"twinkies are healthy for starving people."

i ran across a blog recently that purported to explain why there really is no such thing as "healthy food". the author went on to describe the contradictions and confusion that all of us feel when learning about so many different diets and philosophies about eating today. paleo, south beach, atkins, blood type-based, acidity-based, no-carb, low-carb, fat-free, organic, low-fat, full-fat, vegan, and so on and so forth. i was nodding along for a minute there until she summed it up by basically saying that people should just eat whatever they want - and feed their kids whatever the kids want to eat - because in the end there are no guarantees that eating healthy can actually keep you healthy.

she made a statement in there that basically said that even a twinkie is healthy for a starving person. i tried to shrug it off and understand that she might be confusing "minimally life- sustaining" with "healthy" (you know, like the difference between formula and human milk) and just walk away.

frankly, dealing w/ my own hyperallergic child's current health crisis is taking almost all my free time, so i really had no business looking at a blog that isn't related to my 2 narrow focuses in life right now - learning about safer, non GMO amd cleaner ways to eat and breastfeeding issues. i should really just stick to online materials about those 2 subjects - every time i stray into mainstream info and see what people really think about food, i am astounded. and not in a good way.

but the statement about the twinkies just stuck in my craw. could anyone really EVER think a twinkie was "healthy" ~ under any circumstances? i noticed in the author's bio, that she said she was a "healthy-eating" mother. when i browsed her site a bit more, i found references to "boxed mac and cheese", "drive thru meals" and "cookies". and i remembered the kind of "healthy" feeding i used to do for my 1st children myself. mcdonald's was okay because my kids weren't fat. we went twice a week on gymnastics nights. i knew vaguely that people said it was horrible, but my personal philospohy of "unhealthy food" was if it made you fat. i was uneasily and a bit guiltily willing to accept that french fries were a vegetable and hey - ketchup surely was - it was like, all tomatoes, right?

i watched the comments and replies applauding this open-minded and guilt-assuaging blog article multiply. mothers thanked her for permission to feed their kids what they truly wanted to eat. mothers pointed out that if their children were *such* picky eaters and had so many other issues that ALL they would eat was chicken mcnuggets morning, noon and night - then by god, chicken mcnuggtes are healthy for that child! it went on and on.

i tried to ignore it, reminding myself that there are also blogs where people say that elvis is still alive, too. and that the holocaust never happened. denial can be the best friend of many a harried mother and i lived right on those banks myself until my house tumbled splash into the river and it became a watch -your -family- sink- or -swim situation.

i went on about my schedule but at random times little snippets from the blog article & comments would pop into my head: "yes, i'm a fat woman, but..." "a growth-delayed, sensory-averse child..." "...mother to an underweight, extremely picky eater..." "...the best food for a person stranded on a desert island is hot dogs..." "...not only am i severely underweight...i also have GI issues..." i could go on and on. it's like an actual list of the symptoms of food allergies and intolerances and all the accompanying long-term health issues that result therein, all wrapped up in a justification for continuing to eat fast food, junk food, ramen noodles and mcdonald's!

"whatever's easy with all this stress and illness" are the only comments allowed through the moderation process. trust me, i tried. i know i must be like a dry drunk who thinks everyone that goes near alcohol has to be an alcoholic after all this time with my own food-damaged son, but seriously - reading this article and comments was like watching a drowning person demand a glass of water.

if twinkies are really the answer for starving people, shouldn't the red cross get with it and start shipping them over to 3rd world countries asap? i do concede that they might be ideal in that the expiration date is 'never' and even bugs wouldn't contaminate them. but... seriously?! twinkies for a starving person?? haven't any of these people heard of "supersize me" ?? can you imagine what it would do to a starved, depleted body to consume twinkies? they are hardly more than flavored plastic injected w/ sugar and chemicals! i can't imagine organ failure wouldn't set in within a week or 2 of trying to survive on a diet of twinkies - or hot dogs, for that matter.

and if mcdonald's is "healthy" for a sick, underweight person "who can't/won't eat anything else", then by the same logic, meth would be healthy for all the newborns born meth-addicted, right?

the irony here is that our society *is* starving to death on a diet of limitless twinkies. our bodies are so hungry for true nourishment, that people gorge themselves on whatever tastes good - mistaking overloading your tastebuds with more and more artificial flavor and your body with more and more bad fats, chemicals and genetically modified ingredients with eating something truly nourishing.

as people try harder and harder to sate that hunger, they are growing more and more depleted in vitamins, nutrients & energy while their bodies grow obese trying to store all the excess fat, salt and sugar. and we are only just beginning to get a hint of what the genetically modified ingredients are doing to us!

if people today would only take a few minutes to research what they are actually eating - and what effect it is actually having on their bodies - i have faith that no parent would continue to steadily feed their children the Standard American Diet (SAD). nobody wants to put forth the effort because modern food industries and today's mentality of immediate gratification and convenience assure that people are not likely to take the time to learn about and prepare wholesome, healing and nourishing meals from home. and so the justification and defensiveness about what we eat and feed our kids continues.

i know, i know, i should just stick to the breastfeeding and food allergy blogs out there - trust me, i won't be straying into the scary, Standard American Diet-loving forest of blogs out there again! i have a feeling i'll be seeing some of them again on other food allergy and clean-eating blogs when they finally figure out that their beloved "healthy" fast food is the reason for all their and their children's illnesses, though.

and in the spirit of *not* censoring out the comments that don't agree with a blogger, here's another comment on the article that was not published. the woman who wrote the following also spends her time trying to help people learn how to heal themselves and their children from the ill effects of today's frankenfood.

i may not know exactly which diet philosophy is better than any others - i actually suspect that different body types need different things at different times and no one-size-fits-all way of eating can work for everyone - but i DO know that eating convenient, artificial, chemical-laden and genetically modified foods isn't healthy for ANYONE.

jennifer tow is a good friend, mentor, breastfeeding expert and globally-renowned holistic practitioner on the interweb:

The problem with reading or posting anything on the internet is that you never have the backstory. I tend to ask a zillion questions whenever presented with a situation, which might just be a product of my work as a lactation consultant. So, I have no idea what you eat Arwyn and will not make assumptions. Nor do I need to know, because I can simply address the issue as you presented it.

You say there is no food that brings perfect health. Actually, you can never prove a negative, so I don't know if this is true or not and it doesn't matter. I do know this--that I have worked with tens of thousand of moms and babies over the past 20 years and every single issue that I have ever seen has gotten worse and worse in presentation during that time. Aside from cultural, marketing, economic and social issues that we all know impact birth and infant feeding, the single most significant issue that impacts families is poor nutrition. Or maybe, based upon this post, defense of poor nutrition.

Of course our perception of what is "good" or "bad" will surely have a context. For example, if someone has an allergy to brazil nuts, all the selenium content in the world does not make that a good food for that person. And, if your mother made you finish your least favorite dish as child, after it was cold and everyone else had left the table, I don't care how nutritious it might me, your emotional connection to it might make it toxic to you. After Fukishima, folks in Europe were told not to eat broad leaf greens because they collected too much contaminated rainwater. I get all of that and I agree. Food and its "goodness or badness" have context.

But, it is using these kinds of legitimate points to make such ridiculous rationalizations that really confounds me. And, sure people will get right behind you, because no one wants to do anything that is hard. They would rather believe it doesn't matter. Or at least not very much. I don't care if you are starving--a Twinkie is not healthy--it might sustain you, but it is not ever going to support health. Nor are the vast majority of non-foods people eat every day. As Mark Hyman put it "There is no such thing as junk food. There is food and there is junk."

I spend the majority of my practice helping desperate mothers undo the damage to their babies and children cause by our synthetic/GMO/processed/pasteurized/toxic food supply coupled with our toxic environment and our genetic imprinting from the damage done to our own ancestors by several generations of artificial feeding, medicalized birth, abx and other meds and vaccines. It isn't fun for them and it gets harder all the time and every parent who does not make changes--drastic changes--is adding exponentially to the problem.

We are currently birthing the first generation of children who will not outlive their parents and we are likely the most over-fed, under-nourished people to have every walked the Earth. And we have the wounds and scars to prove it. But, we would rather hide out and defend our addictions, even while those addictions make us sick physically and emotionally, while they fry our children's nervous systems and lead us to medicate them.

You can look at the battles that rage between the Paleo, vegan, raw food, etc camps as more support for your argument, but what I look at are the similarities, because I have no financial interest in any of them. The commonalities are real food. No room for fake food. None. Zero. Some might sprout grains and others say no grains. Some say raw dairy, others none. In the end, it depends on how much gut healing you need to do as to which works best for you, but they all use food that is not GMO or factory-farmed or packaged or processed to death (ours). Look at the similarities and you really can't go wrong. Once you start to feel your own body's true signals again, you can tweak it from there.

What absolutely works for no one though is the crap that the majority of Americans are addicted to, feed their kids and justify through absurd rationalizations, as you have in this post and others have in their comments. If your child only eats mac and cheese or chicken nuggets, then you have two options--rationalize that as good enough or bite the bullet, face your own addictions and get your child and yourself on a gut healing diet, so all of that pickiness disappears with the toxic gut flora and yeast that the fake food is feeding.

Do you have to be a perfectionist? I don't know. Do you want this planet to survive? When we make a mess this big, as we have, then yes, I think we need to be as impeccable as we can to fix it. Do we have to obsess about food. No, we just need to pay attention, become educated and leave the world of non-food behind. Of course, for most people, that's most of what they eat. So, maybe it feels obsessive.

I would say I don't really care what other people feed their kids, and frankly, I don't have much time to think about it if they aren't my clients, but we have come to a point where this human village is at too much risk--frankly, I do not trust sick people to govern this world. And that is where we are rapidly headed.

What's in your kids foods??? (TEDxAustin Robyn O'Brien 2011)

CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY PRESENTS ARGUMENTS BEFORE SUPREME COURT ON BIOTECH ALFALFA

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Heather

High Court Hears Arguments In First-ever Case on Genetically Engineered Crops

States, Scientists, Organic and Conventional Farmers, Food Companies, Exporters, and Legal Scholars File Briefs in Support, Oppose Monsanto

Today the Center for Food Safety (CFS) faces off against Monsanto in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of farmers and public interest environmental organizations. Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, 09-475. is the first case involving genetically engineered crops that has ever been heard by the Supreme Court.

All the lower courts agreed that the planting of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa must be stopped because the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had failed to analyze the crop’s impacts on farmers and the environment. Although it remains undisputed that USDA violated environmental laws, and that it must rigorously analyze the genetically engineered crop’s impacts before deciding whether or not to approve it for sale, Monsanto is arguing that the lower courts should have allowed the planting of the illegal crop to go forward in the interim.

It was announced last week that the Center’s case has brought out an unprecedented range of interests – from farmers’ unions and food companies to scientific experts and legal scholars – which have filed briefs in support of CFS and opposed to Monsanto. The seven briefs, filed by more than sixty individuals, companies, organizations and three states’ attorneys general – can be viewed at http://truefoodnow.org/publications/supreme-court-briefs/

“Today we will have the privilege of speaking on behalf of family farmers, the environment, and the protection of an organic alternative,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “The law and the facts are on our side and we look forward to presenting our case before the Court.”

The genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa seed at the heart of the dispute has been engineered to be immune to Monsanto’s flagship herbicide Roundup. CFS filed a 2006 lawsuit against USDA on behalf of a coalition of non-profits and farmers who wished to retain the choice to plant non-GE alfalfa. Pointing to contamination incidents that have already occurred, organic and conventional farmers anticipate widespread contamination from Monsanto’s patented GE alfalfa, because alfalfa is pollinated by bees that can cross-pollinate GE and conventional plants separated by several miles. Alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the U.S. and a key source of dairy forage. Similarly, contamination of feral or wild alfalfa, ubiquitous across the country, would ensure an ongoing and permanent source of transgenic pollution in wild places akin to that of invasive or exotic species.

Monsanto intervened in the case on behalf of USDA; however in 2007 the district court found in favor of CFS.. Following that, CFS won two appeals in the federal Court of Appeals, in 2008 and again in 2009. In January the Court agreed to hear the case over the opposition of both CFS and the U.S. government.

Farmers and food companies have taken note. Organic businesses and trade groups, including Organic Valley, Stonyfield Farms, the Organic Trade Association, Annie’s, Clif Bar, Eden Foods, United Natural Foods, and Nature’s Path Foods, voiced their deep concerns of the threat to their businesses posed by contamination from biotech crops in an amicus brief. The burgeoning $25 billion-a-year organic foods industry, the fastest growing food sector, is at particular risk from the effects of contamination. The organic industry brief warns that “widespread planting of RR (Roundup Ready) alfalfa imposes massive risk and uncertainty on the continued viability of organic dairy farming” and that overturning the lower courts would “irreparably harm” their ability to grow and sell organic food. Conventional farmers and exporters filed a similar brief, warning of lost overseas alfalfa markets in Asia, Europe and the Middle East that reject biotech-contaminated crops. GE contamination of conventional rice and corn crops in the past decade have cost U.S. farmers billions in lost markets. In Canada, the introduction of GE canola destroyed the nascent organic canola industry in that country.

In addition, the Attorneys General of California, Oregon and Massachusetts, which filed a brief on behalf of their citizens supporting the Center, have emphasized the “States’ interests in protecting their natural resources and their citizens’ rights to be informed about the environmental impacts of federal actions.” They further noted “immense” ramifications for all environmental protection should Monsanto prevail, which would damage the States’ interest in “protection of wilderness, habitat preservation for endangered species, watershed protection, [and] air quality.” A range of legal scholars, former government officials, scientists, and environmental groups have also filed briefs in support of the Center and against Monsanto.

A 2009 study showed that the cultivation of genetically modified crops, the vast majority Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” varieties, has over the last 13 years caused a dramatic increase in herbicide use, by 383 million pounds, and concomitant harms to the environment and human health.

from Center For Food Safety

GMOs Alter the Genetic Make Up of Our Healthy Bacteria

Friday, April 23, 2010 by: Kim Evans, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Although GMOs have infiltrated our food supply, the results of human feeding trials have only been published on one single occasion. Unfortunately, that occasion offered some pretty disturbing findings. It found that the genetic code of GM soy can infiltrate the genetic code of the healthy bacteria in our guts - and change the genetic makeup of the healthy bacteria inside us. Nobody knows how these mutant bacteria will function inside us - yet given the proliferation of GM soy, most of the population probably already has them inside of them.

Mutating the genetic code of our healthy bacteria is incredibly dangerous because these healthy bacteria live inside us for a reason. They are our first line of immune defense and they keep us well by crowding out many harmful bacteria, fungus, and pathogens that cause innumerable diseases. But when their genetic structure is changed, who knows if they'll be able to do this job effectively? Who knows if they'll even be beneficial anymore? More than likely they won't.

Because GM soy transfers its genetic code into our healthy bacteria, it's possible that our own healthy bacteria will now produce abnormal GM proteins inside us for the rest of our lives. Mad cow disease is one example of a problem that abnormal proteins cause.

Proteins are created by our DNA and if you've never seen how beautifully complex our DNA functionality is, you should watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PKj... Afterward, ask yourself if you trust another human being to mess around with this process.

It gets worse because other GM genes may also insert themselves into our healthy bacteria and keep replicating too - and some GM genes, like those in GM corn, are responsible for creating concentrated pesticides. It's very possible that they're also transferring this genetic programming into the formerly healthy bacteria inside you - and creating a living pesticide factory in your gut. We can only imagine the destruction this will cause, but because most diseases are created over a period of years tracing the cause may be next to impossible.

GMOs have been found to change the genetic structure of bacteria in the soil too, which provides more evidence that GM genes can easily insert themselves into bacterial genes. Earthworms have also been found to have incorporated GM genes into their cells - and who's to say this isn't happening in humans too? This is one place that those independent, long-term safety trials would have come in handy. Unfortunately, they never happened.

Unlike any historical human being, you'd be rare not to have consumed any GMOs in your lifetime. GMOs are in most processed foods and their DNA is found in most farm animals and dairy, because many animals are fed GM crops. Unless for the last fifteen years you've been vegan, haven't eaten any processed foods, haven't eaten at restaurants that use corn or canola oil, and have avoided all corn, soy and products containing them, you've almost certainly been exposed and contaminated. If you have any kind of "normal" diet, you're probably eating GMOs several times a week - and possibly several times each day.

More:
Netherwood et al, "Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract," Nature Biotechnology 22 (2004): 2.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Richar...
Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette, Jeffrey Smith
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/uti...
http://www.rense.com/general80/haz.htm
Consumer's Guide To Probiotics, S.K. Dash

from www.naturalnews.com

Can this be why the number of babies with sever allergies is increasing? That the actual genetic makeup of our guts is being altered and passed on to our newborns? This is extremely shocking!

So what can we do? Sign petitions, email your senator, congressman and anyone that will listen that you are not ok with this experiment. Talk to others about it... ask questions. If you can't tell if it has gmos..it prob does. Ask the clerk or email the company....and buy organic! Organic is the only real way to go to be sure you are not eating gmos. You have a vote every time you purchase something. ~nancy

Our Intimate Relationship with Food - and 10 Things You Can Do to Protect Your Family

A famous French political thinker once said that the public would rather believe a simple lie than a complex truth.

The truth behind genetic engineering is extremely complex. It has been used for decades, but it is only in the last ten years that neurotoxins have been engineered into our food supply.

No one has studied the long term health implications of children consuming foods containing neurotoxins, novel proteins and allergens.

Though to look back over the last ten years, you quickly remember that ten years ago, we didn¹t have to worry about sending a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into school with our children; we didn¹t have to medicate our eight year olds to get them through the school day; and the movie, Rain Man, was all we knew of autism.

Today, at least 1 out of every 17 children under the age of three has a food allergy with at least 5 million American children suffering from this condition (though these statistics underestimate the problem since they are from 2002, over five years old).

Autism, diabetes and obesity are often referred to as American epidemics.

So what has changed?

In 1996, the United States adopted widespread use of genetically modified crops due to growing public concern over the health risks associated with the industrial spraying of insecticidal and pesiticidal toxins.

In an effort to reduce the spraying of these toxins, scientists began using biotechnology to engineer these pesticides and insecticides into the plants themselves.

As these ingredients were introduced around the world ten years ago, government agencies in Europe, Asia, Australia, Japan, Russia and 45 developed countries required them to be listed on food labels, so that consumers could make informed choices when it came to feeding their families.

In the United States, our regulatory agencies do not require these genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled.

So, unlike other developed countries, we have not been informed that almost 70% of our corn, 90% of our soy and 75% of our processed food now contain neurotoxins, novel proteins and allergens.

Today one out of every three children suffers from allergies, asthma, autism or ADHD. It appears that we have unknowingly and without informed consent engaged our children in one of the largest human trials in history.

Ten years into this human trial, our children are trying to tell us something.

Shouldn't we listen?

Watch AllergyKids on GOOD MORNING AMERICA to learn how to protect your family.

10 Steps You Can Take to Protect Your Family:

1. Reduce your family's exposure to processed foods
2. Eat food with ingredients that your grandmother would have used
3. Purchase organic eggs, as they are not from chickens fed corn engineered to produce its own insecticides
4. Cook with olive oil instead of butter, margarine or vegetable oil
5. Avoid conventional soy and corn products (vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup) since most are genetically engineered
6. Look for meat and poultry that not injected with antibiotics and additional hormones
7. As recommended by the British Dietetic Association, avoid exposing infants under the age of 12 months to conventional soy
8. Consume organic foods for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in order to reduce your exposure to pesticides (recently linked to autism and gestational diabetes)
9. Look for "rBGH-free" milk. rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) is a genetically engineered, synthetic chemical hormone that is not allowed in milk in most developed countries given its link to breast and prostate cancers
10. When discussing vaccines with your child's pediatrician, especially vaccines grown in eggs, request the informational leaflets that accompany the vaccines as they discuss autoimmune conditions like food allergies in detail

SIGN OUR LETTER TO CONGRESS and Help Us Educate Our Lawmakers about the Risk that these Unlabeled Allergens in Our Foods Appear to Present to Children (and All of Us!).

Watch AllergyKids on the CBS Early Show: Our Children's Chemical Cocktail

For more information, please visit AllergyKids' Resources Page where additional research is available as well as information disclosing corporate funding ties of leading pediatric allergists.

From Allergykids.com
http://www.allergykids.com/index.php?id=33

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The movie "Killer at Large" mentions why policy makers do not want us to know that they are using these modified seeds because they feel we are not smart enough to understand it as well as that it might hinder sales before they product has a chance to be tested and marketed correctly. I want to know what's in our food... but people with allergies need to "know" what's in their food. It's a matter of life or death. Please be sure to sign the letter to Congress...
~nancy