Not a Hippie Thing

       "Timothy will know - " I heard my name as I walked down the hall at work.  (Being a Marine, I go by my last name at work.)

      I took a couple steps back to peek into the office from which I had heard my name.  Three or four of the judge advocates I work with were gathered for an end-of-the-day gab session.  "I'll know what?"

        "What, exactly," one of them asked me, "is patchoili?"

       I supressed a  bit of laughter.  "Why do you think I'd know that?" 

       The answer is obvious.  It has long been established that I am "The Hippie of the Law Center."  I handed over what little knowledge I have of patchouli (which I consider to be a little more tied in with drug culture than the organic, plant eating, food growing, chemical free, pagan-y circles I perfer, but whatever, I did know what it was).  The conversation then went on to much more hilarious topics that I won't be touching on here.  Ok, it may have involved plushies and custom costumes with trap doors... Maybe.

       Over the course of the last year, it has been far from unusual for my coworkers to ply me with random questions about my beliefs and lifestyle.  Always respectfully and out of curiosity, mind you.  The Marine Corps can be a pretty homogenous place, and the assumption is often that Marines are conservative and Christian.  Often, that is exactly the case.  But you also run into exceptions (like raging liberal UU Pagan Marines, ahem).  I find that most of the judge advocates (military attorneys) I've worked with have been much more liberal than the general military population is held out to be.

      Regardless, while many of my fellow attorneys are pretty liberal, they are also, by and large, Christians and not at all what one might call "hippies."  Except me.  The Hippie of the Law Center.

      It is not unusual for me to find myself in a discussion about "crunchy" topics with one or two of my coworkers.  Most often, they want to know about ethical eating and why I feel strongly about it and what I've read lately.  About two months ago, one of them, who I'll call Capt Curious for simplicity's sake asked me to come to his office.  He wanted to show me a video.  He said he thought of me the moment he saw it.  He was totally right, and I LOVED the video:



     This IS me.  Really.  Right up until the point where they decide to actually go to the farm, this is me.  Okay, I've gone to the farms themselves, too, but not in the middle of dinner ;-)  I love Portlandia.  Everything about it.  Especially Dream of the 90's.  I love the 90's just as much as the 80's.  Maybe even more because the style wasn't quite as horrifying.  If you haven't checked out Portlandia, you should.  Love it.  And it totally confirms that MacGyver and I have been right in our continuing desire to move to Portland, OR (though I don't see that happening until the kids are older).

      Anyway, Capt Curious showed me that clip, which I stated was a more accurate representation of me than he probably realized, and we talked a little bit about Food Ethics.  I told him that I don't eat factory meat becasue of the deplorable conditions - both for humane reasons and for health reasons.  A couple other Captains wondered in through the course of our discussion, but the general feel was that no one else had really thought to look into it.  Which I don't hold against them.  That's sort of the status quo in the US.  There is this assumption that mass produced = good, safe, healthy, etc. 

      The degree to which that assumption is wrong is horrifying once you really start to peel back the layers.  The massively negative health consequences of eating large quantities of meat, processed foods,  factory meat, and other common, accepted products are astounding.  And it doesn't end at food - cleaning products, cosmetics (including shampoo and soap), even the materials from which our homes are built, are saturated with toxic chemicals.  But so few people even realize it.  So few people are paying attention.  And really, who has time to pay attention to all of it?  I mean, I'm obsessive about it, and I know I'm only scratching the surface.

      Our system is broken.  Just because something is in the grocery store or nicely packaged in NO WAY means it is safe or should be in your home or in your body.

      And that was what we discussed.  Or, I should say, that was the opinion I gave, to which my co-workers responded with skeptical acceptence.

      Then, a couple days ago, Capt Curiosity approached me as I was milling around outside the courtroom.

      "I saw Food, Inc. this weekend." he informed me with obvious joy, raising his hand for a fist bump (a fist bump?  Really?  If you knew me in real life, you would know how laughable that is.  Maybe just reading this blog is enough to realize I am not really a 'fist bump' sort of person. Then again, none of my coworkers probably are, either... MacGyver laughed out loud when I told him.) 

      I returned the fist bump.  "What did you think?"

      Basically, he was really glad he had watched it, and he wished he had seen it sooner.  He had no idea about many of the serious issues that come into play in food ethics and how much idiocy goes on before food ends up in our grocery stores.  He told me he had decided to switch to only local, humanely and organically raised meat.  I was happy for him.

      "You've been won over to the hippie side."  I told him.

      And that is when he balked a little.

      "Well," he said, "I don't really see it that way.  I mean, I think wanting to know where you food comes from, being willing to do the research before making decisions doesn't make you a hippie, it just makes you responsible."

      Huh.  Apparently I'm not a hippie after all...

Turkey

     As we all know, I'm not one for skipping Holidays.  It frustates the heck out of me when I walk into a store that's all fancied up for Christmas/Yule/Chanukka/Festivus and all other holidays on or around Winter Solstice before we've even hit Halloween (or even Patriot Day in some cases!). 

      But I'm breaking my cardinal rule and skipping ahead a holiday.  This skipping, however is necessary and is only preparatory.  Heaven knows I would never fully gloss over Halloween/Samhain!  But poor Thanksgiving really gets short shrift anyway, being sandwiched right between Halloween and the Soltstice holidays.

      Why start thinking about Thanksgiving so far ahead of time?  Honestly, I should have been thinking about it a few months ago and I totally dropped the ball.  The answer is simple:  TURKEY!

      Thanksgiving is a holiday that supposedly centers around giving thanks, but we all know what it really centers around, at least culturally:  Meat.  Turkey meat, to be more precise. 

      Just because turkey is a less popular poultry meat than chicken in no way means they escape the sick horror of factory farms.  Every year, hundreds of millions of turkeys are raised in sickening, tourturous conditions in factory farms. 

      I, for one, cannot stomach the idea of sitting around a warm family table discussing all the blessings in life that we are greatful for only to celebrate those blessings by feasting on an animal that lived its entire life in painful, sickening, deplorable conditions.  That is just simply WRONG.

      But I really don't think I can get the fam on board with a meat free Thanksgiving this year, and I also don't see it as necessary.  We still eat meat occassionally.  Probably about 3 times a month.  But we restrict ourselves from humanely raised meat from local farms.

      So I set out on a mission to find a humanely raised turkey for our Thanksgiving feast, and it looks like we're in luck.  I found this awesome site:  Eat Wild.  Eat wild provides state by state information (with maps) on TONS of humane farms, many of which will even ship meat to you.  Not only was I able to find turkey, I also found pork, beef, chicken, eggs (not that we need any), and goats.  And I'm sure that's just scratching the surface.  It is a GREAT SITE.

      I highly recommend everyone check out Eat Wild.  You might just be surprise by what you find in your area.  I know I was.  Before I found Eat Wild, I only knew of one or two local humane meat producers, turns out there are tons.

     Now, in all honesty, I should have started looking for a turkey earlier in the year.  Some of the farms start taking reservations for the turkeys back in June when the turkeys are babies.  But I've sent emails to a number of farms to see what's available.  And if I can't find anything in the state, I can always click Eat Wild's "Farms That Ship" link and find a farm that might be able to ship me a humanely raised turkey.

      Where are YOU getting your turkey this year?  Or are you even having a turkey?  How are you going to make your Thanksgiving a day of thanks not just for you, but for all the animals and humans who played a role in bringing your food to your table?

      And be sure to check out the recipes site for lots of Thanksgiving deliciousness before and after the day!

Food Day!

      Monday, October 24th is National Food Day!  And, whether they know it or not, it is effectively Ethical Eating Day.  Just take a look at the 6 Principles of Food Day:

1  Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods
2. Support sustainable farms & limit subsidies to big agribusiness
3. Expand access to food and alleviate hunger
4. Protect the environment & animals by reforming factory farms
5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids
6. Support fair conditions for food and farm workers

      See?  Ethical Eating Day!  I am super excited about this, and I invite everyone to grab the button from up top and join me in celebrating food day by learning more, being mindful of what you eat and how it affects the world around you, and cooking a healthy, ethical, home cooked meal that day.

      Check out the Food Day website to sign a letter to your Congress person asking them to take notice of the issues Food Day is trying to raise awareness of and find ways to participate.

      They even have a free downloadable cookbook with amazing recipes from a ton of celebrity chefs!  I doesn't get better than that.

      So, in honor of Food Day in just a couple weeks, I hope to see you all joining in, if even in a small way.

      Want to be featured here on Cheap Wine and Cookies?  Send me your Food Day plans, and you'll get your very own post.

      What a fun and easy way to have a HUGE impact on our world!

Veggie Brain

*** This is one of the 30 or so posts that have been languishing on my computer desktop, just a thought or a note, waiting for its moment of glory here on this highly respected blog :-P ***

      I recently read a very interesting article in Psychology Today about the differences in brain chemistry/wiring between vegetarians/vegans (veg’ans) and omnivores.  The article discusses a recent and very thought provoking study published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE), The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores.  You should seriously check out the study.  Or at least the article.  But I’m more into the hard scientific details and correlations, so I was thrilled to be able to read the study.

      The basic finding here is – not at all surprisingly, in my opinion – people who refrain from eating flesh for ethical reasons seem to have much more empathy than those who eat meat.  And this isn’t a touchy-feely fill out this survey and tell us how much you like animals thing; subjects of the study were placed in a fMRI machine and shown various images, to include images of humans and animals suffering.  The areas of their brains that responded and the degree of the activity in these areas was then measured and quantified.

      Has anyone noticed that I have a *slight* addiction to research studies?  I probably read an average of 50 studies, articles about studies, or results summaries (on all sorts of topics) every week – no exaggeration.  And the number was much higher when I had more free time (and didn’t blog . ..).  I love studies.  I know – I am, in the truest sense of the word, a complete and utter dork.

      You can check out the study or the article for more detailed discussion of the various brain structures affected and the functioning behind them.  While I love that sort of stuff, I recognize that most people don’t really care much whether it was the Anterior Cingular Cortex that lit up or the Medulla Oblongata (it was the former, by the way).

      The long and short of it is that when vegetarians/vegans who refrained from eating flesh based on ethics were shown images of animal and human suffering, they exhibited responses in a NUMBER of brain regions associated with empathy, higher-order representations of the self and values, and bodily representation that were not found in omnivores.

      VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:  Neither this study, nor I, in any way imply that omnivores are lacking in empathy or are in any way cold and heartless.  The study simply demonstrates that ethical veg’ans have more empathy.  So I don’t want any angry comments from the omnivores out there thinking I’m trying to malign anyone.

      Empathy is an extremely important human emotion.  It is an integral key to societal functioning, successful interpersonal relationships, and human happiness.  I’m not exaggerating.  Empathy – The ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person to understand her emotions and feelings (Alvin Goldman) – is the absolute foundation of true kindness.  Those truly sick, cruel individuals among us and throughout history were the ones lacking in empathy (or able to dehumanize others to a degree where they could deactivate empathy, but the same idea).

      If you can’t tell, I feel very strongly about empathy.  I did well before I read this article.  I have always felt strongly about “The Golden Rule,” which is found in most world religions, and I think empathy is the key to being a good friend, parent, wife, and human being.  I am empathetic to a fault (if that’s possible).

      I’m not saying veg’ans are better people (even though I know it sounds like it).  But I’m not at all surprised by this study, either.  There are people out there that can watch movies like Food, Inc. or see images or videos like the one below and three hours later are scarfing bacon or digging into a bucket of chicken.  I can’t do that.  It has gotten to a point where watching other people eat factory farmed meat upsets me.  In that particular area, I have much more empathy than probably most people.  But I’m sure there are other areas where people have me totally outstripped.  As we all know, I have much less empathy for adulterers (granted, I actually do have some; I’m more talk and ranting than anything else on that, but still – I have a heck of a lot more empathy for poor farm animals than people who take vows then refuse to keep it in their pants).

      So what’s my point?  Interesting facts.  Interesting study.  Something to think about.  No real point to speak of.  I’m not trying to say veg’ans are better or trying to talk people into changing their ways.  I simply found this study enlightening and pertinent to stuff I ramble about on this blog. 

      Ok, so maybe I’m trying to change your behavior a little.  Seriously, how can anyone watch something like this and still eat factory farmed meat?  Or refuse to watch it because they don’t want to feel guilty about eating said meat?  By the way, this is where the SCHOOL LUNCH MEAT comes from:

<damn broken links - erg!.

      Yes, these videos are graphic.  Watching them makes me want to simultaneously vomit and cry.  But, damnit, it’s better to watch it and make a change than to refuse to recognize that you contribute to this every single time you eat meat, eggs, or dairy produced by these animals.  And for most US Americans that is EVERY MEAL OF THE EFFING DAY.

      You don’t need “more empathy” to want to make this stop.

      And, oh by the way, people who commit violent acts toward animals JUST LIKE THIS, are exponentially more likely to commit violent acts against other humans, particularly children.  Think maybe we should try to put them out of business?