ONLINE RESOURCES FOR VEGETARIANS (Updated 1/28/95)

by Bobbi Pasternak

While vegetarians are not regarded with as much suspicion as we were in the past, it is not unusual for us to find ourselves feeling isolated. We may be the only vegetarian in the family or the community or at work. I was the only vegetarian I knew for seven years. Then I discovered cyberspace, that place between you and whoever you communicate with via telecommunications. To participate, all you need is a computer, a modem, a telephone line and the appropriate software. There's some money involved too, but connecting to the Information Highway is becoming less costly all the time.

There are abundant resources available online for vegetarians. This article provides a sampling of those currently available. The areas discussed will be commercial online services, the Internet, bulletin board systems and electronic mail.

Please bear in mind that things change quickly in the online world. Electronic mailing lists come and go. Resources change addresses. If you have a problem accessing a resource listed in this article, please let me know so that I can let you know its status or check on it and make a correction in the next revision.

COMMERCIAL ONLINE SERVICES

Commercial online services include America Online (AOL), CompuServe (CIS), Delphi, Genie, eWorld and Prodigy. Their pricing structures and available services vary. All services offer electronic mail, enabling subscribers to exchange e-mail messages within the service and with people who have an Internet e-mail address. Special interest areas contain message boards where members may post messages, read and respond. Real time conferencing or "chat" allows users to carry on "conversations" with others online at the same time. Real time conferences may be informal gatherings or formal meetings. A feature available on all services except Prodigy is the file library which allows users to place (upload) or retrieve (download) text files and software.

In deciding which service is right for you, consider the time of day you will be online, how much time you will be online, what services you will use and your comfort level with the service's interface. The best way to determine all of this is to call the service and ask a lot of questions. If it sounds good, find out about free or reduced rate trials, go online and see how you like it. Once you're on a service, here's what you'll find available for vegetarians.

CompuServe has a well established vegetarian area in the Cooks' Online Forum with a core of friendly and supportive members. There is a vegetarian message board and library. A monthly conference is held at noon, eastern time, the first Sunday of each month. Unlike the other commercial services based in the USA, CIS is international in scope and there are vegetarians from Germany and England who participate in the forum on a regular basis. On CIS, the message sections and libraries are searchable by keywords, making it easier to find exactly what you're looking for. While great recipes and cooking tips abound, discussion in the Cooks' vegetarian section is not restricted to cooking and food topics. Any topic of interest to vegetarians is permitted (as long as it is carried on in a responsible and respectful manner) and there have been discussions of many ethical, environmental and lifestyle issues.

Due to the success of Cooks' Online Forum's Vegetarian section, CompuServe will launch the Vegetarian Forum (GO VEGETARIAN) February 2, 1995. This forum will include 17 message and library sections dedicated to vegetarian topics as well as a chat area. In addition to the sections dedicated to various vegetarian foods, there will be sections titled Nutrition & Health, Vegetarian Children, The New Vegetarian, Outreach & Resources, Issues & Lifestyles and In Print & On Disk. Once the Vegetarian Forum is established, the vegetarian section of Cooks' Forum will be eliminated. The monthly Sunday vegetarian chats will continue, but will be held in the new forum.

CompuServe has a reputation for being expensive, but there have been two reductions in the hourly rates in the past couple of years, making it more affordable. Another price reduction has just been announced as this is written. In addition, there are several affordable software packages available which can automate your sessions, allowing you to save money by doing your reading and writing offline.

Vegetarians on America Online can be found in several places, but most of AOL's vegetarian activity is centered in the Cooking Club. You'll find the Vegetarian Lifestyle message folder in The Cupboard/Health and Nutrition Trends section. Other folders of interest to vegetarians also come and go in the Cupboard. The Cookbook houses the club's recipe posts and there is a section for special and vegetarian diets with several folders each for vegetarian recipes and vegan recipes. Two discussion folders have been added to the Cookbook's Special and Vegetarian Diets section recently. They are titled "Diet & Health" and "Diet & Ethics". The file libraries contain text documents with vegetarian recipes and vegetarian nutrition information. There is a weekly conference for vegetarians in the Cooking Club Kitchen conference room on Wednesdays at 8:00 pm Eastern time.

America Online's Pet Care Forum Message Center has a section dedicated to discussion of Animals and Society. In this section, several folders deal with animal rights and animal welfare topics.

AOL's advantages include a pleasant and easy to use interface, expanding Internet access, and pricing that does not include surcharges for prime time hours, 9600 baud modem access or Internet access. The most common complaint I hear regarding AOL is that it is often difficult to find the special interest group you seek. I've heard former AOL members complain they found nothing on the service for vegetarians. We were there, but they couldn't find us.

While Prodigy lacks the file libraries of the other services, it boasts a friendly and active message board. The Vegetarian section of the Food Bulletin Board is hosted by Member Reps Cath and Rona who set the tone and provide an abundance of helpful information and recipes. Live chat capability was added to Prodigy recently. Check in the message area to find out if regular vegetarian chats are scheduled yet. A disadvantage to Prodigy is the constant barrage of online advertising and electronic junk mail.

Delphi has at least two areas of potential interest for vegetarians: Custom Forum 112, Animal Rights and Vegetarian Living, and Custom Forum 39, Hearth and Home. These areas offer message boards, file libraries and have live chat capabilities. In addition, Delphi offers a complete gateway to the Internet. If you plan on spending time online during Monday through Friday business hours, though, beware of the significant prime time surcharges.

GEnie's Food and Wine Roundtable has two vegetarian areas with messaging, file libraries and real-time conferences: a general vegetarian section and one for those following the McDougall Plan. Again, it is the prime time surcharge that keeps me off this service.

New on the scene is Apple Online Services' eWorld. Coming to eWorld in the first quarter 1995 will be The Natural Connection with many features for the health-conscious public. The following features are planned. A holistic "mini-mall" will offer catalog shopping and classified advertising. The Holistic Resource Center will contain directories of holistic product and service providers, a Reference Library, and publications. There will be discussion areas and real-time conferences. The Natural Connection will have a special Institutes and Organizations area where vegetarian and health-related organizations can publish their newsletters and hold meetings. Currently, eWorld is only available to Mac users, but DOS and Windows software is planned.

THE INTERNET

The Internet has long been accessible from universities, businesses, government agencies and military sites. There has recently been a boom in usage by individuals from their home PCs due to the availability of "dial-up" services which connect your home PC via modem to the service's mainframe computer on the Internet. Unlike most commercial services, the Internet is truly international in scope. From my den, I've placed files on a computer in Germany and exchanged e-mail with a research librarian in Estonia.

To receive an e-mail containing information about providers of dial-up Internet access, send an e-mail to: info-deli-server@netcom.com The message should include this line and nothing else: send PDIAL

The Internet's answer to message boards is USENET, consisting of thousands of special interest newsgroups where participants can read and post messages. Of interest to vegetarians are rec.food.veg and its spin-off rec.food.veg.cooking. The latter is restricted to discussion of cooking only, but the former is open to any topic related to vegetarianism and discussion there is often heated. Another newsgroup alt.food.fat-free is for discussion of very low fat diets (less than 15% calories from fat), generally vegetarian and following the writings of Drs. Dean Ornish or John McDougall. Alt.food.low-fat has just been introduced. It is for discussion of diets which derive less than 30% calories from fat. Vegetarian topics are frequently addressed in sci.med.nutrition, the general nutrition newsgroup as well. For discussions about animal rights, check the newsgroup talk.politics.animals. USENET newsgroups can often be accessed via private Bulletin Board Services (BBS) and are also available through America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy and Delphi.

On the Internet, real time chat occurs in International Relay Chat or IRC. The hundreds of channels are each devoted to a particular topic. One evening I found myself on channel #Veggies, teaching a woman in the midwest how to make the perfect pot of brown rice.

Several Internet features offer users access to information and files: file transfer protocol (ftp), Gopher and World Wide Web (WWW). File transfer protocol allows you to visit another computer and retrieve files. Some examples of ftp sites with vegetarian documents and the subdirectories in which the documents are found are listed below. Commercial services providing ftp access are CompuServe, Delphi and America Online.

ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de: /pub/doc/vegetarian. This site, at the University of Hamburg, Germany, houses the collection of materials available electronically from the Vegetarian Resource Group. In addition to the text files, the DOS compatible "Vegetarian Game" is available here. Also available is the World Guide to Vegetarianism. Compiled by Internet vegetarians all over the world, the guide geographically lists vegetarian restaurants, vegetarian-friendly restaurants, natural foods stores and vegetarian organizations. The rec.food.veg newsgroup's FAQ (frequently asked questions file) is also here, providing the information most commonly requested in that newsgroup.

ftp.geod.emr.ca: /pub/doc/Vegetarian/Articles/ and /pub/doc/Vegetarian/Recipes/. This site has the VRG material and also boasts thousands of vegetarian and vegan recipes.

sunsite.unc.edu: /pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare contains health articles from the USENET newsgroups.

Gopher is a menu based system that allows you to search by topic. One gopher site with vegetarian information is gopher.geod.emr.ca. Look under the section titled "Vegetarian Info". This site houses the same files as the ftp site ftp.geod.emr.ca. Gopher gives you a different way to look for them.

World Wide Web (WWW or the Web) creates links between many of the Internet's resources. A new and exciting resource for vegetarians, the Vegetarian Pages, has been developed by Geraint "Gedge" Edwards. To get to the Vegetarian Pages, use WWW, Lynx or Mosaic (depending on what is available from your Internet provider) to go to http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Vegetarian/. This takes you to the Vegetarian Pages and from there, you can choose a number of directions. There is information about vegetarian electronic mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups. You can peruse the World Guide to Vegetarianism at your leisure. You can be taken directly to the vegetarian ftp sites where you can view, save or print the documents while online. The Vegetarian Pages will link you with information from the Vegetarian Society of the UK, Veggies Unite!, the Animal Rights Resource Site (ARRS) and others. You can look up recipes, environmental articles, nutritional data and more. WWW technology is still under development, so if you find something doesn't work, don't be discouraged. Just go back and try again later.

To access the ARRS directly, use this address: http://www.umanitoba.ca/arrs/index.html

For a searchable database of vegetarian recipes, visit Veggies Unite! at: http://www-sc.ucssc.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/recipes/

ELECTRONIC MAIL

Whether you're on the Internet or on a commercial service, you will have electronic mail. There are also e-mail services which give you that capability without allowing access to the other features of cyberspace. All commercial services now have Internet e-mail gateways, allowing e-mail to go between services or anywhere else on the 'Net. Cost involved in sending and receiving e-mail will vary, as will the ease with which you can manage your mail.

Even if e-mail is your only link to the information highway, you still have a number of options for exchanging information with other vegetarians and receiving vegetarian resources. The most popular of these is the electronic mailing list. A list is much like a message board except that it comes to you via e-mail and its use is restricted to its subscribers. Subscribers post messages, sending them to a central computer which then distributes the messages to all subscribers. Upon receiving a message, you can read it and reply if you like. Usually, each message is sent to each subscriber as it is received at the central computer, but this can become overwhelming on a busy list with 50 or more messages daily. An option is the Digest. When you subscribe to the digest format of a list, you receive one mailing per day which contains the previous day's posts. I highly recommend the digest format for those first subscribing to a list. The following are electronic mailing lists of interest to vegetarians with directions for subscribing to the list in digest form. Do not include the >'s when placing your name in the space indicated.

VEGLIFE is for general vegetarian discussion. To subscribe, address e-mail to: listserv@vtvm1.bitnet The message should read: sub veglife set veglife digest

VEGGIE is also a general list. It is a manually run list, so there will be a person reading your message rather than a computer. Mail your subscription request to: veggie-request@maths.bath.ac.uk In the message, explain briefly that you'd like to subscribe to the list in its digest form. The Veggie digest appears every few days rather than daily.

VEGAN-L is a list for vegans and aspiring vegans. To subscribe, address e-mail to: listserv@templevm.bitnet The message should read: sub vegan-l set vegan-l digest

FATFREE is a list for those interested in a very low fat vegetarian diet according to the guidelines of Drs. Dean Ornish or John McDougall. To subscribe, send e-mail to: fatfree-request@hustle.rahul.net In the SUBJECT area of the message, enter: ADD DIGEST The message itself is irrelevant, but you might want to let list administrator Michelle Dick know where you found out about it.

VEG-COOK is a list devoted to vegetarian cooking. To subscribe, address e-mail to: veg-cook-request@netcom.com The message should read: SUBSCRIBE veg-cook There is no digest option at this time.

VEG is a new list devoted to vegetarian recipes and discussion of wines. To subscribe, send e-mail to: emailurl@flevel.demon.co.uk The message should read: subscribe veg end Please note that when subscribing to VEG list, the > marks _should_ appear around your e-mail address.

(Note: Veg-Cook and Veg have not transmitted messages recently. It is unclear at this time if they are still active.)

Two e-mail lists are available for those interested in discussion or information about animal rights issues. AR-TALK is a discussion list and AR-NEWS is a newswire. (With AR-NEWS, you receive the e-mail but can not contribute posts to the list.) To subscribe to AR-TALK, send e-mail to ar-talk-request@cygnus.com. The message should read: sub ar-talk For AR NEWS, follow the same directions, but substitute "news" for "talk".

You can obtain files by e-mail by using either a mail server or an archive server. One example of each follows.

The World Guide to Vegetarianism and the rec.food.veg FAQ file may be obtained by sending e-mail to: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu Include any of the following lines (and nothing but those lines) in the message:

send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/canada1 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/canada2 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/california1 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/california2 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/california3 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/usa1 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/usa2 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/usa3 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/usa4 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/usa5 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/europe1 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/europe2 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/other1 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/guide/other2 send usenet/news.answers/vegetarian/faq

The FatFree mailing list has an extensive recipe archive, available via archive server for those who can not access it by ftp or WWW. To get started, send a message to: archive-server@halcyon.com The message should read: help You will then get information for further use of the archive server. Using it will allow you to receive a listing of the available recipes then to request the recipes you want.

If e-mail is your only access to the Internet, there are ways in which you can access World Wide Web pages and Gopher sites via e-mail. To request a WWW page, you must know the exact name of the WWW page you want. Send an e-mail to listproc@www0.cern.ch. In the body of your message, type the name of the Web page you want. For example, to retrieve the Vegetarian Pages' home page, the body of the message should read: www http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Vegetarian/

To learn more about accessing Gopher databases via e-mail, send an e-mail message to gopher@nips.ac.jp and it will send you the GopherMail home page with further instructions.

If you are interested in the Vegetarian Resource Group's electronically available material but have no access to file libraries or ftp, the VRG will send material via e-mail. For a list of available material, write bobbi@clark.net.

BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS

A bulletin board system (BBS) operates in a similar fashion to a commercial online service, but on a smaller scale. A BBS is generally local. While it could be accessed outside the local calling area, such usage would incur long distance phone charges for those outside the local dialing area. Sometimes a BBS is free and sometimes a membership fee is required. This information will be provided when you first sign on. A few bulletin board systems with areas of interest to vegetarians are listed below.

Perry Lowell runs the BBS, SKATEboard (Fidonet 1:333/359, Echonet 50:5016/359, or (508) 788-1603). SKATEboard has specialty areas for vegetarians and vegans and can also be used to access USENET newsgroups of interest as well as Fidonet and Echonet echos in which vegetarians participate. Perry says to look for Fidonet echos INTERCOOK, GOURMET, COOKING and HOME_COOKING and Echonet's RECIPE_CORNER. For further information, contact Perry Lowell.

SALATA BBS is operated in Redondo Beach, CA. The phone number is 1-310-543-0439 and the telecomm parameters are 8N1. Salata supports connections up to 14,400 bps (V.32bis). It contains an online database of vegan recipes and many vegetarian/vegan files are available for downloading. Access to Fidonet and USENET conferences are available as is e-mail. All services are free of charge. For further information, send e-mail to Karen Mintzias .

HealthMate Wellness System BBS is operated by the San Diego Knowledge Network. The modem phone number is 619-745-HLTH and the voice number is 619-739-1912. HealthMate offers forums, e-mail and file libraries covering a broad range of health and fitness topics. There is a membership fee for this BBS. For information via e-mail, contact Lorraine Harris

ONLINE ETIQUETTE

No matter what method you use for telecommunications, there are some basic rules of behavior to keep in mind. When they are followed, cyberspace is a more pleasant place. Every commercial service, BBS and dial-up Internet provider has terms of service governing online behavior. Mailing lists will send you rules for posting. Read them and abide by them. It's best to read a message board, list or newsgroup for awhile prior to posting your first message. This will help prevent potentially embarrassing situations. Remember that your words are all others will see of you. There is no body language and no vocal intonation to help explain your meaning. If you are unsure about posting something, don't do it. Never post anything you wouldn't mind seeing come back at you next week or in the next millennium. Do not publicly post private e-mail you have received without the author's permission. Do treat others with respect and be non- judgmental. When you disagree with someone, be sure to respond in a manner that does not attack the person. If you're presenting something as fact rather than your opinion, have the resources to support your statements. There are those online who seem to exist only to annoy everyone else--they are best ignored. Fortunately, most people online exhibit behavior consistent with these suggestions.

VEGETARIAN KIDS ONLINE

Vegetarian teens and preteens are often encountered online, particularly on Prodigy and America Online. Kids are welcome in the previously discussed areas for vegetarians on these services. There is a folder in AOL's Kids Online (KO) in the Clubs and Hobbies section called "Mission: Animal Rights". It's hosted by a pre-teen named Mike, and topics include both animal rights/animal welfare and vegetarianism in general. Mike also hosts another folder with the same title on eWorld. Any kids who would like to get in touch with Mike may send the e-mail to me and I'll forward it to Mike.

RESOURCES

Phone numbers for the commercial online services are:

America Online: 800-827-6364 CompuServe: 800-848-8199 Delphi: 800-695-4005 GEnie: 800-638-9636 Prodigy: 800-776-3449 eWorld: 800-775-4556

To learn more about the Internet, the following books are recommended.

"The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog", Ed Krol, O'Reilly and Associates, Inc., 1992. ISBN: 1-56592-025-2

"The Internet Guide for New Users", Daniel P. Dern, McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. ISBN: 0-07-016511-4 (PBK)

If you are online and having a problem finding your way around, I'd be glad to help you or send you to someone else who can. You can contact me via e-mail at the following addresses:

America Online: NurseBobbi CompuServe: 70302,3442 Internet: bobbi@clark.net Those on Delphi, Prodigy, eWorld or GEnie may write to me at my Internet address.

This file is electronically published by Bobbi Pasternak and the Vegetarian Resource Group and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided it is not altered.

The Vegetarian Resource Group P.O. Box 1463 Baltimore, MD 21203 Phone: (410) 366-8343 Fax: (410) 366-8804

WHAT IS THE VEGETARIAN RESOURCE GROUP? Our health professionals, activists, and educators work with businesses and individuals to bring about healthy changes in your school, workplace, and community. Registered dietitians and physicians aid in the development of nutrition-related publications and answer member and media questions about vegetarian diets. The Vegetarian Resource Group is a non-profit organization. Financial support comes primarily from memberships, contributions, and book sales.

An earlier version of this article appeared in "Issues in Vegetarian Dietetics", the newsletter of the Vegetarian Nutrition practice group of the American Dietetic Association. For questions or comments on this article, please contact Bobbi Pasternak . Copyright 1994-1995 Bobbi Pasternak