Bill Clinton... Vegan?

There's been a lot of press lately about Bill Clinton having become a Vegan. If so, that's really great. On TV today he looked pretty trim... he's lost a lot of weight (and all the fat that used to be around his neck) and seems like his energy level is pretty high.

There was also some comment that he occasionally eats fish... now, I know this throws a wrench into the Vegan definition, but I think "Bill, do the best you can... you are looking great!"

Wow! Amy's makes a soy cheese macaroni and cheese and it is great!

I'm so glad I discovered this, after reading about it in one of the Vegan mags online. This comes in single serving units and takes about six minutes in the microwave.

And it is DELICIOUS. The Soy Cheddar Cheese actually tastes like cheddar.


For people who can't tolerate soy cheese, they are also coming out with a Non Dairy Rice Mac & Cheeze that uses a non-soy, non-dairy cheese (I think it's Daiya's cheddar)... this should be on healthfood shelves soon!

UTF Type Foundry: I've started using my picture fonts to punctuate blog postings.

UTF Type Foundry: I've started using my picture fonts to punctuate blog postings.
I guess I'll start using them on Panhandle Vegan postings as well.

Goodbye High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hello Corn Sugar (Signed, Corn Industry)

This is part of a longer article in today's Huffington Post which I suggest you read in order to stay on top of the obesity problem.

Cross posted on Under The LobsterScope.

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten up its image with a new name: corn sugar. The bid to rename the sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association comes as Americans' concerns about health and obesity have sent consumption of high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks but also in bread, cereal and other foods, to a 20-year low. The group applied Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get the "corn sugar" name approved for use on food labels. They hope a new name will ease confusion about about the sweetener. Some people think it is more harmful or more likely to make them obese than sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence. Approval of the new name could take two years, but that's not stopping the industry from using the term now in advertising. Renaming products has succeeded before. For example, low eurcic acid rapeseed oil became much more popular after becoming "canola oil" in 1988. Will shoppers swallow the new name?

Read the rest HERE.

Related Articles

• Goodbye High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hello Corn Sugar (Signed, Corn Industry) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Corn Syrup Producers Want Sweeter Name: Corn Sugar (abcnews.go.com)
• A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup (well.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Summary Box: New name for corn syrup? (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

I just read a really good analysis of McDonald's "real fruit" smoothies...

Go here and see if you can take the amount of sugar they put into this stuff:
http://spoonfulofsugarfree.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/mcdonalds-real-fruit-smoothies

If the outrageous sugar content turns you off, Alex puts some great Smoothie recipes in her article... cheaper and MUCH less sugar:

Smoothie Ideas:
~I love making smoothies all the time! They are quick and easy to bring. Just throw the ingredients in a blender, and take it to go in a cup! I make mine by putting frozen fruit (or fresh) in the blender, fill it with juice, water, milk substitute, and add other miscellaneous items like spices, extracts, or protein powder

• PiNa Colada: coconut milk, pineapple, banana
• Chocolate-Dipped Strawberry
• Strawberry Mango
• Chocolate Peanut Butter: cocoa powder (or chocolate protein powder), milk, peanut butter, banana
• All the fruit in your pantry smoothie: and add milk and juice!
• Peachy: peaches, papaya, mango, orange juice
• Orange julius: orange juice, ice, milk
• Chai smoothie: banana, milk, cinnamon, chilled chai tea

The possibilities are endless!

Sustainable Shepherdstown to show "Age of Stupid"

"The Age of Stupid," a British environmental film made in 2009, will be presented by local environmental group Sustainable Shepherdstown on Friday, September 10 at 7 p.m. at the Byrd Center Auditorium at Shepherd University. The film runs 89 minutes and is free of charge.Oscar-winning actor Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, The Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055 who asks: Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?

Runaway climate change has ravaged the planet by 2055. Pete plays the founder of The Global Archive, a storage facility located in the (now melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity's achievements in the hope that the planet might one day be habitable again. He pulls together clips of "archive" news and documentary from 1950-2008 to build a message showing what went wrong and why. He focuses on six human stories: Alvin DuVernay, is a paleontogolist helping Shell find more oil off the coast of New Orleans. He also rescued more than 100 people after Hurricane Katrina, which, by 2055, is well known as one of the first "major climate change events". Jeh Wadia in Mumbai aims to start-up a new low-cost airline and gets a million Indians flying. Layefa Malemi lives in absolute poverty in a small village in Nigeria from which Shell extracts tens of millions of dollars worth of oil every week. She dreams of becoming a doctor, but must fish in the oil-infested waters for four years to raise the funds. Jamila Bayyoud, aged 8, is an Iraqi refugee living on the streets of Jordan after her home was destroyed - and father killed - during the US-led invasion of 2003. Piers Guy is a windfarm developer from Cornwall fighting the NIMBYs of Middle England. 82-year-old French mountain guide Fernand Pareau has witnessed his beloved Alpine glaciers melt by 150 metres.

"This is a signally important film--a very clever and very powerful reminder of exactly where we stand on this fragile, lovely planet."
Bill McKibben, Author, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

"Think An Inconvenient Truth but with a personality."
Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

Wow! Being a Vegan is paying off...

It is now the beginning of September and I am 10 months into being a Vegan... and I have lost 50 Pounds 0ff my 385 pound start (which means I've lost as much as Marie Osmond did on Nutri-System, but I am still not pretty!)

If I continue this way I should have at least 60 pounds off by the end of my first year (my ultimate goal, as folks who read my stuff know, is 150 pounds... at least another year away and probably two.)

Now it's time to increase the exercise (I can actually move around more than I could when I started. Amazing!)