Alcohol Can Be A Gas !!

NPR AUDIO ‘TALK OF THE NATION” ALTERNATIVE BIOFUEL

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THE BOOK!

A LITTLE HISTORY

In 1983, David Blume wrote and hosted a 10-part how-to television series called Alcohol as Fuel for KQED, the San Francisco PBS affiliate. He also wrote the definitive how-to book on ethanol, Alcohol Can Be A Gas!, which was going to be sold on the air.

The book was at the printer preparing to go to press, and the first airing of the television series in San Francisco was underway, to be followed by release to 140 PBS stations nationwide. Big Oil got wind of the project and convinced KQED to halt the printing and cancel the release of the series to the rest of PBS.

Although there were lawsuits, KQED’s oil-funded lawyers crushed Blume, and the series ended up locked in KQED’s vault, while the rights to the book went back to Blume. The book sat on the shelf for the past 20 years.

Beginning in 2003, Dave Blume set about updating the book in a big way. He raised money from individuals (not institutions or corporations) to fund his research into the current state of the art in alcohol fuels. He traveled extensively in both the US and Brazil, collecting and documenting innovations and the success of Brazil’s alcohol fuel program. Four years of full-time work with a team of researchers has resulted in a completely new and greatly expanded version of the book.

THE NEW BOOK

Alcohol Can Be a Gas! (subtitled Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century) is an information-dense, highly readable, profusely illustrated manual, covering every aspect of alcohol fuel from history through crops, hands-on fuel production, and vehicle conversion. It’s the first comprehensive book on small- to farm-scale alcohol production and use written in over 90 years.

Internally divided into six books, the single volume contains 640 8.5″ x 11” pages, with more than 500 illustrations, charts, and photos. It sports a 700-word glossary and a full index. It retains the original 1983 foreword by R. Buckminster Fuller. Alcohol Can Be A Gas! is a complete toolbox for farmers, green entrepreneurs, and activists to wrest control of our energy system from the Oilygarchy and put it back in the hands of the public.

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Union Made Clothing !!

 

Blind Blake: Ragtime Guitar’s Foremost Fingerpicker

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Ragtime Guitar’s Foremost Fingerpicker

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Clean Eating Magazine

Clean Eating Magazine

You may not be able to spa in Ojai, California, this winter, but take advantage of the next best thing with an exclusive recipe from the Oaks at Ojai health resort.

 

7 Days Without Plastic…

http://epicfu.com/7days/about the project

Our interview with Sustainable Dave made us start thinking about how much plastic we use and throw away each day. We wanted to know exactly how hard it would be to change our habits. So starting Thursday, August 14th, I’m attempting to go seven full days without using any new plastic at all.

I won’t try to avoid plastic I already have, I’ll just try to stop bringing in NEW plastic. When you think of all the plastic containers, wrappers, liners, cups, bags, etc. in our daily lives, it’ll be tough! It’s very probable that I’ll acquire some new plastic over seven days, so I will make sure to log and keep track of it all.

I’ll be posting daily behind-the-scenes videoblog updates on the EPIC FU blog to let you know how it’s going. But this page will be the place where all the blog posts, videos, photos, and updates will be kept to make it easier to track my progress.

If you want to join in on the project, that would be great too — there’s nothing better than a support team! Start getting mentally prepared and on August 14th start posting your videos, photos, and updates to MIX, your blog, or any place you can. Then send us links or tag it “7dayswithoutplastic” on Flickr or YouTube, so we can include it here and in the show. You don’t have to do it for seven days like me — post information or tips about anything you’re doing to help limit your use of plastic. Every little bit helps!

 

How To: Show your Bookmarks Folders on your Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox | Everybody Go To

How To: Show your Bookmarks Folders on your Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox | Everybody Go To.

 

Building a Local Food Buying Club

Written by John Moody

2009-Mar-27

Real Food from Real Farms The time for locally oriented food distribution systems has never been better. With dramatically rising food costs threatening to break old inflation records, deadly tomatoes and other contaminant-ridden produce filling the shelves of conventional mega-stores, and inhumane animal practices resulting in pollution, disease and consumer danger all garnering more and more mainstream media attention, the average person is finally waking up to the reality of our impoverished, impersonal, imbecilic and unsustainable food system. More important, many are now searching for alternatives. Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leaders, members, supporters and friends, with their accurate knowledge regarding nutrition, farming and other issues, are in a perfect position to help build these alternatives in their communities. We just need to think about how. In the following few pages, we will offer a brief summary of how our local foods buying club started, has grown and changed, and how we handle finding members, farmers and companies to work with, how we manage distribution, share the workload, cover the expenses and structure the leadership. This article is by no means exhaustive, but we hope it will be instructive and encouraging as to what can happen when average individuals band together to bring about community change on many levels. Small Beginnings with a Large Animal Read More

 

How To Burn Stored Body Fat — A Ketosis Primer

http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-to-burn-stored-body-fat-a-ketosis-primer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FoodRenegade+%28Food+Renegade%29

So, how do you tell your body to start burning stored body fat?” my friend and fellow mother asked.
“Cut the carbs,” answered another mom. “I go into ketosis just about every afternoon.”

“Ketosis? Isn’t that bad for you?”

The short answer? No.

I talk to a lot of people who want to lose weight. They try all sorts of things — exercise, calorie restriction, you name it. Sometimes, they lose the weight. Inevitably, they gain it back. That’s because what they’re doing is going on a diet — a temporary fix at best. What they need is a lifestyle change, a perspective shift, a new paradigm. Of course, you all know the paradigm I espouse — a conversion to eating real, traditional foods.

Yet even a conversion to eating real food won’t necessarily help the pounds melt away. If you’re still eating 200 grams of carbohydrates a day — even if they’re “traditional” carbohydrates like sprouted or soaked grains, unrefined sweeteners, etc, you’re not going to lose weight without making some serious changes.

If your body is regularly storing body fat (you gain a little bit of weight each year), then something is wrong with how your body metabolizes food. Let me introduce you to a new concept: the body fat setpoint.

The body fat setpoint is the mass of body fat that your body attempts to defend against changes in either direction. It’s your body’s attempt to maintain homeostasis. This is why if you exercise more, you eat more. It’s also why if you restrict calories, your metabolism slows down to compensate.

Why should you care about the body fat setpoint? From Stephan at Whole Health Source:

We care because this has some very important implications for human obesity. With such a powerful system in place to keep body fat mass in a narrow range, a major departure from that range implies that the system isn’t functioning correctly. In other words, obesity has to result from a defect in the system that regulates body fat, because a properly functioning system would not have allowed that degree of fat gain in the first place.

So yes, we are gaining weight because we eat too many calories relative to energy expended. But why are we eating too many calories? Because the system that should be defending a low fat mass is now defending a high fat mass. Therefore, the solution is not simply to restrict calories, or burn more calories through exercise, but to try to “reset” the system that decides what fat mass to defend. Restricting calories isn’t necessarily a good solution because the body will attempt to defend its setpoint, whether high or low, by increasing hunger and decreasing its metabolic rate. That’s why low-calorie diets, and most diets in general, typically fail in the long term. It’s miserable to fight hunger every day.

So, how do you “reset” the system? How do you train your body to start burning stored body fat?

One word: ketosis.

Ketosis is the state that your body enters into when it starts converting stored fat into ketones to use as fuel for your cells. If you eat plenty of carbohydrates, you will never enter into ketosis. Instead, your body will simply use all that glucose as a fuel.

Is Ketosis Dangerous?

Ketosis has earned a bad name, though. For one thing, your body enters a ketogenic state when it starts starving itself. But if you’re eating plenty of calories and sticking to a nutrient-dense diet, you need not fear starvation. Ketogenesis doesn’t destroy muscle tissue, but is rather the process by which stored fat is turned into ketones — a perfectly usable energy source for every major body system. Others object to ketosis because it gets confused with ketoacidosis, a dangerous state in which the body not only becomes ketogenic, but also causes the blood to become too acidic. If you’re still getting your limited carbohydrates from vegetables and fruits, you need not fear ketoacidosis.

From Mark’s Daily Apple:

Finally, ketogenic diets, which are generally lumped together by critics, have gotten a lot of bad press. While experts have generally recognized their effectiveness for weight loss, very low carb diets that result in ketosis (like the Atkins) have been criticized on health grounds. The problem with these criticisms? They’re based on diets that allow for 20 grams or less of carbohydrates a day. While I believe we are not meant to run primarily on carbohydrate energy, I do believe we depend on the nutrients offered by low carb vegetables and even some low glycemic fruits. A diet of 20 carbohydrate grams simply can’t allow for the plentiful intake of nutrient-rich vegetables.

When your carb intake is low enough, say 50-80 grams a day, ketosis kicks in when it needs to. Over time, this process becomes efficient as the body “unfolds” in its genetic expression. Yet this carb intake is high enough that you can freely include copious amounts of nutrient- (including potassium) rich vegetables to offer the body sufficient nutrition, fiber, and alkalizing minerals.

In other words, when you cut your carbohydrate intake to 50-80 grams per day and still include plenty of vegetables and fruits in your diet, then your body can safely enter into ketosis when it needs to.

Once you’re at your desired weight and you don’t hope to lose anymore body fat, then sticking to anywhere between 100-150 grams of carbohydrates per day will help you maintain your new body fat setpoint.

The glory of thinking this way is that you absolutely never have to count calories! In fact, you probably don’t even have to count grams of carbohydrates. Just avoid grains, sugars, and sweet fruits. If you start craving those foods, eat more saturated fat from traditional sources like ghee, coconut oil, tallow, and lard. (I swear this works!) When you reach your desired weight, give yourself more grace to eat sweeter fruits and the occasional properly treated grain, tuber, or legume.

When you’re in your “maintenance” mode, what you’ll discover is that you’re eating a diet much more in line with traditional cultures around the world — a diet devoid of artificial and processed foods, a diet full of healthy fats from quality sources, a diet rich in fermented and living foods, a diet absent sugar, you get the picture. The exact quantities of meats, vegetables, and fats you eat can vary greatly depending on your cravings and preferences, but one thing will be sure: you won’t ever want to go back to how you ate before.

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

Glycemic Index vs. Glycemic Load

Fat Is Where It’s At

Eat Fat to Lose Fat: A Real-Life Example

Good Fat, Bad Fat — A Video Tutorial

Health Benefits of Raw & Fermented Foods

 

Cod Liver Oil: The Number One Superfood

http://www.trit.us/basicnutrition/codliveroil.html

Doctor Price was right, as usual. Cod liver oil is very good for you, more than you ever knew. Research studies ranging from 1918-2001 give cod liver oil an A+ rating. This marvelous golden oil contains large amounts of elongated omega-3 fatty acids, preformed vitamin A and the sunlight vitamin D, essential nutrients that are hard to obtain in sufficient amounts in the modern diet. Samples may also naturally contain small amounts of the important bone- and blood-maintainer vitamin K.

There is hardly a disease in the books that does not respond well to treatment that includes cod liver oil, and not just infectious diseases but also chronic modern diseases like heart disease and cancer. Cod liver oil provides vitamin D that helps build strong bones in children and helps prevent osteoporosis in adults. The fatty acids in cod liver oil are also very important for the development of the brain and nervous system. “If you want to prevent learning disabilities in your children,” said David Horrobin, distinguished medical and biochemical researcher, “feed them cod liver oil.”

Nordic Naturals – Arctic-D Cod Liver…

Nordic Naturals

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22 Reasons Not To Go Vegetarian…

http://www.westonaprice.org/Twenty-Two-Reasons-Not-to-Go-Vegetarian.html

2. You’ll save your heart

“Cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer in the United States, and the standard American diet (SAD) that’s laden with saturated fat and cholesterol from meat and dairy is largely to blame. Plus, produce contains no saturated fat or cholesterol. Incidentally, cholesterol levels for vegetarians are 14 percent lower than meat eaters”

“Stacks of evidence” now exist to refute the notion that cholesterol levels and consumption of saturated fat have anything to do with heart disease, but this is a convenient theory for promoting vegetable oil consumption at the expense of animal fats. The International Atherosclerosis Project found that vegetarians had just as much atherosclerosis as meat eaters.¹² Vegetarians also have higher levels of homocysteine, a risk marker for heart disease.¹³

The standard American diet is not, unfortunately, “laden with saturated fat and cholesterol.” It is, however, laden with trans fats and refined vegetable oils, both derived from plants, and it is these processed fats and oils that are associated with the increase in heart disease, not saturated animal fats.

 

Cod Liver Oil: Setting the Record Straight

Debate on the merits of cod liver oil has been ricocheting around the internet of late, sparked by a recent posting from Dr. Joseph Mercola, in which he withdrew his recommendation to take cod liver oil. Mercola’s remarks dovetail with establishment bias against this old-fashioned superfood. Cod liver oil has come under attack as a “dangerous” source of vitamin A. And while vitamin A has fallen to the bottom of the Vitamin Hit Parade, vitamin D has risen to the top, with many voices calling for extensive supplementation and an increase in the RDA for the sunshine vitamin.

The establishment view is as follows: the animal form of vitamin A is toxic and also interferes with vitamin D metabolism, so we should avoid foods rich in vitamin A, like liver, organ meats and cod liver oil; we can get all the vitamin A we need from the conversion of carotenes in plants; it is impossible to obtain adequate vitamin D from food, so we need to take vitamin D supplements.

In recent articles, we have put these mistaken notions to rest by showing the extensive scientific literature on the benefits of cod liver oil and vitamin A, as well as on the synergistic-rather than antagonistic-relationship of vitamins A and D. To bolster our premise that vitamin A is not toxic and that vitamin D can be obtained from food sources, we have published many articles on traditional diets, showing the high levels of vitamins A and D in traditional foods. For example, the traditional Scottish diet, described in a recent article, was rich in fish liver oils, organ meats, shellfish and fats, thus corroborating the discoveries of Dr. Weston A. Price, who found that emphasis on foods rich in vitamins A and D was universal among primitive populations.

However, care must be taken in the choice of cod liver oil. Most brands contain synthetic vitamins A and D and many have the wrong ratio of A to D. Please visit the following links for information on cod liver oil, the number one superfood:

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