Kool-aid..

Not being born and bred in North America, there are some expressions that go by me like they were never said. One is ‘been at the Kool-aid’.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew that it was a drink, but it is only in the last two days that I have been at close quarters with a sachet (packet) of the drink mix.

So, you get a pitcher and add one cup of cold water, the contents of the sachet and one cup of sugar!!! One whole cup? Are they kidding or what? Maybe less? How about I add a couple of teaspoons or maybe none at all.

Why is this product being marketed with the instruction to use a whole cup of sugar?

If it is designed to taste ok with a whole cup of sugar added, presumably it will taste like dirt with less sugar. I added very little sugar, and my grand-daughter didn’t drink the whole cup of Kool-aid. After she left to go home with her mom, I tipped the rest of it away. Says it all, doesn’t it.

I don’t care if Kool-aid has been around since 1927. There is NO WAY that I will ever let my grand-daughter pick up another packet of this stuff. I would sooner she forgot about the brand name altogether.

Apparently, there is a sugar free version of Kool-aid. Great stuff, well done. So now the makers don’t have to sell sachets like the one on the picture, do they..

North Americans, I call on you to boycott this product if you value your child’s health..

It’s the toy..

This is what the kids want when they go to McDonalds, and the worst of it is that the toy has almost zero play value after about five minutes.

Studies in Canada have shown that if the toy was to be included in more healthy meals on the menu, the kids would go for the healthy menu.

Yeah right. My experience with my granddaughter is that she only wants the toy and to play on the McDonalds climbing frames. Eating is down to taking tiny bites of food, and I have to do a deal with her on the number of bites that she has to take.

McDonalds say that they are not responsible for obesity in Canada, but there is no doubt in my mind that they are partly responsible.

If kids really did like the food, one might see them in Harveys or Burger King, but that is not the case because those two companies do NOT offer toys or have play areas at any of their sites.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the food at McDonalds looked interesting, but it doesn’t. The kids burger is limp and tiny, both meat content and the bun. It isn’t even particularly cheap either.

Personally, I would like to see the removal of the toys and the play areas, but parents eager to take the easy way out like them.

The other gripe that I have is with the cleanliness of the play area equipment. Is it cleaned down regularly? I doubt it very much, and here are kids crawling around the floor and the equipment, and then picking up food in dirty hands to eat it. Maybe it’s as well that many of the kids don’t eat anything while in the area.

It would be better if food was NOT allowed in the play areas. At least parents could then control the eating part better by not letting the kids play until a reasonable amount of food has been consumed.

McDonalds pay lip service by including apple slices and a yoghurt in each happy meal, but that is about all that it is. If we had any sense, we would not take our kids to McDonalds at all.  

Eight glasses of water..

The myth states that the average fairly active person needs to drink eight glasses of water per day. http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

The current thinking is that maybe eight is over the top in view of the fact that we get water from sources other than drinks. http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/06/08/water-eight-glasses-myth.html?cmp=rss

This assumes that we are eating food which already has a high water content and that we are preparing the food in a way that preserves the water content.

Raw vegetables or those cooked in water (boiled) will retain their water content. This does NOT include microwaved vegetables where the recommended amount of water to add does not ever cover all of the vegetables. In fact, the added water invariably ends up as condensation on the inner sides of the microwave. There will still be some, but wrinkled vegetables are a sign of dehydration, and dehydrated vegetables are hardly going to hydrate the person consuming them.

Fruit is an excellent source of water too UNLESS it is used to make preserves and only eaten in processed ‘preserve’ form or where alcohol, a known dehydrator, is added.

Modern day living is all about ‘fast’, and while raw fruit is fast, it tends not to feature too high in the diet of many people and is expensive in countries or regions where it does not grow on local trees.

Vegetables are traditionally disliked by many children, and the dislike can continue throughout a lifetime. In the old days when I was a kid, vegetables were boiled, and baked potatoes were wrapped in foil which preserved some of the moisture. Grilled and microwaved vegetables are not the same and do not deliver the moisture of their boiled counterparts.

So, should we drink eight glasses of water per day? Is the myth really the truth?

My advice… Always try to have a glass of water handy when you eat. Drinks with caffeine are ok but caffeine dehydrates to some degree, so back it up with water at some point. Alcohol dehydrates for sure, especially if you drink enough to the point of being sick, and you will definitely have to back it up with water.

Drink when you are thirsty and if your preferred drink is not cutting it, get some water because that always will. There is no good alternative to a glass of clean, plain water.

Oh, and one last thing, only drink eight glasses of water if there is no food available, and try to get something to eat as soon as you can because water alone will flush out the sodium in you, and despite claims that salt is bad, we all need some in our diet..

Enjoy..

Tobacco companies face $25 billion lawsuit

“A groundbreaking trial gets under way in Montreal on Monday against three tobacco companies which face a $25 billion (R189bn) lawsuit for allegedly failing to adequately warn smokers of the dangers of cigarettes.

Plaintiffs have filed two separate class actions against Imperial Tobacco, JTI-Macdonald and Rothmans Benson & Hedges in the Superior Court of Quebec.

The plaintiffs accuse the Canadian tobacco companies of hiding research which has established a link between smoking and serious health problems like cancer.”

Players please.. You’re never alone with a Strand.. I'd Walk a Mile for a Camel.

Of course the tobacco manufacturers advertised their products as good to use. Tell me of a manufacturer that doesn’t.

My paternal grandfather had lung cancer back in the 50’s. He had smoked Woodbines (an un-tipped British brand) for years but was told to give them up in 1944. He did that, but the cancer still got him in 1957. He was one of many.

We don’t smoke because it does us any good in real terms. We smoke because, in our heads, we believe that they calm us down. That is exactly what they do by numbing the nervous system to some degree. And yes, they are addictive.

So what’s with this crap about ‘nobody told us’?

We knew from the first few inhalations that they were doing us no good but we still persisted. Those first puffs wouldn’t have got us addicted, but the PERSONAL choice to continue the practise ensure that we all succumbed.

Recently, there has been a study which suggests that patches and counselling don’t help in the quest to quit. So make the same kind of personal choice as you made as you choked your way through your first cigarette.

Hey, I didn’t say ‘we’ for a reason. You’re on your own with this one. I wasn’t with you when you started and don’t expect me to be there when you quit.. 

Sodium = 24%

Can any foodstuff where almost a quarter of its weight is Sodium be any good for anybody. I am not talking about a bag of potato chips, by the way. This is on the back of a pack of Presidents Choice Mediterranean Chicken.

Apart from having salt added, it has these too..

• Sodium lactate has a mild saline taste. It may be used in shampoo products and other similar items such as liquid soaps as it is an effective moisturiser.
• Sodium diacetate, usually in combination with lactates, is widely used by the meat packing industry as an excellent anti-microbial preservative. Vinegar taste on potato chips or tacos can be achieved by adding 0.1% sodium diacetate.

As an added treat for Type 2 Diabetics, it also has Dextrose added.

• Dextrose, commonly called glucose, d-glucose, or blood sugar, occurs naturally in food, and is moderately sweet. It is a monosaccharide (basic unit of carbohydrates, C₆H₁₂0₆) and has a high glycemic index (digested carbohydrates ability to raise blood glucose levels, also called Gl) ranking at 100.

On the front of the pack, it states that there are no added nitrites. Is this because two other Sodium compounds have been found which do the same job. The two compounds above have been passed as safe, but then so have nitrites.

Loblaws will think that I have it in for them, but I don’t. All processed foodstuff is the same, and all manufacturers will be looking for a way to re-word the labelling such that it appears to be better for us.

I can never see a time when North America or the UK will ever stop charging a premium for healthy food. If I won the lottery, I would scarper back to Spain where people still eat decent stuff and one has to pay a premium to buy the crap that kills us..

Informative but deceitful..

This is the state of food labelling in Canada.

I watched CBC’s Marketplace last night. It was all about lousy labelling. You know the type, full of health claims, little logos which suggest a healthy option. They had 10 products tested, and the #1 culprit was a meat product.

Maple Leaf’s ‘Natural Selections’ came under fire over wording on the front of the packaging. There is an ingredient on the front which seems innocuous enough called ‘cultured celery extract’ which is………….. NITRITES.

It urns out that there is as much nitrite in Natural Selections as there is in the cheaper Maple Leaf cold cuts, so how can it be healthier?

Maple Leaf and most other food producers know that the average shopper will be caught out by false or deceitful claims if the right kind of wording and logos are applied to the front of the packaging. Even the colour of the packaging can make a difference.

But wait.. Is it entirely the fault of the food producers? Well, the deceit is for sure, but not the food stuff or what is added to make it last in packaging.

If you give families the choice of a grocery store which always has a good choice of food stuffs always available regardless of the time of day, or run the gauntlet of having to shop in maybe five different small specialized stores but not always get what is required, they will choose the large grocery store almost every time.

The ONLY way to package processed food stuffs or any foodstuffs such that they last is to add PRESERVATIVES.

Foodstuff manufacturers try to ensure that their products will still look like foodstuffs when the package is opened. The manufacturers do their best to keep it properly before shipping, the shipping people do their best to keep it properly before delivery to stores, stores do their bets to store and display properly before it is sold, but after it is sold, there is no telling what will happen to it.

There are so many shoppers who are ill-informed about how to store foodstuffs. It is amazing that more people aren’t poisoned daily.

Food is bought at the beginning of a shopping trip and then left in a vehicle for an unspecified amount of time while other store types are visited, but if these people are challenged, 99% will say that it should be ok. When the foodstuff finally makes it back home, it may sit around for a while, and when it is finally put away, stuff that shouldn’t be put in a refrigerator often will be, and stuff not suitable for freezing will be put in the freezer. All of the people will expect the foodstuff to still look and taste like it would if it was absolutely fresh.

It is the way that people want to shop and sheer ignorance and unwillingness to learn how to store food properly that forces food manufacturers to add ingredients which will give us all cancer long term.

In North America, there is no way to turn back the clock. The entire food process is so entrenched, and all of the small food retailers who did have the knowledge and skills are gone.

To anybody reading this from outside of North America, take note. If you don’t want to subject your family to medical conditions which may terminate lives early, don’t buy processed food. Stay loyal to the small corner store which still sells preservative free food.

Avoid processed meats, mass produced bread in polythene bags, anything with health claims all over it. Instead of buying ready prepared meals, make them up yourself. It can be fun, and is much better for you.