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Via Crossfit:

Volume 9 Number 2 1997
Why I Am Not a Vegetarian
by Dr. William T. Jarvis

Vegetarianism has taken on a “political correctness” comparable to the respectability it had in the last century, when many social and scientific progressives advocated it. Today, crusaders extol meatless eating not only as healthful but also as a solution to world hunger and as a safeguard of “Mother Earth.” The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) aggressively attacks the use of animal foods and has proposed its own food-groups model, which excludes all animal products.

I disclaimed vegetarianism after many years of observance. Although the arguments in favor of it appear compelling, I have learned to be suspicious, and to search for hidden agendas, when I evaluate claims of the benefits of vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is riddled with delusional thinking from which even scientists and medical professionals are not immune.

http://www.acsh.org/publications/priorities/0902/vegetarian.html

Don't get me wrong: I know that meatless diets can be healthful, even desirable, for some people. For example: (a) Men with an iron-loading gene are better off without red meat, because it contains heme iron, which is highly absorbable and can increase their risk of heart disease. (b) Because vegetarian diets are likely to contain less saturated fat than nonvegetarian diets, they may be preferable for persons with familial hypercholesterolemia. (c) Vegetables contain phytochemicals that appear protective against colorectal cancer. (d) Homocysteinemia (elevated plasma homocysteine) approximately doubles the risk of coronary artery disease. Several congenital and nutritional disorders, including deficiencies of vitamins B6 and B12 and folic acid, can cause this condition. Since folic acid occurs mostly in vegetables, low intakes of the vitamin are less likely among vegetarians than among nonvegetarians. (e) Some people find that being a vegetarian helps to control their weight. Vegetarianism tends to facilitate weight control because it is a form of food restriction; and in our overfed society, food restriction is a plus unless it entails a deficit of some essential nutrient.

However, one need not eliminate meat from one's diet for any of the foregoing reasons. Apparently, it is ample consumption of fruits and vegetables, not the exclusion of meat, that makes vegetarianism healthful.

Dog Day Afternoon?

The term “vegetarian” is misleading, for it is not a name for people who favor vegetable consumption, but a code word for those who disfavor or protest the consumption of animal foods. The neologism anticarnivorist better characterizes the majority of those who call themselves vegetarians. I call myself a “vegetable enthusiast,” because I strongly encourage eating lots of vegetables, including legumes, whole grains, and fruits. I believe that these foods are desirable not only because of their high nutrient density and low caloric density, but also because of aesthetic and gustatory factors. Being a vegetable enthusiast doesn't entail rejecting the use of meat or animal products.

Most people who categorize vegetarians identify at least five different kinds, based on which types of animal food they consume: Semivegetarians consume dairy products, eggs, fish, and chicken; pesco-vegetarians consume dairy products, eggs, and fish; lacto-ovo-vegetarians, dairy products and eggs; ovo-vegetarians, eggs; and vegans, no animal foods. From a behavioral standpoint, I categorize vegetarians as either pragmatic or ideologic. A pragmatic vegetarian is one whose dietary behavior stems from objective health considerations (e.g., hypercholesterolemia or obesity). Pragmatic vegetarians are rational, rather than emotional, in their approach to making lifestyle decisions. In contrast, vegetarianism is a “matter of principle” for ideologic vegetarians; its appropriateness is a given.

One can spot ideologic vegetarians by their exaggerations of the benefits of vegetarianism, their lack of skepticism, and their failure to recognize (or their glossing over of) the potential risks even of extreme vegetarian diets. Ideologic vegetarians make a pretense of being scientific, but they approach the subject of vegetarianism more like lawyers than scientists. Promoters of vegetarianism gather data selectively and gear their arguments toward discrediting information that is contrary to their dogma. This approach to defending a position is suitable for a debate, but it cannot engender scientific understanding.

Because of the influence of my Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) environment, I practiced vegetarianism for many years. My wife and I even tried to give up consuming all animal products, but this didn't work. We sometimes muse aloud about the morning we put soymilk on our breakfast cereal. We ended up eating the cereal with a fork because we found the mixture repulsive. We had another unforgettable experience when we ate with a group of vegetarian hippies in the Oregon woods. We were there at their request to advise them on vegetarian eating. They had already prepared the worst-looking vegetarian stew I have ever seen or tasted. It consisted of raw peanuts and a variety of half-cooked vegetables. After eating it, I had heartburn for hours. Digestive distress is legendary among SDAs.

Reasons for adopting vegetarianism can be very personal. Some years ago I shared a podium for several days with a vegetarian. It became clear from our informal conversations that he was not religious; so I asked him why he had opted for vegetarianism. He told me a touching story about having been a lonely boy whose closest companion was his pet dog. He said that, peering into the dog's eyes one day, he had come to see the animal as a fellow being. Soon he had applied this view to all animals, and since he could not bear the thought of eating his dog, he could no longer eat other animals.

North by Northwest

Darla Erhardt, R.D., M.P.H., listed five vegetarian postulates: (1) All forms of life are sacred, and all creatures have a right to live out their natural lives. (2) It is anatomically clear that God did not design humans to eat meat. (3) Slaughter is repugnant and degrading. (4) Raising animals for meat is inefficient and misuses available land. (5) Animal flesh is unhealthful because it contains toxins, virulent bacteria, uric acid, impure fluids, and the wrong kinds of nutrients. 1 I find all of these axioms flawed:

1. The belief that all life is sacred can lead to absurdities such as allowing mosquitoes to spread malaria, or vipers to run loose on one's premises. Inherent in the idea that all life is sacred is the supposition that all forms of life have equal value. The natural world reveals hierarchies in the food chain, the dominance of certain species over others. And most creatures in the wild die (usually the victim of a predator) long before they have reached the genetic limit on their longevity.

2. The multifarious dietary practices of human populations belie the notion that humans are designed to be vegetarians rather than omnivores. For example, Australian aborigines consume insect larvae and reptiles, Eskimos eat raw meat, and traditional Hindus are vegetarians.

The first SDA physician, John Harvey Kellogg (1852Ð1943), was a vegetarian zealot. Alonzo Baker, Ph.D., his former private secretary, told me of an incident that occurred circa 1939: Kellogg awakened him in the middle of the night and ordered him to board the morning train for Cleveland. There, Weston Price, D.D.S., who had just returned from the mysterious high north, was to give a report on Eskimo dietary habits. When Baker returned, he informed Kellogg of Price's finding that Eskimos ate raw meat almost exclusively (eskimo literally means “raw meat eater”). Kellogg accused Price of lying.

Perhaps Kellogg disbelieved Price partly because it was widely known that the 1898 Yukon gold rushers had suffered extensively from scurvy. People generally believed that Eskimos derived their vitamin C from berries the snow had preserved. In fact, Eskimos derive vitamin C from the raw meat of animals who synthesize ascorbic acid. If they had cooked their meat, they would have developed scurvy like the gold rushers. (When I visited Northwest Territories, Canada, in 1973, a Franciscan monk who raised beautiful vegetables in a greenhouse in Pelly Bay told me that the Inuits, or North American Eskimos, didn't like their taste and wouldn't eat them.)

3. Whether something is repugnant is highly individual. Some Hindus who will not eat animal foods readily drink their own urine for the sake of health. And what is repugnant —for example, chores such as changing a baby's diaper or caring for sick people —is not necessarily wrong. Whether such activities are degrading is a matter of opinion. That most prey are eaten while they are still alive testifies to the heartlessness of nature compared to slaughterhouses, where death is generally quick and painless.

4. The idea that animal-raising is an inefficient way to produce food is half-baked. Animals pull their weight when it comes to land-use and food-production efficiency: They graze on lands unsuitable for crop-growing, eat those portions of plants that are considered inedible (e.g., corn stalks and husks), and provide byproducts and services that ease human burdens. 2 Many nomadic populations survive on lands that lack farming potential by feeding on animals whose nourishment is coarse vegetation humans can't digest.

5. The postulate that toxins render meat unfit as food also lacks merit. Plants also contain naturally occurring toxicants, many of which are far more deadly than those of animal flesh. 3 Vegetarian evangelists who revel in portraying animal foods as unhealthful disregard the fact that those societies that consume the most animal products enjoy record longevity. They also overlook the reality that the animals they brand as diseased are herbivores whose diet consists entirely of raw vegetation. These animals develop many diseases “despite” becoming vegans after weaning.

Ideologic Vegetarianism

Much of my professional life has been spent studying health fraud, quackery, and related misinformation, and their impact on people's lives. I have discerned a recurrent sequence of behaviors: First, the prospective vegetarian eliminates reportedly unhealthful foods from his or her diet, beginning with foods that society considers “bad for you” (e.g., sugar, coffee, and white bread). Next, if concerns about food safety grow to neurotic proportions, the person scrutinizes labels and worries about ingredients indicated by terms he doesn't understand. Then he may patronize health food stores, where clerks and publications can feed his phobias. He may treat modern foods as poisonous. Finally, if he deems vegetarianism not restrictive enough, the “health foodist” may turn to veganism. In my opinion, it is at this point that vegetarianism becomes hazardous, especially for children.

The case of Sonja and Khachadour Atikian illustrates what can happen to those seduced by ideologic vegetarianism. The Atikians were ŽmigrŽs from Lebanon who —because of unrelenting media barrages focusing on environmental pollution, diet, and health —became overly concerned about the safety and healthfulness of modern foods. Sonja Atikian began shopping at health food stores instead of supermarkets. Gerhardt Hanswille, a self-styled herbalist from Germany, taught classes in the rear of a health food store she patronized. Although Hanswille was not licensed to practice medicine, he saw 40 to 45 “patients” day. He treated Ms. Atikian for a sore knee, and she took some of his courses. Hanswille taught that: (a) people should not kill animals, nor consume animal products; (b) God intended cow's milk to be food for calves, not human babies; (c) eating eggs deprives hens of fulfilling their divinely intended role as mothers; (d) people should not poison themselves or the earth with the unnatural products of modern living; (e) using herbs both as food and as medicine is God's way; and (f) the medicines of doctors are poisons. “Choose whom you will believe,” said Hanswille, “me or the doctors. You can't have it both ways.”

Ms. Atikian chose poorly. Except for eating fish occasionally, she followed the herbalist's advice during pregnancy. She delivered a healthy 8.2-lb girl named Loreie. Hanswille convinced the Atikians that the newborn would become a superbaby if they gave her a vegetarian diet of raw, organic foods. He dissuaded them from having the infant immunized and from continuing to see a pediatrician. And he induced them to rely on him for healthcare advice.

Four and a half months after her birth, Loreie's weight was still at the 75th percentile, but when she was 11 months old, breast-feeding —her sole source of animal food —discontinued. Fed only fruits, vegetables, and rice, she eventually stopped growing, slept more and more, and had more and more infections. As the baby's health spiraled downward, Hanswille assured the parents that her decline was merely “the poisons coming out of her body” and that she would eventually become the superbaby they desired. In 1987, 17-month-old Loreie died of bronchial pneumonia complicated by severe malnutrition. She weighed 111/4 lbs. The Atikians were charged with failing to provide their daughter with the “necessaries of life.” Their defense was that they had truly believed they had been providing the “necessaries of life” when they followed Hanswille's advice. The judge acquitted them after the discovery that the prosecution had failed to provide important information supporting the couple's story.

Let's run through some other examples of ideologic vegetarian extremism:

* It caused mental and growth retardation in two boys underfed from birth to ages 3 and 5. Their mother had become a vegetarian, later eliminated sugar and dairy products from her diet, and eventually adopted a macrobiotic diet (see “Peculiar Vegetarianism” ). 4

* Ten cases of nutritional rickets were reported among infants (most of whom were breast-fed) of strict-vegetarian mothers who had not sought medical counsel during pregnancy but had obtained advice from health food stores. 5

* Scurvy and rickets occurred in two boys, 11/2 and 21/2 years old, whose parents were adherents of the Zen Macrobiotic diet (see Peculiar Vegetarianism below). 6

* A 36-year-old former college professor attempted to become a ” breatharian” —one who supposedly feeds on air alone —and died of malnutrition. First he became a vegetarian, then a fruitarian, then a ” liquidarian” (consuming juices only), and finally, a would-be breatharian. 7

* A 2-month-old boy died because his mother, following the invalid recommendation for colic in Adelle Davis's Let's Have Healthy Children, overdosed him with potassium. 8 In a television interview, the mother said that, as she became increasingly estranged toward conventional medicine, she had adopted vegetarianism and then veganism.

* A 24-year-old woman who was head of San Jose State University's student art program died after taking an extract of pennyroyal to induce an abortion. She was described as “a strict vegetarian who was involved in holistic medicine.” 9

For the ideologist, vegetarianism is a hygienic religion. It enables believers to practice self-denial. As a religion, vegetarianism attracts the guilt-ridden. It attracts masochists because it gives guilt a boost. And it seduces the unskeptical by causing guilt and/or by instilling false guilt. Guilt leads to self-denial, even asceticism. The belief that salvation is attainable by eschewing worldly pleasures marked the asceticism of early Christian zealots. Similarly, health neurotics with medical problems seem to believe that the more they restrict their alimentary pleasures, the more their health will improve. Fasting, austere diets, enemas, and the ingestion of bitter herbs are consistent with the psychological needs of health neurotics, many of whom shun those voices of conventional medicine and public health that might disenchant them.

Of course, I don't blame ideologic vegetarianism per se entirely for tragedies such as those outlined above. Mental or emotional disorders apparently figure in many instances. In such cases, extremism is more to blame. This doesn't take ideologic vegetarianism off the hook, however, for it can fuel or ignite psychological problems.

Eating by the Book?

SDA vegetarianism is rooted in the Bible, according to which for food God gave humans “all plants that bear seed everywhere on earth, and every tree bearing fruit that yields seed” (Genesis 1:29). Meat is said to have become a part of the human diet after the Flood, when all plant life had been destroyed: “Every creature that lives and moves shall be food for you” (Genesis 9:3). Adventists are taught that the introduction of meat into the human diet at that time decreased the human life span from the more than 900 years of the first humans to today's “three-score and ten.”

However, the Bible warns against confusing dietary practices with moral behavior:

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace. (Romans 14:17)

Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink. (Colossians 2:16)

One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables, let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats. (Romans 14:2-4)

It also seems to condemn vegetarianism:

The Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some in the church will turn away from Christ and become eager followers of teachers with devil inspired ideas. These teachers will tell lies with straight faces and do it so often that their consciences won't even bother them. They will say that it is wrong to be married and wrong to eat meat, even though God gave these things to well-taught Christians to enjoy and be thankful for. For everything God made is good, and we may eat it gladly if we are thankful for it. ( I Timothy 4:1-4, Living Bible)

SDA Church pioneer Ellen G. White (1827Ð1915) was a proponent of vegetarianism even though she did not practice it herself. Like the Grahamites of her time, she taught that gradually the earth would become more corrupted, diseases and calamities worse, and the food —particularly animal foods —unsafe. In 1902 she wrote that the time might come when the use of milk should be discontinued. Although White was an advocate of science and chiefly responsible for making SDA healthcare a science-based enterprise, clearly she did not anticipate twentieth-century advances in public health and medical science. Despite the record longevity now enjoyed by people in the developed nations, vegetarian zealots within the church caught up in the doomsday hysteria of the 1990s have decided that the time has come to give up all animal foods and are fervidly preaching veganism.

East of Eden

It is possible to provide all essential nutrients except vitamin B12 without using animal foods. On the other hand, it is possible to provide all essential nutrients with a diet composed only of meat. Personal dietary appropriateness —including the value of a diet as a source of essential nutrients and its value as a preventative —for oneself and one's significant others is the foremost dietary consideration of pragmatic vegetarians. In contrast, the overriding dietary consideration of ideologic vegetarians varies with the particular ideology. Typically, their motivation is a blend of physical, psychosocial, societal, and moral, often religious, concerns.

A continual problem for SDAs who espouse the “back to Eden” ideology is the absence of a non-animal food source of vitamin B12. A vegetarian Registered Dietitian who wrote a column for a church periodical asked me if I thought vegans could derive vitamin B12 from organic vegetables that were unwashed before ingestion. I opined that it would be better to eat animal foods than fecal residues. She agreed.

A perennial assumption among vegetarians is that vegetarianism increases longevity. In the last century, Grahamites —devotees of the Christian “hygienic” philosophy of Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) —taught that adherence to the Garden of Eden lifestyle would eventuate in humankind's reclamation of the potential for superlongevity, such as that attributed to Adam (930 years) or Methuselah (969 years). I discussed this matter 25 years ago with an SDA physician who was dean of the Loma Linda University (LLU) School of Health. Although he admitted that lifelong SDA vegetarians had not exhibited spectacular longevity, he professed that longevity of the antediluvian sort might become possible over several generations of vegetarianism. SDA periodicals publicize centenarians and often attribute their longevity to the SDA lifestyle. However, of 1200 people who reached the century mark between 1932 and 1952, only four were vegetarians. 10 I continue to ask: Where on Earth is there an exceptionally longevous population of vegetarians? Hindus have practiced vegetarianism for many generations but have not set longevity records. At best, the whole of scientific data from nutrition-related research supports vegetarianism only tentatively. The incidence of colorectal cancer among nonvegetarian Mormons is lower than that of SDAs. 11 A review of populations at low risk for cancer showed that World War I veterans who never smoked had the lowest risk of all. 12 As data accumulate, optimism that diet is a significant factor in cancer appears to be diminishing. An analysis of 13 case-control studies of colorectal cancer and dietary fiber showed that, for the studies with the best research methods, risk estimates for dietary fiber and colorectal cancer were closer to zero.13 A pooled analysis of studies of fat intake and the risk of breast cancer that included SDA data showed no association. 14

A meatless diet can facilitate weight control because it is a form of food restriction. But one need not eliminate meat to maintain a healthy weight, and there are many overweight vegetarians. Surely prudence and selectivity overshadow mere abstention from consuming animal products.

Daniel's Diet

According to the first chapter of the Book of Daniel, Israel's captive whiz kids —” well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in all knowledge, and understanding science” (verse 4) —after subsisting on just vegetables and water for ten days, impressed the Babylonian king as far superior to all the magicians and astrologers ” in all matters of wisdom and understanding” (verse 20). Many ideological vegetarians credit vegetables for group's physical and mental improvement (see “A 'Biblical' Alternativist Method”). A more credible proposition is that abstention from drinking wine caused the improvement, which the story ascribes to God.

In an interview on the school's Christian radio station in the mid-1970s, an LLU nutrition graduate student (who was not an SDA) claimed that vegetarianism produced superior intellects. To make her case, she stated:

Linus Pauling says that vitamin C improves intelligence. Vegetarians get more vitamin C in their diets than meat-eaters. The probable reason why George Bernard Shaw and Leo Tolstoy were brilliant was because they were vegetarians.

The interviewer agreed, extolling the health and intellect of vegetarians. That Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian went unmentioned during the interview. Also unmentioned was that Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and other eminent moralists were not vegetarians.

Animal behavioral scientists have noted that, to survive, meat-eating predators must outsmart their vegetarian prey. However, I believe that all such theories break down because of the difficulty of defining intelligence.

SDAs note that meat-eating predators such as wolves and lions have tremendous speed but lack endurance. However, Arctic sled dogs that run the 1200-mile Ididarod cover more than a hundred miles per day —a feat no horse, mule or ox can accomplish.

The idea that vegetarians have superior physical endurance was reinforced in 1974 when a group of male vegetarian runners called “the vegetarian seven” set a 24-hour distance record. This inspired an undergraduate dietetics major to seek me out as a coach for a group of seven female vegetarian long-distance runners. I asked her what their motivations were —something every coach needs to know. She said they wanted to demonstrate the superiority of a vegetarian diet. I asked who would be representing the meat-eaters. She said that, because the event would not be a standard competition, no one would represent the meat-eaters. I revealed to her that three of the male runners had not been vegetarians until training for the record-setting event but merely had pledged to become so. I also told her: that genetic factors, principally the capacity for oxygen uptake, determine distance-running ability; that whether a diet is vegetarian is inconsequential to distance-running ability; and that a 24-hour run is a perilous way to try proving vegetarian superiority. “What will you do,” I inquired, ” if seven meat-eating, beer-drinking atheists who are world-class runners decide to beat your record?” She got the point. And although she became an accomplished amateur runner, she didn't use her success to propagandize for vegetarianism.

John Harvey Kellogg sought to prove that vegetarians were physically superior by fielding a Battle Creek College football team, which he personally coached. According to a former player, “Brother” Wright, whenever Kellogg's players lost, he railed at them for cheating on their diets and held them captive until one would say he had broken training rules and eaten meat. Wright stated that sometimes a player would eventually lie that he had eaten meat just to get the team released. He described Kellogg's efforts as “a crusade to prove the superiority of vegetarianism.” Ellen G. White's condemnation of this approach to proving SDA superiority led to a policy restricting interscholastic sports by Adventist schools.

Odorless Doo-doo?

The John Harvey Kellogg character in the 1995 film Road to Wellville stated that his feces had no more odor than that of “freshly baked biscuits.” One evening I offered a ride home from the university to an elderly colleague, an avid vegetarian. Upon entering my car, he declared: “When I drink carrot juice, my bowel movements have no odor.”

Before I could respond, he said: “Rabbits eat lots of carrots, and their feces have no odor.” The thought of someone running around sniffing little piles of rabbit doo-doo almost made me laugh, but I didn't want to be disrespectful. His idea that rabbits eat many carrots intrigued me. I had raised them in my boyhood and discovered that, despite the passion for carrots shown by Bugs Bunny, real bunnies are not particularly fond of carrots. Furthermore, wild rabbits seldom would have an opportunity to eat carrots. Luckily the ride was short.

The late Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that defecation is most closely associated with humankind's animality and mortality. 15 During a Bible class at an SDA school, I was taught that people did not defecate in the Garden of Eden but utilized the food they ingested in its entirety. Apparently, foul odors did not befit Paradise. (Perhaps the persistence of the miasmatic theory of disease —the theory that diseases are due to foul-smelling emanations from the earth —well into the nineteenth century, when SDA beliefs were developed, reinforced the idea of a poopless Paradise.) I was also taught that roughage became part of the human diet after the Fall. Allegedly, this broadening of the diet to include “the herb of the field” (Genesis 3:18, King James version) occurred because humans were now under the ” death sentence” caused by original sin. Whether this reportedly was a voluntary dietary change or part of the curse of being ousted from Paradise is debatable. Some versions of the Bible imply that “the herb of the field” merely meant “wild foods” (New English Version), not a new source of food.

Heavy “PETAing”

In the last century, the pacifist movement was vegetarian because of the belief that meat-eating animals were fierce and vegetarian animals were docile. The British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley claimed that the French revolution had been bloody and the English revolution bloodless because the French ate more meat than the English. 16 Such invalid notions have been discredited, but not abandoned. Some boxers still eat raw meat or drink blood before a fight to increase their aggressiveness.

People who fancy themselves morally superior often have a mission to convert humanity to their worldview. The most violent ideologic vegetarians are the animal-rights activists, who have destroyed animal research facilities and threatened researchers' lives. Animal-rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) consider animals on par with humans. On April 24, 1996, PETA's Ingrid Newkirk appeared on the television newsmagazine Day & Date opposing sport fishing. She began her argument by seeking commiseration for suffocating fish. Then she said that fish were unhealthful food because they contained mercury and other environmental contaminants. The solution, according to Newkirk, was vegetarianism. Her opponent, a TV talk-show host, pressed her into acknowledging the PETA creed. The talk-show host described an on-air encounter she had had with another PETA representative. A scenario had been presented in which the representative's daughter needed a vital organ from a beloved household pet in order to survive. The ethical question had been whether the child's life was worth more than the pet's. The PETA representative had held that the child had no more value than the pet. Newkirk did not contest the assertion that PETA considers the life of a child no more valuable than that of a pet.

When an LLU medical team transplanted a baboon's heart into an infant whose pseudonym was “Baby Fae,” animal-rights activists picketed the medical center. They seemed disillusioned with SDAs, who have no qualms about prioritizing humans over animals. In October 1992, after a pig's liver had been transplanted into a 30-year-old woman to enable her to survive until a human liver was secured, a representative of PCRM engaged in a televised debate with one of the physicians who had performed the transplant. The representative lamented that the pig's consent had not been obtained.

PCRM appears to be largely a personal forum for its leader, Neal Barnard, M.D., and is said to be substantially funded by PETA. (In fiscal year 1994, donations and grants to PCRM reportedly totaled more than a million dollars. 17) Barnard extols the longevity value of vegetarianism. He has claimed: “It's not genetics or fate that gives people long, healthy lives and cuts other people short; for those who want to take care of themselves, it all comes down to diet.” The surgeon argued that pigs were killed daily for meat, including their livers. The PCRM doctor retorted that the consumption of animal fat (which is highly saturated) was responsible for most deaths in modern society. He cited a study conducted by Colin Campbell in China. Campbell had focused on the relative morbidity for certain diseases without pointing out that life expectancy in China (66 years) is lower that that in the United States (75 years). 18

Because they consider themselves morally superior, many vegetarians exhibit no reservations against using mind-control techniques or terrorism to actualize their agenda. Mind control includes using information selectively to “educate” people about the alleged superiority of vegetarianism. It may also include traumatizing people emotionally to condition them against the use of animal foods. Early in my teaching experience, I attended a meeting of SDA secondary school health teachers where many said that they converted students to vegetarianism by taking them on field trips to slaughterhouses to witness the bloodshed. This strategy offended me even though I was a practicing vegetarian at the time. Having studied for years how people have been manipulated by cults and quacks, it is now clear to me that the slaughterhouse tactic is a form of mind control —that it is as unethical as discouraging little girls from having sex by inducing them to watch a difficult childbirth.

Terrorism involves trying to coerce people to behave in ways the perpetrators desire. In December 1994, to keep people from having turkey for Christmas dinner, self-described animal-rights terrorists claimed they had injected rat poison into supermarket turkeys in Vancouver, British Columbia. The scare caused the destruction of more than $1 million in turkeys. Apparently, the activists had not foreseen the ensuing slaughter of turkeys as replacements.

Disclosure

Research into vegetarianism by vegetarians always involves at least unconscious bias. All humans have entrenched beliefs —beliefs whose rootedness makes doing related scientific research unwise. Kenneth J. Rothman, Dr.P.H., referred to SDAs in a recent discussion of conflicts of interest in research:

We might expect conflict of interest concerns to be raised, for example, about Seventh Day Adventists who are studying the health effects of the comparatively abstemious lifestyle of their fellow Adventists. Whereas policies at [the Journal of the American Medical Association] and The New England Journal of Medicine emphasize financial conflicts, Science asks authors to divulge “any relationships that they believe could be construed as causing a conflict of interest, whether or not the individual believes that is actually so.” In other words, to comply with disclosure policies at Science, authors might need to disclose to editors their religion and sexual orientation along with their financial portfolio. 19

Although Rothman argues for letting work standing on its own merit rather than judging cynically any possible connection to a funding source, his example makes the point that motivations more powerful than money can distort data. Science fraud can be extremely difficult to detect, because the perpetrators control the information. As Mark Twain observed, “Figures don't lie, but liars figure!”

I don't believe that all research done by vegetarians is untrustworthy. My experience with the ongoing Seventh-day Adventist Health Study (SDAHS), a series of studies conducted from LLU School of Public Health, has been largely positive. Its chief researcher, the late Roland Phillips, M.D., Dr.P.H., was an outstanding scientist in whose objectivity I had the utmost confidence. He recognized the problem of the influence of social expectations on SDAs responding to questions about their lifestyle. Adventist groupthink makes it likely that SDAs will underreport activities disfavored by the church community (e.g., meat-eating, coffee drinking, and imbibing) and over-report those that are approved (e.g., dining meatlessly and exercising). Phillips seemed to feel that the benefits of vegetarianism per se were limited, and that one must take account of heredity, socioeconomic status, and the total SDA lifestyle. Abstention from smoking, access to state-of-the-art healthcare, and strong social support probably are responsible for most of the health benefits SDAs enjoy. The main problem with SDA vegetarian science is how the scientific information is used. To paraphrase an old Pennsylvania Dutch saying: Among SDAs, when the news about vegetarianism and health is good, “we hear it ever” ; when the news is not good, “we hear it never.”

I have received numerous reports from SDA health professionals, and have personal knowledge of other cases, in which church members' overconfidence in vegetarianism prevented them from obtaining effective medical care. Some reports have involved true believers in vegetarianism who were members of physicians' families. Some denied symptoms, and their denial kept them from seeking effective intervention in time. Others rejected medical care for “natural remedies” that emphasized diet. The attitudes evidenced are consistent with those identified in cancer patients who had turned to quackery because they believed they had brought the disease upon themselves and could cure it by “natural” practices. 20 The SDA Church has bent over backward to document the benefits of the SDA lifestyle and to persuade members to adopt vegetarian diets. I would like to see the church seek earnestly to expose the harm that its vegetarian teachings have caused its members. Alas, there's the rub with ideologic vegetarianism: Objectivity always takes a back seat to proselytism.

The data suggest that most SDAs are reasonable in their approach to vegetarianism. In the 1970s, the SDAHS revealed that only one percent were vegans. 21 This may change as vegetarianism becomes more popular in the general population. SDAs tend to be overachievers. If we regard something as “good,” we strive to adopt it completely. If we consider something “bad,” we avoid it completely. SDA vegetarian evangelists have become more aggressive in recent years because of the widespread belief in the SDA community that doomsday is nigh.

I recall an SDA church leader's fitting reply to the question of whether he ate meat: “I eat just enough to keep me from becoming a fanatic!”

One Less “Ism”

I gave up vegetarianism because I found that commitment thereto meant surrendering the objectivity that is essential to the personal and professional integrity of a scientist. As a health educator, I feel I have an obligation to endeavor to stick to whatever unvarnished facts scientific research uncovers. I can support pragmatic vegetarianism, but I believe that crusading vegetarian ideologues are dangerous to themselves and to society.

ACSH advisor William T. Jarvis, Ph.D., is a professor of public health and preventive medicine at Loma Linda University, founder and president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, and coeditor of The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America (1993). This article is an adaptation of one published by Prometheus Books (Amherst, New York) in the November/December 1996 issue of Nutrition & Health Forum newsletter.

1. D. Erhardt, “The New Vegetarians, Part OneÑVegetarianism and its Medical Consequences,” Nutrition Today, November/December, 1973.

2. R. Spitzer. No Need For Hunger. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1981.

3. National Academy of Sciences. Toxicants Occurring Naturally In Foods. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1973.

4. J. Wood. “Mother of Starved Children Asks Permission to Give Birth Again,” San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, March 27, 1983, p. A5.

5. Journal of Nutrition Education 1981; 13:26.

6. Newsweek, September 18, 1972, p. 71.

7. “Temple Beautiful DietÑDeath for David Blume,” (AP) San Bernardino Sun, October 15, 1979, p. A-3.

8. C.V. Wetli and J.H. Davis. JAMA 1978; 240:1339.

9. San Jose Mercury News, August 20, 1994.

10. O. Segerberg. Living to Be 100: 1200 Who Did and How They Did It. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.

11. J.L. Lyon, M.R. Klauber, J.W. Gardner, and C.R. Smart, “Cancer Incidence in Mormons and Non-Mormons in Utah, 1966-70,” N Engl J Med 1976; 294:129-133 (p.132).

12. J.E. Enstrom. “Cancer Mortality among Low-Risk Populations,” CA — A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 1979; 29:352-61.

13. C.M. Friedenreich, R.F. Brant, and E. Riboli. “Influence of Methodological Factors in a Pooled Analysis of 13 Case-Control Studies of Colorectal Cancer and Dietary Fiber,” Epidemiology 1994; 5:66-79.

14. D.J. Hunter et al. “Cohort Studies of Fat Intake and the Risk of Breast CancerÑA Pooled Analysis,” New Engl J Med 1996; 334:356-61.

15. E. Becker. The Denial of Death. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973.

16. J. Whorton. “Tempest in a Flesh-Pot: Development of a Physiological Rationale for Vegetarianism,” Journal of the History of Medicine, April 1977, pp. 119-120.

17. Good Medicine, Spring 1995.

18. The Population Reference Bureau, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1988.

19. K. Rothman. “Conflict of Interest: The New McCarthyism in Science,” JAMA 1993; 269 (21):2782-4.

20. B. Cassileth et al. “Contemporary Treatments in Cancer Medicine,” Ann Intern Med 1984; 101:105-12.

21. “Researchers Release Adventist Health Study Results,” Pacific Union Recorder, March 12, 1979.

* From Raso J. The Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare: Alternative Medicine, Paranormal Healing, and Related Methods. 2nd ed. Atlanta: The Georgia Council Against Health Fraud; 1997.

Peculiar Vegetarianism

diet #7 (Diet No. 7): “Healing regimen” recommended by George Ohsawa (see “macrobiotics” ) in Zen Macrobiotics: The Art of Rejuvenation and Longevity (1965). It principally involves restricting dietary intake (including water) to brown rice and particular kinds of tea (” as little as possible” ) for a period of one week to an indefinite number of months. The purported objective of diet #7 and the nine other diets of Zen Macrobiotics is to maintain balance of yin and yang.

macrobiotics (formerly called “Zen Macrobiotics” ): Quasireligious movement and health-centered lifestyle whose centerpiece is a mystical form of vegetarianism. The thrust of macrobiotic nutrition is regulation of the intake of two alleged elementary forms of energy: yin and yang. Categorizing a food as yin or yang depends largely on characteristics directly cognizable by the senses and is unrelated to nutrient content. Proponents ascribe the modern version of macrobiotics either to Ishizuka Sagen (1850Ð1910), a Japanese physician and author of A Chemical Nutritional Theory of Long Life, or to George Ohsawa (1893Ð1966), whose names included: Georges Ohsawa, Nyoichi (also spelled “Nyoiti” ) Sakurazawa, and Yukikazu Sakurazawa. The leading exponent of macrobiotics is Michio Kushi, according to whom “Natural and Macrobiotic Medicine” encompasses: (a) astrological diagnosis; (b) aura and vibrational diagnosis, allegedly based on the color, frequency, “heat,”and intensity of a one's “radiating aura” and “vibrations”; (c) consciousness and thought diagnosis, a variation of so-called mind reading; (d) environmental diagnosis, whose theory posits “celestial influences”; (e) meridian diagnosis, which purportedly reveals valuable information about “internal energy flow”; (f) pressure diagnosis, which supposedly reveals “stagnation of the streaming energy”; and (g) spiritual diagnosis, an apparent variation of aura analysis (probably rei-so).

Zen Macrobiotics: Early form of macrobiotics, endorsed by Herman and Cornelia Aihara. The Aiharas were students of George Ohsawa (see “macrobiotics”) and coauthored Natural Healing from Head to Toe: Traditional Macrobiotic Remedies (Avery Publishing Group, Inc., 1994). They also founded, in 1974, the Vega Study Center, in Oroville, California. The school teaches Zen Macrobiotics.

A “Biblical” Alternativist Method

Daniel's Diet: Alleged medical panacea and “higher way of eating” promoted by microbiologist Robert O. Young, Ph.D., author of Colloids of Light & Life, Profiles of Microscopy, Sick & Tired, and One Sickness —One Disease —One Treatment (1995). In the latter book, Young holds that mycosis, or fungal infection, or over-acidification of the body (or blood), is the only disease. He further holds that an “inverted” way of living and eating, especially excessive consumption of sugars and animal protein, causes such over-acidification. Daniel's Diet excludes all foods except avocados, lemons, limes, tomatoes, vegetables (e.g., buckwheat and soybeans), dark-green vegetable juice, tofu (bean curd), millet, “sprouted” or soaked seeds and nuts, oils, sea salt, herbal teas, specific dietary supplements (e.g., Pycnogenol®), and LiquidLightning Oxygen-O3 (a “formula” purportedly beneficial for “oxygen deprivation”). The diet is the namesake of a Jewish “prophet” and fortuneteller of the sixth century b.c.e. According to the Book of Daniel, in the Old Testament, Daniel refused to consume meat and wine assigned to him by a Babylonian king, requested vegetables and water, and, after eating only vegetables for ten days, appeared healthier and stronger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/national/27LIBE.html

October 27, 2003
Libertarians Pursue New Goal: State of Their Own
By PAM BELLUCK

EENE, N.H. — A few things stand out about this unprepossessing city. It just broke its own Guinness Book world record for the most lighted jack-o'-lanterns with 28,952. It claims to have the world's widest Main Street.

And recently, Keene became the home of Justin Somma, a 26-year-old freelance copywriter from Suffern, N.Y., and a foot soldier in an upstart political movement. That movement, the Free State Project, aims to make all of New Hampshire a laboratory for libertarian politics by recruiting libertarian-leaning people from across the country to move to New Hampshire and throw their collective weight around. Leaders of the project figure 20,000 people would do the trick, and so far 4,960 have pledged to make the move.

The idea is to concentrate enough fellow travelers in a single state to jump-start political change. Members, most of whom have met only over the Internet, chose New Hampshire over nine other states in a heated contest that lasted months.

(The other contenders were Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. One frequently asked question on the project's Web site was “Can't you make a warmer state an option?”)

Once here, they plan to field candidates in elections and become active in schools and community groups, doing all they can to sow the libertarian ideals of curbing taxes, minimizing regulation of guns and drugs, privatizing schools and reducing government programs.

“We want to make New Hampshire our home, and we want to make it a better place for everybody,” said Elizabeth McKinstry, a project spokeswoman. “Many times government gets in the way.”

One appeal of New Hampshire is the state's reputation for flinty individualism (although it has only about 400 dues-paying Libertarian Party members). The 150 Free Staters already living here lobbied hard for the state, and Gov. Craig Benson, a Republican, met with visiting members and told them to “come on up, we'd love to have you.”

If the idea catches on, the movement may benefit from the unusually high political profile New Hampshire has because of its early presidential primary.

Some Free Staters plan to move when the project attracts 20,000 participants, which it hopes to do by 2006. But many intend to move sooner, and a few have already arrived.

“Having so many people move into a state means we can really raise issues,” Mr. Somma said. “Once we start to elect people to the Statehouse, I think the low-hanging fruit will be issues like educational reform and medical marijuana.”

Keene, a college town of 24,000, is not the only Free Stater destination in New Hampshire. Indeed, as many members acknowledge, one quandary for a movement of individualistic people is that it can be hard to get everyone on the same page.

Devera Morgan and her husband, Bruce, a computer consultant, plan to move soon from Royse City, Tex., possibly to far-north Coos County or the White Mountain town of North Conway. “I didn't think I would ever leave Texas; that's how much I believe in this project,” said Ms. Morgan, 34, who wants to lift restrictions on home schooling and says she may run for office in New Hampshire.

Although Jackie Casey had voted for Wyoming, she just moved from Portland, Ore., to Merrimack, between Nashua and Manchester, renting a basement apartment with her cat, Soopa Doopa Hoopa, and her two 9-millimeter handguns. (She wants a machine gun “or at least a rifle” for Christmas.) She has already hung one wall and her bathroom with framed posters of Frank Zappa, who was a libertarian himself.

“I don't like to go places that don't let me have my gun,” said Ms. Casey, 33, who sells memberships to a Las Vegas survivalist training institute and models for comic books (her likeness has graced the cover of one called Reload). Her New Hampshire plans include starting eight businesses “because nine out of every 10 fail, and I've already started two, so I need to do eight more.”

“I want to be a billionaire in my lifetime,” she added, “and I don't want to live among people who think that's bad.”

One project member chose the tiny town of Freedom. Also planning to move to New Hampshire are two candidates for the 2004 presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party.

Some project members favor zeroing in on one county or town to maximize their influence, and are scouting out about 30 communities light on property taxes and strictures like building codes. “We completely support and respect that,” Ms. McKinstry said. “We just would never dictate to people.”

The Free State has its opponents here, and shoulder shruggers too.

“If you've got people saying we just want to mind our own business, keep government out of our lives, hey, we all feel that way,” said Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party. “But if they want to have a radical change in our form of government, no, you're not welcome here.”

Michael Blastos, Keene's Democratic mayor, said he was not concerned because Keene had too little housing to accommodate many newcomers, and “anything at all that would stimulate the voters and get them stirred up is a good thing.”

Linda Fowler, a government professor at Dartmouth, called the project a “gimmick” and dismissed “the idea that 20,000 people are going to make a critical difference in New Hampshire, a state of a million and a half people with very high voter participation.”

But, she said, “I suppose if they really did produce 20,000 people, then that might provide a margin in some legislative elections in some parts of the state.”

That seems to be exactly what the project has in mind, according to an article by its founder, Jason Sorens, a political science lecturer at Yale.

“When we arrive in our state, we will have to do our best to blend in, lay down roots in the community, and slowly build our individual reputations,” he wrote. “If we come in trumpeting an `abolish-everything' platform, we will make enemies out of people who might otherwise be sympathetic to us. The key idea behind the F.S.P. is that for every activist, we will be able to generate several voters.”

Dr. Sorens wrote that “within about 10 years after our move, we should have people in the state legislature and we should have entrenched political control of several towns and counties.” He added that “once we have control of the county sheriffs' offices, we can order federal law enforcement agents out, or exercise strict supervision of their activities,” and “once we have obtained some success in the state legislature, we can start working on the governor's race.”

New Hampshire's constitution guarantees the “right of revolution” if “the ends of government are perverted and public liberty manifestly endangered.”

But that is not their intention, Ms. McKinstry said, pointing to their mascot, a porcupine — “a friendly little forest creature who doesn't harm anyone else, minds his own business, but is not really someone that you want to mess with or you might get stuck and a little ouchy.”

Dr. Sorens, 26, said the project reflected his upbringing in Houston as the son of a single mother who pulled herself out of poverty with help from relatives and a Christian charity. He also drew on the migration of the Mormons, the journey of the Pilgrims and the movement of many liberal-minded people to Vermont in the 1970's.

Free Staters, many of them college graduates under 50 earning $60,000 or more, were looking for a state that was small (fewer than 1.5 million people), with low campaign spending, so Free State candidates could compete.

New Hampshire's lack of income tax and sales tax, relatively healthy economy, liberal gun laws and proximity to Boston helped. A big plus was its legislature, the country's largest with 417 members and a state representative for roughly every 3,000 people.

“In New Hampshire, there's so many elected positions that anyone can become cemetery trustee or dog catcher,” Ms. McKinstry said.

About 1,000 project members opted out of moving to New Hampshire, largely for geographic reasons, and Dr. Sorens said the project might eventually designate a second free state out west. Ultimately, he said, he hopes for regional chapters and a new political party with broader appeal than the Libertarian Party.

So far, Free Staters range along the libertarian spectrum, some more moderate than others.

Ms. Casey advocates eliminating entitlements because “then you'd only attract immigrants who are hard-working people.” She said: “I radically oppose public education. It's demeaning and it creates criminals.” And she says “the thing that hurts poor people is they don't know how to think of themselves as rich.”

Mr. Somma doesn't argue against public schools, but maintains that they get too much money, which is good only “if you have to have nice school buildings and computers and all that.” “Back in the day,” he said, “they didn't need all that to teach kids. Back in the day, you were sitting around on rocks and listening to a guy talk.”

Mr. Somma, who grew up in Brooklyn, confessed that he and his wife moved for lifestyle reasons, too, not just political ones.

Otherwise, he said, “I could never pitch to my parents, my wife: Listen, here's this group of people going to move to another state, and I'm going with them.”

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

http://www.asianweek.com/072999/feature_lovelistings.html

Marriage by Mail
The Internet makes it easier for potential mates to connect across seas
By Joyce Nishioka

Roy Des Ruisseaux admits that he had no luck with women. Nine years ago, at age 49, he found himself never-married and lonely, despite what he describes as a lifelong dream of settling down.

“I was the kind of guy who met someone I liked and would get too anxious, or I would focus on someone not right for me,” said the New England postal carrier. “I can look back on it now and laugh.”

That’s because Des Ruisseaux, of Upper Dardy, Penn., has been happily married for some six years to “the one” — a Filipina whom he met through Sunshine International, an introduction service that links up American men with foreign women.

De Ruisseaux remembers when he first gave serious thought to using a service. One weekend some nine years ago, he was resting in a tent after completing a car race. He recalls thinking, “This is not what I want. Judging by the way I am, I’m not going to meet anyone.”

He had heard the stereotype that men who used “pen-pal” services “don’t date and are real losers,” but he thought: “Who cares — if it works. I had no problem with wanting to get married.”

Des Ruisseaux said he sent off about six letters to women featured in the services’ catalogs, to which no one responded. Better results came after he paid $125 to have his name posted in four catalogs. Soon he began receiving letters, including one from Josie, then a 38-year-old living in the Philippines.

“She asked a lot of questions,” Des Ruisseaux recalls. “It sounds goofy, but questions like: ‘if you were on a deserted island, if you could meet one person in history …”

He thought: “That’s me. I can write pages about that stuff.”

After corresponding for about a year, Des Ruisseaux traveled to Hong Kong, where Josie worked as a maid. Though her parents had long urged her to settle down, Josie, too, had never wed. “I didn’t meet the right guy,” she explained.

Recalling her first impression of her husband, Josie De Ruisseaux hesitates for a moment before replying. “He was OK,” she says during a phone interview, laughing as her husband chuckles in the background. “I don’t know why I chose him. I liked his name.”

She notes that she was skeptical at first, asking him how many other girls he was planning to meet on his trip. “I heard about other men who say they’re going to meet three ladies in Manila and pick out the best one,” said Des Ruisseaux. “No. To me that doesn’t make sense. I told her she was the only one here to see.”

Another year passed before Des Ruisseaux brought his fiancee to the United States in March 1993, during which, Josie says, her friends and family told her she was “crazy.”

She recalled thinking, “Let’s see what happens. I can always come back if it doesn’t work out.”

“She packed her bags, quit her job, then flew almost 9,000 miles away with the understanding that we’re getting married,” says De Ruisseaux, explaining his wife’s anxiety.

She wanted to get married almost as soon as her plane landed, he says. They did, some three weeks later. Today, Josie De Ruisseaux works as a seamstress, but has not applied for citizenship yet.

“I admire my wife to have the courage,” says her husband. “What did I do? I got married, but I live in the same house, have the same job. She moved in with a guy she barely knew.”

STATISTICS

An INS study, “The Mail-Order Bride Industry and its Impact on U.S. Immigration,” estimates that 100,000 to 150,000 women, including American women, advertise themselves for marriage through e-mail or other correspondence services.

The study, released this year, estimated that some 5,000 Filipinas come to the United States through mail-order bride services each year; just as many come from Russia, the other country leading the list. They are commonly recruited through local newspapers, women’s magazines and word of mouth. The study notes, however, that only about 1 in 5,000 marriages in the United States has its roots in overseas introduction services.

In the past five years, the Internet has fueled the boom. Though international correspondence services like the one Roy De Ruisseaux used have been around for well over 20 years, more men are logging in to sites like “Foreign Brides International” and “Asian Brides by Mail” to find their mates.

The “growth of [international Internet dating] services has been phenomenal.” noted the INS study, which cited the growth of goodwife.com, a so-called clearinghouse to introduction sites. As of mid-March 1998, it says, the site had 153 Web listings. Two months later, there were 202. By this spring, it had more than 340 listings, including 89 Asian sites and 168 Russian ones.

Traditional letter-writing services, however, remain popular — a fact that the study explained by noting that many women searching for husbands are also looking for a means to escape poverty and have no access to computers. The ones who use online matchmaking services tend to be older, better educated, and more likely to live in a relatively developed country such as Japan or Russia, according to the INS report.

THINGS CAN WORK OUT

Cecilia Julag-ay, a professor at California State University-San Bernardino, is one of the few experts on mail-order bride companies — or international correspondence services, as she and other supporters prefer to call it. “‘Mail-order bride’ is pejorative,” she explains. “It doesn’t do justice to the couples having very nice marriages.”

For her doctoral dissertation, Julag-ay, of Filipino and European descent, interviewed 40 people who had entered into correspondence marriages. “The vast majority were more or less along the lines as any other marriage,” she said.

Of the subjects, a third had been married to each other at least 20 years, usually in “good, stable marriages.” Another third, she said, had been married between three and nine years with “everything needed to have long-term marriages.”

She did concede, though, that unions among the other third “had definite exploitation of one spouse or the other.”

Julag-ay looked only at marriages in which the wife was from the Philippines, where the practice is more common than in any other Asian country. One reason for that, she explained, stems from U.S. colonization and neo-colonization of the Philippines.

“A lot of Filipino women are familiar with the English language and American culture and find it easier to take on U.S. norms” than do other Asian women, observed the scholar. Given widespread poverty and the fact that matchmaker-arranged marriages are already entrenched, especially in rural areas, the thought of meeting a mate through the mail, or e-mail, is worth considering.

“A lot of people need to help families in whatever way possible,” Julag-ay said. “By tradition, the eldest in the family is responsible for taking care of parents and younger siblings. A lot of times the eldest daughter will seek a marriage outside the Philippines to help the family,” possibly by sponsoring relatives for citizenship down the line or by sending financial help, she said. “Once you’ve left, you do have an obligation to send money back.”

“In the United States, there is higher expectation to find someone ourselves, fall madly in love and that’s going to be our marriage.” But in the Philippines, she said, “the idea of going through a correspondence service really isn’t out of line.”

IT’S NOT FOR EVERYONE

Without doubt, though, there are a lot of “ifs.” For one thing, while some services are legitimate, others may not be. “Asian Lovers & Mail-Order Brides,” for example, features women who all look like models and invites visitors to order literature like “The Fantasy Islands Guide to World Sex” and “Adult Travel and Mail Order Brides” — just a mouse click away.

Abuse is another problem. The INS study notes that though the agency has no statistics on how often such wives are abused, “there is every reason to believe that the incidence is higher in this population than for the nation as a whole.”

The potential for conflict rises, it said, with every year that the women assimilate into American culture. “Authorities agree that abuse in these marriages can be expected based on the men’s desire for a submissive wife and the women’s desire for a better life.”

Becky Masaki, executive director of the Asian Women’s Shelter, agreed that women in such arrangements do face a greater risk of abuse. Though any kind of relationship could potentially lead to domestic violence, she cautioned that the risks are greater in an Internet or pen-pal relationship.

“The danger is not being able to fully know the person while you’re dating,” she explained. “Through e-mail, people who are abusive can disguise themselves. They can put forth a different persona.”

Over the past year and a half, Masaki said, the shelter has seen clients who met their husbands through the Internet. “I know of women who have escaped abusive situations who met their partners through e-mail,” she said. “Language is a big part of it. There is a potential for miscommunication.”

Masaki, who also refrains from referring to the women as “mail-order brides,” stresses that those she has met have not been gold-diggers. They “entered in the relationship in good faith. They didn’t enter the relationship just to come here.”

Abuse, in fact, is the one exception to the INS requirement that a spouse remain married to her American sponsor for years.

While men and women can divorce and then self-petition for citizenship as an abused spouse, proving a case is not easy. Someone seeking such an exemption should have her claim well-documented with police reports, notes from medical exams, photos and other information, said INS spokeswoman Sharon Rummery.

Still, some women’s advocates maintain that men who support the introductions industry are also perpetrating abuse. Dorchen Leidholdt, director of the Center for Battered Women Legal Services in New York City and co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking Women, said “This is a big international business that is about affluent, white Western men who want submissive women to meet their sexual and domestic needs, complicated with the fact that the women are often impoverished and entertain notions that Western men are nice and better than men from their own country.”

“The women are Asian, African and Latin American and the men are Caucasian, with a white-man’s fantasy of who these women are.”

“People are reaping profits by playing to the fantasies of the men,” said Leidholdt. “The women will not demand equal treatment. They will stay in the home and do what you want — that’s the clear message.”

Several mail-order marriages gone wrong have, in fact, made headlines in recent years. Susana Remerata Blackwell, a Filipina, met her husband, Timothy Craig Blackwell, through a mail-order service but left him 10 days after arriving to the United States in 1994, alleging abuse. During divorce proceedings a year later, Blackwell, a 47-year-old computer technician, accused her of tricking him into marriage, and then shot and killed her and two of her friends, according to news reports. He was sentenced to life without parole.

Then there’s Terry Nichols, who went to the Philippines in 1989 to meet women who had responded to his newspaper ads. He was introduced to Marife Torres, a high schooler from a poor family. They got married just after she graduated, but soon after she came to the United States, her mother said Torres complained she had to work “like a maid.” Nichols today is behind bars in the Oklahoma City bombing.

“They have the money; they control the women’s immigration sponsorship,” Leidholdt said. “The women have to do what the men want or get out or get beaten.”

The activist, who has worked with the Women’s Crisis Center in the Philippines, said that many women end up going back to their country of origin.

“It’s another side of the story that rarely gets any public attention,” said Leidholdt, who estimates that her organization has represented around a dozen mail-order and Internet brides.

Even though President Corazon Aquino in 1990 signed a measure banning the production or distribution of material promoting the solicitation of Filipinas for marriage to foreigners, and even though the law says violators can be sentenced to up to eight years behind bars, it is difficult to enforce, given the number of firms outside the Philippines — and the ubiquity of the Internet. Leidholdt notes that firms still offer that service as well as “sex-tours” arranged for the benefit of mostly white Westerners.

To Leidholdt, though, the bottom line is clear. “This is all about inequality. The men hold all the cards.”

THE GREEN-CARD TRACK

The INS study, though, indicates that the appeal of living in America is a significant factor for many brides and brides-to-be, even though it takes at least four and a half years for a overseas bride to become a citizen and often takes twice as much time or more.

“If someone lives overseas, once they marry an American, they are immediately eligible to immigrate here legally,” Rummery said. “If they are here already, they are immediately eligible to file to adjust their status to become lawful permanent residents.”

In 1996, 7,317 men and women petitioned for “fiancee visas,” including 3,468 from Asian countries and 1,274 from the Philippines alone, according to Rummery. Though she said the agency did not have a breakdown of where they were in the naturalization process, she did note that the INS usually holds so-called “bona fide marriage interviews” with one or both spouses only if there is a “good reason to question the marriage.”

The process begins when a spouse-to-be is issued the “fiancee visa,” a K-1 visa good for 90 days in which the applicant expects to be married. After the marriage, the new spouse, now classified as a “non-immigrant,” can continue her stay by petitioning to have her status redefined as a “lawful permanent resident,” a process that Rummery said takes 18 months.

After receiving permanent status, the spouse can petition for a two-year conditional green card, after which time she may apply for citizenship. However, as with the previous steps, the spouse must in most cases remain married to her American sponsor and must be “residing in marital union,” as Rummery said the government puts it. After two years, the spouse apply for a regular green card, which would allow her to apply for citizenship even if divorced.

Citizenship itself takes at least one year to process. For most applicants, gaining it requires successfully completing interviews and tests to assess good moral character, comprehension of English and knowledge of American civics and history.

“The idea is to make yourself into something you weren’t before, something new — an American,” Rummery said.

Imperfect PERCEPTIONS

The INS study found that a top priority among would-be brides is the chance for a better, more affluent life with a man more likely to be faithful and nonabusive than a native-born spouse. It also found that women of Asian descent were markedly younger than their European counterparts, the study found: 61 percent of the Asian women were under 25, whereas only 31 percent of the Russian women advertised were under 25.

“Often there is an enormous age difference that exacerbates the inequality,” Leidholdt said. “Many times these men can’t make it with women in this country. Sometimes they are socially inept or just jerks.”

She added that the fact these men are unable to have equal relationships may indicate “they have serious problems.”

The INS report said that the men, a large majority of whom are white, wanted a wife with “traditional values.” American women are “thought to be more concerned with their own careers than being a wife, while Asian women are perceived to be content as homemakers.”

Though Julag-ay found that the men who sought Asian brides were “along the lines to what the popular media has presented – ultra conservative, basically not all that emotionally stable,” she adds, “that isn’t the full truth.”

Valuing traditional things in life means the men “tended to want a lifestyle in which they wanted to be the primary breadwinner,” she said. In many cases, she said, “it was a good fit with the social expectations of the women.”

DEFENDING BUSINESS

Cherry Blossoms, based in Hawaii, was founded 25 years ago. Today, it lists over 6,000 women at any one time. Half are Filipinas; Indonesians rank next. The biggest increase, however, has been in Eastern European women looking for love American style, says the owner, Mike Krosky, who bought the business five years ago.

“It is not a mail-order bride service, it is an international personal ad service,” says Krosky, who estimates that his company’s services result in over 1,000 client marriages per year.

“There are a lot of things I could do to improve profits, I could only publish drop-dead gorgeous, best educated and make more money,” he says. “But I’m trying to help people meet for love and marriage on their own values. We put out a great variety of looks and professions.”

Cherry Blossoms has recently put up a Web site, but Krosky says most of his business is still out of his print catalogs. Addresses cost $10 each or $395 for a one-year subscription, and women can advertise for free. Some 6,000 do each year, says Krosky; about 2,000 to 3,000 men use the service every year.

Though most of the women featured are in their 20s or 30s, Cherry Blossoms has been “getting more older, attractive women in their 30s and 40s,” Krosky says. He hopes to expand into publishing ads toward women who want overseas mates, he said.

“Women from all over the world are given greater opportunity to find men through letter writing than going outside their country,” says Krosky, who challenges contentions that his industry exploits women.

“Go back to Japan and watch how men interact with women. Especially modern women, women around the world recognize this,” he said.

In the United States, “we’re not living in the Flintstone days,” he says. “In general, there is an awareness [by the women] that there’s something better for me than what is in my hometown.”

In fact, Krosky met his wife, a Filipina more than 18 years younger than he, through his own service. “She’s way smarter then I am. She speaks six languages. I don’t try to mold my wife. My wife is her own person. There’s no molding or manipulation.”

Moreover, he says he thinks he is better suited for a younger woman. “I’m youthful in appearance and healthy and fit. When I look at women my age, they are not as attractive to me.”

He’s been interested in Asian culture for many years, he says. “When I was 12 or 13, I watched Kung Fu. Whenever I saw Asian people it was interesting to me,” he said. “I felt a connection to Asia. I’ve always had an interest.”

His interest expanded into attraction. “I’ve always been attracted to Asian women. I like their manners.”

His wife, Hilanie, says she’s not bothered by the age difference between her and her 42-year-old husband, with whom she raises his son. She says she “likes an old person, who knows about life is mature can share experiences.”

She signed up for Cherry Blossoms while she was a student at Saint Colunben College in the Philippines; most women at her school did too, she adds.

“People knew it was good, decent, not like other companies,” she explains. “You write letters and look at how they write and their interests, about life, what kind of woman they are looking for.”

Though she had had no boyfriends, she recalls, she was not necessarily looking for romance, but rather “just for a friend for correspondence.” After being introduced to her husband-to-be, she wrote him three or four letters a week for a year before they got married.

Mike was the first man she had met through such a service, said his wife, though she added that he had had “met a couple of women before me,” perhaps two to four Filipinas.

They didn’t work out, she said, “because he didn’t have attraction to them at all. They had no chemistry.”

“American guys are good husbands compared to the Philippines,” said Hilanie Krosky, who emphasized that her preference for American men and her feelings for Mike in particular were paramount in her decision.

“Most Filipino men are demanding. Most of the time they are violent. They beat and hit you. For me, most of the time Americans are good people, they care about women compared to Filipino men. Besides, in the U.S., you can not beat your wife. In the Philippines you can beat your wife.

“It has nothing to do with citizenship. “If I met him and I don’t have feelings toward him, I’m not going to get married to him,” said Hilanie. She liked her husband, “just because our chemistry to each other was there.”

Now a legal resident with a conditional visa, Hilanie is looking forward to next year, when she hopes to apply for citizenship. She says she does not plan to bring over other kin. “My relatives don’t like to come to the U.S.,” she explained. “My family lives a good life and has good financial support in the Philippines.”

Both said they are happy. “I want to begin to dispel the myths,” said Mike Krosky. “It’s not about mail-order brides.

“Hello, this is a global world … We are a global population. We’re all connected.”

Janet Dang and Connie Hsiao contributed to this article.

Via :

I’ve found blogging to be a low-impact activity, mildly narcotic and mostly quite convivial, but the thing I’ve most enjoyed about it is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I’m doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel – that is, if I’m still blogging, I’m definitely still on vacation. I’ve always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid’s been left off.

Bittersweet words from William Gibson.

Via :

http://grouphug.us/

232468874

At christmas, when walking through large crowds of people, I often, purposely, walk into young children who aren't looking where they are going. They annoy me and I think it's funny when they sometimes fall over and their parents give me dirty looks… it's their own bloody fault for not looking where they are going!

116676110

I masturbated on a girl's headstone. The crescent-moon shape was a convenient smooth shape. Pooh bear was carved on it. Since then, I've masturbated on gravestones about a half-dozen times.

900850155

My boss is a narrow minded fool. So I keep leaking all his private information to his clients. But I've taken it too far this time. I leaked his wife's expenses and there is hell on. They don't know it was me though. Ha ha ha. One day I will get to sit on the big leather chair.

Via CR Society mailing list:

Title: Dieter's Dream: How to Eat More and Still Lose Weight
————————————————————-

When it comes to dieting, bigger food is better.

That may be surprising to dieters who've struggled to cut calories by
eating less food. But a growing body of research now supports the
notion that it's the energy density of foods — not the amount we eat
or even the overall fat content — that most contributes to weight
gain.

A food has a low energy density if it has few calories relative to its
weight. An easy way to choose these low-energy-dense foods is to choose
“big” foods — those that are bulked up by fiber and water. Chicken and
rice soup, for instance, has a low energy density, with just 0.5
calorie per gram. And it will be just as filling and less fattening as
a similar amount of cheese ravioli, which has 3.2 calories per gram.

Food labels don't tell you about energy density, so you have to do the
math yourself to calculate calories per gram. Foods that have up to 1.5
calories per gram are low energy dense. Foods with 1.5 to four calories
per gram are considered medium, while high-energy-dense foods have four
or more.

It might seem obvious that low-energy-dense foods such as chicken soup
are less fattening than the same amount of, say, potatoes au gratin.
But there are some surprises. Even a decadent-sounding cream of
broccoli soup with cheese has an energy density of just 0.8. But graham
crackers, though low in fat, have a high energy density, with 4.2
calories per gram.

WHEN MORE IS LESS
—————–

Here's how to lower the energy density of your diet so you can eat more
without increasing your caloric intake.

Switch to soups: Even creamy soups and rich stews have a lower energy
density than many foods.
Add bulk: Adding vegetables to pasta or casseroles or more veggies to a
salad lowers the energy density.
Beat your food: Smoothies and shakes fill you up longer the longer they
are whipped.
Substitute: Switch to low-fat dressings, cheeses and cooking oil in
recipes

• See a list of some low-energy-dense food options below.

And the energy-density idea works with indulgence foods, as well. M&M's
are considered a high-energy-dense food, with 4.9 calories per gram.
But for about the same calories of a package of M&M's, you could have a
slice of chocolate cake with frosting, at just 3.7 calories per gram,
or vanilla pudding made with 2% milk, at just one calorie per gram. And
you'd be left feeling far more satisfied.

The push to focus on the energy density of foods is backed by numerous
studies that show hunger tends to be satisfied by a certain volume of
food, regardless of the calorie content. In one Pennsylvania State
University study, researchers found that healthy women instinctively
ate about three pounds of food a day. It didn't matter if the foods
were high-calorie or low-calorie — the women were driven by volume,
not calories. Because we are accustomed to a certain volume of food,
when we try to cut back on the amount we eat, we feel hungry — which
is the main reason diets fail.

All of this runs counter to the notion that people who are overweight
are just eating too much food. Often those people are eating normal
amounts of food for their size — they are just choosing energy-dense
foods that cause them to continue to gain weight.

To really make an impact on weight, people need to consume far more
“big” foods like fruits, vegetables, salads and soups. That can
include, for instance, adding more vegetables to bulk up casseroles or
other dishes to lower the overall energy density of favorite foods.
Dieters should pay attention to basic nutrition and eat a balanced
diet, but they should also work to ease high-energy-dense foods out of
their diets.

The problem is that our taste buds don't always like low-energy-dense
foods as much as small convenience foods like snack chips and brownies.
But new research shows there are ways to use low-energy-dense foods to
help curb consumption of more fattening foods, without having to give
them up altogether.

In a study presented Monday at the annual meeting of the North American
Association for the Study of Obesity, Penn State researchers studied
how eating salad before a meal could affect total calories a diner ends
up consuming.

GOOD EATS
———

• Study Says Ranks of the Very Obese Widen Sharply

• Americans Are Starting to Shape Up, Eat Healthier

Diners were allowed to eat as much regular cheese tortellini as they
wanted. One group was just given the tortellini, while other groups
were told they had to eat a serving of salad first. The salads included
both high-calorie and low-calorie dressings and cheeses, and the size
varied from a 11/2 cup to three cups.

Researchers found that when diners pigged out on three cups of salad
with low-fat dressing, they ate 107 calories less — or about 12% fewer
calories for the meal than when they didn't eat a first-course salad.

The finding was surprising because studies have shown that first
courses tend to make people consume more calories, not less, because
variety can excite the appetite, which is why we forget we're full when
a tantalizing dessert arrives on the table.

In the case of the salad study, the first course had such low energy
density that it translated into fewer calories, despite the variety
effect. But be warned, the energy density of the salad matters as well.
Some diners were given a more energy-dense salad with full-fat dressing
and cheese. They ended up eating 145 calories more — or about 17% more
calories for the whole meal — than those who ate no salad at all.

“People aren't that sensitive to calories when they're eating –
they're more sensitive to volume,” says Penn State nutrition researcher
Barbara Rolls, who has led many of the energy-density studies. “After
eating the salads, if they had a lot of [the low-calorie one], it
helped them to eat less. But if the salad had a lot of calories, they
didn't compensate by reducing their intake during the rest of the
meal.”

The lesson for dieters is to binge on a healthy salad or other very
low-energy-dense foods before a meal. It's worth noting that dieters in
the study rated the salads equally satisfying, and didn't notice the
difference between the full-fat dressings and cheeses and the lower-fat
options. But if you want to indulge in full-fat dressing, you still
can, as long as you further lower the energy density by adding a lot
more vegetables.

Pump Up the Volume
——————

Here's a comparison of how much more you can eat and still consume
fewer calories by switching from high-energy-dense foods to lower-
energy-dense substitutes:

Right Column 1: Food Energy Density*
Right Column 2: Total Calories
Columns in random order:
———————————————-
1 jelly doughnut ……………….. 3.4 289
2 frozen waffles ……………….. 2.5 191
1 flour tortilla ……………….. 3.3 114
2 corn tortillas ……………….. 2.2 112
1/2 cup granola ……………….. 4.6 220
1 cup oatmeal ……………….. 0.6 145
1/4 cup raisins ……………….. 3.0 109
1 1/2 cup grapes ……………….. 0.7 92
M&M's plain (69 pc) …………….. 4.9 236
2 cream-filled chocolate cupcakes … 3.6 230
4 oz. margarita ……………….. 2.2 271
4 oz. white wine ……………….. 0.7 80
1 cup cheese ravioli ……………. 3.2 280
1 slice thick-crust cheese pizza … 2.9 202
2 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups …… 5.4 271
1 slice frosted chocolate cake ….. 3.7 235
1 cup cream of broccoli/cheese soup. 0.8 190
1 cup chicken noodle soup ………. 0.3 75
1 cup premium ice cream ……….. 2.6 540
12 oz. Hardee's vanilla shake ……. 1.0 350
8 oz. eggnog …………………… 1.4 342
8 oz. hot cocoa ……………….. 0.5 124
1 hotdog with bun ………………. 2.5 242
1 cup beef stew with vegetables ….. 0.9 220

Right Column 1: Food Energy Density*
Right Column 2: Total Calories
In sorted order, by energy density:
———————————————-
1 cup chicken noodle soup ………. 0.3 75
8 oz. hot cocoa ……………….. 0.5 124
1 cup oatmeal ……………….. 0.6 145
1 1/2 cup grapes ……………….. 0.7 92
4 oz. white wine ……………….. 0.7 80
1 cup cream of broccoli/cheese soup. 0.8 190
1 cup beef stew with vegetables ….. 0.9 220
12 oz. Hardee's vanilla shake ……. 1.0 350
8 oz. eggnog …………………… 1.4 342
2 corn tortillas ……………….. 2.2 112
4 oz. margarita ……………….. 2.2 271
2 frozen waffles ……………….. 2.5 191
1 hotdog with bun ………………. 2.5 242
1 cup premium ice cream ……….. 2.6 540
1 slice thick-crust cheese pizza … 2.9 202
1/4 cup raisins ……………….. 3.0 109
1 cup cheese ravioli ……………. 3.2 280
1 flour tortilla ……………….. 3.3 114
1 jelly doughnut ……………….. 3.4 289
2 cream-filled chocolate cupcakes … 3.6 230
1 slice frosted chocolate cake ….. 3.7 235
1/2 cup granola ……………….. 4.6 220
M&M's plain (69 pc) …………….. 4.9 236
2 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups …… 5.4 271

* Calories per gram

Source: “The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan,”
Barbara Rolls and Robert A. Barnett

——————————- ———————————
ABOUT TARA PARKER-POPE
Tara Parker-Pope writes Health Journal, a column devoted to exploring
health issues that directly affect our readers' daily lives — whether
it's alerting them to a new surgical glue that can replace stitches or
explaining how too much headache medicine can actually cause headaches.
The goal of Health Journal is to arm consumers with information that
will help them make informed choices about health and medicine.

Tara began writing Health Journal in January 2000. Before that, she
spent five years as a consumer-products reporter, first for The Wall
Street Journal Europe in London and most recently from the Journal's
New York headquarters. Previously, she worked as a political and
government reporter for the Houston Chronicle and Austin-American
Statesman. She is a 1988 graduate of the University of Texas, where she
majored in sociology.

A native of Arizona who grew up in Ohio, Tara is married to Kyle Pope.
They live in Manhattan with their daughter Laney.

Send your comments about Health Journal to [email protected].

Via via K.C.Campbell:

“Certainly it is most important to distinguish between those straining at the oars to get to Kook Island, and those who arrived easily via magic carpet and don't even know they are there.”

http://www.airstream.com/product_line/motorhomes/interstate_home.html

width=400 height=240/>

http://www.danny-steyn.com/ultimate_windsurfing_van_02.htm

From each as they choose,
to each as they are chosen.

From Anarchy, State and Utopia
by Robert Nozick