Tag Archives: soy

How do humans know what’s edible? Nature or nuture? Pink Slime vs GMOs

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Is fellatio by nature homoerotic?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.

Simple American breakfast no longer

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pancake syrop corn syrup hfcs maple KaroMy 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. restaurant jelly single serving corn syrup hfcs 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 sauce

Mix 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, Tomatoes

Foods that don’t need to be organic:
Onions, Avocado, Sweet Corn, Pineapple, Mango, Asparagus, Sweet Peas, Kiwi Fruit, Cabbage, Eggplant, Papaya, Watermelon, Broccoli, Sweet Potatoes

GMO crops:
Soybeans, Corn starch, Canola oil, Sugar beet, Rice. Watch list:
Wheat, Potatoes.

Viva Palestina convoy to arrive in Rafah NPR fails to name it, or mention the Gaza Freedom March

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viva palestina route el arishAfter endless impediment, not the least of which was a sudden Israeli naval exercise to block its path, the Viva Palestina aid convoy appears finally about to reach Gaza. Permission to enter has been granted, although last week Egypt reneged on the okay it had given to the 1,400 strong Gaza Freedom March. NPR had a reporter at the Rafah border crossing, but didn’t mention the aid convoy until 1/3 into the report, and then not by name, and never mentioned the New Year’s Eve march at all. As well, NPR referred to the besieged prison state as an “enclave” whose borders were forcibly closed, “understandably,” when Hamas “took over.”

Here’s the opening of this morning’s report. My favorite part? Two. First the interminable sportscast-lke intro, a beautiful day in Fenway Park, etc. Then, hesitation as the reporter explains that the border is opened to let Palestinians out, and um, sometimes back in.

Steve Inskeep: “This is a rare day in a Palestinian enclave known as the Gaza Strip. A border crossing opened today, which is rare because Gaza is surrounded by Israel and Egypt and both have kept the crossings closed for weeks at a time over the last couple years. Today people and supplies have been allowed to move and NPR’s Peter Kenyon is at the border crossing of Rafah on the Egyptian side, Hi Peter.”

Peter Kenyon: “Hi Steve, how are you?”

SI: “Okay thanks. What have you seen?”

PK: “Well it’s a beautiful sunny day here, a little bit windy but a bright blue sky, and I’m at the actual crossing point. The black iron gates are slowly swinging open and closed from time to time, letting Palestinians out into Egypt or uh, sometimes back in, people who need to get home. Now this is a very limited opening, not any kind of a max exodus.”

SI: “Is this an opportunity to move supplies in addition to people?”

PK: “It is. In fact there is an aid convoy that has endured quite a few setbacks that has now finally arrived in the port of El-Arish. That’s about twenty-five miles away and that is expected to come as early as today, possibly tonight, there’s some last minute logistical difficulties. It’s a British convoy led by the outspoken member of parliament George Galloway. And they have finally arrived and they do hope to get in.”

And that’s the extent of the coverage of the aid convoy that has been winding its way toward Gaza for the last month. No mention of “Viva Palestina” or organizations behind the effort, or even what their difficulties have been. The final “logistical difficulties” to which the reporter alludes concern Egypt’s sudden stipulation that aid consist only of medical supplies. Check with York to Gaza, the Reading Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the Sitch, among others, for the final updates.

Meanwhile the BBC has pictures of conditions in Gaza.

While the Gaza Freedom March was kept contained in Cairo, Egypt was simultaneously stopping the Viva Palestina aid convoy from entering through Aqaba. Ultimately the convoy was forced to circle Israel and return to Syria, where it had to ferry its vehicles on the Ulusoy-6 from Lattakia to the Egyptian Port of El-Arish to reach the Rafah border crossing into Gaza.

HFCS is first ingredient in Nutri-Grain Bar -also second, fourth, fifth and ninth

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kelloggs-nutri-grain.jpg
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.

Questions to St Peter

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Sometime in October search engines found Ask Saint Peter .com. This was an experimental A. I. project scheduled to address what people were doing with their lives. It’s online but yet inoperable. The splash page features the picture of a young Iraqi child recovering in a US field hospital emergency room. He looks hauntingly at the camera. Text hidden below the picture quotes the Gospel about a camel having an easier time squeezing through the eye of a needle than a rich man getting into heaven. Clicking anywhere on the page addresses an email to St. Peter and an increasing number of people have begun to write.

Somehow these web surfers expect 1) that St. Peter is all knowing, and 2) that he can divine the future. Their questions range from trying to test him, to asking things they do not know, to asking about their fate, to making confessions. Here are some of their emails: (all last names have been abbreviated).

pweezy: so am i going to hell
andres: hey soy andres kiero saver k camisa tengo
shereen: What types of questions can I ask here?
Alle: What is josh c. doing right now?
dudy: how old am i?
Elizabeth: What color of shirt I’m I wearing today?
kyle: am i going to loose my job
kyle: how many girls have i had sex with?
rhonda m: i want to know if my marriage is going to end?
Katherine: Saint Peter, AM I going to go out with christian?
Vic: I’m not sure what to ask because I have so many questions? Will we my partener and i have a sucessful life? Will I be a good mother and wife? Why do i feel so hopeless? What about financial stability? Why do people lie?
Stacie: whos this
alicia: how many people are in my apartment? will me and my girlfriend be together for much longer? how much longer will we be together?
steve A: will I make it to the league?
jocelyn: if youre not ready to be a christian because your having too much fun being a lose christian, does god pretty much hate you ?
whitney c: Father peter am i going to hell
kyle: what color sweater is jordan wearing?
sydney: I have a question to ask, can u help me?
Andrew: will i go to hill?
lily m: is jose going to hell????
mike: whats this
danny: am i going to hell or heaven
jordon m: am i going to hell if so please email me
jamie: Who is with me? Peter will you answer my questions?: who is with me? please answer. Peter will you answer my question: where am I right now? when will i die? tell me now please
Justin: Why is your picture so scary?
brandon u: am i goin to hell
briana: who am i on the phone with right now?
caroline g: Do what?
tony: what am i doing
Ana: am i going to hell?
ed: Will I go to hell?
(lucas as) jonny: wats my name
jessica: Am i going to hell
brenda: HOW DOES THIS WORK?
chrissy: what is my best friends name?
curtis: what am i doing tommorrow?
julia M: What is my best friends name?
(julia as) giovanni: what’s my friends name?
julia M: Hi i want to know if you know things about me. I want to ask you questions that only i would know. Who is my best friend? Who is next to me? Which neighbor am i with write now? What neighbor is at my house right now? Where do I live?
junior mafia: is this real?
Jordan: Is my fiancee going to move back to Florida?
Alba: im i going to hell?
(blank): Who am i talkinh to and what is their number
Julia (again): Who am i next to? When am i going to die?
roshawna: what color shirt am u wearing?
mb: are you there?
Michael: are you there?
Ruby: Am I going to go to hell? I am a practicing lesbian. I also, however, attend my local church every Sunday. I have talked to my fellow Christian about this and they suggested trying to settle down with a nice man. I tried but couldn’t seem to bring myself to even kiss him.
Another confession of mine is that I’ve dabbled in Astratu. It is a new revivement of norse paganism. I find it deeply interesting.
Sometimes I aim for rabbits on the road if I see them. My vision goes red within this time. I find it highly disturbing.
Finally… My darkest truth is that I once ran over a man at 90 mph and was too scared to stop and help him. I have never shared this horror with anyone.
Please give me guidance as to my destiny after death. Will Satan be in control of my soul? Will I suffer eternal torture as the Holy Bible says?

Red Tennis Balls

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Is it an artifical vegetable or an artificial fruit?Move over Fast Food nation. I just picked up a new book (2006 publishing date) from the liberry, and the first chapter is titled Red Tennis Balls. Ever since my job as a carrot juice maker at a health food store when I was 16, the whole US ‘natural’ food thing has fascinated me. In those long ago days I used to grind carrots and then squash them for 6 hours a day. The rest of the time I made things like beet and parsley juices for our local gourmets. I even tried all those soy ham and soy hot dog things, and even today I got some veggie burgers in the fridge waiting to be charcoal broiled! But what to do for toppings? That’s what me laugh most about this book titled The End of Food. The chapter on the tomatoes!

Well the author says he totally lost it and started to study the food world of corporate science, when all he could find for his simple salads were red tennis balls. He discovered that once there had been over 6,000 varieties of tomatoes available to the North American consumer. But now, sad to say, the typical factory mart has us down to a choice of about 3. Three red types of tennis balls, that is. So he set out to further study just how all this had happened?

He studied USDA statisitcs on the matter. He found out that one pound of tomato in fresh, sauce, and ketchup form had all lost nutritional value since the beginning of USDA record keeping time from what was currently being distributed. When he studied other foods, he found yet the same. He studied pig shit too. He studied chicken eggs, and he studied apples. All foods had less vitamins and minerals in them than from before. All had less taste. Hey, all of it was getting pretty nasty, too. Since we didn’t have so much pig shit everywhere back in the Old McDonald had a farm time, only the pig shit now entering our human food supplies actually was ‘nutritionally’ increasing in volume It was adding things like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide into our living areas, and some locales were literally wallowing in it, so to speak.

Back to the tomatoes of Chapter One though. The author decided to go to grocery stores, farms, and corporate offices to ask folk just what exactly in their learned opinions were the characteristics of a good modern day tomato. Lo and behold, not one group of modern engineers of tomato production mentioned either taste, nor nutritional value, to be on their top seven important items on their lists. Thickness of tomato skins, appearance of being ripe while not, ability to go on long distant trips, etc. were all there, but not taste or nutritional value! In conclusion, the modern day American factory tomato cannot even be productively used to throw at the emperors of our land. They are like dull red tennis balls, and will not splatter. Better to hit them with the eggs from factory chickens, whcih due to less calcium now in their shells will actually help them splatter yet better. Go for it.

And Bon Appetit!