Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem

[Wifezilla]

While the health problems may seem separate, my stance is that grains cause health problems in and of themselves. The melamine problem is just a bonus reason to avoid them.

 

[Sylvie]

I am a vegetarian who is under the care of a Naturopathic doctor. I eat only organic, including whole grains such as whole rice or oat berries. Absolutely nothing processed, ground, rolled or altered in any way. I have no blood pressure, cholesterol, or weight issues anymore and have never felt better. I do eat eggs and that is why I now have chickens. Monitoring my food supply requires diligence because it is tricky.

A friend worked for a company that shipped it's carcinogenic residue to other companies by semi tankers. These same tankers ship milk and are required to clean the tanks after the residue. They are just picking up return loads with the residue to make as much money as they can by always running a load. Who verifies that they are safely cleaned? The lab guys? They fudge numbers on samples more often than you think. And there is always a chemical that can be added to cover something else up so that the lab tests show the numbers they want. This is why I don't trust manufacturers and do my best to avoid their crappola. It isn't just the profit driven CEO and stockholders that mess up the food supply; this can occur anywhere in the chain, anywhere in the world.
What are they shipping in Melamine tankers when the Melamine has been dropped off at a processing plant and the tankers have melamine residual coating clinging to the insides of them. And, yes I mean here in the US

 

[freemotion]

Wifezilla, I am glad you found out that grains were causing you so many health problems and can now avoid them.

It seems like you are saying that all grains are bad for all people....if so, I have to disagree. Although I heartily agree with the dangerous processing that most grains go through before they end up in our grocery stores. This is why you will not find any products containing white flour in my house. Most of the grains in my cupboard are whole grains stored in glass jars, and are ground into flour a day before being eaten.

We have started soaking our whole-grain flour for 24 hours before cooking to neutralize the phytates and have seen great improvements in digestive issues. All grains contain germination inhibitors, mostly in the seedcoat or bran, that keep the seed from sprouting with contact with slight dampness. The seed needs soaking to sprout and grow. This ensures that some seed will winter over and sprout in the spring.

These natural chemicals also inhibit digestion. They can be removed from most grains by simply soaking the grain for 24 hours in an acidic solution, by adding vinegar or yogurt or whey to the soaking liquid and keeping it at room temperature for 12-24 hours. I do this for my animals, too. My older horse benefited greatly from this in her last year or so, when she started to get thin (teeth ok, no worms, etc) and it reversed by soaking her grains. I was even able to feed her whole grains. She was protected from the horse feed recall, as she was eating whole oats by then.

Tonight, we had chicken soup with homemade noodles. I made the dough on Friday, rolled the noodles on Saturday, and put them on racks to dry, made soup and roasted veggies tonight.....yum! And no digestive problems are in store for tomorrow, as I used to suffer from IBS.

Making my own dog and cat food thankfully got us through the melamine scare without problems. My chickens get whole grains, too, and in the winter I soak them, I started this week for this winter. I don't soak the rest of the year as it becomes a small part of their diet with their extensive free-ranging in a rich pasture much too large for them. Spoiled girls!

I say all this to hopefully inspire others to explore their options. Many people with celiac's can add grains back into their diets if treated properly. Bone broths aid in digestion as well, and are amazingly yummy, too!

It is easier than it sounds, too!

 

[poltroon]

Chickens fed melamine will lay eggs that contain melamine. Indeed, there is a big to-do about this in China right now; melamine was found in Chinese eggs.

No one tested American eggs for melamine, but it's likely that during the pet food scare that some chicken feed also contained melamine.

Children in China are developing kidney stones at an alarming rate; this has been blamed on melamine. Children in the US are also developing kidney stones at an unusual rate; here it is blamed on salt. (I find it hard to believe that American kids are eating more salt today than was typical in the 70's when I was a child.)

Part of the problem with feed is that there are very few inspections on it. If it's for animals, there is much more leeway. No one has thought much about the next stage. In addition, the raw ingredients may change hands many times. Your feed mill buys grain from an American supplier. But they may in turn buy it from another American company, and that company in turn may have imported it from China.

Animal feed is required to have certain kinds of labels that include rough ingredients and certain crude protein, etc percentages. I would avoid any feed that contains any kind of gluten.

My feed comes from a mill in Central California. After this latest scare, I emailed them and got a reply that they use only north american grains. I was reassured, but I'll keep watching that label. The companies seem to know why we're asking the question and paying closer attention.

 

[LynneP]

If you can, buy from local feed mills. I realize this isn't possible for most, we are very lucky that the provincial co-op feedmaster is nearby and he can show and tell you all the ingredients in his feeds. Use food grade DE, too! I wish I had the same option with the food I eat. We try to buy as locally as possible, from folks we know. Winter purchases are the most difficult, here.

 

[Chicabee19]

Grains in any form (refined or unrefined) can be a problem for people who suffer from inflammatory, autoimmune, digestive, blood-sugar, and other health issues.

The more unrefined the grain, the better it is for your health.

Certainly we eat far too many carbs in the unrefined forms of grain popular in this country! Most of them have been stripped of any nutritional value, which is why they have to be "fortified" after processing.

 

[luckitri]

I also had IBS, heartburn and do suffer a plethora of auto-immune conditions. I tried being raw vegan for awhile which meant in part that I eliminated all wheat and cheese and made alot of flax crackers. The IBS and heartburn was healed from this. I simply cannot maintain that diet however. It is a lot of work and you need the equipment to provide variety and I still have to make regular food for my family and my energy to make all this food and my willpower to refuse their food - well it is just too much for me to maintain. I also had some tumor growths recede as well as become less painful, lost weight, and lost a growth on my face and many other benefits.


We are told from some sources that almost everything is imported from China - it is very difficult to figure out. I tried to google the supplier for my region "Kelley's" and have not found an on-line presence for them - yet.

Ooops! I forgot to mention the GM material. For years we did not know why starving people or war-torn nations would refuse our food offers. They know things we don't know. Like some of the corn has antibiotic resistance engineered into it (forgot the reason why) and so the fear is that ingesting those corn chips will create antibiotic resistance in the humans. Others have things inserted in them that create previously unknown proteins that are known to carry/help create cancer. I am eating the corn chips but would rather not. I get them for a dollar a bag at the store. At the Health Food Store they are $5.99 for the same size bag and I simply cannot do it.

So when it comes to genetically modified grains - is that what my chickens are getting? Is it dangerous for them? Will it be passed on to us in the eggs or meat?

In other parts of the world the GM crops have to be grown in secret due to vandalism. People are much more informed and they do act on the information. . . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3470877/GM-crops-to-be-grown-in-secret.html

 

[HeadHen]

There is a place in Texas called Coyote Creek Feed Mill. He is an older gentleman who educated himself when he was diagnosed with cancer, and he beat it. In his research he was motivated to grow his own ingredients for his flock's feed so that he could control everything that went into it. He is all organic and up on health benefits (tea composting, etc.). The feed sounds amazing and he does sell it too! I would love to get some, but can't find anyone around me that carries it (they all have contracts with the big feed companies and are not supposed to carry anything else). I wanted to get a bulk order delivered but I think it would go bad before I could use it all. Someone needs to find a way to help all us small flock owners access alternatives! Maybe the competition will make the big companies change their ways.

 

[freemotion]

Even if we cannot find a way to feed our hens 100% of the type of feed we want to, we can still give the mega-companies a kick in the butt. If we all, thousands of us, reduce our purchases from them by getting creative and feeding part of the flock's diet with something else....anything else!....our chickens are healthier and we reduce our dependence on the garbage that is made available to us.

Some ideas: Fruit from unsprayed trees. I know many people who have old apple trees on their property and they don't spray them, and don't use the gnarly apples that drop and rot on the ground. I pick up boxes and keep them in a cool place for many weeks, picking through them weekly and feeding all that are developing soft spots.

Pumpkins and squashes that are used as fall decorations! Put the word out and pick them up before they get frosted. Put one in the coop, cut it in half with a shovel first.

Grow giant sunflowers and grain amaranth in a section of your garden. Popcorn is fun, too, and you can get the seeds from your bag of popcorn.

I have 7 burlap bags of "lawn hay" that I made this past summer from spreading my clippings (untreated lawn) on the driveway and turning them until very dry before bagging in saved feedsacks.

Anyone else have ideas?

 

[Wifezilla]

Freemotion,

You are correct that spouting or soaking is the way to go if you want to use grains. The Weston Price Foundation recommends this too. It is like soy. Fermented soy is no problem, but soy flour, oils, etc... well, it isn't even food as far as I am concerned.

I guess I should have said grains are unhealthy AS THEY ARE USED BY THE AVERAGE AMERICAN

As for giving the mega-corps a kick in the pants....heck yeah!!!


ANd as for the pumpkins....I only paint my pumpkins. After halloween, those suckers get chopped baked and the seeds roasted. Wasting pumpkin is a crime! LOL