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Date Posted: 17:24:08 11/16/09 Mon
Author: SS
Subject: Re: ************ORTHOREXIAANSWERS***********
In reply to: SS 's message, "************ORTHOREXIAANSWERS***********" on 12:36:54 11/16/09 Mon

Awwwwwwwwww, thanks again, Amanda! =)

By the way, I absolutely don't mind, and actually encourage, that you use my real name in your piece. I find it worrisome that we're allowing fear in our society to permeate each aspect of our lifestyles and collective experience, to the point where we are homogenizing and limiting personal and creative expression and liberty, and so I am making an emotionally committed, conscious effort to try and reverse this trend by being as open as can be (aside from sharing my pin numbers and Social Security data, of course, LOL!). Some always claim I'm "brave" or "courageous" for doing so, but really this is all ultimately about celebrating life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and when it comes to speaking the truth........I'll proudly stand on the front line! =)

Now, as promised, my responses, as deep and personally complete as I can make them! =)

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1) I am a 26-year old resident of Portland, Oregon, who was born in Joliet, Illinois and raised for seventeen years in Arvada, Colorado before moving to Portland in 2004. I am presently unemployed and live in my parents house at the moment, and recently graduated from Portland State University with a Bachelors in Art with my Major being English.

As I am presently unemployed, I treat volunteerism as a full-time job daily. I am a trained Volunteer Leader with the non-profit agency Hands On Greater Portland (which facilitates partnerships with other non-profit agencies to help provide volunteer opportunities to everyone regardless of ones background or residence, with minimal to no experience required and training provided), a trained Evening News Producer at KBOO Community Radio, am a regular volunteer at rescue missions and homeless shelters in the Portland area, and have volunteered at numerous festivals including am a co-organizer of the erotic arts festival ErosFest Northwest and part of the Planning Commitee for the forthcoming Earth Day 2010 festival.

In my spare time, I do Ecstatic Dance (also known as Conscious Dance), modeling (mostly either sensual/erotic modeling or socially-conscious, experimental modeling), astrology, and love attending various community meetups via the social networking site Meetup.com. The Portland Tantra Meetup is my personal favorite, and also attend voice acting workshops, Scrabble tournaments, Bingo nights, etc. =)

Politically-speaking, I am a registered Independent, who considers myself progressive-minded but is disenchanted with labels and doesn't believe fits the stereotypical "liberal" or "conservative" mantra and essentially believes we all run deeper than the labels stamped upon us. I'm an enthused proponent of environmental responsibility, sexual equality and freedom, sustainable agriculture and blue collar values. I've blogged often about organic agriculture especially, though as of late I've given more a focus to issues regarding sexuality both because 1) my stepbrother is homosexual and remains stigmatized often, and 2) my own recent fascination with it as a form of artistic expression and social commentary.

Often people describe me as someone who is calm and composed; reacting well to situations that most would find as stressful or overbearing. My thinking is neither simple or complex, where I like to think of myself as well-educated but not an intellectual. I have a strong interest in the needs and well-being of others, and living for the moment and doing what feels good now, as opposed to thinking too far ahead and prioritizing. I'm all "go with the flow" and taking life one day at a time! =)

The one quote I most identify with each day is one spoken by the late American educator Nicholas Murray Butler: "Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress." While I believe we are all imperfect, I also believe we are all inherently good and that, regardless of ones background or upbringing, we have much more in common than we do difference as a global family. ^__^

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2) I apologize in that my answers for both #2 and #3 will be meshed together.

In my youth through mid-adolescence, as you can imagine, like virtually all especially young citizens, I paid no mind to where my food came from, how it was processed and which ingredients it featured, and found many advertisements promoting junk food when watching television excessively as a child entertaining and colorful. I was especially fond of barbecue Lays chips, La Choy miniature egg rolls from the freezer, Rice-A-Roni, Trolli Sour-Brite Crawlers candies and other highly-processed mainstays. Interestingly enough, however, even in my earliest years some of my favorite foods were quite healthy and minimally-processed to not processed at all, particularly kimchee, wheatgrass and most kinds of fruit, and I would always get excited going to the natural, organic supermarket Wild Oats (now Whole Foods) supermarket on occasion with my parents. I was also a major meat-eater, and would even, on road trips, urge my parents to stop at roadside jerky stands to satisfy my carnivorous desires. As far as beverages were concerned, the funny thing is I've always loved tea, but I nonetheless also consumed a lot of Pepsi (thus High Fructose Corn Syrup) and even would often consume three cans of it a day during my high school years. As far as ethnic food is concerned, Chinese/Vietnamese take-out was my favorite (and still would be if I could be rest assured the food wasn't prepared with either MSG or non-vegetarian friendly oyster paste. Finally, I would consume dangerous levels of sodium each and every day, and would flood much of what I ate with soy sauce (which contained hydrolyzed soy protein, an offshoot of MSG).

My first major shift came when I was seventeen (weighing 157 at the time) when I started reading in the Denver Post newspaper, in 1998, when I read in the Denver Post that at an Excel Corporation beef plant in Fort Morgan, Colorado, production was halted for a day that year after workers allegedly cut off the leg of a live cow whose limbs had become wedged in a piece of machinery. U.S inspectors launched an investigation, and found in subsequent stories that the plant had been part of a string of violations for two years prior as well, including the cutting and skinning of live cattle. And the more I heard of increasing slaughterhouse abuse of animals from then on, including chopping hooves off live cattle at IBP plants, the more I cried reading those stories................and I knew I just couldn't stand for this anymore, that even if I knew my intentions were good and I never wished endorsing these acts from the beginning....................unfortunately the mighty dollar was increasingly sponsoring these things, whether you like it or not. I wanted to get this guilt-prone blood off my hands...........and finally in late 2001 I called it quits and have been a proud vegetarian ever since.

Upon moving to Portland (my weight at a lifetime peak of 166 at the time) in June 2004, I quickly acclimated to Portland's impressive public transportation system and started walking a LOT, in contrast to life in the Colorado suburbs keeping me around at home in a sentient state. Consequentially, along with my vegetarian lifestyle, my weight began a steady decline, where I weighed just over 150 by the end of that year. Despite that, I would still eat highly-processed foods for another year and a half.

Then, in early 2006, I started reading and hearing reports in my mid-college years about the dangers of ingredients featured dominantly in processed foods, most notably High Fructose Corn Syrup and Partially Hydrogenated Oils, as well as the dangers of genetically-modified organisms. Both disgusted me in hearing about them, and the more I read into them, the more I unraveled the political dimension/intent behind these decisions and the FDA's inepitude as a regulatory body, and it was then I had a sad realization that we truly ARE what we eat, and I didn't want to be affiliated with unsustainable agricultural practices and junk food propaganda. Finally, reading that often the production of junk food and the integration of pesticides, herbicides, genetic modification, antibiotics, growth hormones, etc. often went hand in hand, I felt sick to my stomach and decided to no longer shop at conventional grocery stores and would begin reading labels so I wouldn't be hoodwinked again. My resolve for local, organic eating was subsequently sinewed by reading Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver's best-sellers, as well as watching John Peterson's compelling documentary "The Real Dirt On Farmer John", subscribing to a CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) farm, and my shock into Monsanto's business practices.

Now, I weigh 126, routinely shop at co-ops for produce and bulk items, avoid all big-name grocery stores and help plant and maintain my own garden with my father, which includes much kale, bok choy, tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries, scallions, radish greens and even lemons among other crops. I also drink only tea (preferably fair Trade-certified), shade-grown coffee, pasteurized kefir (I avoid ultra-pasteurized milk because it is the only milk you can't make cheese out of, thus leads me to believe all the essential bacteria has been destroyed in the heating process) and occasional wine from local artisans. I've gravitated from Asian cuisine heavily due to the concern of MSG being conventionally featured in its preparation to Mediterranean cuisine, which I find is conventionally minimally processed to unprocessed cuisine, and rely on extra-virgin olive oil, hazelnuts, flax seed, nut butters, coconut oil, granola, hemp milk and yogurt primarily to get my much-needed fats, proteins and carbohydrates.

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4) The kind of foods I especially love eating regularly under my present diet include anything that grows organically from a local garden or farm (including my own garden), bulk grains that I cook myself at home and prepare vegetables atop them (especially brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat groats, farro, couscous, arborio rice, etc.) hazelnuts, nut butters (espcially macadamia butter), chia seeds, Goji berries, kefir, kimchee, mung beans, cannelini beans, dolmas, any kind of fruit (favorites being persimmons, mangoes and lychee), coconut milk and a handful of all-natural alternatives to conventional snack foods at Trader Joe's and the co-ops (potato chips with lower amounts of sodium and no beef powder, juices without High Fructose Corn Syrup but rather evaporated cane juice, etc.)

The kind of foods I would never eat again include food from any kind of fast food restaurant, food from most restaurant chains, any kind of meat, virtually all snack foods, juices, cereals, desserts, condiments and bread at big-name grocers like Safeway and Albertson's as well as any gas station convenience store, and virtually everything that's advertised on television (Kashi being one notable exception, assuming they don't veer toward other cereals, as they presently use all-natural ingredients). I will also never drink carbonated beverages again in that they include phosphoric acid, which displaces nutrients from our bones and burns them like a sulfuric acid of sorts, thus leading to higher risks of osteoporosis.

I make a point at shopping only at farmers markets and co-ops as much as possible due to my belief that money should remain in the local economy most of all, but when I do have to shop elsewhere, I choose Trader Joe's as I respect them for their customer support and using only natural ingredients (even Whole Foods allows High Fructose Corn Syrup in some of what they sell at their stores, while Trader Joe's guarantees no HFCS and partially-hydeogenated oils in any of their products, as well as using cage-free eggs).

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5) Because my parents still insist on eating highly-processed foods, and have highly-processed foods represent a vast majority of their weekly grocery shopping, inevitably my sudden shift to an organic lifestyle roused heavy concern from my family for quite a while since moving to Portland in 2004.

In April 2006, when I was amidst my transformation in earnest and my body mass index nonetheless plunged sharply during that time (I at one point near that time weighed 112)………..and though I was never in an anorexic phase at any given point but, nonetheless, it didn’t stop anorexia rumors from surfacing and getting blown out of proportion………and it was then, before I made my final canvassing route for my parent’s Allstate office branch in the Rose City Neighborhood in Portland, that my mother had a little talk with me regarding my appearance for the first time, saying how concerned she was with the way I looked and that if I ever felt sick or anything, which the truth is I have never felt physically sick all this time.

Afterwards, my mother purchased a Blender for me, and with it demanded I fill fat-enriched whole milk to the eight ounce mark, and pour some BioChem 100% Whey Protein Powder into it (which contains 100% pure Ultra-Filtered Whey Protein Isolate, rich in the highly bioactive fractions glycomacropeptide, beta-lactoglobullin, immunoglobullin, glycopeptides and lactoferrin, which feed muscle tissue and support the immune and hormonal systems, and also contains high levels of branched-chain amino acid and glutamic acids, plus a perfect ratio of other amino acids for anticatabolism (muscle sparing) and anabolic responses, which these low molecular whey peptides aid in the delivery of nitrogen into the muscle cells.) shake it up, and drink it twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Because the initial product she purchased was all-organic, I happily agreed to………….but soon afterwards she started purchasing this conventional protein powder loaded with synthetic ingredients, and despite attempting to explain to her I don’t want to consume artificial additives anymore, she said angrily to not complain to her and drink it……..and what happened was, whenever she wasn’t in the kitchen and I had eyed the area carefully, I would flush each container of the powder down the sink, adamant about not drinking any artificial additives.

Also, a year ago on my 25th birthday, my mother was mostly aware about my shift to an organic lifestyle and said she would respect my decision all in all, but nonetheless chose to bake a birthday cake for me using Duncan Hines cake mix and frosting, which is packed with artificial additives including trans-fat shortening. So, wanting to be as respectful as I can to her while being insistent not to have any of my own birthday cake, I simply left the cake alone as the rest of my family dug in. However, later that evening on my birthday, she said in a stern voice: “Why aren’t you eating any of your birthday cake?” and I replied softly: “I don’t eat artificial preservatives anymore!” and she replied “Does it really matter, Noah?” and when I said it mattered to me, she said angrily how I’m just wasting food and should be grateful I’m living in a first-world country that can feed its citizens, which at that point I gave a deep sigh and just walked away from her signaling to end the conversation (this year, in contrast, she understands where I’m coming from and purchased a cake from Trader Joe’s! =) ).

Beyond familial misunderstandings, however, given Portland is a very local-centric, progressive-minded city, I had few difficulties adjusting socially in terms of food issues with others in the community. Portland is a mecca for vegetarianism and urban farming, so most understood immediately where I came from. That said, there’s no question if I was living in a rural Midwestern or Southern town or community, it would be quite the opposite. I am most fortunate to live here in Portland! =)

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6) I absolutely believe I feel MUCH better and healthier under my current set of eating habits than under any previous eating habit regime.

I virtually never feel fatigue (studies have linked more regular/chronic fatigue to poor dietary habits and lack of exercise, while their healthier-eating counterparts report much less fatigue) and can jog half a marathon effortlessly fairly regularly without abdominal cramps, whereas before, even when I was on the cross country team when living in Colorado in my adolescence, I would stop several times before completing a 5K race course. Surely, in my youth, when sitting in front of the television set a majority of the day, I would always feel tired and would take naps, while now I never take naps because I never feel like taking one.

I also haven’t had a single headache as far as I can remember (at least nine months or so), have only fallen ill thrice over the span of seven years (about one upper respiratory infection every 2 1/3 years on average) and feel this greater sense of capability and self-esteem I lacked before. I now feel I can accomplish almost anything, and just feel internally sensual and pure all-around.

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7) I don't consider myself religious at all, but I nonetheless do consider myself a highly spiritual individual.

The real critique I have with contemporary religion is that it encourages, what Neale Donald Walsch calls in his critiques of contemporary religion, this “Separation Theology”; that is, that we are separate from some Higher Force in the universe we identify by different names (God, Allah, etc.) or that "we are here" and "_______ is there". I believe there is Divinity in everything, including ourselves, and all the great Masters throughout history has confiemed this to be true, including Jesus Christ, who said that the key to God’s kingdom is through unlocking ourselves. Yet, when religionists insist we are separate from that Great Mystery, what that Separation Theology does is foment this Separation Cosmology, encouraging us to see ourselves as separate from all other life on this planet, which leads to Separation Sociology where we're led to believe our purpose in life is to act on our own separate interests, separate from others, which leads to this pathological behavior, including all war in the world.

Recently, I’ve become most enthralled with Tantra, and I think the reason why I've become most fascinated with Tantra is that it's really more a spiritual philosophy than anything, which means different things to different people, but ultimately is about expansion and liberation. Tantra is a Unifying Theology, one that encourages growth and interconnectedness. And it encourages us not to resist anything and, regardless of whether each outcome is ultimately judged by others as favorable or unfavorable overall, is equally important in our collective learning experience and personal growth and creation in life. And sexuality, obviously, is just one fabulous facet of that.

Even so, part of me will always value the most positive proverbs and wisdom that echo all throughout the verses of the Bible. Especially the Hymns and the Matthews verses, which are all about helping the less fortunate, which always echo in my head when I'm working in a rescue mission, homeless shelter or other such environment. My turn to Tantra is truly no renunciation of my Christian faith, but rather a celebration of my spiritual and personal expansion! =)

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8) Breakfast: Nothing. Not because I was intending to starve myself or anything, but because generally I don't have an appetite until about one in the afternoon, partially because I haven't had breakfast in years.

Lunch: I generally would cook up a whole pot of a particular grain, then stir-fry a medley of produce from my refrigerator, mix some coconut, sesame or olive oil in it, sometimes turmeric, cayenne pepper, several other spices and a nut butter as well if I want to make a curry, and top the grain with it. Alternatively, I would eat two large bowls of oatmeal or natural cereal (Barbara’s Bakery, Kashi, Arrowhead Mills, etc.) or sometimes a tempeh fillet panini sandwich with olive oil, tapenade, sun-dried tomatoes and peppercorns.

Dinner: Similar to dinner, though with larger serving sizes compared to Lunch.

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9) I think the Food & Drug Administration and the U.S Department of Agriculture, primarily, are not fulfilling their societal duty as proper and efficient regulatory bodies, and are more influenced by corporate lobbyists than at any previous time in their history.

As it is, Monsanto now owns 1/3 of all organic seeds in the world and are among a wide number of forces encouraging the proliferation of genetically-modified organisms, including in Kellogg's breakfast cereals where the oil used in them are coming soon from genetically-modified soybeans. Plus, throughout my life I've had a distrust and scare of aspartame (found in NutraSweet, Splendor, Equal and other sweeteners) of beverages like Kool-Aid which have cancer-causing agents worse than red 40, among other things. I resent the impositions FDA Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs, Scott Gottlieb and other FDA cronies tied to large pharmaceutical interests and Wall Street make on everyday Americans; from FDA panels that write each drug usage guidelines having someone linked to drug companies 3/4 of the time according to a Spring 2005 Nature article, to their passive approval of the bovine growth hormone Posilac from Monsanto which exacerbates illness and destroys calcium levels in cows, to companies like StarLink producing genetically-modified maize that has caused allergy problems among many consumers, etc.

Remember that song you used to hear, and perhaps chant in your second grade class with your classmates, written by Rose Bonne and Alan Mills titled "I Know An Old Lady"............which is essentially about an elderly woman who swallows a fly, then in panic swallows progressively more ridiculous things in hopes of mitigating the problem caused by swallowing the fly in the first place........only to discover that, in spite of wishful thinking on her part that each thing she swallowed would be a remedy for the original problem, her problem only worsened every time she swallowed another animal?

With a wide array of corporate experiments on our food system, THAT is exactly what comes to my mind. Take GMO’s, for instance. Our instance of swallowing the fly began when we adopted monoculture crops and pesticides and then, when we assumed we could somehow fertilize them with synthetic substances and chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorous.......instead we throw entire ecosystems out of balance, which consequentially lead to increasingly erratic fluctuations in populations of various species, generate more complicated pest problems than ever toward our crops, and we attempt to rectify that problem by, applying even more fertilizer to them, and then much of that ends up leaking deep into our soil, into the groundwater, percolating into creekbeds, which pour out into rivers which ultimately empty into our oceans and, the final product being dead zones widening within them. And assuming the fertilizer is the proverbial "cat" in "I Know An Old Lady", and GMO's are its proverbial "dog" counterpart, I'm frightened to guess what the "goat" and the "cow" will be………..or with anything from synthetic sweeteners to antibiotics to herbicides, etc. for that matter.

Walt Whitman famously wrote in his 1867 poem "To The Sayer Of Words":

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“The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.”

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Much the reason I have chosen to eschew processed food in general, and gravitate to organic eating entirely, is because 1) I've realized how much I've taken for granted the beauty of nature in its diverse, original splendor, and that I can have it so much better by eating as naturally and traditionally as possible, and 2) it is well-known that over 85% of processed foods in America use oils, sugars and other ingredients derived from genetically-modified products. I have no regrets whatsoever making this transition, as I refuse to contribute to what Barry Commoner referred to in his 1971 book "The Closing Circle" as an "insidious fraud hidden in the vaunted productivity and wealth of modern, technology-based society" that has "blindly accumulated a debt to nature—a debt so large and so pervasive that in the next generation it may, if unpaid, wipe out most of the wealth it has gained us." I refuse to consume such deceit, which apparently the World Wildlife Fund and even Oxfam are struggling to do, especially if it will make my liver turn purple and dramatically alter my DNA, among many other possible worst-case scenarios.

The world is beautiful, the world is bountiful, the world can provide EVERYTHING for us if we let it, as the United Nations even reported one year ago that organic farming is the best way Africa can escape poverty and malnutrition, as well as help mitigate climate change, and I for one hope to see a future for my children, grandchildren and their great, great grandchildren where historic nobility, rather than historic notoriety, continues to govern our land.

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10) I realized I was all but certainly orthorexic when I began observing that the topic of food was obsessively dwelling on my mind throughout the course of each and every day. Where deciding what to eat suddenly became a chore to me, rather than the simple joy of eating, as well as the obsessive-compulsive urge to research for hours each day the latest “schemes” agribusiness were hatching up, out of the fear that if I missed a single update, something would “slip past me” and I would fall victim to them yet again. I felt like I had to be completely vigilant or I’d get hoodwinked again.

In spite of that, I believe my tenacity to my eating habits is justifiable, and the only real notable shift in my attitudes since then has been not to see my experience in terms of “limiting” myself, but rather in terms of “expanding” myself by being adventurous and trying new foods that are grossly overlooked in conventional grocery stores. And, in that, I believe my diet is actually more diverse than the conventional American diet.

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11) I feel my answer to this question is reflected in my answer to Question 10.

I’ll add, however, that food is certainly valued as a beautiful, necessary entity that enriches our lives in the minds of orthoretics. Orthoretics, if anything, revere the land in which we till, sow, reap and harvest upon, and believe the farmer is not merely a mythical icon that we worship only through folklore and nursery rhyme, but a benevolent sage that is vital to the future of civilization and the survival of the human race and of all living organisms. In that, I believe, since my adolescence, I now revere food through a spiritual lens, rather than just a four-letter noun that we must eat to survive.

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12) The real danger about orthorexia is when one fails to maintain it as a healthy “lifestyle choice”, and allow it to permeate every other dimension of your life like an invasive plant species or algae could forever negatively alter an ecosystem. Where, suddenly, what was once a harmless lifestyle choice suddenly influences everything in your life……………from how you judge your friends to how you exercise during the course of a day to how you spend your spare time. When it becomes a form of unconscious martyrdom as I like to think of it, it can lead to depression, chronic anxiety, and can even shapeshift into something like anorexia or diabetes when not checked and balanced.

What people must understand about orthorexia is that orthoretics DO love to eat. They just simply ask that the food they eat is truly nourishing and/or a celebration of the natural world we inhabit, rather than an artificial, chemically-produced representation of it. If one unfamiliar with this still-widely unknown eating phenomenon, then it will encourage relational empathy and help encourage our youth especially to lead healthy, balanced lifestyles, rather than becoming martyrs if too harshly judged.

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13) McDonalds Hamburger: McDonalds is an atrociously terrible restaurant, with an abysmal record on public health, respect for their workers and labor, the environment and manipulative advertising to children. My vegetarianism aside, I refuse to eat another one of them again.

Coca-Cola: Like McDonalds, Coca-Cola is simply dead to me. The aforementioned High Fructose Corn Syrup and phosphoric acid dangers aside, the fact they’ve been linked to the funding of paramilitary operations in South America, as well as having been implicated in numerous labor violations, gives me no incentive whatsoever to ever purchase a product of theirs again.

Blueberry Muffin: It depends on which ingredients were used in the baking of what is truly a potentially taste-tickling treasure! =)

I could never trust a blueberry muffin from a conventional grocery store bakery or bakery chain because they would all but certainly include both High Fructose Corn Syrup and Partially Hydrogenated Oil as host ingredients (along with artificial colorings as well). However, if they were made at a co-op, farmers market or whole foods store with natural ingredients like flax seed meal, evaporated cane juice, agave nectar, etc……..I could gorge down half a dozen in utmost bliss! ^__^

Banana: Even though I’d prefer purchasing most other varieties of fruits and vegetables in that there are no bananas grown within a thousand miles of Portland, Oregon, thus having the guilt of funding immense carbon emissions just to make their aerial transport to grocers and fruit stands across the United States possible, I otherwise believe bananas are absolutely delicious and excellent for digestive health, as well as ideal for daily potassium intake.

Spinach: (drools) Need I say more? Nutrient nirvana! Nutrient nirvana! LOL!

Quinoa: One of my absolute favorite foods! Can’t live without it! If our youth could be encouraged to have a serving of steamed spinach at least three times a week, who knows what beneficially profound effects it would have on their development, mental health and physical health? Popeye loved spinach, why not our kids? ^__^

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14) Dr. Vandana Shiva put it candidly in an August 14, 1998 interview with In Motion Magazine: "The deeper you can manipulate living structures, the more you can control food and medicine." As Shiva also mentions in that same interview:

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“When we plant a seed there's a very simple prayer that every peasant in India says: "Let the seed be exhaustless, let it never get exhausted, let it bring forth seed next year." Farmers have such pride in saying "this is the tenth generation seeds that I'm planting," "this is the fifth generation seed that I'm planting." Just the other day I had a seed exchange fair in my valley and a farmer brought Basmati aromatic rice seed and he said "this is five generations we've been planting this in our family". So far human beings have treated it as their duty to save seed and ensure its continuity.”

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Without doubt, in struggling, impoverished developing countries across the globe, many have nonetheless survived, as Shiva points out, because their land is rich in biodiversity. That is, they understand that we reside in an astonishingly complex ecosystem that are made up of multitudes of microbes; many of which we haven't even discovered yet, or let alone scratched beneath the surface in fathoming scientifically. Every microbe is vital to the pure existence of nature as we appreciate it now. After all, the food web originates with these microbes, along with all the fungi, bacteria, insects, nutrients, etc. that permeate our natural environment. And as long as there's biodiversity among them, balance is attained in the system.

This maxim rings just as veraciously when it comes to our global food supply, as microbes and other small living organisms also allow the soil to absorb and store water, as well as cycling nutrients from our compost bins into the soil, so the circle of life can continue to circumvolve. Plants are living organisms, after all, capable of persuading microbes in the soil to transfer the nutrients they need to them so, with that true, it is an incontestable fact that the more vigorous and diverse any given ecosystem is, the more alimentary the food from which its grown in will be. Even in adverse weather and pest outbreaks, if the soil is nonetheless healthy, plants have often proven to be resilient in face of such threats, because everything is in balance.

In contrast, whenever we meddle with any given ecosystem, the consequences are always considerable and unforeseen. Geographer Gilbert F. White touched on this adage in his 1970 essay "The Meaning of the Environmental Crisis" where he wrote: "Every intervention of man in the environment around him incurs some risk as to both favorable and unfavorable consequences. Every intervention is taken in the face of partial ignorance as to what its effects will be and involves uncertainty as to the ultimate outcome."

My moral disenchantment with processed food is predicated on this notion, and is precisely what’s wrong with our current food system. Returning to that old lady who swallowed the fly analogy in an earlier answer to an earlier question, we’re literally making an all-in gambling bet with nature which, if we lose the bet, will only multiply uncertain, unfavorable consequences that will become increasingly irreversible by the day. And that our food regulatory bodies are making little to no effort to……….well……..regulate those gambling with nature, thus allowing this gambling of the Earth to be the status quo, is absolutely reckless and cynical in my view.

We MUST return to the earth. We MUST honor the cultivation of the seed again. We must honor the farmer again. Only when we do this can we guarantee our children and their children’s children a world and lifestyle at least equally as healthy as our own………and presently, there is no guarantee of this.

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15) “Hug A Farmer”. =)

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Sincerely,
Noah Eaton

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