Danger. "Eat home-made"

I know there is a lot of sugar, salt, fat, other 'hard-to-pronounce' adulterations and foreign objects in North American food.

However, I feel I can't go far wrong when eating my wife's home-made soup.

Yup, I can live on the stuff.

Link to Danger. Sugar.

PS I'm reading Ch. 1 of Sugar Blues (from 1975) and already would recommend it to others. Do you like rummaging through used book stores?

Photos by GH

Letter to the Editor: Nutritionist slags salad, then wrestled to the ground

Celebrity nutritionist Rehan Jalali said some positive things recently, like feast on oatmeal, dates and sweet potatoes to help you shape up before slipping into your summer swimwear - then he goofed up.

He said, among other things, forget about salads.

“Contrary to popular belief but calorie-filled dressings and croutons make salads a bad choice. Plus the nutritional value of lettuce and tomatoes is negligible.”

Is the guy a maroon? [click here for full article]

Slag salads, just before gardening season perks up?

Glynn Leyshon, former wrestler, coach at the University of Western Ontario and neighbour in Old North, caught wind:

“Anyone who knows food realizes that that tomatoes are loaded with food value including fibre, at least seven minerals and seven vitamins. There is even a modicum of protein and virtually no fat.” [letter to the editor, London Free Press]

In my opinion, Jalali missed a golden opportunity.

Just as one can add currants, cranberries, bran, walnuts, raisins, dried apricots, Red River cereal etc. to oatmeal, to make it a modern-day nutrient delivery system (compared to a refined sugar delivery system like most cereals), one can add tomatoes (hopefully, homegrown) and hundreds of other goodies to salad in place of the unhealthy dressings, croutons and bacon bits that have become some people’s favourite waist expanders.

Celebrity nutritionist - shape up.

***

Ever heard of tuna salad? That's my favourite.

What do you add to your salad?

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Grocery Store Blues: ‘Tis the season to make oatmeal fa-la-la-la-la

On Sunday morning, the first day of autumn, and the day after my son’s wedding, several family members and friends met at Hellen’s Diner for breakfast.

(It’s off Highway 35 near Fenelon Falls. Ask me for directions).

A few leaves were turning colour and I caught the smell of oatmeal in the outside air.


Once inside the diner I noticed our group dominated the small space.

I was greeted nervously.

“How many more are coming?” Hellen asked, wide-eyed.

“Maybe a few more, but we’re all easy to get along with.”

Normally, I’d order a good-sized and meatless breakfast but fall and winter are my oatmeal seasons.

Unfortunately, oats weren’t on the menu, and because I seldom eat manufactured cereals (one reason; 6 types of sugar in Kellogg's Muslix) I instead ordered and enjoyed two eggs, beans and toast.

This week I’ll walk over to Quarter Master in the Village to pick up bulk breakfast supplies for the next few months; rolled oats, dried currants, cranberries, raisins, cornmeal, cream of wheat, bran, almonds and walnuts.

I like to make oatmeal you can stand on.

Is it on your menu?

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Sugar in the Morning: PC white grape juice slams cranberry cocktail

News update:

I moaned and groaned something fierce yesterday about the amount of sugar that was in my bottle of cranberry cocktail.

And well I should. 35 grams of sugar in a 250 ml serving (63 per 450 ml bottle) is way out of line.

Farther still out of line is the PC white grape juice I just had with my lunch. (I diluted it with lottsa tap water).


37 grams of sugar per 250 ml serving or 269 grams per bottle (1.82 L).

We have a winna!!

Can you beat that?

[Click here for yesterday’s posts and moans and groans]

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Live Small and Prosper: The latest reason for practicing restraint out-shadows all others

I said in my most recent column that a quick look at the four main reasons grain prices are on the rise will reveal that our personal fingerprints are all over them.

One reason, greater meat consumption globally, is directly related to the beef, chicken and pork found in our refrigerators and freezers and since summer is approaching and big BBQs sit on 99.99999% of the back decks in North America I thought it would be a good time for us to start showing some restraint in our eating habits.


[Over-consumption is like planting a tree in concrete - GH]

There are many good reasons:

The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people - more than the entire population of the planet. [The Virtuous Consumer by Leslie Garrett]

Eighty per cent of agricultural land in the US is used to raise animals for food. [Ibid]

Less meat on the plate equals more crops for people and/or more land for Mother Nature. [Me]

A vegetarian diet is credited for providing a longer life with reduced risk of such diseases as diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and some cancers. [The Virtuous Consumer - link to Leslie's personal website]

The animals live longer too and their numbers would decrease to more natural levels. [Me]

There is an even better reason to eat less meat.

It takes less effort than leaving the car at home to conserve fuel (our insatiable thirst for fossil fuels is another reason grain prices are on the rise) and we need an easy way to practice restraint over and over and over again until we get really really good at it so we’ll be ready for the hard hard times when they come.

I mean, if we can give up cheeseburgers we can certainly take public transit.

If we can say no to a tenderloin we can, with new internal fortitude, walk to the variety store for smokes and a bag of chips.

If we can eat fewer chicken wings and more beans and brussel sprouts - my gosh, hold onto your hats - we’ll find the strength to trade in the monster pickup for an electric scooter. Yowwzzah.

Practice does make perfect.

[Did you know that climate change will lead to fashion faupas? It surely will. Visit Four Mugs]

Book Review: Like to Eat? The Omnivore’s Dilemma a ‘must read’

I’m reading three books at the same time, four if I count the one I peek at during TV commercials that concerns Bob Dylan’s big song, Like a Rolling Stone, and though The Little Green Handbook by R. Neilsen is loaded with amazing facts, figures and charts [U.S. military budget is 42 % of gov’t spending and rising, education is less than 7%] I spend most of my time with my nose in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

I’m on page 219, slightly over halfway through the very readable text, and getting an alarming and long-overdue education about our continent’s over-reliance on corn and industrial-sized, fossil-fuel-driven farming practices that debase humans, animals and our ecological surroundings. [And it’s true. If factory farms had glass walls many of us would never eat beef, pork or chicken again.]

But I’m also learning about how farming can be a very innovative, rewarding and environmentally friendly vocation or life.


For example, author Michael Pollan spends time on a family farm that cultivates grasses, mainly dependent on free sunlight, that in turn support the healthy growth of a wide variety of animals and by-products.

Chickens team up with cows to manage the grass and replenish the soil, chickens and rabbits team up to provide a unique cash crop, turkeys keep grape vines in tip-top shape, pigs turn cow patties and grass into free, rich compost, and together with a farmer who knows more about plants and animals than 20 factory farmers put together forms an enterprise that rewards the land rather than kills it.

Read the following quote and tell me where the author was at the time - a factory farm or grass farm.

“Unfolding here before us, I realized, was a most impressive form of alchemy: cow patties in the process of being transformed into exceptionally tasty eggs.”

I recommend the book highly to anyone who wants to eat healthy food and leave the air, water and land in good condition for future generations.

[Check Recommended Reading in the right hand panel for a link to an even better book review and go to Motorcycle Miles to read a bit about my next adventure.]

Really, I’m not 100% juiced but I wanna be

Ever since reading Sugar Blues by William Dufty several years ago I banned soda pop from my diet.

Get offa my porch, stop your knockin’, I say. Thou shalt not cross my lips.

I don’t drink Coca-Cola, Pepsi or Dr. What’s-his-name because even though I run on a treadmill and ride a recumbent bike 3 - 4 times per week I have trouble keeping my love handles down to the size of small pillows.

Besides, one beer or can or Guinness before supper is surely enough sugary drink for one day.


[I repeat: This is not me. It's definitely some other guy.]

“Since 1985, an American’s annual consumption of high-fructose-corn-syrup has gone from 45 to 66 pounds. You might think that this growth would have been offset by a decline in sugar consumption, since HFCS often replaces sugar, but that didn’t happen: During the same period our consumption of refined sugar actually went up by five pounds.”

“What this means is that we’re eating and drinking all that HFCS on top of the sugars we were already consuming. In fact, since 1985 our consumption of all added sugars - cane, beet, HFCS, honey, maple syrup, whatever - has climbed from 128 pounds to 158 pounds per person.” pg. 104, The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Now, I do like to drink real fruit juices but they’re getting squeezed off grocery store shelves by cocktails and blends and stuff that is a very poor excuse to cram more HFCS down my throat. (We’re buried in cheap corn, so get used to HFCS being added to just about everything we eat and drink.)

So, help. What’s a poor boy to do?

I want good juice in the fridge. What’s best?