Know Your Sodium
Recommended salt intake for people with diabetes is the same as for the rest of the population. To stay healthy, you should get about 4 grams of salt per day (4,000 mg). Most food labels do not give any information about salt content but do list "sodium" as one of the ingredients. Regular table salt is made of sodium and chlorine.
Sodium is the part of salt that can be bad for your health, especially if you have high blood pressure or heart problems. Four grams of salt — or about one teaspoon — contain 1,407 mg of sodium. Therefore, all you need is about one teaspoon of salt per day.
This sounds easy, but remember, many foods are soaked with sodium. Carefully read the sodium content on food labels — they'll be in milligrams — and then convert it back into teaspoons of salt.
Here's an easy way to think about it: The amount of sodium listed on the food label is a bit less than half of the amount of salt in that food. For example, if a can of soup contains 1,200 mg of sodium, that's the equivalent of approximately one-half teaspoon of salt (2 grams). Four grams of salt a day is usually included in a regular diet without adding table salt to any food.
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Take the Plunge: Water and Weight Loss
Sometimes the best solution is the simplest one: Drinking water can help you lose weight. Water contains no calories, and it helps you feel full. Experts recommend that we drink eight to 12 glasses of water a day for good health. A growing number of weight- and health-conscious people have increased their daily water intake by carrying a bottle of water with them wherever they go.
Unfortunately, many people drink too many soft drinks instead of water. The obesity epidemic in our country is linked to the popularity of drinking bigger sizes of sugar-rich sports drinks and soft drinks. If you drink these instead of water, know that a 20-ounce soft drink contains between 300 and 400 calories and 15 to 20 teaspoons of sugar. That's 12 to 15 calories per ounce. Fruit juices also contain 12 calories per ounce. Even sports drinks, which claim to be healthy, contain between 6 and 10 calories per ounce. These calorie levels make water a very attractive option, indeed. If you are not a fan of water, consider seltzer without added sugar. Diet soft drinks are another option, but for health and variety, drink water, too.
By American Diabetes Association-January 8, 2005
What I do is that for an 8 glasses of water a day is 64oz.
160 pounds = 8 glasses of water and for
25 punds extra add One extra glass.
I personally buy the 9oz bottle water and go accordingly to my weight.
With the 9oz bottle for a weight of 160 you need to drink around 7 to 8 bottles a day.
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Last year, I did a research project about milk
for my speech class at Cypress College.
This is what I found out and exposed!
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Corporate-owned factories where cows are warehoused in huge sheds and treated like milk machines have replaced most small family farms. With genetic manipulation and intensive production technologies, it is common for modern dairy cows to produce 100 gallons of milk a day— 10 times more than they would produce in nature. To keep milk production as high as possible, farmers artificially inseminate cows every year. Growth hormones and unnatural milking schedules cause dairy cows' udders to become painful and so heavy that they sometimes drag on the ground, resulting in frequent infections and overuse of antibiotics. Cows -- like all mammals -- make milk to feed their own babies -- not humans.
Provided by: www.milksucks.com
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White Poison: The Horrors of Milk
Shanti Rangwani, ColorLines
December 3, 2001
As you all can recall the slogan for milk used to be “Does a body good”, they can’t say that anymore because is false advertisement. It does not do a body good, because.
Milk does no body good, but for the vast majority of the world's people -- people of color -- it is a public health disaster.
Hypocrites (460-370 B.C.) was one of the first to realize what many now recognize—that cow’s milk can cause gastrointestinal distress. Now, growing numbers of health experts are starting to catch wind of the link between consumption of dairy products and excess gas in cheese and milk consumers.
Calves are torn away within hours of birth so the milk that nature intended for them can be used by people, instead.
Got milk? If not, then thank your lucky stars. Because if you do, medical research shows that you are likely to be plagued by anemia, migraine, bloating, gas, indigestion, asthma, prostate cancer, and a host of potentially fatal allergies -- especially if you are a person of color. But milk is also a racial issue. Almost 90 percent of African Americans and most Latinos, Asians, and Southern Europeans lack the genes necessary to digest lactose, the primary sugar in milk. An estimated 30 million people in the U.S. suffer from lactose intolerance, a condition that can cause gas, nausea, cramps, bloating, and diarrhea.
Cow’s milk is the number one source of allergies in children, and research links consumption of dairy products, including cow’s milk, to colic (stomach cramps), autism, chronic ear infections, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (type 1 or "juvenile-onset" diabetes), acne, obesity, flatulence (gas), constipation, mucus and a variety of other ailments. Milk consumption leads to (heart disease, cancer, obesity, antibiotic residue, iron deficiency, asthma, ear infections, skin conditions, stomach aches, bloating, and diarrhea). The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, the U.S.'s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding "cow's glue" to children, saying it can cause anemia, ear infections in kids under 6 years old, allergies, and diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease, the number one cause of death in this country.
A fightback is beginning. Protesters picketed New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's planned milk promotion campaign with a photo of the mayor wearing a milk mustache over the caption, "Got Prostate Cancer?" Giuliani (who, like his father, has prostate cancer) dropped the campaign. And doctors from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) persuaded Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams not to declare May 11 as "Drink Chocolate Milk Day" by presenting evidence that milk is harmful, especially to people of color.
WHAT IS MILK?
Milk is a maternal lactating secretion, a short term nutrient for new-born. Nothing more, nothing less. To my thinking, there is only one valid reason to drink milk or use milk products.
That is just because we simply want to.
Because we like it and because it has become a part of our culture.
Because we have become accustomed to its taste and texture.
Because we like the way it slides down our throat.
Because our parents did the very best they could for us and provided milk in our earliest training and conditioning. They taught us to like it. And then probably the very best reason is…ICE CREAM! I’ve heard it described “…to die for”.
So don't drink milk for health. I am convinced on the weight of the scientific evidence that it does not "do a body good." Inclusion of milk will only reduce your diet's nutritional value and safety.
The mother of any mammal will provide her milk for a short period of time immediately after birth. For example is that of a puppy. The mother nurses the pup for just a few weeks and then rejects the young animal and teaches it to eat solid food. Of course, it is not possible for animals living in a natural state to continue with the drinking of milk after weaning. Let’s think about his for a moment. Nature gives us the ability to metabolize lactose for a few years and then shuts off the mechanism. Is Mother Nature trying to tell us something? Clearly all infants must drink milk. It makes no more sense for humans to consume the mother's milk of cows than for us to consume the mother's milk of rats, cats, dogs, giraffes, or any other mammal. Nature created human mother's milk for baby humans, cow mother's milk for baby cows, dogs’ milk is for pups, cats’ milk is for kittens, and so forth, and so on.
Milk is not just milk. The milk of every species of mammal is unique and specifically tailored to the requirements of that animal. For example, cows' milk is very much richer in protein than human milk. Three to four times as much. It has five to seven times the mineral content. However, it is markedly deficient in essential fatty acids when compared to human mothers' milk. Mothers' milk has six to ten times as much of the essential fatty acids, especially linoleic acid. (Incidentally, skimmed cow’s milk has no linoleic acid). It simply is not designed for humans. The enzymes necessary to break down and digest milk are renin and lactase. They are all but gone by the age of 3 in most humans. There is an element in all milk known as casein. There is 300 times more casein in cow’s milk than in human’s milk. That’s for the development of huge bones. Casein coagulates in the stomach and forms large, tough, dense, difficult-to-digest curds that are adapted to the 4 stomach digestive apparatus of a cow. Once inside the human system, this thick mass of goo puts a tremendous burden on the body to somehow get rid of it. A huge amount of energy must be spent in dealing with it. Unfortunately some of this gooey substance hardens and adheres to the lining of the intestines and prevents the absorption of nutrients into the body.
"The latest EPA study concludes that people who consume even small amounts of dioxin in fatty foods and dairy products face a cancer risk of 1 in 100. They may also develop other problems, such as attention disorder, learning disabilities, susceptibility to infections and liver disorders"
Lactose Intolerant
At least half of the adult humans on this earth are lactose intolerant. (the enzyme that allows us to digest lactose) became evident. But why would it be advantageous to drink cows’ milk? After all, most of the human beings in the history of the world did. And further, why was it just the white or light skinned humans who retained this knack while the pigmented people tended to lose it?
Can mother’s milk increase intelligence? It seems that it can. In a remarkable study published in Lancet during 1992 (Vol. 339, p. 261-4), a group of British workers randomly placed premature infants into two groups. One group received a proper formula, the other group received human breast milk. Both fluids were given by stomach tube. These children were followed up for over 10 years. In intelligence testing, the human milk children averaged 10 IQ points higher.
A cow a typical factory-farmed cow is “used up” in four years.
Then it’s off to the slaughterhouse. Male calves, the “byproducts” of the dairy industry, endure 14-17 weeks of torment in veal crates so small that they can’t even turn around. Female calves often replace their old, worn-out mothers. They are often kept in tiny crates or tethered in stalls for the first few months of their lives, only to grow up to become “milk machines” like their mothers.
Any lactating mammal excretes toxins through her milk. This includes antibiotics, pesticides, chemicals and hormones. Also, all cows' milk contains blood! The inspectors are simply asked to keep it under certain limits. You may be horrified to learn that the USDA allows milk to contain from one to one and a half million white blood cells per millilitre. (That’s only 1/30 of an ounce). Another way to describe white cells where they don’t belong would be to call them pus cells.
Certain racial groups, namely blacks are up to 90% lactose intolerant as adults.
Caucasians are 20 to 40% lactose intolerant.
Orientals are midway between the above two groups.
Diarrhea, gas and abdominal cramps are the results of substantial milk intake in such persons.
Most American Indians cannot tolerate milk. The milk industry admits that lactose intolerance plays intestinal havoc with as many as 50 million Americans.
The Small family farms have been replaced by corporate owned factories where cows are warehoused in huge sheds and treated like milk machines. To keep milk production as high as possible, farmers artificially inseminate cows every year. Growth hormones and unnatural milking schedules cause dairy cows' udders to become painful and so heavy, they sometimes drag on the ground, resulting in frequent infections and overuse of antibiotics. Cows—like all mammals—make milk to feed their own babies—not humans.
CASES
Autistic child whose mother believed that his symptoms had been caused by a "cerebral allergy" to milk. And milk and cheese may actually cause osteoporosis, not prevent it, since their high-protein content leaches calcium from the body.
Osteoporosis
A ground-breaking Harvard study of more than 75,000 nurses suggests that drinking milk doesn't prevent osteoporosis. Their studies show an increase in osteoporosis and bone-breakage in people who consume milk.
Asthma
Dr. Robert Cohen of the Dairy Education Board, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exposing the milk lobby, contends that the dramatic 52 percent rise in asthma deaths among minority kids in New York coincided with the surplus milk, cheese, and butter pumped into them under the USDA's free school lunch and breakfast giveaway programs. The incidence of asthma deaths may be even higher since asthma is not a reportable disease, and asthma deaths are sometimes certified as cardiovascular disease.
Cancer
There is also a direct link between milk consumption and prostate cancer among African Americans, who have the highest incidence of this disease in the world. A study in Cancer has shown that men who reported drinking three or more glasses of whole milk daily had a higher risk for prostate cancer than men who reported never drinking whole milk. And dairy foods are linked to all sorts of other problems, including obesity, allergies, heart disease and cancer (including breast cancer and prostate cancer, obesity, antibiotic residue, iron deficiency, asthma, ear infections, skin conditions, stomach aches, bloating, and diarrhea). And are likely to be contaminated with trace levels of antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals, including dioxin, one of the most toxic substances known to humans (The Washington Post reported that (April 12, 2001).
Dairy products are a health hazard. They are frequently contaminated with pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics and are deficient in fiber, niacin, vitamin C, and iron.
The controversial Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) -- banned in most countries -- is pumped into U.S. milch cows to increase annual yield (50,000 pounds of milk per cow today compared to 2,000 pounds in 1959). Milk from cows treated with BGH is likely to contain pus from their udders since the hormone leads to mastitis, or udder infection. BGH use results in a tumor-promoting chemical (IGF-I) that has been implicated in an explosive increase of cancer of the colon, smooth muscle, and breast.
The antibiotics dairy farmers use to treat BGH-caused infections in cows appear in their milk and greatly hasten human tolerance to most antibiotics, a potentially life-threatening state of affairs. The Center for Science in the Public Interest reports that 38 percent of milk samples in 10 cities were contaminated with sulfa drugs and other antibiotics.
The time has come for the milk industry to face the kind of scrutiny that the tobacco companies face today.
The best sources of calcium are beans, figs, and green leafy vegetables. Try delicious soy or rice milk, soy cheese, Tofutti ice cream, and tofu sour cream and cream cheese. All are widely available at health food stores and many supermarkets.
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What You Can Do
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Write to the following state officials and urge them to grant PETA’s complaints:
Christine O. Gregoire, Attorney General
Attn.: Consumer Protection Division
1121 Washington St. S.E.
P.O. Box 40100
Olympia, WA 98504-0100
emailago@atg.wa.gov
Valoria H. Loveland, Director
Washington Department of Agriculture
1111 Washington St. S.E.
P.O. Box 42560
Olympia, WA 98504-2560
vloveland@agr.wa.gov
Hardy Myers, Attorney General
Attn.: Consumer Protection Division
Oregon Department of Justice
1162 Court St. N.E.
Salem, OR 97301-4096
consumer.hotline@doj.state.or.us
Katy Coba, Director
Oregon Department of Agriculture
635 Capitol St. N.E.
Salem, OR 97301-2532
kcoba@oda.state.or.us
Click here to donate to PETA.
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