News Notes

Gems

Film Review: The Last Mimzy

Book Review: Twinkie, Deconstructed

Steve Ettlinger, Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined) and Manipulated into What America Eats. N.Y.: Hudson St. Press, 2007. 283 pages, $23.95 hardcover.

This book was conceived when 6-year-old Chelsea Etlinger asked her father what "Polysorbate 60" was, and where it came from. Steve did not know, most people do not know, and even my computer does not know--it did not recognize "Polysorbate" as a legitimate word in the English language. Mr. Ettlinger felt compelled to investigate the nature and origin not only of Polysorbate 60, but of all the ingredients that go into making a Twinkie (which is recognized by my word processor as a real word, but only if spelled with a capital T).

The resulting book has been widely praised for its educational value, but also criticized for not going far enough: it does not investigate the effects on human health of consuming all these chemicals, fats, sugars, etc. To his critics, Steve Ettlinger, who does care about his own and his children's health, responds: "If you want to eat healthy, eat fruits and vegetables. End of story."

With all due respect, that is not quite the end of the story. As that great man, Isaac Bashevis Singer, used to say, it is not enough to think only of one's own health; we must think also about the health of the chickens. And Twinkies are horribly bad for chicken health. "Twinkies bakeries use a million eggs a year" (page 105), and that means a million horror stories of wretched female birds enslaved in tiny cages a-laying until they can no longer lay enough to please their masters, after which they are massacred en masse and transformed into soup for humans, and food for pigs and other animals destined for the same dreadful fate (page 109).

Not all the news is bad. Monoglycerides and diglycerides (two more words my computer does not recognize, though I have spent so much time hunting for them in the tiny print of labels) are now, in the USA, made exclusively from vegetable oils, no longer from the fat of cows and pigs. Why? To "keep it kosher" (page 182). Jewish people who faithfully observe the Law of Moses have here performed a service to both animals and humans.

Finally, I must make a confession: I have not eaten a Twinkie in over a third of a century--not so much because of my regard for the animals' or my own health, but mostly because I find the little yellow treat too cloyingly sweet.

--Benjamin Urrutia

Recipes: Salads for Summertime

My Pilgrimage

One Step at a Time

There isn’t a time I can remember that I didn’t have a sense of the preciousness of living things. One notable memory from my childhood is when I spotted a butterfly waning in the grass on the side of the house when I was 7. I spent the next couple of days going out to check on my butterfly, sitting beside her, praying that she’d live. Though the butterfly died, my innate sense of tender care for all living things never has.

I have often pondered the reason some seem born to these sentiments, others journey toward them, and still others never experience them at all from birth to death. Did my sense of connection with all living things have a genetic component, stemming from my Cherokee heritage, or perhaps an ancestor who roamed the foothills of Tuscany, or in the rolling hills of Wales, who also communed with butterflies? Or is it perhaps a form of spiritual DNA we don’t yet understand and can’t measure? Could the latter be the key to comprehending the extremes of compassion and savagery seen in the human species?

No solid answer has ever come. But one can’t take credit for something that is inherent, and is more a gift than a choice, and so I’ve always been filled with gratitude to possess the mind and heart I have toward God’s creatures. My evolution to vegetarianism was a rather rapid one, though it may have seemed slow at the time. Sometime during my adolescent years, I decided I could no longer eat cows. I may have been 12 or 13 then, but precise memory fails. Whether it was their soulful eyes or their placid demeanor, something about them tugged at my heart. Then one day, at age 14, I was visiting my first farm. It was a small farm and two pigs were behind the fence outside of a little barn, nuzzling my hand. Witnessing their delight as I scratched their rough ears, and experiencing our connection, I realized these animals were not at all different from my beloved dog at home. I was struck with horror that these creatures are killed and eaten. From there, the reasoning couldn’t fail to extend to chickens and turkeys. (Since I had never cared for seafood, fish were already missing from the menu.) With perhaps a few backsliding incidents that may have taken place for a brief time (again, memory fails), from that point on, I was vegetarian. It was 1965 and I was 14 years old.

At that time, no one in my circle of life experience had ever met a vegetarian, much less been one, so this was a radical decision that alarmed my mother. She expressed her concerns to the pediatrician, who had been my doctor since the day I was born. His easy response was, “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. Just feed her more lima beans.” Why lima beans is anybody’s guess, but I will always be thankful to him for his casual reassurance and support of my decision. Mom never felt concerned about it again, which made things much easier.

Over the ensuing decades, I have been eminently pleased to see the vegetarian population grow. Many have turned in that direction for health reasons alone, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth: if the end result is that fewer animals suffer, that’s all that matters. As happens with truth, it reveals itself, and so awareness of animal welfare has become an increasingly compelling mainstream issue. I’ve never stopped believing that human evolution cannot fail to eventually mean vegetarianism will be the common rather than the uncommon way. Meanwhile, we each do what we can, one voice and one step at a time.

--Juli Maltagliati

Poetry

In Examination

Lo! from quiet skies
In through the window my Lord the Sun!
And my eyes
Were dazzled and drunk with the misty gold,
The golden glory that drowned and crowned me
Eddied and swayed through the room...
Around me,
To left and to right,
Hunched figures and old,
Dull blear-eyed scribbling fools, grew fair,
Ringed round and haloed with holy light.
Flame lit on their hair,
And their burning eyes grew young and wise,
Each as a God, or King of kings,
White-robed and bright
(Still scribbling all);
And a full tumultuous murmur of wings
Grew through the hall;
And I knew the white undying Fire,
And, through open portals,
Gyre on gyre,
Archangels and angels, adoring, bowing,
And a Face unshaded...
Till the light faded;
And they were but fools again, fools unknowing,
Still scribbling, blear-eyed and stolid immortals.

--Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915

 

Credits:

The Peaceable Table is intended to resume the witness of that excellent vehicle of the Friends Vegetarian Society of North America, The Friendly Vegetarian, which appeared quarterly between 1982 and 1995. Following its example, and sometimes borrowing from its treasures, we publish articles for toe-in-the-water vegetarians as well as long-term ones, poetry, letters, book and film reviews, and recipes.

The journal is intended to be interactive; contributions, including illustrations, are invited for the next issue. Deadline for the August-September issue will be July 28, 2007. Send to graciafay@mac.com or 10 Krotona Hill, Ojai, CA 93023. We operate primarily online in order to save trees and labor, but hard copy is available for interested persons who are not online. The latter are asked to donate $12 (USD) per year if their means allow. Other donations to offset the cost of the domain name, server and advertising notices are welcome.