I recently received a comment (Hi Pawan!) asking if Dove is animal-testing-free.  I asked a few of my friends, and they all said they thought Dove was a highly ethical company and probably was cruelty-free.  Dove must have some really good PR, that’s all I can figure (I do like their Campaign for Real Beauty — that seems nice), because Dove is owned by Unilever, which is on PETA’s bad list.  PETA is targeting Unilever, hoping to convince it to go cruelty-free the way Pepsi and Coca-cola have — right now Unilever is torturing piglets and mice.  Do not buy products from Dove if you think piglets and mice should live pain-free lives.

(Unilever also owns Axe, Brut, Degree, Finesse, Lever 2000, Pears Transparent Soap, Pond’s, Q-Tips, Salon Selectives, Snuggle, Suave, Sunlight, Sunsilk, Sure, Vaseline, and Wisk.  If you care about animal suffering, please don’t buy those either — cut Unilever off until it stops torturing piglets.)

Here’s my weekly advice column.  Please bear in mind I’m no expert, that these are just my thoughts, and and that I am in no way telling YOU what to think — I am just giving you the benefits of my hours of google-research on you so you can make your own decision  

Hello –

Only 4 weeks into my decision (or should i say awareness) of cruelty free living, I’ve been buying my pets pet food from a company called Weruva.  From what i can see Weruva is cruelty free. Do you have any thoughts about them?  My cats seem to thrive with the food but my reasearch is not yet as indepth as yours so your feed back would be much appreciated.  

Thanks,

Weruva fan

Hi Weruva-fan!

I’m so glad you’re four weeks into cruelty-free living! I took a quick look at Weruva and I have to say the quality of their product looks AMAZING — no by-products at all, and I like the fact that they seem very concerned with food safety, that every purchase of Weruva involves some money going to rescue homeless animals, and they don’t appear to be on PETA’s list of evil companies. However, I wouldn’t buy Weruva products for two reasons — first, they don’t use humanely-raised meats, and second, they are not listed on PETA’s list of good companies, and I’m a stickler for that. If I were to describe Weruva using a 100% scale, I would say Weruva is 25%-cruelty-free — they aren’t known for actively testing on animals, but then again, they aren’t on the definitely-doesn’t-test-on-animals-list, and they don’t use humanely raised meats (though I haven’t factored the whole safety thing into the cruelty-free rating — that really bumps them up in my personal estimation).

If you have the time, I think it would be GREAT if you could email Weruva and tell them your concerns — say you love their products, but you’d appreciate it if they’d consider signing up with PETA to be listed as not testing their products on animals, and you’d also appreciate it if they’d use humanely sourced meats as well. Here’s the link to the website a company can use to sign up with PETA:

http://www.caringconsumer.com/info_companies.asp

If Weruva did sign up with PETA, and used humanely sourced meats, I would wholeheartedly endorse them.  

I would place a bet that the Weruva people already don’t test on animals — they probably just haven’t gotten around to trying to certify that. Though I could be wrong — I’m not entirely sure if establishing something as “human food grade” involves animal testing or not. It might. The Weruva people seem really nice from their website — I suspect they might be interested in signing up with PETA, at least. They also sound like they’d be at least interested in humanely sourced meats — they look like animal nuts (yay!) — though humanely sourced meats may be too expensive for them, I don’t know, and it looks like a lot of their meat comes from Thailand, and I don’t know if they have free-range/humanely-raised certification in Thailand.

In the meantime, if your cats really like Weruva, I would stick with it. It’s heaps, heaps, heaps better than buying food from an evil company like Iams or Purina that is a known animal tester that most likely doesn’t have the safety standards Weruva does, and certainly doesn’t donate money to animal shelters.

I hope that was informative to you! Tell me what you decide to do. (I should also mention that I’m just telling you my thoughts — I am in no way telling you what to think )

Regards,

Overall, my vegan month was very enlightening, and I encourage anyone who is interested in giving it a try!  I do firmly believe that the best way to do anything is to do it 100% and then forgive yourself the slip-ups, so trying to go cold-turkey for a whole month, but allowing yourself a few exceptions is the best way to try anything.  You end up at 95% whereas if you’d gone in saying you’ll go 50% you’ll end up at 0%.  Seriously.  I fully believe this. 

I also think it’s true you have to give something up for at least three weeks to break your addiction from it, so it was a good amount of time for me (despite numerous slip-ups!).  I didn’t think I could go two weeks without dairy or eggs, but I did!  And I still think fondly of cheese but I no longer have the addiction.  Which is WONDERFUL.

Overall, I really enjoyed going around telling people I was vegan.  It was a little embarrassing, but it really cut down on those awkward dilemmas that used to occur on days throughout this past year where I’d tell myself I was going to try to not eat any eggs or dairy products just that day, but not tell anyone else, and then sure enough I’d go out to dinner that evening, someone would order a souffle, and then they’d offer me a bite, and I’d feel like I’d have to accept, because I’m well-known for really liking souffles.  What was I going to say?  No, I don’t want your souffle?  It’s just easier to go along with kind gestures.  I think, anyway!  (Or worse — I would find myself ordering the souffle.  Oh, the feeling of failure!  And the reason why swearing to go 100% works so much better than “trying to cut back.”)

The part I found difficult was always being on the lookout.  There was the caprese incident, where I wasn’t vigilant about making sure I’d gotten a tofu caprese and the not the mozzarella caprese before eating half of it.  I didn’t write about it but I also bought a bunch of Morningstar faux-sausage products and ate a few of them before I realized they aren’t really vegan.  I do not know why I didn’t read the label carefully — I was half-asleep apparently.  I saw the words “veggie sausage patties” and naturally assumed they’d be vegan.  and full of vegetables.  BIG MISTAKE.  They have egg whites and whey powder.  I’m VERY DISAPPOINTED with old Morningstar there.  Their website, ironically enough, is called “see veggies differently dot com.”  See veggies differently, Morningstar?  More like see egg whites and whey powder hidden in your highly processed bean powder differently, if you ask me.  

The other part I found difficult was giving up dessert.  Very few restaurants have vegan dessert options, and I just had to deal with that.  I’m usually a dessert-aholic, but by the end of this month I’ve gotten to the point where i no longer crave dessert any more, which is Very Nice.  At first I had to grit my teeth while everyone else was eating dessert, and promise myself lots of Coconut Bliss faux ice cream and Trader Joe’s dark chocolate almonds once I got home, but now I see the dessert tray, and it no longer holds any allure for me.  I don’t even mind when other people eat large amounts of dessert around me.  I just order tea or coffee and I’m fine.  I don’t rush home and eat faux-ice cream or Tofutti cuties right after dinner.  (Now I wait till around 11pm when the munchies hit and eat them then.)

The really funny part was the number of people I met who don’t know what vegan means.  They’d get this look of confusion on their face and ask me all sorts of questions about what is, and what is not, vegan.  Is chocolate vegan?  Yes, if it’s dark chocolate.  Is alcohol vegan?  Yes, if it hasn’t been filtered through gelatin.  Are potato chips vegan?  Yes, they’re made from a plant and oil.  Are french fries vegan?  Ditto.  A LOT of people seem to operate on the “if it tastes good it’s probably not vegan” assumption.  And a lot of people don’t seem to know which end of an oven is up, because they have no idea what items commonly have eggs in them — onion rings, biscuits, french bread, handmade pasta, cookies, etc.  I really didn’t think so many people have never cooked anything in their lives.  It’s just amazing.

(PS: Those restaurants that claim they have vegan options when I call you on the phone but don’t when I arrive?  I’m pissed at you.  You make it really awkward when I arrive there with my friends after assuring them we can all eat there.  Vegan=no animal products.  Vegetarian=eggs and dairy are ok.  We live in the San Francisco bay area.  Learn these things.)  

The Very Good thing about my vegan month is that I lost four pounds over Christmas.  Nice, eh?  Also I haven’t had a single blemish since the beginning of December, which is also unusual — I usually get a few massive ones just in time for Christmas photographs.  (I have a jar of Bare Escentuals concealer that I’ve been trying to use up and replace with something 100%-cruelty-free for two years now that I haven’t TOUCHED in the past two weeks.)  Those things, along with my newfound confidence in setting up whole vegan meals, which I really enjoy, have made me very happy I tried to be vegan for a month.  I’m not sure if I’ll be 100%-vegan in the future, especially since Restaurant Month is coming up, but the actual quantities of dairy and eggs I usually include in my diet will be 95% down from what they were last year, which I feel very happy about.  

If you’re not vegan, I highly encourage you to try to go a whole month with no animal products.  I’ve talked to you — you give me that look of absolute incomprehension of how anyone could give up real butter.  But I swear — it’s just an addiction!  Just in principle, you should try to give up dairy products for a month.  It’ll be hard for two weeks, but just like heroin, once you’re clean, you won’t find the cravings so hard to stand

 Have you been thinking about going 100%-cruelty-free?  And is it not New Year’s Eve?  Make going cruelty-free your New Year’s resolution — sign up with the Leaping Bunny, and take the cruelty-free pledge:

The Cruelty-Free Pledge:

There’s a whole community of people out there (besides me, of course!) to support you — over 24 pages of people who do not want animals to suffer for cosmetics!

Energy levels: good

Dairy/egg cravings: gone

Social aspects: good and bad (there was a lot of confusion over which was the vegan butter, which was the normal butter at breakfast, which were the vegan waffles, which were the normal waffles, etc.  Lots of people passing around similar looking dishes = v. confusing experience )

Restaurant aspects: N/A

Breakfast:

Homemade vegan brandy waffles (v. nice!)

tangerine juice

Lindt dark chocolate rabbit

coffee with Trader Joe’s soy creamer

mimosa

Lunch:

vegetable sushi and green salad — futo maki rolls, I think (v. nice!)

coke

spicy white bean dip with crackers

date pecan rolls

Uncle Eddie’s vegan cookies

Dinner:

Thai green curry over vegetables

spring rolls

Cocodrillo red wine

champagne

rum and coke

vegan chocolate cupcake from Whole Foods

assorted vegan chocolates

homemade snickerdoodles (veganized with Ener-G egg replacer from the recipe from the best cookie book ever)

Merry Christmas dear cruelty-freeists!

(This is a photograph of the adorable Judah, photographed by This Year’s Love, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license © 2006, This Year’s Love.)

I learned about this from another cruelty-free blogger, Raffaella, (who has an amazing blog!  You should go check it out!).  Apparently, there is a new non-animal method of studying injury-healing.  (You can also now subscribe to Raffaella’s blog even if you don’t speak Italian — the new Google Reader automatically translates it from Italian straight into English!)

Basically, the Dr. Hadwen Trust, (an amazing trust dedicated to funding non-animal tests — seeing how it’s the holidays, if you’d like to donate money to a charity — it sounds like a GREAT charity to donate to — here’s their donating information), funded some scientists in Australia and Cardiff (Z Upton, L Cuttle, A Noble et al) who, using skin donated by patients undergoing surgical procedures, cause the skin to grow in sheets in petri dishes, and then study the differences between skin taken from healthy skin cells versus skin taken from patients with chronic venous leg ulcers, and compare the gene expression between those. (To my very limited understanding.)

This is FANTASTIC for three reasons.  First, harming layers of tissue in petri dishes instead of live skin on rats is much less morally objectionable.  Skin cells in petri dishes have no nervous systems!  They cannot feel pain or fear!  Second, results can be found much more quickly with skin cells in petri dishes rather than with live rats — scientists can run hundreds of tests a day using skin cells in petri dishes, whereas only thirty or so tests can be run once a month on (expensive bred-without-immune-system) live rats.  Third, rat skin, which is the traditional skin used to look at differences between injured skin and noninjured skin — is completely different from human skin.  Extrapolating from rat skin to human skin is futile.  Rodents are ‘loose-skinned’ — they heal wounds by “contracture,” whereas human skin heals by “re-epithelialisation.”  Human skin also isn’t covered by a fur coat, which complicates wound healing, and lab rats are typically “sacrificed” when they are adolescents and relatively healthy, whereas many of the people for whom wound-healing is a problem are elderly and/or diabetic, both of which can cause severe wound-healing complications.  Thus, using rats to study human wound-healing is fundamentally flawed — using human skin grown in petri dishes is far more scientifically valid.

Anyway, I’m really excited by this!  Non-animal methods just get better every day!

(And because I like to give credit where credit is due, I’d like to thank the scientists Z Upton, L Cuttle, A Noble et al, and the Dr. Hadwen Trust for creating such a compassionate technique!)

Here’s the original article from the Dr. Hadwen Trust:

3 October 2008

Advances in non-animal wound healing research

In vitro methods have been developed by researchers in Australia and Cardiff that could revolutionise wound healing research. Painful tests are often conducted on animals, commonly rodents, for wound healing studies because human skin equivalents have historically lacked the realistic properties required for effective research.

Now, however, researchers at Queensland’s University of Technology in Australia have made a complex 3-D model using skin donated by patients undergoing surgical procedures. The skin keratinocytes are isolated and grown as a skin substitute in vitro in an animal-product-free medium.

The researchers at Cardiff University were funded by the Dr Hadwen Trust from 2004-2007, and used human telomerase immortalised fibroblast cell lines developed from chronic venous leg ulcers and from patient-matched healthy tissues. They then studied the differences in gene expression between the damaged and healthy fibroblasts and found that these were maintained in the cell lines in culture.

The cells were transfected with a fluorescent protein linked to a chronic wound-marker gene. This allowed quantification of changes in fluorescence, and hence gene expression, over time. The technique therefore represents a promising new way to study wound healing without painful experiments on animals.

Methods based on human skin cells are essential to advancing our understanding in wound healing research because human skin and rodent skin heal in different ways. Rodents are ‘loose skinned’ and heal wounds by contracture, whereas human skin heals by re-epithelialisation. There are also differences in abundance of hair, and between wounds that are caused artificially in otherwise healthy animals and human wounds which are often problematic in diabetics and the elderly. All these differences make results from animals difficult to translate between species.

For further information see:

• www.scienceroom.org/wound-healing

• Upton Z, Cuttle L, Noble A et al (2008) Vitronectin: growth factor complexes hold potential as a wound therapy approach. Journal of Investigative Dermatology 128:1535-44

 I’m not a shaving cream person — when I do shave, I use body oil.  Because it lasts a lot longer than shaving cream, and it gives my legs a nice shine, and I think it works better than shaving cream.  I’ve been using body oil to shave with for years — I love how “shaving oil” is coming into fashion nowadays — I’m just ahead of the trend!  

Anyway, I thought I’d try some Badger branded body oil, since I’ve never tried any Badger stuff before and I always see it at my local independent hippie market.  I used to use baby oil, but then I switched to almond oil because I hate the smell of baby oil (and I don’t think there is any 100%-cruelty-free baby oil — or at least there wasn’t at the time I first switched to almond oil), but that became a little frustrating because I always poured out too much almond oil.

So first off, I really like the Badger nozzle — it squirts out a very small amount of body oil, which is great.  You really don’t need that much oil to shave with — less is more.  Also I really like the glass bottle — some people may not like it because if you drop it in the shower, it will break, but I say pffft!  The glass bottle is very pretty.  

There are only two things I’m not so keen on — first, the price is kind of high — $14.99 for 4 oz.  While I think Badger oils are very high quality and undoubtedly worth that price — cold pressed, ecologically grown, USDA organic, etc — that’s a little expensive for my budget — I think I’ll be on the lookout for some less expensive oil in the future.  And second, the fragrance is a little . . . too savory for me.  I think it’s the rosemary.  Oddly enough, when I was testing this at the store, I really liked the fragrance.  I didn’t smell the rosemary at all.  But then I brought it home, and I was like, what IS that smell?  It really smells like something you should pour over potatoes before you roast them.  It’s a lovely fragrance, but definitely not a fragrance I usually look for in skin care products.  

(Besides being 100%-cruelty-free, Badger products are vegetarian — and they contain no animal products other than beeswax, according to the website — and USDA certified organic.)

So my overall verdict is 4/5 stars — great oil, pretty and well-designed bottle — but expensive and roasted potato-ey.

Badger Body Oil (4oz) is available for $15.00 from the Badger online store and most natural stores.

Badger Sore Muscle Therapy Massage Oil

A profoundly healing Poet-Warrior blend, with gingery fragrance, and the natural anti-inflammatory effects of Cayenne Pepper Extract. The essential oils promote good circulation, clear thinking and confidence. Lemongrass is said to strengthen connective tissue and reduce cellulite. The blend is rich in essential fatty acids, E vitamins and anti-oxidants to smooth the skin while bringing much needed relief to your hard working, hard playing and very sore, give-me-a-break-please muscles and joints. The Ginger, Cardamom, Rosemary, and Lemongrass essential oils are also good for muscle and joint healing. The fragrance helps to calm, center and strengthen the emotions. When used prior to physical activity, Sore Muscle Therapy Massage Oil helps keep muscles and joints warm and loose. And, it’s good for the skin.

Ingredients: *Extra Virgin Olive Oil, *Castor Oil, *Cayenne extract, *Jojoba Oil, Essential Oils of of *Ginger, *Cardamom, *Lemongrass, *Rosemary, Wild Marjoram, & *Sage, and CO₂ extracts of *Ginger, *Rosehip, *Seabuckthorn Berry, & *Calendula.

 This is SUCH a great cookbook!  I have had a few dishes that didn’t turn out well from it, but all in all, most of these recipes are wonderful. 

The interesting thing about this cookbook is that it really celebrates vegan cooking.  None of the recipes are trying to fool meat/dairy/egg eaters.  None of these recipes will appeal to people who want fried chicken.  None of these recipes are “substituted” recipes by any means.  There is no soy, no tofu, no egg replacers, no faux-butter, no nothing (not that those are bad — sometimes you really crave some faux-fried chicken!).  Every recipe in here is an actual traditional recipe from France, Italy, Spain, or Greece that has been cooked for centuries in those countries, and has NEVER involved animal products. 

Apparently Mediterranean cooking lends itself very well to vegan cooking.  Ms. Klein states that for centuries, the Mediterranean was too hot a climate for many dairy products to keep, and dairy products were also fairly expensive in those regions, and vegetables and grains were abundant, so people made many dishes with relatively small portions of animal products, and relatively large portions of vegetables, fruits, and grains.  One of the recipes in the book is called a “poor man’s pesto” — it involves just 2 ingredients — pine nuts and basil, instead of 3 ingredients — pine nuts, basil, and cheese.  Because cheese was so expensive, some Mediterranean cuisines just used pine nuts instead.  (It’s a great pesto, by the way.  It doesn’t taste like a cheese-based pesto, but it has no faux-cheese ingredients, and it isn’t supposed to.)

If you’re looking for something to mimic American cooking, you won’t find it here.  There are some French recipes, but very few, and they are very Provencal-oriented — lots of roasted or baked tomatoes and other vegetables in lemon and olive oil with garlic/thyme/rosemary sauces.  No rich sauces.  There are some Italian recipes — lots of pasta with roasted tomatoes, etc.  But mostly there are a lot of Greek/Middle Eastern recipes.   I had NO IDEA Greek food was so vegan-friendly, but now I do!  (I’ve also been very lucky to find this out because it expands my dining options — now if I’m going out to eat I try to go to Greek places — if you ask for things without yogurt, feta, or meat, most Greek food is vegan.  Felafel, Greek salads, vegetarian dolma, vegetable briami, that garlicky-potato dipping sauce — those are all (usually) vegan, and the flavors balance each other well even without the yogurt, meat, or feta, which a lot of cuisines, that just doesn’t hold for.  Luckily I’ve always really liked Greek food, so I’ve been enjoying this a lot.

I haven’t tried any of the desserts, but they all look really good to me.  They all appear to be kind of baklava-like, to my eye — lots of phyllo dough, but they all look kind of simple and delicious, which is what I look for in recipes.  Unfortunately no chocolate cake recipes or anything like that, but that would definitely not be in the spirit of the book.

This book has really helped me with my quest to incorporate more vegan meals into my diet over the past year as I was trying to move away from dairy/egg intensive dishes.  I don’t cook often but when I do, I like to go all out and cook amazing dishes that have simple but good flavor combinations, and take about an hour or two to make.  I highly recommend this book if you’re a decent cook who appreciates interesting flavors and wants to incorporate more vegan meals into your diet. 

Energy levels — good

Dairy cravings — nil

Social aspect — so-so

Restaurant aspect — good

Food Log:

Breakfast:

toast with Whole Foods margarine

Earl Grey tea with soy creamer

Lunch:

apples with peanut butter

Dinner:

vegetable dumplings

a spicy fried vegetable flat noodle dish

Sprite

Purely Decadent coconut-milk base chocolate faux ice cream