Why we cannot all just stop drinking bottled water.

I was just reading a blog post that begged the question, why can't we just stop drinking bottled water? It is a great question.
seen here
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sloan-barnett/day-four-why-cant-we-just_b_136001.html

For many of us the answer is that we can and should get over what we have come to see as necessity in our lives and give up the bottled water completely. Between the impact on the environment of all of the non biodegradable material, our landfills filling up with plastic, the fossil fuel it takes to truck these bottles of water around the country, fish and animals dying from either being caught in plastic remnants, eating them, or inhaling nurdles of plastic that have photodegraded, and lets not forget the impact on our health from the xenoestrogenic BPA leached from plastic bottles why are we sticking with this phenomenon. In this country still today a majority of us have access to safe drinking water straight from the tap. So why are we paying for it????

Mostly we pay for it, because it is yet other area of our lives where we have been convinced of the need for corporate intervention. We like that it comes in a clear, sealed bottle, and we can imagine that no contaminants could ever have touched it. Well guess what? That water might as well have come from your tap, and you might have been better off if it did. As I have mentioned in previous posts, bottling plants draw there water from the same sources as community taps, and in many cases do nothing to it, not even run it through a carbon filter before it gets put in the bottle. Community water supplies are tested at a minimum a few times a week, in somewhere like NYC, at least once an hour. A bottling plant may be inspected as little as once a year. And as too the convenience factor of bottled water, REALLY? carrying bottles of water home or having someone deliver jugs of water is more convienient than turning on your faucet? I am guilty of the occasional bottle of water when I am on the run or somewhere that I cannot practically bring my own water - airports to name one - but the rest of the I take water from the tap, and you should too! Unless...

There are many parts of this nation that are not as lucky as the rest of us. Their water supplies are not safe to drink due to environmental contaminations mostly propagated by private industry. Mostly these areas are underrepresented areas with high poverty rates. The water is not safe to drink and even though they pay a monthly water bill, they cannot partake in drinking it and MUST buy bottled water to drink and cook. As the popularity of bottled water has soared, or water supply seems to be getting less safe and has less oversight. The ability to buy water is no substitute for the right and availability of to the life sustaining substance. What happens in those areas of this country where the water supplies are so contaminated people must buy their water and an American citizen's paycheck doesn't quite stretch far enough to pay for water? Where do we live? Is this really America? Is this the America that I was brought up to be proud of and respect?

There is so much going on right now in the United States, economic bailouts, Presidential campaigns, and natural disasters to name a few, when are we going to see that the most important thing is making sure that we all survive? When are we going to realize that we do not have a lack of food or a lack of money in this country, if anything we have too much. The problem is not scarcity, it is the malapportionment of excess and the lack of accountability to our fellow human beings. We have come to believe that we need so many of the modern luxuries in our lives, that we absolutely cannot live without them, but nothing could be further from the truth. Bottled water and cable television are two that come to my mind most vividly. What we need to do is take care of our fellow Americans, be sure that everyone has food and shelter and if we really want to make this world a better place - a little love.

We can continue to talk about all of the "issues" in these last couple weeks of the campaigns, but lets get down to the real issue: The basic needs and rights of all human beings. Lets narrow our focus and assume responsibility, once those issues are met, then talk to me about politics.

Like Water for Chocolate

I do not have time to write a full entry on this but, there are a couple of recent articles that I feel are really important to post.

The first is on the melamine coming from China in the form of a lot of our processed foods. Candy such as Cadbury Chocolate, other candies, baby formula, toothpaste, pet foods and so many other foods that have been contaminated in this crisis. Unfortunately it takes a lot sometimes for companies to own up to the responsibility and possibly the blow to their reputation when they have to publicly admit that their products are cheaply manufactured in China as opposed to with some care and tradition as they are often thought to be. This underscore the importance of the eat local movements in this country and the need to protect local agriculture. When we outsource and centralize our food supply far, far away from our homes we lose complete control over what we are consuming. There is no accountability in our food supply unless numerous people become deathly ill. One, two, or even unfortunately in a lot of cases hundreds of outbreaks get swept under the rug or interpreted as not having strong causal links to a food or manufacturing plant.

Be wary of eating anything made in China, especially if it is a milk derivative or made with milk. But on the whole, we have so little trade regulation with China, I am confident that if wide scale testing were done on imports, we would find much much more of this type of contamination in the foods that Americans ingest everyday. We only find out about the ones that are killing too many people to keep them quiet.

Here is just one, the most recent article I have just read on the Melamine outbreak, do a search in any paper for many many more. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/world/asia/02milk.html?ref=health

The other issue is of our water supply in this country. The EPA is failing us once again by failing to take action on the amount of Perchlorate in our drinking water right here in the US. We can't blame China for this one...
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/09/22/rocket.fuel.epa.ap/index.html

Organic Batter Blaster

This is an insult to people, to their intelligence, and most of all to food. Spray pancakes in an aerosol can. I encourage you to go on their website to see exactly what a sham the USDA Organic Seal has become. www.batterblaster.com The idea is disgusting enough, but I have read reviews on this product that compare the taste to gritty sawdust. But hey...it is organic and convienient!

Where Good Doctors Miss The Boat

Let me start out by saying that there are a growing number of physicians that are genuinely interested in their patients health and in getting their patients healthy without drugs. I just wish more of them would do it without filling their patients bodies with crap. I just watched a webinar on obesity in America and a number of physicians and a chiropractor spoke passionately about patients they have helped and personal stories. It was an industry webinar, by invitation, so I genuinely believe that these doctors are in this for good reasons and that their passion is real. The program is based on immediate rapid weightloss, including meal supplements(shakes, bars, cereals) every three hours and then one "healthy" meal a day. This is followed by health coaching and support to keep them on the program.

Ok, so they are getting people thinner to get them to the point where they are interested in their health and wanting to stay thin and "healthy". This is a great idea, but the reason I have healthy in quotes is that the way they are helping them lose weight is anything but healthy. It is for sure better in quantity than the fast food and other garbage people shove into their mouths, but the fact is you do not need supplements and meal replacements to lose weight and be healthy! What you need is real food! Look at the labels on these supplements, they are horrible! I decided not to post one or the name of the company that produces them or the name of the plan. But any time you are faced with some sort of meal replacement, read the label as if your life depended on it, because it does. Most have more chemicals, sugars, cheap soy and whey protein isolates, and more fillers than some fast food.

If you want to lose weight and change your life, start listening to your body. Cut out sugar, refined carbohydrates, and commercially farmed meat and fish. Pay attention to what you are eating. Trust your body to tell you what it needs. Most people think that a healthy diet means eating boiled chicken and vegetables every day. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Depending on your body chemistry a nice juicy grass fed steak could be just what the doctor ordered. What about Cholesterol you say? If you still believe anything you have heard about cholesterol, do some research.

My point is that you can have people achieve these same results if not better, by putting them on better eating plans of real food without all of the crap supplements and replacements. But then, no one could make money off of selling all of that cheap crap. Doctors get what are called compliance fees, basically a portion about 20 to 30 percent of the the profit off of the patients purchases for the meal replacements. This is not really that big of a deal I guess, but it is certainly incentive for the doctors to push the products instead of whole foods.

The chiropractor on the call claimed that optimal health is a place you have never been too. I agree for most people. He then went on to say that it is not that you will wake up one day and say "wow, I feel optimal!" Here is where I disagree, feeling optimal is not easy, but it can be done. If you start to detox your body from chemicals as in those found in meal replacements and any other food replacements and processed foods, you will wake up every day and feel more and more optimal. Optimal health is never ending in the beginning, you don't realize how bad you felt before, until you start to feel so good. But he later goes on to say that he has reached optimum health, so I am not sure what is going on there.

These doctors did touch on congruency, a very important topic. The best compliment you can receive in my mind as a health care professional, is that you seem like you really live your words. Health care professionals should be healthy, otherwise, what is the point. You can have all the information in the world, if you haven't figured out how to make it work for you, how are you going to help your patients?

They also mentioned another fact about helping people get healthy. It turns into a chain reaction. People want to help each other, they want to become health coaches and tell their friends to get on board. This kind of chain reaction is a huge source of hope. If you can build it, they will come.

So overall, I applaud these doctors for going into territory off the mainstream and genuinely trying to help their patients. But buyer beware if you are faced with meal replacements. There are other, much tastier, much healthier, ways to go about it.

San Francisco Heriloom Tomatoes are Unreasonably Good!

I thought I knew what a good tomato tasted like, apparently I was mistaken. The heirloom tomatoes that I had in San Francisco were like candy. It is really almost unfair the amount of fresh amazing produce available year round in that part of the country. I guess that is the Mediterranean climate for you. I had some in Southern California as well, they weren't nearly as good. I would move there just for the produce!

The Greening of Detroit Michigan

Detroit has a lot of green spaces and vacant lots. Many of these are next to schools and areas where children play. Lets not beat around the bush, it is a depressed city with a high crime rate and as it turns out, a lot of heart. Detroit is unusual for the amount of grass and vacant space around even its poorest neighborhoods. There is a remarkable effort taking place right now to turn old condemned spaces into fertile ground, literally. The effort is centered around organic gardening.

From children to adults, from rich to poor, the city of Detroit is training gardeners to grow their own organic foods. The gardens are communal, but the skills can be taken anywhere - in a lot of cases hopefully they will be taken home. Some of the most touching gardens are those built in school yards, with the effort of the children at the school and those at community centers. The children get to experience growing and harvesting organic food and experiment with eating new things. In an area like Detroit, what came to my mind first was that these kids are learning survival skills. They are not stuck in a city like NY where there is no green space. They for the most part have backyards, or at least these community areas, they can grow food. The ability to grow food, become independent of welfare and learn these skills to teach for generations.

There are other plots of land, an acre or two at a time that have been donated by the city, one in particular to the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. I can not even begin to express how impressed I was with the whole operation. On this particular two acres of land they did not yet have running water, so in the days that it did not rain, they carried buckets of water across the street to water the crops. It was really a hopeful project with benefits for everyone involved. Some of the gardens and farms have poultry and egg operations, others have future plans to keep bees.

Projects like these that get everyone involved in their health and security are the way of the future. It was really eye opening for me to see projects of this size off the ground and running. I think a lot about what I think needs to be done, or what would be ideal. Sometimes I run across a group of people that just blow me away with what they are already doing. This project is producing about 80 tons of fresh organic local produce a year! All of which is going back to the residents of Detroit. Some of the children working at the community centers even make a little bit of money off of the sales of the produce at farmers markets, others get grades in school, and others just learn skills that if they put them to use may just change the course of their lives.


I toured many of these farms with 500 other people some on tour buses, some on bikes. The event was much larger than I ever expected. For more information visit www.greeningofdetroit.com

Water, Water...used to be everywhere...

Last week I had the privilege of attending a seminar on the Global Water Crisis in San Francisco that was being put on by a non profit organization called Spark. There were two panelists that have been water rights activists for many years. They were Maude Barlow author of Blue Gold and Blue Covenant, and Susana De Anda of the Community Water Center in the Central Valley of California. They were both very interesting speakers and coming from such different levels of work. Maude Barlow's work focuses primarily on the Global Crisis, where as Susana De Anda's Work is more localized, in helping individual people in her area of America.

I had an economics professor in college who was convinced that the next major war would be fought over water, not oil. If it hadn't been for les imbeciles de regime cowboy, aka the Bush administration, he probably would have been correct. I believe that our food and water supply are the most important thing for us to protect at this time in history, and we are doing the exact opposite. We are centralizing our food and water supply instead of diversifying. If you want to protect your money, you don't invest it all in one place, you diversify. So why can't we understand this, with our most precious resources? In fact, a major reason for the spike in wheat and rice prices this year is because some of the major rice producers in the world are starting to realize the need to be independent. India for example is clamping down on rice exports, and as one of the worlds biggest exporters, it is bound to hurt our pockets and dramatically cuts supply. Some areas such as Australia are already facing major issues due to shortages of water. Third world countries feel it much deeper as they do not have the money and technology to filter the water that the first world has polluted. The levels of nitrites, perchlorate, and many other chemicals are off the charts in many parts of the United States. Unfortunately this water looks crystal clear and safe to drink, and when it is boiled many of these contaminants increase in concentration, particularly nitrites. Also of concern is the amount of medication, sedatives, birth control, anti psychotics that cannot be filtered out of water when it is recycled and which seep back into ground water. Many areas of the United States have undrinkable groundwater due to these pollution and contaminants. We will run out of clean water, if there is an area that I am pro technology, it is in trying to figure out how to solve this problem. The earth has an innate ability to heal itself, just as the body does, but it cannot heal itself if we keep thrashing it. Your body cannot mend a broken bone if you keep having someone hit it with a bat.

Our problem is our wasteful lifestyles. At the seminar a woman raised her hand and asked when we are going to realize that we need population control, in other words we need to stop over populating the earth. Overpopulation is not the problem, as Susana De Anda pointed out a family of 7 to 10 in rural Mexico probably produce less waste than a family of 2 in America. It is our lifestyles that lead to pollution, the draining of our resources by industrialization. Don't get me wrong, technology and industrialization have brought us many great things in America, our lives would not be the same without them. However, there is a line, bottled water is one of them. Coke and Pepsi both take water directly from the ground and bottle it. There is no filtering in most cases. You are paying for ground water, sometimes from your local area, and sometimes your local area supply might be safer. These companies are subject to sometimes monthly, often yearly inspections. In a city like New York, the tap water is tested multiple times daily. This use of fresh water in industry is also a major drain on water supply. In some areas there area actually pieces of legislation that state that in an emergency, water must be diverted for drinking and agriculture first before industry, but this does not exist in all or even most areas of our country.

The problem is not hopeless, but the time to act is now. If we run out of drinking water, we die. That is not a scare tactic, that is reality. And it is not a scare tactic to say that at the rate we are going it is inevitable. Conservation of water at a personal level is important for all of us, but it is equally, if not more important for our government to step in and regulate. We need to realize as a culture that water is not as renewable as we think.

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” Cree Indian Proverb

Blessed are Thou who Modifies Nature

The Vatican has issued a statement claiming that it is ok to genetically modify babies. The process begins with isolating a gene from one organism, plant or animal and lodging it into another. Genes can also be shut-off through this process as well so that they are no longer active. The process is a bit imprecise however, we are never really sure what the outcome will be or if we will create foreign proteins that will damage our bodies for generations to come. Although the science to genetically modify human babies is in the works, the Vatican's position is on the genetic modification of plants and non human animal life forms.

What is the difference really? What is the difference if the Vatican's position supports the modification of plants or humans. In my mind supporting one is only a short step away from supporting the other. To confuse matters even further the Vatican has recently updated its list of mortal sins which now includes, genetic experimentation, tampering with the order of nature, pollution, social injustice, causing poverty, accumulating excessive wealth, and drug abuse. Ironically. I could go through each ones of those additions and show rather definitively how the Vatican is breaking its own rules. However, here I choose to focus on those first two. Genetic Experimentation and tampering with the order of nature.

The Vatican has come out many times over the last few years in support of genetic modification. Touting the technology as the hope for the future and putting pressure on the European Union, who currently require all GM foods to be labeled and certain countries completely ban them from the market. It should be noted that the United States has no restriction on Genetic Modification and there are no labeling laws. It is estimated that around 75% or more of the average American's diet contains genetically modified foods. The Vatican claims that these patented modified foods are the answer to the worlds hunger and malnutrition problems. GM Foods are a great blow to sustainable agriculture. The seeds must be purchased every year as they are built to self destruct after one season. In the US and around the world, if a farmer buys seed one year and does not use it all they must get rid of that seed and purchase new seed every year. If they are caught "saving seed" they must pay fees for violation of the patent on the seed. Our worlds hungry need a method that will be sustainable for them forever, otherwise they will be on our welfare forever. That is what these dependent crops do, they take away independence. Some say that it is easy to be anti-GM crops when your belly is full, but our problem in this world is not a lack of food or overpopulation. Look at America, we are the most wasteful country in the world, we have ridiculous surpluses of food, and we have hungry, starving poor people in this country that have no access to food and clean water. The reasons that people in this world are starving are political and monetary, not lack of food.

A large part of the reason that third world countries have problems growing their own food is access to clean water. In many areas around the world the women of the nation spend nearly 8 hours of their day gathering fresh clean water for the household, walking miles and miles carrying pales of water. In other areas meters are installed in towns to allow only a small portion of water to be available to the residents at a great cost. Let us not forget our fellow Americans who cannot drink the tap water that they pay a municipal bill for because it contains such high levels of nitrites and perchlorate. By the way, if you boil water containing nitrites, the level of nitrites increases dramatically! It is education and access to water that is needed in these areas. If we teach people to grow crops and help them with an adequate supply of water, people can sustain themselves. GM crops are a quick fix that will destroy soil quality and keep the world dependent on patented technology. Plus we really do not know the long term implications of genetically modifying crops, the strong pesticides that are used on them, the unnatural protein and gene structures produced in these orgainisms are a potential nightmare for spreading protein diseases such as Mad Cow (BSE, human form Cruetzfeld Jacobs disease).

Companies such as Monsanto run around the world trying to push their financial agenda, in the process they occasionally pick up substantial supporters, such as the Vatican, the US Government, the G8 Summit, and people such as Bill Gates. I believe the reason these people are behind using genetically modified crops is that they are not being shown the other options forcefully enough. The other options are also not as simple. GM crops are the quick fix silver bullet that we are looking for in our society. But they are not a sustainable fix. Education and the promise of clean water are not easy things to produce, but they are necessary. The US Government, Monsanto, Cargil, and GD Searle, have been revolving doors for employees to jump from one to the other and back again. The political lobbies are so strong it is sometimes hard to tell them apart.

So my message to the Vatican, Please I beg of you, knock one mortal sin off of your repertoire. You do not need to commit them all, we believe that you are powerful enough that you do not have to follow your own rules. But this is a fairly clear cut case of tampering with nature and genetic experimentation. You have so much power, use it for good!

The Rubber Duck has New Reason to Float

Congress Moves to Ban Phthalates in Children's Toys.

Wow this is indeed a rare action by Congress! Before I explain the ban, a little about phthalates. Phthalates are a group of oily, colorless chemicals that are found in soft plastics, think vinyl, all vinyl. They are in most commercial products from plastics to shampoo. They are also used in plastic food packaging that leaks into the food being stored. They may also be used in foods as emulsifiers and in the food and cosmetic industry are completely unregulated and not required on the label. All of this despite the fact that they are on the EPA's list of toxic chemicals. They are also in the enteric coating found on many medications. The European Union banned phthalates in 2004 for all uses regarding children under the age of three.

Phthalates are xenoestrogenic, meaning that when these chemicals get into your body they mimic the hormone estrogen. Particularly in males this excess estrogen has a deleterious effect on fertility. Numerous studies with rats have confirmed these findings as has our petri dish that we call reality. For girls the estrogenic compounds can lead to early onset of menses and there are some links to breast cancer. For years people have denied that these chemicals in plastics and cosmetics were having any effect on human beings. Parents in particular, that worried about the health of their children, were concerned that these products were in their children's toys, food products, diapers, nipples on bottles, and personal care products without labeling. These products cannot be readily avoided by a conscious consumer. Phthalates are very available chemicals, they can be transferred simply by placing a toy in your mouth, let alone chewing on it. There is also evidence that phthalates can be absorbed through skin contact.

Phthalates and another chemical BPA Bisphenol-A which has similar estrogenic effect and is found in hard plastics such as Nalgene bottles, baby bottles, plastic tupperware and in the lining of canned goods, have caused much stir among scientists, environmentalists, and doctors, particularly oncologists over the last 10 years. There has been much call to remove or at least label these chemicals on products with little avail until now.

Following a ban in California and Connecticut, all phthalates are to be removed from children's toys in the United States by January 1, 2009. That is pretty quick action! To their credit, big box retailers Walmart, Toys R Us, and Target are pulling phthalate toys ASAP. The problem here is that short of testing every toy on the shelf, how will we KNOW that these imported toys are phthalate free? They weren't labeled before and historically we have not be so great with regulating manufacturing processes overseas especially with China. Well the biggest change with this bill is that it requires that all toys be tested before being sold. The current standard allows toys to be put out on the market and then recalled if they are found to be unsafe.

This brings me to a wider topic.

The Precautionary Principle.

Wikepedia defines the Precautionary Principle as a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.

This means that if you have an idea or product, you must prove it is safe. In the European union the Precautionary Principle is law. In the US however, the burden of proof often falls on the consumer. And establishment of this proof not necessarily through science, but lawsuit. This allows either laziness or corporate greed to infiltrate our market place with unsafe goods. The danger is that new chemicals and products are not labeled so consumers are indeed the petri dish in the lab, chemicals and new products are set out among us to see how we react to them. You should feel empathy for monkeys in labs, because hopefully you just woke up and realized that you are one.

These chemicals are in so many other products, that are also used on babies and the rest of us. We need to take a much wider look at this issue, however this is a great start!

Happy Meal?

I think these videos say enough!


New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less


Domino's Scientists Test Limits Of What Humans Will Eat

I believe that the NY Times is TRYING to get me to stop reading their paper!

Two articles in the health section of the times have me livid over the stupidity our culture when it comes to our bodies and health. Lest I sound like an angry vegan, I assure you I am not, but sometimes I just want to bang my head against a wall because I cannot understand peoples thinking. Last night reading the NY Times online I came across an article titled, "Drugs Offer Promise of Fitness without Effort," it has been aptly renamed, "Couch Mouse to Mr. Mighty by Pills Alone."

Please see for yourself http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/science/01muscle.html

This article tells of a pill being given to mice to make their bodies feel as though they have exercised and make their muscles look toned. The scientists seem very hopeful about these pills implications for diabetics. Yes that is right diabetics, sit on the couch eating a pint of ice cream sweetened with Splenda and pop this pill; life will be all right!

The side effects of this pill are not listed, though I would imagine they are numerous. I do not want to think what this would do to the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands, not to mention the all important liver. And if it really makes the body believe it has exercised so hard, how about the risk of stroke and pulmonary embolism in people who are unfit to exercise vigorously. How about bone mass, will it increase that too? If it doesn't people will be left with more than a crushed spirit. Plus how long will this pill work for before it stops? It would only stand to reason that we would develop a resistance to this drug just as we do any other. What happens then?

We think we are so cleaver with science, we see the body as a machine, and think we can outsmart it. Well until we can build a self sustaining machine with emotions and epithelial tissue we shouldn't be messing with mother nature so much. We pride ourselves in the west with a longer life expectancy thanks to drug culture, than other parts of the world. Well guess what? It is not true anymore! This generations of children will be the first to not outlive their parents. Look at our sick children! They do not need more medication, they need exercise, REAL food, and love!

There may be some application for this drug, probably among body builders for purely aesthetic reasons at the risk of their health, but not to diabetics.

In my opinion Americans are anti exercise for the same reason they are anti vegetables. We are told from the minute we are born, from our families and advertising that we will not like them! It is a conditioned response. That is what needs to change, adults need to start leading by example and being parents to their children. The excuses are killing us and not slowly. Within a generation, cancer, heart disease, and metabolic diseases have sky rocketed. That's not genetics. It is stupidity and shortsightedness.



Second on my hit list of NY Times articles is this one on birth control. Titled "Weighing the Health Benefits of Birth Control"

http://health.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-contraception-ess.html

The article in fact does no such thing as weigh the health benefits of birth control pills. What it does to is spill out all of the reasons why drug companies say the pills is healthy and actually an improvement over the natural state of affairs in your life. It makes no attempt to weigh out or check any of these claims just put them out there. The article is more concerned with convenience than health. Just because something is convienient doesn't make it healthy. It seems to imply that all women should be on the pill until they are ready to conceive because somehow it makes you healthier. And it states that the reason there are so many unplanned pregnancies in this country is because people are non committal to taking their "medication."

I will disclose that my anger over this article is purely personal. I was personally on the pill, and several different brands, for 4 years and it had some horrible effects on me. The details I will spare for the most part except to say that I was not in complete control of my body and certainly not my emotions. The British Broadcasting Company. British researchers at several universities have conducted experiments and found that the pill effects women’s sexuality and decision-making abilities. Likening the hormonal changes that take place to the phenomenon of beer-goggles, calling them pill-goggles. In these studies the researchers found that taking the pill may actually encourage women to have relationships with unsuitable men simply because they have more masculine features. Lead researcher Tony Little going as far as to say that, “A woman who chooses a partner while on the pill, and then comes off to have a child, may find that she married the wrong man.”

Women in another study were less likely to be influenced by pheromones. I felt very strongly that my senses were dampened while on the pill and I have heard this from several other women as well. Some saying that they can feel and smell better after a few months of being off the pill. I really did feel as though I got my body back after going off the pill, as if I was getting to know myself all over again after four years. I suddenly was much more rational, particularly with regard to relationships. Certainly could be used to explain a lot of my college relationships!

Something that I must point out in this article that I do not understand is the line that says in paraphrase, that taking the pill will make women healthier before getting pregnant. Scientifically this makes no sense to me. When you are on the pill your body essentially believes it is pregnant for the entire duration. Never relenting. This means that my body thought it was pregnant for 4 years straight. There are obvious implications on the hormonal system, but how did that make me healthier? Bleeds are not real, but what are called withdrawal bleeds and this article goes into the newer pills that wipe that out all together.

Let me be clear though, I completely agree that women need to be healthier before pregnancy and that it would solve a lot of the problems faced in pregnancies and postpartum. But in my humble opinion that should include a longer amount of time off of the pill before getting pregnant.

Back to the main point, Milwaukee DOES NOT have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country because not enough of the girls are on birth control pills.

Again our problem is not lack of drugs, it is lack of personal responsibility! Things happen, condoms, diaphragms, and even the mighty birth control pills fail, but not enough to make 50% of the pregnancies in the US unplanned as the article states. That is a responsibility and education issue. Guess what? Denying sex education in school and denying birth control pills at pharmacies is not effective pregnancy prevention. We need to teach girls why THIS is not ok:


I came across that picture while image searching. But I have seen girls just her age, sporting similar clothing. Next time you are at the beach, take a look around at the young girls, if you are a man do this discretely... See how many of them are proudly sporting the birth control patch. Seemingly the newest fashion accessory thats screams "look at me, you can't knock this up! ....probably"

Antibacterial Everything!

I was staying at a relatives house and while taking a shower I noticed that the liquid soap I was about to use was anti-bacterial body wash. What possible need could I have to use antibacterial soap everywhere? I suppose this would be more for your head than your body because physiologically this is a bad idea. Unless if you are of a compromised immune system or very intimately taking care of someone that is using these soaps and instant hand sanitizers at all is unnecessary. Your body takes care of itself, if you have healthy insides, exposure to most common daily bacteria is good for you and will make you stronger.

This idea that dirt and germs are bad rises out of the early 1900's when people were struggling to get away from the land and moved into cities. Cities became crowded and they could no longer simply let cows graze in the city and had no room for agricultural plots to grow food. They started to outsource the work of providing food to the country side. Farming practices were not always top notch. Efforts were made to maximize productivity but at the cost of safety. Many people started to get sick from milk, meat, and produce that was coming in from these unsanitary regions. With Luis Pasteur's invention of pasteurization and a growing awareness of germ theory the conclusion was made that if we kill all of the germs and bacteria the product will be healthier. Along with the bad, we killed the good and haven't looked back yet. Unfortunately we are now seeing super bugs that we cannot kill. Bacteria and Viruses reproduce and mutate in ways that we do not fully understand. But when we create breeding grounds by killing everything else off we are setting up a bad situation for ourselves.

Think about when you were growing up. Was the kid that was always playing in the dirt, the one that was always sick? Likely not. It was probably the one whose mother wouldn't let him go outside. Go outside, touch a subway pole, eat naturally raised meat products and raw milk from quality places if you can get your hands on it. Let the bacteria roam free, especially the good ones.

Cargil and Coke: for once they may do some good

Cargil and Coca-cola have teamed up to produce a diet soda that is sweetened with Stevia. The product has gone through many different names from Rebiania to now Truvia. Stevia is a roughly zero calorie, low glycemic natural sweetener, unlike aspartame i.e. nutra sweet, splenda, equal, ace-k, and countless others. If you have watched Sweet Misery or read my post on it, you know that I believe these sweeteners will kill you, if not directly via some sort of cancer, then ultimately of a neurological condition. Some people are extremely sensitive to these chemicals, that is what they are, chemicals, nothing natural about them. Even Splenda, whose "Tastes like sugar, because it is made from sugar" advertisement has put many peoples health in jeopardy as they consume these products.

What baffles me most about artificial sweeteners is not that people use them, or that they are allowed to be marketed, I understand the short comings of FDA in this country too well for that. Most of all I do not understand why people continue to use them. It has been proven over and over again that these sweeteners will actually cause you to gain weight and in very unhealthy ways. They are neurotoxins, your liver does not know what to do with them, it stores them as fat. Things remain stored in your adipose tissue for very long periods. So why would people continue to use a product that is in no way "diet"? Well all I can think of is that they do it because they continue to be told that it is what is good for them. It is just like the margarine situation all over again. Sooner the politics behind the push for these artificial sweeteners wont be enough to sustain it and somehow it will manifest in the public eye that these things are killing us. And these days they are in everything! From toothpaste to yogurt.

So if Stevia is a natural sweetener why is it not used instead of all of these proven dangerous substances? Well that again all comes down to politics and if you watch Sweet Remedy you will hear all about it. Basically Stevia is not allowed to be marketed as a sweetener, only as a supplement, thanks to Monsanto. But if Cargil succeeds in getting it approved by the FDA as a GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) substance it will open a lot of new doors. To get something approved by the FDA as GRAS it takes a lot of political clout and money. Cargil has that, and now the time is right for them to hopefully gain approval. Occasionally, albeit not very often, what is actually good for the masses becomes economically good for big corporations. This is one of those times.

Cargil has developed a stevia sweetener called Truvia. Stevia is sold in stores but as a dietary supplement, not as a sweetener. For now Truvia is a supplement. Hopefully with time it will finally knock all of the artificial sweeteners off the shelves.

But now Coca-cola is after this new product. Obviously it would be best to not drink soda at all. But realistically people are not going to stop any time soon. As long as Cargil doesn't alter anything about Stevia while dubbing it Truvia this will be a very good thing, at least a step in the right direction for drinkers of diet soda.

The World According to Monsanto

A new documentary that recently aired on French Television. Learn more about Monsanto, your food supply, and GMOs. Very good documentary. Even if you know nothing about Monsanto or seed security, this documentary will teach you a lot, everything is explained very well.

The Business of Being Born

The Business of Being Born is a documentary on childbirth in America. It is a project taken on by Ricki Lake and explores the options or lack there of women giving birth in America. The pushing of C-sections, drugs, and anything but natural births. The following is the trailer for the movie:



This flim is as much about our connection in America to giving birth and ways in which we view it as it is about real options that women have. It also explores in depth why things are done the way they are, and almost none of it has to do with the best needs of the baby and mother.

Genmaicha -An unexpected surprise

Genmaicha is green tea with toasted brown rice. It is remarkably nutty and flavorful. It took me off guard at first, a flavor of tea that I did not know how to describe. With its earthy grain flavor I soon became enthralled. I inquired about what was in the tea and was quite surprised when it was disclosed that it was brown rice. The nutty grainy flavor makes it almost feel like a comfort food to me. I picked up some Genmaicha today in Chinatown at Ten Ren's.

Is Your Fish Bloated?

STPP (Sodium Tri-polyphosphate)

Sounds delicious doesn't it?

Your carpet thinks it sounds good when it is being cleaned with it, as do you walls when it is thinning the paint off of them.

But what does this mean to all of us?

Well, we along with our carpets and clothes, we are consuming an awful lot of it. It is used as a preservative in fish, meats, poultry along with other processed goods including detergent and toothpaste as a whitening and cleaning agent. Is it preserving taste? Perhaps stopping the growth of some harmful bacteria? No, actually, it is preserving water. It is making the fish bloated and keeping them from losing water on their long journey to you. If fish is treated with a lot of STPP it means that you are paying for this extra water that fish is retaining when it is weighed.

According to Wikipedia, in 2000, in western Europe the estimated consumption of STPP from food sources was around 300,000 tonnes. Studies for US consumption? I don't know, we don't really do that kind of thing here in the US. What I can tell you is that it is a GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) substance designated by the FDA, which means...exactly nothing to me.

You see the FDA should be looking out for our best interest, unfortunately this is not the case on the whole. The partnerships forged between big business, lobbyist, and the FDA render them unrecognizable from each other. We have to remember that when it comes down to making decisions about our health, there are ultimately people in charge. These people are just people, they are the man behind the curtain, not the "Wizard of Oz." They have no special powers, no extraordinary moral code, and it seems all to often no dedication to safety. They are subject to the same laziness, lapses in judgments, and bullying that can sway even the best of us. When people's money is at stake, morality all to often goes out the window.

The fishing companies claim that polyphosphates are not harmful to humans. They claim that once you ingest them, the polyphosphates will break down into single units of phosphate they will be ingested in the same way that any other naturally occurring phosphate would enter your body. They do concede however, that large amounts of the substance may be harmful, but feel that the average consumer consumes much less than this threshold. The UK and the European Union are both in the process of studying the amount of Polyphosphate that can be injurious to the health of humans. They are considering imposing strict limits, and I believe they already have some import limits.

So, how can you avoid a chemical like STPP. With the exception of carefully questioning the fish vendor at your local farmer's market and watching them from the time the fish is caught until it hits your plate, you can't. The same goes for other products plumped up with the chemical. Trying asking the fish vendor at your local supermarket if the fish contains STPP, they are still trying to get down the wild versus farm raised question.

Here in the United States STPP consumption is dropping in the detergent industry, in favor of more natural substances. As far as food goes, it is not even on the radar of most people. And in all honesty, with the rash of problems with our food supply, before we tackle this problem, we do indeed have bigger fish to fry!

The Myth of the Baby Carrot!

I was having a conversation with a friend and she starts to tell me how she only likes baby carrots and not regular carrots. To this I respond, wow that is interesting, considering that baby carrots are regular carrots, but they are cut up and shaped. She did not believe me...

In her mind I believe somewhere there is a baby carrot field, where tiny perfectly shaped carrots grow. In reality this is not the case.

Granted there are varieties of small carrots that have been harvested early, but these are not the uniformly shaped, bright orange carrots everyone eats. This type of carrot would be generally served with the plant part still attached and steamed.

So once and for all, let me dis spell the myth.

Baby carrots are regular carrots!

They are usually made from oddly shaped, less aesthetically pleasing carrots, that are peeled and cut into the uniformly shaped carrots you see in plastic in the grocery store. The carrots in some cases have been bred or genetically modified to have their bright orange color, sometimes to be sweeter, and be larger from the start with uniform size all the way through the carrot. After they are cut they are soaked in some sort of antimicrobial substance such as chlorine to keep them fresh and from developing a film in the package.

So there you have it!

What is my opinion of baby carrots? Well, a good deal of the nutrients are in the peel of the carrot, which is clearly gone in the baby carrot situation. Also they lose nutrients in the soaking processes, and whether those antimicrobial processes are doing anything to them or adding something you do not want to ingest, I am not sure. But for every day a carrot is out of the ground it is losing nutrients. So you are better off to eat regular carrots from that perspective, there is no processing time, you are likely to get them sooner.

A Remedy For Sweet Misery?

Sweet Misery and Sweet Remedy are two well done documentaries on the effects of Aspartame and politics behind its approval as a GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) substance.

Aspartame, along with all other artificial sweeteners, is a serious neurotoxin that leads some people to become very ill and can cause brain damage and exacerbate symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, have seizures, headaches and other effects that we are only beginning to comprehend.

Also find out Donald Rumsfeld's direct connection to the FDA approval during his time working with G.D. Searle.

Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World




Sweet Remedy: A World Reacts




What I find interesting about artificial sweeteners is that they do not help you lose weight. They actually cause you to gain body fat in areas such as your abdomen and hips because your liver doesn't know what to do with the poison and it stores it as fat. Baring the issue of diabetics, people seem to buy this stuff because they think it is healthier. There really is no evidence that this stuff is safe at all and in fact a large body of evidence that it isn't. If you are over the age of 20 you probably remember seeing on sweet and low packets that it had been proven to cause cancer in lab rats. Well guess what, the fact that it is no longer there has nothing to do with the safety of the product and everything to do with politics. When other sweeteners came out and the substances were pushed through as GRAS all dangerous labels came off. If you think you don't ingest artificial sweeteners think again, they are in your toothpaste, dental floss, mouthwash, yogurt, vitamins, mints, all "diet" products, protein shakes, cookies, gum and countless other places that you wouldn't expect them.

If you suffer from headaches, nausea, or mood swings take a look at your diet and see if eliminating artificial sweeteners helps the problem.

The second documentary also goes into Mono Sodium Glutamate MSG, material for another post...

Viagraberries and AIDS-vaccine Pear?

This is an except directly out of the book "Last Chance to Eat" by Gina Mallet published in 2004. I picked it up at Strand Books last week, and highly recommend it.

She details the declining taste and quality in food along with the rise in industries such as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and Aquaculture (farm raised fish), among others.

This is the Epilogue from the book. I was going to do just small excerpts but I couldn't decide what to pull out, it is all good. It made me laugh, and then cry :(

"Imagine flying over North America and Europe in, say, the next couple generations. The first thing you notice is how much of the land is doomed with transparent plastic. All fruit and vegetables that can be are grown under glass, and those can't are gone, with the exception of some field crops. As far as the eye can see, wind turbines march across the land, even into the sea, like armies of giant cranes. The coastlines are back to their old shape, though, because the fish farms are no more. All factory farms have been banned since excrement, human and animal, was threatening to overwhelm the earth. Fish and beef are produced in small quantities and the animals are treated kindly. Pigs play football in their spare time and calves swing baseball bats-both sports are popular among animal brethren.

The foodscape has changed at ground level. The two foods that scientists discovered to be the healthiest, most likely to extend life, were alcohol and dark chocolate. As a result, people became drunk and got fat. This sent scientists rushing back to the lab. How could it be that the healthiest things were in fact the unhealthiest? This latest crisis of confidence in food science prompted the government finally to step in, and alcohol and chocolate are now strictly rationed. Each consumer is given coupons with which they buy their weekly share, along with their beef and fish rations. This hasn't stopped wave after wave of lawsuits from consumers claiming their lives are being shortened. While they wait for justice, however, they can go to the foodeasy. Foodeasies sell forbidden food after dark.

Once the amount of time the industrial human spends watching something rather than doing it was put at 90 percent, the authorities decided that the human aiming at eternal life, "kick the death habit," must change diets, concentrate on lighter food, mainline liquids constantly. So the state authorized hydration stations, run privately, which look like old time Coke machines and dispense organic, plasticlike packs of liquid nutrients, flavored and sweetened artificially. At first, there was fear that the water might run out; but then a cheap way to desalinate the oceans was discovered, and global warming did the rest.

Food often looks different. Eggs now come shelled in transparent packs of some kind of organic material. Milk no longer exists; it has been replaced by genetically modified soy, once it was found there was no way to wipe out pathogens in industrial cattle. There is no butter because of the cow problem; it has been replaced by genetically modified canola oil spread, which tastes of nothing. There is no honey because the bees were redundant once we had genetically modified plants, and only bumblebees were needed, with the occasional vibrator. There are no more apples because they were too much trouble to grow, and we are now in a trade war with China and cannot import them.

The most popular fruit is the GM Viagraberry, a huge strawberrylike fruit, strawberries and raspberries crossed and spiked with Viagra. After much polling and many in depth focus groups consensus was reached on the favorite fruit, the strawberry, of course. Raspberries scored high, but they are no longer grown as they are too labor intensive a crop, and no machine seemed able to pick them as capably as humans, so the search was on to find some way to keep the flavor. Viagra was no-brainer as the increasingly aging population has no end of sexual problems.

It is now common for transgenic fruits and vegetables to be spiked with vaccines, vitamins, and mood-changing drugs, excellent add-ons when it comes to sales. The AIDS-vaccine pear is hugely successful and has revived pears as a fruit. Onions are banned because they rotted too fast in the markets. They have been replaced by transgenic scalery, a mix of celery and scallions. Another successful transgenic cross is the pinemelon, a smooth orange melon tasting like pineapple, pinapples themselves proving too unreliable a commercial crop.

Only one supermarket chain is left. The only one necessary because most people don't cook, they eat takeaways as in "Come on over for a takeaway," and takeaway cooks buy wholesale. Takeaway is almost all ethnic-industrial sushi, fajitas, lasagna, chicken tikka, fish and chips.

There are still a few restaurants serving Grandads, as meals are now called, and they are patronized by old and older people, those who still remember what an omelette fines herbes used to taste like. The chefs are French almost without exception as they were the only cookds to hide their books when the Food Police decided to eliminate all gastronomically incorrect cookbooks, the kind that featured verboten foods like butter and wine, beef and fish. Some restuarants are licensed to serve the small amounts of meat that has been organically raised and closely supervised, and a Porterhouse steak is what Beluga caviar once was - expensive, and hard to get. You need atleast five people's rations to buy it. On nights that steak is advertised, the restaurants is invariably sold out, although some pesky perfectionists grumble that the meat is obviously wet-aged, not dry-aged.

It is generally agreed that the best place to eat a Grandad is at home, but then the problem arises how to find a home that still makes Grandads. After the supreme technological kitchen of the nineties was declared environmentally unfriendly, those who had them felt so guilty that they tore them out and replaced them with the sole essentials for modern eating: the microwave and the refrigerator. People who kept their old kitchens are frowned upon as insensitive. "Have you thought at all about how the non-aligned nations have to eat?" Owners of old kitchens are careful not to boast, but their kitchens are regarded the same way a fine Boulle cabinet was once, as a priceless antique. See the great six burner stove and the copper hood, the bar sink and dish sink, the silent Rolls-Royce of a dishwasher where the only sounds is the click when the cycle changes, the glistening freezer-fridge, the home coffee roaster, the blender, electric beater, food processor, the maple chopping block, the battery of knives, so many wooden spoons and metal whisks, the gleaming cookware...

Guests who attend a Grandad are invited by self destructing email. Which means the invitation is destroyed the moment the recipient reads it, so no one else gets wind of it and tries to crash. To get invited to a Grandad, you have to join a Health Club, the cover for Grandads, an you receive a password with which you can log on to an encrypted Grandad newsletter that gives you the address of new foodeasies, and accounts of recent Grandads that featured leg of lamb with flageolets verts, osso bucco, pork roast with crackling, and of course Montrachet and Haut-Brion, and Scharffen-Berger Chocolate from the foodeasy. Sometimes a Grandad veteran gets carried away - usually after too many glassed of contraband Dom Perignon - and cries when he talkes about the bad old days, when people ate so well and enjoyed their food. But he is quickly shushed because it is all too painful. Food is dead, continuity is dead, and the new Ice Age finally closes over our heads."


I titled this Viagraberries and AIDS-vaccine Pear? for two reasons, one to get your attention, but two because this is sadly not far from the truth. Our food is fortified with all kind of nutrients. To the scientists putting them in there it doesn't really seem to matter if we actually absorb them it is more of a marketing gimmick. In Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" he says that we used to think that food of the future would be in the form of a pill, now it is more like the pill is in our food. This is especially true right now, when food scientists are trying to genetically modify rice to be anti malarial and spraying store bought cold cuts right here in the US with bacteria killing viruses. Viruses sprayed on your food trigger an immune response in your body even if you do not get sick. This causes unnecessary strain on your immune system. All of this is done to hide shady and unsanitary manufacturing processes that leave the products vulnerable to pathogens.

Stand up for your right to eat the food you want! If we don't this bleak picture will be even further upon us.

Genetically Modified Foods - There is something you should know.

"About 70% of the food we eat contains genetically engineered ingredients and the biotech industry is spending millions a year to convince us that this technology is our only hope."

If you do not know anything about genetically modified organisms(GMO), it is time you start educating yourself. These foods are extremely pervasive in your food supply, particularly if you live in the US. The European Union bans Genetically Modified food and is very vigilant about keeping GMO's out of their food supply. Are they wrong, or are we turning a blind eye to a problem that could be bigger than any of us would like to accept?

Fed Up! (2002)

Redbridge Beer - Beer made with me in mind.

As one of the roughly 1 and 133 people in the US living with Celiac Disease it is very rare that I drink beer. Beer is made with barley and other gluten filled grains that I must avoid. Redbridge is made from sorghum, a gluten free grain, and is produced by Anheuser-Busch.

I must preface the following with two pieces of information:

1) I was never a beer drinker before my diagnosis (about 3 years ago)
2)I am forever grateful that companies are coming around and making gluten free products of all kinds that I may enjoy.

From what I remember, Redbridge tastes like any other beer, quite good along those lines. I however, apparently have not quite acquired a taste for beer. I was never a fan, and I am not one now. I am sort of determined though to find what people enjoy so much about beer. As a lover all of all good foods, especially ones that are finely crafted, there must be something there that I am not getting. Or perhaps not... Maybe I haven't had it with the right food, or at the right moment, or maybe I am missing the taste bud that likes it. ;) My selection of beer is now quite limited, but I will try again...

Monsanto: Patent for the Pig

If you do not know anything about the company Monsanto, stay tuned to future blogs. This short 42 minute documentary can give you a bit of an idea of the tactics of the company. They are currently trying to patent a gene sequence of pigs. This would be the first patent on a biological life form. The scariest part of this is not that they are searching for the patent, but that they have not done anything to warrant it. All they have done is compare gene sequences of pigs and found which are likely to be the largest and most substantial. The patenting of this information will allow Monsanto to file lawsuits against against pig farmers that currently have pigs that have this gene sequence! This natural gene sequence, that Monsanto claims to have "discovered." The repercussions of this are endless. Please watch this video and send it to your friends.

Real Smoked Cured Chorizo

At Esposito’s Pork Shop on Ninth Ave in Manhattan you can find the best REAL chorizo sausage I have ever eaten. I made it once just cutting it into small round slices and heating it in a big cast iron skillet. And the other time cut length wise into thin shaved slices, fried up in a wok with onions, pepper, and garlic. Both were very tasty. I do not know how I will eat chorizo from anywhere else!

Corked wine and wowed by an Oloroso (Sherry)

Yesterday for the first time I tasted what a wine is like when it is slightly corked. This wine wasn’t undrinkable and in fact to me initially it just tasted very austere and dry. Upon further inspection, by that I mean someone pointing it out to me, I realized that it was starting to turn. It had a slightly cardboard flavor and reminded me of the smell of wet fur. I won’t say what the wine was but it was a red wine from along the River Duero in Spain.

A wine being corked is a term that refers to a set of undesirable smells and tastes that is only detected when the wine is opened. The presence of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) is usually found in a bottle of wine with these smells and tastes. It is not known why a particular wine becomes corked and therefore not predictable.

After that I had the pleasure of tasting a Matusalem Oloroso Dulce Muy Viejo, a sweet 25 year aged Sherry from Spain. Full bodied wine, dark brown in color almost like that of light maple syrup. It left a coffee flavor in my mouth and throughout tasted of Maple Syrup, Coffee, Roasted Nuts, and Caramel. It was a really good dessert Sherry.

Functional Circuit Training and Organic Farming

I just saw a guy on the street with a shirt that said, “Functional Circuit Training” on it. He clearly worked out and may have even been a trainer. For some reason this really peaked my curiosity. Enough that I thought about running after him to talk about it. Though I wouldn’t hold someone to something that is on their t-shirt especially if they may work in an industry like the fitness world where you get a lot of free promotional stuff. When you take multiple showers and change clothes multiple times a day, you need clean t-shirts. If you catch me at the right moment you might be able to get me to put on an I *heart* Britany t-shirt.

Regardless, more important than the man wearing the shirt is the message, or lack there of. What does that even mean? Does Functional Circuit Training involve Kettlebells? If so, maybe I am down.

So I did a little research, turns out that you can become NESTA certified to be a Circuit Training Instructor. Through this certification you become certified to teach Hydraulic Circuit Training (riiiiight...), Traditional Weight Circuit Training, Functional Circuit Training, and Sports Specific, you guessed it Circuit Training all for the bargain price of $160.00. However, though I can pay for the home study course which includes no actual “function” except answering some multiple choice questions, I cannot find a good definition on their website of what it is exactly that makes this special. To me trying to sell functional training is like trying to sell someone on eating an apple after you have told them for a decade that an orange was an apple. They will probably miss the point completely and focus on the semantics.

My issue with this t-shirt slogan is that it is some man or woman’s attempt at reinventing the wheel to impress and bewilder you.

So let me break it down for you. At some point there was just exercise, mostly in the form of manual labor. This was indeed “functional” exercise. Improving your function at this particular task of life. At some point someone came along and decided that they wanted to make a ton of money off of busy people and invented the machine in the gym, or even the free weights. Refer to these persons as Cybex, Nautilus, Hammer Strength, ICarian, or my personal favorite Precor, whoever you want it doesn’t matter. Just as GE did for dinner, they made workouts easy, and much much less “functional” in its original sense.

But as time went on we all lost touch with our bodies, due to busy work schedules or some never being in touch in the first place. We just listen to these manufactures, joined a gym, and got down a routine. For many people this routine was a circuit. In traditional circuit training as I know it, you work every body part to exhaustion and then go again for a second set, or you alternate body parts with different exercises, in a circuit, always coming full circle. Unless if you live in the film short Tango, this will not be very functional for your life. (Hopefully at least one person in the world besides me gets that reference) That is not to say that it cannot be helpful in absence of anything else. It is certainly time efficient.

Sidebar - Did you know babies don’t really crawl anymore? They often just skip that phase and go right to walking. Crawling is an exercise essential to developing proper integration. If you didn’t crawl as a baby get down on all fours right now. I’m serious, it will do you good.

Back to what I was saying, as we lost touch, there was great financial opportunity for so called experts to jump into the field. People listened to these experts many of whom glistened with their steely six packs and fake tans, bloated on whey protein and weight gainers. Most of whom had nothing productive to offer but being eye candy. While in my eyes, as eye candy these people hold very valuable places in society, they should not be directing your workouts.

So they sold you on all of this and now they are trying to sell you on functional training. They are trying to sell you on what you once knew, what we once all knew as a culture. Sound confusing? It should, that is what these people are going for. The more bewildered you are, the more you will buy, the richer they get and the more people praise them for it. It is not necessarily malicious either, I believe that they believe what they are doing is helpful and in the interest of the people they are selling to, with one exception, the people that made those pulsing abdominal belts that allow you to sit on the couch and eat fritos while loosing weight. I believe those people knew they were full of sh*t.

So the title of this post was Functional Circuit Training and Organic Farming, seems that I have not established a connection between the two, but here it is... In the same way you are being sold the word functional with exercise, you are being sold the word organic with food. A hundred years ago everything was organic until someone came along and decided to profit large scale off of agriculture, make it more efficient, spray crops with chemicals, growth hormones, human sewage, you name it to increase yields and at the same time confuse the hell out of you and bully your local farmer. One thing is sure hasn’t done is improve taste. The declining taste of food in America is hard for anyone to dispute.

With the mechanical takeover of agriculture, came a subsequent decline in laborious jobs from which the workers derived significant exercise. This decline in exercise left the door open for inventions that made exercise fit back into our lives. Now we are fitting exercise back into our lives instead of our lives revolving around exercise, in the same way that we now fit meals into our lives as opposed to the rest of the things we have to do being secondary to meals.

My point is that organic is not a new invention and neither is functional exercise, in fact they are older than anything we know. So instead of getting involved in all of the rhetoric of these people, take a step back and look at what you can learn from history, see if you can learn anything from something your grandmother said to you as a child. and maybe, just maybe, if you are not too scared, take a look at what your instincts have to tell you. We, in America, spend less time in search of food and more time trying to avoid food than any animal on earth. We are in the middle of a major food crisis right now and maybe only generously 2% of Americans could even fathom that that is possible gauging on what Americans waste and consume every day.

There are ways to not participate in this giant mess of rhetoric, one of the best is to shop local as much as possible, this dramatically cuts out the supply chain that helps to perpetuate these activities. As far as exercise, get out of the gym and give yourself some more time! Trying to squeeze in that 30 minute workout, functional or not, is not the best way to go about it. Find something that you enjoy doing, that doesn’t involve a fixed machine. If you have kids play with them, if you like to garden get outside, go for a hike, go for a walk, buy some snowshoes, there are endless possibilities here. All, you guessed it... functional.