Om Shanti, Nancy

Grandma Gone Granola Blog
Simple, Inexpensive Tips for Healthy Living from Becky Lyles

How to Grocery Shop
June 23, 2010

For years, health experts have suggested we shop the outer rim of supermarket shelves—where unprocessed food items are usually located—and avoid the inner aisles as much as possible. The counters and coolers along the perimeter of most grocery stores include fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood, meat, eggs, dairy products, and sometimes raw grains, nuts and seeds.

“Elizabeth Ward, RD, author of The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to the New Food Pyramids, says we should fill our shopping carts with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, lean meat, fish, poultry, beans and nuts. “Be adventurous; aim to try a new fruit or vegetable each week.” http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/guide/10-tips-for-healthy-grocery-shopping

“When buying or eating food, always remember that the more processes a food has to go through before it gets to you, the quicker you should decide against buying and eating it. The more devitalized and processed foods you eliminate from your diet, the healthier you will be.” (Stormie Omartian, Greater Health God’s Way)

“…factory food is designed to make you want to eat more. And wanting to eat more is the polar opposite of being satisfied. How does the factory food industry get you to want to eat more? The primary addicting ingredient is sugar, but the deal clincher is the flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG).” (Death by Supermarket by Nancy Deville)

Avoid factory food addiction. Eat real food. Happy shopping! Becky

Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,

Wednesday, June 30 at 5 p.m. PST, 8 p.m. EST
Blog talk radio interview with Jon Hansen

Wednesday, July 28 at 11 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. EST
Interview with Cheryl Benton and Debbie Zip
I will discuss Death by Supermarket and my upcoming book Survival Guide.

Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. PST, 4:30 p.m. EST
Radio interview with David Steinman
David is an environmentalist, consumer advocate, and author. I will discuss Death by Supermarket and my upcoming book Survival Guide.

Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,

If you haven’t read Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down, and Poisoning of America, it lays the ground work of education for Survival Guide. Then Survival Guide is the program of diet, sleep, supplements, HRT, meditation, much more.

If you’re curious about what people are saying about Death by Supermarket, you can read Amazon comments here.  I also received this Google Alert this morning from a Gastric Bypass site with even more reviews.

Death by Supermarket is great summer reading. I hope you have a fabulous summer!

Om Shanti!
Nancy

READ AN EXCERPT OF DEATH BY SUPERMARKET

Get your copy now of the first edition of Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down, and Poisoning of America [Paperback] at the crazy discounted price. TOTAL WITH SHIPPING ONLY $10. Buy now they are going fast!

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Out of curiosity I compiled a list of one hundred prominent historical figures from the beginning of history to the year 1900 to see how they died—beginning with Menes, the king of Egypt who legend has it was killed in 3040 B.C. either by wild dogs, Nile crocodiles or a hippopotamus. Other illustrious figures among my subjects were Moses, Homer, Lao Tzu, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, Charlemagne, Hildegard von Bingen, Leonardo da Vinci, Anne Boleyn, Sir Isaac Newton, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Marie Antoinette, Edgar Allen Poe, Crazy Horse and Louisa May Alcott. A dominant cause of death throughout history was violence: crucifixion, assassination, guillotine, suicide, stabbing, shooting, poisoning and other modes of murder. For those who died “natural deaths,” however, because of undeveloped diagnostics, the causes of death were not as clear. The Barbarian invader Attila the Hun, for example, died in 453 A.D. at age forty-seven and is believed to have suffocated from a nosebleed while drunk. The German composer Johann Sebastian Bach died in 1750 at age sixty five of “a stroke brought on by quackery.” Many others died of “natural causes” or “fever.”

Prior to the year 1900, hygiene—the basic practice of cleanliness—was an advancement yet to be “discovered.” Raw sewage ran in city streets, contaminating drinking water. Doctors with filthy fingernails blew their noses during surgery. People and their habits were essentially dirty. Prior to the year 1900, the primary cause of disease was due to infectious diseases, so we can assume that at least some of the “natural causes” and “fever” in my list of one hundred major historical figures from the beginning of history to the year 1900 were deaths caused by infectious disease.

In the late 1850s French chemist and bacteriologist Louis Pasteur promoted the “germ theory of disease”: all infectious diseases have a causative agent, such as a bacteria, virus, fungus or parasite. The discovery of microorganisms precipitated scientific advancements such as the use of personal hygiene, antibiotics, sanitation and refrigeration, which systematically eradicated many infectious diseases plagues. In addition, for the first time in the history of humankind, a population as vast as ours was gaining the capacity to produce enough life sustaining meat, fish, poultry, dairy, vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, seeds and nuts to feed our nation. At the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. was poised to evolve into a utopia filled with healthy, strapping people. But this did not occur. Instead obesity and degenerative disease rose throughout the twentieth century and are now epidemic.

I wanted to get a read on how Americans were dying since the Industrial Revolution. I could have picked 100 nurses or 100 teachers or 100 artists. But I decided draw from a list of over 1,000 “famous” people. Then (without consideration to how they died) I whittled that list down to people I thought were the most notable. For example, I considered Jackie O more influential than Madge the Palmolive Dishwashing Lady. This list of the causes of death of one hundred influential Americans from 1910 to the present is aided by advanced diagnostics. While it is by no means a representative sample or a scientific analysis, it’s interesting to note that death by violence and infectious diseases seems to have been usurped by a shocking rise in death from degenerative diseases.

See my list here.

It seems that very few people these days are dying of natural causes or old age (just plain wearing out). We can conclude from this unscientific glance at the way people are dying that something is causing us to die from degenerative diseases. Could it be the supermarket food we’re eating?

Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down, and Poisoning of America

Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,

I’m finally back on the island after several weeks of schlepping to CA to visit family then D.C. to see a friend. Now I am in a mad dash to prepare to leave for Nicaragua on Thurs., hopefully for the next four months. I spent several days in Los Angeles visiting my older brother. He is 57 and an unhapppily retired vascular surgeon who has type 2 diabetes. To his credit he lost thirty lbs. and is controlling his blood sugars reasonably well but I was stunned with how little he knows. His exercise regimen consists of walking the dog around the block twice a day and he subsists on Lean Cuisine! I asked him about what an optimal diet consists of for a diabetic. He said he is limiting his intake of bread, starches, etc. After a few days in his house it occurred to me that I never ate so much bread in my life! I guess it’s all relative.

I suggested he read Death by Supermarket but I think I will have to send him my copy if that is ever going to happen. By the way, he is also taking statins and probably a handful of other stuff.

I also saw the local supermarket (Von’s) and was pretty disappointed considering it was in a fairly affluent area. The produce was minimal and organic choices were more abundant (by far) at the Edgartown Stop & Shop. This really surprised me. Lot’s of premade foods that looked sort of tired and dry around the edges.

When I arrived in D.C. the disappointments continued. I remember that D.C. in spite of its residents is a pretty poor place as far as food is concerned. I went to Eastern Market (oldest market in the USA) and was appalled. Mostly very generic stuff and poor selection and quality. The meats purveyors made up the bulk of the displays which were uniformly cheerless and drab expressions of the lowest order. Produce was nearly nonexistent and what was there was marginal. I was so disappointed. It reminded me of a supermarket: circa 1962!

Well, soon I will be shopping daily in a thriving, bustling third world market with stalls piled high with all sorts of things, freshly slaughtered meat, smoky tortilla griddles and sacks of rice, beans and God knows what else.

I’m never surprised anymore by the stories of doctors and other intelligent, educated people flushing their health down the drain. I remember once hearing Michael Moore say that he only had a high school education and he’s figured things out about corporations. If you read my bio you’ll see that my formal education is even more spotty, but I’ve managed to figure things out about food and health.

I spent 13 years trying to change people’s minds about food. Now I just want to be healthy myself and write my novels. The recalcitrance of the American people is one reason why I am changing careers. It started to feel like I was the food police and I really hated that! I’ve given up thinking creatively about changing people’s minds and it’s liberating because now I’m thinking about characters in my fiction and that’s more fun! I’m still going to write health blogs because I’m interested in the subject but as I have pointed out many times there is a division of the classes occurring in this country and people have the free will to decide which side they are going to be on, eating poison and taking handfuls of pharmaceutical drugs, and being tethered to tubes and medical appliances and procedures, or eating natural food and being healthy. It’s a choice and the fact that people pretend that it’s too confusing or make up excuses is their choice. People are smart enough to figure it out, they are simply making the choice to be ignorant.

Someone who read my novel Karma said to me that she felt “that the message that what happened to our heroine was somehow the result of her own actions, that is her karma, was just too unsettling.”

Whoa Nelly! Either she was reading Karma very late at night or decided to skip the ending altogether, or most likely all she did was read the title of the book and made up her mind about the book’s message.

Blaming the victim is not the message of the book. It is exactly the opposite. The reason the novel ended up with the title of Karma was because of the venue Meredith Fitzgerald finds herself in—India. As a medical doctor Meredith would naturally interpret the psychological aftermath of what she went through as “post traumatic stress disorder,” but because she is in India—living in the thick of all things Indian—it’s logical that she would be curious when both her oppressor, Mrs. Pawar, and her accidental spiritual teacher, Mr. Jhombarkar begin talking to her about karma. Westerners have the cause and effect interpretation of karma ingrained in our heads, and Meredith is suffering from PTSD (and one of the hallmark manifestations of PTSD is self-blame), so she would naturally feel that what happened to her is her “karma,” i.e. her fault.

Meredith is in India, carrying around a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is a summary of all the knowledge contained in the Hindu holy texts, the Vedas and the Upanishads. Hindus consider the Gita is a guide to life. Those who are not properly educated in the Gita believe that people bring bad things on themselves by their actions. But karma isn’t isolated to each individual. Rather, the world rebounding continually with the karmic activities of everyone. Bad things happen because life is harsh, according to the Gita, we can only control our own actions and reactions. It’s our choice to contribute in a good or bad way to the karma of the world.

A student of Buddhism emailed me, “Blaming the victim is indeed a misunderstanding of karma, but it is regrettably how many people use the concept—as an excuse not to help suffering people. Quite simply, the law of karma presents us with the opportunity to act, here and now, in a way that yields a better future. The notion of karma can be used to empower ourselves, to add insult to injury, or to succumb with resignation. Perhaps human nature is the problem, not the idea of karma?”

Why do we beat up on ourselves when we’re already suffering? How do women deal with trauma? Buddhist teacher Dr. Christopher K. Germer teaches that, “Mindful self-compassion is the foundation of emotional healing.”

That’s so weird! Love yourself? How selfish! But Dr. Germer says that cultivating compassion toward yourself allows you to feel compassion for others. So loving yourself is a win-win. You learn to love yourself despite your history and you also begin to love others.

Dr. Germer teaches Buddhist Metta meditation. In a nutshell, Metta is a form of Buddhist meditation that focuses on self-compassion. This form of meditation was developed by the Buddha himself as an antidote to fear.

The word Metta is an ancient Pali word. (Pali is the Sri Lankan language in which the Buddha’s teachings were written down 400 years after his death.) Metta is translated loosely to mean loving-kindness, self-compassion, goodwill, love, sympathy.

The objective of Metta mediation is to learn self-compassion, to be free from pain and suffering. Metta is learning to love yourself without the encumbrances of attachment (clinging, wishing, longing for material things and/or emotional attachments). In Metta practice you can also give love/compassion to others, to people you know, to your pets, and to strangers (all living beings).

Other forms of meditation may use a mantra or require that you try to stay with your breath. In Metta meditation the practitioner repeats four phrases over and over.

May I be safe

May I be happy

May I be healthy

May I live my life with ease

These phrases gently transform the way you think and feel and slowly but surely you begin to see that you are not reacting in ugly knee jerk ways. You are calmer in daily life, more accepting, happier.

Metta practice can free your distraught, angry, tense, uptight, anxious mind, self-hating, suffering mind so that you can experience love, peace and happiness in a natural flow from your calmed down mind. Neurological studies have demonstrated that Metta (compassion) meditation actually changes activity in the brain that deals with emotion.

You can listen to Dr. Germer on The Martha Trowbridge Radio Hour: Empathic Wisdom for Suffering Women. In this radio interview, which is directed to women who are depressed, traumatized, and grief stricken. Dr. Germer leads listeners through a five minute Metta Soften Allow and Love practice, and a traditional ten minute Metta practice so that you can get a very good idea of what Metta is all about—what self compassion mean (to be happy and free from suffering!)

I’d also like to direct you to Dr. Germer’s website.

I have read many books on Buddhism, but it wasn’t until I read Dr. Germer’s book that I felt I had a grasp of how to meditate. (Some people may feel that hard-core Zen meditation is the only way, but for women like me who are really just looking for some peace and quiet in a gentle way, Metta is the way!)

The Mindful Path to Self Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotion explains the psychological benefits of mindfulness and self-compassion. Dr. Germer writes about fascinating case histories and simple enjoyable exercises of Metta meditation to help you learn the practice.

Nancy’s Book Rating: Gripped from first page, an absolute must read.

I learned a lot from reading and rereading those letters. For a long time I thought I wasn’t destined to be a novelist, though I love writing fiction. I wrote a series of books in the health genre, books on weight loss, Chinese medicine, adrenal burnout, and my latest sole authored book Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down, and Poisoning of America (no explanation needed, I assume).

But I still missed writing fiction. So I got out my draft and started working on it and a year later I was ready to shop it to publishers. The only problem was, as one editor put it to a friend of mine who was shopping his memoir, “. . . this is without question the absolutely worst time the publishing business has experienced since Gutenberg invented the printing press.” She went on to write, “Honest to God, the entire industry virtually imploded upon itself late last year and things continue to deteriorate, with every major house laying off dozens of employees and drastically reducing the number of books signed for publication.”

I could understand that. What really blew my mind though was editors at major publishing houses telling my agent, “We don’t read manuscripts on sexual slavery.”

Okay . . . why not? Because this is an important social issue, so why wouldn’t a publisher want to at least look at a book with an urgently important social message?

It was after hearing many variations on that theme that I decided to self publish.