Recently in Junk Food Category

• Equivalent of 42 litres a week costs him £3,000 a year

• Habit is now so bad he can't leave house without a bottle with him

• 'When I don't have it my family says I'm a nightmare to be around'

A man has told how a lifelong addiction to Diet Coke has come to dominate his life.

Darren Jones, 38, can't go a day without downing 18 cans of the soft drink - the equivalent of 42 litres a week, costing him around £3,000 a year.

Over the past decade his habit has gradually worsened and now he can't leave the house without a bottle of Coca Cola.

I'll have a Coke: Darren Jones, 38, has been downing 18 cans a day for the past ten

years - the equivalent of 42 litres a week

AlterNet
October 26, 2011

Here's the tricks that big breakfast barons use to fool you into believing their products are pesticide and GMO-free.

Photo Credit: D. Sharon Pruitt

A trip to the supermarket is an adventure into a tempting and treacherous jungle. The insatiable hunger for a ready-made breakfast that nourishes our bodies and our social conscience has made our morning bowls of cereal a hiding place for corporate charlatans. A new report, Cereal Crimes, by the Cornucopia Institute discloses the toxic truth about “natural” products and unmasks corporate faces like Kellogg’s hiding behind supposedly “family-run” businesses such as Kashi.

When these breakfast barons forage for profit, we eaters are the prey. But what are the laws of this jungle? And how do we avoid being ripped off by products that are hazardous for our health and our environment? Let’s have a look at some of these corporations’ sneaky strategies.

AHRP
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Vera Sharav

"Consumer protection laws were enacted to regulate product safety and advertising aimed at children... the “best interests of the child” became a touchstone for legal reform. But the 20th century [ ] witnessed a momentous shift, one that would ultimately threaten the welfare of children: the rise of the for-profit corporation."

An Op Ed in The New York Times by Joel Bakan, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, is the author of “Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children,” provides insight into the conflict between laws enacted to protect children's best interest and the newly emerging laws that protect corporate best interests.

This conflict of interest has resulted in devastating consequences: children's best interest--their health and welfare have been sacrificed for corporate profits.

Bakan cites childhood obesity resulting from irresponsible advertising by the purveyors of junk food. And the proliferation of toxic chemicals in children's environment that have undermined children's health. And he cites under-regulated pharmaceutical industry practices, noting that corporate deception led to widespread prescribing of psychotropic drugs for children

(NaturalNews) “If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” – Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994

After two decades of biotech bullying and force-feeding unlabeled and hazardous genetically engineered (GE) foods to animals and humans — aided and abetted by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations — it’s time to move beyond defensive measures and go on the offensive. With organic farming, climate stability, and public health under the gun of the gene engineers and their partners in crime, it’s time to do more than complain. With over 1/3 of U.S. cropland already contaminated with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), with mounting scientific evidence that GMOs cause cancer, birth defects, and serious food allergies http://www.responsibletechnology.org/ and with new biotech mutants like alfalfa, lawn grass, ethanol-ready corn, 2,4 D-resistant crops, and genetically engineered trees and animals in the pipeline http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon… time is running out.

Natural News

June 12, 2011 by: T.M. Hartle

(NaturalNews) A cross-cultural analysis published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found a strong correlation between refined sugar consumption and mental illness. Researchers found that a high national intake of refined sugar and dairy products predicted a higher incidence of schizophrenia and depression. Research published in Neuroscience in 2002 found a high fat, high sugar diet reduces a key growth hormone in the brain necessary for memory and learning. Research into the correlation between diet and mental illness is finally expanding. This new research is shedding much needed light on the reality that diet does play a role in the incidence of mental illness.

The most provocative finding in the cross-cultural analysis was the consistent connection between refined sugar intake and worse outcomes for schizophrenia and increased prevalence of depression. Researchers also found that consumption of pulses or whole grains and high consumption of starchy root vegetables were linked to a lower prevalence of schizophrenia and depression. The connection between dietary habits and mental illness was not seen with healthy carbohydrate consumption but strongly correlated with refined sugar consumption. Sugar consumption causes a cascade of physiological effects that may explain the increased prevalence of mental illness.

(NaturalNews) Coca leaves have been chewed and consumed as tea for thousands of years in the high Andes. They are rich in many essential nutrients; they ease respiratory and digestive distress and are a natural stimulant and painkiller. Indigenous tradition and scientific studies have both confirmed that in their natural form, the leaves are completely safe and non-addictive -- it takes intensive processing and toxic chemical ingredients to produce cocaine. That's why more and more coca-containing products have started to hit the market in Andean countries in the past few years.

Yet the United States still aggressively pursues an eradication policy that encourages Andean governments to spray their forests with toxic chemicals to eliminate this medicinal crop. It is illegal to import or possess the leaves under U.S. law -- unless you're the Coca-Cola company. In an effort to preserve the traditional flavor of the best-selling drink, the company long ago convinced the U.S. government to exempt it from the law.

(Coca-Cola, by the way, used to literally contain cocaine in its original formula. The practice was halted in 1903, but the name persisted. The "coca" part of "coca-cola" is derived from the coca plant, and the "kola" comes from the kola nut which also flavored the original beverage.)

Natural News
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
April 5, 2011

(NaturalNews) The mass radioactive contamination of our planet is now under way thanks to the astonishing actions taking place at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan. As of last night, TEPCO announced it is releasing 10,000 tons of radioactive water directly into the Pacific Ocean. That 2.4 million gallons of planetary poison being dumped directly into the ocean.

This water is being released because they have run out of places to keep it on land. It's too deadly to transport anywhere else, and all the storage pools around Fukushima are already overflowing. So they're dumping it into the ocean, then calling it "safe" because they claim the ocean will "disperse" all the radiation and make it harmless.

But because there's more radioactive water being produced every day at Fukushima, this process of releasing radioactive water into the ocean could theoretically continue for years, easily making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in the history of our world.

As new research reveals antidepressants raise the danger of heart attacks, the disturbing cost of this modern addiction

Just as David Cameron launches his campaign to boost national happiness, along comes grim news for the 12 million Britons taking happy pills. London-based researchers have just announced that antidepressants raise the risk of fatal heart attacks.

This research is only the latest wake-up call for a nation hooked on happy pills. Might we finally heed the warnings and shake ourselves out of our pharmaceutical stupor?

It is high time we did: a small mountain of studies shows that antidepressant drugs are largely ineffective. But more than that, they can ruin lives by creating chronic dependency and a grinding hopelessness that sometimes leads to self-neglect and death.

The drugs don't work: Too many people are needlessly tucking into antidepressants

Food Matters

Food additives have been used for centuries to enhance the appearance and flavor of food and prolong shelf life. But do these food additives really "add" any value to your food?

Food additives find their way into our foods to help ease processing, packaging and storage. But how do we know what food additives is in that box of macaroni and cheese and why does it have such a long shelf life?

A typical American household spends about 90 percent of their food budget on processed foods, and are in doing so exposed to a plethora of artificial food additives, many of which can cause dire consequences to your health.

Some food additives are worse than others. Here's a list of the top food additives to avoid:

Grist
by Tom Laskawy
November 4, 2010

Something tells me that Congress will not be banning your favorite endocrine disruptor bisphenol-A anytime soon, even though Canada has. Just a theory. But while the political prospects for BPA's demise are dropping, the scientific landslide of data set off by recent revelations and press reports regarding the chemical rolls on.

In news that hits a guy where it hurts, scientists from Kaiser Permanente showed that men with higher levels of BPA exposure were two to four times more likely to have fewer sperm overall, fewer live sperm, and poor semen quality. Ouch. Although the BPA levels in Chinese workers involved in the study were still within EPA safety guidelines, the semen problems were severe enough, according to a UCSF reproductive expert not involved with the study, to cause infertility.

Meanwhile, a group of government and university scientists (including Linda Birnbaum, director of the U.S. government's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) conducted the first peer-reviewed study to detect BPA levels in U.S. food products (study). They confirmed earlier work by Consumer Reports showing that canned foods do indeed test positive for BPA, though at highly variable levels. And poor Del Monte: the scientists identified Del Monte green beans as having some of the highest BPA levels of any product on store shelves.