Happy World Vegetarian Day!
Now get out there and spread the vegetarian message!
News, recipes, and opinions for the vegetarian community.
The American Institute for Cancer Research provides "Nutrition Notes" for MSNBC.com, so it's no surprise that this article points out that high consumption of vegetables reduces risk of cancer by a profound percentage, and that high dairy consumption increases risk. That noted, fish still comes out ahead, along with the following foods that fight disease:
Cycling News
The World Vegetarian Day celebration in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Sunday, October 1, will see the official launch of OrganicAthlete, an all-vegan elite cycling team. The team will race a full road season next year with a strong emphasis on California-based events, culminating in the Elite National Championships in July, 2007.Thanks to all the sponsors, and best wishes to the team.
The team’s roster consists of one woman, professional mountain bike and cyclo-cross racer Sami Fournier, and three elite men, Bradley Saul, Justin Lucke and Benjamin Lyon. Fournier will also be representing the team as an elite rider on the road. The team’s major sponsors include a number of green companies including Tour d’Organics, New Harvest Organics and VegNews. The team’s bicycles will be serviced by Mill Valley Cycleworks, an all-vegan bike shop.
Just when you thought all the veg stories were getting rosy... Along comes this article from Germany's The Raw Story.
Wisker stressed that it was nutritionally harmful to avoid an entire food group. "A person who stops consuming dairy products altogether, for example, will soon have a calcium deficiency.It makes you wonder how long ago Professor Elisabeth Wisker studied nutrition, and what influenced her education.
VB has slowed to the point where it is sometimes unavailable. We'll be looking at it in a few minutes. Not sure how long it'll take to get it up and running again. It was nice not having to worry about it the last few days but I knew the fix wasn't permanent. Hopefully we'll figure something out soon.
DesMoinesRegister.com
The USDA is specifically proposing:It's nice to some positive movement on this front.
• Cutting the amount of eggs to 1 dozen a month per person, down from the 2 dozen to 2 1/2 dozen allowed now.
• Women would be given $8 a month worth of fruits and vegetables. A child would get $6 worth.
• Soy milk and tofu could be substituted for dairy products.
Scoop (NZ Vegetarian Society press release)
Christchurch vegan Ella Soryl (11) has challenged Professor Robert Pickard to prove his claims that her diet is lacking.Ha-ha! Go, Ella!
Ella, a life vegan who has never eaten animal products, won her school triathlon this year, and was a finalist in the Vegan Triathlon in 2006 and 2005. Ella has challenged Professor Pickard to compete with her in a one on one triathlon.
“If you’re going to say silly things like children must eat animal products, you have to be prepared to put your money where your mouth is’ says Ella. “I challenge Professor Pickard to meet me on the sports field and run, swim and bike it out with me.”
Professor Pickard, whose trip to New Zealand has been financed by the animal foods industry, has been unable to provide references as proof for his claims when asked by vegetarian organisations in the UK. His claims contradict the position of the New Zealand Dieticians association that a vegan diet is appropriate for all stages of the human life cycle.I had to laugh. Hearty congrats to the Soryls! Especially the parents for putting out four healthy, life-long vegans.
“Pro meat ‘experts’ sponsored by animal industries are as credible as tobacco industry ‘experts’ who promote smoking,” says New Zealand Vegetarian Society (Christchurch Centre) spokesperson Yolanda Soryl.
Following up that fur posting from the other day, here's the anti-fur poster of naked actress Sadie Frost. The picture was taken by no less than that gravel-voiced balladeer Bryan Adams. Now I wonder why he volunteered his services?
More on ethical eating, this time from Ruth Reichl, a woman who's made a career of examining our food choices as individuals and as a society. While she's no vegetarian, she is working to raise consciousness on food justice issues as well as drawing attention to food issues that aren't receiving enough attention, such as modern pig farming, the National Food Uniformity Bill (a frightening fascist bill that would wipe out local food laws in favor of often weaker federal standards, allegedly to make life easier for "everyone"), and of course
...there's the 2007 Farm Bill, which 'may be the single most important piece of legislation impacting our lives,' since 'it subsidizes the wrong kind of food,' such as corn, which is used to produce high-fructose corn syrup, a common sweetener, and milk loaded with hormones and antibiotics.It's sickening to think that our own government would subsidize the foods that are harming us so fundamentally, but does not subsidize to any major degree the wholesome foods and will make us healthy and save taxpayers countless dollars on those items, as well as healthcare bills associated with eating all the wrong foods.
Here we go again...
Unfortunately, it looks like fur is making a comeback in the fickle, some might say "sick", world of high (some maight say "low") fashion. In Britain, and I'm sure elsewhere, there is, at least, some mainstream resistance, but it seems to be fighting a losing battle.
Marin Independent Journal
As some of you know we've been having performance issues on VB - running slow, unreachable, etc. We're not exactly sure how to resolve the issue, the server should be more than adequate, so it may take some time.
I could have sworn that I just posted this, but it seems to have disappeared.
I would like to welcome a new blogger to the VB blog. He's a lifelong vegetarian and currently runs his own blog at http://www.bornveggie.blogspot.com/.
I was at a loss for what to make for dinner tonight so I decided to roast some vegetables with my favorite condiment, curry paste. I took all the leftover vegetables floating around in the refrigerator and came up with the following easy recipe:
A reader of An Animal-Friendly Life reminded me this morning of a story I had seen at another blog that I wasn't planning to write about, but it kinda fits over here, and reading up on lactose intolerance convinced me that more people need to know about it. The story basically covered a study by the dairy industry that ultimately encourages lactose intolerant people to continue to eat as much as they can handle.
The normal mammalian condition is for the young of a species to lose the ability to digest milk sugar (lactose) effectively after the end of the weaning period (a species-specific length of time often equal to roughly 3% of lifespan). In humans, lactase production usually drops about 90% during the first four years of life, although the exact drop over time varies widely. However, certain human populations have undergone a mutation on chromosome 2 which results in a bypass of the common shutdown in lactase production, allowing members of these populations to continue consumption of fresh milk and other milk products throughout their lives.It really is astounding how few people have actually mutated to better digest milk, and yet it's crammed down our throats every day by the dairy industry. As the U.S. and other Western civilizations skew more heavily toward traditionally lactose-intolerant cultures, this will grate even further.
The Marietta Times
A vegetarian or vegan may be your hair stylist, lawyer, mechanic, music teacher, dentist, newspaper carrier, optometrist — best friend.Indeed! Just read through the various occupations held by members of VeggieBoards...
A Time/CNN published in July 2002 found that 4 percent of American adults consider themselves vegetarians and 5 percent of that group, consider themselves vegans.I obviously don't know how many of the 300 million Americans are adults, but I'd imagine it's most of them. Let's be easy on ourselves and call it only 200 million (any population experts reading this?). If 4 percent of those are vegetarian, that comes out to 8 million vegetarian adults. 5 percent of that means only 400,000 consider themselves vegan. Can that be right? I suppose a large number of vegans are younger, say, in high school, and that might put the number up to half a million (then again, with numbers this small, my guess at a starting number create a huge margin of error). I just can't believe that this is anywhere near an accurate number. Anyone for 750,000? Do I hear a million?
Whittier Daily News: Store grows with vegan culture
(Originally posted at An Animal-Friendly Life)