Enough Dinking Around with My Food

Dear Kind People,

The Organic Consumers Association needs our help.

Please read this letter, and if it makes sense to you, please copy, paste, format as needed, print, and deliver to your grocery store manager. Better yet, deliver a letter to the manager of all grocery stores in your town. Be sure to make it personal, as in "Dear Mr. Smith" or "Dear Ms. Jones." If you don't know the name of your grocery store manager, please pick up the phone, call the store, and ask. It's that easy.

Please, it's time for action; for those of you adverse to making a scene, this action requires no scene-making. Thanks in advance for helping.

No more dinking around with our food, ok?

With Love and Gratitude, Lynn Byrd, The Byrdfeeder

ps - it's a long letter, but this issue is long, like love is long. Life? Really, not so long. What's a long love letter in the scheme of a short life? Edit as you please.

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Dear (your grocery store manager's name here),

As one of your regular retail customers, I want to thank you for providing a selection of clean, safe, and healthy organically-certified products in your store, especially as current food marketing practices make it difficult to know how to shop healthfully for my family.

According to ongoing research by the Organic Consumers Association, only 4% of total sales in conventional grocery stores are organic. So called "natural" foods now make up 8% of all sales, but these products are produced with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and often contain Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). "Conventional" foods dominate the grocery marketplace with 88% of sales; unfortunately, most of these products undermine public health and contribute significantly to the destabilization of our environment.

Like you, I am a consumer concerned about my family's health and the health of our planet. I feel strongly that we all have an inalienable right to know where the food we purchase comes from, how it is grown, and what is in it. Up to 90% of U. S. soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, and sugar beets are now genetically engineered and routinely incorporated into non-organic human and animal foods. These products require no labels or safety testing. As a consequence, approximately 80% of current non-organic grocery food items contain GMOs.

The number of current scientific studies suggesting the dangers of GMOs are growing everyday. Studies suggesting their safety are usually paid for by the corporations who sell the products of concern.

Considering the growing public health and environmental concerns of GMOs and Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), I ask that labeling clearly identify processed foods or animal products carrying any level of non-organic soy, corn, cottonseed oil, canola, sugar beets, alfalfa or GM growth hormones with a label or shelf sign that says, "MAY CONTAIN GMOs."

Also, please identify all meat, dairy, and eggs that come from CAFOs, where the animals are confined and fed GMO grains, with a label or shelf sign that says, "CAFO." In other words, unless a product is certified organic, or bears a certification seal from the Non-GMO Project, I want it to bear a sticker that says, "May Contain GMOs" or "CAFO."

Please join the growing group of ethical retailers and voluntarily adopt these Truth in Labeling practices. I ask you to inform your "natural" food vendors that you support the placement of "May Contain GMOs" stickers on their products. Please also inform your meat, dairy, and egg suppliers that non-organic products derived from animals reared on GMO grains or raised in intensive confinement will from now on bear stickers that identify them as "CAFO."

Retailers adopting Truth in Labeling practices will stand out as ethical leaders in the marketplace, gaining new customers and increasing the loyalty of present customers. Please join the nation's organic consumers as we move to label GMOs and CAFO foods so all consumers can make informed decisions. The health of my family and yours depends on it.

Thank you again for providing clean, safe food for my family, and for your support of a healthier planet. I look forward to your response to this letter.

Sincerely,

(Your name and contact information here)

For more information about Monsanto, please go here.

Roasted Turnip and Kale Salad

You're looking at a farm-fresh organic egg (organic meaning the chickens are fed non-GMO scratch), salted and fried in pasture butter. And although the egg was exquisitely cooked, most of it ended up in Jaco the Wonder Dog's bowl. Why? Because the turnip and kale salad was so far beyond good I ate two huge helpings and could have eaten more.

Here's the recipe:

• 4 - 6 small to medium turnips, sliced and quartered
• 1 medium to large bunch of kale, washed and trimmed (a bunch is a gracious handful, or about 4 cups)
• 3 tablespoons tahini (sesame butter...raw is good, but roasted has a deeper flavor)
• juice from a lemon
• 3 garlic cloves (more or less to taste)
• tamari to taste (tamari is a gluten-free product!)
• 2 - 3 tablespoons warm water to adjust texture (add a bit at a time and whisk, then add more...you want the dressing to be of medium thickness)

Preheat oven to 425

• steam the turnips for 3 minutes, then transfer to a cookie sheet, sprinkle with sea salt and bake until slightly brown...about 20 - 30 minutes...flip them once, and watch to make sure they don't burn...no oil needed
• steam kale for 2 - 3 minutes and set aside in a large bowl
• mince garlic and set aside for a few minutes
• mix tahini, lemon juice, tamari, garlic and warm water...a whisk works very well

After the turnips have roasted, just add them to the kale, toss with dressing and adjust to suit your taste. You won't believe how good this is! Sure, you can use potatoes instead of turnips, but for a different kick, use sweet potatoes.

Pyramid of Doom v. Pyramid of Bloom: The Extended Play Version

The quality of your human experience mostly depends upon the choices you make. Suffer the dark Pyramid of Doom, or scale the glorious Pyramid of Bloom. It’s your trip, and you design it.

Doom prefers a sedentary lifestyle, one that turns a brain to mush…makes an enemy of the body…withers curiosity… erases creativity…and lowers vibration, setting the stage for chronic diseases like obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer.

You relinquish all power to Big Ag Biz when you purchase these Doom-creating toxins. You’re looking at the food equivalent of Fox News, but without the entertainment value.

The Industrial Food Complex tricks kids with pretty boxes and poisons them for money. Tell your children the Greedy Monster who makes this stuff doesn’t love them. It all comes down to love, and children understand love.

Looking for a fundraiser? Your school earns a dollar for each box of Little Debbie caca bars sold. But listen: dirty snack marketing aimed at school fund-raising is morally wrong. There are smarter, healthier ways to fund a playground.

Climb Doom and chronic diseases ravage your body, regardless of age. And if you’re an adult male, they kick your old pal Woody Johnson when he’s down. But all those things can be managed.

Big Pharma trotted out 81 new pharmaceuticals in 2010, and 8 more have already been approved by the FDA this year! You’re a volunteer guinea pig, and nobody even had to ask your permission.

You are financially supporting corporations that empty your bank account and make you sick. Your choices have led you up the darkest side of the Pyramid of Doom. May you be pain-free during your End of Days.

And if you happen to be dying in a local hospital, your deathwatch committee can kick back to a Pepsi, the drink that has been bringing fun and refreshment to consumers for over 100 years.

Here lies a SAD American whose epitaph reads: The End Wasn’t Pretty and I Didn’t Have Much Fun Getting Here. Her legacy includes a pantry filled with Frankenfood that will never, ever die!

The Pyramid of Bloom is built on a foundation of love, harmony, movement, curiosity and a child-like belief in red stars – a belief in the possibility of all things. Be here. Be here now!

Because right now, a new paradigm is being born. We’re shifting from mind-focused living to heart-focused living, and we must have clean, safe food and water to fuel our bodies for this shift.

You bloom when you live within your means and seams. The last food Elvis ate was four scoops of ice cream and six chocolate chip cookies; he might still be with us today had he skipped dessert. May we all be received in Graceland...

When you bloom, you save enough money to buy one of those hip Elvis jumpsuits, or pursue hobbies, or to visit new places. And if you’re adept at soul travel, the trip is free! Everyday has high value when you bloom.

Retirement means doing what you want to do, not what you have to do. You are free to fully express yourself, to celebrate your own mysterious nature. Life is a garden...dig it!

Become a healthy Senior Planetary Citizen. Hang with your peeps, brew up some revolution. May your unique experience and wisdom help educate the collective whole.

And at your End of Days, your well-tended soul vibrates in rhythm with the Highest Natural Order. You are pure Love when you reach the stars, and well, everybody is a star. Everybody wants to shine.

But wait! There’s cake! Good health isn’t about deprivation. Just use clean, safe ingredients, balance your treats with nutrient-dense food, and remember to share with your friends.

Here’s what super-high frequency, nutrient-dense food looks like. You bloom when you connect with your food, when you honor the soil from whence it comes.

Make good health your art and your life a masterpiece. Bloom in gratitude to the Divine Spirit who teaches us to let our love light shine. Go ahead, shine on. See you later, Generators!

All material created by PL Byrd for Ignite Agriculture, The Orange Peel, Asheville, NC, March 5 2011