October 2006

GREETINGS

It is now definite: we have reserved Saturday, Nov. 18 as the day of our PreThanksgiving Feast, to be held in the same place as the last couple of years, Unity Evangelical Church on E. Oklahoma Ave. Volunteer sign-ups are continuing to trickle in, but we still need a couple of kitchen crew people, plus three dishwashers and three cleanup people: great jobs for folks who just want to show up and eat and then, while they’re there anyway, pitch in a bit. Join the fun! Phone me (Louise) at (414) 962-2703 or Jody at (414) 764-7262 to volunteer, and/or come to the October potluck. The people we hear from first will get the first choices from among those remaining jobs!

Another reason to come to the October potluck anyway is that we will make it a World Vegetarian Day party (since it falls on Oct. 1 which is World Vegetarian Day), and a good time will be had by all. Unfortunately, this seems to be (again) the only thing we’re doing to observe the day. If anyone out there has any ideas about how we could use the occasion for further publicizing vegetarianism, tell us by phone or email (chuckgyver@ispwest.com ) or at the next meeting! Don’t be shy!

M.A.R.V. ACTIVITIES

Sunday, Oct. 1, 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 our World Vegetarian Day party.

Subsequent regular potluck will be Nov. 5.

Other Veg-Friendly Potlucks

There will not be a macrobiotic potluck in October. Watch this space for future info.

The Urban Ecology Center’s monthly vegetarian potluck will be on Thursday, Oct. 19 at 6:30 PM at 1500 E, Park Pl., just south of Locust St. and east of N. Oakland Ave. Phone (414) 964-8505.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“Indeed, this epidemic [of e. coli poisonings from contaminated spinach] … probably has little to do with the folks who grow and package your greens. The detective trail ultimately leads back to a seemingly unrelated food industry – beef and dairy cattle… California’s spinach industry is now the financial victim of an outbreak it probably did not cause, and meanwhile, thousands of acres of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of e. coli-ridden cattle manure.”

NEWS

The biggest bad food news as I write this is clearly the outbreak of food poisonings from e. coli-contaminated bagged spinach. It started a couple of weeks ago when people started getting sick from eating bagged ready-to-use spinach from three different counties in California’s Central Coast. At this point, the investigations are still going on, bagged spinach is still not found on any grocery shelf, and the latest news is that farmers are pledging to take steps to prevent future outbreaks. There does at least seem to be a recognition that spinach and lettuce do not in themselves breed e. coli, which is only found in mammal digestive systems, and that the problem can only be solved by addressing the issue of how the cow manure got onto so many veggies.

Another much-less-publicized problem with animal food was the discovery at the end of August of two more Canadian cases of mad cow disease, an older beef cow and a 4-year-old dairy cow. Both were possibly infected through contaminated feed. In a related matter, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture officials have withdrawn the proposed rules for dealing with chronic wasting disease (the deer and elk version of mad cow disease) which should have taken effect in July, after hearing objections to them from veterinarians and state officials; there is now more time for public comment and hope for a new set of rules to go into effect this Fall.

A NY Times food column pointed out that Canada’s mad cow cases ought to trigger implementation of rules requiring country-of-origin labeling for meat – but meat industry giants are doing all they can to delay such labeling, which was supposed to have started this month. Other delightful tidbits in her article were that Ben and Jerry’s has agreed to stop using eggs from a supplier accused by the Humane Society of abusing its hens, and that the Food and Drug Administration has given permission to spray certain uncooked and bacteria-harboring deli meats with viruses that are supposed to kill the bacterias. The FDA says that the viruses will be safe to eat. And a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that (gasp) soda is fattening. Prevention magazine went further, running a whole article describing soda as the culprit in raising diabetes risk and damaging bones and teeth as well as widening girths. This makes the full-page newspaper ads I’ve seen, in which soft-drink corporate giants attempt to convince us that they are working hard to make schools more nutritious places, a bit less convincing…

Bird flu is still out there. Indonesia, the country hit hardest by human bird flu cases, is planning to vaccinate 300 million birds; on the other hand, some Michigan swans who had flu were tested and found not to have the worrisome strain of it.

Eating fish is getting scarier. A NY Times item reported that the output from fish farms is now approaching the amount of fish taken by fishing boats –and noted that this is a problem, not a solution, since fish farms use wild-caught fish for feed and therefore help decrease wild fish populations rather than conserving them. A different fish story reported on Potomac River fish who are showing sexual irregularities, with male fish acquiring female characteristics – an indication of multiple forms of pollution in the river (and the fish flesh).

There was other news about problems with supplies of good vegan water. One was a water shortage in the British Columbian town of Tofino that is so severe that this tourist town had to shut down its tourist industry. The other was a Wisconsin Attorney General’s ruling that the town of Richfield can protect its water sources through zoning rules even when they conflict with statewide DNR regulations of drinking water supplies.

Another vegan food substance, salt, is becoming controversial. On one hand, huge amounts of it are found in most prepared and packaged foods, because people have a taste for it and so such products sell better. On the other hand, so much evidence now shows how the high-salt diets most of us eat contribute to dangerous and even deadly high blood pressure that the AMA is urging the FDA to stop describing salt as “generally regarded as safe” – and limit its use.

In spite of everything, though, there remains much good news about plant foods.

Wisconsin State Farmer reported on new interest by farmers in growing non-traditional fruits that might be desirable to non-main-stream buyers, such as European black currant, aronia, fruiting rose (for the hips), and June berry/ serviceberry, as well as plants like alpine strawberry, lingonberry, persimmon, medlar, sea berry, and pawpaw. It would be a while before trees planted now would start bearing crops, but I was excited: I landscape with June berry and am trying to grow pawpaws because I can’t get them commercially.

Delicious Living featured figs as being in season this month, noting their abundant fiber, potassium, and calcium. The magazine also mentioned that the essential fatty acids in dark green leafies and whole grains are good for your hair as well as central nervous system, and ran an article discussing the nutritional marvels of tomatoes: vitamin C, B vitamins, beta-caro-tene that turns into vitamin A, iron, phosphorus, and fiber, as well as the cancer-fighting carotenoid lycopene – which may also fight age-related macular degeneration and lung damage due to environmental pollutants. What luck that tomatoes and tomato sauce taste good!

Prevention offered many pleasant tidbits as well. One was that women in a German study who ate the most grains and greens lowered their risk of breast cancer. Similarly, a University of North Carolina study found that eating red, dark green, and gold-colored fruits and vegetables, along with tea and red wine, lowered the risk of both breast and ovarian cancers.

Another study indicated that drinking 4 to 6 cups of coffee per day – either regular or decaf – lowered the risk of type 2 diabetes. And avoiding being overweight also helps prevent diabetes, so eating beans is good: legume lovers, according to Prevention, eat less total and saturated fat plus significantly more fiber than bean-phobes. The article also listed which beans are best for different nutrients: pintos for selenium, kidney beans for fiber, white beans for iron and potassium, black beans for magnesium, chickpeas for folate, and black-eyed peas for calcium.

Sometimes food can be medicine. For the 30% of ulcer sufferers who are not cured by a round of antibiotics, eating yogurt or soy yogurt with plenty of probiotic active cultures can make the difference between a second round of antibiotics working or not. And magnesium-rich foods eaten early in life can benefit the heart later on. Foods listed as rich in magnesium include pumpkin and sunflower seeds, spinach, almonds, cashews, pine nuts, peanuts, artichokes, soy milk, and brown rice, as well as yogurt.

CONNECTIONS

The MARV website is changing. The new one is www.marveg.org; the old address, http://marveg.tripod.com, will be maintained concurrently for a limited time.

Our own Wanda and Mohan Embar are starting a playgroup for vegetarian kids. “Veggiekids” is a noncommercial, informal, unstructured, parent-run Milwaukee-area play group where vegetarian and vegan parents and children can play, interact, and forge bonds together. Their first meeting will be our upcoming Oct. 1 MARV potluck; for more information, come to the October potluck or visit their website: www.veggiekids.info.

DIALOG

This month’s Prevention ran an interesting article trying to evaluate conflicting information on the relative safety and usefulness of several foods: fish, coffee, eggs, wine, and soy.

Coffee, for example, has lots of antioxidents; it helps mental alertness and may help protect from diabetes and save drinkers’ livers. Yet it can easily create insomnia and jitters, and may be a problem for people with heartburn and gasroesophageal reflux disease.

Wine, beer, and liquor in modest amounts are linked to lowering heart disease and improved cognitive function in older women, and the resveratrol in red wine may be cancer-protective, but alcohol is also linked to slightly higher cancer rates and is easy to abuse.

Soy may be dangerous for people with certain breast cancers, and does not seem to be a panacea, nor are isolated isoflavones or highly processed products good for you. Yet whole soy foods are a great source of protein, fiber, vitamins, and good fats, making it a lot healthier than animal foods – and perfectly safe unless you have an estrogen-sensitive cancer.

Eggs provide super nutrition but also loads of cholesterol, while fish have those good omega-3 essential fatty acids as well as nasty mercury, PCBs, and other pollutants (and you can get the EFAs elsewhere).