Sunday, October 24, 2010

How long is your food taking to rot?

Have you ever put what we in Jamaica call an 'American apple' in your fruit bowl and watch how long it takes to disintegrate? Now put a good old Jamaican Otaheite Apple in that same bowl and see if in two days you don`t have to throw it away ...now put both in the refrigerator.......a friend of mine just took an American apple out of her fridge and while inside wasn`t so hot the outside was beautiful and glossy after 3 months......
Don't you wonder what these beautiful glossy fruits are doing to your insides? My mother never ate an apple without peeling it and she didn`t live in these times.The meat is too red the chickens are too plump, you must notice that only organic chicken or what we call 'scratch fowl' are thin or plump, big or small that's because they're not getting artificial help. Same thing happening with fruits, I love the "ugly" fruit grown by our farmers - when they're too pretty they scare me, they should scare you too!
I haven't had a papaya in weeks because all of a sudden I can`t find one with seeds, went through that with grapes now I have to go through that with papayas too......my son who uses papaya seeds for his favourite greens' dressing is having a hard time...things and times are a-changing people.
Then did you all read the article about the McDonald's kids meal of fries and burger that showed no sign of decomposing after 6 months - it was photographed every day by Manhattan artist Sally Davies and did not show a hint of mould or decay after sitting on a shelf in her apartment , looking at the end of 6 months almost as fresh as the day she bought it - check out this report of the experiment called 'The Happy Meal Project'
I rest my case - it's time to go back to the land for our food!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

High blood pressure?

A lot of my readers with issues want to know what not to eat when suffering from high blood pressure......it seems as if everyone now has high blood pressure or diabetes these days.........well if what DR.MERCOLA says is true in the following article, and we know it is, a lot more of you will be walking that way.
It’s important to understand that uncontrolled high blood pressure is a very serious health concern that can lead to heart disease and increases your risk of having a stroke.
The good news though is that following a healthy nutrition plan, along with exercising and implementing effective stress reduction techniques will normalize blood pressure in most people.
So please review the guidelines below if you or someone you know is affected by high blood pressure. It's actually an easily treated condition, but one that can cause serious damage to your health if it's ignored.
Your Diet Will Raise or Lower Your Blood Pressure
Are you on a high grain, low fat regimen?
If so, I have bad news for you, because this nutritional combination is a prescription for hypertension and can absolutely devastate your health.
Groundbreaking research published in 1998 in the journal Diabetes reported that nearly two-thirds of the test subjects who were insulin resistant (IR) also had high blood pressure, and insulin resistance is directly attributable to a high sugar, high grain diet along with insufficient amounts of exercise.
So, chances are that if you have hypertension, you also have poorly controlled blood sugar levels because these two problems often go hand in hand.
As your insulin level elevates, so does your blood pres­sure...
As explained by Dr. Rosedale, insulin stores magnesium, but if your insulin receptors are blunted and your cells grow resistant to insulin, you can’t store magnesium so it passes out of your body through urination. Magnesium stored in your cells relaxes muscles.
If your magnesium level is too low, your blood vessels will constrict rather than relax, which will raise your blood pressure and decrease your energy level.
Insulin also affects your blood pressure by causing your body to retain sodium. Sodium retention causes fluid retention. Fluid retention in turn causes high blood pressure, and can ultimately lead to congestive heart failure.
If your hypertension is the direct result of an out-of-control blood sugar level, then normalizing your blood sugar levels will also bring your blood pressure readings into the healthy range.
Fructose Can Cause Your Blood Pressure to Skyrocket
The first thing you need to do is remove all grains and sugars, particularly fructose, from your diet until both your weight and your blood pressure have normalized. Eating sug­ars and grains -- in­cluding any type of bread, pasta, corn, potatoes, or rice -- will cause your insulin levels, and your blood pressure, to remain elevated.
A study published earlier this year discovered that those who consumed 74 grams or more per day of fructose (the equivalent of about 2.5 sugary drinks) had a 77 percent greater risk of having blood pressure levels of 160/100 mmHg. (For comparison, a normal blood pressure reading is below 120/80 mmHg.)
Consuming 74 grams or more of fructose daily also increased the risk of a 135/85 blood pressure reading by 26 percent, and 140/90 by 30 percent.
This is significant because the average American now consumes 70 grams of fructose EVERY day!
Fructose breaks down into a variety of waste products that are bad for your body, one of which is uric acid. Uric acid drives up your blood pressure by inhibiting the nitric oxide in your blood vessels. Nitric oxide helps your vessels maintain their elasticity, so nitric oxide suppression leads to increases in blood pressure.
In fact, 17 out of 17 studies demonstrate that elevated uric acid levels lead to hypertension
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Saturday, October 9, 2010

Grilled chicken not a healthy choice?

While people who are trying to eat healthy have stopped cooking down their chicken here comes news of the cancer risks from eating grilled chicken - now I`m not suggesting for a moment that you eat raw chicken but we all need to be aware of the carcinogens in our food. I remember as a child when we were told butter was bad for us so my mother changed to margarine and then when I became an adult and everybody had their little tub of Chiffon margarine in their fridge we heard it was plastic and would never come out of our intestines remember that ? So back to butter we went, in fact where is Chiffon margarine now? Then we heard all that milk that the milk man used to bring with the lovely cream on the top was going to kill us so milk became pasteurized and homogenized....do you see where we are heading with that now ? Good old fricassee chicken seems not to be so bad when we are cooking chicken(WHICH WE EAT TOO MUCH OF ANYWAY) take note of the following from The Cancer Project Update
Grilled chicken has long been touted as the healthy choice for consumers, yet this could not be further from the truth. PhIP, a type of heterocyclic amine (HCA), is a well-known carcinogen identified by The National Institutes of Health. Independent tests found the chemical PhIP in 100 grilled chicken samples from seven restaurant chains. Based on this evidence, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) recently filed and won a lawsuit against fast food companies selling unsafe food. The lawsuit was originally filed under California’s Proposition 65, which states that consumers must be warned about products that contain known carcinogens. Fast-food companies will be put on trial for selling products containing a known carcinogen and will be forced to post warnings in California restaurants about the cancer risk of grilled chicken.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, another reminder to stay ahead of the curve and avoid these risky products. In the United States, more than 209,000 cases of breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in 2010, according the American Cancer Society. Human studies have shown that exposure to PhIP, even at low levels, is associated with increased breast cancer risk. Individuals consuming the most PhIP can have up to a 90 percent increased risk compared to those with the lowest consumption. Other studies found those with the highest PhIP intake had more than a 2.5-fold increased breast cancer risk. Other cancers identified with PhIP and HCA exposure include cancers of the colon, rectum, and prostate.
A common mistake is to consider methods of cooking meat, like grilling, steaming, and boiling to be healthful; however, any method of cooking animal tissue can create HCAs. Meat naturally contains amino acids and a protein called creatine. When heated, the combination of amino acids and creatine form HCAs. Since there are no safe levels of exposure to this carcinogen, it is recommended to avoid the consumption of meats for cancer prevention and survival.
The time is now to create awareness about the ways individuals can take control over their cancer risk. Since environment and lifestyle account for up to 90-95 percent of all cancers, adopting a whole-foods plant-based diet, keeping a positive mindset, and engaging in physical movement are the best tools currently available for cancer prevention. This October help The Cancer Project’s mission and your loved ones by spreading the message of prevention.
When we try to eat right and switch to a healthy plant based diet- one with food free of herbicides and pesticides by buying organic or growing our own- we will stop putting ourselves in harms way.
Once we get the information and know what we are doing to our bodies we can choose not to take heed,but remember life is a choice so choose well!
We are NOTHING without our health!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

GMO`s harmless?????

I always watch the ad where the M&M doesn`t want to be placed in the pretzel with a smirk not a smile as it reminds me of all the sweet peppers and watermelons, tomatoes etc. that no longer know what they really are and also of how I love the flavour of yellow melon but wonder whenever I see it if I should buy it - has it ,in some way, been genetically modified and is it healthy?
Well the results of studies about some Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's)are starting to trickle out - not about genetically modified fruit, but can I wait till the answers come in on that or will it be too late? Here is a report on what has been discovered about some GMO's so far.
Biologist Arpad Pusztai had more than 300 articles and 12 books to his credit and was the world’s top expert in his field. But when he accidentally discovered that genetically modified (GM) foods are dangerous, he became the biotech industry’s bad-boy poster child, setting an example for other scientists thinking about blowing the whistle.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Pusztai was awarded a $3 million grant by the UK government to design the system for safety testing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). His team included more than 20 scientists working at three facilities, including the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, the top nutritional research lab in the UK, and his employer for the previous 35 years.
The results of Pusztai’s work were supposed to become the required testing protocols for all of Europe. But when he fed supposedly harmless GM potatoes to rats, things didn’t go as planned. Within just 10 days, the animals developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers, and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and damaged immune systems. Moreover, the cause was almost certainly side effects from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, the GM foods on the market, which are created from the same process, might have similar affects on humans.
With permission from his director, Pusztai was interviewed on TV and expressed his concerns about GM foods. He became a hero at his institute -- for two days. Then came the phone calls from the pro-GMO Prime Minister’s office to the Institute’s director. The next morning, Pusztai was fired. He was silenced with threats of a lawsuit, his team was dismantled, and the protocols never implemented. His Institute, the biotech industry, and the UK government, together launched a smear campaign to destroy Pusztai’s reputation.
Eventually, an invitation to speak before Parliament lifted his gag order and his research was published in the prestigious Lancet. No similar in-depth studies have yet tested the GM foods eaten every day by Americans.
Irina Ermakova
Irina Ermakova, a senior scientist at the Russian National Academy of Sciences, was shocked to discover that more than half of the baby rats in her experiment died within three weeks. She had fed the mothers GM soy flour purchased at a supermarket. The babies from mothers fed natural non-GMO soy, however, only suffered a 10% death rate. She repeated her experiment three times with similar results.
Dr. Ermakova reported her preliminary findings at a conference in October 2005, asking the scientific community to replicate her study. Instead, she was attacked and vilified. Her boss told her to stop doing anymore GM food research. Samples were stolen from her lab, and a paper was even set fire on her desk. One of her colleagues tried to comfort her by saying, “Maybe the GM soy will solve the overpopulation problem.Of the mostly spurious criticisms leveled at Ermakova, one was significant enough to raise doubts about the cause of the deaths. She did not conduct a biochemical analysis of the feed. Without it, we don’t know if some rogue toxin had contaminated the soy flour. But more recent events suggest that whatever caused the high infant mortality was not unique to her one bag of GM flour.
In November 2005, the supplier of rat food to the laboratory where Ermakova worked began using GM soy in the formulation. All the rats were now eating it. After two months, Ermakova asked other scientists about the infant mortality rate in their experiments. It had skyrocketed to over 55 percent.It’s been four years since these findings were reported. No one has yet repeated Ermakova’s study, even though it would cost just a few thousand dollars.
THEY DON`T WANT TO KNOW!

Friday, October 1, 2010

NEWS FLASH - EXPENDABLE PEOPLE!

Today U.S. officials apologized for deliberately infecting hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea during secret medical experiments in the late 1940s. MSNBC reported the following -
"Between 1946 and 1948, the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Institutes of Health worked with the Guatemalan government to infect 696 unsuspecting Guatemalans—including mental patients—with STDs in order to determine whether penicillin could work as a preventative measure for the disease. "Many of those infected were encouraged to pass the infection onto others as part of the study," MSNBC says. The so-called "Guatemala experiments" were discovered by Susan Reverby, a Wellesley professor who stumbled upon them while researching the Tuskegee experiments, a forty-year study in which the U.S. government also infected black men with syphilis up until the 1970s. NIH director Francis Collins is scheduled to discuss the issue at 11 this morning, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized this morning for the "clearly unethical" experiments.'
How does an apology help? As a Dept.Head I always say to my employees I don`t accept apologies...I`m sorry means nothing to me....Why? The deed has already been done.SORRY CANNOT HELP IT!Of course I believe you may be genuinely sorry but what should have happened is you should not have done it so you wouldn`t be standing in front of me saying you are sorry...damage has been done and 'damage control' is highly over rated!
Didn't the U.S. officials know lives were at stake? But Guatemala and its inhabitants are expendable......who cares? Just like all the fruit that's being exported to 3rd world countries,I see the apples and grapes on the side of the road daily, sorry not buying any why are you flooding my country with them? What are they loaded with? No thank you.......Is it because the population of most third world countries is black ? Why do you think the money promised to Haiti has not gone to them? They are BLACK....therefore expendable!
Can we hear now what experiment-gone-wrong caused Aids? That one came back to bite the US in the butt didn`t it? (no pun intended)...