SoulVeggie

Hypertension: "A Neglected Disease" & Sodium

"Hypertension is a "neglected disease," according to a report released today by the Institute of Medicine. Despite high blood pressure being the cause of death in 1 of 6 US adults, and the greatest single risk factor for deaths from cardiovascular disease, millions of Americans are developing, living with, and dying from hypertension. The decade from 1995 to 2005 saw a 25% increase in the death rate from high blood pressure.

... the report notes that 87% of adults in the United States ingest more than 2400 mg/day of sodium (1500 mg/day is recommended for individuals middle-aged or older, blacks, or those with hypertension)...

...Using estimates based on 31 trials of sodium reduction, and data indicating that 87% of the American population consumes excess sodium, the prevalence of hypertension can be expected to decrease 5% to 8% if everyone currently on a high-salt diet decreased their salt intake by about 4.5 g/day."

[edited from here]

Too many vegans and vegetarians use Tamari, Bragg's, and/or Soy Sauce recklessly without understanding how much sodium is in these products:

• Reduced Sodium Tamari:  700 mg PER TABLESPOON
• Bragg's Amino Acids:  960 mg per TB (deceiving nutritional label with 1/2 teaspoon serving at 160 mg... it's not a low-sodium alternative to anything)
• Soy Sauce:  533 mg per TB

Not eating meat, eggs, or dairy, isn't a shield against the negative biological impact of too much added oil, sugar, and salt.  The research is in, and the answers are clear:  no added oil and limiting sugar and salt with promotes a healthier and longer life. The days of drenching pressed tofu slices in Tamari, then nutritional yeast, and frying such in olive oil (used to be a favorite of mine) are over.  It's slow suicide until you understand the numbers and the science that supports them, and adapt or evolve accordingly.

Mad Cowboy Newsletter: Msg. from Howard, 2 of "1,000 Recipes"

The latest Mad Cowboy Newsletter is now available.  Here's a direct link to the issue:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mad_Cowboy/message/89  And here's the title, introduction, and table of contents.  Enjoy!  Mark

"TITLE:  12_22_09:  Holiday Msg. from Howard, "1000 Vegan Recipes"

Howdy!  Welcome to the 68th issue of the Mad Cowboy Newsletter.

In this year end issue, there's some special treats for our readers.  Amongst the spread is a special Holiday Message from Howard, Recipes from Robin Robertson's amazing new opus, "1,000 Vegan Recipes," and Dennis Kucinich explaining what he'd do as dictator!

Reading further, you'll learn about the collision of the military-industrial complex with the vegetable-industrial complex, what Author Foer thinks about PETA and Pollan, and PCRM's new online "21-day Vegan Program" for going veg that starts in January 2010.  There's also information about the "dietary estrogens" and illnesses controversy, a study on meditation and heart disease, how plants appear to be socially awareness, new dirt on Monsanto, the best/worst tap water online database, links to 10 essays on vegetarianism by Kaythy Freston, and the top food stories of 2009/the decade.

Also, don't miss our "Vegan Digital Media Theater," where you can watch the amazing Octopus that has scientists scratching their heads, a "Smiling Animal" Slideshow, Rip Esselstyn lecturing at Whole Foods, and 85 minutes of Howard speaking at the Conscious Life Expo in 2006.

... as always, a tip of the hat to our new subscribers:  y'all can browse past issues at the Mad Cowboy Newsletter Archives:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mad_Cowboy/

Wishing everyone a Happy Holidaze and warmer weather!

Mark, MC editor/webmaster

***********************************************
TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00: A Holiday Message from Howard!
01: The Vegan Mind-Bender Contest Winner/Challenge!
02: Recipes from "1,000 Vegan Recipes" by Robin Robertson
03: Mad Cow Info Round-Up
04: 2 Fat 2 Serve, Diet/Estrogens, Heart Meditation, Veg. Act
05: Dennis Dictator? Veg Zeitgeist, Foer on PETA, Vegan Kickstart
06: Vegan Digital Media Theater
07: Social Plants, Save Food Steps, Monsanto Biz, Best/Worst H20
08: Quick Bytes
09: Closing Thoughts"

Ruining Broccoli: Making the "Best" the "Worst"

Broccoli is, indeed, a super vegetable.  What a nutritional profile!:  Antioxidents, calcium, protein, vitamin A, C & K, fiber --- the whole biochemical kit'n'kaboodle is fantastic.  Imagine my surprise when a vegan cook manages to take a superb no-fat mega-vegetable and transmute it into deadly pieces of cardiovascular killing shrapnel.

Over at "Super Vegan" (here), our cook dips each broccoli flowerette into Veganaise, sprinkles on some Nutritional Yeast, and then broils 'em all.  We're talking around a tablespoon of Veganaise per broccoli flowerette.  The photo of the "dish" shows 8 flowerettes.  Why is this a problem?  At 9 grams of pure fat per tablespoon/per flowerette (1 gram of saturated fat), that broccoli has been magically transformed from an incredible, essentially no-fat, and totally healthy product of nature into a total of 72 grams of artery-clogging added fat for the one serving (even at 1 teaspoon of Veganaise per flowerette (not likely), it's still a total of over 26 grams of fat per serving).

To put this into perspective:  the ENTIRE Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast (no vegetables in sight!) is around 50 grams of fat.  The guys who've, independently, reversed heart disease (Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn) recommend 14 to 24 or so grams of fat PER DAY, and even the stodgy American Heart Association recommends no more than 60 grams of fat TOTAL per day (2,000 calorie diet). That broccoli now contains around  8 grams of saturated fat which is about half what is recommended by the American Heart Association for women per day.

Wonder full, healthy, tasty, nutritionally dense, broccoli... slathered in pure non-food fat, saturated fat, and broiled.  Well over a whole day's worth of fat in a side dish.  Hardly "the best" broccoli recipe as claimed, and pretty high in the running, imho, for the absolute worst.  No longer a "super food" by any stretch of the imagination and a pretty sad example of how something so healthy (and vegan) can quickly be turned into quite the opposite.

Bleech...

This clever Embeddable Flash Animation showing icons representing numbers of animals being killed in "real time" for food in the United States is available at the very interesting website:  Animal Visuals.  Check it out!

Average & Total Numbers of Animals Who Died to Feed Americans in 2008

Stunning piece of work from valid statistical sources, broken down in detail by type of animal as well as year.  Note that 8.5 billion land animals died, and some 71 billion sea animals.  There's a bunch of interesting and appalling stats herein, but the grand finale:

ALL ANIMALS
Total number died for food: 80 billion
Average number consumed per American meat-eater: 270
Average number consumed per American lifetime: 21,000

... tells the sad tale.  You can read this all in greater detail here.  Kudos for Noam (and UPC) for the fine work.

Latest Mad Cowboy Newsletter - Rip Essy Interview/Recipes

Here's the Intro, Table of Contents, and a Direct Link to the latest Mad Cowboy Newsletter:

LINK:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mad_Cowboy/message/88

"10_19_09:  Engine 2 Interview, Mutant Milk, & SpiderVeg"

Howdy! Welcome to the 67th issue of the Mad Cowboy Newsletter.

In this issue we're proud to present a Mad Cowboy Interview with the amazing vegan firefighter/author, Rip Esselstyn. Rip's the son of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and has built upon his father's remarkable research via some very practical and easy-to-do ways in his diet/exercise/lifestyle book, "The Engine 2 Diet."  There's also three of his recipes for you to try!

Moving on further, there's articles about Mutant Milk, how saturated fat enables Altzheimer's, some surprising statistics on what we eat, Brainfood at the White House, a great new position paper by the ADA on the Vegetarian Diet, and more about that same diet reducing cancer risk.

Continuing in this edition, there's the intriguing proposal for a 50 year Farm Bill, 70 pages of solutions to our agricultural woes, the real cost of food, the new composting mandate in San Francisco, how animal abusers are losing, AETA is winning, new math contrasting a vegan diet with a carnivore's, and the Amazing SpiderVeg!

... as always, a tip of the hat to our new subscribers: y'all can browse past issues at the Mad Cowboy Newsletter Archives:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mad_Cowboy/>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mad_Cowboy/

Here's hoping everyone is warm, and to quote Rip: "plant strong" this Winter!

Mark, MC editor/webmaster

***********************************************
TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00: Quote(s) from Howard
01: A Mad Cowboy Interview with Rip Esselstyn
02: Three Recipes from "The Engine 2 Diet"
03: The Vegan Mind-Bender Contest Winner/Challenge!
04: Mad Cow Info Round-Up
05: Mutant Milk, Fat & Altzheimer's, US Fatter, What We're Eating
06: Brainfood, Veg Diet Reduces Cancer & Chronic Disease Risks
07: The Digital Vegan
08: 50 yr Farm Bill, Ag Solutions, Real Food Cost, Composting SF
09: Animal Abusers Lose, AETA Wins, Veg Math, Spider Veg!
10: Howard's Schedule
11: Quick Bytes
12: Closing Thoughts

Top 10 Items Sold At Grocery Stores 06/2008 to 06/2009

[Cited data from an article (with graphical chart) by Mark Bittman, "What We’re Eating."  Sales are ranked by dollars (in the billions).  A very sobering view of the Standard American Diet and how shortsighted it is that this and related preventative issues aren't part of the current "Health Insurance" debate debaucle: 

              ITEM                                         SALES ($B)                             % CHANGE
1.)  Carbonated Beverages                      $12.00                                         1.86
2.)  Milk                                                     $11.20                                        -8.44
3.)  Fresh Bread & Rolls                             $9.57                                         4.77
4.)  Beer/Ale/Hard Cider                             $8.17                                         5.42
5.)  Salty Snacks                                        $8.09                                         9.75
6.)  Natural Cheese                                    $7.64                                         7.75
7.)  Frozen Dinners/Entrees                       $6.13                                         0.18
8.)  Cold Cereal                                          $6.11                                         2.12
9.)  Wine                                                     $5.49                                         3.72
10.) Cigarettes                                            $4.63                                        -2.18

SOURCE: INFORMATION RESOURCES INC. (IRI)

"A Vegan Zombie's Vegan Twinkie'

In a short article about how Woody Harrelson, while acting in his new movie, "Zombieland," insisted on vegan twinkies made from corn with no sugar.  Says Woody:

"I'm not a Twinkie lover. I don't do sugar or dairy either. When we finally shot my Twinkie-eating scene in the movie, they had to give me a specially made mock Twinkie made of corn meal. It could spur a healthy Twinkie revolution."

The author of the article then recommends a vegan twinkie recipe from Schmoofood & Vegan Lunchbox (here).  How unfortunate.  I've blogged about the clever author of Vegan Lunchbox years ago when it started out, but in recent times I stopped reading her blog for the most part when she was praising "Pringles."

Anyway, I checked out the "Schmooed Food" twinkie recipe and did the math:  28 grams of vegan olive oil/shortening/margarine fat per twinkie, and a whopping 52 grams of sugar per serving.  Oh, and there's 7 grams of saturated fat per twinkie.

Put into perspective:  Ornish & Esselstyn (who've reversed heart disease) recommend between 14 and 24 grams of fat per day (around 10% of your total calories), the Feds no more than 60 grams of fat per day.  Regarding sugar:  the American Heart Association recommends no more than 37 grams of sugar PER DAY for an ADULT man, and no more than 16 grams of saturated fat per day for an adult woman.

Wow... a day's worth of useless added non-real food fat, a half day's worth of saturated fat, and over a day's worth of sugar in ONE "healthy" vegan twinkie.  Now imagine the physiological effect on a child's body.  Reminds me of some dialogue from the 1984 movie version of "Ghostbusters:"

"Dr. Egon Spengler: I'm worried, Ray. All my readings point to something big on the horizon.

Winston Zeddemore: What do you mean, big?

Dr. Egon Spengler: Well, let's say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning's reading, it would be a Twinkie thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.

Winston Zeddemore: That's a big Twinkie."

Fitting too, that one actually "injects" the filling into the twinkies.  That's not unlike injecting sugar and fat into your cardiovascular system when you eat one.  And It's ironic that the standard definition of the Hebrew term "shmoe" is essentially a "stupid" person.  But regardless, there's just no way I'd ever eat this schlock, vegan or not.  It's a nutritional short-range missile with multiple warheads of fat, saturated fat, and sugar.  Best to avoid it's negative impact on your body and target instead, real food.

[BONUS: check out the excellent summary article concerning oil, it's impact on your body, and cited articles, at the "Happy Healthy Longer Life" blog.  For a graphic of a real vegan zoombie, click here.]

[NOTE 10/16/09:  Happy Healthy Longer Life Blog link fixed... apologies!]

A "Mighty O" Heart Attack

A usually interesting vegan blogger today was praising "Mighty O Donuts" in Seatte.  To quote the blogger:

"Their donuts are all vegan and organic. Because there are no animal derived ingredients they are cholesterol free. Mighty O's are made locally, right in the shop and contain no trans fats, artificial colorings or ingredients and are calorie free."

Well, let's glom the nutritional numbers see if we can figure out what the little kid shown in her photo is actually eating.  Sure, it's going to be essentially flour, fat, oil, and sugar (that's what's in a donut).  I'm guessing it's the "peanut sprinkles" chocoloco (BTW: most of the other donuts are much HIGHER in the numbers below).  They don't note the fat content of the peanut sprinkles.

Here's the numbers and percentages for a 2,000 calorie a day grown ADULT:

FAT:  16 grams (almost a third of the total fat for an adult for a day a la Federalists, essentially full-day for Esselstyn and Ornish (who've reversed heart disease:  14 to 24 grams of fat per day)

SAT FAT:  7 grams (about 35% of what the American Health Association recommends for AN ADULT)

SUGAR:  16 grams of sugar (a little under half what the AHA recommends daily for ADULT MEN)

Wonderful.  At least, as the website notes so loudly, that their donuts are "organic," "clean," "non-gmo," and contains "nothing artificial.  After all, we wouldn't want a dirty heart attack.  What the are doing might sound noble ('environmental," "free trade," yadda yadda yadda...), but in reality they are making and selling a highly addictive and decidedly unhealthy VEGAN processed food fat, sugar, and oil delivery vehicles.

...and some wonder why are kids are showing such high obseity and Type II Diabetes rates!  It ain't just because the're not vegan, kiddos.  It's the glazed or sprinkled ticking nutritional time bombs served with a smile.  But, since the saturated fat can feed Altzheimer's, maybe they'll forget about it later.

Here's the company's "core values" (no direct link, badly designed Flash navigation):

• "Respect for individuals, community, and culture" (but we don't care if our products are nutritionally useless and promote heart disease, diabetes, Altzheimer's and obesity)
• "Respect for nature and the environment" (except for your cardiocascular system)
• "Recognize that continual improvement is necessary for our growth and existence.  Be innovative."  (...find new ways to package fat, sugar, salt, and flour, with a high profit margin, to sell to taste addicts)
• "Preserve modesty as an essential tenant to serve others" (WTF? Well, maybe it's "clean" modesty)
• "Be truthful.  Recognize that our success is based on more than profits." (that's true!  It's based on selling fat and sugar-ladden flour products with nano-nutritional value that significantly increase the odds for a shorter life span, while feeding the buyer's addictions)

It's also ironic 'cause they list a ton of artificial food-like ingredients they are avoiding and even include a link to a webpage about "Food Additives" that can cause cancer.  Pity they've missed the heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and Altzheimer's potential from their "natural" ingredients (oil is natural?  I've yet to see an "olive oil" well.).

Transcend your taste bud's addiction to fat, sugar, and salt... transform them into discriminators of REAL food, and not such deep-fried or baked sugar, fat, and flour nutritionally vapid nonsense as "Might O" Donuts.

That's PRESERVING LIFE... and being seriously RESPECTFUL to your body and to those people that love you.  Your health is based on more than taste... And that's the recognizable truth.

Super Award-winning Vegan Pie Recipe: Insulting Your Arteries & Brain

This 1st place award-winning vegan pie recipe is a real eye opener.  Let's glom the nutritional numbers (leaving out the non-fat ingredients):

38 grams of fat per serving (6 servings per pie is average)

12 grams of saturated fat per serving

TOTAL FAT:  as percentage of Preventing Heart Disease Recommendations (14 to 24 grams, Esselstyn, et. al.):  300% to over 150%

As percentage of the Feds Daily Fat Total Recommendation (60 grams):  over 50%

TOTAL SATURATED FAT PER SERVING and AS % RECOMMENDED BY THE AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION (16 grams):  around 75% recommended

Mostly this unnecessary and added fat and saturated fat comes from Earth Balance, which is, (to quote Rip Esselstyn regarding oil), "synthetic goo."  It's not a real food by any stretch of the imagination and is essentially nutritionally void.  Remember, even ONE high fat meal can affect the elasticity of your arteries for several hours.  Saturated fat has also now been linked with Altzheimer's disease (here), in addition to heart disease.

"What about in Moderation?" some people will whine:  let's read what Dr. T. Colin Campbell (lead investigator of the largest study on diet in history, who also advocates the same low fat recommendations of Ornish and Esselstyn) has to say in a recent interview:

"KF: Isn't anything in moderation ok, as long as we don't overdo it?

TCC: I rather like the expression told by my friend, Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., MD, the Cleveland Clinic surgeon who reversed heart disease and who says, "Moderation kills!" I prefer to go the whole way, not because we have fool-proof evidence showing that 100% is better than, say, 95% for every single person for every single condition but that it is easier to avoid straying off on an excursion that too often becomes a slippery slope back to our old ways. Moreover, going the whole way allows us to adapt to new unrealized tastes and to rid ourselves of some old addictions. And finally, moderation often means very different things for different people."

From even the governmental conservative food corporation-influenced standard, at over 50% of the daily fat recommended per day, and 75% of the saturated fat, this is hardly a "super" or "award-winning" recipe in regards to your cardiovascular system and brain.  That's it's vegan is a useless determinent.

Let's hope more people begin to understand that taste isn't as important as how what's in what you eat affects your body, and in particular, your heart and mind.

ADDENDUM:  just noted how ironic it is that a vegan blogger has quoted  (http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2009/09/casein-most-relevent-cancer-promoter.html  -  she won't allow links from my blog to hers, guess the truth bothers her) what Campbell said in that same interview about casein, milk, cheese, and cancer, and then recommended "Follow Your Heart Cheese," omitting the above quote and not mentioning how incredibly high that synthetic goo is in fat,  IMHO, if you're going to quote someone, at least don't leave out what that person says (and believes) which runs totally against what you then advocate.  It's either careless or hypocritical, and certainly bad blogging.