Death By Salad: Why Vegetarianism is Not Sustainable July 18, 2008

A friend of mine posted a query to the DNT (Discussing Nourishing Traditions) list the other day.

She and her husband became violently ill from something they ate a few nights ago, and she was trying to figure out what might have been the culprit.

She described in detail what they had eaten. For lunch, they had hamburgers (cooked medium rare) made from beef from a local grass-based organic farm. For dinner, they had chicken, made from chicken she bought at Whole Foods (free-range, organic, but not pastured).

She said they also had “an organic arugula salad (the kind in the pre-washed bag) and sliced Parmesan cheese made from (aged) raw milk” with dinner.

She asked the list if we thought the food poisoning had more likely been caused by the undercooked hamburger, or perhaps the chicken. She was wondering if she should throw away the leftovers.

Almost every single person (myself included) who responded said it was most likely the bagged arugula.

Our reasoning? For one thing, Earthbound Organics (the brand of arugula she bought) has had issues with E. coli before.

I am not sure is Earthbound Organics was absolved of the charges of E. coli contamination. But scares of bacteria contamination are becoming more and more frequent, affecting a plethora of different fruits, vegetables, and grains.

Most recently it’s tomatoes. And Malt-O-Meal was recalled a few months ago, due to salmonella contamination.

Do we know for sure it was the arugula? No, we don’t. But it’s very likely. Since the other food was cooked (or in the case of the cheese, aged) and it came from small farmers. The arugula was the only food eaten raw — so if it was contaminated with bacteria, they would not have been killed by cooking.

My friend and her husband were lucky. They are young and in good health. But what if they had been very young or very old, or infirm? They might not have survived. They could have died.

What is happening here? Why are so many foods, especially innocent vegetables and grains, many of them organic, being contaminated with deadly pathogenic bacteria?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I have come up with a couple possible causes:

1. The groundwater is contaminated from run-off from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations).

2. The farm workers picking and packaging the produce are not washing their hands after using the restroom. (This I heard from a local grass farmer. He said it’s very tough to enforce.)

I’m not sure how likely either of those scenarios are and how much they could be contributing to the spread of lethal bacteria — I’m not an expert in agriculture. However, they seem very plausible.

I thought of a third possible cause. When I went to the Earthbound Organics website to learn more about their farming practices, I read that they use compost and pelletized chicken manure on their crops:

“The compost mixture reaches and maintains an internal temperature of 131 to 149 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 5 days to kill any disease-causing bacteria and weed seeds before it is used in a field. We also use pelletized chicken manure, which has been heat-steam processed to kill unwanted bacteria.”

Considering how large their operation is, it’s doubtful that they use chicken manure from small farms with pastured chickens. It’s more likely the chicken manure comes from factory farms.

I googled “E. coli” and “pelletized chicken manure” and found this article:

“On Wednesday, Marler told the Free Lance he has known since November that the E. coli contamination occurred on land farmed by Mission Organics and leased from Paicines Ranch, and that the state agency’s investigation only confirmed that.”

And this one:

““The Salinas Valley appears to have seasonal, systemic E. coli O157:H7 contamination in the environment,” said a California health department official.

A portion of Paicenes Ranch was leased by Mission Organics, a company using organic production practices and products in a transition-to-organics program. While not implemented, pelletized, heat-treated, composted chicken manure was used in the production process on that field, the only field on which manure was the major fertilizer.

Samples testing positive for E. coli O157:H7 were also found on the Eade Ranch, where the company Braga Ranch was growing spinach; on the Wickstrom Ranch; and on the Taix Ranch in places next to the Nyland Ranch, which had a 3,500-head cattle feedlot a half-mile away.”

So it looks like Mission Organics was also using pelletized chicken manure — and they also had E. coli contamination (again, I’m not sure if they were later found innocent or not).

To understand more about these lethal bacteria, I found an excerpt from a Food Safety Newsletter discussing E. coli 0157:H7:

The problem of E. coli O157:H7 contamination is complex. The largest known reservoir of these pathogens is the colon of cattle. When cattle are fed large portions of grain — as is the case in feedlots and large factory farms — both the number of E. coli and their acid resistance rise significantly. This increases the likelihood that pathogenic E. coli — including O157:H7 — will survive and reproduce. Perhaps 30-50% of grain-fed cattle harbor E. coli O157:H7. Because the strain is acid resistant, if it contaminates uncooked food it survives the acid environment of human stomachs, which normally kills most bacteria, and then can cause serious illness.

The author of the newsletter opines:

“Although it may be hard to swallow, you’re probably much safer eating a hamburger made from grass-fed beef slaughtered in a local slaughter house and topped with a piece of lettuce from your neighbor’s organic farm that used the grass-fed cow’s composted manure as a fertilizer than you are eating products of all-American industrial agriculture.”

I have to agree. And this, my friends, is what makes me stand even more solidly in my belief that vegetarianism is not a sustainable practice for the environment.

Here’s why: It is impossible to grow crops without some kind of fertilizer for the soil. Farmers, particularly organic farmers, need animal manure in order to raise healthy crops of fruits and vegetables and grains. They do not want to have to resort to synthetic chemical fertilizers.

Why not? For one reason, they are are petroleum by-products.

What is a synthetic fertilizer?

Synthetic simply means “man made” and the common nitrogen sources such as ammonia, ammonium sulfate, and urea are by-products from the oil and natural gas industry.

Source

Hmm… back to petroleum again. Isn’t that something we are trying to avoid? Dependence on oil?

So, if organic vegetable farmers need manure to fertilize their fields, they have to get it from somewhere. They can get it from the factory farms. Or they can get it from small local farmers who raise their animals on organic grass.

Problem is, there aren’t very many small farmers left anymore. Most have been driven out of business by industrial agriculture.

How can we help to support these farmers who raise animals on grass? By buying their products. Raw milk and butter and beef from grass-fed cows, eggs and chickens and pigs who were raised on pasture. All of these animals provide healthy manure, which can then be used on crops.

So you see, there is one very important thing you can do for the environment and for the health of your family and the public health. And it’s not vegetarianism.

The best thing you can do for a healthy environment and a healthy populous is to support local farmers who raise cows and chickens on grass instead of feeding them grain. Farmers who do not use pesticides or antibiotics or growth hormones.

If you want to avoid eating meat, I think that’s fine. But don’t say vegetarianism is good for the environment. Or for public health. Particularly veganism. Because it isn’t. It is short-sighted and it is not a solution in the long run.

And if you are a vegetarian who cares about the environment and health, hopefully you still drink milk and eat cheese and butter and eggs, and you buy those products from grass farmers.

And if you are buying organic milk from cows that are fed grain (like Horizon Organic, a factory farm), you are part of the problem.

Here are some sources to help you find meat and dairy products from animals raised on pasture:

Eat Wild

Real Milk

In future posts, I will get into other issues regarding vegetarianism vs. meat eating, including methane, global warming, and nutrition and health.

Horton Hears a Who July 14, 2008

I want to share with you a wonderful comment I received from a reader, Craig, when I posted a while back on “Real French Fries” (French fries made with real grass-fed beef tallow).

Few people go back and read the comments — and I don’t blame you — life is busy! But this comment is so eloquent and so inspiring — it deserves to be read.

(Thanks, Craig!)

“I loved the taste of the “old” McDonalds fries, I think that was what they were really famous for. Never liked the vegetable oil substitute.

Sounds like you read the book “Real Food”. You have made correct assumptions about the history of saturated fats vs vegetable oils. Why change the way that people have been eating for thousands of years, to listen to a bunch of lined pockets tell us that our ancestors didn’t have a clue?

I wish there was a way to get the word out to the average joe about CAFOs, grass fed farming, raw products, the truth about organics in this country, saturated fat, processed foods, the true costs this country pays for what is sold as “groceries”, the farm bill and who really benefits (can you say Cargill etc…), the unhealthy information and practices put into place and supported by Congress and the FDA. Every citizen should be outraged at what has been forced onto the American people.

Our politicians fake their sympathy for the cost of health care, “food” and the price of gas, yet over 70% of all the costs of health care are related to industrial food sources, regulations and restrictions have forced local farmers out of business and dried up support for them in favor of industrial agricultural companies (same ones mentioned above, who now have the power and money to lobby for anything that they want), and 50% of the gasoline used in this country is used for fertilizing, growing and transporting industrial food (what’s wrong with locally grown food?). Doesn’t sound like our government has the American people’s interests in mind.

We need to have our voices heard!!!”

Thanks, Craig, for taking the time to post. It’s voices like yours we all need to hear.

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

The World According to Food Marketing Executives July 11, 2008

I’m reading a very interesting book called The End of Food by Paul Roberts. It’s a well-written and well-researched book about the history and future of food production.

I was fascinated by some of these facts from food marketing executives and researchers:

Food companies know exactly how much time the average household can devote to cooking — around thirty minutes a day, down from an hour in 1970 — and how quickly that number is expected to shrink: by 2030, the ideal cooking time is forecast to be between five and fifteen minutes.

Industry analysts have also tracked the decline in cooking frequency (less than half of home meals feature even one freshly made, or from-scratch item).

“Today’s average homemaker isn’t cooking a meal for five people anymore,” Steve Silk, the former General Foods executive, told me. “She’s cooking five different meals.”

And “meal” may be an over generous term; according to one recent U.S. study, sandwiches are now the most commonly served dinner entree, ahead of beef and chicken dishes.

Snacking accounts for nearly half of all eating occasions. Not surprisingly, snacks, which are among the most highly processed of foods and thus have among the highest profit margins, are increasingly the focus of product innovations.

For example, when researchers at Skippy realized that the traditional mode for peanut butter consumption — the sandwich — had become too complex for time-pressed families and kids, the company introduced single-serving tubes of peanut butter, called Squeeze Stix, that kids empty directly into their mouths.

There are so many problems with our current food production paradigm. But that last example takes the proverbial cake. Families are too busy to make a sandwich so kids have to squeeze peanut butter directly into their mouths?

How can we be that busy? What are we so busy doing? Playing video games and going to the mall? Watching American Idol?

And why are we buying this garbage? It’s all chock full of genetically modified ingredients, chemical additives and high fructose corn syrup.

We are paying a high price for convenience… and it’s not just the price of our health. The average food item travels 1500 miles from farm to fork. And that’s just transporting it. That’s not including all the energy that goes into processing the food.

Look at this flow chart of the modern food chain:

This is the reason our nation’s family farms have all but disappeared and the landscape is monocropped with corn and soybean.

We don’t even have amber waves of grain anymore. We have genetically modified RoundUp Ready inedible agri-business inventory destined to become feed for animals in CAFOs or high fructose corn syrup.

The only way out of this madness is to get back to cooking and eating real food.

Here are some ideas:

Get out of the supermarket and start shopping at the farmer’s market. Buy real milk from grass-fed cows, pastured chickens and organic potatoes — directly from the farmer. Don’t buy meat or dairy products that come from factory farms. Buy milk, meat and eggs from farmers who raise their animals on pasture.

If you can, grow your own. If you don’t have room for a chicken coop, grow vegetables. If you don’t have a lawn, do it in containers.

Buy dry beans and rice instead of frozen pizza and Lean Cuisine.

Make dinner every night. Use a crockpot if you have to. If you can’t manage every night, start doing it once a week.

Sit down and eat together – and not in front of the TV.

Learn how to make sourdough bread and cookies from scratch. Make your own pasta and pizza dough. Do it with your kids!

Give your kids chores like tending the vegetable garden or keeping the compost or doing the dishes.

Roast a chicken once a week and learn how to use the bones to make chicken stock. Once you’ve made the stock, you can use the bones to make homemade pet food. With the leftover meat, you can make sandwiches for lunch — instead of using processed luncheon meat.

Make eggs or oatmeal for breakfast instead of serving extruded processed cereal from a factory.

And, most importantly, stop buying processed foods. Or at last try to reduce the number of processed foods you buy.

Do it for the health of your family, for the good of the environment, for the future of our nation’s family farms.

Photo Credits: 1950s Housewife, High Fructose Corn Syrup and Obesity, Modern Food Chain, Boycott Krap

Baked Beans for Dinner July 6, 2008

Kate’s dinner: Leftover baked beans mixed with some organic grass-fed beef and beef liver.

I modifed the Nourishing Traditions baked beans recipe. I soaked the beans for 48 hours (just because I was busy and didn’t have time to make them sooner). I used chicken fat instead of butter and olive oil — just because that’s what I had on hand. Instead of water, I used homemade chicken stock to make the beans more nutrient dense. And I added ham hocks for extra flavor and nutrition.

She would have loved some sauerkraut with this dish — but I’m fresh out. I have a couple of quarts fermenting in the cupboard. I need to make more pickles soon, too. Kate loves pickles.

Three Meals for Baby Kate July 2, 2008

Some of you have expressed an interest in what I feed Kate — so I thought I’d document some recent meals.

1. Breakfast:

Two pastured eggs scrambled in butter, with raw organic grass-fed beef liver (frozen and grated) and sea salt. Plus organic cantaloupe and blueberries.

Since then, I’ve stopped giving her raw berries and other fruits with a lot of pectin. She always has runny stools when she eats them. I don’t think they are good for an immature digestive system.

2. Yesterday’s dinner:

Pastured, organic chicken livers sauteed in raw butter, with sea salt.

Organic peaches sauteed in raw butter (yum — tasted just like pie).

Homemade lacto-fermented sauerkraut (she absolutely loves this).

She’s waving and saying “Hi!” in this picture.

3. Dinner tonight — a “baby salad”:

Pastured chicken livers and organic strawberries and purslane.

I sauteed everything in raw butter (babies need a lot of fat!). Garnished with a little creme fraiche.

Here she is fingerpainting with her food:

Real French Fries June 21, 2008

We had Steak Frites tonight. Wow — was it good! I got the steaks (grass-fed) from Rocky Canyon at the farmer’s market this morning. They were melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

I served the meal with Lillet Blanc (a French apertif that tastes like orange) on ice, watered down with a little Pellegrino and a slice of orange. Yum! Exactly the perfect drink when it’s sweltering hot outside and you don’t have air conditioning.

Not to toot my own horn, but this dinner was seriously amazing. The only thing that would have made it better would have been chocolate ice cream. (Next time, for sure!)

I know, I know, potatoes are not on GAPS. But Seth has been doing so well, we figured we’d give it a try. I have a feeling he’s going to do fine with it.

Seth said the fries tasted like In & Out (I think they were better). I fried them in beef tallow (which I rendered a few weeks ago from beef fat, also from Rocky Canyon).

The trick to French fries is you have to either cut them and then soak them in water (in the fridge) for 12 hours (or overnight) — or you have to parboil them (boil for 2 minutes). I did a combination of the two — soaked in water for 8 or 9 hours (I didn’t read the recipe far enough ahead of time) and then parboiled just for be on the safe side. Soaking and/or parboiling helps to prevent soggy fries. It seemed to work — my fries came out crisp.

(I followed the recipes from The Balthazar Cookbook for both the fries and the Steak Frites. They recommend soaking in water for 12 hours. I read online that you can simply parboil — I’ll try that next time.)

I was reading about French fries this afternoon — here are some things I learned:

The taste of a french fry is largely determined by the cooking oil. For decades McDonald’s cooked its french fries in a mixture of about seven percent cottonseed oil and 93 percent beef tallow. The mixture gave the fries their unique flavor — and more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald’s hamburger.

In 1990, amid a barrage of criticism over the amount of cholesterol in its fries, McDonald’s switched to pure vegetable oil. This presented the company with a challenge: how to make fries that subtly taste like beef without cooking them in beef tallow. A look at the ingredients in McDonald’s french fries suggests how the problem was solved. Toward the end of the list is a seemingly innocuous yet oddly mysterious phrase: “natural flavor.” That ingredient helps to explain not only why the fries taste so good but also why most fast food — indeed, most of the food Americans eat today — tastes the way it does.

Open your refrigerator, your freezer, your kitchen cupboards, and look at the labels on your food. You’ll find “natural flavor” or “artificial flavor” in just about every list of ingredients. The similarities between these two broad categories are far more significant than the differences. Both are man-made additives that give most processed food most of its taste. People usually buy a food item the first time because of its packaging or appearance. Taste usually determines whether they buy it again. About 90 percent of the money that Americans now spend on food goes to buy processed food. The canning, freezing, and dehydrating techniques used in processing destroy most of food’s flavor — and so a vast industry has arisen in the United States to make processed food palatable. Without this flavor industry today’s fast food would not exist. The names of the leading American fast-food chains and their best-selling menu items have become embedded in our popular culture and famous worldwide. But few people can name the companies that manufacture fast food’s taste.

That’s an excerpt from an article in Atlantic Monthly by Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation). He’s saying that when McDonald’s switched from frying their fries in beef tallow to vegetable oil, they had to start adding “natural” flavors in order to make them taste good.

Natural flavors can’t be bad, right? They must be better than artificial flavors.

But they’re not.

“A natural flavor,” says Terry Acree, a professor of food science at Cornell University, “is a flavor that’s been derived with an out-of-date technology.” Natural flavors and artificial flavors sometimes contain exactly the same chemicals, produced through different methods. Amyl acetate, for example, provides the dominant note of banana flavor. When it is distilled from bananas with a solvent, amyl acetate is a natural flavor. When it is produced by mixing vinegar with amyl alcohol and adding sulfuric acid as a catalyst, amyl acetate is an artificial flavor. Either way it smells and tastes the same.

Yuck! It’s bad enough that fast food French fries are fried in rancid vegetable oil, an oil which is not at all suitable for deep frying. But in order to make them taste good, they have to add chemicals.

Why not just use beef tallow? That’s the way people have been frying French fries for centuries.

It’s because of this ridiculous notion that saturated fats are bad for you. And yet there is no evidence to back up that claim. Ancel Keys has been disproven.

One thing I keep coming back to… if you just look back at history, and review the kinds of fats we have been eating, it makes you question how healthy these vegetable and soybean oils are. We’ve never eaten this way — ever — in the history of food. So why is everyone so sold on it? If saturated animal fats like lard and tallow and butter were working for us for centuries, why are they being denigrated now?

Fats & Oils in the Food Supply: 1890 vs. 1990
(in descending order of market share)

1890
Lard
Tallow
Chicken Fat
Butter
Olive Oil
Palm Oil
Coconut Oil
Peanut Oil
Cottonseed Oil

1990
Soybean Oil (70% partially hydrogenated)
Rapeseed Oil, or Canola Oil (usually partially hydrogenated)
Cottonseed Oil
Peanut Oil
Corn Oil
Palm Oil
Coconut Oil

(source: Mary Enig, “Know Your Fats”)

People around the world have been eating saturated animal fats for centuries. This is the first century that we are eating vegetable oils. And look at the rise in heart disease, cancer, etc.

Coincidence? I think not.

Fast Food Nation June 2, 2008

“This isn’t about good people versus bad people. It’s about the machine that’s taken over this country. It’s like something out of science fiction. The land, the cattle, human beings. This machine don’t give a shit. Pennies a pound, pennies a pound. That’s all it cares about. A few more pennies a pound.”

“By the way, Don, you seem like a nice fella. But the food your company sells is crap. Total crap. Even when there isn’t manure in it.” — Fast Food Nation

I’m watching Fast Food Nation. I haven’t read the book yet — it’s on my shelf in the stack of To Be Read.

If you are still eating industrial meat, please watch this movie. It will take two hours of your time. I guarantee it will change your mind about eating meat from factory farms.

My only criticism of this movie (other than being a little too Hollywood for my taste) is that it doesn’t go far enough in showing the truth.

It’s not easy to switch to grass-fed meat. I go out of my way to get it. I only buy meat at the farmer’s market, or at my local organic buying club (Rawesome), or online. Only from farmers I trust.

I have bought meat at Whole Foods — but I don’t buy the chicken or the beef anymore because I don’t think it’s that good. The chicken they sell at Whole Foods, while it’s free-range, it’s still not good. They snip the birds’ beaks, they keep them indoors and they don’t get any sunlight. They feed them soy.

I feel much more comfortable buying meat from farmers I trust.

I will still buy some fish at Whole Foods (pole-caught canned tuna and frozen wild salmon, wild whole Thai snapper), and I do buy Applegate Farms turkey (only because Seth requires it).

Whole Foods is fine. For some things. I’m grateful for them — grateful that they have so many organic foods. But most of those organic foods come from great distances — which I do not like. I’d rather go to my local farmer’s market and get foods that are local and in season.

And just because something is “organic” does not mean it’s properly raised or responsibly produced. Just because the beef is organic, does not mean it’s good. If the animals are grain-fed — if they are not on pasture — it’s no good.

Daily Photo: Riding on Daddy’s Shoulders May 11, 2008

We got to spend a lot of time with Daddy this weekend — which is all I really wanted for Mother’s Day. Yesterday we went to the Santa Monica Festival and today we went and ate grass-fed hot dogs at a little hot dog stand in Culver City called Let’s Be Frank. Co-founded by Sue Moore, former “meat forager” for Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, they’re serving healthy hot dogs and supporting local grass-fed farmers. They have locations in San Francisco, too.

After that, we looked at furniture at Plummer’s and went to a store that sells educational materials for kids. Seth bought Kate a bunch of things, including a truck and some sleigh bells (which she loves — she shakes and shakes and shakes them — and laughs herself silly). I picked out a Spanish dictionary and a telephone that says all the numbers in English, French and Spanish.

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/

Hot Dogs: A Health Food! March 19, 2008

I worked all day today and don’t really feel like making dinner. But I can still make a healthy meal — quickly and easily.

We’re having:

US Wellness Meats Hot Dogs (all-beef, nitrate-free, from grass-fed cows) with Homemade Lacto-fermented Sauerkraut and Pickles on Alvarado St. Bakery Sprouted Bread
Organic Green Salad with Tomatoes (from CSA box), Raw Milk Blue Cheese and Homemade Vinaigrette
Organic Corn with Raw Butter (from the freezer)

Grass-fed beef is so good for you. According to the Eat Wild website:

… compared with feedlot meat, meat from grass-fed beef, bison, lamb and goats has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,” or CLA.

I feel good, too, knowing that the cows who gave their lives for this meal lived good lives on pasture in the sunshine, eating green grass — not confined, standing on cement up to their knees in their own manure in a feedlot.

It will only take a few minutes to heat everything up and serve. And this is a meal any kid would love.

Add some reheated homemade chili and raw milk cheese and it’s even better! (I don’t happen to have any chili in the freezer so we are having them plain tonight.)

UPDATE: Seth said, “There must be a lot of fat in these hot dogs because they taste REALLY good!” Actually they have less of the bad fat and more of the good — and yeah, they do taste better.

Hide the Liver! March 7, 2008

I mixed up a huge batch of baby food for Kate today. This is a very easy way to serve organ meats — by hiding them in ground beef.

This is a recipe for an older baby or toddler, since the texture is like ground beef, not a straight puree.

I used organic everything — and the meat was all organic and from grass-fed animals. You can use heart, kidney or other organs or glands in addition to or in place of the liver.

The garlic and onion are very nutritious, as are the herbs and spices.

2 TBS coconut oil, butter or lard
1 large yellow onion, chopped
3 or 4 garlic cloves, minced
4 ounces homemade beef stock
3 lbs grass-fed beef or bison (I used bison)
3 lbs grass-fed beef or calf liver, pureed in the food processor
1-2 tsp cumin (this helps camouflage the taste of the liver)
8 egg yolks
Spices to taste: cilantro, parsley, thyme (use fresh if you have it — mince finely)
Sea salt to taste

You need two 10-inch cast iron skillets. If you don’t have two, you can just cut the recipe in half. I like to make my baby food in bulk and then freeze it.

Put a tablespoon of coconut oil, butter, or lard in each skillet. Add garlic and onion and cook on medium until soft. Throw in 4 frozen cubes of beef stock (make ahead and freeze in ice cube trays). Add ground bison or beef and pureed liver. When cooked through, add 4 egg yolks to each skillet. Add spices and sea salt cook a few more minutes. Let cool and pack into ice cube trays. Freeze and then pop out to use a cube as needed.

You can use more or less liver to your liking. I try to use as much as possible so that Kate gets more liver. I tasted it and it was pretty darn good. Only faintly tasted of liver. It also got a thumbs up from Julianna, Yensi, and Yensi’s friend Maria who was visiting.

You can feed the ground beef mixture as is. We mixed in a little raw butter to make it taste even better (and make it more nutritious — toddlers need about 6 TBS of good fat per day).

It also makes a great base you can use for all kinds of dishes you can feed to baby (or the whole family). Each cube is about 1 ounce — a good amount for a baby or toddler.

Here are some ideas:

You could add it to a cooked (runny) egg yolk for breakfast.
You could add some coconut milk and or/cream and make it into a yummy soup.
You could add it to stew.
You could add cheese and make a cheesy casserole.
You could add stewed tomato and make a sloppy joe.
You could add it to broth or to a broth-based soup (like carrot or fennel soup, made with broth and cream).
You could stir fry with some finely chopped vegetables and coconut oil.

For older babies (over 1 year) you could mix it into rice, risotto, or other grains (just be sure to soak them for better digestion/assimilation of nutrients). You could also use this as taco meat or for enchiladas (again, soaking is necessary for any grains).

All-Day Beef Stew February 2, 2008

I am making All-Day Beef Stew from “Nourishing Traditions” for our Sunday night dinner. I am marinating 3 pounds of stew beef (grass-fed) in a cup of red wine in the bowl of my crock pot in the fridge.

Tomorrow morning I’ll take it out and add 4 cups of beef stock, some peeled tomatoes, a bit of tomato paste, and some spices. Then I’ll let it cook all day.

I made the beef stock (my first time making beef stock) with roasted oxtails and marrow bones which simmered in the crock pot for two whole days. I can’t believe I’ve lived this long and have never made beef stock before.

After I let the beef stock cool overnight in the fridge, I scraped the fat off the top and put it in a container. We can use that later for cooking. Maybe I’ll use it to make homemade French fries.

That will make 3 dishes I can make out of one package of marrow bones:

Marrow on toast (which we ate last week with leftover Chicken and White Bean Chili)
Beef Stew (the bones made the stock)
French Fries (cooked with the fat from the stock)

It’s amazing how far food goes when you know how to cook it.

I’m so fascinated at how much I am learning from this one cookbook. Kombucha and marrow bones and kefir and chicken stock and curds and whey… so many things I have learned.

I have two nannies now (Alla and Yensi) and one housekeeper (Carla). Alla, who is Russian, who comes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Yensi, from Guatemala, is here Tuesdays and Thursdays. Carla, our housekeeper, comes every Monday. She is from Honduras.

All three women, on separate occasions, have expressed amazement that I cook the way their mothers and grandmothers used to cook in their native lands.

Alla was stunned when she realized that I was making kombucha — what she calls “mushroom tea”. “Oh my god!” she said. “I drank this all my life in Russia!” Same with the kefir. “We drank it every day. We used to put it in our hair.”

Yensi pointed to the kefir that I was straining into curds and whey (I use the whey for Kate’s baby formula, for homemade mayonnaise, for beet kvass, for sauerkraut, etc.). She said, “We make cheese like this in Guatemala! And we always make this soup,” she said, pointing to the beef stock.

She also said that her whole life in Guatemala, she always drank raw milk, never pasteurized. (Did I mention that she has perfect teeth?)

Carla, too, said her family always boiled bones in Honduras. “We use the chicken necks, too,” she said, smiling.

But back to tomorrow’s beef stew…

At the end of the day, you add some sliced carrots and potatoes to the stew. I might add some parsnips too, which the recipe doesn’t call for. And fresh parsley from my garden. Whatever we don’t eat, I’ll freeze. It will make a good meal on a night that I don’t feel like cooking. And great lunches for Kate.

And we might eat the last few pieces of the sourdough spelt bread I baked last week — which I froze. That will be yummy slathered with raw butter.

Time to bake another loaf…

By the way, speaking of homemade sourdough bread. Once you’ve tasted this bread, you can never go back to storebought. It’s that good.

Food Heroes: Organic Pastures’ Mark McAfee February 1, 2008

Joel Salatin said once that we have an NRA for guns — we should have a group like that to protect our food in this country.

I totally agree with that. I’d gotten completely ridiculous with the number of chemicals and genetically modified ingredients in our food supply. (I guess that’s because chemical companies own the food supply!)

The traditional food movement is all about taking back our food, going back to the time-honored ways of growing, producing, preparing and eating foods.

I thought I’d share some videos of some of America’s great contemporary food heroes. We’ll start with Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy, who fights every day to keep raw milk on the shelves in California, and in the hands of raw milk drinkers all over the country (they will ship it anywhere in the states).

People have been drinking raw milk for thousands of years. It’s only in this past century that we started pasteurizing milk and dairy products.

Why? Because the cows are sick and pasteurizing it kills many (ahem — not all) of the pathogens.

Why are the cows sick? Because they are crowded into factories, standing 24-7 on cement floors, and fed genetically-modified industrial corn and soy full of pesticides, herbicides. Cows are not meant to eat soy or corn.

What are they meant to eat? Grass. Grass is what keeps them healthy. Cows are meant to roam on pasture. And that is exactly what they do at Organic Pastures Dairy. They eat grass all year long. They receive no antibiotics and no growth hormones. Healthy cows produce clean, nutritious milk. Milk that is clean and does not require pasteurization.

Dairies like Organic Pastures are continually fighting to keep their doors open. Right now they are fighting a “sneak attack” on raw milk that occurred last fall that threatened to end all raw milk production and sales in the state of California.

Who is behind this kind of thing? I don’t know for sure but I bet my boots it’s chemical companies like Monsanto. They make a lot of money off their swill milk pumped full of Posilac (growth hormone). They don’t want people to know the truth. Which is why they pay front groups like The Hudson Institute to build websites like this one: Milk is Milk.

Milk is Milk is a thinly veiled attempt to convince consumers that there is no difference between their tainted, polluted milk from confinement cows in factory farms and real, healthy milk from healthy cows on pasture.

Funny, when I was trying to figure out if raw milk was safe to drink after my baby was born, I was googling and reading everything on the internet. I saw the Milk is Milk website. At first it scared me. Maybe raw milk wasn’t safe to drink after all.

Then I dug around and found out that it was funded in part by Monsanto. That is exactly what convinced me to drink raw milk! Anything Monsanto (makers of Agent Orange, RoundUp, Posilac) says is good for you is definitely not good for you.

If “Milk is Milk”, just try calling up Horizon (an organic factory farm) or any other big dairy and ask them for a tour. You won’t get one. They don’t want you to see the truth.

Then call Organic Pastures. They allow tours all year long. Because they have nothing to hide. You can actually meet the cows, who all have names. It’s right here on their website!

Thank you, Mark McAfee, for doing everything you do. And thanks to everyone at Organic Pastures Dairy. We need more people like you in this country!

Michael Pollan on Milk January 7, 2008

I was just listening to Michael Pollan on the Everyday Foods show on Martha Stewart’s channel on Sirius radio.

I am really loving his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma so I was excited to hear him on the radio.

However, I completely disagreed with him!

A woman called in and asked about feeding whole milk to children and what about obesity.

He said soda is the main cause of obesity.

I agree with that, because soda contains high fructose corn syrup.

However, it is not only soda that causes obesity in children. A lot of moms are feeding their children fruit juice and white bread products and crackers. Fruit juice is often loaded with high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar. And refined flour products and sugar also cause obesity.

He also said that giving children whole milk is preferable to giving them soda.

OK, yes, agreed. (Whole milk is also preferable to fruit juice, particularly fruit juice with added sugar and/or HFCS.)

Then he said that most milk has growth hormones in it so it is not safe to drink.

Agreed.

The caller asked, “Even organic?”

He said, “Yes. Even organic.”

I agree with that. Just because it’s organic doesn’t mean it’s healthy.

However, he didn’t talk about grain-fed vs. grass fed.

Most milk comes from grain-fed cows (even the organic milk) and is not safe to drink because those cows are not healthy — because eating such an unnatural diet makes them sick. I’m not sure why he didn’t mention this fact because he writes about it at length in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

And why didn’t he mention the dairies out there that are producing HEALTHY milk from grass-fed cows? Cows that receive no growth hormones and no antibiotics and eat only green pasture and hay?

He made it sound like all milk is bad. Which is NOT true!

He went on to say that if you are going to give your children milk, you should give them low-fat milk because, while fat is not as bad as we thought it was, lots of saturated fat is not good for you.

Huh? He lost me. What is the basis for that statement?

Mothers around the world have been feeding babies and children milk — human milk as well as milk from cows, goats, and camels — for thousands of years. We have only recently — in the past few decades — seen a huge surge of obesity and diabetes.

Sure, it might be due to hormones in milk and meat but most likely it has a lot more to do with the sharp increase in other things we are now feeding our children for the first time in history: large amounts of refined grains, flours and sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

Weston Price studied many cultures all over the world that fed their children meat or fish and dairy almost exclusively (the Eskimos, many African tribes, people living in the Swiss Alps, Scottish fishermen, etc. etc. etc.).

They had no obesity, no diabetes. No degenerative diseases whatsoever.

You can read his entire book online here and see for yourself:

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

Just look at the pictures and tell me those kids aren’t healthy. And what were they eating? Whole raw milk, butter, cheese. Meat, seafood. Whole grains and some vegetables and fruits. Some nuts and seeds.

These are people who got over 50% of their nutrition from fat, much of it saturated fat. And they had no degenerative disease.

Anyway, back to Pollan. He went on to say that humans are not meant to drink milk and that they can get the same nutrients from broccoli. He made some point about cows only drinking milk for 6 months — and then the go on to eat grass and get all their nutrients from grass.

Um, Michael? Did you forget something?

Humans are not cows. Cows have 6 stomachs. We have one.

They have a completely different digestive system than humans.

Here’s an interesting article about the human digestive system compared to carnivorous animals like dogs versus herbivorous animals like sheep:

Comparison Between the Digestive Tracts of a Carnivore, a Herbivore and Man

Just look at that chart on that page and tell me we should be eating mostly plants.

We are not herbivores.

And yet Michael Pollan’s advice to us is, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Why? Based on WHAT?

Feeding babies broccoli instead of milk. Sheesh!

What do you say about this, Michael:

Mother’s milk provides a higher proportion of cholesterol than almost any other food. It also contains over 50% of its calories as fat, much of it saturated fat. Both cholesterol and saturated fat are essential for growth in babies and children, especially the development of the brain. Yet, the American Heart Association is now recommending a low-cholesterol, lowfat diet for children! Commercial formulas are low in saturated fats and soy formulas are devoid of cholesterol. A recent study linked lowfat diets with failure to thrive in children.

The Skinny on Fats - WAPF

Somehow I can’t imagine myself rocking my baby to sleep with a broccoli floret instead of a bottle of milk.

Save the Liver! January 6, 2008

When we were little, we used to watch “Saturday Night Live”. My mom loved the skit Dan Ackroyd did when he impersonated Julia Child. She used to always bust up laughing at that skit, and she’d always repeat the punch line, “Save the liver!”

Julia Child was always promoting things like liver and high-fat foods. Because it was traditional in French cooking. But the reason it is traditional is because these things are very good for you!

Liver is one of the best things you can eat. What makes liver so healthy?

According to the Weston A. Price Foundation:

Quite simply, it contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food. In summary, liver provides:

• An excellent source of high-quality protein
• Nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A
• All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12
• One of our best sources of folic acid
• A highly usable form of iron
• Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium; liver is our best source of copper
• An unidentified anti-fatigue factor
• CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function
• A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA.

It’s not just the French who revere liver. People all over the world have prized liver. It is traditionally the first food native cultures feed to their children.

Our grandmothers used to serve liver once a week. It was considered a staple and a health food. How many people eat liver today? I know very few.

I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of liver and onions. I suppose if it were prepared well, I would enjoy it. I have yet to eat really good liver and onions.

So I’ve been getting my liver from supplements. Cod liver oil and dessicated calf’s liver tablets.

But two forms of liver I truly love to eat are liver pate (from ducks or chickens) and foie gras (the fatty liver from a goose or duck). I’m feeding Baby Kate liver every day — raw calf’s liver (frozen to destroy pathogens) which I grate onto her egg yolk, and chicken liver pate.

A lot of people say foie gras is inhumane. My mother and sister went to France earlier this year and they talked to a farmer who produced foie gras — they said the ducks happily lined up for the feeding.

Dr. Michael Eades just posted an interesting article about foie gras — read it here.

He also posted this Anthony Bourdain video about the making of foie gras:

Very interesting, eh? As for me, I will continue to eat duck and goose and chicken liver frequently and foie gras on occasion.

Oh, and you know what else I love? Liverwurst. My mother used to feed us liverwurst sandwiches when I was a child and I loved them! I haven’t been able to find a good source of liverwurst. I saw some at Whole Foods but I wasn’t sure about the producer.

Well, guess what? I just googled it and I found a good source!

US Wellness Meats: Liverwurst:

Liverwurst is a mixture of grass-fed beef trim (30%),liver (30%), heart (20%) and kidney (20%). This is a rare opportunity to purchase grass-fed organ sausage.

I’m so excited! I’m going to order some today. Soon I’ll be able to eat liverwurst sandwiches again — on real homemade sourdough bread! (Ahem — once I learn how to make sourdough bread.)

Sources: Protein Power and Weston A. Price Foundation

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.)