May 2006

GREETINGS

First, my apologies for this issue being a tad latish. Getting home from vacation seems to throw everything off for weeks while one catches up. Fortunately for MARV, I don’t go on vacation that often.

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sunday, May 7, 5 PM, regular potluck at the Friends’ Meeting House, 3224 N. Gordon Pl. in Riverwest (from Humboldt Blvd., go east on Auer a few short blocks to the parking lot).

Theme will be a vegan chocolate-chip cookie contest, but hopefully some people will bring entrée food as well (or even instead)!

Other Veg-Friendly Potlucks

I have not heard about a possible May macrobiotic potluck. People who might know are Pat (414) 964-9759 or Jean (414) 265-2366.

There will be a raw foods potluck on Saturday, May 27 (Memorial Day weekend) if enough people call the Cloughertys by Thursday night May 25 to register their interest -- the phone number is (414) 355-7383.

QUOTES OF THE MONTH

According to vegetarianism-promoting Dr. Willet: “As far as building strong bones, don’t drink milk – just take the cow for a walk.”

From the introduction to a Delicious Living article on “vegetarian dinners even a meat-eater will love”: “It’s now common knowledge that vegetarian eating is one of the most nutrient-rich diet choices you can make. Nowadays people from all walks of life are cutting down on or eliminating meat and other animal foods. And vegetarian tastes have come a long way since the days of plain salads and bean loaf. Using seasonal produce and fresh herbs combined with a variety of whole grains, pasta, soyfoods, and exotic spices yields vibrant combinations of flavor, texture, and color – enough to please any gourmand.”

NEWS

The latest mad cow news is the identification of a fifth Canadian cow with the disease, a six-year-old dairy cow from British Columbia; this is the second Canadian case in a cow born after feeding practices were started that were meant to prevent the illness. But we’re promised that no part of this animal entered the food chain, so everything is okay. At the same time, Wisconsin State Farmer reports on an effort to eradicate scrapie, the sheep version of this persistent disease, by 2010 – how they plan to do this was not explained.

Problems with meat are not only about mad cow disease. Wisconsin State Farmer reported on tests showing high salmonella rates at ground turkey plants in Wisconsin and Minnesota. A different article acknowledged that food safety is in such a bad state that efforts need to be made to educate food processors and sellers about keeping consumers safe; a separate report about a rapid test for salmonella promises to reduce meat and produce recalls – but none of these measures does anything to prevent the salmonella from being on the food in the first place. Yet the NY Times reported that cheap burgers, not salads, have revived McDonalds’ sales. Go figure.

Bird flu, which is still about people raising poultry for food, remains an issue. A dead swan in Britain was found to have died of it, while on the Nile delta poor people who rely on their little flocks are refusing to believe that they have a problem or cooperate with slaughter efforts. A baby died of it in Indonesia, amid uncertainty as to how she could have contracted the disease –a situation of concern, since the only way bird flu could become a human epidemic is if human-to-human trans-mission should become possible. Yet the Bush administration’s recently released bird flu epidemic plans do not seem to involve actually preventing a pandemic if one should start.

Eating animal foods remains environmentally as well as nutritionally bad, as witness a NY Times article about extending a ban on Caspian Sea caviar (sturgeon eggs) and sturgeon as part of the effort to keep that species going.

A New England Journal of Medicine study reported that calcium and vitamin D supplements did not lower bone fracture risk; it seems that stopping smoking, being physically active, reducing salt intake, and avoiding animal protein make a difference that supplementation alone does not. Nor does dairy help in weight loss: analysis of a recent study on milk indicated that other lifestyle factors than drinking milk were what made the difference for the men whose diet and weight loss were studied.

In the area of food controversy, the Cornucopia Institute is suing the USDA over its alleged failure to enforce organic standards now that we have some. And there are issues over palm oil, which many manufacturers are turning to as a substitute for trans-fatty acids. The problem is that a fair percentage of the palm oil comes from turning tropical forest in Malaysia and Indonesia into palm plantations, to the devastation of the animals who live there. Center for Science in the Public Interest is now running ads stating that orangutans are dying for your cookies. Further, Newman-O’s, an organic oreo substitute, are one of CSPI’s targets, to the wrath of Paul Newman who insists that the palm oil in his cookies comes from sustainable plantations in orangutan-free Columbia (where palm plantations are promoted as an alternative to coca). So the Newman-O’s are probably politically and environmentally correct – but given palm oil’s levels of saturated fat, they’re still not good for you. Chocolate is another subject for controversy, despite its new nutritional acceptability. Global Exchange and the International Labor Rights Fund, are suing Nestle, Cargill, and ADM, charging them with aiding and abetting child slave labor on West African cocoa plantations. If you want guilt-free chocolate, buy “fair trade” and organic.

And in a sad note for us all, South Africa’s Advertising Standards Authority has determined that eating beans does tend to give a person intestinal gas, and an ad may say so.

Minimizing meat and dairy is good for your brain: a study found that a Mediterranean diet (cereals, legumes, fruits, vegetables, olive oil, a little fish and alcohol, and very little meat or dairy) seemed to protect people from developing Alzheimer’s.

And there is good news about purely plant food diets. A Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine review looked at 87 studies on vegetarian diets and body weight and found that vegan diets can produce healthy weight loss even without additional exercise or calorie-counting. One reason may be their higher in-take of fiber-rich and thus filling whole foods; another may be that a vegan diet increases insulin sensitivity so that nutrients are likelier to be burned for energy than converted to fat.

Garlic, prized for healing for thousands of years, still works, with research demonstrating antimicrobial, antioxident, cholesterol-lowering, and blood-clot preventing properties when used chopped and raw; it can also help keep arteries elastic. Pomegranate juice, meanwhile, can increase blood flow to the heart. Delicious Living featured bok choy as its veggie of the month, citing its vitamin C, folacin, calcium, and fiber, as well as its cabbage-family anti-cancer properties. The Outpost Exchange, however, chose asparagus as the month’s star, with its delicious dose of folacin, vitamin C, other B vitamins, potassium, and fiber, while Prevention mentioned baby beets for their good antioxidents as well as fiber, vitamin C, and folacin.

According to Prevention, eating potassium-rich fruits and vegetables, plus avoiding salt, saturated (= animal) fat, and excessive alcohol and cholesterol, helps ward off high blood pres-sure. A Roswell Park Cancer Institute study found significant cancer protection from eating more than 10 servings of fruit per week. Mean-while, heart disease can be fought by eating carotenoid-rich vegetables and fruits (red, orange, yellow, and dark green ones), though the study cited in Prevention found that you need eight per day to lower the heart disease marker called C-reactive protein. Osteoarthritis, in another study, was found to correlate with low selenium levels; get your selenium from nuts and seeds, and also whole grains.

DIALOG

This is a NY Times Letter to the Editor which I quote here in its entirety, because I couldn’t have put it better myself:

To the Editor:

Re “Firefighters Gone Vegan? Even Austin is Impressed”:

Cancer made me a widow at age 33 and robbed my 4-year-old and 1-year-old of their daddy.

While there are many factors that cause cancer and other serious, often terminal, health problems, diet is a big factor and one that we can control.

Study after study links the consumption of animal products (dairy products, eggs, and meat) with heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure, obesity and other serious health problems.

The Agriculture Department has acknowledged an 80 percent increase in the number of chickens contaminated with salmonella.

Government warnings advise that eating certain fish can cause mercury poisoning.

Then there are mad cow disease, growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and now bird flu to worry about.

Bravo to the Austin, Tex. vegan firefighters for choosing to improve their health with every delicious meal.

May we all choose to stop killing ourselves slowly with our food before it’s too late, not to mention causing unimaginable suffering to billions of animals on factory farms and at slaughterhouses.

-- Monica Ball, Peoria, Illinois

Delicious Living did an interesting article on raw foods, pointing out that the raw foods diet has both passionate advocates and detractors. And since raw foodists are certainly one kind of vegetarian, it seemed appropriate to share the debate in these pages.

Regarding nutrients, raw food proponents claim that cooking destroys a large fraction of the vitamins, minerals and even protein in food – and indeed, some studies show that eating more raw vegetables and fruits provides extra cancer protection over cooked (as well as helping lower cholesterol and triglycerides). On the other hand, some nutrients are actually more bioavailable after cooking, such as cabbage’s heat-sensitive but very abundant vitamin C, and lycopene – and how could cooking destroy minerals, which are not heat-sensitive? As for digestibility, again raw food advocates feel that the enzymes in raw foods helps to digest them and prevent constipation, while cooked food supporters point out that some foods, such as dried beans and unsprouted grains, are only digestible when cooked, and that a healthy diet including cooked food should not be constipating. Raw foodists feel that eating raw foods can rid the diet of the toxins found in hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and so on, while their opponents point out that any organic diet does that. Each side claims that its diet is more convenient. And different healing traditions view the raw foods diet in widely differing ways.