Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

www.time.com

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn th

(visit the link for the full news article)

It's amazing

Should I stop buying peanut butter?
No serioudsly..... should I?

It's becoming almost impossible to eat healthy food
Everything is poisoined!

This makes Nazism seem like a puppy dog broadway show

What is this?
What do we dooo?????

We have to be soooo up do date and educated on what we can eat and not!

www.time.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

EDIT: Please see this: www.salon.com...

[edit on 23-8-2009 by ModernAcademia]

It's not even food anymore.

Ad for the peanut butter, if you're buying the regular stuff made (mostly) from hydrogenated oil and corn syrup with some peanuts thrown in to give it flavor, then yeah, don't buy that. Get a brand of natural peanut butter made from peanuts, or get a food processor, a bag of bulk peanuts, some peanut oil, sea salt, agave nectar, and whip up your own. It's not hard to do and cheaper than buying jars.


One solution is to go vegan, that's what i did after being tired of being sick all the time from toxic food. The toxins are in everything but the higher concentrations end up in meat and dairy.

Also, make your own food, don't buy anything that's supposed to be a complete meal in box, can, bag, or frozen brick of excrement. Control to the best of your ability all the ingredients.

Set solid rules,
NO MSG
NO HFCS
NO Artificial Sweeteners
Period. No excuses, don't accept poison marketed as food, call them on their lies by refusing to eat their poison.

I went vegan and lost 100lbs. When i was 100lbs heavier i was still biking, skating, and was able to do a 20 mile run at 6000' elevation with NO problem. And when i say biking, i mean biketrials, freeride, bmx, and hardcore disciplines. I dropped 100lbs in a year by not eating anything that wasn't food.

But whatever you do, do it with real food, and keep yourself educated. You really gotta be a food nazi to live healthy anymore, as those 47,000 different products of the same repackaged pile of poop have replaced actual food. If you're dhopping right, it's like being a hunter-gatherer anymore. You've gotta keep your senses keen, notice products' labels scope out and research possible food items that are hidden behind the canned crap and turdflakes. Gathering is finding the stuff you know is safe. Even still check labels on stuff you regularly buy and make sure they didn't change. I've caught a few ingredient changes that affected my gathering decisions. As for hunting, take an inventory of what your local stores have available for real food, and stalk your prey, by researching the product and uses for it, recipes, and proper preparation methods. When you're reasonably sure it's a safe item for consumption, then kill it and eat it.

Don't eat poo, it's not food!

DezertSkies, you saved me the time of writing a post!

As much as people like to rail against gov't intrusion/takeover of our lives, we blindly accept corporate intrusion/takeover. We blindly accept and believe, that the crap they deliver is good for us.

I am not against all corporations, just the ones that do harm.

Great thread.

It's pretty appalling that you can hardly buy anything without a thousand different chemicals added to it to make it marketable.

I grew up on an organic farm so my parents did a pretty good job of informing me about what's good to eat and what's not. That's not to say that I haven't put a lot of pure crap into my body over the past few years.

I've started to make a conscious effort to eat better. DezertSkies is 100% correct about sticking to real food. It will just make you feel better.

If you're wondering about the skyrocketing costs of food products, accept it or not, some of the anwser lies in the production costs associated with the explosive growth Kosher Racket. Our food industry supports this multi-billion dollar religous taxation...
www.abovetopsecret.com...
Went to a well known discount store a while back called Aldi's, and most of the food there wasn't labeled kosher and our grocery bill was cut literally in half.

Juuuust a warning: If you weigh 93 lbs like myself, and are anemic occasionally, don't go vegan. Don't go veggie. But DO eat natural/organic/no-hormone meats and poultry.

It's just as good.

Originally posted by ravenshadow13
Juuuust a warning: If you weigh 93 lbs like myself, and are anemic occasionally, don't go vegan. Don't go veggie. But DO eat natural/organic/no-hormone meats and poultry.

It's just as good.

I second that. I still consider deer, elk, rabbit, and wild caught fish real food and occasionally when it's available i eat this, but as far as anything commercial, i'm a vegan.

Following a vegan diet isn't necessary, just make sure you're not eating that bright red dyed irradiated chemically "enhanced" block of hormones, steroids, and antibiotics they try to tell you is "beef". SAme thing with chicken, yellow skin with spots means it wa s sick chicken, and anything ""enhanced with solution" is just a fancy way of saying that 10 to 20% of the weight is added saltwater.so when you buy a "pound" of "enhanced" chicken, you'll get about .85lb of chicken and end up paying the price of chicken for .15lb of water.

Buy 6.5lbs of "enhanced" chicken at let's say, $2/lb and you're essentially buying a pound of saltwater that you'll evaporate away during cooking and never have any real use for. A gallon of water weighs 8lbs, that means that for approximately every 50lbs of chicken you buy you're suckered into buying a $16 gallon of saltwater.

How much money do you think they make off this deal?

No matter what you eat, make damned sure that it's actually food that's fit for consumption and make sure you're not getting ripped off buying water for $2/lb.

I was looking for local honey (for allergies) the other day in the local stores. I actually found something that scared me.

Artificial honey substitute.

This is unreal.

The natural food isn't even food.



[edit on 083131p://f00Sunday by badgerprints]

Guys, all of your arguments are great!

However please see this:
www.salon.com...

It's not just food
Please keep that in mind while stating an opinion

That link is proof of that

reply to post by DezertSkies


There are stores in my area which sell "naked" chicken, which is no hormone, local stuff. It's much better than the alternatives, and more expensive unfortunately. However, it's just better, healthier chicken. There's no reason there should be hormones and chemicals in my chicken/beef.

There's only one reason for hormones and crap in your food, and that's greed.

And as far as honey, watch out, a lot of honey lately is a mix of honey and corn syrup. Same with "maple" syrup, it's corn syrup, maple flavor, caramel color. Basically maple flavored poison.

Be sure to check the ingredients on EVERYTHING, even if you think you know what's in it. Just because it's golden and has a picture of a bee on the bottle don't mean it's honey. Start paying attention to the ingredients in what you eat and you'll probably be shocked at what you're letting into your bodies. How much chemical preservatives, addititves, and flavors do you expect your system to deal with before it breaks down?

Why does everyone have cancer? How About diabetes? Mental illness?

Everybody is sick in general because you're letting "them"(you know who) use your body temple as a toxic waste dump.

And yeah, this isn't just food, it's water, it's shampoo, it's toothpaste, and everything you expose yourself to whether ingested, inhaled, injected, or absorbed. I don't use shampoo, or "corporate" soap, I use THIS SOAP for body and hair, one bar, and no chemical cocktail of pcb's and phosphates and whatever else they put in that crap reacting with hot flouridated and chlorinated water. I avoid showering too often because i don't want to get tap water on my skin and in my lungs while showering. I try to use just enough of warm enough water to make the soap lather and then to rinse off. I distill tap water to make it potable and fo every gallon i get a coral reef of chemicals in my boiler bottom.

I'd really love to collect about 5 gallons' water worth of recovered toxic salts and mail it back to the water company. They'd probably charge me with terrorism and go on about chemical weapons and such if i did so. Still, i'd love to see them shut down the office and call the guys in white spacesuits only to discover that they had their chemicals returned to them free of charge.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


Indeed! And women have colored/sprayed their hair, put on make up, painted their nails, lotioned up with ungodly potions, and now we see men encouraged to use similar products for their skin and hair. All in the name of what we want or "need"...ha!...selling is their game, with money to be gained.

Again, people like to think they have choices, but, really, the only choices they make are in the direction the corporation steers them. A true choice would be this: being aware of all the chemicals in the product then choosing to use it or not. The only "choice" most people make in their purchases is between products that offer different "emotional" ingredients/chemicals.

Besides what we put in and on us, we are immersed in the chemicals of products around us, such as household cleaners, etc.

All this make one upset and worried? There, there. The commercials from the chemical industry (or agri-business, or fossil fuel energy sources, or big pharma, etc.) will lull us back to hypnotic sleep, telling us how friendly they are, how they're our friend, how we couldn't live without them.

I tried to "eat healthy" for a month or so .. after 3 grocery visits I stopped.. my bill more than tripled. Maybe if I ever have enough land to grow organically .. or lol .. perhaps if I get a job, I could afford to .. but as of now, eating healthy is to expensive.

Sorry pigs..

Buy as local as possible. The less time for the food to be transported, the better.

Try indoor/container gardening.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


Try buying Organic peanut butter, if you make your own watch what
ingredience you use, and whats in them.

reply to post by Rockpuck


What were you buying that was so much more expensive? I know it'd cost me a fortune if i bought all the products that told me they were "healthy". The key is you gotta use cheap bulk raw stuff and cook. Most veggies are cheap, tofu is cheap, and seasonings, vinegars, oil, tamari go a long way.

I can have cheaper and better non'dairy sour cream than i can buy anywhere by whipping up 5 simple cheap ingredients fir 2 minutes in a blender. Works out to around $2.10 for a fat 16 0z of good stuff.

Same for breakfast, to replace animals on my plate it costs me about $2.50 to $3.00 to make 16 oz of "bacon and eggs", hashbrowns, and toast.

If you go out and buy everything that says organic or "healthy choice" or whatever marketing gimmick is used, you'll spend twice as much as you would and still only get something that is marginally healthier.

Anybody want to try making bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns the way i do it? Next time you're shopping, pick up the stuff to try this, it's cheap and should be readily available everywhere.

You need:

a package of "firm" Tofu (don't let the T-word scare you)
1 potato
Oil
Soy sauce
Tumeric
Salt and pepper

What to do:

First, drain the Tofu. This means you take it out of the package where it's kept in water, put the block on a plate, and then put another plate on top of it to press down slightly. Put a can of beans or something of equal weight, about a pound of pressure, on top and let it sit for an hour. After an hour there'll be water on the bottom plate, get rid of it and put your tofu on a dry cutting board. If you think tofu is gross, slimy mushy tasteless crap you probably had tofu that wasn't drained or cooked well.

Once your tofu is drained, slice off thin strips about 1/4 thick or slightly thinner, from the long side of the tofu block. Make them about the size of thick cut raw bacon. Do half the tofu this way and crumble the other half in a bowl. Just mash up the remaining block with a fork till it looks like broken up egg whites.

Put a small amount of soy sauce in a small bowl and add some pepper.

Grate the potato with the rough side of a cheese grater. Skin on or off, either way, i like skins so i leave 'em on
Heat up a bit of oil to medium high heat in a nonstick pan, and when hot, toss in the potato in one pile and let it sizzle. When it starts to brown on the bottom, flip it and brown the other side. Remove and drain on a paper towel lined plate.

You should have some oil still left in the pan, if not, ad a bit and heat to meduim high. Take your Tofu bacon strips and briefly dip in your soy sauce and pepper (you can add a drop of liquid smoke and also a bit of maple syrup for "hickory maple" bacon but soy sauce and pepper will work just fine) and then right into the pan. They'll sizzle and opp just like bacon, they'll ripple and dance in the oil, and they'll get brown on the bottom in short order. Turn as you would bacon and fry till golden brown or dark brown. Golden brown would be like soft bacon, darker makes it crispy and crunchy. Remove from pan and drain.

You STill should have some oil left in your pan, hopefully just a small amount. If there's a lot, lose some, you want just enough so that your eggs don't stick. Medium heat, and toss a small pinch of tumeric into the oil and add the crumbled tofu. Scramble 'em up in the pan just like real eggs until they're nice and egg-like. Slat and pepper to taste. The tumeric will turn the eggs a beautiful color yellow, and just the right amount will make it look exactly like eggs.

The bacon will look and feel a lot like real swine, and will taste just like it.

Just put all this together, bacon, eggs, and hasbrowns and you've got a whole breakfast. Toss in a few slices of your favorite toast and your preferred condiments and you're there.

Tofu is about $2.lb, tumeric is $5 for a bottle that'll last "forever", soy sauce, salt, pepper, potatoes, are all common stuff that you probably have anyways, so for a startup cost of about $7 you can try this out. If you follow the recipe you'll get crispy bacon, fluffy eggs, and some tasty hashbrowns without poisoning yourself.

You can also put non-crumbled slices of tofu in the pan like you do for scrambled eggs, and then just fry and turn till it feels rubbery like a cooked egg does. Make these and use 'em for breakfast sandwiches.

Just put in a little culinary effort and you can really make eating healthy economical.

So i challenge you to try this recipe and see if you like it. There's tons of recipes like this that you can make just as easily, this is the tip of the iceberg, but just try it once and see if you like it.

Once you see how easy it is to cook tofu and make it taste good, i bet you'll be using it a lot more often.

If anybody cares i'll post some more simple cheap vegan meals.

Originally posted by desert
...
and now we see men encouraged to use similar products for their skin and hair. All in the name of what we want or "need"...ha!...selling is their game, with money to be gained.
...

Ok, I have a question... Since when did AXE come out and what's the deal with the absolute stench that emanates from it? I'm afraid to pick up a bottle to review the contents. I'm apprehensive about becoming contaminated with some unknown, unnaturally occurring element and it's noxious odor defies description; however, my X-Wife described it as smelling like a 'sweaty black man.'

X-Step son's were sent outside to use it after stinking up the whole house at first use.

...

InLaws gave me an Old Spice 'body-wash' that's been unopened under the sink for at least 2 years now. I believe it contains mostly water.

speaking of containing mostly water; when did the general public demand liquid soap? Main ingredient? WATER.

My Dis-Belief-O-Meter went off the scale when I saw these products hitting shelves that have a main ingredient of water. There are too many to name.

Hand Sanitizers are conveninet on a trip... That's the only liquid I can understand as justifiably in a liquid state. Even though I *think* that the main ingredient is Alcohol. I could be mistaken.

Any thoughts on liquid soap and antibacterials?

DezertSkies: your posts are awesome. I suddenly got the urge to stop buying BEEF (it's what's for dinner!) and go out with DadInLaw hunting this season! Venison is so nummy.

reply to post by DrMattMaddix


You were right not to deploy the male body wash...men should use something in between body wash and Lava bar soap...soap on a rope?

Axe seemed to be marketed at first to teens...and, honestly, something had to be produced to counteract the body smell of a 14 year old male . Although, I'm sure there could be some safe homemade remedy, to be put in a garden sprayer to douse the young man at home, with a small personal sprayer for the backpack.

Liquid hand soap...why would we want to use the slime that was always found sitting under the soap in the soap dish? Actually, I bought and use one of those containers that turns soap slivers into liquid hand soap. I also save the soaps (even used ones) from all my hotel visits. Recycle, recycle.

More on antibacterials later.

DS does have awesome posts.