Here at NaturalSociety we've covered countless reasons to avoid fast food at all costs. This cheaply-processed food fuels illness and disease due to containing numerous harmful ingredients - some of which are actually banned in other countries.

But if you need yet another reason to avoid the junk, here it is: According to a study published in the journalAnnals of Diagnostic Pathology, some fast food hamburgers may contain as little as 2% actual meat.

For the study, researchers analyzed the content of 8 fast food hamburger brands. To ensure that there was no bias in the results, they assigned each hamburger with an anonymously designated name, ranging from H1 to H8.

While it would only logical to assume that hamburgers are made up primarily of meat, much of the 5 billion hamburgers consumed by Americans annually actual contain very little meat (and could contain a whole host of other ingredients.

A devastating new report commissioned by the National Cancer Institute reveals that our 40-year long 'War on Cancer' has been waged against a vastly misunderstood 'enemy,' that in many cases represented no threat to human health whatsoever.

If you have been following our advocacy work on cancer, particularly in connection with the dark side of breast cancer awareness month, you know that we have been calling for the complete reclassification of some types of 'breast cancer' as benign lesions, e.g. ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), as well as pointing out repeatedly that x-ray based breast screenings are not only highly carcinogenicbut are also causing an epidemic of "overdiagnosis" and "overtreatment" in US women, with an estimated 1.3 million cases in the past 30 years alone.

This week, a National Cancer Institute commissioned panel's report published in JAMA online confirmed that we all - public and professionals alike - should stop calling low-risk lesions like DCIS and high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN) 'cancer.'

If you have trouble going to sleep at night and waking up for work or school in the morning, a week of camping in the great outdoors might be just what you need. That's according to evidence reported on August 1 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, showing that humans' internal biological clocks will tightly synchronize to a natural, midsummer light-dark cycle, if only they are given the chance.

A week of exposure to true dawn and dusk with nights lit only by a campfire's glow had the biggest effect on people who might otherwise describe themselves as night owls. Under those conditions, they quickly reverted to a schedule much more like an early bird's.

"By increasing our exposure to sunlight and reducing our exposure to electrical lighting at night, we can turn our internal clock and sleep times back and likely make it easier to awaken and be alert in the morning," says Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado Boulder.

As UK officials tout GMO foods as 'safe' compared to organic crops, results of a long-term, peer-reviewed study conducted by a group of scientists led by Dr Judy Carman of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research in Australia has been released - and it proves that GMO are anything but 'safe.'

Livestock in the UK and around the world have been fed GMO for over two decades, since the USDA authorized the commercial sale of GMO soy and corn to feed not only animals, but human beings in 1996. Much of the meat raised on these GMO crop are sent overseas, to countries like the UK, elsewhere in Europe, and even to cattle-abundant nations like Australia. This most recent study proves that a more sober examination of the long term effects of GMO on our environment and health should be demanded of corporations like Monsanto, even as other evidence mounts that GMO crops are unhealthy, especially considering that nations trying to remove GMO from their food supply are still being devastated by its ill-effects.

A loophole in the European labeling laws insinuated on the EU Commission due to lobbying pressure from the giant US grain cartel - Bunge, ADM, Cargill have allowed huge exports of US-made GMO food into Europe. Under the current laws, anything over .9 percent GMO is required to be labeled.

Toronto - A man being treated at a Toronto hospital is believed to be only the second person in the world known to have developed a rare neurological condition called synesthesia after suffering brain damage.

Nine months after having a stroke, the anonymous patient began experiencing symptoms of synesthesia, in which certain colours evoked specific feelings. Foods were also associated with various colours. High-pitched brass instruments like those in the theme from James Bond movies elicited euphoria and caused light blue flashes in his peripheral vision.

Neurologist Dr. Tom Schweizer of St. Michael's Hospital says it appears that when the man's brain tried to repair the stroke damage, the "wiring" went awry and produced synesthesia.

Most synesthetes are born with the condition and include singer-songwriter Billy Joel, composer Franz Liszt and author Vladimir Nabakov. Functional MRI tests showed that many different areas of the man's brain were activated while listening to the James Bond theme compared with healthy control subjects.

"The areas of the brain that lit up when he heard the James Bond theme are completely different from the areas we would expect to see light up when people listen to music," says Schweizer. "Huge areas on both sides of the brain were activated that were not activated when he listened to other music or other auditory stimuli and were not activated in the control group."

The case is reported in the journal Neurology.

Source: The Canadian Press

With symptoms including headaches, nausea, rashes, and fatigue, Caitlin Shetterly visited doctor after doctor searching for a cure for what ailed her. What she found, after years of misery and bafflement, was as unlikely as it was utterly common.

The office of allergist Paris Mansmann, MD, sits on a grassy slope overlooking the Royal River, a wide waterway that originates in inland Maine and winds down across farmland and under train tracks until it hits the coastal town of Yarmouth, where it sloshes into the Atlantic Ocean. When I first came to Mansmann in February 2011, the river was covered with ice, and bare trees stood silver sentry on its shores. I was 36. I'd been sick for three and a half years.

During that time, when I wasn't working as a writer and theater director or being a wife and mother, I visited doctors and had tests. I told few friends or members of my extended family how ill I was, because I didn't have any way to explain what was wrong. I had no diagnosis, just a collection of weird symptoms: tight, achy pain that radiated through my body and caused me to hobble around (my ankles, I'd joke to my husband, Dan, felt like they'd been "Kathy Batesed," à la the movie Misery); burning rashes that splashed across my cheeks and around my mouth like pizza sauce; exhaustion; headaches; hands that froze into claws while I slept and hurt to uncurl in the morning; a constant head cold; nausea; and, on top of all that, severe insomnia - my body just could not, would not, turn off and rest. I visited every doctor who'd see me and tried everything they threw at me: antidepressants; painkillers; elimination diets (including a long eight months when I went without any of the major allergens, such as gluten, nuts, dairy, soy, and nightshades); herbal supplements; iodine pills; steroid shots; hormone treatments; Chinese teas; acupuncture; energy healing; a meditation class - you name it, I did it. Nothing worked. After I maxed out the available rheumatologists, endocrinologists, nutritionists, gastroenterologists, Lyme disease specialists, acupuncturists, and alternative-medicine practitioners in the Portland metropolitan area, I was sent to neurologists in Boston. All of my tests came back normal.

Obesogens are chemicals that can inappropriately alter fat storage and change metabolic set-points. This disrupts energy balance and modifies your appetite to promote fat accumulation. Chemicals in your environment can certainly have an impact on your health and often your weight. Some of these exposures may occur before you're born but there is still a lot that you can control! Exposure to obesogens don't necessary doom you to become overweight, but it's all the more reason to consider ways to avoid exposure and regularly use neutraceuticals and whole foods to aid our body's natural detox mechanisms through our liver, kidneys and bowel.

Here's some easy ways to do a quick check of your home a to determine where your greatest exposures may be coming from.

Here's 12 simple changes that will significantly reduce your risks:

Scientists have long been worried about the possible harmful effects of regular cellular phone use, but studies so far have been largely inconclusive. Currently, radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, such as those produced by cell phones, are classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). A new Tel Aviv University study, though, may bring bad news.

To further explore the relationship between cancer rates and cell phone use, Dr. Yaniv Hamzany of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Department at the Rabin Medical Center, looked for clues in the saliva of cell phone users. Since the cell phone is placed close to the salivary gland when in use, he and his fellow researchers, including departmental colleagues Profs. Raphael Feinmesser, Thomas Shpitzer and Dr. Gideon Bahar and Prof. Rafi Nagler and Dr. Moshe Gavish of the Technion in Haifa, hypothesized that salivary content could reveal whether there was a connection to developing cancer.

Comparing heavy mobile phone users to non-users, they found that the saliva of heavy users showed indications of higher oxidative stress -- a process that damages all aspects of a human cell, including DNA -- through the development of toxic peroxide and free radicals. More importantly, it is considered a major risk factor for cancer.

The findings have been reported in the journal Antioxidants and Redox Signaling.

Despite what the media preaches to you, your body has no intrinsic need for drugs. Over the course of a lifetime, the average person may be prescribed 14,000 pills (this doesn't even include over-the-counter meds), and by the time you reach your 70s you could be taking five or more pills every day, according to Pill Poppers, a documentary.

The featured film asks a poignant question that anyone taking medications should also, which is, are these pills really beneficial, or are they doing more harm than good?

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) made two moves in recent days that seemingly address consumer concerns on some hot button issues. First, it banned the use of bisphenol A (BPA) based epoxy resins in coatings for baby formula packaging. Second, it proposed a limit on how much arsenic is allowed in apple juice. Looking more closely at these decisions, however, it seems that FDA is really more interested in appeasing industry, than doing its duty to protect the public.

So what action is the FDA really taking? Due to intense consumer demand, manufacturers of infant formula packaging have already stopped using BPA. And, based on the new standard for arsenic levels, 95 percent of companies that make apple juice are already in compliance.

The FDA's BPA ban is actually an abandonment petition coming from industry stating that it is now illegal to use BPA for those specific products - but it does not say anything about the safety of BPA.