Are Vegetarians Bad for the Environment? July 14, 2008

I’m always reading about people eating less meat in order to reduce their carbon footprint. These people say that the most important thing you can do to help the environment is to go vegetarian.

For example, Kelly Freston wrote this article last year in the Huffington Post: Vegetarian is the New Prius:

Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: “The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.

Seems logical. But is it really true?

I read a great article recently in the spring edition of Wise Traditions (the Weston A. Price Foundation quarterly journal). The article was written by Matthew J. Rales, who has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College in Vermont. He also recently completed an apprenticeship at Joel Salatin’s grass-based Polyface Farm.

This article is so dense and so brilliantly constructed that I can’t do it justice in one post. So I am going to do a series of posts discussing Matthew Rales’ arguments against vegetarianism as pro-environment.

Let’s start with the assertion that vegetarians make that rainforests are being destroyed by livestock.

“Make no mistake; rainforests are not cleared in any drastic measure by independent farmers who want to graze a few steers. They are cleared by United Nations-supported corporate giants under the guise of feeding the world and alleviating poverty — all for the production of more of their patented seed.”

“A recent article in Business Week reports that Brazil alone grows over 25 million acres of soybeans — all of which are genetically engineered. The Wall Street Journal reports that Monsanto’s stock has tripled in the last year due to Brazil’s demand for Roundup Ready soybeans — a genetically engineered plant that can withstand multiple, frequent applications of toxic herbicide.”

“Our society has been conditioned to support a co-opted environmental movement in the name of a chemical-intensive vegetable bypass industry, at the tragic expense of good health to both man and environment via the qualities of grazing animals and their products — meat and milk for people, manure for the soil — none of which we can afford to lose.”

Why are cows being blamed for the destruction of the rainforest? Farmers who raise cows on pasture do not buy soybeans. They do not buy corn. They feed their animals grass and hay.

Clearly, this argument made by the U.N. that raising animals for food is destroying the environment is fallacious. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Rales writes:

“The U.N. points its global finger not at bad management practices like feedlots and confinement dairies, but at the cows themselves; not at Monsanto, but at real farmers, who raise livestock in accordance with nature’s principles — on grass.

The U.N.’s accusations ought to be directed at chemical-intensive, industrial CAFO agriculture.”

Back to Kelly Freston’s article on the Huffington Post. The worst, most misleading part of her article are these two sentences:

Recent years have seen an explosion of environmentally-friendly vegetarian foods. Even chains like Ruby Tuesday, Johnny Rockets, and Burger King offer delicious veggie burgers and supermarket refrigerators are lined with heart-healthy creamy soymilk and tasty veggie deli slices.

Environmentally friendly? Burger King?

Let’s take a look at what’s in a BK Veggie Burger:

Vegetables (Mushrooms, Water Chestnuts, Onions, Carrots, Green Bell Peppers, Red Bell Peppers, Black Olives), Textured Vegetable Protein (Soy Protein Concentrate, Wheat Gluten, Water for Hydration), Egg Whites, Cooked Brown Rice (Water, Brown Rice), Rolled Oats, Corn Oil, Calcium Caseinate, Soy Sauce (Water, Soybeans, Salt, Wheat), Onion Powder, Corn Starch, Salt, Hydrolyzed Corn, Soy, and Wheat Protein, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavors from non-meat sources, Sugar,Soy Protein Isolate, Spices, Garlic Powder, Dextrose, Jalapeño Pepper Powder, Celery Extract.Contains: Soy, Wheat, Milk and Egg. This is NOT a vegan product. The patty is cooked in the microwave.

I bolded all the processed foods that are contained in that single patty.

With that amount of processing, there is a ton of energy that goes into making that patty. Not to mention all the energy and chemical fertilizers that went into growing all those vegetables and soybeans and oats and rice. Oh, and there are egg whites in there, too. So you have to factor in raising chickens and slaughtering them as well. Plus those chickens were fed corn and soybeans.

And where do you think the corn and soybeans come from that were used to make this BK Veggie Burger? Do you think they came from organic farms tended by environmentally-conscious sustainable farmers?

Not likely. They are most likely genetically modified soybeans from industrial farms.

And where a lot of those industrial farms located? Why, in South America. Where the rainforests used to be.

All right, okay, so maybe you can still be a vegetarian and save the planet. You just won’t eat at Burger King. Maybe you’ll just buy those faux deli meats like Freston recommends at the health food store. Like “Smart Bacon”. After all, they are made from soybeans that are not genetically modified. So you’re safe, right?

Not so fast. What’s in Smart Bacon?

Water, soy protein isolate, wheat gluten, soybean oil, textured soy protein concentrate, textured wheat gluten, less than 2% of: natural smoke flavor, natural flavor (from vegetable sources), grill flavor (from sunflower oil), carrageenan, evaporated cane juice, paprika oleoresin (for flavor & color), potassium chloride, sesame oil, spice extractives, fermented rice flour, tapioca dextrin, citric acid, salt.

Again, I’ve bolded the processed foods. Any idea how much processing goes into some of these ingredients?

Take paprika oleoresin. I looked it up on Wikipedia:

Paprika oleoresin (also known as paprika extract) is an oil soluble extract from the fruits of Capsicum Annum Linn (Indian red chillies), and is primarily used as a colouring and/or flavouring in food products. It is composed of capsaicin, the main flavouring compound giving pungency in higher concentrations, and capsanthin and capsorubin, the main colouring compounds (among other carotenoids).[1]

Extraction is performed by percolation with a variety of solvents, primarily hexane, which are removed prior to use.[2]

Hexane? Where does hexane come from? Wikipedia?

Hexane is produced by the refining of crude oil.

Oh, okay, so Smart Bacon is made with hexane, a refined petroleum product. Gee whiz, how can that be good for the environment? I thought we were trying to reduce our dependency on oil.

So I guess Vegetarian is the New Prius, like Kelly Freston said, seeing how the Prius also requires gasoline.

But let’s get back to that Smart Bacon. What else is in there? TSP — textured soy protein. According to Wikipedia, this is how it’s made:

TSP is made by forming a dough from high nitrogen solubility index (NSI) defatted soy flour with water in a screw-type extruder such as the Wenger and heating with or without steam. The dough is extruded through a die into various possible shapes; granules, flakes, chunks, goulash, steakettes (schnitzle), etc., and dried in an oven.

OK so you have to grow the soybeans then dry them then grind them into flour then defat (?) the flour by extruding it and then heat it with or without steam.

Hmm… not sure how much energy is involved in that process but I do now that anything extruded is made in a factory.

Here’s a picture I found of a soy extruder:

You think that thing needs oil, too? Just like the Prius and the Smart Bacon? Or do you think it runs on solar power?

Anyone want to take a guess — which has a lower impact on the environment: a grass-fed farmer selling meat at the farmer’s market or extruded soy patties from a factory?

So who’s destroying the rainforests? Who’s using up the most energy to produce their foods?

Is it the small farmers raising grass-fed cows and those of us who support them by purchasing grass-fed meat and dairy products directly from the farmer?

Or is it multinational corporations like Monsanto and Burger King and Lightlife Foods (makers of Smart Bacon), and all the veggie-burger-eating vegetarians?

Wake up, folks. Just because you are avoiding meat does not mean you are avoiding factory farms.

If you really want to avoid factory farms, support your local farmer.

PS: We’re having cheeseburgers tonight. Grass-fed beef from Organic Pastures Dairy up in Fresno — where the cows are on pasture all year long.

Sources: Burger King, Lightlife Foods, Wise Traditions 2008, Huffington Post, Soy extruder machine

King Corn on PBS Tonight! April 15, 2008

“For the first time in American history, our generation was at risk of having a shorter lifespan than our parents. And it was because of what we ate.” —Curt Ellis, KING CORN filmmaker

I’m so excited. They are showing “King Corn” on PBS tonight. You do not want to miss this movie!

Check your local listings and set your DVR!

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/

Look, Mom — No Cavities! April 8, 2008

I went to the dentist today. And guess what? No cavities!

This is the first time I’ve had no cavities in years. And you would think that I would be more prone to dental decay — considering the stress I’ve had on my body over the past year (childbirth, breast feeding).

Here’s the interesting thing… For the past six months, I have not used toothpaste. No fluoride.

My whole life I was told that you’re supposed to brush with fluoride toothpaste to prevent cavities. Yet I only used Tooth Soap and baking soda for brushing. Of course, I ate a very nutrient dense diet — cod liver oil, pastured eggs, raw milk, butter, cream, and cheese, and organ meats. I avoided sugar and any grains/nuts/seeds/legumes that were not soaked and/or sprouted.

But isn’t fluoride supposed to prevent cavities?

When I asked my dentist, Dr. Raymond Silkman, what he thought of fluoride, he responded with one word, “Bad.”

He’s probably the only dentist in Los Angeles who gives prescriptions like this: “Drink beet kvass and freshly juiced green vegetables and carrots — daily”. And he told me to get tested for heavy metals. He thinks I may have heavy metal toxicity. (Beet kvass and freshly juiced vegetables chelate heavy metals.)

But back to the fluoride… This Crest ad says that “Crest stops soft spots from turning into cavities.” Lies! Crest doesn’t do any such thing.

Here’s another lie:

Coke’s slogan proclaims it is the opposite of what it really is — a fake. For centuries, people have been producing naturally fermented soft drinks like kombucha, naturally fermented root beer, and ginger ale. These naturally fermented soft drinks are very high in B vitamins and probiotics — they are health tonics. Conversely, Coca Cola is artificially carbonated sugar water. Not only is it devoid of nutrition, but the sugar in it actually blocks the absorption of vitamins and minerals in the body.

Of course, nowadays Coke doesn’t even have sugar — it’s made with high fructose corn syrup. Which is genetically modified corn soaked in battery acid. YUM!

Here’s an ad for sugar from the ’60s:

I love how transparent it is. Looking at it today, it’s so obvious. You can see the lies.

This is how you have to look at ads. Ads are made to convince you to buy. That is their sole purpose. They don’t care about you. And they don’t care about truth. They are often saying the very opposite of what is true.

Ads also prey on your fears and insecurities.

Here’s a Heinz baby food ad:

The message is based on the idea that real food is not safe, and only food in jars is safe for babies. See what I mean? It’s the opposite of the truth.

Of course, not all ads are bad… here’s a neutral one for iodized salt (iodized salt is not good for you — sea salt is best — but the iodine is something we need):

In the 1920s, with the depletion of the soil in America, people in the midwest started getting goiters due to iodine depletion. This prompted a campaign for iodized salt. Many Americans today are cutting down on salt — but there is a bigger problem today. Soy.

Soy is a goitrogen, which blocks the absorption of minerals, including iodine. Most Americans are deficient in iodine today — due to widespread consumption of soy foods.

Think you’re not eating soy? If you eat in restaurants, you are eating soy. If you eat processed or packaged foods, you are eating soy. Restaurants cook with soybean oil or vegetable oil — which is almost always cut with soybean oil. Most processed and packaged foods contain soybean oil and/or soy lecithin. All baby formulas (not just the soy formulas) contain soybean oil.

Here’s one I like — a French advertisement for cod liver oil:

This next one is not a real ad — it’s a spoof — but it’s great:

Too bad lard is so maligned today. It is such a healthy fat!

Lastly, here is my favorite — calling for a boycott of Kraft genetically modified foods:

Boycott Kraft Foods! Krafted: Genetically Krafted Foods

Genetically Modified Masa Harina March 18, 2008

Yensi cooked us some Guatemalan food for dinner. It was SO GOOD!

We had:

Chicken sauteed in butter with grilled onions and red bell pepper (I added some salsa on top)
Brown rice cooked with chicken broth, chopped carrots and red bell pepper
Black beans with avocado slices and a dollop of yogurt “cream cheese” (yogurt curds without the whey — I used this in place of sour cream)
Salad with red leaf lettuce, strawberries and blood oranges (all from our CSA box) with vinaigrette

We are drinking a very yummy biodynamic (organic) wine I found at Whole Foods called Côtes du Lubéron Blanc Château La Canorgue.

I put the dry black beans in a saucepan (with a lid) last night. I covered them with filtered water and added a couple of TBS of whey (homemade, from yogurt). They soaked for about 17 or 18 hours before she cooked them. We also soaked the rice all day.

Yensi wanted to make homemade tortillas, but we couldn’t find organic (non-GMO) masa harina. I called six stores!

Masa harina is basically pre-soaked corn meal. They soak it in lime water. This is the traditional method Yensi said they use in Guatemala. They soak the cornmeal (which they grind fresh) in lime water for two weeks.

Sally Fallon says in “Nourishing Traditions” that it’s best to make masa harina from scratch, because the masa harina you buy in the store is usually rancid (like most flour — it goes rancid quickly after grinding). Maybe we will get to that one day. In the meantime, the organic masa harina will have to do.

Yensi said has been been buying the Maseca brand of masa harina that she gets at her local store. Problem is, we looked it up and it’s not only not organic, but it is also genetically modified. They publicly denied that their products used genetically modified ingredients a few years back, but I know that is bullshit because they are owned by Archer Daniels Midland, makers of that shitty inedible “GE (genetically engineered) corn”.

I’m sure Maseca was a good company at one time, and they probably made good products. But big agribusiness corporations ruin everything they touch.

In the movie “King Corn” (see it if you haven’t), they tried to eat some of the genetically engineered corn they grew — they spit it out it was so bad. This corn is designed to be used for high fructose corn syrup. They make it by soaking the inedible corn in battery acid.

Yep, here we go:

Longstanding Mexican government regulation of corn supply and prices, support for small corn growers, and price subsidies for corn tortillas for Mexican consumers have been eliminated, all at the behest of Cargill, ADM, and ADM’s powerful Mexican partner, Gruma/Maseca. The end result of this globalization process is that small and medium-sized farmers, both North and South of the border, can’t make a living, while ADM and Cargill (and their preferred customers such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Tyson, Smithfield) make a killing. Meanwhile, consumers, who have been promised that Free Trade would result in lower prices, are paying more for food every year. Corn tortillas, the main staple of the Mexican diet, have risen in price 300% since NAFTA came into effect.

Source

I was trying to explain to Yensi why the Maseca masa harina is bad. Try to explain “genetically modified” to someone for whom English is their second language. I basically said that not only is it not organic, but that the pesticide is actually INSIDE the corn. Not exactly true, and a very simplistic way of explaining it. I tried.

Anyway, I think we’re going to order the masa harina from the Bob’s Red Mill website — then we can have tortillas next week!

That was one of the best meals I’ve had in a while. Yensi is a fabulous cook!

And it was really wonderful to be able to just make the salad and not have to scurry around putting a whole meal together after I worked all day. Whew!

Yensi said she is going to put the leftover beans in the blender and then she will fry them in a skillet. Another Guatemalan specialty. I think we’ll have that Friday night with some ground beef tacos (we’ll use sprouted tortillas from Whole Foods since we can’t have homemade). Sounds great to me!

Genetically Modified Poison February 7, 2008

Here is a great video explaining the problems of GM foods globally:

Also, here’s a link to The Dying Fields, a PBS documentary about the suicides among farmers in India. There is a suicide every eight hours.

You can watch the whole thing online.

This is what Linn-Cohen Cole was referring to in her Open Letter to Hillary Clinton.

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton February 6, 2008

I know a lot of you out there like Hillary. After all, she won the California and New York primaries.

But the Clinton family (like the Bushes) have some dirty little secrets. Namely their ties to truly evil multinational corporations like Monsanto.

Sorry to disappoint, but I gotta post the truth.

What follows is a really well-written letter by Linn Cohen-Cole which came in my email this morning. It’s being posted around the net. I copied it from this site.

Yes, it’s long. But take the time and read it. It’s very important.

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from Another Wellesley College Alumna

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.

I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto’s Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they’d ever experienced

And farmers couldn’t collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto “patents” their DNA-altered seeds as “intellectual property.” They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17).

Since the late 1990s (as industrial agriculture took hold in India?), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land, and it has increased since 2002 to an average of 1 every 20 minutes (P.Sainath,The Hindu). The reasons for suicides are always complex and Monsanto is not the only giant agribusiness now in India, but it is one of the largest in India, and the main one in Maharastra where the suicides are especially high. Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South America, Central America and here, have all protested Monsanto and genetic engineering.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named “Rural Americans for Hillary” was planned with Troutman Sanders, Monsanto’s lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world’s largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE’s most controversial project (DP&L’s - now Monsanto’s - terminator genes), the world’s largest meat producer (Tyson), the world’s largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Walmart).

The inbred-ness of Rose’s legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other’s corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens’ Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You didn’t just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart’s board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000).

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html

Food and friends, in Clinton terms:

Bill’s appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson’s chicken factory farms (http://www.financialsense.com/ editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html). Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, …. Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/GMO/Monsanto/monsanto.html

But what Bill did for Monsanto “genetic engineering” goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people’s escape from it.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from “normal” (even polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora’a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill’s put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more … (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html or http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm

2. Bill’s FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill’s FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even “a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base” had no impact. ” http://www.wafreepress.org/14/Envirowatch.html

4. Bill’s FDA wouldn’t even label rBGH as “present” in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose, Bill’s USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto’s counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill’s FDA enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill’s FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in “organic” standards, “the dirty three” a : genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. (My emphasis.) The FDA backed down.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEED91E31F933A1575AC0A96E958260

Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk … as “organic.” And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.

USDA head Dan Glickman: “This is probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history.” In fact the response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/john.rose/orglab.html

Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public’s right to know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields (http://btcotton.blogspot.com/). We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto’s GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4790.cfm). Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). “[E]ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company.” The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM traits.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9716.cfm

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals - more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill’s USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I will say more about disease from industrialized poultry farms waste, at the end of this letter.

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill’s USFDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all). (My emphasis.)

http://www.sustdev.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2127&Itemid=35

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food exports - badly straining trading relations. Monsanto’s “good ole boy,” he betrayed American families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family’s health and their democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American family farmers - backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean farming.

But, Hillary, it is one thing to not label a regular ole food product to sell it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food product (rBGH), but Bill’s administration didn’t label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow Disease.

Bill’s FDA’s August, 1997 regulation permitted “known TSE-positive [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed,” only requiring the label to read “Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants” in the US.

Monsanto added to the problem. “There is evidence that rbST use [Monsanto's GE bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy cow. … Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor “hidden” BSE. That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic when sent to slaughter.” (My emphasis.)

http://www.consumersunion.org/food/bgh-codex.htm

Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and slaughter and genetic engineering corporations whch benefitted?

Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to this?

With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole world, which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

“Even for the biggest “winners,” it is like winning at poker on the Titanic.” Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right.

Do you hear that?

Bill had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That’s “dinky immoral.” That’s chicken feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.

“Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years…Tens of thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into the Earth’s ecosystems…Some of those releases, however, could wreak havoc with the planet’s biospheres.” Jeremy Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb ass Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys, thinking about as much about the consequences of something this immense and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you, when he was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on the power and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes, developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds from “working” after only one season. Farmers “must” repurchase (patents and suing not certain enough control, it seems). Those “killing” genes pose the apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could fail, too. Nature could fail.

Far-fetched?

GMO fields are already contaminating normal species (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/2002/sp02v8n2.html. Berkeley Professor of Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in maize (http://www.slogefree.org/newsletters/News_Item.2004-12-21.4353/).
And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO seeds break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1882-geneticallymodified-superweeds-not-uncommon.html).

But Bill’s USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the technology to be ‘widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies.’
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20060827&articleId=3082

“Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers.” David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University

Hillary, one third of the world’s bee colonies have collapsed. Gone. Farmers in India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse, what does these farming catatrophes say about “industrial agriculture”?

Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture. And now ….

… transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source of bird flu. … Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be the problem [just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow Disease], and yet “initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. … http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp “Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out in commercial poultry operations, not free-ranging flocks.” http://www.birdflubook.com/a.php?id=75

Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA (http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2006/01/30/ag_news/updates/update01.txt)
to force small farmers to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety, Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital library on every move of small farmers’s livestock. http://goexcelglobal.he.net/~natpropg/nonais.html

But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not supply the feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began) and then sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale, are significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the massive concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers’ right to choose what to plant and the public’s right exclude GE plants from their communities.

http://www.rense.com/general65/righto.htm

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal seeds, immense pollution from factory farms, deadly-disease-ridden feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water supplies, Superweeds (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1882-geneticallymodified-superweeds-not-uncommon.html), lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms, and … India farmers killing themselves in what may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on average … one farmers’ suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu 1.30.0 - that is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural corporations in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law Firm.

Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given what Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose corporate connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah, but “foreign” food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for safe US food. You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane labeling.

I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a media distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and children, are meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those groups profoundly, connections you have never denounced.

Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls, exposing them to a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. http://www.indiaresource.org/issues/agbiotech/2003/monsantounilever.html But you take donations from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but as the poorest people in this country, they are least able to buy organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods Bill let into our food system. The National Black Farmers Association has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?

So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or Monsanto?

Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto?

Women exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto?

Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto?

Animals suffering from lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto?

Our children who eat candy with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver toxicity, or Monsanto?

Edwards was right about your corporate connections. I just didn’t understand until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have been.

I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking us off a cliff.

Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta

Lasagna Composting and Seed Starting January 17, 2008

So I’ve been thinking a lot about my garden. One of the New Year’s resolutions I have for this year is to vastly increase my vegetable and herb gardens. I also want to grow a lot more flowers.

I was pondering buying some fancy composting equipment but now I’m thinking maybe I don’t need it after all.

In mid-December, I buried a bucketfull of kitchen scraps in my vegetable garden and last week I went out to see how it was decomposing and IT WAS GONE. There was no evidence of scraps whatsoever. So it only took about 3 weeks.

Those worms eat fast!

So I guess I don’t need any fancy equipment. I still want some… because I like toys. But I’ll use the money to buy a water filtration system and grain mill instead.

But for now, considering the amount of worms in my garden beds, I am going to start layering my kitchen scraps “lasagna” style as recommended in the book “Lasagna Gardening” by Patricia Lanza (one of the best gardening books EVER).

She recommends laying wet newspaper or cardboard directly on the bed. You can even lay it directly on sod or hard ground — if you want to start a new bed. No digging required. Then on top of that you lay kitchen scraps, and various other components both brown and green, add some peat moss and manure if you can — and on top of that soil. Then cover with tarps or plastic trash bags so it can bake (like lasagna!).

This will get my beds ready for spring planting and no need for any equipment.

And it’s a great way to use up all these Wall St. Journals we have lying around.

I suppose if you didn’t have as many worms as I do, you could simply add worms to your beds and you’d do fine. You can tell if you have worms by using the shovel to dig up a bit of soil. You should see them immediately.

By the way, I did this in the last garden I had and it was staggering how big my plants got. They were absolutely mammoth. Tomato plants taller than me (I’m 5′5), a lemon grass bush as big as a 5-year-old. And I used no fertilizer and no pesticides. Just the lasagna gardening method.

Next on my list is to figure out what I’m going to plant, where to plant it, and then to buy the seeds and set up a place to start them. I’m going to do various vegetables and herbs. Now that I have my dehydrator, I can even dry my herbs for herb tea. Or make fresh mint tea straight from the garden — there is nothing better than that!

I want to buy only non-Monsanto, non-GMO (genetically modified) seeds. Just about every seed purveyor out there sells Monsanto seeds, however I have found three mail-order sources for real heirloom seeds that have not been tampered with:

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Fedco Seeds

Seed Savers

There’s really no place in our house to put seed trays. However, I just read that I can set up some basic metal shelving in the garage and start my seeds out there. You just have to add some lighting. I can probably get everything I need at the hardware store.

Gotta get back to work now. I’ll post more about this when I decide what to plant!

Twenty Ideas for Healthy New Year’s Resolutions December 30, 2007

Christmas is over.

We are still on vacation, though, visiting family. It’s cold in Seattle, but it’s wonderful to be with our family.

I’m thinking about goals for the new year.

1. My first goal is to lose the extra 30 pounds of baby weight by her one-year birthday, April 13th.

2. I also want to get all my finances and paperwork in order (nothing short of monumental).

3. And get out of debt. This one is totally do-able. (I mean for all my credit card debt. The student loans don’t count.) And once I’m out of debt, I get to start investing in real estate, which I am really excited about.

4. Spring cleaning — I want to sell all of the accumulated junk in the garage on eBay and the like.

Those are the main things. I have lots of other smaller goals. Like expanding my vegetable and herb garden and composting and making more of my household cleaners…

Here is my question to you… Do you have any New Year’s resolutions that are related to your health and the environment? No?

Maybe you could add one or two. Here are some simple things you can do that would make healthy and/or green resolutions for 2008…

1. Stop eating high fructose syrup. It’s industrial corn soaked in battery acid. Read the labels and stop eating this.

2. Use cloth shopping bags. You can get them for a coupla bucks at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. I take them with me everywhere in my car these days — and I even use them at Target.

3. Stop eating soy or vegetable oil. It causes heart disease and cancer. Cook with butter, lard, coconut oil, palm oil, and/or olive oil (make sure it’s real olive oil — not the faux olive oil you buy at Costco or Trader Joe’s).

4. Start taking probiotics. Take a supplement. Drink raw milk. Make your own kombucha or kefir or kvass or sauerkraut.

5. Use cloth diapers. It’s really not so hard. I made the switch; so can you. If you don’t know how to do it, email me and I’ll post all the tricks.

6. Limit bread and refined flour. If you want bread, eat any of the following kinds:

whole grain (like Mestemacher German rye breads: http://www.germandeli.com/mebr.html)
sprouted (like Ezekiel or Alvarado St. Bakery)
REAL sourdough bread
best of all, freshly milled, soaked and sprouted homemade whole grain bread.

7. Eat grass-fed beef and dairy products. Grain-fed cows are sickly and pumped full of antibiotics. Grass-fed cows live 3-4 times longer and live happy, full lives.

8. Eat raw dairy products — NOT pasteurized! Pasteurization exists mostly to mask bad milk from unhealthy cows. Buy raw dairy products from trusted dairy farms. They are healthier and much more nutritious, since they have all the enzymes and probiotics intact.

9. Make your own cleaning products. All you need is Borax, baking soda, white vinegar, some Dr. Bronner’s, some essential oils, and some citric acid. If you don’t want to make your own, buy the healthy kind at Whole Foods.

10. Try to buy local. Is it really necessary to buy that foodstuff that comes from New Jersey when you live in San Diego? Think about all the miles traveled, all the wasted gas and energy. Buy local for the environment.

11. Join a CSA. It’s great to buy organic produce but when you join a CSA, you are actually making a pledge to the farm. Letting them know that they can count on you to support them for the next season. I believe everyone in America should be supporting a local farm through a CSA subscription. To find a CSA near you, go to http://www.localharvest.org.

12. Start taking cod liver oil. Dr. Oz called it the supplement that everyone should take. I agree. Not only does it prevent osteoporosis but it also prevents — and even reverses — cavities. I started my baby on cod liver oil when she was 5 months old. (Not all cod liver oil is the same. We buy ours here: http://www.radiantlifecatalog.com/)

13. Avoid genetically modified foods. Yes, this means most packaged and processed foods. You should give them up anyway because most of them contain soy oil and high fructose corn syrup and other toxic crap you don’t want in your body.

14. Buy non-Monsanto seeds. See my blogroll to the right for sources of seeds that are not tampered with by Monsanto.

15. Eat more organ meats. Don’t like liver and onions? Have some foie gras. Or take cod liver oil and desiccated liver tablets. But make sure you get your organs.

16. Stop eating soy. It’s an endocrine distrupter and seriously messes up your thyroid. It can make you infertile. Stop now.

17. Make bone broths. Beef broth, chicken broth, fish broth. Simmer in a big stockpot and freeze for later use. This is one of the healthiest things you can do.

18. Reuse and recycle. Don’t throw away plastic yogurt containers. Or glass mayonnaise jars. Or paper bags. Reuse them for something else. And recycle everything you can.

19. Stop brushing with toothpaste. The fluoride and glycerin are giving you cavities. Use Tooth Soap or Dr. Bronner’s — or sea salt.

20. Filter your water using a reverse-osmosis water filtering system.

Enough for now. That should give you some ideas. (The ones on this list that I have not done yet I am committed to doing in the new year.)

The Future of Food December 14, 2007

I just read my friend the latest post on my friend Louisa’s blog:

http://constantstateofflux.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/the-future-of-food-life-stuff-and-eveything-else/

After I read that, “coincidentally” (not), someone else on a newsgroup posted a link to this video about the history of genetically modified food:

This is just an intro; I want to buy the whole video.

The scary thing is that pretty much everything you buy in the grocery store is now manufactured by companies like Monsanto. Everything is sprayed with pesticides and most things are now genetically modified. Anything with soy oil or vegetable oil (which is mostly soy oil). Anything with industrial corn or soybeans. It’s hard to know what’s what because the way they label it, you can’t tell.

For example, did you know that when you buy a food product at the store and it lists “spices” as an ingredient, that can contain anything? It usually (almost always) contains MSG.

It’s disgusting that Monsanto is going out and suing small farmers for saving and reusing seeds. It’s disgusting that there are only FOUR varieties of potatoes grown today. It’s disgusting the way huge corporations have driven small farms out of business.

I’m not buying seeds from catalogs anymore. Why? Because it’s all seeds from Monsanto!

“Virtually every large mail-order garden company in the United States uses a seed broker to supply them with stock.”

“The American nursery trade is a 39.6 billion dollar a year industry. With the purchase of Seminis in January of 2005, Monsanto is now estimated to control between 85 and 90 percent of the U.S. nursery market. This includes the pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer markets. By merging with or buying up the competition, dominating genetic technology, and lobbying the government to make saving seeds illegal, this monolith has positioned itself as the largest player in the gardening game.”

“Monsanto holds over eleven thousand U.S. seed patents. When Americans buy garden seed and supplies, most of the time they are buying from Monsanto, regardless of who the retailer is.”

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/02/garden-seed-monopoly.html

I’m going to step up what I’m doing to change the future of our food. I’m going to join a seed saver organization and start growing all my vegetables and herbs from seed.

http://www.seedsavers.org/membership.asp

Here’s another place to buy seeds:
http://www.rareseeds.com/

Of course everything I grow is organic. But I want truly organic non-Monsanto seeds in my garden. I’m going to rip out everything that’s in there — it all came from Home Depot. Which means it’s all from Monsanto. UGH! It makes me sick that even people who are growing their own food are still unknowingly buying seeds genetically modified by this evil corporation.

I don’t have a lot of land but I have some and we live in sunny southern California — I can grow food all year long.

This is my first New Year’s resolution! I’m excited to start planning my garden. It’s a small step to take, but if more of us do it, it will impact the planet.

Post-Thanksgiving exhaustion, vaccines, and soy oil November 23, 2007

Kate is down for the night. I'm soaking raw pumpkin seeds (from the pumpkins I used for pumpkin pie) and simmering the turkey carcass to make stock.

I'm so exhausted. The past week has been a whirlwind of shopping, menu planning, roasting, basting, measuring, mixing, baking and cleaning. I feel like I need a vacation now.

Which of course I'm not getting. I went to bed after 11:30 pm last night (trying to wind down after such a long day) and got up at 6:30 to tend to Kate. And I tended to her all day — picking her up and kissing her when she bonked her head on the metal coffee table, feeding her ground turkey with chicken liver pate and butternut squash with butter, doing dishes, doing laundry, heating up bottles and changing poopy diapers. She went down at 5 pm, as usual. A 10 and a half hour day — not so bad. Mothers don't get a day off.

My single friends spent the day at the movies. Last night at dinner, they talked about all the movies they'd seen lately. I couldn't really add anything to the conversation. And for much of it, I had no idea what they were talking about. Being a new parent, I haven't seen a movie in the theater since I tried to go see “Oceans 13″ when Kate was a couple of months old and she pooped halfway up her backside and we had to leave the theater.

Ah, memories…

Anyway, I'm not complaining. I have seen enough movies for a lifetime. Okay, not for a lifetime, but I can skip seeing movies for a while is all I'm saying. And Seth gets those “FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION” movies so I guess I could be watching movies if I really wanted to. We just got “Into the Wild” in the mail for example.

But instead I am relaxing with a glass of wine, reading about vaccines. The more I read, the more I am convinced that waiting on vaccines — or refusing them altogether — is the right thing to do.

Read this:

Because of the dramatic increase in the number of injuries from childhood vaccines over the past decades, Congress enacted the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, setting up a fund to compensate parents for injured or dead children (as if a parent could ever be “compensated” for the loss of their child due to vaccination). Application to this fund is the first step parents must take when their child has been harmed; thus, the fund serves to shield the pharmaceutical company from all initial liability. To date, the fund has paid out over $1.2 billion to parents with over 12,000 reports made every year. This is a staggering number considering how many reactions occur that medical authorities refuse to attribute to the vaccine. And if David Kessler is correct and 90-99 percent of all injuries are not even reported, the true number of children injured or killed by vaccines would be 1.2 million or more per year.

http://www.westonaprice.org/children/vaccinations.html

Doesn't that scare you? It scares me. And that's just a taste of what I'm reading. I'm not just reading the crackpot left-wing fringe websites either. I told that pediatrician I would research it and I am. I'm reading everything.

Read this, from the CBS News site (not exactly a crackpot left-wing fringe website):

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/06/15/couricandco/entry2934107.shtml

Come on, people. One in 160 kids with autism. That is CRAZY. If vaccines are not to blame, something else is. Something is not right.

Here's another heinous thing I read — about the Hepatitis B shot, which is now administered at birth:

A flagrant example of the poor science behind vaccination development, the FDA approved the vaccine for use after only 1636 doses of Recombivax HB were administered to only 653 children who were subsequently monitored for only 5 days after each dose.6 Since the vaccine is recommended for the first day of life, Merck was asked for safety data on newborns. They replied, “We have none. Our studies were done on 5- and 10-year-olds.”7 Further, Merck admitted in 1996 that no data is “available for the simultaneous administration of Recombivax HB with other vaccines” even though children are routinely given other vaccines along with Recombivax HB vaccine.

http://www.westonaprice.org/children/vaccinations.html

Good Lord! They test cough medicine more than that.

Oh, wait. Maybe not: http://www.newstarget.com/022209.html

Do I really want my child to be a guinea pig for the likes of Merck? And Hepatitis B is only transmitted through sex and dirty needles. Hmm — yeah, I guess Kate was high risk, seeing how there's so much casual sex and intravenous drug usage in the maternity ward. Oh, yes, a mother can infect her baby during birth — but couldn't they just administer a simple blood test to the mothers instead of giving our newborns a shot?

Oh, right, a blood test COSTS them money. The Hep B shot MAKES them money.

Anyway, I'll keep reading. I'll keep researching. As I said, when and if I find enough evidence to convince me that vaccines are safe and beneficial, we'll get them for Kate.

I have also been thinking a lot about baby food. Since lately Kate is eating 2 (soon to be 3) squares a day.

The recommendation from pediatricians is to start babies on rice cereal.

Have you read the label on a box of Gerber rice cereal lately? I had bought some for Kate — it was sitting in the cupboard. Needless to say, after reading the ingredients, I promptly dumped it in the trash.

Rice Flour , Soy Oil-Lecithin , Tri- and Dicalcium Phosphate , Tocopherols Vitamin E , Electrolytic Iron , Zinc Sulfate , Niacinamide a B Vitamin , Riboflavin Vitamin B-2 , Pyridoxine Hydrochloride Vitamin B-6 , Thiamin Vitamin B-1 , Folic Acid a B Vitamin , Vitamin B-12 Cyanocobalamin

Number 2 ingredient: Soy oil-lecithin.

Do you know what that is?

First of all, it's a genetically modified food. (http://www.safe-food.org/-consumer/shop.html)

Do you know what that means? No? Neither do I exactly. So WHY are we feeding it to our babies? Genetically modified foods are… well, just google it and look:

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/AboutGeneticallyModifiedFoods/index.cfm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/gelink.cfm
http://www.netlink.de/gen/fagan.html

Need I go on? No, I need not. Suffice it to say that CLEARLY it would be better to give a 7-month old baby REAL food instead of “Franken-food” that has zillions of websites chronicling its dangers.

OK so we've established that GM foods are sketchy and possibly dangerous and at the very least, should be avoided due to the fact that (a) most people don't know what they are and (b) most people don't know what they do to you.

Let's get back to the issue at hand. Soy oil-lecithin.

Soybean lecithin comes from sludge left after crude soy oil goes through a “degumming” process. It is a waste product containing solvents and pesticides and has a consistency ranging from a gummy fluid to a plastic solid.

Historian William Shurtleff reports that the expansion of the soybean crushing and soy oil refining industries in Europe after 1908 led to a problem disposing the increasing amounts of fermenting, foul-smelling sludge. German companies then decided to vacuum dry the sludge, patent the process and sell it as “soybean lecithin.” Scientists hired to find some use for the substance cooked up more than a thousand new uses by 1939.8

Today lecithin is ubiquitous in the processed food supply. It is most commonly used as an emulsifier to keep water and fats from separating in foods such as margarine, peanut butter, chocolate candies, ice cream, coffee creamers and infant formulas.

http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/lecithin.html

But the fact that soy oil-lecithin is a highly refined genetically modified waste food product is not the only concern at hand…

There are a number of potential problems with eating soy:

http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/03summary.htm

Endocrine disrupter. Reduction of vitamin assimilation. Potentially leads to thyroid cancer. MSG. Aluminum.

Aaaagggghhhhh. Great. Let's mess with Kate's endocrine system, reduce her vitamin absorption, and make her susceptible to obesity, diabetes, infertility and cancer.

WHY is this the number 2 ingredient in Gerber rice cereal? Why is soy oil-lecithin an ingredient in rice cereal at all? Why is THIS promoted as baby's first food?

Why don't they just make rice cereal out of rice? Maybe add a little butter.

Oh, right, then it wouldn't have the shelf life it does (nearly indefinite).

Why is soy oil the third ingredient listed in Enfamil infant formula? (http://www.epinions.com/content_237968723588)

The fifth ingredient in Similac? (http://www.walgreens.com/store/product.jsp?CATID=100367&navAction=jump&navCount=0&id=prod3061)

The third ingredient in Nestle Good Start? (http://www.amazon.com/Nestle-Essentials-Infant-Formula-Powder/dp/B000GCL5HO)

Doesn't that make you go HMMM?

It's in everything — including baby food — because it is a cheap industrial-grade product. Soy is cheap to grow and produce.

Makes you wonder if this has anything to do with children's declining immunity, allergies to peanuts, increased diabetes, early-onset puberty, etc.

A better use for soy oil?

Biodiesel!

http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/biodiesel.html

It can make cars run — just like gasoline. Is that what we should be putting in our babies' bodies?

I leave you with this (a good article on soy):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/13/CMGJKK1BP31.DTL

Note the last quotation from Marion Nestle: “People don't have to eat soy if they don't want to!” Nestle says. Uh, okay, I guess not — but what if it's in everything we buy?

This Lady November 14, 2007

I'm exhausted! I just had an 11 1/2 hour day. Kate woke up at 5:30. I tried to put her back down but she didn't want to go back to bed so I just stayed up with her.

Which was, of course, very fun. Kate is very very fun. She plays in her exersaucer or with her toys on the floor, and squeals with delight and laughs uproariously while watching her signing DVD. You really can't do much of anything else when you're with her except enjoy her. Which is not such a bad thing. I'm a pretty lucky lady.

That is what Alla always calls Kate: “This Lady”. As in, “What are we going to do with this lady?” Say that with a thick Russian accent and you have our Alla. The other expressions she uses are equally adorable: “OK babies!” and “Mamma Mia!” (said with the requisite amount of Russian angst). And she calls a bottle a “sippy cup”.

I can't tell you how much we appreciate and love her. It goes very deep.

Anyway, by 5 pm, when I got her down for the night (I know, early — that's what time she likes to retire), I was wiped. I did the dishes and the laundry and cleaned up the kitchen and put all the groceries away. And sat down to rest and have a glass of wine and some raw goat cheese and whole wheat crackers and get on the internet. Finally. It's been out all day. Something is wrong with our AirPort.

I'm making some rice now in the rice cooker. Picked up some tuna at Whole Foods for dinner. I am going to marinate it in some rice wine vinegar and scallions and soy sauce and grated ginger, roll it in sesame seeds, then sear it in a cast iron skillet. With steamed kale and edamame.

In addition to Whole Foods, Kate (”This Lady”) and I went to Rawesome today. Rawesome is a “private buying club” in Venice. It's $25/year to join and they make you sign something that says you basically disagree with the government and it's rules about food (I guess about pasteurizing everything).

Anyway, it's kind of funny. I feel like I keep taking This Lady to all these back alley places to buy food. Organic Pastures Dairy with their truck pulled up into a parking lot, Rawesome with their railroad car next to the organic coffee shop in Venice — just several blocks from the beach.

Rawesome has all kinds of great stuff — tons of raw, organic produce (including fresh coconuts and pineapples) as well as organic pastured eggs, raw honey, ceviche, raw milk, cream, butter, yogurt, cheese, and a wide selection of organic pastured beef (bison and cow) and a fantastic array of wild-caught fish. It's very hard to find wild-caught fish even in Whole Foods — most of it is farm-raised.

Which, incidentally, you do NOT want — I heard they are now feeding CORN to farm-raised salmon. Yes, CORN! Can you imagine? Of course it is genetically modified industrial grade corn — ugh! At least Whole Foods tells you it is farm-raised — unlike most stores, where you typically have no idea where the fish came from.

There was this guy there at Rawesome, shirtless with long hippie hair, delivering food. I forget what he was delivering — something he raised or grew or made. Anyway, when he was done unloading his merchandise, he took out a coconut, stabbed it with an implement (some kind of large pointy steel thing), and poured the juice over a strainer into a mason jar. Then he stirred in some organic barley grass powder, and sat down to drink it.

He was super tan and in perfect health. He looked like he lived on an island.

This was in the middle of Los Angeles. On a warm Indian summer afternoon.

I love it. I love the diversity. Love that people feel free enough to be who they want to be.

I guess I am a bit of a hippie at heart. I did usher for the Grateful Dead at one point. And I lived in a clothing-optional vegetarian co-op in college.

I'm not a Deadhead anymore, nor am I a vegetarian. Nor am I a hippie. But I still appreciate people who strive to be better, closer to the earth, connected to community.

Like Alla. She could be back in Russia, but she chose to come here — seeking a better life. And of course she is totally into natural health, always lecturing me about opening the windows for fresh air and organic foods and exercise.

And I suppose if you added up all my various things — kombucha, beet kvass, organic vegetables, raw milk, homemade earth-friendly cleaning products, tooth soap (I haven't even told you about that yet!!!), cloth diapers, Crocs (which, except for the plastic, are basically Birkenstocks), — you very well could call me a hippie.

Eh. In the words of Albert Brooks, “Call me a hippie, send me to Hell.”

On the way home from Rawesome (where I picked up two dozen pastured eggs*, cultured raw butter, raw goat cheese, and some fresh ginger), I drove past Venice High School, also known as Rydell High (it's the set they used for Grease). There were all these kids in the front of the school — and all these seagulls flying around. It was an amazing sight. That, coupled with the coconut hippie guy — it just made me grateful to live such a different kind of life. I could be stuck in the suburbs somewhere.

Maybe one day I'll have my cow and some chicken and even a vineyard. For now, this is pretty fun.

* why you need pastured eggs instead of just “free range”: http://www.hbmag.com/story_eggs.html