Care Fair, Cooking Class, Vit. B12, Broccoli, Vegan Fine Dining, Vegan Fashion, Leather
June 8, 2007
Dear Boston Vegetarian Society List,
1) Care Fair 6/10 in Medford - Free Health Fair w/ Vegan Cooking Classes & More!
2) Free Cancer Project Cooking Classes in Quincy + Raw Foods Class in Beverly
3) Vitamin B12 - What You Should Know
4) Boiling Broccoli Ruins Its Anti-Cancer Properties
5) StuffatNight: Vegan Fine Dining in Boston Area
6) Boston Globe: Sidekick on Vegan Fine Dining
7) Boston Herald: Fashion Conscience: Animal Lovers Embrace Vegan Chic + Fashion Blog
8) Common Dreams: Leather, an Environmental Nightmare
1) BVS WILL EXHIBIT AT CARE FAIR IN MEDFORD - FREE VEGAN COOKING CLASS & MORE!
Come to the Care Fair this Sunday, June 10, 11 AM - 3 PM, on the field in Powderhouse Square in Medford. This FREE health fair will include a Cancer Project vegan cooking class with Chef Sualua Tupolo and Paulette Chandler, MD starting at noon. There will be free health screenings and chair massages, free veggie food sampling, face painting and fun for kids, too! Stop by BVS' exhibitor table. Co-sponsored by Cambridge SDA Church, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cambridge Healthcare Alliance, and Mt. Auburn Hospital. Directions: Red line T to Davis Square. Walk 3 blocks up College Ave. You will see the field at the rotary at Powderhouse Square.
2) FREE CANCER PROJECT VEGAN COOKING CLASSES IN QUINCY + RAW FOODS CLASS
Sunday, June 10, 2 - 5 PM -- Those on the South Shore can attend the FREE Cancer Project vegan cooking classes at the Thomas Crane Public Library, 40 Washington St. in Quincy Center on the Red Line. Two classes, back to back, topics will be Discovering Dairy Alternatives & Planning Healthy Meals. Includes a short nutrition video, plus instruction and food sampling of the dishes made. Register at 617-376-1301. Details at
http://thomascranelibrary.org/
Sat., June 23, 10 AM - 3:30 PM -- On the North Shore, a Raw Foods Class: Intro to Raw Home Chef with Gourmet Cuisine, Raw Kitchen Review & Dessert Ideas! With Robert Reid of Organic Garden Cafe, held in Beverly MA. $195 pre-paid. Register at 978-922-0004.
3) VITAMIN B12 - WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Assuring a source of Vitamin B12 is critically important to good long-term health for vegans and vegetarians, too. There are no reliable, unfortified plant sources of vitamin B12. But since Vitamin B12 is made by bacterial fermentation, no animal foods are necessary to provide it.
B12 protects the nervous system. Without it, permanent damage can result (e.g., blindness, deafness, dementia). Fatigue, and tingling in the hands or feet, can be early signs of deficiency. B12 also keeps the digestive system healthy and an overt deficiency can cause digestive problems. B12 also lowers homocysteine levels, thereby reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, and other diseases.
So make sure you have a source of B12 in your diet. Many vegan foods are fortified with B12, including non-dairy milks, meat substitutes, breakfast cereals, and Red Star Vegetarian Support Formula nutritional yeast. (Check package nutrition labels.) B12 supplements are also recommended.
I recommend reading this comprehensive material on B12:
http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/vitaminb12
4) BOILING BROCCOLI RUINS ITS ANTI-CANCER PROPERTIES
5/16/07 - Researchers at the Univ. of Warwick found that boiling severely damages the anticancer properties of many Brassica vegetables such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and green cabbage. Past studies have shown that consumption of Brassica vegetables decreases the risk of cancer because of their high concentration of glucosinolates. Loss of total glucosinolate content after boiling for 30 minutes was: broccoli 77%, Brussel sprouts 58%, cauliflower 75%, and green cabbage 65%.
Three other cooking methods gave no significant loss of total glucosinolate analyte content: steaming for 0–20 min, microwave cooking for 0–3 min and stir-fry cooking for 0–5 min.
Storage of the vegetables in a domestic refrigerator showed no significant loss, with only minor loss of glucosinolates over 7 days. Preparation of Brassica vegetables caused only minor reductions in glucosinolate, except when they were shredded finely, which showed a marked decline of glucosinolate levels with a loss of up to 75% over 6 hours after shredding. Source:
http://www.nutritionhorizon.com/newsmaker_article.asp?idNewsMaker=14079&fSite=AO545&next=pr
5) STUFFatNIGHT ON VEGAN FINE DINING IN THE BOSTON AREA
A feature story in the current stuff@night magazine -- Veggies delight: You don't have to be a meat eater to enjoy fine dining (6/1/07)
"Incompatible palates can put surprising strain on a relationship. I learned this the hard way when I, a fine-dining fanatic and wannabe foodie, found myself smack dab in love with a vegan... Thankfully, some of the best chefs in Boston find vegetarian and vegan cooking to be fresh, exciting, and challenging — and they offer menus to prove it." (Thanks Rick F. for this tip.)
http://stuffatnight.com/columns/feature/41047/default.aspx
6) BOSTON GLOBE "SIDEKICK" ARTICLE ON VEGAN FINE DINING
Watch for tomorrow's (6/9/07) Boston Globe in the Sidekick section. There should be a short (300 word) piece on the need for a fully vegan fine dining restaurant in Boston, à la Candle 79 in NYC and Millennium in San Francisco.
7) BOSTON HERALD FASHION CONSCIENCE: VEGAN CHIC
Hot, hot hot! Doesn't it seem the Boston media can't get enough about vegans?
Boston Herald: Fashion conscience: Animal lovers embrace vegan chic (6/6/07) "For most vegans, following a no-animal-product diet is the easy part. It’s putting together a wardrobe that’s tough... 'It’s possible to dress stylishly and still be able to be true to your conscience'” (Thanks Catherine for this tip.)
http://theedge.bostonherald.com/styleNews/view.bg?articleid=1004957
Here's a fun resource for the stylish among us -- For a lively look at fashion finds, check out the new Vegan Fashion Blog: Style with Conscience
http://veganfashionblog.com
8) LEATHER IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL AND CRUELTY NIGHTMARE
We see from the above that leather isn't so hard to avoid and still dress ourselves in style. This recent, superb article tells why we'd want to do so.
April 30, 2007 -- CommonDreams.org Leather: Dead Skin, Environmental Nightmare
"It’s an odd irony, isn't it? You think of leather or fur and you think “natural product.” You think of faux fur or faux leather and you think “unnatural,” or even “petrochemical.” But once you investigate what goes into creating this “natural” (dead) product, whether you’re talking about fur or leather, you’re talking environmental nightmare that far outpaces the synthetic alternatives.
"An animal’s skin will decompose if it’s not treated with a nasty stew of toxic chemicals... Turning an animal’s skin into leather requires massive amounts of energy and toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and various dyes and finishes, some of them cyanide-based. And most leather is chrome-tanned. Tannery effluent also contains large amounts of pollutants, such as salt, lime sludge, sulfides, and acids."
This excellent article is peppered with links to everything from ex-fur wearer Martha Stewart speaking about the fur trade, to sites for leather-free shoes and car interiors, to videos of the Indian leather trade where spent dairy cows endure some of the most shocking and horrific animal cruelty imaginable. India and China ("where animal welfare and environmental regulations either don’t exist or are not enforced") are the source of most leather, regardless of where manufacturing of the final product is done.
Read the full article:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/30/863/
Hope something here has been useful to you!