A controversial government program which gives fast-food chains influence over healthy eating policies has come under severe criticism after US research revealed the extent of "relentless marketing" of unhealthy food and drinks to children.

A report by the authoritative Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found companies such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Burger King spent more than $4bn advertising predominantly unhealthy fast foods in 2009.

Children and young people in the US are bombarded with increasing numbers and types of advertising through TV, radio, magazines, sophisticated websites and phone applications in spite of appeals from the White House to be more responsible, according to Fast Food F.a.c.t.s. Between 2007 and 2009, McDonald's and Burger King increased the number of TV adverts for children by 20 per cent and 10 per cent respectively despite pledging to improve food marketing to children. The report, which analyzed 20 of America's most popular fast-food outlets, found less than 1 per cent of kids' meal combinations met nutritional standards.

Food additives find their way into our foods to help ease processing, packaging and storage. But how do we know what food additives is in that box of macaroni and cheese and why does it have such a long shelf life?

A typical American household spends about 90 percent of their food budget on processed foods, and are in doing so exposed to a plethora of artificial food additives, many of which can cause dire consequences to your health.

Some food additives are worse than others. Here's a list of the top food additives to avoid:

1. Artificial Sweeteners

Aspartame, (E951) more popularly known as Nutrasweet and Equal, is found in foods labeled "diet" or "sugar free". Aspartame is believed to be carcinogenic and accounts for more reports of adverse reactions than all other foods and food additives combined. It produces neurotoxic effects such as dizziness, headaches, mental confusion, migraines, and seizures. Avoid if you suffer from asthma, rhinitis (including hayfever), or urticaria (hives).Acesulfame-K, a relatively new artificial sweetener found in baking goods, gum and gelatin, has not been thoroughly tested and has been linked to kidney tumors.

Found in: diet or sugar free sodas, diet coke, coke zero, jello (and over gelatins), desserts, sugar free gum, drink mixes, baking goods, table top sweeteners, cereal, breathmints, pudding, kool-aid, ice tea, chewable vitamins, toothpaste

You've been out - working, exercising, shopping. You open the car door and slip into the oven like interior. Throat dry, you reach for the water bottle that's been sitting in the cup holder all day. It's warm. But at least it's water, right? Water, yes, albeit water potentially spiked with chemicals that migrated out of the plastic - chemicals that aren't good for your health.

The latest scientific research has given us a lot of good reasons to think carefully about how we use plastics. The main concern with several types of plastic is that they contain endocrine disruptors - substances that, when taken into our bodies, alter normal hormonal function. Over the past several years, scientists and the media have struggled to find answers to mysteries such as precocious puberty, declining fertility rates in otherwise healthy adults, hyperactivity in kids, the fattening of America, and the persistent scourges of prostate cancer and breast cancer. Although multiple factors play a role in all of these conditions, one recurrent theme is the brew of endocrine disruptors infiltrating our lives.

Europe could ban baby bottles containing the chemical Bisphenol-A under legislation to be proposed next year over fears that it may harm a child's health, the European Commission said Wednesday.

European Union health commissioner John Dalli wants to pull such bottles off shop shelves across the 27-nation bloc because of the "uncertainties" about its effects on infants, his spokesman Frederic Vincent told AFP.

Only two EU countries, France and Denmark, have imposed bans on baby bottles with Bisphenol-A. Danish authorities went a step further by extending the prohibition to all food products for children up to three years old.

Bans are also in place in Australia, Canada and a few US states. Canada became in October the first country in the world to classify Bisphenol-A as a toxic substance despite industry opposition.

Harmful errors and accidents remain common in U.S. hospitals despite a decade of efforts to improve patient safety, a study found.

According to the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the number of patients experiencing hospital acquired infections, medication errors, complications from diagnostic techniques or treatments, and other such "harms" did not change between 2002 and 2007.

Medical complications, some of which are preventable, can prove costly. The U.S. Office of the Inspector General released a report recently estimating that complications contribute to 180,000 patient deaths per year and overall, cost Medicare up to $4.4 billion annually.

There is . . . but one categorical imperative: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

~ Immanuel Kant (The Categorical Imperative)

Vegetarianism, as a way of life, has been around for millennia - with relatively few adherents. Recently, however, reports in the news media, have suggested that a vegetarian way of life is healthier. Not surprisingly The Vegetarian Society has capitalised on these reports using them to persuade members of the lay public that their way is better for the animals, the environment, and, not least, for human health - and numbers are growing.

Forms of vegetarianism

Vegetarianism has evolved several forms. Generally the person who calls himself a vegetarian does not believe in killing animals and so does not eat meat and, sometimes, fish. He does, however, eat eggs and dairy produce. This form of vegetarianism, known more correctly as lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, is the most common form. There are also more extreme and restricted diets: the vegan diet whose followers exclude all animal products, but otherwise eat anything from the plant world. More restricted again are the Zen macrobiotic diets which consist almost exclusively of cereals and there are several variations on raw food - vegetarian - diets.

Vegans do not eat or use animal products, animal by-products, or products tested on animals. The term vegan, formed from first three and last two letters of the word veg etari an , was coined in London in 1944 by seven vegetarians who founded the Vegan Society.

Costa Mesa, California is the first city in the United States to call for an immediate end to dental amalgam.

Dental amalgam is a filling material that is 50 percent mercury. The resolution calls on federal and state agencies to eliminate amalgam, and asks dentists in Costa Mesa to switch to non-toxic alternatives.

The resolution does not actually ban amalgam, but it is an important step toward ending a scourge of both health and the environment.


WellSphere reports:

"The watershed Monahan Resolution is the first success for Californians for Green Dentistry, a new project of Consumers for Dental Choice ... At the city council hearing ... dentists, health professionals, injured consumers, scientists, advocates, and even former Californian Dental Board member Dr. Chet Yokoyama... offered poignant testimony calling for a ban on dental mercury."

We are at a critical time in the fight against mercury fillings.

Thanks to your efforts at making your voice heard, on July 15, 2010, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chose a mercury-free dentist by the name of Michael Fleming to be on the Dental Products Panel, which will be the group to reassess the safety of mercury fillings for high-risk groups by way of a hearing this December.

Dr. Fleming has an interesting and varied professional background, with a long track record of listening to consumers.

As we move toward the December hearing, we need your continuing letters and phone calls to the FDA. Although the panel selection process is complete, they need to continue hearing your voice. We must show them there is a large body of consumers out there who are keeping an eye on them - like hawks.

According to the FDA's website, this panel's purpose is defined as follows:

"The Dental Products Panel reviews and evaluates data concerning the safety and effectiveness of marketed and investigational products for use in dentistry, endodontics or bone physiology relative to the oral and maxillofacial area and makes appropriate recommendations to the Commissioner of Food and Drugs."

This hearing will hopefully bring us one step closer to the banning of amalgam fillings for children and pregnant women, and eventually for the rest of us.

Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are most at risk for mercury-related neurological damage, and that is why it's especially dangerous for pregnant women to get amalgam fillings.

As you read this, there is a bill before the U.S. Senate that has the potential to change the U.S. food industry more than any other law ever passed by the U.S. Congress. In the name of "food safety", the U.S. government would be given an iron grip over the production, transportation and sale of all food in the United States. Hordes of small food producers and organic farmers could potentially be put out of business. If this bill becomes law, the freedom to grow what you want, eat what you want and to share food from your gardens with your neighbors could be greatly curtailed. It would give the FDA unprecedented discretion to regulate U.S. food production. A version of this bill was already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last summer, and now S. 510, also known as the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, is in front of the U.S. Senate and it is expected to pass easily.

Because of how vaguely it is written and because of how much discretion it gives to the FDA, it is potentially a very, very dangerous law.

So who is actually in favor of it?

Well, big food corporations and big agriculture are actually very much in favor of this bill.

Why?

Is it because they are so concerned about food safety?

No.

In fact, virtually every major case of food contamination in recent U.S. history has come from large-scale industrial agriculture or large-scale industrial food production.

The real reason why they are backing S. 510 is because it will devastate their primary competition - small food producers and organic farmers.

In recent years, the demand for organic food has skyrocketed as the American people have learned the truth about how our food is actually made. Big agriculture and the giant food producers are losing profits as Americans increasingly vote with their wallets.

So now the food giants are using "food safety" as a way to get market share back. It is an open secret that many of those involved in drafting this bill and in pushing it through Congress have ties to food industry giants.

Thousands of small food producers and organic farmers will have their very existence threatened by this bill. It imposes a bureaucratic nightmare on all food producers that the big corporations will be able to handle easily but that will cripple much smaller operations.

Already, many farmers can see the writing on the wall. One small farmer recently described the mood among her fellow small farmers to the Wall Street Journal....

Take a look at "Smoking Teeth = Poison Gas". This eye-opening video from iaomt.org has had a tremendous impact on both the public and professional audiences.

Dr. Mercola's comments:

This video is worth more than a thousand words when it comes to illustrating the very real danger of mercury fillings. The video helps to powerfully demonstrate that if you have these "silver" fillings then every time you eat, chew, visit the dentist or drink hot coffee, the mercury vapors are released directly into your mouth and body.

The poisonous vapors are odorless, colorless and tasteless, however, so you won't be able to tell that they're there. It takes holding a tooth up in black light to be able to see the toxic shadows of mercury being released.

A single dental amalgam filling releases as much as 15 micrograms of mercury per day. The average individual has eight amalgam fillings and could absorb up to 120 micrograms of mercury per day. In contrast, eating mercury-tainted seafood will expose you to about 2.3 micrograms per day -- and that is enough for scientists to call for a worldwide warning.