The Great Global Warming Swindle

Video, 1:13:32 in length.

The whole movement seems to be made up of leftover Marxists and anti-capitalists, hell-bent on keeping their newly-formed economy running while denying other economies in developing nations to flourish.

This "newly-made economy" consists of invented crises, invented experts, and invented jobs to deal with the invented crises. Without the invented crisis, money and political power would cease to flow into the so-called industries designed to steer us away from the invented crises.

When the sun, clouds, volcanoes, and water vapor are the main culprits in the so-called "global warming" crisis, how would buying a hybrid car or mounting a zillion solar panels solve anything? I'm quite surprised that eco-weenies haven't launched campaigns against Coke and Pepsi, because Co2 is what makes their drinks fizz...or maybe that's too much scientific truth for them to handle.

Capitalizing on Green

On April 2 of this year, the Supreme Court upheld the legislation and implementation of the Clean Air Act. This means kissing commercial enterprise as we know it goodbye—or does it?

Instead of bending over and kissing corporations goodbye, think like a true capitalist: learn how to profit from these parameters. We should’ve adopted this way of thinking back when the Kyoto Treaty stuff was still in the air.

Those business concerns that will have to bend and stretch to fit within the new realities of “green” and “clean” will have to turn somewhere for retrofit, and that would be to other companies currently in the “solutions” business of conforming to the Clean Air Act. They would also find it necessary to rethink how their business is conducted to avoid the continual expense of retrofit and reprocess to new standards that are only going to get tougher as time goes by.

Meanwhile, new businesses are springing up like dandelions to handle this retrofit need and the coming renaissance of manufacturing processes, ready to capitalize on green.

Many people for many years have stood solidly in the way of this change, and with good reason: it isn’t necessary. But seeing how the political winds have shifted, and are bound to shift further in the same prevailing direction, the new fight will be FOR change instead of AGAINST it. The reason: it’s going to be the new area of innovation that carries our economy and society into the next decade or two. Once more people in charge realize this, resistance will lessen.

We’ve already advanced and re-advanced nearly everything else to the point of being hopelessly out of ideas. We’ve “retroed” ourselves out of thinking about the future, because making the old new again is so much cheaper in terms of manufacture, creativity, and marketing. To truly and boldly go where no man has gone before is scary, costly, and rife with risk—businesses don’t like failure. Instead, we’re going down the retro road one more time, and betting the farm on it with politics and public policy, celebrity and marketing, excessive hype, farce, and outright lies, turning a cause into a religion. Let us all pray at the solar-powered altar as liberals take us back to the 70’s and the original “energy crunch” scare that turned out to be nothing.

Energy made from solar, wind, hydrogen, and ethanol aren’t going to solve the REAL problem, which stems from our foreign policy and regard for those in oil-rich countries. These energy sources aren’t going to solve the other problem, which is global haves-and-have-nots. Instead, these energy sources provide a scapegoat so we don’t have to deal with the real problems—if we produce our own energy, then we don’t need to worry about or get along with others. We end up never fostering the global cooperation that’s really needed to lick this long-term energy problem.

Since the sea change to energy independence seems inevitable (for now), look for ways to make it work for you: research renewable and/or sustainable building and construction materials for refurbishing the house or rental property for eventual sale (check with an agent to see if these items actually pay back at sale time), look into the possibility of owning and/or driving a diesel car (a wide selection of diesel models comes out in 2009) so your transportation needs less-refined gasoline (and because diesel cars get 30% better mileage than standard cars or hybrids), switch from regular light bulbs to compact fluorescent wherever possible (the bathroom, refrigerator, and wintertime porch lights make no sense whatsoever), and reconsider how the home itself is powered—look into alternatives or alternative backup sources. Let the next buyer of your home and/or car pay you for your efforts.

Finally, the ultimate way to profit from all this confusion and hullabaloo is to directly invest in companies that produce alternative energy themselves: in energy index funds (not all are oil-based), in energy mutual funds (not all are oil-based), or in individual stocks of solar, wind, hydrogen, geothermal, or ethanol companies, or in commodities like corn and soy. Let the cause-susceptible who will undoubtedly indulge in these products pay you for your efforts, just like you do with commuters and gas every summer.

Instead of demanding these alternative energy items, let those who do the demanding make money for you. If you feel you must personally participate in this cause, then do it in ways that will pay you back in the end rather than cause a loss through depreciation and devaluation.

The businesses that are caught up in this web of the Clean Air Act are certainly going to profit from it by passing the costs onto the buyers of their products—you see, this ruse of a public policy is nothing more than a profit and revenue generator, and the eco-activist types can’t see beyond the “feel good” notion of their cause. Environmentalists think they’re cleaning the air and saving the planet, when the vast majority of our dirty air comes in from China on the jet stream, polluting the west coast first (of course), and causing these eco-weenies into thinking ALL the U.S. air must be dirty. Apparently, as California and New York go, so goes the rest of the country.

There is a huge world between Los Angeles and Manhattan, and not all of it is dirty, in need of saving, in need of converting, or in need of gun control (that’s another issue). If THEY (on both coasts) want a cleaner, greener world, either through volunteer effort or legislation, then let THEM pay (you) for it!

The enforcement of this act only means more companies are going to go overseas, where they can operate in near-complete freedom—they already head overseas because of the ravages of Sarbanes-Oxley, minimum wage laws, and the price of oil. What’s one more act to those who can merely relocate to avoid participation in it? That one more act means even fewer jobs, even less tax revenue, and even more defaults back here in the States—in other words, it will hurt us more than it will help us. Profiting from it will be the only way to survive it. Thanks, liberals, for shooting yourselves (and us) in the foot, then trying to bandage it with a knee-jerk reaction enacted into law!

The Eater’s Digest (L-O-N-G)

We all know what happens when we take a bite of something, chew it up, swallow, and repeat until full. Do we really know what happens when the food gets beyond the stomach?

First, it hits the small intestine, where more fluids meet it to aid digestion—bile from the gall bladder, as well as enzymes that can’t exist in the acid environment of the stomach. Absorption also takes place in this area—this means water for making urine (kidneys), fats for energy (liver), sugars for energy and maintenance (pancreas), and vitamins and minerals to the blood for general maintenance.

Next, when all the “good stuff” had been drained and absorbed out of the digested food, the remains move to the large intestine for further gathering, “composting”, and eventually makes an exit. The large intestine is called “large” for two reasons: diameter and length. What you eat today may take 12-24 hours to completely clear your system, most of that time spent sitting in your large intestine (putrefying and becoming more acidic) waiting for the next train out. The constant acidic level and backup of the bowel makes you susceptible to cancers of the “train platform” (bowel, rectum, and colon).

If you don’t eat a good diet consisting of lean meats, lots of fresh fruits and veggies, complex carbohydrates and fiber, and some sort of water, things get backed up, start clogging, and affect your system all the way back to the starting point—your mouth. When this sort of episode happens in the home bathroom, we call Roto-Rooter® or grab a plunger and start our plumbing workout, but unfortunately we can’t do that with our own bodies.

To employ some Roto-Rooter-like tactics on our own bodies every day to keep them cleaned out and running smoothly, we need to lubricate the system from the inside—this means water in all its forms: drinking, and eating foods rich in water content (meaning produce).

Sometimes, we get a little careless with our drains, and pour grease down them in the form of fats and cholesterol. As in regular plumbing, this will lead to a clog that is really nasty to clean out by hand. In our bodies, the liver acts as the “J-trap” collecting all this fat and cholesterol from the blood, and occasionally needs a good dose of Drano (or in this case, fiber) to clear it. Continual doses of fiber with every meal help ensure a clear J-trap and no fat or cholesterol backups in your body. This is why you should choose your food with care—for every gram of cholesterol and fat consumed, there should be a corresponding amount of fiber consumed as well.

You know that little hole at the top of your sink near the counter edge? That’s called an overflow, and it helps to ensure you don’t overflow your sink onto the floor. Our gall bladders act in this same way by capturing and storing cholesterol (especially from dairy products) when the liver’s backed up and overflowing. The gall bladder then compresses it into “stones” and stores it for times when your cholesterol is low (like low-fat dieting, fasting, or times of famine).

Since we know no famine in this day and age, it’s just more “body clutter” we have to get rid of either through a detox program, or by watching what we eat to prevent this junk from entering the system in the first place. A simple act like adding apples or apple juice to our diet can help dissolve and eliminate these stones from our bodies (through malic acid). Malic acid supplements are also widely available.

The liver itself produces cholesterol, and this is a human biological event. The kind of cholesterol the liver produces is LDL, so it pays to know that your LDL levels are not rising solely because of diet, and also helps to know that there is something one can do about it besides take statins—the liver releases cholesterol into the blood when it senses that your overall cholesterol level is low, and filters it out when the levels are high. You can counteract this event by adding fats of your own (fish oil supplements, high oleic oils, and other “good” fats). Adding “good fats” to replace the body’s own “bad fat” factory is a way to lower your LDL and raise your HDL without succumbing to Big Pharma and all the drug industry has to offer—the trick is knowing how much your body produces, so you can take in enough of your own fats to compensate, and not many people can do that.

When both the liver AND gall bladder are backed up, the fat gets stored in our bodies: the hips, the abdomen, the thighs, etc. If you clean out (and keep clean) your organs’ fat and cholesterol collections, your body is then forced to burn the stored fat from throughout your body for energy. This means weight loss—slow, continual, sustained, and effortless.

Think of fiber as the “Mario Brothers” of our digestive system.

Our kidneys, on the other hand, serve many purposes: to filter our blood AFTER digestion, to regulate hormones, vitamins, and minerals, and to help control our blood pressure. When we eat foods rich in good nutrients, the kidneys help to make sure the excess is filtered out and sent to the bladder for storage and eventual exit. Sometimes we consume too much salt, sending our kidneys into overdrive trying to get rid of it. Sometimes we consume too much protein, which also sends the kidneys into overdrive, because excess proteins tend to clog up the filters. Too much overdrive for extended periods of time will eventually lead to the formation of stones, or worse—kidney failure.

We must consume plenty of liquids to keep these built-in blood filters working smoothly, and the liquids come from our food and drink. Caffeine, salt, certain salt-bearing foods and drinks, and certain medications have a “diuretic” effect—this means “to remove excess water form the body faster.” How do you know if your body is getting enough water? By the color of the urine—it should be clear. The darker the color, the more dehydrated you are, and need to add more liquid into your diet (preferably through fruits, veggies, and clean, filtered water). The more liquid flowing through the kidneys, the less likely you are to get stone formation and infection.

The toilet will be the biggest, most obvious indicator of whether or not your digestive system is functioning properly: your stools should be big, full, stinky, and sink to the bottom of the toilet, and your urine should be crystal-clear with no odor. If you have “floaters,” then you should consume less grains—the human body was designed to get its energy from fats, not carbohydrates.

A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and water-based beverages (tea, etc.) are all your body really needs to operate correctly. You don’t have any need for dairy products, grains, and most nuts, because they don’t feed your body what it needs—these foods are habits borne from hunter-gatherers getting desperate or lazy. When you think about it, cavemen didn’t exactly have access to cows, wheat fields, or nut trees—they ate plants they could reach, animals they could hunt and kill, and drank water from the streams and lakes. Agrarian Man came up with bread, milk, and other “convenience foods” because of the ease of getting the raw materials, and that’s where our society, genetic code, and biology met their first match and succumbed. Continued manufacture and ingestion of convenience foods keeps on leading us down the path of disease, destruction, and malfunction to the point that we're now able to predict the health of people three generations out.

If you want to have healthy grandkids, start by cleaning up your own act BEFORE you have kids of your own!

The Return of NNR Food Scores (L-O-N-G)

Back in 2005, I wrote an article on a new method of scoring food for nutritive value-the NNR, or Naturally Nutrient-Rich. Recently, I came across a follow-up and explanation of that method.

From the North Jersey Herald: “Generally, the energy density of a food is a function of its water content, says Adam Drewnowski, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Washington. Foods with high water content (which generally have high fiber content) tend to have a low energy density and can fill you up without making you fat. The key is to feel full on fewer calories so that you don't consume more than your daily calorie budget.

Studies show we're satisfied as long as the portions we eat are the "right" volume -- meaning the same size as what we would normally eat. Therefore, eating a diet rich in low-density foods allows you to eat a lot, but it won't cost you too many calories. Plus, those eating a low-energy-dense diet generally have higher intakes of several significant micronutrients.

Drewnowski has developed a scoring system called the Naturally Nutrient Rich (NNR) score to help consumers identify nutrient-rich foods. It identifies the nutrient-to-calorie ratio of foods and is based on 16 nutrients: protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamine, riboflavin, vitamin B12, folate, vitamin D, vitamin E, monounsaturated fat, potassium, zinc, fiber and vitamin B5. To get an NNR score for a serving of food you add up its percentage of Daily Values (the nutrients contained in a single serving as compared with the recommended daily intake of that nutrient) and then divide it by the number of nutrients used (16). It ranges from 2 to 1,000. According to Drewnowski, anything over 100 is good; anything over 250 is excellent; and there are some scores in the stratosphere -- specifically fruits and vegetables. Whereas jelly beans have a score of 3 and lard has a score of 35.

By assigning values based on multiple nutrients, healthful foods are defined by beneficial nutrients rather than simply the absence of fat, sugar or salt.
Food is about more than just calories. There are many components, and nutrient-density ratings can help consumers make better food choices.

Unfortunately, it doesn't account for the bioavailability of the nutrients, the freshness or organic nature of the food or the importance of antioxidants.

It's not easy to determine the nutrient density of the foods you eat -- there is not one location of this information yet. However, if you look for fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat and nonfat dairy products, lean beef and pork, skinless chicken and turkey and legumes, you'll be off to a great start.”

Common Naturally Nutrient Rich (NNR) Scores:

Fruit
NNR Score = 250 (great)
Cantaloupe, strawberries, kiwi, grapefruit, orange, mango, apricots, tangerines

NNR Score = 100-250 (good)
Raspberries, blackberries, watermelon, peaches, nectarines, pineapples, plums, avocados, blueberries
(compare canned grape juice - 33)

Vegetables
NNR Score = 1,000 (great)
Red peppers, carrots, pumpkin, spinach, romaine lettuce, mustard greens, broccoli

NNR Score = 500-1,000 (good)
Green peppers, sweet potatoes, iceberg lettuce, V-8 juice, cauliflower
(compare french fries - 50)

Meat and fish
NNR Score = 1,000 (great)
Oysters, clams, beef liver, chicken liver

NNR Score = 250 (good)
Mackerel, bluefish, lean ham, beef sirloin (lean), snapper, canned tuna

NNR Score = 100-250 (okay)
Beef chuck, salmon, lamb, pork, eggs, cod, shrimp
(compare fried chicken breast with skin - 65)

Dairy products
NNR Score = 250 (great)
Skim milk, nonfat yogurt

NNR Score = 100-250 (good)
1 percent milk, 2 percent milk, low-fat yogurt, whole milk, cottage cheese, mozzarella, reduced-fat cheddar
(compare ice cream - 50)

Grains
NNR Score = 100
Oatmeal, bagel, waffle, cereal bar
(many cereals score extremely high, but they are fortified)

*Source: Adam Drewnowski, Ph.D., director, Center for Public Health Nutrition, professor of Epidemiology and Medicine
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Wench’s notes: Obviously, this is still a work in progress. I have been in contact with Professor Drewnowski while trying to perform the above-mentioned calculations (trying to compare MY carrots to his carrots), and had some trouble achieving the 1000 NNR score. I figured either I couldn’t calculate my way out of a paper bag (typical for me), or I must be buying truly inferior organic carrots. Turns out that the math calculations stated above are for food items extrapolated out to a portion size equaling 2000 calories (done with dietician software). I was trying to do the math using “single serving size” information and not “2000 calorie” information. Professor Drewnowski says that the research team is currently working on a math formula for single serving sizes so the average consumer will be able to figure out the NNR scores of foods already in the home, as well as in the store aisles. For now, the math calculations remain a dietician’s software function (unless you feel like multiplying everything out to the 2000-calorie point). All I know is that 2000 calories’ worth of carrots would probably choke a horse, and I’m not about to start feeding horses.

In the meantime, use the list already provided as a guideline until the new formula comes out. He promises to alert me when there’s a formula.

Something you might want to consider: as I found in my experimental diet month, grains, nuts, and dairy are not really necessary to the human diet—the above NNR scores for dairy and grains prove that these foods are not really nutrient-dense at all when compared to fruits, vegetables, and meats. However, I have suggested to Professor Drewnowski that he include quinoa, amaranth, and soy beans to his research when assigning NNR scores to foods. These foods contain other nutrients besides the “starch” factors, are shelf-stable, and widely available in health food stores (sometimes in bulk).

Something I casually observed while attempting to score foods on my own: you can pretty much tell what foods are made up of just by looking at the %DV column—if there are only % numbers in the carbohydrates, sugars, and fiber rows, then the food item is pretty much starch. This food provides more energy (in calories) than nutrients. I looked at a jar of mayonnaise (eggless) and a can of kidney beans, and the kidney beans had %DV values in ten nutrients other than the usual “starch” suspects, while the mayonnaise had no nutritive %DV values besides fats. Basically, the more nutrients (vitamins and minerals) assigned a % number (other than zero) on the food label, the more nutritive the food item. The greater those % numbers are, the higher the value for that particular nutrient. Aim for the highest numbers you can find in the vitamin and mineral areas.

Why did I buy canned kidney beans instead of dry? Because they were cheaper by the pound than the organic store’s dry beans—even in bulk.

Something I did just for fun: I cross-referenced the above list with all the other lists I use for making food decisions (ORAC, TAC, and Ape Diet), and came up with these common food denominators: blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, and plums. Apparently these fruits score high as NNR foods and as antioxidant sources. This means more bang for your fruit buck while shortening the shopping list. I know it’s not exactly “eating the rainbow,” but there are always vegetables to fill in for the missing colors. As for vegetables, none were common denominators across all lists, but there was one that made a 2-out-of-3 showing: red peppers. Carrots, broccoli, and spinach made a poor showing on the TAC list (not even in the top 50 foods), but still made for a very weak 2-out-of-3. Theoretically, one could take all these foods and include them together in a salad (along with more greens, of course).

Another bonus for these "magic 5" fruits--only the blackberries and strawberries need to be organic. The rest can be bought (safely) in commercial form, because the commercial versions carry fewer pesticides than their organic counterparts.

So much for the apple a day keeping the doctor away, huh?

This Thing Called "Global Warming"

Q: If the climate change we seem to be experiencing (mostly in the media) is human-caused, then why is Mars also experiencing it as well?

A: It's the sun, not your activity OR your SUV.

You might want to read this. When you finish, you might want to forward it on to Al Gore, Ed Begley Jr., and the U.N.

Oh No—Not Another Detox!

By now, we’ve all heard of or even performed liver, kidney, and/or gallbladder detox on ourselves, but there’s another you probably haven’t heard of…at least, not in this fashion.

I recently acquired a copy of the book The Brain Gate (J. Robert Hatherill, 2003), and it contains information on how to detox your brain from all the chemicals and residue that managed to cross the blood-brain barrier and clog up your mental workings.

Fortunately, this detox isn’t nearly as involved as the others—you don’t need any special equipment, special foods or supplements, and no fasting is involved. All that’s required is a healthy diet with complex carbs, fruits, and veggies in it, as well as avoidance of a few harmful substances: aluminum, lead, mercury, food additives and preservatives, junk foods, artificial sweeteners, and so on. Most of this information has been around for awhile, but never closely associated with a “brain detox” or even brain health.

It would appear that whatever’s good for the body is also good for the brain. If you’re interested in more specific information about the detox, helpful supplements, or staving off currently-incurable brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, please get a copy of this book.

CAT FOOD ALERT PART DEUX

Since even more pet food brands and types have been added to the recall list, I'm posting a recipe good for cats, dogs, humans, whatever you have to save from polluted wheat gluten--the original recipe was designed by a vet at U.C. Davis College of Veterinary medicine, and I expanded it to include all flavors of meat.

For ALL formulas:

7 eggs, hard boiled
½ t. oat bran or oat/wheat bran mix
½ t. nutritional yeast
2 oil caps (fish/salmon)
½ t. salt substitute (NuSalt is the least objectionable)
6 calcium softgels, pierced
1 One-A-Day Max vitamin tablet, peeled and crushed
________________________________________________

Beef Formula:

2 lbs. ground beef, cooked
½ lb. beef heart, cooked
½ lb. beef kidney, cooked (optional)
1/3 lb. beef liver, cooked

Chicken Formula:

2 lbs. ground chicken, cooked
½ lb. chicken hearts, cooked
½ lb. chicken gizzards, cooked (optional)
1/3 lb. chicken livers, cooked

Fish formula:

1 can salmon, undrained
1 can tuna, undrained
1 can mackerel, drained
1 can clams, drained

Pork formula:

2 lbs. ground pork, cooked
½ lb. beef heart, cooked
½ lb. pork kidney, cooked (optional)
1/3 lb. pork liver, cooked

To cook: cut up into small chunks and brown in a pot on the stove. When done, add meat and juices into food processor with all other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add water as needed to make mix moist and easy to spin in processor. Spoon into ice cube trays and freeze overnight, or pour into bowl and refrigerate until solid—solid mix can be broken up with a fork before serving.

For dogs and other animals who eat vegetables as a matter of course--add about 2 cups grated veggies (carrots, zucchini, etc.) to the above ingredient list. Cats are obligate carnivores and do not process beta carotene (found in all plant material)--they SHOULD NOT eat fruits or vegetables.

The No-Label Diet Diary: Weeks 3-4 and Wrap-up

Week 3: Now that I’m eyeing my toaster with suspicion, I’m seriously considering replacing it with a juicer. I wonder how well Hubby can live without his occasional toast. Maybe that’s best left for another experiment. 

I developed a new allergy to black mission figs, and just when I was starting to like them.

Occasionally, a strong desire for a handful of nuts or a hunk of soy cheese would come up, but I settled for navel oranges and apples instead, while Hubby seemed to be doing well without any cravings.

My weight has begun to zigzag, while Hubby’s has paused, then resumed downward—I think I may know why, and will write an article when I confirm my suspicions. Gray hair has continued to diminish or darken, and skin remains soft. I myself am finding lots of gray hairs in my brush, and loose gray hairs on my clothes—I wonder if I should go have my head checked out for total hair loss, or just revel in the gray loss while worrying about the brown.

Our shopping list has gotten noticeably shorter, and is costing less time and money to complete. I’ve been noodling around on Google and the USDA nutrient database website, trying to see about further refinement, and looking for foods with the highest concentrations of nutrients. It seems dried split peas, dried lentils, dried whole grains, and nuts are concentrated sources of energy, because a serving size on the database is listed as 1 ounce (about a handful) for nuts, and ¼ cup for the legumes (they would double with cooking, of course). On initial read, it would seem that buying and using concentrated forms of proteins would also go a long way to help out a struggling food budget, because less would get purchased and used at one time (and they’re shelf-stable). I’m going to continue to look into this. Sprouts of all kinds are also concentrated forms of food, but they’re perishable.

Hubby enjoyed the lentil/wild rice side dish I made for him, and has expressed an interest in making chili with lentils instead of kidney beans—this goes into next week’s plan. I’m still enamored with the lentil sprouts, and wish to continue adding them to salads.

After looking deeper into the quinoa/amaranth suggestion of my health food store owner, I discovered that the high level of carbs per serving was for the refined form (pasta), not the grains themselves. She happened to have the pastas on her shelf, so that’s what I used as reference. The nutrition database told a different story about the whole grain itself.

Week 4: We can see the finish line, and I already started lining up sources of fiber for the experiment exit: corn in almost all its manifestations (cob, tortillas, frozen kernels--who knew it was loaded with fiber?), Ezekiel and Genesis breads for Hubby, baked potatoes, dried legumes, dried quinoa and amaranth, as well as high-fiber selections from all the “new” fruits and veggies we pretty much used to ignore. We eschewed corn and potatoes in the past for their starch and sugar content, but it looks like they’ll become a chapter in an ongoing diet experiment—I still have to learn whether corn is considered a grain, a vegetable, or both.

We found that lentils fill us up for most of the day when eaten early, as in an early lunch salad or soup. Hubby sure has been eating a whole lot less now that I bumped up his fiber intake. Without lentils, lentil sprouts, or some sort of beans, I turn into an eating machine with big salads three times daily, plus meat with breakfast and dinner. Our energy levels are high, and gray hair continues to lessen--I imagine it will return if we stop eating this way.

Wrap-up: Hubby lost about 10 lbs. and 20 points off his blood pressure. I lost about 6 lbs. and 25 points off my blood pressure. Cholesterol numbers haven’t come back from the doctor yet. This was pretty painless and absolutely nobody went hungry or crazy—it was an easy “diet” to stick to, considering how we ate to begin with.

Anybody out there want some grass-fed butter or low-sodium Swiss cheese? I don’t think we’re going to go back there in the future.

This experiment sure has taught me a lot about the foods we eat, the foods we buy, and how outside influences play into why we buy them. It has also taught me how to shrink the food budget without sacrificing health and nutrition, how to streamline food shopping trips, how I could make more space, do less dishes and cooking, and incorporate more variety into salads while still “eating the rainbow.” I also got a good look at what others were feeding their families, and said to myself, “If they only knew…”

At this point, you’re probably wondering why I chose to omit grains and nuts from the diet (aside from allergies). I got the idea from observing nature—squirrels eat nuts to build fat for winter hibernation (or semi-hibernation), and today’s cows are grain-fed to fatten up for market. If these foods build fat in animals, what do you suppose they do to humans? Also, it doesn’t help that working people are a lot like today’s mass-produced cattle: they both stand (or sit) around in pens (cubicles) and eat (or have eaten--mostly grain-based foods). What’s worse, we eat the meat from these poor animals, and continue adding grain-based foods of our own—and we wonder why there’s an obesity epidemic!

I have come to believe that the label on the front of foods is just as dangerous as the one on the back, because it serves as a lure for shoppers. The best and healthiest foods come without a label—especially on the back. Some are lucky enough not to have one on the front, either. Shopping for and living with these foods, as well as their effects, has revealed a way to health, happiness (spatial, temporal, and financial), and the way back to nature—where it all began. I found a way out from under the commercialism and marketing deluge, and an excellent way to stretch my (mostly organic) food dollar with ease. No more price books, coupons, rebates, or other trickery to deceive me (and hopefully you too) into buying low-quality, high-label food again—now I see too clearly to ever go back.

If you’re going to buy canned peaches and green beans, why not buy REAL peaches and green beans instead? No name, no shame. No label, no libel.

Home ownership around here (SE Virginia) is way more expensive than renting, so Hubby and I have given up on a garden. Sky-high home prices (in my opinion) and property taxes just aren’t worth the luxury of growing our own food, so we’re contenting ourselves with supporting the county’s organic farmers instead and banking the savings.