I don't understand why....

I don't understand why folks are so enamored of Paul Ryan! I appears to me that he stands for demolishing the safety nets that are a hallmark of a civilized society, while using the army as a substitute safety net (do we need more foreign adventures?), and coddling the rich, who take advantage of our public services (public education, infrastructure, safety personnel, etc.) while avoiding paying taxes in every way they can.  Are they going to use their billions to repair our roads and bridges, or hire our public servants, such as teachers and policemen?
   
Yes, we have too many regulations, but do we need to shut down everything that protects us from the predatory nature of big for-profit corporations?

Does that mean we let industry continue to contribute to global warming, environmental disasters, and  lousy food & health systems?

Why have we gotten to the point where some wealthy people appear to be trying to buy the election to protect their often ill-gotten gains?

Why are the airwaves filled with innuendo and out-right lies meant to instill fear in the heart of the gullible masses?

I'm sorry, but the Republicans have turned me off completely with their kowtowing to the right wingers (who seem to have their brains screwed on backwards), with their racist determination to undermine Obama since the day he was elected, and their refusal to compromise for the good of the country.

ProsperityforAll.org seems to me to have a much better handle on putting our country back on the right path - See Prosperity Economics: Building an Economy for All

Plus-size America: What to do?

We will not solve the obesity problem in America until we stop kowtowing to the food and ag industries and change the USDA Dietary Guidelines, which currently tell us to eat lots of grains, half of which can be refined, and which certainly contribute to obesity. They also advise a low fat diet with lean meat and skim milk, which leaves you hungry and seeking all those fattening grains, and ignores the evidence that kids that drink whole milk are slimmer. Then they recommend 'oils,' including your modern polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which provide too much pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats and are often damaged by the processing which makes them unhealthy. There is little mention of real butter, which provides an excellent source of real vitamin A and contains butyric acid that improves insulin sensitivity. They perpetuate the myth that saturated fat promotes heart disease, when good, unbiased evidence shows that is not true. They perpetuate the myth that fat is fattening because it is concentrated calories, ignoring the evidence that it is really carbohydrates that promote obesity and diabetes, especially if they are refined (3 slices of white bread a day is okay for kids over 14). These are the guidelines that govern school lunches, and apparently guide the processed food industry! Is it any wonder we're raising a generation of fat kids!

Lest you think I'm crazy, here are a number of supporting links (below). Fortunately many health professionals are beginning to catch on.

Kris, the retired and reformed dietitian

Adele Hite, RD, on failure of Dietary Guidelines:

What Really Makes Us Fat

Saturated fat is vital to human health

24 Reasons the 2010 Dietary Guidelines are wrong about cholesterol, saturated fat, and carbohydrates

Healthy Nation Coalition - www.forahealthynation.org

Comment on the Nutrition Standards of the School Lunch Program

Open letter to the folks at Slow Food USA Time-for-Lunch:

Dear Time-for-Lunch,

Folks at Slow Food USA must surely be aware that the Nutrition Standards for the School Lunch Program are a recipe for obesity and diabetes, with their emphasis on grains and skim milk, and the misguided limits on saturated fat and salt.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/legislation/dietaryspecs.pdf

I don't know how we push for healthier school lunches when the guidelines are stacked against good health. Juice, dry cereal and skim milk fit the guidelines, but are sure to lead to crashing blood sugars a couple hours later, and fat storage of all those excess carbs. By lunch kids are famished after their low fat breakfast, but the unbuttered, unsalted veggies have little appeal, and the nutrients are poorly absorbed without the good fats, vitamins, and minerals in butter and other traditional natural fats. And of course all those grains are raising blood sugars and storing fat, leading to obesity and diabetes. This is well known science - all the carbs (modern wheat is worse - http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/) cause raised blood sugar and insulin. Insulin is the fat storing hormone, which blocks fat burning.

Why do we ignore the fact that butter, eggs, and whole milk have nourished people well over the ages, but childhood obesity and diabetes have become a problem only in recent years since the guidelines mandated low fat meals, or encouraged meals that are too high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 oils.

Why do we ignore the evidence that children who drink whole milk tend to be slimmer than those who drink skim milk? http://tinyurl.com/Childrenwholemilk

Why do we continue to ignore the evidence that saturated fat does not cause disease?
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/untold-story-of-butter/ and http://healthydietsandscience.blogspot.com/search/label/Butter%20and%20Heart%20Disease

Time for Lunch will not succeed in its goal of seeing healthier children until we convince our legislators to change the goals. More and more health professionals are seeing the light. See http://www.forahealthynation.org/. Now we just need to get the public health officials on board.

The future of our country is at stake!

Peace,
Kris Johnson, retired and reformed dietitian, Slow Food member
www.MercyViewMeadow.org

----------------------------
"Tragically, a growing body of evidence suggests that the bizarre and increasingly common behavioral problems among young children and teen-agers are related to the combined effects of high sugar intakes and the virtual absence of omega-3 essential fatty acids in the American diet."
The Modern Nutritional Diseases, and How to Prevent Them -
Heart Disease, Stroke, Type-2 Diabetes, Obesity, Cancer , page 199
by Alice and Fred Ottoboni, public health professionals

I'm a schizophrenic Progressive

A January 16th column in the Toledo Blade by Charles Krauthammer on the resurgence of libertarianism, lead me to conclude that I am a schizophrenic Progressive - torn between liberalism and libertarianism. Right wingers' focus on 'rights' of the unborn and marriage are certainly not libertarian. Their emphasis on cutting taxes and government seems to reflect greed and selfishness more than any concern for the common good, in spite of their claim to be Christian. I'm afraid I see right wing ideas leading down the path to serfdom, as the rich become ever more powerful and the poor become poorer. On the other hand Democrats need to learn from libertarians that reams of regulations are not the answer to a healthier, happier, more productive society.

The current USDA goal of eliminating access to raw milk by 2020 is but one example of regulatory overkill. Never mind that good quality raw milk has nourished millions of people around the world for thousands of year, and there are currently better that 8 million raw milk drinkers in this country with no evidence that it is more dangerous than all the other things on our grocery store shelves.

The book, 'Everything I Want to Do is Illegal,' written by one of the smartest ecological farmers in this country, Joel Salatin, details a host of other ridiculous, job-killing regulations that add nothing to the safety or health of our food supply. I can see the influence of powerful corporations behind much of this over-regulation, designed to kill small businesses and cut the competition, whichever party is in power, and then the bureaucrats become control freaks. Is either party willing to cut the corporate purse strings, resist corrupt corporate influence, and do what we really need to do to make this a better world?

A few examples of adverse corporate influence:

Dairy Industry
The government war on raw milk is an attack against food freedom
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Meat Industry
Everything I want to do is Illegal - War Stories from the Local Food Front

Ag/Food industries
The Farm Bill: Better Food Starts Here
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/farm-bill-2012

Drug Industry
Ex-Pharma Sales Reps Speaks Out - Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness

GMO Industry
Scientist finding many negative impacts of Roundup Ready GM crops

Trust Us, We're Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future

There are more examples on my website

Make baked goods a little healthier

Here we go again - blaming fat, especially the wrong kind of fat, rather than carbs and commercial vegetable oils. An article in today's (11/27/11) Blade claims to tell you how to make baked good healthier, but it's the usual misguided advice.

• Replacing part of the butter with pureed fruit will just make the item higher in carbs, contributing to undesirable blood sugar gyrations.
• Using oil rather than butter is likely to contribute to the insulin resistance that leads to diabetes.
• Replacing whole eggs with egg whites or egg substitutes, just means you miss all the wonderful nutrients in the egg yolk, including choline and vitamin A. Choline deficiency induces metabolic syndrome (indicated by insulin resistance and elevated serum triglycerides and cholesterol) and obesity. And the cholesterol in egg yolks is actually beneficial.
• Using low fat cream cheese or low fat milk just means you are losing the benefits of butterfat - more vitamin A, stable saturated fats that make for a satisfying meal and protect your cells from the undesirable trans fats and excessive highly reactive omega-6 oils.

The easiest way to make baked goods healthier is to use all your good natural fats, but eat a smaller portion. But one caution, smaller portions may signal your body "Oops! Starvation!" and your metabolism slows down - not what you had in mind. A satisfying meal of real food in modest portions, with plenty of good fats, is more likely to keep your body happily perking along in fat-burning mode. So make that rich dessert with quality ingredients, just don't eat as much! And you can probably cut the sugar - with superior ingredients it doesn't need to be super sweet.

Where are the Innovators?

In response to the Editorial on page 37 of the October 10-16, 2011 large print weekly of the NYTimes, titled "Where to Find the Innovators?"(They are always changing the name!) I wrote this response - but was too late to send it.

What do you mean 'Where are the innovators?' There are plenty of innovators but they are being systematically squashed!

There are innovative eco-farmers who are producing super nutritious, tasty and highly productive farm products, using innovative, sophisticated, ecologically friendly, sustainable techniques, but they have been ignored or belittled by conventional agricultural experts.

There are small eco-farmers and their customers who are producing wonderfully nutritious and innovative value added products, but they are crushed by burdensome, irrational, often arbitrarily applied regulations which have little to do with real food safety, but are true job killers. Read famed, truly innovative eco-farmer Joel Salatin's book, Everything I Want To Do is Illegal, to see what innovation killers those regulations can be. (Summary article)

There are unconventional health professionals who are not only curing cancer, but also guiding their patients into how to prevent it and a host of other chronic diseases in the first place, yet they are regularly disparaged as quacks and frauds by establishment medicine and often threatened with loss of their license to practice.

The public has been led to believe that the latest drug is truly innovative, when in fact the really innovative, effective, and relatively low cost non-drug approaches being used by knowledgeable nutritionists face all kinds of regulatory barriers, while the practitioners are attacked by the dietetic police for not having the "proper credentials," or not following proper protocols.

Wall Street's insistence on short term profits is behind much of this - so hurrah for 'Occupy Wall Street'! An end to the collusion between big corporations and government!

Your everlovin' reformed and retired dietitian,
Kris

Phosphorus fertilizer buildup - a solution

A headline on the business page in yesterday's Blade:
Algae food found in 30% of Ohio farmland - Phosphorus linked to outbreaks on lake
"Ohio's six state agency directors learned Wednesday that nearly a third of all Buckeye State farmland is believed to contain too much phosphorus, one of many possible reasons for large annual algae outbreaks in western Lake Erie since 1995."

This is another reason to switch to intelligent organic/ecological farming techniques. Phosphorus from commercial chemical fertilizers is rather quickly bound up into in insoluble form that is unavailable to the plants - hence its accumulation in the soil. To release that bound-up phosphorus requires the biological action of soil microorganisms, especially fungi. Chemical farming tends to kill off the soil life, making the soil more vulnerable to erosion and requiring yet more chemical fertilizers, but sophisticated ecological farming methods encourage and support the soil life, making the bound up phosphorus and other minerals, as well as nitrogen from the air, available for plant utilization.

It's time we face the reality of what our commercial farming methods are doing to the environment. Ecological farming that is well done can be just as productive as conventional methods, while producing higher quality, more profitable crops.