Childish Organic Propaganda

Though I have to admit this $hit is scary - just as bad as watching how the *sausage is made*...

They say that *farmers won't eat their own potatoes* on account of that one chemical the little girl talks about.

I Googled for that just now and found this, along the same lines:

I'm sure these crunchy food wackos are right. I did read that book after all.

But still I can't turn the corner and bring myself to start worrying about everything I eat AND start anteing up for more expensive food.

Instead I eat the processed crap and just focus on mental health, personal fitness, and efficient defecation.

McNugget De-Boner

Reading the ingredients on a frozen pizza last night I came across, for the first time, *mechanically separated chicken*.

Say what? That has to be disclosed?

I had already presumed the entire process of processing meat was done by non-humans, didn't you?

Pretty gross, eh - seeing how the sausage is made, so to speak?

Massachusetts Milk Nazis

Spraying it at police!

Having the most *schools* and the smallest *private sector*....Massachusetts is our most thoroughly Moronic state. In fact five days after visiting my birthplace, I'm still recovering from hearing my 'old coot' relatives pontificate on current events and whatnot.

Now here's another trophy for the M@sshole mantle:

Fight Over Raw Milk Moves East Amid Charges Of Collusion With Big Dairy

But now that regulators are moving to stem the flow of raw milk in the East, affecting the supplies of Boston lawyers, business owners, and health professionals, as well as even Washington bureaucrats, the situation is moving from fringe to mainstream.

The trigger has been a seemingly small but arbitrary decision by a Massachusetts regulator to restrict consumer access to milk. Unlike Wisconsin, which never officially sanctioned raw milk sales, Massachusetts has long allowed sales from dairy farms, and delivery to consumers by any of a half dozen or more buying clubs.

Everything was working fine in Massachusetts -- more dairy farmers producing ever more raw milk and in the process creating a revival for the state's moribund dairy industry. No illnesses in over a decade.

The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources seemed to be doing its job of supporting state agriculture by encouraging raw-milk-producing dairy farmers rather than harassing them, like the regulators do in New York state. Late last year, MDAR publicly supported a suburban Boston dairy farmer in his fight with state and local public health authorities and helped him gain approval to sell raw milk from his dairy.

But then something happened early this year to change MDAR's approach. The agency sent cease-and-desist letters to four buying clubs that had been quietly and efficiently delivering raw milk to consumers who didn't want to burn the gasoline or were unable because they don't have cars or even are disabled, to travel the hour or two hours to a dairy farm in central Massachusetts and pick up their milk. (Buying clubs are private businesses that deliver milk from raw dairies on a contractual basis for consumers.) The letters weren't well received by the owners of the buying clubs, and they began mobilizing support from their customers and legislators to challenge MDAR. They argued that Massachusetts laws and regulations don't specifically prohibit the buying clubs, making the cease-and-desist letters so much paper.

MDAR seems to have agreed, because two weeks ago, it proposed a new regulation to explicitly prohibit the buying clubs. The regulation would make Massachusetts the first state in the country to explicitly ban raw milk buying clubs.

And if you click the link above and read the article you'll see that the law was ADMITTEDLY proposed by Big Dairy, seriously!

Okay....Massachusetts has the most flu shots....the least seat belts fastened....they were the first state in 1850 to make *education* compulsory....they still have Puritanical liquor laws....70% of the state voted FOR keeping the state income tax,...

See also:

Raw Food For Thought

Massachusetts - The Dumbest State - QED

Book Summary - Omnivore's Dilemma

One of you clowns recommended this book to me in my comment section a while back. So I finally reserved it, picked it up last night, and swallowed it whole in one day!

What's it about? Well the title and subtitle - The Secrets Behind What You Eat - lend a sufficient clue.

It was about *how they make the sausage*. Don't want to know, right? Don't ask, don't tell....whatever you do, don't think too deeply about the *animal Holocaust* that you subsidize.

Except I learned some very interesting things from this book. I had no idea that *corn* dominated almost the entire supermarket. The author, Michael Pollan, goes into great detail as to how and why corn products became and reign supreme. He actually blames Big Government intervention!

But first the corn conspiracy theory. From one of his online articles:

For the great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket rests on a remarkably narrow biological foundation: corn. It’s not merely the feed that the steers and the chickens and the pigs and the turkeys ate; it’s not just the source of the flour and the oil and the leavenings, the glycerides and coloring in the processed foods; it’s not just sweetening the soft drinks or lending a shine to the magazine cover over by the checkout. The supermarket itself–the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built–is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.

There are some 45,000 items in the average American supermarket, and more than a quarter of them contain corn. At the same time, the food industry has done a good job of persuading us that the 45,000 different items or SKUs (stock keeping units) represent genuine variety rather than the clever rearrangements of molecules extracted from the same plant.

And from his book, look at the McDonald's breakdown. This his how much of its *carbon* comes from corn:

Soda (100% corn)
Milk shake (78% corn)
Salad dressing (65% corn)
Chicken nuggets (56% corn)
Cheeseburger (52% corn)
French Fries (23% corn)

Not having thought much about the food that I transform into scat....I had no idea before reading this book that chickens and cattle these days were force-fed corn, a food they wouldn't naturally eat. Apparently grain-fed cattle can be slaughtered at only 15 months or so whereas it takes grass-fed cattle 5 years to fatten sufficiently.  Obviously the latter is more profitable to raise.

Pollan talks about what he calls Big Organic or the industrial organic industry. Consider *Rosie* a Whole Foods chicken:

Rosie lives in a shed with twenty thousand other Rosies. Ah, you ask, what about the "free-range" words on Rosie's label. Doesn't that mean they can "freely range" outside? Not exactly. It's true there's a little door in each shed leading out to a narrow grassy yard. But here's the catch: The door remains FIRMLY SHUT until the birds are at least five weeks old. By that time they are so used to the shed that none of them go outside. And then all of them are slaughtered two weeks later.

Rosie and all the other chickens raised at Petaluma are the same breed: Cornish Cross broilers. The Cornish Cross is a a type of chicken bred for the industrial food chain. It is the fastest-growing chicken ever, turning corn into meat faster than any other bird. They go from egg to full size in just seven weeks. In fact, the birds grow so rapidly that their poor legs cannon keep up. Often, by seven weeks, Rosie can no longer walk.

I absolutely love the FIRMLY SHUT door, the 5 week *re-education* regimen, and the fact that the farm's first four letters are P-E-T-A!!!

Compared to conventional chickens, I was told, these organic birds have it pretty good. They get a few more square inches of living space per bird. (It was hard to see how they could be packed together more tightly.) Because there are no hormones or antibiotics in their feed to speed growth, they get to live a few days longer.

...USDA rules say an organic chicken should have "access to the outdoors."

Admittedly, this book opened my eyes to a lot I hadn't known. But by no means did it close my mouth or stomach. I won't be one of the alleged thousands he's converted to vegetarianism or organic foods.

I'm a pretty healthy eater anyway, and have been trending up in this department for some time. Though I can throw them back and enjoy it tremendously, I'm essentially only a *social drinker* these days. I only drink outside of my house and only on somewhat special occasions.  I've reduced my portion size with everything - notably pizza and ice cream - without any suffering.  And it was my wife, some 10+ years ago that set me down this *healthier eating* path.  Back then I had never even looked at a food label! 

So am I on the brink of paying up for organic meat?  I don't think so.  While there's plenty of *meat* behind the food wackos arguments, in terms of toxic pesticides and whatnot, there's also a glaring lack of evidence.  They can prattle on about a single Mad Cow disease outbreak for years but I remain unmoved by the math, by too many standard deviations from the norm.

In a nutshell, that's how I felt about the book.  Pollan's book does a wonderful job of answering the *what* of "what are we eating?" but it doesn't do such a good job proving consequences or of telling us *why* and *how* processed, chemical-laden food is hurting us.  To his credit, he writes humbly and fully self-conscious - and only mentions the inanity of *global warming* three of four times.  As I said to my wife, "I can't hold that against him because 'the environment' gets plugged every 3 pages in a newspaper or magazine!"

I'm just not about to turn eating into a sacred ritual when I can purify myself in so many more pressing ways.  Pollan, from what I can tell, is a native Northeasterner (Long Island?) who has no religion in his life.  For these types, it's almost a 100% given that they will be drawn to eco-paganism, self-centered hedonism, money worship, or religious sports fanaticism.  It's simply human nature to NEED meaning in our lives.

When I first got this book my wife waxed skeptical - warning me not to go down this road; not to over-analyze the crap that I ate.

I snapped back somewhat indignantly at the woman who should know me better.  I told her the last thing I would ever be afraid of on this over-heated planet was *the truth*.  And I boldly asserted that there wasn't a better equipped person in this spontaneously-arisen-out-of-nothing(!) galaxy...to detect and defuse sophistry.

Healthy Eating Disorder?

First, read my post from last week - Raw Food For Thought - particularly my remarks in the comment section.

Now check out Mike Adams from Natural News today:

NaturalNews) In its never-ending attempt to fabricate "mental disorders" out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they've invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you're "mentally diseased" and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, "Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder" and goes on to claim this "disease" is called orthorexia nervosa -- which is basically just Latin for "nervous about correct eating."

Getting back to this fabricated "orthorexia" disease, the Guardian goes on to report, "Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out."

Hah! I told you (see link atop page) people were *weird* with their food. Though I do hate to ever come down on the side of Big Government medical experts apparatchiks...

Look I know it's wrong to judge the healthy-eating crowd by the queer small sample set that I personally have met - those fat vegans and hypochondriacs. That'd be like generalizing about homeschoolers strictly from meeting a few wackos with the gumption to take that less-traveled route.

So I guess the only way I'm ever going to be able to fairly judge the bio-organic, raw, grass-fed, granola diet is to try it out myself.

Crap! Do I really have to?

Raw Food For Thought

I just asked a local homeschooler, one whom I sensed had strong views on matters of health, what she thought about vaccinations:

I have spent over 15 years studying, reading, researching almost anything about health or anything relating to it. It is an absolute passion of mine.

We do not vaccinate our children or medicate them.(no,antibiotics, Tylenol, prescriptions, over the counter...) We let their bodies heal naturally so that their immune systems learn how to work properly.

We get them adjusted by a WONDERFUL chiropractor once a week or more if they aren't feeling well.


However, my children do not have the typical SAD(standard American diet) and I would never recommend this lifestyle to someone who does.

We eat:raw dairy products(lots of lacto fermented foods-yogurt, kefir,sour cream..) grass fed beef, pastured chickens and eggs, low to no grains, lots of fats (raw butter, ghee, coconut oil, animal fats, raw egg yolks...)lots of veggies, properly prepared nuts and seeds.....

I am not anti-medicine though. If an emergency comes up, then I am all for it. But for an ear ache, cold flu, sinus infection....absolutely not.

If you and your wife are interested in more info, please feel free to call. I am busting w/ info and love to share w/ anyone who might be interested.

And y'all thought I was off the grid!

Click here for my most recent post on immunizations vaccinations.

Tinkering With Food And Whatnot

I'm not sure how *new* this variation of the classic candy bar is....but it is at least new to me. AND I'm really enjoying it!

But I'm wise enough to not get too excited. Surely, they will pull this one - as they do with all these iterative new products. Oh how I miss Bud Ice, the McRib sandwich, and Crispy M&Ms!

I'll enjoy the Nestle Crunch Crisp while it lasts. Though I've been buying them at three a clip....I'm not about to start stockpiling like Elaine did with her discontinued birth control!



Is he *Sponge-worthy*?

But getting back to the fits and starts of Big Food innovation...

After decades of trying to float countless new products, I'm no *brand expert*, but I believe the record of success from these behemoths is quite poor. I once read that McDonalds hadn't had a new product really stick since Chicken McNuggets in the early 80s. And consider all the billions spent by Microsoft in hopes of carving out new ground. What do they have to show for it - XBox? Bing.com?

The fact remains that the vast majority of successful people and successful businesses merely got *lucky* with a single product and, of course, with timing.

But, as that airhead Mark Cuban wisely says - an entrepreneur only has to be right ONCE!