Dr Mark Hyman podcast interview with Kelly Noonan Gores on The HEAL Podcast

 This  has such Great information, I had to share it! 

Here is the description from Kelly's The HEAL Podcast:

Dr. Mark Hyman is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, 14 times New York Times bestselling author, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He has devoted his life to helping others discover optimal health by addressing the root causes of chronic disease through the power of functional medicine. Dr. Hyman believes that our biggest risk factor for disease, disability, and death is our diet, with the western diet being among the most detrimental to our health.

Today, I sit with Dr. Hyman to discuss his latest book, The Pegan Diet and how food is medicine, which can heal or harm. We break down the issues with dairy, wheat, and meat, and delve into many of the common misconceptions surrounding food as a whole. By making the right choices in our food (which can be done on a budget!) we can reverse chronic disease and heal our bodies, ultimately inviting us to see and use our local grocery store as a FARMACY.

Fat-Soluble Vitamins

 

I was in a conversation with a friend the other day talking about vitamins, and she said something like, 'Well, if I get too much Vitamin D, I'll just pee it out.' I said, 'No, your body stores it!' 

And that, in a nutshell, is the major difference between water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins. The important piece being that you won't likely have too much of a water-soluble vitamin in your body, but you can accumulate high amounts of fat-soluble vitamins and that may be harmful. 

I've shared information from Fat-Soluble Vitamins: A, D, E, and K - 9.315 from Colorado State University  The authors are J. Clifford and A. Kozil. Please read the article as it contains quite a bit of excellent information I've not included here like quantity needed and signs of deficiency. 

Here is the basic info:

• Small amounts of vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K are needed to maintain good  health.
• Fat-soluble vitamins will not be lost when the foods that contain them are cooked.
• The body does not need these vitamins every day and stores them in the liver and adipose  (fat) tissue when not used.
• Megadoses of vitamins A, D, E or K can be toxic and lead to health problems.
• Requirements for vitamins may be expressed in different mathematical units. Close attention should be paid to ensure that similar units are being compared.

As stated, the vitamins that area stored in your body are A, D, E, and K. 

Vitamin A sources are dairy and fish. Also, your body converts beta-carotene to Vitamin A, so carrots, pumpkins, squash, and other orange vegetables, as well as dark green leafy vegetables are good sources.

Vitamin D sources are mainly sunlight - your body makes this vitamin when skin is exposed to sun.  [Other sources state about 20 minutes daily of sun exposure without sunblock will suffice to make an adequate amount of this important vitamin.]  Food sources can be fortified dairy products, oily fish, and cod liver oil. This source recommends exposure to sunlight without sunblock for 10 to 15 minutes twice a week. Vitamin D is extremely important to a strong immune system. 

Vitamin E sources are fruits and vegetables, nuts, grains, and sunflower seeds. 

Vitamin K food sources are green, leafy vegetables like spinach, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli. 

Here is another excellent website article containing information on fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins as well as micronutrients: Vitamins and Minerals Are You Getting What You Need  - A Harvard Health Article. 

Healthy Benefits of Dehydrated Fruits - Do It Yourself

 These are 10 benefits of dehydrated fruits identified by Food N Health. 

1 - Great source of nutrients

2 - Light on the stomach

3 - Easy to digest

4 - Source of instant energy

5 - Delicious

6 - Antioxidants

7 - Rich in Fiber

8 - Rich in calories

9 - Improves immunity

10 - No preservatives 

Number 10 is my personal favorite and the reason I do my own dehydrating. 

As I write, I have a batch of pears in my dehydrator. Above is a photo of strawberries and bananas I did yesterday. 

The berries are very sweet, and the bananas taste like candy. If you want a sweet and healthy treat for yourself and your family - especially kids! - you'll want to take advantage of this! 

It takes a while to dehydrate, anywhere from 4 to 10 hours depending on the density of the fruit, but the nice part is, once you have them set on the trays and turn it on, you can ignore it for the rest of the day! 

Another thing I've make in the past is croutons, plain, garlic, and cheese. Again, very simple, prep and forget for a few hours. 

It's actually pretty relaxing to do this, and you can feel satisfied in the knowledge you're doing something good for yourself, and your family if you have one, and your friends if you share - my friends love getting little jars of my dried fruits! They make sweet holiday treats! 

Here is a link to a dehydrator, the same brand I use but mine is an older model no longer available. This one has an excellent rating! 

The connection between inflammation, red (mammal) meat, and NEU5GC

The information in the first 40 minutes of this interview of Dr Roger Seheult with Lewis Howes is pure gold. It's rather long at 1:53:35 and covers many topics relating to health. 

We know we have an inflammation problem in the U. S. and we've been told that red meat can be a cause, but never before have I heard How and Why red meat can be a culprit. Dt Seheult does a fine job explaining it. He talks about a gene called neu5gc and why it's a problem. 

I did a bit of additional research and found these two related articles. See if they apply to you; not all information will, but it's worth researching. 

Neu5gc, Red Meat, and Human Disease:Part I

Neu5gc and Autoimmunity: Hashimoto's Hypothyroidism

Avoid genetically-modified foods with these NON-GMO Shopping Guides

These printable guides, compiled by the Center For Food Safety, help you avoid foods made with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

To learn more about the risks associated with GMOs, visit the Center For Food Safety website at www.centerforfoodsafety.org

The guides are organized by food group, and list the brands of foods stated by the processor to be free of genetically-modified ingredients as well as the brands that may contain GMOs. I printed my guide and keep it in the car so it's handy when I go shopping. Of course, I buy organic as much as possible, but the guides are very handy when organic products are not available.


This booklet is small print, eight pages
http://truefoodnow.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/web_new-ge-booklet.pdf


This booklet is large print, sixteen pages
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/DocumentFiles/144.pdf

Creative Health Tip 14 August 2009

This week, I am sharing a video with you from the Abraham-Hicks selection on YouTube. The topic is weight loss, and in terms of Creative Health, the advice given by Abraham through Esther Hicks certainly offers the best in Mind-Body Creation of a healthy attitude toward food and the attainment of your perfect weight: it has to be in the mind before it can manifest in the body!

Here is the description of the video:

"Abraham, translated by Esther Hicks, responds to a question from a woman has tried every diet, done every exercise, and still cannot lose weight.

"Sidestepping the usual - and often frustrating - approaches to the problem, Abraham lays the foundation of a mental attitude that brings to bear the power of Law of Attraction to create the most effective technique ever presented for losing weight.

"Excerpted from the 2 hour and 20 minute program "Think And Get Slim: Natural Weight Loss" which is available on DVD and CD from Abraham-Hicks.

"Recorded September 8, 2006 in San Antonio, TX."

If you are in Bend, Oregon and would like to learn about local Abraham-Hicks gatherings and workshops, please visit the website of Golden Bridge Seminars at http://www.goldenbridgeseminars.com/


Have a great weekend!

Michelle

Friday Food Pharmacy - Holy Powder To Spice Up Your Life

I know it's not Friday, but I just couldn't help including this one in the Friday Food Pharmacy especially since it has some heavyweight healing and health properties.

The way this spice works is really amazing, and it makes a lot of sense to start using it in more meals!

This is reprinted from the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola.

'Holy Powder' Makes Your Cell Membranes Behave for Better Health

The marigold-colored spice known as turmeric, which is revered in India as "holy powder," has been used for centuries to treat wounds, infections and other health problems. In recent years, there has been increasing research into turmeric's main ingredient, curcumin, and its astonishing array of antioxidant, anti-cancer, antibiotic, antiviral and other properties.

Now, researchers have discovered that curcumin acts by inserting itself into cell membranes and making them more orderly, a move that improves cells' resistance to infection and malignancy.

Scientists had previously speculated that curcumin does its health-promoting work by interacting directly with membrane proteins, but the new findings challenge that notion. Instead, curcumin appears to regulate the action of membrane proteins indirectly, by changing the physical properties of the membrane.

Sources:

Eurekalert March 6, 2009

Journal of the American Chemical Society March 3, 2009

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Turmeric is a yellow spice most often associated with Indian food, curry and yellow mustard, but as research into this powerful spice increases, it’s becoming clear that it may be one of nature’s most powerful potential healers.

Both the ancient Chinese and Indian systems of medicine have recognized turmeric’s beneficial properties for thousands of years, but this new study is the first to show how exactly it does its work.

It appears that curcumin -- the pigment that gives turmeric its yellow-orange color, and which is thought to be responsible for many of its medicinal effects -- is able to “discipline” cells and get them back into working order. When curcumin enters a cell, the study’s lead researcher said:

"The membrane goes from being crazy and floppy to being more disciplined and ordered, so that information that flows through it can be controlled."

This not only improves your cells’ resistance to infections, but it also may help prevent cancer.

Turmeric May be a Potent Cancer Fighter

In India where turmeric is widely used, the prevalence of four common U.S. cancers -- colon, breast, prostate and lung -- is 10 times lower. In fact, prostate cancer, which is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in U.S. men, is rare in India and this is attributed, in part, to turmeric.

Numerous studies have looked into this potential cancer-fighting link, with promising results. For instance, curcumin has been found to:

• Inhibit the proliferation of tumor cells
• Inhibit the transformation of cells from normal to tumor
• Help your body destroy mutated cancer cells so they cannot spread throughout your body
• Decrease inflammation
• Enhance liver function
• Inhibit the synthesis of a protein thought to be instrumental in tumor formation
• Prevent the development of additional blood supply necessary for cancer cell growth

And according to researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, curcumin blocks a key biological pathway needed for development of melanoma and other cancers.

The spice actually stops laboratory strains of melanoma from proliferating and pushes the cancer cells to commit suicide by shutting down nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB), a powerful protein known to induce an abnormal inflammatory response that leads to an assortment of disorders such as arthritis and cancer.

More Reasons to Add More Spice to Your Life

The reason people in India refer to turmeric as “holy powder” is because it has such a broad range of health effects. In fact, curcumin has been shown to influence more than 700 genes, with benefits that include:

• Strengthening and improving your digestion
• Supporting healthy liver function and detoxification
• Purifying your blood
• Fighting cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease
• Anti-inflammatory properties

Further, evidence suggests turmeric may play a beneficial role in the following diseases:

• Cystic fibrosis
• Type 2 diabetes
• Crohn’s disease
• Psoriasis
• Rheumatoid arthritis

• Cataracts
• Gallstones
• Muscle regeneration
• Inflammatory bowel disease

A Few Turmeric Tips

You can absolutely use turmeric in your cooking, and in case you haven’t tried it, it has a warm, peppery flavor. However, when you do choose a pure turmeric powder, rather than a curry powder, as at least one study has found curry powders tend to contain very little curcumin, compared to turmeric powder.

Be sure to listen to your body as always, and if turmeric is a spice you do not enjoy it may be a sign that it’s not right for your body. If you are not one who enjoys the flavor of curry, you can also get the benefits of turmeric by taking it in a high-quality, organic supplement form.

High cholesterol from your food? Not likely!

Television advertising – and maybe even your doctor – would have you believe that eating foods that contain high amounts of cholesterol highly raise your cholesterol levels.

As it turns out, this is true for rabbits because they lack enzymes necessary for the digestion of fats (1), but very far from true for human beings!

Also, they would have you believe that high cholesterol is the cause of stroke or heart attack. This is far from true, too. Many studies have shown that cholesterol is a poor indication of risk; cholesterol levels do not effectively mark a person for heart disease, and in fact people with low cholesterol levels currently deemed as "healthy" may suffer more health problems that those with levels currently deemed "too high."

Here is an excerpt, bold highlights are my additions:

"In the Framingham heart study done near Boston that spanned 30 years , the researchers concluded that high cholesterol was a risk factor for heart disease, but when one really dissects the data, one must question how they came to that conclusion. For example, when the participants of the study are plotted on a graph it clearly shows that those with cholesterol levels between 182 and 222 did not survive as long as those with higher cholesterol levels of between 222 and 261. The study shows that about half the people with heart disease had low cholesterol, and half the people without heart disease had high cholesterol.

"Most studies have found that for women, high cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease at all - in fact, the death rate for women is five times higher in those with very low cholesterol. In a Canadian study that followed 5000 healthy middle-aged men for 12 years, they found that high cholesterol was not associated with heart disease at all. And in another study done at the University Hospital in Toronto that looked at cholesterol levels in 120 men that previously had heart attacks, they found that just as many men that had second heart attacks had low cholesterol levels as those that had high. The Maoris of New Zealand die of heart attacks frequently, irrespective of their cholesterol levels. In Russia, it is low cholesterol levels that are associated with increased heart disease. The Japanese are often cited as an example of a population that eat very little cholesterol and have a very low risk of heart disease. But the Japanese that moved to the US and continued to eat the traditional Japanese diet had heart disease twice as often as those that maintained the Japanese traditions but ate the fatty American diet. This suggests that it is something else, like stress perhaps, that is causing the heart disease."

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

Me again: So, perhaps we should take a look at what cholesterol is, where it comes from, and how the body uses it. Below are two articles that should clear up a lot of the misconception.

How the Body Uses Cholesterol by Neil Stone

As a vital part of the body's chemistry, cholesterol is used to produce the steroid hormones required for normal development and functioning. These include the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone in women and testosterone in men. These hormones trigger development of the physical traits characteristic of adult women and men; they also play a role in reproduction.

Other steroid hormones produced from cholesterol include cortisol, which is involved in regulating blood-sugar levels and defending the body against infection, and aldosterone, which is important for retaining salt and water in the body. The body can even use cholesterol to make a significant amount of vitamin D, the vitamin responsible for strong bones and teeth, when the skin is exposed to sunlight.

Cholesterol is also used to make bile, a greenish fluid that is produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. The body needs bile to digest foods that contain fat. Bile acts as an emulsifier -- it breaks down large globules of fat into smaller particles so they can mix better with the enzymes that digest fat.

Once the fat is digested, bile helps the body to absorb it. The presence of bile in the intestines is required before cholesterol can be absorbed from foods. The body also needs bile in order to absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K, called fat-soluble vitamins, from food or supplements.

Your body has the ability to make al­l the cholesterol it needs for these various functions. A diet that contains animal products, however, also supplies cholesterol to the body. In an effort to balance these two sources of cholesterol, your body adjusts the amount it produces each day.

For example, if you eat many foods from animal sources, your body gets a substantial dose of cholesterol from the diet, called dietary cholesterol; your body then slows down its own production of cholesterol. On the other hand, when most of the foods you eat come from plant sources, your body manufactures more cholesterol in order to meet its needs.

Your body can also eliminate some excess cholesterol through bile. Whenever bile is released into the intestine, a portion of it is absorbed back into the body to be used again. The remaining bile is excreted in the feces. To help maintain the cholesterol balance, the body can dissolve excess cholesterol in the bile and can also convert more cholesterol into bile acids so that the cholesterol will be excreted with the feces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Neil Stone is a professor of clinical medicine in cardiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University and a practicing internist-cardiologist-lipidologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He also serves as the Medical Director of the Vascular Center for the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. Dr. Stone was a member of the first and third National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panels and a past chairman of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee and Clinical Affairs Committee.

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

Here's more on the lack of correlation between high cholesterol foods and your high cholesterol:

Cholesterol Facts: Avoiding Cholesterol in Foods Won't Lower Your Cholesterol by: Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

If you avoid all foods that contain cholesterol, will your high cholesterol return to normal?

It's not that simple. Your blood cholesterol level is influenced far more by how many calories and how much saturated and partially hydrogenated fat you eat, than by how much cholesterol is in your food. Cholesterol is found only in foods from animals, such as meat, fish, chicken, dairy products and eggs. It is not found in plants. More than 80 percent of the cholesterol in your body is made by your liver. Less than 20 percent comes from the food that you eat. When you eat more cholesterol, your liver makes less.

Your liver makes cholesterol from saturated fats, which are found in most foods but are concentrated in meat, poultry and whole-milk dairy products. The saturated fat is broken down by your liver into acetone units. If you are not taking in too many calories, your liver uses the acetone units for energy, but if you are taking in more calories than your body needs, your liver uses these same acetone units to manufacture cholesterol. That explains why eating two eggs a day does not raise blood cholesterol levels in the average American. They are already taking in so much cholesterol from meat, fish and chicken and diary products, that when they take in more, they absorb less.

The average North American takes in 350 mg per day of cholesterol. If he takes in 26 mg per day, he absorbs 41 percent. When he takes in 188 mg cholesterol per day, he absorbs only 36 percent, and when he takes in 421 mg per day (the equivalent of two eggs), he absorbs only 25 percent. Some people absorb more than five times as much as other people at the same intake. So you lower blood cholesterol levels far more effectively by eating less food, less saturated fat and less partially hydrogenated fats than by avoiding foods that contain cholesterol.

About The Author
Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in four specialties, including sports medicine. Read or listen to hundreds of his fitness and health reports at http://www.DrMirkin.com

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

Me again……so, got it? It's ok to eat meat and eggs, really; in fact, eggs have been knows as "the perfect food" for ages, and they still are! Cholesterol isn't the enemy, and you really need reasonable levels to properly absorb vitamins and minerals so you will be healthy. If your cholesterol levels are pharmaceutically forced too low, you will be sick.

(There is an ad on TV these days with a man telling us he didn't know his high cholesterol could have caused his erectile dysfunction. I have another theory: along with exposure to dietary herbicides and pesticides, the statin drug he takes to lower his cholesterol is interfering with his testosterone levels, and those are the causes of his ED, not his cholesterol level. What do you think?)

The bottom line: Don't overeat – many people do when stressed, and that is a greater danger than eating foods rated high in cholesterol. Eat healthy – try eating according to your Metabolic Type or your Blood Type (I do!) – and definitely eat organic!

Caffeine overload in our children?

Here is a reprint of a story I saw on Yahoo today. It gives me the chills on so many levels, the highest of which is why the FDA is again NOT doing its job of protecting the citizens by making companies label products containing caffeine given that there has been a petition requesting this that has been open since 1997.

Yep, you read that right: 1997. It can't possibly take eleven years for an agency to determine that a particular substance which is present in a product should be on the label unless the producers of that product want that information hidden from the consumer!

Un-be-lieveable!

Anyway, if you drink a lot of coffee or tea or other caffeinated products, you will want to avoid certain products....like soap and jelly beans!....... and certainly protect your children from them.

For more information, see below.

And send a note to the FDA when you're done demanding that caffein-containing products be labeled!!

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

Hey! Who Put the Caffeine in My Soap?

By JOHN CLOUD John Cloud – Mon Oct 20, 11:10 am ET October 20, 2008

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081020/hl_time/heywhoputthecaffeineinmysoap

Most adults know how many cups of coffee we can have before we get twitchy. We're a race of well-practiced, high-functioning junkies. After all, regular human consumption of caffeine began at least 2,000 years ago, and until recently there was no reason to think our little global addiction posed any threat.

But recently companies began unleashing a barrage of unfamiliar products packed with extreme amounts of caffeine. The trend started with super-caffeinated energy drinks in the '90s, but more recently scientists and marketers have created caffeinated foods and even personal-hygiene products. In the past five years, according to the market research giant Mintel, firms have launched at least 126 caffeinated food products for sale in the U.S. Twenty-nine such products have been introduced this year alone. The offerings include things like Morning Spark oatmeal, NRG potato chips, and - my favorite, if only for the brazen attempt to draw kids into caffeine culture - Jelly Belly's Extreme Sport Beans, which call themselves "Energizing Jelly Beans." You can also now buy caffeinated toiletries like Bath Buzz Caffeinated Lotion.

Public-health officials are worried about the new products for two reasons: first, people might simply add the new products to their typical ration of coffee or tea. That could increase their risk for caffeine intoxication, a condition that causes symptoms like nervousness, insomnia, tachycardia and psychomotor agitation. Caffeine intoxication is not uncommon: according to a 1998 study in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 7% of caffeine users have experienced it. The symptoms usually abate quickly when people quit caffeine, but in rare cases the symptoms can lead to death.

The larger problem with the new caffeinated inventions is that their labels don't typically disclose how much caffeine they contain. And yet some of them are crammed with the drug: Sumseeds, a brand of caffeinated sunflower seeds, contain 120 mg of caffeine per packet, 16% more than in a typical 6-oz serving of coffee. Shower Shock soap is designed to deliver a crackling 200 mg of caffeine when lathered into the skin, twice the amount in that same cup of coffee.

Earlier this month, a Johns Hopkins neuroscience professor named Roland Griffiths, one of the world's leading caffeine experts, sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration urging it to require specific caffeine labeling in light of all the strange new caffeinated products. Nearly 100 fellow scientists and public-health advocates signed the letter. Griffiths reminded the FDA that it has yet to decide on a 1997 petition filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) requesting caffeine labeling.

The FDA has not yet responded to Griffiths. FDA spokesman Michael Herndon told me in an e-mail that the CSPI petition is still "active and pending." When I asked why it has taken 11 years - so far - to review it, he replied, "Some petitions may take longer depending on agency workload and complexity of the issue."

But caffeine labeling is not a complex issue. Consumers should be able to make informed choices; people should know that a Starbucks venti drip coffee can have as much as 400 mg of caffeine.

Griffiths says there's no good epidemiological data yet to show whether the new caffeinated food and hygiene products are affecting public health. But he does worry about one group that can readily access these products: kids.

Doctors recommend that pre-pubescent kids not have any caffeine, and yet caffeinated candies and gums and chips have strong appeal for kids. Earlier this year, four middle-school boys in Broward County, Fla., had to go to the hospital after drinking energy drinks. The boys were sweating so much that school officials thought they might be having heart attacks.

That's an extreme but not isolated case. Those boys probably wouldn't have paid much attention even if labels did include caffeine content, but the rest of us should be able to calibrate our addictions with more information.

View this article on Time.com

Does Thinking Make You Fatter?

Today's article is a reprint of one I received in today's free newsletter from Dr Joseph Mercola of Mercola.com It's another valuable lesson on the exercise and nutrition we need, and how stress can throw our whole system out of whack!


A research team has demonstrated that intellectual work induces a substantial increase in appetite and calorie intake. This discovery could help to explain, in part, the current obesity epidemic.

The team measured the spontaneous food intake of 14 students after each of three tasks: relaxing in a sitting position, reading and summarizing a text, and completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer.

Each session of intellectual work required only three calories more than the rest period. However, despite the low energy cost of mental work, the students spontaneously consumed 203 more calories after summarizing a text and 253 more calories after the computer tests than they did after relaxing.

Blood samples taken before, during, and after each session revealed that intellectual work caused bigger fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels -- two critical components in the body's regulatory and energy machinery -- than rest periods.

Jean-Philippe Chaput, the lead author of the study, said that mental work "destabilizes" the levels of insulin and glucose, thus stimulating the appetite, apparently in response to a need to restore the body’s energy balance.

Sources:

ABC News September 10, 2008

Psychosomatic Medicine September 2008 70:797-804

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

After a hard day of mental work, you can be just as physically exhausted as if you had spent the day doing physical work. So it makes sense that thinking hard also increases your appetite. The researchers found mental work “destabilizes” your insulin and glucose levels, and that’s what they suggest is causing the increase in appetite and eating.

For now, it’s safe to assume that many factors can increase your appetite, and of them many are related to your mind.

How Your Mind Makes You Hungry

One of the mental states that leads to more eating is stress (remember, a mental challenge is a form of stress). This is a major one that almost everyone can relate to, and to some extent this is hard-wired into you.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found that when rats are chronically stressed, the release of glucocorticoid steroid hormone (cortisol in humans) leads them to engage in pleasure-seeking behaviors, including eating high-energy foods. When they ate these foods (things like the human-equivalent of greasy pizza or chocolate chip cookies), they developed abdominal obesity, but the negative aspects of chronic stress were blunted.

The researchers concluded that craving, and eating, comfort foods may actually “apply the brakes on a key element of chronic stress.”

Well, relieving stress is good, but not when it’s at the expense of abdominal obesity or “belly fat”, which has been linked to an increased risk of heart attacks, diabetes, strokes and more. Nipping stress in the bud at its root source is a much better option than soothing your nerves with a bowl full of ice cream.

Meanwhile, stress is not the only emotion that leads you to eat. A 2004 study by British researchers found that about half of adults turn to food in times of not only stress but also boredom and loneliness.

Then there are many other, very subtle, reasons why people feel hungrier, such as:

• Seeing food, which makes your body anticipate eating.
• Time of day. Your body is conditioned to eat at certain times.
• Drinking alcohol, which can impair your judgment and make you eat more than normal.
• Eating refined carbs, which generates a rapid rise in blood sugar, followed by a subsequent “crash” that makes you want more food.

• Portion size. Studies show that the larger the portion, the more you’ll eat.
• Eating too fast, which allows you to consume more food before your body has a chance to let you know it’s full (it takes about 20 minutes for this to happen, so you should wait at least 20 minutes before going back for seconds).
• Not sleeping enough, which triggers hormone imbalances that boost your desire to eat.

Does This Mean You’ll be Fat if You do a Lot of Mental Work?

Of course not, but knowing that your appetite may be stimulated after a long meeting or hours at the computer is something to keep in mind. And it’s not as though a stimulated appetite is a bad thing at all.

If you feel hungry, you should listen to your body and eat something. Just make sure it is something that will actually nourish your body, not just keep it going temporarily followed by a major crash. Finding out your nutritional type, and eating accordingly, is really the best way to feel satisfied and give your body the nutrients it needs -- without having to worry about gaining weight.

Now, if you do a lot of mentally challenging tasks it’s a good idea to eat plenty of these foods that are known to nourish your brain:

• Organic eggs
• Leafy vegetables like spinach
• Seeds and nuts (especially walnuts)
• Organic grass-fed beef and chicken
• Green tea
• Omega-3 fats (like krill oil)

That said, some of the worst foods for your brain are refined foods (white sugar, white flour, processed anything), alcohol, and trans fats. So focus on eating whole foods (especially those from the list above) if you do a lot of mental work. And if you’re worried about gaining weight, be sure you’re getting plenty of exercise as well. Not only will the exercise burn calories, it will help to relieve your mental stress and optimize your brain function all at the same time.

Friday Food Pharmacy - Some New Facts About Carbs

It's been a while since I did a Friday Food Pharmacy post!

Today's post is comprised of two recent news articles on carbs; one reporting that a low-carb diet is better for losing weight and lowering cholesterol; the second reports on how some carbs turn into fat very rapidly.

Personally, I eat according to my Metabolic Type, and so eat a moderate amount of meat, several handfuls of nuts every day, and have two veggies at every meal. The only grains I eat are a couple of crackers with cheese at dinner, and once in a while a slice of organic flax seed bread. I feel great, have lots of energy, almost never want a snack between meals, and am losing weight - the weight I put on when eating according to the Food Pyramid! I now know that grains are poison for me, and so I avoid them. Low-carb is definitely the way to go for me.

The only way you will know what is best for you is to read The Metabolic Typing Diet: Customize Your Diet to Your Own Unique Body Chemistry fill out the questionaire, and follow the program!


Meanwhile, here are today's stories on carbohydrates:

Study: Low-carb diet best for weight, cholesterol

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080716/ap_on_he_me/med_dueling_diets

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/411105.aspx

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer 2 hours, 24 minutes ago July 16, 2008

ATLANTA - The Atkins diet may have proved itself after all: A low-carb diet and a Mediterranean-style regimen helped people lose more weight than a traditional low-fat diet in one of the longest and largest studies to compare the dueling weight-loss techniques.

A bigger surprise: The low-carb diet improved cholesterol more than the other two. Some critics had predicted the opposite.

"It is a vindication," said Abby Bloch of the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Foundation, a philanthropy group that honors the Atkins' diet's creator and was the study's main funder.

However, all three approaches — the low-carb diet, a low-fat diet and a so-called Mediterranean diet — achieved weight loss and improved cholesterol.

The study is remarkable not only because it lasted two years, much longer than most, but also because of the huge proportion of people who stuck with the diets — 85 percent.

Researchers approached the Atkins Foundation with the idea for the study. But the foundation played no role in the study's design or reporting of the results, said the lead author, Iris Shai of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Other experts said the study — being published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine — was highly credible.

"This is a very good group of researchers," said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

The research was done in a controlled environment — an isolated nuclear research facility in Israel. The 322 participants got their main meal of the day, lunch, at a central cafeteria.

"The workers can't easily just go out to lunch at a nearby Subway or McDonald's," said Dr. Meir Stampfer, the study's senior author and a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

In the cafeteria, the appropriate foods for each diet were identified with colored dots, using red for low-fat, green for Mediterranean and blue for low-carb.

As for breakfast and dinner, the dieters were counseled on how to stick to their eating plans and were asked to fill out questionnaires on what they ate, Stampfer said.

The low-fat diet — no more than 30 percent of calories from fat — restricted calories and cholesterol and focused on low-fat grains, vegetables and fruits as options. The Mediterranean diet had similar calorie, fat and cholesterol restrictions, emphasizing poultry, fish, olive oil and nuts.

The low-carb diet set limits for carbohydrates, but none for calories or fat. It urged dieters to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein.

"So not a lot of butter and eggs and cream," said Madelyn Fernstrom, a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center weight management expert who reviewed the study but was not involved in it.

Most of the participants were men; all men and women in the study got roughly equal amounts of exercise, the study's authors said.

Average weight loss for those in the low-carb group was 10.3 pounds after two years. Those in the Mediterranean diet lost 10 pounds, and those on the low-fat regimen dropped 6.5.

More surprising were the measures of cholesterol. Critics have long acknowledged that an Atkins-style diet could help people lose weight but feared that over the long term, it may drive up cholesterol because it allows more fat.

But the low-carb approach seemed to trigger the most improvement in several cholesterol measures, including the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL, the "good" cholesterol. For example, someone with total cholesterol of 200 and an HDL of 50 would have a ratio of 4 to 1. The optimum ratio is 3.5 to 1, according to the American Heart Association.

Doctors see that ratio as a sign of a patient's risk for hardening of the arteries. "You want that low," Stampfer said.

The ratio declined by 20 percent in people on the low-carb diet, compared to 16 percent in those on the Mediterranean and 12 percent in low-fat dieters.

The study is not the first to offer a favorable comparison of an Atkins-like diet. Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year found overweight women on the Atkins plan had slightly better blood pressure and cholesterol readings than those on the low-carb Zone diet, the low-fat Ornish diet and a low-fat diet that followed U.S. government guidelines.

The heart association has long recommended low-fat diets to reduce heart risks, but some of its leaders have noted the Mediterranean diet has also proven safe and effective.

The heart association recommends a low-fat diet even more restrictive than the one in the study, said Dr. Robert Eckel, the association's past president who is a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado-Denver.

It does not recommend the Atkins diet. However, a low-carb approach is consistent with heart association guidelines so long as there are limitations on the kinds of saturated fats often consumed by people on the Atkins diet, Eckel said.

The new study's results favored the Atkins-like approach less when subgroups such as diabetics and women were examined.

Among the 36 diabetics, only those on the Mediterranean diet lowered blood sugar levels. Among the 45 women, those on the Mediterranean diet lost the most weight.

"I think these data suggest that men may be much more responsive to a diet in which there are clear limits on what foods can be consumed," such as an Atkins-like diet, said Dr. William Dietz, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It suggests that because women have had more experience dieting or losing weight, they're more capable of implementing a more complicated diet," said Dietz, who heads CDC's nutrition unit.

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On the Net:

New England Journal: http://nejm.org

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Some Carbs Turn to Fat Fast in Your Body

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/08/14/some-carbs-turn-to-fat-fast-in-your-body.aspx

According to new research, people on low-carb diets lose weight in part because they get less fructose, a type of sugar that can be made into body fat quickly.

The study shows that the type of carbs someone eats can be as important as the amount. Although fructose is naturally found in high levels in fruit, it is also added to many processed foods, especially in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.

For the study, six healthy people performed three different tests involving drinking various mixes of glucose and fructose. Researchers found that fructose turned into body fat much more quickly, and that having it for breakfast changed how the body handled fats at lunch.

Sources:

• NBC5 July 25, 2008

• Journal of Nutrition June 2008, 138:1039-1046

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

It’s great to find this study is bringing some attention to the dangers of fructose. So often it’s mistakenly labeled as a “healthy” form of sugar, when in reality too much fructose will pack on the pounds faster than a buffet of French fries and Krispy Cremes.

If you need to lose weight, fructose is one type of sugar you’ll want to avoid, particularly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Actually, even if you don’t need to lose weight, you should still avoid excess fructose if you want to stay healthy.

Eating + Fructose = Fat

Part of what makes HFCS such an unhealthy product is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar.

"Our study shows for the first time the surprising speed with which humans make body fat from fructose," said Dr. Elizabeth Parks, associate professor of clinical nutrition at UT Southwestern Medical Center and lead author of the study in Science Daily.

“Once you start the process of fat synthesis from fructose, it's hard to slow it down," she said. “ … The bottom line of this study is that fructose very quickly gets made into fat in the body."

How does this happen?

Well, most fats are formed in your liver, and when sugar enters your liver, it decides whether to store it, burn it or turn it into fat. Fructose, however, bypasses this process and turns full speed ahead into fat.

"It's basically sneaking into the rock concert through the fence," Dr. Parks told Science Daily. "It's a less-controlled movement of fructose through these pathways that causes it to contribute to greater triglyceride [i.e. fat] synthesis.”

Ironically, the very products that most people rely on to lose weight -- low-fat diet foods -- are often those that contain the most fructose! Even “natural” diet foods often contain fructose as a sweetener.

Fat is Not the Only Downside to Fructose

Aside from the weight gain, eating too much fructose is linked to increases in triglyceride levels. In one study, eating fructose raised triglyceride levels by 32 percent in men!

Triglycerides, the chemical form of fat found in foods and in your body, are not something you want in excess amounts. Intense research over the past 40 years has confirmed that elevated blood levels of triglycerides, known as hypertriglyceridemia, puts you at an increased risk of heart disease.

Meanwhile, one of the most thorough scientific analyses published to date on this topic found that fructose consumption leads to “decreased signaling to the central nervous system from 2 hormones (leptin and insulin).”

Leptin is responsible for controlling your appetite and fat storage, as well as telling your liver what to do with its stored glucose. When your body can no longer “hear” leptin’s signals, weight gain, diabetes and a host of related conditions may occur.

“The long-term consumption of diets high in … fructose is likely to lead to increased energy intake, weight gain, and obesity,” the analysis concluded. “The potential for weight gain from increased fructose consumption may only represent one aspect of its metabolic consequences.”

Are You Eating More Fructose Than You Realize?

Since the 1970s the consumption of HFCS in the United States has skyrocketed. The largest contributor is easily soda (The number one source of calories in America!), for which HFCS is the primary sweetener. But HFCS is not only in sugary drinks. It’s in the vast majority of processed foods, even those you wouldn’t think of as sweet, such as ketchup, soup, salad dressing, bread and crackers.

So even if you don’t drink soda, if you eat processed foods you’re likely consuming fructose -- and a lot of it.

Beware of HFCS Propaganda

To further complicate matters, the Corn Refiners Association recently launched a major advertising and PR campaign designed to rehabilitate HFCS’ reputation. The group is spending $20 million to $30 million on the campaign, including running full-page ads in more than a dozen major newspapers, claiming that the product is no worse for you than sugar.

This, of course, is not true.

The Corn Growers Association wants you to believe that HFCS has the "same natural sweeteners as table sugar and honey." But don’t fall for it. HFCS is highly processed and does not exist anywhere in nature.

The Safest Sweeteners Around?

Ideally I recommend that you avoid sugar, in all forms. This is especially important for people who are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

But if you’re looking for the occasional sweet treat, I recommend, in this order:

1. The herb stevia (this is the best and safest sweetener, although illegal to use according to the FDA)
2. Raw, organic honey
3. Organic cane sugar

I recommend avoiding all other types of sugar, including fructose, HFCS, and any type of artificial sweeteners. The easiest way to do this is to stop drinking soda and stop eating processed foods.

Small amounts of whole fruit, which do contain fructose, are not a problem. If you’re healthy, you can enjoy fruit in moderation according to your nutritional type.

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You can find your Nutritional Type by filling out the quesionaire in the book



You'll love what it does for your holistic health and wellness!!

Friday Food Pharmacy – Artificial Flavors and Chemical Additives

Teensy-weensy by Emma Holister from "Chemical Poisoning: Brave New World of Zero Risk" book by Martin Walker, post by Sepp Hasslberger.

The title of this post is more appropriate than you think. Everyday there is more "pharmacy" than "food" in the processed products you eat. Now, we may be looking at yet another flavor enhancing chemical that tricks your brain into tasting what isn't there.

It's totally true what they (medical and industrial establishments) say about excess salt, but they also aren't telling you that the excess isn't coming from your salt shaker, it's part and parcel of the processed foods you eat.

Telling you to not use your salt shaker amounts to telling you not to add sugar to your soda-pop. There is already so much sodium in the processed foods you eat that hiding the salt shaker isn't going to do much for your health. You get about 75% of your daily sodium from processed foods. Eliminating the Doritos, canned soups (which tend to be especially high in sodium), or other processed food products from your diet will reduce your sodium intake to a more natural level, but no one tells you that. (What, you don't read labels?)

Someone has finally figured out how to reduce the amount of salt, and the amount of sugars, in processed foods so you don't have to read those time-consuming labels any more. In fact, they have made it really easy for you by calling the additive a "flavoring," thereby not bothering your head with all those long, chemical-compound words that no one understands anyway.

(I'm not kidding: " 'We are helping companies clean up their labels,' said Kent Snyder, chief executive of Senomyx." A great public service to be sure, but it also hides the ingredients from consumers who have a right to know what they are consuming.)

Instead, we now have a chemical additive that turns on or off the taste receptors on your tongue so that even with lower amounts of salt (and sugar) your brain is tricked into thinking it is getting a higher level of salty (and sweet) tasting foods. ("A taste receptor functions either by physically binding to a flavor ingredient in a process analogous to the way a key fits into a lock or by acting as a channel to allow ions to flow directly into a taste cell. As a result of these interactions, signals are sent to the brain where a specific taste sensation is registered." Senomyx Technology http://www.senomyx.com/technology/ )

Is this additive tested, tried, and true? you ask, remembering some of the "safe" food additives that had to be removed from the shelves in the past. Well, sure. It was safety-tested for at least three months, but don't worry, even if it's not safe, the amount is so small that it won't hurt you. (Since the amount used is so small, they have been able to sidestep the FDA approval process, so rigorous testing is not required.)

(I emailed Senomyx http://www.senomyx.com/ earlier today and asked to see the safety studies done on their products. I'll insert an update at the end of this article if they get back to me.)

Nestle began marketing products containing at least one of these chemicals in 2007.

Coca-Cola may still be in the research phase.

Campbell soup may still be in the research phase.

See the list of manufacturers and food processors who are involved in the possible future use of this brain-fooling chemical additive. Senomyx Collaborate Partnerships http://www.senomyx.com/collaborations/partnerships.htm

Well, enough from me. The excerpts from the articles below tell the full story. And, of course, you are welcome and encouraged to follow the link to the Senomyx website to get their take on this, too. http://www.senomyx.com/technology/

The excerpts are from NaturalNews.com and the UCSF student newspaper SYNAPSE.

'Secretive' Chemicals Being Hidden in Food Under 'Artificial Flavors' Label

Thursday, April 10, 2008 by: Jennifer McKinley posted on NaturalNews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/022982.html

(NaturalNews) You Thought MSG Was Bad? At least they admit that it's in there... well, mostly. Have you picked up a can of soup lately and noticed that the sodium levels are lower? Seen a label that said, "No MSG"? How about realizing that there is less sugar on the label of your favorite ice cream? Believe it or not, this is cause for concern.

A relatively young company, Senomyx, may be responsible for the sodium and sugar levels falling in your favorite grocery store item. How are they doing this without affecting the taste? The truth is, they may be putting chemicals into your food right now without you even realizing it and without telling you.

And guess what? They don't have to.

Senomyx has contracted with Kraft, Nestle, Coca Cola, Campbell Soup to put a chemical in foods that masks bitter flavors by turning off bitter flavor receptors on the tongue and enhancing salty and sweet flavors. This would allow the companies to tout claims such as "less sugar" or "lower sodium" by reducing the actual sugar and/or salt by approximately half, but the foods will retain the same level of sweetness or saltiness when they touch the tongue by fooling your brain.

All of the companies, although admitting the exclusive contracting rights, decline to identify which foods and beverages the chemical additives have been or will be added to.

These chemical compounds are not required to be listed separately on food labels. On the contrary, they will be lobbed under the umbrella of "artificial flavors" which is already found on most food labels.

The foods that seem to be most in jeopardy of an insurrection of these new chemicals: soups, juices (fruit and vegetable), ice cream, and sauces.

"We are helping companies clean up their labels," said Kent Snyder, chief executive of Senomyx.

Mark Zoller, Senomyx's chief scientist, says that his company has used the human genome sequence and identified hundreds of taste receptors. Senomyx's chemical compounds enhance those receptors to heighten the taste of salt or sugar. Under this premise, they go on to claim that their newly added chemicals are completely safe because they will be used in tiny quantities of less than one part per million whereas artificial sweeteners are used in 200-500 parts per million. This fact alone allows them to forgo the rigorous FDA approval process when introducing new food additives into the marketplace.

A Salt With a Deadly Weapon

By Stephanie Chang, first-year medical student.

Contributing Writer (SYNAPSE, The UCSF Student Newspaper)

http://www.ucsf.edu/synapse/content/2006/09/21/salt.html

Many dangers in life that can kill me in a delayed or indirect fashion find themselves shoved into the back of my brain. Some of these slower-acting menaces include secondhand smoke, global warming, UV rays and the lethal parking lot elevator between Irving Street and Parnassus that seduces me from hours of physical exertion.

Excess salt in the average American’s diet has always been a problem, but not one contemplated heavily by me until Melanie Warner raised the issue in a recent New York Times article, “The War Over Salt” (September 13, 2006).

For the past 20 years, health experts have known that “excessive sodium consumptions leads to various health problems” and that “salt-induced high blood pressure, or hypertension, is a significant contributor to heart disease and stroke, the No. 1 and No. 3 causes of death in the United States. (Cancer ranks second).”

And here is the obligatory factoid: Americans eat way more salt than they should. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the average American consumes more than 3,300 milligrams of sodium per day. In contrast, the government’s recommended guidelines are 2,300 milligrams for young adults and 1,500 milligrams for those with high blood pressure and any person middle-aged or older. The Department of Agriculture has found that three-quarters of the salt consumed by Americans derives from processed food.

Elevated levels of sodium consumption in the United States became a public health concern earlier this year after the American Medical Association (AMA) recommended that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “revoke salt’s long-time status as a substance that is ‘generally recognized as safe’” in favor of its regulation as a food additive.

In response, the FDA has promised to consider organizing a hearing or workshop on the dangers of salt, but few believe that these nascent efforts will result in any decisive action due to lack of government funding for the FDA’s division on food regulation, an increasing number of other priorities and “an unwillingness among top agency officials to take on the food industry.”

No one can blame those FDA officials. The salt market in the United States is worth $340 million dollars, and manufacturers find that “salt is an easy and cheap way to give processed foods an appealing taste.” Unlike the steps behind tasting sweetness, the biological mechanism for how humans taste saltiness remains unclear, and so there has never been a satisfactory salt substitute.

Interestingly, in an earlier New York Times article by Melanie Warner entitled “Food Companies Test Flavorings That Can Mimic Sugar, Salt, or MSG” (April 6, 2005), a company called Senomyx in San Diego has developed chemical compounds that could replace or enhance the above-mentioned ingredients in the future. Most of these new chemicals are flavorless by themselves, but activate or block taste receptors to “amplify” existing amounts of sodium in the food product.

Warner reports that “Senomyx’s chemical compounds will not be listed separately on ingredient labels. Instead, they will be lumped into a board category — ‘artificial flavors’ — already found on most packaged food labels.” Also, “since Senomyx’s flavor compounds will be used in small proportions (less than one part per million), the company is able to bypass the lengthy FDA approval process required to get food additives on the market. Getting the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association status of generally recognized as safe, or GRAS, took Senomyx less than 18 months, including a three-month safety study using rats. In contrast, the maker of the artificial sweetener sucralose spent 11 years winning FDA approval and is required to list the ingredient on food labels.”

Critics have argued that the new chemicals require more testing, but Senomyx contends that the compounds are safe by virtue of their use in trace amounts. This is a dubious argument, since these trace amounts appear to be enough to cut the sodium content of a can of soup in half without diminishing the product’s tasty saltiness.

Unsurprisingly, Senomyx’s claims have prompted companies such as Kraft, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s Soup to negotiate exclusive contracts to use these chemicals. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that these major food companies have already paid Senomyx a total of $30 million dollars for research and development, and that the stock price of Senomyx “has nearly doubled since it went public” in June 2004.

[Senomyx is collaborating with seven of the world's leading food, beverage, and ingredient supply companies to develop and commercialize our flavor ingredients. We currently have exclusive or co-exclusive product discovery and development collaborations with Ajinomoto Co. Inc., Cadbury Schweppes, Campbell Soup Company, The Coca-Cola Company, Firmenich SA, Nestlé SA, and Solae, LLC. http://www.senomyx.com/collaborations/ ]

Why have food companies become fixated on reducing sodium content while preserving the original salty flavor of their products? High stakes economics have trapped food companies between pressure from health experts to reduce salt content and a historically dismal consumer response to reduced-sodium foods. Americans enjoy the taste of salt. Both of Warner’s articles on sodium have both appeared in the business section of the New York Times, indicating that excess sodium is a widely accepted health concern that has become less of a health issue than a business issue.

In this salty (rather than sticky) situation, it becomes hard for me to isolate the factors that may be killing me first. Is it the excess sodium in my bag of Doritos or the unlisted Senomyx chemicals grouped under “artificial flavors?” Is it the food companies that refuse to change the salty taste of their products or the FDA for its refusal to regulate sodium content? Ironically, the battle over salt in our food is leading to the development of strange artificial substitutes that may prove to be equally dangerous. Another worry has become shelved in the back of my brain.

Michelle here again……I'm certainly not going to let this new chemical additive go to the back of my brain, are you?

Friday Food Pharmacy – Fatal Harvest and GM Sugar

I had planned on reprinting the essay below anyway, but in my email this very morning was a warning about sugar beets and how farmers are being encouraged to plant "Roundup Ready" crops so they can spray the heck out of them with "Roundup" Weed killer without hurting the sugar beet plant. Of course the herbicide ends up in the soil and in the product, but that doesn’t seem to concern anyone.

I have been toying with the idea of getting a small green house and growing my own food organically……see the end of the article for more on that.

Meanwhile, here is an essay on the dangers of industrial agriculture.

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Essay from the website of FATAL HARVEST: THE TRAGEDY OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE

MYTH 2: INDUSTRIAL FOOD IS SAFE, HEALTHY, AND NUTRITIOUS

The Truth:

Industrial agriculture contaminates our vegetables and fruits with pesticides, 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.

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Here is another essay you may want to read, also from the pages of FATAL HARVEST:

"Untested, Unlabeled, And You’re Eating It: The Health and Environmental Hazards of Genetically Engineered Food" by Joseph Mendelson III

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