The featured video, Overconsumption, is a segment of a longer, completely non-verbal documentary called SAMSARA, which was filmed over a period of five years, across 25 countries.

"By dispensing with dialogue and descriptive text, SAMSARA subverts our expectations of a traditional documentary, instead encouraging our own inner interpretations inspired by images and music that infuses the ancient with the modern."

Indeed, the effect is striking. This clip, which focuses on overconsumption, highlights just how unsustainable our eating habits have become. Modern food production also involves animal cruelty on a scale never seen before in the history of mankind.

A new study from St. Michael's Hospital found that, after four years of declining, the rates of teenagers coming into Ontario emergency departments with suicide-related behaviours stopped dropping between 2006 and 2010.

Suicide-related behaviours are incidents of self-inflicted injuries or self-poisonings.

Using data from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, the researchers found that from 2002 to 2006, the rates of teenagers coming into Ontario emergency departments with suicide-related behaviours declined by 30 per cent. However, from 2006 until the end of the study in 2010, rates did not continue to drop and about one-third more of these events resulted in a hospital admission, suggesting an increase in severity.

"Coming into hospital with a self-inflicted injuries or poisoning is a strong risk factor for suicide," said Dr. Anne Rhodes, lead author and research scientist in St. Michael's Hospital's Suicide Studies Research Unit. "Within a year of coming into a hospital with suicide-related behaviour, 16 per cent will repeat their behaviour and about two per cent will die by suicide."

Previous research from Dr. Rhodes has shown that more than 80 per cent of youth who die by suicide had some form of contact with the health care system in the year before their death. Compared to population-based peers, youth who have gone to an emergency department to hospital with suicide-related behaviours had three to four times higher risk of death.

This one is big.

Dr. Ronald Pies, the editor-in-chief emeritus of the Psychiatric Times, laid the theory to rest in the July 11, 2011, issue of the Times with this staggering admission:

"In truth, the 'chemical imbalance' notion was always a kind of urban legend - never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists."

Boom.

Dead.

The point is, for decades the whole basis of psychiatric drug research, drug prescription, and drug sales has been: "we're correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain."

The problem was, researchers had never established a normal baseline for chemical balance. So they were shooting in the dark. Worse, they were faking a theory. Pretending they knew something when they didn't.

To hear the pesticide and junk food marketers of the world tell it, anyone who questions the value, legitimacy or safety of GMO crops is naïve, anti-science and irrational to the point of hysteria.

But how long can Monsanto ignore the mounting actual scientific evidence that their technology is not only failing to live up to its promises, it's putting public health at risk?

Jim Goodman, farmer, activist and member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board, recently wrote about Monsanto's deceptive use of the expression "sound science."

But, 'sound science' has no scientific definition. It does not mean peer reviewed, or well documented research. 'Sound science' is only a term, an ideological term, used to support a particular point of view, policy statement or a technology. 'Sound science' is little more than the opinions of so-called "experts" representing corporate interests.

Simply put, 'sound science' always supports the position of industry over people, corporate profit over food safety, the environment and public health.

Here are five new reports and studies, published in the last two months, that blow huge holes in Monsanto's "sound science" story. Reports of everything from Monsanto's Roundup causing fatal, chronic kidney disease to how, contrary to industry claims, Roundup persists for years, contaminating soil, air and water. And oh-by-the-way, no, GMO crops will not feed the world, nor have they reduced the use of herbicides and pesticides.

When I interviewed investigative reporter Robert Whitaker in 2010 after the publication of his book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, he was not exactly a beloved figure within the psychiatry establishment. Whitaker had documented evidence that standard drug treatments were making many patients worse over the long term, and he detailed the lack of science behind these treatments.

For Anatomy of an Epidemic, Whitaker won the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors Book Award for best investigative journalism. This and other acclaim made it difficult for establishment psychiatry to ignore him, so he was invited to speak at many of their bastions, including a Harvard Medical School Grand Rounds at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he faced hostile audiences. However, Whitaker's sincerity about seeking better treatment options, his command of the facts and his lack of anti-drug dogma compelled all but the most dogmatic psychiatrists to take him seriously.

Have you ever wondered how anyone makes any money on a $2 bag of nacho-cheese flavored corn chips or a .25¢ apple? Economists and policy wonks have been talking about how we privatize profits and socialize loss here in the U.S. for at least a decade. If your eyes glazed over when you read that, you're not alone. Unfortunately, we can't afford to ignore how this big picture idea affects each and every one of us. What does it mean for Main Street America?

How we grow our nation's food is the perfect snapshot. Organic activists and locavores have also been talking about the same concept for just as long, if not longer: The hidden costs of cheap, industrial food.

We have a system of predatory agriculture in which corporations (aka Big Ag) pursue private gain relentlessly regardless of the social consequences. To bring it closer to home, social consequences can be defined as anything from polluting our water, land and air to impacting the health of our families to making the business of farming economically unsustainable.

All humans were built with the "fight or flight" response and our ancestors were no different. Like everyone, our ancestors experienced anxiety and likely bouts of depression; the issue is that generalized anxiety disorder as well as well as depression has and continues to rise at an alarming rate. Generally speaking, our ancestor did experience anxiety and depression, but not to the disordered extent that many people do today. What was once a necessary and built in mechanism to protect us from danger has become a constant for some people.

Anxiety disorder wasn't even diagnosed until 1980, not so long ago in the scope of medical diagnoses. While the root cause of anxiety and depression (which are often both present) is different for everyone, there are several dietary factors that contribute to these mental disorders.

Low-fat diets do not curb heart disease or help you live longer - the real enemy is sugar and carbohydrates, according to a leading scientist.

Current dietary advice is based on flawed evidence from the 1950s that has demonised saturated fat and put public health at risk, he said.

James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist in New York, said: 'We need a public health campaign as strong as the one we had in the 70s and 80s demonising saturated fats, to say that we got it wrong.'

Writing in the journal Open Heart, he added: 'There is no conclusive proof that a low-fat diet has any positive effects on health. Indeed, the literature indicates a general lack of any effect (good or bad) from a reduction in fat intake.

'The public fear that saturated fat raises cholesterol is completely unfounded.'

Experts believed the low-fat diet would lead to less obesity and diabetes - when the exact opposite was true, he added.

Introduction

A recent publication by Malhotra1 was refreshing, inspiring and hit on an important topic that has been heavily debated for over 50 years, that is, are saturated fats as bad as we have been led to believe?

History of the low-fat 'diet-heart' hypothesis

The vilification of saturated fat by Keys2 began two decades before the seven countries study, where Keys showed a curvilinear association between fat calories as a percentage of total calories and death from degenerative heart disease from six countries. However, he excluded data from 16 countries that did not fit his hypothesis. Indeed, data were available at the time from 22 countries, and when all countries were looked at the association was greatly diminished.3 Furthermore, no association existed between dietary fat and mortality from all causes of death.3 Thus, past data promoted by Keys showing that an increased percentage of fat calories consumed increases the risk of death are not valid (and certainly could never have proved causation). These data seemingly lead us down the wrong "dietary-road" for decades to follow, as pointed out by others.4 ,5

The consequences of replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates

The initial Dietary Goals for Americans, published in 1977, proposed increasing carbohydrates and decreasing saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet.6 ,7 This stemmed from the belief that since saturated fats increase total cholesterol (a flawed theory to begin with) they must increase the risk of heart disease. Moreover, it was believed that since fat is the most "calorie-dense" of the macronutrients, a reduction in its consumption would lead to a reduction in calories and a subsequent decrease in the incidence of obesity, as well as diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. However, the advice to increase carbohydrate intake seemingly made things worse, with an increase in its consumption (mainly corn syrup) paralleling the increased incidence of diabetes and obesity in the USA.8 In this analysis, fat was not associated with type 2 diabetes when total energy intake was accounted for,8 and the intake of saturated fat in the USA during this time was also not on the rise.9 These data provide a strong argument that the increase in the consumption of refined carbohydrates was the causative dietary factor for the diabetes and obesity epidemic in the USA.

Great April Fools' Day prank idea: Switch up your loved ones' sugar with salt. When they spit out their coffee and comment on the saltiness you can insist that it's really sugar and that there's nothing wrong, giving the prank a twisted flair.

But you'd be right - because there's friggin' GMO sugar in salt!

This applies to ingredients found in iodized table salt, and should concern people who are serious about allergy-inducing ingredients or who are seeking a different eating style.

While getting a natural allergy treatment for sugar I had to avoid it completely for 25 hours. At least I can flavor food with salt, I said, but was told to check the label. Haha - okay - whatever. But no, it's true - there was sugar! -