So proud he pulled himself up on Ally's trampoline
Pulled up on the fireplace hearth to get Ally's apple...
YUM!
Monday, May 16, 2011
New Tricks and a Week in Pics
In one week's time, Jace has started sitting unassisted, cut a top tooth, and is pulling up to standing! Talk about a wonder week! I don't have a picture of the new tooth but he's working on the other top tooth now so maybe I can get a picture of both when it's through.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Food, Lies, and Your Health
I recently received an email newsletter from a local farm, Gasper Family Farm, and really enjoyed it. The information is something I've been wanting to post but this was written so well (better than I could do!) that I just asked permission to copy it. Some pieces from the newsletter have been edited out as it wasn't part of the topic.
"Our nations food system is built on lies; profitable lies, but lies nonetheless.
When you get into marketing and producing food directly for consumers you quickly discover how much dishonest marketing is going on. The marketing and packaging of many foods is designed to conjure up images of yesteryear; small diversified family farms with animals living on pasture. Yet in almost all cases this food is produced in factory like, confinement facilities.
'Cage free' eggs just means is the chickens are raised in crowded chicken barns instead of tiny cages. Such eggs may even be labeled as free range. These eggs are also usually marketed as being from vegetarian fed chickens. This has is root in a rejection of feeding chicken byproducts back to chickens; which should be rejected. But the truth of the matter is chickens are omnivores, not herbivores; they enjoy and thrive on eating the many bugs, frogs, and other meaty creatures they find out on the pasture. But their chickens are barned and so really are vegetarian fed. And then there is the question of nutrition. Eggs produced on pasture are more nutritious, including having more healthy Omega 3's. But those Omega 3 claims on store eggs are due to the feeding of flax seed in the grain ration, not pasture.
Similar stories go for milk. The California Milk Board's famous ads of happy cows in beautiful pastoral scenes belies the fact that CA's dairy cows live on massive dirt lots, if they see the light of day at all. And companies like Horizon and Organic Valley will use a couple small farms as poster farms to represent their producers while sourcing some or even most of the milk from huge corporate owned farms. Much of the so called organic milk in the local stores likely comes from massive ID or TX dairies containing thousands of cows which spend little if any time on pasture. Much of the milk sold by Horizon and Aurora (Walmart and Target organic milk) is known to be produced in flagrant violation of organic standards.
All of this makes it hard for the real small family farms producing organic food such as ourselves to survive. We just simply don't enjoy the economies of scale or access to capital that a massive corporation milking thousands of cows does. Nor are we willing to produce milk cheaper by raising our animals in ways that violate organic principles.
But some of the biggest lies in our food system revolve around milk. The FDA, CDC, and other government entities claim raw milk is not pasteurized and so is not safe; you might get sick and even die. According to one agency, "All raw milk products may contain illness-causing bacteria". You are instead encouraged to "purchase only products that are pasteurized or made from pasteurized milk". We are repeatedly told it is healthy, safe, and good for you. The subtle implication (sometimes outright stated) is that pasteurized milk is guaranteed safe and you can't get sick from it. Indeed, pasteurization is sometimes defined as "the means whereby raw milk is rendered safe for human consumption."
But the truth is, no one has died from drinking raw milk in at least 25 years, if not longer. You are more likely to die in a car accident on the way to pick up your milk than from drinking it. And contrary to what the government would lead you to believe, deaths from pasteurized milk do occur periodically with the most recent being 3 people in 2007. In fact, the supposedly safe pasteurized milk has been repeatedly implicated in massive disease outbreaks over the last several decades; killing hundreds and sickening hundreds of thousands of people. And thats doesn't even include the diseases the medical community won't admit are induced by pasteurized milk such as allergies, asthma, lactose intolerance, IBS, Crohn's, and others.
Many of these sicknesses come from post-pasteurization contamination of the milk; something pasteurization not only can't prevent, but actually makes more likely. And the lie goes even deeper. The truth is that pasteurization doesn't kill all bacteria (its not a sterilization process) and it can't even affect all of the disease causing organisms.
At the end of the day, there are no guarantees in life. Food by its very nature is subject to contamination and no food can be make completely safe. Rather than rely on the faulty and corrupt food safety system we need to take responsibility for our own health by building our immune systems and seeking out the right sources for our food."
I'll post more about my own family's food choices another time. Hopefully this information makes you want to know more about how to make the changes.
"Our nations food system is built on lies; profitable lies, but lies nonetheless.
When you get into marketing and producing food directly for consumers you quickly discover how much dishonest marketing is going on. The marketing and packaging of many foods is designed to conjure up images of yesteryear; small diversified family farms with animals living on pasture. Yet in almost all cases this food is produced in factory like, confinement facilities.
'Cage free' eggs just means is the chickens are raised in crowded chicken barns instead of tiny cages. Such eggs may even be labeled as free range. These eggs are also usually marketed as being from vegetarian fed chickens. This has is root in a rejection of feeding chicken byproducts back to chickens; which should be rejected. But the truth of the matter is chickens are omnivores, not herbivores; they enjoy and thrive on eating the many bugs, frogs, and other meaty creatures they find out on the pasture. But their chickens are barned and so really are vegetarian fed. And then there is the question of nutrition. Eggs produced on pasture are more nutritious, including having more healthy Omega 3's. But those Omega 3 claims on store eggs are due to the feeding of flax seed in the grain ration, not pasture.
Similar stories go for milk. The California Milk Board's famous ads of happy cows in beautiful pastoral scenes belies the fact that CA's dairy cows live on massive dirt lots, if they see the light of day at all. And companies like Horizon and Organic Valley will use a couple small farms as poster farms to represent their producers while sourcing some or even most of the milk from huge corporate owned farms. Much of the so called organic milk in the local stores likely comes from massive ID or TX dairies containing thousands of cows which spend little if any time on pasture. Much of the milk sold by Horizon and Aurora (Walmart and Target organic milk) is known to be produced in flagrant violation of organic standards.
All of this makes it hard for the real small family farms producing organic food such as ourselves to survive. We just simply don't enjoy the economies of scale or access to capital that a massive corporation milking thousands of cows does. Nor are we willing to produce milk cheaper by raising our animals in ways that violate organic principles.
But some of the biggest lies in our food system revolve around milk. The FDA, CDC, and other government entities claim raw milk is not pasteurized and so is not safe; you might get sick and even die. According to one agency, "All raw milk products may contain illness-causing bacteria". You are instead encouraged to "purchase only products that are pasteurized or made from pasteurized milk". We are repeatedly told it is healthy, safe, and good for you. The subtle implication (sometimes outright stated) is that pasteurized milk is guaranteed safe and you can't get sick from it. Indeed, pasteurization is sometimes defined as "the means whereby raw milk is rendered safe for human consumption."
But the truth is, no one has died from drinking raw milk in at least 25 years, if not longer. You are more likely to die in a car accident on the way to pick up your milk than from drinking it. And contrary to what the government would lead you to believe, deaths from pasteurized milk do occur periodically with the most recent being 3 people in 2007. In fact, the supposedly safe pasteurized milk has been repeatedly implicated in massive disease outbreaks over the last several decades; killing hundreds and sickening hundreds of thousands of people. And thats doesn't even include the diseases the medical community won't admit are induced by pasteurized milk such as allergies, asthma, lactose intolerance, IBS, Crohn's, and others.
Many of these sicknesses come from post-pasteurization contamination of the milk; something pasteurization not only can't prevent, but actually makes more likely. And the lie goes even deeper. The truth is that pasteurization doesn't kill all bacteria (its not a sterilization process) and it can't even affect all of the disease causing organisms.
At the end of the day, there are no guarantees in life. Food by its very nature is subject to contamination and no food can be make completely safe. Rather than rely on the faulty and corrupt food safety system we need to take responsibility for our own health by building our immune systems and seeking out the right sources for our food."
I'll post more about my own family's food choices another time. Hopefully this information makes you want to know more about how to make the changes.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Easter 2011, in pictures
Wearing one of Mommy's dresses
Egg hunt, now in play clothes
Giant eggs!
And sassy-girl sunglasses
Uncle "Kekken" (Kellen) and "Care-nine" (Caroline)
The 2 year old leads the pack!
"Help, Papa."
Hanging out with Mommy, surveying for more eggs
Uncle Kellen helps play with the new bubbles
Celebrating Nana's birthday too
Helping Nana blow out the candles
Nana watching Jace, Jace watching Sissy, Sissy eyeing the cake...
Yes, this did result in Ally helping herself to the cake, with her fingers.
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