A few links

[teddywolf]

An article describing several alternatives to plain old sugar and how they work. Here's a hint, bakers: chemical action still matters. These things are probably better for regular cooking than baking. Date sugar gets pretty high marks, although its application is limited as it seems to be hydrophobic.

Oh, and if you thought the GOP doesn't like unions, you don't know the half of it. Several GOP legislators want to deny food stamps to families that contain one or more workers on strike.

A good reason to stick to chicken raised without antibiotics: routine administration of such drugs are leading to highly drug resistant strains of bacteria. *sigh* Time to keep the wallet open for organic chickens and non-factory farms the butcher trusts. Gotta pay for health at the front end or out the back end - if we're lucky.

Ladies, if you're pregnant please don't go to South Dakota. They are now mandating that pregnant women who want an abortion must first go to a "pregnancy help center" to get advice and possible preaching on how to keep your baby to term - . They've also put in a 3 day waiting period between seeing an abortion provider and actually getting an abortion, the longest wait time in the nation. You can probably get a gun faster than an abortion. Oh wait, no "probably" about it. I wonder how this measure creates jobs.

Comments

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Aye. We still haven't defined bartending yet :P

[magid.livejournal.com]

In re chickens raised with antibiotics, I was just watching the first eps of St. Elsewhere (yeah, tv bingeing...), and one of the characters talked about hormones in meat likely were causing earlier puberty, etc, which impressed me for an 80s show. (Also, appalled that there was smoking inside the hospital, by patients, even.)

Er, not exactly on topic....

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Nu, health counts; and conversation goes whither it goes. I have my own suspicions about the hormones in the food supply. I have been trying to move more of my meat eating over to organic chicken, or chickens from farms where I have some idea of the provenance of the bird. I am sorry to say that industrial non-organic kosher meats are less appealing than they used to be in the wake of the Rubashkin's scandal of recent memory - clearly kashrut is applied more in the technical sense than the spiritual in some of these cases, and I can't say as I approve. Then again, I have also been finding some kashered meats too salty recently.

I am *so* glad smoking is mostly relegated to outdoors. There's been a firestorm on my campus about a proposed smoking ban everywhere on campus.

[louisadkins.livejournal.com]

I'm having to reduce my sugars/carbs, so the sweetener article was of definite interest. Thanks for the heads up.

[pbrim.livejournal.com]

Re the anti-biotic resistance: If I recall correctly from my dad, a feed-yard veterinarian, this is why there are distinctions made between human and animal antibiotics -- that is, there is a list of antibiotics that may be used with farm/feedlot animals whether for routine treatment, addition to feed or treatment for specific infections. These are never prescribed for humans and it is forbidden (illegal?) to give human antibiotics to animals in the food-chain. The idea is that even if bacteria become resistant to animal antibiotics, they would still be susceptible to human antibiotics.

Now how well this is enforced, and whether there is any cross action I can't say, but there has been some awareness of the problem and efforts to deal with it since the late 60's/ear;y 70's at least

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Also, too, The Onion is on point (http://www.theonion.com/articles/south-dakota-enacts-3day-abortion-waiting-period,19816/) -- see the first pseudoquote.

[alandd.livejournal.com]

How does this create jobs?

1) If they create jobs while Obama is president, "the terrorists win", no?

2) The 'advice and [likely] preaching' has to be done by SOMEONE... There's your job right there!

*sigh*