My boyfriend has been complaining for months about the smell of my Nalgene water bottle. Best friend told me, it’s just old, that’s unavoidable. So I finally decided to replace it, but bf could not find them at Superstore. I read on Mercola tonight a confusing article, but understood his comments about safe(r) plastics.
Plastics that are safer to use for storing food and beverages, none of which are known to leach harmful substances include:
Polypropylene, designated “#5 PP”
High-density polyethylene, designated “#2HDPE”
Low-density polyethylene, designated “#4 LDPE”
I was thankful, then, to find out that all our plastic containers are #5 PP. My water bottle, unfortunately, just says #7, and it’s getting old. It’s Lexan. I can’t tell if it has discoloured because it’s grey! (Say no to Lexan and polycarbonate!!!) It’s not going to kill me but I feel a little uneasy. I still used (and re-used, once) bottled water we bought on our trip. We ended up buying 3 and didn’t use as much on the way home. My 500mL bottle gets used up very quickly between the two of us and it was unfortunate that we didn’t have two more, but at least we had cold water!
I re-used your good old basic thin plastic water bottles for YEARS, from elementary school through to at least grade 10. I don’t know how old my Nalgene bottle is, but maybe 3 years old. Gross… time to be replaced.
The best, they say, is still glass… but it’s heavy and it breaks, so it’s not that practical for use when I go out. Mercola made a good point, though, about the style of Nalgene bottle you might get: the wide-mouth ones can be CLEANED! I find it very comfortable to drink out of, although the biggest ones (1L) are a bit large. Great for day-long excursions and road trips, though.
We’ll see if I can find them tomorrow, hm? And good thing, too, that we didn’t get Lexan ones again because it’s entirely possible they’re not safe, or at least in the long run. The safer, but less trendy HDPE ones are cheaper on their website than the polycarbonate. I’d rather know that I’m not damaging my body than look cool with a water bottle in tow.
Any more evidence?
As a graduation requirement, we must establish communication with a mentor during the course of our grad project(s). They can be a subject, technology, or production expert (with at least 5 years of professional experience) or a designer. “Mentors provide valuable input to Senior Projects to help validate topics and design solutions.”
I’ve now decided to focus my grad project on creating/increasing (through a website) our awareness of the degradation of the quality of our food, in order to change our relationship with food, to change our attitude toward it. I’m also going to be exploring alternative methods of navigation within the frame of the website.
I’m looking for someone who can either provide expertise in nutrition — and all that is wrong with the food industry and its products today — or expertise in Flash/web design. If you are either, or know anyone who is, please contact me right away. Thanks!
Everyone at this point is aware of the airline terrorism plot, metro/train bombs, etc. I’m reading this article from BBC News about the remote possibility of agro-terrorism in the US.
Craig Watz, an FBI special agent who runs the agro-terrorism conference, says that when he talks at lunches or dinners, he emphasises how people need to change the way they think about food.
“How many people thought about the safety or security of food, who handled it, who prepared it, where it came from?” he asks.
“We do have to be vigilant not only getting on an airplane or in buses or train systems, but we also have to be vigilant in who’s handling our food.”
I think the first two statements make important points, but outside of “terrorism.” (Personally I think there should be more emphasis on a term they’ve started using, “extremists.”) We really don’t know where our food comes from most of the time. We don’t know what’s been put on our fruits & vegetables. Industralized food often means a lack of nutrition, so we’re forgetting that food EQUALS nutrition, not food equals edible stuff we can shove in our mouths to satisfy a hunger.
Continue reading The right to live without fear »
BBC News has posted a story with some shocking details about the health of English children. I was aware of the proliferation of sugar in processed foods but wasn’t aware of the decrease in fibre. Maybe I’d have less sugar cravings if I ate less sugar, period. Hmm… anyway. “One in four children in England are obese, official statistics published earlier this year showed.” If this doesn’t tell you there’s a problem, I don’t know what does. I feel bad for overweight kids I see, and not all of them have similarly overweight parents. And, for pre-teen and teenage girls, on the one hand you’ve got stick-thin models and actresses, and on the other a source of food that is not ready to promote a healthy body. Even the agricultural industry tends to prefer lusty-looking, big fruit lacking in nutrients and taste. Potatoes are now cardboard, and you’re lucky if you find french fries made of potatoes. I have a feeling that I’m a rarity to have grown up eating McDonald’s on shopping outings and now avoid it and tend to say ‘no thanks’ to fries. When it comes to the ice cream in the fridge, though… it’s hard to resist. For those of you with my problem, try replacing some of the ice cream with a banana, or other fruit like strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries.
My bananas, disappointingly, went spotty before they even ripened. At that point, they’re too sweet and squishy for my taste, so I decided to make some banana bread. Mm-mmm. I bought two small loaf pans today. They’re non-stick and I hope they’re not teflon, but it doesn’t say so. Anyway, they’re SO slippery that when I got the pan out of the oven with my oven mitts on it SLID OFF MY HANDS and fell on the floor, spilling my almost-done “bread” on the floor. If it were done it might have slid out but not been ruined. I figured out I had too much banana, as the recipe said 3 or 4, and I had 4 so I used them all, but they were large. Next time I want a cup measurement!
It’s in the oven again, what remains of it. No longer perfect. It’s mushy and now I’m wondering whether it’ll be burnt before it solidifies, and of course, while the chocolate is liquid it’s not going to be solid in there. What a disaster!
The good news is… IT TASTES AMAZING!!!
I used this recipe but added milk chocolate chips and chopped pecans. Other recipes included nuts but required bigger pans and more ingredients.
At least the Angel Food Cake turned out pretty well…
a friend posted a bulletin at myspace, by Alan Cassels.
here’s the intro:
There’s a new mania and I’ve got it. At least, I think I’ve got it.
I seem to have all the symptoms for someone whose mania is seeing diseases everywhere. It’s like “all illness, all the time.”
I’ve got “disease mongering mania.” Call it DMM for short.
All around me I hear voices chanting the mantra, “You’re sick, don’t suffer in silence, see your doctor, get treatment. You’re sick, don’t suffer in…” etc.
These same voices seem to be coming from all kinds of unique places: television and magazine ads, the wife of a former prime minister, even from the pages of a medical journal as two psychiatrists battle it out.
Ironically, my current form of DMM seems to be largely emanating from the makers of powerful drugs for schizophrenia – a coincidence, that? – and they all seem to be saying the same thing: It may not be depression; it could be bipolar disorder.”
Full article at Common Ground
You know when you’re taking a shower and you get a funny taste on your tongue, and realise it’s your shampoo, but you didn’t get any in your mouth? Well my receptors got a little criss-crossed when I tasted a peach and knew that if nail polish remover were a drink, that this peach would taste like that. Needless to say I threw it out. What a waste. Mom asked if it was from California. I wasn’t sure. She told me it was the chemicals they use to make it ripen faster. I figured it must be irradiation, and that bothered me.
From Wikipedia’s page on food irradiation:
“Under certain circumstances some research suggests that irradiation forms new chemicals in food, some of which are uniquely radiolytic products. However, the levels of these compounds produced in irradiated foods have been deemed too low to present a meaningful risk to consumers. At very high doses, e.g. >6 kilogray, irradiation can reduce the vitamins and other essential nutrients; and negatively impact the flavor, odor and texture of food. At the doses typically used in irradiation treatment of food, e.g. <3.5 kilogray, these changes appear minimal."
Save a penny a day, you have $1 in 100 days. What about this?
