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..