IVU Online News

2012-11 News

IVU’s 2012 World Vegfest Ends in California

IVU 2012 World Vegfest has successfully concluded its time in California.
For videos, photos and blogs about everything we did, go to: www.vegetarianvegan.org/index.php/blogs/congress-vegfest-updates/33-40th-ivu-international-vegetarian-congress-vegfest

IVU 2013 World Vegfest in Malaysia 

In 2013, the 41st IVU World Vegfest will take place in Malaysia (Malaysia is bright green in the map), hosted by the Malaysian Vegetarian Society, and combined with the 6th Asian Vegetarian Congress. Plans call for events in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, 3-6 October, and then on to Penang, in the north of Malaysia, 8-9 October.

There will be optional extensions the previous week in India, and the following week in Thailand.

The latest details are posted at:
www.vegetarianvegan.org/index.php/blogs/congress-vegfest-updates/71-41st-ivu-congess-vegfest-malaysia-october-2013

- or, for more direct updates on this exciting event, join the IVU Members and Supporters group on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/IVUMembers 

This Month’s HCYKTASEM

To vegetarians like us, the evidence for moving away from meat seems overwhelming. Each new report and each new video just makes it seem more incredible that all the intelligent, knowledgeable meat eaters we know can continue with their destructive habit.

This month’s How Can You Know This And Still Eat Meat (HCYKTASEM) piece is a one minute video from PETA - Factory Farming in 60 Seconds Flat www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2dGvZiHUJ0 - designed for people who say they have no time. Actually, 60 seconds is all it takes to be overwhelmed by the overwhelming cruelty of meat eating.

For those with a little more time, two among the many other videos worth watching are:

Farm to Fridge at www.meatvideo.com and
The pigs and birds 4 minute excerpt from Meet Your Meat at www.youtube.com/watch?v=S35PxldTe34

Letting Visuals Tell Our Stories

In schools these days, students learn new information not just by reading and listening, but also by viewing, as visuals of all types have become easier to produce. Animal Visuals is a website that uses the power of visuals to educate about the plight of our fellow animals.

One of Animal Visuals latest efforts compares eight food categories in terms of the number of animals killed to produce one million calories. Of course, vegetarian food production causes far fewer deaths. The accompanying explanation, in old-fashioned words, is also instructive: www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc

Meat Makes You Fat

Of course, many factors affect health, and diet is a major factor. For example, a very large study found that if we eat less meat, especially less poultry, we weigh less, even if calories are equal: nutritionfacts.org/video/meat-and-weight-gain-in-the-panacea-study/

Free to IVU Member Organisations

Free to IVU Member Organisations: Latest on Nutrition; Dr Michael Greger, Director, Public Health and Animal Agriculture Humane Society of the United States, has released another volume of his Latest in Nutrition series. For a listing of the new topics he covers and to order: www.DrGreger.org/DVDs; As always, all the proceeds received from the sale of the DVDs go to charity. As before, Dr Greger is happy to send a copy of his new DVD free of charge to IVU member organizations--just email him your mailing address to . Hundreds of his nutrition videos are freely available atNutritionFacts.org, with a new video uploaded every day. Subscribe to his videos for free at bit.ly/nutritionfactsupdates Note there is a new email address for folks to email their mailing addresses to.

Here is a short list of the video titles:

 1.   Saffron for the treatment of PMS
  3.   Saffron versus Prozac
  13. Plants versus pesticides
  18. Protein and heart disease
  20. Changing protein recommendations?
  25. Preventing wrinkles with diet
  26. Standing up for your health
  30. Meat mythcrushers
   36. Unsweetening the diet
  37. Cancer as an autoimmune disease
  43. Meat may exceed daily allowance of irony
  45. Preventing strokes with diet
  48. Whole grains may work as well as drugs
  51. Preventing breast cancer by any greens necessary

The GMO Issue

Vegetarian organisations are often asked for their views on genetically modified (GMO) foods. Some organisations have taken a stand on the issues. For instance, the European Vegetarian Union’s V-Label scheme - www.euroveg.eu/lang/en/events/v-label.php - excludes GMO foods. This year, the Green Lifestyles Film Festival - greenlifestyles.org/newgreen - features a film on the GMO issue: Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives.

What Was the Paleo Diet?

The Paleo Diet is another of the meat heavy fad diets: health.usnews.com/best-diet/paleo-diet, thepaleodiet.com The diet claims that before the advent of agriculture, our early ancestors ate lots of meat and that we should eat as they did. However, a recent article in Scientific American magazine claims that our ancestors were mostly vegetarian: blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/07/23/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians

Should what our ancestors ate serve as a guide to what we should eat? Jack Norris of IVU member organisation, Vegan Outreach, sounds this note of caution - jacknorrisrd.com/

Even though I appreciate this article [the Scientific American article], and think it is useful for people to send to their paleo-eating friends, I don’t agree with the assumption that if we knew exactly what our ancestors ate (and it was consistent throughout time) it could override today’s nutrition science. Not everything our ancestors ate was necessarily optimal and we can only know what was and what wasn’t by examining different eating patterns using modern methods.

Book News 1

Review of The Beauty in the Beast by Hugh Warwick. Simon & Schuster, 2012, 320pp, hardback, £14-99. ISBN 978-0-85720-395-3.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Paul Appleby for another of his informative book reviews. By the way, Paul says that the author of the book reviewed here states that he has been a vegetarian for at least 25 years and a vegan "for much of that time".

Hugh Warwick (he’s the one with the strange hair style) is an Oxford-based ecologist, writer, photographer and hedgehog enthusiast best known for his successful campaign to stop a planned cull of hedgehogs on the Scottish island of Uist. Such is his commitment to wildlife conservation that Hugh was the first of 100 volunteers chosen to be the recipient of a permanent tattoo of their chosen species in the ExtInked project launched to highlight the UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan.

In The Beauty in the Beast, the author profiles fifteen species of wild animals in Britain, meeting and interviewing their human ambassadors. The book is as much about these animal advocates as the animals they champion. These are the unsung heroes of the environmental movement: individuals who devote their lives to wild animals by surveying, researching, caring and campaigning on their behalf. Some, such as Denis Summers-Smith, an acknowledged expert on the house sparrow, have achieved a measure of fame, whilst others are barely known outside their local community. All of them share a passion for their chosen species and display an astonishing devotion to duty, collecting the invaluable data that informs farming, environmental and wildlife organisations and government bodies.

The choice of species featured in The Beauty in the Beast is eclectic: solitary bees, badgers, bats, dragonflies, house sparrows, water voles, moths, dolphins, owls, robins, foxes, toads, otters, beavers and adders. You won’t learn a great deal about any one of these species from the book but hopefully just enough to appreciate their beauty and fascination and the threats that they face. The author’s informal style makes this an entertaining read. Important conservation issues are deftly woven into the narrative, and although there is no doubting the author’s commitment to the cause there is nothing too demanding for the casual reader. My only reservation is the surprising lack of photographs in the book (although photos and podcasts from the author’s quest can be found on his website www.urchin.info), but if this encourages readers to get out and seek Britain’s wild animals for themselves, rather than settling for the role of armchair naturalist, the omission is forgivable.

But which species did Hugh choose from the fifteen candidates for his second, and last, ExtInked tattoo? You will have to read The Beauty in the Beast to find out.
Paul Appleby, September 2012

Book News 2

Heart Smart Oil Free Cookbook by Mayura Mohta of Healthfriend –www.healthfriend.com.sg - and published in Singapore by Straits Times Press www.amazon.com/The-Heart-Smart-Free-Cookbook/dp/9814342297

Based on the path breaking research of Dr Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. of the Cleveland Clinic, The Heart Smart Oil-Free Cookbook provides tested, detailed recipes by skilled chefs and global nutrition experts. These vegan recipes enable you to eat right for your heart and for the animals while enjoying a wide range of tasty dishes.

The Heart Smart Oil-Free Cookbook also includes scientific information on why foods high in oil damage the heart, as well as tips on oil free cooking. It is supported by the Singapore Heart Foundation.
foodandnutritionmagazine.com/the-heart-smart-oil-free-cookbook

2012 West Africa Vegetarian Festival - 23-25 November, 2012 - Lome, Togo -

5th Southeast Asian Congress - 23-25 November, 2012 - Chiang Mai, Thailand - http://www.thai-tva.org

Vegfest - 21-22 December, 2012 - Dubai -

India Vegan Festival 27-29 September, 2013 -.Details of the venue and programs will be soon available at www.indianvegansociety.com

41st IVU World Vegfest and 6th Asian Vegetarian Congress – October 2013, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia - www.vegetarianvegan.org/index.php/blogs/congress-vegfest-updates/71-41st-ivu-congess-vegfest-malaysia-october-2013

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Other Online Sources of Veg News

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.

1. European Vegetarian Union www.evana.org

2. Meatout Mondays www.meatoutmondays.org

3. Vegan Outreach www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter

4. VegE-News www.vege-news.com

5. VegNews www.vegnews.com

6. VegSource www.vegsource.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi

7. AnimalConcerns.org doesn't have a newsletter, but they post stories daily at www.animalconcerns.org/categories.html?do=shownews

8. Vegan.com www.vegan.com

9. IVU-Veg-News E-Mail List www.ivu.org/news/veg-news

10. Vegetarianism in the New www.vegsoc.org/page.aspx?pid=928

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Dear Veg Activist

Please use this newsletter as a way to share your knowledge, ideas and experiences with fellow veg activists.

Thx. -–george jacobs -