• Study Proves Three Monsanto Corn Varieties’ Noxiousness to the Organism
  By Le Monde with AFP
  Truthout, December 11, 2009
  Straight to the Source

Editor’s Note: Please click here to read the study. For more information on Monsanto’s unsafe GMO crops, please visit OCA’s Millions Against Monsanto Campaign page.

A study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences demonstrates the toxicity of three genetically modified corn varieties from the American seed company Monsanto, the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (Criigen, based in Caen), which participated in that study, announced Friday, December 11.

“For the first time in the world, we’ve proven that GMO are neither sufficiently healthy nor proper to be commercialized. [...] Each time, for all three GMOs, the kidneys and liver, which are the main organs that react to a chemical food poisoning, had problems,” indicated Gilles-Eric Séralini, an expert member of the Commission for Biotechnology Reevaluation, created by the EU in 2008.

Caen and Rouen University researchers, as well as Criigen researchers, based their analyses on the data supplied by Monsanto to health authorities to obtain the green light for commercialization, but they draw different conclusions after new statistical calculations. According to Professor Séralini, the health authorities based themselves on a reading of the conclusions Monsanto has presented and not on conclusions drawn from the totality of the data. The researchers were able to obtain complete documentation following a legal decision.

“Monsanto’s tests, effected over 90 days, are obviously not of sufficient duration to be able to say whether chronic illnesses are caused. That’s why we ask for tests over a period of at least two years,” explained one researcher. Consequently, the scientists demand a “firm prohibition” on the importation and cultivation of these GMOs.

I buy certain staples like organic cheese and organic butter when they are on sale and keep them in the freezer.

Consider buying your organic meats, eggs, and fish in bulk and store in a larger freezer out in the garage.

Remember we have to pay for our health one way or another. Prevention is key. The food that graces your kitchen table is the best disease prevention money can buy. President Obama thinks that we will never fix the National Deficit until we fix the Health Care Crisis, I think we will never fix the Health Care Crisis until we fix the crisis at our kitchen tables.

Here are my favorite cheap health foods:

Flax seeds
Oatmeal
Brown Rice
Apples
Yams/Sweet potatoes
Broccoli
Spinach
Canned tomatoes
Carrots
Bananas

Tips I have learned from the Whole Foods School of Hard Knocks:

-Avoid buying a bunch of healthy stuff you don’t know how to prepare. Nothing is more wasteful than a bunch of rotting random veggies in your fridge. Instead, commit to making one new healthy recipe per week, experiment with new ingredients and recipes gradually to avoid wasting valuable grocery dollars. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the different grain options, make friends with them one recipe at a time.

-Drink a smoothie in place of one meal each day. You can easily get two servings of fruits out of the way by doing so. Buy frozen fruit when it is on sale, or save money each summer by picking and freezing your own.

-Shop at Farmer’s Markets for produce once weekly when possible. Plan meals around the foods that are in season, rely heavily on fresh herbs, pepper, garlic, and onions to season your food in lieu of organic sea salt.

-Buy frozen chicken breasts and fish on sale.

-Shop organic when possible, buy “The Dirty Dozen” organic, and save your organic dollars on the “Foods Least Likely to Contain Pesticides”.

-Avoid canned foods and opt for frozen. Always keep a little frozen broccoli, spincach, cauliflower, and mixed veggies in the freezer. You can quickly dress up any recipe by adding some steamed frozen veggies. Add one cup of frozen veggies to every frozen meal you prepare, most veggies will mix in nicely with the sauce. The fiber in the vegetables will keep you feeling full longer.

Remember that eating healthy is an investment in your current and long term health.

By Dr. Nicole Sundene

Source: An alarming study published in the Journal of Biological Science this week points toward serious health hazards from genetically engineered foods and pesticides. The research, conducted by scientists from France, Italy, New Zealand, U.K. and U.S., corroborates the decade-long criticism by public interest organizations such as the Organic Consumers Association, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth that European Food Safety bureaucrats and the U.S. FDA have used unreliable tests to assess the safety of food and products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). GMOs are now found in more than 80% of (non-organic) foods sold in conventional grocery stores in the U.S., as well as the majority of animal feed in the EU.

Learn more

Bookmark this link! and share it with everyone you know!

That said, I realize that’s not always realistic for all of us all of the time. We like to have convenience foods to help us deal with our time crunches, and that’s OK. But I recommend that you read the labels. Choose packaged foods made with real-food ingredients over those with factory-created components.

Be a smart consumer and look for things that are going to help your body thrive. When you pick something up, ask yourself the question: “Is this something my great grandmother would have eaten?” If the answer is “no,” you should probably put it back. Things like frozen blueberries or canned black beans can still be good for you, as long as they don’t contain a bunch of unhealthy and unnecessary ingredients.

STOCKING A HEALTHY PANTRY

Now that you know what to avoid, go to your cabinets, refrigerator, and freezer and toss out any foods that contain the ingredients on the avoid list.

Here’s a list of foods that you can replace in your pantry with healthier foods.

· Refined White Sugar – replace with stevia, agave nectar, honey, brown rice syrup, or Rapadura Whole Cane Organic Unrefined Sugar

· Margarine – replace with organic real butter

· Table Salt – replace with natural Celtic Sea Salt

· Skippy, Jif or other Peanut Butter – replace with natural peanut butter with only two ingredients: peanuts and salt.

· Canned veggies/fruit – eat fresh fruits and veggies

· Soft drinks – good clean water, sparkling water, herbal teas

· Pasta – replace with brown rice pasta, quinoa pasta, or whole wheat pasta if your not sensitive to gluten or wheat.

· White Flour – replace with 100% whole wheat flour, or whole wheat pastry flour or other non-gluten flours.

· White Bread – replace with a good 100% whole grain bread. The ingredient list should be short with only a few ingredients such as whole wheat flour, yeast, honey, salt.

· Crackers – replace with whole grain crackers – try Ak-Mak, Mary’s Gone Crackers, or Back to Nature Harvest Whole Wheats

· Breakfast Cereals – Go with a whole grain one, look for short ingredient lists.

Written by Dee McCaffrey, CDC

Learn more

Ever since Nixon, government policy has been to sell large quantities of calories as cheaply as possible — especially calories coming from corn. Now, a quarter of the 45,000 items in the average supermarket contain processed corn, often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.

The result?

Rates of chronic diseases like cancer and Type 2 diabetes are much higher today than they were in 1900. Type 2 diabetes is a $100 billion a year consequence of, among other things, obesity related to a corn-based diet. Four of the top 10 causes of American deaths — coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer – have well-established links to diet as well.

Making matters worse, by now you may have seen “crystalline fructose” as an ingredient in beverages.

If you’ve been wondering what it was, it turns out that crystalline fructose “is produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup.” This information is from the sugar producers themselves. So, it is made from corn syrup, and not only corn syrup, but “fructose enriched” corn syrup. Sounds like another name for high fructose corn syrup.

Fructose and glucose are metabolized differently in the body. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body, but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. When a diet includes a large amount of fructose, then it creates a fatty liver, and even cirrhosis. Crystalline Fructose contains a 99.5 percent minimum of fructose assay, which is an even higher percentage of fructose than regular HFCS!

Another ingredient of crystalline fructose is arsenic. Additional chemical compounds that make up crystalline fructose are heavy metals, lead, and chloride.

Sources:

Smokinchoices March 10, 2009

Cleaner Plate Club May 23, 2008

The Fit Shack March 28, 2007

One in 26 U.S. children have food allergies — up 18 percent in the past decade.

In all, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that about 3 million kids have food allergies, which occur when your immune system overreacts to a food it mistakenly believes is harmful. If your immune system determines, for instance, that peanuts are harmful, it will produce specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies to peanuts.

The next time you eat the particular food, your immune system then releases chemicals, including histamine, that are intended to protect your body from the substance. The problem is that these chemicals trigger an array of irritating and potentially very serious symptoms that can impact your respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract, skin and cardiovascular system.

In fact, the number of children hospitalized for food allergies has also increased, according to the CDC. Hospital discharges rose from 2,600 a year in the late 1990s to over 9,500 a year in recent years.

Yet, food allergies are not the only ones on the rise.

A national survey conducted from 1988 to 1994 by the National Institutes of Health found that more than 50 percent of Americans ages 6 to 59 are sensitive to at least one allergen. That’s two to five times the rate found in a previous 1976 to 1980 survey.

Why are Allergies Increasing so Dramatically?

One theory is that parents and doctors are now more aware of allergies and their symptoms, meaning they’re more likely to identify the problem.

“A couple of decades ago, it was not uncommon to have kids sick all the time and we just said ‘They have a weak stomach’ or ‘They’re sickly,”‘ Anne Munoz-Furlong, chief executive of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, told CNN.

Yet, the increases are steep enough to suggest that something deeper is going on. Some potential causes of the emerging allergy epidemic include:

• Over-sanitized environments and too many antibiotics (in food and as medicine). “We’ve developed a cleanlier lifestyle, and our bodies no longer need to fight germs as much as they did in the past,” said Marc McMorris, a pediatric allergist at the University of Michigan Health System, in Live Science. “As a result, the immune system has shifted away from fighting infection to developing more allergic tendencies.”
• Air pollution. Diesel fumes, ozone and other common air pollutants are known to trigger allergies and asthma. As levels of pollution rise, so do allergies. In fact, according to a study led by Joachim Heinrich, Ph.D., of the German Research Center for Environment and Health at the Institute of Epidemiology, in Munich, traffic-related air pollution can increase the risk of allergy and atopic diseases in children by more than 50 percent!
• Children are taking longer to outgrow food allergies than in the past.
• Peanut allergies in children have doubled, studies show, fueling the increase (yet no one knows exactly why peanut allergies are rising).

Source: sixwise.com