Fast Food Addiction=Sad Food Choices

I could only shake my head in astonishment at what I was hearing! I  had to keep remembering to close my mouth as I was sitting there with it just hanging open in disbelief! Here is an example of the food mentality all too common today with children.

A woman and her two adopted children:  she’s in her early 60′s, they are in their early teens. All are (no surprise) overweight, one of the girls who is quite short, probably under 5 feet, is well over 100 pounds over weight.  The other is a bit taller and probably close to 75 pounds heavier than she should be.

I listened in horror at this story.  Because their food is charged to a credit card, last month the food expenses were about $1800.00.  Four hundred dollars of that was spend at McDonald’s.  Some days they eat there 2 or 3 times a day. Their other favorites are Burger King, Pizza Hut and Wendy’s.  The girls eat no vegetables; the Mom doesn’t cook because she’s too busy.  Their beverage of choice is sweetened ice tea.  They buy 5 pounds of sugar a week for the tea.  Yes — you read correctly:  five POUNDS. With the exception of a Sunday dinner, there don’t seem to be any other homemade meals that are served.

The sad thing is they don’t seem to care.  THIS is food to them! They laughed at the whole thing;  howled as they told the story! The long-term consequences of this is absolutely frightening!  The Mom is compounding her medical problems by eating this diet.  The girls are surely headed (if not already) for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries and other ailments cause by fast food or a diet lacking in essential vitamins and minerals. They get no exercise at all.

Neither of the girls knows how to cook even a simple meal.  They aren’t inclined to learn, either.  Why should they… when McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King are so readily available?

Part of this is from advertising, part from convenience.  Mickey D’s (and others) with their campaigns and never ending product offerings have hoodwinked these woman, and millions like them. They’re TOLD it’s good food.  They’re promised that their fast food has gotten healthier, but HOW can this be healthy when the meat comes from animals treated with antibiotics, growth hormones, fed offal from dead chickens and processed in a way that could essentially make them sick from fecal contamination? Then there are the additives and chemicals used to make the buns, flavor the meat, breading and make up the ‘ice cream’ and flavor the shakes.  What about the pesticides that the cows and chickens have eaten on their grain or are in the vegetables (what little there are) on the sandwiches.  All ingredients in these meals undoubtedly come from fields treated with pesticides and herbicides such as Round-Up and are probably all made from GMO crops!

I later told the Mom and IF… for ONE MONTH… they ate real food, no fast food and used a sweetener such as stevia for their tea… that they all would lose weight, probably without exercising. Their calorie intake as it is right now must be thousands of calories a day…, never mind the salt, sugar and fat consumption! Of course, they’d have to be willing to TRY new food such as eggs, fruits, breads, grains, beans, salads and consume far less meat and processed food.  Their tastes at present are addicted to fast food and it’s a sad testimony.

Is it too much to make a simple breakfast between the three of them in the morning?  How difficult would it be, with all of them participating every evening, to make a home-cooked meal?  Is it so impossible to cook something beforehand, freeze it and have it on a night when they might be in a hurry to be elsewhere?

I still say it:  required reading in schools should be “Fast Food Nation”  by Eric Schlosser and Morton Spurlock’s “Don’t Eat This Book-The Supersizing of America”.  Required movies should be “Fresh, The Movie” and “Food, Inc”

Kids like these are heading toward health problems and an early death. Their generation is the first one that studies show,  that may not outlive their parents.  Already rampant are health issues never seen before in their age group.  These two girls are very likely to have a major health event such as a stroke, cancer of some kind or heart attack by their 40′s or 50′s.

It’s their food choices, bite at a time, that will doom them!

WHY We’re So Messed Up = CHEMICALS

Thank you MONSANTO!  Thank you ORTHO!  Thank you to ALL those wonderful scientists who  thought they were helping this world when some of this stuff was invented.

OK…, OK…, I know about the miracle of plastics and synthetic compounds  and how they have revolutionized life on this planet.

Let’s also remember that as we are finding out, ‘fake’ isn’t better.  Synthetic isn’t necessarily better.  Why?  Because it’s killing us.

Modern science is gathering evidence that artificial ingredients are making us sick.  Decades have passed since this stuff was first introduced into our food.  Look at us now?  We’re fat and sick… some of us are dying from cancer BECAUSE of the stuff.

Our bodies cannot metabolize those fake ingredients.  They cause all sorts of havoc in our bodies as they try to deal with them.  The result:  cancer, hormonal disruptions, illness, allergies and mysterious diseases.

Pesticides are endocrine disruptors, carcinogenic and weaken the immune system.  They are also NEUROTOXINS.  How do you think they kill bugs?  The chemical makes their systems shut down – BANG !  Little by little, with enough exposure, humans suffer a different reaction.  These insidious compounds lodge in fat cells and organs and sit there for decades.  By then – there may be other factors, coupled with the weakened immune system and the whole body goes nuts and says “I GIVE UP!”  Result:  cancer.

I heard a story of a woman who worked at a company where she was in contact chemicals on a regular basis.  I don’t know what the extent OF the exposure was; direct, indirect, exposure to fumes,  or what chemical.  I do know that her hair started falling out, she had terrible pain and many other symptoms.  Doctor after doctor dismissed her as a hypochondriac because their standard blood & urine tests revealed nothing.

Finally she went to a doctor who was inquisitive enough to run some different tests which evidenced that this poor woman was slowly being poisoned!

This is how insidious these things can be.  If you or someone you know has been diagnosed as a hypochondriac, tell them to get a different doctor who will do some extensive tests for poisonings.

It could save their life!

WAKE UP, People!

I am AMAZED every time I go to the grocery store or (infrequently) out to eat.  I watch what others are buying on the grocery line and eating in restaurants.  It’s SCARY !

Yo —-  300 pound woman over there on the checkout line;  her groceries consist of – CASES of DIET soda (yeah.., like that’s gonna make a difference!) bags of chips, frozen this, frozen that, canned goods, ‘flavored’ coffee and (oh gag…) the flavored cream stuff for coffee. Then she’s got SPLENDA, which she may as well be injecting friggin’ anti freeze or something because that stuff is POISON… literally!  She’s trying to get SKINNY eating this CRAP?????

The woman with the kids:  I want to smack the shit out of her for buying  garbage to feed them!

Again – SODA…. what the hell IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?????  Do you wonder why your kids teeth are rotting, why they’re so hyper, and why they – at such a young age – have gastrological problems like ACID REFLUX?  Not to mention these kids look like little blubber people!  This is why!

Here’s some info on ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS:

Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners Nutra-Sweet, Equal and Splenda in diet sodas and low calorie foods are ‘excitotoxins’, causing neurons to fire spasmodically. They are linked to headaches and allergic reactions. “Splenda” has no sugar compound in it rather its molecules are bound with chlorine. Researchers in Britain were looking for a new pesticide formulation when they ‘discovered’ it.  Aspartame metabolizes into formaldehyde.

There are many side effects associated with artificial sweeteners which include: mood swings, anxiety, headaches, increased incidents of hyperactivity, itching, cancers, ringing in the ears, fibromyalgia, dizziness, and as recently discovered, tendency to overeat.

Isn’t THAT lovely?  Isn’t this what you want to eat?

Make sure you’re giving them the recommended dose of CHEMICALS in their food.  Did you know that over 3,000 chemicals are added to our food?  Over 10,000 chemicals, solvents, emulsifiers and preservatives are put into the food we eat.  Is it any wonder why cancer is so rampant?

Parents: Please, PLEASE LOOK at what you are feeding your kids.  Look at what you are feeding yourselves.

Mothers-to-be: You are harming your unborn child with every mouthful of chemicalized, preservative-laden, pesticide coated food.  If you are eating JUNK food – STOP!  Your baby is at risk!  If you still drink soda while pregnant you are, in effect – slowly poisoning your child even before it’s born.

WAKE UP, PEOPLE!  Every day you have another choice!

What will YOU CHOOSE TODAY – especially for your children – who cannot choose!

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2005/02/19/common-toxins.aspx

Food & Wacky, Uncontrollable Kids

I picked up a book in a used book  shop:  “Why You Child Is Hyperactive”  by Ben F. Feingold, M.D.

Dr. Feingold was an allergist, who, back in the 70′s proposed that hyperactivity in children could be traced to chemical additives in food colorings.  His ‘Feingold Diet’ advocated strict adherence to a fresh food, chemical free life.  Parents of ADD and ADHD children were encouraged to keep a food diary.  The results were amazing.

Now, 40 years later, diet and the link to all sorts of disorders, in adults as well as children is mainstream medicine…. well,  practically.  There are still some parents and physicians who barely admit that what goes into a kid’s mouth will result in their little darling turning into the  creature from the black lagoon or Mr. Hyde.

If your child, or one you know, is out of their tree after eating a Happy Meal, you might do well to investigate…, that is unless you have stock in the pharmaceutical company that makes Ritalin!  Or maybe you’re totally oblivious to what it’s really doing to your kid and figure it’s just easier to keep shoving pills down his throat! Hey – if you don’t give a damn…. then keep having those prescriptions filled!

Chemical You….

My current list of books includes one by a prominent physician in environmental medicine. “Huh??” you’re probably thinking – “Environmental medicine – what’s that??”  Just what it says:  a physician who studies  how our environment affects our health.  Years ago, Dr. Roberts would have been called a quack.  Today, the evidence she offers in her books are backed up by solid medical research.

She’s beginning to scare me because too much of what I read in her articles and books mirrors what many other naturopathic, holistic and organic based evidence points out:  we are literally surrounded every day by toxins we have no control over.

CANCER

Maybe it’s because way back – cancer wasn’t diagnosed as cancer, or even at all.  Why, then, does it seem like so many people are getting it?  Not only older people, but young ones as well.  I doubt there is one person alive in this country who doesn’t know somebody with cancer.

Why?

Our environment.  Every single aspect of our lives has in it artificial components of plastic, out-gassing (fumes) or toxins of some sort.  The sad part about this is that the entire population of this world had no say – and is totally unaware that manufacturers, food producers, agribusiness and technology has contributed to it every day.

Chemicals surround us.  Our computers are made from plastics which release chemicals into our environment.  If we’ve sworn off caffeine, and drink decaf instead, chances are we’re getting a good dose of chemicals from the decaffeination process. Got that suit back from the cleaners?  Guess what it’s been cleaned with?  Dry cleaning fluid=chemicals.  If your kids play sports like football or soccer they’re probably rolling around on turf treated with herbicides and other toxic lawn chemicals.  Think you’re safe at work?  Your company probably has a contract with an extermination service and sometimes you’re even sitting at your desk when the guy comes through with the little sprayer tank!  Millions of Americans go to work in environments chocked full of chemicals:  manufacturing facilities with dust and fumes from chemicals, heavy metals, plastic compounds, cleaning solutions,  paints, glues and pesticide residues.  Even if your job does not put you in direct or daily contact, you are still at risk.

We take medicines to make us well, right?  We suffer from various diseases which may have been caused by our body’s reaction to the onslaught of chemicals that started in the womb! Every thing our mother ate, drank, breathed, cleaned with, bathed with;  every time she dyed her hair – we got a little dose of it too. The fetal brain is far more delicate and subject to abnormalities from environmental toxins, as well as hormones created by the mother’s body in response to stress and emotion.  (see ‘The New Feminine Brain”  by Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz)

Our modern world is full of things that we have no control over.  Modern science, supposedly our friends, may unknowingly or KNOWINGLY – have been responsible for the drastic rise in a host of maladies.  From ‘the ‘Big C’ to asthma, fibromyalgia, ADHD, depression – all can be traced to chemical imbalances.  Artificial substances which act as hormone disruptors, making our bodies react with symptoms of an inner world gone haywire:  illness.

Another thing that always scared me was hormone replacement therapy.  Why would a woman want to take the stuff when she could go through a natural process the way her body was designed to do?  OK, for some it’s more uncomfortable than others.  We’re a population of people who don’t want to be uncomfortable.  Now, however, modern medicine is finding that it really ISN’T  ‘nice to fool Mother Nature.’  All the women I know who have taken hormone replacement therapy have cancer in some form or another.  What does that tell you?  I’ll pass, thank you!

When I worked at Lowe’s in the section with the lawn chemicals, after about a month I developed severe body pain.  Every joint would hurt.  At night it usually was the worst.  Sometimes I’d wake up screaming because it felt like I’d been stabbed!  I hurt so bad I gobbled pain killers just to function.  Looking back now, it probably was from exposure to atrazine (‘Weed-B-Gone’) and triazicide and all the other things I was around.  Sweeping the floors and inhaling the dust probably gave me a good dose of pesticides!  Though I wore gloves when handling bags and bottles, there was so much of it in the atmosphere. This is a frightening thought and just one example of how our environment can affect us.

The only thing we can do is learn more, teach others and try our best to live a clean life.  Fastidious detox routines must become the norm, not only with food, massage, detox baths and saunas to beat back the chemical onslaught.

Maybe we can buy ourselves some time.

This is YOUR FOOD We’re Talking About

Corporate America is trying to take one more step to control food.  Small farmers are being threatened yet again by the federal government.  NAIS (National Animal Identification System)  is supposed to provide protection against these food recalls by tracking ‘food’ (in this case, animals) for their life.  Every time an animal is moved, mounds of paperwork have to be completed – for EACH animal. Moreoever – once again – this hurts the people who can least afford it – the SMALL FARMER.

Think it WON’T AFFECT YOU?

Think again.

If your kids have pet rabbits,  if you have a few chickens you keep for eggs or maybe you have a cow or two.  Goats for milking?  Those, too, will be required to be tagged and tracked.

No – what we do NOT need is NAIS.  We need BETTER conditions for these animals to begin with.  Not crowded, disease promoting facilities which harbor dangerous bacteria with lax monitoring systems!  The FDA and USDA cannot do it’s job, so they want to punish the small farmers and impose MORE TAXES on the American people.

Go to Organic Consumers to read more and tell your friends and contact your representatives!  Don’t let AGRIBUSINESS buy the saftey of the American people again!

Take Action: Stop NAIS

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been working for over five years to force a National Animal Identification System (NAIS) onto American animal owners. NAIS is designed to identify and track each and every individual livestock and poultry animal owned by family farmers, hobby farmers, homesteaders, and pet owners across the country.

USDA claims that NAIS is a disease tracking program, but has refused to provide any support for its claims. In reality, NAIS will:

Create expensive and time-consuming tagging and reporting requirements for small farms. The requirements are particularly burdensome for those farmers raising sustainable livestock on pasture. Ultimately, this will reduce the availability of grass-fed meats, eggs, and milk.

Give factory confinement farms a loophole through the use of group identification, providing yet another unfair advantage for factory farms. Not provide any information to the consumer, and does not improve food safety, because the tracking ends with the animal’s death.

Replace states’ existing, well-functioning disease response and brand inspection programs with an unproven, expensive, and unreliable system;

Impose high costs and government surveillance on every farmer and animal owner for no significant benefits, and will likely force many small producers out of business.

NAIS does nothing to improve food safety for consumers or prevent animal diseases. This program is a one-size-fits-all program developed by and for big Agribusiness. NAIS will increase consolidation of our food supply in the hands of a few large companies and put the brakes on the growing movement toward local food systems.

The grassroots movement has already successfully stalled USDA’s plans for NAIS, which originally called for the entire program – premises registration, animal identification, and tracking – to be mandatory by January 2009. The proposed rule is an opportunity to get thousands of objections in the formal record, and have an even greater impact.

It is imperative that people speak up to protect our right to farm and our food supply!

Take action today! Go to: ORGANIC CONSUMERS to see the video and learn more.

The deadline to submit comments to the USDA is March 16th.

Remember:  This is YOUR FOOD and America’s SMALL FARMERS we’re trying to save.

(Source:  OCA Feb Newsletter)

We Are All LAB RATS

YOU and I are lab rats.  Your KIDS are lab rats, too. Unless you grow and consume all your food yourself, YOU are held hostage by the food companies.

Think about it.  Everything thing you eat -  e v e n   those so-called ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ foods probably are tainted in some way with something.

I know too much.  I have my roots in the local food movement, but they stretch way back to the environmental movement.  What I do here, and on my website an other blogs, is try to EDUCATE.

For the most part, the average consumer has their head up their butt when it comes to food and the environment.  They think it’s not their problem, that it doesn’t concern them and that it doesn’t affect them.

Do you send your kids to public  school? Do they play sports?  Do they eat school food?  Do you take them to fast food joints?  What do you buy for them at the  grocery store? Do you eat in restaurants? What DO you eat when you eat? What DO you drink when you drink?

What about your home life?  What products do you buy:  laundry detergent, body care products, beauty products, perfumes, lotions, hair dye, nail polish?  What do you paint your walls with?  Where did you get your furniture? Do you use any bug killing preparations?  What about your lawn?  Do you have a lawn care service and do you KNOW what they put on your lawn?  Have you had a pest company assure you their ‘chemicals’ are safe around kids and pets?  Do you go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy lawn care products to keep the nasty bugs away?  Do your KIDS PLAY ON YOUR LAWN?

Where do YOU choose to shop?  Is Wally-World your best buddy because you have fallen victim and been brainwashed by their  ‘save money, live better’  catchphrase?

Big business, especially the likes of Wal-Mart, does NOT give a shit about you.  Look at the way they treat their own employees?  They’ve been convicted on a vast array of charges in recent years of labor violations.  Going waaaay back, and I have a copy of the article in my files here…. they even wanted to move a Native American cemetery because they wanted to build a store!  Do you think, in this day of corporate greed, that it’s gotten any better, that they’ve become a kinder, more gentler Wally?

There are numerous links detailing environmental disregard -and- total disregard for human life on this planet BY food companies and agricultural chemical companies.  You and I and this planet are being POISONED by thousands of chemicals a day because the likes of Monsanto and Bayer… those kindly aspirin people.

DO THE RESEARCH.  Do it for your kids, your friends, your family, your friends and if you care enough – our planet.

Pesticide Producers OWN Seed Companies

A recent article on Organic Consumer’s website details how much of the world is owned by the pesticide manufacturers.

THIS IS OUR FOOD, folks!  Companies like Monsanto, a chemical giant, pro-GMO,  is the world’s biggest seed company; fifth largest company in the world.  Bayer, yes the aspirin people, is the largest agrochemical corporation in the world.

One third of all pesticide use is weed killers (herbicides) and 80% of the genetically modified seeds are herbicide resistant.

That means that HERBICIDES CAN and WILL BE USED ON YOUR FOOD because it will not kill the plant, just the weeds.  This is what these companies are all about:  getting their agendas passed and up and running without concern for the human race!  Cross pollination is also possible between GM (genetically modified) and non-GMO plants.  Worldwide, 14 species of weeds have developed resistance to ‘Glyphosphate’, (Roundup) which required farmers to use heavier doses.

More bad news:  Monsanto’s Round-Up which has led the market in herbicides for over 10 years, the  “Roundup Ready” patent expires this year which will make it possible for other manufacturers to market a Round-Up clone.

That being said, the poison producers have the world market cornered on food.

THAT’S NOT a good thing!

Buy Local

The average distance food travels to get to YOU is 1,500 miles.  The lettuce you bought at Wal-Mart probably came from California.  So did those strawberries.

Buying local has many benefits.  You get to meet the person who grew the food.  The money you spend stays in the community.  The food is fresher than trucked in stuff.  You’re eating seasonally which is what our bodies were designed to do.  Naturally grown, which is organic food, even if it is not ‘certified’ organic doesn’t contain pesticides & chemicals.

Despite what you think, we humans are still pretty primitive.  Our bodies have not adapted to digesting chemical compounds.  Chemicals have only become the norm in the last 50 years or so; a fleck of dust on the clock of evolution. Why, then, do we think our systems can effectively digest and eliminate them?

We are also made to eat seasonally.  Again, look to our past.  Did cavemen have food brought in during the winter?  Did the almighty Wal-Mart truck roll up at the cave and dump off strawberries in January?  No.  People scrounged for roots;  our modern equivalent of potatoes. Our bodies have not developed much beyond that. It wasn’t until the advent of modern transportation that brought the multitude of different foods to our grocers.

The food you buy locally has more nutritional value.  Depending on the crop, it probably was picked a day or two ago instead of weeks ago.  It wasn’t irradiated or wrapped in plastic.  It hasn’t been in cold storage for 6 months like those apples you buy in the spring.  They’ve been off the tree since the previous fall!

Big agribusiness does NOT have YOUR interests in mind.  Profit is their only goal.  They could care less if the food you eat is poisoned with chemicals.  Wal-Mart doesn’t care about you, either.  They import food which contains chemicals that have been banned in the United States for decades, and YOU’RE eating it! Those grapes from Chile:  do YOU know what chemicals were used on them?

Your local small farmer works tirelessly for YOU.  He or she wants to get good, fresh, nutritious food to you. They are fighting hard to exist, as we all are, but you can help.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FARMERS! Know where your food comes from!