Vegan Confessions (guest post)

The vegetable is a quick cure for much if not most of our health problems



If you invented a pill that offers long life, good health, and a body to be proud of, you'd make a fortune. Bottles would fly off the shelves.

Suggest a change in behavior that achieved the same result, however, and what do you get? Catcalls, derisive comments, and rude e-mails.

Such was Michelle Obama's reward when she launched her "Let's Move" campaign more than two years ago. All she did was recommend feeding our kids better meals — fewer sweets, more vegetables, less calories — combined with more exercise.

You would have thought she'd advocated giving the little dears rat poison for lunch. Sarah Palin was characteristically obnoxious in her response, flaunting her passion for s'mores (that chocolate bar-toasted marshmallow-graham cracker horror) while she mocked the First Lady for attempting to substitute the judgment of the "Nanny State" for that of parents. Even for her, it was dumb.

"Vegan on Board," an OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib.

After all, Let's Move addresses a real issue: the super-sizing of our children. Studies have estimated that nearly one in five of our young people are obese and more than a third of them are overweight. Apparently we're raising a generation of youngsters who think the basic food groups are fat, salt, and sugar, and that changing the battery in your Gameboy is exercise.

This isn't merely a recipe for being fat; it's an invitation to diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, asthma, and even cancer.

Actually, the main problem with Ms. Obama's efforts is that they're too timid. If you really want to make the nation healthier, you have to declare war on American agriculture in general and meat in particular. There are mountains of persuasive research that indicate a plant-based diet is far, far healthier than the meat-based model.

Studies have found that a little meat is better for you than a lot, no meat is better than a little, and a vegan diet — no meat, fish, eggs, or dairy products (in others words, 90 percent of the farm economy) — is best of all.

Good luck trying to sell that one. The Bad Food lobby is one of the most powerful in Washington, up there with guns and oil. Any suggestion that our toxic agricultural industry is less than noble will bring instant political extinction. (Can you imagine a politician trying to win Iowa on a vegan platform? A gay atheist would have a better chance.)

I myself am a vegan of sorts and I'm here to tell you that it's not an easy life. You're OK when you can cook your own food (really), but going out is hard. Most restaurants offer very limited, unappetizing fare for people who don't eat meat or dairy. Grocery stores, while better than they used to be, still aren't great.

And you have to get used to that sickening silence on the other end of the line when you tell the person who's inviting you to dinner that you don't eat meat, cheese, fish, soup made from beef stock, or anything else he or she was planning to cook.

The way I handle that is…I cheat. I'll order fish in a restaurant and eat what I'm served in someone else's home. And when I go to a ballgame, I declare hotdogs a vegetable for the day. Mostly, though, I'm a vegan.

Why not? Catholics, for example, profess a high moral standard but still sin from time to time. That doesn't mean they're not Catholics; it simply means they're human. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of starting a Church of the Holy Vegetable and offering online confession booths to vegans who fall off the wagon from time to time. They could confess, be assigned a small penance, and receive absolution.

The life of a vegan is hard enough without walking around feeling guilty all of the time.

Donald Kaul 

content from Other Words is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative 3.0 License.

Heroic Green

Recently, we spotted a comment on a fellow green friend's thread lamenting that only 10% of the activists for any particular cause actually accomplish anything. The rest of those are in it to schmooze or gain personal glory.

In a world that celebrates heroes, that's not too much of an exaggeration. For example, this past weekend, The Avengers movie broke box office records. The world loves and celebrates a hero, but many times the folks behind the scenes are the ones really making the difference.

Well-known green heroes include Jane Goodall for her animal activism and Ansel Adams for his nature photography yet the names Charlotte Uhlenbroek and Andrea G. Stillman as their assistants are virtually unknown. There are other heroes that aren't even associated with anyone famous, yet are making huge strides in world changing areas. Often, the story behind the story is as fascinating if not even more so.

Whenever lists of heroes circulate, there are always comments countering the list with citations of those who "should be on the list". A cursory search on unsung heroes turned up the non-profit Lowell Milken Center in Fort Scott, KS whose mission is to:

...discover, develop and communicate the stories of unsung heroes who have made a profound and positive difference on the course of history. 

The Center sponsors an annual student Discovery Award with prizes of up to $10,000 for first place. The contest encourages students to research and put together a project celebrating an unsung hero. The winning projects become part of the center's permanent display while serving as an incredible opportunity to give credit where credit is due and also explore history in greater depth.

Microwave Popcorn Threat

Popcorn is one of the healthiest snacks available. It is high in fiber, low in fat and calories and high in antioxidants. All the positives about the snack are quickly offset when it's microwave popcorn. The packaging used to make the bags we are so used to tossing in the microwave contains PFOA, a known endocrine disruptor.

From the Duke University series on chemicals in everyday consumer products,

Fluorotelomers are another class of halogenated compounds with seemingly magical properties. One of those is its lipophobicity — a really great technical term for something that repels oils and fat. If you’ve got a surface that you don’t want to get stained, fluorotelomers are a great solution. And if you’re using paper with fatty, oily foods, a layer of fluorotelomers will keep the paper clean and crisp. 

An ideal place for fluorotelomers is a microwave popcorn bag. A coating of that stuff will keep the butter and oils on the popcorn where you want it and not in the bag where you don’t. Ingenious. Except there’s a problem.

Expose fluorotelomers to high temperatures and they break down into PFOAs. So every time you crunch on microwave popcorn you are more than likely munching on a little PFOA. Yum. How much? Well, if you eat just one bag of microwave popcorn per week, it’s estimated that you’ll receive enough PFOA to maintain levels found in the average 
American’s blood. (Further reading here and here [pdf])

We recommend going back to making popcorn on the stovetop. There are several clever stovetop poppers with a handle to keep the kernels from sticking to the pan and evenly pop the corn. Avoid the chemicals and enjoy your popcorn!