Food Stamps

 

From Feb07, 2010 PostSecrets 

This person would be happy to know that I get about 200$ in FS every month, and always run out before the next month because I blow it all on healthy food. And I mean healthy for me and the environment, thus you too. Nothing makes me more excited than my card being recharged, allowing me to hit up the nice stores like Harris Teeter, or Whole Foods, preferably Trader Joe's if I can bribe a ride, and buy quality organic food. The food stamps are a great supplement to have a healthy diet free of cheap, processed foods that taste like cardboard. Also, vegetarian alternatives can be quite expensive. But I rather pay the price for the food now, than pay for it in mine and the earth's health later. I don't want foods with modified DNA doused in toxic chemicals and processed to an unrecognizable degree devoid of any real nutritional value. Sure they may fulfill your caloric needs, but nutrient deficiencies cause serious physiological, cognitive, and emotional problems.

Here's what I wrote on the PS forums:

[quote]

I often wonder what the checkers think of me buying organic, fresh and healthy food with my Food Stamps.[/quote]

Everytime I make a big purchase at the grocery store with my food stamps, and its as organic and healthy as possible, I feel guilty. I feel like I should really be buying as cheap as food as possible to maximize my stamps.

But I've come to see it as a supplement to me eating healthy which I think is what the author of the secret was trying to get at. Poor people are very unhealthy. Nutritional deficiencies lead to physical, cognitive, and emotional problems that are detrimental to a person's quality of life. It's not fun being tired and depressed all the time, and then being too poor to splurge on any exciting activity (which is why you do have people using food stamps to buy pounds and pounds of filet mignon, it brings us a very rare pleasure - one that affluent people easily take for granted.. not everyone can go to a restaurant every night and order whatever they want).

Think of the people who spend all day working in a factory, then all night working as a waitress trying to make ends meet to raise their family. That takes a lot of energy and strength. They don't have time to buy the cheap, fresh ingredients and make everything at home. They have to buy convenient, easy-to-make meals.. and these meals are so processed and made with such cheap ingredients that they lack the nutritional value (its not just about caloric intake - you can eat all the calories you want, but if you don't have the nutrients to assist in the uptake and conversion in metabolic processes, then what's the point?) to provide a nourishing meal. Vitamins and other nutrients are essential to all of our body functions, and without them, we are weak and unhealthy.

Ideally, people should use the foods stamps as a supplement to buy healthy foods that provide a completely balanced diet. This avoids having preventable health problems like fatigue, depression, dementia, diarrhea, insomnia...the symptoms are wide and varied due to the variety of roles that each nutrient plays. Appropriate nutrient uptake is also a way to prevent certain cancers and heart problems (the top killers in the US). Can people on food stamps afford to go to the doctor to find out what is wrong with them? No. If people realized how important a balanced diet is, that would not matter as the cure to most problems is not some big pharma pill but just eating the right stuff. Buying healthy food (including organics- free of toxic chemical residues) is the best health insurance you can have.

Unfortunately, we don't live in the ideal world. And for many people, food stamps can be all that they have that month for food and thus they have to maximize their dollars and cheaper, less nutritious food is the way.

Why don't you judge everybody that comes in there and buys junk food the same way. Anyone can be as poor as the next person.

What they need in addition to just handing out the food stamps is education. In my county when you go to apply, you spend hours sitting in a cramped room waiting for bits of the process to get done. There is no educational material in that room about a healthy diet. Not even one single pyramid poster. Everyone is just sitting and staring at each other. Why can't we be staring at posters or movie clips telling us how to eat healthy and cheaply?

Nutrition- Thiamine

So apparently today [feb08] I got 684% of my RDA for Thiamine.

Found that to be very interesting. And curious as to why.

Apparently, sunflower seeds contain a lot of thiamine. And unknowingly, I ate a lot today. Unfortunately, I only really had one meal today, about 8ishpm. Which consisted of Sunshine Burger's Organic Southwest Veggie Burger, on top of Arnold's Double Protein Whole Wheat Bread, with some toppings like pepper jack cheese, lettuce and BBQ sauce mainly. Then I made a side of Pictsweet's Japanese Steakhouse Stir-Fry Veggies and through in a big handful of sunflower seeds b/c they're delicious and good for you. Now what I didn't know at that point was that my burger was actually based on sunflower seeds instead of soy or other grains (good news there because I try to limit my soy intake as much as possible due to GMO and phytoestrogen concerns, as well as the intensive agriculture practices thus environmental degradation..), and the bread apparently features sunflower seeds in it because : "These flavorful seeds contain monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, protein, fiber, iron, zinc, vitamin B6, magnesium, folate, selenium and copper. They are especially rich in vitamin E, an antioxidant that protects against cell damage."

 There are studies out there that show how not only does high doses of thiamine improve symptoms of diseases like alzheimers and congestive heart failure, but also helped with mental acuity.

I really wish I had more time to look into this stuff, as nutritional health is so important in our lives but so overlooked by common people and so buried by big business. Here it is 4 25 am, I have an exam at 11 45 that I'm underprepared for, and instead of studying, have spent the last 3 hours reading up on nutrition. At least I'm learning something. But i'd like to have the time to do the real research, instead of just pulling information from online sources. Overtime, maybe it will all add up.

Maybe all this thiamine today will help me have a clearhead tomorrow despite the lack of sleep. You can win on one thing, but not on everything.

February 20K10 Day is fast approaching, and I haven't any ideas really. Haven't had the time to think about it. I am spending the afternoon at the BEST (Business Environmental and Safety Training) conference across the street. Hmm, can't find the email where I registered, and I dont exactly remember what I registered for. But I think it was for Natural Disasters, Indoor Air Quality Issues, and Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination in Raleigh. The morning sesh had classes I was interested in, but at the time I registered I thought I would have class during that time so only signed up for afternoon classes (turned out my teacher canceled class to make us go to this conference, but I dropped the ball and never signed up for those additional morning classes..). Maybe that's what I should encourage you to do, it won't fall on the 10th, but maybe you can find some conference to attend that will increase your knowledge and participation in your community. I'm real excited about the Illicit Discharge class.. I'm hoping it will meet my expectations and point me in the direction to find polluters around here. Or, as I have spent most of my free time this month focusing on nutrition, you should do the same. Sign up for some site that will help you track your diet and exercise, and I emphasize diet as poor nutrition is very overlooked as poor exercise hogs all the hype.

Nutrition Tracking

So, I decided to stick with the FitDay software. It gives me enough flexibility to loose about this project, or to take it seriously and keep a pretty detailed history of my nutritional intake, and also activity as I have discovered.

I am trying to do this as thoroughly and accurately as possible, so I utilizing the Create Custom Food feature bigtyme. I search for the food under their given options, and then use that as a base template to insert the true nutritional values for the specific item I have eaten since the program only gives an average value, that in most items has been eerily close to my observed values.

Surprisingly, the nutritional values for many of the products I consume is easily identifiable on the web, albeit I may have to do a bit of meticulous work with data gathering and transferring. Although they don't always give you the full-listed nutritional details. FitDay includes % Daily Values for 19 nutrients. Products usually only carry the main ones like Vit A & C, Iron and Calcium. Of course these are really important, but another one people should pay attention to is Niacin (Vit B3). In essential metabolic cell activities, Niacin is  precursor to NADH, NAD+, NADP+, and NADPH (you should recognize these from biology class if you paid any attention..) .. psychiatric symptoms of Niacin deficiency include : irritability, poor concentration, anxiety, fatigue, restlessness, apathy, and depression, and thus holistic healers recommended high dosages of Niacin to cure depression and anxiety. Also, increase HDL-cholesterol (the "good" one). Really, you want to pay attention to all of them because they all work together (BigPharm = one disease, one pill; but naturally vitamins and other nutrients are a cure for a variety of ailments, and thus require a holistic approach). Yes, upon further research it seems that a variety of different vitamin deficiencies can cause similar problems - B vitamin family is particularly important to emotional and mental well-being.

Which is why I use a food already listed on FitDay as a base as it includes 19 nutrients instead of 4, and since this expected value is close enough to my actual values, then I assume that these 15 other values I don't have are close enough to what I might have and thus use them and edit the 4 I do have to their actual values. I think I made that a zillion times more complicated in writing.

So because I am just starting out, it is requiring quite a bit of work, and definitely effort, to keep track of my diet. I want to put in my foods and keep track of what I eat, but I dont want to put in an entry that isn't accurate, but then again I dont always want to sit down and invest 30 minutes into describing the smoothie I made (especially when I make a different one every time). But I figure once I get my basic ingredients, as there definitely is items I eat all the time, then soon I will only have a minimum of effort to put in and it won't be so bad. Not that I'm being lazy, I like doing science-like work, I just have a hard time establishing routines (entering my data everytime I eat) and/or remembering things (like exactly what did I put into that smoothie, and how much? and was there anything else I ate today?..)

Personal Health - Nutrition

Been aware for some time now that I don't have a healthy diet. I am tired all of the time.. no energy to do anything. It's not from being a vegetarian. I am sick of everyone asking where I get certain nutritional needs when I tell them that I am a vegetarian. Everyone is concerned about the nourishment of a vegetarian, but not themselves. Meat-eaters assume that their because their diet is the most common, it is normal and thus the best for humans, but they don't know how nutritionally deprived they are too. (I'm not the one with the major risk of developing some cardiovascular disease- which is the #1 killer in America, followed closely by cancer. Sorry, but where is research indicative of cow, chicken, or pork (the main constituents in your diet) having properties to prevent/cure these diseases?)

I really am too tired to get into all of this tonight, I just wanted to start a post about it.

Go watch some documentaries like Food Matters (I got it & am very open to lending it to ya) or Food, Inc. to get you started and interested in your own wellbeing.

With this huge attempt at reform and creating a better life, I am finally going to get serious about my own health. Physical and emotional go hand in hand, and I am ailing in both. Reflecting on the diet I had as a kid up until now, I have probably been some degree of malnourished for most of my life. I don't eat 3 meals a day with snacks in between and cover all parts of the pyramid, and there seems to be no trend in my eating habits except it is all or nothing it seems. Either I want to eat and crave everything and thus eat as much as I can, or I don't feel like eating and thus just don't eat.

Anyways, to get done with this posting..

I want to keep a record (as accurate as possible) of my diet (optimistically my activity level too), and thus am utilizing online diet journals.

The USDA has one, but the system seems to be very outdated, and is very complicated, slow, and harassing to use. You can enter a meticulously detailed catalog of all your daily activities if you so desire.

My school health service page led me to the FitDay system. An easy interface, and allows you to customize the nutrient labels for foods. But it doesn't seem to account for burning those calories via activity.

This EveryDay Health one seems to be balanced to both diet and exercise, though it may be losing some of the detail because of it.

snow days

mean a lot of cars are kept off the streets. whoohoo. and a lot of businesses dont open. whoohoo. but it also means salt on the roads, which actually has some detrimental environmental side effects. like chloride spikes in groundwater. and increasing salinity in our freshwater supply.. saltwater only works for the marine ecosystems. salt is sodium chloride, and the chloride spikes in freshwater are responsible for wildlife and vegetative killoffs. and roadside vegetation kill offs from the salt stealing the plants' water.


http://www.cee.vt.edu/ewr/environmental/teach/gwprimer/roadsalt/roadsalt.html

http://www.ecostudies.org/images/newsletter/winter_2005.pdf

3am is too late to start researching this, but its another idea for my senior seminar class. nobody will be talking about that for sure. im also considering the great pacific gyre, war pollution, cloud seeding. any other ideas? presentation day=feb 17th. i actually care and want to do a decent job unlike any presentation given thus far in my schooling.