Consuming Consciousness

This is the fastest and tastiest collards recipe ever. I love the slow-cook southern-style collards, but this version, sauted in less than a minute in a hot wok, is unbeatable for flavor and texture. (more…)

A new survey shows that education is linked to cancer death rates. Those with more education had lower death rates from cancer, across race and gender groups. The groups that benefit most in this regard are black men and white women, whose risk of getting cancer was cut 76% at the highest levels of education. Educated white men’s risk was cut by 48 percent, and educated black women’s was cut by 43%.

Data was collected on over 135,5000 cancer deaths from 2001 involving black and white men and women between the ages of 25 and 64. Overall, whites had lower cancer death rates than blacks with the same level of education. But black and white men with zero to eight years of education had almost the same level of cancer deaths, which was much higher than the other groups.

Let’s see… what might this tell us? The two groups with a single oppression to battle (white women and black men) are at the same level, and benefit the most from education. White men, with no oppression to battle, had almost the same level of improvement as black women, who suffer from the double whammy of gender and race oppression. But the white guys have a significantly lower cancer death rate than the black women. What do you think? Maybe things are already so good for white men that education isn’t the huge advantage it is for the other groups. And maybe things are so bad for black women that education doesn’t confer as much benefit as it does to their black male and white female peers.

Elizabeth Ward, co-author of the Study and the American Cancer Society’s director of cancer surveillance stated, “The difference between blacks and whites is most certainly due to socioeconomic conditions and access to care.”

No kidding. The people at the bottom always suffer the most. In every way, cancer being no exception.

“Garam Masala” is like “Chili Powder” or “Curry Powder.” They’re all names for spice combinations that one is often called to used in recipes, but they vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, so you never quite know what you’re getting. I’m pretty picky about my spices, so I grind my mixtures myself. It’s not very time consuming, and in a sealed container they can keep for six months at room temperature — longer if you store them in the refrigerator or freezer.

The recipe is best if you use whole spices and grind them yourself from seed. I use a coffee grinder, but a mortar and pestle works just as well. Spices are unbelievably expensive if you buy them in small quantities in the supermarket, but if you have access to a health food store you can often buy them surprisingly cheaply, especially if you measure them out yourself from bulk dispensers. Another very cheap place to get these spices is at neighborhood Mexican or Asian markets, where they’re sold inexpensively in cellophane or plastic bags.
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Since childhood I’ve had an inexplicable emotional attachment to grape soda. Unfortunately, like other sodas, the commercial brands are unbelievably high in sugar, as well as low on natural grape juice. Some studies came out in the last couple of years, though, suggesting drinking grape juice lowers your risk of heart disease. Apparently, it works just like red wine, helping you avoid blood clots, reduce bad cholesterol, preventing damage to blood vessels in your heart, and helping maintain healthy blood pressure.

Naturally this inspired me to rethink the grape soda issue, and I’ve come up with an alternative. It’s so simple it doesn’t require a formal recipe. Just combine 1 cup grape juice with 4 cups of mineral water and the juice of one lemon, and you’ll have 2 servings of a refreshing, sparkling drink. Each serving has only 50 calories and gives you 78% of your daily requirement of Vitamin C. The best juice for your heart is made from the dark purple Concord grapes.

[Note: For the carbohydrate counters among us, there are 13.0g total carbohydrates, 11.5g of which are sugar.]

If you eat fast food, you might want to avoid Hardees for their sexist advertising, and for their inability to understand that it’s a problem to sexualize the student/teacher relationship. Here’s the offensive ad:

Tennessee Guerrilla Women has an extensive article on the commercial and the campaign against it.

Feminist blogs have been bashing evolutionary psych lately, and for good reason. The pseudoscientific evolutionary psych findings reported and promoted in the mass media provide a seemingly endless series of “just so” stories to support the Status Quo, and they have been particularly bad in the area of gender. Lately pop evolutionary psych proponents have been claiming that women are “naturally” better shoppers because they have had, in our prehistory a (completely unconfirmed and probably imaginary) primary role as “gatherers” (as opposed to those he-man hunters); that they prefer “pink” (they actually, like men, prefer blue) for the same reason; and, most lately, that, “like the Neanderthals” (more made-up stories of our prehistory) women look for security and commitment in a mate while men look for beauty. (more…)

This post was inspired by a continuing discussion about feminism and animal rights on the Feministe blog by Jill.

It’s human rights that concern me, and it concerns me that many “animal rights” advocates are more willing to spend their time making things better for puppies and kittens and cows and harp seals than they are to saving children, stopping violence against women, working for racial equality, or ending war. I love puppies and kittens too, but I tend to save my strongest emotions for human beings. It reminds me of that moment in Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, where a poverty-stricken woman kills a rabbit and skins it before the viewers’ eyes. I’m always amazed when this creates a more powerful negative reaction and deeper emotional involvement in many of my students than the images of families being put out of their home and a community being devastated and destroyed. That was, I think, the film maker’s point, and it sticks with me as an example and a reminder of the limits of human empathy for other human beings.

One of the things that puzzles me about “animal rights” advocates is that the very activity of organizing to secure “rights” for animals is based on the notion that humans can “speak for” animals — animal rights activists think they know what animals want. It’s a really paternalistic movement (certainly no less paternalist than the view that animals are, well, animals), and I think it must be a relief for some of its supporters to have found a subaltern who can’t speak (and tell them when their views are bogus). It must be so much simpler to crusade for a group whose members can’t contradict their self-appointed leaders, or contest their leadership. After all, when privileged white liberals start running around telling black people what they want, or when men who like to call themselves feminists run around telling women what’s good for them, the members of those oppressed groups tend to talk back in no uncertain terms, and it really makes it hard for the do-gooders to, well, feel good. Back in the abolitionist days, when many white anti-slavery advocates were also terrible racists, there were black Americans who had their number and contested their assumptions. Oppressed people can and do speak, even in the most terrible conditions of oppression. Animals don’t… even if they’re smarter than the average bear. (more…)

I just read a sharp-tongued article on zuzu’s blog that criticizes PETA’s proclivity for comparing animal “holocausts” to human genocides. The comments were pretty interesting, in large part because they reflected a division in feminist thought, with one side clearly placing human rights at the center, and the other side (more fuzzily) supporting “animal rights.”   PETA, which is an almost all-white organization, has no scruples about appropriating the traumatic histories of minorities and oppressed peoples and using them in the service of its fight against… the poultry industry.  If you want to get lathered, you can read the original post and comments, in which a woman’s status as a feminist is challenged because she bought a dog from a breeder instead of getting one from the pound or (as PETA would rather) not getting one at all.

The whole PETA thing is pretty disgusting, and they’re on awfully shaky moral ground because they regularly kill the animals in their shelters (see http://www.petakillsanimals.com/) — healthy animals that no-kill shelters could certainly have placed. Those deaths are apparently okay in PETA’s eyes, while the death of hamsters sacrificed in the cause of fighting disease and bettering human health are not. Go figure.

I can weigh in here as a Jew (and a Holocaust scholar), as well as a feminist and an antiracist, and a person who has had a lifelong relationship with dogs, wolves and wolf hybrids. Of course comparing the maltreatment (or perceived maltreatment) of animals to the wholesale genocide of peoples like Jews (or Gypsies) in the Holocaust, and like Africans in the forced diaspora of slavery is offensive.

I say “of course” because I freely admit that I privilege human life over animal life, and that I believe even the most loathsome human being’s life is more valuable than that of even my dearest and most beloved dog. Personally distraught as it would make me, I would sacrifice my dog to save a person I didn’t know. I love my dog dearly, but not more than I love the principles to which I adhere.

And that’s what this comes down to — a question of morality. Not the fundamentalist right’s concept of morality, which is immoral nonsense, immediately and demonstrably incoherent and inconsistent. Instead, it’s an ethical position derived from a set of clear principles that I can very comfortably defend:

Human life is of primary importance (no murder, no death penalties); human rights to life-sustaining food, water, housing, and medical care are inherent, as are the rights to self-determination and free exercise of thought and speech, the right to an education and equality of opportunity. Similarly, human responsibility is also crucial — responsibility for the health and welfare of others through the mechanism of community; responsibility for securing the rights of minorities; responsibility for creating a sustainable future that includes the health and diversity of the planet… including the animals on the planet.

In my experience, PETA people tend to refuse to acknowledge their moral foundations, preferring instead to hide behind the argument that animal lives are just as important as human ones. But when you push them, they can’t articulate why that is the case, nor can they really describe the ideal world that would result if everyone on earth followed their instructions. PETA people are upset at fur coats, but not usually at insecticides — they do, in fact, draw an equally arbitrary line between the animals (usually mammals) that they think are important and the ones (insects, fish) that they don’t think are so important, and they’re totally unable to cope with the fact that each life necessarily depends on the deaths of other creatures. Nor can they cope with ideas about interdependence of species (for example, the notion that dogs and people evolved together in symbiotic relationships).

My experience with PETA people is that they don’t really know much about animals — they have all sorts of stories and fantasies about them, but they (despite claims to the contrary) have very little respect for animals. Vickie Hearn was the best of the animal-savvy moral philosophers. A Wittgenstein scholar as well as a trainer of search-and-rescue dogs and of dressage horses, her book Adam’s Task: The Moral Life of Animals is as clear headed a reflection as I’ve ever encountered. Like her, I have no patience for those who let their ideas of what animals should be get in the way of seeing animals for who and what they are. It’s probably good that PETA people don’t believe in pets, because all their animals would be horribly neurotic.

A life-long cooperative working relationship with dogs and wolves has taught me that at the level at which they live (which is not a human level), canines are capable of thinking, of self-organizing, of making judgments about right and wrong, of memory and narrative and a certain amount of self-consciousness (by which I mean they are capable of thinking about what they are thinking). They are also capable of great emotion, though their happiness or sadness or boredom is not the same as human emotions of the same name.

Those who live with animals and have a rational, healthy respect for their pet’s otherness understand that most relationships between pets and people are at some level consensual. If you’ve ever tried to get a recalcitrant dog to come when called, or a stubborn horse into a trailer, you know that’s true. It’s a totally different situation than the involuntary enslavement or wholesale murder of entire groups of people, and the comparison is indeed offensive.

I am in complete agreement with those who want to reduce needless animal suffering, but I am interested in reducing that suffering on a level that lasts from their births to their deaths, and I don’t mind if they die if their deaths serve a purpose, like feeding me or other people. What I do mind is if they live in pain or terror up to the moment of their deaths. I don’t condemn a wolf for killing and eating a deer and I don’t condemn people for killing and eating a cow, even though we could both conceivably survive on beans and rice.

PETA, though, doesn’t stand for anything I can get behind and they have been, as a number of people have mentioned, anti-woman and racist in their promotional campaigns, self-serving in the causes they promote, and hypocritical in living up to their own standards. To me, they’re just another group based on the same hype that sustains New Age religion: they make privileged people feel good about their privileges, and relieve them of the difficult responsibility of making the world better for other human beings AND for animals.

I love smoked fish, but it’s usually too expensive for me to buy. However, lately I’ve been seeing packages of smoked fish in the deli sections of many of the less up-scale supermarkets, and I’ve been buying smoked trout this way. In my part of the world it costs about a dollar an ounce. Yeah, I know that amounts to sixteen bucks a pound, which could hardly be called economic, but you don’t need more than two ounces to get the full benefits of the wonderful taste of smoked fish. And the rest of the ingredients in this dish are inexpensive, so you can feel like you’re living in the lap of luxury while not breaking the bank.

This recipe stretches an eighth of a pound of smoked fish to feed four on a lunch menu, or to serve six people as a side salad. It’s also low enough in calories that you can have a big, satisfying bowl and still add less than 350 to your daily total. And they’re good calories too: 21.4 grams of protein per serving, and only 7.2g of fat, most of it from the fish. You’ll meet 25% of your daily needs for Vitamin A, calcium and iron in a single serving, and over 80% of your Vitamin C needs. All that and it tastes fabulous, too! (more…)

I love cassoulet — the rich, full flavors of duck, sausage and beans and the herbs of the French countryside combine to create a hearty and satisfying main course. On my diet, though, a single bowl of traditional cassoulet would use up my entire daily calorie allotment, so I decided to try to put together a relatively low-calorie version of the dish.

Skinning the duck (or simply starting with boneless breast meat, which is very convenient but more expensive) immediately reduced the calorie load by almost 75% percent. Using smoked turkey sausages (or other low-fat sausages) keeps the spirit of the dish while further reducing calories from fat. And aside from skinning the duck, the recipe takes less than half an hour of time to prepare all the ingredients for the stew pot or crock pot.

The result was surprisingly successful while, I think, remaining true to the flavor, consistency and texture of the original. A heaping bowl will cost you 600 calories, which seems about right for a main course dish. Because cassoulet is a stew and gains flavor for the next 48 hours while the leftovers sit in your refrigerator, I’ve written the recipe for a substantial 10 servings; enough for a dinner party or for several days worth of tasty eating. It also freezes well, so you can eat half now and save the rest for another family meal. If you want to make less, simply cut the recipe in half.

You can cook this in a stew pot on the stove top, or in a slow cooker. On the stove it takes about 1 1/2 hours; in a crock pot set on low you can slow-cook it all day, while you’re at work. (more…)