Aspartame is one of the most used artificial sweeteners in the food supply today. It also happens to be one of the most dangerous.

Aspartame is used in thousands of products as a substitute to sugar, though consumers would actually be better off eating regular sugar.

Specifically, the toxic substance is often found in diet soft drinks and various candies. You should also be aware that aspartame is even present in a number of lesser-known conventional products as well.

Millions either knowingly or unknowingly consume aspartame on a daily basis. However, if the public was aware of the various dangers aspartame poses to individual health, they would stop - or would they? Aspartame is an addictive substance.

Three factories that made so-called "pink slime" beef filler have shut down since public outcry about the ammonia-treated substance began last month, The Associated Press reported Monday.

Beef Products Inc. spokesman Craig Letch told AP that only one factory in the country, located in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, is still producing the stuff. Three others, in Texas, Iowa and Kansas, have reportedly been shut down.

The product, known as "lean, finely textured beef" to industry insiders, is comprised of connective tissue and other less-than-edible pieces of cows, which are mashed into a slimy, pink substance and treated with ammonia gas to kill off bacteria.

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., have found that when they deplete a smoker's self control, smoking a cigarette may restore self-control.

The study, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (Vol. 121, No.1), exposed a test group and a control group - totaling 132 nicotine dependent smokers - to an emotional video depicting environmental damage. One group in the study expressed their natural emotional reactions (no depletion of self-control) while the second group suppressed their responses (self-control depletion). Half of the participants in each group were subsequently allowed to smoke a cigarette. Everyone then was asked to complete a frustrating task that required self-control.

"Our goal was to study whether tobacco smoking affects an individual's self-control resources," said lead author Bryan W. Heckman, M.A., a graduate student at the Moffitt Tobacco Research and Intervention Program and the Department of Psychology at the University of South Florida. "We hypothesized that participants who underwent a self-control depletion task would demonstrate less persistence on behavioral tasks requiring self-control as compared to those with self-control intact, when neither group was allowed to smoke. However, we also hypothesized that we would not find this performance decrement among participants who were permitted to smoke."

Acne is unheard of in populations eating a 'primal' or 'paleolithic' diet. This has caused some researchers, for example Loren Cordain (author of The Paleo Diet), to question what factors might be at play here. One prominent theory concerns the impact of eating carbohydrates that tend to be disruptive for blood sugar levels. These foods stimulate, among other things, the secretion of insulin and something known as insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) that induce changes in the skin that are conducive to the development of acne. Not only that, but a low glycaemic load (GL) diet (one which will tend to lower insulin and IGF-1 levels) was found to brings benefits to people with acne. You can read more about this in a previous post from 2007.

Very recently, the journal Acta Dermato-Venereologica published a study which again tested the potential of a low GL diet as a treatment for acne [1]. According to the summary of this study, eating a low-GL diet led to a significant reduction in acne, as well as evidence under the microscope of reduced sebaceous gland size and lower levels of inflammation.

This study is accompanied by a commentary [2] which talks about the role of diet in acne, and it inevitably focuses on the role of carbohydrate here, making reference to this recent study as well as the one I wrote about in 2007 that I link to above.

The author of the commentary also focuses on the potential role of milk in the development of acne. This is something that has been mooted before (see a previous post here from a couple of years back for example).

Prescription medications usually always carry a rather frightening (and long) list of possible side effects. These drug side effects may range from mild symptoms like headache or nausea to more serious risks such as seizures or temporary blindness. New research suggests that the side effects listed on the label often represent just a small portion of what users are really experiencing.

The Truth about Clinical Trials

Most new prescription drugs undergo extensive testing in laboratories, often on animals, before being the center of a variety of clinical trials among closely monitored patients. While these studies are generally very thorough and are the most reliable way to prove that a medication is safe and effective, clinical trials could not possibly foresee all of the potential effects the drug could have on individuals with different underlying conditions and medical histories. Many times, the most serious side effects are not acknowledged until after the medicine has been on the market for quite some time.

How Additional Side Effects Are Determined

Once a drug is approved by the FDA for specific treatments and medical providers begin to prescribe the medication to their patients, it is not uncommon for many other adverse effects to emerge. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to determine if the symptoms are a direct result of the medication or if other factors are also to blame. All of these reactions and side effects are added to more than 4 million similar reports in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System database. Until recently, no one had devised a logical method to analyze and filter the data.

Amid mounting evidence of the dangers genetically modified crops pose to humans, animals, our soils and biodiversity, the corporate-controlled U.S. government continues to ignore the dangers and actively promote GM crops.

Even worse are the increasing reports that scientists trying to study these dangers are having their government or corporate funding cut off. In some cases, they are even being prohibited by their universities from continued research because the universities fear losing corporate funding. And corporations with patents on GM crops are further hindering these same scientists by refusing them access to their seeds and crops.

But at least retired professor emeritus Don Huber of Purdue University has not been afraid to sound the alarm. A specialist in soil microbiology and plant pathology for more than 35 years, Huber has written and met with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to express his concerns about GM crops and ask for action to halt their spread and fund more research into the dangers.

It is no secret that the average American diet is in completely in the slumps. Consuming packaged foods, fast food, artificially enhanced products, and especially low quality cheap food is the norm, but is it any wonder that being overweight while also falling victim to a host of illnesses is also the norm. Being raised in this era of poor health makes it difficult to know what is truly healthy and unhealthy. Food has drastically changed since decades ago, and so parents often aren't aware of the severe decline in food quality. Fast food in particular is one of the primary reasons for the drastic health decline seen today.

If you haven't already, take a couple of hours to watch the documentaries Super Size Me or Fast Food Nation. After watching these films, you can see first hand how fast food causes severe damage to your body - even if you don't consume it for every meal of every day like in one of the films. Fast food is nothing but a concoction of harmful and health-damaging chemicals which can easily be understood if you were to think for a moment how any restaurant could offer a double cheeseburger for only $1.

Most recently it was uncovered that these $1 cheeseburgers, along with the rest of McDonald's' beef and chicken, were actually harnessing 'pink slime' scrap meat covered with ammonium hydroxide.

Not only does this fake meat provide no nutritional value at all, but it is chemically contaminated from ammonia, the toxic cleaning agent found under the sink. The meat is actually fat trimmings and connective tissue that are separated from the bone - scrap meat that is not fit for human consumption. The ammonia treatment is in response to the danger of contamination from salmonella or E. coli, but the scrap meats themselves are more likely to contain pathogens. Despite the chemical treatment, the meat is still in the line of fire for contamination.

A recent study has confirmed that toxic compounds derived from oil that was released in the Deepwater Horizon spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico nearly two years ago has entered the ocean's food chain through microorganisms.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and led by a team of researchers from East Carolina University, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Oregon State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the U.S. Geological Survey, detected chemical compounds found in oil called hydrocarbons, some known to be carcinogenic, within the bodies of microscopic crustaceans called zooplankton.

"Our research helped to determine a 'fingerprint' of the Deepwater Horizon spill--something that other researchers interested in the spill may be able to use," Dr. Siddhartha Mitra of East Carolina University said in a statement. "Furthermore, our work demonstrated that zooplankton in the Northern Gulf of Mexico accumulated toxic compounds derived from the Macondo well."

This is definitely a consumer alert that all should be aware of. You may have noticed some unusually large watermelons and kiwi fruit on the shelves lately. China's largest base of these fruits has fallen into scandal as farmers are overusing growth chemicals in an attempt to make extra money for their enhanced weight. The chemicals are also being used in other countries who are the top producers of the world of these fruits.


An investigative report by China Central Television found farms in and around Danyang city in Jiangsu province were losing acres of fruit to the problem.

The farmers spray forchlorfenuron, a growth accelerator, during overly wet weather which make the melons burst, CCTV said, citing agricultural experts. Readers should be aware that forchlorfenuron is also registered for use on grapes raisins, and kiwi fruit in the United States, Chile, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Turkey, Canada and Europe.

Forchlorfenuron is a cytokinin, that is, it's a substance that promotes cell division and delays cell death. FCF acts on septins, which are key factors in mitosis, cell division. That function results in larger--and exploding--fruit. The application of excess FCF prompts cells to divide more rapidly. That's a cancer-like function.

Of course, the greater multiplication of cells produces bigger fruits, but that excess growth is not necessarily accompanied by adequate nutrients. Therefore, the stability and nutritional quality of the fruit tends to deteriorate.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Pesticide Fact Sheet, forchlorfenuron causes inflammation, growth retardation, emaciation, and increased mortality in rats tested.

Exposing your body to temperatures of -110C can be an excellent tonic.

During the so-called Big Freeze that paralysed parts of the country last week, night-time lows reached -9C. Pah! I'm about to experience temperatures more than 100C lower than that - and while wearing little more than a swimsuit.

The reason? Because chilling out in an oversized deep-freeze - or cryotherapy as it is known to spa-goers - is an extreme pick-me-up. More than that, it is said to work wonders for the skin, can boost your immune response, ease chronic pain, heal nerve damage, and even improve sporting performance.

Whoever thought that walking half-naked into a sealed, icy chamber with a pair of knee-high socks, gloves and ski mask could be good for you? The Japanese, as it happens, who came up with the idea of "whole-body cryotherapy" in the 1970s. But it was Polish scientists who embraced it as a way to relieve chronic pain, helping to popularise it in sanatoriums across eastern Europe.