Organics in Costa Rica and such

I have to tell you that I love your blog name! Anyway, there are different places you can get the produce & other items depending on where you will be living. The “organic feria” (farmer’s market) has been moved around a bit (San Pedro, Desamparados..), but there are orgs that keep track of where they may be found (see link). If you contact UNED, UCR or UNA (call the extension depts. of these universities), I worked with the farmers thru IICA (in Coronado, SJ)and ask for the Costa Rican offices, but I think the easiest thing is to try this link:

http://www.agriculturaorganica.org/ferias.htm

They had managed to place some of their products in the supermarkets–I really don’t know how that’s going now, but you can always find someone that will tell you how to find these products. Costa Ricans are very generous with that kind of info. Once you make contact, ask them if they are fully organic or not. Certification is a long process and some are just starting so that you can make informed decisions. They will not be using chemicals but the land may still have a ways to go before it can be considered & certified organic. Pura Vida!

Lard is better for you than all the omega 6 oils they typically use in restaurants.
You can peruse this article to see all the lies we’ve been told about saturated fats.
http://www.drcranton.com/nutrition/oiling.htm

Also there is an organic website — http://www.naturastyle.com that has almost everything you would ever want to eat. They even deliver in the San Jose area. I’m trying to get a group of people together from San Ramon so we could put in a big order and see if they would deliver to us.

Besides learning Spanish, learn to cook. It could save your life. Plus when you see the plethora of the most gorgeous fruits and vegetables in the world, you will be inspired.

There is plenty of research that implicates Omega 6 fatty acids in the formation of inflammation in the body, thus leading to heart disease, cancer, and clogged arteries. If you read the article “Oiling of America” (link provided in my post above) you will see that it was money that promoted the use of all kinds of unnatural oils such as canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, and other vegetable oils — none of which are good for you. Look how they demonized coconut oil, which is a saturated fat and a source of medium chain fatty acids. The health benefits of coconut oil are many, and it was used in all bakery products until the soybean or corn oil industry demanded that it be removed. Your brain and your body cannot function without saturated fats. When the majority of the population ate lard and butter there was less heart disease, and contrary to the latest propaganda, most people who suffer heart attacks actually have low cholesterol. It will take two to three years to displace all the omega 6s in your body once you eliminate them from your diet. I’ve been researching diets that prevent breast cancer, and one of the things every single breast cancer expert says is that Omega 6 oils promote a host of diseases, including breast cancer. My grandparents, too, grew their own food, and ate lots of lard and butter, and never went to a doctor, never were sick, never took a medication, and they lived into their late 80s when then died peacefully. My mother also grew a lot of the food we ate growing up, so it’s in my blood to have an awareness about where my food comes from and how it was grown. The prolific consumption of margarina in Costa Rica is troubling, to say the least. I was in a mas x menos one day looking for unsalted butter, and the woman next to me told me in spanish that butter was bad for your heart, and here, take this coupon for a discount on some garbage that Dos Pinos makes. I tried to explain to her as best I could that margarina was an awful thing to eat, that it scars the arteries, leading to plaque build-up, and that she would be healthier if she ate butter instead. Her eyes glazed over because obviously there has been a big campaign in third world countries promoting margarine as good, natural fats as bad.

OK, lard may or may not kill you, however, I would put big money on a bet that the vast majority of people would forgo lard as well as most other mammal meats if they saw the process from live animal to their plate.
Not saying that everybody should be vegetarian.
I’m just saying that there is more to concider then if it is good or bad for US.
BTW, for those of us here in Southern Florida, or anywhere else they have that wonderful Cuban bread that crisps up so nice in the sandwhich press…the bread is full of lard. I just like to put that out there, especially when I see a vegetarian order a veggie burger and veggies on Cuban bread, it’s really good, but it is full of PIG FAT.

Hey UpeCity, I’ve missed hearing from you… I’m not on a bandwagon about lard, my reasoning goes to the point that our grandparents did not have to live in this age of toxicity & artificial chemicals. All animals store much of these toxicities/impurities (and sometimes parasites) in their fat deposits and heat doesn’t really help in most cases. It’s this that makes lard a real problem for me. I have not said anything about coconut oil and I use it. As far as Omega-6 and inflammation, yes, it has been proven to cause that and Omega-3s have been proven to lower the factors that cause inflammation in the body, but if you over do it with the Omega-3, you will lower those factors beyond the balancing threshold they should be at and then you’re going to be ill. You may just slight weaken your immune system (inflammation is a natural immune system response) or you may have a nosebleed or if you’re really unlucky, you might have a stroke and die (as per many different sources including the Mayo Clinic). There is definitely a balance factor that needs to be addressed and previous generations practiced this. They didn’t have the obesity indices that we currently “enjoy.” Our bodies have evolved to eat real food and will have difficulties with anything that we haven’t spent a few million years adapting to. I prefer natural/herbal medicine to chemically prepared ones, but remember that arsenic is a very natural substance and it can also kill you. For the most part of what we eat, we should do so because we feel it will be positive for our bodies and our souls (that’s really very subjective). As for me, I now love chocolate cake even more than I did just a few weeks ago, but I will not stuff myself with it everyday. In the end, how we feel about the food we eat has much more of an impact on us than as just a placebo effect. So if you feel like larding it up, then go right ahead–as for me, I prefer to avoid it, although I do love those Cuban Midnight Sandwiches and I will actually enjoy one once in a blue moon (midnight is the name not the time I eat them at :-)…Long live chocolate cake! (note: one of the best chocolate cakes in CR can be found in Bread & Chocolate in Puerto Viejo de Limon)

There is an organic produce fair or something in Upala sp.? I may have read it in the Tico Times…