Nature knows no political parties

There is a saying in the Talmud that "Once the sword is let loose in the land, it does not distinguish between the innocent and the guilty."  Perhaps a corollary to this should be:  Once a storm is let loose in the land, it does not distinguish between Republicans and Democrats.

Radar map of areas
 affected by Hurricane Sandy,
October 29, 2012

I am referring to the hypocrisy of  the 36 Republican Senators who voted against federal aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy,  yet previously voted for -- even demanded! -- similar aid for disasters in their own states. (See a list of who they are and what they previously voted for).  In Jewish numerology, the number 36 is "double life," but theirs was hardly a humanitarian decision.

To me this vote was the height of hypocrisy.  It makes me wonder why anybody would vote against helping their fellow Americans recover from the worst storm system to hit the East Coast since we have been recording the weather.  Was this in retaliation for New York City Mayor Bloomberg's support of Obama and acknowledgement that global warming is real?

If that sounds like some sort of paranoid conspiracy theory, consider the fact that in 2011 the Republicans on the House Energy Committee voted unanimously to deny the existence of climate change. This was part of a concerted campaign on the part of  the Tea Party to de-legitimize global warming in the minds of the public, starting right after Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for "An Inconvenient Truth." (Watch the PBS documentary "Climate of Doubt")  And they came close to succeeding -- until Hurricane Sandy hit and demonstrated what the scientists have been predicting all along:  Manhattan was going to end up under water.  Suddenly climate change seems very real after all.

This time the water receded, but if the polar ice caps continue to melt, the flooding of the Coast could  become permanent.  2012 marked a new low in the amount of polar ice since the advent of the satellite era (when we could observe the Earth from space.)  And no amount of denial is going to stop the big meltdown if we don't stop pouring CO2 into the atmosphere.

You can't vote science out of existence.  The universe is not a democracy, it simply is what it is.  Nature is no respecter of party politics.  Had we listened to the warnings that scientists have been sounding for decades, we might not be having these devastating (and very expensive!) super-storms now.  I have argued before that climate change -- not Obamacare or Medicare or whatever -- is the biggest threat to our economy.  Those who resist aid to storm victims are often the same people who have been trying to convince us that global warming is a hoax.  But nature does not listen to votes on congressional committees.  Nature just marches on.

It's not too late to begin changing our polluting ways, although turning the situation around is going to take a long time -- if it is even possible at this stage.  Meanwhile, the very least we can do is to help those who are in the path of the storms.

Shame on those 36 Republican Senators!

Book Review: The Vegetarian Diet for Kidney Disease

"Ecologically Grown Vegetables"
Photo by Elina Mark
(Courtesy of Wikimedia)

As I've written on this blog before, my wife Caryl (pronounced "Carol") and I are vegetarians.  She is also a diabetic, plus she has high blood pressure, and needs to watch her sodium and cholesterol.  Caryl had gotten her diabetes under control when the "other shoe" fell -- she now has first stage kidney disease.

The doctor recommended a low potassium diet and gave her a list of no-no foods -- all of which were things we vegetarians rely on: beans, potatoes, lentils, soy, oranges, avocados, tomatoes, squash, nuts, and a ton of other veggies.  Just imagine trying to be a vegetarian without using these basic foods.

A search online revealed kidney disease diets that were all heavily meat-oriented for protein sources -- not an option for us, both because of our commitment to vegetarianism and the fact that we keep kosher and live in a rural area where kosher meat is not easily available.  This was so disheartening to Caryl that she plunged into depression. What on earth COULD she eat?  Food just did not seem interesting or palatable anymore.

Then I found this book by registered dietitian Joan B. Hogan, who specializes in renal nutrition.  Not only does it deal with vegetarianism and kidney disease, it talks about combinations of diseases -- such as having both diabetes and kidney disease.  As Hogan explains, it used to be believed that vegetarianism and kidney health did not mix, and that animal proteins were superior to proteins obtained from plants, based on early studies of baby rats.  But this is now changing.  As Hogan says, "This theory is now history, for we are not rats."

 Hogan's approach to menu planning is much more sensible than the old flesh-centered renal diet.  Rather than outrightly forbidding various foods, she classifies them as high, medium, and low potassium.  Sort of a "Chinese menu" approach where you can choose one from list A, two from list B, and three from list C per day. So, for example, Caryl can have an orange (high) if she doesn't have a tomato (high) the same day. Or she could have half an orange at breakfast and a slice of tomato later in a sandwich. This allows for a whole lot more flexibility and variety in the menu. (The same goes for other nutrients, but since potassium is what brought us to this book, this review focuses primarily on that.)

And there are lots of charts for various foods to compare levels of protein, potassium, phosphorus, sodium, etc., as well as a useful chart on commercial meat substitutes. (Which is why you should buy the book version, NOT the kindle version, which renders the charts totally unreadable. Besides, having the book on the shelf right there next to your recipe books is more convenient.)

There is also a very useful list comparing various types of beans, where I learned that pinto beans have half the potassium of white beans -- so by changing the beans we use in a favorite soup, we could cut the potassium way down and still enjoy it in smaller portions.

One thing that the book does not have is more info on how cooking and other preparations affect various foods. There are recipes with stats for the complete recipe, but not for individual cooked ingredients. For example, she mentions "soaked potatoes" in a chart but does not say how long to soak them, or how soaking affects their potassium level. I assume she means soak them raw and pour off the water?

I do know that potassium is water-soluble, so when we cook potatoes (and a lot of other veggies) we no longer use the water they were cooked in for soups.  Ditto for beans, which we first soak overnight, then pour off that water and use fresh water for cooking.  I assume this lowers the potassium levels of the foods, but some statistical comparisons between raw and cooked vegetables would be very helpful. And how does sprouting lentils and mung beans (both high potassium but also soaked first and rinsed repeatedly as they grow) change their statistics?

I later discovered that a lot of this type of info can be found on the USDA Food Composition Database, where, for example, a search for "lentils" did find comparisons between raw, cooked, and sprouted.  This info, plus Hogan's book that pointed us in the right direction for figuring out how to balance a renal vegetarian diet, has made life a lot more bearable.  Caryl is no longer so depressed and we are now enjoying food again.  Plus her potassium was normal last blood test. I give it ten stars!

Kudos to "Hatchlings" for listening to me!

If you play the Hatchlings egg hunt game on Facebook, then you know that there are always tons of Christmas-themed eggs every year.  But up until this year there had only been two Hanukkah eggs -- and both of those were way back in 2009.

Hatchlings 2009
Hanukkah egg

OK, it's pretty normal for Jewish holidays to be ignored by the dominant culture.  But I have to admit that the ubiquitous Christmas commercialism gets pretty old when you are constantly bombarded from all directions with a holiday you don't even celebrate.  (My Christian friends tell me it gets old for them, too, but that's another story.)

If you have Jewish kids, "The Season" is the time of year when they feel most left out.  Frankly, so do we adults.  So anytime there is even a tiny little acknowledgment of a Jewish holiday in the mainstream world, we Jews pounce on it like a starving dog on a bone.

Well, this year Hatchlings threw us more than a bone -- we got a whole week of meals.  Eight beautiful Hanukkah eggs.  You see, I got to thinking that maybe the reason we had never had a Hanukkah series might be because the Hatchlings design team didn't know what the symbols of Hanukkah are.  Hatchlings eggs tend to be in series of eight, and Hanukkah has eight days.  So a while back, I suggested these possibilities:  Judah Maccabee, menorah, latkes (potato pancakes), sufganiot (Israeli donuts), gelt (coins), presents, bottle of olive oil, Star of David.  Well, they took my suggestion -- and now we have those eight things in a Hanukkah egg series (the menorah on this page is number 8.)  Which just goes to show, it's better to step forward with a solution rather than sit back and grumble about a problem.

So my New Year's resolution is this:  I'm going to look for more ways to facilitate inclusiveness in this increasingly divisive world.  Sometimes you get left out, not from prejudice, but from sheer ignorance.  Fortunately, ignorance is curable with education.   Not to mention activism.   (Now let me see... we've never had any Passover Hatchlings eggs, and Passover also has eight days... so what would be eight good symbols to use for  a Passover series?  For that matter, Kwanzaa also has eight days...)

Wishing everyone a happy, prosperous New Year 2013!