BY ELIZABETH FIEND JUNK SCIENCE EDITOR I’ve been reading Wild Fruits, an unfinished, recently published manuscript by American naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The book is a combination of diary and essay, chronicling the ways Thoreau spent his days and what he learned during the final years of his brief life. With each page I get more jealous, wishing I too could spend my day stalking a bee to find its hive and to learn what type of flower the bee drinks nectar from and how that affects the flavor of the honey.

Of all the things I love to do (and I love to do a LOT of things) observing nature is on the top of my list. Fantasizing how I could manage to spend my days doing what Thoreau did, I realized my main stumbling block is that I’m just not as big of a mooch as Thoreau. Sure, he worked some in his family’s pencil factory (in fact, he “invented” the modern clay-and-graphite pencil). But he also spent quite a lot of time not working, crashing at his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house and living on, and off of, Emerson’s land.

I work full time at a library, not some of the time at a pencil factory. But still, I manage to spend quite a lot of time observing nature, especially the ecology of my South Philly back yard. There’s a lot going on outside, even in the midst of a large city. I actually start my observing while I’m still lying in bed each morning — If you listen to the sounds of the outdoors you can learn quite a lot, especially about the birds. In fact, I think I know more about what the birds in my ‘hood are up to than my human neighbors, whom I never see and don’t particularly want to hear. MORE

FAREWELL TO HARMS: U.S. Military personnel toss everything from unexploded ordinance to amputated limbs onto the burnpit at Balad Air Base in northern Iraq, creating a near-constant toxic plume that can be seen and smelt for miles.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Balad, the largest military base in Iraq is home to about 25,000 U.S. military personnel as well as several thousand civilian contractors. In December 2006, Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, a bioenvironmental flight commander for the base, reported that there is an acute health hazard with possible chronic implications associated with the disposal of waste, via a burn pit, at the base. According to an article in the Salt Lake City Tribune, “The great plume of black smoke that rises above the burn pit at Balad Air Base is such an invariable part of the horizon that software engineers writing a program to help fighter pilots navigate their way onto the base made it a central part of the digitally simulated skyline.”

Most military outposts use burn pits to dispose of their garbage and waste. However the military has never had any standards on how the pits are managed even though they’re routinely used to obliterate objects that are either toxic in-of-themselves or contain toxic elements. At the pit in Balad plastics, rubber, paint, medical waste, unexploded ordnance and petroleum products are among the noxious items being burned on a regular basis. Burning these items produces smoke that contains known toxins such as benzene, Freon, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, cyanide and more.

The pits in Balad are even used to dispose of amputated limbs. Yes add the smell of burning human flesh to what the soldiers call “plume crud.”  Airman Aaron Rognstad wrote on his blog Blog Flack “The burn pit is probably one of the worst things on this base. I don’t know how the Air Force, or whoever is in charge of this base, can think that they can just burn all of this toxic s— and have 30,000 people inhale it on a daily basis. The burn pit is probably the reason I am having constant headaches.”

Other soldiers have sinus problems, chronic coughs with black phlegm, and bronchitis. They’re worried about the future as well. The toxins burning at the pit are known carcinogens that may cause leukemia and other types of cancer. Consider that more than 100,000 U.S. service personnel have rotated through Balad Air Base during the course of the Iraq war. And that’s not even factoring in the impact on the surrounding Iraqi population. Burning garbage, toxic or not, creates ultra fine particles that float away on the air. These particles find their way in to the local soil and water ultimately finding their way in to the food chain through contaminated plants and the fatty tissue of animals. Military officials deny the risk. MORE

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Genetic engineering is a biological science that involves modifying plants, animals or any living cell on a genetic level using gene splicing and gene modification. Complex technology allows scientists to isolate DNA from a plant or animal, and also from tinier organisms like bacteria. The DNA is then cut and spliced and either removed from the original source or implanted into another organism. This allows alterations and direct manipulation of hereditary traits of either the original organism, or whichever new host organism into which the DNA has been implanted.

OLD SCHOOL

Hybridization, the old way of making new plants and animals, involves cross breeding (aka sex) between species that are related. This is a natural process and is TOTALLY different than modification on a cellular or genetic level. Be wary of any source, article or argument that tries to tell you they’re similar processes, they are not.

FRANKENFOODS

Foods that have been genetically modified are here and have the catchy nickname Frankenfoods. Genetically engineered crops have only been planted since 1996 but already account for 60-70% of the food in the grocery store. And almost all food that comes in a box or a package. Genetically modified products that are already in the store include dairy products; beef, pork and chicken raised on genetically modified feed; peanut butter; salad dressing; muffins; bread; cake; candy; chocolate bars; protein bars; veggie burgers; corn chips; French fries; cereal; tomato sauce; soy sauce; canola oil; Bacos; soda; beer; fruit juice; non-dairy creamer; pasta; Nutrasweet; corn; squash; potatoes; soy; strawberries and lettuce; not to mention non-food items like detergent, soap, aspirin. . . .

THE PROBLEM

Genetic engineering has already allowed scientists to take DNA from a fish and transplant it into the cell of a tomato plant — the purpose, to make the plant hardier in cold weather. Proponents of GMO say that a tomato from the original tomato plant and one from the new plant, the one with the gene from the flounder, should be treated as indistinguishable. But are they? What happens if you have an allergy to fish? Substance equivalence has yet to be proven. And there is no law that requires the makers of GMO products to do so. To make matters worse, there is no required labeling of products that contain genetically altered components either.

In the little over a decade since GMO has been here, there have been many documented mistakes in the biotech industry. Genetic engineering of plants and animals has already caused allergic reactions and even death in humans, not to mention the suffering of animals. GMO food meant for animal feed has accidentally made its way into the human food supply. Soy and peanuts are now very common allergens. They didn’t used to be. The reason why so many children have allergies to these foods nowadays is unknown and very difficult to determine. But there is mounting speculation that the large amount of genetically altered foods on your kitchen table may be to blame. There is also great concern that the widespread use of GMO in today’s dairy business might be leading to a crisis in antibiotic resistance in humans. MORE

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend knows how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts. Every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you, ya big dummy.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Orange juice laced with anchovies, fish genes in ice cream, cheese that kills intestinal parasites, laboratory extracted elements of green tea in your ginger ale, bacteria from yogurt hidden in salsa. Welcome to the supermarket of the 21^st century. Not the 21^st century to come, I mean today, this is your food store now. Fortified foods aka functional foods are the newest adventure in eating. The fancy name for fortified foods is nutraceuticals. Say that out loud, it’s kind of nauseating. A combo of nutrition and pharmaceutical, this name is trying to convince us that food is medicine. Tropicana now offers an orange juice to stop bone loss and another one to prevent acid reflux. But if you drink OJ for breakfast every day, how do you know how much of the ‘medicine’ you’re getting? And couldn’t this add up to be a pretty caloric way to deliver your dose?

During the 90’s nutraceuticals came into prominence. They were originally offered mostly in the form of pills like garlic pills, soy pills or cranberry pills. Food science, a relatively new science, had noted that certain foods seemed to be really good for you. People who consumed these foods had less cancer and heart disease, they didn’t develop diabetes, their bones were strong. So instead of these scientists recommending you eat the healthy and good tasting foods (duh) like tomatoes or blueberries they took a different route. They wanted to know exactly which one, specific micronutrient was responsible for the positive health benefit. So they did a lot of studies and picked one. But time has shown, over and over again, that they can be wrong. That this is not the way nutrients should be delivered into our bodies. That isolating one element away from a whole food doesn’t produce the same positive health benefit as the original food. Maybe that’s because one element isn’t responsible for the positive benefit. Maybe a combination of two different micronutrients is what really works. Or maybe it’s the combination of hundreds of elements in the food. We don’t just know. But apparently, we don’t care either. These failures have not dissuaded the food industry from grasping hold of the concept and producing ever new and startling “foods.” Nestlé, PepsiCo and Dannon are among the many manufacturers who are rolling out new nutraceuticals, aka new food products.

Sure, in the natural state a whole tomato is great for you. Scientists think that maybe the photochemicals lycopene, lutein and betacarotene are the reason tomatoes are so good for you. But to grow a special variety of tasteless tomatoes in an indoor facility and then extract the lycopene in a lab and microencapsulate it into beadlets so small your tongue can’t feel it? Or even worse, produce synthetic lycopene and insert it into a totally different food and then say that this is a good thing.

Will this new product deliver the same nutrition that the original tomato did? The answer: We don’t know, there is no proof, eat a real tomato. The Food and Drug Administration has no rules and few regulations for both the labeling and manufacturing of fortified foods. There is no good science behind these new products, and there doesn’t need to be. Yet, there they are on your store shelf. Maybe even already in your fridge.

Of course, I think they’re stupid. Maybe even dangerous. Eat REAL foods. Eat WHOLE foods. Eat fruit and vegetables and whole grains. You’ll be fine. Actually better than fine. You want omega 3 fatty acids? Eat omega 3 fatty acids in a natural state. Want the benefits from a tomato? Eat one for crying out loud. Don’t eat some chemical abstraction of these healthy foods. Eat the real thing. It’s scrumptious and good for you. The key to good nutrition: hedge your bets eat a wide range of natural foods. You’re guaranteed to be covered nutritionally and you’ll be so healthy you won’t need pharmaceuticals and definitely not need nutraceuticals. MORE

EDITOR’S NOTE: Miss Fiend has asked that we clarify the difference between ‘frankenfoods’ and ‘nutraceuticals.’ So-called ‘frankenfoods’ have been genetically modified, wherein genes from different species are combined and grown in the laboratory, while ‘nutraceuticals’ result from mixing ingredients, presumably for their health-promoting properties, after the fact. Sorry for the confusion. Please carry on.

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend knows how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts. Every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you, ya big dummy.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR In a stunning consumer victory the biotech behemoth Monsanto announced on August 8th that they want to dump their business of producing rBGH and hope to find a buyer for the product. rBGH is a lab produced, genetically modified artificial growth hormone that is being administered to about 15-17 percent of America’s milk producing dairy cows. r = recombinant which means it’s artificially produced in a lab; BGH, Bovine-Growth-Hormone is the common description for the hormone bovine somatotropin (BST) sold to dairy farmers under the commercial name of Posilac. The label on a bottle of Posilac lists 20 possible toxic effects. Posilac was approved by America’s Food and Drug Administration in 1993 but the product has always been banned in the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and other countries that have more sense than our own.

The beef with rBGH? Many farmers and animal advocates believe this growth hormone is harmful to cows and many mothers worry that it might actually cause cancer in humans — all this just to get cows to pump up their production of milk by one gallon a day?

rBGH did pump up Monsanto’s bottom line, for awhile. But due to continued consumer backlash many corporations that sell milk and dairy products like yogurt and cheese are realizing that their customers do not want to feed their children milk containing genetically modified growth hormones and have discontinued selling milk that contains rBGH. Thank you Wal-Mart (did I really just say that?!?!) and a shout out to Starbucks, Kroger supermarkets and Kraft who have all announced earlier this year that they were going to only source their milk from dairy processors that have rBGH-free cows. And the Nurses, again on the forefront, have passed an official resolution at the latest American Nurses Association stating that they support state laws and policies that aim to reduce rBGH. This is a huge issue because many states, including Pennsylvania, have tried to pass (or have already passed) laws that would make it illegal to label milk “rBGH Free.” The nurses go even further and announce they favor hospital and health care industry purchases of rBGH free products — in other words, the whole shebang anything that will reduce the use of rBGH. [So Doctors, what’s up with you?]

One of the creepiest results of cows being treated with rBGH is a common side effect, mastitis. Mastitis is an inflammation of the breast, aka mammary gland, aka utter.  It causes the cow pain which is enough of a reason (for me) to stop using this drug. But if you don’t care about things like that what about this — cows that get mastitis from rBGH have to be treated with antibiotics. As you know, increased use of antibiotics in animal husbandry puts everyone at risk of new antibiotic-resistant-diseases. Ok, you say that will never happen to me, I won’t catch one. Fine. How is this? Cows with mastitis produce milk filled with pus. So not only will your milk from rBGH cows have trace amounts of artificial growth hormone and antibiotics it may very well have pus in it too.

In a strange twist of fate, cows with mastitis produce less milk. If the primary purpose of rBGH is to increase milk production but it causes mastitis which significantly decreases milk production, what’s the use? Money for sure. But now, the money isn’t there anymore and Monsanto wants out.

As I said at the top this is a stunning consumer victory. The public doesn’t want to drink milk with artificial, genetically modified growth hormones. They spoke with their pocketbooks and it was noticed, big time, by the corporations involved all the way down the supply chain. But there is still a cloud ahead and it may not have a silver lining. On August 20th the 10th largest maker of pharmaceuticals has offered to purchase the rBGH division from Monsanto. Eli Lilly, the infamous maker of such drugs as Prozac and Cialis has offered to pay $3 million upfront.

People, our work is not done.  MORE

BiG TeA PaRtY has two, count ‘em, two videos showing at this year’s GreenFest Philly, the area’s largest environmental event. It’s a one-day street fair FREE to the public, where over 200 exhibitors and 20,000 people are expected.

Eco-Film Forum @ Greenfest Philly
Sunday, September 7, 11am-6pm
PhillyCarShare Tent: 2nd & Pine Streets
FREE !!

As part of Water Issues 3:30-4pm
BiG TeA PaRtY video:  H2Yo
Learning the importance of water conservation was never so entertaining. Eco-punk Elizabeth Fiend offers cool do-it-yourself tips amidst a groovy parade of psychedelic images.

As part of Communities & Activism 5-6pm
BiG TeA PaRtY video: Crop Circles
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a fun and easy way to maintain an organic and sustainable lifestyle, while also supporting local farmers. Featuring Greensgrow Farm, Scarecrow Hill Farm and candid interviews with Philadelphians.

More info: http://bigteaparty.com/category/events/

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR “You peng zi yuan fang lai, bu yi yue hu?” “Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?” To the thunderous beat of 2,008 Xia Dynasty drums, 2,008 voices chanted this classic greeting from Confucius in welcoming the 100,000 spectators to the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. The games are now well underway, and it’s impossible to ignore thinking about China, especially after that dazzling opening ceremony. Are the Chinese scary task masters, or did that display show the wonders of a large group of people working together in harmony? It’s hard to decide from our vantage point. But one thing’s for sure, China is on the world stage, straight and center, and its population of 1.3 billion, one out of every five people in the world, is going to influence everything on earth – for the good and for the bad.

Not only big, China is one old country, which is also hard for us Americans to wrap our heads around. It has a history, philosophy and culture that has had continuity for over 4,000 years not like the United States that has only a few hundred years of history under its belt. But unlike its also-communist neighbor Russia, mostly we’ve ignored China except as a source for cheap goods. Well, that’s going to change no matter what we think about it. This sleeping behemoth has woken up for real. Since the Beats of the 1950s brought it to our attention hip Americans have had a love affair with another export from Asia, Buddhism. The Baby Boomers carried this affection with them and integrated aspects of Buddhism into New Age philosophy. The Buddhist philosophy is often about looking inwards; if each person perfected themselves to the highest state of consciousness the world could not help but to be a better place. How true, but how impractical and unattainable.

I think that because of this fascination with Buddhism we have totally overlooked one of his contemporaries, the amazing Chinese philosopher Confucius. Confucius (551-479 BCE) and Buddha (566-480 BCE) may have desired the same outcome from their systems of belief, but the paths they suggest are quite different. While Buddha was looking inward for enlightenment, Confucius recommended looking outward. I’ve always been into Confucius because of the emphasis he placed on doing the common good, community service and the importance of good manners, on the whole treating people with empathy and respect. Confucius coined the phrase “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself,” which is the same sentiment as the Biblical Golden Rule, except Confucius said it way first. He taught that pursuing self-interest isn’t necessarily bad, but the more righteous person bases his life’s journey on trying to enhance the greater good. It’s pretty surprising that Communist China rejected this guy. Confucius also believed that there is no Creator God who’s going to set things right; it’s up to us humans, as stalwarts of the land to make sure the earth and her inhabitants are treated properly. Yeah, I can dig that too. He thought people should think for themselves, that study and understanding created skilled judgment, which was better than the knowledge of legal rules. Amen to that. Hopefully China’s Olympic “coming-out party” will bring some attention to the ideals and philosophies of Confucianism. MORE

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend knows how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts. Every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you, ya big dummy.

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR There’s a crisis in the organics world, and it’s called big business. Too much of a good thing has gone haywire. Organic food is so much in demand these days that there simply isn’t enough to go around. As a result, manufactures of organic products have had to outsource. What was once an industry of small family farms has mushroomed into a new kind of agribusiness, with direct financial ties to the likes of Wal-Mart, Kraft, Kellogg and General Mills. Yikes. Big business is finding loopholes in the legal definition of organic and is taking the modern organic farm further and further away from the original, fundamental philosophies of organics. There are already consumer boycotts against organic companies such as Horizon Farms, makers of Silk soy milk, who may not be sticking to the philosophies. In fact, organic standards have deteriorated enough that there’s a whole new classification for farms that do follow the philosophies: Deep Organics.

Now ask yourself this: Is it really better to buy an organic bell pepper – one that doesn’t have any pesticide residue — rather than one grown by agribusiness, if that organic pepper has been grown halfway around the world and then flown-in to your supermarket? Will that foreign-grown organic pepper taste better? Will it be fresher? Is it better for you? What is the environmental cost? Don’t try that “Finally! A good excuse not to eat vegetables and fruits” stuff with me, either. Even eating macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets or ice cream will expose you to the insecticides DDT, and chlorpyrifos-methyl and malathion. Cheese and ice cream come from cows and chicken nuggets from . . . I guess, chickens . . . which eat plant-based food treated with pesticides. The toxic residue is passed on to you when you eat animal products. So what’s a person to do if organic is losing its luster and food grown conventionally is treated with pesticides? Of course I’m going to tell you the answer. But I’m not going to do it here. For pointers, smart food choices, and the full Monty, please click over to the BiG TeA PaRtY Sustainable Living Center and Blog. MORE

CONSOLIDATED ORGANIC: AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR You go to the doctor. First thing, a nurse takes your blood pressure, then makes a face and leaves the room. Most of the time they never tell you the numbers. Infuriating! You should always ask what your numbers are. It’s a pet peeve of mine that you even have to do this — the nurse or doctor should automatically tell you, but mostly they don’t. I’ve found that a lot of people don’t really understand what their blood pressure readings mean or how having high blood pressure might impact your health. So, here’s a primer on blood pressure: what the numbers mean, and how you can improve them through natural methods.

The Big Picture

Your heart contains a muscle that works like a pump. It begins the cycle of pushing blood through out your body bringing nutrients like oxygen, amino acids or glucose to all your organs. Arteries are the muscle-men of blood vessels; they push blood away from the heart. When your heart beats, which is really a contraction of the muscle, it pumps blood to the arteries and creates little bursts of pressure in the artery walls. This is what we call blood pressure.

When you get your blood pressure taken, two things are measured: the pressure created in your arteries when the heart is contracting (pumping blood away) and the pressure in your arteries in-between beats (when your heart is at rest). The higher or top number in a blood pressure reading is the systolic (sys·tol·ic) pressure – heart pumping; the second number is the diastolic (di·as·tol·ic) pressure – heart at rest. I remember it like this STD = Systolic/Top, Diastolic. Your pulse, by the way, is the difference between these two numbers.

Sphygmomanometer is the name if that cuff-thingy they put on your arm and then pump to gauge blood pressure. In the old days the sphygmomanometer used a column of mercury which would rise up from the pressure, looking much like a big thermometer. Mercury is no longer used but the term related to mercury, mmHg, still is. A normal blood pressure reading should be less than 120 mmHg (systolic = heart pumping) and 80 mmHg (diastolic = heart at rest), spoken as 120 over 80.

Your blood pressure is far from static. It changes constantly thought out the day and night, even from one heart beat to the next. Factors such as our internal clocks, drugs, alcohol, food and diet, exercise, even a change in posture have major affects on blood pressure. And of course there’s the big one — stress. For these reasons, if there’s any question about your blood pressure, get two readings. I think one reading at the beginning of your office visit and one at the end is a good system for a reliable average. The medical community hasn’t thought of this yet. You have to ask.

High Blood Pressure

When you’re healthy your arteries are elastic and muscular. They actually stretch when your heart pumps blood through them. But if the pressure becomes too great over an extended period of time your arteries become less elastic (aka hardening of the arteries) and therefore narrower and you guessed it, you get high blood pressure. Changes in other blood vessels, like the ones that supply blood to your brain or kidneys, become affected over time as well. Your heart will then become strained and maybe won’t work as efficiently as it should. When this happens you become at increased risk for heart failure and heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure.

Hypertension is the term used to describe high blood pressure. If your numbers are between 120-139 over 80-89 you’re considered in the warning zone and have pre-hypertension. Stage 1 hypertension is 140 to 159 over 90 to 99. Stage 2 hypertension is numbers higher than 160 over 100.

When you have high blood pressure and diabetes, obesity, smoking or high cholesterol, the risk of something going wrong increases several fold. It’s bad news, a double whammy kind of thing. If you smoke, drink heavily or take birth control pills, your risk goes up too. This is why you should know your numbers. They actually mean something and you can do something about them. Hypertension can develop practically overnight in the last trimester of pregnancy. Have your doctor keep an eye on this.

For most high blood pressure cases, the cause is unknown. High blood pressure runs in families, and is particularly prevalent in African Americans and women, beginning at age 55 when our bodies produce as much estrogen. But our risk for cancer goes down, so it’s a trade off.

Chemical Treatment

You’ve probably heard these strange words in TV ads or even on the news: beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, alpha blockers. These are the categories of drugs physicians prescribe for high blood pressure, and they help many people reduce their blood pressure. But they all come with a host of varied side effects such as kidney damage, insomnia, loss of taste, hacking cough, increase in blood sugar, cold hands or feet, depression, constipation, tiredness, skin rashes, and the big one no one wants to hear – impotence.

Natural Treatment

Luckily, high blood pressure is something that can actually be helped through natural methods, so discuss natural options with your doctor before going on medications. If you doctor isn’t interested in natural remedies, I’d suggest getting a new doctor.

The obvious natural remedies for high blood pressure are regular exercise or physical activity; limiting your alcohol intake (one drink a day for women, two for men); and the DASH Diet, in which sodium is limited to less than 2,400 mgs a day and fruits, vegetables and whole grains dominate, while fat and sweets are eaten in moderation. Hey, what do you know? This is the very same plan of attack for reducing your chances of getting cancer, diabetes and heart disease or becoming obese. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. (See end of article to learn more about the DASH Diet and what a serving size is, which is crucial.).

Natural remedies are great and actually work. The problem for most people is that unlike a little pill you just swallow (but might come with unwanted side affects), you have to actually work at and keep up with these natural remedies. Ok, some people are just too darn lazy to make this work. There, I said it. But it’s the truth. Excuses, excuses, excuses. Motivate yourself people.

Mind Control

Yes, various types of mind control can lower blood pressure. Meditation, biofeedback, yoga, even self hypnosis can do the trick. But you must keep at it, because they don’t really work unless you do them on a regular basis. Meditation is shaping up to be one of the best ways to lower blood pressure, and it’s just great for you in general. TM, or Transcendental Meditation, is the type of meditation that has been studied the most. There has been a statistically significant reduction in blood pressure by people who practice TM on a regular basis. Yeah, I know TM, they want to charge you. But don’t worry, you can learn to meditate on your own.

It’s believed that the powerful, deep rest achieved through regular meditation actually activates biochemical changes that help the mind and body reach a more harmonious state. This then triggers the body’s own self-healing mechanisms. Twenty minutes at a time, two times a day is optimum. But you can squeak by on one 20-minute session if needed. And you can totally teach yourself to meditate. There are many, many different ways to meditate. A basis for most types of meditation is breathing; breathe in through the nose and out through the open mouth while at the same time clearing your mind. You can either just simply follow or count your breath; stare at an object; recite a word, phrase or mantra; or practice guided meditation which is visualization of a sequence of events. Some people are better off taking a course to get started.

All types of breathing techniques, which are easy to do on your own at anytime, work very well at reducing stress and controlling your heart rhythms. No time you say? Do your breathing techniques or meditation in bed while you’re trying to fall asleep, or even at 3 a.m. when you’re, unfortunately, wide awake. Often people who practice mind-body techniques report an overall raise in quality of life. Biofeedback is a technique where you are actually trained to control involuntary bodily functions. That’s pretty cool. Blood pressure, breathing, even body temperature can be controlled by our conscious minds. Hey, it’s good for urinary incontinence too. You need a doctor or medical practitioner to learn how to do this. Yoga poses the corpse and the knee squeeze (instructions at end of article) are especially valuable for reducing blood pressure and for blood circulation in general. There are many New Age-y ways to control high blood pressure, too, like aroma- or sound therapy if that’s more your style.

Then You’ve Got Food

Potassium and calcium lower systolic blood pressure while magnesium lowers diastolic pressure. Garlic, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, melons, dark leafy greens, bananas are good foods for these minerals. In Asian medicine, turnips, honey, Chinese celery, mung beans, water chestnut and hawthorn berries are thought to lower blood pressure. Acupuncture and herbs are also effective. The supplements flaxseed oil, vitamin E, coenzyme Q-10 (co Q-10), hawthorn berry, ginseng, folic acid (a B vitamin) all show promise in lowering blood pressure as well. Right now, everybody — yeah you right there at your computer — try Dr. Andrew Weil’s breathing technique. It takes less than a minute – no excuses. See how easy it is? It’s good. Just do it.

Dr. Weil’s breathing technique:

* Sit up, with your back straight (eventually you’ll be able to do this exercise in any position).

* Place your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth and keep it there throughout the exercise.

* Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.

* Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.

* Hold your breath for a count of seven.

* Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

* Repeat this cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

Try to do this breathing exercise at least twice a day. You can repeat the whole sequence as often as you wish, but don’t do it more than four breaths at one time for the first month of practice. This exercise is fairly intense and has a profound effect on the nervous system. Adding more breaths is neither necessary nor better for you.

More on Dr. Weil: http://www.drweil.com/

The DASH diet includes fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy foods, beans and nuts:

*Sodium is limited to 2,400 mg per day.

*7 to 8 servings of grains

* 4 to 5 servings of vegetables

* 4 to 5 servings of fruit

* 2 to 3 servings of low-fat or non-fat dairy

* 2 or less servings of meat, fish, or poultry

* 2 to 3 servings of fats and oils

* 4 to 5 servings per week of nuts, seeds, and dry beans

* Less than 5 servings a week of sweets

Examples of Serving Sizes:

1/2 cup cooked rice or pasta

1 slice bread (yeah, that’s right, a sandwich is two servings of bread)

1 cup raw vegetables or fruit

1/2 cup cooked vegetables or fruit

8 oz. of milk

1 teaspoon olive oil

3 ounces cooked meat

3 ounces tofu

More on the DASH Diet: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/hbp/dash/new_dash.pdf

Yoga Pose: The Knee Squeeze

How To Do It: Lie flat on your back and bend your right knee and wrap your arms around your knee cap. Breathe in for a count of 3 and then gently squeeze your knees towards your chest. Hold for at least 3 seconds and exhale as you slowly release your leg back down to the floor. Repeat this on the left leg. Alternate with each leg for at least 3 repetitions. Now breathe in for another 3 seconds and then bring both of your knees to your chest at the same time. Hold your breath for 3 seconds as you squeeze. Once you have the breathing and squeezing patterns down, you can then repeat the last steps only this time you will lift your head up between your knees, going as far as you can go and exhale. Note: it is very important to breathe in to a count of three before you begin hodling your breath and squeezing or else your lungs will not get enough air.

More on the knee squeeze: http://www.ymib.com/daily-inspiration/health-holistics/bites/yoga-defined-knee-squeeze.html

Official Transcendental Meditation (TM) site: http://www.tm.org/ (yeah, they want you to pay for the goods)

Basic meditation techniques:

http://www.wikihow.com/Meditate

http://health.discovery.com/centers/stress/articles/meditation/meditation.html

Other Sources and For More Information:

American Heat Association: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=2114

National Institute of Health: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/hbp/detect/tips.htm

Mother Nature: http://www.mothernature.com/library/bookshelf/books/21/131.cfm

Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071204121953.htm

Alternative Medicine, About.com: http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/herbsvitaminsek/a/Hypertension.htm

WebMD: http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/guide/treating-hypertension-naturally

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Tempeh (pronounced TEM pay) is a ‘cake’ of halved soybeans bonded together with mold. Mold you say? Yes, mold — sweet, delicious mold. Tempeh is totally different than tofu. I mean, like totally different — in taste, texture, manufacturing process, even having different nutritional attributes. Some people call tempeh the ‘dark meat’ to tofu’s light. Tempeh could be the original veggie burger with its firm, nougat-like texture, nutty, mushroom, yeasty, bean flavor. It really is nothing at all like tofu – except they’re both made of soybeans and I love them both. Most soy foods originated in Japan and China. But not tempeh. This is an Indonesia invention, perfected by the Javanese.

If this mold thing sounds kind of creepy substitute the word fermentation for mold. The traditional Indonesian mold is Rhizopus spores. The mold as it grows acts as a binder to the soybeans, thus forming a compact, dense cake of cracked soybeans and mold, with little else – this simplicity, lack of additional ingredients is what makes tempeh so special. Unlike tofu, which is actually heavily processed, tempeh is very close to being a whole food. And you know the mantra, whole foods are the best for you.

Indonesia was the place to stumble upon this wonderful food. It has the perfect climate to incubate the cooked soybeans which were wrapped in hibiscus leaves to create the original tempeh. What about the mold? Hibiscus leaves naturally contain the Rhizopus spore. A match made in heaven. Culinary heaven that is.

This business of wrapping the soybean in leaves proved to be a tricky process and delayed the spread of tempeh to other parts of the world. The Indonesian climate proved to be just as big a part of the process as the mold and soybeans. Try the method else where, uh oh. Other poisonous maybe even deadly molds grew.

It took a while but finally tempeh found an ally in America, the hippy commune The Farm, out of Summertown, TN. Their interest in the food slowly caught on and in the 1970s articles started appearing in the mainstream press espousing tempeh’s virtues. By the ’80s articles began appearing in scientific journals testifying and giving scientific backing to tempeh’s unique nutritional values.

Nutrition wise tempeh is a powerhouse but it’s the taste and versatility that will endear you to this unique plant based food. But still, let’s just review what you’ll get when you bite into a meal made with tempeh.

Tempeh is a great source of magnesium, my personal favorite mineral. Who knew you could have a favorite mineral – but I do. Magnesium is a blood vessel and nerve relaxant – the mineral-world’s valium. Now you know why it’s my favorite! Not that I’m stressed out, or worked-up, or anything like that, but consuming the correct amount of magnesium actually does relax you and aid in a restful night’s sleep. A serving of tempeh, which is 4oz., about ½ cup, provides 21% of your daily value (DV) of magnesium (DV is the new RDA – recommended daily allowance. In case you’re not keeping up on these things, RDA is out DV is in.).

You’ll also get 72% of the DV of manganese and 30% of your copper. Not just minerals, there are vitamins in tempeh too. B2 in the form of riboflavin is an important factor in the liver’s detoxification process.

There are also bio-active compounds in tempeh such as the phytonutrient (plant based health-protecting compounds) isoflavones (only found in soy) and soy saponins (anti-carcinogens). Isoflavins and saponins are important to women’s health, especially as we age. They help ease the symptoms of menopause, strengthen bones and reduce the risk of heart disease. You know that estrogen protects your heart, but estrogen production decreases after menopause, right? (Remember this, it’s important. More American women die from heart disease than from anything else.) Soy contains a plant based estrogen. Add soy to your diet, ok?

But this is no ladies food. Real men will benefit from eating tempeh too. In areas of the world where tempeh is a staple food low rates of colon cancer and prostate cancer abound.

The fermentation process in the making of tempeh produces natural antibiotic agents. And unlike many fermented products, tempeh is made without any added salt. We’re not talking low sodium, we’re talking NO sodium. This is a wonderful bonus to those following a heart healthy, low sodium diet like the DASH Diet.

Because tempeh is so un-processed it maintains all the fiber of the bean, but the fermentation process provides enzymes that naturally make the beans more digestible (ie: no gas!). But there’s more. The fiber in tempeh actually binds to fat and cholesterol from other foods pushing them out of your body before they can do any harm.

Soy protein is equal to that found in egg, milk and meat but comes with out the added nuisance of cholesterol. 4oz of tempeh will provide a whopping 41% of the DV for protein with only 14% of your fat. Did I tell you, a serving of tempeh is only about 160 calories?

The possibilities for tempeh are basically limitless both in recipe and cooking method (find recipe suggestions at end of article). You can slice or dice tempeh; it can be grated or mashed; or just left in larger pieces more like a patty. Tempeh can be baked on a greased pan in the oven. Sprinkle on herbs, seasoning or soy sauce before baking. Try frying or broiling it. Tempeh is a star at the summer BBQ. Because it’s so firm it’s fabo for the grill. You can simmer, boil, poach or steam tempeh too. Some people originally find tempeh to have a strong or bitter flavor. Pre-steaming can reduce this (and then bake, broil, fry, grill). Steaming in orange juice for Asian fare, and tomato juice for Italian/American dishes is a nice touch. But I don’t do the pre-steaming thing anymore, it took a few tries but my family now loves tempeh’s flavor. Of course there’s the microwave. Although I’ve never done this.

Purchase tempeh in the refrigerated section of the health food or Asian store. Sometimes other grains or vegetables are also incorporated into tempeh, slightly different flavors, slightly different textures. Experiment, try them all. Tempeh should last for a few weeks in its original package in the fridge. Some brown spots are ok. Check the expiration date.

My Super, Chunky, Meaty Vegan Tomato Sauce is a great intro to tempeh. The tempeh is crumbled and in a sauce so it’s not in-your-face. Maybe a good way to convert the family to the wonders of this food? I mean its spaghetti, what could go wrong?

Last fall the Philadelphia Inquirer published my recipe (below) followed by their own nutritional analysis. I was excited to see a professional nutritional analysis of one of my recipes, too bad the analysis was totally wrong. (They didn’t count the calories from the pasta and said the sauce had cholesterol – totally impossible for a plant based recipe!) When I pointed out the error of their ways, they refused to print a correction. Humph, so much for accuracy in mainstream journalism.

SUPER CHUNKY, MEATY vegan TOMATO SAUCE Served Over Pasta

by Elizabeth Fiend

Time: 50 minutes, Serves 6

Chocolate in spaghetti sauce? Yes, coco and cinnamon add a smoky denseness to tomato based sauces that make meatless meals seem meatier. Feel free to make your tomato sauce from scratch. But I don’t have time to chop and cook all the tomatoes so I’ve devised a way to make bottled sauce — or ‘gravy’ as they say in the old school Italian neighborhood near my house — taste just as delicious. This sauce is well seasoned, chunky with vegetables and chewy from tempeh, which takes the place of chopped meat, all adding up to an extremely nutritious meal that everyone will love.

For weight management fill up by eating two portions of the sauce BUT only ONE serving of pasta. Leftovers store well (if you’re lucky enough to have any).

Ingredients:

16 oz jar tomato sauce

8 oz can diced tomatoes

8 oz tempeh

1/4 cup red wine

16 oz whole wheat linguine

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large green pepper, diced

1 large red pepper, diced

1 medium onion, diced

8 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon dried sage

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons unsweetened coco powder

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Tempeh:

Set a steamer in a medium sauce pan filled with 1 inch water

Break the tempeh into 3 or 4 pieces

Add tempeh to the steamer and steam for 25 minutes, turning once

After cool enough to handle, grate tempeh with a cheese grater

Pasta:

After tempeh has steamed, put up a pot of water for the pasta and add the spaghetti when it boils, cook as usual

Sauce:

In a large sauce-pan sauté the garlic and sage in olive oil

Add onion and the peppers, sauté for 5 minutes

Add diced tomatoes

Cook until all are tender (adding water as need, not more oil)

Pour in the tomato sauce

Add wine

Add oregano, cayenne pepper, coco and cinnamon

Add grated tempeh

Thin with water to desired consistency if too thick

Continue cooking at a low/medium heat until pasta is ready.

Drain spaghetti, top with sauce.

Other Tempeh Recipe Suggestions by Elizabeth Fiend:

Sweet and Sour Tempeh: An awesome use of baked, cubed tempeh. I use cauliflower, red and green bell peppers, onion, pineapple (both chunks and also crushed which sweetens the sauce). Season with soy, ginger, garlic.

Mock Chicken Salad: Steam tempeh for 20 minutes, cool, crumble. Use your regular chicken salad recipe.

Stuffed Peppers: Steam tempeh in some tomato juice, crumble, mash. Mix in some cooked celery and onions, add tomato juice to moisten, season to taste. Stuff peppers, bake. Top with cheese if desired.

The Tempeh Ruben: This is the classic American use of tempeh. Make like a Ruben, but use broiled, fried, or baked tempeh instead of meat (duh).

BBQ Tempeh / Tempeh Ribs: Cut tempeh into strips, steam 20 min. in a thinned BBQ sauce. Then grill, or bake in oven until browned. Coat heavily with a thick BBQ sauce. Get out the napkins!!! (Make extra.)

Tempeh Snax: Cut tempeh into cubes, steam 20 min. Marinate for a few hours in soy sauce, sugar, ginger and garlic. Right before cooking – dredge tempeh in nutritional yeast (if you don’t have that how about some corn meal or ok, if you must, use white flour). Fry in small amount of sesame oil. Eat hot or cold.

Tempeh Bacon: Another tempeh American classic. Similar to Tempeh Snax but cut into thin strips. Use tamari and honey instead of sugar and soy sauce, add some smoke flavor.

Sloppy Joes: Crumble tempeh, steam for 20 min. Use regular Sloppy Joe recipe.

Sources and For More Information:

http://www.soyfoods.org/products/soy-fact-sheets/tempeh/

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=126

http://www.drsoy.com/t-glossary.aspx

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Subway’s Tuna sandwich is advertised as dolphin-safe but they fail to mention it comes with a side order of heavy metal — mercury, to be exact. Not just hoagies, sushi too. Shocking news outta Manhattan recently. How much mercury did you say was in that sushi? Yikes, just eating two or three pieces a week of bluefin tuna sushi could be a health hazard for an adult. There are dangerous levels of mercury in marlin, shark, and swordfish, too. Tuna is the fish most often consumed by Americans, so this is the vehicle for most of our mercury exposure. But even the fish you catch yourself, in nearby streams, rivers and lakes out on those fishing trips with your buddies is contaminated with mercury.

Mercury is dangerous to kids, especially when they’re still in the womb. A powerful neurotoxin, mercury can impair a child’s ability to do just about everything – walk, talk, read, write. And the effects are permanent. Currently, one in six American babies are born with mercury levels exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) safe limit. It’s not good for adults, either, recent studies have shown. High mercury intake has been associated with an increased risk of heart disease and neurological problems in grownups. But where is the mercury coming from?

From opening the hood of your car.

Say what? Yeah, freaky.

You know the switch that turns on the light when you open the trunk of your car? It’s got mercury in it. When your car is scrapped, so the metal can be reused, the mercury is released into the atmosphere. In the U.S. alone an unbelievable 10 to 12 tons of mercury each year comes from these mercury switches in cars. So, like, recycling sucks? Or maybe it’s the car industry that sucks for using mercury-based switches in the first place?

I wouldn’t lie to you. Lye production is another huge global source of mercury pollution.

Mercury is used to convert salt into lye (chlorine gas and caustic soda) which is then used in manufacturing detergents, plastics (especially PVC) and paper. These chlor-alkali plants have been polluting the world for years. And with the recent housing boom, PVC production has skyrocketed.

But the number one reason for mercury finding its way into fish in the U.S. is coal.

Mercury is naturally found in coal. So when coal-fired factories and electricity-making power stations burn coal, mercury is released into the atmosphere — 48 tons of it each year in the U.S.

After being released from smoke stacks, the mercury particles float around the atmosphere for about three years. Finally the particles fall to the ground. When they fall into oceans, lakes, streams and rivers, the mercury becomes the even more toxic organometallic compound methlymercury.

Once in our waterways, methlymercury moves up through the aquatic food chain and then into our stomachs when we eat fish, especially fatty kinds. Mercury is easily absorbed but slowly excreted from the human intestinal wall. Mercury can remain in our blood for over a year after we ingest it.

The fix is in.

There are fixes for all these mercury polluters. All that’s lacking is the will to fix them, especially on a global level.

Mercury-free technology for chlor-alkali manufacturing is already happening in new plants, and some older ones have converted. Every chlor-alkali plant could be mercury-free, if the owners cared.

We have to face it: Coal is a limited natural resource. It’s dirty, and not the way to go to combat the energy crisis. Ya hear me President Bush? Stop with the coal already.

Unfortunately, mercury can float in the air for thousands of miles. China has plans in the works to build a new coal plant each week for the next 560 weeks (I’ll do the math for you, that’s a new plant every week for the next 10 years). And with its booming economy, China is way into PVC, using it and producing it.

Don’t look in the trunk.

Following intense public pressure (go consumers!) the automobile industry agreed to stop using mercury-based switches in 2003. But there are about 150 tons of mercury sitting around in pre-2003 cars. Sooner or later these cars too will be scrapped and the mercury released.

The fix around these light switches is to remove them before the car is melted down (it takes about a minute per car to remove the switches) and pass the cost on to the automobile makers who installed the switches in the first place.

Some states have already passed legislation requiring the removal of mercury-based light switches from automobile scrap, but the EPA has yet to introduce nationwide standards. What’s happening in Washington?

The EPA is a basically schizophrenic. Legislation was already in place to guard against mercury pollution, but in 2004 the Bush administration weakened and delayed efforts to clean up mercury pollution by redefining mercury emissions as run-of-the-mill pollutants, not hazardous pollutants.

Call in the Spin Doctor.

The EPA called this recatagorizing of mercury from hazardous to ordinary the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAIR). Does that take balls or what? The CAIR plan was to create a cap-and-trade program where coal-fired plants could swap rights to emit mercury with other factories and power plants.

The plans was so stupid, and so obviously harmful to the environment, and to creatures that eat fish — like the American Bald Eagle — that a bunch of states, consumer, medical and environmental advocacy groups, not to mention a few Native American Indian tribes, had to sue the federal government.

A victory!

I know, it seems unbelievable, but a federal court just ruled that the EPA must rework its kooky scheme for mercury polluters. The court ruled that the EPA actually violated its own Clean Air Act when it removed mercury from the list of toxic substances, which also includes lead, nickel and arsenic.

The new ruling means that coal-fired plants and plants making electricity from coal will have to actually curb mercury emissions. They’ll have to install mercury-reduction equipment on their plants rather than be allowed to pollute and trade pollution-shares with a less polluting plant.

Unfortunately, this victory has thrown regulation into a free fall. New rules must be drafted, then enacted. It could take years. In the meantime, states can set their own limits, and hopefully they’ll set strict ones. Globally, we’re in deep trouble unless we get some sensible lawmakers.

What can you do?

To see the FDA guidelines for fish consumption: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/sea-mehg.html As you’ll note, the data is years old.

Lastly, think of this way: Eating fish isn’t just bad for you, it’s bad for the fish too. Commercial over-fishing and lack of governmental regulation have pushed many fish populations to the brink of collapse.

Sources and For More Information

Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_page_id=1965&in_article_id=482373

Natural Resources Defense Council:

http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/sources.asp

News from Harvard

http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2004/Feb20_2004/environmental_health.html

Common Dreams.org:

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0206-21.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0208-08.htm

Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN0847678520080208?sp=true

International Herald Tribune:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/22/america/fish.php

EPA:

http://www.epa.gov/mercuryrule/basic.htm

FDA:

http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2004/304_fish.html

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Although there’s still a chill in the air and a bit of winter left, if you want to do a garden this year, start now. That’s right. The key to gardening is to be on top of everything. Gardening is based around the weather and the weather waits for no man — or woman. You probably have a growing mound of garden catalogs by now. A few arrive in my mailbox every day. Overwhelming! But If you don’t have catalogs, try buying a mail-order plant ONE time, and you’ll be flooded with garden catalogs for the rest of your life. What I do is just thin out from the very beginning. Divide the catalogs into categories like flowers, seeds, landscaping, accessories. I grow a lot of soft fruit, so I set aside catalogs that sell fruit as well. If you try to look through every single catalog, you’ll be paralyzed by too many options. So you must weed out from the start.

After you’ve divided the catalogs into categories, start with the Buy Local buy philosophy. Sure, sure it helps dollars grow in your neighborhood economy, but there’s another overriding reason why this is a good idea. Buying a plant from a nursery located in an area with the same ecology as where you plan to put the plant is some extra insurance that it may grow happily in your yard. Yes, that plant from the nursery in New Mexico is gorgeous but face it, it’s just not going to take root around here even if the phrase “hardy enough for colder climates” is tossed about in the catalog’s description.

There are some big nurseries right here in Pennsylvania: Burpee’s, The Cook’s Garden among them. You can’t get much more local than that. Plus by buying local, you’ll be kinder to the environment by saving the fossil fuel with a shorter transport to your garden. There is one major downside to the Buy Local thing when it comes to mail order. The Feds. When you make a snail mail or Internet purchase from a company located in your home state, yikes, you’re going to be charged sales tax.

Of course, not all the plants I desire can be obtained from Pennsylvania nurseries. So I move out geographically, just not too far. Ohio is looking pretty good to me this year and I’ve ordered my plants from Bluestone Perennials out of Madison; my seeds from Cook’s Garden, Warminster, PA.

You know about the hardiness zones right?

The hardiness zone, or just zone, was developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. Zones are based on the average annual minimum temperature over a five-year span. Numbers are assigned, and they make undulating bands across the map, much like you see on a weather forecast map. Zone 1 is the coldest, and here in Pennsylvania, we’re Zone 6. (Yeah, the zone thing is starting to get a little thorny right now due to global warming, but we won’t get into that today.)

A good, reliable catalog will list the hardiness zone of each plant. If it doesn’t, I’d ditch that catalogue right from the start and move on to a more informative and honest supplier.

The zone is a great indicator, but it only tells one part of the story. The hardiness zone only talks lowest temperatures. Plants are also picky about the high temperatures. And they care deeply about how much rain there is, or how long between rain, or what the snow cover is and how likely an early or late freak frost is in your ‘hood. And let’s not forget the number of hours of daylight. So look at the big picture, not just hardiness zone.

Code words.

The catalogs can be sneaky with their wording and descriptions. Buying plants that are inappropriate for your area is one of the top reasons for garden frustration and failure. It wastes a lot of dough too. So be on guard.

There are a ton of code words in garden catalog land. “Woodland” equals shady, we know that, but it’s also a code word for wet. If the area under that tree out back isn’t a moist environment, forget about it, it’s not suitable for that plant. Go for the plant labeled “shade” or “part-sun” instead.

Other code words like “needs winter protection” mean that the plant probably won’t do well in Pennsylvania even if it says hardy up to Zone 6. “Plant along pond or stream” is code for “needs lots of water,” While “drought resistant” indicates the plant will probably die if there’s too much rain. “May bloom first year” means it won’t bloom until the second year. And phrases like “self-seeds readily” and “a good neutralizer” imply that the plant has the potential to be a garden pest, so plant with caution.

Also consider your soil and the location of your garden when selecting plants. Clay soil? Sandy soil? Full sun, partial shade? Which do you have? Choose plants accordingly. You’re doomed to failure if you try to force a plant into an inappropriate location.

Seeds.

You have to be realistic about selecting seeds as well. Unless you’re an experienced gardener I would recommend staying away from trying to grow perennial plants from seeds. Stick with annuals and you’ll be a lot happier.

As for food, one of the main things to look for when selecting seeds is the length of the growing season. I stick with vegetables seeds that will go from being in my hand to ready to eat in the range of 120 days. Plant May 1, eat Sept. 1, that is of course if everything goes according to your plan, which it never does, not exactly.

My order this year:

Plants: Songbird Cardinal columbine; Blue Angel and Great Expectations hostas; Southern Charm verbascum (a cascade of sherbet-colored blossoms, so lovely!); D. Agatha dianthus (aka carnations, spicy, edible flowers!); Avante Garde clematis; Mt. St. Helens, H. Regina and Dale’s Strain coral bells. Total cost = $122.00.

Seeds: Four packs of various lettuce; greens: chard, kale, bok choi, (the Fiends are green inside and out!); cucumbers; sweet and hot pepper mix; summer squash mix; tomatoes: Brandywine, Genovees and Sun Gold Cherry; basil: Siam Queen, Bounty, Mammoth and Holy; parsley; nasturtium mixed (these edible flowers and leaves turn a bagel and cream cheese into haute cuisine); cosmos; larkspur; and for the birds, sunflowers. Total cost = $85.00.

Right, gardening is not cheap. But the yard will be lookin’ good, and yum, we’ll be eatin’ good this summer!

[Artwork: The Garden Of Earthly Delights by HIERONYMOUS BOSCH]

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Not just one, but TWO different strains of fungi and a submarine are named after him. He was a man of great spirituality and faith, but subscribed to no specific church. He was recruited by Booker T. (though the MG’s weren’t around yet) and started out growing green onions. Aids to both Gandhi and Stalin asked for his advice. There are rumors that in an unimaginable act of racially-motivated violence he may have been castrated, and other rumors that his disinterest in female companionship simply implied that he was gay. Either way, he was doing it even before there was a word for it.

But he did not invent peanut butter.

That’s Dr. Booker T. Washington, the founder of Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. The it is ‘chemurgy.’ And the man I speak of is George Washington Carver, whom I absolutely adore.

George Washington Carver knew the importance of the small family farm and of community service; he believed that we should look to nature for advice instead of trying to tame it to our will; he knew that eating healthy, nutritionally sound home cooking was vital to good health and that wastefulness is a bad thing.

Although his contributions were born of economic necessity, his ideas are my ideals.

Here is a man whose work exemplifies so much of what we’re trying to get back to today. If he was alive he’d be a guru to the sustainable movement, the slow food movement, the holistic movement, the recycling, conservation and environmental movements. He understood the interconnectedness of things, and that ignoring this would have disastrous results.

He also would have brought something key that is missing in these movements: He would have brought poor people into the fray. Much of today’s progressive movements center around with the middle class and wealthy white people because, unfortunately, they’re the only ones who can afford the “luxuries” of healthy food, clean energy and organic cotton.

But Carver saw that the poor are the ones most affected by bad food options, high energy prices and lack of education. He believed that the poor would benefit most from a less wasteful world. He was a naturalist at heart and observed that nature did not waste anything, and he tried to do and teach the same.

George Washington Carver, a dynamic man, was born at one of the most dynamic times in American history, 1864 — the final year of the Civil War. Born a slave but emancipated by his first birthday, he struggled, as all blacks did, to find and define his place as a free man in an environment forced to change yet woefully unprepared for the challenge.

At first, things were going well but with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln coupled with the subsequent death of his Reconstruction Acts, and the rise again to power of the upper middle class white supremacist, this time called the Redeemers, what little gains given to the former slaves were lost and decades of unrest and attempts at acclimation into the mainstream followed. Even today.

But the world was a stimulating place for a man like Carver. He grew into adulthood at the same time exciting new fields and ideas were opening up at home and abroad. Darwin was doing his thing. Agriculture was just beginning to emerge as an actual scientific discipline. Mendel founded the science of genetics.

However, the future was not that bright for the poor, minorities and the uneducated. Two things happened at once. The plantations that had previously relied on the cheap source of slave labor now had to develop new ways to turn a profit. And, industrial capitalism was born. Along with these, social fragmentation.

America had seemed like a vast track of unspoiled, unlimited natural resources and natural splendor just a few years prior. But out west land was already turning to dust bowls and in the south, fields were depleted because of an over-reliance on cotton.

While most agricultural researchers were headed towards industrialization of farming, Carver cared most for the people who were so low that industry didn’t even touch them. He devoted himself to the man farthest down.

In his work Carver concentrated on ways to help save the family farm, to preserve soil quality, to eat better, to discover more ways to reuse or recycle natural materials so less money had to be spent. He was into organics because fertilizers were too expensive for the poor to purchase. He developed farming methods that didn’t rely on heavy machinery.

In fact, he was exploring exactly what we’re coming to learn today is wrong with our agribusiness and farming methods; our attitudes towards wastefulness and careless abuse of the environment; our diet.

He floated the idea to use acorns — plentiful, free and a nuisance — as animal feed. He experimented with ways to make faux marble from green wood shavings and rope from cornstalk fibers. He developed paints, stains and color washes from clay and minerals in local soil and from native plants. All done with this in mind: cut down on costs, promote new local industry and small business, waste nothing.

And he taught people how to do all these things. Through his post at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute he not only experimented and conducted classes but wrote and distributed newsletters. But he didn’t stop there. He also came up with the idea of a mobile education center which he called the Jessup Wagon, so that he could bring training straight to the farmers who needed it most.

He urged crop rotation, switch out from tobacco and cotton to soil-healing, nitrogen-fixing plants like peanuts and sweet potatoes. Then he worked out ways that farmers could have added value from these new crops. By 1939 peanuts, which had never been grown much in the South, were a $200 million industry.

He developed recipes like sweet potato chips and wrote the pamphlet “How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption.” He even led cooking classes to help and educate farmers’ wives.

He understood nutrition and the need for a balanced, varied diet. He devised ways to preserve food by drying it so people with meager means could obtain and maintain a hearty diet. He saw value in the homemade. He was into local plants, wild foods and the medicinal value of plants. He was into self sufficiency.

Carver called his work stovetop chemistry. It wasn’t until the 1930s that a real word was designated defining the division of applied chemistry that was concerned with cooking-up industrial uses from organic substances, chemurgy. Henry Ford just loved him for this and they would occasionally pal around.

During his life his fame, went up and down with the economy. During the world wars and the Depression his ideas were in vogue. Save, save, save. Reuse everything. Make something out of nothing. Here he was in his realm.

But when the economy was in an upswing, people doubted his contributions. Some even wondered if he was a scientist at all.

He was a smart guy, maybe a genius. But because of the color of his skin he had to struggle to educate himself; he had to sit at the back of the bus and had to stay in the servant’s quarters in fancy hotels even though he was the key-note speaker. He never received adequate funding or payment for his work. Today he’s trotted out in 5th grade classes as a great African American. But I think he should be regarded as an inspiration to us all and as a great man, period.

PEANUT COOKIES

by George Washington Carver

3 cups flour

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs

1 cup sweet milk

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 cups ground peanuts

Cream butter and sugar; add eggs well beaten; now add the milk and flour; flavor to taste with vanilla; and the peanuts last; drop one spoonful to the cookie in well greased pans; bake quickly.

On George Washington Carver’s tombstone: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

Sources and For More Information:

About George Washington Carver:

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa041897.htm

http://lib.iastate.edu:9060/gwc/bio.html

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/carver.htm

http://www.suntimes.com/food/765230,013108carver.stng#

George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol by Linda O. McMurry [book]

You can see more of George Washington Carver’s recipes in this 2005 cookbook The African-American Heritage Cookbook: Traditional Recipes and Fond Remembrances From Alabama’s Renowned Tuskegee Institute by Carolyn Quick Tillery.

About Tuskegee University:

http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/category.asp?C=34069&nav=menu200_1

About the Civil War:

http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/weblect/lec02/02_preamble.htm

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.

]]> https://phawker.com/2008/02/15/junk-science-mr-peanut-goes-to-washington/feed/ 1 https://phawker.com/2008/01/22/junk-sci-sunshine-on-my-shoulder-makes-me-happy/ https://phawker.com/2008/01/22/junk-sci-sunshine-on-my-shoulder-makes-me-happy/#respond Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:11:48 +0000 http://www.phawker.com/2008/01/22/junk-sci-sunshine-on-my-shoulder-makes-me-happy/

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR People invariably get depressed in the winter. They complain about the weather. They huddle in the dark, alone and SAD with Seasonal Affective Disorder, or just plain bad moods. They sleep too much, eat too much. Productivity levels go down, anxiety sets in. In Northern Europe, Canada and other cold climates, people sit on park benches, eat and drink at outdoor cafes, ice skate and cross- country ski, soaking in the sun — even if its rays are dimmer, present for shorter periods and there’s a chill in the air. Americans? We hide indoors and bitch.

PROTIP: Get fresh air and sunshine, even in the winter.

I’m outside on my bike for my half-hour commute to work each morning. And I go outside during my lunch hour each day, even if it’s just bundling up and walking to another building with a lunch room. It’s not a drag, it’s rejuvenating and exhilarating. Change your mindset so you think so, too. You’ll feel better for it physically and mentally.

When I went outside for lunch a few days ago, I spied a hawk lazily sunning himself on a tree branch. Since it’s winter, even though it was noon, the sun was low to the horizon and hidden behind an office building. Only its filtered rays hit the hawk, highlighting its brown head feathers turning then to a glowing, golden color. Such a magnificent beast! So huge, so noble so confident, so in charge. It filled my heart with joy – so not kidding! Really, I felt such happiness. I just gawked at that hawk until my neck started to hurt from looking up for so long.

But before I turned away, I noticed a broken tree limb about 6 feet away from the hawk. Poking out from the hollow was the wisp of a squirrel’s tail! Ha, ha, the squirrel was hiding from the hawk. Even in Wild West Philly, nature plays it out. What a wonderful scene to behold, and it all happened before my eyes because I had made the effort to go outdoors. [Note to any squirrels reading Phawker: When hiding from a hawk, tuck in your tail!]

It was a stand-off that day: no lunch was had; no one became lunch.

Such is the yin and yang of life itself; the seasonal shifts creating changes even inside our own bodies coming round full cycle every 365 days and 365 nights. Except that this year has 366 days and nights, and the extra one is in the coldest part if winter.

Our bodies, emotions, and health are balanced (or put out of balance) by hormones that respond to the call of nature’s cycles. We are , after all, still animals. These hormones are yin and yang in our bodies, regulating us, keeping our systems in harmony.

Melatonin, the dark yang, is a sleep-related hormone. Too much is linked to depression. Melatonin production increases during long winter nights. Uh-oh.

The hormone serotonin, the bright yin, brings with it a level of happiness. It’s believed that sunlight can increase production of serotonin. And winter has short days, less sunshine.

Yeah, it all seems like a set up. And the cards are stacked against us.

In the winter when the days are shorter and the nights are longer, it’s easy for our natural cycles to get out of whack. Bring on the overeating, the mild depression, as well as the more intense Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The answer: Let the sun shine!

But we’ve become afraid of the sun. It’s been vilified, and rightly so, since we’ve f-ed up the atmosphere and wrecked the ozone layer, making the sun’s rays hit us with much more intensity than they used to (or should). Skin cancer, a real killer, caused by exposure to the sun’s UV rays, has forced us to rethink our outdoor time. But a little time, each and every day is OK, even better than OK.

Being outside at least 30 minutes per day during daylight hours helps to regulate your circadian rhythm, or biological clock. Our internal clock is controlled by the pineal and hypothalamus glands, which regulate the release of hormones like melatonin, telling you when to wake and when to sleep, among other things. If your internal clock is messed up, you can become depressed, lethargic and have the other symptoms of SAD. All this in response to information the glands receive from photoreceptors in our eye’s retinas.

See where I’m going? The sun. You need to be exposed to it. And how do you do that? You have to go outside.

Even in the winter, or maybe especially in the winter, spend some time outdoors each and every day. Go on, squeeze in a little outside-time into your normal schedule. Make it a habit.

Sun glasses: Don’t wear them in the winter (unless you have to when driving, skiing etc.). I know you’re cool, but your eyeballs need to be exposed straight-out to the sun in the winter, not hidden behind glass or plastic, to gain the healthy benefits of Sol.

Again, we’re talking use-some-sense. Moderate exposure to the sun, 30 minutes at a time.

Exercising, indoors or out, is another way to beat the winter blues.

Sources and For More Information:

Circadian rhythm:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Circadian%20rhythm%20

Seasonal Affective Disorder:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2006/properly-timed-light-melatonin-lift-winter-depression-by-syncing-rhythms.shtml

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17683643&tool=MedlinePlus

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/seasonal-affective-disorder/DS00195

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.