IVU Online News
2013-10 IVU News
on 15 September 2013. Posted in IVU Online News
Table of Contents
The Action Is in Malaysia This October
Many, Many Veg Events
Does Talk Speed Up Slow Change?
Do Vegans Need Less Calcium?
Have You Eaten Your Marine Veggies Today?YouTubing It
Visual of the Month
This Month’s HCYKTASEM
Book News 1 - Crocodile
Book News 2 - Complete Idiot’s Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition
Book News 3 - The Adventurous Vegetarian
Upcoming Events
New Business Supporter
Other Online Sources of Veg News
Please Send News to IVU Online News
The Action Is in Malaysia This October
The IVU World Vegfest is now an annual event, rotating around the world. 2012 was in North America, 2014 will be in Africa, and this year, we’re in Asia, with the event taking place in Malaysia’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur, 3-9 October: http://mvs.my/2013.
The 2013 IVU World Vegfest, held in conjunction with the Asia Vegetarian Congress, begins on the evening of Thu, 3 Oct with a welcome dinner. Then, Fri & Sat, 4-5 Oct feature talks, workshops, forums and more at Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC). The main event wraps up on Sun, 6 Oct with a big food fair (100+ veg stalls) at Lake Titiwangsa (pictured here). Afterwards, there is an optional tour to Penang, Malaysia.
To attract the younger generation, full-time university students 25 years of age and below pay only $US10, although the uni student ticket does not include the lunches, tea break snacks and dinners. However, arrangements will be made for uni students to get reasonably priced food.
For budget accommodation, please try: Hotel Wira, Jalan Thamboosamy, 50350 Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, +60 3-4042 3333 or Hotel Anum, 100 Jalan Putra JALAN PUTRA Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, +60 3-4041 4102.
Among the scheduled speakers are Malaysia’s Minister for Health, Dr S. Subramaniam, who is veg; Marly Winckler, the head of the Brazil Vegetarian Society and chair of the IVU International Council; Emmanuel Eyoh, IVU’s representative for Africa; Professor Emeritus Dr Maitree Suttajit, Dean, Sch. of Medical Science, University of Phayao, Thailand; Professor Duo Li, Zhejiang University, China, president of Asia Vegetarian Union; Sebastian Zösch of Germany’s Vegetarian Bund; John Davis, IVU’s Manager; Paul Turner, the head of Food for Life, a vegan food relief organisation; Malaysia Vegetarian Society’s president, Dr P Vythilingam; Dr Susianto Tseng, COO of the Indonesia Vegetarian Society; and Professor Dr Lekhraj Rampal, Community Health, University Pertanian Malaysia (Medical).
To register and for more information, please contact our Malaysian friends via the event website: http://mvs.my/2013.
Many, Many Veg Events
October is a favourite time for veg events. We hear about so many. Here’s an example of something IVU received recently by email.
Every year, the beginning of October is special. In numerous cities, in numerous countries, veg events take place. From large festivals to small street stalls or just family and friend gatherings, the Vegetarian Week is an opportunity to celebrate a healthy, ecological and ethical lifestyle. 2013 will be no exception. What do you plan to do this year? No matter how small or large your contribution - Get involved!
Visit the Vegetarian Week website and feel free to use the resources available, to print posters, leaflets, try and share recipes, etc. All material available is copyright free.
www.vegetarianweek.org
all the latest on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/VegetarianWeek
Does Talk Speed Up Slow Change?
The Vegan Outreach Newsletter recently reported some thought provoking research on change. The researcher was by Dr Atul Gawande (pictured here), who combines careers as a surgeon, a professor of medicine and a writer for the New Yorker, a prestigious magazine.
Dr Gawande claims that some ideas, such as the use of anesthesia in surgery in the 19th century, spread quickly. In contrast, other equally beneficial ideas, such as antisepsis (sterilizing operating rooms), another 19th century idea, spread slowly.
Why did one idea spread quickly and the other slowly? Gawande hypothesizes:
First, one [anaesthesia] combatted a visible and immediate problem (pain); the other [antisepsis] combatted an invisible problem (germs) whose effects wouldn’t be manifest until well after the operation. Second, although both made life better for patients, only one made life better for doctors. Anesthesia changed surgery from a brutal, time-pressured assault on a shrieking patient to a quiet, considered procedure.
Listerism [antisepsis], by contrast, required the operator to work in a shower of carbolic acid. Even low dilutions burned the surgeons’ hands…. This has been the pattern of many important but stalled ideas. They attack problems that are big but, to most people, invisible; and making them work can be tedious, if not outright painful.
You can watch Dr Gawande explain this hypothesis here and read his New Yorker article here.
For veg activists, the main take away point from this research is that we need to do more than just give people flyers or write blogs or produce videos. We also need to talk to people. According to Dr Gawande, "The most powerful force for [having people] change their norms is not whether you pay them, not whether you penalize them, but whether you talk to them. People talking to people. [If] you trust someone who is doing this, then you change."
Do Vegans Need Less Calcium?
Just as meat eaters have myths about the alleged deficits of veg diets, vegetarians may have myths about the alleged benefits of veg diets. Recently, Ginny Messina used her Vegan RD blog to warn about what she considers a myth - vegans need less calcium.
Here’s part of what Ginny wrote:
The theory is that animal protein, through its acidifying action, “leaches” calcium from bones, eventually weakening them and causing bone fractures. If that’s true, it means that those of us who eat no animal protein are likely to have better bone health. And maybe even lower calcium needs. “Unfortunately, it’s not true. Or at the very least, the evidence in support of this relationship has fizzled over the years.
Read the rest of her blog post here
Have You Eaten Your Marine Veggies Today?
In a recent post on his NutritionFacts blog, Dr Michael Greger encourages people to eat marine vegetables. Here is part of what he wrote:
I've frequently talked about the benefits of dietary diversity, eating different families of fruits and vegetables, eating different parts of individual plants—beets, and beet greens. If we just stick to land plants, though, we're missing out on all the plants from the other 70% of planet earth.
Sea vegetables have phytonutrients found nowhere else, types of fiber, and unique carotenoids, and polysaccharides, and various polyphenol defense compounds, each of which may have anti-cancer properties. I encourage everyone to try experimenting until you find one you like, even if that means just sprinkling some powdered dulse on your food.
The entire post can be found here:
nutritionfacts.org/video/which-seaweed-is-most-protective-against-breast-cancer
YouTubing It
Recently, IVU Online News featured veg blogs. Another online platform for promoting veg is YouTube. People and organisations can post their videos there and even get their own YouTube channel.
For instance, this year, IVU member organisation, Vegetarian Society (Singapore), posted some locally produced videos. The first is a five minute introduction to veg, and the others are vegan food demos.
Here’s a list of the food videos:
Power Breakfast Smoothie - Natalia Angel
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4gZ8YZGHaU
Savoury Oatmeal with Sautéed Mushrooms, Onion and Thyme - Priscilla and Roland
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRe6zwO1UJU
Super Easy Vegan Soup - Pauline Menezes
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wXTKY5jsvg
Vegan Avocado Alfredo Pasta Sauce - Ashley Chow
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_OQY0UFKWs
Fudgy Vegan Brownie - Halimah Ilavarasi
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHeZe-qgWeU
Visual of the Month
This poster neatly captures the message that going veg protects the environment.
This Month’s HCYKTASEM
This month’s How Can You Know This And Still Eat Meat (HCYKTASEM) piece is about the growing body of research that highlights the harm to human health from eating meat and other animal based foods.
Just one of many examples of this research can be seen in a recent blog post by Dr Michael Greger in which he cites research on the links between diet and Parkinson’s Disease. Plus, here’s an article about arsenic in chicken flesh.
Adults do so much to help children live a long, safe and happy life. For instance, we would do anything - even jump in front of an oncoming car - to keep children from harm. Yet, we don’t seem to be bothered by the increasing evidence of the risks children confront - now and in the future - when they eat a diet high in animal based foods.
Why do people ignore the evidence? Why do they continue feeding their children a ticking time bomb that increases the dear children’s risk of so many illnesses?
Book News 1 - Crocodile
Review of Crocodile by Dan Wylie, Reaktion Books, 224pp, pbk, 104 illustrations, 68 in colour; ISBN 978-1-78023-087-0, £9-99
Crocodile by Dan Wylie, Professor of English at Rhodes University, South Africa, explores the cultural and natural history of the twenty-three extant species of crocodilians: crocodiles, alligators, caimans and the Indian gharial. Compared with the charismatic, gentle giants of Wylie’s previous book in Reaktion’s Animal series - Elephant - crocodilians suffer from a serious image problem arising from their unfortunate tendency to kill and eat people when given the opportunity. In fact, although some crocodilians grow to 6 metres (20 ft) or more in length, many are too small to pose a threat to people, and human fatalities are remarkably low.
Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that crocodilians are superbly adapted aquatic predators, equipped with keen senses of smell, sight and hearing, and, unique to these reptiles, dermal pressure receptors in the skin that are able to respond to ripples emanating from a single drop of water. If you value your life, you don’t go for a swim when crocodiles are around!
Crocodilians are an evolutionary success story par excellence, having existed in various forms for an estimated 180 million years and remarkably surviving the cataclysmic event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Today they can be found on every continent except Europe and Antarctica, among the most numerous and iconic species being the Nile crocodile of Africa, the American alligator and, the largest of all, the saltwater crocodile of Australasia.
However, crocodilians now face the greatest challenge to their survival, their numbers decimated by hunting, habitat destruction, and the voracious skin trade which accounted for an estimated 1.3 million animals per annum between 1999 and 2008, two-thirds of these from captive-breeding operations. To add insult to injury, thousands more are taken from the wild each year to supply farms, zoos, circuses and the pet trade, and some 400 tons of crocodile meat is consumed annually. It is no wonder that several species teeter on the brink of extinction.
So what does the future hold for crocodilians? In the author’s words:
Crocodilians find themselves, for all their longevity and ubiquity, surprisingly vulnerable to the kinds of predation, exploitation and borderless environmental damage inflicted by an overwhelmingly larger human population - to the extent that they are being flagged as ‘canaries in the mine’ of global ecological decline. …
Efforts by those who try to conserve them as ecological treasures have not prevented half the world’s crocodilian species becoming critically endangered; at the same time the modern sciences have gained us an unprecedented appreciation of the complexity, hardiness and uniqueness of this extraordinary reptile. One does not have to accept apocalyptic scenarios of humanity’s demise to find it credible that, ultimately, the crocodiles might well outlive us.
Lovable they may not be, but crocodilians are surely worthy of our respect and protection, for which Dan Wylie’s book makes a powerful and persuasive case.
Paul Appleby
August 2013
p.s. - Paul adds that the website www.crocodilian.com is recommended by the author as an excellent source of information on crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials.
Book News 2 - Complete Idiot’s Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Plant Based Nutrition by Juliana Hever, Publisher: Alpha Books, ISBN: 1615641017.
The Complete Idiot’s Guides cover a very wide range of topics, from sports to languages to home appliances. They have already produced a number of books on veg food. A similar set of titles are the For Dummies books.
Juliana Hever, the author of The Complete Idiots Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, can be seen in a YouTube interview here, and the book’s Facebook page is here.
Book News 3 - The Adventurous Vegetarian
The Adventurous Vegetarian: Around the world in 30 meals, by Jane Hughes, published by New Internationalist, ISBN: 978-1-78026-160-7.
Here is something, slightly revised, from the cookbook’s website:
Working with many vegetarian groups and societies, including IVU, author Jane Hughes has brought together favourite meals and fascinating stories from Belgium to China, Cuba to Palestine.
Each country is introduced by a section about that country’s traditional vegetarian meals and interesting info about the history of vegetarianism within that country. Recipe pages include pull out boxes with ingredient information and ideas for altering ingredients where local foods are not available.
Jane Hughes has 20 years’ experience of working in publishing, as an editor, production manager and small publisher. She has been associated with The Vegetarian Society since the 1980s, she has a clear understanding of the meaning of the word ‘vegetarian’ and daily access to experts. She has a website and a blog which contain samples of her work: interviews, food and cookery course reviews, features and recipes. www.veggiefoodwriter.co.uk / www.veggiefoodwriter.blogspot.com
6th Asian Vegetarian Congress and 41st IVU World Vegfest – 3-7 & 8-9 October 2013, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia - www.mvs.my/2013
Animales en Mente: Escuchar, Entender, Responder (Minding Animals: Listening, Understanding, Responding). 4-5 October, 2013, Morelia, Mexico. - sites.google.com/.../coloquioanimal...
5th China Xiamen International Vegetarian Food Fair, 10-13 October, 2013 - www.whatsonxiamen.com/event3235.html
British Animal Studies Network meeting - Theme: Winged Creatures - 11-12 October, 2013 - Glasgow, Scotland - www.britishanimalstudiesnetwork.org.uk
Paris Vegan Day Festival - 12 October, 2013 - www.parisveganday.fr
VegSource Healthy Lifestyle Expo 2013 October 18-20, CA - www.vegsource.com
Eating America: Crisis, Sustenance, Sustainability – 23-25 October, 2013, University of Wroclaw, Poland - paas.org.pl/2013-paas-conference
Peace as a Global Language conference [includes a talk+ on veg] - 16-17 November, 2013 - Tokyo, Japan - http://pgljapan.org
College Art Association conference - Theme: Unbecoming Animals – 12-15 February, 2014, Chicago, USA - www.collegeart.org/conference
The Science of Animal Thinking and Emotion – 17-18 March, 2014 - Washington, DC, USA -
New Business Supporter
The Looney Veggie Cooking Company - We provide vegetarian/vegan natural foods personal chef and cooking tutor services. We can cook/teach to accommodate health conditions & allergies - Metro Denver area.
In addition to IVU Online News, there are many other places to go online for general veg-related news, rather than news mostly about one country or one organisation. Here are some.
Please Send News to IVU Online News
Dear Veg Activist
Please use this newsletter as a way to share your knowledge, ideas and experiences with fellow veg activists.
Thx. -–george jacobs,
IVU Online News is non-copyright. Readers are encouraged to share the contents elsewhere. If you do so, please consider including a link to www.ivu.org/news as others may wish to subscribe to this free publication.
Read back issues of IVU Online News at www.ivu.org/news/online/index.html