May 2004

This time my excellent excuse for getting this to you at the last minute is that several pieces of information that I needed to read and digest and include all arrived in the mail yesterday, just as I was getting ready to start writing. So the need to be up-to-date delayed composition by a day. I expect to still get this out in time for you to read it before the potluck on Sunday.

Although Chuck and I missed the April potluck, we are informed that there was a good turnout, with a couple of farmers there to talk about the joys and pleasures of Community Supported Agriculture as well as brochures from five or six different local CSAs. This sounds very successful; should we do a CSA-focus potluck each Spring in future?

Folks, right now is when we need to start lining up a site for this Fall’s Pre-Thanksgiving Feast! The question remains: do we try again for the very pretty but quite expensive South Shore Park Pavilion? Or do we find a different and cheaper site that has a kitchen, can accommodate around 200 people, and allows us to bring in food? And if the latter, where? Any ideas? Feedback? Come to the next potluck and/or phone us at (414) 962-2703, or email us at chuckgyver@aol.com!!

Another opportunity for doing some sort of publicity-generating event would be if we did something for World Vegetarian Day, an annual event on October 1. Again, if anyone has any ideas, now would be the time to discuss it.

We have not heard anything from anyone about the Eating For Peace Veg-A-Thon that I mentioned before, and time is getting short on that. If anyone is interested, come to the pot-luck or contact us.

Sunday, May 2, 5:30, 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). Focus will be a 77-minute video, "Peaceable Kingdom," about Farm Sanctuary, which will start at 7 PM in a separate room adjacent to the potluck room.

Subsequent regular potlucks will be at the same place and time on June 6, Aug. 1, and Sept. 5, with a different time and venue for our July 4 potluck, which will be a holiday potluck picnic at David and Jody’s place in South Milwaukee across from the park, and therefore with an option of watching the holiday fire-works later in the evening.

There will be no macro potluck in May. We’ll let you know about June.

"Diets rich in fiber and complex carbohydrates, found in fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains, have been shown in a wide array of studies to be associated with longevity, lasting weight control, reduced risk of cancer, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, reduced risk of diabetes, reduced risk of gastrointestinal disorders and overall health promotion. In other words, the notion of cutting carbs is a step in the opposite direction from everything we know about healthful eating."

-- Dr. David Katz of the Yale School of Public Health, quoted in the 5/3/04 Time magazine

Bad news about animal foods this month included continued attention to mad cow disease, although nothing new came to light. The Hightower Lowdown and the publication of the environmental group Friends of the Earth both reviewed the issue and concluded that: All cattle should be tested. All downer animals should be kept out of the food supply (and human consumption in drug and cosmetic ingredients). There should be no feeding of any animal products to any food animals. There should be required reporting (and better diagnosis) of all human brain-wasting diseases. If people are going to eat meat, they should eat organic and "grass-fed-only." And the government is not mandating these measures, and ought to be. Stay tuned.

I was startled by a news article warning of upcoming surges in vision ailments like cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy. For all were described as related to advancing age – yet both macular degeneration and type 2 diabetes are directly related not to age but to the effects over time of bad diet! "Age-related" macular degeneration is prevented by a diet high in dark green leafy vegetables, while even people predisposed to diabetes can prevent it by exercise plus a diet that minimizes fat and sugar while maximizing high-fiber carbohydrates and protein and low-glycemic index vegetables and fruits. Okay, there’s a danger of vision problems, but a good vegetarian diet can help avoid them.

Another bad-food report was a newspaper story finally stating that the attempt to save wild fish stocks through fish-farming has back-fired badly, since the farmed fish are fed on wild-caught fish, thus making the problem worse instead of better.

Fish live in water, and water is in the news again. Delicious Living magazine had a piece about how much water people should drink. Its conclusions: don’t wait to get thirsty before taking liquids, and do drink more when exercising. But you can get some of your water from fruits, vegetables, soups, and non-water drinks like milks, teas, and juices, and you should find your own level of need, since some people need more than 8 glasses a day while others really need less, and getting too much water is as bad as not getting enough.

An interesting piece about butter versus margarine arrived via email. It pointed out that butter is really better for you than margarine, which is high in heart-dangerous trans-fats, and chemically very similar to plastic. If you do not want to eat butter – which is after all an animal product – you should use oils such as olive, canola, flaxseed, and hemp seed oil, rather than margarine. A Prevention article also warned that nuts are good, but nuts doctored up with hydrogenated-oil-containing flavorings are full of bad trans-fatty acids and should be shunned.

There were also reports about the continuing debate over cholesterol in the blood and what should be done about it. Issues include what really are safe levels of blood cholesterol, and concerns about the safety and effectiveness of using statin drugs to control it. None of the news reports even mentioned that one can exert considerable control over one's blood cholesterol level by dietary means alone. Yet avoid-ing cholesterol-containing foods (i.e., meat and dairy) is completely free of bad side-effects.

Meanwhile, what makes up a healthy diet continues to be controversial. As suggested by our Quote of the Month, Time magazine did a big article on the low-carb craze; although it focused on reporting the scope of the fad, it did include some reporting on nutritionists’ hand-wringing over it.

And there were seriously contradictory recent reports about soy. On one hand, Delicious Living mentioned research that shows soy to have both antioxident and anti-skin-cancer properties, while Organic Gardening magazine did an article on soybeans that described edamame (whole green soybeans) as not just an easy-to-grow, soil-building vegetable, but full of essential amino acids, dietary fiber, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, vitamin C, and folate. On the other hand, the usually very credible Mothering magazine had a major anti-soy article, representing the stuff as positively dangerous. The author is a nutritionist who must have seen people with problems from soy, but she seemed to me to be rather overstating the anti-soy case. She does cite sound research showing some problems: soy-based infant formula may really interrupt normal reproductive development; animal studies (sounder human ones being unethical) suggest a possible link between women who binge on soyfoods during pregnancy and babies who have reproductive-tract abnormalities; people with low thyroid function may find that eating lots of soy worsens the problem. And of course, some people are allergic to soy, and eating it in the many products in which it is a hidden ingredient can be disastrous for them. It’s also true that some soy-based meat-substitutes are full of sugar, salt, and chemicals, though not all, as she implies. But she asserts that the amount of soy that Asians really eat is miniscule, which just does not tally with observation. My feeling, in short, is that she does offer some sound warn-ings regarding reproduction, but that for most people, eating a few soy servings a week does not seem to be particularly dangerous. And the author’s credibility would have been enhanced if her attitude had been more judicious.

Then there are the many uncontroversial ways in which vegetarian foods are good for you. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran an article on the general agreement among nutritionists that people should eat more fiber, found in raw fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans, and whole grains; in addition, Prevention magazine reports that diets high in soluble fiber (found in oats and beans) can help lower blood cholesterol. Delicious Living’s featured vegetable this month is dandelion greens, a dark green leafy high in calcium, fiber, beta-carotene (vita-min A’s precursor), vitamin C, and iron. Find them in stores like the Outpost, or in your lawn – but ONLY if you know that lawn has not been poisoned with herbicides!! A news article on the possibility that vitamin E may help pre-vent bladder cancer mentioned almonds, pep-pers, spinach, sunflower seeds, and healthy oils as good sources, while Prevention recommended both vitamin E and vitamin C as helping prevent strokes; this article listed wheat germ, almonds, sunflower seeds, and sunflower and safflower oils as vitamin E sources and named red bell peppers, kiwifruits, oranges, brussels sprouts, and strawberries as particularly good vitamin C sources. A news article examined health claims for Guinness beer and actually confirmed them: it is low in calories and carbohydrates, and lower than many brews in alcohol, yet loaded with heart-healthy anti-oxidents and B vitamins (Chuck is so happy).

Another Prevention item mentioned the benefits of magnesium for the heart, listing peanut butter, broccoli, and bananas among the good sources of it. A different article looked at dietary means for preventing prostate cancer and came up with nuts, garlic and onions, green tea, red and orange vegetables including tomato sauce, freshly ground flax seed, foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids such as dark green leafy vegetables, and by golly, soy foods.

CONNECTIONS

We noticed in the newspaper a reference to a vegetarian website that comes out of Los Angeles and includes recipes, vegetarian book reviews, and other information. If you want to check it out, click here.

And in a reprise of a reference we’ve made before, John and Jean Clougherty are still hosting monthly raw foods potlucks. You can phone them at the Art of Living Center, (414) 357-6200. Or, it is just possible that they may come to our own potluck coming up on May 2, in which case we would be able to meet them in person.

There are times when I get really tired of trying to sort out all the contradictory dietary advice and conflicting regimens different people advocate. Low-carb or vegan? Eat soy or shun soy? Raw foods or cooked foods? Eat honey rather than sugar because it is a natural whole food with beneficial enzymes, or avoid honey because it is an animal product and bees may have been "collateral damage" (i.e, accidentally dead) in the process of collecting it? Be a purist, never allowing a slip from whatever standard one sets, or give oneself a little slack and seek moderation in one’s eating habits? What approaches are really healthful, and where amid all the possibilities should one draw one’s lines, and how firmly?

Adding to the mess is the fact that different approaches seem to work for different people or at different times. Chuck went from fat to fit by eating a low-fat vegan diet, yet our daughter and son-in-law have lost 190 pounds between them on a high-animal-food Atkins diet. I myself trust whole foods more than processed ones, and I know that meat-analog soyfoods are pretty processed – but soy does help cool the hot flashes. There are people for whom any sugar wreaks havoc with their metabolism, and others whose bodies don’t seem to notice whether they eat sugar or not – and I myself have no problem with it, unless I’m fighting off a cold, in which case sugar paralyzes my immune system while honey is fine….

Perhaps the fact that different diets work for different people at different times should give us a clue – and perhaps the answer is that no single way of eating is so right that all others are wrong.

What foods we enjoy and which we find icky will affect our choices. Food allergies or lack of same must make a difference. Whether we are pregnant or menopausal – and whether a particular woman’s menopausal symptoms are helped by soy or not – will affect her choices. Whether we are motivated by humane issues or environmental ones or health matters dictates certain options.