Mini Vent (or No, Seriously What the Hell?!)

Cockroach milk is the superfood the world’s been waiting for

-New York Post July 2016

First of all, ew. Just ew. Second, how the hell do you milk a cockroach? I really hope this is a hoax, but even if it is there are some people out there who are going to believe it and start chowing down on cockroaches.

Don’t get me wrong. Bugs are amazing and are a major staple in some places. But perhaps you mean “cricket flour”? Which is actually is a thing. It does’t taste very good, but people make energy bars out of it. Nobody eats energy bars for the taste anyway.

Again advertisers are throwing around the word “superfood” which is advertiser speak for “anything better for you than a cheese burger”. I get that food companies have it hard. It’s not like the latest I-Phone or tablet where people are going to buy more than they need and stand in line for hours to do it. I have a smart phone, a laptop, and a tablet like a good little consumer. In the food industry you have a lot of competition and people usually eat the same amount of food. You’re not going to get people to each more food than they already do. So, the question is, how do you make food “sexy”?

Exotic superfood you’ve never heard of with magical cancer fighting properties. Boom! Millions of dollars in sales. First of all, these foods often come from developing countries who don’t have regulations on pesticides, don’t have EPA standards, and are usually a local staple.

For example, quinoa. I am not a fan of the taste because I think it’s really bland actually. Also, quinoa is the rice equivalent to the local population in South America. Suddenly millions of Americans want this “superfood” and it jacks up the price. Now many locals can’t even afford what was a staple food for them. The really sad part is just plain old rice and beans is just as good if not better. Black beans and rice is one of the easiest recipes to make, it’s a super cheap meal if you’re a college student, and it does everything quinoa does without robbing people of an important food staple that’s part of their culture.

Blueberries are definitely a superfood that’s overlooked. Local produce sold at farmer’s markets are superfoods. Spinach has been known as a “superfood” for years, but we only buy one type in grocery stores because that’s the kind that travels and stores well. There are several kinds of local variations that get overlooked because they have a shorter shelf life. You could probably grow those variations in a garden at home.

The key to a “super” diet is variety and a little common sense. Take that money you would have spent on fast food and throw together an easy meal. My cooking skills are nonexistent really, but one of my favorite dishes is one I got from a Tai restaurant. It’s just pan fried veggies and a ton of garlic. Simple, easy, and delicious.

Snake Oil (or “I really just want to rant about health for a minute”)

One health food fad that really irked me when it was at it peak was chia seeds. My literal reaction when my coworkers told me about this was, “Wait, you mean the seeds from those Chia pet things? That’s what you’re eating?” because it struck me as a pretty weird coincidence. Think about it. Suddenly the company stops showing chia pet ads (like seriously who bought those anyway?) which I remember being on all the time and starts selling the seeds as a “superfood”. Also, nobody could really give me a straight answer on what exactly the seeds were supposed to do.

Fiber and antioxidants, apparently. Oookay. This is where I do that thing that irritates my coworkers to no end. The thing where I say, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” meaning sources. After spending years having to defend my opinion I basically have Google Scholar as my homepage. I might suck at making friends, but I keep some smart acquaintances in the form of Master’s and Doctorate students. “Oh, you read that on facebook? Well I got five webpages including the Washington Post that says that click-bait post is a load of bull.” And then I wonder why I don’t have any friends.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anywho, fiber isn’t my issue. My issue is with the magic word “antioxidants”. You keep using that word; I don’t think you know what it means. That’s okay, I hated chemistry too. There’s the mentality that an antioxidant rich diet is going to protect you from cancer which is not true. There is NO SUCH THING as a cancer prevention diet. Advertisers just like to make you think there is.

There is a significant deficient in nutrition research and there is nothing that’s been published that has promising results for a “cancer prevention diet”. All we have is the “don’t eat this thing that’s everywhere, shoved in your face, greasy, sugary, over processed goodness that makes up 90% of what’s in your local grocery store” diet. When I’m walking past the shelves at my work (I work at a grocery store) I’m mentally going (salt, sugar, sugar, sugar, salt, sugar) because US food really only comes in two flavors.

So, what exactly are antioxidants? Well, hopefully you remember from your high school biology and chemistry classes that the human body is a complex organism, but one of the main important processes is “making” energy. Since energy can’t be created out of nothing, the body uses chemistry to convert “fuel” (food) into an energy the body can use. Since there’s no such thing as a “perfect” conversion, the chemistry process is always going to have byproducts. Heat is usually always a byproduct, a few other things we don’t care at the moment, oh, and “Free radicals”. (Cues dramatic music)

Free radicals is another one of those terms that everyone’s heard of, but they don’t really know what that means.

Free radicals are unstable elements that come spinning off any oxygen-using chemical reaction in the body. They are unstable because they are missing an electron and, in a bid to restabilise themselves, they steal an electron from elsewhere. This could be from the fats in cell membranes or from your DNA. The damage they do when bullying other elements into handing over an electron is called oxidative stress, and this can be associated with heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
–The Guardian, Feb 2015

Sounds awful right? Except free radicals also play a small part in the immune system by helping against invading bacteria and viruses which also happen to have electrons too. To prevent any real serious damage to cells body makes it’s own antioxidants. The antioxidants found in chia seeds and other plants are different than the ones we make for ourselves so they might not even work the way advertisers are telling use they do. Nutrition studies are very hard to conduct and find funding for so actual scientists aren’t saying chia seeds are magical. The best I’ve been able to find is “Well, it’s probably not going to hurt you.” three emails later. (Yeah, I know the dissertation’s not going to write itself, but my sanity is important too!)

A good nutrition study will last for years. This study had 10,000 participants who were studied for 4 years. I can’t even even follow a diet for a week without breaking down and buying a donut and that’s one study. Think about how many fad diets have come and gone since then.

So anytime somebody tells me about this “amazing” superfood I won’t believe. Well, guess what. I don’t believe it. I know there was no ten year study to back up that claim. I know the FDA can’t do a damn thing about it unless somebody dies. No, seriously. People can literately sell poison in a bottle without putting all the “nutrition facts” on the label and the FDA can’t force it off the market until somebody dies from it first. Those daily vitamins you take everyday? A) They do nothing because you get most of your nutritional needs from your food anyway. B) I sure hope as hell they were honest on that label because C) You won’t know it’s bad for you until it’s too late.

This is not the same paranoia that prevents parents from vaccinating their kids because that HAS been thoroughly researched and nobody wants a measles outbreak. No, my paranoia about the health market is that it’s a market. People are there to make money and they’re gambling with people’s health to do it. If you really want a cancer-free diet, maybe you should hold off on the snake oil.

 

Gender Dysphoria from an Agender Perspective

One of the most useful skills I’ve ever picked up was from a Mental Health First Aid course I took as part of a mandatory job training. I had no idea that two years later the person I would be using my training the most on would be myself. I approach Mental Health First Aid the same way I would approach regular First Aid. I would be able to treat a sprained ankle from home, for example, but I would want a professional to treat a broken ankle. Currently my gender dysphoria is like a sprained ankle; hurts like the dickens, but is still manageable.

The problem is, just like a sprain, one wrong twist and I’m left hobbling along gingerly for days. The most recent incident was triggered by mostly harmless comments from my coworkers. The first being, “Why do have to be so aggressive?/I don’t like your attitude”. Alone those comments are hurtful, but not enough to cause days of emotional grief. The second catalyst was another coworker and I were talking about meditation and how he’s using meditation to have “out of body experiences”. It just hit me out of nowhere that “out of body experience” is exactly how I describe looking at myself in the mirror. The idea that someone was purposely trying to do what I feel on a daily basis was the “wrong twist” that sent me on the latest spiral.

The hardest thing for me about a bad dysphoria incident is the spiraling thoughts and the anxiety that comes with it. I’ll usually alternate between being sad and feeling like a freak to being pissed off at the world. The circling thoughts that I have during that time are definitely not healthy and I have to remind myself to take action to stop spiraling downward. I also get really bad headaches whenever I get mad or upset so I take my mental health very seriously.

First Aid courses love their acronyms. For a sprained ankle the acronym is RICE. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. Keeping the the sprain metaphor I also ‘RICE’ed when I realized how emotionally distressed I was this past week:

REST: Resting was probably the most important step. Since I was at work at the time of the trigger incident, I did calming techniques to tie me over until I could go home and go to bed. I spent a lot of time reading and keeping to myself until I could relax and I made sure to get plenty of sleep. It took work because I was still anxious, but I made resting my priority.
Informed: Secondly I look at my options. What resources to I have available? Who can I reach out to? Most of the job places I’ve worked at have mental health resources if I needed it. Did I need to call in an take a mental health day. Would transitioning physically or socially help? What are my options for that? (I’ll touch more on transitioning a little later.)
Compression: This was actually the first week that I felt like I needed to wear my binder in public. I usually work 9 hour shifts so wearing a binder at work isn’t comfortable. Instead I wore my binder to my night class and it felt amazing. The binder I have is super comfortable (for a few hours at least before I feel like I need to take it off). It’s weird to think that I felt like I could breath easier wearing it.
Engaging with Community: Since I knew I was still feeling bad I talked to some folks in an agender chat room. I love to vent. If I can talk about my problem to somebody and get it off my chest then I feel a million times better. It’s amazing to have that interaction with people who get it, have been there, and can remind me that it does get better. Having a support network in place is one of the best things you can do for your mental/emotional health.

After a few days of taking care of myself I’m feeling much better, but the truth of the matter is my gender dysphoria is probably never going to go away. When I look in the mirror I’ll still feel that “not my body”or “out of body” experience. I don’t think a physical transition would work for me. I’m agender; there isn’t gender to for me to transition into. If there was a way in my culture to look truly androgynous that wasn’t colored by the masculine/feminine, then maybe I would do that, but I don’t want to be seen as a man or a manly girl, tomboy or butch. I don’t want to be seen a girl, feminine, or womanly. I want to be seen as agender.

Maybe if there were nonbinary folks in mainstream media I would feel more comfortable in my own skin. It would be nice to have role models. It would be nice to have something to point to so I could tell my coworkers, “See? That’s just like me.” For now I really have no idea what I can do to get rid of my dysphoria for good. It’s a problem, but for the moment it’s a manageable one. That’s just going to have to be good enough even if, occasionally, it really hurts.

 

My Reaction to the Election

I know this an emotional time for everyone and each person responds in their own way. I knew early on that this was a possible outcome because of the political climate of my area, but I continue to hope for the best. 

I personally feel like fear was the major winner this election because it certainly wasn’t either candidate. Hilary won the popular vote, but now Donald Trump has to spend the next four years doing one of the most stressful jobs on in the world when he could have been living it up in a lavish retirement. He’s 70 years old and I like his running mate even less.

My response is to grieve, yes, but I also want to take action. All through the campaigning I kept asking “geeze, when is it my turn to be an asshole?” Evidently the time is now. I’m just done. I’m done with “asexuality doesn’t exist”, I’m done with “you’re just a cold bitch”, I don’t freaking care what you learned in school, my gender is real. Basically I’m going to be REALLY cranky for the next 4 years and the next person to make a pms joke at my expense is going to get an earful. 

So I think I’m going to be okay. I won’t have any friends left. But I’m going to be okay. 

A zen student asked their teacher, “I am discouraged, what should I do?” and the master said, “Encourage others.”

Here are Progressive Organizations That Need Your Support, Now More Than Ever, in Trump’s America http://www.wmagazine.com/story/progressive-organizations-that-need-your-support-now-more-than-ever-in-trumps-america 

Here’s a bit of encouragement for today.

https://youtu.be/QqvUz0HrNKY “Times They are A-changin” by Bob Dylan

Carnival of Aces for November ’16: Relationship Anarchy

[This is my submission for the Carnival of Aces November 2016 hosted this month by Dee of It’s An Ace Thing for the topic of “relationship anarchy”. The Carnival of Aces is a monthly blogging carnival centered around a particular topic. For more information about the CoA see the >>Master Post<<]

When I first saw the topic for this month I was a little skeptical (having never heard the term before), but after reading into it a little more I can see how relationship anarchy would appeal to many people (including myself). As an aromantic asexual I shy away from the idea of relationships because of the expectations that come with them. We’ve all seen the Hollywood romance model: Boy meets girl, they date, they sex it up, they fight, they make up, sex it up again, roll credits. It’s all very formulaic and I am all for breaking that standard model.

I’m slightly romance-repulsed. If a random person walks up and tries to hit on me I’ll either a) not realize that’s what they’re trying to do or b) internally-freak-out-and-give-them-the-choice-of-solving-three-riddles,-completing-an-impossible-task,-or-going-on-quest. Then to make things even more complicated, I’m a nonbinary gender (agender). So following the standard relationship model does not work for me and my only option really is relationship anarchy.

“What’s the point of a relationship without sex or romance?” Well, just because I don’t feel romantic or sexual attraction doesn’t mean I don’t feel any attraction at all. I still feel sensual attraction. If I were to confess to a ‘sensual-crush’ (and I did that just today actually), I would say, “I want to hug you. You are allowed to enter into my personal space.” and I would consider them an acceptable cuddle-buddy. Words like “dating” freak me out, but despite all that I still want to have healthy and wholesome relationships.

Relationships of all kinds are defined by unwritten rules that dictate what you can and cannot feel and what behavior is considered normal. For me that is very oppressive. I would love to live in a world where my “before everyone else” is a mutual platonic partnership. I would love to live in a world where my “love” for my mentors is just as celebrated and talked about as a romantic love for a significant other would be. I would be over the moon if the social norm was that one of the first questions people ask me is NOT “do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend”?  and instead, “what is your most significant relationship?”

Right now my most significant relationship is with my tai chi mentor because they are making the most positive impact on my life right now. I want to be able to talk about and celebrate that relationship with others, but I can’t because of the social expectations. If I talked about a mentor like I want to people would think it’s weird or they’d mock me for having a “secret crush” when it’s not like that at all. I usually do fall “in love” with my mentors, but it’s always in a non-romantic way. I see those kinds of relationships as reverent and worth celebrating and talking about, but because of our social norms I can’t do exactly that.

I want Hollywood to tell a “Falling in Best Friends” kind of story. I want Hollywood to STOP KILLING OFF THE MENTOR CHARACTERS because that’s the only way they know how to talk about the relationship. I want us as a society to stop worshiping romantic love like it’s the end all, be all way. I believe all kinds of relationships are worth celebrating and talking about. I didn’t have a word for it before, but I guess “relationship anarchy” is what I’ve been wishing for all along.