A former co-worker of mine recently started teaching a vegan cooking class in Fairfax, Virginia.  Finding vegan-only cooking classes outside of a major city can be kind of tough, so something like this is really welcome in this area.  She comes from a background of French cooking, so I’m willing to bet her classes are going to be quite good.

Here’s the info:

HI06026   Transitioning to a Vegetarian or Vegan Diet

Learn how to transition to a vegetarian diet (lacto/ovo) or an animal product free diet (vegan). Learn how to manage proper nutrition and to prepare dishes such as spinach lasagna, couscous salad, upside down apple tart, and various hot and cold soups for both types of diets. Class includes demonstration and participation. 5 sessions @ 3 hrs each.

Course #         HI06026       
Fees: Tuition ($179.00) + Materials ($50.00) = Total ($229.00)     

Fairfax HS, room B115, 09:00 AM, starting 05/10/08

Note that even though it says “vegetarian or vegan,” the class will focus exclusively on veganism and will not deal at all with dairy or eggs.

I suspect everyone with a veg-themed blog will be thwacking this terrible NY Times op-ed piece.  I know Erik has, though I haven’t had a chance to listen yet and Isa took a good shot that I read earlier this morning.  Here’s what I’ve got to add, with apologies for repeating any arguments you may have read elsewhere.

Nina Planck is the author of “Real Food: What to Eat and Why.”

I wanted to start with the byline.  Please note that this was written by somebody with something to sell.  She has no formal training in nutrition (note: neither do I, but I’m not writing books about the subject).  Just saying.

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.

This is purely anecdotal evidence, but everyone I’ve ever met who was “once a vegan” either a.) really wasn’t a vegan or b.) did it for a couple weeks for health purposes (never mind that veganism is an ethical way of life and not just a diet).  I’d like to hear a little bit more about her stint as a vegan.  I’m really curious because she must have been doing something pretty wrong in her own diet to conclude that it was “irresponsible” to be a pregnant vegan.

There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

Source please?  I suspect it’s less a reason of a vegan diet’s adequacy and more a reason of availability, control of food production, or reliance on historical/cultural precedent.  Our current world is much different than it was even 100 years ago.

Besides, if she says a vegan diet’s not adequate in the long run, she might want to read up on Donald Watson.  I’d say mid-90s classifies as the “long run.”  And what’s interesting is that I’m still trying to find these vegans with deficiencies.  It’s a lot easier to find omnis suffering from excesses.

Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as “first class” (from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second class” (from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians.

I believe that this idea of “first class” and “second class” proteins goes along with the outdated notion of protein combining en vogue in the 1970s.  As long as you’re eating a varied diet of primarily whole foods, protein’s not an issue.  Back in 1982, Francis Lappe updated her classic Diet for a Small Planet to note that “In all other diets [other than fruit-based, tuber-based, or junk food-based], if people are getting enough calories, they are virtually certain of getting enough protein.”

A vegan diet may lack vitamin B12, found only in animal foods;

A lot of this is due to the pesticides we use when growing vegetables, which makes them unsafe to eat unless they’re thoroughly cleaned.  However, a simple supplement takes care of this without much problem.

usable vitamins A and D, found in meat, fish, eggs and butter; and necessary minerals like calcium and zinc. When babies are deprived of all these nutrients, they will suffer from retarded growth, rickets and nerve damage.

Vitamins A and D as well as calcium and zinc are easy to get in a vegan diet.

Yet even a breast-fed baby is at risk. Studies show that vegan breast milk lacks enough docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, the omega-3 fat found in fatty fish. It is difficult to overstate the importance of DHA, vital as it is for eye and brain development.

Most people can properly convert the Omega-3s in flax seed into EPA and DHA, but even for those that can’t, there are a number of vegan sources.

A vegan diet is equally dangerous for weaned babies and toddlers, who need plenty of protein and calcium. Too often, vegans turn to soy, which actually inhibits growth and reduces absorption of protein and minerals. That’s why health officials in Britain, Canada and other countries express caution about soy for babies. (Not here, though — perhaps because our farm policy is so soy-friendly.)

Again, I’d like to see a source quoted here, but I’m willing to bet it’s somehow tied to the dairy industry (as most anti-soy studies so far have been).  John Robbins has some useful info about mineral absorption and soy:

It is true that soybeans are high in phytates, as are many plant foods such as other beans, grains, nuts and seeds, and it is true that phytates can block the uptake of essential minerals, and particularly zinc. This would be a problem if a person consumed large amounts of phytates; for example, if they ate nothing but soybeans or wheat bran. But the phytic acid levels found in a plant-based diet including a serving or two of soy a day are not high enough to cause mineral absorption problems for most people eating varied diets. Furthermore, when soy products are fermented - as they are in tempeh, miso, and many other soyfoods - phytate levels are reduced to about a third their initial level. Other methods of soy preparation such as soaking, roasting and sprouting also significantly reduce phytate content.

While phytates can compromise mineral absorption to some degree, there is absolutely no reliable evidence that vegetarians who eat soyfoods “risk severe mineral deficiencies.” The complete adequacy of vegetarian diets is now so thoroughly proven and documented that even the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has acknowledged the legitimacy of meatless diets. In an official statement, these representatives of the beef industry declared, “Well planned vegetarian diets can meet dietary recommendations for essential nutrients.”

Back to Ms. Planck:

Historically, diet honored tradition: we ate the foods that our mothers, and their mothers, ate. Now, your neighbor or sibling may be a meat-eater or vegetarian, may ferment his foods or eat them raw. This fragmentation of the American menu reflects admirable diversity and tolerance, but food is more important than fashion. Though it’s not politically correct to say so, all diets are not created equal.

‘Tis true, but take a look at a whole foods vegan diet versus any of the fad diets and you’ll see one major difference: a vegan diet is sustainable for a lifetime while most others aren’t.

An adult who was well-nourished in utero and in infancy may choose to get by on a vegan diet, but babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil. Children fed only plants will not get the precious things they need to live and grow.

I think someone needs to make a t-shirt based on the quote “Babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil.”

Pieces like this one by Nina Planck seem to exist not to foster any sort of serious discussion about nutrition and diet, but for other purposes (selling books, selling papers).  Without citing any sources, it’s hard to take any claims that Planck makes seriously.  If you go out there and do the research, you’ll find that a well-planned vegan diet can be every bit as healthy as a well-planned omni diet.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

We all need to look at what we eat.  It’s not a “vegan thing.”  If you shovel food down your gullet and don’t have any concept about what’s good for you, it doesn’t matter if you’re omnivore, vegan, or breatharian — you’re going to have problems.

I’d challenge Ms. Planck or anyone else looking to cash in on the latest “VEGAN PARENTZ KILL BABY, OMG~!!” headline to debate with a dietician like Vesanto Melina or a vegan nutritionist so people can make up their minds based on facts rather than a piece of marketing fluff masquerading as an op-ed piece.

Vegans Sentenced for Starving Their Baby

ARGH.

Some variation of this story pops up about once a year in the mainstream press.  You may remember the baby that died thanks to his supposedly vegan parents that fed him cod liver oil (NOT VEGAN).  Or the fruitarian parents who were spared jail after their baby died.

The thing is, if you look at this story, the fact that the parents were raising their children vegan has no bearing whatsoever on the story.  The child didn’t die because he wasn’t eating meat, he died because he was (allegedly) fed only soy milk and apple juice.  I’ve got news for you: if you feed your child only cow’s milk and apple juice, they’re going to die, too.

Veganism is not the issue here.  It’s poor parenting.

But thanks to the obsession with making vegans look like crazy loons, readers will continue to take away the wrong message from the story.  Instead of it being a terrible tragedy (allegedly) brought on by neglectful parents, it becomes a sweeping generalization about vegans.  In fact, as I was writing this post, an e-mail came in with a link to the story, followed by this witty comment:

Save a cow …. Kill your baby!
Vegans are sick SOB’s

As regular readers surely know by now, it can be perfectly healthy to raise a child as a vegan.  In fact, all of the vegan kids I’ve met have been healthy, vibrant, and well-adjusted.  Yeah, parents need to do a little research to make sure their child’s nutritional needs are met, but that’s not limited to vegans.  Every parent needs to read up on diet and nutrition.

Unfortunately, these unfair portraits of vegan (or supposedly vegan) parents are catchy news fodder for press and pundits.  It’d be nice if the press would leave “vegan” out of the story (and here, the headline) if it doesn’t have any real bearing on the story itself, but that doesn’t generate the same kind of buzz.

(This is fair warning: I’m not going to let this degrade into a flurry of idiotic comments.  If you’re commenting on the story, bring your A-game.)

If you haven’t heard it yet, make sure you go check out the health episode of the VeganFreak radio show.  It’s a departure from their normal style and is quite an interesting and informative listen.  In the past, they’ve kind of breezed by a lot of health talk, often coming out and saying things like, “I don’t worry much about Omega-3s” and things along those lines.  But after Bob was diagnosed with diabetes and high cholesterol and Jenna with high cholesterol, they realized that just being vegan isn’t enough.  Thankfully, with some minor diet changes, they really turned things around.

I thought I’d share my own health-related anecdote.

By May 2005, I had been vegan for seven months.  The previous year, as a lacto-ovo, my HDLs (good cholesterol) were a tad low and I had a triglyceride reading of 210.  Considering under 150 is what one should shoot for, I was pretty far off.  That May I thought to myself, “I’ve been vegan for a while now, I’m sure things have improved.”  My HDLs were about the same and my triglycerides were actually up to 227.  Yikes.  The doctor wasn’t overly concerned, but I didn’t like my triglycerides up that high.

Over the next year-and-a-half, my eating habits changed a bit.  I relied less on processed fake meats and was generally eating more whole foods.  It wasn’t really a conscious effort, but happened naturally.

When I had my blood checked again in December of 2006, my total cholesterol had dropped from 165 to 135, my HDLs were up from 35 to 37 (still a little more work to do here), my LDLs dropped from 85 to 77, and, get this: my triglycerides dropped from 227 to 106.  In addition, my cholesterol ratio dropped from 4.7:1 to 3.6:1 (optimal for males is 3.5:1).  That was some seriously good change.

I still could stand to be a bit healthier.  I eat more sugar than I probably should (cookies) and haven’t been able to get back into a good, regular exercise groove.  But, I’m pleased with where simply moving towards more whole foods has gotten me so far, with surprisingly little effort.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (best known as “those guys that fought to get trans fat listed on nutritional labels”) publish a newsletter called Nutrition Action. It’s a good read with solid scientific information about diet and health, often debunking or questioning claims behind supplements. It’s far from vegan, as they are often recommending dairy and meat, but that sort of makes sense since they’re focused solely on health. They never speak against a vegan diet, but I suppose they know their readership is primarily non-vegetarian.

However, in May 2006 I was very surprised to see a full-page ad for their campaign against palm oil. Palm oil is very prevalent in processed foods and isn’t exactly healthy, so it’s not unusual that they’re speaking out against it, but what surprised me is the angle they’re taking. Their main ad reads “DYING FOR A COOKIE?” and underneath says, “Palm oil production is killing orangutans and other endangered wildlife.” Their full report talks about palm oil’s detrimental effect on health, the environment, and wildlife. This is the first time that I can remember that the CSPI has made note of the animal suffering associated with any food product.

One danger they note is that with the new trans fat designation on nutrition labels, many companies are looking to switch away from partially hydrogenated oils. The danger is that they might move to palm oil.

If companies replaced the 2.5 billion pounds of partially hydrogenated oil used annually in foods needing a solid fat with palm oil, U.S. palm oil imports would triple over the 2003 level. Such an increase would require about 1,240 square miles of new oil palm plantations—an area that represents rainforest habitat for up to 65 Sumatran rhinos, 54 elephant families, 65 Sumatran tigers, and 2,500 orangutans.

Good job, CSPI. Let’s see more of it in the future and it wouldn’t kill you to start mentioning vegetarian diets a bit more, would it?

The other day, I was browsing this thread on the Vegan Freak forums and saw this in an interesting post from Kyle:

Also, just a quick health tidbit, vegans should be careful to limit thier consumption of corn, even the popped varity, as it blocks the absorbtion of B vitamins, including the all important B12. Once in a while is okay though.

I had never heard such a thing before and couldn’t find anything to back it up (and he said he didn’t remember where he saw it originally). But it got me to thinking, my God!, if this is true does this mean that the popcorn I eat three times a week is completely offsetting the nutritional yeast I put on it?

(This is certainly said with sarcasm, though I would be interested if anyone has any evidence that this particular claim has some scientific support.)

Holy cow.

I was doing a little bit of research to see what types of food some of the local public schools make available for students. After reading the article about the school in Atlanta with the amazing veggie-friendly lunch line, I had high hopes for Northern Virginia. Alas, what I came across was quite disappointing. Case in point, this document (PDF), a newsletter titled Nutrifax published by the Fairfax County Public Schools.

Being that it implies there are “fax” about nutrition, you might think that the document included helpful tips about vegetarian diets. Instead, in one page we get loads of half-truths, misinformation, and an undertone of anti-vegetarianism. If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone from the meat industry penned this, but there’s even a phone number to call a “registered dietician” for more information. Here’s a quick look at some of the main problems with this newsletter:

• It’s titled “The Vegetarian Agenda.” Right off the bat, it’s antagonistic.
• Incorrect definition of terms. Here, a semi-vegetarian = pescatarian. Semi-vegetarians just eat “less” meat, which can include any and all meat, poultry, etc. Pescatarians don’t eat beef or poultry, but will eat fish. They also refer to “lacto-ova” vegetarian. As far as I know, this is not an accepted alternate spelling for “lacto-ovo,” though it may be technically acceptable.

• False information about the “risks” of vegetarianism. They have a section about the health benefits of vegetarianism, but it’s half the length of the “risks” section. A blatant falsehood crops up here: “Animal protein is the only source of complete protein with all the essential amino acids present.” One word: quinoa. Also, the soybean has what’s considered a complete protein, though it doesn’t have all of the essential amino acids.

  The risks section continues with more subtle errors, like stating “The more restrictive the diet is
  about eating animal protein, the greater the health risks become.” They mention B12 (which actually only occurs naturally in plant sources but for humans comes primarily from animals that have ingested B12 in their feed) and that “animal protein is the major source for calcium, Vitamin D, and iron.” Remember that most of the best sources of calcium are from plant sources.

  The worst of all the errors, though comes in this paragraph:

  Many grains, legumes and seeds are good sources of protein but need to be combined with one another to become complete proteins. A grain product, another vegetable or an animal derived protein can provide amino acids that are missing in a vegetable. Examples of complementary combinations are beans and rice, peanut butter and bread, macaroni and cheese.

  This section implies that protein-combining in the same meal is required, a belief that was disproven a couple of decades ago. The current school of thought says that a.) most people get too much protein, b.) plant proteins generally don’t have the health risks associated with animal proteins, and c.) as long as you eat a decent variety of foods over the course of a day, your proteins will be plenty well combined.

There’s still a lot of work to be done in the food service industry. While a lot of the statements above may on the surface have a layer of truth, there’s a sense of “vegetarianism is bad and hard to do, so if you have to deal with it, here are some things to tell those annoying people.” We are pests, aren’t we?

2006 Food Forecast

The good news:

More allergy information will be included on labels, which is not only good for people with severe food allergies, but for vegans since dairy and eggs are common allergens. The best parts:

• “If there are any egg, peanut, nut, fish, shellfish, wheat or soy in a product, the label will have to say so.”
• ” Goodbye to non-descriptive words such as “artificial” or “natural” flavors, colors or additives. Labels with those ingredients also will have to specify which allergens they contain.” Whether this means that any animal-derived products in the natural flavoring will need to be labeled is not clear.
• “If “casein” is included, “milk” would be listed after it.”

Also good: trans-fat will appear on labels. As a result of having to add this to the label, many food companies have cut back significantly or eliminated trans-fat from their products.

The bad news:

There’s still no universally accepted “Vegan” symbol on food packages. This may actually be a good thing, because really there hasn’t been enough discussion on the issue. For instance, if something is produced on equipment that is also used for dairy, should it be labeled vegan? If a product is made by a company that also makes meat products, is that product vegan? There are some tricky issues.

Also bad/stupid: well, I’ll let the article do the talking:

[F]ood forecasters are predicting some provocative trends, including such possibilities as Christian-raised chicken…

Trend expert Faith Popcorn, keynote speaker at the Future of Food conference last month in Washington, and the person who predicted the “cocooning” craze of the 1990s, sees faith-friendly food showing up in the marketplace, an outgrowth of what her company calls “clanning,” or the desire to belong to groups with common ideas.

Tyson Foods, which makes chicken, beef and pork products, already has begun offering free downloadable prayer booklets on its Web site. The booklets provide mealtime prayers in a variety of faiths.

Before I comment, I love the fact that the food trend expert’s name is “Faith Popcorn.” I would have killed to be born with that name.

I hadn’t heard of the idea of “Christian-raised chicken” before, and predictably, it strikes me as pretty stupid. If you’re that concerned about how your religious beliefs coincide with how your food is raised, shouldn’t you consider just, you know, not eating meat? I suspect that this kind of falls into the same category as halal meats, but without the long-standing tradition.

And does anyone else find it hilarious — and at the same time, deeply troubling — that Tyson Foods is producing prayer booklets?

Feel free to suggest prayers in the comments that Tyson could include on their web site.

While I keep hearing that annoying phrase “liberal media bias,” I think we need to be more concerned with lazy reporting, lack of research, and general disinterest in anything beyond shock value.

Paul mentioned a story that aired on the WGN news in Chicago last night, summarized here (scroll to “Vegetarians”). The summary reads:

Vegetarians may be in danger of serious bone loss. Those who eat only raw plant-derived foods have abnormally low bone mass, an early sign of the bone thinning disease osteoporosis. In a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers found the extreme raw food vegetarian diet does not provide enough calcium or Vitamin D, both crucial for bone strength. The study looked at people who ate a vegetarian diet for three years.

In this summary, and according to Paul, even more so in the broadcast, it makes it seem that the raw diet = the vegetarian diet. Look at the opening and closing sentences: “Vegetarians may be in danger of serious bone loss.” and “The study looked at people who ate a vegetarian diet for three years.” That’s just wrong.

This shock value piece makes misleading connections that many people will walk away from thinking, “Vegetarianism isn’t healthy.” Do you have any idea how infinitesimally small the number of pure raw foodists there are in this country? I don’t know the exact number, but I’m willing to bet that not a single one was watching that broadcast.

Of course, you’re unlikely to see any news stories on the studies that have shown that frequent consumers of dairy tend to have more bone breaks and a higher incidence of osteoporosis than those who eat less or no dairy. That might piss off the advertisers.

Oh good Lord.

Remember when Reagan declared that ketchup was a vegetable? Well, the USDA has done Ronnie one better by proclaiming frozen french fries a “fresh vegetable.”

“While plaintiff argued that battered-coated French fries are processed products, they have not been ‘processed’ to the point that they are no longer ‘fresh,’ ” attorneys for the USDA argued.

“It is still considered ‘fresh’ because it is not preserved. It retains its perishable quality.”

Wonderful.

Don’t forget, today is National Carbohydrate Awareness Day! Well, at least according to the excellent food blog The Amateur Gourmet it is.

Now go out there and eat some bread covered pasta! Or pasta covered bread!

The Washington Post is running a story about how low-carb product sales are declining, which I would never have guessed with the myriad new products claiming “low carb” on their labels, even if they never had any carbs to begin with. Really, if I never hear the abbreviation “carb” again, I’ll be happy.

The one good thing that came about from the Atkins/Zone/South Beach/etc. diets is that now it’s not so hard to find whole wheat hot dog and hamburger buns for my not dogs and veggie burgers.

Here’s a question for any Veg Blog readers that are medical doctors or training to become medical doctors: how big of a role does nutrition play in your education?

The reason I ask is that I recently went to my doctor’s for a physical. I don’t have a regular doctor at this office and, in fact, I think I’ve seen just about everyone on the staff at one point or another. This time around, I had a nurse practitioner who did my physical. She’s rather young, I’m estimating maybe 26 or 27, and so I thought perhaps when I mentioned that I had moved to almost an entirely vegan diet, that she would have some knowledge and understanding about the issues involved with giving up meat, dairy, and eggs. Unfortunately, the first question out of her mouth was, “How do you get your protein?” At this point in time, I would hope that people coming into the medical field would bypass that question and go to something more applicable like, “Are you taking supplements for B12?” or “Are you careful about getting all your Omega-3s?” I went on my short diatribe about how protein’s not much of an issue and that I get plenty from a number of sources. She did ask if I take any supplements and I told her that generally my diet’s pretty well-rounded, but that I use nutritional yeast regularly and will take a vegetarian multi-vitamin if I feel I haven’t been eating as well as I should.

While I was a bit disappointed by the protein question, she also showed some interest when she asked why my reason was for being vegetarian/almost vegan. In addition, she didn’t shake her head in disapproval or show any sort of serious concern that I was depriving myself. Indeed, she actually checked off the “healthy diet” box on my physical form, which pleased me.

The way I understand it, nutrition has always been glossed over when it comes to medical training, and I was wondering if there’s any sort of trend in the opposite direction, stressing diet and lifestyle education so that MDs aren’t always so quick to recommend drugs.

If you’ve been following the stories about avian flu in Vietnam (and now Thailand), a story from last Wednesday sets an even more potentially disastrous scenario than most people initially thought:

There’ve been nearly 900,0000 chickens that farmers have sold to the market from the beginning of January, mostly from Long An and Tine Giang,” said Nguyen Van Thong, deputy director of the veterinary department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, referring to the two hardest-hit provinces. The chickens were still alive when sold.

900,000. There’s a lot of potential there for a major health disaster, even moreso if the virus mutates, as Erik over at Vegan.com has mentioned.

This is also interesting because I’ve been to Long An. My mother-in-law’s boyfriend’s family lives there, and when I traveled to Vietnam with my wife and her mother back in 1998, we stopped in Long An a number of times. Coincidentally, Long An is where I had water with ice—the only time during my entire trip since the ice is usually chopped on the sidewalk—and I got extremely sick for three days because of it.

My mother-in-law is currently in Vietnam visiting family. I’m curious what the mood is like in Vietnam right now, but we haven’t gotten any e-mail from her since the avian flu was first discovered. We wrote to her to tell her, “Don’t eat the chicken.”

A new development today: KFC in Vietnam has switched to serving fish.

Six people have died thusfar from the flu.

Jeez, I go away for a few days and mad cow is discovered in the United States.

To get up-to-date, I suggest visiting VegSource.com and Vegan.com, both of whom have kept track of recent events on their front pages. In addition, I’ve added a temporary “mad cow” feed to the news feeds page.

Hope you all had a happy holiday. I was working my way through a nasty cold, so my Christmas dinner was a bowl of miso soup and some tasty sides from my family’s main meal.

Man I get frustrated when I read articles like “Study surprise: Low-carb dieters eat more, lose weight.” It’s another in a series of recent “hey, low-carb diets actually help you lose weight!” studies. But take note of several things here:

1. This is “a small but carefully controlled study.” How small? 21 people.
2. The point of the study was that the dieters on a low-carb diet were given 300 more calories, yet they didn’t gain weight because of it. However, the only health-related mention (remember, health and weight don’t always map one-to-one) is that the low-carbers didn’t raise their cholesterol levels. But there’s a lot more that needs to be considered, particularly with the high levels of saturated fat that many high-fat diets involve.
3. This one’s the most important. We all know that there has yet to be a worthwhile long-term study of the effects of a low-carb diet on the body. This skimpy study, somehow worthy of almost 800 words on CNN, ran for a mere twelve weeks.

As far as I’m concerned, this “study” is worthless.

On the other side of the coin, Time is featuring a much better (but not perfect) article titled “How to Eat Smarter.” A kind of funny quote from the article regarding the Mediterranean diet:

“The Mediterranean diet works well in the Mediterranean,” says Yale’s [David] Katz. “My concern about it in the U.S. is that people will continue to go to Burger King but just dump olive oil over their French fries.”

While the article doesn’t even bring up a vegetarian or vegan diet as a possibility, it does lean toward the “more vegetables, less meat” message.

I received the following e-mail and thought I’d post a response publicly in case others had a similar question. The e-mail (edited for readability):

I haven’t eaten meat or chicken in a year and its been a few months with out dairy. I wanted to know, do I have to take a vitamin? I eat very well. Fresh veggies and fruit, beans, rice, certain fish, soy, seeds and nuts, whole grains, organic teas. I just don’t really understand why people take fish oils? And do I need to be taking them? Do you know of a book that tells you what you need to eat or take and why?

Before I respond let me say this: I’m not a nutritionist and my “advice” is only a guideline. You should check with your doctor or nutritionist before acting on any of my advice. Phew. Now that I have the legal stuff out of the way…

First of all, congratulations on what sounds like a big step toward eating healthier. It certainly sounds like you’re eating healthier than most people! Without knowing exactly what vegetables you’re eating and in what balance, it would be hard for me to say whether you’d need a vitamin, but my general thought on the matter is that if you’re eating a good variety of healthy foods you’ll get the nutrients you need. Since you’ve cut dairy, you will want to make sure that you’re getting enough vitamin B12 either through a supplement, fortified foods (fortified soy milk is a great source), or by adding some Red Star nutritional yeast to your foods.

With regards to fish, the main reason people are encouraged to eat fish or take fish oil is for the omega-3 fatty acids. I won’t get into a long discussion of what those are, how they work, and why they’re important, but fish, flax seeds (which can be ground and added to foods), and nuts like walnuts are all good sources. Obviously, as a vegetarian, I’d recommend going for the flax seeds as your primary source of omega-3s, particularly with some of the other health concerns with eating too much fish (high mercury levels, etc.).

I would suggest checking out Virginia Messina’s site and read through some of the questions regarding vegetarian health and nutrition. Virginia’s also written a book titled The Vegetarian Way: Total Health for You and Your Family that may have the answer to some of your questions. You may also find The Vegan Sourcebook and VRG’s Vegan & Vegetarian FAQ helpful.

Lunch lessons

My mom passed this story along about Chester County, PA’s Kimberton Waldorf School has a unique lunch program: homemade vegetarian dishes made mainly from organic local produce. And the kids like everything from the spinach tofu pie to the broccoli cheese soup and Gardenburgers (every dish also has a vegan equivalent available!). Extras are donated to needy families and the tables are set with tablecloths and flowers.

One quote that sums it up well: “If the school is feeding them really crappy food, that is what they know.” Imagine if all schools offered up healthy and tasty vegetarian meals? It wouldn’t be anything strange if it was a normal part of the everyday routine… the kids would get used to it and would learn to enjoy healthy food.

Healthy, good-tasting school lunches that support the local community. Can’t beat that.

All over the news in recent days is a small study that contends a vegetarian diet can lower cholesterol as well as drugs:

It involved 46 men and women with high cholesterol levels. Sixteen ate the vegetarian diet for one month, 16 consumed a very low-fat diet, and 14 ate the low-fat diet and took 20 milligrams of lovastatin (sold as Mevacor) every day for a month.

The vegetarian group showed an average drop of 28.6 percent in their LDL cholesterol, the “bad cholesterol” that can raise the risk of heart disease. That was about equal to the 30.9 percent reduction seen in the low-fat diet plus statin group. By contrast, the low-fat diet-only group had just an 8 percent drop.

This falls under that “yeah, but we knew that already” category, but it’s still good to see it get such wide coverage, even if some outlets refer to it as the “ape diet.”

Blogger extraordinaire Rebecca Blood has posted a useful chart on her site comparing the nutritional values of different kinds of rice. As you’d expect, brown rice is leads the pack in most values, especially fiber, where it has more than 3.5 times as much as any of the white rice included.

Paul pointed out “The perils of the Atkins diet,” from Texas A&M’s The Battalion which discusses how Atkins isn’t healthy in the long-term and isn’t really all that effective as a weight-loss diet, either. One point the writer makes that’s kind of unique, though it’s probably not news to long-time vegetarians, is that the Atkins diet is more expensive than low-fat, reduced-meat diets. Add this to the years of research that goes against the Atkins hi-fat, hi-protein philosophy and the recent study of more than 90,000 women that links animal fats to breast cancer, and you have pretty much every reason in the world not to follow Atkins. Erik Marcus over at Vegan.com also made a good point a while back when he referred to the Atkins diet as a nightmare for the animals.

Someone said to me the other day, “I want to lose some weight… how can I cut out carbs from my diet?” I said, “Well, first of all, you don’t want to cut carbs from your diet. You want to replace simple carbs with complex carbs… whole wheat bread instead of white, whole wheat or mixed pasta instead of regular pasta, high-fiber cereals, etc. Then you want to cut back on saturated fat and trans fat… avoid the snacks with partially hydrogenated oils… replace your cooking oils with olive oil, canola oil, and high oleic safflower oil (for high-temperature frying)…” And then I realized I was starting to sound like my mom. :)

I think people just have this idea that they want to lose as much weight as they can, quickly, and with little effort. Eat more meat? Sure! Everybody loves their steak, why not eat more of it and lose weight! Really, who needs fiber, anyway? What we need to be thinking is, “How can I be healthier?” Weight loss doesn’t necessarily map one-to-one with health… after all, anorexia can help you shed those pounds fast, but it’s not exactly helping you get your nutrients.

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks about yet another health benefit related to tea: it can help lower your cholesterol.

While I don’t think that going on the Atkins Diet and taking some tea extract capsules is going to even out, for vegetarians (whose high-fiber non-meat diet can significantly lower cholesterol), this could help those with a family history of high cholesterol.

They divided [220] people [with elevated cholesterol who had been put on a low-fat diet] into two groups. One group got the pill, which was a soft gel capsule with the tea extract. The other group got just a placebo, a sugar pill, and they found that the capsule group, the people who are getting the tea, actually had an 11 percent increase in total cholesterol and a 16 percent decrease in the bad type of cholesterol. Again, that’s just over 12 weeks. So pretty significant results there.

The ADA has issued their new position statement on vegetarian diets. This is one worth getting familiar with, as you’ll surely see it quoted many times in the coming years.

The two that will surely get the most press:

“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”

… and …

“Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence.”

Many nutritionists recommend getting your fair share of Omega-3 fatty acids as part of an optimal diet. The traditional source for Omega-3s is oily fish, but vegetarians can get theirs from various kinds of nuts or, best of all, flax seeds. Generally, freshly ground flax seeds provide the best nutritional value and are reasonably priced at most health food stores. However, grinding them ain’t that easy…

… or so I thought! Then, I remembered Dr. Andrew Weil recommending buying a coffee grinder specifically for grinding flax seeds (you don’t want to mix your coffee and flax seeds in the same grinder). Turns out, they’re really pretty cheap. I picked up a $15 Mr. Coffee grinder and I’m happy to report it works wonderfully. I grind a quarter-cup of flax seeds with no problem, then put it in a container in the fridge and over the course of a week or two, spoon a tablespoon or two a day onto my cereal, into my sandwiches, or into pasta sauce after it finished heating. The flax adds a very slight nutty flavor, but the consistency is fine enough that you don’t even notice it in most things.

Here’s some more info on the health benefits of Omega-3s from Dr. Weil.

Adagio Teas’ monthly newsletter Tea Muse looks at the facts and fiction behind tea’s health benefits. I was a little disappointed they didn’t take time to debunk any myths and also noticed that most of the research uses small samples, but it’s still a worthwhile read (as is their frequently updated “Tea in the News” section.

Rebecca Blood links up to “Neighbors of Vast Hog Farms Say Foul Air Endangers Their Health” in The New York Times. If the phrase “cesspools the size of football fields belonging to the industrial hog farm” whet your appetite for a little anti-factory farm reading, dig in…

Even though I’m an avid tea drinker, I still frequently learn something new about tea’s health benefits. For instance, did you know that green tea is a good source of vitamin C? How much? Well, one source says that green tea has more vitamin C than an orange, but another says there’s about 280mg per 100g of loose leaves (3g = 1 teaspoon, meaning about 9g of vitamin C per cup… a medium orange has 70mg). I couldn’t seem to find a definitive answer.

Most of tea’s vitamin C is lost during fermentation, so black and oolong teas have significantly less than green tea.

White Wave is recalling some of its half-gallon containers of their Silk vanilla soy milk because of possible contamination with sodium hydroxide, an alkaline cleaning solution. If you have one of these products with the following code dates, return it to the store for a refund: Jun 17 03 H CD70, Jun 17 03 J CD-70, Jun 18 03 H CD70 and Jun 18 03 J CD70.

No other Silk or White Wave products are involved in the recall.

If you look at this Reuters report, you might be encouraged to see that incidents of salmonella are down a bit from last year. Of course, if you’ve read any of the modern literature on factory farms, you’ll realize that the statistics are nearly worthless since the meat and poultry industries pretty much self-regulate. The USDA inspectors are generally regarded as just figureheads that have very little power or authority to create any sort of meaningful change in the factories.

Vegan.com pointed out this AP report which is more balanced. For instance, “[The USDA] excluded data on plants where salmonella has been found repeatedly, making it seem as if salmonella is on the decline.” Where was that little tidbit in the Reuters article?

One of the comments I get frequently is that “humans are meat-eaters by nature, or else we wouldn’t have the sharp teeth we have for tearing flesh.” This particular argument’s always been flawed because our “sharp” teeth are really far from a true carnivore or omnivore’s equivalent. Nonetheless, for all I know, we could be “meant” to eat meat by our design, but none of the arguments I’ve heard have really swayed me. Not that it ever mattered to me anyway, and not that it would change my mind about how I, personally, want to eat.

Herbivore, Omnivore, or Carnivore? by Milton R. Mills, M.D. outlines the traits of typical plant-eaters, meat-eaters, and ominivores versus our own. His findings are interesting and summarized well at the end of the article. I’m not qualified to verify or debunk any of his logic, but it’s worth taking a look at.

“Pilgrim’s Pride/Wampler is recalling 27.4 million pounds of cooked sandwich meat after warnings of possible contamination from the listeria bacteria—the largest meat recall in U.S. history.”

Seems like there have been an awful lot of multi-million pound recalls of meat in the past five years. Perhaps this is why food safety is finally becoming an election issue for representatives of major political parties. Of course, I’m skeptical that the meat industry will ever really be held accountable while our representatives are still accepting large donations from the industry it seeks to regulate.

Recall of Contaminated Beef Expanded to 18 Million Pounds

Stories like this remind me again why I don’t eat meat. Of course, if the slaughterhouses weren’t so dangerous, their workers so overworked, and the cattle so mistreated and pumped full of antibiotics, this might not happen.

Then again, maybe it would.

Is the meat, poultry and fish you buy as fresh as you think?

I bet you can guess the answer to this Dateline question.

According to this report, some of the United States’ largest grocery chains are extending the sell-by dates on meat. “Pathmark says if the meat doesn’t sell [after the initial sell-by date but less 72 hours after being cut], they re-inspect the meat and re-date it. How are you supposed to know if the meat you’re buying has been re-dated? Pathmark admits, you can’t.” That’s comforting.

Even more comforting: it’s not against the law: “The dating of product is voluntary. Stores can legally, according to the 1972 Department of Agriculture law, rewrap and re-date meat.”

I haven’t watched the video of this yet, but after reading the transcript, I’m looking forward to it: there looks to be a lot of squirming and agitation of the people being questioned about this disturbing (but not at all surprising) practice.

Teen Vegetarians Healthier Than Meat-Eaters -Study

Here’s a recent study worth showing to your parents if you’re one of those teens that can’t convince them that going vegetarian can be a good thing, if done right. (Vegan.com)

I lied—here’s another link: Stephanie Burns thinks that vegetarian dogs live longer

It’s not exactly statement based on thorough research, but get this: her vegetarian dog is 23 years old. Isn’t that some kind of record?

USDA Relies On Foreign Inspections, Meat Plants Abroad Fail Sanitation Checks

This high profile Washington Post article discusses recent problems with raw beef coming from Mexico and it’s levels of fecal contamination. “… the USDA increasingly relies on foreign governments—including ones that have repeatedly failed to get the job done.” The USDA insists that foreign meat is safe, perhaps safer, than domestic meat since it goes through two safety checks.

Based on a number of “slaughterhouse expose”-type books I’ve read over the past year, I highly doubt that the problem is limited to foreign meat. By all accounts I’ve read, the USDA has quite a difficult time even beginning to enforce many of the health and safety issues domestically with our food supply. So, perhaps, imported meat is “safer… than many domestic foods,” but I don’t think that’s something to brag about.

After reading this article, I also realized that the Post has been archiving a series of meat industry-related articles under “Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest,” that should be of interest to those concerned with animal rights and food safety.

Eating Healthy Can Make You Sick

This excellent article discusses the newly-coined eating disorder of “orthorexia nervosa,” an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. This is one of those traps that I hope never to fall into. In my own opinion, if you go beyond veganism (into raw foodism, fruitarianism, etc.) then you’re a likely candidate for orthoexia nervosa. To me, a complex, varied diet that I enjoy is the most important. As a vegetarian I don’t feel like I’m limiting myself or becoming obsessive about the “little things” (like cooking out small bits of nutrients from veggies by stir-frying them for a few minutes). My goal is to always enjoy what I’m eating while remaining aware (but not obsessing over) the positive or negative health ramifications of the food.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to eat a bag of Double Stuf Oreos and a block of organic tofu.

Diets without animal products can be very complicated

I’d be nervous about having a doctor with “Dr. Bill”’s outlook on diet. In this article, Dr. Shockey challenges another article titled “Vegan teens: They can give up meat, dairy and stay healthy” but rather than providing any truly sound reasoning, he instead insults the vegan lifestyle with meaningless attacks.

“For calcium, Kelln recommends dark leafy vegetables, broccoli and fortified orange juice,” Dr. Bill starts. “A cup of raw chopped spinach contains 56 mg and a cup of raw chopped broccoli contains 42 mg of calcium. So my teen-ager would only have to consume 21.5 cups of raw spinach or 28.5 cups of raw broccoli to meet their calcium requirement. Hope they’re hungry.” Of course, this is assuming that spinach and broccoli are the only source of calcium. Notice how he left out the fortified orange juice? It contains somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 mg of calcium. The vitamin D required to absorb calcium can be obtained via fortified soy milk or sunlight (vegansociety.com).

He goes on to make similar comparisons with beans, bread (choose white bread rather than whole wheat bread, no doubt so he can inflate his numbers even more), and takes another shot at dark, leafy vegetables. It leads me to think that he’s rather averse to eating his veggies. Of course from a doctor that coldly declares, “Personally, I believe that meat animals are alive for the sole purpose of consumption by humans, and I am pleased to contribute my fair share,” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at his anti-vegetarian rhetoric.

MSNBC has a good article titled Menu help for vegetarian moms-to-be: Tips for getting in all the proper nutrients. While it’s only a brief overview, it’s still a good read.

One thing that puzzled me, though, was recommendation that pregnant vegetarian/vegan women “avoid soft cheese or raw seafood, which can be possible sources of a potentially harmful type of Listeria bacterium.” Seafood? Since when was that vegetarian or vegan? Otherwise, this seems to be a well-informed and researched article.

It seems like the end of 2001 brought with it an awful lot of meat recalls:

• Dec. 31: Tampering Investigated in 266,000-Pound Ham Recall: a disgruntled IBP employee may have tained the ham with nails.
• Dec. 28: Florida and Connecticut Companies Recall Corned Beef “because it contains inedible beef byproducts that are not declared on the label.”
• Dec. 28: Michigan Bakery Recalls 12-Inch Tortes because eggs were improperly left off an ingredient label
• Dec. 28: USDA: 4 Firms to Recall 461 Tons of Beef. That’s almost one million pounds of beef… yikes. (This is associated with the corned beef link above.)

But that doesn’t mean vegetarians are exempt from food safety issues: apparently, raw sprouts may cause a foodborne illness.

“People who eat a meat-laden diet have more than triple the average risk of esophageal cancer and double the risk of stomach cancer, while people who eat a lot of dairy products had double the risk of both,” reports MSNBC. (via VegSource)

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day since it’s usually the most nutrient-dense, so I’ve been trying to make mine as good as possible. There are three ways I’ll go for breakfast, depending on my time and my mood:

1. Health Valley Cranberry Crunch cereal (which even got a good review by the discerning folks at The Empty Bowl) with Original Edensoy Extra. It’s an incredibly tasty cereal that’s also mighty healthy, and it works very well with soymilk.
2. A bagel, half with Tofutti Herb and Chive Better Than Cream Cheese and half with Spectrum Naturals’ Essential Omega Spread. For that one-two punch of soy and flax, this is a nice, quick way to have a filling breakfast on the drive into work.
3. Health Valley cobbler bar. Both their strawberry and blueberry are mighty tasty, and quite healthy. There’s no saturated fat, 100% of your daily Vitamin E, and 10% of a number of other nutrients (including B-12). It even has 50% of your daily Selenium (a trace mineral that helps the absorption of Vitamin E in the body—the two make a good antioxidant team). Note, though, that these bars are not vegan (they have whey and nonfat dry milk.

I haven’t grown tired of any of these three options yet, and it’s nice to know I’m not shoveling unnecessary amounts of sugar in my mouth first thing in the morning.

An interesting fact: apparently going vegetarian doesn’t mean you’ll lose the ability to digest meat. I had heard that you would so many times, I started to believe it. Virginia Messina refutes this idea succinctly.

13 Percent of U.S. Turkeys Have Salmonella

Bring this article up at the dinner table on Thursday and watch the fun begin!

Depressed? Eat Some Sushi, Scientists Say

“Everyone could benefit from increasing their
intake of Omega-3 fatty acids.” Of course, they fail to mention that Omega-3’s are also easily found in flax seed and flax seed oil as well as walnuts and pumpkin seeds. And with nuts and seeds you won’t have to worry about the high levels of contamination in factory farmed fish or the high levels of mercury.

16,000 Chickens Ordered Destroyed

The Avian Influenza Virus, a highly contagious disease commonly found in ocean birds and migratory waterfowl (more), was found in chickens at a Connecticut farm last month and has subsequently resulted in the order for destruction of 16,000 of those chickens.

The farm where the virus was found is one that raises “broilers,” chickens raised strictly for meat that are slaughtered after a mere 6-7 weeks (more info). Apparently “the disease does not pose a threat to human health,” but according to this article by the Queensland government, “an outbreak of influenza in humans was associated with an avian source in Hong Kong” in late 1997/early 1998. In addition, AIV could be absolutely devestating to the bird population if it spreads.

Mad cow tests botched in ‘disastrous error’

“Scientists trying to find out whether the national sheep flock is infected with mad cow disease have spent the past four years testing the brains of cows instead of sheep.” D’oh…

Some frightening survey results published in the New England Journal of Medicine: out of 200 random retail meat samples, 20% of them contained salmonella. Four out of every five of the infected samples contained a strain of salmonella that’s resistant to at least one antibiotic.

With all the other news of international importance recently, these blurbs have been easy to miss:

• [Oct 4] First Mad Cow case appears in Slovakia
• [Oct 1] A mad-cow like disease is appearing in deer in the western US
• [Sep 23] Mad Cow outbreak confirmed in Japan, which forced a hunt in the US for Japanese cows. In Japan, there’s a 20% decrease in beef consumption but a 20% increase in pork consumption.
• [Sep 19] Mad Cow found (possibly) in Sweden

Food Headlines and VegSource are good resources for current Mad Cow-related info.

While the PCRM’s request of the USDA to label all meat and poultry with a biohazard label is laughable, they do bring up an important issue: current factory farming practices can cause some serious illness due to fecal contamination.

A PCRM representative said on the radio today that every day 200,000 people become ill from food poisoning and in the majority of those cases, it’s due to fecal contamination of the meat or poultry that they’ve eaten. While it may sound like a scare tactic, it’s enough to perk my ears up.

Initially, I would have disagreed with Dr. Bernards assertion that “the average person loses about 10 pounds after switching to a vegetarian diet, even without watching calories and fat grams.” When I became vegetarian, I stayed at pretty much the same weight for a number of months. Of course, this was as I was still eating a lot of processed foods and easing into cooking more.

After about six months, I dropped a couple pounds, mainly because being vegetarian for me no longer meant eating Boca Burgers three times a week. I was cooking a lot more and started buying cookbooks with the same fervor I buy CDs.

About a month before I got married, I really started to notice a change in my weight. Now, after a month-and-a-half, I’m down from 140 to 132.