The B12 Study, Part 2

Nosing around this morning, I found two excellent reactions to the B12 study referenced in the article(s) I discussed yesterday.

Gary L. Francione is addressing the Telegraph piece, itself, on Opposing Views, commenting on how the journal article's abstract doesn't actually even refer to veganism. As well, PCRM has issued a statement endorsing "well-planned vegan and vegetarian diets for healthy pregnancies".

Veganism in the News

In a guest article for the Globe and Mail, "Vegan diet has surprising stick-to-it-iveness", dietitian Leslie Beck discusses the recently published results of a PCRM study on losing weight and reducing bad cholesterol levels by following a strictly plant-based diet. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but within the context of her article, I can't help but feel that a more accurate way of describing what she calls a "vegan" diet would be to call it a "strict vegetarian" diet. Veganism isn't just about what you put into your mouth; it's a way of life wrapped around an ethical belief system that concerns itself with not using or consuming non-human animals.

In the last third or so of the article, she juxtaposes achieving the same the same health benefits as those touted by PCRM, but by following a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet (she mentions "other studies" without actually citing sources). The positive side of the piece is that it drills home that it's not hard to follow a plant-based diet. The negative is that it presents veganism outside of any sort of ethical context, which inevitably waters down the actual meaning of the term.

A Vegan Thanksgiving

Trying to figure out what to do for a holiday meal? The ScrippsNews website has a short article on how to have a vegan Thanksgiving (U.S.). It includes recipes for a vegan Shepherd's Pie, Mushroom Gravy, Creamy Spiced Butternut Squash Soup and Pumpkin Raisin Bread, all from Mary Grayr, the chef and owner of Mary's Secret Garden in Ventura, CA.

Cookbook writer Bryanna Clark Grogan's got a whole mess of scrumptious-sounding Thanksgiving recipe ideas on her website. PCRM'S site has a bunch that sound lovely. Veg websites like VegWeb.com also have tons of holiday-themed recipe ideas and even ordinary recipe sites with search functions offer up lots of vegan variations on traditional holiday dishes.

Vegetarianism in the news

I stumbled upon an article about a chef who'll be a guest on today's Oprah for a sandwich cookoff where three chefs will be paired with three Oprah fans. The chef was planning on making some sort of lobster, crab and cow concoction until...

...when Stone met the fan he would be paired with, she uttered four words that changed everything.

"She came up to me and said 'So, I'm a vegetarian'," he says. "I was like, 'Oh great. Just great,' and went right back to the drawing board."

After a brief moment of panic, Stone and his helper got to work, planning, shopping for and cooking an elaborate meal.

"We ended up doing a trio," he says. "A cocktail, a crab cake sandwich that was like a mini burger and a falafel. Thankfully, her doctor had said she should eat more protein, so she was willing to try some crab."

Yet another incidence of mainstream media presenting the eating of fish (or other water-dwelling critters) as vegetarian-friendly, as well as another perpetuation of the protein myth (i.e. that vegetarians don't get enough)... I'm irked. Sorta. I wonder if any of this will come up in the show.

And then while reading the New York Times...

Yes. Yes, Nicholas D. Kristof, it does indeed seem like ''soggy sentimentality'' and ''hypocrisy'' that you pretend to support animal rights, when in the same breath you assert that you enjoy devouring them. It's like someone asserting that he stands up for women's rights, even though he slaps his wife and daughters around at home and then -- whimsically -- shrugs off his doing so by blaming it on his upbringing. I mean, c'mon?

The protein myth

AlterNet has a short article today by Kathy Freston about the "protein myth". For most vegans, the question "But where do you get your protein?" always seems a bit perplexing as it comes up again and again (and again). It's as if by eschewing that ol' ribeye steak or yogurt cup, vegans face some sort of inevitable and well-known nutritional deficiency purportedly common to their ilk, even though most of the folks like me who live in North America live in a world where most diseases have to do with excessive consumption.

Freston points out that only 10 percent of most people's daily caloric intake needs to be protein-derived and that it's almost impossible to not meet this requirement by simply eating a varied plant-based diet. She discusses Dr. Dean Ornish's article that links common cancers, heart disease and other illnesses to high protein -- and especially animal-derived -- foods (she's right that his article is well-worth the read) . She also mentions T. Colin Campbell's famous The China Study, which also links cancer to excessive animal protein consumption.

The Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) has a well-researched section on its website about daily protein requirements and vegan sources of protein. It also addresses the still widely-perpetuated myth (kick-started -- and long-since repudiated -- by France Moore Lappé in her famous work Diet for a Small Planet) of the supposed need to combine different types of protein to get a "complete" protein. PCRM also has an informative article on protein for vegans and breaks down protein requirements by body weight (as well as throwing in a couple of protein-rich recipes to boot). It's almost embarrassing how ridiculously easy it is to get the minimum amount of protein you need day to day.