Manufactured natural versus really natural

I am often amused by all the manufacturers who put "All natural ingredients" on their products.  Excuse me, but poison ivy is a natural ingredient.  Second, if the ingredients have been processed, are they really natural anymore?

We try to eat mostly fresh, unprocessed food.  Exceptions include yogurt, maple syrup, and meat, fish, and poultry.  One of our favorite snacks is about as-natural-as-you-can-get peanut butter – unsalted roasted peanuts that we put through a store grinder ourselves.  Almost every afternoon I scoop a big glob out of the jar with a tablespoon.  Nibble, nibble, lick, lick, until the spoon is almost clean enough to go back into the drawer.

Unfortunately, this peanut butter is a bit too popular, and the peanuts are often back ordered.  I had this problem last weekend.  I didn't want to do without my peanut butter and checked the peanut butter in jars.  I selected one that was labeled "organic no stir peanut butter".

I didn't read the ingredient list until I got home – organic dry roasted peanuts, organic palm oil, organic unrefined cane sugar, sea salt.  Palm oil?  Sugar?  Salt?  I don't need these.

I debated taking the peanut butter back or donating it to a food shelf.  But snack time rolled around and I had to have my peanut butter.  Hm!  This is kind of creamy and sweet, and it has bigger chunks than the self-ground.  It is a bit salty, but not as salty as the pretzels I snack on.  I could get to like this stuff.  It is certainly better than the nationally-branded peanut butters with overdoses of sugar, salt, and other unneeded stuff.

But, I'll be strong and go back to the really all-natural peanut butter as soon as we've finished the jar.  Besides, the peanut butter in a jar costs about two dollars a pound more.

Salt of the girth

When we came back in 1974 from six years of living in Europe, we were struck by how salty much of American food was.  Thirty-six years later, we still think most American food is too salty.

We bought some roast turkey from a deli for tonight's supper.  My wife decided not to eat it because it was too salty; she opted for her own brown rice and black bean concoction instead.  So I'll have her turkey tomorrow and she'll have my brown rice and black beans.

She is fussy about where we have pizza; a couple of pizzerias are off her list because their pizzas are too salty.

One day a week I used to have a three-egg omelet, home-made muffins, plus breakfast sausage from the local supermarket.  Then the sausage seemed a lot saltier.  I mentioned it to the meat cutters, but the salt content seemed to stay the same.  Now I just have the omelet and muffins.  I put no salt on the omelet and my wife says that she makes the muffins 24 at a time with a half teaspoon of salt for the batch.

For several years I've said that excess salt belongs in two places - on the rim of a margarita glass and on pretzels.  I can't even remember the last margarita I had, but I like to have some pretzels with wine before dinner.  Also olives.

A couple of weeks ago I had one leg swell up to a third larger than the other.  I didn't hurt much but it was an anomaly.  My wife called the nurse online who recommended I go into urgent care the next day, a Saturday.  In the morning the swelling had subsided and I decided to just watch it.  The following week it swelled up again, and I called for an appointment with my regular doctor.  By the time I saw him the swelling had gone down again.

I thought it might be excessive salt and mentioned it to him.  I said I had the wine, pretzels, and olives most nights.  He couldn't find anything abnormal, but recommended that I get an ultrasound.  He also said watch the salt.

The ultrasound was negative.  Total charge: $690!

I started thinking about my activity or lack thereof.  I have been very involved in family history research and just get carried away sitting in front of the computer looking at record after record, finding new stuff or confirming old stuff.  Maybe I'm just cutting off my circulation.  I also have the chair rather high because my computer is on a rather high table.  I've lowered the chair and try to get up more frequently.  The swelling has not come back in a big way.

I also decided to check my salt intake.  For the most part, we eat very few processed foods.  I won't bore you with a list of the salt content of various foods that I do eat, but for what I could find of sodium content for the foods I do eat, my intake was 96% of the daily value.

The sodium percentages were surprising.  For olives and pretzels, no.  But 1/2 cup of low-fat yoghurt was 3%; a few "baby" carrots, 3%.  The big surprise was a 2-1/2 inch slice of French bread was 14%!!!

If I eat French bread, I often have two servings, 28% of the daily value for sodium.  But I don't eat French bread very often, and so that gets me down to 82% of the daily value of sodium.  And my doctor wants me to watch my salt?!?

Joan D. Vinge wrote a series of science fiction novels starting with "The Winter Queen".  A persistent theme in some of the later values is when a distant super computer is asked for information, it responds with, "Ask the right question."

And that theme is something for a different blog entry.

Hospitals are not healthy places

In addition to the old bromide that people die in hospitals and to the fact that one can pick up an infection easily, there are a few other unhealthy aspects of hospitals. Many don't support the healthy life style I mentioned in yesterday's post.

My wife is in a hospital now after surgery. She found the food not to our idea of healthy - the bouillon was too salty, the juice too sweet with added white grape juice, and the gelatin tasted of non-food chemicals.

Roommates can cause stress. They often have the TV sound too loud or their guests talk too loudly. Of course, listening to the complaints of an uncooperative patient can be a big distraction.

My wife's current roommate is generally quiet but she wanted to watch the Vikings-Packers game. My wife has as much interest in professional sports as I have in ironing clothes, as well as in professional sports. I made sure I was back at home during the game with the TV off. My wife heard it even from other rooms, but she was still so fatigued from her surgery that she slept through most of it. Neither of us knew the score until this morning.

Another unhealthy aspect of hospitals is the number of overweight staff, not a good example. Besides the amount of carbonated beverages they drink, some have too many treats around. On one stay, we saw a whole box of donuts. And the cafeterias are often only a step above fast food restaurants.

Two wrongs can make a right

Put a toxic metal and a poisonous gas together and you have something people and animals can't live without. Take the metal sodium and mix it with chlorine and you have salt; something we can't live without.

Why do you think deer stand in the middle of the road? Why do crows congregate in the middle of the road where there is no roadkill? It's all the salt that has been spread on the road to keep us safe. In the case of the crows its probably also the sand to help them digest their food.

Americans tend to eat too much salt. Many fast food places, not just the biggies dump salt on fries and other food. Try to get salt-free popcorn at a movie. Thirty-five years after living in Europe and having a relatively low salt diet, we still notice how salty American food is. Even at restaurants that pride themselves on the quality of their food.

But sometimes things go the other way. Low sodium food can be almost tasteless. We bought V-8 for a long time but it was too salty. We found Knudsen's Very Veggie which has a moderate amount of salt. My wife once bought Knudsen's Low Sodium version and it was bland. Last week on our ski trip we bought low-sodium V-8 and it was also bland. My wife will use it for soup base or mix with the regular Very Veggie.

There are only two places for excess salt: on pretzels and on the rim of a Margarita glass.

One last thought: I could never understand the argument against fluoridated water that it contains a poisonous gas. Do these people abstain from salt because it contains a poisonous gas?

Oops! A second last thought. We have started filtering our drinking water. Boy, do we notice the chlorine taste when we drink unfiltered water.