Cold, Refreshing and Delicious - Ice Cream Alternatives

It's summer and its hot. For many of us our first thought is to go out and get ice cream. Some of us consider ice cream one of the basic four food groups even though we know it is not a health food. Here are some refreshing alternatives and a way to get more healthy fruits into your diet.



STRAWBERRY FRUIT FREEZE (my personal favorite)
1- 1# bag frozen strawberries
2 previously frozen bananas w/o skins
1 sm can crushed pineapple
Blend in a VitaMix or food processor until smooth

ORANGE JUICE ICE (or any juice flavor)
1-12 oz can frozen juice concentrate (use 100% juice for healthiest ices)
1 Qt rice milk or other nondairy milk. partially frozen
Blend in a VitaMix or food processor until smooth You may have to poor the mexture into a shallow container and freexe until almost frozen and then blend

CHERRY VANILLA ICE
1 qt box vanilla soymilk or other vanilla nondairy milk
2 cups frozen cherries
Freeze nondairy milk until almost frozen. Blend in a VitaMix or food processor until smooth. Add in cherries and blend briefly so that their are cherry chunks dispersed throughout the ice

Melon Ices
Frozen Cut up pieces of fresh melon
Fresh squeezed orange, lemon or lime juice if desired
Blend in a VitaMix or food processor until smooth
note: I usually do watermelon solo, cantaloupe with orange juice and honeydew with lime

Juice Pops
Go to the health food section of your store. Pick out a 100% juice blend that suits your fancy. Freeze in pop molds. This is a great summertime diet helper. The pops are only about 60 calories each and will satisfy both your appetite and your thirst.

If you are in the mood for a sundae, try the Strawberry Fruit Freeze along with chocolate or strawberry sauce and coconut milk. For a really refreshing treat try putting the orange juice ice in a tall glass of pineapple juice. This is a great refresher after a long bike ride on a hot day.

Note that because these treats do not contain emulsufiers and chemical antifreezes, that it you put them away in the freezer they will freeze solid. You will have to let them soften a bit outside the freezer before serving.

Michael Moore's Film "Sicko"

You can currently view "Sicko" in its entirety at http://files.filefront.com/Sickoavi/;7822955;/fileinfo.html While Michael Moore exposes the problem of the for profit system we have in this country, his film comes up short on dealing with the fact that we are sick because of our lack of knowledge of good health. As long as the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the processed food industry, the chemical industries and the entire medical industry make obscene profits from our being sick, they will do everything in their power to keep us in the dark about wellness.

Tell FDA Not to Weaken Labeling for Irradiated Foods!

What if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a rule that would intentionally hide information you rely on to make decisions about what to feed yourself and your family? Or if FDA proposed changing food labeling information to something the agency knows to be misleading to consumers?
Well, FDA has announced just such a rule to weaken labeling of irradiated foods.
Currently, irradiated food must be labeled as “Treated with irradiation” or “Treated by radiation” and have on them the irradiated symbol. But now, in yet another attempt to appease industry at the expense of the public, the FDA has proposed a new rule that would allow irradiated food to be marketed in some cases without any labeling at all. In other cases, the rule would allow the terms “electronically pasteurized” or “cold pasteurized” to replace the use of “irradiated” on labels. These terms are not used by scientists, but rather are designed to fool consumers about what’s been done to their food.
Pasteurization involves heating liquids for the purpose of destroying harmful bacteria and other pathogens, and has been used safely for decades. Irradiation is a completely different process, using high-energy gamma rays, electron beams, or X-rays on meat, grains, and other foods.
Labeling irradiated foods as “pasteurized” is simply untruthful and misleading. Allowing the marketing of irradiated food without any labeling is equally misleading. Consumers have demanded irradiation labeling because they know that irradiation can create potentially dangerous chemical byproducts and reduce their foods' nutritional value.
In fact, FDA’s own research found that the proposed change would confuse consumers, stating "Research indicates that many consumers regard substitute terms for irradiation to be misleading."
What is the FDA hiding? A lot.
Consumers have a right to truthful labeling in order to make informed choices for themselves and their families. A public comment period is open until July 3, 2007.
Protect Your Right to Know: Tell the FDA Not to Weaken the Rules for Labeling Irradiated Food!
Take action online here: http://ga3.org/campaign/Irradiation

Organic Or Not

If you are trying to eat organic on a budget, you may do some of your shopping at Wal-Mart for cheaper prices. Be aware Wal-mart has been caught labelling non organic foods as organic in the state of Wisconsin. http://cornucopia.org/index.php/250#more-250. With a corporation like Wal-Mart looking after its bottom line, one has to wonder if this is also going on in other states?

And for an interesting video regarding the real cost we pay the for low prices at Wal-Mart http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3836296181471292925

Death By Medicine

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm

Vioxx Killed Over 100,000 - How Many Will Statin Drugs Kill

Vioxx (and also other Cox2 inhibitors) was a common prescription for aches and pains that was given to many people before it was removed from the market for causing death via heart disease. In the court cases, it has come to light that the people that produced Vioxx were well aware of its potential to adversely affect the heart. Yet they still saw to it that these drugs were brought to market and actively marketed as drugs of choice for treating aches and pains.

Today, we have a whole class of drugs commonly prescribed to people by the medical field because their blood level of cholesterol is deemed high. Medical science has attributed high levels of cholesterol to heart disease, yet the truth be known about 50% of the people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels. Also studies with older populations show people with higher cholesterol levels have a longer life expectancy. A good perspective on the falsity of cholesterol theory has been done by a Swedish MD, Dr Uffe Ravnskov. He has written a book called "The Cholesterol Myths"

In medicine the standard for bringing any drug to market should be the benefits in taking that drug outweigh any risks involved from that same drug. In the case of statin drugs, they effectively lower the blood cholesterol numbers by interfering with a metabolic pathway involved in the bodies production of cholesterol. However, studies have failed to show a lower mortality rate simply from lowering cholesterol numbers. And there are several problems associated with interfering with this metabolic pathway. Most notably this same pathway interferes with the bodies supply of CoEnzyme Q10. CoQ10 in involved in cellular energy production in all cells. A common side effect of statin drugs is muscle weakness caused by the lower amounts of CoQ10 that the body has to work with. The heart being the most important muscle in the body also has to function with a lower rate of CoQ10 bringing into question the wisdom of treating heart disease with this class of drugs.

Even more disturbing about this lowered rate of CoQ10, is the fact that this nutrient is typically low in cancer patients and is in fact considered one of the many alternative cancer cures (see http://www.cancertutor.com/ ) In my mind this brings into question the fact that statin drugs as a class may cause cancer. In fact the rat studies of statin drugs did see an increase in cancers. The reason that this may not be evident in human trials of statin drugs is that most if not all of the studies of statin drugs lasted less than five years. Cancers typically take longer than five years to develop and in fact if you were to conduct a study trying to find a correlation of tobacco use and cancer and the study lasted only five years, you would probably not find a correlation.

The drug makers are well aware that these drugs lower CoQ10 in the body. In Europe and Canada, patients prescribed statin drugs also get a prescription for this nutrient. Merck has patented a version of Lipitor that includes CoQ10 in the US but has not brought it to market. And unlike Europe and Canada, few physicians in the US advise their patient to take CoQ10 supplements.

Another effect of statin drugs is that they stimulate the growth of blood vessels. While this may might sound like an innocuous benefit, the greatest need for increased blood vessel growth is from cancer cells and recently researchers have called this effect into question For more info on this see http://www.mercola.com/2000/sep/10/statins_cancer.htm and/or http://www.yourmedicaldetective.com/public/1020.cfm

In closing I would like to add that this research takes on a personal note with me. My mother was a seven year statin drug user. She recently passed away at the young age of 72 from pancreatic cancer. I fully attribute her death to her total trust in the medical industry.

The Drugging of Our Children

Our brightest and most active children are often labeled with psychiatric labels and drugged. Watch this video http://www.thelastoutpost.com/site/1516/default.aspx for some disturbing details. Big pharma would like to see all of our kids on drugs for life. Under the influence of Big pharma programs such as "teen screen" http://www.teenscreentruth.com/ have been set in place to label and drug more of our kids. Ask yourself what is going to happen to society when this generation of kids grow up.