Regular readers of Hell Food know that Shane & I just came back from twenty-one glorious days of vacation a few weeks ago. Well, I finally have the inevitable vacation pictures available for perusal over at Flickr. Just a tad bit late, yes, but in my defense my little sis managed to infect me with her germies right before I left, so I’ve spent most of the past two weeks in bed or, during my more lucid moments, doing mindless dreg work on the ‘puter. I’ll only post a small selection here, so if you’re one of those sickos who actually enjoys looking at other people’s vacation slideshows (gasp!), check out my Road Trippin’ ‘06 set on Flickr.

First up - THOSE VEGAN DONUTS from Ronald’s Donuts in Las Vegas:

Yes, yes, I know - one of the donuts does have a huge hunk missing. It’s in my belly. Well, technically, I guess they all ended up in my belly, but that half was ingested in the seconds before I snapped the pic. You see, I was so excited by the presence of VEGAN DONUTS that I wolfed half of ‘em down before I even thought to take a picture.

Luckily, we bought a second batch before our departure:

Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? It brings a tear. (Guess you’ve gotta be a veg*n to understand.)

Sadly, the donuts didn’t fare too well on the plane ride back. I still ate ‘em, though. Hey, it’s hard to completely annihilate such sweetness.

Interestingly, Grist ran a story on green/veggie food options in Sin City not long after we returned to Kansas. It wasn’t a huge kick in the arse - having spent an afternoon researching vegan eateries on Happy Cow before the trip, I was well-versed on all the guilt-free options available in Vegas - but it was fun to note which of the featured businesses we had hit up during our weeklong stay. We went grocery shopping at the new Whole Foods mentioned in the article, and ordered lunch from Rainbow’s End Natural Foods & Café. It isn’t nearly the dealio as is Ron’s Donuts (c’mon, what trumps VEGAN DONUTS!?), but it definitely rocks the strip. Certainly, Vegas is unexpectedly welcoming to veg*ns - just don’t go there during the summer months. Trust me.

And DO stop by Ronald’s, at least once. Screw the diet, it’s worth it.

While in Vegas, we also…

Back in Rochester, I:

* Saw my little bro graduate from hs (and bust his first-ever move at Liquid while our designated driver Shane nodded off on a couch in the corner of the club);

* Caught a Red Wings game followed by some post-show fireworks;

* Watched some gawd-awful “comedians” “perform” at Comix Cafe;

* Had a Chinese feast with the relatives a la the Royal Dynasty;

* Suffered through “Family Picture Day”;

* And was embarrassed at the Corn Hill Arts Festival by some strange man I don’t know.

Seriously. Never seen him in my life. And he certainly isn’t my father or anything.

Good times.

Of course, the doggies also had fun. My parents have two of their own, so for three weeks, there were five (!) hyper (and hyper-sexed, even though they’re all fixed…go figure) dogs running to and fro.

That made Shadow so happy, she was literally beaming!

I’ll leave y’all with a picture of my dogs’ pimped out ride - two wire cages, set side-by-side, cushioned by fluffy fluffy bankies, and cooled by crisp rear A/C.

Ralphie especially enjoyed his shiny new car cage. The wires were just perfect for pinning O-Ren up against while he tried oh-so-frantically to hump her.

Still no luck, though. As always, she wound up on top. That’s my girl.

(* Oh, and PS - don’t call me Mrs. Brady. Evah.)

After a long hiatus, I am returning to doing food reviews. Today’s victim is Welch’s Orange Pineapple drink. My office supplies two soda machines, and this drink is considered one of the “healthy” drinks. I used to drink it myself, thinking it was a better alternative to having a regular Coke. Oh how wrong I was.

The first thing that strikes me about the can, is the “Since 1869″ printed right below the “Welch’s” logo. I’m assuming the date is meant to hint to the consumer this drink has over one hundred years of use, from back in the old days when drinks were nothing but natural. I doubt the citizens of the 1869 United States ever drank anything like this.

The drink contains only 10% real juice. The rest is water and everyone’s favorite food, corn syrup. Throw in some yellow dye #5, and you get 11.5 oz of sugar water with 180 calories. The 180 calories for 11.5 oz of liquid is atrocious. While it also contains 100% of your daily need of vitamin C, it comes at the price of 45 grams of sugar. That’s nearly 20% of the recommended daily intake of carbohydrates in one little drink.

I can’t recommend Welch’s Orange Pineapple. Just eat an orange, some fresh pineapple, and a nice 16 oz glass of ice water. You’ll be much better off.

(Crossposted on easyVegan.info.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jul 25, 2006 4:33 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Washington Post on vegan diets and diabetes 7/25/06

The Tuesday, July 25, Washington Post, has an interesting article on the cover of the Health section (Pg F01) by Sally Squires, headed, “‘Good’ Carbs To the Rescue.”

It opens:

“People with Type 2 diabetes are advised to limit carbohydrates because of worries that too many carbs could overtax the body’s dwindling insulin production and lessen its ability to process glucose.

“Now some scientists are asking if a very-low-fat diet rich in healthy carbohydrates — whole grains, beans, fruit and vegetables — might be another option.

“The idea borrows a lesson from the heart disease field, which has shown that very strict vegetarian diets quite low in fat and very high in carbohydrates can help reverse arterial blockages.”

Then Squires writes: “Such diets have proven very difficult to stick with, absent high motivation and plenty of support.”

On the benefits, she writes:

“In May, physician Dean Ornish, a proponent of the very-low-fat approach for reversing heart disease, reported that this regimen also helped a subset of people with both diabetes and heart disease.

“In the study, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, participants who followed the approach shed pounds. Blood levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), ‘bad’ cholesterol that raises heart disease risk, dropped. Levels of protective high-density lipoprotein (HDL) didn’t drop, and unhealthy fats known as triglycerides didn’t rise, as some researchers had feared. Another key finding: 20 percent of participants who stuck with the diet for a year were able to cut or eliminate their insulin and other glucose-lowering medications.

“Similar results are expected later this week from a study headed by the University of Toronto’s David Jenkins and Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a pro-vegetarian group.”

We learn that in PCRM’s study, the group on the American Diabetes Association standard diet and PCRM’s vegan diet both improved blood sugar control and LDL cholesterol levels, but that the vegan group lost an average of 15 pounds, compared with six for the ADA group.

Then Squires suggests (again):

“Learning to go vegan takes effort, time and some sacrifice, however.”

You can read the whole article on line at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ OR http://tinyurl.com/otvt4

It cries out for letters from those who don’t find plant based diets difficult to follow or requiring of much sacrifice. The Washington Post takes letters at letters [at] washpost.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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Wow! It seems as though food, particularly the ethical/environmental aspects of organics, meat, etc., has been in the headlines quite a bit in the past month or so. Here’s another DawnWatch alert on the subject.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jul 19, 2006 2:10 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Washington Post on ethical eating 7/19/06

The Wednesday, July 19, Washington Post includes an article, by Candy Sagon, on the cover of the food section, headed, “Is There Anything Left That We Can Eat?; With All the Conflicting Headlines, No Wonder We Can’t Decide What to Buy.”

Sagon opens:

“I can’t decide what to eat. I don’t mean which recipe to make, or what restaurant to go to. I mean when I go grocery shopping, I’m paralyzed with indecision. Everything, it seems, is either ethically, nutritionally or environmentally incorrect. Guilt is ruining my appetite.

“Take the other day when I went to buy eggs. Sounds easy, but this is the dialogue that played in my head as I stared at six shelves of egg cartons:

“‘Should I buy the omega-3 eggs that are supposedly good for my heart? But wait, they’re not organic. Maybe I should spring for the $3.50 organic eggs from Horizon, even though I read that the company has gotten so huge, it’s driving out the smaller organic farmers. Perhaps I should get the cage-free eggs from a small farm in Pennsylvania? Or the brown eggs from vegetarian-fed, free-roaming hens?

“‘Oh, never mind. I need to save money. So what if the hens are living a miserable existence in the poultry version of the state pen. The eggs are only 79 cents. I have bills to pay.’

“(Note to PETA: Don’t worry. I couldn’t live with the guilt. I ended up buying the brown eggs from free-roaming happy hens, so don’t write to me.) ”

“The point is, choosing what to eat and drink has become hard work. It’s not simply a case of taste or price. Now we have to ask ourselves: Is this good for my health? Have animals suffered? Is it local? Organic? Bad for the planet? Harvested by child workers? ”

Sagon discusses wild caught vs farm-raised salmon, the treatment of both workers and animals in slaughterhouses, and also issues of human health and environmental impact.

You can read the whole article on line here OR http://tinyurl.com/jdqjo

It presents the perfect opportunity for letters to the editor on the horrors of factory farming and/or singing the praises of a plant-based diet.

Send letters to letters [at] washpost.com. The paper advises, “Please do not send attachments; they will not be read. Letters must be exclusive to The Washington Post, and must include the writer’s home address and home and business telephone numbers.”

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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…Grist Magazine’s interview with Bryant Terry:

As founder of a group promoting healthy eating among NYC youth and a chef in his own right, Bryant Terry has plenty of food for thought. Organically grown, sustainably harvested, locally sourced food for thought, that is. As InterActivist this week, Terry chews over questions from readers about soul food, Wal-Mart’s organic offerings, South Central Farm, his love of okra, and more.

Check it here. Lots of discussion of organics and sustainable agriculture.

Still catching up on all that email (!)…

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jul 10, 2006 2:44 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Discover Magazine on lab-grown meat — July 2006 edition

The July edition of Discover Magazine has an article under “Blinded by Science” headed, “The Way of All Flesh. Bringing home the bacon may become a thing of the past when we can grow our own.” (p 28.)

It opens with a discussion of a proposed meat machine, and suggests that “in the future we’ll be sprinkling a few ’starter cells’ into our meat machine before we go to bed and adding a cup or two of ‘growth medium.’ The next morning we’ll awake to an appetizing, fully formed lump of pork or beef or poultry, ready to be fried up with breakfast…”

It tells us that this new meat will be healthier for humans:

“The steaks and chops we use to fill our faces will have the fat content of mere salmon. Nor shall we submit any longer to disease. Salmonella, mad cow, E. coli . . . these will be consigned to the dustbin of meat history and the name pool of heavy-metal bands.”

The article suggests that some vegetarians will be thrilled:

“Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, informs me that she has been following Dr. Mironov’s career and the glacial progress of the ‘lab-grown meat’ movement since its inception. Newkirk is salivating in anticipation of the day she finally gets to eat a chunk of meat that nothing had to suffer to produce-not least because the flesh won’t contain the vast quantity of ‘rectums and nose-skin bacteria’ she assures me I’ve been eating a lot of.”

It continues:

“But Newkirk is the right sort of vegetarian: the rational sort. She concedes that not all of her pale fellow travelers share a commonsensical enthusiasm for the coming revolution.”

It then goes on to discuss, in amusing detail, the kinds of vegetarians the author imagines won’t be pleased, those whose “decision not to eat meat was inspired less by the contemplated suffering of animals than by the contemplated prolonged suffering of parents forced to cook two sets of meals….”

You can read the whole article on line at:
http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-06/departments/blinded/

It presents a fabulous opportunity for letters about the current methods of bringing meat to dining tables.

Discover takes letters at editorial [at] discover.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jun 27, 2006 9:37 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times write-up on “The Way We Eat” 6/27/06

The Health section of the Tuesday, June 27, New York Times (pg F5) has a positive write-up on two new similarly named books, “What to Eat,” by Marion Nestle and “The Way We Eat,” by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. The article’s headline reads, “On Special At Your Local Supermarket: Moral Choices.”

The review explains that Nestle’s book “focuses on how much food we need, what kind, and how to find it” while in their book “Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton, and his co-author, Jim Mason, an animal rights activist, make the case that food choices are ethical choices.”

We read:

“Dr. Singer and Mr. Mason organize their book around food shopping by three very different households: an Arkansas family eating ‘the Standard American Diet,’ much of it bought at Wal-Mart; a Connecticut family striving to eat only organic food; and a Kansas family of vegans who eat nothing animal-based, not even cheese or eggs.

“Both books end up in the same place on a number of issues.

“Both advise eating organic food. Not because it’s better for you — though it might be — but because it’s better for the environment and far kinder to animals. And both pile up evidence that profit pressures in agribusiness are detrimental to society at large.

“The examples the authors use to bolster their arguments are not for the weak of stomach. Dr. Singer’s and Mr. Mason’s gruesome description of industrial pig farming ought to turn any sentient reader away from anything but organic bacon. As Dr. Nestle puts it, ‘If you think too much about what is involved in the raising and killing of animals, you may find meat hard to eat.’

“In ‘The Way We Eat,’ the description of industrial chicken production actually comes with a warning that it may be ‘disturbing to some readers.’”

The review discusses the impact of the glut of corn syrup on the market, and touches on the environmental impact of factory farming. We read:

“For example, any doubt that industrial pig farming can have disastrous environmental impacts was removed a few years ago, with the failure of a so-called lagoon holding vast amounts of manure from a North Carolina hog factory. The resulting pollution was widespread and long lasting.”

And it returns to animal cruelty issues:

“Dr. Singer and Mr. Mason dismiss the cost argument as insufficient to justify what they regard as chronic cruelty, much of it inflicted on highly intelligent creatures…. And, while it is true that if a pig’s tail is chopped off, another pig cannot gnaw it off, and that chickens whose beaks are seared off cannot peck one another to death, the authors say these steps are unnecessary when pigs are allowed to forage and nest naturally and chickens are not crammed into sheds where each has less than 80 square inches of space — an area smaller than a sheet of typing paper — as is typical in chicken production sheds.”

You can read the whole piece on line at
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/health/27book.html

It presents a nice opportunity for veg-friendly letters to the editor. The New York Times takes letters at letters [at] nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

You can read other reviews and buy Singer and Mason’s book on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/qdmds. I highly recommend it.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info)

Returning from vacation with an old-ish email from DawnWatch. Vaca pics coming soon!

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jun 25, 2006 11:49 AM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times on animals raised for food — “It Died For Us” 6/25/06

This Sunday, June 25, The New York Times Business section (page 2) has an article that discusses the Whole Foods decision to stop selling live lobsters and tells us of a new invention called the “CrustaStun,” which electrocutes crabs or lobsters in a matter of seconds. See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/business/yourmoney/25goods.html for that article.

“The Week in Review” section, also includes an article, on its cover, inspired by the Wholefoods decision. Titled “It Died for Us,” the piece, by Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, takes a broader look at the raising of consumer consciousness with regard to the treatment of animals sold for human food.

Bruni’s piece opens by questioning whether oysters eaten alive feel pain, then comments:

“These questions seem less ridiculous than they once did. This month Whole Foods announced that it would no longer sell live lobsters, saying that keeping them in crammed tanks for long periods doesn’t demonstrate a proper concern for animal welfare. The Chicago City Council recently outlawed the sale of foie gras to protest the force-feeding of the ducks and geese that yield it. California passed a similar law, which doesn’t take effect until 2012, and other states and cities are considering such measures.

“All of these developments dovetail with a heightened awareness in these food-obsessed times of what we eat: where it came from, what it was fed, how it was penned, how it perished. If the success of best sellers like ‘Fast Food Nation’ and ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and stores like Whole Foods is any indication, more Americans are spending more time mulling the nutritional, environmental and, yes, ethical implications of their diets.

“They prefer that their beef carry the tag ‘grass fed,’ which evokes a verdant pasture rather than a squalid feed lot, and that their poultry knew the glories of a ‘free range,’ a less sturdy assurance than many people believe.

“But these concerns are riddled with intellectual inconsistencies and prompt infinite questions. Are the calls for fundamental changes in the mass production of food simply elitist, the privilege of people wealthy enough to pay more at the checkout counter? Does fretting about ducks give people a pass on chickens? Does considering the lobster allow seafood lovers to disregard the tuna?”

Great questions! And Michael Pollan, author of ”The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is quoted:

”Foie gras and lobster are not at the heart of the real tough issues of animal welfare, which are feed lots and pigs and cattle and chickens and how billions of animals are treated….On the other hand, the fact that we’re having this conversation at all — that we’re talking about ethics in relation to what we’re eating every day — strikes me as a very healthy thing.”

The article also shares thoughts from Jay Weinstein, author of a new book ”The Ethical Gourmet’.”

We read:

“While the lives of ‘free-range’ chickens are hardly ideal, the lives of other chickens are even worse, Mr. Weinstein said. The birds’ feet are lacerated by the wire they are forced to stand on, while their beaks are clipped so they can’t peck at each other in the tight quarters they occupy. He questioned whether any of that was less offensive than the force feeding of ducks.”

The article also includes quotes by a chef, Eric Ripert of ‘Le Bernardin’, who kills lobsters with a knife before boiling them, to save them suffering.

But we read:

“But where do the restaurant’s lobsters await their appointment with the knife? For as many as 24 hours, as many as 40 lobsters inhabit a container that’s just 3-feet long by 1-foot wide, he said. It doesn’t sound much comfier than a Whole Foods holding tank.”

Ripert is quoted:

“When you think about treating animals in a humane way, it’s unlimited. If you start with the lobster, then next month you should think about the clam, and then you have to think about the fish, which is suffocating outside the water after we catch it.”

The reporter, Bruni, adds:

“Even before it suffocates, a hooked or netted fish flails in a doomed effort to avoid its fate. The process is traumatic enough that David Pasternack, a fisherman and co-owner of the Manhattan seafood restaurant Esca, noted that ‘you can see the struggle in the flesh of a fish.”’

Bruni then asks, “Does that struggle deserve as much heed as the grisly realities of the abattoir?”

He answers:

“Maybe not. Ample scientific evidence suggests that various creatures have varying levels of consciousness.”

He quotes Pollan again, ”There really is a difference between the sentience of an oyster and the sentience of a lobster and the sentience of a cat. These lines really can be drawn.”

And Bruni writes:

“And advocates of animal welfare argue that some lines are better than none, that inconsistencies are better than inaction.”

A nice comment — of course inconsistency is better than inaction. The article, however, might inspire animal advocates to question drawing lines between animals when there are so many nutritious vegetarian choices available. You can read the full article on line at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/weekinreview/25bruni.html and send letters to the editor to letters [at] nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published, and that it is important not to use any of my phrases or those from other alerts. Sample letters (or alerts that recommend specific talking points — much the same as sample letters) are counterproductive when dealing with the media since many papers will avoid publishing letters that appear to be part of a campaign. Yet still, many letters about the same article show great reader interest in the topic, and will ensure that some letters are published and also that the topic gets more coverage. So it is important to write — but to write short original notes.

Most importantly, please keep an eye out for related articles in your local media — you might use any article on food as a jump-off point for an animal friendly letter. Some of the smaller papers publish close to 100% of the letters they receive, so why not write?

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info)