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No Rain.

Starting this post, I was about to begin with saying the “signs of global warming…” but I stopped and realized the appropriate word is “results” of global warming. As Michio Kushi mentioned in his lecture that I attended a few years back, deserts will continue to expand due to global warming. And that is exactly what is already happening in Africa — Kenya, to be exact. They have not had rain in over a year. River beds are dry. Animals are dying. Crops are dying. People are dying… and the children are the first to go.

Do You Really Know How Bad It Is?

And I wonder as you read this from the comfort of your home, office, commute, or wherever you may be, are you aware of what is going on in the world? Our world? And, no, I’m not pointing fingers. As I can admit that I was unaware of the extent of current “damage” caused by radical climate change, aside from the obvious disasters. Of course you’ve heard about global warming. But maybe you’ve thought of it as a problem of the future, not the present. But it’s happening NOW. I live in California, and my lawn is brown with a few specs of green here and there. We are on water restriction and have been for most of the year. But I feel ridiculous even mentioning my lawn, after what I have seen in the following video.

It’s REAL.

It’s hard to comprehend that some people still don’t even “believe in” global warming… as if it was some imaginary tale. If you happen to know people like this, please forward this video to them. I don’t want to be a “downer,” but if we all keep our heads stuck in the sand on this issue, one day they really will be.

Please Watch This Video.

Global Warming: Deserts Expand. Drought Brings Death.

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OK. I’ll try to make this quick. This morning, something dawned on me while I was thinking about Monsanto’s genetically modified “Terminator” seeds. If you don’t know, “Terminator” seeds are GM seeds that only produce once. Meaning, the seeds from the crops cannot be taken and planted to produce more crops. Instead, more seeds have to be purchased and planted. They are patented by the Monsanto Corporation (On a side note, Monsanto is the producer of Agent Orange, Round-Up and aspartame, to name a few damaging chemicals.).

Here is a list of what bothers me, or more so, SCARES me about Monsanto and/or GMO’s:

• the health risk factors of GM food (infertility, low birth weights, under developed brain, liver and kidneys)
• the unintentional cross pollination of GM with non-GM crops
• the spreading of, and contamination by, GM pollen (GM pollen has even been found in Antarctica!)
• the allowing of a patent to be granted for a living organism
• the lawsuits against farmers who are unintentionally “infringing” on these patents because of GM pollen blowing over into their crops
• the contamination of organic crops from GM pollen
• the possibility of “killing” off our food supply because terminator seeds will not produce crops that will reproduce
• the eventual end of the human race and other life because of food shortage due to infertile seeds (maybe that’s why GM food has been linked to infertility?) This makes me think of Easter Island and how its people met their demise from starvation due to their negligent ways of living…

And in case you didn’t know, the new Senior Advisor to our FDA is a former Monsanto VP! How safe do you feel about your food NOW?

If you want to get really in-depth information that you can sink your teeth into, I recommend visiting the following sites and signing up for their newsletters:

• The Institute for Responsible Technology (They are the leader in taking action against GMO companies and policies.) and/or to sign up for IRT’s newsletter
• mercola.com (I recommend doing a search on Monsanto and GMO’s. There is a lot of info.) and/or to sign up for mercola.com’s newsletter.

“Huh?” You may ask, “what does that mean? It sounds like a contradiction.” Simply put, if you are going to eat something that is deemed “bad” for you (I’ll leave you to decide who is doing the deeming), at least make sure you are eating real, high quality ingredients, free of anything artificial. If possible, use whole foods, rather than processed ingredients.

Let’s take lasagna as an example meal — meat lasagna. The reason I specify meat lasagna is that I want to acknowledge that it is different from a veggie lasagna. I could say substitute a veggie lasagna as a healthier lasagna choice. But honestly, it’s different. A veggie lasagna does not taste like a meat lasagna. I’m not speaking of a vegetarian or vegan version of a meat lasagna. I’m speaking of a lasagna made with vegetables, such as spinach, mushrooms and other veggies. So back to what I was saying…

Use High Quality Ingredients

Make your own sauce, or at least buy an organic sauce. In fact, use all organic ingredients if you can. Stay away from canned tomato products, as the liner has BPA that leaches into the sauce. Instead, use jarred tomato products. Use grass-fed beef, which is high in essential fatty acids (omega-3’s) and free from hormones and antibiotics. Use high quality cheese. If you don’t use organic ingredients, at least make sure you are not consuming anything artificial or may contain herbicides, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics or genetically modified ingredients.

The same goes with any “once-in-awhile” food choice that is not exactly the healthiest.

Remember, food is to be enjoyed, but not over-consumed. If you are, for the most part, healthy and not suffering from a major disease, it’s OK to indulge once-in-awhile. It’s good for a sense of well-being. Since you may not eat this “bad” food very often, make it really good. I always say, if it doesn’t taste really good, then it is not worth it (“it” could be my stomach space, or extra calories, sugar, fat, etc.). Another example is popcorn. Pop it on the stove in high quality oil and put real butter and sea salt on it. Don’t eat that microwave garbage that’s over-salted and contains artificial stuff that your body doesn’t know what to do with. You’ll be amazed at how much better it tastes! If you want a dessert, don’t eat cake made with gmo high frutose corn syrup, transfat and artificial crap. Make your own cake with real, whole ingredients. Or, have an organic blueberry pie, or a hot-fudge sundae made with organic vanilla bean ice cream, organic hot fudge, and organic whipped cream.

We’re all human and we want to indulge. So at least do it right.

Go Do It

Now go give yourself a treat and be “bad.” Indulge without guilt. You deserve it. Just do it right with REAL, whole, good tasting, ingredients. And as I said earlier in so many words, eat good “bad” stuff.

“You Paid $21 for Only Three Pieces of Produce?!”

I normally do the grocery shopping when it comes to produce. But the other day, my other half did the honors. And I was very thankful that he did. He brought home some really nice fruit and vegetables. However, some of his choices caught my eye, as they seemed out-of-season. So I browsed the sales receipt. And low and behold, there were a few high numbers that jumped out at me.

Grapes, cauliflower and pineapple were the culprits. The grapes were $7, the cauliflower was $6, and the pineapple was $8. How crazy is that? I broke out an earlier receipt to make sure that wasn’t “the norm.” And sure enough, it wasn’t. On the previous receipt, I paid $1.96 for grapes, $1.50 for cauliflower, and $2.99 for the pineapple. I paid, roughly six dollars for the same items that he paid twenty-one dollars. Wow! What a difference!

Tips for Buying Organic Produce

Buying organic food can be more expensive than commercially grown food, but it doesn’t have to be outrageous. The key is to be vigilant and look at the prices CAREFULLY, especially if sold by the pound. It’s all about supply and demand. And since there is less organic than commercially grown produce, and the demand keeps going up, the prices are more volatile and can change dramatically, as demonstrated in my story. Also, it’s usually better to buy what is in season and, if possible, grown locally. Finally, keep a look out for sales and take advantage of them. It’s always better to have more than one source for your organic produce as well (such as CSA’s, farmer’s markets, local markets, specialty or health food stores, wholesale clubs).

Is It Worth Paying More for Organic Food?

To an extent, yes. The main reason I buy organic produce is to avoid poisons such as pesticides and herbicides. And now that I have a child, I try to only feed her organic food. Who knows what those GMO’s and pesticides do to a developing baby? What really scares me are the genetically modified foods (GM or GMO), even though those are not usually found in fresh produce (except Hawiian Papaya and Sweet Corn). If you care about your health, you should care what you are eating. But I don’t think one should have to give up cable TV in order to eat organic. It just takes more time and effort to make it affordable. Which means have several sources; look at prices carefully; buy what’s in season and buy wisely.

Become Aware: Try this Experiment

Choose an organic fruit or vegetable and “follow” it’s price throughout the year. Notice how much it fluctuates. See where it hits its peak and when it is at its cheapest and compare the price at different stores or sources. It will open your eyes to how much the price can fluctuate so you won’t pay $7 for a vegetable that you paid a $1.50 at an earlier time.

The Queen

I was watching the HBO Series, True Blood, the other night when a comment was made by one of the age-old vampires that struck a nerve. The “Queen” vampire was touting on one of her many humans in her “collection,” as if she was speaking of a fine wine. She was offering him, or more so, his blood, to another vampire and said something along the lines of, “You must try this Latvian boy. He tastes how humans used to taste before the industrial age” or something like that. I know I put quotes on that — but really, don’t quote me. Her comment made me wonder how a human today would compare with a human from 200 or more years ago if lab studies were done on blood and tissue for contaminants and environmental pollutants. Or maybe I should just say, if a human was tested for “unnatural ingredients.”

Grand Scale Pollution — the Obvious

So when I started thinking about it, the large-scale environmental pollutants that contaminate the air, earth, and water, came to mind first — such things as manufacturing waste, vehicle and factory emissions, etc., that assault us from the outside in. Meaning, we breathe in the polluted air, swim in contaminated water, and have contact with dirty soil (dirty dirt?). From there, I kept going down the funnel from the larger scale pollutants, to the more intimate personal artificial substances.

Hidden Large-Scale Pollution

Now, let’s consider the large scale pollution that is not so obvious: water and food that is laden with chemicals and waste, which we consume. Run-off from commercial and factory farms (one of the worst offenders), manufacturing facilities, and our streets, put such things as herbicides, oil, gasoline, pesticides, fertilizers, bio-waste (crap, et al) and many chemicals, that only a chemist would fully understand, in our drinking water and food supply. So in short, we eat and drink this horrible stuff — usually, unknowingly. Hey, out-of-sight-out-of-mind, right? To take advantage of a pun opportunity, it is in our mind, well, our brain, more accurately — and body… literally (litter-ally? Sorry. I couldn’t help myself). But let’s move on.

Chemicals In Our Personal Environment

Then there are the contaminants that we, ourselves, choose to add into our personal environments: the lawn fertilizer, the weed killer, the bug spray, the house cleaning products, the laundry detergent… yadda, yadda, yadda. And, FINALLY, the last of the distasteful offenders comes from all the chemicals in our personal products that we use: shampoo, conditioner, body wash, soap, powder, deodorant, facial cleansers, toothpaste, body lotions, make-up, and for many people, a whole SERIES of solutions that they chronologically put on their faces in order to do SOMETHING to their skin (stop acne, stop aging, miraculously transform them into a 20-year-old, etc). But, wait! I forgot, there’s MORE!

The Stuff We Know is Bad and Do It Anyway

What about the hoard of detrimental stuff we choose to put IN our bodies: drugs, tobacco, alcohol, artificial flavors, sweeteners, colors, preservatives… I’ll let you finish this part on your own.

We’re Like Feedlot Cows

To concur with the True Blood vampire queen, humans nowadays are not like how we used to be. We are no longer “organically grown” like our ancestors and have become tainted by the industrial age. We have become a “commercially-grown” lot, chemical-ized like a feedlot cow. And if there were age-old vampires today using wine as an analogy to rate blood, we would be equivalent to that of a cheap boxed wine. Or, as a friend once called it, “chateau de carton.” Can you say, “bad taste?”

It’s Time to Get “Clean”

I leave you with this. Take note of what YOU can do to improve your environment, your health, yourself. Ask yourself what can you change to eliminate or reduce toxins in your surroundings and in your body. Maybe we can “upgrade” our industrialized bodies to a status of, at least, a house chardonnay.