Turn Vegetarian, Save the World

 

There is a compelling need for the world to turn vegetarian today. The choice to turn wholly vegan or vegetarian is not dictated by moral or ethical concerns alone, nor should it be seen as an attempt to convince anyone using religious mumbo jumbo. We should leave all such sentiments and arguments aside and look at the issue exploring the practical, ethical and ecological reasons for turning towards veganism or vegetarianism.

Foremost among the many consequences of a flesh based diet is its effect on one’s health. If that is an individual concern, then the dwindling nature of earth’s precious resources is certainly a cause for collective concern of all nations. The poor nations are hit the hardest as land and water which can be used to eradicate hunger and mal nutrition are diverted to grow fodder for cattle which will eventually end up on the lunch plates of only those who can afford it.

Locals can be convinced of the need to move away from animal based foods if alternate methods can be explained to them. Also cultivating farms and growing more food will improve their own health index as also bring in some revenue and employment. Planting trees, donating seeds, cultivating vegetables are all helpful in improving the health and productivity of the nation.

It should be our resolve to bequeath a healthy, nourished and prosperous world to the coming generations.

Easy Recipes for you

Kesari (Sheera)

Ingredients

• Roasted semolina-1 cup
• Sugar-one and quarter cup to one n half cup (if u want it too sweet)
• Water-2 cups
• Dry fruits of your choice
• Ghee-Quarter cup

Method

1. Put 2 cups of water in a wok and let it boil.
2. Add the sugar and let it melt in the water.
3. Add 2 tsp of ghee to it.
4. Then add the roasted semolina little by little stirring continuously and let it cook.
5. Now add the remaining ghee stirring it continuously on a low flame.
6. Let it cook till all the water is absorbed, till it becomes dry.
7. For garnishing roast the dryfruits in ghee and add to the kesari.
8. your delicious kesari is ready!!!!

         News from the Veg World

Vegetarian diet twice as effective for weight-loss, new research shows

Low-calorie diets are notoriously difficult to maintain in the long-term. But they may be unnecessary. Switching to a vegetarian diet can be twice as effective for weight-loss as counting calories, according to new research.

For the study, published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, researchers from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine followed 74 participants with type 2 diabetes for six months.

Half the group were assigned a vegetarian diet (60 per cent of energy from carbohydrates, 15 per cent protein, and 25 per cent fat) consisting of vegetables, grains, legumes, fruits, and nuts, with one portion of low-fat yoghurt a day. The other half were assigned a conventional low-calorie, anti-diabetes diet comprising of 50 per cent of energy from carbohydrates, 20 per cent protein, less than 30 per cent fat.

After six months, the vegetarian group had lost an average of 6.2 kilograms compared with 3.2 kilograms in the conventional group. The researchers also used magnetic resonance imaging to analyse the effect of the two diets on adipose fat in participants’ thighs. While both diets reduced subcutaneous fat (fat under the skin), only the vegetarian diet caused reductions in subfascial fat (on the surface of muscles) and saw a greater reduction in intramuscular fat (fat inside the muscles). Excess subfascial and intramuscular fat is associated with insulin resistance and lowered glucose metabolism.

“Vegetarian diets proved to be the most effective diets for weight loss,” said lead author, Dr Hana Kahleova. “However, we also showed that a vegetarian diet is much more effective at reducing muscle fat, thus improving metabolism. This finding is important for people who are trying to lose weight, including those suffering from metabolic syndrome and/or type 2 diabetes. But it is also relevant to anyone who takes their weight management seriously and wants to stay lean and healthy.”

Dr Joanna McMillan believes the vegetarian diet was more effective because it tends to include more fibre from plant foods. “This helps to fill you up but also means the gut bugs have to help with nutrient retrieval,” Dr McMillan explained. “Potentially our gut bugs help us to stay lean or get fat depending on our individual microbiomes and usual diet.”

Our genes may come into play as well, as another new study, published in the journal Nature: Ecology and Evolution, found that the introduction of farming 10,000 years ago led to an increase in plant-based diets.

This dietary shift from the animal-based diet of hunter-gatherers resulted in genetic adaptations that helped vegetarians and their offspring to better metabolise plant-foods. The plant-based gene variants regulate cholesterol levels and may provide protection against many inflammatory diseases, the researchers from Cornell University said. Although modern paleo advocates emphasise meat, in fact most hunter gatherer communities ate loads of plant food as well – so the balance of foods is clearly key,” McMillan said. “Although our genes can’t change quickly, epigenetics allows us to adapt more quickly and the microbiome can adapt within a day. This is probably how humans have thrived on many different diets all over the world.”

Moving meat-free

For many meat-eaters, the concept of becoming completely vegetarian is inconceivable, however there are health and environmental benefits to having more meat-free days. A new free app, designed by Charles Darwin’s great-grandson, Chris Darwin, challenges people to have one or more meat-free days each week, rewarding users, by “showing you how your meat-free days are improving your health and your world”. According to the app:

• One meat-free day per week for a year saves a tennis court of forest.
• One meat-free day saves 98 toilet flushes of water (usually seven litres per toilet flush) – based around water support for meat production – from cattle growing, feeding, cleaning and processing.

Source:  http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellbeing/

Content Team

Kenya Vegetarian Club

PO Box 1390, Obote Road, Kisumu 40100, Kenya

Email: kvc@shrivedant.com / website: www.kenyavegclub.com

Yoga for Health

Recognizing the role yoga plays in ensuring good health to all, this year’s theme chosen by the United Nations is Yoga for health. When we talk of harmony and well being it has to be in tandem with nature and the world around us. Yoga can contribute in a holistic way towards achieving this harmony between mind and body. If we have to achieve harmony with nature, then we need to collectively embrace a lifestyle that helps us move towards sustainable development. Everything in this world is interconnected. Man is a limb of this society which in turn is a part and parcel of nature. So any talk of health and well being should include lifestyle, sustainable development, care of the earth, conservation of resources and preservation of nature. We cannot view ourselves only as consumers but custodians of resources too.

Introducing the draft proposal for the observance of International Yoga Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address during the opening of the 69^th session of the General Assembly, said: “Yoga is an invaluable gift from our ancient tradition. Yoga embodies unity of mind and body, thought and action … a holistic approach [that] is valuable to our health and our well-being. Yoga is not just about exercise; it is a way to discover the sense of oneness with your self, the world and the nature.”

The resolution adopted at the General Assembly notes “the importance of individuals and populations making healthier choices and following lifestyle patterns that foster good health.” The World Health Organization, aware of the fact that physical inactivity is among the top ten leading cause of death worldwide has advised its member states to get actively involved in the health and well being of its citizens.

Yoga is the panacea for many ills – physical, mental and emotional. It ensures holistic development of a person’s body, mind and soul. In the words of one of its most famous practitioners, the late B. K. S. Iyengar, “Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one’s actions.”

21^st June is observed as International Yoga Day

Easy Recipes for you

Italian Sev Puri

Ingredients

• Eggless Mayonnaise
• Cheese spread
• Green, Red and Yellow Capsicum
• Cabbage
• Salt
• Pepper
• Packet of Sev Puris

Method

1. Mix eggless Mayonnaise and Cheese spread in 2:1 proportion respectively.
2. Cut small pieces of Green, Red and Yellow Capsicum and Cabbage. Mix them in the above mixture.
3. Add salt and pepper as per taste.
4. Mix it properly.
5. Put the final mixture on Sev puris with a spoon and serve.

Time required for preparing the dish: 10 minutes

News from the Veg World

Some Neanderthals were vegetarians who used natural forms of penicillin and aspirin as medicine

image: A Neanderthal model on display at the Natural History Museum The Natural History Museum, London

‘Apparently, Neanderthals possessed a good knowledge of medicinal plants … the use of antibiotics would be very surprising, as this is more than 40,000 years before we developed penicillin’ Despite their popular reputation as meat-eating simpletons, some Neanderthals ate a vegetarian diet and appear to have used natural forms of penicillin and aspirin to treat infections and pain.

Dental plaque was found on the fossilised teeth of Neanderthals who lived in what is now Asturias, Spain, and in Belgium up to 50,000 years ago. In a startling demonstration of just how astonishing science can be, a team of researchers from Spain, Australia and the UK were able to extract DNA from the plaque that allowed them to tell what the individuals had eaten.

Neanderthals were thought to be enthusiastic meat eaters and an analysis of the remains found in Belgium revealed DNA from woolly rhinoceroses and wild sheep, along with a few mushrooms. But the teeth of the Spanish group revealed they had eaten wild mushrooms, pine nuts and moss, but no evidence of meat, according to a paper in the journal Nature.

One of the researchers, Dr Antonio Rosas, of Spain’s National Natural Science Museum, said: “We were surprised not to find any remains of meat in the Asturias Neanderthals, given that they were thought to be predominantly meat eaters. However, we have found evidence they enjoyed a varied diet including a wide range of plants. “What’s more, some of these plants may well have been cooked before being eaten.” The enamel and dentine of one Neanderthal’s upper teeth were chipped, and it is thought he may have used his like a third hand when sharpening stone tools.

But there were also signs that he was in severe pain and had taken surprising advanced steps to alleviate it. Dr Rosas said: “We have evidence that this Neanderthal self-medicated. “We have discovered that the plaque preserved in his teeth contains sequences of the pathogen Enterocytozoon bieneusi, which causes gastrointestinal problems, including serious diarrhoea. “Additionally, thanks to a hole in his jaw we know he had a dental abscess. Both health issues must have caused him intense pain.” The plaque contained traces of the penicillium fungus, the natural antibiotic from which the drug penicillin is derived, and also poplar. That tree’s bark, roots and leaves all contain salicylic acid, which is used in aspirin and other painkillers.

Professor Alan Cooper, of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at Adelaide University, who helped carry out the genetic analysis, said the evidence showed Neanderthals were more sophisticated than previously thought. “Apparently, Neandertals possessed a good knowledge of medicinal plants and their various anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties, and seem to be self-medicating,” he said. “The use of antibiotics would be very surprising, as this is more than 40,000 years before we developed penicillin. “Certainly our findings contrast markedly with the rather simplistic view of our ancient relatives in popular imagination.”

Researchers have previously found evidence that Neanderthals were aware some plants had medicinal properties, apparently taking camomile and yarrow to help their digestion. The remains were found in El Sidrón cave in Piloña, northern Spain. Discovered in 1994, the cave is one of the most active archaeological dig sites in the world. So far 2,500 skeletal remains from 13 Neanderthals, male and female, young and old, have been discovered there.

Another of the researchers involved in the current study, Professor Keith Dobney, of Liverpool University, said the techniques available to scientists were enabling them to “access direct evidence of what our ancestors were eating”. “This extraordinary window on the past is providing us with new ways to explore and understand our evolutionary history through the microorganisms that lived in us and with us.”

http://www.independent.co.uk

Content Team

Kenya Vegetarian Club

PO Box 1390, Obote Road, Kisumu 40100, Kenya

Email: kvc@shrivedant.com / website: www.kenyavegclub.com

Kenya Vegetarian Club – Veg-licious- a monthly newsletter

Connecting People to Nature

This year the theme for World Environment Day on 5^th June is ‘Connecting people to nature’. Unless we move outdoors and see and feel the nature around us we will never be inspired to preserve the precious resources that are scattered all over this wide earth. Every year the 5^th of June is celebrated as World Environment Day all around the globe and it is a celebration and a thanksgiving for all that nature has bestowed upon us in her munificence. At the same time, it is also a day when we need to pause and take stock of the state of things. We are doing too little and too late. Unless corrective measures are taken on a war footing it would be irreversible damage done to our environment. Keeping all these in mind, the host country Canada has chosen the theme as Connecting People to Nature.

Ever since the observance of the day first began in 1972, people around the world have been taking part in many programs like cleaning the lakes and river bodies, preventing crime against wildlife, planting trees, neighborhood clean ups, campaigns, competitions, seminars and the like. It requires the combined effort of each and every one of us to conserve our environment and no effort can be dismissed as miniscule or insignificant. Nature’s gifts are priceless. It is hard to put a price on the resources but once we don’t get them then we realize its value.

Hence this year’s theme exhorts us to go out, savor nature in all its glory, take responsibility to protect it for it nurtures and nourishes us. It gives back manifold when compared to our efforts. Celebrate this environment day with your family, friends, community or fraternity. Go out, shake a leg, take a walk, run a mile or simply allow the gentle breeze to caress you as you spend time outdoors. It is time we learnt to value nature and her gifts and also learn how nature is the best teacher. Let us connect ourselves to nature, this environment day and every other single day.

The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved. – Richard Rogers

Easy Recipes for you

Vermicelli Upma

 Upma is a breakfast dish that is popular in South India, Maharashtra and among Sri Lankan Tamils. It is known as upma, uppuma, uppeet or uppittu.

 Ingredients

• 1 packet of store bought Indian vermicelli
• water to boil the vermicelli
• 3 green chillies cut fine
• A cup of finely cut vegetables like tomatoes, carrot, beans, capsicum
• 2 medium size onions cut fine
• Pinch of turmeric powder & asafetida powder
• 1 tbsp of roasted peanuts
• Salt to taste
• A piece of ginger (skin to be taken out and then grated)
• Curry leaves (5-6); cilantro for garnishing
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Some sev for garnishing (optional)
• Three tbsps oil
• 1 tsp rai or Mustard seeds
• 1 tsp cumin or jeera; 1 tsp chana daal

Method Add oil in a big wok. After it becomes hot put mustard seeds, cumin, chana daal, peanuts. When they splutter put asafetida or hing pdr, curry leaves, green chillies, grated ginger.

1. Then add the onions. Saute till brown, add cut vegetables and cook till oil separates. Add turmeric pdr, salt.
2. Then add the vermicelli.
3. Pour water and cook till they mix well.
4. Garnish with cilantro and Sev.

News from the Veg World

Antarctic has seen widespread change in last 50 years, moss study reveals

This photograph shows Green Island moss bank with icebergs in background.

Credit: Matt Amesbury

In 2013, researchers studying mosses and microbes growing at the southern end of the Antarctic Peninsula documented unprecedented ecological change over the last 50 years, driven by warming temperatures. Now, the same research group has confirmed that those striking changes in the Antarctic are widespread, occurring all across the Peninsula. The findings appear in Current Biology on May 18.

“This gives us a much clearer idea of the scale over which these changes are occurring,” says lead author Matthew Amesbury of the University of Exeter. “Previously, we had only identified such a response in a single location at the far south of the Antarctic Peninsula, but now we know that moss banks are responding to recent climate change across the whole of the Peninsula.”

The Antarctic Peninsula is known to have been one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth. Annual temperatures there have crept up about 0.5°C each decade since the 1950s. The researchers realized they could learn a lot about how rising temperatures have affected the ecology of the Peninsula by studying core samples taken from moss banks established more than 150 years ago.

In the new study, the researchers added an additional three sites and five cores to their earlier sample. Those sites include three Antarctic islands (Elephant Island, Ardley Island, and Green Island) where the deepest and oldest moss banks grow, representing a 600-kilometer transect along the Peninsula.

Careful analysis of those five cores going back 150 years showed increased biological activity as the Peninsula has warmed in the last 50 years. Those findings suggest that the Peninsula is undergoing fundamental and widespread change. Amesbury noted that the consistency of changes in the moss samples taken from different parts of the Peninsula was particularly striking.

There’s more to come, the researchers say. The sensitivity of mosses’ rate of growth in response to past temperature increases suggests that terrestrial ecosystems of the Antarctic Peninsula will continue to experience rapid change with future warming.

“Temperature increases over roughly the past half century on the Antarctic Peninsula have had a dramatic effect on moss banks growing in the region, with rapid increases in growth rates and microbial activity,” says Dan Charman, who led the research in Exeter. “If this continues, and with increasing amounts of ice-free land from continued glacier retreat, the Antarctic Peninsula will be a much greener place in the future.”

The researchers say they’ll continue to examine core records stretching back in time over thousands of years. Their goal is to explore the impact of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems before humans began heating things up.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/

Content Team

Kenya Vegetarian Club

PO Box 1390, Obote Road, Kisumu 40100, Kenya

Email: kvc@shrivedant.com / website: www.kenyavegclub.com

KVC News

Prof. Pushpendra K Jain from Botswana, who was visiting Buenos Aires, Argentina, attended the 44^th IVU World Vegfest at the Convention Center Palais Rouge, BA on 11 December 2016. Prof Jain was the only representative from Africa to attend the Vegfest in Argentina.

The 45^th Vegfest is scheduled to be hosted in Kenya in 2017. Before his travel to Argentina, Prof. Jain was requested by the IVU Africa representative, Mr. Emmanuel Eyoh from Nigeria to bring the “Hosting Flag of IVU Vegfest” to Botswana for passing it on to the organizers of the 2017 Vegfest in Kenya.  A brief “Passing of the ‘Hosting Flag’ ” ceremony was organized by the Argentinean Hosts in the afternoon on 11 December 2016 at which, amid speeches, Prof. Jain was handed over the IVU Vegfest flag by the Argentinean hosts which he accepted on behalf of Kenya to pass it on to them. In his acceptance speech, Prof. Jain thanked IVU for their continued support of Vegetarian movement in Africa, and invited the guests present to the Vegfest in Kenya in 2017, the details of which will soon become available on the website. As the IVU Patron and former IVU Council member Prof. Jain is well known in the IVU circle, and has attended two past IVU World Vegetarian Congresses (as they were known then) in Thailand (2000) and Toronto (2004).

 Setting the record straight

I recently met a group of youngsters at a luncheon who were intrigued when they heard I was a vegetarian. So do you eat only vegetables, they queried innocently. I laughed and told them being a vegetarian did not mean living on vegetables only but it is a broad term that means plant based food. I am not surprised. Most of them who are not into vegetarianism wonder how it can sustain us and whether we get sufficient nourishment and nutrition. In spite of living in the information age, misconceptions abound. Vegetarian food has an enormous number of recipes and variety that one need not repeat recipes for a lifetime if one is willing to experiment.

So this article is for all those who would like to get a correct picture based on facts and not myths. There are many types of vegetarians in the world today depending on the diet and lifestyle.

A vegan is one who avoids all animal products and food that has animal origin and that includes meat, milk, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy products.   A vegetarian is one who subsists on plant based food and also takes dairy products. They may be known as lacto vegetarians. There are lacto ovo vegetarians who take eggs along with what is mentioned above. Flexitarians, and this is now a growing breed, consume vegetarian food largely but do make allowance for animal based food once in a way when such cravings get the better of them.

A vegetarian diet is naturally healthy and nourishing, clean and cruelty free. Let me hasten to add, not all vegetarian food. It would do no good if we were to consume only high fat, nutrient empty junk foods. So being a vegetarian doesn’t confer good health straightaway if we do not combine sensible eating with good exercise. There is an amazing variety of vegetarian dishes that can be dished out creatively. But care should be taken that the food we take should fall under all categories as can be seen in the food pyramid below.

Image Source: https://worldlyvegetarian.com/

Vegetarian meals are friendly to the human body, fairly cheap and nutritious too. It can be had by all categories of people, the young, the sick, the recouping and the growing. It certainly promotes compassion among the population.

Easy Recipes for you

                ALU JEERA

INGREDIENTS

• 4 potatoes de-skinned, boiled
• 1 medium size Onion cut into small pieces.
• 2 small tomatoes cut into small pieces.
• 4 Garlic pods cut into fine pieces.
• 2 green chillies cut into small pieces
• 3-4 leaves of curry leaves
• 1 tsp of cumin powder
• ½ tsp of turmeric powder
• 1 tsp Mustard seeds
• A pinch of asafoetida
• 1 tbspn oil
• Salt to taste

METHOD

1. First put oil in a pan. After it becomes hot put mustard seeds. When it crackles put asafoetida powder.
2. Then add the garlic, green chillies and the curry leaves.
3. Add the Onions. When it becomes slightly brown (can add very little sugar to brown faster) you can add tomatoes.
4. Then cook for some time and add the Potatoes.
5. Add turmeric, cumin powder, salt.
6. Close and cook for a min.
7. Garnish with cilantro leaves (optional)

 

                                                                      News from the Veg World

Matters of the heart

In a candid chat, renowned cardiologist Dr. B.M. Hegde busts several myths about cardiac ailments and what defines good health.

Squeezing a wedge of lemon into a glass of warm water, Dr. B.M. Hegde says, “It’s the best medicine for an acidic stomach. You don’t have to run to the hospital for every ailment.” “Not even for blocks in your heart,” he asserts. “Blocks in arteries are common,” he points out. The leading cardiologist also notes that in reality there has not been even one per cent absolute increase in the rate of heart attacks. It is a plain hype, he says and calls it a labelling error. Unfortunately, every chest pain is dubbed as angina and every block is labelled coronary disease,” declares Dr.Hegde.

“Anybody who walks into a hospital with complaints of chest pain is made to undergo angiogram whereas there is a need to understand heart blocks,” he says. “Blocks happen when you are young and as they grow, nature provides bypasses through collateral vessels. This is called pre-conditioning the heart.”

Dr. Hegde believes that any individual who sees a doctor for medical help becomes a patient. “Once you get caught in the whirlwind, you continue to remain a patient.” The veteran cardiologist has been known for making bold statements on the dark side of medical industry. “When I was a student, I questioned how can cholesterol be bad if it’s made by our body. Forty years ago, I wrote that cholesterol is a counter by the body to increasing stress levels. I said coconut oil is the best oil for the heart at the American College of Cardiology Meet long ago.”

“The flaw of today’s approach to treatment is that the human body is seen as a car machine which can be repaired part by part. Whereas, the human body is a whole entity and should be treated in entirety. How else can one explain the side-effect of drugs used to treat one organ, affecting the other organs?” he asks. Author of over 40 books, Dr.Hegde also supports alternative forms of medicine like Ayurveda. Quoting Sanskrit texts from Ayurveda, he explains how any treatment ought to be holistic. “Ayurveda has unfortunately been relegated to back seat, in spite of being traditional and rich form of medical treatment,” he says.

“Health is about the environment you live in and the mind is the environment of the body. It’s not what you eat but what eats you (the thoughts) kills you,” he says. “The key is to cultivate positive thoughts and surround yourself with positive emotions. Quantam healing is the new method of healing. Your mind can heal you.” He suggests the book Quantam doctor by Amit Goswami.

Dr.Hegde opposes the burgeoning fitness craze among the young urbane crowd driven by the belief that fitness leads to good health. “Health is in the mind and fitness is in the muscle. These are two different things but often confused as one. If someone is fit to run a marathon doesn’t mean he/she is fit to live a healthy life.” “Health is not even absence of disease, as all of us have diseases. We all will have over 100 cancer cells at any given time, but they don’t become clinical cancer as they die on their own.” Quoting a sloka from Ayurveda, Dr.Hegde defines health as the enthusiasm to work and love. “Keep the enthusiasm in you alive, nurture positivity and cull negativity and you are healthy”, is his simple mantra.

Dr.Hegde practises what he calls ‘Coordinated medicine’, that’s futuristic and meta treatment. “I take elements from various genres of medicine. For instance, I take emergency care and corrective surgery from modern medicine. I don’t prescribe too many drugs and treat patients unnecessarily.” Calling modern medical treatment as ‘exclusive’ and ‘reductionist’, Hegde comes down heavily on the trial-and-error method of slapping scans, drugs and tests on patients. “I have come up with suggestions of a new definition of health and the concept of whole person healing instead of organ healing, both of which have been accepted by the Institute of Medicine.”

As a vegetarian, Dr.Hegde suggests following traditionally made and locally grown food. “One should eat what their ancestors ate. To eat Mediterranean food in Madurai will not suit your body. Eat the locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables and follow recipes that have been there for generations.” A veteran doctor that he is, Hegde says every doctor should unfailingly follow ethics since they deal with human lives.”

Dr.Hegde was in the city to deliver a guest lecture on ‘Spirituality and Health’ at the Madurai Readers’ Club.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/society/Matters-of-the-heart/article17139237.ece dt Feb. 2, 2017

Content Team

Kenya Vegetarian Club

PO Box 1390, Obote Road, Kisumu 40100, Kenya

Email: kvc@shrivedant.com / website: www.kenyavegclub.com

Plant based food to enhance mood

The green planet earth has so many secrets within her that we just need to look around and get maximum benefit for ourselves. Have you been in the company of trees in full bloom? Does walking in a large public garden bring out a nameless happy feeling in you? Do you love the smell of fresh earth and the smell of the leaves when drenched with water from the hose or the natural droplets of rain? If the answer to all these questions is yes then you are not alone. There are so many things in nature that can lift our mood and enliven our senses, it is just that living in concrete jungles, we don’t try getting close to nature.

It is not just the sense of sight and smell that gain from nature. Even our taste buds benefit from nature. Eating plant-based foods is supposed to enhance our mood and lift our spirits. Studies reason that plant-based foods are obtained straight from the earth and therefore we get a dose of unadulterated vitamins and minerals directly when we consume these.

 

Magnesium is a mineral which can be got only from nuts and seeds, cacao, whole grains, coffee, and leafy greens, bananas, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash. This mineral is great mood enhancer apart from its energy giving benefits.  Calcium can be found in leafy greens, seaweed, almonds, broccoli, figs, chia, sesame seeds, few varieties of beans, fortified non-dairy milks, soy and tofu. This mineral helps in relieving anxiety and thus lightens the mood. This list is just a sample. Minerals like iron play similar roles. Thus plant-based foods are beneficial even in curtailing mood swings. One more reason to go for it!!!

Easy Recipes for you

Mushroom Fried Rice

Ingredients

• Cooking oil
• Red chilly
• Onions- 2
• Tomatoes- 2
• Mushroom- 200 gm
• Turmeric Powder
• Red Chilli Powder
• Salt
• Pepper
• Steamed rice

METHOD

1. Put oil in a frying pan.
2. Cut big pieces of dried red chilli and put it in the frying pan.
3. Then add onion and tomato cut in medium pieces.
4. Add mushroom pieces cut in T-shape.
5. Then add turmeric powder, red chilli powder, salt and pepper.
6. Close the pan with a lid and let it get cooked for 10 min on a low flame.
7. Then add steamed rice to it and stir it well.
8. Serve hot.

 Time Required For Preparing The Dish: 30 Minutes

News from the Veg World

A groundbreaking program backed by the irrefutable results from Dr. Esselstyn’s 20-year study proving changes in diet and nutrition can actually cure heart disease

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States for men and women. But, as Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., a former internationally known surgeon, researcher and clinician at the Cleveland Clinic, explains in this book it can be prevented, reversed, and even abolished. Dr. Esselstyn argues that conventional cardiology has failed patients by developing treatments that focus only on the symptoms of heart disease, not the cause.

Based on the groundbreaking results of his 20-year nutritional study—the longest study of its kind ever conducted—this book explains, with irrefutable scientific evidence, how we can end the heart disease epidemic in this country forever by changing what we eat.

Here, Dr. Esselstyn convincingly argues that a plant-based, oil-free diet can not only prevent and stop the progression of heart disease, but also reverse its effects.

*PREVENT AND REVERSE HEART DISEASE*offers readers the same simple, nutrition-based plan that dramatically changed the lives of his patients forever. With this eating plan, sufferers of heart disease will maintain cholesterol levels low enough to ensure that they will never have a heart attack. Best of all, the book offers more than 150 delicious recipes that Dr. Esselstyn and his wife, Ann Crile Esselstyn, have developed over the years
—showing readers how easy it is to enjoy their new way of eating.

Excerpts from Chapter One
Eating to Live

…………………………….

I believe that coronary artery disease is preventable, and that even after it is underway, its progress can be stopped, its insidious effects reversed. I believe, and my work over the past twenty years has demonstrated, that all this can be accomplished without expensive mechanical intervention and with minimal use of drugs. The key lies in nutrition—specifically, in abandoning the toxic American diet and maintaining cholesterol levels well below those historically recommended by health policy experts.

The bottom line of the nutritional program I recommend is that it contains not a single item of any food known to cause or promote the development of vascular disease. I often ask patients to compare their coronary artery disease to a house fire. Your house is on fire because eating the wrong foods has given you heart disease. You are spraying gasoline on the fire by continuing to eat the very same foods that caused the disease in the first place.

I don’t want my patients to pour a single thimbleful of gasoline on the fire. Stopping the gasoline puts out the fire. Reforming the way you eat will end the heart disease.

Here are the rules of my program in their simplest form :

• You may not eat anything with a mother or a face (no meat, poultry, or fish).
• You cannot eat dairy products.
• You must not consume oil of any kind—not a drop. (Yes, you devotees of the Mediterranean Diet, that includes olive oil, as I’ll explain in Chapter 10.)
• Generally, you cannot eat nuts or avocados.

You can eat a wonderful variety of delicious, nutrient-dense foods:

• All vegetables except avocado. Leafy green vegetables, root vegetables, veggies that are red, green, purple, orange, and yellowand everything in between
• All legumes—beans, peas, and lentils of all varieties.
• All whole grains and products, such as bread and pasta, that are made from them—as long as they do not contain added fats.
• All fruits.

It works. In the first continuous twelve-year study of the effects of nutrition in severely ill patients, which I will describe in this book, those who complied with my program achieved total arrest of clinical progression and significant selective reversal of coronary artery disease. In fully compliant patients, we have seen angina disappear in a few weeks and abnormal stress test results return to normal.

………….

The dietary changes that have helped my patients over the past twenty years can help you, too. They can actually make you immune to heart attacks. And there is considerable evidence that they have benefits far beyond coronary artery disease. If you eat to save your heart, you eat to save yourself from other diseases of nutritional extravagance: from strokes, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis, adult-onset diabetes, and possibly senile mental impairment, as well. You gain protection from a host of other ailments that have been linked to dietary factors, including impotence and cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, rectum, uterus, and ovaries. And if you are eating for good health in this way, here’s a side benefit you might not have expected: for the rest of your life, you will never again have to count calories or worry about your weight.

………………………………………………That’s the point of this book: to tell the world what I have learned.

Source: http://www.dresselstyn.com/site/books/prevent-reverse/excerpt/

Content Team

Kenya Vegetarian Club

PO Box 1390, Obote Road, Kisumu 40100, Kenya

Email: kvc@shrivedant.com / website: www.kenyavegclub.com

The Earth Day- How green is my earth!

Every year 22^nd April is observed as Earth Day. Organizations and communities organize many programs involving the local population and mark this day with speeches, events, tree planting sessions and the like. But taking care of the earth is not such a simplistic affair marked by tokenism and lip service. Real change can happen only when each and every inhabitant of this earth feels responsible regarding the well being of this planet which sustains us and tolerates our idiosyncrasies.

The campaign to preserve earth should be a sustained, life-long process with involvement from each one of us. What can we do in our own small way to conserve earth and its natural resources? Let us see some possible solutions. These could involve preserving water, land, soil and air. It can be to ensure less pollution and less wastage of resources.

We do many things without thinking of the repercussions these actions may have on other life forms. Recently a video of a doctor pulling out a plastic straw from a gasping sea turtle went viral. Every day millions of plastic straws land up in our rivers and seas as they are dumped by careless workers. These end up in the stomachs of some unfortunate voiceless animal. The plastic covers that are ubiquitous become a meal to cows and cattle that roam the streets which chomp and gulp them down to cause many ailments. Can we take a silent pledge never to use straws and plastic covers when we go to a restaurant or a shop? We can always carry a cloth bag in our tote and keep them handy for any purchase that we may want to make. It is a small lifestyle change but a great leap in conserving this planet if we all do it together. Similarly, we can avoid using disposable plates and cups at home and switch to steel and glass instead.

We can also ensure we buy eco-friendly beauty products and not chemical based ones as these will have fewer pollutants in their manufacturing process. The same applies to cleaning products as well. We never know how many chemicals invade our homes in the form of household cleaning products or pest control products to name a few. Above all let us not buy just because we have the ability to spend but conserve and buy only if it is an absolute essential. Simply buying new things and throwing out the old is going to clog the refills and dumps. Recycle the waste and prepare home composts. Paper and other recyclables can be segregated and sent to community recyclers.

If we become conscious, then there are many ways by which we can take care of our planet earth. A beginning can be made starting this Earth Day.

 Easy Recipes for you

Spinach Pasta/Noodles/Spaghetti

Ingredients

Half a bunch of Spinach leaves, blanched in boiling water and cooled in cold water and then ground to a paste.

• 2 tbsps of Oil
• 6 Garlic pods cut fine
• 1 Red bell pepper.
• 3-4 leaves of the greens of spring onions cut into small strips.
• Half cup of fresh cream
• 2 tbsp of any cheese spread
• 1 packet of Hakka noodles/Spaghetti/pasta and salt to taste and half tsp pepper powder.

Method

1. Boil water with a little salt and when it boils immerse the noodles. Keep boiling till it is AL DENTE i.e. half cooked. Then strain and keep noodles on a plate. Put Oil on it and set aside.
2. In a pan put oil, put garlic pieces, bell pepper. When it cooks slightly then add pureed spinach.
3. Add cheese spread, cream, pepper powder, salt and the greens. Just while serving heat the mixture again and add noodles to it.
4. Give a toss and enjoy

News from the Veg World

By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the Arctic Ocean

Hundreds of billions of pieces of plastic are floating in the once pristine Arctic, according to a new study, in a startling indication of how polluted the planet has become.

While most Arctic waters were found to have little plastic debris, researchers discovered two major “dead ends” the seafood we eat.

In a paper in the journal Science Advances, an international team of scientists led by Dr Andres Cozar, of Cadiz University, described how they had sailed across much of the ice-free waters of the Arctic Circle, trawling for plastic. “The total load of floating plastic for the ice-free waters of the Arctic Ocean was estimated to range from around 100 to 1200 tons, with 400 tons composed of an estimated 300 billion plastic items as a mid-range estimate,” the paper said.

The most polluted areas in the northernmost and easternmost parts of the Greenland and Barents seas were found to contain hundreds of thousands of pieces per sq km. “This should be a wakeup call to everyone,” said Sue Kinsey, senior officer at the Marine Conservation Society.

Source: The Independent

Content Team

Kenya Vegetarian Club

PO Box 1390, Obote Road, Kisumu 40100, Kenya

Email: kvc@shrivedant.com / website: www.kenyavegclub.com