Day 180

Thoughts: The evolution of food.

If I had created 'The Earth Diet' before the 1st century the human beings who occupied the earth at the time would have laughed at me. Eating purely foods naturally provided by the earth is not the 'Newest Thing'. In fact, it's the oldest thing. Humans started out eating only what nature intended. We began to create new recipes, pastries, white bread, milk shakes, jelly beans, hot dogs, tv dinners, sugars and processed foods only after we mastered the technology to create it. The natural foods like fruits, vegetables and nuts we eat are not invented; they evolve. If you have ever wondered about the history of food, you don't have to anymore, I did the hours of research for you! I found it fascinating to trek all the way back to BC (Before Christ) today and see how our food has evolved : (And remember I did not write history, I wrote this using all the resources available to me today)

Water, ice, salt, oysters, shellfish and fish, eggs, mushrooms, insects, rice and millet were all traced back earlier than 10,000BC.

10,000BC Agriculture begins
10,000BC Bread, beer and soup
10,000BC Almonds and cherries
9,000BC Sheep
8,000BC Wheat, apples, lentils
7,000BC Pork and pistachios, beans: old world & new world, walnuts
6,500BC Cattle domestication
6,000BC Wine and spelt, maize and tortillas, dates and broccoli
5,500BC Honey, chickpeas & lettuce
5,000BC Olives and olive oil, cucumbers and squash, chilli peppers, avocados, potatoes, milk & yogurt
4,000BC Yeast breads: pitta and focaccia
4,000BC Grapes, watermelons, oranges
3,600BC Popcorn
3,200BC Chicken domestication
3,000BC Butter & palm oil, barley, peas, carrots, onions, garlic, spices
3,000BC Ice cream
2,900BC Figs, soybeans
2,737BC Tea
2,700BC Rhubarb
2,500BC Duck
2,000BC Pasta and noodles, radishes, carob, marshmallows & liquorice
1,500BC Peanuts, chocolate (cocao bean) & vanilla, horseradish
1,490BC Raisins
1,200BC Sugar
1,000BC Pickles, peaches, oats
900BC Polenta
900BC Tomatoes
850BC Celery
750BC Cider
700BC Cinnamon
600BC Cabbage
500BC Italian sausages & artichokes
200BC Turkeys and asparagus
55BC Devon cattle
1st Century Fried chicken, French toast, flan & cheesecake, The Haggis, lobster, crab and shrimp, truffles, strawberries & raspberries, capers, turnips & kale, chestnuts
3rd Century Lemons
4th Century Beets and bananas
5th Century Vinegar, pastries & appetizers, Anglo Saxon foods, peppercorns and gardencress, pretzels
6th century Eggplant
7th Century Kimchi,
9th Century Halva & goulash, coffee, cod
10th Century Medieval food, Peking duck
11th Century Lychees, corned beef & cider
12th Century Breadfruit,
13th Century Ravioli, lasagne, pancakes, waffles, couscous
14th Century Scrambled eggs, guacamole, pie, Mexican limes, kebabs,
15th Century Coconuts, sushi & sashimi
1475 Pork and beans
1490 First stove built in Alsace, France
1493 Pineapples, cows in America
1495 Marmalade
16th Century Salsa, quiche, puff paste, teriyaki chicken, pecans, papayas, turkeys in Europe, cashews, Japanese tempura, brandy
1517 Sweet potatoes in Europe
1529 Vanilla in Europe
1544 Tomatoes in Europe
1554 Camembert cheese
1587 Brussels sprouts
1590 Shakespeares food
1596 English trifle, skim milk
1597 Potato salad
1599 Hasty pudding
17th Century Pralines & coffee cake, cream puffs & éclairs, maple syrup, modern ice cream, cranberries in America, doughnuts in America, corn bread, hoe cakes, spoonbread, cheese pie, shortbread, French onion soup, salad
1604 Raspberry Jelly
1610 Bagels
1615 Coffee in Europe
1650 Rum
1653 Pumpkin pie and lemonade
1686 Croissants
1690 Rice in South Caroline
1691 Lemon meringue pie
18th Century Crab cakes, English muffins & chowder, sticky buns, Dutch Cuisine, coffee in America, root beer, French fries & ketchup
1708 Casseroles
1740 Pound cakes & cupcakes
1747 Mashed potatoes
1750 Grapefruit
1775 Dried apples
1756 Mayonnaise & tartar sauce
1762 Sandwhiches
1764 Bakers chocolate
1765 The first restaurant (paris)
1767 Soda water
1769 Tofu in America
1781 Tomatoes in America
1784 Lollipops
1786 Deviled eggs
1787 Toad-in-a-hole
19th Century Wedding cake, shepherds pie and pickled peppers, canapés & hamburgers, Sally Lunn, Victorian Era, hotdogs, The history of the calorie began in the mid-nineteenth century.
1807 Ice cream cones
1811 Corn syrup
1817 Toffee and butterscotch
1820 Lady fingers
1824 Steak sauce
1825 First metal cans for canned food
1828 Macadamia nuts
1830 Softdrinks in America
1835 Worcestershire sauce
1847 Chinese food in America, vanilla extract, peanut brittle
1848 Pesto, commercial chewing gum
1849 Sourdough bread, Cadbury chocolate
1850 Modern marshmellows
1855 Boston cream pie
1856 Condensed milk
1857 Australian James Harrison developed the world first practical ice making machine and refrigeration system,
1859 Baking powder
1860 Fish and chips, ice tea, can opener
1861 Beef stoganoff
1863 Breakfast cereal, fruit salad
1867 Synthetic baby food
1868 Tabasco sauce
1869 Waffle iron
1870 Margarine, California raisins, Neapolitan ice cream
1872 Philadelphia cream cheese
1876 Heinz Ketchup
1877 Campbells soup
1879 Nestle Chocolate , Lindt Chocolate
1880 Passion fruit, French dressing, meat loaf, vending machines for post cards in London
1883 Christmas pudding
1885 Milk shakes and Dr pepper, evaporated milk
1886 Coca Cola, pecan pie
1888 First vending machines in USA, New York city selling tutti-fruity gum,
1889 Pizza
1890 Ice cream sundaes, lipton tea
1891 Cafeteria Kansas City
1893 Cracker jacks, fudge
1894 Hershey bars, eggs Benedict, chilli powder
1895 Peanut butter, shredded coconut
1896 Oatmeal cookies
1897 Jello, 1000 island dressing, cotton candy, chocolate brownies
1898 Jelly beans and candy corn, pepsi
1900 Oysters kirkpatrick
1901 Peanut butter & jelly
1903 Canned tuna
1905 New York pizza, submarine sandwiches
1906 Kellogg’s Corn Flakes
1907 Gum ball machines
1912 Oreos
1914 Anzac biscuits
1917 Moon pies
1918 Fortune cookies
1920 First vending machine to dispense sodas into cups
1921 Wheaties, zucchini
1922 Gummi bears, vegemite, girl scout cookies, blender
1923 Popsicles
1924 Frozen foods, Caesar salad
1926 Ice cream sandwich
1927 S’mores
1928 Health bars
1930 Twinkies, pavlova cake, banana bread, soufflé
1931 Tacos, dry soup mix, refrigerator biscuits
1933 Peanut butter cookies
1934 Hawaiian punch, Ritz crackers
1935 Sloppy joes, jagermeister, cheeseburger (Humpty Dumpty Drive-in)
1936 Dagwood sandwhiches, drive in restaurants Glendale California
1937 Spam & krispy kreme, chicken kiev
1938 Canned soda, chicken & waffles
1940 Vending machine for coca-cola and pepsi
1941 M & Ms, cherries
1942 Corndogs
1943 Irish coffee & nachos, Chicago style pizza
1946 Nutella, instant coffee
1948 Frozen French fries, ready to spread frostings
1949 Seedless watermelon, instant pudding, minute rice
1950 Smoothies, frozen pizza, Kraft process cheese slices, dishwasher, first metal lunch box, Oleomargarine Act requires prominent labeling of colored oleomargarine, to distinguish it from butter. (Yes, swindlers tried to sell folks cheap margarine in the guise of butter.
1952 Diet soda
1953 Tv dinners
1954 Ranch dressing, Mc Donalds
1955 Chex mic
1956 Panini
1958 Instant ramen noddles, Food Additives Amendment enacted, requiring manufacturers of new food additives to establish safety. Going forward, manufacturers were required to declare all additives in a product.
1960 Brown rice in USA, green eggs and ham
1962 Instant mash potato
1964 Buffalo wings & pop tarts, chicken sandwiches (fast food), pita bread
1965 Gatorade & slurpees
1967 High fructose corn syrup
1969 Creamed ground beef
1970 Tiramisu, soft drink bottles grew 20 to 24 ounces
1973 California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) is formed. Begins with 54 farmers mutually certifying each other’s adherence to its own published, publicly available standards for defining organic produce.
1977 Happy Meal at Mc Donalds
1980 Mud pie, pasta salad
1984 Red Bull energy drink
1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) is passed. It requires all packaged foods to bear nutrition labeling and all health claims for foods to be consistent with terms defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. As a concession to food manufacturers, the FDA authorizes some health claims for foods. The food ingredient panel, serving sizes, and terms such as “low fat” and “light” are standardized. This is pretty much the nutrition label as we know it today.
1991 Nutrition facts, basic per-serving nutritional information, are required on foods under the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990. Food labels are to list the most important nutrients in an easy-to-follow format.
1998 Grape tomatoes
2001 Omega 3 eggs
2002 The 2002 Farm Bill requires retailers provide country-of-origin (COOL) labeling for fresh beef, pork, and lamb. After repeated debilitation and stakeholder pressures, the law would finally go into effect only 6 years later, on Oct 1, 2008, and even then with many loopholes. AND The National Organic Program (NOP), enacted. It restricts the use of the term “organic” to certified organic producers (USDA).
2003 Announcement made that FDA will require food labels to include trans fat content. Labeling went into effect in 2006.
2004 Passage of the Food Allergy Labeling and Consumer Protection Act. Requires labeling of any food that contains one or more of: peanuts, soybeans, cow’s milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, and wheat. AND Baked Doritos in. Fried Doritos out.
2006 Deep fried coco cola
2009 Smart Choices launches formally with several hundreds of products labeled with the green check mark. Froot Loops becomes the poster child for everything wrong with an industry backed nutrition rating system.
2010 New product introductions like Wrigley’s 5 gum, Genetically Modified Foods

In the last 100 years, the choice of food, the food itself and human dependence upon it has changed more than in any other time in history. Now we have ‘pretend food’. It’s called Genetically modified (GM) foods, which are foods derived from genetically modified organisms. Genetically modified organisms have had specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering, using a process of either Cisgenesis or Transgenesis. The world population has topped 6 billion people and is predicted to double in the next 50 years. Ensuring an adequate food supply for this booming population is going to be a major challenge in the years to come. Genetically Modified foods promise to meet this need in a number of ways for example pest resistance, crop losses from insect pests can be staggering, cold tolerance and nutrition. Is it possible to continue living on the Earth without GMF?

A beautiful and intelligent friend of mine Leanne Bridges who is studying Anatomy and Physiology at Uni thinks it's dangerous ...

“So what does this mean when we look at genetically modified foods? When you modify the genes of a potato, you are introducing artificially created cells into your bodies cell environment and beyond. These genes attack our internal environment.”

Will we become genetically modified people?

Some call the 21st century ‘the end of living and the beginning of survival’.

In 1855 Chief Seattle wrote ‘Where is the eagle – gone’ to President Franklin Pierce .

“The whites too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than the other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket - gone - where is the eagle - gone - and what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt.” - To read his full letter go to my blog Day 127.

The obesity epidemic arrived with astonishing speed. After tens of thousands of generations of human evolution, flab has become widespread only in the past 50 years, and waistlines have ballooned exponentially in the last two decades. In 1980, 46 percent of U.S. adults were overweight; by 2000, the figure was 64.5 percent. Childhood obesity, also once rare, has mushroomed: 15 percent of children between ages six and 19 are now overweight, and even 10 percent of those between two and five. "This may be the first generation of children who will die before their parents," Foreyt says.

Personal responsibility surely does play a role, but we also live in a "toxic environment" that in many ways discourages healthy eating, says Ludwig. "There’s the incessant advertising and marketing of the poorest quality foods imaginable. To address this epidemic, you’d want to make healthful foods widely available, inexpensive, and convenient, and unhealthful foods relatively less so. Instead, we’ve done the opposite."

We are awash in edibles shipped in from around the planet; seasonality has largely disappeared. Food obtrudes itself constantly, seductively, into our lives—on sidewalks, in airplanes, at gas stations and movie theaters. Humans can eat convenient, refined, highly processed food with great speed, enabling them to consume an astonishing caloric load—literally thousands of calories—in minutes.

Pumping up portion size makes good business sense, because the cost of ingredients like sugar and water for a carbonated soda is so small, and customers perceive the larger amount as delivering greater value. The French aren’t so interested in the amount of food; they are more concerned with its quality. The restaurant industry—which employs 12 million workers (second only to government) and has projected sales of $440.1 billion this year.

“A hundred years ago there was no such thing as a snack food—nothing you could pop open and overeat”, says Mollie Katzen, author of The Moosewood Cookbook

In 1978, they note, only 8 percent of homes had microwave ovens, but 83 percent do today. Food that once took hours to prepare is now "nuked" in minutes. The food industry’s major objective is to get us to intake more food, the restaurant industry’s major objective is to get us to eat there more often, the drug industry major objective is to get us to use more drugs - why would we do that? Because we are sick and have learned that taking these drugs it will make us better and we will feel great and live longer. Cities are designed for automobiles, not for healthier ways of getting about like walking or bicycling. "In fact, we’ve made it dangerous and unattractive to do so,"Our bodies were not designed to handle so much caloric input and so little energy outflow.

It's becoming so obvious and so easy for us to see these days, how our eating habits and sickness is linked to billions of dollars.

So... where to next people? What will the 21st century evolution of food look like?

And it's not good or bad or wrong or right, it is what it is, we have created the earth as it is, and we can re-create it however we want it. How do we want it?

References below.

Challenges: “Food is one of life's greatest joys yet we've reached this really sad point where we're turning food into the enemy, and something to be afraid of." Jamie Oliver

Triumphs:Jamie Oliver' - “We just need to re-discover our common sense."

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Water with lemon juice. A beet, carrot, celery and ginger juice! A chocolate ball!

Lunch: A avocado. Blackberries, strawberries and a chocolate ball.

Dinner: Basil Potatoes. With garlic, red chilli, onion, broccoli, zucchini, carrot and green beans! Oh it was so delicious! The vegetables and spice absorb each other and it is so rich in flavour!

Dessert: Chocolate balls and strawberries.

Snacks: 2 chocolate balls with 2 strawberries! Oh my have you tried my chocolate balls with strawberries! It is divine. I bite part of the strawberry and part of the rich chocolate ball (with peanut butter that is blended peanuts) and then whirl it around and push it to the top of my mouth where I absorb all the flavours mmm then I open my mouth a little to really taste the rich fruitiness!

Recipe: Recipe for Basil Potatoes will be in my book that is published in November!

Exercise: I exercised my body today and went for a beautiful walk and run in the sunshine and warm wind! Then I came home and danced to two of Travis's songs ... my favourite music! No rules, no dance 'steps', just abstract movin the body! ;)

185 days to go!!!

http://www.foodtimeline.org/
---A handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing and Consumption, Ann Hagen [Anglo Saxon Books:2992] (p. 69-70)
---The Rituals of Dinner, Margaret Visser [Penguid:New York] 1991 (p. 159-160)
---Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 1996 (p. 12)
---Food and Feast in Medieval England, P.W. Hammond [Wrens Park Publishing:Pheonix Mill] 1993 (p. 104-5)
---Eating Right in the Renaissance, Ken Albala [University of California Press:Berkeley] 2002 (p. 112-3)
---Food in Early Modern Europe, Ken Alabala [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2003 (p. 231-4)
The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Gilly Lehmann (various references throughout the book; charts p. 385-6)
--Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 65-7)
http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventions/a/gum.htm
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food
---Food in the Ancient World, Joan P. Alcock [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2005 (p. 136-8)
---America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking, Keith Stavely & Kathleen Fitzgerald [University of North Carolina Press:Chapel Hill NC] 2004 (p. 178-180)
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 41-2)
According to an article titled "Serving up chicken and waffles," Los Angeles Business Journal, September 22, 1997 (p.1):

Day 179

Thoughts: Revealing my self to myself : Thoughts that shape my health and determine what I eat.

Jinjee a 39 year old raw food eater said "What I would tell my 20-year old self if I could go back: You could probably be having some really lovely, happy, warm thoughts right now, if your mind wasn't so busy being addicted to stressful, anxious, negative thoughts. Just like you could be eating some fresh, in-season, organic fruits right now if you weren't busy being addicted to overeating dense, low quality, chemically flavored foods. You can't imagine of all the wonderful, beautiful, light-giving thoughts, moods, and delicacies you are missing out on!"

I am so afraid to live out there and be bold and courageous all the time. Yes I am addicted to stressful, anxious, negative thoughts. These thoughts allow me to disconnect from people, my self, love, the universe. I do allow myself to be courageous and bold, and then I come back from that as I'm not sure yet how to be that all the time. I am afraid of people. Yet if you meet me you would say I am confident. I think you are all better than me. All of you. No one is not better than me. That's how paranoid my mind is. I am afraid to shine my light all the time.

The first time I have truly loved myself as an adult was a couple of weeks ago. I looked into the mirror and instead of being ashamed or embarrassed and looking away, I looked right into my eyes. I connected with myself. I experienced love and forgiveness. It was amazing. The most lifting experiences I have had. I apologize for not having the courage two weeks ago to share this, I let fear get in the way and thought that if people knew I am happy when I look in the mirror that I would be weird. They will think I am weird if I love myself. See how afraid I am of people judging me. This is crazy, I would hope that everyone looks in the mirror and experiences love for themselves. I am my own worst enemy.

It seemed easier to appreciate and love myself when I was younger. Until the vicious circle of guilt, shame and punishment started where I would use food in place of emotions. To avoid particular emotions I would just eat and eat and eat only to find myself in a darker place than before I started!

In 'Shifting the Horizon of What's Possible: Beyond the Vicious Circle' Jane Wright explains it perfectly.

"Like historians and novelists, we too construe our own histories as we see them, and realities get created accordingly. Here's how it works: Something happens. We simultaneously assess and interpret what happened—we assign meaning, categorize importance, draw conclusions, identify action to be taken (or not), form opinions that linger. This melding or collapse between what happens and the meaning we assign to it happens almost instantaneously and becomes our framework for what's real, not something separate or outside of us. When we can begin to "uncollapse" all this, we have a say in the matter of who we are, and the room to create and design our lives."

I have learned that no one and no thing can make me happy. No one and no thing can make me satisfied. No food can make me fulfilled. Only I can. I generate my own well being, health, happiness, love. I generate it from INSIDE.

If you stay consumed with the tasks of outside things, you'll give up inner peace. Take a moment to be present and feel what's all in you and around you. It's where your solutions and true wealth lives. - Marquese Martin-Hayes

Once we have inner peace the outer will come. Outer is the expression of inner.

In Heidi Williams's 'Reality vs Perception' she says "It is the ultimate to be able to acknowledge and accept the past, be open and awake to observe and be in the moment of the present without any form of pre-judgmental expectation, and conformatism to our past experiences . Making a purely conscious thought occur with a blank open non opinionated mind, is the ultimate. Freedom of thought, without any fear is a powerful tool. It is courageous. It is admirable, it is non-judgmental, it is internal power.

It is hard as human beings to not be influenced by fellow humans words or judgementation or even actions as we are naturally so absorbent to energies ... but it is what we choose to do with those energies is what really is the key to homeostasis. As negative energies and traits such as anger, hatred and jealousy manifest themselves into a dis-ease with the human body if absorbed, it is important to acknowledge the feelings and emotions and release them ... but is it so simple ... Is this why there is so much dis-ease amongst humans?"

I have a dis-ease. And that is honouring my emotions. Anger, upset, regret, reasonableness, cynicism, reactions to outside circumstances. That is they are things happening OUTSIDE of me. They are outside of my self. That is believing them to be real and true, believing that emotions are who I am is a terrible disease, for then my frequency is that of a negative energy, and I am polluting the world with my negativity.

My biggest fear in starting this Earth Diet challenge for 365 days was that I would fail. I created an identity that only knew how to deal with emotions using food, an identity that liked to avoid emotions. One of the questions that arose when I took on this challenge was, 'How do I not be without this identity? How do I not be without an addiction? How do I not be without bingeing?'. I had created my self in this identity of pain and suffering and had become addicted to it.

In 'Transformational Imperative: Revealing Our Selves to Ourselves', Balvinder Sodhi says, "Enormous value is having direct, hands-on access to who we are as human beings—to being able to actually impact our actions, to change course should we so desire, to be the authors of our own lives. The single biggest stop to having this kind of access is one of identity (the “who” it is that we consider ourselves to be), coupled with the impulse we have to cling to and defend whatever notion of ourselves we already have. How we “arrive” at our identity is mostly inadvertent—essentially built from a series of what we see (consciously or not) as failures to do or be something. When these “apparent” failures arise, we make decisions about how to compensate for, respond to, and accommodate ourselves to them. So whether it is one or 10 or even 40 years later, when something inconsistent with how we see ourselves occurs, we still hold on to that with which we’ve identified— leaving us no powerful way to be with whatever is going on.

The degree to which our behavior is filtered by our identity goes unrecognized—the default filters then set our values; bestow meaning; determine the aims, limitations, and purpose of our daily life. They become “us,” they are “us,” and we only get what they allow—obscuring access to ourselves and to what’s really possible in being human. Unless the identity factor is addressed, the answer to the question, what does it mean to be human, gets looked at only through that lens. But stepping outside of our identity isn’t so easy—as it’s achieved a certain density throughout our lives—it is all we know of ourselves. The idea that another whole idea of self is available can be disconcerting, invalidating. In setting aside “all the usual things that gave us an ‘identity’—the accident of our time and place of birth, the accident of being a human being rather than a dog or a fish—we become aware that this so-called self is as arbitrary as our name. It’s like standing over an abyss, recognizing that ‘I,’ as we know it is not an absolute.”*2 But it is here, with this recognition, where transformation occurs.

Transformation does not merely change our actions, it uncovers the structures of being and interpretation on which we are grounded. This revealing of our selves to ourselves occurs in a profound way that can alter the very possibility of what it means to be human. And while transformation is not an event, there is a definite before/after quality to it. Transformative learning gives us an awareness of the basic structures within which we know, think, and act in the world. This shift does not rid us of old contexts, it simply stops defining who we are."

The transformation for me was committing to The Earth Diet and eating only foods naturally provided by the earth for 365 days.

www.landmarkeducation.com
www.thegardendiet.com - Jinjee
http://www.facebook.com/marquese



Challenges: Kicking out the thoughts that do not have me believing in my self.

Triumphs: It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself. - Muhammad Ali

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Strawberries and blueberries!

Lunch: Green Thai Curry with potatoes and brown rice (Last night's creation)!

Dinner: A avocado with walnuts.

Dessert: Chocolate balls with peanut butter (crushed peanuts)

Snacks: More strawberries and blueberries mmm mmm mmm the perfect snack!

Recipe: Recipe for Green Thai Curry is on blog Day 21. Recipe for chocolate balls is blog Day 115.

Exercise: Exercising love and forgiveness for myself!

186 days to go!!!

Day 178

Meet the chocolate slaves.

Thoughts: People around the world share a love of chocolate, one of the most delicious and pleasurable foods on earth. Thousands of children in West Africa are forced to labor in the production of cocoa, chocolate’s primary ingredient. Want to support child trafficking and slavery? Imagine your children didn't come home from school one day and instead were forced to slavery to work in cocao fields. Or if you don't have children imagine yourself as a child, robbed of your childhood and having to go start work in fields from 5 years old. Perhaps the children enjoy working there? Do we have ethical standards?

I had no idea about cocao child trafficking until yesterday thanks to my friend Elisha Yarington who posted a comment on my facebook wall saying "It breaks my heart Liana". Even more people don’t know that the chocolate industry promised in 2001 to end the trafficking of children onto cocoa farms by July 1st 2008. It is 2010 and it is still going on...

Kidnap attempt (from BBC)

A young boy called Victor trafficked from Mali said:
“Tell your children that they have bought something that I suffered to make. When they are eating chocolate they are eating my flesh."

"I was playing football," said Karim Sadibe. "This man said I should come with him to the Ivory Coast. He would sign me up for the national team and I would get lots of money and that I shouldn't tell my parents."

Karim went, but luckily was intercepted by police. The man who was to have sold him into slavery - probably for about £50 - melted away.

"I don't know how one human being can treat another in the way they treated me" - Former child slave

Karim was sent back to Mali, to a centre run by Save the Children Fund, Canada. All of that had taken place within the past week.

Next door was 20-year-old Moussa Doumbia. He slipped off a freshly pressed pink shirt to reveal welted scars where he had been made to carry sacks of cocoa until he managed to escape two years ago.

At night he slept on the floor in a locked room. He was given food once a day. If he complained, he was beaten. The boys who tried to escape had their feet cut with razors.

"I don't know how one human being can treat another in the way they treated me," he whispered.


Child labour

That's the challenge from Stop The Traffik, an international movement that has stepped up its pressure on confectionary giant Nestle and Cadbury to ensure it uses cocoa that's free from child trafficking and forced child labor.

Recently, Stop The Traffik coordinated a series of phone calls to Nestle's headquarters in Croydon, south of London, to demand answers about its links to the Ivory Coast, which produces more than 35 percent of the world's cocoa crop.

In 2001 reports confirmed widespread child labor on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, and thousands of children being trafficked from nearby Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo.

The conditions these children were working in were characterized as dangerous and they were forced to work long hours.

More recently an Interpol-led operation in July resulted in the rescue of more than 50 child workers from cocoa and palm plantations in the Ivory Coast.

The operation was the first of its kind to target child trafficking in West Africa. Eight people were arrested in connection with the illegal recruitment of children.

Since Stop The Traffik was founded by Chalke in 2006, it has encouraged people to refrain from buying chocolate that cannot guarantee to have been made without trafficked children.

Stop The Traffik is hoping its pressure will end in a similar result to previous campaigns.



Two years ago, representatives, including Chalke, met Cadbury executives and were told that it was "naive and unrealistic" to expect the company to seriously adopt fair trade standards.

"Nestle is one of the biggest global players in the chocolate industry with global sales of approximately $11.4 billion for chocolate, confectionery and biscuits. As a company that sources cocoa from Ivory Coast, it could have a major influence on the ethics of sourcing from that country."

She added, "Unless industry can assure us that our chocolate is not made from beans picked by trafficked children, then no real progress has been made. This should be the standard by which they are judged."

"We agree with Stop The Traffik," she told The Baptist Times.

"But with two million farms in the Ivory Coast nobody can guarantee that their cocoa will be free from these unacceptable practices."

"We want to see it changed and are working towards that, but it takes time."



So in 2002 Humphrey Hawksley set off to find out what was going on. A drive of hundreds of miles from the parched bush land of Mali to the lush jungle of Ivory Coast.

"I had thought that finding child labour would be difficult. I had talked to contacts, gathered phone numbers, spent hours of preparation. In the end, I needed none of it.

After a 30 minutes' drive from our hotel in the city of Yammousoukrou along the main road to Sinfra, we turned into a village, drove through, down a dirt track, past a cocoa plantation and saw gangs of children coming towards us.

They wore grubby, torn T-shirts and carried machetes, their heads hung in confusion.

It was a Wednesday morning. The oldest was 13 years old. The others didn't know their age. The youngest was probably six or seven.

As we talked to them, another gang passed us on their way to work. After that a group of women, who saw nothing unusual about child workers.

Then their boss turned up, on a bicycle, looking for them. He was only 15 himself.

It turned out the boys were shunted between maize, coffee and cocoa farms - depending on the season. If they were paid, it was the equivalent of a pound a day - between the ten of them."

"We spend all the time bent over in the field," one said.

"It's terrible," said another. "Hot, tiring work."



"Down the road to my right was a cocoa farm.

In front of me was evidence of the contravention of at least two International Labour Organisation conventions aimed at protecting children from abusive labour and giving them a right to an education.

If child labour is so easy to find, the numbers might be in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions.



I gave their names to an official of the Ivory Coast government and told him where we found them. I showed their pictures to the chocolate spokesman, Bob Eagle.

There was no sign that any immediate help was on its way to them. Mr Eagle said exploitative child labour was unacceptable in his industry - and reiterated the deadline of July 2005 to end it.

But that means, although we know who they are and where they are, they could be working in the farms for at least another three years." Humphrey Hawksley said this in 2002, thinking it would be over by 2005. It is now 2010 and nothing has changed. Will it ever?

What can you do to stop child trafficking? Don't support the business. I buy cocao, buy it child labor free from the health food stores. We have the power, we can choose these children's freedom or slavery. Are the poor worth fighting for?

EthicsDaily.com's Featured Resource
http://ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=14783
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2042474.stm
http://www.nestlecritics.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Itemid=1
http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor/cocoa-campaign
chocolateandchildslavery.blogspot.com/2007/10



Challenges: “Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.” - Alfred A. Montapert. I found articles on this issue from 2001, this has been going on in the news for 9 years ... where have I been?!

Triumphs: “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” - Denis Waitley. I choose to accept the responsibility for changing them. I have not had a chocolate bar for 178 days since on this earth diet, and the cocao powder that I do buy to make my own chocolate balls, I will make sure it is fair trade now that I am aware of this trafficking.

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: A beet, carrot, celery and ginger juice. Water with lemon squeezed in it.

Lunch: Strawberries and black berries.

Dinner: Green Thai Potatoe Curry with brown rice! mmm mmm mmm it is so rich with flavours and spices :) Recipe below

Dessert: Strawberries with peanut butter! It is like peanut butter and jelly ... the real deal! mmm mmm mmm!

Snacks: A Avocado with walnuts!

Recipe: Recipe for the Green Thai Curry is in blog day 21.

Exercise: I exercised my body with a bike ride to the grocery store to buy a coconut for the curry and a skateboard to the library.

187 days to go!!!

Day 177

Thoughts: Kevin Trudeau is no doubt one of the biggest threats to the billion dollar drug/medicine companies on the planet. He is the man who claims that there are "all-natural" cures for serious illnesses, including cancer, herpes, arthritis, AIDS, acid reflux disease, various phobias, obesity, multiple sclerosis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, ADD attention deficit disorder, and muscular dystrophy, and that these cures (which include apple cider vinegar, coconut oil, consuming dietary supplements, such as calcium, eating organic food, cleanses and detoxification, such as colonic irrigation, use of a rebounder, colloidial silver and more, are being deliberately hidden from the public in order to protect the profits of drug companies. Among his claims are that sunscreen, not ultraviolet radiation, cause cancer, that antiperspirants and deodorants contain aluminum (a toxin), that AIDS is a hoax and that chemotherapy is more dangerous than cancer. Truth resonates with me.

I first read his book when I was 18 and started on my healthy journey. I absorbed a lot about health and how it CAN be. He says that there are twelve known cures for cancer but that they are being kept from the general public by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration), the FTC, and the pharmaceutical companies. He also says that the FDA and the FTC are two of the most corrupt organizations in America and that there is a long list of chemical ingredients that are secretly not required to be on the FDA ingredients label that are damaging to human health.

I have heard it from my own ears someone who has been to FDA conferences. I cannot name them as they are obviously sworn to privacy and I would be putting their life at risk if I were to do so. I had heard about the FDA being corrupt for a few years now, and it really ingrained truth for me when I heard it from my own ears from a trustworthy resource. It hit me that this is really happening, and people don't know about it. At these meetings the person witnessed the FDA plotting the next drug to introduce to the market, and then a drug to neutralize the sickness they get from taking the first drug. It is a vicious circle, and one extremely smart money making scheme at that. Kevin says that pharmaceutical companies "don't want us to get well" because curing disease is not nearly as profitable as treating it in perpetuity. According to Trudeau, the corporate profit motive overrides the human desire to truly help people.

Kevins's books have sold extremely well. Natural Cures was listed in September 2005 by the New York Times as the number-one-selling current nonfiction book in the United States for 25 weeks, and has sold more than five million copies. It is a shame that when you google his name, the first few things that come up are websites claiming him to be fraudulent. Like I said, he is the billion dollar drug industry's largest threat. Doctors have expressed serious concerns that the book's instructions, such as stopping all medication and refusing vaccinations, are not only misleading but harmful. Of course they would say that. We have learned that to take medication is "normal".

Kevin says that natural treatments cannot be patented and are not profitable enough to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars in testing, so they will always lack FDA approval. He uses herpes as an example, saying that people with herpes must buy an expensive drug for the rest of their lives. He says that if there were a cheap, easy cure for herpes, the FDA and pharmaceutical companies would not want the population to know about it because corporate profits would suffer.

He cites the number of advertisements on television for prescription drugs and points out that prescription drugs should be advertised to doctors, not to the general public.

Kevin says that the drug industry and the FDA work with each other to effectively deceive the public by banning all-natural cures in order to protect the profits of the drug industry. Trudeau says that FDA commissioners who leave the FDA to work for large drug companies are paid millions of dollars. In any other industry Trudeau says, this would be called "bribery," a "conflict of interest" or "payoffs." He also says in his infomercials that the food industry includes chemicals (such as MSG and aspartame) to get people "addicted to food" and to "make people obese."

I read an article today that said Kevin Trudeau has been sentenced to 30 days in jail for contempt of court. The sentence comes after Trudeau and visitors to his website, helped him launch an e-attack on a federal judge's computer -- so many people emailed the judge that his computer in Chicago crashed. What the article failed to explain was why Kevin Trudeau and thousands of other health conscious people from around the world did this. The judge said Trudeau urging the deluge of e-mails was harassment. Trudeau was ordered to post a $50,000 bond and surrender his passport.

Below are words from Kevin's book, they may move you, anger you, upset you or resonate with you, or all of it.

Right now, you either have some known illness or disease such as cancer, diabetes, etc., or you claim to be "healthy." If you claim to be healthy, you probably still experience the normal occasional headaches, aches and pains, fatigue, indigestion, colds and flus, heartburn, etc. So called healthy people believe that these occasional medical conditions are "normal." They are not. A healthy person has little, if any, body odor, they have no bad breath, no foot odor, their urine and stool do not smell, they sleep soundly, they have no skin rashes or dandruff, they are not depressed or stressed, they rarely if ever get colds, flus, heartburn, aches and pains. Truly healthy people are full of energy and vitality, and never have to take any nonprescription or prescription drug because they never have any symptoms that would require them to take a drug. So, in reality, every one of you reading this book is unhealthy to some degree. I can assure you that if you continue to do what you always have, your physical health will slowly begin to deteriorate, you will get more sickness and diseases, and your energy levels will continually go down.

Some people always ask me if all I say is true; how did "Aunt Millie" live to be 85? First, I say that I would like to offer my condolences for Aunt Millie's premature death. It is sad to see someone die so young. You see, I believe that the human body, like all mammals, should live to be well over 100 years old. When you compare the life spans of virtually all mammals, they live well in excess of what would be the equivalent of 120 human years. So, dying at 85 to me is dying young. Secondly, Aunt Millie lived the first half of her life where the amount of toxins being put into the body was a fraction of what it is today. I hear a lot about the alleged fact that we are living longer than ever before. This is categorically not true. Yes, it is true that people lie in nursing homes and hospital beds hooked up to life support devices that keep the physical body alive for years, but realistically these people are not living. The statistics on lifespan are fraudulent and false. The fact of the matter is a person 100 years old should be strong, flexible, full of life and energy, and have the physical capacity of what the average 40-year-old person has. It is amusing to me when you hear the American Medical Association classify someone in their 50s as being "older", and someone in their 60s as being "old". The most amazing part of this is that it is assumed that as you get older, it is "normal" to be on some type of medication. This simply is not true.

The bottom line is that you are either: a) very sick; b) somewhat sick; or c) about to get sick.

It is hard to find a truly healthy person. The good news is there is a way out. Let's examine where you are right now. You are full of toxins. You are also deficient in necessary nutrients. The energy in your body is not flowing properly. Many of your systems are not operating at optimal levels. You either notice severe symptoms, or you have mild symptoms that you classify as normal. What can we do to: a) eradicate any and all symptoms you have, thus "curing" the disease or illness, and b) prevent any illness or disease from starting, thus giving you a tremendous increase in energy, vitality, and vibrant dynamic health.? The first thing I would recommend is that you seek proper health care from a professional healthcare provider who does not use drugs or surgery. Since every person is different, and every condition is different, you need to have a knowledgeable person examine you and give you appropriate care. Keep in mind that all healthcare providers have different backgrounds and experiences, and may have different opinions about the course of action that is best for you. It is wise to get several opinions from several people.

The big question I get often is: How do I find a good alternative, all natural healthcare provider? This is an excellent question. Unfortunately, these healthcare practitioners can not advertise because the FDA is looking for people that are curing disease without drugs and surgery, and if the FDA becomes aware of these people, history shows that the FDA or FTC will drive these healthcare practitioners out of business. A simple way to find someone good in your area is to go down to your local health food store and ask who they recommend. On my website, I have a private member area where you can be provided with recommendations of people in your area that have excellent track records in using all natural therapies. Generally speaking, healthcare providers who practice homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic medicine, herbology and nutritional therapy are all good places to start. I myself have been treated by over 200 natural healthcare providers from around the world. Is one better than the other? Yes. They are also, in many cases, very different in their approach. Do they all provide some benefit? I believe so. Do some treatments and therapies work faster and more completely than others? Yes. However, the one that works best for me may not work best for you. Everyone is different, every situation and condition is different, and the same treatment may have varying results with each person. You have to take responsibility for your own health. No one knows it all. No one, including the pharmaceutical industry and medical doctors, has a monopoly on the truth. So the first step is to seek out alternative, all natural healthcare providers, and start experiencing for yourself the benefits you'll enjoy without drugs and surgery.

Kevin's website www.naturalcures.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/17/kevin-trudeau-sentenced-i_n_466173.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau



Challenges: "It's all about money. The drug industry does not want people to get healthy." - Kevin Trudeau

Triumphs: Being alive to me is : my cells and blood and organs are all vibrating. Moving. They are alive. Not dead.

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Water with lemon squeezed in it. Strawberries and blackberries! Oh I love blackberries!

Lunch: Avocado and macadamia nuts! mmm mmm mmm beautiful creamy warm fats :)

Dinner: A beet, carrot, celery ginger juice. Raw cauliflower crunchy crunchy! Macadamia nuts.

Snacks: More blackberries!

Exercise: Exercised my patience! The person I let down the most when I am impatient is myself. I am working on my integrity and being my fullest self expression.

188 days to go!!!

Day 176

Thoughts: What if your food was grown in contaminated soil? What if the soil your fruits and vegetables develop in is toxic and poison? It is....

This blog thanks to Diana Mitchell... “This stuff makes me so Angry...Unless it affects them personally, these people could care le$$.”

USDA Downplays Own Scientist’s Research On ill Effects of Monsanto Herbicide - by Tom Laskawy Grist Newsletter (grist.org)

What would happen if a USDA scientist discovered that one of the most commonly used pesticides on the planet with a reputation for having saved millions of tons of US soil from erosion was -- rather than a soil savior -- a soil killer?

That, to quote a certain paranormal expert, would be bad. And yet, it's true.

This news came to the fore thanks to a recently published must-read article from Reuters on how government regulators are “dropping the ball” on agricultural biotechnology. It begins with the story of USDA scientist Dr. Robert Kremer. Kremer has spent the last fifteen years looking at Monsanto's blockbuster broad-spectrum herbicide glyphosate (aka RoundUp), the most commonly used pesticide in the world and the companion to Monsanto’s possibly monopolistic RoundupReady lines of genetically engineered seeds.

While exact figures are a closely guarded secret thanks to the USDA's refusal to update its pesticide use database after 2007, estimates suggest upwards of 200 million pounds of glyphosate were dumped on fields and farms in the US in 2008 alone. That's almost double the amount used in 2005.

Glyphosate has a reputation as the “safest” of all the agricultural herbicides and has become the primary means of weed control in industrial agriculture. While being the best of an extremely nasty bunch may be the faintest of praise, the USDA relies on this perception, which has been fueled by industry and government research indicating that the chemical dissipates quickly and shows low toxicity (as poisons go, that is) to humans.

The claim of "millions of tons of soil saved" relates to the soil that would have otherwise been lost to erosion without glyphosate’s central role in chemical no-till farming techniques. Indeed, experts such as Dr. Michael Shannon, a program director at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, as well as other USDA scientists, make this anti-erosion claim the core argument in favor of the widespread use of the chemical.

Even so, glyphosate has been under attack from several quarters of late. Research indicates that, while glyphosate on its own may be relatively "safe," it is actually quite toxic in combination with the other (supposedly “inert”) ingredients in commercial preparations of the herbicide, i.e. the stuff that farmers actually spray on their fields.

And of course, there is the frightening spread of superweeds that glyphosate can no longer kill. It's to the point that thousands of acres in the South have been abandoned to resistant strains of giant pigweed.


Enter Dr. Kremer. His work, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of European Agronomy, further tarnishes glyphosate's golden status. He has found that glyphosate’s side-effects in the ground are far more severe than previously thought. As he described it to me, the use of glyphosate causes:

1)damage to beneficial microbes in the soil increasing the likelihood of
infection of a crop by soil pathogens
2)interference with nutrient uptake by the plant
3)reduced efficiency of symbiotic nitrogen fixation
4)overall lower-than-expected plant productivity.

Dr. Kremer has even helpfully provided a set of recommendations for farmers who use glyphosate or who plant Monsanto’s RoundUpReady seeds. According to Dr. Kremer, the worst of the problems can be avoided if 1) farmers only plant RoundupReady crops every other year in the same field, 2) come up with alternate crop residue management techniques and 3) plant cover crops “to revitalize soil biological and ecological processes as well as improve other aspects of soil quality.”

A USDA scientist wouldn’t recommend measures like this if he weren’t convinced his results merited it. From the Reuters article.

This could be something quite big. We might be setting up a huge problem," said Kremer, who expressed alarm that regulators were not paying enough attention to the potential risks from biotechnology on the farm, including his own research ..."Scienceis not being considered in policy setting and deregulation," said Kremer. "This research is important. We need to be vigilant."

Meanwhile, the response from the USDA to Dr. Kremer’s work has been, shall we say, subdued. Dr. Shannon of the USDA/ARS admitted that Dr. Kremer’s results are valid, but said that the danger they represent pales in comparison to the superweed threat. In fact, Shannon specifically likened Dr. Kremer’s new findings to unfortunate but unavoidable side-effects like any drug might have.

Making matters worse, and much to Dr. Kremer’s chagrin, the ARS refused to publicize his work on glyphosate. While ARS spokesperson Sandy Miller Hays admitted that an announcement about his findings was written, she claimed it was withheld due to the quality of the writing. In other words, the ARS killed the story because they couldn't bother to do some light editing.

Nor was the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) very interested in Kremer's findings. Run by Roger Beachy, a man with long-time links to the ag-biotech industry and an openly hostile attitude toward organic farming, NIFA is the bureaucratic nook within USDA responsible for informing farmers of new research.

When I asked if NIFA had a position on Dr. Kremer’s work or if his guidance was being used by USDA extension agents, a NIFA spokesperson replied via email that:

The advice and counsel provided by extension agents in the field is not “approved” or “sanctioned” by NIFA; typically, these materials are developed through state and county extension offices, which receive some NIFA funding (how much varies from state to state) but are not managed by NIFA.

NIFA does not take positions on research papers, and has not produced any guidance about Dr. Kremer’s work.

In short, nothing to see here. Move along!

This most chilling comment of all, however, was provided by Miller Hays who observed that a European journal was the ideal place for this work because Europeans are “passionately interested in... the soil and pesticide use and that sort of thing.”

As opposed to we Americans, who don’t care about the soil and pesticide use and that sort of thing?

Following this particular USDA trail has reminded me of the age-old question, if a tree falls in a forest and people are standing around staring at it with their hands over their ears screaming “I’m not listening!!” at the top of their lungs, does it make a sound?

What I find most concerning about this episode is the willful inability of most divisions at USDA to conceive of agriculture without pesticides in general and glyphosate in particular. Not that companies aren’t planning for a post-glyphosate world. A recent article in the Western Farm Press painted a bleak future wherein farmers overcome the failures of individual pesticides (failures caused by USDA and industry-encouraged overuse, by the way) by planting genetically modified seeds that provide resistance to five or even six different pesticides at once.

The “simplicity” of Monsanto’s GMO system of RoundupReady seeds plus glyphosate will be replaced by a dizzying and insanely toxic cocktail of pesticide treatments and hugely expensive seeds. Leaving aside cost, farmers will barely be able to manage the mixing and maintenance of their equipment in this scenario.

There are alternatives. I only wish that the USDA technical divisions would start taking the work of researchers like Dr. Kremer (not to mention sustainable ag advocate Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan) more seriously. Instead, they insist that farmers stay on the ever-accelerating and increasingly damaging chemical treadmill.

Challenges: The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923

Triumphs: Don't blow it, good planets are hard to find ;) Never too late...

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: A beet, carrot, celery, ginger juice. A apple.

Lunch: Homemade bread made from whole flour and water by a true Italian, Jeff! Right out of the oven ... With olive oil, salt and pepper mmmm. A cucumber.




Dinner: Raw cauliflower. Kiwi fruit.

Exercise: Walking around Manhattan all day :) Exercising presence ;)

189 days to go!!!

Day 175

Thoughts: FAT THOUGHTS Make You Fat was yesterdays blog, today we look at THE ANATOMY OF A FAT THOUGHT with Mary Sue Abernethy.

WHY THEY HAPPEN
You think when you look in the mirror and feel self hatred or disgust, if you hate yourself or the fat on your body enough it will force you to stop eating and loose weight, when in fact most often fat thoughts make you eat more now or later. Yo-Yo Diet Cycle

1. OUR FEELINGS SOMETIMES ARE LESS THAN IDEAL
We each have a particular self-image. We would prefer to strike from the record any thoughts or feelings which run counter to our ideas about who we are. It makes us anxious to think of ourselves as not living up to our ideals. Instead of experiencing the letdown and dealing with the possibility that your expectations of yourself are unrealistic or that circumstances have simply prevented you from having something you want and day by day that can change, you eat.

2. FORBIDDEN FEELINGS
These have to do with notions we developed as children. It is about the power of our wishes, where a wish is equivalent to a deed, a thought equivalent to an action.
Some compulsive eaters fear the forbidden emotion of anger, others fear lust, and still others fear jealousy. The list is as endless as the variety of emotions you can feel. Regardless, we continue to fear what we consider to be unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and wishes, and compulsive eaters attempt to erase these thoughts with food before even realizing that you have them.

3. STRONG FEELINGS
Some of us are less concerned with the permissibility of the thought or feeling than with the intensity, fearing we will be overwhelmed by them. "If I feel sad, I'll never stop being depressed." "If I get angry, I'll go out of control." Compulsive eaters also fear a change in the status quo. Any strong feeling or change results in the reach for food. We are in need of a carefully controlled atmosphere or a better method of having feelings come and go and experiencing the fact that we are still here, we are “ok”.

All of these situations occur because we make food magic - we give it magical powers. This is much the same way that a child's Teddy Bear represents all the care and support that its’ owner has known or wanted. Food represents mother, father, family, love, safety, strength, comfort, power, support, and on and on. The problem is that food is not mother, father, family, love, safety, strength, comfort, power, support, and so on. While these are symbols, with the power to make us feel safe, food is not the same as any of these other symbols. When food is used for comfort, its proper function is neglected entirely and it becomes addicting instead of enabling. A Teddy Bear helps a child make the transition from dependent care, to the knowledge s/he can ensure her/his own well-being. The Teddy Bear is eventually left behind and becomes no more special than any other stuffed toy. Food, however, keeps us stuck, unable to get the real needs taken care of. When that happens compulsive eating stops being the problem, fat thoughts lessen over time and you will translate them more rapidly.

THE ANATOMY OF A FAT THOUGHT

1. YOU BEGIN WITH AN UNLABELED DISCOMFORT
⇓
2. YOU EAT TO DISTRACT YOURSELF-usually without true belly hunger- AND TO TRY TO FEEL BETTER
⇓
3. AFTER YOU FINISH EATING YOU FEEL ANXIOUS and physically uncomfortable
⇓
4. YOU TRANSLATE YOUR ANXIETY INTO A FAT FEELING!
The uncomfortable feeling turns into a Fat Feeling AND fat thoughts & feelings don’t help you, they just re-create the problem…… eating to soothe rather than for belly hunger!
⇓
5. YOU EXPERIENCE PAINFUL THOUGHTS...
ABOUT WHAT YOU JUST ATE, YOUR WEIGHT, OR HOW YOUR BODY LOOKS.

You have just made the TRANSLATION from the language of feelings into the language of FAT! Compulsive eating is a way of coping with discomfort and a low Sense Of Self by translating complex concerns into an obsessive preoccupation with eating, weight and body size.
⇓
You are telling the truth, but in TRANSLATION!

You are referring to something else that you feel bad about. You eat through the difficulty or yell at yourself about your size and weight, and then you say the problem is fat on your body (it didn’t appear overnight!), instead of recognizing what you are really needing, thinking/believing or feeling that needs to be addressed.

WHY WE KEEP THE "FAT THOUGHT" CIRCUIT ALIVE- and what you can do differently.

1. It is simpler to reduce all life's problems into an eating/weight problem.
Having fat thoughts, thinking about dieting, staying busy counting fats and calories is all MUCH EASIER than dealing directly with the sophisticated issues in our lives! If you stop the fat thoughts, you break the circuit and can stop calling all your problems a fat problem. Then you can really discover what you are needing, meet the need, and feel calmer while you practice conscious eating, and Responsive Eating

2. It could feel scary to stop translating all problems into an eating/weight problem.

If you stop your fat thoughts you will be challenged to come up with real solutions to life's challenges. It can be overwhelming to begin trying to solve issues around relationships, parenting responsibilities, job security, financial needs, or emotional needs. It feels so much easier to say the solution to dealing with my life is just simply to stay busy hating my body and thinking about dieting. Until you take a look at the real issues nothing can change. It is not as hard as it seems, many have “been there done that” and are free of eating and weight issues and have lost weight while translating Fat Thoughts.

3. You have grown accustomed to hating your body
While having fat thoughts and hating your body is painful, it is for many of us the only way we know how to be with ourselves. In a strange way keeping with the familiar...even when it is painful...can seem comforting. And, most of us have very little information about how we might relate to our bodies' positively: we live in a culture where the sole theme is the suggestion that you should be very dissatisfied with your body.



Dieting, compulsive eating, and Fat Thoughts function as a way to keep people fat and from having their feelings. If you can stop dieting & interrupt your fat thoughts you can begin to identify the feelings & issues that lie beneath and take care of them. Once you do that you are on your way to understanding yourself better. You will feel calmer, you will think more clearly, and you will be better able to direct your life in a way that optimizes your happiness!

What you can do differently.

Once you notice the “Fat Thought”: Remember the body is listening to you are thinking!
1. Apologize to yourself for insulting yourself.
2. Ask: WHAT AM I NEEDING/Wanting? I know you want weight loss it is coming ☺!
WHAT AM I FEELING?
WHAT AM I THINKING/BELIEVING?
And Stay Fascinated, say with delight......I am so fascinating, I am translating feelings into “fat thoughts”. I can figure this out and meet my real needs.
I have to if I want to really lose weight and keep it off.

Mmm mmm mmm that was beautiful Mary thankyou, it resonated with every measure of my spiritual heart.

Copyright © Mary Sue Abernethy 2009 www.weight-loss-choose-inner-wisdom.com

Challenges: Well only this word to my left, this word challenge, well that is my challenge and I am challenged every day and night and that is my challenge, that I like to be challenged why do I like to be challenged and then that is just more of a challenge. Do you get my song?

Triumphs: People love my little !!! !!!! !!!! !!!!!! !!!!!! !!!!!!!!

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Water with lemon squeezed in it. A grapefruit.

Lunch: Thai Curry potatoes, that we cooked last night carried into todays lunch mm mm mm mm mmm mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mmm obviously it was mmm mm mmmmmmm

Dinner: Walnut patte wrapped in lettuce with avocado. They are VERY creamy, kind of like a warm syrup, like a ludge of creem cheese in your mouth for you cheese lovers, like thick moist coconut! Recipe below!

Dessert: Chocolateballs with peanut butter!!!!! Extra !!!!!! Recipe as always on blog day 115!!!

Snacks: Sweet sweet pineapple! And a beet and carrot and ginger and celery juice!

Recipe:
- 1 handful walnuts or brazil nuts (1/2 to 1 cup)
- 1/8th to 1/4 cup young coconut meat
- tablespoon of fresh rosemary

Process above together in food processor. Pulse until nice chunky paté mixture (not too smooth, or the brazil nuts start to get really oily)...

Scoop in to bowl and add a handful of cut wakame seaweed (available at Asian markets), and himalayan salt and season to taste...

Slice up cucumber rounds and put the paté on top like on a cracker...

Or wrap in lettuce with avocado and tomato slices...

Recipe from www.thegardendiet.com

Exercise: Walking around, laying around, practising loving and trusting myself

190 days to go!!!

Day 174

Thoughts: Unhealthy people think unhealthy thoughts. Fat people think fat thoughts. This is not good or bad, it is as it is.

There is a old saying “ Every thought that you think is a little hammer blow on the lump of iron which our bodies are, manufacturing out of it what we want it to be. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far. So take care of what you think.”

How do we do that? How do we take care of what we think? We all know that we have a past and our past shapes our present and out of our present evolves our future life. Why are we stuck up in our life? Why don’t we have the ability to convert our dreams into reality? What is stopping us?

For long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin, I thought. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life....

The supreme obstacle is the doorway to ultimate fufilment. This is the highest truth. Your past is a fact. It is not a reality. Your current circumstances do not reveal your true nature. It only reveals your current state of thinking. So despair not. Your current circumstances can quickly be altered by changing your nature of thoughts. Look what I said. I said “by changing your nature of thoughts” .

Pay close attention to the lives all the great men and women, all the success stories and you find a common thread amongst all of them... “ That which you seek you already own. Acknowledge it and everything that you deeply cherish will manifest itself in abundance...” And most of them were believers.

What is the greatest mistake we make in reaching out for our dreams? We start with the assumption that we do not possess the fruit(goals). That we are lacking something and we focus more and more on the fruit and less on the abilities(seed and environment) which can help us grow the fruit.

What is the difference between a seed and a fruit?


The effect is nothing but cause in another form. There is no difference between a seed and the fruit. The whole intelligence of the fruit must be in the seed. The seed cannot grow into a fruit unless the intelligence of the fruit is embedded in the seed. You might not be able to see the fruit in the tiny seed but that doesn’t mean that the intelligence of the fruit can’t exist in a subtle form in the tiny seed. The cause has to contain the intelligence to produce the required effect.

Why am I telling you all these things? Because you have all the abilities and causes to attract and produce all those fantastic things you dream for. All you got to do is meditate on the seed which you own, which you possess and then watch as the universe works its magic filling you with the choices of love, light, abundance and joy.

You have every right to benefit from a healthy body and mind.

You have every right to enjoy the best of relationships.

You have every right to become rich.

All the good things in life should come to you. Should that is the word and if they do not there are ways and means for allowing them to come to you. - Vish

You think when you look in the mirror and feel self hatred or disgust, if you hate yourself or the fat on your body enough it will force you to stop eating and loose weight, when in fact most often fat thoughts make you eat more now or later, the Yo-Yo Diet Cycle.

http://www.vish-writer.com/recommends/SoulPowerMagic
Dr Alfred Dsouza

Challenges: Allowing abundance to come to me.

Triumphs: My body is getting confused between orgasims and my chocolate ball recipe!

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Water with lemon juice. Strawberries. A cucumber.

Lunch: Left overs from last nights eggpant basil dish with brown rice and avocado.

Dinner: Green Thai curry potatoes with green beans and brocoli! Recipe below ;)

Dessert: chocolate balls (Recipe on blog Day 115)

Snacks: 6 chocolate balls

Recipe: The recipe for my Green Thai that can be either raw on a salad or cooked as a curry, vegetarian or not vegetarian, is on blog Day 21!

Exercise: I went for a skateboard to the park and almost went arse up! I was thinking for a different word to use then arse, nothing else fit right! My skateboard went into the gutter out of all things! So then I did some jumps up onto the park benchs, and some stretching and push ups, or I should say half push ups! Come on chest muscles you can do it hoooigghhhaaa! Hehe! And I skateboarded around some more and then skatboarded home!

And Meditation. I always thought meditation was an activity. It is not an exercise that I choose to do during certain times of the day. Meditation is like breathing. If I stop it I lose my awareness and connection with the life force. It has got nothing to do with sitting in one place and closing my eyes. Meditation is simply a medium to convert powerful thoughts into reality.

191 days to go!!!

Day 173

Thoughts: Meet Jinjee, "I've been raw vegan for 13 years on and off and 100% raw (not including a few slip-ups) for 5 years!". Jinjee is 39 years old.

Here are some photos of her fourth pregnancy - which she says "Painless birthing and rapid recovery with a Raw Vegan Diet!"



And this is Jinjee just 10 days after giving birth!!!


Jinjee didn't always look like this. This is her, before a raw vegan lifestyle, at 24years old, in 1992, at 180 lbs.


This is Jinjee after, at 34 years old, in 2001, after three babies, at 135 lbs. She looks younger here than she did at 24! It is obvious that weight certainly ages a person.


Jinjee's story: I was 25, overweight and tired, starting to feel pains I knew I was too young to be feeling. Then I met Storm! With his influence I began to eat a mostly raw diet with a few simple vegan dishes like rice and beans and began to lose weight and feel better. After about a year I went 100% raw and after a few months I began to feel the most incredible health! I quickly and easily dropped to my ideal weight and became filled with energy. The difference between 100% raw compared to 75%was like night and day!!

I LOVE food! My Father was a Hungarian-Jew and raised me on rich deli food. I teethed on Hungarian sausage, fattened on cold cuts, cheeses, Westfalian ham, lox, cream cheese, Swiss chocolate and German nougat! When I was 15 I started my battle with weight and overeating, a battle that raged continuously for 11 years! Every day of my life I promised myself that "tomorrow" I would control my eating, and I meant it. But no matter how hard or consistently I tried I wasn't able to overcome my eating problem. I prayed, meditated, and worked out furiously. The workouts helped somewhat with my weight during the year or two that I went to the gym daily. But by then I had also become a complete junk food junkie. I ate chocolate bars every day! I was a big fan of milkshakes, ice cream, pizza, nachos and cheese, bagels, pastries, chips, burgers and fries, chocolate chip cookies, anything with meat sauce, and quite simply anything that tasted good!

Looking back in my journals they are filled with the normal and not so normal events of growing up, but the common thread that runs through each entry over the years is my battle with food. One day I'd tell myself that tomorrow I'd eat no sugar, the next day that I'd eat only 3 meals a day, or that this month I'd loose 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds, that I'd stick to a certain meal-plan, or try a new diet I'd read about. But nothing worked. My skin began to break out. I tried cutting out chocolate but it didn't help. My face was starting to scar up, ravaged by junk food. My Father, who was overweight and a very disciplined concert pianist, told me to give up, that I was going to drive myself around the bend. But this only made me more determined to win this battle. I was going to vanquish the forces within me that sought my destruction.

Pursuing a music career at 25 I enrolled in College in Santa Barbara California. I was 180 lbs., my heaviest ever, at 5'9", and young and free. Storm (now also known as "Nutman") was also in the music program and we met in the practice rooms and started playing music together. I noticed there was something special about him, an energy, - he glowed. He was very lean, very muscular, very athletic. He was captain of the fencing team and he was on crew, and also took jazz dance and tennis. Later I also discovered he was a martial artist, sailor, and mountain-climber. Although he wasn't on the track team, he spent a lot of time at the track and would often work out with the college's top track athletes.

I was stunned and appalled when I learned that this man, who I thought was in his 20's, was 47 years old! He never talked about his diet, but I noticed he often walked around with a bottle of water. When we started spending more time together playing music and hiking in the mountains, I observed that when he ate, it was usually plain shepherds salad, sprouts, or grapes that he got at the Farmers Markets, which were large gatherings of farmers who sold their produce twice a week in stalls on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara. It was there that I discovered the joys of fresh organic avocados, tomatoes, sprouted humus, fresh squeezed orange juice, dried apricots, raisins, pecans, almonds, pumpkin seeds, guava pineapples, strawberries, bananas, smoothies, wheatgrass juice, seaweed, melons, peaches, sprouts and Tom Shepherd's delicious pre-washed salad mix that I could eat right out of the bag. I was caught up in the sensuality of eating these foods uncooked, in their natural fresh state. And I suddenly found myself rarely eating anything else. Between Santa Barbara and surrounding areas Goleta, Montecito, and Carpenteria, there was a Farmer's Market nearly every day of the week!

I was feeling really good and loosing weight, but then I started to get sick. Very sick. I developed a killer migraine, and I had a flu that wouldn't go away. One night, at the worst point of all this, I was vomiting, shaking and very frightened. I thought I might be dying. I called Storm. He asked several questions about my condition and then explained that I was going through a de-toxification of my system. Because I had stopped putting junk food into my body, my system was finally able to begin cleaning house. He said I could slow down the detox process if I ate some rice. But now that I knew what was going on I didn't feel as afraid. I was still a little unsure of the safety of this way of eating. I worried about becoming anorexic and about getting all the nutrients a body needs. But I decided I'd rather die than go back to my former battle. So I kept to my new habit of eating all-live foods.

And then, after a few weeks, something happened! It was like I had passed through some invisible barrier, and had come out on the other side! I felt like my body had been born again. I had reached a level of health that I had never felt before. I was tingling. I was completely in touch with the sensuous universe. Colors, sounds, leaves, smells, thoughts, every vibration had a profound effect on me. I was very clear, very aware, very at peace, very energized. I relished just moving, just breathing. I felt so thankful for each moment of being alive in this incredible living and vital body. The pleasure of it was so intense that the cravings that would soon resurface had very little power. The pleasure of junk food was incredibly small in comparison to the pleasure of my new sense of being truly healthy. I was glowing and high with energy. I was floating on air, walking 10 feel above the ground, running effortlessly up mountains, swimming across lakes, things I'd never dreamed of!

I had gone from eating whatever I wanted to living on a diet consisting exclusively of raw fresh organic vegetation! I still ate large quantities of food and enjoyed eating as much as ever if not more, but I lost 20 pounds in the first two months and another 22 pounds over the next three months. I'm holding now at my ideal weight of 135 pounds. The intense pleasure of good health just gets stronger all the time and I'm finally enjoying my youth.

One of the things that really helped me to never go back to my former eating habits was Storm's gift with recipes. He was able to replace any food I might be craving with an all-live version. For instance, if I craved meat, he made a nut-loaf out of ground nuts (usually pecans and almonds ground up in a meat grinder), with red peppers, tomatoes and onions, with a sauce made from raw tahini, lemon juice and garlic. He replaced milk shakes with nut-milk. He replaced apple pie with raw oat cobbler that tasted better than any pie I had ever had. He replaced rich deserts and sweets with fruit salad texture-blends from heaven. He made Sushi from ground nuts and avocado wrapped in dried seaweed, nut pizzas, smoothies, salads with dressings of avocado, vinegar and honey. For almost every junk food craving there was an even better substitute from the world of living foods.

Since being on this diet, which I now know is called the "raw vegan" diet, I am seldom depressed or irritable, my PMS and menstrual cramps have completely vanished, and I sleep 5 hours a night instead of 9.

The Doctors themselves also disagree as to the right diet. Some say that we eat too much protein. Some say that vegetarian diets don't have sufficient protein. Some say that high protein diets are dangerous. There are so many conflicting opinions coming out of the medical community, that I think we need to start thinking for ourselves. I think when considering a diet, you should always look at the author and ask yourself "Would I want to look like that?".

When it comes to knowing what foods to put into our bodies, perhaps our inner knowing is farther along than science. I believe we all know in our hearts that there is a right way to eat, and that the foods that the forces of nature put here on this earth are good, in their natural uncooked form that they were put here in, and that everything else is suspect. People just don't believe that it is POSSIBLE to eat an all-natural diet in today's society. But it is!!! And once you grab hold of that "golden ring" , as I have come to think of "good health", it becomes the easiest thing in the world. The raw-vegan diet is the only diet I have ever been able to stick to, - and I've tried everything from "Aroma-trim" to "The Zone". With this diet, I went off it one time and tried to get back on it for two years. I had had a major lifestyle shift, moving into a different climate, and didn't think it was possible to maintain a raw diet in Canada. So I went "off the wagon". But fairly soon I knew I had to get back on it as soon as possible. And I promised myself that next time I got hold of the golden ring, I would NEVER let go!

To visit Jinjee's website go to www.thegardendiet.com You can also see photos of Storm, when he was 53 years old with a body of a 20 year old! They have 5 beautiful children, and I must say some of the healthiest, glowing looking children I have ever seen! You can also see a photo of Storm from my yesterdays blog.

Challenges: I too was like Jinjee and every day of my life I promised myself that "tomorrow" I would control my eating, and I meant it! But no matter how hard or consistently I tried I wasn't able to overcome my eating problem. I would eat extremely healthy and then binge on junk food. Thinking I was not in control of myself and what went in my mouth was the worst! I hoped it would someday end and worked out furiously. It was a tiring mess! I know there are a lot of other people out there with this same thing, I know it because I get emails from people about it, plus if I can think it, so can any human being. Most human beings are operating from the one frequency, therefore I can assume that anything I think, you are probably thinking it, or have thought it before, or will think of it someday. The hardest part of being stuck in this food trap is thinking that you will never get out, or that it will never end, and that you will be like this and live like this for your entire life. I thought this. And since The Earth Diet no longer think this. I am free from it. The same as Jinjee. Try eating more raw foods, it will shift your consciousness.

Triumphs: Wow Jinjee's transformation is inspiring and it is undeniable that a raw vegan diet works! I live 75% raw and have absolutely noticed a transformation in my body, health and energy. It absolutely makes sense to eat live foods rather than dead organic matter. Well it does if you want this, "Colors, sounds, leaves, smells, thoughts, every vibration had a profound effect on me. I was very clear, very aware, very at peace, very energized. I relished just moving, just breathing. I felt so thankful for each moment of being alive in this incredible living and vital body."'Wow.

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Water with lemon squeezed in it. Beet, carrot, celery and ginger juice.

Lunch: Strawberries, black berries and a cucumber!

Dinner: Eggplant with brocoli, garlic, chilli, onion, zuchinni, walnuts, spinach, green beans and basil, with brown rice and avocado!

Dessert: Black berries... mmm mmm mmm my new favourite fruit!

Snacks: Peanut butter, crushed peanuts :) And some peanuts. They are so much fun to crack open and the reward is the peanut in my mouth! Hehe! Yep pretty much an elephant today.

Recipe: Recipe is in blog day 172 although today I included avocado, it is such a smooth, soft and cool compliment to this dish, as it has a lot of flavours, spice and chilli. The more chiili you put in, the more avocado needed to cool your mouth! ;)

Exercise: A workout in the park! I get very easily bored with exercising if it becomes to repeat machine like. So I like to mix it up and have fun with it! I went for a skateboard, did some sit ups using the park equipment, and some jumps up onto a platform. I sat at the top of the slide and did some pull ups. Did some squats around the outside of the park. There was also a balancing cylinder so I practised balancing and falling off that! Then I did some stretches on the comfy grass! Oh what fun :)

191 days to go!!!