Stop for a byte: on-line services help vegetarians connect - includes list of resources

Vegetarian Times, August, 1995 by Rita Laws

YOUR GUESTS ARE DUE to arrive in an hour and the tofu you're pressing is feeling far less pressure than you are. Who can you call for advice? Your brother-in-law constantly teases your son about being a vegetarian and you want an effective retort. How have others handled this situation? You're the only vegetarian in a small town and you're longing to converse with other vegetarians. Where can you turn for help?

To your computer. All you need is a computer, a modem (a device that enables computers to communicate over telephone lines) and the appropriate software in order to join the vast and growing electronic vegetarian community. Once you've joined, a world of information becomes available: recipes and cooking tips, advice on everything from nutrition to raising vegetarian children, travel tips, information on environmental and animal-welfare issues, and friendly conversation.

There are several ways to communicate in cyberspace. You can send a message (called "posting") to the message area of a forum (also known as a bulletin board, special interest group (SIG) or round-table, depending on the on-line service), which is like putting up a written message in a public place. There are thousands of these message areas on the various on-line services, each devoted to a specific topic. After you post your message, other people read it and respond, providing the information, recipe or support you need. These messages are saved for several months on Prodigy (one of the commercial mega-networks) and indefinitely on the other services.

Chatting is like a conference call with people who are at their computers. The exchange is more spontaneous and immediate than posting to a forum, but it involves far fewer people (only those involved in that specific chat at that particular time), and once the conversation has moved on, your message no longer garners responses. Some chats occur spontaneously; others are planned in advance. On CompuServe and America Online, for example, there are regularly scheduled vegetarian conferences that you'll learn about if you enter the vegetarian forums.

Once you know other on-line vegetarians, you can write private messages to any of them using electronic mail (e-mail), which is like writing a letter but is delivered as quickly as a phone call. If the person you're sending the message to isn't at his or her computer, it is stored until he or she returns. Or you can subscribe to an electronic mailing list, which enables you to send messages via e-mail to a selected list of people and receive mail from all of them. A central computer manages the list and makes sure everyone on it receives all messages sent to the group. This can save you and everyone else on the list from having to send each piece of mail dozens of times to the complete list of addresses.

You can also browse through the libraries of a forum that interests you and retrieve articles, scientific studies, magazine articles, cookbooks, software and other materials. With so many ways to access information and communicate, cyberspace has become a very useful and friendly place for vegetarians.

GAYLE PERLMAN, a stay-at-home mom in Connecticut, went on-line three years ago, after reading about a food bulletin board on Prodigy. Perlman, 33, had recently become a vegetarian, but neither her husband nor her two children shared her dietary choice. After logging on with Prodigy and finding a vegetarian forum, Perlman learned a lot about the practical and social aspects of being vegetarian. And she found vegetarian friends around the country, some of whom she plans to meet in person.

"Most of my friends think vegetarianism is kind of strange," Perlman posted one day. "I feel isolated as a vegetarian, except for this [bulletin] board."

"Your story is exactly like mine," Pamela Caswell from Louisville, Ky., responded after reading Perlman's message. "I've been a vegetarian for three years. Everyone thinks I'm nuts. Are there any vegetarian clubs you can join?"

Perlman responded that she didn't know of any vegetarian groups in Connecticut. Then another vegetarian posted a message about a vegetarian society in West Hartford, Conn., near Perlman's home. In minutes, she had gone from feeling isolated to being a member of a thriving community.

Barry Posner, a vegetarian from Alberta, Canada, posted a message on the Internet, the "information superhighway": "Can anyone give me some suggestions on vegetarian (preferably vegan) or veganfriendly restaurants in Chicago, particularly in the North Loop, River North and Magnificent Mile areas?" In no time, he had a dozen suggestions, complete with detailed descriptions and some warnings such as this one from Craig Worsham, a local vegetarian: "The Blind Faith Cafe in Evanston does not consider egg to be dairy. Some of their dishes marked as dairy-free do have egg in them. Be careful." There's no other resource quite like this.

Similar conversations can be found on most of the major on-line services: Prodigy, America Online, CompuServe, Delphi, Genie and eWorld. There are also small, independently operated bulletin board systems (BBS), some with vegetarian-related charters. These smaller services tend to come and go. You can find ones in your area (an advantage because you'll pay only local and not long-distance phone charges) by visiting your local computer store and asking for a copy of the local users group newsletter. Hundreds of them are also listed by topic in the Internet Yellow Pages by Harley Hahn and Rick Stout (Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1994), which is constantly updated. Or post a message on a forum on vegetarian issues asking if there's a local vegetarian-related BBS--your fellow travelers are probably the best resource of all.