If you’re not vegan yet, I bet this movie will convince you

Or maybe not, who knows! But this movie does seem to be very convincing to a lot of people. See if it works for you, maybe!

Community screening SATURDAY in Ithaca:

DOVE (Demonstrating Our Values Through Eating) & Club Veg Film Series
FORKS OVER KNIVES: Join the Conversation That’s Changing the Way America Eats

Saturday, April 13th, 7 – 9 PM

At the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca ANNEX Building, 208 East Buffalo Street, 2nd floor, Ithaca

FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.

“A film that can save your life” ~ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“I Loved it and I need all of you to see it” ~ Dr. Oz, The Dr. Oz Show

“Great movie” ~ Mark Bittman, New York Times columnist

“Convincing, radical, and politically volatile” ~ John Anderson, Variety

Who: Open to the public, childcare available
Cost: FREE (optional desserts and popcorn available for sale)
Reservations: Reservations for childcare REQUIRED by Wednesday April 10th.
Reservations for attending helpful for setup purposes. Reserve by emailing clubveg@gmail.com. For more information call 272-1126 before 10 PM
Make sure to include your name, number in your party, if you want to reserve childcare (and how many children and what ages).

DOVE & Club Veg planning meeting precedes the movie starting at 5:30. If you would like to get involved with DOVE (Demonstrating Our Values through Eating) an Action Team of the Unitarian Social Justice Council OR Club Veg as a volunteer, come to a meeting for volunteers. Delicious vegan dinner available for $10/each. Reservations required if you would like to order a dinner. See reservation information above.

10 things you can do to help bees

This morning I started to read Bee Deaths From Colony Collapse Disorder On The Rise As Researchers Point To Pesticides on Huffington Post, and then I realized I’d rather find out how I can help, instead of just feeling bad about the problem. Here are some suggestions I found on the interwebs.

1. Stop buying GMO, non-organic food, and support organic agriculture instead. Buy used and/or organic clothing.
2. Learn about where your food and clothing comes from and how much pesticide went into its production.
3. Stop using pesticides in your own lawn and garden.
4. Sign petitions banning pesticides, and support the use of organic alternatives.
5. Encourage your local government to do more to help bees.
6. Attract bees by planting clover, flowering trees, and herbs that bees like. Provide a water source so they can take a drink when they visit.
7. Let your veggies go to seed after harvest, to help fatten up your bee neighbors for the long winter.
8. Educate yourself about bees so you can be more sure of how you relate to them and what you might like to do to help them.
9. Pass on your knowledge about bees. Your voice is powerful, and the bees can’t speak for themselves! Make sure that kids understand that bees are an important part of their ecosystem.
10. Provide bee habitat, but make sure you’re keeping bees and humans safe from hurting each other by marking bees’ homes.

    The only one I saw folks mention elsewhere that I didn’t put here was “become a beekeeper / support your local beekeeper.” I don’t feel that it would be my place to confine and manipulate others and take things they make, or to encourage others to do that. It takes the average worker bee her entire life to produce just one twelfth of one teaspoon of honey. They make it for their colony, not for us.

    If you do choose to use bee products, please make sure they’re locally produced and that you feel good about the way the bees are living, from birth to death. Since your decision impacts the lives of other beings, you may want to educate yourself about some of the ethical problems with beekeeping, honey, and beeswax. Thank you!

Friday Macro Dinner comments needed today

TODAY only – this just in from Katherine Ludwig on Facebook, via the Ithaca Vegans group:

Hi! I’m writing a short piece about Friday Macro Dinners and I’m wondering if anyone who attends would like to give me a quote about the dinners (how you feel about them or what they mean to you or what they are like) just a line or maybe two. I need it today. If so, Email veganithaca@yahoo.com. Thank you! It’ll be in Fresh Dirt Magazine, out April 8.

Curry peanut butter and vegan advocacy

Our Hen House has published a great post by Ginny Messina, MPH, RD about peanut butter as a good source of vegan protein. It comes with a recipe by JL Fields for curry peanut butter, a sauce/dip that looks pretty amazing. Click through to check it out.

Veganized Girl Scout Cookies

These look amazing!

“fat peanut butter patties with a shortbread crust and thick chocolate coating.”
Healthy Girl Scout Cookies: Tagalongs (Healthy Dessert Blog)

Vegetables are good for you

• A Washington Post food critic has come out as a vegetarian (not vegan, mind you, heavens no!), with lots of excuses and worries, making me aware of how biased food writers apparently are toward animal products. I’d been ignoring them for so long I hadn’t thought much about it. How weird, that a food critic should be so afraid to openly reduce the suffering that he or she is causing. It’s a good thing. You don’t have to be ashamed to eat fewer dead things.
• Avoiding chemicals is hard, but eating a lot of relatively unprocessed vegetables is probably a smart move.
• Processed Meat Raises Risk Of Dying From Cancer And Heart Disease, Study Finds, recalling earlier studies finding the same conclusion
• The Partnership for a Healthier America, Let’s Move!, and USDA’s MyPlate came together to offer “healthy” recipes to folks on Pinterest. Disappointingly, they focus mostly on meat and put vegetarian food last. Because who needs science!
• Check Happy Cow to find good vegan food near you – you can search by ZIP code or town. It’s really useful for roadtrips, too. (They recently redesigned their site, so check it out if you haven’t been there in a while!)

Animals are all made of meat: Now what?

I read Lindy West’s F*ck Yes, I’ll Eat Some Horse Meat. Give It to Me. I Love It. on Jezebel with amusement and… shock? I’m not used to seeing things like this in mainstream media. It’s just so conscious, calling humans on our speciesism so clearly and bluntly and irreverently: Humans know that all animals are made of meat, she writes. (She doesn’t touch on the fact that humans are also animals, and also made of meat, but okay.) So if we eat cows, what business do we have being all upset when we accidentally eat a horse? Good point.

Back when I was 17 I went to Japan on a scholarship and resolved I would try to be really open, and would try any food that came my way. I was an enthusiastic omnivore then, comfortable with myself as an animal that had evolved to eat other animals (I, um, hadn’t read enough yet), and I was ready for anything. I ate a lot of flesh from members of species I never eaten before: octopi, eels, lots of unfamiliar fishes. No turtles. I had a ban on turtles and rabbits because I had had them as pets.

I had met a horse many times, a horse who was deeply loved by someone in my family, but I hadn’t ever gotten really close with horses. So on this trip, I ate horse. Raw, actually — there was a big plate of horse sushi at the reception the Japanese government folks held for us exchange students. I didn’t want to be rude, and I kind of wanted to show off how brave and culturally open I was, to defy some stereotypes about Americans. So I ate some. It tasted a lot like all the other sushi: Soft and chewy and kind of slimy. It was fine, but I didn’t enjoy it. And now, years later, when I’ve come to the realization that horses and cows and humans are all the same, I regret that I made the choice I did then. I have to live with that regret for the rest of my life. I wish that I had seen it then: If animals are all made of meat, what do we do? Eat all of them indiscriminately? (Why not humans then?) Or stop eating all of them, because we’ve realized that all the other meat is just as autonomous as we are?

For more on humanity’s apparently willful ignorance about our food choices, watch this clip from Real Time With Bill Maher, Episode 273 (wherein he says a number of insensitive things as he is wont to do, sorry):

It’s perhaps worth noting that despite his apparent grasp of the consent issues relating to animal exploitation, Bill Maher isn’t vegan.

I’m curious if human beings will always try to hold onto the idea that we’re somehow so special we should be allowed to treat every member of every other species on this planet like they’re property.

A sandwich that’s bad for everybody

Have you heard about this secret menu at McDonalds? How about the McGangBang? I hadn’t heard of it until the other day when it was mentioned casually in a slideshow of other fast food secret menu items on Huffington Post. Personally, I can’t imagine wanting such a thing, even back when I was an 18-year-old dedicated carnivore: Something about the name just feels wrong.

Thankfully, the fine feminist folks at Shakesville have done a great job of pointing out the sexism implicit in this sandwich name — a sandwich which, I’d like to point out, is neither good for women, or animals, or the men to whom this kind of thing is marketed (and who this kind of food is harming, with all of its saturated fat, cholesterol, and other nastiness).

Where do vitamin supplements come from?

Melanie Warner: Where Do Vitamins Added To Processed Foods Come From? (Democracy Now)

Sounds like it might be safest to just eat more vegetables!

Food Not Bombs seeking donations

This just in from Food Not Bombs Ithaca! Please donate if you can, or pass this on to people who can donate, if you can’t. Thanks!

This Saturday, as many of you probably know, Watermargin will be hosting a teach in on Antifascism in Greece and Europe. Ithaca’s Food Not Bombs chapter will be providing dinner for the attendees, and we’ve been out of commission for a while, so we’re going to need to rustle up some food in time for the event. If anyone has anything they’d like to donate in support- staples such as rice or flour, spices, herbs – or can contribute knowhow as to where we might be able to get food, it’d be greatly appreciated! Any interested parties can contact me at 508-395-9802. Love and Solidarity, Sophie Griswold – svg6 at cornell.edu