Mahesh Shah doesn’t eat meat or any animal products. He lives in Barrington Hills.
Those two facts led to the establishment of Northwest Vegetarians, a loose-knit group of northwest suburban residents who meet in Barrington to discuss dietary concerns and, on occasion, dine out together.
Shah said he started the group last fall to lend support to suburbanites who are committed to a vegetarian diet and to provide education to people considering a shift to a meatless existence.
“I felt this was something I had to do in my community because there wasn’t much going on, and I was paying back for the benefits I’ve received” by following a vegetarian diet, he said.
Northwest Vegetarians meets about twice a month at the Barrington Area Library in Barrington. The meetings usually include a video on such topics as gourmet vegetarian cooking, how to cook with tofu, the health benefits of vegetarianism and environmental issues related to vegetarianism. A discussion usually precedes and follows the presentation.
Shah estimates that 20 to 40 people attend each meeting. Because Northwest Vegetarians is the only group of its kind in the Chicago suburbs, members travel from all over, though most are from Barrington and surrounding suburbs (Palatine, Schaumburg) and the North Shore, he said.
A few people come regularly, but the majority are first-timers, interested in trying something new. “It’s to help support people who want to make a transition to a healthy diet,” Shah said.
There are no membership requirements–no dues, no fees, no prerequisites other than an interest in vegetarianism.
The group grew out of Shah’s desire to share his vegetarian views with people in the suburbs. About eight years ago, Shah was shopping in an Oak Park health food store when he spotted a newsletter for the Chicago Vegetarian Society. He began to go to the society’s meetings and outings but soon tired of the long drive. “A lot of their events are in the city, and I’ve always lived in the suburbs,” he said. “Also, the Chicago Vegetarian Society stopped doing the educational thing and just did the social thing.”
That’s when he started to make plans. Soon after, Northwest Vegetarians became a reality.
Shah, a self-employed electronics engineer, bankrolls the group’s efforts. So far, he said, he has spent about $4,000 on books, videos and publicity in an effort to get the group established.
Jim Dunn of Palatine counts himself among the “members” of Northwest Vegetarians. Dunn met Shah at a Chicago Vegetarian Society dinner outing soon after he moved to the area in November.
A vegetarian for more than 10 years, Dunn, who currently eats a vegan diet–which does not include animal products, milk or eggs–said he made the shift away from meat a few weeks after he attended a California county fair. “I stumbled on an exhibit on factory farming,” he said. The treatment of animals depicted in the exhibit was enough to convince him. “I thought, `One person can’t change anything, but I don’t have to be a part of it.’ “
Dunn became something of a vegetarian activist well before his move to Illinois. A retired CIA security specialist, he did volunteer work with the Baltimore-based Vegetarian Resource Group, has been a member of the Vegetarian Society of the District of Columbia and has lectured high school students in south Florida.
Like the groups he has been involved with previously, Dunn said, Northwest Vegetarians strives to make the move toward vegetarianism easier. “A lot of people don’t know much about it. A learning curve is involved,” he said.
Regina Kaufmann of Long Grove, a vegetarian for the last six years, has also been to Northwest Vegetarian meetings and sees the group’s mission as educating others.
“What we have to do is bring in people who have never even questioned the quality of their meat,” Kaufmann said. “Mahesh saw the need that we should maybe have something (for such people) outside of Chicago.”
“What I’m doing is a pittance compared to the benefits I’ve received,” Shah said.
Shah had been raised on a lacto-vegetarian diet–a diet that excludes meat but allows dairy products–as a child in Bombay. When he came to the U.S. in 1969, he said he tried to remain a vegetarian, but it wasn’t easy.
“I knew what I didn’t want to eat, but I couldn’t find good alternatives,” he said. For a short time, he ate meat “because I thought it might make me healthier,” he said.
He continued to experiment with different approaches to a healthy diet, eventually settling on a vegan diet. “Once you try this diet and stick with it for a while, you see the (health) benefits,” he said.
Shah said he believes his health, though always good, has improved since he decided to eliminate meat from his diet. “The health aspect has been just tremendous. I was quite healthy–but I’m healthier now,” he said. “For the last seven years, I haven’t had a cold or the flu.”
Gretchen Collins, a registered dietician at Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, said vegetarian diets can be very healthy if the practitioner is careful to consume necessary nutrients.
“(Vegetarians) need to include non-meat sources of calcium, iron, protein and the whole complement of amino acids and vitamin B-12 (in their diets). All they really need to do is get their hands on a nutrition or diet book. They need to read up on it and be educated.”
As for negative consequences of vegetarian eating, Collins said, vegetarians should be wary of getting too much oil or fat in their diets. She said vegetarian recipes often have high fat content because the emphasis is placed on replacing nutrients present in meat with nutrients from non-meat sources, while fat content is downplayed.
On the whole, she said, vegetarian diets can be very healthy. “A true vegetarian is turning to plant and grain sources to get the nutrients we get from meat. It can be excellent, if they do it correctly.”
Although Northwest Vegetarians sponsors educational seminars, the group also has a social component. Members get together to eat out at local spots, including iveta in Barrington, Bangkok Cafe in Arlington Heights and, in Schaumburg, Taste of Thai, India House and California Pizza Kitchen.
Although group members often order from the menu, sometimes arrangements are made with the restaurant’s management in advance. “In some cases we’ve asked the chef to adapt the menu, and most are very accommodating,” Shah said.
Shah said he plans to keep the group going as long as he can and is looking for help. “We need volunteers,” he said. “As long as people can benefit from it, and I think they can, there’s a reason for a group such as this. People are hungry for information.”
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For more information about the group, call 847-836-6246. Northwest Vegetarians has a Web site at http://nsn.nslsilus.org/bakhome/mahesh. The e-mail address is mahesh@starnetinc.com.
