While I was sitting in the mandap during my wedding a couple of weeks ago now, I was a bit concerned about all of the Indian sweets I was consuming. It seemed that every two minutes another mithai was being prodded in my direction, and the thought of all the ghee, the sugar, the gor (molasses) etc that I must have inhaled was a bit frightening. It wasn’t until last week when I read these articles in India-West (Link 1 and Link 2), I realized that as a vegetarian, I should have been concerned with something else. According to the story,
Varak, that gossamer-thin silver sheet that covers Indian mitthai, is made by placing thin metal strips of silver between the steaming intestines of a slaughtered animal or its hide and hammered into a thin foil. A substantial number of cattle, sheep and goat are killed specifically for the industry, according to animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi.
I used to think it was real silver that was just wittled down, perhaps by a machine? Apparently, there is no such thing as machine-made varak, so chances are, if you are vegetarian and you eat mithai or anything else with that silver gossamer on it, you are unwittingly eating an animal by-product. It pains me to think that many unknowing vegetarians, who perhaps think Indian sweets are vegetarian-friendly, have been consuming an animal by-product all these years. What’s worse is followers of the Jain religion, a religion that holds the notion of ahimsa or nonviolence in high regard, and the strictest of whom will wear a face-mask so as to not kill any living thing by breathing, have been using varak to decorate their “religious idols and the tirthankaras in their temples.”
I was enraged following the McDonalds controversey a few years back in which it was found that McDonalds was wrongfully telling customers their french fries were vegetarian, when in reality, the fries were frozen with a beef tallow additive, and the news in this article doesn’t make me much happier. While we all know that gelatin is found in marshmallows and gummy bears, I was surprised to see that certain cereals like Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats, actually contain gelatin, as does a now-former favorite of mine Lucky Charms. With the increasing popularity of vegetarianism, one would think a vegetarian friendly substitute for gelatin would have been created by now.
And while certain members of the food industry allege that it is impossible to synthesize gelatin, like John Magnifico, the technical service manager of Kraft Foods Atlantic Gelatin, others suggest the prohibitive cost of these substitutes make them unpopular choices for food manufacturers. Unbeknownst to me was that the substance agar-agar, which is derived from seaweed, is an existing alternative to gelatin, but is not regularly used vice gelatin because it costs about four times what gelatin costs. As a vegetarian consumer, I would pay the extra amount for gelatin-free favorites, as many consumers do to have the option of buying organic.
Sure, if you are dining out, part of the vegetarian’s risk is that some kind of meat might end up in your food. But knowing before hand what items are safe to eat, and what items aren’t is a big help. One of the stories I often heard was that Pizza Hut used a cheese which had beef in it. This could have been true, since rennet (an ingredient in many cheeses) can be derived from either animal sources or from fungal or bacterial sources. The usual source of rennet, according to the India-West story “is the fourth stomach of slaughtered, newborn calves.” Fortunately, “95 percent of the cheeses currently made in the U.S. is made with non-animal based rennet,” including the cheese used by Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Round Table, and Little Caesar’s.
I wonder now, like I wondered when the McDonald’s controversy erupted why the FDA does not require companies to label vegetarian foods as such. Just like Kosher items are required to have the K in a circle, it would do companies well to have a green leaf, or a big V in a circle for items deemed to be suitable for vegetarians. Perhaps this is something companies should do anyway, as a courtesy to its vegetarian clientele.
hasn’t a german or some other european company already produced a meat that they say tastes like human flesh? if the argument is that today’s hindus or others should have no problem eating beef because their ancestors may or may not have eaten beef, then why shouldn’t humans today eat other humans since cannibalism and human sacrifice was a feature of many ancient civilizations around the world?
(caveat: i’m a dog lover and don’t eat any meat, fowl or fish).
hey Flrdn – dont know if you were implying anything deep – but emulating the taste and texture of meat thru substitutes isnt anything new or nefarious – just the art of food preparation – i’ve had shepherd’s pie made with soy and boy o boy… it was quite uniqu and quite fantastic… for you truntoonians there’s a restaurant, king’s cafe in kensignton mkt (branches in ottawa, loo and montreal) that serves the faux stuff… and it’s awesome good – chek it out.
DD:
never had tofurkey…but have been to several chinese buddhist restaurants.. ranging from happy family in monterey park, cali (awesome for those who are out there…) to harmony here in atlanta… and one of my all time favorites in DC called yuan fu (the faux duck their is awesome..but how would i know?).. anyhow, i know some vegetarians are perturbed of eating fake ‘meat’… i just find it interesting as to what tempeh, tofu, and other gluten products can be prepared as.. it makes it more interesting for my taste buds…
hey chick pea, I don’t find it peturbing either… One time at Dragonfly in NYC, I ordered the “fake” spicy cashew chicken and Mr. DD ordered the real one. Strangely, the two carnivores in our party concurred that mine tasted hella better. I personally like to sneak not-dogs and fake meats on my non-weg friends, just to see if they really can tell half the time. And anyone who’s had my spinach & black bean enchiladas knows the last thing on their mind is “where’s the beef?” 😉
ok… here’s a plug for the home crew… plus they’re nice people … always a plus in my book … most indian restaurateurs always seem so grumpy… like giant rats with their little beady eyes and that weird grumpy probing look … vere are you from?
anyway… so DD care to share your bean enchilada recipe!!! sounds awesome!!! do you use canned beans or pressure nuke the beans… any tips!!!? can you seee where i’m going … i vahnt that tastes of sepia tab!!! kwite badly.
ok… rude of me … not cool… sorry … read a little while back that when a person misbehaves it is a reflection of the last person he met rather than a reflectionon you… anyhow… i’ve had bad experiences at this place indian rice factory twice, the most recent being two weeks back and rather fresh… that’s it in my book… sod them with a jackfruit…
tofurkey is not worth writing home about. It’s okay. Mac and cheese is better.
Dragonfly in NYC, I ordered the “fake” spicy cashew chicken and Mr. DD ordered the real one. Strangely, the two carnivores in our party concurred that mine tasted hella better. I personally like to sneak not-dogs and fake meats on my non-weg friends, just to see if they really can tell half the time. And anyone who’s had my spinach & black bean enchiladas knows the last thing on their mind is “where’s the beef?” 😉
I agree, Dragonfly is the bestest and fake meat is making miraculous strides (thank you TVP). I wonder how much this comes at the cost of our health, but then, I had pringles and pizza (okay, and some grapes) for all my meals yesterday.
PS writes: >>the idea of not eating your mother’s meat or your own meat is again a millenia old value system that you are stuck at CP:>>i know some vegetarians are perturbed of eating fake ‘meat’.
Every technology has early adopters and late adopters. A few relatives of mine bought a TV set within a week of getting Doordarshan in the early 80’s. But other relatives of mine still haven’t bought a TV – the old couple say they are happy without it.
Similiarly, with the factory-farm grown “meat”, there will be early adopters and late adopters. I will be an early adopter because my value system says that I can eat anything as long as no living being is killed, and this fits the bill. However, I do understand folks who are repulsed by the thought of it tasting like something which was alive. All of us have conditioned responses, and the more broad-minded and adaptation-friendly among us modify/rectify our conditioned responses based on new information (scientific, social, cultural etc).
Because, after all, what is the difference between meat and vegetable? Both are just matter where molecules are arranged in a particular order: the first belonged once to a living being and the second did not. Now, if “meat” could be grown on farms by installing water and fertilizer feeders, would it really be meat? It’s just another vegetable. It’s due to this logic that I choose to “adapt”.
However, I cannot adapt to eating human meat grown in a similiar manner. I know – it’s illogical and irrational. Sue me. This is one technology that I will not adopt – but I won’t have a problem if others did. Social behaviour should change as times change – those who refuse to adapt, perish.
Fifty years from now, it will probably not be surprising to see a couple argue : “Why do we have to eat your folks every Chrismas? Why can’t we eat my folks for once?” It will not be considered cannibalism, because it isn’t.
M. Nam
Eat me. 😉
I haven’t read all the comments so don’t know if this has been brought up already, but a side-effect of eating silver is that it can turn your skin blue.
That is if you consume (relatively) massive quantities of it. I remember reading about it but dont have specifics at hand. the problem mainly occurs when people take silver tablets as supplements regularly (like “colloidal silver” which is touted as a cure-all) – the extremely thin layer on sweets amounts to nothing compared to that. And excess silver accumulates on fingertips and nails, gives a bluish black tinge to skin.
I’ve never had the ‘whole bird’ ToFurky (too expensive), but their deli slices and veggie dogs are great (but also more expensive than they ought to be, imho). However, I find that most life-long veggie people have a difficult tiem acquiring the taste for mock-meats (especially veggie dogs).
this whole eating human flesh thing reminds of that movie “Alive”…
animal-byproduct-life-saving medicine aside, would you eat another human or as someone else put it ‘just die’?
You must try this, if you haven’t already: “Quorn” products (excellent chicken/meat substitute) — available in ‘naked cutlets’ (wonderful to chop into pieces for meat/chicken-substitutes), breaded cutlets, minced, nuggets etc. Yellow boxes in the frozen foods section of Whole Foods, Vons etc. Quorn (pronounced kworn, I think) has been available and popular in Europe for years, but was apparently being kept out of the US by the soy-lobby. Quorn is micoprotein (technically, like cheese, yeast etc a ‘fungus’…the healthy kind)
Texture exactually like chicken! And no sentient creatures brought up in cruel conditions and killed even more cruelly :).
I make the yummiest un-chicken masala, biryani etc with it for my meat-maniac friends who can’t tell the difference :).
I can tell the difference. It’s even in consistency all the way through, and doesn’t get crunchy easily. That’s fine for something that’s sauced, but when served alone, it’s clearly something different from chicken.
Well, perhaps that was the wee-est exaggeration. For those not wanting to eat fellow-creatures, though, the difference is readily ignorable. Quorn rocks!
This topic is near and dear to my heart. I think there is a market for vegetarian food production. It makes me angry when I realize many of my favorite foods have some animal by-product in it. We live in a meat-eating society and vegetarians are left out. It is near impossible to not eat meat by-products. !!!
For Shakaharis:
I too am a Shakahari. As you all have pointed out, it is nearly impossible to avoid consuming foodstuffs which contain no animal by-products.
Question: why not start making everything from scratch at home? This way you know what is exactly in your food. If you need to have butter, for example, go milk a cow. Don’t know who will let you milk a cow simply because you, a vegetarian out of religious conviction, would want to milk one of their cows? Go to the Voits, they’ll understand.
hey cheap ass, dairy production isnt exactly a no-animal pain domain. in my layperson understanding, as with any logical mammal (i think therefore i am), cows produce milk through and around child birth – prolonging that milk production beyond child rearing requires a constant machinic or human stimulation. ergo – it isnt quite natural and the peta folks will have your cheap ass for suggesting the above.
“I make the yummiest un-chicken masala, biryani etc with it for my meat-maniac friends who can’t tell the difference :).”
Ms Fink ‘Quorn-fan’ Nottle – Please post recipes! Or do you just follow the usual chicken recipes and substitute Quorn?
I don’t know about Ms Fink of the Quorn, but I usually take all the old school Dadi-Nani ki recipes and slap some quorn in there. Madhur Jaffrey and that Sanjay WhatsHisButt (with the TV show in India, the brown Emeril dude) might be challenged to tell the difference.
Yep, Vegnut and Desidancer, that’s exact-ually what I do :)…simbly take chicken/mutton recipes and use Quorn instead (usually ‘naked cutlets’ cut into pieces — you can also ‘brown’ em a little first on a pan with a teeny amount of oil, but don’t have to do this).
I’d be happy to post recipes but am a little unsure if doing so is against the protocol of this blog, it not being a ‘cooking’ site…don’t want to take advantage of the good SM folk :). I do submit my e-mail add with my posts and would be happy to e-mail you, though (assuming one can access people’s emails, that is).
Quorn is also a great substitute for fancy-schmancy — though often simple — French etc dishes that use meat.
“Yves” meat substitute products (in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, not frozen) are also good, but quorn definitely has the texture down better esp. for ‘chicken’ pieces.
Ms. Fink. Please do not use quotation marks in your handle. It messes up the commenting system. Thank you.
Okay. (Perhaps that explains why I kept getting those error messages when I tried to post …)
Dhaavak
hey cheap ass, dairy production isnt exactly a no-animal pain domain. in my layperson understanding, as with any logical mammal (i think therefore i am), cows produce milk through and around child birth – prolonging that milk production beyond child rearing requires a constant machinic or human stimulation. ergo – it isnt quite natural and the peta folks will have your cheap ass for suggesting the above.
I didn’t know that it’s a painful procedure. Thanks for setting my Cheap Ass straight. But I was saying that for all the Shakaharis who want to make sure that there are no animal by-products in their foods should start making things from scratch. People who do not want to consume foodstuffs with animal by-products doesn’t necessarily mean that they also care about whether animals are hurt or not; they can care for both, but it is not synonymous. If it were this way, then all Shakaharis would eliminate dahi , ghee and doodh from their cuisine. And Gujurati Hindu Shakaharis, as far as I know, are big on all three products.
hey CAD… i see your point… i probably fit that profile… i have killed some animals in the past when i was a kid and couldnt stand the sight of them writhing in their blood … needless to say i went hungry that night – but even so i probably have at least three servings of milk/milk products a day.
BTW
you sound a little miffed there – i was just fooling along with your handle but it sounds very abrasive to me when i read back – pardon me – didnt want to offend you – and even if you werent – i would prefer i hadnt used your handle so casually.
No, no, I’m not trolling. (Btw is there any sort of public rule about using the same name on this site? If so, I will post under whatever original name I used).
Anyway, “try accepting death as the inevitable” — yes! That’s exactly what I’m trying to do and what I wish other people would do. I truly believe the wrong/inefficient/worse path is to run around churning out more drugs, more treatments, etc. I honestly don’t see the point of spending billions of dollars on drug research and development — why exactly do we need a cure for cancer or AIDS? Because they’re horrible diseases that cause pain, suffering, hardship on loved ones, financial trouble, etc? Sure — but if the whole entire world had a change in perspective — that it’s OK to experience (terrible) pain and that we should help the dying and the ones losing their loved one accept or, day i say, embrace death as part of the ciiiircle of life, then … maybe we could spend all that research money on something more useful.
I am saying this as a person who has lost grandparents to very painful terminal illnesses, and whose friend was run over by a truck last summer. And as a person who cannot imagine life without my mom, and I fear that she too will die after suffering from multiple uncurable illnesses. Those deaths were very hard losses for me, still are. But they are gone and that’s that. I’m not going to sit around wishing that modern medicine was more advanced so that their lives were saved. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love my family and friend, or that I don’t think that people should be sad when people die. And it doesn’t mean that I was some stoic robot at their funerals. But it’s not up to me to make statements like, “she was too young to die” or anything like that. Some people die and they’re gone and we don’t get to enjoy their company and love as long as we’d like. I’m saying all this and sounding half crazy/amoral/etc. and it’s not that I believe what I am writing 100% — but I’d like to.
So, no, it’s not the “cool” thing to think. But I feel like we, as humans, would be a little better off if we could be more … pragmatic about death and less afraid. I think it’s the fear of death and the vanity/greed of wanting a long and unspoiled life that have caused a lot of suffering in the world.
Its also a question of degree: cows/animals used for milk etc the way they were traditionally kept in villages/by older methods at least sometimes lead/led half way decent lives the rest of the time i.e. could wander around etc even if there were some cruelties involved (like being kept in a longer state of milk-producing or whatever). Modern factory farming however is utterly brutal and cruel in both how these animals (who are capable of both feeling fear and pain) are kept for their entire lives (beaks/other parts cut off, hardly allowed to move) and then how they are killed — swung up kicking with one leg (which of course breaks), swung round etc etc before being killed. I’m not going into too much detail here.
I’d be perhaps willing to eat meat if the animals led an okay life and were killed quickly and humanely, but eating the products of modern factory farming…no WAY.
Dhavaak–
you sound a little miffed there – i was just fooling along with your handle but it sounds very abrasive to me when i read back – pardon me – didnt want to offend you – and even if you werent – i would prefer i hadnt used your handle so casually.
Oh, no, I had known you were jesting. So was I, when I said “Thanks for setting my Cheap Ass straight”. Don’t worry, it is inevitable with a name like “Cheap Ass Desi”. My parents should have given me a more considerate name. Off the topic, but I knew an African American guy who is brown as heck, and his name was– get this– Aryan White!! Really. On his birth certificate, driver’s license, everything.
Ms. Fink Nottle, would you like you newts rare Or do you prefer them rather well done?
The thread is way off track.
Anyway I asked a Jain colleague. She mentioned that the Silver one that is used in the Jain temples is pure vegetarian and uses a different process. And Jains can special order it from the temples if they need it for their own use.
Maybe some Jain from India can reconfirm this.
From this article:
Who would have thought that something as simple yet ubiquitous as varak– which we hardly ever gave thought to– would elicit 132 comments?
Sajit # 132
Maneka Gandhi is prone to hyperbole and she has misstated and misused information before to fit her agenda.
From the article you linked above:
If you by her numbers, for 30000 tons of Varak, 375,000,000 animals have been killed for Varak. Doesn’t make sense to me.
just for the record….i am a vegetarian from a vegetarian family and am married to a non-vegetarian from a non-veg family and I think my family has way more “problems” than his. My in-laws are sooooo sweet and loving and generous. I really hate for anyone to claim that they are somehow not as good because they are non-vegetarians. They live according to their cultural norms, as do most Indian vegetarians. And vegetarianism in India is often a caste based thing…so, ahem, isn’t oppressing humans a kind of violence against sentient beings?
That said, vegetarianism can also be a choice. And I think only when it is a conscious choice, is it truly worth anything. Which is why, hard as it will be for me (and my -dysfunctional- fam), I’m going to let my daughter make the choice for herself (though as long as her food is under my exclusive control, she’s only getting veg!)
And thanks so much for the tip about the silver. I never knew that. In fact, I always bought into the whole thing that it’s good for you!
just for the record….i am a vegetarian from a vegetarian family and am married to a non-vegetarian from a non-veg family and I think my family has way more “problems>” than his.
yaiyemvezonly:
Out of curiosity, what kind of problems? Are the problems related to or attributable to vegetarianism?
Random: I find it really inconvenient that I cannot use spell check when I write these posts. I am forced to actually spell things correctly without the aid of automatic spell check. Damn!
A few years ago (in the US), a lady posted a request for vegetarian recipes on the company’s bulletin board. Her seven year old daughter, she said, found out where meat really comes from. Meat, at home, was a once-a-week affair, growing up in India. Reality first struck me when I cooked chicken for the first time and had to clean the damn thing. I was a bachelor then, living on my own, and despite having eaten plenty of meat in the preceding twenty two years, this first time experience was pretty unnerving. Sure, I’d seen marinated fish and chicken on my occasional saunters to the kitchen, but touching raw chicken for the first time was pretty disgusting. IÂ’d never really been to the butcher before that and didnÂ’t think much about associating the dishes with the sources. Now, since meat is such an integral part of the daily spread, I was wondering if thereÂ’s a western tradition about explaining the origins of meat to kids? Like the cliched “the birds and the bees” talk is there something like “the cows and the chickens” talk?
Last night I watched two shows that tangentially relate to this thread. One was Anthony Bourdain’s travelogue on eating in Paris. He was delighted with the very natural way the French slaughter and sell their animals. The birds still had their fathers, the pigs their heads, and so on. No factory processed cruelty here. But one look at these animals and it turned my non-vegetarian stomach. The second show was a CNBC doc on the CEO of Whole Foods Stores – a case study of how big business can be benign and eco-friendly. Same rant against factory processed.
People should be free to choose what they eat. But that doesn’t meat they have the right to twist arguments, draw inane analogies and somehow prove that they are holier than thou. There has never been a definitive argument on either side of the veg vs. non-veg debate.
Don’t be silly. A non-veg diet kills animals cruelly and needlessly. It’s that simple. Every animal farm would be prosecuted under animal cruelty laws if not the ‘food’ in their tagline.
Don’t be silly. A non-veg diet kills animals cruelly and needlessly. It’s that simple. Every animal farm would be prosecuted under animal cruelty laws if not the ‘food’ in their tagline.
Is the problem with the way animals are killed or the fact that the animals are killed for human consumption period?
I would imagine that we could find more ‘humane’ ways to kill animals, but we would be killing them nevertheless.
A veg diet uproots plants and mercilessly destroys their seeds. I’ll stick to eggs and bacon please.
I promise this is my last post on this subject. Enough already!
Mankind will continue to torture, kill and maim other forms of life for scientific, commercial and nutritional purposes. Why? Because mankind considers itself to be the most evolved form of life on this planet with a god given right to use other forms of life for its own purpose. Now, some people may try to differentiate between killing for the sake of devouring VS. killing for the sake of science (as in lab rats) or killing for the sake of development (as in clearing out corn fields to put in suburban developments). And some would like to differentiate between a kind killing vs. brutal killing.
C’mon folks! How twisted can our logic be? Why don’t we just admit that we humans are here to master and use our planet, and killing other forms of life (including plants) comes with the territory. Unless one anoints oneself a saint, particularly a jain saint, one is a party to all this.
Mankind will continue to torture, kill and maim other forms of life for scientific, commercial and nutritional purposes. Why? Because mankind considers itself to be the most evolved form of life on this planet with a god given right to use other forms of life for its own purpose.
So long as man is considered the center of the universe, and so long as such thinking is justified philosphically and through theology, that mindset will likely continue. But we may be cautiously optimistic: There is an awakening to the horrors of animal brutality, and just like ethnic and religious minorities had their civil rights movements, so too will the advocacy of the humane treatment for animals intensify – especially in the West. We may look forward to the day when the needless slaughter of animals for food in particular is considered as unenlightened and reprehensible as racism and religious discrimination.
You go, Eddie!
DesiDudeinAustin: we know for sure that animals are capable of feeling pain and terror, which is why it is terrible to inflict these things on them just because, like all bullies, we ‘can.’ “killing plants and seeds” is hardly at the same level of participating in cruelty.
“killing plants and seeds” is hardly at the same level of participating in cruelty.”
there’s a roald dahl short story that made me question the above!
“there’s a roald dahl short story that made me question the above!”
🙂 Yes, I think I remember reading that. Ultimately its a question of degree and how much ‘killing/ignoring pain’ you’re willing to be a passive/active participant in.
Cmon now, animal cruelty applies only to dogs and cats. During Katrina, volunteers spent hours saving a cat from a house, they were all hungry from the “noble” work, so they all went and ate 1 cow and 1 pig. :-))
Floridian,
Not wishing to be pedantic, but as far as I know the “God-given right” in this matter is something specific to the Abrahamic faiths.
Other people:
Then the solution is very simple:
If this really bothers you, don’t eat meat unless you really have to and all other available vegetarian options have been exhausted.
If you still have a problem with eating meat, and are in a life-or-death situation where no other food is available, then you have to make a judgement-call on whether you’re prepared to starve to death on this particular point of principle. If so, then fine — your responsibility, along with the consequences.
“Cmon now, animal cruelty applies only to dogs and cats.”
interestingly, if you clubbed a dog to death you would be prosecuted, but you can club a baby seal to death. our humaneness is full of contradictions.
“:) Yes, I think I remember reading that. Ultimately its a question of degree and how much ‘killing/ignoring pain’ you’re willing to be a passive/active participant in.”
i had a really hard time eating for a few days after reading that story. kept imagining the vegetables and plants shrieking and groaning! same with flowers that were cut from the garden.