Steal, Kill and Destroy

I believe that in years to come, people will look back at many of the practices of the "health care system" of today as being as barbaric as the practices of witch doctors in the jungles of Africa years ago, or the practice of doctors in America 200 years ago in putting leeches on people to suck out their "bad" blood. We stand in awe and wonder at the many technological advancements of modern medicine and the amazing things that they can do, but we don’t often stop to think through what they are doing and if they should be doing those amazing things in the first place.

As I thought about the phrase in the Bible "Steal, kill and destroy", I realized that it describes far too many of the practices of modern medicine and modern agriculture. Fortunately, it does not describe every doctor and every practice. First, let’s look at agriculture and then at medicine.

In conventional chemical agriculture, chemical herbicides and insecticides are sprayed on the food and crops to kill the "bad guys" and produce a product that looks good on the outside. The food value is not viewed as very important. In true organic agriculture, the farmer focuses on building up the nutrient qualities of the soil and the plant so that the "bad guys" leave the product alone and so that the produce has high nutrient value to give health and strength to the person who eats it.

Steal

Stealing seems to be a strong term to describe modern medicine. But the extremely high cost of medical care can very well be described by the old phrase "highway robbery". In what other industry do you have someone do something for you and you have no choice in the cost, and then a month or two later they send you an astronomical bill and you legally have to pay whatever incredibly high price they choose to put on the bill? People are so afraid of getting sick and the doctors and hospital taking "everything that they have" that they go to great lengths to protect themselves. Health insurance has become a "must have" to protect one’s cash and home. Many people stay in jobs that they hate because of the health insurance that they have there. The cost of protecting one’s assets with health insurance has continued to rise.

About five years ago I broke my ankle in a car accident. The ambulance took me to the hospital where they wanted to go which was further away. One doctor charged $300 for asking if I was allergic to any medications. I told him I was allergic to hospitals. He called it a consultation. The total bill was about $15,000 for a broken leg.

The motel room (hospital room) cost about $5,000 a night and it was not very fancy. No better than Motel 6. It did not even have a decent bed for Cathy to sleep in.

Now contrast that to several stories I heard from one of my aunts on Labor Day. After my Grandma Horst died, they were going through the things in the attic of her house. They found a bill from the doctor for the home birth of one of my aunts. The cost was $1! For the birth of another aunt, the story was told of how on the way out the door, the doctor asked for one of my grandfather’s honey cured hams as payment for the delivery. That is a big difference from the high cost of health care today.

Kill

When you step back and look at the practices of modern medicine, many of them focus on killing something rather than making the body work as it should. We hear the terms so frequently that we don’t stop to think about what they are really doing.

Antibiotics – The word antibiotic comes from the Greek "anti" meaning ‘against’ and "bios" meaning ‘life’. The purpose of antibiotics is to kill, not strengthen. Antibiotics attempt to cure disease by killing or injuring bacteria. A major problem with antibiotics is that they not only kill the bad bacteria, but they also kill the good bacteria which fight infections in our bodies. The main purpose of antibiotics is killing.
Radiation – A procedure used to kill cancer. Radiation is also a potential cause of cancer.
Chemotherapy – Chemotherapy acts by killing cells that multiply rapidly. This means that it also harms cells that multiply rapidly under normal circumstances: cells in the bone marrow, digestive tract, and hair follicles.
Surgery – A procedure used to kill by cutting offending tumors, organs, and parts of the body and removing them. Once an organ or part of the body is cut out, it will not re-grow or function again.

Last month my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. I went with my parents for their consultation with the oncologist doctor. He could offer her no real hope and gave her a relatively short time to live. He only had three tools in his bag – surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Three methods of killing, none of which offered much hope for her cancer.  We asked if there were any alternative methods. He did not know of any. He did not have a method that gave life.  He did not know what might have caused it – she has never smoked or worked in a smoke filled environment. By not knowing the cause, he did not know how to help prevent someone else from getting it. It would have been very depressing if we had not known of another method that works by giving life. My mother decided not to go with chemotherapy and instead went with the RBTI program. I will share about the RBTI program a little later.

Destroy

Not all procedures used by the medical industry work by killing. But most drugs and medications do have side effects. Side effects are usually not improvements in health, but in a broad sense are a decrease in health or a destruction of health, or function in another area of the body. Many times, medical procedures and drugs, while reducing the initial symptoms also destroy, to some extent, the health, energy, or personality of the person. When I broke my ankle, I got an ear infection from being in the hospital and receiving all those antibiotics. For the next three years I did not have the same energy that I had before the accident and medical treatments. After surgery, many people are never the same again as before they had the problem. They have limitations and/or pain for the rest of their lives. A certain quality of life has been destroyed by the medical procedure.

Health has been redefined to mean the absence of disease, rather than the positive – a restoration of original strength, energy, and life.

It is the ignorance of a solution other than the modern "health care system" that keeps most people trapped in the "steal, kill, and destroy" cycle, much in the same way that years ago people were trapped in the barbaric methods of the witch doctors in the jungles of Africa.

Our goal is to find the secrets of food, life and health, so that we and you can have life and have it more abundantly.

Egg Omelet Sandwich with Grilled Bread

 
Gather the ingredients for your omelet. You will need a large or jumbo egg, butter, salt and whatever else you desire such as cheese, chopped onion, and cut up precooked chicken. Left over meats and veggies from other meals are great for omelets. It will give your omelets lots of variety. Do not use any pork, unless if you want to feel grumpy for the next five or six days.


Beat the egg with a fork.

Put a teaspoon or two of butter into a small skillet. Pour your egg into the skillet.

Add chopped onions, leftover pieces of chicken breast, cheese, etc.

When the omelet is cooked enough to flip, carefully flip with a spatula to brown the underside a bit.

Butter two pieces of bread. When the omelet is cooked through, remove it from the skillet and place the bread in the skillet butter side down. Grill it until it’s brown.  Make into a sandwich, adding tomato slices and mayonnaise. For an eat-as-you-drive breakfast, slide the sandwich into a sandwich bag to contain the crumbs and any drips. Enjoy your gourmet quick and easy breakfast!

Fried Egg with Salsa and Cheese


Fry your egg in a small amount of butter in your pan. As soon as you can, flip the egg and top with salsa and cheese.

Cover with a lid until the egg is cooked and the cheese is melted.

This is delicious with toast or grits.

Raw Honey and Its Ability to Improve Brain Function

Another food that we produce here on the farm that is important for school students for success in school is raw honey. On the containers of raw honey that we sell here on the farm, Joel has this quote: "Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good." Isaiah 7:15

I have often wondered why milk and honey would enable a person to be able refuse evil, and to be able to chose properly between right and wrong. The ability to make wise decisions is a skill that many children, and adults, lack today. Parenting would be a lot easier if you could feed your child food that would help them behave. School would be a lot better if kids didn’t have to be drugged so that they could sit still and behave. In Barnes’s Bible Commentary, commentator Barnes expresses what most people think: "As this translation now stands, it is unintelligible. It would ‘seem’ from this that his eating butter and honey would ‘contribute’ to his knowing good and evil. But this cannot be the meaning." But what I have found in my research is that milk and honey can have an effect on a person’s brain, and the brain’s ability to function properly.

Here are some pieces of the puzzle that I have been able to put together recently. I did a Google search for "calcium brain". What I found is that calcium is used by the brain cells to conduct the electrical signal using protein ions. Nitrogen (protein) is an electrolyte and conducts electricity in a liquid. Each brain cell has to have calcium in it for the electrical signal to work. Calcium is an alkaline earth metal and conducts electricity. The protein ions conduct the electrical signal from one brain cell to another to communicate messages. If there is not enough calcium, the brain will not function properly. If there is not enough protein the brain will not function properly. Raw milk is an important source of calcium and as such is an important food for brain function. So yes, milk can be a food that helps a person make wise choices.

I also learned that honey helps the body to absorb calcium. Therefore eating both milk and honey together helps the brain to assimilate and use calcium properly. The brain needs the calcium in order for it to make wise choices and decisions. One interesting piece of research that I found was on calcium and the affect of calcium on the honey bee in memory and learning. They found that calcium is crucial for long term memory in honey bees. When honey bees were deprived of calcium, they were not able to remember their food source. Within three days after receiving calcium, the bees were able to again learn and remember their food source. I find this interesting because this may be a clue for the decline of the honey bee in recent years. With Colony Collapse Disorder, the honey bees leave the hive and never return. It is possible that because of low calcium in the brain, the honey bee is not able to remember where home is. Because of acid rain, calcium is being depleted out of our soils. Our foods contains significantly less calcium than they did 60 years ago. It is likely that the honey bee is not getting enough calcium for it to function properly. I see what is happening to the honey bee is an important clue of what can be affecting us. They honey bee has a short life of only about 6 weeks. Our life span is closer to 70 years. Therefore affects on health will show up quickly in the honey bee, years before it will show up in our health. To read more about the honey bee and calcium:
http://insects.about.com/b/2009/06/22/calcium-crucial-to-long-term-memory-in-honey-bees.htm

After finding out about the importance of raw milk and raw honey in the ability of a person to make right decisions, I believe that the battle for raw milk is also a spiritual one, not just a legal one. Today, both milk and honey are pasteurized and the important function of helping teenagers and adults make right choices is destroyed or significantly reduced.

The take home message – Eat homemade ice cream made with raw milk and raw honey. Dessert is important! You need to eat your dessert so that you can make the right choices of what to eat and what not to eat!

Eggs are a Large Vitamin and Mineral Pill

Earlier this year, two leading nutritionists gave reports to the International Egg Commission in which they explained that eggs are an excellent source of high quality protein with high amino acid content. They said that per 100 grams, the nutrients in eggs are comparable to meat. One of the nutritionists, Professor Windisch, stressed the importance of eating the correct combination of amino acids and stressed that eggs provide these in a highly suitable quantity. He said that eggs are a excellent source of calcium, sodium, iodine, selenium and vitamins A, D, and E, making it a "mineral cocktail". He further explained that because eggs are the source of life for chickens, they naturally contain the nutrients that we need for healthy bodies.

The other nutritionist, Dr. Layman, said that during the past 30-40 years, people have been told to avoid cholesterol and animal fats in their diets. He believes that this advice has led to people eating a high ratio of carbohydrates which has been a contributing factor in an increase in obesity, diabetes, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and heart disease. He said one of the problems we’re battling is the protein myth that adults eat more protein than they need. Dr. Layman also stressed that the protein that people are eating is not evenly distributed throughout the day. 65% of the protein is consumed after 6:30 in the evening. Most Americans eat less than 12 grams of protein in their breakfast. It is important to have adequate protein for breakfast for the brain and muscles to function properly throughout the day. Eggs are an excellent breakfast food to provide morning protein and other nutrients that are important for life.

To read more:
http://cdn.bigdutchman.de/bd/fileadmin/misc/PDF/IECJournal_2011_02_VitaminPills.pdf

The Lazy Days of Summer??

The August 2011 edition of Country magazine has on the cover: "Easy Season, Relax and enjoy the dog days". Summer might be the lazy days for air conditioned city folks, but they are not lazy days here on the farm. We have been trying to apply the wisdom of the old proverb: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:  Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,  provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? When wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." (Proverbs 6:6-11)

In addition to all our other work, we have been busy canning and freezing as much of our nutrient dense food from the garden that we can so that we have nutritious food to feed our family this winter when all the colds, flu bugs and other sicknesses are going around.

Sweet Corn 2011
This is a bucket of high brix sweet corn (25 brix) from our garden. Our family loves corn and we grow a large patch of sweet corn. Last year the stink bugs destroyed our last planting of sweet corn. This year Cathy was determined that we would get all our sweet corn. Unlike other bugs that are deterred by high brix plants, stink bugs love sugar. We found a repellent that really works. We used a mixture of liquid laundry soap that we got from a health food store and mixed it with water and sprayed it on the ears as the corn was nearing maturity. We had to spray it twice. It turned some of the outer husks brown, but it didn’t affect the corn. Watering with a sprinkler seems to help reactivate the soap also.You can find more at this link: http://www.ehow.com/info_8607847_stink-bug-repellent-home.html

Cutting Corn
Cathy and some of the children cutting the corn off the cob. The corn is first husked, then the silk is removed. Then about 100 ears are blanched at a time in a large outdoor cooker/canner. The corn is then cooled in water, cut off the cob and put into freezer boxes. This year we put 98 quarts of corn in the freezer.

Canning Veggie Soup
Cathy and Kara in the process of canning 41 quarts of beef vegetable stew. In the lower left corner is canned beets. Cathy learned an easy way to wash a large quantity of beets and potatoes. You put them in the washing machine with an old towel and set it on the gentle setting. It works well and takes the work out of washing all those vegetables.

Cooking Under Pressure
There are also times to sit and relax and learn how to cook under pressure! Here Cathy is reading a new cook book about how to use her new 10 quart pressure cooker. She is waiting while salsa is being canned in the the outdoor canner. She and the girls made and canned 76 pints of delicious salsa that day. Salsa is great on eggs – fried, scrambled, and omelets.

Daniel with Spinning Wheel
Recently, our son Daniel made an electric spinning wheel using a sewing machine motor and foot control. It is amazingly simple and works well.

Oh the non-lazy days of summer, when we go to bed feeling like we accomplished something and we feel more prepared for winter. This winter we will sit by the wood stove in the evening and enjoy a good book or use that new electric spinning wheel.

The Difference Between our Pasture Raised Chicken and Conventional or Organic Grocery Store Chicken

That organic "free-range" chicken you see in the health food store has probably never seen a blade of grass. The term "free-range" means that it has "access" to the out of doors. It could mean that there is merely a fenced in dirt lot next to the large chicken house where some of the chickens can go, if they are close enough to the door. The typical health food store organic "free range" chickens are raised in concentration, dust and ammonia (from the chicken manure) filled chicken houses very similar to any other grocery store chicken.

Taste

Our chickens are raised in the fresh air on grass pasture and have a much better taste than a conventional grocery store chicken. You might compare it to the difference between a garden fresh tomato and a hot house tomato. Pasture raised chicken has a slightly firmer meat texture (not tough) as opposed to mushy. Even the smell of the uncooked chicken is so different. In addition to pasture, our chickens are also fed a certified organic feed.

Humanely raised

The chicks spend the first three weeks in a sunny brooder where they are kept warm. Then they are moved to a large airy shelter in the pasture. Each morning the doors are opened on the shelter and the chickens go outside to enjoy the fresh green grass, insects, and sunshine. During the middle of the day they usually go into the shade of the shelter to rest and eat a lunch of organic chicken feed. Towards evening as it gets cooler, they again range out in the pasture looking for a tasty "salad". At dusk they again return to their shelter and the doors are closed to protect them from foxes, owls, and other night predators.

Health benefits of eating our organically fed, pasture raised chickens

You receive the health benefits of a chicken that was nutritionally fed organically raised grains as opposed to grains raised by chemical nitrogen stimulation in mineral depleted soils. In addition, the chickens’ feed includes an organic mineral supplement containing 60 trace minerals. From a visual perspective, the processed chickens have a more yellow fat from the grass that was consumed, similar to the darker yolk color of pasture raised eggs. The fat in cooked chicken broth is also noticeably more yellow.

What you don’t get: A chicken that was raised breathing manure dust and ammonia in a conventional chicken house 24/7 its entire life. The chicken will not have received any antibiotics, vaccinations, growth simulators, genetically modified grains, pesticide laden and chemically produced feed, synthetic vitamins or feed ingredients, or arsenic to be passed on to you. Because the chickens have not received any of these things, the chicken livers are not loaded with toxins and are good to eat.

Our Summer in Pictures


The kittens are at a very cute stage. Here is Fluffy posing in the flowers on the front porch. Fluffy’s mom is Midnight, the grandma and head matriarch of the other cats. She is a peacemaker. Whenever the male cats get into a fight, Midnight streaks across the yard and breaks up the fight. It is always interesting to watch.


Farm boys don’t need to work out at the gym. They do their weightlifting with slightly larger weights! What you don’t see is that the tractor is hooked up to a trailer with several ton of gravel on it which made the front of the tractor lighter.


We made hay stacks again this summer. In spite of modern technology, hay stacks are one of the best ways of preserving hay and makes a fun family project. Most hay today is crushed when it is cut to speed the drying process. Unfortunately, the crushing process also releases the vitamins in the grass, similar to what happens when grain is cracked or ground into flour or feed. If built properly around a pole, the hay stack sheds rain with only the outer 4 inches or so being affected by the weather. This year we used the conveyor to make the hay stacks which made the work much easier. We were also encouraged with the significant improvement in the soil and the amount of hay. Two years ago, this same pasture made only half as much hay.


Last week our sons Nathan, Daniel, and Joel purchased some more Texel sheep from a farm in Michigan for breeding stock. We left Thursday evening about 7:00 pm, drove through the night and arrived at the farm in Michigan at 8:00 am. With three drivers and beds in our conversion van, we were able to take turns sleeping. We returned home again Friday night about 11:00 pm.


Nathan purchased this Texel ram in Michigan to improve the genetics of his flock of sheep. Note how exceptionally wide the ram’s chest and front legs are. He is wide the whole way back. From the rear he resembles a pig with wool. The Texel breed is a heavily muscled breed that does very well on grass alone. They are also known for their superior meat quality and naturally lean meat. Two years ago in England, a Texel ram lamb set the world record for the highest priced sheep at £231,000 ($324,647). Nathan, 18, owns most of the sheep on our farm. You know a guy likes sheep when he puts all his money into buying sheep rather than buying a car!


Flowers of summer – a Stargazer Lily

Is Your Food Giving Your Body the Complete Nourishment You Need For Health and Longevity?

In thinking back on what you ate today and yesterday, was the food nutrient dense, produced on fertile mineral rich soil? Did the farmer that raised the food care about your health, or did he/she mass produce it with little regard for what it would do for your health? Were the meat, eggs, or dairy products raised in a healthy environment and fed a nutrient dense, non-GMO diet on pasture? How much variety of different vegetables and fruits did you have? In evaluating your food and beverages for the last two days, on a scale of 0 to 10, how valuable do you think they were in contributed to your ultimate health and longevity? Or did they have a negative impact on your health?

I used to think that eating food was basically like putting gas in a car. I needed a certain amount of calories each day (just like a car needs a certain number of gallons of gas). If I ate too many calories I would get fat, and if I didn’t eat enough calories I would lose weight. The number of calories I ate was the main thing to be concerned about. How naive I was! What I didn’t realize is that unlike a car, our bodies need a wide variety of fuels because there is a wide variety of systems operating at the same time that each has special fuel needs. Because of the wide variety of fuel needs that the organs in our bodies need, it is important to eat a wide variety of foods, fruits and vegetables. An athlete that focuses on building his muscles will consume a large amount of protein and protein powders, but in the process he neglects the fuel that his brain needs and many of the other organs in his body.

Years ago, I had a great-aunt who went on a carrot diet to try to cure a health problem that she had. She juiced carrots and consumed a large quantity of carrots. I don’t know how long she was on the carrot diet, but it was long enough that her skin turned yellow. She decided she had eaten too many carrots! Carrots are an excellent source of certain "fuels" that our bodies need, but they are not a complete food source. The same is true of each variety of grain, fruit or vegetable.

The following is an interesting email that I received about a year ago from a lady in Australia about how certain foods look like the body parts that they supply specific "fuel" for. I have not validated everything that she shares about the different foods, but it gives an excellent illustration of the importance of eating a wide variety of foods.

"Hello, While reading my Bible, I asked God about sheep. I believe that God doesn’t just put things in the Bible for no reason & that everything has meaning that only He can reveal to a person who asks. I forgot about the sheep for awhile & about a week later I was looking something up on the internet (not sheep)& your website popped up and "sheep" caught my eye. I smiled because I knew it was God!!! I loved your articles. So thankyou!!! God has been showing me things too on health, food, environment etc. very similar to what you are finding. I just wondered if you knew about foods looking like body parts?

It’s been said that God first separated the salt water from the fresh, made dry land, planted a garden, made animals & fish…all before making a human. He made & provided what we’d need before we were born.

A sliced carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris & radiating lines look just like the human eye…& YES, science now shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to & function of the eyes. Carrots get their orange colour from a plant chemical called beta-carotene, which reduces the risk of developing cataracts.

A tomato has 4 chambers & is red. The heart has 4 chambers & is red also. All of the research shows that tomatoes have fibre & are loaded with lycopene (a powerful antioxidant) which is indeed pure heart & blood food. They also have Vitamin K which regulates blood flow.

A walnut looks like a little brain, a left & right hemisphere, upper cerebrums & lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds on the nut are just like the neo-cortex. We now know walnuts help develop more than (3) dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney beans actually heal & help maintain kidney function & yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, bok choy, rhubarb & many more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium & these foods are 23% sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Avocados, eggplant & pears target the health and function of the womb & cervix of the female – they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, & prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? It takes exactly (9) months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. The name avocado comes from an Aztec word meaning "testicle tree" because the rounded fruits grow in pairs. Avocados have vitamins & minerals that are necessary for reproduction such as Vitamin E. Diets lacking in vitamin E do not support the reproductive function. Vitamin E may also help the sperm penetrate the egg. Deficiency leads to a degeneration of testicular tissues.

Unfortunately I don’t have time to write too much more on this but I must say that what I discovered here is endless. Other examples that you can research yourself are as follows:

Grapes hang in a cluster & look like the shape of the heart. Individual grapes look like a blood cell.

Lungs are made up of branches – bunches of grapes (vine).

Eyes are fish shape (Vitamin A)

Sweet potato looks like the pancreas.

Grapefruits, oranges & other citrus fruits look like mammary glands of the female when the fruit is sliced.

Onions when sliced look like body cells.

Broccoli – green tips on the head look like hundreds of cancer cells.

Pumpkin and squash seeds look just like the prostate gland.

Ginger looks like the stomach.

Raw cheese looks like internal structure of bones.

Figs correspond to male reproductive organs and they hang in twos when they grow.

Olives look like ovaries.

Beetroot are good for blood production and look like blood.

Going away from food I’ll tell you something about elephants that are interesting too. There are Indian elephants and there are African elephants. Indian elephants have ears in the shape of the continent of India and African elephants have ears in the shape of the continent Africa.

God’s insights are endless and amazing. What an amazing Creator we have!!!

Karen

After reading Karen’s email, I had to think of this verse in the Bible that mentioned several foods that resemble body parts: "Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. "(Deuteronomy 32:14) I am not sure how the oil in wheat germ affects the kidneys, but I did find that to clear the kidneys of kidney stones, one method is to take olive oil or coconut oil along with lemon juice. It appears that oil is important to keep the kidney functioning properly. Most wheat consumed in America today has the oil and the wheat germ removed, even in so-called "whole wheat" products. People do not get the "fat of the kidneys" of the wheat to help their own kidneys.

The correlation between blood and grape juice in the above verse is more than just looks. The Mayo Clinic has an interesting article on the value of grape juice for our blood in which they say:

"Recent studies have suggested that red and purple grape juices may provide some of the same heart benefits of red wine, including:

  • Reducing the risk of blood clots
  • Reducing low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or "bad") cholesterol
  • Preventing damage to blood vessels in your heart
  • Helping maintain a healthy blood pressure

Both red wine and grape juice also contain antioxidants called flavonoids, which have been shown to increase your high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or "good") cholesterol and lower your risk of clogged arteries (atherosclerosis), and may help lower blood pressure."
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-and-nutrition/AN00576

The take home message for each of us for health and longevity, is to eat foods that are as nutrient dense as we can find and to eat as wide a variety of foods as we can.

Meat Glue

It is incredible the bad inventions that the food industry comes up with and puts in our food. It is becoming more and more difficult to eat out or to buy food in the store that will give us true health and longevity. It is becoming more important to buy locally and to know where our food is coming from and how it was raised. One of the latest things is a meat glue that is used to glue pieces of meat together so that pieces of meat can be sold as a "whole" piece of meat. One of my questions is, if it glues meat together, what does it do inside our body? We are made of meat.

The statement that Joseph Gonzales makes in the article below "There’s a 50 percent chance you’re eating it every day, and it could be dangerous", makes me wonder what all they are using it in that is not listed in the articles: Roast beef sandwiches? Turkey breast sandwiches? Lunch meat? Those nicely prepared, ready-to-heat meats and meals in the grocery stores? Etc.

The following is a snippet from the April 24, 2011 WTOP news article titled "Meat Glue – You’ve probably had it, and it could be dangerous"
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=267&sid=2357468

"WASHINGTON – There’s a meat industry secret they probably don’t want you to know. It’s called transglutaminase, more commonly known as ‘meat glue.’

"It’s made from a blood-clotting enzyme from beef and pork plasma that helps turn leftover scraps of meat into whole fillets that can be sold at market price.

"Joseph Gonzales, dietitian for the Cancer Project, says there’s a 50 percent chance you’re eating it every day, and it could be dangerous.

"’All the bacteria is still on the outside of the meat and as you gather them together, they start to fold inward. Now you can’t cook off that bad bacteria because it’s stuck inside,’ Gonzales says.

"The FDA categorizes transglutaminase as Generally Recognized as Safe, but the study was funded by Ajinomoto, the same company that produces it and other products like MSG."

Another article that explains more about meat glue and has some excellent pictures is "Industry-Wide Use of Meat Glue Sticks Together Scraps of Meat to Sell You Prime Cuts"
http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/03/29/industry-wide-use-of-meat-glue-sticks-together-scraps-of-meat-to-sell-you-prime-cuts/

The following is a quote from that article:

"Meat Glue: It sounds utterly repellent; like some pre-industrial, rustic adhesive, but it’s actually a fine, tasteless powder that looks like icing sugar and it makes meat and other proteins stick together like super glue. If you are eating meat, chances are you’re eating or have eaten the glue at some point.

"This sort of thing has been a boon to the food industry, which can now treat all sorts of proteins like meat or fish as just another material to be processed, but in the hands of molecular gastronomists it’s become a way to manipulate food in a way that would have been previously impossible. It’s possible, for example, to make tenderloin rolls wrapped in bacon that hold together perfectly without the need for twine or toothpicks."