Hell has frozen over and pigs can fly!

No, I don’t have a fever. Am I still alive? (Pinch-OUCH-guess so!) I am so proud of Dee! She actually listened to me and rented the video! I had 2 other patients this week that did as well. It must be a full moon or I’ll have to accept that people may actually be starting to listen to my rants and raves!

Here’s what Dee had to say about the documentary…

When I started this challenge to spend 90-days getting healthy through a better diet and exercise, Dr. Angela mentioned a few documentaries that were very powerful in hammering home the grave consequences of the Western Diet — a diet rich in animal proteins, dairy, refined grains, sugars and processed foods. One of the documentaries, “Forks Over Knives”, has some staggering statistics that demonstrate the global impact of nutrition over the centuries. For example, the average American is 23 pounds overweight with forty-percent falling into the obese category. I myself, at 5 ft. 7 in. and 190 pounds am on the overweight/obese borderline. This year, 460,000 women will die of heart disease and stroke and we are seeing dramatic increases in diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and prostate cancer. Diabetes and hypertension are becoming diagnosed in children as young as four with one in every four preschoolers reaching obesity. This generation may well be the first generation of children who are outlived by their parents.

The United States spends 2.2 trillion dollars each year in health care, five times the budget for national defense and half of the US population is taking some type of prescription drug. Every minute, a person dies of heart disease….you get the picture. This 90-minute documentary is well-worth your time to watch. It is available on DVD, Netflix online and Hulu Plus.

“Let food by thy medicine.” — Hippocrates

“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” — Thomas Edison

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Angela in Body, Diet, disease, Exercise, Nutrition, vegan, Weight Loss, Whole Food Leave a comment

Pink Slime and the 26 Ingredient School Hamburger

A big thanks to Jamie Oliver from The Food Network for finally raising some public attention and encouraging us to be savvy in inspecting the ingredients in the foods we are eating. I have to say that I have been just as ignorant as the rest of the public about what I’m actually putting in my body! Nutrition isn’t taught in medical school. Unfortunately, I have had to go back and relearn everything about healthy eating that I wish I would have learned as a child. I hope these posts are shocking but helpful so that you don’t have to spend hours seeking out the right information.

The Following Foods Contain over 25 ingredients!

Combos, Chocolate Cereals, Cheez Whiz, Frozen Waffles, Snicker’s Peanut Butter, Pringles, Breakfast Bars, Lunchables, and Big Mac Sauce

Dear Lunchable,

Sidney and Emma are breaking up with you! You are taunting them like candy from a rapist van! Stay away before I really have to go all mama bear postal on you!

Keep your nasty ingredients to yourself!

Cherry Flavored Water Beverage With Other Natural Flavor: Water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, sucralose (Splenda brand sweetener), natural flavor. Cooked Ham–Water Added–Chopped And Formed–Smoke Flavor Added: Ham, water, contains less than 2 percent of sodium lactate, potassium chloride, modified cornstarch, sodium phosphates, sugar, salt, sodium diacetate, sodium ascorbate, flavor, sodium nitrite, smoke flavor. Pasteurized Prepared American Cheese Product: Milk, water, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, whey, whey protein concentrate, contains less than 2 percent of sodium citrate, salt, lactic acid, sorbic acid as a preservative, cheese culture, enzymes, oleoresin paprika (color), annatto (color), with starch added for slice separation. Artificially Flavored Candy: Sugar, invert sugar, corn syrup, modified corn starch, tartaric acid, citric acid, natural and artificial flavoring, yellow 6, red 40, yellow 5 and blue 1. Crackers: Unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate [vitamin B1], riboflavin [Vitamin B2], folic acid), whole grain wheat flour, soybean oil, sugar, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, salt, leavening (baking soda and/or calcium phosphate), whey (from milk), soy lecithin, natural flavor

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Angela in Body, Diet, disease, Nutrition, vegan, Weight Loss, Whole Food 2 Comments

The Reality of the Intrusion of Red Dye #40

Ok–hold on because it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

The following foods contain the infamous Red Dye #40:

Cereals—Kix, Lucky Charms, Reece’s, Trix, Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, and Captain Crunchberries

Yogurts–Dannon, Yoplait, Breyer’s, Colombo, and Trix

Juices and drinks– V8, Hi-C, Minute Maid, Gatorade, Sunkist, Hawaiian Punch, Koolaid, Crystal Light, Pepsi, Ocean Spray , and Lipton iced tea

Sauces and dressings— bullion cubes, BBQ sauce, Catalina dressing

Snacks—Nutragrain bars, Poptarts, Jello pudding, Little Debbie products, granola bars

Cakes and doughs—Pillsbury/Duncan Hines cresent rolls, frosting, pie crusts, cake mix, quick breads

Candy— Brach’s, fruit snacks,Jolly ranchers, Twizzlers, M&M’s, Starburst, Skittles, Lifesavers, Altoids, Smarties, Trident, Tootsie Rolls

ETC ETC ETC—This list is incomplete! Please visit http://www.red40.com/ for the complete details.

Remember: This small dye changed Susan’s life for the worst ( see post When I let go..) and eliminating it changed her life back for the better. Do you believe in miracles?–I do now!

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Angela in Diet, disease, Green Living, Nutrition, Organic, vegan, Weight Loss, Whole Food Leave a comment

Food additives: Read the Label Part 1/10

Now that I have sparked your curiosity by telling you the true story of a food additive allergy (See blog “When I let go of who I am…), I am starting a 10 part series on Food Additives and the health consequences that accompany them.

I am starting my favorite obvious offender Red Dye # 40 because I have seen this mutant troll ruin the lifes of an undeserving woman and her family for 7 years! This devious bandit is hiding undercover in more foods than you can possibly imagine, including something that I am serving my family for dinner tonight, Pillsbury crescent rolls.

Red Dye #40 debilitates the immune system -I believe it’s the Michael Jordan of disease-causing food additives.

Food coloring dates back to Ancient Egyptian writings as early as 1500BC. In the late 1800’s chemically synthesized color additives were derived from coal and metal based compounds and actually contained some poisons (arsenic). They used color to mask poor product and spoiled stock from improper storage technology. Documented injury and death from the tainted colorants demanded the necessity for “The Pure Food and Drug Act” passed in 1906. This Act allowed the government to scrutinize the use of color additives.

By 1938, the FDA had successfully brought colorants under stricter control by naming and assigning numbers to them. F for food use, D for drug use, and C for cosmetic use. Hence Red Dye # 40 (FDC) is the most commonly used food, drug, and cosmetic additive. 3 million pounds of this dye were manufactured in the year 1992 alone. Today, it is by far the most commonly used colorant and hence–my new nemesis. I will say that FDC yellow # 5, the second most commonly used dye, will be put on hold because of its marriage Diet Mtn Dew, (my personal Bad Romance”). Yellow Dye #5 causes adrenal tumors in rats! More to come, I’ll have to go to an AA meeting or take abusive relationship course before I face the reality that I am emotionally dependant on this toxic relationship. “Hi everyone, I’m Angela, and I’m a Diet Mtn. Dewaholic” The first step is acceptance.

Next blog if you are interested: The Foods that Contain Red Dye # 40 —Warning, it will be painful.

http://www.angelamd.com

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Angela in Call to action, Diet, Green Living, Humor, Nutrition, Organic, Spirit, Whole Food Leave a comment

I’m a plastic girl living in a plastic world!

“Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food appeal so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever new flavorings….

DO YOU KNOW.. The difference between margarine and butter? Read on to the end…gets very interesting!

Both have the same amount of calories.
Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams; compared to5 grams for margarine.
Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.
Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.
Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few and only because they are added!
Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.
Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years.

And here’s the most disturbing fact…Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC… and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT.

These facts alone were enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance).

Open a tub of margarine and leave it open in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will notice a couple of things:

* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)

* it does not rot or smell differently because it has no value ; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny micro-organisms will not a find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic. Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?”