Share And Voice: Red Mug

I always like to explore new places and I love coffee, so a lot of times I find my self at different coffee shops around the area.  I decided last week that I needed a new place to sit down and read my book.  I was over in the Superior Area and was trying to think where to go when a friend suggested to me to try out the Red Mug.  I wasn't to aware of it before, so I thought why not give it a shot.  Much to my surprise it was a very neat place.  It was very trendy and had a very green feel.  They offer many art shows and different musicians each week.  Not to mention some very good coffee.  According to their website they serve only local, organic and fair trade coffee.  And when making their soups, salads, and other baked goods they try to use as many organic ingredients as possible.   Best of all they also use biodegradable cups!  Overall it was a great experience and if your ever in the are and like coffee or art, it would definitely be worth while to stop by.

Read "n" Seed 3: Second Quarter of The Food Revolution

Well before I start to rant about all of the interesting, and alarming new facts that I am learning about in my book I just want to say how intrigued I am by it. I also want to apologize for this post being so long, there is just so many things that I thought were interesting.!!! To be honest I haven't sat down and got caught up in a a book like this for a long time!  Anyways for the second quarter of reading I read up to page 183.  This included chapters five through ten, covering a variety of topics including:

• A healthy plant based diet
• Got BS?
• Unsafe on any plate
• policing the pathogens
• The pig farmer
• Old McDonald had a factory

As a stated before I cannot believe all that I am learning from one one book.  Its keeps me interested to the point where I have a hard time putting it down, even when I'm not supposed to be reading it in class. OOPS!  However I feel that it is teaching me a lot of different beliefs and facts that I had no idea existed until now.   I have learned so much that I think that it will be easiest to summarize what I have learned by breaking the information down according to chapters, which correspond to the bulleted list above.

In the chapter A Healthy Plant Based Diet, it focuses on many issues of American increasing trend of obesity and how our diet plays a huge role in determining that.  According to the text it says that there are some school districts in the U.S which still have contracts with coca-cola and other soft drink companies.  And to much alarm these schools actually have to promote their students to drink coke products, even though we know the harmful effects.  However on a positive not there are some schools in Berkley, California which only offer organic food at there lunch programs, which is even grown by the students!!  It also goes into detail on what a plant based diet would look like.  And it states that around 60 billion dollars go towards medical costs stemming from meat consumption.  I couldn't believe that, it even surpassed the amount from smoking.

The next chapter Got BS touches on the topic of milk and the amount of calcium that it really has.  According to the texts a Dr. V said in class it really doesn't have as much as we would like to think that it has.  Brussels Sprouts and broccoli have almost 20% more calcium than what is actually even able to be absorbed from the calcium content of  milk.  In addition to that new research has found that milk may not event prevent osteoporosis in women.  Many people speculate that vegans will have low calcium levels however this is not the case, as most of them attain more than the average American because of the amount of vegetables that they eat.  It is more concerning that they get adequate vitamin B12 rather than calcium.  Over all lots of interesting things I could go on forever.

Unsafe on Any Plate was the next chapter that I read.  It was probably the most interesting and the most alarming.  It went on to discuss the different food borne illnesses caused by animal products including E coli 0157:H7, salmonella, listeria,  and Mad Cow Disease and how they may stem from irradiation.  Which definitely has some serious health effects.  I always knew about E coli but I had no idea of how terrible the condition was, it basically destroys your intestines  It may clean up bacteria according to the text however it does not clean up the  feces or pus that the animal may be surrounded in.  I couldn't believe most of this! 

The next chapter, Policing the Pathogens dips into the topic of how animals are injected with antibiotics to increase production,  However is is vary alarming because of these antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones injections many animals are producing harmful bacteria that is resistant to it, hence causing many of these food borne illnesses. Fluoroquinolones are considered to be the last resort to kill these forms of bacteria. The U.S is one of the only countries to continue to do this at such high rates many countries such as Denmark do not use any.  Mad Cow Disease, which we talked about earlier, is a disease that is caused by feeding cow remains back to cows.  It essentially makes the cow go crazy by attacking the central nervous system and deteriorating the brain.  Its a very painful way to die and many are concerned of the the disease passing from animal to human causing Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease, which in humans causes a 100% death rate.  It can be contracted by eating meat which was infected with the disease.  Many people confuse the symptoms of CJD and Alzheimer's disease, and according to the book, a study done on patients that were though to have died from Alzheimer's disease nearly 5.5 percent of these people actually had CJD, that I found to be very alarming.


In the last chapters it discusses the issues that even farmers do not always agree  with what they are doing when it comes to how they treat there animals.  Many of them do it because they too are trying to survive and support their family.  It also addresses the issue of big corporations and how they run their slaughter houses PETA has made great strides tying to get large fast food chains to abide by the FDA's guidelines when it comes to minimum requirements for how they need to treat animals.  Although there are rules many of the animals are still stuck in small cages, trapped in their own and others feces and slaughtered alive.


Overall this book still continues to open my eyes to many things.  It has taught me that it is much more that just what I eat, its us meaning our society collectively as a whole.  It has seriously got me thinking about trying to not eat meat as much as possible, not only would it make me feel better about what's in my body it would also make me feel better now that I know what goes on to the animals.  I believe that with the help of one another we can make changes for the animals and for the environment.  It helps that we are getting more education on the subject.  Its hard to change when we grow up eating a certain way and seeing what other people eat.  I grew up eating meat and dairy products, knowing nothing of what actually went on to produce them.  Now as I learn more the more I want to adapt my diet and the others that are close to me.  Although John Robbins said this quote in referral to a pig-farmer turned vegan, I think it is appropriate for all of us when he says, " we can depart from all these cages that we build for ourselves and for each other, and become something much better."

EYE OPENER: CSPI

For the they activity for the Eye Opener I chose to take a tour of the food supply, simply because I thought that it would go along well with my book that I am reading.  I thought that maybe I could become a little bit more educated about what was going on in the food industry by reading it.  Before I read about different parts of the food supply activity I have to admit that I was pretty naive on the subject.  The first section that I read about was air pollution.   I was absolutely shocked about my findings.  I had no idea that hydrogen sulfide was such a dangerous gas that can cause a variety of health issues including vomiting and even death.

The next part that I read about was the different aspects of manure.  I had no idea that it had so many detrimental health effects.  I never really thought that it was that bad for you.  However from the text I found that I was completely wrong.  Even the odor can lead to health effects such as headaches and depression.  It also causes a great deal of pollution to our world especially when it gets into our water and on our crops.  Not only is manure a major, so is how we a treating our animals.  Animals that bread just for the purpose of livestock endure many harsh conditions.  There are not laws protecting these animals, like the ones we have for animals that are used for scientific testing.  Instead they are confined to tight living spaces, and other terrible conditions that include:

• Chickens being debeaked 
• pigs getting their tails cut off
• fed sewage
• branded 

These are just a few of the harsh realities for them.  In some rare cases cattle remains were fed back to cattle for food which in turn caused mad cow disease.  This was recently banned, but it is still very alarming.  

One last issue that seemed alarming to me was the issue of pesticides on our crops.  I always knew that they were harmful but I wasn't fully aware of how bad they were.  They are attributed to many heart attacks and may contribute to hight cholesterol.  Overall these are all topics that I would enjoy finding more information on.  They really opened my eyes to some new things.

Image from http://planetgreen.discovery.com