A Dose of Health

Back in the old days, aluminum foil was used to wrap just about everything.  Kids went to school with their lunch box fully packed with sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil.  Pickles were wrapped in aluminum foil and so were the homemade snacks.  Just about everything we carried in our lunchbox was wrapped in aluminum foil (balled up aluminum foil was a great source of entertainment).

In addition to stuffing our lunch boxes with aluminum foil and later throwing the aluminum foil balls around the lunchroom, my parents also used the product more traditionally in cooking.  After the hot roast came out of the oven, covering it with aluminum foil was a perfectly acceptable way to keep it protected.

When the roast was cool enough to touch, it went into the fridge.  I never remember seeing small black holes in the aluminum foil or traces of dissolved aluminum foil on the meat (ahh, the good old days).

New and Improved Aluminum Foil

I don’t know if I was living in my childhood fantasy, but I never remember my mother complaining about the aluminum foil dissolving.  Now a days I find that I cannot use aluminum foil to cover foods.  It appears to melt when it spend too much time in contact with
food.

My first response was to purchase a thicker, heavier grade of aluminum foil.  That didn’t work, because it dissolved onto the food too.  Seeing that my first line of action didn’t work, I decided to see if other folks on the internet had the same problem.  Imagine my surprise when I found that aluminum foil dissolves when it comes into contact with acidic foods.

Check out these links:

• Acidic Foods in Contact with Aluminum Foil: A Cause of Parkinson’s/Alzheimer’s Disease?
• Ask A Scientist

Although my research indicates that eating food with dissolved aluminum foil on it is perfectly safe, I’d rather not.  I’ve spent time cutting off the ‘melted’ portions of aluminum foil from my food.  I now wait until the food is cool enough and use plastic wrap followed by a layer of aluminum foil.

Alzheimer’s Disease and Aluminum

There appears to be a correlation between Alzheimer’s disease and aluminum  toxicity in the brain.  Although, these sites do not point to aluminum foil as the cause of the toxicity, they do mention items like antiperspirants containing aluminum, aluminum utensils and self-rising flour which contains aluminum, just to name a few (Here’s another site: Alzheimer’s and Aluminum, Is there a connection?) .

My Conclusion

There may not be a connection between aluminum foil and Alzheimer’s disease.  Additonally, according to my limited research, it may be ‘perfectly safe’ to eat food with melted aluminum foil; however, in my book, I’m not doing it.  I already had a calcified brain scare.  No sense in eating aluminum to create some other unwanted health condition.

As I watched the Oprah show and saw 85 year old billionaire, David Murdoch, go to Costco to purchase his fruits and vegetables for juicing, it brought to mind the question,”Should he be juicing non organic vegetables?”  By the way, I can’t be sure but it sure looks like he uses the Jack LaLanne Juicer to me.

Now, I didn’t know if the Costco trip was for the benefit of us ‘everyday’ folk or whether or not he always buys his fruits and veggies at Costco.  I’m not a Costco shopper, but I didn’t think he was placing organic fruit in his shopping cart.

Organic or Non Organic Juicing

It’s been my practice to juice organic fruits and vegetables if I am going to go through the trouble of juicing.  However, if my funds are low and I purchase non organic produce which are not juiced but are relegated to normal eating and cooking.  Juicing to me is like ‘mainlining’ vegetables, where as eating and cooking them is not.  If I’m going to mainline, I’d prefer to have the purest most nutritional dose of my veggie of choice.

Non Organic Juicing Hesitation

The major reason for my hesitation to juice non organic produce is that I don’t want to mainline toxic pesticides directly into my system.  The fact that non organic vegetables are usually grown in less nutrient rich soil is another factor, but the presence of toxins is my primary reason for using organic rather non organic.

Getting rid of the Toxin Concern

I read on one site that removing the outer skin of non organic vegetables severely cuts down on the presence of toxins.  The only problem it also severely cuts down on the presence of nutrients too.

Other sites recommend washing the fruits and vegetables in a solution of water and hydrogen peroxide , followed by a washing with vinegar and water and rinse.  This process purportedly removes  most of the bacteria and toxins.

My Thought Process

As I write this there are pears, apples and oranges sitting in my fruit bowl, that will go bad over the next few days if not eaten (my family loves fruit when it first comes in the house, but after day 2 or 3 the fruit becomes invisible and they no longer see it in the fruit bowl).  So, to prevent the fruit from going bad, I’d prefer to juice it.

After combing the internet I think I’m going to use a combination of both organic and non organic produce for juicing.  The organic greenery (that I like to juice to mask the taste of wheatgrass) will be 100% organic.  The other fruits and veggies that I usually cook or nibble on throughout the day, will be organic when money permits, and non organic otherwise. I’ll apply the pesticide removal methods a outlined above and juice the produce if I find that they’re about to hang around too long (juice them before they go bad).

When I stop to think about it, no one is ever really 100% sure of what’s on store bought produce (organic or not).  After all, some organic vegetables have traces of pesticides and bacteria.  I guess the only way to be sure is to grow it myself (not going to happen anytime soon). Oh, and as for David Murdoch from the Oprah show…he’s 85 years old and going strong.  If he’s using non organic fruit, I guess it can’t be all that bad.

How do you tackle the organic vs non organic produce quandary?

Butter gets a bad rap, but in my book I’ll pick butter over margarine any day.

I used to buy into the ‘margarine is better than butter’ hype, but no more.  Trans fat free and low in cholesterol spreads such as Promise and I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter, Country Crock and a host of others have a long list of ingredients.  Have you ever checked it out?

Here’s the list for Smart Balance Buttery Spread:

Ingredients

NATURAL OIL BLEND (PALM FRUIT, SOYBEAN, CANOLA, AND OLIVE OILS), WATER, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, WHEY (FROM MILK), VEGETABLE MONOGLYCERIDES AND SORBITAN ESTER OF FATTY ACIDS (EMULSIFIERS), SOYBEAN LECITHIN, POTASSIUM SORBATE, LACTIC ACID (TO PROTECT FRESHNESS), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN B6, VITAMIN B12, VITAMIN D, VITAMIN E (DL-?-TOCOPHEROL ACETATE), BETA-CAROTENE COLOR

You can find this listing on the Smart Balance website.

Butter:

Now, I’ll go to my refrigerator and pull out a stick of butter and read the ingredients as follows:

Cream, Salt, Milk

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the stuff I can pronounce over what I can’t any day.

Not only does butter taste better and makes things it interacts with taste better, but the ingredients are common every day ingredients.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a spare jar of VEGETABLE MONOGLYCERIDES AND SORBITAN ESTER OF FATTY ACIDS sitting around on my pantry shelf.

The Healthy Goal

I know, I know, butter is full of saturated fats and its ‘bad’ for us.  Well, since the goal is to make healthy choices one choice at a time, if given the option between margarine and butter, I choose butter (olive oil would be better, but that option is not on the table at this time).

So, if eating butter means that I have to make one extra lap around the block or vacuum with a little more vigor, so be it.  I’d rather have cream, salt and milk in my system than the host of ingredients that are listed on the margarine label.

Additional Reading

While doing a little research on butter, I came across this document entitled Ingredients for Margarines and Spreads.  Not quite sure what it all means, but I know after skimming through the document, I’m even more adamant about choosing butter over margarine.