THE VEGETARIAN BLOG

Three New Jersey residents are suing Nathan’s Famous, Kraft Foods/Oscar Mayer, Sara Lee, Con Agra Foods, and Marathon Enterprises for failing to warn consumers that hot dogs increase the danger of colorectal cancer. The action comes in the wake of landmark scientific studies linking hot dogs and similar meats to colon cancer.

The class-action consumer fraud lawsuit, which is being filed July 22 in Superior Court in Essex County, seeks to compel all five companies to place cancer-risk warning labels on hot dog packages sold in New Jersey. The labels would read “Warning: Consuming hot dogs and other processed meats increases the risk of cancer.”

The nonprofit Cancer Project is filing the suit on behalf of John O’Donnell, Ruthann Hilland, and Michele DeScisciolo, who purchased hot dogs made by the companies without being made aware that processed meat products are a cause of colorectal cancer.”Just as tobacco causes lung cancer, processed meats are linked to colon cancer,” says Neal Barnard, M.D., president of the Cancer Project. “Companies that sell hot dogs are well aware of the danger, and their customers deserve the same information.”

The lawsuit is based on the findings of a landmark report from the American Institute for Cancer Research, based on 58 separate scientific studies, showing that just one 50-gram serving of processed meat (about the amount in one hot dog) consumed daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer, on average, by 21 percent.

Every year, about 150,000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer; approximately 50,000 die of it. In March, the National Cancer Institute published a study of more than half a million people showing that red and processed meat intake is associated with a higher risk of dying from cancer and cardiovascular disease.

The Cancer Project is a collaborative effort of physicians, researchers, and nutritionists who have joined together to educate the public about the benefits of a healthy diet for cancer prevention and survival. Based in Washington, D.C., The Cancer Project is an affiliate of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

This is great news for cruelty-free shoppers. Vegan media activist Adam Kochanowicz has released a new free tool to the public which allows users only to verify alcohols, products, ingredients, and retailers as vegan/non-vegan or tested/not tested on animals but collaborate in continuing the size of this vast database the more people use it. It’s a kind of Wikipedia for vegan shoppers.With a clean, uncluttered interface, the wiki works with any browser. Says Kochanowicz:

“All you have to do is type “vegan.fm/” before the ingredient/alcohol/product/retailer to be taken to a page detailing what is known about that topic. At that point, you have the option to edit the entry similar to how Wikipedia articles are edited and maintained by a community. If a page does not exist for your query, you have the option of creating the page yourself adding whatever you know about the product so others may develop your stub.”

Start browsing and adding to the wiki at Vegan.FM/isitvegan

I read this great article about veganism and how to turn it into a culinary art form, which I’d like to share. Here’s a taster:

What most people don’t realize is that it’s very possible, indeed even probable, for a creative chef to make vegan food just as exciting and full of variety as any other type of cuisine.

The full article is here.

The point is, living healthily and ethically is not as easy as living life mindlessly and unhealthily - the world is designed that way. However, the same principle applies to everything. If you want to be good at your job, you need some dedication. To be physically fit, you need to exercise. To be a good friend, you need to give people a slice of your time. And the list goes on. Veganism is like that: with a few adjustments, it becomes second nature. It’s as easy as that.

On a different note: UPI has a list of the worst countries for vegans and vegetarians to travel to . It confirmed what I partly knew from my own experience: Mexico, Spain, Germany, Cuba and Central Asia. Oddly, a country like Spain that depends on tourism should be better prepared to welcome us vegans, but for some reason it is stuck in time. Let’s hope it changes one day. I spent two years in that country and I found their eating habits very limited and unhealthy.

Great news for vegans everywhere: the American Dietetic Association has released an updated position paper on vegetarian diets and it says loud and clear that such diets, if well-planned, are “healthful and nutritious for adults, infants, children and adolescents and can help prevent and treat chronic diseases including heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes.”

Of course, all diets should be well planned, so don’t interpret this detail as a difficulty. Here’s an excerpt of the paper:

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life-cycle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence and for athletes.

The organization says the revised paper incorporates new topics and additional information on key nutrients for vegetarians, vegetarian diets in the life cycle and the use of vegetarian diets in prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. “Vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle. There are many reasons for the rising interest in vegetarian diets. The number of vegetarians in the United States is expected to increase over the next decade.

The paper highlights several health benefits of a plant-based diet: “Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids and other phytochemicals. These nutritional differences may explain some of the health advantages of those following a varied, balanced vegetarian diet.”

The position paper draws on results from ADA’s evidence analysis process and information from the ADA Evidence Analysis Library to show vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and result in positive maternal and infant health outcomes. Additionally, an evidence-based review showed a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease.

A section in ADA’s paper on vegetarian diets and cancer has been significantly expanded to provide details on cancer-protective factors in vegetarian diets. An expanded section on osteoporosis includes roles of fruits, vegetables, soy products, protein, calcium, vitamins D and K and potassium in bone health.

The American Dietetic Association is the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. For further information visit: www.eatright.org .

Avoiding companies that test their products on animals has become a touch easier.

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Like many people around the world I am saddened by Michael Jackson’s early departure from this world. However, I know his music will stay with us for as long as electronic music is around.

Amid the variety of topics written about him in the wake of his death, one of the many that caught my attention was that he was a ‘strict vegetarian’. That term is often used to describe vegans. I do have a feeling that it may be true that Michael did not consume animal parts in his food. However, that alone would not have made him an ethical vegan. For one, he kept a zoo in his Neverland ranch, which an ethical vegan would never have done – he could have kept a sanctuary of rescued animals, but I understand that the animals he kept, and later neglected when money became tight, were bought. He also wore leather. Veganism is not just about food, it’s about a holistically ethical approach to all sentient creatures. So no, Michael Jackson was not a vegan.

I also heard that Tippi Hedren (pictured), the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and the mother of Melanie Griffiths, has called on Michael’s fans to donate to her big cat sanctuary in California, The Shambala Preserve, which she has kept since 1983. You see, Hedren houses two of Jackson’s tigers, Thriller and Sabu, who are part of a family of 68 animals, mostly rescued from the entertainment industry. I have no information whether Tippi is a vegetarian or vegan but I once read that she became interested in animal welfare during the shooting of Birds. Back then, she refused to wear a fur coat that Hitchcock gave her as a present. That was well before people had any awareness about the plight of animals killed for fur – so credit be given to her for being ahead of her time in this way.

Watch Tippi speaking about her work with big cats:

One of America’s leading vegetarian events, the Vegetarian Summerfest, is taking place between July 08 and 12 and it promises a bumper array of speakers and the chance to socialize with vegetarians and vegans from all over the country. It will take place at the Conference Center at Pitt-Johnstown, on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, PA. The campus is a 650-acre mountaintop wildlife preserve with 40 acres of hiking trails. The event is organised by the North American Vegetarian Society.

Of all the fallacies designed to make people feel good about consuming animal parts is the so-called ‘humane animal farming’, sometimes also called free-range or organic. From the vegan perspective, it’s just hogwash. What many people don’t realize is that life for animals on these deceptively benevolent farms are still treated like property and subjected to an array of painful procedures such as castration, ringing and spaying. And at the end of it, they often go to conventional slaughterhouses to be killed – is that something we do to those we claim to care for? I don’t think so.

Slate Magazine has written an excellent article exposing the facts mentioned above. It falls short of inviting readers to go vegan , but it does so between the lines. When writer James McWilliams advises readers to look for alternatives to alternatives, he’s effectively telling people to drop animal products altogether because there is no better alternative that involves animals. And that’s a fact, not a myth, like ‘humane meat’ is.