Happy Mission Monday! Fall is the perfect time for families to spend time together outdoors before winter hits and all we want to do is bundle up close to a fire. We want to hear what your favorite activities are to do this time of the year. Is it heading to a pumpkin patch and having a pumpkin carving contest or apple picking with some of your closest friends? Maybe you like to take it easy and spend time watching playoff baseball in the comfort of your home. Our favorite thing about fall is celebrating the organic harvest. What do you like most about this time of year?  We hope you take a moment to play along on Twitter or Facebook.

Today’s challenge: Share with us your favorite spice for this time of year for a chance to win a spice prize pack.

If you’re playing along on Facebook, simply comment in our Mission Monday post before 11:59 p.m. ET tonight to be entered to win!

If you’d like to play along on Twitter, simply tweet us your answer with #wildoatsmission #sweeps by 11:59 p.m. ET today to be entered to win!

Good luck! Full Sweepstakes rules and details can be found here Twitter and Facebook .

My parents’ English friends, Carrie and Richard, came over from the United Kingdom this summer for vacation, and so my mom and dad hosted a fun backyard get together so all their close friends could share in their visit. My father prepared a feast as usual- this time he grilled up some hearty, robust mushrooms, made bright green pesto from the basil he grows in his garden for the shrimp and pasta course, made from scratch a creamy cucumber and yogurt dish called tzatziki, and prepared panzanella, an Italian-style tomato and bread salad. The tomatoes, also from his garden, were so ripe and sweet that they burst with flavor in my mouth; I couldn’t get enough of them. Each of the items he served were so unique that it was impossible to confuse them.

I was talking with Carrie during this delicious, fresh and colorful dinner, about my job as a dietitian, and the struggles I face working with overweight and obese American children. She made a comment regarding this problem, that was something like this, “It’s because of all the brown food they serve in schools here.”

Brown food? I asked her what she meant by this. She proceeded to tell me that most of the foods we serve to our children here is all so highly processed that they all become roughly the same color- golden brown.

I thought about this, and she is right- chicken nuggets, chicken patties, Freedom fries, buns, hamburgers, American cheese, chips, tater tots- the list goes on of ‘brown food’. They all taste exactly the same too- like fat and salt, and not much else. School food items have lost individuality.

It is really sad that the food we feed our children- our next generation, that is meant to thrive and prosper- is so laden with added fats and chemicals, and so highly processed that we can barely tell the difference between the taste and color of each food. To be honest, I find this inexcusable. This must change so that America lives on in a healthy and vibrant way.

We need to stop serving “brown food” to our children as soon as possible. For our sake, “soon” needs be taken very seriously.

Everyone wants to look and feel younger and more vibrant. Curiously, some of the best solutions sometimes have ancient roots. For instance, Dead Sea Salts have been used as far back as Cleopatra times to fight aging. Now, you can bring the powerful benefits of these healing salts straight into your own bathroom to create a healing home-spa experience.

Known the world over for their therapeutic properties, Dead Sea Bath Salts provide all natural help for dry, itchy skin and promote healthy circulation. The miraculous mineral bath salts are also known to be anti-viral, anti-fungal and anti-bacterial to support the body on multiple levels.

Nearly two thousand years ago, Historian Titus Flavius wrote about the benefits of these powerful salts. The salts have a different composition than typical sea salts, which makes them hydrating and nurturing to the skin. Furthermore, these special salts contain magnesium, potassium, calcium chloride and bromides. These beneficial nutrients are said to have many positive effects on the skin and even help heal conditions including acne, eczema, and seborrhea.

Not only are Dead Sea Salts used for the skin, but they also are used as a therapy for other conditions including fighting stress and combating hair loss. You can find Dead Sea Salts in the bulk aisle at your neighborhood health food store or as a part of a number of beauty and therapeutic products.

Since this is my second post about my husband and I poisoning each other, you might be thinking there is some kind of problem. There is, – but it’s not that we want to kill each other, at least not this weekend. It’s just that it’s not that hard to do. Here’s how it happened: I like protein for breakfast. Pretty substantial protein usually. It’s Sunday and I’m thinking, “…I guess he’s not brining me breakfast in bed.” Actually what I thought was, “It would be nice to grill something.” So I send him out on a manly mission to light up the grill. We have some lovely organic beef all thawed. I decide some asparagus and tomato would be good with that, maybe a little mozzarella and fresh basil… I remember that the last time we grilled, I used this Greek seasoning that a friend had recommended for salmon and it was luscious. As I am making the hamburger patties I start anticipating how delicious the meat is going to be, because wow, that salmon was really good… I mean, it was like it was etched into my brain how good it was. And then I thought, ‘That’s weird.’ I suddenly got this little ‘stop’. Reaching for the seasoning I start reading through the ingredients. Monosodium Glutamate was fourth on the list. No wonder my brain was all lit up. Note to self: What is dumber than dumb friend? Me. I pitched the bottle straight in the trash and confessed immediately.

There is a lot of conflicting information out there about MSG, and it has been around a long time, but in my opinion that does not make it safe or good. Depending on which studies you believe or who you trust, it can be considered everything from a possible allergen, to a chemical time bomb.

One thing we can say for sure is that it is something that does not occur in nature in that form, and there is a good bit of evidence that it has long term, as well as short-term perils. Dr Mercola calls it, “A widespread and silent killer that’s worse for your health than alcohol, nicotine and many drugs,” Even if it just “might be” true, that’s reason enough for me to avoid it, – if that is even possible! It really is everywhere, and when you are eating out unless you ask, you could be getting dosed unknowingly. The grilling incident was on Sunday, but just the day before, we were out investigating the wares on the mainland and stopped to get something to eat in a small Chinese restaurant. We both left feeling – not right. I had a headache and Ragnar The Explorer said he was feeing, “flushed.” I would like to think it was my cute outfit, but it might also have been that the food had MSG.

An article in How Stuff Works states that, “A double blind study found that MSG exposure caused muscle tightness, fatigue, numbness or tingling, and flushing [Source: Yang]. One study in mice concluded that injections of MSG produced obesity, inactivity and many other hormone fluctuations.”

I am not even going to comment on that hormone fluctuations thing.

So – This is one where the Runes will not help you. Whoever you choose to believe, remember it’s your life and health you are deciding for or against.

Wikipedia – Monosodium Glutamate

The Facts on Monosodium Glutamate

MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets – Dr Mercola

The Dangers of Monosodium Glutamate

Mayo Clinic on MSG

Unless you’re a professional beekeeper, chances are you haven’t heard about funny honey.

I’m talking about honey that isn’t really honey at all. Some of it may be adulterated with other sweeteners like sugar or high fructose corn syrup.

And then there’s the problem of processing of honey via “ultra-filtration,” a method of heating and filtering that removes all pollen. That was first publicized several years ago by Food Safety News after it had tests performed on honey being sold in ten states at numerous retail outlets.

What they found was that more than three-fourths of honey sold in the U.S. was so highly processed as to be totally devoid of pollen. Pollen is a honey’s documentation or fingerprint, the only way to tell where it came from.

Texas A&M anthropology professor Vaughn Bryant is a “melissopalynologist” – that’s an expert detective in identifying pollen and its source. “As far as I know I’m the only person in the U.S. who looks at honey to try and identify where it comes from,” Bryant said. “There is no one in the U.S. Customs who does it, and no one in the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) who does it.”

What Bryant looks for, based on decades of experience in distinguishing it, is pollen, the microscopic specks that bees leave behind in their honey that tell the story of where that honey came from and what those bees foraged on.

Without pollen, the origin of honey is impossible to trace, and origin is of prime importance to both beekeepers and consumers, especially if that honey is from China, the world’s number one honey-producing country.

Chinese honey is cheap and often contaminated with drugs, pesticides or even diluted with cheap sweeteners. In an attempt to keep low-cost Chinese honey from flooding the U.S. market, a big import tariff was imposed in 2001. Since pollen-free honey can’t be traced, a trick called “transshipping,” is used, where Chinese honey is shipped to other countries with fake documents and passed off as coming from a tariff-free location.

In 2011, Food Safety News reported that more than three-fourths of the honey sold in the U.S. (including 100 percent of the honey from Walgreen’s, Rite-Aid and CVS drug stores) was “ultrafilered,” so highly processed that it was totally devoid of pollen. Mark Jensen, president of the American Honey Producers Association, was quoted in the article as saying, “in my judgment, it is pretty safe to assume that any ultra-filtered honey on store shelves is Chinese honey…”

But the solution to this honey problem is really quite simple: buy your honey from local, or regional beekeepers.

To find out who is in your neck of the woods, check out this countrywide “honey finder.” Then you’ll know that what you see inside that jar is really something made in America – by American bees.

http://www.honey.com/honey-locator/