[762] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
USDA approves veg diets
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (elsiedee@MIT.EDU)
Fri Jan 26 12:29:08 1996
From: elsiedee@MIT.EDU
To: vsg@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 12:26:08 EST
From: "Margaret K. Carpenter" <mcarpent@CapAccess.org>
To: ar-news@cygnus.com
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 12:41:43 -0500 (EST)
The following appeared in the 1/9/96 Washington Post:
USDA's Not-So-Meaty Advice
by Colman McCarthy
Greenfield, Mass. - In the cooking room of Lightlife Foods,
eight rolling racks holding several thousand Smart Dogs
await workers about to vacuum-pack what is, for them, their
occupational meal ticket. Some 120,000 Smart Dogs are made
daily at Lightlife Foods, a 16-year-old company with two
shifts of 65 employees, an average annual growth rate of 40
percent and a nationally distributed line of 100 percent
vegetarian products.
Along with Smart Dogs, which look like hot dogs but without
meat, artery-clogging fat, cholesterol, nitrates and who
knows what else, the vegetarian fare includes Tofu Pups,
Foney Baloney, Fakin' Bacon, Lightburgers, Gimme Lean
meatless "beef" and a dozen other mostly organic staples
made from soy protein, grains, beans and spices.
When opening shop in 1979, Michael Cohen, a Brooklyn
transplant to north central Massachusetts, knew he was
ahead of his time but only by a minute or two: the time
needed for one vegetarian oddball to tell another that
something was cooking and it was healthy and tasty. Last
week, the odd became normal and Smart Dogs became smarter.
For the first time, the Department of Agriculture stated in
its dietary guidelines that vegetarian diets are healthy.
For intellectual boldness, this ranks with the Vatican's
statement years back that Galileo was right, the Earth does
revolve around the sun. The USDA's announcement is welcome
but it remains well short of the leadership that could be
shown. A genuine educational reform would have seen the
department not only add the life-affirming vegetarian diet
to the guidelines but subtract the nutritionally dangerous
animal-based diet as well.
Independent researchers have been reporting for decades the
undeniable links between meat-based diets and heart
disease, several types of cancer, hypertension and other
killer ailments. The department remains politically
compromised by not rebuking the meat and poultry industries
that promote their sick foods as health foods.
If "a vegetarian lifestyle is quite consistent with good
health," as the co-chair of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory
Committee states, isn't this a time to state the dietary
obvious, that a meat, poultry and fish diet means poor
health?
Like the public they have been serving weakly through years
of fellowship with the meat industry, USDA officials are
culturally conditioned to see flesh-eating as normal. The
prevailing misperception is that someone "turns"
vegetarian. It's the opposite. People turn carnivore.
Anatomically, humans are born with bodies designed for a
fruit, vegetable and grain diet. Along with apes, humans
are of the frugivore and herbivore diet, not the carnivore
and omnivore.
No secretary of agriculture would dare speak this plainly
to the public. It would make Joycelyn Elders's bluntness
sound sugary. Secretary Dan Glickman, whose department
runs a food surplus program that consists mainly of such
health disasters as butter, eggs, high-fat cheeses, beef,
pork and milk, released the guidelines by insisting that he
is not coming on as the national "nanny."
He would do better worrying about being the national patsy,
which is what a long line of USDA secretaries and
cattle-state politicians have been to the National
Livestock and Meat Board, the Beef Council, the National
Cattlemen's Association and similar dwellers of coronary
country.
With the USDA now catching up by at least allowing the
heretical word "vegetarian" to be printed in a government
document, dietary leadership is to be found elsewhere.
There is Dean Ornish, a University of California physician
and specialist in the benefits of low-fat eating: "I don't
understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced
vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is
medically conservative to cut people open and put them on
powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their
lives."
In Greenfield, Michael Cohen sees another strong year
ahead. This month's Vegetarian Times reports that the meat
and dairy alternatives industry is fast commanding shelf
space in mainstream supermarkets. Sales in 1996 are
expected to reach $416 million, more than double 1992.
Those who are eating for the health of it need to continue
spreading the word, as did the early savorers of Lightlife
Foods: Get smart, don't eat animals.
