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You Eat Chicken, Don't You? |
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December 1, 2008
Becoming a vegetarian is easy. Explaining to those around you that
you do not eat meat and having them respect your position is an
entirely different story. I don't even want respect. I am now to the
point where I wish they would just leave it be, and I have a feeling I
am not alone.
The argument I continually hear is "How do you get your protein?"
There is not a single person in this country suffering from a protein
deficiency. My own grandmother practically had a heart attack when I
told her I no longer eat meat. "Why, that can't be healthy. You have to
eat meat," she fussed the last time I visited. Grandma makes three
things - Spanish rice, goulash, and chili. All with ground beef. She is
the ground beef queen. Eating ground beef is healthier in the eyes of
some of my family members than eating plants. Go figure. They sit and
stare at me. "What are you going to eat?" I try to explain that it's
simple to eat pasta without meat sauce. This is not a concept that
comes easy to them.
The phone rings once a week. Another person having difficulty with
my decision to eat an almost exclusively plant based diet has been my
mother-in-law. Mind you, this is a person whose life is dedicated to
the crusade against fat. She abhors fat, and talks about how healthy
she herself eats to the point of exhaustion. "I had a third of a muffin
and three strawberries for breakfast." The question on the answering
machine this week, the one before Thanksgiving, is "Lorie eats turkey,
right?" When my patient husband calls his mother to explain once again
that poultry is meat, she counters with "Well, what fish should I
prepare for her? She has to eat something." When I first switched to
vegetarianism, this went on for months, with the same question, feel
free to substitute in whatever meat you like. "She eats chicken,
doesn't she?" "You eat fish, don't you?" As an acquiescence to me, she
made rice once - with beef stock. She now acts as if I am a difficult
eater. I ask that nothing be made special for me, and I try to be
extremely gracious when it comes to the food prepared for me. I used to
eat it just to be polite, but I soon realized that going against my
principles because someone else is offended by my good intentions does
neither of us any favors. The invites to my in-laws for dinner have
ground to a halt, with the exception of major holidays.
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Prop. 2 unlikely to raise egg prices, study says |
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November 6, 2008
Californians voted resoundingly to free about 20 million egg-laying
hens of tiny cages. But in passing Proposition 2, the farm animal
welfare measure, did the state's consumers yoke themselves to higher
egg prices?
For months farmers had contended that the measure
would drive up egg prices or even put them out of business because of
the high cost of retrofitting their farms with cage-free facilities.
But the measure's proponents and a respected state agriculture expert
stressed Wednesday that such results were unlikely, especially in the
short term. Proposition 2, approved by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, doesn't
take effect until 2015.
Also, California imports a third of
the shelled eggs it consumes from out-of-state producers, which are not
subject to the new regulations. There would be no reason for a jump in
the price of those eggs, according to a study on the economic effects
of the proposition from the UC Davis Agricultural Issues Center.
Out-of-state producers would also be likely to increase their
production to feed Californians.
"There is no reason to expect
any significant change in the price of any eggs. That applies to eggs
from cage-free hens too," saidDaniel Sumner, the primary author of the UC Davis study.
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Hero dog risks life to save kittens from fire |
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October 26, 2008
A dog was hailed as a hero on Sunday after it
risked its life to save a litter of newborn kittens from a house fire,
rescuers said.
In
a case which gives the lie to the saying about "fighting like cats and
dogs," the terrier cross named Leo had to be revived with oxygen and
heart massage after his ordeal. Fire broke out overnight at the house
in Australia's southern city of Melbourne, where he was guarding the
kittens.
Firefighters
who revived Leo said he refused to leave the building and was found by
them alongside the litter of kittens, despite thick smoke.
Click here to read the full story...
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