[pepper]

i have a veggie friend whose new babe is putting on weight slow and they want her to supplement with formula, anyone got any suggestions about what she can eat to produce more and fattier milk? crossposting in the mama thread...

[chachaheels]

I love Kombucha too--good for digestion and it helps you absorb even more nutrients from your food. It tastes like soda, too--but infinitely better for you. I'm a big fan of Bengal Spice tea, too--the very best Chai tea on the market, bar none.
Celestial Seasonings makes some excellent fruit teas as well, they're easy to brew up and sweeten with Stevia (or nothing, it's good that way too) and just keep cold as an alternative to fruit juice (too sugary, and often hfcs loaded) or other sugary cold drinks.

[pepper]

people are easy to brain wash, look at that insane hpv vaccine that people are giving to young girls en mass right now. it's totally crazy what people make themselves believe.

mushroom tea with sugar = kombucha? it probably won't help but i won't hurt either.

green tea is good for you, so is white tea and a variety of herbals. many herbal teas are naturally sweet too (bengal spice by celestial seasonings is my current fave).
good luck to your pops.

[rubberdollz]

You know what's amazing about that whole thing is it will brainwash people! You know that people watched that and thought, my god it is made out of corn so how can it be bad for me?!?!?! Drink up that soda!!!

Is the effects of becoming smarter or penis enlargement on that website????

Oh yeah I have to mention this.... my dad is a huge aspartame addict! He drank about 1 diet soda a day but would put Splenda on his cereal and he's got quite a few health problems as well. I've been bothered by this for some time and am always sending him articles on aspartame letting him know the problems. He always said, no I don't use that much of it. Well this last time he started telling me about another health problem he had, so I found an article that links aspartame to this health problem. I think that finally got him! He called me and said "I'm off the aspartame, you've convinced me." You know how excited I was!?!?!?! It's hard watching someone you love basically kill themselves! I love my dad too much so I kept hoping some article was finally going to grab his attention and this one did. Now he's trying to find something he can drink during lunch, he just doesn't like water so he found this mushroom tea that is supposed to have some healing properties in it and when he's making it you add sugar to it. He picked up some stevia and agave to try something new and healthier. It's a start!!!! Now I just need to convince him to get off the vegetable oils!!!

[Perilous]

Rubberdollz,

That is brainwashing at its finest. This is how the media likes to take advantage of the idiocy of the public at large. And by the way, hfcs not only makes you smarter, it has a little-known side effect of penis enlargement as well. This is what those health food companies don't want you to know about.

[SUPERLUVER]

thanks, erinjane. i am feeling much better today, but not 100%. ive been able to go to work and then take it pretty easy in the evenings, and it seems to have helped. still drinking water and avoiding caffeine, good for the body! if it is mono, i guess it will just take time to get out of my system.

[erinjane]

Super, my brother had mono a few years ago and his symptoms were almost identical to what you're describing. The doctors thought he had strep at first but his throat was so swollen and white that after a few days they realized it was mono. I would get to a doctor if you can to confirm a diagnosis and make sure it's nothing more serious. It's good that you're feeling a little better but keep a close eye on yourself.

[SUPERLUVER]

ok, so i came down with this severe sore throat on monday afternoon..tuesday i woke up and thought i might be able to handle it so i came to work. left after an hour, *doh* went home and was miserable all morning, had a 102 degree fever. i took acetominiphin and got the fever down. today my throat is still sore, and there are white patches, not spots, on my tonsils. ive been doing research all morning and some things point to strep, but also to mono. both of these are viral, so there is really no point in my going to the doctor. ive been drinking water with airborne immune supp tablets, taking zinc, drinking herbal tea, gargling with salt water. last night my fever was down to 99.6. i havnt taken my temp today yet. is there anything else i should do to speed this process along? the only thing that freaks me out are these white patches of ick in my throat. i just want to be able to stick my toothbrush back there and scrape them off without hurling! i have also been very tired lately and had just about zero appetite, which also points to mono. ack.

[pepper]

Some almonds are to be treated with propylene oxide.

According to Dr. Mercola, and also this article (below), it's race car fuel, and it's been banned in a number of countries as very likely carcinogenic:
*******
Racing Fuel on Your Almonds?
Thursday 11 October, 2007 Written by Amy Galland
Shop Smart. Shop Safe.
More proof that you can’t trust a product label to tell you the truth.

As of September 2007, most “Raw” almonds will actually be “Dead,” either sprayed with a potentially carcinogenic gas, or boiled to the point of being un-sproutable.

Last spring, the Almond Board of California mandated that all almonds grown for North American markets must be pasteurized. Oddly, the FDA has allowed these pasteurized almonds to be marketed as “Raw,” even though there are significant nutritional differences between raw and pasteurized almonds.

When you consider the benefits of truly raw nuts and the toxic chemicals used in the pasteurization process, this mislabeling is more than deceptive – it’s downright toxic!


Organic almonds will be pasteurized using steam treatments, but for “conventional” almonds, the FDA has approved oil roasting, blanching, steam processing and – most disturbing – fumigating them with propylene oxide (PPO)

Of all of the pasteurization treatments that kill the enzymes and chemically alter the nutritive value of the almonds, PPO raises the most cause for alarm. PPO is recognized as a possible carcinogen and is banned in many countries including the EU, Canada, and Mexico. PPO was used as racing fuel until it was banned to protect drivers and fuelers…but according to the Almond Board PPO residue is safe for human consumption.

And as the manufacturers are not required to label the almonds “pasteurized”, neither are they mandated to tell you by which process the pasteurization occurred. Thus, unless you purchase “raw” organic almonds, you very well could be consuming a carcinogenic chemical!

So why all this effort to cook 80% of the world’s almonds?

In 2001 an incident of salmonella poisoning was attributed to eating raw almonds. After a second case in 2004, the Almond Board decided to pre-empt any potential lawsuits by pasteurizing every almond they grew.

This is all a bit strange, as both cases were traced back to large processing plants – bringing into question not the safety of raw almonds, but the dangers that abound in unsustainable industrial farming practices.

Consumers aren’t the only ones affected by this decision. In order to stay in business, almond farmers will be forced to purchase expensive systems for pasteurizing nuts ($500,000 minimum).

Growers had requested an extension of the mandate from the Almond Board and the USDA in order to find the best processes for pasteurization and in the hopes of ameliorating the ruling – but their request was denied and as of 1 September 2007 any “raw” California almond that you don’t purchase directly from a farmer, will be cooked.

[chachaheels]

Just goes to show you how threatened those corn farmers (and Monsanto, and Cargil, and ADM) are feeling!

[pepper]

saw it, laughed my pants off!

[rubberdollz]

Ok I have to ask this... has anyone seen the commerical promoting high fructose corn syrup?????? Holy f*ng crap!! I was watching TV the other day and this commercial comes on where a woman is about to give her kid(s) a juice drink. Her friend is like oh my god you aren't going to give that to your kids are you??? Don't you know it has high fructose corn syrup in it??? She says yes and what's wrong with that? The lady stands there dumbfounded, not knowing what is wrong with high fructose corn syrup but that obviously she is an idiot. So the lady goes on pouring the drink and here pops up a website...

www.sweetsurprise.com Yes that is right. This website is completely promoting hfcs to people. Saying that because it is made from corn it is natural and good for you with a little hint of... in moderation thrown in there as well.

Yesterday I see they made another commercial of a woman eating a popsicle and her idiot boyfriend questioning her about the hfcs in it? Of course he's a moron because he can say it's bad but he doesn't really know why.

[pepper]

instead of making sure that all the people who have their hands on produce make sure that they wash them first (hello poop), the government would like to douse it all with radiation.

[www.organicconsumers.org]


*********************************************************
Vegetables you should never eat

Here's another FDA fiasco in the making. You might be familiar with the recent contamination of some vegetables. Health authorities scrambled to find the source. It wasn't easy. And, rather than compelling factory farmed-food producers to clean up their act, the FDA wants to make it easier to distribute contaminated food.

Here's how the FDA is doing this. The government organization recently announced that it will allow the irradiation of vegetables, such as spinach and lettuce, to destroy disease-causing bacteria.

Please think about this decision. Most people eat vegetables because they are full of life and nutrients. Now, if someone treats them with something that kills life (bacteria), doesn't it make sense that it will also kill the nutrients of the vegetable as well? Radiation will generate free radicals and toxic molecules that we don't see in nature. This will be extremely dangerous to your immune system.

Now supermarkets may be required to label the veggies as irradiated. But restaurants, schools, hospitals, and nursing homes won't have this requirement. You could go for an evening out and come home with a belly full of nuked food. Something stinks here.

There is a short window of time to take action. Please click on this link: [www.organicconsumers.org].

It will take you to a web page that will allow you to send a comment to the FDA. If we don't take action now, we will eventually find that anything not marked "organic" will be suspect for GMO and/or irradiation. I am not 100% organic. It's hard to be, and I prefer eating locally grown food to organic produce grown hundreds of miles away. We shouldn't have to worry about GMO and irradiation on top of pesticides. But thanks to an industry driven government, that's exactly what's happening. Please speak up.

Yours for better health and medical freedom,
Robert Jay Rowen, MD

[chachaheels]

The world's foremost expert on lipids is Mary Enig. She's done over 5 decades worth of research on fats and their role in the body, and none of her research has been funded by food corporations or pharmaceutical companies. Much of it has been based on the kind of long term observational study done by Drs. Price and Pottenger; a lot of it has been done on actual analysis of "modern" fats and what changes in the body's ability to function after these lipids have been used in the body over long terms. I personally value independent, long term observational study in science over any other kind of research, especially when we're talking about nutrition: there is so much absolute bullshit about fats and carbohydrates and healthy and unhealthy foods out there it can be totally disorienting to people because so much of that information is pure marketing and it's never presented honestly, with studies you can look up yourself and analyse yourself.

Yet it does affect our health negatively: most doctors out there are still touting the "no fat/high sugar/no red meat/no shellfish nonsense for their heart patients, pushing foods which aren't really food but collections of chemical compounds synthesized in labs to replicate real food. This is all based on Ancel Keys' laughably faulty research on "the mediterranean diet", which he conducted over 50 years ago in places like Italy--without asking actual Italians, without frequenting their markets or taking note of what they ate on a daily basis (which included--and still includes, in many places--servings of red meat at every meal, if possible; tons of organ meats; tons of fresh vegetables, rich creams, heavy cheeses, all kinds of sea food, all kinds of rich fats like lard, pure oils, and real, unpasteurized, full fat butter). Ancel Keys himself has admitted himself that his research was acceptable because that kind of racist bias "about other cultures" was acceptable then--you don't need to speak their language, you don't need to ask them what keeps them healthy, you can just get a menu at a cafe where only the tourists eat! Just the other day I heard a woman gloating about how the restaurants where she lives insist on selling Fois Gras even though it's been "banned" (an asinine idea if one ever existed) by selling a loaf of bread for a nominal price and throwing in the fois gras for free. She lectured on how her mother, a nurse, absolutely forbade organ meats and butter and cream in their lives--when these are some of the healthiest, most nutrient rich foods available. We still have doctors who believe "cholesterol" levels in the blood can be influenced by what people eat--they absolutely are not; also, low cholesterol does not protect these patients from heart disease and heart ailments of any kind, including hardened arteries and heart attacks. But the market for coronary bypasses and heart medication in general has ballooned over that last 50 year period, so for the intents and purposes of pharmaceutical giants, the mission has been accomplished. It pays to foster ignorance on a large scale, where nutritional "science" and medicine are concerned. But if you want to stay healthy, it pays to question all that research unless it hold up to intense scrutiny of long term observation, and unless no one stands to gain financially from its undertaking.

As for any vaccine: the bottom line is you can't be forced to undergo vaccination against your will, every state in the union has an "escape" clause, be it religious or otherwise. There are companies and schools which will try to coerce you but you don't have to agree to attend those schools or work in those fields of occupation; also people should realize they do have a right to organize to oppose such conditions in their work. What's really hard to deal with are the ad campaigns being used to coerce people to submit to the shots. The ones used in Ontario right now to coerce young girls into taking Gardasil take the schoolyard bully approach and call the girls "chicken" if they have any concerns; the ones used to push flu vaccines on the aged and asinine vaccines like the ones for Chicken Pox and Measles on children monger fear.

The healthiest ingredients in any diet: a critical mind, access to resources which allow you to question these conclusions, and knowledge with which you can be armed.

[rubberdollz]

What's cool is I got this little pamphlet at the fair with a list of companies or websites that sell products that they consider "best" or "good." I think it is published by the Foundation.

I get my walnut oil from Whole Foods but I haven't looked at how it is processed. Sometimes it seems they don't always put how it is processed in big bold lettering which I'm sure has a reason for it. hmmmmm.....

Mary Tocco was talking about that Gardisal, some states are looking to make it a mandatory vaccine for girls!! Could you imagine having to get that vaccine just because. They are using HPV as such an excuse to give this vaccine and you really wonder how much truth is involved? I'll tell you, after that fair I came out even more skeptical of the medical world. It was horrifying to see her statistics and watching/listening to her presentation. It made me sick.

I actually got scared for myself. We don't have kids, yet but are planning them in the future and to think that some a*hole doctor could force my kid to get that vaccine ticks me off and they are going to try to start giving it to little boys as well!!! I'm truly lucky to know that my state does not require kids to have vaccines before attending school.

Thanks also for the info on the oils chacha. I am hoping that Sally Fallon's book will help enlighten me some more! I sometimes feel like am I the only one in the world that doesn't get it? I guess I really need to read the labels even more than what I do now. Mainly I'm an ingredient person and now I need to also pay attention to the processing as well. The lady at the nutrition lecture kept talking about polyunsaturated and seriously, I have no idea what that is? Unfortunately because some lady kept asking questions during the whole lecture and really cut into the time of the lecture, it was annoying.

[chachaheels]

I think the problem with vegetable oils is that they are so overprocessed with bleaches and deodorizors and hexane, which is really poisonous, in order to "stabilize" them. Canola oil is all genetically modified, so absolutely no Canola oil is good, no matter what's done to it (though the vast majority of it is processed with hexane, too). Finally, much vegetable oil is then hydrogenated to be made into margarines and shortenings. All of it is rancid, nutrient free, and dangerous to the human body.

Much of the coconut and palm oils on the market used to be processed this way too. Now you have options as much more of it is being produced from organic or wildcrafted coconut and expeller cold pressed. This is the best stuff.

The key to choosing good fats is choosing 100% expeller pressed fat that has not been processed further than that. It has to be fresh. This kind of Walnut oil can be found--pure, cold pressed/expeller pressed, preferably wildcrafted or organically/biodynamically produced. All of this kind of vegetable oil is great: now you just have to match the oil to your intended use. Oils with high smoking points (like coconut oil) are great for high temperature cooking, such as frying. Those with low smoking points are best for using raw.

And yeah, vaccinations are really damaging. I'll say all of them are, to almost everyone who gets them. They certainly play a huge role in the vast spread of autism we're seeing, and certainly the kind like the "one less" (what an eerily accurate description for the drug, since I think the potential for deadly side effects on the long term with Gardasil is phenomenally high). Whenever I hear they're "working on a vaccine" for some disease we really need to find a way to treat effectively, I cringe. Vaccines have a way of turning all acute, self-resolving diseases into extremely long term, insidious diseases in a latent form. Real, serious chronic disease on a mass scale.

All I know is it's a hell of a lot easier to restore your health when you've never had vaccines, no matter how deadly your disease, than it is to even help a person suffering from a chronic disease of any kind when they've had any number of vaccines. It's especially hard if the chronic disease is a direct result of the vaccination, to add insult to injury.

[lapis]

Hi all,
Sorry I never post anymore (newish baby+ research= no time). I wonder if anyone can help me. I am living abroad for the next few months and believe i have contracted giardia or some other belly buggy. I have good days and bad days and terrible gas. I've lost some weight and am pretty sure I had the same thing last summer. Anyway, I can go to a doctor here but would hesitate to take anything that might interfere with the breast feeding. I eat yogurt and such--any other suggestions. Lacto-fermented foods? I could get some kind of parasite cleanse from the US if someone thinks it's safe with the bf. Help!

[dani1983]

OMG 'oil pulling'? are you serious?? how can you keep that in your mouth for 15-20 minutes? it would be coming out of my nose after 5, ew!

There's only one thing I eat/drink that can be considered some sort of alternative medicine thing. It is this "cereal" I get at the korean supermarket. It's called Mother Nature. What they do is, after you choose what type of cereal you'd like them to make for you (you can choose between diet cereal, family cereal, sports cereal, etc, etc) they go and grab the seeds they need to do this cereal (they have like 50 different kinds of them). Put them all together in a bowl that goes into a machine and this machine pulverizes it. veeeery fine powder. Then you take that home, mix a couple of spoons of it with some milk and cactus honey (you can do it with sugar too but cactus honey is healthier), a little water and presto! it's great for your body. (at least it regulates me going to the bathroom).

[rubberdollz]

So I have to say the health fair I ended up going to was a lot of fun! I ended up at 3 different lectures about different topics, it was so informative.

The first one was on nutrition based on the Weston A. Price way, they really talked about Sally Fallon and her book Nourishing Traditions. I actually finally purchased the book today and it is being shipped via Amazon! Yeah!

The second lecture was on detoxification by a Dr. Richard Ng. What an amazing speaker. He had some really great information on nutrition as well and people really packed it in to listen to this guy speak.

The third was on vaccines by Mary Tocco. Oh my lord... that is some horrible information to listen to!!! She was literally trying to cram in hours worth of information into about a 2 hour session. My friend bought her dvd but I haven't heard reviews on it yet.

The vendor booths that were there were really cool. I ended up meeting a farmer that has grass fed animals and he actually does meat deliveries once a month into an area around me. I heard so much about coconut oil it was crazy! Luckily I've never been one to really use vegetable oils and I'm glad I don't! I'm really looking forward to seeing the food/recipes Sally Fallon talks about and luckily I've had some great reviews from some of you wonderful ladies on here.

Cha cha I do have a question for you. I use walnut oil at times for my cooking and I'm wondering, is that just as bad as using vegetable oils? A recipe I have calls for is and I've actually enjoyed using it when I'm roasting some vegetables but now I'm wondering if it's considered a vegetable oil? I got so many pamplets and literature to read I haven't had a chance to go through it all!!!!!

[lunasol]

Thanks, chacha!