Change the World Wednesday – 7th Jan

The first CTWW of 2015.

Small will be back in a couple of weeks.

Most of the people who read this blog are already ‘green’. As I said in a comment last week, I sometimes feel as though I am preaching to the converted, but I look at it positively, if I can reach just one more person…

This week’s challenge is something small.

Look at everything you have changed, or aspects of life that are now different; how can you can waste less of just one thing.

or

If you have already made a small change this year, tell us about it.

Over the past year, I have changed my life, in particular, my diet. I am not dieting, heaven forbid, dieting is a myth, counting calories is counterproductive; and I have read this week that ‘flushing toxins’ out of your body is a fallacy.

So what did I do?

I have changed some of the liquids that I used to drink. Previously, I wasn’t beyond drinking Coca Cola and boxed fruit juice and my milk intake was a lot, often more than a litre per day.

For the past year, I have all but stopped drinking all soda; I still have a little coke if I make a Cuba Libre, but I have had only one since I gave up soda.

Fruit juice in a box, don’t even think about it. I buy or grow fresh fruit and make my own juice without sugar,

I still drink beer. In fact my beer consumption has risen since the silly season; mainly because I have had less students and more free time. After carnival the students will return and I will have less free time.

My milk consumption is down drastically. So much that the last two litre boxes of milk went sour in the fridge before I could use them all; because I now only have milk in my coffee, and maybe one cold chocolate drink a week in the evening, whereas before it was a nightly ritual.

So, what did I do with the last box? Because I was sure that it would be sour in the morning and end up going down the kitchen sink too.

Before the milk went sour, I filled an ice cube tray with the last and put it in the freezer.

This morning I made my coffee as normal and put two milk cubes in it.

The milk cubes turned yellowish, but taste normal

Okay, that’s a small change, but it reduces waste and saves about half a litre of milk. I have enough frozen milk for coffee for the next three days.

So, what do I drink instead of Coca Cola? Sparkling mineral water! It’s also cheaper than Coke. So the saving is twofold, health and finnancial.

The end result was a weight loss without dieting and I counted not a single calorie. I just made changes.

How much weight have I lost… about 20kgs (44lbs).

I can walk easier, I have less reliance on my walking stick, I can’t yet run up the stairs at work, but I can walk up in a semi-normal fashion instead of taking them one at a time which was laborious.

So small changes can make a big difference.

What have you done, or what can you do this year?

Change the World Wednesday – 10th Dec

Running a bit late today.

Small is still away and will be until mid-January, but I will try to keep the CTWW idea afloat.

But here’s a CTWW for you for Christmas celebrations.

Avoid all softdrinks and soda this Christmas, no Coca Cola, no Pepsi, no processed fruit drinks in a box, no diet, no lo-cal, no zero.

Instead buy fruit and make your own juice, and offer sparkling mineral water.

This challenge doesn’t apply to Christmas cheer for adults. They’re not the issue. The issue that we’re fighting is HFCS and artificial sweetners like sucralose and aspartame.

You can have a Happy Christmas without these beverages.

You do not need these additives in your, or your kids’ diets; they are the principle reason for obesity and other health problems.

See you next week.

Make you Fink on Friday

Gout surge blamed on sweet drinks

Gout was once a common complaint in men as this 1799 cartoon shows. Copyright Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library

Sugary drinks have been blamed for a surge in cases of the painful joint disease gout.

Men who consume two or more sugary soft drinks a day have an 85% higher risk of gout compared with those who drink less than one a month, a study suggests.

Cases in the US have doubled in recent decades and it seems fructose, a type of sugar, may be to blame, the British Medical Journal study reports.

UK experts said those with gout would be advised to cut out sugary drinks.

About 1.5% of the UK population currently suffers from gout and there has been an increase in numbers over the last 30 years – although the condition is more associated with Victorian times.

The symptoms of painful, swollen joints, mainly in the lower limbs, are caused when uric acid crystallises out of the blood into the joints.

US and Canadian researchers said the increase in cases had coincided with a substantial rise in the consumption of soft drinks.

Previous research had also shown that fructose increases levels of uric acid in the bloodstream.

Diet

To look in more detail, the team carried out a 12-year study of 46,000 men aged 40 years and over with no history of gout, asking them regular questionnaires about their diet.

Over the period, 755 newly diagnosed cases of gout were reported.

The risk of developing the condition was significantly increased with an intake level of five to six servings of sugary soft drink per week.

This link was independent of other risk factors for gout such as body mass index, age, high blood pressure and alcohol intake.

Diet soft drinks did not increase the risk of gout but fruit juice and fructose rich (my emphasis, think HFCS) fruits (apples and oranges) were associated with a higher risk, the researchers said.

But this finding needs to be balanced against the benefit of fruit and vegetables in preventing other chronic disorders like heart disease and stroke.

Dr Hyon Choi, from the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver said dietary advice for gout had focused on restricting purine-rich foods, such as red meat and beer.

He said practitioners should advise patients with gout to reduce their fructose intake.

“I can think of some situations, for example in severe treatment failure gout, where reducing sweet fruits, such as oranges and apples could help,” he added.

Dr Andrew Bamji, president of the British Society for Rheumatology, said anecdotally cases of gout appeared to be rising.

“When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense in that fructose inhibits the excretion of uric acid.

“I will certainly change my advice to patients and I suspect the number drinking fructose is quite large.”

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Monday Moaning

Sell, sell, sell, at all costs, sell!

Even if it’s bad for people’s health.

Coca-Cola’s Conspiracy Against Tap Water

Coca-Cola is running a stealth advertising campaign.

Stealth? Why would a corporation as ad-dependent as Coke spend big bucks on advertising that it doesn’t want consumers to notice? Shhhh – because the campaign is a surreptitious ploy to enlist restaurants in a marketing conspiracy that targets you, your children, and – of course – your wallet.

Coke calls its covert gambit “Cap the Tap,” urging restaurateurs to stop offering plain old tap water to customers: “Every time your business fills a cup or glass with tap water, it pours potential profits down the drain.” Cap the Tap can put a stop to that, says Coke, “by teaching [your] crew members or waitstaff suggestive selling techniques to convert requests for tap water into orders for revenue-generating beverages.”

The program provides a guide for restaurant managers who would direct Coke’s customer assault, a backroom poster to remind waitstaff “when and how to suggestively sell beverages,” and a participant’s guide to put “suggestive selling” foremost in mind as staff confronts the enemy… uh, I mean customers. Tactics include outflanking those recalcitrant customers who insist on water. Just switch the sales pitch to bottled water – remember, Coca-Cola also owns Dasani, one of the top-selling brands of bottled water in the US.

Early in its Cap the Tap scheme, the beverage behemoth offered two incentive programs for waitstaff: “Suggest More and Score” and “Get Your Fill.” Both were competitions to spur servers to push more Coke on American restaurant-goers.

Coke’s CEO has declared that “obesity is today’s most challenging health issue,” and solving it requires all of us “doing our part.” Really – by selling more Coke? That’s proof that hypocrisy is now the official rocket fuel of corporate profits.

Listen to this commentary on The Progressive:

Opinion:

“doing our part” (in the battle against obesity). Really? That’s a joke. Selling more of the biggest cause of obesity on the planet – Coca Cola!

As long as soda manufacturers use HFCS, they are killing people.

Governments are scared stupid to tackle these corporations, the lose of political donations bribes makes government sphincters quiver with fear.

Restaurants need to tell these companies where to put their nasty deals and hope it hurts!

 

Make you Fink on Friday

Why do so many people drink soda?

Consider this…

Now, ask yourself again.

Why do I drink soda?

Change the World Wednesday – 23 Oct

Basic human right, we have the right to know what we are eating and putting on our bodies

Last week’s post was about human rights and the right to know what we are eating through labelling.

I am going to extend that thought with today’s post.

First my weekly update:

Cloro is learning that the kitty litter (sand) box is outside more than inside, she’s getting the meassage.

The second lot of chili peppers have been bottled and the third lot would have been picked today, if exhaustion hadn’t over taken me. Which is the reason I am running late with this post.

This is my beefless week. For those of you who have been following my posts will know that several months ago I decided that the first and third full weeks of any month are ‘beefless’. I have continued with this theme since then. This week so far: Monday, poached sole (halibut) fillets with potatoes in milk and a delicious parsley white sauce. Tuesday, leftovers. Today, chicken breast with the last of the parsley sauce. Tomorrow, curried pork sausages; this will continue until Sunday.

Click on the banner for the full post

On with this week’s CTWW challenge:

The subject is BPA.

This week ban BPA from your life. Need some ideas? Avoid canned foods, including prepared soups, vegetables, sauces, soda and beer. Don’t microwave polycarbonate plastic food containers. Say no to printed receipts; they contain BPA.

 

OR … If you live in a country which bans BPA (Canada and Europe both ban this toxin), then please consider other ways to ensure food safety in your home. For example, defrost food in the refrigerator rather than at room temperature (which encourages the growth of harmful bacteria). Take a look at your pots and pans and make plans to replace any, which may leach chemicals into your food, with safe cookware like cast iron or stainless steel (here’s a hint … any coated pans or “non stick” varieties are unsafe). Avoid packaged, pre-cut produce which may be washed in a solution containing chlorine.

Brazilian canned beer. I don’t even buy the first one in bottles, hate it.

Principally, I do this already. I don’t buy canned beer.

I don’t buy soda, period!

I don’t buy prepared veges in a can, and I don’t microwave anything. Remember my thoughts on microwaves is that they should all be consigned to the dump. Search ‘microwave’ on this blog and you will find my thoughts there.

I do, however get printed receipts. I was totally thrown by the fact that they have BPA. I’ll have to look into that. But receipts here in Brazil are required when returning/exchanging purchases.

Generally, I buy in glass, doesn’t matter if it is beer or asparagus (can’t get fresh asparagus here). This is acceptable, but they also have insipid white shit, that I have never tried, nor want to.

The only thing that I buy in a can are sardines in olive oil. I’ve never seen them any other way. But I don’t buy tuna nor salmon in a can.

I also shun products in plastic whenever possible. Cheese spread for example, if I can’t find it in glass, I go without. This attitude has been part of my life for years, even before I learned about BPA.

I’ll add a warning here. Many companies have done away with BPA, and say so on their products; they have replaced it with BPS, which is several degrees worse, but the furore hasn’t reached the public yet through companies being super-secretive about the change.

Aluminium saucepans

In the second part of the challenge, cooking ware is mentioned. One of the most contaminating materials in your kitchen is aluminium (aluminum for our American cousins). Aluminium pots and pans leach the metal into your food and this contamination has been linked to things like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

I have two aluminium pots in my kitchen, they bget used as little as possible, but then at my time of life I am silly enough anyway, a little bit sillier probably isn’t that important. But, for young families with kids, they should be consigned to the scrapyard.

In the main, I use steel or cast iron, although I do have a coated non-tick frying pan which produces the most heavenly fried eggs, which would be even more heavenly if I had a source of farm fresh eggs.

Products packaged with BPA or BPS should be labelled as such.

So, yes, I do participate in this week’s challenge, and in some aspects have done so for years.

Monday Moaning

Whatever form

Soda – Soft Drinks, depends whether you are American or British, but that is immaterial, the question is what are they doing to our kids?

We have long known that soft drinks/soda are contributing to the current epidemic of obesity.

With ‘light‘ or ‘diet‘ drinks being the worst offenders; which just begs the question, why do so many people drink this shit?

There is new evidence coming to light. Evidence that soda/soft drinks are more evil, much more evil than imagined.

We have become preoccupied with conditions like ADHD (which I have just read is a hoax condition – for another time) and things like inattention at school, juvenile violence levels manifesting at kindergarten level, and worsening in the teens.

But there are definite suspicions as a result of an inconclusive survey by Columbia University epidemiologist Shakira Suglia and her colleagues that the culprit may well be our beloved sodas and soft drinks.

Read this article: Soft drinks’ side effects on Stuff.co.nz

And tell me, that we should be banning these products outright from our children’s diets. In fact governments should be banning these drinks from the young, just like they ban smoking.

Soda was once a luxury, you had a can maybe once a week, I was allowed one 7oz bottle of Coca-Cola on Saturdays; if I had behaved myself during the week.

But today, it is part of our kids food chain, a daily routine, sometimes more, a lot more than one can/bottle a day.

Our kids are overdosing on soda, it’s become a drug, its addictive. A recent case in NZ where a woman died drinking (to excess) Coca-Cola. That’s not a fantasy, it was a decision of the coroner’s court.

As a parent I want you to think about it, seriously. Is your child’s behaviour aggressive, or in any way manifesting some form of antisocial behaviour? Is he/she possibly a bully? Does he/she get irritable? Do they show an attention deficit?  Have there been complaints from school about his/her general behaviour?

Okay… now measure that against their intake of soda – BE HONEST!

Do you see a relationship?

There is a solution! BAN SODA AND SOFT DRINKS.

I have. I have returned to water.

 

Make you Fink on Friday

I used to buy fruit juice, I used to drink Coca Cola and other softdrinks and soda, I used to make cordial…

But then I discovered some facts about the ingredients used in all these drinks, ugly facts.

They have shit in them like aspartame, sucralose and high fructose corn syrup instead of suger. All of the above are pure poison!

So I switched to water, good old tap water. For a fizzy beverage sparkling mineral water became my drink.

But water can be boring…

So, spice it up a little.

fruit infused water

Image: Flux and Flow

Some interesting recipes to spice up your water. Homemade is better than commercial poison. Use your fruit and vege, scrapes can be used too. For example, when I have pineapple, the skin goes to make pineapple water.

Check out Flux and Flow for more ideas.

Update

Parents are warned to steer clear of sugar-filled ‘healthy’ drinks

Parents’ efforts on healthy eating ‘undermined’ by marketing campaigns and lack of government interest

Many ‘healthy’ drinks for children contain nearly as much sugar as Coca-Cola. Photograph: Melissa Lomax Speelman/Getty Images/Flickr RF

Nutritionists and health campaigners are calling on parents to avoid supposedly “healthy” fruit drinks during the hot summer – asking them to give thirsty children plain water or milk instead.

The calls come as new health research puts sugary drinks, and particularly the fructose in them, at the heart of the “diabesity” epidemic affecting young people in Britain. Some 67 health charities, medical royal colleges and public health bodies are asking the government to consider a health tax on sugary drinks, along the lines of those already successfully introduced in France and four other European countries.

Read more

Opinion…

And the governments are just not interested; too much money to lose in corporate donations.

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!