Freaky Food Fuss: Part Deux/Dos/Two!

(A continuation of yesterday's Part One rant)

So, where did we leave off.....

Milk:  Oh this one really freaked me out.  I never was a milk drinker, but girlfriend likes some moo juice on her cereal and in her hot beverages.  All that crap about whether you should have whole, 2%, 1% or skim milk is so small compared to the fact that you are drinking more from the cow than its milk.  If you like drinking milk, please stop reading this now if you would like to continue drinking it without being skeeved. You can return in a few paragraphs.  I'll let you know when!

If you aren't drinking organic milk, you are probably drinking cow pus.  Yup, cow pus.  Ew.  Double ew!  The regulations on how long they can leave the machines hooked up to a cow's udders are...well.... udderly ridiculous!  (couldn't resist that one)  If a cow's udders are sensitive and haven't formed a callous, they become raw and get lesions on them.  More biological stuff happens to the udders that I will spare you the details of and the end result is that until the udders toughen up, things like pus go into your milk.  It's light colored too, so it just blends right in nicely, doesn't it?

"Oh my gawd!  There better not be any of that crap in this bottle, missie!"

There's also the fact that cow's milk is genetically formulated to help a calf gain a whole lot of weight in a short period of time.  I read a lot of stuff by some nutritionists, professors and doctors that suggest that the increase in milk consumption with children in the past few decades is why kids are going thru puberty faster and are larger than kids 50 years ago.  That supposedly hasn't been confirmed by the government and even if it was,  you and I both know that we will never know.

I'm done with the milk grossness now!  You can come back!

By the way, you can't milk an almond, rice or soy so that isn't milk in my world.   I refuse to entertain the discussion..... but I respect those who are successful an fooling their taste buds into accepting it.

The entire time I was pregnant I did not drink cow's milk.  I wanted to gag.  When the doctor said it was time for Allie to start drinking it, I hedged.  I learned that organic milk is kinder, so she gets that.... but only the bare minimum of it.  It feels just wrong to push it any futher.

Meat:  The food industry does miserable, horrible things to cows, pigs, chickens, etc.  When I learned that pigs react emotionally to being separated from their loved ones and mourn (LOUDLY) upon the death of their fellow pigs, I had a really hard time with that.  Pig products are rarely eaten here.  Beef must be grass fed and organic.  Veal is wrong.  I lived across the street from cows and I live in a cow town.   I challenge you to look at a calf eye to eye, watch how they are killed and then eat veal.

I had to stop eating chicken when I was pregnant because the smell grossed me out after driving past the Perdue factory on my way to VA.  That smell lived in my sinuses until I gave birth.  Blech!  Cage free eggs.  Why not be kind?  Do I need to expand on why cage free is better?  Hmmmmm.....smashed in  box until the legs atrophy and/or break, or clucking around the coop working out the dark meat?

"The horror of it all!  Why, I ask!  WHY?  Leave the beasts be!"

Last but not least, I have a really hard time with the "anything that's in the machines when we turn them on in the morning is considered an ingredient" policy of many plants that make processed meat.  What is considered acceptable by the food industry is way off the charts in my world!  I do not like my hot dogs with a vermin chaser.

Fruits and veggies:  I get the pesticide thing.  I understand WHY it is the way it is.  I will not bash anyone, especially farmers, when it comes to stuff that comes from the ground.  I live near farmers and  I see how hard they work at trying to keep their crops looking and tasting scrumpdillyicious until it all gets carted the hell out of here.  At least they are trying for the greater good.  But I still feed Allie organic fruit and vegetables every day.  I want to keep the chemicals out until I have no control about what she puts in her stomach.  And I'm no super mom here.  My lazy ass buys those pouches of puree for her.  God bless Earth's Best.  She loves them and I don't have to do the hard work of making them all sorts of tasty.   I tried cooking them myself and she hated it, so I learned my lesson. It's BV....Beyond Vic.

Well, this turned into quite the rant, didn't it?  Originally, I started all of this because I was amazed that I was willing to eat such garbage without thought, but I would do whatever I could to keep the same crap away from Allie.  I've chocked it up to another example of how motherhood makes you a smidgen more selfless.  I've also decided that ingesting a pound of chocolate mini eggs while giving my child only 8 plain M&Ms for a treat is the start of setting a very poor, hypocritical example of how to eat.  If I love my child enough to feed her only the best, I should try to do at least HALF as good for myself, right?

I suppose I should accept that Cadbury and Little Debbie are actually BRANDS, not valuable participants in the food pyramid.  DAMN. (By the way, have you seen that the food pyramid lately?  It doesn't look like anything I saw as a wee one in school.  The USDA got fancy!  Check it out here)

As a person who lives by the philosophy that cake makes everything better (I told you yesterday that I'm not perfect in the health department....I'm just trying!), I have promised myself that I will never force my child to eat a gluten free, sugar free, organic ingredients only cake again.  Some things purely exist for the purpose of happiness and just shouldn't be messed with.  Long live cake!

Allie's 1st Birthday and the "horrendously healthy cake".  Just by looking at the cake she can tell something is not right.

The look on her face says it all.  This was her one and ONLY bite.  I love how she's holding onto my mother's hand as if she's frightened. 

The cake on the left was Allie's cake and the one one on the right was for the rest of us who didn't give a sh*t what we were eating as long as it tasted good!  (You can see why I was so traumatized by the Elmo cake this year considering that the previous year's cake was this sloppy heart made with extra Vitamin L(ove)

By the time Halloween came around a few weeks later we decided to give in and let her have some of the tasty carbs!  This is her first piece of bread (it was Italian bread). Notice she's clenching bread in both hands and she's jammed so much in her mouth that she can barely chew.  I think she likes bread.