Wood As An Ingredient In Cheese, And Other Wrong Things In Our Store Bought Food

Does the grated parmesan cheese you buy at the
supermarket have wood pulp in it? Probably.
This is another example of how the food
industry lies to us. 

If I eat prepackaged shredded parmesan cheese, will I get termites?

An odd question, yes, but maybe not so odd given the revelations this week that some grated cheeses have an unannounced ingredient: Wood.

Well,  it's cellulose, but most of that comes from ground up wood.

In 2012, it turns out the federal Food and Drug Administration raided a Pennsylvania cheese factory and found that Castle Cheese Inc. was doctoring its so-called 100 percent real parmesan cheese with substitutes like fillers and wood pulp, says Bloomberg News.

Castle's president, Michelle Myurter pleaded guilty recently to criminal charges. She could face up to a year in  jail and a $100,000 fine, Bloomberg says. 

It also looks like other producers of grated parmesan cheese fill it in with what is basically groud up wood.

This wood, or cellulose as regulators call it, is considered a safe additive and can comprise up to four percent of that can of parmesan you pick up at the local Piggly Wiggly or whatever.

Bloomberg had various paremsan cheese from grocery stores tested.  The results weren't great. Essential Everyday has what it calls 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese, but a sample from a Jewel-Osco store in Wisconsin showed it was actually 8.8 percent cellulose

I guess Essential Everyday thinks that wood chips are the exact same thing as cheese.

Other grated parmesan cheese came back with anything from 0.3 to 7.8 percent wood chips.

The worst part about all this is we can't trust food manufacturers to tell us what's really in the food they sell us. That's because marketing is more important than truth. And safety.

True, most of the lies they tell us are about ingredients that probably wouldn't harm most of us. But there are people allergic to certain things. Nobody would ever be able to trace things back because who knows exactly what you ate and when?

There's a lot of examples of inaccurate food claims:

Olive Oil:

Last year, we learned that extra virgin olive oil might be anything but. According to CNBC and numerous other media outlets, Italy's anti fraud investigators were probing whether seven well known olive oil brands were selling lesser quality olive oil as "extra virgin."

Again, the extra virgin olive oil that really isn't won't hurt you, but you're paying extra from a high quality product that is not high quality at all.

Extra virgin olive oil comes from the first press of olives, which is the best. Subsequent presses aren't as good, and are sold as either virgin olive oil or just olive oil.

Maple Syrup

Here where I live in Vermont, maple syrup is an important industry. Just last week, members of the Vermont Sugar Makers Association and other maple industry groups took the food industry to task for saying there's maple in their products when there is not, according to the Associated Press.

Again, the artificial ingredients and corn syrup that masquerades as maple syrup in such products as oatmeal and energy bars won't hurt you much, but they lead you to believe that you're getting wholesome maple syrup when you're really not.

Says the AP:

"Roger Brown, chairman of the Maple Industry Committee of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association, said maple syrup - derived from heating sap from maple trees - is a premium product and sweetener and for that reason a number of companies imply that a product contains maple without the ingredient being present. 

He said the association has asked the FDA to investigate so that consumers get what they're looking for, and maple producers get compensated for their hard work."

Pet Food:

Even pet food is subject to ingredients that aren't there.

According to Poisonedpets.com, Blue Buffalo was forced to admit last year that it had chicken by-products in its pet food, like internal organs, renderings etc. That was contrary to what Blue Buffalo packaging and advertisements said.

This came to light only after pet food rival Purina, which grew suspicious, sued Blue Buffalo.

Assume They're All Lying.

I guess the bottom line here is many, if not most food manufacturers are lying to us about what is in the food they sell us.

The only way around it is to grow all of our own food, which of course is a huge challenge for most people.

The FDA says they focus more on food safety rather than ingredients, which makes sense. The FDA is too short staffed and underfunded to go after people who lie about what ingredients they put in our food.

Industry wins over our well-being again, I'm afraid.







 

In An Era Of Abortion Restrictions, Should Viagra Be Restricted For Men?

Fed up with restrictive abortion laws,
a Kentucky lawmaker wants to require men to
have a written note from their spouse
before they can obtain Viagra 

A Kentucky lawmaker is introducing admittably somewhat tongue in cheek legislation that would create some uncomfortable conversations about Viagra. according to a recent article in the New York Times. 

All this has to do with abortion laws.

Follow me here:

Like many conservative states with majority Republican lawmakers, Kentucky has been passing more and more restrictive abortion laws.

The new Republican governor, Matt Bevin, recently signed into a law a requirement that women have a medical consultation 24 hours before an abortion.

Another Kentucky bill, likely to be enacted into law soon, would force women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a doctor's description of the image.

All this is couched in language that indicates that they're just trying to protect the health of women. But obviously what's really going on is to make the abortion process so onerous and difficult and expensive and emotionally charged for women that they don't actually go through with the abortion.

I get it that anti-abortion lawmakers' hands are tied because of Roe Vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that granted women the right to abortions. But these laws are disingenous. If you're opposed to abortion, say so. Fight Roe V. Wade is you are anti-abortion. Don't be sneaky with these weird laws.

Kentucky Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, a Democrat, wants to make that point, so she's introducing legislation regarding Viagra. Her bill would require that men who are seeking Viagra receive written permission from their spouse before getting the drug, reports the New York Times. 

"I thought if we're going to insert ourselves into women's most private health care decisions, then we should insert ourselves into men's most private health decisions as well," Marzian said. "As a woman and a pro-choice woman and as an elected official, I am sick and tired of men - mostly white men - legislating personal, private medical decisons.....It's none of their business."

Marzian's proposal echo a 2012 Illinois lawmaker's bill that would have mandated men seeking Viagra watch a video detailing some of the possible side effects of the drug, like a prolong erection of the penis lasting several hours that can cause permanent damage.

Yes, Marzian's bill is a stunt and lawmakers should be doing serious work instead of jokes like this. But if you can't get through with reason, sometimes you've got to get goofy, satirical and weird.

It looks like Marzian reached that point. I think many of us of all political stripes have with ineffective, grandstanding politicians.

The Most Satisfying YouTube Video In The World?

A model train does exact figure eights' in the
"Most Satisfying Video In The World"

The video in this post is billed as the most satisfying video you can possibly watch.

It's because it shows machines, people, toys and a couple animals operating with absolutely precision, doing things perfectly, beautifully and as efficiently as possible.

In the video from Digg, we see everything from cake decorating, or getting rid of annoying poplar fluff on your lawn, to model trains, and a factory getting batteries ready for packaging.

It all sounds so mundane, until you watch the video. Then you'll wish everything, including yourself, worked that well.

Here's the video:

Best Drywall Contractor Makes Beautiful Art Out Of Joint Compound

Artwork created by drywall contractor Bernie Mitchell
He uses joint compound to create these detailed images. 

If you ever need the wall inside your house fixed, you could do no better than to hire drywall contractor Bernie Mitchell of Ontario, Canada.  

The guy uses joint compound to make beautiful artistic murals on walls.

He turns clumps of the drywall into finely detailed images of landcapes and forests or meadows populated with blue herons, osprey, loons, horses, wolves, dogs and many other images, says twistedsifter.com

The artwork is best shown off by aiming lights in such a way where to emphasize the bumps and shadows in the drywall artwork. He uses spackles, spoons, brushes and other small tools to create the artwork.

He began by using wheat and barley stalks to leave impressions in wet joint compound, but graduated to making the detailed artwork, as you can see by scrowling through his website and the twistedsifter post.

Here's a video of Mitchell at work:

Dancing Dog Named Ginger Rogers Sashays Her Way Into A New Home

Ginger Rogers now has a new home, thanks to
some very cute dance moves.

A dog named Ginger Rogers, given that moniker for a reason that will soon become apparent to you, knows how to sell herself.  

She was in a shelter, up for adoption, when she noticed people come in.

So she did a little dance behind her cage that was so irresistible that somebody adopted her.

Of course, Ginger Rogers wasn't truly "dancing" but trying to get much needed attention. She wanted out of the shelter and into a permanent home.

Whatever, it worked.

Orange County Animal Services put out this message on Facebook after the Ginger Rogers video went viral:

"Ginger Rogers danced her way into hearts yesterday when her video was shared on social medial. It's been viewed more than 100,000 times and shared on multiple news outlets...Miss Ginger was adopted earlier today and she will soon be raising the roof under her own roof."

So congratulations to Ginger and her new human companions. I hope there's lots of dancing in your household for years to come.

Here's the video:

Dramatic Views Of Cliff Collapses After New Zealand Earthquake

Cliffs collapse near Churchchrist, New Zealand during
an earthquake Saturday 

It was a gorgeous summer day in Churchchrist, New Zealand Saturday when a sharp 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit.

Unlike a previous awful quake in February 2011 that killed 185 people and injured thousands aroud Churchchrist, this one wasn't as destructive.

Saturdays quake didn't seriously injure or kill anyone, and damage was pretty light. 

But parts of cliffs along the coastline near Churchchrist collapsed, raising enormous clouds of dust over the blue waters there.  I bet some people had to scramble out of the way as rocks began to fall.

Here's some video clips. Looks scary and dramatic:

Watch Another Company Move Jobs To Mexico; Turn Employees Into Sanders Supporters

Carrier/United Technologies hamhandedly
announces their firing 1,400 workers so they
can get cheaper labor in Mexico and then
wonders why everybody is mad. 

If the political "establishment" ever wonders why so many voters are gravitating toward the likes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, they need only watch the video at the bottom of this post.

In it, Carrier Air Conditioning which is part of United Technologies, is announcing to employees that they're moving to Mexico for the cheap labor and screw you expensive American assholes.

Well, they didn't exactly say it like that, but you get my drift.

Yes, I know that Bernie Sanders and  Donald Trump are worlds apart politically.  Not very alike AT ALL.

But one of the extremely few things the two have in common is they're attracting a lot of people who are fed up with the "system."

It's the system in which that dreaded 1% we hear about calls the shots, mucks with peoples' lives and is totally aided and abetted by the established political system. Or so the thinking goes.

Donald Trump is among the so-called one percent, but his message of blaming our ills on everything but him, but especially the political establishment, Mexicans and Muslims, draws a lot of fans.

Bernie Sanders rails against the one percent so often that if I had a penny for every time he railed against that one percent, I'd BE part of that one percent.

It isn't as if United Technologies is desperate and the only way to save them from bankruptcy is moving to Mexico.

The company and its CEO are flush with cash. They just want more. If they make a bunch of people in Indiana unemployed, it's not their problem. They should just figure out a way to get rich on their own, is apparently the "logic"

Zach Carter writes in Huffington Post, in an article about the Carrier/United Technologies video of them telling employees of the Mexico move. The title of the article is, accurately, "Watch Corporate America Turn a Room Full of Workers Into Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Supporters"

"The contractor does billions of dollars a ear in business with the federal government. CEO Gregory Hayes pulled down nearly $10 million in 2014 and over $20 million the year before. On Thursday, the company reported $7.6 billion in profits, up from $6.2 billion the year before and $5.7 billion the year before that."

And, sorry, it's not the just the wonderful work Hayes is doing to keep the company so profitable. It's also the workers who are making all those air conditioners that are doing it. The ones that are being thrown on the garbage heap here.

I'm sure it wasn't a big leap for the people in the video who were learning they'd soon lose their jobs that the political and economic system is stacked against them and they need to find better leaders to run this country.

This might not be totally fair to the Powers That Be. And there are a lot of complex reasons why a company bails out of the United States in search of cheaper labor elsewhere.

But the employees in the below video  understand that it's all a race to the bottom. A handful of powerful and rich people are amassing wealth, while making the rest of us worse and worse off.

Which is why they're looking for a new direction.

Wanna know why so many people (me included!) are so angry at the way American politics is run? The video at the bottom of the post is one, but Carter in Huffington Post sums it up:

"The answer is pretty simple. Both Republicans and Democrats have consistently backed economic policies over the past 35 years that have systematically gutted the American middle class. For decades, Congress has listened to corporate lobbyists who told our representatives that if they could just cut this one tax rate, or just ease this one regulation, there would be a renaissance of prosperity. The renaissance has happened for the rich. Everyone else has been left behind."

And there you have Trump and Sanders' appeal. Trump is largely self funding his campaign. Sanders is relying on milions of Americans making small donations to his campaign, and he has eschewed PACs and big corporate contributions.

The rest of the presidential campaigns have PACS run by the corporations and the elite. See why everyone's mad?

For what it's worth, Trump posted the following on Facebook:

"1,400 workers in Indianapolis are informerd their company is moving to Mexico. WE cannot allw this to keep happening! It WILL NOT happen under my watch! We need to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"

This is a ready made campaign issue for Sanders, and I expect him to comment on this, very forcefully, any minute now.

I don't have a a decent prescription on how to fix this. Expecially since I'm surely oversimplifying everything.

Still, videos like the one below make me angry, and makes me understand why the rest of the country is so angry.

What I don't understand is why corporate America, and the politicians they pay off, are so bewildered by the fact that everyone is so pissed off.

But then, cluelessness is their forte.

I love/hate how the guy announcing the layoffs explains things. As if the 1,400 he's discarding should just be happy the company is "rescuing" its financial well being.

From theblaze.com, we start with the company rep making the announcement:

"'The best way to stay competitive and protect the business longterm is to move production from our facility in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico,' te representative says as the employees begin booing and shouting. 

The representative goes on to share details that the company doesn't intend to fully close the facility's doors until mid-2017, and encourages employees to 'remain committed to manufacturing the same quality products' until then."

Yeah, like the employees are going to do that to a corporate who thinks their garbage. Pro tip: I wouldn't buy any Carrier air conditioning products going forward.

Theblaze.com then continues with the reaction from the workers:

"'Yeah, fuck you!' one person shouts back.

Later, another one says, 'How long will it take before people start tearing shit up?'

The representative then tells employees how 'extremely difficult' a decision this was to make.

'It was made most difficult because I understand it will have an impact on all of you, your families, and the community,' he said."

Oh, please, this decision was NOT difficult for United Technologies. Anything to maximize profits, right?

Here's the video: