Aspartame - Yuck

Giving up meat for me - easy.

Giving up soda - Oh my god! Hard Work.

I switched to diet soda last year after a root canal and always heard little things about artificial sweeteners but never put much thought into it. After researching it recently on my new health obsession, I realized the awful things surrounding aspartame and similar sweeteners. Soda has always been my guilty pleasure :) .

This is day four and the caffeine withdrawal headaches are awful! Once I stop depending on it though, I know I'll be so much better off. I have been reading all of my labels lately and it's even in Crystal Light powders. I've been sticking to water, soy milk, and 100% juice.

Many sources list over 90 side effects from aspartame and describe it's FDA approval process as very suspicious. People close to me know I have a general distrust for the FDA anyways.

I don't want to go through and list 90 different side effects, but go ahead and search for it yourself if you weren't already aware of the associated problems.

Does anyone have any ideas for kicking a caffeine addiction?

(That clever graphic is from healingdaily.com)

Eating my Smoothies and Whey...

I finally bought a blender and decided to try out some smoothie recipes. These are great for getting added nutrition and especially protein. They are so convenient considering you can just buy bags of frozen fruit and toss them in. I've been using them as meal replacements to get a flat stomach before my vacation :) . Here are two of my favorites:

Both of these make 2 -3 servings.

Strawberry-Peach Smoothie
2 cups fortified OJ
1 banana
2 cups fresh (or frozen) sliced strawberries
About 10 slices of frozen peaches
Two or three handfuls of ice
2 scoops of Strawberry Whey Protein (20g or protein per scoop)
Blend on smoothie setting of course and tweak it to your liking.

Reese's Cup Ice Cream Smoothie
(maybe more of a milkshake)

2 fresh bananas

1 or 2 cups of milk - organic soy or regular is fine

4 or 5 cups of Reese's Ice Cream - available in low fat

3/4 cup of any peanut butter

Chocolate syrup to taste

3 handfuls of ice
2 scoops of Vanilla Whey Protein
Blend

More Mad Cows

So the media announced the 140+ billion pound recall of beef to the public. Does it surprise anyone that I knew about a week, maybe even a few weeks before it was officially announced?

Don't trust the FDA to protect you from unsafe food. The only reason this was revealed was because of an undercover operation from an "outsider." The Humane Society and organizations such as PETA finds things like this all the time. Oddly enough the government ran FDA does not. Why? They don't care! They care about money and money alone. It doesn't matter school children were being fed sick and diseased beef, but that it was being paid for.

The fact that it took this long to warn the public and recall the meat is shocking enough. If you were shocked by the videos, it isn't an isolated incident. The common "acceptable" practices of cattle raising is almost equally as cruel and disgusting.

If the torture, or the saturated fat and cholesterol content doesn't bother you, your risk of contracting serious disease such as e-coli, salmonella, and mad cow disease should.

If there is one thing I am learning is vital to all of us, it's that you should find your news from sources outside of the "unbiased" mainstream... that's a whole story in itself though.

All animals, yes - even cows, deserve respect. Look at the picture above, they are affectionate, they do have feelings, and they do express fear and pain. How can we allow them to be shocked, kicked, and shoved around by fork lifts for the sake of cheap beef? When will these awful practices finally end?