Remember how we were told to eat all our veggies when we were younger because they were good for us? Is that really true? On this week's show, we took a look at the myth of the 'balanced diet' as promoted by the USDA and other state agencies. Mass cultivation of grains and vegetables has had devastating consequences for the planet's biosphere, not least the one billion-plus people who go hungry daily, a top soil exhausted of the basic nutrients for growing crops, and a mechanized global food industry that poisons the environment at every stage of production.

GMOs are promoted by Big Agribusiness as the answer to global food shortages, but independent studies indicate that genetically modified food is not fit for human or animal consumption. GMOs are already prevalent in the food supply so is it too late to stop Monsanto's world takeover? And is there really a food shortage to begin with? If Goldman Sachs and other market predators can pocket $400 million in 2012 alone from betting against the price of food, then commodity prices are clearly distorted. So what is the real outlook for food supply and demand?

People who seek healthy options appear to be hemmed in on all sides, but perhaps if we look to the past, we can find a way out? Our ancestors survived Ice Ages on paleo diets that were high in meat and saturated fats, and distinctly low on carbs. Tens of thousands of people experimenting with 'going paleo' have reported excellent health results -- results that the Big Agribusiness and Big Pharma-sponsored scientific establishment said should not have happened.

But they did, and now, on the eve of global civilization's collapse - due in large part to its addiction to increasingly refined carbs - word is getting around that saturated fat is where it's at.

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In research that echoes previous studies about the increase of diseases in those who work overnight, new research has drawn a strong correlation between ovarian cancer and an inverted work schedule.

By tracking the health of 3,000 women who worked night shifts, researchers found that they had an increased rate of early stage ovarian cancer by nearly 50 percent compared to women who worked a regular day shift.

Researchers speculate that a possible imbalance caused by the disruption of the sleep hormone melatonin may be a leading factor.

In the current research, investigators examined 11,100 cases of women with ovarian cancer, 389 cases of women with borderline disease and 1,832 women who were not ill. They found that roughly one in four women with advanced cancer worked the night shift, with one third of borderline cancer working overnight and only one in five in the control group working overnight.

Difficulty or inability to write a coherent text message, even in patients who have no problem speaking, may become a "vital" tool in diagnosing a type of crippling stroke, according to new research at Henry Ford Hospital.

The case study focused on a 40-year-old man visiting the metro Detroit area on business who showed signs of "dystextia," a recently coined term for incoherent text messaging that can sometimes be confused with autocorrect garble. But in his case, the man saw nothing wrong with the garble.

The patient had no problem with a routine bedside test of his language abilities - including fluency of speech, reading, writing, comprehension and other factors. However, when asked to type a simple text message, he not only produced garble, but he was unable to see it as such.

Despite showing only slight facial asymmetry and no other symptoms, doctors determined the man had suffered an acute ischemic stroke, in which a clot or other blockage cuts off blood supply to part of the brain. Such strokes usually result in some form of physical impairment and can be fatal.

Gwyneth Paltrow has been castigated for saying she avoids feeding her children carbohydrates, but she's right: we don't need to eat starchy carbs at all, says Joanna Blythman

Gwyneth Paltrow has provoked the wrath of the dietetic establishment by saying that she avoids feeding her children bread, rice and pasta, because she believes that these carbohydrate foods aren't good for them. Paltrow was writing in her new low-carb, gluten-free cookbook, It's All Good, which is out in April, and whose recipes are said by her publisher to "form the basis of the diet Gwyneth goes back to when she's been overindulging, when she needs to rebuild, or lose weight."

Dieticians who subscribe uncritically to government nutritional guidelines have been wheeled out to testify to how 'vital' carbohydrate is in the diet, and warn in the bleakest terms of the dangers of restricting it. Paltrow is putting her children, aged eight and six, "at risk of nutrient deficiencies", warns one. Her children "won't be able to think straight as their brain won't be functioning", says another. In the same Daily Mail piece, it is even observed that Paltrow's children are thin - shock horror! - as if this was automatically cause for concern. So accustomed are we to the sight of overweight children, thin ones are beginning to look unusual.

Casting Paltrow in the role of the neurotic celeb, selfishly inflicting her own faddy and dangerous eating habits on her poor starved offspring, has undeniable appeal, especially for those of us who aren't rich or pretty and who struggle daily with our own excess weight. The New York Post says: "The book reads like the manifesto to some sort of creepy healthy-girl sorority." But Paltrow has a point: no one, not even a child, actually "needs" to eat carbs.

Why were HPV-16 L1 DNA fragments detected in post mortem samples taken six months after Gardasil vaccination and not the other vaccine-relevant types? Dr. Sin Hang Lee, of Milford Hospital and Milford Molecular Laboratory, may have provided an answer in his most recently published paper entitled, "Topological conformational changes of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA bound to an insoluble aluminum salt - A study by low temperature PCR."^[1] His findings suggest that non-B-conformational changes in HPV L1 gene DNA fragments bound to the AAHS adjuvant may be genotype related, in other words specific to HPV-16.

In September 2011, SaneVax Inc. informed the FDA that despite all claims stating Gardasil contained 'no viral DNA' Dr. Lee had discovered there were indeed fragments of HPV-11, HPV-16 and HPV-18 L1 DNA firmly attached to Merck's proprietary aluminum adjuvant in 100% of the samples he tested, but all were lacking a region amplifiable by an MY09 degenerate primer.^[2] The FDA was quick to confirm that Gardasil does contain residual HPV L1 gene DNA fragments,^[3] but that these fragments posed no health risk. The FDA completely ignored a request for further investigations put forth by the SaneVax Team.^[4]

In light of the FDA statement corroborating Dr. Lee's previous findings, the presence of HPV DNA fragments of vaccine origin in the bodies of recipients might be anticipated after intramuscular injections of Gardasil. However, finding HPV-16 L1 DNA fragments in post-mortem blood samples of a teenager who died six months after completion of 3 Gardasil injections without finding any other vaccine-relevant fragments was a surprise.[5] Obviously, further investigations were necessary.

Over the past few weeks, I've been blogging about the Citizens For Health selections of the top ten food additives to avoid in the "Read Your Labels" campaign. In case you missed any of the actors in this rogue's gallery of unnecessary and health-damaging ingredients that turn up in so many products, here's a recap of what they are, where you're most likely to find them, and why you should keep them out of your diet.

As the high point of this campaign, Citizens for Health has declared Thursday, April 11 to be "Read Your Labels Day." On that date, we would like you to help spread the "411" on these additives by taking a photo of food and beverage products containing these undesirable ingredients and sharing your photos on Instagram by using the hashtag #ReadYourLabels.

Never before in the history of tracking red tide in Florida have so many manatees died as a result of exposure. Despite this concerning fact, 'experts' are towing the party line that there are no human harms associated with long-term exposure. Are they serious?

ABC7 interviewed Mote Marine Laboratory's senior scientist Dr. Barbara Kirkpatrick on Feb. 27^th about whether there are any long-term effects of red tide on humans, to which she responded "I don't think there's any evidence yet that we have to worry about long-term exposure."

Really? What kind of evidence does Dr. Kirkpatrick think is lacking?

Is Dr. Kirkpatrick pointing to a lack of large-scale, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled human studies showing that chronic "low-dose" red tide exposure is anything but harmless? Because if this the standard of proof she requires in order to make a determination about possible health risks to an already exposed public, we shall never know the truth, as such a study is not only unethical to perform, but would be too expensive to attract the necessary funding. In the meantime, following Dr. Kirkpatrick's disregard for any reasonable sense of caution, you can view tourists and locals eating red tide affected shellfish and swimming in the Gulf, unaware that anything could be wrong or unhealthy with these routine behaviors.

Written with my husband Luke.

Today I need to make the following emergency public service announcement:

The restaurant world has been taken hostage - by Canola oil!

Over the past several months, Luke and I have eaten out at all sorts of restaurants here in the Napa Valley, from Mexican to Thai, from Chinese to French, from Italian to Fusion. And we've discovered there's one thing nearly every meal had in common.

If an American food product contains under 0.5 gm trans fat "per serving" it can legally claim "0 gm" canola oil.

This week, Cate and I celebrated our wedding anniversary, so we decided to go for a special night out. A friend recommended a place in the next valley over, so we took the drive in hopes that this quaint little eatery might provide a temporary shelter from the relentless Canola downpour. Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be offered yet another menu built on the viscous foundation of this "neutral" oil.

But alas, like a breached tanker foundering on a reef, our hopes were dashed.

Psychopathology and particularly psychosis has had a bit of a research dance with immunology over the past several years. For example, women with post-partum psychosis are more likely than controls to have anti-thyroid antibodies. And folks with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are more likely to have strange anti-wheat protein antibodies than controls. In the recent, very large CATIE trial, 23.% of those with schizophrenia had IgA anti-AGA antibiodies (anti-gliadin) compared to 3.1% of a comparison group, and 5.4% had high levels of tTG antibodies compared to 0.8% of the comparison group.

No one is sure what these immune reactions mean. But it would be interesting to see how immune modulators might affect psychosis in a clinical trial. In evolutionary medicine, immune and inflammatory modulators could include a dietary intervention, probiotics, or even helminth therapies. To my knowledge, none of these have been applied to schizophrenia or post-partum psychosis in a clinical trial of any kind.

This week, a paper came out in the renamed Archives of General Psychiatry (Now JAMA Psychiatry) linking schizophrenia to a set of autoantibodies. The findings in this paper lend more credence to the idea that a subset of schizophrenia may be caused by an immune attack on the brain. Blood from a group of unmedicated, hospitalized schizophrenics was compared to blood from people admitted with major depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and healthy controls.