Psychic Lunch

BB Cream: Really the "Best" New Thing in Beauty?

2012-03-19T23:52:00.002-05:00

Essance's BB Cream. (Photo credit: JAY ZHANG)

A friend of mine was asking about "BB Cream" which is apparently an upcoming beauty trend from Asia. There are a lot of products that fall in this category, so I googled around and took a closer look at one of the first few that I found, that was talked about on blogs. I think the ingredients speak for themselves, and I hope the time spent investigating this list is worth it at least to someone.

Here's a TRANSLATION of the ingredients in "Etude House BB Magic Cream SPF30 PA++":

Water (we're going to go with "safe" on this one)
Ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate (known to produce excess reactive oxygen species that can interfere with cellular signaling, cause mutations, and lead to cell death)
propylene glycol (Classified as expected to be toxic or harmful/Classified as skin irritant)
4-Methylbenzylidene Camphor (Human endocrine disruptor - strong evidence)
Titanium Dioxide (potentially controversial)
Cetyl Ethylhexanoate (Not much known, but suspected safe)
Mineral Oil (a liquid mixture of hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum)
Butylene Glycol (Human irritant - strong evidence)
Stearic Acid (Suspected to be an environmental toxin BUT not likely to be carcinogenic/toxic/harmful in humans)
Isopropyl Myristate (dries the skin and hair, and creates cracks and fissures in the skin, which encourage bacterial growth)
Cetyl Alcohol (Despite the fact that the CIR Expert Panel recognizes this ingredient as non-irritating, many dermatologists recommend that individuals with sensitive/irritated skin avoid it)
Polysorbate 60 (Restricted in cosmetics; also dually used in Cool Whip and some sexual lubricants!; may be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, a probable carcinogen, which readily penetrates the skin)
Sorbitan Stearate (Suspected to be an environmental toxin, not expected to be potentially toxic or harmful [in humans])
Glyceryl Stearate (very mild irritant and can cause allergic reactions; FDA Generally Recognized as Safe)
Dimethicone (raises no health concern, but listed as an "unacceptable" ingredient in Whole Foods Organic Body Care products standards)
Dipentaerythrityl hexahydroxystearate (generally okay)
Polyacrylate-13 (generally okay)
CI 77492 (a pigment; not a big deal)
Methylparaben (Teach yourself to read the word "paraben" as "do not use"; Human endocrine disruptor - strong evidence, Human skin toxicant - strong evidence, Interferes with gene expresion, etc)
Triethanol amine (Did you think parabens were bad? STAY AWAY! Cancer! Danger! Also, widely used in household detergents and polishes, .. agricultural herbicides, .. petroleum demulsifiers, synthetic resins, plasticizers, adhesives, and sealants.)
Polyisobutene (medium human health priority, expected to be toxic or harmful, BUT the CIR Expert Panel does not believe these large, mostly insoluble polymers present any risks in the practices of use and concentration as described in this safety assessment)
Caviar (Seriously? Another ingredient besides water that anyone can understand? Wow. This is probably a really great thing to be putting on your skin. Fish oils are generally good for you.)
Tocopheryl Acetate (a low cancer risk and Human skin toxicant - strong evidence)
Chlorphenesin (has been reported to cause irritation and contact dermatitis in many, particularly those with sensitive & dry skin. In addition, research has shown it relax the skeletal muscle, depress the central nervous system and cause respiratory depression (slow or shallow breathing) in infants.)
Propylparaben (Reproductive toxicity, cancer, Human endocrine disruptor - strong evidence, Human skin toxicant - strong evidence, Limited evidence of sense organ toxicity, Wildlife and environmental toxicity. The second paraben in the list. Typically parabens are used at levels ranging from 0.01 to 0.3% - so now you're up to a possible .6% total paraben volume)
CI 77491 (iron oxide; pigment)
Cucumis Sativus (Cucumber Oil)
Eucalyptus globulus (Eucalyptus Oil)
Acrylates/C10-30 alkyl acrylate crosspolymer (meh)
Ethylparaben (See this PARABEN stuff? Third time in the list; now we're up to .9% You should already have thrown your BB cream away by now.)
Pueraria lobata (Kudzu. It's probably safe, but read this.)
Morus Alba (White Mulberry. Not much to report)
Diospyros kaki (Japanese Persimmon)
Cinnamomum cassia (It's cinnamon)
Artemisia princeps (Japanese mugwort)
Chrysanthellum Indicum Extract (Golden Chamomile)
Camellia Sinensis (Tea plant)
Fragrance (Your guess is as good as mine... but if we're going according to the Cosmetics Database, stay away! Moderate evidence of human neurotoxicity / Known human immune system toxicant)
Polysorbate 20 (See Polysorbate 60, above)
CI 77499 (Another pigment. Made of inorganic iron oxides)
Butylparaben (a FOURTH paraben, bringing us to a possible total of 1.2% paraben level in the ingredients list. Are you going to use this stuff on your skin every day? How many times do you need to read the word "cancer"?)
Disodium EDTA (Penetration enhancer, meaning it helps all those other bad things enter your skin more easily.)
BHT (Human skin toxicant - strong evidence)
hexastearate (meh)
hexarosinate (meh)

That's it. That's a mouthful, isn't it? Of course, don't put it in your mouth. Don't even put it on your skin. If you'd like to learn more, watch the VERY informative Story of Cosmetics and click Like on The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

Allergies, a personal note

2011-11-09T23:29:00.001-06:00

So, I finally got the chance to do some allergy testing and not unsurprisingly it turns out I have some allergies. Well, not really just "some" allergies - more like a lot of 'em. Nothing like an "eat a peanut and die" kind of allergy, but at least I know what causes my problems now. I've tested it; avoiding the foods the blood test points out does work. It's just not easy.

I'm foremost allergic to brewer's yeast, which as I understand thanks to the internet means pretty much all alcohol is off-limits. That's fine, I guess. Most of my life has been filled with little- or no- drinking anyway. There was a time when my friends would see me with a drink and ask whether I actually drank or not. So, now I have a true, physical reason to avoid it.

But a brewer's yeast allergy doesn't bother me. Neither does the blue cheese allergy which is 3rd on the list of personal no-no's. In second place is corn. Fourth? Eggs. Great. Like those aren't found in absolutely everything! It's been so long since I've been blogging (since April? Wow.) that I've forgotten a good number of contacts that I had and miss... But at least there are resources. I'm either going to have to memorize lists like this or just let this influence me to live the way I know I should.

That's the way to look at adversity, right? How can it make me better? Basically the foods I'm not allergic to are almost all vegetables and fruits, and all meats except pork. So I'm looking at essentially a primal kind of diet. I can get used to that, I think.

I don't know whether this one allergy test tells me whether I'm only allergic now and if I can heal and incorporate some of the off-limit foods - like green beans. I also don't know whether this really only tests "mainstream" foods; it says I'm allergic to milk but does that mean raw milk? I personally doubt it.

I'm not sure where to go from here, except to just keep eating more greens. I'm safe with greens.

BPA and Avoiding Receipts

2011-04-12T08:27:00.000-05:00

Image via WikipediaWhen handed a receipt at the store, you apparently have just over a 50% chance of receiving an apparently-high dose of easily-absorbed bisphenol-A, due to unregulated and wide usage of the material as a loose coating to make printing the receipt easier. A study by the Washington Toxics Coalition (WTC) says that in as little as ten seconds of light handling, BPA receipts can transfer large amounts of BPA directly into the body.

Not something that a society, recently awakened to the toxic effects of this material, wants to hear. Essentially, you can’t avoid being affected by this material if you live in a modern society. Just think about how you interact with store receipts every day – and how often you do. You probably will touch each receipt for at least ten seconds, after which it might find its way into your pocket, wallet, or purse. After that, you’ll touch it again, but considering this is “loose” BPA, how much of your wallet/pocket/purse has BPA covering it now, too? (It has transferred readily to dollar bills so it’s quite likely to brush off many other places as well)

Until the manufacturers of BPA-laden receipt paper grow up and change the way their materials are made, our best course of action is to avoid touching the receipts at all. If you work in a retail position, besides wearing gloves you might just be out of luck. But if you’re a regular customer – and have a smartphone – you could try this high-tech alternative:

First, set up an account on xpenser.com; this is a website designed for keeping track of your expenses and has a number of ways you can interface with their system. Once you have an account, turn on the option to receive email receipts, and if you like, also turn on email verification for when Xpenser logs your emails.

Then, if you have an Android or iPhone, search the market for the Pixelpipe app, or follow the links from pixelpipe.com. You’ll then need to set up a destination “pipe” (or more, if you so feel like it) of the email type. Set it to send to r@expenser.com and make sure you mark it to be sent “from” you (your email address), since that’s how xpenser will identify you.

Once you’ve set both of these applications up, the next time you’re in the store and buy something, you need only take a picture of the receipt. Pixelpipe will* appear and ask you to fill in a title, a caption, and some tags – but you only need to fill in the title in the form that Xpenser needs, which is “category amount description” (i.e. “café 3.25 coffee with Jim”) Send it off, and you’re done. You no longer need the receipt!

* Pixelpipe does not always work perfectly with all phone models; sometimes it may not pop up automatically.

Source: Study: More than half of store receipts and nearly all money bills contain dangerously high levels of toxic BPA

Raw, Non-Dairy Hot Chocolate (has an awesome bonus result)

2011-02-02T17:02:00.000-06:00

While cruising around for a recipe for a raw, apple-pie smoothie today (how many other people use Google as their main cookbook? :), I stumbled upon Karen Knowler's blog, and after checking out her (okay, actually Nina Dench's) recipe for it, I browsed her homepage and found her recipe for Spiced Hot Chocolate. So, as a snack for the family today, I tried it out.
I'm surprised that it didn't occur to me earlier to write up a recipe specifically for raw/vegan hot chocolate, since technically we've done it before in our house by first making almond milk, then using that milk further to make hot chocolate. This seemed different, though, because of the spices and because of the fact that it uses pecans to make the nut milk, all at once.

Anyway, like I said before we tried it - and it turned out to be much more delicious than that which we normally make with almonds. I imagine that's because pecans typically seem to feel richer than almonds - but that's also just my opinion. I've not used pecans to make milk before - but I've used them in smoothies many times. I'm not sure whether it would be healthier or not to soak them for a period of time beforehand like almonds, but I imagine it so.

Throwing it all in the Vitamix was particularly easy, of course, but then the recipe took a turn for the worse - or more difficult, at least. Straining the mixture through a nut milk bag while it had the chocolate and syrup (we used maple syrup, incidentally) made it much more difficult to separate than when I've pressed our almond milk. However, eventually I separated it out into the chocolate-pecan nut paste and the milk. The recipe didn't mention the leftover paste, but we never throw that stuff out. Normally, with our almond milk, I immediately make up a batch of almond waffles which the kids absolutely love - but this seemed more like something I'd rather spread on toast, like a homemade Nutella.

I tried it, and finding it rather bitter I added another 1/8th cup of maple syrup to the paste and tried again - perfect. So much so that the entire family swarmed around and commenced on a mid-afternoon snack of toast with "Nutella" and hot chocolate. Approval came from all sides, adults and children included.

This recipe will certainly be used again in our house - but next time, I'm putting moving the mixture from the Vitamix to the Hurom Slow Juicer to speed up the process and do it better at the same time. Yum!

A Second Look at the Hurom Slow Juicer

2011-01-28T11:58:00.000-06:00

I thought it appropriate to come back and describe my experience with the Hurom Slow Juicer (see my previous review), now that we've been using it at our house for many months. By now, the honeymoon has worn off, but fortunately the love is still there. Even though the cracks and stains are showing a little bit, I look forward every morning to waking up and making a new juice in this very easy-to-use and thorough juicer.

We have discovered the long term pros and cons, and overall we still think this is our favorite juicer, of all that we've tried. When juicing, we tend to chop almost everything up ahead of time - and the "stringier" the item to be juiced, the smaller the pieces. One of the (very minor) downsides is that the waste-output spigot tends to get clogged by such things; celery, ginger, or pineapple, for example. That being said, it almost never stops completely and remains usable until you're done juicing. I do recall two times where my wife was able to stop it, so much that it was rather hard to even take the machine apart, but I believe that was when she was trying to run some raspberries through it.

It seems surprising to me that any juicer manufacturer these days would use a white plastic to build their products, considering how easily carrots, beets, and other colorful fruits and vegetables tend to stain them. The Hurom is no different. Although the containers that the waste and juice pour into are appropriately tan-colored, there are two pieces of our juicer that once were white, but no longer. This is not a big deal; with some work, it's possible to get those stains out, but usually we just live with it. It doesn't affect the quality of the juice.

The piece of plastic that holds the meshes through which the items are pressed has begun to crack a little bit, and that disappoints me most. It implies that eventually it will break beyond usage, and I also worry whether this might create any sort of mold in the crack itself. We clean it as much as we can by hand, under hot water, as I guess that's all we can do.

The bottom of the presser also has a slight tendency to leak; there is a rubber stopper that you can pull out for easier cleaning. At first, we kept forgetting to plug it back in after rinsing, and then it really leaked! But usually it only leaks if we don't fasten it all the way - so we're blaming this one on user error.

That's about the worst of it, I think. Even considering the prepwork of chopping the items to be put in, I still think it's actually as fast or faster than any regular juicer, and it's still more thorough in extracting juice. Oh - it isn't "foam free" as the advertising might lead you to believe; that's dependent upon the foods you put in. For example, we had some apples that had gone soft, and when we tried to juice those, they came out as apple sauce no matter what we did.

We also like to send the foods through the juicer two or three times - but we'd probably do that even if we had some of those thousands-of-dollar machines, too. It really is amazing how little pulp is left over when you're all done, even without multiple pressings.

So in short, we're still very glad to have and use the Hurom, it's still very easy to use, and it still produces more juice than our other centrifugal juicers. It still gets the thumbs-up from us.

Healthy at McDonalds?

2011-01-27T16:13:00.000-06:00

CAN McDonald's be healthy? That's the thought that's running around my mind. Naturally, as you might guess, I'm probably biased against the restauarant and you might be able to guess how this article will turn out. But stick around; I'll try to be creative and come up with ways they possibly could. If I can. For the sake of healthiness, it certainly WOULD be great if there was a fast food restaurant out there that you could actually trust was serving you healthy food.

So how did I get to this question? I was looking at some page on Facebook where I found one user suggesting to another that using www.healthydiningfinder.com would be a good way of finding healthy alternatives when dining out. Naturally, I went there and performed a search on restaurants local to me. However while I was expecting to hopefully find organic co-ops that I perhaps hadn't come across before, I was disappointed by the search results when it retunred a restaurant listing showing choices such as Famous Dave's (1st), Panera Bread, Chili's, and - you guessed it - McDonald's. Believe me, the list goes on and on. The only difference between this and a Google search of local restaurants was that HealthyDiningFinder gives you the count of "healthy" items to be found on that restaurant's menu.

Curious what could be on the healthy menu at McDonald's? So was I. In a nutshell, you're looking at oatmeal, yogurt, yogurt smoothies, Egg McMuffins, some salads (WITHOUT dressing), a Happy Meal, some chicken sandwiches and wraps, some bags of fruit with or without carmel dip, and a fruit plate. So... McDonald's is ALMOST somewhat healthy.

What? A fruit plate isn't healthy? Let's look into some of these, starting with the oatmeal. It is made of: Oatmeal [Whole grain rolled oats, brown sugar, food starch-modified, salt, natural flavor (plant source), barley malt extract, caramel color.], Diced Apples [Apples, calcium ascorbate (a blend of calcium and vitamin C to maintain freshness and color)], Cranberry Raisin Blend [Dried sweetened cranberries (sugar, cranberries), California raisins, golden raisins, sunflower oil, sulfur dioxide (preservative)], and Light Cream [Milk, cream, sodium phosphate, datem, sodium stearoyl lactylate, sodium citrate, carrageenan].

Whole grain rolled oats are healthier than a Big Mac, but they are not necessarily healthy in and of themselves. Oats need to be soaked, not cooked, otherwise they are pulling nutrients from your body instead of adding to it. We can agree that the sugars are bad. Modified food starch? Not necessary, but it's probably there as a thickening agent and personally, I'll pass. Salt, "natural flavor," barley malt extract, and caramel color? Not healthy choices.

Let's pretend for a moment that McDonald's was a healthy restaurant choice. If it was, and you were served "diced apples" in such a restaurant, the chef would take an apple, and dice it. Unfortunately, that's not the case. McDonald's gets its foods delivered already completely prepped and the "chef" in question simply opens a bag and throws the pieces together. Thus, the unnecessary calcium ascorbate on the apples. Really, McDonald's employees can't CHOP APPLES? I'd say that's just insulting, but I've seen videos on YouTube about some fast food restaurant employees, and, well... maybe they can't! It's a lose-lose situation.

Skipping lightly over the cranberry raisin blend, which is mostly healthy except that the cranberries and raisins most likely aren't organic, and the sunflower oil and sulfur dioxide are less-than or NOT healthy choices of additives, consider the dairy that McDonald's uses. Their "light cream" HAS INGREDIENTS. Cream requires no ingredients; it IS an ingredient. On top of that, it is pasteurized and homogenized, making it a highly-processed food and therefore one not welcome in the body.

What else is there? It's worth pointing out that Egg McMuffins and Happy Meals (consisting of a hamburger, "Apple Dippers" with low-fat caramel dip, and low-fat white milk) absolutely DO NOT belong in a list that even hints at being healthy. That's a mistake on the part of HealthyDiningFinder. Either their definition of "healthy" needs correction, or they get some kind of kickback for placing THOSE on the list.

Finally, let's take a peek at that fruit plate. There are many other things that could be considered on the list - like the salads, but frankly all you need to think about for those is the fact that nearly ALL restaurants - especially fast food restaurants - add sugar and preservatives to the foods they're serving you. Back to that fruit plate.

It's made of apples, grapes, vanilla low-fat yogurt, and candied walnuts. If you're savvy, you already see that each of those actually contains a lot of sugar. Okay, okay - apples and grapes are typically healthy and I do not recommend you leave off eating them, but McDonald's fruit is, again, most likely not organic, and of course they have that unnecessary calcium ascorbate. SO - you can eat better fruit outside of McDonald's. The yogurt? Again with the McDonald's dairy - don't forget any of the previously-mentioned problems with that. But it's also bringing with it extra sugar, fructose, preservatives, and artificial colors and flavors. Sounding a little less healthy all the time, hm? Finally: candied walnuts - yeah, that's healthy. Walnuts with preservatives, sugar, more sugar, junk, junk, annnnnnd artificial flavor. Way to go, McDonald's.

I can't go through any more of McDonald's food items. It's like they don't even try to be healthy. Wait, no - it's like they TRY to not be healthy while hiding it. The worst aspect of all of this is for HealthyDiningFinder to list them as having healthy options so that customers may feel good about themselves while going to McDonald's, because with great likelihood temptation will kick in and they will find themselves with Meal #6, double-sized.

But COULD a massive, corporate chain create fast food that is also, actually healthy? I believe it is. Could it be profitable? My guess on this is that it could make a profit - but nowhere near one as great as McDonald's does now, with production-line junk food. They could stock kitchens with real ingredients, like organic steel-cut oats soaked overnight in raw yogurt, with organic fruits and nuts added... or farm-fresh eggs and organic meats. They could do all that, because their kitchen can be just like any other kitchen. But they don't...

...but they won't.

Real Hot Chocolate *not instant!

2011-01-14T23:35:00.002-06:00

Recently, Lifehacker had a post about how to make a better-tasting instant hot chocolate mix, linking off to Cook's Country that revealed the recipe as including dry milk powder, confectioner's sugar, salt, white chocolate chips, and Dutch-processed cocoa powder.

That's... well, the best word I can come up with to compliment such a recipe is "convenient" but convenience has long since failed to be a positive trait when it comes to food, for me. The only "good" ingredient in the list is just the cocoa powder, provided you've chosen an organic option. Everything else? Pass, thanks.

It's so incredibly easy to make hot chocolate at home, that tastes amazing and is actually healthy for you. Try this next time:

1 cup of milk (if you can get it raw, do so)
5 drops of vanilla stevia
1 tbsp raw, organic cocoa powder
1 tbsp virgin coconut oil

Heat this to the desired temperature, remembering that if you're using raw milk you should try to keep a lower max. temp. You don't have to wait until it's all mixed together. In fact, it probably won't mix together easily. Sometimes I've sat there and ground the cocoa powder until it's blended, but that was before I started adding the coconut oil. It's better to just transfer your cocoa to a Vitamix (or other) blender and spin it up for a few moments. If you bump it up to a really high speed, the coconut oil actually turns into a really delicious froth.

That's it; pour it into a mug and enjoy. No sugar, no processing, no preservatives, and some actual health benefits from the raw ingredients. This gets us through the wintery months ... and through the summer ones, too. If you enjoy this recipe, or have a great variation, please let me know! And as a quick disclaimer, yes those are Amazon affiliate links, but I really don't believe I'll be seeing any revenue from them. Last I checked, I think I have .58 cents sitting in my affiliate account. (thank you, whoever it was that bought something after clicking one of my links!)

Colour Me Surprised - but just not my teeth.

2011-01-07T11:19:00.000-06:00

Image via WikipediaActually, I'm not surprised at all. Neither are, I would imagine, any of the other opponents of fluoride being added to the water supply. It's being revealed now - after 50 years - that the government finally admits one aspect of negative fluoride effects. Fluorosis, or the discoloring and perhaps even slight pitting of teeth, is finally being admitted to.

The articles announcing this are - of course - downplaying this by insisting how fluoride is a naturally-occurring mineral in water and soil. They are preconditioning their readers by saying this admission will invigorate anti-fluoride movements. They're right. But they're also misleading you. The fluoride used in treating public water supplies, or used in adding to store-bought bottled water and toothpaste, is not naturally-occurring. It's a man-made product that oh-so-conveniently is sold for profit to communities.

That's just it. Before you buy into either side of whether or not fluoride is healthy for you, find out how much money is being made and by whom. Then, especially considering all the actions being revealed by corporations and governments in the recent Wikileaks documents, ask yourself: Who do you trust? Do you really trust the agencies that claim this reduces cavities - and if so, why haven't cavities been decreasing in occurrence since the nation began fluoridation? If you brush, floss, and fluoridate, why aren't you cavity-free?

Couldn't, by some chance, cavity frequency be determined by genetics and most importantly, nutrition? It's certainly a much more natural solution.

SAVE THE FARMS: Follow the money!

2010-11-19T08:01:00.005-06:00

It is time to stop FDA tyranny against dairy farms! I woke up this morning and was almost immediately looking for any news about the S.510 Senate bill, the "Food Safety Modernization Act". It is beyond baffling that a bill like this could be recommended in its entirety by the committee to be voted on by the Senate. But then, knowing how infrequently (if ever?) our Senators and Representatives actually read the bills they're voting on, I guess I'm not surprised.

Setting all the articles of this bill aside, consider where the money is coming from on this one. Maplight.org charts it out for us, showing that three times as much money is being given to Senators by organizations that support this bill as opposed to its opponents. And for the most part, the supporting organizations are all big industry and big government types, such as restaurants and drinking establishments or food/etc manufacturers (these are the top two contributor types). Think General Mills or Kraft Foods, the kinds of businesses that make gobs of money selling highly processed and packaged foods. The groups that oppose this bill are proponents of small farms, organic and/or local produce, and healthy foods, such as the Weston A Price foudation,the John Birch Society, or the National Family Farm Association.

This is it, if there ever were a more blatant power grab by large corporations. And what do you think will come of it? Watch Farmageddon (trailer) and take a guess. If this passes, you can expect to see more and more frequent farm or co-op raids, with arrests for people because they violated some obscure "health violation" created by this bill. Because corporate farms cannot compete with local, sustainably-produced foods, this bill will eliminate their competition for them.

If you don't believe that, consider the Morningland Dairy Farm of ~~California~~ Missouri, a family farm caught up in the Rawesome Foods raid of 2010. They are but one example of how the power of the FDA can be wielded to destroy "the little guy". They're in trouble now, so read about their story and please consider contributing something to their cause. If businesses like theirs go under, eventually all that's going to be left is the factory farm. So, save Morningland Dairy! Save the family farm. Rescue the spirit of what made our country great: you, me, and honest, hard work.

This article is part of Fight Back Friday on FoodRenegade.com

TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch Conference

2010-11-05T11:54:00.000-05:00

Image via WikipediaThe TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch conference takes place Saturday, Nov 6 from 8:30am to 6pm Pacific Time. Watch as Fake Plastic Fish joins with other fantastic names in a conference about the plastic that has invaded our oceans and our lives. See the video after the jump (and on Saturday, the 6th, or thereafter - of course).

tedxgp2 on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Carbs won't let you go?

2010-10-01T07:31:00.002-05:00

Image via WikipediaA good friend of mine asked me to look into breaking the carb addiction - a request made with pastry in-hand. I wish I had the easy answer; I still love breads and sweets myself and keep trying to find ways to put more and more veggies in my diet to crowd out the hunger for the things I've felt addicted to.
The typical solutions involve tricks such as "just eating less" of whatever you're having troubles with... drink water to keep yourself not hungry for other things... or keep busy with other things so you don't think about your addiction. Most of the suggestions I find to be very, very good ones - especially drinking a lot of water, since we're supposed to be doing that already.

The thing that helps me turn down the free bagel in the lunch room, or choose NOT to get the pumpkin/banana bread at the morning cafe? Knowledge. Really finding out what sugar or wheat does to your body makes me fear it, and when my head's full of bits of trivia about how this is all slowly-but-surely making me sick, rotting my teeth, or in some other way generally killing me - I can choose to refuse.

Recently, Tim Ferris, of the Four Hour Workweek fame, shared a book excerpt that I found extremely compelling. Before clicking on the link in my reader I was wondering whether he was playing around with his traffic-focusing title generator again, but once I started reading I couldn't look away and realized how it's actually an accurate caption: How to Keep Feces out of Your Bloodstream. Odds are probably good that if you follow nutrition you've come across this article but it's definitely worth mentioning nonetheless. When you realize what gluten is probably doing to your system even though you're not celiac, when you know that a little bit of gluten affects your system for a period of up to two weeks... it's easier to make the right choice about what to eat.

Take a moment to sit back and think about all the times you've ever had a cold. Overlay the knowledge that even a tiny bit of sugar will make you vulnerable for six hours to catch another cold - and you have more strength to turn down that piece of cake. There are so many reasons why sugar is harmful to your body. You should make it a high priority to learn them and keep that knowledge close to your heart. Review what a sugar is so that you know what to avoid; it's not all just white granules. Processing of sugar today involves a highly technical process that takes the natural sugar sources and boils them, mixes them with chemicals, rinses them, boils them again, dries it, and all sorts of things. They are processes that are not body-friendly.

So that's it. No real tricks, no plan to follow for a perfect, carb-free diet. Just a simple instruction to "arm yourself with the truth" when facing down the next donut warrior that comes knocking on your door. Good luck, and keep your strength up!

Stevia and the Quest for a Sugar-Free Life

2010-09-21T07:06:00.000-05:00

Image via WikipediaA friend of mine asked me about sugars yesterday and I tried to explain my favorite replacement, stevia. This is essentially my email rewritten for the general public, and it's a quick-rundown for anyone unfamiliar with it, or perhaps a review for those who are. It’s worth reviewing the Wikipedia entry about it so that you know its history, but basically it’s unknown - or at least less widely known - today because large sugar interests managed to get it labeled by the FDA as a dietary supplement. This essentially meant that you could eat it, and it could be sold in stores without health claims but companies couldn't use it as an ingredient for their products. Now, when people are finally starting to learn about the ways they’ve been deceived (and since the major manufacturers have come up with their own branded versions of stevia) the FDA has conveniently changed their mind about it. At least, they're not saying a distinct "yea" or "nay" about it.

Incidentally this new position of the FDA is now good enough for companies like Coca-Cola to produce their own, protected versions of stevia. Those who are in-the-know (and I would love to be able to include myself in that group) recommend avoiding these brands such as Truvia or Purevia due to their extra processing. Don't fall for the pretty packaging!

Anyway, stevia: it’s an herb. You can grow it right in a planter in your house if you’d like; we do (although we don’t necessarily use the plant we’re growing for sweetening; without some processing stevia really has a strong aftertaste). For most applications today, the leaves are dried, ground up, and processed. They’re also often added to other things to make handling and cooking with it a bit easier. Trader Joes, for example, sells a mix of stevia and lactose which has a 1/3 ratio to regular sugar and is pretty convenient. We do use this in our house, even though we realize it should still be considered a processed ingredient. The other way we use it is in liquid extract form. We’ve tried – and love – two brands; SweetLeaf and NOW. I prefer the SweetLeaf brand, but NOW creates a French Vanilla flavor that is truly awesome. The downside of the NOW brand is that it has more and unnecessary ingredients such as vegetable glycerin. Regardless of brand, in liquid form, I’ve determined that 4 drops has the equivalent sweetness of a level teaspoon of sugar and 5 drops is a heaping teaspoon.

By itself stevia has no calories, but depending on the form you use it takes some getting used to. Baking with it can prove difficult as often recipes require the actual mass of sugar to make up for body of the baked good. There is an aftertaste that you notice the same way you notice the aftertaste of a diet soda – but you can get used to it pretty easily.

Overall when I’m baking I almost always replace the sugar with stevia. Sometimes, however, I’ll use honey or maple syrup – but those are of course still true sugars. Getting to the point of using no sugar is a difficult one, to be sure; we aren't there yet in our house as we're still keeping some around for making kombucha and the occasional indulgent dessert. But with stevia you can make great strides toward that goal without giving up too many sweets. Just don't forget that eating less sweets to begin with should remain your primary goal.

As a final note, definitely click through to the Huffington Post article below in the Zemanta links.

Milk Recall Affects Five States (but does it matter?)

2010-09-11T09:11:00.001-05:00

Image via WikipediaAn upper-Northeastern dairy has voluntarily recalled 8,000 to 10,000 gallons of milk after it was discovered that a pasteurization machine failure. While it's very admirable that the dairy announced this massive recall in a precautionary measure, recalls like this - let alone the recalls such as the recent egg fiasco or other meat-related incidents that left people ill or dead - should be scaring people far, far away from the idea of purchasing food created in "factory" farms.

Recently in Minnesota there was a farm selling raw milk and somehow a few customers were hit by an e.coli outbreak. This went as far as getting state-wide television coverage, if not larger. This story was and is being used as fuel to fire the anti-raw-milk brigade so that no one drinks "unsafe" milk - even when it affects less than ten people nationwide.

Does nobody see the irony of all this? When one large farm produces unhealthy products that reach millions of people, what happens? Eggs are recalled (and repurposed, but not destroyed) but the company goes on selling their products, same as before. But if it's a small farm, producing real food that has the accident... it affects, perhaps 5 people and their livelihood is shut down by the state? This is not just crazy, it's... redonkulous.

Americans should be choosing - no, they should be demanding that their foods be produced in small amounts by local farmers who care for the products they make. No more factory farms! Maybe everyone just needs a visit to a confined animal feeding operation before they'll wake up...? What's it going to take, America?

Hurom Slow Juicer, a few weeks in and loving it

2010-09-10T08:07:00.001-05:00

We have several juicers - four, to be exact - in our house, now. The first three that we owned were all centrifugal juicers. I've got one at work so that I can juice there as I feel, we've got an old one as a gift, from a garage sale, that we never really used, and we had our prior best one in the kitchen for nigh-daily use. It was a rather nice centrifugal one that we also received as a gift, but it had a tendency to leak. We never really figured out what caused it to leak but enough was finally enough.
Please read the follow-up review.

Having recently read on NaturalNews.com that Mike Adams was changing his "best juicer" recommendation to the Hurom Slow Juicer, we decided to give it a shot and ponied up the money for the hefty price tag it carries. When we bought it, it was about $350.

Before ordering it and when we first received it in the mail, I was worried about how difficult it would be to clean. That's one of my primary concerns about a juicer; if it's a pain in the butt to clean up then eventually you get tired of using it. I am happy to say that despite having more separate pieces than the average centrifugal juicer, it's not really that much harder to clean at all. I don't really even know if there's any real additional minutes worth of cleanup; the hardest part of the Hurom to clean is the mesh basket - just like a centrifugal juicer. Unlike a centrifugal juicer, there is actually far LESS mesh to worry about, so you're not scrubbing as much as you normally would. After the mesh basket, the pulp dispenser tube is the next hardest to clean and it usually requires the use of the included toothbrush/pick tool - and it's a fairly quick clean, too. For the most part, you're really just rinsing off the pieces and that's it. Cleanup definitely will not dissuade me from using this one!

The Hurom is much more quiet than other juicers, in my experience. I suppose that's not a crucial selling point, but it's certainly nice. The machine gets its name from this aspect, from what I can tell. The "slowness" is because it only turns at 80 RPM and is thus quieter - but it produces juice just as quickly as any other juicer.

I'm very impressed with how much juice the Hurom puts out - and that makes the higher price tag quite worth it. With our previous juicers, my wife and I would often gather the ejected pulp and send it through the spinner again to get more juice out (and it did make a difference) but now... the pulp the Hurom puts out is practically completely dry. Amazing - and kudos to you, Hurom.

Image via Wikipedia

Buying the Hurom actually saved me about $100, too, because prior to this I was also considering buying a separate machine for making almond milk. Usually I make almond milk by sending soaked almonds through the Vitamix and then going through the tedious process of filtering it through a pressing bag. It took a long time. However, the Hurom has the excellent advantage of also being able to create nut (and soy, although I don't recommend it) milks and press them automatically. The end-product IS a very slightly bit more gritty than if I were to use the pressing bag, but it's well within tolerable limits and I love the time saved.

There are a few negative aspects. Putting your foods to be juiced into the machine is a little more difficult because the tube you put them in is a small one AND the instructions say that hard vegetables such as carrots need to be chopped into small pieces before adding. Everything other negative aspect of this machine is very small. There ARE more pieces as I mentioned before. It's a heavy machine, but I don't really see that as a negative aspect. It's supposed to have less foam for juices and it does, but not by much. I've also found that greens should be ripped or chopped as well as hard vegetables because if you don't they turn into string which makes it a little harder to clean. Overall, these downsides do NOT make any kind of impact on my joy of using it.

I love it SO much more than the old centrifugals!

How much do pharmaceuticals spend... to get your money?

2010-09-02T08:51:00.000-05:00

Going to the mailbox today I found a letter - sorry, an advertisement - addressed to my mother-in-law, who currently lives with us. Knowing she wasn't going to be opening this junk mail, I was curious to see what exactly was inside. You see, it was from Walgreens and the only thing it seemed to be advertising was the flu shot. This, of course, is not really unexpected. One can find ads for the flu shot pretty much everywhere one looks at this time of year, and it's only going to get worse. I'm certain I will soon be seeing the ubiquitous, massive billboards by the local hospitals again telling us all to cover when we sneeze, wash our hands constantly, and oh, oh oh - don't forget your flu shot!

SIGH.

This "little" advertisment we received in the mail, however, just blew me away with its presentation. To give you a little background, there was a year of my life some time ago in which I spent writing for a physical newsletter I'd created. It was about education and homeschooling - another one of my passions. The reason I bring this up is because, although my little publication didn't receive a lot of attention and I really tried to be as economical as possible, it definitely taught me that printing and sending fliers costs a lot and takes a lot of time and effort.

This flier was slick, too; a glossy, multi-page foldout with well-designed graphics AND a pocket containing a pre-filled, multi-page form for my mother-in-law to return at her convenience. It boggles my mind how much money was spent on this advertising campaign. Whenever you receive something in the postal mail, you should always mentally multiply that times the size of the campaign. Since this is a national retailer at work, it's probably safe to multiply this one ad by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. Then consider that this is a small drop in the bucket of flu vaccine advertisement campaigns. It is amazing how much companies spend on this.

Remember - these are companies, not individuals. Any single company's purpose in sending out advertisements is NOT for the good of all mankind - it's to make money. So if they're spending this much already on advertising these drugs, how much are they raking in?

I hate to think about it.

My Own Credibility

2010-08-27T20:41:00.000-05:00

Image via CrunchBaseEarlier today a visitor to the site asked me via the Meebo plugin I have here whether the information I post here is "creditable or all just crap." Unfortunately while Meebo said I was online, I was actually away from the computer when he or she posted the question, so the best I can do is write a response here as a post and hope this person swings by again.

In short, he or she wanted to know where I get my information. Let me preface my answer by saying as I have in my "About" page that I am just a regular Joe - a nerd dad who wants his family, and everyone, to be healthy. I'm contemplating and probably will start taking nutrition classes so that I can be of even more use to people in regards to health, but that will take some time. I'm just researching schools right now (and am open to any suggestions, too!)

Some of the things I write here are pure opinion; they're my reaction to things I read in books or online, see in movies or in the news, and so forth. I definitely get some things wrong. For example, I'm torn between the idea of having a food police (like a strong FDA) versus allowing manufacturers to make any kind of unhealthy product they feel like (such as hydrogenated oils). I'm still leaning on the side of freedom on that subject, but that's for a different time.

Most other times, however, when I'm writing an article here I put in a good bit of research looking around for verification of the things I find. It takes a really long time to write a single article because of this. When I do find this verification, I will almost always provide a link to it in order to prove my due diligence. For resources, I look to company websites for official information, Wikipedia for general leads and ideas, resource sites like Cosmetics Database for ingredient facts, and I'll even email or talk to those more studied than I for actual quotes, etc.

So to make a long answer short: I try. I try to be a good source of reliable information. If I make a mistake, I'll be sure to point it out and apologize. What else can be expected of anyone?

Hungry Gamer? Buy Somethin' Will Ya?

2010-08-24T20:30:00.009-05:00

Image by pinguino via Flickr

Having grown up with a love of video games and also having a love for Real Food, I felt a bit insulted when I came across a new snack being aimed at game players everywhere. It's called Gamer Grub and it's essentially cheap sugars and carbohydrates in a convenient but wasteful package.

Game players everywhere seem to have it rough when it comes to how industry sees their nutritional needs. It reminds me of what the movie and advertising industries originally thought the "gamer look" was: you've probably seen it. The disconnected stare with a mix of both determination and a dorky smile. Now, when it comes to what a gamer eats or drinks, it has to be some concoction of Instant Satisfaction and Ultimate Power. Seriously, I think energy drinks came about solely from the rise of the gaming industry. At least some of them have; I recall the introduction of "Bawls" and how it was targeted at the late-night gamer. It even had a kind of cameo appearance in the Playstation 2 games, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and Run Like Hell.

Back to the topic at hand, Gamer Grub is supposedly a snack invented to keep up with the busy nerd. As the founder of Gamer Grub reportedly says, "15 browser tabs, 11 apps, voice chat and two games running. We couldn't find a snack that could keep up… so, we made our own." Apparently the whole idea about eating while playing games is that nothing is supposed to distract you from moving your butt away from the computer or console, even hunger. They used "science" in their recipes to deliver "essential vitamins and neurotransmitters" to help you achieve this oneness with the couch.

This is just crazy. A load of synthetic vitamins is not going to improve any snack, let alone one as processed as this. And isn't advertising that L-Glutamic Acid as a mental booster a rather stupid idea considering that glutamic acid has been implicated in epileptic seizures? Isn't it - correct me if I'm wrong - an especially stupid idea considering that L-Glutamic Acid is, in other words, MSG, a known excitotoxin?

To continue a disappointing trend, Gamer Grub does not list the nutrition facts on their website - okay, actually they do, but they don't list the ingredients, which in my opinion are at least as important. It seems to me that any time a company doesn't list the ingredients of their food products on their website... they have something to hide. Fortunately with a little digging I found that ThinkGeek shows the ingredient list of two of the Gamer Grub flavors. And there's a lot they're hiding.

Pizza ingredients: (compound ingredients are on individual lines)
Sesame sticks: (Unbleached wheat flour (contains malted barley flour as a natural enzyme additive), canola oil, sesame seeds, bulgar wheat, salt, beet powder, turmeric)
cheese curls: (Corn flour, salt, citric acid, soybean oil, whey, natural cheese flavor, salt, natural and artificial flavors, buttermilk powder, monosodium glutamate, lactose, autolyzed torula yeast, maltodextrin, caramel color, yeast extract, disodium inosinate & guanylate, lactic acid, tumeric (color)),
almonds,
pita chips: (Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, ascorbic acid, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), canola oil, water, salt, yeast),
cashews,
fried onions: (Onions, safflower and/or sunflower oil, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), salt),
sun dried tomato and basil seasoning: (Sugar, tomato & sun dried tomato powder, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, spices, parsley, citric acid, natural flavors, paprika extract, dextrose),
pizza seasoning: (Tomato powder, garlic powder, sugar, natural flavors, spices, salt, paprika),
cheese seasoning: (Whey, parmesan and romano cheese blend (part-skim milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes),
maltodextrin, butter-milk powder, salt, sodium phosphate, citric acid, onion powder, garlic powder, dehydrated cream, disodium inosinate and guanylate, disodium phosphate, natural flavor,
vegetable oil (peanut, canola, sunflower and/or soybean)),
proprietary cognitive blend: (Magnesium phosphate dibasic, choline bitartrate, ascorbic acid, vitamin e acetate, l-glutamic acid, beta-carotene, and niacinamide).
Contains: Almonds, cashews, wheat, milk and soy. Packed on shared equipment with other tree nuts and eggs. Caution: May contain an occasional shell fragment.

What are they hiding? Canola oil. Salt. Corn flour (unless specified, assume corn is genetically modified). Soybean oil. Artificial flavors. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). Yeast extract (more MSG). Enriched flours (flours should not be enriched with synthetic replacements). Vegetable oils. Sugar. Lactose (more sugar). Dextrose (more sugar). Skim milk. l-glutamic acid (more MSG)... this list goes on and on - and gets worse if you look at the Peanut Butter/Jelly flavor; it's more of the same plus other things such as hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, and preservatives. I think their "science" must be related to the theory of pulling the wool over peoples' eyes.

It seems all the reviews of Gamer Grub come back generally mixed but positive; the reviewer tends to say, "I don't really like THIS flavor but THAT flavor is awesome and I would totally buy more." Fortunately, judging by user comments such as those found on this kotaku.com review prove that end users MOSTLY find this new "performance snack" to be a bad-tasting joke. Pun intended.
This article is part of Real Food Wednesday via KellyTheKitchenKop.com

Vitaminwater: What Happens with Corporations

2010-08-10T21:33:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Once upon a time, there was a company called "Glaceau" (it technically still exists as a subsidiary - but more on that in a moment) that created SmartWater and later came out with FruitWater, and then VitaminWater. I remember when I first saw FruitWater; it tasted good and had no calories because it had no sugar. I'm still not entirely sure, mind you, how they got the flavor and I suspect even though it was "natural" that it was actually junk but this is also not the subject of the moment. What was interesting was that this drink became popular and it had no sugar.

Later on, the company was sold off for millions and billions of dollars as it eventually wound up in the hands of Coca-Cola. FruitWater's follow-up, VitaminWater, was essentially the same thing as FruitWater but had a lot of added sugar and some synthetic vitamins added. VitaminWater really became popular, ultimately because people believe it is a healthy alternative to soda pop. It's still popular to this day, but are you aware that Coca-Cola itself is already on official record as saying "...no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage."

NaturalNews.com brought this to my attention today... but this court case was from a year and a half ago, and consumers are STILL buying VitaminWater, preferring it AS a healthy alternative. Where is the disconnect in this kind of thinking? I'm a bit torn. I want to vilify the corporation because in general it seems to be simply an artificial person designed with the sole purpose of making money. Okay, well, that's essentially what it IS, and ... yes, it also appears that most of the words publicized by corporations are really just fancy lies packaged so that people will line up to buy them. However, I say I'm torn because the general public still really DOES just line right up to buy whatever is shiny and new. So whose fault is it? Why don't "we" just STOP buying the junk and become healthy?

What SHOULD happen, to fix this kind of situation, is that corporations should start being HONEST in advertising their products. I personally know that will never happen, so what's next? People have to wake up and read the ingredients. What's easiest? Just stop buying as many processed food products as possible. As Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau said recently in one of her shows, just Nike the hell out of your life and DO IT. Just make the change for yourself, let others know, and spread the information.

Fast Food Salads? Nope, won't trust 'em.

2010-07-16T06:55:00.001-05:00

Wendy's restaurant recently introduced four new salads to their money - perhaps you've heard of them? They're calling them "real salads" as if they're made from real food or something. Ian Froeb of Riverfront Times wrote a piece yesterday that caught my eye and points out the fact that these salads contain more calories, salt, and fat* than a KFC DoubleDown.

He's right, of course; these faux-salads which have more meat, bread or chips, and cheese than a "real salad" should sometimes top out at 740 calories, 49g of fat*, 50g carbs, and 47g protein. But I'd like to take a step back and point out the obvious: This is a fast-food meal. You can't trust the ingredients they use to make their food.

As Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau of The Kathleen Show said on July 8th in her monologue about "where I am with meat," the animals they use for these kinds of foods are raised in CAFOs - which always force horrible, disease-causing conditions on them. This produces the kind of food that you do NOT want in your body.

As for the vegetables, cheeses, nuts, chips, and other parts of these salads, I don't trust them either; if they're not raised organically, the odds are not only good but great that they've been treated with all sorts of chemicals and radiation that poison and kill the food you eat. Live bodies need live food - and that means pure and clean, organically-raised food.

So, yay-to-you, Wendy's, for coming out with more salad offerings to trick people into thinking they're doing their body right. But I'm not buying it.

* Oh, and don't fear the fat. Well, fear this fat, sure - but don't go thinking that all fat is bad, because many fats are essential!

Nerd Gardeners: Power UP with a Wunda Weeder!

2010-07-15T10:49:00.001-05:00

I love dorky gadgets. I'm an early adopter for a lot of technology and - within reason - totally geek out about tools that make our lives easier. Imagine how I feel when gadgetry is combined with sustainable agriculture, like this wacky but awesome invention.

Some inventor nerds in Australia have come up with a solar-powered tool to help weed your garden. Now, first, this thing isn't going to be aimed at a single-family-sized garden. At an estimated retail cost of $8,000 you're not going to be opening your wallet for this kind of thing without the intention of selling your wares it helps gather. And it's not an "automated weeder" really, either. You lay in this thing like from a hammock, but on your stomach, and it propels itself along by solar power, carrying you in a perfect position to just pluck those annoying weeds right out. So it just makes weeding EASIER by saving your back, providing shade, and perhaps allowing crops to be planted a little more closely together. (That last idea is something that I personally throw in.)

The first thing I thought when I looked at it was that it was kind of neat but a bit overkill for weeds - but when you consider that this kind of tool could really help out the local farm be just a LITTLE bit bigger and thus provide more produce and still avoid the chemical pesticides, this has a bit more appeal. I can't see myself or even my brother, who farms organically, buying something like this, but the fact that it exists (or will exist) makes me feel better about the strength of local foods' growth.

Image credit of ohgizmo.com

Organics and Plastic - a personal gripe

2010-07-12T10:16:00.001-05:00

Image by Kate Blackport via Flickr

Every morning as I pack my lunch I am repeatedly reminded of how much plastic has invaded our lives, and I just have to wonder why. I'd actually like to pose this as a question to the community at large to see if anyone knows why this is:

Each little fruit or vegetable that I put in my bag has a sticker on it to identify the type of produce, as well as whether or not it's organically-sourced; these could be simple paper stickers, or better yet - laser brandings as I've heard exist. But they're tiny, plastic stickers that I know when multiplied across the millions+ of produce distributed daily translate into at least SOME more plastic nurdles floating around in the middle of the Atlantic ocean or SOME piles of never-decomposing garbage piles buried who-knows-where in America. I ask: WHY are these made out of plastic? Is it a cost benefit for the manufacturer? Do paper stickers fall off too easily (which I doubt)? Is there just loads of plastic that some manufacturer needs to get rid of?

It's not just the little, plastic stickers which are a problem though, either. Whenever you go into a store such as Trader Joes, Rainbow Foods, or Cub Foods, when you buy your produce - especially, for some reason - organic produce, odds are extremely good that it's going to be wrapped in a layer of useless, wasteful plastic.

Image via Wikipedia

Do young coconuts, for example, really need to be shrink-wrapped in excessive layers of plastic, presumably so that a label can be applied to each one? I think not. If you take a look at farmers' markets, you'll see most of the produce there is sold individually or in bunches but not wrapped in plastic.

Of course, farmer's markets, since the subject has come up, are also another place where plastic is unnecessarily involved and therefore abused. Every seller at your market will have a stack of the disposable plastic bags on hand to dole out as customers forget to bring their own bags. Frankly, I think everyone would be better off if those kinds of plastic bags were simply not offered. Let people find themselves without bags from home enough times and it will become second nature to always have a few on-hand, tucked in the car, or wherever. These plastic bags really are conveniences we can live without.

I'm not saying that we've freed our family from the bags, or other disposable plastic, but we're trying. We do keep our extra cloth bags with us when produce shopping. We decline the lid and straws on our few purchased drinks that come in disposable cups. We're trying. I'd just like to see producers and manufacturers try as well.

McDonalds to CSPI: Buzz Off

2010-07-09T11:53:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Guest blogger Doug Powers writes today on MicheleMalkin.com about the McDonalds CEO's response to CSPI's recent lawsuit threats. In a nutshell, McDonalds officially tells CSPI to buzz off.

CSPI's alleges that McDonalds is like the creepy lurker at a playground, handing out candy to children and corrupting the youth. That's taking it a bit far, and it ultimately says the consumer is too dumb to make their own decisions. It's not relevant whether you believe that many consumers out there are too dumb - or not - to refuse the offer of McDonalds food accompanied by the latest trending plastic toy. Let's take that out of the picture for now. The core reasoning behind CSPI's push is that by offering toys for which children will beg, parents everywhere will be broken down and forced to buy a Happy Meal for their whining darlings.

That's where CSPI can take a hike. Parents can, should, and must decide what they're going to feed their children. America is not the place for Food Laws that tell us not to eat such and such a food. This, of course, is McDonald's point.

However what's not being said - and what most Real Food lovers out there know - is that there are some very important issues of health being overlooked. McDonalds' food is really not something people who are concerned about health should be feeding to children, whose bodies need every nutrient they can get to build a proper, healthy foundation. Even the salads that are offered at fast food restaurants such as McD's come with added sugars.

In addition to the poor nutritive quality of the food offerings, don't forget the amount of throw-away plastic that comes with these Happy Meals (and almost all McDonalds - or other fast food restaurant - meals, too); the toys, which are usually of such poor quality they seem made to be temporary, are made entirely of plastic and usually come wrapped in a plastic bag. These will all find their way to the ocean, landfill, or (at the very least) junk drawer in your house. Do you really need to be adding more garbage to these things? The lids and straws of the drinks are plastic that is almost always chucked in the garbage. The salad dressings and condiment packages are disposable plastic. It's all garbage.

So, CSPI is wrong for thinking they can limit what kinds of food or products that McDonalds sells, McDonalds (and so many other companies) is (are) wrong for selling the harmful or useless products, and everyone else is wrong for buying it right up.

Jane, stop this crazy thing! I'll just go raise my own food, until they pass a law against that. (Did I speak too soon?)

Yogurt-flavored Sugar is NOT Yogurt!

2010-06-22T08:42:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Before coming to the realization of how bad sugar is for the body, while I was growing up when I drank tea (the plain old Lipton black) I would load it with cream and sugar, occasionally warranting the offhand remark from any spectators - usually my parents - of, "would you like a little tea with your sugar?"

Today, a co-worker of mine and I cruised the skyway around lunchtime and noticed that the Sola store is finally reopened. We didn't walk in, but we did use the circumstance to comment on the ridiculousness of it. Although it only looked like the remodeling of their store resulted in changing a straight counter to a curved one, the real craziness that is associated with the frozen yogurt industry is summed up in my friend's remark, "Didn't we do away with frozen yogurt back in 1997?"

On top of all of this, entirely coincidentally, the Health Ranger - Mike Adams - posted a new article on how frozen yogurt is not health food, and it's really worth your time. It should be rather telling when the ingredient list for frozen yogurt is hard to find. Mike did some searching and found the vanilla yogurt powder that is used to make these desserts, and it's mostly sugar. As sad as that is, by now we should probably not be surprised.

For the sake of your health, stay away from the frozen yogurts unless you totally understand that what you are buying and eating is no healthier than artificially-created ice cream. It is possible to make frozen yogurts and ice creams that are healthy, but the odds of finding such options in a restaurant or grocery store are stacked against you.

The Stats About PHARMACEUTICAL Companies

2010-06-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

Source: Online Colleges and Universities
Created by OnlineEducation.net. Click through to see the original size.

What's so "smart" about the TetraPak Brik?

2010-05-21T09:58:00.001-05:00

Image by barely_legal via Flickr

Recently while discussing which kind of milk is good for you - a discussion that actually comes up a lot with me - I wandered off subject while looking for research and my thoughts came to the Tetra Brik, by TetraPak. Why I didn't see it before this, I'm not sure, but... these are essentially plastic bottles that are masquerading themselves as paper. The company specifically claims that the packaging is "consisting mainly of paper made from wood" yet inside and out, there are multiple layers of plastic and aluminum in addition to that paper.

TetraPak has a promotional website that describes how "smart" their packaging is for the planet, for people, for all around use. They've been around a long time. But how much trust should you put in something simply because they say they're trying to do right, and because you have been trusting them for a while?

Smart for the planet? This from the product which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as "A type of plasticised cardboard"? Well, let's find out how much of that carton is actually biodegradable. TetraPak claims that 73% of the packaging is made from paper (click Raw Materials -> Corporate Data). I have to wonder exactly how much paper actually breaks down on its own in some unknown landfill when enclosed completely in plastic. There are multiple layers of plastic (and sometimes 6 microns-thick aluminum) attached both on the inside and outside of that paper. Without a lot of industrial help, that paper is not going to break down easily. That is not smart for the planet.

And how are they smart for people? Well, looking at the TetraPak campaign, they actually don't talk about the healthiness of using their plastic packaging as food containers at all, except to say they're aseptic, which explains a lot. According to TetraPak, their products are smart for people because they're convenient and as I just mentioned, aseptic. They're "smart for people" because they can package almost anything that's fluid and edible, like "milk, juice, nectar, still drinks, water, wine, oil, yoghurts, probiotics," and more. If you were to go to a grocery store in Europe, you'll find that these packages are much, much more prevalent in use than in America, and seeing their veritable walls of Tetra Briks, I certainly believe they can package everything and anything in them.

I'm not sure how they can claim that these packages are good for people when the packaging is plastic, specifically low-density polyethylene and sometimes aluminum. Greencradle.net sums it up fairly well:

What is low density polyethylene? LDPE is a petroleum plastic derived from gasoline production. It is made up of chemicals that have been forced together, however temporarily, through chemical reactions. Aluminum is, of course, a metal that has a long history of being considered toxic by some, and even sometimes associated in studies with Alzheimers, Kidney disease, and bone disease in children. Aluminum is also the sort of metal that needs a coating to keep it from rusting, which is why SIGG used BPA coatings on their aluminum water bottles until recently. What other plastics might be in the TetraPak lining? The company that owns Tetra-Paks, which is Tetra Laval, creates PET #1 bottles (Polyethylene Terephthalate) through a subsidiary known as SIDEL. PET, like LDPE is also a plastic derived from petroleum leftover from gasoline production. PET, used for most bottled waters sold in stores, has more recently been shown to also leach estrogenic substances into the water contained therein, not unlike BPA from polycarbonate bottles (#7). One study, conducted by a German University found that PET plastics leached synthetic estrogen into the bottled water. Studies involving snails, found that snails that lived in the PET plastic bottles, as opposed to glass bottles, tended to produce twice as many embryos, presumably as a result of increased synthetic estrogenic leaching into the water. Whether the estrogenic activity was caused by phthalates, which are chemicals in certain plastics that mimic the estrogen hormone, or catalysts like antimony (which have been documented to also leach into drinking water) or other substances added to plastics to keep them from oxidizing, the presence of estrogen presents potential health issues ranging from cancer to developmental problems in kids to sexual/reproductive problems.

There is so much that is so wrong about using plastics as a food delivery mechanism. If we care about our planet and our bodies, we absolutely must stop our destructive habits, and using disposable containers like the TetraPak is one of them.

Still Using Plastic?

This article is part of Fight Back Friday on FoodRenegade.com

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