Donnerstag, 29. März 2012

Highway to Heaven

I like those series...

Charismatic actors, nice storyline...I wish they would make more of similiar wholesome series.

Oh alright I like pokemon and taotao and csiand Dr. House, but sometimes I miss those series where you can make yourself a cup of tea or hot choclat, grab some cookies and sit with the whole pack in front of the TV, just having a mellow, nice time where no big bangs happen..harmless enjoyment.

No dragons, no super ninjas..just people...and some peoplelike angels that don´t throw lightning around or burst their wings out to impress.

But maybe I am just a bit old fashioned.

What I always loved about this series that it teached tolerance, what humanity is about.

Caring for old and young, the healthy and the disabled...that we need  to protect our environment.

Whispered teachings that imbedded themselves deep in your thoughts..am I the only one who thinks so?

Sonntag, 25. März 2012

Hospital barf, the doom of patients

For everyone it seems, hospitalfood is a red piece of cloth.

Rarely it is that hospitals provide menus that are eaten, in most cases 50% of the food goes back untouched, in some hospitals more than that.

Even more problematic it is that the food is unbalanced or outright devoid of the nutrition needed for the patient to go back to health, or to meet the dietary needs.

Sure there may be menus for  people with celiac disease, for people with gastric problems or who have diabetes.

But sometimes not..or they are totally screwed nutritionalwise..or outdated.

Yes, it happens that some hospitals rely on mealplans for certain illnesses  that are from the 50´s or earlier...but than it was proven that it was wrong...and the hospitals still hold on tightly to outdated information.


Another problem is that the meals are delivered and often need only to be heated...and than are heated the wrong way.

Either not hot enough, so they are still cold, lukewarm and what is worse, bacterias might grow and lead to an outbreak.

Especially salmonella are a problem with sauces made with egg, desserts or breakfast scrambled eggs..or chicken dishes.

Not too long ago hundreds of patients fell ill with salmonella that was tracked back to a dessert made with eggwhites and not completly heated through.

Or in other cases the food is heated too long, veggies limp and soggie, bakery items dry and hard or even burnt.


Salmonellas are a big problem..not only for the very ill like cancer patients or someone who is recovering from a big operation. They are a big danger for the elderly,pregnant or children, but also for the average adult.

It is very contraproductive to go into a hospital to get better, just to contract an infection from the food..or loose strength because the food is inedible

Most hospitals spent only 1,50  to 2 dollar/english pound or euro on a patients food for a day. Just food, not labour or the cost of electricity included.

So now I try to work out a meal plan that has a great nutritional value, is with easily to cook dishes  that can be made in the house, are tasty  and also don´t break the budget.

For now it will be a weeks worth on meals.

Breakfast, lunch with soup, main meal and dessert or similiar dishes(like when you have a stew you don´t need a soup and the dessert can be lighter), a simple thing for tea time and dinner.

The menu should be easily adaptable or suitable for a wide range of patients(diabetes, celiac disease, gastritis etc)

You  still would need to choose from a weekly menu, but you could make notes on the side or even purchase something by the side(like when you want lots of fresh fruits which would be out of the menuplan but you could pay for those if friends and family can´t bring you them..or just chocolat, humans best friend next to dogs)


So...let the fun begin and see what can be done

Mittwoch, 21. März 2012

When is a calorie not a calorie?

Is a calorie a calorie, or not?

An interesting read.
But I miss some points which I will add here.

First, the human body is not like a car, you don´t dump food in it and it will burn the food and win so and so much energy..or work a certain ammount of time.

The body can decrease and increase its metabolism,this is why some people can stay alive and work on 800kcal daily while others eat 3000 and more calories and have not even an extra ounce of fat on their frame.


Also...the calorie of white rice is digested differently from the calorie of parboiled or whole rice.

Same with the fructose-glucose sirup in soft drinks and the same ammount of glucose-fructose from fresh fruits.

Just look at the glyx/glykämic index.
The higher the numbers, the faster it will push your blood sugar levels up.

White polished rice will rise your blood sugar fast...and as fast it will again drop.
Parboiled rice is not much different to white rice, except that it contains more minerals and vitamins through the parboiling that pushes the vitamins and minerals from the bran and outer layer of the rice kernel deeper into the grain before the bran is polished off.

Those minerals and vitamins help to make parboiled rice a healthier choice, beeing less harsh on the ups and downs of the bloodsugar.

Nothing is different between those two..except that one has more micronutrients and helps the body to digest the calories in a more bodily friendly way.


Worth some thought, don´t you think so?


The sugar in soft drinks is like a wild rollercoaster ride..up and down and whooops...

Fruits have fiber, vitamins,  minerals and micronutrients that will give your body nourishment and long lasting energy...even when the sugar in fruits is a simple sugar and scientists told us it will go fast in the blood and just as fast will drop us again from the sugar high.

Fruits deliver fast energy, but they don´t drop you from a cliff.


Calories without micronutrients will make the body belief that its starves, therefor storing more fat and lowering the metabolism 


Tests with rats have shown that those feed part of their calories with sugar water will gain weight even when they have the same calories and exercise like other rats who are feed complete foods.


Those rats on a sugar drop will also get nervous, hysteric, agressive if they can not get their sugar water and will, like junkies, gulp down big ammounts of their allowance when they are given back the sugar water....

Digestion is a complex system

The body knows from a combination of stretch receptors in the stomach,through intake and digestion of micronutrients  and intake of whole foods  when he had enough.

This is why stomach fillers like tablets and fibre drinks don´t really work..you still feel hungry after a short period of fullness because your body realises, even with the receptors telling you that the stomach has been full, you miss nutrients.

And because the body is learning what food he has to expects, the worse your diet was before, the harder it is to tell your body that he doesn´t need as much as he got before.

The body expects a certain feeling of fullness, a certain ammount of calories, a certain ammount of sugar, fat and protein...just like your dog will expect you to go for walks at certain times, wake up, or feed him/her.

We don´t know yet how exactly the body can know those things or see through the tricks we use on him to fake a full meal or sugar where there is only sweetener...but our body developed to survive...so it is just pure survival to realise that a certain food, even when tasting sweet or make you feeling full, does not provide enough calories or nutrients.

Or our ancestors would have starved.


Another part of this survival practice comes into play with out calorie rich, but nutrient devoid moder diet.

Oh you get more than enough from all macronutriens...so much protein, fat and sugar as you desire.

But soda, white flour products, hamburgers and chicken wings do not provide all the micronutrients we need.

Our body realises that he just doesn´t get enough of those, despite the protein,carb and fat overload.

So our body thinks he is in some kind of starvation,which he is, starving for micronutrients he needs to function properly, lowering the metabolism, storing the calories because he gets too much from those and still making us feel hungry.

Because the body IS hungry, starving for minerals, vitamins, phytonutrients, healthy fatty acids which are lacking in the modern diet.

Our body makes us hungry to eat, to find a food to restore the micronutrients he needs, but what do we grab? More soda, more fries, more white toast, more chicken wings, more hamburgers, cheese pizza and so on.

And we still feel hungry, but we can not tell for what.

Food devoid of nutrients doesn´t exist in the wild. If it gives you enough calories it also delivers normally enough micronutrients.

Nature didn´t know that humans one day would strip all the fibre, minerals, vitamins and other micronutrients from the food, leaving only fat, carbs and protein.


A calorie is not a calorie when you eat refined foods

Why Vegans shouldn´t say that plants do not feel pain and/or have no awareness

This is one of the pet peeves between deatheaters and vegans.

Vegans can only roll their eyes when deatheaters come with the argument that plants feel pain to, therefor vegans are also murderers.
Or even more hilarious.
"Think of the poor plants you eat, you monsters!"


If deatheaters really would care about plants, they wouldn´t eat animals.

Because it is something that even kindergarten children grasp,that animals have to eat many, many plants until they are grown up.

In the USA is 12 times more space used to grow hays for cows and other lifestock, than is used to grow vegetables for human consumption.

Most sources can tell you that cows are feed 12 pounds of grains/soy/corn to grow one pound of muscle(beef)-not to count the grass and hay they have to be feed too.

So even small children grasp the principe of the food chain and the convertion from food to bodily tissue.

To make it simple, deatheaters kill 10-15 times more plants just through feeding and raising animals for their plate.

Not to count the plants and animals that die when fields are plowed, sprayed and harvested which are not part of this food chain.


But that doesn´t stop deatheaters from swinging the argument..plants feel pain, therefor vegans are murderers too.




Well, I never heard a vegan say that plants are not alive or are not killed by eating them, so the argument that vegans are killers too and say otherwise is invalid.


Also that they are not better than deatheaters themselves is invalid, because people have to eat something to live...and vegans choose to eat stuff which causes the least harm.

The land that feeds 2 people with plants and meatproducts, can also feed 12 vegans.




But lets now get to the real issue....

Do plants feel pain and have self awareness?


Well, we can not say for sure....

100 years ago it was said that animals and non whites can not feel pain, they just react like automates to a stimulus.

But now we know that this isn´t true.

Plants are much more different to us than animals. We can not see nerves, a brain or a heart in plants.
But they are alive..they react to light, to insects, to pheromones of other plants that are warning them from approaching insects that want to eat them.

Plants communicate with each other.

With saying that plants do not feel pain or have no awareness, just because our imagination and science isn´t developed far enough, doesn´t mean it is so.

Or we would still believe that the world is flat and we could fall down from there into the nothingness.

Also the sun is moving around the earth..but we know that is not true...we evolved, our science got better, our horizon broadened.

When sometimes in the future scientists will bring the undeniable proof that plants feel and are selfaware, deatheater will just use that to taunt vegans further and say they are not better than themselves.

The best way to withstand pressure is to bend...and flow with it.

So let us say...yes it could be that plants feel pain and are selfaware and we just do not have the means to proof that nowadays.

Therefor it is even more important to eat a plant based diet, because that kills less plants(and animals) than eating meat from animals, which had first to be raised on hundredthousands more plants than if we had eaten the plants directly.

Becaus plants may be able to feel, go and kill less of them..eat a plant based diet if you really care