Recently in Junk Food Category

Fractured Paradigm

May 17, 2013

Even as we have an increasing disease burden due to chemicals and pollutants, there is an attempt to push GMOs despite the serious health risks they pose – Dr. Vandana Shiva

Who controls the food supply controls the people- Henry Kissinger

AlterNet

Mother Jones / By Tom Philpott

May 9, 2013

Want some arsenic with your sandwich?

The following article first appeared on Mother Jones. For more great content, click here to subscribe to Mother Jones magazine.

Last week, the European Commission voted to place a two-year moratorium on most uses of neonicotinoid pesticides, on the suspicion that they're contributing to the global crisis in honeybee health (a topic I've touched on here, here, here, and here). Since then, several people have asked me whether Europe's move might inspire the US Environmental Protection Agency to make a similar move—currently, neonics are widely used in several of our most prevalent crops, including corn, soy, cotton, and wheat.

The answer is no. As I reported recently, an agency press officer told me the EU move will have no bearing on the EPA's own reviews of the pesticides, which aren't scheduled for release until 2016 at the earliest.

All of which got me thinking about other food-related substances and practices that are banned in Europe but green-lighted here. Turns out there are lots. Aren't you glad you don't live under the Old World regulatory jackboot, where the authorities deny people's freedom to quaff atrazine-laced drinking water, etc., etc.? Let me know in comments if I'm missing any.

GreenMedInfo

May 2nd 2013

By: Sayer Ji, Founder

Promoted for decades as a "safe" sugar alternative, presumably to prevent or reduce symptoms of diabetes, Splenda (sucralose) has been found to have diabetes-promoting effects in human subjects.

The artificial sweetener sucralose, which is approximately 600 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar), and marketed under a variety of brand names, such as Splenda, Cukren, Nevella and SucraPlus, has recently been found to diabetes-promoting effects in human test subjects, despite containing no calories and being classified as a 'nonutritive sweetener.'

A new study published in the journal Diabetes Care, lead by researchers at the Center for Human Nutrition, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, set out to test the metabolic effects of sucralose in obese subjects who did not use nonnutritive sweeteners.

GreenMedInfo

April 27th 2013

By: Scott Tips, JD

Industry Insensitivity to Health Drives Codex Agenda

By Scott C. Tips

President of the National Health Federation

The hazy, smoggy skies over Beijing during these March days are emblematic of the Codex meetings that the National Health Federation (NHF) has been attending for many days here in China. The Sun only shimmers as a strange, pale orange globe, casting an ethereal, almost futuristic "Bladerunner" look to the cityscape while city residents glide silently past with white face masks and we Codex delegates and staff work inside overheated rooms on international food-additive standards. Given what has transpired, the setting seems apt.

Throughout the week of March 18-22, 2013, the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA) met at the Asia Hotel in Beijing, China, chaired by Dr. Junshi Chen of the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, to consider hundreds of food additives, some of which are innocuous, even healthful, others of which are most decidedly toxic. The problem is that many of the Codex delegates cannot discern the difference between the two, the haziness of their thinking working in some sort of bizarre parallel to the opaque weather outdoors.

GreenMedInfo

PreventDisease

April 11, 2013

by MARCO TORRES

That’s the conclusion of a large cohort study from the Netherlands which compared generational shifts in a range of well established metabolic risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Assessing the trends, the investigators concluded that “the more recently born generations are doing worse”, and warn “that the prevalence of metabolic risk factors and the lifelong exposure to them have increased and probably will continue to increase”.

Life expectancy at birth rose by a few years for both men and women in the last two decades of the 20th century. This has come at an enormous cost in the quality of life of our elders, for they are suffering with more pain and greater disability than ever before in last 15 years of life. People globally are living longer but chronic debilitating conditions are becoming more prevalent.

A recent Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 involved 486 authors in 50 countries who aimed to offer a comprehensive update on diseases and injuries since the last such report in 1990. It found the leading risk factor accounting for the disease burden in most developed nations is diet.

In modern medicine everything is defined as toxic so they obsess with the idea that the dose makes the poison. The problem is that not everything is poisonous. Is water? How about clean air, organic food? Well sure one can drown in water and eat too much good food but does that make them poisonous?

Is Coke poisonous? Is it toxic? A New Zealand coroner has linked the death of a 31-year-old woman to her Coca-Cola addiction. The coroner concluded that the sugar and caffeine she got by drinking more than 2.6 gallons of Coca-Cola Classic per day was “a substantial factor” in her death.

GreenMedInfo

March 1st 2013

By: Heidi Stevenson

We keep hearing about different types of cholesterol. It's all nonsense. There's only one cholesterol molecule, so there's only one type of cholesterol. What started this nonsense of types of cholesterol?

Photo from Morgue File, http://morguefile.com

by Heidi Stevenson

Article Concept by Andrej Oljaca

According to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, sugar poses a health risk—contributing to around 35 million deaths globally each year. So high is sugar's toxicity that it should now be considered a potentially toxic substance like alcohol and tobacco. Its link with the onset of diabetes is such that punitive regulations, such as a tax on all foods and drinks that contain "added'' sugar, are now warranted, the researchers concluded. They also recommend banning sales in or near schools, as well as placing age limits on the sale of such products.

Sugar's harmful effects do not stop at diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hyper- and hypoglycemia, GERD and heart disease. Sugar and cancer are locked in a death grip, yet oncologists often fail to do what's necessary to stop their patients from feeding their cancers with sweets.

by: The Liberty Beacon Staff

February 25, 2013

Excitotoxins, as they are appropriately named, are supposed to enhance flavor and excite your taste buds, but this “class” of chemicals overstimulate neuron receptors, which are what allow brain cells to communicate with each other. This causes a firing of impulses at such a rapid rate that they become completely exhausted, and several hours later, these depleted neurons die. This is true cell death, and the parts of the brain that are specifically targeted by excitotoxins are the hypothalamus and temporal lobes, which not only control behavior, emotions, and sleep cycles, but you guessed it, immunity. (http://experiencelife.com/article/excitotoxins/)

Aspartame and MSG stimulate the taste cells in the tongue, causing food flavor to be enhanced, especially in soups, snacks, sauces, gravies, low-fat processed foods, and now aspartame is found in 95 percent of breath mints and chewing gum, even when they’re not “sugar free.” If you regularly experience any or all of the following, it’s about time to question the amount of “excitotoxins” that are swimming through your heart and brain. Do you suffer from migraine headaches, inflammation, unwarranted weight gain, rashes and “crawling skin?” It may all be spurred by genetically modified flavor enhancers.