Word's Getting Out!

The word is MOST DEFINITELY getting out!  People are doing their research, gaining knowledge, engaging in discourse and beginning to realize what I have come to realize.  It's simple, my people, and it's truth.  Our bodies need the right nutrition to act right.   

When your body is acting right:

You have tons of energy.

You actually want to exercise.

You have more will power to break bad habits like smoking.  (Yep, It's documented.)

Your skin is not punking you.

Your intestines are not turning into what seems to be cement.

Your taste buds cause you to actually like the taste of veggies.

You think more clearly, at a higher capacity and prevent cognitive decline.  (Yep, it's documented.)  

You seriously feel ten times better and ten times happier.
Just considering observations,  I experience this all the time. 

Bangin Bird Food is the business.

Anywhos, this post series is PACKED with information, so let me get on with it.   :)

Here are just a few names (there are MANY more) that I have come across who have already either made a transition to a plant-based diet or are promoting the message.  These individuals include presidents, athletes, actors, musicians, physicians, TV and radio personalities and other pop-culture icons.  Majority of their responses about bird food eating were reactions to watching the documentary Forks Over Knives.  Forks Over Knives is, as Robert Ebert puts it, "a film that can save your life".  Maybe a few names is an understatement.

Check the Word's Getting Out sub-sections for the details on these folks.............................and if you really want to know how many celebrity folk have been impacted by this doc: Check Forks Over Knives's Celebrity Talk and this HuffPost article.

Note: The order of the categories has nothing do with an unconsciously established bias towards certain career paths.  Trust me.  I don't consider physicians to be less intelligent or less respected than athletes.......................................because I plan to be one.  :)

So.....................what have we learned here today: 

1.  Watch Forks Over Knives!

2.  Consider a plant-based diet!

3.  Reap the rewards of your excellent decision-making skills!

Thank you for reading.  My people, I appreciate you all so much.  Be healthy and happy.  Ciao!

Knowledge Addicts: All Sweeteners are Not Equal

Knowledge Addicts

Today's dose of knowledge comes from Science Daily, an awesome news website that features current research from universities, journals and other research organizations.  You can directly access the papers through links at the bottom of the articles.  You're a knowledge addict so I know you were wondering. :)

Title: High Fructose Syrup Prompts Considerably More Weight Gain, Researchers Find

A photo from the article.  Below is the caption from the article

(A Princeton University research team, including (from left) undergraduate Elyse Powell, psychology professor Bart Hoebel, visiting research associate Nicole Avena and graduate student Miriam Bocarsly, has demonstrated that rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup -- a sweetener found in many popular sodas -- gain significantly more weight than those with access to water sweetened with table sugar, even when they consume the same number of calories. The work may have important implications for understanding obesity trends in the United States. (Credit: Princeton University, Office of Communications, Denise Applewhite)

Wooow!  High-fructose corn syrup leads to serious weight gain. This is a crazzzzy thing.  I think most of us may know that any form of refined sugar is easily converted into energy that is immediately used or stored as potential energy in the form of fat.  It is a very simple carbohydrate so it takes nothing for the body to process it and send it to the liver for storage.  What this article is claiming is that high-fructose is on some other kind of level.  It's as if its conversion rate is 50 times greater than that of regular table sugar.   The research was conducted by a Princeton University research team that looked specifically at the effects of high-fructose corn syrup in comparison to table sugar and their long-term consumption on weight gain.  In the first study, two groups of rats were fed equal amounts of waters sweetened with either high-fructose corn syrup or table sugar in addition to rat chow and weight gain was assessed.  In the second study, the rats were monitored over a period of six months.  The weight gain was assessed at the ending of the six month period.  The team controlled for caloric intake as well as amounts that would be roughly comparable to commercial sodas.

The results were insane.  Man, I was really hoping for a photo form the article.  That would have been a ridiculous visual!
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Ok, I couldn't resist, so I found one myself.  Exactly what I imagined.  

Photo Credit: MedCity

Check out this excerpt from the piece:

"In addition to causing significant weight gain in the lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides.  The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States."

What's crazy is that this particular sweetener is what is in most of our sodas, snacks, sweets and condiments.  Think about it!

So what's the takeaway?  High-fructose corn syrup is the devil!      

Haha!  I'm just kidding but please do check out this article in full.

  Knowledge is MOST DEFINITELY power and I want you to have it.


Thank you for reading.  My people, I appreciate you all so much.  Be healthy and happy.  Ciao!

Bangin' Bird Food?

That's spinach guys, not leaves :)

So why the title Bangin' Bird Food?  Well, there is a little story behind it.  It's a short and sweet one.  You reaaaaaaady? Ok!

So, I've always been fascinated by health and obtaining the most optimal level of it since forever.  You only have one body, so I just want mine to work as it is supposed to until the day I die.  I mean show me someone who doesn't want that.  That's every human.  It started in high-school when I gradually began changing my diet on my own after my mom began making some changes to food options in the house (buying whole wheat bread instead of white and fewer snacks).  I'm a free spirit so I've always kind of done my own thing.

I think this has free spirit written all over it.     :)

I had a faux hawk during high school.  Loved it.

Wearing a meticulously prepared ensemble while globetrotting in Costa Rica 

I started to realize this right here: Health is Wealth.  Tried?..................Yes. BUT is it TRUE?....................Oh Yeah!  I just wanted to be healthy so I started opting for fruit over Cheez-it when packing my lunch for school, making time to exercise even though track, soccer and basketball seasons were over and guzzled water.  That desire to experience great health till death decides to hangout with me forever has led me to come to the profound truth that "You are what you eat".  Why wouldn't you be?  Isn't the food you eat then digested in your body and used to build you up again and help you live life?

Exactly.
  

I believe that food can be the deciding factor between whether you are merely surviving or thriving.  I continued making changes until I got to college where I really got into it.  Homemade granola, vegan bar at the cafeteria, soy milk all day, everyday.  My friends could tell you STORIES of my plates full of salad at dinner and offerings of freshly blended smoothies on the dorm hall.  Then after that..............................................I wasn't playing around.  After graduation, I just started researching about the food we eat.  Lots of great books, documentaries, articles, blogs, videos and websites contributed to this.  My people, reading is MOST DEFINITELY fundamental, and knowledge is MOST DEFINITELY power.  Naturally, it just seemed like a logical decision when you look at food on a physical, mental, social, spiritual and economic level.  What I want to point out here is how it was a gradual process.  I didn't do it overnight because you really have to change how you look at food first.  Ask Ellen!

What's amazing is how this aspect of our lives is so integral to our existence.   Yo, MGD, you're sounding real ethereal right now and you still haven't explained what's up with the name?

Oooooook, Daaaaag!  Can a woman share a little about her life story?  Can I feel important for like two pages?


But seriously.  I appreciate you so much for reading up to this point; I really do.  :)

On many occasions during my college years, one of my best friends would add her naturally witty commentary of my choice of nourishment.  It went like this.  I would be eating some granola, eating spinach leaves or some plant life and she would look and just shake her head and say, "Just love that bird food dontcha," or I would ask if she wanted to try something I made and something like this would follow, "Marsha, I am not down with your bird food.  I'm not trying to have digestion problems right now".  Still cracks me up!  And like that, it stuck.  I mean, when you really think about it, that is exactly what I eat, if bird food constitutes nuts, seeds and a variety of other forms of vegetation.  Now, and this is CRUCIAL, what's special about the bird food I eat is that it's bangin'.  I mean BAAAAAANGIN"!!!!  I'm not even joking.  Sometimes I find myself wondering if life can really be this way. I mean I love what I eat because it is not only great for my body but it is ridiculous how daggone delicious it is!

One thing is that I love to eat.  I am one of those people that go to bed thinking about what I want to eat for breakfast.  It's intense but that's how I live.  Haha!  I have had a particularly strong affinity to food since a young age.  My mother could recount in detail how I would finish my food in a split-second and proceed to literally grab for myself the food my older sister (we are 2 years apart) was struggling to finish eating (she's never been much of an eater).  I go hard man, I go hard.  

The other thing is that whatever I eat, I want it to taste really good.  So naturally, these two factors have always been necessary for my happiness.  Now that I have reached a new level of that in being really happy about what I choose to place in my body, I must translate these two factors into this part of my life as well.  So you can process that I am a vegan but I really just like to say that I eat Bangin' Bird Food.  Translation = I eat very very very well on a plant-based diet.  And with my blog baby here, I just want to share what I have come to know with anyone and everyone.  This ranges from folk who are all about it with me..........or folk that are considering the change, but are not sure, or have no clue how..........to folk who think I may be a little off and breathing a special type of smoke-filled air with how excited I am about this.  Plants really gotchu that hype Marsha?  You heard that song?  They sure do and in due time, I hope they get you that hype too.  :)

Link to:
Bangin' Bird Food Music Video
Navigating Bangin' Bird Food
The Focus

Thank you for reading.  My people, I appreciate you all so much.  Be healthy and happy.  Ciao!

The What? Why? and Really?: McFrankenstein McNuggets

Photo from the article, "What's in Fast Food Chicken?"

That title isn't even my creation. It's the words a federal judge used to describe all-white-meat McNuggets in 2003.  He literally called the nuggets a "McFrankenstein creation of various elements not utilized by the home cook".   Ooooo, that can't be good.

A CNN post, in addition to citing the judge, explains that chicken nuggets from an American McDonald's restaurant are noticeably different from chicken nuggets from a McDonald's restaurant in let's sayyyyy........the UK.  American McNuggets lists a plethora of ingredients, many of which seem almost unpronounceable and include chemicals, while British McNuggets feature more basic ingredients and no chemical additives.  Check out the complete list of McNuggets ingredients in this article comparing McNuggets to mom's homemade fried chicken and on the actual Mickey D's website.  The two main chemical additives are tBQH (tertiary butylhydroquinone for my organic chemists), a petroleum-based chemical and dimethylpolysiloxane, a chemical also used in cosmetics and Silly Putty.  Looks like the trash might be eating those nuggets you just bought. Haha! I'm sorry, I had to. 

tBQH contributes to .02 percent of the oil in the nuggets.  One thirteenth of an ounce of tBQH can lead to a good amount of not so good situations: ringing in the ears, nausea, vomiting, a sense of suffocation, delirium and collapse.  Five grams can kill you.  Nah man, I'd like to end my meals on a high note rather than a low one.............six feet deep.  In addition to these ingredients, the actual piece of chicken is more like miscellaneous that meat.  It is an amalgamation of the random stuff that you thought they threw away.

The Young Turks break it down.

If you want to see more pictures, I gotchu: Pre-Chicken Nugget Meat Paste


Sources in full:
What's in Fast Food Chicken? (HINT: It's NOT Chicken)
All McNuggets Are Not Created Equal
Photo: Pre-Chicken Nuggest Meat Paste
Young Turks: What Are Chicken Nuggets Made of?
McDonald's Nutrition

Thank you for reading.  My people, I appreciate you all so much.  Be healthy and happy.  Ciao!