I was reminded this week by a friend of mine who lives in Boston, about the lack of Dunkin Donuts in the Kansas City area. If you ever go to Boston, however, you will see Dunkin Donuts practically on every street corner. We have donut chains in Kansas City, but nothing like that.

What we do have, though, is Krispy Kreme. The only time I have ever had Krispy Kreme donuts was when I lived in Rochester, NY, and the grand opening of a new store was big news. My brother and his friend waited in line over thirty minutes to buy a dozen of their standard donuts. It’s been many years since they bought them, but I can still remember the greasy feel of the donut in my mouth, and the quick sugar rush that ultimately caused a nasty headache. It felt like what I imagine a few lines of cocaine would feel like, but not quite as healthy.

If there is any food that is a “Hell Food”, it’s probably Krispy Kreme donuts. One donut has 200 calories, 100 calories from fat, 12 grams of fat, and 22 grams of carbohydrates. It is also one of the most unsatisfying things you can eat. It’s mostly air and sugar, and does nothing to fill you up. Most likely, you will end up having a second one. There is not one redeeming thing about eating a Krispy Kreme donut. Over five years since my last Krispy Kreme, I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.

I need an apple.

(Crossposted at easyVegan.info.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Aug 16, 2006 7:40 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: LA Times lead ‘Food’ article on books about ethical eating 8/16/06

The Food section of the Wednesday, August 16, Los Angeles Times has a cover story (Pg F1) on the rush of books about ethical eating, headed, “Voting with their forks.”

It opens:

“In the last couple of months a choir of disparate voices has been sending the same message through books, magazines and the Internet that advocates of farmers markets and eating locally have been preaching for years: The cost of industrialized food is too high, both literally and environmentally. And the thought is sinking in.

“At least four ambitious books connecting the dots between what we eat and how it affects the world have been published recently, and the most insightful of them, Michael Pollan’s ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ has been a bestseller…. The reasons behind this sudden consciousness-raising are myriad, but Pollan summarizes them most succinctly. In an e-mail, he says Americans are starting to understand ‘just how important the food issue is — how it is linked to energy and global warming (17% of our fossil fuel use goes to feeding ourselves); to environmental pollution (farming is the single biggest source of water pollution); health (obesity and diabetes turned attention to the way we produce food); world trade, the federal budget and the welfare of animals.’”

There are other good quotes from Pollan such as:

“My hunch is that, at a time when world problems seem so dire and intractable, food represents one area where people feel they can actually make a difference, here and now. As I tell audiences, if you feel your tax dollars are going to support practices you find deplorable, you can’t withdraw your support for those practices without going to jail. But if you feel that your food dollars are supporting morally or ethically objectionable practices — brutal factory farms or environmental pollution — you can withhold your support, and vote with your fork for a better alternative.”

The article comments on the shift of consciousness into the mainstream:

“Unlike the last revolution in food, in the ’70s, the movement toward change is not coming from the fringe and cannot be easily written off as the pipe dreams of a bunch of vegetarian hippies. The right stuff is no longer segregated in health food stores and co-ops; it’s gone mainstream.

“And that may explain one more sea change in the Summer of Food: Priorities have shifted. Americans concerned about how their food is raised now know they can make a difference. Hence the ’scandale’ over lobsters (Whole Foods promised to stop selling them live to give them a finer quality of life) and the growing movement to outlaw foie gras on the grounds that it represents cruelty to ducks.”

The article ends with recommendations of five books on the topic. Though the author favors “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” those particularly interested in animal issues should pick up another of the five, “The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter,” by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. (You’ll find information about that book and some reviews at http://tinyurl.com/qdmds where you can also purchase it.)

You’ll find the whole Los Angeles Times article on line here OR at http://tinyurl.com/qbsfj

It does not concentrate on animal cruelty issues but provides a great opportunity for letters that do. www.FactoryFarming.com is a good source of information.

The Los Angeles Times takes letters at letters [at] latimes.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.)

—————————————-

(Crossposted at easyVegan.info.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Aug 14, 2006 5:00 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: “Meat Eaters Without The Guilt” in Washington Post 8/14/06

The Monday, August 14, Washington Post has a thoughtful piece by Tamar Haspel headed, “Meat Eaters Without The Guilt.” (Pg A13)

It opens:

“It’s almost a movement. Sustainable agriculture — David to factory farming’s Goliath — is capturing the eating public’s imagination with its contented cows, bucolic landscape and its practice of leaving the environment intact.

“With an assist from some recent books describing the miserable lives of animals under big agriculture, the small farmer’s message that we should care about the lives of our livestock is getting traction. As it does, it gives those of us with a concern for animals, but also a fondness for pork chops, a place to hang our hats.

“Until relatively recently, when grass-fed beef and free-roaming pork began arriving in stores, consumers had to be one of three things: carnivore, vegetarian or hypocrite. If you didn’t care about your pork chop’s quality of life, you could be a carnivore. If you did, you could either renounce it and be a vegetarian or eat it anyway and, well . . .

“Vegetarians had a good claim to the ethical and environmental high ground. Factory farms abuse animals and devastate the environment, and a world where we all eat plants is clearly better than that. When you put the vegetarian vision up against a system of small, sustainable farms, though, the equation changes.

“Ecologically, vegetarians focus on efficiency. If humans eat animals that eat plants, it takes much more land to feed us than if humans just eat the plants. That seems like a quaint concern, though, in this era of abundance. Besides, what would we put on freed-up farmland? Gated communities? Wal-Mart?”

Haspel mentions a farm where the animals are well treated (until they are killed) and the manure from the animals makes growing the vegetables possible, but then writes:

“None of this would matter if the livestock suffered. Sustainability couldn’t excuse keeping pigs in such close confinement that they chewed each other’s tails off. But the beauty of the sustainable farm is that the pigs root, roam and wallow. Of course, you still have to kill them, and there are people who find that unacceptable under any circumstances.”

“But there’s a strong case that giving a farm animal a happy life making a constructive environmental contribution and slaughtering it humanely to feed people is ethical. Even animal rights hard-liner Peter Singer, in ‘The Way We Eat’ (co-authored with Jim Mason), can’t condemn ‘the view that it is ethical to eat animals who have lived good lives and would not have existed at all.’ He concludes that it’s ‘more appropriate to praise’ this relatively enlightened view than to criticize it for not being the veganism he prefers.”

Haspel then mentions that “vegetarians are undoubtedly healthier than meat eaters,” but she writes, “no study has compared a wholly vegetarian diet to a largely vegetarian diet that includes some grass-fed beef, free-rooting pork or cageless poultry.”

She suggests that by supporting sustainable farms, we “might be able to change the nature of American agriculture.”

You can read the whole piece on line at http://tinyurl.com/o5p3a.

Haspel clearly has a concern for animal welfare that should be commended. However those tempted to believe that raising animals on sustainable farms, where they are well treated, negates the problem of cruelty should read another article from the Washington Post, (April 10, 2001, front page) titled “They Die Piece by Piece.” It is available on line at http://tinyurl.com/d2mtm.

It describes undercover footage taken from a slaughterhouse that shows cows, improperly stunned, moooing, kicking and blinking as they make their way down the slaughter line being hacked to pieces.

Today’s article presents a great opportunity for letters that sing the praises of plant-based diets. The Washington Post takes letters at letters [at] washpost.com and 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 — and please leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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<sarcasm>
I’m sure this never happens in America.
</sarcasm>

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1417438.ece

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jul 31, 2006 4:38 PM
Subject: DawnWatch LA: Vegan diet control of diabetes in LA Times 7/31/06

Angelenos:

Sally Squire’s article on vegan diets controlling diabetes (from last week’s Washington Post) is in the Monday, July 31, Los Angeles Times (see below). It offers a great opportunity for those who enjoy a plant-based diet to sing its praises. The Los Angeles Times takes letters at letters [at] latimes.com

Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2006 Monday
HEALTH; Features Desk; Part F; Pg. 7

THE LEAN PLATE; Need to control blood sugar? Carbs might help

Sally Squires, Special to The Times

People with Type 2 diabetes are advised to limit carbohydrates because of worries these foods could overtax the body’s dwindling insulin production and lessen its ability to process glucose. Now some scientists are asking if a diet rich in healthful carbohydrates — whole grains, beans, fruit and vegetables — and with just 10% of calories as fat might be another option.

The idea borrows a lesson from heart disease research, which has shown that very strict vegetarian diets quite low in fat and very high in carbohydrates can help reverse blockages — if people stick with them.

“A diet can be wonderful for you, but if it can’t be practically applied, it can’t do much,” says Robert Eckel, president of the
American Heart Assn.

In May, Dr. Dean Ornish, a proponent of the very-low-fat approach for reversing heart disease, reported that this regimen helped people afflicted with both diabetes and heart disease. Not only did they lose weight, but their blood cholesterol improved and they didn’t show a rise in unhealthy fats known as triglycerides, as some researchers feared. Another key finding: Twenty percent of participants who stuck with the diet for a year were either able to cut their insulin and other glucose-lowering medication or eliminate it.

Similar results were reported from a National Institutes of Health-funded study headed by David Jenkins of the University of
Toronto and Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a pro-vegetarian group. The four-month trial studied 99 people with Type 2 diabetes. Some were asked to follow the standard dietary advice from the American Diabetes Assn. The others were asked to adhere to a very strict, low-fat vegan diet, devoid of meat, fish, eggs, dairy or any other animal products.

Both groups improved blood sugar control and LDL cholesterol levels. Both lost weight, but the vegan group shed an average of 15 pounds compared with 6 pounds for the group that adhered to the ADA guidelines. Like the Ornish study, the vegan group showed no harmful changes in either triglyceride levels or in high-density lipoprotein (HDL), a protective form of cholesterol. Results of the study were published in the August issue of the journal Diabetes Care.

The findings offer more evidence that eating a very-low-fat regimen with a lot of healthful carbohydrates may not be as harmful as once thought for those with Type 2 diabetes and could prove to be another treatment option.

HDL and triglycerides “are often windows of concern, and they were not modified adversely by this,” says the heart association’s Eckel. “If this more radical approach in diabetes can be tolerated better long term, then we may be on to something here.”

Learning to go vegan takes effort, time and some sacrifice, as Vance Warren, 36, a retired Washington, D.C., police officer found. “I know the difference between a Morton’s steak and a tofu steak,” says Warren, who lost more than 70 pounds while participating in the study and was able to reduce the medication he takes to control his blood sugar. “It’s like the difference between a Mercedes and a Toyota. The hardest thing for me was giving up the chicken wings … but I really don’t miss them now.”

Experts caution that the findings are not likely to change current recommendations for diabetes until much more research is conducted with larger groups of people. “It’s great that the low-fat vegan diet improved glycemic [blood sugar] control,” says Karmeen Kulkarni, president of health care and education for the American Diabetes Assn. “But we had 50 people here. We have to see if this is palatable in a bigger scheme of things on an ongoing basis.”

In the meantime, there’s wide agreement about how to control or prevent diabetes, as well as heart disease and many types of cancer:

* Eat more plant-based foods. The more varied, the better.

* Easy on the fat. Gram for gram, it contains more than twice the calories as protein or carbs. Being overweight or obese are major risk factors for diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Whatever fat you eat, make it healthy. Reach for fish (not fried), healthy oil such as canola or olive oil, nuts, avocados and seeds.

* Get active. The Diabetes Prevention Program, a large federally funded study of people who are just a step shy of developing diabetes, found that daily exercise (walking is fine) was important to prevent diabetes. How much? Thirty minutes daily. But that half-hour can be broken down into 10-minute increments.

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(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.)