Recently in Nutrition Category

With all the buzz surrounding the specter of cataclysmic change that may soon be upon us as the Mayan calendar comes to an end in December, it's a good time to take stock of life here on planet Earth. While doomsday predictions will no doubt garner much of the attention from the mainstream media, I don't plan on building a fallout shelter or taking any other extreme precautions for that matter. Nevertheless, there are big changes coming and I do believe that it is possible to discern the outlines of a new cultural paradigm that has been slowly taking shape for quite some time. What it holds in store for medicine should be of interest to us all.

On a global scale, signs of the shift are already evident. In just a short span of time we have witnessed floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, melting polar ice caps, the Fukushima disaster, and dramatic changes in weather patterns. In socioeconomic and geopolitical terms, we have seen the fall of the Twin Towers, the Wall Street financial meltdown, the burst of the housing bubble, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the European monetary crisis, and an ever-widening income gap between the haves and have-nots.

HFNN

Dec 30, 2011

One of the most vulnerable segments of the population -- infants -- are being affected as chemical giant Martek Biosciences uses cronyism to have its patented GMO products classified as organic. The National Organic Program is trying to correct this, but in the meantime the "organic" infant formula or baby food parents feed their children could contain industrial Frankenfood.

History of Irresponsibility

The story of how this state of affairs came about reveals much on how politics and profit can undermine food safety. Here's a timeline on how the word "organic" is being undermined, creating a health threat for babies who are fed with formula.

2002: Food manufacturers begin supplementing infant formula and baby food with synthetic forms of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA). These polyunsaturated omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, naturally present in breast milk, are important components of the human brain and eyes. Although the form of DHA/ARA used in infant formulas is structurally incompatible with the form found in human milk, food manufacturers market their products with the claim that their formulas will make babies more intelligent.

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.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, October 3, 2011

No Evidence, Eh?

(OMNS, Oct 3, 2011) Many of our readers have written to say that when they try to talk to their physician about using nutritional medicine, the subject is promptly dismissed. Furthermore, such dismissal is often accompanied with doctor statements such as, "I have not seen any good research showing that vitamins work therapeutically."

That your doctor has not seen the research is probably true. However, the research has been there all along. The problem is that many health practitioners are often too busy, and sometimes too complacent, to look for it.

It is time to change that. Here are some highly-reliable orthomolecular resources online, for free access.

Natural News
September 29, 2011 by: S. D. Wells

(NaturalNews) Organic consumers and nutritionists may already know, but the rest of the general population does not know about sodium benzoate. It has the ability to deprive the cells of oxygen, break down the immune system and cause cancer.

This killer is flying under consumer radar with its user friendly tag line, "as a preservative." This silent cell choker has found its way into thousands of products, even foods that are labeled as all natural. But don't be fooled. While benzoic acid is found naturally in low levels in many fruits, the sodium benzoate listed on a product's label is synthesized in a lab.

Derived from a reaction of benzoic acid with sodium hydroxide, sodium benzoate is actually the sodium salt of benzoic acid. Sodium benzoate is a known carcinogenic additive which, when eaten or applied to the skin, gets transported to the liver, where it is supposed to be filtered, and expelled in urine, but the damage gets done before that process is completed.

Sodium benzoate chokes out your body's nutrients at the DNA cellular level by depriving mitochondria cells of oxygen, sometimes completely shutting them down. Just as humans need oxygen to breathe, cells need oxygen to function properly and to fight off infection, including cancer.

Gaia Health
29 August 2011
by Heidi Stevenson

Evidence shows the mass antibiotics experiment is devastating our children's health. It may be the reason so many struggle for breath and can't assimilate food properly.

Painting by talented artist and homeopath, Gina Tyler
(Words Added by Gaia Health.)

Emerging research shows that the harmful effects of antibiotics go much further than the development of drug resistant diseases. The beneficial bacteria lost to antibiotics, along with disease-inducing bacteria, do not recover fully. Worse, flora lost by a mother is also lost to her babies. The missing beneficial gut bacteria are likely a major factor behind much of the chronic disease experienced today. The continuous use of antibiotics is resulting in each generation experiencing worse health than their parents.

Martin Blaser, the author of a report in the prestigious journal Nature writes:

Antibiotics kill the bacteria we do want, as well as those we don't. These long-term changes to the beneficial bacteria within people's bodies may even increase our susceptibility to infections and disease.

Overuse of antibiotics could be fuelling the dramatic increase in conditions such as obesity, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies and asthma, which have more than doubled in many populations.

Monsanto began to take over our food supply in the 1990s. First came soybeans with genes manipulated to withstand Monsanto's chief money maker, Roundup. Shortly thereafter came Bt corn. Bacillus thuriengensis is a natural organism which was being used by organic farmers for pest control. Monsanto blasted it into corn seed and had its second patented crop. GM canola and papaya followed soon after, and then along came Roundup Ready corn and rice. Other biotech seed companies entered the game and applied for patents on vegetable crops and trees. My understanding is that rice was manipulated to contain vaccines and to my knowledge has not been grown commercially.   

Recently, in spite of many protests and comments to the contrary, the US Department of Agriculture approved Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beets and alfalfa for unlimited planting. GM Kentucky bluegrass is also just approved without restrictions.   

GM alfalfa will cross with regular alfalfa in the area and will destroy organic farms on a wide scale, especially dairies which depend on alfalfa. A requirement of organic certification is that no genetically modified crops can be grown.

Almost immediately upon introducing patented seeds, Monsanto began suing farmers whose land had been accidentally contaminated by those patented seeds, and/or farmers who dared to save their own seed from a Monsanto crop to replant. Hundreds of farmers are said to have been sued. Monsanto is believed to employ 75 people who work full time on investigating and prosecuting farmers who do not cooperate with Monsanto's plans.

By Investigating Journalist Jon Rappoport

July 15, 2011

NewsWithViews.com

HEALTH FREEDOM ALERT

re: FDA NIDA Guidelines 2011

re: Food Safety Modernization Act 2011

re: S.1310 Dietary Supplement Labeling Bill 2011

I just finished interviewing brilliant constitutional lawyer, Jonathan Emord, on my radio show. Emord has taken the FDA to court and beaten them eight times. No other attorney in America comes close.

So when Jonathan talks, I listen.

And I can tell you that the government is coming after your nutritional supplements. Again.

The radio interview will be archived in a day or two:

Scroll down to The Jon Rappoport Show and you'll find it.

For 30 years the American Diabetes Assn has rejected all evidence that aspartame is deadly, you see, they've been on the take from the poison producers whom they really represent. At last the truth is confessed by two reports at an ADA Conference. Like they say: "Murder will out". See my analysis following their confession.

http://www.beveragedaily.com/content/view/print/383456

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/255633/Diet-drinks-make-you-fat

http://www.fitsugar.com/Diet-Soda-Leads-Weight-Gain-New-Studies-Find-18073646

Another Study Says It: Diet Soda Leads to Weight Gain

Study after study has told us to watch out for those empty, sugary calories in sweetened drinks like soda, but two new studies remind us about the dangers of diet soda - they too can lead to weight gain and may raise your risk for developing diabetes.

The studies were presented at a diabetes conference this weekend, and together they show that drinking diet soda may just be another thing in our diets that is making us fat. One study followed 474 older-age diet-soda drinkers and found that their waistlines grew 70 percent more than non-diet-soda drinkers, even when the researchers accounted for differences in age, physical activity level, and diabetes status.

The news gets worse; read on for how bad a two-diets-a-day habit is for your waistline.

Confectionary News

By Jane Byrne

June 27, 2011

November 2011 should see steviol glycosides get regulatory backing for use in food in drink products in the European market, according to a European Commission (EC) representative.

Bringing industry up to date on the regulatory timeline, Wim Debeuckelaere from the Directorate General for Health and Consumers (DG Sanco) told delegates at the Stevia 2011 conference in London last week that the natural sweetener is on schedule for sanction by the EC in “November or December at the latest.”

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) gave a positive safety opinion on steviol glycosides in April 2010, in line with the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), which approves the use of steviol glycosides at 95 per cent purity or above.