Weight Loss and Diet Blog

I finally get it!  It's not about the antibiotics I take - though I shouldn't be taking antibiotics every time I get a sniffle - it's about the Antibiotics I eat!

Did you know almost everything we EAT and DRINK contains antibiotics?  Animals are being fed antibiotics at low doses to prevent disease and to make them grow larger.  It's mixed in their food!  I knew they were giving them antibiotics, I didn’t know they were feeding them antibiotics.

Animals receiving antibiotics in their feed gain more weight, so it's big money for the cattle and poultry producers.  It's also big money for the drug manufacturers.  70% of all antibiotics sold are sold to the agriculture community.  Big Bucks! 

But it doesn't stop there, we eat those cattle and chickens; we drink the milk, we eat the eggs.  Unfortunately it doesn't stop there either.  After those antibiotics pass through the digestive system of those animals (and us), they find their way into the water systems, and are spread on the vegetables, both to water the plants and as fertilizer.  It's in everything we put on our tables. 

I had, to this point, comforted myself that because I didn't take a lot of antibiotics, I wasn't a part of the problem.  Not so fast, it seems maybe I haven't done enough.

In October 2007 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), they reported there were about 100,000 cases of invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in the United States in 2005, leading to about 18,600 deaths.  Deaths for that same year due to HIV/AIDS were about 17,000.

At my house we're going to be eating a lot more wild Alaskan salmon (don't eat farm raised), and looking for meats raised without antibiotics.   If you've got the freezer space and are able to find a local farmer who will raise and sell grass feed beef, you're all set.

Until next time,
B.J.
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