VegMoms

Thursday’s Working for Change: When I was a kid, the only thing the culture at-large taught most of us about food was:

1) Fast food restaurants, microwaves and TV dinners will make our lives easier.

2) Buying soda was somehow going to help the world “sing in perfect harmony.”

3) As long as breakfast cereals had cute, funny-named characters on the packaging and a prize in the box, they must be good.

I was fortunate that my mom went far beyond those social messages to include yummy, real-life lessons from our garden and home-cooked meals about healthy eating. But it was difficult for parents to go it alone when ads all over TV, billboards, newspapers and magazines were screaming other, often more compelling messages.

The good news is today parents are starting to get some support from big-name sources. Sugary food ads geared toward children are in the process of being regulated. More schools are eliminating sodas and other sugary drinks from their vending machines. In an “if you can beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude, companies that distribute fruits and veggies are starting to use kid-friendly packages with cartoon characters to encourage kids to eat their carrots and salad.

Michael Pollan, author of the bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma has published a graphics-heavy, easy to read version of that book for kids, The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat.

And secrets they are. Prior to this new crop of kids, young people were never encouraged or expected to ask questions about their food — where it came from, how it was produced, how it will affect their health. The fact that we are beginning to empower them to learn about and take ownership of what goes into their bodies is a seed that’s being planted today that will grow into a plentiful crop of healthy, discriminating adult eaters tomorrow.

Thursday’s Working for Change: Is it just me, or are we all seeing Jamie Oliver all over these days? And I haven’t even seen Jamie’s Food Revolution USA show on ABC (we don’t have a television that gets channels since we opted to not get a converter when it went digital, so now we just watch DVDs and skip all the network/cable stuff). From everything I’ve read, Oliver, while not at all vegan or vegetarian, is doing a good thing by at least bringing the issue of the sad state of the Standard American Diet to prime time. Especially with kids and school lunches, it appears that Oliver is willing to stick his neck out and say how truly atrocious the food is that America’s school system gives to its children. Oliver has a better food in schools petition posted on his website that he plans to give to the government that, as of today, more than 150,000 people (including me) have signed. I hope you consider signing it, too.

Do I wish Oliver was promoting veganism as the way to solve America’s food ills? Yes. Would I prefer that he was petitioning to get vegan (or even just more vegetarian) school lunch options in schools? Sure. But I’m just thankful to Oliver that he’s making the better food for America conversation more mainstream so that all food and health opinions — including the vegan voices — will be taken more seriously as part of a larger and extremely important conversation. 

Thursday’s Working for Change: The 20th anniversary edition of the enlightening, empowering, life-changing book The Sexual Politics of Meat is due out this month. I pre-ordered my copy, and can’t wait to read it — again. Written by feminist and veg activist Carol J. Adams, I first read this book as a college student when a hip, mysterious unusually empowered (compared to the other young women like myself that I knew at the time) college classmate recommended it to me when she found out I was a vegetarian.

Adams writes about herself that she is “particularly interested in the interconnections among forms of violence against human and nonhuman animals, writing, for instance, about why woman-batterers harm animals and the implications of this.”

I don’t remember everything I read in the book so many years ago, but I do remember that she illustrates her points with compelling examples about how women and animals used for meat and certain body parts of both are re-named to de-humanize and de-personalize, making it easier to objectify and harm them both. That one realization was enough to make me sit up and take notice that I may not always be aware of underlying issues going on in our world expressed through language. 

Fascinating stuff… I highly recommend that you read the re-release of Adams book, and all her other work    (others which are listed on the page for that link, and that I plan to read, too). The insights will anger, motivate and ground you in a commonality that’s usually not even recognized as existing between women and animals used for meat, perhaps intentionally: Motivate enough women to make a change, and change usually happens.

World Peace Diet Day: I deeply admire the work of author, musician, PhD and vegan activist Will Tuttle. So I’m posting a message about a project to get his book The World Peace Diet into more hands. Here’s the message from Will and his wife, artist Madeleine Tuttle: “We are coordinating a special offer today for The World Peace Diet called “The March 12 World Peace Diet Compassion and Health Campaign.” This special campaign aims to boost The World Peace Diet to the top of the bestseller lists, thereby creating more opportunities for media conversations about the ramifications of our culture’s ongoing violence toward billions of animals for food.

So! We are encouraging you to get a copy of The World Peace Diet today — to help spread the message in a big way - and - This is the really good news:
Many generous and caring sponsors have donated a whole lot of excellent bonus gifts and prizes to anyone who buys The World Peace Diet (today only) through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

There are downloadable audio books, recipes, music, e-books, discount coupons and the chance to enter drawings for some terrific prizes! There are over 50 gifts and prizes, all told, and anyone who buys the book today is eligible to receive them. Here’s the link to this special campaign: http://worldpeacediet.org

You can help strengthen the forces of health, truth, transparency, sustainability, and peace by buying a copy of The World Peace Diet today (for yourself or to give to a library or friend). It’s a great way to help animals, the Earth, hungry people, and all of us, and spread the message we believe in. Thanks for helping with this.
This is the page to go to - http://worldpeacediet.org - everything is explained there. This is a one-day only campaign.

Peace and all best wishes,
Will & Madeleine

Thursday’s Working for Change: A whistle-blowing veterinarian called USDA officials on the carpet today in testimony before Congress for what he says were covered up or ignored inhumane and unsanitary conditions at slaughterhouses  including ”butchering days-old calves that were too weak or sick to stand. He also describes being threatened with transfer or demotion after citing a plant for butchering conscious pigs, despite rules that they first be stunned and unconscious.” (Source: USA Today. Food Safety Veterinarian to Detail Slaughterhouse Breaches, by Peter Eisler).

Ironically, minutes before I saw that article today I had just finished watching the documentary Earthlings, an epic movie about our use of animals for profit. It took me two sittings to get through the entire film, it was so overwhelming to see the brutal footage of animals being mistreated by the pet, factory farm, slaughterhouse, deep sea fishing, clothing, science and entertainment industries. But from the hidden camera footage I saw in that movie, I can testify here that what this vet is testifying before Congress really happens. I’ve now seen it with my own eyes, and it’s a sad sight to see. (I highly recommend watching this film — which you can do from the website, and many libraries carry it, too — but not with your children. It is far too brutal for children, even young teens, to view, in my opinion). 

Much gratitude to this vet and these filmmakers for speaking truth to power. Keep working for change…