Life, Love, Liberty and Lunch

graduation cheyenne mountain high school julia marie walden
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!
julia walden cheyenne mountain high school

Hay bellies

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, Hay ride 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.

FDA rapists on the loose, again

Bachelorette nutrition One of my favorite jump starts to the day is a breakfast of cottage cheese, fresh fruit and almonds. It’s is a simple meal, easy to prepare, and represents a near-perfect combination of protein, carbohydrate and healthy fat. It’s the almonds that provide the magic. In addition to a low glycemic index, which curtails a heavy duty insulin response, almond intake protects proteins from oxidative damage while delivering vitamin E and other antioxidants, magnesium, calcium, folic acid, protein, fiber and living enzymes.

Thank goodness that the USA has a near lock on almond production. 70% of the world’s almonds come from California. I can only thank goodness that raw almonds are readily available in our bountiful land, even at most corporate grocery stores.

Oh, but wait. The FDA recently decided that all California almonds must be either irradiated or chemically pasteurized prior to sale. Not so for almonds exported to other countries. No. This particular punishment is reserved especially for the American people.

What this means is that our pristine, nutritious and beautiful almonds are subjected to gross degradation by FDA rapists. Irradiation exposes food products to extremely high levels of radiation that kill bacteria, parasites and fungi. Never mind that animal studies have shown that irradiation may promote chromosomal damage and cancer. And never mind that toxic radiation demolishes the nutritional value of food.

Chemical pasteurization is even more dangerous. The technique used is called propylene oxide fumigation, which makes use of a chemical compound that the EPA has classified as a probable human carcinogen. Here’s another interesting note: Propylene oxide was once used in racing fuel, but in 1993 the National Hot Rod Association banned its use because of cancer concerns. Yet this poison is used to pasteurize almonds and other foods – EPA and FDA approved. Oh yeah, baaaaby, just gimme the purple stamp!

One comforting tidbit, we needn’t worry our purty heads over this because it’s all being done without our knowledge or approval. Ya’ll know that ignorance is bliss. The FDA — that trusty public servant — has allowed almond growers to pretend that it’s business as usual. California almond growers may still label their almonds “natural” and “raw” even though they’ve been corrupted by irradiation and chemical pasteurization.

The FDA is tired of being held accountable by the vocal few. They are more than willing and able to fly under the radar. And, obviously, California almond growers are happy to fly with them. One of them should stand tall and expose the FDA for the abusive piece of shit that it is. If they’d take that leap of faith, I’d buy their almonds — though they be unfit for consumption — until the poor drugged fallen cows come home!

HIv horsecrap is deep

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.

Aneuploidy and the cause of cancer

Cancer it is turning out, may not be gene mutation. Peter Duesberg, the man who was first to challenge that HIV, (the “probable” cause of AIDS as announced by U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary in April of 1984), was not capable of causing cell or immune destruction, is now challenging the established scientific theory that gene mutation is the cause of cancers. And he may be right. His proposition for chromosomal damage by cell aneuploidy, supports the suspicion that many of us have had and is being established more so in the mainstream …that cancer is caused by combination of poor diet, lethargy, non-nutritional, toxin ridden industrial food manufacturing, fast foods and man made environmental toxins and carcinogens of all sorts.

AIDS research has failed to find cause

“AIDS research has not failed because it never found a cure … AIDS research has failed because it never found a cause”
 
Twenty four years and no cure, no cause, no answers. But billions of tax dollars to an established AID$ industry who refuse to look at the facts. More money has been spent on AIDS research than any other disease in the history of medicine, all with no results! Giving a weakened or compromised immune system a name, “AIDS”, is trickery. Telling us it is caused by an old and harmless retrovirus is dishonest. But treating immunodeficiency, whatever is causing it, with toxic chemo ARV drugs, that destroy DNA and bone marrow, is criminal! It’s time to get mad and get the word out and demand a reappraisal. Or accountability for the terror, stress, damage and destruction to many lives.

FACTS:
1. HIv has never been isolated as a pure virus, direct from human blood or tissue nor have control groups been used who are HIv “positive” and HIv “negative”. One must understand that HIv is a harmless passenger retrovirus, not a disease causing virus like HPV or HSV. (see 3 and 8.)

2. Isolation experiments, as recommended by the Perth Group and others, in the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel Report of 2000, have never been done on control groups both with or without HIv. This is especially important since it is well known that thousands who test positive for antibodies for HIv remain healthy and thousands who have “AIDS” (by CDC definition) are not infected with HIv.

3. Kochs Postulates is and has been the widely accepted, time tested screen for determining whether an infectious germ or virus is causing disease. HIv fails all 4 (or 3 depending how you consider #4), of the postulates. A large effort must be undertaken to produce HIv in any quantities that are similar to disease causing virus. This is done by co-culturing HIv with leukemia cells in the lab (petri dish) or by adding growth stimulants. (See point 7 under “AIDS – Fact or Fraud”.)

4. HIv was first studied/discovered by Luc Montagnier as LAV around 1979. Montagnier admitted in 1990 that his LAV was probably benign. Robert Gallo stole Luc Montagniers work in approx. 1983 when Montagnier shared it with him. Gallo then claimed it as his own. He and the NIH were sued by the French government. Montagnier worked for the Pasteur Institute of Science. He also shared in the royalties. (see 13) Luc Montagniers LAV stood for Lymphademopathy Associated Virus. Part of the Pasteur Inst. charges in the initial lawsuit against Gallo were for Gallos claim that HIv was infectious. Regardless virus as causation of any kind of cancer, including lymphoma, is long proved false in the 70’s “Cancer Virus Program” through the Natl. Inst. of Cancer which is part of the NIH.

5. AIDS is nothing more than an acronym created by the CDC to create the categories of known diseases hypothesized as being “caused” by HIv. Suppression of the immune system however is not a disease and is caused by many things, which has led to much (purposeful?) confusion of the public. With a “positive” HIv antibodies test,(see 11,) or low T-cell count, or if in a risk group, and if showing symptoms of any one of 29 AIDS diseases as classified by CDC, any observation of those symptoms (see 19 for Africa) are now “AIDS-HIv” related and somehow deadly when most are not, all have other known causation and can be treated without antiretroviral drugs. All of this convoluted testing and categorizing adds to the numbers of HIv “positives” and then “AIDS” patient cases. Useful data for keeping the ARV drugs on the front line of treatment even though they are useless having been designed for cancer tumor therapy, and thus very harmful.

6. AZT, an ARV(antiretroviral), and other AIDS cocktails like HAART, are very toxic chemo CANCER drugs and destroy cells and terminate DNA chains. The initial trials of AZT based drugs showed wide evidence of harsh side affects, i.e. muscle wasting, organ failure, vomiting, diarrhea, destruction of bone marrow, yet FDA approved them on a fast track mandate in 1987. Many involved in the trials say these side effects were hidden. When AZT was created in 1964 it was deemed too toxic for use and was shelved. It is no “theory” that these drugs cause the very kinds of immune system destruction and breakdown that is deceitfully blamed on HIv. Admitted by the drug manufacturers themselves in their printed warnings. Why was this drug even thought to be useful for a “virus” when chemo therapy had never been used for virus treatment?

7. People who refuse AZT or the chemo drug cocktails after a “positive” HIv antibody test, remain healthy in most cases. (see risk groups #18) AIDS activists and counselors who are unaware of what HIv actually is, consistently fail to inform the “at risk” population that often call or visit them, that the HIv test is not a test for the virus. Or that the tests have disclaimers that say: “there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of antibodies to HIV-1 or HIV-2 in human blood”. And the viral load tests have the same disclaimers for what they are testing for. Besides, there is no proof of different specific HIv-1 or HIv-2 because HIv is a benign indistinguishable retrovirus.

8. The PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test is a desperate misleading attempt to detect DNA-RNA fragments of HIv retrovirus, in order to prove it is causing disease. Its inventor, Kary Mullis, rejects HIv as the cause of AIDS or anything else and says his test only amplifies and copies these fragments for study. No real disease causing cytotoxic virus needs this kind of help in it’s detection and purification.

9. HIv is non-cytotoxic.Therefore HIv cannot destroy the cells it infects. Nor can any retrovirus. In fact HIv is well known to virologists to be compatible with T-cells. Or most cells for that matter. This and transcriptease (the ability of retrovirus to insert themselves into cells RNA first, the reverse of cytotoxic virus) is the reason for their specific classification as retroviruses.

10. Real disease causing viruses can be vaccinated against in 95% of cases. But viruses are not always the cause of disease. As often in the case of scurvy, pellagra and weak immune system, it is a dietary and lack of proper exercise or nutrient problem/issue. The case of SMON in Japan was a similar search for a “virus” causation when finally the culprit was found to be a toxin. A toxin in the very drug that doctors were prescribing to SMON patients. This is what happens when “virus hunters” get carried away and take over research for professional recognition and monetary reasons. Or just plain stubbornness. Legionairres disease was a prime example of how the CDC/NIH missed a toxin causation completely and birthed a vaccine that did more harm than good. (Duesbergs “Inventing the AIDS Virus”)

11. The Western Blot HIv test is well known to give many false positives as many antibodies already in the body or other medical conditions (up to 70) can set off the non-specific protein strips in the test. All HIv diagnostic tests carry a disclaimer that the test is NOT to be used to determine the presence or absence of HIv antibodies. Regardless, presence of antibodies to HIv would mean the immune system has done it’s work and the body is protected. In reality based science anyway. In other words, it is impossible to be positive for HIv with these tests because a positive test really means you’re positive for the antibodies and negative for HIv! Thus the PCR tests and viral load(T-cell counts) became the new hope to detect fragments of HIv DNA/RNA or low immune response. (see 8, 16)

12. There are different standards of HIv positive in different states and countries! Why? If it’s a virus it’s a virus! One standard needed. But there is no “gold” standard test. Other than Kochs Postulates for virus and microbes which the CDC and NIH refuse to acknowledge or talk about or if they do they claim that Kochs method is outdated! That’s like saying the 2nd law of thermodynamics is useless.

13. Gallo/NIH received the patent on the HIv tests in the exact same week he announced the “probable” cause of AIDS in 1984. It made the NIH-CDC, Montagnier and Gallo, millions. He had no peer review and had not isolated pure HIv directly from any “infected” persons blood or tissue, at the time of announcement. He could only claim 40% of his “AIDS” patients had detectable HIv. Not anywhere close to claim HIv was infectious or the cause of AIDS by recognized science standards. But how did he determine his “AIDS” patients had HIv? By co-culturing HIv in the lab or with a growth additive. Why? Because retrovirus are weak non-cytotoxic passenger virus that do not multiply or destroy cells.

14. Gallo was involved in the Nixon “War on Cancer” program in the 70’s and helped the Natl. Inst. of Cancer to pressure Congress to fund the program with great promises of success to find retrovirus or any virus as the cause of cancer. But it failed. Luckily, the emerging AIDS “epidemic” helped to find NIH/CDC and the virus hunters a new program to keep and increase their funding and a disease for Gallos HTLV-3. At a time when Reagan needed a political solution, and as gay men were demanding an answer, HIv was acceptable because it erased blame from the gay community for the disease being a “lifestyle” or behavioral disease. But early in it’s announcements, the CDC claimed it was behavioral and called it GRID. Gay Related Immune Deficiency. This was a correct diagnosis as the first 5 cases were all same extreme sexual behavior, heavy drug use related causation. For the CDC, there was no money in a program for only gays. Thus heterosexuals had to be at risk as well. (see 18)

15. Testing people for HIv because they show “AIDS” related disease symptoms, with or without immune suppression, has become the standard line of reasoning though it is preposterous due to the falsity of the tests and absurdity of using other diseases as markers. (11) But the AIDS hysteria has swept through every corner of our medical professions, without a widely publicized critical analysis of testing procedures or reassessment allowed.

16. Low T-cell counts are misleading. A variety of illness, drug abuse, poor health/diet, colds, flu, disease are also responsible. Many athletic people have low T-cell counts and they can vary almost hourly. In people with detectable HIv (by PCR test), it has only been found to infect 1 in approx. 1000 T-cells, hardly enough to destroy immune response. Regardless monitoring the immune response is no way to detect specific disease. Laying in the sun will lower your T-cell count to under 200.
http://www.aliveandwell.org/html/viral_load_tcell/viral_load.html

17. Gallo claims his electron micrograph pictures are of an HIv virus, but nothing can be found by other virologists that resembles a true concentrated virus titer. It is now known that Gallo forged these pictures and was investigated for it by the NIH.

18. “AIDS” has stayed within it’s risk groups, Gay and straight male intravenous drug users, heavy drug abusers, popper users (which causes Karposis Sarcoma), hemophiliacs, and the poor malnourished living in unsanitary conditions…. instead of spreading widely across the population as we’re led to believe. It is not sexually transmittable as claimed by the CDC and NIH, but this edict spread the risk to heterosexuals. With this false claim, and Americans ignorance of virology or HIv testing, funding for research and the following prescriptions for ARV’s was increased 1000 fold. HIv is an old retro-virus that has likely been with us for 100’s of years. Farrs law for dating virus proves this as HIv models exactly to Farrs test. The body’s DNA-RNA discards many cells and retro-virus everyday. Repeat: HIv is not sexually transmittable. It is a parinatally transmitted retrovirus.

19. AIDS related disease in South Africa was and still is occurring markedly in the overcrowded poor populations where malnutrition, common persistent parasitical diseases long vanquished from western populations, lack of health care, std’s infections and unsanitary environments persist. And this is true for the new countries AIDS is supposedly invading. To make matters worse, give them toxic chemo drugs on top of their persistent diseases and already compromised immune systems, and they will die. Many die of the common regional diseases regardless due to lack of health care services, known curative drugs, and of malnutrition. For instance, researchers who have examined the supposed massive deaths reported in Tanzania, find no such evidence. (Questioning AIDs in South Africa) And the CDC has now allowed themselves to categorize many common diseases in these areas as AIDS related, WITHOUT HIv testing, due largely to the expense of the HIv tests. (see Duesberg paper below) Of course they know the the testing is a hoax regardless. As a result, AIDS cases increase lending to the deception of a pandemic. All numbers the CDC and UNAIDS uses for HIv infection and AIDS cases are false and/or completely made up estimations and projections.

20. In fact now the NIH and CDC have admitted that they do not know how HIv causes destruction to the immune system (it doesn’t but the ARV drugs, immune suppressive behaviors, poverty, malnutrition do), and they are now factoring in a co-virus as a way out of their deception. A vaccine was promised in 2 years after the announcement of the “probable” cause HIv in 1984. No cure has ever been produced because no cure is needed or possible for a retro-virus (or passenger virus) that cannot cause disease. No vaccine because HIv isn’t a real disease causing virus.

21. Scurvy (citric acid deficiency), Pellagra (niacin deficiency), Beriberi (thiamine deficiency) , SMON (toxin in drug treatment), Zantac,Tagamet-Ulcers (bacteria, Tagamet, Zantac useless), Clioquinol-Diarrhea (toxin in Clioquinol treatment), Influenza (virus) , DES – Synthetic hormone( caused cervical cancer and sterility)…………all cases that were misdiagnosed or causations ignored by the medical/scientific profession at their specific occurrences in history to the detriment of the public. And in the cases where a drug was given and was causation, it was always to the profit of the pharmaceutical industry. In some cases the misdiagnoses, sickness and death went on for years.

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From the website www.questionaids.com

Why isn’t an antibody test that’s verified by another antibody test good enough to say someone is infected with HIV?

The rationale for the use of antibody tests is that the immune system has the ability to detect foreign agents or viruses and to respond by producing antibodies that react with those agents or viruses. However, this rationale does not work in reverse. That is, the observation of an antibody reaction with a particular agent or virus does not prove that the antibody was produced in response to that particular agent or virus.

The problem with using antibodies alone to indicate infection with a particular agent or virus is twofold:

1. Antibodies can only be associated with a disease after it is shown that they are consistently generated after exposure to the pure virus. We are unaware that this has ever been accomplished with HIV.
2. Antibodies engage in indiscriminate relationships with a variety of agents or viruses. One could say that antibodies are “promiscuous,” that is, antibodies meant for one agent or virus may react with another agent or virus that is a perfect stranger. Or, to put it technically, there is ample evidence that antibody molecules, even the most pure (monoclonal antibodies) are not mono-specific, and that they cross-react with other, non-immunizing antigens.

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FROM THE DVD “AIDS – FACT OR FRAUD?” Ten reasons why HIv cannot be the cause of AIDS:

“Classifying suppression or deficiency of the immune system, that long has had causation in many things, as a specific “syndrome” caused by a harmless retrovirus, is beyond comprehension and an insult to good medicine and science…unless you’re up to no good. But then treating an immune deficiency with poison chemo antiretroviral drugs, that destroy same immune system (bone marrow) and terminate DNA chains is criminal and insane! AIDS is an immune issue and should be treated as such. In fact, the acronym AIDS should be thrown away and banished from our vocabulary.”

1. HIv, like other viruses is harmless after antibody immunity. There is no known disease or virus that has re-emerged after a mature, healthy immune system created antibodies to it.(1) Testing positive for HIv means you have the antibodies and don’t have HIv. Unfortunately many different antigens are documented to set off the protein strips in the HIv tests which makes it difficult to lend any credibility to the tests. Thus the PCR test was invented.

2. HIv does not kill the T-cells it infects. In fact T-cells are compatible with HIv. Virologists know this for a fact. Abbot Labs used T-cells to grow HIv to make the protein strips for the Western Blot test.

3. HIv does not infect enough T-cells to cause AIDS. T-cells reproduce at the rate of 5% a day. HIv, after being destroyed mostly by antibodies produced, can only infect 1 in every 500 to one thousand T-cells. There is no virus in AIDS patients, only antibodies against virus. Gallo could never find any cytotoxic virus in T-cells.

4. HIv has no AIDS causing gene. HIv is no different in gene make up than other retrovirus. There are many retroviruses in the body all the time. If HIv can cause destruction of the immune system ( thus AIDS) then why don’t the other retrovirus? Or if the other retroviruses don’t cause AIDS, why does HIv? There is no genetic reason to explain why HIv causes AIDS.

5. There is no such thing as a slow virus. Gallo and Gajdusek gave HIv magical properties. Real virus cause specific disease and do so within days or a few weeks at most. (1) Herpes is not the exception as viremially it reproduces exponentially when active and passes Kochs Postulates. HIv does not. (Page 74 Duesbergs book IAV) And Herpes when first transmitted almost immediately shows its trademark sores. Gajdusek (NIH) had a history of claiming slow and dormant virus, but never in humans. Always in the lab. Also in his early work he gave retroviruses the ability to create more than one disease. All by correlation but never through proof. In fact he and Gallo and a few other retrovirologists seemed to always discover a retrovirus in the lab, then went looking for a disease.

6. HIv is not a new virus so HIv would not suddenly cause a new epidemic. New epidemics explode across populations. HIv has remained constant in populations and has been infecting every generation likely for centuries without causing AIDS. Farrs law is used for dating virus or microbe age and HIv models exactly to Farrs law. HIv then, is not sexually transmittable nor an epidemic. It is parinatally passed.

7. HIv fails all 4 Kochs postulates. A real disease causing virus or microbe must pass every one. The postulates are:1.) A virus or bacteria must be found in all cases of the disease, actively growing in large amounts call virus titer. HIv FAILS. 2.) Virus or germ must be isolated from the host and grown in pure culture. HIv FAILS HIv has only been grown substantially in the lab using a co-culture of leukemia cells and stimulated with chemicals, never directly from an HIv infected person in large quantities. 3.) The virus or bacteria must cause the same disease when injected into a new healthy host. HIv FAILS. 4.) The virus or bacteria must be isolated and found growing again in large amounts in the newly diseased host. HIv FAILS (failing 3 it cannot pass 4.)

8. AIDS has remained in its original risk groups for over 23 years. 97% AIDS patients made up of same risk groups. 3% risk group isn’t growing.

9. The CDC, WHO international profile of AIDS is inconsistent. U.S. and Europe = 90% male. Africa = 50/50 male female. U.S. and Europe fall 97% into risk groups. Africa = no risk groups.(the official UNAIDS line) The truth is the poor, malnourished living in crowded slums and shanty towns with no sanitation or clean water, or access to health care and continually fighting old parasitical diseases, are the most susceptible to immune deficiency disease, not HIv. They are the risk groups in poor overcrowded areas of developing countries. And CDC and UNAIDS have categorized all the old African diseases now as AIDS, whether HIv infection is present of not.

10. AIDS related disease occurs without HIv infection, and, most people with HIv antibodies, never develop AIDS related disease. What we see in this statement is evidence of no retrovirus in the first case or of a harmless retrovirus in the second case, that does nothing and has been cleared by immune response. Of course what is evident is that no one has HIv who has the antibodies present. If we can even verify that these antibodies are or have reacted to HIv proteins!!! And if it takes a polymerase chain reaction test to confirm that we can only find fragments of the DNA/RNA of HIv, not the HIv itself, then why is anyone worried about HIv??? Because we’ve been terribly misled by, as Duesberg calls them, the “virus hunters”.

Conclusion: HIv is not infectious nor sexually transmittable. With this information and finding of fact we should question any and all claims of disease that are supposedly caused by virus. Immediately what comes to mind are HPV, Hep B and HepC. These may be as harmless as HIv and treatment has been hyped to push people toward vaccinations that are untested and whose efficacy is not totally known.

For our children’s sake, ban food dyes

Food dyes are a completely unnecessary product from a consumerist point of view. They add no value other than to hide away the bad visual effects of artificial food and badly handled food, so as such, they have value only for large manufacturing concerns trying to sell us trash foods.

They are the true sign of factory produced food that looks like Fruit Loops, tastes as bad as Fruit Loops, and is as nutritionally harmful as this pseudo cereal is for your kids. Plus, food dyes are linked to hyperactivity. So why not just ban them altogether?

Banning food dyes is just good public health policy. Of course, in the US there is no real public health policy at this time, since the capitalist ‘free market’ mentality is running rampant and destroying public health. It’s time to change that. Ban food dyes in our US diet.

Bachelor Nutrition part 2. fasting

Raw unfiltered honey, hot cayenne pepper, and lots of fresh lemons
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.

Bachelor Nutrition, part 1. Breakfast

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.
Slivered almonds, cottage cheese and blueberries

*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.

Eco regressive marketing

Here’s an idea whose time should not have come: PLASTIC CANS. Supermarket repackaging
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.

Putting lipstick on a big fat pig

McDonald’s feng shui’dBrazenly pandering to a large local Asian population and hoping to attract members of a nearby Buddhist temple, a California McDonald’s has gone feng shui. The restaurant’s owners say the designs are aimed at creating a soothing setting that will encourage diners to linger over their burgers and fries and, of course, come back again and again.

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese practice of arranging objects to promote health, harmony and prosperity. The basic principles of feng shui include placing strategic representations of five natural elements — earth, water, fire, metal and wood — around the room to increase the flow of chi, or energy. The McDonald’s in this Los Angeles suburb boasts a wood ceiling, silver-coated chairs, rich leather booths, and red accents throughout the dining area to symbolize fire and good luck, laughter and prosperity. The textured walls patterned after ocean waves symbolize life and relaxation.

What could be more ludicrous than McDonald’s, one of the original fast food restaurants and a major contributor to overall American un-wellness, using interior design to promote health and prosperity? Maybe they mean franchise health and corporate prosperity? McDonald’s feng shui’dI can’t imagine that freely flowing chi is a pressing concern for diners who’ve just stuffed themselves with 1500 calories, none of which have provided them with any nutritional benefit whatsoever.

I will admit that the restaurant looks quite appealing. If only McDonald’s had anything on the menu worthy of consumption, a cup of coffee even, I might pop in for a bit to open up my chakras and seek enlightenment. But they don’t, so I won’t. And I hope no one else does either.

No more reporting on the beef recall?

Suspect beef product ON HOLD on school shelvesThe 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.

Knowing we are in over our heads

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.

The phony vote game

Stupor Tuesday coverage was even more stultifying than I had imagined it would be. The media truly has its job cut out trying to make the American public continue to think that we are watching democracy in action this time around. It just doesn’t smell right though. In fact, it smells rotten.

As unease about world security continues to arise, the American ruling strata only can try to put us all into an insipid political La-La Land, but we’ve already seen this shit too many times before. Nobody is enthused much by this processed spam that we are told is democracy in action.

It most certainly is not and it’s increasingly obvious. Even the liberal, vote-is-all cheerleaders are rather silent compared to their excitement in past electoral years. The vote is obviously phony and thinking people are now total outsiders in this fantasy shopping mall election. What we have is a corporate scrubbed political system that is as devoid of reality as fast food is of nutrition.

America is simply starving for lack of real democracy, and it shows. The media commentators make one simply want to gag.

A kernel of un-truth

food industry fascists
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.

Fibersure Feetballs?

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?

I’ve cured AIDS !!!

The Cure for AIDS
1. If you are gay/str8/lesbian/trans/bi and have tested for HIv and been told you are positive for the antibodies to HIv, (using Western Blot type test which register as much as 70% false positives) or been told due to a low T-cell count or high viral load count with PCR test, you are at risk for AIDS, and that HIv is the cause … you need to first thing, look your doctor or AIDS org. counselor in the eye and say: I’m not taking the AZT, HAART, Protease Inhibitors, chemo poison drugs that are the main regimen for treatment and that will destroy my immune system and internal organs (depending on dosage and length of time on the meds). Nor will I be a guinea pig for any new untested drugs or vaccines. Nor will I take any drugs for HIv because HIv is not cytotoxic nor can it destroy my T-cells. Over 60 known diseases cross react with the unreliable Elisa or Western Blot type HIv tests giving false positives. Don’t believe the HIv=AIDS “death sentence”. Sources: Help For HIV and Living Without HIV Drugs.

2. If you are pregnant and test “positive” for the HIv antibodies (meaning your immune system has destroyed it and you’re actually HIv negative) or the PCR viral count/low T-cell farse, refuse the drugs vehemently. HIv in infants passes in 90% of cases. In the remaining cases it really doesn’t matter as HIv can do nothing being a non-cytotoxic retrovirus and will likely soon be passed by healthy immune system. AZT drugs cause many different birth/developmental defects! Retroviruses cannot destroy the cells they infect. Long known in virology. See African Treatment Information Group (a PDF)

3. If you are a gay male, stop having unprotected sex especially if promiscuous because multiple std’s and then resistance to antibiotics cause immune suppression. And possible immune destruction if in combination with this you are doing poppers, I.V. drugs, meth, heroin etc……heavily. And not getting sleep. Foreign proteins from sperm that may enter through torn anal lining are more serious as this may be a causation of autoimmunity where the immune system attacks itself.

4. If you are a hemophiliac getting blood transfusions, know that HIv is a retrovirus, cannot cause anything and that you are more at risk of foreign proteins or other real viruses in donor blood reacting in your body and overwhelming your immune system. You need to be extra ambitious in taking care of your immune system. Don’t buy into HIv.

5. For all; Stop all heavy drug use as in I.V.drugs like heroin, meth, cocaine. Limit marijuana and also alcohol, and take care of your immune system with regular exercise, laughter, lots of water, avoiding stress, avoiding refined sugars, flour, cut down or quit dairy, and get as close to vegetarian diet (i.e. raw foods, organic) as possible. Stop worrying about HIv. Personally I will never worry about HIv testing again. In 1st world nations supposed HIv infecteds live long healthy lives without AZT or any HIv drugs.

That’s it. I’ve just cured American, European and other 1st world nation “AIDS!” You’re welcome.

AIDS in Africa, Distinguishing Fact from Fiction (a PDF)
African and other similar circumstance countries with many poor living in squalid, unsanitary, overcrowded slum conditions with rampant malnutrition, unsanitary water, parasitical disease and lack of access to health care …well we all know their fate. Because no one cares about them. UNAIDS, WHO and CDC can however count their deaths and diseases as AIDS by their own permission and rules, without HIv.

No wonder we’re fooled into believing that they are dying of AIDS. It is indifference they are really dying of. And all the old diseases and conditions of developing poor countries, now categorized as AIDS cases or deaths. All of UNAIDS, CDC and WHO HIv/AIDS case numbers are projections that never develop into real numbers. Or outright lies. Death by HIv caused AIDS is a lie.

What Killed Makgatho Mandela?
Did Nelson Mandela’s son really die of AIDS?

AZT -Shouldn’t we ask, why give a drug that mimics the symptoms of a “probable” causation HIv, that you’re trying to cure with same drug? I know the answer:

Glaxo Wellcome puts the following warning in large, bold-faced, capital letters at the start of the section in the 1999 Physician’s Desk Reference that describes AZT (referred to under the name Retrovir or Zidovudine).

“RETROVIR (ZIDOVUDINE) MAY BE ASSOCIATED WITH SEVERE HEMATOLOGIC TOXICITY INCLUDING GRANULOCYTOPENIA AND SEVERE ANEMIA PARTICULARLY IN PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED HIV DISEASE (SEE WARNINGS). PROLONGED USE OF RETROVIR HAS ALSO BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS.”

An earlier version of the Physician’s Desk Reference, published in 1992 made the connection even clearer:

“It is often difficult to distinguish adverse events possibly associated with Zidovudine administration from underlying signs of HIV disease or intercurrent illness.”

Happy World AID$ Day !!

Rats to power!

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!

America is starving the children to death in Somalia

The US started the current war in Somalia by bombing the country early this January and sending in its Ethiopian proxy troops to occupy the nation. Now, it is slowly starving the population to death, as 400,000 refugees from Mogadishu alone remain homeless in the countryside.

SOMALIA: Malnutrition stalks once fertile region Especially hit hard are the children.

The US is directing this war against the Somali people. Troops forcing residents from homes in Somali capital, rights group says We must pressure the world to stop this US government terrorism in Africa. We cannot let the world forget about what the US is doing to Somalia.

The Godzilla Mac

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.

We’ve fallen! And we won’t get up!

There’s been much hand-wringing over the news that the United States lags behind 41 other nations with regard to life expectancy. Oh my, they say. How could the richest nation in the world be surpassed by lesser mortals? We’re #1! We’re #1!

We’re #1 alright. Thanks to our gluttony and laziness (with kudos to the food industry and the government), we have the highest rate of obesity on the planet. A third of adults over 20 are considered obese. Two thirds are overweight. We gorge ourselves on fast food. Know nothing about nutrition. Refuse to exercise. So, duh, we’ve got heart disease. High cholesterol. High stress. Depression. Anxiety. Addiction.

Thanks to our avarice, we also have record foreclosure rates. A negative savings rate. High expectations for our personal prosperity but an unwillingness to work for its attainment. Or, conversely, we are workaholics who spend our lives like rodents in a wheel, running to pointless exhaustion. The rest of the time we sit, slack-jawed in front of the TV or the computer, passively enjoying life from our Lay-Z-Boy deluxe armchairs. Not exactly Heidi in the Alps.

Many of the nation’s problems are tied to our lack of self-care and low standards for our own health and well-being. Quick to place blame, we are rarely the culprit. We rely heavily on others to slap expensive Band-Aids on the woes we’ve created for ourselves. We are Americans. We are entitled. To whatever we want. From whatever pocket.

What do we want? Whatever we want! When do we want it? NOW!

It’s a twisted existence we’re living. We are ruining ourselves. We are ruining the rest of the world. I’m overjoyed that our life expectancy isn’t the highest. I’ve already had enough and I’m only halfway there.

Got health insurance?

Universal healthcare you say? Every civilized nation on earth has it except us? Well, take a look at the average American when compared to a French or Canadian counterpart. Fat, dumb and happy. Chubby hand reaching out….trying to find a Hot Pocket, or an open pocket. Gimme more, gimme more. Fill my yap. I deserve it. Don’t expect me to care for myself, or my family.

We can thank the government and the educational system for creating a nation of uninformed cretins. We can thank the food industry for lining their pockets at the expense of good nutrition and health. We can thank the legal system for stealing Hansel and Gretel’s crumbs….leaving doctors to take the safest path. We can thank the pharmaceutical companies for corrupting our well-meaning doctors and putting profiteering ahead of health.

The truth is that most doctors are saps who care about the average American. I was married to one for many years. Never once did I see him hesitate to help an uninsured individual. He’s a fantastic surgeon who knows little about wellness. You’ve gotta cut to cure. You’ve got pain? Here is Vicodin. You’ve got inflammation? Let me give you a cortisone shot. Depression or anxiety? Zoloft and Paxil. Exercise? Massage? Acupuncture? Herbs? Good nutrition? Safety? Self discipline? Not on the radar. Medical education is driven by those that stand to gain. If there isn’t profit in a particular course of treatment, it is not part of the curriculum. The powers that be do not make money from whole grains, whole foods, supplements, Eastern medicine, helmets, exercise. Thus, our poor students learn nothing about wellness. And they are unaware of their lack.

Enter the greediest of parasites–attorneys. When managed care first came to the fore, every doc I know was willing to forego unnecessary tests, to save healthcare dollars. Dave had great confidence in his diagnostic powers. He knew what his patient needed and had the balls to refuse unneeded and expensive tests. In one year, when the average surgeon ordered several hundred MRIs, Dave ordered 11. Alas, it took only one lawsuit by a fat, diabetic smoker to change his opinion. “Did you order an MRI?” “No, it was unnecessary.” “Isn’t that the standard of care in the community?” “Yes, but it was unnecessary in this case.” Nevermind that an MRI would tell him nothing that he didn’t know. It was an Achille’s heel with a jury of uneducated peers. Now, my idealistic and caring husband has become jaded. Why on earth would he put himself, his family and his reputation on the line to save a few bucks for Centura? Especially when they are taking the “savings” to line the pockets of their top executives.

Let’s also talk about end-of-life issues. Many healthcare dollars are spent in the last two weeks of a terminal patient’s life. To say euthanasia is to belie one’s atheistic nature and to bring brimstone down upon one’s head. To suggest withholding care is to betray an uncaring attitude. Bullshit! Who wants to spend his last days unconscious, hooked up to IVs, soiling the sheets and dragging out the grieving process for loved ones? No one I know. But what doctor is brave enough to make the suggestion? Jack Kevorkian was imprisioned for honoring the requests of the dying. He was a revolutionary. He paid a great price. I won’t encourage Dave to take the same path, although I think it is a noble one.

Until the American public is willing and able to start looking out for their own health and well-being, until they are willing and able to educate themselves and their children, until people are willing to forego expensive testing, until they are willing to see a nurse, a midwife, a physical therapist or a physician’s assistant for their primary care, there will be no moving forward. Any presidential candidate promoting a universal healthcare plan best be prepared to confront not only the corporations who control our food supply and our education, but also the Unhealthy American and his cousin, the Greedy American. I will not support a candidate who doesn’t have the knowledge and integrity to speak truth.

You are how you eat

There are land crabs around the cenotes of Yucatan which burrow in the mud, eating the mud actually. They’re bright blue and red. We don’t eat them because they taste like mud. It occurred to me today as I ate a naturally-grown apple, actively hoping to avoid a worm, that perhaps a worm growing in an apple might taste of apple.

If man has traditionally avoided worms, I’m not about to buck tradition. I wondered if eating raw produce in the days before pesticides involved the little ritual I was mindful to adopt between each bite. A blemish at the base suggested to me that something might already be eating this fruit. But it didn’t seem too difficult to plan to avoid the path already taken. I would simply take a bite, then check the corresponding area to see if a hole indicated a trail into the chunk in my mouth. If so, I could spit it out. If not I could chew with peace of mind.

What an unsettling experience, in retrospect, having to hold each morsel in escrow in my mouth until it was deduced to be safe. Thanks to modern chemistry we are accustomed to chowing down our food, without care, without pause, and without maybe that little bit more appreciation.

Botulism erases brand name distinction

Nothing like a little botulism to blow the lid off brand identity. Does it make a difference whose label is on the can? Apparently not. Unless you can visualize factory assembly lines where some cans are prepared with better ingredients than others. Same suppliers, same machinery, same ovens, in this case the same inadequate cooking temperature.

Brand label transparency happened just recently with contaminated pet food, many brands it turned out are manufactured by the same company, Menu Foods. Now we have deficiently canned people-product from Castleberry. And lo, they make dog food as well.

The problem is with Castleberry’s chili sauce. If you don’t live on the east coast, Castleberry may not ring a bell with you. But they are responsible for these labels too:

Austex, Best Yet, Big Y, Black Rock, Bryan, Bunker Hill, Cattle Drive, Firefighter, Food Club, Georgia, Gold Star, Great Value, Kroger, Lowe’s, Meijer, Morton House, Paramount, Piggly-Wiggly, Prudence, Southern Home, Steak N Shake, Thirfty Maid, Triple Bar and Value Time.

And the dog food brand Natural Balance. This one looks like it’s table scraps. A doggy bag in a can.

How is this for dog food?

Take the Potter taste test challenge

Harry Potter jumps the sharkMy comments about JK Rowling were mean spirited naturally, but the reaction was like I’d made a snotty put-down of something exalted. Was my criticism limited by subjectivity?
 
This is not Fancy Feast versus the same thing in an economy brand can. Do you think quality is a matter of subjective taste? In such case you are confused by the hyperbole of marketing. A Coke tastes like its commercials, a Pepsi like theirs. That’s not taste. In many things involving our senses, the human being was designed to judge quantitative differences.
 
Why raise the subject at all? No one expects a symphony from an ice cream truck. But when promoters want to drive an ice cream truck unto the stage at Carnegie Hall, naturally some of us want to intone.

To me, you know literature when you see it. You’re reading along, and before you know it you become distracted by notions not linearly related to the physical events of the plot, musings, asides, descriptions which express larger truths. They don’t stand out necessarily, except you find yourself reading more slowly, lost in thought. That’s literature. It’s more to chew.

Of course everything doesn’t have to be literature. I can appreciate a Big Mac, even praise it, without having to pretend it’s filet mignon. I’m not defensive either way. But I’ll also add that if you were to serve me the same Big Mac reconfigured as Haut Cuisine on an oversized plate with pepper and Special Sauce cast about artfully, I could easily delight myself confusing it for something nutritious. Though it be the same poison.

And here is my point. My palate is not very sophisticated about food. I can enjoy a claret or a cheap Shiraz equally. I’m uneducated and inexperienced with them. Similarly I can’t tell a saxophone from the hydraulic exertions of a garbage truck.

Just as we fall short teaching critical thinking in our schools, might we also raise readers lacking discernment for meaningful writing? Readers who might confuse writing of nutritional value with writing that can give you heart disease?