Weird Science In Your Food: Trademarked Experiments

(photo by Nutraflora [tm] )

My good friend Noel in NYC called me last night and told me her concerns about a cereal she had bought at the health food store...

She said aside from the fact that it "tasted like poison" when she tried to eat it, in the ingredient list there was something called "Nutraflora" (TM) which had been trademarked. Trademarked food? Assuming that any trademarked food must either be...

1. Chemical/creepy man made & bad for you (aka not food)

2. Trademarking some process of how they got that 'food' , maybe?

So she looked it up, here... where the whole website described a type of food fiber that helps you "absorb calcium". A "prebiotic" they say occurs naturally... but only in the tiniest amounts.

Really? Naturally occurring... then how can they trademark it? I mean my donkey poop naturally occurs from my donkey but I can't trademark donkey poop across the world. Can I?

Is this really going to start happening already, have any of you seen natural foods that have been trademarked at the grocery, such as fruits and veggies? This really smacks of some Monsanto monopoly type crap, where they have claimed their TM'ed seeds, and even seeds that insects accidentally pollinated miles down the road...(destroying other people's farms for their greed & seed!)

How can you claim seeds OR naturally occurring foods as a trademark?

Maybe Nutraflora (tm) can trademark it because actually what it does in your body is not at all natural....

" For example, to get the same benefits offered in one serving of NutraFlora-enriched yogurt, you would have to eat about 22 bananas, 15 onions, 16 tomatoes, or 383 cloves of garlic."
Um WHAT? I don't know about you, but hell if I would ever eat 383 cloves of garlic in one meal..... muchless 22 bananas, 15 onions, 16 tomatoes all on the same plate. That is not what the human body was made to do. Period.
To me this is a vitamin product, not a "naturally occurring" food that belongs in Noel's cereal.
And if you wanna know the real deal, this strange shit is in foods you'd never guess...
How about your Horizon organic milk? Or your Silk Soy Milk? Look at the labels.
***
Why is so much food a trademarked experiment these days? And doctors sit around perplexed by all their patients with strange chronic diseases, and food allergies. I believe the mass scale altercation of food through farming AND processing is slowly breaking down the natural abilities & defenses of the human body...
who can say they don't know someone these days who has diabetes, cancer, allergies, arthritis, thyriod disorder, etc. In my opinion it went from minority sick to majority chronically pushing their way through life.
We have made some great break throughs in science, major technological advances. But the altering of what we eat is an experiment we will surely regret. The human body has evolved on foods provided by the earth, not by science labs. The human-like diseases which our pets and animals have begun to have from our man made foods (leukemia, AIDS, diabetes, cancer, tumors) for them is just a small proof of what we are creating for our own now and future.

For good health, eat whole real foods made by nature!



Xoxoxo
PS--- this blog post is the opinion of the author. Don't sue me. Sue Noel, she's the one who brought it up. ;)

My Cat Is Scared Of My Dancing

My Cat Is Scared Of My Dancing from Leslie Richard on Vimeo.

My Cat Toots gets really unraveled when I turn up the music and start dancing... I don't know why? But you can watch and see. ;)

....

Dancing Benefits ::::: Health, attitude, breathing, self love, feeling hawt, and the phobias of little cats. I have this idea that when people are happy they treat other people and the earth with kindness/balance. Dancing makes me happy.

Especially when I am snowed in with my very own cabin fevah.!

XOxoxox

(My) Reasons For Being Earth Friendly

I was always drawn to it... nature, but I grew up in the most spotless chemical cleaned suburban house in the city of New Orleans. Everyone evolves, and I'd like to think I came from one extreme but my soul decidingly bridged the gap by seeking the other (huge city to huge forest). It didn't happen overnight, being eco wasn't a trend I picked up, in fact if anything it made me very 'uncool' as a teenager and beyond- only as an adult is my lifestyle (sometimes) appreciated for what it is :::::
a life that doesn't destroy our basic resource & lifeline, nature in it's wildest form.
*
It's nothing I discuss often with others, but here are some reasons why I live the way I do::::
*

• I refuse to take part in the pollution that I believe causes chronic diseases and human suffering (like the auto immune disease i have...)
• I feel that all creation is equal and the plants, animals, trees all should have respect- the food chain and survival chain should be used wisely not selfishly
• I only want to put energy into supporting a lifestyle that which won't continue further destruction (long term or short term) of nature- putting my energy into skills for homesteading, rewilding, and organic minded activities.
• I don't want to support with my $$$ any asshole company helping pollute on ANY level (that goes for chemical, fashion, food, and also big Pharma putting drugs through bodies and into our water)
• I believe that children deserve the peace and experience of true wildlife, for reasons mental, spiritual and vastly biological- i think without it kids are detached and will behave detached in many other aspects of their life (and when I am an old lady those kids are going to be running sh*t, ya know!)

*

I don't walk on eggshells, have less quality of life or suffer by refusing to clean my house, paint my house or fix my house with chemicals. I don't suffer because I refuse to buy any clothing slave made of chemical fabrics (unless thrifted), I feel good about what I put on. I don't have less a life because I go by car very little and instead I choose to enjoy & explore the area I actually live in.
I realized many years ago that our lives are formed mostly of (raised) habits, and as many times a day as I am told by people "it's cool you live like that, but i could never do it".... i know from experience that we all really could.

XOxoxoxo
(ps- the pic above is from this summer when my sister's kid came to visit me.)

For My MCS Peeps: This Is Progress!

People who have never experienced a chemical injury or some kind of health breakdown that causes a person to get Multiple Chemical Sensitivites may find this post a little weird... So be for-warned, let your judgments and confusion take a nap while ya keep on reading.
For those of you who have MCS, ya might have to let your judgments go too, cause I am about to talk about the most hotly debated and taboo topic in the MCS crowd - and that is about healing & possibly being cured. Yeah, i said the "C" word, and now I am gonna tell you what I really think....

Some of us who developed MCS know exactly what happened, you might have been exposed to chemical in your workplace and then watched your health take a spiral into a housebound hell, you may have been renovating your home and didn't recover, you may have been a gulf war veteran who was lied to until recently about pills you were administered, or a 911 victim...... or maybe an average person like me who was exposed to various things over time and happen to have an auto immune disease that caused enough damage to make the normal body functions take a dive 6 feet under.
However you got to the stage of MCS, no matter how hard you had to fight to be understood and never truly were by everyone... there is also this point of acceptance and letting go - letting the label of being "sensitive" be as big a deal as having brown hair.

Over the years my symptoms of MCS kinda took up and down dives, with being only generally sick when going into K-mart (who isn't sick in that place?), or when exposed directly to fresh paint, or loud amounts of perfume. These things bordered on normal, and didn't stop me from at least hanging out at thrift stores. But nearly 5 years ago I got pregnant, and very sick - when I lost the baby my mild MCS turned into raging impossible to deal with every smell makes me wanna pass out and kill people so I must hide in the woods MCS. It was so intolerable that I could no longer drive without having seizures, I could not stand for my X boyfriend to come home from the store and get near me with his smelly clothes, I could not hang out with or visit any other humans, or go anywhere in public. After nearly a year of this kind of hell-ish reclusive life, I ventured out....
I didn't go sticking my head inside of paint cans or huff glue, but I decided if the world was going to kill me, then Fuck It! Let it kill me while I am living my life and doing what I want --->
I started off slow and made small goals. Each time I reached a small goal (like buy a lottery ticket at a gas station 2 blocks away), I would set the bar higher and further till I was working on a more functional level. 4 years later.... look at the picture at the top of this post, that is me AT A PARTY that included alot of people, bon fire, some people smoking ect....

Two things I noticed over these years :::::

1. MCS is not in your head, people react to nasty shit in our environment as a natural part of our body's function.
2. I (my body) was so used to reacting, there was some auto-anxiety involved... not 'in my head' but anxiety that was learned and out of control. Anxiety bad enough to be confused - like was it a symptom or anxiety causes me discomfort?

The reason I bring this up is cause there are a few things I have done over the years that I believe have helped me improve. I am not cured, but since I am always on a steady upswing and will never give up I thought I would just jot down the things I felt were helpful to me - no matter how controversial they may be (and knowing everyone's body will need their own personal combo of things to heal!)
1. I got on the macrobiotic diet. I did not eat bad before that, in fact I have eaten all organic & whole foods long before health problems, but this diet has some really helpful ways to keep your foods appropriate for your ailments, the seasons, your body tempature, and healing in general. Over time I branched out and added back in some whole foods not strictly on this diet, but ones that help improve my energy and give me a greater variety of nutrients.

2. I got outta my head. This one will undoubtedly make some people with MCS upset cause it's not a head disease, but with any health problems sometimes the best thing we can do is get the hec outta our own way and STOP for da' love of gawd thinking about sickness, what causes sickness, how we got sick, being mad we got sick, blaming the world we got sick... ect (you know the thoughts I am talking about!) I had to start thinking about life and my dreams, and not about "sickness" stopping my life.

3. Risks. I am not recommending anyone with MCS do anything to put themselves in harms way, but for me I had to take some risks to find out what my real limits were. With all the other helpful things i was doing for my health (clean house, clean diet, homeopathic detox, being nice to myself) there would come a time when new limits needed to be tested if I was to ever be able to branch out and do anything beyond my own backyard. Each time I took a successful risk (no matter how many were unsuccessful) I was able to do that much more and that did wonders for my mental health too.

4. Homoepathic/Medicinal stuff. I tried about a billion things, but the only stuff I used that worked for helping de-tox my body in a gentle way were homeopathic pills for kids (Newton brand) and eating shittake mushrooms (takes out heavy metal and junk real gentle, easy and tastes good too!) I don't like taking pills, of any kind and I did best when I stopped taking all the pills recommended to me and just took the one homeopathic or nothing at all.

5. I got a therapist! Hell yeah I did, because being sick is not easy to deal with and it turned out I learned amazing skills and coping methods that reduced tons of stress in my life and I only had to go for a short period of time before i learned to support myself emotionally and forgive and live again. What I learned in therapy about how to deal with being sick, rolled over into every relationship for the better.

6. Exercise!! No matter what, even if it's hard and makes ya fatigued. I did this even when bed ridden and at my worst, getting the body moving and the blood circulating is your ticket to wellness.

7. Nice Home Environment. It never needed to be the Taj Mahal for MCS'ers, just had to not be freshly painted or super disgusting - I moved around more times then I can count on two hands and generally my house plants cleaned the air good enough each time. The really important part for me was not living right in a city (too much pollution), to have fresh air outside, to open my windows, to walk in the woods, to grow my own food, and have animals around me.

8. Brain re-training. I KNOW, this is the one people in the MCS community have been either seething with hate over, praising, arguing, or banning... but I tried it. Let me just tell ya'll, i didn't even watch all the CD's for the Gupta Program but only up until the specific exercise to re-train your brain and I started doing the exercise immediately everyday. Did i do it like 20 times a day like he suggests? NO way maybe like once a day... nor did i do any of his meditations and all those suggestions on how to breathe cause I already had enough self help like that in my bag of tricks. But when I had a majorly bad thought about being sick, or bad symptoms I did the exercise and then moved on. Brain re-training helped me, I can't put my finger on it but once i started thinking in a positive direction and got my brain outta auto-sick mind my bravery and ability to do things doubled up ten fold times 100!
This method has helped me tons with my newest challenge, and that is I am trying to learn to drive a car again after 5 years of being home bound! (See pic above!)


I remember when I could not breathe in a small enclosed space with any other human unless they were totally decontaminated, chem free .... but this picture below is me and my dad recently in my bathroom hanging a mirror together and the only reason my face looks like it does is cause he was calling the mirror a "f-en bastard" and scaring me with his perfectionism. :)
I am not in perfect health, I still have trouble breathing in certain places, I still feel ill to smell the fragrance detergents, I still know I am not reliable or well enough to go out and get a regular job .... BUT i am much more functional. Functional enough to begin enjoying my life again and I wanted to put this out into the world - for those with MCS or any disease do not give up, ever! The body always is working towards healing itself, the body always wants to get better and so do you... do not give up on the miracle of healing - even if it's slow and takes many years. Just know none of ya'll are alone, I am over here at my little cabin in the woods believing everyday that we all can be healthy - no matter what anyone says!

Xoxoxo

The Pope: A Health Hazard?

Remember a few years back when the former Pope John made some statements about activities such as yoga being against church beliefs? I was pretty stunned, maybe even giggled and thought it was quite a lame little health hazard. I figured he was slightly absolved from saying something so silly when polluting the earth was later declared a "sin". But the new Pope, Mister Benedict XVI made recent statements about the AIDS crisis in Africa that make my toes curl, my lips curl, and cringe at the pure ignorance that could cause a major religious based health hazard.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. "On the contrary, it increases the problem." (read the rest of the article that has me pissed off here.)

With the lack of education & modern resources I imagine that Africa looks like a great place to go in and brainwash some people on how to get to heaven, in only the style the pope knows how. Abstinence. I suppose if he isn't getting any play, then no one should? What are you telling us Pope B? Just inform these people not to have sex, not to be humans, not to follow biological needs, to not do what inevitably WILL be done - and suggest that the one preventative contraceptive available and cheap isn't going to help the problem as good as your abstinence plan? Kind of like how Prez Bush took out sex education here in the US, replacing it with abstinence only programs that actually increased the percentage of teen pregnancies, and therefore STD's. Pope B, I have to ask, was this a statement directed towards your hunger for religious respect, fame and controversy - at the price of people's lives & health? I can not even fathom the numbers of people saved from terminal and terrible STD's using condoms since our knowledge of AIDS has increased. Not to mention pregnancies that were unwanted or unable to be cared for properly. And maybe you also forgot about things like misogyny and how possibly another culture differs from your micro Vatican white bread world in how they relate to their sexuality and relationships.

I am beyond disgusted that anyone is such power would propose statements that effect the minds of many people throughout the world, including impressionable and sexually active teens in the united states as well. In the real world people have sex- in fact, they have sex quite a bit - and once they get started they really aren't gonna stop because you said so - but maybe they won't have that condom in their hand to protect themselves because they couldn't get it from the government or they were too humiliated by the social & cultural rules you are perpetuating.
It's like you want to have blood on your hands - the blood of unwanted pregnancies, of people dieing of AIDS, people taking tons of STD meds that end up in our drinking water - while you sit pretty on your supposed moral high horse telling people not to be what they are (humans) as a solution.
Purity is in nature, not in selfish moral statements that have the weight to damage lives.

PS- Pope Benny, I would bet my life on the fact that you have your own F buddy - let's hope they use a condom (or vice versa) and don't give you AIDS.

Toxic Chemicals, Love Canal, and Our Health

"Today, nearly half of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of one of EPA’s 1304 active and proposed Superfund sites, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group dedicated to investigative journalism."

I found a fascinating article via the Canary Report about Love Canal... have you ever heard of it? The name was most appropriate before the residents of the area were given an emergency evacuation due to a gumbo of chemicals that began bubbling out of the ground in the school yard and seeping out multi colored goo from their basement walls, causing birth defects and illness to double in their area. It took a few years and a huge community rising to get the government to buy out all their houses and clean up the mess- for quite a while these residents were told that there was no evidence that it was harming their health.

"... one-quarter of the waste was benzene hexachloride, the main component of the pesticide lindane, a neurotoxin. There were chlorobenzenes (used in the synthesis of DDT) and dozens of other organic chemicals, many of which were known to be toxic. The waste also contained an estimated 120 pounds of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, commonly called dioxin, which is a byproduct of trichlorophenol manufacture. At the time dioxin was buried at Love Canal, it was not thought to cause disease, but it is now known as one of the most carcinogenic chemicals in the world. "

When the community tried to speak out the government said their testimonials to what was happening in their area was "useless housewife data".

This was back in 1978.

Now we are in 2008 nearly 30 years later and much of the same environmental crisis is going on- much of which is on a large & mysterious scale. One of the major problems for Love Canal was that no matter how people tried to use their voices to say something was wrong, the government only would act on substantial data that they could measure by standards they made up. Tests which couldn't measure much of anything at the time, and unfortunately have scarcely been updated in 30 years. Which is where the major problem lies since the standards of the EPA are , ehem , let's say not in the people's favor as much as they are in industries favor. Marketing & money now talks the talk and educates the masses, with nothing but nonsense to make a sale, to get us all to buy into their products and consumerism. Most of the products we buy have never been tested for chemical exposure safety, how they mix with other common products and what's worse is how they are manufactured is polluting our basic needs too- when the US wants even looser restrictions it just outsources their factory to a poor country and poisons their land & people instead. Some of which that very air pollution is blowing back our way.

While standards for toxic dumping (like what happened at Love Canal) have tightened some, we are still behind the times for testing the mixture of chemical products we bring into our home, build our home with, and shop for in stores. If you are questioning whether we are brainwashed into toxic consumerism and educated by marketing and not with real knowledge just look to the tragedy at Walmart where the worker was trampled to death by swarms of anxious customers convinced they had to get a good deal on Black Friday (at the expense of killing someone and injuring others). This type of tragic acceptance & anxiety on a mass scale is what leads to the environmental disaster that is taking place. I am not even speaking about global warming, or animals going extinct, glaziers melting, or trees being cut down at alarming rates - those are the issues that half the country seems to think are silly "treehugger" ideas. The disaster is right under your nose, under your kitchen sink, filling your washer machine, spewing into the air, on your walls and in your bottle of shampoo. The mixing of all the chemical fragrances (perfume, shampoo, lotion), bleach, household cleaners, detergent chems, preservatives & additives in your food, the paint out gassing on your walls that now contains anti-mildew chems too - stop and think about how you are mixing all these each day, and stop to think of how many people you know with chronic, re-occurring, mysterious health problems, ones that are just achy and the ones that are dieing of cancer.

In reality when we buy into the marketing bullshit we are paying big corporations & big pharma to destroy our health, so that they can fly in their private jets, wear expensive clothes, live in huge houses, and buy more destructive junk being sold by another rich company - continuing a cycle of the rich sickening (or killing) the poor for their own luxuries. We are paying their way and paying all the consequences, and the government sits back and let's it happen because these giant companies are paying government officials too. We all know it is happening, so why are we letting it?

Even in economic strife we must stay strong on demanding the health standards we deserve. And not buy into the big corporation's brainwash, because following their lead is creating a mini Love Canal in each of our homes, schools, and workplace - and in the air we breathe, the soil we grow food, and the water that is vital to our life.

Do you live near a Superfund site? Go HERE to check.

Want to learn more about where the stuff you buy really comes from? Go HERE to watch The Story of Stuff.

Watch a Documentary on Love Canal HERE.