Yappers’ Delight: Centennial Man Suffers From “Popcorn Lung”

You’d think that a person who ate two — sometimes three — bags of buttered popcorn a day would suffer from clogged arteries. But Centennial sofa salesman Wayne Watson became ill with “popcorn lung,” a rare disease that typically affects people working in popcorn factories. Watson lost half his lung capacity after a decade of eating the snack. Popcorn companies now say they are going to remove the culprit ingredient, diacetyl, from their recipes. While Watson recovered this week, commentators on the Denver Post site were out in full force, preaching about the ills of processed food. Here are a few favorite moans, as well as a couple of tips to make your popcorn more savory and less likely to kill you:

If you want another "nasty surprise" about buttery popcorn, try the following experiment: Turn the bag upside down and poke a bunch of small holes in it. Put a folded paper towel on a paper plate and then place the popcorn pouch on it, as you normally would. Microwave it as usual. When you take it out of the oven, you'll be amazed at how much of that "buttery goodness" there actually is! By the way, go ahead and eat the popcorn - - you'll find it tastes better than the non-buttered kind , because the popcorn absorbs some of the flavor while it cooks, but most of the butter ends up on the paper towell instead of in your arteries..

I think that this should be a sign to all that perhaps we rely on the microwave convenience to much these days. Perhaps we should take a step back and see why & what is in all this processed food that companies have taken the liberty to make easire for preparation.

So why in the world would anyone add a chemical to popcorn?? Its not like it needs anything else added, its just a sales gimick to make it taste better and last longer thats not really necessary. Why not just sell it with nothing and let people add thier own flavoring? Its easy enough to cook the un-buttered kind, open the bag, plop in a bit of cold butter, shake it and eat it, which is what I do, plus its cheaper that way and lasts forever before you put the butter on. The same thing goes for juices. Why do they add sugar to them all? Isn't orange or apple or even cranberry juice sweet enough without adding sugar to it? The sweetened ones are always too sweet for me so I avoid them anyway. If I find they are not, I can certainly add sugar or whatever I prefer to sweeten it with later.

Become a label reader. The food industry adds many toxic chemicals and substances made in labs that adversely affect consumers' health. Use the internet to research HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, ASPARATAME (NUTRA SWEET), FOOD COLORINGS and many other chemicals and food additives that are found on labels. Take charge of your own health by purchasing organic products that nourish your body, not poison it. Eat whole, nutritious food instead of prepared products that are loaded with toxic substances. Humans today are exposed to more toxins in one day than their grandparents were in their entire lifetime. One way to counteract this toxic world is to eat fresh, nourishing food.

-- Naomi Zeveloff