Status: Married
Signup Date: 11/9/2006
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July 5, 2009 - Sunday
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Current mood:  adventurous
Hope you had a good 4th of July.
Small town of 600 people and 2/3 of them children.
I know we are really out of the main stream when we drove a half a mile to the closed car repair shop and parked and get out of the car to look into some ones back yard while they shoot off Roman Candles for an hour.
Here we are just like the big city fire display. We think we are on top of the world.
Then another car with two people join us. They are there about 15 minutes when the man asks if we are looking at our fair ground displays and I tell him no "its someones back yard display."
I do not know what went through that persons mind at that point.
Arturo asked if I wanted to buy fireworks to do at our house. I was happy watching some one else do all the work. Firework sales tent was right across the street.
OK so its not the big town. I live in a town when in the winter people leave their unlocked car running with the keys in the car when they go into the store to grocery shop. That way their car does not get cold. If I drive into town and see 8 cars moving at one time its because its traffic time. On Sunday I can drive through town and not see any cars moving.
Half of my front yard is dedicated to growing a vegetable garden. Part of it has 3 old antique cars and the other part of it is parking. The back yard is divided up into a one car garage, a strawberry patch and a corn field. A lawn is a nuisance. Now can you do that in your subdivision.
We have people that drive by and eye ball our garden to see how its growing. Stop by to talk about the antique cars. The deputy sheriff comes over to see what type of fertilizer we use.
We are small town USA.
We enjoyed our display of fire works. Hope you all enjoyed your evening.
Love you all Josefina & Arturo
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June 29, 2009 - Monday
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Current mood:  content
....................
....
In this day that God has granted me....
He let me glimpse into the past....
Through another's eyes I saw what was....
A sister ....
For whom I most affectionately search a life time for....
Yet it was not meant ....
For me to find her on this earth....
A sister who that arrived in all her glory into this
world....
Who struggled to get a foot hold on the life given her....
Giving of devotion and compassion to those she
treasured....
Each day giving all she could to life itself....
Lighting the way for those that came after her....
Like the evening sunset....
Showing all the splendor of her love....
Of the life that quickly came and went....
Only to hide herself in silent sleep ....
Below the earth to rest....
Yet again when the morning comes....
My sister will arise in all her splendor....
To greet the grandeur of eternal life with God....
To be encircled by those she was committed too....
Oh my Sister ....
Who in this lifetime I was powerless to find....
When the greatness of eternal life arrives....
Set a little time aside for me....
Who has so diligently searched for you up on this
earth....
That I might in your heavenly abode....
Sit and enjoy a little chat....
Of what was....
And what should have been....
Josefina Lafferty ........
.. ......
.. ......
.. ..In memory of my sister Socorro Lafferty 1929-2004
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June 24, 2009 - Wednesday
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Current mood:  amused
I was talking to my son. Who never listens to my advice. But then did we listen to our parents.
Summer is here in full bloom with heat in the high 90's and low 100's. The veggie garden in full bloom. The heat has just started. July is very hot.
Explaining to my son if he wants to keep his veggie garden growing in full heat of the two summer months he has to water in the morning and again at night.
The summer we had weather of 115 degrees for a week. Many vegetable garden dried up and died. I was the only one on the block that had a green garden. When the temperature dropped down to manageable in September then I went back to watering once a day.
I could tell by the tone in my sons voice he was not going to believe me nor do it. I knew he had worked hard at putting in a garden of several acres. Oh well he needs to experience it all himself. All that work tilling up soil that had never been worked. Putting 8 8 8 fertilizer on it. When I told him he needed turkey manure.
I also mentioned to him to get a small air conditioner. His comment was it got hot in New Hampshire and he never had to use an air conditioner. It was no use telling him that hot in New Hampshire coast line was not like hot here in Missouri.
The month of July is the worst for heat, always in the triple digits. Art and I get up at dawn and do what has to be done outside and by ten we are inside and at noon we are taking our siesta /nap. We sleep in the heat of the day. Yes we do have air conditioning.
When my son moved close to us I talked about the ticks and chiggers. I said they were bad. His comment was "yea mom, we have ticks and chiggers in New Hampshire." I said "but not like here." Two months later he asked if I could get him some Frontline for his two dogs. They were covered with ticks. He had finally sprayed the area of his 80 acres where his home is and where he had fenced for the dogs.
What made him spray. Well he put a board down on the ground to climb under something that needed repair and before he got down on the board there were ten chiggers on the board waiting for him. At that point he went to the feed store and bought spray for his yard. He spent two months of having to remove off his body a dozen ticks each day. Even two from parts he does not talk to his mother about. He removed hundreds of ticks off his dogs. He finally told me the ticks are brutal here in Missouri. MMM, I thought, did I not tell you.
Now the chiggers are extra bad this year. I have 4 infected chigger bites all on my left side. Now I know the chiggers climb on both my left and right side. So what is different on my left side, the circulation on that side is not what it should be. I could go to the doctor and find out. But he would want to run tests and we do not have a hospital in a ten county radius in Missouri. The nearest medical care is in the Next state. Where we go to our Doctor and the hospital for testing. Drs are for emergency use only.
Already the newspaper announced we had the first tic related death. I know chigger related infections can put people in the hospital. Last year I was in the hospital for a very infected chigger bite that the oral antibiotics would not clear up.
Art is going to have to spray the yard again. E bay sells a bug spray made from garlic. Biodegrades.
Never knew a state that has so many chiggers and ticks. It does not stop there we are blessed with different kinds of spiders and the most beatiful butterflys, gorgeous moths, they are so awesome. The lightning bugs that come out at night for an areal display of blinking lights. The gentle wasps, muddoggers and hornets that I can brush out of my way and never seem to bite.
The wild life is pleantiful. Turkeys, rabbits, deer, squirrles, chipmunks, racoons and as if not enough the state of Missouri traded turkeys to Texas in exchange for armadillos. Arkansas did one better they traded turkeys for rattle snakes, letting them go in the national forests.
Snakes, we have those too. Water moccasins and other poisonous snakes and a lot of rat eating snakes. So far I have only seen two snakes in the yard. The cat takes care of the mice and chipmunk population along with anything small enough to eat.
That is Missouri for you in a shell. Has its good points and has its bad points.
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June 20, 2009 - Saturday
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Current mood: happy
Category: Friends
In 1973 my maternal uncle asked me if I had heard from my half sister in Mexico.
It was like "I have a half sister?" He told me about her. I set out to look for her not knowing where to start.
When my brother married in the town we were born in, I tried looking for my half sister. My brother was most uncooperative and he had the car. I am sure that my half sisters older half siblings had put out the word they did not want to know anything about our dad or his other children.
I think that her brothers and sisters afraid dad would take his daughter and they would never see their sister again had blocked us finding her. A few weeks ago I received an e mail from her oldest son. My half sister had passed away in 2004.
He called me and it was emotional. I told him what had happened with my dad, his grandfather. He had been told his grandfather was a "cowboy." That was true.
I told my nephew of the death of my mother at my birth and the bankruptcy of dad's business, and why dad moved across the US. I told him how we grew up and who cared for us. Dad died when I was 13, my brother 18.
My nephew filled me in on his mother, who lost her mother at age 14 and grew up with her brothers and sisters hoping some day dad would come get her.
I asked my husband if I tend to disrupt lives by contacting people. I am not sure. It certainly brings up a lot of going back and trying to figure out why the relationships did not last. Dad had 3 families, I was the last. The meetings are very emotional.
My nephew is ecstatic about having a living aunt. I am glad. He has sent me photos and information. I have sent him information about dad and his ancestors. Some day we may meet.
In this next week I will print him out a book on my dad's family. Its 400 pages going back to 1700. Full of cousins and stories about their families.
Life is interesting. I am always looking for the elusive relative.
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June 15, 2009 - Monday
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Current mood: amused
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural
Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he's
fed.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes;
Are the rule.
Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!
Tax his cow,
Tax his
goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his
tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.
Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries
Tax his
tears.
Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his ass.
Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won't be
done
Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers,
Then tax him more,
Tax him till
He's good and sore.
Then tax his coffin,
Tax his
grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he's laid.
Put these words
upon his tomb,
' Taxes drove me to my doom...'
When he's gone,
Do not
relax,
It's time to apply
The inheritance tax.
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CD License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal
Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance
Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Privilege
Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge
Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Use Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration
Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our
nation was the most prosperous in the
world.
We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest
middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What in the hell happened? Can you spell
'politicians!'
And I still have to 'press 1' for
English!?!?!?!?
I hope this goes around THE USA at least 100
times!!!!! YOU can help it get there!!!!
GO AHEAD - - - BE AN AMERICAN
!!!
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June 13, 2009 - Saturday
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Current mood:  relaxed
It is what we identify as lost, which brings us concern.
When one knows that one owns nothing,
nothing can be lost, and nothing mourned.
For all belongs to God .
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June 10, 2009 - Wednesday
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Current mood:  bouncy
Category: Food and Restaurants
4. My mom was born in 1912 and toward the end of that
decade, there was an influenza epidemic that took a lot of her
neighbors. Her mother made the family eat onion sandwiches with mustard
every day to ward off the flu. No one in her family got the flu. Do
onions have any antibiotic qualities, or was it the mustard? Or were
they just mighty lucky?
— Barb D.
What
a good question! I agree with your mother. There is no doubt in my mind
that onions may be beneficial in viral disorders. The mustard wasn’t
the effective ingredient; it was used only for flavor. Although we have
antibiotics for bacterial disorders, we have had little for most viral
disorders until recently.
And, although we have improved treatments for influenza, resistance has become a problem.
Likewise, HIV AIDS treatment has been revolutionized with new agent combinations.
SARS
(severe acute respiratory syndrome) has no specific treatment, but a
compound (quercetin) found naturally in red onions and the peel of red
apples may act as a natural remedy.
German
researchers reported that plant substances, especially quercetin,
appear to neutralize an enzyme that permits RNA coronaviruses to invade
living cells. Quercetin has been reported to be active against herpes
simplex, adenovirus, rotaviruses, paramyxoviruses, poliovirus,
parainfluenza, and respiratory (RSV) virus. Although it is unproved in
clinical trials, the suggestions are clear.
With
a whole red onion containing about 30 mg of quercetin, it appears that
30 to 60 onions daily would be needed to produce a preventive dose.
This is clearly not a remedy free of side effects and certainly not
something I would recommend! Studies published in an American Chest
Journal support traditional claims that chicken soup, which contains
onions and other vegetables, has beneficial effects for the common cold
virus. This supports the claim by Israeli investigators that chicken
soup should be an essential component in our diets. The effects include
improving hydration, nutrition, and enhancing mucosal clearance and,
perhaps, being inhibiting the replication and spread of viruses.
The recipe for grandma's traditional chicken soup includes:
A 5-to-6-pound chicken 1 package chicken wings 3 large onions 1 sweet potato 3 parsnips 2 turnips 11-12 large carrots 5-6 celery stems and 1 bunch of parsley. Salt and pepper to taste and cook for 90 minutes over low heat.
Although
the common cold has eluded our researchers looking for specific
effective therapies, I have no doubt that onions, combined with other
vegetables, have a definitive role in the dietary remedy/management of
viral disorder prevention and treatment. Note that while all the
vegetables both individually and in combination inhibited viruses,
commercial soups varied greatly in activity.
========================== My mother in law use to slice onions, put sugar on them and use the juice as cough syrup, she swore by it.
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June 9, 2009 - Tuesday
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Current mood:  angsty
Category: Life
Tick-borne Illnesses Already Taking a Toll in Missouri and Arkansas
By
KSPR News
Story Created:
Jun 6, 2009
Story Updated:
Jun 6, 2009
A Missouri man is dead after contracting a disease carried by ticks.
The Department of Health and Senior Services says a 74-year-old
Saint Louis man died from a bacterial infection known as ehrlichiosis,
which is similar to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
He is the first Missouri resident to die from a tick-borne illness this year.
His family says he found the attached tick after a fishing trip in northeast Missouri.
Ticks are also biting in Arkansas, as one family recently found out.
It all started with your typical outdoor summer activities, but
those led to a trip to the hospital, and a fight for life for one
little boy.
Joanna Small explains why a Marion County mother has a message for
other Arkansans about protecting themselves from a rare but potentially
fatal disease.
7-YEAR-OLD GAVIN DICKEY IS CELEBRATING A SCHOOL YEAR WELL-DONE.
HE MADE STRAIGHT "A'S"... BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY... HE MADE IT TO THE CEREMONY.
"Right there was the tick bite, and right up here is where the lump was," said mother Brenda Dickey.
THAT LUMP WAS TULAREMIA... A VERY RARE, YET OFTEN DEADLY DISEASE MOST COMMONLY CAUGHT FROM TICKS AND RABBITS.
"My boys, they're all active in scouts, they're always out in the
woods, and they're camping. Ticks are just a thing of life," said
Dickey.
A THING THAT COST GAVIN *TEN DAYS* OF HIS *LIFE*... THAT'S HOW LONG HE'S ON IV-ADMINISTERED ANTI-BIOTICS.
HIS MOM BRENDA HAD NEVER HEARD OF THE BACTERIA...BUT THE ARKANSAS STATE HEALTH DEPARTMENT CERTAINLY HAS.
"On some years Arkansas has led the nation on cases of Tularemia,
on occasions, Arkansas sometimes has more cases than the rest of the
nation combined," said a doctor with the Arkansas Health Department.
THE STATE SAW ELEVEN CASES LAST YEAR... RESULTING IN TWO DEATHS.
TULAREMIA USUALLY APPEARS AS A HARD BUMP... AN INFLAMED LYMPH NODE ANYWHERE ON THE BODY.
"Given enough time that lesion will ulcerate and you'll get a little ulcer there," said the doctor.
ALTHOUGH IT'S TREATABLE... PREVENTION IS KEY.
"This is a prime example of what not to wear in wooded areas where
ticks are prevalent. You should have on long pants, long sleeves,
light colors, and insect repellant. If you don't have those, there's a
makeshift solution-rubber band your loose clothing."
"We spoke with the other kids in his class," said Dickey.
GAVIN'S EXPERIENCE HAS TURNED INTO A LESSON PLAN THE LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL.
"Make sure they tell their parents if they get bit by a tick," said Dickey.
THAT MESSAGE MAKES BRENDA FEEL MORE CONFIDENT WHEN SHE SAYS "SEE YOU NEXT FALL."
BECAUSE TULAREMIA CAN BE CONTRACTED JUST BY INHALING THE BACTERIA... IT IS CONSIDERED A BIOTERRORISM THREAT.
TULAREMIA IS NOT THE MOST COMMON TICK-BORNE ILLNESS IN ARKANSAS.
THE STATE REPORTED 128 CASES OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED FEVER LAST YEAR AND CLOSE TO 100 CASES OF EHRLICHIOSIS.
http://www.kspr.com/news/local/47132722.html
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April 7, 2009 - Tuesday
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Current mood: amused
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural
A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"
Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"
"You're a Congressman for the U.S Government", says Bud.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a
herd of sheep. ..
Now give me back my dog.....
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March 27, 2009 - Friday
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Current mood:  annoyed
Category: Food and Restaurants
by Dr. Mercola Nearly everyone knows that white flour is not
healthy for you, but most people don’t know that when white flour is
bleached, it can actually be FAR worse for you.
It’s generally understood that refining food
destroys nutrients. With the most nutritious part of the grain removed,
white flour essentially becomes a form of sugar. Consider what gets
lost in the refining process:
Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids
Virtually all of the vitamin E
Fifty percent of the calcium
Seventy percent of the phosphorus
Eighty percent of the iron
Ninety eight percent of the magnesium
Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins
And many more nutrients are destroyed -- simply too many to list.
The Journey of the Wheat Berry
Have you ever wondered how white flour is made?
The website Healthy Eating Politics has an interesting article about the process.
Most commercial wheat production is,
unfortunately, a “study in pesticide application,” beginning with the
seeds being treated with fungicide. Once they become wheat, they are
sprayed with hormones and pesticides. Even the bins in which the
harvested wheat is stored have been coated with insecticides. If bugs
appear on the wheat in storage, they fumigate the grain.
A whole grain of wheat, sometimes called a wheat berry, is composed of three layers:
The bran
The germ
The endosperm
The bran is the layer where you’ll find most of
the fiber, and it’s the hard outer shell of the kernel. The germ is the
nutrient-rich embryo that will sprout into a new wheat plant. The
endosperm is the largest part of the grain (83 percent), making up most
of the kernel, and it’s mostly starch.
White flour is made from the endosperm only, whereas whole-wheat flour combines all three parts of the wheat berry.
Old time mills ground flour slowly, but today’s
mills are designed for mass-production, using high-temperature,
high-speed steel rollers. The resulting white flour is nearly all
starch, and even much of today’s commercially processed whole wheat
flour has lost a fair amount of nutritional value due to these
aggressive processing methods.
White flour contains a small fraction of the
nutrients of the original grain, with the heat of the steel rollers
having destroyed what little nutrients remain. But then it is hit with
another chemical insult--a chlorine gas bath (chlorine oxide). This serves as a whitener, as well as an “aging” agent.
Flour used to be aged with time, improving the
gluten and thus improving the baking quality. Now, it is treated with
chlorine to instantly produce similar qualities in the flour (with a
disturbing lack of concern about adding another dose of chemicals to
your food).
According to Jim Bair, Vice President of the North American Millers Association:
“Today, the US milling industry produces
about 140 million pounds of flour each day, so there is no way to store
the flour to allow it to age naturally. Plus, there is a shelf life
issue.”
It has not been determined how many mills are
bleaching flour with chorine oxide, but we do know the use of chlorides
for bleaching flour is considered an industry standard.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines chlorine gas
as a flour-bleaching, aging and oxidizing agent that is a powerful
irritant, dangerous to inhale, and lethal. Other agents also used
include oxides of nitrogen, nitrosyl, and benzoyl peroxide mixed with
various chemical salts.
The chlorine gas undergoes an oxidizing chemical
reaction with some of the proteins in the flour, producing alloxan as
an unintended byproduct. Bair and other milling industry leaders claim
that bleaching and oxidizing agents don’t leave behind harmful residues
in flour, although they can cite no studies or published data to
confirm this.
Why Bleaching Makes White Flour Even Worse
It has been shown that alloxan is a byproduct of the flour bleaching process, the process they use to make flour look so “clean” and -- well, white. No, they are technically not adding alloxan
to the flour -- although you will read this bit of misinformation on
the Internet. But, they are doing chemical treatments to the grain that
result in the formation of alloxan in the flour.
With so little food value already in a piece of
white bread, now there is potentially a chemical poison lurking in
there as well.
So what is so bad about alloxan?
Alloxan, or C4 H2O4N2, is
a product of the decomposition of uric acid. It is a poison that is
used to produce diabetes in healthy experimental animals (primarily
rats and mice), so that researchers can then study diabetes
“treatments” in the lab. Alloxan causes diabetes because it spins up
enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus
destroying them.
Beta cells are the primary cell type in areas of
your pancreas called islets of Langerhans, and they produce insulin; so
if those are destroyed, you get diabetes.
There is no other commercial application for
alloxan -- it is used exclusively in the medical research industry
because it is so highly toxic.
Given the raging epidemic of diabetes and other
chronic diseases in this country, can you afford to be complacent about
a toxin such as this in your bread, even if it is present in small
amounts?
Just How Much is Too Much?
Similar to disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in
water, alloxan is formed when the chlorine reacts with certain proteins
remaining in the white flour after the bran and germ have been removed.
Protein makes up between 5 percent and 15 percent of white flour,
depending on whether it’s cake flour, or high-gluten flour, such as
what’s used for pizza crust or bagels.
So, this would suggest that perhaps 5 to 15 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour could be contaminated.
However, according to Professor Joe Schwarcz,
Director of the McGill University Office of Science and Society,
alloxan is the byproduct of xantophyll oxidation only. Xantophylls are yellow compounds in wheat that react with oxygen, causing flour to turn white.
According to Mr. Schwarcz:
“One of the possible minor side products of
xantophyll oxidation is alloxan. It may therefore be found in small
amounts in flour. There is no available research that shows trace
amounts are a problem or that alloxan builds up in the body. The
amounts, if present at all, must be small because xantophylls
themselves only occur to the extent of 1 microgram per gram of flour.”
Alloxan has not been studied in terms of human
exposure, particularly long-term. There is just so much we don’t know,
and you know what assumptions will get you.
Alloxan in Rats vs Alloxan in Humans
Scientists have long known that alloxan produces
selective destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, causing
hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis in laboratory animals. Alloxan is
structurally similar to glucose, which might explain why the pancreatic
beta cells selectively take it up.
According to Dr. Hari Sharma’s Freedom from Disease,
alloxan causes free radical damage to DNA in the beta cells of the
pancreas, causing them to malfunction and die. When they fail to
function normally, they no longer produce enough insulin.
Even though the toxic effect of alloxan is common scientific
knowledge in the research community, the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) still allows companies to use chemical processes in which the end
result is toxic food. Until they unequivocally prove something is toxic
by way of human deaths, severe side effects, or when the public screams
loudly enough, the FDA is not likely to protect you.
Until then, it is you who must protect yourself.
If you have diabetes, or cancer, have a
compromised immune system, or if you are in some other high-risk
category as tens of millions of North Americans are, you need to know
what foods contain hazardous ingredients so you can avoid them. But in
the case of alloxan, there is no way to know, either by reading the ingredient list or by any other means, that it might be in your food!
History of Bleaching Flour -- Pillsbury and the FDA
An interesting sideline to this whole flour story lies in the origins of the FDA.
Bleaching and oxidizing agents weren’t developed
to produce quick aging of wheat flour (within 48 hours) until the early
1900s. Prior to that, it required several months for oxygen to
condition flour naturally.
When bleaching was introduced, it was vehemently opposed.
The first major consumer advocate was Harvey W.
Wiley, MD, who eventually became known as the “Father of the Pure Food
and Drugs Act” of 1906. Mr. Wiley was head of the Bureau of Chemistry,
which was the precursor to the FDA. Wiley crusaded against benzoic
acid, sulfites, saccharin, and bleached flour, among other food additives and adulterants.
Dr. Wiley felt so strongly about preventing the
bleaching of flour that he took it all the way to the Supreme Court.
They ruled that flour could not be bleached or “adulterated” in any
way. However, it was never enforced.
Wiley believed that foods posed a greater risk
to the public than adulterated or misbranded drugs. He constantly
butted heads with Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and President
Roosevelt over food regulation.
Soon, Wiley’s personal administrative authority
was undercut when Wilson created the Board of Food and Drug Inspection
in 1907 and the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts in 1908,
one of which was reportedly headed by someone who had been working at
Pillsbury, although I have not been able to verify this addendum.
Finally, in 1912, Dr. Wiley quit as director out
of frustration, although he continued as a vocal consumer advocate for
many years.
The government replaced Dr. Wiley with Dr. Elmer Nelson. Dr. Nelson was the polar opposite to Wiley , and was quoted as saying:
”It is wholly unscientific to state that a
well-fed body is more able to resist disease than a poorly fed body. My
overall opinion is that there hasn’t been enough experimentation to
prove that dietary deficiencies make one susceptible to disease.”
Therein lies the foundation of the FDA. Since
Dr. Wiley resigned, the FDA has continued to shift its focus on drugs,
since Wiley was never able to convince the government of the dangers
from chemicals in our foods. He was truly a pioneer and a century ahead
of his time!
Food For Thought
The important point to take away is, beware of any processed food
because chemicals are always used. And we simply don’t know what the
long-term effects will be of ingesting chemicals, on top of chemicals,
on top of more chemicals.
Strive to stick to whole unprocessed foods that
are as close to their natural state as possible. If you’re going to eat
grains, make sure they are at the least unbleached, whole, and organic,
and eat them in the proportion that is best for your nutritional type.
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