Hope this doesn't come across badly

[Squeak the Rat]

Do what works. I recently tried some acupuncture and was amazed at the result. Lots of little tiny holes. Oh, and i felt shit loads better.....

[scumdog]

fixed bike = joy

I can forego beer, and wheat, and margarine quite easily compared to giving up on bike.

Ya haven't got caeliacs (sp) disease have you??

[Crisis management]

Good on ya Kro, anyone that ressurects DR's can do no harm in my book!

As others have said it sounds like cealiacs (hope your spelling was good SD, I'm just copying). A couple of friends have that and althought its taken a while to get a good food balance there is now shit loads of info and wheat / gluten free foods available.

Look after yourself and enjoy a better life!

[Joni]

there is now shit loads of info and wheat / gluten free foods available.

Yup, and kro if it turns out you do have it... you life will improve so much when you move to gluten free products!!!

Good luck... and good on ya too!

[vifferman]

Good stuff, Kro! Well done.
It's nice to hear positive stuff like this.

[Bloody Mad Woman (BMW)]

When you take positive action - good things happen ay. Riffer may have referred you to a website for coelics (sp) gives you recipes and all and where to buy gluten free goods.

Onwards and upwards. Thanks for sharing - I love positive posts like this.

[Toaster]

Good on ya dude.

[WickedOne]

Good on ya bud!!!

[riffer]

When you take positive action - good things happen ay. Riffer may have referred you to a website for coelics (sp) gives you recipes and all and where to buy gluten free goods.

No I haven't but what you're referring to is the Manufactured Food Database, the bible for people like myself.

I've advised Kro on how and where to take this further if he wants actual medical advice and help.

[SDU]

Awesome Kro

[bikemike]

We are constantly being told about freedom of choice and how we have never had it so good in the food department.

Walk down the local supermarket aisle and stop for a moment, watch the crowds go by....

The aisles with 'choice' are Bread, Yoghurt, Chips/Crisps, Fizzy Pop, Biscuits and Breakfast cereals. Look at the butchery, fish stall, and grocery stands and compare. I kept losing count adding up the number of different types of biscuits available, and there are several dozen types of breakfast 'cereal' in my local for example. I counted 42 types of Humous the other day (including different brands and different flavours) Only TWO were plain. Same with Bread, dozens of varieties with lemon this, seeds that, softer the other. Seems there were only a couple of producers, and they owned many of the brands, and all had the same debased ingredients. Only in the Organic and Special Diets section were there any real breads. For heaven sake, I want to add my own flavouring to my bread!

But in the fruit and veg section, there were two kinds of apple, one kind of carrot, two kinds of tomatoes, one kind of capsicum.... you get the idea.

The stuff where there is supposed 'choice' is the commoditised food 'products' sections.
Anything with Milk Solids, Wheat, Soy Flour, Oilseed Rape, Sugar and amenable to gums, thickeners, bulking agents, flavours and long shelf life is where the 'choice' is. These are in fact refortified, reconstituted, heat treated denuded foods. It's all about recombination and marketing. And this is not where the health is. It's garbage!

There are so many grains we could be eating, and so many varieties thereof. We could be having whole milk, un-homogenised, even unpasteurised if you feel so inclined, even goats milk. (I asked an assistant the other day for unhomogenised milk and he didn't even know what it was!)
It's hard to find yoghurts that are not some bastardised version thereof; just a thickened, sweetened, flavoured pudding with milk solids in it.
How may kinds of fruit and vegetable are there that we no longer eat?

The business market has taken over our food production, and it is no longer food in my opinion. It's amazing we are tolerating it as much as we do, though stories like Kro's are not uncommon these days. Wheat and cow's milk are two of the top allergenic foodstuffs, and we eat them continuously, we completely overload our systems with one food type.

It's true that some organisms can live on limited food variety, and humans can also, for a time. But evolution has given us a much higher brain function and complex chemistry which thrives with a variety of foods and micronutrients.

Hey, I still eat wheat and dairy, but limit it when I feel clogged up, but for the other crap, I support the Green Party. Only party that's even aware of this and doing anything about it.

Glad you found a solution Kro, and sorry for the rant.

[Hitcher]

I support the Green Party. Only party that's even aware of this and doing anything about it.

There is a huge choice of fresh fruit and veges available -- considerably more than 30 years ago, e.g. bok choi and other Chinese greens, exotic mushrooms, varieties of lettuce; mangoes, paw paws and other assorted tropical fruits; venison, ostrich and meat from assorted other "exotic" animals, not to mention a wider choice of leaner cuts of meat than existed three decades ago. "One sort of carrot", I think not. There are probably at least four different varieties available at any one time, depending on the time of year and the part of the country they're grown in.

But people don't prepare and cook their own food to the extent they did 30 years ago either. That's why food manufacturers have stepped up to the plate, as it were, with a huge variety of prepared or partially-prepared foods. There is a wealth of information available about the contents of these for anybody who cares to read the label. And you can't blame food manufacturers for this. They're not in the business of deliberately poisoning people or selling them harmful products. In fact the opposite prevails. People these days are more concerned about the "safety" of their food than whether or not it may be "good" for them.

By wacking on about increasingly more punitive labelling and other requirements for food products (including the totally pointless country-of-origin labelling) all the Greens are doing is making food more expensive to produce, store, distribute and retail, and the "gains" from such additional measures are totally cosmetic.

Food and the consumption thereof has become a religion with a variety of cults: vegetarians, vegans, macrobiotics, anti-additives, and the dreaded organics. Endeavoring to have a reasoned discussion with foodies about what constitutes a balanced diet is a bit like attempting a conversation with the Taleban about the American political system.

The Greens are in the business of winning the votes of middle-class people who have nothing more to worry about that whether or not a particular tin of baked beans has a Heart Foundation tick, or not, or whether cars should be powered by biofuels. Meanwhile, in New Zealand and other parts of the world, children are going to bed hungry. Their arguments are shallow and generally misinformed.

[mstriumph]

................ followed by a deafening silence ..........

[bikemike]

Taking it for granted that you are not trolling...

The point remains that in the supermarkets the space given over to real food ingredients compared to infinitely and unnecessarily processed and permutated foods is tiny. Most of our diet should be those fruits, veges, nuts seeds etc. All good advice says the same these days, whether you are vegetarian, vegan, Indian or any other...

On the one hand I agree with the intent of labelling our food. Simply because I want to know what's in it and I think I have a right to that. Secondly, whilst our Kiwi farming practices may be debated, on the whole they are considered to be significantly more honest and safe than those in the regions much of our bulk goods and exotics come from.

On the other, I tend to grow or buy mostly raw ingredients so the issue doesn't affect me so much - and we do cook most of our own food. You are absolutely right about that, most folks don't do that these days as they feel there are more important things to attend to; evening TV schedules, games stations and so on. We once did a comparison of our weekly shop with a couple who buy most of their food processed. That is, coleslaw in a bag, custard in a box, ready made everything. We spent about 10 bucks a week more on average. Whilst our diet appeared more exotic, it was usually mostly locally produced.

The variety I want is not with exotics from all over the world at any time of year, regardless of season or transport costs but fresh local variety and seasonal variety. You may have had less choice in fruit and veges 30 years back, but the rot was already set in then. Whatever the benefits or downsides of the green revolution, ever since the start of intensive farming the tendency has been towards homogenisation, standardisation and optimal single varieties. Having said that, the old seed catalogues do have heaps of veges most of us no longer grow or buy, so it may be down to how you or your folks acquired your foods. I've seen the grubbing of a large variety of English apple orchards, all because of the all-pervasive, supermarket conquering Granny Smith (and Braeburn perhaps?) The variety is being lost and the inordinate and inane choice offered in the processed food section does not make up for that

The Greens are in the business of winning the votes of middle-class people who have nothing more to worry about that whether or not a particular tin of baked beans has a Heart Foundation tick, or not, or whether cars should be powered by biofuels. Meanwhile, in New Zealand and other parts of the world, children are going to bed hungry. Their arguments are shallow and generally misinformed.

This is disingenuous and utter nonsense. Meet any bunch of Greens anywhere and you will find piss poor and very well off people and all in between. It is not about any jaded British class codswallop. Despite what some may think, Greens are rarely dogmatic and it can be more of a problem that so many points of view and ambitions are represented under one banner. Still, I would rather that than the two-faced reality of the two-party system which we still seem to be stuck with, and its singular, polar and unquestioning idea of how the world works.

I personally do not agree in principle with the Ticks, and Schemes and Pyramids and so on. We should all be inheriting our food sense from our friends and family as we grow up. It should be common sense, cultural sense. However, given the nature of the products on the shelves, if it were not for some of the labelling we would have no idea what's in some of these processed foods. Check out the Guacamole Style Dip on your local shelf for a good example...

You can't sign on for a healthy diet by buying processed foods on an approved list and chucking it down your gullet in my opinion. You have to buy your ingredients, and make the meal. Without that knowledge, the manufacturers are pulling the wool over your eyes, despite what you say.

I think biofuels is the wrong way to go for two reasons: One, whilst the feedstock is produced along intensive chemical farming lines, the oil and gas based inputs can outweigh the energy of the biofuel outputs. Same with Hydrogen, unless it is 'produced' using renewable fuel sources, there is no net gain. Two, with an increasing population, and an increasing imperative to produce food locally, the local demand for land for food production in many markets will increase and to have this need compete with the need for biofuel will only weaken our links with food and make it more expensive. However, biofuels from waste, such as algal farming and so on might have a future. Also, in New Zealand, if we gave up some milk-solids-export farming land for other food production....

Going back to the original post, those with wheat, soy or dairy intolerances or allergies are finding it easier now to find new foods made for them, but the rest of us find it harder and harder to find regular foods made without them. I'd contend there might be a connection. Perhaps if these things were a smaller part of our diet we wouldn't be struggling with them so much?

[Ixion]

There is a huge choice of fresh fruit and veges available -- considerably more than 30 years ago, e.g. bok choi and other Chinese greens, exotic mushrooms, varieties of lettuce; mangoes, paw paws and other assorted tropical fruits; venison, ostrich and meat from assorted other "exotic" animals, not to mention a wider choice of leaner cuts of meat than existed three decades ago. "One sort of carrot", I think not. There are probably at least four different varieties available at any one time, depending on the time of year and the part of the country they're grown in.
,,,.

I do not think this is entirely correct. There may be more exotic items , but there is far less variety within the "standard" ones.

For instance, how many types of potato can one find now ? 4? 6 if you are lucky. I can remember as a boy the greengrocer having at least a dozen. Apples the same .

And whilst we may have bok choi and mangos (though I remember the latter as a child), we have lost many others. When did you last see a banana passionfruit? Or a loquat? Sorrel ? Cresses? Greengages? Even gooseberries. Where can I buy rabbit? (I know you can if you try hard enough) . Let alone buying a chicken. We used to be able to buy chickens of different types. Now there is just the Universal Fowl.

You could always get dozens of varieties of lettuce. And cabbage.