The Disadvantages Of Industrialized Food For Us And For Our Livestock - Part 2

   This will be a series of mini messages. I could write a book on this subject, but writing it in blog format makes it impossible to write everything on one page. The reason I am even writing this is ultimately, that my readers will have a foundational understanding of what has gone wrong in the health industry and why people in our country are not healthy today. There is an underlying reason, and it might take many posts to lay the foundation, but I think you will appreciate this information.

   There are so many things wrong with our commercial food system, and if we don't pay attention, there will be some bad ramifications coming about. In order to understand what I am explaining here, you have to understand the kind of culture we live in, and what has happened to make it the way it is today.

   First, some terminology learning will be helpful. We need to learn what the word, 'pragmatic' means. The definition given by dictionary.cambridge.org explains pragmatic as being based on practical judgments rather than principles. Pragmatic people want a quick answer and tend to be short sighted. They do not have a long term vision for something. If it works today, that's what we want. We are not interested in finding out bad news that will happen in the future, if we do this very thing. We aren't going to take the time to study and research the long term effects on something. If we do find something wrong, or a bad result that will come because of the use of a particular thing, we don't want to know. If we find out, then we will be accountable and responsible for change. That would cost us way too much money.

  That is the problem right now. Is is any wonder the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil? The FDA works hand in hand with Monsanto, and they work together with the American Medical Association and other groups supported by government funding. For instance, Michael Taylor was a lawyer for Monsanto, as well as the head of the FDA. If a person like Michael Taylor who has such authority in these groups, is a person who lacks judgment, then we all are going to suffer because of the decisions that he will make. So, the FDA not only approves adding fluoride to our drinking water, but has also made it mandatory. Most other countries forbid this practice, but no amount of reasoning with the FDA will change their minds. Fluoride may help protect our teeth from decay, but at the same time, it is very toxic and it is a carcinogen. Brushing our teeth will also protect decay from happening in our mouths. One teaspoon of fluoride is enough to kill 20 children. Another issue that is being approved and is gaining momentum in becoming mandatory is that of genetically modifying organisms. GMO as it is known by, is not a way to help feed people in Third World countries. Genetically modified food has little nutritional value and, in time, will end up preventing local farmers and gardeners from being able to produce their own food. The goal is to produce mass quantities of food, at the least expense possible. That it does, but, not without cost to us. We need food that has nutritional value to it, not tampered with seed production which produces tons of non-valuable food. Unfortunately, the government fully supports this activity, even with the knowledge of the harm it will bring. 

   O.K. I didn't forget the vet story. It is found in Mother Earth News, June/July 2014 issue. A veterinarian named Will Winter, who lives in Minnesota, got tired of taking care of sick cows. These cows were fed a diet of ground grain and protein meal, a perfect example of food that has been mass produced to feed many cows, but lacking nutritional value. All the cows have gotten sick from being on this diet. But Will Winter has taken these sick cows to an established pasture where they can roam and the cows can eat grass, brush, and woody stuff (not sure what that is, but whatever it is, it is natural). The cows always got better when they were brought to this type of pasture. Instinct tells the cows that they need minerals, and that these minerals are found in the roots of these plants that grow in this pastureland. 

   Stay tuned for the next part in this series. We will cover 'hidden hunger'; what it is, who has it and why, and some cures for it.

http://pasturetoprofit.blogspot.com/2011/09/herbal-clover-pastures-challenge-our.html

   

The Disadvantages of Industrialized Food For Us And Also For Our Livestock

  (I originally wrote this as a whole article, but it is way too long to put it into this blog. I am going to divide it up in parts, or put it on another blog and summarize it here.)

   I am not sure which blog page I should put this on, so I may put it on more than one. Is it a political issue, or a health issue? It's really both. You will see why in a moment.
   I have been watching a Youtube video called, 'Back To Eden' gardening. I am not quite sure where the guy is coming from theologically, but he definitely sees God's handiwork in fruits and vegetables! This man explains how to do a garden naturally, which will end up using very little work effort. This man can grow all kinds of food that aren't supposed to grow in his area. All of nature works together in his yard to grow a lot of food.
   There are so many things wrong with our commercial food system, and if we don't pay attention, there will be some bad ramifications coming about. In order to understand what I am explaining here, you have to understand the kind of culture we live in, and what has happened to make it the way it is today.
 I am going to end the article here for today. I did want to point out something I saw in the video 'Back To Eden' tour. The farmer, who is totally natural and organic, had some excellent points. I am going through this video on a continual basis to become familiar with this method of gardening. One example of what he shares is with his dog not eating store bought organic carrots. The dog loves vegetables from the garden. But when offered carrots, even ones which are labeled 'organic' the dog would not eat them. Why? Because the dog is able to smell poisons and chemicals that are on the vegetables, and by instinct, he knows not to eat them. The farmer actually called the carrot company to ask about the carrots, and was told that the carrots are sprayed with some kind of chemical before being bagged. Why would organic carrots have poison on them? According to the farmer, these organic carrots, which look very pretty and clean, are sprayed with some type of cleaner. It actually causes the carrots to be slimy. I have also heard about those pretty little short carrots they sell in bags in the produce section. They are labeled organic. But, they are washed in bleach water. Yes, they really are organic carrots, but there is no law that says you can't spray or soak the organic carrots in bleach water. When I found this out, I was disappointed, for I have often bought these carrots at the store.

Dogs know intuitively
when something is
toxic

More to come. I'll share about the vet who got tired of treating sick cows and how he cured them with a simple answer. 

Making Cookies that are a little Too Crunchy - What You Can Learn From My Mistakes

  I am always working with recipes, incorporating new ideas, substituting ingredients, etc. I'm always learning new recipes too. I have an old recipe I was going to use tonight, but I was going to change the grains from bran cereal to fresh ground wheat flour (using hard wheat berries) and freshly ground oatmeal.
   I put the two grains in the Vitamix together (big mistake!) and ground, and ground some more, and continued to grind. I added the baking soda and salt and ground some more. Then I dumped this mixture into the whipped butter in the mixing bowl. Another big mistake! I didn't see the wheat berries that didn't get ground until then.
   I took different sized strainers and tried to sift the berries from the ground oatmeal. I finally salvaged many berries and put them back into the blender container. Then I ground them until they were finally ground. Unfortunately, there were many unground wheat berries still left that didn't make it back to the container.
   So I finished making the dough, but realized that the dough was very crunchy. In fact, I had to spit the berries out. How many more things could have gone wrong this day?
   My grandson got a bad bloody nose this morning, to which I still have to get a cleaner out to clean the stains up. Another grandson went pee on the carpeting, not too far from the blood stains. Then I couldn't find my toothpaste. It was no where to be found. But I did actually find it later on. I have so much to be thankful for even on days like this.

Chocolate Chip Cookies With Bran (or whatever ground grain you want to use)

1 cup bran cereal (I always ground this)
1 cup unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, softened
2/3 cup organic sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 cup chocolate chips (the best are the ones with the highest cacao percentage)

    I used 1 cup oatmeal and 1 cup ground wheat berries. If you do this, be sure to grind them separately. Combine the bran cereal and flour, or whatever flours you are using. Add the baking soda and salt. Whip the butter until smooth and add sugar, vanilla, and egg to the butter. Blend all together and add the flour mixture. Then add the chocolate chips. I also added a tablespoon of coconut oil and also one of lard. Bake at 375 for about 10 - 12 minutes depending upon how hot your oven is. This recipe is taken from the box of All-Bran cereal, I believe.

My Recap of Article on Why Artificial Sweeteners Are Bad For You

Why Artificial Sweeteners are bad for you

   We live in a time when being thin is in. But most of us are fat, even if it is only a little. Some of us just look fat, but there are other problems going on that are causing us to be overweight. Whatever the problem or reason is, Americans do not want to be overweight. We also know that being overweight will bring up the risk of heart attack and other various illnesses. So, ways to either not gain weight or to loss weight sound appealing to us. Thus, many Americans turn to artificial sweeteners for help.

   What are the risks that go with using artificial sweeteners though? I read an article this morning by Mercola which gives one reason why using artificial sweeteners is not good. I will post part of that article here. It is found at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/04/16/aspartame-diet-soda.aspx

Why Artificial Sweeteners Are NOT a Dieter's (or Diabetic's) Best Friend

Despite being promoted for weight loss, foods and beverages with artificial sweeteners have never actually been proven to help weight loss. On the contrary, studies that look at this actually find artificial sweeteners promote weight gain. Part of the reason why artificial sweeteners don't work as advertised (such as help you lose weight and manage your insulin) relates to the fact that your body is not fooled by sweet taste without accompanying calories.9

Scientific American10 previously ran an article explaining the science behind this phenomenon. In a nutshell, when you eat something sweet, your brain releases dopamine, which supplies you with a jolt of pleasure. Your brain's reward center is activated.

The appetite-regulating hormone leptin is also released, which eventually informs your brain that you are "full" once a certain amount of calories have been ingested. In contrast, when you consume something sweet but non-caloric (i.e. an artificial sweetener), your brain's pleasure pathway is still activated by the sweet taste, but there's nothing to deactivate it, since your body is still waiting for the calories. As a result, you may end up overeating.

Another recent report published in the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism11 found that diet soda drinkers suffer the same exact health problems as those who opt for regular soda, including excessive weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.12, 13 The sad fact is, Americans in particular are addicted to sweet flavors, which appears to trigger a complex set of biological systems, pathways, and mechanisms that in the end leads leads to excess weight gain—whether that flavor comes loaded with calories or not.

While sugar is bad for you, it doesn't appear that artificial sweeteners are any better. They may also be worse for other reasons I will not go into here. 

  There are other alternatives to sugar which are much better, but they are more expensive than sugar or artificial sweeteners. The best ones are xylitol and stevia. Xylitol is very expensive and I haven't found that it sweetens very well, but it does resemble sugar and it is a product completely independent of sugar. Stevia is very good, but also expensive. I had been using the Stevia in the Raw product until someone pointed out that the powdered version is really maltodextrin with drops of Stevia. I ordered liquid stevia through amazon.com and I think that will be a good alternative for me. 

Some Thoughts on Some Modern Day Contradictions From Reading Health Articles

  Are you having a good day? I hope so. I hope you feel well and have energy and strength for the day. Many do not feel well today. Could there be a connection between what we eat, what we breathe in, what we touch, and what we see and hear, and how we feel physically?
   We have many in our country (America) here, who have cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other diseases and illnesses that we can't seem to fight against and win. Maybe, its too late to try to win, or maybe, we just don't really want to put all the effort into trying to win.
   I have some interesting observations with my theoretical conclusions. You can read them here and take them with a grain of salt, if you wish. But, at least consider them. This is more than just a matter of eating right and exercising. It seems to have become a matter of control from authority figures. What are the next steps we can take?
   First, I have been considering the whole wheat/gluten intolerance issue. Have people always been gluten intolerant but never had it diagnosed? Maybe people died before they would have discovered it. But it is popping up everywhere, in every city and state in our country. But I don't think other countries are experiencing this epidemic in the same way as us. In fact, I have heard reports of Americans (some of whom I know) who have gone to another country and eaten bread and they didn't get sick from the gluten. So, what is it about American bread that makes people gluten intolerant? Could it be that wheat has been genetically modified? I personally believe so. But an author who wrote an article in Mother Earth News doesn't agree. He says that wheat has not been genetically modified. He seems to think that the problems people have with tolerating gluten are mostly do to eating ingredients that are bad, along with eating the gluten, and that is why most people are gluten intolerant (or think they are). However, I have read other articles that say that wheat has been genetically modified? Who is right? Here is an article that is interesting about bread: http://www.rodalenews.com/how-bread-made . This article explains in detail how wheat has been modified. It has been so modified that it has lost most of its original value. But, according to this article, modern day wheat is not genetically modified. perhaps that happened in the past, but now it is hybridized. Hybridization is not necessarily bad, but in this case, the results were bad. They affect us today.
   The other food topic I want to mention is soursop. Soursop has been touted as being more powerful than chemo in killing cancer cells. Of course, everyone and their brother now wants to buy soursop products. While there are articles on the power of soursop, there are also articles warning against the product, claiming that drinking soursop juice or eating soursop can actually make a person sick. The article I read recently was written by a man who was a director of a neurology center. Could it be that if a cure for cancer were found, the medical society and FDA would be in an uproar? Do you realize how much potential money is made by people using pain killers and pharmaceutical products, and that potential will be minimized if people did not develop cancer anymore?
   Another one is raw milk. People have been drinking raw milk for thousands of years. I believe that occasionally, if a cow or animal that produced milk was sick, it could affect those who drank the milk. But overall, raw milk is full of nutrition and is very beneficial for us. Nevertheless, I have seen recent articles on 'the dangers of raw milk'. I almost have to laugh at them, because it seems like the authors of such articles must have their heads in the sand. Even reading the article, it doesn't appear that there are any dangers in drinking raw milk. Could it be that as long as farmers continue to produce raw milk, that there is a threat to the industrialized agriculture system? If everyone drank raw milk from now on, that would affect our economy in some interesting ways. Those who produce milk commercially would go out of business, and lose lots of money they are banking on. But, local farmers would become prosperous and improvements to farming would come about as more raw milk is being made available for the public to have. Perhaps, people would be healthier and would not have to make as many trips to the doctors? Again, the medical association would be affected financially and would suffer loss as well. So, some areas would prosper financially, while others would suffer great loss. But people would probably be healthier and happier if they eat properly, and not necessarily follow the FDA guidelines for what we should or shouldn't be able to eat.
   These problems are primarily specific to Americans, and part of the reason is that Americans tend to live by convenience. We go for whatever is easiest and whatever tastes best. If something requires a lot of work to produce, we say 'forget it' regardless of what kind of results we could get from working hard. The tradeoff for convenience is our health. We can have convenience, and we are used to convenience, but we will pay for it sooner or later. The FDA and Monsanto know this and are banking on our love for the easy life. They are making a lot of money off our love for having everything right at our fingertips. They make sure it tastes good too.

 
Did you know that outlawing gardening is being considered?

Four Thieves Oil Recipe

   If you have never heard of Four Thieves oil, you need to look this up. The story goes like this; in the Fifteenth Century, Some thieves came up with this recipe and used it to protect themselves from getting sick while digging up graves. They gave the recipe away in order to make their sentence lighter when they got caught, and we have it today.
   Four Thieves oil is made up of cinnamon oil, lemon oil, rosemary oil, clove oil, eucalyptus oil, and lemon oil. When combined in the right proportions, this mixture is amazingly beneficial. It helps serve as an antiseptic, and has anti-viral properties as well. It is good to use if someone in the family is sick or has a cold.
Here is more information on it: http://mountainroseblog.com/thieves-oil/
I think I just might want to make some!

Heads Up For My Vitamin Taking Friends If You Are 'Flushing' Take Heart!

    There is a saying that goes like this; We learn something new every day. Well, today I learned something new and I want to share it with you. I want to share this with my health minded friends (I know there are a lot of different ways of thinking of health care. I am talking specifically with my friends who take supplements and vitamins.

   I was about to finish my dinner when my neck became very hot. At first, I thought it was just a hot flash. But in seconds I knew this wasn't a hot flash. I felt like I was on fire. My neck and shoulders were now burning. I asked my husband for help. Maybe we should call 911?

  I was pointing out to my family while we were eating dinner, that our dinner was a 'safe' dinner. Almost everything we ate was organic, or at least natural. So, was I suffering from a food reaction or allergy? Whatever it was, it was spreading down my arms, and eventually went down the trunk of my body and into my legs and feet. Was it food poisoning? I was concerned, because I had used some raw cream that was a little old. I don't think it was bad though, but I could have been wrong. Maybe my body was reacting to it. Maybe I had food poisoning from it. Why weren't any of the other family members affected like this?

   This seemed more like a reaction to something I ate, rather than food poisoning. The only thing I could think of was the seasoning I put on the potatoes. I looked at the ingredients and it was a just a bunch of common herbs and spices. By now, I was almost beet red. It looked like I had been to the beach! I had also posted a message on Facebook seeing if anyone would have any idea of what this could be.

   Lo, and behold, someone came up with the bright idea that it could be niacin and asked if I had taken any. I had taken some a couple of hours prior to dinner. I went to the bottle and read what it said about 'flushing'. Flushing could occur when you take niacin. Sometimes, you would become itchy. I finally concluded that I must have had a 'flushing' reaction from the niacin. I have never had anything like this before.

   But it gets better. I decided I will not take niacin again unless it was the non-flushing kind. But I was mistaken. According to this video, flushing is a good thing. It is part of detoxing. I had no idea. Detoxing is desirable and taking niacin can result in it. So, I will keep my bottle of niacin and continue to take them. I may have another 'flushing' session tomorrow or the next day. It's ok. I will come back to normal within an hour or so. So, if you start turning beet red and feel really hot, chances are that you are flushing. If you are flushing from taking niacin, take heart. It is a good thing. If you suspect you are flushing from something else, please see a good health caretaker. Or do a google search on the Internet. Use wisdom and be safe.