Hundreds of veggie friendly Chicagoans celebrated Chicago VeganMania

[Guest guest]

People of all ages, races and sizes came out for the Chicago VeganMania event,

and I heard one lady bragging about how she was there and her friend was not,

and how she needed to come asap before the doors even opened. A couple was

kissing to create body heat, and loads of people had on their knit hats, coats

and even scarves just to keep warm, another reason I didn't expect such a

turnout. When the doors did open at 10:00 a.m., it took me until 10:18 a.m. to

get inside in 40-something degree weather. Word of advice next year: Treat

Chicago VeganMania like a music concert and arrive extra early.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As promised, five free tickets were given to the first 100 people who arrived,

and I was surprised I got any because it looked like there were an easy 100

people in front of me and definitely another hundred behind me. After passing

the ticket counter where several volunteers greeted Chicago VeganMania guests

with smiles, I passed by tables with a plethora of vegetarian cookbooks, crafts

and other reading material.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(from left) Message from Montie blogger (me), and Chicago VeganMania creators

John Beske and Marla Rose

..Then, I strolled around a bunch of the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse rooms to check

out the scene. One room was called " The Art Gallery, Compassion Fashion Gallery "

and had all kinds of vegan-based products like paintings, jewelry, clothes, body

soap, chapstick, shaving cream and hair care products. And unlike some events

I'd been to in the past, the prices were reasonable. One lady was selling all of

her items for $10, which was a great deal considering animal friendly clothes

aren't always the cheapest products for that quality.

 

After visiting the main performance area where food booths were set up, I

immediately saw Soul Vegetarian East had a flock of people trying to get plates

of their wheat gluten " BBQ delight " and vegan macaroni and cheese with greens.

That meal was terrific. The carrot cheesecake and cacao ganache cake at a

dessert booth called Raw Creations® were delightful, and I was so impressed with

the vegetarian chili prepared by Match™ that I went back a second time to try

the vegetarian meat again. Other restaurants and food vendors included The

Chicago Diner, Cousin's Incredible Vitality, Great Taste Café/Cru Cacao

chocolates, Delicious Café/Ste Martaen cheeses, Raw Creations, Upton's Naturals,

Vega/Sequel Naturals and Veggie Bite. I'm not a big fan of veggie hot dogs or

regular hot dogs, and that was the only thing Veggie Bite had so I didn't try

them, but from the conversation I had with Moshe Shalom, the owner of the

five-year-old, self-proclaimed " first vegetarian quick-service restaurant "

located at 1300 N. Milwaukee and 3031 N. 111th St., I'm going to check that

place out for other vegetarian items soon.

 

 

Along one hallway on the other side of the main hall were more booths with

vegetarian and vegan magazine publishers, vegan bumper stickers (my favorite was

" Eat like you give a damn " ) and animal friendly groups ready to increase

membership. After satisfying my appetite with the food (the ticket prices for

meals were somewhere between 1-8 tickets, depending on the size of the item),

filling up my tote bag with free stuff and checking out some of the live

performers and deejays, I went upstairs to hear the speakers.

 

 

I didn't really expect to be up there that long because sitting in long lectures

isn't my cup of tea, but the Chicago VeganMania's tagteam couple, John Beske and

Marla Rose, knew who to pick.

 

 

At 11:00 a.m., Caryn Hartglass, the Executive Director of EarthSave

International, talked about the history of EarthSave, how clean her doctor

thought she was while she was fighting ovarion cancer, why she became a vegan at

the age of 30, how carbon dioxide feeds plants and when there's " way too much

carbon dioxide, " how 6.7 billion people on the planet affect animal agriculture,

and she gave suggestions that if we make more plant food for humans, the demand

for animal agriculture would decrease. This, in turn, would help the environment

and the carbon dioxide issue, according to Hartglass. She had a great point when

she mentioned past political and social movements by saying, " None of the

changes that were made were from some president. " Hartglass believes by becoming

a vegetarian or vegan, " you're doing what you can do and the rest of the world

will just have to come aboard. " Encouraging individuals to take a stand against

animal agriculture instead of waiting for the legal system to do so, she also

encouraged drinking green juice daily and meditation for at least 10 minutes per

day.

 

 

At 12:00 p.m., Nathan Runkle, the Executive Director of Mercy for Animals,

showed a graphic presentation called " Inspiring Compassion, Putting Our Ethics

on the Table, " about how animals were treated, and although I knew most of this

already, the way male chicks and female chicks are handled was depressing.

Runkle also talked about the hypocrisy that human beings will show to dogs and

cats versus farm animals. I found this speech fascinating because I'd been

arguing that same point in my blog, " Carroll Care Center partners with HSUS to

eliminate dogfighting in Chicago, " with an anti-dogfighting advocate. Runkle

spoke about the legal issues with slaughterhouses and made an excellent point

about how people don't associate fish with hurt because " fish aren't as cute and

cuddly. " The only thing that bugged me in Runkle's speech was he kept mentioning

Michael Vick as thought that's the only dogfighter in all of the U.S. But I have

mixed opinions about Vick and instead focused on the eye-opening quotes he gave

from animal agricultural magazines about how animals have to be treated like

machines and not lives. His strongest statement: " Humans would be 300 lbs. if we

were bred like animals " and " Our forks, our knives, our spoons are our most

powerful tool. "

 

 

At 1:00 p.m., Dr. Will Tuttle, the author of " The World Peace Diet: Eating for

Spiritual Health and Social Harmony, " was up next. I ran out for a few minutes

to see what was new downstairs, mingled and came back upstairs just in time to

hear Dr. Tuttle tell a strange but interesting story about why and how animals

are killed. He said: " The reason animals suffer so much is because we don't like

soggy meat " and explained why slaughterhouses kill animals and avoid all of the

blood. Dr. Tuttle had actually seen a cow killed in front of his eyes, and he's

now a 30-year vegan. He then discussed why female animals are treated so much

worse than male animals and hopes that the vegan lifestyle will go from at least

1 percent of the population to 5 percent.

 

 

At 2:00 p.m., Dr. Michael Greger, the Director of Public Health (HSUS), came to

the mic. Beske had already told me how great of a speaker Dr. Greger was while I

was downstairs, but I was a little disappointed. Dr. Greger had to catch an

O'Hare flight so while he was giving the audience a large amount of information,

he was talking fast and throwing a lot of information at us. He encouraged

audience participation and had the audience stand up to answer questions, and

whoever had the right answers got a prize at the end (a CD filled with top-notch

articles). A 9-year-old girl beat at least 100-plus adults in the room with the

help of her guardian, but I loved the fact that she was getting so much

information during the talk. The young girl's presence also showed how it's not

so harmful to tell the truth to children about animal agriculture because she

was spouting out responses with no hesitancy at all.

 

 

All of the information Dr. Greger gave was helpful, but the ones I remember when

he wasn't flying through his presentation were the following:

 

 

•Oil-based dressing is healthier than fat-free dressing because of the nutrients

in oil-based dressing.

•Coconut milk is as bad as McDonald's food.

•Mushrooms are harmful uncooked no matter the type.

•Chlorella is harmful and can lead to human infection.

•Tofu does not lead to dementia, and the Indonesian study that said that tofu is

harmful was because there was an additional ingredient--formaldehyde.

•It is false that soy lowers sperm count.

•Vegetarians have a higher sperm count than fish eaters.

•Pregnant women should not eat undercooked meat.

•There was a zero percent compliance in a recent study for Food Code

recommendations for hand washing.

•Chicken breast is more harmful than flame-broiled burgers, pan-fried burgers,

pan-fried porkchops and grilled salmon.

•One percent of 128 are likely to get a brain tumor from cell phones, but hot

dog intake can make a brain tumor more likely.

•Seven hours of sleep duration is the optimal amount to live the longest.

•Body mass index (BMI) for meat eaters = 28.8 out of 40, flexitarians = 27.3,

vegetarians = 25.7, vegans = 23.6 (even though " vegans exercise less than meat

eaters)

•When vegetarians do not get the correct amount of B12, they are more likely to

get a disease called Vegetarian's Myelopathy.

 

See what I mean? All that information, and that was only about one-third of it

all pushed into a 45-minute talk that was cut short so he could sell and sign

his books. His lecture was too fast, but it was also the most educational. I

just wish he was the first speaker so I could see what his talks are like when

he's not in a rush.

 

 

And last up was Rae Sikora and JC Corcoran, who I'd met downstairs. The couple

showed a 12-minute video on vegan living. One of the strongest points in the

video was that the number one reason trees are cut down is for animal

agriculture, not paper supplies. The movie also stated that if we left a shower

on for 365 days a year all day long, we still wouldn't waste as much water as

slaughterhouses do from the plant food that's wasted, barely taking care of the

animals in the slaughterhouses and cleaning slaughterhouses from animal wastes

and spraying out dead animals.

 

 

At the end of the couple's presentation, the audience asked questions about the

vegetarian and vegan lifestyle, how to avoid lapsing back into a dairy or

meat-based diet and why comfort food is so important. The audience had so many

questions and comments ( 'm very guilty of contributing to going over the time

they were allotted from answering and asking questions, but I enjoyed Sikora and

Corcoran's talk) that finally we were forced to cut it short. I looked at the

time and it was 3:50 p.m. I hung out through the entire Chicago VeganMania event

and will definitely come back next year.