Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Righteous Porkchop, just coined a new catchphrase that ought to go viral: "Sugar is NOT just an empty calorie."

Her statement contradicts the notion we've had for years that the worst thing about sugar is its lack of nutrients. Either you're eating sugar in addition to all of the calories you need to stay healthy, or you're eating it instead of them. In the former case, you're getting too many calories; in the latter, you're getting too few nutrients. This idea is so dominant it was recently cited in an anti-sugar op-ed in the Guardian.

Even if that was the case, we're eating too much sugar. Or, more specifically, too much added sugar. Sugars that are naturally present in whole foods like fruit are okay; it's the sugar added to whole foods that we must worry about. Previously, the World Health Organization said we should limit consumption of added sugars to 10 percent of calories. Even then, more than seven in 10 Americans ate too much sugar. On average, about 15 percent of our calories came from added sugars.

But now WHO is considering cutting its recommendation in half. That means limiting sugar consumption to five teaspoons, the amount found in half a can of soda. The American Heart Association has long recommended that women limit added sugars to six teaspoons and men stick with nine or less. (For those looking for a loophole, this means all added sugars, including so-called healthier sweeteners like maple syrup, agave, honey, or even fruit juice.)

Didn't the modern miracle of vaccines eradicate the plague and pestilence our Paleolithic ancestors succumbed to? Think again...

Paleo-oriented researchers, foodies, and clinicians seek to honor a wisdom in evolution that has been forsaken in the modern food era.

The human genome is best expressed under conditions of plentiful macro and micronutrients, an absence of foodborne and manmade toxins, and an acknowledgement of our coevolution and inextricable interdependence with other animals, plants, and microbes. If we get out of our own way, and follow ancestral practices, we can hope to optimize the genetic potential of our bodies to produce a robust and sustainable state of health and vitality.

Does that mean that those with ancestral dietary aspirations are glorifying a time long gone that was in actuality riddled with pestilence and plague? Weren't people dying prematurely of diseases we have long since eradicated through the miracle of vaccination? Isn't vaccination the best way to have it all - Paleo principles plus suppression of those nasty bugs that threaten our very lives from the moment of birth? Are we cherry-picking modern epigenetic exposures - yes to a traditional diet, no to evolutionary immunity - in favor of 'high tech' medical interventions?

Paleo Immunity

Why are we eating ancestrally in the first place? Isn't it to evade or undo the immune-disrupting, inflammation-generating, and infection-promoting effects of the modern grain-based diet, also featuring genetically engineered vegetable oils, synthetic additives and flavorings, grain-fed meats, and processed dairy? Our present dietary trajectory was initiated around 10,000 years ago in the transition from 2.5 million year old Paleolithic to the so-called Neolithic periods. Our Neolithic predecessors were the innovators of today's grain-based, animal breeding and milking, sedentary, city-dwelling mode of subsistence, whose glorious technological innovations (written language, science, engineering, pyrotechnology, pottery, etc.) came with an ultimately steep price: epidemic levels of so-called 'diseases of affluence,' including metabolic syndrome, heart disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and cancer.

"Sprouted" garlic - old garlic bulbs with bright green shoots emerging from the cloves - is considered to be past its prime and usually ends up in the garbage can. But scientists are reporting in ACS'Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that this type of garlic has even more heart-healthy antioxidant activity than its fresher counterparts.

Jong-Sang Kim and colleagues note that people have used garlic for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Today, people still celebrate its healthful benefits. Eating garlic or taking garlic supplements is touted as a natural way to reduce cholesterol levels, blood pressure and heart disease risk. It even may boost the immune system and help fight cancer. But those benefits are for fresh, raw garlic. Sprouted garlic has received much less attention. When seedlings grow into green plants, they make many new compounds, including those that protect the young plant against pathogens. Kim's group reasoned that the same thing might be happening when green shoots grow from old heads of garlic. Other studies have shown that sprouted beans and grains have increased antioxidant activity, so the team set out to see if the same is true for garlic.

Suicide among young men is a major public health concern in many countries, despite great efforts to find effective prevention strategies. By interviewing close relatives and friends of apparently well-functioning young men who unexpectedly took their own life, Norwegian researchers found there had been no signs of serious mental disorder. This contradicts previous research which suggests that depression or other mental illness is an important risk factor in suicide.

In Norway, there is still scant scientific evidence of effective prevention strategies, and suicide rates among young men remain high. Most studies of suicide are based on clinical populations, and the detection and treatment of mental disorder is the main focus in suicide prevention strategies in many countries.

Researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health interviewed close relatives and friends of ten young men who, in spite of accomplishments and successes, had unexpectedly taken their own lives in young adulthood about how they knew the deceased and understood the suicide.

A University of Liverpool researcher has shown that thoughts of suicide, sexual difficulties and emotional numbness as a result of anti-depressants may be more widespread than previously thought.

In a survey of 1,829 people who had been prescribed anti-depressants, the researchers found large numbers of people - over half in some cases - reporting on psychological problems due to their medication, which has led to growing concerns about the scale of the problem of over-prescription of these drugs.

Psychologist and lead researcher, Professor John Read from the University's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, said: "The medicalisation of sadness and distress has reached bizarre levels. One in ten people in some countries are now prescribed antidepressants each year.

"While the biological side-effects of antidepressants, such as weight gain and nausea, are well documented, the psychological and interpersonal effects have been largely ignored or denied. They appear to be alarmingly common."

Can't get a good night's sleep? You're not alone. In surveys of what would improve people's lives, a good night's sleep frequently comes near the top of the list.

Poor sleep results in worse cognitive performance, including degraded memory, attention, performance and alertness. And in the long term insomnia is also associated with anxiety and depression. And people's sleep gets worse as they get older. After 65 years old, between 12% and 40% of people have insomnia.

All sorts of methods have been tried to combat poor sleep, from drugs through psychological remedies to more outlandish treatments.

One of the many side effects of the government putting itself into the flu vaccine business is that it is not providing honest statistics.

In October 2013, nineteen-year-old Chandler Webb of Utah received a flu shot. A week later, he slipped into a coma. A month later - after his brain swelled so severely that it crushed his brainstem - he died. His mother attributes his death to the flu shot.

This is, of course, what scientists call "anecdotal evidence." Even murkier is the potential brain or neurological damage to millions of children and adults from the mercury used as a flu shot preservative.

Clearly it would help to have honest flu case, flu mortality, and damage statistics to help sort out these complicated issues. Unfortunately, we aren't getting them.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has claimed that over 200,000 Americans are hospitalized and 36,000 die from the flu each year. However, Dr. Joseph Mercola's investigation of inflated flu shot statistics revealed that the hospitalization estimate includes not just those who are hospitalized with flu, but for pneumonia, respiratory, and even heart conditions.

An extremely rare, polio-like disease has appeared in more than a dozen California children within the past year, and each of them suffered paralysis to one or more arms or legs, Stanford University researchers say. But public health officials haven't identified any common causes connecting the cases.

The illness is still being investigated and appears to be very unusual, but Dr. Keith Van Haren at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University warned Monday that any child showing a sudden onset of weakness in their limbs or symptoms of paralysis should be immediately seen by a doctor.

"The disease resembles but is not the same as polio," he said. "But this is serious. Most of the children we've seen so far have not recovered use of their arm or their leg."

But doctors are not sure if it's a virus or something else, he said. Van Haren said he has studied five cases from Monterey up through the San Francisco Bay Area, including two that were identified as the disease enterovirus-68, which is from the same family as the polio viruses. He said there have been about 20 cases statewide.

New ground-breaking research reveals that SPLENDA® may cause Diabetes and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Also, it could increase your risk of cancer. This comes as a shock to many people in the diabetes and weight loss community who were told by the creators of Splenda that it would NOT effect their blood sugar and metabolism in any way.

Well I'm here to tell you, you've been lied to! Splenda has now been scientifically proven to harm your digestive system and cause insulin spikes increasing your risk of diabetes.

The ingredients that make up Splenda (sucralose) are chlorine, dextrose and maltodextrin (which are made from GMO corn). Splenda is made by replacing hydrogen atoms with chlorine atoms. And because of the large amount of chlorine you are getting when you consume sucralose you can actually get chlorine poisoning and cellular toxicity!

School ended early last Monday for students at three elementary schools and one middle school in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Members of the National Guard and the state departments of environmental protection and health were called in. It was the rapid-response team's third deployment to schools in the county this month.

The teachers said the tap water smelled like licorice candy - a fragrance associated with MCHM (4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol), a coal-extraction chemical that had flooded the water supply for 300,000 people in nine West Virginia counties on January 9. Residents of Charleston and the surrounding area live in fear of the sweet scent, and they have grown increasingly bitter.

West Virginia is coal country. More than a million acres of mountain have been blown apart in Appalachia, where the state is situated, in order to retrieve it. Not to mention, West Virginia is plastered with signs extolling the patriotic virtues of the black geological discharge. The signs tout coal as a source of energy independence for the Red, White, and Blue and implore residents to be proud of their natural resources. They frame regulation as an impingement on freedom and a threat not only to the livelihoods of West Virginians but to the country as a whole. Environmentalists have been harassed, beaten, and threatened with their lives for suggesting otherwise.

Meanwhile, local ambulance chasers have launched ad campaigns of their own, appealing to those diagnosed with silicosis, mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis (commonly referred to as Black Lung), and other diseases associated with coal extraction to seek their legal services. It's a sign of the imprint the industry has had on the state's rural communities over the decades. Now, the 10,000-gallon MCHM spill from a chemical storage facility run by Freedom Industries - just a mile upstream from a water treatment plant on the Elk River - has raised questions over how much environmental degradation West Virginians are willing to tolerate in the name of patriotism.

In the immediate aftermath of the contamination, 671 people called poison control, complaining of severe vomiting and diarrhea, rashes and dizziness. The White House declared much of the state a federal disaster area and state troopers were deployed to deliver water.

Five days later, the local water utility declared their product safe to drink. "We are in compliance with all the standards set by the health-based agencies, like the CDC [Center for Disease Control], the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health, and we have been since the 13th of January," Jeff McIntyre, oresident of West Virginia American Water, later testified at a congressional hearing in Washington on February 2.