It's been a while...

Well, let us not dwell on the fact I haven't had any time to post here in quite a while, and move right on to the food related stuffs... okay?  Lately I have been hearing a lot of bad things about food colouring.  I hear that red and yellow have toxins in them, that they are all chemicals that have health effects, and even of a study showing a link between ADHD (which I have by the way) and artificial food colourings... it leaves a person wanting to find an alternative. 

I already know the basics of some of the natural food colourings, like spinach for green, beets for purple, turmeric for yellow... but the one that I knew I can't live without is the one that was harder to find.  Blue.  Fear not, because I found a link to a recipe for natural blue food colouring, and it turns out I had an idea what it was too.  I once heard of dying yarns with red cabbage to get a beautiful shade of blue, but I thought it was only achieved by adding alum powder, which didn't sound tasty at all.  This recipe doesn't contain anything nasty, so I hope to give it a try and maybe save my child from food colouring related illness... at least at home.

How to Make Blue Food Coloring

 

 here is also a link to wikipedia on the subject of natural dyes that may be helpful / interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_coloring#Natural_food_dyes

GM foods... where science and stupid meet

I found this article a while ago which explains about genetically modified foods, and how although it sounds like smart people weilding powerful knowledge to make things better, you find out that making these crops is more of a frankenstein experiment in trial and error. 

I found the topic to be thought-provoking to be sure, and if you are curious about knowing more concerning your food and what GM actually means for your food, then click the link bellow and read this.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/03/jeffrey-smith-interview.aspx

This is more in the states then up here in Canada, where we don't have hormone ladden cow's milk and such, but since we get a lot of our products from the states, we should still be informed.

As I read it, I thought about how it could even be too late now to turn back from this badly broken road we are on with GM food, and how it could just be a little problem, or the end of all things?  I guess time will tell, but I will say, I have lost a lot of respect for the scientists that think kludging together pesticides with food was a good idea in the first place.

You can also read more about this here:


http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/09/the-great-genet.html#more
 
they have funny pictures and are very intelligent about the subject.

The dark secret of sucralose

I may want to loose a few pounds, but I think real sugars, like cane sugar, maple syrup and honey are the 'good in moderation sweeteners' we should be using.  I take real junk food over fake health food anyday now.

I have been worrying more and more about the effects of 'fake foods' on my health, and have already been avoiding aspartame like the devil, then I came across this very thorough and thoughtful article that told me more than I needed to know about an increasing in popularity and use artificial sweetener we all know by the brand name of Splenda. 

Now I will be keeping an eye out for sucralose on the labels too, I mean, even if you don't take the time to read that article, you need to remember that Splenda was discovered by a person trying to create a new pesticide. 

It may look like sugar and taste like sugar as they claim, but if it's a chlorocarbon (comprised of sucrose (sugar) — except that three of the hydroxyl groups in the molecule have been replaced by three chlorine atoms to be technical) it might have just left the food categorie.

Here is the article I found, but you could also just look up splenda on the internet. 

http://www.womentowomen.com/healthyweight/splenda.aspx



*picture, and more info on the dangers of aspartame found at this site:

http://www.aspartame.co.za/