Menu Lies. Today's Modern Food: It's Not What You Think. Cheap Food is No Bargain. Dangerous Ingredients. Chicken Poop. Civil War Begins. FDR Dies. Jack Knife Clams.

 

For “Foodie Friday”:

Healthy Fast Food Menu Items Can Lure and Deceive Consumers

“Comparatively, the new Burger King turkey burger is not that much healthier than a regular Whopper.

When you weigh the options of having a grilled chicken sandwich with either a burger or fried chicken sandwich at a fast food chain, how often will you choose the option lower in fat and calories? We appreciate the healthier options, but the options usually don't change our decisions.

Contrary to popular belief, these "healthy" menu items are not a significant reduction in calories from the original items. In fact, the new turkey burger from Burger King has 530 calories, whereas a regular Whopper sandwich has 630 calories and a regular cheeseburger has 280 calories. It doesn't seem like the "healthy" turkey burger is comparatively better than a regular burger.

Knowing that a restaurant offers healthier items places the thought in consumers' minds that it's a healthier place to eat than other restaurants. But when it comes time to order, we rarely order off the "healthy" side of the menu -- and if we do, it's not that much healthier anyway.”  More at: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2013/03/healthy_fast_food_menu_items_l.php

______

Today's Modern Food: It's not what you think - Part 1 of 2

“This video examines the truth about our Nation's food supply. The food we buy today is the product of a business who's more concerned about their own profits than their customers health and the government regulators are looking out for the interests of the businesses rather than the American people's well being. The complete script for this video, as well as all the links to the articles, websites and videos in this presentation are available here: http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/jeffben... “

 

Today's Modern Food: It's not what you think - Part 2 of 2

______

Are Industrial Foods Considered Healthy Foods?

What Type of Food Would You Rather Eat?

“If you were to grow food for you own family, my guess is that you, like most people, would do so with extreme care -- the best seeds, the healthiest animals, the least amount of chemical additives. Yet, when most people buy their food they have no idea where it actually comes from …

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you had to see the animal you were about to eat before it makes its way to the supermarket or your dinner table, would you choose one that had lived out its days in a filthy, crowded conditions? One that had been mutilated and tormented, forced to live in its own feces, then pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, while being fed pesticide-laden grains it was not designed to eat?

Or would you choose one that had lived a nurtured and well cared for life, free to roam on pasture, see the sunlight and breathe in fresh air? One that was fed its natural diet and nothing more?

The choice is obvious, which is exactly why agri-business has done such a masterful job of concealing what really goes on from the vast majority of Americans.

All you see is a cellophane-wrapped package, maybe a picture of a barn with happy cows and chickens standing near. In many cases, if you could really see how that animal was raised, you would likely shield your children's eyes, then turn away in disgust.

Why Cheap Food is No Bargain for Your Health

The cheap dollar menus at fast-food restaurants and sales on meat in your grocery store at prices that are often less per pound than the price of tomatoes are courtesy of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, otherwise known as CAFO or factory farms.  These buys may seem like a steal, but they are no bargain when it comes to your health, the environment or the animals' welfare.

Cheap food is actually incredibly expensive once everything is added up, including stratospheric health care costs, continued dependence on fossil fuels, and the destruction of the earth as a whole.

As written in CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories:

"These costs, known among economists as "externalities," include massive waste emissions with the potential to heat up the atmosphere, foul fisheries, pollute drinking water, spread disease, contaminate soils, and damage recreational areas.

Citizens ultimately foot the bill with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, medical expenses, insurance premiums, declining property values, and mounting cleanup costs."

None of these immeasurable costs are factored into the $1 cheeseburger you had for lunch, but they exist nonetheless.” More at:  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/17/3-lies-big-food-wants-you-to-believe.aspx

______

The Caltons warn Dr Steve about dangerous ingredients

“The Caltons are at it again making sure Dr Steve is aware of some pretty scary ingredients in common foods.”

5 Banned Foods Stilled Allowed in U.S.

 

______

Here’s the Poop: Warning Labels on Chicken

"“USDA should make consumers aware that chicken often contains feces,” says Mark Kennedy, director of legal affairs with the Physicians Committee. “Contaminated chicken often passes right through inspection, is marketed as ‘wholesome,’ and lands on unsuspecting consumers’ dinner plates, feces and all.”"  More at: http://www.pcrm.org/media/online/apr2013/heres-the-poop-warning-labels-on-chicken

______

On This Day:

The Civil War begins, Apr 12, 1861:

“The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern "insurrection."

As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln's victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the "Ordinance of Secession," which declared that "the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states -- Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana -- had followed South Carolina's lead.

In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was subsequently elected the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead.”

______

FDR dies, Apr 12, 1945:

“On this day in 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power.

On a clear spring day at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat, Roosevelt sat in the living room with Lucy Mercer (with whom he had resumed an extramarital affair), two cousins and his dog Fala, while the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff painted his portrait. According to presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, it was about 1 p.m. that the president suddenly complained of a terrific pain in the back of my head and collapsed unconscious. One of the women summoned a doctor, who immediately recognized the symptoms of a massive cerebral hemorrhage and gave the president a shot of adrenaline into the heart in a vain attempt to revive him. Mercer and Shoumatoff quickly left the house, expecting FDR's family to arrive as soon as word got out. Another doctor phoned first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington D.C., informing her that FDR had fainted. She told the doctor she would travel to Georgia that evening after a scheduled speaking engagement. By 3:30 p.m., though, doctors in Warm Springs had pronounced the president dead.

Eleanor delivered her speech that afternoon and was listening to a piano performance when she was summoned back to the White House. In her memoirs, she recalled that ride to the White House as one of dread, as she knew in her heart that her husband had died. Once in her sitting room, aides told her of the president's death. The couple's daughter Anna arrived and the women changed into black dresses. Eleanor then phoned their four sons, who were all on active military duty. At 5:30 pm, she greeted Vice President Harry Truman, who had not yet been told the news. A calm and quiet Eleanor said, "Harry, the president is dead." He asked if there was anything he could do for her, to which she replied, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now."

Indeed, Truman had rather large shoes to fill. FDR had presided over the Great Depression and most of World War II, leaving an indelible stamp on American politics for several decades. He also left Truman with the difficult decision of whether or not to continue to develop and, ultimately, use the atomic bomb. Shockingly, FDR had kept his vice president in the dark about the bomb's development and it was not until Roosevelt died that Truman learned of the Manhattan Project. It was also not until FDR died that Eleanor learned of her husband's renewed affair with Lucy Mercer.

Eleanor, in her own words, was trained to put personal things in the background. She swallowed the shock and anger about Mercer and threw herself into FDR's funeral preparations. Thousands of Americans lined the tracks to bid Roosevelt farewell while a slow train carried his coffin from Warm Springs to Washington, D.C. After a solemn state funeral, he was buried at his family's home in Hyde Park, New York.”

______

Yesterday:

Ray came over to finish what we started yesterday, but it was too chilly to be outside washing the cellular blinds.  We had put the mini-blinds back up in my bathroom, so that I could have some privacy, but the cellular ones go over them.

There were still items that needed to be vacuumed and washed in bleach water in my bathroom.  All my real shells are in the glass case in the living room, but the fake shells are in my bathroom, to match the decor and the shell pictures on all four walls.

Also stored in my bathroom were some real shells that I had brought back from a beach in England when I visited in 1981, called Jack Knife or Razor Clams:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_jackknife_clam . I had been meaning to put them in the glass case with the rest of the shells. They are still intact with the hinges on one side.  When we unwrapped them from the tissue paper that I had been keeping them in all these years, we realized that we really need to make some dowel stands to display them properly, as they live their lives on end. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funny little critters aren’t they?

We also tried to find out why my chiming door bell doesn’t work. All the batteries tested good, so I will have to return it.

Still more laundry, and one of the cushions that was on a screen porch chair came apart in the washer.  That put kapok on everything in that load, but it didn’t take long to clean it up.

It finally warmed up enough to turn off the heat, and open the doors and windows for the rest of the day.