Monday, March 14, 2016

Calculating the Actual Costs of Food

Americans live in an insulated system of lies and fabricated realities. Every time an American consumer goes to their favorite purveyor of fast food, be it burgers, chicken parts cooked in a variety of ways, subs, pizza and well, pretty much the multitude of various foods out there; they are deluded into thinking that the cost they pay the cashier or delivery guy is what that food actually costs. It isn't. We live in an environment where our government actually pays for the costs to produce the foods you eat. The subsidizing of American food encompasses a wide variety of services that most people never consider. And is far more convoluted than most could ever imagine. Subsidies go far beyond the scope of the government paying the major costs of growing animal feeds like corn, soy, canola and cotton. Not just paying the giant agricultural corporations outright to grow these crops but to actually subsidizing crop insurance for them as well. Hard to believe but it's true, the Feds pay around 15 billion dollars a year just for insurance on crops being grown by major corporate farming cooperatives. That's on top of the pricing subsidy guaranteeing that the crops are brought in at a profit. Think about that for a minute, do the Feds pay for your insurance in case you get sick and can't work. Do the Feds guarantee that you will make a minimum amount of money each year. Big corporate agricultural companies have those guarantees. Nice hunh? American taxpayers front the costs of production of meat to the tune of Billions of dollars each and every year. And here we get differing amounts from our government overlords, they tell us they pay 20 billion out as subsidies. The EWG tracks 322 billion annually in direct benefit payments to large corporate agrigiant businesses.

Then there is the truly horrendous costs to the environment that Americans, and well, all citizens of the world, must pay dearly. The costs of waste products. That encompasses not just the costs of the removal of the huge huge piles of animal feces and urine, but the much larger problem of atmospheric carbon release. Methane and the breakdown of the feces into carbon dioxide that would, and does in sustainable systems, sequester the carbon back into the soil, are totally absent in modern Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. The most common method of handling waste on modern meat production facilities is to dump the feces and urine into holding ponds and allow it to breakdown thus releasing the carbon into the atmosphere. And there is the added danger of the release of those holding pond waters with the sludge to overflow into local waterways, neighboring agricultural fields and local community water systems during heavy rainfall. I love this link, it shows the disdain the Feds have for ordinary human citizens (2nd Circuit Court Decision)  The World Health Organization has determined that right now, at this time, 55% of all greenhouse gas emissions are a result of the production of meat for human consumption. This one is difficult to calculate, what is the cost of greenhouse emissions, the costs of cleanup from catastrophic mass releases into the environment of raw animal wastes, and the costs of contamination of agricultural products resulting from modern meat production methodology that has never developed an actual process for dealing with waste products. Allowing it to rot in ponds and hopefully get washed away in storms or in arid areas like Arizona, allowing it to dry and waiting for dust storms to blow it out into the desert, are not actual plans.

Probably the largest cost to not just consumers of modern meat, but every single person on the planet, is the cost of antibiotic resistance. CAFO production methods for beef and pork as well as turkeys (Chickens are exempt and not feed prophylactic antibiotics) ((but they are fed arsenic)) is to feed large doses of antibiotics to animals that live breathe eat lie down in move sit and exist in piles of their own wastes as a way to keep diseases manageable. The lessons of sanitation in human settlements seems to be lost. When cities grew, sanitation became an issue and cities where human and animal feces existed everywhere, diseases spread. Why would that same reasoning not apply to animals living in their own filth not be of primary importance to those making money on meat production? Well, the answer is simple, it's cheaper to feed antibiotics than it is to allow for humane and reasonable sanitary conditions. And the big one, governmental regulations allow for the slaughter of diseased sick deformed animals. ( Downer's Decision) Please note that it was a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court to overturn the California law that stopped the slaughter of cows that were too sick crazed deformed or whatever to walk. Yeah, the Feds love American consumers and do what they can to protect them. Even allow them to eat diseased meat. 

The result of the huge amounts of antibiotics being fed to animals has resulted in the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria that are pretty much everywhere in our society now. They coat the meats in stores, in fast food joints and home kitchens. They are everywhere in hospitals and doctor's offices, and the CDC now estimates that antibiotic resistant bacterial infections result in 22,000 deaths each year. And the number will grow EXPONENTIALLY  in the coming years as the numbers, varieties and possible methods of infection rise. How do you calculate the cost to society of the death rate, the illnesses and loss of work time and family time of the horrific diseases being bred in meat production facilities simply because they can do such things.

The last thing here is the degradation of the quality of the nutritive benefits of modern meat. Modern methods of raising pork, beef and poultry involve the feeding of the animals corn, soy, canola meal and cotton meal. All are unnatural foods for each of the animals. Their systems are not designed to exist on those products and although they may grow and add the much desirable fat (not unlike humans drinking their caloric intake in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup) but they don't thrive on that type of diet. But then, they don't need to thrive on those food sources, they only need to grow to saleable weight to be slaughtered. Now each of those main food sources are of course drenched in Glyphosate, the EPA two years ago raised the allowable limit of Glyphosate on animal feed to 200 ppm. That was of course a year and a half before the World Health Organization declared Glyphosate to be a carcinogen. At this time, there is no definitive research as to what happens when humans consume a diet primarily consisting of meat that contains Glyphosate residues. But we do have research that shows us that the composition of modern meat is very different from meat raised using traditional sustainable methods. Grass fed beef has much higher levels of Omega 3 fatty acids, higher levels of beta-carotene, Vitamin C and, well, the stuff is just way way way better for humans than modern CAFO raised meat. (Study on Beef composition  How do we place a dollar value on the lack of nutritive value of modern meats as well as the speculative and probable destruction of tissues and cancers from the Glyphosate issue. It's there, we know it, we see the effects directly, it's just that no one will fund a study on the secondary effects from consumption of Glyphosate via animal sources.

So go out, eat that 99 cent burger, that cheap chicken sandwich, those all you can eat buffet ribs and fried chicken in a bucket of canola oil. Everytime you do, you cost me money, your neighbor money, and every citizen on this planet pays in one way or another for you to get that cheap cheap and probably toxic meat. Enjoy!

Yep
Ractopamine info (Ractopamine)
Gross out about meat (MEAT
Feceiation (Feces in Meat
Modern Meat (Modern meat again
Meat of the Matter (MEat Matter

Friday, March 4, 2016

Vegetarian Tacos, kinda cool actually

So I started making my taco seasonings a while back and I think most know, I don't eat meat. But that doesn't mean I can't have tacos. I love tacos. Tacos don't necessarily mean meat. Tacos means tasty bites of wondrous spicy (at times) stuff that will tantalize and satisfy on a primal level. Me, I ate a lot of fish tacos in my day. So tonight I thought I would try something different. 

I made some humus the other day and cooked some extra garbanzo beans just for doing this. As I have talked about
here in the past, there are techniques that can be done when preparing food that will make healthy foods, healthier. Simple things. I take my garbanzo beans and soak overnight with a bit of liquid from some of my fermented kim chee style fermented cabbage. Drained them the next day and cooked in a pressure cooker until semi soft. Most went into humus, the rest in the fridge for tacos.  Place them in the bowl of the food processor and chop, sort of rough. Dice a half an onion and saute a couple minutes
in a skillet and then dump in the chopped garbanzos. Stir well and add a half a pack of my taco seasoning. Here I used the Garlic Taco Mix, sort of didn't feel like really hot tonight. So the mild one. Then stir it in well and add a quarter cup of the cooking liquid from the garbanzos. Stir it in well and cook until the liquid is
absorbed and thickened. Then make your tacos. 



This night I didn't feel like corn shells, nor flour tortillas. So I did the weird thing. I used butter lettuce leaves and topped with shredded red leaf lettuce and a bit of shredded cheese. Not exactly a taco, more like a Chinese Lettuce Wrap. Only better.






Yep

Aluminum Adjuvants. Theory, practice, reality

Since the birth of modern vaccination development in the mid 1920's, aluminum has been added to the vaccine production with the concept that the heavy metal compounds when injected into human bodies will increase the human immune response and thus increase the effectiveness of the vaccine as the human body works diligently to offset the introduction of foreign viruses along with all the other ingredients in the vaccine by creating antibodies. Aluminum salts were believed to aid in this effect. That belief came about because of the human body's natural response when foreign substances are injected, swallowed, attached topically or in any other way introduced into or onto a human person. The human system will fight to reject the foreign substance. 

It's called autoimmune response. When you get a sliver in your finger, and you don't remove it; the skin around the sliver swells and pus forms in preparation to expel the invading foreign body. That's how it works. The same thing happens when substances are injected into the bloodstream, the human immune system works to alter the foreign bodies in a number of ways. The most common, and the one in which the entire vaccine industry is founded on is that the human immune system creates specific antibodies that are specific to each strain of virus. Those antibodies, for the most part, destroy those specific viruses that caused the immune system to create them. And, here, the cool thing is, for most virus antibodies, they remain in the human system throughout the lifetime of the host human and continue to provide natural real protection against those same viruses should they be reintroduced into the human body again.

Well, that's supposed to be how it works. For many pathogens, that's how it does in fact work. When I was a child, I contracted chicken pox and measles. It has generally been accepted in ALL medical texts and throughout the entire medical profession, that I will NEVER contract measles or chicken pox throughout my life ever again. My body has produced antibodies for those two diseases and they will remain in my body and protect me as long as I live. Or as long as those two viruses don't alter dramatically through the process of adaption and evolution. Which realistically if you are Christian, those processes aren't real so they are discounted as arbitrary and unimportant. And that lifetime immunity is the goal of the vaccine industry, to be able to on demand, create synthetic, artificial immunity to the diseases that inflict havoc, death and mutilation upon humanity. 

Since the inception of the industry, the belief has been that anything that furthers the human body's natural ability to create those antibodies within the human system; is a good thing. And that's how aluminum adjuvants were introduced into the manufacture of vaccines. If you inject aluminum salts into your skin, your body reacts, it swells, it forms pus around the injection site, and the body responds in a wide variety of ways in an attempt to rid the body of the foreign substance. Again, that's called the Autoimmune Response. At some point some one some where some how thought that you could create a greater autoimmune response artificially by adding adjuvants to dead viruses. The reasoning is the body would create a greater number of antibodies against those viruses. And it does work, there is proof that the numbers of specific antigens is greater when adjuvants are present in the vaccine. The questions arise however as to just how harmless the adjuvants are to the human system and in fact, does the entire process actually work.   

The thing is, aluminum salts are not the only adjuvants added to vaccines. They are just one of a host of additives. And the one that has been in continuous use the longest. If you want to view what the ingredients actually are in vaccines in use today, you can go here (VACCINE INGREDIENTS) where the CDC actually lists all them for everyone to see. Just take a look at the first vaccine on the list. It contains MSG, Coal tar dye Yellow Number 6, four different types of sugar, acetone and, aluminum salts. Adjuvants. Not harmful, as described by the manufacturers. Now the reasoning behind adding aluminum to vaccines is upheld by the regulatory agency that determines whether or not any specific ingredient added is in fact, or could possibly determined to be, dangerous. The FDA. If you go here, (FDA and Aluminum) you will find the FDA website page that specifically tells us the reasoning used by scientists as to why they in 2011 once again approved the use of aluminum salts in all vaccines as a safe adjuvant. The reasoning is very convoluted. It was based on absolutely no research into what happens when human babies are injected with aluminum salts. The reasoning however, is believed to be sound. It's simple, since aluminum is present in the environment, baby formula contains trace aluminum, water contains trace aluminum, pretty much aluminum is everywhere; therefore the small amounts added to vaccines do not pose a significant risk factor for additional neurotoxic effects by direct injection into the bloodstream.

That's pretty sound reasoning, for government workers.

I'm sorry, I can't get this entire article to be available to the general public, but the abstract is really all one needs to look at and see that there is some dissension in the ranks of scientists out there. So look at this one paragraph and see a very different point of view in regards to aluminum. (PUBMed Abstract) The reasoning behind the usage of aluminum, and well any other adjuvants, is being called to question. Realistically one must consider some of the basic operational procedures within the medical community, the entire concept that vaccination will enhance the life of the recipient. And conversely, that the concept is even viable. As I stated above, I contracted measles as a child. I have immunity. The CDC now specifically states that children that get the measles vaccine need to have three doses before the age of 2. And subsequently there is a need for additional doses of the vaccine before the child enters school. Up to 3 more vaccinations for the same virus. And as we discovered last year at the highly publicized measles outbreak, it was discovered that 43% of those that contracted measles, had already been vaccinated against the disease. I did discuss this very issue a year ago, go here to read about it (MEASLES

Now I know, I'm not an expert on scientific research into the causes of childhood diseases, vaccinations, governmental policies or anything else other than my field of study, which was the propagation of mushrooms and food technology; and I don't have a PhD after my name. An MS is no where near as impressive. (Well that's what Sheldon says of poor old Wolowitz) But no one needs any initials after their name to understand that there is controversy in this field. There are scientists on both sides of the issues. There are shortcuts being taken that cannot be justified by governmental regulators setting a policy based on the reasoning that aluminum exists everywhere, a little bit more injected directly into your blood won't hurt. And finally, given studies showing the benefits of childhood illnesses and the benefits to the human immune system through the natural cycle of contracting certain childhood diseases such as measles, chicken pox and others, the recommended procedures for vaccinations should be looked at with suspect.

Yep