Traffic keeps getting worse
As a tourist I realize that I am part of the problem. We love Kauai and have been there nine years in a row. The traffic has become intolerable between Kapaa and the Wailua Bridge.
Every year it gets worse. Maybe you could adopt rural Canada’s method by which three lanes are used. Three lanes go for two miles with one side getting two lanes. Then it narrows up to two lanes with each side getting one lane. That goes for one mile and then the other side gets the use of two lanes for two miles and so on and so forth. It is a nifty system.
As it is, it takes almost one hour from Kapaa to the bridge, and that’s deplorable not only for the residents of Kauai but the tourists as well.
I saw a bumper sign while in Kauai that I loved. It said, “If you love Kauai, tell your friends to go to Maui.”
Mahalo to Kauai and the wonderful hospitality we receive even with the rotten traffic problem.
Mary Jo Swanson, Grand Rapids, Minnesota
Give us this day our daily bread
I recently read “Fat Chance,” by Dr. Robert Lustig. He explains that our soaring rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease are all caused by processed foods, with too much sugar and not enough fiber.
We desire food that is tasty, economical and healthy. Unfortunately, especially among low-income people, we choose processed food that is tasty and economical but not healthy. In the end, it is not economical, either, because disease is very expensive.
I am getting sick of watching another local friend here die of complications from diabetes that could be prevented with a high-fiber diet. I believe we can make a major change by using live, fresh-ground grains to make our own healthy breads that are delicious.
It is said that 40 percent of the nutrients in live wheat (wheat berries) are lost just 24 hours after grinding it into flour. It is also said that white flour is so deficient in nutrients that it actually removes nutrients from our bodies.
Wheat berries are very healthy when fresh-ground. They can also be inexpensive. Farmers sell wheat berries for just 10 cents per pound. Twenty-five pound bags can be purchased for around 55 cents per pound on the mainland. If many of us start using wheat berries, local stores will offer it at economical prices.
At our house, we now make fresh bread by putting wheat berries into our Vitamix blender along with other grains like oats, brown rice and flax seed (a super food). In one minute, it is ground into flour.
We then take out the flour and mix the wet ingredients together in the same blender. We fold the wet and dry ingredients together in a bowl and bake it in a pan. We make a variety of breads, including wheat breads, banana breads, pumpkin breads, avocado breads, etc. We use half the recommended sugar in these fruit breads. With fresh fruits included and protein from flax seeds and eggs, these breads can be nearly a complete meal.
Let’s encourage each other with other food ideas that are tasty, economical and healthy. Let’s stop eating so much processed food that sends us to an early grave.
Mark Beeksma, Koloa
Aloha Kakou,
TRAFFIC:
1.) Set all the traffic lights from Kapa’a ABC Store, past Big Save, Safeway, Foodland, Houselots, CocoPalms, Hanamaulu turnoff, Airport, Courthouse, LIHUE Industrial II, and Rice Street, to a GREEN LIGHT setting that allows the Kapa’a Molasses Corridor to accommodate 100 Car Caravans, (CARavans) to pass through at speed limit; and the cars in the shopping centers and cross over intersections to shut off their motors and count the 100 cars going by, or enjoy some radio Relaxing Hawaiian Music.
2.) Make the TRAFFIC CONES stay in place on Kuhio Hwy 24/7.
3.) Stagger County and State and Big Box workers to pau hana from 4 to 5 pm in 15 minute intervals.
With 100 CARavans, 24/7 cones, and Pau Hana Stagger, the only thing people going to miss is TEXTING.
Derek, Jimmie, Ron, Mina, Tulsi,and the Gang of 7; we voted you in to do something: either fix it or replace your advisors, because they no more how…! ! !
Unless you are planning a Double Decker 4 lanes each way Elevated Freeway.
MAHALO for reading,
Charles
Mark…there is no such thing as healthy breads or grains. The end result of consuming these and all simple carbohydrates is spiked blood glucose and insulin. This eventually leads to insulin insensitivity & Type 2 diabetes which in turn leads to cardiovascular disease, a host of other maladies and death.
Dump all carbohydrates except for small amounts leafy green vegetables, cauliflower etc. Eat lots of protein and fat…yes, even saturated fat. Google LCHF, Keto, carnivore diet.
RG DeSoto
RG,
I am no expert, but Dr. Lustig seems to have knowledge that far surpasses the knowledge of the latest fad diet promoters. I recommend the book. He actually gets deep into the science of what causes diabetes, obesity, etc.
Dr. Lustig recommends a diet of 1/4 whole grains, 1/2 fruits and veggies, and 1/4 meats. One problem with meats is that good meats are expensive. Free-range beef and wild fish are expensive. Fruits and veggies are also expensive and don’t really supply enough calories to live on.
Live wheat and other grains can be very inexpensive if more of us would buy them live and grind them fresh ourselves.
I think your idea that all grains are bad is based on processed grains. Dr. Lustig explains how live grains are full of good things for our bodies. The starch is not a problem when it is ground fresh and it includes the proper amount of fiber and wheat germ.
If you have serious science to prove that using fresh-ground live grains is bad for us, I would like to see it.
Aloha
Mark, can you please provide your bread recipes online? Would love to try them!
https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/recipes/whole-wheat-bread
Curious dog,
Here is a vitamix recipe, above. Instead of all wheat in this recipe, I use about 1/2 wheat, 1/6 oats, 1/6 brown rice, and 1/6 flax seed.
You may want to use less flax seed, because it does impart a flavor. Flax seed is loaded with omega 3s, which are good for the heart, etc. Live oats is not that easy to find, either. But I also use rolled oats. Each kind of grain has different good things for us, so it is good to mix it up. This also reduces the wheat gluten, which helps the bread rise more, but many people don’t want too much gluten.
We make flour fresh from the same mix of grains and use it in other recipes like banana bread, etc., with less sugar. No sugar would be better, but a step in the right direction is better than nothing. I will keep an eye out for banana bread recipes with no sugar. Pumpkin bread is also really tasty with all the spices in it. Also, pumpkins are very healthy also.
aloha
Aloha Kakou, Aloha Mark,
It would take several books to adequately respond to all the good stuff you have presented; and they have already been written; and would not fit in my response to your Letter today anyway.
Please allow me to comment otherwise.
Your fantastic home made bread recipe is terrific. May I take issue on one ingredient. SUGAR.
Our loyalty to the Plantations is over…! Sugar, “speed”, Kiddie Krak, whatever you want to call the pandemic food additive that just keeps habitually “bringing you back” for more…has a lot of negative press besides promoting inflammation, a detriment to health in itself; and feeds infection.
At a 3 generation Thanksgiving Dinner of friends after the cake and ice cream Sugar rush” was eaten, the little children turned into something akin to the Whirling Dervish, wow they really got off on all that sugar after the seadation of the turkey’s tryptophan. Even the parents became quite animated. The few “grannies” skipped the sugar rush food and watched in amazement at the happy chaos.
Down to business: and back to sugar…use 50% of the recipe’s sugar? Mark aren’t you talking anti-Obesity and Diabetes and Heart Attack, Stroke, and Cancers? Mark, many people would say 1% added sugar is too much considering the epidemic of fat and obese people, especially kids on Kaua’i.
The food additive “SUGAR” contributes to all of that. When it comes to wheat which is in almost every packaged food, read the label, and mostly refined, meaning nutritionally worthless and robs your body of stored nutrients to use it; please know that there is a natural sugar already in all wheat.
And that sugar found naturally in all wheat is called AMYLOPECTIN “A”.
Amylopectin A is even digested to some degree in your mouth if you chew it long enough, the Amylopectin “A” that is. An enzyme in your saliva called Alpha Amylase converts the sugar Amylopectin A into glucose, in a perfect balance of human need. You see our cells, not our tastebuds need sugar for you to live.
But when you and food manufacturers add any of the 60 known sugars now available to be put in processed foods you get an excess of sugar in your body’s cells. Sadly that’s about every bite of overweight and fat people’s food. Ignorance of food makes ignorance of choice makes ignorance of disease, which you could almost call a conspiracy considering the incomes it makes for some in our society.
When your level of sugar in your cells reaches “full”, your body through the miracle of biochemistry, converts that excess sugar into body fat…becoming obesity and causing the pancreas to become “exhausted” from making all the insulin needed to carry all that sugar to your cells. Insulin is a “pack mule” to carry sugar, just like mules carried sacks of sugar in the early sugar plantation days. As well, the pancreas can run out of the ingredients that make insulin due to too much insulin demand all because you are eating too much sugar…!
So Mark, please do not recommend 50% added sugar, there already is plenty sugar in the wheat and some other grains as well.
Now, getting worse…excess fat in our body manufactures the hormone estrogen…the chain reaction is: too much sugar…too much fat…too much estrogen…hormone balance in the body is a delicate balance not wanting too much or too little. Too much estrogen for women causes more toxic weight gain, water retention, bloating, and excess estrogen is a risk factor for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, blood clots, and stroke and may increase chance of thyroid dysfunction.
There are numerous pills for all these ills but none of the pills remove the cause, which is what you are eating. People need to “curb” their diet, and some even need to throw it under the bus.
55% of Americans regularly take prescription medications and many of those people take up to 4 different medications and see different doctors for different conditions, and take over the counter medications as well. Called Saturation.
While we try to protect our youth with laws that forbid alcohol and tobacco use before they are 21 years old; tobacco leading to lung, lip, mouth, and throat cancer, and organ diseases; and alcohol causing vehicle fatalities, liver disease, and domestic violence; are good reason for these laws of basically FORBIDDANCE.
With the amount of fat and obese children and teens on Kaua’i and probably all of Hawaii, and, with those easily obsevered fat and obese conditions, science knows that means those young people have early stage Heart and Vascular Disease, Diabetes, and hormonal dysfunction and possibility of cancers. Doesn’t this severity of the health of our youth deserve better attention than more chemical pills?
And finally as to estrogen, the female hormone, it stands to reason that men should not have too much estrogen, which too much fat makes too much of, the estrogen.
Many people say Fat and Obese people deserve better.
Mahalo for reading,
Charles
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for your comments. I wrote in my letter that sugar is killing us, so I appreciate your comments. Using half the sugar for pumpkin bread was a compromise with my wife, who did not read the book and does most of the cooking. I was not recommending sugar. I was just stating what we use less than recommended some times. I do think that eating less sugar and more healthy food is a good step in the right direction. The book explains how fiber slows down the release of sugars. So eating less sugar with lots of fiber seems like a step in the right direction.
We don’t use any sugar in our wheat breads or other grain breads.
I expect that we will continue to eat less and less sugar over time, but we don’t have any health problems, so we have not gone cold turkey yet.
Aloha
Charlie:
Your reply was very interesting reading, but I have to break it to you: sugar does not cause a “rush” and turkey does not make you sleepy. Both are myths that just keep being told over and over again!
Aloha Sue, then we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Kids on sugar not only go up quite quickly but their metabolism goes through the sugars rapidly causing a downer response followed by child demand for more sugar, and your knee jerk response to buy ore of the sugar loaded foods you buy…being true for most folks.
The only myth is that sugar does NOT spike ones BLOOD SUGAR THERE IS NO MUTH THAT WHAT GOES UP must come down.
But ask yourself why do 99% of packaged processed foods and drinks have high sugar content. Get sugar high and buy more, Big Food knows that as much as Big Pharm knows the victims will come back for more opioids every time.
Charles.
Aloha Charlie:
Here are 3 links out of a multitude of science that explain the myth. I don’t know how you can disagree with science, unless you are Trump.
https://www.parents.com/recipes/scoop-on-food/say-what-science-says-the-sugar-high-is-a-myth/
https://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyperactivity-myth#1
https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2012/10/31/debunking-a-halloween-myth-sugar-and-hyperactivity/
I don’t see any traffic. It only takes few minutes to get into or out of traffic. So I don’t see any traffic in Lihue side of the island. Kaumuailili Highway. Highway 50 or highway 51
“Traffic” on this island is a perception thing.
Those that have lived here the longest complain the most about how the “traffic” is not “like when I grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s”.
One thing is correct. The County Council better have some long range, strategic plan to make the two lanes in to 3 lanes. It is a complete disgrace that in 2018, this has not been done. Anyone making a left hand turn these days is a safety issue on both lanes, for much of the island. Stop the madness!
P.S. 99% of packaged food have sugar because it makes the food taste better. Just like they all add salt, it makes it taste better. Are you one of those kind of people who thinks that the big companies are all out to get us? If people would just read the the labels before they stuffed the food in their mouths, or gave their kids all of this horrible food, they wouldn’t be so unhealthy. We have choices!