Showing posts with label SAD Standard American Diet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SAD Standard American Diet. Show all posts

Monday, 30 June 2014

Are you what you eat? "Chewicide" (film)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Seven, Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Keidi Obe Awadu, ChewicideMovie.com, LivingSuperFood.com


This is a healthier vegan option
Junk food, fast food, the SAD (Standard American Diet), and highly-processed foods all contribute to our American problems with healthcare and paying for it. "I'm saving money on the 99 cent menu but paying for it at the doctor's office."

Despite all the great and not-so-great (i.e., "official") information on better dietary practices, we still suffer epidemics of man-made chronic disease brought on by chewicide.

Junk food: U.S. men are getting fatter
Chewicide, what's chewicide? Munching brought on by emotional-eating, low self-esteem, the impact of psychological craving brought on by advertising campaigns and empty calories from corporations that favor profit by compromising the health of their consumers.

The use of GMOs, hidden in foods we all eat particularly corn chips, is causing perforations in the lining of our stomachs -- by design. This is the way Monsanto's Roundup-ready pesticide and pest resistant products kill insects, by exploding their stomachs.

French fried slayers: starch, acrylamides, plasticized oil, dipped in red sugar
 
Well, wuddintcha know? They have the exact same effect on school children, working adults, acne-ridden teens, and anyone else who eats conventional, non-organic food. What are the chances?
Whether it's consuming the flesh of animals fed GMOs or plants injected with GMOs or condiments utilizing GMO foods (like the 50 pounds of high fructose corn syrup the average American eats on top of the 162 one-pound sacks of sugar one is trying to digest without developing cancer, diabetes, OCD, ADHD, autism, brain fog, fatigue, erectile dysfunction, depression...), we take in too many harmful ingredients, additives, and calories. Yet most of us are suffering from malnutrition -- a lack of nourishment in spite of the surplus of salt, sugar, and fat our brains' crave.

There is an antidote to the madness and disease: conscious eating of actual food
 
Be conscious or commit chewicide
Companies induce us to eat more (by adding excitotoxic MSG, artificial flavorants, other addictive glutamates, "natural" flavors that are synthesized using petrochemicals, sterilizing preservatives, mold inhibitors, attractive colorants, etc.)  then an entire industry capitalizes on the effect of our standard American diet with ineffective, but highly profitable, medical "treatments," pharmaceutical interventions, surgeries, and radiation sessions to address our symptoms.

But we keep eating. Money doesn't grow on trees, so the only way for corporations to make good money from food is by processing it and selling it at an exorbitant price compared to how much it cost to make. A pound of potatoes, for instance, is worth almost nothing wholesale. But fry it, salt it, bag it, and even a few ounces spells obscene profits. Who cares if consumers' suffer in the transaction?

The best antidote to chewicide is mindful "conscious eating." It is certainly worth the effort to change our lifestyles from committing chewicide to nourishing ourselves on living foods (fresh, green, preferably sprouted). When we let food be our medicine, suddenly we do not need medicine. Food is Nature's perfect answer to all of our health problems. Eating with gratitude, while relaxed and joyful, and  according to one's biomechanics, blood type, and Ayurvedic dosha may also be helpful. Learn more or join the movement
  • What's wrong with American men? As Americans we like to pride ourselves on being the best country in the world [WQ EDITORIAL: when everybody knows that's Switzerland]. However, it's clear that other countries... More proof we're fat. Here's what the average American man looks like compared to other men... How do YOU measure up? Artist compares "average" shape of men from around the world...
  • VIDEO: Hey, why are you so FAT?
  • "If you don't move, you get fat." But how can you move when you're exhausted, and your brain and heart are telling you they're starving, and when plastics and chemicals are making you obese even as you diet? Meanwhile, the diet industry, food corporations, and cancer.... 30th over 1,000 people gathered at IP Church in Los Angeles to hear a Pacifica-sponsored speech by the acclaimed Canadian addiction specialist, physician, and bestselling author Gabor Mate.AUDIO: Poor SLEEP makes us fat, demented American men are fatter than other men... The study adds to a growing body of evidence that there's "an intimate relationship between the amount of sleep we get and our ability to maintain a good, healthy body weight," says sleep expert Helene Emsellem, director of the Center for Sleep and Wake Disorders in Chevy Chase, Maryland. But Americans don't seem to be getting the message that we need seven to nine hours per night. More than 1 in 5 of us...
  • How Western diets are making world sick It had a visceral potency to it when you could see it directly there." In a conversation on Fresh Air, Patterson tells Terry Gross that the effects of urbanization are making people everywhere in the world both fatter and sicker.

Monday, 2 June 2014

National Burger Day, U.S.A.

Amber Larson, Xochitl, Dev, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly (TEST KITCHEN); Lassens.com (LassensLoves.com, LivingNaturally); Moonbeam (FollowYourHeart.com); YF
Weird Things Our Families Eat (That We Unabashedly Love)
There are yummy vegetarian things our families eat (that we unabashedly love)!
The Moosewood Collective says, “Our all-time favorite, luscious burgers the way we make them now: Vegan and wheat-free. “Tofu burgers have been a favorite at the restaurant since we can remember. Our customers often call to ask, “Are tofu burgers on the menu today?” In the early years, we served them on a thick slice of whole wheat toast with lettuce, tomato slices, and Russian dressing. Now we serve them... (Jim Scherer)
 
Wednesday, May 28, 2014, more than a month before it's needed, is National Burger Day. Presumably we're celebrating carnage like that of the Battle of Hamburger Hill.

Now, what if it were possible to have flavor, health, and compassion? What if National Burger Day could be celebrated in style free of heart attacks, cancer, obesity, bad karma, a jump in cholesterol (as our body tries to protect itself against the free radicals we're dumping in with animal flesh, acrylamides, and fermented toxins used in flesh burgers), or harm to the environment?

It is possible! We do it all the time. There are so many center "patty" options, and the best we've found is the amazing new Hilary's Hemp & Greens Burger at Lassens (online).

10 Meat-free Grilling Tips
Lassens edited by Wisdom Quarterly
Grilled blocks of barbecue-flavored tofu (SH)
The start of summer is the perfect time to enjoy delicious, sizzling meals straight off the grill! As we get set to fire up our BBQ grills, instead of the ugly and likely germ and GMO-contaminated flesh fare, cook up some grilled veggies instead. Going flesh free means opening up a world of many more options with smoky barbecue flavor.
 
The world of vegetables is amazing on the grill -- squash, tofu, hemp seed, onions, tempeh, garlic, quinoa, tomato, lettuce greens, chives, gobo root, chia seeds, lentil, eggplant, zucchini, potato, green jack, bell pepper, beet, portabello 'shrooms, and so much more! Plus, meat-free grilling is an easy way to add nutrient rich, fiber rich, healthy seasonal produce to our diet, which reduces disease.

"Eating [any] meat, particularly red and processed meat, can increase risk of heart disease, diabetes, and various forms of cancer," says Allison Righter, MSPH, RD, Meatless Monday science adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

And it's not just the amount of animal flesh someone eats -- it's also how someone cooks it. "Cooking meat at high temperatures, like pan frying and grilling/charring over an open flame, forms [toxic] chemical compounds in the meat that have also been linked to cancer," Righter says.

Kids love it -- vegan, hypoallergenic, cruelty-free, dairy-free cheese (followyourheart)
 
The good news is that many of these chemicals are NOT formed when grilling vegetables or fruits. "So [people] can enjoy their grilled flavor worry-free!"  So get grilling and take a break from toxic flesh with these 10 easy summer grilling tips: More

Golden potatoes are an excellent complement to cruelty-free burgers with all the fixins.

Thursday, 22 May 2014

White Sugar is the new Cocaine (audio)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich (KPFA.org, Berkeley, 5-21-14)
I snort my sugar, take the candy straight to my head, which is where it ends up anyway.
 
Live from Berkeley, Pacifica's Letters and Politics (KPFA FM) focuses in on the effects of carbohydrates and white sugar. Professor of Pediatrics Dr. Robert Lustig, M.D. (UC San Francisco School of Medicine), author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Foods, Obesity, and Disease. They also mention the pioneering work of Dr. Perlmutter, author of Grain Brain. Diabetes? Brain damage? Lack of energy? Heart disease? Obesity? The results will surprise listeners:
Neuroscience of carbs: Grain Brain, Dr. David Perlmutter, MD (drperlmutter.com)

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Cooking with Native American Foods (recipes)

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Dev, (eds.), Wisdom QuarterlyTim Martinez, UrbanHomestead.org
Cooking with Native Foods at Path to Freedom Urban Homestead Annex, Pasadena
 
Precious and abundant acorn
Tim Martinez, Outreach Coordinator for the Arroyo Seco Foundation, led a workshop on Cooking With Native Foods.
 
The ancient Native diet centered on the Three Sisters -- squash, tepary, and a staple grain.

Tim Martinez preps his table (WQ)
Native peoples were largely vegetarian [a custom they perhaps learned from the earliest Chinese and Afghan Buddhist missionaries]. In any case, according to Martinez, all Native children were raised vegetarian up to the age of 10 to keep them hearty, healthy, and in the habit of eating their vegetables and firmly establishing lifelong good habits.

Anais looks on: The Aztec impact (WQ)
Other plants from the Americas have become staples worldwide -- chocolate (xocolatl, the food of the devas, Theobroma cacao), potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, herbs, wild rice, avocados, chia, quinoa, cactus pad, and prickly pear. Some have yet to become famous. The acorn would have if only it had been easier to grow and process, but it comes from oak trees and contains tannins that must be soaked and rinsed off repeatedly.

Feasting on succotash, nopal/toyon berry stir fry, acorn bread, and chocolate (WQ)
 
Aztec feast (Florentine Codex)
What did we learn? It turns out much of the "Native" diet was preserved in Mexico. And with the popularity of Mexican food in California, the entire country enjoys "Native cuisine" without realizing the venerable history of our favorite foods: salsa, tacos, savory beans, stevia/agave sweetened desserts, and that dream grass at the center of our super genetically modifiable syrup and flakes.

Making tortillas by hand 1836 (Karl Nebel)
Berries, veggies, roots, tender greens (like miner's lettuce and lamb's quarter), nuts and seeds, herbs -- the Natives had it all. What they also had, which we seem to have lost in America, was a reverent way of eating inherited from their Aztec forbears. That dietary advice, according to Martinez, ran:
 
Aztec warrior at Mayan revival celebration Kukulkan pyramid, Dec. 21, 2012 (ABC.net.au)


Cosmic time on the Aztec calendar
Listen! Above all, be prudent in food, as in drink, for many things pertain to it. Do not eat excessively of required sustenance. When you do something and perspire, or when you work, it is necessary to break your fast. Furthermore, show courtesy and prudence in this way: When about to eat, be neither hasty nor impetuous. Do not take food in excess. Do not break up your tortillas. Do not put a large amount in your mouth or swallow food unchewed. Do not gulp like a dog when you eat... Eat slowly, calmly, quietly. This is traditional Aztec advice. And with that we reverently savored our succotash. 
 
Savory stir fry of fresh veggies (WQ)
Cactus/California Holly (Toyon) STIR FRY: Scrape prickles from two small cactus pads with sharp knife (or purchase cleaned and diced). Wash. Bring to a boil in two cups of water; rinse to remove mucilage, which is healthy to drink when cool. Mince purple onion, tomato, and any green leafy vegetable. Sauté in light oil. Add toyon berries and a dash of sea salt or savory tamari. Serve over multi-colored quinoa (a pre-corn pseudocereal) and/or amaranth (a sacred grain of Asia and the Americas), both of which look like millet and are prepared like rice).

WARRIOR'S BREAKFAST: Boil 1 cup acorn meal until mushy. (Available from health food stores, mail order, or easily made using aluminum-free Bob's Red Mill baking soda in rinse to quickly remove tannins using a blender). Add half cup cooked amaranth. Toss in rolled quinoa flakes or rolled oats to reduce mushiness. Sprinkle in 2 tbsps. of chia seeds. Top with half cup of dried elderberries, cranberries, or fresh blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Drizzle with raw agave nectar to taste and a sprinkle of Aztec superfood spirulina. Best eaten with wooden utensils. Feeds multiple warriors.

http://urbanhomestead.org/photogallery/gallery/community/image/1/Anais_staffs_the_Urban_Homestead_Exhibit
TONGVA-MEXICA GUACAMOLE: To make an easy ahuacate salsa (Aztec aphrodisiac), take one or more ripe avocados, cut, remove seed, mash in bowl. Add half cup minced cilantro (coriander leaves), one medium jalapeno (mild) or serrano (hot) chile to taste, diced tomato, cucumber, and celery. Sprinkle with sea salt. Douse in fresh cut lemon juice. Enjoy cold with Beanfield's corn-free bean and rice chips. (To store, cover airtight with more lemon juice as this prevents oxidation). 
 
BROILED SAVORY TOFU: In honor of the Chinese-led Afghan Buddhist missionaries discovering America more than a thousand years before Columbus, here is a fusion dish: Slice 1 firm block of tofu into large squares then lengthwise into pyramids. (Or use Beyond Meat Strips, which tastes so good it may freak diners out. Mix 1/2 cup of dried herbs (each to taste: rubbed sage, rosemary, dried onion, garlic, leeks, sesame, or simply use 21 Seasoning Salute) and a good quality ground Himalayan or sea salt. Mix the dry herbal mixture with a 1/2 cup of California olive oil.

Marinated broiled, baked, roasted tofu with herbs, olive oil (WQ/outoftheordinaryfood)
 
Place in ceramic or glass baking dish. Marinate pyramids, strips, or slabs in lemon juice from 1 lemon and 1/2 a cup of preservative-free shoyu soy sauce for 1 hour. Brush on herb/oil mixture. Bake for 15 minutes. Then broil under flames until well browned (just a few minutes keeping an eye not to blacken).

Broiled tofu "pyramids" taste the best!
Serve with sauteed greens (kale, collards, chickweed, spinach, saag, or bok choy), or small white baked potatoes garnished with coconut cream (which is a healthy fat), and/or fluffy wild rice (which takes longer to cook than brown rice).
 
(BBC documentary) Say goodbye to corn. Poison Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) placed in American food by poison and pesticide maker Monsanto, Inc. cause allergies, auto-immune disorders, chronic inflammation, diabetes, heart disease, thyroid disease, mental disorders... and the FDA knows humans and animals are being harmed. But many FDA officials are former and future executives at Monsanto such as lawyer Michael Taylor now US "Food Safety Czar."

Sunday, 2 February 2014

THE FIX IS IN: professional sports (video)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Brian Tuohy (thefixisin.net)
It is not just football but professional sports worldwide -- futbol (soccer), cricket, baseball...
(Brian Tuohy) The Fix Is In -- professional sports matches are rigged for billions in profit. Our sports are Larceny Games: Sports Gambling, Game Fixing, and the FBI
  
The Fix Is In (Brian Tuohy)
Brian Tuohy (thefixisin.net) is a frequent contributor to the CBS Sports website (bleacherreport.com), where he chronicles sports scandals and conspiracies as stories break. Tuohy has been interviewed by The New York Times, ESPN, Fox Sports, and The Power Hour radio program.
 
How much of our lives have we spent watching televised sports, attending games, talking (useless babble) about sports, listening to sports radio, checking websites for updated scores and statistics, then taking in SportsCenter or another highlight show at the end of the day?

How much of our thoughts have been consumed with the big upcoming game? How many nights have we stayed awake wondering how "our team" blew that huge lead? How often have we reminisced about that impossible comeback win as if we had played in the game?

How much money have we emptied from our pockets on tickets, DirectTV packages, bets, jerseys, hats, trading cards, autographs, and overpriced salted junk food and beers over the course of our lifetimes?

Rabid Alex Jones talks with author Brian Tuohy about his latest book,
The Fix Is In: The Showbiz Manipulations of the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL & NASCAR,
which delves into the dark underbelly of professional sports.
 
What if all that time, emotion, and money was wasted on a lie?
Gambling, Game Fixing, and the FBI
What if the action on the field isn’t what it appears to be? What if we, and millions others like us, have been duped -- outright lied to -- by those franchises we hold so dear to our hearts, all in the name of greedily making an easy buck?
 
Well, it has been happening. And although our name might not be “Mark,” we have certainly become marks to those running the carnival known as professional sports.

When a win seems too good to be true -- it is too good to be true. When an impossible turn of events changes the course of a game -- it is an impossibility. When an improbable underdog rises to the top like some sort of Hollywood screenplay -- it is a screenplay.
 
The leagues, hand-in-hand with the TV networks, which pour billions of dollars into professional sports, have fixed their own games to squeeze every ounce of drama they can out of each season and to ensure we remain committed to our sport and glued to our TVs.
 
TheFixIsIn.net is dedicated to shining a light into those dark corners and exposing professional sports leagues and their athletes for the money-grubbing hypocrites they are. Some may call these sports conspiracy theories. Brian Tuohy calls them the truth. More

Classic East Coast punk rock from VOID: "Organized Sports"

Sunday, 26 January 2014

What animals can teach us (audio)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Maria Armoudian (The Insighters, Scholars Circle, Pacifica, Jan. 26, 2014);
Don't look at me! You're just anthropomorphizing (ktla.com)
 
I am looking at you (Tess_athey/flickr).
Do animals get depressed? Overeat? Laugh? Feel feelings?

Inspired by an eye-opening consultation at the Los Angeles Zoo, Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D., a cardiologist, embarked upon a project that would reshape how she practiced medicine -- and how we all look at animals.
 
The consultation revealed that monkeys experience the same symptoms of heart failure as her human patients. Beginning with questions about what animals go through, Natterson-Horowitz began informally researching every affliction she encountered in humans to learn whether it happens in animals, too.

It does. Dinosaurs may have had brain cancer, koalas can catch chlamydia (the STD), reindeer seek mind expansion and/or escape by using hallucinogenic mushrooms, stallions self-mutilate, and gorillas experience clinical depression.
Paying butchers is like paying hitmen to kill.
 
Natterson-Horowitz and science writer Kathryn Bowers have dubbed this pan-species approach to medicine zoobiquity (like ubiquity). Here, they present a revelatory understanding of what animals can teach us about the human body and mind, exploring how animal and human commonality can be used to diagnose, treat, and heal patients of all species.

What animals can teach us about being human
You don't buy bacon, do you? Don't tell me you buy bacon.

 
Concerns about the recent explosions of HIV, West Nile Virus, and other avian and swine flus that originate in animals have encouraged new efforts on a global scale to bridge the gap between animal and human medicine for the benefit of both. Zoobiquity is the first book to explore many of the overlapping human and animal health issues. It provides new insight into the treatment of diseases including diabetes (from the sugar and starch we eat), cancer (from the pollution), heart ailments (from stress), and mental illnesses (from all causes).
 
It is even bigger than health, however. It encompasses much more than our human diseases and how to cure them. It sheds light on the evolution of hierarchies and similarities between a tribe of apes and a Fortune 500 company. 

It suggests that the ways we run our political and justice systems may overlap with how animals protect and defend their territories -- and that examining this possibility in a scientifically credible way could help strengthen our institutions.
 
It dangles the possibility that human parenting could be informed by a greater knowledge and respect for how our animal cousins solve issues of childcare, sibling rivalry, and infertility. More

Friday, 24 January 2014

Raw Living Expo (video)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; RawLivingExpo.com
The Raw Living Expo comes to Thousand Oaks, California, Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2014
  
"Vegetarian" does not derive from the word vegetable but from the word vegetus (Latin "lively"). When we enjoys fresh life-giving foods, our health, clarity, and longevity increase. It is not enough to be be alive when we could be living instead. What does it mean to "live" with verve and sparkling effervescence? It's like the rap song says, "Everybody dies, but not everybody lives." So long as we live and strive for the ultimate, for the highest, for the summit o four dreams, Max De Pree reminds us, "We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are."

Tuesday, 12 November 2013

"The Superior Human?" (film)



Are you going to kill us?
Do animals have feelings? Do they have an vital place in the world, or any essential right to protection? It's "speciesism," a term formed from racism/sexism with regard to nonhuman species. In "The Superior Human?" the welfare of animals, and by extension of humans and the planet, is explored. Surely all life evolves and/or is co-created for a reason and stands to serve a function higher than human waste and abuse. Let's be protective stewards for all creatures and plant forms. In that way, we would save ourselves and others.

“The Superior Human? is a superior documentary exposing the arrogance of humankind and the destructive results of its insistence on domination. If Man can’t conquer nature, he destroys it. A wake-up call for saving our planet and ourselves.”
- Clarke Poole, former Assistant Mayor of Eagle River, Michigan

“I am flabbergasted and appalled that animals feeling pain was proved as late as 1989. We have so far to go before this is a ‘modern’ world, know what I mean?”
- Top voted comment from user: EllenRebecca3

“It is unbelievable some humans actually need scientific proof of animals feelings and intelligence. For me it is obvious it is there. However, some times it would be nice to have proof of the existence of intelligence and emotions in some humans.”
- Top voted comment from user: maurcd

Just five more minutes! (TAV)
“We all evolve to become optimal for our environmental needs. Humans are bad by human standards, ask your dog for his take. How about indoctrina[tion] methods of subjugation? A complete disregard for the other? Too much time on our hands? The purpose of the documentary was not to say humans are not important or of greater importance but to allow for the equality among all species on Earth. There is no hierarchy of species, but an interdependence between all sentient beings, plant, and other life forms.” More 
- Top voted comment from user: MikeJRe2ipi
Superior human diversity is stranger than fiction.
The "girl with two heads" are two girls with one body.