Videos on Veganism

A short movie ( in Hindi ) which explains importance of Veganism. (No blood or gore, just a nice message in the video)

Expand your circle of compassion and the love will come back to you a thousand times.

Same video in English.

We are simplifying our lives, buying less and living more because we know that the Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.
But there is one connected choice that sometimes gets overlooked. It's one of the most far-reaching personal, practical and ethical choices you can make. With this choice we can help...

... feed ourselves and every hungry person on the planet.
... end deforestation -- replenish the deep woods of the North and save our disappearing rainforests.
... revitalize our rural landscapes and save family farms.
... stop the number one polluter of water and the number one waster of water.
... return our oceans to thriving underwater worlds teeming with life and wonder.
... make cancer and heart disease a rarity instead of a common occurrence.
... stop the unnecessary suffering of billions and billions of animals.
... and return wild lands to their rightful owners.

This powerful choice can be done by everyone every day... by you... right now.

Vegan.

Every day you are invited to make choices. Live your values. Change the world.

It's that simple.

Numbers

• 1 pound of cheese = 10 pounds of milk

• 1 gallon of ice cream = 12 pounds of milk

• 1 pound of butter = 21.1 pounds of milk

• 1 pound of ghee(clarified butter) needs about 28 pounds of milk

• Americans eat the equivalent of 10 acres of pizza every day! Americans eat an average of 29 pounds of cheese every year—over a lifetime that’s more than a ton of cheese

• Average U.S. cow produces 53 pounds of milk= 6.2 gallons a day.

• Cows eat over 90 pounds of food each day

• Cows drink over 35 gallons of water every day, in the summer time that is sometimes

doubled

Dairy Milk alternatives !

From http://www.care2.com/greenliving/milk-alternatives-easy-greening.html

Almond, Rice and Oat milk are relatively easy to make at home.

Almond Milk
With only 2 grams of protein per 8 ounces, almond milk is not that impressive in the protein department—but almonds are one of the healthiest foods around. They’re rich in magnesium, potassium, manganese, copper, the antioxidants vitamin E and selenium, and calcium. Almond milk has a nice sweet, nutty flavor and a good consistency, which makes it good for drinking as well as a good dairy substitute in cooking.

Hemp Milk
A personal favorite: Hemp milk is new to the market and is made from seeds grown in Canada, where growing hemp is legal. It is a good source of omega-3 and -6 essential fatty acids, calcium, and phosphorous, and is commonly fortified with other vitamins and minerals. One (very delicious) brand, Living Harvest, states that unlike soy protein, hemp protein doesn’t contain high levels of enzyme inhibitors, phytates, which can interfere with the proper assimilation of essential minerals, or oligosaccharides which cause flatulence and stomach distress.

Oat Milk
Oat milk is gaining in popularity and availability. It is high in fiber, is cholesterol and lactose free, and contains vitamin E, folic acid, and other trace elements and minerals. Oats are also rich in phytochemicals, naturally occurring chemicals in plants that help fight diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and stroke. It is said to be highly tolerated by people with multiple allergies—however it’s not good for people with gluten intolerance.

Rice Milk
Rice milk is processed from brown rice and typically contains rice syrup, evaporated cane juice or another natural sweetener. It is usually fortified with calcium or vitamin D. It is generally very sweet, and pretty watery. The main drawback of rice milk is that it is mainly just a source of carbohydrates—it is a good dairy substitute for cooking, but shouldn’t be used as a replacement for nutrients.

Soy Milk
There was a time when soy was considered nothing short of a miracle bean. But times have changed. The preponderance of GMO strains drifting into soy fields is alarming (it is estimated that 90 percent of soy is genetically modified), and people are increasingly acquiring quite serious allergies to soy. If you drink a lot of soy milk, you might want to read the arguments about possible health issues associated with soy. Dr. Kaayle Daniel, author of the book The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Health Food says: “Soy isoflavones–the plant estrogens in soy most often credited with cancer prevention–are listed as carcinogens in many toxicology textbooks. They have also been proven to be mutagenic, clastogenic and teratogenic.” Excessive soy intake has also been linked to an increased risk of thyroid disease, and some feel that soy’s phytoestrogens may attenuate testosterone levels in boys. The jury may still be out on soy, but the bottom line might just be that soy milk is significantly more processed than the other milk alternatives.

Vegan Nutrition: Protein

Charts reproduced from http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/protein.html

We need only 2.5 to 10% of our calories from protein. And all vegetables have more than that. Not some vegetables, all of them.Vegetables average around 22% protein, beans 28%, and grains 13% .

Check the below chart to see the different types of protein content in some vegetables and compare to the "Need" row for a 5 ft 11 inch 181 lb individual.

Click picture to enlarge

A good amount of whole beans, lentils, peas, whole grains, nuts and vegetables is all you need to maintain all complex protein balance.

Read about how Milk protein is actually bad for the body in my earlier post about Milk here .Protein in milk has been linked coronary deaths and to hardened, narrowed arteries.

More comprehensive protein requirements and tables

http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/protein

There is also a calculator at the bottom of the above link to calculate your complex protein requirements and most common protein sources.

Some other usually asked questions and comparisons to meat/eggs.

http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/protein.html

Keep a lookout here for more of the nutrition series to see how to balance your daily vegan meal, and also check out my food blog for vegan options and sample vegan menu with balanced nutrition and meal nutrition values, posted weekly on wednesdays( starting the coming week).

Have a great weekend u' all

borrredd

i get super bored the day my eyes dont work well .. coz i cant read much, write much, do anything on the computer much.. i am typing blindly.. will prob corret spell mistakes tomm:!!

listening to book today.. and getting hubbs to find time to read the Hundred Year Lie to me.

Atleast, this time the eyes went bonkers after almost a month instead of a week..

To do next week: Fix recipe index, plan daily vegan menu, connect with vegan food bloggers, plan a vegan blog hop...phew..

Skepticism or Inaction ??

I am the aggressive passionate activist in the house and hubbs is the skeptical practical thinker. Between the both of us, our discussions about, any issues I come across or things I would like to change or feel strongly about, usually cover a good number of arguments that I would need to know and answer to when discussing with others.

When I discussed about going vegan, giving up milk and eggs because of ethical reasons, he needed some more reasons. Eventually we discussed ethical, health and environmental reasons for a convincing conclusion.

A similar discussion on the weekend with friends led to a familiar first reaction. As hubbs pointed out to me later that day, that we had had that discussion before, and he had a similar reaction to it. Like any big change, if you extrapolate it , the event and the change become too big for the mind to fathom. This usually leads to skepticism to make the small change.

For eg. Going vegan, if we start thinking of say , if most of the world or the entire world goes vegan, will that actually be beneficial and balanced for everyone?. will that not affect the current man animal, environment balance. Sure it would. According to most research and statistics, that is the best path for this planet to survive, but as with any big long term change, things can go differently, which no one can completely predict. Does that mean that we do not take that step, of going vegan completely or few days a month or whichever small step towards what we currently know as a better path?

We all are dependent on gas. We already know what that dependence is doing to the world, to our health, to the environment. If we decide to take the step to reduce gas consumption, and then extrapolate it to a world in the future when our gas consumption is extremely minimal, can you actually imagine a world like that? I dont think so.. In the slow path to getting there, there could be several other influencing factors that could change things. The shift of power from the gas producing countries, other political, ecological, economical impact depending on what other source of energy gets tapped into. But does that change the fact that the better path to take right now is to reduce our gas consumption?.

And hence eventually we concluded that the skepticsm is because of inaction inertia. Because we do not know both sides of the coin well enough, or all of the future consequences, and because there are already overwhelming number of problems to solve on the world, it is human nature to choose the least or no action path.

If everyone in the world goes vegan( which it self is such a far far away eventuality), the cows are not going to rule the earth.

Veganism is not about food. It is a belief system. That tiny change causes a lot of small and big ripples, which we might not be able to see. Try going completely vegan for just 2 days. Not a commitment, not an exam, no judgement, just an experiment to listen to your body. No milk, cheese, ghee, any dairy, eggs and also organic and as less processed as possible. And leave me comments on what your body told you.

Some reading about how organic, humane are just keywords these days which may or may not be enforced, other statistics and reading

http://crisisboom.com/2011/03/24/usda-refuses-to-enforce-organic-standards/

http://ocveganista.wordpress.com/why-vegan/

http://organicfood.einnews.com/article.php?oid=YJ2ZP0TDE+KA8A

http://www.ecolips.com/notes-from-the-prez/is-organic-in-an-end-game-article

http://humanemyth.org/

sunny sunday

Its a suunnyyy dayyy today...!

We are still struggling a bit to replace the eggs and milk, but the enticement and dependency is reducing day after day.

I am subbing milk with almond or rice milk here and there already to transition the taste and I've replaced eggs from everything except breakfast. The day I find a good protein breakfast to replace the eggs.. bye bye eggs! I just do not like tofu. Sprouts and vegan multigrain pancakes do work on a lot of days. And I have ideas to make multi lentil idlis or uttapams, but those are a developed taste esp for mornings. Both of us think of them as a big meal. Lets see, some more reading, some more recipe trials and we will be there. I have to really like the stuff to eat a good amount of it, coz the stress affects the whole digestion system and hence I get very choosy.

In the midst of all this healthy food, my appetite is getting better.. but at the same time I am also getting more active and eating healthier than ever, which means my weight is still stuck.

And also going through the the dilemma that all new vegans go through. Do u appreciate or like recipes or pictures or food discussions of non vegan food?

As hubbs pointed out yest, when it comes to meat, if people dont eat it , they keep it at home for others who do, they dont appreciate the looks and smells of dishes containing meat for whatever reasons, be it releigious or personal choice. With Milk and eggs, its a bit of a different story. Will we keep dairy milk at home when we transition to a completely vegan household?

People

Its all about passion. The discussions on a common platform with similar minded individuals are not arguments and are not about why the topic of discussion is even being discussed. It is more about defining the problem and finding a solution or just enumerating the different viewpoints. But as soon as the discussion goes out onto a non similar minded people platform, it can easily evolve into a crazy debate.

I try to not jump into most of such debates or even if i do jump in, I put in a lot of thought by putting forth multiple viewpoints. I sometimes will discuss with hubbs before jumping into the discussion too. Coz as I mentioned before. the excessive passion about a particular thing can make you close minded too, it does hamper my ability to look at things differently sometimes.

I get a new point of view from hubbs for almost all discussions, and can eventually think it out and put forth great arguments. It is the times when these well written and, would work for most people, points of views, get shunned by a close minded person, that gets to me. I am learning to ignore such situations, because the people who are closing their minds and rambling on without even knowing enough about the topic do not have anything to lose. I lose, because my passion can convert to argument anxiety. The exasperation easily does. and that state of mind never helps. I am learning I am learning. As I told one of my friends today.. There are more than 6 billion of us.. cant take each one of us seriously. And keep the emotions out of the discussion.. that keeps the exasperation from building and hence less stress!

mental note

- Deliberately accept the anxiety

- ask your brain what would it rather do, what would it prefer to feel

- mentally go through the situations again and again and accept the stupid negative thoughts before the actual event!

my creative brain takes me through negativity hell when i am anticipating a timed event.. time to train it to accept and think positive!!

changes..

I need to overhaul my inspiration blog roll on my food blog .. thats one long task.. also have to update the recipe index.. poof

My current blog roll is a mix of a lot of bread blogs, baking blogs, veggie and non veggie and some other mixed blogs. I guess it is difficult for everyone to keep up the variety and change on their blogs..I struggle to keep the blog interesting as well. Also with a shift to vegan options as much as possible, I also need some interesting as well as likable(my palate is a bit restricted and cautious to totally new ingredients or recipes, and i do not like tofu, seitan and other meat substitutes). So I am looking to vegan blogs and trying to add the interesting one to the google reader, facebook as well as the blog roll on my blog.

Theres more to life than butter and sugar, and blogs baking buttery and sweet cakes and cookies and decorating need to be moved to separate blogroll!!

no wonder hubbs says that my mind is so occupied these days planning something or the other.. Thats the problem with no deadline.. work keeps piling up!

The sun's gone on a vacation after a short trip to seattle last week.. Back to grey rainy days!

more wacky lights and camera angles

I was trying to watch some American Idol today.. They keep adding more wackier neoner lights to the set and more and more cameras and angles.. making is almost impossible for me to watch..

I could just listen to the singers.. but this season isnt doing much justice to its name.. bye bye TV.

On another note, took out the weighing machine today and obviously did not like the reading.. theres a reason why hubbs had hidden it. most likely i am bouncing back from a low I hit in between , but still lower weight than I what I should be at.. gaining weight is tiring..

Communication

when hubbs is in a meeting

Me: when are your PT appts

Hubbs: thu/fri

M: what about today

H: friday

M: whens your appts

H: 5:20 pm

M: i have to schedule some other things this week at 4 .. are you free today

H: i have appt

M: today?

H: at 5:20

M: you said thu/fri

H: ok

M: ok what

H: in a meeting

M: i know ping me when u r free

H: ok

later...

M: when are your appts

H: 5:20

M: huh.. days

H: today and friday i think..

Early morning.. chats with 4 people at the same time.. phew... one conversation led to the thoughts which end up confusing everyone... stray dog adoption in India.. sponsored by the pet grooming and food companies.. alls good.. lots of adoption drives, strays getting good homes and care, less dogs on street, less abuse of the strays..

but what about pet food.. more demand of commercialized pet food.. means more factory farmed chicken and meat.. no good deed is ever a win win..

i say that its mostly win, getting dogs off the street and into homes, all fixed dogs, mo more reproduction, more pet owners, more people who will be a bit more compassionate towards dogs.. think about it.. if people cannot even be compassionate towards their own pets who are like family members.. can you expect them to understand compassion towards cows and hens and other animals they never ever get to meet.?

The honey conundrum

Partly Reproduced from the article http://www.slate.com/id/2196205

Whenever I read about veganism or talk about it with someone, I end up with questions about honey. Honey stumps a lot vegans, because it leads to a lot more arguments about the insect world and just makes veganism sound extreme and not sensible. The worry is usually over the ethics of honey production without worrying over the entire beekeeping industry.

Honey accounts for only a small percentage of the total honeybee economy in the United States; most comes from the use of rental hives to pollinate fruit and vegetable crops. Commercial bees are used in the production of about 100 foods, including almonds, avocados, broccoli, canola, cherries, cucumbers, lettuce, peaches, pears, plums, sunflowers, and tomatoes. Even the clover and alfalfa crops we feed to dairy cows are sometimes pollinated by bees.

Life for these rental bees may be far worse than it is for the ones producing honey. The industrial pollinators face all the same hardships, plus a few more: They spend much of their lives sealed in the back of 18-wheelers, subsisting on a diet of high-fructose corn syrup as they're shipped back and forth across the country. Husbandry and breeding practices have reduced their genetic diversity and left them particularly susceptible to large-scale die-offs.

Even the vegans who abstain from honey end up dining on the sweat and hemolymph of exploited bees. There isn't really an alternative: We can't replace our insects of burden with machines, as we've done for the mules that once pulled our tractor rakes. You might try to do right by seeking out wind-pollinated grains and fruits tended by wild insects. But what about the bugs that inevitably perish in the course of any large-scale agriculture? Even the organic farmers are culpable: They may not spray synthetic pesticides, but they do make use of natural chemicals and predators to kill off unwanted animals.

We do not know enough about the insect nervous system to know if they feel pain or how much suffering are they conscious about. The suffering as we know is felt only by living things with a developed nervous system. Eventually we can keep going down the path of all living things to a single cell organism and if there is any suffering involved. The debate becomes useless at this point.

The point of veganism is not being extremist about such issues. It is about reducing suffering in as many ways as possible, in being kind to as many living things involved, is understanding that self preservation will eventually lead to pain and death of say agriculture pests or mosquitoes and such. And it not just about animals as well. It is about people too. Reducing suffering and being kind to your fellow human being. Whenever possible.

Its a way of life, a state of being.

To read about the honey debate and other discussions about colony collapse disorder and more, read the complete article at http://www.slate.com/id/2196205

Some more information about the cruelty in the honey industry. http://www.veganpeace.com/animal_cruelty/honey.htm

To read more views about veganism, health resources, discussions and other details check out

http://www.veganoutreach.org/about/index.html

conversations

General discussion with hubbs about how some people go vegan quite easily vs some who are always on the fence.

I was telling him about Mihika , who went vegan as a teenager in a meat family and how she convinced most of her family to do so with her! Its an amazing achievement considering, you are not the in charge of the kitchen and grocery shopping and are not the one who makes decisions in the home! Do read her story here!

Then the discussion went into me telling him to watch, some videos about the meat industry. He said, that he was still scarred by the fur video i had sent to him a few years back where animals are skinned alive and since then he hasnt bought any fur or leather.. So I pointed out to him, that the video essentially was effective in making that permanent change in his head.. so maybe he should watch just a few seconds or clips of Earthlings .. the vegan making documentary.. to help make the move towards giving up meat!

sunday movie making

so hubbs filmed chewie playing fetch near the p-patch and the video kept rolling when he put the camera cap back on.. so now i have to edit that part out or make another video some other day.

I decided to edit it using the new windows live movie maker.. downloaded it and stuff and tried some editing.. and wow.. it is some amazing piece of non intuitive crap.. i got so pissed at it, that i wrote the same feedback to them.. then hubbs comes along and sez..

hubbs: well its too non specific feedback.. they cannot use it..

me: well i dont have any other feedback about it, coz i cannot figure out how to use it without spending some money on a movie editing course!

hubbs: so what does that feedback mean.. do you want it to be intuitive or do you want it be non crap.. or do u want it to be intuitive non crap..

me: hmm i want it to be intuitive crap.. coz even if it is crap it will atleast be intuitive enough to use... and make less people crazy..

partly sunny saturday

I sound like a weather station..:)

Weather is one of the big topics in Seattle.. cant help it.. it is so grey and cloudy three quarters of the year..:) so any sunny day.. we seattleites go crazy!!

Here's a typical seattle year description http://theoatmeal.com/blog/seattle_weather .. very accurate and very funny!

This week there were Blogathons and Adoptathons all over the Pet blog world.. So I have been busy updating my other blog http://find-me-a-happy-pet.blogspot.com/ blogging for the change for animals and a bunny adoptathon.

Also posted some yummy recipes on http://hobbyandmore.blogspot.com/, some vegan chewy ginger cookies , some main course dishes and a lemony bread!

Have to do some more research on animal abuse laws and sign some petitions next week!

Have a great weekend y'all..

Why use cruelty free products? Toxins, cancer, us and the environment.

So apart from the fact that cruelty free products are not tested on animals and a lot of them do not contain animal ingredients. The companies which care about the animals also care about the health impact on people and the environmental impact.

The regular bath and body products, soaps, shampoos, moisturizers, household cleaners, laundry and dish cleaners and so on.. contain carcinogens, irritants, allergens, hormone disruptors, and other hazardous materials which can affect you and your body and the kids in all sorts of ways. The parabens, sulfates, phosphates are carcinogenic to humans and eventually end up in oceans polluting and poisoning them.

Here are some examples of daily products and carcinogens in them http://www.wikicancer.org/page/The+list+of+carcinogens

Here is a list of all possible hazardous materials http://www.preventcancer.com/press/pdfs/hazardous.pdf

Here's how to make you own green and non toxic cleaning kit http://www.care2.com/greenliving/make-your-own-non-toxic-cleaning-kit.html#

There are many more detailed articles on the web about what toxins affect your health in which way. Look up the ingredients in your current set of products and do a web search!

Finding a safe daily use or household product, which is safe for us, for the environment and is kind to animals(non animal tested) seems like a long research task.. But it is easier than that.. The companies that stick to their policy of being cruelty free, also have policies about ingredients, where they come from and their impact on the people, animals and the environment

The products you pick out from the cruelty free list at Leaping Bunny or PETA are definitely going to have all natural ingredients(some have completely vegan options as well), no parabens, sulfates or other harmful chemicals, containers made with recycled or recyclable materials, non animal tested, certified organic, non genetically modified and so on. Or We can also make our own non toxic house cleaning products !

My earlier posts about Animal testing http://offspaces.blogspot.com/2009/11/animal-testing.html

and Cruelty free options and what we use in this household http://offspaces.blogspot.com/2011/02/cruelty-free-alternatives.html

Back..

From no where.. :) I dont know what i was doing last week.. Just keeping busy i guess with food blogs, petitions, reading about rescues and other efforts in India and so on..

and listening to some screwball romantic comedy books by Susan Elizabeth Philips and Jennifer Crusie.

Today is a sleepy day coz of all the warm sun... Last week i screwed up my eyes one night and got all jittery again.. Training the brain to accept the other anxiety symptoms seems relatively possible, but how do you train it to like or be neutral about dizziness or bad balance!.

Have to take some nice pictures of my lemony fresh soft and squeezy multigrain mini loafs and put up on the food blog!

If anyone wants to read about why you should or should not get a dog, head to http://find-me-a-happy-pet.blogspot.com/

Tuesday.

The sun is out and about... for a change.. and i need to stop signing petitions for a while.. the graphic images get to me after a while.. its almost like torturing myself... and though theres some good news here and there.. Anne the elephant is finally free and Patrick the dog is finally looking like a dog.. theres a lot more to be done!!

Signing petitions.. writing mails to people and so on.. The mass movement in the above cases got the happy results.. it is not easy to move the rusted machinery without a ton of oil and push!!

I got some conditioner for chewie's long hair which is getting dry at the ends!. the hair is softer but not really shinier.. lets see after a couple of uses...

Time to plan up evening snack and dinner.. herb tofu creamed and cucumber sandwich... and some aloo baingan(potato eggplant curry)...

Perspectives

One of the most frequent questions(after going over the usual frequent ones) that crop up in why vegan argument is about the bugs. Why do dogs have more care and abuse rights than chicken.. and why do chicken have more rights that bugs. I mean who ever thinks twice before squashing a bug. So when we really can kill a living thing without a though, how does it matter that a living thing is getting killed for food?

Here is what I think . In the wild, carnivores like lions, tigers also kill their prey, and if you watch national geographic, you know that the whole process of stalking and killing looks like a very cruel and painful slaughter. But the carnivores cannot survive without that food, and the animals that get killed had a normal, natural life in the wild, till they were killed.

Applying the same argument to bugs/ticks/fleas/mosquitoes, that they had some natural life before the infestation became a problem and they had to be killed.

Humans being omnivores though do have a choice. For their carnivore self, if they can simulate a somewhat natural life of the animal, before they slaughter it, then eating meat would seem more acceptable. But the problem is, that even in organic and humane farms, the life of the hens,cows,goats is far from natural and enjoyable, with only limited access to sunlight, perches, space and green pastures to roam and such. And there is no way to guarantee that the animals had a decent and not miserable life before the slaughter. This is one of the reasons a lot of us are going vegan. Because there are very very few ways to ensure the kindness in the meat or dairy industry.

Veganism really, is not extremism, it is about being aware and kind. Being aware of what goes on in each product you consume, being Kind to the animals, kind to the people, being aware of the options, and making good choices for yourself. being kind to yourself, your health, your environment, your earth.