Below was sent to me via email today from compassion in world farming. There is a long way to go when it comes to ethical conduct within our supermarkets, but it’s progress. I think Hugh Fearnley Whittingstalls chicken out campaign has made a lot of people think a lot more about the welfare of chickens & has taught people a lot about consumers control with supply & demand.
MORRISONS GOES 100% BRITISH FREE-RANGE ON OWN-LABEL EGGS
Morrisons has announced that it has become the first top four retailer in the UK to switch to 100% British free-range on its own-label eggs.
This week’s introduction of 100% British free-range comes nine months earlier than Morrisons had previously forecast and will see millions of laying hens become free-range two years before the EU-wide ban on battery cages comes into force.
The retailer, which currently sells more than 10 million own-label eggs every week, will offer four own-label ranges, all 100% British and free-range, providing even more customers with an ethical choice when purchasing eggs. (Morrisons lowest-priced free-range eggs will be £1.37 for six medium-sized).
Jamie Winter, Trading Manager from Morrisons said; “We have been working towards this goal for some time. As Britain’s fourth largest grocer, we have a responsibility to our customers, suppliers and their animals. We are unique in sourcing our food directly from the producers so we are able to introduce and maintain good farm animal welfare into our sourcing policies. We have a dedicated Farm Working Group which liaises with a network of farmer groups to shape our policies and set targets on farm animal welfare.”
Rowen West-Henzell of Compassion in World Farming comments; “Morrisons has achieved great strides over the last 12 months. Its move to 100% British free-range on own-label shell eggs demonstrates its commitment to improving animal welfare.”
If you wish to congratulate Morrisons on its free-range only policy for own-label shell eggs, you can do so via their website here:
Well, it seems that this is not exactly breaking news, but I can no longer enjoy a guilt free bar of Green & Black’s chocolate either!
Whilst looking at a forum today on the subject of ” boycott Nestle this Easter ” I read that THE BODY SHOP sold itself to L’oreal in 2006 and L’oreal is part owned by NESTLE.
When cross checking this information on other site’s on the net, I came across this report in The Guardian
and also found that Green & Blacks is owned by Cadbury’s - Schweppes.
It seems to be the case now, that if you want to buy truly ethical products, not only do you have to check the conduct of the immediate company that the product is made from but, also to look deeper into the spiders web of which other companies have any sort of involvement in shares / partnership.
Well, at least I will have a damn good excuse to not attend any future Body Shop parties that I am asked along to in the future.
I thought that Anita Roddick had higher standards.
The article below was on Yahoo news last week. It is not the first time I have come across the theory of seaweed being added to foods to aid weight loss. Apart from the fact that seaweed is a highly nutritious natural ingredient to add to your diet anyway.
As this report below has said that scientists have tested the effectiveness of 60 different natural fibres with an ” artificial gut “, I decided to try it on myself.
I sourced a supplier of dried bladderwrack & I have been adding 2 teaspoons of this + 1 teaspoon of lemon pepper to my basic bread mix.
It is thorougly delicious & all friends that have tasted it so far are in total agreement with me regarding how good it tastes.
As from today:-
I will be eating 1-2 slices of this bread every day for 1 month & sharing my results on this blog. I do not own bathroom scales, as I do not think it is healthy to weigh yourself too regularly.
I weighed in at 150 kilo, at my friends house on Sunday evening & I had been eating seaweed bread then for 4 days.
One observation that I have made so far on this, is that if you are constipated. eating seaweed bread may help to wake up the bowels. Nothing extreme you understand. But if you are an irregular person, eating a slice a day may make you function on a daily basis.
Researchers found seaweed fibre could reduce the body’s fat uptake by more than 75%.
A fibrous material in Sea Kelp called alginate was better at preventing fat absorption than most over-the-counter slimming treatments, laboratory tests showed.
Dr Iain Brownlee, who co-led the University of Newcastle team, said: “This suggests that if we can add the natural fibre to products commonly eaten daily - such as bread, biscuits and yoghurts - up to three quarters of the fat contained in that meal could simply pass through the body.
“We have already added the alginate to bread and initial taste tests have been extremely encouraging. Now the next step is to carry out clinical trials to find out how effective it is when eaten as part of a normal diet.”
The scientists used an “artificial gut” to test the effectiveness of 60 different natural fibres by measuring the extent to which they affected the digestion of fat.
They presented their findings at the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting in San Francisco, US.
Dr Brownlee said the aim was to see if the same effects modelled in the laboratory could be reproduced in living volunteers.
“Our initial findings are that alginates significantly reduce fat digestion,” he said.
The research is part of a three-year project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
Nestlé is singled out for boycott action as monitoring shows it to be responsible for more violations of the requirements than any other company. ( Copied from Baby milk action.org )
Last night a friend had put a comment on facebook ” Why have a break with a Kit Kat, when you can have a break with a pint for 8 less calories”. Fair point. But I commented on liking his rationale, & that Nestle should be boycotted anyway & it is far better to support your local brewery.
My brother sent me a link today to a CNN report. “Greenpeace, Nestle battle in kit kat viral”.
(CNN) — A video clip which shows an office worker opening a Kit Kat chocolate bar and finding an orangutan’s finger has been re-posted on video-sharing Web site YouTube, a day after it was removed at the request of food giant Nestlé.
The viral campaign, which parodies a Kit Kat television commercial, was intended by Greenpeace to highlight how Nestlé buys palm oil — a key ingredient in many of its products — produced from the destroyed rainforest homes of the last orangutans in Indonesia.
Here is the video:
“The Greenpeace campaign will continue until Nestle has cut the Sinar Mas group from its supply chain. –John Sauven, Greenpeace UK
After watching this video & noticing that the Kit Kat on the video had a FAIR TRADE logo on the wrapper, I went to my nearest outlet for said confectionery, I found that YES INDEED, Kit Kat wrappers do display a FAIR TRADE LOGO. ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING!!!!!!!
I do of course intend to find out how & why they can get away with this. Perhaps Kit Kats are made using fair trade chocolate ( or some similar thing that would qualify them for the logo useage ),? but using palm oil from grossly deforested area’s is o.k. then?
I will do a seperate blog post on this when I have investigated this issue on what the rulings are for qualifying something to proudly boast an item as being fair trade.
You can’t really blame people for thinking that a Kit Kat, was perhaps an ethically o.k. chocolate snack to buy as bearing the fair trade logo, would OR SHOULD make you think that the ingredients were ethically sourced. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and people will consider the logo & probably see how many calories it contains to help them decide if that should be their snack of choice that they want to buy.
The 60-second clip ends with a play on Kit Kat’s famous slogan: “Have a break? Give orangutans a break.”
Give us a break as well. Give us decent laws on food labelling & advertising & let us then, be able to make an educated & informed choice on what we eat, what is in it & where it comes it come from.
I recently watched a BBC documentary called, Mischief: who made me fat?
Although this programme was excellently presented & well researched, it made me pretty angry ( especially the part about the olympic games, that I shall go into in a minute.
The programme was presented by Becca Wilcox & I have to admire her control during interviews & whilst being accosted by security guards.
One of the opening statements on the programme went something like this: fat people are a bigger threat to the economy than terrorism or global warming.
Well, The NHS spends 4.2 million on obesity & the ministry for health spends 75 million on tv & advertising campaigns such as their “change for life campaign”.
One example of the cost of tackling obesity was given about the fire brigade needing to get a fat man out of his house. They needed to build a ramp & close the road & the procedure took 5 hours to get him out.
Now to the bit that really annoyed me:
Olympic games:
Apparently, the only companies giving money to the 2012 London Olympic games are
Cadburys
McDonalds
& Coca-cola
Yep! healthy choices indeed. A diet consiting of that lot will surely turn you into a mean, lean olympic machiene!
Here are a couple of McDonalds olympic’s adverts:
The companies derive a “halo effect” by sponsoring such events ( not to mention making a huge amount of money & getting more kid’s hooked on the junk they call food ).
The ethos that has always been behind the olympic games since they begun is ” physical excellence “.
Becca Wilcox portrayed this well, with gathering a few less pysically excellent specimens and parading around the Olympic commitee offices as team GBB ( Great Big Britain ) and said ” Don’t take food from an athelete, they may be feeding you junk “.
Personally, I think that any athlete that helps these types of “junk food feeder” companies, should be disqualified for any olympic games.
Becca also sent a cracking letter to Lord Sebastian Coe about the sponsorship & in his reply he said that, The Olympic Commitee ” was proud to be associated with ” said companies. Well any respect I may have had for Sebastian Coe is gone.
Now, on the sponsorship front……………………….
Burger king sponsors NHS:
Yes, sad & hard to believe isn’t it. But enter your nearest NHS hospital and do not be too surprised if you see a Burger King in the foyer. I sadly have noticed this myself in the past, but apparently one of the best known hospitals in the UK, which is renown for it’s heart surgery ( I think it was Brookes Hopsital in Cambridge, but did not take enough notes at the time, probably due to shock! ) Has actually got printed in it’s directions on how to get to the heart surgery department ( I think it was ) turn left after the Burger King in the foyer. It was certainly something like that. The point is, how can they even consider printing such a thing, let alone allow a fast food chain within the hospital grounds.
Below is copied from a web page about the NHS Reading walk in centre, It doesn’t say much about Burger King but they do seem to like to name drop BK when they can.
Slough NHS walk in centre.
Reading Walk-in Health Centre is located on the first floor of the Broad Street Mall in Reading town centre and offers a wide range of GP-led services.
Reading Walk-in Health Centre is an 8am to 8pm service, open to registered and unregistered patients with or without an appointment, 365 days per year. Please note that after 5.00pm on Sundays when the Broad Street Mall is closed, entrance to the Centre is only possible using the door near to Burger King.
( I wonder how much longer it will be a walk- in centre rather than a roll- in centre , or being hoisted by a crane-in centre )
The NHS seem to be obsessed with promoting burgers.
And from the British Heart Foudations website:
12/02/2010
Responsible approach to portion size needed
In response to an enquiry regarding a new ‘double Angus three cheese burger’ being sold at Burger King restaurants Victoria Taylor, Senior Heart Health Dietitian at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said:
“A responsible approach to portion size is vital to the promotion of healthier diets and never more so than in meals that are high in saturated fat.
“Although both the standard and double versions of this burger are high in saturated fat, going for the double Angus three cheese burger would provide an adult woman with her entire daily saturated fat allowance and half her daily calorie limit, and that’s without adding in chips and a sugary fizzy drink.
“Consumers need to use nutritional information available to them to help make healthier choices and be wary of going large – as they could get more than they bargained for.”
Is it just me, or is that an increadibly lame response. No mention of home cooked meals, eating fruit & vegetables & that junk food should not really be eaten at all.
No wonder, chairs are being made ( & there is demand for them ) to accomodate people of 70 stone!
Recently there has been plenty of talk & debate on the subject of carbon emmissions, electric cars e.t.c, & all the positive aspects being outweighed by negatives. Electric sounds o.k. at first, but how much extra electricity woud your household bills incurr by charging your car battery & if the battery will only get yo 50 miles or so, would you consider changing your car to an electric at this time. Not me.
Could this car be a role model for future thinking in car manufacturing?
There is an increadible book that I first read a couple of years ago. The book is NOT ON THE LABEL by FELICITY LAWRENCE. Reading this book WILL make you think twice about what you buy to consume & may put you off eating some things completely, for life.
I re-read the chapter on chicken this week & want to share some of the information given in this book. Felicity exposes some of the grossly unethical conduct of the meat industry, by doing undercover investigations & even taking low paid shifts in meat production factories to gain the inside knowledge of what actually happens to the meat that we eat. So often blissfully unaware , we often are, of what has happened to our meat before it goes anywhere near a packing factory or supermarket shelf. Felicity is /was a reporter for The Guardian Newspaper & writes very factually about her investigations.
In the early stages of poultry processing, the birds are put into a scold bath. 180 dead birds a minute are dipped into this to make the plucking process easier. The water in the scald bath is changed, just once a day so try to imagine if you wish, the amount of excrement & feathers that float around in the bath for hours. The temperature of the bath is 52 degrees, which is an ideal temperature for salmonella & campylobacter contamination.
During the next stage our chickens are ridded of what feathers are left by a rubber fingered plucking machiene. Lots of faeces gets squashed out of the carcasses during this process. If just one of these birds is colonised with campylobacter the rest will be contaminated also. Organic & free range birds go through the same process, same machienes, same day, no less at risk of contamination than mass the produced, cheap, factory chicks.
Felicity went undercover, on shift, at a family run, Devon factory whilst doing a report for The Guardian. This factory supplied to Sainsburys & also produced West Country & Organic Poultry for supermarket sales. Their website quotes ” total control & traceability “. Word had gotten out that chicken breasts from Dutch crates had been seen there, re packed, labeled with new use by dates & sent out for a Sainsburys special offer. A Brittish red tractor logo stuck onto them to identify the meat for un suspecting shopper to buy. Under UK food labeling law it is NOT ILLEGAL to label foreign meat with a Brittish red tractor logo as long as the meat is from the EU.
Annother company, Denby Poultry was annonymosly tipped off to Derbyshires Chief Envorionmental Officer. The caller reported that Denby Poultry was taking condemned chicken, diseased & contaminated birds ( which should have been sent for rendering or for pet food production ) . Denby Poultry was trimming it, washing it with bleach and selling it back to the human food chain. Denby poultry products was a pet food processing plant. It sold, cleaned up, waste meats to annother company who applied illigitamate health marks before selling it again to other companies. The owner of Denby poultry was found guilty in his absence at Nottingham Crown Court ( suspected of having fled the country ).
The tumbling industry is even more scary. Tumbling is the process where the ” bulking up ” of a chicken takes place. Most of this takes place in The Netherlands as chickens arrive their from Thailand & Brazil via Dutch ports.The chickens are often salted, as the tarrif on salted meats is significantly lower than that of unsalted. Tumbling helps to dilute the salt. During the tumbling process chickens are defrosted, then injected with additives & water & tumbled in huge, concrete mixer type machienes. Then they are re frozed and shipped for further processing. Tests conducted by Hull City Council & The FSA have found chicken breasts that have contained pork & beef waste & hydrolyzed proteins. Hydrolyzed proteins are skin, hyde, bone even ligaments and feathers, where the proteins are extracted through exposure to high temperatures or by chemical hydrolysis. Yep! then it’s injected into a chicken. Yum! By the way, adding proteins from other animals is NOT ILLEGAL either. Some of the concerns & implications of this are, with alduterated beef waste in our chickens, could that spread BSE ? With antibotics being injected into our chickens, is that lowering our human tollerance to antibotics ? And with pork being added to chickens that have even been labeled ” halal ” is that not an outragous abuse & insult to Hindus & Muslims?
We have the right to know what is in our food. The governments do not protect us on this issue and despot supermarkets have outragous levels of control.
The chapters in this book are: 1) chicken, 2) salad, 3) beans, 4) bread, 5) apples and bananas, 6) coffee & prawns 7) the ready meal. All the chapters listed have raised my eyebrow several times at what the food industry gets away with.
O.K, So some people, infact lots of people give the likes of Christmas presents to their pets. Sharing the Easter chocolate binge with your furry friend is not such a good idea.
Human chocolate contains Theobromine which is a bitter alkaloid from the cocao plant.
Theobromine is used medicinally as a diuretic, heart stimulant ( more effective on the human body for this than caffine ) & as a blood vessel widener.
Theobromine levels in chocolate are low enough that humans can safely consume it. That’s assuming non rediculous amounts are eaten. Anything comsumed to ludicrous levels can be a bit dodgy. I recall a case not so long ago where a woman died from eating too many carrots. If you eat a few sackloads a day of the same thing, no matter how healthy it would be it normal dosages, it may cause some bad reactions in the body. Dogs metabolize therobromine slower than humans & can get theobromine poisioning. This can cause excitability, digestive issues, dehydration, seizures, it can cause the heart to slow down & in the worst case of theobromine poisoning can cause death.
I have just seen this article about how criminals who eat processed foods, with a high salt content, can leave more of a mark on their identity than the healthy criminal.
If you read my post the other day on food irradiation you will be aware of my dislike and distrust of the Food and Drug Administration. They have so much control over which drugs are allowed and those which are banned, but hey, where’s the profits in a healthy nation?
I learned from the podcast I put on that post that the FDA were aware of the dangers of the drug Vioxx, (known generically as rofecoxib and produced by the drug company Merk & Co ) but then the FDA knowingly allowed it to be prescribed, Vioxx ended up ( when taken as directed ) killing more people than the amount of Americans that were killed in the Vietnam War.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Vioxx eventually led to more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths.
Vioxx is a COX-2 selective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). Vioxx was commonly prescribed to reduce inflammation and pain in osteoarthritis, arthritis, management of acute joint pain and for period pain.
I have a cracked disc in my spine from a rather stupid injury in 2001 ( My own fault) . This does of course give me some discomfort from time to time and gives referred pain throughout other parts of the body, but hell am I glad that when my GP offered me ( actually recommending me would be more to the point ) a prescription for Vioxx I declined. That was at a point when I started looking into natural food alternatives for inflammation reduction instead of popping pills, even then when I was recommended Vioxx I was aware of rumours that heart attacks were a common side effect. I was not that desperate for pain relief accept that prescrption but went from the doctors surgery to the co-op to buy strawberries and a pineapple.
My medicine that night felt more like a treat than a gamble with my life.
( NSAID’s ) such as Vioxx can reek havock on the body. Vioxx side effects included causing stomach ulcers, stomach bleeding and majorly increased heart attack and stroke risk to those who were taking it.
Osteoarthritis is the result of the body lacking the ability to manufacture a molecule known as glucosamine . This then leads to a lack of collagen which is the main protein of connective tissue.
Glucosamine, which can be bought in a tablet form from a good health food shop or as a gel, is derived from crustaceans, so not a good idea if you have allergic reactions to shellfish, but capsicums and comfrey are both effective at relieving joint pain. There always seems to be some food that will do the job when it comes to healing. Perhaps comfrey cream or a capsicum food extract would be things buy for anyone building up a natural “drug company free” medicine cabinet, although I did make my own comfrey cream once that was effective and smelt “oh so earthy” but the downside was that it did stain any clothes or bedding bright green.
Perhaps this is the best way for us to save our natural food supplies. Consumers do control the market but unfortunately the majority do rely upon and expect their doctors to prescibe something for any condition that they have. If more people looked for a natural alternative, which I believe is starting to happen then perhaps our foodstuffs being irradiated could be stopped, but alas that’s allready started and a lot of education is needed before the masses turn their backs on the big pharmacuticals for common ailments that need not even occur if diets were good and prescription drugs did not so often cause a different but worse condition that it was innitially designed to treat.
