UPDATE: Codex Alimentarius REQUIRES – MANDATES that ALL food be irradiated (even organic!!), that ALL animals be treated with antibiotics & BGH, and that vitamins and minerals will be ILLEGAL in the way heroin is illegal. It also legalizes the WORST banned chemicals and prevents their censure.
I started this post on October 16, 2011, planning to publish it on World Food Day. Locating this type of information in search engines has become so much more challenging since May 2011 that even with all my 2,961 saved notes and research, it has taken me four long days to compile this information.
Someone is bound to ask why I am writing this, so I’ll state up front:
Your business or blog WILL SUFFER
if you aren’t eating healthy – or at all.
October 16, 2011 is World Food Day and never have there been so many threats to our ability to feed ourselves – much less eat food that is actually healthy and nutritious.
Have you even HEARD about
the Food Safety Law?
Almost no one is aware of the Food Safety Bills that have already been made law in the U.S. – and I dare you to try searching for unbiased information about it written by those warning of what it does.
Do a search on YouTube or Google and you will find plenty of major media spin telling us how this bill will “protect us” from “dangerous food” but almost NOTHING about how it endangers us.
Have you seen anything on social media about how this
Food Safety Law can be used to make gardening illegal?Today it is clear to me how effectively what we see – and
more importantly – DO NOT SEE – is already being controlled.
If you judge by this PBS Newshour Food Safety Law coverage you would believe there was no controversy – except for that part where he admits they did NOT WANT TO but had to exempt small farmers (for now – expect scope creep) to get the bill passed.
This video shows Congressman Frank Lucas addressing the House floor on his concerns with the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, including its potentially negative impacts on American farmers and ranchers,
It mentions the flawed procedure that excluded the House Agriculture Committee from reviewing the bill HR2749 – later renamed the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011.
[Changing the names is a common tactic that makes it harder for those who object to keep up with new versions of bills.]
While the major media distracted the public with coverage of Michelle Obama planting a Victory Garden, these laws to limit our food rights were secretly kept from being debated or amended or even considered by relevant committees before being voted into law.
These videos describe how this law could impact Farmer’s Markets, Organic Grocers, and even family gardens.
There are still people alive who remember how lives were different, food was healthy, almost no one was obese, and cancer was so rare that they actually thought it was CONTAGIOUS! I am not talking about generations ago – that was only forty years ago.
While the video quality is not very good, I encourage you to watch the video below from Carole who writes about REAL FOOD at RebelwithaFork. She shares how much different things were only a few decades ago.
What happened that caused all these weight and health issues?
I’ll tell you what happened! First came the propaganda to convince us that butter is bad, whole milk makes you fat, eggs cause high cholesterol and salt is bad for you.
Followed by advertising, “news” stories, and product placements to convince us that margarine is better for you, we should all be drinking skim milk, and limiting eggs to a couple a week and avoiding salt like the plague.
The best way to stay healthy is to eat REAL FOOD –
the kind that wasn’t created by scientists in a lab.
IF butter, whole milk, eggs, and salt are bad for us, WHY
are the people who ate bacon and eggs and drank whole milk
their whole lives still alive at 80-90 but their children are
dropping dead like flies in their 60s or 70s or even 50s or 40s?
WHY Should YOU
Believe ME?
How do I know what I know? Before the Internet existed and before search engines, searching databases was a complex process requiring boolean searches and writing queries.
Because I worked for IBM for 23 years I learned to do advanced searches.
I worked all those years diagnosing whether computer system failures were caused by hardware, software (operating system or application), user error or the communications network. Many of those problems were intermittent. The toughest ones to diagnose are those that exhibit overlapping symptoms from unrelated causes.
Before I chose to leave because IBM stole our pensions and was working me to death – literally – I managed the largest multi-CPU mainframe accounts using refrigerated, water-cooled, and RISC towers (similar to Big Blue used in the famous Chess matches) networked together with International remote telecommunications networks.
Determining which variables can be isolated to determine the most
likely cause or causes is what I did for a living – and that is also what
must be done to follow the evidence and arrive at the truth.
I’ve been researching nutrition since I started breeding Thoroughbreds to race in 1978. To excel as an athlete – horse or human – requires far higher levels of quality nutrition and health than a horse that is a pasture ornament or a person sitting behind a desk all day does.
All this propaganda was in full swing when I was a child:
- Margarine is better for you because butter causes heart attacks.
- We should limit how many eggs we eat – or better yet use egg substitutes!
- Whole milk makes you fat so you should drink skim milk.
- Salt causes high blood pressure.
Health problems caused by people following this conditioning about what is good for you to eat and what isn’t led to the new cash cow:
Big Pharma
By labeling symptoms with new “disease” names and selling miracle cures with side effects worse than what they are supposed to treat, they created their own gold mine!
Know any healthy elderly people?
ASK THEM if they take ANY prescription drugs.Ask people you know take prescription drugs
HOW MANY different drugs they’re taking.One prescription usually leads to another and another.
As more are added, side effect lead to more health issues until
health is something they only remember fondly.
I reject all of that nonsense, but the odds of most people ever figuring out the truth based on what they can find online are slim.
You can see this for yourself. Try searching on cholesterol or high pressure or any other health related or controversial subject.
This is what you are most likely to find:
Q: What appears on the first page at Google
no matter how many keyword phrases you try?A: Poor quality information that supports the
official position they WANT US TO BELIEVE!“They” are the wealthy elite who have corrupted governments
around the world by paying them off to get what they want.
One of their pet projects is to make tons of money off
Big Pharma “solutions” that are KILLING US!Another is “food” that has little nutritional value and is
laced with chemical substances that are known toxins.Whoever controls the food supply controls EVERYONE!
The way that I find studies, research, and links to support what I write is that I ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWERS so I can search over and over using keywords that contain the question AND the answer and dig deep into the search results until I FINALLY find worthwhile information to share with you.
Besides the official sites, there are always sites that APPEAR to offer either impartial analyses or even dissenting views that are, in fact, created to ensure you do not actually find credible sources to disprove what they want us to believe.
The problem is that it is extremely difficult to tell true sources
from groups that APPEAR to be FOR a cause or group –
but are actually well-funded disinformation sources
created by those AGAINST that cause or group.
Sourcewatch.org is published by the Center for Media and Democracy and claims to “profile the activities of front groups, PR spinners, industry-friendly experts, industry-funded organizations, and think tanks trying to manipulate public opinion on behalf of corporations or government”.
How can we tell whether they really are doing that or whether they ARE actually a front group of PR spinners – or since that site is a wiki – maybe they’re both? Even I haven’t figured out where their interests truly lie – at least not yet.
It is critical that we all understand that
the Pseudo truth
is being carefully manufactured,
manipulated and SEO -ed while
real truth is for now
buried in the search results.It will most likely totally DISAPPEAR from
the search results in the near future.
Google already has the perfect excuses for deleting sites from their index:
- Chrome block data to justify deleting sites because “their users” don’t like them (as I explained in my CrowdSourcing Failure post).
- Page load time – your site was “too slow” – sorry.
You do NOT have to take my word for it.
I have shared some perfect examples so
you can test for yourself!Do the searches yourself –
I want you to SEE with your own eyes!
We also have enormous amounts of greenwashing going on:
WHAT IS GREENWASHING?
“The unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers.” after being embroiled in controversy.
What Else You REALLY Need to Know:
This post is already so long that I created additional pages to share with you more of what I learned from raising horses and decades of research:
- NEW: Read What IS being sprayed on your produce BEFORE you eat EVEN ORGANIC store bought fruits or veggies
- How the USDA conspired with food manufacturers to boost their sales while totally disregarding your health
- Why Our Food is Nutritionally Deficient Because of Commercial Fertilizers ~ We Literally EAT OIL!
- Why CORN is Killing Us: HFCS and GMO FOOD
- Does Salt Cause High Blood Pressure
I implore you to take what I have written to heart. Do NOT automatically just believe me or anyone else. Most have figured out some pieces of the puzzle but have yet to question other aspects of their conditioning.
Many will have an instinctive desire
to just close their eyes to what is going on
because it is all so overwhelming.RESIST that urge and help us
stop this before it is too late.
If you believe I am incorrect about ANY of the above, I encourage you to share your best evidence including links in the comments – or even just your thoughts. A wise person always welcomes challenges to what they believe so that they may always be moving closer to the entire truth.
Gail Gardner
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It’s unbelievable that they are outlawing what used to be commonplace (growing your own food and exchanging it with your neighbors). What’s next?
Tazering 8 year olds for refusing to give up their plastic fork they brought from home to eat lunch. Arresting kindergarteners. Threatening arrest or “mental evaluations” for walking. Road blocks and demanding ID wherever you go. This should remind people of past history – but most will remain willfully ignorant of what is going on. If you have the stomach for it, see http://smbcontest.com/causes.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Top Three Competitive Analysis Tools to Fire Up Your Online Business #smallbiz
WOW, what a food insights,!!
1 Million is really big figure,! superb analysis.
Thanks for this heads up, its getting ridiculous and the only thing to do is to take these food and nutrition matters into your own hands.
I’ve been saying for years that Michelle Obama is a distraction… 😉
Paleo Guy would love you to read ..Baked Eggs And Avocados Recipe
I agree with you that hunger is a big problem but the cause of this problem is not the production of food. The problem is Capitalism. We often see the list of people who are the richest in the world. Some of those people’s GDP is much more than the GDP of some countries in Asia or Africa.
US Food Politics is just so disgusting it’s stomach churning!
The lobbys and government – alongside the huge multi-nationals just do the worst job slapping down anything not aligned with their own narrow money focused agendas! Ideas like the caveman or paleo eating concepts are so natural but are given no credence. cavemandietblog.com is just one example of a system of eating so aligned with nature, but so derided by the establishment.
Chris – interested in finding out how that paleo diet is going for you… it’s something I’ve been considering given the amount of processed food that our modern lifestyles seem to demand that we consume… and that’s it (as many people have pointed out) – our modern lifestyles are fuelled by corporations who benefit from our ill-health. An unvirtuous circle. Hard as I try to eat as much organic meat, veg, fruit, etc., I know I don’t always have the time to prepare everything…
ùanother source of illness is pasta and this is pretty difficult to admit because being Italian we live for pasta. Anyway hard wheat do not exists, the one used for almost every kind of pasta. Since the fifties they took common wheat and put it under radiation to get the characteristics of hard wheat. Can you imagine? It’s sixty years that we eat radioactive food, but they say it’s ok for our health. Now they’ve probably substituted it with GMO, how lucky we are! Another healthy and safe food. As you say, that’s why everyone is sick and that’s why every year arrives a different disease and so on. Given that at a certain level those who own banks are also the owners of oil companies, big pharma, GMO and so on then it makes perfectly sense that they also own the greatest part of governments. At that level paying someone to obey 1.000.000.000 of dollars or shooting him down it’s the same. They always get what they want. Like Italian ‘Ndrangheta which grosses 90.000.000.000 euros per year. At that level you can own a country or make anyone who disturb to simply disappear.
Sorry for the rant Gail, I’m a bit disappointed as big G has just slapped me again with the latest update. It always happens and I always recover but that’s really exhausting.
Have a great weekend!
Hi Andrea,
The problem isn’t pasta – it is commercially produced pasta. The solution is to either make it yourself from quality ingredients or identify a small independent company that does.
Small business is the solution to economic challenges and health challenges everywhere. We must all work to identify and then spread the word about what companies can be trusted (publicly) and which can not (carefully or privately).
growmap would love you to read ..Small Business Internet Marketing: Where to Start
This is insane. I can’t believe the scale of these issues. I remember Jack LaLane (God rest his soul), always saying how he refuses to take any prescription medications. The guy lived a very healthy life, and at age 90 could bench more than me at 20.
Of course, medications will have their place in some situations. But the scale we consume them as a modern society is just crazy.
Hi Scott,
Taking prescriptions is the first step to bad health and it is downhill from there. Those who take them have horrendous side effects (although sometimes they don’t connect them to the pills and potions) and those who do not and also eat REAL food live to be mentally and physically healthy much longer.
We gave have the capacity to heal naturally IF we give our bodies the nutrients it needs – and that means not eating Frankenfoods. Make getting nutrients highest priority – even if you can not obtain an organic or optimum source – eat what you can get.
Few know this: Getting the nutrients and healthy fats you need are a higher priority than avoiding pesticides. If you get the nutrients you need your body can throw out the pesticides and heavy metals. If you don’t it can’t.
One of the biggest issues in the UK regarding food is waste. Due to health and safety laws manufacturers and supermarkets label products up with use by dates and sell by dates that are WEEKS and even MONTHS before they really should be.
Yes I can understand that it is important that people do not get ill from their food, but a lot of food is marked with “best before” – eating this food after this date is not harmful at all, yet supermarkets will throw anything away that goes beyond this date. They are throwing food into bins that could feed hungry homeless people without any risk at all.
A bit of common sense is all that is required. Within reason it is best to let us decide if we want to buy something (obviously exclude high risk foods) – a tin of beans does not go off after a few months!!!
You asked us, Gail, to ask healthy older people about their drug-taking.
I’m almost 70 and I take no drugs, whatsoever.
The only over-the-counter supplements I take are a B12 tablet because my gut doesn’t manufacture this essential neuro-vitamin. I also take Vitamin D in winter because I live in sun-deprived Toronto, Canada.
What powers my wellness is that I am a non-religious live-food vegan and a Follower of Jesus. I felt led to make this change because of my research to over-come Chronic Fatigue & Immune Deficiency Syndrome (CFIDS).
CFIDS struck and totally-disabled me in 1995 after a near-death event. It prevented me from working for about 5 years. This was at a time when the medical profession’s almost universal wisdom said CFIDS was raging-related and psychosomatic (not real and in my head).
In other words, they were stumped by CFIDS and couldn’t heal it or even eliminate its symptoms. But, they didn’t want to admit it.
Now in the second decade of the 21st century, doctors are playing the same obfuscationistic game by blaming their incapacity to help people’s many life-style symptoms like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, etc. on genetics.)
Before my lifestyle change healed me, as it did my wife’s cancer at the same time, I was disabled and unable to work for over 5 years while looking like a healthy, robust male of 55. (You can read more about our healings at .)
No Doctor or other health-care practitioners could help me. I went to all the “hot, then-budding, holistic-type-healers” e.g. acupuncturists, herbalists, chiropractors, homoeopathic-practitioners, plus others.
My wife was diagnosed and biopsied with life-threatening colon cancer 3 years into my disability. She’s been cancer-free now for 15 years. She’s never gone once for the doctor recommended first quarterly, then semiannual cancer checks.
At 71, in 2011, she has regular physicals bi-annually as do I.
With our new age generation, most foods available now at the market are commonly processed foods. Most of these are less nutritious compared to those home cooked foods. Though printed claims like high in fiber, good source of omega 3, etc. in their food labels, I could say that it’s not really that reliable. It might be a good source of nutrients but only small amount of it is present or sometimes, there are other chemicals like food preservatives are highly present to these canned or processed food. Still unhealthy for our body.
Greg would love you to read ..Yard Machines 31A-2M1A700 21-Inch Snow Thrower Review
This is exactly what we should expect to happen when our country doesn’t have a conflict of interest law for politicians and heads of government departments. When you have an ex-CEO of a food company becoming the head of the FDA, you should expect all types of bad things getting approved when he’s in office. Then when he’s done with his term, he returns to being CEO of the company. How does this help the citizens of America?
nice share we also making world food day and donate food in India………thanks for aware community for social service
i really admire u guys for that.. donating food is a nice way to show we are all humans..
if i could be any help for this, contact me, i want to be part of this..
~alex
Gail, thank you for this important post. It’s clear the government is taking away our right to nutritious food step by step. Later generations don’t know what they’ve missed.
Regarding people and the rise of cancer, all you have to do is look at people are putting in their grocery carts at the supermarket: processed foods, few if any vegetables, sugary breakfast cereals, foods that are labeled “healthy food” but which are loaded hidden sugars and preservatives.
Responsibility also falls on individuals too to make the right choices about what they put in the mouth. Though in some areas of the county people don’t have a choice because there are no stores nearby that sell decent food.
Mireya Merritt would love you to read ..Recipe: Garlic Chicken
There are lots of concerned people out there, as this comment thread shows. Some bring up points like drinking raw milk ( I read ‘the Bovine’ occasionally ) and raids on cooperatives – to the point where one can’t even drink milk from one’s own cow !
Rady Ananda especially at Food Freedom collates stories about the whole garbage truck of legal impediments to eating healthy food and supplements.
One shock I had was in realizing the whole ‘germ theory’ itself acts as a distraction from growing healthy bodies and watching nutritional needs.
Care2 newsboard has been a good source of intel as well.
But : political surfing provided the most amazing, scary and horrifying intel. You know how ‘conspiracy theorists’ in all caps accompanied with derogatory commentary proliferate ? Roll your own : Search Codex Alimentarius and then ‘Monsanto – Rumsfeld’
I have posted many collections of relevant articles but fall to pranks like the time ‘The Truth About Monsanto’ – a YouTube video – led to the company website !
For now I’ve cited articles in my sidebar ( and in past notes found in the list of Pages – augmented by the Topical Index including Corporate Farming ) August 13 2009 I posted articles by a raw milk activist and a retired Ohio farmer ( the former was on Care2 and the other still is as best I know )
Also a few days later I noted the group at Current TV under JanforGore which follows ‘Water’ news plus articles on food dysfunction.
Care2 has a Search utility which will point you to past submissions on a topic.
So : you are right to be horrified…and may at first wish you hadn’t ‘taken the red pill’.
opit would love you to read ..22 October – Netvibes ( Public Page )
Welcome to GrowMap, John,
The corporations have all the money to hire trolls and agencies to create massive amounts of disinformation. Writing this post was extremely frustrating because there is already so much of it – and it ranks highest thanks to being favored by you know who – that it took more than twice as long to find information I know exists.
Most people will not have a clue about all the sites, organizations and people claiming to be “for” something in order to sway opinions away from the truth. The only solution is to identify trusted sites and go directly to them instead of trying to search for the information themselves.
growmap would love you to read ..Why Small Business and Bloggers Can NOT Ignore Economic Decline and Occupy Wall Street
The history of the Pamphleteers ( Ben Franklin was one ) warns of how ‘the Establishment’ deals with competition : economic warfare. These days Search Engines themselves are tuned to give desired results. Another little datum popped out about how Bush wanted the Memorex to conveniently ‘forget’ data. But I’ve long mistrusted public library style overviews – only to find my blog and cache both inacessable.
At this point my Diigo files ( oldephartte ) give me a Deep Search function while Delicious ( Opit ) does good Tag search. Plus Delicious allows me to follow other collections – while the only group at Diigo I joined lies fallow. And at Care2 there are many groups/forums to which I do not give proper attention ; ditto for Yahoo! And at the D’s do Search community results : commercialization is still in its infancy there.
Trolls. Things got so nuts at Political Animal / Washington Post when Kevin Drum was posting there ( now at Mother Jones and more obviously an Establishment tool ) that a paid moderator had to be installed for comment threads !
And though I was reluctant to associate with 911 Truthers and those I thought racist hatemongers ( Holocaust ‘revisionists’ – which means they want historical analysis ), I’m finding the ‘Denier’ epithet flung around with calculated abandon as a smear to further false argument.
So I’m waiting for the day the prophets of propaganda ( 101st Chairborne Bigots ) decide I can be dispensed with as an information source. Meantime I play librarian.
opit would love you to read ..22 October – Blogs I’m Following
Gail – thanks for the heads up on the blogging collaboration… I am definitely going to check that out. I am actually a new-ish internet marketer myself though I tend to not branch out too much regarding who I read. I’ve been working on it a bit more lately which is why I think I found my way here. I adore marketing but my lifestyle doesn’t allow much time for it, at least not until my kids are a little older. It’s kinda pathetic but my favorite “me time” is the time I’m able to take and focus on marketing!
Yes it is absolutely SHAMEFUL that someone thinks they need laws to protect them from food. Well, if they want to eat your mass produced, confinement raised, chemically and genetically altered food, I guess have at it but the laws are ridiculous. The rest of us need to have a choice.
I do move around a lot in the homesteading type circles and I’ve seen this disconnect a lot. You would be shocked to hear the stories… people who don’t want to buy farm eggs because “they came out of a chicken’s butt” and would rather go buy eggs from caged chickens at the store, or think it’s cruel when you raise and slaughter your own pasture-raised meat humanely, but think nothing of buying the little irradiated or red-dyed styrofoam packages of grain-fed meat at the store.
There’s a huge disconnect there, which I think has probably been done on purpose. People don’t realize that beef are not meant to be eating corn, chickens were not meant to be housed in tiny cages in huge warehouses, and veggies these days are specifically bred to stand up to long distance transport at the expense of nutrition and flavor.
Okay so food quality is a huge huge deal to me, in case you can’t tell. I think it’s awful this deception that’s been perpetuated onto us.
Bethany would love you to read ..My Secret For Finding Rare Items On Craigslist
I am simply thrilled to meet you, Bethany. My collaborations are meant for bloggers just like you who have limited time so that they can use their limited time as effectively as possible.
Most people no longer have ANY IDEA where food comes from – none at all. They would be appalled if they actually saw how it was produced.
I wonder how many realize there is ammonia in ground beef or that there are standards for how much rodent is in commercial food
or the fact that what is in most cosmetics and skin and hair care products have never been tested. I share the link to the EWG.org product safety database ALL the time – and use it regularly myself.
Even simple things are foreign to most city people – and even many rural ones. One of my co-workers was pulling carrots from his garden when another stopped by to pick up a part. The first one asked if he’d like some carrots to which he replied, “Ewwww….they have DIRT on them.” LOL
It is crazy to me how everyone has been conditioned to be afraid of GERMS so they spray POISONS everywhere. If germs were all that dangerous, the people who are exposed all the time would be dying off first – like Doctors, nurses, and researchers.
I want to know what is in all those “room fresheners” that people are intentionally breathing all the time. And what is with expecting laundry to smell like artificial fragrance. Who knows how bad that is for people – and some I know can’t stand it if some artificial smell isn’t on EVERYTHING and EVERYONE.
Have you seen those crazy retro laundry commercials for some stuff you put in the wash to “shake it up” with some kind of artificial fragrance?
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Website Marketing Revealed: Consistent $4000 per Month Income Sales Funnel – Sold for $50,000
It’s great to meet you too Gail!
This reminds me of when I first butchered one of my mom’s chickens – not an opportunity many people get, but it sure makes you appreciate that it was a life and not be wasteful of any of it. I mentioned it to my boss at the time and she immediately told me she didn’t want to think about that, that she just wanted to get hers at the store and not think about where it came from.
I didn’t even know what to say. The truth is, we can do the best we can to spread the word but not everyone is going to want to deal with the realities of it. It’s so mass-conditioned that people don’t even stop to think – where did all this cancer, autism, diabetes, and other modern health issues come from? Most people, if you ask, will say because we are lazy and sit around eating chips all day (for the most part). But the truth is, well, that’s simply not true. Most people do try to eat healthy. I’ve noticed lately… when you see severely obese people at the store, you don’t always see them with carts full of junk. Sure, sometimes, but just as often as not you see them with carts full of processed, enriched “healthy” foods, Lean Cuisines, fat free stuff, etc. The stuff we’re told is healthy and good for you.
100 years ago people didn’t need gym memberships to be healthy! Why? Because they ate real food!
It used to be considered low class for women to purposefully exercise, yet the obesity problems we see today were not an issue. I am firmly convinced it is due to our diet – the idea that saturated fats are unhealthy, that whole grains are healthy, and this horrible disconnect between what we put in our mouths vs. where did it come from!
I recently spent a week with my parents on the homestead and I asked for one thing – that they let me cook for them all week. My mom, during that time, realized that her hypoglycemia problems that she’s battled her whole life were due to too little fat in her diet… too little saturated fat. Literally… she’s had to eat every few hours as far back as I could remember, but just by increasing the fat in her diet (she had bought into the low-fat mentality) she not only started to lose weight but now can eat three regular meals a day and not have blood sugar crashes in between. She feels better, has more energy, and doesn’t feel so tied to making sure she carries food in her purse all the time. She’s consulted doctors and of course their answer is – MEDICATE!
Good grief!
Bethany would love you to read ..My Secret For Finding Rare Items On Craigslist
Hi Bethany,
I totally agree with you. This nonsense that butter is bad for you and the only thing we should be eating is raw vegetables is taking healthy eating too far. All we need is to get more nutrients – even if the only way we can get them is to take in some less than terrific ingredients.
Organic butter – or better yet, homemade butter from raw milk – is far healthier than margarine ever could be. Everyone who has bought into that whole “eggs are bad” thing would be appalled at how many I eat. They make me feel better and give me energy.
With chickens, a stocked pond, and mesquite trees to make flour from will go a long way to ensuring you don’t go hungry. I believe that is why they chose “bird flu” – a great pretense to take away by force one of the best food sources the poor count on.
I may have to think about that cheese press you wrote about if I can locate a quality source of milk. But we have to talk about alternatives to promoting Amazon. Any company that would intentionally risk the lives of their employees is not one I can recommend or use. I assume you haven’t seen the coverage about Amazon employees heat stroke and ambulances?
growmap would love you to read ..Website Marketing Revealed: Consistent $4000 per Month Income Sales Funnel – Sold for $50,000
Hi Gail,
That’s exactly what our goal is – to get ourselves to a point where we produce enough of our own food to not worry about it. Aside from things like coffee, CHOCOLATE, etc. I even bought my own black pepper plant last year 🙂 That’s one reason why I market – so I can establish an income where we can go live in the mountains and not be tied to a job, to be able to work the land.
As far as Amazon, I will agree with you that it is a concern for me as well. I remember reading that, and I talked to my husband about it. I’ve never worked in a warehouse myself but he has, in the Colorado summer heat. One thing he did point out is that even if Amazon did install AC (which is uncommon in warehouses) it would not really do much… it’s nearly impossible to control the heat in a place that huge.
I know some people who have worked for Amazon in the past and currently do, and many of them are surprised at this. I live in WA, so since Amazon is based here I suppose it’s easy enough to find people who work there but everything I heard about them prior to the warehouse event was that Amazon is a great place to work. One thing I had thought about is when I worked at a really big company, and the company itself was awesome, you can have outlying stores or what have you where one manager makes it completely different. I experienced it when I worked at Eddie Bauer – used to be a phenomenal company to work for, but when my department got a new manager everything changed. I ended up leaving over it.
Not making excuses, I believe Amazon is absolutely responsible for what was going on. Even the conditions in the warehouse, while they might be hard to avoid, that whole point system thing is ridiculous. I can see where it might be a good way sort of, but bring in one of “those” bosses and it quickly becomes intolerable. I’m glad to see they got rid of the point system in response to this event but I have a feeling a better solution would be to bring in a new management team for that warehouse. Every day, people work in worse conditions than 102 degree heat, but accommodations are usually made. For instance, I know that many farmers who hire labor to harvest their fields will offer alternate shifts to keep their workers out of the heat of the day. Keeping people accountable to a breakneck pace like they apparently were even during those conditions is not exactly good management.
The truth is, even a great company, once it gets HUGE, is going to have pockets of not-great conditions. Having said that, that in itself is a concern for me. I’m not a fan of monopolies, and I can see it happening with them quickly. If the company gets so big that things like this happen, regardless of what the overlying “company culture” is, that is a problem. A few weeks ago I signed up with CJ so I can look for alternates. I also sell through Amazon and I really like it a lot because of the act they can do the fulfillment for me, but there’s not really an alternate for that.
Now that I think of it, I think there would be a market for another company that could do this for people. Kinda like Amazon fulfillment without the Amazon, or a cross between them and eBay. There’s a business idea I’ll never be able to implement 🙂
Bethany would love you to read ..My Secret For Finding Rare Items On Craigslist
Hi Bethany,
Since you left this comment there was an incident where Amazon left their employees standing outside in below freezing weather. In researching what happened I came across much, much more and wrote this post on why there are so many calls to Boycott Amazon.
That post points out there are even more issues with Amazon and offers alternatives to promoting them.
growmap would love you to read ..SOPA Blackout Strike Already Started; Why Major Sites and Blogs Went Dark in Support
May be I am wrong, but i don’t think that a single law can limit my ability to eat. Surely we can eat many things, but we want to be healthy and we will try to choose healthy food. The planet has about 7 bln people on it and many of them starve, but in some cases they starve because they don’t want to do anything. If you are hungry, go and find some or earn some money. I know there are exceptions, but still we are people…
Hi Anna,
We have to choose between ignoring unreasonable laws and the possibility of having severe penalties imposed or doing what we feel is best for us. Should we really have to choose whether to go hungry or ignore laws? Deciding whether to grow food in an “unlicensed” garden or buy healthy, locally grown food from a small farmer or rancher is what is coming. The wise will follow common sense and a higher authority.
We have all been conditioned to blame the victims because that is how selfish people look at the world and they control the conditioning. The time is coming when MOST in America will be hungry and will not have any idea how to earn some money because so few people they know will have any to spare.
Food banks are distributing record amounts of food to people who have never needed a handout EVER in their lives before.
I’m glad you commented because in seeking links to share with you I found out there is a Hunger Blogathon going on RIGHT NOW.
From that link:
From Hunger Free Communities:
Hamilton Community News (Ontario, Canada?) handles this the best way: they bring visibility to the issue and create a solution with posts like this: No child should go to bed hungry.
Perhaps Canada is more enlightened on this as preliminary research keeps bringing up Canadian sites such as this in support of Canadian Feed the Children.
In America, major cities pass laws against feeding the hungry and make homelessness a crime to try to force the poor to go underground in an “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy.
Some quietly feed “their” homeless because they are afraid admitting they are willing to could attract homeless from other areas.
In India, known for their food and the third largest producer of food grains in the world, millions of children go to bed hungry and 5,000 children die every day of preventable illnesses.
Laws like NAFTA are another cause: NAFTA is Starving Mexico.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Blogging Ethics: Time to Choose
We absolutely have to look at all the ingredients that every product includes. Because sometimes we can find something even unexpected for you. But of course, all food that we eat today isn’t as healthy as we want it to be and some measurements should be undertaken
This law should be implemented for it secures the safety of the citizens. I hope that this will go well. Our safety for food is in the hands of this law. I agree with this and I would gladly appreciate it when this will become a law.
Oh, John. Did you read the post or watch the videos?
No, NO! a million times NO. This law does NOT secure our safety. It takes away our right to buy food from small farmers who would rather grow organic produce, and eventually to grow food, share it with others, and CHOOSE whether we want to drink raw milk or eat organic or avoid putting poisons on our own gardens.
We are all fools if we believe that garbage on the grocery stores is “food” or safe to eat while avoiding what grows in our own gardens. Commercial “food” is killing people. KILLING THEM.
Our food safety comes from taking control of what we eat by BUYING LOCAL, growing our own food, finding a local co-op or CSA or farmers or ranchers and BUYING REAL FOOD.
I feel for you, John. Are you saying you support the government telling me I can not give something I grow or eggs my chickens have laid to someone who needs them? That it is better to let them go hungry than eat that “risky food”!?
Or that you support the government’s “right” to come into my garden and tell me I must put chemical pesticides on it and I must “register it” with some bureaucratic nightmare I am just speechless. I truly am.
growmap would love you to read ..Why Small Business and Bloggers Can NOT Ignore Economic Decline and Occupy Wall Street
Oh I’m really sorry for the misinterpretation. I actually believe that this law is supposedly good and should be directed towards the betterment of the health of citizens. If only they would revise it and direct their purpose to a more genuine one that is truly helpful to the citizens, that would surely be agreeable.
Hi John,
If you could see the big picture that I see you’d know that the purpose of all laws is NOT our good – it is the good of the wealthy who are paying to get the laws passed.
This law is NOT good – it is terrible. In fact, most laws are not in our best interests and I would start to improve the world by repealing a whole bunch of them.
My bottom line is that I answer to a higher power and no law is going to prevent me from eating REAL FOOD sources locally. I am NEVER going to REGISTER my garden or animals or myself. Better the guillotine or holocaust than accept the dictates of the Beast – and make no mistake about it – that IS who the wealthy elite worship as they have repeatedly revealed themselves.
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I know I have a lot of shortcomings as a citizen and not being aware of all these things is one of them. Thank you for making me aware of it through this post. Really very informative and an eye opener to the public. This is one of the best ways to grow awareness to the public. It really makes big impact to every people.
It was really interesting to read your post. I think it should be common sense to eat food that is unprocessed, just like it is common sense that if you eat well and excercise you will loose or maintain your weight, not with a pill or a 30 day eat “insert here” programm. I actually feel physically bad if I eat “chemical food” as I call it. It is also astonishing to see so many TV dinners in daycares that the moms pack for lunch…
Hi Carson,
I suspect that the person who coined the phrase “common sense” was being facetious as there is certainly a dearth of it everywhere. Those who were raised on farms developed a lot more of it than people living in cities are likely to get from their environments.
growmap would love you to read ..Why We Need Group Geo-Targeted Niche Blogs
If you think about it, sure butter, eggs, etc. are unhealthy NOW because of the crap they are feeding the animals producing it. And as Bethany points out, it’s the perfect cycle – pump chemicals into the food, make everyone sick, then “miraculously” come up with cures (drugs) to compensate – not solve the problem, but mask the symptoms so you can continue the cycle.
One of my great plans during my new work at home tenure was to do some container gardening… now I’m motivated to turn my entire balcony into a mini-container farm in protest!
Hi Kristi,
Thank you for taking the time to read my post and comment. While commercially produced eggs, butter, etc. are less healthy than in decades past, there ARE healthy alternatives.
My eggs come from chickens who eat very little commercial feed because they are allowed to roam the yard controlling insects and grazing grass and other plants.
We can FINALLY buy organic feed in Texas from the ONLY organic feed mill I could find (last time I researched which has been a while ago).
They are supplying many feed stores that are also organic feed stores.
The Muenster mill produces Natural Dog Foods but last time I called them they weren’t doing any organic horse or livestock feed.
growmap would love you to read ..Why Small Business and Bloggers Can NOT Ignore Economic Decline and Occupy Wall Street
Kristi you should totally do it! That’s how I got my start! Not to mention growing your own veggies has this bizarre effect on kids that makes them actually want to eat them 🙂 Just some containers on a balcony will show you the huge difference between storebought and homegrown food.
Bethany would love you to read ..My Secret For Finding Rare Items On Craigslist
I agree with Bethany. Start with tomatoes because those things they sell in the store bear little resemblance to the read thing! And get heirloom plants if you can find them.
I love having Basil, Rosemary and other herbs growing on the window sill in the kitchen. That makes them handy to pick, chop and add while cooking.
growmap would love you to read ..Why Small Business and Bloggers Can NOT Ignore Economic Decline and Occupy Wall Street
Extremely angry about what I’ve read in the past few days showing just how efficiently and cruelly planned is the deconstruction of America. Now I do believe that “dead peasants” is a part of the 1%ers’ lexicon.
Hi MiMi,
These statistics I came across yesterday may make you even more concerned: The Top 100 Statistics About The Collapse Of The Economy That Every American Voter Should Know.
I’ll be adding that to my post about Occupy Wall Street.
.
growmap would love you to read ..Why Small Business and Bloggers Can NOT Ignore Economic Decline and Occupy Wall Street
Great post!
You really start to notice the crap you’re eating when you start to look at the labels and ingredients. YUCK!!! Why does a bag of chips need 35 ingredients? Oh thats right, because they are loaded with addictive chemicals meant to make them last and keep you wanting more poison. All approved by the good folks at the FDA!!! lol
My wife and I recently started the Paleo diet, which is basically only eating whole foods. No artificial ingredients, high-fructose corn syrup, mono-sodium glutamate, etc… and only meats, fruits and veggies that are organic & humanely raised. It really is amazing how much better the food tastes when it’s not loaded with chemicals.
In our culture we are constantly bombarded with ads for junk food and the convenience that comes along with those mass-produced meals. The only adjustment we found difficult at first on the Paleo diet, comes from the brainwashing of the FAST FOOD industry that makes you believe your food should be ready in 5 minutes with no effort. Shocker Alert: You actually have to cook for yourself and it takes more than 5 minutes to prepare good food… =]
So in the end, you have to ask yourself if you are worth the extra time needed to prepare your meals? Our answer was YES!
Hi Chris,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Another huge benefit to eating whole foods is the cost savings. Have you ever noticed that 20 pounds of potatoes costs about the same as one bag of chips? Think how many more meals you get out of the potatoes!
I plan to launch a blog about healthy eating to share my tips on how to save time and money when cooking. Here’s an example of one of my cook once; eat many tips:
I cut up ten to twenty pounds of potatoes in cubes and boil them until tender. I use a canning pot but you can use any large pot or pots.
Then I split them multiple ways:
I make part of the potatoes (at least twice as many as I want to eat right away) into mashed potatoes to eat that meal.
I save the rest of the mashed potatoes to make into potato pancakes. I simply adore potato pancakes!
I put 1/3 – 1/2 of them into the refrigerator. Part of them I will heat in a little water with butter and serve as buttered, cubed potatoes with another meal. Part of them I’ll make into potato salad.
So by cooking a large amount of potatoes once, I can get four to six meals or more and create four totally different tastes.
While cooking does take longer than taking something out of a package, if you count the time spent driving somewhere, ordering, waiting for your order, and driving home, cooking is actually faster.
I’m looking for a blogger in New York to work with me. If you might be interested or know anyone who is please let me know.
growmap would love you to read ..Why Your Geographic Location IS a Niche
This is all so true. I’ve been learning a lot about this in the last year. The modern dietary recommendations are specifically crafted in order to provide money into the pockets of not only Big Pharma, but think about how huge the diet industry is. Oh and then there’s the “Big Three” – Wheat, Corn and Soy are heavily subsidized by the government AND touted as healthy foods when they are all three anything but healthy.
Who benefits if we are healthy? We do.
Who benefits if we are unhealthy? A whole lotta industries. Those industries have lobbyists.
Do we really think it’s a coincidence that in the late 70s and early 80s when the modern food pyramid (which is totally UPSIDE DOWN) started to be promoted, obesity and health issues started to take a major jump? Is it a coincidence that if you overlap charts of obesity rates with wheat consumption over the last 5 years they look nearly identical?
It is absolutely shameful what we’ve let them do to us. Many of you heard about the raw milk raid that happened earlier this year at Rawesome. Did you realize they spent MILLIONS setting all this up? Millions of our tax dollars because people wanted to drink unpasteurized milk. Which, by the way, is very very good for you and tastes phenomenal.
We need to take our food choices back, and FAST. This is the first time I’ve seen this blog, saw a tweet from Ana Hoffman, and I’ve already emailed out the post, tweeted it and FB’d it. Thank you for making this stand!
Bethany would love you to read ..Best Cheese Press for Home Cheese Making
Welcome Bethany,
What is most concerning is that two of the “big three” (as you referred to them) – corn and soy – are almost all GMO so we are not only eating unhealthy – we are eating artificially manipulated stuff our bodies can not digest.
Apparently many still will NOT see the connection between what they are eating and why people are so unhealthy. Read some of the other comments in this post. I almost fell over when a blogger I know WANTS bills like this to “protect” him! Oh no!
A friend of mine is a nurse in a hospital who also does home health care. People are moving their elderly parents who are in their 70s and 80s into their homes so THEY can care for THEIR PARENTS but the children in their 50s and 60s are dying first!
If people want to drink raw milk – and if I liked to drink milk that IS what I would drink – that is NONE of the Government’s business! People have lost what little common sense they ever had if they WANT “Daddy government” to tell them what to do so “BIG BROTHER” can monitor and control their every breath!
How can the warnings have been so easy to find for so long and so few paid attention? Those who don’t wake up soon never will.
The reason you probably haven’t come across my blog before is that it is primarily marketing and supporting small business rather than about healthy eating or food rights.
That all ties together though because the solution for what is going on in our economy is for us to support small businesses, farmers, and ranchers and stop giving any time or money to corrupt entities of every stripe.
Do you follow the Twitter hashtags #BuyLocal #ShopLocal and #EatLocal – they are a good way to connect with others and find more choices.
I am mentoring collaborations of bloggers in the same niche and location on how to grow their influence and more effectively share what we know with others. Please see Blogging Collaborations and let me know if you’re interested.
growmap would love you to read ..Why Small Business and Bloggers Can NOT Ignore Economic Decline and Occupy Wall Street