July 2008

GREETINGS

Welcome to Summer! -- that wonderful time when fresh vegetables and fruits make being vegetarian especially easy and tasty and fun. Not to mention that this time of year we Wisconsinites can finally get fresh produce which is local, and therefore fresher and tastier and, if you shop right, cheaper than in the grocery stores. And these days, cheaper is starting to mean something…

M.A.R.V. ACTVITIES

Sunday, July 6, 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 corn. Bring a corn dish or whatever else you choose.

Other veg-friendly meetings

The July macrobiotic potluck will be at the Strampes’ place on Sunday, July 20 at 2 PM – note the different time. Address is S63W15025 College Ave. in Muskego. Phone 414-422-1370 to confirm and coordinate.

The Urban Ecology Center’s vegetarian potluck should be on Thursday, July 17, at 6:30 PM at 1500 E. Park Pl. – bring plate and fork as well as a meatless dish. Phone 414-964-8505 to confirm or get directions.

QUOTES OF THE MONTH

“Mary had a little lamb,/ And when she saw it sicken,/ She shipped it off to Packingtown/ And now it’s labeled chicken.”

-- 1906 ditty regarding the need for regulating food safety – which is, alas, still relevant

“Most Americans, like Koreans, understand that testing for mad cow could save lives – and they’d like to have that option.”

“Salmon is imperiled. So stop eating it. At least for a while.”

NEWS

It has become an international incident, and threatened to topple the government of South Korea. The new South Korean administration attempted to improve relations with the U.S. by, among other things, resuming the importation of U.S. beef which had been halted some years ago due to the discovery of mad cow disease in U.S. cattle. But this proposed measure became the focus of such widespread demonstrations against it that the government could not ignore them and is now seeking to revise its agreement. Furthermore, part of the backlash has been to put the issue back in the news here, with newspaper op-ed articles suggesting that the FDA really should be testing all slaughtered cattle rather than about one per thousand – or at least allowing that to be done by those cattlemen who want to. The FDA has in any case been losing credibility steadily of late, as food contamination keeps cropping up in the news. Most recently we’ve heard about salmonella on fresh tomatoes, which sickened at least 383 people in 30 states. The suspect tomatoes may have been grown in Florida or Mexico. Do we need better regulation and inspection, or a switch to more local and seasonal eating habits? Or both?

In other bad animal food news, a Healthwise article pointed out that seafood, especially bigger, older fish higher on the food chain (such as tuna) is the leading source of mercury in the diet. And bird flu is still with us: two human deaths were reported in Indonesia, and Hong Kong ordered all the poultry in its markets killed after the disease showed up in four of the markets’ birds.

Generally speaking, the world is beginning to notice a multifaceted food crisis in progress. Mexican food manufacturers have promised to freeze prices on over 150 products so that people can still afford to eat. The UN had a big meeting in Rome which laid out the measures needed to increase global food security, with an estimated cost of $30 billion per year and an urgency in getting started. Weather disturbances in the U.S. threaten to destroy this year’s crops, for which farmers had such hopes of good prices due to the increased demand for grains for biofuels. And while there is now a backlash against that measure, the Bush administration continues to push for it.

At the same time, the decimation of the seas is becoming increasingly clear. This month saw a report about the collapse of some shark populations in the Mediterranean, while the Pacific salmon populations are in very bad shape now as well. For that matter, water itself is becoming an issue to worry about, with drought in Spain leading to conflicts over water rights there. Perhaps it’s a good thing that there is beginning to be a recognition that guzzling 8 glasses of water per day is probably not usually necessary for health. Yes, you need to stay hydrated, but fruits, vegetables, soups, and other liquids can do the job without dragging bottles of water around with you.

In light of the above, it’s nice to also be able to report some hopeful signs. An Outpost Exchange article on cutting one’s carbon footprint did name eating more locally, and eating less meat as two of its four tactics. A NY Times food section’s lead article was on strategies for eating less meat, including: forget the protein thing; buy less meat and more vegetables, and learn new ways to prepare the veggies; get the meat out of the center of the plate; make non-meat items as convenient as meat with a bit of preplanning. Wisconsin State Farmer reported that U.S. red meat production will decline in 2009. And yet another NY Times op-ed article pointed out that cheap bananas are a result of unsustainable and anti-human-rights corporatization of that product, and dared to suggest that bananas could and should return to the status of the rare exotic tropical fruits that they really are. And then there was the news that PETA has endorsed the growing of meat in vats, a process in which cells taken from animals are grown in labs; this can be done without harming animals (but would have to get a whole lot cheaper and less energy-intensive to be viable).

Various liquids are turning out to be beneficial in various ways. For those who do drink milk, a new study found that organic milk from pasture-fed cows has higher levels of good fats and other nutrients than feedlot cows’ milk –and are better for the environment and nicer for the cows. The Whole Foods magazine ran an article about coffee and tea, reiterating that both are high in antioxidents, and that coffee also contains B vitamins and some minerals, making both distinctly healthy items to indulge in (but not so much that you get jittery). And some new research suggests a possibility that the pytochemical resveretrol, found in red wine, may help people live longer by triggering the same tissue-preserving function that occurs in some species whose caloric intake is cut.

If you do live longer (whether through wine-drinking or not), it will be good to know about a different recent study which found that people who eat lots of fruits and vegetables, which produce an alkaline residue, preserved lean muscle mass much better as they aged than people eating the typical American diet which is high in animal protein and white flour (which have acidic residue).

Another article addressed diet and eyesight. Age-related macular degeneration, for example, is combated by eating the antioxidents lutein and zeaxanthin, found in egg yolks and leafy green vegetables. And eating vitamin C sources – which are fresh fruits and veggies – can help protect against cataracts. Vitamin C was also the subject of a Healthwise article, which pointed out that people who eat high-produce/ high vitamin C diets have fewer strokes and less heart disease than those who don’t; in addition, eating foods with vitamin C – but not taking supplements – correlates with a lower cancer risk and less body fat.

Prevention magazine ran an item about anti-oxidents in beverages; the top ten included red wine and green and white tea, and seven fruit juices: pomegranate, concord grape, blueberry, black cherry, acai, cranberry, and orange. Whole fruits have fiber and additional food value as well, but clearly unsweetened juices are good to drink. Another article gave tips for how to cook / prepare foods so as to maximize their nutrition. One tip was to cook tomatoes, to raise the levels of available lycopene. Another was to crush garlic and then let it sit awhile before cooking in order to activate the compounds that protect the heart. Steaming broccoli raises levels of some beneficial compounds in it while frying and other cooking techniques decrease them. Watermelon should be stored at room temperature for up to 5 days to increase its beta-carotene content. And leafy greens should be paired with healthy fats (salad oil or avocado). Another article pointed out that even if you don’t manage to eat ideally, you still get plenty of benefits from getting some amounts of good foods. Thus the “gold standard” for fruit-and-vegetable servings may be 9 per day, but you get a lot of good if you only manage at least 5. For staying hydrated, good enough is probably to have liquid with meals and drink when thirsty. And you probably don’t have to worry about overlarge portions of vegetables and fruits.

DIALOG

Chuck and I saw a DVD lecture about the march of a Greek army in Persia in 400 BC, whose 10,000 or 14,000 fighters were accompanied by camp followers, servants to carry the armor, engineers, armourers, herders of meat animals for the midday meal, bakers, traders (to exchange loot for money) – so the whole procession amounted to some 50,000 people, and could not travel faster than the slowest ox-cart. So the enemy had time to assemble his army, and we know about the whole thing through the account of the retreat that one of the 10,000 (a guy named Xenophon) wrote.

Only a couple of centuries later, in contrast, the Roman legions were renowned for their speed, which contributed significantly to their many military successes. Part of the source of this speed was that the legions ate frugally, carrying in their packs the whole-wheat-and-honey waybread that they could live on for days at a time. Yup – the Roman legions conquered most of their known world on a basically vegetarian diet…

This advantage of lighter and leaner over well-appointed and cumbersome strikes me as a kind of metaphor for the world situation today. Our expectations and economy have come to demand a lot of stuff. We all want ready transportation, which all depends on oil, and computers and cell phones, and central air conditioning, and golf courses – and food that’s literally higher off the hog: strawberries in December, but also a world demand for meat that is growing fast as more people climb out of poverty and more people continue to be born. And this creates a ponderous and most unsustainable burden for Earth’s ecosystems. Like the march of Xenophon’s 10,000.

In contrast, some have already envisioned a different model, one leaner and lighter on its feet, more like the Roman legions. It involves fuel efficiency and clean fuels and public transportation and energy conservaton; fewer possessions and more time spent with each other; environmental preservation and restoration; it involves eating more locally and seasonally, and lower on the food chain.

Eating less or no meat and other animal foods dovetails with this sustainable-future vision in every direction. The fossil fuel spent in growing and transporting grain to feedlots drops off, as does the greenhouse-gas emissions of the food animals. The environmental havoc made by the pesticides and fertilizers dumped on feed-grain crops diminishes, helping water and wildlife begin recovering. Not eating fish helps restoration of the oceans; ceasing to clearcut rainforest for cattle raising helps conserve those crucial environments. And of course, feeding beans and grains to people directly, instead of running them through animals first, greatly multiplies the amount of food available, to the extent that hunger could be eliminated.