my-blog

Say No to Food Dyes.

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:13:52 +0100

Take a look at this video. They are saying that food dyes are a likely cause of ADHD in children.

Please click here if the video below is not displayed correctly.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Come Support Haiti!

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 05:31:27 +0100

Haiti Fundraiser featuring: Chelfoto - Rachel Strevey Photography

“Haiti As I See It” - A Photography Showing Fundraiser Event

This fundraiser is one way to do your part and provide support during a time of standstill to a Haitian school and orphanage struggling to stay in operation. It is a gallery opening event with photos from Haiti taken by Chelfoto - Rachel Strevey Photography during her week of volunteering in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Service de Prochains Haitiens (Haitian Neighbors Service) orphanage and Maranatha School are two organizations she volunteered with that desperately need YOUR help!

Food, Inc. LOVE

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:54:33 +0100

Love, Love, Love...

"The way we eat has changed more in the last fifty years than in the previous 10,000. The modern supermarket has on average 47,000 products. The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating because if you knew you might not want to eat it. We've never had food companies this powerful in our history."

"Everything we've done in modern agriculture is to grow...

faster

                                fatter
                                            bigger
                                                            cheaper."

"They have managed to make it against the law to criticize food products. There is an effort to make it illegal to publish a photo of any industrial food operations. And it's making us sick. Smells like money to me. But you have the power to turn the tables. The average consumer does not feel very powerful, but it's the exact opposite. Look at the tobacco industry... the battle against tobacco is a perfect model of how an industry's irresponsible behavior can be changed. Imagine what it'd be if as a national policy the idea to have such nutritionally dense food that people actually felt better, have more energy and weren't sick as much. That's a nobel goal! People have got to start demanding good, wholesome food of us and we'll deliver. I promise you." -Various farmers and food authors in Food, Inc.

Food, Inc. trailer (Please click here if the trailer below is not displayed correctly.)

Q&A with
Producer/Director, Robert Kenner
Co-Producer/Food Expert, Eric Schlosser
Food Expert, Michael Pollan
Producer, Elise Pearlstein

What was the most surprising thing you learned?
Kenner: As we set out to find out how our food was made, I think the thing that really became most shocking is when we were talking to a woman, Barbara Kowalcyk, who had lost her son to eating a hamburger with E. coli, and she’s now dedicated her life to trying to make the food system safer. It’s the only way she can recover from the loss of her child. But when I asked her what she eats, she told me she couldn't tell me because she would be sued if she answered.

What have been the consequences for the American consumer?
Kenner: Most American consumers think that we are being protected. But that is not the case. Right now the USDA does not have the authority to shut down a plant that is producing contaminated meat. The FDA and the USDA have had their inspectors cut back. And it’s for these companies now to self-police, and what we’ve found is, when there’s a financial interest involved, these companies would rather make the money and be sued than correct it. Self-policing has really just been a miserable failure. And I think that's been really quite harmful to the American consumer and to the American worker.
Pearlstein: The food industry has succeeded in keeping some very important information about their products hidden from consumers. It’s outrageous that genetically modified foods don’t need to be labeled. Today more than 70% of processed foods in the supermarket are genetically modified and we have absolutely no way of knowing. Whatever your position, you should have the right to make informed choices, and we don’t. Now the FDA is contemplating whether or not to label meat and milk from cloned cows. It seems very basic that consumers should have the right to know if they’re eating a cloned steak.

How has fast food changed the food we buy at the supermarket?
Schlosser: The enormous buying power of the fast food industry helped to transform the entire food production system of the United States. So even when you purchase food at the supermarket, you’re likely to be getting products that came from factories, feedlots and suppliers that emerged to serve the fast food chains.

Is it possible to feed a nation of millions without this kind of industrialized processing?
Pollan: Yes. There are alternative ways of producing food that could improve Americans’ health. Quality matters as much as quantity and yield is not the measure of a healthy food system. Quantity improves a population’s health up to a point; after that, quality and diversity matters more. And it’s wrong to assume that the industrialized food system is feeding everyone well or keeping the population healthy. It’s failing on both counts.

Coming Soon... Understanding the Nutrition Facts Label: Calories

The New Year is approaching... fast!

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:56:04 +0100

It's that time of year to come up with a New Year's Resolution! What's yours?

I have several:

Develop better sleep habits (in bed by midnight!)
Consistently eat a nutritious diet
Get some form of exercise everyday
Strengthen my relationships with God, friends and family (here's an insightful article from the Wall Street Journal... thanks Emilia!)

Wall Street Journal: Making 2011 the Year of Great Relationships

I feel that my subconscious mind is always in a never-ending pursuit of these things -whether it's the new year or not. So I guess the new year is really just a good way to bring these things back to my conscious mind. Yay for that! : P

Anyway... back to talking about that nutritious diet!

Question for you:
How well do you understand
the Nutrition Facts
on food labels?

Let's take a close look at FDA's (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) food label in efforts to better understand what we're actually eating. Let's start with the top of the label and work our way down.

First, there's the Serving Size...

The Serving Size section shows how many servings are in the package, and how big the serving is. Serving sizes are given in familiar measurements, such as “cups” or “pieces.”

Remember: All of the nutrition information on the label is based upon one serving of the food, but a package of food often contains more than one serving!

Serving size is the key to the rest of the information on the Nutrition Facts Label.

The nutrition information about the food – like the calories, sodium, and fiber – is based upon one serving.
If you eat two servings of the food, you are eating double the calories and getting twice the amount of nutrients, both good and bad.
If you eat three servings, that means three times the calories and nutrients – and so on.

That is why knowing the serving size is important. It’s how you know for sure how many calories and nutrients you are getting.

Coming Soon: We'll continue to work our way down the Nutrition Facts food label... Calories

*Information Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Using the Nutrition Facts Label How-To-Guide for Older Adults
*Disclaimer: I'm not a health expert, I am simply researching and sharing my findings.

The Power of a Nutrient

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:44:44 +0100

I love learning about all-things food, nutrition and culinary. I have done quite a bit of research on various aspects of the food and culinary world...

superfoods
natural/organic/whole foods
farm-to-table/sustainable farming
cooking green
news and trends with culinary arts, renowned chefs and technology... you name it!

I have done all of this research with a unique perspective... What does God think of it?

Why should we care what God thinks?

When an engineer creates something they always have a purpose for their creation and their design is based on how it's intended to be used. Let's take a dishwasher for example... the dishwasher was created to serve a purpose of washing dishes. It works best when you operate the dishwasher as it was intended... filling up the dishwasher with dishes, using the specified amount of dishwasher detergent and waiting until the dishwasher is done before taking them out. If you use it any other way, bad things are likely to happen. It may not be noticeable right away, but over time you may notice the harmful effects. God and our earth is no different. That's why I care about what God thinks, because He is the engineer of our earth, our body, and our life.

Education is the foundation of living a healthy life.

Along with a desire to live your best life, I believe that education is the foundation of living a healthy life and eating a nutritious diet. I especially noticed this to be true while watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution unfold in Huntington, West Virginia, a town that was once identified as having the highest obesity rate in the country. It was such a struggle for them to abandon their destructive eating habits. I kept thinking to myself, "They haven't been educated." It wasn't until the Huntington residents were educated and understood the importance of a healthy diet, that their eating habits began to change for the better.

From soil to plate, learning what a doable healthy diet truly entails...

Nutrients are not only good for our overall health, but necessary to survive. I want to learn what we should all know about nutrients so we can make smart food decisions -starting with our soil, all the way to the food that ends up on our plate and into our mouth! Feel free to join me in my journey in discovering the full power of nutrients and what a doable healthy and nutritious diet truly entails... all for the sake of optimal health and living at God's best, the way He intended for us.

Nutrient - a substance that provides nourishment essential for growth and the maintenance of life.

Six Nutrients
1. Water
2. Carbohydrates
3. Protein
4. Fats
5. Vitamins
6. Minerals

Stay tuned for more to come, but in the meantime, have you seen the new food pyramid presented by the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture)? In general, www.mypyramid.gov is an excellent resource for healthy living.

New Food Pyramid

Old Food Pyramid