Why I became a "vegetable - tarian"

I have a friend who has a niece that refers to people who eat nothing but vegetables as "vegetable - tarians", that is how she now refers to me. About a month ago I decided to transition from being a semi-vegetarian to being a vegetarian.

I had been thinking about becoming a vegetarian for quite some time but I suppose I needed something to push me over the edge. That thing was an announcement last month by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that cloned meat would be entering the food supply at some unspecified time in the near future. They also announced that cloned meat would not be labeled as such.

I refuse to be a guinea pig for corporate meat producers and the FDA.

I am also a very picky vegetarian because of the influx of food from China and Mexico. Food items from these countries have been reported to be substandard and potentially harmful to humans for a variety of different reasons. One thing I have heard is that it is a common practice in Mexico to use human waste as a fertilizer.

So now I do not purchase food from those countries and also avoid food that is not labeled with its country of origin. This is a problem when shopping in most commercial food markets since many times they don't label their fruits and vegetables with the country they are grown.

I do most of my shopping now at a specialty market that gets most of its fruit and vegetables from within a few hundred miles. And they clearly label the origin of food grown outside of the U.S. I also shop at a few different local farmers’ markets.

I have even had to be very careful when buying fruit juice since a lot of fruits used to make commercial juice are grown in China. This is sometimes a problem because a lot of juices do not label the origin of the fruit used in the juice.

All of this might seem like a lot to go through but to me it's worth the trouble, I don't want to find out in five or ten years that food I have eaten was not safe and is likely to make me sick in the future.

The U.S. has allowed food safety to take a backseat to corporate profit. That is totally unacceptable. I hope food safety becomes an issue this election season.

Do you worry about food safety?

Are you concerned about food grown in China?

Stuff...

Fri Jan 18, 10:07 PM ET
Canned beans recalled on botulism risk: FDA

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New Era Canning Co is expanding a recall of canned green beans and garbanzo beans because of potential botulism contamination, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday.

The FDA said the beans might be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, which can cause botulism, a serious and sometimes life-threatening condition.

The affected cans are large institutional-sized containers, weighing approximately six and a half pounds, the FDA said.

"To date, no illnesses have been reported to the FDA; however, consumers should not consume these products, even if they appear to be normal," the agency said in a statement.

New Era distributed the beans nationwide over the last five years.

The cans and contents should be thrown away carefully, as even tiny amounts of the C. botulinum toxin can cause serious illness, the FDA said.

Michigan-based New Era made the recall voluntarily in the interest of public health, the agency said.

(Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh)


It sounds like you should not eat these products in a restaurant setting. The products that we would use at home, small cans, have not been recalled. So use caution in restaurants.
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I would like to introduce you to a couple of blogs that I really enjoy
If you haven't checked them out please do!

Just click on the links

New Black Woman

That Old Black Church

The Black Actor

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Have you noticed that most corporate media outlets are constantly talking about the power of the Hispanic vote? And that Hispanic political power is usurping that of the African American community.

Well what they don't tell you is that even though so-called Hispanics out number African Americans, Hispanics are much less likely to vote than African Americans. Also a very large percentage of Hispanics cannot vote, since they are not legal citizens.

So in actuality African American voters out number Hispanic voters nationally.

The media once again is trying to play African Americans and Hispanics against each other. I hope we don't fall for it.

Do you think Hispanics and African Americans can be political allies?

Caution: Very Addictive!

These cookie type things are great. But use caution because they are addictive. And don't even think about having them with ice cream! oh my.