MY Letter to IHOP

Most of you are aware of the Humane Society of the United States' campaign to stop the International House of Pancakes from using cruel, unsanitary battery caged chickens for their eggs. I joined over a million other concerned Americans and wrote (emailed) directly to IHOP about my concerns. Here is what I said to them:

Many of your concerned "customers" are not raving do-gooders. Many are common sense business persons like me. I run my own business, hold meetings and mini-conferences at local restaurants, and patronize eating establishments with my family and friends during my leisure time. 

I also am one who will not support your business while you continue unacceptable business practices. If your kitchens were filthy, your employees inconsiderate, or your menu unsavory, I would shun your restaurant. Since your procurement practices are very objectionable, I will avoid contact with your fare and I will encourage my associates, business and private, to go to other restaurants.

Please make life easier for both of us. Please refuse to purchase your foodstuffs from suppliers who exercise filthy, inconsiderate, unsavory practices. Free range eggs cost more. But free range eggs are much, much more flavorful and much healthier than the contaminated eggs you are foisting on your trusting (and discriminating) clientèle. 

Please choose better.
Sincerely,

You can view undercover investigative video of the supplier, Michael Foods, HERE.

Do you think this is a trivial problem? Or do you agree that this is a matter to be addressed? Why?
PLEASE COMMENT so others may get this information.

Vitamin B12

[NOTE: This information comes from VegFamily a very good source of reliable information for the wiser of us (i.e. veg*ans) and was orginally written by Dina Aronson, M.S. R.D.]

Vitamin B12 is produced by bacteria, fungi, and algae. Neither plants nor animals can synthesize the vitamin. Thus, it is not found in plant products naturally (there might be trace amounts in plant foods contaminated with B12-producing microorganisms, but we should not depend on contaminated food). Animal foods are reliable sources of B12 because large amounts of bacteria live inside animals, and vitamin B12 remains in flesh, milk, and eggs.

We vegans need to get B12 from supplements and/or fortified foods. The B12 added to foods and supplements are synthetically produced in a laboratory from bacteria, not animal sources. Here are some other foods that typically are B12-fortified. Make sure you read the food label! B12 is also called cobalamin.

• Red Star Vegetarian Support Formula Nutritional Yeast*
• Fortified breakfast cereals
• Fortified soy milk
• Fortified vegetarian meat analogs
• Fortified energy or snack bars, such as Luna Bars
• Fortified soy powders or other beverage mixes

*Nutritional yeast adds a cheesy flavor to foods; my favorite way to use it is in tofu scrambles.

By the way, the lack of vitamin B12 in plant foods has led many to question how "natural" a vegan diet is. After all, if an essential nutrient is lacking from a 100% plant-based diet, how can such a diet be good for you? This is a very good question. Remember, B12 is produced only by microorganisms. Consider the sanitary modern world: only in the last several decades have we had the luxury of treated water, power-washed produce, and machine-sanitized packaged foods. Before these conveniences, people (vegans and non-vegans) ate locally-grown fruits and vegetables and drank water from the well or public water supply, all of which were rich in vitamin B12 due to bacterial contamination. In those times, vitamin B12-producing microorganisms contaminated the entire food supply, not just animal products. The need of a modern-day vegan to supplement the diet with B12 is not because the vegan diet is inferior to a diet with animal products; it is the result of modern sanitary conditions

Thanksgiving or Turkey Day???

We ain't a eatin' no old dead birds for Thanksgiving this year!
 

We've got much more to be thankful for than the death of a bird just so we could eat it. The pilgrims and Indians didn't eat turkeys for the first Thanksgiving, so why do we? Marketing, man! The turkey farmers, just like the milk pushers are lying to you about the fake benefits of eating dead, rotting, pesticide and hormone filled bird bodies. Why do you think they clearly post the numbers to the Turkey Hotline on each bird? so you won't poison your family! Sheesh! But then, many of you go ahead and smoke cigarettes despite warnings, too!

God designed our bodies to operate at peak efficiency on a vegetarian diet (did too! see Genesis 1:29 for proof), so putting dead animal bodies and guts into your stomach is tantamount to putting diesel into a gasoline engine - NOT a good idea!

Here are some more reasons to skip the turkey this year:

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No Turkey?! Why Not?

For the Animals

Abusing and killing an innocent bird betrays the life-affirming spirit of giving thanks for our life, health, and happiness. The nearly 300 million turkeys killed each year in the U.S. spend their entire lives crammed in large sheds with little room to move. Artificially inseminated and selectively bred to gain enormous amounts of weight, they suffer heart attacks, broken limbs, lameness, and death from their genetically-induced accelerated growth rate. Most of these same conditions apply to "free range" turkeys.

Click here to continue reading and learn more about atrocious animal farm practices or watch undercover investigations of turkey facilities.

For Your Health

Turkey flesh is loaded with cholesterol and saturated fats, which have been linked conclusively with an elevated risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases that kill 1.3 million Americans annually. Turkey flesh is also contaminated with deadly pathogens and antibiotics.

Click here to continue reading about the negative effects of turkey on our health.

For the Globe

In addition to threatening personal health, factory farming is a global problem. Much of the 10 billion pounds of manure generated by 7,300 turkey farms in 33 states ends up in our drinking water. Grain fed to turkeys is denied to millions of starving people in the world's most impoverished nations.

Click here to continue reading about how animal farming ruins the earth.

Want More?

Find out the Top Ten Reasons to drop turkey from your holiday menu!

Original source: http://www.gentlethanksgiving.org/index.htm

Review: Hospital Food Comes to Furrs!

For those of you who reminisce about a past vacation spent in the luxury of a hospital, enjoying four-star service and five-star cuisine, have I got good news for you! Furr's "Fresh Buffet" Cafeterias are now offering hospital fare for their valued customers who have gotten tired of the same old home style cooking at other family restaurants.

As vegetarians (I'm stricter than my wife is), we used to eat at Furr's occasionally, because of their vegetable and salad variety. Imagine our delight when we recently went back to Furr's (in our home town of Fort Smith, Arkansas) and found an entirely new buffet menu had been adopted.

As a 90% of the time strict vegetarian, I stick to fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds almost all the time (as advised in Genesis 1:29). However, on the advice of my very understanding and very wise doctor, Phil Agent, MD, I will occasionally eat fish for the omega 3 and 6 oils that seem to be so important. When we go out for fish, we aim for a variety, staying away from catfish, which has very little food value, and heading for either Furr's or Long John Silver's - depending on our appetite ... and our bank account!

Generally, Furr's has supplied us with a great salad selection, lots of properly done veggies, and several fish dishes to choose from. Generally.

However, as I said before, on our last visit we were very disappointed. I made notes:

• The cajun baked tilapia was almost completely flavorless, which is pretty remarkable for anything cajun!, and it was very dry, despite swimming in butter.
• The featured and advertised butterflied shrimp was so over cooked it wasn't crunchy, it was hard! And flavorless.
• The usually reliable baked cod was almost cold and ... greasy! Now how do you make baked cod greasy?? Oh, and hard around the edges. It wasn't flavorless - it tasted greasy.
• I gave up and tried the fried catfish despite it's lack of food value (at this point I was just hungry for some decent fish!) and, much to my surprise it was cold, chewy, and overcooked. (The surprise comment was sarcasm.) And it was, y'know, flavorless.

The highlight of the meal was the tartar sauce which was tangy, creamy, and worked wonderfully to conceal the awful fish dishes. The salads were still good. It's apparently very difficult to ruin pasta, carrot and raisin, and plain lettuce and tomato salads.

Overall, we should have gone to Long John Silver's. And we probably will the next time we go out for fish.
Unless, you know, we're longing for hospital food.
But then, the hospital cafeteria is cheaper.

Stick to the veggies.

God's Original Health plan:

Genesis 2:29:
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.