Would You Like Some Carbon Monoxide With Your Fish, Sir?

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A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go on an organic diet, because I had been reading about the fact that much of our food has chemicals in it that cause hunger, weight gain, and other side affects. I had also been talking to my son, who goes to Ecuador a couple of times a year. He maintains that every time he goes down there he drops about 20 pounds or so, in a very short time. His last trip, he took a friend with him and his friend also said that he lost weight as well. We were speculating that Ecuador does not use the herbicides, pesticides, and hormones in their food products such as found in the United States. In my search for "clean" food, I have been trying to find frozen fish that was wild caught, and therefore relatively free from chemicals. I came upon some frozen fish that looked very good in the frozen food counter. I picked it up and looked at the ingredients. Imagine my surprise when the ingredients listed were fish and carbon monoxide. Those were the only two ingredients. It's stated that the carbon monoxide it was to retain color. Since carbon monoxide is a known toxin, it is quite likely that many of the other chemicals used in fish for flavor retention or color enhancement are likewise also toxic. I bought some frozen fish there, but was so preoccupied with the price, I neglected to check and see if it had chemicals in it. After I got it home and was cooking it, I looked on the package and found that indeed it did have some unpronounceable chemical in it for flavor retention. This morning I woke up with a tremendous headache, and I cannot assume that it was not due to the chemicals in the fish. So, the next time you are at the grocery and are looking at the frozen fish, do not assume that all you're looking at is plain fish. Various chemicals or use to soak the fish in after being caught in order to make the fish fillets absorb more water, and this was evident as I cooked my fish last night. Out of 2 pounds of fish fillets, there was only about two servings worth at the end of the cooking. The rest was water and chemicals. So much water was in the fish in fact, that the water level in the frying pan came up to past half of the thickness of the fish. Law requires that fish cannot exceed a certain amount of water weight when it is frozen. This is something like 10 or 15%. Obviously this rule is being broken. The chemicals that are used for flavor and appearance enhancement usually start with the word sodium, which causes the fish to absorb the water around it. In my continued pursuit to find organic produce and other products, it is becoming more difficult to find items that do not have tainted ingredients and who knows what affect these myriads of products are causing in our systems. And when you think that the herbicides and pesticides and other hormones that are applied to our crops are building up in the soils, year after year as they farm the same land over and over. This toxic material called soil is extremely unhealthy, does not have any earthworms and it is continually spoiling the food that is grown in it.