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634 days ago
... you will find high fructose corn syrup. We wanted to make a kind of a Thanksgiving dinner with the turkey I bought at Griggstown, so we popped it in the oven and I went to the store to get all the accoutrements. I had planned to make home-made stuffing but didn't have any bread (with no corn syrup). So I thought, I'll buy stuffing mix. Here are the things I have had a hard time finding, because of they contain high fructose corn syrup. Bread stuffing (packaged)--not available without HFCS Cranberry sauce (canned)--not available without HFCS Frozen vegetables with sauces--I settled on steamed veggies--no sauces Any kind of bread--unless I buy it at Maple Tree The bottom line is, just about anything packaged, frozen or canned has high fructose corn syrup. Anything. In order to avoid it, you really have to take a giant step back to the day when everything was made from scratch. I've been travelling on business, so I've had to eat out. I have ...
647 days ago
I noticed Earl Butz died on February 8. If I had not read The Omnivore’s Dilemma , I would not have known, nor cared, who Earl Butz was. However, it seems that as a highly powerful Secretary of Agriculture in the 70s, Earl Butz was responsible for a major shift in agricultural economic policy—a shift that was responsible for the explosion in the farming of corn—“from fencerow to fencerow.” His mantra was “Go big or go home,” and what may have seemed to have been technological and industrial progress, it led ultimately to the demise of the family farm, the raping of the soil, and is directly responsible for the metastasis of corn into every area of our lives—not just at the backyard barbeque, but in our drives to work, in the meat we eat, in every supermarket aisle, in the pause that refreshes, and in the bottle it’s made in. In all fairness to Mr. Butz, his legacy spanned decades that were different from the way we see our world now. He served under Dwight ...
654 days ago
I almost missed the boat on my project. As I said earlier, I was in the middle of doing market research for a company developing a new diabetes drug, and I was spending long hours traveling and interviewing primary care doctors, endocrinologists, podiatrists and neurologists. The last two specialists get involved with diabetes when diabetes has advanced to the microvascular complication of diabetic peripheral neuropathy. This is a condition that brings on tingling, burning and numbness of toes, feet and sometimes hands due to damage to the nerves. If its progression cannot be stopped—and to date there are no medications to halt or reverse nerve damage--the patient ultimately winds up at risk for leg amputation. My sister-in-law was a victim. Her diabetic symptoms drew worse and worse, and when she finally had to have a leg amputation, she may have lost the will to live, because very shortly after she got an infection and died at the age of 48. I’ve been ...
656 days ago
I decided to give up corn for Lent. Big deal, you might say. Who in New Jersey eats corn in winter anyway? Here in New Jersey, we are darn proud of our corn and tomatoes. “Jersey Fresh” is such a wonderful counter-message to the usual branding of Jersey as Home of Tony Soprano, or Home of the Stinky New Jersey Turnpike. So we don’t eat corn in winter—we wait until July and August when it is sweet, crisp and hours off the vine if you buy it at your local farm stand—looking down our noses at any cheap substitute like canned or frozen corn, or corn shipped in from anywhere outside of The Garden State. But, stars aligned last week, as I embarked on a business trip to Chicago and then on to San Franciso. I was involved in market research with doctors who treat diabetes—an illness that doctors say comprises of up to 30% of the patients they treat in primary care! That was Star #1. Star #2 was the fact that I was ...
