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import their food because the huge corporations own the best farmland. The price of the food that they must import has
risen dramatically in recent years. In 1961 Sri Lanka needed to sell 156 pounds of tea to buy one ton of wheat; in 1974
she needed to sell 663-pounds almost five times as much. This is because as industrialized nations become wealthier,
their consumption of meat products rises. Thus the grains that would have gone into the world market for Third World
countries to import are now sent to the industrialized nations to feed their growing cattle businesses. The people of the
Third World are literally competing against industrialized nations' livestock for food!
While on the subject of the indignities of meat, 'let's not forget the way in which the animals are treated. The fact that
these creatures have souls, feelings and their own needs to remain healthy is totally ignored. The last few months of
fattening are torture for the animals. They are force-fed and in a constant state of indigestion. In the slaughterhouse the
fear, the incredible panic that they feel at the sight, sounds and smell of their own kind dying permeates their flesh and
is then served to us for dinner. No, thank you.
Women and Sugar
Did you ever stop to think about all the women you know who have some sort of problem with their menses? Pain and
cramps, headaches, backaches, aching feet and legs, depression, constipation, diarrhea we have probably had them all
at one time or another. Our menses are a constant by which we check our health. If we are in optimum health, we will
experience none of these symptoms. If you don't know anyone who goes through a painless menstrual period, that
indicates how many of us are not in good health. So what does this have to do with sugar? Simply that our health is
built upon the foods that we eat.
Our bodies are made up of about forty known nutrients. If we eat whole foods, which contain all the known nutrients,
then our bodies will have what they need to grow, repair tissue and bone, and maintain our health. When we eat food
that is only partially complete because it has been refined and processed, its original plant shape disguised and its
original life energy destroyed, we are not providing ourselves with all we need to remain healthy. The longer we eat
incomplete foods, the longer our bodies will lack the needed nutrients. We then fall into a state of disease; we are
missing some of the necessary links to the nutrient web. There are many different diets and philosophies of food, but
most agree on some basic types of food we should eat daily to insure that we get all we need. We continue to need
these nutrients all our lives.
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The greatest nutrient needs come at different phases of life: when we are infants; as young children; at puberty; as
teenagers; when using contraceptive pills; during pregnancy; while nursing an infant. There is another time in our lives
when we have greater nutrient needs, and that is when we have our monthly menses. If we haven't taken in all the
necessary nutrients, this monthly elimination will offset the equilibrium that our bodies have established, just enough
that we experience how many more nutrients we need than we are getting. At each menses we eliminate blood and
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other waste from our body. Each month we have a chance to grow and repair tissue, and we upset our balance the least
if we have all the necessary nutrients to make that growth and repair work possible. One of the nutrients needed in
large quantity, to replace the monthly loss of blood, is iron. Women need almost twice the amount of iron that men do.
The average diet in the United States fails to provide women with enough iron. It is standard practice to prescribe iron
supplements automatically to all pregnant women, the assumption being that the woman would not possibly get what
she needs from her food. If you are eating white flour products, refined grains, few vegetables of little variety, some
meat, some eggs, some cheese and lots of sugar (usually in the form of soft drinks, sugar in coffee or tea, candy,
sweets and alcoholic drinks) you can be certain that you are NOT getting what your body needs to maintain its health.
When sugar is digested, it actually pulls other nutrients away from your body because it does not have its own
nutrients to aid its digestion. Not only does sugar lack nutritive value and rob you of needed nutrients, it adds many
unnecessary calories to your diet. Our bodies can handle only a limited number of calories approximately 2000 a
day. If most of our calories come from sugar and from oils and fats, which have a disproportionate ratio of calories to
nutrients, then we are leaving very little caloric room for the foods which contain the nutrients we need daily.
We have to stop eating the patriarchy's factory food, and return to eating the foods that women once knew how to
make. These foods were simple but delicious because they were whole, live foods which fed and nourished. The less
sugar and fat we eat, the more we open ourselves to eating foods that keep us whole.
Sugar was not a common food even fifty years ago. Today it is so pervasive that if something isn't "sweet," we feel it
"doesn't taste good." Americans now eat more sugar than ever before over two pounds each per week. We have let
the taste of sugar make us forget other tastes. Sugar has been proven to cause tooth decay. 98% of all children in the
United States today have tooth decay and over half the people in the U.S. aged fifty or older have no teeth. Sugar is a
death-gift from the patriarchy. Take the power of food back from the food industry. Cut down now, and eventually
eliminate all sugar from your diet. Any change will take time, so
don't rush it just do it. You will see what a difference it makes in your ability to want to eat and enjoy a greater
variety of food. You will also feel better in many ways. One method of cutting down on sugar intake is to stop eating
processed foods. Read the labels on things. The ingredients are listed on the label in order by weight; if sugar is a
primary ingredient, don't buy that food. Get to the point where you don't have to buy canned or commercially
manufactured food. You will thus eliminate most of the empty calories in your diet.
Taking Back Our Food and Our Lives
Whole foods contain all the nutrients essential for life: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. When
industry refines our food, it usually takes some of these essential nutrients away and adds chemicals so that the food
will have a long ' 'shelf life,'' more important by its reckoning than a long human life. Of the more than two thousand
food additives currently in use, only a fraction of them have been tested for safety. The testing is often inadequate to
examine the full range of effects the additives may have over a long period of time. When we eat these chemicals we
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