Mindfully.org

Spring 2009: Food for Everyone

2009-06-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.

“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.”
CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL



	More than 10 years ago, Brazil’s fourth-largest city, Belo Horizonte, declared that food was a right of citizenship and started working to make good food available to all. One of its programs puts local farm produce into school meals. This and other projects cost the city less than 2 percent of its budget. Above, fresh passion fruit juice and salad as part of a school lunch. Photo by Leah Rimkus

In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life’s essentials? Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise here in the United States—one in 10 of us is now turning to food stamps—these questions take on new urgency.

To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help—not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.



The city of Belo Horizonte puts “Direct From the Country” farmer produce stands throughout busy downtown areas. Photo by Leah Rimkus

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

When my daughter Anna and I visited Belo Horizonte to write Hope’s Edge we approached one of these stands. A farmer in a cheerful green smock, emblazoned with “Direct from the Countryside,” grinned as she told us, “I am able to support three children from my five acres now. Since I got this contract with the city, I’ve even been able to buy a truck.”

The improved prospects of these Belo farmers were remarkable considering that, as these programs were getting underway, farmers in the country as a whole saw their incomes drop by almost half.

In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city makes good food available by offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the city determines a set price—about two-thirds of the market price—of about twenty healthy items, mostly from in-state farmers and chosen by store-owners. Everything else they can sell at the market price.



	ABC bulk produce markets stock the items that the city determines will be sold at a fixed price, about 13 cents per pound. Photo by Leah Rimkus

“For ABC sellers with the best spots, there’s another obligation attached to being able to use the city land,” a former manager within this city agency, Adriana Aranha, explained. “Every weekend they have to drive produce-laden trucks to the poor neighborhoods outside of the city center, so everyone can get good produce.”

Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal. When Anna and I ate in one, we saw hundreds of diners—grandparents and newborns, young couples, clusters of men, mothers with toddlers. Some were in well-worn street clothes, others in uniform, still others in business suits.

“I’ve been coming here every day for five years and have gained six kilos,” beamed one elderly, energetic man in faded khakis.

“It’s silly to pay more somewhere else for lower quality food,” an athletic-looking young man in a military police uniform told us. “I’ve been eating here every day for two years. It’s a good way to save money to buy a house so I can get married,” he said with a smile.



The line for one of three “People’s Restaurants” a half hour before opening time. Meals cost about 50 cents; diners come from all socio-economic groups. Photo by Leah Rimkus

No one has to prove they’re poor to eat in a People’s Restaurant, although about 85 percent of the diners are. The mixed clientele erases stigma and allows “food with dignity,” say those involved.

Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.

“We’re fighting the concept that the state is a terrible, incompetent administrator,” Adriana explained. “We’re showing that the state doesn’t have to provide everything, it can facilitate. It can create channels for people to find solutions themselves.”

For instance, the city, in partnership with a local university, is working to “keep the market honest in part simply by providing information,” Adriana told us. They survey the price of 45 basic foods and household items at dozens of supermarkets, then post the results at bus stops, online, on television and radio, and in newspapers so people know where the cheapest prices are.

The shift in frame to food as a right also led the Belo hunger-fighters to look for novel solutions. In one successful experiment, egg shells, manioc leaves, and other material normally thrown away were ground and mixed into flour for school kids’ daily bread. This enriched food also goes to nursery school children, who receive three meals a day courtesy of the city.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world. But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

The result of these and other related innovations?

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The cost of these efforts?

Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.

Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social mentality”—the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of us have access to good food, so—like health care or education—quality food for all is a public good.”

The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect.

And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in human nature is required! Through most of human evolution—except for the last few thousand of roughly 200,000 years—Homo sapiens lived in societies where pervasive sharing of food was the norm. As food sharers, “especially among unrelated individuals,” humans are unique, writes Michael Gurven, an authority on hunter-gatherer food transfers. Except in times of extreme privation, when some eat, all eat.

Before leaving Belo, Anna and I had time to reflect a bit with Adriana. We wondered whether she realized that her city may be one of the few in the world taking this approach—food as a right of membership in the human family. So I asked, “When you began, did you realize how important what you are doing was? How much difference it might make? How rare it is in the entire world?”

Listening to her long response in Portuguese without understanding, I tried to be patient. But when her eyes moistened, I nudged our interpreter. I wanted to know what had touched her emotions.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world,” Adriana said. “But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

Adriana’s words have stayed with me. They will forever. They hold perhaps Belo’s greatest lesson: that it is easy to end hunger if we are willing to break free of limiting frames and to see with new eyes—if we trust our hard-wired fellow feeling and act, no longer as mere voters or protesters, for or against government, but as problem-solving partners with government accountable to us.

Big Pharma and the FDA: Suppress the Science and Ban the Natural

2009-06-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

In 2005, the pharmaceutical company Biostratum, Inc. made a mistake -- they invested millions of dollars into developing a drug, only to discover that the active ingredient, pyridoxamine, was a common, naturally occurring substance that has been sold for decades at low cost.

Biostratum responded by asking the U.S. FDA to declare supplements containing pyridoxamine “adulterated,” and effectively ban anyone but Biostratum from selling pyridoxamine. Earlier this year the FDA agreed to ban companies from selling pyridoxamine as a dietary supplement.

The FDA’s comment on the decision specifically says, “To allow such an article to be marketed as a dietary supplement would not be fair to the pharmaceutical company that brought, or intends to bring, the drug to market.”

Apparently, they were not as concerned about fairness to consumers.

This is hardly the first time the FDA has attacked naturally occurring substances. The FDA has banned information about scientifically proven health benefits of cherries from appearing on Web sites. And for years, the FDA barred health claims about the benefits of omega-3 fats for heart, cancer, depression, body pain, and various other conditions until a drug company paid a great deal of money to go through the approval process.

In the case of pyridoxamine, the FDA did not act out of concern for public safety. This is about a profit-seeking corporation taking advantage of corruption in what is supposed to be a public health organization.

Pyridoxamine is one form of the vitamin B6. It is an important nutrient for helping your body process carbohydrates, support your nervous system activity and prevent homocysteine, which has been linked to increased risk of heart disease, from building up in your blood.

This substance has long been sold over-the-counter as a dietary supplement, but the FDA abruptly put a stop to that in January 2009. Their reasoning has nothing to do with safety, but rather is firmly based on protecting a drug company’s investment.

As stated above, the FDA actually said:
“To allow such an article to be marketed as a dietary supplement would not be fair to the pharmaceutical company that brought, or intends to bring, the drug to market.”
What is happening here is a blatant example of the FDA protecting the hand that feeds it. It is now essentially banning vitamin B6 in the form of pyridoxamine, and reserving it to be exclusively distributed by the drugmaker Biostratum, Inc.

If the FDA really wants to speak about being fair, why are they not worried about being fair to the supplement makers who already distribute this product … or the people who will have their inexpensive supply of this vitamin taken away?

Why?

Because the FDA and U.S. government are loaded with people trying to eliminate all competition for the drug companies, who financially support the FDA in the form of user fees for drug approval.

This Type of Injustice Has Happened Many Times Before

To get a feeling of who the FDA is really looking out for, you need look no further than the recent estriol debacle.

Estriol is a bioidentical hormone that is sometimes used in hormone replacement therapy drugs, available through compounding pharmacies. However, estriol is not an FDA-approved drug, and according to the FDA estriol “has not been shown to be safe and effective for the uses for which it is being prescribed.”

Therefore, the FDA has proposed to allow estriol-containing prescriptions to be filled only if accompanied by an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, stating that the use of INDs is “routine,” and therefore shouldn’t cause any major inconvenience or limitation on estriol’s use, if and when a physician believes it’s in his patient’s best interest.

However, the IND places a significant financial burden on physicians, most notably by requiring them to submit applications to an Institutional Review Board (IRB). Submitting necessary documentation and contracting for a private IRB can easily cost between $10,000 and $25,000 and can take months.

So the process will effectively ban most physicians from prescribing estriol, which is a much safer, natural alternative to synthetic hormones.

This news is frustrating in and of itself, and certainly highlights the need for less government involvement in health care. But what happened next is nothing short of infuriating.

Pipex Therapeutics is now seeking approval for Trimesta, a knock-off of natural estriol, and the FDA is in the process of considering the approval!

Clearly, the FDA was never concerned with estriol being used in an unsafe manner -- they were concerned that their drug-company buddies were not getting their fair share of the profits.

Is The FDA Your Protector -- or a Threat to Your Health Freedom?

Examples like this one and the latest pyridoxamine scandal are red flags that the U.S. FDA is not there to protect you, or your health freedom.

You may not be aware, but in June 2007 the FDA announced new standards for dietary supplements that were intended to improve consumer safety.

In reality, the 800-page rule surrounds the dietary supplement industry with regulations and requirements in excess of those imposed on the drug industry, and up to 50 percent of small companies will simply not be able to afford to comply.

Even before this ruling, supplement makers were (and still are) limited from making health claims (this is reserved only for drugs).

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

But consider that it’s still illegal even in cases where the claims have been clearly proven -- so cherry growers cannot legally say that tart cherries may do more good than aspirin or other anti-inflammatory drugs when it comes to pain relief, even though studies back them up.

This is why the American Association for Health Freedom (AAHF) states that the FDA “ignores first amendment protections and censors the communication of valid scientific information.” They continue:
“The agency seems to have lost sight of its mandate to protect the public and has instead come to see itself as the guardian of corporate interests.”
The FDA is clearly censoring your right to know about, and purchase, foods and supplements that can help you stay healthy and prevent disease. At the same time, they are allowing dangerous drugs and consumer products to remain on the market and be sold and aggressively advertised as safe.

Even the FDA has admitted to its shortcomings and in a report said:
• “The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base... is weak...."
• "The FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific workforce does not have sufficient capacity and capability."
• "FDA does not have the capacity to ensure the safety of food for the nation."
• “The development of medical products based on 'new science' cannot adequately be regulated by the FDA.”

You Can Sign a Petition to Help

The AAHF is leading a campaign to reform the FDA, and your help is urgently needed, as a large number of signatures are required to compel Congressional Action.

So if you believe reforming the FDA is a worthy cause, please sign the petition now, and encourage your friends and family to do so also.

Congress already knows the FDA represents a serious problem. This petition will help move them to take the urgent action required to invoke much-needed positive change.

Spices Kill Cancer Cells

2009-06-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Scientists have discovered the key to the ability of spicy foods to kill cancer cells.

They found capsaicin, an ingredient of jalapeno peppers, triggers cancer cell death by attacking mitochondria - the cells' energy-generating boiler rooms.

The research raises the possibility that other cancer drugs could be developed to target mitochondria.

The Nottingham University study features in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

The study showed that the family of molecules to which capsaicin belongs, the vanilloids, bind to proteins in the cancer cell mitochondria to trigger apoptosis, or cell death, without harming surrounding healthy cells.

We believe that we have in effect discovered a fundamental 'Achilles heel' for all cancers

Dr Timothy Bates

Capsaicin was tested on cultures of human lung cancer cells and on pancreatic cancers.

Lead researcher Dr Timothy Bates said: "As these compounds attack the very heart of the tumour cells, we believe that we have in effect discovered a fundamental 'Achilles heel' for all cancers.

"The biochemistry of the mitochondria in cancer cells is very different from that in normal cells.

"This is an innate selective vulnerability of cancer cells."

He said a dose of capsaicin that could cause a cancer cell to enter apoptosis, would not have the same effect on a normal cell.

Cancer Research UK recommends reducing your risk of cancer by eating a healthy, balanced diet, with plenty of vegetables and fruit

Josephine Querido

Potential Drugs

The fact that capsaicin and other vanilloids are already commonly found in the diet proves they are safe to eat.

This could make development of a drug containing them a much quicker and cheaper process.

Dr Bates said: "Capsaicin, for example, is already found in treatments for muscle strain and psoriasis - which raises the question of whether an adapted topical treatment could be used to treat certain types of skin cancer.

"It's also possible that cancer patients or those at risk of developing cancer could be advised to eat a diet which is richer in spicy foods to help treat or prevent the disease."

However, Josephine Querido, cancer information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "This research does not suggest that eating vast quantities of chilli pepper will help prevent or treat cancer.

"The experiments showed that pepper extracts killed cancer cells grown in the laboratory, but these have not yet been tested to see if they are safe and effective in humans."

Cancer Research UK recommends reducing the risk of cancer by eating a healthy, balanced diet, with plenty of vegetables and fruit.

Dr Bates added that the mitochondria in cancer cells could also be targeted by other compounds.

He said the investigation and development of anti-mitochondrial drugs for cancer chemotherapy was likely to be "extremely significant" in the fight against cancer.

Aspartame and Multiple Sclerosis - Neurosurgeon's Warning

2009-06-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

Aspartame is a low calorie sweetener. Called a potent neurotoxin by several researchers, it is being sold as a sugar substitute for those on low calorie diets and for diabetics. If you like Coke or Pepsi "light", you certainly are at risk, but both industry and health officials deny that there is any truth to this story. Manufacturers have recently been sued in California.

Trade names for Aspartame are NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Canderel, Benevia, Misura, but in Europe we often cannot recognize that Aspartame is part of what we're about to swallow unless we know that it also hides behind the seemingly innocuous "E 951" label. We might also watch out for warnings on food and drink labels that say: "contains a source of phenylalanine" or "phenylchetonurics should not consume this product".

In truth, no one should be consuming Aspartame and those responsible for putting it on the market - Donald Rumsfeld had a part in politically forcing its approval - should be held responsible for unleashing an agent of chemical warfare on an unsuspecting public.

Dr. Russell Blaylock, a recently retired neurosurgeon, has been warning for years and has even authored a book "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills". Blaylock says that Aspartame and Multiple Sclerosis are closely related. Unfortunately the Multiple Sclerosis society denies there is any connection between MS and Aspartame. The Society has chosen, according to Betty Martini, to hang on to industry funding rather than to warn its members. Blaylock explains the biological mechanism by which Aspartame circumvents the blood-brain-barrier and gets at the vital nervous tissues - the grey matter in our heads:

The Connection Between MS And Aspartame

By Russell L. Blaylock, MD
Neurosurgeon
6-7-4

(originally published on Rense.com)

Recently, much controversy has surrounded a claim that aspartame may produce an MS-like syndrome. A current review of recent peer-reviewed scientific studies has disclosed a pathophysiological mechanism to explain this connection. As far back as 1996 it was shown that the lesions produced in the myelin sheath of axons in cases of multiple sclerosis were related to excitatory receptors on the primary cells involved called oligodendroglia. Recent studies have now confirmed what was suspected back then. The loss of myelin sheath on the nerve fibers characteristic of the disease is due to the death of these oligodendroglial cells at the site of the lesions (called plaques). Further, these studies have shown that the death of these important cells is as a result of excessive exposure to excitotoxins at the site of the lesions.

Normally, most of these excitotoxins are secreted from microglial immune cells in the central nervous system. This not only destroys these myelin-producing cells it also breaks down the blood-brain barrier (BBB), allowing excitotoxins in the blood stream to enter the site of damage. Aspartame contains the excitotoxin aspartate as 40% of its molecular structure. Numerous studies have shown that consuming aspartame can significantly elevate the excitotoxin level in the blood. There is a common situation during which the excitotoxin exposure is even greater. When aspartate (as aspartame) is combined in the diet with monosodium glutamate (MSG) blood levels are several fold higher than normal. With the BBB damaged, as in MS, these excitotoxins can freely enter the site of injury, greatly magnifying the damage. So, we see that dietary excitotoxins, such as aspartame and MSG, can greatly magnify the damage produced in multiple sclerosis. Likewise, excitotoxins have been shown to break down the BBB as well.

Of equal concern is observation that we know that about 10% of the population (based on autopsy studies of elderly) have MS lesions without ever developing the full blown disease, a condition called benign MS. A diet high in excitotoxins, such as aspartame, can convert this benign, subclinical condition into full-blown clinical MS. The amount of excitotoxins consumed in the average American diet is considerable, as shown by several studies. In addition, the toxin methanol is also in the aspartame molecule. Methanol is a axon poison. Combined toxicity of the aspartate and the methanol adds up to considerable brain toxicity and can convert benign, subclinical MS into full-blown MS. Once the MS becomes full-blown, further consumption of excitotoxins magnifies the toxicity, increasing disability and death.

Recent studies have also shown that even single exposures to these food-based excitotoxins can produce prolonged worsening of neurological lesions. In addition, it has been demonstrated that autoimmune reactions (as occur with MS) greatly magnify the toxicity of aspartate and glutamate (the excitotoxins). We also know liquid forms of excitotoxins are significantly more toxic because of rapid absorption and higher blood levels. In the face of this connection between excitotoxicity and the pathophysiology of MS, it would be ludicrous to allow further use of this excitotoxin containing sweetener.

References:

1. Sannchez-Gomez MV, Malute C. AMPA and kainate receptors each mediate excitotoxicity in oligodendroglial cultures. Neurobiology of Disease 6:475-485, 1999

2. Yoshika A, et al. Pathophysiology of oligodendroglial excitotoxicity, J Neuroscience Research 46: 427-437, 1996.

3. Singh P, et al. Prolonged glutamate excitotoxicity: effects on mitochondrial antioxidants and antioxidant enzymes. Molecular Cell Biochemistry 243: 139-145, 2003.

4. Leuchtmann EA, et al. AMPA receptors are the major mediators of excitotoxin death in mature oligodendrocytes. Neurobiology of Disease 14:336-348, 2003.

5. Takahashi JL, et al. Interleukin1 beta promotes oligodendrocyte death through glutamate excitotoxicity. Annal Neurology 53: 588-595, 2003.

6. Pitt D, et al Glutamate uptake by oligodendrocytes: implications for excitotoxicity in multiple sclerosis. neurology 61: 1113-1120, 2003.

7. Soto A, et al. Excitotoxic insults to the optic nerve alter visual evoked potentials. Neuroscience 123: 441-449, 2004.

8. Blaylock RL. Interactions of cytokines, excitotoxins and reactive nitrogen and oxygen species in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of American Nutraceutical Association 6: 21-35, 2003.

9. Blaylock RL. Chronic microglial activation and excitotoxicity secondary to excessive immune stimulation: possible factors in Gulf War Syndrome and autism. Journal American Physicians and Surgeons, Summer, 2004.

TREATMENT FOR MS:

It is now known the cause for the destruction of the myelin in the lesions is overactivation of the microglia in the region of the myelin. An enzyme that converts glutamine to glutamate called glutaminase increases tremendously, thereby greatly increasing excitotoxicity. Mercury also activates microglia, even in subtoxic doses.

Any dietary excitotoxin can activate the microglia, thereby greatly aggravating the injury. This includes the aspartate in aspartame. The methanol adds to this toxicity as well. Now, the secret to treatment appears to be shutting down, or at least calming down, the microglia. It has been found that the antibiotic minocycline powerfully shuts down the microglia. I tried this treatment on a friend of mine who just came down with fulminant MS. He was confined to a wheelchair. I had him placed on minocycline and now, just a few weeks later, he is walking.

The good news is that other things also calm the microglia - the most potent are: silymarin, curcumin and ibuprophen. Phosphatidylcholine helps re-myelinate the nerve sheaths that are damaged, as does B12, B6, B1, vitamin D, folate, vitamin C, natural vitamin E (mixed tocopherols) and L-carnitine. DHA plays a major role in repairing the myelin sheath. Vitamin D may even prevent MS, but it acts as an immune modulator, preventing further damage - the dose is 2000 IU a day. Magnesium, as magnesium malate, is needed in a dose of 500 mg 2 x a day. They must avoid all excitotoxins, even natural ones in foods - such as soy, red meats, nuts, mushrooms and tomatoes. Avoid all fluoride and especially all vaccinations since these either inhibit antioxidant enzymes or triggers harmful immune reactions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr. Blaylock is a recently retired board-certified neurosurgeon with more than twenty six years experience. He is a recently retired Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the Medical University of Mississippi. Author of thirty scientific papers on various medical subjects, chapters in three medical textbooks and a booklet on multiple sclerosis, he recently completed a booklet on bioterrorism and is the author of "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills", "Health & Nutrition Secrets to Save Your Life", and "Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients". (www.russellblaylockmd.com) He serves on the editorial staff of The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association, and acts as a medical advisor to the American Nutraceutical Association. His excellent newsletter can be gotten at his website. He lives in Ridgeland, Mississippi.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note from Dr. Betty Martini :

Cori Brackett, co-owner of Sound and Fury Productions, an MS victim diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic, had a huge lesion in the brain. Cori was a user of the neurotoxic drug Aspartame, marketed as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, E951, Canderel, Benevia, etc. Off the poison, she too walked out of her wheelchair; the lesion disappeared. Because of what she had endured from aspartame disease she felt a moral obligation to warn others, especially with 70% of the population and 40% of our children using this deadly toxin. Cori Brackett traveled 7000 miles and with 25 hours of footage produced the movie, "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World." She says it reveals one of the most pervasive, insidious forms of corporate negligence in the history of the industrial revolution. On this date it is being released to the world. You will get to see the famed Dr. Blaylock and other aspartame experts, as well as hear the horror story of the victims. See Diane Fleming who is wilting in a Virginia prison because her athlete husband died of aspartame. She was sentenced to 50 years for the crime committed by the manufacturer who had the malice to market a poison. Don't miss this film. Contact Cori Brackett at Cori@soundandfuryproductions.com or (telephone) 520-624-9710. http://www.soundandfuryproductions.com

For years physicians have written the MS Society to alert them about aspartame. You can read my letter on www.dorway.com, never answered, of course. Faced with the choice of warning the public or continuing to receive funding from industry, the MS Society has chosen to sacrifice the victims. And when those responsible to solve the problem ARE the problem it is a sad commentary on greed and lack of concern for humanity. How can anyone set aside professional ethics to allow an MS holocaust, when simply alerting those with MS to avoid aspartame and other excitotoxins could save the lives of thousands. At one MS Society walk-a-thon, they were giving out free Diet Coke while trying to prevent our activists from giving walkers info that could save the lives of MS victims. I simply turned to the crowd and said: "The MS Society does not want you to have this life-saving information on a product triggering this disease." The entire crowd took copies. Later I received several calls of those who had heeded the advice and gotten well. But I shudder to think how many have perished because the MS Society hasn't had the integrity to warn victims.

Contact Information:

Dr. Betty Martini, Founder
Mission Possible Intl.
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
Bettym19@mindspring.com

WORLD NATURAL HEALTH ORGANIZATION
www.wnho.net
and
www.dorway.com

http://www.russellblaylockmd.com

See more aspartame lawsuits filed against companies knowingly
poisoning the public on www.wnho.net

Aspartame Toxicity Center: www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

From the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, October 4, 2006 - some more references to treatment options for MS. As always, don't take my word for it - if you have MS and want to do something about it, consult a medical doctor who is up-to-date on nutritional treatments.

VITAMINS FIGHT MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

(OMNS) New research confirms that niacinamide, also known as vitamin B-3, is a key to the successful treatment of multiple sclerosis and other nerve diseases. [1] Niacinamide, say researchers at Harvard Medical School, "profoundly prevents the degeneration of demyelinated axons and improves the behavioral deficits."

This is very good news, but it is not at all new news. Over 60 years ago, Canadian physician H.T. Mount began treating multiple sclerosis patients with intravenous B-1 (thiamine) plus intramuscular liver extract, which provides other B-vitamins. He followed the progress of these patients for up to 27 years. The results were excellent and were described in a paper published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 1973. [2]

Mount was not alone. Forty years ago, Frederick Robert Klenner, M.D., of North Carolina, was using vitamins B-3 and B-1, along with the rest of the B-complex vitamins, vitamins C and E, and other nutrients including magnesium, calcium and zinc to arrest and reverse multiple sclerosis. [3,4] Klenner's complete treatment program was originally published as "Treating Multiple Sclerosis Nutritionally," Cancer Control Journal 2:3, p 16-20. His detailed megavitamin protocol is now posted for all interested persons to read at http://www.tldp.com/issue/11_00/klenner.htm

Drs. Mount and Klenner were persuaded by their clinical observations that multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, and many other neurological disorders were primarily due to nerve cells being starved of nutrients. Each physician tested this theory by giving his patients large, orthomolecular quantities of nutrients. Mount's and Klenner's successful cures over decades of medical practice proved their theory was correct. B-complex vitamins, including thiamine as well as niacinamide, are absolutely vital for nerve cell health. Where pathology already exists, unusually large quantities of vitamins are needed to repair damaged nerve cells.

Nutritional therapy is inexpensive, effective and, most important, safe. There is not even one death per year from vitamins. [5]

Vitamin supplementation is not the problem. It is under-nutrition that is the problem. Vitamins are the solution.

Restoring health must be done nutritionally, not pharmacologically. All cells in all persons are made exclusively from what we drink and eat. Not one cell is made out of drugs.

References:

[1] Kaneko S, Wang J, Kaneko M, Yiu G, Hurrell JM, Chitnis T, Khoury SJ, He Z. Protecting axonal degeneration by increasing nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide levels in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis models. J Neurosci. 2006 Sep 20;26(38):9794-804.

[2] Mount HT. Multiple sclerosis and other demyelinating diseases. Can Med Assoc J. 1973 Jun 2;108(11):1356-1358.

[3] Frederick R. Klenner. "Response of Peripheral and Central Nerve Pathology to Mega-Doses of the Vitamin B-Complex and Other Metabolites", Journal of Applied Nutrition, 1973,

[4] Dr. Klenner's "Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C" (which discusses orthomolecular therapy with all vitamins, not just vitamin C) is now posted in its entirety. It includes a multiple sclerosis protocol, which takes up about five pages. See also: http://www.doctoryourself.com/klennerpaper.html

[5] Watson WA et al. 2003 annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers Toxic Exposure Surveillance System. Am J Emerg Med. 2004 Sep;22(5):335-404.

See also:

Does aspartame multiply female MS?
At the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting, Dr. Gary Cutter, professor of Biostatistics at the University of Alabama, said women are now four times as likely as men to get multiple sclerosis: “It started at two-to-one and is now four-to-one.”

Aspartame, Anti-Depressants And Bush
By Jerry Mazza - Online Journal

Aspartame Gate: When Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle

Aspartame Consumer Safety Network and Pilot Hotline

Aspartame Warning (Video on YouTube)

Toxic Aspartame and Grave's Disease: Disease diagnosis doesn't deter diver

Aspartame May Be the Cause of Your Health Problems

Aspartame patent expired. We are now supposed to buy NEOTAME...

Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004
Subject: [Health_and_Healing] Neotame---the 'exciting new sweetener'

The patent on Aspartame has run out---so our favorite health benefatctor--Monsanto has come up with a bigger better version...

Learn about this 'exciting new sweetener': http://www.neotame.com/

Learn MORE about this 'exciting new sweetener' http://www.holisticmed.com/neotame/

http://www.truthinlabeling.com/forB.html

The Connection between Aspartame (Artificial Sweetener) and Panic Attacks, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Memory Problems, and Other Mental Symptoms

Cola, Soda And Other Empty Calories

2009-06-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

While consuming an excess of almost anything is more than likely harmful, we believe that even small amounts of flavored sodas are harmful over a lifetime and that diet cola's are even more harmful.

Excessive cola consumption can lead to anything from mild weakness to profound muscle paralysis, doctors are warning.

This is because the drink can cause blood potassium to drop dangerously low, they report in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

They tell of the curious case of an Australian ostrich farmer who needed emergency care for lung paralysis after drinking 4-10 litres of cola a day.

He made a full recovery and was advised to curtail his cola drinking.

Another example included a pregnant woman who regularly consumed up to three litres a day for the last six years and complained of tiredness, appetite loss and persistent vomiting.

A heart trace revealed she had an irregular heartbeat, probably caused by her low blood potassium levels.

Once she stopped drinking so much cola, she made a full and uneventful recovery.

The investigators believe these cases are not atypical and that many people risk problems due to their intake.

Manufacturers insist the products are safe when consumed in moderation.

In a commentary, Dr Clifford Packer from the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Centre in Ohio said: "We have every reason to think that it is not rare.

"With aggressive mass marketing, super-sizing of soft drinks, and the effects of caffeine tolerance and dependence, there is very little doubt that tens of millions of people in industrialised countries drink at least 2-3 l of cola per day.

"It follows that the serum potassium levels of these heavy cola drinkers are dropping, in some cases, to dangerous low levels."

Moderation

The author of the research paper, Dr Moses Elisaf from the University of Ioannina in Greece, said it appeared that hypokalaemia can be caused by excessive consumption of three of the most common ingredients in cola drinks - glucose, fructose and caffeine.

"The individual role of each of these ingredients in the pathophysiology of cola-induced hypokalaemia has not been determined and may vary in different patients.

"However in most of the cases we looked at for our review, caffeine intoxication was thought to play the most important role.

"This has been borne out by case studies that focus on other products that contain high levels of caffeine but no glucose or fructose."

Despite this, he warned that caffeine free cola products could also cause hypokalaemia because the fructose they contain can cause diarrhoea.

"We believe that further studies are needed to establish how much is too much when it comes to the daily consumption of cola drinks."

Excessive consumption has already been linked with obesity, diabetes and tooth and bone problems.

A spokeswoman from the British Soft Drinks Association said: "The examples used in this paper by the IJCP are all very extreme cases - moderate consumption of cola drinks is completely safe and people can continue to enjoy such drinks as part of a balanced diet and active lifestyle.

"The soft drinks industry is committed to encouraging responsible consumption of all its products. Nutrition labelling is included on packaging so people can make an informed choice about the products they are drinking."

In our opinion an informed choice would dictate that only pure, additive free fruit and vegetable juices are safe for human consumption along with adequately filtered water.

Pthalates

2009-06-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

Phthalates make plastics soft but have many other uses in the chemical world we live in.

A top manufacturer of household cleaners announced plans on March 12th, 2009 to eliminate a controversial plastics additive from its brand and voluntarily disclose all product ingredients.

S.C. Johnson – maker of Windex, Shout and Glade – said that it has begun working with its suppliers to end the use of phthalates, which soften plastics.

The move comes as lawmakers are debating regulations for many industrial chemicals as research suggests potentially serious health impacts. Phthalates, for example, interfere with hormones and have been linked to genetic abnormalities in baby boys.

Congress passed a bill last year banning certain phthalates in toys as part of a broad consumer-protection bill, and some states are considering bans on the chemical in children's products. The American Chemistry Council opposes such bans, saying they are unsupported by science.

The council and other industry groups point to studies by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that failed to find a link between the plastics additive and human reproductive problems because of the low levels to which the vast majority of people are exposed.

S.C. Johnson Chairman and CEO Fisk Johnson said in a statement that the company believes the chemical is safe but is moving to remove them in response to consumer concerns.

"Even though the chemistry was sound, we decided that making sure consumers know they can trust S.C. Johnson products was well worth the time and cost to change them," Johnson said.

Environmentalists and public-health advocates say that even if the science is not conclusive, there is enough uncertainty to warrant action.

S.C. Johnson also pledged to list all ingredients, including dyes, preservatives and fragrance ingredients – a first in the industry.

The industry has come under fire lately for a lack of transparency in product ingredients. Advocacy groups say such disclosures are critical to understanding the effects of cleaners and other household products on human health and the environment.

In response, Johnson said the company is committed to providing accessible information to consumers, including setting up a Web site dedicated to product ingredients. The goal is to get all ingredients listed by 2012.

Lawsuit seeks disclosure

Last month, a coalition of advocacy groups sued four manufacturers of household cleaners for failing to disclose the ingredients under New York state law. Earthjustice attorney Keri Powell, who filed the lawsuit, said she sees S.C. Johnson's announcement as a positive step.

"We're glad to see S.C. Johnson taking the lead today, setting an example for transparency that the rest of the industry would do well to follow," Powell said.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in a blog post that disclosing ingredients does not guarantee a product's safety but is a critical step in assessing safety. In addition, she wrote, it empowers consumers.

"This move could signal a broader response to the public opposition to lack of information and unsafe chemicals in household products," Beinecke said. "Public concern is starting to move not only individual companies like S.C. Johnson, but the marketplace as a whole, as well as public policy."

There are signs that the market is paying attention, as major manufacturers begin to change product formulations based on consumer concern. Last week, the country's six largest manufacturers of baby bottles agreed to stop using another controversial plastics additive, bisphenol A, or BPA, as states consider banning the chemical.

BPA is a high-protein chemical that has been used for decades to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy linings for food cans. Concerns about it are growing because studies show it mimics estrogen and has been linked to developmental problems and precancerous growths in animals.

Beinecke called the companies' decisions a "testament to the power of consumers to make a difference."

Water 8 x 8?

2009-06-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

Virtually every health-conscious person can quote the recommendation: Drink at least eight eight-ounce glasses of water per day. Other beverages—coffee, tea, soda, beer, even orange juice—don't count. Watermelon? Not a chance.

There's no denying that water is good for you, but does everyone really need to drink 64 ounces or more every day? According to Heinz Valtin, a retired professor of physiology from Dartmouth Medical School who specialized in kidney research and spent 45 years studying the biological system that keeps the water in our bodies in balance, the answer is no.

Valtin says that for people who have specific health concerns, such as kidney stones or a tendency to develop urinary tract infections, drinking lots of water can be beneficial. But after an extensive search in 2002 for the origins of what is commonly referred to as the "8 x 8" guideline and a review of associated health claims, he reports finding no scientific evidence supporting the notion that healthy individuals need to consume large quantities of water. In 2008 Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb reviewed the evidence for the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. They came to a similar conclusion: "There is no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water."

In fact, Valtin found that the 8 x 8 guideline may have originated from a misunderstanding. In 1945 the Food and Nutrition Board, now part of the National Academy of Sciences's Institute of Medicine, suggested that a person consume one milliliter of water (about one fifth of a teaspoon) for each calorie of food. The math is pretty simple: A daily diet of around 1,900 calories would dictate the consumption of 1,900 milliliters of water, an amount remarkably close to 64 ounces. But many dieticians and other people failed to notice a critical point: namely, that much of the daily need for water could be met by the water content found in food.

The Board revisited the question of water consumption in 2004. Its panel on "dietary preference intakes for electrolytes and water" noted that women who appear adequately hydrated consume about 91 ounces (2.7 liters) of water a day and men about 125 ounces (3.7 liters). These seemingly large quantities come from a variety of sources—including coffee, tea, milk, soda, juice, fruits, vegetables and other foods. Instead of recommending how much extra water a person should drink to maintain health, the panel simply concluded that "the vast majority of healthy people adequately meet their daily hydration needs by letting thirst be their guide."

Advocates of the 8 x 8 guideline sometimes claim that thirst is a poor hydration indicator. They assert that many people are so chronically dehydrated they no longer recognize their bodies' signals for water. Barbara Rolls, professor of nutrition sciences at the Pennsylvania State University, disagrees. Her studies, she says, "found no evidence that people are chronically dehydrated." Although some drugs can cause problems with thirst regulation and the elderly may not experience thirst as intensely as younger people, Rolls maintains that most healthy people are adequately hydrated.

Weight loss is another benefit often touted by proponents of the 8 x 8 guideline. They claim people mistake thirst for hunger, which causes them to eat when they are really just thirsty. They also allege that drinking water suppresses appetite. Given the obesity crisis, every little bit (or drop) helps.

But Rolls disagrees, arguing that "drinking water and waiting for pounds to melt away does not work. We all wish it were that simple." She explains that "hunger and thirst are controlled by separate systems in the body. People are unlikely to mistake thirst for hunger." Furthermore, she reports that her studies "never found that drinking water with or before a meal affected appetite." Nevertheless, there are some elements of truth in the misperception. Rolls did find that water-rich foods—as opposed to stand-alone water—tended to help people consume fewer calories. And, she says, "there is a way that water can help with weight loss—if you use water as a substitute for a caloric beverage."

Neither Rolls nor Valtin opposes the idea of including water in a healthy diet. They both note that the body needs water to function properly and that dehydration hurts the body. They do object, however, to the notion that a universally true guideline governs ideal water consumption. "Water requirements depend so much on outside temperature, activity levels and other factors that there isn't one rule that fits everybody," Rolls says. And Valtin cautions that in some situations drinking too much water can actually be dangerous, even fatal.

So how much water should you drink? Here's their advice: If you have specific medical concerns, talk to your doctor. But if you are healthy, Rolls recommends that you "have a beverage with meals and drink when you are thirsty." In other words, heed your thirst signals, enjoy that watermelon, and stop feeling guilty for not guzzling those extra glasses.

Exposing Fish To Disease, Death and Intersex Traits And We Eat Them!

2009-06-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

Exposure to estrogen puts fish at greater risk of disease and premature death, according to a new federal study.

The U.S. Geological Survey study showed that estrogen exposure reduces a fish's ability to produce proteins that help it ward off disease and pointed to a possible link between the occurrence of intersex fish and recent fish kills in the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers.

The report, published in the current issue of Fish & Shellfish Immunology, adds to a growing body of research pointing to problems with estrogen in the nation's waterways.

Other research has found evidence of estrogen exposure in freshwater and some marine fish populations. In a previous report, USGS scientists found widespread occurrences of fish in the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers with "intersex" characteristics -- male fish carrying immature female egg cells in their testes. Other scientists observed similar problems in fish in Southern California and in labs in Canada and the United States.

Scientists have not targeted the source of estrogen, but many suspect it stems from certain pollutants and drugs in waterways.

For the new research, USGS scientists injected largemouth bass with estrogen in laboratory tests. They discovered that the fish produced lower levels of hepcidins, proteins that regulate iron and may be a first line of defense against disease-causing bacteria, fungi and viruses.

Largemouth bass usually produce two kinds of these sickness-shielding proteins. After being exposed to estrogen, they reduced production of one type of the protein, and exposure to estrogen and bacteria completely blocked the production of the other. The researchers say this could explain why the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers seem to have the co-occurence of intersex fish, fish lesions and fish kills.

"The fact that estrogen blocked production of hepcidins in fish exposed to bacteria gives more weight to the theory that estrogen or estrogen-mimicking chemicals could be making fish more susceptible to diseases," said Laura Robertson, who led the research.

Male fish with the capability to develop immature eggs inside their sex organs were first found in a West Virginia stream in 2003, raising fears that there were endocrine disruptors in the water that scientists were not finding in repeated water tests.

In a 2006 study, the USGS scientists found widespread endocrine disruption among smallmouth and largemouth bass in the Potomac River and its tributaries across Maryland and Virginia. Tests on smallmouth bass in the Shenandoah River in Virginia and in the Monocacy River in Maryland -- both of which feed the Potomac -- concluded that more than 80 percent of all the male bass were growing eggs. Environmental groups have asked U.S. EPA to ban chemicals used in many household detergents that are linked to endocrine disruption and gender changes in fish. One chemical, nonylphenol, imitates estrogen. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups want EPA to use a provision of the Toxic Substances Control Act to regulate individual substances.

Toxic World - Toxic Food

2009-06-06T02:23:00.000-07:00

The Non-Toxic Times Newsletter reports that some people in the scientific community think that the startling, inexplicable rise in food allergies in recent years can be traced to genetically modified foods.

Thirty years ago, food allergies were rare, but now they affect more than 11 million Americans. Rates of peanut allergies in the U.S. doubled between 1997 and 2002.

Genetically modified (GM) foods entered the U.S. market in 1994 without any special labeling. Now, experts estimate that 60-70% of processed foods contain genetically modified ingredients. The most common GM foods are soybeans, corn, and cotton. (Cottonseed oil is a common ingredient in many processed foods!)

GM foods contain foreign genes from different species. These foreign genes are inserted to create desirable traits for farmers and increase profits. Many GM foods, for instance, have been modified to resist a particular disease or pest.

Here are just a few pieces of evidence that GM foods may be fueling the increase in food allergies:

In 1999, an annual study of food allergens in the U.K. found that soy allergies had increased 50% over the previous year. This trend coincided with the first imports of GM soy from the U.S., which led scientists to strongly suspect a connection.

A Monsanto company study on GM Bt corn (which the company was forced to reveal through legal action) showed that rats who ate it experienced a significant increase in three types of immune system blood cells.

Mice fed a diet rich in GM soy had significantly lower levels of pancreatic enzymes, which are needed to break down proteins in the digestive tract. When proteins last longer in the body, they're more likely to provoke an allergic response.

A type of GM potato has been found to damage the immune systems of rats.

If you'd like to learn more about GM foods, I suggest that you watch the documentary The Future of Food, which you can watch in its entirety on Google Video.

They've Genetically Modified YOU

2009-06-06T02:15:00.000-07:00

You may be surprised to learn that you have a 75 percent chance of picking a food with genetically modified (GM) ingredients when you’re at the supermarket. This is because at least seven out of every 10 items have been genetically modified.

In fact, the United States leads the world in GM crop acreage with 123 million acres in all (that’s close to one-third of the agricultural land in the United States planted with gene-altered crops).

And the blight of genetically engineered crops across the globe continues to grow. Worldwide, there are at least 222 million acres planted with GM crops, and the number keeps rising.

Although the major food giants are carrying on with their claim that GM foods are no different from conventionally grown varieties, the research begs to differ.

Here is just a sampling of the unsavory findings associated with GM foods:

GM peas caused lung damage in mice
GM potatoes may cause cancer in rats
Bacteria in your gut can take up DNA from GM food
They may be spurring the creation of weed-killer-resistant superweeds

Aside from the potential risks to your health, genetic modification known as “terminator technology” is now being used to create, you guessed it, seeds that “self-destruct.” In other words, the seeds (and the forthcoming crops) are sterile, which means farmers must buy them again each year (as opposed to using the seeds from their harvest to replant the following year, which is the traditional way).

This, of course, means bigger profits for the food companies that are patenting GM seeds, and more money shelled out from farmers. Worse still, this practice could actually threaten the entire food supply because the sterile seeds may spread to nearby fields.

There is an incredibly important documentary on this topic that I urge you to watch yourself and then pass on to ALL of your friends and family. This should be required viewing for everyone that is living in the 21st century. It will open your eyes to the dangers of GM foods and do it in a way that is very easy to learn. It is one of the most important videos I have ever viewed.

Again, you simply MUST watch this video!!

It’s called The Future of Food. This documentary will help you understand the very real threat that ALL future generations face as a result of genetic engineering.

You may also be interested to know that I am actually working strategically with Jeffery Smith, the leader of the anti-GM movement in the United States, to facilitate the end of GM foods in the U.S. within the next two years.

This shopping guide is an excellent start, as you can print it out and take it with you to the store so you can avoid GM foods like the plague.

Along with using The True Food Shopping Guide, you can also follow these tips to avoid GM ingredients:

Examine produce stickers on the fruits and vegetables you buy. The PLU code for conventionally grown fruit consists of four numbers, organically grown fruit has five numbers prefaced by the number nine, and GM fruit has five numbers prefaced by the number eight.
Buy organic produce as often as you can. By definition, food that is certified organic must be free from all GM organisms.
Stay away from processed foods. Most of these contain corn and soy products, and most corn and soy are genetically modified.

Monsanto: Seeds Of Starvation

2009-06-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

An ad that recently ran during the American Public Media show Marketplace, sponsored by Monsanto, the world’s largest corporate agribusiness chemical firm, touted how Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) seeds are going to save the world from environmental catastrophe and human hunger.

The Monsanto ads are, quite simply, false. The premise of the ad is that Monsanto’s GM seeds are going to save the world from environmental catastrophe and human hunger, but the reality of Monsanto’s seeds and the company’s ethics and commitment to fighting world hunger have little to do with either.

Eighty-five percent of all GM seeds are engineered for herbicide tolerance, most of these being Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” cotton, corn, soy, and canola seeds. This allows plants to withstand significant amounts of pesticides being sprayed on it, in effect promoting pesticide use. As a result, there has been an increase in pesticide use in the United States since the introduction of GM seeds. Since the introduction of GM crops in the United States, more than 120 million pounds of additional pesticides were used.

At the same time, not a single GM crop has been commercially introduced that is intended to increase yield. Agronomists and plant scientists made far greater advances in yields through conventional breeding methods than they ever have with GM crops. In fact, there have been several studies which show that there are actually yield losses associated with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans. GM crops are not feeding the world, and they are not enabling us to produce more.

Monsanto wants you to believe their crops are feeding hungry children in Africa, and that they are allowing farmers to use fewer chemicals. But do their actions demonstrate that their concern lies solely in their profits?

Anyone who believes Monsanto’s proclamations of saving the world from environmental catastrophe and hunger is clearly not paying attention to some very blatant signs that this is not true.

It’s unfortunate that the U.S. has yet to follow the decision of several other countries that have already banned genetically modified crops. Germany, for example, recently became the sixth country in the European Union to take a stand against GM corn. Meanwhile, tens of millions of acres of GM corn are being planted in the U.S.

According to the French Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, a molecular endocrinologist and a member of two French government commissions evaluating GM food, the corn variety in question, called MON 810, has shown statistically significant problems in animal studies.

They found the effects of the GM crops were similar to that of pesticides, causing inflammation disorders, and problems with livers and kidneys, two major organs involved with detoxification.

Another scientist, biology professor Bela Darvas of Hungary‘s Debrecen University, discovered that Monsanto’s Mon 810 is lethal to two Hungarian protected species.

So how does Monsanto respond to Darvas’ disturbing findings?

They simply refuse to give him any more Mon 810 corn to use in his tests. They’ve also refused his request for Mon 863, another GM variety. Is that really the enlightened action of an environmentally sensitive company that is looking out for not only your health, but the wellbeing of the planet?

Common GMO Myths

As The GM-Free Ireland Network points out, there are numerous GM biotechnology propaganda myths in circulation, and none of them are true. If you’ve been paying attention to the news about genetically modified plants, you’ve probably heard some of them already. (For the full list, please see this pdf.)

Myth #1: Genetic engineering is a continuation of traditional breeding methods

In fact, most GM crops are modified with the introduction of DNA from other species entirely. This never occurs in nature, or with traditional breeding methods.

Myth #2: Opponents of GM food are anti-science

Leading opponents of GM foods include the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Independent Science Panel, the U.S. Center for Food Safety, and numerous agronomic, environmental, and health scientists.

Myth #3: GM crops have higher yields

GM crop seeds currently on the market do not increase yields, and are not designed to. In fact, GM crops typically render lower yields.

For example, GM soya has decreased yields by up to 20 percent compared with non-GM soya. And up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton have been recorded in India. This in turn has spurred a staggering number of suicides among India’s farmers. According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, more than 182,900 Indian farmers took their own lives between 1997 and 2007, potentially due to GM crop failures. An estimated 46 Indian farmers commit suicide every day.

Additionally, recent studies by scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia found that growing GM cotton in the U.S. can result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent.

Myth #4: Americans have been eating GM foods for 15 years without any health problems

This one is perhaps most deceptive as GM foods are not labeled in the U.S., which makes traceability and accountability impossible. There may or may not be obvious health problems, but it is carefully designed so that no one can find out for sure.

However, according to Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, what we do know is that between 1994 and 2001 – at the same time as GMO’s flooded the market – food related illnesses DOUBLED.

His findings show that GMO foods can be:

Allergenic
Toxic
Carcinogenic
Anti-nutritional

Although the major food giants are carrying on with their claim that GM foods are no different from conventionally grown varieties, the research says otherwise.

For example, GM peas were found to cause lung damage in mice; GM potatoes have been linked to cancer in rats; and bacteria in the human gut has been shown to take up DNA from genetically modified food under certain circumstances.

When viewed as a whole, GM foods are a disaster for the environment, an unviable solution to world hunger, and undoubtedly worse for your health.

GM Crops Fail to Live Up to Advertised Promises Again and Again

The fact remains that GM crops have failed to deliver on virtually every single promise and expectation. After 30 years of GMO experimentation, we have the data to show:No reduction in pesticides use; on the contrary, USDA data shows that GM crops has increased pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the U.S., and the use of glyphosate went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds.

GM crops do harm wildlife, as revealed by UK and U.S. studies.

Bt resistant pests and Roundup tolerant superweeds render the two major GM crop traits useless. The evolution of Bt resistant bollworms worldwide have now been confirmed and documented.

Unpredictable transgene contamination is completely unavoidable, as science has recently revealed that the genome (whether plant, animal or human) is NOT constant and static, which is the scientific base for genetic engineering of plants and animals.

Instead, geneticists have discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic and changeable, and constantly ‘conversing’ and adapting to the environment. This interaction determines which genes are turned on, when, where, by what and how much, and for how long. They’ve also found that the genetic material itself has the ability to be changed according to experience, passing it on to subsequent generations.

How to Avoid GM Foods

Avoiding GM products in your diet means avoiding an ever-growing number of ingredients, or choosing organic versions of them. This is not an easy task, especially if you eat processed food. However, the four most prevalent GM ingredients to look out for are:

Soy
Corn
Cottonseed
Canola

You’ll also want to avoid the offspring of these products, which includes items like maltodextrin, soy lecithin, and high fructose corn syrup.

You CAN Demand Better Food

It’s easy to sit back and think you can’t do a thing to change the current state of affairs, but the fact is, you CAN make a difference. You can demand something better -- food that is still food, grown the way nature intended.

First and foremost, you can vote with your pocketbook by avoiding everything that contains GM ingredients, and ask your local supermarket to stock their shelves with more natural organic foods. Some supermarkets will even allow you to special order food items.

And don’t forget about your elected officials. Let them know how you feel about it, and what kind of policies you’re willing to support.

People in certain professions can play a significant role to advance this cause as well:

Chefs, restaurants and food companies can switch to non-GM sources

Retailers can remove or label GM products or offer in-store Non-GMO Shopping Guides

Religious leaders can help to educate their congregation

Health practitioners can provide patient education materials

Those in the education world can help make school cafeterias GM-free

Reporters can expose the health risks

To get an idea of just how widespread GM ingredients are, I recommend taking a look at The GMO Food Guide. It lists 20 different food categories that include everything from baby food to chocolate.

And the incredible series Seeds of Doubt, written by staffers at the Sacramento Bee, can offer further guidance to fully understand the many problems associated with GM foods.

Last but not least, I urge everyone to watch the video The Future of Food, and forward the link to this video to your friends, family and acquaintances. This in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind genetically modified foods is one of the best documentaries made to date. It will help you understand how and why the genetic engineering we allow to be unleashed today is a very real threat to ALL future generations.

Common Chemicals Threaten Male Fertility

2009-06-05T03:02:00.001-07:00

In recent years, more and more evidence has emerged, showing that certain chemicals are causing damage to the endocrine system of both wildlife and humans. Male infertility, in particular, is on the rise, and about 250,000 fewer boys have been born in the last 30 years in the U.S. and Japan.

Scientists are linking these phenomena to an accumulation of “gender-bending” toxins called endocrine disruptors.

Based on the initial evidence, Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act in 1996, which required the EPA to initiate the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP) to screen pesticide chemicals and environmental contaminants for their potential to affect the endocrine systems of both animals and humans.

However, despite the fact that more than a decade has passed since the beginning of the program, the market is literally flooded with chemicals that have the potential to wreak havoc with your health. Especially when you’re exposed to them in a myriad of untested combinations.

Says CHEM Trust director, Elizabeth Salter Green:

“Chemicals that have been shown to act together to affect male reproductive health should have their risks assessed together. Currently that is not the case, and unfortunately chemicals are looked at on an individual basis.

Therefore, government assurances that exposures are too low to have any effect just do not hold water because regulators do not take into account the additive actions of hormone disrupting chemicals.”

Why You Need to Protect Your Endocrine System

Your endocrine system is a complex network of glands, hormones and receptors, which works in tandem with your nervous system to control all your bodily functions and processes.

The glands of your endocrine system and the hormones they release influence almost every cell, organ, and function of your body. It is instrumental in regulating mood, growth and development, tissue function, metabolism, as well as sexual function and reproductive processes.

Endocrine disrupters are substances or mixtures that alter the functions of your endocrine system and consequently cause adverse health effects, either in your body or in your offspring.

These types of chemicals can exert their effects by:

Mimicking the biological activity of your hormones by binding to a cellular receptor. This can initiate your cell's normal response to the naturally occurring hormone at the wrong time or to an excessive extent (agonistic effect).
Binding to the receptor but not activating it. Instead the presence of the chemical on the receptor prevents binding of the natural hormone (antagonistic effect).
Binding to transport proteins in your blood, thus altering the amounts of natural hormones that are present in your blood circulation.
Interfering with the metabolic processes in your body, affecting the synthesis or breakdown rates of your natural hormones.

So far, the main areas of scientific study have focused on disruption to the hormones that play a major part in development and reproduction, mainly estrogens and androgens.

These hormones also influence your immune system and general metabolism.

The strongest evidence showing that exposure to environmental chemicals can lead to disruption of endocrine function comes from the bizarre changes seen in a number of wildlife species, such as male fish transforming into females; frogs developing a variety of defects like multiple testes or ovaries; and hermaphrodite bears, just to name a few.

The Dirty Dozen -- Potential Endocrine Disrupters to Avoid

Endocrine disrupting chemicals are everywhere these days. You are exposed to them from a variety of sources, including countless common household products, toys, personal care products, and cosmetics.

Here’s a list of twelve common agents with hormonal activity, i.e. potential endocrine disrupters:

Phthalates -- Exposure to phthalates can lead to incomplete testicular descent in fetuses. Phthalates are found in vinyl flooring, detergents, automotive plastics, soap, shampoo, deodorants, fragrances, hair spray, nail polish, plastic bags, food packaging, garden hoses, inflatable toys, blood-storage bags, and intravenous medical tubing.
Bisphenol A -- a common ingredient in many plastics, including those in reusable water bottles and resins lining some food cans and dental sealants, can change the course of fetal development in a way that increases your risk of breast cancer.
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) -- found in grease- and water-resistant coatings like Teflon and Gore-Tex, is a likely carcinogen.
Methoxychlor and Vinclozin-- An insecticide and a fungicide respectively, have been found to cause changes to male mice born for as many as four subsequent generations after the initial exposure.
Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) -- Known to be potent endocrine disrupters, these chemicals affect gene expression by turning on or off certain genes, and interfere with the way your glandular system works. They mimic the female hormone estrogen, and have been implicated as one reason behind some marine species switching from male to female.
Bovine growth hormones, commonly added to commercial dairy have been implicated as a contributor to premature adolescence.
Soy products, which are loaded with hormone-like substances.
MSG -- A food additive that’s been linked to reduced fertility.
Fluoride -- This chemical in the U.S. water supply has been linked to lower fertility rates, hormone disruption and low sperm counts.
Synthetically produced pharmaceuticals that are intended to be highly hormonally active, such as contraceptive pills and treatments for hormone-responsive cancers. Your body is not designed to be exposed to these synthetic hormones, and long-term use will invariably increase your risk of developing serious chronic illness.
Other natural chemicals, including toxins produced by components of plants (the so-called phytoestrogens, such as genistein or coumestrol) and certain fungi.
Other man-made chemicals and by-products released into the environment. These include some pesticides (such as pyrethroids, linuron, vinclozolin, fenitrothion, DDT and other chlorinated compounds), and a number of industrial chemicals like polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs) and dioxins.

How Do These Chemicals Affect Your Health?

Certain health patterns over recent decades suggest that endocrine disrupting chemicals are quietly at work. These include:

declining sperm counts
increased incidences of male children born with genital malformations
increased incidences of certain hormone-sensitive types of cancer
impaired neural development, causing memory problems and lower IQ
impaired sexual behavior
precocious puberty
retarded sexual development

One of the Most Infamous Examples of the Dangers of Endocrine Disrupters

The clearest example of the disastrous, long-term health effects of an endocrine disrupter is diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen prescribed in the 1950s and 1960s to five million pregnant women for the prevention of spontaneous abortion.

Many of these children ended with physical deformities and developmental abnormalities, and some of the girls developed an unusual form of vaginal cancer when they reached puberty.

Consequently, DES was banned in the 1970s. But the damage still lingers, and in some cases keeps showing up even in second generation babies. And, although DES is no longer on the market, other similar chemicals are, such as Bisphenol-A (BPA), which I’ve written about on numerous occasions.

How to Protect You and Your Children’s Health

If you have children, or are planning a pregnancy, this is clearly an issue you’ll want to pay attention to. Yet, so many more products contain endocrine disruptors of varying types; trying to avoid them all can seem like an impossible task.

It is difficult, yes, but there are still a number of practical strategies you can implement to limit your exposure to endocrine disruptors, and other common toxins.

Here’s a baker’s dozen of practical measures you can take to protect you and your children from common toxic substances that may wreak havoc with your delicate endocrine system:

Store your food in glass containers whenever possible, as it is the most inert container you can use.
Only use natural cleaning products in your home. Most health food stores will have these available or you can search online for them.
Buy and eat organic produce and free-range, organic foods to reduce your exposure to pesticides and fertilizers. This also applies to milk, which is frequently contaminated with bovine growth hormone.
Avoid conventional or farm-raised fish, which are often heavily contaminated with PCBs and mercury. Instead, supplement with a high-quality krill oil, or eat fish that is wild-caught and lab tested for purity.
Avoid processed foods, and artificial food additives of all kinds, including artificial sweeteners and MSG.
Throw out your Teflon pots and pans.
Have your tap water tested and, if contaminants are found, install an appropriate water filter on all your faucets (even those in your shower or bath).
Only use natural cleaning products in your home.
Avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners or other synthetic fragrances.
Switch to natural brands of toiletries, including shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants and cosmetics.
When redoing your home, look for “green,” toxin-free alternatives in lieu of regular paint and vinyl floor coverings.
Replace your vinyl shower curtain with one made of fabric.
Review Our Stolen Future, which is an excellent resource on this topic.

Warning: Food Labels Can Fool Even the Smartest People

2009-06-05T02:58:00.000-07:00

When you decide to eat a packaged food of any kind, the only factor you have to go on to determine its contents is the nutrition label. These food labels are supposed to be there to help you make healthy, informed decisions about what you eat, in terms of not only the calories, sodium and fat content, but also the ingredients.

When Lisa Lillien, the voice behind Hungry-Girl.com, had several samples of food tested in independent labs, the results were not consistent with what was printed on the labels.

How could this be?

A very good question. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees federal labeling rules for 80 percent of foods, and this is a large part of the problem. A report released in October 2008 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) gave the FDA a failing grade when it comes to preventing false and misleading labeling.

The FDA is Not Testing Label Compliance

According to the report, the FDA “has not kept pace” with their enforcement efforts as the number of food products has increased dramatically in recent years. Amazingly, it’s revealed that the FDA has not done random sampling to test the accuracy of Nutrition Facts labels since the 1990s!

Further, as reported by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, even among labels that are suspected of being inaccurate, only very limited testing is done. And as for foreign food firms, the FDA inspected only 95 out of tens of thousands of them in 2007, and only in 11 out of 150 countries.

But wait -- there’s more!

The GAO also reported that the FDA does not track the correction of labeling violations, which means even if a food manufacturer is known to be using inaccurate labels, no one is checking up to make sure the problem is fixed.

Adding to the problem, the FDA’s own guidelines put the onus of accurate labeling on the manufacturer, and recommend not sampling the actual finished product to test for accuracy but rather to base it on product composition (i.e. a recipe). As their Web site states:

“FDA's continuing policy since the 1970s assigns the manufacturer the responsibility for assuring the validity of a product label's stated nutrient values.

Accordingly, the source of the data used to calculate nutrition label values is the prerogative of the manufacturer, but FDA's policy recommends that the nutrient values for labeling be based on product composition, as determined by laboratory analysis of each nutrient.”

How Likely is it the Nutrition Info Listed on Your Favorite Foods is Wrong?

This is truly anyone’s guess, as even the FDA does not have reliable data on the number of label’s they’ve reviewed for accuracy, according to GAO.

There was one report a few years back in which the FDA implied that more than 28,000 food labels were checked in a 14-month period. However, they only checked to see whether or not the Nutrition Facts panel was present, rather than whether or not it was accurate.

Simply checking to see whether a Nutrition Facts panel is present on a food’s label is hardly the information necessary to help Americans make healthier food choices.

Last year “Good Morning America” also hired a lab to test a dozen packaged food products to see if the nutrients matched the labels. All 12 products had label inaccuracies of some sort and three were actually off by more than 20 percent on items like sodium and total fat.

But even if the label is present and accurate, it must be more than 20 percent off in order for it to violate federal law, and government food labs have a 10 percent margin of error. This means an item labeled as having 400 calories can legally have up to 480 calories, plus there is the 10 percent testing margin of error.

There are other food-label loopholes to watch out for as well, including:

Ingredients called “incidental additives” do not have to be listed anywhere on labels. These include substances transferred to food via packaging and "ingredients of other ingredients" that are present at "insignificant levels" and have no "technical or functional effect."

A label can state it is “free from” a substance if there is less than 0.5 grams of it per serving. So a product that claims to be gluten-free or trans-fat-free can actually contain up to 0.5 grams per serving. This may seem insignificant, but if you eat more than one serving (as many people do) it will add up fast.
Undesirable ingredients are often “hidden” on labels. A classic example of this is with the dangerous food additive MSG, which is often disguised under ingredients like glutamate or glutamic acid.

“Natural contaminants” are also allowed and present in your food. This includes things like insect parts, insect eggs, and rodent hairs.
Many other items are also exempt from being labeled, or may be stated in a way that makes it hard to find. This includes genetically modified ingredients, irradiated ingredients, and ingredients from cloned animals.

So How Can You Know What’s in Your Food?

If you purchase processed or packaged foods, the bottom line is that you simply can’t -- unless you make serious invest in some independent laboratory analyses. Of course this isn’t very practical so you can do your homework and identify a few high-quality companies and pick foods that they make and then ask them for their independent, objective third-party analysis that confirms the accuracy of their nutrition labels.

If you’d rather not have to make a trip to the lab on your way home from the supermarket, simply focus your purchases on whole foods like fresh produce, eggs and meat from healthy sources, then prepare them at home.

Unfortunately as it stands, 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food goes toward processed food, of which the label inaccuracies may be most apparent.

To get better nutrition along with the greater peace of mind that comes from knowing what’s really in the food you eat, try to reverse this ratio and purchase the majority of your food in non-processed form.

Splenda & Sucralose - Sugar Substitutes Are Poisonous

2009-06-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

James Turner, chairman of the national consumer education group Citizens for Health expressed shock and outrage after reading a new report from scientists at Duke University. "The report makes it clear that the artificial sweetener Splenda and its key component sucralose pose a threat to the people who consume the product. Hundreds of consumers have complained to us about side effects from using Splenda and this study, published this past week in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health Part A, confirms that the chemicals in the little yellow package should carry a big red warning label," said Turner.

Among the results in the study by Drs. Mohamed B. Abou-Donia, Eman M. El-Masry, Ali A. Abdel-Rahman, Roger E. McLendon and Susan S. Schiffman is evidence that, in the animals studied, Splenda reduces the amount of good bacteria in the intestines by 50%, increases the pH level in the intestines, contributes to increases in body weight and affects the P-glycoprotein (P-gp) in the body in such a way that crucial health-related drugs could be rejected. Turner noted that the P-gp effect "could result in crucial medications used in chemotherapy for cancer patients, AIDS treatment and drugs for heart conditions being shunted back into the intestines rather than being absorbed by the body as intended."

The study was conducted using male rats over a period of twelve weeks. The manufacturers of Splenda also used a rat study when they applied for and received approval to market the product from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. At the time, the findings from their rat studies were extrapolated as to possible effects on humans. This is standard FDA practice and this study is consistent with that practice.

Turner said, "This report followed accepted policies and procedures and the results make clear the potential for disturbing side effects from the ingestion of Splenda. It is like putting a pesticide in your body. And this is at levels of intake erroneously approved by the Food and Drug Administration. A person eating two slices of cake and drinking two cups of coffee containing Splenda would ingest enough sucralose to affect the P-glycoprotein, while consuming just seven little Splenda packages reduces good bacteria." Although the effect of consuming Splenda does not result from a one time use, the side effects do occur after accumulated use. Turner also noted unmistakable evidence that Splenda is absorbed by fat, contrary to the claims of Johnson & Johnson.

Turner announced, "We are calling today on the FDA to immediately accept our petition filed over a year ago and initiate a review of its approval of sucralose and to require a warning label on Splenda packaging cautioning that people who take medications and/or have gastrointestinal problems avoid using Splenda. The new study makes it clear that Splenda can cause you to gain weight and lose the benefits of medications designed to improve and protect your health. The FDA should not continue to turn a blind eye to this health threat."

Killing You Sweetly

2009-06-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is also known as crystalline fructose, isoglucose and glucose-fructose. But it doesn’t matter what name it hides under; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s utterly unhealthy for you.

Yes, high fructose corn syrup is a silent killer. And the danger is real because it’s very difficult to avoid.

What is HFCS? High fructose corn syrup is a highly refined artificial sweetener made by processing cornstarch into a thick, clear liquid. The industrial process for making HFCS was developed in the 1970s.

When the cost of importing sugar significantly increased in 1977, producers wanted a cheaper alternative. They found that sugar from corn – corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, dextrine and HFCS – was much less expensive to produce, much sweeter (processed fructose is almost 20 percent sweeter than common sugar) and is easier to transport because it’s a liquid. Thus, corn-based sweeteners were born.

The result? High fructose corn syrup has drastically altered the American diet since it was widely introduced as a sweetener in the 1980s.

In 1966, sucrose (white sugar) had 86 percent of the market share for sweeteners. Today, more than 50 percent of sweeteners used are made from corn.

American consumption of HFCS increased by more than 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990. That’s bigger than the changes in intake of any other food or food group.

HFCS is now commonly found in almost all processed foods, including:

soft drinks (Coca-Cola, Pepsi)
fruit juices (Snapple, Ocean Spray Cranberry )and canned fruits
breakfast cereals (Kellogg’s cornflakes)
ice cream and dairy products (Dreyer’s, Yoplait yoghurts)
cookies and crackers (Nabisco Ritz crackers)
soups and sauces (Campbell’s vegetable soup)
condiments and salad dressings (Heinz ketchup)
baking products and baked goods (Brownberry bread)
candy bars and gum (PowerBar)
jams, jellies and syrup (Smucker’s grape jelly)
even in cough syrups and low-fat diet foods (Robitussin, Vicks)!

If you’re fond of drinking soda and processed fruit juices and any of the above food items, chances are you’re “high” on high fructose corn syrup. HCFS is the number one source of calories in the American diet and is one of the main contributors to the obesity epidemic in the United States.

The Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup

You’d be hard-pressed to find something in the supermarket which doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup but there is no shortage of reasons why you should avoid HCFS because it:

Travels straight to the liver where it is metabolized to fat. In fact, fructose converts to fat more than any other sugar.
Contributes to the development of diabetes and tissue damage. A recent study presented at the 2007 national meeting of the American Chemical Society found new evidence that soft drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup contains high levels of reactive compounds that have been shown by others to trigger cell and tissue damage that cause diabetes.
Does not stimulate insulin production or enhance leptin, a hormone involved in appetite regulation. Because insulin and leptin act as key signals in regulating how much food you eat, this suggests that dietary fructose may contribute to increased food consumption and weight gain.
Contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals; instead, it takes micronutrients from your body while it assimilates itself for use. The fructose in HFCS is different from the natural fructose you get when you eat a small piece of whole fruit, which contains the nutrients needed for your body to assimilate sugar.
Increases your triglyceride and LDL (bad cholesterol) levels. Triglycerides are the chemical form of fat found in foods and in your body. Studies show that elevated blood levels of triglycerides increases your risk of heart disease.
Is almost always made from genetically modified corn, which may radically increase your risk of developing corn food allergies. The problem with corn allergies are that once you have a corn allergy from GMO corn you will have an allergy to even healthy organic corn products.

The Murky World Of High Fructose Corn Syrup

2009-06-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

Think of sugar and you think of sugar cane or beets. Extraction of sugar from sugar cane spurred the colonization of the New World. Extraction of sugar from beets was developed during the time of Napoleon so that the French could have sugar in spite of the English trading blockade.

Nobody thinks of sugar when they see a field of corn. Most of us would be surprised to learn that the larger percentage of sweeteners used in processed food comes from corn, not sugar cane or beets.

The process for making the sweetener high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) out of corn was developed in the 1970s. Use of HFCS grew rapidly, from less than three million short tons in 1980 to almost 8 million short tons in 1995. During the late 1990s, use of sugar actually declined as it was eclipsed by HFCS. Today Americans consume more HFCS than sugar.

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a high percentage of fructose. It all sounds rather simple--white cornstarch is turned into crystal clear syrup. However, the process is actually very complicated. Three different enzymes are needed to break down cornstarch, which is composed of chains of glucose molecules of almost infinite length, into the simple sugars glucose and fructose.

First, cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce shorter chains of sugars called polysaccharides. Alpha-amylase is industrially produced by a bacterium, usually Bacillus sp. It is purified and then shipped to HFCS manufacturers.

Next, an enzyme called glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains down even further to yield the simple sugar glucose. Unlike alpha-amylase, glucoamylase is produced by Aspergillus, a fungus, in a fermentation vat where one would likely see little balls of Aspergillus floating on the top.

The third enzyme, glucose-isomerase, is very expensive. It converts glucose to a mixture of about 42 percent fructose and 50-52 percent glucose with some other sugars mixed in. While alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are added directly to the slurry, pricey glucose-isomerase is packed into columns and the sugar mixture is then passed over it. Inexpensive alpha-amylase and glucoamylase are used only once, glucose-isomerase is reused until it loses most of its activity.

There are two more steps involved. First is a liquid chromatography step that takes the mixture to 90 percent fructose. Finally, this is back-blended with the original mixture to yield a final concentration of about 55 percent fructose--what the industry calls high fructose corn syrup.

HFCS has the exact same sweetness and taste as an equal amount of sucrose from cane or beet sugar but it is obviously much more complicated to make, involving vats of murky fermenting liquid, fungus and chemical tweaking, all of which take place in one of 16 chemical plants located in the Corn Belt. Yet in spite of all the special enzymes required, HFCS is actually cheaper than sugar. It is also very easy to transport--it's just piped into tanker trucks. This translates into lower costs and higher profits for food producers.

The development of the HFCS process came at an opportune time for corn growers. Refinements of the partial hydrogenation process had made it possible to get better shortenings and margarines out of soybeans than corn. HFCS took up the slack as demand for corn oil margarine declined. Lysine, an amino acid, can be produced from the corn residue after the glucose is removed. This is the modus operandi of the food conglomerates--break down commodities into their basic components and then put them back together again as processed food.

Today HFCS is used to sweeten jams, condiments like ketchup, and soft drinks. It is also a favorite ingredient in many so-called health foods. Four companies control 85 percent of the $2.6 billion business--Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Staley Manufacturing Co. and CPC International. In the mid-1990s, ADM was the object of an FBI probe into price fixing of three products--HFCS, citric acid and lysine--and consumers got a glimpse of the murky world of corporate manipulation.

There's a couple of other murky things that consumers should know about HFCS. According to a food technology expert, two of the enzymes used, alpha-amylase and glucose-isomerase, are genetically modified to make them more stable. Enzymes are actually very large proteins and through genetic modification specific amino acids in the enzymes are changed or replaced so the enzyme's "backbone" won't break down or unfold. This allows the industry to get the enzymes to higher temperatures before they become unstable.

Consumers trying to avoid genetically modified foods should avoid HFCS. It is almost certainly made from genetically modified corn and then it is processed with genetically modified enzymes. I've seen some estimates claiming that virtually everything--almost 80 percent--of what we eat today has been genetically modified at some point. Since the use of HFCS is so prevalent in processed foods, those figures may be right.

But there's another reason to avoid HFCS. Consumers may think that because it contains fructose--which they associate with fruit, which is a natural food--that it is healthier than sugar. A team of investigators at the USDA, led by Dr. Meira Field, has discovered that this just ain't so.

Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose. When sugar is given to rats in high amounts, the rats develop multiple health problems, especially when the rats were deficient in certain nutrients, such as copper. The researchers wanted to know whether it was the fructose or the glucose moiety that was causing the problems. So they repeated their studies with two groups of rats, one given high amounts of glucose and one given high amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol and heart hypertrophy--that means that their hearts enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen production. (Copper deficiency, by the way, is widespread in America.) In a nutshell, the little bodies of the rats just fell apart. The females were not so affected, but they were unable to produce live young.

"The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Dr. Field, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."

HFCS contains more fructose than sugar and this fructose is more immediately available because it is not bound up in sucrose. Since the effects of fructose are most severe in the growing organism, we need to think carefully about what kind of sweeteners we give to our children. Fruit juices should be strictly avoided--they are very high in fructose--but so should anything with HFCS.

Interestingly, although HFCS is used in many products aimed at children, it is not used in baby formula, even though it would probably save the manufactueres a few pennies for each can. Do the formula makers know something they aren't telling us? Pretty murky!

The Dangers Of High Fructose Corn Syrup

2009-06-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

For many years, Dr. Meira Fields and her coworkers at the US Department of Agriculture investigated the harmful effects of dietary sugar on rats. They discovered that when male rats are fed a diet deficient in copper, with sucrose as the carbohydrate, they develop severe pathologies of vital organs. Liver, heart and testes exhibit extreme swelling, while the pancreas atrophies, invariably leading to death of the rats before maturity.

Sucrose is a disaccharide composed of 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose. Dr. Fields repeated her experiments to determine whether it was the glucose or fructose moiety that caused the harmful effects. Starch breaks down into glucose when digested. On a copper-deficient diet, the male rats showed some signs of copper deficiency, but not the gross abnormalities of vital organs that occur in rats on the sucrose diet. When the rats were fed fructose, the fatal organ abnormalities occured.

Lysl oxidase is a copper-dependent enzyme that participates in the formation of collagen and elastin. Fructose seems to interfere with copper metabolism to such an extent that collagen and elastin cannot form in growing animals--hence the hypertrophy of the heart and liver in young males. The females did not develop these abnormalities, but they resorbed their litters.¹

These experiements should give us pause when we consider the great increase in the use of high fructose corn syrup during the past 30 years, particularly in soft drinks, fruit juices and other beverages aimed at growing children, children increasingly likely to be copper deficient as modern parents no longer serve liver to their families. (Liver is by far the best source of copper in human diets.)

"The bodies of the children I see today are mush," observed a concerned chiropractor recently. The culprit is the modern diet, high in fructose and low in copper-containing foods, resulting in inadequate formation of elastin and collagen--the sinews that hold the body together.

BINGEING ON FRUCTOSE

Until the 1970s most of the sugar we ate came from sucrose derived from sugar beets or sugar cane. Then sugar from corn--corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, dextrine and especially high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)--began to gain popularity as a sweetener because it was much less expensive to produce. High fructose corn syrup can be manipulated to contain equal amounts of fructose and glucose, or up to 80 percent fructose and 20 percent glucose.² Thus, with almost twice the fructose, HFCS delivers a double danger compared to sugar.

(With regards to fruit, the ratio is usually 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose, but most commercial fruit juices have HFCS added. Fruit contains fiber which slows down the metabolism of fructose and other sugars, but the fructose in HFCS is absorbed very quickly.)

In 1980 the average person ate 39 pounds of fructose and 84 pounds of sucrose. In 1994 the average person ate 66 pounds of sucrose and 83 pounds of fructose, providing 19 percent of total caloric energy.³ Today approximately 25 percent of our average caloric intake comes from sugars, with the larger fraction as fructose.⁴

High fructose corn syrup is extremely soluble and mixes well in many foods. It is cheap to produce, sweet and easy to store. It’s used in everything from bread to pasta sauces to bacon to beer as well as in "health products" like protein bars and "natural" sodas.

FRUCTOSE FOR DIABETICS?

In the past, fructose was considered beneficial to diabetics because it is absorbed only 40 percent as quickly as glucose and causes only a modest rise in blood sugar.⁵ However, research on other hormonal factors suggests that fructose actually promotes disease more readily than glucose. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver.⁶ The livers of test animals fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics.

Pure fructose contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals and robs the body of its micronutrient treasures in order to assimilate itself for physiological use.⁷ While naturally occurring sugars, as well as sucrose, contain fructose bound to other sugars, high fructose corn syrup contains a good deal of "free" or unbound fructose. Research indicates that this free fructose interferes with the heart’s use of key minerals like magnesium, copper and chromium. Among other consequences, HFCS has been implicated in elevated blood cholesterol levels and the creation of blood clots. It has been found to inhibit the action of white blood cells so that they are unable to defend the body against harmful foreign invaders.⁸

Studies on the Maillard reaction indicate that fructose may contribute to diabetic complications more readily than glucose. The Maillard reaction is a browning reaction that occurs when compounds are exposed to various sugars. Fructose browns food seven times faster than glucose, resulting in a decrease in protein quality and a toxicity of protein in the body.⁹ This is due to the loss of amino acid residues and decreased protein digestibility. Maillard products can inhibit the uptake and metabolism of free amino acids and other nutrients such as zinc, and some advanced Maillard products have mutagenic and/or carcinogenic properties. The Maillard reactions between proteins and fructose, glucose, and other sugars may play a role in aging and in some clinical complications of diabetes.¹⁰

Fructose reduces the affinity of insulin for its receptor, which is the hallmark of type-2 diabetes. This is the first step for glucose to enter a cell and be metabolized. As a result, the body needs to pump out more insulin to handle the same amount of glucose.²¹

OTHER EFFECTS

Nancy Appleton, PhD, clinical nutritionist, has compiled a list of the harmful effects of fructose in her books Lick the Sugar Habit, Healthy Bones, Heal Yourself With Natural Foods, The Curse Of Louis Pasteur and Lick the Sugar Habit Sugar Counter. She points out that consumption of fructose causes a significant increase in the concentration of uric acid; after ingestion of glucose, no significant change occurs. An increase in uric acid can be an indicator of heart disease.¹² Furthermore, fructose ingestion in humans results in increases in blood lactic acid, especially in patients with preexisting acidotic conditions such as diabetes, postoperative stress or uremia. Extreme elevations cause metabolic acidosis and can result in death.¹³

Fructose is absorbed primarily in the jejunum before metabolism in the liver. Fructose is converted to fatty acids by the liver at a greater rate than is glucose.¹⁴ When consumed in excess of dietary glucose, the liver cannot convert all of the excess fructose in the system and it may be malabsorbed. The portion that escapes conversion may be thrown out in the urine. Diarrhea can be a consequence.¹⁹ A study of 25 patients with functional bowel disease showed that pronounced gastrointestinal distress may be provoked by malabsorption of small amounts of fructose.²⁶

Fructose interacts with oral contraceptives and elevates insulin levels in women on "the pill."¹⁷

In studies with rats, fructose consistently produces higher kidney calcium concentrations than glucose. Fructose generally induces greater urinary concentrations of phosphorus and magnesium and lowered urinary pH compared with glucose.¹⁸

In humans, fructose feeding leads to mineral losses, especially higher fecal excretions of iron and magnesium, than did subjects fed sucrose. Iron, magnesium, calcium, and zinc balances tended to be more negative during the fructose-feeding period as compared to balances during the sucrose-feeding period.¹⁹

There is significant evidence that high sucrose diets may alter intracellular metabolism, which in turn facilitates accelerated aging through oxidative damage. Scientists found that the rats given fructose had more undesirable cross-linking changes in the collagen of their skin than in the other groups. These changes are also thought to be markers for aging. The scientists say that it is the fructose molecule in the sucrose, not the glucose, that plays the larger part.²⁰

Because it is metabolized by the liver, fructose does not cause the pancreas to release insulin the way it normally does. Fructose converts to fat more than any other sugar. This may be one of the reasons Americans continue to get fatter. Fructose raises serum triglycerides significantly. As a left-handed sugar, fructose digestion is very low. For complete internal conversion of fructose into glucose and acetates, it must rob ATP energy stores from the liver.²¹

Not only does fructose have more damaging effects in the presence of copper deficiency, fructose also inhibits copper metabolism--another example of the sweeteners double-whammy effect. A deficiency in copper leads to bone fragility, anemia, defects of the connective tissue, arteries, and bone, infertility, heart arrhythmias, high cholesterol levels, heart attacks, and an inability to control blood sugar levels.²²

Although these studies were not designed to test the effects of fructose on weight gain, the observation of increased body weight associated with fructose ingestion is of interest. One explanation for this observation could be that fructose ingestion did not increase the production of two hormones, insulin and leptin, that have key roles in the long-term regulation of food intake and energy expenditure.²³

HYPERSENSIVITY

The magnitude of the deleterious effects of fructose varies depending on such factors as age, sex, baseline glucose, insulin, triglyceride concentrations, the presence of insulin resistance, and the amount of dietary fructose consumed.²⁴ Some people are more sensitive to fructose. They include hypertensive, hyperinsulinemic, hypertriglyceridemic, non-insulin dependent diabetic people, people with functional bowel disease and postmenopausal women.²⁵

Everyone should avoid over-exposure to fructose, but especially those listed above. One or two pieces of fruit per day is fine, but commercial fruit juices and any products containing high fructose corn syrup aremore dangerous than sugar and should be removed from the diet.

REFERENCES

1. Fields, M, Proceedings of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine, 1984, 175:530-537.

2. Appleton, Nancy, PhD, Fructose is No Answer For a Sweetener, http://www.becomehealthynow.com/article/carbs/1170.

3. Beatrice Trum Hunter, Confusing Consumers About Sugar Intake, Consumer’s Research 78, no 1 (January 1995): 14-17.

4. Fallon, Sally and Mary Enig, Nourishing Traditions, New Trends Publishing, Washington DC, 2001, p. 23.

5. Hallfrisch, Judith, Metabolic Effects of Dietary Fructose, FASEB Journal 4 (June 1990): 2652-2660.

6. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 2002 Vol. 76, No. 5, 911-922.

7. Appleton, Nancy Ph.D., Fructose is No Answer For a Sweetener, http://www.becomehealthynow.com/article/carbs/1170.

8. http://www.mcvitamins.com/cornsyrup.htm.

9. H. F. Bunn and P. J. Higgins, Reaction of Nonosaccharides with Proteins; Possible Evolutionary Significance, Science 213 (1981):2222-2244.

10. William L Dills Jr., Protein Fructosylation: Fructose and the Maillard Reaction, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 58 (suppl) (1993): 779S-787S.

11. Hunter.

12. J. MacDonald, Anne Keyser, and Deborah Pacy, Some Effects, in Man, of Varying the Load of Glucose, Sucrose, Fructose, or Sorbitol on Various Metabolites in Blood, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 31 (August 1978)): 1305-1311.

13. Hallfrisch, Judith, Metabolic Effects of Dietary Fructose, FASEB Journal 4 (June 1990): 2652-2660.

14. D. Zakim and R. H. Herman, Fructose Metabolism II, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 21: 315-319, 1968.

15. A. E. Bender and K. B. Damji, Some Effects of Dietary Sucrose, World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics 15 (1972): 104-155.

16. J. J. Rumessen and E. Gudmand-Hoyer, Functional Bowel Disease: Malabsorption and Abdominal Distress After Ingestion of Fructose, Sorbitol, and Fructose-Sorbitol Mixtures, Gastroenterology 95, no. 3 (September 1988): 694-700.

17. Hunter,Beatrice Trum,Confusing Consumers About Sugar Intake, Consumers’ Research 78, no 1 (January 1995): 14-17.

18. A. E. Bergstra, A. G. Lemmens, and A. C. Beynens, Dietary Fructose vs. Glucose Stimulates Nephrocalcinogenesis in Female Rats, Journal of Nutrition 123, no. 7 (July 1993): 1320-1327.

19. R. Ivaturi and C. Kies, Mineral Balances in Humans as Affected by Fructose, High Fructose Corn Syrup and Sucrose, Plant Foods for Human Nutrition 42, no. 2 (1992): 143-151.

20. Roger B. Mc Donald, Influence of Dietary Sucrose on Biological Aging, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62 (suppl), (1995): 284s-293s.

21. H. Hallfrisch, et al.,The Effects of Fructose on Blood Lipid Levels, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 37: 5, 1983, 740-748.

22. Klevay, Leslie, Acting Director of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Human Nutrition Research Center, Grand Forks, N.D.

23. Observation by Nancy Appleton, PhD.

24. Hollenbeck, Claire B., Dietary Fructose Effects on Lipoprotein Metabolism and Risk for Coronary Artery Disease, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 58 (suppl), (1993): 800S-807S.

25. Appleton, Nancy Ph.D., Fructose is No Answer For a Sweetener, http://www.becomehealthynow.com/article/carbs/1170.

Sidebar Article

SOFT DRINKS IN THE SCHOOLS

High fructose corn syrup is the primary sweetener used in soft drinks, now readily available to children in school vending machines. The soft drink industry increased US production from 22 to 41 gallons of soft drinks per person a year between 1970 and 1997.

Teenagers and children, the industry’s main tragets, are among the largest consumers. In the past 10 years, soft drink consumption among children has almost doubled in the United States. Teenage boys now drink, on average, three or more cans of soda per day, and 10 percent drink seven or more cans a day. The average for teenage girls is more than two cans a day, and 10 percent drink more than five cans a day. A typical 20-ounce Coke contains zero fat, zero protein and 67 grams of carbohydrates, usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

There are an estimated 20,000 vending machines in schools nationwide, according to the National Automatic Merchandising Association. The USDA collected data on vending machines in schools and reported that 88 percent of high schools, 61 percent of middle schools and 14 percent of elementary schools have food or beverage vending machines for student use. Thirty-four percent of high schools and 15 percent of middle schools permit students to use school vending machines at any time, and 6 percent of elementary schools allow students to use vending machines during lunch.

Fluoride and Fluoridated Water's Link to Thyroid Disease

2009-05-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

This common additive to your water supply, and ingredient in the toothpaste you and your children use may be contributing to the increased rates of hypothyroidism -- and other health concerns -- in the U.S. . . without improving dental health.

*Note: there are links to many other medical problems besides Thyroid Disease; Fluoride lowers IQ, messes up your pineal gland, causes premature puberty in females, and can cause dental and bone fluoridosis.

What is Fluoride?

Fluoride is an element from the halogen group, as are iodide and chloride. It is commonly added to the water supply as hydrofluosilicic acid, silicofluoride or sodium fluoride. Fluoride is also found as an additive in toothpastes and some mouthwashes, as a tooth decay preventive ingredient.

Why is Fluoride Used?

Fluoride is used to fight tooth decay in children. The key initial studies purporting to demonstrate its effectiveness as an anti-cavity fighting compound were performed back in the 1940s. Those studies, conducted in Grand Rapids, MI in 1945, in Newburgh, NY in 1945, in Brantford, Ontario in 1945, and in Evanston, IL in 1947, are now being called into question. According to Dr. Philip Sutton, author of "The Greatest Fraud: Fluoridation" *A Factual Book, Lorne, Australia, 1996), these studies are actually of dubious scientific quality.

More recently, other studies attempting to document the effectiveness of fluoride have been conducted. Dr. John Yiamouyiannis examined the raw data from a large study that was conducted by the National Institute for Dental Research (NIDR). He concluded that fluoride did not appear to have any decay preventing success, as there was little difference in the DMFT values (the mean number of decayed, missing or filled teeth) for approximately 40,000 children. It did not matter whether they grew up in fluoridated, non-fluoridated or partially fluoridated communities. (Yiamouyiannis, J.A. "Water Fluoridation and Tooth Decay: Results from the 1986-87 National Survey of U.S. Schoolchildren", Fluoride, 23, 55-67, 1990).

A larger study has been conducted in New Zealand. There, the New Zealand National Health Service plan examines the teeth of every child in key age groups, and have found that the teeth of children in non-fluoridated cities were slightly better than those in the fluoridated cities. (Colquhoun, J. "Child Dental Health Differences in New Zealand", Community Healthy Services, XI 85-90, 1987).

Although children's teeth have improved steadily from the 1930s to the 1990s, this improvement appears to be independent of the addition of fluoride to the water. A study has yet to be conducted that specifically addresses whether the addition of fluoride affects the quality of teeth, while controlling and accounting for other factors and other sources of fluoride.

Despite growing questions about the effectiveness of using fluoride to fight tooth decay - and increasing concerns of the safety of this practice -- over 60 percent of the United States' water supply is fluoridated. Most of those cities are in the eastern part of the U.S.

What are the Concerns Associated with the Addition of Fluoride to the Water Supply?

The most recognized problem with the ingestion of too much fluoride is dental fluorosis. This condition is characterized by the failure of tooth enamel to crystallize properly in permanent teeth. The effects range from chalky, opaque blotching of teeth to severe, rust-colored stains, surface pitting and tooth brittleness.

This condition, though worrisome, may not be the key concern , at least according to some researchers. Dr. Phyllis Mullenix believes, based on her research, that fluoride acts in a way that lowers the I.Q. of children ("Neurotoxicity of Sodium Fluoride in Rats", Mullenix, P. Neurotoxicology and Teratology, 17 (2), 1995).

Dr. William Marcus, believes that a study conducted by Battelle for the National Toxicology Program on the toxicology of fluoride shows that there were dose-related increases in bone cancer in male rats. Dr. Marcus also questions the removal by peer reviewers of cancers at other sites in the rats as well. Especially worrisome to Dr. Marcus is the fact that that levels of fluoride that caused the cancers in the rats were lower than those seen in humans who ingested lower amounts, but for a longer period. These levels are generated because fluoride is accumulated in the body and is not secreted.

Dr. Marcus was formerly the chief toxicologist for the EPA's Office of Drinking Water, but was fired in 1991 after insisting that an unbiased evaluation of fluoride's cancer potential be conducted. Marcus fought his dismissal, and was able to be reinstated after demonstrating in court that it was politically motivated.

An article in the Irish Times of Dublin on August 16, 1999, reports that Dr. Hans Moolenburgh's research in Holland found that up to 4 percent of people using fluoridated water experienced health problems. These problems ranged from gastrointestinal disorders to mouth sores to rashes to headaches to forms of arthritis to more serious concerns such as cancers and neurological complaints.

Studies dating back to the 1950s have shown links between Down's Syndrome and natural fluoridation. Ionel Rapaport also showed how the age of women bearing Down's Syndrome children decreased in direct relation to the increase of fluoride in the water supply. The more fluoride that was in the water, the younger the age of the women bearing Down's Syndrome children.

Even those who aren't convinced of the toxicity of fluoride should be concerned about the level of fluoride added to the water supply. The optimum level was set in the 1940s at approximately 1 ppm (equal to 1 mg/l). This was based on assumptions that the total intake of fluoride would be 1 mg/day, assuming 4 glasses of water were drunk per day. However, current intake of fluoride comes not just from the water supply. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Iowa and reported in the November issue of the Journal of American Dental Association found that 71% of more than 300 soft drinks contained 0.60 ppm fluoride. Toothpaste, beverages, processed food, fresh fruits and vegetables, vitamins and mineral supplements all contribute to the intake of fluoride. It is now estimated that the total amount of fluoride ingested per day is 8 mg/day, eight times the optimum levels.

An additional and less well studied concern is the interaction of the fluoride compounds added to water with other water additives. Most studies examining the addition of fluoride to water have used sodium fluoride, however, most communities use the less expensive forms such as silicofluoride, hydrofluosilicic acid or sodium silicofluoride. A 1999 study of 280,000 Massachusetts children shows that levels of lead in blood were significantly higher in communities using these cheaper compounds than in towns where sodium fluoride was used or where the water was not treated at all. ("Children's Health and the Environment", 17th International Neurotoxicology Conference, Little Rock, Arkansas, October 17-20, 1999).

Aluminum compounds are frequently added to the water supply as clarifying agents. On its own, aluminum is not readily absorbed by the body, however, when fluoride is present, the two form aluminum-fluoride, which is easily absorbed. A long term study published in 1988 found that even low levels of aluminum-fluoride in drinking water delivered more aluminum to the brain than concentrated aluminum fluoride. The same study found that low levels of aluminum fluoride and sodium fluoride found in "optimally" fluoridated water cause severe kidney damage and lesions to the brain similar to those found in Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. Dr. Robert Isaacson, State University of New York, found that when aluminum fluoride is added to the food of rats, the rats developed short-term memory problems, smell sensory loss and other characteristics of Alzheimer's disease. (Isaacson, R. "Rat studies link brain cell damage with aluminum and fluoride in water" State Univ. of New York, Binghampton, NY, Wall Street Journal article by Marilyn Chase; Oct. 28, 1992, p. B-6).

What are the Thyroid-Specific Concerns?

Is fluoride in part the reason for near epidemic levels of hypothyroidism in the United States? Some experts and researchers believe this is the case.

Fluoride had been used for decades as an effective anti-thyroid medication to treat hyperthyroidism and was frequently used at levels below the current "optimal" intake of 1 mg/day. This is due to the ability of fluoride to mimic the action of thyrotropin (TSH). It makes sense, then that out of the over 150 symptoms and associations of hypothyroidism, almost all are also symptoms of fluoride poisoning.

Researcher and advocate Andreas Schuld has also found that excess of fluoride correlates with other thyroid-related issues such as iodine deficiency. Fluoride and iodine, both being members of the halogens group of atoms, have an antagonistic relationship. When there is excess of fluoride in the body it can interfere with the function of the thyroid gland. It is possible that iodine deficiency, which is the most common cause of brain damage and mental disability in the world, could be lessened by simply cutting back on the use of fluoride.

The Future of Fluoride

Some advocates believe that the truth about fluoride does not reach the public easily because fluoride, produced as a toxic waste byproduct of many types of heavy industry - such as aluminum, steel, fertilizer, glass, cement and other industries -- must be disposed of somewhere. If it's not used as an additive to water, manufacturers would have to pay millions of dollars to dispose of it properly, so the pressure to keep fluoride listed as a healthy additive to water-and not as an environmental toxin that requires costly disposal - is great and political pressures to keep fluoride in the drinking water is strong.

And the U.S. government has been one of the key supporters for fluoridation. Despite the questions regarding fluoride's effectiveness and safety, the administration's stated federal health objective is to increase the number of Americans with fluoridated tap water from previous levels of 62 percent to 75 percent in 2000.

Given half a century of support for fluoridation, it's also not likely that the American Dental Association will backtrack on its support for fluoridation.

Some cities are taking action, and making the decision to stop fluoridating their water supply - or not to fluoridate in the first place. For example, the City Council of Santa Barbara, California voted in late November of 1999 in favor of a resolution that "disagrees with and rejects the State's recommendation to fluoridate the city's public water system." With this action Santa Barbara joined the California cities of Santa Cruz, El Cajon, La Mesa, Escondido and Helix, Riverview, and Lakeside water districts that have each passed protective resolutions or ordinances in 1999. The cities of San Diego and Sunnyvale have ordinances prohibiting fluoridation that pre-date the State's law. The city officials of Santa Barbara indicated that adding a chemical to the water supply to medicate everyone was not the right approach and requested that the City's staff look into other programs to help children obtain fluoride for dental health.

The only admission that you're likely to see is the 1997 addition of warnings on toothpaste tubes, that now say: "Don’t Swallow—Use only a pea-sized amount for children under six." and "Children under six should be supervised while brushing with any toothpaste to prevent swallowing." In areas where the drinking water already contains fluoride, brushing more than once daily with more than a pea-sized amount of fluoridated toothpaste can cause fluorosis, the discoloration and spotting of the teeth that affects an estimated 20% of children.

What Can You Do?

Besides learning more about the effects of fluoride and getting involved in your community's decisions regarding water fluoridation, you can buy an unfluoridated, natural toothpaste, such as Tom's of Maine, particularly for young children.

You can also pay attention to the water you drink, and use filtered or bottled waters. Some water filters can remove fluoride from the water, but carbon-based filters such as the Brita filter do not, so be sure to find the right type of filter for fluoride.

Many bottled waters contain no additional fluoride. You can find out the fluoride and other mineral content of your favorite bottled waters at Bottled Water Web's Bottlers listing. (This link is no longer active). Evian, and Perrier, for example, contain no measurable fluoride, but Calistoga brand has 0.9 parts per million.

Yogurt: FDA Plays Hide the Poison

2009-05-31T10:09:00.001-07:00

The National Yogurt Association (NYA) has petitioned our FDA (Fatal Drugs Allowed) bureaucracy to ditch the requirement that chemicals added to food must be identified by name on the label. NYA wants to conceal their use of aspartame, otherwise called NutraSweet and Equal, from consumers. Like maybe they’ll call it natural flavor or some other imaginative alias.

Now why would they want to do that? Because smart consumers know about aspartame toxicity and avoid it like the plague. (It is.) A few days ago Equal producer Merisant filed for bankruptcy, reporting assets of $331 million against $561 million debt. Their submarine is $230,000,000 under water.

Once aspartame/NutraSweet/Equal was the billion-dollar queen of sweeteners. One that the FDA faithfully refused to approve for 16 years from the date it was created. Don Rumsfeld ran G. D. Searle, the company making it. He was Reagan’s buddy, so hours after Ronnie was inaugurated, in the middle of the night, the honest FDA Commissioner was fired. Next morning stooge Arthur Hayes was appointed who approved aspartame over the objections of FDA’s scientific board, then bailed out into the arms of NutraSweet’s PR firm as a consultant on a ten year contract for $1000.00 a day. He sold his soul for $365 million dollars.

Three congressional hearings and countless research reports and papers by renowned doctors confirm the deadly chemistry of aspartame, a multi-potential carcinogen concluded the Ramazzini Institute after a 3-year study on 1,800 rats. FDA listed 92 adverse reactions, including death, in their report on 10,000 consumer complaints volunteered by American consumers. Even the National Soft Drink Association petitioned FDA to deny aspartame approval, which objections were published in the 5/7/1985 Congressional Record, Senate.

The Jan.15, 2009 Federal Register, pg 2446-7 notes:

With respect to NYA’s recommended provision that would permit yogurt to contain non-nutritive sweeteners and be labeled simply “yogurt” without a specific declaration of the non-nutritive sweetener in the name of the food, comments were varied…. several consumers and at least one State government agency strongly opposed this provision … that removal of this identification would be misleading to consumers and could prove harmful to those individuals with Phenylketonuria.

Next comes consumer and dairy farmer objections to the NYA proposal that cheaper, inferior and imported ( from China?) ingredients be OK’d in what they’ll call yogurt. You see, when they make it cheaper they get richer, and who do you think you are to be told its just phony toxic stuff called “yogurt”, not the real thing.

The FDA concludes this action will promote honesty and fair dealing. How fair is hiding poison and concealing trash in your food? Consider exporting and misleading other countries as well. The public has to learn to only buy organic yogurt - know what’s in it.

NCL Study Links Aspartame To Leukemia/Lymphoma

2009-05-31T10:06:00.001-07:00

EFSA blesses formaldehyde-forming aspartame on April 20
NCI backs study linking formaldehyde to leukemia, lymphoma on May 14

From Mission Possible International

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced April 20, 2009: …”on the basis of all the evidence currently available including the [second] published ERF study there is no indication of any genotoxic or carcinogenic potential of aspartame and that there is no reason to revise the previously established ADI (allowable daily intake) for aspartame of 40mg/kg bw/day.” Truth be told: aspartame is an addictive excitoneurotoxic, genetically engineered, carcinogenic that interacts with virtually all medications.

EFSA is blinded by allegiance to commercial interests so it invents objections to acclaimed medical research, disregarding the suffering, ruined lives and death their cupidity brings to Europe.

In 2005 the renowned Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences reported a rigorous three years study on 1,800 rats, concluding: aspartame causes significant increases in lympomas/leukemias and is a multi-potential carcinogen. EFSA invented “deficiencies” in the study to protect manufacturers pet poison. The second study, ERF 2007, entirely verified the first. Dr. Morando Soffritti, who led both projects, noted that so much formaldehyde developed in aspartame-exposed rats that their skin turned yellow.

Who is the European Food Safety Authority? In 2002 a review of aspartame a review of aspartame y the European commission, Scientific Committee on Food attempted to pass off this deadly addictive drug as safe. An assessment by the European Anti-Fraud Agency (OLAF) revealed the opinion was written by a single person and not by the entire Scientific Committee on Food. OLAF did not reveal the name of this individual or any scientific expertise or conflict of interest he/she had.

Astonishingly, one unnamed individual writes each opinion of the committees. Next, persons, often industry consultants, review the draft. What is clear: neither the author nor the Committee (including industry consultants) considered or had familiarity with the scientific research detailed in the 2002 analysis.

The European Commission, Scientific Committee on Food is defunct and reviews are now conducted by EFSA, which is composed of many of the same scientists with conflicts of interest who were on the earlier bureaucracy.

America’s FDA approved aspartame as a synthetic sweetener in 1981. However, studies given the FDA by the manufacturer hide the fact the poison caused tumors in lab rats.

An interesting twist of formaldehyde fate

On May 14, 2009, the National Cancer Institute confirmed the link between formaldehyde and cancer. The NCI’s Laura E. Beane Freeman, Ph.D. reported that an extended analysis of workers exposed to formaldehyde was associated with a 37 percent increased death-risk from lymphoma and leukemia. “The overall patterns of risk seen in this extended follow-up of industrial workers are consistent with a causal association between formaldehyde exposure and cancers of the blood and lymphatic system and warrant continued concern,” Online: Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

According to Kristina Fiore of MedPage Today, “Since the 1980s, the Institute has studied a cohort of 25,619 workers employed before Jan. 1, 1966 in 10 industrial plants that produced formaldehyde in molded-plastic products, photographic film, decorative laminates and plywood. The formaldehyde cohort, originally assessed through Dec. 31, 1979, was then updated through Dec. 31, 1994.”

Researchers have not yet identified the mechanism by which formaldehyde causes leukemia but the pattern is consistent with “a possible causal association, with the largest risks occurring closer in time to relevant exposure.” She called for further study to “evaluate risks of these cancers in other formaldehyde-exposed populations and to assess possible biological mechanisms.”

Toxicologist, Dr. George Schwartz, told team NutraSweet in 1999 they had presented a one-sided self serving polemic defending their potentially dangerous product and said, “As one example, your comment that “formate is quickly eliminated by the body” is demonstrably false. .. The study done by Trocho et al, Formaldehyde derived from dietary aspartame binds to tissue components in vivo. Life Sciences 63:5:p.337-49, 1998, clearly demonstrates cellular persistence and accumulation, or in layman’s terms, that formaldehyde can remain and accumulate in the body.”

It is absolutely established formaldehyde converted from the methyl ester in aspartame embalms living tissue and damages DNA. www.mpwhi.com/formaldehyde_from_aspartame.pdf

EPA listed formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen in 1987. In 2004 the International Agency for Research on Cancer went further classifying formaldehyde as a “known human carcinogen” based partly on research suggesting a link to leukemia.

Dr. Woodrow Monte (Aspartame: Methanol and the Public Health) in New Zealand saw that the New Zealand Food Safety Authority was concerned formaldehyde was found in pajamas. He wrote: “If you are concerned about formaldehyde in your pajamas then think twice about taking it with your breakfast cereal. Aspartame or Equal, the controversial sweetener virtually forced down the throats of the American FDA by the notorious former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (the president of the company that produced it) turns into Formaldehyde inside your children’s bodies. It is well known aspartame or Equal (E951/951) turns into wood alcohol when it is consumed, however, few people realize this wood alcohol morphs into formaldehyde in the cells of the human body. Formaldehyde is a Class 1 causing agent (the world class of carcinogen) and is responsible for everything from sick house syndrome to birth defects. Definitely something we don’t want to see in Pajamas but most certainly not in our food.”

Dr. James Bowen said: “Other examples of this toxic axis are the extreme poisonings caused by formaldehyde, which plasticizes corpses, and is a deadly carcinogen. Both acute and chronic poisonings from methanol with the several other synergistic poisonings from aspartame ingestion steadily accumulate within aspartame consumers until finally hastening or culminating in fatal events.”

“The NCI study confirms the work of Dr. Soffritti,” said Mission Possible Director Dr. Betty Martini. “Now we have to get the NCI to realize that the ‘biological mechanisms’ that cause formaldehyde-induced cancers from workplace exposures are likely to be identical to the ‘biological mechanisms’ causing aspartame-induced cancers. Research shows formaldehyde, which aspartame produces, causes lymphoma and leukemia in both lab rats and people. EFSA’s general review of aspartame will be completed in November. With their tight relationship with industry what should we expect? Perhaps they’ll remember Mark Twain’s words: “Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

FDA has admitted aspartame carcinogenicity; nevertheless the NCI and NIH recently said aspartame is a safe artificial sweetener.

Note: For 30 years the neurotoxicity/carcinogenicity of aspartame have been demonstrated in numerous studies posted on the sites below. This research is confirmed by the case histories of thousands of victims who suffered dread infirmities or died from the myriad complications from this chemical poison. This could end if the NCI announces workplace formaldehyde and dietary formaldehyde have the same affect on the body and produce the same cancers.

FDA Toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, told Congress in 1985 aspartame violates the Delaney Amendment because it causes cancer and an allowable daily intake should never have been allowed to be set.

Russell Blaylock, M.D. said in “Health and Nutrition Secrets to Save Your Life”: “So in the case of diet drinks in aluminum cans, the very toxic brain aluminum fluoride compound co-exists with multiple toxins found in aspartame, thus creating the most powerful government-approved toxic soup imaginable.”

Aspartame… it’s not just in diet foods anymore

2009-05-31T09:51:00.001-07:00

Remember when aspartame (brand name: NutraSweet) first came out? It promised to have none of the aftertaste of other artificial sweeteners on the market, and virtually zero calories. You could lose weight by simply swapping aspartame for sugar… in your coffee, tea, soft drinks and so on. A drawback was that aspartame wasn’t stable and lost its sweetness over time, but that was merely a minor inconvenience. At least the product was safe (we were told), having been approved by those guardians of public health, the FDA (in the US) and the Food Standards Agency (in the UK).

However, if you do a bit of reading, you’ll find there are a lot of concerns about the safety of this supposedly innocuous sweetener, and the road to its approval… well let’s just say those pesky bumps were ironed out by some pretty high-profile names. A 2005 article which appeared in The Guardian detailed some aspartame concerns:

Safety of artificial sweetener called into question by MP

There is also this very revealing video on aspartame produced by a Fox news station in Washington DC, which was never shown outside its local broadcast area.

A short article on aspartame reactions can be found here.

As for the claims that aspartame helps people lose weight, a study at the University of Texas Health Science Center found that people who drink diet soft drinks don’t lose weight, they gain it.

If you’ve decided to avoid aspartame, it’s not as straightforward as you may think.

Aspartame is now added to a whole raft of food products, both diet AND “regular” ones which also contain sugar. You’ll also find it in products that you may never imagine would have sweeteners in them at all, like crisps and cider.

So what’s a would-be aspartame avoider to do?

1. Look for the words “no added sugar”, “sugar-free”, “diet” or “light” on packaging. This MAY indicate the presence of artificial sweeteners. However, some products which are sweetened naturally may also have the words “no added sugar”, so there is no need to avoid ALL products labelled as such.

2. Don’t assume that just because a product is sugar-sweetened, it is free from artificial sweeteners. An increasing number of products are sweetened both with sugar AND artificial sweeteners. One product commonly containing both sugar and aspartame is chewing gum. In fact, it is now quite difficult to find any chewing gum without aspartame.

Another product containing both sugar and aspartame is Robinsons Fruit Squash.

Here is a picture of “no sugar added” Robinsons Fruit Squash. Note the presence of the artificial sweeteners aspartame and saccharin in the ingredients list.

Now here is a picture of “regular” Robinsons Fruit Squash. It not only contains sugar, as you would expect, but ALSO contains aspartame and saccharin.

3. Be aware that the statements “no artificial flavours” and “no artificial colours” have nothing to do with whether a product has artificial sweeteners like aspartame in it.

4. Also be aware that a product labelled “suitable for vegetarians” may still contain aspartame and/or other artificial sweeteners.

5. Don’t assume that all products in a health food shop are free from aspartame. They probably aren’t.

6. Look for products which are certified organic; such products are prohibited from containing aspartame. Click here and here for more info on organic standards.

7. Be aware that some products which wouldn’t logically contain sweeteners, may contain them. As an example, the following flavours of Walkers crisps contain aspartame: prawn cocktail, Sensations Thai sweet chilli, Sensations caramelised onion & sweet balsamic vinegar.

8. Realise that some vitamins and medicines contain aspartame. It seems that current UK laws require that this be mentioned on the labelling.

9. Read the ingredients list. This encompasses all of the above guidelines into one easy-to-remember one. For most products, the ingredients list will indicate the presence of aspartame, which may also be listed as “NutraSweet” or by its E-number, E951.

10. Be very careful with alcoholic beverages, which do NOT have to list ingredients unless alcohol content is UNDER 1.2%. There appears to be no requirement under the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) guide “Labelling requirements for alcoholic drinks” to list artificial sweeteners. However, the FSA guidelines on aspartame labelling state:

As well as the general requirement for foods to carry a list of food additives and other ingredients, products containing sweeteners such as aspartame must show the statement ‘with sweetener(s)’ on the label close to the main product name. Foods that contain both sugar and sweetener must carry the statement ‘with sugar and sweetener(s)’. In addition, foods that contain aspartame must be labelled with a warning ‘contains a source of phenylalanine’.

It would appear that alcoholic beverages which contain sweeteners therefore do have to indicate this on the label.

Another point on cider: you may have read something about the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which “is an independent, voluntary, consumer organisation which campaigns for real ale, real pubs and consumer rights”. Although CAMRA’s Definition of Real Draught Cider & Perry states that the beverages may contain neither added flavourings nor colourings, this is not, unfortunately, the case with sweeteners:

Sweetener may be added to fully fermented Cider/Perry to make it sweet or medium.

Therefore, cider brands jumping on the CAMRA bandwagon are not necessarily free from aspartame or other artificial sweeteners.

If you want to avoid aspartame, you’ll need to become a label-reader. You may have to squint to read those tiny ingredients lists, but at least you won’t be buying blindly.

Lipsticks Contain Lead

2009-05-20T03:51:00.000-07:00

Mindfully.org note:
Finding lead in lipstick is only the start to the problems one would find here if a realistic investigation for toxic chemicals and heavy metals were to take place. We see this kind of a campaign by nonprofits all the time. Rather than alert consumers to the fact that people should not wear cosmetics at all, they use this single toxicant as if it is the only toxicant in the product. So then the industry replaces that single chemical with another chemical that isn't so well-known in sort of a bait-and-switch routine. It's a win-win situation for both nonprofit and industry because the product remains on the market and the toxicant du jour of the nonprofit is born.

However, using such stuff is hazardous to one's health. Not to mention the fact that it says a lot about the person wearing it — "I need to make myself look better. I am ugly, or too old, or too young, or any number of reasons that point to the fact that I don't think my appearance is sufficient." Cosmetics are the result of the combination of slick and very expensive advertising that is most of the cost of the product, and Hollywood cinema imaging, neither one of which is healthy. One last comment on the ingredients: Even if all the colorant and medium is nontoxic, there must still be a preservative, which are toxic by nature.

Lipsticks tested by a U.S. consumer rights group found that more than half contained lead and some popular brands including Cover Girl, L'Oreal and Christian Dior had more lead than others, the group said on Thursday.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics said tests on 33 brand-name red lipsticks by the Bodycote Testing Group in Santa Fe Spring, California, found that 61 percent had detectable lead levels of 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million (ppm).

Lipstick, like candy, is ingested. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of public health, environmental and women's groups, said the FDA has not set a limit for lead in lipstick.

One-third of the lipsticks tested contained an amount of lead that exceeded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 0.1 ppm limit for lead in candy -- a standard established to protect children from ingesting lead, the group said. Thirty-nine percent of the lipsticks tested had no discernible lead, it said.

"It's critical that manufacturers reformulate their product," said Stacy Malkan, a co-founder of the coalition. "It's possible to make lipsticks without lead, and all companies should be doing that."

Lead can cause learning, language and behavioral problems such as reduced school performance and increased aggression. Pregnant women and young children are particularly vulnerable to lead exposure, the group said in its statement. Lead has also been linked to infertility and miscarriage, it said.

Procter & Gamble Co's makes Cover Girl brand and France's L'Oreal is one of the largest cosmetic companies in the world.

Over the last three months, more than 20 million toys made in China have been recalled, mostly due to the use of lead paint.

The coalition said that some less expensive brands it had tested, such as Revlon, had no detectable levels of lead, while the more expensive Dior Addict brand had higher levels than some other brands.

The Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association trade group said in a statement that lead was a naturally occurring element that was not intentionally added to cosmetics.

The FDA has "set strict limits for lead levels allowed in the colors used in lipsticks, and actually analyze most of these to ensure they are followed," the association's statement said. "The products identified in the (CSC) report meet these standards."

L'Oreal's U.S. arm said its products are reviewed and tested by a safety team that includes toxicologists, pharmacists and doctors.

"All the brands of the L'Oreal Group are in full compliance with FDA regulations" as well as safety requirements in international markets, L'Oreal USA said in a statement.

P&G said in a statement that the quantity of lead a consumer might be exposed to from its lip product "is hundreds of times less than the amount that she would get from eating, breathing and drinking water."

"Lead builds up in the body over time and lead-containing lipstick applied several times a day, every day, can add up to significant exposure levels. The latest studies show there is no safe level of lead exposure," said Dr. Mark Mitchell, president of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice.

Sexy For Her . . . For baby, it could really be poison

2009-05-20T03:44:00.000-07:00

Toxic chemicals linked to birth defects are being found at alarming levels in women of childbearing age.

And according to new laboratory tests (see chart at right), these same chemicals are being added to popular cosmetics and beauty aids, from Poison perfume to Arrid Extra Extra Dry deodorant.

Manufacturers use these chemicals, known as phthalates (tha-lates), to add flexibility and help dissolve other ingredients. They're also used in industrial adhesives, and in medical and consumer goods made with polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC).

But phthalates have been shown to damage the lungs, liver and kidneys, and to harm the developing testes of offspring.

These results come from animal tests which, according to government scientists, are relevant to predicting health impacts in humans.

Despite this, the Food and Drug Administration doesn't regulate phthalates in cosmetics. In most cases, phthalates aren't even listed on the label.

The FDA must act now. All cosmetics - as well as food-related and medical products containing phthalates - must be labeled. And manufacturers should publicly pledge to voluntarily remove phthalates as quickly as possible.

Phthalate-free alternatives are available in every product category. And some companies have already announced phase-out policies.

In the meantime, we believe that every consumer - indeed, anyone who cares about the health of future generations - should demand action from companies and the FDA. Learn more at www.NotTooPretty.org.

After all, Eternity is a long time.

The New York Times advertisement by CHE Partner David Fenton showed a young woman sniffing a bottle of perfume. "Sexy for her," said the text. "For baby, it could really be poison." In July, CHE Organizational Partners Health Care Without Harm and the Environmental Working Group, along with a national network that includes many CHE Partners concerned with chemicals as a risk factor for health called Coming Clean, released "Not Too Pretty," a groundbreaking report that describes the harmful effects of aggregate exposure to chemicals called phthalates that can damage the lungs, liver and kidneys, and can harm developing testes during fetal development. The report tested popular fragrances, hair sprays and deodorants purchased from four drug stores. The report was announced with a full-page ad in the New York Times that listed specific products that contained these toxins. Go to www.nottoopretty.org for a full report.

What Are You Wearing?

Off-the-shelf samples of hair products, body lotions, deodorants and fragrances, including those listed below, were analyzed by an independent testing lab for the presence of phthalates. Four were found: BBP, DBP, DEP and DEHP. The phthalate content of listed nail polishes comes from manufacturers' information and ingredients listings on labels.

Products listed below as "phthalate free" contained no detectable trace of the four compounds. Products listed as "contain phthalates" contained one of the four, while those noted with an asterisk contained more than one.

Total phthalate exposure comes from repeated small individual doses from cosmetics and a wide range of products containing PVC plastics, including shower curtains and window shades; some plastic food packaging; and medical devices such as IV fluid and blood bags. Other sources of phthalate exposure include paints, pesticides and printing inks.

Hair Sprays
Contain Phthalates Aqua Net Professional Hair Spray* LA Looks Styling Gel: Extra Super Hold Suave Naturals Ocean Breeze Extra Control Spray Gel TRESemme European Freeze-Hold Hair Spray* VO5 Crystal Clear 14 Hour Hold
Phthalate Free Aussie Mega Styling Spray Finesse Touchables Silk Protein Enriched Mousse Helene Curtis Thermasilk Heat Activated Firm Hairspray L'Oreal Paris Studio Line: Springing Curls Mousse Suave Naturals Aloe Vera Extra Hold Hairspray

Deodorants
Contain Phthalates Arrid Extra Extra Dry Ultra Clear Ultra Fresh Spray* Ban Delicate Powder Roll-On Degree Original Solid Anti-Perspirant & Deodorant Secret Sheer Dry Regular* Sure Clear Dry Anti-Perspirant & Deodorant
Phthalate Free Certain Dri Anti-Perspirant Roll-On Dove Powder Anti-Perspirant Deodorant Lady Speed Stick Soft Solid Anti-Perspirant Secret Anti-Perspirant & Deodorant Platinum Protection Ambition Scent Soft & Dri Anti-Perspirant Deodorant Clear Gel

Body Lotions
Contain Phthalates Jergens Skincare Original Scent Lotion Nivea Cr´eme
Phthalate Free Lubriderm Skin Therapy Moisturizing Lotion Vaseline Intensive Care Advanced Healing

Fragrances
Contain Phthalates Calgon Hawaiian Ginger Body Mist Charlie Cologne Spray Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds Escape by Calvin Klein Eternity by Calvin Klein Fire & Ice* Freedom Lancome Paris Tresor Oscar* Poison by Christian Dior* The Healing Garden Pure Joy Body Treatment* Wind Song Perfume by Prince Matchabelli

Nail Polishes
Contain Phthalates Christian Dior Nail Enamel Cover Girl Nail Slicks Express Finish Nutra Nail OPI Sally Hansen Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Wet'n'Wild
Phthalate Free Jet Set Revlon Nail Enamel Super Top Speed Urban Decay

*Contain multiple phthalates

Industry aims to strip local control of food supply

2009-05-20T03:41:00.000-07:00

Environmental and healthy-farming advocates are learning what tobacco-free campaigners learned in the 1990s: When local governments step up to protect their community's citizens, industry responds by taking away the authority of local governments.

In spring 2004, three California counties and two cities passed ordinances that restricted growing genetically modified organisms. In response, state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter (Kern County), earlier this month gutted and then amended Senate Bill 1056 with some of the broadest and most sweeping pre-emptive language ever written in the Legislature. Its purpose? To override existing local restrictions, prohibit any future initiatives that might restrict genetically engineered crops and eliminate local control of seeds and plants. Essentially, to hijack control of our food supply.

Just as the tobacco industry acted to restrict local tobacco controls in 20 states, agribusiness corporations and their affiliated associations are behind the moves to thwart local efforts to restrict the growing of genetically modified foods. In the 2005 session, 16 state legislatures, including California, introduced bills prohibiting local control of seeds and plants. The nearly identical language used in each of the bills illustrates a systematic and ordered approach to stifling community decision-making. Agribusiness councils, whose leadership includes members such as bioengineering firms Monsanto and Syngenta, are promoting the legislation while the bills' initial language has been developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative public-policy organization.

What will such pre-emptive laws do to local control? According to Tom Campbell, director of the California Department of Finance, "state pre-emption laws can do two things. They can overturn the will of the people in the event an initiative has passed, and they can prevent the introduction of laws on the same subject from being introduced in the future." Pre-empting local authority stifles citizen participation in the democratic process and should give pause for any legislator or citizen. What are voters in Mendocino and Marin counties to think when their votes to restrict genetically modified crops and protect local food and farming are worthy of so little respect?

There is no denying that agricultural biotechnology is a complex and controversial issue. You would think this would be all the more reason public debate and discussion should be encouraged, not silenced. Yet if legislators such as Florez have their way, citizens will lose an opportunity to be part of the discussion to resolve one of the most challenging issues of our time. Local initiatives and citizen actions restricting genetically modified crops are a signal to the Legislature that Californians are concerned about this new technology and, in the absence of government leadership, are taking matters into their own hands to protect their environment, economy and health.

Proponents of SB1056 assert that California needs uniformity and homogeneity with regard to seed laws and that the state could not possibly handle a patchwork of laws passed by local government. Yet, if local authority over seeds is taken away by the state, then so is every farmer's choice not to use genetically engineered seeds and plants. Once genetically engineered plants are released into the environment, historically preserved and heirloom seed strains are forever affected, according to a 2004 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Diverse agricultural economies may suffer from losses due to this contamination. For example, if organic crops become contaminated with genetically engineered pollen, those farmers may lose their organic certification.

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to James Madison in which he stated, "I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people, and if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them." That critical power is now being challenged, as state Sen. Wes Chesbro, D-Arcata (Humboldt County), noted: "Regardless of how you feel about the (genetically modified organism) issue, taking away local voters' rights is a serious threat to democracy."

Organic Erosion

2009-05-20T03:40:00.000-07:00

Will the term organic still mean anything
when it's adopted whole hog by behemoths
such as Wal-Mart?

Marin Sun Farms, in Point Reyes, is a collection of ranches on more than 2,000 acres of rolling, certified organic pasture. All year long, cattle and chickens speckle the hills, free to roam and graze at their leisure.

The Hereford and Angus cows, in fact, are never confined. They are grass-fed, except during winter, when they also eat hay and silage. The chickens' typical diet of plants and insects is supplemented with organic grains, which they eat at night, in the winter and in otherwise foul weather when kept in their portable coops. When you imagine an organic cattle ranch, Marin Sun Farms is probably pretty close to what you picture — though maybe not exactly.

No synthetic fertilizers or chemical pesticides are used on the pasture, and the animals are hormone- and antibiotic-free. But even though most of the land is certified organic, the cows and chickens raised there are not.

One reason is because the owner, David Evans, obtains cows from partner ranchers who use synthetic "wormers" to control parasites — a violation of organic standards. But Evans has been slowly accumulating a base herd with an eye toward becoming entirely organic.

Lately, however, Evans has begun to wonder if the USDA "Certified Organic" stamp will be worth the annual fee, which could run more than $1,000. His pastures — the largest certified organic acreage in Marin County — may seem large, but they are dwarfed by their corporate counterparts.

As Evans knows, organic food has become big business. According to the Organic Consumer's Association, sales could hit $18 billion this year, with half coming from conventional supermarkets. Though still only about 2.5 percent of the agricultural market, demand for organic has grown 20 percent annually in recent years, and most of the top-selling brands are now owned by agribusiness behemoths.

Dean Foods, for example, owns White Wave (maker of Silk soymilk) and Horizon Organic, the No. 1-selling organic brand across the country. Unilever owns Ben & Jerry's Organic. Groupe Danone, a French corporation, recently bought Stonyfield Farm. Even Wal-Mart is plunging deeper into the market, announcing it would dramatically increase its organic offerings.

And if you think Evans' 2,000-plus organic acres is a lot, take a look at Earthbound Farm, which grew from a 2 1/2 acre raspberry and lettuce farm to the largest organic produce operation in North America, with $350 million in annual sales and more than 150 growers on 30,000 organic acres under its control.

Evans worries that the influx of these big companies — with their industrial production methods, profit obsession and political muscle — will dilute organic standards and, potentially, render the USDA stamp irrelevant. "If big business kills the name," Evans said, "why go organic?"

He's not alone. Many critics foresee an erosion not only of organic standards but also of the movement's true ideals — which include localism and sustainability as much as eschewing chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Indeed, a battle is raging in organic food production, and it has already split the industry: between those willing to sacrifice ideals for growth and those who think organic should remain small, local and transparent.

The 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill hacked the split between these groups into a chasm. A rider on the bill legalized, for the first time, the use of synthetic substances in the processing and post-harvest handling of organic foods.

What particularly worries purists is that the rider was sponsored by the Organic Trade Association, a lobbying group that represents the interests of big corporations. And, though virtually all of the 38 synthetics are considered harmless — and in fact were already being widely used — some believe that codifying their use may pave the way for others that may not be so harmless.

Jim Riddle, former chairman of the USDA's National Organic Standards Board, which advises the USDA in setting organic standards, said that what was most alarming about the rider was the secretive method used to attach it. According to Riddle, the rider (which is an amendment to the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act) was snuck into the bill — inserted after an appropriation's conference committee had adjourned, in order for the corporations pushing the amendment (Kraft Foods was a leader) to avoid debate. This way, Riddle said, "There's no author, no one to be held accountable."

Brian Baker, research director for the Organic Materials Review Institute, described the rider issue as a "volatile situation" because of organic consumers' dedication to purity. He pointed out that after the first set of organic standards were set in 1997, allowing for sewage sludge, irradiation and genetically modified organisms, the USDA received more than 300,000 letters of protest from furious consumers.

When asked about the long-term ramifications of the rider, Baker said he wouldn't "take sides," though he acknowledged it "could open the door" to other synthetics.

The very existence of any synthetics in organic food remains unfathomable to some — perhaps no one more so than Arthur Harvey, a 74-year-old blueberry farmer from Maine. A purist, Harvey believed that the organic standards of 2002, and their inclusion of a national list of allowable synthetics, violated the original 1990 law, which he believed banned all synthetics. In January 2005, a federal appellate court agreed with him. The court's ruling would have banned all synthetics had it not been for the OTA rider. But Harvey didn't give up; he found fault with the rider, too, and is back in court.

Though a Maine district court dismissed his latest case in November, Harvey is appealing the decision. At issue is a category of synthetics known as "food contact substances." The USDA is currently allowing more than 600 of these in the processing of organic foods — in addition to the 38 synthetics legalized by the rider.

Not only would these FCSs be exempt from listing on ingredient labels, they would not be required to be on the national list — thus they'd be exempt from review or approval by the NOSB. And, according to Riddle, some are toxins, such as dimethyl dicarbonate, an antimicrobial added to fruit juices (even those that say "100 percent juice"); and a substance containing methyl chloride, a flammable gas once used as a refrigerant.

"There's no language in the Organic Foods Production Act, the regulation or the court ruling to empower this invisible allowance of substances that don't even appear on the national list," said Riddle, "which never have been reviewed by the NOSB, and have never gone through a rule-making process or even a public comment period."

Caren Wilcox, executive director of the OTA, would not comment on the rider because she was not with the organization when it was attached. She also declined to comment on the issue of "food contact substances" because of Harvey's suit. She asserted, however, that "there has always been a place for synthetics" in organic foods. She added that it would "be impossible to produce" organics without synthetics such as ozone, to resist bacteria; chlorine, a disinfectant; and bleached lecithin and ascorbic acid.

Harvey disagrees. A producer of his own blueberry jams, Harvey was motivated (during the brief period when it appeared synthetics would be banned) to find an organic alternative to a synthetic pectin he'd been using as a thickening agent. It took some experimentation, but eventually he discovered that apple pomace would do the trick.

"I think any manufacturer of organic products is terrified they won't be able to use synthetics," he said. "Because they are cheaper, and easier to handle. If you're using pomace, as we are, well, every batch is a little bit different. So it can be a headache. But it is a natural, organic product, and I feel much better about making jam this way."

Wal-Mart's burgeoning market presence is another divisive issue. At a shareholder's meeting in early 2006, Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott declared that Wal-Mart would significantly increase its organic offerings. (These already make up a wide array, from milk and produce to breakfast cereal and salsa.) The announcement panicked critics who feared that Wal-Mart's business model of low prices — Wal-Mart has said its goal is to sell organics for only 10 percent above conventional prices — would pressure organic suppliers to cut corners, thereby diluting the label.

In September, the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin watchdog group, published an analysis of Wal-Mart's early influence on the organic market. The study found that not only was Wal-Mart "cheapening the value of the organic label" by sourcing most of its products from "industrial-scale factory farms and Third World countries," but also — on multiple occasions and in multiple stores — labeling non-organic food as organic with misleading in-store signs.

The study even discovered Wal-Mart selling "organic" baby formulas containing synthetic ingredients prohibited by U.S. organic standards.

"This is disturbing and a serious problem," Mark Kastel, co-founder of the institute, said in a November news release accompanying a legal complaint to the USDA. "Consumers, who are paying premium prices in the marketplace for organic food, deserve to get what they are paying for."

In a recent interview, Kastel speculated that the labeling problems, which he and his staff photographed, probably stemmed more from detachment and a lack of dedication to organics than from purposeful deception.

(Karen Burk, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, replied to the charges by saying, "we believe it to be an isolated incident should a green organic identifying tag be inadvertently placed by or accidentally shift in front of the wrong item." She did not comment on the infant formula.)

The study also found that because of its stringent price demands, Wal-Mart obtained little organic food from U.S. family-scale farms, but most from major agribusiness companies, industrial-scale farms and foreign countries.

Kastel illustrated how Wal-Mart's low-price-only policy has hurt small farmers and "cheapened" the organic label.

After one of Wal-Mart's original organic milk suppliers, Organic Valley — a co-operative of small organic dairy farmers — refused to acquiesce to Wal-Mart's demands, the giant retailer turned to Horizon Organic (owned by Dean Foods) and Aurora Dairy, both of which have been accused of exploiting ambiguities in the organic standards to confine thousands of cows in feedlot-like conditions with little time spent grazing on pasture. (The law says cows must have "access to pasture," but doesn't say how much or how often.)

"Wal-Mart's dependence on factory farms," the study concluded, is a typical example of its "philosophy of sourcing products from the least expensive supplier regardless of the impact on product quality, the environment or our nation's workers."

Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the Organic Consumer's Association, echoed these criticisms.

"When you get into bed with Wal-Mart, you forget your ethics because of the money involved," Cummins said. "But you simply cannot act in organic the same way you did in conventional because consumers are looking for more than just low prices."

Cummins added that even if the aforementioned practices by Wal-Mart, Horizon and Aurora technically fulfilled organic standards, they nevertheless violated organic ideals like animal rights and the preservation of fossil fuels. "How organic can food really be that is shipped halfway around the world?" he said.

Which brings up another concern: how to insure that organic products grown outside U.S. borders are actually organic.

The USDA's National Organic Program is ultimately responsible for the integrity of all organic food sold in the United States, but it does not conduct inspections. Instead, it accredits third-party agencies to inspect the farms, processors and retailers that seek certification.

Currently, there are 40 accredited foreign certifying agents (and 55 domestic). But serious questions remain about the integrity of the process in some countries — especially China. The USDA, in fact, has yet to make an inspection tour of what Kastel described as China's "government-controlled certification system," even though the United States is already importing huge amounts of Chinese organic products.

(When asked for comment, Joan Shaffer, a spokeswoman for the USDA, said that the associate deputy administrator of the NOP, Mark Bradley, would be flying to China later this year to conduct reviews.) Proponents of small-scale organic say foreign sourcing is a key factor in the dilution of the label, because transparency, another important organic ideal, is lost. Knowing your farmer, visiting his ranch and seeing how the food is grown — gathering any kind of story behind the food — becomes virtually impossible when organics are obtained from overseas.

"I'd rather spend $5 on some locally grown, organic strawberries than $2.50 for some Chilean farmer's strawberries at Wal-Mart," David Evans said. "Why would I want to save $2.50 on those Chilean strawberries when I don't really know how they were grown, under what conditions or if they were really grown organically?"

But, as even the most vehement critics of industrial organic concede, there are benefits to Wal-Mart's — and other big corporations' — market presence. Perhaps the most significant is the removal of toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers from the ecosystem: As demand rises and huge retailers like Wal-Mart seek to meet it, conventional acres will transition to organic, and whether those are in the United States, Chile or China, it will be good for the environment.

Drew and Myra Goodman, the owners of Earthbound Farm (one of Wal-Mart's top suppliers), estimate that their business alone has been responsible for eliminating almost 10 million pounds of synthetic fertilizer and 313,000 pounds of chemical pesticides. This is a significant boon to the environment and to national health, not only for the removal of pesticide residues from food, but also by preserving petroleum, which is used to create synthetic fertilizer.

A study by the Rodale Institute found that organic farms fight global warming by removing carbon from the atmosphere by sequestering it in the earth at a rate of 3,670 pounds per acre. With the Goodmans' 30,000 acres, that would mean Earthbound Farm alone has removed the equivalent of more than 7,500 cars from the road.

Peggy Miars, executive director of California Certified Organic Farmers in Santa Cruz, one of the nation's largest organic certifiers, believes the benefits of big businesses' market presence outweigh the potential negatives.

Miars said the USDA standards are strict enough (though she acknowledged ambiguities existed) that the label would remain strong, and, in addition to the environmental benefits, she said big corporations would create greater awareness, boost demand and create more markets. "If consumers who never thought much about organic foods see them at their local Wal-Mart," she said, "they may investigate more, maybe even stop by a farmers' market. This would increase demand and the end result is it would be good for organic."

But others maintain that even in the best industrial organic models, there are aspects that mirror conventional agriculture and conflict with organic ideals — such as the use of migrant farmworkers, aggressive business practices designed to crush competition, reliance on monocrop at the expense of diversity and mass expenditures of fossil fuels in distribution and production.

"There's a long list of benefits of small-scale organic that you don't get with industrial," said Helge Hellberg, the executive director of Marin Organic, an association of organic producers dedicated to "creating the first all-organic county in the nation."

Like Hellberg, most of Marin's organic community does not view Big Organic as a direct threat to their own farms or way of life — "we're far removed from the Wal-Marts of the world," is how Evans put it — but they remain an advocate for the preservation of the nation's small farms, yet another ideal not addressed by the industrial model.

"We're still losing 400 family farms in the U.S. every week to development," Hellberg said. "The industrial model, even if it's organic, will not stop that. We're still shipping food an average of about 2,000 miles from where it's grown to where it's consumed. The industrial organic model will not address that."

But will the local model address skyrocketing demand? While much of agribusiness's market presence can be chalked up to profit seeking, even some proponents of small-scale organics think the industrial model may have its place — for supplying populations in less agriculturally sustainable areas, such as Las Vegas or Albuquerque, for example.

Hellberg, however, believes local, small-scale organics should be the aim. He said he's seen "the most arid and horrible soils turned around," and he pointed to Marin's movement as an example he believed could be replicated in other places — if not practically, than at least the "mind-set." He said Prince Charles' November 2005 visit was due to the innovation, tradition and dedication to ideals of the area's organic farmers.

The biodiversity of Peter Martinelli's Fresh Run Farm in Bolinas, where more than 40 crops are grown on 5 acres; Dennis and Sandy Dierks' Paradise Valley Produce, where unique fertilization methods such as fermenting seaweed and other microbes to enhance soil fertility are used, and where the coho salmon are making a comeback because of a healthier watershed; and Warren Weber's Star Route Farms, the longest continuously certified organic farm in California, are all examples of the sustainable model — and were all "certainly a draw" for His Royal Highness.

When asked if he thought some ideals needed to be sacrificed to meet rising demand, Hellberg said: "No, I think the opposite is true. Smaller scale agriculture, artisan food production, true relationships, integrating agriculture in your local region and building upon it: That is the model that shows the most benefits. It is the closest to the heart and there's no place on earth where you can't apply it."

Evans agrees. "The most conscious way to buy food is straight from the farmer," he said. "There's a lot of room for growth in this country for that kind of relationship. Even better than organic is local organic, and that's a niche that the big guy just can't get in on."

Unhappy Meals

2009-05-20T03:30:00.001-07:00

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

Uh-oh. Things are suddenly sounding a little more complicated, aren’t they? Sorry. But that’s how it goes as soon as you try to get to the bottom of the whole vexing question of food and health. Before long, a dense cloud bank of confusion moves in. Sooner or later, everything solid you thought you knew about the links between diet and health gets blown away in the gust of the latest study.

Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing — this from the monumental, federally financed Women’s Health Initiative, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease. The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had been confidently told, help prevent colon cancer. Just last fall two prestigious studies on omega-3 fats published at the same time presented us with strikingly different conclusions. While the Institute of Medicine stated that “it is uncertain how much these omega-3s contribute to improving health” (and they might do the opposite if you get them from mercury-contaminated fish), a Harvard study declared that simply by eating a couple of servings of fish each week (or by downing enough fish oil), you could cut your risk of dying from a heart attack by more than a third — a stunningly hopeful piece of news. It’s no wonder that omega-3 fatty acids are poised to become the oat bran of 2007, as food scientists micro-encapsulate fish oil and algae oil and blast them into such formerly all-terrestrial foods as bread and tortillas, milk and yogurt and cheese, all of which will soon, you can be sure, sprout fishy new health claims. (Remember the rule?)

By now you’re probably registering the cognitive dissonance of the supermarket shopper or science-section reader, as well as some nostalgia for the simplicity and solidity of the first few sentences of this essay. Which I’m still prepared to defend against the shifting winds of nutritional science and food-industry marketing. But before I do that, it might be useful to figure out how we arrived at our present state of nutritional confusion and anxiety.

The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding what is, after all, the most elemental question an omnivore confronts. Humans deciding what to eat without expert help — something they have been doing with notable success since coming down out of the trees — is seriously unprofitable if you’re a food company, distinctly risky if you’re a nutritionist and just plain boring if you’re a newspaper editor or journalist. (Or, for that matter, an eater. Who wants to hear, yet again, “Eat more fruits and vegetables”?) And so, like a large gray fog, a great Conspiracy of Confusion has gathered around the simplest questions of nutrition — much to the advantage of everybody involved. Except perhaps the ostensible beneficiary of all this nutritional expertise and advice: us, and our health and happiness as eaters.

FROM FOODS TO NUTRIENTS

It was in the 1980s that food began disappearing from the American supermarket, gradually to be replaced by “nutrients,” which are not the same thing. Where once the familiar names of recognizable comestibles — things like eggs or breakfast cereal or cookies — claimed pride of place on the brightly colored packages crowding the aisles, now new terms like “fiber” and “cholesterol” and “saturated fat” rose to large-type prominence. More important than mere foods, the presence or absence of these invisible substances was now generally believed to confer health benefits on their eaters. Foods by comparison were coarse, old-fashioned and decidedly unscientific things — who could say what was in them, really? But nutrients — those chemical compounds and minerals in foods that nutritionists have deemed important to health — gleamed with the promise of scientific certainty; eat more of the right ones, fewer of the wrong, and you would live longer and avoid chronic diseases.

Nutrients themselves had been around, as a concept, since the early 19th century, when the English doctor and chemist William Prout identified what came to be called the “macronutrients”: protein, fat and carbohydrates. It was thought that that was pretty much all there was going on in food, until doctors noticed that an adequate supply of the big three did not necessarily keep people nourished. At the end of the 19th century, British doctors were puzzled by the fact that Chinese laborers in the Malay states were dying of a disease called beriberi, which didn’t seem to afflict Tamils or native Malays. The mystery was solved when someone pointed out that the Chinese ate “polished,” or white, rice, while the others ate rice that hadn’t been mechanically milled. A few years later, Casimir Funk, a Polish chemist, discovered the “essential nutrient” in rice husks that protected against beriberi and called it a “vitamine,” the first micronutrient. Vitamins brought a kind of glamour to the science of nutrition, and though certain sectors of the population began to eat by its expert lights, it really wasn’t until late in the 20th century that nutrients managed to push food aside in the popular imagination of what it means to eat.

No single event marked the shift from eating food to eating nutrients, though in retrospect a little-noticed political dust-up in Washington in 1977 seems to have helped propel American food culture down this dimly lighted path. Responding to an alarming increase in chronic diseases linked to diet — including heart disease, cancer and diabetes — a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by George McGovern, held hearings on the problem and prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called “Dietary Goals for the United States.” The committee learned that while rates of coronary heart disease had soared in America since World War II, other cultures that consumed traditional diets based largely on plants had strikingly low rates of chronic disease. Epidemiologists also had observed that in America during the war years, when meat and dairy products were strictly rationed, the rate of heart disease temporarily plummeted.

Naïvely putting two and two together, the committee drafted a straightforward set of dietary guidelines calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm, emanating from the red-meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee, and Senator McGovern (who had a great many cattle ranchers among his South Dakota constituents) was forced to beat a retreat. The committee’s recommendations were hastily rewritten. Plain talk about food — the committee had advised Americans to actually “reduce consumption of meat” — was replaced by artful compromise: “Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”

A subtle change in emphasis, you might say, but a world of difference just the same. First, the stark message to “eat less” of a particular food has been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. dietary pronouncement. Second, notice how distinctions between entities as different as fish and beef and chicken have collapsed; those three venerable foods, each representing an entirely different taxonomic class, are now lumped together as delivery systems for a single nutrient. Notice too how the new language exonerates the foods themselves; now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless — and politically unconnected — substance that may or may not lurk in them called “saturated fat.”

The linguistic capitulation did nothing to rescue McGovern from his blunder; the very next election, in 1980, the beef lobby helped rusticate the three-term senator, sending an unmistakable warning to anyone who would challenge the American diet, and in particular the big chunk of animal protein sitting in the middle of its plate. Henceforth, government dietary guidelines would shun plain talk about whole foods, each of which has its trade association on Capitol Hill, and would instead arrive clothed in scientific euphemism and speaking of nutrients, entities that few Americans really understood but that lack powerful lobbies in Washington. This was precisely the tack taken by the National Academy of Sciences when it issued its landmark report on diet and cancer in 1982. Organized nutrient by nutrient in a way guaranteed to offend no food group, it codified the official new dietary language. Industry and media followed suit, and terms like polyunsaturated, cholesterol, monounsaturated, carbohydrate, fiber, polyphenols, amino acids and carotenes soon colonized much of the cultural space previously occupied by the tangible substance formerly known as food. The Age of Nutritionism had arrived.

THE RISE OF NUTRITIONISM

The first thing to understand about nutritionism — I first encountered the term in the work of an Australian sociologist of science named Gyorgy Scrinis — is that it is not quite the same as nutrition. As the “ism” suggests, it is not a scientific subject but an ideology. Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it’s exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather, all pervasive and virtually inescapable. Still, we can try.

In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help.

But expert help to do what, exactly? This brings us to another unexamined assumption: that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health. Hippocrates’s famous injunction to “let food be thy medicine” is ritually invoked to support this notion. I’ll leave the premise alone for now, except to point out that it is not shared by all cultures and that the experience of these other cultures suggests that, paradoxically, viewing food as being about things other than bodily health — like pleasure, say, or socializing — makes people no less healthy; indeed, there’s some reason to believe that it may make them more healthy. This is what we usually have in mind when we speak of the “French paradox” — the fact that a population that eats all sorts of unhealthful nutrients is in many ways healthier than we Americans are. So there is at least a question as to whether nutritionism is actually any good for you.

Another potentially serious weakness of nutritionist ideology is that it has trouble discerning qualitative distinctions between foods. So fish, beef and chicken through the nutritionists’ lens become mere delivery systems for varying quantities of fats and proteins and whatever other nutrients are on their scope. Similarly, any qualitative distinctions between processed foods and whole foods disappear when your focus is on quantifying the nutrients they contain (or, more precisely, the known nutrients).

This is a great boon for manufacturers of processed food, and it helps explain why they have been so happy to get with the nutritionism program. In the years following McGovern’s capitulation and the 1982 National Academy report, the food industry set about re-engineering thousands of popular food products to contain more of the nutrients that science and government had deemed the good ones and less of the bad, and by the late ’80s a golden era of food science was upon us. The Year of Eating Oat Bran — also known as 1988 — served as a kind of coming-out party for the food scientists, who succeeded in getting the material into nearly every processed food sold in America. Oat bran’s moment on the dietary stage didn’t last long, but the pattern had been established, and every few years since then a new oat bran has taken its turn under the marketing lights. (Here comes omega-3!)

By comparison, the typical real food has more trouble competing under the rules of nutritionism, if only because something like a banana or an avocado can’t easily change its nutritional stripes (though rest assured the genetic engineers are hard at work on the problem). So far, at least, you can’t put oat bran in a banana. So depending on the reigning nutritional orthodoxy, the avocado might be either a high-fat food to be avoided (Old Think) or a food high in monounsaturated fat to be embraced (New Think). The fate of each whole food rises and falls with every change in the nutritional weather, while the processed foods are simply reformulated. That’s why when the Atkins mania hit the food industry, bread and pasta were given a quick redesign (dialing back the carbs; boosting the protein), while the poor unreconstructed potatoes and carrots were left out in the cold.

Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.

EAT RIGHT, GET FATTER

So nutritionism is good for business. But is it good for us? You might think that a national fixation on nutrients would lead to measurable improvements in the public health. But for that to happen, the underlying nutritional science, as well as the policy recommendations (and the journalism) based on that science, would have to be sound. This has seldom been the case.

Consider what happened immediately after the 1977 “Dietary Goals” — McGovern’s masterpiece of politico-nutritionist compromise. In the wake of the panel’s recommendation that we cut down on saturated fat, a recommendation seconded by the 1982 National Academy report on cancer, Americans did indeed change their diets, endeavoring for a quarter-century to do what they had been told. Well, kind of. The industrial food supply was promptly reformulated to reflect the official advice, giving us low-fat pork, low-fat Snackwell’s and all the low-fat pasta and high-fructose (yet low-fat!) corn syrup we could consume. Which turned out to be quite a lot. Oddly, America got really fat on its new low-fat diet — indeed, many date the current obesity and diabetes epidemic to the late 1970s, when Americans began binging on carbohydrates, ostensibly as a way to avoid the evils of fat.

This story has been told before, notably in these pages (“What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” by Gary Taubes, July 7, 2002), but it’s a little more complicated than the official version suggests. In that version, which inspired the most recent Atkins craze, we were told that America got fat when, responding to bad scientific advice, it shifted its diet from fats to carbs, suggesting that a re-evaluation of the two nutrients is in order: fat doesn’t make you fat; carbs do. (Why this should have come as news is a mystery: as long as people have been raising animals for food, they have fattened them on carbs.)

But there are a couple of problems with this revisionist picture. First, while it is true that Americans post-1977 did begin binging on carbs, and that fat as a percentage of total calories in the American diet declined, we never did in fact cut down on our consumption of fat. Meat consumption actually climbed. We just heaped a bunch more carbs onto our plates, obscuring perhaps, but not replacing, the expanding chunk of animal protein squatting in the center.

How did that happen? I would submit that the ideology of nutritionism deserves as much of the blame as the carbohydrates themselves do — that and human nature. By framing dietary advice in terms of good and bad nutrients, and by burying the recommendation that we should eat less of any particular food, it was easy for the take-home message of the 1977 and 1982 dietary guidelines to be simplified as follows: Eat more low-fat foods. And that is what we did. We’re always happy to receive a dispensation to eat more of something (with the possible exception of oat bran), and one of the things nutritionism reliably gives us is some such dispensation: low-fat cookies then, low-carb beer now. It’s hard to imagine the low-fat craze taking off as it did if McGovern’s original food-based recommendations had stood: eat fewer meat and dairy products. For how do you get from that stark counsel to the idea that another case of Snackwell’s is just what the doctor ordered?

BAD SCIENCE

But if nutritionism leads to a kind of false consciousness in the mind of the eater, the ideology can just as easily mislead the scientist. Most nutritional science involves studying one nutrient at a time, an approach that even nutritionists who do it will tell you is deeply flawed. “The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science,” points out Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist, “is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle.”

If nutritional scientists know this, why do they do it anyway? Because a nutrient bias is built into the way science is done: scientists need individual variables they can isolate. Yet even the simplest food is a hopelessly complex thing to study, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in complex and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another. So if you’re a nutritional scientist, you do the only thing you can do, given the tools at your disposal: break the thing down into its component parts and study those one by one, even if that means ignoring complex interactions and contexts, as well as the fact that the whole may be more than, or just different from, the sum of its parts. This is what we mean by reductionist science.

Scientific reductionism is an undeniably powerful tool, but it can mislead us too, especially when applied to something as complex as, on the one side, a food, and on the other, a human eater. It encourages us to take a mechanistic view of that transaction: put in this nutrient; get out that physiological result. Yet people differ in important ways. Some populations can metabolize sugars better than others; depending on your evolutionary heritage, you may or may not be able to digest the lactose in milk. The specific ecology of your intestines helps determine how efficiently you digest what you eat, so that the same input of 100 calories may yield more or less energy depending on the proportion of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes living in your gut. There is nothing very machinelike about the human eater, and so to think of food as simply fuel is wrong.

Also, people don’t eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain. Researchers have long believed, based on epidemiological comparisons of different populations, that a diet high in fruits and vegetables confers some protection against cancer. So naturally they ask, What nutrients in those plant foods are responsible for that effect? One hypothesis is that the antioxidants in fresh produce — compounds like beta carotene, lycopene, vitamin E, etc. — are the X factor. It makes good sense: these molecules (which plants produce to protect themselves from the highly reactive oxygen atoms produced in photosynthesis) vanquish the free radicals in our bodies, which can damage DNA and initiate cancers. At least that’s how it seems to work in the test tube. Yet as soon as you remove these useful molecules from the context of the whole foods they’re found in, as we’ve done in creating antioxidant supplements, they don’t work at all. Indeed, in the case of beta carotene ingested as a supplement, scientists have discovered that it actually increases the risk of certain cancers. Big oops.

What’s going on here? We don’t know. It could be the vagaries of human digestion. Maybe the fiber (or some other component) in a carrot protects the antioxidant molecules from destruction by stomach acids early in the digestive process. Or it could be that we isolated the wrong antioxidant. Beta is just one of a whole slew of carotenes found in common vegetables; maybe we focused on the wrong one. Or maybe beta carotene works as an antioxidant only in concert with some other plant chemical or process; under other circumstances, it may behave as a pro-oxidant.

Indeed, to look at the chemical composition of any common food plant is to realize just how much complexity lurks within it. Here’s a list of just the antioxidants that have been identified in garden-variety thyme:

4-Terpineol, alanine, anethole, apigenin, ascorbic acid, beta carotene, caffeic acid, camphene, carvacrol, chlorogenic acid, chrysoeriol, eriodictyol, eugenol, ferulic acid, gallic acid, gamma-terpinene isochlorogenic acid, isoeugenol, isothymonin, kaempferol, labiatic acid, lauric acid, linalyl acetate, luteolin, methionine, myrcene, myristic acid, naringenin, oleanolic acid, p-coumoric acid, p-hydroxy-benzoic acid, palmitic acid, rosmarinic acid, selenium, tannin, thymol, tryptophan, ursolic acid, vanillic acid.

This is what you’re ingesting when you eat food flavored with thyme. Some of these chemicals are broken down by your digestion, but others are going on to do undetermined things to your body: turning some gene’s expression on or off, perhaps, or heading off a free radical before it disturbs a strand of DNA deep in some cell. It would be great to know how this all works, but in the meantime we can enjoy thyme in the knowledge that it probably doesn’t do any harm (since people have been eating it forever) and that it may actually do some good (since people have been eating it forever) and that even if it does nothing, we like the way it tastes.

It’s also important to remind ourselves that what reductive science can manage to perceive well enough to isolate and study is subject to change, and that we have a tendency to assume that what we can see is all there is to see. When William Prout isolated the big three macronutrients, scientists figured they now understood food and what the body needs from it; when the vitamins were isolated a few decades later, scientists thought, O.K., now we really understand food and what the body needs to be healthy; today it’s the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem all-important. But who knows what the hell else is going on deep in the soul of a carrot?

The good news is that, to the carrot eater, it doesn’t matter. That’s the great thing about eating food as compared with nutrients: you don’t need to fathom a carrot’s complexity to reap its benefits.

The case of the antioxidants points up the dangers in taking a nutrient out of the context of food; as Nestle suggests, scientists make a second, related error when they study the food out of the context of the diet. We don’t eat just one thing, and when we are eating any one thing, we’re not eating another. We also eat foods in combinations and in orders that can affect how they’re absorbed. Drink coffee with your steak, and your body won’t be able to fully absorb the iron in the meat. The trace of limestone in the corn tortilla unlocks essential amino acids in the corn that would otherwise remain unavailable. Some of those compounds in that sprig of thyme may well affect my digestion of the dish I add it to, helping to break down one compound or possibly stimulate production of an enzyme to detoxify another. We have barely begun to understand the relationships among foods in a cuisine.

But we do understand some of the simplest relationships, like the zero-sum relationship: that if you eat a lot of meat you’re probably not eating a lot of vegetables. This simple fact may explain why populations that eat diets high in meat have higher rates of coronary heart disease and cancer than those that don’t. Yet nutritionism encourages us to look elsewhere for the explanation: deep within the meat itself, to the culpable nutrient, which scientists have long assumed to be the saturated fat. So they are baffled when large-population studies, like the Women’s Health Initiative, fail to find that reducing fat intake significantly reduces the incidence of heart disease or cancer.

Of course thanks to the low-fat fad (inspired by the very same reductionist fat hypothesis), it is entirely possible to reduce your intake of saturated fat without significantly reducing your consumption of animal protein: just drink the low-fat milk and order the skinless chicken breast or the turkey bacon. So maybe the culprit nutrient in meat and dairy is the animal protein itself, as some researchers now hypothesize. (The Cornell nutritionist T. Colin Campbell argues as much in his recent book, “The China Study.”) Or, as the Harvard epidemiologist Walter C. Willett suggests, it could be the steroid hormones typically present in the milk and meat; these hormones (which occur naturally in meat and milk but are often augmented in industrial production) are known to promote certain cancers.

But people worried about their health needn’t wait for scientists to settle this question before deciding that it might be wise to eat more plants and less meat. This is of course precisely what the McGovern committee was trying to tell us.

Nestle also cautions against taking the diet out of the context of the lifestyle. The Mediterranean diet is widely believed to be one of the most healthful ways to eat, yet much of what we know about it is based on studies of people living on the island of Crete in the 1950s, who in many respects lived lives very different from our own. Yes, they ate lots of olive oil and little meat. But they also did more physical labor. They fasted regularly. They ate a lot of wild greens — weeds. And, perhaps most important, they consumed far fewer total calories than we do. Similarly, much of what we know about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet is based on studies of Seventh Day Adventists, who muddy the nutritional picture by drinking absolutely no alcohol and never smoking. These extraneous but unavoidable factors are called, aptly, “confounders.” One last example: People who take supplements are healthier than the population at large, but their health probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the supplements they take — which recent studies have suggested are worthless. Supplement-takers are better-educated, more-affluent people who, almost by definition, take a greater-than-normal interest in personal health — confounding factors that probably account for their superior health.

But if confounding factors of lifestyle bedevil comparative studies of different populations, the supposedly more rigorous “prospective” studies of large American populations suffer from their own arguably even more disabling flaws. In these studies — of which the Women’s Health Initiative is the best known — a large population is divided into two groups. The intervention group changes its diet in some prescribed manner, while the control group does not. The two groups are then tracked over many years to learn whether the intervention affects relative rates of chronic disease.

When it comes to studying nutrition, this sort of extensive, long-term clinical trial is supposed to be the gold standard. It certainly sounds sound. In the case of the Women’s Health Initiative, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the eating habits and health outcomes of nearly 49,000 women (ages 50 to 79 at the beginning of the study) were tracked for eight years. One group of the women were told to reduce their consumption of fat to 20 percent of total calories. The results were announced early last year, producing front-page headlines of which the one in this newspaper was typical: “Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds.” And the cloud of nutritional confusion over the country darkened.

But even a cursory analysis of the study’s methods makes you wonder why anyone would take such a finding seriously, let alone order a Quarter Pounder With Cheese to celebrate it, as many newspaper readers no doubt promptly went out and did. Even the beginner student of nutritionism will immediately spot several flaws: the focus was on “fat,” rather than on any particular food, like meat or dairy. So women could comply simply by switching to lower-fat animal products. Also, no distinctions were made between types of fat: women getting their allowable portion of fat from olive oil or fish were lumped together with woman getting their fat from low-fat cheese or chicken breasts or margarine. Why? Because when the study was designed 16 years ago, the whole notion of “good fats” was not yet on the scientific scope. Scientists study what scientists can see.

But perhaps the biggest flaw in this study, and other studies like it, is that we have no idea what these women were really eating because, like most people when asked about their diet, they lied about it. How do we know this? Deduction. Consider: When the study began, the average participant weighed in at 170 pounds and claimed to be eating 1,800 calories a day. It would take an unusual metabolism to maintain that weight on so little food. And it would take an even freakier metabolism to drop only one or two pounds after getting down to a diet of 1,400 to 1,500 calories a day — as the women on the “low-fat” regimen claimed to have done. Sorry, ladies, but I just don’t buy it.

In fact, nobody buys it. Even the scientists who conduct this sort of research conduct it in the knowledge that people lie about their food intake all the time. They even have scientific figures for the magnitude of the lie. Dietary trials like the Women’s Health Initiative rely on “food-frequency questionnaires,” and studies suggest that people on average eat between a fifth and a third more than they claim to on the questionnaires. How do the researchers know that? By comparing what people report on questionnaires with interviews about their dietary intake over the previous 24 hours, thought to be somewhat more reliable. In fact, the magnitude of the lie could be much greater, judging by the huge disparity between the total number of food calories produced every day for each American (3,900 calories) and the average number of those calories Americans own up to chomping: 2,000. (Waste accounts for some of the disparity, but nowhere near all of it.) All we really know about how much people actually eat is that the real number lies somewhere between those two figures.

To try to fill out the food-frequency questionnaire used by the Women’s Health Initiative, as I recently did, is to realize just how shaky the data on which such trials rely really are. The survey, which took about 45 minutes to complete, started off with some relatively easy questions: “Did you eat chicken or turkey during the last three months?” Having answered yes, I was then asked, “When you ate chicken or turkey, how often did you eat the skin?” But the survey soon became harder, as when it asked me to think back over the past three months to recall whether when I ate okra, squash or yams, they were fried, and if so, were they fried in stick margarine, tub margarine, butter, “shortening” (in which category they inexplicably lump together hydrogenated vegetable oil and lard), olive or canola oil or nonstick spray? I honestly didn’t remember, and in the case of any okra eaten in a restaurant, even a hypnotist could not get out of me what sort of fat it was fried in. In the meat section, the portion sizes specified haven’t been seen in America since the Hoover administration. If a four-ounce portion of steak is considered “medium,” was I really going to admit that the steak I enjoyed on an unrecallable number of occasions during the past three months was probably the equivalent of two or three (or, in the case of a steakhouse steak, no less than four) of these portions? I think not. In fact, most of the “medium serving sizes” to which I was asked to compare my own consumption made me feel piggish enough to want to shave a few ounces here, a few there. (I mean, I wasn’t under oath or anything, was I?)

This is the sort of data on which the largest questions of diet and health are being decided in America today.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

In the end, the biggest, most ambitious and widely reported studies of diet and health leave more or less undisturbed the main features of the Western diet: lots of meat and processed foods, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything — except fruits, vegetables and whole grains. In keeping with the nutritionism paradigm and the limits of reductionist science, the researchers fiddle with single nutrients as best they can, but the populations they recruit and study are typical American eaters doing what typical American eaters do: trying to eat a little less of this nutrient, a little more of that, depending on the latest thinking. (One problem with the control groups in these studies is that they too are exposed to nutritional fads in the culture, so over time their eating habits come to more closely resemble the habits of the intervention group.) It should not surprise us that the findings of such research would be so equivocal and confusing.

But what about the elephant in the room — the Western diet? It might be useful, in the midst of our deepening confusion about nutrition, to review what we do know about diet and health. What we know is that people who eat the way we do in America today suffer much higher rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity than people eating more traditional diets. (Four of the 10 leading killers in America are linked to diet.) Further, we know that simply by moving to America, people from nations with low rates of these “diseases of affluence” will quickly acquire them. Nutritionism by and large takes the Western diet as a given, seeking to moderate its most deleterious effects by isolating the bad nutrients in it — things like fat, sugar, salt — and encouraging the public and the food industry to limit them. But after several decades of nutrient-based health advice, rates of cancer and heart disease in the U.S. have declined only slightly (mortality from heart disease is down since the ’50s, but this is mainly because of improved treatment), and rates of obesity and diabetes have soared.

No one likes to admit that his or her best efforts at understanding and solving a problem have actually made the problem worse, but that’s exactly what has happened in the case of nutritionism. Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health. Perhaps what we need now is a broader, less reductive view of what food is, one that is at once more ecological and cultural. What would happen, for example, if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?

In nature, that is of course precisely what eating has always been: relationships among species in what we call food chains, or webs, that reach all the way down to the soil. Species co-evolve with the other species they eat, and very often a relationship of interdependence develops: I’ll feed you if you spread around my genes. A gradual process of mutual adaptation transforms something like an apple or a squash into a nutritious and tasty food for a hungry animal. Over time and through trial and error, the plant becomes tastier (and often more conspicuous) in order to gratify the animal’s needs and desires, while the animal gradually acquires whatever digestive tools (enzymes, etc.) are needed to make optimal use of the plant. Similarly, cow’s milk did not start out as a nutritious food for humans; in fact, it made them sick until humans who lived around cows evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. This development proved much to the advantage of both the milk drinkers and the cows.

“Health” is, among other things, the byproduct of being involved in these sorts of relationships in a food chain — involved in a great many of them, in the case of an omnivorous creature like us. Further, when the health of one link of the food chain is disturbed, it can affect all the creatures in it. When the soil is sick or in some way deficient, so will be the grasses that grow in that soil and the cattle that eat the grasses and the people who drink the milk. Or, as the English agronomist Sir Albert Howard put it in 1945 in “The Soil and Health” (a founding text of organic agriculture), we would do well to regard “the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject.” Our personal health is inextricably bound up with the health of the entire food web.

In many cases, long familiarity between foods and their eaters leads to elaborate systems of communications up and down the food chain, so that a creature’s senses come to recognize foods as suitable by taste and smell and color, and our bodies learn what to do with these foods after they pass the test of the senses, producing in anticipation the chemicals necessary to break them down. Health depends on knowing how to read these biological signals: this smells spoiled; this looks ripe; that’s one good-looking cow. This is easier to do when a creature has long experience of a food, and much harder when a food has been designed expressly to deceive its senses — with artificial flavors, say, or synthetic sweeteners.

Note that these ecological relationships are between eaters and whole foods, not nutrients. Even though the foods in question eventually get broken down in our bodies into simple nutrients, as corn is reduced to simple sugars, the qualities of the whole food are not unimportant — they govern such things as the speed at which the sugars will be released and absorbed, which we’re coming to see as critical to insulin metabolism. Put another way, our bodies have a longstanding and sustainable relationship to corn that we do not have to high-fructose corn syrup. Such a relationship with corn syrup might develop someday (as people evolve superhuman insulin systems to cope with regular floods of fructose and glucose), but for now the relationship leads to ill health because our bodies don’t know how to handle these biological novelties. In much the same way, human bodies that can cope with chewing coca leaves — a longstanding relationship between native people and the coca plant in South America — cannot cope with cocaine or crack, even though the same “active ingredients” are present in all three. Reductionism as a way of understanding food or drugs may be harmless, even necessary, but reductionism in practice can lead to problems.

Looking at eating through this ecological lens opens a whole new perspective on exactly what the Western diet is: a radical and rapid change not just in our foodstuffs over the course of the 20th century but also in our food relationships, all the way from the soil to the meal. The ideology of nutritionism is itself part of that change. To get a firmer grip on the nature of those changes is to begin to know how we might make our relationships to food healthier. These changes have been numerous and far-reaching, but consider as a start these four large-scale ones:

From Whole Foods to Refined. The case of corn points up one of the key features of the modern diet: a shift toward increasingly refined foods, especially carbohydrates. Call it applied reductionism. Humans have been refining grains since at least the Industrial Revolution, favoring white flour (and white rice) even at the price of lost nutrients. Refining grains extends their shelf life (precisely because it renders them less nutritious to pests) and makes them easier to digest, by removing the fiber that ordinarily slows the release of their sugars. Much industrial food production involves an extension and intensification of this practice, as food processors find ways to deliver glucose — the brain’s preferred fuel — ever more swiftly and efficiently. Sometimes this is precisely the point, as when corn is refined into corn syrup; other times it is an unfortunate byproduct of food processing, as when freezing food destroys the fiber that would slow sugar absorption.

So fast food is fast in this other sense too: it is to a considerable extent predigested, in effect, and therefore more readily absorbed by the body. But while the widespread acceleration of the Western diet offers us the instant gratification of sugar, in many people (and especially those newly exposed to it) the “speediness” of this food overwhelms the insulin response and leads to Type II diabetes. As one nutrition expert put it to me, we’re in the middle of “a national experiment in mainlining glucose.” To encounter such a diet for the first time, as when people accustomed to a more traditional diet come to America, or when fast food comes to their countries, delivers a shock to the system. Public-health experts call it “the nutrition transition,” and it can be deadly.

From Complexity to Simplicity. If there is one word that covers nearly all the changes industrialization has made to the food chain, it would be simplification. Chemical fertilizers simplify the chemistry of the soil, which in turn appears to simplify the chemistry of the food grown in that soil. Since the widespread adoption of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in the 1950s, the nutritional quality of produce in America has, according to U.S.D.A. figures, declined significantly. Some researchers blame the quality of the soil for the decline; others cite the tendency of modern plant breeding to select for industrial qualities like yield rather than nutritional quality. Whichever it is, the trend toward simplification of our food continues on up the chain. Processing foods depletes them of many nutrients, a few of which are then added back in through “fortification”: folic acid in refined flour, vitamins and minerals in breakfast cereal. But food scientists can add back only the nutrients food scientists recognize as important. What are they overlooking?

Simplification has occurred at the level of species diversity, too. The astounding variety of foods on offer in the modern supermarket obscures the fact that the actual number of species in the modern diet is shrinking. For reasons of economics, the food industry prefers to tease its myriad processed offerings from a tiny group of plant species, corn and soybeans chief among them. Today, a mere four crops account for two-thirds of the calories humans eat. When you consider that humankind has historically consumed some 80,000 edible species, and that 3,000 of these have been in widespread use, this represents a radical simplification of the food web. Why should this matter? Because humans are omnivores, requiring somewhere between 50 and 100 different chemical compounds and elements to be healthy. It’s hard to believe that we can get everything we need from a diet consisting largely of processed corn, soybeans, wheat and rice.

From Leaves to Seeds. It’s no coincidence that most of the plants we have come to rely on are grains; these crops are exceptionally efficient at transforming sunlight into macronutrients — carbs, fats and proteins. These macronutrients in turn can be profitably transformed into animal protein (by feeding them to animals) and processed foods of every description. Also, the fact that grains are durable seeds that can be stored for long periods means they can function as commodities as well as food, making these plants particularly well suited to the needs of industrial capitalism.

The needs of the human eater are another matter. An oversupply of macronutrients, as we now have, itself represents a serious threat to our health, as evidenced by soaring rates of obesity and diabetes. But the undersupply of micronutrients may constitute a threat just as serious. Put in the simplest terms, we’re eating a lot more seeds and a lot fewer leaves, a tectonic dietary shift the full implications of which we are just beginning to glimpse. If I may borrow the nutritionist’s reductionist vocabulary for a moment, there are a host of critical micronutrients that are harder to get from a diet of refined seeds than from a diet of leaves. There are the antioxidants and all the other newly discovered phytochemicals (remember that sprig of thyme?); there is the fiber, and then there are the healthy omega-3 fats found in leafy green plants, which may turn out to be most important benefit of all.

Most people associate omega-3 fatty acids with fish, but fish get them from green plants (specifically algae), which is where they all originate. Plant leaves produce these essential fatty acids (“essential” because our bodies can’t produce them on their own) as part of photosynthesis. Seeds contain more of another essential fatty acid: omega-6. Without delving too deeply into the biochemistry, the two fats perform very different functions, in the plant as well as the plant eater. Omega-3s appear to play an important role in neurological development and processing, the permeability of cell walls, the metabolism of glucose and the calming of inflammation. Omega-6s are involved in fat storage (which is what they do for the plant), the rigidity of cell walls, clotting and the inflammation response. (Think of omega-3s as fleet and flexible, omega-6s as sturdy and slow.) Since the two lipids compete with each other for the attention of important enzymes, the ratio between omega-3s and omega-6s may matter more than the absolute quantity of either fat. Thus too much omega-6 may be just as much a problem as too little omega-3.

And that might well be a problem for people eating a Western diet. As we’ve shifted from leaves to seeds, the ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s in our bodies has shifted, too. At the same time, modern food-production practices have further diminished the omega-3s in our diet. Omega-3s, being less stable than omega-6s, spoil more readily, so we have selected for plants that produce fewer of them; further, when we partly hydrogenate oils to render them more stable, omega-3s are eliminated. Industrial meat, raised on seeds rather than leaves, has fewer omega-3s and more omega-6s than preindustrial meat used to have. And official dietary advice since the 1970s has promoted the consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, most of which are high in omega-6s (corn and soy, especially). Thus, without realizing what we were doing, we significantly altered the ratio of these two essential fats in our diets and bodies, with the result that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in the typical American today stands at more than 10 to 1; before the widespread introduction of seed oils at the turn of the last century, it was closer to 1 to 1.

The role of these lipids is not completely understood, but many researchers say that these historically low levels of omega-3 (or, conversely, high levels of omega-6) bear responsibility for many of the chronic diseases associated with the Western diet, especially heart disease and diabetes. (Some researchers implicate omega-3 deficiency in rising rates of depression and learning disabilities as well.) To remedy this deficiency, nutritionism classically argues for taking omega-3 supplements or fortifying food products, but because of the complex, competitive relationship between omega-3 and omega-6, adding more omega-3s to the diet may not do much good unless you also reduce your intake of omega-6.

From Food Culture to Food Science. The last important change wrought by the Western diet is not, strictly speaking, ecological. But the industrialization of our food that we call the Western diet is systematically destroying traditional food cultures. Before the modern food era — and before nutritionism — people relied for guidance about what to eat on their national or ethnic or regional cultures. We think of culture as a set of beliefs and practices to help mediate our relationship to other people, but of course culture (at least before the rise of science) has also played a critical role in helping mediate people’s relationship to nature. Eating being a big part of that relationship, cultures have had a great deal to say about what and how and why and when and how much we should eat. Of course when it comes to food, culture is really just a fancy word for Mom, the figure who typically passes on the food ways of the group — food ways that, although they were never “designed” to optimize health (we have many reasons to eat the way we do), would not have endured if they did not keep eaters alive and well.

The sheer novelty and glamour of the Western diet, with its 17,000 new food products introduced every year, and the marketing muscle used to sell these products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and marketing to help us decide questions about what to eat. Nutritionism, which arose to help us better deal with the problems of the Western diet, has largely been co-opted by it, used by the industry to sell more food and to undermine the authority of traditional ways of eating. You would not have read this far into this article if your food culture were intact and healthy; you would simply eat the way your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents taught you to eat. The question is, Are we better off with these new authorities than we were with the traditional authorities they supplanted? The answer by now should be clear.

It might be argued that, at this point in history, we should simply accept that fast food is our food culture. Over time, people will get used to eating this way and our health will improve. But for natural selection to help populations adapt to the Western diet, we’d have to be prepared to let those whom it sickens die. That’s not what we’re doing. Rather, we’re turning to the health-care industry to help us “adapt.” Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick. It’s gotten good at extending the lives of people with heart disease, and now it’s working on obesity and diabetes. Capitalism is itself marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into lucrative business opportunities: diet pills, heart-bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But while fast food may be good business for the health-care industry, surely the cost to society — estimated at more than $200 billion a year in diet-related health-care costs — is unsustainable.

BEYOND NUTRITIONISM

To medicalize the diet problem is of course perfectly consistent with nutritionism. So what might a more ecological or cultural approach to the problem recommend? How might we plot our escape from nutritionism and, in turn, from the deleterious effects of the modern diet? In theory nothing could be simpler — stop thinking and eating that way — but this is somewhat harder to do in practice, given the food environment we now inhabit and the loss of sharp cultural tools to guide us through it. Still, I do think escape is possible, to which end I can now revisit — and elaborate on, but just a little — the simple principles of healthy eating I proposed at the beginning of this essay, several thousand words ago. So try these few (flagrantly unscientific) rules of thumb, collected in the course of my nutritional odyssey, and see if they don’t at least point us in the right direction.

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called “Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the “eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (“flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of “health.” Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It’s all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn’t bordered by your body and that what’s good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch To Fatty Snacks

2009-05-20T03:27:00.000-07:00

On the Menus: Chocolate, Candy,
Trail Mix, Cheese Curls, Tater Tots;
Farmer Jones's Ethanol Fix

GARLAND, N.C. — When Alfred Smith's hogs eat trail mix, they usually shun the Brazil nuts.

"Pigs can be picky eaters," Mr. Smith says, scooping a handful of banana chips, yogurt-covered raisins, dried papaya and cashews from one of the 12 one-ton boxes in his shed. Generally, he says, "they like the sweet stuff."

Mr. Smith is just happy his pigs aren't eating him out of house and home. Growing demand for corn-based ethanol, a biofuel that has surged in popularity over the past year, has pushed up the price of corn, Mr. Smith's main feed, to near-record levels. Because feed represents farms' biggest single cost in raising animals, farmers are serving them a lot of people food, since it can be cheaper.

Besides trail mix, pigs and cattle are downing cookies, licorice, cheese curls, candy bars, french fries, frosted wheat cereal and peanut-butter cups. Some farmers mix chocolate powder with cereal and feed it to baby pigs. "It's kind of like getting Cocoa Puffs," says David Funderburke, a livestock nutritionist at Cape Fear Consulting in Warsaw, N.C., who helps Mr. Smith and other farmers formulate healthy diets for livestock.

California farmers are feeding farm animals grape-skins from vineyards and lemon-pulp from citrus groves. Cattle ranchers in spud-rich Idaho are buying truckloads of uncooked french fries, Tater Tots and hash browns.

In Pennsylvania, farmers are turning to candy bars and snack foods because of the many food manufacturers nearby. Hershey Co. sells farmers waste cocoa and the trimmings from wafers that go into its Kit Kat bars. At Nissin Foods, maker of Top Ramen and Cup Noodles, farmers drive to a Lancaster, Pa., factory and load up on scraps of the squiggly dried noodles, which pile up in bins beneath the assembly line. Hiroshi Kika, a senior manager at the company, says the farm business is "very minor" but helps the company's effort to "do anything to recycle."

Other businesses called "jobbers" serve as middlemen, buying food that manufacturers would otherwise throw away, like burned or broken cookies, or cereal that contains too much sugar, and selling it to livestock operations. At Midwest Ingredients Inc. in Princeville, Ill., manager Ruthi Coats says more farmers are coming to her because, rather than feed corn they grow to livestock, they want to sell it on the market for those big prices.

Ideally, livestock producers like to feed their pigs and cattle a mixture consisting of about 70% corn, plus soybean meal, fat and vitamins. Corn provides protein, essential nutrients and amino acids that give animals energy and fatten them up. Historically, the livestock industry has consumed 60% of the nation's corn crop.

Thanks to the ethanol rush, the price of a bushel of corn for months has hovered around $4 — nearly double the price of a few years ago. That has prompted livestock groups like the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Chicken Council to call for an end to federal ethanol subsidies, including a 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit offered to companies that blend gasoline with ethanol. For now, livestock must pay up or make do with alternatives.

On his farm in Garland, population 833, the 56-year-old Mr. Smith clenches a can of Mello Yello soda as he steers his blue 1992 Chevy pickup down an old railroad bed to his pens. There, about 1,000 oinking pigs plunge their snouts into troughs filled with corn, soybean meal and trail mix.

Mr. Smith says he's paying about $63 to feed a single pig for five or six months before it goes to market — up 13% from last year. His costs would be even higher if he didn't augment his feed with trail mix, which he says helps him save on average about $8 a ton on feed. This year, Mr. Smith has bought enough trail mix to feed about 5,000 hogs, and that will save him about $40,000.

He began feeding his hogs trail mix about a year ago, after Mr. Funderburke told him a local manufacturer was looking to dump surplus mix that was either too salty, sprinkled with cardboard or otherwise unfit for human consumption. Mr. Smith recently got a truckload of chocolate chips and his pigs seem to like them. "I've heard no complaints," he says.

Sweet products, because they are high in energy, can be good for pigs and cattle, Mr. Funderburke says. Trail mix often contains chocolate and dried fruit, which supply sugar, and nuts, which provide fat and protein. But too much fat and salt from foods like potato chips can depress animals' appetite and cause them to eat less. That isn't good for producers who want to pack as many pounds as possible on their animals.

In many places outside the Corn Belt where farmers must bring corn in by rail or truck, trail mix and other fringe products have long been used to keep feed costs down. But as corn prices have risen, the practice has spread across the country.

In ethanol-producing states, some farmers have been able to mitigate high corn costs by feeding their animals dried distillers' grains, a corn mash left over from ethanol production. But in states without ethanol plants, distillers' grains aren't always readily available. Also, many farmers say the product lacks sufficient nutrients. Others say their animals don't like the taste.

Dwight Hess, a cattle feedlot operator in Marietta, Pa., is located in the heart of snack country, near Hershey and Herr Foods Inc., a maker of potato chips, pretzels and snack mixes. His cattle ration consists of about 17% "candy meal," a blend of chocolate bars and large chunks of chocolate; 3% of what he calls "party mix," a blend of popcorn, pretzels, potato chips and cheese curls; 8% corn gluten; and the remainder corn and barley he grows. He says the byproducts save him about 10% on feed costs. Still, it costs him about 65 cents to put a pound on a steer, up from 42 cents last year.

Near the Snake River in Idaho, Cevin Jones of Intermountain Beef is struggling to feed his 12,000 cattle in light of higher feed costs. Traditionally, he has used up to 30% corn or other grains in his feed mix. This year he's using 100% byproducts, including french fries, Tater Tots and potato peels.

"It's kind of funny," Mr. Jones says, "every once in a while, you can spot a couple of cattle fighting over a whole potato."

Fatal Harvest

2009-05-20T03:07:00.000-07:00

Myth:
Industrial Food is Safe, Healthy, and Nutritious

The Truth:
Industrial agriculture contaminates our vegetables and fruits with pesticides and plastics along with endocrine disruptors, slips dangerous bacteria into our lettuce, and puts genetically engineered growth hormones into our milk. It is not surprising that cancer, food-borne illnesses, and obesity are at an all-time high.

A modern supermarket produce aisle presents a perfect illusion of food safety. Consistency is a hallmark. Dozens of apples are on display, waxed and polished to a uniform luster, few if any bearing a bruise or dent or other distinguishing characteristics. Nearby sit stacked pyramids of oranges dyed an exact hue to connote ripeness. Perhaps we find a shopper comparing two perfectly similar cellophane-wrapped heads of lettuce, as if trying to distinguish between a set of identical twins. Elsewhere, throughout the store, processed foods sit front and center on perfectly spaced shelves, their bright, attractive cans, jars, and boxes bearing colorful photographs of exquisitely prepared and presented foods. They all look unthreatening, perfectly safe, even good for you. And for decades, agribusiness, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have proclaimed boldly that the United States has the safest food supply in the world.

As with all the myths of industrial agriculture, things are not exactly as they appear. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that between 1970 and 1999, food-borne illnesses increased more than tenfold. And according to the FDA, at least 53 pesticides classified as carcinogenic are presently applied in massive amounts to our major food crops. While the industrialization of the food supply progresses, we are witnessing an explosion in human health risks and a significant decrease in the nutritional value of our meals.

INCREASED CANCER RISK

A central component of the industrialized food system is the large-scale introduction of toxic chemicals. This toxic contamination of our food shows no signs of decreasing. Since 1989, overall pesticide use has risen by about 8 percent, or 60 million pounds. The use of pesticides that leave residues on food has increased even more. Additionally, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that more than 1 million Americans drink water laced with pesticide runoff from industrial farms. Our increasing use of these chemicals has been paralleled by an exponential growth in health risks, to both farmers and consumers.

The primary concern associated with this toxic dependency is cancer. The EPA has already identified more than 165 pesticides as potentially carcinogenic, with numerous chemical mixtures remaining untested. Residues from potentially

carcinogenic pesticides are left behind on some of our favorite fruits and vegetables — in 1998, the FDA found pesticide residues in over 35 percent of the food tested. Many U.S. products have tested as being more toxic than those from other countries. What’s worse, current standards for pesticides in food do not yet include specific protections for fetuses, infants, or young children, despite major changes to federal pesticide laws in 1996 requiring such reforms. Many scientists believe that pesticides play a major role in the current cancer "epidemic" among children. And the cancer risk does not just affect consumers; it also imperils tens of thousands of farmers, field hands, and migrant laborers. A National Cancer Institute study found that farmers who used industrial herbicides were six times more likely than nonfarmers to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer. Along with their cancer risk, pesticides can cause myriad other health problems, especially for young people. For example, exposure to neurotoxic compounds like PCBs and organophosphate insecticides during critical periods of development can cause permanent, long-term damage to the brain, nervous, and reproductive systems.

INCREASE IN FOOD-BORNE ILLNESSES

In addition to increased health risks associated with our current pesticide dependency, industrialized food production has also brought with it a rise in food-borne illnesses. Researchers from the CDC estimate that food-borne pathogens now infect up to 80 million people a year and cause over 9,000 deaths in the United States alone.

This increase is largely attributed to the industrialization of poultry and livestock production. Most meat products now begin in "animal factories," where food animals are confined in shockingly inhumane and overly crowded conditions, leading to widespread disease among animals and the creation of food-borne illnesses. According to the CDC, reported cases of disease from salmonella and E. coli pathogens are ten times greater than they were two decades ago, and cases of campylobacter have more than doubled. The CDC saw none of these pathogens in meat until the late 1970s when "animal factories" became the dominant means of meat production. Even our fruits and vegetables get contaminated by these pathogens through exposure to tainted fertilizers and sewage sludge. Contamination can also occur during industrialized processing and long-distance shipment.

The use of antibiotics in farm animal production may also be accelerating the alarming growth of antibiotic resistance exhibited by dangerous pathogens. Residues of these veterinary antibiotics that make their way into our food supply may confer resistance upon bacteria responsible for a wide variety of human maladies. Infections resistant to antibiotics are now the 11th leading cause of death in the United States. Guided by popular media reports, we may hastily conclude that doctors, by overprescribing antibiotics for people, are solely to blame for growing resistance. This assessment, however, ignores the fact that nearly 50 percent of U.S. antibiotics are given to animals, not people.

KILLER FOODS

The introduction of fast, processed, and frozen foods in the 1950s has forever changed our dietary habits. At least 175,000 fast-food restaurants have sprouted among the gas stations, strip malls, and convenience stores of America's ever creeping suburban sprawl. Frozen dinners, prepackaged meals, and take-out burgers have, for many people, replaced the home-cooked meal. Consequently, people are consuming more calories, preservatives, and sugar than ever in history, while reducing their intake of fresh whole fruits and vegetables. It is no mystery that these changes have led to overwhelming increases in obesity, Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease among Americans. About one in three Americans is overweight, and obesity is now at epidemic levels in the United States. According to a joint New York University/Center for Science in the Public Interest report "added sugars — found largely in junk foods such as soft drinks, cakes, and cookies — squeeze healthier foods out of the diet. That sugar now accounts for 16 percent of the calories consumed by the average American and 20 percent of teenagers’ calories. Twenty years ago, teens consumed almost twice as much milk as soda; today they consume almost twice as much soda as milk." The Surgeon General has determined that two out of every three premature deaths is related to diet.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES: A CLEANER CURSE

The purveyors of industrial food, when confronted with the health crisis that their food has caused, respond by assuring us that new industrial technologies will be a quick fix. For example, in response to the huge increase in food-borne illnesses, the industry promotes the use of irradiation to sanitize our foods. Through this technology, the average hamburger, for example, may receive the equivalent of millions of chest X rays in an attempt to temporarily remove any potential bacterial contaminants. However, as the meat continues to flow through the industrial food supply, it loses its "protection" and is quickly subject to additional contamination. Meanwhile, numerous reputable studies have shown that consuming irradiated meat can cause DNA damage, resulting in abnormalities in laboratory animals and their off-spring. Moreover, irradiation can destroy essential vitamins and nutrients that are naturally present in foods and can make food taste and smell rancid.

Contrary to our government's pronouncement, industrial food is not safe. It is, in fact, becoming increasingly deadly and devoid of nutrition. Ultimately, we cannot achieve food safety through simple political fiat or technological quick fixes. Increased dependence on chemical, nuclear, or genetically engineered inputs will only intensify the problem. The real solution is a return to sound organic agricultural practices. It turns out that food production that is safe for the environment, humane to animals, and based in community and independence is also a food supply that is safe and nutritious for humans.

Facts and Data on Antibiotics and Factory Farming

2009-05-20T02:57:00.001-07:00

The USDA reports that animals in the US meat industry produce 61 million tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human waste - or five tons for every US citizen.

North Carolina's 7,000,000 factory-raised hogs create four times as much waste - stored in reeking, open cesspools - as the state's 6.5 million people. The Delmarva Peninsula's 600 million chickens produce 400,000 tons of manure a year.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

Pfiesteria, a microscopic organism that feeds off the phosphorus and nitrogen found in manure, is a lethal toxin harmful to both humans and fish. In 1991 alone, 1,000,000,000,000 (one billion) fish were killed by pfiesteria in the Neuse River in North Carolina.

Since 1995, an additional one billion fish have been killed from manure runoff in estuaries and coastal areas in North Carolina, and the Maryland and Virginia tributaries leading into the Chesapeake Bay. These deaths can be directly related to the 10 million hogs currently being raised in North Carolina and the 620 million chickens on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

The pollution from animal waste causes respiratory problems, skin infections, nausea, depression and even death for people who live near factory farms. Livestock waste has been linked to six miscarriages in women living near a hog factory in Indiana.

In Virginia, state guidelines indicate that a safe level of fecal coliform bacteria is 200 colonies per 100 milliliters of water. In 1997, some streams had levels as high as 424,000 per 100 milliliters.

Each full-grown chicken in a factory farm has as little as six-tenths of a square foot of space. Because of the crowding, they often become aggressive and sometimes eat each other. This has lead to the painful practice of debeaking the birds.

Hogs become aggressive in tight spaces and often bite each other's tails, which has caused many farmers to cut the tails off.

Concrete or slatted floors allow for easy removal of manure, but because they are unnatural surfaces for pigs, the animals often suffer skeletal deformities.

Ammonia and other gases from manure irritate animals' lungs, to the point where over 80% of US pigs have pneumonia upon slaughter.

Due to genetic manipulation, 90% of broiler chickens have trouble walking.

Almost 30% of agricultural subsidies go to the top two percent of farms and over four-fifths to the top 30%.

In 1970, there were approximately 900,000 farms in the United States; by 1997, there were only 139,000.

Between 1969 and 1992, the number of producers selling 1000 hogs annually or less declined 73%. Producers selling more than 1000 annually increased 320%, according to the US Census of Agriculture.

Estimated inputs to produce a pound of: Pork: 6.9 pounds of grain, .44 gallons of gasoline, 430 gallons of water Beef: 4.8 pounds of grain, .25 gallons of gasoline, 390 gallons of water

Meat production has grown worldwide from 44 million tons in 1950 to 211 million tons in 1997.

The price of meat would double or triple if full ecological costs - including fossil fuel use, groundwater depletion and agricultural-chemical pollution - were factored in.

90% of the nation's poultry production is controlled by 10 companies.

In Maryland, chickens outnumber people 59 to 1.

Overuse of antibiotics in animals is causing more strains of drug-resistant bacteria, which is affecting the treatment of various life-threatening diseases in humans. The Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences has estimated the annual cost of treating antibiotic-resistant infections in the U.S. at $30 billion.

Fifty million pounds of antibiotics are produced in the U.S. each year. Twenty million pounds are given to animals, of which 80% (16 million pounds) is used on livestock merely to promote more rapid growth. The remaining 20% is used to help control the multitude of diseases that occur under such tightly confined conditions, including anemia, influenza, intestinal diseases, mastitis, metritis, orthostasis, and pneumonia.

Chickens are reservoirs for many food borne pathogens including Campylobacter and Salmonella. 20% of broiler chickens in the US are contaminated with Salmonella and 80% are contaminated with Campylobacter in the processing plant. Campylobacter is the most common known cause of bacterial food borne illness in the US.

5000 deaths and 76 million cases of food-borne illness occur annually.

Antibiotics in farm animals leave behind drug-resistant microbes in meat and milk. With every burger and shake consumed, super-microbes settle in the stomach where they transfer drug resistance to bacteria in the body, making one more vulnerable to previously-treatable conditions.

The average American consumes nearly twice his or her weight in meat annually.

Poultry processing has almost double the injury and illness rate than trades like coal mining and construction.

The United Nations reports that all 17 of the world's major fishing areas are at or beyond their natural limits. One third of all the world's fish catch is fed directly to livestock.

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man."
Mohandas Ghandi

Unborn Babies Could be Harmed by GMOs

2009-05-20T02:52:00.000-07:00

Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn babies, startling new research suggests.

The study — carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences — found that more than half of the offspring of rats fed on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times as many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many were also severely underweight.

The research — which is being prepared for publication — is just one of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food damages human health. Italian research has found that modified soya affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon a decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study found they caused lung damage.

And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech giant Monsanto, which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn had smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional one.

The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation held a workshop on the safety of genetically modified foods at its Rome headquarters late last year. The workshop was addressed by scientists whose research had raised concerns about health dangers. But the World Trade Organisation is expected next month to support a bid by the Bush administration to force European countries to accept GM foods.

The Russian research threatens to have an explosive effect on already hostile public opinion. Carried out by Dr Irina Ermakova at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it is believed to be the first to look at the effects of GM food on the unborn.

The scientist added flour from a GM soya bean — produced by Monsanto to be resistant to its pesticide, Roundup — to the food of female rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soyaand a third group was given no soya at all.

She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya at all.

"The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing" said Dr Ermakova. "They point to a risk for mothers and their babies."

Environmentalists say that — while the results are preliminary — they are potentially so serious that they must be followed up. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has asked the US National Institute of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.

The Monsanto soya is widely eaten by Americans. There is little of it, or any GM crop, in British foods though it is imported to feed animals farmed for meat.

Mortality Rate for New-Born Rats Six Times Higher
When Mother Was Fed on a Diet of Genetically Modified Soya

Tony Coombes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, said: "The overwhelming weight of evidence from published, peer-reviewed, independently conducted scientific studies demonstrates that Roundup Ready soy can be safely consumed by rats, as well as all other animal species studied."

What the experiment found

Russian scientists added flour made from a GM soya to the diet of female rats two weeks before mating them, and continued feeding it to them during pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were give non-GM soya or none at all. Six times as many of the offspring of those fed the modified soya were severely underweight compared to those born to the rats given normal diets. Within three weeks, 55.6 per cent of the young of the mothers given the modified soya died, against 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed the conventional soya.

Heartbreak in the Heartland: The True Cost of Genetically Engineered Crops

2009-05-20T02:44:00.000-07:00

Percy Schmeiser is a Canadian canola farmer who has been sued by agricultural chemical and biotech giant Monsanto after some of Monsanto's genetically engineered Roundup Ready canola genes drifted onto his property from neighboring farms and contaminated his crop.

Mr. Schmeiser, who is now 70 years old, has traveled the world speaking to a wide variety of audiences about his experience.

Mr. Schmeiser received the Mahatma Gandhi award in October, 2000.

Editors Note: In late 2008 or early 2009 Mr. Schmeiser won his suit with Monsanto.

Percy Schmeiser speaking at the University of Texas at Austin - October 10, 2001:

I've been farming for 53 years, and 50 years of those I spent in developing a natural breeding of canola. I was known in Western Canada as a seed saver and a seed developer. Besides being a farmer, I've also spent 25 years in public life. I was a member of Parliament and I was also mayor of my community for that length of time. In those years of public life, I was on every agricultural committee you can imagine, both federally and provincially. I've always fought for farmers’ rights and farmers’ privileges, and regulations and laws that would benefit them.

Text on screen:

Rodney Nelson, along with his father and brothers, grows soybeans on their North Dakota farm. His family is also being sued by Monsanto, who accused them of saving and replanting their patented Roundup ready soybeans, a charge Mr. Nelson adamantly denies.

Rodney Nelson (seen speaking from his fields in a tractor - note: taped for this event):

Our family comes from a long line of share renters. Our farm has grown quite dramatically in size over the years because we have always been honest and fair with people. And I believe our landlords realize this. And that's why they come to us to rent us a farm. It has been heart wrenching for us to watch our reputations be destroyed in our own community over something we did not do.

My family has been enduring a living hell since this began. I am sure this is what led to my father's recent heart attack a few weeks back. He has
been physically and emotionally shattered since this began, as our whole family has been.

Rodney Nelson:

A RUDE AWAKENING

I want to share with you my family's experience regarding a very dark side to patented genetically modified crops. My family is being sued by the Monsanto Corporation for alleged patent infringement. Monsanto claims we saved Roundup ready soybean seed from our 1998 crop and replanted it in 1999. And they believe that we continue to do so. I can assure you people this absolutely did not happen. We have a ton of evidence to prove that. Why Monsanto continues with this. . . only God knows.

In the summer of 2000, my family and I were discussing how rude we thought it was that Monsanto never sent us a letter or thanked us for cooperating with their investigation into our business that they conducted in the fall of 1999. We were stunned, when in late July of the year 2000, we received a letter from a law firm in New Orleans, that was representing Monsanto Co., accusing us of infringing on their patent.

How are we to go back in time to get crop samples, to disprove them a year later, when we were faced with these allegations? This is part of Monsanto's strategy. Every accused grower in the United States, that I've talked to, had nearly identical stories on Monsanto's tactics.

Percy Schmeiser:

In 1998, without any previous warning or any indication at all, Monsanto launched a lawsuit against me. In that lawsuit, they stated that I had illegally obtained Monsanto's genetically altered canola without a license, and that I had infringed on their patent. Before the main trial, Monsanto withdrew all their allegations against me that I had ever obtained their seed illegally. They went on to say that it didn't matter how the seed got onto my land, I still infringed on their patent.

Rodney Nelson:

In late October, 2001, Monsanto dropped
the seed patent lawsuit against the
Nelson family and came to an
undisclosed settlement.

In the suit against us, we have tried to be as cooperative as possible with Monsanto. We have sent them all relevant information that they requested regarding our soybean crops from 1997 to present. They have even asked for our tax returns dating back to 1996.

When we sent our interrogatories to Monsanto, they refused to answer any of our questions, claiming work product doctrine and attorney client privilege. When we asked their claimed independent third party who gathered their supposed samples for the location and the results of the samples taken, they told us they could not answer those questions because they were retained as expert witnesses by Monsanto and instructed not to answer.

We feel that we were profiled by Monsanto because of the size of our farm, and that they wanted to try to make an example of us to scare other farmers into never saving their own seed - to be too scared to save their own seed - and that's happening.

Percy Schmeiser:

So eventually, my case went to court after 2 1/2 years. And Monsanto dragged me through those courts. In pretrial, they did everything to break me. They basically took all of our retirement funds, because just my lawyer fees alone, up to date, have been around $200,000.

And what did the judge rule after 2 1/2 weeks of trial?

Text on Screen as Percy speaks:
1) It doesn't matter how Monsanto's patented genes got into the wrong field.
2) All cross-pollinated plants become the property of Monsanto.
3) Use of patented traits is irrelevant Farmers' rights are secondary to Monsanto's patent rights.

[He said] it didn't matter how Monsanto's genetically altered canola got into my field. And then he went on to specify that whether it cross pollinated or if it blew in by the wind, by birds, bees, animals, or falling off a farmers truck, a combine and so on, it didn't matter. The fact that there were some plants there, I had violated Monsanto's patent, even though I didn't want it in my field.

Number 2, which is the most important one I think - he ruled that any farmer that has a regular conventional plant, it doesn't matter what kind of a plant, if it's a tree, if it's a seed, and it gets cross pollinated with Monsanto’s gene against your wishes, and destroys your property, my [sic] plant becomes Monsanto's property.

Now stop and think what that means to farmers all over the world -- farmers, gardeners, anything to do with a life-giving form. My property becomes Monsanto's property against my wishes because it gets cross-pollinated by their gene.

The third issue. He ruled that the fact that I never used Monsanto’s patent - which means I never used Monsanto’s Roundup Ready herbicide or glyphosate on my crop - he ruled, “that’s immaterial.” He said the fact was that there were some plants there. So that shows you the extent of the power of patent law over farmers’ rights.

Now, what did we do immediately after the judge came down with that decision? First of all, we launched an appeal to the Federal Court of Canada, with three judges. It will probably be heard next spring.

We also launched a counter lawsuit against Monsanto, in which it states that there’s a liability issue now. If Monsanto has a patent, that still doesn’t give them the right to release it to the environment - a life-giving form that they knew they couldn’t control, they had no intentions of controlling , and now it’s out of control. So there’s a real liability issue.

If anybody can patent a life-giving form, where do you stop? What about animals - birds, bees, insects, fish? How far do you go? Ultimately we asked, “can you patent a human being?”

Jim Hightower:

Heavy-Handed Tactics

Monsanto is a bully. Monsanto is a thug. For fun and profit, it has long been tampering with the world's food supply.

Percy Schmeiser:

How does Monsanto regulate their contract? To me, it is the most vicious, suppressive contract on the face of the Earth. People don’t realize what is going on in North America - in Canada and the United States - the rights and freedoms of people are being taken away.

Text on screen as Percy speaks:

Cannot save and replant Monsanto's genetically engineered seed.
Must use Monsanto's proprietary chemicals.
Must comply with Monsanto's confidentiality statement.
Must pay Monsanto of technology fee of $15 per acre every year.
Must allow Monsanto to monitor the entire farm for three years after using patented seeds.

Monsanto gets farmers to sign a contract. In that contract it states you can never use your seed. You sign all your right away to be able to use your own seed. And as I said to you, under federal law in Canada you’re always allowed to use your own seed.

You must buy the chemical from Monsanto.

You must also sign a nondisclosure statement. And if you happen to use some of your seed the following year and they find out about it, they can fine you or take all the profits from your crop, or make you destroy it. They can say anything about you, but you cannot say anything about Monsanto.

You must pay $15 an acre each year, which is a technology charge.

The most revolting part of this contract is that you must allow Monsanto’s police force to come on your land for three years afterwards, to go into your granaries, with or without your permission to see if you’re cheating or not.

What I have told farmers all over the world is to “never sign that contract, never ever give up the right to use your own seed.” Because if they do, they’ll become slaves and serfs of the land.

(Percy holds up a piece of paper)

This is an advertisement that Monsanto has in brochures. On the bottom it says, “if you think your neighbor might be growing Monsanto’s Roundup Ready canola without a license, squeal or rat on him. And what happens after that is that Monsanto’s police will come out to this farmer’s house, and they’ll come into that home, and they’ll threaten that farmer or his wife, and say “we got to this tip or rumor.” And that’s always what they say - tip or rumor. And if you don’t come clean, we’ll get you, we’ll destroy you, you won’t have a farm left.”

This is in a free country. And they get away with it because if a farmer catches them in his field, and he says, “you’re trespassing, you’re taking some of our grain, or some of our seeds or plants.” Monsanto says, “OK, you take us to court. If you do, we’ll drag you through the courts. By the time we’re through with you, you won’t have a farm left.” It’s the power of money and might.

So, you can imagine what this does to the social fabric of a community when a farmer gets a visit from two of Monsanto’s police, and generally they come in pairs. He’ll think when these police leave, “Was it this farmer, this farmer, or my neighbor, or that neighbor?” So, you have the breakdown of working together - of trust amongst farmers.

In North America (sic), the same as here in the United States, farmers have to work together to develop our country. And now, you have a company that is so low that it’s trying to break down that social fabric of our community.

They don’t stop there. If they don’t find a farmer at home, they send a farmer extortion letters. And I mean extortion letters. In this particular letter that was sent to a farmer - we don’t know how many thousands of these letters they sent out - but basically what they say is, “We have reason to believe that you might be growing Monsanto’s genetically altered canola without a license. Please send us, in this case, $28,750 and we won’t charge you.

These are the extortion letters. Not only that, it goes on to say, “You agree that Monsanto shall, at it’s sole discretion, have the right to disclose the facts and settlement terms associated with this investigation and settlement agreement. And you may not say anything to anybody about it.” [It's] a total muzzling of farmers’ freedom of speech and rights.

MORE FARMERS
IN CORPORATE CROSSHAIRS

We estimate that there are now over 2000 farmers that Monsanto is ready to charge, depending on the outcome of my case. We estimate that they have investigated at least 40,000 farmers in North America. That’s the extent of their police force. Monsanto has 35 ex-Royal Canadian Mounted police that they have hired to interrogate and harass farmers.

Jim Hightower:

Monsanto is not going to stop until we stop it. And that is the basic message here tonight.

Percy Schmeiser:

Why did farmers sign on to Monsanto to grow genetically altered canola in 1996, when regulatory approval was given? And right across the border to us in the U.S., Monsanto was allowed to sell to [soybean farmers] genetically altered soybeans.

I think the reasons were this. Number one, Monsanto told farmers that it would be more nutritious, it would be a bigger yielder, but most of all, less chemicals. In Western Canada, the same as right across the border, we as farmers, use hundreds and hundreds of tons of chemicals - insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, you name it.

Our land is contaminated. Our water is contaminated. Farmers now realize that we’re just killing ourselves and we’re killing the environment - our insects, our birds, and everything else. When farmers heard that, it was not only an economic reason, it was the fact that they realized - farmers realized themselves, like myself - the damage that we were doing to the environment. So, when Monsanto said “less chemicals,” I think that’s what really caught the farmer’s ear.

But what happened after four and five years?

Number one, it was not more nutritious. It was not a bigger yielder. When Monsanto advertised a bigger yielder, always note they never say anything about quality. The quality drops about in half. And a third issue; less chemicals - farmers are now using from six to ten times more chemicals.

GMOs:
THE BIG PICTURE

Text on Screen as Percy speaks:

3 GMO ISSUES:

Property rights vs. patent law.
Health and safety
Damage to the environment.

There are three things to the whole issue of GMOs. One is the part that I’m involved with - property rights vs. patent law - the rights of farmers always to be able use their own seed worldwide. The other issue is the health and safety of GM foods. And a third issue, the damage to the environment.

Rodney Nelson:

GMOs:
OUT OF CONTROL

In Bismarck ND, our state capital, this past spring, a legislator asked a Monsanto representative at what level of contamination in a farmer's field do you consider a patent infringement has occurred? We were told that if a farmer represents a field of soybeans to be non-GMO and Monsanto finds as little as one plant that tests positive in that field, they may consider that patent infringement, regardless of whether the farmer used conventional chemicals on the crop.

I can also assure you that it is not possible for a farmer in the United States to buy soybean seed from a major seed supplier that is not already contaminated with Monsanto's genetically modified organism.

Percy Schmeiser:

There is no such thing as pure canola seed. It is all contaminated.

Also there is also no such thing as containment. The reason for that is that now, canola has become a super weed.

What is a super weed?

If farmer “A” buys a GMO canola from “this company,” and farmer “B” buys a GMO canola from “that company,” and over here another farmer buys GMO canola from Monsanto, the genes from these three GMO crops are now into one conventional plant. That makes it a super weed because you need three chemicals to kill one plant. In four or five years, that super weed has spread all over Western Canada, into fields where people never grew canola. It’s in wheat fields, barley fields, oats fields, flax fields - it’s all over.

Monsanto says, "don't worry, no problem. We'll now come up with a new super chemical." But I guarantee you by the end of the year 2001, after tests are done, we will have five of the GMO genes in one plant.

Rodney Nelson:

ARE GMOs SAFE?

On the aspect of the safety of these products . . . we're growing crops out here that, if any bugs or worms chew on them, the crops have a built-in pesticide that was genetically engineered to kill worms and bugs that chew on the crops. The pesticide is in the total plant, including the kernels that we eat.

If our DNA is the same as these little creatures that chew on them, and it kills them, I don’t know about you people, but it quite frankly scares the hell out of me to be eating these crops.

Percy Schmeiser:

There is not one published peer-reviewed report in the world stating that genetically modified foods are safe.

Rodney Nelson:

As a farmer, when I first heard about these things coming on the market I thought it would make things easier for us and I assumed that everything would be safe. But what I’ve learned is that just because our government approves it and companies introduce it, it isn’t necessarily going to be safe. We look in the past . . . we were told that PCBs were safe. DDT, we were told that was safe. There is an old commercial that the government put out showing children eating at a picnic table while a DDT fog was rolling over them, because the chemical companies that produce these assured our government and people that these things were safe.

The list goes on and on of products like this. We’ve now learned, years down the road, that they were very dangerous. They are probably are the reasons why our country has the highest cancer rate of any nation in the world.

Now we're being told that these genetically modified crops are safe. [long pause] I don’t believe it.

Percy Schmeiser:

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, a division of the Canadian Department of Agriculture, and AgCanada have been receiving grants from Monsanto to do research work on agricultural test sites and development sites in western Canada. It came out that these same people, after taking grants from Monsanto, were the ones they gave regulatory approval to Monsanto so they could sell GMO canola to farmers. So on one hand, they were taking grants, and on the other hand, they were giving regulatory approval.

Money Talks,
Governments Listen

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which was regarded as one of the most reliable and trustworthy departments in Canada, in regards to the safety of foods, admitted at my trial that they had done no testing of genetically altered food. They only used Monsanto’s data.

Fred Walters, editor and publisher of Acres USA:

Monsanto’s response is, “Monsanto should not have to vouch safe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.” That’s from Phil Angel, a Monsanto spokesman.

Text overlay on Screen:
Percy Schmeiser's web site www.percyschmeiser.com

So, there you have our government agencies basically in bed with Monsanto, taking their grants and then giving them regulatory approval. And I’m sure the same thing is happening in the United States.

Rodney Nelson:

I have written a letter to our attorney general, John Ashcroft, and I begged him for help with this monumental crisis that farmers are facing. His response was that it is not their policy to get involved in private litigation matters. I have since learned that Mr. John Ashcroft has submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding a similar patent infringement case to be heard in October of this year. He preyed upon the Supreme Court to uphold these new plant patents to protect the corporations that owned the patents. I also learned that Mr. Ashcroft had received the largest campaign contribution that Monsanto gave any 2000 political candidate, in his failed bid for Senate reelection. This knowledge felt like a cold slap in the face. It makes a person wonder if all of our government’s for sale to the highest bidder.

GMOs
AT WHAT PRICE?

I’ve been asked many times, am I totally against GMOs? That’s a difficult question to answer. I think all of us want to be on the leading edge of new technology. But GMOs - I say, at what price?

If something is released into the environment - a life-giving form - that destroys the property of others, I say then, it is wrong. If it’s not safe to eat, if it’s not safe for our environment, then I say it’s wrong. And then we should adopt a precautionary principle, and go slow. That’s what we have to do with the whole issue of GMOs. But until that time arrives, I say no to GMOs.

Jim Hightower:

NO LABELING REQUIRED

We’ve got a saying here in Texas, Percy. We say that if you find you've dug yourself into a hole, the very first thing to do is quit digging. However, the ag establishment - the corporations, and their puppets in government - continue to say, “we’ve got to dig ever deeper.” If 8 billion pounds of pesticides every year is not doing enough damage to our food, our environment, and ourselves, then let’s add genetic engineering to this Kafkaesque stew. Let’s tamper with the very DNA of our food - transgenic mutations. And then they say, “here’s an idea. Let’s also fool our customers by disallowing labeling.”

Fred Walters:

Famous molecular biologist, John Fagan said, “without labeling of GMO products it will very difficult for scientists to trace the source of new illness caused by genetically engineered foods.

GENETIC MELTDOWN?

Dr. Erwin Chargoff is an eminent biochemist. He’s often referred to as the father of molecular biology. He said that he considers genetic engineering a “molecular Auschwitz,” and warned that “the technology of genetic engineering poses a greater threat to the world than the advent of nuclear technology. An irreversible attack on the biosphere is something so unheard - of, so unthinkable to previous generations, that I only wish that mine had not been guilty of it.”

Jim Hightower:

TAKING CONTROL

The issue is the most fundamental issue of democracy. It asks this question, the same question that democracy-seeking people have always had to ask. “Who the hell is going to be in charge? A handful of corporate greed-heads, or we the people?” That’s what it comes down to. Who’s going to be making the decisions in a society that supposedly is self-governing?

Mary Helen Lease was a famous populist orator, a fiery orator. Back in the 1870’s and 1880’s, when women could not even vote, Mary Helen Lease was on the political stump, opposing the monopoly power that was squeezing farmers off of the land back then. And she said to the corn farmers throughout the plains states, “It’s time to raise less corn and more hell.”

I think that’s our job too.

Thank you very much for being here.

Don't Buy Plastics!

2009-05-20T02:23:00.000-07:00

At every step in the production of plastics, hazardous substances are used and hazardous wastes are produced. When plastics are disposed of in incinerators, more hazardous wastes are produced. If we are truly concerned about limiting our exposure to hazardous and toxic wastes, then we must take on the plastics industry. For the plastics industry is a major, if not the largest, source of the hazardous wastes entering our environment. The promise of recycling plastics keeps this hazardous waste industry alive. PVC can't be recycled economically. Many other plastics can't be recycled., and even when they can, the one sure product being recycled is hazardous waste. It has been difficult to confront the plastics issue because of several factors, some of which are listed below.

(1) Citizens have worked hard to bring the message home on the necessity to recycle materials. It has been an extraordinarily successful campaign. Millions of Americans have responded, in an overwhelmingly positive way.

(2) In our effort to bring the message home, the plastic industry waylaid concerns when they said they would and could recycle plastics. At that time, the fundamental question of what we were recycling was put on hold.

(3) Greenpeace has persisted in educating us on the dangers of one plastic: PVC. They've done a great job, produced great reports, and it is generally accepted in environmental circles that we must do whatever we can to stop PVC production.

(4) Since the successful battles against McDonald's use of Styrofoam, what major environmental group is campaigning against any other plastic?

(5) Millions of tons of plastics are being dumped in third-world countries while the plastic industry is pumping millions of dollars into `let's feel good about plastics' ads.

(6) The issue of endocrine disruptors hit us all in the ecological solar plexis. We learned that many substances, that are known endocrine disrupters, are used as additions to plastics and that they leach out from them. In fact, just one of these substances, Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate “is principally used [95%] as a plasticizer in the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and vinyl chloride resins.” (Ref: Toxicological Profile for Di (2-Etheylhexyl) Phthalate, April 1993, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.]

(7) Plastics are used for practically everything - packaging for food; furniture; construction; medical supplies; toys, etc. They have replaced many safer materials. In fact, we are losing, at an exponential rate, our ability to manufacture safe materials

(8) If, in the saving of life, plastics must be used, so be it. We will not argue against really critical use; but wherever possible we must campaign for alternative materials that produce less hazardous wastes and are genuinely conservative of finite resources.

(9) Those who work in the production of the chemicals necessary to produce plastics have been the hardest hit. They are exposed, almost unconscionably, to toxic and hazardous chemicals. Many have had their health impaired; many suffer illness and cancer; too many have died. Similarly, people who live in the communities where these chemicals and plastics are produced; who live near the incinerators and cement kilns where they are burned; who live next to hazardous waste landfills; and the firefighters who brave toxic fires, are also put at grave risk for cancers, illness and death. Shouldn't we be asking: “Are plastic food wraps, plastic packaging, plastic furniture, plastic construction materials, and plastic toys worth the cancers, illness and deaths their production, manufacture and disposal cause?”

“Pesticides and plastics have common ingredients and common hazardous waste by-products. The famous Love Canal and Hyde Park toxic dumps (both near Niagara Falls, New York) from Hooker Chemical and Plastics Company came from one-site manufacturing of several chlorinated products. Among these products are DDT (pesticide), Mirex (pesticide), lindane (pesticide), PVC (plastic), and PCBs (plasticizer, fire-retardant, and insulator). These products were made at the one manufacturing site because of many common feedstocks that are necessary for all these products. (Feedstocks are the chemicals needed for the manufacture of these products.)...Most people don't even know that there is a close relationship between plastics and pesticides, or that they are often manufactured on the same site with the same feedstocks.” In the Mouth of the Dragon: Toxic fires in the age of plastics, by Deborah Wallace, 1990, Avery Publishing Group, ISBN 0-89529-440-0.

“In an EPA ranking of the 20 chemicals whose production generates the most total hazardous waste, five of the top six are chemicals commonly used by the plastics industry...These include propylene (ranked first), phenol (third), ethylene (fourth) polystyrene (fifth) benzene (sixth).” Ref: Wrapped in Plastics: the environmental case for reducing plastics packaging, by Jeanne Wirka for the Environmental Action Foundation, 1988.

The following excerpts are from Wrapped in Plastics:

Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE): Principle raw materials: ethylene gas (monomer). Sometimes copolymerized with butene, hexane, octene, or vinyl acetate. Toxic chemicals used in production: benzene, chromium oxide, cumene hydroperoxide, tert-butyl hydroperoxide.

High Density Polyethylene (HDPE): Principle raw materials: ethylene gas (monomer). Also frequently copolymerized with other olefins such as 1-butene, 1-hexane, or propylene. Toxic chemicals used in production: chromium oxide, benzoyl peroxide, hexane, cyclohexane.

Polypropylene (PP): Principal raw materials: propylene (monomer). Toxic chemicals used in production: methanol, 2,6-di-tert-butyl-4-methyl phenol, nickel dibutyl dithiocarbamate.

Polystyrene (PS): Principal raw materials: Styrene (monomer). Most styrene is produced from ethylbenzene, which is itself made from benzene and ethylene. Toxic chemicals used in production: Styrene, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, polyvinyl alcohol, antimony oxide, tert-butyl hydroperoxide, bensoquinone.

Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET): Principal raw materials: terephthalic acid and/or dimethyl terephthalate and ethylene glycol. Toxic chemicals used in production: antimony oxide, diaszomethane, lead oxide.

Acrylonnitrile: Used as a key ingredient in the production of many synthetic fibers. It is also used as a monomer for two styrene resins (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, or ABS, and styrene-acrylonitrile, or SAN). Frequently copolymerized with polyvinyl chloride. Acrylonitrile has been shown to cause cancer and birth defects in laboratory animals and has been linked to an increase in cancer among exposed workers. Antimony Oxide: A crystaline substance used as a catalyst in the polmerization of PET, as a flame retardant in polystyrene, and as a pigment (white). A suspected carcinogen. May cause birth defects.

Benzene: used as a solvent in the production of PVC and LDPE and as a raw material for styrene, the chemical (monomer) used to make polystyrene. A recognized human carcinogen that causes leukemia. Acute exposure to benzene in the workplace depresses the central nervous system, causing headaches, fatigue, insomnia, nervousness, nausea and loss of muscular coordination. p-Benzoquinone: used as a retardant in the polymerization of polystyrene. Extremely toxic on ingestion. A suspected tumoragen and mutagen. t-Butyl Hydroperoxide: used as a radical initiator in the polymerization of polystyrene and linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE). Although the toxic hazard to humans is not know, has produced severe depression, incoordination, cyanosis, and respiratory arrest in laboratory animals. Carbon Tetrachloride: used in the polymerization of PVC and polystyrene and as a solvent for other resins. Causes cancer in laboratory animals. Suspected human carcinogen. Workers subject to prolonged or repeated exposure can develop severe liver and kidney failure. Chromium (VI) Oxide: uses as a catalyst in the polymerization of HDPE and LDPE. Has produced both cancer and mutagenic and teratogenic effects in laboratory animals. Chronic exposures in the workplace have led to severe liver and nervous system damage. Cumene Hydroperoxide: used as a radical initiator in the polymerization of LDPE. Acutely toxic by ingestion, inhalation, and skin absorbtion. A suspected mutagen and terotogen. Diazomethane: used in the polymerization of PET. A known animal carcinogen. 1,2-Dichloroethane: used as a solvent in the production of PVC. Extremely toxic by ingestion or inhalation. A suspected human carcinogen and mutagen. Dimethylphthalate: used as a plasticizer in PVC. Listed as a hazardous waste

Di-N-Butyl Phthalate: used as a plasticizer in PVC. Listed as a hazardous waste. Di-N-Octyl Phthalate: Used as a plasticizer in PVC. Listed as a hazardous waste. Ethylene Oxide: used in the manufacture of ethylene glycol (a raw material for PET) and acrylonitrile. Has caused cancer, changes in genetic material, and reproductive problems in laboratory animals.

Lead Chromate: used as a pigment in PET, LDPE, HDPE, PP, PS, PVC, and other plastics. Very toxic and accumulates in the body over time producing anemia, headaches, sterility, miscarriages, kidney and brain damage. Lead Oxide: used as a catalyst in the polymerization of PET and as a colorant. See above for symptoms of Lead Chromate. Methyl Acrylate: used in the preparation of thermoplastic coatings and as a copolymer for PVC. High levels of inhalation may cause lethargy, convulsions, and death from lung damage. Methanol: used as a solvent in the polymerization of PVC and other resins. Also known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol. Swallowing methanol, or breathing high concentrations can cause headaches, weakness, drowsiness, lightheadedness, nausea, vomiting, drunkenness, eye irritation, blurred visions, blindness and death. Symptoms may recur without additional exposure and recovery is not always complete. Nickel Dibutyldithrio Carbamate: used as a UV-stabilizer in LDPE, HDPE, and PP. Nickel is a toxic heavy metal. Has been show to be associated with an increased incidence of nose and lung cancer in occupationally exposed workers. Present in the air emissions and ash from incinerators. Phthalic Anhydride: used as a plasticizer in PVC. Toxic. Polyvinyl Alcohol: widely used in the production of textiles, paints and other synthetics. Also used as a suspension stabilizer in the polymerization of PVC, PS, ABS, and other resins. Has produced positive results for carcinogenicity in animal tests. Styrene: used as a monomer in polystyrene. Styrene has been linked with increased levels of chromosomal damage, abnormal pulmonary function, angiosarcoma of the liver, and cancer in workers at styrene or polystyrene plants. Tetrahydrofuran: used as a solvent in the polymerization of PVC. Toxic by in ingestion and inhalation, causing irritation of the eyes, nose, and respiratory tract, headaches, dizziness, and potential damage to the central nervous system, liver and kidneys. Tribasic Lead Sulfate: used as a heat stabilizer in PVC. See “lead chromate” above for information on lead toxicity.

Plastic Water Bottles a Health Threat

2009-05-20T02:20:00.000-07:00

We consumers need all the help we can get when it comes to translating slick advertising on containers.

There is another difference between bottled and tap water.

Last year, Consumers Union tested 5-gallon polycarbonate jugs and found that "eight of the ten 5-gallon polycarbonate jugs we checked leached bisphenol-A into water--from 0.5 ppb to 11 ppb. Any health effects would be most likely to occur in developing fetuses, judging from animal research."

Bisphenol-A (BPA) mimics the hormone estrogen in animals. Just in case nobody has noticed lately, we are still animals. Estrogen is active in the human body at concentrations measured in parts-per-trillion. To get an idea of what 1 part-per-trillion looks like, imagine one drop of water in 660 rail tank cars. That's a train about 6 miles long! Our federal regulations for testing such chemicals as BPA do not come anywhere near the parts-per-trillion range.

As a group, the plastics and chemical industries are waging a multi-million dollar disinformation campaign to debunk the fact of hormone mimics via the media and lobbying.

My choice between bottled and tap would be bottled if I could verify the quality and if it was available in glass bottles.

Differences between bottled water and tap water

Bottled water has grown into a $22 billion-a-year industry. Bottled water is now so popular there are more than 700 brands of water produced worldwide.

The phenomenon is attributable to the belief by health-conscious consumers that bottled water has some advantage over the stuff that comes from the kitchen faucet. Believing that, they stock supplies of bottled water and even take it with them when they have occasion to leave home for any prolonged period - guarding against the eventuality that they'll become thirsty and have only a tap to turn to.

But now comes a report from the world's largest environmental organization, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, which concludes: "Bottled water may be no safer or healthier than tap water in many countries while it sells for up to 1,000 times the price."

The Swiss-based environmental group, which is known in the United States as World Wildlife Fund, based its report, released this month, on a study made at the University of Geneva.

Among other things, the study points out that tap water standards in Europe and the United States are higher than those governing bottled water.

Those who have become heavy users of bottled water may be surprised to learn that, in the view of the World Wildlife Fund, their habit is actually harming the environment. They say 1.5 million tons of plastic are used each year to bottle water. And toxic chemicals released during the manufacture and disposal of bottles can release gases that contribute to climate change.

What's more, says Dr. Biksham Gujja, head of World Wildlife Fund International's Fresh Water Program, some bottled water is nothing but tap water in a fancy vessel.

The bottom line, it appears, is that those who insist on purchasing the bottled water are possibly paying not so much for the product as for the attractive nature of that which contains it.

Much like Cub fans and Wrigley Field.

Alarm Rising in Denmark over Plastic Piping

2009-05-20T02:18:00.000-07:00

Contamination of drinking water via plastic piping, increasingly recognised as a potentially serious problem in Denmark, is more widespread than previously thought, Danske Kommuner, the local authorities' magazine, reports.

Analysis of data collected from 197 of Denmark's 271 local authorities by the environmental protection agency (EPA) disclosed 67 cases of pollution by a range of chemicals including benzene, oil and solvents that had leached through the pipes, Danske Kommuner says. The number was twice as many as expected.

In 34 cases, the pipes had been laid at or near inappropriate sites, such as petrol stations, in breach of regulations. In the other 33 instances, often involving private property, contamination was "unforeseen". Piping made of both soft plastics and harder types such as PVC was involved.

Danske Kommuner also reports on work carried out at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) suggesting that "impurities" in the pipes themselves are an additional source of pollution. Recent detection of phenols attributed to plastic piping is "the tip of the iceberg", the magazine says. The DTU scientists reckon they have identified barely 10% of the compounds that are probably present.

Plastic piping delivers about half of Denmark's drinking water.

Dangers of packaging chemicals getting into food

2009-05-20T02:17:00.000-07:00

Brief Summary:
Harmful chemicals from plastic or Styrofoam packaging can penetrate the foods, and may cause health problems such as cancer. Plastic wrapping on microwavable foods can transmit the chemicals during heating. Other products packaged with safe materials are discussed.

More than a decade ago, it was discovered that an ordinary Styrofoam cup could disintegrate when it held hot tea and lemon. Discoveries of such unanticipated interactions still occur from time to time.

For many years, polystyrene egg containers have largely replaced papier-mâché. However, their safety has only recently been investigated, in 1991. The Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station reported that volatile styrene monomers were detected in shell eggs stored in polystyrene containers for two weeks in supermarkets. Egg dishes cooked with these contaminated eggs contained seven times more ethylbenzene and styrene than those prepared from fresh farm eggs that had not been packaged in polystyrene. It is suspected that the volatile compounds can migrate through the porous shells into the edible portions of eggs.

Benzene from multilayer, oxygen-barrier, laminated bags has been found to migrate into meat, poultry, cheeses, and other packaged foods. This problem surfaced in September 1990 when an off-odor was noted in a roast beef shipment. Investigation showed that the meat contained benzene from the packaging, ranging from less than 5 parts per billion (ppb) to 17.8 ppb in raw meat. The benzene volatilized when the meat was heated.

Increasingly, plastic food wraps and containers have gained in popularity for microwaving foods. This practice can release components from the plastics, including base monomers, plasticizers, colorants, and stabilizers, especially when high heat is used. Many plastics contain plasticizers, used to increase the wrap's flexibility. Some plasticizers have been found to migrate from the plastic into food. One is DEHA [di(ethylhexyl)adepate], commonly used as a plasticizer in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) film wrap, which is popular for covering stored and microwaved food. DEHA is a suspected carcinogen.

In a 1987 study of home use of PVC film wrap, the DEHA migration level was found to increase in proportion to the time that the food was in contact with the PVC wrap and with the rise in cooking temperature. The highest migration levels were found when the plastic film was in direct contact with food with a high fat content on its surface. The highest migration levels were found with microwaved meats (such as pork, spareribs, and roast chicken), and bakery products (such as cakes, scones, and biscuits made with peanuts). Somewhat lower levels were found in fruits and vegetables, except avocado with its high fat content. Migration levels were low when there was little or no direct contact between the food and the wrap.

In the same study, use of PVC film with foods in retail stores was examined. Results were similar. The amount of DEHA migration into foods depended on how long the film was in contact with fatty surfaces of food. The highest amounts were found in cheeses, baked goods, and sandwiches; lower amounts in cooked meat and poultry; and the lowest, in fruits and vegetables.

Polyethylene, a popular plastic film commonly used for food freezer bags and wraps, does not contain plasticizers, and is considered to be generally safe for microwaving foods. However, if printing has been applied to the surface, the primer applied to the plastic prior to printing, as well as the applied inks, may subject the heated plastic to conditions distinctly different from those for which they had been tested and approved. Only clear polyethylene is suitable for microwaving food.

Formed plastic containers, used for carry-out foods, should not be re-used for microwaving. Such containers, if heated, may be subjected to conditions other than those for which they had been safety tested.

Some plastic packaging materials now in use for microwaving have not been approved for use at high heat. The most severe conditions for such packaging recognized by protocols of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were under conditions that previously had prevailed: from 212[degrees]F to 275[degrees]F. Recognizing the changes that have occurred, FDA scientists are working with members of the packaging industry to study new testing procedures, and to learn whether packaging materials can be modified to assure food safety when used for cooking at high heat.

Of concern, too, is "active packaging." Thin layers or strips of metallic heat susceptors are placed in plastic food packaging intended for microwaving. The susceptors focus microwave radiation to produce extremely hot surfaces (400[degrees]F to 500[degrees]F) within the package. This high heat permits food to be browned, crisped, or popped--features usually lacking in microwave cooking. At such high heat, substances such as polymers and their breakdown products, as well as adhesives and their components and other substances present in the plastic, can migrate into the food. Originally, susceptor strips were approved by the FDA for a different purpose, and were tested at far lower temperatures.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a popular plastic film wrap. It had long been assumed that PET film provides a functional barrier to adhesive components. It was demonstrated recently that the film allowed the migration of adhesive components into foods when oils or foods were cooked in contact with it. A study by the FDA's Division of Food Chemistry and Technology showed that the susceptor board components that migrated in the largest quantities were the plasticizers rather than the polymer components, even though the polymer components were in direct contact with the oil or food, whereas the plasticizers were in the adhesive layer of the susceptor boards. Approximately 50% more plasticizers migrated than did polymer components.

For many years, a purple dye (FD&C Violet No. 1) had been used to stamp inspected meat. The dye was suspected as a carcinogen. There was no assurance that the portion of the meat with the dye would be cut away before being consumed. In 1973, the FDA banned the dye as a meat marker.

Nitrosamines (carcinogenic compounds) were discovered in rubber nipples used to cap baby bottles. The rubber was reformulated to eliminate nitrosame formation. More recently, nitrosamines were discovered in hams that had rubber netting to encase them after boning and curing. The rubber was reformulated to eliminate this problem.

With rapidly changing packaging practices and many innovative techniques, manufacturers and regulators need to be vigilant in order to prevent unanticipated and undesirable interactions with foods.

Hormone Mimics (Endocrine Disruptors): They're in Our Food

2009-05-20T02:14:00.000-07:00

Should We Worry? Yes!

Might chemicals that mimic hormones be harming the human endocrine system? From top to bottom: the pituitary gland; the thyroid and parathyroid glands; the adrenal glands atop the kidneys, with the pancreas in between; and the testes (ovaries, in women). The intestines secrete hormones as well.

There has been a scattering of disturbing news reports in the last year or so about abnormalities in animals-- male fish with female sex organs, for instance, and frogs with extra legs. In their search for a cause, scientists are focusing on a class of chemicals called endocrine disrupters. Such chemicals seem to interfere with or mimic the action of hormones and thus may upset the normal growth, behavior, and reproduction of wildlife.

If these compounds are harming animals, scientists ask, are they harming people, too? Some researchers have concluded that they might be. In the past two years, dozens of conferences have focused on the effects of endocrine disrupters. The debate will only get louder with the expected release this summer of the National Academy of Sciences' long-awaited report on endocrine disrupters. Whatever the report finds, Congress has already mandated that, by August, the Environmental Protection Agency present recommendations for screening tens of thousands of chemicals for endocrine-disruptive activity and limiting human exposure to those that pose a problem.

More than a dozen federal agencies and institutes are planning nearly 400 research projects on endocrine disrupters. The chemical industry is funding studies, too. Are endocrine disrupters something to worry about or just another false alarm, like those warnings about a killer asteroid? Here's what scientists know so far, plus our tests of two types of product in which suspected endocrine disrupters are apt to hide--plastic wraps and baby foods.

[ See Test of plastic wraps, baby foods below ]

The ABCs of EDs

Some endocrine disrupters, such as dioxins, PCBs, and various relatives of DDT, are already infamous for the other problems they've created. (See "Prime Suspects," on page 55.) PCBs and DDT were banned in the U.S. in the 1970s, but dioxins are still being released-- they're byproducts of combustion and other processes. All these compounds persist at low levels virtually everywhere--in air, water, and soil. From there, they can enter the food chain, working their way into animals and, eventually, people.

They accumulate in fatty tissue, from which they are released very slowly. Other hormone mimics, less well known, are found in some plastics. To understand how these chemicals work their mischief, it helps to know a bit about the endocrine system, which has the same basic function in animals and humans. It's a complex network of glands (the thyroid, the ovaries or testes, and others) and organ tissues (the intestines) that secrete hormones. Hormones act as chemical messengers, traveling through the bloodstream to affect growth, metabolism, reproduction, and other functions elsewhere in the body.

The endocrine system is finely tuned through delicate checks and balances. Disrupters can throw off the system by sending the wrong signals or blocking the right signals. The effect is often temporary in adults, whose systems are fully developed and fairly stable. Babies and small children are more vulnerable. And there can be permanent effects on a fetus, whose normal development requires certain amounts of hormones at precise times. Change the amount or the timing, and the individual may suffer problems in behavior, immune function, neurological development, or gender development. As a link between endocrine disrupters and humans is being debated, evidence of a connection between disrupters and animals is mounting.

Animal evidence

Here are some of the bizarre things that have happened to animals:

In a 1981 laboratory study done at the University of California, Davis, male gulls with a feminized reproductive tract emerged from eggs exposed to levels of DDT and other synthetic chemicals similar to levels found in the wild. Similar gender- bending oddities are today being found in terns off Massachusetts and are likely due, researchers say, to as-yet-unidentified pollutants.
In 1992, 12 years after the DDT relative dicofol spilled into Florida's Lake Apopka, testosterone levels in the lake's male alligators were just one-quarter to one- half their normal level, and the alligators had shrunken genitals, according to a research team led by Louis Guillette, a University of Florida zoologist. What's more, the lake's female alligators had higher-than-average estrogen levels. "Their eggs were weird looking," says Guillette, "and they didn't hatch, or the young died within the first two weeks." Guillette's team has found a new abnormality in alligators from lakes Apopka and Okeechobee--an alteration in thyroid hormones, which are linked to growth and metabolism. Guillette considers the findings important because scientists think of alligators as a "sentinel" species: Their health reflects the health of their ecosystem.
In 1995, schoolchildren in a nature- studies class discovered frogs with five legs and other deformities in a pond near Henderson, Minn. Because frogs are another sentinel species, scientists around the country took notice. Subsequent searches turned up frogs with extra or missing legs and grossly deformed webbing elsewhere in Minnesota and in several other states. In Anacortes, Wash., a frog had an eye sprouting from behind its front leg.

Endocrine-disrupting pesticides may be the culprit--or, as some researchers have suggested, the defects might have resulted from exposure to excessive amounts of retinoids, vitamin A-like chemicals that might have come from a natural source like plants in the lake.

Of Mice--and Men?

Given the similarities between animal and human endocrine systems, it's tempting to think that what seems to be harming animals may harm people. "We have to bite the bullet," says Ana Soto, associate professor in cellular biology at the Tufts University School of Medicine. "Whatever we're finding in animals, I think we have to assume that it's very relevant to what is going on in humans." Others are much more skeptical. "I'm not saying let's dismiss everything," Texas A&M toxicologist Stephen Safe told our reporter. "I'm saying, hey, let's back up. The evidence isn't there. Should we do more work? Sure, but let's not go bananas."

mindfully.org note: Safe is an industry sponsored scientist, and very supportive of industry's point of view.

Indeed, there's no proof yet that routine exposure to these chemicals is disrupting the human endocrine system. And conclusive proof may not come. Because people aren't lab rats, researchers may never be able to rule out other possible explanations for any effects they observe. But researchers must keep asking questions. Among them:

Do endocrine disrupters affect intelligence?
When we spoke to scientists and others who believe chemicals are disrupting the human endocrine system, they often cited the work of Joseph and Sandra Jacobson, psychologists at Wayne State University. The Jacobsons have been tracking the developmental and intellectual performance of children whose mothers regularly consumed Lake Michigan fish before and during pregnancy. Those fish contain elevated levels of PCBs and other contaminants. In September 1996, the Jacobsons reported that the children of fish-eaters showed persistent, measurable intellectual impairment. This finding was highlighted in "Our Stolen Future," the 1996 best-seller that helped kick off public interest in endocrine disruption. But Joseph Jacobson has drawn no conclusion about what particular mechanism might have caused the impairment. In an interview, he called the idea that PCBs disrupted hormone function in the brain before birth "pure speculation." Early brain development, he said, is "such a complex process, and so many things could go wrong, that we just don't have any basis for concluding that it's endocrine related."

Do endocrine disrupters cause genital birth defects?
Quite possibly, say researchers at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They reported last November that hypospadias, a birth defect in males in which the urinary opening is mislocated--on the underside of the penis or even on the scrotum--doubled between 1968 and 1993, and now afflicts nearly 1 of 100 newborn boys nationwide. "That makes it the most common specific type of birth defect among males," says lead researcher Len Paulozzi.

The defect is thought to result from an inadequate surge of the male hormone testosterone between 9 and 12 weeks after conception. "As you block the fetus's own testosterone, the fetus cannot masculinize itself," Paulozzi explains, "and you wind up getting these various states of feminization of the fetus, of which hypospadias is a mild form." Suspected causes include a fungicide and DDE, a breakdown product of DDT. Also possible, Paulozzi says, is that doctors have simply become better trained at recognizing and reporting less severe forms of the defect.

Do endocrine disrupters cause prostate problems?
Frederick vom Saal, of the University of Missouri, Columbia, exposed mouse fetuses to tiny doses of the estrogen-like chemical bisphenol A, found in plastic dental sealants and food- can linings. The mice that emerged had enlarged prostates overburdened with receptors for testosterone as well as testes that produced fewer sperm than usual. Based on these studies, vom Saal hypothesizes that a corresponding overload in men could lead to increased vulnerability to prostate enlargement and perhaps to a decline in sperm count.

Do endocrine disrupters lower sperm counts?
In 1992, Danish endocrinologist Niels Skakkebaek determined that sperm counts had declined by 50 percent worldwide from 1938 to 1990. He later suggested that PCBs and pesticides, including DDT, may have been the cause. But sperm counts are not down everywhere, said Harry Fisch of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1996. They varied greatly in different areas, and hadn't declined at all in 25 years in the three U.S. cities he analyzed.

Yet when Shanna Swan of the California Department of Health Services recently reanalyzed Skakkebaek's data, adjusting for regional variations including the type Fisch had found, she discovered an even steeper global decline. Of all the explanations offered so far, Swan says, endocrine disruption seems the "most coherent and best supported by animal data." Over the next few years, Swan, with researchers in Europe and Africa, will be analyzing regional differences in semen quality. They will compare the sperm count of fathers-to-be with their level of sex hormones, steroids, and the time it took their wives to conceive, a sensitive marker of fertility. Stay tuned.

Do endocrine disrupters increase the risk of breast cancer?
In 1995, British investigators reported that some plasticizers, called phthalates, acted as estrogens, enhancing the growth of breast-cancer cells in lab studies. Two years earlier, Mary Wolff, a professor at New York City's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, had studied 58 women and found that the higher the levels of DDE in the blood, the greater a woman's risk of breast cancer.

But follow-up studies failed to find such strong correlation. Last year, Wolff teamed up with Harvard researchers to examine DDE and PCB levels in a larger sample of women. This time, she found no evidence that exposure to those chemicals increased the risk of breast cancer. Now a study has come out suggesting an association between PCBs and breast cancer--but only for women who have never lactated. Wolff's reaction: "I don't know. Nature's never, never simple." In search of better data The conflicting reports may mean that these compounds don't harm people. More plausibly, they may mean that the scientific tools available are too crude to see any harm that's there.

Indeed, the several studies that have looked for broad, population-wide effects have a built-in limitation: Even people in remote locations, such as Canada's Baffin Island, harbor traces of PCBs, DDT, and dioxins. There are no unexposed "controls" to help highlight the effects of exposure. But research, especially on possible effects in humans, continues.

Soto of Tufts is joining researchers at the University of Granada in Spain to develop precise ways to measure patients' blood and fat for total estrogens, including those originating outside the body, such as from chemical pesticides and plastics. Her team is testing two groups of patients--boys with undescended testes and women with breast cancer--to see whether exposure to environmental estrogens correlates with birth defects or disease. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hope to begin clinical tests that would help them estimate how many Americans harbor traces of chemicals that could mimic hormones.

What's more, the Chemical Manufacturers Association is investing some $4 million to study endocrine disrupters. "We're taking this very seriously," says Jon Holtzman, CMA's vice president for communications. "When a plausible theory is proposed and consumers are depending on the safety of the products we produce, we can't walk away." More work lies ahead--rigorous research on everything from how endocrine disrupters affect individual cells to whether they affect groups of people. Because science progresses by the slow accretion of innumerable facts, a tidy explanation is not likely anytime soon.

Recommendations

Although research indicates that manmade chemicals may be causing problems in wildlife, at least in localized areas, it's too soon to tell whether hormone mimics pose health risks for people. But should we ignore warning signs and simply hope the news will eventually be good?

It makes more sense for government, industry, and individuals to take reasonable steps to limit exposure. The EPA and industry should modify processes that release dioxins, for instance, and the FDA and industry should phase out the use of plasticizers suspected of causing endocrine problems. Such a phase-out is certainly possible: Some plastic wraps already contain no plasticizers. If in the face of all that is still uncertain, you want to reduce your ingestion of the suspect compounds, here are several low-cost strategies that may help: Consider using alternatives to pesticides and insecticides on lawn and pets. Wash fruits and vegetables thoroughly or, better yet, buy organic foods. Limit your ingestion of fatty foods (where the compounds can accumulate). Heed official advisories about fish contamination. And if you reheat food wrapped in plastic, make sure the wrap does not touch the food. The attitude that may serve us all best is one of prudent caution, not blissful ignorance.

Tests of plastic wraps, baby foods

Which suspected endocrine disruptors are in our foods, and at what hat levels? One category: certain plasticizers, which add flexibility to plastic food wraps among other products. Plasticizers can migrate from wraps into foods, especially fatty ones like hamburgers and cheese. We tested four endocrine disruptors in a variety of plastic wraps--both the kind you use at home and the kind store-bought foods come wrapped in--and in wrapped food. We tested a few plastic bowls, too. We also tested meat-based baby foods for persistent pollutants like dioxins and PCBs. Although adult foods are known to contain these endocrine disruptors, virtually no data have been published on amounts in baby foods--an odd data gap, considering that exposure during infancy could he important.

mindfully.org note: Please note that the chemicals found mimic hormones which are active in our bodies down to concentrations in the parts-per-trillion range while the testing done by Consumer Reports was at parts-per-million.
That is a difference of six orders of magnitude or six zeros.
1 million  = 1,000,000
1 trillion = 1,000,000,000,000

Wraps: Some Mull problem plasticizers

Of seven national and store brands Of plastic wrap we analyzed America's Choice, Dow brands Saran Wrap, Duane Reade, Foodtown, Glad Crystal Clear Polyethylene, Reynolds Wrap, and White Rose--only Reynolds Wrap and Saran Wrap contained any of the five plasticizers we looked for.

Would a cooked hamburger that was wrapped in plastic Reynolds Wrap or Saran Wrap and reheated in a microwave oven absorb plasticizers? Yes, a little bit, our tests showed, but only where the fat contacted the wrap.

It's impossible to say whether a tiny serving of plasticizers is risky. If you want to play it safe, buy one of the wraps we found to be free of suspect plasticizers, or buy any polyethylene wrap. (Polyethylene lacks plasticizers; the product's label should say what it's made of.)

In any case, do as some wrap makers recommended and leave a gap between wrap and food when heating. In fact, that's sound advice at any temperature. Studies have indicated that some migration of plasticizers can occur with refrigerated food, too. That's what we found when we analyzed 14 national and local brands of grocery- store and deli cheese wrapped in six types of plastic. The wraps themselves had a wide range of concentrations of two families of problematic plasticizers, adipates and phthalates. In the cheeses, we found:

Very heavy migration (50 to 160 parts per million) of the adipate plasticizer DEHA into cheeses in deli cling wrap. People who ate several ounces of this cheese every day could get doses nearly as high as those linked to a host of health problems in lab animals.
Moderate migration (I to 4 parts per million of the most common phthalate, DEHP, into some of the shrink-wrapped cheeses and into two waxed cheeses with clear plastic overwrap.
little to no migration into individually wrapped slices of American cheese or blocks of cheddar in laminated foil wrap.

We found no plasticizers at all in eight new microwavable Rubbermaid and Tupperware bowls.

Baby foods: No worse than other foods but ...

We tested about 2 dozen meat and poultry baby foods made by Gerber, Beech-Nut, and Heinz for dioxins, PCBs, and related compounds. Like "adult" meats, these baby foods contained substantial traces of the pollutants. The EPA has published what amounts to a limit for dioxin exposure. That guideline is based on the EPA's definition of a negligible cancer risk posed by daily intake over a lifetime, not on any understanding of the potential endocrine-disrupting effects of these chemicals, and it does not account for the likely need for an extra safety margin to protect infants.

Nevertheless, a baby who ate one jar--just 2.5 ounces--of an average meat-based baby food on a given day would consume around 100 times the EPA's daily limit of dioxins. No brand was significantly more contaminated than another.

Does that mean babies shouldn't eat meat baby food?

It's not that simple. Other foods babies might eat instead--even fruits and contain dioxins. Breast milk actually has higher levels than meat baby food--and because most babies drink 2 pints or more of milk a day but eat just an ounce or two of processed baby food, mother's milk is overwhelmingly their largest source of these pollutants. mindfully.org note: some studies have found that the mother's breast is still the best source for milk, and that it can reduce the chances of some diseases. In spite of the benefits still outweighing the risk, this is no reason to feel comfortable. Every effort should be made to put pressure on our regulatory agencies to ensure that this vital source of sustenance be made pure as it was once just a few years ago.

No one would suggest that babies not be breast-fed --the benefits of breast feeding far outweigh the risk involved. But. that doesn't mean the risk is nil. It's becoming clear that babies--who, with fetuses, are thought to beat the highest risk of endocrine-disrupting effects--can't avoid consuming rather startlingly high doses of these compounds. The health consequences of that intake, if any, are unknown. Our results suggest why research on endocrine disruptors, and expanded efforts to keep them out of our foods, deserve to be national priorities.

Low Doses of Chemicals in Packaging May Affect Reproduction

2009-05-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, DC -- A panel of academic, government and industry scientists has determined that there is "credible evidence" that some hormone like chemicals can affect test animals at very low levels well below the "no effect" levels determined by traditional testing. However, other credible studies failed to observe such low dose effects, reported the panel, which found no obvious reason for the different outcomes.

The 36 member panel reviewed the chemicals, called environmental estrogens and endocrine disruptors, at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). After reviewing dozens of prior studies, the panel concluded that these hormone like chemicals deserve greater scrutiny and additional research.

Plastic trash bags and many other common plastic products can contain hormone disrupting chemicals (Photo not included)

Some of the hormones, like estrogen and testosterone, occur naturally. Other, chemically related substances are manufactured for packaging, plastics and other products of modern life.

Because of years of controversy over some of the studies and their meaning, the review has attracted attention from environmentalists, industry, government and academic scientists worldwide.

"In a first for this kind of review, the panel was able to obtain the raw data from nearly all of the studies. Nearly 100 percent of the scientists were able to cooperate in this," said Dr. Kenneth Olden, director of the National Toxicology Program and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

"This permitted a statistical reanalysis of the data, rather than merely a reliance on the conclusions of published papers," Olden said. "In fact, some of the data are from papers still to be published."

Under current regulations, studies are undertaken at three or four levels where each dose may be two to four fold less than the next highest. The highest dose at which no effect on the animals is observed is called the "no effect" level.

But the panel said the raw data suggested that at even lower levels, an effect might occur, so that the traditional study may need to be re-thought.

Some pesticides contain hormone disrupting chemicals (Photo not included)

The panel found enough evidence of low level effects to recommend additional studies of low level doses of bisphenol A, a plastics building block used for a wide line of products, from safety helmets and impact resistant eye glass lenses to food packaging.

A subpanel of the review committee found there was "credible evidence" of bodily changes, such as in increased prostate weight, in some rodents exposed to low levels of bisphenol A.

However, "due to the inability of other credible studies... to observe low dose effects... and the consistency of these negative studies, the subpanel is not persuaded that a low dose effect of BPA has been conclusively established as a general or reproducible finding."

While the panel stopped short of finding any of the effects to be either harmful or benign - it was not asked by EPA to make that judgment - it found evidence that increases in prostate weight and changes in female reproductive organs can occur in rodents or other test animals from low doses of estrogen. Several other estrogenic compounds, including the insecticide methoxychlor and a dietary component derived from soy known as genistein, can also cause such changes.

Five types of studies were recommended for a group of chemicals related to testosterone, called androgens and antiandrogens. These chemicals include the fungicide vinclozolin, which appeared to cause changes in the reproductive organs of both female and male offspring when pregnant rats were exposed to the chemical.

The panel said the EPA should obtain the best advice of experts who design tests and then consider rewriting the guidelines that industry must follow in having their new products tested before obtaining EPA approval. The panel said that additional multi-generational studies might use a range of different dosages to better determine if any reproductive problems result in the offspring or grand-offspring of exposed animals.

Hormone disrupting chemicals have been linked to unusual sexual characteristics in some species. Here, University of Idaho professor James Nagler examines chinook salmon from the Columbia River's Hanford Reach (Photo not included)

The panel also suggested to the EPA that it consider which strains and ages of rodents are best for such tests.

The National Toxicology Program, which is headquartered at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina, released the experts' draft report on Monday. The draft will be available for 60 days to collect comments from other scientists, industry representatives and consumers, before the report is sent to the EPA.

The comments will not change the report but will be attached to it, said Dr. Ronald Melnick of NIEHS, who chaired the peer review organizing committee.

Additives in food packaging

2009-05-20T02:04:00.000-07:00

In the United States, food packaging materials, including additives in the polymers, are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Jennifer Markarian reports for Plastics Additives & Compounding on a change in the FDA approval system and summarizes trends in food packaging additives such as slips, antistats, antioxidants, colorants, antifogs, antimicrobials and oxygen scavengers in the USA.

Changes in FDA regulations

FDA requirements vary with the end-use of the packaging material, such as type of food that will be contacted and usage temperature. To gain direct food contact approval, materials must meet extractability requirements. Although regulations are vague in some areas, “the general principle is that no matter what is in the packaging, it must not adulterate the food,” explains Dr. Robert Bussey, Regulatory Services Project Manager at The National Food Laboratory in Dublin, California.

A significant change in the FDA approval procedure was instituted in January 2000 with the new Food Contact Notification (FCN) system. To get approval for a new food-contact substance (FCS), the producer submits information including composition; intended use including additive level, usage temperature and type of food the substance will contact; and data on migration of the substance into food.

Migration studies can use food-simulating solvents, such as 10% ethanol to represent aqueous, acidic and low-alcohol foods, or a food oil or 50 or 95% ethanol to represent fatty foods, explains Dr. Bussey. Experimental temperature and duration are set at the most extreme anticipated conditions. “For example, the most extreme condition requires heating at 121°C (250°F) for two hours, followed by 10 days at 40°C (104”F), in a special cell designed to withstand the extremes of temperature and pressure,” notes Dr. Bussey. The FDA uses migration data to estimate consumer exposure to the substance. In the previous system, an application could take years to gain approval. With the FCN system, the FDA has 120 days to review the application and object based on safety grounds, or the substance may be marketed. Expectations were that the new system would result in many more applications for new products from companies that otherwise would not have tried marketing in food applications, but it is too early to tell how much impact the new system has had, comments Steve Hentges at American Plastics Council. Companies such as GE Specialty Chemicals that are using the new system report that the clearly articulated timetable makes the process much easier. The FCN system “is economically attractive to companies since the use of the clearance is limited to the notifying company,” adds Naeem Mady of Ciba Specialty Chemicals.

Although food companies have been driving a trend towards irradiation to prolong shelf life, general FDA guidance on package irradiation has not yet been published. The FDA does give advice to companies about specific irradiation questions. Only a few polymers are approved for gamma irradiation of prepackaged food and these were approved with additive packages prevalent in the 196Os, notes Dr. George Sadler of the National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST) based at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The NCFST’s consortium of polymer manufacturers, converters and food industry representatives sponsors an irradiation task force that is working towards approval of contemporary additive packages and new polymers. Ciba will be working with the FDA to develop a protocol that will allow the notification clearance of additives used in the irradiation process, reports Ciba’s Naeem Mady.

Synthetic/vegetable derived additives

The trend continues toward use of synthetic or vegetable-oil based rather than animal-fat derived additives, agree industry experts. In Europe, this trend is due to concern of bovine spongioform encephalopathy (BSE). Since many companies have customers globally, the concern has spread to the U.S. as well. Some companies continue to be interested in vegetable-based additives for kosher-certified applications.

Slips and antistats

Slip and antistat additives, which function at the surface of the plastic part, are traditionally migratory. The additives are difficult to predict and control because migration occurs over time and depends on part thickness and polymer crystallinity, explains Dr. Victor Mimeault, Senior Vice President Technical at Ampacet Corporation. Ampacet introduced non-migratory, surface-functional slip and antistat products that fit a need for controllable, predictable performance in premium films. Other advantages of the slip are that it can be used at higher temperatures than conventional slips and has no adverse effect on sealing. The nonmigratory antistat does not interact with adhesives, has no effect on sealing or printing and has high thermal stability. Its antistatic properties last longer than those of conventional migrating antistats and its surface resistivity is similar at 50% and 12% relative humidity. The non-migratory additives are used at much higher levels than traditional additives and so are more expensive. They find use in coextruded structures, such as a film that has slip on the inside but not on the outside, says Dr. Mimeault.

One trend for antistatic additives is the use of longer chain materials, explains Dr. Ashutosh Sharma, technical service and market development manager for polymer additives at Akzo Nobel Polymer Chemicals. Longer chain antistats provide higher temperature processing stability, which is in increasing demand as extruders are pushed to faster rates. A trend for slip additives is to use higher purity slips with reduced shortchain (four to nine carbon) impurities. These higher purity slips have lower organoleptics, or taste and odour components, notes Dr. Sharma.

Croda recently introduced a loworganoleptic erucamide slip product called IncroslipC(r) that has advantages for the bottled water and beer industries. Plastic screw-type bottle closures contain high amounts of slip to enable torque release. Irradiation or sterilization of bottles by UV or ozone can degrade the trace amounts of byproducts inherent in erucamide and produce off-tastes and odours. IncroslipC has improved stability and is less susceptible to degradation than standard torque-release products, notes the company.

Antioxidants

Two new, high performance antioxidants from GE Specialty Chemicals perform well under harsh conditions such as gamma irradiation of food packaging, notes Benjamin Watkins, stabilizer business leader at GE. Ultranox(r) 641 is GE’s improved solid phosphite, and GenoxrM EP is an amine oxide derived from vegetable oils.

Clariant introduced Hostanox 03, a phenolic antioxidant with reduced water extractability that gives it an advantage in liquid food products and in those applications requiring excellent post thermo-oxidative stability at 150°C after 14 days hot boiling water extraction. The antioxidant reportedly does not discolour, as typical phenolics do in either a quinone methide dimerization reaction in the dark that causes pinking or in a gas-staining reaction with prompt oxides of nitrogen that causes yellowing.

Ciba has received positive feedback from companies using its Vitamin E antioxidants for improved organoleptic properties for sensitive applications such as plastic milk and beverage bottles. Ciba(r) Irganox(r) E 201 is a powerful stabilizer that is effective at very low concentrations because it reacts with carbon-centered radicals, says the company.

Colorants

A variety of organic and inorganic colorants are allowed by FDA for indirect food contact; other colorants are exempted from FDA regulation based on migration testing in a specific polymer for a specific application. “Over the past two to three years, we have seen an increase in the number of FDA exemptions, especially for dyes, which are not allowed by FDA,” explains John Wood, technical manager at Teknor Color Company, a subsidiary of Teknor Apex Company. The industry trend towards thinner parts creates a need for a higher colorant loading to maintain color intensity and opacity. This has driven demand for higher pigment levels in ‘super concentrates’ to maintain costeffectiveness. “High-efficiency concentrates can contain pigment loadings of 75% or greater, compared to levels of 20 to 50% for conventional concentrates,” says Mr. Wood.

Antifogs

In fresh-cut produce packaging, antifogs prevent the film from fogging so that the consumer can see the product clearly.

“The use of antifogs in fresh food packaging is on the increase and will continue into the future as new applications as well as new polymer entrants into the fresh food packaging industry continue to evolve,” comments Ciba. Antifogs act as a surfactant, so that moisture given off by produce forms a transparent, continuous film on the package surface rather than forming beads of water, explains Jeff Brandenburg, president of The JSB Group, a food packaging consultancy based in Massachusetts. Antifogs can be impregnated into the film as an additive or applied as a liquid coating. A new trend towards microwaving of fresh-cut produce packages, such as spinach products, has led to challenges of meeting performance requirements and regulatory requirements, which are stricter at elevated temperatures, comments Mr. Brandenburg.

Cryovac Inc., a subsidiary of Sealed Air Corporation, produces films with an anti-fog coating. For example, the Cryovac (r) Microwaveable Vegetable Bag, which won a Flexible Packaging Association award in 2000, has an antifog coating. The coating also aids in improving the shelf life of the vegetables, says the company. The extended shelf life is due in part to the permeability of the package, but also to the “synergistic effect of the antifog coating that reduces moisture, which can encourage the growth of spoilage bacteria,” says Myra Hughes, fresh-cut produce marketing manager for Cryovac.

Antimicrobials

The use of antimicrobials, or biocides, in packaging is 3 a growing trend in the global food packaging industry. In the U.S., many of the antimicrobials in use protect the packaging or the packaging raw materials, although recent interest has been in antimicrobials to protect the packaged food. Antimicrobials that are incorporated into food packaging are regulated by the FDA under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). Under the FFDCA, the FDA ensures that such antimicrobial uses are safe with respect to any potential human dietary intake. Unrelated to federal requirements under the FFDCA, antimicrobial products used in food packaging that have no intended antimicrobial effect on the processed food in the package are subject to EPA registration as pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Antimicrobials added to food or delivered to food via the packaging are treated as direct food additives and are not subject to FIFRA. In 2000, the EPA issued a Pesticide Registration Notice explaining FIFRA’s Treated Article Exemption, which applies to articles treated with an antimicrobial only to protect the article itself. It clarified that companies cannot make explicit or implicit health benefit claims and must state to customers that the biocide is solely for protection of the article when marketing products qualifying for the Treated Article Exemption. Research at Clemson University has looked at coating food packages with nisin, particularly for hot dog packaging, explains Dr. Kay Cooksey, associate professor of packaging science. Nisin is produced commercially under the trade name Nisaplin(r) by Aplin-Barrett in the U.K., and can be compounded into the packaging polymer or applied as a powder or a coating. It is widely used in Europe but not extensively in the U.S., although it has FDA approval, notes Dr. Cooksey. Silver compounds are also used in Europe and have FDA approval for some applications. Other research is looking at additives that produce the antimicrobial chlorine dioxide under certain relative humidity or UV light conditions. The advantage of these systems is that the antimicrobial could protect any product within the package, not just what comes in contact with a protective coating, notes Dr. Robert Testin, professor of packaging science at Clemson. Chlorine dioxide is also less expensive and effective for a broader range of microorganisms than nisin, adds Dr. Cooksey. The additives are currently being used in a sachet inside the package, but can be compounded into the packaging polymer. Bernard Technologies holds patents on this technology and received GRAS notification from FDA. Current research at Clemson is investigating ways to improve the release of the product into the package.

Freshness Indicators

A major trend in the food industry over the past several years has been the consumer’s desire for freshness in taste and appearance and freshness indicators are an upcoming technology, predicts Dr. Testin. Modified atmosphere packaging controls the flow of carbon dioxide through the food package to extend shelf life, but is dependent on storage conditions in the store or home. Indicators to show when a food has begun to decay are currently being used in bulk packaging, such as the Vistab 8 adhesive labels from Cox Technologies. Current research is focused on making indicators cost-effective for individual packaging, says Dr. Testin. Indicator dyes work by either changing as a function of time and temperature or by reacting with a food degradation product. For example, an indicator in a sensor or in the packaging film could react with an amine given off by fish at the beginning of decay, explains Dr. Testin.

Oxygen scavengers

The use of oxygen absorbers is a relatively new additive trend in food packaging, comments Ciba. Oxygen scavengers are especially important in the trend towards single-serve packages because of the smaller packages’ increased surface volume and exposure to oxygen, says Chevron-Phillips Chemical Company LP Commercial oxygen scavengers include iron oxide powders enclosed in sachets, additives incorporated into the packaging polymer or a polymer layer extruded as part of the package to maintain freshness by absorbing headspace oxygen and oxygen that enters the package.

Ciba’ Shelfplus^TM O₂ oxygen scavenger is a polymer-based additive that can be incorporated directly into the walls of the package. It can be incorporated into either an existing layer within the package or as a distinct scavenging layer.

CP Chemical introduced an oxygen scavenging polymer system consisting of an oxidizable resin, ethylene methyl acrylate cyclohexene methyl acrylate (EMCM) and a masterbatch containing a photoinitiator and a cobalt salt catalyst. Other oxygen scavenging polymers based on nylon, polypropylene, polybutadiene and polyisoprene degrade on oxidation into by-products that can migrate into packaged food and cause off-taste or odour, notes CP Chemical. EMCM does not degrade into compounds that cause off-taste or odour and the photoinitiator allows the inactive polymer to be stored and then activated by UV light during the package filling process, says the company.

Cryovac introduced an improved oxygen scavenging film that reportedly removes oxygen lo-20% faster than before. The Cryovac (r) OS Films ” slow microbial growth and oxidative deterioration of flavours, colour and nutrients,” states the company. A Nestle fresh pasta package using the film recently won an award for technical innovation from the Flexible Packaging Association. The oxygen scavenging process increases the shelf life of refrigerated pasta by more than 50%, notes Nestle.

The ‘Plasticization’ of our Lifestyle

2009-05-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

It’s all around us. We live with it every day. We wear it. We sit on it. We eat/ heat our food in it, nay, we may even be eating it. The word has gained so much fame (or is it infamy?) that we sometimes even use it to describe people we’re allergic to. Of course, you know the word: Plastic!

"Plastic is ubiquitous in our lives because it is convenient and relatively inexpensive," notes writer Paul Goettlich. "It is advertised as safe (or is it?) and that it saves lives (or doesn’t it cost lives?) ... "

The truth about plastic is that it is made by combining monomers into polymers under great heat and pressure during a process called polymerization. There are different formulas for making plastic. Among the additives used are UV filters, plasticizers, flame retardants, colorants, antioxidants, and heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, and lead. In Goettlich’s story titled "You are what you eat," he writes that chemicals are also used to facilitate production "such as mold releases and countless other toxic chemicals regularly added to plastic consumer goods without our knowledge or approval. Many of the intermediary steps of plastics production are used in other plastics or industrial processes and products such as pesticides or fertilizers. For holistic thinkers, the mention of plastics and pesticides in the same sentence should begin an informative thought process ..."

Goettlich tells us the ugly truth and nothing but: "When you eat or drink things that are stored in plastic, taste it, smell it, wear it, sit on it, and so on, plastic is incorporated into you. In fact, the plastic gets into the food and food gets into the plastic and you. So, quite literally, you are what you eat – plastic!"

Goettlich points to vinyl or PVC as the worst plastic. [Polycarbonates such as baby bottles contain] the notorious monomer BPA. A few years ago, the Consumers Union found BPA "at worrisome levels" in samples from baby bottles. Children are exposed to BPA through dental sealants with which dentists coat their teeth.

Among its multitude of uses, Goettlich's article points out that even most cardboard milk containers are now coated with plastic (rather than wax); it is sprayed on both commercial and organic produce to preserve their freshness. It is even used to transport organic produce.

Asked what’s the safest plastic to use – and the safest plastic to microwave food in, Goettlich replies, "Plastic should never contact food. And one should never microwave food – it’s probably as bad or worse than putting it in plastic because it creates free radicals in the food that damage cells in your body. It also heats the plastic, thus increasing the rate of migration into the food."

Goettlich, further courting the ire of the thriving plastics industry, can’t stress this enough: "Plastics, their additives, and other processing chemicals can be toxic at extremely low concentrations. In fact, some are significantly more toxic at extremely low concentrations than at much higher concentrations."

Before we’re eaten up by plastics and we destroy our ecosystem to smithereens, Goettlich urges, "While it’s impossible to avoid all plastics, we must rid our diets and lives of this toxic material as much as possible."

Plastic Generation and Recovery Graph 1960-1995

2009-05-20T01:59:00.000-07:00

A great percentage of all plastic generated from the time its production began to the present day, is floating and mixed with the waters of the oceans. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF) has found 6 times more plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean than zooplankton—the food of sea animals, who cannot distinguish between the plastic and zooplankton because it is the same size and shape. Much of that sea trash has not even been made into a product yet. It is still in the primary form of pellets—known as nurdles. It may have been on its way to the toy or computer manufacturer. Or it may have been washed down a storm sewer near the factory that made the nurdles. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation recently (2002) received a half-million dollar grant from the State of California to find its source.

Dust Full of Toxic Chemicals Found All Over Houses

2009-05-20T01:56:00.000-07:00

Brominated Flame Retardants

Contamination from brominated flame retardants is so pervasive in American homes that people cannot avoid exposure to the toxic chemicals, two new studies of household dust found.

Studies by government scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and by the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group that researches toxic chemicals, found high levels of PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) in dust from 27 homes.

The studies raise new concerns about potential health risks to young children because toddlers who crawl on the floor and put their hands in their mouths generally have greater exposure to household dust than adults and because their brain and organ systems are still developing.

The only study of PBDEs in children, done in Norway, found higher levels in 4-year-olds than in adults.

The new studies indicate household dust may be an important source of human exposure to PBDEs, said Environmental Protection Agency scientist Linda Birnbaum, an expert on brominated flame retardants.

Nevertheless, it is likely that food - particularly fish - is the chief source of the PBDEs that wind up in people's bodies, Birnbaum said. That's because PBDEs appear to act similarly to their chemical cousins, PCBs, which persist in the environment for very long periods, accumulating in animal fat and working their way up the food chain to top predators, she said.

PBDEs are a class of brominated flame retardants used in thousands of consumer products, from computers to televisions to textiles to foam cushions. Laboratory studies of mice and rats show that some of the most widely used PBDEs can interfere with brain development and thyroid function.

Used extensively since the 1970s, PBDEs did not attract much attention until 1999, when Swedish scientists detected them in breast milk. Further studies found that PBDE levels in women's blood and breast milk have been increasing rapidly over the past three decades, especially in American women.

About 5 percent of women tested have been found to have PBDE levels near or above the levels that have produced health effects in animal studies. Scientists do not know how much exposure is dangerous for people, especially the developing fetus, which is the most vulnerable.

The institute of standards study found high levels of PBDEs in dust samples taken from 17 houses in the Washington metropolitan area. The levels of the chemical components of deca, the most widely used of the PBDE mixtures, ranged from 160 parts per billion to 8,700 ppb. Levels of penta, the second-most widely used mixture, ranged from 200 to 25,000 ppb.

The working group's study found high PBDE levels in dust samples from 10 home around the country. The average combined levels of deca, penta and octa - a third commercial mixture - for nine of the homes was over 4,600 ppb.

All the homes in the working group's study belong to new mothers whose breast milk was tested for PBDEs in an earlier study by the organization.

"Exposure to brominated fire retardants is unavoidable," the working group study concluded. "(We) found them in the dust of every home and in the body of every participant tested. ... Even if these toxic fire retardants were phased out immediately, our exposures to them would continue through the foods we eat or from the products in our households."

Institute chemist Heather Stapleton said PBDEs are so pervasive in most indoor environments that she had trouble keeping her uncontaminated dust samples free of the flame retardants.

Mindfully.org

Spring 2009: Food for Everyone

Big Pharma and the FDA: Suppress the Science and Ban the Natural

Spices Kill Cancer Cells

Aspartame and Multiple Sclerosis - Neurosurgeon's Warning

Cola, Soda And Other Empty Calories

Pthalates

Water 8 x 8?

Exposing Fish To Disease, Death and Intersex Traits And We Eat Them!

Toxic World - Toxic Food

They've Genetically Modified YOU

Monsanto: Seeds Of Starvation

Common GMO Myths

GM Crops Fail to Live Up to Advertised Promises Again and Again

How to Avoid GM Foods

You CAN Demand Better Food

Common Chemicals Threaten Male Fertility

Warning: Food Labels Can Fool Even the Smartest People

Splenda & Sucralose - Sugar Substitutes Are Poisonous

Killing You Sweetly

The Murky World Of High Fructose Corn Syrup

The Dangers Of High Fructose Corn Syrup

BINGEING ON FRUCTOSE

FRUCTOSE FOR DIABETICS?

OTHER EFFECTS

HYPERSENSIVITY

SOFT DRINKS IN THE SCHOOLS

Fluoride and Fluoridated Water's Link to Thyroid Disease

Yogurt: FDA Plays Hide the Poison

NCL Study Links Aspartame To Leukemia/Lymphoma

Aspartame… it’s not just in diet foods anymore

Lipsticks Contain Lead

Sexy For Her . . . For baby, it could really be poison

Industry aims to strip local control of food supply

Organic Erosion

Will the term organic still mean anythingwhen it's adopted whole hog by behemothssuch as Wal-Mart?

Unhappy Meals

With Corn Prices Rising, Pigs Switch To Fatty Snacks

On the Menus: Chocolate, Candy,Trail Mix, Cheese Curls, Tater Tots;Farmer Jones's Ethanol Fix

Fatal Harvest

Myth:Industrial Food is Safe, Healthy, and Nutritious

Facts and Data on Antibiotics and Factory Farming

Unborn Babies Could be Harmed by GMOs

Mortality Rate for New-Born Rats Six Times HigherWhen Mother Was Fed on a Diet of Genetically Modified Soya

Heartbreak in the Heartland: The True Cost of Genetically Engineered Crops

Don't Buy Plastics!

Plastic Water Bottles a Health Threat

Alarm Rising in Denmark over Plastic Piping

Dangers of packaging chemicals getting into food

Hormone Mimics (Endocrine Disruptors): They're in Our Food

Should We Worry? Yes!

Low Doses of Chemicals in Packaging May Affect Reproduction

Additives in food packaging

The ‘Plasticization’ of our Lifestyle

Plastic Generation and Recovery Graph 1960-1995

Dust Full of Toxic Chemicals Found All Over Houses

Brominated Flame Retardants

Will the term organic still mean anything
when it's adopted whole hog by behemoths
such as Wal-Mart?

On the Menus: Chocolate, Candy,
Trail Mix, Cheese Curls, Tater Tots;
Farmer Jones's Ethanol Fix

Myth:
Industrial Food is Safe, Healthy, and Nutritious

Mortality Rate for New-Born Rats Six Times Higher
When Mother Was Fed on a Diet of Genetically Modified Soya