FoodSpook Comments: “The Devil’s Advocate”
GET YOUR KIDS INTO THE KITCHEN!
By FoodSpook, publisher of “DiabetesResourceSpot.com”
Recently one of my readers commented that he thought I should play the role of “The Devil’s Advocate” more often in my blog. I read the comment and thought it was very interesting.
As I have written before, my blogsite is dedicated to re-posting information about the prevention of diabetes and other serious medical conditions that are on the rise and unequivacally out of control in our society. Two examples of “out of control” medical conditions are, childhood obesity and autism. This post is not is not going to address these two medical conditons today. This post is dedicated to my readers that want to hear my opinions.
I may not support a particular article or video that I post. That is not the purpose of this blog. I try to re-post written articles and videos that I find interesting and thought-provoking and therefore hope my audience will find them likewise. When I do contribute a opinion, usually it will be titled “FoodSpook Comments”. As far as the information posted here, I know you will decide what you think. The main purpose of this blog is to present health information developed by many authors to try to derail the rapid approach of a health train wreck looming in this country.
I am dedicated to posting information about how most adverse health issues in this country can be linked to the foods we consume. Also, corporate greed and duplicity and the seemingly massive lack of education of the American public of nutrition are major co-conspiritors behind the “Perfect Storm” of diseases and illnesses that are consuming children and adults in the USA at a unprecedented rate.
With new technologies and medical breakthroughs we now live a few years longer than our relatives 100 years ago. But, are we as healthy as they were? Were 40% to 70% of their children and adults obese? Were thousands of parents worried if their children had developed autism due to one or more vaccinations? Did their kids have to handle ADHD? What has happened to health in America?
Food has happened to this country. Tony The Tiger, Ronald MacDonald, and the Flintstones have changed our image of food to suit the corporate desires of food companies (profits), and in the process have changed the image we have of ourselves. It seems we don’t expect to be healthy. Our people were healthier 30 years ago than we are now. Today, Tony The Tiger and the Lucky Charms Leprechaun has trained our children how and what to eat. We as parents have NOT!
The reason we can’t train our kids is because we have not been trained ourselves about the differences between processed and real food and how important that difference is to our children’s health. Studies show that many chemicals and sweeteners that are included in processed foods are negatively affecting the developing brains of our children. Who do you think benefits in the long run from from brains that are not fully capable of critical thinking?
We have been serving our children up as fodder to the pharmaceutical companies as they create a unlimited selection of drugs to treat ADHD, autism, schzophrenia, depression and you name it. These companies reap incredible profits as we continue to go to the grocery store and NOT read the lables and hope that things will get better.
We have a daunting task ahead if we want to change this downward spiral of health in this country. Many people are discussing , networking, and helping to change how we view food. Authors like Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle are writing books, Alice Waters is bringing nutrition to nation’s schools through her “Edible Schoolyard” concept and First Lady Michelle Obama not only has a White House garden for D.C. kids, but has also established her “Exercise 60″ program to encourage children to get out and excercise at least 60 minutes a day. Ordinary people like myself are writing blogs, publishing articles, making videos and using every media available to persuade our readers that you personally can make changes in your lives and your children’s lives. The health problems that have exploded in this country during the past 30 years did not just happen, they have been caused.
I know many of you are involved with good nutrition and are training your children. This is not an easy task. It will take some research and self education. But if each of us can figure out our own way to battle crafty food corporations, and their deceptive advertising practices, we will change the status quo.
As I have written before, I am not a doctor nor a specialist in any field related to health or any other medical condition. I am just a concerned citizen. I look for articles produced by dedicated authors that I think my readers may find informative and hopefully inspiring.
So, in answer to my reader, I thank you for your comment. I become the “Devil’s Advocate” de facto because you have read my blog and decided to contact me. That’s what this blog is about.
FoodSpook
The World According to Monsanto – Full Length
Source: Uploaded by Livefreerevolution on Dec 27, 2010 to YouTube
You may want to take a closer look at the Monsanto Corporation. FoodSpook.
There’s nothing they are leaving untouched: the mustard, the okra, the bringe oil, the rice, the cauliflower. Once they have established the norm: that seed can be owned as their property, royalties can be collected. We will depend on them for every seed we grow of every crop we grow. If they control seed, they control food, they know it — it’s strategic. It’s more powerful than bombs. It’s more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world.
The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting disproportionate influence over policymakers via the “revolving door”. One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. While at the FDA, the authority that deals with all US food approvals, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company’s vice president for public policy.
Thanks to these intimate links between Monsanto and government agencies, the US adopted GE foods and crops without proper testing, without consumer labeling and in spite of serious questions hanging over their safety. Not coincidentally, Monsanto supplies 90 percent of the GE seeds used by the US market. Monsanto’s long arm stretched so far that, in the early nineties, the US Food and Drugs Agency even ignored warnings of their own scientists, who were cautioning that GE crops could cause negative health effects. Other tactics the company uses to stifle concerns about their products include misleading advertising, bribery and concealing scientific evidence.
Note from FoodSpook – What is Food?
Hello to my readers. I am FoodSpook, the publisher of this blog. If you have followed this location the past couple of years, you are already aware that I am totally consumed with catastrophic health problems we are experiencing in this country due to the lack of food education. We are not a dumb people. We are a very uninformed people in terms of buying, cooking and consuming food.
The whole purpose of this blog is to present enough information to make one THINK about what you are putting into your body and to drive home the point, there are food consequences in your life. If you are a reader under the age of forty, this blog will probably seem not relevant to your life. That’s understandable. You were born into the “fast food” age, you could not know about life before the fast food drive-thru and mega-supermarket chains.
Your life was changed while you were a baby, and you are passing these changes on to your babies. There is a reason why this country has the highest rate of obesity per population in the entire world. There is a reason why heart attacks, strokes and diabetes are causing more people to die or become crippled and disabled in numbers unprecedented. That reason is the almost total uneducation of our children about food and nutrition
The main common denominator causing this havoc is food. The main problem with our people is the lack of understanding of what is food. It’s complicated. It is complicated by design. The food corporations profit greatly because of our confusion about what is food and what foods can ruin your health. They will make their money. The doctors and hospitals will make their money. The food industry is not your enemy but they have no real interest in your education about food. True, 40 to 50 years ago this education didn’t seem to be warranted. Today it should be mandatory!
This blog is one of many, published by concerned citizens trying to spread the messege that we can change the way we treat our bodies. We can stop allowing the food industry to tell us how good manufactured food is. Many people can’t tell you if a Dorito is a real food or not.
Times are changing. I was in Costco this week, which is the American version of IKEA. I was so pleasantly surprised to see that the store is now selling a quality Ground Flaxseed in a very attractive package size and price. I am a flaxseed disciple and believe in its health benefits. The important thing here that a major player in the food distribution system in this country is becoming aware that it can effect beneficial changes in the food consumption of our people.
When people become aware of what real food is and the health benefits afforded, they will buy it. Look at the sales of truly 100% whole wheat products. We must become educated and the food industry will be more than willing to meet our demand for healthy foods.
FoodSpook
The Demise of “Mrs. Jay”- Comments By FoodSpook
I used to own a house in the suburbs. It was in a cul-de-sac with only four other homes. It was very quiet and civilized. The hillside across from my driveway was rustic. The bottom part of the hill was covered with wild blackberry thickets and the top half with oak trees in various stages of maturation. In the summer the colors were all shades of green and deep purple. In the fall, the shades of the trees on the hillside turned to browns, burnt umber and gold. I met Mr. Jay one summer morning around 6:00 AM. He was Loud!
I had studied Eastern customs and entered a Zen phase of life at that time. I trained my brain to ignore and to zone out the noise that Mr. Jay was cawing into my existence every morning, seven days a week. Still Mr. Jay was still very annoying. But, I told myself to be cool. He deserves to live, even if it’s on my property. We all have to get along.
Mr. Blue Jay and I got to know each other. He was a bird. I was a property owner. I had a bird feeder in my back yard. Mr. Jay was too big to perch on the feeder but he was able to harvest some seed from it everyday anyway. The squirrels were much more aggressive and successful at liberating the birdseed than the birds.
I thought I was the “Dr. Doolittle” of my domain. Whenever I was working my yard all kinds of animals would show up. Humming Birds would fly up and drink right from the end of my garden hose. Raccoons came at night. When I arrived home late at night, deer would be all over my yard and in the field behind my property. Well, early one morning while out in my yard, I noticed that Mr. Jay sounded different. His squawking had changed into a loud and raucous high pitched monologue.
When I looked into Mr. Jay’s tree I got a big surprise! Mr. Jay was sitting on his limb and quiet as a mouse. There was another Jay besides him making all the noise. Mr. Jay had found his Lady Jay! I was very happy for Mr. Jay. He had been living in my backyard for two years and because we were both bachelors, I felt a special comraderie towards Mr. Jay. The only problem I could perceive was, Mrs. Jay NEVER shut up. She fussed with her high pitched cackling from sunrise to sunset, everyday. I never really got used to her noise and found her presence outright irritating. However I learned to tune her out and to appreciate the fact that she is now Mr. Jay’s wife and we all must get along.
It’s interesting that I can’t remember Mr. Jay ever speaking again for the next 18 months. I must assume he was happy. They stayed together faithfully until the “incident”. It was a beautiful summer evening, headed towards dusk. I was in my back yard with my garden hose, watering and enjoying nature’s evening sound effects. Suddenly a dark gray shadow streaked into my yard from out of the sky like a cruise missile programmed to my front door. I was speechless. There was a burst of feathers left floating in the air. Then it became clear to me what had happened.
I have read that frequently our eyes see much more than we are conscious of. However, our brain stores all kinds crap that we see, whether we need it or not. In that millisecond I saw Mrs. Jay’s panicked face and ruffled blue and white body clutched in the deadly grasp of a Red Tailed Hawk. I realized it was case closed. She was cackeling her last high pitched squawks as the hawk carried her to a big nest high atop a 100 ft. Eucalyptus tree in the field behind my house. Baby hawks have to eat too.
I was saddened at Mrs. Jays demise. I had actually almost gotten use to her being around. In fact, that day she was taken, I hadn’t even noticed her flying to her nest a few feet away. I know Mr. Jay loved her. No other bird would have put up with her yammering. Mr. Jay lived in my backyard for another year but it was not the same. True, we were both bachelors again but the arrival of Mrs. Jay had changed us. One day Mr. Jay was gone. I know he had decided to move on and I wished him luck.
My experiences living with the Jay family were enlightning. Maybe there were some psychic parallels between Mr. Jay’s life and my own. The main thing I learned is, I really need to get a life!
Foodspook
Daddy’s Pigeon Coop – Comments From FoodSpook
Hello,
I am FoodSpook. From time to time I like to share with you what my life was like in the 1950′s. This post is non-medical. It is for fun.
In 1955 I was 7 years old. We lived in Richmond, CA in our very first home. My father and mother came to the Bay Area in the 1940′s to build warships during WWII. After the war, my father also became a preacher and my mother worked during the summer months at the Del Monte canneries.
One spring morning I awoke to the sound of hammering. It was a Saturday. It was 9:00 AM and I was surprised that my father had not awakened me to go to work with him on our side jobs. We washed cars and cut lawns. I got dressed as fast as I could and ran out of the house to find out what was happening. I asked, “daddy what are you building?”. He answered, “a pigeon coop”. Our neighbor was also there and they were building this coop together.
Being a young boy, I had my pride and I didn’t want to ask what is a pigeon coop? This little square box was about 15′ by 15′, half plywood with an enclosure and covered with chicken wire in the front. My father and neighbor finished this project the next day on Sunday afternoon. On the next day when my father arrived home from work he had a cardboard box cradled under his arm. I ran up to him on the sidewalk and asked “daddy what’s in the box?”. He opened the top flaps on the box and I was looking at 15 beautiful gray pigeons with soft rainbow translucent feathers and I almost stopped breathing!
My father also had a five pound bag of pure mid-west corn to feed the pigeons. He explained to me that one of my after school jobs from now on would be to keep these pigeons fed and supplied with fresh water. I agreed whole heartedly, actually I really had no choice. As months passed by, the pigeons and I learned to accept each other. I was not in love with them but I liked them as fellow captives. As for the pigeons, I seemed to be irrelevant to them.
During the wintery and rainy months when I went into the coop to feed and water the pigeons, I had to wear my school rain gear. That consisted of black knee-high rubber boots, a yellow full lenth rain slicker and yellow rain hat. This dress was necessary. The front of the pigeon coop always had at least 6 to 7 inches of pigeon poo that would turn to a slimey quicksand with the rains. I ALWAYS slipped and fell down. My mother would hose me down before letting me back into the house. My younger sisters thought this was a hoot. They couldn’t stop laughing.
In the 1950′s people ate differently in the United States. This was a time before giant supermarket chains. Fast food outlets had not taken over our appetites with fast, cheap and dangerous foods. People still believed in the past proven benefits of growing their own foods and fowl and cooking them.
My parents were no different. Once a week my dad would cook and he was a good cook. We kids would ask, “daddy this looks like chicken but the legs are too small”. My father would answer ” that’s squab, shutup, you’ll like it”. And we did. My mother would never cook this squab. We kids noticed but didn’t ask questions. We ate what was prepared for us in our own home.
A few months later my father brought home a beautiful snow-white goose. He put it in the coop with the pigeons. We kids did not know if the goose was a girl or a boy, so we arbitrarily named it “Granny”. My father was still bringing home this perfect grain corn as feed and now I was also feeding Granny, the goose. Granny had a dark side. I will refer to him as ‘he’ but I’m not sure. When I entered the coop to feed and water the birds, Granny would find a hiding place. He would wait until I bent over to pour the grain and then run from behind and peck me real hard on my butt with his beak. He would then quack like Hell as if his actions were hilarious. He did this every day.
A couple of years went by. I kept falling into the muck and Granny kept pecking. By the way, a goose can peck very hard. One day I went into the coop to do my job and Granny was sprawled out in dirt, stone dead. We informed my father when he came home from work. He told us ” well that’s too bad, I’ll cook him tomorrow”. We kids were horrified! We said “you can’t cook Granny, we won’t eat him”. My father was “old school”. You didn’t defy him. But we did. My mother said “listen to the kids. They don’t want to eat Granny”. So I buried Granny in the backyard the next day.
They say with age comes wisdom. Well now I was two years older at age 9. When I realized my father was ready and willing to cook Granny, our dear departed goose, I also realized the delicious squab we were eating once a month was none other than the very same pigeons I had been feeding and watering during the past two years. My dad was just replacing them with new pigeons. My mother was in on the jig but refused to cook the birds. That was the end of that. We kids rebelled and daddy caved.
Source: FoodSpook
Message from FoodSpook
Dear Audience,
I’m on a well deserved vacation (at least in my mind…). Shall return sometime before 6/26. Happy Father’s Day to all you gentlemen who have begat!
FoodSpook
Pork Chop Sandwich and Bread Pudding
May 24, 2009
I often wonder how children’s health today would compare to children back in the 1950′s when mothers used to fix your lunch for school everyday. In the 1950′s obesity and type 2 diabetes was very rare for children in grade school, (K-12). We had two recesses each school day and a 45 minute lunch period. We had plenty of time to PLAY. That was the time before schools had cafeterias. Our moms prepared a lumch for us most times using leftovers from a home cooked dinner served the evening before. I remember the day my lunch prepared by my mother was a pork chop between two pieces of white bread and a slice of bread pudding wrapped in tin foil.
I traded my sandwich with another kid or his peanut butter and jam sandwich. This went on every school day. A long time ago food used to be real! You young people today must pay
attention to your nutrition. The food industry in this country is extremely dangerous. It will kill you. When I was a kid we traded lunches all the time. That food our mothers prepared for us was natural. We were all healthy. In the 1960′s “super markets” began to appear. And that was the beginning of the mass marketing of faux foods. We have two generations of children below the the age of 12 that are becoming type 2 diabetics. In their 30′s and 40′s they will start going blind and start having amputations. Those will be the lucky individuals. Many will die early from strokes and heart disease caused by diabetes.
Waymon Tisdale a world reknown pro-basketball player and saxaphone player died in his 40′s from conditions brought on from diabetes last week. THIS IS NO JOKE! I am not a doctor. I have no medical degree. I am one of thousands of people on the internet trying to help change this health disaster that is happening in this country as I write this article. If you think you don’t feel good, go to a doctor or clinic. Trust your instincts. God gave you the tools to watch out for yourself and your loved ones. The alternative is physical and mental destruction.
Men and women, ALWAYS get your annual physical. You can help to save your own life.
FoodSpook
Cadillacs, Preachers and Rock & Roll
by FoodSpook
I was a little kid in the early 1950′s. I remember Elvis‘ big hit, ‘You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog’, like it was just yesterday.
My daddy was a preacher. Back at that era, preachers had to travel to other towns and cities as a visiting pastor to pick up extra cash from the congregation of the day. They all did it. It was also a way of building your reputation as a minister and growing your own congregation.
I remember my father’s Cadillacs. Even before the day I was born, my father always purchased a brand new Cadillac every two years. He always had a least 2 or 3 jobs besides his ministry that allowed him to provide for the family and maintain his public image. This car was the American counterpart of the European Mercedes. In the U.S. the Cadillac was the king of cars at that time.
I remember seeing pictures of the great blues singer Bobby “Blue” Bland Bland in Jet Magazine always standing with one foot inside a 1950′s Cadillac convertible. Having a Cadillac was a sign of major success, especially for Black men. A lot of entertainers and sports figures arrived in town in fancy Cadillacs. It seemed to me from my perspective as a little coloured boy, all Black ministers had Cadillacs. In the Black community back in that day, a successful preacher was treated like today’s rock stars. In Oakland we had a minister that called himself “King Narcisse”. He lived in Piedmont area of the Oakland hills and traveled in a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. Wherever his foot touched the ground, a red carpet was waiting. Cars at that time were a real measure of status. He was really successfull.
If you were successfull in your profession, you drove a Cadillac. Of course there were Buicks, Pontiacs, Chryslers and Fords, but the Cadillac was king. Lincolns came along a few years later. The Lincoln was reserved for White doctors or lawyers. Black men generally could not get financing for a Lincoln. When James Brown hit the Bay Area, he came in on his tour bus. He was driven around Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond in a Cadillac. Count Basie, Miles Davis and so many stars of that time came to the Bay Area and were furnished Cadillacs to use by various establishments and local hustlers. If you could get a sighting of these visiting celebreties they would always be in some late model Cadillac.
In 1955, my father was the proud owner of a brand new sky blue Cadillac sedan. In the summer of that year our church was holding its annual summer youth convention in Bakersfield, California. My Mom could not attend the convention because I think she was very much expectant.. I had two younger sisters but somehow it was decided that I would travel with my father to this convention. I was 7 years old. My Dad was highly resistant to the idea of me spending the week with him at a out of town convention. He was furious! My mother prevailed. I realized much later in my life that my mother was using me as a chaperone to my dad. Wives didn’t want to let their preachers go gallivanting away at a out of town convention alone because they knew what goes on after church meetings.
Reluctantly my dad gave in and took me with him. I was ecstatic. Just me and dad in a hotel in another city. Because I was a preacher’s son , I was allowed to sit beside my father in the minister’s dining room. That was a real special privilege. The 30 or so ministers sitting in that room swapped stories about women in their congregations and their experiences on the road that I have not forgotten yet. And I was a little boy.
We stayed a week in Bakersfield. On Sunday morning we left at daybreak on the return trip back to Richmond in the Bay Area. We were driving up Highway 99 through the heart of the beautiful San Joaquin Valley. A rainbow of colors of the fruits ripening in the trees was being broadcast by the rays of the rising sun to the motorists zooming down Highway 99. My father and I began to to smell a slight hint of burning rubber.
We had not reached Fresno. I told my father, yes I could smell somthing burning. We traveled on. By the time we reached Merced the smell was a little more pronounced. I remember looking over at my dad while he was driving. He was a handsome man and very G.Q. for that time. I admired his style and elegance. He dressed well. That morning before we left, he had shaved and dressed in a suit and tie just to drive home! As I looked at him I thought, my God nothing can go wrong, my daddy is in charge! He asked me, “son, do you still smell rubber”? I answered “yes daddy, I do”.
We traveled on. In those days when you traveled on Highway 99, there were stop lights. Yes, you had to go through each town, like Fresno, Madera, Merced and other small towns and stop at the one or two traffic lights in town. After two or three blocks, Main street became Highway 99 again. Bakersfield is about 280 plus miles one way, from Richmond. As we traveled home, my dad and I figured that farmers along Highway 99 all had to be burning something in their fields that smelt like burning rubber.
We had driven about 250 miles and our baby blue Cadillac sedan had gotten us back to San Leandro and the Nimitz Freeway. We were 30 miles from home. I said to me father, “daddy smoke is coming out the back of the car”. He looked in the rear view mirror and said “what the h***! So we stopped on the side of the freeway. We both got out and went to the rear of the car. The rear tire on the driver’s side or left side of the car was smoking. It wasn’t a lot of smoke but it was steady. My dad said “son help me throw some dirt on this tire so we can cool it down”. So that’s what we did. We were on or hands and knees, grabbing dirt and gravel by the hand full and throwing it underneath the Cadillac to try to cool that back tire down. Then the tire caught on fire. It was a little flame so we new we could put it out. We just needed more dirt. We kept throwing more dirt and the flame kept getting bigger. By now I started to have doubts about how much control does my father really have over this situation. My dad must have read my thoughts because at that exact same moment he told me, “boy, don’t worry, we’ll handle this”. He said “we” and my chest filled with confidence and exhilaration. I was going to help my dad put out this fire!
The flames were getting bigger. My father told me, “son, let’s get our luggage and the spare tire out of this trunk just to be on the safe side”. I said “sure dad”. I was so proud to able to help. The flames were getting bigger. Black smoke was now billowing from underneath the back of the Cadillac. A Safeway Foods truck driver with a tractor and two trailers stopped on the other side of the freeway and reached behind his driver’s seat and grabbed a fire extinguisher and bounded across the lethal freeway to help us. I was 7 years old. This was the first time I witnessed a White person willing to help Black people in distress and put their life in jeopardy as well. This man was a teamster and a White truck driver. In my young life I thought no White people could be caring. But I was wrong.
At least 10 or 12 big rigs stopped along both side of the treacherous Nimitz Freeway to help me and my father. The drivers were both White and Black. The firefighters eventually arrived and fought heroically to try to save my daddy’s car. I mean they really tried. I was only 7 years old and I remember that fire like it happened yesterday. I will always remember the men that came to our aid without a moments hesitation and even endangering their own lives so maybe this preacher and his young son could make it home safely. The firefighters were all White. It did not make any difference as to their color. All of these men were looking out for the safety of this preacher on the road with his little son. That was 53 years ago. Many, many years before most of you reading this blog were born. I will never forget the dedication and compassion of the men that came to our aid. In the end, the car burned to down to the axles. You could not recognize it as a Cadillac.
We were driven home by a representative of the San Leandro Fire Department. On the way my father whispered to me, “son, you know I had been driving with the emergency brake on since we left Bakersfield”. I was only 7. However I had figured that out. I told him, “yes, I know”. He asked me “promise me you won’t tell your mother how I screwed up”. I was so proud to be able to keep a secret with my father, “yeah daddy, I won’t talk”. I never did. My dad had to put his rock star/ minister persona on hold for 6 weeks while the 1955 sky blue Cadlliac sedan was rebuilt from scratch. Both my mom and my dad have passed but I still smile sometimes when remembering my little secret. My mom outlived my dad and now I wish I had told her how the Cadillac burned up. She would have had a good laugh!
My dad owned a Cadillac until his last day with us. I’m positive those mighty GM road warriors brought him much joy on the road.
FoodSpook
Thought For The Day
I heard this quote on a P.B.S. TV station last night. “Anything can happen at anytime at any place in any country. The one thing that is certain in this world is uncertainess”.
‘Lil FoodSpook the Gardener
I am a grandfather and a life long gardener. In 1956 I turned eight years old. My father declared it was time for me to go to work. My family had moved from San Francisco to Oakland in 1950 and then to Richmond in 1951. My parents had both worked very hard and long hours in the Bay Area shipyards during WWII and were able to buy their first home that year. My mother became a house mom, except during the summer when she worked in the canneries. My father worked for the Navy as a “chipper”. His job was to go down into the bowels of gigantic warships and into their fuel and oil tanks and stand on ladders with a heavy, hand held pnuematic tool and chip sometimes up to seven inches of whatever crud had coagulated on the tanks walls during the ship’s last voyage. In summer, the heat in those tanks could kill a man. In winter the gray and wet Bay Area climate would wreck havoc on a man’s joints. My father’s arthritic knuckles looked like tree roots.
My father was also a Preacher on Sundays and a butcher on weeknights. He also did gardening work for white people living in the Richmond and Berkeley Hills. My Father declared it was time for me to start work when I was eight years old. He and I would do seven or eight yards on a Saturday. We started with my Dad shaking me in my bed at 5:30 in the morning. For years every Saturday morning I awakened to the words, “boy, let’s go”. By the time I got downstairs, my Dad had a pot of boiling water that he had thrown in about 4 tablespoons of Hills Bros. ground coffee. A pot of grits was bubbling and a dozen pieces of bacon sizzling on the stove. By 6:00 AM we were on the road. I will never forget the freshness of the air just at dawn. The smell of fresh cut grass with a slight layer of nocturnal dew is etched into my psyche. I worked very hard. In fact my Dad would leave me to do a mansion while he went to the next. He would come back and pick me up and we would repeat the routine. By 6:00 that evening we would have done 7 to 8 estates. I truly became a gardener at a very young age and my love for nature and plants has never left me. I worked with my father until I was in my late teens.
Of course I couldn’t know at that time that his work ethic for me was illegal. What would a young Black family from the south know about child labor laws? My Dad was forced to stop school after the third grade to work on the family farm. He had a inferiority complex the whole rest of his life. He treated me in the the 1950′s the same way his father treated him in the 1920′s. My young life was no picnic. Out of this rough existence of a childhood I became a lifelong devotee of the positive energy of ALL living things. Gardening and plants were my sanctuary and my private world. I absolutely love plants and gardening. I have been involved in growing, pruning and landscaping for over 50 years.
This blog is about the simpler things in our life that should be some important things also. Years ago people in little towns all over the country had gardens. They actually grew their own fruits and vegetables. A dairy farm would deliver milk, eggs, cheese, and butter. Neighbors exchanged apricots for plums or squash for tomatoes. My mother was capable on canning anything, and she did. We did not run to the supermarket for each and every food we needed. There where NO supermarkets in the early 1950′s. The were corner markets, then there where bigger corner markets. These stores were family owned. Supermarkets began in the late-1950′s early 1960′s. Stores became corporate owned. Neighbors began to rely less upon each other and more so upon big markets opening on the outskirts of town. The new U.S. Highway system was being built at that time a suburbs were just being created. These markets were incredibly convenient and remarkably efficient. My parents didn’t know what a loss leader was in these stores. They just knew there was one big store where they could go to and find everything they needed. I remember chicken feet cost .29 cents a pound. By the way a loss leader is a product a store advertises to sell for less than their cost in order to get customers into the store and by products that have a bigger markup.
That is how our food production has been hijacked. We no longer grow our own foods. Not to disrespect our farmers and people that are growing their own fruits and vegetables, they are under assault by big business and your own government. We now have products on the grocery shelves that contain ingredients that will shorten your life. That convenient supermarket now dictates how long your lifespan will be. WE gave them that power. Most of you reading this blog are young adults. The factors concerning unhealthy foods and your consumption were established fifty years ago. Now, today we have no control over type II diabetes, heart attacks and strokes. In fact, obesity is now killing more people that cigarettes.
FoodSpook says if you can, start your own garden. At least be aware that the future of your health and welfare has been abducted. Your government has other priorities like wars and stealing other country’s seeds and indemnifying Wall Street thieves. We did not have over 50% of Americans obese in the 1950′s. We did not have a pandemic of diabetes. We did not have 400,000 people dying from complications due to obesity. Stop trusting the FDA. It is a become a political honeypot for presidential appointments. It is not an effective organization. Overall. Americans are becoming more unhealthy each year. Think about how you can become your own gardener. Look at labels! Even though they lie and try to confuse you, for example (dehydrated cane juice), you would be rudely surprised at how gullible we have become. The food industry in America thinks we are stupid. We are are not doing enough to disprove their opinion. We still buy their products with the utmost trust and very little research. What we stop buying, these companies will STOP selling.
From my early gardening days, I trust the products that I coxed and nutured from the ground and then ate. I now look for true organically grown fruits and vegetables. I look for fair trade coffee and bananas from our Southern Hemisphere. Our dollars help support the growers of these foods that sustain life, not take life. You can positively effect the destiny of your health and in turn, create a positive ripple for other deserving people that are providing healthy foods for our sustainment.
FoodSpook
‘Lil FoodSpook Goes to Disneyland, 1957
My mother was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She had eight other siblings. She met a man from Kilgore, Texas. In those, days mothers back then warned their daughters about dating Texas men. My Mom was a very pretty girl. She was very intelligent. She was the eighth of nine children. Somehow she met a man from Texas. They dated and had a tumultuous relationship for a couple of years. My mom decided to bail. Two of my mothers older sisters had already left Louisiana and lived in Los Angeles, California. My mother left her boyfriend and caught a train to California where her sisters were. The year was 1941. World War II was raging in Europe. Hitler was rounding up Jewish people by the millions and killing them in the most barbaric ways you could imagine. He was also exterminating Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill and Blacks. The list goes on.
My mother was kind of a gypsy. Her older sisters were not kind to her when she showed up in Los Angeles. My father caught the same Southern Pacific train out of Shreveport, Louisiana and came to California to find his girlfriend, who later became my mother. My mother’s sisters disapproved of my dad. They thought he was uncouth. His father only allowed him to finish third grade. Whereas my mother’s sisters were all teachers and the brothers were brick masons. Well, you know what happened. They got married.
My parents married in 1942. They moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco to work in the shipyards building Liberty ships to transport our troops and supplies to Europe in WWII. The money was good. War is a very nasty business. Young people die. If you are born into wealth, you won’t die. You won’t be drafted. Overall, wars are very profitable for corporations and even citizens. Millions of people from jerkwater towns all over the country were transmogrified from rural “sod busters” to middle class property owners. My parents were in that first generation of Blacks from the South to become what considered “middle class”.
In 1957 ‘Lil FoodSpook was nine years old. My parents had bought their first home in 1950. Many people, White and Black were still living in WWII built apartments, (aka, war projects). The real point of this article is my experiences as a grade school child in Richmond, California in the 1950′s. When I went to school, I had a lunch box. My dad had a second job working as a butcher in the grocery store across the street from our house. We never new what meat would be served at dinner. I think it was a mystery to my mother each evening also. We got tired of steak. We were well fed. It was also a mystery as to what would be in my lunch box at school the next day. I might have a tuna sandwich and celery sticks or it might be a pork chop between two pieces of Wonder Bread. My favorite was bread pudding. I could trade that for anything that any other kid had in their lunch pail. My first lunch pail had a picture of Mighty Mouse and Pluto. I was really kool. The main thing is, your mother decided what went your lunch pail.
One day my mother asked how would I like to spend the summer with my cousin in Los Angeles. I was delighted, this was my favorite cousin. When school let out for the summer in 1957 my parents put me on a Continental Trailways bus from Richmond to Los Angeles. The bus lines then had “travel attendants”. I lived with my cousin for two months in the summers for four years. My aunt and uncle took us and my cousin’s older sister to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm in Anaheim every summer. We would eat candy apples, cotton candy, salt water taffy and snow cones. When we really got hungry, we got hotdogs or hamburgers. French fries were a real joy. Absolutely no food could be consumed without a glass of Coca-Cola.
America was past the recovery of WWII and the Korean War. They country was building at warp speed. If you were able to take your family to the new Disneyland, you were Somebody. If you could afford to go out Knott’s Berry Farm and have hot dogs and cotton candy, you had achieved Status. Thus the fast food takeover of our eating habits began. The Mickey Mouse Club, Howdy Doody, Bugs Bunny and countless other media presentations and cartoons were invented to entertain my generation. Now in 2008, Disney’s Hanna Montana is the media’s main outlet for bad nutrition. Today ALL media is designed to get people to buy crap foods. These ads especially target our children. The weapons being used today by the corporate world are the same as were being used in the 1950′s. In my childhood days it was Mickey Mouse and Snow White, Twinkies, Snowballs, and Tootsie Rolls. Today foods are much more dangerous and advertising more duplicitous. It benefits the food industry to keep you in doubt about what people like me are saying and also about your own instincts. When you eat think, ‘would I put this food in my child’s lunch’? Think, did I check the amount of sodium in that Campbell’s can of noodle soup that I fixed for my little daughter? You may not realize this fact, the food industry and especially fast food restaurants could not have succeeded without your help. They had to convince you first by using the Colonial, Ronald Macdonald, Nascar and Coke and countless other fast food icons that brainwashed you and in turn, you train your kids into uninformed automatons thinking a soda machine on their elementary schoolyard is perfectly NORMAL. Well, it is not normal. It is not normal for children between the ages of 2 to 25 to develop type II diabetes.
During the past 45 years, 99% of the media we are exposed to, is designed to make you buy something or eat somthing. No company is advertising “don’t eat our food, it will make you fat and give you grave health problems”. It is quite the contrary, “eat our food, it will make you sexy, you’ll make lot of money and will marry a incredible individual. Did I mention , live happily ever after? It is all a LIE! Go to your next Disney animated film. Count the ads for sodas, popcorn, and candy before the film begins. Go to the lobby and look at the people in line at the counters. Look at the people over 35. What do their waistlines look like? Whose standing right beside them? Their children. The adults are teaching their children how to become obese without even realizing what they are doing. I was one of those parents. I have lived long enough to see how I was fooled and how trusting I was.
I’m saying, when you go to DisneyWorld and SeaWorld and any other world, and especially theaters, please understand the price you pay for admission is maybe 3% of their profit for the year. The other 97% is made by selling you and your children tons of processed foods. Chicken nuggets may not be chicken at all. Goofy at Disneyland was not there to be your friend. He’s there to make you feel fuzzy enough to pull your wallet out and buy crap. I ama grandfather. I have two beautiful grown daughters and a grandchild. I know how good I felt to be able to take my daughters to Disneyland and Disney World and buy all the fastest foods they even thought they wanted. My aunt and uncle did the same for me when I was a child. That acquired “good feeling” about fast foods has brainwashed us over the past 40 years by the design of our food industry and has led to obesity and type II diabetes in people in this country in unrepresented numbers
I had a ton of fun with my family visiting these tourist destination over the years. My kids loved the places we took them. Little did I understand how our eating habits were being slowly changed. I unknowingly became a sales person for the fast food industry just by taking my children to these places. I now see my daughter taking my grand-daughter to fast food places. I try to be low key when I get a chance to talk about nutrition. She listens somewhat, but nothing really changes. My daughter is grown now. She is teaching her daughter what I and her mother unwittingly taught her. This blog is just my way of trying to fight this epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America. I was not aware of the dangers of fast foods when my children were young. Back then, we had never heard of transfats or hydrogenated oils. Today we have no excuse. Adults must protect our children and ourselves from the damages caused to our bodies by an uncaring food industry protected by our government. Don’t let Goofy fool you.
President-Elect Obama, HFCS, and Diabetes
Our new President-Elect Obama promises to bring health care to every American that needs it. FoodSpook requests that Mr. Obama addresses one of the great hazards in our food system that is making people obese and creating greater and greater numbers of type II diabetics every year. That hazard is called ‘high fructose corn syrup’. Our food lobby in Washington is extremely powerful. Our new President-Elect wants a new health insurance system, but does he want our citizens to be healthy? Healthy people use health insurance less often. The use of HFCS must be addressed.
The question is , will President-Elect Obama’s administration have the courage to take on our American food industry and challenge the use of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in so much of our foods. HFCS is a cheap form of sugar that is created by chemically altering corn products. Is is NOT good for human digestive tracts. In fact, many doctors and nutritionists believe the consumption HFCS might be the main culprit behind the exploding number of people developing type II diabetes in America today.
Our food companies are running TV and print ads about how HFCS is not harmful if consumed MODERATELY. They are trying to make you accept the fact that the existence of HFCS in your food system is alright. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When you start reading the list of ingredients on every packaged and every canned food product you are about to buy, you will realize that 80 to 90 percent of products on our grocery shelves contain HFCS. I dare you to pickup the first 10 boxes of breakfast cereal when you enter the breakfast isle in your grocery store and read the label of ingredients. Every box will contain HFCS. Why? Because it has become the new processed “sugar,” and it is the cheapest sugar on the block. Refined sugar is a man-made product and has never been good for our health. C and H sugar convinced us over the years that sugar processed from sugar cane plantations in Hawaii was sexy, (just look at the pretty Hawaiian Hula girls and happy kids in the cane fields of Maui in their commercials), well those commercials were a lie! We have on obesity problem in America that greatly driven by among other things, the amount of sugar we consume. HFCS is has been engineered to fool your body and brain. When you eat foods and drink sodas sweetened with HFCS, first of all, your digestive tract does not break this sugar down into the necessary nutrients to power the muscle systems of your body. That sugar is just passes through your colon system and is distributed to storage locations on your body, mainly your waist, butt, and thighs. That’s bad. Secondly, the food industry and fast food outlets don’t tell you that this sugar, (HFCS) has a major side effect on your brain. The brain tells you that you are still hungry, even when you are full! This is a perfectly engineered sugar for the food industry. It’s cheap to produce and it causes the consumer to eat more, (ie. “super size me”).
I hope the President-Elect realizes it’s no use developing a national health plan if we are going to allow the food industry in this country to purposely and knowingly create very sick people that by numbers could possibly bankrupt any health plan that could be implemented. I hope the President-Elect has the kind of conviction it will really take to help change the perception of “health” in this country.
FoodSpook
A Note from FoodSpook
Folks, be aware. Our food industry is powerful. It is profit driven. That’s capitalism and OK. What you must understand that any regard for your health or your lifespan on this Earth is NO concern to the corporations that are controlling our food production and supply. We are like the frog in the pot of water, as the temperture gets higher, the frog does’nt notice, until it dies. If we stop buying the processed crap on the store shelves, the stores will stop selling it. When you become aware of nutrition you can become the master of your own existence. The markets will sell what the public demands. The public is uninformed. We are becoming diabetic, and sick with heart disease and don’t know why. You are being duped. The food industry is NOT your friend. Our government is not your protector. You can believe in yourself and trust your instincts. People are dying young. Almost all of my male friends have died at a younger age than their fathers. This is 2008 and early deaths should not be happening, but it is.
A new Asian market had a grand opening my city two days ago. I went there today and could hardly find a park. When I got inside I went crazy! The fresh seafood and produce was intoxicating. The markets before that, are boring. They offered hardly any diversity on their shelves. They presented the typical U.S.A. grocery module of foods with “high fructose corn syrup”, partially hydrogenated oils, aka trans fats that are a real contributor to heart attacks in women.
Do not trust the FDA. It can only be effective as the funding it receives from Congress. Your safety and health is a concern for the FDA but this regulatory arm of our government is controlled by lobyists from wealthy food corporations. They are selling us processed foods full of disguised sugars and government sanctioned fillers, such as sawdust. We are dying. Trust your motherwood sense. It’s there. You know when you eat something that doesn’t “set right” in your stomach. Your body is telling to stop putting this CRAP into me. You must listen to your body. It communicates with you 24/7 and does not lie. Obeisity is real. Diabetes is real. Give yourself a chance. The food system in the U.S. is dangerous. The new food pyramid is a product of a political compromise in congress. The food pyramid was decided on by politicians and lobbyists for their best interests.
I ask you to empower yourself to maintain your health. People might think you a weird or quirkey. So what. It doesn’t matter what people think. It’s your life. TV, newspapers, and magazines are selling you a lie. People have lived well for thousands of years before any kind of media. Your body depends on the foods you put into it. You are being fooled to put scientifically engineered foods into your body. BEWARE. Just because you see items on a grocery shelf, that doesn’t its safe.
Read food labels. Study food labels. Then your eating habits will start to change for the better. You are not being looked after by our government. Look for 100% anything. Whole wheat, 100% whole grains will give you life and robust health. There is a reason for the epidemic of diabetes in America . The reason is our people do not realize our government has unleashed the dogs of war upon the population and we are no match for the forces that are leading us into bad heatlth and a possible early demise.
Back to the Future for Real
Hello,
I’m FoodSpook. I was a little boy in the early 1950′s. Both of my parents came out West from the South during WWII to build warships in high paying shipyards in the Bay Area. I was the oldest child and a boy. I remember from way back my Daddy used to tell me “boy, get an education, its the key to the world”. Those words are etched into my forehead and brain forever. By the way, I did go to college and graduated in Business.
My father and mother always told us on occasion about putting too much sugar in our oatmeal or cold cereal. My two younger sisters and I were always told about the dangers of “sugar diabetes”. We were young. We still ate a lot of sugar, especially when we made ‘Kool Aid’. This was one one the first fast foods to hit the neighborhood. All you needed was a pound of sugar, a half gallon pitcher of cold water and a five cent packet of concentrated artificial flavoring such as grape or cherry and you had yourself a liquid treat. That was in 1952. The same ‘Kool Aid’ is on the market shelves today. All you need to add is sugar and water. I was lucky. When I was a child, we played outside everyday and many times in the rain. We children got a LOT of exercise. Type 2 Diabetes can’t stand for you to exercise. Your body burns up too much glucose (blood sugars) and Diabetes can’t get a hold of your body. You kids today have to take time away from your laptops and cell phones and get outside and play, forever! Not just on Saturdays for soccer, but everyday if possible.
Our food industry advertises synthetic and man made food products as kid friendly. This is a outright LIE! I went to the grocery store last week and my grandaughter ask me to pick up a container of cranberry-grape juice. The only cranberry -grape juice was not juice at all, it was a juice “cocktail”. Kids, whenever you see the word “cocktail” on a juice container, leave it. Its only artificial flavoring and sugar. The label will say something like 14 to 18 percent real fruit juice. Even if that is true, that means the container holds 86 t0 82 percent sugar and flavored water. Remember what I said about ‘Kool Aid’ in the 1950′s? The products on the grocery shelves today are ‘Kool Aid’ on Steroids. In the past 60 years, the same nutritional game is being run on the American public and by many of the same companies.
If you are a young person, there is no way you can relate to what these food companies have done in the past. You must understand what they are doing to us right now. Type 2 diabetes is avoidable and in many cases reversable. It is not a fluke that YOUR generation is suffering from the greatest number of children becoming type 2 Diabetics ever in our history. I hope you will understand that you have corporations that are buying ad space on TV and advertising products that are carrying high percentages of disguised sugars that can cause you to become obese which can lead to Diabetes.
WE adults are older and have had our chance to figure out what’s happening to us. The majority of us have not worked this out. You kids are young and HAVE to do battle with a food system that has been fooling the America public way before you were born. This epidemic of type 2 Diabetes is very related to what we eat . In this 21st Century, why are so many children developing type 2 diabetes? There is a common denominator, the food you are fed. Kids, if your parents are unaware of how they are being manipulated by food companies and fast food restaurants, then you must SCHOOL them. Its your life.
The same ‘Kool Aid’ that I fixed as a child in the 1950′s is still being sold today. People were getting Diabetes then and they are getting it now, but the numbers are staggering. An estimated 60 million people in the United States have Diabetes. That’s about one out of five U.S. citizens. The use of corn based sugars in foods (high fructose corn syrup) has exploded in the past 30 years. Guess what? So has the number of children diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes. Folks, this is no coincidence! What saw way back in the 1950′s was just the previews of what is happening today. We must become aware of what this food industry is doing to us.
I don’t blame the food industry for making a buck. I’m trying to tell people that many of these companies are more that willing to sell you products taht can destroy your health or even you life. Do not put your trust in them. We must be vigilant.
T. jeffery
Kids, Its Not Your Fault You Have Diabetes
The book, ‘Fast Food Nation’ by Eric Schlosser was first published in 2001. I read passages of this book from time to time to help me stay focused on how America has been Ambushed by our food industry.
There is a direct relationship between fast (processed) foods, obesity and Diabetes. Our food industry has evolved into a corporate entity that is driven by profits only. This industry has trained a whole country that what they sell you is GOOD! This is a lie. Why has diabetes become a epidemic during tha past 35 years? Many of you reading this blog are under 20 years of age. You were born into a society that has been misinformed about nutrition for many years before you were born. In other words, your parents did not have a clue about the foods they were feeding you. I’m a parent. I was clueless also. The Colonial at Kentucky and Ronald McDonald told us “Don’t worry, we have what’s good for your children”, and its cheap! Everybody fell for the fast food craze. You kids never had a chance.
I quote from the book ‘Fast Food Nation’, “The McDonald’s Corporation has become a powerful symbol of America’s service economy, which is now responsible for 90 percent of the country’s new jobs. In 1968, McDonald’s operated about one thousand restaurants. Today (2001) it has about twenty-eight thousand restaurants worldwide and opens almost two thousand new ones each year. An estimated one out of every eight workers in the United States at one point has been employed by McDonald’s. The company annually hires about one million people, more than any other American organization, public or private. McDonald’s is the nation’s largest purchaser of beef, pork, and potatoes — and the second largest purchaser of chicken. The McDonald’s Corporation is the largest owner of retail property in the world. Indeed, the company earns the majority of its profits not from selling food but from collecting rent. McDonald’s spends more money on advertising and marketing than any other brand. As a result it has replaced Coca-Cola as the world’s most famous brand. McDonald’s operates more playgrounds than any other private entity in the United States. It is one of the nation’s largest distributors of toys. A survey of American schoolchildren found that 96 percent could identify Ronald McDonald. The only fictional character with a higher degree of recognition was Santa Claus. The impact of McDonald’s on the way we live today is hard to overstate. The Golden Arches are now more widely recognized than the Christian Cross”.
So kids you must understand, you did personally go out your way to get type 2 Diabetes. We parents were AMBUSHED by the fast food industry in America. Restaurant chains like McDonald’s, Wendys, Jack In The Box, Kentucky Fried, Burger King, and many others have changed the way Americans eat. We have embraced them wholeheartedly. Now we know a diet that includes a weekly regimen of fast foods is very dangerous. Your school districts are cutting expenses by dumping sports programs and P.E. classes. If you wonder why so many of you are becoming Diabetic and pumping Insulin, its because we parents have been unaware of the dangers of fast foods for the past 35 to 40 years. Way before you were born many of your parents, uncles, aunts and even grandparents developed Diabetes. We now are well aware that with good nutrition and excercise type 2 Diabetes can not only be avoided but in many cases, reversed.
If you have Diabetes, please don’t feel guilty. You really didn’t do anything wrong. However, you must take this disease seriously. Take your medication. Take your insulin. Check your blood sugar often. Its not normal for a kid to have to go through these changes everyday, but the consequences of not doing these things can be very serious indeed. Lay off the sodas and fast foods. Exercise is like Kryptonite to type 2 Diabetes. If your are not Diabetic, do your best to avoid this desease. Food companies and fast food restaurants are not your friends. You Have to look out for yourself.
FoodSpook
Remembering “Mad Cow Disease”
I saw a very interesting documentary on the DOC channel the other night. The disease in cattle called “Mad Cow Disease” began in England. this disease almost doomed the beef industry throughout the entire globe. So, where did this come from? According to this TV documentary, the cattle industry in England decided to cut costs and improve their profit margins by supplementing their cattle feed with ground up carcasses of sheep and cows. Before that time, their cattle where strictly vegeterian, eating local grasses, grain and hay. What happened when the cattlemen started making cannibals out of these innocent animals? The cows became sick.
For a number of years a disease known as ”scrapes” has been part of raising sheep. When a sheep contracts this disease it begins to scrape its body uncontrollably upon the nearest post or tree or whatever. Eventually it starts to lose its balance and control of its body. Then it dies. When cattle started being fed the bodies of dead sheep that had died of this disease, they started to show the same symtoms of scraping and loss of balance of the diseased sheep they were being fed.
The British government and meat industry had not put the pieces together yet. People had to DIE first. Two or three people came down with neurological brain cell damage and destruction that had not been seen before in humans. Scientists eventually discovered the disease they where seeing in human brain tissue resembled a brain disease they had known about in sheep for years. The question is, how did this disease get into humans? In the meantime, cattle were being euthanized all over the world, wherever “Mad Cow” was suspected. I’m talking about hundreds of thousands of heads of beef being killed or embargoed under the suspicion of being deadly. Economies were threatened in Europe, Canada, United States and even Japan. Something had to be done.
Scientists across the continents finally figured it out. Diseases can jump from one species to another. They found that cattle were being fed diseased sheep. Cattle were getting sick. No Problem! What became a problem was that people were now getting sick because were were eating sick cattle. When people start getting sick because of one industry it becomes worldwide news. When you get this news, its not to inform you about, lets say buying beef. The only reason you found out about “Mad Cow Disease” is because the story made money for print the press, TV, and all types of media outlets.
My blogsite is about Diabetes. It is also about our health. There are a lot of circumstances in life that are not in our control. For example, you live in a dictatorship. You were born in a rural village on the continent of Africa where you now have to buy your drinking water from a foriegn corporation. You live in the lower socio-economic level in America. The basic fact is no matter where welive on this planet, we must look after ourselves. Our governments are bought by multi-national comglomerates. The only reason why scientists discovered the roots of “Mad Cow Disease” was because it threatned the beef industry throughout the world. Economies could fail.
The Diabetes epidemic in America is not like “Mad Cow Disease”. It is not threatening anyone’s economy at the present. Diabetes effects Black People twice the times of White People. As more and more countries adopt the American diet of convenient fast processed food outlets, the rates of Diabetes will inevitablly rise in those countries. This fact will not matter to food corporations. They don’t care. How can a company care about you when they are selling you beef that has been fattend on the carcasses of dead sheep and other beef? Did you know that as much as 5% of your hot dogs, sausage and salami is sawdust? Check the food labels and look for celloulous fillers. It will be somewhere in the small print of the ingredients lable. In some ways we are like the cattle, being fed who knows what and becoming sick, even dying.
Nutrition is life. What we eat can mean life or the alternative. The food industry in America is corrupt and dangerous for the we, the consumers. We must get back to our “mother-wood since” as my dad used to say to me. I’m afraid of ground beef. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am. We must be more investigative in what we eat and drink. Watch out for all the disguised names of SUGAR. There is a reason for the explosion of obesity in this country in the past 30 years. Thus, there is a reason for this huge epidemic of Diabetes in America today.
FoodSpook
My Own Advice
Did you exercise for at least 15 minutes today? Good for you! I didn’t. Got on my computer this morning and have been here for almost 8 hours. No excuses. That’s how time gets by you. Tomorrow I will get back to what I Preach. Good nutrition and exercise can prevent type 2 Diabetes. There is no If’s and But’s. Just DO it.
FoodSpook
Diabetes – Ambushed In America
My Fellow Americans,
Would you believe we have been Ambushed? How so? By our food industry. Period. When I say food industry I’m talking about producers and sellers. For example, why do we now have the choice of whole grain cereal at the grocery store in the 2000′s when food companies like General Mills for example, could have been making whole grain cereals 40 years ago? The 1960′s was the beginning of the “healthy living” revolution in America, especially on the west coast. There was the free speech demonstrations/riots at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State, and thousands of self annointed hippies
staging “love ins” and “be ins” in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The spectacular forests and meadows of Northern California was the home of many communes of free living people. Young soldiers were being sacrificed in the Viet Nam war. I was at the Senator John Kennedy’s campaign speech at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater when he said those famous words “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”. The 1960′s spawned the Peace Corp. The 60′s was a time of a fundamental change of attitude and trust of many Americans toward our government and our corporations. I’ll give you the example of the Black Panthers headquartered in Oakland, CA. Like their counterparts throughout the country, they were protesting the “status quo”. With all of this awareness happening and our new found enlightenment, we were being Ambushed!
Think about it. With all of the medical breakthroughs and discoveries during the past 40 years, why is obesity the number one health problem in the whole country? Why are our two year olds developing Type 2 Diabetes? Because during the mid 1950′s and 60′s we were being Ambushed by the fast food army. Two of the generals in this army were the Colonel and Ronald MacDonald. They slipped into our lives and changed the eating habits of a entire nation. The Ambush was not typical. It probably one of the slowest Ambushes in history. Ray Croc, the founder of MacDonalds, opened his first burger outlet in the early 1950′s after the Korean War. America was on the rebound after two wars. Real estate was being developed cookie cutter style, design one box house and sell it over and over. The beginning of tract homes. The future was wide open and for the taking. There were many great sci-fi movies produced during this time. Two of my favorites were “War of the Worlds” starring the great Gene Barry and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” starring the magnificent Micheal Rennie and his sidekick, Mort the Robot. In 1957 Russia put a satellite into outer space. America was Shocked. The new president, John F. Kennedy promised the country that we would have a man on the moon within the next 10 years. We did. First man walked on the moon in 1969, the same year my first daughter was born. So, let me tell you how we’ve Ambushed.
In the early 1960′s there was a transition in the Hollywood cartoon industry. Remember “Popeye” and “Bugs Bunny”? Please don’t forget “Donald Duck” and “Pluto”. I was here when TV’s first went on sale. My love affair with TV and movies has been a lifetime. In the 1950′s when there was only 3 national TV stations, they went off at midnight and you would see a bulls-eye sign-off on the screen. I was 7 years old and highly disappointed when the programming stopped. I would wait to my parents went to sleep and sneak back into the living room to watch TV. One late Saturday night I viewed the original “Godzilla” the wonderful Japanese destruction film. My father was a preacher and out of town that weekend. About 5:00 AM that Sunday morning a gigantic beak broke through my bedroom window. Godzilla had flown to Oakland, CA and was trying to EAT me! My screams brought my mother to my bedroom and she clutched my face against her breasts. It took me 40 minutes to finally calm down. The Ambush is coming.
I will often refer to TV programs because it or not, they actually chronicle and sometimes predict real life. Can you recall the cartoon series “The Jetsons”. This series of cartoons portrayed a middle class family of the future. Everything was a their fingertips with the touch of a button. This cartoon was a reflection of America’s power and lust for modern things. Thus, the Ambush! When MacDonalds started showing up in minority neighborhoods we thought that Martin Luther King’s vision for Black People and all People in America might be happening. After President John Kennedy came President Lyndon B. Johnson, one of the most Honourable Presidents to serve the country since Uncle Abe. President Johnson also had a dream about a single America not being divided by race, wealth and contacts. His “Great Society” programs were magnificent and some of the finest legislation from our Executive Branch since Mr. Roosevelt. The Ambush is coming.
As I mentioned before, after WWII and the Korean War, America was giddy with gusto and energy. Let’s do it was the motto. A very subtle changed during the great changes of the 1960′s. Women came out. I’m talking about sexually, professionally and capable of thriving in any working environment. It was OK to have children and send them to day care. The country had changed! It s okfor women to work. I remember my wife and I both marveled fact that after a long days work, we didn’t have to worry about cooking on many days. At 6:30 in the evening we just went to Kentucky Fried and let Colonel take care of us. We new that we are part of the new wave of young progressives. When they started putting MacDonalds franchises in minority neighborhoods we said thank God! Somebody likes us. MacDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried, Wendys and so many more franchises showing up in minority neighborhoods we thought Oh Lord, our time has come. Business to where WE live. Thus, the Ambush began. Withboth parents working our butts off to achieve the American dream, we thank God for the Golden Arches where we could take our children to not only be be fed cheaply but also entertained. Wow! One stop shopping! The 1960′s was a time of change and a new awareness about life in general. Food corporations were far ahead of us in planning strategy and still are.
I quote from Marion Nestle, world renowned Professor of Nutrition and activist,”Food companies will make and market any product thar sells, regardless of its nutritional value or its effect on health. In this regard, food companies hardly differ from cigarette companies. They lobby Congress to eliminate regulations percieved as unfavorable; they press federal regulatory agencies not to enforce such regulations: and when they don’t like regulatory decisions, they file lawsuits” Understand, food companies demand the right to sell you crap! Your government not only condones this attitude toward feeding Americans garbage, the government is an ally with the food machine in this country that is screwing millions of people.
I am not anti-business. The free enterprise system has worked since the beginning of history. For example, Black Slavery. This enterprise was not limited to Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Washington, it was worldwide among white populations. Little countries like Denmark and Portugal became big international stars by kidnapping and selling African families. Slavery built the economy of the United States and our country has been the dominant economy in the entire world. The entire purpose of business is to achieve a PROFIT. That’s the absolute bottom line. Our government regulates the food industry like your family would condone your cousin that likes to break into houses and also sells drugs. We know he’s bad but he’s family. The food industry is the black sheep in the United States that is allowed to sleep in the Big White House and whose cousins are the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our government. Thus the Diabetes epidemic was not only able to begin, today as I write it has been allowed to continue. Why are 2 year olds becoming Type 2 Diabetics? When the child first started speaking, were her words “mama I want to be a Diabetic when I grow up”? Did the mother talk to her husband in bed that night and say ” I sure hope that our little girl becomes Diabetic, maybe she’ll DIE before she’s 40. MacDonalds, Wendys, Taco Bell and all the rest are not evil franchises. Good people from all walks of life own them and believe in them. These people are in business to make a profit, not to improve your health. If their products are making thousands of people obese and subject to Diabetes, Heart Disease and Stroke its not a problem. They just wait until the next generation of customers to born that night. Most children by the age of 2 recognize the MacDonald logo, the golden arches. Most children will recognize the Wendy’s big head. These same children will grow to adulthood without knowing how to read a food lable. This is by design. There is NO education to young children about healthy foods. There is unlimited education on TV and now online about food products that are absolutely not good for our children. The child buys into this hype. The parents buy into the ads. Hence, the Great American Ambush, Diabetes.
My first daughter was born in 1969. Her mother an I were both career people and worked 40 to 60 hours a week. Remember the cartoon “The Jetsons”. This futuristic family had everything at their fingertips, including meals. When MacDonalds hit our neighborhoods in the 1960′s we thought how wonderful. Almost like the Jetsons, we could drive up to this little box and order a happy meal for each child and each meal came with a toy! Absolutely brilliant marketing. Thus the 40 year Ambush was unleashed. The majority of Americans are blissfully unaware of the significance “processed foods”. When you pick a packet of sausage if you read the lable you might see ” 5% celloulose filler as allowed by th USDA”. This means each sausage is 5% sawdust and 95% of who knows what. Hidden ingredients and disguised names of substances in foods are the norm. Sugar is one of the main ingredient in thousands of food products. They food industry is aware that the public is becoming more educated about reading labels. Sugar is now listed as “dehydrated cane juice”. Now that’s a hoot. There are about 20 separate names being used to disguise sugar. The consumption of sugar is probably the main precursor to becoming Diabetic. The number of children and adults becoming Diabetes in the United States is at a all time high and still growing. The Diabetes Ambush is still happening today.
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