Recycling – kiddie car seats..

They are marked as recyclable but recycling centers will not take them. In Canada, There is a center in Alberta, which is really useful for people living in Eastern Canada.

So why isn’t there a recycling center which will take them in Ontario? This is why..

Shown here is a baler machine. Unlike plastic bottles, kiddie car seats are an awkward shape and do not respond well to being compressed. This is where the problem starts. Your local recycling depot may bale stuff up, but car seats require a substantial shredder which is very expensive to buy and maintain and that has to be under cover.

The present answer is to smash them to pieces and place them in the regular garbage. It clearly isn’t a good solution, but is the only one.

There must be thousands of car seats dumped yearly, and even if there were facilities to dispose of them, how many owners would do it right and take them to a depot. Unfortunately, there are many people who don’t care enough t put themselves out, so the situation will continue ad infinitum.

I am going to call a local auto-breaker and ask what they do with plastics from recycled cars. It is just possible that they might accept the seat for putting though their shredders.. we shall see..

Canada bans Marmite

Unbelievable..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25867613

There is talk of meat products in the article but that can’t apply to Marmite because Marmite is entirely vegetarian.

Personally, I think that Canada is just jealous, and to be honest, only Brits know what to do with it. Here in Canada, you find Marmite in the BAKING section in grocery stores because the jar has mention of yeast on the label..

Too funny.. bordering on idiocy, actually..

McDonalds fast food..

I paid a visit to one of the outlets yesterday, and ordered a Big Mac and a Signature wrap Combo.

Fast it wasn’t. Five minutes to produce a Signature Wrap that included the equivalent of ONE ‘Janes’ chicken finger and a tiny amount of salad.

The burger patties in the Big Mac were smaller than the average cardboard drinks coaster found in bars, and were the driest looking things I have ever seen.

Were it not for the fact that my grand-daughter likes the play areas, I would NEVER revisit a McDonalds again.

The standards are low, the value questionable. Way to go, Ronald, scamming millions of people every day while aggressively defending your business MO.

It sucks and you know it..

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..