Disinformation » Food

What Do You Call ‘Disgusting’?

majestic — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:38:22 +0000

photo: Sonya (cc)

Rachel Herz discusses the merits of eating the rotted bodily fluid of an ungulate as part of an excerpt from her new book, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion in the Wall Street Journal:

Nattō is a stringy, sticky, slimy, chunky fermented soybean dish that Japanese regularly eat for breakfast. It can be eaten straight up, but it is usually served cold over rice and seasoned with soy sauce, mustard or wasabi.

Aside from its alien texture, nattō suffers from another problem, at least for Westerners—odor. Nattō smells like the marriage of ammonia and a tire fire. Though this might not be the worst smell combination ever, it has zero food connotation for me, and I’ve never met a Westerner who can take a bite of nattō on the first attempt. What Japanese love, we find disgusting.

In the last several years there has been an explosion of research on disgust. Disgust is one of the six basic emotions—along with joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear—but it is the only one that has to be learned, which suggests something about its complexity.

Most children get their first lessons in disgust around the time that they are potty trained. After that, the triggers of disgust are quickly acquired from the responses and rules of parents, peers and, most importantly, the wider culture. One of the best places to look for the vast differences in what is or is not considered disgusting in different parts of the globe is food, especially distinctive foods, like every culture’s favorite fermented dish.

Take cheese, considered by Westerners to be anything from a comfort food to a luxurious delicacy. A good taleggio, Gorgonzola or Brie might be described as sweaty or slimy. Cheese also has its fair share of aromatic obstacles and, depending on the circumstances, may be confused with vomit, stinky feet or a garbage spill. Many Asians regard all cheese, from processed American slices to Stilton, as utterly disgusting—the equivalent of cow excrement.

Given that cheese can be described as the rotted bodily fluid of an ungulate, that’s not far off…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Oklahoma Bill Proposed To Outlaw Use Of Human Fetuses In Food

JacobSloan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:53:26 +0000

Republican Ralph Shortey believes that in the near future, human fetuses will be added to our food to “enhance flavor” and wants the government and pro-life movement to take action. Is he onto something? Talking Points Memo writes:

An Oklahoma Republican is pushing a bill to outlaw the use of human fetuses in food, because, as he says, “there is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors.”

State Sen. Ralph Shortey introduced a bill on Tuesday “prohibiting the sale or manufacture of food or products which contain aborted human fetuses.”

Though he has allowed that he is not aware of this occurring in Oklahoma, or anywhere for that matter, Shortey cited research he did on the internet that claimed that some companies use embryonic stem cells to help develop artificial flavoring. “It would be a public relations nightmare for a company to use” aborted human fetuses for R&D, Shortey told KRMG Radio, so when asked they usually say something like “we strive to do things ethically.”

“I’m not entirely sure if there are any” companies doing this, he continued. “But the fact is that there is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors. And if that is happening — because it is a possibility — and if it’s happening then I just don’t think it should even be an option for a company.”

Shortey added that if you took this idea to its logical conclusion, you could “force every human being” to be an organ donor, “and that’s kind of what we’re doing with these children. Before they’re born, we’re going to kill them and then we can do anything we want to with your body.”

Fried Food Not A Cause Of Heart Disease

majestic — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:30:53 +0000

The Telegraph’s Stephen Adams reports on a new study belittling the “myth” that regularly eating fried foods causes heart attacks:

They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters.

The latest study, published in the British Medical Journal, found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain – where olive and sunflower oils are mostly used – and the incidence of serious heart disease.

However, the British Heart Foundation warned Britons not to “reach for the frying pan” yet, pointing out that the Mediterranean diet as a whole was healthier than ours.

Spanish researchers followed more than 40,000 people, two-thirds of whom were women, from the mid 1990s to 2004.

At the outset they asked them how often they ate fried foods, either at home or while out. They then looked to see whether eating fried foods regularly increased the likelihood of falling ill from having coronary heart disease, such as a heart attack or angina requiring surgery.

Dividing participants into four groups, from lowest fried food intake to highest, they found no significant difference in heart disease.

There were 606 incidents linked to heart disease in total, but they were split relatively evenly between the four groups.

The authors concluded: “In a Mediterranean country where olive and sunflower oils are the most commonly used fats for frying, and where large amounts of fried foods are consumed both at and away from home, no association was observed between fried food consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or death.”…

[continues in the Telegraph]

McDonald’s Discontinues Use Of ‘Pink Slime’ In Burgers

JacobSloan — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:00:38 +0000

No more slimeburgers? Until recently, 70 percent of burgers in the United States contained “pink slime”, also known as ammoniated boneless lean beef trimmings, a cheap beef filling unfit for consumption until it is gassed with ammonia. Now McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King are dropping the magic additive following a campaign of withering criticism from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Via the Argus Leader:

McDonald’s and two other fast-food chains have stopped using an ammonia-treated burger ingredient that meat industry critics deride as “pink slime.” The product remains widely used as beef filling in burger meat, including in school meals.

The beef is processed by Beef Products Inc. in Iowa and in three other states. One of the company’s chief innovations is to cleanse the beef of E. coli bacteria and other dangerous microbes by treating it with ammonium hydroxide.

“Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs, and after this process we can give it to humans,” food activist Jamie Oliver said in a segment of his ABC television show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, that aired last spring.

BPI, which once boasted of having its product in 70 percent of the hamburgers sold in the country, has lost 25 percent of its business. McDonald’s has been joined by Taco Bell and Burger King in discontinuing use of the product, and the company is worried other chains and retailers will follow them.

Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact

ralph — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:14:13 +0000

If you like soft drinks the way I do, that is, looking like my conception of nuclear waste, this is really good news. From the Smoking Gun:

Defending itself from a lawsuit claiming that an Illinois man found a dead mouse inside a can of Mountain Dew, PepsiCo contends that a rodent would have disintegrated and been transformed into a “jelly-like” substance between the time of the soft drink’s bottling and the day the plaintiff reportedly purchased the soda from a vending machine at his office.

In a court response to a motion filed by Ronald Ball–who claims to have found the dead mouse in a Mountain Dew can about three years ago–PepsiCo filed a fascinating/revolting affidavit from Lawrence McGill, a veterinarian who noted that he was “familiar with the effects an acidic fluid, such as common soda drinks including Mountain Dew, will have on mice and other animals.”

According to McGill, if a mouse is submerged in Mountain Dew between four and seven days, the rodent “will have no calcium in its bones and bony structures.” During those days of soft drink immersion, “the mouse’s abdominal structure will rupture.” Additionally, “its cranial cavity (head) is also likely to rupture within that time period,” McGill noted.

The Fake Sugar Rush

majestic — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:12:22 +0000

Can ingesting so many sugar wannabes be a good thing? Remember that saccharin and aspartame were once touted as safe and calorie free before they were found to be totally toxic. Anne Marie Chaker reports for the Wall Street Journal:

At the Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring, Md., the self-serve coffee counter offers four types of milk and nearly every imaginable alternative to granulated sugar. There’s unrefined sugar, evaporated cane juice, agave nectar—and a no-calorie sugar substitute called Truvia.

The green packets are tucked behind the cash register; if you want it, you have to ask. That’s because they have a way of disappearing. “People take a lot more than they need,” says Liz Burkhart, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.

Truvia’s maker, agricultural giant Cargill Inc., of Minneapolis, is aware that consumers often stock up on Truvia packets at coffee bars and in restaurants. Zanna McFerson, vice president and business director for Cargill Health and Nutrition, says Cargill is developing a dispenser that would limit the number of packets a consumer can take at once.

One reason Truvia is so appealing is its position as a “natural” alternative to aspartame, saccharin and other chemically derived sugar substitutes. Fans say they think Truvia’s taste and texture are closer to sugar than those of older entries. It’s true that Truvia pours out of the packet in convincing crystal-like granules, not in a powder. And when sprinkled on top of foods such as cereal, Truvia crunches.

Some detractors, though, complain of a Truvia aftertaste, especially when it is used in coffee. And many customers blanch at the price. A 40-count box of Truvia packets retails for $4.29 at the Giant Foods supermarket in Silver Spring, compared with $2.99 for a 50-count box of Splenda.

Few consumer products have been a greater marketing challenge than no-calorie sweeteners. Companies have devoted teams of scientists to trying to develop better-tasting sugar-substitutes. “I don’t think anyone’s cracked the code,” says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of brand-consulting firm Landor Associates. Consumers resist, whether complaining about taste or worrying about safety.

Taste “used to be the only thing [marketers] had to worry about,” Mr. Adamson says. “Does it taste good? Is there an aftertaste?” Now, he says, “the new challenge is to alleviate the lingering concerns . . . . Did they really test it on enough rats over a long enough period of time?”…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Where Does Your Food Come From?

majestic — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:14:16 +0000

From Food + Tech Connect:

Fueled by food recalls of everything from cantaloupe to ground beef, the public is now calling for more, and more easily accessible, information about the food they eat.

In fact, 86% of shoppers say the presence of local food – food they believe is healthier, safer and more easily traceable – is important to them when choosing where to shop. The global food safety testing market is also expected to grow into a $2.5 billion industry by in 2015.

In large part, the demand for traceability will be realized through technology. Initially led by industry leaders like IBM and Microsoft, the move to track more complex data and to make it accessible to consumers via the web and smart phones is now being pioneered by private companies and university groups alike.

Food+Tech Connect reflects on the tech advancements of the last year and will continue following this trend over the course of 2012.

Integrated vs Fragmented Chains
IBM announced several technology innovations now in use to track food as it travels through the food supply chain. In partnership with Cherry Central, the company now makes it easier to collect data as fruit travels from processing plant to store and restaurant. This data now contains more food quality and compliance information than was previously available. IBM also recently won a contract to work with Shandong Commercial in China to implement a food monitoring system for use in the pork industry.

But these systems are vertically integrated, while much of the food system is not.

The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium (WCTC) is working to allow “consumers to point a smart phone at a food product bar code, and retrieve a global sourcing map and reliable information about all the steps a product took from the farm to the store,” said Steve Holcombe of Pardalis, Inc. In an interview with Food+Tech Connect, Holcombe and Professors Dr. Brian Adam and Dr. Michael Buser of Oklahoma State, explained that much of the problem lies in fragmented food supply chains where many different companies are buying and selling the product…

[continues at Food + Tech Connect]

Organic Food That’s Bad For The Planet

majestic — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:05:58 +0000

You knew it was too good to be true, of course. The New York Times provides fodder for critics of shipping out of season produce thousands of miles to satisfy the desires of organic food fans. Perhaps this will help push consumers towards seasonal, local foods that are produced both organically and sustainably:

TODOS SANTOS, Mexico — Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’ — that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies…

[continues in the New York Times]

Monsanto’s GM Corn Linked To Organ Failure

majestic — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:18:53 +0000

Make sure you have a GMO-free Christmas y’all! Katherine Goldstein and Gazelle Emami report on the consequences of genetic engineering of seeds by Monsanto, for Huffington Post:

In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto’s GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.

According to the study, which was summarized by Rady Ananda at Food Freedom, “Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn – Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 – were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities.”

Monsanto gathered its own crude statistical data after conducting a 90-day study, even though chronic problems can rarely be found after 90 days, and concluded that the corn was safe for consumption. The stamp of approval may have been premature, however.

In the conclusion of the IJBS study, researchers wrote:

“Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others. We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity….These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown.”

Monsanto has immediately responded to the study, stating that the research is “based on faulty analytical methods and reasoning and do not call into question the safety findings for these products.”

[continues at Huffington Post]

The Flavor Map

majestic — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:21:48 +0000

Ever wonder why certain flavors work well in combination while others are just gross? Scientists Yong-Yeol Ahn, Sebastian E. Ahnert, James P. Bagrow and Albert-László Barabási published their findings in Nature:

Here we introduce a network-based approach to explore the impact of flavor compounds on ingredient combinations. Efforts by food chemists to identify the flavor compounds contained in most culinary ingredients allows us to link each ingredient to 51 flavor compounds on average. We build a bipartite network consisting of two different types of nodes: (i) 381 ingredients used in recipes throughout the world, and (ii) 1,021 flavor compounds that are known to contribute to the flavor of each of these ingredients…

The backbone of the flavor network. Source: Nature

[continues in in Nature]

Norway’s Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet Fad Has Caused a Butter Shortage

bluemana — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:35 +0000

Nick Carbone writes in TIME:

Denmark is trying to wean its people off butter by imposing a hefty “fat tax,” but their neighbors across the Skagerrak in Norway can’t get enough of the golden goodness. A diet fad in the Scandinavian country has depleted the nation’s supply of butter. While we’d use the term “diet” lightly, the newest craze is a low-carb, high-fat feeding frenzy that has put a strain on Norway’s butter supply.

“Sales all of a sudden just soared,” Lars Galtung, head of communications at TINE, the country’s biggest farmer-owned cooperative, told Reuters. “Twenty percent in October then thirty percent in November.” The fat fad coupled with a summer that saw a major reduction in milk production spells empty supermarket dairy fridges. This year’s wet summer ruined animal feed, reducing cows’ outputs to 25 million liters less than last year. As a result, this year’s hot Christmas item isn’t the iPad or an Angry Birds game; it’s much more primitive: butter …

Going To A Public Farm School

Jin_TheNinja — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:31:10 +0000

Are schoolyard farms the best way to counteract the increasingly industrial food provided by school lunches? Via Denver’s ABC affiliate:

DENVER — Just eight months ago, a one-acre plot at the Denver Green School was an unused athletic field, but now that land has come to life with food-bearing vegetation.

“We have harvested over 3,000 pounds of produce from this ground. Lots of salad greens and root vegetables, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers,” said Megan Caley, the programs and outreach coordinator for Sprout City Farms.

Each week during harvest season, the farm produces 150 pounds of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables that end up in the school’s cafeteria.

“Kids are eating healthier,” said Frank Coyne, lead partner at the Denver Green School. “They are excited to eat the tomatoes on the salad bar, they are excited to eat the cucumbers.”

How The Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch

majestic — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:07:35 +0000

Lucy Komisar, who contributed the essay “Dirty Money and Global Banking Secrecy” to the disinformation anthology Everything You Know Is Wrong, contributes a major op-ed to this Sunday’s New York Times:

An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned.

Each day, 32 million children in the United States get lunch at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which uses agricultural surplus to feed children. About 21 million of these students eat free or reduced-price meals, a number that has surged since the recession. The program, which also provides breakfast, costs $13.3 billion a year.

Sadly, it is being mismanaged and exploited. About a quarter of the school nutrition program has been privatized, much of it outsourced to food service management giants like Aramark, based in Philadelphia; Sodexo, based in France; and the Chartwells division of the Compass Group, based in Britain. They work in tandem with food manufacturers like the chicken producers Tyson and Pilgrim’s, all of which profit when good food is turned to bad.

Here’s one way it works. The Agriculture Department pays about $1 billion a year for commodities like fresh apples and sweet potatoes, chickens and turkeys. Schools get the food free; some cook it on site, but more and more pay processors to turn these healthy ingredients into fried chicken nuggets, fruit pastries, pizza and the like. Some $445 million worth of commodities are sent for processing each year, a nearly 50 percent increase since 2006…

[continues in the New York Times]

Think Plastic Bottles Are Toxic? Try Canned Food

majestic — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:55:04 +0000

Here at disinformation we long ago dispensed with plastic water bottles in the wake of our film Tapped, but now it seems that canned foods are way more dangerous in terms of their delivery of BPAs into our bodies. Via CBS News:

Talk about stirring up controversy. A new study shows that the urine of people who consume canned soup can contain surprisingly high levels of bisphenol A (BPA), a hormone-disrupting compound linked to health problems including heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

People who consumed one serving of canned soup a day for five days had a more than 1,000 percent increase in urinary BPA over people who consumed fresh soup for five days, the study showed.

“We’ve known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body,” study author Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student at Harvard School of Public Health, said in a written statement. “This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use.”

BPA is used in the linings of metal food and beverage cans as well as in certain plastic bottles and dental sealants…

[continues at CBS News]

FDA Allows Meat and Produce To Be Blasted with Radioactive Nuclear Waste

Camron Wiltshire — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:59:36 +0000

Photo: DMKTirpitz (CC)

Ethan A. Huff writes on Natural News:

The use of pesticides and the presence of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) are not the only major differentiating factors between conventional food and organic food. According to GreenMedInfo.com, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows the conventional food supply to be irradiated with nuclear waste at extremely high levels, and also treated with deadly bacteriophage virus “cocktails” in order to make it “safe” for consumers.

It is a dirty little secret of the factory food industry, and one that has remained largely veiled thanks to a lack of effective regulation concerning proper labeling. But everything from herbs and spices to vegetables and fruit is effectively murdered with Cobalt-60 gamma radiation derived from the waste of nuclear reactors before being sold to customers.

According to data listed on the FDA’s own website, fresh conventional foods are typically blasted with 1 kilogray (kGy) of gamma radiation, which is the equivalent of 16,700,000 chest X-rays, or 333 times the human lethal dose. Fresh poultry and red meat are subjected to 3 kGys and 4.5 kGys, respectively, with frozen red meat subjected to radiation blasts as high as 7 kGys.

The FDA has approved gamma radiation doses of 10 kGys for enzyme preparations, which include various food additives, solvents, preservatives, and antioxidants. And spices, herbs, and seasonings are permitted to be blasted with an astounding 30 kGys of gamma radiation, which is the equivalent of 500,000,000 chest X-rays, or 10,000 times the human lethal dose.

Congress Declares Pizza A Vegetable For School Lunches

JacobSloan — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:07:11 +0000

Pizza contains two tablespoons of tomato paste and thus will remain the healthy, vegetable portion of children’s lunch across the nation. The move draws criticism from nutritionists but kudos from the head of the American Frozen Food Institute, reports MSNBC:

Congress wants to keep pizza and french fries on school lunch lines, fighting back against an Obama administration proposal to make school lunches healthier.

The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year, which included limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line and delaying limits on sodium and delaying a requirement to boost whole grains. The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to prevent that.

Food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes, and some conservatives in Congress say the federal government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat.

Nutrition advocate Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said Congress’s proposed changes will keep schools from serving a wider array of vegetables. Children already get enough pizza and potatoes, she says. It would also slow efforts to make pizzas — a longtime standby on school lunch lines — healthier, with whole grain crusts and lower levels of sodium. “They are making sure that two of the biggest problems in the school lunch program, pizza and french fries, are untouched,” she said.

“This agreement ensures that nutrient-rich vegetables such as potatoes, corn and peas will remain part of a balanced, healthy diet in federally funded school meals and recognizes the significant amounts of potassium, fiber and vitamins A and C provided by tomato paste, ensuring that students may continue to enjoy healthy meals such as pizza and pasta,” said Kraig Naasz, president of the American Frozen Food Institute.

Soy Protein Present in Egg Yolks and Chicken Tissues

phunkychic666 — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:55:50 +0000

Via Health Freedoms:

There is a growing market today of consumers trying to avoid soy in their diet. Many people have developed soy allergies, and a number of people are concerned about the plant estrogen properties of soy protein. Soy protein is linked to the rise in hypothyroidism, early puberty in young girls, and lower testosterone levels in men, among other problems. Much of this research is documented in Dr. Kaayla Daniel’s book The Whole Soy Story.

What most people do not realize, however, is that due to the predominance of soy in animal feeds, soy protein is probably present in your food even if it is not listed as an ingredient anywhere. Very little testing has been done to determine if the soy protein from the animal feed is passed into the end products we consume. Most laboratories do not even have tests available to test for this.

Professor M. Monica Giusti, a poultry biologist of The Ohio State University, is one of the few people who has done research on soy isoflavones appearing in commercial egg yolks. She has designed lab tests to detect soy isoflavones. In 2009 one of her students published a master’s thesis on the transfer of the soy protein into egg yolks and chicken tissue …

GM Food Needs Mandatory Labels, Food Producers Tell FDA

phunkychic666 — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:59:45 +0000

Molly Peterson writes in Business Week:

Genetically engineered corn, soy and plant oil should be disclosed on mandatory food labels, a coalition of more than 350 producers, trade groups and consumers said in a petition to U.S. regulators.

The U.S. should require added disclosure even when a product containing a gene-altered organism is similar to foods that aren’t bioengineered, the groups said today in the petition to the Food and Drug Administration. Stonyfield Farm, the organic-yogurt maker owned by Danone SA, and Dean Foods Co.’s Horizon Organic are among the coalition members.

Petitioners, led by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, want to reverse a 1992 Food and Drug Administration policy that doesn’t require different labeling. Gene-altered seeds are used for almost 90 percent of U.S.-grown corn, 94 percent of soy and 90 percent of cottonseed, an oil-producing plant, the coalition said.

“Consumers ought to have the right to choose whether to be buying these foods,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive officer of Londonderry, New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farm, in an interview. “Polls show a vast majority of Americans say they don’t want to eat genetically engineered foods.”

Denmark Becomes First Nation With Tax On Fat In Food

JacobSloan — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:00:42 +0000

Is Denmark’s new fat tax a just response to the societal problems caused by obesity? Or is it sweet, buttery tyranny? Via the BBC:

Denmark has introduced what is believed to be the world’s first fat tax – a surcharge on foods that are high in saturated fat. Butter, milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed food are now subject to the tax if they contain more than 2.3% saturated fat.

Some consumers began hoarding to beat the price rise, while some producers call the tax a bureaucratic nightmare.

Danish officials say they hope the new tax will help limit the population’s intake of fatty foods.

However, some scientists think saturated fat may be the wrong target. They say salt, sugar and refined carbohydrates are more detrimental to health and should be tackled instead.

A Simple Cure For Heart Disease

David Irving — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 06:57:17 +0000

David Irving

[disinfo ed.'s note: the following is an excerpt from The Protein Myth: Significantly reducing the Risk of Cancer, Heart Disease, Stoke and Diabetes while Saving the Animals and the Planet courtesy of John Hunt Publishing.]

Current research suggests that death from cardiovascular disease is on the decline. However, the incidence of people who get heart disease remains the same, and risk factors may be increasing.¹ (Cardiovascular disease includes stroke, high blood pressure, heart failure, and other conditions like arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation, cardiomyopathy, and peripheral arterial disease.) Discoveries that isolate the cause of heart disease and offer cures like the remarkable breakthroughs made by Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Dr. Dean Ornish should, consequently, excite cardiologists. Yet in spite of the proved effectiveness of these new treatment options, most mainstream cardiologists and cardiovascular treatment facilities have ignored them.

Dr. Esselstyn began a twelve year cardiac disease arrest and reversal trial in 1985. Five years into the study he published his first findings and the complete report seven years later. Dr. Dean Ornish began his first clinical trial in 1986, issued his first report a year later, and then in 1990 published the results of his study in a widely acclaimed book, Dr. Dean Ornish‘s Program for Reversing Heart Disease.²

Both trials showed conclusively that heart disease can be prevented and reversed though a low-fat, plant-based diet.³ Prior to these trials the field of cardiology considered coronary heart disease to be irreversible.

Dr. Ornish’s plan calls for a diet of no meats and no added fats with an emphasis on whole grain foods, vegetables, fruits, and beans. It permits the consumption of egg whites and nonfat dairy products. Ornish combines his diet with exercise, stress management, and group support. With this plan he was able to reverse severe coronary artery disease without statins or other drugs.⁴ Praise for Ornish’s work, however, is often accompanied by negative criticisms on how difficult the plan is to follow or some other comment that casts it in a less than favorable light. The Mayo Clinic Heart Book, for example, offers a generally favorable review, but comments that “many people find that the program…requires substantial lifestyle changes.”⁵

Dr. Esseltsyn’s program, described in his book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, calls for avoiding oils, meat, fish, fowl and dairy products.⁶ His trial involved 18 patients who in the eight years prior to the trial had experienced 49 coronary events such as “angina, bypass surgery, heart attacks, strokes and angioplasty.” After 12 years on Dr. Esselstyn‘s program, these 18 patients experienced only one coronary event, and that particular patient had dropped out of the program for two years. After he came back and resumed Esselstyn’s plant-based diet he had no further cardiovascular disease occurrences.

The medical establishment does not react to heart disease arrest and reversal programs like those Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish have set up with great enthusiasm. Dr. Campbell, for example, recalls the kind of responses he witnessed from his colleagues steeped in surgical and drug treatment procedures when the evidence began accumulating that nutrition could prevent cardiovascular events from occurring.

I remember when my superiors were only reluctantly accepting the evidence of nutrition being able to prevent heart disease, for example, but vehemently denying its ability to reverse such a disease when already advanced. But the evidence can no longer be ignored.

Those in science or medicine who shut their minds to such an idea are being more than stubborn; they are being irresponsible.⁷

Dr. Esselstyn practiced at the Cleveland Clinic, called by some the “best medical center for cardiac care” in the country, if not the world. Patients fly there from all across the globe for advanced heart disease treatment. It was during Dr. Esselstyn’s work there that he conducted the trial described above.⁸

Besides winning an Olympic gold medal in rowing and a Bronze Star for military service in Vietnam, Esselstyn was President of the Staff at the Cleveland Clinic, member of the Board of Governors, chairman of the Breast Cancer Task Force, and head of the Section of Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery. He was also the president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, author of over 100 professional scientific articles, and he was included on a list of the best doctors in America in 1994 – 1995.⁹

After he had completed his trial with the eighteen coronary patients and after his retirement in the year 2000, Esselstyn proposed to the Cleveland Clinic that he set up an arrest and reversal dietary cardiac program like the one he had done, as an option to be offered to every patient in the clinic suffering from heart disease.¹⁰ The program cost little and presented no risk for patients. The Clinic rehired him as a consultant in 2009 to direct the Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Reversal Program at the Cleveland Wellness Institute.

Many people at the Clinic were excited about Dr. Esselstyn’s work. Staff members and trustees of the Clinic who had developed coronary disease themselves were approaching him for treatment.¹¹

Esselstyn notes that work is presently being done with “stem cells to try to make new blood vessels grow.”¹² He asks if it would not just be easier to prevent the disease in the first place.¹³

Campbell concurs. “We, the public, turn to doctors and hospitals in times of great need,” he says. “For them to provide care that is knowingly less than optimal, that doesn’t protect our health, doesn’t heal our disease and costs us tens of thousands of dollars is morally inexcusable.”¹⁴

It is worthwhile noting that in contrast to heart disease arrest and reversal programs, in 1996 a team of surgical specialists from the Cleveland Clinic flew to Brazil to investigate a new

operation that an unknown surgeon, Dr. Randas Batista, had developed to treat heart failure by strengthening the heart muscle. It involved removing a wedge-shaped piece of tissue from the left ventricle, the main chamber of the heart. Batista had 400 patients under his care and claimed the operation was hugely successful.¹⁵

After consulting with Dr. Batista, the surgical team returned to the Cleveland Clinic and tried out this procedure for themselves on 62 patients, all of whom gave their consent. But the operation turned out to be a dismal failure. Within three years more than a third of the patients had died, and only a quarter were free of heart disease.¹⁶

When surgery was involved, the Cleveland Clinic flew a team of experts to Brazil which subsequently operated on 62 patients in an experimental procedure that was highly dangerous, involved intense pain, cost enormous fees, failed to provide perceived benefits for three-quarters of those operated on, and ultimately proved fatal for more than a third of the participants.

The bias favoring surgery and drugs over treatment by means of nutrition could hardly be more apparent. If the patients who were operated on unsuccessfully with the Brazilian procedure could go back and do it over again — especially those who died — can any rational person doubt that they would choose heart disease arrest and reversal treatment over the one offered by the Cleveland Clinic, the best cardiovascular clinic in the world? Cutting open patients’ chests and splicing in new blood vessels to bypass clogged arteries costs $13 billion a year. One half of all bypass procedures clog up again within 10 years. One third of all angioplasty procedures clog again within four to six months. In contrast, the patients who participated in Dr. Esselstyn‘s program were still disease free two decades after they had finished the program, and never experienced one spasm of pain.¹⁷

It costs considerably less per year, obviously, to undertake a low-fat, plant-based diet as the sole treatment for cardiovascular disease. But while that is great for the bank accounts of patients, it is also a part of the problem. Medical facilities are not anxious to forego their cut of that $13 billion a year heart bypass industry which open heart surgery provides.

Cutting open someone’s chest, it goes without saying, is a surgically complicated, serious, and painful procedure. As Dr. David Eddy, a professor of health policy at Duke University noted, “a coronary artery bypass may change the life expectancy of a 60 year-old man with triple vessel disease, but it will also change his joy of life for several weeks after the operation, the degree and severity of chest pain, his ability to walk and make love, his relationship with his son, the physical appearance of his chest and his pocketbook. Pain, disability, anxiety, family relations, and any number of other outcomes are all important consequences of a procedure.”¹⁸

Patients should not have to endure this kind of sufferingwithout at least being informed that other possibilities exist.

As for Dr. Esselstyn, his goal remains untarnished. He has glimpsed the possibilities and he forges ahead as do all pioneers when faced with mainstream status quo rejection.

I have an ambitious goal: to annihilate heart disease — to abolish it once and for all. Your arteries at the age of ninety ought to work as efficiently as they did when you were nine….We have shown that [this] number one killer in Western civilization can be abolished, through consumption of a plant-based diet. But we can do much more. If the public adopted this approach to preventing disease, if, by the millions, Americans abandoned their toxic diets and learned a truly healthy approach to eating, we could largely limit all those diseases of nutritional extravagance — strokes, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis,and adult-onset diabetes. Meanwhile, we would see a marked reduction in cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, rectum, uterus, and ovaries. Medicine could relinquish its primary focus on pills and procedures. Prevention, not desperate intervention, would become the order of the day.¹⁹

Most medical facilities ignore the work of Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish in favor of more traditional approaches. At the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dr. John Young, director of comparative medicine and chairman of Americans for Medical Progress, a pro-animal testing organization, and his staff work on research projects that include vivisecting pigs in the study of cardiovascular disease. He makes the same pitch all animal researchers make when they want public sympathy and support: the research is exciting; we’re right on the verge of a cure; it’s just around the corner.

In an interview on PBS early in 2009, Young showed off a magnificent, lean and muscular, black-and-cream-colored pig confined in a small holding pen and said: “The cardiovascular system of a pig is almost identical to that of a human being, okay? The coronary arteries, the heart muscle — virtually identical, so pigs are a favorite model for cardiovascular disease.”²⁰

It seems a terrible waste that Dr. Young and the staff of the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center work on experimental heart disease operations that take away the lives of beautiful pigs, like the one Dr. Young displayed, when the exemplary trials completed by Dr. Esseltsyn and Dr. Ornish have scientifically demonstrated that heart disease can be prevented, arrested, and reversed through diet. Undoubtedly, to Dr. Young and others involved in heart surgery, like those at the Cleveland Clinic who participated in the Brazil experiment, heart disease arrest and reversal treatment, no matter how successful, does not meet their standards. We should take a closer look, then, at why, from the standpoint of logic, heart disease arrest and reversal therapy is far superior to drug and surgical procedures.

For a person standing with his/her arm extended into a furnace, the best way to prevent that person’s arm from being burned to a crisp is to have him/her remove it from the furnace. Healing can then begin. That is essentially what the Esselstyn/Ornish treatment does. Since animal protein is the underlying cause of heart disease (and stroke) because it puts saturated fat and cholesterol into the digestive system leading to atherosclerosis and high blood pressure, the best way to halt the progression of the disease and to begin reversing its effects is to stop the cause, which is the consumption of animal protein. It should be apparent that neither Dr. Young nor any researcher at the Cleveland Clinic is likely to surpass this simple method of saving someone from “burning their arm to a crisp.” Remove their arm and the burning stops. Reduce the cholesterol count to 150 mg/dL or below and the heart disease stops. Then start the healing, which includes complete rest from the original cause.

Apparently, though, this is not a satisfactory method for Dr. Young and mainstream medical practitioners more attracted to complexity. In general they seem intent on finding some way in which a person can remain with his/her arm in the oven without burning it, or, in the case of heart disease, can continue consuming animal protein with the accompanying high cholesterol it produces. To many people, that is a farfetched dream that after decades of failure no longer deserves public tax funding, nor should innocent animals be forced to sacrifice their lives to try to achieve a goal that is essentially unethical. It is unethical because 1) it is just plain egotistical arrogance to insist that human beings should be able to put poisons (animal protein) into their bodies and get away with it just because they have a craving for the poisons, and 2) a treatment has now been developed by Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish to treat heart disease so that research to find other treatments that scientists like Dr. Young continue to work on are not necessary, especially when they involve operating on and killing innocent animals.

In comparing his method of cardiovascular treatment to conventional medicine, Dr. Esselstyn described it this way. “All the interventional procedures carry considerable risk of morbidity, including new heart attacks, strokes, infections, and for some, an inevitable loss of cognition… And the benefits of intervention erode with the passage of time; eventually, you have to have another angioplasty, another bypass procedure, another stent… Mine carries none.”²¹

Heart disease has been the number one killer in America for 100 years. Every day nearly 3,000 Americans will have heart attacks and 2400 will die of heart disease.²²,²³ It costs 30 billion dollars a year for heart disease for drugs to control cholesterol, blood pressure and other risk factors. Patients pay $46,000 for bypass operations in which one out of every 50 patients will die of complications. Angioplasty is a simpler procedure but also expensive, and one in about every sixteen angioplasty patients will experience “abrupt vessel closure“ which can lead to death, heart attack, or an emergency bypass.²⁴ Angioplasty patients cannot feel very secure walking around knowing that at any second they may become one of those 1 in 16 who experience “abrupt vessel closure.” Similarly, it cannot be very reassuring for bypass patients lying on the operating table just before going under knowing that they could be among those 1 in 50 who willdie of complications from the operation.

All of this can be prevented. But champions of animal esearch and surgery and drugs would rather continue in the direction of painful open heart surgery in needless bypass operations causing patients unwarranted suffering. According to long-term studies, bypass patients do not even have fewerheart attacks than those who do not have surgery.²⁵

The clinical trials conducted by Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish have proved incontrovertibly that cardiovascular disease can be arrested and reversed through nutrition. Ornish has even widened his research to include prostate cancer and has shown that prostate tumors can also be arrested and reduced through a nutrition program.²⁶But even though the success of Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish has by now been widely reported, few hospitals and medical centers have made an effort to include nutrition arrest and reversal treatments in their cardiac programs. The Ornish program has, fortunately, been picked up by a few hospitals and with great enthusiasm in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, including Stamford Hospital in Connecticut, which is affiliated with the New York Presbyterian Health System, a teaching affiliate of no less than the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, one of the top medical schools in the country.

If more hospitals were to start using cardiovascular arrest and reversal programs it would be possible to begin reducing expensive surgical, radiological, and chemotherapeutic treatments for cardiovascular disease. However, this is just not a priority for heart surgeons and animal researchers who are content with the high salaries and peer prestige they receive for their work. They also get enormous grants in public funding plus quid pro quo employment security for bringing in huge sums of money for the facilities that employ them through patient fees and federally funded tax grants, of which their employers get from 50% to 75%. A further obstacle to the success of arrest and reversal therapy for heart disease are the drug and medical corporations responsible for producing the expensive drugs and equipment for surgical procedures and pre- and postoperative care. Continuing the status quo can only benefit these companies.

Simply put, the healthcare establishment does not want to seriously consider the preponderance of evidence that shows beyond all sustainable doubt that heart disease can be arrested and reversed through nutritional procedures.

Today we are privileged to live in a world of technological advance. Modern science is a marvel to behold. Scientists have developed complex prosthetic body substitutes that respond to electrical activity in the muscles through computer sensors.²⁷ They are working on ways in which our own bodies might regenerate blood vessels. Research is being conducted for avoiding the risk of defects in childbirth. Exploration has begun on how to clone cells to create organs and even body parts.

In the field of cancer research, scientists are now trying to develop drugs to choke off the blood supply to tumors, thereby killing them. They are investigating many compounds including green tea and thalidomide, the drug responsible for the horrendous birth defects in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They also see promise in a drug derived from the bark of the African bush willow tree that Zulu witch doctors have used for centuries as a medicine and to apply as a poison to the tips of their arrows.²⁸ Yet when it comes to recognizing that heart disease could be almost totally eliminated through nutrition so that it is nearly nonexistent as a threat to human life, scientists and surgeons married to surgery and drugs plug their ears and do not want to hear one word.

Footnotes

1. American Heart Association, “Cardiovascular disease death rates decline, but risk factors still exact heavy toll,”

(12/1/2007), http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml? identifier=3052670 2. Esselstyn, pp. 89 – 91.

2. Dean Ornish, M.D., Eat More, Weigh Less, (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994).

3. Ibid., see Chapter 5.

4. Gersh, p. 190.

5. Ibid.

6. Campbell, p. 126

7. Ibid., p. 23.

8 . Ibid., pp. 125, 323.

9. Ibid., pp. 338 – 341.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., pp. 339, 340.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Richard Horton, Health Wars: On the Global Front Lines of Modern Medicine, (New York: The New York Review of Books , 2003), p. 436.

16. Ibid.

17. Esselstyn, p. 55.

18. Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think, (New York: First Mariner Books, 2007), p. 155.

19. Esselstyn, pp. 11, 108.

20. PBS interview of Dr. John Young, “Animal Testing Ethics,” Religious & Ethics Newsweekly, (August 15, 2008), Episode no. 1150, contains interview transcription and video, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1150/cover.html

21. Esselstyn, p. 4.

22. American Heart Association, “AHA Statistical Update, Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics – 2009 Update,” p. e22, http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/CIRCULATIONAHA.108.191261

23. Campbell, pp. 111 – 123.

24. Ibid., p. 124.

25. Ibid.

26. Annieappleseed Project, “Dean Ornish, Nutrition and Prostate Cancer,” from Dr. Gregor Newsletter, (Fall 2005),

http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/deanornutpro.html See also Washington Post, Rob Stein, “Study Shows Diet,

Exercise, and Reduced Stress Slow Prostate Cancer,” (August 11, 2005), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/

content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081001882.html

27. Robert Winston and Lori Oliwenstein, Superhuman, (New

York: Dorling Kindersly, 2000).

28. Ibid., p. 165.

David Irving is a vegan and an animal rights activist. His writings on various animal rights issues have appeared on Cyrano’s Journal, Thomas Paine’s Corner, All-Creatures.org, Press Action, Radical Noesis, Dandelion Salad, The Animals Voice, and other blogs and journals.

An accomplished musician, he is a composer and has played French horn with ensembles like the Marlboro and Cabrillo music festivals and the San Francisco Ballet and the San Francisco Opera. He was a member of the 7th Army Symphony, the Graz Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra (Austria), and the Oakland Symphony. David attended the New England Conservatory of Music, the Vienna Academy of Music, and graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University from which he also earned an M.A. in music composition. His compositions are performed in the United States and Europe.

He has lived in Boston, Vienna and Graz (Austria), San Francisco, and New York City. He presently makes his home in the upper Catskill Mountain region of New York where he attends to and is attended by his three cats, Lewie-Lew, Goldie Boy, and Loonie. David has a twin brother, Darrel, who is a classical guitarist and an editor and author of several books. They were born in Kankakee, Illinois and grew up in Bluffton, Indiana.

The High Price Of Cheap Food

majestic — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:28:31 +0000

Mark Bittman asks and answers the question “Is junk food really cheaper?” in the New York Times:

The “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”

This is just plain wrong. In fact it isn’t cheaper to eat highly processed food: a typical order for a family of four — for example, two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, six chicken McNuggets, two medium and two small fries, and two medium and two small sodas — costs, at the McDonald’s a hundred steps from where I write, about $28. (Judicious ordering of “Happy Meals” can reduce that to about $23 — and you get a few apple slices in addition to the fries!)

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home. You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that’s too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it’s easily enough for four people and costs about $9. (Omitting the bacon, using dried beans, which are also lower in sodium, or substituting carrots for the peppers reduces the price further, of course.)

Another argument runs that junk food is cheaper when measured by the calorie, and that this makes fast food essential for the poor because they need cheap calories. But given that half of the people in this country (and a higher percentage of poor people) consume too many calories rather than too few, measuring food’s value by the calorie makes as much sense as measuring a drink’s value by its alcohol content. (Why not drink 95 percent neutral grain spirit, the cheapest way to get drunk?)

Besides, that argument, even if we all needed to gain weight, is not always true. A meal of real food cooked at home can easily contain more calories, most of them of the “healthy” variety. (Olive oil accounts for many of the calories in the roast chicken meal, for example.)In comparing prices of real food and junk food, I used supermarket ingredients, not the pricier organic or local food that many people would consider ideal. But food choices are not black and white; the alternative to fast food is not necessarily organic food, any more than the alternative to soda is Bordeaux.

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative…

[continues in the New York Times]

Monsanto Corn Falls to Illinois Bugs

Good German — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:09:08 +0000

Tom Philpott writes in Mother Jones:

As the summer growing season draws to a close, 2011 is emerging as the year of the super-insect — the year pests officially developed resistance to Monsanto’s genetically engineered (ostensibly) bug-killing corn.

While the revelation has given rise to alarming headlines, neither Monsanto nor the EPA, which regulates pesticides and pesticide-infused crops, can credibly claim surprise. Scientists have been warning that the EPA’s rules for planting the crop were too lax to prevent resistance since before the agency approved the crop in 2003. And in 2008, research funded by Monsanto itself showed that resistance was an obvious danger.

And now those unheeded warnings are proving prescient. In late July, as I reported recently, scientists in Iowa documented the existence of corn rootworms (a ravenous pest that attacks the roots of corn plants) that can happily devour corn plants that were genetically tweaked specifically to kill them. Monsanto’s corn, engineered to express a toxic gene from a bacterial insecticide called Bt, now accounts for 65 percent of the corn planted in the US…

It Takes 110 Chemicals To Grow A Tomato In Florida

majestic — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:36:09 +0000

There is so much wrong with Florida tomatoes it’s hard to believe that anyone will touch them. One farmer tells author Barry Estabrook “I get paid per pound. I don’t get paid a cent for taste.” He also says the farm workers are slaves: “Slavery is what is happening. There is no way to gloss it. You can’t say ’slavery-like.’ You can’t say ‘near-slavery.’ ‘Human trafficking’ doesn’t even do it credit.”

He’s interviewed by CNN’s Eatocracy blog:

Eatocracy: How did you become invested in telling the story of the modern day tomato?

Estabrook: I became interested in tomatoes when I was in fact attacked by a group of tomatoes. I was driving down an interstate highway in Southwestern Florida and come up behind what I thought at first was a gravel truck. As I got closer, I saw what I took for Granny Smith apples – and I thought, “Those don’t grow in Florida.” When I got really close, I saw it was full of bright green tomatoes. No pink – just green.

I was mesmerized, and then the truck hit a bump. Three tomatoes came flying off and nearly went through my windshield. I noticed that they hit the pavement on I-75, bounced and then rolled into the ditch.

They didn’t shatter, they didn’t splatter; they stayed intact. I thought, “My God! What have they done to this wonderful fruit?”…

[continues at Eatocracy]

Is Milk Good or Bad for Me? (Video)

phunkychic666 — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 19:15:03 +0000

Got the facts on Milk? is the work of filmaker Shira Lane whose dairy allergy prompted her to examine the scientific research on the subject. Apparently she did not find satisfactory answers to her questions. On her month-long, 4600-mile journey from Los Angeles to Washington DC through the American Southwest and Bible Belt, she interviewed top doctors and researchers, dietitians, dairy farmers, veterinarians, parents, teachers, and plenty of “ordinary Americans” who provide both comic relief and food for thought.

The movie contends that the political and financial power of the dairy industry have done a great disservice to millions of Americans. She brings research on the connection between dairy consumption and cancer, osteoporosis, weight gain, asthma, acne, hormones, early menstruation, as well as the prevalence of lactose intolerance in African Americans, Asian Americans and Indigenous Americans.

According to Lane: “Having a lifelong dairy allergy has forced me to learn how to read food labels and ask questions in restaurants, and the more research I did, the more passionate I became,” said Lane. “I would have wanted my parents to watch this film when I was growing up and I hope the information helps others.”

Do You Live in A ‘Food Swamp’?

ralph — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:38:05 +0000

Interesting article on The Week. It says that it’s really not the lack of access to healthy food (what the USDA terms a “food desert”) but living close to fast-food joints and convenience stores (i.e. a “food swamp”) is what is more influential in eating habits. People like convenience — sure, doesn’t sound like rocket science — but more telling is that fast-food restaurants outnumber supermarkets by 5 to 1 in the U.S. Americans really do like convenience, a hell of a lot. Over cost as well, it seems, since you will get a lot more bang for your buck in a supermarket. Reports The Week:

So what’s the real problem? Many people simply like fast food better. A recent University of North Carolina (UNC) study of the eating habits of 5,000 people over 15 years found that living near a supermarket had little impact on whether people had healthy diets. But living close to fast-food outlets did. The real problem, the study found, is the existence of “food swamps,” filled with convenience stores selling calorie-loaded packaged foods, gallon cups of soda, and other sugar-loaded beverages, and fast-food chains peddling burgers, fries, and fried chicken on almost every street corner. That’s no exaggeration: There are now five fast-food restaurants for every supermarket in the U.S.

Britain Is Only ‘Four Meals Away From Anarchy’

Join Or DIE — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 06:43:52 +0000

[Site notice: Re-posting this now (originally posted 7/19/2011) due to a timely observation (of an older post) from Disinfo.com commenter SuddenlySpam.] A blast from the past for all you newshounds. Enjoy via the Times:

Modern civilisation may not be quite as safe as we thought. Britain’s security services have been privately warning their staff that western societies are just 48 hours from anarchy. MI5’s maxim is that society is “four meals away from anarchy”. In other words, the security agency believes that Britain could be quickly reduced to large-scale disorder, including looting and rioting in the event of a catastrophe that stops the supply of food.

The maxim will provoke debate over whether MI5 is over-egging the threat, partly to justify its rapidly growing budget. It also opens a wider question as to whether civilised societies could so quickly revert to primitive behaviour. MI5 — whose motto is “regnum defende”, defend the realm — uses the “four meals” rule to assess the threat levels from attacks on strategic installations, such as computer networks and power stations; natural disasters; or widespread strikes and civil disobedience.

The Raw Food Conspiracy

majestic — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:27:12 +0000

Courtesy Counterthink.com/NaturalNews.com

SWAT teams assaulting farmers for conspiring to distribute raw milk? Who wrote this fantasy, Aldous Huxley? Actually, no, it’s an all too real event from California, reported by Mike Adams for Natural News:

The raid on Rawesome Foods by a combined force of agents from the FDA, LA County Dept of Agriculture, CDC and the LA County Sheriff’s office wasn’t the only SWAT-style armed raid that took place today. Sharon Palmer, a mom and owner of Healthy Family Farms was also arrested and taken to jail. A third woman, Victoria Bloch, the LA County liaison for the Weston A Price Foundation (www.WestonaPrice.org) , was also reportedly arrested, NaturalNews has learned.

Sharon Palmer is being charged with “mislabeling cheese,” NaturalNews has learned. (Yes, mislabeling cheese! This earns you an armed raid in America today, even while the real crooks in Washington run free…) This is on top of the conspiracy charge which has been leveled against all three (James, Sharon and Victoria).

Victoria Bloch is being charged with conspiracy under Section 182A of the California penal code (http://law.onecle.com/california/pe…), which states that that law applies “If two or more persons conspire to commit any crime.”

As NaturalNews previously reported (http://www.naturalnews.com/033220_R…), the SWAT-style raid was conducted like a terrorist operation, where the cops immediately went after Rawesome’s cash and then began vandalizing and destroying the store’s entire inventory. This raid was an act of economic terrorism against a legitimate, ethical business selling wholesome, healthful products to a very happy group of members.

A massive public protest on the front steps of the LA courthouse is being planned for the morning of August 4th, where James Stewart has been promised a hearing before a judge. NaturalNews is calling on its readers and supporters to join in this protest to help send a message to the law enforcement tyrants that we will not tolerate our health food stores being terrorized by criminal cops and rogue federal agencies. We will announce the time and place of the protest as soon as we are provided the details. Watch for that announcement here on NaturalNews.com or on our Facebook page:www.Facebook.com/HealthRanger …

[continues at Natural News]

Vegan Is The New Viagra!

majestic — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:34:54 +0000

In the hot new doc promoting a plant-based diet, Forks Over Knives, Dr. Terry Mason calls erectile disfunction “the canary in the coalmine” for cardiovascular problems. This promo clip goes quite a bit farther than that … the vegan diet has never sounded so compelling!

A Tax On Unhealthy Foods?

majestic — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:49:24 +0000

Source: New York Times

The New York Times‘ Mark Bittman proposes a tax on junk food. What do you think – is he right?

What will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet. (Yes, it’s SAD.)

Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives.

And — not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending — a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs.

Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix…

Simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually. That money could be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonal greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit…

[continues in the New York Times]

A Visionary Way To Bring Good Food To The Poor Is Taking Off

Pelliciari — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:45:34 +0000

Photo: Carrie Leber

Don’t have enough money to go out and eat? Panera Cares is an innovative café that allows you to pay what you can without leaving you feeling guilty or hungry. Via AlterNet:

If you were to only judge the world by watching the news, you’d think we had collectively lost all of our humanity, our intergrity. Neverending wars, devastating environmental disasters, punishing austerity measures… all of which impact the poorer among us more than the richer. Rare is the voice that speaks for the underprivileged. But, if you listen hard enough, you might just hear a little whisper out there in the distance.

Among those voices, Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich might well be the loudest. Last year, Shaich began an experiment in Clayton, Missouri. He opened a Panera Cares pay-what-you-can café and it has been an unqualified success, so much so that he has since opened two more locations – in Dearborn, Michigan, and Portland, Oregon. The goal, now, is to open one per quarter in diverse communities around the country – the geographical logic being that the folks with more means can help offset those with less.

[Continues at AlterNet]

Disinformation » Food

What Do You Call ‘Disgusting’?

Oklahoma Bill Proposed To Outlaw Use Of Human Fetuses In Food

Fried Food Not A Cause Of Heart Disease

McDonald’s Discontinues Use Of ‘Pink Slime’ In Burgers

Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact

The Fake Sugar Rush

Where Does Your Food Come From?

Organic Food That’s Bad For The Planet

Monsanto’s GM Corn Linked To Organ Failure

The Flavor Map

Norway’s Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet Fad Has Caused a Butter Shortage

Going To A Public Farm School

How The Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch

Think Plastic Bottles Are Toxic? Try Canned Food

FDA Allows Meat and Produce To Be Blasted with Radioactive Nuclear Waste

Congress Declares Pizza A Vegetable For School Lunches

Soy Protein Present in Egg Yolks and Chicken Tissues

GM Food Needs Mandatory Labels, Food Producers Tell FDA

Denmark Becomes First Nation With Tax On Fat In Food

A Simple Cure For Heart Disease

David Irving [disinfo ed.'s note: the following is an excerpt from The Protein Myth: Significantly reducing the Risk of Cancer, Heart Disease, Stoke and Diabetes while Saving the Animals and the Planet courtesy of John Hunt Publishing.]

David Irving is a vegan and an animal rights activist. His writings on various animal rights issues have appeared on Cyrano’s Journal, Thomas Paine’s Corner, All-Creatures.org, Press Action, Radical Noesis, Dandelion Salad, The Animals Voice, and other blogs and journals.

The High Price Of Cheap Food

Monsanto Corn Falls to Illinois Bugs

It Takes 110 Chemicals To Grow A Tomato In Florida

Is Milk Good or Bad for Me? (Video)

Do You Live in A ‘Food Swamp’?

Britain Is Only ‘Four Meals Away From Anarchy’

The Raw Food Conspiracy

Vegan Is The New Viagra!

A Tax On Unhealthy Foods?

A Visionary Way To Bring Good Food To The Poor Is Taking Off

David Irving

[disinfo ed.'s note: the following is an excerpt from The Protein Myth: Significantly reducing the Risk of Cancer, Heart Disease, Stoke and Diabetes while Saving the Animals and the Planet courtesy of John Hunt Publishing.]