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Showing posts with label food safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food safety. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Welcome to 2011!
Another year has come and gone. So what can we look forward to this New year? We have heard a lot of recent info about obesity and kids. If we believe the current news briefs, babies are obese before they ever get their first taste of food. I wonder if they are obese in utero too? There seems to be so much focus on weight, and almost no focus on wellness. Everywhere you look you see weight loss info.. either some new pill ,new diet, crazy basic training type exercise programs, the latest greatest combination of foods to super charge your fat loss. All this info about weight. How about health? Is there are truth to the supposition that what we weight is not as important as how healthy we are overall? How about what we choose to put in our mouths as opposed to how much? If any of you out there have ever struggles with weight issues, either too much or too little, you know how horrible a life focused on weight can be. Either you have to weigh every morsel you put in your mouth, or simply cut out enitre groups of foods. Then add the fact that we are told our food supply is dereft of nutrients; our soil is bankrupt, so our veggies cannot be as nutrient dense as they once were. We must supplement! We must spend countless hours in a gym on a treadmill like a hamster on a wheel. We must drink the right kind of water, the right kind of coffee, and most assuredly the right types of vegetables. Plain ordinary potatoes and broccoli are no longer good enough for good health. Kids cannot be allowed to have a soda, any candy or ice cream at all, because no one knows just what the recipe is for healthy kids. Somewhere along the line, we lost what makes us healthy. Kids used to play outside in the sunshine, sans sunscreen, until dark. Baseball games sprang up anywhere there was a space and a few kids to play. Tag was big fun. Freeze tag was even better. Hide and seek was an art form. Kids hated eating vegetables just like they do now. The difference is there was not a place you could just drive up and get food without a wait for it to be cooked. Dinner was prepared not brought home in a paper bag or delivered to your door in a box. People cooked and peeled and grew their own foods. Parents could say no a child without having to go to therapy as a result. And the kids didn't need therapy either because they didn't get eveything they wanted. We knew what went into our food because we controlled it for the most part. There were no such things as supermarkets. There were grocery stores. You knew where the veggies came from... your neighbors. You knew where the water came from that nourished the farm animals and the vegetables that graced your table. There was only one sweetener... sugar and it grew in fields not in labs. So what will 2011 bring with it? Will there be more fat kids than ever before? Will more Americans die of weight related illnesses than any other type? Perhaps. One thing is for sure. Unless we start paying attention to how healthy we are instead of how skinny we are, nothing will change for the better. Girls will continue to have their first period at age 7 and have breasts by 10. Boys will have full beards by the age of 12, and will be able to father children by 11. Pay attention to the ingredient list on your next food item that goes into your grocery cart. Chances are the list will contain about 30 items most of which you can't pronounce. My challenge to you for this new year is to stop gambling with the health of you and your family. Don't eat anything that is not 100% identifiable as a natural food. If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it . Forget convenience and actually put some thought into a meal at home, cooked from scratch, not from a box. Teach your kids how to cook, and where their food comes from...no kid should be shocked to find out their Happy Meal comes from a live animal. So Welcome to the New Year! Make it the best it can be by being the best you can be. Be healthy and be happy. It makes all the difference to those you care about.
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Fast Food and Fast Maturity
We have heard stories that indicate kids are matuing at a alarmingly quick rate. The most recent fact I have heard relates to girls having their first menses at age 8 which is in the second grade. Far be it from me to cast blame on why this is such an epidemic, but I might consider looking to the food industry as a whole. Ever since the "modern age" we have been on a quest to make our lives easier, faster, and more efficient in every aspect. This has accounted for use of antibiotics in food supplies to prevent damaging diseases in animal products. There is the addition of growth hormones to make the animals and birds grow bigger and fatter in a shorter period of time to produce more product for a growing demand. Then we have artificial agricultural products to keep disease and blight from infesting and destroying whole crops. That is a lot of artificial substances being pumped into the American food supply. From what I have heard from friends who have traveled over seas, we are the only country that practices this type of gambling with our food chain. The French still can generally track where the milk comes from for their cheeses.Italians still harvest and make their own grains and pastas and baked their own bread from handmilled grains that are hand picked and culled. The Hawaiian coffee grower still practice outdated methods of harvesting, growing and roasting Kona coffee, one of the best tasting coffee perhaps in the world.
So where did we get the idea that no matter what we choose to inject into the food supply in a nation, starting at birth ,would not have a dramatic effect on growth and development? I am sure it had to do with some less than accurate marketing claims. Perhpas the fear of a coming famine helped.But now we have truth in advertising laws and food regulations which seem to be ill equipped to deal with the onslaught of issues in our food supply brought about by all these practices.
The amount of hormones in milk and meats is astounding. Milk and dairy products are perhaps what our kids consume most of and they are highest in these substances, according to a few limited run reports.
As any woman who is short on hormones and she can testify to what a drastic impact just one hormone imbalance will do for your skin, mood and thought processes. The thing most of us fail to recognize is hormones don't function in isolation of each other. They work together to provide the body the appropriate support and function for all the organs we depend upon for maximum health. Stress hormones impact not only the organs but the vessels, resulting in hypertension, as an example.
The addition of hormones over an extended period of time in a child's diet will not go unnoticed bt the body. The maturing brains, sex glands and vasculature will respond. We have seen reports that a teen's brain will hit a growth spurt which will increase the amount of information they can process. But they still haven't developed the higher reasoning skills like frustration tolerance, delayed gratification and the ability to think things through to their possible outcome before acting. They may have developed these by the time they are close to 25, if then. This is what happens in the natural child. Now dump two tons of various hormones, additives, genetically manipulated material into the already delicately balanced system and the result is questionable at best.
Sow what to do? First, stop with all the convenience foods that are loaded with chemicals and stuff you need a chemical engineering degree to even pronounce. Stick to food as close to its natural state as possible and buy organic if the fruit or veggies is something with a thin skin or that will retain the skin when consumed. Look at eliminating such things gluten articifial sweeteners. If you must use one on occasion, use Stevia, or regular cane sugar. Eliminate oils, except olive, and eat nothing fried. For meat, organic grain or range feed only, free of hormones and antibiotics. No processed meats like hot dogs, lunchmeats, etc and yes get rid of caffeine as a regular drink :stick to water ,filtered .
If you expect your child to make this transition, you need to show the way. Be prepared to shift your focus too. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Just make it more often than not and you will see a definite difference in your overall health and wellbeing and maybe just maybe we can avoid girls starting their period in kindergarten.
So where did we get the idea that no matter what we choose to inject into the food supply in a nation, starting at birth ,would not have a dramatic effect on growth and development? I am sure it had to do with some less than accurate marketing claims. Perhpas the fear of a coming famine helped.But now we have truth in advertising laws and food regulations which seem to be ill equipped to deal with the onslaught of issues in our food supply brought about by all these practices.
The amount of hormones in milk and meats is astounding. Milk and dairy products are perhaps what our kids consume most of and they are highest in these substances, according to a few limited run reports.
As any woman who is short on hormones and she can testify to what a drastic impact just one hormone imbalance will do for your skin, mood and thought processes. The thing most of us fail to recognize is hormones don't function in isolation of each other. They work together to provide the body the appropriate support and function for all the organs we depend upon for maximum health. Stress hormones impact not only the organs but the vessels, resulting in hypertension, as an example.
The addition of hormones over an extended period of time in a child's diet will not go unnoticed bt the body. The maturing brains, sex glands and vasculature will respond. We have seen reports that a teen's brain will hit a growth spurt which will increase the amount of information they can process. But they still haven't developed the higher reasoning skills like frustration tolerance, delayed gratification and the ability to think things through to their possible outcome before acting. They may have developed these by the time they are close to 25, if then. This is what happens in the natural child. Now dump two tons of various hormones, additives, genetically manipulated material into the already delicately balanced system and the result is questionable at best.
Sow what to do? First, stop with all the convenience foods that are loaded with chemicals and stuff you need a chemical engineering degree to even pronounce. Stick to food as close to its natural state as possible and buy organic if the fruit or veggies is something with a thin skin or that will retain the skin when consumed. Look at eliminating such things gluten articifial sweeteners. If you must use one on occasion, use Stevia, or regular cane sugar. Eliminate oils, except olive, and eat nothing fried. For meat, organic grain or range feed only, free of hormones and antibiotics. No processed meats like hot dogs, lunchmeats, etc and yes get rid of caffeine as a regular drink :stick to water ,filtered .
If you expect your child to make this transition, you need to show the way. Be prepared to shift your focus too. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Just make it more often than not and you will see a definite difference in your overall health and wellbeing and maybe just maybe we can avoid girls starting their period in kindergarten.
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