I hope you can participate somehow, either by walking or by donating. If you know a walker, please support them. If you don’t, but you would like to support the cause, here’s my donation page. Just click on the link. Added bonus on my donation page: you get to see one of my dogs, Arnold, and one of my cats, Showme.
The page is owned by Firstgiving, an online donation service and is secured by Verisign.
Please give what you can.
In the meantime, here a video about youth opportunities to learn about humane animal husbandry sponsored by Farm Sanctuary:
How to compare the abuses of animals at the hands of dog fighters or disgusting dog breeders versus those at the hands of our food suppliers is a delicate issue, I’ll grant you. But I guess I just don’t get the willful blindness that is incumbent upon an animal lover that he or she can vilify the one and justify the other.
We each make our own choices, and I’ve decided not to eat animals. I understand that that choice isn’t doable for everyone. But it doesn’t seem much of a stretch for anyone to be able to acknowledge that factory farming contains a multitude of examples of mistreatment of animals. No. Not good enough. Factory farming institutionalizes animal abuse. But because our food animals are lower on the totem pole than our companion animals . . . I don’t even know where to go with the rest of that sentence, because I’m not buying that one.
A Blue Wyandotte Bantam
I’m not advocating bringing your chicken to bed (although I understand that some do). But I am suggesting that puppy mills being somehow worse than factory farms requires a devaluing of the life of the food animal. And I’m just not sure how one does that, without some basic assumption that is not founded in logic.
Take a look at some of the videos that show the abuses of animals on factory farms and at slaughterhouses, and tell me that dog fighting or puppy mills are worse than that.
What can you do?
Go veg. A vegetarian saves 100 animals each year.
Eat only free range meat, dairy, poultry and eggs.
Buy meat, poultry and dairy locally where you can personally verify the living conditions. I buy eggs from a friend who raises chickens, when family comes to town.
Write your State and U.S. representation and insist on stronger animal protection laws and – oh, horrors – effective regulation of the animal as food industry.
Go animal-as-food-less one day per week.
Choose a restaurant that uses only non-factory farm food animals and does not serve foie gras and let them know that’s why you’re there.
I read this story on npr, and amid a big smile, am left with the thought, life is good.
For my Harlan peeps, don’t you just remember that folk music was a core of our music education when we were younger. Marilyn Maxwell and the Kooky Ukes; and who doesn’t remember George Ella and Joan with their guitars singing for us in front of the Harlan County Courthouse? Happy, happy memories. Pete reminds me how much I love that music, and how we all used to sing together.
There’s a link on the linked page where you can listen to Pete Seeger closing the Newport Folk Festival this past weekend. Enjoy whatever it reminds you of.
We would be a much healthier people, if we just had some additional info and a few basic tools. I recommend that you keep in your nutrition toolbelt the information about eating conscious of the acid-forming versus alkaline-forming character of your food and of how to optimally combine or to avoid combining food groups. I wrote about both of those notions recently in this blog, and there’s lots on the web about it.
I thought I’d also assemble a couple of possibly- new-for-you factoids and tools that might impact your food choices if you knew.
The Protein Myth: There is considerable evidence that one can eat too much protein. Although we’ve been told for many years that we had to have a minimum amount of meat and dairy in our diets, that appears to be just not true, or else vegetarians and vegans would have all expired, instead of experiencing a restoration of rosy health. One of the factors, if not causes, of gout, for instance, is meat consumption. Gout? Try cutting way back on protein (and eating on the acid-alkaline diet). The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has lots of info and resources for the use of nutrition for restoration of health, in the first instance, instead of immediately turning to pharmaceuticals.
But how to know how much protein to eat? Well, it depends upon your age, height, weight, level of activity, basal metabolism rate, level of health and maybe some other factors. I know. Lots of things to consider, but really easy to figure out, like of rule of thumb. Always pay attention to your own precious body’s response.
One way of calculating how much protein is as a percentage of the total calories you need each day. First, you calculate your basal metabolism rate (BMR); the calories are then a percentage of your BMR. Another way is based directly on your weight. Both are discussed below.
Basal Metabolism Rate: Your basal metabolism rate is the minimum number of calories that one needs to consume daily in order to support vital functions (breathing, circulation, digestion, etc). So, even if you’re dieting, you probably don’t want to go below this daily intake. Here’s a calculator that will spit out a number based on your height, weight and age. Mine is 1322.
How much protein for you? Once you have your BMR, you can calculate how much protein you need. We generally need about 15% to 30% of our calories to come from proteins. So, take your BMR, and multiply by the lower end if you are sedentary and healthy, or on the higher end if you are weight lifting or have a health challenge that requires more protein. But do some reading about this last notion. Most folks that are ill will benefit from and recover faster on an alkaline diet. Proteins often come from acid-forming sources (meat, dairy).
Another way of calculating protein need is based on your weight:
Take your weight in pounds. Divide by 2.2. That gives your weight in kg.
Take your weight in kg and multiply by 0.8 – 1.8. Use the lower number if you are in good health and are sedentary. Use a higher one (between 1 and 1.8) if you are under stress, pregnant, recovering from an illness, or exercising or doing weight training regularly.
And remember: eating protein does not mean that you have to eat meat, milk and eggs. But I’ll save that chat for another day. In the meantime, think legumes, nuts, whole grains and green leafies. I look forward to seeing us all becoming healthier!
Just a few more words about how to eat for optimal health. Swear.
Last week, I wrote about food-combining: one principle of how to eat our food that makes a huge difference in wellness. However, if what we’re combining isn’t the right stuff in the first place, well, proper food combining can’t make up for that.
So, what should we be eating? Well, for optimal health, the food we eat should be alkaline-forming. Why? Because generally speaking, the body needs to be slightly alkaline. The pH of both the blood and the small intestine need to be slightly alkaline. If what we eat is, on average, more acid-forming in the stomach, when that food passes out into the small intestine, the body has to excrete a major amount of alkaline buffer to return it to alkaline medium. Our body is a champ. It will do this for us. But how and at what cost? What does the body use to restore the small intestine to alkalininity? Well, calcium for one. Calcium can buffer the acid. Or magnesium. Magnesium’s good for that, too.
Great, right? All good? Well, no. Your body doesn’t create calcium or magnesium. So it has to find it somewhere.
Where does your body find calcium and magnesium? You’re way ahead of me. Right – your bones. And, by the way, the body is reaaaaaally smart. So, it knows to look for non-weight-bearing bones first. Hmm. Where are those? Think jaw bone. Think receding gums. Ask your dentist. “Receding gums” has many causes or related symptoms, but if you have receding gums, your dentist will find, in many if not most cases, less bone supporting your teeth. There are a host of illnesses that are related to acidosis.
If, on the other hand, you are eating a mostly alkaline-forming diet, the body is not taxed with this additional buffering process, and it doesn’t have to go looking for calcium. It doesn’t have to rob your bones.
So. What I am NOT saying is avoid all acid-forming foods. What I AM saying is to eat enough alkaline-forming foods so that you’re not taxing your body’s stores of calcium on an ongoing basis. Here’s a chart that shows alkaline-forming versus acid-forming foods. Here’s another. You’ll see some slight variations. It’s okay.
There’s lots of information on the web about it. In addition to the links associated with the charts, Michael Murray, “the alkaline diet guy,” is helpful. Here are some rules of thumb to get you started:
stop drinking sodas. Stop. Drinking. Sodas. Stop. Drinking. Sodas. I could say more about phosphoric acid needing calcium to be processed by the bod, but I won’t.
eat smaller portions of meats relative to your veggies
eat more veggies
stop eating white bread, except really good artisan bread (you know why I wrote that!)
eat less white pasta – try subbing spaghetti squash for pasta. Pasta sauce over butternut squash is delicious!! Swear!!
drink less coffee
eat less sugar and even artificial sweetener; both are high acidifiers. Try agave nectar and brown rice syrup; they are low acid-forming.
For most of us, just eating more fresh fruit and vegetables and less white flour, meat and saturated or hydrogenated fats would be a step up. But for others, who are already eating pretty darn well, but still have health issues or are carrying around some extra pounds, food combining may be your next best friend.
The premise of foot-combining is that digestion of different foods involves different digestive chemistry and occurs over different time frames. Some foods require an alkaline medium in the stomach; others acid. Some foods take hours to digest; others more quickly. Fruits generally require enzymes in the stomach for digestion, while proteins require acids to digest. Fruits also digest fairly quickly, while a meat like pork, takes up to five hours to digest. So, if you eat pork, you should probably avoid fruit at the end of your meal, unless your meal lasted five hours.
The thing about the tummy is that it mixes it all up, and the food that takes the longest to digest tells the stomach valve when to open. It doesn’t somehow mix and then strain the food back into its component parts and let out the parts that are digested and keep the ones in that aren’t “done” yet.
And here’s the other important thing about fruit. Fruit should always be eaten alone. If you eat fruit with a protein – you know that fruit and yogurt or fruit and cottage cheese that you love so much? – you have given your stomach signals to secrete an acid and an alkaline: an acid to digest the protein, which will compromise the delicate enzymes that you asked to stomach to secrete to digest the fruit. Here’s where we can use some of that high school or college chemistry: the acid and alkaline will work against each other, that is, neutralize each other. The not-so-lovely food melange will sit in the neither acid-enough nor alkaline-enough medium in your stomach and eventually do something like digest. But your stomach won’t be happy. Some people will get an upset stomach (go figure) and then take an antacid, which then interferes with the cottage cheese digestion. It’s just a mess. If you’re going to take any digestion aid, please make it digestive enzymes. But I’m getting in way too deep here.
So, here’s the deal in its simplest form.
When you eat fruit, eat only fruit. In 45 minutes, the fruit, which digests fairly quickly (that’s why it doesn’t “stay” with you), will be out of your stomach and you can eat whatever you want next with impunity.
And don’t eat protein with starches. You can eat non-starchy veggies with both starches OR proteins. Non-starchy veggies are our friends because we can eat them with anything. Except fruit.
Anyway, I’ll stop the yammering and send you to some text and graphics that will get you started and tell it way better than I did.
The Good Life is a wonderful little video, produced by Free Range Studios. There’s lot more on their page on youtube, but this caught my eye this morning. Enjoy.
Just reading this Exxon-Mobil memo from 1998, which points out to us non-scientists (oh, wait, I am a geologist, even though I am now merely an attorney) that water is a greenhouse gas, and that hydrocarbons are being unfairly targeted in the global warming debate. Joe (the author of the memo), are you kidding me? You really put that in writing? You and Exxon-Mobil (oh, and I’m a past Mobil employee with great memories of the pre-merger company) can sleep at night, knowing that your intent to foment uncertainty in the global warming debate ignores scientific quantities, like the heat-trapping capacity of water versus that of hydrocarbons? The heat-trapping capacity of fossil fuels greatly exceeds that of water. They aren’t comparable. And I’m betting that even you know this.
Little bitty science lesson: It used to be really, really hot on Earth. Then water came, formed an atmosphere, which shielded the Earth from a whole bunch of that wicked Sun and heat. Then, when the temperature was not so hot, plants came. Plants absorbed a bunch more of the heat. They also gobbled up carbon dioxide like nobody’s business. That’s the way they survive. Gobble up CO2 and give off O2. Sequester that Carbon. Give off oxygen. So, now land plants could begin to thrive. The Earth became green. And we came along a lot later.
Then over time, all the decayed plants, both land and ocean, held onto a large part of that carbon. But now we drill it up, mine it up, burn it up – and return that carbon to the atmosphere. And bear in mind that oil was discovered in the late 1800s. When my grandfather was born, there was no petroleum oil lamp. It was whale oil. Maybe some other oil. But not petroleum. And our hydrocarbon of choice for heat at that time, I repeat, in my grandfather’s time, was either wood, peat or coal. As luck would have it, in that time frame, the industrial revolution also happened. And the newly discovered hydrocarbon, oil, was added to coal as the hydrocarbon of choice. So, it’s not a mystery. It’s not even hard to imagine. It’s logical. It’s predictable. Since my grandfather’s birth, the Earth has become a lot dirtier and a lot hotter. I repeat, it’s not a mystery.
But hey. Who cares about history, or science, or what is predictable? Not Exxon-Mobil, I guarantee you. Or they would stop. It is about the dollar for them. It’s about survival. And who can blame them for being terrified. But, sorry. They picked an industry that had a fixed life span because it was not rooted in sustainability. But their clamoring for their last few dollars is shameful. They figure the future will handle itself. It’s not their problem. It’s not their board’s problem. It’s not their stockholders’ problem. Let the future executives, boards and stockholders find their own solution. But the problem is, it’s not their problem alone. It’s ours. They created it. But we live it.
Doesn't need a caption, does it?
So, here’s the little internal Exxon-Mobil memo that states that their main goal in the global warming issue is to avoid certainty in the scientific debate. To delay getting a clear answer for as long as they can. Keep those pumps pumping and those pipelines flowing for as long as they can. But, you know? Scientists don’t seek to encourage uncertainty. They look for answers. It might not be the answer that the scientist on the next block or in the next consortium finds. That’s fine. That’s the way the scientific process works. But it does not, never has, and never should encourage uncertainty. Especially not by proudly proclaiming that water is a greenhouse gas. Give me a stinking break, Exxon.
For shame, Exxon-Mobil. Find a real solution. You have the dollars. You have the scientists. You can find a new monopoly. I promise! Solar panels don’t grow on trees.
Oh, Frito, how stupid do you think we are? Do you think we really believe your ads that suggest that you are part of the “locally grown” farming movement just because you have purchased potatoes from agribusiness that just happens to be in the county next to your potato chip factory? You don’t say what percentage of the potatoes come from that “local” farm, but I’m not even going there.
Well, at the risk of pissing off half of my friends and two thirds of my family, I’d wager that the “locally grown” ads by Frito Lay don’t even try to appeal to our ability to think, but only to the brain center that loves those starchy obesity and heart attack biscuits. If that I-love-chips brain center happens to be next to the one that squirts out an endorphin or two when it chooses to believe that buying the chips contributes to smaller, healthier farming practices (no pesticides, cage free animals, etc.), well, so much the better.
The New York Times reports in its food section about the new ads, and I daresay, I haven’t much to “ad” to the discussion, except my disgust. Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be thinking more positively these days, and not judging so much. But, are you kidding me? Do I look like I just fell off the potato truck? I suspect the answers are “no,” and “I don’t care; you’ll believe anything in a 30 second sound bite, especially when I bombard it at you and your unsuspecting 10-year-old until I see a fall in sales.”
That the food industry somehow manages to sleep at night when it skates by on the fringe of truth-in-advertising by claiming that no sugar is added to foods, when the truth is that the sugar was added in making the high-fructose corn syrup that was an ingredient, but was not actually added as pure white stuff. OR when they claim that a bread is whole wheat when it is not 100% whole wheat, but whole wheat was merely an ingredient. OR saying that something is 100% juice. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that you were drinking 100% juice 100% of the time, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Okay, I’ll stop with the listing.
But locally grown? Frito Lay? I just have one thing to say: Shut up; we’re not that stupid. Oh, wait, that was two. Maybe just I am.
What is Farm Town, you ask. To have a glimpse of a glance at a glimmer of what Farm Town is like, remember the gleeful days when you had just discovered Facebook, Myspace, or maybe even the business ones, like LinkedIn? The groups you could find, the causes, the cool videos you could post. . . I can’t even say that my Facebook enthusiasm ever waned, really. It’s just that I apparently have room for a finite number of addictions, and Farm Town has supplanted at least part of my FB one.
But, good grief ! How could a woman fully growed wake up at the ass crack of dawn to see what chores await her on her virtual freaking farm!! I think of myself as a fully functioning human being. Okay, okay. So, my son tells me that I’m a bit of a control freak; and maybe I shiver at the thought of romantic involvement; and maybe I had a bit of acquisitionitis a few years ago, leaving me with a house full of stuff that I am now giving to Goodwill Industries. But other than that, I’m pretty normal.
But, then, in waltzes Farm Town. And I swear, this must be what crack is like.
Oh, it starts innocently enough. Farm Town gives you a little farmstead of about eight fields, plows and plants a few of them for you. The crops ripen, you sell them, you make a little virtual dough. Nice. If this doesn’t catch you, you’re safe. But if you venture in even a step further, it’s all over for you, sister.
The potatoes and strawberries (or strawbs as we in Farm Town call them) are cheap and ripen quickly, and are, therefore, the obvious choice for a novice farmer. A few more days into farming, you have more ready cash for more expensive seeds, like tomatoes. Your friends, conspirators in sharing their sickly farming addiction, are already planting coffee, for criminy’s sake. Coffee is damn expensive. The gauntlet has been thrown. Every day they send you horses and chickens and coconut trees and apple trees. And soon your farm, too, begins to take on a kind of glow. You buy fences to keep your horses and sheep in separate fields. And scarecrows to keep the birds (which Farm Town has not yet added) away from your corn.
Soon you realize that you’ve run out of room. But lucky for you, Farm Town allows to take your cash and buy more land. Land! At this point, the addict’s relationship to trees alters. The trees really do crowd the crops. Trees that you’ve loved all your life become an annoyance. You understand for the first time why Iowa looks that way. Crops as far as the eye can see, except for butt up against the house, where someone finally wins the argument for having a few trees.
And this is where you become either a factory farmer or a cottage farmer. Pesticide-laden or organic. Iowa or Highgrove. I think that, even in Farm Town, the factory farmer becomes obsolete. There’s only so much money, and so much land, before it loses all its juice. You can plant only so many rows on so many consecutive days before you wear out your fingers. And your soul. You either give up or go back to your cottage farming roots.
So, try it. Come on. Just a little. It won’t hurt . . .and you might learn a little about farming.
For most of us, just eating more fresh fruit and vegetables and less white flour, meat and saturated or hydrogenated fats would be a step up. But for others, who are already eating pretty darn well, but still have health issues or are carrying around some extra pounds, food combining may be your next best friend.
So, here’s the deal in its simplest form.
