Vampire Cookies

In which our Heroine yearns for the Wheat Berry. 

Dear Diary,

I’ve just finished ordering over $600 worth of organic, non-GMO foodstuffs.  I am so excited.  I justify my shopping spree tonight by the fact that I feel like having food storage available, and also that I am one of those odd ducks that actually uses the oddity called the wheat berry.  I have a wheat grinder, and I’m not afraid to use it.  Even though it is kind of scary and loud (it sounds like the Chainsaw Massacre in action on my kitchen counter).  Images of bloodletting aside, the results are worth it.  Did you know that it only takes a matter of a few days (presumably sitting on a store shelf) for wheat flour to lose its supposed nutrients and turn rancid? However, if recently ground and then stored in a refrigerator, those nutrients stay intact, plus you get the benefits of high fiber that is usually stripped from white flour.  Oh, and then “They” add bleach to the flour to make it pretty.  Mmmm—I just love a good cup of bleach with my average, everyday, death-defying meal.

Speaking of those kinds of meals… Remember reading the nutrition panel on the back of cereal boxes back in college?  I used to feel somewhat mollified in eating my high sugar breakfasts because all those B vitamins were identified as present, listed out in a clean column next to a cheesy kid’s game—and in exact amounts too!  With military precision, aligned into a column, each one would have the number “25%” neatly labeled next to said vitamins.  A year or two ago I learned how very wrong it is to have this kind of homogeneity in my food.  Think of those delicate nutrients being sifted, damaged in the process, lined up in rows, labeled, and sent on their merry ways inside plastic wrapping.  It seems a tad eerie to me now.  Maybe it’s the crazy rock music I’m listening to right now (Eclipse soundtrack—vampires you know), but I begin to feel that we torture our own food and then enjoy eating it!  I bet vampires get more nutrition out of their meals.

Also on my order list are my new discoveries of: Soft White Pastry Berries (“perfect for pie crusts, cookies, muffins, angel food cakes”), Real Salt (“similar to Celtic, but harvested in Utah,” thus cheaper), and Coconut Oil, organic, extra virgin.  I can only hope that the coconut oil comes in a container and not as a semi-solid brick or some other massy shape.  I’m only a little nervous about the weird items.  But I’ve got to learn sometime, right?  Meanwhile, I munch on cookies full of non-GMO, non-tortured, non-militarized, and non-carcinogenic fresh ground wheat, real butter, and cane sugar.  Take that, vampire cookies everywhere—you shall not have my brain cells!

The Invisible and Deadly Preservative

In which our Lady goes Invisible. 

My husband brings home the weirdest stuff from the library.  This week it was a series of Invisible Man movies, the earliest a black and white from the 40’s. I actually sat down to watch this one with him.   I haven’t read the book yet, but Jon tells me that there are significant differences—which speak to me of the socio-cultural background in which it was filmed. 

Several of the characters in this film are scientists.  They work together, mixing chemicals into what they deem as an honest, straight-forward, and helpful product—namely, preservatives for food.  The thing that I find interesting is that it is from these same chemicals and the same professional experimentation that one of the scientists creates a formula for invisibility, which he inevitably tests on himself.  The problem is that the formula has additional unforeseen effects as well.  It makes its victims go mad.  And there is no antidote.  Thus begin a series of horrifying incidents that make up the bulk of the movie. 

Just before watching the film, I had been reading Nina Planck’s Real Food: What to Eat and Why.  Perhaps because of the juxtaposition of these two pieces of media, I began to see some interesting parallels.  For instance, there is the creation of preservatives—and their possible danger—as topic.  It is interesting that the ingredients and processes for food preservatives and for mad invisibility in the movie are the same.  To look at the invisibility problem symbolically, it would appear to deliver not only a very unhealthy insanity, but also a kind of inhumanity.  It seems that the chemical formula for invisibility can make a person less human.  I’m seeing an underlying fear present in the 40’s regarding the change from traditional ways to modern.  To be honest, this is nothing new.  Underlying anxiety about change is abundant in almost any form of media and art.  Still, to have chemical experimentation at the heart of it all intrigues me—especially because Planck (among others) insists that such chemicals, preservatives, and non-traditional eating habits are leading our Western society into an uneasy balance of quick eating and diseased bodies. 

To Nina Planck, it is a kind of madness to continue to gorge ourselves on a scientific experiment that is clearly not working.  The statistics are compelling.  The more of this processed and non-traditional food that our society eats, the more obese, cancerous, and diabetic we become.  There has been a marked increase in these kinds of health problems since just after WWII, about the time that processed foods became wide-spread.  Planck is also alarmed by the extinction of many species of plant and animal life (yeah, she’s definitely a hippie) because of homogenization of food products and the use of chemicals in our environment.  As an example, we have lost certain varieties of grains, etc… in favor of corn and soy products, which after being chemically changed into unrecognizable form, become the foundation of many types of processed food.  Planck states:

“We’ve gone too far.  Songbirds are missing, frogs are sterile, and our bodies may already bear the signs of misadventures with powerful poisons.  Farmers and their children have higher rates of cancer and birth defects.  All these chemicals were designed to kill, after all…” (pg. 150)

Well stated, Nina.  Let us just hope that the diseases are curable and reversible.  For my ailments, I’m going for as traditional an antidote as possible now that the surgical part is over. 

With that said, an honest and critical Postscript:

Dear Nina Planck,

Thank you for your book.  It is wonderfully informative and easy to read.  I appreciate how you have taken so much information and condensed it into a learnable and usable format.  From your coherent and compelling arguments, I can well believe that farmer’s children have higher rates of cancer and birth defects.  As I said earlier, this is nicely stated.  But Nina, Nina, where is your source backing up the link between cancer and farmers?  Where are the scientific facts that will stave off the myth-making that this book could easily become? From my standpoint, they are crucially important, and yet ephemerally invisible.

Briefly yours,

T

Metalhead

In which Our paranoid Heroine discovers that Cancer is really all about Marketing

“Its time to take a short break (from angels), but after these messages, we’ll be RIGHT BACK!” as said in best announcer voice.  There are some house-keeping items to take care of.  Yesterday I went to see my neurosurgeon, Dr. Bernard, also frequently deemed “brilliant” on this blog.  (In operas and musicals, main actors or actresses frequently have their own tune that accompanies them each time they enter the stage.  Think of the word brilliant as Dr. Bernard’s aria.) There is a reason he is dubbed as brilliant.  He knows things.  Things important beyond his specialty of neuro-surgery, and isn’t that saying something?  For awhile there, Jon and I thought about seeing a neuro-oncologist when we next flew out of state.  My chemo doctor recommended it because we had a few specialized questions.  Dr. Bernard is still open to giving us a referral, but I don’t know if we need it now because he knew the answers to all our questions. 

The most pressing question was whether pregnancy (not so much now, but later…) would enhance the growth of this kind of tumor.  The answer is no.  I may be paranoid usually (especially about nuclear facilities and commercialization), but this time I believe him.  My understanding is that some cancers are more directly linked with hormones: breast, ovarian, cervical, testicular, prostate, and in the brain, melingiomas (not my kind).  It makes sense, doesn’t it?  The studies on this are somewhat controversial, like so many things with cancer, but there is good evidence to suggest that these kinds of cancers particularly afflict the West. 

Why the West? Again, evidence suggests that all that processed food we’re eating is sending our hormones on un-amusing roller-coaster rides with cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease as the final big splash (no I did not say big Mac).  In my humble and cancerous opinion, these processed foods are around for the express purpose of supporting mega-companies.  They reel in the pound-adding dough, cushion their coffers, and then donate money to universities and institutes to do research on anything other than processed foods).  Have I mentioned yet that I’m paranoid? 

But conglomerates aside, Dr. Bernard asked me if I was eating a lot of fruit and vegetables.  I said I was actually thinking of going organic too.  To be truthful, paranoid me expected the currently doctor-approved line, “Oh, you can eat anything you want with cancer and you’ll be fine,” something I’d heard and read before, but didn’t necessarily believe.  Instead, my brilliant (angelic voices add to the aria) doctor smiled and said it was a great idea.  He asked if I’d heard of the raw food diet and suggested that taking red meat out of the diet might be an idea to consider too.  (The flesh is weak and hungry.  I’m not sure if I could manage that.)  I don’t know much about higher nutrition and cancer, but eating foods that are unhealthy when you already feel terrible is counter-intuitive, and taking out even one mode of control in this uncontrollable world of cancer seems hard.   Thank goodness my doctor is brilliant: I need a man I can agree with to be monitoring my health. 

Also interesting, I finally remembered to ask someone if I had a metal plate in my head from surgery—just in case I travel.  Everyone wants one more difficult thing to worry about in airports—especially us world travelers.  Yes, I can now boast a titanium plate complete with mesh and screws.  I must read Frankenstein soon.  I think I could really identify.  Maybe I’ll be carrying this book around with my specially-ordered “I have metal attached to my skull” card the next time I travel.  You know, the word lobotomy frequently flies into my head these days.  (As a reader, it is your responsibility after seeing word lobotomy to imagine hearing a loud gasp followed by the idea of horror, horror!)  

Internal commercial voice: “Hey, if you’re going to lose part of your brain, at least use a high-grade metal like Titanium® to cover the patch!!!”