Archive for November, 2007

We’ve had a beautiful Indian summer in Utah, and the last couple of weeks, I’ve come home from my Saturday run past my neighbors bagging their leaves.  I asked them to drop the bags off at my house instead of the dump, and we layered them in our compost boxes as the “brown” layer to mix in with the “green.”

 I’m told that grass clippings and leaves, mixed together, will break down and become perfect mulch in a matter of weeks.  Also, you can poke holes in the bags of leaves and leave them over the winter, because the rain and snow will get in the holes, but so will air, letting them decompose.  Mindy told me today that you can put PVC pipe with holes in it sticking out of your compost pile, to help it get air.

We almost had a very nice dead goldfish, Emma’s longtime pet, Bob, in our compost.  Unfortunately, this conversation ensued upon Bob’s death today:

Me: Bob might not be dead, but he’s on his way there.  You don’t want him to die slowly, do you?  I don’t think that’s what he’d want.

Emma (looking at me with horror): But he’s not dead yet!  You’re not going to put him in the compost pile, are you?  The dogs might eat him.

Me: You know, most vegetarians would love the idea of dust-to-dust, ashes-to-ashes, Bob becoming part of the circle of life.  He would be part of the earth, contributing to nutrients that feed our family someday.  Remember when we went to the Plymouth village in Boston last year?  All the native Americans putting a dead fish in each hole where they were planting corn?  That’s how they got great corn.

Emma (testy now):  That’s not why I’m a vegetarian.  I don’t care about that.  HEY!  What did you do with my LAST fish that died, Nemo?

Me:  Put it in the compost pile, I think.

Emma:  You did WHAT!!??  You didn’t!

Me:  Okay.  I didn’t, then.

I’ve said before that sugar is more addictive than cocaine (I’m not making this up—earlier research has documented this phenomenon).  A new study in today’s paper, conducted in France, has been presented to the annual meeting for the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego. 

Rats offered a choice between cocaine and sugar chose . . . sugar.  Researchers started with saccharin-sweetened water, and rats chose that over cocaine.  They switched to sugar water, and rats chose that over cocaine.  They then tried cocaine-addicted rats, and even THEY chose the sugar.

 Cocaine increases the brain chemical dopamine, but so does sugar, just via different mechanisms.  Sugar is the upstanding citizen’s cocaine.  This surely has everything to do with the obesity epidemic. 

Parents, we unwittingly fuel this epidemic by giving our kids sugary yogurt, drinks, cereal, and treats when they’re little.  We make them addicts for life and begin burning out their tissue binders and making them at high risk for all degenerative diseases at a younger age than any generation has been exposed.  And our kids don’t have the strong genetics that our grandparents had, to withstand the modern diet’s destructive effects.

Young moms, you have so much power to change everything!

Need a nutrition activity for kids?  Have them watch my new three-minute green smoothie demo on YouTube.  If you like it, give me five stars so I can bump out all those weird and totally inferior green smoothie demos.  :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXr8-jru1KE

I wonder how fast YOU could do it if you weren’t talking the whole time like I was.  Set your kids loose in the kitchen with your BlendTec (see greensmoothiegirl.com for the actual recipe allowing for lots of variety, 7 reasons why BlendTec is the best blender, and a deal with freebies on that blender if you don’t have one).  Tell the kids you’ll—I dunno, give them a sticker on their forehead or something—for making a green smoothie and drinking it.  They will drink it, I swear.  Extra agave/honey/stevia and extra berries is the key to converting them in the beginning. 

I got the last laugh.  Last week I ranted about skewed charts—weight charts, hematocrit charts—and I tested my theory today as I promised I would.  I did NOT drink 1/2 gal. of water by 1 p.m. like I usually do.  I drank over a quart and then no water after 11 a.m. except a few sips from the drinking fountain at work to survive teaching (i.e., talking) for three hours straight.

I went at 5 p.m. to give blood and had a hematocrit of 38!  So I faked the Red Cross out, all in the name of serving my fellow man.  If they want me to be dehydrated to pass their silly little test, FINE.  Done.  Just don’t call me anemic!  :-)