shopping – The Cancer Canary

Chili Night

I made a pot of chili last week, which disappeared quickly… so on Mother’s Day, I made another one, bigger this time.

I have been reading Fiber Fueled: The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, and Optimizing Your Microbiome by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, and had just read about how good beans are for us, and for gut health. He also repeats the “30 different plant foods per week” rule.

So, yeah, I manifested it!

I started with 2 big celery stalks, a huge onion, some garlic cloves, a green bell pepper, and a yellow bell pepper. Chop and saute in olive oil.

Add a pound of organic grass fed beef, and let it brown & meld together.

Then add 3 cans of beans, 1 can of chopped, stewed tomatoes. Maybe some sundried tomatoes in olive oil.

Let it simmer for a while. Spice it up with dark chili powder, cumin, curry, salt, and pepper.

I gotta say, it is so nice to be able to get so many organic options at Aldi. Seems like they are really listening to what people want and delivering the goods.

All three of these came up with a 100 score on the Yuka app. They each have only 3 ingredients… the beans themselves, sea salt and water.

I made a little salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and an avocado.

Plating: Start with a layer of organic corn chips, then add salad (no need for dressing), then a big scoop or two of chili, plus cheese on top if you like. And maybe some chopped cilantro if you’ve got it.

So, how many different plant foods are in this meal? Eighteen, baby, in one meal!

🫘🤘🏻🫘🍅🫑🌶🧅🧄

Lettuce Be Friends

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Lettuce.

Lettuce who?

Lettuce be friends.

I think I read that on a Valentine’s Day card… probably in grade school.

Anyway, friends, I wanted to share this awesome organic lettuce we’ve been buying from Aldi.

The box is crammed with organic lettuce varieties like red and green leaf lettuce, red and green oak, red and green chard, Lolla Rosa, tango, spinach, arugula, beet greens, frisee, radicchio, mizuna, kale, red mustard greens, tatsoi, and collards. I’ve never even heard of some of these.

It’s prewashed, and its a full pound.

It’s a good deal, though I can’t tell you the exact price I paid. #worthit

Sunscreen

Yesterday, my husband and daughter went to an outdoor event during the heat of the day. A conversation about sunscreen popped up, and so I pulled out my Yuka app to check our choices.

Here’s the first choice:

Here’s the second choice. After seeing the score, I threw it in the trash! And that’s a shame because it was pricey.

Here’s the third choice. Winner winner chicken dinner!

CLL brings with it a higher than average risk of skin cancer, so I did the research a while back (that is, I stood in Target and scanned all the choices with Yuka). Native had the best ratings that I could find.

For the record, hats and shirts are my preferred “sunscreen.”

We Can Pickle That!

After a couple rounds in the dishwasher, this jar still smells like pickles!

Just wanted to share. Bubbie’s is a brand of fermented foods, and we have tried a couple of their products. They taste great and are fermented so you get a little probiotic boost.

I was thinking the other day that, if every deli and hamburger joint in America started using Bubbie’s pickles, what an improvement we would have in our overall gut health.

https://www.bubbies.com/

Salt & Pepper

Was using my salt and pepper grinders today and realized that they BOTH have plastic grinding gears … yet another way for microplastics (or not-so-micro-plastics) to break off, get into our food, and then be consumed.

I’m throwing them out!!

Deep Dive on Endocrine Disruption

I wanted to share this article sent to me by Yuka, an app I use on my phone to help understand all the chemicals we find on labels and make safer choices.

I’m hearing others say the name “Yuka” more and more, and that makes me really happy. I’m so glad folks are using this valuable tool to defend themselves against all the dangers in the grocery aisles.

(Wow, what did I just write??? This place that should be so safe… we need an app to safely shop. Yes, that IS where we‘re at.)

https://yuka.io/en/endocrine-disruptors-health/

I love that they included the alligators of Lake Apopka, Florida. I grew up in Florida and remember this happening. The young male alligators were trying to mate with the other males, and the females were left out of the action… and the population declined. 🐊

Not making a political statement! But, the endocrine system controls hormones. And hormones control sexual development.

Toxic Tagalongs

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but apparently tea bags are coated in a type of plastic or teflon, which is then heated in the boiling tea water and then goes into our bodies and stays, for years. Ugh. 😵‍💫😵

This is one more source of microplastics that are unfortunately accumulating in our bodies and especially our brains. 🧠 So last week, I started doing things a little differently.

I do have a couple of mesh tea balls, which can hold the contents of a tea bag or loose tea. Generally, the holes are a little too big, and the tea particles go rogue. And to be honest, I have no idea what metal they are made of…

I used a French press to make tea last week, and it worked pretty well. However, some little bits of tea found their way into my mug and then my teeth. Not a big deal… I did like putting lime slices into the press along with my hibiscus tea and pressing them together.

Then my husband found this cool little gadget on Amazon. The holes are crazy tiny and its made from stainless steel:

You empty the tea bag or put loose tea into the cup, put the little cup inside an empty mug, and pour the hot water into/through it. Then, put on the little cap on while your tea steeps.

After a minute or two of steep time, you can use the cap as a coaster when you take it out of the mug.

P.S. Doctor Li talks about microplastics in the video interview I posted recently.

Here’s more research on it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31552738/

Tee Vee

I watched TV with my husband last night, and every commercial break was for things we would never buy, knowing what we know now. Mainstream things that carry hidden harms and toxins, which most people don’t realize…

Time to put the roast on.

Tide laundry detergent: There are a lot of harmful chemicals and endocrine-disrupting scents in typical laundry soaps, such as Tide. Years ago, I reacted to clothes washed in Tide, got a full-body rash, and haven’t touched it since. We used Purex after that but recently changed to Meliora soaps for our laundry. Check them out at https://meliorameansbetter.com/
Febreeze plug scent boosters: This is a little machine that takes artificially-scented oil and shoots it into the air of your home, so that you and your loved ones can breathe endocrine-disrupting scents/chemicals at the touch of a button! You can also sign up to have more toxic chemicals sent to you regularly in the form of scent cartridges! Because your house smells so bad, folks…. don’t clean it or open windows, give your money away in exchange for this little button.
Downy fabric softener: First, the advertisement convinces you that you simply must get those smells out of your clothes! But we know that if you only used natural fibers, you could get the smells out with hot water. With polyesters, nylons, etc., you’ll need this chemical-laden potion to get smells out. There are so many alarms going off about this… People breathing microplastics shed from the polyester, chemical smell-removers, and endocrine-disrupting scents to follow you around when you wear the clothes. It’s too much. But the song is so catchy (Total eclipse of the heart, Bonnie Tyler)…
Starbucks Keurig pods: Brew your coffee thru plastic! Yay! Don’t think about how these things are artificially flavored or preserved. Don’t think about the waste you’re producing. Think of all the time you’ll save by not having to scoop the coffee into the little basket yourself. You deserve that little convenience, right?
Too many prescription drugs to mention, with strange names that I can’t begin to spell… and horrible side effects that may be worse than the original condition.
Charmin Ultra Soft: All I’m going to say is, if you eat better and take care of your microbiome, you won’t have situations that call for special, deluxe, quilted, top-dollar toilet paper. Enough said… Except did you know that every mainstream toilet paper brand except Scottissue uses formaldehyde in the paper?? Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, folks!
Universal Orlando: Ok, this one looks good and reminds me of my son’s 12th birthday. 🫠 yes, go have some fun!

Sorry for the snark, but it’s as a “buyer beware” sort of world. Don’t let yourself be persuaded, fooled, or robbed of your money and health. XO.

Bread

When I first got diagnosed, my sweetheart of a husband started baking bread for me. Eventually, I found a brand that’s really good, has omega 3s, and gets a high score on Yuka.

There are a couple of varieties — seedtastic, graintastic, thin slices, thicker slices, etc.

I don’t eat a lot of bread, but when I do, it’s this brand.

100 out of 100 … that’s a rare thing. Thanks, Aldi!

If you are thinking of baking your own bread, I recommend One Mighty Mill flour. Expensive but really pure. Here’s their information:

https://www.onemightymill.com/

Food Babe

Many years back, at a rained-out fourth of July party, stuffed in a garage apartment with a bunch of people, I was talking to my friend Corey about an idea I had to investigate food additives and sources.

This must have been an idea for a newspaper column because the internet was (at the time) still in its infancy. Blogs hadn’t been invented yet, nor social media.

She thought about it for a moment and then foresaw how paralyzed a person would become, unable to make decisions about eating, unable to trust food and food sources, unable to relax and enjoy a meal.

Which got me thinking about the pressure on papers back then, needing advertising revenue to keep afloat, and needing to NOT offend the advertisers.

I didn’t pursue the idea.

Years later, I became aware of The Food Babe, Vani Hari, and was glad that someone had done this and was gaining a following.

This woman recently gained national attention when she spoke at a healthy foods round-table, which included Senator Ron Johnson and now-HHS secretary RFK, Jr., and other folks I’ve talked about on this blog, showing us the visible difference between the US formula for Froot Loops vs. the Canadian product.

Soon after, she led a group of protesters to the General Mills headquarters, where company officials refused to even come outside. She delivered a petition signed by thousands of people (including me), asking them to follow through on an old promise to remove dyes linked to ADHD and other behavioral issues.

Some General Mills employee even put a hand-written “Get Off My Lawn” sign in the window.

Her actions sparked change, and many people will benefit from it.

She is now part of the push to clean up infant formula. It’s so upsetting to find out that formulas often contain seed oils, corn syrup, and heavy metals. Are you kidding me?

I breastfed my kids, but I remember being admonished/warned by the pediatrician not to give my infant plain old water, or weak chamomile tea.

These were things that my mom and grandmother had given their babies (including me) in the heat of summer…. and we turned out fine!

Anyway, check out her website, sign up for her newsletter, or give her some likes or a follow on the socials.

It’s eye-opening!

https://foodbabe.com/

If you’ve got 4 hours of spring cleaning to do this weekend, listen to the entire round-table while you work: