The New York Times is reporting that the country’s leading group of pediatricians recommends children receive "double the usually suggested amount of vitamin D because of evidence that it might help prevent serious diseases."

While I am not a lover of milk (it really is intended for baby cows) vegetarians can imbibe.


Read the full story here

nytimes.com

For anyone who loves animals - and stories about pets, check out www.teslaslove.blogspot.com

Fish bread?

Imagine my surprise on a recent day, when I found just that when I was drawn to a new type of bread I had never seen before on the grocery store shelf.

It was a whole grain product (great) that also was on sale. (even better)

The label, however, also said that the bread had “double omega.” This really caught my attention, what with all the attention being paid to Omega-3 fatty acids, and its purported benefits for our hearts, brains, joints and vision.

I knew the main source of Omega-3s is fish, but I also know that there are vegetarian sources.

I made no assumptions here: I read the label.

This fish bread contained anchovies, cod liver, sardine and tilapia, all fish.

Even if I were not a vegetarian, that combination would sound less than tasty to me. I don’t begrudge anyone their taste for anchovies and, though I don’t like it, offer kudos to the person who thought up this idea. But the thought of any product that contains sardines, anchovies, tilapia and cod liver makes me feel slightly queasy.

What I liked even less was that I had to read the ingredients list to determine that the product contained four kinds of fish. I did not see it elsewhere on the packaging.

But this product additive is apparently a trend, as Omega-3s have landed in juices, cereal, dairy products and even pet foods.

My advice to vegetarians, as I have said before, is not to let products reel you in before you read labels on everything you buy.

Ah, I said to myself, if only I would have a reason to blog about Paul Newman, the wonderful actor we lost this past week, the man who brought us everything from “Cool Hand Luke” to the coolest of Newman’s Own Lemonade.

However, I told myself, this is a vegetarian blog and as such should focus only on ways to keep meat out of our diets and veggies in, not on ways to celebrate the life of a man I never knew. (Forcing my then-reporter Phil Helsel to cover a Fairfield Country political race two years ago, where he met and interviewed Newman does not count toward me being any closer to the Academy Award winning heartthrob, even in a six-degrees-of-separation delusion)

Yet, given this utterly public platform with which to express thought, I thought: Newman and his company, Newman’s Own, especially Newman’s Own Organics, had a lot to do with healthy eating. Among their specialties are items that are vegetarian – they even have vegan treats for dogs. My dog, shown here, is a lover of vegetables – she eats mostly meat, of course, but happily scarfs down carrots and broccoli too


Even better than the vegetarian offerings, however, is that the proceeds from the Newman’s companies are used for philanthropic endeavors, one of them the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut for gravely ill children. I received an e-mail this week from the people that run the camp, it was a copy of the piece that was published in the New Haven Register this week as they sought to come to grips with their grief, pay homage to their fearless leader and pay tribute to the incredible work Newman has done to help others. The piece is a poignant one; from people who were feeling acute loss of a man they knew and loved, but also a reminder that doing good is still good.

Ah, it seems I have blogged about Paul Newman. See, talking about being a vegetarian can be a topic that lends itself well to branching out. My advice in this case? Eat, drink and be merry – “Raise a little hell,” as Newman told his Hole in the Wall Gang staff. It won’t hurt if some of that eating is done by buying Newman’s Own products – and it just might help someone else.