Sometimes - the most bizarre thoughts just pop into your head don’t they? Here’s one that popped into mine earlier here in the U.K:

Snails have a pretty tough time of it don’t they? Especially if they live in France.

They can’t exactly run away from hunters and their defence mechanism is to hide in their shells, which they are promptly cooked in, with a little garlic & butter which nobody asked them if they like!

Tough life eh? So what little thought popped into your head today - funny, sad or just plain weird ‘where did that come from’ sort of weird. Do tell…..

Hello, from Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, flower smellers. Are you interested in a healthier life? We do have alternatives for disease prevention. We all have an opportunity to contribute to the sustainability of our planet in the process.

Red meat has previously been implicated as cancer producing. Researchers have now unraveled how consuming red meat and milk contributes to tumor growth. According to the results of a new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), when we eat red meat, we’re introducing Neu5Gc (N-glycolylneuraminic acid) into our bodies – a type of sugar molecule. We don’t naturally produce Neu5Gc. The body tries to fight the foreign substance by producing antibodies. The response causes inflammation, in turn promoting cancerous tumor growth…….

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Arvind here from the UK where I have just learnt that here in the UK, supermarkets are banned from selling “ugly” fruit and vegetables which fail to meet EU rules on size and shape.

You can read more of this story here. I assure that this is NOT an early April Fool hoax.

One of our supermarket chains, Sainsbury’s is to challenge this ban. This move could reduce our vegetable prices by up to 40% and cut down on the one-fifth of produce wasted, the retailer said.

Stores are not allowed to use up to 20% of what’s produced in the UK and with the current credit crunch climate, they cannot continue to waste so much food before it even leaves the farms. Allowing the selling of “ugly” fruit will not only save money, it will also reduce waste and support British farmers.

Clearly, this is another clear example of EU regulations gone bonkers!

What do you think? Should we only eat “beautiful” fruit and vegetables or should we be given the chance to buy odd-shaped fruit and veg as they taste just as good?!

And does this kind of blatant “fruitism” and “vegetarianism” go on in your part of the world?

Do share

There has been a fair amount of focus on raw food here in recent times, so now for the opposite.

Whilst living in China one of the regular dining treats I went for was Szechuan style hot pot. There are many types of hot pot, some dating back to the times of Genghis Khan, but Szechuan/Chongqing style is by far the best in my opinion and by far the hottest. Its very simple and involves a pot in the middle of the table and a selection of meats (lamb, beef, duck, frog, eel, etc), vegetables, tofu, noodles and anything else you fancy.

Hot Pot

Szechuan uses a lot of chili, correction it involves more chili than most people have ever seen. The boiling pot in the centre of the table is loaded with chili and chili oil until it resembles a colour similar to red wine. You then cook your food in this chili oil/water mix. The first mouthful numbs the lips slightly but after that its one of the tastiest Chinese dishes you will ever try. Other variations offer a half/half pot with one half spicy the other half none spicy but generally its chili all the way.

My wife and her friend were a little homesick the other day so we decided to break out the hot pot. Only about 20 minutes to prepare from scratch, then we were up and running for the evening. The food is cooked for as long as you want it to be and then dipped into your own bowl which generally contains garlic, ginger, onion, some spicy sauce, chili, whatever you want.

Generally I have a spicy dish every day in one form or another and have begun to struggle with bland food. Lashings of Ginger, garlic, chili and other spices really wake up the taste buds.

What’s your limit on spice? Do you have one, if so why not work your way up, its a real taste explosion and the spice brings out the flavour of whatever you are eating.

Hello flower people,

Several weeks ago I commented here about blood types and how that might affect one’s health or diet. So, I looked and I looked and I looked and couldn’t really find anything on the subject. There does not appear to be a lot of research into the area of blood types and whether it can affect the way your body reacts to food, the environment or even medical treatments. Everyone knows you don’t mix blood types in transfusions, but do they know if your blood type can affect the treatment you receive?

I did find that book called, ‘Eat Right 4 Your Type’ by Dr. Peter D’Adamo. Although I haven’t read it to know just what’s in the book. From what I’ve seen online, this is a pretty controversial idea, many individuals claim that these diets do work to improve their health and their weight, while many experts are pointing out that there isn’t a lot of real research that’s been done on the subject of blood types and food.

I did come across one golden nugget of research conducted by Drs Joseph K. Neumann and collegues in a paper titled ‘Effects of Stress and Blood Type on Cortisol and VLDL Toxicity Preventing Activity’. They found a connection between your blood type and stress reaction. Apparently people with certain blood types react more quickly to stressful situations and recover more quickly.

Basically, there isn’t really a lot of research out there that looks at blood type on something more than a transfusion scale. It does seem to effect the body’s reaction sometimes, but we won’t really know how or in relation to what until more research is completed.

My learning from this: Take blood type treatments, diets and ideas with a grain of salt until you find the truth.

I’ve been off-colour for a while now here in the UK - then the bolt out of the blue about Gilbert’s Syndrome the other week. Now after some more tests involving lots of needles the doctor smiled and told me:

“You’re allergic to Chicken Curry and you can never eat it again. To do so will shorten your life span considerably and you’ll die a horrible, squirming on the floor, holding-your-stomach death….”

Hi folks - thankfully a nightmare from which I awoke earlier this morning (well the curry ban bit anyway) - Phew! Close or what?

So what favourite food would you hate to be told you couldn’t eat anymore? Or drink for that matter? Would you break that ban or stick to it if it was a matter of life or death?

Remember back in May 2008 when we featured Raw Foodie Angela Stokes during our spell of flushing out in the Thai Spa that led to a 66 comment thread?

We awarded her a flowers smeller badge and are pleased to report that she recently featured on CNN AFTER we’d written up her Flower Smeller article! She lost 160 pounds in body weight in 2 years on a totally raw food diet!

TWO MILLION hits later Angela is now enjoying being the biggest health story of the year on CNN after her remarkable transformation. On the day it was released, it was THE most viewed story on CNN and also sent both her name and the search term ‘Raw Food Diet’ into the top ten ‘Hot Trend’ things that people were searching for on Google. Maybe we’ll be seeing more of her here?

We’ve linked her image & her flower smeller badge to her blog at the RawReform E-Journal. TWO MILLION HITS! ALL these curious new minds investigating raw foods - what could you cut out of your diet and would you consider going RAW?

Do tell, any opinions on raw food are welcome here and CONGRATULATIONS to flower smeller Angela Stokes!

Thanks to blogcatalog regular HelloAnnie for alerting GO! Smell the flowers on the dangers of Chinese milk products. Last month investigators believed dairy farmers added a dangerous chemical to milk that was linked to kidney stones in dozens of babies and 3 deaths in China’s latest product safety problem.

The government vowed ’serious punishment’ last month after China’s biggest milk powder producer recalled 700 tonnes of baby formula. The official Xinhua News Agency said the power was tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical used in plastics that contaminated pet food in 2007.

Melamine has no nutritional value but is high in Nitrogen, making products with it appear higher in protein. Suppliers trying to cut costs are believed to have added the toxic chemical to watered down milk to cover up the resulting protein deficiency. Latest news is that Chinese milk imports are now under keener scrutiny but is it enough?

Only today I’ve heard of consignments of children’s sweets being held up at the Dubai Port as they ‘May contain traces of milk’ on the back of this recent news.

What can be done to protect consumers and are measured like banning chocolate taking this too far? Comments welcomed.

Arvind here flower people, enjoying a beautiful sunny autumnal day here in the UK today, having just had a leisurely (i.e. lazy!) breakfast. The leaves on the trees have begun to turn brown before they disperse for another year and the copper beech tree outside my house looks quite majestic.

To get my day off to a healthy start, I feasted this morning on freshly made mung bean sprouts.

It is quite easy to make your own bean sprouts at home.

Bean sprouts are considered to be a “super food” as they contain a lot of enzymes and high levels of anti-oxidants. They are also packed with proteins, vitamins, minerals and are easily digestible.

Being a vegetarian I take great care in souring the right food for me and being Indian, I have been brought up on mung beans.

The sprouts are a “living” food and by eating them raw you will be able to absorb the healthy enzymes and amino acids created in the germination process and you will not be destroying all the goodness - the perfect start to my day.

Wherever you are in the world, vegetarian or not, what is your ideal food to start off your day? Let me know!

Arvind here back from almost becoming a werewolf over the weekend.

I am allergic to sunflower seeds and have been extremely careful over the last few years to avoid them in salads etc. However at the weekend at a so called Festival of Life, I bought a “Health” bar and was assured that it did not contain any sunflower seeds.

Well, I had a couple of small bites on the way home and by the time I had parked the car I could sense a rash coming up. Luckily I had some anti-histamine tablets at home but these normally take a few hours to kick in.

In the meantime, I had a rash all over and the skin was flaring up and the eyes were swollen. All this happened within just a few minutes - I felt like I was turning into a werewolf!

A few days later I am now recovered and rested but it was quite a frightening experience. All suggestions for a cure most welcome.

So what are you allergic to and how do you get around it? What it YOUR worst experience of turning into a ghastly creature?!