Monday Moaning

In some respects, I am a cynic.

I have grave doubts, no, I am almost certain that 100% of the food products you buy in supermarkets and other retail outlets are poisoned, polluted or contaminated in some form. There is nothing on a supermarket shelf that is healthy.

I would hazard a guess and say the only product on these shelves safe to eat is the blue stuff on the right, but even that is almost guaranteed to have been chlorinated/bleached.

I want you to take a hard look at this… And bear in mind that this is just drinks!

7 Beverages To Stop Consuming Today

Lately I’ve been focusing on all the foods we should stop consuming, but what about beverages which can account for up to 30 percent of our daily calorie intake? Many of us take for granted all those calorie-laden lattes, soft drinks and other sweetened beverages, however the real problem is not related to calories, but something much worse.

Here are 7 beverages you should avoid consuming at any time, for your health and your waist line:

1. Soft Drinks (soda, pop, carbonated beverages, fizzy drinks, etc.)

There isn’t enough bad things to say about soft drinks of any kind. Soft drinks account for more than a quarter of all drinks consumed in the United States. That works out to at least one 12-ounce can per day for every man, woman and child. They are estimated to be at least one-third of the problem related to child obesity. Carbonated soda pop provides more added sugar in a typical 2-year-old toddler’s diet than cookies, candies and ice cream combined.

Many sodas and diet soft drinks approach the pH level of battery acid in terms of corrosiveness and erosion of tooth enamel.

Besides the fact that diet soda causes dehydration, weight gain, mineral depletion, diabetes and caffeine addiction, research shows they’re also responsible for an increased risk of vascular events such as stroke, heart attack, and vascular death.

Artificially sweetened soft drinks are marketed as healthier alternatives to sugar-sweetened beverages, due to their lack of calories. However, past research has shown very serious long-term health consequences due to highly toxic additives and artificial sweeteners such as sodium benzoate, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose and high-fructose corn syrup.

Men who drink just one 300ml can of soda per day are much more likely to require treatment for a serious form of cancer than those who never consumed the drink. One soda a day can raise aggressive cancer risk by 40 percent.

One study of more than 66,000 women found those who drank artificially sweetened drinks were more 60 percent more likely to develop diabetes than those who indulged in regular versions of the same beverage.

Another recent study published in the journal Respirology revealed that soft drink consumption is associated with lung and breathing disorders including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Reblogged from: PreventDisease.com

Now, do you want to read No. 2 Tap water?

Then there’s pasteurised milk, sweetners, fruit juice, sports drinks and speciality coffee.

Just in liquids the average poison has been poisoned, now add foodstuffs.

It’s scary!

Change the World Wednesday – 27th June

Sometime later on Wednesday… I began this post (the AA spoof below) at 5:50am. My alarm went off at 5:30, and nothing, but NOTHING happens before that first cup of coffee.

I did participate in last week’s challenge, by NOT driving anywhere. The results are not as spectacular as one might think, because I don’t go anywhere apart from work, the supermarket and on Sunday I treated myself to dinner out, oh and a walk to the local market.

Big donk!

So, I didn’t drive 141 miles, I didn’t spend $61.88 and I didn’t emit 14lbs of pollutants.

Because I don’t have a car, I chose a model from my past. It was suggested I should use a Hummer at 12 miles to the gallon, but I figured that would be stretching the imagination a bit, so I chose my old favourite, 1956 De Soto with a gas gobbling 380 cubic inches (that equals about 6 cars with a 1,000cc engine) doing 18miles/gallon on a good day.

Just for your interest, the median price for gasoline here in Brazil is $6.82/gal.

On with Wednesday. I just had a break for lunch. Living alone one doesn’t just have lunch appear magically on the table; there needs to be a certain amount of physical effort, and then there’s the dishes…

Change the World Wednesday from Reduce Footprints.

For the next two weeks refuse to use (or buy) paper towels. Yep, 14 days … no paper towels. And … to make things just a bit more interesting … let’s include paper plates and single-use utensils, cups, etc.

Or …If you never use paper towels or single-use utensils, please share how you avoid them. We’d like to know how you handle “messy” messes (like pet “accidents”, cooking oil splatters & spills, etc.) … and what you use instead of single-use products for picnics, entertaining, etc. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with tips and ideas to help us all live without these products and reduce waste.

.

Those old evils disposable stuff…

Paper towels are an evil, addictive waste of trees

Hello, my name is Argentum…

“Hello, Argentum”

I am addicted to paper towels, but I haven’t used one in four days.

*Pause for effect while audience claps*

I had to, you see I was making a white sauce and my nose began to run, it was an emergency! I couldn’t abandon the white sauce and run through the house for my old T-shirt rag. I have the ‘flu! I know I shouldn’t have them in the house, they are such a temptation. The roll has been sitting on the kitchen shelf for months, almost a year. I look at it, I hanker for the days when I could use one without guilt. But, I have resisted, each time my trembling hand reached out for that soft white dimpled chlorine bleached absorbent texture, I would catch myself and use the cold damp cloth from the kitchen sink instead and I would feel so ashamed that I had nearly succumbed to temptation, then I would make fresh Brazilian coffee and the world would be safe from the evils of paper towels; at least until the next spill, the next crisis.

It’s true. I do have a roll of paper towels in the kitchen. It has been there since the last similar ‘paper’ challenge and does get used for timely emergencies. But the life of a single roll of paper towels in my kitchen is about a year. They do get used for draining the lard from a deep fry, there is nothing like paper for that. If I have a paper bag (‘sack’ for our American cousins) I use that instead.

I don’t entertain, I don’t go on picnics, so I don’t have disposable stuff in the house. I don’t usually use paper towels, except for the odd emergency listed above.

da Meow survey his kingdom (The praça)

The last time I had a ‘pet’ emergency, was when da Meow, my previous moggy, decided to play ‘Chuck Chunder’ under the bedroom table. I simply got the kitchen shovel and swept the oubliette with the yard broom and hosed it off into the outside drain. Apart from a serious gag myself, no damage. The same thing happened when he presented me with a huge dead rat in front of the backdoor; cats do like to show off their prizes. da Meow was no different, he was a good ratter, at least one a day sometimes two from the canal along the street. I just swept it up and buried it in the compost heap, three months later, no rat and good quality compost.

Splatters and spills are always wiped up with a floor cloth with a little kitchen detergent for the greasy ones. My floor cloths are old clothes saved for the purpose.

So truly, I have little use for disposable stuff; the challenge will be easy.