Don’t Eat the Mints!

A lot of people don’t touch restaurant mints because of the germ factor–but here’s another reason why you should leave them alone: they’re not real food!

Behold an average ingredient list for mints:

Sugar, invert sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soybean oil, sorbital, salt, oil of peppermint, natural and artificial butter flavour, lecithin, Red 40, Blue

Unless you really have a craving for artificial butter flavour and Blue, my advice is to leave the mints alone!

Friday Food Face-Off: Meat vs. Soy

I have not adopted a vegan or a vegetarian lifestyle. I still enjoy my fish, my eggs and milk in my caffeinated tea.  However, I enjoy these things less often.  After having lived like a vegan, I discovered some new foods and genuinely enjoy them.  While I ate tofu before, I always had it as a meat substitute.  When I was cleansing, I did not eat soy–I had to find other alternatives like beans and nuts.  And while some people go on and on about the health benefits of soy, I’m not convinced. Like everything else–meat, caffeine, dairy, alcohol–soy is okay in moderation.  

In fact, too much soy can be unhealthy. Not only do some experts think it can be linked to cancer and increased estrogen levels in women.  I cannot comment on these claims because I am not a nutritional expert or an expert on soy, but I would caution against always using soy as a meat substitute or as a protein.  

Unfortunately, though, after reading this release on soy from Health Canada I’m not sure I want to eat any soy anymore as Health Canada has approved genetically modified soy for sale.  

I’m not going off meat and soy will be a treat–not something I keep in the house. 

The final verdict?  One thumb down! Soy’s not soy good after all! (sorry–terrible pun?)

Eat Your Greens

Please check out this very interesting article in Time magazine about the benefits of a plant-based diet.

One great fact from Time’s Bryan Walsh:

“A meal at McDonald’s produces more carbon than your trip to the drive-through.” 

An interesting point: “The most efficient way to shrink the carbon footprint of your menu is to eat less meat, especially beef. Raising cattle takes a lot more energy than growing the equivalent amount of grains, fruits or vegetables: most produce requires about 2 calories of fossil-fuel energy to cultivate per 1 calorie of food energy; with beef, the ratio can be as high as 80 to 1. What’s more, the majority of cattle in the U.S. are reared on grain and loads of it–670 million tons in 2002–and the fertilizer used to grow that feed creates separate environmental problems.”

After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, my eyes were opened to the sorry diet that most cattle are receiving. But I wonder if a vegetarian world is the answer?  After all, if none of our land animals were eating, would this not produce problems?  What would happen to our wonderful Canadian beef farmers?  Our dairy farmers?  I think that people should eat less meat–it should be a side dish, perhaps, rather than a main–but I’m not convinced that meat should be removed from our diets altogether.