Agriculture - Genetically Modified (GM) Foods - Health Risks of Gentically Modified Foods

Governments should never have allowed these products into the food chain without insisting on rigorous testing for effects on health.

Europe - Shoppers across Europe had already voted with their feet. By the end of the first week in May, seven European supermarket chains had announced they would not sell genetically modified foods. Three large food multinationals, Unilever, Nestlé, and Cadburys-Schweppes followed suit.

India - The Supreme Court in India has upheld a ban on testing genetically modified crops. Activists in India have set fire to fields of crops suspected of being used for testing.

U.S. - The population of the USA, where up to 60% of processed foods have genetically modified ingredients, seem, as yet, unconcerned.

A group of Canadian scientists wrote a letter to the Toronto Globe and Mail which warned that genetic drift or pollution from plants gene-spliced to produce medical drugs or industrial chemicals is a disaster waiting to happen.

Ninety percent of the money Americans spend on food is spent on processed foods and seventy percent of processed foods have genetically modified foods in them.

There are NO STUDIES with humans on what happens when one consumes genetically modified foods. The FDA has ASSUMED that they are equivalent to the original and never required any studies to have them approved.

Pharmaceutical interests in the UK are ignoring new scientific research that shows the insecticide used in the UK government's own warble-fly campaigns triggered the UK surge of 'Mad Cow' disease.

Latest experiments by Cambridge University prion specialist, David R. Brown, have shown that manganese bonds with prions. Other researchers work shows that prions in the bovine spine --along which insecticides are applied-- can be damaged by ICI's Phosmet organophosphate(OP) insecticide -causing the disease.

The new work proves that the prions can bond with manganese in animal feeds or mineral licks. These manganese prions cause the neurological degeneration seen in BSE. By a similar process, prions in human brains are damaged by lice lotions containing organophosphate. This can result in neurological diseases like CJD and Alzheimer's - later in life.

In the course of legalizing the irradiation of numerous foods, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has dismissed or ignored a substantial body of evidence suggesting that irradiated food may not be safe for human consumption ... a careful analysis by FDA of all Army data presents:

* A 32.3 percent decrease in surviving progeny of dogs. Dogs weighing 11.3 percent less than animals on the control diets... Carcinomas of the pituitary gland, a particularly disturbing finding since this is an extremely rare type of malignant tumor.

* Considerable amounts of radioactivity were present in the liver, kidney, stomach, gastrointestinal tract, and blood serum of rats fed irradiated sucrose solutions. Radioactivity was present in urine and feces samples.

* Fatal Internal Bleeding in Rats.

* Embryo Deaths in Mice. Freshly irradiated diets produced elevated levels of early deaths in [mice fetuses]... The increase in early deaths would suggest that the diet when irradiated has some mutagenic potential.

Professor Graham Bell, from McGill University in Canada warns that the new antibiotics pose "a serious and unprecedented" risk to public health. Antibiotic resistance has been called one of the world’s most pressing public health problems. It can cause significant danger and suffering for people who have common infections that once were easily treatable with antibiotics. When antibiotics fail to work, the consequences are longer-lasting illnesses; more doctor visits or extended hospital stays; and the need for more expensive and toxic medications.

There is something sinister afoot when it comes to cancer research ... Dr. Linus Pauling who some years ago claimed that as long as there's a lot of money to be made in cancer research and the sale of chemotherapy drugs, cancer won't be cured.

Most cancer sufferers lack knowledge of what an optimal nutritional program is or how to implement it.

Carcinogens - 2008 Report - Final Report on Carcinogens Background Document for Styrene Plastics

Carcinogens - 2010 Report - Final Report on Carcinogens Background Document for Formaldehyde

On There is convincing evidence that people with diabetes can benefit by maintaining pH balance in their bodies. The connection between diabetes and pH balance can clearly be seen in the kidneys, a bodily system that is known to be weakened by both diabetes and an acidic pH balance. By maintaining the proper pH balance in your body, your kidneys and your diabetes will likely improve, too.

Action on smoking, diet and infections can prevent one third of cancers ... another third can be cured.

by Mike Adams, Editor of NaturalNews.com

Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply.

This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics in order to provide the "mutation pressure" that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.

So if you're curious about the origins of such a strain, you can essentially reverse engineer the genetic code of the e.coli and determine fairly accurately which antibiotics it was exposed to during its development. This step has now been done (see below), and when you look at the genetic decoding of this O104 strain now threatening food consumers across the EU, a fascinating picture emerges of how it must have come into existence.

The genetic code reveals the history

When scientists at Germany'sRobert Koch Institute decoded the genetic makeup of the O104 strain, they found it to be resistant to all the following classes and combinations of antibiotics:

• penicillins
• tetracycline
• nalidixic acid
• trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazol
• cephalosporins
• amoxicillin / clavulanic acid
• piperacillin-sulbactam
• piperacillin-tazobactam

In addition, this O104 strain posses an ability to produce special enzymes that give it what might be called "bacteria superpowers" known technically as ESBLs:

"Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamases (ESBLs) are enzymes that can be produced by bacteria making them resistant to cephalosporins e.g. cefuroxime, cefotaxime and ceftazidime - which are the most widely used antibiotics in many hospitals," explains the Health Protection Agency in the UK (http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/InfectiousDiseases/InfectionsAZ/ESBLs/).

On top of that, this O104 strain possesses two genes --TEM-1 and CTX-M-15-- that "have been making doctors shudder since the 1990s," reportsThe Guardian(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/05/deadly-ecoli-resi...). And why do they make doctors shudder? Because they're so deadly that many people infected with such bacteria experience critical organ failure and simply die.

Bioengineering a deadly superbug

So how, exactly, does a bacterial strain come into existence that's resistant to over a dozen antibiotics in eight different drug classesand features two deadly gene mutations plus ESBL enzyme capabilities?

There's really only one way this happens (and only one way) -- you have toexpose this strain of e.colito all eight classes of antibiotics drugs. Usually this isn't done at the same time, of course: You first expose it to penicillin and find the surviving colonies which are resistant to penicillin. You then take those surviving colonies and expose them to tetracycline. The surviving colonies are now resistant to both penicillin and tetracycline. You then expose them to a sulfa drug and collect the surviving colonies from that, and so on. It is a process of genetic selectiondone in a laboratory with a desired outcome. This is essentially how some bioweapons are engineered by the U.S. Army in its laboratory facility in Ft. Detrick, Maryland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Biodefense_Analysis_and_Counter...).

Although the actual process is more complicated than this, the upshot is thatcreating a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight classes of antibiotics requires repeated, sustained expose to those antibiotics. It is virtually impossible to imagine how this could happen all by itself in the natural world. For example, if this bacteria originated in the food (as we've been told), then where did it acquire all this antibiotic resistance given the fact that antibiotics are not used in vegetables?

When considering the genetic evidence that now confronts us, it is difficult to imagine how this could happen "in the wild." While resistance to a single antibiotic is common, the creation of a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight different classes of antibiotics-- in combination -- simply defies the laws ofgenetic permutation and combinationin the wild. Simply put, this superbug e.coli strain could not have been created in the wild. And that leaves only one explanation for where it really came from: the lab.

Engineered and then released into the wild

The evidence now points to this deadly strain of e.coli beingengineeredand then either being released into the food supply or somehow escaping from a lab and entering the food supply inadvertently. If you disagree with that conclusion -- and you're certainly welcome to -- then you are forced to conclude that this octobiotic superbug (immune to eight classes of antibiotics) developedrandomly on its own... and that conclusion is far scarier than the "bioengineered" explanation because it means octobiotic superbugs can simply appear anywhere at any time without cause. That would be quite an exotic theory indeed.

My conclusion actually makes more sense: This strain of e.coli was almost certainly engineered and then released into the food supplyfor a specific purpose. What would that purpose be? It's obvious, I hope.

It's allproblem, reaction, solutionat work here. First cause a PROBLEM (a deadly strain of e.coli in the food supply). Then wait for the public REACTION (huge outcry as the population is terrorized by e.coli). In response to that, enact your desired SOLUTION (total control over the global food supply and the outlawing of raw sprouts, raw milk and raw vegetables).

That's what this is all about, of course. The FDA relied on the same phenomenon in the USA when pushing for its recent "Food Safety Modernization Act" which essentially outlaws small family organic farms unless they lick the boots of FDA regulators. The FDA was able to crush farm freedom in America by piggybacking on the widespread fear that followed e.coli outbreaks in the U.S. food supply. When people are afraid, remember, it's not difficult to get them to agree to almost any level of regulatory tyranny. And making people afraid of their food is a simple matter... a few government press releases emailed to the mainstream media news affiliates is all it takes.

First ban the natural medicine, then attack the food supply

Now, remember: All this is happening on the heels of the EU ban on medicinal herbs and nutritional supplements-- a ban that blatantly outlaws nutritional therapies that help keep people healthy and free from disease. Now that all these herbs and supplements are outlawed, the next step is to make people afraid of fresh food, too. That's because fresh vegetables are medicinal, and as long as the public has the right to buy fresh vegetables, they can always prevent disease.

But if you can make people AFRAID of fresh vegetables -- or even outlaw them altogether -- then you can force the entire population onto a diet ofdead foodsand processed foods that promote degenerative disease and bolster the profits of the powerful drug companies.

It's all part of the same agenda, you see: Keep people sick, deny them access to healing herbs and supplements, then profit from their suffering at the hands of the global drug cartels.

GMOs play a similar role in all this, of course: They're designed to contaminate the food supply with genetic code that causes widespread infertility among human beings. And those who are somehow able to reproduce after exposure to GMOs still suffer from degenerative disease that enriches the drug companies from "treatment."

Do you recall which country was targeted in this recent e.coli scare? Spain. Why Spain? You may recall that leaked cables from Wikileaks revealed that Spain resisted the introduction of GMOs into its agricultural system, even as the U.S. government covertly threatened political retaliation for its resistance. This false blaming of Spain for the e.coli deaths is probably retaliation for Spain's unwillingness to jump on the GMO bandwagon. (http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_GMOs_Wikileaks.html)

That's the real story behind the economic devastation of Spain's vegetable farmers. It's one of the subplots being pursued alongside this e.coli superbug scheme.

Food as weapons of war - created by Big Pharma?

A new era has begun: Bioweapons in your food

But in either case -- no matter what you believe -- the simple truth is that the world is now facing a new era of global superbug strains of bacteria that can't be treated with any known pharmaceutical. They can all, of course, be readily killed with colloidal silver, which is exactly why the FDA and world health regulators have viciously attacked colloidal silver companies all these years: They can't have the public getting its hands on natural antibiotics that really work, you see. That would defeat the whole purpose of making everybody sick in the first place.

In fact, these strains of e.coli superbugs can be quite readily treated with a combination of natural full-spectrum antibiotics from plants such as garlic, ginger, onions and medicinal herbs. On top of that, probiotics can help balance the flora of the digestive tract and "crowd out" the deadly e.coli that might happen by. A healthy immune system and well-functioning digestive tract can fight off an e.coli superbug infection, but that's yet another fact the medical community doesn't want you to know. They much prefer you to remain a helpless victim lying in the hospital, waiting to die, with no options available to you. That's "modern medicine" for ya. They cause the problems that they claim to treat, and then they won't even treat you with anything that works in the first place.

Nearly all the deaths now attributable to this e.coli outbreak are easily and readily avoidable. These are deaths of ignorance. But even more, they may also be deaths from a new era of food-based bioweapons unleashed by either a group of mad scientists or an agenda-driven institution that has declared war on the human population.

Additional developments on this e.coli outbreak

McDonald's, the fast food giant says Fruitizz gives children one of the recommended five portions of fruit and veg a day. Sugary drinks can encourage tooth decay and erosion and lead to weight gain. McDonald’s says it spent three years developing a drink which “excites children, but also delivers nutritional benefits.

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said: “For a drink purporting to be healthy having this much sugar is appalling. The danger to children is incredible.”

Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good.

Medical Professionals and Scientists are warning that water fluoridation has dangerous long-term consequences to health. For over 50 years, the U.S. government and media have trumpeted fluoride as a safe and effective means of reducing cavities, especially in children. But fluoride is not the benevolent and innocuous substance the public has been led to believe. Chronic doses of fluoride, like arsenic and lead, accumulate in our bodies causing a blockage in the way cells breathe and leads to the malformation of collagen.

Cancer, diabetes, thyroid and neurological disorders, hormonal imbalances, heart disease, arthritis and osteoporosis have all been linked to chronic fluoride ingestion. We are now exposed to increasing doses of fluoride from toothpaste, rinses, water, food, medicines, showering, bathing, and even the air that we breathe. Our environment has become a literal fluoride dumping ground.

January 2011 - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) today issued a startling report that admits 2 in 5 children in America show signs of fluoride poisoning (streaking, spotting or pitting of teeth due to dental fluorosis). The agency concluded that fluoride levels need to be lowered in municipal water supplies, reducing fluoride to 0.7 milligrams per liter (the previous recommended upper limit was 1.2 milligrams per liter).

This ends over five decades of the U.S. government recommending up to 1.2 milligrams of fluoride in every liter of water. But even the new lower levels are still more than enough to cause serious harm to children, and when mothers make infant formula using fluoridated tap water, they inadvertently poison their infants with hundreds of times the level of fluoride that would normally be found in healthy human breast milk. 

Albert Schatz, Ph.D - "Fluoridation ... it is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated and it has been perpetrated on more people than any other fraud has."Professor Albert Schatz, Ph.D. (Microbiology), Discoverer of streptomycin and Nobel Prize Winner.

Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd - "I am appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. Fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effects on a long range basis. Any attempt to use water this way is deplorable." Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd is  the former president of the American Medical Association.

Barry Grove's book, Fluoride: Drinking Ourselves to Death, exposes the "science" that has successfully promoted water fluoridation for what it is: bluff, propaganda, and lies. Fluoride is a poison--more poisonous than lead, slightly less poisonous than arsenic.

Fluoride and fluoridation will go down as one of the greatest controversies of the 20th century. Up until the early 1940's, fluorine's effect on life was always deemed poisonous. It was proven to be altering enzymes used by living organisms to carry out a multitude of essential processes.

Fluorine, the most reactive element on the planet, is also the strongest free radical. Scientists in the 1930's and 1940's experimented with this element to create the most deadly nerve gasses, rocket fuel, and radioactive U235 for the bomb. As a wood preservative, rodentcide and insecticide, fluorine compounds are second to none.

As an Orthodontist, I began investigating the increasingly prevalent lines and spots that I saw on the enamel of children. Like rings on a tree, they indicate excessive fluorine exposure. I started to ask the question, "How does fluorine cause these marks?" Chronic doses of fluoride, like arsenic and lead, accumulate in our bodies causing a blockage in the way cells breathe and leads to the malformation of collagen. Cancer, diabetes, thyroid and neurological disorders, hormonal imbalances, heart disease, arthritis and osteoporosis have all been linked to chronic fluoride ingestion.

We are now exposed to increasing doses of fluoride from toothpaste, rinses, water, food, medicines, showering, bathing, and even the air that we breathe. Our environment has become a literal fluoride dumping ground. This book explores many chronic diseases that plague man today and looks at the scientists that connected these diseases to chronic exposures of fluoride.

Barry Grove's book, Fluoride: Drinking Ourselves to Death, exposes the "science" that has successfully promoted water fluoridation for what it is: bluff, propaganda, and lies. Fluoride is a poison--more poisonous than lead, slightly less poisonous than arsenic.

In The Fluoride Deception video, Christopher Bryson, an award-winning journalist and former producer at the BBC, discusses the findings of his new book The Flouride Deception. "Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride's harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate.

Alzheimer Disease 

There are also several studies linking aluminum with fluoride, showing that the bioavailability of aluminum is increased in the presence of fluorides, causing aluminum in the brain to double in treated animals. According to an October 28, 1992 Wall Street Journal Article about a study conducted by Varnier JA, et al.: "Rats fed the highest doses developed irregular mincing steps characteristic of senile animals.... Post mortem examination of the rat brains disclosed 'substantial cell loss in structures associated with dementia -- the neo-cortex and hippocampus'." (Note: Alzheimer's Disease, first diagnosed by Dr. Alois Alzheimer in 1907, is now the #4 killer for every person over 60 in the US. Every 2nd person over 70 will develop Alzheimer's.) Environmental fluoride is implicated in this. more on Alzheimer disease and natural recovery

Arthritis and Osteoporosis

Scientists at EPA in Washington have declared that there is every reason to believe that the increasing numbers of people with carpal-tunnel syndrome and arthritis-like pains are due to the mass fluoridation of drinking water. On July 9, 1998 the Manchester Guardian reported news of fluoride poisoned water in Central India, from untested wells drilled in the 1980s, causing severe arthritic damage to tens of millions of people -- a national disaster. Fluoride is the most bone seeking element known to mankind. The US Public Health Service has stated that fluoride makes the bones more brittle and dental enamel more porous.

Brain Damage: 

Fluorides lower the intelligence capacity of humans, with children, again, especially susceptible to early fluoride toxicity. IQ levels were significantly lower than children not exposed to fluorides in all age groups listed. (Li,X.S.,Zhi,J.L.,Gao,R.O.,"Effects of Fluoride Exposure on the Intelligence of Children", Fluoride;28:182-189, 1995) Further studies proving the neurotoxicity of fluoride in rats have also been conducted by Dr. Phyllis Mullinex.

In 1995 Mullenix and co-workers showed that rats given fluoride in drinking water at levels that give rise to plasma levels fluoride concentrations in humans, suffer neurotoxic effects that vary according to when the rats were given the fluoiride - as adult animals, as young animals, or thorugh the placenta before birth. Those exposed before birth were born hyperactive and remained so throughout their lives. Thoses exposed as young animals displayed depressed activity.

In 1998 Guan et al. gave similar doses as used by the Mullenix group and found that several key chemicals in the brain - those that form the membrane of brain cells, were substantially depleted in rats given fluoride, as compared to those who did not receive fluoride. Partly based on these findings, the union representing all EPA scientists in Washington have now filed a grievance demanding fluoride-free bottled water for their offices.

(Note: this also explains a recent University of South Florida study relating fluoride intake during pregnancy to the yearly 1% increase in learning disabilities found in children...) Studies proving that fluorides transfer through the placenta are well known. (Meanwhile, Dr.Weil, Internet's Health Guru, advocates fluoride supplements for pregnant woman in his book "8 Weeks To Optimum Health"...) 

Cancer:

Fluoride was found to be an equivocal carcinogen by the National Cancer Institute Toxicological Program. Further studies by the New Jersey Department of Health have now confirmed a 6.9 fold increase in bone cancer in young males. Earlier studies had found a 5% increase in all types of cancers in fluoridated communities. In 1981, Dean Burk, for many decades Chief Chemist at the US National Cancer Institute, testified at congressional hearings, reporting that at least 40,000 cancer deaths in 1981 were attributable to fluoride. 40,000 cases that could have been prevented simply by NOT putting industry waste into the public water supply. Burk stated that fluoride causes more cancer, and causes it faster, than any other chemical.

Infertility:

Infertilityin women was found to increase with water fluoridation. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists reported a close correlation between decreasing total fertility rates in women between ages of 10 and 49, and increasing fluoride levels. They also reported that a review of all of the animal studies done to date shows that fluoride adversely affects fertility in most animal species. 

Hip fractures:

Drinking fluoridated water will double the number of hip fractures for both older men and women. Extremely low levels of water fluoridation 0.1 ppm still produced statistically significant increased hip fractures. (Bordeaux Study JAMA 1994). According to Dr. J. William Hirzy (vice-president of the NFFE LOCAL 2050, the union representing all scientists at the EPA, Washington, D.C.) there have been 5 epidemiological studies done since 1990, in three different countries, all showing a higher increase in hip fractures in fluoridated communities. Some studies have indicated a 87% higher risk of hip fractures to the elderly in areas where water fluoridation was even below 1.5 ppm. 

Thyroid Disorder:

Two main thyroid disorders: Hyperthyroid and Hypothyroid. The thyroid hormones regulate (1) metabolism, (2) growth and developement, (3) the activity of the nervous system. An under production of these hormones is a hypothyroid condition, while an overproduction creates a hyperthyroid condition.

Barry Grove's book, Fluoride: Drinking Ourselves to Death, exposes the "science" that has successfully promoted water fluoridation for what it is: bluff, propaganda, and lies. Fluoride is a poison--more poisonous than lead, slightly less poisonous than arsenic. It is cumulative and collects in bones and tissues, not just the teeth. Numerous studies done on animals point out the obvious dangers. Other studies have shown increased rates of cancer, osteoporosis, and other diseases. Dr. Albert Schatz, who discovered the antibiotic streptomycin, said in 1982 that "fluoridation is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated." Yet other studies of tens of thousands of children show that it isn't even effective at preventing cavities and is an extremely poor delivery system even if it were effective. Like it or not, your government sometimes lies to you. Groves points out the fact that fluoridation is nothing more or less than a huge government-sponsored lie, conveniently spun so that the super-phosphate industry can rid itself of harmful toxic waste that is illegal and dangerous to release into the air but suddenly becomes a magical "elixir of good teeth" when added to our drinking water (more info)

One of the most common tricks is to distribute sugars among many ingredients so that sugars don't appear in the top three. For example, a manufacturer may use a combination of sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, brown sugar, dextrose and other sugar ingredients to make sure none of them are present in large enough quantities to attain a top position on the ingredients list (remember, the ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the food, with the most common ingredients listed first).

In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-sounding berries, herbs or superfoods that are often only present in miniscule amounts. Having "spirulina" appear at the end of the ingredients list is practically meaningless. There's not enough spirulina in the food to have any real effect on your health. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junk food manufacturers who want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producing healthy foods.

Another trick is to pad the list with miniscule amounts of great-sounding ingredients. You see this in personal care products and shampoo, too, where companies claim to offer "herbal" shampoos that have practically no detectable levels of real herbs in them.

Formaldehyde is generally considered to be a highly toxic irritant and has been linked to cancer for quite sometime. After receiving many complaints about symptoms developing throughout Canada, the Canadian government stepped in to diagnose what the root causes was. It quickly became clear that the symptoms were linked to salons and specifically hair smoothing treatments know as keratin Hair Smoothing Treatments.

All of the 10 products contained dangerously toxic concentrations of formaldehyde of up to 7%, or more than 350% the legal permitted limit in Canada and 700% the legal permitted limit in the United States.

In response to these conclusive results, Health Canada has issued an Official Government Order to immediately stop-sale and use of the 10 products. Salons must immediately stop using the products on any of their clients.

15 of 16 brands admit to little to no formaldehyde. Tests show their products contain substantial amounts. Companies whose claims and tests do not match include Brazilian Blowout, Keratin Express, KeraGreen, Tahe and R&L. The 16th company, Goleshlee, admits on its website that its product contains formaldehyde but omits the toxic chemical from its online ingredient list.

Leading hair straighteners, including Brazilian Blowout, claim that formaldehyde mixed with water creates a new chemical, methylene glycol. That is like saying that sweet tea does not contain sugar. In fact, when you purchase straight formaldehyde from a chemical company, you are actually buying a formaldehyde-water mixture. Over time, if exposed to air, the formaldehyde will off-gas, in other words, reverting to a gas, its natural state at room temperature.

Abstract: This review explores whether fructose consumption might be a contributing factor to the development of obesity and the accompanying metabolic abnormalities observed in the insulin resistance syndrome. The per capita disappearance data for fructose from the combined consumption of sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup have increased by 26%, from 64 g/d in 1970 to 81 g/d in 1997.

Both plasma insulin and leptin act in the central nervous system in the long-term regulation of energy homeostasis. Because fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion from pancreatic ß cells, the consumption of foods and beverages containing fructose produces smaller postprandial insulin excursions than does consumption of glucose-containing carbohydrate. Because leptin production is regulated by insulin responses to meals, fructose consumption also reduces circulating leptin concentrations.

The combined effects of lowered circulating leptin and insulin in individuals who consume diets that are high in dietary fructose could therefore increase the likelihood of weight gain and its associated metabolic sequelae. In addition, fructose, compared with glucose, is preferentially metabolized to lipid in the liver. Fructose consumption induces insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, hyperinsulinemia, hypertriacylglycerolemia, and hypertension in animal models. The data in humans are less clear.

Although there are existing data on the metabolic and endocrine effects of dietary fructose that suggest that increased consumption of fructose may be detrimental in terms of body weight and adiposity and the metabolic indexes associated with the insulin resistance syndrome, much more research is needed to fully understand the metabolic effect of dietary fructose in humans.

The intake of dietary fructose has increased markedly as a result of the steady increase in added sugars in the American diet (134). In the past, fructose was considered to be beneficial in the dietary management of diabetes mellitus and insulin resistance because fructose ingestion results in smaller postprandial glycemic and insulin excursions than do glucose and complex carbohydrates (28).

Conclusion: In light of the information presented here, a cautionary note is warranted. Obesity is a growing epidemic in the United States. In terms of feedback to the CNS regarding energy status in peripheral tissues, fructose consumption results in decreased production and, therefore, decreased signaling to the CNS from 2 hormones (leptin and insulin) involved in the long-term regulation of energy homeostasis and body adiposity (11, 69). The same observation applies to dietary fat.

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

Obesity and type 2 diabetes are occurring at epidemic rates in the United States and many parts of the world. The "obesity epidemic" appears to have emerged largely from changes in our diet and reduced physical activity. An important but not well-appreciated dietary change has been the substantial increase in the amount of dietary fructose consumption from high intake of sucrose and high fructose corn syrup, a common sweetener used in the food industry.

A high flux of fructose to the liver, the main organ capable of metabolizing this simple carbohydrate, perturbs glucose metabolism and glucose uptake pathways, and leads to a significantly enhanced rate ofde novo lipogenesis and triglyceride (TG) synthesis, driven by the high flux of glycerol and acyl portions of TG molecules from fructose catabolism. These metabolic disturbances appear to underlie the induction of insulin resistance commonly observed with high fructose feeding in both humans and animal models.

Fructose-induced insulin resistant states are commonly characterized by a profound metabolic dyslipidemia, which appears to result from hepatic and intestinal overproduction of atherogenic lipoprotein particles. Thus, emerging evidence from recent epidemiological and biochemical studies clearly suggests high dietary intake of fructose has rapidly become an important causative factor in development of the metabolic syndrome.

There is an urgent need for increased public awareness of the risks associated with high fructose consumption and greater efforts should be made to curb the supplementation of packaged foods with high fructose additives. The present review will discuss the trends in fructose consumption, the metabolic consequences of increased fructose intake, and the molecular mechanisms leading to fructose-induced lipogenesis, insulin resistance and metabolic dyslipidemia.

You can almost always find something nice to say about someone if you think hard enough.  But - let's be honest - there's a few people that you think are just pure evil.  It's the same with some foods.  Trans fats, mangled souls of the nutritional underworld, are a prime example:  they destroy your lipid profile and wreak havoc throughout the body.  Fructose is the same way:  the more science researches fructose, the scarier it gets.  In this link we're going to look at how fructose sabotages all attempts at weight loss.

Some of you may be thinking that you never eat fructose since you don't really like or buy fruit.  Well, it's not that simple:  sucrose, or table sugar, is composed of a glucose and fructose molecule bonded together.  In other words, when you consume table sugar, your body quickly breaks the table sugar into one half glucose and one half fructose.  The glucose can go in its merry way annihilating your testosterone and the fructose can do its job of adding fat and keeping your from any weight loss you might be attempting.

This happens because glucose is pulled into cells through the glut-4 system, which raises insulin as expected.  Fructose completely bypasses this system and uses the glut-5 system, which few cells in the body have by the way, thus achieving a greatly muted insulin response. Fuctose is so powerful at inducing insulin resistance that researchers use it like a drug in lab studies to create insulin resistance.

NEWS FLASH:  Researchers just announced that mercury contamination is extremely common in high fructose corn syrup:  50% of products tested by researchers were contaminated! [4] The issue apparently is that there are no standards for mercury residue in hydrochloric acid and hydrochloric acid is used to make high fructose corn syrup. This is dangerous for anyone but particularly for children.  (NOTE:  Mercury can affect testosterone!)

Don't forget that table sugar has a glucose molecule bonded to a sucrose molecule.  So if you have table sugar, you're also having fructose after the body breaks apart that bond.  Corn syrup and high fructose are no better:  they are also roughly the same percentage of fructose - not exactly but close enough for discussion purposes.  So if you drink a can of coke, you'll ingest 42g of sugars. And here is the key: after your body digests the corn syrup, approximately half of that will be fructose, i.e. a little over 20g.  And, of course, nowadays, who has one can of Coke?  Most people have bottles or 64 ouncers!   

This is how many of you are ingesting large quantities of fructose without even realizing it.  It is also in many, many packaged goods as well.  Many Western vegans, trying to eat well and live good, eat a lot of sweets and fruit and consume a disproportionately high quantity of fructose thus confounding what may be an otherwise healthy lifestyle. 

Research has proven that deficient levels of essential elements or elevated levels of toxic elements have a direct relationship to pathological diseases. Indeed there is much supporting evidence that high levels of elements such as cadmium, mercury, lead and arsenic are directly correlated to many of our most common and debilitating degenerative pathological diseases such as cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and more.

Our physical body is made up of numerous minerals which are the basis of all life. The levels of these minerals need to be delicately balanced for perfect health. Hair analysis has been proven to accurately reveal the level of minerals within the body and is hence and important test.

One curry served to patients had SIX times more fat than a KFC Zinger Burger with fries. And a pasta dish had over THREE times a person’s total daily recommended saturated fat intake and TWICE the salt limit.

The damning truth about NHS grub was unearthed by the Sun-backed Campaign for Better Hospital Food. It wants MPs to bring in minimum dietary standards on wards — which schools and even JAILS already have. Campaigner Alex Jackson said: “It’s staggering to think sick patients could be better off eating at McDonald’s.

“Without standards, many meals will remain unhealthy and unappetising.” Seventy-five per cent of hospital nosh contained more saturated fat than a Big Mac, while 60 per cent had more salt, experts discovered. And 40 per cent of meals had higher saturated fat levels than a 9in Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza. The stodgy fare helps explain why 30million dishes a year go uneaten in English hospitals, despite £50million spent in the past decade to improve them.

Researcher Katharine Jenner warned bad diets threatened patients’ health: “Salt and saturated fat is linked to heart disease and strokes. “Hospitals should provide tasty and healthy meals, rather than ones that could lead to more health problems.”

The probe by Mr Jackson’s Sustain group examined 25 meals from the NHS Supply Chain, which provides food to almost every hospital trust. The crusade — which includes the Patients Association and organic farming charity the Soil Association — has now got MPs to table a Transforming Hospital Food Bill, discussed in the Commons for the first time this week.

The Department of Health said hospitals decided diets but admitted yesterday: “There’s no excuse for any hospital offering poor quality food.”

TO back the campaign visit www.hospitalfoodbill.org

By KATHERINE MURPHY, Patients Association chief exec: PATIENTS often tell us they didn’t like the food in hospital — and the facts bear this out. The Campaign for Better Hospital Food reckons more than 82,000 meals go uneaten every day. Improvements would not be expensive or difficult. But I fear it will be easy to cut budgets for things like food and cleaning without appreciating the impact on patients. Good food can bring joy to patients in difficult times and help recovery. That’s why we support the Transforming Hospital Food Bill.

You wouldn’t eat lipstick, would you?

Somebody once calculated that the average woman consumes 22 kgs of lipstick in her lifetime. Yummy!

What is considerably worse is what is in it. Heavy metals are quite common. Take a recent FDA study in America. They have recently reported that 380 out of 400 of the most common lipsticks tested contained higher lead levels than the maximum safe level allowed in chocolate bars. Some were up to 70 times greater. Bizarrely, they concluded that the lead in lipstick is not dangerous because you don’t eat lipstick.

They also do not seem to understand that some compounds simply pass through the skin, which is a carrier not a barrier (if it wasn’t, how would nicotine and HRT patches work?)

The research was carried out by Frontier Global Sciences, Inc., a private laboratory based in Seattle, WA. (To be published May/June, 2012, issue of the Journal of Cosmetic Science.)

Orange juice is healthy and wholesome. We drink it because it's fresh, full of Vitamin C and made from the natural fruit of orange trees. Right? Not hardly, says Alissa Hamilton in this darkly absorbing history of the Florida orange juice industry.

Even if the carton says "not from concentrate," what you drink when you pour a glass of conventional, pre-squeezed orange juice is wholly industrialized, more a product of laboratory "food science" than of those sunshine-nourished orange groves Bing Crosby and Anita Bryant once pitched ... Hamilton set out to chronicle the orange juice industry's influence on the biodiversity of the sweet orange.

Documents Hamilton stumbled across ... changed the direction of her research and painted a damming picture of the "wholesome" citrus industry and its "tree-fresh" product ... and the loss of the archives after Professor Mack died.

The story in Squeezed, about an industry that became so successful in deceiving the consumer that it may have killed its own market, is an important contribution to the annals of our everyday food and how it is produced and marketed.

OJ drinkers will be the revelation that most orange juice comes from Brazil, not Florida, and that even “not from concentrate” orange juice is heated, stripped of flavor, stored for up to a year, and then reflavored before it is packaged and sold. The book concludes with a thought-provoking discussion of why consumers have the right to know how their food is produced.

"I wrote this book with a modest ambition," Hamilton says in the Preface, "to make you look at your glass of pre-squeezed orange juice differently and begin to see through the opaque packages of food that surround you."

On There is convincing evidence that people with diabetes can benefit by maintaining pH balance in their bodies. The connection between diabetes and pH balance can clearly be seen in the kidneys, a bodily system that is known to be weakened by both diabetes and an acidic pH balance. By maintaining the proper pH balance in your body, your kidneys and your diabetes will likely improve, too.

On There is convincing evidence that people with diabetes can benefit by maintaining pH balance in their bodies. The connection between diabetes and pH balance can clearly be seen in the kidneys, a bodily system that is known to be weakened by both diabetes and an acidic pH balance. By maintaining the proper pH balance in your body, your kidneys and your diabetes will likely improve, too.

Perhaps the most amazing display of unmitigated gall since the Journal of Pediatrics declared mercury 'good for kids,' ... not its 'Pink Slime!'

"What pink slime reveals to us ... is the unsavoury marriage of engineering and food, but it's present in a lot of the products we eat.

Beef is heated, spun in a centrifuge to separate the meat from the fat. Final product treated with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria.

The current debate, which has been brewing for months, began after celebrity chef Jamie Oliver drew attention to the practice.

Beef is exposed to ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella. (O3) Ozone is a safer. more effective alternative.

Beef is exposed to ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella. (O3) Ozone is a safer. more effective alternative.

Processed vs unprocessed red meat both increased risk of death (13% vs 20%), heart disease (18% vs 21%), cancer death (10% vs 16%).

Far from being a wonder drug,  steroids cannot cure one single condition. All they do is suppress the body's ability to express a normal response.  The medical community seems to have a particular blind spot about these drugs, refusing to believe that steroids can cause the terrible carnage that the manufacturers have long admitted to.

For over 30 years we've known that steroids can routinely cause over-activity of adrenal hormones, which produces Cushing's disease. They can also cause muscle wasting, hyperglycemia, water retention, bruising, insomnia, serious mood changes, menstrual problems, impotence, loss of libido, or even allergic shock and diabetes. (Source: Physicians Desk Reference).

Daily low doses of a commonly prescribed oral steroid, prednisone, can double your risk of hip fractures and cataracts, scientists reported today. Researchers have long known of the link between higher doses of oral steroids and dangerous side effects, but the new study shows the potential for side effects at much lower doses ... the problem is that prednisone and other steroid medications are critical in managing diseases in which inflammation plays a painful role.

A December 2010 article in Politics Daily reports on a list released by the EPA of chemicals highly suspected in the development of brain disorders, including learning disabilities, aspartame and Asperger’s. And guess what? Aspartame is on that list—right beneath arsenic. 

A 1997 study found that macrophages exposed to aspartame produces a three-fold rise in leukotriene (B4, C4 and 15 hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid) and arachidonic acid metabolites. This would be detrimental to patients having autoimmune disorders such as lupus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Clinically, there is some evidence for worsening of two of the three conditions (MS and Lupus) by aspartame use.

H. J. Roberts, MD has written many articles concerning aspartame's toxic effects on diabetic patients and on the food additive's correlation to Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. 

The FDA acknowledges that sucralose "is produced at an approximate purity of 98%." While that may sound pretty pure, just what is in that other 2%? It turns out that the final sucralose product contains small amounts of potentially dangerous substances such as:

* Heavy Metals (e.g., Lead)
* Arsenic
* Triphenilphosphine Oxide
* Methanol
* Chlorinated Disaccharides
* Chlorinated Monosaccharide

There is no monitoring of health effects. It took government agencies decades to agree that there were countless thousands of deaths from tobacco. Why? Simply because there had been no monitoring or epidemiological studies. Without such monitoring and studies, huge effects can easily go unnoticed.

Sucralose is not yet approved for use in most European countries.

"Before thalidomide was introduced, phocomelia had been so rare in germany that most doctors did not see a case in their lifetime. After the newspaper revealed the horrors that Dr. Lenz had found, Griinenthal removed thalidomide from the market in germany. Other countries also quickly halted its sales. Thousands more Americans would have taken the sedative if it had not been for a doctor at the FDA named Frances O. Kelsey. She had been reviewing the application that Merrell submitted to gain approval to sell thalidomide in the United States."

- Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

It is 40 years since the world woke up to the horror of thalidomide. In a special Radio 4 documentary, Geoff Adams-Spink, who was himself directly affected by the drug, examines the issues.

*In the late 1950s and 1960s pregnant women across the globe reached for a recommended remedy for bouts of morning sickness - thalidomide. They had no idea how this, "chemical shrapnel", as it has since been called, would affect the lives of their unborn children.

*Around 10,000 babies were born with disabilities as a result of their mothers taking the thalidomide drug. Just under half of those survived - 456 of them in the UK.

*In 1962, a Belgian woman was found not guilty of murdering her thalidomide baby. There was much celebration in Liège when she and her co-accused - her mother, sister, husband and the family doctor - walked free.

Difficult memories:

I had a more fortunate start in life, though my mother, too, was initially numbed. I was born with very short arms, no right eye and 10 per cent vision in my left eye. My mother had taken one thalidomide tablet. "When you were born it was a very big shock. In fact for the first three days I didn't really want to know," my mother admitted. Apparently it was my father who insisted that I would need more love than all of the others - I am the youngest of four. "I realised I was being very selfish and that I shouldn't do this," she told me.

Discovering the dangers:

It took some time for evidence of birth defects to be linked to thalidomide. One of the lesser known heroes of the thalidomide story was a young German lawyer, Karl Schulte-Hillen. His wife and sister had both given birth to deformed children so he began to suspect that an environmental factor linked the two. He approached Professor Widukind Lenz, a paediatric specialist in Hamburg, who agreed to pursue the matter. Lenz's suspicions soon settled on thalidomide, but he needed more evidence.

Schulte-Hillen's thalidomide son, Jan - now a doctor himself - recalls the detective work undertaken by Schulte-Hillen senior and Lenz: "My father and Dr Lenz drove all over Germany in an old Volkswagen. They showed people pictures of my cousin and of me and they asked people if they knew of anyone who'd given birth to similar babies. "My father would tell them not to be ashamed - that these were pictures of his own child and niece. In many cases people had simply hidden their children away."

It was eventually established that around 2,500 thalidomide babies were born in Germany.

A "harmless sedative":

The drug was not only administered as a treatment for morning sickness: it was also marketed as a "harmless" sedative. Margaret Yendell had taken it following a nervous breakdown. When she gave birth to a son without arms, health professionals didn't think that she could stand the shock. Margaret left hospital without her son, Tom, who was taken off to a children's home. "We never saw him," she recalls. "I was told 'you're not to have anything to do with this child at all'."

"It must have been at least six months before we saw him," Margaret's husband, Jack, told me. "It was one of the saddest times of our lives." Now, Tom Yendell is a family man himself and an artist with his own gallery in Hampshire.

Thalidomide returns

Incredibly, Thalidomide staged a comeback that many people thought could never happen. In the 1960s it was discovered the drug had a radical effect on some of the painful symptoms of leprosy. In the 1980s, scientists once again became interested in the drug's complex properties and researchers began to explore its use in the treatment of a number of diseases, including cancer.

Trials began in the 1990s and are now ongoing.

Forty years later, I suppose many of us "thalidomiders" see ourselves as guardians of the drug's heritage - anxious that no scientists or medical practitioner should forget, and that pharmaceutical giants are held firmly in check.

But for others - like my mother - the drug has taken on an almost demonic status.

You can listen to Archive Hour: Thalidomide 40 years on presented by Geoff Adams-Spink on Radio Four on Saturday 8 June at 2000 BST