New Travel Radiation Concerns

Happy Holidays!  We're on the last day of November before true holiday chaos ensues!!

May your holiday season be filled with peace, joy, and love - rather than materialism, stress, and greed!  (Did you know on Black Friday this year, people actually brought MACE to stores so they could fight their way to the deals they wanted?!)

And with the holiday season comes travelling for many.  Back in 2010, I shared a post called Flying and Frying, about some of the damaging radiation from flying, and ways to help stay healthy on plane flights.

More recently, you're probably heard about the privacy invasion arguments regarding TSA's full body scans.  (You may want to check out the Colbert Report snippet on it, if you need a little laugh about it, rather than too much stress!)



From http://www.allvoices.com/



And now there is some concern that these scans may be adding even MORE damaging radiation to a body! 

I am not trying to sound like an alarmist. I know that our bodies are constantly being bombarded with toxins.  I know that travel is fun and I am not saying to stop.  Just make sure you're taking care of your health! 

The full article can be found here, but here are some bits from the article, TSA Attempts to Cover Up Cancer Threat From Its Airport X-ray Machines:

• "The European Union has even put a moratorium on the [backscatter] scanners in light of the cancer threats—member states have been told not to install scanners until scientific assessment of risks has been carried out, and they will be banned completely in April if experts find them dangerous"
• "According to a ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation, up to 100 US airplane passengers could get cancer from the machines each year."
• "the majority of the [backscatter] machine’s energy is delivered to the skin and the underlying tissue—not distributed throughout the volume of the entire body—so the dose to the skin may be dangerously high."
• "After the release of the ProPublica report, TSA Administrator John Pistole agreed to conduct a new independent study of the health effects of backscatters. But now the TSA is refusing to honor its commitment to conduct that safety study."

Pretty Spinach Salad Wreath

So drink your green smoothies and water, fill up on the antioxidant fruit, crave cancer-fighting cruciferous veggies, and enjoy your holidays!  Yes, you CAN still enjoy a healthy holiday even with healthy food!  I hope to make a handful of healthy, natural desserts to go with the traditional unhealthy desserts my family loves :)  I'll share recipes and links soon!

Healthy cashew spread snowman!

Holiday Hugs!

~Katie

How Toxic is your County?

Hey guys!  A colleague of mine passed on an interesting link to me the other day.  You can input your zip code and it shows you a review of how toxic your little county is!  Is ignorance bliss?  Or would you rather know, and try to change something?  The choice is yours :) 

http://scorecard.goodguide.com/index.tcl

I was sad, but not surprised, to learn I live in a city that "ranked among the dirtiest/worst 10% of all counties in the U.S. in terms of total environmental releases" in 2002, and my guess is it hasn't gotten a whole lot better.  And we're the #9 Worst County in the state.  But at least we're not so high when it comes to dumped toxic waste... we're in the worst 40% though... still worse than average. 

As for air?  Well, here's an email I received from the City health department last year:

Take a deep breath!  Notice anything different?  For the first time in well over a decade, Cincinnatians are breathing air that meets the Federal Government’s Air Quality Standards for ozone... New, even-stricter federal ozone regulations take effect in 2011.  So enjoy that breath of federally approved air.  It may not last long.

 Hm, well, I guess that's something!  I don't tend to think federal regulations are all that strong, but hopefully they're getting closer!!

 

From Chris Madden website

And water?  Heh, well, when my friend visited from Washington with it's beautiful crystalline blue waters... she was disgusted by the murky brown that runs though the state!  Yep, that lovely Ohio River that I drive past every day for work - brown, dirty, and smells awful when it floods up closer to the roads!  So, no suprise that we're averaging in the top 10% for worst water, too!  As the semi-joking saying here goes: stay out of the rivers, or you may come out on the other side with an extra eyeball!

You can look at total environmental releases, and then look at the individual toxins ofwhat your county is dumping into the air, water, land, animals, etc.

How does your home town look?

Stop... In the Naaaaame of Love! (Or Big Brother)

The Washington Post writes: One in three U.S. adults has high blood pressure, which in turn is a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. And while being overweight and inactive raises blood pressure, too much salt is a big culprit as well. The American Medical Association has said 150,000 lives a year could be saved by cutting in half sodium levels in processed and restaurant food.

And a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that added sugars may be playing a role in cholesterol problems.

Hmmm... ok, so maybe salt isn't good... but is salt-free dead food really all that much better? And added sugars aren’t wonderful either. But again – are sugar-free cookies really “healthy”? Let’s not get so focused on losing weight that we forget about health! Your weight is not the problem – it’s the symptom. It's the secondary result of imporoper nutrition, improper activity, and many o ther factors that may be more difficult to control. How about cutting down on processed foods, regardless of salts and sugars?

But on a different angle…

I heard on the radio this morning that the government is being urged to require food manufactures to cut down on the salt in their processed foods.

In theory, that’s a good idea. But in practice, where does that leave your personal freedom of choice? If companies want to volunteer to cut down on dangerous additives, I am all for that! But I also think people need to take responsibility for their own health. If you don’t care about your health, and want to go to town on that jumbotron-sized bag of potato chips, that’s your decision.

And yes, continued efforts need to be made to help people learn where hidden sources of these additives are – so here’s a little run-down for ya!

The American Heart Association shares this list of major food sources of sodium:
-Tomato Sauce
-Soups
-Condiments
-Canned foods (beans, veggies, sauces, etc)
-Prepared mixes (Hamburger helper, flavored rices, etc.)

Pretty much any pre-packaged food is going to have added salt to help preserve it. This includes many microwave dinners. Drinks are another source: pop and sports drinks are riddled with sodium! (Pop makes ya thirsty so ya want more! And sports drinks are for athletes who are sweating buckets due to more than 60 minutes of exercise!)

And sugar? Whoo-buddy! Where to start?

A Rose By Any Other Name Is Just As Sweet…

And sugar is no exception! It’s time to be a sleuth, my friends! Food manufacturers like to try to disguise the sugar! But we’re too smart for that sneakiness! ;-)

Sugar is known by so many names. Ready for this crazy list?

Corn syrup/High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
Cane Juice
Dextrin or dextrose
Fructose
Fruit Juice Concentrate
Glucose
Lactose
Maltodextrin
Malt Syrup
Maltose
Rice Syrup
Sorghum
Sugar/Invert Sugar
Sucrose
Syrup
Xylose

*phew!*

Read any food ingredient list, chances are it will contain at least one of those items.

Common culprits often thought of as “healthy”: fruit juice, flavored yogurt, flavored coffees and teas, pop, and even some sweetened cereals! Am I saying avoid all those things? Not if you don’t want to (doesn’t it just ROCK that you have that choice still?!) but at least be aware. Check out those sugars! Am I saying all sugar is bad? Not at all! Natural sugars definitely have their place and purpose – but stick with the natural as much as you can: fruits! Ok, ok, and moderately use other natural sources like dates, honey, and agave. (Lets face it – we love sweet things!)

So make your own personal choice to cut down on that processed stuff! Don’t wait for the government to force you – do it for yourself, your health, your wellbeing.

Go fresh, baby! :)
~Katie

Wednesday Words: More Lables!

Halfway through the week! I hope it's been a good one so far. I don't know about you, by MY GOODNESS this new year has been flying fast! I can't believe we're in February already - and I'm STILL dating things 2009! Haha!

After a very early morning (had to get up at 5:30am), I was dragging. Not as badly as I expected, possibly due to all the salads and smoothies, but still! Coffee called my name. I don't normally drink much coffee (acidic, possibly demineralizing to your body - read "bad for skin, bones, health, etc") and I wish I had opted for green tea instead. Oh well, I only drank half a cup for now, and hopefully can just keep pushing water and my healthy snacks until I can get to bed tonight!

Ah well, on to the fun of label laws!

Today's term and its confusing (ok, today, it's more like disgusting!) meaning:

Ever looked at the ingredient list for hot dogs? At the top of the list, is the oh-so-yummy phrase "mechanically separated" meat. The USDA defines this as a tantalizing "paste-like and batter-like meat product produced by forcing bones with attached edible meat under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue."

When the mad cow disease was a risk, the government decided beef could no longer be mechanically separated, but they still do it with pork.

Well, gee golly! Spear me one o' thems and throw it on the bar-B-Q! Sounds mighty tasty!
Actually... I'll pass...

Have a good, natural afternoon!
~Katie