Team Vegan Update

Hi Team Vegan!

Some numbers for this year’s international team:

·         76 members/teams (not including 'general')

·         26 U.S. States represented by the following number of teams:

AR – 1; AZ - 7; CA – 15; CO – 2; CT – 2; FL – 4; GA – 2; IL –4; IN – 2;

MD – 4; ME – 1; MI -2; MN – 1; MO – 1; NC – 2; NJ – 2; NM – 1; NV – 2;

NY – 5; OH – 1; OR – 1; PA – 4; TX – 1; UT – 1; VA – 1; WA – 2;

·         3 team members from Ontario, Canada!

·         1 team member from Panama!

·         1 team from France!

Fantastic!

Keep up the great fundraising!

For the animals,

Anne

Team Vegan member Melissa Swanson (left) with other vegan runners.

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Is Leafleting Effective?

This week's Enewsletter covers a recent Farm Sanctuary / The Humane League survey of students handed a VO booklet. Highlights:

49% of students who had received a VO booklet while in college changed their diet to help animals. Furthermore, about 20% of the surveyed students influenced another person to alter their diet to help animals.

The implications of the Farm Sanctuary / The Humane League survey results are pretty incredible:

• Every few booklets you hand to students will influence someone to change what they eat. 
• Getting a Vegan Outreach booklet to a few hundred students will lead to new vegetarians! 
• The “cost” of a new vegetarian is in the range of a mere $2-10. 

How many people receive a booklet depends entirely on income. In other words, your donation really does change lives and save many, many animals!

Today, your donation to Team Vegan will be doubled, dollar-for-dollar, reaching twice as many college students! 

Please click here to make a direct, tax-deductible contribution.

Thanks so much – you really make a difference!

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Is “Better” Good Enough?

The light shines down on Riley Law as she helps animals.

Why is it better to be a vegetarian than someone who, say, eats only “free-range” animals. Obviously, eating animals that weren’t factory farmed is better.

But as vegetarians, we don’t make our food decisions simply based on what is better. We want to make the best choices we can for the animals.

That is exactly how Vegan Outreach looks at advocacy: We don’t want to make things somewhat better. We want to make the best choices we can for the animals.

Steve met Nina at Los Angeles Pierce College; she now wants to go veg and get involved.
She joined Steve in leafleting, reaching 300 students in fewer than 2 hours!

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Catching Up with Stories

Recent Enewsletters have focused on Team Vegan leafleters, so here are some other stories:

We had SUCH a great experience at UMass-Lowell today! It should have been absolutely miserable (it was cold and raining super hard) - but with the positivity of the volunteers, I couldn't help smiling the entire day. We gathered about 6 email addresses to give people more details about getting involved! We also met two people who came up to us, thanked us profusely, and said after reading the booklet, they were going to go vegetarian!
-Rachel Atcheson, 2/27/13

Last year, George Fox University, a private Christian school, asked their student government to vote on whether I could table there. The student government voted me in, so I was there today, with CVA's "Would Jesus Eat Meat Today?" booklet. Met many vegetarians and interested students. Talked with two men - one vegan and the other a friend who he had recently influenced to go vegetarian. The vegan was happy to see me there, saying a lot of people gave him trouble over the fact that he's vegan. He said this was the first time he had seen literature that discussed vegetarianism and the Bible. A man took a "Would Jesus Eat Meat Today?" booklet and asked, "What do you think? Do you think He would?" (in what I thought was a skeptical tone). I said I'm guessing He would not, but I can't prove it. The man asked, "What would He eat? Bread?" I gave him a Guide, and said, "Here are some other things that people eat." A woman said, "Actually I think He would eat fish." I said, "He did eat fish, but there are questions of what He would eat in our era. It was harder to get food back then, and they hadn't invented some of the worst ways of killing fish yet." (In retrospect, I'm not sure whether the Bible actually mentions Jesus eating fish, but He served fish to other people.)
-Cobie Delespinasse, 2/25/13

Great night at The Rock and Worship Roadshow, where Anna, Aaron, Katie, Melodie, Sheila, Stephanie, and I reached 1,500 people with CVA booklets. A few people returned the booklet, but just as many people came back to get additional booklets. I had some success with a young guy who declined a booklet, declared "I like meat!", and started walking away. I was able to grab his attention by asking if he believed that animals should be treated inhumanely. He came back over to me for a brief, positive conversation, and then he walked away reading the booklet. 
-Jessica Dadds, 3/1/13

Traffic held us up, but good outreach at Florida International University, Biscayne Bay. One middle age vegetarian woman took a brochure and then returned a few minutes later asking for more, so she could distribute them in her work place. Another highlight for me here too was in meeting a high school aged vegetarian who excitedly took her leaflet (then proceeding to make sure her 6 other friends with her also took one) and then told me how she'd recently given a talk in class about being vegetarian, getting one of her classmates to give it a try in the process. So exciting to meet others willing and already busy getting the word out for the animals. She got a Guide, and I have no doubt will continue being an excellent and positive role model for others she meets interesting in transitioning into a more compassionate lifestyle. 
-Ken Pelton and Yuri Mitzkewich, 3/4/13

After a slow start, things picked up at Miramar College, and I had some great conversations. One guy came back after about a half hour to say he read the entire booklet, and doesn’t know if he will be able to eat animals again after this and thanked me for being there and asked for a couple of leaflets to give to his friends. Another positive encounter was with a guy who was a bit resistant at first but after talking for a few minutes said he could feel how passionate I was, and promised to read the booklet before his next class. Met someone who said she had seen something relating to factory farming in a class and that she was happy to receive a leaflet because she had been wanting to learn more about it ever since.
An all around great day at Southwestern College -- so many nice encounters. A lot of people stopped to ask what this was about and began asking many questions; I feel that I really got through to a number of them. My favorite part about doing outreach is having conversations like this, seeing them change their minds and come to new realizations is the best. I really enjoy when people ask so many questions, and when I have a group around me talking and asking questions it lures more people over to see what it’s all about. I continue to experiment with different methods, bringing up various points and learning what works best and what doesn’t work as well. Each time I leaflet I feel that I’m making improvements in my ability to get through to people more and more.
-Shura Hammond, 3/6/13

Ciera Leughmyer in her Team Vegan shirt.

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"Life Is Good, Baby"

1. What does it mean to “want a vegan world, not a vegan club”?

We have limited time and resources. We can spend it worrying about ingredient lists, arguing philosophy, praising veganism, and enforcing definitions / excluding people from being "vegan." Or we can work to help others take steps to reduce the number of animals bred into factory farms and butchered in industrial slaughterhouses. In other words: we can focus on and promote our personal veganism, or we can get new people to take start taking steps that help animals. (See also http://whyveganoutreach.blogspot.com/2013/04/lincoln-and-first-step.html)

2. How long have you considered yourself vegan, how has your attitude towards vegans, as a group, evolved over that time frame?

I stopped eating animals sometime in the Stone Age – back in the 1980s – and evolved to veganism a few years after that. At that time, I was a total vegan clubber – worried about justifying and praising my veganism / attacking and “winning arguments” with meat eaters, etc. I would repeat anything and everything I heard that sounded vaguely pro-vegan, or anti-meat, regardless of its veracity or its impact on others.

It took me years to realize that how I felt about veganism, or the issues that seemed (to me) to be related to veganism, were ultimately irrelevant. The animals mattered. Period. And if I wanted to help as many animals as possible – to reduce as much suffering as possible – my actions had to be focused on the animals, not me or veganism.

Psychologists have a good idea why and how people change, and it isn’t by being confronted by an egotistical absolutist who cares only about their definition of veganism. People change when they open their hearts and minds to change, and we can help this by reaching them where they are, focusing on the first step they can take, rather than talking about the last step we took.

3. Why did you initially embrace veganism?

When I was a freshman in college, my roommate was a vegetarian. He told me about the cruelty of modern agribusiness. I didn’t change at first, and there was a false start, but I eventually did stop eating animals. This evolved over time – I gave up factory-farmed eggs, buying “free-range” from the local health-food store. I bought only Amish cheese. And then I gave it all up – I finally got to the point where habit and convenience didn’t outweigh wanting to make choices that caused animals to be killed.

4. Why do you currently embrace veganism?

I actually wouldn’t say I “embrace” veganism. For the reasons I discuss in AML (http://bit.ly/meaningfullife), my goal in life is to reduce as much suffering in the world as possible. But my personal food choices are only a small part of that. Being a good, joyous example; writing constructive booklets and essays; doing and promoting effective and efficient outreach; living simply so more money can go to the animals – that is what I seek to embrace.

5. How did you perceive veganism, as a lifestyle, before you were vegan?

Hard! Bordering on crazy and impossible!

6. How do you perceive veganism, as a lifestyle, now?

I know many vegans like to say, “Veganism isn’t a diet, it is a lifestyle!” They then go on to say, “And the lifestyle is X, Y, and Z,” and X, Y, and Z just happen to align with their personal views – their politics, their other habits, their philosophy, etc.

Not surprisingly, I was like that, too. It took me a long time to realize this was, at best, a waste of our limited resources. But worse than that, this attitude just serves to put up barriers to others. It is much less likely for a new person to consider taking any step when we insist on the last step, and that step has to involve many things other than what we eat. (See also http://www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/definingvegan.html)

Now I only care about more people learning the hidden cruelties of modern agribusiness. This is how more people can take the first step toward helping these animals. Reading and/or worrying about debates about veganism … well, this isn’t an efficient use of my limited resources.

7. What was your attitude towards food before you were vegan?

I would guess I had a pretty typical Midwestern attitude toward food before I met Fred, my first roommate in college. I really didn’t like vegetables (except corn on the cob), steak was the “special treat” food, etc. I was a middle-class kid who dreamed of a good career, a bigger house, a fast car, a fancy stereo system, trips and good food, etc. That first week of college, my parents and I planned to celebrate my future graduation at the city’s five-star French restaurant.

8. What is your attitude towards food now, as a vegan?

We have such great, amazingly tasty food today. I look forward to meals – choosing is difficult! It is so much different than when I first went vegan, I can’t begin to tell you. Between being poor and the lack of options, it was rough. For a while in Cincinnati, there was a little place – Take Outrageous – that had this amazing deep-fried tofu sandwich with a sauce we thought was infused with some addictive drug. We would each have one, and were absolutely tormented because we couldn’t afford another. Now, I eat things that at least that good nearly every day, and I don’t have to fret about affording my next meal. Life is good, baby.

9. What role does “personal purity” play in being vegan?

See this: http://whyveganoutreach.blogspot.com/2013/03/npr-and-vo-more-on-being-vegan.html

10. Do you feel camaraderie towards others who identify as vegan, why or why not?

Although I obviously have great sympathy for people who, like me (http://www.veganoutreach.org/articles/youngmatt.html) have a different focus than my current work, I tend to feel the deepest connection to fellow utilitarians dedicated to practical, efficient, and effective work to reduce suffering.

-Matt

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Plagiarizing Jack, Part 2: Can a Natural Diet Require Supplements?

From here:

If we admit that vegans need to get vitamin B12 through fortified foods or supplements, are we saying that a vegan diet is unnatural?

One point to consider is that feces contain large amounts of vitamin B12, produced by bacteria in the colon, and that if we found ourselves in a state of nature, and still wanted to be vegan, we could get enough B12 from feces, though it would be important to make efforts to make sure the bacteria were killed and viruses were neutralized. Admittedly, that's not terribly appetizing.

People have told me that they and other vegans they know do not take vitamin B12 supplements nor eat fortified foods and are healthy. While many vegans do not supplement with B12 and remain apparently healthy for many years, they normally do not know what their homocysteine levels are, which could eventually contribute to stroke or dementia. They might eventually run into overt B12 deficiency (see Individual Cases of Deficiency). You are taking a real chance by assuming you have transcended the need for a recommended B12 intake.

As people live longer, homocysteine has more years to cause damage to the body. Because of this, the importance of B12 has increased. The longer a vegan does not supplement with B12, the lower their active B12 levels will drop, increasing their homocysteine levels.

In Western society today, it is easy for vegans to ensure an adequate B12 intake. Vegans who supplement with B12 can have superior B12 status to non-vegetarians who do not supplement. In fact, due to a decrease in the ability to absorb B12 from animal foods as people age, the Food and Nutrition Board says that all people (not just vegans) over age 50 should "meet their RDA mainly by consuming foods fortified with B12 or a B12-containing supplement."

Is the Vegan Diet Natural?

Is the vegan diet natural? To answer that question, I recommend an article that examines the subject in great detail, Comparative Anatomy and Physiology Brought Up to Date: Are Humans Natural Frugivores/Vegetarians, or Omnivores/Faunivores? by Tom Billings. After an extensive review of the research, Billings concludes that humans are not naturally vegetarians or vegans. Despite this, he says:

I am both pro-vegetarian and pro-[eating raw foods as a large portion of the diet]. Readers should be aware that I am a long-time vegetarian (since 1970), a former long-time (8+ years) fruitarian (also a former vegan),... However, I am definitely not a promoter of, or a "missionary" for, any specific diet. In reality, I am tired of seeing raw and [vegan/vegetarian] diets promoted in negative ways by extremists whose hostile and dishonest behavior is a betrayal of the positive moral principles that are supposedly at the heart of veg*ism.

He continues:

You really don't need the naturalness claim to be a veg*n! That is, moral/spiritual reasons alone are adequate to justify following a veg*n diet (assuming the diet works for you, of course). Further, if the motivation for your diet is moral and/or spiritual, then you will want the basis of your diet to be honest as well as compassionate. In that case, ditching the false myths of naturalness presents no problems; indeed, ditching false myths means that you are ditching a burden.

Readers may also be interested in the article Humans are Omnivores, adapted from a talk by John McArdle, PhD (originally published in the May/June 1991 edition of the Vegetarian Journal). The PaleoVeganology blog also has interesting information about the diets of our ancestors.

Whose Diet is Really Natural?

I strive to be like my prehistoric ancestors in no way whatsoever. I am glad they were able to survive lives that were nasty, brutish, and short, in order to one day allow me to type away for hours a day on a MacBook. But I have already outlived them while eating a large proportion of food they wouldn't recognize and taking supplements both as a child and as an adult.

The idea that a prehistoric diet can be approximated today or that it would be the most optimal diet is rather questionable. Today's commercial plant foods and meats are different from the foods available in prehistoric times. We eat hybrids of plants and we feed foods to farmed animals that they would not normally eat. Farmed animals are typically given a host of supplements in their feed. The U.S. food supply is routinely fortified with a host of vitamins and minerals (such as vitamin D in milk), and most people who turn to what they consider to be a more natural diet as adults have often benefited from this supplementation. In the last two hundred years, nutritional science has solved all sorts of serious health problems that plagued humanity for eons.

Although there are exceptions, eating meat is one of the few things which most people try to do that is "natural." Paleolithic dieters are probably the most vocal anti-vegetarian, natural eaters. Yet they rarely eat insects, grubs, and worms which, according to Paleoveganology in his post What, No Bugs?!, "have long provided humans and other primates with nutrients, and continue doing so today in most parts of the world." So one has to wonder how close to nature they are actually trying to eat.

Future of Research on Vegans

Many vegans are understandably skeptical of the medical and scientific community. But by refusing to accept the scientific evidence in favor of the need to supplement with B12, we provide a steady flow of vegans with health issues for the medical community to study. If you are wary of the medical community, the best thing you can do is ensure that you do not develop B12 deficiency and become one of their subjects.

While I'm grateful that research has been done on vegans who do not supplement with B12, enough is enough. It is the vegan community's responsibility to stop this flow of research subjects. When researchers decide to do studies examining the health problems of vegans who do not supplement their diets with B12, it would be best if they simply could not find any.

Encourage New Vegans to Get B12

All vegan advocates should be aware of the symptoms of B12 deficiency (with the realization that elevated homocysteine levels occur long before these symptoms are noticeable), and the need for new vegans to start supplementing with B12 shortly after becoming vegan (or even near-vegan).

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Plagiarizing Jack, Part 1: American Cancer Society on Soy & Breast Cancer

Taken from here:

If you’ve read my articles on soy (Response to Not Soy Fast, Soy: What’s the Harm), there’s nothing new here, but it’s good to hear it from an organization like the American Cancer Society (ACS):

The Bottom Line on Soy and Breast Cancer Risk* 
August 02, 2012 
By Marji McCullough, ScD, RD

Excerpt:

“Bottom line: Even though animal studies have shown mixed effects on breast cancer with soy supplements, studies in humans have not shown harm from eating soy foods. Moderate consumption of soy foods appears safe for both breast cancer survivors and the general population, and may even lower breast cancer risk. Avoid soy supplements until more research is done. So, enjoy your occasional tofu stir-fry or tofu burger – they are unlikely to increase your risk of breast cancer and, on balance, are some of the healthier foods you can eat!”

*Warning: There are the typical Weston Price Foundation-type comments after the article – the myths about Asians eating only fermented soy and fermented soy being significantly different than other soy. Too bad they allow comments which will possibly just serve to scare people. And I realize that I’m saying that as someone who allows comments on my own blog, but it’s one thing to be an RD blogger and another to be the strategic director of nutritional epidemiology for the ACS. Of course, that doesn’t mean Dr. McCullough is infallible, but if someone whose opinion is worthwhile has an objection to her article, they can contact the ACS behind the scenes and she can correct the article if they have a valid point. Just my two cents!

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Double Doubling Deadline!

Sunday, May 19 marks the deadline for Team Vegan's Double Doubling (details here).

Please be sure to take advantage -- just click on over to the Team page! -- and pass along this opportunity to others!

Thanks so much!

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Team D-F at Texas Women's University!

Alissa Finley reports:

We had planned to stop on our way down to the Gulf at some other colleges too, but TWU went so successfully that we ran out of booklets at our first stop. Yay!

It was a beautifully sunny day and there was a housing fair in the middle campus, complete with a "Crawfish Boil" being advertised. Fin and I (middle) stood nearby this sign. Deke, Sen (bottom), and Anna (top) spread out in other areas. The fair made for great traffic. It was the first time out for these kids leafletting and they did a super smiling job!

Sen (12), Anna (9), and Fin (5 y.o.) Dalrymple along with us, their parents (me and Deke Dalrymple), gave out over 650 booklets. Fin our Kindergartner was especially earnest and adorable, and no one could turn him down when he asked, "Do you want to help animals?" A good handful of people said they had already received a VO booklet previously, and were thrilled to be offered a Guide to keep them on track.

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One Pic to Rule Them All

Sent in by Karen James:

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