8 Random Facts

Because I love Maggie so much, and because I am challenging my irrational fear of creating boring tags, I'm going to post my random facts....

I'm not into rules today and I'm not tagging anyone else.  Bah!

1.  I pronounce "toilet", "tolet", to the amusement of one of my friends and all of her Bay City sisters.  I also have a potty mouth and sometimes choose consciously to use poor grammar if I think it will sound clever or funny.

2.  I was a vegetarian for nine years and now I'm not.  I do choose my animal products consciously and I think eating locally and organically is much more environmentally friendly than eating a strict non-animal diet from thousands of miles of away.  Hello, chard in my backyard.  Goodbye avocados from Chile in January.

3.  I think and speak at the same time, making me an annoying conversationalist at times.  This is how I learn my own opinions about things.  I have a secret envy for people like this who think and then speak. 

4.  I can curl up my toes and stand on them and even take a few steps, something my parents have talked about to their friends since I was about 4.

5.  I ran major production for several giant clothing companies for 11 years and never learned how to thread a needle on a sewing machine.

6.  Composting and earthworms excite me.  I hate to throw things away in a landfill.  I also loathe cheap plastic shit.

7.  It sometimes takes me over half a day to decide what I want to do with it.

8.  I think figs are sexy.  And Jack Johnson, too.

Comments

[wendy]

Most people will tell you that I rarely discuss my reasons for becoming a vegetarian. In fact, I often avoid mentioning it because doing so sets off a chain of events, a barrage of questions (some sincere - some antagonistic) but more frequently the guilty plea, "I try not to eat that much meat". (my reply is always the same: I don't care what you eat as long as you don't make me eat it!) I don't want anyone to feel guilty about their food choices, but I do wish people would make educated choices. These days, most people are so far removed from the food chain that they have no idea how the food gets to their table and this, I feel, is the great divide. It's hard to see a burger the same way when you've looked it in the eye.

I became a vegetarian because it became increasingly difficult for me to justify eating animals when there are so many other choices...it was more of a spiritual choice than an environmental or health choice, though these are definitely perks.

When I read about the cruelty that goes on (and continues to) in the meat industry, I chose to have no part of it whatsoever.

Read:
- Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully

- Diet for a New America by John Robbins

and this article I read in the NY Times Magazine back in 2002 and long after I became a vegetarian really shook me up...

http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=55

Environmentally speaking.....

A few facts for consideration:

Chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide residues in the U.S. diet supplied by meat: 55%

Supplied by Dairy products: 23%
Supplied by vegetables: 6%
Supplied by fruits: 4%
Supplied by grains: 1%

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, factory farming pollutes U.S. waterways more than all industrial sources combined.

Twenty-thousand pounds of potatoes can be grown on one acre of land, but only 165 pounds of beef can be produced in the same space.

Rain forests, vital to earth's oxygen supply, are being destroyed at an alarming rate - the top cause is the raising of animals for food.

Forty-five percent of the total land in this country is used to raise animals for food or crops to feed these animals.

A carnivorous diet requires 4200 gallons of water per day; a vegetarian one, 300 gallons per day.

Turning grain into flesh is extremely wasteful. Twenty vegetarians can be fed on the amount of land needed to feed one person on a meat-based diet.

More than one-third of all the raw materials and fossil fuels used in our country go to raise animals for food.

We have permanently lost 3/4 of U.S. topsoil; 85 percent of this loss is directly due to the raising of animals for food.

The price of meat would double or triple if the full ecological costs - including fossil fuel use, groundwater depletion and agriculture-chemical pollution - were included in the price tag.

A typical hog factory farm generates raw waste equivalent to that of a city of 12,000 people. The waste from U.S. factory farms in a single year would fill 6.7 million train boxcars - enough to circle the Earth 12 and a half times.

Malnutrition and starvation will kill approximately 14 million people this year. If Americans reduced their intake of meat by just 10 percent, the land, water and energy freed up from growing livestock feed would feed 100 million people.

And if that isn't food for thought (pardon the pun), there is even more to consider in the aforementioned books.

In conclusion, I think that eating locally is ideal, but eating locally vegetarian is even better!

[pixie]

Wen-

I hear all of your reasons for being a vegetarian. Many of them were my reasons for nearly a decade. I honor your choices as they sound like the right ones for you.
I personally have a problem with Robbin's book, which was our bible in the early years of being veg. One big reason is that some of his health facts are presented in a skewed manner and I am suspicious about why he doesn't present all of the truth or get better studies to support his claims. An example that comes to mind is that of soy. He uses soy to demonstrate longevity in Okinawans who eat a traditional diet (they consume raw soy beans at least once per day in general). But he uses soy milk in his argument against dairy milk (totally not the same food product at all, with few health benefits once it has been processed and preserved), and fails to mention that Okinawans have a diet comprised largely of pork, lard and cold-water ocean fish.
I do believe a traditional diet, far from anything factory farmed or produced, trucked or flown, is healthier than a vegetarian diet only.
Many vegetarians, and I includ myself in this opinionated statistic, eat a diet of vegetables and fruits, but also a diet high in processed, baked or hard baked foods.
My ideal diet would be one including a backyard diet of eggs from my own chickens who also fertilize my vegetable garden and weed it, fruits and vegetables acompanied by wild alaskan salmon. I buy free range, local, humanely raised and killed, organic, veg fed chicken & turkey to make stock from all of the animals parts (even bones and organs, something I would have yekked at before) for soups and sauces.
We eat raw dairy, unpasteurized and lacto fermented foods such as organic kefirs and yoghurts. I am trying to eat more fermented foods, but that is not easy for me. I do believe in the health benefits and can at least stomach an umeboshi plum a day to help with digestion. I do not order meat at restaurants where I have no idea where they came from or what they had to go through to get to my table.

I struggle with any lacto-ovo-vegetarian's ethical argument,
(my own included) mainly because of contributing to the veal industry (and baby boy chicks fall into the same category). Baby boy cows have to be used for veal because their breed is only good for milk and veal, not beef. My understanding is that Guernsey or Jersey cows are better if one has the choice as the holsteins have limited use and are mutant at this point.

Organic holstein cows have to be milked on a factory line by a machine unless you get them from a local handmilker. Also, they have to keep being impregnated in order to continue producing milk. That doesn't jive with a system promoting only humane treatment of animals, in my opinion.
I think it is a weak ethical argument at best, to swear off meat, but not dairy too. This is how I felt while I was a vegetarian, that I was trying to convince myself that I was ethically perfect, but alas, I wasn't afterall. And to have that expectation of myself was creating a shaming effect I didn't like. I think I'm doing more for the planet now than when I was veg. Honestly, with a bit of chicken stock and fish in our diets, I crave processed foods and cheese MUCH LESS.

I love Sally Fallon's book "Nourishing Traditions" for a great read about a local traditional diets vs. processed diets.
I also love Mary Jane Butter's Cookbook, in which she tells of her conversion from vegetarianism-she now harvests deer on her property for venison because the amount of nutrition it provides cannot be compared to the fossil fuel energy pound for pound of granola or grain food, which she was making before. I'd never considered what machinery/energy it takes to produce non-whole foods.
Needless to say, I was moved enough by all of this to try a new way.

Thanks for feeling safe enough to share your views here!

I adore you,

p

[ally bean]

Pixie, the funny thing is that I'd like to be able to just say things and figure them out as I'm saying them the way you do, but that doesn't come naturally to me. So as I figure there's nothng wrong with introversion, I'll stick with what works for me. The grass is always greener, eh?

Oh, great random list, btw. You do the concept of "random" proud.

[wendy]

Thank you, my sista, for elaborating and referring more reads for the readers. I agree, Robbins goes out on a limb with the soy milk...not the same, but a substitute nonetheless.

The eggs and dairy are such a tough call, indeed, especially for me having been a vegan for 5 years before moving back towards vegetarian. I do know that chickens will lay eggs regardless of whether or not there is a rooster present...just as we ovulate. So, one can, in fact, purchase unfertilized eggs. The question is what farm? I used to get eggs from friends whose chickens (known as the girls) were like extended family roaming free and housed at night to protect them from predators. They had no rooster so there was no chance of a fertilized egg slipping in or the nightmares of all the boy chicks being tossed in dumpsters to their death. horrors! These hens are living out their lives until they die naturally. D&L swore that their hens were innately aware of "coning" as they freaked out one day as she passed by the coop with what she realized later appeared to be a cone. So, they vowed to never kill "the girls".

As for the dairy...the only ethical farms I've heard of are Wilcox and Organic Valley. There are some small local farmers that make fantastic sheep's milk cheese and don't use rennet. The small farms that I know of are not keeping animals pregnant to make milk like the commercial farms.

Again, I usually don't talk about my vegetarian lifestyle as I mentioned in my previous comment, but your blog is indeed a safe place to open windows of thought and present other perceptions. Food choices, like parenting styles, are such personal decisions and require serious contemplation which I feel we are both doing very well :-) I acknowledge that my vegetarian diet isn't perfectly ethical due to the cheese factor (I don't like milk and am not fond of eggs...as you know), but I feel, as you do, that I'm doing what feels right to my soul. And like you, I feel like I'm making an informed choice and that is what I think is important. I don't think the general population has a clue what goes on in the food industry.

There were no other comments under this post so I thought I would start some dialog (even if only 'tween two friends)

[wendy]

My dream is to one day have a totally green zero energy home with non-off-gassing furniture; a small vegetable garden; and an Amish neighbor who raises sheep, makes cheese, knits gorgeous sweaters, sews and whom I can buy everything else from.

[pixie]

I want to live next to this crafty Amish neighbor, too! If I'd paid better attention to my grandparents, I wouldn't have to be educating myself so late in life on what "feels" right. This tells me I still have far to go to tune back into the intuition I was born with, that we all were born with. It is our birthright to eat and enjoy food without poison, cruelty, corporate motivations and human poverty woven into our meals.

I think that consciousness is limited to the biggest issues in front of each of us. As I age, I find that I make room for a bit more here and there. My hope for the lower and middle class people of the planet is to know that we have choices and to ask for help when we need it and become the change that we want to see in the world. The moving and shaking takes time, but and I'm glad that the people who are inspiring us have made it their priorities in life to educate little ole us.
It has to begin somewhere.

[pixie]

p.s. I like this little dialogue 'tweenst us friends! but maggie or anyone else, feel free to jump on in!

[HerbanGirl]

What a great dialogue!!! I always love hearing about other people's journey through food, and the reasons behind our choices.

Like Pix I was a vegetarian/vegan for the better part of 17 years, for all the usual reasons - health, environment, ethics, animal rights, a basic dislike of steak. I spent the second half of last year vegan, and by December I was so sick and weak, and my entire body so out of whack, that I had to look at other options.

After re-reading Nourishing Traditions I returned to a vegetarian diet plus raw organic dairy from Organic Pastures, and organic pastured eggs from a local farm who was glad to answer all my many questions about the treatment of their chickens. No forced molting, no beak trimming, allowed to eat grass and grub and live a happy life (I've visited the farm as well, and I agree). These chickens will not live out their full natural lives. It is too expensive for Nigel, my farmer to keep them after their egg-laying capacity drops dramatically near their 3rd year. I plan to buy some of these chickens starting in the fall, when Nigel will start offering them to CSA members and local restaurants. They will provide good stock for us. It's not idyllic or perfect, but it's real and I take responsibility for the fact that my egg-eating habit results in chickens dying...but while they live they live well and are given good care and freedom to fulfill their "chickenness", as Michael Pollan puts it.

I have also started eating grass-fed beef and pasture-fed poultry, both from local farms that I have researched and chosen on the basis of their humane and sustainable practices. I am every enamored of Joel Salatin and his farming method, and I look for local farmers following his lead. I also will not eat meat at a restaurant unless I know where the meat comes from and that it is produced humanely and sustainably. Fortunately, I know a few restaurants here in Sacramento that are committed to local, organic, sustainable food.

In addition to all of this, I eat lots of organic vegetables and fruits (most from the same organic farm that supplies me my eggs) and I'm becoming quite the prolific lacto-fermenter! (Pix, if you're interested in making kombucha I can bring you a mother in a few weeks!) I don't eat grains nearly as much as I used to, and when I do I soak my grains or flours before cooking or baking to break down the phytic acid that prevents absorption of nutrients.

Wendy, if you're looking for local sources of dairy and eggs, you might want to check out www.eatwellguide.com. You can type in your zip code and pull up farms, restaurants and farmer's markets in your area. I found my eggs this way, and have used the site to research my meat sources as well. I totally understand your arguments for vegetarianism. Interestingly, I read in "Vegan Freak" that world hunger is not an effective argument for veganism (the authors actually discouraged their readers from using this argument) because world hunger is not about amounts of food grown, but about the politics and economics of food distribution. Turning grain to flesh is fairly wasteful, I agree. But grass-fed beef is a very different story. If you haven't read The Omnivore's Dilemma, I highly recommend it - not because I want you to become an omnivore! But because Michael Pollan does a pretty effective job of explaining the differences between factory-farming and sustainable farming practices.

Books that I'll throw into the mix:
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice (I LOVE this book!!! A great read on the spirituality of food)
Real Food: What To Eat And Why by Nina Planck
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price

Thanks for letting me in on your chat!

Love, Maggie

[wendy]

Can you see it now, Pix...

"Hey Hezekiah...tell your wife I'll trade her my bracelet for her sweater...oh and before I forget, how much do you want for that rhubarb?"

(sigh) if only....

[HerbanGirl]

I seem to have stopped the conversation cold...sorry aboot that!

[holli]

we are so much alike.
it's a bit scary.