[46] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Food Fact Flyer
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (espiekos@MIT.EDU)
Mon Feb 28 23:34:55 1994
From: espiekos@MIT.EDU
To: vsg@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 94 23:32:53 EST
Well, happy March Everyone. It was my goal to get this flyer out before
March, and it looks like I will make it my about an hour and a half.
Here's the deal: I have been lurking on the net for the last couple of
months and have learned a great deal about food, even though I *thought* I knew
a thing or two. Anyway, I have been surprised at how little most people seem
to know about the stuff they are putting into their bodies and I thought it
would be nice to perhaps inject a little knowledge into the General Public.
My reasons for this are several. First, we could have a very beneficial
effect on peoples' health if we can bring about even a slight change. In
Realities, it states that you reduce your risk of heart attack in almost direct
proportion to the amount of meat you eliminate from your diet. It also states
that 68% of all diseases in the US are diet related. Second, if there are
more vegetarians, or even more people who consume vegetarian products
occasionally, the increased demand will give us more bargaining power
for getting stores to carry certain items and restaurants to offer meatless
entrees, making all our lives a bit easier. Lastly, I must admit that the
traffic on this group has been pretty light. If we can interest more people
in joining, the amount of meaningful and interesting dialogue will increase,
making it more valuable and fun for all.
Basically, we have a tremendous reservoir of information on a topic that
is fundamental to life. I think that most people would be genuinely surprised
about some of the things we know about the Standard American Diet (SAD) which
haven't been well publicized, due to far too many factors. It is my intention
to try an disseminate some of this information.
Here comes the tricky part. We have all seen that look on people's faces
when you tell them you're a vegetarian. Many people seem to expect all
vegetarians to be vocal, pushy radicals and that you are going to launch into
a tirade about how the whole world is going to end tomorrow if we don't all
switch immediately to a diet consisting entirely of tofu. This *really* turns
many people off, and they will just tune us out if we come on too strongly.
The goal is to make people think without getting into their faces.
Lucy and I have bounced a couple of ideas around and here is what we came
up with: A food information flyer that tosses a couple of facts onto the table
and encourages people to seek out more. This can be done as a series of
'Food Facts of the Month'. The problem is, no one has enough time
to do much around here, so it would be nice if we could spread the labor out.
The proposed solution for this is to place the flyer on Athena, so anyone who
has their eye on a blank place on a bulletin board can simply print a copy
and tack it up. In this way, we can easily flyer the whole campus without
a great time commitment on anyone's part.
I have made the flyer and it is in the /mit/arf/Vegetarianism/Flyers
directory on Athena. Do an 'attach arf', 'cd' to the above directory, and
then you can simply print it with an 'lpr vsg_flyer'. You can also open it
with Idraw, if you'd rather look at it electronically. I think we should have
a comment period, say until midnight Sunday, before anyone hangs any of these
because they have the vsg name on them and, therefore, reflect on all of us.
Let me know what you think,
-Ed
