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.