A Suggestion From the United Nations

So here's the disclaimer.  I am not a nutritionist nor am I a medical doctor or any other kind of doctor for that matter so any information or advice contained here should not be considered anything except the mental wanderings of someone interested in just about everything and expert in just about nothing. 
I really like reading lists of foods that I should eat to reclaim health, vigor, youth, coherence -- you get the picture and you've seen the lists.
Imagine, then, my delight with this list of suggested foods recently released by the United Nations.  It's a list of bugs provided by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.  Bugs are high in protein and at least for now easy to obtain.
Here's the list of best bugs.
1. Beetles

The most commonly eaten beetles are the long-horned, june, dung, and rhinoceros varieties. These are munched by people living in the Amazon basin, parts of Africa, and other heavily forested regions, both tropical and temperate, as diverse species are easily found in trees, fallen logs, and on the forest floor. They are efficient at turning cellulose from trees (indigestible to humans) into digestible fat. Beetles also have more protein than most other insects.

2. Butterflies and Moths

They're very popular in African countries, and are an excellent supplement for children and pregnant women. In Central and South America, fat and fleshy agave worms, which live between the leaves of the agave plant and turn into butterflies, are highly sought after for food and as the famed worm dropped into mescal, a Mexican liquor.

3. Bees and Wasps

We love bees for their honey, but they have more to give. Indigenous people in Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, and Mexico commonly eat these insects when they are in their immature stages. Stingless bees are most commonly munched, with wasps a distant second.

4. Ants

You're probably thinking that it takes a lot of ants to make a meal. True. But they pack a punch: 100 grams of red ant (one of thousands of ant species) provide some 14 grams of protein (more than eggs), nearly 48 grams of calcium, and a nice hit of iron, among other nutrients. All that in less than 100 calories. Plus, they're low in carbs.

5. Grasshoppers, Crickets, and Locusts

Grasshoppers and their ilk are the most consumed type of insect, probably because they're simply all over the place and they're easy to catch. There are a lot of different kinds, and they're a great protein source.

6. Flies and Mosquitoes

Not as popular as some of the others, these insects—including edible termites and, yes, lice—still have a place at some tables. Flies that develop on various types of cheese take on the flavor of their host, and the species from water habitats may taste like duck or fish.

7. Water Boatmen and Backswimmers

Easy to cultivate and harvest, these cosmopolitan little guys deposit eggs on the stems of aquatic plants, in both freshwater and saltwater environments—even in stagnant water. The eggs can be dried and shaken from the plants to make Mexican caviar (tastes like shrimp), or eaten fresh for their fishy flavor.

8. Stinkbugs

If you can get past the funky smell, these insects apparently add an apple flavor to sauces and are a valuable source of iodine. They're also known to have anesthetic and analgesic properties. Who would have thought?

I'm only sharing a list with you.  I haven't tried any of these bugs and I don't expect to.  However, at least two billion people on this planet do regularly eat bugs.

And here's the kicker.  The diets of a good percentage of those two billion are as healthy or healthier than our 'civilized' Western diets of chemicals forced to look like food.

Just some food for thought.

Perhaps Lesson Learned?

The other day a Pennsylvania couple was arrested.  Seems their ten-year-old daughter was in a cage in the back of their pickup and they were driving along on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The couple explained this away:  "She wanted to be with her dog.  She plays with him in there all the time."
As it works out, the dog was in the cage too. 
That's legal and even desirable.  The dog in the cage, that is.
What isn't legal, as the Carlson couple now know, is to lock your child in a cage in the back of the pickup with or without her pet dog.
Concerned motorists apparently alerted law enforcement and law enforcement responded with arrests.
For some reason this whole thing doesn't bother me as much as those folks in pickups who haven't caged their dogs and in some cases their children.  There they are ears flapping in the breeze defying gravity to hold them onto the truck. 
That's terribly dangerous for man, child, and beast.  This other thing is just weird.  Illegal, also, as it works out.

Tuesday Tips For Well Being

Let it be known that I am not a doctor and in no way qualified to give out medical advise.  What I can do, though, is share some interesting tid bits with you.
Today's tid bit is from a magazine I never read before and may never read again.  The magazine is called 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' which is apparently quite a bit.  However, in an article called 'The gain without the pain' we are advised that walking gives us as many if not more benefits than does running.
I'm all for that. 
Here's what I learned.  Walking uses up about the same amount of energy as running.  Walking is as good for our over all health as is running.  Walking is really good for our hearts.  We don't have to be speed walkers to gain health benefits and we don't have to walk all day either.  Thirty minutes broken up into three ten minute walks works as well as thirty solid minutes.
Hmm.  Maybe I will read that magazine again

We Remember and We Honor

 We fly the flags and we sing the songs for all of our fallen.

"No Man's Land" is a song written in 1976 by Scottish-Austrian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle about a young man who died at the age of nineteen in World War I.  In his words, It's a song that was written about the military cemeteries in Flanders and Northern France.  In 1976 my wife and I went to three or four of those military cemeteries and saw all the young solders."
According to the song and the grave stone, Willie McBride died when he was nineteen years old.  I never met him.




I never met this young man, either -- a casualty of World War II.  He died in the South Pacific when he was also nineteen years old.

He was my uncle and his name was Jerry Walker.

Please Heal

This week’s Torah portion Behaa’lot’kha (Num. 8:1 – 12:16) has many remarkable events, but perhaps none more remarkable than Aaron’s and Miriam’s confrontation with their brother, Moses.  They speak against Moses because he married a Cushite woman. God’s anger is stirred against Aaron and Miriam, and he calls all three of them into the Tent of Meeting, backing Moses completely and thoroughly.  And when God’s presence left the sanctuary, Miriam was stricken with leprosy, covered in snow-white scales.  And Moses cried out to God with a simple but fervent five-word prayer: “God, please heal her, please.”

In his early years, Miriam saved Moses’ life by placing him in the basket of reeds to avoid Pharaoh’s death decree for newborn Israelite boys.  Now, Moses’ heartfelt prayer moves God to heal Miriam, and God does heal her.

The prayer that Moses uttered to heal his sister is still used as a prayer of healing today.  Songwriter Debbie Friedman, of blessed memory, wrote a lovely melody for it, and it is inscribed on wall hangings, amulets, scarves, blankets and other objects of comfort.   It is the best we can do for those we love: to pray these simple words for what we desperately want.

Another Day To Live In Infamy

On this day in 1886 Dr. John Styth Pemberton invented a carbonated beverage that would later be named Coca-Cola.  On this infamous day, Dr. Pemberton carried a jug of his 'stuff' down the street to Jacobs' Pharmacy and asked the folks there to sample it.  They pronounced it 'excellent'.  The pharmacy started selling it for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink.  Customers declared the drink to be both "Delicious and Refreshing."
The good doctor's creativity went beyond liquid concoctions into advertising.  He decided that two Cs would look good together and started calling the drink Coca-Cola.

The first newspaper ad for Coca-Cola soon appeared in The Atlanta Journal, inviting thirsty citizens to try "the new and popular soda fountain drink." During the first year, sales averaged a nine drinks per day.  (Just an fyi-in 2010 worldwide 1.7 billion servings of Coca-Cola were sold each day.)
The good doctor never made much money from his creation because he gradually sold off all of his rights until he had none.
And so it is that today we might choose to hoist one in honor of Dr John Styth Pemberton, the little known pharmacist who gave us a dietary staple.
Before we hoist too many, though, we might consider that Dr. Pemberton was born in 1831 and died a mere 57 years later in 1888.  While he survived the Civil War serving in the Confederate Army he might not have done so well enjoying his own drink.

Thank you, Delaware

Delaware has made same sex marriage legal.  Little, tiny Delaware -- a David to the hate mongering Goliath.  And still we wonder what is happening to California.  It's too late to lead the pack but at least this once follow me state might at least decide to join it.