There was a time when corpulence was a sign of wealth and luxury. But in modern day Western countries, quite the opposite is true. In fact, a recent study found that fully one third of homeless people living in Boston are obese. "This study suggests that obesity may be the new malnutrition of the homeless in the United States," wrote the researchers, led by Harvard Medical School student Katherine Koh, whose study is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban Health.

And it's not just the U.S. that is reporting these kinds of findings, a New Zealand study of preschoolers found that 82 percent did not get enough dietary fiber and 68 percent did not have enough long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are found in fish and nuts. Despite these nutritional deficiencies, the researchers also found that fully one-third of preschoolers are overweight or obese.

These findings highlight an interesting contradiction - obesity correlates with malnourishment. Research indicates that lack of proper nutrition - even when people over consume calories - is at the root of obesity. Part of the reason this seems contradictory is because nutrition science has long held that all calories are created equal and that with the right amount of caloric intake, it would be difficult to also be malnourished. Coincidentally, this is also what the food industry would have us believe. In a recent interview in USA Today, Katie Bayne, president and general manager at Coca-Cola said in response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed ban on large size sugary drinks,

"A calorie is a calorie. What our drinks offer is hydration. That's essential to the human body. We offer great taste and benefits whether it's an uplift or carbohydrates or energy. We don't believe in empty calories. We believe in hydration."

Researchers describe inflammatory mechanism for first time.

The biological mechanism of sunburn - the reddish, painful, protective immune response from ultraviolet (UV) radiation - is a consequence of RNA damage to skin cells, report researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and elsewhere in the July 8, 2012 Advance Online Publication of Nature Medicine.

The findings open the way to perhaps eventually blocking the inflammatory process, the scientists said, and have implications for a range of medical conditions and treatments.

"For example, diseases like psoriasis are treated by UV light, but a big side effect is that this treatment increases the risk of skin cancer," said principal investigator Richard L. Gallo, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. "Our discovery suggests a way to get the beneficial effects of UV therapy without actually exposing our patients to the harmful UV light. Also, some people have excess sensitivity to UV light, patients with lupus, for example. We are exploring if we can help them by blocking the pathway we discovered."

Using both human skin cells and a mouse model, Gallo, first author Jamie J. Bernard, a post-doctoral researcher, and colleagues found that UVB radiation fractures and tangles elements of non-coding micro-RNA - a special type of RNA inside the cell that does not directly make proteins. Irradiated cells release this altered RNA, provoking healthy, neighboring cells to start a process that results in an inflammatory response intended to remove sun-damaged cells.

Charges are flying. Here are some facts.

As we have reported many times, GMO foods are not safe. Remember those rats fed GMO corn whose offspring were fine but whose grandchildren were sterile? Is this uncontrolled experiment on human beings a good idea?

The California Right to Know 2012 Ballot Initiative, if enacted in November, would require GMO food - that is, all food containing genetically engineered ingredients - to be so labeled in the state. Consumers all over the US are in favor of this by wide margins. It is very important because, with the full power of the US government behind GMO, and huge amounts of money flowing back to Washington from GMO producers, the only way to stop the GMO juggernaut is to tell consumers what they are buying.

The usual suspects are mounting a huge disinformation campaign against the initiative. A leading coalition is StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com, the funding for which comes in part from the Council for Biotechnology Information - whose members include Monsanto, Dow, and other GMO companies.

Peggy Lemaux, an extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science at UC Berkeley, was recently quoted in a National Public Radio piece as opposing the initiative. She has credentials, but keep in mind that she's a member of an agricultural science council that includes all the major biotech companies, and was recently the recipient of a financial award provided by Monsanto.

While expensive cancer drugs linked to premature death and mega-tumors are pushed by many mainstream doctors as the only option outside of chemotherapy, a growing number of informed individuals are consistently opting to instead utilize natural methods that are known to conquer cancer cells and effectively negate the disease - without harsh side effects. One such person, Vicky Sewart of Britain, chose such a path when she refused mainstream medical cancer treatments and instead began consuming powerful turmeric spice.

Despite excessive warnings from MD's who insisted that Vicky would surely not recover using superfoods that are commonly touted as 'woo' and 'ineffective medicine' by pharma-backed doctors, Sewart found amazing success by altering her lifestyle and taking in extra amounts of supefoods like turmeric each day.

Sewart recalls to The Telegraph how her doctor repeatedly voiced concern over switching to a healthy diet full of turmeric to fight the cancer (one of many turmeric health benefits), telling her that it would do virtually nothing:

"The doctors absolutely will not say that the diet is going to do anything to help the cancer in any way."

Four years later with absolutely no mainstream treatments, she is still cancer free with no signs of it coming back. At the age off 44, Sewart is now the center of a major research project led by scientists who are downright fascinated by what she has done.

One of the perks of writing a book about sound medical solutions to common health complaints is that I have an opportunity to reach so many people from so many places on the globe. In the release of my latest book, The Blood Sugar Solution, I have been inspired by countless tales of the human body's empowered healing from the debilitating effects of insulin resistance and unruly inflammation in each system of the body.

I feel such joy every time I hear feedback from a reader or a patient about his or her success on the program. It's not egotistical joy necessarily, although my passion for Functional Medicine certainly fills me with happiness. Rather, it's pure gratitude for your willingness to make an effort at restoring your health by honoring the most natural and basic laws of the human body.

Remove unnecessary stressors, seek balance and strive for enjoyment on your ever-changing quest for health and vitality.

Why is it that we believe we can feed our bodies industrial nutrient depleted food-like substances empty of life and be healthy? How did we come to believe that food industry chemicals and processing could replace nature made foods?

A hundred years ago all food was organic, local, seasonal, fresh or naturally preserved by ancient methods. All food was food. Now less than 3% of our agricultural land is used to grow fruits and vegetables, which should make up 80% of our diet.

Today there are not even enough fruits and vegetables in this country to allow all Americans to follow the government guidelines to eat 5 to 9 servings a day.

What most of us are left with is industrial food. And who knows what lurks in the average boxed, packaged, or canned factory made science project.

When a French fry has more than 20 ingredients and almost all of them are not potato, or when a fast food hamburger contains very little meat, or when the average teenager consumes 34 teaspoons of sugar a day, we are living in a food nightmare, a sci-fi horror show.

Think food allergy and you might conjure the worst-case scenario, like a child going into anaphylactic shock after exposure to peanuts. No doubt, a severe food allergy is scary. But it's also relatively rare. A much more common scenario is an adult with a low-grade food allergy to, say, gluten who never pinpoints the cause of his misery. His symptoms are vague (bloating, constipation, weight gain) and his exposure is frequent (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), so the connection is murky. And, over years, the hidden allergy takes a toll on the immune system. The result of an overworked immune system is everything from weight gain to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to arthritis.

Back in 2003, photographer Thilde Jensen started getting sick. She had problems with her sinuses, flu-like symptoms, a weird tingling in parts of her body and at times felt drunk and foggy.

"I felt like my blood was running backwards," she said.

The weirdest part was what set if off. First she noticed that the symptoms would appear whenever she was around a lot of car exhaust. Then she experienced similar symptoms whenever she was around books. Then it was cigarette smoke and perfume.

"It just kept getting worse and worse," says Jensen, 40, who at the time was living in New York City. "It actually became kind of surreal. It was like being in a Hitchcock movie, like everything was out to get me."

Finally, Jensen says, it got the point where there were so many triggers that she became totally disoriented and completely non-functional. By that point certain foods were also making her sick, as were electronics that emitted radiation, like phones and computers.

Faced with constant irritation, Jensen made the difficult decision to permanently move to upstate New York and live outside in a tent, away from almost all the amenities of modern life. It was the only thing, she realized, that would make her feel normal again.

She was married at the time, but about a year into her stay near Syracuse the marriage ended - in part because she couldn't move back to NYC and her husband couldn't move out to the country. Jensen says she's doesn't hold the breakup against her former husband.

"Most people would probably do what he did because it was such an extreme life change, I wasn't the same person anymore," she says. "I used to be this fun-loving person and suddenly I couldn't do anything, and in certain ways I really needed to do it by myself."

It seems that while obesity rates have risen over the decades, so have portion sizes - not a particularly surprising connection. In fact, an incredibly alarming infographic helps to show that not only have meal sizes increased in size over the decades, but restaurant portion sizes have quadrupled since the 1950′s.

Could this be the reason for the ballooning obesity epidemic? The infographic created by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that hamburgers and french fry meals have tripled in size over the decades, while a cup of fountain soda is a whopping 6 times larger today than it used to be. A 2.4oz portion of french fries has grown to 6.7oz; hamburgers from 3.9oz to 12oz; and soda from 7oz to 42oz.

What may be even worse is that accompanied by this massive increase in portion sizes is the heavy use of harmful and toxic ingredients. While the ingredients used in food used to be minimal, you can find a plethora of toxic substances in the majority of food today, including MSG, aspartame, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial coloring, neotame, caramel coloring, and much more.

McDonald's chicken McNuggets, which would be expected to have nearly 0 ingredients, contains autolyzed yeast extract, dimethylpolysiloxane, sodium phosphate, to name a few ingredients. Even something as simple as 'strawberry flavor' consists of nearly 50 different chemicals. These ingredients along with many more can be found throughout the mainstream food supply.