Obesity in America - now it's worse than cigarettes

Why Americans think Obesity is worse than cigarette smoking

Not too hard to find this one. A recent Gallup poll refreshed earlier findings on obesity. It shows that since cigarette smoking has been broadly discredited and reduced, obesity (and overweight conditions) has continued to rise.

"Most Americans say obesity is an "extremely" or "very serious" problem to society, the 81% who do so is up significantly from 69% in 2005, the last time Gallup asked this question. Americans now see obesity as a more serious societal issue than cigarettes -- a change from the past."

Of course, you have to thank our way of living in these Western culture nations. Fast food and sedentary lives have replaced home-cooking and high-caloric-throughput of physical labor jobs.

Few of us can now have physically demanding jobs where you actually have to walk a mile or more each day in addition to lifting and really physically working up a sweat during the course of the day. So many have instead started including work-outs in their daily regimen.Others have such a long commute that they are exhausted from simple stress at each day's end - wanting no more than to sit and watch TV with a beverage of choice at hand.

Diet is another scene entirely. Instead of fast food, we could all be eating healthy home-cooked food made from natural ingredients. But city life demands those long commutes and little access to sources or wholesomely grown food that we can afford.

Those of us who live on farms have this much simpler, since good food and plenty of exercise is built-in to our lifestyles.

This doesn't mean we can't get some extra pounds added on.

My own solution to this is to simply steer myself away from unhealthy eating by getting on a shake and supplement diet called the Cinch Inch Loss plan. It's from Shaklee, which is the leader in natural supplements. Built on studies of athletes, it was found that the amino acid leucine is key to keeping metabolism high by preserving muscle mass.

The trick is that this diet not only has great weight loss shakes (which can involve tons of recipes) but also pays for itself as you quit buying those expensive "latte's" and fast food "meals" which simply put pounds on. Instead, they have a system of meal and snack bars, as well as teas which are actually less expensive than what you are already paying for. It's a question of investing in your health instead of cravings for sweets, fats, and salts. You lose no convenience, but actually save time (which your boss will appreciate.)

If you follow the links above, you will be able to get more data on the Cinch Diet Plan which should be useful and help you solve any extra poundage you may want to rid of.

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Some additonal links on this subject:

Obesity and the Built Environment | Star - Hi Books - Posted in Uncategorized Tags: Childhood Obesity, Definition of Obesity, Effects of Obesity, Graph of Obesity in America, Height Weight Age Calculator, Main Causes of Obesity in America, Obesity Chart, Obesity Facts, Obesity ...

Why the surge in obesity? « Consider the Evidence - The Weight of the Nation is a four-part series on obesity in America by HBO Films and the Institute of Medicine, with assistance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It's been ...

Prevalence Of Childhood Obesity - About “Obesity Tax” – Page 3 – Calorie Counter | Free Online Diet … Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a new public health epidemic: childhood obesity. reduce the number of smokers and smoking-related deaths, a tax ...

Get Toxic Cleaners out of your Farm Shop

How a Farmer Gets By Without Toxic Shop Chemicals

Practically, I don't know how anyone could get by without killing themselves off from fumes. I was in the shop today, and was marvelling again at how much I can get from my 5 gallon bucket of Basic H Classic. Every farmer should have one out there.

First, I wanted to mix up some bug spray to keep the mosquitoes off me. That's an easy one (and a friend recently tested this for me while mowing his lawn - not a single bite):

Half water, half Basic H (put the water in first, or you'll have foam all over the place.

I pick up other people's trash all the time and like to re-use (recycle) it when I can. Occasionally, I find old plastic fifth's tossed out. Those hip flasks. When they are plastic, you can take a pop-top screw-on lid and you can then squeeze a squirt out, rub it on.

The Mechanic's Friend.

I work with oil and grease every day, it seems. So when I get it on my hands, it usually sinks in and is hard to get off. Usually, I have to do a two-step process to get it off, first some sort of cleanser, and then soap and water to get the cleanser off. In both cases, I'm left with something that makes my food smell different when my hand gets near my mouth and nose.I don't need another adventure when I come in for lunch.

Solution is the same bottle and mix. Just put it on before you start to work and rub it in good, let it dry. Then you simply put your hands under running water to get rid of it.

A note here: it only takes a drop in your pet water to act as a de-wormer, so don't wash your hands over something they use to drink out of - they won't use it. Wash it over some patch of lawn you can mow. The grass will soak it up and love it - but I have that problem right now with that spot of grass much taller than everything else as it's gotten the run off from my "experiments" but I can't mow right there. (Have to clip it by hand - or maybe pull out that clump and feed it to the cattle, then replace with gravel and rock. Add it to my "To-Do" list - [sigh].)

Here's another note: if you accidentally leave the pop-top open, it's only going to clean your truck seat and jeans, not dissolve them.

A Natural Degreaser without Fumes.

I use the Cattle Spray formula, which is a bit thinner. 1 part Basic H to 6 parts water. That's thicker than they recommend for just degreasing, but easier to remember. (And I'm still old school with habits like: use a lot to fix something better.)

This one I put in a spray bottle - and mark it so no one else will pick it up. (I've already had that happen.) What's great about this is that it isn't some aerosol, and you don't mind if it gets tipped over or leaks on something. It's not going to take paint or skin or lung tissue out when you use it. So you can use it more often.

The spray bottle is adjustable for a mist or a direct, focused stream about 5-6 ft. away. I went and bought one of these, as the old ones were in use or worn out.

I've even found that it does pretty well on sticky bolts or  hinges as a temporary fix. It's a bit of a lubricant as well. Since it's all natural, it will simply wash off. So it's a great degreaser, since you don't have to be concerned too much about where all that oil is going to as you do rinse it. And I've used it on projects where I didn't want to put the various gaskets at risk by putting a toxic solvent on them.

You should see my tractor oil radiator. Never could get it clean before this, mostly because I didn't trust being able to get those commercial degreasers completely off with just water. This just sprayed on, left it for a bit (did the other side of the tractor) then came back and washed it off with a garden hose. I'll post a picture when I can (camera-phone ran out of juice at the wrong moment.)

That bottle in the middle is a honey jar (empty when I started) as it squeezes out well for bigger messes, and is easy to pick up and hold with a gloved hand.

Which brings up the other use - taking it out with me to put on a cow's head (right around the horns where they like to be scratched, even the polled ones - and that honey-jar size ensures I won't run out easily.

Other Basic H uses

Well, there are a lot. Today, I took that flask (as it was in my pocket - nice size and shape, eh?) and put some on my dog where I know she couldn't lick it. I felt a tick around her ear and she didn't want me to mess with it. This stuff is also great as tick repellant and flea dip/shampoo. As well, the dogs don't mind it, as it doesn't have a perceptible smell to humans.

She's had some fleas at the beginning of winter, but didn't want me picking them off, so I just sprayed a house version of degreaser on it (2 ounces Basic H per gallon of water - divide by 8 to fit into a 16 oz. spray bottle) on her stomach and she seemed to like it. And they didn't bother her again.

For ag uses, I've got a lot more listed on my Worstell Farms site, under Agriculture News & Information. It's good as a soil conditioner, which is what I bought it for (one quart Basic H per 50 gallons water) and some even use it to both pre-treat seeds and also to fatten stock on feed. (But Shaklee doesn't test on animals, so your mileage is your own. But there have been some university studies conducted some years ago with Basic H.)

 

 

 

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More information about Basic H is available as linked below: 

Basic H® Classic  Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner. Size: 30 gallon

Basic-G® Concentrated Germicide Tackles over 40 microbes, including several animal viruses. Excellent choice for use in the kitchen, bathroom, or pet area. EPA registered Size: 32 oz.

Basic H® Classic Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner. Size: 5 gallon

How to Get Rid of Moles

Getting Rid of Moles and Dandelions

A common problem with lawns is mole tunnels and dandelions.

The Shaklee solution I found was:

1. Grubs: 1 ½ quart Basic H - ½ pint Basic G - 10-12 - gallons of water. Spray every 100 ft Use Ortho bottle or injector

2. Dandelions: 100 sq ft - Use Ortho Spryer or hose w/ valve sytem - 2 quarts of Basic H - 1 bottle of Liqui-lea - ½ pint Basic G - Should be used with some form of liquid fertilizer, as determined by soil tests. Apply twice a year

The grubs recipe is because moles are found to go after grubs, which are insect larvae that hatch in the soil.

While this can be disputed, in both cases it's due to nutrient deficiencies in the soil.

The average lawn has problems.

Lawns are commonly built with a few inches of topsoil on top of whatever was there before. In many developments, the top soil is scraped off, then the basement dug and the ground leveled around that foundation. Then a few inches of topsoil is spread back over and the lawn seeded.

In many cases, you are dealing with clay or rock under that thin veneer of soil.

To make matters worse, the amount of grass you have above will mirror the roots below. If you like a closely cropped lawn, then you'll have maybe an inch or less of roots below. This is why grass needs regular watering.

The solution to converting clay soils to deep organic matter requires deep-rooted plants and earthworms. Earthworms live on organic matter and move through the soil, digesting as they go. So a deep-rooted plant will dig down and leave organic matter as their roots expand and contract.

There are at least a couple main types of worms. Surface earthworms live within the upper soil, and are described above. Night crawlers and others have more or less permanent burrowing systems which go several meters (3-foot lengths) underground. (http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/earthworms.html)

Why Liqui-Lea works on dandelions was more of a mystery.

According to several sources (I use "Weeds: Control Without Poisons" by Charles Walters) dandelions occur in acid soils with low calcium. And the suggested solution is to dig your soil up to a depth of six inches and incorporate lime or another source of calcium, then replant your lawn. As well, let your lawn grow taller.  Of course, that isn't in anyone's budget.

When I looked into the Liqui-Lea label, I expected to find calcium. Nope. The closest I found was Vitamin D-3 as cholecalciferol - which doesn't mean contains calcium, but apparently refers more to how it's produced (I'm no chemist, and Wikipedia didn't help.)

But when I chased up what influences calcium intake, it pointed right back to vitamin D-3. While most of the data is on how humans use this, there have been some studies on how this affects plants, such as livestrong.com and homestead.org - the latter pointing out that B-12 (also in Liqui-Lea) was beneficial to plant growth. D-3 is found generally to improve root growth.

The dandelion is noted for it's deep taproot, which is able to bring up nutrients from deep in the soil. Earthworms will use the tunnels created by dying dandelion taproots as well.  So when you use Liqui-lea to spray your lawns, the other plants are able to improve their root structure.

Additional to this, Liqui-Lea contains citric acid, which is known to dissolve calcium carbonate (the most common form of calcium amendment for soils - like egg shells).

But back to our moles.

Now one misconception is that Basic H, being an effective naturally-based and biodegradable surfactant, actually kills earthworms and grubs. However, Shaklee doesn't do testing for agricultural use. The university studies I've followed don't address this. One parallel is that when you use Basic H as fly repellant, reports are that flies and mosquitoes simply stay out to a distance from horse and rider by about 18" to 3 feet. So it's more probable that they simply avoid it and move elsewhere.

Another fascinating aspect about surfactants emerges - is that they actually make water more effective ("wetter") by reducing tension in the molecules, so that it can penetrate further. What this would mean is that it would make minerals (and vitamins) more available for uptake by existing plants.

Organic matter would then go deeper with your lawn roots and so earthworms would tunnel deeper as well as moles.

Now most of the above is some effort to explain the anecdotal results of this spraying. The bottom line is that people have used this recipe above and found it to work. Until we can get several comparative university studies to investigate Shaklee vitamins and green cleaning solutions and their effect on plant growth as well as grub eradication, we are really just guessing as best we can.

Meanwhile, we can enjoy a deep green lawn with no mole tunnels.

More information about Basic H is available as linked below: 

Basic H® Classic Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner. Size: 30 gallon

Basic-G® Concentrated Germicide Tackles over 40 microbes, including several animal viruses. Excellent choice for use in the kitchen, bathroom, or pet area. EPA registered Size: 32 oz.

Basic H® Classic Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner. Size: 5 gallon

 

Homemade Cleaner for more than Just cleaning...

  Farm and Home, Garden Remedies

 

(Note: In any agricultural application, your results will vary depending on your soil content, available nutrients, climate, etc. While these are reported used below, your mileage may definitely vary.*)

Basic H has numerous applications on the Farm. While not recommended for internal livestock use, it has been found effective by many farmers as a de-wormer. It also has been proven in use as a soil conditioner, allowing ground which was resistant to water penetration to become porous and more productive.

Here are a few of the many uses Basic H has been found effective for:

Fire Extinguisher – 1 tablespoon Basic H to 1 pint spray bottle; put water in first then add the H to prevent suds. Very effective on grease fires; keep one by the stove, in the tool box, by the welder… Also 1 gallon H to 55 gallons water in 55 gallon water barrel; suffocates a fire fast. In Fire trucks 1 gallon H to 1,000 gallons water.

Tape Residue – 4 drops to 16 ounce spray bottle filled with water, spray on let set and wipe off.

Paint Brushes – Work full strength H into brushes and wash under the tap.

Outside Windows and Screens – Spray mixture of 1 teaspoon H to 2 gallons of water.

Rust – Use Basic-H for rust inhibitor for rusty nuts and bolts. Also use one tablespoon to radiator full or water or anti-freeze to help prevent rust.

Changing Tires - Spray diluted or full-strength Basic-H on rims. Tires go on easier.

Septic Tank – Pour one quart of Basic-H into septic tank drainage when it becomes sluggish to clean it out. Does not hinder bacterial action in septic tank or cesspools. In fact, it helps build bacteria in your septic tank.

Boat Bottom Algae - 1 tablespoon Basic-H to one gallon of water.

Garden bug killer: 1 tsp of Basic H to 1 gallon water

Orchard trees: for bug killer; 1 oz. Basic H to 1 gallon water and spray before buds appear. For fungus or disease, 1 qt. Basic H to 5 quarts.water. Spray until drips off plant. (I used on my gardenia bush which was inflicted with something that was white and fuzzy. Whatever it was, it disappeared.)

Garden soil treatment: 2 1/2 quarts of Basic H to 25 gal. water. Spray and plow under in  early spring or fall.

DE-WORMERS…

Dogs and cats: 2 drops of Basic H to one gallon of water.

Chickens: 1 quart Basic H to 95-100 gallons of water (1 C. for 25 gallons of water… keep reducing for your needs.)

Cow and horse: 4 oz. basic H to 150 gallons of water. (note in book says that cows drinking this liquid give more milk and have increased rumen activity. Also, gets rid of scours.)

Sheep or goat: 2 oz. Basic H to 150 gallons of water.

PEST CONTROL

Animal fly spray: 4 oz. of Basic h to 1 quart of water

Ant removal: 1 quart Basic H to 4 quart water. Pour over hill. ( I love this! No fear for chickens pecking at the hill after treatment!)

Basic H is also reported to have cut herbicide use in half, while improving crop production 20%, depending on application and crop.

Consider this video about Basic H - http://youtu.be/_0sDmf3a7Z4

Buy Shaklee Basic H in bulk quantities for farm and garden use.

 *Shaklee Corporation makes no claims for Basic-H or H2 with reference to crops, growth response, or crop yield; as a nutrient release aid or fertilizers as a spray adiuvant, pesticide, fungicide, herbicide, or rodenticide.