Food, Inc. - The Movie to See This Summer

Ready to know what you're eating? Check out Food, Inc. this summer. I don't know about you, but it scares and disgusts me to know what I've been eating, and still crave, and still eat. And yet knowledge is power, so I want to know all I can about the food around me.

From the official movie website: "In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults."

Watch the trailer:


Premier times vary from today to August 7. Check here for a theater that will be showing it near you.

American Yogurt vs. Greek Yogurt

I'd like yogurt for breakfast, please. Hold the sugar.

I was looking at the ingredient lists of some common yogurts in the grocery store...Yoplait/Yoplus, Dannon, store brand, etc. Did you know all of the light or fat free yogurts I picked up contained aspartame? To manufacturers, light or less fat typically = less sugar. But that sweet taste has to be replaced by something, so they use a chemically engineered sweetener such as aspartame.

I finally found a lowfat fruit on the bottom Publix brand yogurt with no aspartame; it's 2nd ingredient was sugar and it also had artificial coloring. (Regular or full fat yogurts contain sugar, too. Lowfat was just the most abundant so it's what I picked up to look at.)

It should be easier than this to have a sugar/sweetener-free breakfast.

I picked up Greek Yogurt. I had heard it was the most natural of any yogurt. Cha-Ching! The only thing in the ingredient list was cultured pasteurized organic nonfat milk & 5 live active cultures. All the good bacteria without any of the junk. (We'll save the pasteurized debate for another day)

Greek Yogurt is comparable to sour cream. It's thick and creamy with a bit of a tang and is actually a good substitute for sour cream, even in baking. I'm not a calorie-counter, but sour cream has 60 calories for 2 tbsp compared to Greek yogurt's 60 calories for 1/2 cup.

I tried Stonyfield Farm's Oikos Greek Yogurt. Go here for Stonyfield coupons (they also make regular yogurt, yogurt for baby, milk, and ice cream).

Greek yogurt is less likely to curdle when heated. It is also richer in protein and has less lactose than regular yogurt.

Some Ways to Eat Greek Yogurt

1. On a baked potato, in place of sour cream.

2. In a smoothie, in the place of milk. Careful what kind of smoothie you add it to. Greek yogurt won't make it sweet like common American yogurt.

3. With honey, nuts, berries, or other fruit. (Though honey is technically a "sweetener," so I try not to include it too often.)

4. Tzatziki - a Greek cuisine often served with (or over) kabobs or fish.

We're Giving Ourselves Cancer

Last year, I had 3 suspicious looking moles removed from various regions of my body. After the lab tested them, 1 was reported as normal, 1 had A-typical cells, and 1 was a spitz. A spitz is a rare benign (non cancerous) mole that looks very much like melanoma. In a small number of cases, a spitz can look so much like melanoma (even under a microscope), that even an expert cannot tell the difference without further tests.
I am fair-skinned, blue-eyed, have many small moles, and tend to burn easily in the sun. All of these characteristics put me at risk for skin cancer. I used to think all I could do to protect myself was to stay out of the sun. Here's what I found out instead:

What you eat effects your risk of developing cancer...ALL kinds of cancer.

This article, Cancer Prevention Through Healthy Foods in the blog Healthy Eating Plans, describes some food additives to stay away from and why.

Here, the World Health Organization has written that at least 1/3 of all cancer cases are preventable. However, their article leaves out the prospect that chemicals & synthetic additives can lead to cancer. Instead, they say a diet high in fresh fruits & veggies (in other words, leaving out many additives and including natural vitamins/minerals) could protect against cancer. On their site, the WHO say cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease, and the number of cancer cases is increasing around the globe.

HelpGuide.org says 30-40% of cancers are directly linked to dietary choices, siting a 1997 report underwritten by the American Institute for Cancer Research, titled Food, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective.

The Hundred Year Lie

The Hundred Year Lie, How Food & Medicine are Destroying Your Health (published 2006) was written by Randall Fitzgerald, a former investigative reporter.
I was looking up nutrition in the library and came across this book. I knew a lot of the processed foods I ate were not healthy, but I didn't know the extent of the damage until reading this book. This was the final catalyst for me to start living healthier. I know it's going to be a slow, difficult change, but I'm going to take it one step at a time. I'm currently resisting the temptation to throw everything in my house away and start from scratch.
Here are a few facts and studies from the book to get you started. However, the book is not all doom and gloom...in the final chapters, Fitzgerald writes about what you can do and detoxing your body.

**In the last decade, children being born with both male and female sex organs has tripled.

**The U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care than any other industrialized nation. (When's the last time your doctor asked about your nutrition when you told him/her the ailment? Instead, most prescribe synthetic medicines with unknown side effects.)

**Battling terminal brain tumors and the breakdown of her body due to chronic disease, Bonnie Lovett stunned the National Institute of Health and experienced complete disease regression that left her with no physical deformities. Her secret? Acting on the knowledge that the Synthetics belief System (that medicine, chemo, and radiation were the answers) was ruining her life.

**There are over 100,000 chemicals in use today. Most of them have not been tested for toxicity in humans, either alone or in combination with other chemicals. (Synergies is the way different chemicals react together. With so many combinations of chemicals in our bodies right now, there is no telling how they will react and the problems they will cause.)

**A study from the science journal, Public Health, described in 2004 how the incidence of death from brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and motor neurone disorders, was found to have tripled in nine Western countries, including the U.S., during the period 1974 to 1997. The most likely causes researchers identified were exposure to pesticides sprayed on crops, synthetic chemicals from the processed foods that we consume, and industrial chemicals used in almost every aspect of our modern lives

**In California, state environmental officials discovered that 60 percent of the rivers and streams contained high levels of prozac, ritalin, and antibiotics.

**Medical researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other synthetic chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers who had no occupational or geographical connection to these chemicals or where they are manufactured. More than half of these chemicals are known to be responsible for birth defects, or cancer, or brain and nervous system disorders in humans.

**Britain's Daily Mail reports on a new study showing that food additives are a cause of hyperactivity in children.

**Our pets suffer too: Dogs and cats fed a processed foods diet suffer similar ailments as humans who consume chemical food additives.

A Smoothie a Day...

My typical meals
Breafast: Poptarts or a few handfuls of cereal
Lunch: Something frozen like Marie Collanders or Lean Cuisine
Snack: Chocolate like Hershey kisses or Reese cups. Cookies or crackers if any are around.
Dinner: Meat and a veggie with pasta or rice. Pepsi or sweet tea to drink.
Another snack: Ice cream or more chocolate

I don't have to be a nutritionist to look at that diet and know it's not healthy. I had been having headaches for the last 6 months or more, and they had been steadily occurring more often and more severely. I had originally blamed it on new contacts that were a stronger prescription than I was used to. I couldn't keep up that excuse for that many months.

So, for over a month now, I have been making fruit smoothies for breakfast. I figured as the most important meal of the day, that's the part I should work on first. I typically make smoothies 5 or 6 times a week. It's a rink-a-dink blender that can't handle everything I'd like to try, but it serves its purpose for now. Slowly, my headaches are becoming fewer and less severe.

I typically make 2 cups for myself.

My Favorite Smoothie - Banana Berry
1/4 pound of strawberries
a handful of other berries (blueberries, blackberries, and/or raspberries)
1 banana
1 apple (a sweet red kind)

Other possible add-ins:
**a heaping spoonful or 2 of Greek yogurt
**1/4-1/2 cup of juice (Cranberry Grape is what's typically in my fridge. Ideally, I'd juice my own fruit, but I haven't started that yet)
**A veggie that doesn't have much flavor, like some squash or zucchini
**For a sweeter mix, add a couple of chunks of ripe watermelon.

I like the strong blend of flavors, so I don't add water or ice. The juice and apples help give more amount without messing with the flavor. I would've frozen some of the fruit or juice to have a thicker smoothie, but the blender couldn't handle it. The yogurt and banana help make it a little thicker.

I'm going to take baby steps towards healthier eating. The next step will be healthier drinks in general instead of sodas and tea. Then on to snacks...