Researching, was: hey marilyn-

[Guest guest]

At 02:14 PM 2/11/2008, you wrote:

i was wondering if you could

give me some pointers on how you find

info and research stuff online or in general?

you are such a whiz that im gobsmacked and my jaw like totally

drops..

are you part of the borg or something or maybe you have and extra

finger that is constantly typing away like a mad banshee? like a

cartoon? <insert visual here>

Jodi,

No, no Borg here! That's the agri-business and pharmaceutical firms!

" You WILL be assimilated! " and " We'll let you pay us to

make you sick with our miserable, adulterated food, and then we'll let

you pay again for our medicines which may help your symptoms, but we

won't mention that we made you sick with our food products in the first

place because then you'd stop buying them! "

First, I'm an inveterate reader. My husband proposed by suggesting that

we merge our libraries. We have around 12,000 books here in the house.

And yes, I've read most of them. Some more than once. (Current reading:

The Age of Agony, a history of medicine from about 1650-1900.

Despite our exasperation with The System, we can all thank our stars and

garters that we live at the beginning of the 21st century! Current

re-reading, Kurtz's Deryni series, and Elaine Gottschall's

Breaking the Vicious Cycle.)

So, I pick up an incredible amount of information from reading.

Remembering where I found it... gah! <grin>

On line, one of the best skills you can teach yourself is the use of a

good search engine. I use Google; some people like Dogpile. Others have

another favorite. It doesn't really matter which one you use: just learn

how best to make it give you what you want.

The trick is to determine your search terms. For instance, on the

question about the carrots and beta carotene, Misty popped in with a

great list, but my search choice would have been to enter /foods,

" beta carotene " , high/ in the search engine box without the

slashes, of course. Then you look until you find something which has the

information you like.

Or when trying to find out what's in a food, something like /?food?,

composition/ where ?food? is whatever you're looking for.

The USDA food composition site

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

is really handy.

If it's some commercial whatever, look first for the company's web site:

they often have an analysis there, although you may have to dig for it.

(That's one reason, if someone asks about a particular product, I ask for

them to post the web site: it saves a few minutes of hunting and

typing.)

And, of course, there are the SCD web sites which I have book marked so I

can jump to them real quick to check on something. (Always easier to copy

and paste something if it's already been written about.)

I keep a folder of " boiler plates " in my email program of stuff

I've written about. New comers often have similar questions -- I know I

did -- and it helps keep me from groaning, " Not again! " if I

can just pull the basic info and then customize it to the specific

question asked.

Oh, and did I mention that I typo real fast? (And no, the

" typo " was NOT a typo!) Sometimes I really blush over them,

because inevitably, I never see the typo until I've hit the SEND

key!

—

Marilyn

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Undiagnosed IBS since 1976, SCD since 2001

Darn Good SCD Cook

No Human Children

Shadow & Sunny Longhair Dachshund