CULTURE SHOCK!

The other day I had to go to the east side of Harlem for a doctor visit and decided it would be a great idea to visit the Pathmark grocery store that sits on 125th and Lexington. It's a pretty sizable grocery store that takes up a good 1/2 portion of the block.

I was a bit hungry and knew it could wait, but I wanted to see how much organic food I could find in the store since I was already there. I wasn't going to let the crack heads hanging out front deter me.

Walking through the isles alone was enough to give me a coronary!! In all of my life I have never seen thousands of square footage (in the form of an oral death trap) posing as a grocery store. In this photo half of the isle alone is ORANGE!!!! Cheese curls, cheese puffs, party mix with orange snack mix......unbelievable! That wasn't even the snack isle!!!

Then there was the enormous kiosk from Nabisco that held Oreos on one side and canned cheese spread on the other side. The section of chicken nuggets.....HOW MANY TYPES OF CHICKEN NUGGETS ARE THERE? The section was the equivalent size of a normal dairy section at some of the bodegas in the city!

Every which way I turned it just kept getting better. There were huge meat sections just dedicated to sausage. Then in the snack section/isle featured endless corn syrup-based sodas while opposing every brand of chip imaginable.

The produce department was pathetic. Organic or not it didn't even appeal to me. It made me imagine flies swarming over the produce like the way that an illustrator would draw for the sunday comics feature. Earthbound organic spinach seemed to be the only organic item in the entire store.

I found myself having to pick my jaw up off of the floor after my visit. What are we doing America?! No wonder we're so sick! Does Pathmark provide this type of food because that is what is affordable? Is this food a lifestyle? Do people want to see more real food available? How did it ever come to this?!?!?

FAUX FOOD LABELS

Happy Easter Everyone!

Given that a lot of businesses were closed for Easter it made me exercise moving out of my comfort zone for once to explore other options.

On my random walk around the city I spotted the opening of a new cafe called Fresh & Co.
I wanted to witness how "fresh" they were. At first they looked like any other corner deli/restaurant, but amidst the sodas and the chips they had prepackaged organic pasta dishes and fresh juices.

What really put me off was the fact that they designed their juice label to look like the USDA symbol from a distance. This is conditioning the consumer to feel a certain way about a product. This is really not cool. My patience is running thin with this kind of subliminal marketing. I'm hoping that someone brings it to the USDA's attention.

Personally I was so put off by the design that I walked out of the store. A design that was problem made to make the consumer trust their products was exactly what put me off of their products. What's worse is I have no idea if their produce is GMO or not.

How do we trust these companies?

Gonna have to really figure this one out. I'm wondering who to speak to about stricter labeling guidelines?

RESPONSIBLE CONSUMERS

I can't believe how much time has passed and how much I have already learned. It is so encouraging to see how my own changes in my life have started to impact others. I even saw one of my friends secretly start to change some of their products to organic (even though he was laughing at me in the beginning)! My brother is making his own granola. Friends are going to organic restaurants. There are exciting changes being made.

In the beginning of my journey I spoke of how Fresh Direct had included Kashi in their organic section. I also spoke about how they would not respond to how upset I was that they put items that were not organic in their organic section of their website. It's a long story, but if you go back to the beginning of the blog you can read more about it.

Right after I got the Kashi in January I found a group/note on Facebook called the Kashi Misconceptions. I posted my grievances. I was upset how we as consumers are being misled in so many ways.

This past week a woman named Lori Geiger (her photo is above) posted a little more helpful information. I asked Lori if I could post her photo and response to the thread because I admired that she exercised her right as a responsible consumer.

I really feel like we as consumers need to stop trusting everything that is handed to us. We need to really connect to the things that we put on and in our bodies.

This is what Lori posted about Kashi:

"My local food co-op store stopped carrying Kashi. :~( When asked why, they said Kashi uses genetically modified grains. Never one to believe things without confirmation, I called Kashi. They stated that they never intentionally purchase GM grains, however there is no certainty that the grains have not been contaminated at the farm level. They carry only 4 items marked organic, all cereals. Sad day in Kashi land! :o(
I do not believe this rests on the company's shoulders. If there were more oversight of the GMO or didn't use them at all on the farm, we wouldn't have this problem!"


What I love most about Lori is that she is open and not angry. There is a lot of love in what she says and no fear. She didn't trust what one person said. She went straight to the source.

Yeah Lori!

SO GMO?

Ah ha! Someone just sent me a link to some studies about GM (genetically modified) foods. As I said before I am less worried about pesticides than I am GMO's. I don't like how it's modified especially if you're using a virus to invade the cell of the plant to change its DNA!

I have not had a chance to read this yet, but I thought I would go ahead and pass this along anyway. It's called Scientific evidence documenting the Negative impacts of Genetically Modified (GM) Foods on Human and Animal Health and Environment.

Let me know what you think!

CHEMICAL ALERT

So after a bit of light searching it looks as though I was correct. From the sounds of it the body does have a hard time processing some chemicals. Those chemicals do get stored in our fat. Toxins are fat soluble. If it comes from food it can tend to gather around the waistline because it is the body's way of protecting the major organs from the amount of acid the body builds up.

You can read up on this fascinating information at this link: http://common-patient-ailments.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_liver_an_overview

That does not mean that I agree with all of the cleanses that are going on out there. A cleanse could be just as simple as eliminating all of the garbage in your diet! Keeping away from sugar, meat, simple carbohydrates......just eating clean with fish, fruit, veggies, etc for a week could do wonders without putting strain on your system.

Just some food for thought!

JAMIE'S FOOD REVOLUTION STARTS TONIGHT!

I'm very excited that tonight on ABC Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will be airing.

Follow this link to get more information!!! http://tinyurl.com/yj4pwgk

LET'S GET NAKED!

I was in the middle of Harlem about to pass out from being tied up in an appointment for 5 hours with no food or water so I ducked into a bodega to try to see if there was anything that I could eat or drink that could be organic.

I ran across NAKED's new tropical smoothie with coconut juice. I knew they were known for not having anything artificial in them, but that wasn't good enough for me. What grabbed my attention was the fact that the label said that there were no GMO's in the bottle. That means none of the produce was genetically modified. Back to the Coconut....it is also a really good electrolyte which balances the body. The coconut also cuts the calories of the smoothies by 35%.

My real issue this entire time has been genetically modified foods. Something tells me our bodies may not be able to process our GMO foods. Sometimes the body has a very difficult time getting rid of chemicals, etc. Eventually the body stores those chemicals in our fat cells.

The funny thing is many doctors know that toxins are fat soluble. Is it possible that chemicals can make us fat? Hmmmmmmm? I'm going to have to look into this further.

In the meantime I am very happy to see Naked is not messing with their fruit. Worst case scenario I think I would take pesticides over GMO's!