Starve The Corporate Food Beast, Save Your Health

[K8-EEE]

I don't think it's a big mystery: we have fast food chains every half mile and we keep getting fatter and sicker and the chain restaurants and the pharmaceuticals (eat that stuff and you'll need pills of some sort) snarl and make ever bigger donations to BushCo.

Which brings me to my lentil & veggie soup! Make a big pot of this on Sunday and you'll gladly drive past the drive-ins on your way home. Yummy, fast and cheap!

In a heavy soup pot, sautee 1 cup each of finely chopped celery & onion with lots of garlic in some olive oil until it's translucent. Add about 8 cups of water and a small bag of rinsed lentils; bring to a boil, then add one cup each of diced potato and carrots. Turn the heat to low and simmer for 25 minutes; then add 2 cups of chopped spinach, salt, and pepper & cook 5 more minutes.

We like to have this with fruit, cheese and crackers for a good winter vegetarian dinner.

I used to have quite a fast food habit in my younger days. I swear even when I make really unhealthy stuff at home, I feel better than when I ate that stuff! There's something about it -- I swear I think fast food and dumb politics are killing America, sometimes I think they put prozak in those french fries!

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Make sure to take a B12 supplement

Although it comes from the pharmacology industry, vegetarian diets are almost always deficient in B12, supplementation is usually required.

You could eat a little meat -- unless your vegetarianism is based on ethical or metaphysical principles.

(If recent studies have demonstrated that there are plant-based foods that produce B12 -- "cobalamin" -- please let me know.)

Incidentally, it's almost impossible to get away from corporate control; the farm/produce agribiz is every bit as evil as any other business dealing with basic human needs (animal husbandry, pharmacy, medicine, energy, etc.) People really ought to garden more, and widespread use of human waste in composting (not as raw sewage) would help quite a lot.

--bkl

[K8-EEE]

3. Well..

I'm not a vegetarian -- my oldest daughter and my dad are so I cook that way several times a week.

I take every suplement there is incl. the B12! From trader joes....but I don't get your human waste in composting thing, I quit buying Kelloggs Amend for gardening because of that particular ingredient! I use chicken manure & fish emulsion in my garden.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. The human waste thing

Using composted human waste -- feces, garbage, and lawn cuttings -- provides an extremely rich mulch and returns nutrients to the soil efficiently. The book Humanure goes into this in great detail.

Here's the URLs:
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/

This will become necessary in coming years when food prices start to skyrocket from the lack of cheap petrochemical fertilizer.

--bkl

[NuttyFluffers]

2. i'm spoiled...

there's cheap and fast non-chain ethnic food all over SF bay area. especially asian cuisine.

[K8-EEE]

4. Yep!

Here in L.A. as well, especially Thai. But there's four of us so it's not as cheap as in my single days -- I try to keep take-out to once or twice a week.

[ever_green]

5. Yay for vegetarians!

I haven't eaten fast food in years! or meat.

[K8-EEE]

13. Isn't It Funny

The warnings they give you about being a vegetarian....my 14 year old has been one (like grandpa) since she was 7 ad she's literally never sick. All her blood tests and everything, she's got tons of iron and all that,is the right weight and the picture of health, thank God.

And yet people never cease to act all concerned about it like, make sure you're getting enough this and that -- when in fact, a lot of the fat kids are actually malnurished and nobody ever worries about them lacking any vitamins.

Also girls have to get REALLY skinny before anybody ever notices they're too skinny.

My doctor is a vegetarian and he always says that nobody's ever opened up a guy in emergency surgery and said "oh how horrible -- a vegetarian! He was only one hamburger away from surviving." Yet the opposite is true...years of animal fat you can see in a heart surgery, that's what does people in in this country.

[ever_green]

14. Yeah, no kidding..

Kids these days eat tons of sugar and fat. Vegetarians have a much healthier diet. People are just brainwashed I think.
Isn't heart disease the number 1 killer here?

[bluedonkey]

7. I just had

a pot of lentil soup,too.I love that stuff.
I'm not a vegetarian,but I don't eat much meat,I prefer fish.
I try to eat as organic as possible.there are ways around it,we have a farmers market on saturdays.Sometimes I get there too late (6am)and I have to leave without fresh eggs,it is this popular.I'm trying to find a source outside the city for fresh veggies and eggs.
I definitely will start a garden for next year.

[K8-EEE]

12. Here In L.A. We're Still Gardening...

I have spinach, cilantro, snow peas...stuff we can't grow in the summer because it gets too hot.

[DELUSIONAL]

8. 2 of the ingredient in that would kill me

We all have to find our own path to health.

Read labels -- learn about your food intolerances, and food allergies and cook from scratch -- foods that are healthy for you -- not presumed "healthy" foods. As I said -- two of the ingredients in that "healthy" meal would kill me.

[K8-EEE]

10. You Must Be Fun At Dinner Parties

OMG -- my chili would probably kill you 20 different ways! It's got pork, corona beer, chilis and green apples. Amazingly nobody's ever died from it yet, or the lentils either, LOL!

[RebelOne]

9. I'm vegetarian and I love lentils, but can't eat them often.

They do a job on my stomach if you know what I mean.

[K8-EEE]

11. Truly I Have A Cast Iron Stomach!

The only thing that's ever bothered it was drinking a Coke in Tijuana years ago -- stupidly, I wasn't drinking the water but I did have ice in the Coke, duh!! But I ate off the taco carts there and that didn't bother me at all.