But seldom proves to slow me down... - 139
So its time for me to talk about something that I'm sure none of you have thought about (and possibly even care about) but I think about every single day... What Dan is eating.
And let me start by saying that yesterday I went to see the movie Food, Inc. and I can see how many of you would think that all of this is a direct result of seeing this movie but I assure you its actually quite the opposite... I went to see the movie because I've been thinking about this so much lately.
So what is Dan eating? Lets start back a bit, three years ago I never thought I would ever be anything close to a vegetarian... Three years ago I also weighed 300 pounds. I can't say exactly when I decided to change the way I was living but basically I started getting chest pains and at 19 years of age that's probally the scariest thing I've ever felt. So deciding that I wanted to live to see myself at 25 I decided that I needed to change something... the first thing I changed was my diet. So I looked at what I was eating on a regular basis and I realized that I was eating (at least!) 4 hamburgers a week, most of them not just a hamburger but the latest bacon double cheese whatever often from multiple fast food places... I don't think I didn't know it wasn't good for me I just think I didn't care. I've always (for as long as I can remember) a very liberal view of what I ate and dieting thinking that I'd just shorten my life worrying about it so I was better off being happy and just eating whatever I wanted. Not too hard to see how I got to 300 pounds now is it? Well if that wasn't enough I realized that I had absolutely no idea what it was like to eat a meal with out stuffing myself until I physically could not eat another bite... every single meal. So even when I would eat my mother's somewhat healthy (or way healthy compared to all the drive through food) dinners I would gorge myself what I can now see as a really discusting manner. Eating made me happy (or what I thought was happy) and so that's what I did... a lot. I realize now that eating carefree is not the same thing as eating happily.
So to change things I decided to start eating a lot more white meat... it sounded simple enough I honestly have never been a big beef eater... A steak is good for special occasions, ribs are waaaay too much effort for such little meat and it's such a mess! I used to make fun of my brother when we were a kids and he used to just order "hamburger" every single place we went to eat but eventually I became obsessed with the image of a Bacon Cheese Burger with A1 steak sauce being the ultimate dinner... one that's incredibly hard to screw up and tastes pretty much the same anywhere you get it... funny how be become the things we criticize. I limited myself to one hamburger a week and decided to pretty much eat chicken whenever eating out and not worry about whatever mom makes. Around this same time I decided to start taking walks around the neighborhood both to get some physical excercise and to work out a lot of stuff I needed to deal with in my head (and sometimes just to get out of my household.) Now it started as not much... 30-40 minute walks around the neighborhood like once a week during the evenings and these simple walks really kicked my ass. I can laugh at it now but I'd come back from a 30 minute walk around the housing track breaking a huge sweat with pains in places I had no idea could even hurt! But wouldn't you know I started to see a difference... and that excited me. Very quickly I lost 5-10 pounds and this sparked something inside me... I was doing something right I just needed to keep it up! Around this time I was very obsessed with Anime and anything Japanese Culture one of my favorites of this time of my life was he game Dance Dance Revolution and I knew from a few years back that this game was much more than a game and could quickly be used as a form of excersize and could easily kick my fat butt with out much hesitation at all! So loving the game already and seeing it as another (fun) way to get my excersise I started DDRing on a regular basis not for long at first just like 20 minutes but eventualy working that up and the best part was it didn't seem liike work it was fun! After adding DDR into the lineup and walking like 3 times a week I saw 25 pounds go down the drain in like about 6 months and that was awesome... because people dont notice you losing (or gaining) 5 or 10 pounds but people notice 20 pounds in a heart beat... and that kind of praise and complements I recieved was a good feeling... it was a sign that this all was working and something I should keep up. But despite all those complements I saw myself as fat still and thats really who I wanted to impress... myself. We are always our own harshest critic.
I'm going to jump a head a bit and summarize now a bit because I didn't keep track of how exactly I changed what I did over the past 3 years... things went up and down repeatedly... I didn't follow any diet or plan and most of it was personal experimentation. Basically though I eventually fell in to a routine where I was doing an hour of exercise a day... either and hour of DDR or an hour of walking during the evening. And this alone worked pretty well to a point no with out much other changes in the diet... besides eventually dropping the 1 hamburger a week and just eating chicken when I went out. However I am not such a person to go do more than an hour of exersice a day... that just seems wasteful and somewhat boring (remember I also am doing it for the time in my head and for my own peace of mind) and I know plenty of people who don't diet at all but will run miles and miles on the tread mill or around a track but I am not one of those people. So as things started slowing weightloss wise and as I refused to work more of a workout into my daily life I decided to look again at what I was eating... so over these past 3 years a major event for me every year has been lent. This Roman Catholic holiday (for whatever reason) has always been a tradition around my household... for those of you who don't know you're suposed to give up something that you partake in or do very often that isn't neccisary AND every friday during lent all good Catholics are suposed to refrain from eating meat with the exception of fish during these 6 weeks every spring. MY family has always combined these two into one and just celebrated it by not eating any meat (except fish) during the whole lental season essentially becoming pescatairian for a month and a half... I really don't know I think its just some thing my Dad came up with years and years ago and they've done it ever since. Now it being a personal choice I never have to do this but in the past I've often chosen to do it with them because it's well kind of fun... and wouldn't you know? I saw more weight come off when I was celebrating this pescatarian lifestyle. Now 3 years ago I didn't think much about it... My parents would only make meatless dishes while I was at home and I would just have to remember to order fish when I went out with my friends... I went away to college 2 years ago and decided to try it again with out the aid of mom's home cooking and yes it was harder but not that much harder.... just choose fish when I went out and pick from the tasty (or sometimes tasteless) vegetarian dishes offered at my school's Dining Commons every day... honestly not as hard as I thought it was going to be! This last year I decided to take up the pescatarian thing again for lent because I was cooking for myself every day in my kitchen in my appartment and NOBODY would be making dishes for me and now that sounded like a challege... and in truth it was... but it was a fun challenge :) Lent ends and my parents are up North visiting for Easter (day after lent) and instead of our usual ham or polish sausage Easter dinner we go out to mexican food and I have the strange sensation not to have some form of meat but just keep the eating habits I was doing... I've been eating super healthy.. really good food that I prepared every day and honestly I didn't miss the meat! So why go back? I kept eating the same way the rest of the year with very limited exceptions (pretty much I had chicken twice the rest of the year after that and both times they were nothing special and I felt like going back to eating the meat wasn't worth it. A major event was immediately after I get back home we have a party at my home for my brother's graduation... my mom makes all of this awesome mexican food (what she's best at) and its all great... but I decide to test the waters and try some of the chicken that looks so good and tempting... I make myself 1 taco out of the chicken and that's all I eat... meat wise and it is amazing... I clearly rememeber thinking "well okay this I'd go back to eating meat for..." and woudn't you know that night I got food poisoning (the only person at the whole huge party as far as I ever heard) and it's the sickest I've been in years... I was violently throwing up for the next 12 hours and that night is not one I will be forgetting for a long time... it truely felt like hell. But believe it or not I actually ate meat after that... not much but it puts me where I am at now.
My current diet consists of:
->No red meat (I honestly cant rememember the last time I had it and it actually just sounds rather disgusting everytime I think about it)
->No pork... I used to eat it thinking "oh it's white meat" well that whole "the other white meat" campaign is just a stupid scheme by the pork industry to make you think that the pork you're eating is healthy like chicken over beef when in fact pork can often be just as bad for you as beef.
->I basically refuse chicken all the time... it still sounds pretty good and apetizing but I choose not to because honestly I end up likeing the alternative meals I end up making instead loads more but basically I go untill I can't remember the last time I had chicken so pretty much like once or twice a month (and actually I think I'm approaching a whole month with out it now so that might change...)
-> and fish seems to be out of convienence It's extremely lean so I don't have a problem keeping up the pescatarian thing and eating fish once or twice a week (often when there's no veggie option in a place I'm at to eat...) The funny thing is though that I eat the most fish out of all the meats and I'm not even a huge fan of fish I've never been... I just find that amusing.
In the end I'm rather happy with this lifestyle but it seems to be at a transitioning point and I seem to be at a crossroads (or just not completely decided on what I should eat or shouldnt eat in the end.) which turns out to be the actual reason for this whole megazord of a blog...
"SO WHAT DO YOU EAT!?" Every vegetarian is sick to hell of hearing that question but the answer is "EVERYTHING ELSE!" Belive it or not there is TONS of food you can consume besides meat! I mean I think most people dont realize that the "food pyramid" a generally excepted standard of how to have a balanced diet does not have meat as the pillar its all based around... no meat or protien is actually closer to the top of the pyramid in the 2-3 servings a day catagory oposed to the vegitables at 3-5 or bread and grains with 6-11 servings a day... now I can easily get enough protien in a day with out the aid of meat and anyone who wants to try and use the pyramid against me better be eating 5 servings of vegetables a day... something most americans fail at completely.
The crossroads I stand at is where to go with my diet... I just want to make up for myself ultimately what I will or won't eat because right now I'm honestly still figuring that out, because there's a lot of options and a lot of things that work for different people... Do I go Vegan? For those of you who might not know (belive me some people have no idea) Vegan's refrain from anything that comes from an animal... no milk no cheese... no leather! No honestly I do care about animal rights and all the reasons Vegans do what they do but not enough to change my lifestyle completely... I got into this whole thing for health reasons to begin with and I often see vegans who aren't eating properly (despite what they think.) (and I do love cheese a lot!) But for the past month (again with the experimentations) I've been eating vegan one day outta the weekk just to try it (and honestly it's not as bad as a lot of you guys would think!) But honestly I don't think you guys will see me go strict Vegan unless I am diagnosed with cancer in the future because of all thes stuff I've read about that lately... (another topic, another post) Similarly I highly respect the strict Rastafarian Jamaican Diet of "Ital." Bascially the "Jamaicanized" version of the english work "Vital," Ital is putting into your body only that which is natural. No preserved foods, no fried foods just good wholesome food, with no meat no drugs no alcohol no tobacco but plenty of the natural weed ganja ironically enough. Now I do have problems with the worshiping of an herb (the main reason I am not a rasta actually) but I do really belive that if you eat only that what is natural and good for your body you will be healthier full of energy and all around a better person! Don't believe me? Try it for yourself for a week! ;) And the other option is go completely vegetarian.... no more meat, no more fish just eating good everything else! and honestly lately this sounds more appealing all the time. (expecially while hanging out with people like Lindsey who is vegan more) and the complete extreme of being around my brother who to this day eats 2 hamburgers at least a day.... freaking genes! But the major thing for me I guess is that I don't really want to change what I'm eating just to fit under a title or a label....and there is a ton... pescatarian... latctotarian, ovotarian, vegan, ital, semi-vegetarian, psudo-vegetarian... I used to say that I wasn't a vegetarian but I just didn't eat meat... (cause of what people think of when they think about vegetarians xD) but lately I've just been saying I'm "kind of a vegetarian" which most people get the point and I can dive in further if they care...
WHERE I'M AT NOW:
I'm good, I'm happy, I'm happier than I've ever been! AND I want to be happier... (hence the huge contemplative blog) Nutrition and Eating healthy is kind of additing as you get into it you find out how awesome it really is and wand to see what you can do to be better! I weighed in at 181 pounds this week which brings my total weight loss to almost 120 pounds... I am no longer fat... I'm no longer over weight I am average for the first time in my life since elemetary school! And I honestly can't descrive how good that feels.... I really never want to go back to the way I was living. The whole stirct vegetarian thing (not vegan) sounds really tempting right now if nothing else becasue of how you never feel weighed down when you're not eating meat! You don't get a food coma or need a nap after every meal in fact quite the opposite if you fill up eating like a vegetarian then you have more energy and are more active and wanting to do something uposed to sitting on the couch! Which is honestly how I believe eating should be... food is energy, fuel you shouldn't have to take a nap after every meal just so your body can slow down enough to break down the feast you just stuffed down into your stomach! At the same time though I'm still crossed Chicken is good... it's one of my favorite things to eat... but likewise the lunch I had yesterday at the (vegan) Veggie Grill resturant and The imitation chicken I just had for dinner tonight (also vegan) from trader joes proves that they can make a chicken substitute that is pretty much perfect in texture and almost identical in taste to fill any cravings one might get (which have becoming increasingly infrequent btw) So in the end I don't have an answer... I contiune to experiment and try things and learn which curious little me finds the best part of this whole thing. I do reccomend everyone go see Food, Inc. it was very informative and yet fun and interesting at the same time! And if youre scared of going to see it because you might become a vegetarian or something (believe me I heard this...) well let me tell you that one of the movie makers first lines in the movie is that to this day he belives the ultimate meal is a hamburger and that he continues to eat them. This guy... Michael Pollan is the best selling author of "The Omnivore Delima" and really if you're scard that someones going to "scare" you into being a vegetarian maybe you forgot that YOU decide what you eat... and no one else. In furthering my reasearch on the subject I actually just picked up Michael Pollan's newest book which is about how we should eat no imitation food but just real food... as real as we can get it so who knows... maybe I'll find some answers to my questions in here? I dunno only the future will tell... happy eating everybody! (too be continued...?)
And let me start by saying that yesterday I went to see the movie Food, Inc. and I can see how many of you would think that all of this is a direct result of seeing this movie but I assure you its actually quite the opposite... I went to see the movie because I've been thinking about this so much lately.
So what is Dan eating? Lets start back a bit, three years ago I never thought I would ever be anything close to a vegetarian... Three years ago I also weighed 300 pounds. I can't say exactly when I decided to change the way I was living but basically I started getting chest pains and at 19 years of age that's probally the scariest thing I've ever felt. So deciding that I wanted to live to see myself at 25 I decided that I needed to change something... the first thing I changed was my diet. So I looked at what I was eating on a regular basis and I realized that I was eating (at least!) 4 hamburgers a week, most of them not just a hamburger but the latest bacon double cheese whatever often from multiple fast food places... I don't think I didn't know it wasn't good for me I just think I didn't care. I've always (for as long as I can remember) a very liberal view of what I ate and dieting thinking that I'd just shorten my life worrying about it so I was better off being happy and just eating whatever I wanted. Not too hard to see how I got to 300 pounds now is it? Well if that wasn't enough I realized that I had absolutely no idea what it was like to eat a meal with out stuffing myself until I physically could not eat another bite... every single meal. So even when I would eat my mother's somewhat healthy (or way healthy compared to all the drive through food) dinners I would gorge myself what I can now see as a really discusting manner. Eating made me happy (or what I thought was happy) and so that's what I did... a lot. I realize now that eating carefree is not the same thing as eating happily.
So to change things I decided to start eating a lot more white meat... it sounded simple enough I honestly have never been a big beef eater... A steak is good for special occasions, ribs are waaaay too much effort for such little meat and it's such a mess! I used to make fun of my brother when we were a kids and he used to just order "hamburger" every single place we went to eat but eventually I became obsessed with the image of a Bacon Cheese Burger with A1 steak sauce being the ultimate dinner... one that's incredibly hard to screw up and tastes pretty much the same anywhere you get it... funny how be become the things we criticize. I limited myself to one hamburger a week and decided to pretty much eat chicken whenever eating out and not worry about whatever mom makes. Around this same time I decided to start taking walks around the neighborhood both to get some physical excercise and to work out a lot of stuff I needed to deal with in my head (and sometimes just to get out of my household.) Now it started as not much... 30-40 minute walks around the neighborhood like once a week during the evenings and these simple walks really kicked my ass. I can laugh at it now but I'd come back from a 30 minute walk around the housing track breaking a huge sweat with pains in places I had no idea could even hurt! But wouldn't you know I started to see a difference... and that excited me. Very quickly I lost 5-10 pounds and this sparked something inside me... I was doing something right I just needed to keep it up! Around this time I was very obsessed with Anime and anything Japanese Culture one of my favorites of this time of my life was he game Dance Dance Revolution and I knew from a few years back that this game was much more than a game and could quickly be used as a form of excersize and could easily kick my fat butt with out much hesitation at all! So loving the game already and seeing it as another (fun) way to get my excersise I started DDRing on a regular basis not for long at first just like 20 minutes but eventualy working that up and the best part was it didn't seem liike work it was fun! After adding DDR into the lineup and walking like 3 times a week I saw 25 pounds go down the drain in like about 6 months and that was awesome... because people dont notice you losing (or gaining) 5 or 10 pounds but people notice 20 pounds in a heart beat... and that kind of praise and complements I recieved was a good feeling... it was a sign that this all was working and something I should keep up. But despite all those complements I saw myself as fat still and thats really who I wanted to impress... myself. We are always our own harshest critic.
I'm going to jump a head a bit and summarize now a bit because I didn't keep track of how exactly I changed what I did over the past 3 years... things went up and down repeatedly... I didn't follow any diet or plan and most of it was personal experimentation. Basically though I eventually fell in to a routine where I was doing an hour of exercise a day... either and hour of DDR or an hour of walking during the evening. And this alone worked pretty well to a point no with out much other changes in the diet... besides eventually dropping the 1 hamburger a week and just eating chicken when I went out. However I am not such a person to go do more than an hour of exersice a day... that just seems wasteful and somewhat boring (remember I also am doing it for the time in my head and for my own peace of mind) and I know plenty of people who don't diet at all but will run miles and miles on the tread mill or around a track but I am not one of those people. So as things started slowing weightloss wise and as I refused to work more of a workout into my daily life I decided to look again at what I was eating... so over these past 3 years a major event for me every year has been lent. This Roman Catholic holiday (for whatever reason) has always been a tradition around my household... for those of you who don't know you're suposed to give up something that you partake in or do very often that isn't neccisary AND every friday during lent all good Catholics are suposed to refrain from eating meat with the exception of fish during these 6 weeks every spring. MY family has always combined these two into one and just celebrated it by not eating any meat (except fish) during the whole lental season essentially becoming pescatairian for a month and a half... I really don't know I think its just some thing my Dad came up with years and years ago and they've done it ever since. Now it being a personal choice I never have to do this but in the past I've often chosen to do it with them because it's well kind of fun... and wouldn't you know? I saw more weight come off when I was celebrating this pescatarian lifestyle. Now 3 years ago I didn't think much about it... My parents would only make meatless dishes while I was at home and I would just have to remember to order fish when I went out with my friends... I went away to college 2 years ago and decided to try it again with out the aid of mom's home cooking and yes it was harder but not that much harder.... just choose fish when I went out and pick from the tasty (or sometimes tasteless) vegetarian dishes offered at my school's Dining Commons every day... honestly not as hard as I thought it was going to be! This last year I decided to take up the pescatarian thing again for lent because I was cooking for myself every day in my kitchen in my appartment and NOBODY would be making dishes for me and now that sounded like a challege... and in truth it was... but it was a fun challenge :) Lent ends and my parents are up North visiting for Easter (day after lent) and instead of our usual ham or polish sausage Easter dinner we go out to mexican food and I have the strange sensation not to have some form of meat but just keep the eating habits I was doing... I've been eating super healthy.. really good food that I prepared every day and honestly I didn't miss the meat! So why go back? I kept eating the same way the rest of the year with very limited exceptions (pretty much I had chicken twice the rest of the year after that and both times they were nothing special and I felt like going back to eating the meat wasn't worth it. A major event was immediately after I get back home we have a party at my home for my brother's graduation... my mom makes all of this awesome mexican food (what she's best at) and its all great... but I decide to test the waters and try some of the chicken that looks so good and tempting... I make myself 1 taco out of the chicken and that's all I eat... meat wise and it is amazing... I clearly rememeber thinking "well okay this I'd go back to eating meat for..." and woudn't you know that night I got food poisoning (the only person at the whole huge party as far as I ever heard) and it's the sickest I've been in years... I was violently throwing up for the next 12 hours and that night is not one I will be forgetting for a long time... it truely felt like hell. But believe it or not I actually ate meat after that... not much but it puts me where I am at now.
My current diet consists of:
->No red meat (I honestly cant rememember the last time I had it and it actually just sounds rather disgusting everytime I think about it)
->No pork... I used to eat it thinking "oh it's white meat" well that whole "the other white meat" campaign is just a stupid scheme by the pork industry to make you think that the pork you're eating is healthy like chicken over beef when in fact pork can often be just as bad for you as beef.
->I basically refuse chicken all the time... it still sounds pretty good and apetizing but I choose not to because honestly I end up likeing the alternative meals I end up making instead loads more but basically I go untill I can't remember the last time I had chicken so pretty much like once or twice a month (and actually I think I'm approaching a whole month with out it now so that might change...)
-> and fish seems to be out of convienence It's extremely lean so I don't have a problem keeping up the pescatarian thing and eating fish once or twice a week (often when there's no veggie option in a place I'm at to eat...) The funny thing is though that I eat the most fish out of all the meats and I'm not even a huge fan of fish I've never been... I just find that amusing.
In the end I'm rather happy with this lifestyle but it seems to be at a transitioning point and I seem to be at a crossroads (or just not completely decided on what I should eat or shouldnt eat in the end.) which turns out to be the actual reason for this whole megazord of a blog...
"SO WHAT DO YOU EAT!?" Every vegetarian is sick to hell of hearing that question but the answer is "EVERYTHING ELSE!" Belive it or not there is TONS of food you can consume besides meat! I mean I think most people dont realize that the "food pyramid" a generally excepted standard of how to have a balanced diet does not have meat as the pillar its all based around... no meat or protien is actually closer to the top of the pyramid in the 2-3 servings a day catagory oposed to the vegitables at 3-5 or bread and grains with 6-11 servings a day... now I can easily get enough protien in a day with out the aid of meat and anyone who wants to try and use the pyramid against me better be eating 5 servings of vegetables a day... something most americans fail at completely.
The crossroads I stand at is where to go with my diet... I just want to make up for myself ultimately what I will or won't eat because right now I'm honestly still figuring that out, because there's a lot of options and a lot of things that work for different people... Do I go Vegan? For those of you who might not know (belive me some people have no idea) Vegan's refrain from anything that comes from an animal... no milk no cheese... no leather! No honestly I do care about animal rights and all the reasons Vegans do what they do but not enough to change my lifestyle completely... I got into this whole thing for health reasons to begin with and I often see vegans who aren't eating properly (despite what they think.) (and I do love cheese a lot!) But for the past month (again with the experimentations) I've been eating vegan one day outta the weekk just to try it (and honestly it's not as bad as a lot of you guys would think!) But honestly I don't think you guys will see me go strict Vegan unless I am diagnosed with cancer in the future because of all thes stuff I've read about that lately... (another topic, another post) Similarly I highly respect the strict Rastafarian Jamaican Diet of "Ital." Bascially the "Jamaicanized" version of the english work "Vital," Ital is putting into your body only that which is natural. No preserved foods, no fried foods just good wholesome food, with no meat no drugs no alcohol no tobacco but plenty of the natural weed ganja ironically enough. Now I do have problems with the worshiping of an herb (the main reason I am not a rasta actually) but I do really belive that if you eat only that what is natural and good for your body you will be healthier full of energy and all around a better person! Don't believe me? Try it for yourself for a week! ;) And the other option is go completely vegetarian.... no more meat, no more fish just eating good everything else! and honestly lately this sounds more appealing all the time. (expecially while hanging out with people like Lindsey who is vegan more) and the complete extreme of being around my brother who to this day eats 2 hamburgers at least a day.... freaking genes! But the major thing for me I guess is that I don't really want to change what I'm eating just to fit under a title or a label....and there is a ton... pescatarian... latctotarian, ovotarian, vegan, ital, semi-vegetarian, psudo-vegetarian... I used to say that I wasn't a vegetarian but I just didn't eat meat... (cause of what people think of when they think about vegetarians xD) but lately I've just been saying I'm "kind of a vegetarian" which most people get the point and I can dive in further if they care...
WHERE I'M AT NOW:
I'm good, I'm happy, I'm happier than I've ever been! AND I want to be happier... (hence the huge contemplative blog) Nutrition and Eating healthy is kind of additing as you get into it you find out how awesome it really is and wand to see what you can do to be better! I weighed in at 181 pounds this week which brings my total weight loss to almost 120 pounds... I am no longer fat... I'm no longer over weight I am average for the first time in my life since elemetary school! And I honestly can't descrive how good that feels.... I really never want to go back to the way I was living. The whole stirct vegetarian thing (not vegan) sounds really tempting right now if nothing else becasue of how you never feel weighed down when you're not eating meat! You don't get a food coma or need a nap after every meal in fact quite the opposite if you fill up eating like a vegetarian then you have more energy and are more active and wanting to do something uposed to sitting on the couch! Which is honestly how I believe eating should be... food is energy, fuel you shouldn't have to take a nap after every meal just so your body can slow down enough to break down the feast you just stuffed down into your stomach! At the same time though I'm still crossed Chicken is good... it's one of my favorite things to eat... but likewise the lunch I had yesterday at the (vegan) Veggie Grill resturant and The imitation chicken I just had for dinner tonight (also vegan) from trader joes proves that they can make a chicken substitute that is pretty much perfect in texture and almost identical in taste to fill any cravings one might get (which have becoming increasingly infrequent btw) So in the end I don't have an answer... I contiune to experiment and try things and learn which curious little me finds the best part of this whole thing. I do reccomend everyone go see Food, Inc. it was very informative and yet fun and interesting at the same time! And if youre scared of going to see it because you might become a vegetarian or something (believe me I heard this...) well let me tell you that one of the movie makers first lines in the movie is that to this day he belives the ultimate meal is a hamburger and that he continues to eat them. This guy... Michael Pollan is the best selling author of "The Omnivore Delima" and really if you're scard that someones going to "scare" you into being a vegetarian maybe you forgot that YOU decide what you eat... and no one else. In furthering my reasearch on the subject I actually just picked up Michael Pollan's newest book which is about how we should eat no imitation food but just real food... as real as we can get it so who knows... maybe I'll find some answers to my questions in here? I dunno only the future will tell... happy eating everybody! (too be continued...?)