Food in the end, in our tradition, is something holy. It's not about nutrients and calories. It's about sharing. It's about honesty. It's about identity. ~ Louise Fresco

You may already know that junk food is bad for your health, but you may not realize how bad it can be. A new study from the School of Medical Sciences at Australia's University of New South Wales points to profound brain changes that junk food causes, making a junk food habit "more deadly than war, famine, and genocide".

Say what? Yep, the food war is real, and though the UNSW study was conducted on rats, the brain changes observed matter to us humans.

As mammals we share similar brain functioning in the orbitofrontal cortex, the part of our gray matter responsible for sensing and evaluating the pleasurable aspects of food.

Makers of junk food know it is highly addictive, but the UNSW study proves unequivocally that junk food alters behavior by causing near-permanent changes in the brain's reward circuiting, an alteration that can trigger obesity.

The study abstract concluded:

"We observed that rats fed a cafeteria diet for 2 weeks showed impaired sensory-specific satiety following consumption of a high calorie solution. The deficit in expression of sensory-specific satiety was also present 1 week following the withdrawal of cafeteria foods. Thus, exposure to obesogenic diets may impact upon neurocircuitry involved in motivated control of behavior."

While mammals developed a natural trigger over our evolutionary history which prevents us from over-eating, a phenomenon termed "sensory-specific satiety," the consumption of junk food overrides this natural 'kill' switch that allows us to regulate the calories we consume.

Junk food consumption also causes mitochondrial dysfunction and tissue inflammation, which leads to a host of other diseases. Perhaps most troubling, though, is that these fake foods also mess with our internal motivation and reward system - which causes us to seek more nutrition-less junk. It's like programming a time bomb and just waiting for it to blow.

Hype a war, sell an invasion.

Hype a disease, sell a vaccine.

That's the business model. Make no mistake about it.

And at the criminal liar's club called the US Centers for Disease Control, men and women are working that business model every day.

Here are 13 reasons to reject the current hype about the "measles outbreak."

One: Above and beyond all other reasons is the CDC's track record of lying. There is no reason to believe anything they say or publish. And I mean anything.

For example, during the so-called Swine Flu epidemic of 2009, as Sharyl Attkisson reported for CBS News (10/21), the CDC stopped counting Swine Flu cases in America.

Stopped. Counting.

"Cereals here in the United States contain a packaging ingredient called—God, I'm paranoid." The natural-food advocate Vani Hari paused, laughing, looking at a man standing a few feet from our table in a Union Square coffee shop. He was huddled over his phone, just waiting for his coffee—or so it seemed. She lowered her voice, continuing, barely audible: "... called BHT."

Hari looked in my blank eyes. I asked, "In the plastic bags?"

She nodded as if I'd just been let in on the secret to end all secrets. "And in the U.K., they can't use it," Hari, who is better known through her blogging, speaking, and TV appearances as "The Food Babe," continued. "The purpose of it is to leach into the cereal, so it keeps it fresh. And, how many millions of kids are eating this every single day?"

"Why did the U.K. take it out?" I asked.

"They don't allow it," Hari said.

"They must have a reason."

"There are studies that suggest it's linked to cancer, tumors," she said. "It's an endocrine-disrupting chemical."

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) is one of the corporate front groups suing Vermont in an attempt to block the state's GMO labeling law. The trade group is also lobbying for H.R. 4432, an anti-consumer, anti-states' rights bill, introduced in April (2014) in the House of Representatives by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.). The bill, dubbed by consumers as the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act, would preempt all state GMO labeling laws. HR 4432 would also legalize the use of the word "natural" on products that contain GMOs.

IDFA President and CEO Connie Tipton has been an outspoken opponent of consumers' right to know. In her address to this year's Dairy Forum, she noted that consumers "can be harsh critics on topics such as genetically modified organisms," and then went on to criticize "restrictive labeling requirements" as "a straightjacket on innovation and marketing."

Tipton has also made it clear that not only does the IDFA oppose mandatory GMO labeling laws, the trade group also opposes retailers' efforts to label voluntarily. For instance, when Walmart considered labeling the GMO sweet corn it sells (a promise that remains unfulfilled), Tipton went on the attack:

[Walmart] announced this past summer it planned to sell a new crop of genetically modified sweet corn created by Monsanto. Nothing wrong with that, but a lot of us were scratching our heads when Wal-Mart added that it would label the product as containing GMO ingredients - even though the Food and Drug Administration has already said the product is safe. Given Wal-Mart's size and market share, there are legitimate concerns that its decision on GMO labeling will force other retailers to march in lockstep behind the industry giant.

This is a short clip from the upcoming film STATIN NATION II.

Health Impact News Editor Comments

Dr. Suzanne Humphries is a practicing nephrologist (kidney physician). In this lecture (video below), she addresses a study done in Croatia [1] where a child who was vaccinated with the MMR vaccine was tested positive for the measles vaccine strain Schwarz eight days after vaccination.

This was a significant finding, because the child's symptoms were thought to be similar to rubella, and without testing, the sickness would have been possibly mis-diagnosed as rubella, or the wild-type strain of measles the vaccine is designed to protect against.

This concept of "shedding," where the child comes down with the disease from the virus in the vaccine itself, surprised the researchers:

Virus excretion in vaccinees has been reported before, but to our knowledge, this is documented for the first time for the Schwarz vaccine strain. [1]

Since 2010, this phenomena of vaccine shedding with measles in the MMR vaccine has been observed in at least two other studies:

Differentiating the wild from the attenuated during a measles outbreak. Paediatrcis and Child Health, 2012:

In the midst of a local measles outbreak, a recently immunized child was investigated for a new-onset measles-type rash. Nucleic acid testing identified that a vaccine-type measles virus was being shed in the urine. Clinically differentiating measles from a nonmeasles rash is challenging, but can be supported by a thorough medical history evaluation. Rashes are expected to occur after immunization; nucleic acid testing can be used when it is difficult to differentiate between wild and attenuated strains. [2]

Case of vaccine-associated measles five weeks post-immunisation, British Columbia, Canada, Eurosurveillance, 2013:

We describe a case of vaccine-associated measles in a two-year-old patient from British Columbia, Canada, in October 2013, who received her first dose of measles-containing vaccine 37 days prior to onset of prodromal symptoms. Identification of this delayed vaccine-associated case occurred in the context of an outbreak investigation of a measles cluster. [3]

Are health officials testing cases of measles in the current outbreak in the United States, to determine if the measles strain is the wild strain of the vaccine strain?

Not likely, and it is not likely that the mainstream media "TV doctors" will even discuss this as they falsely vilify parents who choose not to administer the MMR vaccine to their children as the cause of these outbreaks. Some of these cases are confirmed to be among those who have received the MMR vaccine, and for those who have not been vaccinated, is it possible they were infected from those recently vaccinated when the vaccine was still "shedding," and that the vaccine-strain of measles was passed on from the vaccinated child to the unvaccinated child?

Are you or your children on psychotropic drugs?

If so, you may be interested in knowing what independent researchers are finding regarding ADHD drugs, Antidepressant drugs, Antipsychotic drugs, and Anti-Anxiety drugs. CCHR International—The Mental Health Watchdog online, publishes an extensive listing of those drugs risks and/or possible side effects here.

Individuals with five neurodevelopmental disorders -- autism spectrum disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, dyslexia, and Specific Language Impairment -- appear to compensate for dysfunction by relying on a single powerful and nimble system in the brain known as declarative memory.

This hypothesis being proposed by a Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientist is based on decades of research. It is published online and will be in the April issue of Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.

The proposed compensation allows individuals with autism to learn scripts for navigating social situations; helps people with obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette syndrome to control tics and compulsions; and provides strategies to overcome reading and language difficulties in those diagnosed with dyslexia, autism, or Specific Language Impairment, a developmental disorder of language.

Public health scientists and a government committee working on nutritional advice receive funding from the very companies whose products are widely held to be responsible for the obesity crisis, an investigation by The BMJ reveals today.

Findings from the special report raise important questions about the potential for bias and conflict of interest among public health experts as the UK faces a growing obesity epidemic.

Recipients of research funding from sugar and other related industries include members of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), which is currently updating official advice on carbohydrates consumption, and researchers working for the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research unit (HNR).

HNR scientists have received research funding and funding in kinds from companies including Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestlé, Sainsbury's, the Institute of Brewing and Distilling, Weight Watchers International and others.

Recent research investigates the effects of food on dreams.

"It is no humorist's fancy that the rarebit is a thing of dreams. Clothed in gold and breathing a fragrance that fills the nostrils with a charm more bewitching than woodland odors, it is, to a soul attuned to it's beauties, a thing of glorious reverie by day and matchless dreams by night."

- Randolph C. Lewis. "Rarebit Symbolism," in Winsor McCay, Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend (Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1905)