Hormones and/or hormone-mimicking chemicals are omnipresent environmental contaminants. Already found in places as varied as our teeth (dental sealant) to our paper products (receipts, money), our meat to our canned foods, new research now indicates that even fresh, whole vegetables and fruits are no longer immune to this growing biological and chemical threat.

A newly released study has found that a variety of substances with hormone-disrupting properties now widely contaminate commercially available fresh vegetables and fruits, in some cases at concentrations exceeding the recommended acceptable daily intake (ADI) for children as recommended by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA).

Published this month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers at the Indian River Research and Education Center, University of Florida/IFAS, found the synthetic endocrine-disrupting chemicals bisphenol A (BPA), nonylphenol (NP), and the natural steroidal estrogen 17-β-estradiol, in vegetables and fruits randomly sampled from local markets, using gas chromotagraphy with tandem mass spectrometry.[i]

According to the researchers, the "BPA was detected in all vegetable and fruit samples, ranging from 0.2±0.1 to 9.0±4.9 µg kg-1, indicating significant exposure potential for humans." Nonylphenol (NP), a chemical in the alkylphenol class mainly used to manufacturer detergents, was detected in pumpkin, sweet potato, citrus, and apple samples. Concentrations of 17-β-estradiol in vegetables and fruits ranged from 1.3±0.4 to 2.2±1.0 µg kg-1 except those in tomato and strawberry.

If you know a junk-food junkie with a stockpile of Twinkies in their garage, the following news might not be a big surprise: Researchers have found that quitting a diet high in fat and sugar produces changes in the brain similar to withdrawal from addictive drugs.

Researchers in Canada made this discovery after feeding a group of mice a junk-food diet that would shame any glutton: For six weeks, the mice ate foods that had a whopping 58 percent calories from fat.

They compared these mice to another group of mice eating relatively lean foods with just 11 percent calories from fat, reports Huffington Post.

To the surprise of no one, the mice that scarfed down the high-fat diet increased their waist size by 11 percent at the end of the six-week study. After the mice raised on a high-fat diet were switched to a healthier one, they acted more anxious and depressed.

America's most popular TV doctor seems to have forgotten his own words that organic food is "worth the investment" and is instead trashing organics.

"So you're being told organic food is no more nutritious than conventional and it's not worth your extra money. Well I'm here to say that it is worth the investment. Why do I say that? Pesticides." -- Dr. Oz, Oct. 19, 2012

Less than two months after telling millions of TV viewers that organic food is "worth the investment," America's most popular TV doctor is singing a different tune. In the December issue of Time magazine, Dr. Oz described organic foodies as "elitist" - part of the 1% - and claimed that conventional foods are nutritionally equivalent to organic foods. According to Dr. Oz:

The rise of foodie culture over the past decade has venerated all things small-batch, local-farm and organic - all with premium price tags. But let's be clear: you don't need to eat like the 1% to eat healthily.

Suddenly, the pesticides Dr. Oz was so concerned about a couple of months ago, the ones he warned viewers were "one of the greatest threats to your kids' health," no longer matter. What's more, if you're spending extra money to avoid them, you're a food snob - instead of a responsible, health-conscious parent.

Much of the public forgets the gut when it comes to warding off the flu and other more threatening diseases, but the gut - and its army of beneficial bacteria - are essential in protecting us from harm. That's why eating genetically modified and/or conventionally farmed food could be a direct assault on your own health. Most recently, research has shown that Monsanto's herbicide, known as Roundup, is destroying gut health, threatening overall health of animals, people, and the planet significantly.

The journal Current Microbiology recently published a study that caught Monsanto's Roundup herbicide's active ingredient, glyphosate, suppressing beneficial bacteria in poultry specimens. Given that gut health is directly linked to chronic illnesses and overall health, this isn't exactly welcome news for people who can't always afford or who lack access to organic, locally grown food.

In a recent piece, I fretted about one problem with our reliance on industrially produced fertilizers: They come from scarce and nonrenewable sources, meaning we'll eventually run out of them. But there's another, much more immediate downside to the synthetic nitrogen and mined phosphorus that drives industrial agriculture: They tend to leach out of soil and foul up water, both for drinking and recreation.

Environmental Working Group has just released an excellent report (available here) on the impact of that pollution on water quality in Iowa, ground zero of US industrial agriculture. The condition of that state's water is, in short, dismal. EWG looked at data kept by Iowa's Department of Natural Resources on 72 free-flowing streams across the state, comparing the 1999-2002 period and the 2008-11 period. In the chart, below, note that the majority of streams are rated either "poor" or "very poor" - and that the situation has improved little if at all over time. The main culprits are nitrogen and phosphorus. Here's EWG:

The two pollutants most responsible for poor water quality ratings in the Index are nitrogen and phosphorus. In 55 percent of the monthly samples across all sites, nitrogen was the single worst pollutant, followed by phosphorus in 30 percent. Together, high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus set off a cascade of pollution problems that contaminate drinking water and damage the health of Iowa's streams and rivers.

Miracles are pretty rare events - except on television's Dr. Oz Show, where they appear with astonishing frequency. Oz doesn't claim to raise the dead or part the Red Sea, but he does raise people's hopes of parting with their flab. And he's certainly not shy about flinging the word "miracle" about. But it seems miracles fade as quickly as they appear when it comes to weight loss. Raspberry ketones, acai berries and African mango, once hyped as amazing "fat busters," have already given way to newer wonders.

Granted, Dr. Oz, or more likely his TV producers, do not pull miracles out of an empty hat. They generally manage to toss in a smattering of stunted facts that they then nurture into some pretty tall tales. Like the ones about chlorogenic acid or Garcinia cambogia causing effortless weight loss. The former piqued the public's interest when the great Oz introduced green coffee bean extract as the next diet sensation. Actually, "chlorogenic acid" is not a single compound, but rather a family of closely related compounds found in green plants, which perhaps surprisingly contain no chlorine atoms. The name derives from the Greek "chloro," for pale green, while "genic" means "give rise to." (The element chlorine is a pale green gas, hence its name.)

An "unprecedented" breakthrough, Dr. Oz said of the green coffee bean extract, apparently having forgotten all about his previous weight-control miracles. This time, the "staggering" results originate from a study of green coffee bean extract by Dr. Joe Vinson, a respected chemist at the University of Scranton who has a long-standing interest in antioxidants like chlorogenic acid. Aware of the fact that chloro-genic acid had been shown to influence glucose and fat metabolism in mice, Vinson speculated that it might have some effect on humans as well. Since chlorogenic-acid content is reduced by roasting, green coffee bean extract was chosen for the study.

This week and last week saw the violent deaths of many people including young children, at the hands of young men on the rampage in the USA. Understandably, there are calls for changes in the gun laws. But the fact that American can carry guns is not the cause of the problem.

It isn't guns that kill people; it is people who kill people.

The US has a long history of such outrages. And is pretty much alone as a country to suffer in this way, despite the fact that guns are carried, legally, in other countries - whose citizens don't go around on killing sprees.

So, instead of blaming the weapons, wouldn't it be more profitable to research the cause? To ask why some people feel the need to go kill a bunch of others and then (usually) themselves?

In the 1990s I was researching fluoridation of water supplies. But as I did my research, I came across examples of the harm that fluoridated drugs could do. Just like the killings in last two weeks, there have been examples of children going on a killing sprees and shooting their parents, school friends, teachers, other people and then themselves for decades.

I don't know whether the recent perpetrators of these outrages were on drugs but back in the last century, I found that many, if not all, of them appeared to be taking the SSRI drug, Prozac.

Below is an extract from my book, Fluoride: Drinking ourselves to death? I wrote this in 1999; it is still relevant today. Searching PubMed today, I could find no medical research that addresses the problem. Perhaps it is about time there was some!

I came across this surprising news story on 20/20 on a special story called the "The Real Dish". It was a documentary with insight into the food industry. Although this was a story about safety issues, 'meat glue' caught my attention. Yes, 'meat glue', also known as 'transglutaminase'. Fibimex is a commercial name of this glue, coagulant. A coagulant, made from cow or pig blood (same thing as in our body) allows things to stick together.

After doing a little research I was surprised to find that you too can buy 'meat glue' on Ebay, for about $14.00. Although the experts claim that glued meat is safe, (labeled as 'reformed') one has to think twice when chewing on that juicy steak.

Meat glue is actually a tasteless powder added to meat and rolled up in plastic wrap. The meat is refrigerated for 6 hours and the result is a solid piece of meat that looks real, intact.

The meat industry admits that companies use 'meat glue' to bind pieces of meat that would normally be thrown away, so the steak 'looks' better. Put a little sauce (who knows what's in that) and show a pretty pictures on the menu, and voila, an expensive steak of combined different meat parts from different animals.

A University of Oklahoma-led study has demonstrated that ancient DNA can be used to understand ancient human microbiomes. The microbiomes from ancient people have broad reaching implications for understanding recent changes to human health, such as what good bacteria might have been lost as a result of our current abundant use of antibiotics and aseptic practices.

Cecil M. Lewis Jr., professor of anthropology in the OU College of Arts and Sciences and director of the OU Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, and Raul Tito, OU Research Associate, led the research study that analyzed microbiome data from ancient human fecal samples collected from three different archaeological sites in the Americas, each dating to over 1000 years ago. In addition, the team provided a new analysis of published data from two samples that reflect rare and extraordinary preservation: Otzi the Iceman and a soldier frozen for 93 years on a glacier.

"The results support the hypothesis that ancient human gut microbiomes are more similar to those of non-human primates and rural non-western communities than to those of people living a modern lifestyle in the United States," says Lewis. "From these data, the team concluded that the last 100 years has been a time of major change to the human gut microbiome in cosmopolitan areas."

Discovery suggests way to protect cells from damage caused by oxidative stress

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have identified a novel mechanism by which a type of low-carb, low-calorie diet - called a "ketogenic diet" - could delay the effects of aging: the compound β-hydroxybutyrate (βOHB), a "ketone body" that is generated during a prolonged low-calorie or ketogenic diet.

Blocking oxidative stress

While ketone bodies such as βOHB can be toxic when present at very high concentrations in people with diseases such as Type I diabetes, researchers in the laboratory of Gladstone Senior Investigator Eric Verdin, MD found that at lower concentrations, βOHB actually helps protect cells from "oxidative stress" - which occurs as certain molecules build to toxic levels in the body and contributes to the aging process.

This fundamental discovery reveals how such a diet could slow the aging process and may one day allow scientists to better treat or prevent age-related diseases, including heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and many forms of cancer.

"Over the years, studies have found that restricting calories slows aging and increases longevity - however the mechanism of this effect has remained elusive," Dr. Verdin said. He directs the Center for HIV & Aging at Gladstone and is also a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, with which Gladstone is affiliated. "Here, we find that βOHB - the body's major source of energy during exercise or fasting - blocks a class of enzymes that would otherwise promote oxidative stress, thus protecting cells from aging," he said.