ten more reasons to grow more of your own food. I will admit that I do feel better when I avoid anything with dyes and preservatives. Some of the ingredients I question, but we would all do better to be outside and working to grow more of the food we consume than we do.
Carolyn, I agree wholeheartedly! But for those who can't grow their own, those of us who can might want to grow a bit extra and give it to the elderly, infirm, or those who just don't have the land for a garden. One of gardening's greatest pleasures is sharing.
There are alternatives to the foods containing the additives they mentioned so it is possible to buy grocery store food and still be healthy you just have to read labels and choose wisely. Olestra..don't eat foods that claim to be Lite or Fat-free without reading the label, many of those have Olestra in them but not as many items as companies planned on in the 1990's during the low fat craze. Last year the FDA notified chicken feed companies that they could no longer use organic arsenic products in feed. Don't buy Papaya grown in Hawaii. We only buy Lactaid milk because daughter and hubby are both lactose intolerant. No growth hormones in it. We don't drink any of those sodas mentioned but do not tell me what's in Dr. Pepper (and it isn't prunes) anyway I figure the vodka in it will negate the bad stuff. Don't buy store bought bread products made with Bleached Flour and don't use Bleached flour in your homemade goodies. And if you do buy breads/pastries from a real bakery ask them if they use flour containing potassium bromate. Youngest daughter is alergic to red dye #40...no rash or fever, she gets violent. I look for foods colored with natural ingredients...like Beet for red, Spinach for green, etc. Whole Foods has an M&M type of candy called Sundrops that is sooooo much tastier than the other kind. The chocolate is thicker, the shell is thinner and the colors are all veggie based. It might be hard to find your favorite foods without BHT and/or BHA, especially since all food items in this country must have a 'Sell By' date on them. The further in the future the Sell By date the more likely that the item will contain those preservatives or other preservatives of some sort. But if you read the labels you can find other preservatives used that do not have bad side affects. Go with some of the Natural or Organic products.
I just had a customer tell me she bought some pre made cookies last summer at the local upscale grocery store. When she turned them over there was mold on the bottom so she returned them. When she checked the sell by date it was a 3 year later date. They evidently freeze them and pull them out to defrost and sell as needed. WHO freezes anything like that for 3 years? Jane, You are right... I wasn't thinking about those who can't just that we as a whole should try to grow more than we do and help those who can't. It is actually quite sad (and frightening) that there are so many people who don't know plants and food come from "the ground". "You should just go to the grocery store for them" is their idea of getting food.
Food coming from the 'store' is normalcy bias. Most people, and I do mean MOST people have no idea where food comes from. They've been conditioned/brainwashed to think 'grocery store' from very young ages. I get beef from a 'bum' steer that three of us buy together. Pork comes from the shoat I pay the pig farmer to pasture, note: i said pasture, not feed. Some feed is supplemented. I get free range chicken and eggs from a chicken 'ranch' a few miles west of town. Most of our vegetables come from the garden. I talk about canning, pickling, processing and preserving meat at work, and people look at me like I'm from another Galaxy.
FBG, I think you and I, and many Stewbies, are from the same galaxy! We have grass-fed beef from a neighbor down the road, pork from a couple who raise their own hogs and let them free-roam and forage, and of course our own eggs. Although we don't eat our hens we will eat someone else's hens! Having a big vegetable garden is such a boon, and of course we now have our almond harvest--all the way up to 37 almonds so far. We even get fish from our own pond, as long as someone else catches and cleans them! I like our galaxy.
I don't get grassfed beef...actually, I skip the beef for the most part. But I do raise meat birds....They are ever so much better, too. Jane, that is quite the haul...whew whee! how can you keep up with the shelling? Try not to use them all in one recipe, ya hear?
Carolyn, you have heard of trout almondine? Well, we are thinking of having shrimp almondine--one shrimp apiece!
In that list of 10 items, I felt one was missing. So here it is: A chemical named Diacetyl (DA), used in butter flavored microwavable popcorn - Is inked to the onset of Alzheimer's disease... http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/h ... -1.1135225 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 132606.htm http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20 ... alzheimers Personally speaking, I think it's our own laziness that's the greatest threat - I mean, we can still have buttered popcorn the old fashioned way. The way our parents and grandparents used to have in their time... But no, now we must have it made in less then 3 to 4 minutes - Thus ready to serve in front of the TV (during a commercial break)!
Thank you S-H. I was going by the list provided in the article. I am sure there are many other things that need to be outlawed, including GMO foods. Put Monsanto and its ilk out of business. They do far more harm than good, and their lawyers go back and forth repeatedly working for them, and then working for Congress, etc. It is called a 'conflict of interest' and is quite illegal. They are not even required to put these things on the lables. ALL chemicals added to foods should be listed. If you need a degree in chemistry to read labels, DON"T eat it! There is a video on the Weather Channel here about Walmart's ice cream sandwhiches do NOT MELT even in extreme heat. Don't eat them. Nasty. Thankfully, I rarely ever shop there, and I won't be buying their ice creams. Any food with more than just a few basic items ought to be left on the shelf.
I agree with you 100%, that anything which has a misleading/confusing list of ingredients on the labels - Should be left on the shelves to rot... But as I had said in my earlier post, it's actually our own laziness that's the greatest threat. As we now like to get things done straight out of the box, cutting corners in just about every task... However the funny thing is, that despite so much time and labor saved by doing such things - Why are we today still so short of time, as well as depleted of energy??? Obviously, it's kind of an addictive narcotic (the way by which we today behave and react). At first we think that we are saving time, so it feels really good! But in the long run, we slowly become slaves to it... Now every single one of us here on GardenStew is a gardener, or a grower of some type. So we at least are talking about how to avoid it. But we (even though may seem very much alike) are actually a different breed. As majority of the people out there don't even bother to think about any of this. So this for me is the real sad part... As no matter how much i try to make others listen to logic - I am always fighting a losing battle. As FBG said in his post, I too feel that ignorant people start to see me as if I also am from a different galaxy!
Exactly S-H. Everyone eats junk from a box, and it is 'instant' this or instant that. I think my DIL is poisoning my DS with her cooking, or lack thereof. [not sure about the other DIL?] I like mostly homemade stuff. If I get lazy now and then, it is more likely to be a sandwhich.
