Lies, Lies, Lies....

One of the things I am becoming more passionate about as I get older is using products that don't contain chemical additives and preservatives; or NOT using or buying products that DO contain these things.
If you stop and think about it even for a minute, you will realize that 99% of the products you buy and love, are manufactured with a veritable cornucopia of chemicals which the manufacturer has to infuse in order for the product to have an extended shelf life.  Now, I realize that the wonder of modern technology has given us the ability to buy products that we don't need to use immediately before it spoils, which makes life easier, saves us money, and even makes certain things safer.  But modern science has also created more research into these products, and it seems to me that the more research there is on what makes up the things we love, the more evidence there is that the things we love contain things that can do us harm.
The best example I can think of is High Fructose Corn Syrup. By itself, HFCS may not be such a bad ingredient. You've all seen the commercials (funded by the Corn Refiner's Association, and other HFCS manufacturing organizations) that claim it's not dangerous, it's made from corn, it's just as safe as sugar, etc et etc. While this may be true to a certain extent, the fact that manufacturers put it in EVERYTHING, sort of cancels out any argument that it might be good for us. I dare you to open your refrigerator or cabinets and look at the list of ingredients on some of the items in there. Here's a hint as to where to start: Ketchup, Barbeque sauce, spaghetti sauce, juice, canned fruit, soda.
I don't want to waste this entire post on HFCS alone though. The whole reason I got inspired to write this in the first place was because I read an article someone shared on FB about "flame retardant" being one of the ingredients in Gatorade.

You can read the article here:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/01/26/theres-flame-retardant-my-gatorade

What pisses me off is that these companies answer the call of consumers who want chemicals removed from their drinks, by researching ways to add DIFFERENT chemicals in order to fool consumers again. 

The bottom line to me, is that I feel like I get lied to everyday by product manufacturers. Through their use of keywords like "natural" or "organic" or even by using seemingly honest phrases like "nutrient-rich" or "heart healthy", they try to fool me into believing the superficial words they plaster on the front of their product labels. They are hoping I don't turn the box/bottle/can/etc around and look at the ingredients that the product is made of. Even more, they hope that I don't do an internet search to learn more about WHAT the ingredients are.   You can do this on your own, I don't have the energy to list some of these ingredients and what they are (maybe later).

This just goes to show that we need to stop buying this crap. The only way we're going to send a real 
message to these companies is if no one buys from them anymore.

Think about the affect that lying has on you, when it comes to people you know. When you discover that someone has been lying to you over and over again, you stop trusting that person right? So why do we seem to make an exception for companies we buy products from? When we discover that PepsiCo dupes us time and time again into believing that products like Gatorade are good for restoring our electrolytes, when actually it is doing more harm than good, why would we continue to trust them by buying their products?  Is it an issue of laziness on our part? i.e. "convenience", Is it our own ignorance? Is it that we just don't know what our alternatives are? 

It takes a lot of research, but it's not hard to do, just search online using "DIY" or "homemade" and chances are you will learn how to make A LOT of the products you love, yourself. And the best part is, they are not only cheaper (if you break down the cost of the ingredients and the number of "servings" you can get out of them), but they do NOT have all the nasties in them that the store bought products have.

I can go on and on about this for hours especially because i've been learning so much about this stuff recently, but i'll let you do some research for yourself. I just wanted to rant about the lies. 

Appropriately Titled...

A former boss loved to proclaim that she uncovered a new layer "of the onion that is Adam", and although I despised her for her poor leadership and overall interpersonal skills, her regular proclamations about me stuck. So while thinking about an appropriate title for this blog, I decided to go with "The Onion's Layers". When you think about it, we are all like onions. After peeling away our initial "skin", we are comprised of layer upon layer of delicious goodness (ok, so maybe this isn't a good way to describe our personalities, but whatever). At our core, we have a heart that contains the ability to grow over and over again and build new layers over existing layers.

There are "layers" of me that only a select group of people in my life ever get to see. At work, people generally only get to see the professional layer. This is probably the toughest; the thickest layer in my proverbial onion. I guard the rest of my layers carefully. Possibly because I've been burned in the past by people I don't completely trust to begin with. My professional layer and my personal layers don't like to intermingle because of this. Sometimes I just don't see the point in showing my other layers to people who aren't crit
ically important to me.  But who knows, I might just need to practice peeling away that outer layer to some of those people as I learn to let go of things or people I can't control.

But you know, that's all part of the growing process for "the onion" anyway. I recently committed myself to be more honest with people around me. I am practicing being more honest with myself, and part of that is to allow people to see all my layers; to not guard myself so much, because well, I have no reason to be ashamed of who I am or what makes me, me.

I really hate being all serious and philosophical like this. I feel like this post is too serious. I love to laugh and I love life, so I have to practice keeping things positive in these posts. I also wanted a place (other than the Facebook demon, as my wife refers to it) that I could share things that interest me, and make up the layers of my "onion".  I hope this whole blogging thing sticks, because it might end up being cathartic or enlightening or something deep like that.