Vegan’s Choice

Many of my friends are vegetarian by choice, either brought up without meat in their diet because of religious beliefs or ethically against the killing of animals for food. While it’s still hard to get a variety of vegetarian dishes at your average restaurant (though things are better than a decade ago when it was almost impossible to find even one meatless dish on the menu), you have to pity the humble vegan whose choices are even slimmer.

Veganism is the belief that humans should not eat or use any part of an animal for any purpose. When you consider that a lot of our food contains animal products, like eggs in cake or gelatin in jelly, and much of what we wear, such as wool and leather, is derived from animals, then veganism seems quite an uphill battle.

Although it may be difficult to eat socially with non-vegans, veganism has many pluses. For starters, vegans are careful consumers not only in buying food but also beyond the supermarket, in fashion, homewares and other areas. The disciplined vegans are healthy and will have no problem counting five vegies and two fruits in their diet. And they will know how to cook. They will know what their clothes are made of and where to buy jackets that have the same warmth as wool. There’ll be no leather sofa at their pad, and certainly nothing resembling a bearskin rug.

Vegans benefit from technology in many cases, for example by using food substitutes and synthetic fibres where plant-based materials fail. After all, sometimes cotton and hemp don’t cut it when the temperature turns Arctic. But it hardly seems right that they should be so concerned about animals when the alternative seems to be to live a man-made existence or risk endangering the environment in which animals live.

Take, for example, cotton. Cotton is a fairly damaging crop, even if you manage to get rid of the pesticides such as with organic cotton. For starters, cotton is a very thirsty plant and in a country like Australia where water is scarce, that’s a bad thing. And neither cotton nor hemp is endemic to this country. So, either you grow non-native crops or you contribute to the greenhouse effect by having foreign cotton shipped to our shores.

To be fair, wool and leather is just as damaging since sheep and cattle are also not native animals and their presence has been blamed for damaging the natural environment to provide grazing grounds, encroaching on native fauna habitat. And, other than kangaroo meat and leather, there’s no real native alternative now that our modern society has wiped out a great deal of knowledge of indigenous land cultivation.

I admit an impasse. Veganism is noble activism but perhaps the true problem lies with the way we have mishandled our environment. I don’t think that avoiding dairy products will change anything in a hurry, but I do think we can learn something from a vegan lifestyle, if only to become better consumers.

Good Medicine, Bad Medicine

There’s no doubt that the 21^st century has delivered not only a heavily medicated society, but one that wants to know if there’s an alternative. Whether it’s trying a herb-based supplement for a therapeutic effect, or just another way to manage a disease or condition, patients are looking beyond the pill for their prescription needs. Here’s a rundown on some alternate therapies. I can’t personally vouch for any of them so you should use this as a guide only and do your own research.

Placebo treatment: harmless medicine administered to a patient in the belief that the patient’s condition is largely psychological rather than physical. The placebo treatment can be dangerous if it turns out that the condition is evident in the body and not just the mind.

Acupuncture: the use of strategically placed needles in skin tissue to alleviate pain and a variety of physical and emotional problems. The belief is that particular areas on the surface of the body correspond with organs and that piercing the skin will stimulate restorative processes in that area. Not recommended for those queasy with needles!

Aromatherapy: the use of fragrant plant extracts to stimulate healing. These extracts usually come in the form of essential oils, which can be inhaled or applied to the skin. Different plants will have different effects.

Homeopathy: a form of natural therapy that stipulates a form of the disease or condition as part of the cure. For example, if you ingested poison, a homeopath might prescribe a solution that will induce nausea, causing vomiting. The solution would make a healthy person sick but would expel the poison in the affected person, making them healthy.

Laughter: some say laughter is the best medicine. Studies show that being happy prevents a lot of diseases and that laughter produces endorphins, a naturally occurring hormone that relieves minor pain. Also links physical pain to emotional disturbance - laughter is an emotional release and may have curative effects on the body.

Magnet therapy: mostly used as an alternative to painkillers, strategically-placed magnets are said to realign the body’s natural magnetic field on the premise that a disturbed field causes chronic pain.

Death of the Underground

What was once underground now walks the earth and I don’t mean reanimated corpses. Marketing, it seems, is taking over the world. There is no such thing as ‘alternative’ lifestyle any more, the mainstream has cottoned on and you can buy almost anything almost everywhere.

The gothic movement is now marketing dream with its own fashion industry (where black and fetish gear never go out of style), music sector (consisting mainly of punk, hardcore rock and metal) and movie genre, all vaguely based on the European Dark Ages and its gloomy architecture. You can buy a goth lifestyle overnight, bypassing the stages of angst and torture but the price you pay is authenticity.

Then there’s the environmental movement, which has been hijacked by a number of people to promote a healthier lifestyle and surrounds. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, it’s a great thing to obsess over. But when the words ‘nature’, ‘organic’ and ‘green’ appear on just about everything, you start to realise that you have to dig through buzzwords to find the real thing.

Don’t get me started on yoga. Anyone who thinks they are being hip and trendy by going to yoga had better get a reality check. Once the domain of the spiritual, yoga has now moved into a gym near you. I’m not having a go at yoga, like the enviro movement, it’s essentially a great thing promoting health and wellbeing. But I’m insulted by the way that yoga has become something that people do on a Wednesday night when the principles of yoga are almost like that of a religion; the stretches, the deep breathing and the meditation are only a fraction of what yoga really is and yet that’s all yoga instructors have time for in a one hour class. Yoga is an alternative lifestyle with a particular belief system centred on the mind, body and spirit; everything else is yoga-based exercise.

Diversity of music is another great thing that has been dragged through the mud by marketing types. There’s no such thing as alternative music any more. The music laughingly labelled ‘alternative’ at the music store is anything but and is probably being played on three mainstream radio stations as you browse. As soon as an alternative, something fresh, breaks through there’ll be a second rate wannabe promoted by a big record label, malleable, attractive and disposable. The talented ones rise to the top, the rest are transparent. You’ll hear about them on “Where Are They Now?” in 20 years.

We love knowing about cool things and having them available to us but it’s one thing to discover a lifestyle or a music genre and it’s quite another for it to be packaged neatly and stuffed down our throats. Drowning in the mainstream? Seek true alternative and do it your own way.