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Lentil Rolls

3/21/2025

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These amazing little rolls are so incredibly simple to make -- and they are not only gluten-free, but also entirely grain-free, nut-free, oil-free and sugar free!  They don't even need salt in the recipe -- but you can sprinkle it on lightly after you cut them open if you think they need it.
My friend Nina emailed me one day asking if I had seen any of the buzz on the internet about making bread rolls from red lentils, and telling me that she had been making them and really liked them. 

She sent me a couple of videos showing different recipes for them -- and that's all it took, I was off and playing around with this entirely new idea.

I have now come up with two different versions of my own that I really like.  The first is the simplest and it is just a very plain lentil roll.  Following this recipe, I will post (in a separate post below this one) my "Chedda" Biscuit version.
Here's the recipe:


Ingredients:
 2 cups red lentils (picked over and soaked in water for 3 hours)
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/4 cup psyllium powder (not whole husks)
1 TBS onion powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup water
1 TBS raisins
1/4 cup lemon juice


Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350. F and place either a silicone baking sheet or parchment paper onto a cookie tray and set aside.
  2. Place the flax seed, psyllium powder, onion powder, and baking soda into large bowl and mix well with a wire whisk or fork, and set aside
  3. Place the water, raisins and lemon juice into a powerful blender and blend on high for about a minute until raisins are completely broken into tiny bits you can't see.
  4. Fill a separate bowl with about 2 cups of tap water and set it on the counter near where the prepared cookie tray is -- you will use it to dip your hands into before forming each roll so they don't stick to your hands.
  5. Thoroughly drain the lentils in a strainer and add them to the blender, with the lemon juice and blend on high for a couple of minutes until creamy, then pour this mix into the bowl of dry ingredients and quickly mix with a spatula just enough so there is nothing dry left.
  6. Working quickly, dip your hands into the water and then use the spatula to grab about 1/4 of the lentil "dough" and place it into your wet hands -- toss it back and forth rolling it into a ball and then set it onto the tray.  Wet your hands and repeat this until you have used up all the batter, leaving about 1 inch of room between the rolls.
  7.  Pop the tray into the oven and bake for about 20 minutes just until they begin to brown.  Let them cool before slicing and they will firm up inside.
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Chedda Lentil Biscuits

3/20/2025

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I remember when Jo Stepaniak's revolutionary "Uncheese Cookbook" hit the stores. It was the early 1990s.  I'd been vegan only a couple of years, and there were no plant-based "cheezes" for sale in the grocery stores,  The idea of making your own cheese-like recipes using nutritional yeast was something I had never considered, and since cheese had been far more important to my diet than meat had before going vegan...this was a really BIG deal for me!
The red book came out first and it was like finding a secret door in my house that I never noticed before, but which opened into a vast and exciting new world.  I loved every recipe of hers, and many of them and the recipes in her updated edition (the blue book) are still staples when I make meals or entertain.

So when I started making bread rolls using soaked red lentils one of the first things I wanted to do was to see if I could use this approach to make rolls like Stepaniak's Chedda Biscuits (page 114 in the red book) and here is what I came up with:

Ingredients:
2 cups of red lentils picked over, rinsed and soaked for 3 hours
5 TBS psyllium powder (not unground husks!)
5 TBS nutritional yeast
1 TBS onion powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dill weed
1 tsp salt (optional)
1/2 tsp ground yellow mustard powder
1/2 cup soymilk (I use Edensoy unsweetened)
1/2 cup finely chopped sweet red pepper -- pressed tight to measure
3 TBS lemon juice


Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350. F and place either a silicone baking sheet or parchment paper onto a cookie tray and set aside.
  2. Place the psyllium powder, nutritional yeast, onion powder, baking soda, garlic powder, garlic, mustard and salt (if using) into a large bowl and mix well with a wire whisk or fork, and set aside
  3. Place the soymilk, peppers and lemon juice into a powerful blender and blend on high for about a minute until peppers are entirely blended into the milk.
  4. Fill a separate bowl with about 2 cups of tap water and set it on the counter near where the prepared cookie tray is -- you will use it to dip your hands into before forming each roll so they don't stick to your hands.
  5. Thoroughly drain the lentils in a strainer and add them to the blender, with and blend on high for a couple of minutes until creamy, then pour this mix into the bowl of dry ingredients and quickly mix with a spatula just enough so there is nothing dry left.
  6. Working quickly, dip your hands into the water and then use the spatula to grab about 1/4 of the lentil "dough" and place it into your wet hands -- toss it back and forth rolling it into a ball and then set it onto the tray.  Wet your hands and repeat this until you have used up all the batter, leaving about 1 inch of room between the rolls.
  7.  Pop the tray into the oven and bake for about 20 minutes just until they begin to brown.  Let them cool before slicing and they will firm up inside.

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Joe's Fabulous (almost) Fat-Free Potato Latkes

12/3/2024

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Potato Latke Recipe

Traditional potato latkes are fried in oil -- a way of cooking our family left behind almost as long ago as we left behind eating animals.  My husband Joe was the first to remake the traditional recipes we had grown up with by omitting the eggs and broiling them instead of frying -- and using vegetable spray on the tops as well.

When our family went gluten-free I played around
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with the recipe some more to completely eliminate flour, and I also found that spraying the tops with oil really wasn't necessary either -- these are virtually oil-free too -- using just a single teaspoon of olive oil on the cookie sheet that makes 30 latkes...(Dr. Goldhammer would you approve these as SOS free?) Vegan, gluten-free, grain-free and just about oil-free too.  But most importantly they are really delicious! I still think of these as "Joe's latkes" because it was his original innovation that got us here.

Make a bunch -- this recipes doubles really well and the extras (which we rarely have) freeze really well too.  Serve them with applesauce, ketchup or home made sour tofu topping. Click the "read more" to see the recipe below...

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Bananaberry Muffins   Gluten-Free, Soy-Free, Sugar-Free Oil-Free

5/2/2024

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These are so easy and so delicious.  Though I have created other blueberry muffin recipes -- today I had different ingredients on hand  -- tons of bananas to use up and not any pears or apples.  so I set about making up a new recipe -- and it came out great.  This makes 12 big muffins -- fill the cups up to the top, they don't rise that much during baking. but 12 muffins go really fast, so you might want to double this recipe.
           Bananaberry Muffin Recipe

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup sorghum flour
  • ½ cup garbanzo flour
  • ½ cup ground golden flax seeds
  • 1 TBS aluminum-free baking powder
  • 1 tsp guar gum or xanthan gum
  • 1 cup water
  • 3 TBS raw cashews (or use hemp hearts to make these nut-free)
  • ¼ cup lemon juice
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • ½ tsp liquid stevia extract
  • 1 cup of pitted dates, packed tight to measure them.
  • 2 ripe bananas
  • 1 ½ cups of fresh or frozen blueberries

Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350.
  2. Place the (first five) dry ingredients into a bowl and mix well with a wire whisk
  3. Place the water cashews, lemon juice, vanilla and stevia into a powerful blender and blend on high until cashews are fully blended into liquid.
  4. Add the dates and process on high until well blended. Then add the bananas and process a final time.
  5. Pour the wet into the dry, stir in the blueberries and mix just until there is no dry flour – don’t over mix! Spoon into a dozen paper-lined muffin cups and bake for 35-40 minutes just until they start to brown.
Note: This makes 12 muffins -- fill each cup really full -- they don't rise that much.
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Are You a "Conscientious Omnivore?"

2/5/2024

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                                             (Updated from it's original posting in 2017)
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     Back when I tabled at the Kaw Valley Seed Fair, where I gave away hundreds of free vegan food samples and literature. one of my most memorable encounters was with a couple of young women just barely out of their teens. These women, one of whom indicated she had been vegan at one point, told me with earnest conviction that as a result of interning on a small local farm, they now ate animals and no longer found it uncomfortable because they had, “Made peace” with killing them.  

     Let those words sink in for a moment. They, "Made peace with killing." 

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Is CDC info reliable?

8/24/2022

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  On Aug 24, 2022 I screen shot the following from this page on the CDC's website:
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"Anaphylaxis...is rare...5 cases per one million vaccine doses"



How well does CDC's statement reflect the published evidence?


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The JAMA paper above said this:

"...severe reactions consistent with anaphylaxis occurred at a rate of 2.47 per 10 000 vaccinations."


That's 247 per million! 
(almost 50 times higher than what CDC said)

And here is another paper:


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And it reported this:

"...37 cases of anaphylaxis were observed, equating to 204.2 cases per million doses administered."


Whose interests is CDC prioritizing...consumers
or investors in the liability-free vaccines?

(And anaphylaxis is but a single type of adverse event of literally HUNDREDS of different types that have been reported following these mRNA shots.) Click HERE to see some of the others that have been reported too.)
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BBC: Journalism or Propaganda?

11/2/2021

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     This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy! I use to consider the BBC a credible source of news, but now? They are just as much an instrument of big pharma propaganda as is Forbes, (which I previously blogged about HERE.)

  In the hopes that more people will read this -- I will keep it bite size by deconstructing just a single passage from the BBC article.  This one:
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 Here is what makes this propaganda -- rather than legitimate journalism.

    First -- the study they referenced was a comparison between hospitals that had different percentages of their employees vaccinated against the flu. Then they correlated the percent of staff vaccinated for flu with the likelihood of patients there dying from the flu. But they report that the data also showed that the rate of positivity for influenza in the patients was similar between the hospitals regardless of vaccine coverage in the workers.  So just think about that for a moment...since correlation doesn't equal causation anyway, there is no rational basis to conclude that higher vaccination rates in the staff, had anything to do with fewer patients dying -- since flu appears to have been equally prevalent in patients in both populations.  Duh.

     Then the author provides a second example, that is just as disingenuous -- but in a different way. Do most readers just swallow this BS without doing any critical thinking? Look at this sentence:

"There's no question mandatory vaccinations can save lives."
    
     But the "evidence" of the second example -- discussing measles, doesn't even mention deaths. It only mentions "cases." Since 2015 there has been only ONE measles death in the US. This in spite of nearly 1300 measles cases documented in 2019 alone! (Such a deadly disease!)  And while we hear over and over how deadly measles is -- take note -- those are deaths outside of the US -- where unfortunately, children suffering the extreme impacts of poverty and malnutrition -- and especially vitamin A deficiency -- ARE vulnerable to dying if they get measles. But those deaths reflect the dangers of poverty and malnutrition more than they do measles. Clearly unvaccinated children in the US who do catch measles are not likely to die from it. 

      This article is agenda driven propaganda. It reinforces the pharma-profiting narrative and is not unbiased journalism simply seeking to inform. About par for what we see everywhere now that the military-industrial-medical-meat-media complex has a death grip on our government.
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Are You a Critical Thinker?

10/19/2021

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PC = Politically Correct = Pharma Collaborators ?

10/14/2021

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From 'Never Again' to It COULD Happen Again

5/11/2021

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Tuskegee, Internment, Trail of Tears, Warsaw Ghetto
Growing up in the 1960s I was among the first kids whose Jewish education emphasized the horrors of the Holocaust. This left me with a couple of burning questions that never got answered: “How did so many seemingly average/good people fail (in the beginning stages when they still could) to speak up? How did so many not object to the propaganda, and to the insidious progression of little injustices/oppressions that we now recognize paved the way for such an enormous tragedy?
My mother always said things happened so incrementally that people just accepted them – never dreaming how bad they might get...until it was too late. But her answer never explained HOW people failed to speak out against things that were so wrong in hindsight. It wasn’t until 2020 that I came to understand what I never before could – which I will explain in just a moment.

Most of us upon learning of atrocities like The Trail of Tears, slavery in the US South, internment of Japanese Americans, or Tuskegee, believe we would never have gone along with things that so obviously harmed others – even if those around us appeared to be okay with them. That’s why I vowed to myself, decades ago that I’d never ignore injustice happening to others. And it’s why, in direct response to the horrors I observed happening to animals while working as a pharmaceutical industry microbiologist in the 1990s, I became a vegan.

For two decades, as part of a national vegan activist community, I felt reassured to personally know so many outspoken, passionate fellow social justice advocates, because during this time I was also a parent raising vegan children, breastfeeding longer than society approved of, sharing a family bed, and giving birth at home. I had heard about cases where parents’ custody had been challenged for straying from society’s norms, and I always felt better thinking about all the amazing people in my vegan community, who I believed would fight for my rights alongside me if ever I found myself in a class of citizens facing injustice. That’s why 2020 was especially disturbing – I realized how many of us were vulnerable to the very same fear tactics and social pressure that have manipulated and silenced dissenting voices that might have averted so many past atrocities.

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When officials began recommending face masks, I was caring for my two elderly parents in hospice. They did not want to go into a nursing home, and I was doing all I could to keep them in their own home. I oversaw a half-dozen caregivers, plus filled in gaps in care myself.
As fear of COVID became more widespread, my family felt that negative consequences of several public health measures outweighed the benefits. They also didn’t reflect our family’s values, and they were making life harder, at an already difficult time. My parents didn’t have long to live, and we wanted our remaining time together to be as close and connected and unencumbered with additional challenges as possible. Masking and isolation were not the direction we wanted to go. Furthermore, as I was the person doing all their shopping – and because the media-promoted-fear, and public health measures impacting supply chains led to shortages, I was going to multiple stores almost daily to find supplies. It was my view from the beginning that masks were counter-productive to preventing spread. I watched people touch their mask, right in the spot most likely to be contaminated and then touch products and money with the same, unsanitized hand. Because it was hard to understand people talking with a mask on, many were leaning in close to each other in order to communicate, (at a time we were being told that keeping six feet apart was even MORE important than wearing a mask!) It was obvious, too, authorities were going to extremes to discourage affordable, readily available nutritional therapies like vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc, as well as widely available inexpensive preparations like Ivermectin, and inhaled nebulized budesonide, all of which have shown great benefit among clinicians using them. (I have since learned that the current vaccines could not be deployed under Emergency Use Authorization unless no other viable treatments were available. So vaccine industry stakeholders including the NIH, CDC and Anthony Fauci had plenty of incentive to disparage the alternatives or suppress their study.)

But even more chilling was observing so many of my most educated friends being scared to question what we were being told -- perhaps because they were reading Forbes or the New York Times. When I read in The New England Journal of Medicine that the greatest benefit of masking may be its ability to function as a “talisman” that could calm anxiety – I began to ask myself, “Could mask wearing essentially be serving as a sort of ritual, accustoming people to be compliant with public health directives and paving the way for them to submit to the new experimental vaccines with unknown long-term consequences?”

Few of my medically trained friends seemed to be concerned that mask mandates were put in place before any published science showed masks prevented spread of respiratory viruses, even those who knew that viruses are orders of magnitude smaller than the pore size of the mask. “Well we have to do SOMETHING!” they argued. The rationale seemed to be, “It can’t hurt and it’s no big deal, so why not?” Unfortunately I learned that’s simply not true. Mask wearing does involve some not-insignificant health consequences. Then there is what is happening psychologically to an entire generation of children, forced to wear masks and fear the microbiome of others.
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It got worse. The media encouraged hate against people who dared to be in public without a mask. Sexual-assault survivors and people who got headaches or acne from masks be dammed! I witnessed shoppers verbally attack strangers unmasked in grocery stores. Angry masked people got right in the bare face of strangers to spew hatred. I found this ironic; because mask wearing was also being framed as a way to show care for others. I couldn’t help but reflect upon how early Third Reich propaganda, sought to stir up hatred of Jews by creating fear of them because they were spreaders of disease, and I remembered the stories of non-Jews suddenly turning on their Jewish neighbors.

Then the media began disparaging anyone who questioned what was going on as Trump supporters, Q- Anon followers or terrorists putting everyone at risk. This effectively silenced the majority of my liberal friends, who understandably didn’t want to be seen as spreading conspiracy theories. While I shared that valid concern, my own deeply held values of free speech and personal sovereignty would not allow me to abide the censorship and authoritarianism they were turning a blind eye to. I was stunned.

Perhaps more bewildering, friends of mine whose parents were Holocaust survivors became the most outspoken people I knew demanding the government “lock us down!” I found this especially surreal,
given our shared perception of Donald Trump as a would-be demagogue. The last thing I wanted was increased authoritarianism, while a president I saw as nasty, vindictive and disdainful of the rule-of-law was running the country. But my “lock-us-down” friends didn’t seem to be concerned about that or restrictions on speech, public assembly, or religious freedom. My dismay turned to horror as I watched people sit silently as the informed consent requirement for medical procedures vanished before our eyes. My friends were okay with all of that in exchange for feeling a bit safer from the virus.

Psychological literature suggests that victims of oppression/abuse may unconsciously behave in ways that contribute to harming others...could their generational trauma explain my friends’ inability to see how they might be facilitating oppression? Could this have anything to do with the fact that Israel with widespread generational trauma from the Holocaust, is leading the world in restricting personal freedoms and coercing citizens to accept an experimental medical treatment without informed consent – a direct violation of the Nuremberg Code?

And so 2020 has finally allowed me to understand HOW people could have allowed the little injustices that paved the way for Hitler’s final solution, HOW law abiding Japanese Americans could be ripped from their homes and put in internment camps, HOW researchers seeking to advance science could lie to African American men who had syphilis, and intentionally deprive them of medical treatment, HOW vaccine developers could experiment on mentally disabled children, and so many other obvious injustices that good people just like us went along with again and again in history because they were scared, or because they believed they were supporting some kind of “greater good.”

That’s why the scariest thing for me about 2020, was not that a novel virus could take out myself or a loved one, but rather it was seeing how incredibly susceptible we all are to the very forces that have allowed the masses to go along with past injustices that inflicted horrific suffering or death. I heard it said once, that with war we are always preparing based upon previous battles and this can blind us to the current threats – and I think there is a parallel to that when it comes to recognizing injustice. The forces that load the gun for human caused tragedy don’t necessarily have to be triggered by race or ethnicity as many past one’s were. The next human-caused tragedy could appear motivated by dramatically different aims (seducing those who would oppose injustices they recognize as linked with race/ethnicity/sexuality/disability to go along with the little injustices that pave the way) and still cause egregious suffering and loss of life. It COULD happen again.

(For a printer-friendly PDF of this essay Click HERE)
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Why I don't trust the American Academy of Pediatrics

4/9/2021

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Their slogan says, "Dedicated to the health of all children." But after looking at this  March 10 article on this page, (screen shot below) I think it would be more truthful if their slogan was, "Dedicated to the fiscal health of all pharma shareholders."

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I found so many problematic statements in this article -- how could any objective person with familiarity of the published science fail to see they have cherry picked their sources to support their pro-pharma bias? In the interest of keeping this short I will deconstruct just one statement from this article. They said there were only 4.7 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses:


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   But the CDC in this report put the number at more than double that, at   

   11 cases per million doses:

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However a more thorough analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that there are 247 cases per million doses:


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Meanwhile the government's own passive reporting system (which a previous analysis by Harvard suggested only captures a tiny fraction of injuries reported following a vaccine) shows these numbers as of April 2, 2021:

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In response to the comment by John (below) I am updating this post -- to include a screen shot -- showing that the fact check site john linked to is funded by Google.

People should keep in mind, that the year 2020, saw the greatest transfer of wealth ever to take place on this planet -- all going to billionaire philanthro-capitalists (Like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page.) Arguably, Google has ahuge vested interest in the narrative that has driven our entire response to COVID.

And here is the report (some screen shots from it below) that our government commissioned Harvard to do to study how well VAERS was doing at capturing vaccine reactions. It basically says VAERS captures about 1% of actual vaccine adverse events. 

Keep in mind, our government has provided billions of taxpayer dollars just for propaganda to influence people to believe that the vaccine is safe and effective.
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Vegans and Vaccines -- My comment to Mainstreet Vegan's blog post

12/31/2020

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Victoria speaking at a BBQ I organized in the 1990s.


Victoria Moran of Main Street Vegan has been a long time friend of mine. She and Howard Lyman were the very first vegans I ever met -- after I became vegan in 1991. Though Victoria and I do not see eye to eye on some issues, I will always be grateful for the information, inspiration and support she provided me at the beginning of my vegan and parenting journeys.

Victoria just posted a guest article addressing vegans and vaccines. I replied to it and included links to published science, but her anti-spam software, removed the links I had so laboriously included.  So here is my comment with the links intact.   Be Well my friends!

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A look back at Polio to gain some perspective on COVID-19

11/7/2020

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(originally posted 4/27/20 - updated with more evidence)
 
      Are you familiar with this book?

     It's assembled by pharmaceutical giant Merck -- the company I used to work for. The Merck Manual is well-respected around the world by doctors and scientists. It's considered a sort of medical "bible" by many and summarizes the published science on various diseases.
    
     My high school biology teacher once told me about what it was like to live through the polio epidemic of the 1950s. He was a child at the time and recalled classmates, "dropping like flies." He told me it was terrifying coming to school each week and learning that more classmates had fallen ill with polio.

     However in recent years, I have struggled to reconcile my teacher's experience with the published science I have read as I looked into the issue of polio a bit more.

     For example, look at this passage from page 2341 from my own 17th edition of the Merck Manual:


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You Can Improve Your Odds of Surviving COVID!

9/7/2020

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     Pharma and big-tech (driven by the billions invested in R&D) are fixated upon selling us all the rushed to market, liability-free vaccine. But in small human trials, many had severe reactions to the vaccine. And it will be used in large populations before any long term safety data is available. We are also told it may only be 30% effective -- but that we should still all get it. Did you know there are less risky ways individuals may improve their odds of surviving COVID-19 if they become exposed and/or infected?

1) Eat to optimize your gut microbiome.  Bad outcomes from Covid  are linked with high levels of chronic inflammation, and inflammation levels are mediated by gut bacteria. A whole food plant based diet (emphasizing beans and greens) encourages the growth of gut microbes that down-regulate inflammation in the body, while consumption of animal protein encourages the growth of microbes that up-regulate inflammation. (1) (2) (3) (4) (22)

2) Avoid fever reducers -- especially Tylenol. Fever is adaptive, boosting our metabolism and giving our immune system an advantage against invading microbes. But artificially lowering a fever handicaps the immune system. Tylenol may be additionally harmful in the case of COVID-19, because it has been shown to reduce levels of glutathione, an important antioxidant, that protects the liver and lungs and may mitigate COVID-19 harms. Low levels of glutathione have been linked with more severe COVID-19 outcomes. In fact, Tylenol sales skyrocketed from the pandemic and may turn out to be a big reason why so many people have died from this virus. (5) (6) (7)(14)

3) Taking NAC may be beneficial. N-Acetyl Cysteine has been shown to increase levels of glutathione in the body. NAC is used to save people who have overdosed on Tylenol. Studies suggest it may be helpful in preventing some of the more serious manifestations of COVID-19.(8) (9)

4) Make sure you have optimum levels of Vitamin D. Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to worse outcomes from COVID-19. Get your vitamin D levels tested. If low or unknown, 2500 iu of vegan D3 daily is probably safe for most people. (10) (11) (41) (42)

5) Quercetin, Zinc and Vitamin C may be protective. These three nutrients may prevent  COVID-19, or may make the disease more mild for those who do get it. (12) (13) (40)

6) Avoid meat, dairy, eggs. A variety of compounds present in them (endotoxin, Neu5Gc, AGES, Saturated fat, Cholesterol) contribute to inflammation, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance/ diabetes, which are well established  co-morbidities that increase the odds of death or long-term harms from COVID-19. (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22)

7) Eat sugars, salt and oils very sparingly.  Excessive amounts of highly processed carbs like sugar and flour, oils and even too much sodium in the diet have been variously linked with insulin resistance, inflammation, or high blood pressure, all of which make one more vulnerable to harm if they get COVID-19 (22) (23) (24)

8) Seasonal flu shots may increase COVID-19 risk. A number of studies have suggested that influenza vaccine may make one more likely to become infected with other respiratory viruses -- including Coronaviruses.  Yet more and more institutions are mandating flu vaccines for school attendance, or employment. This could increase deaths from COVID. (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31)

(Update: And since first writing this -- a new study was published suggesting that getting a flu shot is correlated with an increased risk of dying if one then gets COVID-19.) (39)

     While the above information may empower you to fare better in the current pandemic -- It can prevent FUTURE pandemics. COVID-19 is just the teaser for what is likely coming if we continue on our current path of using animals for food and research.  It's not just a "personal choice" to consume meat, dairy and eggs. Doing so puts everyone at increased risk from future pandemics, and the next one could be more deadly than COVID!

       Most people know that emergent diseases like Mad Cow Disease, Ebola, Campylobactor, Listeria, E coli 0157, and Salmonella, come to us from animals, but did you realize that most infectious diseases that spread human to human, originated from humans hunting, farming, eating or using animals in some way? It's not just modern factory farms that put us at risk either. The Influenza pandemic of 1918 predated modern industrial agriculture. Measles, Tuberculosis, H. Pylori, Pertussis and many other pathogens that have plagued us since long before the era of large intensive farms, we got from exploiting non-human beings.  Some cancers are linked with by viruses in dairy cows and a variety of zoonotic diseases occur at higher levels in those involved in meat and dairy production. (32) (38)

We can live happy healthy lives without intentionally killing other animals. 
So why not do it?

Click here for a printable 1 page PDF of the above points


References:


 (1) Tao, W. et al. (2020). Analysis of The Intestinal Microbiota In COVID-1 19 Patients And Its Correlation With The 2 Inflammatory Factor IL-18 And SARS-Cov-2-Specific IgA. medRxiv preprint.

(2) Tomova A, Bukovsky I, Rembert E, et al. The effects of vegetarian and vegan diets on gut microbiota. Front Nutr. Published online April 17, 2019.

(3) Plant-Based Diets and the Gut Microbiota by Carrie Dennett, MPH RDH, CD, Today's Dietitian, Vol 20, No 7 P.36

(4) David, L., Maurice, C., Carmody, R. et al. Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome. Nature 505, 559–563 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12820

(5) https://www.pnas.org/content/115/22/E5243

(6) Polonikov, Endogenous Deficiency of Glutathione as the Most Likely Cause of Serious Manifestations and Death in COVID-19 Patients, ACS Infect Dis, May 28, 2020

(6) Polonikov, Endogenous Deficiency of Glutathione as the Most Likely Cause of Serious Manifestations of Serious Manifestations and Death in COVID-19  Patients, ACS Infect Dis, May 28, 2020

(7) Dimova S, Hoet PH, Dinsdale D, Nemery B. Acetaminophen decreases intracellular glutathione levels and modulates cytokine production in human alveolar macrophages and type II pneumocytes in vitro. Int J Biochem Cell Biol. 2005;37(8):1727-1737. doi:10.1016/j.biocel.2005.03.005

(8) Jorge-Aarón, Rangel-Méndez, and Moo-Puc Rosa-Ester. “N-acetylcysteine as a potential treatment for COVID-19.” Future microbiology vol. 15 (2020): 959-962. doi:10.2217/fmb-2020-0074

(9) https://drjewilliams.com/glutathione-and-nac-reduce-the-severity-of-covid-19/

(10) Meltzer DO, Best TJ, Zhang H, Vokes T, Arora V, Solway J. Association of Vitamin D Status and Other Clinical Characteristics With COVID-19 Test Results. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(9):e2019722. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.19722

(11) Biesalski, H, Vitamin D deficiency and co-morbidities in COVID-19 patients - A fatal relationship?
Nfs Journal, Aug 20, 2020, pp 10-21

(12) Biancatelli, R., Quercetin and Vitamin C: An Experimental Synergistic Therapy for the Prevention and Treatment of SARS-C0V-2 RElated Disease (COVID-19) Front Immunol, 2020; 11: 1451.

(13) Wessels, The Potential Impact of Zinc Supplementation on COVID-19 Pathogenisis, Front, Immonol, 2020; 11: 1712.

(14) https://hbw.pharmaintelligence.informa.com/RS149912/JJ-Producing-Tylenol-247-As-US-OTC-Sales-Jump-35-On-PandemicDriven-Stockpiling

(15) Tall, Alan R, and Laurent Yvan-Charvet. “Cholesterol, inflammation and innate immunity.” Nature reviews. Immunology vol. 15,2 (2015): 104-16. doi:10.1038/nri3793

(16) Padler-Karavani V, Yu H, Cao H, Chokhawala H, Karp F, Varki N, Chen X, Varki A. Diversity in specificity, abundance, and composition of anti-Neu5Gc antibodies in normal humans: potential implications for disease. Glycobiology. 2008 Oct;18(10):818-30.

(17) van der Lugt, Timme et al. “Dietary Advanced Glycation Endproducts Induce an Inflammatory Response in Human Macrophages in Vitro.” Nutrients vol. 10,12 1868. 2 Dec. 2018, doi:10.3390/nu10121868

(18) Erridge C, Attina T, Spickett CM, Webb DJ. A high-fat meal induces low-grade endotoxemia: evidence of a novel mechanism of postprandial inflammation. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Nov; 86(5):1286-92.

(19) Erridge C. The capacity of foodstuffs to induce innate immune activation of human monocytes in vitro is dependent on food content of stimulants of Toll-like receptors 2 and 4. Br J Nutr. 2011 Jan; 105(1):15-23.

(20) D Estadella, C M da Penha Oller do Nascimento, L M Oyama, E B Ribeiro, A R Damaso, A de Piano. Lipotoxicity: effects of dietary saturated and transfatty acids. Mediators Inflamm. 2013; Epub 2013 Jan 31.

(21) C J Nolan, C Z Larter. Lipotoxicity: why do saturated fatty acids cause and monounsaturates protect against it? J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2009 May;24(5):703-6.

(22) Giovana Jamar, Daniel Araki Ribeiro & Luciana Pellegrini Pisani (2020) High-fat or high-sugar diets as trigger inflammation in the microbiota-gut-brain axis, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2020.1747046

(23) R J Suckling, F J He, N D Markandu, G A MacGregor. Dietary salt influences postprandial plasma sodium concentration and systolic blood pressure. Kidney Int. 2012 Feb;81(4):407-11.

(24) G A MacGregor, N D Markandu, F E Best, D M Elder, J M Cam, G A Sagnella, M Squires. Double-blind randomised crossover trial of moderate sodium restriction in essential hypertension. Lancet. 1982 Feb 13;1(8268):351-5.

(25) Wolff GG. Influenza vaccination and respiratory virus interference among Department of Defense personnel during the 2017-2018 influenza season. Vaccine. 2020;38(2):350-354.

(26) Rikin S, Jia H, Vargas CY, et al. Assessment of temporally-related acute respiratory illness following influenza vaccination. Vaccine. 2018;36(15):1958-1964.

(27) Kelly H, Jacoby P, Dixon GA, et al. Vaccine Effectiveness Against Laboratory-confirmed Influenza in Healthy Young Children: A Case-Control Study. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2011;30(2):107-111.

(28) Cowling BJ, Fang VJ, Nishiura H, et al. Increased risk of noninfluenza respiratory virus infections associated with receipt of inactivated influenza vaccine. Clin Infect Dis. 2012;54(12):1778-1783. doi:10.1093/cid/cis307

(29) Dierig A, Heron LG, Lambert SB, et al. Epidemiology of respiratory viral infections in children enrolled in a study of influenza vaccine effectiveness. Influenza Other Respir Viruses. 2014;8(3):293-301. doi:10.1111/irv.12229

(30) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2010/04/new-canadian-studies-suggest-seasonal-flu-shot-increased-h1n1-risk

(31) https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES2015.20.4.21022

(32) Buehring, Gertrude Case et al. “Exposure to Bovine Leukemia Virus Is Associated with Breast Cancer: A Case-Control Study.” PloS one vol. 10,9 e0134304. 2 Sep. 2015, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134304

(33) Johnson ES. Poultry oncogenic retroviruses and humans. Cancer Detect Prev. 1994;18(1):9-30.

(34) Johnson ES, Griswold CM. Oncogenic retroviruses of cattle, chickens and turkeys: potential infectivity and oncogenicity for humans. Med Hypotheses. 1996 Apr;46(4):354-6.

35) Gandhi S, Felini MJ, Ndetan H, Cardarelli K, Jadhav S, Faramawi M, Johnson ES. A pilot case-cohort study of brain cancer in poultry and control workers. Nutr Cancer. 2014;66(3):343-50.

(36) De Roos AJ, Stewart PA, Linet MS, Heineman EF, Dosemeci M, Wilcosky T, Shapiro WR, Selker RG, Fine HA, Black PM, Inskip PD. Occupation and the risk of adult glioma in the United States. Cancer Causes Control. 2003 Mar;14(2):139-50.

(37) Johnson ES, Zhou Y, Sall M, Faramawi ME, Shah N, Christopher A, Lewis N. Non-malignant disease mortality in meat workers: a model for studying the role of zoonotic transmissible agents in non-malignant chronic diseases in humans. Occup Environ Med. 2007 Dec;64(12):849-55.

(38) Johnson ES, Yau LC, Zhou Y, Singh KP, Ndetan H. Mortality in the Baltimore union poultry cohort: non-malignant diseases. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2010 Jun;83(5):543-52.

(39) https://peerj.com/articles/10112/

(40) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7482607/

(41) www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007602030296X

(42) febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/febs.15495
       A slightly condensed printer-friendly PDF of this article is available for download HERE
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Cranberry Mold  Recipe

9/6/2020

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     Cranberries are one of the foods I have always most associated with Thanksgiving, but I never really liked the cranberry sauce I remember being served growing up.

     I hope you enjoy my redo of that classic, made with less sugar and it tastes better.
Ingredients:
12 oz package of fresh cranberries
1 cup water
3 tsp agar powder
1/4 tsp liquid stevia extract
2 cups freshly squeezed OJ
2TBS maple syrup
1/4 tsp orange extract.

Directions:

1) Place cranberries in a large bowl and pick over and remove any that are soft. Fill bowl with water, swish berries well and drain in a strainer.  Do this several times until berries have been well rinsed. Drain them very well.

2) Place berries in a covered pot along with the one cup of water and the 4 tsp of agar powder and bring to a boil.  When  you hear the berries starting to pop, cover and turn heat to low and allow to simmer about five more minutes until berries start to fall apart.  Stir in the remaining ingredients remove from heat. Allow it to cool slightly and barely thicken before transferring it into a mold. To transfer, stir well and then spoon it into a mold and chill for several hours until firm. When ready to serve, place the mold in warm water for a couple of minutes to loosen it from the container. Place your serving plate on top and then carefully invert the whole thing.  You might need to tap it some to get it to fall out onto the plate.


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Let's Deconstruct a CNN Article Promoting Mask Wearing

6/26/2020

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     CNN has a very  broad reach, yet most readers have no idea how flimsy is the evidence they cite to support their framing.  So I'd like you to join me now -- on a short exercise in critical thinking.


     On June 26th I saw the above article linked to on the main page of CNN's website where the first paragraph begins like this:
                                                                          (click, "read more" to continue)   ---->

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Are we Trusting the Wrong People?

5/9/2020

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     Remember Brave New World, and Orwell's line about "War is peace"?

    As I see and hear the narrative being crafted by CNN, FOX, MSNBC and other big media -- and then compare their message to published science, I can't help but think about Orwell -- and how the dominant narrative perverts the facts.

  
    At the same time, health information at odds with big media's message is being censored by Facebook, Amazon, Pinterest, Yahoo, YouTube and more. Yet those lacking first hand knowledge of this censorship, often don't realize how pervasive the censorship has become.

     The big tech companies claim they are merely removing things that are not true -- but Sanjay Gupta, Nina Shapiro and others aligned with those who hold the power are not getting censored -- even when they say things that can be shown to be factually incorrect. Here is a good example.

     Dr. Nina Shapiro is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, a division head of a surgery center and she's taught medicine in academic settings. With those credentials -- you'd think there might be some pressure on her to make factually supportable public statements right?

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     Shapiro is also the author of the book, "Hype" which claims to be a doctor's guide to  "...medical myths and exaggerated claims...and how to tell what's real and what's not."  It is that tagline by Shapiro that makes me think of Brave New World. Let me explain.

             Nina Shapiro exemplifies Brave New World.

     My first exposure to Nina Shapiro was when I stumbled upon an article of hers featured on Forbes where she argues that the right to have or refuse an abortion IS a valid personal choice, but the right to have or refuse other medical interventions -- with documented risks is not. She thinks having an abortion which can be definitively linked with ending a specific life is acceptable while refusing a vaccine which has  only a theoretical possibility of preventing a disease which if not prevented has only a theoretical chance of hurting someone is not acceptable.  Here is a screen shot of the headline of her article:

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    But Nina has a big problem with her facts.  The only justification she offers for why our fundamental right to decide what happens to our own body should be violated is this statement:


"The dissolution of herd immunity...is...contributing to resurgence of...pertussis, measles, tetanus, and diphtheria."

      Could a medical doctor who graduated from Harvard really be THAT ignorant?

      Tetanus is not a communicable disease.
     
     The vaccine for Diphtheria is a toxoid --- so there is not even a theoretical basis to suggest that it can  prevent the spread of the organism that causes diphtheria.

     And the published science on the Pertussis vaccine not only provides ZERO evidence that this vaccine prevents the spread of the disease --- in fact it is well documented that people properly vaccinated for pertussis can have and spread the illness -- and often don't show any symptoms!


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(So only one of the four diseases she mentions -- measles -- is there even a theoretical basis to suggest herd immunity, and we  had over 1200 measles cases in the US last year -- and there was not a single death. Measles is not deadly in well-fed populations.)


     I notice a disturbing double standard by some of my scientist and doctor friends when it comes to medical information like this.

     When I share information that challenges their perspective (particularly on the subject of vaccines) many look at it only long enough to find a single detail they can point to, to discredit the entire article -- even when the detail might not be central to the evidence being presented. But they take the opposite approach to sources that support what they already believe....like this one I just deconstructed by Nina Shaprio.
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     But sometimes details really do matter a lot. So I ask you...who is really promoting medical myths and exaggerated claims? (For the record -- here is a screen shot of what Nina wrote:
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If you liked this post -- be sure to read my
previous post -- comparing COVID-19 to POLIO
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Ten Ideas that May Improve Resistance to COVID-19

4/14/2020

1 Comment

 
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COVID-19 has many people feeling anxious, but knowing that things within our own power may improve our odds of having a mild case can be very calming. 

So here are my top ten ideas for simple things -- most of which are completely within our power to do, that will likely reduce our risk of being harmed by the COVID-19 virus.

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Millet Milk -- easy to make, fat free, nut-free, low -cost

2/17/2020

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      I rarely buy packaged plant-milks from the store anymore because it's so hard to find milks that are free of additives that I don't want.

    Carrageenan and vitamin A are two things in particular I do not want to consume. If you are not familiar with why it might be a good idea to AVOID vitamin A, I wrote about that HERE.

    This milk is easy to make and costs me under a dollar to make 6 cups. It is also fat-free, and nut free. This recipe makes a very thick finished product -- because I then go on to turn it into a wonderful hot latte-like 

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My testimony at the Ks Capitol

2/14/2020

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     If you don't have young children or grandchildren -- you may not be aware of possibly the most serious epidemic facing us here in the US:  The vaccine epidemic.

    In the early 1980s, so many children were being injured by vaccines and filing  lawsuits, that vaccine companies were not able to make a profit from vaccines, and so threatened to stop making vaccines unless congress did something. Congress passed and Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act into in 1986. This gave
manufacturers immunity from liability for vaccines on the CDC schedule, by placing a tax on vaccines and then having a special court award that money to vaccine injured people. To date the fund has paid out over four billion dollars for vaccine injuries. This in spite of the fact that most claimants spend years trying to get compensated, before being refused. That in addition to the fact that one must file a claim within 3 years, and many who are injured and seeking treatment don't even learn about the fund until it's too late to file. But the 1986 act was a gold mine for vaccine makers, turning vaccines into one of pharma's most profitable sectors now estimated to be worth over sixty billion annually It also led to an explosion in the number of vaccines children are mandated to get in order to attend school.

     Most people don't realize that unlike all other pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines are not tested for safety against a true inert placebo. Instead the, "placebo" group may get the vaccine's entire toxic brew minus only the actual antigen. Because mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, gelatin, bovine serum, DNA fragments, egg protein and the other assorted ingredients in vaccines all have  biological impacts when injected, "placebos" that contain these probably  obscure many harms and adverse impacts from vaccines.

That was why I recently trekked to my state capitol to testify for a proposed bill that would simply make it harder for those under pharma's spell to get additional vaccines mandated for school entry Here is my testimony:

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