Nutrition and Physical Regeneration

"The day may come when the courage of men fails; when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day! This day we fight!" ~ Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

I’ve already lamented the use and abuse of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in pretty much all processed foods. It seems clear that the state, in an effort to "help" corn farmers, has hurt everyone else. But at least in that case, albeit difficult, we can still choose to avoid that poison. Several respondents to my essay made that point in their messages to me. It’s tough, but the choice is still there. I agree, although without the state’s involvement, our choices would certainly be larger. Then again, that’s always the case, is it not? As Manual Lora and I tried to convey in our most recent joint essay, choice for each of us is best for all of us.

Enter the Trans Fat Police

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As a followup to my Turning Fast Food Into Healthy Food: 10 You Can Quickly Make At Home, here are three foods I didn't include in the original article that are worthy of mention.

Enjoy!

1. Ginger ale (yes, soda!)

Tools needed: 2 quart jar (larger or smaller depending on how much you want to make at one time), knife, peeler, water kefir grains.

Typical ingredients when buying at the store: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative) Caramel Color.

Ingredients you are avoiding: everything (including natural flavors which most likely includes MSG, a known neurotoxin.

Ingredients to use at home: water, honey, ginger, tumeric, lemon

Total time: less time than it takes to watch the how to video above – less than 10 minutes

For those wanting a stronger ginger brew you might try ginger beer which is just as quick and easy to make as ginger ale.

2. Chapati

Tools needed: skillet (you will need a gas range to make a chapati with pockets)

Typical ingredients when buying at the store: chapatis are like the majority of retail bread products, made with umpteen ingredients most of if not all which do not contribute to healthy eating.

Ingredients you are avoiding: everything

Ingredients to use at home: grain berries and oil if you like.

Total time: less than 10 minutes

If you want a written description you can check out this post on making a McCarrison-style Chapati.

3. Creme Fraiche

Creme Fraiche is luxurious, decadent, delicious and expensive when bought at retail. It is so easy to make at home (and keeps 7-10 days) that it is fairly simple to always have some on hand.

If you have never tried it prepare yourself for a treat. If you have tried it but use it only occasionally, you will never go back to store bought creme fraiche (pronounced "fresh") once you make it yourself. If you are like me, once you have it you will never again resort to eating its poor American cousin, sour cream. There is no comparison either in taste or versatility.

Below I have listed three ways to produce it at home. If you have access to raw cream so much the better as that is how creme fraiche is made in France.

1. The quick and dirty ready to eat immediately version. It's not real creme fraiche but it will do in a pinch. Don't cheat yourself. Make the real thing.

2. Creme Fraiche made with yogurt.

3. Creme Fraiche made with buttermilk (editor's note: this is a video but it could not be embedded).

We can debate the merits of how healthy one can eat with a steady diet of McDonald's by making the right choices, but I couldn't resist putting up this picture.

Hat tip: The Ochlophobist

This weekend I saw the film Food, Inc., a treatment of modern monoculture, the fast food industry and factory farming. There were some parts that would make any libertarian cringe, and yet the movie did place a fair amount of blame on the state. Michael Pollan, food journalist and hero of the “slow food movement,” was featured heavily, and he has always explained how farm subsidies are largely to blame for Big Ag, for the proliferation of soy and corn in almost everything we find in the modern American diet, and for distortions in the market from waves of illegal immigration from Mexico to the impoverishment of the third world.

Another statist intervention that gets some blame, although not with the libertarian analysis, concerns patents. Monsanto, the corporate food giant that has had its tentacles in the last three presidential administrations (including the current one), owns genes that can be found in 90% of America’s soy. As wind inevitably blows the seeds from Monsanto crops to those owned by smaller farmers, the company has come to claim intellectual property rights over the land of those who want nothing to do with the company. It is forbidden for farmers to save seeds — instead, they become wards of this corporation. Even worse, some farmers have been sued for merely “encouraging” the violation of these patents.

The role of patents in modern food industry seems to be an understudied topic, and I would bet that with some exploration we would see how the fraud of intellectual property has messed up American farming as much as it has so many other areas of creative and industrial enterprise. In fact, I would bet that the vast majority of the grievances of today’s anti-corporate farming movement, usually seen as part of the statist left, would be addressed simply by removing the state from subsidizing Big Agriculture, either through direct payouts and price supports, or through the indirect assistance of patent protection.

Incidentally, the movie blames Clarence Thomas, former Monsanto attorney, for his key role in a 2001 Supreme Court decision upholding plant patents, which opened the door to such tyrannical litigation and prosecution, as well as the increasing concentration of the American food industry into the hands of fewer and fewer businesses. This is just another reason I dissent from the view that Thomas is the best Supreme, and indeed regard him as one of the worst.
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Anthony Gregory – shamelessly cribbed from his blog post titled Big Ag and Intellectual Property

The Federal Trade Commission announced that it has the power to regulate blogs, specifically blogs that endorse commercial products. The unelected FTC —composed entirely of Bush appointees—mandates that “bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.”

Consider a scenario. Someone gives you a CD as gift. You like it. You post on your blog that others should buy a copy but don’t “disclose” that you received a free copy. This is a violation of the new regulation. You are hit with a fine of $11,000.

This is merely a first step toward regulating the content of blogs themselves, as anyone who offers a personal testimonial about any product will be liable, under the Federal Trade Commission Act, should the FTC disagree with your personal experiences.

If you’re wondering just how big a mess the FTC can make, consider a decision published by D. Michael Chappell, the FTC’s chief administrative law judge. Judge Chappell caught FTC prosecutors in a blatant attempt to lie their way out of a bad situation arising from yet another misguided attempt to micromanage the World Wide Web. It’s a case that demonstrates the FTC’s unique combination of stupidity and narcissism.

The FTC has been waging war against small retailers of medicinal herbs. This rampage is directed against any website that dares to even suggest there may be some benefit to the use of herbs in treating diseases like cancer. The FTC is emphatic: No individual may speak about the health benefits of a product—even a legal product—without the express consent of the federal government. All speech not permitted is forbidden.

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I have been away for a few days but things will be back in full swing shortly. In the meantime check out this tasty steak recipe.

Enjoy!

"Clean Your Plate, They're Starving in China" is quite possibly the dumbest article I have ever read (and I frequent National Review Online, mind you).

Now before writing a critique, I asked myself: Does this young author, untainted by the dry pages of economics tomes or lectures on symbolic logic, deserve my sarcastic wit (which some have likened to a rapier, or at the very least a strong pair of toenail clippers)? But my doubts soon evaporated.

If Amanda Park Taylor is going to share her views on the august pages of The L Magazine, then I should likewise air my concerns in a public forum.

Let us then proceed to her horrifying discovery while shopping in Trader Joe's:

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One way to enhance your diet is simply to make foods from scratch. It used to be that making foods from scratch was a time consuming and sometimes tedious process. However modern technology has changed the rules of the game, and many foods that were once labor intensive can be made in a fraction of the time. The key is having the proper tools on hand and sourcing the right ingredients.

Another thing to keep in mind is that nearly all junk foods can become good foods if you make them at home. The same is true for compromise foods, i.e. foods that don't quite pass the smell test from a traditional healthy food perspective, but aren't the equivalent of chowing down a few double stuffed oreos either.

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In a bind and don't have a corkscrew to open that final bottle of wine you certainly do not need? Well here is the answer to your dilemma.

Those of you who are regular readers of this site have probably read my posts on Curing the Incurables with Dr. Richard Schulze. If you haven't and know someone who is sick I would recommend that you view or listen to the videos. They are potentially life-changing for someone who is suffering from a major disease. There are three videos posted thus far and 5 more to go.

The videos are a necessary introduction to the work of Dr. Schulze. The real workhorse material was recorded in a different video series titled The Sam Biser Save Your Life Herbal Video Collection (Advanced Herbal Healing Techniques for Chronic & Even Incurable Health Conditions) , where Schulze gets into all the nuts and bolts of what to do and how to do it.

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