Should people be freed from trans-fats?

>> Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Washington Capitol, DCImage by FranciscoDiez via Flickr
Update: Please review the comments following this post for a change in my position on this political issue.

It seems that along with a few major cities around the nation, the entire state of California will begin banning trans fats beginning with 2010, with a grace period for some (bakeries) continuing up until 2011. While it's fantastic to see that people are finally starting actually do something about trans fats, is this the way it should be done?

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In-depth Reviews of Recipe Websites

>> Sunday, December 27, 2009

It may not be apparent why an in-depth review of major recipe websites is related to the subject of our health and well-being, but I felt the need to do some real searching for a tool that would help other foodies out there, if they were interested in something like this. I know a lot of us love to share the recipes that we come up with or come across in our journey to well-being, and usually what happens with these recipes is that they become an entry in each of our blogs, which are scattered across the internet and thus not very indexed and searchable. Sure, there's Google to the rescue, but it's still a very disjointed process with no standards to count on.

I thought it would be great if there was at least one well-thought-out recipe website that would cater to the blogging world as well, so that we could not only talk in detail about our loving creations on our blog but also put them all together in a kind of online book as these sites are so good at.

So, I began the arduous task of testing out what I consider to the be the big names in the recipe biz as well as some more obscure entries in the list that I have since come across. I hope the results will be of use to you.

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Zicam and Thoughts About Zinc

>> Tuesday, December 22, 2009


CHICAGO - JUNE 17:  Boxes of Zicam cold remedy...Image by Getty Images via Daylife
A recent conversation also has me looking into Zicam, another over-the-counter cold remedy. If you are unaware, this product uses primarily zinc as its weapon for fighting the cold.

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7 Ways to Preserve Fruits and Vegetables

>> Monday, December 14, 2009

Barley fieldImage via Wikipedia
  When it was autumn the fathers gathered the barley and wheat and corn that they had planted, and found that it had grown so well that they would have quite enough for the long winter that was coming.
  "Let us thank God for it all," they said.

THE FIRST THANKSGIVING DAY by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith

In modern America, foods such as cheese, sauerkraut, picklets, jellies, jams, and smoked meat are prepared more for their taste than for their natural ability to keep long on the shelf. In fact, store-bought preparation of these types of foods can sometimes even include artificial preservatives so that their shelf life is extended even further in an attempt to gather more dollars for the manufacturer. Along with the loss of the skills for putting aside food, activities such as bee-keeping, maple syrup creation, and so on have been delegated to hobbies - something a very few people do (and love doing), but is also forgotten by most.

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Let's Broaden Our Minds... About Cosmetics

>> Friday, December 11, 2009


JokerImage by Gilberto Viciedo via Flickr
Whenever I consider beauty aids or makeup, the nerd in me always reaches out to the original Batman movie - you know, the one where Jack Nicholson did such a fantastic job as the Joker? I think about how the entire city stopped using beauty supplies because they didn't know what secret combination of chemicals in the cosmetics would kill them.

Ironically, life imitates art as much as the opposite is true when we're sold a bunch of poisonous preparations in lieu of makeup, perfumes, and skin cream. The huge difference between what we have and the fiction of Batman is that our deaths come slowly with diseases like cancer.

While coconut oil is still one of the healthiest and easiest treatments you can give to your skin, I thought I'd take a look at even more comparisons and solutions to this problem.

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A Skin Care Product You Can Eat

>> Wednesday, December 9, 2009


Rotating image of Optical Coherence Tomography...Tomogram of skin - Image via Wikipedia
"Being a guy" I never really cared too much about keeping my skin healthy when I was growing up. I look back and realize that I should have, of course. It just goes to show how disconnected I was from my body at that time. Your body talks back to you in more ways than just feeling pain when you're sick. Whether it's acid indigestion telling you that you just ate a whole bunch of stuff your body really hates, or just dry skin as a result of the wrong kind or not enough oils throughout the day, you should try to listen to what it's saying.

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You had me at coconut. [recipe + tip]

>> Monday, December 7, 2009

I love how YourGlutenFreeRecipes is adding personal commentary and sensible health tips along with each of the recipes. I found this fascinating quote today:


Amazingly my kids actually like fish, which is really a good thing.  We try to eat fish at least once a week to get the healthy fats in them.  We try to find wild caught, as many fish farms feed their fish corn and other grains which could create a problem for those who are gluten free.  They also dump a lot of antibiotics and growth hormones in the water to help keep diseases down created by the small living space and to grow them faster to make more money.   Since I created this recipe, I have found it very difficult to find wild caught Talapia, so I use it on any wild caught fish we can find at the market. It is very simple but has tremendous flavor.yourglutenfreerecipes.blogspot.com, Your Gluten Free Recipes, Dec 2008
You should read the whole article.

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Today Ice Cream is More than Just Frozen, Sweet Cream!

>> Sunday, December 6, 2009

Strawberry ice cream in a cone.Image via Wikipedia
The subject of ice cream came up recently in a conversation and as I also have a sweet spot for the stuff, I thought I'd put my response out here for more to share.

Ice cream should be an occasional treat and we can probably all start in agreement on that point. It's typical high in calories considering the concept of it is frozen, sweetened cream. In America it's probably eaten more often than it should. Working in a downtown area, it is unsurprising to see people eating as they walk down the skyways at any particular time of the year. So what exactly are we eating when we devour this evilly-delicious stuff?

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MSG in your H1N1 vaccine?

{{en|Image of the newly identified H1N1 influe...H1N1 virus via Wikipedia
As perhaps further evidence, if it is needed, that pharmaceutical companies' primary interest is not in your optimal health but in your wallet and what they can extract from it, here is a small peek into one of the recent swine flu vaccines available to the public, revealing some of its unexpected and hopefully uncommon ingredients.

TruthInLabeling.org has a headline at the top of their page as of this writing that reads:
MedImmune’s H1N1 vaccine contains monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed protein gelatin, and various forms of phosphates. See section 11, page 13 of the package insert.
If you don't want to pull up the PDF at the end of that link, here's a screenshot of what you'd be looking for, with some fun highlights:

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Book Review: The Unhealthy Truth

>> Friday, December 4, 2009

I literally just finished The Unhealthy Truth by Robyn O'Brien and cannot emphasize what a blessing it is to the state of health for anyone who may read it. The book follows the discoveries of a woman who can easily be described as a very typical working mom. 


Her first awakening came with an unexpected allergic reaction of her youngest child to some eggs, and this discovery eventually leads her to the revelation that the people and organizations she thought were looking out for her health were more concerned about how much money they could fit in their bank accounts. 

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Food or Foodstuff?

>> Tuesday, December 1, 2009

LunchablesImage by elmada via Flickr
Just after high school, I once worked for a hotel chain. Not the most glorious job, but it was something. You get to see all sorts of human behavior, good and bad, when you work somewhere that people typically hold in their minds as a temporary residence. I wish I could remember the name of the nice, older lady who always smelled of Jessica McClintock perfume as she was such a delight to chat with.

On the other hand, I certainly won't miss the party-loving folks who seemed to assume that you just love to pick up after them because hey - you're getting paid to do it, right? (Based on the amounts of mess, sometimes and often you can answer that: WRONG.)

After one particularly large, but thankfully not too rowdy, group left, we found mountains of leftover "food." The typical party faire; there were bags of Doritos, 2-litre bottles of pop in many varieties, pizza boxes, and so forth. There was something a little extra in this case, too: A huge stack of Lunchables. You know what I'm talking about - those prepared lunch snack packs that are marketed to busy parents of schoolage children. They contain an amazing variety of non-food food nowadays, but back when this happened it was mostly limited to lunch meat, cheese, jello, crackers, and so forth.

Usually when a guest left something important, or if they left as much unopened food as they did this time, they would be back soon to claim it, so we did what we usually did: We set it in a back room and forgot about it.

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About Psychic Lunch

Psychic Lunch was founded in 2009 by a nerd and father who wants people to be healthy. The information on this site is researched, but should be considered opinion; that is, you should always do your own research and come to your own conclusions about what is and what is not healthy. Products endorsed on this site are actually believed in and used by the author.

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