Why everything we know about the Sun is probably wrong.

Ok, maybe not Everything... 


This post was inspired by a twinge of anger I felt this weekend at the industries that are supposedly looking out for our interests. It will be a little ranty, but also insightful (hopefully) and maybe even rousing. It should make you mad. 


It was a lazy sort of Sunday, the boy was coloring and I was reading an article my Father in-law sent me about the dangers of sunscreen. A day or two before, I had read an article about tanning beds, so this was an interesting coincidence in my inbox. The whole thing got me on a roll.


I am an individual that does not tend lend my trust easily, especially to industry. I find that the Bottom Line is always the bottom line, that the only thing anyone cares about is profit, not what is actually good or bad for consumers. Corporations will tell you anything to make you think you need what they are pandering and will go to great lengths to make sure other industries back them up. If the FDA says it, then it MUST be true, right? Well, the FDA has a lot of explaining to do. Its important to know that it really is "us" vs "them" and that they only care about our checkbooks.


I have pretty fair skin, but my Mom doesn't. She used to use tanning beds until she got a little spot of skin cancer on the bridge of her nose. She stopped and has been very very cautious since, using sunscreen and keeping covered up, etc. I have used a tanning bed a time or two, but I wasn't overly fond of the weird smell my skin had after climbing out and I never really devoted myself to it enough to get tan. Of course, it was common knowledge anyway that tanning beds caused cancer and were to be avoided. Its easy to believe the hype that the right course of action is to slather up with sunscreen and limit your time in the sun, my moms cancer was proof, right? Well... not exactly. 


Turns out tanning beds are a misunderstood creature, and may not be as bad for us as we think. Its easy to say that this concept is bull, but really think about it for a second. This article states"


 "In fact, tanning beds are designed to synthesize the perfect conditions of a summer's day, when the UV-rays are balanced to perfectly stimulate the maximum growth of melanin pigment, as well as vitamin D. It is because of these ideal conditions that people can absorb all the UVs and produce all the vitamin D they need in such a short period of time."


Makes sense, so assuming that that is true, we can also assume that not all tanning beds are created equal, and therefore do not perfectly simulate ideal conditions, but the general concept its there; they are designed to simulate the rays of the sun. Does that mean that tanning beds cause cancer? Or more to the point, that the sun does? Because ultimately, this isn't just an attack on tanning beds, its an attack on the actual sun itself. "They" are trying to convince us that the sun is bad for us. 


The Sun. Wait, the sun? The sun, without which we would all certainly perish? The sun, which sustains us and all life on this planet? The frick'n sun... we can't live with out it, but it will give us cancer and we should all be terrified? The answer isn't black & white, but the propaganda that is spewed out via the media on a daily basis would have you believe that it is. Too much exposure, over doing it, going off the deep end... its not good for you, but that is true of EVERYTHING. You can drink too much alcohol, eat too many candy bars, drive a car too fast, text too much and, yes, spend too much time in the sun. Over exposure is bad, but that is why its called over exposure. It it wasn't to much, then it would just be regular exposure and we wouldn't be talking about this.


That leads to the topic of sunscreen. All this talk about the sun and the danger of UV rays, be they organic or artificial, leads many of us to the conclusion that protection from that fiery orb of doom in the sky is our only weapon in the war against cancer. Hide indoors, and if you MUST be outside, cover yourself with a think layer of sunscreen. That is exactly what you are supposed to think. However, stop for a moment and flip that bottle you have in your hands over and take a look at the ingredients. Even if you have "natural" or 'chemical free" lotions, most of them still (oddly enough) contain harmful chemicals. Carcinogenic chemicals. Yes... your sunscreen could be giving you cancer, much more so than the sun. Those chemicals are being absorbed into our skin, into our blood stream, into our organs... so what if we aren't taking that tube and squeezing it into our mouths, its still getting into our systems and causing the same problems it would if we were eating it. That's what the words "for external use only" mean; that this product is not really safe for you, so we don't want you to eat it, ignoring the fact that it will still get into your system if you put it on your body.  This is true of a great many products, not just sunscreen... look at the back of your shampoo bottle sometime. if you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't be using it. Sunless Tanning? I don't think so. Here are some of the side effects that the chemicals in sunscreen can cause [from http://www.skinbiology.com/toxicsunscreens.html ]:

In Women	Endometriosis
	Migrane
	Severe PMS
	Erratic Periods
	Increased Breast and Uterine Cancer
	Fibrocystic breast disease
	Uterine cysts
In Men	Lowered Sperm Counts
	Sexual Identity Confusion - Feminization
	Breast Enlargement
	Smaller then normal penis size
	More testicular cancer
	Undescended testicles
	Block or reduce fetal imprinting of male behavior pattern in brain

Ever get the feeling that everything is out to get you? It shouldn't be this way and it doesn't have to be... "they" want to scare you into not thinking for yourself. In the links to some of the articles I have posted are alternatives options to chemical sunscreen, like antioxidant supplements, dietary recommendations and actual natural sunscreens that don't contain things that will hurt you. Its funny to read that what you eat has more of an effect on your chances of getting cancer than the sun does, but "they" don't want you to know that because then "they" won't make a ton of money off of the cosmetic industry. "They" want you to be afraid... I think anger is a more appropriate emotional response to this.


There is tons more to this argument, factors like the ozone, etc. One of the articles above addresses that briefly, but I urge you to take steps toward discovery on your own. I can type till my fingers hurt, but you won't truly *know* it until you see it for yourself. 


So, Sara, what does it all mean? Well, its this. Don't believe everything "they" tell you just because its "them" saying it. "They" do not have your interests at heart. "They" only care about the Bottom Line... that is, how much money they stand to make. Its hard to believe anything anyone says anymore, but what it boils down to is this: stop waiting for other people to come up with solutions to these problems because the solution they come up with probably only works for them anyway. Someone that wants to sell you something will tell you anything to get you to buy it. There is a ton of information out there for both sides of the argument, but ask yourself which one is going to fatten someones pockets, and which one isn't. The one that isn't is probably your best bet. 


There are some things that just shouldn't be about profit.




~SR~

Greetings, Salutations, and Sweet Introductions

Greetings, and welcome to our little corner of the internet.  As this is primarily a food blog, most of what we will be posting about is food, with the occasional nugget of eco-friendly joy and the off gripe about life in general. On a side note, I (Sara) am a spectacular cook, but I have no experience baking.  I will be posting for your reading pleasure both my triumphs and tragedies, my successes and failures, my FTW’s and FML’s. 

For our inaugural post, we decided cupcakes were the way to go. Cupcakes are ALWAYS the way to go.

Since Stefanie is deeply immersed in her condensed summer class schedule at the moment, I went solo on this one. It was my first real ‘from scratch” baking attempt. No cheating… no shortcuts… all experimentation.  My kitchen will forever be known as the laboratory. Lab-or-a-tory. Like a mad scientist.

So, since we are all perpetually watching our figures, this cake contains only ¾ cup of sugar in the entire batch and is completely gluten free. I’ve Googled it and apparently Vanilla Extract is GF, something to do with the distillation process… however, if you are sensitive, I would use an alternative just in case, or do the research yourself to make sure you are comfortable using it. Neither Stefanie nor myself are gluten intolerant, we just recognize that it is the devil and shouldn’t be in frigg’n EVERYTHING we buy.

But I digress. Here is the recipe for my experimental Butter-Fig cupcakes:

·         1 cup Pureed Fig (preferably fresh (you can also use Dates), but dried will work if you soak them in water overnight… or Rum if you are feeling frisky, but I haven’t tried that yet… and that would make it not GF. You can substitute 1c of raw, organic sugar or 1c of agave syrup if you want a lighter colored cake)  It will be thick. Add 1/3 cup of water to make the pureeing process easier.

·         1/4 cup Butter, room temp

·         2 Eggs

·         2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract

·         1 cup GF Baking Flour  (I used Bobs Red Mill)

·         ½ cup Almond Flour (Also Bobs…)

·         1 3/4 teaspoons Baking Powder (look for a GF brand with no Aluminum; yes BP has gluten in it… I know, right? ug.)

·         3/4 cup Milk (I used half almond and half coconut milk, but you can use regular milk if you want. I just don’t care for cow’s milk so I never have it in the house. To be honest, it doesn’t care for me either…)

Blend together the fig puree and the butter. Your life will be a thousand times easier if you have an electric mixer or even a hand mixer (you know, the ones with the turn crank? I totally want one of those… I used my blender.) Beat the 2 eggs together and add to the butter/fig mix, then toss in the vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, mix the dry stuff together until well incorporated. Now, dump it in the wet stuff. Stir until smooth, adding the milk as you go. This will be a thicker batter, if that makes you uncomfortable, you can add about a ¼ cup more milk, but I wouldn’t mess with it beyond that. I have no idea what will happen.  I’m still new to this.

Preheat your oven to 350 and line a muffin tin with paper liners (this will make 12 cupcakes). You will notice in the photo that I have not used any liners… something else I forgot at the store. Folks with young children will understand this phenomenon. Just grease with a little butter and these babies will fall right out once they’ve cooled. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes. I live just a hair above a mile-high and I took mine out a 22 minutes, and cooking times seem to go up as your elevation does, so definitely check this at 20 minutes, maybe even 15 if you are at sea level. 

Now, for the magic on top. My intention was to make a cream cheese frosting, but since I forgot it at the store and didn’t feel like going back out, I improvised. It’s a little weird, unless you have done this before (but since most of us get our frosting from a tub…) it needs to be “cooked”.

·         2 tablespoons of GF flour

·         ¾ cup of Milk

·         ¾ cup Sugar (or Agave syrup) (I actually did half of each)

·         ¾ cup Butter, room temp

·         1/8 teaspoon of Salt

·         1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Turn you burner to medium heat and put a little milk in a small sauce pan.  Add the flour, stir until a smooth paste forms, then add the rest of the milk and stir constantly until it “boils” (it should only take a couple minutes), then remove from heat and cool. I stuck mine in the fridge while I prepped the rest. Blend together the butter, salt, vanilla extract and sugar (or agave…) until very smooth. Here is where that electric mixer will come in handy again. Add this mixture to the cooled milk mixture and blend some more. It will be creamy and difficult to resist eating right out of the bowl.  The boy (my 1 ½ year old son) thoroughly enjoyed licking the spoon and I didn’t feel guilty in the least.

Once the cupcakes have cooled (they will look a bit like muffins), get that frosting and spread away.  Now, enjoy the fruits of you labor.

The taste test: Interesting. It’s moist, fluffy and light, yet slightly muffiny. Its nice, but very rich, any more than 1 and you will have a tummy ache for sure. I am truly pleased with this neutral cupcake, though it’s not as cupcakey as I would like, gotta tweak the flour ratios.  I think that it’s a good starting point for other flavors… blueberry,  raspberry, strawberry… if you use agave instead of figs, lemon would be a good direction to go. Oh yes. This will get explored.

As this was my first actual time baking anything from scratch, and it happened to be a success, I will try not to let it go to my head.  I couldn’t tell you how long the prep time for this recipe is as I am a stay at home mom and the boy can be quite demanding, this took me about an hour and a half, with many stops and starts. I would suppose you can expect half that, maybe less, especially if you are an experienced baker.

Please, if you try to make this, post your experience in a comment. We’d love to hear how this worked out for others.

~SR~

** A fun aside:

I read an article a while ago on OrganicAuthority that made me so happy. Disney World is giving fast food the boot in favor of cupcakes. There is a sweet (pardon the pun) company that makes cupcakes that are free of refined sugar, gluten-free, wheat-free, soy-free, vegan and kosher. If someone can make a cupcake that captures the attention of a mega-corp like Disney then not only must it be good, but it must serve as an inspiration to us all.