Tag Archives: health

Is Organic Really Good?

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An article in Slate comments on Whole Foods marketing and reality.

If you’ve ever wondered whether organic food is more than just marketing, read this:

Is Whole Foods Wholesome? by Field Maloney.

I do have a mildly amusing story about organic food, so I may as well tell it here.

Years ago, Mike and I went for a week-long vacation in Hawaii with Mike’s cousin Ricky. Ricky is heavily into health foods and the like — or at least he was back then — and insisted that we buy organic fruit for snacking while we traveled.

I had a terrible cold and we bought some oranges at a supermarket so I could suck down the vitamin C and soothe my sore throat with the juice. They were delicious oranges, sweet and juicy, and I really enjoyed them.

But because Ricky wanted organic fruit, we tracked down an organic food market and bought some extremely ugly — but organically grown — oranges. They were terrible. Tough skins and membranes, dry pulp, and not even sweet. Mike and I refused to eat them. Ricky finally threw them away.

He never bugged us about buying organic again.

Now I’m not trying to say that organic is bad. I’m just saying that it isn’t always good.

Land of the Sun Endurance Ride

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I mark horse butts and time in the riders.

Yesterday was the Wickenburg Horsemen’s Association’s annual Land of the Sun Endurance Ride. And, for the fourth year in a row, I was one of about 80 volunteers enlisted to help out and make the event run smoothly.

For those of you who don’t know what an endurance ride is, our endurance ride is a 25- or 50-mile horseback ride over trails in the Wickenburg area. Endurance riders — people who actually like to cover that many miles on horseback — come from all over the southwest to participate.

The trails are created or maintained and then marked with ribbons by volunteers organized by Robin Ollendick and Nancy Halsey, who manage the whole thing. There are two loops, each of which are 25 miles long. The 25-milers do one loop and the 50-milers do both. There are vet checks, water stops, and check points along the way. There’s food and beverages for riders and horses at the vet checks and riders are required to spend a certain minimum amount of time at each one to ensure the health and well-being of their horses. There are drag riders who follow the last group out and remove the ribbons.

It’s a big deal and a great western event. This year, we started out with 148 riders. A few were pulled early on or on the trail for various reasons — for example, a problem with a horses’s gait or a horse “tying up” — but the vast majority finished their courses.

As a volunteer, I had three official jobs.

The first, on Friday, was to use “paint sticks” to mark numbers on horse butts. Each horse had a number and the number had to be visible by the folks at the check points so each rider could be tracked through the course. We used yellow, pink, or green markers to put the numbers on. The markers are similar to Cray-pas — soft crayon-like markers I used as a kid. But they’re fat — at least an inch and a quarter in diameter — and they’re a pain in the butt (no pun intended) to get off your skin and out from under your nails.

My second job was to make the vegetarian bean soup I make every year for the lunch stop. A lot of the riders are vegetarians and it seems that most other people put some kind of meat in their soups or chilis. I make it without any meat at all. The flavor comes from the root vegetables I include — onions, carrots, turnips, parsnips — as well as celery and leeks. I got it cooking in our camper, which we parked at the rodeo grounds (It’s for sale and we wanted to show it off to potential buyers.), on Saturday and it was ready just in time for lunch.

My third job was to work with Janet, timing in the riders. The first 50-milers, who had left at about 7:00 AM (before dawn!), started showing up at 9:45 AM. That’s 25 miles in 2 hours and 45 minutes. On horseback. Janet wrote down numbers and times on a clipboard while I handed out check in slips with numbers and times. The 50-milers were required to wait for a hour after their horses “pulsed down” before leaving on their second loop. The 25 milers didn’t get check in slips, but they did get champagne. By 1:30, the 50-milers were coming back from their second loop. Janet and I were relieved at 2 PM, when all the excitement was pretty much over.

I didn’t take any pictures yesterday. I was too busy with my jobs. But if Janet sends photos of the winners, I’ll insert them here.

The big surprise: the winner for the 25-milers was a rider on a mule!

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?

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Another example of the religious right taking offense at nothing.

I was born and raised Catholic. I don’t practice it these days, but I still consider myself “Christian.” The winter solstice holiday I celebrate is Christmas.

Almost every year, I send out Christmas cards. Well, to be fair, they’re not all Christmas cards. Some of them are holiday cards. Because not all of my friends celebrate Christmas. Some of them are Jewish and celebrate Chanukah. And I’ll admit that I’m not even sure what some of them celebrate because I don’t go around asking my friends about their religion.

I have a collection of Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays cards. I send them out primarily based on the picture on the card or the sentiment inside the card. I don’t, however, send a Merry Christmas card to someone who I know is Jewish. Or someone who might be Jewish. I do this out of respect for their religious beliefs. After all, why should I wish them a Merry Christmas — a holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, who isn’t anyone terribly special to them — when I could wish them a Happy Holidays?

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the wish I’d like to share is for a happy and healthy holiday season. Isn’t that what we all wish everyone this time of year?

Now I’m definitely not a supporter of George Bush Jr. In fact, I don’t like him at all. But I think he’s taking a lot of undeserved grief with the White House Christmas card debate. I think the card is fine — a Happy Holidays wish covers everyone, without offending anyone. Christmas is a Christian holiday. Not everyone who received the card is Christian. Why should it wish everyone a Merry Christmas? And what the hell is wrong with a Happy Holidays wish?

Come on guys. Is it really that important? Don’t you think homelessness, unemployment, and hunger within this country are more important than the words that appear on a White House Christmas (or Holiday) card? Yet I don’t hear any of the religious right whining about any of that.

And, for the record, it is a Christmas tree. Sheesh. What other holiday puts a pine tree (or a fake pine tree) in people’s living rooms every December?

You: The Owner’s Manual

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Health for Dummies? Leave it on the shelf.

We have a room in our house which we call the Library. It’s our third bedroom, the one with the futon for overflow guests. It’s also the room lined with bookshelves and full of books — other people’s books — I don’t keep the books I’ve written at my house.

I’ve read or plan to read, or refer to or plan to refer to, all of the books on these shelves. But because there’s a limited amount of shelf space and I’m a major supporter of bookstores, I occasionally have to go through my collection and weed out the ones I don’t want to keep. These fall into three categories: 1) read it once and that’s enough, 2) started to read it and didn’t like it enough to finish it, 3) has been replaced with a newer edition. These are the books — many of which are bestsellers — that I donate to my local library. I figure I give them about 50 books like this a year.

The other day, I went through this process and pulled out a dozen books. On the very top of the pile was You: The Owner’s Manual. Mike bought this book for me, thinking it would help me understand the weird things that go on with a person’s body as he/she ages. I’d seen the book in stores and thought the title was catchy. It looked like a good book. Evidently, lots of people have thought the same way, because this book has been selling like crazy and is available everywhere they sell books.

Don’t let the catchy title and “Bestseller” labeling fool you. This book should have been published as Health for Dummies because that’s what it is. There’s very little meat in this thick book. There are far too many poor jokes, cartoonish illustrations, and oversimplified explanations. Like most of the Dummies books I’ve seen. I’d read a chapter about a topic that interested me and get about halfway through it, wondering when the authors were going to stop trying so hard to be funny and deliver some useful information. What a waste of time.

Health is important. It’s not something to be joked about. When I take the time to read something that’s supposed to explain why I feel a certain way or what I can do to feel better, I don’t want to wade through a lot of fluff to get to the meat of the matter. I want immediate gratification. I want facts, plain and simple, delivered with a writing style geared towards someone above a 2nd grade reading level and TV’s Funniest Bloopers mentality.

In other words, I don’t want this book.

The library will take it gladly, even though they probably have a copy. They’re always happy when I hand over a bestseller for their collection. And maybe someone else will get something useful out of the book.

ING

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Real online banking.

One of the things a Robinson helicopter owner has to consider is the big bill that comes after 2200 hours or 12 years of flight (whichever comes first). Robinson made helicopter ownership and maintenance easy by having most limited-life parts end their lives at the same time. When that time comes, the entire helicopter goes in to the factory or an authorized overhaul center for a complete overhaul. When it emerges, it’s like a brand new helicopter.

The only drawback is that this overhaul currently costs $184,000 for a Robinson R44, which is what I own. And that amount goes up by a few thousand dollars every year.

So although my normal maintenance throughout the year is quite low (for a helicopter, anyway), I have to remember that big bill. Every hour I fly, I put aside about $85 in a “reserve” account. Right now, that’s a money market account at my local bank.

The helicopter currently has about 184 hours on its Hobbs meter. Do the math and you’ll see that I already have a pretty good chunk set aside.

The goal, of course, is to keep building up the balance in this account so when the big bill comes along, the money’s there to cover it. Lots of people go the other route — they take out a loan to refinance when the big bill comes. But I hate debt and would rather save up and be prepared.

The problem is that it’s very tempting to spend that money when it’s just sitting around, doing nothing. Especially when it’s only earning 1.25% a year. I was thinking of rolling it into CDs, which are less liquid than a money market account that comes with checks. But the rates are equally dismal at my local bank.

In New Jersey the other day, I got into a conversation about this with Mike’s ex-roommate, Greg. He suggested ING, an online bank. I checked it out last night and learned that I can get 3.5% on a savings account and 4.1% to 4.85% (depending on term) for a CD. Holy cow!

ING can offer such good rates because they have low overhead. They don’t have branches, they don’t offer checking accounts. They have very few banking products. Everything is simple and to the point. Even their Web site is simple.

The last time I had a CD was when my grandfather passed away and my little inheritance — about $15,000 — was tucked away in a CD until I turned 25. My father was the executor of the will and he put the money in a 6 month CD. At the time, inflation was running rampant and CD rates were up around 18%. My father thought the rates would keep going up, so he wanted the money to roll over at a higher rate. But the bottom dropped out and rates descended from the stratosphere. Disappointing, but not a big deal, because I wound up putting most of the money toward the down payment on my first house. But every time I think of CDs, I think about those rates in the late 70s. Today’s rates look pretty bad in comparison.

But 3.5% on a savings account is way better than the .5% my bank offers for savings or the 1.25% I’m getting on my “risky” money market. So last night I opened a savings account for my personal money at ING.

It’s an interesting process. You fill out an online form that asks for the usual information. You also provide information about your checking account, which is linked to your ING savings. ING makes two tiny deposits into your checking account and you tell ING how much those deposits were for. This is so ING can confirm that this is indeed your account. You can then initiate transfers between your ING and checking accounts via ING’s Web site or telephone. There are no fees for your ING account and no minimum balance requirements. Transfers probably take 24-48 hours, so there is a bit of a lag. But if you have a relatively large sum of money, it’s nice to have it sitting someplace where it’ll earn a decent return.

My personal savings fluctuate wildly. Most of my income comes in quarterly, so at the beginning of a quarter, I’ll have a nice, healthy bank balance but, by the end of the quarter, I may be scratching around for loose change. The ING account will work out nicely.

I’ll create a savings account and a CD account for my helicopter overhaul reserve. The CD will be short term — probably six months — and every time it’s ready to roll over, I’ll add a little to it. That’ll keep it intact and growing over the next 11 years or 2016 hours (whichever comes first).

Anyway, if you have a bit of money stashed away and you’d like an FDIC-insured way to earn a decent return on it, you should definitely check out ING.