Tower Garden

Our Easter Sunday family activity this year was firing up our Tower Garden, a home hydroponic  system for growing fresh produce in a small space. It was very fitting since Earth Day was this week.

Tower Garden before planting Photo owned by www.shelleygoldbeck.com

We started our seeds a couple weeks ago. We had great fun “planting” the rock wool cubes into the net pots. A pump in the tub lifts water to the top where it showers the water and liquid nutrients down onto the plants.

I first saw Tower Gardens last summer. Since I am a huge proponent of our growing as much of our own food as possible I instantly saw the potential of this growing system. Our growing season in Calgary is a mere 90 frost-free days so it’s almost impossible to eat locally grown fresh food nine months of the year.

Tower Garden fixes that. We were able to start indoors six weeks before the last frost. The gardens have wheeled platforms that allow growers to move their towers inside before the first frost. I suspect with some grow lights, I can run my tower year-round.

My plan is to document and blog about my Tower Garden experience. I will measure and record the produce I harvest from it. If I can prove that this is a viable option for food growing with a reasonable ROI, I will shout about them from the rooftops.

Tower Garden2
Grow fresh organic vegetables, greens and even fruits in less than one square metre. Photo owned by www.shelleygoldbeck.com

In the meantime, if you’re curious or anxious to have one for yourself before I share my experiences, please visit this site: https://sg23190.towergarden.ca/

Let me know if you have questions about my Tower Garden experience. I invite you to have a conversation with me.

I believe we can change our lives and our world if we grow even a bit of our own food. It’s the best way to ensure food purity (organic, non-GMO, etc.) and to reduce our footprint on this earth.

Tower Garden seems to be part of the solution!

Get Off the Diet Roller Coaster: Ten Tips for Achieving Your Ideal Weight

Roller CoasterAfter just two weeks the diet roller coaster has already ejected a good number of its riders.

Some of those didn’t even get on. The pull of holiday goodies was simply too strong.

Besides the festivities really weren’t over until seven days into the year. Well, that wrecks it for the whole year, so why bother?

Others jump on with great enthusiasm, strapping themselves in and throwing their arms up in the air with abandon. Many of these fall off rather early too: their arms quickly tire and they can only handle so much of the stress of the ups and downs.

Some make it through numerous hills and valleys, but find themselves frequently dizzy and nauseous.

And by mid January, most people have already lost their grip and tumbled to the ground.

Here’s a radical idea. Let’s get off the diet roller coaster forever. In fact, I propose we skip that area of the amusement park altogether.

Let’s not give our money to the hucksters selling us the illusion that this ride is taking us somewhere. The facts are:

FACT 1: Diets don’t work.  Once you get off the diet all the problems return. Diets often distract us from dealing with the real problems.

Fact 2: Follow the money. Diets have never worked but the diet industry (including physicians and pharmaceutical companies) makes billions of dollars every year perpetuating the myth. We foolishly keep getting back onto the ride that takes our money and makes us sick.

Fact 3: Governments, Big Agriculture, Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Health Care and Big Health Insurance industries DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU! I am saddened by the blind trust the average person has in the “system”.

Fact 4: You must take responsibility for yourself, for your own health and education.

Fact 5: Food does not have to be complicated. We simply need to reconnect to it.

So what can you do? How do you relinquish your lifetime pass on the diet roller coaster?

Here are just ten examples:

1. Learn more about food. Why is broccoli good for you?  Why should you be suspicious of GMOs?

2. Cook more of your own food. Food made with hands is better for us than factory food. By preparing your own food you can avoid the chemical poisons of food additives.

3. Grow some of your own food. Some herbs and a tomato in a pot on the patio. Turn a patch of lawn into a salad garden. Plant berry bushes that grow well in your area. (Turn children loose in a raspberry patch for a soul-filling event.)

4. Shop the periphery of the supermarket. The fresh real food is usually found around the outside and the junk is usually on the middle shelves, especially at the ends of the aisles. Even better, forego the supermarket for the farmer’s market.

5. Get to know your grower. When you learn about the inputs required for successful organic farming, you won’t mind paying a bit more at all. You will gain an appreciation for the resources required to feed you and perhaps you’ll stop taking the earth for granted.

6. Buy colourful foods. Fruits, vegetables, and berries come in a rainbow of colours. We are genetically programmed to associate bright colours with good nutrition. It’s no mistake that junk food is marketed with brightly coloured packaging and messaging (but the food itself is often bland and colourless). We are being misled.

7. Stop poisoning yourself. Avoid “unfoods”.  You know, they come in a colorful bag inside a colourful box wrapped in plastic, with a shelf-life of decades and a list of ingredients that sound like they could power a space station, er, I mean “look”, because they are invariably unpronounceable! Avoid factory food. Eat whole real food.

8. Stop counting calories. Yes, they matter to some degree but focusing solely on calories is dangerous. (That is how fats became villains, even though many are actually heroes). Nutrient density, the total nutrients per calorie, is what really matters. Micronutrients are probably more important than macronutrients (fat, protein, carbs). Choose foods that give you the most nutrient bang for the buck/calorie. Go for quality, not quantity.

9. Start paying attention to your body. My great-grandfather said your body will tell you whether you should eat it. I’m often chided for avoiding bread but it bloats me and adds up to eight pounds to my weight in one day. My body is telling me bread isn’t serving it. If you have inexplicable health problems try eliminating some of the worst offenders from your diet for a while. Wheat, soy and dairy are some of the common foods that cause mystery illnesses.

  1. Drink water. This one step, if practiced many times each day, can revolutionize your health.

Finally, remember this. There is evidence that we are not sick because we’re fat, we’re fat because we’re sick. Fat is a symptom. Treating symptoms doesn’t work. It only masks the problems.

The accumulation of fat can be the body’s way of defending itself from toxins. Those toxins can be emotional, from food or from industrial chemicals.

Therefore the goal to “lose weight” is off track. When we strive for optimum health the body will detoxify itself, heal itself and we achieve our goals.

We’ve been riding the wrong ride!

I am happy to point you in the direction of many good resources if you decide to stay off the diet roller coaster forever. Feel free to contact me.

Canola Con: 7 reasons to Avoid Canola Oil

golden-canola-field-with-blue-sky-1245845-mCanola Oil is often touted as a healthy oil. This is one of the great health myths perpetuated by vested interests.

Personally, I avoid canola oil. I don’t cook with it and I don’t buy anything that lists canola as an ingredient. This policy eliminates much processed and restaurant food from my diet. I don’t even give canola to my dog. (She gets olive oil, fish oil and coconut oil.)

Here are seven reasons to avoid canola oil.

1. Canola is a genetically modified organism. Canola is almost always genetically modified. GMO may seem like a smart idea but there is evidence that splicing genes from unrelated species could have disastrous effects on our health.

Little testing has been done. GMO companies’ tests rarely last longer than three months. GMOs and their effects are forever in the system, our bodies, as well as the food system. We’re all supposed to assume that nothing is amiss, that GMOs are no different from other foods. If that’s true why do they grant patents on GMOs?

I know that the government, big agriculture and the big food companies cannot be entrusted with my health. So to be prudent, I avoid GMOs as much as possible.  (This is why I want GMO labeling).

See related article: http://wakeup-world.com/2013/08/28/13-lies-about-gmos-and-gmo-labeling

2. Canola contributes to the poisoning of our environment. Canola is highly engineered so it can withstand repeated dousings of glyphosate (RoundUp), sprayed on canola and other crops to kill weeds.

Glyphosate is showing up in water supplies at several times the “safe” level. In fact, California recently raised the official “safe” level of glyphosate exposure, from parts per billion to parts per million (a thousand-fold increase!) not because it’s safe but because that’s what’s in the water and they really don’t know what to do about it!

RoundUp, a Monsanto product, is detectable in soil, water and food virtually everywhere on earth. None of us can escape this film of poison draped over the planet.

Glyphosate, in parts per billion (ppb) is known to alter DNA in humans. With RoundUp levels now measured and supposedly regulated in ppm we need to brace ourselves for the mass mutation of the human species. We wonder why cancer rates have burgeoned!

In addition to DNA damage, RoundUp’s ubiquitous reach and overuse has spawned superweeds, organisms that no longer respond to normal applications of RoundUp, requiring ever-increasing doses of this deadly drug.

I prefer not to be responsible for the pollution of our water, air and soil. I prefer not to contribute to cancer via my consumption of products that are known carcinogens. One way is to avoid products that are routinely raised with RoundUp. Canola is one of the biggest offenders.

See related articles: http://www.naturalnews.com/040808_glyphosate_breast_cancer_drinking_water.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/041464_glyphosate_monsanto_toxicity.html

3. Canola is actually inedible. Canola started out as rapeseed. Rapeseed oil was used as fuel in diesel engines. In fact, Rudolph Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine used vegetable oil diesel (often made from rapeseed) long before petroleum-based diesel became commonly used as fuel.

4. Canola is processed with dry-cleaning fluid. Someone got the brilliant idea that with modification, canola could serve a whole new market as a food product. Early canola oil used to stink like rotten fish. I remember my mom trying it once and the smell of it cooking gagged us.

To remove the stench, one of the required processes is “washing” canola oil in hexane, a solvent used in the dry cleaning business. Personally I am suspect of food products that are exposed to solvents and other harsh chemicals. I was taught as a child that solvents are generally unsafe to consume. I can barely stand the smell of freshly dry-cleaned clothes; how could I possibly eat them?

5. Canola oil is not organic! Don’t be fooled by the labels. Canola oil is never organic. It is a genetically modified organism, raised with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and processed with dry cleaning fluid. Every one of those disqualifies it as an organic food.

6. Canola oil tastes terrible. Hexane may remove the stench but the bitter taste remains. I’ve accidently bought hummus made with canola instead of olive oil and it’s bitter and inedible. I turned a friend onto baklava, usually made with butter and/or olive oil.  She bought some that was bitter and disgusting and couldn’t understand why. The label revealed it was made with canola.

7. Canola oil is not as healthy as they claim. The health claims pertaining to canola are based largely on the theory that saturated fats cause heart disease, which we must question. Per capita consumption of saturated fats is down over 30 years yet heart disease ravages our society.

Canola does contain Omega 3 and 6 fats, in a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio, depending on processing method and the source of information. The recommended ratio of omega 3 to 6 fatty acids is one to one.  The average North American has a 1:20 ratio! Too many Omega 6 fatty acids cause inflammation, which is implicated in many modern chronic illnesses. While canola can help balance too many omega 6 fats, I prefer to get my Omega 3’s from other sources.

Canola has a high flash point making it popular for deep-frying, which is dangerous for one’s health. The frying of proteins and carbohydrates in fats creates many carcinogens and contributes to obesity and heart disease.

Admittedly, there is nothing prettier than driving through a patchwork quilt of crops emboldened by brilliant yellow fields of canola. So many farmers grow this crop that canola fields in bloom are almost synonymous with being a farmer on the Canadian prairie. Unfortunately hollow health claims cannot change the fact that canola, far from being a health food, is actually an Unfood.

 

A Google search of Omega Fatty Acids or Omega Oils reveals many interesting and educational sites. Here are a few I found.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratio_of_fatty_acids_in_different_foods

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid

http://omega6.wellwise.org/omega-6-omega-3-ratio

http://chriskresser.com/how-too-much-omega-6-and-not-enough-omega-3-is-making-us-sick