Is it real?

I don’t know about you, but I really detest polythene packed sliced white bread. It may be a miracle of mass production, and it may contain all of the ingredients which go to making bread, but bread it most definitely isn’t.

I recently ate a couple of slices of Dempster’s Smart16, and like almost all other white sliced loaves, it had a distinctive taste which I did not recognize as being bread. I sometimes think that eating the wrapper would be more beneficial.

The manufacturing process includes ‘bleaching’ which is what accounts for the aftertaste for many people. See here..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_bleaching_agent

This is an interesting website too.. http://www.womenfitness.net/ugly_truths.htm

Should anybody be eating this stuff? I don’t think so. When I was a kid, we didn’t have bread like the above. It was all baked locally and for the most part was a pleasure to eat. Modern white sliced bread is just a convenience, and in my opinion an unpleasant convenience at that.

Wholemeal bread is not much better either when produced in the same way. If you are going to eat bread, try to buy locally baked. Many major grocery stores in Canada make their own, and the difference in taste and texture is night and day.

Do your kids a favour and stop giving them the crappy stuff. It is only marginally cheaper and will save your kids developing health problems later in life which will cost them more than just money.

Note that while I have mentioned the Dempster name, ALL mass produced bread is made to the same standards, and should be avoided at all costs. As long as people buy this stuff, the manufacturers will have no problem supplying it. They don’t care as long as they make money.

Bad news on the health front..

The preponderance with pre-packaged, reconstituted products in North America is alarming, and it is no wonder that so many have health issues.

I have recently been diagnosed as being a diabetic type 2, and I blame it on the food that I have been eating for the last eight years. Before coming to Canada, I ate a southern European diet, almost all fresh and no crap like pizza, burgers and other reconstituted junk.

In all of my travels, apart from the UK where many have adopted the North American fast food way, I have never come across so many people with so many health issues.

Everything in North America has to be fast, not just at pizza and burger joints, but also in preparation at the food processing plants.

If you want a healthy life, make a stand and stop buying anything which has been reconstituted from mechanically recovered processes.

I watched a bit of Jamie Oliver’s program on TV and watched as US school boards took legal action to prevent the guy even being allowed in school cafeterias, let alone the kitchens. Absolutely deplorable on all counts..

I know that the word ‘conspiracy’ is a dirty word in the US, but I really do think that there is a conspiracy between the food producers and health providers. Nobody seems to be willing to change, and resistance is put up because nobody wants to lose out financially.

Get your heads out the sand, people. Your governments do NOT care. Food producers do NOT care. Health providers thrive on your illnesses and diseases.

Health is entirely in your hands, and never forget it.

More on ‘Cold cuts’..

As discussed in another post, cold cuts sold in packages have an excessive amount of preservatives in them. Look on the packs.

OK, so maybe you think that getting cold cuts from the deli counter of your favoured grocery store will be better. Think again, because it is a false assumption.

Metro deli counters sell cold cuts which do not have the harsh taste of the packaged stuff. I assume that there is some preservative in them, but just not as much.

This is NOT true of Loblaws deli counter. They have TWO variants for sale. The cheaper shaved cold cuts are every bit as bad as the packaged hams, chicken, turkey etc. If you want nitrate free cold cuts, you have to pay between 80c to a dollar more for the more brightly labelled meats.

None of the items on a deli counter have labels showing what is in them, and NEVER assume that they are better for you. Ask to taste a piece first before committing to buying.

Fish.. Is it safe to eat?

I bought a pack of frozen Basa fish recently. To be honest, I had no idea what type of fish Basa was, but I knew that it was not part of the Cod family. While I was bread crumbing, the consistency was slightly rubbery, so I looked it up on the Internet.

Yikes. Malachite Green, human excreta, industrial waste, was their nothing to which these fish were not subjected? Naughty Asians for making those poor old Basa eat nasty stuff. You almost put me off eating any of the pack at all, and I am not sure that I will ever buy more.

The above made me read up on fish generally, and this is part of what I found.

http://ottawa.ca/residents/health/living/nutrition/healthy_eating/fish_facts_en.html

http://www.intraspec.ca/fish.php

http://www.fas.usda.gov/ffpd/Newsroom/Articles/Catfish__Basa_5-07.pdf

http://www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/fish/safefish.html

http://www.iaglr.org/scipolicy/issues/contamseds.php

Yikes. Canada and the USA are no better. Both countries seem more interested in how it affects the economy more than how it affects health, but why wouldn’t they?

With all of the testing that can be done, we can learn what is good and bad, but don’t kid yourself that  pollution of environments is anything new. The industrial Victorians didn’t give a hoot what they let out into water tables, rivers  and oceans. I doubt that  fish has been safe for the last two hundred years and more.

So, does fish pass my ‘safe’ test?  The jury is out presently. Land based farm animal diets puts them in the ‘suspicious’ category too.

What is a foodie like me to do? Ignore all of the warnings, or go hungry for days at a time? Maybe if I over cook everything, that will help. If it doesn’t, I will end up in an obituary list in the local newspaper.

Yikes..   

CPAP sucks..

Well, actually blows, but you know what I mean. For those who don’t know, CPAP = Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, is the gold standard for the treatment of Sleep Apnea, and it is administered via a machine which pumps air through a humidifier into a mask which has to be strapped to one’s face.

Sounds like torture? You betcha.

Modern CPAP machines are very quiet, so noise is not the issue, but the mask and tube? There are two types of mask, nose only nose or ‘nose and mouth’.

The nose only mask pressurises when you turn on the main box, and you can feel the pressure too. Although breathing out is slightly harder than without, it is not as bad as one might imagine. However, open your mouth and you feel a sudden gush of air from your nose into your mouth, and if you close your mouth quickly, your cheeks puff up like a hamster.

Coughing produces similar results, and can wake you up, which is totally the opposite of what the machine should be achieving.

Anybody who suffers with claustrophobia should not use the nose and mouth mask. It is horrid, but only slightly worse than the other one.

I sleep with one hand under my face, and always have done. The tube gets caught up sometimes, and the mask moves. Air rushes into my eyes generally which, surprise surprise, wakes me up.

If you suffer with a blocked nose, CPAP is useless. If you suffer with claustrophobia as I do, it is distressing. I used to look forward to getting to sleep. Now I wait and wait until I am really tired.

It is easy to see why most give up on these infernal torture machines. They are not nice.

There are other ways to get over sleep apnea and, at the next meeting, I will discuss the problem with the sleep study doctor. I will never ever get used to CPAP. 

An update to the previous post..

I looked at all of the packs of cold cuts in my local Loblaws store here in London Ontario. Apart from two, Maple Leafs Natural Selections and a Presidents Choice Prosciutto, all of the other packs of ham, salami and similar products produced by:

• Ziggy’s
• Piller’s
• Mastro
• President’s Choice
• Schneider’s

contained the following preservatives:

• Sodium Phospate
• Salt
• Carageenan
• Sodium Ascorbate
• Sodium Nitrate

You might think that the contents of the packages came off the same productions lines and were just packaged according to which retailer was going to sell them. There may well be some truth in this, but I do not know for sure.

What I do know is this. We are eating all kinds of crap.

Now for a question.

If Sodium Phosphate is a substitute for Sodium Nitrate, why do both sodium types appear in the SAME foodstuffs?

Food of this type should not hurt..

After a course of antibiotics for a Bronchitis infection, my mouth has become fairly sensitive to some food stuff. I am taking medication to get over it but progress is slow. So I have to look for something to eat that is mild.

Oh dear. Marmite and East Indian dishes are off, as are fries which have been lightly coated with salt and vinegar. Bread-crumbed stuff will have to go as the crumbs will get into the corners of my mouth and irritate it. My favourite Rye bread will have to go on the back burner too. What a dilemma.

I know. I will have plain bread buttered toast and some Black Forest Ham, but without the English mustard which I always use on ham.

Big mistake. The buttered toast is fine but what the hell is in this ham? Well, apart from Pork, there is added salt and three types of Sodium preservative, unknown spices and colour fixer. Dammit, I have been giving my grand-daughter this stuff, but no more. Black Forest ham shouldn’t have this effect. My mouth and lips feel like they are on fire.

One of the ‘ingredients’, according to a website, has side effects which include swelling of the lips, tongue and mouth parts. Another is considered to be a carcinogenic. One of the Sodium products is used as an alternative to Sodium Nitrite, and yet both Sodium products are in there.

The same ingredients appear in the entire range of ham products from this one particular manufacturer, and they all have the same effect on me.

Are these people in cahoots with the medical professions, ensuring a steady queue of people who will need treatments for which the drug companies will fleece them?

I will be writing to the manufacturer and will report back on what they say. Stay tuned.. 

They call the process ‘plumping’

What they do is inject salt water into large chunks of meat, and the result is a nice piece of meat which feels springy to the touch, more tender. It can be done with any kind of meat, by the way.
Take a scrawny, aging chicken, put it out of its misery, pluck it, inject it and hey presto, one nice looking chicken, ready to be wrapped and sold as fresh. Nice job. Do the same with a side of bacon too. Turn it into good, succulent looking slices.
How do you tell that meat has been plumped? That’s easy.
When you cook the chicken, what looked like it could feed four people can now only reasonably feed three. Yes, it shrank as the injected water evaporated out during the cooking period. The only way to ensure that it doesn’t shrink too much is to seal the outside of the chicken in a sauté pan before committing it to a roasting dish, It helps seal in the salt water.
And the bacon? When you opened the pack, did it drip water out all over the counter top? That is some of the salt water, forced out by compression of the packs in their packing boxes. The longer that the bacon sits in transit, the more water will come out when the pack is opened. The rest comes out in the pan.
You may have struggled to fit the pieces of bacon into the pan at the start of cooking, but see how it has all shrunk to under half the surface area. The water has all but left the bacon, but much of the salt will most likely remain. One thing that you do not want to do is add more salt before eating.
So, how do you feel about this practice? Paying for an illusion, water that will evaporate before you get to serve the meat up to your family? Be happy in the knowledge that it may not have been your cooking methods which caused the Sunday roast to shrivel beyond all recognition.
Blame the scammers, the unscrupulous meat producers who will do anything to ensure that their profits stay high..