I intend on using this blog to chronicle what I am learning and to share what I know. Who knows if that is what will happen! Here we go:
The most shocking shit ever:
1) Your food is killing you and the makers of your cuisine won’t tell you. Pesticides used on our fresh fruits and vegetables to assist in larger crop output are poisoning us. Washing is not enough. The chemicals penetrate the outer skins of the produce and when you eat it your body absorbs these very chemicals intended to kill bugs. Yum! It’s so very expensive to buy organic fruits and vegetables so I follow this guideline. The thicker the skin the less the produce absorbs. It’s not great but I’m not rich. Moving on, additives: chemically altered substances such as the now all too famous high fructose corn syrup, altering your hormones. (This is not scientifically proven…yet. Research is on going. There is strong evidence linking early onset diabetes to it as well as obesity and all of the problems that go along with that.) It’s in almost everything. Avoid it at all costs (which is what? Skip the un-natural soda? You can do it, I promise.) Read labels, avoid any unnatural additive and avoid the undisclosed natural flavors and coloring. Why? An undisclosed “natural” flavor can be high fructose corn syrup or even MSG. What you call natural and what the manufactures call natural can be two very different things. Those sneaky bastards! Artificial sweeteners while good for your waste line are bad for your brain. Aspartame is causing brain cancer in lab rats and the FDA has known this for decades. Rumsfeld, yes, Rumsfeld passed the usage of aspartame in food products back in the late 60’s while he was in charge of the FDA. Youtube and watch in horror. These are only a few examples of the poisons in what you eat. Now, you can say yeah, yeah, in small amount in us big humans it’s no big deal. Well, look at what you eat figure out how much “poison” you are consuming on a daily basis and think about how these poisons are reacting with each other in your body. I did. I have cut out almost all unnatural substances from entering my body and wow what a difference it makes! I had felt like crap for years and years not able to put a finger on what was wrong with me. I had all kinds of lab work done and MRI’s and psychological evaluations galore. No doctor could tell me what was wrong with me. I heard things such as depressed, hypochondriac, fibromyalgia, crones disease, hormonal imbalances, plain ol’ allergies, and the lists go on but no diagnosis was ever given that stuck and was treated. I could tell that there was something bad going on with me but no one could give me any answers. I thought that I would just have to deal with it and try to live that way. About 6 months ago I read an article online that changed my life, HFCS . I have since done my best to eat right and take care of my body the natural way. The proof: I don’t feel bad anymore!
2) We are seriously screwing up this planet in a rapid way and people are not being told the important evidence. Yes, glacier melt is a huge thing, depleting ozone is big too but did you know that at the center of the Atlantic Ocean there is an area TWICE the size of Texas that is a swirling mass of plastic waste. There is no life here except for plankton and it is estimated that there is 6 lbs. of non biodegradable plastic to every pound of plankton. SICK! I just found out about this a few short weeks ago. It’s called, by the people who know about it, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, look it up. It’s real but you won’t find much info about it because the makers of the garbage want to keep it hush-hush. My question is “what else are they not telling us?”
3) Plastic is bad for you but it’s not just you it’s messing up. Plastic is a new type of poison (new because we are just now discovering that it’s bad) that not just affects you but your unborn children and their unborn children, too! Sweet! It mimics your natural hormones and fools your body in to a hormonal catastrophe. It alters the things in your body that are ruled by hormones such as sperm and eggs. It mutates unborn fetuses and the mutated genes are then passed down to their unborn children. WOW! Trust me, you can look it up, it’s doing very sad things to the private parts of out unborn children. It’s an epidemic that no one is talking about. Sad! Now with this known, pay attention, can you go for more than one minute with out using plastic? I know I can’t, it’s everywhere! So, where you ask is it important to rid your life of this nasty stuff since it’s impossible to stop using it entirely? The kitchen. Stop storing food in plastic bags and containers. Stop drinking out of it. Stop using it to cook with, especially because when plastic is heated that is when it leeches into your food the most. Oh, it’s sickening! This is my current project and it’s just gross the amount of plastic in my kitchen! Use this link to help you get started Alternatives to Plastic. This guy really has it down! He’s my new hero!
Well, I guess that is enough for today. I have a friend who wants me to list the foods I buy now and healthy recipes I use, so be on the look out for that. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. If I don’t know then I sure as heck will try to find out for you. If you have any helpful information on this broad subject, please share!
Okay, adding more links to what I have read that has changed my lifestyle.
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/54/7/1907
http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/highfructose.html listed as a resource for wikipedia
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/newscience/2007/2007-0815apelbergetal.html
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976926875&nav=Namespace
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080422114734.htm
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2005/7713/abstract.html
*NOTE*
I’m finding myself defending my views on what I consume and what I choose to feed my children. My belief is that food additives are not good for you. The FDA has been testing and approving then re-testing (under new and improved guidelines) and declaring unfit food additives. In the late 90’s the FDA banned certain food coloring that consumers were gleefully consuming for decades that until the late 90’s were tested and declared okay for human consumption. This is still happening. Fist they say it’s okay, then further testing is done then they say “okay, maybe it’s not so good, let’s get it out of your food.” Under this same thought process, the FDA has been denying for years that there is no correlation between early child hood vaccinations and autism. Very recently under public driven reexamination they are now discovering that the vaccinations are the culprit when the child has a genetic predisposition to autism. So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it! My children have been vaccinated, locally they were not some of the few who were affected in this way or I would be on that bandwagon. I decided, knowing what was going on, to have them vaccinated. I weighed the public scrutiny against the benefits of the vaccination and rolled the dice. With food additives, there is no benefit, in my opinion, so I’m not going to roll. It is my job as a parent and a person who has taken her health into her own hands to do what I believe to be the right thing for myself and family. It is up to you whether you take my word for it or not. I wish someone had done all of the research that I have done and put it out there for me to find but no one did. I figured that since I have all of this knowledge of what people and researchers are saying pertaining to the subject I would write it down. I’m just doing what I wish someone else had done for me. What you do, whit what I’ve found and suggest, is up to you.
Hello to my 4 readers. It has been brought to my attention that there has been a study concluded on BPA the nastiest stuff in plastic found so far. This is the stuff that you hear about leeching into your food and drink. The study linked higher levels of BPA’s in the subject’s blood to all kinds of modern day ailments. I’m not sure how long NPR leaves their stories up but here is a link to listen to their report on the study and to read a Q&A about BPA’s: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94662514
I’m sure that their will be more reports and stories to come on the subject. Well, at least, I hope there is.
An update on me and my quest to remove all harmful stuff from my home: I switched to glass and metals. I sent away all kitchen plastics and Teflon coated stuff. I replaced our drinking cups with glasses and our frying pans with iron skillets. The latest and greatest triumph in my quest was to rid my self of the daily use of my plastic coffee maker. I, a coffee addict, could not find a suitable replacement to my leeching percolator. I was convinced that in order for me to drink coffee I would have to have plastic involved somewhere, until I found an advertisement in the Tuesday morning flyer promoting a SALE on their coffee press. I was in heaven! Not only did I find an answer to my woes but it was on sale! I indeed purchased this wonderful gizmo. It is a glass beaker like thing that uses a metal rod and mesh metal filter. Very stone age engineering. You place your coffee grounds in the bottom of the beaker, pour in hot water, stir a bit, then plunge the filter through the concoction to press the grounds down to the bottom leaving grounds free coffee to be poured out into your coffee cup. I was disappointed to find that the top of the plunger was insulated with plastic. I’m super careful not to let it come in contact with the fluids and am trying to figure out a way to remove it. BUT if you are interested in plastic free coffee, I found a non-plastic insulated coffee press at IKEA for about $8. If I can’t get the plastic out of mine, I will be purchasing the one from IKEA. Good luck to all (raising my coffee cup) and here’s to a plastic free existence! Cheers!
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