A little booklet thanking Ron's mom for saving our Ciao furbaby.

When Ciao came down with crystals a month ago, Ron's mom put her credit card on the line and saved our little guy's life. I can't convey how much gratitude I have for this woman's kindness. As a way of saying thank you, I created this little booklet to send to her. She has scaled down a lot and I wanted her to know how much I appreciated her and to give her a little momento that she can keep in her pocket for when she misses family.

I found a tutorial on the internet (Stumbleupon) that showed me how to cut a sheet of scrapbooking paper so that it folds down into this little 3 x 3 booklet.

I picked out a bunch of photos that I wanted to add and had them reduced and printed on regular paper.

I have a lot of scrapbooking doodads, I collect them all the time.

Not bad! That's my handsome Ron... whatta man...

Ron loves summertime and cemeteries, old Churches too.

 Mt. Baker is in the background if you look closely. The other photos shows Ron at the top of the stairs on the walking route back to the tiny town of Portofino, Italy.

What can I say?

The last page, with my fave pic of Ciao and Grace, both of them laying across the top of the chair with both arms and legs hanging down.

The little booklet closed, in Alva's favourite colours of purple and red, like the Red Hat ladies, of which she's a member.

Bella likes it too.

The little book laid out.

I wanted to make a bit of a documentary of it before I popped it into the mail tomorrow. If Bonnie can show this to Alva before she gets it, she might be miffed. LOL. But Alva's not exactly what could be considered 'user friendly', so I suspect it will be cool.

Thanks for enjoying.

Afterwards:

My buddy Tanis came over for dinner tonite and she made a little book too. So cute! (No photos of it tho unless she takes it, she made hers for her mom. :)

What is BPA and why should it have my attention?

There is a chemical that is in a lot of the things we use daily that is another estrogen mimicker and has connections to various cancers. The chemical I'm talking about it BPA...   The initials are short for bisphenol-A. It is used as a softener to make plastic pliable or harden it (as in the baby bottles that the Canadian Govt' banned from the country in 2006 because of BPAs) and up till now, I was aware that it was in Crocs, Holey Soles shoes, water bottles, supermarket shopping bags and sex toys to name a vast spectrum of places we can find it.

What I didn't know up until recently is that it is also hiding in another place. While there are minute traces of this horrendous substance in these items I listed, it's mind boggling to find out that there is one place where there a thousand times more of the stuff. Heat treated receipts are the culprit. Easily half the receipts you handle are stockpiling a chemical in your body that is quietly undermining your health and you dont even know it.

Cashiers handle them all day. Not only are clerks in stores dealing with the carcinogens contained in the gasses that have inundated the clothes in the ready to wear industry that they must unpack to place on hangers for sale, (a plethora of carcinogenic chemicals that come under the category of 'Mildew retardant' as the huge cargo ships bring the stock from the free trade zones of the far east), but now they must find out that for their minimum wage job that is not even a living wage, they are dealing with an even more intrusive element that has every indication it will be responsible for the shortening of those very lives they are struggling to maintain.

These days, I am working to help a friend at tax time and am learning the ropes about bookkeeping. All day long as I work for this friend, I handle receipts. I realize what dire dangers I am doing to myself yet, instead of finding rubber/latex gloves to protect myself, I act as if I can't see it, it must not be there.

This is a discovery so heinous that pregnant women are now being warned that handling ONE receipt puts her foetus at risk and to wash her hands as well as keep her receipts encased in a ziplock (plastic!) bag.

I am including a few links at the end of this warning so that if I don't have you convinced, perhaps authors with the correct credentials will succeed where I've failed.

I'm not trying to be Chicken Little, all 'sky is falling!' about things. I believe that knowledge is power and with understanding comes the responsibility to share the information with others. I don't live in fear of the HFCS in food today, I avoid it when at all possible. I won't live in fear of this either, but I WILL become less stupid about my exposure to it.

BPAs are in the plastic tupperware that we put our hot food in. This causes the plastic to degrade, the heat creates an oil to extrude from the plastic over time and that oil is laden with BPAs. If you nuke your food in plastic, you are ingesting BPA's.

I remember my time in university, in the cafeteria, lined up waiting for my food,  looking through the pass window into the kitchen where students prepare food and seeing them use yogurt containers for containing hot butter. Back then, I had to wonder where people got so lackadaisical about accepting plastic as being harmless when in reality, it is far from it.

In one article, John Warner, a prof teaching green chemistry, explains.

'When people talk about polycarbonate bottles, they talk about nanogram quantities of BPA [leaching out],” Warner observes. “The average cash register receipt that's out there and uses the BPA technology will have 60 to 100 milligrams of free BPA.” By free, he explains, it’s not bound into a polymer, like the BPA in polycarbonates. It’s just the individual molecules loose and ready for uptake.

As such, he argues, when it comes to BPA in the urban environment, “the biggest exposures, in my opinion, will be these cash register receipts.” Once on the fingers, BPA can be transferred to foods. And keep in mind, he adds, some hormones — like estrogen in certain birth-control formulations — are delivered through the skin by controlled-release patches. So, he argues, estrogen mimics like BPA might similarly enter the skin.
Moreover, there are all kinds of materials(on and) in the skin that might selectively degrade or alter this hormone imposter as it passes through.' (1)

How often have I sat at the desk over the past two weeks and eaten something in the midst of recording the endless stream of receipts? So now, I'm eating BPA as well as getting it into my bloodstream through my fingers. Good to know!

Another article from the CBC News desk claims:
"It's a concern that retail workers who are handling receipts all day long would be exposed to higher amounts.
According to the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S., 93 per cent of Americans over the age of six have BPA in their bodies. People working in the retail sector had 30 per cent more BPA on average than other Americans.
The EWG recommends people minimize the number of thermal receipts they collect at retail outlets ATMs and other machines where possible."(2)

Here is another quote from an article, the link of which I'm posting at the bottom as well.

'Another recent study out of Harvard University found that, out of 389 pregnant women, those with the highest BPA levels in their bodies worked as cashiers. The findings are disturbing, considering that a growing body of evidence suggests that BPA does most of its damage to the reproductive system when babies are exposed in utero.' (3)

'Thermal cash-register receipts are the norm now, and many of them are coated with high levels of BPA. Researchers of this new study, published in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, found BPA transferred from paper the skin after handling a receipt for just a few seconds. And the longer the hands went unwashed afterwards, the more researchers say was absorbed through the skin into the body. (Two hours after handing a receipt, nearly 75 percent of the BPA on the skin was gone, leading researchers to believe it was absorbed.) Interestingly, researchers found that when hands were greasy from body oils or other moisturizers, BPA transferred from receipt to skin was 10 times higher.' (3)

' until manufacturers collectively stop using it in food cans and packaging and stores stop issuing BPA-laced cash-register receipts we'll likely continue to hear about its links to infertility, sperm damage, heart disease, obesity, and other problems.' (3)


 Not only do all thermal receipts look alike, there is no way yet to know if the receipt you are holding is or isn't inundated with BPA. So what can you do to limit or avoid your exposure?

I strive to write a solution-based blog, not just problem-oriented. Having said that, here are some steps you can take to avoid handling the little bits of paper spit out by cash registers, and what you can do if you DO have to handle them...

• Avoid toxic receipts like the plague. Complicating matters, an Environmental Working Group study found that when looking at chain stores, there doesn't seem to be an across-the-board BPA-free policy. Chains in one region had receipts that contained BPA, while in another, the same chain's franchises did not. When you order a simple coffee or everyday grocery order, you may want to just say you don't want a receipt. At the gas pump and ATM machine (the receipts could contain BPA), you usually have the option to say no thanks to a receipt. If you need to take a receipt, store it in a folder or envelope, not in your wallet.

• Wash with soap and water. Use regular soap and water (avoid toxic antibacterial soaps containing triclosan) after handling receipts. If you're a cashier, push your manager to convert to paperless receipts, and until then, you may want to wear non-vinyl gloves to protect yourself.

• Pressure your favorite retailers to go with paperless receipts. Although BPA-free receipt paper is available, it costs more. If retailers want to save money, they can forgo paper receipts altogether by choosing an electronic receipts system. Implementing paperless receipts gives companies a legit reason to say they're going green. (3)



Today, I handled receipts for four hours straight, came home, lightly washed my hands and made supper. I have no way of knowing if I contaminated the meal with my laziness. I probably did. After reading all this research on the effects of BPA on our bodies, I feel REALLY grimy. I think I'm going to go have a shower now.


Lastly, do not think that by using alcohol based hand sanitizer, you are eradicating the chemical from your skin. Far from it, hand sanitizer SPEEDS up the absorption.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/07/29/con-bpa-receipts.html#ixzz1DLeUWTah


(1)   http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48084/title/Science_%2B_the_Public__Concerned_about_BPA_Check_your_receipts

(2)   http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/07/29/con-bpa-receipts.html


(3)    http://www.rodale.com/bpa-receipts

My Imbolc Posting

I can hear the little fronds of nettle from here, rustling in the otherworld as they line up their molecules for their hasty process in a few weeks. Even though the little patch is cold and littered with flattened grass and decaying leaf litter, there is a throbbing feeling when you take a minute to notice. It is Brigid's heartbeat, turning the wheel  of the year and promising tiny buds that erupt into lifesaving medicines and delicious, nutritious food.

My little netbook is so small that my tummy tries to type all the time, when I rest it on my thighs at a comfortable arm's length. I can be typing for a couple of minutes before I find that the wrinkle of my clothing and the insistence of my belly, have moved the cursor in the body of work and I am making no sense at all. I love my little netbook, its size is usually convenient, however... I should try using a regular keyboard with her when I have a lot of text to upload...

I am watching the world closely these days, as I see Australia dealing with the dangers of cyclones that threaten to be bigger than anything they've ever seen before. I have people on that side of the world that matter to me and it is unnerving to be so far away. I would really be stressed if I couldn't find out more online. When I searched for info, I found satelite maps, radar maps, web cams and on the spot postings from people that really brought me to feeling like I had a handle on the pulse of what was going on. I am relieved it wasn't the storm of the century after all. The information is still coming in as there have been power cuts in the northwestern areas of Queensland as to storm damage, and there is devastation in some regions, but nowhere near what officials had been dreading.

Hop around the planet to Egypt and Mubarak has apparently gotten on the entire country's last nerve, with street protests the like of which has never been seen before. Unrest, protest, death and the possibility of a democratic Egypt are all in the balance right now, and I watch with bated breath as that unfolds, my prayers with the innocent people there, too.

Bringing it home, our family is in turmoil. My sweetheart, Ron has a dear old mom who isn't doing so well. Her gruff exterior hides a core that is growing increasingly more defensive and fearful about what is to come as her body has started to show signs of wear and tear. The ever-present responsibility of my Ron, who is the best son imaginable is crushing but he has so much more on his shoulders than the needs of an 82 year old woman. A 40+ year history of soldiering is coming to an end and he has bureaucratic departments of all manner feverishly pulling all the necessary paperwork together that will facilitate his retirement, pensions, prospective reeducation and other related items.

We are also looking at moving in a couple of months, larger digs that will release us from the demon of the storage place, that sucks money from us monthly.

I have started working on the Ragology, the combined collection of works gathered over 10 years of the Moonwit Collective, the beginning of which was over 20 years ago, when there was little menstrual education to be had. For those of you who aren't aware of this, Moonwit is the acronym for Meeting Our Own Needs With Imagination and Tenacity, and is the name of a collective I created in the late '80s. I was selling washable cloth menstrual pads at fairs, events, through magazine ads and had been noticing that my pad customers were a very unique demographic that caused me to want to collect them. I didn't just want to be in touch with them during a transaction, I saw that they were collectively a treasure trove of wisdom, sustainable understanding and permaculture education that it would be wise to learn from. At the time, people would pass me information and artwork, poetry, stories, articles until I had a milkcrate full and finally, I compiled it all into a single sheet newsletter. The subscribers to this little sheet, affectionately called 'An irregular periodical - The Rag', were my customers. I had figured out how to collect them!

In the days before the world wide web and computers, MW grew through the use of what technology was available at the time. Photocopiers, typewriters, an old gramma sewing machine. The second issue was more sophisticated, and by the time MW grew to 700 subscribers and the editorial team consisted of many amazing people, we had a 36 page, full size magazine style underground 'zine that targeted an incredible market of conscious people.

Moonwit became too much for me as parenting, then my degree and further foster parenting took over my life. I trend watched the evolution of the alternative menstrual / wise woman/ woman's wisdom industry as it developed on the internet and have grown very heartened to see the leaps and bounds this kind of education has taken by incredible inspiring women who have found a way to help women facilitate the shifts they need in order to have a more easily managed womanhood.


Now, I have my degree behind me yet business doesn't appreciate an educated crone. I rest on laurels that widen by the day. What's wrong with this picture? I have decided that there is indeed a market for the Rag in all it's forms, the individual sheets and the anthology that I am starting to bundle up into a fun compilation of old and new.

Ragology is the tentative name for the project, and it will contain the works of all 14 issues of the Rag, plus back story and updates about involved members, kids that were little at the time, and anecdotes about my process of creating the Rag uneducated, then gaining a Woman's studies and First Nations studies perspective and revisiting the body of work I created two decades ago to reflect on those observations as well. It will have my works in it and with permission, that of others. Artwork that is shocking and fierce, gorgeous, funny and hersterically appropriate will adorn the pages as will the incredible poetry of our former Moonwit Mavens. Even the Guy's Eye will be represented as updates and back story from that may be forthcoming as well.

I know that we are all bearing our burdens. Family, health, finance, faith problems abound for everyone, and I don't mean to complain. When I bring up my struggles, its not for sympathy, but for a sense of the timing of my life, maybe even a bit of a warning about how things could change drastically any moment and share that its good to know in case I fall off the radar for a few days.

The global warming problem is starting to become apparent as extreme weather has become a part of our daily news fare. The economic situation has become so out of whack in many parts of the world that the ripples begin to affect our lives here and I watch a military cutting the bones and brains out of its promises to protect. I see a church through Ron's involvement, that is splintered, kneecapped and treated like a product rather than a living, breathing community of parishioners.  I am watching my kids go through their challenges, each one as critical to their future as the next. Some are excelling, some are in a crash course of adulthood, some are licking their wounds and some are still off on their own tangents, I'm sure that eventually they will surface again.

Just before Xmas, my boy cat Ciao got crystals backing up his urethra and it cost Ron's mom a fortune as she stepped forward to help save his little furry behind. I can't believe how much vets cost these days! That's just the icing on the cake.

My ramble is done and I'm getting off the soapbox now. I'll leave you with a fun little video that I found by Old Spice. (I know, parfum/fragrance is not a good thing and its packed with it, but its a funny commercial...) and the actor...well... he's... *fans self* kinda tasty.

http://www.oldspice.com/videos/video/34/questions/

Hope your Imbolc is a happy one. Mine consists of memories aplenty as I anthologize The Rag, set up new altars for spring and generally try to be the best spider in the middle I can be. Do share what you're up to!

Feminism rears its head as I observe a topsy turvy world around me

 When the world you live in shifts from what you understand to something very wrong, its like being Alice in the Looking Glass. This is the story of a very strange Sunday for this pagan shamanic feminist woman.

The other day, for the first time in a very long time, I let myself be talked into going to someone's church. It is described as somewhat nontraditional/ charismatic, held in a hall here in Victoria. The person who invited us will remain nameless, but she is a trusted, respected friend, so there was no question that this might indeed be a community of faithful who it might be enjoyable to associate with and we arrived with open hearts and minds.

We were a little late and the show was already in operation with a hula clad woman up front on the mike singing along with the words on the screen, church karaoke. Who knew? There was an ensemble of Hawaiian clad people up front, a choir of sorts who sang along with her and the congregation, sitting around large round tables with coffee cups and muffins in front of them, joined in. After this we were led on a gentle guided meditation, so far so good.


Then the preacher invited a woman up to the mike and sat next to her, proceeding to introduce and then interview her in a surreal spotlight, with his Hawaiian shirt and her sarong very dissonant when the topic was revealled. The woman explained how she had been thrown into a Satanic ritual cult when she was a baby and was sexually ritualized from her earliest memory. Remember now, this is being spoken in a quiet room of about 100 men, women and children. Then the priest asks 'And what exactly did you experience and when is your earliest memory?' to which the woman starts spending the next ten minutes describing events that parallel the sensational 1970's Satanic Ritual themed book, 'Michelle Remembers', that I remember reading as a young teen. I was very uncomfortable as this whole dynamic was wrong on so many levels. That she was describing physical sexual acts in front of children was the least. How was this considered to be 'church worthy'? If the information was indeed true, which I have my doubts about, given my long career with women in need/crisis, and this public announcement was part of her healing, then surely she would be better off announcing it to a closed group of trusted parishioners and not the public Sunday drop in? How was this leadership of responsibility to the congregation?


My mind boggles with the notion that if I had kids there and they were subjected to this kind of dialogue, I would not have sat there like the 100 others and continued to listen as the woman went on and on, the priest goading and coaxing her to reveal more.  It is not a Sunday church meeting's right to take away the innocence of the younger parishioners, what IS IT about Churches that thinks it has the right to blindside their meek followers like that?


We left before they got any further. We went to the pub, had brunch and I drowned the image that lingered in my psyche by that poor, coopted, meek woman on the church's stage, who had regailed us all with the description of her earliest sexual abuse memory, of being forced to give head to two men who she woke up in her crib with at the age of 9 months. I drowned it behind several drinks and when that didn't help, I added tequila to the mix, had my hubby drive me home, and I slept it off.


Can anyone blame me?

Why did those people all just sit there and listen like it was perfectly acceptable? The incongruity of the hawaiian theme that week was just so strange too. That this woman actually participated in dressing for the theme even though she knew that she was going to be publically humiliated eventually that morning boggles my mind. The guided meditation was a 'virtual cruise' to a place of the heart, using all manner of cruise ship vernacular, assuming that the congregation was experienced with it, although I could see a room full of for the most part, lower middle class white/ elderly poor / handicapped  people, most of who would not likely know what a cruise was like. The preacher spoke at length about ritual sexual abuse as if it were credible, accepted, and that all who were attending understood the jargon he used. He gave a source referring to the esteemed expert somebody or other, and continued to tell his audience what to believe about this farcical topic.

There were penises and rape and prostitution bandied about on the stage for the 15 minutes we tolerated it, not believing our ears and too 'deer in the headlights' to move. Maybe that was it, it was the shock of the psychological blind side that froze us to our seats.

We live in incongruous times. My friend texted hubby and apologized. I don't believe an apology is necessary as she had no way of knowing this was going to happen. When we met later, I was not able to open the topic with her. I suppose there are long standing loyalties with the congregation that confuse the issue for her. I don't know what I would feel in her place.

I can't believe that I didn't stand up and stop the proceedings by saying 'This is wrong.' and that I sat there like the rest of the room and let it continue. I guess walking out was enough for me to summon at the moment. I can't believe that there were no complaints, no hue and cry either. It just boggles my mind.



Ironically, the next day, I read an article in here (internet) about 'Deploying Feminism' and once again, I am jangled awake as a feminist, with another affront to my sensibilities of gender imbalance, human rights offenses and discordance. Using the war machine's patriarchal language to describe a manner of utilizing feminist concepts set my red flags off  as much as the statement ' fellow feminists' does.  I am once again reminded that  like Alice in the Looking Glass, we live in a very strange world.

The King's Speech... my buh buh buh blog on it.

My sweetheart took me to lunch and a movie today and we went to see 'The King's Speech' with Collin Firth. When we arrived at the theatre, I saw a fairly official younger dude in a fleece vest with the theatre's logo on it and I thought immediately that he must be a manager or something. When we took our seats in the viewing room, halfway through the obnoxious trailers and ads, they turned off the volume and as we looked around to identify why, a voice from the front of the room began speaking to the audience and I saw that it was the official guy I'd noticed earlier.

And then he said something that got me thinking. He said 'Considering the demographics of this movie are so different from who regularily attends movie theatres, this chain of theatres has decided to use the modern technologies of live streaming digital media to bring the Bolshoi Ballet to the screen 'LIVE', as well as orchestras and operas. Not only that, but the chain is going to be having a monthly series of old classics, remastered for today, two showings a month.' To think that folks in upper office are actually paying attention to realities as they shift. Very interesting...

The movie was amazing and thoughtful and all the actors did a remarkable job. It was fast paced and photographically breathtaking, a real class act. The entertaining storyline showed a time of history we have only read about. The blustery role of Churchill interspersed with real clips of Hitler, the Queen, the corgis, the humour and the love were all juxtaposed by the terse manner of the Cardinal and the Duke's father with the shadow of impending war looming overall. It made me think about how close I had come to being born during wartime, arriving only 8 years after the end of WW2. How little 8 years is to me now, how people who were kids during Y2K are thinking of that milestone as being so long ago when I feel like I just blinked and only 11 years had whizzed by...The topic of child abuse is thinly veiled with 'Bertie', the future heir, incapable of speaking publically. His wife sought help in the form of an irreverant and lovable speech therapist, 'Lionel', to help him with his problem and the hilarity ensues forthwith.

I want everyone to know that if you go to Kelsey's for a meal before the movie and you tell your waiter/tress, you will get a coupon so your tickets to the movie will be only $6!!!  Such a deal, and Kelsey's is a pretty good eatery as those places go.

At the end of the movie, we stood up after the credits and put on our coats as it had been pouring torrentially when we got there and Ron says to me 'Take a second and look at the audience' and I looked up from our front and centre location to see that the entire theatre was full of grey/silver heads. Not only were we the aging baby boomers I am always warning about the snowball coming at us represented by the demographic shift of age/population etc, but these were the educated. The aware, the conscious elders as reflected by the initial announcement by the theatre's manager, who let us know that the theatre chain was not only recognizing that they had attracted a different group of viewers with this intelligent movie, but that they want those people to be recognized as having more than the average intelligence and that the chain is going to do this by showing products that address the need of the intellectual as well as the mindnumbed sheeple.

All in all, a most excellent afternoon.

We stopped for produce and catfood on the way home and then of course, a stop at the Tude for a 6 pack of cold ones... We're ready to bring the deluge inside.

As I write, Ron naps and I ponder my next step... oh yeah... pork ribs and huge salad...

Go see 'The King's Speech', you'll be glad you di di di did.

HFCS-Innocent Sweetener or Evil Contributor to International Obesity Epidemic?

HFCS comes under my curious yet shrewd gaze

   As a 50 something woman with bad knees, tender kidneys and swollen feet often, I am avidly researching anything that has to do with food, cravings, incomplete digestion etc. I have been continuously perplexed by my edema because as a rule, I eat healthy. In my deductive process, I have been to western doctors who tell me that my weight gain is to be expected. It is the relative outcome to the amount of calories that I take in, doh! At the same time, I have a great rapport with an eastern medicine doctor who gives me roots to simmer and make tea out of, which improves my liver function as he’s identified that my liver is working much harder than it should.

     With my recent discovery of sugar additives becoming more prevalent in our food, this is all starting to make more sense.

     Remember that I am a shrewd shopper who rarely if ever brings home snacks, baked goods, candy, pop or other such groceries that I deem pretty useless. Although my life is sedentary at present, I’m not taking in that much. I HAVE been caving to cravings around caramel, jelly candies, gummy bears and worms and a decade ago, the International Delight creamer additives led my weight to skyrocket 30 lbs in a single summer. I cut that out based simply on my realizing it was the contributor to my gain, but still I crave Tim Horton’s Ice Caps. I cave to the craving less and less and almost instantly rue the decision as my shoes begin to tighten on my feet.

HFCS interrupts the brain's natural hunger reflex  

     Recently, I discovered an article online that warns about the dangers of ingesting High Fructose Corn Syrup or HFCS. There is a current flood of information in the dieting scene regarding this substance that has been added to our food by agribusiness as a sweetener since the 1970’s that digests in a particular way that leads the body to send the wrong messages to the brain regarding hunger responses.

     Corn and its byproducts is an enormous billion dollar agribusiness that claims to have a solution to world fuel shortages and has contributed to the demise of the sugar cane and beet industry. As corn is produced en masse at the expense of other crops, that which isn’t converted into ethanol for fuel, becomes disposable. A Japanese scientist in 1970 discovered that if you take that remaining corn, attach a fungus to it, then stir in a bacteria and let ferment, the resultant goo becomes a high fructose corn syrup concentrate that is easy to add to regular corn syrup, it is an inexpensive additive, making the corn syrup stretch a lot further and also doing several things as a result.

     One result is that by adding High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) to corn syrup and then that corn syrup to anything, the final product has an extended shelf life, like margarine, which is only one molecule removed from plastic. The HFCS food product becomes suspended in a state that no longer has the same decomposition tendencies. This makes digesting this product a challenge for the human body however.

     Not only does HFCS make things hard to digest, but the liver becomes overworked in the doing of it, where sugars in our body create insulin, HFCS does no such thing. At the same time, tests done recently have shown that continued digestion of HFCS sends false messages to the brain that indicate hunger is present and to add to the evil, those cravings become specific for products that contain… you guessed it, more HFCS.

To be the canary in the proverbial coal mine

     I am beginning to suspect that my errant consumption of HFCS foods is contributing to my weight gain, combined with other factors, such as menopausal body, sedentary lifestyle, access to more food. When I started to become aware of the prevalence of HFCS in our food, it was natural to start looking at ingredients of foods and it was harder, to my amazement, to find food that DIDN’T have it than it was to find foods that did. It is labeled in many different ways and there is no consistent vernacular for it. I suspect the food industry disguises it by not addressing it in its easily recognizable initials. HFCS is present on the label if its posted as ‘liquid sugar’, corn syrup, fructose, glucose as well as corn sugars. That’s not to say all corn syrup has HFCS, but how does one know and wouldn’t it be prudent to conclude that by eliminating all corn syrups, one lowers the risk of exposure to HFCS

     The use of this sugar additive is not new, imagine that you have been ingesting HFCS in greater and greater quantities since 1970. For some of us, that’s our whole lives!

     Canada produces less HFCS and uses less as a result. Europe is vigilant against it and baby food companies avoid it in their baby food, but use it in their juices for adults. What message does that send you?

     I’m beginning to narrow down all the foods that contain HFCS and as strong as my cravings make me yearn for them, my common sense is able to override those pangs because that stuff is contributing to my overall health demise and it’s going to STOP! This is a land of drugged, innocent people who are being fed something, but it's not food

Imagine, experiencing true Hunger for the first time

     So not only do we have to be vigilant about how often our body hits us with messages of hunger, and if it is a physical or emotional hunger, we also must be aware of the things that we ingest which offer up more confusion in that end. Imagine not knowing the most pertinent information that any product with HFCS in it will send us messages to eat when we’re not hungry, and not only that, but to crave a product that will provide our addicted bodies more of the dreaded HFCS it craves. Articles I’ve read online, and I will add the urls to several after this blog, have also stated that to eliminate this scourge to our wellbeing from our diets, we are to expect the body to retaliate as withdrawal symptoms ranging from severe headaches and dizziness, nausea and intense cravings can result.

     HFCS has been introduced to almost everything we eat as a way for the product manufacturers to cut costs on sweetening agents and still claim the sweetener to be ‘natural’ or 100% original. Law suits have drawn attention to the mislabeling involved, causing large food corporations to change the semantics on their labels from stating they are 100% organic, to state similar things that are just as easily confused with wholesome foods. I don’t know how ‘natural’ it is, when I looked at the aerial photos of industrial plants provided in one article, that are 5 square miles of pipes and buildings which is apparently what it takes to turn corn into HFCS with the bacteria and fungal additions.

     By becoming vigilant in our desire to heal from issues contributing to tendencies to use food inappropriately, we must also be consciously critical thinkers when it comes to WHAT kind of foods we are permitting into the sacred temples that are our bodies as well as how much and how often.

     Hard to quell a food obsession by coping with it, with the resultant vigilance bordering on food paranoia thanks to the development of Big Brother food supplier agendas, isn’t it? Don’t even get me started on the genetically modified corns that those Big Brother consortiums are imposing on the world farming industry.

What can we do as the ‘little people’?

How to avoid HFCS in your diet

     The best suggestion of all the articles I read on the perils of ingesting HFCS, stick to the outside aisles of the supermarket. Organic vegetables and fruits grown relatively locally (to avoid the pesticides and slack regulations of Mexican and Chinese providers), breads that are baked locally from actual sugar and not corn sugars, nuts, seeds and grains that will swell or germinate if given half a chance and meats that are not modified with additives, preferably organic. Fruit drinks that claim to be healthy are big culprits of adding HFCS, including Gatorade. As are ice creams that I used to think were the better brands, and every other canned or processed food item. Mayo, salad dressings, Ketchup, 7 up… its across the board.

     Do research online on products and become more pro-active by emailing companies and informing them that you think their decision to sweeten their product with HFCS is in poor regard for their customer base.

One step at a time… one label at a time. Just don’t be a sheeple around what you eat. Know that what we are eating is not nourishing us if its killing us. And THEN watch your urges towards Hunger.

URLS of interest: 

Pro and Con articles on High Fructose Corn Syrup

From Green Magazine: High Fructose Corn Syrup – A Not So Sweet Surprise – Get the rest of the facts! Click here.

From the Washington Post: High Fructose Corn Syrup: Not so sweet for the planet. Click here.

For an intriguing article accompanied by photos of big industry related to the corn industry from the website SPROL: Click here. 

From ‘In the kitchen with Mother Linda’ found online at:  Click here.

Tina Budeweit-Weeks'  philosophy has always been one of self-nurturance and dignity. Tina’s writing is designed to sympathize, support, encourage and inform.

 
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Nancy K's Pass it forward Kindness 2011 Slippers ~ Pom Pom Tute

Before you start reading and enjoying the blog today, I invite you to open a tab separate from this one, put on your speakers and click on this you tube link so that you're enjoying the same music I was as I was putting this together. Happy, ambient music with a bit of a tempo for movement.  Click HERE for tuneage to accompany your blog perusal.

We have one pompom completed and are in the process of the second one. Nancy's slippers need what I call 'Dust Bunny Catchers' and these are made with beautiful odds and ends of yarn I've collected on my rounds. The cardboard rings are cut to provide a bit of an alley for the thread in the middle that ties the pompom together(and for the scissors when you are done spooling the thread on and have to cut the edge all the way around). The crochet hook is for pulling the completed pompom's anchoring threads through the slippers to be tied off.

Can't torment you with just a peek at my up-next and present reading list so here are the books I'm tackling this month.

Ron's other other woman. This was a gift to him from Grace and Dave. He collects angels. His other women are the two motorcycles but that's another blog entry in the future. Suggest names for it, I'm curious what he will pick to name her. The person who comes up with the name he chooses gets a motorcycle ride.

Round and round and round we go, loading up the bobbin.

This is where it can all go so so so wrong. The point of no return. One wrong move and all your good intentions are a pile of 2 inch snips of yarn in a bunch of pretty colours.  But I persevered!

The completed second pompom

The completed slippers bound for Midway in a few days~ Hope Nancy K likes 'em!