Gluten and Obesity. Weed of Disease. 'Gluten-free' GMO Foods. Death Penalty. Welsh Oil Spill. Dale Earnhardt Sr. ‘Satchmo’s Arrival.

 

For “Foodie Friday”:

Wheat Gluten Newly Confirmed To Promote Weight Gain

“…Considering our previous investigation of the weight-promoting effects of wheat in cattle, discussed in our essay The Dark Side of Wheat, we are not at all surprised by these most recent research findings.  Wheat grain-fed cattle, while much sicker, are always heavier. Grass-fed, on the other hand, are healthier and yet weigh less. Certainly, therefore, the notion that feeding wheat to mammals may increase their weight is not novel.

The time has come for us to recognize that the consumption of grains, that is, the seed form of the cereal grasses, is a evolutionarily novel behavior. While we have been doing so for 10,000-20,000 years, this is only a nanosecond on the scale of biological time. Albeit, culturally, it may seems like forever.

Weight gain, of course, is only one of over 200 adverse health effects associated with wheat consumption. Whereas weight gain often speaks to our vanity, the reality is that cardiovascular health, psychiatric problems, autism, irritable bowel, and many other common health complaints can be tracked back directly to this "king of grains." The time has come, we believe, to give wheat and gluten elimination a good try. After all, only your first-hand experience can determine with any certainty whether these concepts are just theory or truth – for you.”  More at: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/wheat-gluten-newly-confirmed-promote-weight-gain

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So how did wheat, “the staff of life,” become a weed of disease.

“Wheat is not the same today. It has been agriculturally hybrid, not genetically lab engineered over some decades to resist fungus, grow more quickly, and be more pliable for industrial bread baking. As a consequence, 50-60 years ago wheat containing only five percent gluten has become 50 percent gluten today.

Agricultural resources used the hybrid process for wheat to accommodate the baking industry’s mechanical requirements of pliable proteins, leading to the 10-fold increase of wheat’s gluten.

The processed food industry’s concern for production efficiency and perception of consumer demands has focused on the bottom line with the usual disregard to negative health consequences.

Slightly different high speed methods of baking evolved over time. By artificially bleaching flour and adding “improvers” with often toxic additives and mixing the dough violently, loaves of bread could be baked, cooled, and packaged within a few, short hours. Cheap, unhealthy foods for many with massive profits for a few.

This is beginning to change with measures that seem to offset gluten’s damage for some. For example, Whole Foods has their own bakery providing fresh breads daily without bromides, which can displace the thyroid gland’s iodine contents and create hypothyroidism.

Other local bakeries may provide sprouted grain and real sourdough breads, which even some celiac sufferers manage to consume without adverse reactions.

If you wish to cut out wheat products completely, beware of gluten free products. Most contain high glycemic substitutes and GMOs.”  More at: http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/01/16/gluten-confirmed-to-cause-serious-weight-gain-or-wheat-belly-scientific-research/

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Majority of 'gluten-free' foods found to contain GMOs

“In the wake of all the recent revelations about the dangers of GMOs, a special warning needs to go out to all those health-conscious consumers buying "gluten-free" foods. As it turns out, most "gluten-free" foods sold in the USA contain genetically modified organisms.

Why is this so? Because the primary ingredient in most gluten-free foods is corn. And most corn-based foods are made with genetically modified corn. Around 85% of the conventional corn grown in the USA is genetically modified corn, and that corn is engineered to produce its own deadly insecticide right inside every grain.

When GM corn is harvested and made into gluten-free foods, the insecticide stays with it and resides in the gluten-free food. As a result, people who are buying gluten-free are often exposing themselves to the risk of toxicity from GM corn.
What are those risks, exactly? No one knows for sure, as GMOs are still a radical agricultural experiment being conducted on the population at large. But French researchers recently found that feeding a lifetime of GM corn to rats caused a huge increase in the risk of developing horrifying, massive tumors and premature death. The rats who were fed GM corn also suffered widespread organ damage.

How to avoid GM corn in gluten-free foods

The only gluten-free foods that don't contain GM corn are those foods that either don't use corn as an ingredient or ones that use certified organic corn. GMOs are not allowed under an organic label.
Sadly, there are very few gluten-free foods that are also USDA organic. So gluten-free shoppers have very few choices if they wish to avoid both gluten as well as GMOs.”    More at: http://www.naturalnews.com/037494_gluten-free_gmos_gm_corn.html

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Three Hidden Ways Wheat Makes You Fat

‘How Wheat -- and Gluten -- Trigger Weight Gain, Prediabetes, Diabetes and More’, by Mark Hyman, MD

“The biggest problem is wheat, the major source of gluten in our diet. But wheat weaves its misery through many mechanisms, not just the gluten! The history of wheat parallels the history of chronic disease and obesity across the world. Supermarkets today contain walls of wheat and corn disguised in literally hundreds of thousands of different food-like products, or FrankenFoods. Each American now consumes about 55 pounds of wheat flour every year.  It is not just the amount but also the hidden components of wheat that drive weight gain and disease.

This is not the wheat your great-grandmother used to bake her bread. It is FrankenWheat -- a scientifically engineered food product developed in the last 50 years.

This new modern wheat may look like wheat, but it is different in three important ways that all drive obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and more.

1. It contains a Super Starch -- amylopectin A that is super fattening.
2. It contains a form of Super Gluten that is super-inflammatory.
3. It contains forms of a Super Drug that is super-addictive and makes you crave and eat more.

The Super Starch

The Bible says, "Give us this day our daily bread." Eating bread is nearly a religious commandment. But the Einkorn, heirloom, Biblical wheat of our ancestors is something modern humans never eat.

Instead, we eat dwarf wheat, the product of genetic manipulation and hybridization that created short, stubby, hardy, high-yielding wheat plants with much higher amounts of starch and gluten and many more chromosomes coding for all sorts of new odd proteins. The man who engineered this modern wheat won the Nobel Prize -- it promised to feed millions of starving around the world. Well, it has, and it has made them fat and sick.

The first major difference of this dwarf wheat is that it contains very high levels of a super starch called amylopectin A. This is how we get big fluffy Wonder Bread and Cinnabons.

Here's the downside. Two slices of whole wheat bread now raise your blood sugar more than two tablespoons of table sugar.

There is no difference between whole wheat and white flour here. The biggest scam perpetrated on the unsuspecting public is the inclusion of "whole grains" in many processed foods full of sugar and wheat, giving the food a virtuous glow. The best way to avoid foods that are bad for you is to stay away from foods with health claims on the labels. They are usually hiding something bad.

In people with diabetes, both white and whole grain bread raises blood sugar levels 70 to 120 mg/dl over starting levels. We know that foods with a high glycemic index make people store belly fat, trigger hidden fires of inflammation in the body and give you a fatty liver, leading the whole cascade of obesity, pre-diabetes and diabetes. This problem now affects every other American and is the major driver of nearly all chronic disease and most our health care costs. Diabetes now sucks up one in three Medicare dollars.”  More at: http://drhyman.com/blog/2012/02/13/three-hidden-ways-wheat-makes-you-fat/

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On This Day:

The death penalty--then and now, Feb 15, 1933:

“Giuseppe Zangara shoots Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, in Miami, Florida. Zangara's shots missed President-elect Franklin Roosevelt, who was with Cermak at the time. Cermak was seriously wounded and died on March 6.

Immediately after Mayor Cermak died from the gunshot wounds, Zangara was indicted and arraigned for murder. He pled guilty and died in the electric chair on March 20, only two weeks after Cermak died. Today such a swift outcome would be practically unheard of, particularly where the death penalty is concerned.

Changes began in the 1950s. In the most notable case, Caryl Chessman spent almost 12 years on California's death row before going to the gas chamber in 1960 for kidnapping. His appeals kept him alive while he wrote three published books and caught the attention of Hollywood and the international community, who lobbied publicly on his behalf. The Chessman battle did more than any other case to politicize the death penalty; some credit it with bringing Ronald Reagan (who fiercely opposed commuting Chessman's sentence) to office as California's governor. Chessman was one of the last Americans to be executed for committing a crime other than murder.

Such cases have become commonplace in modern times. Jerry Joe Bird met his demise through a lethal injection in Texas in 1991, after 17 years on death row. In 1999, two inmates who had been on death row for 20 years appealed to the Supreme Court that the long delay itself was cruel and unusual punishment. The Court declined to hear their appeal, ruling that the prisoners had caused the delay themselves.”

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Oil tanker runs aground near Wales, Feb 15, 1996:

“On this day in 1996, a supertanker, the Sea Empress, runs aground near Wales, spilling 70,000 tons of crude oil. The oil spill did not take any human lives, but severely damaged several bird sanctuaries.

The Pembrokeshire coast of South Wales is an area teeming with wildlife, particularly seals and seabirds such as shelducks, teals and curlews. It is also an area often traveled by oil tankers carrying oil from North Sea drilling operations. On the evening of Thursday, February 15, at 8 p.m., the Sea Empress, a 1,300-foot, 147,000-ton tanker was traveling to Milford Haven on the Welsh coast through poor weather conditions. The ship, registered in Liberia, was carrying 128,000 tons of crude oil for Texaco.

The Sea Empress slammed into some underwater rocks and ran aground. The hull was pierced, causing oil to leak from the ship. The 28-member Russian crew worked feverishly to re-float the tanker, while attempting to move the oil to undamaged holding areas. Despite the quick response, the foul weather reduced the effectiveness of these measures. The Sea Empress was pushed aground a second time when tow lines from a towboat snapped.

Eventually the crew was pulled off the ship by Royal Air Force helicopters. High winds prevented most salvage operations, so the only measure officials could take was to drop detergent and dispersal chemicals on the growing oil spill. Approximately 70,000 tons of oil spilled from the tanker, causing a 12-mile-long oil slick. Nearby beaches were covered with the slimy oil, resulting in the deaths of thousands of seabirds.

The bird sanctuaries on nearby Skomer and Skokholm islands suffered severe damage that was still being repaired 10 years later. Nearly a week after the accident, the Sea Empress was finally pulled in to port.”

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Victory at last for Earnhardt at Daytona, Feb 15, 1998:

“On February 15, 1998, after 20 years of trying, racing great Dale Earnhardt Sr. finally wins his first Daytona 500, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) season opener and an event dubbed the "Super Bowl of stock car racing." Driving his black No. 3 Chevrolet, Earnhardt recorded an average speed of 172.712 mph and took home a then-record more than $1 million in prize money. Following his victory, crews from competing teams lined the pit road at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, to congratulate Earnhardt, who drove his car onto the grass and did several celebratory doughnuts, or circles.

Earnhardt, whose tough, aggressive driving style earned him the nickname "The Intimidator," was born on April 29, 1951, in Kannapolis, North Carolina. The son of a racecar driver, the younger Earnhardt dropped out of high school to follow in his father's footsteps. He went on to become one of NASCAR's most successful and respected drivers, with 76 career victories, including seven Winston Cup (now known as the Sprint Cup) Series championships, a record he shares with Richard Petty. Despite his success as a driver, victory at the Daytona 500--a 200-lap, 500-mile event first held in 1959--eluded Earnhardt for years. At the 1997 Daytona 500, Earnhardt's car flipped upside down on the backstretch; however, he managed to escape serious injury.

His win in February 1998 represented Earnhardt's sole Daytona victory. Tragically, on February 18, 2001, Earnhardt died at the age of 49 during a crash at that year's 43rd Daytona 500. After being cut from his car, he was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead of head injuries. As it happened, the race which cost Earnhardt his life was won by Michael Waltrip, who was driving for the Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI) racing team. Earnhardt's son, Dale Jr., also a DEI driver at the time, took second place. Three years later, on February 15, 2004, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won his first Daytona 500, with an average speed of 156.341 mph.”

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Yesterday:

Misty and I picked up Jay, and also Lil Miss, Jim the mechanic’s dog.  I had locked Miss Priss up in her big cage, as I didn’t want her to ‘help’ me groom.  She has done that when I groom my Misty. Jim had said that he would come and look at the breaker box.  But he wasn’t ready at that time.

So Jay cleaned up the rest of the lumber from the torn down RVport, while he was waiting for Jim, and lit the burn pile.   I was busy grooming Lil Miss.  

I surely wanted to get all the shelf units back on the wall, and get everything back on them.  Jim came with a tester, tested various places on the box, and said it was safe, so Jay put all the shelf units back upon the wall.  I still have to put all the things back on the shelves though.

Then I took Jay and Lil Miss back to their homes, and Miss Priss was let out of the big cage so she went out onto the screen porch to watch the birds at the feeder.

In the afternoon, I drove to Montgomery (TX), to pick up Satchmo, the old cat that I had been given. He is very sweet and gentle, and when we were on the drive back here I put my fingers through the carrier door, he would rub them with his head.

There was no way that I was going to let him be around Miss Priss, for two reasons.  He has no claws to defend himself, and she doesn’t need to be in contact with an unknown cat for health reasons.  After he goes back to the vet for his dental check-up, and has a clean bill of health, I’ll introduce them gradually.

I set him up with everything he needed in my bathroom, turned the bathroom TV onto Animal Planet, and closed the door.  He could quietly get used to the new smells and noises of his new home.  I was told he was shy, so I wasn’t surprised when he found a hiding place in the linen cupboard.  But he did come out, eat some of the canned food, and ask to be petted, then went back in his hidey-hole.

By 8.00 PM, he was in the best seat in the house, Bobbiecat’s bathroom window, and was very content. He doesn’t seem to have a complex about everything being pink, and snuggled up to Bobbiecat’s favorite pink mouse.

I hope he will be very happy here, I know I am very happy with him.  During the night, he came out of the bathroom, and came to sleep on the end of my bed.  That made my day!