Intro

December 30, 2006

Hi Cyndi and Everyone,

I joined from the Notary group, but my s/o Kristen and I have been living in the country in central California for 9 years now. We rent an old schoolhouse which goes back (at least) to the 1920's, the place has it's charm, but it has many drawbacks as well, the worst being that it's not really insulated and the winter nghts here can drop below 20.

We're on well water, but the water doesn't taste very good so we buy bottled. The water around here has a very high mineral content, and when the well is low it can look permanently hazy.

We live in San Benito county, which is a farming/ranching county, but ironically enough there are almost no farmer's markets to buy food from. There is only one vegetable stand and a weekly farmer's market and both of them actually charge more than the Supermarket does for produce, and the supermarket actually has more organic available. There is no Whole Foods or Trader Joes here, the nearest being in San Jose over two hours away, so we're limited on what we can buy and what we can actually afford.

I've also tried to have a garden, but once the dry season hits, the local wildlife will do anything to get at the veggies. The ground squirrels are especially adept at squeezing through weak spots in the chicken wire. After several years I gave up and now our turtles live in the garden area.

Despite the lack of availability, I do find a noticeable difference in the quality of organic produce and grass fed/no antibiotics beef and buy it when I can. I haven't decided on cloned beef yet, if it were raised without adding artificial hormones or antibiotics, I don't think I'd have a problem with it.

Two thngs I've learned to avoid like the plague in prepared foods are artificial sweetners and MSG. There are a number of European studies linking Aspertame to Alzheimers, and I've always gotten an instant headache from artificial sweeteners. I can remember a friend of mine saying " you get used to it " many years ago, No Thanks!

As for MSG, we became aware of how much of an effect that was having on us after eating some seasoned fries in a diner one time. MSG fools the brain into making you crave the food more as you eat it, giving you a sort of ravenous effect. Afterwards, we both got major headaches and felt dehydrated.

So now we check snacks and prepared foods for all the hidden names for MSG (natural flavorings, autolyzed yeast extract, etc...) and skip anything that has it. That's about 80% of the food in most supermarkets!

I should also note that San Benito County was ground zero for the big Ecoli/Spinach outbreak a few months ago. One possible reason is that the county sewage plant overflowed several years ago sending millions of gallons of contaminated water into the waterways. This was the result of rapid expansion without reinforcing the infrastructure to support the thousands of new homes that were built in under a decade.