You are what you eat

It’s me, at long last! Wow, I have had some serious issues with my computer and it has only taken months to sort it all out. It crashed in September and up and running last Sunday. I thought computers are supposed to make life easier? Not! My one is old, upgraded twice, still short on memory but I am going to use it until it completely dies – I am not into the disposable lifestyle and buying a new computer would mean dumping this one – not good for the environment in both the dumping and the resources it would have taken to make the new one. So I am sticking with it! P.s. do you notice the green button on my keyboard? It is an  ‘eject’ button. It doesn’t work of course, but it helps to ease the impatient-ness I have with the internet sometimes. Broadband in New Zealand is ‘almost but not quite’ as slow as dial-up.

My friend has a computer that I could have used – but to be honest – I go there to her home with all good intentions and we just sit and drink coffee and natter. I also like a bit of peace and quiet when writing and she has a tribe of eager kiddies, and writing would be hard when it sounds like the house is being pulled apart. So to sum it up, I haven’t posted for quite some while but I’m baaaack!

On Thursday night there was a SAFE movie night. We viewed Food, Inc. Check out the trailer at the website titled Hungry For Change. The icon to the left will take you to Amazon, or search the internet, there may well be a full length version posted somewhere, I haven’t looked, but worth a try.

Although the movie was Americanised it still held very true for the rest of the world, we all know that fast food has wheedled itself into just about every orifice that it can get into – and why not, fast food industries want to make a profit and the public ask (or believe they do) for it. The movie highlighted corporate greed and the absolute monopoly that only a few corporations have on food and the coverup, buying-off and bullying that these corporations do and the corrupt way in which these few corporations legalise policies. I think because the movie took a more ‘human’ approach than a ‘cruelty to animals’ approach it might mean more people would be open to watching it and having it impact on their food choices – humans have an ego and see what they want to see, they might turn a blind eye to animals being slaughtered but seeing a movie that has the human element and shows the impact on average people it might make them sit up, take notice, and look into what they eat (here is hoping – forever the optimist I am). The movie touches on the obesity epidemic and other health issues and tries to get the voice across that cheaper food does not necessarily mean cheaper as there are seriously horrendous spin-off effects to ‘cheap’ food. All-in-all, not a bad movie to watch. If it gets people thinking about ‘we are what we eat’ and there are choices if we just say ‘no!’ then hats off to them and I hope that many people do find a way to watch it – the voice of many is needed against the food corporate empire to even begin to falter.

It is a vicious cycle, eat bad food, feel listless, so eat bad food because you don’t have the energy to cook – much easier to go and get a hamburger at McD’s and before you know it you are starting to look and act like a hamburger, a hamburger with no energy, a high fat content and no nutritional value. It does not take long to cook a nutritious meal that is on the table before the person is back from the takeaway shop, although it might seem it. Eating a nutritious meal means that your energy levels are higher, more ’stable’ and you do not need as much food because your hunger is satisfied for longer. Fortunately it hasn’t become totally impossible to buy cheap vegetables at markets here in New Zealand and alot of us who have the classic Kiwi half-acre can grow a few things. Sometimes you don’t even need a back lawn but just a balcony, hey even a tomato plant can be grown in a pot and potatoes in old tyres. But still the fast food industry grows, thrives and kills in an insidious way. So not only is it a problem with peoples energy abating and the small cost of buying a hamburger and the time in people’s lives that they think is needed to cook a meal but a habit as well – a habit we are passing on to our next generation. You just have to break the cycle.

Clean Teeth Compassionately

Many things on my site will be aimed at new vegans or potential vegans and will point out things in which ‘hardened vegans’ learnt years ago and now take for granted as an everyday part of their lives, but new and potential vegans may not be aware of. So, take this journey with me and let us learn together. Today I would like to blog about toothpastes and toothbrushes.

Not only are there many ingredients in toothpaste that are derived from the suffering and death of non-human animals, but there are many companies that use the inhumane practice of testing their products on animals. In New Zealand along with vegans from many other countries we have to be aware of all aspects and look behind the product and into the company that produces that product. What you will find is that many are seriously lacking in compassion for the sake of financial gain. Is the company that makes your toothpaste using animals for testing their toothpaste or any of their other products on? Quite possibly, in fact, more than likely. So to be absolutely sure only buy a toothpaste that states clearly on the label that it is vegan and not tested on animals. There are a couple of vegan toothpastes available but I thought I would introduce you to a lovely product which I just purchased:

lemon-myrtle

Phyto Shield Lemon-Myrtle, Botanical Oral Care Toothpaste.

I bought this 100g tube of toothpaste for $6.10 from Stay Well Pharmacy in Hornby, on Shands Road – the little shopping complex on the left after coming off Main South Road.

Chemical-free and does not contain parabens, sodium lauryl sulphate, added fluoride, sugar and artificial sweeteners. Along with no petrochemicals or chemical bleach.

Suitable for children, vegans and vegetarians.

Not tested on animals.

100% naturally New Zealand

Manufactured in New Zealand by New Zealand Natural Oral Care Company, freephone 0800 red seal or 0800 733 732

 Ingredients:

• Calcium Carbonate (chalk-mild mineral abrasive)
• Aqua (purified water)
• Glycerol and Sorbitol (moisture retaining agents from plant origin)
• Silica (natural ore for better paste structure)
• Orange Oil
• Lauryl Glucoside (mild cleanser from coconut oil)
• Carboxymethyl Cellulose (gumming agent from plant fibre)
• Lemon Oil
• Calcium Magnesium Carbonate (abrasive)
• Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate (plant derived sweetener)
• Menthol
• Aniseed Oil, Peppermint Oil, Thyme Oil, Myrrh Oil, Lemon Myrtle Oil
• Totarol (in ethanol) Tincture

Sounds all good to me and it is also a very nice tasting fresh-feeling toothpaste.

Maybe your local chemist or health food shop has it in stock, and if they don’t, maybe they would look at stocking it or get it in for you. We live in a very accommodating society when it comes to most retail shops and they are on average only happy to oblige. If you don’t ask, you will never know.

Keeping along with the thought of not supporting companies who exploit innocent animals for testing their products on – think about the toothbrush you use and which company it was made by, are they a company that does animal testing? I just purchased a new vegan toothbrush from SAFE (link in sidebar), 145 Armagh Street in the centre of Christchurch. They have a selection of vegan toothbrushes (and other stuff of course). Go in and check it out and while you are there say hi to other like-minded vegans as well, very approachable and very friendly. And if you are not vegan but thinking about it – good on you, keep getting information and learn – pretend you are a sponge and suck up that information, take things slowly (or not!) because with every step you take towards veganism you are helping the animals, the planet and making yourself healthier – and always remember you are not alone – there are other vegans out there.

Save the Beagles Protest – NZ Open Rescue Message

FYI

Save the Beagles Protest – Saturday 26th September

Hundreds of animals each year suffer the fate of live testing at Valley Animal Research Centre.

Animal testing is unscientific, producing no beneficial data and merely filing the pockets of fraudulent scientists.

Allen Goldenthal breeds hundreds of Beagles dogs every year. The only existence these animals know is one of pain and suffering.

Valley Animal Research Centre must be stopped! Come along to the protest and make your voice heard for those who cannot speak.

Saturday September 26th 1.30pm Bainesse Kennels, Himitangi or meet at 1pm, the Square information centre, Palmerston North

For further information

visit: www.varc.org.nz

New Zealand Open Rescue

PO Box 37612

Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.youtube.com/NZOpenRescue

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nzopenrescue/

And an exerpt from Save the beagles www.varc.org.nz about other things to do:

Sign SAFE’s online petition to the Minister of Agriculture http://www.banbeagleexperiments.org.nz/Sign-Petition/ If you have your own website or blog, please link it to this petition.

And for other ideas go to www.varc.org.nz under the tab ‘what you can do’, and …

For more information, please contact National AntiVivisection Campaign, PO Box 6387, Wellington ; nzarinfo@gmail.com

Lambing season ‘09

snow receding, summer looming

It is a lovely trip into work every morning, I see some beautiful sights – ever changing sights, Mother Nature showing off her beautiful colours in the changing of the seasons. The snow on the mountains is slowly, day by day, starting to recede.

I also see other things. Lambing season is in full swing and over the last month while driving to work and home I have noticed an unusually large amount of ewes with twins or triplets. I am not sure if this is consistent with the rest of the country or whether it is only a regional phenomenon this year. It has been a better winter in Canterbury, alot milder in temperature than the last couple of years and although there was a fair amount of rain there was no snow on the ground.

The problem (other than the ownership of course) with the farmers having ewes that  produce more lambs is that sometimes a ewe cannot feed three babies. The first reason is that a majority of sheep breeds only have two functional teats (some breeds have more) and another reason is that if the ewe is lactating early in the season she will lose body weight and condition. Ewes rearing twins and triplets cannot consume sufficient nutrients to prevent this weight loss early on in the season. With triplets their growth can be uneven and inconsistent with their siblings as they have to battle for the teats, competition for the available milk supply  – and the farmer wouldn’t want that, the uneven growth I mean – he wants big fat lambs. The ewes with triplets can also have an increased risk of teat damage.

Of course the farmer wants highly productive sheep, those that lamb frequently, produce multiple lambs that grow rapidly and are capable of re-breeding after having the existing lambs weaned from their mothers at an earlier time than is natural. But with triplets from ewes with only two functional teats the fight begins and the farmer wins, theft of one of the babies.

wee fella

This little sweetie is only 10-hours old at the time of this photo and because he was one of three that his mum went through labour and gave birth to he was deemed (or doomed?) surplus to requirements, “would have died anyway”. This is not a definite, he may have died, but then again he might not have. But because he, like many are unfortunate enough to be born into slavery, farmers find someone to buy them – yes ‘buy’ like a commodity, and he could just as well have been bought by someone who wanted him fattened up a bit and had his carcass on a dinner plate. He is special in his own right. Do farmers care about what would happen to this little fella or others like him? No way, compassion is something that is not thought of in the sheep industry, only profits. Supplement feeding for the ewe could have avoided the separation of mother and baby entirely and minimized weight loss in the ewe. Well, actually, abolition of farming sheep would have avoided it entirely.

I am always deeply saddened and feel like a part of myself is dying inside with the exploitation of so many sentient beings, not a day goes by that I don’t think of the atrocities and suffering that human beings inflict on just about every other species including our own – and today my thoughts go out to those that lost their loved ones in 2001 .

When people have lamb for dinner they do not consciously make the connection between the carcass on the end of their fork and the lamb leaping around with the other lambs in the paddock, they do not think of them as living, vital, alive beings, they close their minds to the lambs being loaded into a truck heading for the slaughterhouse, they do not think of the terror that these babies feel, the loss that their mothers’ feel – these babies that have no choice – the innocents – they should not be farmed for fashion or dinner plate and do not go with knitting needles, mint and kumara.

Glue-it at the office

At work we sometimes have to use glue, as most offices do. Since going vegan I have abstained from using any, but recently I had to. We use the  Pritt Glue-it Refill Roller made in Germany by Henkel Corporation which is readily available in all office supply stores in New Zealand. I thought I would send them a quick email before I used it to find out what was in their glue.

Pritt Glue-it Refill Roller with spare refill

I commend them on their prompt response …

An excerpt from their reply;

“We do not use animals in the manufacture of any of our products” – signed by the Henkel Corporation.

Question the process

UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE: Confirmation has been received that Bean Me Up soymilk and tofu are vegan, the filtering cloth is nylon. So it is now back in the shopping trolley. Thank you SAFE for the detective work.

Sometimes it is hard to know about the processes that many of our foods go through before reaching our cupboard or fridge, processes that you wouldn’t even think to question until something triggers you to look into it a bit further; well this happened to me.

No milk today - 3x in a row Bean Me Up is out of stock, so all I have for you is the price label, note: when taking photos in supermarkets do not use a flash

I was listening to a Radio NZ podcast on the processing of Bean Me Up Soymilk which is made locally here in Christchurch, and was finding it quite interesting until the moment the product came out of the heat tank – you see, it goes through a filter, and I thought she said ’silk filter from Japan’ – the noise from the machine was quite loud so I may have heard incorrectly. Anyway, right then I knew I had to find out.

It took quite a few attempts at phoning before I actually managed to speak to someone for clarification. They advised me that it was silk and I replied “so it is not suitable for vegans then” and she said “oh hang on” and went and spoke to the person who operates the heat tank and he said “I’m not sure if it is silk or nylon, it could be nylon but I am not sure”. She also mentioned that “everyone does it that way” – but does she mean that the filtering is done by everyone or the use of silk is done by everyone? Do others use silk, nylon, cheesecloth or muslin?

Bean Me Up Soymilk. Got the photo!

So now I am left without a definative answer from Bean Me Up, do they use silk or nylon? Why would they say they used silk on the podcast if this may or may not be correct, wouldn’t that be false advertising? Shouldn’t they know? – anyway, until I am 100% sure that it is vegan it is off my shopping list, I can always make my own, or use something else, there are always other options (I must admit I have since got a real liking for Rice Milk).

I was buying the soymilk because of my stance on the dairy industry only to find out that I might be supporting the exploitation of silkworms – the silkworms that are exploited by being boiled alive to get the silk out, which I also find abhorrent. And what about their soy yoghurt which is advertised on the web as a vegan dairy replacement? Does it go through a filter? I am not sure – something for me to pursue at a later date perhaps.

UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE: Confirmation has been received that Bean Me Up soymilk and tofu are vegan, the filtering cloth is nylon.

But it just points out to ethical, compassionate vegans the importance of not assuming something is vegan just because the list of ingredients is ok, but to also question the process as well. This got me to thinking about other things, this would also apply to products in cans or glass jars that have labels – what is the glue made from? And speaking of glue, how about the glue used in non-leather shoes? And another of my peeves is the word ‘organic’ – the producers consider blood and bone to be ‘organic’, so unless you know who grows your vegetables be very wary of that word. I will not be a part of the exploitation of innocent lives and I feel that the only option is to question everything, and I will not stop questioning, and I will not find it a burden, non-human animals are too important for me, way, way too important to do anything but question – and in the answers I will have something to pass on to others, because knowing what is in our food and the process it goes through to get to our plate is important.

Day of wonder

Everyone has something they love more than anything, and for me that would be the Honeybee. Today is the day I have been waiting all winter for … the arrival of the Honeybees.

My fruit trees have been covered in blossoms for more than a week now, but in a way they have still been dormant – until today that is, suddenly, without warning they all arrive – thousands of individuals but all as one. One minute not there, the next a deafening sound descends upon my small orchard. I have a picnic table under the huge apricot tree where I can sit and listen and look at the wonder around me, so loud there are no other sounds that can penetrate, the industrious wonder of the Honeybees who give so much to the continuum and beauty of this planet.

In New Zealand the day that officially takes the title of the first day of spring is the 1st September, but for me today takes that title.

Bees may be solitary or social. They feed on nectar and pollen, and play an important role in the pollination and survival of many flowering plants. New Zealand has 28 native and 13 introduced species of bee. At least three native bee species have a basic social structure, a bit like the introduced Honeybee and Bumblebee. The rest are solitary, although they may make nests close together. Native bees pollinate many native plants. They also pollinate kiwifruit and apple orchards and some vegetable crops, and are important pollinators in horticulture.

The photos I have taken today in my orchard are from the Apis mellifera species, introduced into New Zealand in the 1830’s.

There are many species of Honeybee in the world. All of them build nests with hexagonal combs for brood (their babies) raising and food storage. All of them use dance language as their primary means of recruiting nest mates to valuable resources.

Honeybees do their dance on the vertical plane of the comb and indicate direction by transposing the direction of the sun to the direction relevant to gravity using a straight upwards direction to be equivalent to flying towards the sun. In all species the vigour with which the bee dances is directly correlated with the richness of the resource indicated, while the length of the straight run, or its omission are indications of the distance to be travelled to the resource, this need not be a straight line but may involve flying around some natural obstacle such as a small mountain.

Honeybees pass on additional information to their hive mates concerning the taste and odour of the food resource by means of one bee regurgitating from its crop some of the nectar it has collected and feeds it to another bee, when this is happening it looks like they are kissing, and before long there is a string of bees all ‘kissing’ each other as the food gets passed around. Recruitment to a site is strengthened by returning foragers passing on the location to more of the colony.

The down side is that humans found yet another form of exploitation, exploiting the honey that the Honeybees make for their use in the cold months of winter. The honey is stripped from their hives and a substitute replacement (sugar syrup) is put in it’s place. The sugar syrup is not the Honeybees natural food and is a poor replacement for their own food, especially through a very cold winter. Commercial beekeeping practices are there for profit and not the welfare of the bees. Commercial beekeepers are restricted by timeframe and requires the beekeeper to grab as much honey in the shortest possible time, therefore by not being careful many deaths occur to Honeybees that are sitting on the rim of the hives and through the shock to the colony, Honeybees are seen in their commercial value with no intrinsic value of their own. It must also be noted that many colonies can perish through mis-management; hives not being checked through the winter as cold winds and rain can kill a whole colony if the top cover is not secured; for sufficient food – remembering that we have taken their precious winter honey store and the Honeybees are then totally reliant on a beekeeper making sure there is plentiful food. Honeybees do not venture outside the hive during the cold winters for long periods, only for their toilet duties – yes, that’s right, they do not go to the toilet inside.

In the wild a small part of an existing hive along with a new virgin Queen will swarm, the ritual of mating where many Drones (males) will mate with the new Queen and she will find a new site for her new colony. The sole purpose and desire of the Drone is to mate with a virgin Queen, his life role being accomplished he will then pass away, no doubt with a smile on his face, and definitely with dignity. Nowadays the favoured method is artificial insemination involving the death of the Drone in a most disgusting way, the sperm is obtained by pulling off his head causing an electrical impulse to the nervous system which causes sexual arousal, the lower part of the Drone is squeezed to make him ejaculate, and then collected in a hypodermic syringe and fertilisation of the new virgin Queen is done. No swarming, no virgin flight, no mating, no dignity in death. Nothing short of slavery really.

I leave you with one final photo – the picture of life eternal.