You're Eating What?

You're eating What? is a lecture by Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, describing why you should NOT eat Genetically Modified Food.

If you eat anything that comes out of a box from a grocery store, chances are likely that you ARE eating Genetically Modified Food. This stuff isn't safe......

Listen here....

You're eating What?

Don't Put That into Your Mouth

Jeffrey Smith, author of several books including Seeds of Deception, and Genetic Roulette has a great hour long audio that tells you how you can live healthier by not putting any GMO foods in your mouth.

Take your health back into your own hands and listen to this audio!

Don't Put That into Your Mouth!

You won't believe how poisoned the American food supply is!!!! LISTEN NOW!!!!

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

If you are looking for an awesome resource for organic, non-treated, GMO-free heirloom seeds look no further than Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. This company has been around for 11 years and what's amazing is the vision of the owner, Jere Gettle. He is a 28 year old young man who sees the need in preserving our world's diversity in foods. Over the course of 11 years he has grown the number of rare seeds his company is helping to preserve to a very impressive amount. I have also ordered seeds from Fedco Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange this year, but I am very excited about the seeds coming from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They carry many varieties I have never ever seen before (and I check out heirloom seeds all the time).

You may ask yourself why you should consider buying heirloom seeds. After all....seeds at the rack in Walmart are a lot cheaper. Yes, that may be true, but actually when you stop to think... You can save heirloom seeds from year to year, and your only investment is your initial purchase. Which seed is more cost effective? The heirloom seed of course. Plus you get the honor of preserving our diverse food heritage. The cheap seed racks at Walmart really only offer the same old seeds that Mansanto wants you to buy. They don't really want you to know how delicious an heirloom tomato is. Or how flavorful an heirloom bean may taste. If you know this, you might demand that farmers start growing these crops and sell these in the grocery store instead of all the bland veggies that taste like cardboard.

Another reason to grow heirloom crops is for the community it creates. Farmers used to pass their seeds down to the next generation. They would also share with neighbors. Farmers were quite proud of the great qualities they bred into their seeds by careful seed selection year after year. Many communities proudly served their heirloom goods to visitors, and each region was known by the crops they propagated.

Hybrid seeds can only be grown once. The seeds are a result of the cross pollination of two different parent crops. Generally, the off-spring seeds will not run true to type but will rather have traits that are more dominant of one of the parents. Heirloom seeds do not do this. You will get the same off-spring each year. But even more amazing is the fact that careful seed saving year after year can get you a seed that has characteristics you are looking for. For instance if you want a huge tomato....then save the seeds each year from the very biggest tomatoes and after a few seasons your tomatoes will be bigger. If you want an earlier harvest, then save the seeds from the earliest ripening fruit and after a few years your plants will be producing crops a little earlier. Isn't that amazing that God gave us the ability to adapt his seeds by careful gardening without gene altering science?

Why would you want to avoid Genetically Modified Seeds? Well, the only test done in the US for the FDA to make the claim that gene altered food is safe was done by the very company who wants to sell these gene altered seeds and the chemicals that must get sprayed on them for them to work, Monsanto. All other independent companies research has deemed these foods unsafe to eat. Why would the FDA allow this company to sell these seeds then? It's called $$$$$$. The very heads making the legislation in the EPA, FDA, and USDA come from (drumroll please.......) Monsanto. Mansanto and the gov. regulating agencies have had quite the revolving door. Now isn't that a interesting fact?

OK, enough of the rant here. What I really want you to know is that God gave us the ability to enjoy diverse, nutrient dense food through growing and eating heirloom foods and saving our own seeds. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds is a great place to start.

P.S. Jere was a homeschooler and started this business as a teenager! Gotta love that!

Are Organic Foods Really Organic?

You still need to read the labels on food even when they are labelled organic. The government has tried to allow big agri-business to cash in the ever growing organic food market by lessening the organic food requirements. So even though a package may say organic is may only be made with one organic ingredient. Sometimes it is 70% organic. If you want everything inside the package to be organic you have to find 100% organic. nice....huh? I read the label on everything because I want to know if there are any soy, corn, cotton, or canola ingredients in my item and I want those to be organic. Those four items are the highest risk of probably being genetically modified ingredients. The summer of 2008 was the first planting of GM beets as well, so you can except to find sugar as a GM ingredient in most processed food too. The only way to be guaranteed to get non GM sugar is to look for 100% cane sugar or evaporated sugar cane.

Isn't it nice of our government to not think it is wise to at least give a consumer of choice of knowing exactly what is in our food? (heavy dose of sarcasm here!!!)

So, while there are many very good companies out there trying their hardest to provide you and me with alternatives to the big agri-businesses toxic food products, those big businesses are trying to mislead the consumer with very lax labelling laws. The only reason we still have the 100% organic label is due to consumer DEMAND. I wish there was as much consumer demand for labelling GMO foods. I truly believe you are what you eat.

Time For Change

It's time for a few changes in our home and lifestyle. To date....I have always been very much interested in good nutrition and health. From the time I was young I loved to cook and read cookbooks for fun, knowledge and adventure in good eating. I was the first person in the family to eat or make whole wheat bread. Whole wheat pizza dough was a foreign concept, but was relished with delight. In deed, pizza dough was the only beneficial use for whole wheat flour. How was it that I could have been raised on white Sunbeam bread? So I sojourned through life filtering out the education I received in cooking and nutrition and have since adopted new politically incorrect information. The results?

Everything I once believed to be true about nutrition and our government regulating agencies that are "supposed to look out for the welfare of the American people" is untrue. The regulating agencies: EPA, USDA, FDA have revolving doors with the big agri-businesses and the policies that are supposed to be made for the benefit of the health of our country and its people are only policies that benefit big agri-business. So great is the corruption in our government that our country is face with illness in epidemic proportions.

So what kind of changes do I intend to make immediately. For starters.....I will not buy anything that contains high-fructose corn syrup. Almost all the corn produced in this country is Genetically Engineered. That means that the very corn itself is considered a pesticide/herbicide. Why would I want to eat that? All studies performed outside of Monsanto have been discredited and only the Monsanto studies are used by our government regulating GE crops. Since when do we allow a company with a financial gain to do the studies? Outside peer reviews on these studies show that the studies were lax and were not searching for anything negative. Why would they want to prove that GE crops are unsafe? It wouldn't benefit their company. Indeed, most countries now believe that these crops are very unsafe to eat and are watching the people in our country get sicker and sicker like researchers watching rats in a laboratory experiment.

What is a replacement for high-fructose corn syrup? Sugar. But buyer beware......Genetically Engineered beets hit the market this year and since most of the sugar used in processed foods and candies comes from beets you aren't safe there either. Now you have to look for cane sugar....frustrating isn't it. Perhaps the time will come when the entire food supply is contaminated. It will be if people don't do something about it. At least if Genetically Modified foods were labelled we could make a choice, but since our government won't give us that choice, we have to make the only choice we can....go organic.

Soy is the other big no-no. Most of the soy produced in our country is also Genetically Engineered. I wonder how many Americans know that 70% of our food supply is contaminated with Genetically Modified foods. I know I didn't until recently and I just happened to stumble upon this information with a lot of digging......it's not in the mainstream media....that's for sure.

Third.....no rBGH. That means reading labels labels labels and calling companies. I will only buy milk if I know the company can tell me no growth hormones are used. That means all dairy.


So what is a person to do? Well, for me it means taking advantage of buying clubs, co-ops, and other health food stores. I wasn't as fanatical about organics before even though I grew a lot of my own organic food and organics are important to me. But......now I will only buy organic dairy, soy, cottonseed, corn, canola (don't like canola anyway which is another story, but if something is fried in it, it has be organic). That means no more shopping at the local grocery for the most part as most of those do not have any organics (or very little).

The inspiration to each more local fresh foods is increasing with each page I read in Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle book. Investing in good nutrition and good health is much easier than forking out money to doctors and insurance companies for illnesses that probably could have been avoided in the first place. I have always thought "you are what you eat." I totally embrace that statement even more now.

The government is not going to take of you. The only person that is going to take care of you is you. You.....that is the place to begin change. This does change my thinking.....so what do I feed my kids? That means no more go-gurts, animal crackers, happy meals....wow, this is extreme.

I'll be sharing recipes that I build over the course of the next year that will become the nutritional counterpart to these fast convenient unhealthy snacks. I have always loved to cook and I love to cook from scratch (the more extreme sort of "from scratch" that most people can't relate to), but I have relied on quick conveniences like crackers, sweetned yogurt cups, sweetened canned fruits, and such. Now....to find replacements....and fast....the kids are starving!

Stayed tuned.....recipes to follow.