Olive Oil Fraud?

Hi,

It seems that olive oil fraud has been around since day 0001 but it only came to my attention today in an e-mail from a guy who wants to sell me real extra virgin olive oil. I get so many e-mails from websites that are trying to sell me something that I don't often pay attention to them anymore, but this one caught my eye. I did not want to read the advertising for his expensive product so I searched out the source of information in an article that he referred to which was written in 2007 in The New Yorker magazine. (Here is a link if you are interested: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mueller )

After reading about all the corruption and mislabeling I am about to go off of extra virgin olive oil. There is no guarantee that what I am buying at my local grocery store, whether it be Kroger or Whole Foods, is even olive oil. It could be anything from soy bean oil to hazelnut oil. I only started using extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) because it was supposed to be so healthy for my body -- if I cannot be sure that what I am buying is actually EVOO, then why bother?

I can use extra virgin coconut oil (EVCO) instead. I tried using it in the salad dressing that I make myself and it actually tasted better than the EVOO from the plastic bottle under my counter. Plastic Bottle. That should be a dead give away that what is inside could be anything and the longer it sits (even if it actually is EVOO) the more rancid it gets. I don't need it. Out she goes.

The only problem I foresee with using EVCO for salad dressing is that in the winter time it tends to harden while sitting on the counter in my kitchen. It needs to be above about 75 degrees in order for it to be liquid form which works well in the pourable salad dressing. I've been considering placing my bottle of dressing near the pilot light on my gas stove to keep it at a liquid temperature but I have no idea what that will do to my dressing. Perhaps I should put it in a different shaped container so I can spoon it out. I really don't know and will have to wait for winter time to experiment with that.

In the mean time, it is summer and it works fine as a good replacement. So there you have it. My personal workaround for the corruption in the olive oil industry.

You know what this reminds me of? The Mormon church which I grew up in. They actually tell their people not to trust the Bible because parts of it have been changed over the years. They only read the King James Version (at least when I was a member that's what they did) and they believed that parts of it were corrupt. To me, even at the time, that meant that since I had no way of knowing which parts were supposedly corrupt and which parts were accurate I could trust none of it. What a mess.

I'm glad I found out the truth and became a Christian who can read and trust all of the Bible from cover to cover. I have found the evidence that I needed to ease and clear my mind concerning the Bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls give strong evidence that the Books in the Bible we are reading now are nearly identical to the ones stored away for three thousand years and hidden in a cave. There are other proofs that I've read about too, so I don't worry about it anymore. I know the Bible is the word of God, and that is what I stand on. It is so much more "clean" to trust what I have investigated and found to be authentic. It actually eases my mind and assuages my soul.

My best source of information about the authenticity of the Bible came from a book written by Simon Greenleaf -- here is a link to Amazon.com where you can look inside http://www.amazon.com/The-Testimony-Evangelists-Examined-Evidence/dp/0825427479.

It's only about eight dollars so it won't break the bank. But I must warn you, it is probably not for the casual reader. It is quite interesting to me and very well written in my opinion, but some people don't like technical nor precise reading matter. I like it, expressly for that reason. When I was done looking through his eyes, I no longer had questions about whether the New Testament was authentic or whether I could trust the words of the Apostles which were written there.

Back to the typical fodder of this blog: I went to see my doctor on Thursday but ended up not seeing her at all. I ended up simply walking out of the office and not one person even noticed it or said a thing to me. Not even a friendly "Goodbye." I'll be choosing a new primary care physician from my insurance list, soon. It was an experience that I probably won't forget.

Before I went I knew that my only current health problem that needed to be addressed was my high blood pressure. When I measured it on the morning of the appointment it was about twenty points higher on the upper number than usual so I already knew it was going to be sky high in the office. Of course dreading that, makes it worse, but I did not want to miss the appointment, so I went. As I waited for them to call me, I tried to do deep breathing and relaxation to lower it. It is hard for me to relax in the doctor's office but I did my best.

When the perky little girl came and got me and lead me back to the room to wait for the nurse practitioner (I had never really seen the doctor there.) I tried to continue to relax myself, but she wanted to chit chat so I was polite and cheerful. She walked me into the room, sat me down, tore the paper off of the examination table and pulled the blood pressure machine over to me. It all happened so fast I had no chance to breath and the number she got was pretty outrageous. She cheerfully said she would measure it again later and left the room. I got no chance to try to get anything under control and simply sat and waited to see my NP.

As I waited I got out my journal which I always take with me and was reading some things to relax me and the door opened up and another young nurse came in. She too rushed about and wanted to take my BP by hand this time. I know that the cuffs that they have don't work on my upper arm which is really oversized. They not only won't measure me, it is often extremely painful for me to undergo their trying to get it to work over and over, again, so I asked that she take it on my forearm instead of my upper arm. She said she did not know how to do that, so I was stuck. I rolled up my sleeve and asked for an arm support knowing that if they leave my arm in the air and I have to hold it up, that raises my blood pressure, too.

She pulled out the doctor's stool and sat down so I could rest my arm on her knee and quickly put the cuff on my arm and started to pump. As she pumped the pain just got worse and worse until I said that I could not take any more pressure and she immediately stopped pumping and let it go. This begins to ease the pain but it does not stop until they take the cuff off. So she let it down and said she got the lower number but did not get the upper one and started to pump it up again. Of course my arm was already in pain and she started pumping it up again harder and harder. At a certain point, I could not take the pain any more and saw that she was oblivious to my torture so I simply reached over with my other hand and undid the cuff as I explained that it was simply way too painful for me.

She actually jumped up off of the stool, leaving it in front of me, and ran out of the room, leaving the door open. The next thing I heard was her talking about me to someone in the hallway as if I had committed a crime. She seemed very shocked. I suppose she never ran into someone before who believes that they are in charge of their own body and not the nurse or the doctor. Well, when I heard her talking about me, I realized that I needed to get out of there before they wanted to torture me some more -- but I really wanted to talk to the NP, so when I made the decision to leave, I did it slowly. I carefully put my gloves and glasses on and got out my keys and waited. I sat there a few moments waiting but no one came in to talk to me.

I slowly stood up, fully expecting to see my NP coming into the room, but when I got to the door way and looked out, all I could see was the shocked nurse still talking to some other nurse farther down the corridor. So I got my walking stick and started to move slowly down the hall, fully expecting someone to approach me. No one even noticed me. I walked past the check out desk which was empty and pushed the green button to open the door and walked out. I did it all slowly in case someone wanted to say anything to me but no one came after me, and I just left. I then knew I would need to find another doctor.

I'm not asking for agreement that I did the right thing. Perhaps it was the wrong thing. As I've been thinking about it, I've come up with reasons to justify finding another doctor. For one thing, I really have never once even seen the doctor there, I don't even know what he looks like. I'd rather go to a doctor that I can see and talk to.

Their BP equipment is faulty and even from the comments of the nurses using it, it seems that they have a hard time using it. I've also never liked having to carry my urine specimen in an open container -- my previous doctor had cups with caps that prevented spillage or contamination. And when they take blood from me, it is in the middle of the nurses station rather than in a private place.

Those things may not seem like much, but I had been putting up with all that because I liked my NP, but I really don't like being treated like I am "cattle." I really do think that, all things together, I will just find another doctor.

And about the HBP. I know how to lower my BP. It is with walking. So I shall manage it with walking. The only time in my entire life that I had normal blood pressure was after I had started walking a long time ago. I also saw how my BP came down when I did a stress test a few years ago so I know that walking will make the difference. It makes me wonder why my water arerobics has done nothing for the problem. I had been hoping it would, but my BP seems to be staying particularly high, so I will start the walking thing and see if that still helps.

In the mean time, I want to find a doctor with his eye on his patients and not on his bottom line or the elegance of his office. I really did not like the "factory" format they had so maybe I can find a more personal doctor. I'd really like to go back to my old one, but she does not take medicare, so I'll keep looking.

BTW I was surprised to see a weight loss this morning. I'm below 318 today. Still losing weight. Thank you Lord Jesus!!

Be back soon,

Marcia