If you’ve seen the documentary King Corn, you know that it takes more than a Hazmat suit and a kitchen to make High Fructose Corn Syrup, yet food packaging can say “100% natural ingredients” and be mostly HFCS.
SO I am going to brave the hypothesis that you can write about Twinkies without having to eat one. Actually I discovered Twinkie image aversion easily overcomes Twinkie the concept, and I don’t just mean examples like the phallic Strangelove Slim Pickens hat tip at right, excuse me? Even to look at the dubiously baked confections is unappetizing, so why do we think they’re edible? This might be a recurring quandary of mine to which short term memory blinds me. Why don’t we try to eat dirt? (Easy for a well fed person to ask.) Where do we get a hunger for breakfast cereals, but not processed pet food? Why do humans stop consuming a fruit at the seed or rind, yet question why those discards fail to interest animal life too? Taste? We grasp that fire consumes nutrients, a toaster sometimes terminally, but how do industrial processes blur how we discern between live food and dead? Is it box art? Which grocery aisle? Sugar and butter are both edible and inedible, with flour it’s the reverse –never mind, that’s not what I meant to write about, I wanted to address the sudden Soylent Greening of PINK SLIME.
I know that vegetarians deride animal flesh for being inhumanely unsavory, but since when have “food activists” been motivated by what’s “gross”? Exactly. Gross has yet to stop sausage makers, and obviously the “Pink Slime” assault on ground beef production is food industry astrotruf. It’s a PR back-burn against the real public outcry, the wildfire of resistance to Genetically Modified GMO Frankenfoods.
Guess I’m on a roll, so–speaking of shit you find lying around outside: The Pikes Peak region is “semi-arid” and pretty sparse, so far as dinner plate items from Nature’s bounty are concerned. “Pioneers”, (which of course is proto-Orwellian for “conquerors”), had rather more game around til they killed it all for the sheer glee of it, so if your caught out now things can be even rougher. To top off the chicken thingy I used strictly ingredients found outside. Lying around.
Take and harvest a bunch of prickly pears–the fruit are nice and ripe at this very moment! Use a razor sharp knife, and don’t take more than half the fruit from a single plant. Thank whomever you like to Thank as you harvest, and be gentle. We caused our Moms enough grief as teens; we don’t need to carry on so with our Mother.
Find some other kind of berries or other fruit for variety, anything that’s not apt to poison you will do just fine, as will skipping it.
Hunt down some kinda wild mint. There are several varieties around. Keep track of your living stash and you can harvest till the Apocalypse. The shit’s like weeds, only tasty.
OK, wild honey. You really can, I promise, find bee trees by following bees. Look for a good field of flowers and be patient with the difficulty of the task. Even if it takes all summer, it’s worth it. WATCH OUT FOR BEARS! I’m not joking at all about that one. It’s even more important to exercise great care when harvesting, given the delicate position of bees, lately, and their crucial function to the current Manifestation. Also, they might sting you, but that’s minor. Use smoke to quiet their anger–if you are serious and find a good tree, it’s worthwhile to get hold of a smoker from an apiary supply^. Agave nectar would probably render a more “authentic” version of this, if such a thing exists, but you’ll have to figure out how to get it yourself, (let me know). This is strictly a thing of mine, but I can’t believe no indigenous gatherer ever worked it out before.
One thing–I used a little lemon juice, both for flavor, and for its marvelous preservative quality. It’s not necessary, by any means, but if you want the effect and if you really want to be a purist and go all native and shit, you’ll need to sort out a local source of citric acid. Or, duh–it dawns on me the pricklies probably suffice for that, too.
I used the other half of the jalapeno from the chicken thing, too, which I found in it’s natural environment at the bottom of a Whole Foods donation box. It’s awful tricky to find a wild pepper around here, but not impossible….
Pluck the fuzzies from the pears and seed them. You can blanche and peel them very much more easily, but the skin has half the flavor and even more of the nutrients. Besides, the plucking offers an excuse for sitting around a table with your family without an idiot box blaring inanities, though I recommend blaring some jammin’ tunes. Look me up on Facebook and I’ll post some for you.
Put all the ingredients except the honey in an appropriately sized saucepan, add a little water so it don’t burn while the juices are coming out, cover, and simmer til you get sick of simmering.
Add honey to taste and use for ice cream, a kind of chutney, or whatever. Mixes well with cream, too, if you’re not too aggressive about the process.
Best when built as a family project from top down, side-to-side, and suffused liberally con molto amore!
(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)
Organic foods are higher in nutrients, free of neurotoxins, growth-supportive, not pesticide factories, not water-polluters, ecologically sustainable, economically sustainable, better tasting, not gas-ripened, safer for farm workers, conducive to wildlife, less likely to be cancer-causing, free of antibiotics and hormones, tried & tested, and supportive of biodiversity. Read on, from Care2 make a difference:
15 Reasons to Eat Organic Food
1. In study after study, research from independent organizations consistently shows organic food is higher in nutrients than traditional foods. Research shows that organic produce is higher in vitamin C, antioxidants, and the minerals calcium, iron, chromium, and magnesium.
2. They’re free of neurotoxins–toxins that are damaging to brain and nerve cells. A commonly-used class of pesticides called organophosphates was originally developed as a toxic nerve agent during World War I. When there was no longer a need for them in warfare, industry adapted them to kill pests on foods. Many pesticides are still considered neurotoxins.
3. They’re supportive of growing children’s brains and bodies. Children’s growing brains and bodies are far more susceptible to toxins than adults. Choosing organic helps feed their bodies without the exposure to pesticides and genetically-modified organisms, both of which have a relatively short history of use (and therefore safety).
4. They are real food, not pesticide factories. Eighteen percent of all genetically-modified seeds (and therefore foods that grow from them) are engineered to produce their own pesticides. Research shows that these seeds may continue producing pesticides inside your body once you’ve eaten the food grown from them! Foods that are actually pesticide factories…no thanks.
5. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that pesticides pollute the primary drinking source for half the American population. Organic farming is the best solution to the problem. Buying organic helps reduce pollution in our drinking water.
6. Organic food is earth-supportive (when big business keeps their hands out of it). Organic food production has been around for thousands of years and is the sustainable choice for the future. Compare that to modern agricultural practices that are destructive of the environment through widespread use of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizers and have resulted in drastic environmental damage in many parts of the world.
7. Organic food choices grown on small-scale organic farms help ensure independent family farmers can create a livelihood. Consider it the domestic version of fair trade.
8. Most organic food simply tastes better than the pesticide-grown counterparts.
9. Organic food is not exposed to gas-ripening like some non-organic fruits and vegetables (like bananas).
10. Organic farms are safer for farm workers. Research at the Harvard School of Public Health found a 70 percent increase in Parkinson’s disease among people exposed to pesticides. Choosing organic foods means that more people will be able to work on farms without incurring the higher potential health risk of Parkinson’s or other illnesses.
11. Organic food supports wildlife habitats. Even with commonly used amounts of pesticides, wildlife is being harmed by exposure to pesticides.
12. Eating organic may reduce your cancer risk. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers 60% of herbicides, 90% of fungicides, and 30 percent of insecticides potentially cancer-causing. It is reasonable to think that the rapidly increasing rates of cancer are at least partly linked to the use of these carcinogenic pesticides.
13. Choosing organic meat lessens your exposure to antibiotics, synthetic hormones, and drugs that find their way into the animals and ultimately into you.
14. Organic food is tried and tested. By some estimates genetically-modified food makes up 80% of the average person’s food consumption. Genetic modification of food is still experimental. Avoid being part of this wide scale and uncontrolled experiment.
15. Organic food supports greater biodiversity. Diversity is fundamental to life on this planet. Genetically-modified and non-organic food is focused on high yield monoculture and is destroying biodiversity.
Short answer, not really. But we’re feeling left out of the excitement, even if it’s addled. Reed’s Natural Energy Elixir is probably the most interesting (sparkling filtered water, cane sugar, pineapple juice, honey, fresh ginger root, lemon juice, lime juice, green tea leaf, ginseng, goji, acai, camu camu, jiaogulan & L-theanine) but won’t deliver the jitters to suit energy drink junkies. It’s sort of like Herbal-X was to Ecstasy. Colorado local Petey’s Bing is a “natural” concoction with bing cherries, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, acai & flax seed extract (plus caffeine, taurine & guarana for the obligatory heart palpitations), but cuts its cane sugar with Sucralose to reduce the calories, so until they consider natural stevia, shelve Bing with Tab/Fresca. Pimpjuice has acai juice, grape extract, green tea extract, pomegranate juice, pear juice & yerba mate to supplement the usual suspect stimulants. The legendary Bawls ties with …Lost for best taste in popular polls. But doesn’t “Lost Energy” say it all? Our serotonin-leaking masses are being pitched caffeinated supplements to make up for what’s gone missing from their dead processed food.
…because, really, I DO believe there’s a deliberate sabotage of Public Education being done simply by handing a “liberal” program over to be administered by “conservatives”.
In 7th grade in Texas you’re taught Texas History. Some of it would be almost unrecognizable from a Yankee point of view.
For instance, we were taught that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about State’s Rights.
State’s Rights to spend civic money and exercise military and police powers to enforce slavery.
We were also told, and I have reason to believe that it’s gotten worse, we were told that the Slaves were well treated, given decent food and housing, and Medical Care. Happy Days on de ol’ Plantation wif all de Darkies singin’ and happy and de Massa jes’ lubbin all of dem!
O, de sun shines bright
on my old Kentucky home
it’s summer and the darkies are gay…
You smile and laugh and sing because the Massah would beat you and maybe have you killed if you indicated any dissatisfaction with the arrangement. It’s that simple.
The Slaves were all Happy and Content and Well Treated… so why do the Corporate Slaveholders of the Modern Plantation, the ones who advance this bald-face lie about how good slaves had it, refuse to provide health care and good nutrition and housing for their Debt-slaves?
Is it only profitable to provide a decent standard of living if you outright OWN the workers?
They don’t make too much comment about how these Happy, Contented Slaves all smilin’ and singin’ and the Good Massah lubbin’ every one of dem… why they would be forbidden to take any outside employment in their spare time, to perhaps earn enough money to buy their freedom?
The Prison System uses a similar tactic to keep its slaves from escaping, if you’re caught with money you’re punished.
Likewise the Slaves were forbidden Education, even so much as to teach a slave to read was punishable by death. And to BE that slave?
Thus are the scions of the Debt Slaves treated now, public education being snatched away from our kids and allocated only to the children of the Merchant master class.
And health care and nutrition… look to the TeaTards with their anger and hatred toward people who actually receive health care, which the TeaTard Hate Freak leaders say only the Wealthy deserve.
Of course they will LIE and say they’re only looking out for States Rights…. Corporate State rights to hold people in slavery.
And threatening a new Civil War in which they’ll kill a lot of Americans to keep things that way.
Them Corporate Slaveowners sho’ does love them the idea of Killing Americans.
Why I believe the Texas History Textbooks are being slanted more to the right… Rick “GoodHair” Perry, fascist dictator of Texas, said the older textbooks were too Liberal WTF?
And in Texas the Governor determines the curriculum for the schools in the entire state. So look for even MORE brainwashed morons who will grow up thinking that keeping human beings in bondage and Killing PEOPLE who object is actually a good thing.
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING- Jimmy Dean urges its office Solar System to Fight the Morning Fade with fatty pork product. No sign of Pluto, only rotund planetary bodies floating high on chemical flatulence. The spheres are not size-proportional, but their shapes correspond exactly to bodies stuffed with an everyday Breakfast Sandwich. Truth in Advertising? Jimmy Dean isn’t targeting breakfast, their Morning Fade is the Snickers pitch, marketing a non-nutritional fix for the predictable post crap-breakfast crash.
My ideal breakfast is served at a diner: coffee, eggs, hash browns and toast. But can you feel healthy about it –as your conscience (n) –> vegan? You could pack in sugar in the raw, sea salt, and organic peppercorns in the requisite grinders; likewise from a cooler you could pull jars of rBGH-free half and half, real butter, and organic ketchup if you’re inclined. But what about what’s served on the plate?
A disclaimer: let’s define eating to mean the consumption of nutrition and avoidance of toxin. That precludes genetically modified organisms, irradiated produce, chemical pesticides, trans-fats, corn-syrup, HFCS, etc. The expression “natural” has been co-opted by Big Agra, but no longer can detractors say that “organic” doesn’t mean anything.
I’m omitting the optional meats: ham, bacon and sausage links for the obvious reasons; free-range, grass-fed, single-animal slaughtered efforts notwithstanding. Enough said.
Empty calories like juice are out as well, unless it’s freshly squeezed for your glass.
And let’s presume too, we’ll be asking the cook to stir some onions and peppers into the hash browns, for at least a little green.
Before we leave the subject of condiments, there a three non-perishable items it might be worth bringing with you to the diner. 
For your toast: corn-less fruit preserves, unheated honey, and if you’re planning to add pancakes, grade-B maple syrup. The diner variety syrup, and any portion-size pre-packaged confection are apt to be entirely corn syrup and HFCS.
If the price of your breakfast starts at $3.80, it’s unlikely your local diner can afford the healthy food supplies you are able to ferret from your grocer. It’s become enough of a feat to stock them at home. Let’s see: eggs from vegetarian-fed cage-less chickens, organic potatoes, whole-grain bread. All these hyphens concatenate into a value meal priced more like a dinner entree. And there’s probably no chance a typical diner can spring for fair-trade organic coffee beans.
Economists point to America’s relatively level cost of living. Progressive analysts address the subsidies which keep commodity prices artificially low. Others decry the need for society to address the real costs which cripple our unhealthy system. From the consumer’s point of view, the cost of real nutrition has suffered a hyperinflation to put it beyond our reach, eating out or in.
NOTES:
1. Here’s that recipe for organic catsup:
3 cups canned organic tomato paste
¼ cup whey (liquid from plain yogurt)
1 Tbls sea salt
½ cup maple syrup
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
3 cloves peeled & mashed garlic
½ cup fish sauce fish sauceMix together in a wide-mouth glass jar, leave at least an inch below the top and leave it at room temperature for 2-3 days before putting into the refrigerator. Recipe makes a whole quart.
2. An optimum juice concoction:
1. Beetroot
2. Celery
3. Carrot
4. Apple
5. Ginger
3. Three lists:
Foods to buy organic:
Meat, Milk, Coffee, Peaches, Apples, Sweet Bell Peppers, Celery, Nectarines, Strawberries, Cherries, Kale, Leafy Greens, Grapes, Carrots, Potatoes, TomatoesFoods that don’t need to be organic:
Onions, Avocado, Sweet Corn, Pineapple, Mango, Asparagus, Sweet Peas, Kiwi Fruit, Cabbage, Eggplant, Papaya, Watermelon, Broccoli, Sweet PotatoesGMO crops:
Soybeans, Corn starch, Canola oil, Sugar beet, Rice. Watch list:
Wheat, Potatoes.
Did you hear that Coke has partnered with the American Academy of Family Practitioners to offer nutritional advice about how Coca-Cola products can be part of a child’s healthy diet? What, with a side order of stomach pump? Have they developed an anti-venom for High Fructose Corn Syrup? How about superglue for the bottle caps? This reminds me of the malarkey on sugar cereal boxes about being “part of a balanced breakfast.” How many children do you know eat a heaping bowl of cereal with eggs, toast, and fruit? What would be the point of serving the cereal? Remember the scene in Supersize Me when nutritionists were asked what percentage of a regular diet can come from fast food? The answer: zero. 
Can a moral nutritionist speak favorably of processed food? These AAFP doctors probably think family dentists still give out hard candy.
With local produce, organics and natural foods adorning their packaging with seals of approval to differentiate themselves from ordinary supermarket slop, the processed food purveyors have conjured their own green badge. They call it the SMART CHOICES program, and it’s extraordinarily egalitarian. Whoever pays gets one. The makers of Fruit Loops, for example, have shown themselves smart enough to buy in.
The good news is that food activists are all over this online. Hopefully the hilarious jeers will lead to supermarkets shun the Smart Choices PR group effort to propagandize their aisles.
Remember when Wonder Bread advertised that it “built healthy bodies in 24 ways?” They were forced to retract those commercials because that claim was absolute malarkey. Hopefully there exists the regulatory muscle to challenge the processed food multinationals on the misleading wisdom of their “Smart Choices.”
Dark wit Gahan Wilson drew these cartoons in 1970 and 1976, illustrating an awareness of industrial duplicity many Americans have yet to fully grasp. The bankruptcy of processed nutrition, and the depravity of marketers.
Passing a prominent end cap in the Supermarket today and I noticed: the first ingredient of Kellogg’s NUTRI-GRAIN Breakfast Bar is HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. (Colorado has a law criminalizing disparaging remarks about food, so I have to say no more.) Except to add, HFCS is also ingredient two and four of the Nutri; and five and nine of the Grain.
Yum! Is corn the first thing that comes to mind when you think fruit and wheat? Or the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 9th? The big-agra commercials would have us ask, what’s wrong with that, it’s corn. Well, an inedible corn, also used as a gasoline additive. Corn is to HFCS what babies are to baby oil.
It’s not what Kelloggs would have you believe, in fact there is no nutritional information offered at nutrigrain.com. But other websites concerned with nutrition make note that Nutri-grain bars are neither.
Have a look at the ingredients label. I’ve highlighted the HFCS where they didn’t
INGREDIENTS:
Filling (high fructose corn syrup, strawberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, strawberry puree], glycerin, blueberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, blueberry puree concentrate, water], fructose, water, maltodextrin, modified corn starch, natural and artificial blueberry and strawberry flavors, citric acid, sodium alginate, calcium phosphate, xanthan gum, soy lecithin, malic acid, red #40 lake, blue #1),
enriched wheat flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, whole oats, high fructose corn syrup, honey, corn cereal (milled corn, liquid sugar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, malt flavoring, calcium pantothenate), calcium carbonate, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, salt, cellulose gum, leavening (potassium bicarbonate), natural and artificial vanilla flavor, soy lecithin, wheat gluten, potassium carrageenan, modified wheat starch, guar gum, molasses, niacinamide, zinc oxide, reduced iron, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), vitamin A palmitate, thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), annatto color and folic acid.
Most of the food in the American diet is approved by the FDA for irradiation and chemotherapy treatments. Our fresh produce and meat are subjected to these invasive procedures 1) to kill microorganisms and other pathogens 2) to arrest or delay the ripening process 3) to act as a pesticide 4) to prevent spoilage or sprouting. Although they don’t say it explicitly, irradiation also masks serious sanitation problems in both farming and meat processing and provides greater immunity to the food industry executives who can claim that their products were “clean” when they left the facility.
The FDA has assured us over and over that the process of irradiation is completely safe. So safe, in fact, that consumers don’t even need to know which foods are exposed to ionizing radiation.
I think the FDA should define its terms. What do they mean by safe? Irradiation works by breaking down molecules and creating free radicals. Sure, the free radicals kill some bacteria, but they also damage vitamins and fragile enzymes. The free radicals can combine with existing chemicals in the food, like pesticides, to form new chemicals, called unique radiolytic products (URPs). Some of these URPs are known toxins like benzene and formaldehyde, and others are unique to the irradiated foods. Since they are unique, I guess we can assume they are safe.
After the anthrax scare a few years back, the US Postal Service began irradiating our mail. Because there is no danger in irradiating anything, least of all the mail, they were surprised when postal employees began to experience headaches, nausea, eye irritation, lightheadedness, nose irritation, and chest or throat tightness when processing irradiated mail. The USPS hired an industrial hygiene consultant who found elevated levels of carbon monoxide, ozone, chlorine, and other volatile organic chemicals in the work area. The USPS called OSHA.
Long and short of it, OSHA came in and did a bunch of tests. They found the same URPs that the consultant had identified, and quite a few more. But instead of addressing the dangers of mail irradiation, OSHA made the following recommendations:
1) “Air out” the mail before processing.
2) Monitor facilities for high concentrations of toxic chemicals/gases and, if found, try a change in handling methods or provide additional ventilation.
3) Keep a log to track health problems related to handling or being exposed to irradiated mail. Have the log reviewed periodically by an occupational medicine physician to look for trends or areas requiring further evaluation. (like maybe increased cancer rates or other pesky statistics)
4) Recommend that employees experiencing eye irritation use over-the-counter eye drops as often as necessary to relieve symptoms.
Can you believe it? OSHA sold the postal employees down the river so they could keep the irradiation-is-perfectly-safe lie going. I’m sure they weren’t given much leeway by the unscrupulous ignorant bastards at the FDA.
Scientists have known for years that irradiation causes food to become vitamin deficient which leaves well-fed bodies starved for nutrition. Irradiation deactivates food enzymes which affects the digestion process, which affects absorption of nutrients, which affects every cell in the human body. Irradiation damages the very DNA of not only the food, but also the bacteria it’s supposed to kill. This, in turn, leads to irradiation-resistant super germs that are far more dangerous to us than the original pathogens. Irradiated food contains toxic radiolytic products, aka poisons, which are ingested by you and me and everyone we know. Irradiation creates free radicals which are known to cause cell damage. The cell damage can manifest in innumerable ways, from premature aging to cancer to blindness.
The process of irradiation is safe? It’s certainly not free of harm. I guess the FDA means that irradiation is safe from public scrutiny, safe from government accountability, safe from ethical study, safe from its own sad truth.
I HATE THE FDA! HATE ‘EM. HATE ‘EM. HATE ‘EM.
I’m taking over the Bachelor Nutrition Series. Yes, Eric is a bachelor. But he’s my bachelor; as such, he’s carefully tended and well fed. The Simple Nutrition Series (its new name) should be geared toward those who know something about the body and, as such, desire nutritious fare but who, for whatever reason, find themselves culinarily challenged for a spell.
Proper equipment, fresh ingredients, adaptable recipes, sufficient time and talent — all components of good nutrition — are in short supply when one finds herself alone, in a dorm room, on a big college campus, hungry for both food and companionship. Yes, the hot pot is small consolation, and stands in the way of starvation. But wouldn’t it be great if a moveable feast was a genuine possibility? If the way to the heart is truly through the stomach, shouldn’t a girl come prepared for the journey?
My lovely Julia graduated from Cheyenne Mountain High School this weekend. Voted Most Likely to Win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Best Sense of Humor — both make me so happy! — she did not win the Next Rachael Ray title. So begins my Fifteen Freshman Recipes Cookbook.
Freshman Fifteen #1 — Tortilla pizzas
I will not sing the praises of the lard/bleached-flour combo known as the tortilla. Pure dreck if you ask me. But, in a pinch, it can be the foundation for a nutritious gourmet pizza.
The PRESTO Pizzazz Pizza Oven is a stand-alone device that can cook a fresh or frozen pizza in minutes. We experimented with it tonight and discovered a few nutritious alternatives to Totino’s, using flour tortillas as our crust.
I placed the following items along the counter:
marinara sauce
olive oil
chopped fresh garlic
chopped fresh cilantro
chopped fresh basil
chopped fresh spinach
black beans
sliced black olives
turkey pepperoni
sliced roma tomatoes
sliced green pepper
sliced green onions
pineapple tidbits
shredded cheddar
shredded mozzarella
shredded swiss
We used the above ingredients in various tasty combinations and had a really lovely time of it.
A few combinations we discovered:
-black beans, tomatoes, cilantro, green onions, cheddar
-olive oil, spinach, garlic, basil, swiss
-marinara, pepperoni, pineapple, black olives, mozzarella
Each pizza took about six minutes, and ended up crisp and delicious. Not exactly haute cuisine, but definitely a step up from the ramen noodles of my era!
I’ve read quite a bit about vegetarianism over the years. Nutritionists assert that in order to be healthy a vegetarian must actively seek the full complement of amino acids that make up protein, 
the building blocks of our bodies, by consuming protein. This sounds like a reasonable assertion, but does it hold true in nature? Do living organisms, all of which are basically organized proteins, require ingested protein to survive?
Think of cows. What do they eat as they grow fat and delicious, merrily trotting the path to becoming culinary delights for the non-vegetarian population? Do they eat thick steaks, succulent chickens, light flaky fish, or the other white meat, pork? No, of course they don’t. They eat only plants — grass and hay — and only as much as they need.
Recent research suggests that our grains, fruits and veggies have become less nutritious over the past century. Man’s interference with the growth of plants — breeding for certain marketable traits, using chemical pesticides, artificially propping up the depleted soil with chemical fertilizers, speeding the ripening process — has resulted in not only dangerous food, but less nutritious food.
Animals are instinctive. They know what they need. They neither over- nor under indulge. I mean, have you ever seen an overstuffed cow, lying on her side in a meadow, moaning oh my god, I feel like a fat cow? No, nature provides every needed nutrient, in proper portions and proportions, for our cattle.
Or at least she used to. These days, ranchers do, in fact, encounter fat cows, dissatisfied cows, cows with big hay bellies. When cows aren’t getting needed nutrients from the grass they eat, they eat more, and more again, until they do. The fact that ranchers are seeing hay bellies is an indication that food ain’t what it used to be.
We have a similar problem. As Big Food alters the natural food supply to ensure that food looks pretty, has a long shelf life, is conveniently packaged, transported, and prepared, we are starving to death. Without micronutrients like resveratrol to signal satiety, without phytochemicals, enzymes, vitamins and minerals to nourish and support our biochemical processes, we’re eating more and more to gain needed nutrients, and we’re getting fatter and unhealthier in the process.
Found this recently: Genetically-Engineered Babies With HIV-Resistant Genes This kind of information is so completely vapid and devoid of information (or purposeful dis-information) it’s mind numbing. As long as WE, John and Jane Q. Public, don’t have a clue of what HIv really is, we’ll believe anything.
And… that viruses, like HPV and HVV and HSV etc… can and do cause cancer is another falsehood going around now. They can’t!! It’s impossible. Cancer and virus are two completely different entities and produce different symptoms and effects that are not related or compatible in any way!! Cancer is cell growth, Virus is cell destruction! Don’t get the HPV Gardasil vaccination! It’s bogus.
We are already resistant to virus and microbial infection! IT’S CALLED AN IMMUNE SYSTEM!!!!!!! If it’s healthy and not compromised by prolonged drug and alcohol use and malnutrition and unsanitary living conditions! OR, by taking the DNA chain terminating, bone marrow destroying antiretroviral AIDS drugs! New vaccinations and drugs and testing kits to detect or cure fake diseases that are being created, are huge money making opportunities for wall street and the pharmaceutical companies. HEALTHY IMMUNE SYSTEM IS KEY! (interferon response is immune system response.)
This new gene is a distraction. It is not needed regardless. And I wonder how these researchers were able to study HIv since it is so difficult to find in the body that it has to be co-cultured with growth stimulants in the lab. Luc Montagnier knew that and Robert Gallo knew that as well. Retroviruses as a class, are all weak and very difficult to isolate. And what is TRIM22? The lie that HIv keeps mutating is central to maintain the claim that it cannot be cured and must be fought with a never ending new line of drugs… that are worthless. Thus this articles calling for a new drug to mimic the action of this supposed gene.
HIv is a retrovirus, incapable of causing anything because it is non-cytocidal or non-cytotoxic. IT CANNOT DESTROY THE CELL IT INFECTS! It cannot spread to other cells. Abbot Labs grew HIv using T-cells to get the proteins to create the HIv Elisa test kits. They are also called “passenger” virus as the body destroys 1,000’s everyday and rids itself of them. If you test positive for the antibodies to HIv, (which has likely been a false positive as many diseases and even pregnancy react to the many proteins on the test strips, which are not all HIv proteins) you are PROTECTED!. That’s what antibodies represent. Protection and destruction of the virus/microbe.
Herpes is the exception as it has the ability to hide in the nervous system, but… it is a cytotoxic virus. It produces a specific sore always and within days or a week from infection. It is not a retrovirus. It can be isolated in the blood. HIv has never been isolated in blood or flesh by the required titer to prove causation of disease. Never! Why there isn’t a vaccination for Herpes is the question we should be asking.
Feel like making nothing, and eating less? Here’s a digestive-centering tincture that you can put together in the morning to sip all day and feel satiated and fortified. Do this for three days to clean out your system. (Bachelors come by their adaptation skills by their brushes with women. This concoction is no exception. Purging, dieting, cleansing, what man would have thought to need that? But not having to eat for a few days? That’s handy.)
The main ingredients are equal parts lemon juice and honey, dissolved in water, with a pinch of cayenne pepper. Drink as much as you like, but make the pitcher fresh every time. To do this right, use fresh lemons instead of lemon juice, distilled water, and raw unfiltered honey.
Squeeze two fresh lemons into a liter of water. Mix thoroughly before adding the honey. If you’re using raw unprocessed honey, you don’t want to cook it straight off in undiluted lemon. Then add a pinch of hot cayenne pepper. In the supplement aisle, cayenne pepper comes in capsules. This is handy as the portion you need is pre-measured (two caps). Otherwise cayenne pepper in the spice section is 35x cheaper.
Want the quickest, healthiest breakfast? Try this: half a container of cottage cheese, half the blueberries, and a sprinkle of slivered almonds. These should be, respectively, without rBGH, organic, and raw* when possible. The second day this meal will be even more convenient, since the berries are already rinsed and you can combine everything in the dairy container without needing to dirty a bowl. Use a plastic spoon and you can take breakfast for the drive.
*The Bachelor Nutrition series is meant to provide simple authoritative culinary guidance without exhaustive explanation. Suffice to say, your food should avoid additives, pesticides, and processing, and should be fresh, not frozen. Which means not just organic, but local. Check eatwild.com for a clean source for meat and dairy. Check localharvest.com for local organic produce.
Here’s an idea whose time should not have come: PLASTIC CANS. 
Canned fruit purveyors figured out that unlike baked beans or peas, the visual appeal of their produce could be a selling point. As a result, clear plastic bottles lend the appearance of an upscale alternative and command over three times the price -and social cost. What was a recyclable can, is now more plastic landfill. What was a safe container, will now leech plastic into your fruit.
The largest beef recall in history has taught us what, so far? That 37 million pounds went to the USDA school lunch program, which was distributed to schools unknown. We quietly presume the USDA had been pawning off the questionable product to the poor and dismissible among our population. But why won’t they release the names of the schools? In whispered tones with food program insiders, you learn why. Because the USDA product goes to ALL schools. (NOTE: Corpus Christi School found the recalled meat on their shelves and made the switch to a safer supplier, shouldn’t your school do the same?)
While all or any of the Colorado schools may have taken delivery of the Hallmark suspect product, the USDA school food program in Colorado gets the bulk of its meat from Advanced Meatpacking out of Oklahoma. Advanced is regarded by industry watchers as likely worse than Hallmark. We’re not talking about the tip of an iceberg, we’re [not] talking about the as yet largely unexposed large underbelly of American factory farming.
What’s so bad about US meat that foreign markets won’t buy it? Our government regulators won’t test it adequately. Individual meatpackers who want to submit their product for voluntary testing are prevented by the USDA, for fear of creating a stigma around non-tested meat.
Other countries test their 100% of their herd animals for BSE. They also prohibit the feeding of rendered animals to other animals. This is the process by which BSE spreads. The US does not prohibit the use of rendered feed. US calves are raised on a diet of milk and blood: milk fortified with the blood of their predecessors. It redefines “adulterated” I think.
US methods to prevent mad cow disease resemble more the measures necessary not to see it. The official word is that the USA doesn’t have mad cow disease. Cattle which display the traits resembling mad cow disease in Europe, here are called “downer cows.” Our safety guidelines are thus: keep those cows from reaching the meat packers. Easy enough, unless you run across slaughterhouse workers with the initiate to use forklifts and chains to harvest downed cows like any other. Then you need video cameras to catch them.
But video cameras cannot catch the biggest flaw in this screening process. Most cattle infected with BSE do not begin to show symptoms until after they are two years old. Most cattle in the US reach the slaughterhouse before they are two.
Even with a breach of our paltry preventive procedures, the USDA is still unwilling to say their prescribed screening is insufficient.
Perhaps the USDA fears that implementing European testing standards would reveal a huge chunk of US beef to be tainted with mad cow. This would profoundly impact the food industry and our economy as a whole. Perhaps a few thousand CJD fatalities five years from now is a small price to pay for stability now. Besides, those in the know have money to buy organic beef from verifiable sources. The prosperity of the market has always been borne on the backs and at the expense of the common mortal. CJD means fewer to reach retirement.
Newspapers don’t want to touch this subject, many of their advertisers are restaurants which can’t afford to deal in the more expensive meats. Alternative news-weeklies rely on supermarkets for their distribution sites.
(NOTE: Except Ralph Routon and the Independent, March 6)
No one wants to shake consumer confidence in the food supply. The problem extends beyond beef, beyond poultry, beyond farmed fish, beyond ocean fisheries, beyond imported produce, beyond domestic agribusiness, beyond pesticides, irradiation and biogenetics. So the media is not going to start with any of it. As it is with the American health care system, your health is up to you.
By the way, most of the meat being recalled has already been consumed. Of what’s left, the USDA is only asking schools to set it aside for the time being. It is being neither recalled, nor destroyed. Probably it would be too alarming to ask cafeteria workers to destroy what only a day before they had been serving up for their kids for years.
This is good news for you, if you want to find out which schools were serving the bad meat. You still have a chance to call those responsible for the food service at your child’s school. Public or private, I assure you the probability is similar. Ask them if they’ve got the recalled Hallmark stock on hold.
One reason we have governments, for you inquiring civil libertarians, is for guidance. I can certainly think of two matters which might always evade common man’s grasp: nutrition and economics.
In spite of all best efforts to educate a public, we may have to agree that nutrition and economics are too big for the layman to grapple. We elect representatives to Washington to advise our lives about complexities like these.
Take for example the fudgsicle, it’s “low fat” but probably not on the whole going to make you skinnier. By the taste, the fudgsicle is made of sugar. So where does that put it, as obesity causal factors go?
Regulating calorie intake vis-a-vis carbs, electrolytes, supplements, additives, toxins and who knows what, is not a static math problem. It’s about maintaining a buoyant equilibrium as we move our bodies forward in our mortal trajectory. It’s like keeping the steam pressure up on an old locomotive, there was a reason the train drivers were called engineers. A steam engine didn’t start and go like its Lionel Train facsimile, it had to be tended, coaxed and fed lest it a) falter or b) explode.
Not everyone can be an engineer. We can read how-tos, and feel good about taking the levers, but ultimately the pop-guides are written to take us in circles to the next self-help over-simplification.
Likewise, not everyone can understand economic theory. We like to apply our bookkeeping common sense, our coupon-clipping savvy, and Nike GTD ethic to the federal budget: just balance it, but spreading greater prosperity is much more complicated than that. Try conducting even domestic trading with “neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
That’s why we elect administrators, that’s why we make them give big speeches to demonstrate their competence. We know we want smart people to be in charge. You’d think that concern would be intuitive, but we have learned it to be otherwise.
Evidently we need at the very least to be taught in our schools that our leaders must have more than the common sense of our drinking buddies. Our educational system must keep citizens up to speed to appreciate that governance is a demanding task. We don’t need to know the complexities, but we need to know enough to tell buffoons like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity that their homespun drivel is for uneducated morons.
If you’ve met me, even for five minutes, you know that I hate the US food industry with great gusto. Every single day, though I try very hard not to, I read something about the obesity epidemic and the alarming rates of depression, anxiety, ADHD, heart disease, diabetes, cancer. The list of woes goes on ad fricking infinitum.
Before I rip on the government, who should be watching over the food industry to ensure that our food supply is safe and nutritious, but most assuredly isn’t, not only because they are fascist bastards who love corporate goodies, but also because they are fucking idiots who know absolutely nothing about health or nutrition…. breathe….. before I rip on them, let me say that the joke known as the food pyramid has actually, finally, been revised a tiny bit in the right direction. Still, the pyramid only addresses the quantities of food that should be consumed and doesn’t speak a word about nutrition, so it’s still pretty worthless.
What do you think of when you hear the word enrich? Does it conjure up images of a living thing, mangled and dissected until nothing of value remains? Do you picture its skeletal carcass, picked clean by vultures and bleached in the desert sun until it is devoid of not only life, but color as well? If somehow it fell upon you to enrich the poor dead thing, what would you do? Dress it up in fancy clothes? A nice hat? Maybe even googly eyes?
Do you know why the food industry is so good as to enrich wheat flour after they’ve milled it, discarded the nutritious parts, and bleached any remaining life out of it? Why they then throw worthless synthetic vitamins in the coffin? A guilt offering perhaps. But more likely its because they have to for their bleached white flour to be considered, get this, FOOD.
I’ll cut right to my point. A kernel of wheat, or a wheat berry, is a living thing, a seed. It consists of three separate parts: the bran, the germ and the inner core, the endosperm. A kernel of wheat contains over 30 different nutrients, dispersed throughout the component parts, and is the primary food source for most of the world. In the US, instead of acting as our nutritional savior, as the good Lord intended, most wheat isn’t even food.
But I don’t buy bleached flour! I buy stone ground whole wheat products! Sorry to tell you but once a kernel of wheat has been milled, even if it is not subjected to the atrocities committed on its less fortunate counterparts, it is still nearly worthless, possessing only 10% of all vitamins, minerals and trace elements found in a wheat berry. As soon as wheat is ground into flour it begins to oxidize. Within 24 hours, most nutrients have dissipated into the atmosphere, and spoilage sets in soon after. Freshly-milled, highly-nutritious whole wheat flour has almost NO shelf life. Which is why the food industry spends so much time and money on our eventual enrichment.
My poor kids have suffered for years under my ruthless hatred of American flour. They are the physically fit, calm and well-behaved little souls who forlornly peel their Clementines while cruel classmates taunt them with flour-y treats. They are the oddballs, the misfits, the outcasts. At least they were.
Now I buy hard red wheat kernels at Mountain Mamas for $.67/lb. I grind the flour in my handy Nutri-mill (For purposes of full disclosure, this runs about $250. I’ve had mine for 10 years, no trouble). Within minutes I use the freshly ground flour to make cinnamon rolls, muffins, cookies, waffles and other delicacies. My kids are popular again and, almost more importantly, stuffed full of 30 vital nutrients. They have good physical health and energy, good mental health, stable moods. It’s a happy place, this home.
If you do one thing this year to improve your life, grind your own flour and learn to bake a few things. And never ever ever believe that the US food suppliers, or the US government, cares one iota about your health and well-being.
Someone is advertising a fiber supplement on the radio, you add it to your dinners to have, not turkey, but FURKEY. No kidding! Not hamburgers, but famburgers, an imfrovement presumably.
Tofurkey was self-explanatory: turkey out of tofu, but I find Furkey to be just, umm, funky. The radio spots have a refrain of a feminine homemaker’s voice exclaiming the assorted meals as if echoed by her enthusiastic children. Each dish, now enhanced with fiber, donned a name fibered up with ff’s. For the life of me I cannot remember any of the apparently appetizing ones. Fork and Beans? Fam and Eggs? But I remember not salivating to this one: “Spaghetti and Feetballs!” Yum?
Forget Michael Moore. Forget all the other liberal/ Left movies out there, but go see Ratatouille. Rats to power!
The same director that directed the movie, The Incredibles, has made a movie where French rats once again come to power and overthrow elite snobbery and capitalistic trash to improve basic food consumption for the masses. Power to the rats, and rats to power!
The Soviet Union may have fallen, China is capitalist-roading it, but subversion is still alive. Maybe those rats that ‘infested’ that New York Taco Bell just a while back were merely trying to better the menu? Ratatouille!
Want to see the evolution of the Big Mac into The Japanese Mega Mac into the Chici Mac?
Actually, I think that burger should actually be named The Godzilla Mac instead… But that would imply that you might be eating too many calories, I guess? Is this Mega Mac- Chici Mac going to be made out of Kobe beef? And how many yen will we have to pay for one of these monsters? Be sure to scroll down at the site for the actual evolutionary pictures of these future Japanese Godzilla burgers.
Just last week, too, our editorial clowns at The Gazette here in Colorado Springs, themselves devolved back into the Newt Gringich/ Ronald Reagan dinosaur reigning era with a cartoon they printed once again making fun of America’s working poor and lower middle classes. It was the usual picture of starving poor in the Third World with a side by side picture of the overweight poor at home.
Ha-ha-ha… The pro-capitalist pigs of the Right Wing just love to laugh about how their junk food chains, 24/7 mega-stressed worker/servant schedules, and impoverished factory food supplies are causing working people to grow out like balloons, which of course leads to death by chronic disease instead of kwashkior. They got such a great sense of humor, these elitist fucks. Capitalism is such a great success! See?!!!
Not being a passifist I sometimes get the urge to go out and club these social Neanderthals with some of their own stupid golf clubs. Don’t worry though. I am making great progress in my anger control classes. Plus, I will be attending a 3 day forum this month about how to take up non-violence and become all Jesus-like. There, I will be hugging cops (CS police Boss Liars Meyers) and throwing flowers onto their police stun guns to the sound of meditationary-relaxation-Buddhist music and passifist Anababtist encantations.