Organic Diet

Your best shot at safety in food is to eat whole, unprocessed foods,organic and wild caught. Like The Silver Cloud Diet says. But its good to see the FDA is gonna get its teeth back. Yeah!

Advocates for food safety scored a major win last week when the House of Representatives approved a bill that will initiate sweeping reform to existing laws.

The Food Safety Enhancement Act, H.R. 2749, will increase the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority in food production inspections, developing new enforcement measures and tracking food recalls.

Government funds of $3.5 billion will be allocated to facilitate the revisions, partially funded by a $500 annual tax on food producers. The bill passed by a vote of 283 to 142.

“This bipartisan, landmark bill will fundamentally change the way we protect public health against such outbreaks and update our federal food safety laws to keep pace with the changes in our food production and processing methods,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a statement. “It provides the FDA better access to the records of food producers and manufacturers, without having to wait for an outbreak of food-borne illness. And it strengthens penalties imposed on food facilities that fail to comply with safety requirements.”

Initial support for the bill grew from multiple instances of salmonella-related illness and recalls over the last several years with items such as spinach, peanut products and peppers.

Leslie G. Sarasin, president and chief executive officer of the Food Marketing Institute, lauded the bill’s passing, in a statement: “We are pleased that the bill endows the FDA with new powers such as mandatory recall authority, which will improve its ability to safeguard the food supply. We support the measure’s recognition of fully accredited third-party food safety certification programs and the need to develop traceability initiatives that build on industry efforts already under way.”

Sarasin was recently named one of *Progressive Grocer*’s “Top Women in Grocery” for her efforts in promoting food safety and initiating national reform.

Although the bill was generally well-received by the food and foodservice industries, some are still looking for additional amendments to the bill’s current provisions, such as increased requirements on record-keeping for restaurateurs. There are also concerns about the proposed tax for food producers, which may result in pricing increases for consumers.

President Obama called the bill “a major step forward in modernizing our food safety system,” in a statement, and called for the support of Senate members who have yet to cast their vote.

Voting with your Fork – Weight loss

Last week, I went to see the new documentary, Food, Inc. I can’t get over the impressions I got from that movie.

One, industrial farming may sicken consumers who eat the foods that are produced in this monoculture agriculture model.

But we have a lot of power in the market place, and if we all just vote for organic foods – yes they’re even available at Walmart and enlightened grocery store chains (in my hometown I can get all the organic produce I want at Stop and Shop).

Organic milk and eggs are everywhere. Organic fish, well any wild caught fish is – by definition – organic. Not that the fish might not have been contaminated by mercury, et al from the waters (avoid tuna and swordfish except once in awhile).

We can choose cold pressed oils easily: extra virgin olive oil, cold pressed nut oils, coconut oil. These are infinitely healthier than industrial oils like Wesson, or any cottonseed or soy oil.

And speaking of soy, just don’t swallow the marketer’s story that soy milk is better for you than cow’s milk. It just ain’t so. Soy vitamins and minerals are not bioavailable. In baby formulae, little helpless children have sickened and died when fed soy formula exclusively.

The old ways really are the best. Shop at farmer’s markets. Find a source for grass fed beef. Be mindful of what you eat, every day. Your life depends on it.

Linda West Eckhardt

Eat More Saturated Fat. Lower Your Cholesterol. Improve Your Weight and Heart Health – Weight Loss

Yes, it’s true. The more saturated fat you eat, the healthier you will be, and all the while, losing weight at a gratifying rate.

How is this possible? In a study done by endocrinologist, James Hays, MD., he found that by putting his patients who were at risk for diabetes type II on a diet that consisted of *half* the calories coming from saturated fats and NO starches. they not only lost up to 5% of their body weight in six weeks, but dramatically improved their cholesterol levels.

Importantly, the high-fat diet did not have harmful effects on cholesterol levels. In fact, the participants saw a lowering of the blood fat called triglycerides. “Bad” LDL and “good” HDL cholesterol levels didn’t change, but the size of the HDL and LDL molecules increased.

Larger LDL molecules are less likely to form artery-clogging plaques. Larger HDL molecules stay around in the body longer to clean up more plaque.

“We also saw a significant drop in glucose and insulin levels,” Hays reported to WebMD. Higher blood sugar (glucose) and insulin levels indicate the early signs of diabetes.

Hays told WebMD that he believes the heart-healthy benefits of his Atkins-like eating plan are because of its high intake of saturated fats — considered by most experts to *cause* heart disease.

“Cholesterol leaves our body through bile, and high-fat foods cause bile secretion,” he says. “Although I would caution that this is genetically determined, I think that most people are able to excrete huge amounts of cholesterol they’re consuming with this bile secretion.” Still, he advises that anyone starting any type of high-fat diet keep close tabs on their cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

Light, Lite, or Sugar Free? What’s Best and What’s the Difference

Label Reading is one of the most important skills you can learn to stay on your Silver Cloud. As a general rule, you should buy products in the grocery store with a carb count under 10. This is not always so easy and especially with the deliberate confusion foisted off on us by the food marketers.

Like today. My grandchildren love crepes for breakfast. We don’t eat flour in our family and we make them with oats that we whiz up in the food processor into an oat flour. Lily likes her oat crepes with unsweetened whipped cream and fresh berries. Noel, the traditionalist who likes everything “olden-fashioned” wants his with butter and syrup. So today, I’m in the syrup aisle wondering what’s the best.

It’s a cinch I won’t be buying regular pancake syrup with its 60+ carb grams. Nor the “Light” one with 36 carb grams, nor even the “Lite” which still has 26 carbohydrate grams. Ixnay. But then I find one marked “Sugar-Free” and sweetened with Splenda and coming in at 7 grams carb per serving. Now we’re talking.

And I just want to say that these luscious Oat Crepes are good not only for a kid’s breakfast but for your own sunday brunch and dessert. Yahoo. A luscious sweet and I’m still on the Silver Cloud.

Staying On Target With Your Diet Goals

By: Linda Eckhardt

I don’t know about you. But many things can cause me to lose focus on my diet goals. A celebration. A bad day at work. A disagreement with the neighbor who is cutting down a healthy 100 year old tree. A friend coming into town for two weeks.

All these things can interfere with staying on your Silver Cloud, or at least they can for me. Why is this? If you think about it, coping with disappointment, anger, or even great and good fortune have been associated with food in our culture, and certainly in my life for a long time.

So what strategies can you develop to help you make better decisions? First of all, if you fell off the wagon and ate a cookie or three, forgive yourself and go on. If you can just get in touch with what you’re really thinking and feeling, you can probably find a more appropriate way to handle the emotion than just pigging out.