Archived News of the Week

What's Wrong with Pork and Shellfish?

(Plus a healthy and tasty mung bean recipe to start the New Year.)

Warning: Read at your own risk: You may never eat pork or shellfish again after I'm done here: I don't eat pork or shellfish. With my food predilections I should be Jewish, but I'm not. I'm a Presbyterian. Most of us Presbyterians will happily embrace a Crown Roast of Pork on a Sunday after church and Coquille St. Jacques for the fancy dinner party but I really don't like the idea of eating anything that scavenges. Shellfish considers the bottom of the ocean its very own personal poopy smorgasbord, grazing slowly and sucking up whatever it darn well pleases which may include all the excreta of vast cruise ships and large fish, plus spilled oil and radioactive algae.

Moreover, really! Just look at a lobster. How can you possibly think you could eat that awful looking thing? Who in the world was brave enough to eat it in the first place? How about those gruesome tanks in fancy restaurants with the indolent, half dead lobsters crawling around the bottom of the tank just waiting to be picked, only to be thrown into a big pot of boiling water. First it's alive! Then it's dead and broiled and on your plate, split wide open with a side of butter. It's sort of like The Crustacean Hunger Games.

And pigs, well, they eat anything and everything, so they are similar to shellfish except they are of the Land of the Filthy Mud Pen. Also, pigs are very, very smart - I heard, smarter than dogs, cats, horses - and this is the other reason I don't eat pork  it's too close to cannibalism and creeps me out. (George Clooney had a pet pig. I wonder if he eats pork?) I can see their little anxious eyes looking at me and their snouty mouths moving with beggy little prayers for grace. Save me! Don't eat me! Put that sausage down! Then there was the movie Babe, about an adorable pig that talked and was brave.

Pork, according to an investigation recently done by Consumer Reports, is contaminated and dirty. Researchers used 200 samples of raw pork and found 69 % to be contaminated with all kinds of dangerous bacteria, including but not only, Yersinia enterocolitica, salmonella, staph aureus, listeria  all causes of food borne illnesses and some of which are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Most pork is not raised humanely, but in CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) situations. All CAFO animals  because they live their entire lives hip to shoulder with other CAFO animals and knee-deep in poopy mud  receive massive amounts of antibiotics. Then they excrete massive amounts of toxic waste (poop) into the environment. Have you ever smelled a pig farm? Still want a pork chop?

I saved the best, most shocking part til last: Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer, has been bought for $7.1 billion by China's Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. So now, China is the world's largest pork producer. What do you think will happen to pork/ham quality? Interesting tidbit: The Shuanghui company is controlled by the Communist Party of China. I don't pretend to know what any of this information "means", but my head spins anyway.

Heads up on a new GMO: It's an apple and is due in the grocery stores as early as 2014. I doubt that it would be in Whole Foods's or Vitamin Cottage, but you never know, thus the heads up. The apple is made by Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF) and is called the Arctic Apple. It comes in Golden and Granny Smith varieties. And it doesn't bruise or brown when sliced. All of the GMO apples will be labeled with the Arctic sticker, so at least they aren't trying to pull one over on us: You will be able to identify it as GMO. However, processed foods such as juices and apple sauces and butters will have to contain more than 5% of the Arctic apple to bear the Arctic logo. So, you will have to be careful there.

The non-browning feature is created through a laboratory modification which turns off the enzyme that produces browning. "This trait is created with tiny pieces of apple leaves, a medium containing the antibiotic kanamycin, plus Agrobacterium tumefaciens  an important plant pathogen in bioengineering able to transfer special DNA to create a desired effect." (www.greenpasture.org) So, it takes a bunch of leaves, an antibiotic and a pathogen to create this apple. I say give me brown and bruised apples right off the tree rather than what sounds to me like a Frankenapple.

Switching from Bottom Feeders and Bizarre Apples to Mung Beans (Quickly now!) If you wade through this part, you will get to the good recipe in the end. Mung beans are one of the truly super foods: 1) They lower the oxidation rate of LDL cholesterol. LDL won't kill you but if it is oxidized, it becomes more prone to deposit plaque in your arteries. 2) The mung bean acts like natural Lisinopril on the angiotensin-converting enzyme thereby reducing your blood pressure. 3) It is magnesium rich. 4) It helps to control diabetes. 5) It fights obesity and 6) It has anti-cancer effects due to its ability for apoptosis (killing cancer cells) and 6) The mung bean has high levels of insoluble fiber, good for prevention of colon cancer. Finally, it is a legume and has a lot of protein.

Meanderings: We natural healing type people must really be getting under Big Pharma's skin (actually, more like deep into their pocketbooks) because they are coming after us with increasing frequency and ferocity. The latest study, which was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, dissed the use of multivitamins, saying that they don't work and moreover could be dangerous. Here is what I have to say to you, Big Pharma: For years you have said that supplements don't work and that all they do is create expensive urine. But now they are dangerous? Tell me something: If they don't work then how can they be dangerous? You can't have it both ways.

As if they were presciently expecting this kind of clever rejoinder, I saw an article just the other day in the NY Times about a teenage boy who took a green tea supplement touted as a fat burning supplement and immediately turned yellow suggesting liver issues. The quantity he took was not mentioned, but if you put a teenage boy together with anything, they will majorly overdo. So, was it bottles of the green tea supplement? At one sitting? Wow, did the MD's jump on this bandwagon saying things like, "It's really the Wild West out there (referring to supplements)." And, "When people buy these dietary supplements, it's anybody's guess as to what they're getting." And, the FDA"... estimates that 70% of dietary supplement companies are not following basic quality control standards that would help prevent adulteration of their product and of about 55,000 supplements that are sold in the United states, only 170  about .3% - have been studied closely enough to determine their common side effects." (New York Times, 12/23/13)

Some of the above is true, or more specifically, not entirely untrue. This is why I have you bring in your supplements for me to test. Some supplement companies are just not any good. They use toxins as fillers and try to entice you to buy their inferior product just to make that buck. This is why my supplements may cost more than the special in the latest Vitamin Cottage flyer. This is why maybe you muscle tested poorly on the green tea supplement you brought in yet tested well for my green tea supplement from the reputable companies I carry in my pharmacy, like Thorne. This is why my face falls when you bring me the latest MLM product out there and I have to remind you, yet again, that these MLM reps do not have your best interest in mind - only their down line  and that the latest supplement for your aging whimmydiddle from the carefully harvested inner pistilla of the ancient life crodendum from the rainforests of the south east coast of Gondzwana may not be good for you, no matter how slick the packaging and persuasive the patter.

Folks, I do a lot of research before I put products on my shelves; I look at the companies and how they manufacture their products and how long they have been in business. I read papers on the products and supplements. I talk to sales reps and customer advice people. I put in my due diligence. And since I have been in this business for going on 30 years there has been a great deal of research on my part. Yes, my products will cost more, because there are no shortcuts in the manufacture of a good supplement. But, I guarantee you this: You will never have a toxic liver, or get terribly sick or die from one of the supplements I suggest you take. Nor, if you choose the intelligent use of preventive care as a lifestyle, will you be one of the many thousands of people who die or are seriously harmed from a pharmaceutical drug. My healthiest patients are those on no pharmaceuticals at all.

Let's all have a wonderful 2014. Take things as they come. Stay centered, and in quiet readiness for whatever comes. Remember: If things are bad for you, they will always get better. And let me know how I may continue to serve you. I honor, respect and appreciate each and every one of you.

"All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."

Julian of Norwich, a mystic nun in the 14th century, her first words after a 40 day meditation.

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