by Tina Erwin
This particular blog is my personal opinion. I admit to feeling strongly about these issues.
The new age movement often seems all about finding peace, love and enlightenment – on this side of heaven. However, to make mortal life full of love and light, it is incumbent upon each of us to stand up to what is making life not that way. Literally, part of our spiritual test is standing up to what makes things detrimental to all of us. We each have to find the moral courage that lives within us. We can do that in many mundane ways. We as consumer pawns have quite a bit of power!
Lets start about ten years ago when use of a credit card created a carbon with the full number on it. This was a great way to have your card number stolen. I started demanding that stores hand me the carbon and then asked the store every single time, why they didn’t use a carbonless machine and why they had to print out my whole number every time. I think I embarrassed my kids when they were with me. However, surprisingly it didn’t take long for everyone accepting a credit card to go to carbonless machines that blocked out your entire number except for the last four. Who knows how much influence one person can have. I believe there were thousands of us making that same request.
What needs to be changed today? Frankly, I have begun asking the manager of each restaurant I enter to tell me what on the menu is made from Genetically Modified Food. I remind them that GMO food is poison. GMO food, uses Roundup Ready seed. When an insect eats the seed, its stomach explodes. If this is the case, then ask yourself, what is happening in my own stomach when I eat GMO based food? Virtually 99% of corn and soy are GMO. When I am in a restaurant, I ask management what menu items are made from GMO food. I am very polite. I have been surprised at the response. Cracker Barrel said that their corn and green beans are GMO but coleslaw isn’t. The waitress was a student in environmental studies and knew exactly what was GMO and what wasn’t. Another restaurant in Taos, Graham’s Grille said the chef refused to use any GMO products. They were quite proud of that. Especially when a menu item uses corn or soy, I absolutely ask if it is GMO. Even if it makes the waiter or manager uncomfortable if they hear it enough, you can effect change. It’s the only way I can vote: with my voice and my dollar. If management doesn’t know what is GMO, I do not order anything with corn or soy. I also call the home office of the restaurant and ask these same questions. If enough people ask, we can turn the tide.
I have also begun to call, now and then, when I have a spare moment, food companies. Bird’s Eye says they absolutely refuse to use any GMO seed. Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn only uses GMO seed. I have insisted that they label their packages as to GMO or non-GMO. If the company isn’t worried about whether or not someone will buy it, tell them to be honest, label the package. I am one of these consumers who wants to know.
I also only purchase dairy products that do not include RBST which is a growth hormone. If I have to buy a dairy product and I don’t see one with this label ‘No RBST’ on it, I ask the manager. If they don’t have the product I’m looking for that is not contaminated with RBST, I leave empty handed and I explain to the manager why.
I have also begun to ask management why they aren’t including Stevia as a sweetener choice. Islands, a restaurant chain on the West Coast offers Stevia packets as well as one of the only two places to eat in Monument Valley, Goulding’s restaurant. Other restaurants are beginning. Ask for Stevia. Go on line and tell chain management that you want Stevia included as a sweetener option instead of aspertame, which is Equal which we all know is bad for us, or Splenda which is one molecule away from almost pure chlorine.
I do not buy products with High Fructose Corn Syrup in them and I won’t serve those products in my home. Most sweet tea in restaurants is made from HFCS.
In these days, if I had a child, and the doctors insisted on vaccines, I would have a lawyer draw up a legal document requiring the doctor and nurses to sign it. The document would inform them that if my child gets autism or has a bad reaction from a vaccine, I reserve the right to sue the drug company, the doctor and all the nurses. Then I would ask the doctor, is he or she absolutely positive that vaccine won’t cause autism? You can recover from measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox. Autism is a life sentence that affects not just your family, but literally thousands of people who will have to help you along the way. It will take all the money you have to care for one of these kids damaged by a vaccine. . . and it only takes one shot. It’s time to hold doctors accountable. Having personally watched autism strike many families who had perfectly normal kids one day, be utterly disabled the next day, this is a real situation that requires tremendous moral courage. Currently, they are insisting that pregnant women receive vaccines, most of them with mercury. Again, moral courage is required to stand up and say no to these intrusions on the immune systems of our children and our own bodies. Finally, every American has the right to refuse vaccines for themselves and their children, under the Constitution. Do not let schools bully you into forcing vaccines on your children.
I personally will never have a mammogram. I believe to my very core that they have caused the explosion of breast cancer in this country and I am not alone. If your doctor insists, find the moral courage to ask your doctor [if he's male] to have his testicles tested in the same way. Tell him that you’ll do it after you watch him have his testicles tested for cancer by squishing them, bruising them and then irradiating them at point blank range. Also ask your physician if he or she has an ownership stake in the mammogram machine. One woman’s doctor insisted she get a mammogram twice a year and after five years, her hair fell out and her doctor refused to see the connection. Radiation doesn’t leave the body. It accumulates. If you must have your breasts looked at, use Thermography instead. It does not use radiation.
Just maybe, if we can stop the use of GMO products, mammograms, vaccines and growth hormones, we can begin to stem disease, stem the exploding use of drugs and begin to bring our own country back into balance. It will take the efforts of every single one of us. This country functions on how people make money. If less money is to be made by harming us, then perhaps corporations will take a different route, one away from potentially poisoning us.
Consider that it was people complaining about smoking in restaurants that finally got cigarettes out of office buildings, hospitals, airplanes and restaurants. Even Virginia and North Carolina have banned cigarettes from these places. Voters actually overcame the cigarette lobby! Miracles can happen. We can make them happen.
If we remain complacent, then nothing will change. We can each take some action every single day and begin to turn the tide toward less toxic food and medicine in our lives. We may appear to be pawns, but we have tremendous power!
Epilogue: Currently, as I write this in January of 2012, there is a political move to place on the November 2012 ballot in California, a bill to require the labeling of all GMO food. The GMO seed companies will fight this hard. But if voters can overcome the cigarette companies, nothing is impossible!
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