make better food choices

I haven’t bought any baby carrots since Little Man died, maybe I’ll try some soon.

I’ve loved the strawberries and nectarines from there. Started taking lots of fruit to school and find myself less groggy. Now if I can transform my main meal eating habits, I think I’ll definitely be on a better track.

I tried something last week with taking in cans of veggies with a can opener. My car gets hot, so it naturally heats it. I fulfill my veggie servings and have my fruit in the fridge at work. I still have my Subway gift card, but would rather see if I can do veggies this week at work, see how I feel and hopefully benefit from it. I’ll continue to work on eating less fast food.

Flour dust is explosive.

Homeland Security figures prominently in modern food production.

When cooked, cotton cellulose is transformed into a soft goo, perfect for lending a slippery sensation to the filling in snack cakes—and rocket fuel.

The iron compound in enriched flour is also used as a common weed killer.

The touch of iron in a Twinkie usually begins not only in iron ore mines in Minnesota, which is no surprise, but also in oil wells, which is.

Sugar and its derivatives also have some surprising technical uses: as a flame retardant and plasticizer in polyurethane foam, as a water-based ink for printing on plastic bags, for curing tobacco(spread on leaves to help them dry evenly), and, my personal favorite, for cleaning out cement mixers. Third world medics often use sugar to soak up moisture in wounds that might otherwise grow bacteria. Sugar burns, and can be substituted for charcoal in gunpowder mixtures or mixed with saltpeter to make a cheap smoke bomb.

Glucose adds smoothness, flavor and shelf life to tobacco, brings glossiness and pliability to shoe leather; stabilizes adhesives; prolongs the setting of concrete; moisturizes air fresheners; and controls evaporation of perfumes. It helps hand lotion stay moist on your shelf for years.

Cornstarch is found in Wise Cheez Doodles, extends Cheerios crispiness in milk, and binds moisture in processed meats like Oscar Mayer Turkey Bologna.

Cellulose gum is what you wrap your pudding, sauce, or cake tightly with and then put it in the fridge to keep it lasting longer. It’s like tossing some gelatin into your whipped cream to keep it from slumping. Hard to believe it comes from cotton and trees. Scientists say the gum “stabilizes” a cake’s crumb, or that it “controls staling,” which, of course, goes back to the all-important shelf life.

Whey was discovered via farmers that noticed sturdy weeds growing along the streams behind the cheese-making plants which grew because of the waste and whey that was coming out of the cheese-making plants. The kind that most are familiar with is found in the kitchen, in the form of milk, cream or butter. It’s popular to use as it helps bind water, slow staling, and keep cakes “moist and fresh” after days or weeks on a store shelf.

Rocks make cakes light and airy. Believe it or not, the sources of the three chemical leavening ingredients on the Twinkies’ label are rocks: phosphate rock, a sodium-rich rock called irona, and calcium-rich limestone. Pure phosphorous bursts into flames when it comes into contact with air. Lime just kind of disappears into thing air if not stored properly. Almost all sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda, is water-soluble and comes from deep mines in Wyoming.

Pearlash-a crude potassium bicarbonate made from wood ashes and normally used in soap and glass-making—could be added to bread dough to counter the natural sourness of sourdough(Historians figure colonists learned from or discovered this from the Native Americans by mistake/accident). It’s also prized for its quick rising.

Phosphorus is what puts the glow in tracer bullets and causes artillery shells to explode, because it bursts into flame when it makes contact with air. So it does seem odd that it’s part of a Twinkies recipe.

Three ways to harvest salt. Evaporate salt water to get crystals naturally-the oldest method-but that takes as much as two years of sunny, windy weather found only in limited (but beautiful) places. You can blast it out of a mine with dynamite and front-end loaders and then crush it, but that takes big mining operations and leaves a fairly impure rock salt suitable for water softening, ice control, and chemical processing—not food. Or you can flush it out of the ground with water and boil it down in an evaporation plant. That last method produces the fine, pure crystals of salt we purchase at the grocery store or that are used in processed foods.

Glycerin by itself is not explosive but nitro-glycerin is. Another intriguing coproduct is making methyl esters(instead of fatty acids) when splitting off the glycerin. Those are used to make diesel fuel. Technically an alcohol, glycerin is a clear, sweet, thick oil, like a heavy mineral oil or corn syrup and is delivered to mono and diglycerides plant by tank truck, pumped into tanks at the windy loading dock. Glycerin works as a solvent for coloring, as a moistening agent for baked goods and as a texturizer in syrup. It prevents sugar from crystallizing in icings and candies, and best of all, improves the texture and allows for the use of less sugar in lower-calorie icecream.

Polysorbate 60 fills our cakes with creaminess, and puts the “whip in whipped cream.” it replaces real cream and eggs. Sorbitol is a popular reduced calorie bulk sweetener that comes from corn, or rather dense dextrose corn syrup. It’s in chewing gum, cough syrup and toothpaste. PS 60 could be said to grow on trees-trees on Malaysian oil palm plantations which creates the stearic acid that is in PS 60. Stearic acid provides the hallmark gooeyness for many shampoos and lotions. It’s also used with pipes, towers, and railcars.

Polysorbate 60 after going some deodorizing and purification, out pours a greasy, tan goo that’s ready to be mixed with oil and water. Warned not to taste a sample. It is so bitter, and the aftertaste on the back of your tongue is so cloying, that an engineer sternly cautions saying “You won’t be able to taste your dinner for a week.” As its in the filling, could it be the reason why Twinkies’ taste seems to linger long after you’ve eaten one?

Butyric acid, a natural component of Parmesan cheese, rancid butter, and unbelievably, vomit and persperation, is made by passing carbon monoxide, not quite your usual food ingredient over a mixture of sodium metal catalysts at 400 degrees F. The result is an oily, colorless, foul-smelling liquid that eventually suggests…butter.

This is something I’d like to go see for myself. The purest gypsum, the only gypsum approved for use in food is found in the northwestern quadrant of Oklahoma in a rolling area called the Gypsum Hills that sparkles with glasslike crystals. Canyons in nearby Glass Mountain State Park show dramatic layers of white rock alternating with red earth.

Sorbic acid starts with two main ingredients: natural gas, cracked to make ethane gas (for C) and methane gas (for D). These change into other forms eventually into methanol(wood alcohol) with a little help from carbon monoxide. Don’t worry-it’s not an ingredient, just a convenient source of chemicals that become part of a complex reaction…the same way it is used to keep your supermarket ground beef looking fresh.Eventually after the whole extended process goes on-you get sugarlike crystals.

A Twinkie’s label always identifies it as “Golden Sponge Cake,” but that gold does not come from a precious metal found in the ground. It comes from a precious liquid found in the ground, sometimes called “black gold.” Yes, Red No. 40 and Yellow No. 5 are made from oil, some processed by European companies, some by domestic companies but most likely from the Chinese petroleum refined in the Yellow River Delta, at the edge of the Yellow Sea. Benzene, a colorless, light, flammable oil is one of the first things to come off crude oil when its heated in a refinery ad that is where both artificial red and yellow begin. Benzene is the source of the basic materials for food colors and other dyes as well as products as diverse as solvents, detergents, gasoline(to boost octane and reduce knocking), plastics, perfumes and of course artificial flavorings.

and watching some of my fun money disappear. Trying to reengage my appetite for fruit & veggies rather than fried crap. Last can of Slimfast is tomorrow for lunch and then I need to figure what to do for lunches.

Still wish there was a pill that simulated your favorite food and helped you lose weight. Sadly, it is so easy to reach for a french fry/fried chicken thing and appeals so much more than healthy stuff.

Brainstorm thought-new goal with this one is to reintroduce myself to saying no to myself. I’ve been such a naughty girl with this….muahaha (sigh) I’ll try harder though.

I am currently going through a cycle where all I seem to want is fast food. I did really well for a long time and didn’t eat McDonalds for quite a few months to a year or two after seeing the movie Supersize Me and then reading the book. Add in it takes up a bit of my spare money so I have to be careful of other expenses, it just doesn’t make sense to keep eating all the fast food.

I’m trying to eat more fruits and drink more water to fill up. Hoping to start walking in mornings or even nights since I haven’t been doing racquetball much recently.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I have been eating too much junk food and food that is way too fattening. I am trying to lose 100 pounds in One Year, so I am really making a big effort to make better food choices and stop eating so much stuff that makes me fat. I bought a book called “Volumetrics Weight Control Plan” and it is helping me to make better choices of the foods I eat each day.

This would require me to make food choices at all. I just haven’t been eating. Not eating is not a good food choice.

I’ve been feeling really melancholy recently. This usually makes me want to eat and eat and eat. Today, however, I’ve been able to resist that urge. Some people take it day to day. I take it minute to minute these days. It helps when I’m really busy at work – I can go from lunch to dinner in about two seconds.

I’m trying to be more specific about my goals. Like, I want to lose weight, but I know the only way I’m going to accomplish that is to make better food choices and work out. So, whenever I purchase food, I’ll make a note of it on here.

Grocery shopping:
apples
bananas
spinach
romaine lettuce
grape tomatoes
carrot shavings
already-cut-up peppers
veggie burgers
low-cal buns
a few lean cuisines
cous cous
frozen broccoli, peas, and stir fry vegetables
100 calorie oreo packs
all bran bars
yogurt