privately negotiating with large "factory farms" to exempt them from the Clean Air Act and existing Superfund laws, the same paper reported on these "farms" sick neighbors. In Ohio, doctors are diagnosing neighbors of vast hog operations with various severe maladies, probably as a result of exposure to the hog waste lagoons’ poisonous hydrogen sulfide and ammonia gases. The federal government is studiously ignoring these findings, but state officials in both Iowa and North Carolina have begun monitoring levels of the two toxic gases near some hog operations – and finding them dangerously high. Several lawsuits have begun.

Yet another subject surfaced repeatedly this month, in case anyone tries to tell you that eating fish is okay. The NY Times reported on an environmental group’s finding of a 90% reduction in large fish out there to catch over the last few years, while a new book, The Empty Ocean by Richard Ellis, documents the devastation of the seas by modern fishing techniques and also by fish farming (3 pounds of wild-caught fish are killed to grow each pound of farmed fish). There was also a report that farmed salmon have gray rather than pink flesh, and that they were therefore being dyed; a follow-up report mentioned that the companies dyeing them had agreed to reveal this activity in future. Meanwhile, researchers in Hong Kong report that eating seafood with high mercury levels could be linked to human infertility, and researchers in England proved that fish do feel pain when hooked.

There is one bit of good news for animals, though: PETA has partially lifted its boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken after KFC agreed to several of PETA’s demands about how the chickens are kept and killed.

Meanwhile, we should all be aware that even vegetarian food is not always safe. When the EPA found that lettuce irrigated with Colorado River water (in the region where most U.S. lettuce is grown) had dangerously high levels of toxic perchlorate (a rocket fuel), the Bush ad-ministration ordered the EPA to keep quiet about it – but the watchdog organization Environmental Working Group got wind of it and started its own study and publicity campaign. Local lettuce should be okay to eat.

Mostly, however, and in spite of some very peculiar news about the Atkins diet (see Dialog section below), vegetarian food is good for you.

For example, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reports ongoing research in Scotland which found that older women who eat plenty of fruits and vegetables have stronger bones than those who don’t. Delicious! magazine reported on a 12-year study which found that men who ate at least 3 servings of whole grains per day had a 40% lower chance of developing type 2 diabetes. (They also ran an article about how grass-fed beef is much better for you than feedlot grain-fed cattle. Oh, well.) Fresh wild strawberries can help remove plaque and discoloration from teeth (and they come into season this month). Prevention ran an odd article warning people not to become alcoholics in the process of using a glass or two of red wine to help their hearts – but at least the alter-natives to wine that they mentioned were vegetarian, such as eating blueberries to reduce blood vessel inflammation, drinking unfermented purple grape juice for the resveretrol that prevents oxidation of LDL cholesterol , and drinking black tea to encourage healthy blood vessel dilation. There was a small study which found that when you exercise shortly after eating, you burn off monounsaturated fat (like in olive oil) much better than saturated fat (like in animal foods). Prevention also reported on a study of using chili peppers (whether in pill form or hot sauce) to ease indigestion. Yet in a serious instance of cluelessness, they gave a recipe for tacos using soy crumble as a way to eat health-promoting soy – while also including ground beef in the recipe.

A long Prevention article focused on eating well for better and healthier longevity, includeing a nutritional longevity quotient self-test. Most of the top 12 foods it recommended were vegetarian: olive oil; nuts; whole-grain/ high fiber cereal; legumes such as beans, peas, and Peanuts; cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower; cooked tomatoes; oranges; berries; and dark chocolate. Yogurt was recommended as a low-lactose source of calcium and vitamin D (or try dark green leafy veggies and calcium-fortified soy milk or orange juice, and getting a little sun on your skin instead), and salmon was suggested for the omega-3 fatty acids (flax seed oil and dark green leafies are the vegetarian alternative).

Not every vegetarian diet is low-fat, of course, but to the extent that vegetarians avoid fatty meat and equally exciting whole-fat dairy foods, many of us are a bit less prone to obesity than the average American, and this is clearly good health news. One news item reported on a study which confirmed a link between being fat and having a baby with birth defects. Reasons for this were unclear, but researchers speculated that women who were fat during childbearing years might be that way because of a generally lousy diet. Another item reported on a huge American Cancer Society study which found very strong links between being fat and being susceptible to many cancers. In a related matter, PCRM ran an article on foods for surviving prostate cancer after getting it. Their recommendations are to try out a vegan Ornish-type diet, and/or a macro-biotic diet – there are starting to be studies con-firming the benefits of each for this purpose. PCRM’s bottom line for cancer survival: add whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes while avoiding dairy products, meat, eggs, fried foods, and too much fat. Why are we not surprised?

CONNECTIONS

The North American Vegetarian Society has announced its annual Vegetarian Summerfest conference, on August 6-10, at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, PA. If you’re interested, contact NAVS at PO Box 72, Dolgeville, NY 13329 or (518)-568-7970.

As mentioned above, considerable new furor has erupted of late regarding the high-protein, low-carbohydrate meat-and-cheese-heavy Atkins diet.

On the one hand, many people who try it do seem to lose quite a bit of weight quite quickly, and in an increasingly fat nation (especially as more and more is known of the health calamities attendant on being fat), this has a certain clear merit. On the other hand, there has been considerable concern about the effect of all that saturated fat on blood serum cholesterol.

Chuck and I have been particularly personally involved, since our daughter and son-in-law, who are both obese, went on the Atkins diet in January, and are still with it; he has lost 50 pounds and she’s lost about 33. We saw early on that, heaven help us, it actually improved their eating habits! They had to stop eating all refined carbohydrates, including Mike’s 12 cans of Coke per day, and were actually required to eat a very few vegetables, which nonetheless made them eat more veggies than ever before. We’re still absolutely convinced that our low-fat, whole foods, high-complex-carb vegan diet is much better nutrition, yet cannot avoid seeing that cutting out refined carbs and adding a few vegetables actually improved their weight and energy and comfort levels. We did worry about their blood lipids.

But in the past few weeks, two studies were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. A 6-month study of the Atkins diet and a 1-year study both found that Atkins’ dieters’ weight loss was just marginally greater than regular calorie-counting, low-fat dieters’ loss, while Atkins dieters actually had improvements in their triglycerides and good HDL cholesterol – and our daughter herself experienced both these blood-lipid effects in addition to her substantial and continuing weight loss. Yet on the other hand, PCRM reported on a single case of a girl who put herself on an unsupervised low-carb, high-protein diet and died, apparently of electrolyte imbalance. The commoner effect of such diets is that as soon as people lapse at all they tend to gain the weight right back. The belief, in fact, is that the Atkins diet’s fat fills one up and takes longer to digest, so what actually happens is a reduction of calories – which can be managed in other ways. Simple portion control works for me. And while these two new studies seem to have found some advantages in the Atkins diet, it was acknowledged that they were quite short, with many participants dropping out, and that more and much longer follow-up studies are needed.