If you REALLY do not want to be exposed to acrylamide, besides french fries, you’ll have to avoid potato chips (or anything kind of cooked potatoes, for that matter), prunes, dried apricots, black olives, cocoa, coffee, corn chips, bread, biscuits, crackers, cookies, cereal (basically anything made with any kind of wheat or grains). And, no, organic doesn’t matter. Acrylamide is present in organic foods at the same level as non-organic products. Acrylamide has also been found in cosmetics and drinking water, so you’ll have to avoid those as well. And those are just the things that we what we know of right now. 40% of foodstuffs/groups have yet to be investigated for acrylamide.

Bottom line, use common sense – eat a normal, healthy diet, rich in antioxidants…and don’t freak out about some uncredited picture you came across on facebook.

From Taste of Home:

Ingredients

1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups frozen lima beans, thawed
2 cups frozen cut green beans, thawed
1 pound smoked sausage, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1 can (16 ounces) baked beans
1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon prepared mustard

Directions

In a 3-qt. slow cooker, layer the carrots, onion, lima beans, green beans, sausage and baked beans. In a small bowl, combine the ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar and mustard; pour over beans. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours or until vegetables are tender. Stir before serving. Yield: 4-6 servings.

If you are able to be an instrument in the hands of God, if you have trust, love, and the patience to accept His plans for you, He restores to you what you have given, one hundred times over. The reign of heaven is already among us, because it is joined with the reign on earth. The good that we do is a goodness that remains forever. This is what I have experienced. A path has opened in front of me, that has become a reality, that cannot yet be grasped. It has begun to take on the dimensions of the love of God. Who would have thought that this path could have opened like this in front of me, a woman who is weak, not very intelligent, and incapable like me? Those who trust in Him will not remain imprisoned in their little plans. I have seen young people who built a cage with their own hands and then fell into desperation because of it. God gave me the strength and patience to follow what He indicated to me day by day and this path has slowly opened wide and has welcomed with open arms many young people in need of love. These arms now embrace the whole world. By now these arms are not only mine, they are the arms of many young people who, after having received the love of God, have decided, like I did, to trust in Him and to give to those in need with that love which they have freely received.

-Mother Elvira Petrozzi
She is the foundress of Comunita Cenacolo, welcoming the lost and desperate in fifty-six fraternities in fourteen countries.

To be able to follow [Christ], it is necessary that the desire to learn to pray grow inside of us. Prayer is an interior light that shines on our wounds and our defects. Every defect that weighs on our conscience is an open wound that bleeds. If we don’t accept the help of others, who see and suffer from our defects every day, we run the risk of accumulating a lot of anger, sadness, and superficiality inside of us.

He does not punish and does not cause fear, because he knows very well what we are like. We shouldn’t blame God when all of the idols that we keep for ourselves, making us slaves, bring us to the point of death, be it physical or spiritual.

We were created, rather, to be good, merciful, patient, and to live a clean and transparent life, in our minds, in our hearts, and in reality. To continue to live in our filth does us harm.

We were created for peace and joy, and if we haven’t yet found them, we have to ask ourselves why, and begin to search for them inside ourselves.

-Sister Elvira Petrozzi

A new biography on Frank Duff was published this summer. See: Frank Duff A Life Story