Health & WellnessS


Red Flag

15 Food Companies That Serve You 'Wood'

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Wood pulp, or cellulose, in processed food! Are you getting what you pay for on your plate?
The recent class-action lawsuit brought against Taco Bell raised questions about the quality of food many Americans eat each day.

Chief among those concerns is the use of cellulose (wood pulp), an extender whose use in a roster of food products, from crackers and ice creams to puddings and baked goods, is now being exposed. What you're actually paying for - and consuming - may be surprising.

Cellulose is virgin wood pulp that has been processed and manufactured to different lengths for functionality, though use of it and its variant forms (cellulose gum, powdered cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, etc.) is deemed safe for human consumption, according to the FDA, which regulates most food industry products. The government agency sets no limit on the amount of cellulose that can be used in food products meant for human consumption. The USDA, which regulates meats, has set a limit of 3.5% on the use of cellulose, since fiber in meat products cannot be recognized nutritionally.

Attention

Avoiding Artificial Sweeteners? This Study Will Surprise You...

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© iStockphoto.com
For those of you who are aware of the health dangers posed by artificial sweeteners and dutifully avoid them, the featured study findings may come as a shocking surprise...

Researchers have found that the artificial sweetener sucralose (Splenda) is a widespread contaminant in waste water, surface water, and ground water. In a recent test, water samples from 19 U.S. drinking water treatment plants serving more than 28 million people were analyzed for sucralose. The sweetener was found to be present in:
  • The source water of 15 out of 19 of drinking water treatment plants tested
  • The finished water of 13 out of 17 plants, and
  • In 8 out of 12 water distribution systems
The average amounts of sucralose in source water and finished water was 440 ng/L and 350 ng/L respectively.

Smoking

British government to introduce plain packaging to deter youths from smoking

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© Alex Segre/AlamyThere's little evidence to show that plain packaging will deter young people from buying cigarettes.
Forcing cigarette manufacturers to introduce plain packaging, following Australia's lead, will not prevent young people smoking, says Richard White

Australia's health minister Nicola Roxon is aiming for the country to be the first to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. In what she calls a "courageous" move against the tobacco industry, legislation is expected to come into force on 1 July 2012 that will make all packets a uniform olive green with the name of the brand in small type. The World Medical Association has called on other governments to follow Australia's example.

Here in the UK, health secretary Andrew Lansley says he wants to look at the idea of introducing plain packaging so that brightly-coloured cigarette packets do not lure youths into smoking. The coalition government will launch an official consultation by the end of the year to discuss introducing plain packaging in England as part of its tobacco control plan. It is unlikely to happen soon, however, as ministers and the Department of Health have stated that they want to judge the effectiveness of the measure in Australia before making a firm decision.

Comment: See, your government cares about your children! Nevermind that they have indentured them and their children to lifetimes of debt slavery and promote foods that are killing them slowly, tobacco must be the culprit!

And now for the propaganda antidote: Pestilence, the Great Plague and the Tobacco Cure


Cookie

Kid's Health: Food Allergies, Diet and Child Behavior

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© Unknown
When Jodi Sternoff Cohen of Seattle became overwhelmed by her then-4-year-old son's hyperactivity - and his recurring bouts of vomiting, rashes and ear infections - she searched for solutions in every parenting class and book she could get her hands on. And yet, no matter which method or approach she tried, nothing seemed to help.

"Everywhere we went, I felt like this total failure who couldn't control my child," Cohen says. She knew her family needed help, but when doctors suggested treating the ear infections with tubes and the behavior (which they thought may be attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD) with medication, she resisted. "I didn't think it was necessary. There had to be a different way."

Comment: For further information regarding a healthy diet, see these Sott links:

ADHD: It's The Food, Stupid

Everything About Fat


Ambulance

First, Let Them Get Sick

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© Unknown
In Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs tells how, in the 1920s, one of her aunts moved to an isolated North Carolina village to, among other things, have a church built. The aunt suggested to the villagers that the church be built out of the large stones in a nearby river. The villagers scoffed: Impossible. They had not just forgotten how to build with stone, they had forgotten it was possible.

A similar forgetting has taken place among influential Western intellectuals - the people whose words you read every day. Recently I wrote about why health care is so expensive. One reason is that the central principle of our health care is not the meaningless advertising slogan promoted by doctors ("first, do no harm") but rather the entirely nasty first, let them get sick. Let people get sick. Then we (doctors, etc.) can make money from them. This is actually how the system works.

People

With more talk in mind

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© Robin Cowcher.
Serious problems in Victoria's mental health system have been revealed recently in The Age. The important thing now is to find solutions. In doing so we should remember that although Victoria is in the spotlight, similar ''crises'' occur regularly all over the world. Perhaps this is because Victoria is not alone in having a system based on fundamentally flawed principles.

Mental health services have become increasingly dominated by psychiatry's ''medical model'', which claims that feeling depressed, anxious or paranoid is primarily caused by genetic predispositions and chemical imbalances.

This has led to alarming rises in chemical solutions to distress. In New Zealand, one in nine adults (and one in five women) is prescribed antidepressants every year.

Sherlock

If Your Multivitamin Contains These Ingredients - Dump them now..

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© hbbase.com
Both sodium selenite and selenate are classified as dangerous and toxic to the environment. They can be carcinogenic and genotoxic, and may contribute to reproductive and developmental problems in animals and humans. Nonetheless, they are the primary forms of the mineral sold on the mass market today.

Most mass-market vitamins actually contain chemicals that the EPA has banned from public drinking water at levels above 50 parts per billion. That's the equivalent of a tablespoon of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool.

According to Green Med Info:
"... [T]his is not the first time in American history that such a hoax has been perpetuated on the public. The FDA-approved use of fluoride in our drinking water and the use of radioactive cobalt-60 culled from nuclear reactors for the IRRADIATION OF conventional food illustrates how industrial waste products with known toxicity are eventually converted into commodities or technologies 'beneficial to health.' Whereas initially these substances have very high disposal costs for the industries that excrete them into our environment, the liability is converted - through the right combination of lobbying, miseducation and "checkbook science" - back into a commodity".

Attention

Growing Concern Over Drugs Fed to Animals

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© lowdensitylifestyle.com
Drugs fed to animals to promote growth and prevent diseases may play a key role in the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, microbiologists said Sunday.

The practice of administering large quantities of antimicrobial drugs "favours the emergence of drug resistant bacteria that can spread to humans through the consumption of contaminated food, from direct contact with animals or by environmental spread," said Awa Aidara-Kane of the World Health Organization.

"In addition, genes encoding for resistance can be transmitted from zoonotic bacteria to human pathogens," added Aidara-Kane, who leads the WHO Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance.

She was speaking during the 51st annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy meeting this weekend in Chicago.

Comment: For more information about Farmacology: Antibiotics resistance generated at factory farms and what the FDA 'claims' to be doing about the serious issue with antibiotic resistance in humans read the following articles:

What the USDA Doesn't Want You to Know About Antibiotics and Factory Farms
The FDA Finally Reveals How Many Antibiotics Factory Farms Use
How Factory Farms Are Pumping Americans Full of Deadly Bacteria and Pathogens
As MRSA Gets Worse, the FDA Discovers Antibiotic Abuse on Factory Farms
The Problem with Factory Farms
Why Factory Farms Threaten Your Health
Factory Farms Make You Sick. Let Us Count the Ways


Stop

US: Child Abuse Head Injuries Increased During Recession, Study Finds

Parents Arguing
© Gladskikh Tatiana, ShutterstockParents argue as a child sits by.
Despite earlier reports that child abuse did not increase during the economic recession of 2007 to 2009, a new study finds that at least one measure of abusiveness went up in several areas of the U.S. during that time.

Abusive head trauma (AHT), or head injuries from abuse in children, became more common in three geographic areas in the U.S. during the hard times of the recession compared with the years prior, according to a study published today (Sept. 19) in the journal Pediatrics. The study can't prove that the hard times caused the increased injury rate, but the study researchers found the data troubling.

"The presence of an association between the economy and the AHT rate should be sufficient to spur a discussion of specific stressors," they wrote in their report. Physicians might want to think of recessions as times when abuse is more likely, they wrote, much like doctors would keep a close eye out for red-flag symptoms during a disease outbreak.

Beaker

US: Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields

gas fracking pollution
© Erin Trieb for ProPublica
Susan Wallace-Babb, wearing the oxygen mask she has to wear almost every day outside, walks with her dog at home in Winnsboro, Texas, on Sept. 12, 2011.
On a summer evening in June 2005, Susan Wallace-Babb went out into a neighbor's field near her ranch in Western Colorado to close an irrigation ditch. She parked down the rutted double-track, stepped out of her truck into the low-slung sun, took a deep breath and collapsed, unconscious.

A natural gas well and a pair of fuel storage tanks sat less than a half-mile away. Later, after Wallace-Babb came to and sought answers, a sheriff's deputy told her that a tank full of gas condensate - liquid hydrocarbons gathered from the production process - had overflowed into another tank. The fumes must have drifted toward the field where she was working, he suggested.

The next morning Wallace-Babb was so sick she could barely move. She vomited uncontrollably and suffered explosive diarrhea. A searing pain shot up her thigh. Within days she developed burning rashes that covered her exposed skin, then lesions. As weeks passed, anytime she went outdoors, her symptoms worsened. Wallace-Babb's doctor began to suspect she had been poisoned.