Several months ago, at the start of the baseball season, I wrote an article indicating that a major league baseball player, Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers, had gone vegetarian. Yesterday was the mid-way point in the Brewers’ season, so I thought we should check and see how Mr. Fielder has been performing thus far this season. As you may recall, Fielder became a vegetarian after his wife Chanel, had showed him Kim Barnouin’s and Rory Freedman’s book, Skinny Bitch.

Major league baseball maintains very detailed statistics, making it easy to see how a player or team has performed during one season versus previous seasons. They keep stat on as to the number of hits during the day, at night, at home, on the road, in the division, in interleague play, against left hand pitcher, against right hand pitchers, etc. We’ll just look at Fielders basic stats, his batting average, home runs, and runs batted in.

So how well has Fielder performed thus far this season as compared to previous seasons? According to his mid season stats, I guess you would have to say that he is not performing quite as well – especially as compared to last season. This season, Fielder got off to a very slow start. He didn’t his first home run until April 17^th, nearly three weeks into the season. His batting average (the number of base hits that he gets as a percentage of his official at bat appearances) had also suffered. Three weeks into the season, he was hitting only .215.

Something certainly seemed to be impacting his strength and his overall hitting skills. Early in the year, Fielder took a lot of “ribbing” (pun intended) from the media and fans alike, linking his new diet to his poor stats. However, now that we have reached the mid point of the season, he stats have improved. Fielder is a third year player. In his first pro season, he batted .271 with 28 home runs and 81 runs batted in (rbis). Last year, he had a phenomenal season. He batted .288, while hitting a massive 50 home runs, and had 119 rbis.

So far this year, Fielder has batted .271 with 16 homers and 42 rbis. If you extrapolate that out over an entire season, he is a pace to hit 32 home runs, drive in 84 runs, and hit batting average is .271 as it was back in 2006. These stats are right in line with his rookie season’s stats. However, they fall far shy of his monster stats from last year. Can this be attributed to his new vegetarian diet? Perhaps. Were last year’s stats an anomaly? Perhaps. Have pitchers figured out how to pitch to him? Perhaps. Are there other mitigating circumstances? Perhaps. People will continue to speculate and argue about this. In my mind, there is no definitive answer.

Fielder has the capability to go on a tear and dramatically increase his home run production in the second half of this season. If he gets his home run numbers close to that 50 total from last season, it would likely quiet those who argue that there is no place for a meatless diet in baseball.

There continue to be conflicting arguments within the medical profession as to whether a meatless diet is acceptable for athletes. Some doctors feel that a vegetarian diet is not optimal, as people may not accumulate some of the valuable micronutrients such as zinc and iron, and that soy proteins in males may increase their estrogen levels, adversely affecting their testosterone levels. Other doctors argue that a well-planned vegetarian diet will satisfy people’s nutritional needs. They indicate that as long as muscles are receiving protein, it doesn’t matter where it (the protein) comes from – whether is be animal or plant derived, and that a plant based diet can meet the increased nutritional needs of the professional athlete. As I mentioned in a previous article, there are many successful vegetarian and vegan professional athletes.

Regardless, if Fielder, a 270-pound professional athlete, finishes this season with stats that are similar to last year’s, it would be a boon to vegetarianism. There would be another celebrated figure bringing awareness to the public that meat free nutrition is a reasonable, acceptable alternative to a meat laden diet. Will vegetarianism or even veganism become mainstream? That’s unlikely in the near term, but it certainly seems to be gaining momentum.

Go Fielder!

Hi All, it's Jane writing today - post day for the Daring Bakers. This month's challenge was a Danish Braid. As some of you may have realized, I begged off last month's challenge, an Opera Cake. My fellow Alternative DBs did the challenge proud; however, I simply couldn't face another buttercream. But the waiting was worth it, I was thrilled with this month's offering. Lane has always loved pastry, however, that's been off the menu for us since we've been vegan. I'm sure the vegan bakeries in Los Angeles have plenty of pastry options, however, we're not really near any of them, and don't need to be making special trips for goodies.

I always suspected that pastry would be something easy to "veganize," after all, my pie crust hasn't suffered a bit in the transition. I had just never tried pastry before. I made the assumption that it would be incredibly difficult to make. I was wrong. It's time consuming, but fun.

I'd gotten a sense of security from all the posts on the alternative DB board. Most of the vegan bakers seemed to have a positive experience. The gluten-free people had a tougher time of it, as you can imagine! But most people were reporting successes, even if the process wasn't textbook perfect. So when I actually started laminating my dough (a technique where you roll "butter" into the dough) I was surprized that I didn't have any of the difficulties I'd read about and expected -- dough too sticky, butter exploding out of the dough... Everything went swimmingly, my single folds and double book folds were almost perfectly aligned. Not bad for a first try! I left the dough in the fridge overnight and went to bed.

Today I needed to assemble the filling, roll out the dough, fill and braid, and bake. We were supposed to fill one braid with an apple concoction and the other with the filling of our choice. I bought the Fuji's as directed, even though they're not in season here now. They didn't taste as sweet as usual, and I wasn't really happy with the apple filling. So, for the second braid, I used a triple berry jam, and vegan cream cheese. This was a very satisfying pastry to make. I enjoyed the process, I enjoyed the end results. But it's not something you're going to throw together a few minutes before you're company is coming!

We shared this with our omnivorous cousins, and they loved it. They asked me to make it with blueberries next time. I was also thinking it might be good with the lemon curd from the vegan lemon meringue pie we made in the January challenge...  (Lane's liking that idea.)

I will definitely make this recipe again, but I'll make a few changes. The recipe directed us to mix the dough for 5 minutes after incorporating all the ingredients. I've never done that before in making any type of dough. I'm not an expert, but I thought you weren't supposed to "overmix" as you make things too tough. My dough was a tad chewy, so next time, I will only mix until things are incorporated. Also, I don't think the orange zest/juice in the dough recipe added anything to the pastry, so I'll omit them next time as well, and maybe the cardamom too.  They added a nice taste to the pastry, but I made croissant with the leftover dough, and that didn't work.   And finally, if I have the time, I'll try to make individual danishes. I'm really glad Kelly and Ben selected this recipe as our challenge. I would have never tried to make this on my own, and now I have a wonderful new dessert in my repertoire.

Note: I skipped the egg wash (of course), so my pastry wasn't shiny. No one missed it!

-- Cheers, Jane

Tonight Jane and I went out for Thai food. We've eaten at this particular restaurant a number of times, and are fairly confident we're getting a vegan meal - as long as we specify that we want no eggs, and no meat. We know we need to do that regardless of the menu description because they tend to use a lot of egg and some kind of dried shredded pork or shredded fish product in Thai cooking, at least in the Thai restaurants we frequent.

After a rather busy day for both of us, we were tired. We knew what we wanted, and so we ordered our favorite dishes... Pineapple fried rice, no meat; Pineapple Curry; and Glass Noodle Deluxe - Tofu. No meat. Do you see our mistake? We missed it!

Everything arrived and looked lovely. We were very hungry, and so we dug in. About halfway into our meal, we noticed there was egg in both the Pineapple Fried Rice and the Glass Noodle. And we both looked at each other with dismay. We'd forgotten to specify "no egg" when we placed our order.

This was our dilemma: the eggs had been "consumed," regardless of whether or not we ate the egg, it was already incorporated into the meal. (And good luck trying to get bits of fried egg out of a fried rice dish!) If it had been the restaurant's error, we would have returned the meal, to make the point (and because we would have specifically ordered "no egg"). But this was our mistake. So we talked about it for awhile and decided to continue eating. Why? Because the eggs were used and the restaurant had depleted their inventory by one or two eggs. Even if we'd felt comfortable returning the dishes (we'd eaten more than half, and it was our mistake), the eggs were still "consumed." So we continued eating, and even brought home the leftovers.

Regardless of where we're eating (unless it's a vegan restaurant), we typically tell our servers we're vegan, and specify "no milk, no egg, no meat, no butter" when we are ordering our meals. We like to eat out, and we know our servers aren't going to necessarily know the ingredients in everything we question them about. So we make our most informed choices and hope for the best. But we're often taking a leap of faith that the bread we're being served has no milk or egg, and that when we've asked for our meal to be prepared with oil not butter, we're actually getting it prepared that way. We also ask for more vegan options at restaurants we frequent, either by asking our server or manager directly, or dashing off an email if the restaurant's particularly busy. We've even had some success getting restaurants to carry more vegan items. (Or rather, us and whomever else might have been asking for the same thing.)

We are vegan at home, and we strive to be vegan outside our home. We never knowingly order a non-vegan meal, except for that occasional slice of pizza we're still planning on eating when we're in NY. Unfortunately, we're fairly confident that occasionally we wind up with something vegetarian, whether we know it or not. So this was our conclusion, in the instances where it's their error, we will return the meal because it's not what we ordered. In the instances where it's our error, we will eat the meal, and make a note of how to request the meal for the next time, or we will never go back.

How do you handle these situations?

I used to be an avid fan of The Simpsons. I still like the show, and watch the reruns often, but I don't watch it nearly as much as I used to. That doesn't stop me from quoting the show however. One of my favorite quotes is from the Episode "Lisa The Vegetarian."

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No!
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal!
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Most of my friends and family members are omnivorous. Many of them believe they are doing the "right" thing by eating organic foods. I've put right in quotations, because right is a subjective term, and organic is perceived as being a better choice than conventionally produced foods. However, it appears this isn't necessarily the case, for pork at least.

“Animal-friendly, outdoor farms tend to have a higher occurrence of Salmonella, as well as higher rates of parasitic disease,” said lead study author Wondwossen Gebreyes, associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State University.

Site: The PigSite.com

Wondwossen Gebreyes and colleagues at Ohio State University in Columbus tested US pigs for antibodies - telltale signs of infection - to pathogens that can also affect humans. They found traces of Salmonella in 39 per cent of pigs raised in standard indoor pens and routinely given antibiotics, but in 54 per cent of organic pigs raised outdoors without the drugs.

This poses a dilemma, says Gebreyes: giving pigs routine antibiotics favours antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but not giving them drugs means more animals carry Salmonella, which causes a million cases of food poisoning a year in the US alone.

Site: New Scientist Magazine

It gets even better... Gebreyes' team found traces of Toxoplasma in 7 percent of free-range animals but only 1 percent of conventional pigs. They also found two organic pigs infected with Trichinella. This is particularly troubling as Trichinella is virtually non-existent in livestock in the the US and Europe, although it is still found in wildlife populations. Finding this parasite in two pigs of the 600 tested is 23 times its average frequency in US pigs.

Any way you slice it, it looks like the "magical animal" isn't so wonderful. If you eat conventionally raised pork, you are contributing the overuse of antibiotics, pollution, and a more inhumane treatment of animals (among other things). If you eat "organic" pork, you are potentially exposing yourself to bacterial infection, contributing to the contamination of groundwater with pathogens such as Salmonella, and contributing to a slightly less inhumane treatment of pigs (among other things). The costs of eating meat are simply too high.