Slaughterer, Sex worker, shelf filler or lion tamer

Oh phew, the old blog is back without the fancy hair extensions. I will be carefully what buttons I push in future...

I've just been doing my tax return, online of course and just days before the deadline.

I got distracted which is not difficult to do when doing something so engrossing.

Like the classifications of employment.

I mean those lists are long.

Kids have it so lucky nowadays. So many jobs to choose from and literally anything goes.

Now you can be weed controller, weight loss consultant, trolley collector, turf grower, trapper, slaughterer, sex worker, shelf filler, lion tamer and on and on.  I looked for the drug trafficker but I think that's listed under medical professional..(ouch).

When I left school the choices seemed to be well........far less exotic........and there were probably more jobs come to think of it as well.......

Sign of the times

I saw this sign outside a Sports Club - you mean people need to be actually reminded about this?

Made in where?

Once upon a time we were being warned about fake designer goods. Well now it seems we should be aware that people are trying to fake Made in China goods. I bought something yesterday that was clearly a Made in China rip-off. Who'd have thought it!

Fancy a ride

I am loving these bikes that you can hire for short trips around the city. Only problem is that you need to carry a very large handbag to fit your helmet in. And to the person who suggested they hire helmets out as well....two words to you...YUK and NO...

You don't say

I visited this shop yesterday but burst out laughing and had to leave quickly.

I walked in and heard this guy say very loudly to his wife, "Jesus, it looks like a fairy threw up in here". His wife glared at him and almost dragged him out of the shop by his collar....personally, I thought he had a point.

Dear Mr Weather

It is Spring you know. I know you have a hard year but please a little sunshine never goes astray does it? Rain and Hail....(and of course it's a Mr...ever heard of females being so fickle?)

Stalking

Mark Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for........it's amazing how socially acceptable facebook stalking has become...

I found this image on someone's Facebook page, how else? No, of course I wasn't stalking, I was merely browsing.....go on hands up, who is guilty?

Sunday Life - blogging

As you may have noticed, Lilly's Life has a new look.

By accident though.

You now have to click on the post title to see the post in full and to see the comments.

You see I decided to get a bit serious about blogging again just as it's apparently going out of fashion.  It seems that everyone is too busy facebooking and twittering to blog or read blogs these days.

Except me and maybe you too.

Anyway, in my efforts to makeover my blog, I clicked on a Blogger design template called Dynamic Views and .......abracadabra .....I got a little more than I bargained for.

I can't seem to get it back the way it was and I am not sure if I like it. So I'm kind of stuck with it.... just like my new hair cut...

I am hoping they both might grow on me.

Dynamic Views is apparently a unique browsing experience that makes it easier and faster for readers to explore blogs in interactive ways. You can use the Sidebar view, to preview the blog in different ways by using the view selection bar at the top left of the screen.

You might want to try out the new look on your own blog—read the official Blogger Buzz post for more info. Blogger says in the next few weeks we should be able to customise the templates which will be good because I kind of miss a few things I used to have ......including the rest of my hair.

Happy Sunday.

Do you want some neurotoxins with your greens?

Well you might just get them whether you like it or not.

We all know that fresh is best but when it comes to frozen vegetables, I've always been confident that the difference between the two in terms of their vitamins and mineral content is negligible.

However, my sister, bless her, just destroyed that fanciful notion.  

Clearly I must be the last to know or was too busy eating rubbish to pay attention.

I was opening up a bag of frozen spinach a couple of nights ago when my sister rang. I told her what I was making and she asked me to look on the back of the packet and see where the spinach was produced.

It said, Made in New Zealand using local and imported products.

She then asked me the brand and I said McCains (founded in Canada, has 55 production facilities in 12 countries, and sells in 110 countries).

I felt kind of smug thinking how could the combination of McCains and NZ be wrong. It wasn't a no name brand after all.

She then told me to throw the bag in the bin. 

As if.

When she uttered the words likely carcinogen I decided to rethink my dinner plans and ask a few more questions.

The fact is, I was not going to be eating New Zealand produce.

 
If you look at most frozen food packets (anywhere in the world) you have no real idea where the food comes from. It doesn't say. In most cases companies bring the product from China, repackage it, in this case New Zealand and then put it on our shelves with no testing required.

It gets to us via the back door because New Zealand has lax laws. And with no testing we do not know what we are really eating.

Unfortunately,  China appears to have some very questionable growing practices. In fact you can google the horror stories slowly filtering out of China - vegetables being grown in human excrement and watermelons exploding after being sprayed with a growth accelerant. Even the Chinese middle class have started growing their own vegetables, because they don't trust the mass-produced produce.

So, if the Chinese won’t eat the food why are we?

A recent study done by the National Toxics Network tested bags of frozen vegetables from McCains, Heinz and Birdseye, plus Coles and Woolworths home brands. Most were imported from China or New Zealand, and a few were Australian home-grown.

Twenty percent of them came up positive for four nasty chemicals.

The four chemicals found in the vegetables are all pesticides that have been banned.

The worst chemical found was procymidone in the McCain’s Winter Vegetables - a product made in New Zealand from local and imported products.

This chemical has been shown to cause birth defects. The regulator recently updated label instructions to make sure that pregnant women, or women of child-bearing age, don’t come into contact with the chemical. They’re worried about the fact that it can actually stay in the food.

Even more worrying is the fact parathion methyl, an organophosphate, was also found in the same bag of vegetables. It was banned in Australia from July this year, with a two year phase out.

The fact that parathion methyl was found in the same food with the procymidone is concerning because with food residues it’s not necessarily an additive effect - one plus one doesn’t necessarily equal two. Here one plus one can equal ten.

In the Heinz chopped spinach, clearly marked as a product of China, omethoate was found – it’s an organophosphate and is under investigation here.

That’s an extremely dangerous group of chemicals that work by poisoning the nervous system.  

The chemical Permethrin was also found on an Australian product Birdseye Broccoli Florets. Permethrin is a neurotoxin. The US Protection Agency has said it’s a likely carcinogen. It’s also turning up on the international list for concern on hormone disruption - its toxic effects are more profound in children than in adults.

Both McCains and Heinz have left Australia for New Zealand. In fact the only processor of frozen vegetables left in Australia is Simplot - they make Birdseye products. So why have they all left?

Apparently in order to remain competitive their production facilities have to move overseas. Many of the Woolworths Home Brand and Select labels and Coles Smart Buy products are all clearly from China.

At the end of the day these foods are coming onto the Australian dinner tables and people just like me do not even give it a second thought. It's probably safe to eat poison in small quantities right? I am sure that is what these companies and even the regulators would tell us.

Going to the supermarket and buying anything is a leap of faith these days.

In fact it's a lucky dip.

I better work on extending that vegetable garden and putting into practice everything my parents and grandparents have been preaching for years (and out of convenience and supposed lack of time, I ignore) - join the slow food movement and stick to eating food grown in your own local community or better still in your own backyard because at least you know how its grown and that it is actually food.

What do you think?  Are you careful about where you buy your food from? Love to hear your thoughts as this is a problem which affects us all and not just contained to frozen foods.

Have you seen Food Inc - well worth watching - you can see the trailer here.