74 Comments

We should def help each other find best sources of clean food. I have become very choosy but it is hard to trust anything

anymore. I’m hearing the organic label is sketchy cause our gov’t is sketchy (totally believable). I still buy organic as much as possible though and source my meat from local farmers as well as local eggs. When the scales fall from our eyes everything is in question! That’s sometimes hard to accept but here we are. Grateful to have grown up in an era that was so much more innocent and carefree.

Expand full comment

We truly were the Lucky Ones.

Expand full comment

OCA.ORG- Organic Consumers Association. oca.org newsletter the best in America.

Expand full comment

Thank you!

Expand full comment

You’re welcome Patti…...

Expand full comment

The link took me to an Orthodox Church…

Expand full comment

Please excuse my error Elizabeth, Below, Ty has the latest website address.

Organic Consumers Association

6771 South Silver Hill Drive

Finland, MN 55603

Tel: 218-226-4164. https://office@organicconsumers.org.

Radiating a warm Aloha to you...

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
May 16
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Thank you!! Just subscribed to the newsletter..

Expand full comment

I started buying coffee that’s tested for mold. I have chronic inflammatory response syndrome from not being able to heal from past mold exposure.

Thanks for the information, I’d rather know the truth.

I couldn’t figure out why cheese bothered me a little, come to find out, the renett is allowed to be genetically modified junk from big pharma. Now I understand why I prefer Irish cheese . Or Australian .

Expand full comment

Sadly, Pfizer creates that gmo rennin for USA cheeses. I buy only Irish, Swiss and Italian imported cheeses just to avoid that junk.

Expand full comment

Me too, now that I know.

My leaky gut knew all along! I was too exhausted to look into it further.

Expand full comment

Always buy cheese or make your own, made with animal rennet.

Expand full comment
author

A lot of things nowadays are produced by "precision fermentaion," which is a fancy work for "farms" of usually genetically modified microorganisms (including oftentimes pathogenic ones) producing target molecules for pharma, as well as food subtances, like citric acid (the latter is produced by a pathogenic black mold, and not purified very well I think).

The more your know, the less appetizing it gets :)

Expand full comment

Citric acid bothers me!

Didn’t know why until recently, mold..

thanks!

Expand full comment

Hi Rosalind! Lisa here. I only use mold free coffee now too. It's such a pleasure to drink. Trader Joes has a good raw, organic cheese from New Zealand that causes me no problems. Best to you! :)

Expand full comment

Thanks for the cheese tip!

Expand full comment

How do you know it’s mold free?

Expand full comment

Hi Rosalind, maybe the coffe/caffein is the problem making the inflammation? Caffein seems to ne a toxin...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1PBt3glb3k

Expand full comment

Peer-reviewed journal THICKNERS. There are 4 in Buttermilk. Carrageenan is a seaweed. All have GI inflammation. Carrageenan is a polysaccharide extracted from red edible seaweeds, such as Irish Moss, that is used as a thickener, gelling agent, and stabilizer in the food industry. It has been added to processed foods since the 1950s and is found in many products.

Food allergies, and the risk of certain types of cancer.

In a 2021 study Trusted Source on mice, researchers concluded that consuming certain emulsifiers may be a risk factor for developing colorectal cancer. The emulsifiers carboxymethylcellulose or polysorbate 80 have also been found to worsen the development of colonic cancer tumors.

Researchers think this link could be due to the increased inflammation and negative impact on the gut microbiome that excess emulsifier consumption causes. In general, emulsifiers seem to decrease the diversity of bacteria in the gut.

https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/what-are-emulsifiers#:~:text=An%20emulsifier%20is%20a%20binding,mix%2C%20like%20oil%20and%20water.

Expand full comment

Thanks. I useheavyv cream with gellan .

Expand full comment

Tessa I remember your post about making bread, and each bag of flour you opened was bug infested, until you came across one that was bug free. It's funny but back 50 years ago, the sieving of flour was always a step in baking. I used to think it was really about "lumps" but haha it was always about the catching of mealworms. They can't be avoided. Unless sieved. Preppers: get a sieve into your arsenal!

Expand full comment
author

When I was a kid, we had to sift flour, too, and somehow the presence of bugs didn't bother people too much, bugs were expected, and were removed. On the innocent times... :)

Expand full comment

My mother (farmer's daughter), and her mother, always kept a bay leaf or two in the flour canister to repel bugs. I do too. I was surprised to see bay leaves included as having insects on the list! I recall one time seeing a meal worm in oatmeal growing up. That stuck with me so I also always have put a bay leaf in oatmeal containers once opened. I've never SEEN any bugs in the containers, yet. Could be missing them, perhaps. Or not! ;)

Expand full comment
author

I was surprised to see mold counts in cinnamon as cinnamon is antifungal, maybe it's a theoretical count? Or maybe conventional cinnamon has a lot of non-cinnamon in it? Who knows

Expand full comment

That was imported Cinnamon. And affected only certain brands.

Expand full comment

I found that surprising too. Perhaps your suspicions are spot on.

Expand full comment

I keep my brown sugar in glass jars, with a piece of bread, it doesn't go hard as fast. Then the Food Processor gets a workout.

Expand full comment

I recall hearing that somewhere. Good to know such fixes.

Expand full comment

Hub spent 20 years in the USN, 58-78, when they had 'raisin bread' they knew the flour had weevils in it.

Expand full comment

I learned that the FDA allows higher levels of Cesium 137, at the UN 10th Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, at a side event on “the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.” on August 15, by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) from a presentation by Ivana Hughes, Director of NAPF

https://coronawise.substack.com/p/for-those-who-still-trust-the-fda

Expand full comment
author

Doesn't surprise me. Thank you for the link, Diane, very important to know!

Expand full comment

Yes, important to know. Some good things happen at the UN, like meeting fellow NGOs like Ivana, having a young Palestinian woman delegate powerfully address the whole NPT (before Gaza, UNRWA - it's 10,000 things - some are terrible (WHO) some are good, the Nuclear Ban Treaty, conference on WMD free zone in the Middle East, etc, needs reform. I make important connections there.

Expand full comment

Thanks, Tessa. I knew the FDA had standards for crap in food, which is why I eat only foods from the garden and bought from trusted farmers. I do think those of us who grew up rolling in the dirt and eating wild stuff have much more robust immune systems than those of the young folks today, who haven't been sufficiently exposed to immune-boosting germs growing up, and have been overexposed to toxic industrial chemicals and a Frankensteinian vaccine schedule.

Expand full comment
author

I hear you, Gary!

Expand full comment

had a girlfriend in college and her husband’s job was to analyze levels of insect residue in food products like catsup.

Expand full comment
author

Appetizing! What they allow in pet food is probably worse than what they allow in human food, I have not looked in to pet food in detail. Yikes, all this!

Expand full comment

Ok, so we’ve already been eating a lot of insects. Might as well go for the whole thing. Ha!

Expand full comment
author

I know! :)

Expand full comment

I was pointed to the defect levels handbook by a coworker at a screen printing shop who used to work at a vegetable cannery. she wouldn't eat anything canned anymore.

I like to share the link to it with people but I don't know how many people are actually willing to get grossed out reading it

Expand full comment

Ca 25 years ago I talked with somebody from Washington state who worked at a ketchup facility. She said that snakes and other insects were ground up into the ketchup and she doesn't eat ketchup for this reason. So it seemed that more than allowed by fda ends up in foods especially if it can be hidden by crushing it making sauces et .

Expand full comment

I mean… these are the same people pushing us to eat bugs, so… 😂

Expand full comment
author

Yes, indeed! This document is old, it precedes the open agenda to make people eat ze bugs. But it reflects the level of care for sure. :)

Expand full comment

zey really vant you to eat zee bugs, don't they

Tessa that's such a sweet picture...with the barrette so you don't have to brush the hair out of your eyes ;)

Expand full comment
author

Thank you!! My grandfather grew an amazing garden, I really appreciate it now that the time and the garden are gone.

And yes, they do want us to eat ze bugs, they are not even hiding it!

Expand full comment

My Grandma had a huge garden. Good memories!

Expand full comment

well it’s barely that different than eating de bugs, no?

Expand full comment

Tessa, it is wonderful that the FDA cares enough about us to set minimum standards on how much filth is allowed in our food (although, the standards seem somewhat lax). What would be nicer would be the FDA actually inspecting our food, instead of being bought off by Big Aggie and Big Business.

Expand full comment
author

I, too, feel warm and fuzzy! :-)

Expand full comment

So Trader Joe’s, it’s just a distribution grocery store means they ship to the store every day around three in the morning and all the produce is sprayed with insecticide some pesticides and fungicides even there organic stuff. And because they’re a distribution outlet, they don’t wash off the vegetables. I work there I know. I was poisoned many times while I worked there. So, if you buy your produce from there, it may not have any bugs, but it has a lot of chemicals. Also to the dried figs, Turkish dried fig specifically have insect larvae remains in them from wasps. just Google it.

We are under attack on many levels.

Expand full comment
author

Wow, do you mean that the produced is sprayed by the time it's delivered, or do they do additional spraying in the store to prevent spoilage?

Expand full comment

I buy frozen veggie because it's time saving and convenient. Did they sterilize and clean such before packing ? No no,,,,,Thank you Tessa . Another wee door opened to the slap dash manner in which the likes of FDA operate...As if the covid hoax was not enough !! ,,,Eyes Wide Open

Expand full comment
author

I suspect things are in practice worse now, this handbook is very old, last updated in 2005. What is going on in actuality is probably even less sanitary!

Expand full comment

I truly pray these people "in charge" find love because... this is insanity.

Expand full comment