These are additives you should avoid like you would cyanide!

These additives are contributing to the diseases that are ravaging this nation. These ingredients are directly being linked to all forms of cancer, auto-immune diseases like: chronic fatigue, Lupus, MS, diabetes, arthritis, Fibromyalgia, other diseases like endometriosis, heart disease, stroke, gastrointestinal diseases like IBS and Crohn’s disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, ADD and ADHD and Autism.

Partially Hydrogenated vegetable oils or “Trans-Fats”

Hydrogenated oils, same as Trans-Fats

Sodium Benzoate and Ascorbic Acid – These two together create Benzene Poisoning!

Hydrolyzed Protein, this is hydrogen added to protein…Yum!

Sodium Caseinate & Calcium Caseinate (linked to autism and other brain malfunctions)

Hydrolyzed Plant Protein, Hydrolyzed Oat Flour & Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, Yeast Extract & Autolyzed Yeast – another name for MSG

Textured Protein & Plant Protein Extract, another hidden source of MSG

Spices or seasoning that you cannot pronounce!

Bouillon or Broth (Organic Broth is just fine, no chemical are added!)

Natural Flavoring, bugs, guts and naturally occurring chemicals are all considered “Natural”

High Fructose Corn Syrup – Reports show ten times more addictive than sugar!

Nitrates & Nitrites - Nitrate is harmless, but it can convert to nitrite, which can form nitrosamines, a powerful cancer-causing chemical, in your body.

Enriched Foods, everything “good” was removed and replaced with chemicals and isolated vitamins

Phosphoric Acid – clear colorless liquid, H3PO4, used in fertilizers, soaps and detergents. Are you hungry yet?

Carmine, Cochineal Extract, Carminic Acid and PEG-80, 3, 46 and 120. These are all names for the Cochineal Beetle used today for coloring foods. Not only gross, but severe allergic reactions, especially with children.

Any dye colors and preservatives that you didn’t make yourself! Aspartame & Splenda

Diacetyl – Make in fermentation process, causing respiratory injury and illness: OSHA information about diacetyl ,

MSG, EDTA, BHA, BHTA or any other combination of letters! These preservatives will make it through the next ice age!

INTERESTERIFIED – The new improved “trans-fat”. Improved because you don’t know to look for it!

In this country the thought is, if a little is good for you, a lot is better!  A friend of mine was presented with an article in one of the news magazines which stated on the cover, "Your vitamins may be making you toxic!!! "  I heard someone say to a coworker recently  that she could have whatever she wanted because after all, she did take so many vitamins!  Taking a multitude of vitamin pills seems to be the excuse for a bad diet.  We were, like everyone else, jumping on the supplement bandwagon, finally taking up to $200/month (or more)  worth of pills, potions, herbs and juices.  Who could find room for real food??? 

Even though our outward symptoms of exhaustion, lack of stamina, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, anxiety, insomnia, dry skin, and vascular issues (gasp!) all continued, we were undaunted in our regimen!  We were resigned to believe that we were just getting older (as that was what our doctor told us as he wrote more prescriptions).  With what we were taking and spending, we should have been the pictures of health!  I know there are others out there who are doing what we have done and feel what we felt, -- not one whit better!

Everyday, handfuls of tablets slid down our gullets, followed by the "juice-of-the-day" chaser.  We felt pretty self righteous, but no better.  It was a case of the king's new clothes. We would not admit, nor will others, that our routine was not improving our health.   And yet, there we were, urine glowing bright orange, feeling like crap, exhausted, depressed and we weren't obese or a little overweight!  I was not even 45 and getting up stairs hurt my knees and made me short of breath. Walking through an airport uninterrupted was not an option.  I had to stop every 50 yards to rest.  And forget about dragging a suitcase!

 In 2004, everything changed.  no, the vitamin pills did not finally kick in.  We have a grandson who was literally dying of an autoimmune disorder; his immune system was not working in fact, it was destroying him.  He was 11 and had blood work numbers that would scare a cirrhosis or AIDS patient; one of them upwards of 500,000 and normal was 100 or less.  All this meant that he was ripe to catch whatever whenever and usually did.  This meant hospitalization, months of IV medications, antibiotics, inhaler and whatever the drug du jour would be for that particular bug. 

During my workout in the summer of that year,  there was a woman at the gym who loudly touted the ingestion of 9-13 servings of fruits and veggies to build one's immune system.  My thought was, "Yeah, I can see it now!  Oh, Grandma, please give me some more broccoli!"   However, I was intrigued and desperate.

She posed this question:  "If your grandson will not eat fruits and veggies, why not try giving them to him in a capsule?"  It was only food, she said, and could not hurt him and he was already taking so many pills.  I was pretty skeptical and hated to give him one more capsule.  And yet, if it would help him, I would give it a try. We had nothing to lose.

Suffice it to say, we couldn't move fast enough enrolling this child in something that I hoped at the time, might just change his life; something so simple that actually might give him life.  That's what we did and that IS what happened.

It was at that time, that in our researching, we found that most illnesses, maladies, joint pain, stamina are all affected by what goes in your mouth and the quality of that food.  Imagine that!   In fact, we learned that 70% of all degenerative diseases, which is just about all of them minus those that are genetically caused, are related to poor nutrition and lifestyle!  Food became our medicine as a necessity for the entire family and we have not returned to that soda at every meal, sweets for breakfast, couch potato life again.  It took a little adjusting and insistence on our parts that certain foods were just poison to us. 

We learned that sugar suppresses the immune system for up to 6 hours. It basically puts your immune system to sleep and with your immune system sleeping, the infections invade.  We could not afford that.  In fact, there were many things that we had been ingesting that now did become poison to us.  Donuts, candy, soda was a huge no-no. Water, tea, veggies, fruits, wholesome bread with some fiber in it all became the new regimen.

Now,  I feel now better than I did 10 years ago!  As for my grandson, he is thriving, top of his class, normal, healthy, never sick.  This is true for the rest of my grandchildren and children as well.    Does that mean that we NEVER eat anything bad for us?   Absolutely not, but we know where to go to offset the damage we do everyday because we are human. We reach for the good things more often than the bad.

You might ask,  "Are you just telling me this to have me buy something?"   Yes, I am!  Buy more fruits and veggies and eat them like they are going out of style.  If you can't, won't or just don't like them, there is a solution and that's what this page is all about.  

-- Mary Camfield  

The link between Health and Nutrition is established by eating the right kinds of foods, specifically fruits and vegetables.  There are literally thousands of these plant chemicals (researchers are still discovering and naming them) but it is important to understand the impact they have on the tiny building blocks that support our lives.

The handful (read the labels!) of isolated, fragmented vitamins often found in vitamin supplements are provided in mega-doses and may become toxic over time.  

The nutrition available in fresh, raw fruits and vegetables has been shown in numerous studies to increase the efficiency of the immune system thus preventing many ailments. 

The "catch" is a person needs 9 to 13 servings of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables each day!   

Perhaps, you're thinking you can't possibly eat that many servings of fruits and vegetables. 

There are → solutions ← available!   

Many people have turned to organically grown fruits and vegetables.  Organic is defined in many ways to many people.  A general consensus is they are free of herbicides and pesticides.  That's a good start but what about the nutritional content? 

Current government estimates are that fruit and vegetables on average contain as little as ten to thirty per cent of the nutrition they did in the 1940's!  Surprising?  Not when you consider they are shipped thousands of miles to get to market and have to be picked early to withstand the trip.

An apple receives 80 per cent of it's nutrition during the last week it ripens on the tree but if it's picked while it's still green...

 See the → solutions ← available!  

Searching for a farmer's market?  The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) maintains a listing of markets.  Click Here.

Let's think of your immune system as though it were a brick wall  This wall to the left represents the immune system you were born with. How pretty!  How perfect!  How strong.  Impermeable!  Your healthy cells fought disease on a regular basis and needed building every day. You were nursed, later fed good food and all those cells (bricks) stayed intact and connected.  You grew and were fed by your parents hopefully wholesome, living food; not sodas, chips and fries and candy.  You thrived!  You could run and jump, you were never tired and rarely sick.  Life was good!  Your immune system was perfect!

Then one day, probably in your preteen years, you discovered sweets, burgers and fries, colas -- junk food!  "Dude!  That is good stuff!"  Ice cream, cotton candy, popcorn balls and all those great holidays associated with things that make your broccoli taste like sewage to you!  The cell degeneration begins. See that tiny little hole?  That's a missing or damaged cell.   As you have several trillions of cells, what difference did it make that you were missing a few?   The wall still is there.  You can still run, jump, are not often tired and you were sick a little more often but not enough to make much of a difference.  You did eat dinner occasionally and maybe had a salad, but you had soda everyday just to make that meatloaf and salad palatable.  No big deal, -- yet.

Before you know it after your twenties of too much beer, too much bad food, too little sleep, no water, and very little fresh, raw fruits and veggies, you begin to notice that you are hurting in your knees, your back, you are sick 3-4 times a year.  You have headaches and you  can't get enough sleep.  Your  blood pressure starts to rise and your cholesterol is too  high for your age.   Your wall is still upright but there is now tuck pointing in the form of regular medications. Migraine meds,  pain pills, antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills.  The cells are not really so solid anymore and are hanging on by the little splatters of cement and mortar put there to hold them together.  They are not healthy; they just aren't too noticeable, -- yet.  They are too small as to cause you to be non-functioning,  but sick they are and they are reproducing themselves.  They are starting to make your wall weak and it is starting to crumble.  You say to yourself in your youthful ignorance, "Everyone has to die of something!"

You begin to notice that even sex is too much work, climbing the stairs is too much work.  You don't want to travel because that will involve taking suitcases that you have to drag, load, pack and unpack.  You're just tired.  You can't get through the day without a nap.  You continue to eat your chips and drink your soda.  Your mid-morning snack is a donut and your afternoon snack a candy bar.  What's a carrot?   Then one day:   "Diabetes?   "No one in my family is diabetic!  There must be a mistake!"   It's time to change your diet, but you are angry now and don't want to change because you never developed the habit of eating real food.  You liked the pretty, pink, blue and purple foods with the chewy, fruity flavors or covered with chocolate and caramel, and of course the burgers, fries, pizza and sodas and lots of beer!  Peaches are not THAT good.  Most of the wall is still standing.  You can't feel the deterioration deep inside your body.  You reason that because you are on your feet and you can still work, you must be fine.  But your knees do hurt!  Oh, and that fat in the middle?  It's just middle age spread, -- normal "for your age"

One day, however,  on your way to work, the wall crumbles.  You can't hold it together anymore. You' re sweaty and cold, short of breath, hot and cold at the same time.   A few cells too many have given way and now your wall does not look like a wall anymore.  It looks like this (below right).  This is when most people decide to eat better and  to begin to change some of their unhealthy habits.  It is like closing the door after the horses have gone.  Or is it?  What if I told you that if you start now, you can actually improve your health, not with a pill but with food; the stuff you don't prefer to eat, but you can learn to love?

Why do we wait until the immune system is at this stage?  But,  do you know what?  Nutrition can help you at any stage and just like the way the mortar can be replaced and the bricks can be relaid, it may not yet be too late for you!  If you have noticed that perhaps you need some help getting the nutrition you need there is a solution.  It is simple, inexpensive, and can put you on the road to re-mortaring your brick wall to go from looking like this crumbling, rocky mess, --

to this again!
Unlike taking medicine, which is made to mask the symptoms, health will take time, -- Nutrition is not a  quick fix  but it is going to help you  restore your  health where drugs will not; maybe it will not fix ALL the damage that living in the fast food nation has done to your body, but you WILL improve.  The bricks (cells) have to be rebuilt and fed.

Pottenger's cats failed to thrive after the fourth generation.  What generation are we in since fast/processed food was introduced into the American diet?   Something to think about.

-- Mary C

Here are some educational pieces that I have found helpful in determining my selection of produce from my local market and/or grocery store. The Environmental Working Group has provided a handy tool called, the “Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce” that you may find helpful too (www.foodnews.org ). You may want to put this in an adobe file and there is a cutout purse size guide that you can take with you as you shop. I recommend for a very effective, affordable and easy to use fruit/vegetable spray that you can make at home for fractions of the cost of some of those on the market!

And finally, a little bit of education as to how to read those PLU codes on your produce at your local grocery so you know if what you are buying is organic or not……..always check this code as many times, the heading over the bin may say “organic” but somehow, inorganic produce is incorrectly placed in those bins……….consumer be AWARE!

— 4 digits: conventional produce

— 5 digits beginning with 9: organic

— 5 digits beginning with 8: GMO

Example:

— #4131 = Fuji apple

— #94131= Organic Fuji apple

— #84131 = GMO Fuji apple