Category Archives: food

Da bees

by

Well, it’s refreshing that some countries are paying attention.  And acting on it.

Purdue Research on the problem here: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120111KrupkeBees.html

What bothers me when researchers report that the pesticides are causing the problem, instead of advocating eliminating pesticides and using beneficial (complimentary) methods of insect control, they want t come up with some other scientific method.

It’s like throwing a rock through a window and trying to correct the damage by putting a newspaper over it….doesn’t really address the problem, does it?

To me, it kind of feels like avoiding responsibility–avoiding the harder choice of trying to work with nature instead of against it.  Farmers in Indiana never met a tree they liked–if you look at Indiana on the map, you can pick it out from the other states by the absence of trees.  One of the reasons I admire Michigan and Ohio is they actually seem to like trees and it’s pleasant to drive through the states.  (Well, I could say something about Ohio drivers, but I’ll save that for another time….:)

So…the farmers remove as many trees from the acres as they can because they want to use every inch of space for crops…but the problem is that they remove the habitats of the birds that eat insects.  It also creates more wind erosion by taking away the windbreaks…hence drier soil that is more susceptible during drought.

It takes more work to factor in all of this, and the motivation just isn’t there.  It’s just too easy to apply chemicals to control for insects, weeds, and fertilize.

 

Slooooow Food

by

…versus Fast Food.  Here’s a link to the Slow Food website.  As the website states, Slow Food is a way of life–a sustainable way of feeding ourselves without destroying the environment (and ourselves) in the process.

Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food movement after the first McDonald’s opened its doors in Italy.

The National Heirloom Expo is held annually to draw attention to what’s happening with the GMO seeds and to promote heirloom seeds (non-GMO).

Seed Savers website here.   Another website here.

Finally, here’s Treehugger.com, where those dirty effing hippies must hang out.  🙂

Note that in the comments, the readers state there is a controversy with Seed Savers being stacked with corporate toadies….intrigue among the seeds. <sigh>

A rather depressing article here. 

Bill and Melinda Gates controlling the world food supply along with Monsanto is a scary thought.  It’s apparently not enough for them (Gates)  foisting “education reform” on the children of the United States…

…and his comments on environmentalists being against GMO’s speak of his true intent…

As the Grist article states, organic farming has proven to be effective during times of drought, more so than chemical-based farming.  And it goes on to remark about organic/sustainable farming being ideal for the poor communities.  It’s a no-brainer to me:  you put food scraps in a compost pile that turns into a rich soil that you put back into the ground.  This rich compost returns nutrients and beneficial microbes back to the soil.  One of the problems with chemical farming is that it strips the land of nutrients and the soil deteriorates, requiring more water than compost-rich soil.  Any poor person could do that–returning food scraps back to the soil is free.

An interesting article here.

John Ikerd is a retired professor out of the U of Missouri.  He’s an advocate of sustainable farming and has written extensively about it. Link here.

The problem that most folks are unaware there is a problem.  They go to their grocers, see rows of fresh food and shelves stocked to the hilt, and think everything is great….

…and the only thing left will be GMO food that makes them ill…

Fighting the Good fight

by

Turtle Talk has a link up to this story.  I’m glad that the judge gave a nod that the lawsuit has merit–I hope that they pursue it at the state level.

Along those lines, I’ve posted before, but it bears repeating, that I don’t believe that it is a character issue, but that alcoholism is a chemical imbalance of some sort.

In the great book, Potatoes Not Prozac, Kathleen Desmaisons wrote about her experience in counseling alcoholics.  (It’s been awhile since I read the book, so I’m going on memory)  In it, she describes counseling people who really wanted to quit drinking, but were unable to.  She began asking them about diet, and discovered that they reacted to sugar much more so than the average person.  They would get spikes in their blood levels after eating sugar–a high with it. That is, when they saw a plate of cookies warm out of the oven, they wanted to devour the entire plate, whereas most folks would be able to stop at a few.   When she developed a diet that was low glycemic (slow rises in blood sugar levels), her patients began to get their drinking under control–they no longer had the sugar highs that made it difficult to give up the drink highs, too.
Additionally, I wonder about the connection with zinc.  I first read about the connection between zinc and anorexia in the book Food, Mood, Body Connection by Gary Null.  He quotes a doctor who was treating anorexic patients and discovered that those that took liquid zinc were helped in an amazing four days’ time.  They characteristically had difficulty digesting zinc in any other form.  The disgusting part was when this doctor made a presentation to hospital staff about his findings, the bean counters let the person (who invited him) know that this would cut into their profits.  The hospital had a clinic for eating disorders…and the ole’ morality versus profits question came up….and you can guess what happened—morality lost.  The information was withheld from patients so they could profit off of their condition.

I’ve wondered about this and cravings–whether it be alcohol, chocolate, cigarettes, etc.–because of my own experience of having the chocolate cravings go down when I started taking a supplement with zinc glycinate.

I found this link on how alcoholics are low in zinc–just as anorexics and mercury poisoned folks are—so now it seems there would be a connection?  Hmmm…

More sauerkraut adventures…

by

I’ve joined yet another support group–for GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome).

One of the members also has a blog and posted this.  I thought I’d pass it along for anyone also following this diet.  It kind of tickles me that the Pickl-It jars are a lot like the jars I’m using for making my own sauerkraut.  I think I might try the longer method of fermentation–cabbage itself is known to irritate the thyroid, which is what I suspect is going on with this lady’s child.  I’ve noticed the “red neck” rash on my neck after eating sauerkraut, even though it has benefited my gut in other ways…so, yeah, longer fermentation with kefir whey seems to be the ticket.

(A side note~ I didn’t get a migraine last month–just a bad headache…saying this with fingers crossed so not to jinx myself.)

 

Funding for organic research questioned

by

commondreams has this up on the questions of who funded this bogus study.  Knowing about how corporations are trying to influence university’s research, I was suspicious of this study from the start.

Links on the subject here. 

And here.

And here.

And here.  This isn’t shocking to me–Monsanto was giving huge amounts to Purdue University.  During a panel on the genetically modified organisms, circa 1998, they asserted there was no problem with GMO’s.  The panel was made up of three scientists–one against GM’s and the other two for them.  The technology was new and had not been tested for adverse affects not only on humans, but nature, as well.

Deer have been known to cross a road to eat organic corn if a choice were given between GMO corn.  Here’s a link to an article.

A thought struck me as I read that last article–these crops are engineered to “drink poison”.  If we put aside the genetic manipulation, and look at the ability for the gene to absorb much more pesticides, etc., wouldn’t that be multiplying the devastating effects of those chemicals on the body?  I mean, we know how devastating chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT, etc.) are…so it stands to reason that it’s exponentially more so with these GM crops.  And the Celiac thing–how much is being influenced by not only eating GM crops, but breathing in that poison from, say, corn pollen? Article here. Note that this was clear back in 1999–this stuff has been known…and yet the Monsanto monster continues to grow…

When profits come up against morality…

by

…it’s rare that profit loses… (Shirley Chisholm, first woman presidential candidate)

commondreams has the story here on the banks’ speculation on food:  corn, soy, and wheat.  Be sure to look at the comments–someone has posted on the Federal Reserve bailing out foreign banks, as well as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase…the list goes on…

I’m a little skeptical, however, of the person who lists the quotes against the Federal Reserve…sounds too civil libertarian, right-wingish for my liking…

If you recall, I wrote about the drought here in Indiana, but how the ag undersecretary was saying that it shouldn’t affect corn because there were record numbers of corn planted this year.  But after that declaration, they suddenly started saying that there was, indeed, a corn crop shortage and prices at stores were going to reflect that.

About six months ago, a resident of the building I’m in said something prophetic—when Social Security gave a cost-of-living increase…she said that grocery prices were going to go up–they always went up after s.s. increased their checks.  I’ve seen more than one single item jump $2.00 in a month’s time…and they weren’t corn, soy, or wheat or anything that depended on those three…

 

GMO monsters; Nanoparticles and Karl Rove…

by

Jill Richardson has this up at PR Watch.  Can anyone make sense of this?  The chemical/bioengineering industry is a monster running amok—make more toxic food that makes people, animals sick and poisons the atmosphere…

…so they can grow more food per acre.

I have a question:  if people are dying from the poison food and poison atmosphere, who is this serving?  Not us.

~~~~~~

More from PR Watch on the propaganda of Monsanto, et al…

Good Grief. Nanoparticles are nothing to worry about??  Just a little benzene (one of the most toxic chemicals out there)  isn’t going to hurt…/snark

And the debate on sunscreens also questions their validity and necessity.

CDC link here: http://www.ewg.org/analysis/toxicsunscreen

Natural News has a story here.

~~~~~~~~

Finally there’s this story on Rove controlling the purse strings…the behind the scenes and under the radar guy.

Eating their own…

by

organic consumers has this up on the companies that mount million dollar efforts to destroy the right-to-know GMO in food products.

Why would these companies do this?  Because, as the article says, they can label GMO food as “natural”.  This translates to Big $$$ for them.  I know that they have done this in a national organic grocery store chain that has switched organic produce with conventionally grown produce and called it “organic”.  The unsuspecting public trusts them and there are no government inspectors keeping watch over them…at least, there aren’t to my knowledge…

That’s another reason to buy local from farmers or organic stores that you trust.  Know where your food comes from!

 

“Baffling new disease…”

by

AP has this up on a yet another disease that implicates a destroyed immune system.

Let’s break this down, shall we?

She was from Vietnam, and came here after the war, in 1975.  Although the article doesn’t state that, she most likely was exposed to Agent Orange–exposure to Agent Orange can cause immune system deficiency.

I also wonder about Celiac.  When doing my research on it, I had read that Asians don’t get it–it’s just unheard of in that population…but knowing how the medical profession likes to make pronouncements of entire classes of people with a small sampling, I’m suspicious that she might have it and not be diagnosed nor tested.  I didn’t have any overt symptoms–it was only because of my Irish-German heritage that I put the puzzle together.  And it’s interesting that I have become more sensitive as I have adopted the GAPS diet–allowing my gut to heal.

There isn’t any mention of her diet, nor of the doctor asking her about diet….so one is left to wonder if she’s adopted the Western diet and is suffering because of it.  I think the age thing is a big clue–our bodies are miracles that can take a lot of abuse before the cells break down and start to wreak havoc.  This is something I’ve noticed on the mercury poisoning support group–some folks will have good health up ’til the time they reach 40, and then things start happening.

There’s also no discussion on toxin exposure.  She lives in Tennessee, ranked 11th in toxic exposure.  (What? Indiana is *only* ranked 4th? …we must be slipping in polluting our environment./snark)   Note the assertion of the article that the EPA is right on top of things… the reporter apparently didn’t get the memo of the corporate polluters who worked to get those regulations repealed.

From the article:

The NRDC also framed its report in a political context, indicating that Sen. Lamar Alexander voted against an attempt by Sen. James Inhofe, R.-Okla., to repeal the Mercury and Air Toxics standard. Sen. Bob Corker supported it.“For too long, Americans have had no choice but to breathe toxic air pollution. Thanks to the EPA, the air is getting cleaner,” said Franz Matzner, NRDC associate director of Government Affairs. “But we need lawmakers who will help clean up the air we all breathe — not lawmakers who do the bidding of big polluters trying to repeal safeguards that protect children’s health. This and future Congresses should let the EPA do its job so all Americans can breathe easier.”

Here’s another article on the toxic junk in Tennessee by Kelly Hearn ( The Nation).  Pay attention to the date–I think it could be significant to this woman because she began getting ill in 2009.  Holy Crap.  Mysterious disease…my arse.

Here’s another discussion on it (same blog).  A good discussion on Celiac reaching across several populations that the medical profession has refused to acknowledge. Good Grief.  The misery and diseases they have caused by their ignorance.