I thought you might enjoy this poignant commentary on how health care is more about big business than health.

Happy Friday!

If you can’t see the embedded video below click here to watch.

Its cold and flu season … just in case you hadn’t heard about it in the news … and I’m surrounded by people in various stages of sniffles and coughs, and plenty of people who have been down a few days and recovered.

With all this going on I’ve been thinking about how to fortify my immune system the low crap way.

So I started blending up a small clove of garlic with my morning smoothie.  I don’t do it every day …  just the days that I wake up with a little tickle in my throat (which is a sure sign my immune system is under serious strain.)

I’ve discovered over the years that when my body needs a garlic boost I am not bothered by the unpleasant smell normally associated with eating raw garlic. When I start to smell garlic coming through my skin, then I know that the garlic has done its job in fortifying my immune function and I won’t eat it for a few days.

If you really don’t like the taste of garlic in your smoothie (its actually quite subtle) then you can take deodorized garlic tablets (1 or 2 per day is plenty) and achieve the same results. Remember though, processed garlic tablets are not low crap … what with all the packaging and processing that goes on to make them.

Garlic is worthy food medicine to keep on hand. It has antibiotic and antiviral properties and it is excellent for both preventing and treating respiratory conditions such as colds and flu. While you are keeping away colds and flus you will also be doing your heart good as garlic will lower cholesterol. Be aware though that garlic is a natural blood thinner; so use caution if you have a bleeding disorder or are using pharmaceutical blood thinners.

Fresh raw garlic is truly low crap, self-packaged goodness.

This afternoon I listened to a radio host interview a doctor about … what else … H1N1.

The slant to his interview was “Are children at risk of contracting H1N1 when they go trick or treating?”

The host asked the doctor questions like: “Can H1N1 be transmitted through candy.” “Are children at risk by touching a door knob that a bunch of other kids have touched?”

And my personal favourite question: “Could a ‘bad guy’ use Halloween candy to deliberately spread H1N1?”

I think the doctor was as frustrated as I was with the way the interview was going and he gave a calm and courteous, but firm “No” answer to all these questions.

I wish the media would stop.

If the media really wanted to do service to the public they would talk about how eating a whole bunch of sugar laced with food colouring, preservatives, and artificial stuff wreaks havoc on a child’s immune system.

And not only does all that crap food almost instantly deflate immune function, but researchers now say that repeated high spikes in blood sugar greatly contributes to one’s risk for developing Type 2 Diabetes.

Oh ya … don’t forget the damage that sugar can do to your child’s beautiful second set of newly forming teeth!

If you really want to protect your children this Halloween, limit the amount of candy they eat to one treat per day for a just a day or two, then quietly throw the rest in the garbage.

Want to know more? See “What’s so bad about junk food.”

If you have a few random vegetables in the fridge and whole grain or lentils in the pantry … then you’ve got soup.

Home made soup is wonderful low crap food. The possibilities are endless and its quicker than you think.

No crappy tin cans are involved.

If you have a slow cooker, you can assemble your soup in a hurry and have it cooking while you go about your day.

It is a perfect way to get low cost real food nourishment into growing bodies.

Throw in a few cloves of garlic and you have a flu-defying remedy in a bowl.

I like to serve my home made soup over a handful of fresh spinach leaves to get an extra serving of greens into my day.

I don’t have specific recipes that I use. It all depends on what I have on hand. Here’s some general instructions to get you started. Remember, like smoothies, you really can’t go wrong. As long as you like all the ingredients that you put into your soup, it should turn out just fine.

Ingredients for approximately 1 liter of soup
1 liter of water
½ - 1 cup of uncooked brown rice, wild rice, lentils, quinoa (or a combination)
2 – 6 cups chopped vegetables (Cabbage, Carrots, Celery, Corn, Green Beans, Leeks, Onion, Parsnip, Peas, Potatoes, Squash, Tomato, Yams, Zucchini, etc)
Seasoning (Herbs, Pepper, Salt, Spices, Curry, etc)

Directions
1. Wash and chop veggies into bite size pieces.
2. For extra flavour, sauté the stronger flavoured vegetables in a little butter or olive oil until tender and slightly browned (celery, garlic, leeks, onions).
3. Place all ingredients into pot or slow cooker.
4. Add ½ to 1 tsp sea salt, and other spices and herbs. Taste the broth at this point, but know that the flavour will change as everything gets cooked up together.
5. Bring to a boil, cover, and then simmer until the grains/legumes are cooked and the vegetables are tender, approximately 30 – 60 minutes. If using a slow cooker, set on low over night or while you are away at work.
6. Just before serving adjust the seasoning.

These days a lot of people ask me what I think about the much talked about coming flu season that is predicted to disrupt society.

Almost daily I’m asked if I am going to be vaccinated against H1N1 or the seasonal flu.

More than daily I receive emails warning about some grand conspiracy purporting to use the flu vaccine to spread disease, not prevent it.

Let me start by telling you what I think about all the hype around H1N1. Its a flu. Some type of flu virus moves throughout communities every year … always has … probably always will. Some years are worse than others. These days our community is global, so there are a lot more people who could potentially be carriers of the virus.

Am I going to be vaccinated against H1N1 and/or the seasonal flu? No. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I believe vaccinations are a personal decision based on personal circumstances and beliefs.

There are risks with any decision. Do your own research. Check in with your own inner knowing. And don’t let anyone bully you to get, or not get, any vaccine.

And please do me a favour. Once you have made your decision, don’t go around bullying other people to make the same decision you’ve made.

What about all those conspiracy theories that are floating around? In my opinion they are about as amusing as all the mainstream media hype. I don’t forward those emails.

Only time will tell if my beliefs, my immune system, my lifestyle choices and my efforts to reduce stress in my life, will protect me from this winter’s flu.

Whatever happens, I am fully committed to continuing my exploration of a low crap lifestyle, and will dedicate the next few weeks to talking about how a low crap diet can shore up your immune system and increase your chances of enjoying a comfortable, flu-free winter.

To get started check out these past posts:
Ten ways to clean up your diet 
Eating clean
What’s so bad about junk food?
Carrot Ginger Garlic Soup
7+ servings of fresh produce … no fork required
Fresh Ginger Root Tea

My kitchen is never without fresh ginger root … especially at this time of year when the seasons are changing and I know a long, cold winter is not far away.

You may know ginger for its endearing ability to quell queasiness and aid digestion. You may even know about ginger’s ability to warm the body from the inside out and ease the pain of arthritis.

What you might not know about ginger is that when its boiled up, then combined with honey and lemon, it can quite literally stop a cold or flu before it starts and allow you to get on with your life, instead of having to succumb to three days of feeling miserable.

For me, Ginger Tea is one of those “wrap my hands around the mug and close my eyes” kind of tea.

I love to drink it on days when morning has come way too soon and I find myself stumbling around in the kitchen wrapped in a blanket, unwilling to let go of my bed.

Or those nights when a chill in my bones and scratch in my throat threatens to spoil weekend plans.

I especially welcome Ginger Tea at that beginning stage of a cold or flu … when I can’t warm up and my ears are popping and my throat hurts and I just feel darn miserable.

Fresh Ginger Root Tea is easy to make at home. You simply boil sliced ginger root in a pot of water and serve with lemon and honey.

Fresh Ginger Root Tea is
- dairy free
- gluten free
- vegan

Ingredients
4 – 10 slices fresh, organic Ginger Root (You will need to experiment with how much ginger you use. Some people like a strong Ginger Tea with a sharp bite; other prefer a more subtle ginger taste.)
2 – 4 cups filtered water
Fresh Lemon wedges, one per cup
Honey to taste

Directions
1. Place sliced ginger root and water in pot with lid.
2. Bring to a boil, then cover pot and reduce heat.
3. Simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Pour into a mug. Add lemon wedge and honey to taste.

You may have noticed I’ve taken a few weeks off. In those few weeks I visited various parts of this great country, spending time with friends and family. And in amongst my travels I made a quick change of residence.

It was my move that got me thinking again about how much stuff we collectively have, and just how necessary it all really is … or isn’t. Anyone who has moved in a hurry has probably cursed at how much ‘stuff’ they have … I know I did.

And that got me thinking about a nifty little presentation that Annie Leonard has put together called “The Story of Stuff”.

So since its Friday, I’ll leave you to watch The Story of Stuff and maybe it will inspire you to take a walk this weekend instead of going shopping.

Happy Friday!

If you are viewing this in email, click here to go to the online version and see the show.

Click here to watch the rest of the chapters on YouTube.

Click here to watch the show on The Story of Stuff webpage.

I get a kick out of advertisements that claim their product contains ‘real’ food …

When a processed, packaged product boasts that one of its ingredients is ‘real’, you have to wonder what else the product contains.

I decided to investigate a breakfast cereal that brags about containing ‘real’ strawberries, and sure enough the product contains freeze dried strawberries … ingredient number 23 of a whopping 38 ingredients.

Other interesting things about this ingredient list is that the word ‘sugar’ shows up 4 times, and on closer examination I discovered that there are an additional 4 types of sugars (honey, molasses, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup) listed AND a chemical sugar (sucralose).

That’s 9 forms of sugar to go with those freeze-dried real strawberries!

Tomorrow morning I’m going to slice some really-real juicy ripe fresh strawberries onto my really-real bowl of brown rice and top it off with really-real almond milk.

Here is the complete ingredient list of the breakfast cereal I investigated. The numbers, indentations and colours are my additions.

1. Whole Grain Wheat
2. Wheat Bran
3. Sugar
     Berry Flavored Oat Cluster
          Toasted Oats
               4. Rolled Oats
               5. Sugar
               6. Soybean Oil
               7. Honey
               8. Molasses
          9. Sugar
          10. Rolled Oats
          Strawberry Flavored Apples
               11. Dried Apples
               12. Artificial Flavor
               13. Citric Acid
               14. Red #40
               15. Sodium Sulfite
          16. Corn Syrup
          17. Brown Sugar
          18. Natural
          19. And Artificial Flavor
          20. BHT [For Freshness]
21. Wheat Flour
22. High Fructose Corn Syrup
23. Freeze Dried Strawberries
24. Salt
25. Malt Flavoring
26. Natural And Artificial Flavors
27. Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)
28. Sucralose
29. Niacinamide
30. Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6)
31. Reduced Iron
32. Folic Acid
33. Riboflavin (Vitamin B2)
34. Vitamin A Palmitate
35. BHT (Preservative)
36. Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1)
37. Vitamin D
38. Vitamin B12

I don’t eat all that well when I’m tired and cranky.

Actually, let me rephrase that … I don’t take the time to purchase and prepare low crap food when I am tired and cranky.

I learned this about myself when I recently returned from a ten day business trip. I got home after dinner time and my fridge was lacking in fresh stuff … which leaves my fridge pretty empty indeed.

So I went shopping at the big box grocer that is open late and I found myself wandering around the store being tempted by the prepackaged stuff that I teach people to stay away from.

Even though I knew the food would leave me with a tummy ache, my tired cranky mood kept saying “I don’t care what you feed me … just feed me …”

It wasn’t too hard to find relatively low crap convenient food to take home … the hard part was trying to find low crap convenient food that wasn’t heavily packaged.

I didn’t do a very good job staying away from the packaging.

I came home from the store with two bags of groceries. One was full of fresh fruit and veggies. The other contained a hot, cooked chicken, a loaf of sprouted grain bread, and a small tub of mayonnaise … all great fixings for a low crap chicken sandwich … all heavily packaged in plastic.

When I was finishing up my month long ‘buy no food in plastic’ experiment at the end of July, I decided it was time to take action against plastic food packaging.

Well that was a month ago and I have to confess that I am just now getting over the trauma of that experiment … seriously … I hadn’t realized how stressed I had become until the stress began to ease.

The week after the experiment ended I came down with a nasty summer cold. Some people told me I must have gotten sick as a result of coming in contact with plastic again after avoiding it (as much as possible) for 30 days.

While that’s a lovely romantic notion …and it may or may not be true … I would have to do bunch of double blind scientific studies to prove my friend’s theory that our “immune system deteriorates in direct proportion to the amount of plastic we come in contact with”.

No, I believe that the danger that plastic poses is more insidious than that in ways that we don’t understand and can’t yet imagine.

So right now you might be thinking that the first rule of a low crap diet is to avoid plastic at all costs … but that would be a silly rule and, as I have proven, unattainable.

Actually, the first rule of a low crap diet is to not stress about what and how you eat because stress has been proven beyond a doubt to lower immune function.

Notice I said not to “stress” about what and how you eat … you must take responsibility for your health and the health of our planet … just don’t get all stressed out and sick over it.