Why We Serve Plant-Based Foods at YES! Events

The food we serve at YES! events is primarily organic and vegan (vegan means no meat, dairy or eggs), and is based around natural and healthful foods. Our cooks do their best to prepare food that is delicious and that celebrates the diversity of culinary cultures from which the participants come. We recognize that for many participants, this is an unusual way of eating, and that as such it may be difficult. So we are choosing to explain the reasons behind the decision we have made. The information presented here is only an extremely short summary of a complex matter, and will be far from comprehensive. The chair of YES!'s board, John Robbins, is author of the best sellers Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution, both of which are available at our events, and they discuss these issues in far greater depth for anyone who wants to learn more. We also have him as a guest presenter at many of our events.

The USA Context

While many rural people around the world incorporate animal agriculture as a healthy and important part of their lifestyle, economy, ecology and nutrition, livestock raising has become something very different for most people in the United States. People in the US today consume vastly more animal products than ever before. To fuel our enormous appetite for animal products, industrialized animal agriculture in our country has become a system of factories and mass production that is intensely cruel to animals, consumes vast amounts of our planet's resources, and is causing large numbers of deaths from heart disease, cancer, and other ailments.

Equity and Justice

• Most US cattle live a major portion of their lives not on pasture land, but in feedlots where they are fed grain.
• It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef in this way, while the other 15 are wasted.
• For chicken and pig flesh the numbers are a little better but still tremendously wasteful. It takes 6 pounds of grain to produce a pound of factory farm pork, and 4 pounds of grain for a pound of chicken.
• More than half the land in the United States is being used for animal agriculture.
• Livestock are fed more than 80% of US corn and soybeans.
• Half of the water in the United States is used in animal agriculture.

In a world where 20,000 children are dying of hunger daily, we consider modern US meat production in its present scale and methodology to be an obscene waste of resources. And this wastefulness is not just happening here. Throughout the world, the poor are growing food that is being cycled through livestock which only the rich can afford to eat.

In The Food Revolution, John Robbins writes:

"Every time you eat a hamburger in the U.S. you are having a relationship with thousands of people you never met. Not just people at the supermarket or fast food restaurant but possibly World Bank officials in Washington, D.C., and peasants from Central and South America. And many of these people are hungry. The fact is that there is enough food in the world for everyone. But tragically, much of the world's food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock - food for the well-off - while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvation. In Central America, staple crop production has been replaced by cattle ranching, which now occupies two-thirds of the arable land. The World Bank encouraged this switch-over with an eye toward expanding U.S. fast-food and frozen-dinner markets. The resulting expansion of cattle ranching has deprived peasants of access to the land they depend on for growing food. And because of ranching's limited ability to create jobs (cattle ranching creates 13 times fewer jobs per acre than coffee production), rural hunger has soared. What does all this have to do with our hamburgers? The American fast-food diet and the meat-eating habits of the wealthy around the world support a world food system that diverts food resources from the hungry."

Health

We all have different beliefs about what constitutes a healthy diet, and we are each profoundly unique. There is no one diet that is right for everyone. Yet medical research is decisive in its evidence that people in this country eat too much meat for optimal health, and that a balanced and wholesome vegetarian diet is, for most people, healthier by almost every statistical measure. A few facts on this point: In the US and other industrialized nations, vegetarians live on average 7 years longer than meat eaters. A healthy vegetarian diet is a powerful protection against heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, obesity, osteoporosis, and many other rampant illnesses. It's not right for everyone, but it's a direction that a lot more of us could explore, and be better off for it. A core part of our work is helping young people who are committed to building a more just and sustainable world to have the health and sustainability necessary to be in the movement for the long haul. Serving simple, delicious, healthy, vegan food for a week is one way for us to support people we care about.

Access

In West Oakland, there are 37 liquor stores and there is one grocery store. On many reservations in the US, the only food available is government surplus products of poor nutritional value at inflated prices. Low income communities of color in the US tend to have little access to, or ability to afford, healthy food. As a result they consume even larger amounts of fat, cholesterol, sugar, and chemical additives and preservatives than the rest of the population. There is a profound health cost to this reality. For example, compared to whites in the US:

• The cancer incidence among African-Americans is 26 percent greater.
• The heart disease rate for Hispanic women is double.
• The incidence of obesity among African-American and Mexican-American women is 45 percent greater.
• The diabetes incidence among Native American women is more than triple.
• We consider spreading access to healthy and nutritious food to be an issue of profound import to the struggle for justice.

Lactose Intolerance and Dairy

The federal government currently recommends that all U.S. children drink milk every day - including the 70 percent of African Americans, 95 percent of Native Americans, 60 percent of Hispanic Americans, and 90 percent of Asian-Americans who are lactose intolerant. Tens of millions of lactose intolerant people experience bloating, stomach cramping, nausea and other distress as a result of consuming dairy products. There are other sources of calcium and protein which are more bioavailable and do not cause distress to people of color, but our government has been in bed with the dairy industry so deeply and for so long that it doesn't promote these. We consider that to be a form of institutionalized racism.

The Animals

As we work for a more just and compassionate world, we believe that all sentient life deserves respect. Cows, pigs and chickens in the US's factory farms are treated with a level of cruelty that is difficult to comprehend. Chickens, for example, are housed in cages so small they can never lift a single wing, and are in constant contact with other birds and wire cages on all sides at all times. They may never see the light of day, or touch a bit of dirt. The birds are driven so insane by these conditions that they become cannibalistic and try to kill each other. The industry responds to this problem by cutting off the bird's beaks so they cannot peck each other to death. Cows, pigs and other livestock (including, ever more often, fish) are treated with a similar degree of inhumanity.

Indigenous People

When the Indigenous people's of our continent were invaded, the drive to produce beef was at the heart of the battle. Cattle ranchers killed off, by the millions, the wild buffalo upon which the native people of the land depended, bringing in their own domesticated cattle. This same genocidal tale has been enacted with the Aborigines of Australia, and continues to unfold in the tropical rainforests of central and south America, as cattle ranchers slash and burn ancient tropical rainforest. The indigenous people who have lived in the rainforests sustainably for thousands of years are losing their rainforest home, and their entire way off life, for beef- much of it shipped to North America and Europe.

Other Dangers

Because of the way the animals are raised, US meat is frequently contaminated with e.Coli and other pathogens, causing millions of food poisoning related illnesses each year. Mad cow disease is so deadly that the discover of its presence in British beef led the British government to incinerate the entire herd, at a cost of many billions of dollars. There is a very real possibility that this disease will be found in the US herd, and by the time it is discovered, contaminated beef could have already been consumed by millions of people.

The Organic Choice

Organic foods are grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, from seed stock that is not genetically modified. Not using synthetic fertilizers means food is more tasty and nutritious. Pesticides are poisons, and not using them has enormous advantages not only to the consumer (who may have reduced incidence of cancer and other problems as a result), but also the environment (soil, birds and wildlife don't especially appreciate being poisoned either) and the farm-workers. Farm-workers who are exposed to pesticides on the job have substantially higher rates of cancer, birth defects, and infant mortality. Latino farm-workers in California have nearly triple the cancer rate of whites living in the same area. To us, choosing organic is a statement of solidarity with the farm workers and the environment, as well as being healthier for each of us. Organic seeds are not genetically modified. Despite the US government's unquestioning support of genetic engineering in our food supply, and a relentless corporate drive to push it through all over the world, there are substantial and persistent health, environmental and ethical concerns about this new and powerful technology.

Our Dollars Are A Vote

If we were buying T-shirts for our event participants, we wouldn't get them made in sweatshops. Likewise, when we spend money on food, we choose not to support industries that are harming our environment, cruel to animals, contributing to a more unjust world, and often harmful to people's health.