Thursday 8 September 2011

Vegetarian Society - Fish Free Friday

The Vegetarian Society - Vegetarian Society - Fish Free Friday

The Vegetarian Society's Fish Free Friday
Sea TheTruth about Fish and The Environment

Today The UK Vegetarian Society launched Fish Free Friday a kind of Meat Free Monday for demi-vegetarians who have been duped into thinking that fish is the healthy option. It's most likely
also a polite dig at chefs who still think fish is a vegetarian option.
 
The film The End of the Line, and more recently Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's channel 4 TV Fish Fight have gone a long way to educating us about the plight of the sea. 

However if you watch 'Sea The Truth' the movie (available free to view online) you'll see that the issues uncovered by Hugh and the End of the Line's naked Greta Satchi are quite literally the tip of the melting Ice berg.

Devastation Under The Sea
Sea The Truth is a film instigated by Dutch diver and underwater macro photographer Dos Winkel who founded The Sea First Foundation. He was horrified to watch over the last 20 as the underwater ocean habitat had been quickly decimated. As he looked for the reasons behind the devastation he became more and more angry that governments were sitting back and intentionally allowing this to happen. 
 
Extinction Looms
Dos also discovered that the loss of biodiversity under the sea was not only devastating for marine biology, social, health, environmental and economic reasons but that the survival of the human race depends on the health of the sea.
It seems one of the many bio-chemical functions of the fish in their synergistic place in the natural world's delicate balance of things is to regulate the acidity of the sea. It's now thought that no fish = no balance = no plankton= no planetary lungs = the whole world slowly suffocates.

Report by The UN
The findings of a new environmental report by the UN was revealed to journalists in New York recently. Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists "If the various estimates we have received come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish!" 
 
UNEP's warning is that tuna only symbolizes a much vaster catastrophe, threatening economic, as well as environmental upheaval. The report, assesses how surging global demand in other key areas including energy and fresh water can be met while preventing ecological destruction around the planet.
Perverse Subsidies for the Fishing Industry
The annual 27 billion dollars in government subsidies to fishing, mostly in rich countries, is "perverse," Sukhdev said, since the entire value of fish caught is only 85 billion dollars.
According to the UN, 30 percent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10 percent of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.

Save the World by Saving Fish
Dos Winkel's solution is a fairly simple one. He says we have no sensible choice but to put a complete and immediate stop to commercial fishing. We have to stop eating fish, and animals that are fed fishmeal and using fish oil. As he toured around the world lecturing and exhibiting his photographs he found many people that couldn't contemplate life without fish on their plates. Dos's solution was to commission a cookbook, a fish-free taste of the ocean recipe book called 'Fish-a-Licious', originally published in Dutch and is now being translated into a number of languages.

Healthy, Delicious Fish Alternatives

In the Sea First Foundation's cookbook it's mainly clever plantarian cooking and an ingenious use of seaweed that's behind the delicious, 'taste of the sea' recipes. However just like meat fish have their vegetable pirate copies and veggie burger and veggie sausage equivalents too. Chinese and Korean restaurant suppliers sell a range of faux prawns, fish-steaks, tuna and crab-sticks made from soya and vegetable protein. These days you can find vegetarian fish free fish-fingers even in the supermarkets. A Danish company even makes some very realistic black caviar made from seaweed, so good it even fooled a top celebrity chef .

Save The Seas with Omega 3s ?


V-Pure vegetarian omega 3 supplement
Despite medical claims that we need to eat fish for adequate supplies of the long chain essential omega 3 fats EPA and DHA even this nutrient is now available from farmed natural algae.
Launched in 2006 V- Pure the world's first vegetarian / vegan omega 3 EPA DHA supplement, provides a fish free, sustainable, toxin free omega 3 long chain fatty acid for consumers who avoid fish for ethical, religious, allergy, environmental, health and common sense reasons.

Leading London Nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston says "For people who we've tested that have low levels of omega 3 DHA and EPA, algal oil is a great alternative to fish as one not only avoids the risk of pollutants and toxins such as mercury and traces of PCBs, but also avoids the saturated fat that comes free with the non vegetarian form of DHA omega 3 fat in fish." 

 "If you haven't already done so please watch the film 'Sea TheTruth' it's an eye opener!" She says



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