Trick-Or-Eat 2015 Tierney Watkinson Team Member Do Something Diferent This lowe www.trickoreat.ca ] I Join us at UNBC’s Northern Sport Centre on October 31st from Spm until 3pm. We will be going out into the community to collect non perishable food donations to restock our University food bank ! Email: nugss-sustainability@unbe.ca to sign up your tearm pq, hen a good friend of mine first told me about Trick-Or-Eat and forcefully invited me to join her group, I will confess that I was tentative. I admit, I have missed trick-or-treating, but the thought of trekking from house to house asking for donations struck fear into my heart—how would people react when they opened the door not to children in superhero-outfits asking for candy, but to practically-adults asking them to raid their cupboards for non-perishable donations? Despite my trepidations, I joined the cause. Signing my life away was incredibly easy; I registered at trickoreat.ca, found my friend’s group in the Prince George region, and forever linked my name to the “The Emotions” team. On Halloween night at 5:00pm, I arrived at the Northern Sports Centre with my friend, who was on the ball and already in costume (I would later frantically braid my beard and don my cloak in the sports center bathroom). Two of my friends in the group were dressed as characters from The Emotions, that really popular movie I still have not seen. Due to some miscommunication, I was dressed not to comply with the group theme, but as a Dwarf of Middle Earth. However, only two of the four of us were actually wearing Emotion costumes, so everything was alright and the night was not to be ruined. After being fed pizza, cookies, and information, we were given a map of our designated route and, after I had grown a beard, our group headed out. Finally, after so long of pretending to be too old for it, we were all momentarily returned to our childhoods and were trick-or-treating once again. Looking back, the night was a great success. We got a surprising amount of candy, and people were very gracious about donating food items after we had explained who we were. Just as generous was the fact that they gave us candy even after they discovered we were university students. By 8:00pm, the end of the event, our bags were heavy with donations. We drove back to UNBC, and our donations were weighed and arranged with the food items other groups had collected. Costumes had been optional, but I must say, I saw many amazing costumes that night amongst the other groups! For those fellow students who get a little bit melancholy around Halloween because they miss the feeling of trick-or-treating, this event is the perfect solution. Not only do you get to be a kid again for a night, but you are part of a great cause, too. Altogether, Iam told that UNBC students collected 1428 lbs. of donations to the university food bank! Thank you to NUGSS Sustainability at UNBC for hosting this event! UNBC Life 5 Getting to the Meat of the Problem Jesmeen Deo Guest Contributor rocessed meats, like bacon, are a widely loved staple by many of us. It is also widely known by everyone and their uncle how bad it is for you. Obviously, the fact that the hot dog you ate at your last club barbeque was incredibly unhealthy is probably not news. How bad it is, exactly, may not have sunk in yet, so allow science to butcher any misconceptions. Processed meats are now officially considered a Group 1 carcinogen, joining the likes of tobacco and asbestos. Yikes. Meats such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs, cold cuts, pork, and steak have long been suspected to have a hand in people developing cancer, but it was only this week that the International Agency for Research Against Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, announced it officially. The reason processed meats are so toxic to us likely has something to do with how they are preserved- the process of salting and curing creates known cancer-causing chemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and N-nitroso compounds, according to the IARC study; however, the reason is still not yet fully understood. The theory is that these compounds damage the inside bowel lining, so that the cell lining has to keep replicating in order to heal- the increased replication leads to the increased chance of error leading to mutation and eventually, cancer. Cooking meat at high temperatures with grilling or barbequing can lead to these types of compounds being created, as well. According to the IARC study, eating 50 g per day (2 slices of bacon or a bit less than 2 breakfast sausages) leads to an 18 percent increase in your risk for colorectal cancer. The Canadian Cancer Society has long advised against eating red meat for this very reason. The Harvard School of Public Health published a study in April 2012 that showed that eating red meat once a day could increase your risk of dying by cancer or heart disease by 13 percent. Eating processed meat once a day meant an increase of 20 percent. Eating white meat, fish, legumes, low fat dairy or nuts once a day actually decreased the risk of cancer and heart disease by 7 to 19 percent. So what can you do about your diet? Cut down on processed meat, obviously. We’ve still got the green light on fish and white meats like chicken. Beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, eggs and even dairy products are other sources of protein, and taste amazing if you learn how to cook them. However, those things are not complete proteins like meats are. Complete proteins are those that provide us with all the essential amino acids our bodies need. Since meat alternatives are incomplete sources of protein, a vegetarian diet has to be careful in including the right proportions of different types of incomplete proteins. Besides, most of us are probably unwilling to give up on eating meats completely. The advice from experts is to limit your meat intake (the IARC did not release a specific recommended amount) and to steer clear of the processed and high-salt preserved and cured meats that line grocery store shelves, and instead buy from the fresh section. Whether you choose to take action based on this evidence and reduce processed meat in your diet is up to you. Or perhaps you'll choose to take this news with a grain of salt, especially when you consider it relative to some of the other substances that the IARC has labeled as a Group 1 carcinogen on their website: among them, alcoholic beverages, wood dust and outdoor air pollution. Now that’s some food for thought.