Welcome to the Lab Rat Digest


In this issue:

I was reading an article on Yahoo today and found out some shocking things about soda. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, the average American drinks the amazing amount of 44.7 gallons of soda in one year! Okay, you are sitting there wondering how much that is?  Imagine filling a small kiddie pool with soda. That means plenty of soda bottles with what I nearly impossible to open bottle caps lying around taking up much needed space on our planet.  Now to the heart of the matter, how does all of this soda affect your body. Get ready to be amazed!
#1: Soda fattens up your organs. When I first read this, I said what? How? It turns out that regular soda drinkers have dramatic increases in harmful hidden fats, including liver fat and skeletal fat. But diet soda won't save you from this tragic fate, the artificial sweeteners and food dyes are capable of causing brain cell damage, hyperactivity plus leaving you more vulnerable to diabetes. Is this scary enough for you my dear reader? Just continue on with your perusing.
#2: Soda contains flame retardants. Sure this may be good news if you are a hard core smoker who tends to fall asleep with a cigarette in hand.  Brominated vegetable oil is the culprit in this episode. It does a wonderful job of keeping the artificial flavoring from separating from the rest of the soda. But you can also get bromide poisoning and maybe have skin lesions, memory loss and nerve disorders. Now see why you can’t remember the last time you drank a soda? It wasn’t that it has such a wonderful, refreshing taste that you have become addicted to it after all! You my nice reader, say enough already? Continue on please.
#3: That nice, refreshing soda is turning you into a lab rat! Yes you heard me right. The problem here is that many sodas are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. So what is wrong with that? This is a man-made compound made mostly from genetically engineered corn. The problem with genetically engineered corn is that there has never been long term safety testing done on these plants. Now do you wonder why you have such a craving for cheese, want to squeak and are starting to grow a tail?
If you want to know more, read the article on Yahoo at: http://health.yahoo.net/experts/eatthis/3-shocking-soda-facts

“The Raven” takes flight today

Today in 1845, Edgar Allen Poe’s poem  “The Raven” is published and begins to take flight into fame. Mister Poe (born Edgar January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) an American author and poet, was best known for his tales of mystery and macabre. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and orphaned at the young age of 3. Two years after the publishing of “The Raven”, his wife died of tuberculosis. I have always considered “The Raven” to be a rather depressing work and after learning of his being orphaned at such an early age, plus losing his wife after a short marriage and rather difficult life, I am not surprised by the fact that he passed away at the young age of 40.
To learn more details of the tragic life of Edgar Allen Poe, see the Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe

There's no time like snow time!

Hello again! It's a beautiful day for a nice 2 inch snowfall in Southern New Hampshire. I tried to get pictures of Mount Monadnock which is 10 miles east of us, but there is not enough sunshine so I wind up with white and no demarcation line on the mountain of where the treeline ends. Oh well you can't have your cake and eat it too. I am very happy that this was not a repeat of the 30 inch snowfall we had on October 29, 2011. That was a bad Halloween trick by Mother Nature. This storm has put an end to the snowless winter we have had so far.

My first post!

I am Carolyn and this is my first post on my first blog. I am still getting the hang of this so please bear with me. I am 48, married to my the love of my life Seamus. I live in a cozy abode with our dog Lucky. He is our child since we can't have children. I love to knit, crochet, latch hook and will try other crafts as they strike my fancy. We collect many cookbooks and other books that interest us.