Some topics just keep coming around and around again.  Like butter vs. margarine.

Have you heard about the ‘butter is one molecule away from fat’ argument?  That impressed me at the time.  But even I wouldn’t make that my main argument because frankly, lots of things are ‘one molecule away from plastic’.  If you’ve got the lab time and can come up with the correct polymers and correct chemical bond.

The ‘one molecule away from…..’ is a weak argument.  Take water as an example – it is one molecule away from being hydrogen peroxide.  It makes for a weak argument, abeit an impressive one until you dig deeper. 

It’s the digging I enjoy…err…for information, that is.

Ok.  What is the ingredient list of butter?  Bingo, you got it…butter!

What is in margarine?  Quick, get out that tub.  It’s a list.  Usually hardened vegetable fats such as derived from canola, safflower or worse, soya.  If it doesn’t tell you which one, then it’s an unknown blend of whatever.  Oh, and water, whey, artificial colouring, flavouring and to make you get excited and happy, artifical vitamins.

The fact that margarine smears at summer room temps and butter melts (pause here to think about the why and how your body and arteries may deal with that), that transfats are still in most margarines and yes, Veronica there is such a thing as healthy saturated fats – doesn’t seem to interest the staunch ‘artifical food eaters faction’.

One of the problems with so called healthier-for-you artifical foods are that they convey a sense of ‘doing good’ for yourself. 

With this false sense, one ends up lavashing on the margarine, or piling on that fake sour cream whereas wouldn’t you be a little more conservative using REAL butter or sour cream???

You know what?  Eat animal protein only a few times a week, eat more eggs and healthy fish, enjoy real butter and don’t worry about it.  And understand the importance of cholesterol for your good health.  Oh, and MOVE!

Me?  I seldom use butter.  I love my coconut oil.  We have much in common – we are both often misunderstood ;>D

Interesting fact:  Autopsies have shown that patients who died of heart disease two thirds had normal levels of cholesterol (my comment: and probably slogged up their arteries with margarine!)

What is the real price you pay for convenience foods (and I don’t refer to monetary value)?  Is what you see on the shelves really as good as it appears to be and is the price really as good as it seems? 

And do you believe that reading the labels is enough?

Investigative journalist Jane Moore exposes the convenience food industry through undercover filming and scientific analysis.  There are seven videos covering probably every type of convenience food you may normally have on your shopping list.

The series was filmed in Great Britan but you can be certain that the information you will learn there is the norm for most of the western world. 

How and what we eat has radically changed over the past few decades with the all-consuming rise of the supermarket. But what price are we paying for the homogenised, cheap and convenient food that supermarkets specialise in? In a two-part programme, journalist Jane Moore investigates how supermarkets have affected the food on our plates and reveals the tell-tale signs that the food we buy may not have been grown in the way we think.

Watch part one and have a look at the right hand side of the video where you will find links to the other 6.  Then have another think about what you are REALLY feeding yourself and your loved ones.

I am so grateful that even with my mother working 60 hours a week, we never ate ‘convenience food’.  We always had fresh food.  I think the only ‘junk’ food I remember was the breakfast cereal that I sometimes ate.   Anything like the occasional coke or icecream was a treat enjoyed away from home and never a staple. 

Convenience foods may seem to save time or even money, but it comes at a greater cost than most people consider.  What is it costing your health…let alone the environmental questions?

In 2006, the FDA decided that to get rid of one pest, they would use another ‘pest’ to pester the pest…literally, to eat it.  The main pest, listeriosis which is a highly dangerous bacteria is now controlled in processed meats and cold cuts by a spray of the little pests…er…bacteriophage, which is a bacteria eating virus.

Ok, let’s get this straight.  The meats are sprayed by a ‘friendly’ virus to get rid of the dangerous bacteria. Good guys vs. the Bad Guys.  David and Goliath.

A serious read about phages reveals that they may be the factor that is present in certain rivers  that seem to heal those who bathe in them of certain illnesses.  And they’ve been around for ages and are present everywhere…are beneficial and help keep the viruses down.

Still, the thought of eating a piece of processed ‘meat’ (a revolting thought in the first place) that has a coating of good guys and lots of dead bad guys is yet another argument to avoid processed food in the first place.  I just can’t help the ‘eeeewwwww’ reflex!

(Wikipedia has a page on bacteriophages here.)

I can’t help it.  Most trends put me off because of the seemingly overnight bombardment of the latest silver bullet with whatever it is appearing in everything.  The skeptic in me pulls away with arms crossed and takes a ‘prove it’ stance.  In fact, it can take me years before I decide something is worth looking into and trying.  And by then, I’ve done my research before settling for the best form of whatever healthy consumable is in question.

My eyebrow goes up and I can’t help the smirk over acacia berries, goji berries and even that old tried and true standby aloe vera.  Oh, and let’s not leave out the agave ‘nectar’.

It is not the berries, the leaf or the sap that I take issue with, but the processing beyond recognition or usefullness and the hype over watered down expensive rubbish products.

You know something’s amiss when something like aloe vera is just in your face and everywhere, from sheets to mattresses to yoghurt and – get this – aloe vera candy sweetened with agave nectar.  Oh, please.

You just know that IF there is anything resembling aloe vera in those commercial  products such as yoghurt, it’s in microscopic quantities that only serve to somehow justify the price.  Just how valuable is aspartame sweetened yoghurt ‘with aloe vera’?  What an oxymoron. 

Save yourself lots of money and drink your aloe vera in water or your herbal tea or…ok, stir it into your natural yoghurt into which you stirred some real fruit bits if you can’t take it any other way. 

Do your research and look for the best aloe vera juice made from fresh whole leaf, with nothing added to it but a natural preservative.  And while you are at it, leave the other watered down, trendy,  healthy, over hyped products on the shelf for the gullible.

From Alliance of Natural Health

Sentence for influential anaesthesia professor after 12 years of bogus research

Scott S Reuben, the influential Massachusetts anaesthesia professor, who pleaded guilty in February this year to health care fraud after it was discovered that he had been faking research for pharmaceutical companies for 12 years, was sentenced this week to six months in jail plus three years supervised release.

Having received many thousands of dollars in research grants, the former chief of the acute pain unit at Baystate Medical Center published his ‘findings’ in scientific journals such as ‘Anesthesia & Analgesia’. Yet his ‘work’ on post-operative pain management using highly controversial pharmaceutical drugs such as Vioxx and Celebrex had never actually been carried out…

Read the rest of the article at the Alliance of Natural Health site.

From the Alliance for Natural Health website:

This was a key federal case argued for ANH-USA and other plaintiffs by Jonathan Emord and the Emord law firm. It was a remarkable seventh victory for Emord over the FDA in the area of allowable health claims for food or supplements. Unless reversed on appeal, the decision restricts the Agency’s ability to place gag orders on the emerging science behind healthy foods and dietary supplements.

The case revolved around what are called qualified health claims. In a qualified health claim, the producer of a food or supplement tries to share the state of the science behind the product with the public. If the science is less than completely conclusive, usually the case with food or food related items, the claim is “qualified”.

The FDA has never liked qualified health claims. It wants food and supplements to be treated like drugs and forced to submit to the full FDA approval process in order to make any health claims. Of course this is crazy. Food and supplements, being natural, cannot usually be patented, and nobody can afford to spend a billion dollars to gain FDA approval of claims on an unpatented product that anyone else can sell.

The FDA knows this full well. The real reason it does not want any health claims for food or supplements is probably that it fears that this will create competition for approved drugs– and drugs pay the Agency’s bills.

Read the rest of this article at the Alliance for Natural Health.