Today I’m expressing my opposition to what’s going on in the State of North Carolina. A blogger named Steve Cooksey of Diabetes Warrior maintains a chronicle of his health journey, detailing how how he’s managed his disease.

The North Carolina State Board of Dietetics (members of the American Dietetics Association) has formally objected to his blogging activities, and he is now facing 120 days jail time. For what, you may ask. Writing about how he is healing himself without drugs and conventional approaches to his diagnosis of Diabetes.

When he was originally diagnosed, he was recommended to take insulin and consume the Standard American Diet of government recommendations, including My Plate (formerly the Food Pyramid) and a regimen of pharmaceutical drugs. Since then, he has been in the process of reversing his condition by not taking conventional advice.

If you read his blog and you don’t agree with his recommendations, then you certainly don’t have to take them. He’s not a doctor, nor does he claim to be. Steve is merely sharing his experience in the hopes that it may benefit others.

That should be just fine, right? Not really.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Here’s the biggest problem with the ADA or any other large entity giving out health recommendations. Their information is based on corporate sponsorship, which everyone should boycott and disapprove. We are supposed to get sound, unbiased health advice from doctors. But we all know doctors receive kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies, and incentives to push one drug over another (name brands over generics).

The ADA is no different. If you look at their sponsor list, it’s full of companies selling toxic, harmful products. If you have ever attended any of their conventions, you’ll know that the booths and sessions there represent corporations like Nestle, Coca-Cola, foods with chemicals, pesticides, hormones, and everything else. Basically, junk food aplenty and then some. If state Dietetic Boards are objecting to this, you had better believe it’s only a matter of time before other states follow suit.

Two years ago, I wrote a post about how the ADA wouldn’t admit that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional. This post has a link to the ADA site with specific information about annual amounts donated by sponsors. The only information now available is on this link showing annual report information, but with no specific annual amounts from each sponsor listed. I contacted the ADA today with a phone call to obtain that information, and I was told that I could send an e-mail and request it. We’ll see what happens.

In a nation with an increasing population of overweight, heart-disease ridden, cancer developing individuals, we don’t need to be told to eat more chemicals, artificial foods, and toxins.  For many years, the standard advice has been to maintain a low-fat diet which encourages the heavy consumption of plants and grains, but cautions against consumption of fats and animal products.

These companies, who sell many of these products being recommended by health authorities to the general population to “manage” disease, have absolutely no business sponsoring any activity or information where health advice is being delved out. EXCEPT that this type of activity IS big business to them.

How else do you think these companies are controlling most the food in this country? Don’t believe me? Take a look at this diagram:

At least 5 of the companies in this diagram are major ADA sponsors: Coca Cola, Pepsi Co, Unilever, Kellogg’s, and General Mills.

So why should the ADA or any other entity care that Steve Cooksey is blogging about how he healed himself with natural means?  Because ultimately, Steve didn’t follow their dietary and medical advice. Instead, he did his own research and learned ways to heal himself.

He chose to follow a diet that is low-carb and high in protein and fat. Steve eliminated the use of all medications – insulin, cholesterol, and blood pressure in one month. This is a direct threat to the information the ADA or any other large, powerful entity gives out about health and nutrition. 

This is a violation of Freedom of Speech. We have the right to “furnish nutrition information on food, food materials, or dietary supplements” (section 9) and to “furnish nonfraudulent specific nutritional information and counseling about the reported or historical use of herbs, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, carbohydrates, sugars, enzymes, food concentrates, or other foods” (section 10).

How can you make your voice heard about this?

Sign the Petition. All petitions need 10,000 signatures before they will be looked at by anyone in Washington, so PLEASE. Take a moment and sign this petition to protect our health freedoms and rights –  to make sure that in the future, you and anyone else can buy a book that doesn’t tow the party line on conventional health, to be able to write or blog about your own health experiences for others to read, to be able to look up information online which can someone the answers they so desperately need, or to allow yourself or anyone else to be able to receive counsel from someone who is not a doctor or RD/LD (Registered Dietitian or Licensed Dietitian).

Or, send an e-mail to:

info@ncbdn.org

governor.office@nc.gov

In your message, make a respectful request to review the limits and boundaries of the law and the § 90-368: Persons and practices not affected, regarding sharing nutritional information with the public. The N.C. Board of Dietetics “Guidelines” and “interpretations”, and that this movement oversteps the limits of the law. Here’s a good template letter on the Heal Thyself web site.

Or, call Toll Free: (800) 849-2936.

By making contact with one of these entities, you are helping to ensure a future where we have choice and freedom to obtain health information or share information with others. Don’t allow our basic freedom to be able to have these choices to be placed in jeopardy. Blog about it, post on social media networks, and make your voice heard!

Want to learn about an exciting series coming to Public Television which provides great information about health and nutrition awareness, from experts in the field? Visit the Health Quest web site for more details.

Read this interesting post from Grist about how consumers are losing their faith in big food

Dr. Russell Blaylock, M.D. speaks about how nutritional support can eliminate disease in the body

Further reading about why we can’t trust big food corporations and the entities like the ADA which recommend we eat their products:

Reading labels in the store – don’t be fooled by marketing lingo - reading labels is important, but understanding that these foods are largely empty of nutrition and contain toxins that are harmful to our health is the other side of the equation
Fortified and processed foods – are label claims about nutrition true? - many foods recommended by entities like the ADA, mainstream medical professionals, and the government are highly processed and chemical-laden foods which don’t make us healthier
4 ways to avoid GMOs in the foods you buy – many of the foods recommended for us to consume by conventional health contain genetically-modified ingredients which are harmful to our health

Is cheap food really cheap? The hidden cost of industrial food - the money you spend on the food you eat really is directly correlated with how healthy you are

Factory farms or CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) produce high food volumes to feed a growing population, but at the cost of animal, human, and environmental health. The result of housing animals and birds in these facilities is pollution to the surrounding area, growth of pathogenic bacteria, and heavy use of antibiotics to “prevent” disease.

Just visiting one of these facilities and enduring the malodorous smell coming from concentrated cesspools of manure and the strong ammonia used to “contain” it, and the hydrogen sulfide gasses emanating from the area would forever affect the way you see and eat meat.

Meat recalls due to tainted meat are an unfortunate but frequent occurrence in the food supply, and have been on the news radar for the last number of years.  The most recent news reports of problems with commercial meat have appeared from pink slime in the public schools, grocery store chains, restaurants, and other places have the consumer and health publics up in arms.

Adding another element of contention to meat consumption are recent flawed findings that eating meat will decrease our life spans from the Harvard School of Public Health.

It’s no wonder fear and confusion about meat are in the minds of consumers.

In agricultural, political and government realms, there has been a lot of discussion about the need for improvements in the food safety sector. Large food producers aren’t motivated to make improvements due to the cost involved, so factory meat will always continue to yield problematic results for those who consume it. The nature of how it is produced all by itself is disease-inducing, and unless those methods and approaches to meat production and processing change, the hope of safe food ever coming from those sources is nothing but a fairy tale.

This reality greatly undermines the mantra of food safety officials, politicians, decision-makers, and health officials who have proclaimed with unwavering conviction: “The U.S. has one of the safest food systems in the world.”

It is situations like this which prompted the creation of one of the most insidious acts humanity has ever known: The Food Safety and Modernization Act, signed into law by President Obama in January of 2011.  This law supposedly puts the focus on “prevention” of the problem.  But what it will eventually do is strip away rights and abilities of smaller farmers, who are more likely to produce sustainable food, to make a living and produce the kind of safe products we want to consume. Smaller farmers have a much more difficult time meeting the requirements and satisfying fees that large-scale producers can, and these changes could be very bad for them indeed.

Tyson Fresh Meats, one of the largest subsidiaries of Tyson Foods, Inc. has the following changes planned for within the next year:

“The Dakota City project, which is already under way, is scheduled to be completed in mid-2013. It includes construction of a new beef slaughter floor that will incorporate the latest sanitation and production systems.

The company is also making improvements to the Dakota City plant’s beef carcass cooler, rendering and box handling operations, as well as employee lockers and cafeteria. Changes in the plant’s box handling system will involve the installation of additional conveyors and other equipment that will enable the facility to more efficiently handle the product mix.”

Every time you hear about a large corporation violating a law or regulation or having to recall product, those companies are never put out of business.  Generally they are fined and go on their way since they are able to absorb the cost of these fees without issue.

And, none of the improvements on the agenda call for making alterations to the way the meat is produced and raised; specifically, where the animals are raised, what feed they are given, the elimination of hormones, antibiotics, or pesticides, herbicides, and other harmful chemicals which cause the meat to become unfit for consumption in the first place. Everything is centered around the actual processing of the meat after it has been slaughtered – and many of those proposed changes will still employ dangerous methods. Until food manufacturers realize this and make changes accordingly, nothing will change.

Pink slime

“Pink slime” has been in the news for weeks, and schools are now being given the choice to “opt out”.  Last week, news reports showed that various supermarket chains have chosen to stop buying this “meat” from producers. These are steps in the right direction, but it shouldn’t stop there. If more businesses selling meat would refuse to buy factory-farmed meat and support local, sustainable farmers, our economy would begin to move in the right direction and recalls would start to cease.

“Pink slime” is the substance dubbed by the media from a company named BPI, which uses ammonia mixed with ground up meat scraps and connective tissue (normally used in dog food or even discarded) and then mixed with ground beef to ensure the elimination of pathogenic bacteria.  These parts and connective tissue are not harmful because of what they are, but because they originate from factory-farm animals raised in the worst conditions and as such, are at risk for contamination from pathogenic bacteria such as certain strains of E. coli or Salmonella.

A news report from The Atlantic asks a very important question: “Is pink slime really any worse than pink cylinders like hot dogs, or yellow nuggets of mechanically separated poultry? Probably not.”

The answer denotes not only the stark reality that is the processed meat (and food) industry, but the fact that just because this recent event has been brought to our attention doesn’t mean that these issues are anything new.

But it confirms something loud and clear: Consumption of all processed and factory meats carries a high risk of illness and or death. 

And so, like a raging river of water from a broken dam, meat recalls and reports showing how dangerous conventional meats are, continue.

Drug-resistant bacteria

Last year, a flood of reports came out showing that 1 in 4 packages of meat was tainted with pathogenic bacteria.  Researchers found when testing a variety of raw beef, pork, turkey and chicken in grocery stores in various U.S. locations, nearly half – or 47% were found to test positive for a multi-drug antibiotic-resistant bacterium.

Cattle on CAFOs receive a regular diet of the following: grains, corn, soy, manure and other animal waste (including feathers, hair, skin, and blood), meat from diseased animals, plastics, chalk, and by-products from food, beverage, and candy factories, and silage.  According to Sustainable Table:

“Under current US agriculture policy, the government provides large subsidies to farmers that produce grains, particularly corn and soybeans. Livestock producers like to use corn and soy as a base for their animal feed, because these protein-rich grains fatten up their animals, and because they’re incredibly cheap as a result of the government subsidies. Livestock consumes 47% of the soy and 60% of the corn produced in the US.ⁱⁱ

It’s been estimated that factory farms get a discount of 7-10% on their operating costs because of the subsidies that the government provides for corn and soy.ⁱⁱⁱ Although these cheap feed grains mean that meat and dairy prices are lower for consumers, they also result in lower nutritional content. In general, grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy are lower in omega-3 fatty acids (the “good” fat), and Conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA (CLA’s help to fight against cancer and cardiovascular disease), with higher levels of fat than products from animals raised on grass.^iv”

The unnatural feed is not only missing vital nutritional components, it also makes the cattle sick. To combat this, they are routinely given subtherapeutic or preventative doses of antibiotics to “prevent” the generation of and spread of disease. Ironically, since antibiotics effectively destroy all bacteria, this wipes out the good bacteria too. The result? A weakened immune system of the organism receiving the antibiotics, and animals bodies’ are then susceptible to pathogenic bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella. Bacteria find ways to survive in the face of drugs which seek to wipe them out, and they become stronger and resistant to those drugs.

Researchers testing raw turkey, pork, beef, and chicken purchased at grocery stores in five different cities across the U.S. found that roughly 1 in 4 four of those samples tested positive for a multidrug antibiotic-resistant “superbug” bacterium: “We found that 47% of the samples were contaminated with Staph aureus, and more than half of those strains were multidrug resistant, or resistant to three or more antibiotics.”said Lance B. Price, PhD, director of the Center of Food Microbiology and Environmental Health at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Flagstaff, AZ.

The other finding that came out of this research is that MRSA was found in about 2% of the meat samples. MRSA is a resistant-type of Staph (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a pathogenic bacteria). The bacteria usually enters a person’s body through a sore, cut, breathing tube, or catheter and often causes an infection, and can be fatal.

In a study from University of Iowa College of Public Health in Iowa City, epidemiologist Tara Smith discovered that even pork labeled “antibiotic-free” still contained MRSA bacteria:

“For the new study, published this month in PLoS ONE, she and colleagues bought a variety of pork products—395 packages in all—from 36 different stores in two big pig farming states, Iowa and Minnesota, and one of the most densely populated, New Jersey.

In the laboratory, the team mixed meat samples “vigorously” with a bacterial growth medium and allowed any microbes present to grow. MRSA, which appears as mauve-colored colonies on agar plates, was genetically typed and tested for antibiotic susceptibility.

The researchers found that 64.8% of the samples were positive for staph bacteria and 6.6% were positive for MRSA. Rates of contamination were similar for conventionally raised pigs (19 of 300 samples) and those labeled antibiotic-free (seven of 95 samples). Results of genetic typing identified several well-known strains, including the so-called livestock-associated MRSA (ST398) as well as common human strains; all were found in conventional and antibiotic-free meat. (The label “antibiotic-free” is not regulated, and the products were not “certified organic.”)”

Health officials claim that because these bacteria are commonly found on human hands and human nasal passages, this bacteria is likely originating from the skin and body surfaces of meat processing plant workers. But, we are also told that to avoid harmful bacteria from meat we should cook it thoroughly during preparation. So which is it – does the bacteria primarily originate from animals or humans? Health authorities seem very unclear about this. And, do you really want to eat something that you have to cook all of the nutrients out of just to make it “safe”, and does cooking it really make it “fit” to consume?

The American Meat Institute has this to say about antibiotic use and its connection to drug-resistance: 

“There is a misconception that somehow consuming meat from animals treated with antibiotics will cause humans to become resistant to those antibiotics. This is simply not the case. When antibiotics are used in livestock and poultry production, strict withdrawal periods must be followed before the animals are processed for foods. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) monitors meat and poultry to ensure that in the unlikely event that antibiotic residues are present, they do not exceed the tolerance levels deemed unsafe by FDA and USDA.

The industry has a strong record of compliance in this area. Most informed scientists and public health professionals acknowledge that the problem of antibiotic resistance in humans is overwhelmingly an issue related to human antibiotic use.”

And yet the USDA confirmed in early 2011 that 80 percent of antibiotics in use are in animal agriculture, which is about 4 times the amount used in humans to treat disease.

Drug-resistance microbes are prevalent in soils according to a recent report on Food Safety News: 

“Mounting scientific evidence shows that animal antibiotics are contributing to a rise in drug-resistant bacterial diseases among humans. But a new study out of Poland has found high levels of these antibiotic-proof pathogens in the natural environment as well. And yet again, animal antibiotics seem to be the culprit.”

So despite the insistent claims from health and agriculture officials that consuming meat from animals administered antibiotics doesn’t cause resistance, we know better because:

• Research shows data to the contrary
• Incidence of resistant bacteria is higher than ever
• Antibiotics are less effective than they were in the past, due to over-prescribing by doctors and abuse by patients, as is evidenced by the need to use other medications when many commonly used medications have failed
• Although other factors contribute to this issue, antibiotic use in animals and birds accounts for 80 percent of all use, this undeniably one of the biggest sources of resistance

Industrial meat causes sickness and death

There are countless stories of people who have consumed tainted meat, some whose lives were forever changed.

2001: One of the most heartbreaking stories is about a little boy named Kevin Kowalcyk, who died at the age of 2 years and 8 months…due to consumption of factory farmed meat during a family vacation. From the time he became sick to the day he died, 12 days passed. During that span of time Kevin was incredibly sick and suffered greatly, and so did his family.

The meat company that produced the ground beef which made Kevin ill had actually failed tests multiple times that were supposed to detect E. coli and Salmonella. During a long investigation and inquiry, Kevin’s family requested that records about the meat to match up to recall dates be submitted for examination. The company was “unable” to locate these records, and was protected by the USDA. Even after filing a lawsuit, the Kowalcyks were unable to obtain the answers they needed. Since then, his family has dedicated themselves to campaigning against foodborne illness in unsafe food.

2007: Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor in her early twenties, ate a hamburger from her parent’s house and was hospitalized soon after with severe abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea. Her kidneys shut down and she had multiple seizures during the days that followed. Doctors resorted to putting her in a coma for 9 weeks. She is now permanently paralyzed from the waist down – all due to pathogenic E. coli in the meat she ate.

Summer 2011: Cargill recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey. This incident killed one person and made more than 70 others ill from Salmonella poisoning. The USDA-FSIS released a public health alert reminding consumers to cook all meat thoroughly before eating.

September 2011: Tyson Fresh Meats recalled over 130,000 pounds of ground beef for potential E. coli 0157:H7 contamination in 14 states.

December of 2011: Tyson had another recall – this time, 41 thousand pounds ground beef from 16 states, from contamination of E. coli O157:H7.  Last week, Hannaford Stores, a Scarborough, Maine-based grocery chain, recalled an unspecified amount of fresh ground beef products that may be contaminated with a multidrug resistant strain of Salmonella Typhimurium.

There are countless other food recalls, this list is but a drop in the bucket. There are also food recalls which don’t involve meat, but involve produce or other foods from commercial farms. But these are related to factory meat farms…why? Because many of these foods receive contamination from runoff water from the meat facilities:

• Cantaloupes
• Eggs, peanut butter, spinach
• Tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Cheese and sausage

The solution: sustainable meat

Why not just stop buying meat from commercial producers and avoid the inevitable risks associated with eating these animal products? You will be hard pressed to find local, sustainable meats on recall lists or making people sick. In all the years my family has consumed local meat from sustainable, grassfed producers, we have yet to become sick. We’ve been eating this kind of meat for at least a decade – along with other real, traditional food. Besides the amazing difference in the flavor and texture of real meat, the other prominent change I’ve observed is the vast improvement of our collective health.

The farmers who raise the meat we eat care about animal and land stewardship. They also care about the health of the people who are eating the products they produce. Anytime I want, I can go out to these farms and visit the premises, and I know what I’ll find is a far-cry from the disease infested facilities I described in the beginning of this post. I love this interview on Our Natural Life’s podcast series (with Jon and Cathy Payne) with Kimberly Hartke of Hartke is Online! discussing the importance of eating sustainable meat and other foods, and how it is possible to produce our food in this way.

The reality is, if the consumer public continues to support toxic, dangerous corporations producing tainted meat products, we can expect nothing but more of the same. The FDA, CDC, and USDA certainly aren’t worried about shutting down these companies, and as long as consumers ignore news reports about meat recalls and pretend there isn’t a problem, none of those agencies will ever demand that anything change in the industry.

The choice is simple:  

1) Stop supporting large producers who don’t care about the health of the animals, the environment, and its own consumers.

2) Start buying meat and animal products from sustainable farmers in your area who use safe and ethical farming practices

It’s up to you. If you continue to buy garbage, you can expect recalls, drug resistance, and disease to continue. If you buy real meat from honest farmers, this situation will start to change…and the ability of large, bloated corporations who follow no rules but their own and rake in billions and billions of dollars from the sickness and death of our health and environment, will stop.

Since our federal and state regulatory agencies have failed in this task, it is up to the consumers to force our food producers to be accountable for their actions, and demand that they adhere to principles of sustainable farming and food production, or go out of business. 

More information:
1 in 4 meat meat packages tainted with pathogenic bacteria

Questions to ask your farmer: Know what’s in your food!

Huge FDA recall of 10,000 products – Another wakeup call to avoid processed foods

The grassfed meat challenge: Busting myths about meat

Deciphering egg and poultry labels

This post is part of Real Food Forager’s Fat Tuesday Carnival.

Given what’s at stake with regard to current contamination issues of the food supply from the presence of GMOs, I want to focus on ways to make finding sustainable foods as easy as possible, and promoting these buying habits which support more local farmers and producers who use sustainable methods in their food growing practices.

Many farmers have realized the importance of sustainable methods in farming. There are some wonderful organic and sustainable farmers who take careful stewardship of our land. Many farmers and food growers have challenges becoming certified organic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ask around and find out which ones are certified organic or who are using “organic practices”.

What’s wrong with GMOs?

GMOs are some of the most common substances now in our food supply. These organisms have been shown to promote the spread of pathogenic bacteria not only in the soil in farming environments, but in our digestive tracts as well. This spread of bacteria has contributed greatly to the degradation of our soil and crop yields, as well as health issues: digestive disorders, autism, cancer, reproductive issues, and auto-immune disorders.

From the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM): “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. Their conclusion: “There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,” from recognized scientific criteria. “The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.”

Children are especially vulnerable since their bodies are growing and developing, and they are susceptible to the many impacts of eating foods with GMOs in them – liver damage, food allergies, and others. Jeffery Smith from The Institute for Responsible Technology and author of Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, explains why babies and children are more susceptible to the effects of these harmful organisms. “Children consume a large amount of products that may be genetically engineered. They eat a higher percentage of corn in their diet compared to adults, and allergic children often rely on corn as a source of protein.”

Dr. Donald Huber, PhD., professor of plant biology (formerly of Purdue University) is trained in microbiology, plant physiology and pathology, and has a background in genetics. He is a seasoned expert in soil-born diseases and host-parasite relationships, and has researched, written, and spoken about the dangers of GMOs to our environment and our bodies.

Please watch Part I of this informative video interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola interviewing Dr. Huber:

Part II

4 Ways to Avoid GMOs in your food:

Now that you understand the inherent dangers in these organisms, let’s go over 4 ways we as consumers can send powerful messages to farmers and companies using these organisms to produce food.  That means we not only have to educate ourselves, but be mindful about where we put our dollars in buying food and other products that could contain GMOs. Practicing what we preach is critical.

1.  If you must shop at a store, always research where the food or product you want to buy comes from.

This can be tricky to navigate because so much of what is sold in stores is highly processed and suspect, making this the least preferred way to avoid GMOs. If you have no local farmers nearby from which to purchase food, download the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, prepared by the Institute for Responsible Technology.  Get in the habit of asking store employees questions.  If they don’t have the answer, ask the store manager. If he or she doesn’t have the answer, contact the company personally. Many companies which sell products in stores are not sustainable and do used GMO-sourced ingredients.

Never assume a product is GMO-free because it says “natural” or that the meat is not from a feedlot because it says “free-range”. Many of these labels are meaningless and there are no laws in place requiring those terms to be backed by anything.

Buy as many organic products as your budget allows, but be aware that due to loosening of FDA regulations and requirements, organic products are now commonly made with ingredients you might not want or are trying to avoid, so read labels whenever you buy. One example is the sweetener neotame (developed by Monsanto), a chemical derivative of aspartame. Highly concentrated, this neurotoxic sweetener is 7,000-13,000 times sweeter than sugar. According to Dr. Mercola: “In 1998, Monsanto applied for FDA approval for neotame, “based on the aspartame formula” with one critical addition: 3-dimethylbutyl, which just happens to be listed on the EPA’s most hazardous chemical list.“ It often doesn’t appear on the label at all, or can sometimes be listed as some other ingredient that is unrecognizable.

If something doesn’t seem right about a product you’ve been buying for a period of time, make inquiries again because sometimes things change.

2.  Avoid chain/commercial store shopping as much as possible, and keep to smaller, independent health food stores and co-operatives.

Last month, I wrote a post discussing 8 reasons I won’t shop at Whole Foods Market  when they come to Boise, ID where I live. My friend Sarah Pope, author of  The Healthy Home Economist also wrote a similar post about this topic, and why she won’t be shopping at Whole Foods, which will be opening in her area soon.

Both of us feel strongly about avoiding corporate chains that claim to sell local, sustainable foods because we understand how sketchy marketing claims can be and how powerful the lobbying interests of big corporations like Monsanto are to get GMOs in the food supply. In both of our areas, there is really no reason to shop at Whole Foods. In Boise, ID where I live, we have a wonderful health food store here called The Boise Co-op, which has been in our community for decades and heavily supports local sustainable and organic farmers and food growers, as well as merchants who produce other safe, local products.

In Boise, people complain that the Co-op is too expensive. But Whole Foods won’t be any cheaper and there is no guarantee that the products you buy which might be labeled as “natural” (as one example, their 365 line) are free from GMOs, that their meats are 100% grassfed (the USDA only requires that the labeled meat be from animals that are 30% grassfed), or that their products are actually local.  This is one of my biggest gripes about labeling and marketing. Just because it says “all-natural” doesn’t mean it is, and large corporations like Whole Foods are in the habit of letting you assume something is non-GMO just because the label says “natural”.

There are certainly GMO products in other stores besides Whole Foods, so don’t worry, I’m not being naive. But why switch to a large corporation which is putting farmers and other local companies out of business, when you can support your local farmers by buying direct or by shopping at the businesses that stock the same products and you can actually find out whether these farmers use practices you can trust?  Even though Whole Foods has signs everywhere saying they carry local products, the reality is, these stores ship in products from all over the country and the world – such as from China. They stock much less local food product than bigger name products shipped in from who knows where. And, it’s guaranteed they stock a lot of GMO products.

3. Buy from local farmers and ask questions about how your food is produced.

Because labeling laws are so permissive and we really can’t trust big corporations at all, the single most powerful way to make a statement about GMOs and to assure your food is clean and sustainable is to buy from local farmers. You have complete control this way, and can keep looking until you find what you want.  If you decide to settle for something that’s less than what you are looking for because you are just guessing or you haven’t really made an inquiry, you get what you get.

I don’t live in Amish farmer country, but we do have a fantastic community of farmers that produce sustainable food here in the Boise area. I’ve managed to find several good sources of raw milk that are grass-fed. In our area, grass-feeding year round is not always possible. At least I know that these raw milk farmers feed either grass or non-GMO alfalfa hay since I’ve personally talked to them about it. These producers are not organic, so they are not “perfect”, but they are good in many other  ways as they do use “organic” practices.

In our climate, it’s difficult to have cows on pasture all year round. However, there is one farm, Saint John’s Organic Farm, in Emmett, ID which does keep their cows on pasture all during the year, and they are grass-fed and organic. During the winter months, they supplement with non-GMO, organic, alfalfa hay.

4. Learn all you can about GMOs and what to expect, and share with those you know and love.

Spread the word to people around you. Get involved in your own community to help keep local, sustainable farmers in business.

In Europe, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, France, Germany, Greece, and  Luxemborg have put a ban on GMOs. To get GMOs removed from the U.S., the first and most important thing to do is change your buying habits, and get in the habit of avoiding them everywhere you go.

Next, put pressure on legislators to vote for legislation requiring labeling on all GMO products. New technologies, marketing campaigns, and other emerging activities which can easily fool consumers are always on the horizon. Don’t be fooled!

From The Institute for Responsible Technology site:

“By avoiding GMOs, you contribute to the coming tipping point of consumer rejection, forcing them out of our food supply.”

Truer words were never spoken. We as consumers have POWER to take back our food supply and put our health in our own hands. Are we up for the challenge? Are we dedicated to protecting our food freedom, our health, and our future? I am, and I hope you are too!

If we don’t take back our food supply, who will? If we don’t do it now, then when? The time is now, and the situation is fervent. So please, I humbly ask you to reconsider the impact these organisms have on our health, our planet, and the future of our children.  Let’s get serious and change our buying habits for a healthy future.

More information: 

Busting myths about GMOs

Institute for Responsible Technology for more information and for the GMO Shopping guide, which can help you avoid GMOs both in the commercial marketplace and otherwise.

Millions Against Monsanto Campaign (project of Organic Consumer’s Association). Find out how you can become involved and stop bio-terrorist bullies like Monsanto from spreading their poison seed across the earth.

The Non-GMO project - non-profit multi-stakeholder collaboration committed to preserving and building sources of non-GMO products, educating consumers, and providing verified non-GMO choices.

The Internet is aflame with a contentious report about a recent study telling us eating too much red meat will shorten our lives.

Once again, the conventional propaganda machine spews its unfounded and nonsensical fear-mongering out to the public ear, and what ensues is sheer panic.  In the last week, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had comment or ask with great trepidation:

“is red meat safe to eat?”

I wonder just how many paranoid people are going to curtail their meat consumption even more than they already have?

This is a subject I feel very strongly about. My mother made red meat a lot when I was a child, but I honestly never took to it. For many years after, I disliked red meat unless it was appropriately disguised in something or had a lot of seasoning or flavoring on it. Looking back I thought it was because meat was terrible, but now that I know what real, grassfed meat tastes like, I know that it wasn’t my mother’s cooking or because I was finicky (and I was very finicky). The meat tasted awful because it was conventional.

I admit I was also brainwashed into thinking all meat was bad for our health by conventional health recommendations.

If you’ve been an omnivore for sometime, you don’t have to give up your meat consuming ways.  So, before you go to your refrigerator or freezer and throw out all your red meat, there are some things you should know.

If you are a vegetarian for health reasons, there are some things you ought to know about this and other studies which conclude meat is bad for our health.

The method behind the red meat study

An Pan from the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues examined data from 37,698 men and 83,644 women. They compiled this from 2 previous studies done over 25 years ago, from 2 different groups of people. All subjects were asked to complete a questionnaire revealing their dietary habits, every 4 years. Surveys about food consumption are known for their inaccuracy as they aren’t an good reflection of what they actually consumed.  Many respondents cannot remember what they’ve eaten with certainty from day-to-day or week to week.  People are also prone to be less than truthful about what they ate, especially when it comes to confessing about foods they’ve eaten which are perceived as unhealthy.

The results  showed the following: those diagnosed with a medical condition were more likely to misrepresent meat consumption on the survey than those without a diagnosed medical issue.  Don’t forget, this was the bulk of where the “scientific” data originated from in this study to draw the conclusions that red meat causes premature death.

The study conducted was observational in nature. According to Denise Minger who was featured on Mark’s Daily Apple earlier this week, the study was not “an actual experiment where people change something specific they’re doing and thus make it possible to determine cause and effect. Observations are only the first step of the scientific method—a good place to start, but never the place to end. These studies don’t exist to generate health advice, but to spark hypotheses that can be tested and replicated in a controlled setting so we can figure out what’s really going on. Trying to find ‘proof’ in an observational study is like trying to make a penguin lactate. It just ain’t happening… ever.”

Minger goes on to explain that even though the head researcher, Frank Hu emphatically claimed that the study gave obvious evidence that regular red meat consumption contributes to early death, “only an actual experiment, with controls and manipulate variables, could start confirming causation. ” Minger is well-known for her excellent rebuttal to Colin T. Campbell’s (author of the infamous China Study) theories on the superior health benefits of  a plant-based diet.

The study’s author, An Pan (Harvard School of Public Health) even admitted that the “link” wasn’t absolute proof that eating red meat causes premature death.

Other important variables not factored into the study

To provide accurate results, other lifestyle and dietary considerations are critical.

From the Sun Times:

“To determine the risk of eating unprocessed red meat or processed meat, the researchers factored out other lifestyle factors, including age, weight, physical activity and family history of heart disease, and dietary factors, such as intake of whole grains, fruit and vegetables, nuts, legumes, dairy products, fish and poultry.”

Dietary consumption of polyunsaturated fats, white flour, and sugar are all culprits of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and early death. These 3 highly processed ingredients are very commonly found in a majority of foods people consume. But the researchers did not take these foods into account as to health condition or causes of death.

Here’s what the Weston A. Price Foundation has to say about polyunsaturated fats, white flour, and sugar:

“The cause of heart disease is not animal fats and cholesterol but rather a number of factors inherent in modern diets, including excess consumption of vegetables oils and hydrogenated fats; excess consumption of refined carbohydrates in the form of sugar and white flour; mineral deficiencies, particularly low levels of protective magnesium and iodine; deficiencies of vitamins, particularly of vitamin C, needed for the integrity of the blood vessel walls, and of antioxidants like selenium and vitamin E, which protect us from free radicals; and, finally, the disappearance of antimicrobial fats from the food supply, namely, animal fats and tropical oils. These once protected us against the kinds of viruses and bacteria that have been associated with the onset of pathogenic plaque leading to heart disease.”

Many commercial meats contain nitrates

An Pan also admitted that nitrates and salt content in processed red meat could be an answer as to “the relatively higher risk found in processed compared with unprocessed red meat.” Nitrates are used in a variety of processed meats, even so-called “healthy” and “all-natural” meats to increase shelf life.  Nitrates are carcinogenic and can cause a variety of health issues that can cause fatal disease over time, such as cancer.

Refined salt

As well, the type of salt used on the meat is also key. Refined table salt, which is what is used in most commercial meats, is primarily comprised of sodium chloride. Due to high heat processing of the salt, this chemical alteration destroys minerals.  Unlike real sea salt which has not had vital trace minerals removed, sodium chloride is a poison to the body.  Magnesium, among other minerals eliminated during high heat processing of salt, is important for heart and circulatory health. The lack of magnesium from eating foods such as sodium chloride can contribute to a rise in blood pressure, heart arrhythmias, and other problems.

Refined salt also has a number of additives in it: to keep it dry and reduce caking, food manufacturers add aluminum compounds, dextrose or other refined sugars are added for a stabilizer, MSG, and bleaching agents are used to make the salt have a white appearance for the consumer market. It is for these reasons that table salt can cause water retention and other issues. Food companies also use large amounts of sodium chloride, causing more problems. Sodium chloride is a poison to the body. It causes edema, artery damage, high blood pressure, the onset and continuation of heart disease, diabetes, and many other illnesses associated with chronic inflammation and Metabolic Disorder.

Why is meat being blamed for our health problems?

Red meat has been eaten all over the world by traditional societies for thousands and thousands of years.  But not all meat is the same. One reason meat is getting the heat is that most meat people consume comes from animals in confinement, administered antibiotics and hormones, and eating unnatural types of feed such as soy, corn, grain, and other silage (many of these are predominantly GMO in source). As we discussed earlier, many toxins and chemicals are also added to meat such as MSG, refined salt, sugar, corn syrup, and other additives and preservatives that are harmful to health.

Take a look at most any study where the results conclude meat is bad for us to consume. Where is the differentiation between this horrific, industrial abomination described above and safe, grassfed meat without additives, chemicals or other toxins, and from healthy animals living out on pasture? These reports don’t take into account the superior health benefits of such a pristine and nourishing food.

Why factory farm meat doesn’t stack up

Cattle are ruminants and not meant to consume grain, they are designed to digest grass. Pigs can eat other feed such as clovers and annual grasses like oats, rye, wheat, and ryegrassbarley, root vegetables, and even fermented dairy leftovers. But soy and corn should be avoided due to the inflammatory effect these substances on the meat. When you produce meats in this manner, the nutritional quality of the meat diminishes greatly.

The ratio of Omega 6 essential fatty acids to Omega 3s is typically 20:1. CLA content (conjugated linoleic acid) is almost non-existent. When these nutrients are out of balance in the foods they eat, the result is all the symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome – diabetes, heart disease, weight problems, high blood pressure, stroke, and cancer.

This is the meat you hear about on recall lists all the time and in the news. We are so bombarded with this information, it’s rare when the media doesn’t have a field day about this topic. One of the latest scandals is pink slime reports in the news, served to children at school. Yuck.

In our modern diets, we eat far too many Omega 6s, which creates an inflammatory response in the body, setting the environment up for disease. Omega 3s, on the other hand, are something we are in much shorter supply of in the modern food supply. Omega 3s are essential for brain, immune, heart, and digestive health.

Grassfed meat supports health

Author Stanley Fishman has produced two fantastic books on the subject of healthy, grassfed meat and how to prepare it: Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue.  In the first book he talks about the reasons why he decided to choose grassfed over factory-farm meat. Grassfed meats from grazing animals out in the open are quite a different story from industrial meat.  He describes why real, grassfed meat is so different in nutritional composition, flavor, and the way it is produced.

The essential fatty acid ratios are ideal for Omega 6s to 3s at  4:1. Grassfed meats and dairy products are actually the richest source of CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) there is. CLA is a healthy fat which serves as an antioxidant to the body (cancer-fighter), and protects cardiovascular health. It also supports metabolism function and immunity, keeps cholesterol level, stabilizes blood sugar levels to prevent heart disease and diabetes, and encourages the production of lean muscle mass.

CLA is primarily found in the fatty sections of meat. What you won’t find in factory and commercial meats is much of a fat cap. If you do, you can be assured it won’t contain much CLA. These meats are artificially produced to be lean and without fat. Meat without fat is not healthy for us to eat.

Stanley presents a number of ways and recipes in the book to prepare it for the best eating experience possible, in your own kitchen. This book is a staple in my house and I have referred to it many times while cooking grassfed meats.

I just received my copy of Tender Grassfed Barbecue and I am looking forward to learning how to better prepare my grassfed meat for outdoor eating this season, as I have a lot to learn on this subject.

The Weston A. Price Foundation discusses the truth about why red meat, fat, and cholesterol aren’t the culprit of heart disease:

“There are many societies where the populace consumes high levels of animal food and saturated fat but remains free of heart disease. Dr. George Mann, who studied the Masai cattle herding peoples in Africa, found no heart disease, even though their diet consisted of meat, blood and rich milk.  Butterfat consumption among Masai warriors, who consider vegetable foods as fodder for cattle, can reach one and one half pounds per day. Yet these people do not suffer from heart disease. Mann called the lipid hypothesis “the greatest scam in the history of medicine.” It is a scam that has been used to convince millions of healthy people that they are sick and must take expensive drugs with serious side effects, a falsehood that has persuaded Americans to adopt a bland, tasteless diet simply because their cholesterol has been defined as being too high.” Source.

More information: 

The grassfed meat challenge: busting myths about meat

Cardiologist: “Lowfat diet scientifically and morally indefensible” - The Healthy Home Economist

Tender grassfed meat - Stanley Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue

Red meat is still not bad for you, but shoddy research clueless media are – The Healthy Skeptic

The amazing benefits of grass-fed meat - Mother Earth News

This post is part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday Carnival. 

If you find that your yogurt comes out too runny, sour, lumpy, or just not what you envisioned, never fear. Don’t throw it out! I’ve done this on more than one occasion, some years in the past, and wished I hadn’t.

We definitely don’t want to throw out any probiotic foods unless you see mold or some other unsightly appearance growing on them. They are simply too useful. We all need more beneficial bacteria in our guts to help with digestion and immune system support…which in turn, helps maintain health in general.

Now that I know that there is practically no way to ruin yogurt or really any cultured dairy products, I decided to provide my readers with this list of useful ways to use your yogurt that doesn’t turn out how you wanted.

1.   Make a smoothie.

This is a guaranteed way you’ll be able to eat the yogurt you made which may have a taste you aren’t fond of, and still get in your probiotics. The sky’s the limit for smoothies – you can put anything in them you want. Most of mine have kefir, egg yolks, bananas, frozen berries, avocado (to make it thick like a milkshake), and sometimes coconut oil. You can also add cinnamon or other spices and herbs, healthy sweeteners like raw honey, coconut palm sugar, rapadura, real maple syrup, real fruit juice, home-made almond or coconut milk, greens, and nut butters. Be sure to use full-fat foods in your smoothies to keep your energy and blood sugar levels even until your next meal.

2.  Use in cooking recipes.

Although the probiotic and enzyme value of your yogurt will diminish, one way to minimize this by stirring into whatever you plan on using the yogurt in before you serve the meal, and after you have allowed the food to cool from being on the stove or in the oven. Ideas include using in Beef Stroganoff, dishes using tomato or cream sauces, and soups, stocks, or soups.

3.  Blend with another cultured dairy food you’ve made or purchased.

If for instance, you have picky eaters in your household who don’t like home-made yogurt over store-bought and you are trying to integrate these foods into their repertoire, mix in some of your home-made yogurt, whether it “flopped” or not, with the best quality commercial yogurt you can find such as Brown Cow or Nancy’s.  This is a great way to “sneak” in something nutritious that your family members won’t notice.

4.  Make yogurt cheese. 

If your yogurt isn’t too runny, you can put it in cheesecloth and strain they whey out it into a bowl overnight to make delicious cheese.

5.  Dump it into your potting soil, container pots, or garden.

Probiotics (good bacteria) are really important for the health of your soil for growing healthy vegetables, legumes, fruits, and other foods. This is a perfect way to use your “flopped” yogurt!

6.   If all else fails, give it to your dog or cat, or your livestock such as pigs.

Probiotics are good for animals too, and helps maintain their health.

How do you use your yogurt or other cultured dairy “flops”? 

New to raw milk and raw milk yogurt? Read this post about why raw milk is superior to commercial milk and dairy products. 

The superior health benefits of eating home-made cultured and fermented foods and beverages

All probiotics are not created equal

Waste not, want not: tips for saving in the kitchen 

In this edition of Deceptions in the Food Industry, I’m tackling Omega 3s. If you shop at the grocery store, you know there are thousands of products proclaiming their Omega 3 value, from cereals, crackers, chips, breads, bagels, and pretzels to fish and krill oil, flax and other seed oils, to vitamins and powders.

The latest offender I’ve seen is a bag of Ritz Toasted Chips, at a friend’s house. I think most people know crackers and chips aren’t healthy, but come on…do people really believe this product has Omega 3s?

On the front and back of the package, it says that this product contains “320 mg ALA Omega 3s essential fatty acids per serving from soybean oil”.  Not only is soybean oil highly processed and extremely high in Omega 6s, it is also goitrogenic and suppresses thyroid and hormonal function. The Standard American Diet is loaded with Omega 6s, the over-abundance of which are responsible for causing inflammation in the body – weight issues, auto-immune problems, osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, and so on.

Here’s the ingredient list:

Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate {Vitamin B1}, Riboflavin {Vitamin B2}, Folic Acid), Soybean Oil, Cornstarch, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Potato Starch, Salt, Leavening (Calcium Phosphate And/Or Baking Soda), Sour Cream Powder* (Cultured Cream, Skim Milk), Monoglycerides (Emulsifier), Onion Powder, Dextrose, Monosodium Glutamate (Flavor Enhancer), Skim Milk, Natural Flavor, Spices, Whey, Disodium Inosinate And Disodium Guanylate (Flavor Enhancers), Citric Acid, Modified Corn Starch, Cultured Cream*, Milkfat*, Soy Lecithin. *Adds A Trivial Amount Of Cholesterol. Contains: Wheat, Milk, Soy.

Even if the Omega 3 claim wasn’t there, doesn’t this ingredient list send chills up your spine? Yikes!

I also found this other product, a “vegetarian” product called Life’s DHA, which is backed by “clinical research” to improve health.

The web site claims it is fish-free and made from “algae cell culture and results in a highly purified DHA oil”.  What the heck does that mean? Oh, and it also says it is used in “99% of all infant formulas” on the market, which means it’s full of toxic ingredients and no nutritional value. See my post on infant formulas.

Anything that starts off as natural and ends as a “purified” oil should immediately be suspect. Most oils on the market are far from pure, are highly processed, go through a chemical alkalinization process where a base is added to alter the chemical properties of the substance through heat and become oxidized, and are deodorized to remove any taste or odor issues with the product.

This processing alters the original chemical makeup of the food and renders it devoid of nutrients. And yet, millions and millions of consumers will read the claims on the label (which fails to provide this information) and think to themselves, “sounds good to me!”

There are endless products in the store which will claim to deliver Omega 3 health benefits. The bottom line is, these should be avoided. Real food is the only sure source of valuable, brain and heart supporting Omega 3 essential fatty acids.

Best sources of Omega 3s:

• Wild-caught fish such as salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel, and mollusks like clams, oysters, mussels, squid and octopus
• Eggs from hens on pasture
• Grassfed meats and poultry
• Butter, ghee, cream, and milk from healthy cows on pasture – see sources
• Sprouted hazelnuts or walnuts
• Fermented cod liver oil – see sources

Enough of this nonsense already. Get your Omega 3s from real foods with real nutrients, not fake, processed foods in the store with a shelf life of several years, and which after sitting around that long will still look the same.
 
Read the other posts in the Deceptions in the Food Industry series: 

Lean meats

Low fat foods

All natural

Wait, did I just say a dirty word? You’d certainly think so. When I utter the word “lard” to some people, they do a double-take, as though I’ve just asked them to cross the Mojave Desert without any water.

The picture shows two young adults who appear to be happy and healthy because they are imbibing. All joking aside, their vibrant health was not from the alcohol they drank nor their sparkling personalities. Lard is certainly not new to the human diet, but over the last 100 or so years, it’s been increasingly absent from our tables and kitchens.

Why is this such a misunderstood food?

I’ve got one word: Marketing. Fats have been wrongly villanized in medical and health communities for many decades.  This translated over to the food industry very well, and just as lard was once marketed as a health food, unhealthy, artificial fats started being marketed to the public just after the turn of the 20th century when hydrogenated vegetable oils were created. It was more cost-effective to produce these products because the meat industry had a monopoly on lard and tallow used for soaps, candles, and cooking.

It was at this time that saturated fat and cholesterol in particular, became “unhealthy” to consume.  No longer were people encouraged to eat real animal fats, but instead, fake, modern fats. Despite the fact that lard is comprised of 40% monounsaturated fat, as a culture, we’ve continued to bestow a most unfair criticism of it. All because, dare I say it…it’s an animal fat!

Deaths from heart disease were rare prior to 1920s in the U.S. Prior to that, tallow (beef fat) and lard were the most widely used for cooking. Around the turn of the 20th century, shortening (think Crisco) started becoming a more commonly used “fat” in people’s kitchens. Read this history of cottonseed oil and how it took the place of lard and tallow in American kitchens due to the discovery of hydrogenation.

Perhaps lately you may have seen some of the various articles circulating around proclaiming lard’s true health benefits. Here, or perhaps here. Of course, these articles are heralding the benefits of real, unhydrogenated lard which is very important. Most of what you’ll find on the consumer or commercial markets is hydrogenated lard, if you can find it at all. The other point they make which I don’t agree with is that because it has less saturated fat (about 40%, as compared to other animal fats like dairy and red meat), it’s better for us.  This couldn’t be more false.

Lard is really a health food!

Actually, we need many different kinds of fats in our diets to be healthy. That includes saturated fats, monounsaturated fats, and even a little polyunsaturated fats – but from real foods that are unadulterated. The source is of key importance. For thousands of years, people have eaten real fats, and this practice has ensured the survival of humankind. Dr. Weston A. Price discovered in his travels that there were no successful plant-based societies, and that those who were eating animal fats in their diets were healthiest.

A recent article on the Weston A. Price Foundation site by Dr. Kaayla Daniel reveals just how detrimental plant-based diets can be, that they are actually responsible for depleting our bodies of critical nutrients such as B12, and lead to high mortality rates caused by heart disease.

The way food is produced now has contributed greatly to metabolic disorder of which heart disease, obesity, food allergies, auto-immune disorders, hormonal problems, diabetes and blood sugar problems, and other problems like cavities and osteoporosis are all a part. But conventional medical and health professionals seldom mention this fact. They just say fats and meats and cholesterol are bad for us to eat.

If you do consume lard, you’ll want to render it yourself from the fat of hogs on pasture. Local farmers who are mindful of sustainable practices can provide this healthy fat for very little cost or sometimes free. Last year I wrote a post about the Forgotten Craft of Rendering Lard. For recipes on how to render your own and where to get the best lard, a bit about the history of lard, and more about why it’s such a wrongly feared, but beneficial health food, please read it and pass it along to those you know who could benefit from reading it.

Benefits of lard from pastured hogs

• Excellent source of Vitamin D, of which most people are deficient
• Boosts the immune and digestive system (which are intertwined)
• Supports cardiovascular and arterial health
• Provides lasting energy for the body, and keeps blood sugar and metabolism even
• Enhances bone, cartilidge, teeth, and muscle health
• Benefits the liver and pancreas by
• Can be used for higher heat cooking since it contains saturated fats, which are stable in heat – up to 375 degrees
• Is generally odorless and does not impart the “pork” taste to other foods, so is versatile in many types of cooking

How do I love lard? Let me count the ways!

We use lard for so many things we do in our kitchen. Here’s just a few uses:

• home-made refried beans
• desserts and pies
• frying vegetables
• braising meats
• cooking potatoes (and especially, home-made french fries!)
• popcorn
• fried plantains or apples
• stir-fry
• cooking eggs, pancakes, crepes, and other breakfast foods
• cracklings (which I have yet to try, but if you asked the Ingalls family whether they are good, you’d get a resounding YES!)

So, if you’re thinking about using lard for cooking, you should know it has amazing health benefits as well as versatility in many things you can prepare…but most of all, that it’s definitely not the enemy it’s been made out to be by conventional health sources.

Like many things, scientists have at one time condemned it and are now starting to come around again. Remember the scare we had for many years about how eggs were bad for our health? Now eggs are considered healthy to eat again. But eggs aren’t healthy to eat because they don’t have as much cholesterol as we once thought. It’s because eggs have nutrients we need for health – CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), Omega 3 essential fatty acids, cholesterol, Vitamins A, D, E, K, minerals like calcium, iron, zinc, phosphorus, and magnesium, folate, B6, B12, and choline, . Just like lard from hogs on pasture, eggs from hens on pasture are much higher in these essential nutrients.

The problem has been that because our food system has changed so many traditional foods from what they used to be – life-giving, nutrient-dense components of health – we are now seeing the results on our well-being, which is a decline in health due to the consumption of foods that are barely recognizable from what they once were – processed, irradiated, pasteurized, full of hormones, antibiotics, pesticides/herbicides, residue from chemical fertilizers, GMOs, and other harmful substances.

More information:
The forgotten craft of rendering lard
The importance of dietary fats
Looking for lard in your area? Check out:
Lard Lover’s network

This post is part of Sarah The Healthy Home Economist’s Monday Mania Carnival and

Mind, Body, and Sole’s Wildcrafting Wednesdays Blog Hop. 

Over the last 5 or 6 years, I’ve been hearing the question, “why doesn’t Whole Foods come to Boise?” Before I knew much about food and nutrtion, I too thought this would be a great thing, to have such a pillar of whole foods and health in our city.

This was before I realized what Whole Foods really is: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  After educating myself, I have learned all about Whole Foods and their mission to sell “healthy food” to the consumer market.

Over the years, I have shopped at Whole Foods in other cities when I traveled and had no other choices. I also do everything I can to bring my own food with me – especially if I’m driving. I want to avoid having to pay the expensive prices Whole Foods charges for their products, especially because I know that I’m really not getting what is claimed on the label for my money.

8 reasons I won’t shop at Whole Foods in Boise, Idaho:

1. Whole Foods claims to be anti-GMO. They have engaged in large anti-GMO campaigns throughout their history.  But the fact remains, Whole Foods carries a great deal of GMO products in their stores.

GMOs are becoming more and more pervasive in our food supply. Most soy, corn, canola, and cotton come from GMO sources. There are currently no labeling laws in the U.S. If something isn’t labeled “non-GMO” or “GMO-free” it’s probably GMO.

If you watch this video, you can see that when Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director of Organic Consumer’s Association asked a Whole Foods employee whether store products had GMO  ingredients in them, the question was patently avoided. When you shop at Whole Foods, you are likely buying GMO foods without realizing it.   How can a corporation claim to be anti-GMO and continue to carry GMO products? It’s wholly abhorrent, and sends a mixed message to the consumer public. Wouldn’t a company that is so outspoken about GMOs be eager and open to answer the question? In my opinion, this refusal to answer the question shows that they in fact do have GMOs in their store.

In 2011, Organic Consumer’s Association featured an article talking about how Whole Foods admits they sell GMOs, and Natural News also featured an article talking about how despite its best efforts, “products sold at Whole Foods do, in fact, contain genetically engineered ingredients, even when Whole Foods would prefer they didn’t.” Even with this recent information being released, Whole Foods continues to make it seem like they are anti-GMO, when clearly they are not. If they would just drop the pretense of being on an anti-GMO campaign, it wouldn’t be nearly so deceitful.

There are so many issues with labeling now and misinformation being conveyed to consumers, many consumers believe that just because a product carries the word “all- natural“, “organic“, “low-fat“, “low sodium“, “lean meat” on its label, that makes it safe and healthy to consume.

This is not the first time I’ve blown the whistle on Whole Foods. In January of 2011, I wrote a post about big corporations who were agreeing to partial deregulation of GMOs. These companies: Whole Foods, Stonyfield Farm, and Organic Valley, gave their blessing to the USDA about allowing a “co-existence” of GMOs in our food supply. If you understand the inherent threat GMOs pose to our food supply, you would never agree that co-existence is a good thing or even possible.  Many people argued with me that there were only two choices available as stated by the USDA: partial deregulation and full deregulation, and that these entities did the right thing by choosing the “lesser of two evils”. Again, there is no such thing as co-existence with GMOs. Once those organisms are in our food supply, they will contaminate EVERYTHING and cause harm to us, our farmland, animals, and the environment.

Those companies could have just refused to agree to these terms. If I were the one making decisions for those companies, that’s exactly what I would have done, and let the chips fall where they may.  Those consumers who have high standards would have supported them, and their businesses would have continued to flourish. And they would have remained with their integrity intact. As it stands, their ethics and business strategies are very much compromised, and their reputation forever called into question. For those companies, they clearly saw it as a matter of less profit to disagree with those two choices.

2. Whole Foods is one of the most over-priced grocery stores at which you’ll ever have the pleasure of shopping.

For years, I’ve listened to people in my city complain about the expense of our employee-owned and locally operated Boise Consumer Co-op.  Guess what folks, real food costs more.  The fact that you can go to Win-Co, Wal-Mart, or some other discount grocery store and pay $1.99 – 2.99 for a pound of steak is not a good thing. You are still paying a lot for those processed foods (yes, that steak is highly processed and full of chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, GMOs, etc) you buy at the chain grocery store due to farming subsidies (paid for by every tax payer), the fact that the food you are buying has little to no nutritional value, and your doctor bills later. But many people don’t take that into consideration.

So when I hear people complain about how expensive the Co-op is, I think about how amusing it will be to see their jaws drop when they see the prices in Whole Foods.  And it’s not just in certain cities like Las Vegas and L.A. I’ve shopped at Whole Foods in those cities as well as Orlando, Seattle, and others, and prices are consistently higher than any other health food store I’ve shopped. I’ve talked to dozens and dozens of people all over the country who shop in numerous locations, and what I’m hearing from them is that prices are also higher in their cities, 2-3 times higher than any other health food store.  If you think Whole Foods has better prices and selection, you are in for a rude awakening indeed. And even though you are paying more, guess what? The quality of food is not high enough to justify those prices (in fact, most of it is not healthy at all).

3. Whole Foods proudly advertises their support of small, local farmers, and yet the majority of their products are from many miles away.

In this article from Slate (2006), a small farmer from Connecticut explains why this isn’t really the case:

“Almost all the organic food in this country comes out of California. And five or six big California farms dominate the whole industry.” There’s a widespread misperception in this country—one that organic growers, no matter how giant, happily encourage—that “organic” means “small family farmer.” That hasn’t been the case for years, certainly not since 1990, when the Department of Agriculture drew up its official guidelines for organic food. Whole Foods knows this well, and so the line about the “small family farmers that make up a large percentage of organic food producers” is sneaky. There are a lot of small, family-run organic farmers, but their share of the organic crop in this country, and of the produce sold at Whole Foods, is minuscule.

Okay, I get it. To be competitive and offer products people want, most grocery stores sell produce shipped in from all over. This has been the model of grocery stores for decades and decades. But don’t advertise and market yourself as a company that stocks products from local farmers when it’s very obvious that the majority of your inventory is anything but local or produced by small farmers. In 2008, news reports uncovered the fact that much of Whole Foods organics are not even from California, but China. It’s dishonest. It’s half truths like this, in addition to the blatant, outright lies that Whole Foods tells to its consumers (such as being anti-GMO and stocking many GMO products in the store) which have made me so mistrustful of this corporation.

4.  Even though I do buy some foods from other sources, there are many wonderful, sustainable, local farms in my area which I have been buying my meat, poultry, produce, and raw dairy from for years, and will continue to purchase from in the future.

Here are some of the farms from which my family buys food:

• Matthew’s All Natural Meats
• Homestead Natural Foods
• Peaceful Belly
• Alderspring Ranch
• Rice Family Farms
• Morning Owl Farm 

5.  In March of 2010, Whole Foods Corporate office announced that although it had formerly carried raw milk on its shelves, it was issuing a new corporate policy of discontinuing this practice on a national level.

For years, Whole Foods carried Organic Pastures raw milk. Our family drank OP raw milk and ate raw dairy foods for 2 years, and they were some of the best we’ve ever eaten. Organic Pastures is the largest raw milk dairy in the country and has never had an outbreak of pathogenic bacteria during the time they’ve been in business, which is over 10 years. Organic Pastures sells to many, many satisfied residents and visitors all over the state of California and beyond, and continues to sell milk in a variety of stores, businesses, and locations.

I can’t support a corporation which bans the sale of healthy, raw milk and yet allows a variety of inferior dairy products to grace its shelves with the assumption that these are “health foods”. One example is Organic Valley, a dairy conglomerate which is now considered one of the pinnacles of health in the food system, and yet they use ultra high temperature pasteurization, which effectively destroys all good bacteria, proteins, fats, and enzymes in milk. So much for the money you are spending on those products – and they aren’t cheap. Every time you buy Organic Valley products, you are getting denatured enzymes and other nutrients, as well as dead bacteria. Doesn’t sound quite so healthy anymore, does it?

6.  There is already one great local health food store where I do shop and will continue to shop –  The Boise Consumer Co-op, and two brand new businesses opening up this spring, Huckleberry’s Natural Market and Natural Grocers.

I’d much rather support a locally-owned and/or family-operated business which prides itself on being part of the community in which it resides, and has principles in supporting the local, surrounding food system, than a large, corporate, pseudo-health store catering to the affluent who don’t bother to educate themselves about foods and products they are buying, and who are impressed by above all – slick marketing and high price tags. I’ve not yet shopped at Natural Grocers, but I like their mission statement information, and have heard great things about it from others I know. I used to shop at Huckleberry’s Natural Market when we lived in Spokane, WA for a year and loved it.

7. Did you know the USDA standards for organic beef only requires “grassfed” beef to be 30% grassfed?

That’s right. So even though Whole Foods says they have very high standards about humane treatment, grass-feeding, etc., what you are buying there is really only required by law to be 30% grassfed. So even though in some cases you will pay up to 3 times more for the meat they sell there, you are only getting about the same amount of time on grass as feedlot meat. It also means some producers choose to finish cattle on grain for the last 90 to 160 days before slaughter, and that folks, is not grassfed beef.  The last 30 days of an animal’s life is the most critical for assessing nutrient quality of the meat.   

8.   Whole Foods CEO John Mackey posted under an assumed name for multiple years on Yahoo’s online forums, and trashed the store it eventually bought out, Wild Oats.

The reputation and integrity of a company rests heavily upon those who represent it. How can you trust a company whose CEO is engaged in such activities? This deceitful action embarrassed his company and probably pissed off many of the competitor’s stockholders. This action put a shadow on his entire person, calling into question the integrity of his actions. Can we really trust this man or his company to be truthful about the products it sells? He says he “had fun doing it”. Very childish, and doesn’t speak well of his ability to make sound decisions. It borders on pathological behavior.

Some people might believe my purpose in writing this article is to be nit-picky or that I’m just a snob. But this is serious stuff. This isn’t about empty criticisms or bad-mouthing a company that does ” the best they can”. It’s about blowing the lid on corporations who have continually made it a practice to appear green, sustainable, and healthy in the products they sell, but who certainly are not. It’s extremely important we make a distinction between all the marketing and advertising we are continually bombarded with – products which we are told are healthy for us and the environment – and those which aren’t. Sadly, these make up a majority of what’s available on the market. That’s why it’s critical to know what these corporations are doing and understand that they are pulling the wool over our eyes when they tell us they are better than all the other conventional stuff available.

I think these are pretty compelling reasons to avoid large chain stores and support local, sustainable farmers who avoid GMOs in their farming practices, whether it be in crops or feed they give to their livestock/fowl. These 8 reasons also really illustrate the importance of accountability and transparency in our food system and our farming industry, which currently is under a great amount of scrutiny from the real food and sustainable communities for some of the reasons I mentioned here.

If you doubt the integrity of the commercial, industrial food system and farming industries, you are not alone. These issues are becoming more and more visible with food recalls which happen regularly and are documented in various places. All you have to do is a little research, and the things you will learn will make you angry and disturbed. But becoming aware is the first step in taking action against companies and corporate farms who continue to sell unsafe food and who are not thwarted by our own government, which is supposed to protect us.

More posts: 

Is cheap food really cheap? The hidden costs of industrial food 

Questions to ask your farmer – know what’s in your food! 

Processed food and eating disorders – a product of modern society

For years I’ve read how most crockpots contain lead, cadmium, or other carcinogenic materials. I really didn’t want to go down that road again. I don’t ever know what to believe since I hear so much conflicting information about them.

I was planning to buy a nice big stock pot for large batches of broth, and then my parents were kind enough to buy me a Le Crueset 6 quart pot for Christmas (pictured above). It’s the best gift I’ve received in such a long time, and I love it!

At the time, we knew we were planning to move fairly soon, but the stove I was using in our current house worked fine to cook broth in the Le Crueset and leave for days at a time. That stove was just a standard electric burner stove, and I really hadn’t thought about whether moving to a new house and new stove would have an impact I might not appreciate on that process.

As soon as we moved to our new house last month, it became evident that we’d have to find a different method for making broth and keeping it on low heat for several days. The new stove is a glass-top range, and it doesn’t cook at all the same way as our previous stove. In fact, all my broths I’ve made on it have scalded, even on low heat. Not good. I certainly don’t want burnt broth.

Enter the Cadco (BroilKing) Double Cast Iron Burner Range/Hot Plate. This was my husband’s idea (he has many good ones). I had seen these in a few places, but had never heard anyone I know of using or owning one. Since I didn’t know anything about these, I had no idea what to expect.  But now I can tell you after having ours for just a few days, I’m so thrilled about it! I can’t think of a better solution to our broth making-issue with our current stove.

Pros: There are so many good things about the hot plate. Like a crockpot, it’s great for keeping  just about any foods on low heat that you don’t have room for on your stove, and want to leave for some hours or days. And just like a stove, you can use any of your own pots or pans on it.  The one we ordered has a double-burner, but you can order single burner units as well. I highly recommend the double-unit because it allows you to cook more food at once, and is especially handy for anyone who prepares multiple dishes regularly for home use (like us since we make broth all the time) or for when you have gatherings.

I find it is especially useful when I have over-sized pots too because it’s not uncommon for me to have every burner on my stove being used at once, and things can get pretty crowded.  In fact, at least once a week I am using two of my stockpots at the same time. When I’ve had two big stockpots on the stove at once, there simply isn’t room for anything else but my smallest pots on the other burners. And I find that I still need to be able to put my medium-sized pots on the stove at the same time to cook other foods, and they just won’t fit (especially on a glass-top range where pots and pans slide around so much). The hot plate solves that problem easily, and I can leave it on for days at a time without worrying about scalding or burning, and it’s just as well-contained as the crockpot cooking I’ve done for years.

It has heat settings which go from 1 up to 12, and I find that for broth somewhere between 2 and 3 is great to keep soups, stews, casseroles, broths, and other foods warm for extended periods of time.

Setup: When you take your hot plate out of the packaging, there is no assembly, but you will need to turn the heat on each burner for 10 minutes, to allow the factory coating (some kind of oil, my husband says) to burn off to prepare it for use. This does cause some smoke to collect in your kitchen, so make sure you turn on the fan and open windows for good ventilation. You may even want to vacate the room or house while this is happening, or if possible, put it outside if you have an outdoor outlet to plug it in.

Cons: I really can’t find anything negative about this product, other than the fact that you will definitely have to spend more than you would on a crockpot. However, you also have the capability of cooking on two burners with the dual-plate model (even though one burner is smaller), so it’s like getting two crocks in one unit. In my opinion, over the years you will save money buying crockpots that might not last as well as have the potential to leach chemicals like lead and cadmium into your food – which will ultimately become another health burden and expense to deal with later.

Also, when we first ordered our unit, one of the burners on the original was defective and didn’t turn on. We called to report this, and they promised to immediately replace it with a brand new one by sending another out to us that day. It did take awhile for both of the units to be sent to our home, but the wait was so worth it!

Price: The hot plate we purchased cost about $178.89 retail, and was about $190 including shipping, which I think is a great deal considering I won’t have to worry about lead leaching into my food anymore, and I likely won’t be replacing this unit for quite awhile. Since I started cooking, I’ve gone through at least 4, maybe 5 crockpots. Unlike many products that are made in China, Taiwan, or other countries where the emphasis is on quantity and not quality, the Cadco hot plate is a German product and has a limited 2-year warranty from the date of purchase.

Conclusion: The hot plate is a great investment if you plan to do multiple cooking projects at once, especially for those who cook a lot of broth, soups, stews, casseroles, beans, rice, and other large meals. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves to cook! I’m incredibly satisfied with this purchase, and I’m wondering now how I ever did without it.

This post is part of Sarah The Healthy Home Economist’s Monday Mania Carnival and Fat Tuesday at Real Food Forager. 

For years, our government (FDA and USDA) and many other health sources have recommended not only consumption of grains, but that we increase our intake of grains, vegetables and fruits, and avoid eating saturated fat and cholesterol (that’s another topic entirely). And yet in spite of this “healthy” low-fat diet that we are told to consume, our disease and obesity rates continue to rise.

So what’s the truth? Are grains are okay to consume or not?  Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple yes or no. In this post I’ll explain the reasons grains are harmful to consume, and the conditions under which you could safely consume them.

Why grains make people sick

A lot of people talk about how their bodies are made irritated or diseased by grains. For many years, I was one of these people. I used to consume a lot of grains (wheat in particular), but didn’t understand the connection between just how much these substances caused many of my health issues. When I found out that wheat could be a problem, I eliminated it and immediately started experiencing better health. As time went on, I heard more stories about how others experienced the same issues.

From my research, I discovered that various issues in our food supply are causing these problems: farming methods, pesticides and other chemicals, GMOs, hybridization of grains, and industrial processing by food companies. When I realized I had issues with wheat, I tried substituting properly prepared gluten-free grains to see if I had any improvement. Sometimes I could eat these foods, and sometimes not.  My conclusion was that I largely needed to avoid gluten-containing AND gluten-free grains as well.

Then I heard that if I detoxed my digestive tract, I could eat grains again. Over the last 7 years, I’ve done various protocols such as a lengthy candida cleanse, detoxes such as liver/gallbladder cleanses, homeopathic detox, and healing strategies like GAPS (which I started in May of 2011 and am still doing) to heal my gut and allow my body able to normally digest food again. For the most part, I’ve avoided “offending” foods: wheat, corn and other grains, soy, refined sugar and carbohydrates. I only occasionally consume fermented soy, real sourdough bread, alcoholic beverages, caffeine, and starches like rice or potatoes.

I keep reading that once I finish GAPS, I’ll be able to consume grains again. Dr. McBride’s book Gut and Psychology Syndrome tells us that the healing period of GAPS can take anywhere from 1-3 years due to the extent of digestive and health damage most people have in their bodies. The reality is, because of our processed diets, most people in the world today living in developed countries have GAPS syndrome. It’s just a fact of modern life.

When you come off GAPS, it is not advised to eat the foods you ate once before since, doing so would inevitably put you back where we were before starting the protocol. This is where foods like whole, sprouted/soaked and fermented grains come in.

Grains, nuts, legumes, and other foods should be properly prepared and dairy should be raw. We should eat as many live foods with real enzymes and bacteria as possible including naturally cultured and fermented foods, and all foods should be unprocessed, just how our ancestors used to eat it.

Read about this great online course from Cheeseslave to understand how to get the most nutritional benefit out of the grains you eat, discover how to make all the grain foods you love at home, and avoid the processed grain foods from the store.

Grains contain nutrients like B vitamins and magnesium – important nutrients many people in this country are deficient in due to the over-processing of foods, poor gut health, and also because grains are usually not properly prepared. Like most nutrients, they don’t work in isolation. Taking supplements doesn’t often work well, and to absorb Vitamin D we need magnesium AND calcium (these work together in synergy), and also members of the Vitamin B family. Magnesium and B Vitamins are both found in grains as well as other foods.

Will I eat grains again someday? That all depends on my body. For years I have done better on a low or no-grain diet. But I’ve also been told by my naturopath that if I heal my digestion with healthy foods, mineral supplements, and digestive enzymes, I can then eat clean grains from a non-GMO source that are properly prepared.

Another problem she mentioned is that if a person has weak adrenals and/or blood sugar issues (which I’ve had for years), eating a high-carb diet can cause a great deal of problems. And ironically enough, weak adrenals and blood sugar issues are caused by years of eating processed foods with no nutritional value – including processed grains that come from GMO sources.  So when I resolve these issues, I may be able to eat grains again, in moderation. I can tell you one thing…if I do, it won’t be the way I used to eat them.

Now I’d like to set the record straight about why grains have gotten such a bad reputation and have wreaked so much havoc on our health. Grains are not necessarily “the bad guys” across the board, but here are some significant reasons/conditions which make them harmful to consume.

5 reasons grains are unhealthy to consume:

• People have never, in the history of the world consumed the volume of grains they do now. Up until recently, the FDA Food Pyramid recommended we eat 6-11 servings a day. Consuming that many grains daily led me to a variety of health problems: insulin-resistance, thyroid problems, irregular menstrual cycles, depression, and panic disorder. I ate plenty of commercial breads, bagels, crackers, English Muffins, pancakes, pita bread, muffins, croissants, pasta, rice, and other similar foods.  Although I ate other things, most of the animal products were commercial, lean, or low-fat, and my vegetable intake wasn’t very high.  The Food Pyramid has now become My Plate, but the emphasis continues to be eating more vegetables, fruits, and grains. My Plate entirely omits fats as a category, and uses the term “protein” which can include a variety of unhealthy, processed products which aren’t real, nourishing proteins; two grave nutritional mistakes. The foods recommended to us by the FDA and USDA are not natural, healthy foods. They are commercially processed, full of toxins, pesticides, GMOs, antibiotics, preservatives, fillers, MSG, and other undesirable substances, not soaked, sprouted, nor fermented, and largely devoid of nutrition, including grains. If you follow these recommendations, roughly half of your diet amounts to grains. The result is blood sugar highs and lows, which will negatively impact your weight, energy levels, and cause auto-immune disorders like thyroid and/or low adrenal function.  It’s no wonder the markers of metabolic disorder are so common in our popluation: heart disease, diabetes, hypoglycemia, high blood pressure, obesity, and others are so common.

• The way we process and consume grains is totally changed from how they were traditionally prepared and eaten.  It’s no secret that grains are a cheap, convenient food source.  However, since the Industrial Revolution, food companies and merchants have found ways to mass produce grain products, using the cheapest ingredients and most convenient processing. Grains are ground, extruded (subjected to high temperatures and pushed through holes in machinery which molds the grains into shape, rendering the nutrients in grains damaged and altered), and otherwise highly processed to make most foods found on the consumer market.  Many people don’t realize that throughout time, people have prepared grains properly by soaking, sprouting, and fermenting them to neutralize naturally-occurring phytic acid. Phytic acid is a nutrient inhibitor and not only prevents uptake of minerals zinc, magnesium, calcium, and others in the body, but also leeches many of these same elements from the stores your body keeps.

• Due to hybridization or selective-trait breeding in wheat, there is nearly 75 percent more gluten in wheat today than in the historical past. Although gluten is desirable because of its elasticity for baking, it is also highly indigestible and is responsible for contributing to many health issues in humans including food allergies, celiac, IBS, Crohn’s Disease, diverticulitis and colitis, among others. Like other foods, wheat has been engineered to increase crop yields, “improve” wheat quality, require less pesticides and herbicides (with other issues cropping up such as the creation of pathogenic bacteria in the soil which encourages the growth of disease and pesticide resistant super-weed).  The result has contributed to many health and environmental issues. Last week I talked to a naturopathic doctor who said she didn’t think it was the fact that people were eating grains, she thinks it’s from the fact that many of these grains are from GMOs (genetically modified substances). Although I think this is definitely a factor that affects our health, I don’t think it’s the only reason.

• Over-consumption of grains and gluten in particular, due to the reasons I described above, has caused many people to have compromised digestive tracts.  A person with a sick digestive tract cannot properly digest grains – even properly prepared ones that are soaked and sprouted, and/or fermented – or any other food for that matter. People with compromised digestion often experience a variety of symptoms such as:  gas, bloating, indigestion, diarrhea, constipation, or chronic problems like IBS, Crohn’s Disease, colitis, food allergies, asthma, eczema, physiological disorders, auto-immune problems, and more. The intestinal tract becomes permeable and undigested foods pass through, entering the blood stream causing distress on the whole body.

• If you have a gluten intolerance or celiac disease, it is now possible to buy the same things you once ate in just about every gluten-free variety you can imagine on the consumer market. It’s a big mistake to trade your gluten-consuming habits of 3-4 times a day into gluten-free consuming habits of the same frequency. Most of those products are just as highly processed and cause the same type of gut damage, nutrient loss in the body, weight problems, metabolic syndrome, and auto-immune disorders. Read here about the big gluten-free lie.

So, if: