Food for the dog

The old woman came down today with more meat for my dog Buddy - she usually comes every 2 weeks. She loves Buddy and whenever she goes by with her van and Buddy is outside he will jump off the porch. She will stop and talk or come and pet her (Buddy is a her). Then there is an old person down the street that brings her bacon strips and when Buddy sees him come out of his house, she goes crazy because she knows that he is coming over here. It seems like everyone loves my dog around here. Most women stop and hug her and pet her.

Takeout joints

Do you like eating out in restaurants or take out joints? If you do I would suggest you be careful about it. There are some disgusting things that go on. Mind you I’m not saying that every restaurant or take out joint is the same but there are always bad apples in everything. I mean there are people that will serve you food that you wouldn’t eat if you saw who prepared it for you. There are some places that if you saw who else handles your food besides the cook you'd have a problem. In fact, is the cook him/herself even clean? How do you know for sure? Do the cooks wash their hands after finishing their business in the restroom? Are the cook's or the waitress’s fingernails clean under the ends or crappy with dirt under the ends? If that is so then that person can’t be considered as being careful with their hygiene. In food preparation and service, hygiene is very important.

If the hygiene is not good there are a lot of clues besides just the fingernails. Is there a bad odor coming off of the cook or waitress as if they hadn't taken a shower in a long time? If the people have one or all of those things going on, then they should not be in a place of work where they are responsible for either cooking or handling foods. That should be the same as take out joints.

Now in some restaurants, i some people that ordered food don’t eat all of it do some cooks take what has not been touched and save it and heat it up for the next customer to order whatever that cook was saving? I know that is probably not common, but how do you know it doesn't ever happen? My point is - you don't know. In the kitchen of those places are there some foods that are dropped on the floor then just picked up and cooked? These places need to make a profit so wasting food is a bad thing for them. So it is possible that if it dropped food could be cooked after being picked up and brushed off or washed off. If it's something that's not to be cooked like say salad, is it just put on a plate and given to the next customer with whatever else that’s supposed to go with what has been ordered?

If you’re a finickier eater at home then why do you eat in a restaurant or order from a takeout joint where you don't know what has happened with your food preparation? Where you can’t see how your food is being handled or who is handling it?

Now I’m not inferring that what happens in some places is happening in all places, but I do suggest that you be careful.

Depriving kids of sustainable foods (Part 1)

While surfing the internet this morning to see what kind of news I could to comment on I happened to open this. I checked out the video just to see what the complaint from the kids were. It turns out it was in regards to what the Michelle Obama tells the schools about what the kids should be served for lunches. From what I could see what was on the trays was only garbage that wouldn’t sustain a kid's activities on a school day.  Kids need fuel for their bodies and from what I had seen that the schools were told to give the kids, I wouldn’t even offer it to my dogs for fear of getting bitten by them for offering that kind of garbage. And the first lady calls it food.

Kids are humans and they need good food to give the body what it needs for energy. The energy they would get from that garbage wouldn’t last them an hour of activity.

Kids have parents and the parents don’t need anyone to tell them what to feed their kids. At least what the parents feed their kids sustains them in their activities of a school day and beyond.

More on garbage in our food

Related problems.

The "yoga mat" chemical azodicarbonamide has been banned in the U.K. because of a risk that it causes cancer. Let’s face it, a chemical that is used to make shoe soles and yoga mats cannot be good for the 500 foods that it’s used in. I’m beginning to think that instead of eating food made for humans we should start eating animal food. It might just be safer than the food produced for human consumption.

Via Fox News:

I guess the producers of the foods that we eat, are not deterred by the damage that some of these chemicals can do to a person’s health. Just as long as it looks good, and tastes good, and sells well. Money is clearly the first thing on their minds. We can’t even trust the meat that we eat because of what’s given to animals to make them fatter. Cows are given things to produce more milk and chickens to lay more eggs. Then things are taken out of the milk and added to it. Margarine was supposed to be for animals and it ended up being for human consumption. Then there's all the salt that is in our food, and this garbage aspartame and whatever else. Our food just doesn't seem safe or natural at all.

They say sugar is no good for you so they come out with aspartame. It seems to be more dangerous than sugar. These so call scientists that I’ve blogged about add to the confusion. One group claims that if you’re a tall person your IQ would be higher than a short person an also if you are old age you tend to be a grouchy person. No wonder this world has gone to the dogs with some of these stupid things that people of 'intelligence' will say just to be mentioned on the news or to be paid for it.

Let me add one last point. Thee is a lot of conspiracy theory about the government and agri-business. Much of it is crazy talk, but just because that is the case it doesn't mean there are some elements of truth or at least concern in what the government allows the food industry to get away with. These people might have vivid imaginations but I would say that it doesn't mean they don't have some valid concerns about real issues. Food safety is something fundamentally important to everyone.

Giant agribusiness companies are slowly and quietly spreading their scientifically altered seeds to so many farms that nearly half of all foods on supermarket shelves now contain some ingredient that has had its DNA tampered with by science.

Well I guess I’m finished because I’m a grouchy old man and not tall enough to have a high IQ. I didn’t know I was in that bad of a shape but at 79 years old I finally found out what some of these so called scientists think about people like me.

The evils of aspartame

Aspartame. Why is this garbage of product still allowed to be used in our foods and drinks? My son is 47 years old and whenever he ingests any product that has this garbage of Aspartame in it, he gets really bad migraines. That is too coincidental to be a coincidence.

I was watching the video below on how dangerous this product is to our health. I would refer you to this site for more about aspartame.

I wrote a post not too long ago where I talked about how money was worth more to some people than our health. After seeing this video and other videos on what is used in our food, I must say greed has taken over the mentality of our food producers and pharmaceutical products.

Every day you read about dietitians that tell you, to stay healthy you should eat this or that. I would say to those dieticians, before you advise people on what to eat to stay healthy you should do a good investigation as to the product that you people tell us to eat and not eat. After you have done some good research, you might be surprised as to what you’re telling us is good to eat.

Why are there so many people getting sick these days? Even people that follow some of these diets in order to stay healthy, end up with poor health and in hospitals. The reason is the garbage that is included in the foods and also in the medicines that we are not told about.

That’s my rant of the day. You want to stay healthy? Eat what you want as your diet and you just might be healthier than if you eat what you are told to eat.

No one knows the truth about food

No one knows the truth, the whole truth, about what is done to the food that we ingest every day. This is the same for the producers of pharmaceutical products. Some of it is known but not all of it. Not enough of it is known.

In today’s world, no one can be believed when they talk about the product's they are selling. That's because business is business and to them it doesn't matter what is added to some of their products, just as long as they taste or look good and they can’t be sued for the garbage that was added. That's the extent to which a business cares about what it makes. Health-wise, who cares? Just as long as the customer likes it, and buys it, the side effects only matter so long as they don't get in trouble for it. So businesses add things - preservatives, colouring, other additives, all in the name of cost, convenience or appeal. Maximizing the money that can be made out of selling them is the main purpose of the business.

Now I`m not saying that businesses making money is wrong, but to expect them to care about your health is just not realistic. Not unless it becomes financially important for them to do so.

Now here come the dietitians. They tell you what is good for you and what you should eat.  They tell you  to watch out for certain kinds of fat and this and that, and it never ends.  It would be impossible to eat  exactly what you’re told to eat as a diet.  Even if it were possible, what is considered good  changes every time a new study comes out.  Imagine how much food you would waste trying to keep up with that ever-changing list of do`s and don`ts.  These dietitians might have good intentions in telling us what and what not to eat to have good health, but at the same time, they should be a little more focused.  They should try to find out exactly what has been added or taken out of certain foods before advising people on what to eat and what not to eat. Try and find out what kind of pesticides were used on some certain fruits and vegetables, because some of them are porous and will absorb pesticides which you can’t wash off.

I don`t have an answer on a perfect solution, but I do have my rant of the day about something that needs fixing.

Dangerous chemicals in our food.

Not too long ago, I wrote about the dangerous chemicals that could be found in the food that we eat. More than once in fact.  I also mentioned that if I saw something but didn’t have time to write about it,  I would bookmark it for future reference. Today looking back at my bookmarks,  I found this link (use the link if video does not display on this page)that I had saved and I thought I should share it.  It deals with chemicals in food, something that I think is a bad thing for people.


Some of these chemicals were given to rats and they developed cancer. It's not clear to me why some of these chemicals need to be added to food at all.  Even 50 or 60 years ago this was not normal and yet people weren't dying off because foods were terrible.  Technology makes our lives better in many ways, but not all technology changes lives for the better.  Adding chemicals to food, many of which have no reason to be added, is most often not a good way to utilize technology.

That's my short rant for today.

Poop pills

My last post was about beaver butts.  Don't get the wrong idea - I'm not fixated on derrieres.  But I just had to comment on this article that's worth checking out.

Hold your nose and don't spit out your coffee: Doctors have found a way to put healthy people's poop into pills that can cure serious gut infections - a less yucky way to do "fecal transplants." Canadian researchers tried this on 27 patients and cured them all after strong antibiotics failed to help.

It's a gross topic but a serious problem. Half a million Americans get Clostridium difficile, or C-diff, infections each year, and about 14,000 die. The germ causes nausea, cramping and diarrhea so bad it is often disabling. A very potent and pricey antibiotic can kill C-diff but also destroys good bacteria that live in the gut, leaving it more susceptible to future infections.

Recently, studies have shown that fecal transplants - giving infected people stool from a healthy donor - can restore that balance.

Remembering the good old days (part 4)

These are my latest thoughts in an on-going comparison of the good old days to today.  You can read the previous parts 1 through 3, here, here and here.

I remember when food was food, and I mean food. Pure food that had no chemicals whatsoever.  Now the world is so populated that some chemicals have to be put in to preserve foods for sale. But it's not only preservatives.  There are other things that get added - like sodium.  Other chemicals are put in that should not be put in - like colouring to make foods look fresh.

Take for example meats, especially ground meat. Stores add colouring to make the meat look a deeper red.  Some stores even go so far as wrapping ground meat that is a couple days old or starting to turn colour. They will put that meat on sale but with fresh ground meat wrapped around it so you don’t see it until you open it up to start cooking it.  I know it's happened to me a couple of times.  But since it was on sale people would jump on it.  Another thing that some meat packers will add is what they call pink slime in the ground meat

Pink slime.  Can you imagine how great it must be to get that name?

The gross factor: The meat industry likes to call it "lean finely textured beef," but after ABC News ran a story on it, the public just called it what it looks like — pink slime, a mixture of waste meat and fatty parts from higher-quality cuts of beef that have had the fat mechanically removed. Afterwards, it's treated with ammonia gas to kill Salmonella and E. coli bacteria. Then it gets added to ground beef as a filler. Food microbiologists and meat producers insist that it's safe, but given the public's reaction to the ABC News report, there's an "ick" factor we just can't overcome. The primary producer of pink slime just announced that it's closing three of the plants where pink slime is produced, and Kroger, Safeway, Food Lion, McDonald's and the National School Lunch Program (among others) have all pulled it from their product offerings.

Now if this can be done in ground meats what else do we get in other foods that we should know about? And that’s why I'd mentioned in an earlier post 'what are we eating'?

I love meat but I wish I was a vegetarian. Then I would know what I was eating. Then again it would all depend on what kind of fertilizer that would enrich the soil the vegetables were growing in.  None of this was a problem in the good old days.

Well, I was hungry but my appetite just went for a  holiday after writing this.

That’s all for now. Bon appétit.