It is incredible how many toxins can be found at the grocery store. This also applies to the health food stores as they try to expand their market reach to include MSG loaded soy foods and market them as low fat and healthy.

I used to buy Late July Organic crackers for my kids thinking that they where a healthier choice for them. What I did not realize was that they use soy lecithin and it was not “organic” soy lecithin. Soy is a GMO and highly dangerous.

My food shopping policy now is to buy 98% of my food in its original state and not in a box, bag or bottle with the exception of ecologically harvested canned salmon, organic tomato paste, vinigars and oils.

This video brings to light exactly how I feel when I go shopping. It brings to light what has happened to our food and what is added to our food..

• The amount of (GMO) soy
• The amount of (GMO) corn
• aspartame and splenda sweeteners
• food dies
• irridation
• aluminum pans
• food additives
• hydrogenated oils
• canned food
• hormones/nitrates in meat

Warning: this video contains some profanities.

Video by the Truthergirls Karen and Sonia.

I have my own thoughts on how this kind of food has ended up in out grocery stores and in our homes. One of them being that there is a lot of profit to be made from sick people. But that is my opinion.

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For the last couple of days what I have learned has shaken me to my core. I am so angry at my new findings that I have started to call the television and radio stations asking them why the information that I have found out about is not being broadcast in the mainstream media.  I have also asked them to do news pieces on this Bill C-6 and I will see if they will actually comply with this request. Canadian Citizens have to know this information because these laws are going to be forced on us when they are passed. It is time to take action.

Bill C- 6 is Canada’s Version of Codex Alimentarius! Yes you can find out what Codex Alimentarius is here. It is a frightening bill that will be passed and it will affect every person living in America and even those living outside by the horrific trade implications.

Bill C-6 Is Unconstitutional

Constitutional Lawyer Shawn Buckley addresses the issues of Bill C-6:

It abolishes the Law of Trespass, the government can come onto, into your property without being liable or have a warrant. In the Law of Trespass, it is the only law where you don’t have to have proof of the trespass and can be charged criminally and convicted. Normally a warrant is only issued by the courts if there is a likelihood of finding evidence of crime.  Bill C-6 is the Canada Consumer Product Safety Bill. There is no home without consumer products so the Justice can issue a warrant if Health Canada is likely to find something that is regulated under the Act ie. Any consumer product!

• They can use force.
• They can confiscate our goods.
• They have unlimited powers of search and seizure.
• They can charge you for storing the property that they seized.
• They can impose penalties.
• They can destroy your property without a court order.

Anybody who is believed to have contravened a section of this act is deemed guilty by the minister NOT by a court. You are guilty until proven innocent. This act removes the Rule Of Law. We have the government, we have the courts and we have citizens… This act removes the courts and allows the government to intrude against its citizens. This is what wars and rebellions are fought over! No nation will possibly benefit from separating the people from their courts.

You are found guilty and have to prove yourself innocent before a minister. There is no court. The minister can confiscate your property and when you are found guilty it is the minister who gets to keep your confiscated property. This create a huge conflict of interest.

There is also a Notwithstanding clause of our charter of rights and freedoms that says that any right enjoyed by Canadian Citizens may be annulled temporarily for the good of the nation!

They can suspend civil rights because of the H1N1 Flu. This gives them the power to do mandatory mass vaccination campaign against the H1N1 flu.

These Vaccines contain toxic adjuvents that kill brain cells by causing chronic inflammation to the brain.  Your body starts to attack and fight itself because of the poisons that are injected in the blood.  Auto-immune disorders that are linked to vaccines are Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease and Gulf War Syndrome.

Health Canada will have the power to destroy the Natural Health Products.  The consumer products products pose little risk to Canadian Citizens and yet the government will be given a lot of power to enforce costly, restrictive and intrusive legislation. Health Food Stores will be raided and products pulled off the shelves. The natural products that can help us get better and heal will disappear.

The big Pharma drug companies have great lobbyist in the parliament.  These companies produce products that pose a lot of risk for the Canadian consumer including death. But the government does not have a lot legislative power to go after these big drug companies.

So not only are our rights and freedoms threatened, the natural health products that we use to make us healthy are at a risk of becoming endangered, but also organic foods and our backyard garden are also under attack (with codex alimentarius – yes it will affect Canadians by trade).

I urge everyone to write a letter to the Senators. I will be doing this this weekend and will post a copy of my letter here.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade.

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Cows grazing on the rolling hill pasture is one of the most picturesque and relaxing sceneries. But for more traditionally raised cows they do not spend all their life on pasture.  The last year of their life they spend in a feedlot getting fat on grain and corn.

Farmers know that grain makes animals fat and makes them grow fast. It is not rocket science (if the farmers can figure this out I have no idea why the health canada and the creators of the food pyramid can’t figure it out??). In today’s traditional farming culture it is about finishing the animals faster, better and cheaper. Raising grass-fed beef is a much slower and natural process. A cows natural food is grass and not grain.

There is great health benefits in seeking out grass-fed beef. Grain raised beef is high in omega 6:3 ratio (20:1). Our ideal ratio is 1:1. Grass fed beef has 0.16:1. The benefits of eating grass fed beef are the same as eating salmon that is high in omega 3 EFA. It is good for the brain and it is excellent for heart health. For good health,  we want to reduce our omega 6 EFA and increase our omega 3 EFA. (Source)

Grass fed beef is also high in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). The benefits of CLA are that it can aid in fat loss, gives protection against cancer, insulin resistance and diabetes.

Grass fed beef has also shown to contain vitamin E and beta carotene which are powerful antioxidants that prevents illness and protects us from degenerative disease. (Source)

Raising Cattle

Were I live grass fed beef is certified as such. The cattle have to be treated humanely. The calves are able to nurse from their mother which protects them from illness.

Grass-fed cows are raised organically without antibiotics and growth hormones. The diet is 100% grass from the pastures and in the winter they eat stored hay. They are fed no grain or no animal by products which conventional beef are fed.  The farms are inspected and certified and the animals are supposed to be in good health condition at finishing time.

They also go to an organic certified kill plant.

Buying Grass-fed beef has many benefits.

• Supports sustainable local family farms and not big agri-biz.
• Quality meats for exceptional health with more vitamins and more good fats.  Grass fed beef is a super food just like salmon without possible contamination with mercury.
• There is an environmental benefit: There is no need to over use antibiotics and veterinary medicines because of poor farming conditions.
• The animals are much happier and healthier.

I get my grass-fed beef locally ( My father in law raises grass-fed cattle!). We are lucky indeed. But there are three other farmers in the area that also grow grass-fed beef. This past week I also discovered and tasted grass-fed local bison! It was so delicious.

To find local beef growers you can use google! A lot of farmers have simple websites with their contact information. Google your local area and just add “grass-fed beef” into the search box. In this post I also discuss how to find local farmers and get good quality food.

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Imagine your child is sick and you want to get some Vitamin C to boost their immune system. Now imagine Vitamin C being illegal. GASP! Your vitamins are going to become as illegal as Herion!

Have you ever heard of Codex? It will be implemented on December 31, 2009…

• Every dairy cow on the planet will have to be treated with a Monsonto bovine growth hormone.
• Every animal (if it has fins, feet and feathers) on the planet will have to be treated with antibiotics and growth hormone.
• Codex will mandate that all food be irradiated including our local food!
• Organic standards are very low and they will be able to give animals growth hormones and drugs and still classify the as organic.
• Codex sets extremely high limits (these limits are poisonous) on industrial chemicals allowed on our food.
• Codex brought back 7 out of the 12 extremely toxic pesticides that have been world banned pesticides.
• When just the vitamin and mineral guideline alone goes into implementation a minimum of 3 BILLION people are estimated to die. 1 Billion people will die of starvation alone.

Dr. Rima Laibow is suing the US Government because Codex is illegal. Watch her presentation it is well worth the time.

From the video… “He who controls food, controls the world”

Congress uses a multiplier and every e-mail, fax and phone call counts as 13,000 constituents!

Use your voice to prevent this from happening!

Sign the petition here and visit www.healthfreedomusa.org

Please help share this message and tell as many people as you can. Show your outrage and don’t let Codex control our food!

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Cheeseslave!

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When it comes to weight loss there are so many products to choose from. There seems to be a food to fill any kind of need that we have. These franken foods come as…

Low Carb Tortilla’s, Low Carb Bread, Low Carb Chocolate, Low Carb Desserts, Low Carb Syrups, Low Carb Sweeteners and Low Carb Countdown Milk.

These foods all have artificial or modified ingredients in them. When I was vegetarian I ate plenty of fake meats, cheeses and sauces with horrible ingredients thinking they were healthy. I did not see any bad health problems until I was eating them for over a decade!

I now prefer to eat REAL food that my grandparents would recognize. So even if I am feeling emotional and want to sink my teeth into an apple or banana to get my sugar fix – I will. I will eat REAL honey. I will eat sprouted whole grain bread. It will cause my cravings to skyrocket and it will cause me to overeat. It may also cause a Candida Yeast outbreak.

But real food has real nutrition. Fake processed foods cause the real damage to your body (How else did I get insulin resistant!). Think about what happens every time man tries to interfere with food…

• Turning away from butter to margarine… we have created trans fats and a heart disease catastrophe!
• Turning away from raw milk/eggs to pasteurization… this has allowed for the industrialization and factory farming of animals and getting away from the traditional family farm.
• Turning away from whole grains to bleached and processed grains… These grains are so nutrient deficient that they need to ADD vitamins back into them.
• Turning away from nutrient dense spices to artificial flavours… These flavours are so dangerous that they kill brain cells.
• Turning to Genetically Modified Foods to mass produce food.
• Turning to fast food junk rather than slowly cooked nutrient dense traditional food.
• Turning to mass pesticide/fertilizer use and poisoning of our food, soil, water and air and abandoning traditional biodynamic organic ways.

There are still probably many ways that we alter food and in turn poison ourselves that I have not thought off.

Is it any wonder why we are sick?

Am I supposed to trust these people that put this junk on the market? I don’t think so.

All of this is done for one reason – For profit!

Don’t feel bad about cheating on your low carb diet with real food. Do it occasionally if it does not cause to much health and weight issues.

To your health and wellness,

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There are many products on the market that promote weight and fat loss. From diet books, diet pills, diet food, diet products and gizmos… We are buying them up and have turned this into a multi-billion dollar market. This industry never existed 70-80 years ago.  And there was no obesity health crisis like there is today.

We look back at what has changed:

• We are more stressed
• We sleep less
• There are more fast food restaurants
• More packaged and processed foods
• Cars
• Computers and Televisions
• More chemicals and pollution
• We drink less water and more sugary drinks
• We see less sun (and vitamin D)
• Pasteurization of milk and egg products
• Pushing of a low fat, high carb diets
• Factory Farming (and animals being sick and fed an unnatural diet)
• We eat much more sugar
• Our grains are refined and then refortified with vitamins!
• Toxic drugs that wreak havoc on our bodies.

In the news this week President Obama made it illegal to put downer cows into the food system. How horrible that such a thing even exists.

So is it any wonder why we are so much sicker and fatter?

Did you know that corn fed beef can make you fatter but grass fed beef contains CLA which has been shown in studies to make you thinner? You can buy CLA in a pill form but that really does not solve the problem that corn is not the healthy food for a cow (or for you). Not only that but grass fed beef contains omega 3 EFA’s and that is the same kind of omega 3 EFA’s found in fish and considered a brain food. We don’t need to be raping our oceans to get the health benefits of these essential fatty acids. We need to raise our animals they way were meant to be raised.

We are living longer but definitely not healthier. Our quality of life has certainly plunged.

If we reverse the above list our health would get better and our weight will drop. The focus should not be fat loss but health gains! Environmental health, animal health and our health are all related.

The first step is gaining knowledge. With the right knowledge good decisions can be made.

To your health and wellness,

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These days everyone could use a little help with sticking to their budgets. You don’t need to sacrifice good food. Organic food can still be accessible, you may just need to make some new friends.

I have lived in a rural community for 5 years. Previously I was a city girl – born and raised.  The big difference that I notice between rural and urban living is COMMUNITY.

In a rural community there is a bigger connection to neighbors. There is much more help offered by neighbors and phone numbers are freely handed out and called upon. Maybe it is because it is a smaller community and it feels more intimate – “everybody seems to know everybody”, or maybe it is the slower pace of life out here.

Here are some community oriented ways to get cheap local organic food. You don’t need to live out in the country you just need to get connected!

1. Buy directly from the farmer
2. Join a CSA – you own a share of the garden
3. Community Trading Programs
4. Working for discount
5. Buy in bulk

Any other tips are welcome!

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Last week I took the kids and myself to the dentist. The kids normally have a checkup every six months, but I was a bit nervous about this appointment. You see I also made an appointment for myself. I have not seen a dentist since I was 12 years old – that was 20 years ago! Everything went well and no cavities in any of us so far.

My eldest daughter Aliena has had some issues though. When she was a small baby she developed small black pits in her front teeth and white discolourization in some others. I was concerned because she also was classified as failure to thrive and was losing weight. We were vegan at the time (due to milk and egg allergic skin reactions in Aliena) and I had a vegetarian pregnancy.  I was very concerned about her growth. [Read more →]

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Eating food is one of the most intimidate experiences that we do everyday. It is what we bring into our bodies to nourish, satisfy our hunger, fight disease, and give us energy. But there is more to food then just the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fats that we tend to focus on. What am I talking about???

I am talking about the quality of food!  And the Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution does not address it. 
   
Safety of mass meat production…
At the end of August there was a Listeriosis outbreak at one of the biggest meat producing plants in Canada. Processed meats coming from the Maple Leaf Foods in Toronto containing Listeria bacteria were shipped from Toronto all the way to the West and East Coast across the country. The meat was served to elderly in retirement homes, to day cares and hospitals. Kids in Camp fell sick and 15 people died from the same strain of Listeria found in the meat. On online forums pregnant women were scared because they ate recalled meat and they were afraid to miscarry their babies. There are in total 42 confirmed Listeriosis illnesses across the country that was caused by eating contaminated meat.

Raw Milk goes to trail…
On another note, this past week a raw milk farmer (who is a raw milk crusader), Michael Schmidt, has gone to court to fight charges for producing raw unpasteurized milk and cheese and distributing it in Toronto. It is illegal to sell raw milk to consumers, so to by-pass this law Michael has provided a cow share program. It is legal for cow owners to drink their own cow’s milk without it being pasteurized. So instead of buying milk a costumer will buy the cow and the farmer will milk it for you.
Michael Schmidt is the owner of Glencolten Farm. It is a small bio-dynamic organic farm located 2 hours north of Toronto in beautiful Grey County. They have a cow milking operation but also raise pigs, fowl and horses. They have their own apple orchard, organic gardens and they grow their own grain. They make thier own bread and  raw cheese and sell it as well.

A bio-dynamic farm is viewed as a living ecosystem. Everything works with the way nature intended it too – as a nutrient cycle. The animals are not stressed to produce, their living environment is clean, the manure is used as compost for the fields. The animal feed is grown on the farm. Bio-dynamic practices increase soil fertility and more nutrient rich crops.

Summary of the two very different scenarios…
The first story you have here is of a gigantic food corporation trying to mass produce processed food. Listeriosis bacteria gets in the equipment and contaminates meat. The meat is then transported across the country and makes many people sick and kills 15 people.

The second story is of a small dairy farmer (Michael Schmidt) who believes in bio-dynamic farming. That if the farm is healthy, the animals are healthy and the people eating from that farm are healthy. Raw milk is not allowed to be commercially sold because of the fear that it may contain pathogens such as Salmonella and E-coli and Listeria. Michael Schmidt is facing jail time if convicted of the charges laid against him even though no one has ever gotten sick or died from eating and drinking the food he produces.  Raw milk naturally has many enzymes and bacteria. Lactoferrin, xanthine oxidase, lactoperoxidase, lysozyme and nisin are enzymes present in raw milk that kill pathogens.

From http://www.realmilk.com/safety-raw-milk.html
To study this issue further, Organic Pastures contracted with BSK labs in Fresno to perform multiple challenge and recovery tests on our raw milk and raw colostrum. When 7 logs (10 million counts) of pathogens were added to one-milliliter samples of organic raw milk they would not grow. In fact they died off. The salmonella was so badly out-competed that it could not be found less than 24 hours later. The listeria drop was less dramatic and was similiar to the E. Coli O157:H7 samples that were studied, but they also did not grow and declined substantially over time.
The lab concluded: “. . . organic raw milk and colostrum do not appear to support the growth of pathogens. . .”

Conclusion
Although I am comparing the processing of meat to the processing of dairy, the principle is the same. Food is safer when it comes from small farms dedicated to growing healthy food. The Atkins Diet focuses heavily on eating animal products. But for optimal health it is very important to eat high quality unprocessed organic animal products. To learn more about traditional farming practices, the healing benefits of traditional food and the benefits of raw milk visit www.westonaprice.org or pick up Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, Ph.d.

Organic is not always better…
I just want to emphasize the importance of knowing your food! If it hurts to look at the farming practices then there is no way you should be eating it! I recently went to an organic farm that was less then ideal and there was one dead animal on this farm and many animals were hurting. Yet it was certified organic. If I had not gone for a visit and just bought from a grocery store I would not know this. Consumers have a right to safe healthy food. If it is organic then it should be raised ethically. Actually ALL animals should be raised and treated ethically – but I am dreaming here.

We can’t always assume that an inspector is going to catch every infraction. So it comes down to the consumer. The consumer does have buying power!

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