Everything You Want to Know About “Pink Slime”

If you’ve turned on the news or read the paper in the past few months, you’ve undoubtedly run across reports of “pink slime.” Pink slime is the term that has been given to lean, finely textured beef, commonly served in school lunchrooms and fast-food restaurants. Before you choose to jump aboard the pink slime bandwagon, there are some things you need to know:

1. What is Pink Slime?

Pink slime is a product made by mixing beef scraps, connective tissue and ammonium hydroxide. Though the FDA regards the product as “generally safe,” many restaurants, including Burger King and Taco Bell, have stopped using the product. The great pink slime debate kicked off when the USDA announced plans to purchase seven million pounds of the product for the national school lunch program.
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Weston A Price Nutrition and Physical Degeneration – Reflections on Reading Weston Price

I recently read an extraordinary and thought-provoking book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, DDS. In the 1930′s Price, a dentist from Cleveland, Ohio, became interested in the deteriorating dental and general health of his patients and of modern Americans. He noticed that each new generation seemed to have more cavities and more dental problems such as crowded teeth and narrow bridge formation, accompanied by an increase in other health problems, such as allergies, fatigue, behavioral problems and asthma.

Suspecting that the cause of this worsening dental and overall health might be nutritional and suspecting the many processed foods in his patient’s diets, Price decided to travel the world to examine firsthand cultures still eating their traditional diets, devoid of modern, processed foods. He eventually studied fourteen different cultures, including a remote island in Scotland, tribes in Africa, Eskimos in Alaska, Polynesian islands, and a village high in the Alps of Switzerland.
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Re-Thinking Fluorides: Fluoride Toothpaste, Water Fluoridation Toxicity, Fluoride Dangers

The fluoride controversy has been going on for years, completely unbeknownst to me until a few months ago. As I mentioned in my post about my summer reading list, a longtime reader of Telling It Like It Is emailed me with a long list of websites, news article links, books about fluoride dangers and documentary videos discussing the high levels of fluoride in water supplies, fluoridated foods and drinks consumed on a daily basis by children and adults alike.

As a dental professional for over 21 years, but not an actual dentist nor a dental hygienist, the email I received caused me to really delve deeply into the controversy surrounding what fluoride is, where fluoride comes from and if its naturally occurring or man-made, the real cause of dental fluorosis, why the water fluoridation issue is such a heated debate, etc.
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