Think before you eat. (Final)

One of my core beliefs is to respect the beliefs and values of others, regardless of weather or not they agree with or even respect my own. I’m not going to say you are wrong for consuming processed, synthetic, adultered and non-whole foods, that would be very wrong of me. As such I do respect your choices in life, and accept you as you are. What I am going to do is try and convince you not to consume those sorts of things. From the bottom of my heart I want this story to reach the innermost depths of your mind and heart and hopefully convince you to lead a healthier life.

Growing up:

My mom was, and still is for that matter, the sort of person based heavily in convenience. To her healthy, safe, moral and logical things are 100% dependant on the easiest and most readily available sources. If weapons grade plutonium was the cheapest and easiest way to fill me up and keep me quiet and out of her hair, then she would have fed it to me. (Yes she is a selfish person). So to say when I did live with my mom I had the most atrocious diet, so much so that it’s a wonder I stayed so thin. Mountain Dew, instant oatmeal, hamburger helper, LOTS OF FAST FOOD OF EVERY VARIETY, and TV dinners were the norm. There was virtually nothing fresh, whole, home made, unprocessed and so on in our cupboards. If it was not sugar coated and full of trans fats, or deep fried in high cholesterol animal fats, then we didn’t have it. There was no consideration for Acid Alkaline balances of the body or potassium to sodium ratios, which would be OK if she were all together ignorant of these principles. As it stands she was and is well aware and informed about them. My mom rationalized just like so many others do, that “it says heart healthy on the package”, “it says low fat”, “kids like sugar”, “salt makes it taste better”, "Its my house and my lungs, Ill smoke in here if I want to", and so on. (I am happy to report my family and I have successfully gotten my mom to quit smoking and she has not smoked for 4 years now). It wasn’t until I moved out on my own that I started making decisions about what I wanted to eat and what was an acceptable diet.

I paid for this with my health, for as much as I ate I was always Mal nourished, I was always sick, one severe cold after another, whooping cough that lasted for years, a yearly tradition of bronchial streptococcus and seriously life threatening bouts with the flu. I was a poster child for the over use of antibiotics and the ineffectiveness of vaccines. My little brother who still lives with my mom has much the same diet only with about 3 times the candy intake and new rationalizations; “bread has fiber in it”, “growing boys need meat”, “the microwave is so convenient”, “Splenda is better than sugar”, I limit his soda intake so he doesn’t get too much sugar and caffeine” – as I watch Nicholas, who is now 10 years old and 50 pounds over weight, suck down his fifth Pepsi for the day and is double fisting the gummy bears and snickers bars.

My grandmother who raised and had primary custody of me is another story. Though I spent several days per week with my mom and she lived with my Grandma and I after age 10, Grandma absolutely demanded I eat fresh fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. Grandma also had a rule of no soda pop, no candy bars and no candied cereals, that didn’t stop my mom though. My grandma worked long hard days to be able to support herself and me; so to say I still had lots of microwaved TV diners as my meals. As such my diet and health remained poor until I was seventeen. Because of my childhood diet I developed an intolerance to processed sugar and processed wheat and there is no doubt in my mind that I am NOT an atypical case, I believe this to affect the masses of American society and the American food industry is responsible for a large portion of it.

It has been eight years since I started cooking for myself, and by cooking I mean COOKING, from scratch and using mainly raw/whole foods, not microwaving a plastic brick of anti-nutrition. For the last six of those eight years I can count three times I’ve been sick and of those three times, it lasted a whopping day each and I was back to normal. I have not had any vaccines in that eight-year time span, obviously had no need for antibiotics and am regularly around large groups of people and many sick people. For me this is irrefutable proof that diet alone contributes to a very large portion of human health and well being, never mind that the National Institute of Health says 90% of human health can be attributed to diet alone.

The Next Generation:

I have never had a problem with my daughters being picky eaters, I mean yeah the both of them refuse onions and/or mushrooms, though that’s pretty much the limit of what they wont eat. At the same time, I dislike onions with a passion so if that all my babies don’t like, then I can accept that. How would you like for your children to beg for broccoli every day, raid the fridge and eat all the carrots and ginger root, pick all the cucumbers and eat them before you have a chance to get some, or eat squash like it were going out of style.

Now maybe I should clarify the 'anything' that Shiori and Kiya will eat. The point was made to me that Shiori and Kiya are extremely pick eaters, and it makes good sense when you consider the context of their picky eating. My daughters will not drink soda, not because I said they cannot, rather because when offered some by my brother they were physically repulsed and spat it right out. (That is to say humans typically are trained to like carbonated and sugary drinks). The girls will pick at and not eat processed foods when they stay the night at my moms house. (As such, I have 'infiltrated her house' with fresh, whole and natural foods, as a causality of my mom wanting to have the girls visit). My babies go trick or treating for the fun of it and then give their candy away while telling other kids "candies yucky, candies hurt." So to say a duality plays out here, because like their daddy, my babies will willfully starve themselves before putting overly processed or synthetic crap foods in their bodies and still just like their daddy, they LOVE FOOD! Savy?

Perhaps this is because I do not short order cook anything, perhaps this is because I do not own a microwave oven or even allow the foods we eat to be microwaved, perhaps this is because just about everything we eat is home made from scratch using only whole food ingredients, perhaps this is because I do not allow any kind of processed sugar or candy, food coloring or heavily processed foods, or soda and so on in my house, in my body and most certainly not in their bodies. (In context, I have hundreds of pounds of candy in my office for my vending machines, though my office is my office where I work, not where I live so the candy really is not in my house.) I would venture to guess that all of these reasons bear significant weight when it comes to why my babies are such good eaters, after all it is the addiction to sugar and an overgrowth of candida yeast in the body that in general cause most of our (as humans) disliking and even repulsion of whole foods and healthy alkaline diets (fear of green things). As an aside, I always get comments on how well behaved Shiori and Kiya are, I mainly attribute this to proper nutrition and the ways in which I interact with them.

I think though, the most prominent reason why my girls will eat just about anything is I did not, and do not, treat them like fragile little children, I treat them like humans who happen to be smaller than me. That is to say when I have conversations with them, I speak to them as I speak to adults. (When Shiori asks me a question, I word it so her young mind can understand it, and still I am very up front and honest with her, I do not beat around the bush and I am not aloof with her. Kiya doesn’t talk much yet, so I dont really have conversations with her). When I play with them I take care not to be brutally rough and still I ‘bring it on’. When I renovate houses I bring them along and give them paintbrushes to go nuts with. When I garden I bring them with and teach them about the earth and the creatures whom we live with and why prayer and meditation are so integral to our well being and place on this Earth. When we eat I do not anticipate little taste buds not liking something foreign and I do not beg them to try it, instead what we have is what we have and I believe my daughters learned from day one that the world is full of flavor and each flavor is distinctly its own, each flavor is more magical than the last, and each flavor has power and meaning in every little bite. Two of the first solid foods I remember Shiori eating is curried rice noodles with carrots, cucumber, tomato, and grilled chicken (A.K.A. real sweet and sour chicken), and genuine Jalapeno and Anaheim salsa.

There is this wonderful little Thai restaurant close to my house simply called ‘Pad Thai’ which is located in the Mission Trace Shopping Center at Wadsworth and Highway 285. If you are faint of taste or cannot handle flavor, I would not suggest this place to you. If your Idea of quality Thai cuisine is those overly vinegary dollar a scoop places, you shouldn’t eat here. If your expectations are for it to be like going to ‘Tuk Tuk’ you will be sorely disappointed. Now if you like trying new things or like truly authentic Thai food, then I invite you to take a little journey with me. Never you mind that this little restaurant placed in the top 100 Thai restaurants in the U. S. and is rated the number one in Colorado, the family that owns and runs the place has to be the most wonderful and giving people I’ve met.

Imagine you are three years old again your favorite auntie has just brought you a wonderful desert new dish to try; you haven’t even finished stuffing your face with garlic pepper chicken. sweet and creamy whole coconut milk with a mellow undertone of mushroomy black beans, plantain bananas wrapped in rice and steamed or grilled to perfection, tantalize your taste buds with mango and deglazed garlic and curry sauce. Now imagine these are not available on any menu, rather you get these because your auntie loves you so much. That’s just a bit of what Shiori and Kiya eat when we do go out. No the restaurant owner is not their auntie. Rather in our family anyone whom we spend time with and know on a personal level is our family, that is to say we have a very large family. (Takes a village to raise a child/takes a village to build a society kind of mentality).

In my family, food is a central part of our mini culture on many levels. Food is fuel, food is another reason to sit down together, food is sharing, food is flavor, food is a journey, food is gratitude, food is abundance, food is wealth, food is a responsible choice, and food is an integral part of our lives. What is food to you?

I have made a deliberate effort to provide my babies with the best nutrition possible and to instill values with food that I hope will last a lifetime. I believe it to be the sacrifices parents are willing to make of themselves that better their children and prime the next generation for a better future than our own present day in age. Aren’t you worth the effort, aren’t your children worth it? Isn’t the future of this world worth your effort and sacrifice?

Authors Notes:

So I had a very difficult time with this essay, I wrote copious quantities of different ideas and random thoughts that popped into my mind and just couldn’t figure what to put on paper. Even after deciding what to write about I had a very difficult time describing my topic, I had a very difficult time thinking of ways to present it while still being engaging, I feel even now that I was too technical and preachy, personally I think this essay was not my best work. I know the best way to “woo” someone into a thought, is to speak to their inner self, to tell stories. Preaching and making technical argument usually end up turning people off. OK, so yes I put my authors comments in the main body, they would not fit in a comment box and I had other links I wanted to share, so that's why they are in the main body.

I do not know why some paragraphs are grey while others are black, I've tried changing the color, it wont change, I've gone over the HTML code several times and can't seem to find anything that would tell the lettering to appear as grey, so you have to deal with it. I did like 6 drafts of this essay before having it ruined by the HTML code underlining and striking through everything and make it all blue (like one big hyperlink), so I am quite done reading HTML and fixing problems.

My message in the essay is that “processed foods ARE KILLING YOU!” Obviously I am applying to emotion with both my childhood the bit with my kids. While the stories I tell are true I have used some empty rhetoric, especially with my childhood, to get the point across. Mainly alluding to how my mom was not around much during the earlier portion of my life, although this is true, the context in which I use it pulls on emotional chords while simultaneously attempting to link an association of processed foods and imbalanced diets to those very emotional chords. I am brainwashing you, yes I know this is not altogether a nice thing to do, and still it works.

I like the photos I used for this blog, I feel they are engaging as well as controversial, working well at catching your attention. As well the pictures of my daughters are cute and of course work well to pull you into the whole message of doing better for the sake of our children. The "Bush '04 pin on the t-shirt of the guy in the first picture is an obvious political stab. I do not follow any specific political lines and as such do not agree with the stab as the gross generalization that it makes. I find the picture with common foods and what's in them to be very informative, though I wish I could have gotten it to shrink down a bit more. The final picture is of Coconut Milk and Black Beans as a desert soup, I've never had it chilled like in the picture, though I would think even with differing characteristics, the dish would still be very good, you get the idea.

Eating a healthy and balanced diet IS NOT EXPENSIVE, in fact it is more cost effective (I.E. CHEAPER) than the alternative.

So to clarify, I read the labels of EVERYTHING my family and I put in or on our bodies, if they do not pass my stringent guidelines, I move on to something else, no exceptions. We do not have a microwave and we do not need one, microwaves are poisonous and hazardous to the human condition and I implore you to read the hyperlinks I have included throughout this essay on microwave ovens and other varying diet and health concerns. I believe that the general masses just don’t know because the information is not commonly spoken. That is, while the information is widely available, it is just not widely dispersed.

Another context to take into account: De Minimis Non Curat Lex - Latin for 'the law does not concern itself with trifles'. That is to say if a minor infraction should happen, somehow sugar/food coloring/synthetics/etc is in something we ate, its no big deal as tomorrow is another day. Though the Microwave is an absolute NO, no if ands or buts, I will make no exceptions for this one. If you are constipated or have serious IBS issues and use the microwave, I would venture to guess there is your answer. Microwave ovens change the chemical structure of foods with only one second of exposure, and you really truly are digesting a hard lump of plastic.

I felt it necessary to leave vegetarianism out of this essay because I felt it would ‘muddy the waters’ and make my point less effective. I get asked all the time “are you a vegetarian?” Anymore I just respond yes and leave it at that, I find it exceedingly difficult to communicate the principles of food combining, and eating limited meats and so on, so I just yes, yes I am. The reality is I do eat chicken and bison for no reason other than I like them, both of which disqualify me as a “true vegetarian”, even though the word in itself is so wishy washy that it has no real meaning. I do not eat beef or pork because of “industrialization” of cows and pigs as food sources and how horrible both meats really are for consumption. (Yes I realize that in general chicken and now more commonly bison as well are indusrialized). I will also point out, humans have absolutely no need at all in any way, in our current genetic structure to eat meat, so when the argument it brought up that its healthy to eat meat, NO ITS NOT, the level of uric acid (I really wish this site addressed the count of urics the body can process per day vs the count of ruics per 8oz serving of meat, none the less this is a wonderful site for general information on healthy foods) and cholesterol in every ounce of meat alone outweigh the benefits of protein and iron in meats. If someone wants to say they eat meat because it tastes good, Id call that a very legitimate reason. Id love to go on about other aspects of say calcium, iron and protein, and I feel this is getting lengthy, so Ill just implore again, research it, make an effort to learn about it, and if you want ask me about it.

On the vending machines: Call me a hypocrite of you want, the reality of the mater is, it doesn’t matter how much I preach to the people around me the value of proper nutrition. The mass majority of Americans, and other countries at that, are going to binge eat candy and other junk foods like they are going out of style, so it might as well be me who profits from those who choose to eat that shit. I do mean shit because that’s what it is, 100% pure pasteurized synthetically made and mass produced death in a colorful candy shell. ‘POINSONOUS SHIT’ going down the throat. And it tasted like SHIT too.

I am sure I come across a a bit harsh, especially in my writers comments. I have found that respect is give and results more commonly come from being honest and straight forward about words and intentions. I believe that too many individuals are exceedingly wishy washy and aloof about their words and intentions. I make a deliberate effort to be diplomatic and never cross, while still direct and to the point, sometimes that means I will offend or upset individuals, especially those who may be more sensitive than others. I apologize if I have offended you, that was not my intent, and still my goal has been achieved because weather or not you agree with me, I have etched an image into you mind that will last for an eternity.