11/03/2015: TUNE IN LOVE!

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Caryn talks about her new theme for the show, TUNE IN LOVE along with Guinness Stout going vegan. She gives her thoughts on Dr. David Perlmutter’s recent article in the Huffington Post called Preventing Alzheimer’s and Other Brain Illnesses. She shares some of her personal food stories from the past week.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Caryn Hartglass: Hello, everybody! Okay, we’re back for the second part of today’s program. I’m Caryn Hartglass, and you’re listening to It’s All About Food. Remember you can always send me a message. I love to hear from you. My email is info@realmeals.org. Info@realmeals.org. And also visit me at https://responsibleeatingandliving.com/. And I haven’t mentioned it lately, but do you have the www.responsibleeatingandliving.com app? It’s free! Did you know that? I have to tell you, I use it all the time. Why? I like to get my recipes, and there’s a lot of them. There’s hundreds of recipes, and some of them are my favorite, and I don’t always remember exactly how to do them, so I just dial up the Responsible Eating and Living app on my phone. It’s a cute, little, green “r”, and then I can scroll over to some of my favorite recipes and whip them up. So I recommend that for you. It’s free, why not? Let me know what you think of it. It’s a pretty simple little thing. Okay. Did you like that last program? A lot of interesting stuff.  A very, very difficult choice. I’m sure different people have different attitudes about the choices this particular person made. I’m just glad that he finally got to the other end and stopped raising pigs for food, but that transition of raising these precious non-human animals and already having the bail lifted and then deciding that they would have to be slaughtered before finally moving on to becoming a vegetable farmer must have been extremely difficult. All right. There’s a lot of different things I wanted to talk about. One of the things I wanted to remind you, we’re tuning in love. Don’t you love that? I love it. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re tuning in love. Feel the love. Tune in love. Now there’s a bunch of stuff that’s in the news that I wanted to talk about. Some of it’s fun. You know about www.barnivore.com. “B” like “boy.” www.barnivore.com. That’s where I go to find out whether some of the alcoholic products that I like to drink occasionally are vegan. Not every alcohol product, not every beer, wine, or vodka, or any other spirit is listed on this site. They’re doing their best to get as many of them as they can, but one that used to be on this site as vegan-friendly was the Guinness Extra Stout. You know, that dark beer. I loved it, and then a few years ago, I think it was revealed that it wasn’t vegan-friendly and that the information that they got wasn’t accurate. Leave to the screaming vegans, thank you, who have petitioned Guinness to make their beverages vegan. You may have seen it in the news, but they are now changing the way they produce their dark stout. They are going to eliminate fish bladder, that gelatin made from fish bladders called isinglass, and they’re working on changing that out of their recipes. They’re not ready yet, but they’re working on it, and I’m looking forward to having that beer again because I really enjoyed it, but not with fish bladder gelatin in it. No, thank you! Now some will say it’s only traces that can wind up in the finished product, but I support all companies becoming more aware of all of the products that they’re using to make their final product, and we need to helping them so that they can make better choices. Responsible choices. Even when it comes to alcohol. Now I’m not a big drinker, but you know occasionally I like a beer. Occasionally, I like a little wine, maybe even something a little more intense, but I want to know that they’re cruelty-free, so this was really, really exciting news. You see a lot of conservative scientists are talking about it, and they’re not talking about it in a positive or negative way. They’re just sharing the news, and I think it’s really, really wonderful. Another thing I got because I have this radio program, there are different PR places that send me information, ask me if I want review a product, ask me if I want to speak to somebody about a particular issue. Just today I got an email. I want to see if I can pull it up here, talking about November being Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, and I was forwarded an article by Dr. David Perlmutter, “Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease”. Now you may be familiar with Dr. David Perlmutter. He is an MD and he is the author of a number of books including one called, Grain Brain. His information in his Grain Brain book is somewhat similar to the book, Wheat Belly. Both of them are very popular books, and basically what they’re telling us is to eat more fat, animal fat, and cut out wheat and grains. I think that the information in these books is very misleading, so I’m talking a little bit about this article because I don’t agree with it. If you have any comments or questions about it, I would be happy to discuss it with you. Send me an email at info@realmeals.org. In this article, Dr. Perlmutter is recommending three foods to consume, how was he putting it here: he calls it the “anti-Alzheimer’s trio: three foods high in brain healthy fat”, and I guess it’s to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease. He says it’s grass-fed beef, avocados, and coconut oil. Now you have to imagine I have a problem with grass-fed beef. It may or may not be healthier than industrial beef. Number one, I have an issue about ethics. I don’t think any of these precious, non-human animals should be killed for food. Number one, priority. Number two, there’s plenty of evidence that red meat is not a healthy food. We should be eating plants, more plants. What isn’t clear today in the science, just because it’s so difficult to do these kinds of studies and expensive, is how much, if any, animal products we can consume in our diet. A number of people have thrown around a number, maybe 10%, so there’s this gray area. If we’re consuming mostly whole plant foods, whole, minimally-processed plant foods, and we include 0-10% of animal products in our diet, there’s no evidence right now if that’s better or worse. The focus should be on all of us eating plant foods, and when somebody comes out like this who has a medical degree, and says we should be eating grass-fed beef, I think it’s a bit irresponsible because the science does not support it. He also recommends coconut oil, and a lot of people believe that coconut oil has a lot of magical powers. I personally like coconut oil to put on my skin. I love it as a makeup remover. I love it as a moisturizer. I love it on my hair to control my frizzy curls when I haven’t blown it dry, and occasionally I will use it in some of my recipes. I don’t eat a lot. I don’t cook with oil. I don’t think it’s a super-food, or a savior food, or a bad food. It is minimally processed. It is processed because whole coconut is going to be better than coconut oil. One thing I did want to mention, and I haven’t done a lot of reading on this, but I’m very devastated to find this out. Perhaps you’ve heard about this. We live in a world where when humans discover that something can make them money, they want to do all that they can to make the most amount of money, and that often involves exploitation. And while many people are talking about avoiding palm oil, because palm oil is devastating, the harvesting of the palm tree is ruining rainforests and killing orangutan habitats and devastating to the environment. Coconut oil may actually have some new problems to it. I just started to read about, oh goodness, how macaque monkeys are being trained to harvest coconuts. There are supposed to be some brands who confirm that their coconuts are picked by fairly compensated human workers, and those brands are, that I’m reading here right now from a particular article: Alaffia, Biona, Dr. Bronners, Essential Trading Cooperative, Harmless Harvest, Maison Orphee, Naked Coconuts, Nutiva, So Delicious, and Zico. But there are many other coconut oil companies, and we don’t know right now if their coconuts are being harvested by monkeys or by human workers. Then there’s that gray area in between if the human workers aren’t being treated very well. Apparently, they train these macaques to collect to 600-1,000 coconuts a day, whereas humans can only collect about 100-200.  Right there, they see this advantage to using these lovely, little, non-human animals. They are exploited, they are not treated well, and they are not free. This is very sad news, and I’ll be looking into this further. If you have any more information on it, please feel to share it with me at info@realmeals.org. When Dr. Perlmutter is recommending that we eat grass-fed beef, avocados, and coconut oil, there are so many issues that are related, ethical issues, that are related to these foods. I’m not talking about avocados right now. I don’t know anything bad to say about avocados at this moment, but there’s so many issues related to grass-fed beef. It’s not a healthy food, and coconut oil now has these ethical issues related to these macaque monkeys. There you have it. The other thing about Dr. Perlmutter is his information. He talks about how carbs are destroying our brain, and we really don’t see that in the science. Now I’m sure you know how to tell the difference between highly processed carbs and whole grain foods. There’s a big difference. I believe we’re discovering that Alzheimer’s, which is affected by plaque on the brain, is very similar to heart disease, which is plaque in the arteries. Plaque from cholesterol, plaque from saturated fat, plaque from animal products, not fibrous plant products. Now, like I said before, it’s so hard to do studies and expensive to do studies to find out if one product better than the other, if eating one way better than the other. A lot of times we have to glean things from looking at cultures who have eaten one way in their geographical location and then they move somewhere else, or their culture changes, and their diets change. Japan is a classic example. The last few decades, dementia has shot up, and it’s because they’ve increased the amount of animal products they’ve been eating. Their traditional diets included vegetable products, grains, and very little animal products. Maybe starting about 50 or more years ago the Japanese diet has changed from a traditional rice-based diet, which is a grain, to one that is heavy in meat. We see this in many other countries. It’s happening in China. The rate of Alzheimer’s disease is increasing and dementia is increasing as they choose to consume more animal products. It’s happening also in India as well. They have had the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s and have had the lowest rates of meat consumption, but that will probably go up, too, if it hasn’t already. You cannot trust everything that’s out there. People like to grab what supports what they want to do. That was Dr. Perlmutter. In order to decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s, what do we do? Dr. Neil Barnard has a great book out, Power Foods for the Brain. Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about it all the time. It’s the things that are good to reduce risk of all chronic diseases, heart disease, diabetes, reduce the risk of cancer. It’s all the same. It’s a whole food, plant-based diet and doing a lot of good word games and things. Keep your mind active, memorizing stuff, and meditation. I don’t know if you remember a few programs back, we were talking about meditation and some studies that have shown we can actually repair the telomeres in our brain, decrease aging, and improve memory from meditation. There are lots of things that we can do. We don’t need to eat grass-feed beef, thank you very much. Now I wanted to go over my past week because there was a lot of fun things that had to do with food. You know I do eat everyday, and I post what I eat in my daily blog, What Vegans Eat. Today is actually day 265, which means I have 100 days left and then I will have blogged a complete year, of what this particular vegan eats everyday. This past week, to start with, I was invited to an event by Lantern Books cofounder Martin Rowe. He’s been on this program a number of times. His wife Mia McDonald, who is the founder of Brighter Green, a wonderful organization, was a moderator. We got to listen to Élise Desaulniers – Élise Desaulniers was on the program last Tuesday, the Canadian who recently came out with a book, Cash Cow – and Farm Sanctuary‘s Gene Baur was there. It was a really lovely event. It was about 20 of us who were able to have this intimate discussion about animal foods, about milk and the industry, and what we can do about it. One of the things that Mia McDonald was talking about, with respect to some of the work that she’s doing with her organization, is how the dairy industry is increasing in China. This is a culture that just did not consume dairy. In fact, many of them are lactose-intolerant, but people who want to make money, the dairy industry, they see an opportunity. They see many, many people that they can start educating to think that they need to consume dairy. She was telling us that one of the things that they’re taught in school, and they’re fed milk in school, is because it is believe that they will grow bigger and taller when they consume milk. I guess what hasn’t gotten to them yet is how it will increase their risk to many cancers, multiple sclerosis, chronic bronchitis, a number of auto immune diseases, etc. That’s really very sad, and it continually boggles my mind and frustrates me why other cultures want to be so much like us and not learn from our mistakes. That was a really lovely event, and you may remember also last week I spoke with Judith Haskins about her late father’s manuscript that she and her sister and mom published. As you may remember, it was a very difficult book to read, very dense, but I really recommend it. The title itself I have to look it up because it was quite a mouthful to begin with. I’m looking it up here: Congenital Alterable Transmissible Asymmetry: The Spiritual Meaning of Disease and Science. I learned a great deal from that book, and I wish a lot of health practitioners would read it. I had the opportunity. They invited me to lunch a few days after the interview, and I got to meet their 102-year-old mother. What a delight that was. If you go to my Facebook page, you can see the link. I’m not sure if I put it on my website. I didn’t, but that’s a reminder to put it there. The mother, Shirley Hyman, had a video made of her when she was 100 years old that you can see on Youtube, and it is absolutely lovely. It was just wonderful to meet her and speak with her. She studied French when she was of college age, and we had an opportunity to speak together in French and in English, totally lucid and a delight. I got to photograph her, and she wanted me to photograph her eating her vegan lunch. She’s very proud of being a vegan, which I believe she began about 14 years ago when she had heart problems at 88 years old. Her daughters decided, “You’re going vegan mom”, and here she is doing very, very well at 102. Gorgeous skin, too. That was really something. The other thing is, I went to a Broadway show this past week. A friend of mine was very generous in sharing some comp tickets that she got. I was meeting her early, and I was sitting in Times Square. It was actually right after I did this show. Did I talk about this already? I had brought food with me and, because I did the show in the studio last week, and I brought some really great stuff, I just got to sit in Times Square and watch all these people around me. A very, very lively program. I brought some great food with me, and the wonderful thing about Manhattan these days, Mayor Bloomberg did this a few years ago while he was mayor (he is no longer mayor), he added a lot of pedestrian zones in the Times Square area. This is fabulous. I could sit at a table and eat the best food anywhere, it was my food, and sit in Times Square. It was really, really fun. I hope you had a great Halloween. I know that we did. If you haven’t had a chance to watch our Halloween show, I hope that you do. We’re still enjoying some of those recipes. We finally finished the almond biscotti that we made into finger cookies. We finished the last fingers last night. We still have plenty of the cashew cheese fondue, which is a great recipe. Please, please try it. Please let me know what you think. If you’ve got cheese issues, this is one recipe that is really going to help you wean yourself. Non-human animal milk. We don’t need to be consuming dairy. I know it takes a lot of courage. I was talking about that before with Bob Comis. Making change is difficult, but we all need to do our best, and we need to be sharing information with everyone around us. We cannot be fearful. If we do it with love, if we tune in love, people will be more open and receptive. My favorite way of getting people interested in eating plants is to make delicious food and just have them try it. That’s what we do at Responsible Eating and Living. That’s why I put up as many recipes as I can, and that’s why I’ve been doing this What Vegans Eat blog. One other thing I wanted to bring to your attention, there’s an event coming up on November 21st. It’s the Anti-Fur Society. They’re having a conference here in Manhattan. You might be interested about it. I just wanted to let you know. It’s at AFS,  which is “Apple”, “Frank”, “Samuel”, conference.org. http://www.afsconference.org/. Anti-Fur Society Conference.org. There’s going to be great food, fashion, speakers. It’s here in New York, and it’s going to be on November 21st. November 21st. It’s going to be Landmark on the Park, 160 Central Park West, in the heart of Manhattan. Cruelty-free fashion show, and Anti-Fur Society Vegan Conference, so check that out if you’re interested. Very good! I think we’ve come to the end of this program, so I’m going to tell you to do two things. One is tune in love. Thank you for joining me in tuning in love today. The other is have a very delicious week.

Transcribed by Zia Kara, 2/20/2017

  1 comment for “11/03/2015: TUNE IN LOVE!

  1. My father encouraged me to smile as a I passed people and with them good will, et.al.

    What with all the that has transpired in Chicago of late, I like to go out of my way to thank all of the first responders/Public Servants if you will/as I know most all of them got into what they are doing/to do well/to be of help/and have done so to the best of their abilities under trying circumstances.

    I was instructed by Brian Tracy and others/to treat whoever I may be working/dealing with as though they are the most important people/person in the world; and they are and should be at that point in time.

    I, too, am very fond of the “Platinum Rule”/look it up; “Do unto others as THEY wish to be done unto.” I think it is a nice new twist to a very tried and true rule; and it reflects my thoughts that “we are each an experiment of one”. One of the many people that you and I admire most recently pointed that out, too, relative to our DNA/maybe Greger for one. Great New BOOK!!!! Thanks for that interview too. FREE/FREE/AND ALWAYS FREE; An amazing array of information/i check his site every M-F at 7:00 AM Central./NutritionFacts.org.

    THANKS CARYN!!!!!

    ==========
    And Thanks Dr. Greger:

    Among Dr. Greger’s Greatest Hits:

    http://www.turnx.info/Maximum_Nutrition_on_Internet/Greger.pdf

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9nNa81dSoY

    2003: About time for an updated version/Eh Dr. Greger?

    THANK YOU DR. GREGER: Devotee/7:00 Central/Weedays/Every Week/for past several years

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