Category Archives: organic

California GMO Ballot

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…as California goes, so goes the Nation  (she says hopefully)… (hat tip to organic consumers)

I wasn’t as impressed with this article as Ronnie Cummins.  It failed to note the Purdue University scientist, Dr. Huber, who sent a letter of concern to Vilsack.  But it was sure to get in GMO advocates that have nothing to back up their assertions that this *stuff that resembles food* is safe.

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By now, you have heard of the *cough* research that says people who buy organic food are….jerks.  Um-hmmm…

Organic Consumers states that reason.com is a part of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian “think tank”, which is…wait for it…a member of ALEC.

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Another link organic consumers had was to a movie trailer about the coming water crises.  However, it was made by the folks who brought us “Waiting for Superman” a smear piece on the public school system that was used as a prop to promote charter schools…so yeah, I’m not linking to it.

GAPS and the sustainable environment

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While I was out jogging this morning, I was thinking about the GAPS diet and how Dr. Campbell-McBride advocates nuts in the diet…and it flashed in my head about how much land is used to grow wheat and corn and soybeans…and I wondered about how much more food, as in nuts, could be grown and if that was more ecologically sound?

I found this page advocating that very idea–it says that nut trees require very little chemical intervention, if any at all…not to mention the benefits of increased oxygenation by the trees and providing a home for the birds and squirrels.

I also found this resource for the re-foresting agriculture.

I also found this dedicated to permaculture.  I really like the Vajra farm–I could picture myself taking a stroll through there…I could just feel the cool breeze and the serenity of the forest.  It doesn’t look like any farm that I’ve been acquainted with…

I’m looking at that and thinking about the dry, windblown fields in Indiana, and how much better having this type of agriculture would be for the Earth.  And it would be better for us, as well, with eating nuts and berries again instead of stuffing our faces with bread, cakes, and the like…

Here’s yet another take on growing trees  in “alley ways” along with the usual.  I don’t get a good feel for this–I’d have to see it in operation.  My thinking is that the trees will eventually grow enough to block most of the light for the other crops…unless that is the purpose–to grow crops between them until they are large enough to use for lumber?  The site doesn’t really explain the process very well.

Anyway, there you have it.  I think this would really take off if it were promoted as a healthier alternative for diet, for the Earth, for the animals…

…but that’s just crazy talk 🙂

 

 

 

GAPS

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More from the book Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride….

p.321

Top Ten Influences which boost immunity:

1.  Fresh animal fats (from meats and dairy) and cholesterol-rich foods (particularly raw egg yolks).  [Dr. Campbell-McBride emphasizes that cholesterol is very beneficial, despite the false promotion of junk science saying otherwise.]

2.  Cold-pressed oils:   olive oil, fish oils, nut and seed oils.

3.  Onions and garlic.

4.  Freshly pressed veggie & fruit juices. [the fresh foods have enzymes that help your body to digest them properly. ]

5.  Regular consumption of greens:  parsley, dill, coriander, spring onion and garlic, etc. [word of caution: coriander has an effect on mercury mobilization, and it’s not been researched so there is no reliable info. on whether it carries it out of the body, too.]

6.  Probiotic supplementation and fermented foods. [She explains that gut flora is seriously compromised in most of the population, and these will help restore normal flora.]

7.  Contact with animals:  horses, dogs, etc.  Having a pet in the family can do a lot for children’s immune status.

8.  Swimming in unpolluted natural waters:  lakes, rivers, sea.**

9.  Physical activity in the fresh air.

10.  Exposure to sunlight and sensible sunbathing.

**These are non-chlorinated swimming pools.  Pretty cool, eh?

…and if you prefer to do it yourself, Mother Earth News has this for you.  They lose me with advocating man-made materials, however, but you’ll get the basics from the article.

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Next, Dr. Campbell-McBride has a list of the Top Ten Influences that damage immunity:

1.  Sugar and everything containing it:  sweets, soft drinks, confectionery, ice cream, etc.  [she does, however, allow natural honey…whew]

2.  Processed carbohydrates:  cakes, biscuits, crisps, snacks, breakfast cereals, white bread, and pasta.

3.  Chemically altered and artificial fats:  margarine, cooking and vegetable oils, processed foods with these. [basically, the more they change the structure of the food, the worse it is for you–raw and fermented being the best foods.]

4.  Lack of high quality protein in the diet, from meats, fish eggs, dairy products, nuts and seeds.  [Dr. Campbell-McBride writes quite a bit against the vegetarian diet.  She says that the proteins in the plants are not easily absorbed/digested by our digestive systems.  I was a vegetarian from 1998-ish to 2006, when I was advised to start eating meat because of severe anemia, so I understand what she’s saying, but I had hopes that once I was well again that I could go back to vegetarian, but it doesn’t look promising.]

5.  Exposure to man-made chemicals:  cleaning and washing chemicals, personal care products, paints, fire retardants, petrochemicals, pesticides, etc.

6.  Exposure to man-made radiation:  electronic screens: TV, computer, play stations; mobile phones, high-powered electricity lines, nuclear stations, nuclear waste, anti-cancer medication, anti-viral drugs.

7.  Drugs:  antibiotics, steroids, antidepressants, painkillers, anti-cancer medication, anti-viral drugs.

8.  Lack of fresh air and physical activity.

9.  Lack of exposure to sunlight.

10.  Lack of exposure to common microbes in the environment. […]  Living in too sterilized environment is strongly associated with compromised immunity.

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More from the book:

p.71  […]  In an old Textbook of Psychiatry by Henderson and Gillespie, published in 1937, it is clearly stated:  “A thorough physical examination is absolutely essential in every case–schizophrenics are commonly poorly nourished”.  […]  Deficiencies in vitamins (such as niacin, or B3, B6, B12, B1, folic acid, Vitamin C)and many minerals (such as magnesium, zinc, manganese, etc.) are routinely recorded in schizophrenic patients.[…]  U.S. professor Curtis Dohan, M.D., devoted many years to researching what connection digestive abnormalities in schizophrenic patients may have with their psychological state.

…Dr. Dohan found that symptoms of schizophrenia could be dramatically relieved by cutting all grains…

He also found that some cultures in the South Pacific which never consumed grains, had no schizophrenia.  Only when they adopted a Western diet full of grains did they stat getting cases of schizophrenia.  Another good example is Ireland, where people did not consume wheat until the potato famine in 1845.  Before then there were no cases of schizophrenia or coeliac disease recorded in Ireland.

(I can’t find it now, but I had seen a link a while back where Germans also suffer from gluten intolerance.  They observed that schizophrenia went down dramatically during WWII, when grains were scarce.  So, yeah, I have both German/Irish genes, so I’m pretty much SOL in the gluten department.)

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I know this diet is spot on–but it’s not easy.  Dr. Campbell-McBride has a list of allowed foods and non-allowed foods.  She eliminates ALL grains, so I was correct in my thinking that I couldn’t eat rice nor potatoes (carbs).

On the non-allowed foods, I got to…chocolate.  Read it again to make sure that I hadn’t misread it….

Chocolate?  She wants me to give up chocolate?  Was she freaking crazy?  I didn’t think I could do it….*anything* but chocolate…

…so I ate a bunch of chocolate…

…and felt so awful that I thought I’d have to at least give it a shot.

I’m at day five…and holding my own.  I have a fear that closer to *that* time of the month, however, I’ll be craving it like crazy and will lose the battle…

On the more positive side, I have lost fifteen pounds since March.  And my gut is less swollen.  It’s freaking amazing. 🙂

Farm bill 2012

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Environmental Working Group’s take on Farm Bill 2012. (hat tip to organic consumers)

Instead, legislators created an expensive new entitlement program (called “shallow loss”) that guarantees nearly 90 percent of the income of farm businesses already enjoying record profits. It also leaves untouched a bloated $9-billion-a-year crop insurance program that pays about 60 percent of farmers’ crop insurance premiums, no matter how large the farm, and sends billions to crop insurance companies and their agents.

Most of the benefits of these proposed programs would flow to the big five commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, rice and wheat) that provide feed for livestock, raw material for processed food and corn ethanol fuel for our cars. Not only would these proposals be highly inequitable and wasteful, but the new revenue guarantees, combined with unlimited insurance subsidies and high crop prices, will create powerful new incentives for growers to plow up fragile wetlands and grasslands and erase many of farming’s recent environmental gains.

 

I like that it at least adds monies for food stamp recipients to purchase locally grown food at farmer’s markets.  Great idea.  I actually made the suggestion to our housing authority folks to help us get some land to plant our own vegetables to raise organically.  *crickets*

 

Link to Craig Cox, of Environmental Working Group’s statement on it here.

Republicans to the poor:

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Eat Shit.  Because we’re going to cut food stamps by 11 percent.  Never mind that you can’t afford to buy food for an entire month on what you’re given right now–you’ll have to resort to eating shit to survive….

One of the commenters mentions the Titanic.  I watched it over the weekend on the anniversary of the ship’s sinking.  I couldn’t help but picture Mitt Romney as Billy Zane’s despicable character, a wealthy sociopath…

…and how much today’s economic times reflect those of that period.  And people talk as if those times were permanently relegated to history….ignoring what is happening all around them.

And I don’t believe for a second all the glowing reports of a recovery.  I don’t see it where I sit.  And I find it a little too convenient now that we are in an election year–that suddenly we’re in an upswing of jobs?  And jobs alone aren’t the total answer–GOOD PAYING jobs are the answer.  Martin Luther King was promoting the idea of a guaranteed income before he was murdered…everyone would have a minimum income.  Of course, he preferred that everyone have a decent-paying job.

I found this living wage calculator from Pennsylvania State.  I went to Allen County, Indiana, and found their low allowance for food: $236 per month for a single adult appalling.  Only if you eat unhealthy food: processed meat like bologna, hot dogs, etc., and if you stay away from organic and fresh vegetables can you afford that piddly amount.  Indiana only allows $200 per month in food stamps as it is…if the republicans get their way, it will be $178.

The smiley face of Monsanto

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I was listening to our local radio station over the weekend, and heard this radio ad of “America’s Farmers”.  My ears immediately perked up and I listened for the reason behind the ad…political? PR? Raising awareness?

I found it at the end of the ad, when they quietly disclosed it was brought to you by….Monsanto.  Um-hmmm…

Here’s the website:  http://www. americasfarmers .com/  I’m not linking to it for obvious reasons.  I’ve made spaces in the addy, so you’ll have to close them up to look it up in your browser.

The website is just *this close* to equating farming with patriotism…

I clicked on the “Hear their stories’ link, and to the right is a paragraph with the sentence “They get up everyday just to ensure we have food on the table and clothes on our backs. and they do it without being asked.”  They do it because they get PAID for their work.  They do it so they can put food on the table and clothes on their own families’ backs.  They do it without being asked?  WTH does that mean, really?

I clicked on the “Meet the Families” link.  The first family are the Boyds:  Will and Wendy, and their children Wilson, Weston, Waylon, and Wenslie….(I already don’t like them because of being cutesy while naming their kids.)  Let’s see…they’ve had the farm for five generations…that would put them back in the times of slavery… and the farm is in Georgia….hmmmm….and they are politicians with being a County Commissioner, along with being deep in the Farm Bureau, which is no longer representative of the farmers, but a part of the political machinery….kind of like the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA–or Bossy Indian Around).  So…yeah, don’t see a lot of free thinking here who would question Monsanto or their motives.

The rest of the families basically all say the same thing–Farming is not a job, but a way of life.  Yep.  Anyone around here (Indiana being a big corn producing state) knows somebody who’s a farmer and how farming IS a way of life. What they don’t understand is how they are destroying that very life by supporting an organization that couldn’t care less about messing with nature.

Four years ago, I worked on an organic farm for one summer, and if my adrenals didn’t start crashing, I would have loved to have gone back and worked on another farm the next summer.  It’s great being outdoors tending to the plants.  No one is around–just you and the quiet….and the birds perched nearby singing or the occasional grasshopper or flutterby’s that happen in your path.  Watching clouds form and wondering how long you can push it until you need to run for cover…being caught in a rainstorm… or at lunch time, sitting by the “wild” pond (i.e., it’s not been made “pretty” by landscapers…nature “scaped” it).

Farm families know their survival depends on the family working together.  I fail to see how Monsanto ties into that.  If anything it’s the opposite—  Ask Percy Schmeiser, or any farm family that has been sued by Monsanto. What Monsanto means to say…is that they support chemical farmers, but sue organic farmers…

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organicconsumers.org has this up–more legal tactics by Monsanto.  Their legislators need backbone transplants….

More here on the changes in tadpoles after exposure to RoundUp.

Here’s another link from organic consumers about an organic farmer and their trials.  It sounds like a good book.  From the little tidbits mentioned in the article, she “gets it”–that all things are connected–the earth, the animals, etc.

 

Death by Delay…

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…or, would you like some neurological and heart disease in your formula, baby?

And the question begs to be asked:  Why are they putting flame retardants in children’s clothing when they have been associated with cancer, and other serious health affects?  Killing them inch by inch…

(Makes me glad that I sewed my kids’ pajamas…one less thing for them to be exposed to)

Even though Michelle Obama will promote organic food…well, organic food is great, but if you’re sleeping in chemicals every night for eight hours or so, it kinda negates the good of eating organic food.

Organic consumers.org has this up on the ever-increasing growth of Walmart and Michelle Obama.

And then there’s this.

So…yeah…it’s not hard to see why the Obama Administration hasn’t moved forward.

Whatever happened to looking forward, not backward? (just a little snarky)

Go for the kiddies…

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…when your efforts fail to brainwash the adults. (hat tip to organicconsumers.org)  Good Grief.  The lies and misrepresentations throughout this piece of work are mindboggling–page 8, for instance, actually states that biotech is helping the environment, while completely ignoring the genetic drift between organic corn and GM corn, (and other crops) and that Monsanto deliberately engineered plants to accept even larger quantities of RoundUp.  Even more of a concern is the “unknown proteins” and their effects not only on animal health, but human health.