McDonald’s announced last week that, as of last August, is has stopped using ammonium hydroxide in the production of its hamburgers. MSNBC reports that the chemical, used in fertilizers, household cleaners and even homemade explosives, was also used to prepare McDonalds’ hamburger meat.

And while the announcement is making headlines, you may (or may not) want to know about some other unusual chemicals being used in the production of some of our most-popular foods:

The International Business Times lists some other questionable chemicals showing up in our foods:

Propylene glycol: This chemical is very similar to ethylene glycol, a dangerous anti-freeze. This less-toxic cousin prevents products from becoming too solid. Some ice creams have this ingredient; otherwise you’d be eating ice.
Carmine: Commonly found in red food coloring, this chemical comes from crushed cochineal, small red beetles that burrow into cacti. Husks of the beetle are ground up and forms the basis for red coloring found in foods ranging from cranberry juice to M&Ms.
Shellac: Yes, this chemical used to finish wood products also gives some candies their sheen. It comes from the female Lac beetle.
L-cycsteine: This common dough enhancer comes from hair, feathers, hooves and bristles.
Lanolin (gum base): Next time you chew on gum, remember this. The goopiness of gum comes from lanolin, oils from sheep’s wool that is also used for vitamin D3 supplements.
Silicon dioxide: Nothing weird about eating sand, right? This anti-caking agent is found in many foods including shredded cheese and fast food chili.
So, what moved McDonald’s to make the change in their hamburger production? In a statement posted on its website , McDonald’s senior director of quality systems Todd Bacon wrote:

“At the beginning of 2011, we made a decision to discontinue the use of ammonia-treated beef in our hamburgers. This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year. This decision was a result of our efforts to align our global standards for how we source beef around the world.”
The U.S. Agriculture Department classifies the chemical as “generally recognized as safe.” McDonald’s says they stopped using the chemical months ago and deny the move came after a public campaign against ammonium hydroxide by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

You can watch video of Jamie Oliver showing the process of using ammonium hydroxide on meat here:

The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-microbial agent in meats, which allows McDonald’s to use otherwise “inedible meat.”

On his show, Oliver said of the meat treatment: “Basically we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it ‘fit’ for humans.”

Even more disturbing, St. Louis-based dietician Sarah Prochaska told NBC affiliate KSDK that because ammonium hydroxide is considered part of the “component in a production procedure” by the USDA, consumers may not know when the chemical is in their food.

“It’s a process, from what I understand, called ‘mechanically separated meat’ or ‘meat product,’” Prochaska said. “The only way to avoid it would be to choose fresher products, cook your meat at home, cook more meals at home.”

McDonald’s confirms that it’s no longer using ‘pink slime’ chemical in hamburgers
Article by Eric Pfeiffer | The Sideshow – Wed, Feb 1, 2012. Ammonium hydroxide, image from KSDK TV

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

 

And after reading the letter, could not the same questions be ask to our slave master, i.e. our gov?  This is where we’re headed back to if we continue this current course of action.  Of course we won’t be in the fields picking cotton, but what are you doing when you slave away at a job just to get by or doing something that does not ignite your life’s purpose?

As with the big gold nugget of time is that education is priceless, for once one knows that they are free, awhole world opens up.

During that period it was very important that his son’s and daughters get an education by going to school.  It sounded very high on the priority list.  Today the black man and other ignorant man is not interested in education.

And of course, the biggest gift of Freedom is always a right of every man, black, white, asian, or any other label you chose to give someone.

“The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We’re a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.”

http://www.khanacademy.org

Ahhh!  Turning lemons into lemonade…  who would think a tart, bitter taste, that makes your face scrunch up and mouth pucker could be reconfigured into a thirst-quenching, cold, steam-heat-busting remedy?  One is the seemingly ‘impossible’ problem.  The other is the ‘I’m-possible’ solution.  Just a ‘spoonful of sugar’ is all it takes.  Contrast is our middle name.

Think about it:  What would hot be without cold.  Short without tall.  Fat without skinny.  Sunny without cloudy… and on and on. We are born with an innate intelligence about those things.  As a matter of fact, there is a myth that says we know all things before we come into our material body, and the shock of our birth makes us forget everything.  Amnesia.  The act of growing up human is the act of re-membering, re-joining all we knew before (Conversations With God, book I).

Did you ever blow bubbles?  Did you ever see those giant, loopy, floaty bubbles made from swirling a large hoop around with full body propulsion?  They are at least three feet, jiggling, gracefully kissing the space around you… rising up in the air current; a marvel to behold.  Yet, they last only a few seconds.  You dip the hoop into the soapy substance and create an entirely new bubble, nothing like the first, totally unique, yet, made of the same stuff.  Just like we are:  Totally unique, yet made of the same stuff.  Depak Chopra puts it this way:  The same Being, in different disguises.

Nothing lasts forever.  Our housing real estate bubble did exactly the same thing.  We enjoyed the ride, floating freely in a false sense of greed disguised as opportunity.  Why, the word ‘OPPORtunity’alone resembles the fat, loopy, amorphic, bubble shapes we just talked about – can’t ya just seem ‘em floating all around in the air, and all the ‘investors’ gobbling up a cheap deal at the high cost of families that lost everything as the scam of sub-prime mortgages became the standard instead of illegal?

Being open to shifting into a new place can be scary.  Not ‘can’, it IS scary.  Learning from experience, when ‘sacred’ shows up, this new energy is the right place to be.  Scared is a good thing, if you stick with it long enough to experience what the other side has to offer.  Scared is the sign of rightness,  as we forge forward into the unknown.  Golly.  How boring life would be if everything went as planned.  Planet Earth isn’t designed that way.  It is a harsh classroom.  The harshest lessons offer the biggest, most challenging circumstances.  When we keep our eye on the prize, a NEW prize that otherwise never would have shown up without the CONFLICT, we have turned lemons into lemonade.

In a million years this newness, this grand possibility would have remained in the ethers, floating unseen as invisible loopy giant bubbles, if things didn’t crash, fall apart, cause crisis and trauma.  Then along comes Lancelot to save us,  tapped into telling the Truth about the Lies.  Our Mortgage Savior.  A new industry was born:  Residential Rescue Remedy!

Look.  We can either go down with the ship or nourish different, risky, uncomfortable, unproven ideas of good, and be in the action of creating something new, revealing new answers from the questions born in the flames of the wreckage; a new idea for good in this world.  Look at how the 9/11 tragedy brought people together all over the world.  Wars called cease-fires, strangers reached out to one another, new possibilities emerged out of emergency.  “Sometimes, you have to do what you don’t want to do in order to ensure that you won’t have to keep on doing it!… In other words, often the only way to know yourself as That Which You Are is to experience yourself as That Which You Are Not.”  Lemons into Lemonade.

We have two wolves.  One for darkness and one for light.  One for anger and fear, and one for love and victory.  Which one are YOU feeding?  Sometimes, we have to become who we are not in order to preserve who we really are.  Sometimes, a war of sorts has to show up first, for us to participate in developing a portal for the real me to shine.  “…The wisdom to know the difference of what I can and can’t control.”  Sometimes, suffering and strife cause an awakening compassion, a healing consciousness, that shifts us from fear into love, that always transcends darkness.  It’s a spiritual law.  “Turn your eyes to the light, and the shadows will fall behind” – Helen Keller.  This is when vulnerability and the tender heart come together in a common connection.  Which wolf are you feeding today?

Breaking: Fluoride Linked to #1 Cause of Death in New Research

Check the side of the toothpaste container as well…  Same stuff.  They have known since the 1930’s that sodium fluoride made people docile.

Nothing happens by accident or coincidence.

PS Bonus material.

The article below made me wonder if these folks are in the Presidential race for the reasons that they should be out of the race or in jail… Maybe they use these little known secrets to force them into the race as a form of blackmail. 

Larry Grooms leaves Rick Perry camp, endorses Rick Santorum

Suppose the establishment was well aware of Perry’s Perverse Proclivities, P cubed for short, and they wanted to stack the RNC deck to make it look like it was a competitive race with viable candidates.  Perhaps they are using this knowledge to force them into the race and then setting up the exit strategy for them to drop out at the precise time in the race.  There is a big difference between passion and talking points.  Most of these guys are delivering talking points.   This could be true for RP as well.  At 76 years young he would be leaving the office in his 80’s if elected.  At that age he could be leaving horizontally on a stretcher.

Some of us are lucky enough to find a person who takes on the role of cheerleader in our lives, when we realize we aren’t living the life we planned and decided to do something to change it. How many of you resonate with that idea? That is key… altering the course and outcome. Before we can do that, an awareness of circumstances, paths, and feelings must be present. Once discovered and revealed, we are capable of taking action to Shift and begin a new journey. We get to change the tape. It’s simple, but not easy. Did you know that the work ‘repent’ in the New Testament means ‘change direction’?

Did you know that we were all born with a purpose for being here? Great authors have proclaimed that we actually chose to come here to evolve our soul. You can either buy into that or not. It’s your choice, like most things in life. What if it is true? What does that ‘evolve’ mean, anyway? Does it mean leaping into something better, higher; tapping with the innate source of identity and authenticity we were born to express?

Did you know that purpose pairs up with an intention to become a contribution on a personal and global scale? Well, it’s true. Many 21^st century gurus attest that we are spirits having a body experience, not the other way around. When we were six or seven years old, we KNEW what we wanted to be when we grew up. Now, way beyond childhood innocence, that vision is buried in an abyss, hidden but not lost forever if we choose to resurrect it. Are you ready to play the high stakes game called the PASSION YOU LIVE IS THE PASSION YOU GIVE?

Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah used to be the archetypal cheering chant, in the old days… George “The Gipper” Gipp, played by Ronald Regan in his early, handsome days in Hollywood, had a football coach; his guide, his mentor. His coach was much more than an athletic director. He was a spiritual and emotional guide. He posed all the important questions that led the Gipper to triumph (and look where HE wound up!).

THE COACH FACILITATES AND THE CLIENT DOES ALL THE WORK. (Life coaches help clients set and reach goals using a variety of tools and techniques). Apply this rule to a football team, the cheering team and yourself. When you hire a Life Coach to accomplish climbing to the next level of your life, together you are a united force, an entity. A team is as strong as the weakest link. One principle applies: The client does ALL the work. That’s you. The coach wants a win-win with you. If your word isn’t your bond, then what’s the point. Whose time are you wasting? Why, yours, of course. Make up your mind from the get-go. When you take on your life and begin to SHOW UP in a new way, everyone wins: You, the Coach, and our human condition at large.

Coaches have the insight you seek and crave. At first the questions are easy to answer and get progressively more complex as you take that dive into the unknown, dredging up long lost desires and dreams that were once so bright. It’s like weight training: Strength is built through resistance, taking on the tougher stuff as you progress. The coach assists you in peeling the layers of the onion back, benchmarking events that caused you to make assumptions that eventually turned into your erroneous, decision-making truths.

How many of us are unhappy in our job? The ‘career’ we stay in just for the paycheck? The energy suck imposition on everything you ever wanted to be? Day in. Day out. The vicious cycle. The responsibility of your coach is to help you find the key to lose the chains, and step into the glory of freedom; Your authentic self. The wonder of living your dreams and learning the right self-dialog to confess them into reality, is a phone call away. The coach does not unlock that lock. YOU DO. YOU DO ALL THE WORK! And sometimes bridges fall, relationships end, but the results is all worth the effort.

Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah has evolved. Coaching people who are athletes of the Spirit has flourished. Even athletes have personal coaches/cheerleaders. People at large have started to recognize some of the lies leading to the assumptions that brought them into their life of chains and numbness. Coaching is for the strong of heart, those on the edge of spreading their wings to soar and just can’t find the launch-pad. Like a hatching bird, or the butterfly breaking free from the cocoon… Your coach is your cheerleader, your personal Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah, helping you keep your eyes on the prize: YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF, the ONE you were born to BE!

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle,
When 24 hours in a day is not enough;
remember the mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class
and had some items in front of him.
When the class began, wordlessly,
he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar
and start to fill it with golf balls.
He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured
it into the jar. He shook the jar lightly.
The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.
He then asked the students again
if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand
and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else
He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded
With an unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table
and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively
filling the empty space between the sand.
The students laughed.

‘Now,’ said the professor, as the laughter subsided,
‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

The golf balls are the important things – God, family,
children, health, friends, and favorite passions
Things that if everything else was lost
and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the things that matter like your job, house, and car.

The sand is everything else –
The small stuff.

‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued,
‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff,
You will never have room for the things that are
important to you.

So…
Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your partner out to dinner.
There will always be time
to clean the house and fix the dripping tap.

‘Take care of the golf balls first –
The things that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.’

One of the students raised her hand
and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled.
‘I’m glad you asked’.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem,
there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.’

Please share this with other “Golf Balls”