Health & WellnessS


Bacon

Bacon sales sizzle to all-time high‏

Bacon illustration
© Inconnu

It's a question that veteran "As Seen on TV" marketer Scott Boilen asked when he was given the opportunity to introduce yet another bacon product to an already crowded marketplace. But Boilen couldn't resist the invention, a simple gizmo that turns a few strips of bacon into an edible shell. And so the Bacon Bowl was launched by Boilen's Allstar Products Group via a series of infomercials in late 2013.

In a brief period, Boilen's New York-based company has sold more than two million units of the $10.99 bacon cooker, making the Bowl a success story potentially on par with the Snuggie, to name Boilen's biggest "As Seen on TV" hit.

The lesson? Never underestimate the power of bacon, says Boilen: "It's almost become a cult-like food."

Comment: Perhaps another reason for this upward trend in bacon sales is the rising popularity of the paleo diet.

For more reading about the wonders of bacon, check out:
The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview


Health

New evidence that chronic stress predisposes brain to mental illness

stress depression
University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown that chronic stress generates long-term changes in the brain that may explain why people suffering chronic stress are prone to mental problems such as anxiety and mood disorders later in life.

Their findings could lead to new therapies to reduce the risk of developing mental illness after stressful events.

Doctors know that people with stress-related illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have abnormalities in the brain, including differences in the amount of gray matter versus white matter. Gray matter consists mostly of cells - neurons, which store and process information, and support cells called glia - while white matter is comprised of axons, which create a network of fibers that interconnect neurons. White matter gets its name from the white, fatty myelin sheath that surrounds the axons and speeds the flow of electrical signals from cell to cell.

How chronic stress creates these long-lasting changes in brain structure is a mystery that researchers are only now beginning to unravel.

Pills

Big Pharma lobbyists exploit patients and doctors

Prescription Drugs
© PressTV
Ten years ago, when I was a health journalist, I was once contacted by lobbying company working for a large pharmaceuticals firm.

They asked me if I would be interested in travelling to Chicago to attend a cancer conference where, they said, the company was about to make an exciting and important announcement.

Foolishly I accepted. The conference was fascinating, the hospitality generous - but the announcement which I was supposed to write about could not in any way be regarded as news.

I'm ashamed to say I still wrote about it - feeling some sense of misplaced obligation to my 'hosts'.

I should never have done so but in the process learnt an important lesson about the way in which the medical lobbying industry works.

Of several hundred doctors, nurse leaders and pharmacists from the UK who were in Chicago that year almost all were also there at the largesse of the drugs industry.

Health

Antibiotic resistance: death of a wonderdrug

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Needwood House Farm is easy to miss. Only a small sign - the bright pink image of a pig - suspended from a fence post hints at anything of significance down the one-way track that leads off the main road. After a few hundred metres of bouncing over mud and gravel, it is the pungent smell that smacks you first. Then, the sound; the squealing, grunting and growls of 5,000 pigs crammed into this corner of rural Staffordshire.

A hundred or so piglets are excitedly clambering over each other or snuffling around the muddy floor of the gated outdoor enclosure where they are waiting to be transported for slaughter. Inside the great barns, 500 sows lie side-by-side in pens while their offspring fight for space at their teats.The air hangs heavy with ammonia, so thick it stings the lungs.

This is the flagship operation of Midland Pig Producers, which runs nine farms across the country producing 80 tonnes of meat a week to supply leading supermarkets including Tesco, Marks and Spencer and Asda. It is big. But only a few miles away over the border into Derbyshire, something even bigger is planned.

Attention

MSG proven highly toxic: 1 dose causes headache in healthy subjects

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Found everywhere as an additive in your food, new research has uncovered that this "flavor enhancer" is extremely toxic, causing a battery of adverse health effects within normal dietary ranges.

A new study published in the Journal of Headache Pain reveals that a single intake of monosodium glutamate (MSG) produces headache in the majority of healthy subjects tested.[i]

The researchers conducted a double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover study to examine the effect of repeated MSG intake on the following:
  • Spontaneous pain
  • Mechanical sensitivity of masticatory muscles (the four muscles that move the jaw laterally)
  • Side effects
  • Blood pressure

Comment: Over the past several years SOTT.net has carried many articles detailing how monosodium glutamate (MSG) is proven to be highly toxic:

Monosodium Glutamate: What We All Should Know
MSG: Delicious Seasoning Or Drug And Poison?
MSG: Drug, Poison Or Flavor-Enhancer?
MSG: The Flavor Enhancer That Sickens In Two Ways
MSG Hidden in Variety of Foods and Contributing To Illness
The Shocking Dangers of MSG You Don't Know
MSG Lurks As A Slow Poison In Common Food Items Without Your Knowledge
Hold the MSG: Food Triggers for Epilepsy and Other Neurological Illnesses


Wolf

'My dog saved my life': Breast cancer patient says her Doberman nuzzled into her chest until she went to the doctor

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Diane Papazian, 56, says she owes her life to her dog, Troy, after he detected a tumour in her breast

A dog owner says she owes her life to her Doberman after he detected a tumor in her breast. Diane Papazian, from New York, says Troy persistently nuzzled into her breast when he was just a four-month-old puppy.

Mrs Papazian then realised Troy was showing an interest in a lump and decided to go for a mammogram - despite having had one just six months earlier.

As a result, she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. Mrs Papazian, 56, went on to have a double mastectomy and chemotherapy and is now cancer-free. Troy, a show dog, is currently the number one Doberman in New York State and ranks ninth in the U.S.

Eggs Fried

Eggs don't cause heart attacks - Sugar does

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It's over. The debate is settled.

It's sugar, not fat, that causes heart attacks.

Oops. Fifty years of doctors' advice and government eating guidelines have been wrong. We've been told to swap eggs for Cheerios. But that recommendation is dead wrong. In fact, it's very likely that this bad advice has killed millions of Americans.

A rigorously new study shows that those with the highest sugar intake had a four-fold increase in their risk of heart attacks compared to those with the lowest intakes. That's 400%! Just one 20-ounce soda increases your risk of a heart attack by about 30%.

This study of more than 40,000 people, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, accounted for all other potential risk factors including total calories, overall diet quality, smoking, cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity and alcohol.

This follows on the heels of decades of research that has been mostly ignored by the medical establishment and policy makers. In fact, the Institute of Medicine recommends getting no more than 25% of your total calories from added sugar. Really?? This study showed that your risk of heart attacks doubles if sugar makes up 20% of your calories.

Yet more than 70% of Americans consume 10% of their daily calories from sugar. And about 10% of Americans consume one in every four of their calories from sugar.

Cow Skull

Beef Recall: Rancho Feeding Corp. recalls a year's worth of beef products

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A Northern California company is recalling more than 8.7 million pounds of beef products because it processed diseased and unhealthy animals without a full federal inspection, federal officials said Saturday.

That's just over a year's worth of meat products processed by Rancho Feeding Corp., which has been under scrutiny by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. The agency said that without full inspection, the recalled products are unfit for human consumption.

The products were processed from Jan. 1, 2013, through Jan. 7, 2014, and shipped to distribution centers and retail stores in California, Florida, Illinois and Texas. They include beef carcasses, oxtail, liver, cheeks, tripe, tongue and veal bones.

Last month the company recalled more than 40,000 pounds of meat products produced on Jan. 8 that also didn't undergo a full inspection.

Health

Left for dead: The mysterious disease killing thousands in Central America

A strange kidney ailment leaves scientists searching for answers.
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A sugarcane worker receives treatment for chronic kidney disease at his home in Nicaragua
Ed Kashi arrived in Nicaragua last January to shoot some photos for a local nonprofit organization. At the time, it seemed like just another two-week commission - no different from the countless others he's completed during his career as a far-flung photojournalist - but what he saw there stuck with him for much longer.

"Literally every single day I was there, there was a funeral," says Kashi, who is based in New Jersey and works for VII Photo. "It was astounding, actually."

The funerals he saw were not for slain soldiers or elderly villagers, but for young sugarcane field workers - mostly men - who had died from chronic kidney disease, or CKD. This debilitating renal disease has, over the past few years, killed thousands of agrarian workers across Central America and parts of south Asia. The disease itself is hardly a new phenomenon, though the strain affecting Nicaragua and neighboring countries is unique; many of those affected are far younger and healthier than typical CKD patients, and a staggering number work in sugarcane fields. And while theories and hypotheses abound, scientists have yet to figure out what's actually causing it.
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A former sugarcane worker walks near his home in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua. He suffers from end-stage kidney disease.
It's not clear when CKD began killing field workers in Central America, though reports suggest that it dates back at least 20 years. There are no reliable data on mortality rates, either, but experts estimate that the disease has killed thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - within the past decade. Cases among sugarcane workers have been reported along the Pacific coast of Central America, while similar cases involving rice farmers have been reported in Sri Lanka and India. The disease has been especially devastating in the low-income countries of El Salvador and Nicaragua, where many workers rely on subsistence wages from sugar plantations to provide for their families.

Attention

6 Nasty drugs your meat is on

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American livestock is pumped full of harmful drugs, making our food dangerous and cruel at the same time.

Most people are aware of Big Pharma, thanks to its advertising, but few are aware of Animal Pharma, the animal drug divisions within drug companies that sell livestock drugs by the ton. Unlike people Pharma, many Animal Pharma drugs do not require a prescription or a veterinarian and the hormones, growth promoters, feed additives and antiparasite and antifungal drugs are loosely regulated and monitored. The USDA tests for residues from the drugs in meat, poultry and egg products but repeat offender farms that release animals with violative drug residues into the human food supply are identified weekly.

Among the drugs found in beef released to the public in a USDA Inspector General report were penicillin, the antibiotics florfenicol, sulfamethazine and sulfadimethoxine, the antiparasite drug ivermectin, the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug flunixin and heavy metals. Some drug-contaminated meat was released into the human food supply and there was no attempt at a recall, says the report.

The highest of all veterinary drug residues are found in bob veal (calves under three days old that weigh only 70 to 100 pounds) says the USDA Inspector General report, because "Farmers are prohibited from selling milk for human consumption from cows that have been medicated with antibiotics (as well as other drugs) until the withdrawal period is over; so instead of just disposing of this tainted milk, producers feed it to their calves. When the calves are slaughtered, the drug residue from the feed or milk remains in their meat, which is then sold to consumers." Meat from bob calves is put into "value added" veal products like veal sausages and breaded veal patties.

Is there any other food that is so dangerous and cruel at the same time?