Healthy Transitions-Fee Healthy Diet Plans

I know I've been quiet lately......

2010-02-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a new web site and it's proven to be a huge task. I'm finding myself concentrating for hours on end. Manipulating, perfecting and publishing. Never did I think I could learn HTML. I know that sounds silly but I thought it was going to be more difficult than it is!

I'm really excited about my new web site because I've decided that I have a great deal of information to share from a variety of sources. As I look at the stacks of books on my desk and the differing pieces of information I've garnered from each, I secretly wish for a kindle to carry all of this information with me at all times!

Obsessed? Maybe....but that's what happens when you find a passion and run with it. Look for a newly revamped site with more news than you can even use!

The Origins of Agriculture-A fascinating Perspective

2009-11-05T19:41:00.000-08:00

A Biological Perspective and a New Hypothesis

by Greg Wadley and Angus Martin

Published in Australian Biologist 6: 96-105, June 1993

Introduction

What might head a list of the defining characteristics of the human species? While our view of ourselves could hardly avoid highlighting our accomplishments in engineering, art, medicine, space travel and the like, in a more dispassionate assessment agriculture would probably displace all other contenders for top billing. Most of the other achievements of humankind have followed from this one. Almost without exception, all people on earth today are sustained by agriculture. With a minute number of exceptions, no other species is a farmer. Essentially all of the arable land in the world is under cultivation. Yet agriculture began just a few thousand years ago, long after the appearance of anatomically modern humans.

Given the rate and the scope of this revolution in human biology, it is quite extraordinary that there is no generally accepted model accounting for the origin of agriculture. Indeed, an increasing array of arguments over recent years has suggested that agriculture, far from being a natural and upward step, in fact led commonly to a lower quality of life. Hunter-gatherers typically do less work for the same amount of food, are healthier, and are less prone to famine than primitive farmers (Lee & DeVore 1968, Cohen 1977, 1989). A biological assessment of what has been called the puzzle of agriculture might phrase it in simple ethological terms: why was this behaviour (agriculture) reinforced (and hence selected for) if it was not offering adaptive rewards surpassing those accruing to hunter-gathering or foraging economies?

This paradox is responsible for a profusion of models of the origin of agriculture. 'Few topics in prehistory', noted Hayden (1990) 'have engendered as much discussion and resulted in so few satisfying answers as the attempt to explain why hunter/gatherers began to cultivate plants and raise animals. Climatic change, population pressure, sedentism, resource concentration from desertification, girls' hormones, land ownership, geniuses, rituals, scheduling conflicts, random genetic kicks, natural selection, broad spectrum adaptation and multicausal retreats from explanation have all been proffered to explain domestication. All have major flaws ... the data do not accord well with any one of these models.

Recent discoveries of potentially psychoactive substances in certain agricultural products -- cereals and milk -- suggest an additional perspective on the adoption of agriculture and the behavioural changes ('civilisation') that followed it. In this paper we review the evidence for the drug-like properties of these foods, and then show how they can help to solve the biological puzzle just described.

The emergence of agriculture and civilisation in the Neolithic

The transition to agriculture

From about 10,000 years ago, groups of people in several areas around the world began to abandon the foraging lifestyle that had been successful, universal and largely unchanged for millennia (Lee & DeVore 1968). They began to gather, then cultivate and settle around, patches of cereal grasses and to domesticate animals for meat, labour, skins and other materials, and milk.

Farming, based predominantly on wheat and barley, first appeared in the Middle East, and spread quickly to western Asia, Egypt and Europe. The earliest civilisations all relied primarily on cereal agriculture. Cultivation of fruit trees began three thousand years later, again in the MiddleEast, and vegetables and other crops followed (Zohari 1986). Cultivation of rice began in Asia about 7000 years ago (Stark 1986)

To this day, for most people, two-thirds of protein and calorie intake is cereal-derived. (In the west, in the twentieth century, cereal consumption has decreased slightly in favour of meat, sugar, fats and so on.) The respective contributions of each cereal to current total world production are: wheat (28 per cent), corn/maize (27 per cent), rice (25 per cent), barley (10 per cent), others (10 per cent) (Pedersen et al. 1989).

The change in the diet due to agriculture
The modern human diet is very different from that of closely related primates and, almost certainly, early hominids (Gordon 1987). Though there is controversy over what humans ate before the development of agriculture, the diet certainly did not include cereals and milk in appreciable quantities. The storage pits and processing tools necessary for significant consumption of cereals did not appear until the Neolithic (Washburn & Lancaster 1968). Dairy products were not available in quantity before the domestication of animals.

The early hominid diet (from about four million years ago), evolving as it did from that of primate ancestors, consisted primarily of fruits, nuts and other vegetable matter, and some meat -- items that could be foraged for and eaten with little or no processing. Comparisons of primate and fossil-hominid anatomy, and of the types and distribution of plants eaten raw by modern chimpanzees, baboons and humans (Peters & O'Brien 1981, Kay 1985), as well as microscope analysis of wear patterns on fossil teeth (Walker 1981, Peuch et al.1983) suggest that australopithecines were 'mainly frugivorous omnivores with a dietary pattern similar to that of modern chimpanzees' (Susman 1987:171).

The diet of pre-agricultural but anatomically modern humans (from 30,000 years ago) diversified somewhat, but still consisted of meat, fruits, nuts, legumes, edible roots and tubers, with consumption of cereal seeds only increasing towards the end of the Pleistocene (e.g. Constantini 1989 and subsequent chapters in Harris and Hillman 1989).

The rise of civilisation
Within a few thousand years of the adoption of cereal agriculture, the old hunter-gatherer style of social organisation began to decline. Large, hierarchically organised societies appeared, centred around villages and then cities. With the rise of civilisation and the state came socioeconomic classes, job specialisation, governments and armies.

The size of populations living as coordinated units rose dramatically above pre-agricultural norms. While hunter-gatherers lived in egalitarian, autonomous bands of about 20 closely related persons, with at most a tribal level of organisation above that, early agricultural villages had 50 to 200 inhabitants, and early cities 10,000 or more. People 'had to learn to curb deep-rooted forces which worked for increasing conflict and violence in large groups' (Pfeiffer 1977:438).

Agriculture and civilisation meant the end of foraging -- a subsistence method with shortterm goals and rewards -- and the beginning (for most) of regular arduous work, oriented to future payoffs and the demands of superiors. 'With the coming of large communities, families no longer cultivated the land for themselves and their immediate needs alone, but for strangers and for the future. They worked all day instead of a few hours a day, as hunter-gatherers had done. There were schedules, quotas, overseers, and punishments for slacking off' (Pfeiffer 1977:21).

Explaining the origins of agriculture and civilisation
The phenomena of human agriculture and civilisation are ethologically interesting, because (1) virtually no other species lives this way, and (2) humans did not live this way until relatively recently. Why was this way of life adopted, and why has it become dominant in the human species?

Problems explaining agriculture
Until recent decades, the transition to farming was seen as an inherently progressive one: people learnt that planting seeds caused crops to grow, and this new improved food source led to larger populations, sedentary farm and town life, more leisure time and so to specialisation, writing, technological advances and civilisation. It is now clear that agriculture was adopted despite certain disadvantages of that lifestyle (e.g. Flannery 1973, Henry 1989). There is a substantial literature (e.g. Reed 1977), not only on how agriculture began, but why. Palaeopathological and comparative studies show that health deteriorated in populations that adopted cereal agriculture, returning to pre-agricultural levels only in modem times. This is in part attributable to the spread of infection in crowded cities, but is largely due to a decline in dietary quality that accompanied intensive cereal farming (Cohen 1989). People in many parts of the world remained hunter-gatherers until quite recently; though they were quite aware of the existence and methods of agriculture, they declined to undertake it (Lee & DeVore 1968, Harris 1977). Cohen (1977:141) summarised the problem by asking: 'If agriculture provides neither better diet, nor greater dietary reliability, nor greater ease, but conversely appears to provide a poorer diet, less reliably, with greater labor costs, why does anyone become a farmer?'

Many explanations have been offered, usually centred around a particular factor that forced the adoption of agriculture, such as environmental or population pressure (for reviews see Rindos 1984, Pryor 1986, Redding 1988, Blumler & Byrne 1991). Each of these models has been criticised extensively, and there is at this time no generally accepted explanation of the origin of agriculture.

Problems explaining civilisation
A similar problem is posed by the post-agricultural appearance, all over the world, of cities and states, and again there is a large literature devoted to explaining it (e.g. Claessen & Skalnik 1978). The major behavioural changes made in adopting the civilised lifestyle beg explanation. Bledsoe (1987:136) summarised the situation thus:

'There has never been and there is not now agreement on the nature and significance of the rise of civilisation. The questions posed by the problem are simple, yet fundamental. How did civilisation come about? What animus impelled man to forego the independence, intimacies, and invariability of tribal existence for the much larger and more impersonal political complexity we call the state? What forces fused to initiate the mutation that slowly transformed nomadic societies into populous cities with ethnic mixtures, stratified societies, diversified economies and unique cultural forms? Was the advent of civilisation the inevitable result of social evolution and natural laws of progress or was man the designer of his own destiny? Have technological innovations been the motivating force or was it some intangible factor such as religion or intellectual advancement?'

To a very good approximation, every civilisation that came into being had cereal agriculture as its subsistence base, and wherever cereals were cultivated, civilisation appeared. Some hypotheses have linked the two. For example, Wittfogel's (1957) 'hydraulic theory' postulated that irrigation was needed for agriculture, and the state was in turn needed to organise irrigation. But not all civilisations used irrigation, and other possible factors (e.g. river valley placement, warfare, trade, technology, religion, and ecological and population pressure) have not led to a universally accepted model.

Pharmacological properties of cereals and milk

Recent research into the pharmacology of food presents a new perspective on these problems.

Exorphins: opioid substances in food
Prompted by a possible link between diet and mental illness, several researchers in the late 1970s began investigating the occurrence of drug-like substances in some common foodstuffs.

Dohan (1966, 1984) and Dohan et al. (1973, 1983) found that symptoms of schizophrenia were relieved somewhat when patients were fed a diet free of cereals and milk. He also found that people with coeliac disease -- those who are unable to eat wheat gluten because of higher than normal permeability of the gut -- were statistically likely to suffer also from schizophrenia. Research in some Pacific communities showed that schizophrenia became prevalent in these populations only after they became 'partially westernised and consumed wheat, barley beer, and rice' (Dohan 1984).

Groups led by Zioudrou (1979) and Brantl (1979) found opioid activity in wheat, maize and barley (exorphins), and bovine and human milk (casomorphin), as well as stimulatory activity in these proteins, and in oats, rye and soy. Cereal exorphin is much stronger than bovine casomorphin, which in turn is stronger than human casomorphin. Mycroft et al. (1982, 1987) found an analogue of MIF-1, a naturally occurring dopaminergic peptide, in wheat and milk. It occurs in no other exogenous protein. (In subsequent sections we use the term exorphin to cover exorphins, casomorphin, and the MIF-1 analogue. Though opioid and dopaminergic substances work in different ways, they are both 'rewarding', and thus more or less equivalent for our purposes.)

Since then, researchers have measured the potency of exorphins, showing them to be comparable to morphine and enkephalin (Heubner et al. 1984), determined their amino acid sequences (Fukudome &Yoshikawa 1992), and shown that they are absorbed from the intestine (Svedburg et al.1985) and can produce effects such as analgesia and reduction of anxiety which are usually associated with poppy-derived opioids (Greksch et al.1981, Panksepp et al.1984). Mycroft et al. estimated that 150 mg of the MIF-1 analogue could be produced by normal daily intake of cereals and milk, noting that such quantities are orally active, and half this amount 'has induced mood alterations in clinically depressed subjects' (Mycroft et al. 1982:895). (For detailed reviews see Gardner 1985 and Paroli 1988.)

Most common drugs of addiction are either opioid (e.g heroin and morphine) or dopaminergic (e.g. cocaine and amphetamine), and work by activating reward centres in the brain. Hence we may ask, do these findings mean that cereals and milk are chemically rewarding? Are humans somehow 'addicted' to these foods?

Problems in interpreting these findings
Discussion of the possible behavioural effects of exorphins, in normal dietary amounts, has been cautious. Interpretations of their significance have been of two types:
where a pathological effect is proposed (usually by cereal researchers, and related to Dohan's findings, though see also Ramabadran & Bansinath 1988), and where a natural function is proposed (by milk researchers, who suggest that casomorphin may help in mother-infant bonding or otherwise regulate infant development).

We believe that there can be no natural function for ingestion of exorphins by adult humans. It may be that a desire to find a natural function has impeded interpretation (as well as causing attention to focus on milk, where a natural function is more plausible) . It is unlikely that humans are adapted to a large intake of cereal exorphin, because the modern dominance of cereals in the diet is simply too new. If exorphin is found in cow's milk, then it may have a natural function for cows; similarly, exorphins in human milk may have a function for infants. But whether this is so or not, adult humans do not naturally drink milk of any kind, so any natural function could not apply to them.

Our sympathies therefore lie with the pathological interpretation of exorphins, whereby substances found in cereals and milk are seen as modern dietary abnormalities which may cause schizophrenia, coeliac disease or whatever. But these are serious diseases found in a minority. Can exorphins be having an effect on humankind at large?

Other evidence for 'drug-like' effects of these foods
Research into food allergy has shown that normal quantities of some foods can have pharmacological, including behavioural, effects. Many people develop intolerances to particular foods. Various foods are implicated, and a variety of symptoms is produced. (The term 'intolerance' rather than allergy is often used, as in many cases the immune system may not be involved (Egger 1988:159). Some intolerance symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, epilepsy, hyperactivity, and schizophrenic episodes involve brain function (Egger 1988, Scadding & Brostoff 1988).

Radcliffe (1982, quoted in 1987:808) listed the foods at fault, in descending order of frequency, in a trial involving 50 people: wheat (more than 70 per cent of subjects reacted in some way to it), milk (60 per cent), egg (35 per cent), corn, cheese, potato, coffee, rice, yeast, chocolate, tea, citrus, oats, pork, plaice, cane, and beef (10 per cent). This is virtually a list of foods that have become common in the diet following the adoption of agriculture, in order of prevalence. The symptoms most commonly alleviated by treatment were mood change (>50 per cent) followed by headache, musculoskeletal and respiratory ailments.

One of the most striking phenomena in these studies is that patients often exhibit cravings, addiction and withdrawal symptoms with regard to these foods (Egger 1988:170, citing Randolph 1978; see also Radcliffe 1987:808-10, 814, Kroker 1987:856, 864, Sprague & Milam 1987:949, 953, Wraith 1987:489, 491). Brostoff and Gamlin (1989:103) estimated that 50 per cent of intolerance patients crave the foods that cause them problems, and experience withdrawal symptoms when excluding those foods from their diet. Withdrawal symptoms are similar to those associated with drug addictions (Radcliffe 1987:808). The possibility that exorphins are involved has been noted (Bell 1987:715), and Brostoff and Gamlin conclude (1989:230):'... the results so far suggest that they might influence our mood. There is certainly no question of anyone getting 'high' on a glass of milk or a slice of bread - the amounts involved are too small for that - but these foods might induce a sense of comfort and wellbeing, as food-intolerant patients often say they do. There are also other hormone-like peptides in partial digests of food, which might have other effects on the body.'

There is no possibility that craving these foods has anything to do with the popular notion of the body telling the brain what it needs for nutritional purposes. These foods were not significant in the human diet before agriculture, and large quantities of them cannot be necessary for nutrition. In fact, the standard way to treat food intolerance is to remove the offending items from the patient's diet.

A suggested interpretation of exorphin research
But what are the effects of these foods on normal people? Though exorphins cannot have a naturally selected physiological function in humans, this does not mean that they have no effect. Food intolerance research suggests that cereals and milk, in normal dietary quantities, are capable of affecting behaviour in many people. And if severe behavioural effects in schizophrenics and coeliacs can be caused by higher than normal absorption of peptides, then more subtle effects, which may not even be regarded as abnormal, could be produced in people generally.

The evidence presented so far suggests the following interpretation.
The ingestion of cereals and milk, in normal modern dietary amounts by normal humans, activates reward centres in the brain. Foods that were common in the diet before agriculture (fruits and so on) do not have this pharmacological property. The effects of exorphins are qualitatively the same as those produced by other opioid and / or dopaminergic drugs, that is, reward, motivation, reduction of anxiety, a sense of wellbeing, and perhaps even addiction. Though the effects of a typical meal are quantitatively less than those of doses of those drugs, most modern humans experience them several times a day, every day of their adult lives.

Hypothesis: exorphins and the origin of agriculture and civilisation
When this scenario of human dietary practices is viewed in the light of the problem of the origin of agriculture described earlier, it suggests an hypothesis that combines the results of these lines of enquiry.

Exorphin researchers, perhaps lacking a long-term historical perspective, have generally not investigated the possibility that these foods really are drug-like, and have instead searched without success for exorphin's natural function. The adoption of cereal agriculture and the subsequent rise of civilisation have not been satisfactorily explained, because the behavioural changes underlying them have no obvious adaptive basis.

These unsolved and until-now unrelated problems may in fact solve each other. The answer, we suggest, is this: cereals and dairy foods are not natural human foods, but rather are preferred because they contain exorphins. This chemical reward was the incentive for the adoption of cereal agriculture in the Neolithic. Regular self-administration of these substances facilitated the behavioural changes that led to the subsequent appearance of civilisation.

This is the sequence of events that we envisage.
Climatic change at the end of the last glacial period led to an increase in the size and concentration of patches of wild cereals in certain areas (Wright 1977). The large quantities of cereals newly available provided an incentive to try to make a meal of them. People who succeeded in eating sizeable amounts of cereal seeds discovered the rewarding properties of the exorphins contained in them. Processing methods such as grinding and cooking were developed to make cereals more edible. The more palatable they could be made, the more they were consumed, and the more important the exorphin reward became for more people.

At first, patches of wild cereals were protected and harvested. Later, land was cleared and seeds were planted and tended, to increase quantity and reliability of supply. Exorphins attracted people to settle around cereal patches, abandoning their nomadic lifestyle, and allowed them to display tolerance instead of aggression as population densities rose in these new conditions.

Though it was, we suggest, the presence of exorphins that caused cereals (and not an alternative already prevalent in the diet) to be the major early cultigens, this does not mean that cereals are 'just drugs'. They have been staples for thousands of years, and clearly have nutritional value. However, treating cereals as 'just food' leads to difficulties in explaining why anyone bothered to cultivate them. The fact that overall health declined when they were incorporated into the diet suggests that their rapid, almost total replacement of other foods was due more to chemical reward than to nutritional reasons.

It is noteworthy that the extent to which early groups became civilised correlates with the type of agriculture they practised. That is, major civilisations (in south-west Asia, Europe, India, and east and parts of South-East Asia; central and parts of north and south America; Egypt, Ethiopia and parts of tropical and west Africa) stemmed from groups which practised cereal, particularly wheat, agriculture (Bender 1975:12, Adams 1987:201, Thatcher 1987:212). (The rarer nomadic civilisations were based on dairy farming.)

Groups which practised vegeculture (of fruits, tubers etc.), or no agriculture (in tropical and south Africa, north and central Asia, Australia, New Guinea and the Pacific, and much of north and south America) did not become civilised to the same extent.

Thus major civilisations have in common that their populations were frequent ingesters of exorphins. We propose that large, hierarchical states were a natural consequence among such populations. Civilisation arose because reliable, on-demand availability of dietary opioids to individuals changed their behaviour, reducing aggression, and allowed them to become tolerant of sedentary life in crowded groups, to perform regular work, and to be more easily subjugated by rulers. Two socioeconomic classes emerged where before there had been only one (Johnson & Earle 1987:270), thus establishing a pattern which has been prevalent since that time.

Discussion

The natural diet and genetic change
Some nutritionists deny the notion of a pre-agricultural natural human diet on the basis that humans are omnivorous, or have adapted to agricultural foods (e.g. Garn & Leonard 1989; for the contrary view see for example Eaton & Konner 1985). An omnivore, however, is simply an animal that eats both meat and plants: it can still be quite specialised in its preferences (chimpanzees are an appropriate example). A degree of omnivory in early humans might have preadapted them to some of the nutrients contained in cereals, but not to exorphins, which are unique to cereals.

The differential rates of lactase deficiency, coeliac disease and favism (the inability to metabolise fava beans) among modern racial groups are usually explained as the result of varying genetic adaptation to post-agricultural diets (Simopoulos 1990:27-9), and this could be thought of as implying some adaptation to exorphins as well. We argue that little or no such adaptation has occurred, for two reasons: first, allergy research indicates that these foods still cause abnormal reactions in many people, and that susceptibility is variable within as well as between populations, indicating that differential adaptation is not the only factor involved. Second, the function of the adaptations mentioned is to enable humans to digest those foods, and if they are adaptations, they arose because they conferred a survival advantage. But would susceptibility to the rewarding effects of exorphins lead to lower, or higher, reproductive success? One would expect in general that an animal with a supply of drugs would behave less adaptively and so lower its chances of survival. But our model shows how the widespread exorphin ingestion in humans has led to increased population. And once civilisation was the norm, non-susceptibility to exorphins would have meant not fitting in with society. Thus, though there may be adaptation to the nutritional content of cereals, there will be little or none to exorphins. In any case, while contemporary humans may enjoy the benefits of some adaptation to agricultural diets, those who actually made the change ten thousand years ago did not.

Other 'non-nutritional' origins of agriculture models
We are not the first to suggest a non-nutritional motive for early agriculture. Hayden (1990) argued that early cultigens and trade items had more prestige value than utility, and suggested that agriculture began because the powerful used its products for competitive feasting and accrual of wealth. Braidwood et al. (1953) and later Katz and Voigt (1986) suggested that the incentive for cereal cultivation was the production of alcoholic beer:

'Under what conditions would the consumption of a wild plant resource be sufficiently important to lead to a change in behaviour (experiments with cultivation) in order to ensure an adequate supply of this resource? If wild cereals were in fact a minor part of the diet, any argument based on caloric need is weakened. It is our contention that the desire for alcohol would constitute a perceived psychological and social need that might easily prompt changes in subsistence behaviour' (Katz & Voigt 1986:33).

This view is clearly compatible with ours. However there may be problems with an alcohol hypothesis: beer may have appeared after bread and other cereal products, and been consumed less widely or less frequently (Braidwood et al. 1953). Unlike alcohol, exorphins are present in all these products. This makes the case for chemical reward as the motive for agriculture much stronger. Opium poppies, too, were an early cultigen (Zohari 1986). Exorphin, alcohol, and opium are primarily rewarding (as opposed to the typically hallucinogenic drugs used by some hunter-gatherers) and it is the artificial reward which is necessary, we claim, for civilisation. Perhaps all three were instrumental in causing civilised behaviour to emerge.

Cereals have important qualities that differentiate them from most other drugs. They are a food source as well as a drug, and can be stored and transported easily. They are ingested in frequent small doses (not occasional large ones), and do not impede work performance in most people. A desire for the drug, even cravings or withdrawal, can be confused with hunger. These features make cereals the ideal facilitator of civilisation (and may also have contributed to the long delay in recognising their pharmacological properties).

Compatibility, limitations, more data needed
Our hypothesis is not a refutation of existing accounts of the origins of agriculture, but rather fits alongside them, explaining why cereal agriculture was adopted despite its apparent disadvantages and how it led to civilisation.

Gaps in our knowledge of exorphins limit the generality and strength of our claims. We do not know whether rice, millet and sorghum, nor grass species which were harvested by African and Australian hunter-gatherers, contain exorphins. We need to be sure that preagricultural staples do not contain exorphins in amounts similar to those in cereals. We do not know whether domestication has affected exorphin content or-potency. A test of our hypothesis by correlation of diet and degree of civilisation in different populations will require quantitative knowledge of the behavioural effects of all these foods.

We do not comment on the origin of noncereal agriculture, nor why some groups used a combination of foraging and farming, reverted from farming to foraging, or did not farm at all. Cereal agriculture and civilisation have, during the past ten thousand years, become virtually universal. The question, then, is not why they happened here and not there, but why they took longer to become established in some places than in others. At all times and places, chemical reward and the influence of civilisations already using cereals weighed in favour of adopting this lifestyle, the disadvantages of agriculture weighed against it, and factors such as climate, geography, soil quality, and availability of cultigens influenced the outcome. There is a recent trend to multi-causal models of the origins of agriculture (e.g. Redding 1988, Henry 1989), and exorphins can be thought of as simply another factor in the list. Analysis of the relative importance of all the factors involved, at all times and places, is beyond the scope of this paper.

Conclusion

'An animal is a survival machine for the genes that built it. We too are animals, and we too are survival machines for our genes. That is the theory. In practice it makes a lot of sense when we look at wild animals.... It is very different when we look at ourselves. We appear to be a serious exception to the Darwinian law.... It obviously just isn't true that most of us spend our time working energetically for the preservation of our genes' (Dawkins 1989:138).

Many ethologists have acknowledged difficulties in explaining civilised human behaviour on evolutionary grounds, in some cases suggesting that modern humans do not always behave adaptively. Yet since agriculture began, the human population has risen by a factor of 1000: Irons (1990) notes that 'population growth is not the expected effect of maladaptive behaviour'.

We have reviewed evidence from several areas of research which shows that cereals and dairy foods have drug-like properties, and shown how these properties may have been the incentive for the initial adoption of agriculture. We suggested further that constant exorphin intake facilitated the behavioural changes and subsequent population growth of civilisation, by increasing people's tolerance of (a) living in crowded sedentary conditions, (b) devoting effort to the benefit of non-kin, and (c) playing a subservient role in a vast hierarchical social structure.

Cereals are still staples, and methods of artificial reward have diversified since that time, including today a wide range of pharmacological and non-pharmacological cultural artifacts whose function, ethologically speaking, is to provide reward without adaptive benefit. It seems reasonable then to suggest that civilisation not only arose out of self-administration of artificial reward, but is maintained in this way among contemporary humans. Hence a step towards resolution of the problem of explaining civilised human behaviour may be to incorporate into ethological models this widespread distortion of behaviour by artificial reward.
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Good Calories Bad Calories-The Truth

2009-11-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

During my weight loss journey I was fairly confident with the way I was eating even though I had so many different folks who questioned my food choices sometimes daily. My own daughter was one of them. Why then did I feel better? Why was I losing weight? Why did I have more energy than ever before? Focus? Wow! I felt like I had hit the jackpot!! For more information, check out "My Journey" as I go into more detail there about my brain and what I figured out is that there is the direction relationship between my cognitive function and nutrition. I practiced my particular lifestyle for more than 7 years being about 75% confident with what I was doing. The nagging 25% was on my mind frequently. Until Gary Taubes hit the scene with his compelling book Good Calories Bad Calories. It was this book along with Mary Enig's work as the foremost lipid researcher (where you will see Gary reference frequently) Now, this isn't an easy read but the following excerpt from one of my Mother Jones Subscriptions will give you a taste of what this more than 500 page book has to offer you. I remember in 2003 when Time magazine came out with the cover story "What if it's all been a big fat lie" (also written by Taubes). A colleauge of mine handed me the magazine knowing I was a low carber and just snickered. "Here's a good story for you Misty" all while enjoying his sandwich, chips and cola. You know who you are Jim S.

Good Calories, Bad Calories: What Really Makes Us Fat?
By Gary Taubes
If you had asked your mother or grandmother for diet tips, you might have heard, “Every woman knows that carbohydrates are fattening.” In fact, that’s from a 1963 article in the British Journal of Nutrition, co-authored by one of the leading nutritionists of the era. And for the previous 100 years or so, this was the conventional wisdom: carbohydrate-rich foods such as bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, sweets and beer make us fat, and, by implication, foods rich in fat and protein do not.

But since then, the nutritional dogma has changed completely, and we’ve come to accept the idea that there is nothing uniquely fattening about carbohydrates. Rather, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, as nutritionists hasten to tell us. This means that the only way to lose weight is to diligently eat less of everything, to exercise more and hope for the best — a prescription that even the experts will admit rarely seems to work.

As an investigative journalist working in science and health, I’ve spent the last decade assessing the conventional wisdom on diet, weight control and disease. My conclusion is that much of what we’ve been taught since the early 1970s — most of which we’ve all come to accept — is simply wrong. This might explain why those same years have seen unprecedented increases in obesity and diabetes worldwide. When I started my research, I had no idea that I would come to such contrarian views. But now I think that certain conclusions are virtually inescapable:
Obesity and being overweight are not caused by eating too much and certainly not by eating food with “too much” fat.

Carbohydrates, not fat, are the cause of excess weight, just as our grandparents’ generation always knew. Eating carbohydrates triggers a hormonal response — insulin secretion — that signals our bodies to accumulate fat. This is why the fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be. Sugar, flour and other refined carbohydrates produce an exaggerated version of this response, and so are particularly fattening.

Exercise doesn’t make us lose weight, it just makes us hungry.
Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of heart disease. Rather the same foods that make us fat — easily-digestible carbohydrates and sugars — will eventually cause the diseases that are likely to kill us: heart disease, diabetes and even most cancers. As the late Tim Russert’s physician explained in The New York Times shortly after Russert’s death, “if there’s one number that’s a predictor of mortality, it’s waist circumference.” Because carbohydrate-rich foods increase our waist circumference, then it must be these same foods that shorten our lives.
These conclusions about diet and weight loss aren’t exactly new. A carbohydrate-restricted diet is not a “fad diet” as the American Heart Association has insisted on calling it. Rather it had been the standard medical practice for treating obesity until the 1960s, when the American Heart Association began insisting that we all eat low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets to prevent heart disease. But then, in one decade, the fattening carbohydrate was miraculously transformed — without benefit of scientific data — into heart-healthy diet food.

So What Happened?
Beginning in the late 1950s, a small but influential group of nutritionists and cardiologists decided that dietary fat caused heart disease. First the American Heart Association adopted this position, then Congress, the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Institutes of Health. Beginning in the late 1980s with the publication of the Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, an entire research industry arose to create palatable non-fat substitutes for fat, while the food industry spent billions to market the less-fat-is-good message. The USDA’s booklet on dietary guidelines and its Food Guide Pyramid recommended that fats and oils be eaten “sparingly,” while we were now to eat six to 11 servings per day of the pasta, potatoes, rice and bread once considered uniquely fattening.
Three facts were neglected during this national push for a low-fat diet. One was the upturn in obesity and diabetes rates that emerged as this new nutritional advice displaced the knowledge that carbs were fattening.

The second was that when researchers actually did clinical trials to test the hypothesis that eating less fat or less saturated fat prevented heart disease, the evidence failed to support the hypothesis. This was the conclusion of a 2001 review of “reduced or modified dietary fat for preventing cardiovascular disease.” The review was published by the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization dedicated to producing unbiased assessments of the science underlying medical interventions. The authors had combed the literature for all possible studies that addressed the question of dietary fat and heart disease. They identified 27 that were performed with sufficient scientific rigor to be considered meaningful. These trials encompassed some 10,000 subjects, followed for an average of three years each. The review concluded that our supposedly heart-healthy diets, whether low in all fat or just saturated fat, had no effect on longevity and no significant effect on the likelihood of actually having a heart attack.
The third fact that was regrettably neglected during the years that we came to believe in the evils of saturated fat was that back in the 1950s and early 1960s, biochemists and physiologists had already figured out what it is that regulates the accumulation of fat in our fat tissue. In other words, scientists have known what makes us fat for almost half a century.

The Skinny on Fat
As it turns out, every hormone in our body works to release fat from our fat tissue, with the singular exception of insulin, which works to put it there. And insulin levels in our blood are determined primarily by the carbohydrate content of our diet. The more carbohydrates we consume, and the easier they are to digest, the higher our insulin. Insulin tells our fat tissue to accumulate fat. So long as insulin levels remain elevated, fat is locked in the fat tissue and can’t escape.

What’s even more remarkable — and completely ignored in all discussions of obesity and weight since the 1970s — is that we must eat carbohydrates to accumulate excess fat in our fat tissue. It’s only by eating carbohydrates that we can obtain alpha glycerol phosphate, an enzyme that is an absolute requirement for storing fat. This enzyme fixes the fat in the fat tissue in a way that it can’t slip back out through the fat cell membranes and escape into the blood stream. This is why the more carbohydrates we consume, the more fat we will store. The less carbohydrates, the less fat.

After a meal is digested, insulin levels should decline. When this happens, fat is released from the fat tissue in the form of fatty acids and these are then burned in cells for fuel. For this reason, another necessary requirement for remaining lean is to have lengthy periods during which insulin levels are low and we burn our fat for fuel. When insulin levels remain elevated, fat can’t escape from the fat tissue. It goes in, but it doesn’t come out, and we can’t use it for energy. A meal without carbohydrates is a meal that doesn’t stimulate any significant insulin secretion. You store very few, if any, calories as fat, and you get plenty of opportunity to burn the fat you had stored.

The reason this science was left behind was a simple one. Diet doctors in the 1960s read the same medical literature that I did decades later, and they then began prescribing carbohydrate-restricted, mostly meat diets to their patients. But a low-carbohydrate diet is high in fat, and fat was thought to be a killer. Indeed, in 1965, the same year that the American Physiology Society published an 800-page Handbook of Physiology describing the recent research in the regulation of fat tissue, the research that implicated carbohydrates and insulin in fat storage, the Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer was quoted in The New York Times saying it would be the equivalent of “mass murder” to prescribe low-carbohydrate diets to treat obesity. Mayer’s reasoning was that these diets were high in fat and the fat would cause heart disease. That’s how the medical establishment has treated it ever since, even after researchers revealed that high fat diets actually improve cholesterol profiles, rather than worsen them.

Meanwhile, the last decade has witnessed a renewed interest in carbohydrate-restricted diets as obesity levels have risen and a new generation of clinicians have come to question the prevailing wisdom on weight loss. These studies have all confirmed what the underlying science of fat regulation tells us: cut out carbohydrates and you lose fat. Seven independent teams of investigators set out to test low-fat, low-calorie diets of the kind recommended by the American Heart Association in randomized control trials against “eat as much as you like” Atkins-like diets. Together these trials included well over 900 obese subjects. In each case, the weight loss after three to six months was two to three times greater on the low-carbohydrate diet — unrestricted in calories — than on the calorie-restricted, low-fat diet.

In 2003, the prestigious medical journal JAMA published an article that its seven authors from the Yale and Stanford medical schools considered to be the “first published synthesis of the evidence” in the English-language medical literature on the efficacy and safety of carbohydrate-restricted diets. They concluded that the evidence was “insufficient to recommend or condemn the use of these diets,” because it lacked long-term randomized trials that could allow the safety of the diets to be established beyond reasonable doubt. Nonetheless, they did report the average weight loss from 40 years of trials and research. “Of the 34 of 38 lower-carbohydrate diets for which weight change after diet was calculated, these lower-carbohydrate diets were found to produce greater weight loss than higher-carbohydrate diets” — an average of 37 pounds when carbohydrates were restricted to less than 60 grams (240 calories) a day, compared to 4 pounds when they were not.

What Is for Dinner?
The ultimate question is whether a protein- and fat-rich diet lacking virtually all starches and sugars can be a healthy diet, since one conclusion of my research is that to remain lean we would have to follow such a regimen for life. If we give up carbohydrates and lose our excess weight, but then go back to carbohydrates, the weight will come back as well.

Is it possible to eat red meat in any quantity without it being bad for our hearts? This is one question of many where the experts have simply failed us. If you actually look at the fat content of a piece of red meat (or eggs and bacon), you’ll find that the principal fat is not saturated fat — which is supposedly bad for the heart — but the same monounsaturated fat as in olive oil, which is supposedly good for the heart. And much of the remaining fat is still what nutritionists would consider heart-healthy. Consider a porterhouse steak, for example, with a quarter-inch layer of fat. After broiling, this reduces to almost equal parts fat and protein. Of the fat, slightly more than half (51 percent) is monounsaturated, which lowers the (bad) LDL cholesterol and raises the (good) HDL. Slightly less than half (45 percent) is saturated fat, some of which raises LDL, but all of it raises HDL. A third of that saturated fat is stearic acid, which raises (the good) HDL, and has no effect on the bad LDL. The remaining fat (4 percent) is polyunsaturated, which lowers LDL but has no meaningful effect on HDL. (You can look up the numbers yourself in the USDA National Nutrient Database.)

Although nutritionists don’t like to talk about this in an era that considers fruits and vegetables to be the sine qua non of a healthful diet, animal products happen to contain all the amino acids, minerals and vitamins essential for health, with the only point of controversy being vitamin C. And the evidence suggests that the vitamin C content of meat products is more than sufficient for health, so long as the diet is indeed carbohydrate-restricted, absent the refined and easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars that would raise blood sugar and insulin levels and so increase our need to obtain vitamin C from the diet.

Moreover, carbohydrate-restricted diets, as they have been prescribed since the 1920s, do not restrict green leafy vegetables, but only starchy vegetables such as potatoes and refined grains and sugars — only those foods that are virtually absent any essential nutrients unless they’re added back in the processing, as is the case with white bread. A calorie-restricted diet that cuts calories by a third, as the British nutritionist John Yudkin pointed out in the early 1970s, will also cut essential nutrients by a third. A diet that prohibits sugar, flour, potatoes and beer, but allows eating to satiety of meat, cheese, eggs and green vegetables, will leave the essential nutrients, whether or not it leads to a decrease in calories consumed.
If you’ve been trying and failing time and time again to lose weight by dutifully eating less and exercising more, perhaps its time to try your grandmother’s diet instead. Stay away from the fattening carbohydrates, stop worrying about how much fat you eat and see what happens. Let your weight and your waist circumference tell you whether the diet you’re now eating is a healthy one.

Grandma Knew Best
As far back as the 1820s, the French gastronome Jean Brillat Savarin in The Physiology of Taste, insisted that the roots of obesity were obvious. He had spent 30 years, he said, listening to one “stout party” after another proclaim their love for bread, rice and potatoes. His conclusion: obesity was caused by a natural predisposition to put on weight, conjoined with the “floury and feculent substances, which man makes the primary ingredient of his daily nourishment.” And the effects of this fecula — i.e., “potatoes, grain or any kind of flour” — he added, were exacerbated by eating sugar.
For the next 140 years, when physicians discussed weight loss in the medical literature, the two constants were the ideas that starches and sugars — i.e., carbohydrates — must be minimized to reduce weight, and that meat, fish or fowl must constitute the bulk of the diet. “The great progress in dietary control of obesity,” wrote Hilde Bruch, considered the foremost authority on childhood obesity, in 1957, “was the recognition that meat … was not fat producing; but that it was the innocent foodstuffs, such as bread and sweets, which lead to obesity.”
This was also what Dr. Spock taught our parents and our grandparents in five decades, eight editions and more than 50 million copies of Baby and Child Care, the bible of child-rearing in the latter half of the 20th century. “Rich desserts,” Spock wrote, and “the amount of plain, starchy foods (cereals, breads, potatoes) taken is what determines, in the case of most people, how much [weight] they gain or lose.”
Gary Taubes is a investigative science journalist and author of Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Everything You Need To Know About Organic Foods

2009-11-02T17:14:00.000-08:00

What is organic food?

Organic refers to an "earth friendly" and health-supportive method of farming and processing foods. Weeds and pests are controlled using environmentally sound practices that sustain our personal health and the health of our planet. The term "organic" applies to both animal and plant foods.

Organic farmers do not use chemicals (pesticides, fungicides or fertilizers) in an environmentally harmful manner. They utilize a blend of old and new technologies and scientific research to balance the earth's natural ecosystem. Examples of organic farming methods include:

Rotating crops between fields. This helps keep pests from building up and improves soil fertility.
Planting select bushes and flowers to attract beneficial insects which ward off unwanted pests.

Organic farming produces nutrient-rich, fertile soil which nourishes the plants, and it keeps chemicals off the land to protect water quality and wild life. Organic farming also gives us food that is safer to eat and much more likely to keep us healthy.

How to Fully Understand the Labels on Organic Foods

What Does the "Organic" Label Mean?

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) sets, defines and regulates the use and meaning of "Organic" on food labels. It is the term used to describe raw or processed agricultural products and ingredients that have been (a) organically grown (farmed) and (b) handled in compliance with the standards of April 2001, which have been fully enforced since October 2002. These standards prohibit the used of:

Most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides
Sewer sludge fertilizers
Genetic engineering
Growth hormones
Irradiation
Antibiotics
Artificial ingredients

So, when you see foods that have the word "organic" on the label you can be assured that they meet these strict standards that were established for organic foods.

How to understand the different use of the term "Organic" on food labels.

Many people are not completely sure about the precise meaning of the word "organic" or "organically grown" on food labels. One of their concerns is whether or not they can trust that the words ensure that the foods were grown or produced without the use of potentially hazardous chemicals.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the term "organic" can be applied to a variety of different kinds of foods. The term can be used on agricultural products, and on meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. And it also applies to the methods used to process organically grown foods in preparing them for market or to retard spoilage.

Organically Grown Crops:

The crop must be produced on land without the use of synthetic substances (pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers) except those provided by the standards.
No prohibited substances can have been applied to the land for 3 years prior to harvest.
The land must have defined boundaries and buffer zones preventing the crop to have contact with prohibited substances from adjoining land.
Soil fertility and crop nutrient management must be done in a manner to improve soil conditions, minimize soil erosion, and to prevent contamination of crops, soil or water by plant nutrients, pathogenic organisms or heavy metals:
- Use of crop rotation
- Use of composed animal manure with specified carbon to nitrogen ratios and temperature readings.
- Use of uncomposted plant materials
Use of sewage sludge is prohibited
Seeds, seedlings and planting stock are organically grown except as provided in the law.
Genetic engineering is prohibited
Pest problems controlled by mechanical and physical methods including:
- Introduction of predators or parasites of the pest species
- Development of habitat for natural enemies of the pests
- Use of lures, traps and repellants
Weed problems controlled by:
- Mulching
- Hand weeding and mechanical cultivation
- Mowing
- Flame, heat, or electrical
- Grazing livestock
- Plastic or synthetic mulches that are removed at the end of the harvest
Disease problems controlled by:
- Management practices to suppress the spread of disease
- Application of non-synthetic biological, botanical or mineral inputs

The National List provides a list of allowed and prohibited substances for organically grown crops.

Organically Grown Meat, Poultry, Eggs and Dairy:

Livestock must be fed rations composed of agricultural products, pasture and forage that are organically produced and, if applicable, handled.
Prohibitions regarding animal feed include:
- Administering of animal drugs in the absence of illness
- Use of hormones to promote growth
- Use of supplements in amounts above those for adequate nutrition
- Use of mammal or poultry slaughter by-products for feed
- Excessive use of feed additives
- Routinely administering synthetic parasiticides
Producer must provide conditions to maintain and promote the health and welfare of livestock including:
- Sufficient nutritional feed rations
- Appropriate housing, pasture, sanitation conditions
- Conditions allowing for exercise, freedom of movement and minimizing stress of the animals
- Administration of veterinary care
Origin of livestock:
- Organic livestock must be from livestock under continuous organic management from the last third of gestation or hatching
- Organic poultry must be under continuous organic management beginning no later than the second day of life
- Milk or milk products must be from animals that have been under continuous organic management beginning no later than 1 year prior to milk production.

Organic production is managed with the intent to integrate cultural, biological and mechanical practices to promote the cycling of resources, promote ecological balance and biodiversity. Practices help to protect the soil, groundwater, provide health promoting conditions for animals and ultimately help promote the health of the consumer.

The National List provides a list of allowed and prohibited substances for organically grown meat, poultry, eggs and dairy.

Organically Handled:

Mechanical or biological methods used to process an organically produced agricultural product for the purpose of retarding spoilage or otherwise preparing the agricultural product for market. This includes acceptable processing aids and ingredients, appropriate packaging materials and labeling, cleaning methods, waste disposal and pest management at processing facilities.

Why did we need the April 2001 regulations of organic foods?

In 1990 the Congress mandated that the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) create a national legal definition of "organic" that would provide reliable, uniform, enforceable standards for any food bearing the term "organic." This regulation is intended to prevent fraud and support our right to know what's in our food and how it's grown and processed.

In accordance with this mandate, the USDA adopted the first national standards regarding organic foods, which took effect in April, 2001, and farms and others had until October 2002 to fully comply to the new law for their products to be labeled as "Organic." State and private certifiers are accredited by the USDA to ensure that food processors and growers comply to the April 2001 standards.

Since October 2002, you can be certain that organically labeled products in all the states meet the federal standards. States can (and some do) have stricter standards than the federal government

What is USDA certification?

Certification is the process by which the consumer is assured that a product marketed as "organic" is in compliance with production and handling requirements set forth by the USDA April 2001 regulations.

All producers of organic food, livestock, fiber crops and handlers or organic products must be certified. (except growers who gross less than $5000 and retailers)
Growers and handlers submit an Organic Farm Plan or an Organic Handling Plan, to a USDA accredited certifying agent detailing their growing and handling methods.
On-site inspections are conducted by certifying agents to verify submitted plans.
Methods and materials used in production must meet standards set in the new regulations.
Clear documentation of methods and materials must be kept
There must be a paper trail tracing of a product back to its production site enabling verification of production methods and materials.

How will "organic" foods be identified?

A government seal identifies "organic foods."

Label
Logo - Products labeled "100% organic" or "organic" can display the USDA logo.

What are the federally mandated labels that identify "Organic" products?

100% organic: A raw or processed agricultural product that contains (by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt) 100% organically produced ingredients.

Organic: A raw or processed agricultural product that contains (by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt) not less than 95% organically produced or processed agricultural products.

Made with (specified) organic ingredients: The ingredients in a multi-ingredient agricultural product must contain at least 70% organically produced ingredients and handled according to law.

Organic ingredients listed individually: The ingredients in a multi-ingredient agricultural product containing less than 70% organically produced ingredients with each organically produced ingredient identified as such.

How is the term "Certified Organic" used under the April 2001 regulations?

The idea behind these different uses of the term "organic" on foods is to make it clear and easy for you to be able to know the specific information about the organic ingredients just by reading the label. With the Federal "organic" label standards in effect, it is no longer necessary to see the term "Certified Organic" on a product to feel secure about it. That term was important before there were national standards for organic foods because it indicated that the product's organic authenticity was being monitored by an agency or impartial source. Since the USDA now sets, defines and regulates the use and meaning of the term "Organic" on all food labels, you can feel confident whenever the word appears on a label, because now the Federal government ensures that organic foods set under the Organic Foods Production Act provide true fulfillment for goals of the original organic growers who devoted great dedication and sacrifice in order to assure the safety and nutritional value of the foods you eat.

What does it mean if you see the word "transitional" on a food label?

Crops grown on land which is in transition to organic (during the first three years after switching from conventional farming, for instance, cannot be certified as organic, and by federal law, cannot be labeled as "transitional"). However, under state law, products can already be certified as "transitional" and will continue to be labeled as "transitional" as long as the state laws remain in effect.

What Foods Are Covered by the April 2001 Standard?

Fruits, Vegetables, Mushrooms, and Grains
Dairy products and Eggs
Livestock feed
Meats and Poultry
Fish and seafood
Honey

Standards for culinary herbs, pet food and food for minor animal species such as rabbits are not yet defined.

Are there any foods that are not covered by the federal organic standards?

Yes. Although the Final Rule for federal organic standards, officially approved in April 2001, covers the vast majority of food types, standards for culinary herbs, pet food and food for minor animal species such as rabbits are not yet defined.

Can you give me some examples of organically labeled foods?

Yes. You might see the following types of labels on federally certified organic foods:

A label which reads "Organic Vegetable Soup" would be stating that ninety-five percent of the total ingredients of that soup (by weight) are certified as organic.
Alternately, a soup label might read "Vegetable Soup" and include the phrase "Made with Organic Vegetables" on the front panel, indicating that the primary ingredients are organic and make up more than seventy percent of the total ingredients by weight.
Another label might read simply "Vegetable Soup" and include the word organic to identify specific items in the ingredient listing panel - as in potatoes, carrots and organic kidney beans.

Why Organic Foods are Better for Health

Can organic foods really improve my health?

Yes. Organically grown food is your best way of reducing exposure to toxins used in conventional agricultural practices. These toxins include not only pesticides, many of which have been federally classified as potential cancer-causing agents, but also heavy metals such as lead and mercury, and solvents like benzene and toluene. Minimizing exposure to these toxins is of major benefit to your health. Heavy metals damage nerve function, contributing to diseases such as multiple sclerosis and lowering IQ, and also block hemoglobin production, causing anemia. Solvents damage white cells, lowering the immune system's ability to resist infections. In addition to significantly lessening your exposure to these health-robbing substances, organically grown foods have been shown to contain substantially higher levels of nutrients such as protein, vitamin C and many minerals.

Research Suggests Organic Food is Better for Your Health

Rats fed organic food were significantly healthier than their peers given conventionally-grown produce, shows research reported by the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, February 2005.

During the experiment, 36 rats were divided into three groups. All were given potatoes, carrots, peas, green kale, apples, rapeseed oil, and the same vitamin supplements. One group was fed organic food, another conventionally grown food with high levels of fertilizer and some pesticide, and the third group received minimally fertilized conventionally grown food.

Although pesticide residue was measured and found to be below detection levels in all groups, the scientists found that the rats fed organically-grown produce were measurably healthier, slept better, had stronger immune systems and were less obese.

Lead researcher, Dr Kirsten Brandt, of Newcastle University's School of Agriculture, was careful not to overstate the findings, but noted: "The difference was so big it is very unlikely to be random. We gave the food to the rats and then we measured what they were doing. We can say the reason why the rats have different health was clearly due to the fact that there was a different growing method, and this was enough for this result. If we want to understand how and why, we need another study."

How do organic foods benefit cellular health?

DNA: Eating organically grown foods may help to better sustain health since recent test tube animal research suggests that certain agricultural chemicals used in the conventional method of growing food may have the ability to cause genetic mutations that can lead to the development of cancer. One example is pentachlorophenol (PCP) that has been found to be able to cause DNA fragmentation in animals. Mitochondria: Eating organically grown foods may help to better promote cellular health since several agricultural chemicals used in the conventional growing of foods have been shown to have a negative effect upon mitochondrial function. These chemicals include paraquat, parathion, dinoseb and 2-4-D which have been found to affect the mitochondria and cellular energy production in a variety of ways including increasing membrane permeability, which exposes the mitochondria to damaging free radicals, inhibiting a process known as coupling that is integral to the efficient production of ATP. Cell Membrane: Since certain agricultural chemicals may damage the structure and function of the cellular membrane, eating organically grown foods can help to protect cellular health. The insecticide endosulfan and the herbicide paraquat have been shown to oxidize lipid molecules and therefore may damage the phospholipid component of the cellular membrane. In animal studies, pesticides such as chlopyrifos, endrin and fenthion have been shown to over stimulate enzymes involved in chemical signaling causing imbalance that has been linked to conditions such as atherosclerosis, psoriasis and inflammation.

How can organic foods contribute to children's health?

The negative health effects of conventionally grown foods, and therefore the benefits of consuming organic foods, are not just limited to adults. In fact, many experts feel that organic foods may be of paramount importance in safeguarding the health of our children.

In two separate reports, both the Natural Resources Defense Council (1989) and the Environmental Working Group (1998) found that millions of American children are exposed to levels of pesticides through their food that surpass limits considered to be safe. Some of these pesticides are known to be neurotoxic, able to cause harm to the developing brain and nervous system. Additionally, some researchers feel that children and adolescents may be especially vulnerable to the cancer-causing effects of certain pesticides since the body is more sensitive to the impact of these materials during periods of high growth rates and breast development.

The concern for the effects of agricultural chemicals on children's health seems so evident that even the U.S. government has taken steps to protect our nation's young. In 1996, Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act requiring that all pesticides applied to foods be safe for infants and children.

Organic foods that are strictly controlled for substances harmful to health can play a major role in assuring the health of our children.

Eating Organic Dramatically Lowers Children's Exposure to Organophosphate Pesticides

Eating organic foods provides children with "dramatic and immediate" protection from exposure to two organophosphate pesticides that have been linked to harmful neurological effects in animals and humans, shows a study funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and published in the September 2005 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

The pesticides-malathion and chlorpyrifos-while restricted or banned for home use, are widely used on a variety of crops, and according to the annual survey by U.S. Department of Agriculture Pesticide Data Program, residues of these organophosphate pesticides are still routinely detected in food items commonly consumed by young children.

Over a fifteen-day period, Dr. Chensheng "Alex" Lu and his colleagues from Emory University, the University of Washington, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention measured exposure to malathion and chlorpyrifos in 23 elementary students in the Seattle area by testing their urine.

The participants, aged 3-11-years-old, were first monitored for three days on their conventional diets before the researchers substituted most of the children's conventional diets with organic foods for five consecutive days. The children were then given their normal foods and monitored for an additional seven days.

To ensure that any detectable change in dietary pesticide exposure would be attributable to the organic food rather than the change in diet, the researchers substituted organic foods that were the same items the children would have normally eaten as part of their conventional diet. Organic food items were substituted for the conventional diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, juices, processed fruits or vegetables (e.g. salsa), and wheat-based or corn-based products (i.e. pasta, cereal, popcorn, or chips).

"Immediately after substituting organic food items for the children's normal diets, the concentration of the organophosphorus pesticides found in their bodies decreased substantially to non-detectable levels until the conventional diets were re-introduced," said Dr. Lu.

During the days when children consumed organic diets, most of their urine samples contained zero concentration of the malathion metabolite. However, once the children returned to their conventional diets, the average malathion metabolite concentration increased to 1.6 parts per billion with a concentration range from 5 to 263 parts per billion.

A similar trend was seen for chlorpyrifos. The average chlorpyrifos metabolite concentration increased from one part per billion during the organic diet days to six parts per billion when children consumed conventional food.

A second study, published in the February 2006 issue ofEnvironmental Health Perspectives, confirmed these results. Once again, another group of 23 children from the Seattle area aged 3-11 years participated. When the conventionally grown foods in their diets were replaced with comparable organically grown foods, concentrations of compounds in the children's urine indicating exposure to organophosphate pesticides immediately dropped to non-detectable levels and remained nondetectable until they once again consumed conventionally grown foods.

The children were first monitored for three days on their normal diet. Then, most of the conventionally grown items in their diets were replaced with comparable organically grown items for 5 days. Substituted items included fruits and vegetables, juices, processed fruit and vegetable products and wheat or corn based products. Lastly, the children returned to their normal diets for a further 7 days.

Researchers analyzed two spot daily urine samples, first-morning and before-bedtime voids, throughout the 15-day study period. Urinary concentrations of compounds indicating the children were ingesting the organophosphorus pesticides, malathion and chlorpyrifos, became undetectable immediately after the introduction of organic diets and remained undetectable until the conventional diets were reintroduced.

The repetition of this research clearly demonstrates that an organic diet provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect against exposures to organophosphorus pesticides, which are commonly used in agricultural production.

Organophosphate pesticides account for approximately half the insecticide use in the United States and are applied to many conventionally grown foods important in children's diets. Organophosphates work by poisoning the nervous system in pests. When exposure to organophosphate pesticides is sufficiently high, these neurological poisons can also interfere with the proper functioning of the nervous system in humans.

Children are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of organophosphate pesticides because their bodies and brains are still growing. Even low body levels of organophosphate neurotoxins can contribute to developmental delays, behavioral problems, attention problems/hyperactivity, poor school performance and learning disabilities.

In 2000, the Consumers Union reported that the conventionally grown foods with the highest levels of pesticide residues were apples, peaches, pears, grapes, strawberries, cantaloupe, green beans, winter squash and spinach. The message is clear: to minimize your children's exposure to pesticides, choose organic!

Are organic foods nutritionally superior to conventionally grown foods?

Yes, and significantly more. Proof of their superiority has been demonstrated in numerous studies. In 1998, a review of 34 studies comparing the nutritional content of organic versus non-organic food was published in the peer-reviewed, MEDLINE-indexed journal Alternative Therapies (Volume 4, No. 1, pgs. 58-69). In this review, organic food was found to have higher protein quality in all comparisons, higher levels of vitamin C in 58% of all studies, 5-20% higher mineral levels for all but two minerals. In some cases, the mineral levels were dramatically higher in organically-grown foods-as much as three times higher in one study involving iron content.

Organic foods may also contain more flavonoids than conventionally grown foods, according to Danish research published in the August 2003 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. In this study, 16 healthy non-smoking participants ranging in age from 21-35 years were given either a diet high in organically or conventionally grown fruits and vegetables for 22 days, after which they were switched over to the other diet for another 22 days. After both dietary trials, the researchers analyzed levels of flavonoids and other markers of antioxidant defenses in the food and in the participants' blood and urine samples. Results indicated a significantly higher content of the flavonoid quercitin in the organic produce and in the subjects' urine samples when on the organic produce diet, plus the subjects' urinary levels of another flavonoid, kaempferol, were also much higher when on the organically grown compared to the conventionally grown diet.

A review of 41 studies comparing the nutritional value of organically to conventionally grown fruits, vegetables and grains, also indicates organic crops provide substantially more of several nutrients, including:

27% more vitamin C
21.1% more iron
29.3% more magnesium
13.6% more phosphorus

The review also found that while 5 servings of organically grown vegetables (lettuce, spinach, carrots, potatoes and cabbage) provided the daily recommended intake of vitamin C for men and women, their conventionally grown counterparts did not. Plus, organically grown foods contained 15.1% less nitrates than conventionally grown foods. Nitrates, a major constituent of chemical fertilizers, bind to hemoglobin and, particularly in infants, can significantly reduce the body's ability to carry oxygen. For more information on nitrates, click Nitrates - North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service

In another study whose findings are based on pesticide residue data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic fruits and vegetables were shown to have only a third as many pesticide residues as their conventionally grown counterparts. Study data, which covered more than 94,000 food samples from more than 20 crops, showed 73% of conventionally grown foods sampled had residue from at least one pesticide, while only 23% of organically grown samples had any residues. When residues of persistent, long-banned organochlorine insecticides such as DDT were excluded from the analysis, organic samples with residues dropped from 23 to 13%. In contrast, more than 90% of USDA's samples of conventionally grown apples, peaches, pears, strawberries and celery had residues.

When it comes to choosing between organic or conventionally grown foods, size is definitely not everything, suggests another study published in Science Daily Magazine. Chemistry professor Theo Clark and undergraduate students at Truman State University in Mississippi found organically grown oranges contained up to 30% more vitamin C than those grown conventionally. Reporting the results at the June 2, 2002, meeting of the American Chemical Society, Clark said he had expected the conventionally grown oranges, which were twice as large, to have twice the vitamin C as the organic versions. Instead, chemical isolation combined with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy revealed the much higher level in organic oranges.

Why the big difference? Clark speculated that "with conventional oranges, (farmers) use nitrogen fertilizers that cause an uptake of more water, so it sort of dilutes the orange. You get a great big orange but it is full of water and doesn't have as much nutritional value."

Eating organic may also help protect against chronic inflammation, a major factor in both cardiovascular disease and colon cancer. Another study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, found that organic soups sold in the UK contain almost 6 times as much salicylic acid as non-organic soups. Salicylic acid, the compound responsible for the anti-inflammatory action of aspirin, has been shown to help prevent hardening of the arteries and bowel cancer. Researchers compared the salicylic acid content of 11 brands of organic soup to that found in non-organic varieties. The average level of salicylic acid in 11 brands of organic vegetable soup was 117 nanograms per gram, compared with 20 nanograms per gram in 24 types of non-organic soup. The highest level (1,040 nanograms per gram) was found in an organic carrot and coriander soup. Four of the conventional soups had no detectable levels of salicylic acid.

What substances do we avoid by eating organic food?

Over 3,000 high-risk toxins routinely present in the U.S. food supply are, by law, excluded from organic food, including:Pesticides: By far the largest group of toxins to be largely prohibited from organically grown foods are synthetic pesticides, which are found virtually everywhere else in the food supply. Several hundred different chemicals and several thousand brand-name pesticide products are legally used in commercial food production in the U.S. Act of 1992; the Environmental Protection Agency had classified 73 pesticides authorized for agricultural use as potential carcinogens (cancer-causing agents). And pesticides don't just remain where they are applied. A 1996 study by the Environmental Working Group found 96% of all water samples taken from 748 towns across the U.S. contained the pesticide atrazine, and at least 20 different chemical pesticides are routinely present in municipal tap water across the U.S. Heavy metals: The toxic metals cadmium, lead, and mercury enter the food supply through industrial pollution of soil and groundwater and through machinery used in food processing and packaging. Cadmium, which can be concentrated in plant tissues at levels higher than those in soil, has been linked to lung, prostate and testicular cancers. Despite lead's long-recognized serious adverse impact on health, especially that of young children, lead solder is still used to seal tin cans, imparting the lead residues found in many canned foods. Even low levels of lead are harmful and are associated with decreased intelligence, impaired neurobehavioral development, decreased stature and growth, and impaired hearing. Mercury is toxic to brain cells and has been linked to autism and Alzheimer's disease. Solvents: Used to dissolve food components and produce food additives, solvents are also virtually omnipresent in commercially processed food. Solvents, such as benzene and toluene have been linked to numerous cancers. Benzene, specifically, has been repeatedly associated with rheumatoid arthritis-an auto-immune condition involving pain and degeneration in the joints that affects over 2 million adults in the U.S.

Not only are these toxic substances harmful singly, but when combined, as they are in commercially grown and processed food, and in the human body where they accumulate, their effects have been found to be magnified as much as a 1,000-fold.

Why Organicically Grown Foods Are Better for the Health of Our Planet

What are the environmental benefits of organic farming over conventional farming methods?

Organically grown foods are cultivated using farming practices that work to preserve and protect the environment.

Most conventional farming methods used today adhere to a chemical-dependent model of agribusiness. Residues from conventional farming methods use toxic chemicals that remain in the soil, leach into groundwater, and frequently end up either on the skin or become internal constituents of commercially grown foods. The predominant use of this model has resulted in adversely affecting the earth's environment and the health of its inhabitants. These methods have adversely affected:

Soil quality
Water purity
Biodiversity
Safety and health of farm workers
Survival of small and family farms
Connection to the land
Taste and quality of foods

Organic farming is seen as the alternative to chemical farming. It is often inaccurately and simplistically described as farming without the use of pesticides. More accurately, it is a method of farming which partners with nature rather than altering or controlling natural processes which includes:

Absence of use of dangerous synthetic pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers
Improving soil quality
Conserving and keeping up water quality
Encouraging biodiversity
Minimalizing the health and occupational hazards to farm workers
Maintaining a restorative and sustainable biosystem.

Organic Farming Significantly Improves Soil Quality

Results recently published from a long-term study conducted by researchers at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, PA, show that organic farming practices help retain significantly more carbon in the soil, making the soil more productive, better able to retain water, and helping to prevent global warming.

Data gathered since 1981 from the Rodale Institute's experimental farms in east-central Pennsylvania on organically grown corn and soybeans shows that the soil retained 15-28% more carbon than conventionally farmed soil, the equivalent of 1,000 pounds of carbon, or 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre foot of soil. According to Paul Hepperly, research manager for the Rodale Institute, converting the nation's 160 million acres of corn and soybeans would significantly reduce the carbon dioxide produced each year by the United States.

Some conventional growers have responded that the Rodale Institute's numbers are too high to be believable, but Hepperly explains that his excellent carbon sequestration results are due to the fact that organic farming keeps a variety of crops in the field longer than conventional farming. "We grow diversified crops in the organic system, and actually that looks like it's more important than whether it's plowed or not," Hepperly said. "It's the extended cropping season and the crops grown through a longer portion of the season that seem to be very important for the trapping of carbon and nitrogen in the soil. They're retaining the nutrients and building the organic matter through a longer season." State Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff and Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty said their offices would build on the Rodale Institute research to help develop policies that would allow farmers to benefit from environmentally sound practices.

Organic farming is highly preferable to conventional agriculture in terms of its effects on the environment, confirms a study published in the March 6 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The yearlong experiment, conducted in an established apple orchard on a 4-acre site in the Yakima Valley of central Washington, used some trees raised with conventional synthetic fertilizers; others grown organically without pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilization; and a third group raised on integrated farming, which combines organic and conventional agricultural techniques.

Each tree in all three groups was given the same amount of nitrogen at two feedings, one in October and another in May. Organically grown trees were fertilized with either composted chicken manure or alfalfa meal, while conventionally raised plants were given calcium nitrate, a synthetic fertilizer widely used by commercial apple growers. Trees raised using the integrated system got a blend of equal parts chicken manure and calcium nitrate.

One goal of the study was to compare the amount of nitrogen leaching into the soil from each of the four fertilizer treatments. Nitrogen fertilizers release or break down into nitrates-chemical compounds plants need to build proteins. When present in excess of the amounts needed by plants, however, nitrates percolate through the soil, contaminating surface and groundwater supplies.

Besides their harmful impact on aquatic life, high nitrate levels in drinking water can cause serious illness in humans, particularly small children. According to the PNAS study, nearly one of 10 domestic wells in the United States sampled between 1993 and 2000 had nitrate concentrations that exceeded the EPA's drinking water standards.

"Nitrogen compounds also enter our watersheds and have effects quite distant from the fields in which they are applied, as for example in contaminating water tables and causing biological dead zones at the mouths of major rivers," said study co-author Harold A. Mooney, the Paul S. Achilles Professor of Environmental Biology at Stanford.

The researchers measured nitrate leaching during the entire year and found it was 4.4 to 5.6 times higher in the conventional treatment than in the two organic treatments, with the integrated treatment in between.

"The intensification of agricultural production over the past 60 years and the subsequent increase in global nitrogen inputs have resulted in substantial nitrogen pollution and ecological damage. The primary source of nitrogen pollution comes from nitrogen-based agricultural fertilizers, whose use is forecasted to double or almost triple by 2050," wrote study co-authors.

The research team also compared the amount of nitrogen gas released into the atmosphere by the four treatments. Nitrogen compounds from fertilizer can enter the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

Air samples collected in the orchard after the fall and spring fertilizations revealed that organic and integrated soils emitted larger quantities of an environmentally benign gas called dinitrogen (N2) than soils treated with conventional synthetic fertilizer.

This may be due to the fact that the organic and integrated soils contained active concentrations of denitrifying bacteria-naturally occurring microbes that convert excess nitrates in the soil into N2 gas. Communities of denitrifying microbes were much smaller and far less active and efficient in conventionally treated soils.

Modern conventional farming practices have also led to nutrient-poor food. The mineral content of vegetables has dropped significantly over the last few decades. Today, you need to eat almost twice as many carrots and three times as much broccoli to get the same of calcium you would have received from one carrot in 1950. The lesson is clear: organically grown foods are the clear choice to promote the health of both ourselves and our planet.

How do conventional farming methods affect water quality?

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates pesticides (some which are known to be cancer causing) contaminate the groundwater in 38 states, polluting the primary source of drinking water for more than half the country's population.

What is sustainable agriculture?

Sustainable agriculture is farming practices that preserve and protect the future productivity and health of the environment. Sustainable agriculture is, however, a wider topic than organic farming. The way food is processed, packaged and transported may pose a threat to the environment, even when the food was cultivated organically. For example, pretzels may be organic-meaning 95% of their ingredients are organically grown-but have been produced from highly refined flour processed using energy-wasting machinery, packaged in non-recyclable plastic, and shipped around the world using large amounts of fossil fuel. Growing foods organically is, therefore, only the first step in achieving sustainable agriculture. Most environmentalists and ecologists and many individuals involved in the production of organic foods believe that sustainable agriculture is necessary if we are to reach the long-term goals of personal health and ecological balance.

In 1988 the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization adopted the following official definition of Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development:

Sustainable development (in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors) should conserve land, water, plant and animal genetic resources, is environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable.

In the 1990 Farm Bill, the U.S. Congress defined sustainable agriculture as an integrated system of plant and animal production practices that:

Satisfy human food and fiber needs
Enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends
Make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrates, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls
Sustain the economic viability of farm operations
Enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.

In 1992, during the UN Conference on Environment and Development, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGO) drafted their own Sustainable Agriculture Treaty which states:

Sustainable Agriculture is a model of social and economic organization based on equitable and participatory vision of development which recognizes the environment and natural resources as the foundation of economic activity. Agriculture is sustainable when it is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just, culturally appropriate and based on a holistic scientific approach.
Sustainable Agriculture preserves biodiversity, maintains soil, fertility and water purity, conserves and improves the chemical, physical and biological qualities of the soil, recycles natural resources and conserves energy.
Sustainable Agriculture uses locally available renewable resources, appropriate and affordable technologies, and minimizes the use of external and purchased inputs, thereby increasing local independence and self sufficiency and insuring a source of stable income for peasants, family small farmers and rural communities, and integrates humans with their environment. Sustainable Agriculture respects the ecological principles of diversity and interdependence and uses the insights of modern science to improve rather than displace the traditional wisdom accumulated over centuries by innumerable farmers around the world.

How to Understand the April 2001 Regulation of Organic Foods

Can you give me more details about federal regulation of organic farming?

Yes. Most of these details are presented in the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, as discussed below.

What was the Organic Foods Production Act?

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) was Title XXI of the 1990 Farm Bill. Its purpose was to establish national standards for the production and handling of foods labeled as organic.

Previously, private and State agencies had been certifying organic practices, but there was no uniformity in standards and therefore no guarantee that organic meant the same thing from state to state, or even locally from certifier to certifier. National standards for organic products were desired by both producers and consumers to clear up this confusion in the marketplace and to protect against mislabeling or fraud.

OFPA allows for state standards that are more restrictive than the federal standards, but they must be approved by the USDA. In addition, states cannot discriminate against out-of-state products that meet the federal standards.

What is the National Organic Program?

OFPA authorized the formation of a National Organic Program (NOP) to establish organic standards, and to require and oversee mandatory certification of organic production. The NOP will be implemented once the Final Rules are signed by the Secretary of Agriculture. The NOP, by statute, is administered by State and private organizations rather than by the Federal government. The USDA's role is to act as overseer of the Program.

While the NOP has required federal funding during its developmental stages, it is expected that, as with similar USDA programs, future costs will be covered by user fees paid by certifying agencies.

Currently, fees for certification are paid by growers and processors to private or state certifying agencies.

What is the National Organic Standards Board?

Under the Act, a National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) was created to advise the Secretary of Agriculture in setting the standards on which the USDA's National Organic Program will be based.

The NOSB wanted their recommendations to be based on industry consensus. They asked for and received an unprecedented amount of public input from farmers, businesses and consumers during every step of their decision-making process. After considering the recommendations of the NOSB, the Secretary has final authority in determining the regulations. Appointments to the NOSB are made by the Secretary of Agriculture for five year terms, and must include:

Four farmers, two handlers/processors, one retailer, one scientist (with expertise in toxicology, ecology or biochemistry), three consumer/public interest advocates, three environmentalists.

In addition to making recommendations on the national standards, the NOSB is authorized to convene Technical Advisory Panels to advise on materials to be included on a National List of materials allowed for use in organic production.

Who actually gets certified in the organic certification process?

With two exceptions (listed below), everyone who wants to sell products labeled as organic must be certified. This includes producers of organic livestock, food and fiber crops, and handlers of organic products.

A handler is any operation that receives, processes, packages, or stores agricultural products. Some examples: a processing company that buys organic tomatoes and makes canned spaghetti sauce; any distributor who substantially transforms, repacks or re-labels organic agricultural products. This last distinction is meant to exclude brokering, warehousing or trucking operations that merely store or move finished processed products from place to place without altering them in any way.

Is anyone exempt from certification?

Yes. Growers who gross less than $5,000 annually are exempt from certification. The NOSB recommends that these growers sign a declaration (available from certifying agencies) stating that they understand and are in compliance with the Act, and that they have a written Organic Farm Plan (see below), which can be made available to the public upon request. The NOSB further recommends that growers falling under this Small Farm Exemption may not use the term certified organic when marketing their crops, and may market through direct sales only (i.e., farm stands, farmers' markets, or direct sales to a retailer).

At present, retailers aren't required to be certified. The NOSB, however, recommends certification for retailers that engage in activities that qualify them as handlers. (An example: repacking bulk products such as dry beans or grain.)

How does the certification process actually work?

A grower or handler seeking organic certification submits an Organic Farm Plan or an Organic Handling Plan to a USDA-accredited private or state certification program. The Organic Plan must detail all current growing or handling methods and any materials that will be used. The Plan also covers future intentions and improvements to all areas of production.

Even growers or harvesters of organic wild crops, such as fiddlehead ferns, must develop a Plan showing that harvesting practices will not be destructive to the environment or to the future productivity of the crop.

Five-year records must be kept of all management practices and materials used in organic production.

In addition to assessing the Organic Plan, the certification agency performs annual on-site inspections of each farm or handling operation participating in its program. Certification is then either awarded or denied. User fees are collected from each grower or handler to cover the cost of the certification program.

What if a farm only wants to be part organic?

The Act does allow for only part of a farm or handling operation to be certified. The organic and conventional parts of the operation must be kept separate - whether by physical boundaries and buffer zones, in the case of a farm, or by proper cleaning and management of facilities and machinery, in the case of a handler.

Separate records must be kept for each part of a split operation. This provision can be seen as a short-term compromise. The NOSB's intent is to encourage conversion to 100% certified organic production.

What are the basic organic standards for plant crops?

Organically produced crops must be grown on land which has been free of prohibited substances for three years prior to harvest. Crops grown on land which is in transition to organic (during the first three years after switching from conventional farming, for instance) cannot be labeled as organic. The Act makes no provision for a USDA-sanctioned transitional label.

The Act covers organic agricultural methods and materials in great detail, including managing soil fertility, when and how manure may be applied to crops, crop rotation, and composting. Compost ingredients recommended by the NOSB include crop residues, crop waste from food processing operations, animal manures, yard waste from private or municipal sources, or other vegetable by-products. The NOSB recommends prohibiting municipal solid waste compost and sewage sludge compost, and the use of any prohibited material as a compost ingredient. The NOSB also recommends that all ingredients must be documented.

Prevention is considered a grower's first approach to pest management, but the Act establishes a National List of acceptable and prohibited materials, which includes pest control treatments as well as other agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and seed treatments.

The NOSB recommends that all agricultural inputs be evaluated as to their long- term affect on the environment and not simply on whether they are synthetic or natural.

The following highlights address some of the questions most frequently asked about the NOSB Recommendations for Organic Crop Production Standards.

Pesticide/Fertilizer Drift

Organic farmers are responsible for establishing adequate buffer zones or barriers to protect against pesticide or fertilizer drift from neighboring conventional farms. Organic crops that have been contaminated in this way cannot be sold or labeled as organic, or fed to organic livestock.

Certifying agents are responsible for verifying such incidents, and for deciding when products from the area may again be sold as organic. The certifier may also decide to implement pre-harvest residue testing.

Emergency Pest Eradication Programs

The NOSB recommends that local, state and federal agencies avoid treating certified organic farms during emergency pest eradication programs, and that they seek alternatives to chemical pest control methods on these farms. Organic growers are responsible for registering their farms with the appropriate state and local agencies to facilitate this.

The NOSB also recommends that certified organic farms be compensated for damages resulting from emergency pest eradication programs.

Residue Testing

Although the NOSB feels strongly that residue standards do not define organic food, it recommends that organic products shall not contain pesticide residues in excess of the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) action level or 5% of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) tolerance. The NOSB proposes the following residue testing system:

National monitoring through the Federal Regulatory Monitoring program of at least one percent (1%) of organic fresh produce and processed product samples.
State monitoring by those states which conduct pesticide residue programs.
Local monitoring by certification agencies when suspicions of contamination arise, or for a three year period following an emergency spray program, or to follow up on positive results from federal, state or local government testing, or in response to complaints.

What are the basic organic standards for livestock (animals)?

Quite simply, organic livestock must be fed organic feed.

The NOSB recommends that conventional feed be allowed only if the organic feed supply has been compromised by a national, state or local weather emergency, or by fire or flood on an organic farm.

Growth promoters and hormones, and plastic pellets for roughage in feed are prohibited. Synthetic vitamins and minerals are allowed.

Organic Livestock Production

Standards for organic livestock production are meant to assure both an organic product to the consumer and living conditions for farm animals that limit stress and promote good health. They address substances used in health care and feeding, as well as herd or flock management and housing.

Livestock includes cattle, sheep, goats, swine, poultry, fish, wild or domesticated game and horses raised for slaughter or used as draft animals. There are even standards for organic bee-keeping.

Regardless of whether they're raised as breeding stock, as dairy animals, or for slaughter, all livestock is covered by the Act.

The following highlights address some of the questions most frequently asked about the NOSB Recommendations for Organic Livestock Standards.

Housing and Health Care for Organic Livestock

Healthy living conditions and attentive care are considered first steps in the prevention of illness. Therefore, animals must not be overcrowded, and must be allowed periodic access to the outdoors and direct sunlight.

Antibiotics, wormers and other medications may not be used routinely as preventative measures. See The National List for specific details on medications recommended by the NOSB for use in organic livestock health care.

Recordkeeping for Organic Livestock

Records must be kept on all feeding and health care practices for each animal or flock, and there must be a verifiable audit trail to trace any animal or flock back to the farm.

Are there basic organic standards for processing and handling?

Yes. Standards for the processing, handling and labeling of organic products cover all steps in the process from receiving organic raw materials, acceptable processing aids and ingredients, appropriate packaging materials and labeling, to cleaning methods, waste disposal and pest management at processing facilities.

The following highlights address some of the questions most frequently asked about the NOSB Recommendations for Organic Processing, Handling & Labeling Standards.

Processing Additives

The following additives are not allowed in organic processing: sulfites, nitrates or nitrites; any ingredient known to contain higher levels of heavy metals or toxic residues than permitted by federal regulation; and any non-agricultural ingredient that is not organically produced unless it is designated as acceptable on The National List.

Packaging Materials

Organic products cannot be packaged in materials, storage containers or bins that contain synthetic fungicides, preservatives or fumigants. The reuse of containers that have been in contact with any prohibited substance is not allowed.

Imported Products

Imported products may be labeled as organically produced if the Secretary of Agriculture determines that they have been produced and handled under an organic program that meets or exceeds the requirements of the USDA's National Organic Program.

What is the National List, and why has it been so controversial?

The National List provides a complete account of all substances permitted and prohibited in the production of organic food. Its purpose is to make clear which materials can and cannot be used in organic production, processing and handling in the United States. You can view the National List directly by visiting the following website:http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/nop2000/Final%20Rule/regtext/reg-natlist.htm

Who defines the National List?

The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) is responsible for recommending to the Secretary of Agriculture which materials will be on the list. This process began in 1995, when the NOSB completed a massive review of the materials in use by organic producers, and those recommendations became the base for the first draft of the National List.

The procedure is ongoing, however, and many manufacturers and processors seek to add new substances to the National List that are currently prohibited in organic food production. While the NOSB includes five separate committees, including committees on livestock, food processing, crops and materials, it is the materials committee that must review the most constant supply of petitions asking for permission to use currently prohibited substances in the production of organically-certified foods. The committee continues to review these petitions on a quarterly basis. For example, in its March 2001 quarterly meeting, the materials committee was asked to recommend use of hydroxyquinoline sulfate and polaxalene in livestock husbandry, and cyclohexylamine, morpholine, and octadecylamine in plant food processing.

Once the NOSB makes a recommendation, the Secretary of Agriculture makes the final determination. A Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) gathers and evaluates the scientific data and makes recommendations to the board based on seven review criteria:

Effect on human health.
Effect on the farm ecosystem.
Toxicity and mode of action.
Availability of gentler alternatives.
Probability of environmental contamination during manufacture, use and disposal.
Potential for interactions with other materials used.
Overall compatibility with a system of sustainable agriculture.

How is The National List structured?

The NOSB recommended that the National List be divided into three parts:

Acceptable synthetic production materials;
Prohibited natural production materials;
Acceptable non-agricultural, non-synthetic processing aids.

These lists contain the exceptions to the basic understanding within the organic industry that all organically grown and handled foods are produced with solely natural materials.

This may seem like an unusual structure; however, it avoids the problem of trying to list every natural material that organic growers or processors might use. Such a list might neglect to mention all of the local resources available in a given region.

Why are there exceptions?

Organic production systems encourage a healthy environment with as few inputs as possible. The NOSB recommends that cultural, biological and other management tools be sought to replace material inputs - whether synthetic or natural.

Congress, in passing the OFPA, recognized that it will take time for organic producers and handlers to achieve the long term goals expressed in the Act. The National List was meant to reflect realistic organic practices and to take into account current obstacles to ideal organic production. Therefore, some synthetics are allowed if the review process shows that they are:

Not harmful to human health or the environment.
Necessary to production because of unavailability of natural products.
Consistent with organic ideals.

Likewise, the law provides for prohibition of natural materials that may be harmful to human health or the environment and inconsistent with organic ideals.

Following are some of the questions most frequently asked about the materials recommended by the NOSB for inclusion on The National List.

Why are there no brand names on The List?

The National List applies only to generic materials that are active ingredients and does not apply directly to brand name products. The complexity of brand name product formulations, the changeable nature of what is on the marketplace at any given time, and manufacturer's concerns over confidentiality made this approach the most viable.

Do organic farmers use any pesticides or pest control products?

Yes. Sometimes, organic farmers find that they need to use pest control products as part of an ecological farm plan. However, they may only use products included as acceptable in the National List.

When would an organic grower need to use a pesticide or pest control product?

In a natural ecosystem, predators keep plant pests in check, while diseases strike individual plants or may even wipe out a species. Nature constantly works to correct imbalances. Organic farmers also strive for such a balance, but farming interferes with the native mix of plants and animals, and so farmers must contend with the problems that arise. They must also meet customer expectations of quality - and do all of this in an economic fashion. The allowed pesticides are, therefore, sometimes used as a corrective measure when cultural methods of pest control have failed.

Organic farmers look for pesticides that target their pest specifically while impacting the ecosystem as little as possible. For example, if a field of tomatoes has attracted a large population of tomato hornworms, a natural toxin can be sprayed which harms only leaf-eating caterpillars. If aphids are the problem, a light petroleum oil spray could be used to suffocate these soft-bodied insects without harming their predators.

Next season, the farmer might change his fertility plan or use a natural repellent such as a garlic or cayenne spray to make the crop less attractive, use crop covers and rotations to encourage beneficial predators, or use traps and visual inspection to catch the problem earlier.

What is the difference between IPM and organic production?

IPM, or Integrated Pest Management, differs from organic production in three ways. First, IPM only addresses pest control and not fertility. Second, IPM focuses on reducing chemical sprays, but has no compunction about using them when indicators point to a need. Third, IPM allows for the use of any synthetic pesticide as a last resort measure, rather than restricting to natural and least toxic materials.

What synthetic materials does the NOSB recommend for use in crop production?

Petroleum oil and soaps are allowed for insect control because of their benign nature to people and the environment. They also do little harm to beneficial insects.

Pheromones are chemicals identical to those given off by insects in locating food or mates. They are used in small quantities to lure pests to traps in the field, or to confuse them so that they won't mate. Pheromones have been revolutionary throughout agriculture in reducing pesticide usage.

Copper and sulfur compounds can stop plant diseases that could destroy entire crops. These metallic compounds mechanically kill fungus spores and have been in use for centuries. Other disease control practices include variety and site selection, proper plant spacing, and improved irrigation methods.

Research is leading to biological controls, but in the meantime, copper and sulfur are allowed for fungus control, along with two antibiotics for virus control on the leaf surface of plants.

Cleaning compounds, specifically alcohol and bleach, are recommended by the NOSB for inclusion in the National List for use in disinfecting irrigation systems and food contact surfaces.

Micronutrient fertilizers are usually synthetic, but are needed in very small amounts. While most natural fertilizers will supply adequate micronutrients, when soil testing shows that micronutrients are needed, they are allowed to balance fertility. Balanced, fertile soil will grow crops with the fewest pest problems and the most nutrition.

Plastic mulch and covers are allowed for weed, insect, and frost protection. Plastics are synthetic, but in this use are not disrupting the natural balance and actually reduce the need for pesticides. They must be removed from the field at the end of each season and may not be plowed in or allowed to decompose.

Liquid fish emulsion also appears on the list of approved synthetics because of added processing aids.

Small quantities of pH adjusters are added to keep the product stable and prevent fermentation in storage.

What are some of the natural substances that the NOSB recommends be prohibited?

Arsenic for insect control, and strychnine for rodent control are some of the few natural materials prohibited in organic production. Their high toxicity and concern about residues has warranted this exclusion. Restrictions have also been placed on the use of other natural materials because they disrupt the ecological balance or are of moderate natural toxicity.

The botanical pest controls Rotenone, Pyrethrum, Ryania, Sabadilla, Neem and Tobacco Dust are derived from plants. Their use is recommended only when primary methods of defense have failed.

This is because they are broad spectrum in action and may affect not only the target pest, but also other insects they contact. These materials are registered with the EPA and have undergone safety testing, falling into EPA's least toxic category. Botanicals are preferred in organic production to even the least toxic synthetic pesticides because botanicals break down quickly into common natural compounds.

An important measure of the safety of these plant-derived materials is their known effects based on historical use for the last 3,000 years.

Sodium nitrate (commonly known as Chilean nitrate) is also a restricted material. Its high salt content may disrupt soil biology, and it is used to feed the plant directly rather than increasing overall soil fertility. While direct feeding may be necessary in certain situations, organic producers should not rely too heavily on this method of fertilizing. Use of sodium nitrate is restricted to a small percent of the total nitrogen requirement of the crop, thus encouraging growers to build soil fertility with less soluble materials that have a lower impact on soil biology.

Why are antibiotics allowed in organic livestock production?

Organic feed, good living conditions and attentive care are usually enough to support animals without medication. However, animals do get sick, and it would be contrary to the underlying values of organic production to let an animal suffer or die when treatment is available. The NOSB therefore recommends that antibiotics be allowed only for the treatment of a sick animal, not as a growth promoter or preventive measure, and never on a routine basis. If an animal intended for slaughter must be given antibiotics, it can no longer be considered organic. If a breeding animal, dairy cow, or laying hen must be given antibiotics, the NOSB recommends it be taken out of the organic production system for an appropriate withdrawal period.

What other drugs does the NOSB recommend for livestock health care?

Synthetic wormers are recommended as allowed for use in much the same way as antibiotics, to prevent the suffering or death of an animal. However, they cannot be used routinely. The producer must have a plan in place to prevent worm infestation. Without such a plan, the producer cannot be certified.

Other recommended allowed synthetics in livestock production include vitamins and trace minerals to balance nutritional requirements, aspirin for inflammation, electrolytes for dehydration, local anesthetics with appropriate withdrawal periods, and milk replacers when fresh milk is not available.

Why are there non-organic ingredients in some organic food?

If you were to make organic cookies at home you would naturally use organic flour, oil, eggs, raisins, etc. But what about the salt and baking soda? Because they are non-agricultural products, neither of these ingredients meets the definition of organic. Processors of many kinds of organic foods face the same dilemma. In addition, nutritional fortification is sometimes required by regulation or professional guidelines, but is not available in natural form.

Thus the NOSB recommends that the National List include synthetic processing aids and natural products such as minerals that are not agricultural. For the finished food to be called organic, these ingredients may not comprise more than 5% of the total product, by weight.

What are some of the non-organic ingredients recommended by the NOSB?

Recommended non-synthetic ingredients include baking soda as a leavener, some calcium compounds, pectin for jelling, and lecithin for consistency. Carrageenan and agar-agar are seaweed products not available in certified organic form, but are recommended as allowed materials for thickening and smooth consistency. Nitrogen and oxygen are recommended as allowed processing aids with restrictions as to source. The NOSB also recommends that bacterial enzymes, cultures and yeast be allowed unless produced from gene splicing.

Recommended synthetic ingredients include the synthesized version of carbon dioxide (a naturally occurring gas) for use in carbonation and pest control, ferrous sulfate and other vitamins and minerals for nutritional fortification, and bleach for cleaning surfaces. The use of ethylene gas, a processed version of the gas naturally produced by fruits for ripening, is recommended by the NOSB only for bananas, since the travel required to get them to market often precludes ripening on the tree.

Synthetic magnesium chloride is available for making tofu, as the FDA restricts the natural form due to health hazards from impurities.

Does the Organic Foods Production Act have provisions for enforcement and penalties for regulatory violation?

Yes. There are provisions and penalties for both producers and certifiers.

Mislabeling and False Statements

Any person who knowingly mislabels a product as organic can be fined a maximum of $10,000 and may be disbarred from the Organic Program for five years. Persons who make false statements to the Secretary of Agriculture, a state official or a certifying agent are subject to penalties under Federal law, and may be disbarred from the program for five years.

Violations by Certifying Agencies

A certifying agency that violates the provisions of the program or falsely or negligently certifies any operation shall lose accreditation and shall not be eligible for re-accreditation for three years.

(Note: The previous summary of the Organic Foods Production Act was based largely on a report produced by Organic Harvest, the educational program of the Organic Trade Association P.O. Box 1078, Greenfield, MA 01302.)

Are there any foods that will not be covered by the federal organic standards?

Why Organicically Grown Foods Are Better for the Health of Our Planet

What are the environmental benefits of organic farming over conventional farming methods?

Organically grown foods are cultivated using farming practices that work to preserve and protect the environment.

Soil quality
Water purity
Biodiversity
Safety and health of farm workers
Survival of small and family farms
Connection to the land
Taste and quality of foods

Absence of use of dangerous synthetic pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers
Improving soil quality
Conserving and keeping up water quality
Encouraging biodiversity
Minimalizing the health and occupational hazards to farm workers
Maintaining a restorative and sustainable biosystem.

Organic Farming Significantly Improves Soil Quality

Organic Farming More Productive Long-term than Conventional Farming

Yields on farms using conventional synthetic fertilizers and pesticides have been steadily declining for the last 20 years, shows an ominous report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jun 12;104(24):10282-7.

Over the past 40 years, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use has increased 7-fold, and pesticide use has increased 3-fold, yet crop yield continues to decrease because the synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, organochlorine pesticides and other synthetic agrichemicals used on modern farms actually reduce the total amount of nitrogen available to crops.

Most of the nitrogen in farmers' soil is produced via the activity of soil-dwelling, nitrogen-fixing Rhizobium bacteria, which attach to crop roots, and nitrogen-fixing legumes, like soybeans and alfalfa, which farmers plant every other year when following the practice of crop rotation. According to PNAS study researchers, pesticides and other common agrichemicals disrupt the processes through which these bacteria and legumes enrich the soil with nitrogen. Fortunately, a review of the research conducted by Ivette Perfecto and colleagues from the University of Michigan indicates ecologically sustainable organic farming can feed our world's expanding population. Data from existing studies shows that in developed countries, crop yields from organic and conventional farms are about the same. In developing countries, compared to the inefficient methods currently employed, modern organic farming methods can double or triple the amount of food produced per acre. A comparison of nitrogen availability on organic and conventional farms found that crop rotation alone could provide enough nitrogen to replace synthetic fertilizers, confirming the findings of the PNAS report.Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 2007 June; 22 (2):80-86; Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 2007 June;22(2):86-108.

How do conventional farming methods affect water quality?

What is sustainable agriculture?

In 1988 the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization adopted the following official definition of Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development:

Sustainable development (in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors) should conserve land, water, plant and animal genetic resources, is environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable.

In the 1990 Farm Bill, the U.S. Congress defined sustainable agriculture as an integrated system of plant and animal production practices that:

Satisfy human food and fiber needs
Enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends
Make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrates, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls
Sustain the economic viability of farm operations
Enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.

In 1992, during the UN Conference on Environment and Development, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGO) drafted their own Sustainable Agriculture Treaty which states:

Sustainable Agriculture is a model of social and economic organization based on equitable and participatory vision of development which recognizes the environment and natural resources as the foundation of economic activity. Agriculture is sustainable when it is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just, culturally appropriate and based on a holistic scientific approach.
Sustainable Agriculture preserves biodiversity, maintains soil, fertility and water purity, conserves and improves the chemical, physical and biological qualities of the soil, recycles natural resources and conserves energy.
Sustainable Agriculture uses locally available renewable resources, appropriate and affordable technologies, and minimizes the use of external and purchased inputs, thereby increasing local independence and self sufficiency and insuring a source of stable income for peasants, family small farmers and rural communities, and integrates humans with their environment. Sustainable Agriculture respects the ecological principles of diversity and interdependence and uses the insights of modern science to improve rather than displace the traditional wisdom accumulated over centuries by innumerable farmers around the world.

How to Understand the April 2001 Regulation of Organic Foods

Can you give me more details about federal regulation of organic farming?

Yes. Most of these details are presented in the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, as discussed below.

What was the Organic Foods Production Act?

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) was Title XXI of the 1990 Farm Bill. Its purpose was to establish national standards for the production and handling of foods labeled as organic.

What is the National Organic Program?

While the NOP has required federal funding during its developmental stages, it is expected that, as with similar USDA programs, future costs will be covered by user fees paid by certifying agencies.

Currently, fees for certification are paid by growers and processors to private or state certifying agencies.

What is the National Organic Standards Board?

Under the Act, a National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) was created to advise the Secretary of Agriculture in setting the standards on which the USDA's National Organic Program will be based.

Four farmers, two handlers/processors, one retailer, one scientist (with expertise in toxicology, ecology or biochemistry), three consumer/public interest advocates, three environmentalists.

Who actually gets certified in the organic certification process?

Is anyone exempt from certification?

How does the certification process actually work?

Five-year records must be kept of all management practices and materials used in organic production.

What if a farm only wants to be part organic?

What are the basic organic standards for plant crops?

The NOSB recommends that all agricultural inputs be evaluated as to their long- term affect on the environment and not simply on whether they are synthetic or natural.

The following highlights address some of the questions most frequently asked about the NOSB Recommendations for Organic Crop Production Standards.

Pesticide/Fertilizer Drift

Emergency Pest Eradication Programs

The NOSB also recommends that certified organic farms be compensated for damages resulting from emergency pest eradication programs.

Residue Testing

National monitoring through the Federal Regulatory Monitoring program of at least one percent (1%) of organic fresh produce and processed product samples.
State monitoring by those states which conduct pesticide residue programs.
Local monitoring by certification agencies when suspicions of contamination arise, or for a three year period following an emergency spray program, or to follow up on positive results from federal, state or local government testing, or in response to complaints.

What are the basic organic standards for livestock (animals)?

Quite simply, organic livestock must be fed organic feed.

The NOSB recommends that conventional feed be allowed only if the organic feed supply has been compromised by a national, state or local weather emergency, or by fire or flood on an organic farm.

Growth promoters and hormones, and plastic pellets for roughage in feed are prohibited. Synthetic vitamins and minerals are allowed.

Organic Livestock Production

Livestock includes cattle, sheep, goats, swine, poultry, fish, wild or domesticated game and horses raised for slaughter or used as draft animals. There are even standards for organic bee-keeping.

Regardless of whether they're raised as breeding stock, as dairy animals, or for slaughter, all livestock is covered by the Act.

The following highlights address some of the questions most frequently asked about the NOSB Recommendations for Organic Livestock Standards.

Housing and Health Care for Organic Livestock

Recordkeeping for Organic Livestock

Records must be kept on all feeding and health care practices for each animal or flock, and there must be a verifiable audit trail to trace any animal or flock back to the farm.

Are there basic organic standards for processing and handling?

The following highlights address some of the questions most frequently asked about the NOSB Recommendations for Organic Processing, Handling & Labeling Standards.

Processing Additives

Packaging Materials

Imported Products

What is the National List, and why has it been so controversial?

Who defines the National List?

Effect on human health.
Effect on the farm ecosystem.
Toxicity and mode of action.
Availability of gentler alternatives.
Probability of environmental contamination during manufacture, use and disposal.
Potential for interactions with other materials used.
Overall compatibility with a system of sustainable agriculture.

How is The National List structured?

The NOSB recommended that the National List be divided into three parts:

Acceptable synthetic production materials;
Prohibited natural production materials;
Acceptable non-agricultural, non-synthetic processing aids.

These lists contain the exceptions to the basic understanding within the organic industry that all organically grown and handled foods are produced with solely natural materials.

Why are there exceptions?

Not harmful to human health or the environment.
Necessary to production because of unavailability of natural products.
Consistent with organic ideals.

Likewise, the law provides for prohibition of natural materials that may be harmful to human health or the environment and inconsistent with organic ideals.

Following are some of the questions most frequently asked about the materials recommended by the NOSB for inclusion on The National List.

Why are there no brand names on The List?

Do organic farmers use any pesticides or pest control products?

Yes. Sometimes, organic farmers find that they need to use pest control products as part of an ecological farm plan. However, they may only use products included as acceptable in the National List.

When would an organic grower need to use a pesticide or pest control product?

What is the difference between IPM and organic production?

Organic Farming More Productive Long-term than Conventional Farming

References

. National standards for organic foods proposed. J Am Vet Med Assoc 2000 May 1;216(9):1381 2000. PMID:17810.
Amaditz KC. The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 and its impending regulations: a big zero for organic food. Food Drug Law J 1997;52(4):537-59 1997. PMID:17820.
Badgley C, Moghtadera J, Quinteroa E, Zakema E, Chappella MJ, Avilés-Vázqueza K, Samulona A, Perfecto I. Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 2007 July, 22(2): 86-108. 2007.
Badgley C, Perfecto I. Can organic agriculture feed the world. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 2007 July, 22(2): 80-86. 2007.
Baker BP, Benbrook CM, Groth E 3rd, Lutz Benbrook K. Pesticide residues in conventional, integrated pest management (IPM)-grown and organic foods: insights from three US data sets. Food Addit Contam. 2002 May;19(5):427-46. 2002. PMID:12028642.
Baxter GJ, Graham AB, Lawrence JR, Wiles D, Paterson JR. Salicylic acid in soups prepared from organically and non-organically grown vegetables. Eur J Nutr. 2001 Dec;40(6):289-92. 2001. PMID:11876493.
Clark T. More vitamin C in organic oranges than conventional oranges. Research presented at American Chemical Society Meeting, Press Release, Science Daily News, June 2, 2002. 2002.
Davis DR, Epp MD, Riordan HD. Changes in USDA food composition data for 43 garden crops, 1950 to 1999. J Am Coll Nutr. 2004 Dec;23(6):669-82. 2004. PMID:15637215.
Eskenazi B, Bradman A, Castorina R. Exposures of children to organophosphate pesticides and their potential adverse health effects. Environ Health Perspect. 1999 Jun;107 Suppl 3:409-19. 1999. PMID:10346990.
Fisher BE. Organic: What's in a name. Environ Health Perspect 1999 Mar;107(3):A150-3 1999. PMID:17830.
Fox JE, Gulledge J, Engelhaupt E, Burow ME, McLachlan JA. Pesticides reduce symbiotic efficiency of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and host plants. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jun 12;104(24):10282-7. Epub 2007 Jun 4. 2007. PMID:17548832.
Grinder-Pedersen L, Rasmussen SE, Bugel S, Jorgensen LV, Dragsted LO, Gundersen V, Sandstrom B. Effect of diets based on foods from conventional versus organic production on intake and excretion of flavonoids and markers of antioxidative defense in humans. J Agric Food Chem. Sep 10;51(19):5671-6. 2003. PMID:12952417.
Hepperly P. Organic farming improves carbon sequestration.J. Nutr. October 2003, 133:3170-3174. 2003.
Kramer SB, Reganold JP, Glover JD, Bohannan BJ, Mooney HA. Reduced nitrate leaching and enhanced denitrifier activity and efficiency in organically fertilized soils. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 Mar 13; [Epub ahead of print] 2006. PMID:16537377.
Lu C, Toepel K, Irish R, Fenske R, Barr D, Bravo R. Organic diets significantly lower children's dietary exposure to organophosphorus pesticides. Environ Health Perspect doi:10.1289/ehp.8418 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 1 September 2005] 2005.
Lu C, Toepel K, Irish R, Fenske RA, Barr DB, Bravo R. Organic diets significantly lower children's dietary exposure to organophosphorus pesticides. Environ Health Perspect. 2006 Feb;114(2):260-3. 2006. PMID:16451864.
National Research Council. Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. Washington: National Academy Press, 1993. 1993.
United States Congress. Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. Public Law 701-624: 1990; Title 21, U.S. 1990 Farm Bill 1990. PMID:17840.
Wilkinson T. Rats 'Healthier' on Organic Diet. The Scotsman (UK), February 18, 2005. http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm 2005.
Worthington V. Nutritional quality of organic versus conventional fruits, vegetables, and grains. J Altern Complement Med 2001 Apr;7(2):161-73 2001. PMID:17530.
Worthington V. Effect of agricultural methods on nutritional quality: a comparison of organic with conventional crops. Altern Ther Health Med 1998 Jan;4(1):58-69 1998. PMID:17540.
Worthington V. Analyzing data to compare nutrients in conventional versus organic crops. J Altern Complement Med. 2002 Oct;8(5):529-32. 2002. PMID:12028642

Original Source:

Worlds Healthies Foods by George Matjelan

Swine Flu Brings Big Business for Doctors and Drug Companies - ABC News

2009-11-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

I've been researching most of the day today for my appearance on KGGV tomorrow evening. I'm a bit stressed right now to hear that President Obama may hold stock in Baxter, the original manufacturer of the H1N1 vaccine. This led me to the story below from ABC News and again, we can draw the line of conclusion. As a Nutrition Educator, it is my job to educate the people on the subject of nutrition and its relationship with good health. I work hard to research alternative therapies and food choices for ailments that many Americans most commonly suffer. Two are elevated or negative cholesterol readings as well as acid reflux. These are in fact the easiest two to manage with optimized nutrition.

If you are still following me here, my point is the sales of statins and antacid medications it seems are slowing. Great! My colleauges and I are either doing our jobs or Dr.'s out there are finally doing what they are supposed to do and that is the care of the human frame not just the treatment of disease. But then again, we are in fact living in a time when your poor health is to the benefit of our economy. Imagine that! Someone profits from your illness. While you are suffering that chemo treatment, lying in your bed with sores that won't heal or finding that your muslces are weak and you might just have tears in your muscles.......someone is profiting.

You should be the only one profiting from health. Your GOOD health! Your profit? Longevity, vitality and love and enjoyment of those around you. Think about your choices each and every day because one day, you just may not have a choice. Knowledge is power, please use your head!

Be well

Swine Flu Brings Big Business for Doctors and Drug Companies - ABC News

To the NIH - Please acknowledge existing science !

2009-11-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

People with Diabetes & People Who Know People With Diabetes
National Institutes of Health re: the ACCORD Diabetes Study: "Intensively targeting blood sugar to near-normal levels ... increases risk of death. "This statement is untrue. This study lowered blood glucose levels only by aggressive drug treatment.

Preventative measures and proven non-drug treatments are being ignored by the NIH, ADA and many other governing agencies.

There is abundant scientific evidence proving a carbohydrate restricted diet can be as effective as drugs in lowering blood glucose levels safely. Many times diet is more effective than medication in controlling diabetes - all without side effects or increased risk of death.

I ask that the National Institutes of Health publically retract the above quoted statement. It is misleading the public.
I also request that the NIH acknowledge the existing science and fund more research by the experts who have experience with carbohydrate restriction as a means of treatment for diabetes.

Unfortunately, most diabetics are encouraged to reduce their fat intake and monitor their carbohydrate intake at approximately 60 grams per meal. Once reducing my girth by 85lbs., I continue to eat 60 grams or less a day after maintaining this lifestyle for 10 years now. I could have been a diabetic statistic with many of my cousins and a few uncles suffering currently.

This information diabetics are receiving is coming from Registered Dieticians who are trained using the USDA Food Pyramid which was designed not for human health, rather political and economic benefit. In case you aren't familar with the USDA Food Pyramid, it is recommended that we consume 6-12 servings of grains daily with 50% being whole grain. Let's start with 50% being whole grain! ? Really? As a holistic Nutrition Educator, I recommend no refined grains for optimum health and that is what an educated person should advise. Does your government have your good health in mind first and foremost? If you consider that the majority of the US economy depends upon poor health for its economic status, (think cancer treatments alone) consider their advice as the exact opposite for your good health. Your poor health drives our economy!

So, with that being said, I encourage anyone interested in longevitiy for their family member or themselves to sign the below petition.
In optimum health....

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/get-the-nih-to-acknowledge-the-existing-science-and-fund-more-research-by-the-experts-who-have

Gathered information regarding the H1N1 vaccine

2009-10-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

I have been working on gathering information for a radio show I will appear on this evening. "In Touch With Milo" on KGGV, Guerneville. You can stream it live at kggv.blogspot.com.

I am more astounded than ever with the research I've gathered. I'm sitting here currently with a mountain of printed material as well, several different website resources at my fingertips!! Confused, dumbfounded, agitated, pissed off.....yes, these are some of the descriptive words I can use to describe how I feel right now. Are we truly sheeple? Do we just follow and believe? the history is astounding people!

If you go to the CDC or FDA websites, the information is so vague. While there are thimerasol free vaccinations, they are not made widely available. The biggest joke currently is the word "reduced amounts of thimerasol". No amount of mercury is healthy! This project began as the H1N1 research but the farther into this I got, the more appauled I am. From the AIDS virus and the New York City Hepatitis B campaign to this particular vaccine, H1N1.

We have gone as a society from about 10 shots in our lifetime to up to 36? Really? A healthy civilized people? Yeah! GOTCHA! We might be civilized but we're far from healthy. In fact, we're such an unhealthy society, we've turned into the sheeple I've mentioned above. While you're munching on your Quarter Pounder and sipping your soda are you contemplating the vaccine? Or are you eating an apple with a few slices of cheese thinking "I'm safe, I took my vitamin D today and I'm sure to eat healthy so as not to compromise my immune system" I won't tell you what the right answer is because you should already know. Your behavior more than likely just might dictate your need for this vaccination that could potentially super charge your immune system to actually attack itself and end up with Guillian Barre Syndrome. Just one in a million are affected by this nuerological disease right? Your lottery ticket probably has the same odds but you bet on those don't you?

If one milion people have already been exposed to this flu why I ask you are more people not dying or falling ill? If you've been exposed to this flu, you also have an increased risk of worse incidence of the flu should you decide to accept this vaccine.

Yes, you could very well contract this flu this year. However, if your immune system is optimized, meaning you're working hard to support the works of your miraculous body, you'll fall ill, maybe be in bed for a few days but then, you've built immunity.

Check out the links below and satisfy yourself with research and factual information. Don't be a guinnea pig for pharmaceutical profit! If you are pregnant, I beg you not to allow your Dr. to let your growing baby become an experiment. Mercury, Squalene, Formaldahyde, antibiotics, I mean really???? I was nervous to take an aspirin while pregnant!

http://www.generationrescue.org/evidence-science/05a-autism-and-vaccines.htm
http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/docs/ThimerosalScandalFINAL.PDF
http://www.drtenpenny.com
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/01/autism_mercury_and_politics/
http://swineflu.mercola.com/sites/swineflu/home.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4SmFxyust0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y77oExTDw8I&feature=related
http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/

The Synthetics Belief System

2009-10-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

The synthetics revolution is a by-product of activities within three sectors of the U.S. economy; the processed foods industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the chemical industry. These economic interests influence our diet and health from the womb to the grave. The control we give them over our lives springs directly from our acceptance of this belief system's primary conceit — that their lab-created synthetics are as benign and more effective than naturally occurring foods and medicines.

Our indoctrination into the synthetics mythology has deep roots in an awestruck fealty to science and technology, whose powers have simultaneously blessed us and blinded us. We live in a prosperous system where the economic principles of supply and demand, competitive markets, and profit motives, relentlessly drive the industrialization of our food and medicine and health care. This system has created cheaper and more plentiful food and produced a host of medical technologies (if we can afford them) that may save lives and extend lives in almost miraculous ways. But what have we overlooked, what have we sacrificed, in return?

At least 70 percent of the processed foods in your local grocery store contain at least one genetically engineered ingredient that has never been tested for its potential harm. More than 3,000 synthetic chemicals are regularly added to U.S. food products and hardly any have been tested for their synergistic (interactive) toxin producing effects in the human body.

Most vitamins and supplements sold in the U.S. that are advertised as natural are actually synthetic chemical concoctions that contain coal tars, preservatives, artificial colorings and a vast range of other potentially harmful additives. More than 25,000 chemicals are in the cosmetics sold in the U.S., yet less than 4 percent of these ingredients have ever been tested for toxicity and safety. Within the nine or so vaccines given your children before entering school are additives and preservatives that can include mercury, aluminum, MSG, formaldehyde and others linked to disorders ranging from brain and nerve damage to autism and attention deficit disorder.

Over the past one hundred years our species has been engaged in a vast and complicated chemistry experiment. Each and every one of us, along with our children, our parents and our grandparents, have been a guinea pig in this experiment that uses our bodies, our health, our wealth and our good will to test the proposition that modern science can improve upon the foods and medicines of Nature.

Despite our culture's remarkable sophistication in medical technology that keeps the seriously ill alive and extends lifespans, our overall health condition has degenerated alarmingly and rapidly. Over the past 100 years our cancer mortality has gone from 3 percent of all deaths to 20 percent of all deaths. Our incidence of diabetes went from one-tenth of one percent of the population to almost 20 percent. Heart disease went from being almost non-existent to killing more than 700,000 people a year. At the same time, health care costs have risen until the U.S. now spends twice as much on medicine and care per person per year than any other industrialized nation in the world.

It's no coincidence that simultaneous with this health decline the perils we face from our food, our medicine and our health choices have become a drumbeat of alarming news reports. Here are a few representative examples. A study from the science journal, Public Health, described in 2004 how the incidence of death from brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and motor neuron disorders, was found to have tripled in nine Western countries, including the U.S., during the period 1974 to 1997. The most likely causes researchers identified were exposure to pesticides sprayed on crops, synthetic chemicals from the processed foods that we consume, and industrial chemicals used in almost every aspect of our modern lives.

Food seemed to be a major culprit for this toxicity because Japan, alone among the ten countries studied, experienced no increase in brain disease mortality, apparently a result of the Japanese diet being healthier than Western diets. Only when Japanese citizens relocate to Western countries and consume those processed foods do their disease rates exceed that of Japan as a whole.In California, state environmental officials discovered that 60 percent of the rivers and streams contained high levels of prozac, ritalin, and antibiotics.

How could such contamination possibly have happened? Because people had dumped their excess prescription drugs into those bodies of water, or had flushed them directly, or through bodily waste, into sewer and septic systems where the chemicals then leached into ground water.

Blood testing of thousands of Americans has widened the scope of concern. Medical researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other synthetic chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers who had no occupational or geographical connection to these chemicals or where they are manufactured. More than half of these chemicals are known to be responsible for birth defects, or cancer, or brain and nervous system disorders in humans.An even more extensive round of testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, involving 2,400 adults and children, documented more than 200 synthetic chemical toxins in their bodies, with hundreds more chemicals suspected to be present. How did we become so toxic? What thrust us as a culture and as individuals onto this slippery slope? How can we navigate our way back to a healthier and less toxic future?

These are some of the questions raised and answered in The Hundred Year Lie.
Above is from The Hundred Year Lie website. Grab the book..it's a fascinating read!

How Much Vitamin D Do You Really Need to Take?

2009-10-10T09:39:00.001-07:00

How Much Vitamin D Do You Really Need to Take?

This is a 30 minute video on some studies that have been carried out by the Grass Roots organization. If you learn nothing else from me, know that Vitamin D can save your life. Unfortunately, we have been mis-guided into believing that any amount of sun is dangerous. This is just not true. If sun exposure is at an all time low, sun screen use an all time high, and consequently melanoma cases are sky rocketing? We clearly have something else to blame.

Of course sun exposure is the healthiest most efficient delivery of Vitamin D but this is impossible to obtain if you reside above the equator. Supplementation is then necessary. Remember, our RDA for supplements were set to simply avoid blatant disease of that particular deficiency, ie: Rickets is the noted diesease from a Vitamin D deficiency. At 400IU per the RDA, that's the only thing you'll prevent. I am recommending a minimum of 1000IU of Vitamin D to my clients as well, 25OHD testing to detect potential deficiency. At this point, your Dr. might recommend a prescription strength of 50,000IU's once weekly and a lower daily dose thereafter.

I constantly hear "I drink milk" or "I eat cheese". Unfortunately, the fortified dairy is a synthetic form of Vitamin D. You want Vitamin D3 or as it is also referred to, cholecalciferol.

This winter arm yourself! Take 1tsp. per 50lb. of body weight of Norweigen Cod Liver Oil. My recommended brand is Carlsons, Lemon Flavored 500mg DHA. Not only will this supply you with a nice dose of Vitamins A & D but your daily dose of omega 3 fatty acids as well!

Though Cod Liver Oil has a dose of Vitamin D, I would recommend one arm themselves with a boost of additional D with Carlsons D drops at 1-2 drops per day. This will provide you with 1000-2000 additional IU's for illness protection.

In the 1950's, the use of Cod Liver Oil for supplementation was discouraged by none other than Dr. Spock, the infamous pediatrician whom most parents counted on to deliver safe and accurate information. Dr. Spock claimed that vaccinations will now replace the need for supplementation. What a sad day that was. Now, with the rates of ADD, ADHD, Autism and other developmenatal disabilities, soaring cancer rates, debilitating brain disorders, we need to get back to our traditional roots of whole food supplementation.

In light of the H1N1 virus, you and your children will be much better served by supplementation, fresh whole foods and a reduction in processed foods for optimal immune support.

Be Well

UAB Researchers Find Possible Use for Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

2009-10-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

The following findings I must admit are humurous. I signed on to my Facebook account this morning with a nice surprise "friend request" from a cousin (not sure how many times removed) in Alabama. I excitedly added her, sent her a couple of comments and went on my next stop to one of my frequented natural news stops. To my surprise, what did I see but this article about Kudzu!

Now let me go back to my trip to Alabama this past June. I literally saw whole houses and cars engulfed by the Kudzu. It's almost as if the whole property has been enveloped by this vine. I was told about it by my Dad but never believed I would see "vine covered houses." It was slightly mystical, slightly spooky and as if time has stopped. It's a beautiful site if your home hasn't been taken over yet, I also wonder just how many snakes might be living there too!

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Kudzu, the fast-growing vine that has gobbled up some 10 million acres in the Southeast, may prove to be a valuable dietary supplement for metabolic syndrome, a condition that affects 50 million Americans, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

In findings published in the latest Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, the researchers say studies on animal models showed that substances called isoflavones found in kudzu root improved regulation of contributors to metabolic syndrome, including blood pressure, high cholesterol and blood glucose. One particular isoflavone, called puerarin and found only in kudzu, seems to be the one with the greatest beneficial effect.

"Our findings showed that puerarin helps to lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol," said J. Michael Wyss, Ph.D., a professor of in the UAB Department of Cell Biology and lead author on the study. "But perhaps the greatest effect we found was in its ability to regulate glucose, or sugar, in the blood."

An excessive amount of glucose in the blood is linked to both diabetes and obesity. Wyss says puerarin seems to regulate glucose by steering it to places where it is beneficial, such as muscles, and away from fat cells and blood vessels.

Wyss and colleagues added a small amount of kudzu root extract to the diets of lab rats for about two months. Compared to a control group that did not get the extract, the rats had lower cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and insulin levels. No side-effects were noted.

"We need to better understand the mechanism by which kudzu root has these effects and then conduct human trials before we can recommend it as a supplement," Wyss said. "We also need a better understanding of who would most benefit. Is this something that children should take or perhaps those at risk for stroke or heart disease?"

"Puerarin, or kudzu root, may prove to be a strong complement to existing medications for insulin regulation or blood pressure, for example," said Jeevan Prasain, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UAB Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and a study co-author. "Physicians may be able to lower dosages of such drugs, making them more tolerable and cheaper."

Kudzu has long been used as a dietary supplement in Asian countries, most commonly as a tea or a powder. The climate of the American Southeast is ideal for kudzu, which is native to China and Japan and was brought to the United States in the 1930s for erosion control. Kudzu vines can grow as much as a foot per day during the summer and can overwhelm trees, power poles and buildings if left unchecked.

This research was supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the Office of Dietary Supplement Grants, parts of the National Institutes of Health. Collaboration came from the UAB departments of Cell Biology and Pharmacology and Toxicology, the Purdue-UAB Botanicals Center and the Department of Biology, Luther College, Decorah, Iowa.

About UAB
Known for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is an internationally renowned research university and academic medical center and the state of Alabama's largest employer.
For more information, please visit www.uab.edu.
Media Contact

Our Fruit and Vegetable Supply

2009-09-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

In 1936, a group of doctors sounded an alarm to the US Senate. It was a dire warning that the mineral content of the soil was eroding. Vegetables were losing their power and people were at risk. Congress did nothing and today we're feeling the effects.

Just look at the loss of vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables today compared to 1975.
Apples: vitamin A is down 41%
Sweet peppers: vitamin C is down 31%
Watercress: iron is down 88%
Broccoli: calcium and vitamin A are down 50%
Cauliflower: vitamin C is down 45%; vitamin B1 is down 48%; and vitamin B2 is down 47%
Collards greens: vitamin A is down 45%; potassium is down 60%; and magnesium is down 85%

These are the USDA's own numbers. The vitamin and mineral content of our fruits and vegetables has dramatically plummeted - in just 34 years!

Notice that minerals like iron and magnesium have dropped by more than 80 percent. That's from commercial farming and powerful fertilizers that practically sterilize the soil - leaving it with little to no mineral content.

If the soil doesn't have minerals, there's no way for vegetables to absorb them. And that leads to the big question…

How Can We Get the Vitamins and Minerals We Need?
It is important to purchase as many organics as you possibly can. This doesn't just mean USDA certified organic but the small local farmer in your area that you can trust when they tell you they do not add synthetic fertilizers or dangerous pesticides. Studies show that organic produce carries at least 50% more vitamins and minerals than that of conventional.

Another great way to get an abundance of nutrients is from spirulina, a "green food" with the nutritional power of 1,000 pounds of assorted vegetables! It's the oldest food on earth, arriving on this planet over 3.5 billion years ago.

Spirulina is a kind of blue-green algae. After 30 years of clinical study, researchers agree it's the world's richest source of vitamins, minerals, iron, protein and a host of other energizing and detoxifying nutrients.

It's so powerful in fact, that scientists at NASA consider it the perfect food for astronauts when they travel into space.

So don't rely on commercially grown fruits and vegetables alone. Start taking a green food supplement with spirulina to ensure you're getting all the nutrients your body needs.

Kombu
This powerful sea vegetable is a valuable mineral booster as well as gas reducer and the secret ingredient in speeding up the cooking process of your beans! I advise my clients to simmer a strip of kombu in a cup of chicken or vegetable broth for an additional mineral booster. Add to your soups, stews and chilis. Move over Beano, we have Kombu!

Monsanto & Cancer: Crack for cows?

2009-09-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

And if you currently trust that Aspartame is safe or anything Monsanto is responisble for, you're their puppet. It's just how they like it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard in my 10 year health quest "There's no scientific evidence that aspartame is dangerous" of course, word has it that scientists working for Monsanto have had un-explained, un-timely deaths. When you decide to work on improving your health or if that is your current journey, know that everything related to diet and nutrition in the mainstream is actually quite opposite than that of the truth.

The following video is in relation to the added synthetic growth hormones that are added to your dairy. Who consumes the majority of our dairy? Generally, your children. Yes, your little girl who you would never put on a birth control pill right? Your 3 year old sweetie on a birth control pill? Yes, that's essentially what is happening here. Your son, can store these hormones as excessive estrogen there by causing gender issues such as breasts, etc. This is only touching lightly as we only think that adults are at risk for cancers right? WRONG! Demand clean dairy. If you cannot afford organic, at the very least, do look for the label claiming "rBGH free" or you might also see "cows not treated with rBGH". You can check your favorite brand at: http://www.purefood.org/rBGH/rbghlist.cfm

And the videos of interest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1pKlnhvg0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GpqwZDbMHU

Your best option is always raw organic dairy. It is not available to everyone yet others have more access than they realize by visiting a campaign for real milk, a cow share program:
http://realmilk.com/

Do try to look for rBGH free, organic and/or raw dairy

Studies on Saturated Fat

2009-09-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

There is so much mis-information out there on the subject of Saturated Fat and its relationship to poor health. When did the most natural fat on earth become the most dangerous in the last 100 years? Now reading this, do you all realize that we've been on this planet for quite a few more years than just 100? Think about it logically if you will. Michael Pollan of The Omnivores dilmena said in Food Inc. "The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000". I often reflect on my childhood and try to count the amount of people I knew with thyroid disruption, gall bladder removal, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and the on slaught of auto-immune diseases out there. None of my grandparents took medications for cholesterol, in fact, I don't remember ever even discussing cholesterol as my Grandfather sat down to his bacon and german pancake breakfast! He lived well into his 90's by the way in quite excellent health. Fortunately, they did not discover spray butter until they were senior citizens.

So, getting back to fat....that macro-nutrient that apparently kills. Saturated fat has saved my life in so many ways. Focus, weight loss, improved blood work, satiety and so much more. I did my stint with McDougal, for a few weeks or so......until I felt the extreme hunger and the thought of gnawing my own arm off at several points sounded appetizing! Take fat away from a girl who has ADHD and absolutely no focus and you have a true recipe for disaster. I'm quite sure my neurotransmittors just became confused!

When advising my clients to increase their fat rather than reduce it, they are quite surprised. Now, we're not just talking any kind of fat, I"m talking about saturated fats from clean, animal proteins fed a species appropriate diet, raw butter and dairy, coconut and palm oils. These are the nurturing fats that will benefit you in the ways below:

You might see this repeated throughout my blog.......while it may seem redundant, redundancy I find assists the memory (as does coconut oil by the way)

Saturated fatty acids constitute at least 50 percent of your cell membranes. They are what gives your cells necessary stiffness and integrity.

They play a vital role in the health of your bones. For calcium to be effectively incorporated into your skeletal structure, at least 50 percent of your dietary fats should be saturated.

They lower Lp(a), a substance in your blood that indicates proneness to heart disease.

They protect your liver from alcohol and other toxins, such as Tylenol and other drugs.

They enhance your immune system.

They are needed for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids. Elongated omega-3 fats are better retained in your tissues when your diet is rich in saturated fats.

Saturated 18-carbon stearic acid and 16-carbon palmitic acid are the preferred foods for your heart, which is why the fat around your heart muscle is highly saturated. Your heart draws on this reserve of fat in times of stress.

Short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids have important antimicrobial properties. They protect you against harmful microorganisms in your digestive tract.

Following is some great information on studies. Don't just believe me, check out the studies below!

A survey of 1700 patients with hardening of the arteries, conducted by the famous heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, found no relationship between the level of cholesterol in the blood and the incidence of atherosclerosis.

A survey of South Carolina adults found no correlation of blood cholesterol levels with "bad" dietary habits, such as use of red meat, animal fats, fried foods, butter, eggs, whole milk, bacon, sausage and cheese. A Medical Research Council survey showed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease as those using margarine.

Mother's milk provides a higher proportion of cholesterol than almost any other food. It also contains over 50% of its calories as fat, much of it saturated fat. Both cholesterol and saturated fat are essential for growth in babies and children, especially the development of the brain. Yet, the American Heart Association is now recommending a low-cholesterol, lowfat diet for children! Commercial formulas are low in saturated fats and soy formulas are devoid of cholesterol. A recent study linked lowfat diets with failure to thrive in children.

Numerous surveys of traditional populations have yielded information that is an embarrassment to the Diet Dictocrats. For example, a study comparing Jews when they lived in Yemen, whose diets contained fats solely of animal origin, to Yemenite Jews living in Israel, whose diets contained margarine and vegetable oils, revealed little heart disease or diabetes in the former group but high levels of both diseases in the latter. (The study also noted that the Yemenite Jews consumed no sugar but those in Israel consumed sugar in amounts equaling 25-30% of total carbohydrate intake.)

A comparison of populations in northern and southern India revealed a similar pattern. People in northern India consume 17 times more animal fat but have an incidence of coronary heart disease seven times lower than people in southern India.

The Masai and kindred tribes of Africa subsist largely on milk, blood and beef. They are free from coronary heart disease and have excellent blood cholesterol levels.

Eskimos eat liberally of animal fats from fish and marine animals. On their native diet they are free of disease and exceptionally hardy.

An extensive study of diet and disease patterns in China found that the region in which the populace consumes large amounts of whole milk had half the rate of heart disease as several districts in which only small amounts of animal products are consumed.

Several Mediterranean societies have low rates of heart disease even though fat-including highly saturated fat from lamb, sausage and goat cheese-comprises up to 70% of their caloric intake. The inhabitants of Crete, for example, are remarkable for their good health and longevity.

A study of Puerto Ricans revealed that, although they consume large amounts of animal fat, they have a very low incidence of colon and breast cancer.

A study of the long-lived inhabitants of Soviet Georgia revealed that those who eat the most fatty meat live the longest.

In Okinawa, where the average life span for women is 84 years-longer than in Japan-the inhabitants eat generous amounts of pork and seafood and do all their cooking in lard.

None of these studies is mentioned by those urging restriction of saturated fats.
The relative good health of the Japanese, who have the longest life span of any nation in the world, is generally attributed to a lowfat diet. Although the Japanese eat few dairy fats, the notion that their diet is low in fat is a myth; rather, it contains moderate amounts of animal fats from eggs, pork, chicken, beef, seafood and organ meats. With their fondness for shellfish and fish broth, eaten on a daily basis, the Japanese probably consume more cholesterol than most Americans. (Interestingly enough, Japanese men smoke heavily)

What they do not consume is a lot of vegetable oil, white flour or processed food (although they do eat white rice.) The life span of the Japanese has increased since World War II with an increase in animal fat and protein in the diet.

Those who point to Japanese statistics to promote the lowfat diet fail to mention that the Swiss live almost as long on one of the fattiest diets in the world. Tied for third in the longevity stakes are Austria and Greece-both with high-fat diets.

As a final example, let us consider the French. Anyone who has eaten his way across France has observed that the French diet is just loaded with saturated fats in the form of butter, eggs, cheese, cream, liver, meats and rich patés. Yet the French have a lower rate of coronary heart disease than many other western countries.

In the United States, 315 of every 100,000 middle-aged men die of heart attacks each year; in France the rate is 145 per 100,000. In the Gascony region, where goose and duck liver form a staple of the diet, this rate is a remarkably low 80 per 100,000.

This phenomenon has recently gained international attention as the French Paradox. (The French do suffer from many degenerative diseases, however. They eat large amounts of sugar and white flour and in recent years have succumbed to the timesaving temptations of processed foods.)

A chorus of establishment voices, including the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, claims that animal fat is linked not only with heart disease but also with cancers of various types. Yet when researchers from the University of Maryland analyzed the data they used to make such claims, they found that vegetable fat consumption was correlated with cancer and animal fat was not.

So, what does the above tell us? In my opinion, I believe we need more studies. We need to see a study of peoples currently practicing that of more traditional diets and monitor their health through that of blood work for a 10 or more year period. I once watched a great interview with Mary Enig, Phd., when asked why she or anyone else hasn't conducted such a study? Her words "No special interest groups in the field of health and natural food" Yes, it's SAD and when I say SAD, I mean that's our Standard American Diet.

Weight Loss, Type 2 Diabetes, and the Importance of a Diet That "Fits"

2009-09-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

Researchers get caught up in this issue as well, particularly when it comes to chronic disease situations like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Many different approaches to diet can help us lose weight-at least in the short-term. But in type 2 diabetes, there is also a need to improve insulin metabolism and blood sugar levels.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in the Bronx, NY put two very different diet approaches to the test in their study of 105 obese adults, mostly Hispanic and African-American, who were on medication for their type 2 diabetes. Half of the participants in this study followed a very low carbohydrate diet, based upon the Atkins diet. (In this diet, the participants were allowed only 20-25 grams of carbohydrate per day during the first 2 weeks. After that time, they were allowed to increase their carbs each week by a total of 5 grams.) The other group of participants followed a low-fat diet in which a maximum of 25% total calories were allowed from fat. (For example, if a participant were allowed to eat 1,600 calories of food, 44 grams of fat could come from fat. That amount is the same as 2 tablespoons of olive oil plus 1 ounce of walnuts.) Over the course of one year, all participants received regular nutritional counseling and assistance following their diet plans.

The results of this study were extremely interesting. Overall, participants in both groups lost weight over the 12-month study period. Their average weight loss was approximately 7 pounds, or 3.5% of their initial body weight. However, the low-carb group lost weight rapidly in the first three months (for a total of about 11 pounds) and then regained weight very slowly (at about one-half pound per month) over the rest of the study period. The low-fat group lost weight more slowly over the first three months (for a total of about 7.5 pounds), and then plateaued and just stopped losing weight. Neither group significantly improved their blood sugar levels (as determined by lab work measuring their hemoglobin A1C). In their discussion of the blood sugar results, the researchers noted that in previous studies, a total weight loss of about 10-15 pounds was required before significant changes could be observed in hemoglobin A1C levels.

The research team in this study concluded that very low carbohydrate and low fat diets could be helpful to obese individuals with type 2 diabetes who were trying to lose weight and control their blood sugars, but that the helpfulness of these diets might be limited unless practical aspects of the diets were made very familiar to the participants and could be followed closely for an extended period of time. In other words, they recognized the fact that very low carb diets and low fat diets can be very challenging to follow, and while potentially helpful might not turn out to be as helpful as expected due to practical difficulties in adherence.

We definitely agree that very low carb diets and low fat diets can present real difficulties as long-term, everyday approaches to eating. A daily intake of 20-25 grams of carbohydrate is a very unnatural food balance, which makes it impossible to enjoy fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. Additionally, 25% fat is likely to be a level that many people find unnaturally restrictive. If you use up 33% of your day's fat with one tablespoon of olive oil, your options with nuts, seeds, and cold-water fish become pretty limited.

So we would go one step further than these researchers in our interpretation of the study results. We would conclude that very low carb and low-fat diet approaches are probably not helpful to most individuals because they create a diet context that is just too unnatural. Most people are unlikely to stick with any diet that feels too unnatural, regardless of the diet. The world of food is diverse and rich in foods of all flavors and textures, and a diet needs to contain enough nutritional room for us to enjoy all of them!

From a long-term perspective, the only approach that makes sense to us is one that allows for complete individualization of a diet in a way that feels natural to the person following it. In most cases, that kind of individualization will mean more room for high-quality carbs and high-quality fats than was allowed in either of the diets featured in this study.

Misty Notes: This article came from whfoods.org a fabulous web site that provides information and recipes on whole foods. I would like to add that in working with folks with type 2 diabetes, a higher fat much lower carbohydrate level normalized A1C levels more quickly than my clients following a moderate carbohydrate diet. Unfortunately, unless Mary Enig is heading the study, we will not see fair and balanced studies with saturated fat and its positive effect on the healing of the cell wall. Our cells are lined with more than 55% saturated fat. When a diet is predominately polyunsaturated, you then have a compromised, floppy cell wall that is prone to damage and disruption. Unfortunately, the pull to lower fat is dogma though not scientifically sound advice to the detroment of the consumer and profit to soy as usual.

When faced with a potentially harmful degenerative disease, we must put aside our immature "taste bud choices" and work on healing our bodies. This can work two fold! You can heal your cells if you're not supplementing insulin and enjoy tasteful full fat foods at the same time. If you're a type 2 diabetic, your days of fun in the chip bag are over! You have two choices, chips or life! You won't look very attractive with bandaged feet, swollen ankles and rolling around in a wheelchair with that bag of chips in your lap!

Put the processed snack foods away and begin nourishing your body as it was intended! Feeling lean, young and vibrant far outweighs that of any snack!

Green Tea, a new weapon against prostate cancer?

2009-09-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

Many medical “discoveries” have occurred quite by happenstance. For instance, consider the story of Green Tea which began some 5,000 years ago when, as Chinese legend has it, leaves from a nearby Camellia sinensis tree fell into an emperor’s boiling pot of water. The leaves turned the water a light-brown color and gave off a delightful aroma. The emperor, upon taking a sip, found it also had an excellent taste and proclaimed it as “heaven sent.” Since then, the delectable brew has been considered a health-promoting beverage in China; used to treat everything from headaches to depression.

Today, a wealth of studies has provided hard evidence for its positive effects on health. Drinking green tea is reputed to promote heart health, lower high cholesterol levels, lessen free radical damage to cells, fight obesity, inhibit the abnormal formation of blood clots, and slow the progression of age-related cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers now say that certain compounds in green tea may actually slow the progression of prostate cancer, a disease that kills more men each year in the United States than any cancer other than lung cancer.

Previous studies have shown that green tea may be linked to a reduced incidence of prostate cancer, and its polyphenols have been regarded as a potential cancer therapy. But last year, the FDA announced that the evidence for green tea benefits was inconclusive, because people consume relatively small quantities. So, Dr. James Cardelli, and his colleagues at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, carried out a clinical trial to determine the effects of short-term supplementation with increased amounts of the active compounds in green tea on the progression of prostate cancer.

The small study consisted of 26 men between 41 and 68 years of age who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and were scheduled for radical prostatectomy. The men were put on a daily dose of four capsules containing a total of 1.3 grams of polyphenon E, equivalent to about 12 cups of normally brewed concentrated green tea, for 12 to 73 days (with an average time of 34.5 days), until the day before surgery.

Blood tests showed a significant reduction in serum levels of three biomarkers associated with the growth and spread of prostate cancer: hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and prostate specific antigen (PSA). On an average, HGF decreased 18.9 percent, VEGF decreased by 9.9 percent and PSA dropped by 10.4 percent. Some patients demonstrated reductions of more than 30 percent.

The researchers said that in vitro, EGCG (the main catechin in polyphenon E) swiftly blocked the production of HGF, and the block “seems to be at the level of transcription.” EGCG also blocked the production of VEGF, which plays a critical role in the angiogenic process in cancer-associated fibroblasts, they noted. Age, race, and time on the drug did not have a significant effect on the changes in serum biomarkers.Previous studies have suggested that high levels of EGCG may have adverse effects on liver function, but in this study the liver function of the patients remained normal. “Our results show a significant reduction in serum levels of PSA, HGF, and VEGF in men with prostate cancer after brief treatment with EGCG (Polyphenon E), with no elevation of liver enzymes.

These findings support a potential role for Polyphenon E in the treatment or prevention of prostate cancer,” the researchers concluded.Dr. Cardelli admits that the study is still in an early stage and that the findings need to be verified by larger, placebo-controlled trials. “Green tea can keep cancer from growing very fast, but it may not be able to shrink tumors,” he said. “But it can be a good addition to traditional therapies, like chemotherapy or radiation.”“We think that the use of tea polyphenols alone or in combination with other compounds currently used for cancer therapy should be explored as an approach to prevent cancer progression and recurrence," Dr. Cardelli said. “There is reasonably good evidence that many cancers are preventable, and our studies using plant-derived substances support the idea that plant compounds found in a healthy diet can play a role in preventing cancer development and progression.”

John Neate, chief executive of the Prostate Cancer Charity, says though there have been a number of studies into the potential benefits of green tea, there is no conclusive evidence. “The results of this study do suggest that there is merit in further research into the effects of extracts of green tea, both in relation to its impact on the prevention of prostate cancer and in controlling progression in men already diagnosed with the disease, as was investigated in this instance,” he said. “These initial positive findings could indicate that green tea could have a place in ‘active surveillance’, where a slow-growing, low risk tumor is monitored for changes and men want to take something which could help keep progression at bay.”

“Potentially, this could mean completely avoiding, in some cases, any of the more usual medical interventions and their associated side effects,” Neate said. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among American men. According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 192,280 men and will kill 27,360 in 2009. Men over 50 are urged to get tested for the disease annually, however very few do, putting them at risk of being diagnosed at a later stage rather than earlier in the cancer process.

The study is published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research

Misty Notes: There is a fabulous website I will encourage you to visit and learn the value of 6-8 cups of tea daily for health, energy and weight loss. The author is referred to as "Dr. Tea". Bookmark this site: http://www.teagarden.com/ and start reading! You might be pleasantly surprised.

Ten Exercise and Nutrition False Beliefs

2009-09-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Ellis
People Hold Many False Ideas About Nutrition and Exercise
Here are ten common ones:
1. You Can Change Your Metabolism or Metabolic Rate
This is a major false belief and it’s championed everywhere you look. Your resting metabolism relates to your body size. If you gain weight, metabolism increases a bit and likewise if you lose weight it decreases. But you do not have volitional control over your metabolism any more than you can control your temperature. These, and many other functions, are regulated features of life.

2. Add a Lot of Muscle and Become a Fat-Burning Machine
Adding muscle is not easy. Muscle at rest burns 5 calories per pound over 24 hours and fat burns 2 calories per pound. So, added muscle AT REST doesn’t do much to increase you calorie burn.

3. You Can Get Rid of Fat by Working Out and Changing It Into Muscle
Fat is fat and muscle is muscle — you cannot convert one into the other.

4. Eating Non-Fat Foods Means You Can Eat All You Want
Calories control your weight, so eating less fat and eating more carbohydrates and protein will increase your calorie intake and you’ll get fat.

5. You Can Target Specific Areas of Your Body to Lose Fat
There is no such thing as spot reduction of fat tissue. You accumulate fat in areas dependent upon your own body’s fat-storage pattern.

6. Eat Many Small Meals a Day to Increase Calorie-Burning
This is an old false belief as it has been around for years and forms the basis of many modern-day, popular weight loss plans. The idea is that it uses up calories to burn the newly consumed food. Research clearly shows that the digestion and processing of food uses about 10% of your total daily calorie burn. This is known as the Thermic Effect of Food.

7. Carbohydrate is the Preferred Fuel of Your Body
This is another major blunder that causes people many problems and makes most diet and weight loss programs ineffective. Fat is the preferred fuel and, in fact, 90% of your calorie burn at rest comes from fat. The body will burn what you feed it and if you eat more carbs then it’ll burn more of those but it’s really programmed to burn fat.

8. This Exercise Burns 3 Times More Calories Than This or That Exercise
This is another great marketing tool. You body can only burn so many calories per minute. You can train yourself to burn more per minute but there is still an upper limit. You burn more calories depending on the amount of muscle that is active during the exercise.
9. Running is Better Than Walking
You’ll burn more calories per minute running but walking is good enough to become very fit and you’ll enjoy it more.

10. The Fat You Eat Turns Into the Fat on Your Body
Actually, the body doesn’t very easily store the fat you eat as body fat unless you eat it with carbohydrates. It is the carbohydrates that you eat that get rapidly converted to body fat. This textbook biochemical fact is unknown and the promotion of the ‘fat to fat theory’ is the undoing of many people’s efforts to control body weight.

Misty notes:
I think the one thing that most do not understand is that a calorie is a measurement of energy and at 9grams per kcal, fat is your superior choice. It's what we refer to as nutrient density!

Spriulina The Ultimate Multi Vitamin!

2009-09-05T09:14:00.000-07:00

There are over forty thousand–yes, someone has actually counted them–types of single-celled microalgae which need only a drop of water and a sunbeam to make them prosper. But among those forty thousand varieties of little water-loving organisms, one species is clearly making the largest nutritional splash.

Weighing in at an impressive 60% protein content, Spirulina is a fresh water algae–more specifically, a form of bacteria–which rivals both red meat, at 27%, and soy, at 34%, on the ropes in terms of muscle-building potential. While soy is a good source of protein, it is not without its problems so spirulina is perfect for the vegetarian! And it brings with it, along with all that protein, a powerful combination of minerals, including iron, calcium, and magnesium, with a backup punch of all the vitamins to which the first five letters of the alphabet have been assigned. If only Spirulina were bigger; it might have been able to fit all the vitamins in. But a single Spirulina alga measures approximately .0196850394 inches in length.

If Spirulina wanted to get bigger, however, it probably could. How? By eating its relatives. The Chinese add Spirulina to the diets of commercially produced poultry and livestock to increase their growth rates.

Another growth rate which has definitely increased because of Spirulina is that of the Spirulina commercialization industry, which began with annual harvests of around one hundred tons in the 1970s. By the year 2020, according to BioNat.net, worldwide Spirulina production is expected to reach 220,000 tons.

The most avid believers in the health benefits of Spirulina are the Japanese, who both produce and consume more of it than anyone else. Some Japanese researchers claim that Spirulina, because of the high concentration of its nutrients, is useful in helping diabetics control their food cravings and decrease their insulin intake.

And, when France started its research on Spirulina in the 1970s, global scientists were looking at it as the inexpensive answer to the ages-old question of how to feed a protein-starved Third World.

Today commercially produced Spirulina powders and pills sell at health food stores for the equivalent of about $50 per pound, or some ten times what it costs to grow and harvest. The Third World is still waiting.

Spirulina Contains
vitamin A, B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), B6 (pyridoxine), B12 (cobalamin), vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, folate, vitamin K, biotin, pantothenic acid, beta carotene (source of vitamin A), inositol.

calcium, manganese, iron, chromium, phosphorus, molybdenum, iodine, chloride, magnesium, sodium, zinc, potassium, selenium, germanium, copper, boron.
phycocyanin, chlorophyll, carotenoids.

myxoxanthophyll, zeaxanthin, cryptoxanthin, echinenone and other xanthophylls.gamma linolenic acid, glycolipids, sulfolipids, polysaccharides.

isoleucine, phenylalanine, leucine, threonine, lysine, tryptophan, methionine, valine, alanine, glycine, arginine, histidine, aspartic acid, proline, cystine, serine, glutamic acid, tyrosine.

As always, purchase clean safely farmed spirulina at your local health food store.

Pfizer to pay record $2.3B penalty for drug promos

2009-09-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

Does your Dr. have your best interest? The following is a disguisting account of what happens in the pharmaceutical industry. If Dr's. are receiving perks whether legal or not, your health is secondary to a Pismo Beach Golf Trip.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines Wednesday and called the world's largest drugmaker a repeating corporate cheat for illegal drug promotions that plied doctors with free golf, massages, and resort junkets.

Announcing the penalty as a warning to all drug manufacturers, Justice Department officials said the overall settlement is the largest ever paid by a drug company for alleged violations of federal drug rules, and the $1.2 billion criminal fine is the largest ever in any U.S. criminal case. The total includes $1 billion in civil penalties and a $100 million criminal forfeiture.

Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it is the company's fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade. The allegations surround the marketing of 13 different drugs, including big sellers such as Viagra, Zoloft, and Lipitor.

As part of its illegal marketing, Pfizer invited doctors to consultant meetings at resort locations, paying their expenses and providing perks, prosecutors said.

"They were entertained with golf, massages, and other activities," said Mike Loucks, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts.

Loucks said that even as Pfizer was negotiating deals on past misconduct, they were continuing to violate the very same laws with other drugs.

To prevent backsliding this time, Pfizer's conduct will be specially monitored by the Health and Human Service Department inspector general for five years.

In an unusual twist, the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder, did not participate in the record settlement, because he had represented Pfizer on these issues while in private practice.

Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli said the settlement illustrates ways the Justice Department "can help the American public at a time when budgets are tight and health care costs are rising."

Perrelli announced the settlement terms at a news conference with federal prosecutors and FBI, and Health and Human Services Department officials.

The settlement ends an investigation that also resulted in guilty pleas from two former Pfizer sales managers.

Officials said the U.S. industry has paid out more than $11 billion in such settlements over the past decade, but one consumer advocate voiced hope that Wednesday's penalty was so big it would curb the abuses.

"There's so much money in selling pills, that there's a tremendous temptation to cheat," said Bill Vaughan, an analyst at Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.
"There's a kind of mentality in this sector that (settlements) are the cost of doing business and we can cheat. This penalty is so huge I think consumers can have some hope that maybe these guys will tighten up and run a better ship."

The government said the company promoted four prescription drugs, including the pain killer Bextra, as treatments for medical conditions different from those the drugs had been approved for by federal regulators. Authorities said Pfizer's salesmen and women created phony doctor requests for medical information in order to send unsolicited information to doctors about unapproved uses and dosages.

Use of drugs for so-called "off-label" medical conditions is not uncommon, but drug manufacturers are prohibited from marketing drugs for uses that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They said the junkets and other company-paid perks were designed to promote Bextra and other drugs, to doctors for unapproved uses and dosages, backed by false and misleading claims about safety and effectiveness.

Bextra, for instance, was approved for arthritis, but Pfizer promoted it for acute pain and surgical pain, and in dosages above the approved maximum. In 2005, Bextra, one of a class of painkillers known as Cox-2 inhibitors, was pulled from the U.S. market amid mounting evidence it raised the risk of heart attack, stroke and death.

A Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia and Upjohn Inc., which was acquired in 2003, has entered an agreement to plead guilty to one count of felony misbranding. The criminal case applied only to Bextra.

The $1 billion in civil penalties was related to Bextra and a number of other medicines.
A portion of the civil penalty will be distributed to 49 states and the District of Columbia, according to agreements with each state's Medicaid program.

Pfizer's top lawyer, Amy Schulman, said the settlements "bring final closure to significant legal matters and help to enhance our focus on what we do best -- discovering, developing and delivering innovative medicines."

In her statement, Schulman said: "We regret certain actions taken in the past, but are proud of the action we've taken to strengthen our internal controls and pioneer new procedures."
In financial filings in January, the company had indicated that it would pay $2.3 billion over the allegations.

The civil settlement announced Wednesday covered Pfizer's promotions of Bextra, blockbuster nerve pain and epilepsy treatment Lyrica, schizophrenia medicine Geodon, antibiotic Zyvox and nine other medicines. The agreement with the Justice Department resolves the investigation into promotion of all those drugs, Pfizer said.

The government said Pfizer also paid kickbacks to market a host of big-name drugs: Aricept, Celebrex, Lipitor, Norvasc, Relpax, Viagra, Zithromax, Zoloft, and Zyrtec.

The allegations came to light thanks largely to five Pfizer employees and one Pennsylvania doctor, who will now share $102 million of the settlement money.

FBI Assistant Director Kevin Perkins praised the whistleblowers who decided to "speak out against a corporate giant that was blatantly violating the law and misleading the public through false marketing claims."

To rein in the abuses, the government's five-year monitoring will force Pfizer to notify doctors about Wednesday's agreement, encourage them to report any similar behavior, and publicly post any payments or perks it gives to doctors.

Under terms of the settlement, Pfizer must pay $1 billion to compensate Medicaid, Medicare, and other federal health care programs. Some of that money will be shared among the states: New York, for example, will receive $66 million, according to the state's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo.

When Pfizer originally disclosed the settlement figure, it also announced plans to acquire rival Wyeth for $68 billion. That deal, which would bolster Pfizer's position as the world's top drugmaker by revenue, is expected to close before year's end.
Shares of Pfizer dropped 14 cents to $16.24 in midday trading.

AP Business Writer Linda A. Johnson in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this report

Is Cheap Food Worth Risking Your Life?

2009-09-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

We spend far too much money on our toys and far too little money on our most valuable asset ever, the human frame. When I tout the benefits of eating organically, I like to remind my clients to take a moment to commit to putting as much thought into their food decision making as they do their electronics. Pay now or pay later with pharmaceutical drugs, paind, illness and degenerative, even terminal disease.

(OrganicJar) While relying mainly on hard work, yield variations, composts, green manures, organic pest controls, and mechanical cultivation for a productive agriculture, the Organic community has managed to produce globally accepted crops and livestock even without resorting to synthetically made soil enrichers, chemical pesticides, plant growth enhancers, genetically modified organisms and alternative feeds. The organic market nowadays still continues to grow in a precipitous pace that their forty years of extensive labor and prowess enabled them to build a $25 billion a year market that provides the consumers in the U.S. a healthier alternative to the affordable yet perilous modernized or industrialized agricultural services in terms of food products.

According to the latest sales statistics, there are more than 75 million Americans who are sentient about their health and environment that they are more willing to pay more for all-organic products, despite the present economic state. These organic consumers are aware that healthy living is to eat organic, as fresh unpreserved organic foods contain more essential nutrients that aid in boosting the immune system and help prevent cancer. Buying organic also helps in reducing the greenhouse effect and can also be the solution to the imminent falling-off of global fuel reserve and the very costly healthcare services. Organic farming provides us all with a good quality of life.

On the contrary, Industrial agriculture offers nothing but health and environmental hazards and cruelty to animals such as hypertension, obesity, food poisoning brought about by pesticides, high risk for cancer because of the use of chemical, preservatives and radiation, water contamination, and climate change. The claim that industrialized foods and food products are cheaper compared to organic is actually not true. As a matter of fact, they are more costly if the hundreds of billions of dollars that the citizens pay for the annual taxes, health care and environmental maintenance are to be taken into account. Even the pandemic AH1N1 or the Swine Flu Virus can be directly ascribed to the poorly tended farming lands.

There are also products that claim to be “natural” however they’re not. Be sure to buy products that are certified by the USDA National Organic Program (NOP). Certified food and other organic products are 95-100% purely organic. This means that the farmer or producer adhered to the strict regulation of the NOP in terms of organic agriculture and that no synthetic fertilizers, GMOs, irradiation or any forms of industrial agriculture is practiced.

The scary fact is that the organic and “natural” food industry is controlled by huge corporations and we all know what they care about: profits and market share. The UNFI and the WFM are but two of the biggest and most monopolizing wholesalers and retailers of the industry, selling mainly so-called “natural” but not organic products. Because of their vast grip of the market, the small coop and grocery owners find it hard to compete in selling their mostly organic products.
What matters most is we put the environment and our health first before anything else. Just think about it, is a cheap product worth risking your life for?

Study confirms increase in wheat gluten disorder

2009-07-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

Blood samples from '50s show it isn't just improved diagnosis, and researchers wonder if diet is a factor

A Minnesota study using frozen blood samples taken from Air Force recruits 50 years ago has found that intolerance of wheat gluten, a debilitating digestive condition, is four times more common today than it was in the 1950s.

The findings contradict the prevailing belief that a sharp increase in diagnoses of wheat gluten intolerance has come about because of greater awareness and detection, and raises questions about whether dramatic changes in the American diet have played a role.

"It's become much more common," said Dr. Joseph Murray, the Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist who led the study. No one knows why, he said, but one reason might be rapid changes in eating habits and food processing over the last half century.

"Fifty years is way too fast for human genetics to have changed," Murray said. "Which tells us it has to be a pervasive environmental influence."

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota who conducted the study also found that the recruits who had the undiagnosed digestive disorder, called celiac disease, also had a four-fold increase in the risk of death.

Today an estimated one of 100 people suffer from the inherited disorder, though most of the time people don't know they have it.

The disease occurs in people whose bodies cannot digest gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The undigested protein triggers the body's immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine, causing diarrhea, nausea and abdominal pain. Though people live with it for many years, over time it destroys the lining of the small intestine, leading to an inability to absorb nutrients such as iron and calcium. That, in turn, causes serious problems, including anemia, osteoporosis and even infertility.

The only treatment is a gluten-free diet -- no wheat, rye or barley.

Murray said he initiated the study to find out whether the disease is on the rise, and whether it had long-term health consequences if undiagnosed and untreated.

He turned to medical archaeology to find the answers - a treasure-trove of blood samples taken from recruits at the Warren Air Force base in Cheyenne, Wyo., between 1948 and 1954. At the time, strep infections were raging among the recruits, mostly young men on their way to fight in the Korean war. Doctors there drew the samples as part of a study that proved treating the infections with antibiotics would prevent rheumatic fever, a serious heart ailment that can follow strep throat.

One of the doctors in that study took some of the samples with him when he moved to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. When he decided to retire two decades ago, he asked Dr. Edward Kaplan, a strep specialist at the University of Minnesota, to become their guardian. The vials were transported in frozen-pizza delivery trucks to Minneapolis, where they reside today.

"Nobody has anything like it," said Kaplan. "There are other collections, but none go back this far."

In 2000 they were used to help resolve an intense debate among researchers over whether hepatitis C infection meant certain death, or whether many people could live with it for years.
Murray used a similar design for the study on celiac disease, published today in the journal Gastroenterology. He tested more than 9,133 samples for the antibodies that proved the recruits had celiac disease; 43, or about one out of 652, had the disease. He then tested blood samples from groups of men from Olmsted County, more than 12,000 in all. In an older group of men, one in 121 tested positive, and in the younger group one in 106 tested positive, an increase of four to four-and-a-half times.

His findings raise questions about why the number of people with the disease has grown so fast. But rates of other immune diseases have also increased a lot. One theory is that modern, clean living, which has resulted in fewer infections, parasites and microbes in our bodies, causes the immune system to turn on healthy tissue instead. Or it might be the modern diet, Murray said.
"The types of food we eat now are different," he said.

Star Tribune 7-09

May Russian River Times Publication

2009-05-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

I am contributing to the Russian River Times, a local small town newspaper in my community. The following is May's publication
Enjoy!

Promoting Health One Bite At A Time
You are what you eat right? Well, sort of. More accurately, you are what you absorb and assimilate.

What does nutrition mean to you? Do you understand the importance of a healthy diet? Does this mean count your calories, count your points, restrict your fat and exercise more? That’s the story that your Dr. will give you but is it accurate? No, not really. It’s a much larger more complex picture than that and the previous recommendations just aren’t working.

Because of the confusing USDA dietary recommendations, the average American now consumes approximately 150lbs. of sugar per year in various forms. Sugar is inflammatory, and degrading to the immune system. In order to assimilate the sugar, the body pulls valuable vitamins and minerals from bones and tissue of the human frame thereby sacrificing healthy immune response.

As a nutrition educator, I am saddened by our current state of health in this country. How did the “richest country in the world” become the sickest and the fattest? 2/3 of the American people are obese and of those 2/3, most have diabetes one of the deadliest preventable diseases of our time. Deadly and preventable? Stop for a moment and say it…..deadly and preventable. Actually, many of our modern diseases are preventable. In 2003 the surgeon general reported that 68% of the deaths in this country could have been prevented through lifestyle change. If you knew that, in one to five years you could be hospitalized or dead if you didn’t change your eating habits, would you? Well, you know now. I just informed you that our current Standard American Diet, or just use the acronym SAD, is responsible for disease and death. Yes, the acronym for our current state of nutrition is referred to as SAD.

Let’s take a look back to my opening statement “You are what you absorb and assimilate”. This, my friends and neighbors should be thought provoking to you. If the majority of your food choices are based on nutrient density rather than taste, you are a unique and rare individual. Eating strictly for taste is one of two things. Either the individual lacks knowledge and is receiving their nutrition information through what I like to call 30 second media sound bites or the individual lacks nutritional maturity. That is, knowing the right choices yet making the wrong choices because “donuts taste good”. I ask you, do donuts carry Vitamins A, D, E, K, B or C? You know the answer, and so do I.

It is my goal to contribute to this paper monthly with information that will help you make the choices that will create an atmosphere for healthy cellular regeneration, immune support, well being and vitality. If after you’ve read my contributing columns and you still eat based strictly on taste, you are being immature and should prepare yourself for the inevitable illness and disease that is sure to follow. We have alarming rates of cancer, more heart disease than ever before, thyroid disruption, cold, flu and now we must worry about pandemics! Is your immune system ready to take on a pandemic flu? Not if you’re practicing the SAD way of life.

Dust off the fruit bowl, fill it up and begin with Mother Nature’s original 100 calorie snack pack, the apple!

The most important wealth is health. Remember, you have choices, choose foods that provide you with life, not death.

I leave you with these thoughts and I look forward to contributing each month and hope that I can help you or someone you know gain greater health, lose un-wanted pounds, boost the immune system, ease child behavioral complications and increase wellness through healthy cellular regeneration. You have a whole new body every 8 years. Let’s make it count. You’re going to be surprised at some of the old myths that I will dispel for you so you can begin eating satiating nourishing foods, and start living..

Low Vitamin D levels found in acutely ill patients

2009-05-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

If you learn nothing else from me, you should remember that Vitamin D is as far as I'm concerned the most important supplement one could take. Remember, there are only 2 ways to obtain Vitamin D. The first, through that of the sun and your cholesterol. Cholesterol plays an important role in the uptake of Vitamin D. It is converted in the kidney and without sun or the supplementation of Vitamin D3 in the form of cholecalciferol, you are most likely deficient if you live above the equator. Now when I ask folks how they are getting their Vitamin D, the first thing women will tell me is "Well it's added to my calcium source". That would be ergocalciferol, Vitamin D from plant matter. Unfortunately, that's not the correct form we're looking for here. Yes, D2 assists in the uptake of calcium and is helpful in the prevention of osteoperosis but it's not the complete picture. The story below from my favorite source, Science Daily is a great example of just how deficient we are. With the current h1n1 virus, your vitamin D is your immune system.

Carlsons Vitamin D3 drops, High Quality Cod Liver Oil like Carlsons Lemon Flavored 500mg DHA as well, 20 minutes exposure to summer sun will help boost your immune system and pave the road to good health. If you suffer pain like fibromyalgia, a 25OHD test might just be in order for you!

ScienceDaily (May 2, 2009) — A group of endocrinologists in Sydney have observed that very sick patients tend to have very low levels of Vitamin D. The sicker they are, the lower the levels.
Dr Paul Lee, Professor John Eisman and Associate Professor Jackie Center, researchers at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, examined a cohort of 42 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. Forty-five percent turned out to be Vitamin D deficient.

"Until now, the medical community has thought of Vitamin D deficiency as a chronic condition," said Dr Lee. "Little is known about its acute complications."

"Last year, we published several cases showing that Vitamin D deficiency can cause acute complications in the intensive care unit."
"Recently, Vitamin D has been recognised for its many roles beyond the musculoskeletal system. It has been implicated in diabetes, in the immune system, in cancers, in heart disease and in metabolic syndrome."

"Vitamin D appears to have roles in controlling sugar, calcium, heart function, gut integrity, immunity and defence against infection. Patients in ICU suffer from different degrees of inflammation, infection, heart dysfunction, diarrhoea and metabolic dysregulation – so vitamin D deficiency may play a role in each of these common ICU conditions."
"So we did a preliminary study and found that 45% of people in our ICU were Vitamin D deficient. There may be a bias, in that all patients were referred to endocrinology, so the numbers may not reflect the prevalence in a standard ICU cohort. However 45% is still a significant proportion.

When the team correlated the Vitamin D levels with a disease severity score, there was a direct correspondence between sickness and Vitamin D deficiency. In other words, the sicker someone was, the lower the levels of Vitamin D. Out of the 42 patients studied, there were 3 deaths. The 3 patients who died all had the lowest level of Vitamin D in the cohort.
"Perhaps when we are well, we have ways to compensate for organ dysfunction if we run low on Vitamin D," said Lee.

"But when we are very sick, the "sick organs" draw upon any vitamin D available to function properly, therefore we may need extra Vitamin D to maintain organ function during critical illness. However, at this stage, we don't know whether Vitamin D deficiency is just a marker of ill health, or whether it contributes to disease severity."

Lee believes that the study, while preliminary, is important because it highlights the fact that Vitamin D deficiency is common in intensive care units and is associated with disease severity.
The next step will be a randomised control study to investigate whether Vitamin D has benefits in critically ill patients. In simple terms, two groups of patients (who are evenly matched) will be treated, with Vitamin D added to the treatment of one group, but not the other. The outcomes will then be compared.

So should doctors be trying to raise the Vitamin D levels of their patients in the meantime?
Dr Lee hopes the randomised study may provide a more definitive answer to the question. "However, Vitamin D is very safe. It's inexpensive and has a very large safety window, making toxicity unlikely, unless there are underlying diseases causing high calcium. Giving vitamin D to severely deficient patients is very unlikely to cause harm. In addition, ICU patients are lying in bed for a long time, and are at risk of bone loss and osteoporosis. So if nothing else, Vitamin D will help protect their bones."

These findings will be published as a letter in the April 30, 2009 issue of theNew England Journal of Medicine.

Our first true love, chocolate!

2009-05-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

Chocolate comes from the cacao tree (genus name theobroma cacao, meaning 'food of the gods') which grows up to 12 feet tall in the rainforests of Ivory Coast, Belize, and other equatorial countries. The tree produces large pods that look like footballs, which contain seeds known as cacao beans. The beans are harvested, fermented, roasted and ground into a powder that is the basis of chocolate. Why does this matter? Because cacoa pods are berries. That's right. Chocolate is a fruit. In its unprocessed form, it is one of the healthiest fruits you can eat. It is full of flavanols, potent antioxidants that neutralize free radicals in the body. In fact, Cornell University food scientists discovered that cocoa powder has nearly twice the antioxidants of red wine, and three times more than that of green tea.

Chocolate is also high in minerals including magnesium, calcium, and zinc And it contains the substances tryptophan, PEA and anandamide, which trigger the release of numerous feel-good brain chemicals. No wonder our love for chocolate is almost euphoric!

Try a few squares of high quality dark chocolate for some of the less healthy treats you already eat. It's important to choose dark chocolate, since the addition of milk appears to inhibit the beneficial antioxidant effects. So yes, your favorite hershey's milk chocolate is out!

The healthiest ways to indulge your chocolate cravings is by eating raw organic unprocessed cacao beans, also known as cacao nibs which can be purchased at your local health food store. They can be eaten by the handful, or added to trail mix. I make a nice trail mix with walnuts, fresh organic coconut shavings, dehydrated blueberries and cacao nibs. The next best option is organic unroasted cocoa powder (non-alkalized.) Mix it with heavy whipping cream for a delicious chocolaty drink or use it in baking.

Another great way to get your healthy chocolate fix is by eating organic dark chocolate with the highest percentage of cocoa and lowest amount of refined sugar (bitter or semi-sweet dark chocolate.) Since the good news about dark chocolate is out, it is widely available, even at your supermarket! My favorites are Endangered Species 88% (pretty hardcore) and Green & Black's organic 85%.

h1 n1 previously known as "The Swine Flu"

2009-05-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

Do you fear the next big pandemic? Are you pricing face masks for fear that you just might be the next victim? Or, are you pretty confident that your immune system is pumped up and ready to go?

Some say it's the survival of the fittest and this could ring true. When I say survival of the fittest, I mean those that are aware that the body has an awesome ability to heal itself if properly cared for and given the tools to do so it can fight off disease the moment it hits the system and more effectively than any medication or antibiotic.

We know that this flu is transferred from human to human via respiratory spores. While sanitation is so very important, those hard working T-Cells need to be strong and ready to jump to action.

When one consumes a primarily processed foods lifestyle, this gives no nutrition to the human frame therefore forcing the system to borrow valuable vitamins and minerals from your tissue, blood and bones. This reduces your immune response ability and opens you up to the latest pandemic among other illness and disease.

Some tips from me include:

Practice a whole fresh foods lifestyle, avoid processed refined foods

Include fruits and vegetables high in Vitamin C like berries, green leafy vegetables and squash and pumpkin. I like Acerola Cherry wafers and 2-4 wafers daily is a nice immune booster.

Vitamin D is one of your primary immune support micronutrients and I recommend Cod Liver Oil as well as Vitamin D3 in the form of cholecalciferol. Carlsons D3 drops are nice!

Avoid sugar! It is said that one teaspoon of sugar can supress the immune system for many hours and even days. A soda has about 12 tsp.

Consume coconut oil. With its anti-viral, anti-microbial properties, it's the perfect prescription to lower that potential viral load!

Again, this just might be the survival of the fittest and if you think this is the last one, brace yourself. We are an unhealthy world and without nutrition reform in your own household, disease is eminent.

How fit is your immune system?

Booster Foods are Super Foods

2009-04-22T13:27:00.000-07:00

Booster foods are a fabulous way to increase not only your whole foods index but your personal nutritional profile as well. When one adds booster foods to their diet, they add a whole host of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and enzymes. What does all of this mean? It means that you can supplement less, gain more clarity, energy, focus and obtain greater health. Who doesn't need all of these? In our busy lives we have a tendency to use sugar and caffeine as our energy sources and drugs and alcohol to cope in the evening. When one is properly nourished, one finally gets off that roller coaster we call "poor dietary coping choices".

Today we talk about the power of seaweed. The following is a beautiful description of the value of sea vegetables. I use seaweed of various types in my homemade flax crackers as well, a powerful sea vegetable called "kombu". I simmer the kombu in my bone broth which infuses it with valuable trace minerals. This is a beautiful baase for a super charged soup or just a sipping broth. It is also a valuable chelator. When we consume large fish such as tuna, sea bass and other large creatures of the sea, we have a higher likelihood of also consuming heavy metals such as mercury. When I order Ahi at my favorite Japanese restaurant, I always order a side of wakame salad as a proactive heavy metal detoxifier.Sea Vegetables of all kinds can be found at your local health food store or Farmers Markets.

SEAWEED IS AN EVERYDAY MIRACLE
By: Susun S. Weed

Seaweed is an everyday miracle. The benefits of including seaweed’s optimum nourishment into your daily diet are extensive: increased longevity, enhanced immune functioning, revitalization of the cardiovascular, endocrine, digestive, and nervous systems, and relief from minor aches and pains. No wonder seaweed has been part of the traditional diet of all coastal cultures, including the people of Japan, Korea, China, Iceland, Denmark, Wales, Scotland, Hawaii, and the South Pacific Islands, and all the people who had trading contacts with the coastal cultures.

All seaweeds are high in fiber. Those in the brown family supply large amounts of algin as well. Each seaweed contains a wide range of essential nutrients, including enzymes, nucleic acids, amino acids, minerals, trace elements, and A, B, C, D, E, and K vitamin complexes. Seaweeds offer us zest for life and the perfect medium for electrical nerve flow.

Benefits from a wise woman alliance with seaweed - glossier hair, more luminous skin, less digestive distress, renewed energy and stamina, rekindled sexual desires, and reawakened delight in life - will be noticeable in about 13 weeks.

SEAWEED IS AN ALLY WITH LOTS OF HEART

Seaweed is an ally with lots of heart. Dancing, singing seaweed strengthens circulation, balances blood pressure, lowers cholesterol, builds healthy blood, increases the veins and hearts contractile force, restores and increases cardiac efficiency, nourishes and prolongs the life of the heart muscle, and encourages rhythmical working of the heart in all its aspects: physical, emotional, and inspirational.

How can weeds with so much sodium (we all know salt raises blood pressure) be good for the heart and even hypotensive - that is, capable of lowering blood pressure? DID YOU KNOW?Sodium is not to blame for high blood pressure. Sodium chloride may be. Table salt may be. But table salt contains sugar, aluminum salts, and several other agents as well as sodium chloride. This is an unnatural salt solution and one that creates cardiovascular stress.

The naturally occurring sodium in seaweeds (and garden weeds) bathes the inner being with rich salty nourishment, like the amniotic fluid of our original home. This sodium relieves tension in blood vessels made brittle by immersion in the wrong saline solution, table salt. (Note that commercial sea salt is usually as full of free flowing agents and other addenda as commercial table salt. Real evaporated seawater salt is pinkish in color. As usual, if it’s white, you can’t trust it.)

Seaweed is a wonderful green ally to use with other Wise Woman ways when healing those with problems of the heart and circulation including atherosclerosis, hypertension, chilly extremities, varicosities, heart infections, repressed feelings, and self blame.

SEAWEED IS A WAY TO GET YOUR JUICES FLOWING

Daily use of seaweed provides optimum nourishment for the hormonal, lymphatic, urinary, and nervous systems. The hormonal system uses minerals and trace elements so richly available from seaweed to repair tissue, build new cells, and create hormones responsible for regulating blood pressure, metabolism, fertility, sexuality, and reaction to allergens, to name but a few.

The lymphatic and immune systems are avid partakers of seaweed’s splendid feast of nutrients. Combined with this optimum nourishment, the communication enhancing effects of seaweed further enhance response time and strength in the immune system. This reduces opportunist bacterial and viral infections and helps prolong youth and vitality, not to mention joy and ease in life. The urinary system gets a special boost from seaweed’s seeming excess of potassium and sodium. Those with cystitis, kidney weakness, gout diabetic kidney ills, and bladder weakness find health / wholeness / holiness with seaweed and Wise Woman Ways.

The nervous system relaxes in the presence of seaweed’s mineral abundance. Seaweed creates an inner environment where nerve signals flow more smoothly and where brain chemicals are produced as needed: to maintain alertness, increase memory, reduce pain, and provide a sense of buoyant bliss. (Envision the head sized floats of kelp bobbing on a gently undulating sea.)

SEAWEED IS A GUT GREASER

Seaweed provides a multitude of gifts to the digestive system: soothing, disinfecting, and nourishing distressed surfaces, helping out with the metabolism of lipids, and maintaining a healthy balance of digestive yeasts and bacteria in the intestines. Seaweed is an exceptional ally to the wise woman healing those with gastric ulcers, duodenal ulcers, ulcerated colon, colitis, constipation, watery stools, and other intestinal ills, thanks to its bio-available nourishment, high algin content, mucilaginous fiber, and rhythmical resonation.

SEAWEED IS AN ALLY IN WOMEN’S MYSTERIES

Seaweed flows and shifts like the energy of a woman. Saline solutions of ocean and uterus rock in rhythm. Pulses of tide, menstruation, heartbeat, and fertility join seaweeds and wombs. Nourishing breast milk merges with waves of green fronds.Seaweed eaten daily is a powerful ally to a wise woman for, prevention and healing herself or others with osteoporosis, breast cancer, mastitis, uterine cancer, irregular menstrual cycles, ovarian cancer, fibroids, ovarian cysts, infertility, fibro-cystic breast distress, and pre-menstrual / menopausal problems such as water retention, emotional freak-outs, chills and hot flashes, fatigue, lack of lubrication, loss of calcium and general irritability.

SEAWEED IS A GREAT WAY TO STAY IN SHAPE

By providing optimum nourishment to the thyroid, helping to regulate metabolism, and increasing the effectiveness of the digestive system, seaweed helps you get in shape and stay that way.

SEAWEED PROPERTIES AND USES* Protective - anti-radiation, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, anti-toxic, anti-rheumatic, antibiotic, antibacterial, alterative. * Nutritive - trace mineral supplement, cardio-tonic, rejuvenative, aphrodisiac. * Mucilaginous - Emollient, demulcent, aperient, anti-constipative, diuretic. * Anti-stress- Analgesic, calmative, anti-pyretic.

Bio:
Susun Weed, green witch and wise woman, is an extraordinary teacher with a joyous spirit, a powerful presence, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of herbs and health. She is the voice of the Wise Woman Way, where common weeds, simple ceremony, and compassionate listening support and nourish health/wholeness/holiness. She has opened hearts to the magic and medicine of the green nations for three decades. Ms. Weed's four herbal medicine books focus on women's health topics including: menopause, childbearing, and breast health.

susanweed.com

Look out Flax!

2009-04-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

There's a new seed in town and it's nutritional profile surpasses that of flax seed! Don't get me wrong, flax is still a valuable source of omega 3 fatty acids but the profile of the chia is nearly a perfect balance of omega 3:6. Just what the human frame needs to avoid inflammation and prevent heart disease as well as other degenerative diseases of "lifestyle". I have been adding a tablespoon of chia seeds to my morning smoothie and have noticed a difference, most notably, my monthly cycle. While this may be too much information for some, it is valuable for women. I have had very little bloat and my cycle this month I must admit was a surprise with no symptoms other than a slight headache.

As I have and continue to preach the benefits of an omega 3:6 balance, I am personally feeling the postive effects from my own dietary increase of omega 3 and my complete avoidance of vegetable oils.

What makes the Chia Seed the super food that many claim it to be?

30% of the chia seed's oil is Omega 3 oil. 40% of its oil is Omega 6 oil. This provides the nice balance those who take supplemental Essential Fatty Acids are looking for. The chia seed's substantially dense percentage in alpha-linolenic fatty acid also makes this seed a healthy dietary source of fatty acids.

You do not need to grind the Chia Seeds to digest it. It is a relatively easy to digest seed, whereas flax seeds are not. It is necessary to grind flax seeds to be able to process them in our digestive system and benefit from their oils. That is not the case with chia seeds. Chia digests easily making the almost perfect ratio of fatty acids more bio-available.

The chia seeds are great for athletes because they are highly hydrophilic. Being hydrophilic means it absorbs large amounts of water. Chia Seeds can absorb over 10 times their weight in water making them a great enhancer in hydrating our bodies. We've seen some horrible outcomes of athletes who have pushed too hard and received too little hydration on the field.

Studies show that eating chia seed slows down how quickly our bodies convert carbohydrate calories into simple sugars. This leads scientists to believe that the chia seed may have great benefits for diabetics.

The chia seed gels when becoming wet and this gel, when in our digestive systems, helps one to feel fuller longer helping the diet achieve greater success.
Chia seeds provide antioxidant activity! Don't worry about feeling too full or bloated unless one consumes more than necessary at one sitting. 1 tbs. is a nice serving providing all of the above benefits.

With high fiber and beneficial oils, chia is a valuable addition to your detoxification program as well! These valuable fibers help to attach to and pull the toxins from your system for a nice cleanse. Remember, the human liver has over 400 functions and in this toxic world, a mild liver detox program 2-4 times a year is a healthful boost to your health!

I encourage you to join me in this venture toward optimum health by adding chia to your diet! Sprinkle it on salads, in yogurt or add to your smoothie. This will be of great benefit to your children and it's an easy hide in smoothies. Give your child that added advantage of brain power! He/She could use it in this overly processed world.

Restless Leg linked to Obesity?

2009-04-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2009) — A new study shows both obesity and a large belly appear to increase the risk of developing restless legs syndrome (RLS), a common sleep disorder characterized by an irresistible urge to move your legs. The research is published in the April 7, 2009, print issue of Neurology.

It is estimated that 5-10 percent of adults in the United States have RLS and the disorder often has a substantial impact on sleep, daily activities and quality of life.

For the study, researchers questioned 65,554 women and 23,119 men, all of whom were health professionals who took part in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study or the Nurses' Health Study II. None of the participants had diabetes, arthritis or were pregnant. Of the groups, 6.4 percent of the women and 4.1 percent of the men were identified as having RLS.

The research found men and women with a body mass index (BMI) score over 30 were nearly one-and-a-half times more likely to have RLS than people who were not obese.

In addition, people who were in the top 20 percent of the group for highest waist circumference were more than one-and-a-half times more likely to have RLS than the bottom 20 percent of the group with the lowest belly size. The results were the same regardless of age, smoking, use of antidepressants or anxiety.

"These results may be important since obesity is a modifiable risk factor that is becoming increasingly common in the U.S.," said study author Xiang Gao, MD, PhD, with the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. "More research is needed to confirm whether obesity causes RLS and whether keeping a low BMI score and small waist size could help prevent RLS."

Gao says some studies suggest that obese people have lower dopamine receptor levels in the brain. "Since decreased dopamine function is believed to play a critical role in RLS as well, this could be the link between the two." Dopamine is a chemical naturally produced by the body that transmits signals between nerve cells.

The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Inadequate Vitamin D Levels Linked To High Use Of Narcotic Medication By Patients In Chronic Pain

2009-03-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

With the increased rates of Fibromyalgia, many are reaching to pain medication for pain management I found the following story quite interesting. I have a dear friend that suffers fibromyalgia and I am constantly impressed with the the amount of research and application of holistic remedies my friend utilizes. The pain from fibromyalgia can be debilitating hence the need for pain medication but at what cost to the rest of the systems? I would encourage each and every fibromyalgia patient to work on optimum nutrition, supplementation and pain management therapies such as EFT and let the pain killers and muscle relaxers be your last choice and not your first. There are many inflammatory foods that perpetuate the pain in the body like refined sugars and flours. Choose fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, quality animal proteins and quality fats and oils like olive, coconut and butter. Your body will thank you with higher function and less pain.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2009) — Mayo Clinic research shows a correlation between inadequate vitamin D levels and the amount of narcotic medication taken by patients who have chronic pain. This correlation is an important finding as researchers discover new ways to treat chronic pain.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic pain is the leading cause of disability in the United States. These patients often end up taking narcotic-type pain medication such as morphine, fentanyl or oxycodone.

This study found that patients who required narcotic pain medication, and who also had inadequate levels of vitamin D, were taking much higher doses of pain medication — nearly twice as much — as those who had adequate levels. Similarly, these patients self-reported worse physical functioning and worse overall health perception. In addition, a correlation was noted between increasing body mass index (a measure of obesity) and decreasing levels of vitamin D. Study results were published in a recent edition of Pain Medicine.

"This is an important finding as we continue to investigate the causes of chronic pain," says Michael Turner, M.D., a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at Mayo Clinic and lead author of the study. "Vitamin D is known to promote both bone and muscle strength. Conversely, deficiency is an under-recognized source of diffuse pain and impaired neuromuscular functioning. By recognizing it, physicians can significantly improve their patients' pain, function and quality of life."

Researchers retrospectively studied 267 chronic pain patients admitted to the Mayo Comprehensive Pain Rehabilitation Center in Rochester from February to December 2006. Vitamin D levels at the time of admission were compared to other parameters such as the amount and duration of narcotic pain medication usage; self-reported levels of pain, emotional distress, physical functioning and health perception; and demographic information such as gender, age, diagnosis and body mass index.

Further research should document the effects of correcting deficient levels among these patients, researchers recommend.

This study has important implications for both chronic pain patients and physicians. "Though preliminary, these results suggest that patients who suffer from chronic, diffuse pain and are on narcotics should consider getting their vitamin D levels checked. Inadequate levels may play a role in creating or sustaining their pain," says Dr. Turner.

"Physicians who care for patients with chronic, diffuse pain that seems musculoskeletal — and involves many areas of tenderness to palpation — should strongly consider checking a vitamin D level," he says. "For example, many patients who have been labeled with fibromyalgia are, in fact, suffering from symptomatic vitamin D inadequacy. Vigilance is especially required when risk factors are present such as obesity, darker pigmented skin or limited exposure to sunlight."
Assessment and treatment are relatively simple and inexpensive. Levels can be assessed by a simple blood test (25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D]). Under the guidance of a physician, an appropriate repletion regimen can then be devised. Because it is a natural substance and not a drug, vitamin D is readily available and inexpensive.

In addition to the benefits of strong muscles and bones, emerging research demonstrates that vitamin D plays important roles in the immune system, helps fight inflammation and helps fights certain types of cancer.

Other study authors from Mayo Clinic include W. Michael Hooten, M.D., Department of Anesthesiology; John Schmidt, Ph.D., Department of Anesthesiology Research; and Jennifer Kerkvliet, Cynthia O. Townsend, Ph.D., and Barbara Bruce, Ph.D., all from the Pain Rehabilitation Center.

The Little-Known Secrets about Bleached Flour

2009-03-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

Nearly everyone knows that white flour is not healthy for you, but most people don’t know that when white flour is bleached, it can actually be FAR worse for you.
It’s generally understood that refining food destroys nutrients. With the most nutritious part of the grain removed, white flour essentially becomes a form of sugar.

Consider what gets lost in the refining process:

Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids

Virtually all of the vitamin E

Fifty percent of the calcium

Seventy percent of the phosphorus

Eighty percent of the iron

Ninety eight percent of the magnesium

Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins
And many more nutrients are destroyed -- simply too many to list.

The Journey of the Wheat Berry
Have you ever wondered how white flour is made?
The website Healthy Eating Politics has an interesting article about the process.
Most commercial wheat production is, unfortunately, a “study in pesticide application,” beginning with the seeds being treated with fungicide. Once they become wheat, they are sprayed with hormones and pesticides. Even the bins in which the harvested wheat is stored have been coated with insecticides. If bugs appear on the wheat in storage, they fumigate the grain.

A whole grain of wheat, sometimes called a wheat berry, is composed of three layers:
The bran
The germ
The endosperm

The bran is the layer where you’ll find most of the fiber, and it’s the hard outer shell of the kernel. The germ is the nutrient-rich embryo that will sprout into a new wheat plant. The endosperm is the largest part of the grain (83 percent), making up most of the kernel, and it’s mostly starch.
White flour is made from the endosperm only, whereas whole-wheat flour combines all three parts of the wheat berry.

Old time mills ground flour slowly, but today’s mills are designed for mass-production, using high-temperature, high-speed steel rollers. The resulting white flour is nearly all starch, and even much of today’s commercially processed whole wheat flour has lost a fair amount of nutritional value due to these aggressive processing methods.
White flour contains a small fraction of the nutrients of the original grain, with the heat of the steel rollers having destroyed what little nutrients remain. But then it is hit with another chemical insult--a chlorine gas bath (chlorine oxide). This serves as a whitener, as well as an “aging” agent.

Flour used to be aged with time, improving the gluten and thus improving the baking quality. Now, it is treated with chlorine to instantly produce similar qualities in the flour (with a disturbing lack of concern about adding another dose of chemicals to your food).

According to Jim Bair, Vice President of the North American Millers Association:
“Today, the US milling industry produces about 140 million pounds of flour each day, so there is no way to store the flour to allow it to age naturally. Plus, there is a shelf life issue.”
It has not been determined how many mills are bleaching flour with chorine oxide, but we do know the use of chlorides for bleaching flour is considered an industry standard.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines chlorine gas as a flour-bleaching, aging and oxidizing agent that is a powerful irritant, dangerous to inhale, and lethal. Other agents also used include oxides of nitrogen, nitrosyl, and benzoyl peroxide mixed with various chemical salts.
The chlorine gas undergoes an oxidizing chemical reaction with some of the proteins in the flour, producing alloxan as an unintended byproduct. Bair and other milling industry leaders claim that bleaching and oxidizing agents don’t leave behind harmful residues in flour, although they can cite no studies or published data to confirm this.

Why Bleaching Makes White Flour Even Worse
It has been shown that alloxan is a byproduct of the flour bleaching process, the process they use to make flour look so “clean” and -- well, white. No, they are technically not adding alloxan to the flour -- although you will read this bit of misinformation on the Internet. But, they are doing chemical treatments to the grain that result in the formation of alloxan in the flour.
With so little food value already in a piece of white bread, now there is potentially a chemical poison lurking in there as well.

So what is so bad about alloxan?
Alloxan, or C4 H2O4N2, is a product of the decomposition of uric acid. It is a poison that is used to produce diabetes in healthy experimental animals (primarily rats and mice), so that researchers can then study diabetes “treatments” in the lab. Alloxan causes diabetes because it spins up enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them.
Beta cells are the primary cell type in areas of your pancreas called islets of Langerhans, and they produce insulin; so if those are destroyed, you get diabetes.
There is no other commercial application for alloxan -- it is used exclusively in the medical research industry because it is so highly toxic.
Given the raging epidemic of diabetes and other chronic diseases in this country, can you afford to be complacent about a toxin such as this in your bread, even if it is present in small amounts?

Just How Much is Too Much?
Similar to disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in water, alloxan is formed when the chlorine reacts with certain proteins remaining in the white flour after the bran and germ have been removed. Protein makes up between 5 percent and 15 percent of white flour, depending on whether it’s cake flour, or high-gluten flour, such as what’s used for pizza crust or bagels.
So, this would suggest that perhaps 5 to 15 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour could be contaminated.

However, according to Professor Joe Schwarcz, Director of the McGill University Office of Science and Society, alloxan is the byproduct of xantophyll oxidation only. Xantophylls are yellow compounds in wheat that react with oxygen, causing flour to turn white.

According to Mr. Schwarcz:
“One of the possible minor side products of xantophyll oxidation is alloxan. It may therefore be found in small amounts in flour. There is no available research that shows trace amounts are a problem or that alloxan builds up in the body. The amounts, if present at all, must be small because xantophylls themselves only occur to the extent of 1 microgram per gram of flour.”
Alloxan has not been studied in terms of human exposure, particularly long-term. There is just so much we don’t know, and you know what assumptions will get you.

Alloxan in Rats vs Alloxan in Humans
Scientists have long known that alloxan produces selective destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, causing hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis in laboratory animals. Alloxan is structurally similar to glucose, which might explain why the pancreatic beta cells selectively take it up.
According to Dr. Hari Sharma’s Freedom from Disease, alloxan causes free radical damage to DNA in the beta cells of the pancreas, causing them to malfunction and die. When they fail to function normally, they no longer produce enough insulin.

Even though the toxic effect of alloxan is common scientific knowledge in the research community, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still allows companies to use chemical processes in which the end result is toxic food. Until they unequivocally prove something is toxic by way of human deaths, severe side effects, or when the public screams loudly enough, the FDA is not likely to protect you.

Until then, it is you who must protect yourself.

If you have diabetes, or cancer, have a compromised immune system, or if you are in some other high-risk category as tens of millions of North Americans are, you need to know what foods contain hazardous ingredients so you can avoid them. But in the case of alloxan, there is no way to know, either by reading the ingredient list or by any other means, that it might be in your food!

History of Bleaching Flour -- Pillsbury and the FDA
An interesting sideline to this whole flour story lies in the origins of the FDA.
Bleaching and oxidizing agents weren’t developed to produce quick aging of wheat flour (within 48 hours) until the early 1900s. Prior to that, it required several months for oxygen to condition flour naturally.

When bleaching was introduced, it was vehemently opposed.
The first major consumer advocate was Harvey W. Wiley, MD, who eventually became known as the “Father of the Pure Food and Drugs Act” of 1906. Mr. Wiley was head of the Bureau of Chemistry, which was the precursor to the FDA. Wiley crusaded against benzoic acid, sulfites, saccharin, and bleached flour, among other food additives and adulterants.

Dr. Wiley felt so strongly about preventing the bleaching of flour that he took it all the way to the Supreme Court. They ruled that flour could not be bleached or “adulterated” in any way. However, it was never enforced.

Wiley believed that foods posed a greater risk to the public than adulterated or misbranded drugs. He constantly butted heads with Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and President Roosevelt over food regulation.

Soon, Wiley’s personal administrative authority was undercut when Wilson created the Board of Food and Drug Inspection in 1907 and the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts in 1908, one of which was reportedly headed by someone who had been working at Pillsbury, although I have not been able to verify this addendum.

Finally, in 1912, Dr. Wiley quit as director out of frustration, although he continued as a vocal consumer advocate for many years.

The government replaced Dr. Wiley with Dr. Elmer Nelson. Dr. Nelson was the polar opposite to Wiley , and was quoted as saying:
”It is wholly unscientific to state that a well-fed body is more able to resist disease than a poorly fed body. My overall opinion is that there hasn’t been enough experimentation to prove that dietary deficiencies make one susceptible to disease.”
Therein lies the foundation of the FDA. Since Dr. Wiley resigned, the FDA has continued to shift its focus on drugs, since Wiley was never able to convince the government of the dangers from chemicals in our foods. He was truly a pioneer and a century ahead of his time!

Food For Thought
The important point to take away is, beware of any processed food because chemicals are always used. And we simply don’t know what the long-term effects will be of ingesting chemicals, on top of chemicals, on top of more chemicals.

Strive to stick to whole unprocessed foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. If you’re going to eat grains, make sure they are at the least unbleached, whole, and organic, and eat them in the proportion that is best for your nutritional type

by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Omega-3 Fatty Acids Reduce Risk Of Advanced Prostate Cancer

2009-03-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

The below is a study from Science Daily News. My goal as a nutrition educator is to educate the general public of the importance of our omega 3 fatty acid intake. You may feel like I'm repeating this information in most posts. I am, and for good reason. The human frame requires equal quantities of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids. A 1:1 ratio, though currently most Americans are consuming a 1:50 ratio. This imbalance creates inflammation in the body leading to disease. Omega 6 fatty acids found in grain fed animal proteins and vegetable oils are inflammatory while omega 3 fatty acids found in Wild Caught fatty fish such as salmon, grass fed beef, flax, eggs and walnuts are anti-inflammatory. More and more evidence is pointing to disease caused by a diet heavy in omega 6 fatty acids.

When reading the following story, they refer to the COX-2 gene. COX-2, or cyclooxygenase-2: an enzyme that makes prostaglandins. Prostaglandins were first discovered and isolated from human semen in the 1930s by Ulf von Euler of Sweden. Thinking they had come from the prostate gland, he named them prostaglandins. It has since been determined that they exist and are synthesised in virtually every cell of the body. Prostaglandins are like hormones in that they act as chemical messengers, but they do not move to other places in the body. They work right within the cells where they are made.

They have a variety of physiological effects on the body including: - Activation of the inflammatory responses at the sites of damaged tissue, and production of pain and fever. When tissues are damaged, white blood cells flood the site to try to minimise tissue destruction. Prostaglandins are produced as a result.

Prostaglandins are involved in several other organs and systems such as the gastrointestinal tract, cell growth and the immune system response.

Science Daily, March 25, 2009
Omega-3 fatty acids appear protective against advanced prostate cancer, and this effect may be modified by a genetic variant in the COX-2 gene, according to a report in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"Previous research has shown protection against prostate cancer, but this is one of the first studies to show protection against advanced prostate cancer and interaction with COX-2," said John S. Witte, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco.

For the current study, researchers performed a case-control analysis of 466 men diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and 478 healthy men. Diet was assessed by a food frequency questionnaire and researchers genotyped nine COX-2 single nucleotide polymorphisms.
Researchers divided omega-3 fatty acid intake into four groups based on quartiles of intake. Men who consumed the highest amount of long chain omega-3 fatty acids had a 63 percent reduced risk of aggressive prostate cancer compared to men with the lowest amount of long chain omega-3 fatty acids.

The researchers then assessed the effect of omega-3 fatty acid among men with the variant rs4647310 in COX-2, a known inflammatory gene. Men with low long chain omega-3 fatty acid intake and this variant had a more than five-fold increased risk of advanced prostate cancer. But men with high intake of omega-3 fatty acids had a substantially reduced risk, even if they carried the COX-2 variant.

"The COX-2 increased risk of disease was essentially reversed by increasing omega-3 fatty acid intake by a half a gram per day," said Witte. "If you want to think of the overall inverse association in terms of fish, where omega-3 fatty acids are commonly derived, the strongest effect was seen from eating dark fish such as salmon one or more times per week."
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009)

Work on increasing your omega 3 fatty acid intake. Grass fed beef, eggs, walnuts, flax, fish oils, fatty cold water fish such as salmon and sardines. Nutrition is at the heart of everything that heals or ails.

Flawed Study: Lots of red meat increases mortality risk

2009-03-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

The study below is a perfect example of the 30 second sound bytes I speak of constantly. I am infuriated with this particular study. It is flawed, inaccurate and misleading to the general public. Red meat provides us with iron, zinc, B12, B6 and a host of other health promoting heart saving nutrients. The flaw in the study? First, processed meats should never be compared to whole unprocessed animal proteins. This is contradictory to a natural diet. Most importantly, what were the other factors? It is my experience that many in these AARP groups dine out frequently exposing themselves to unhealthy polyunsaturated vegetable oils, indulge in dessert items frequently which in turn elevate blood sugar and triglycerides and unknowingly also consume trans saturated fatty acids. What kind of blood tests were performed during these studies? Were the subjects consuming factory farmed beef with added hormones and antibiotics? Of course they were.

I would consume red meat daily and feel comfortable as long as all of my other factors were in place. In other words, consuming 100% natural grass fed beef is as healthy as consuming salmon daily. Why? Well, grass fed beef contains omega 3 fatty acids while factory farmed beef is 100% omega 6. The abundance of omega 6 fatty acids in the Standard American Diet are the direct cause of inflammation that leads to heart disease and cancers.

That's my "beef" with this study. What omega 3 fatty acids are you consuming?

By CARLA K. JOHNSON, AP Medical Writer - Mon Mar 23, 9:15 PM PDT
CHICAGO - The largest study of its kind finds that older Americans who eat large amounts of red meat and processed meats face a greater risk of death from heart disease and cancer. The federal study of more than half a million men and women bolsters prior evidence of the health risks of diets laden with red meat like hamburger and processed meats like hot dogs, bacon and cold cuts.

Calling the increased risk modest, lead author Rashmi Sinha of the National Cancer Institute said the findings support the advice of several health groups to limit red and processed meat intake to decrease cancer risk. Misty notes: grouping the two together is not a balanced assesment.

The findings appear in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

Over 10 years, eating the equivalent of a quarter-pound hamburger daily gave men in the study a 22 percent higher risk of dying of cancer and a 27 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease. That's compared to those who ate the least red meat, just 5 ounces per week.

Women who ate large amounts of red meat had a 20 percent higher risk of dying of cancer and a 50 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease than women who ate less.

For processed meats, the increased risks for large quantities were slightly lower overall than for red meat. The researchers compared deaths in the people with the highest intakes to deaths in people with the lowest to calculate the increased risk.
People whose diets contained more white meat like chicken and fish had lower risks of death.

The researchers surveyed more than 545,000 people, ages 50 to 71 years old, on their eating habits, then followed them for 10 years. There were more than 70,000 deaths during that time.
Study subjects were recruited from AARP members, a group that's healthier than other similarly aged Americans. That means the findings may not apply to all groups, Sinha said. The study relied on people's memory of what they ate, which can be faulty.

In the analysis, the researchers took into account other risk factors such as smoking, family history of cancer and high body mass index.

In an accompanying editorial, Barry Popkin, director of the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote that reducing meat intake would have benefits beyond improved health.

Livestock increase greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming, he wrote, and nations should reevaluate farm subsidies that distort prices and encourage meat-based diets. Misty Notes: Sustainable farming is our solution. Consuming grass fed beef is our superior choice for our bodies and the environment.

"We've promoted a diet that has added excessively to global warming," Popkin said in an interview. Misty Notes: This is factory farming at work.

Successfully shifting away from red meat can be as easy as increasing fruits and vegetables in the diet, said Elisabetta Politi of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, N.C. Misty Notes: As long as one is not insulin resistant, low glycemic fruits are recommended.

"I'm not saying everybody should turn into vegetarians," Politi said. "Meat should be a supporting actor on the plate, not the main character." Misty Notes: Studies indicate those who consume moderate amount of "clean and natural" animal proteins live 6 years longer than vegetarians.

The National Pork Board and National Cattlemen's Beef Association questioned the findings.

Dietitian Ceci Snyder said in a statement for the pork board that the study "attempts to indict all red meat consumption by looking at extremes in meat consumption, as opposed to what most Americans eat."

Lean meat as part of a balanced diet can prevent chronic disease, along with exercise and avoiding smoking, said Shalene McNeill, dietitian for the beef group. Misty Notes: Grass fed beef is leaner beef. Remember, corn fattens all of us!
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For clean sources of meats, go to http://www.eatwild.com/ for a sustainable farm near you! If you're in the Sonoma County area, I purchase my grass fed ground beef at Andy's Produce. Eel River 100% grass fed and the taste is wonderful. Do your body good, eat sustainable beef a few times a week! I'd avoid the tuna!

Missing Link Between Fructose, Insulin Resistance Found

2009-03-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

High fructose corn syrup is one of the biggest disease promoting products of our time. It is added to almost every packaged food product from ketchup to soda pop and everything in between. It is poisoning our children by destroying their livers. The human liver is an amazing organ that is responsible for over 400 process' in the human body. It filters, it manages, it distributes and one product alone is responsible for destroying it. HFCS. We require our children brush their teeth, clean their rooms, we encourage them to take interest in activities, complete their homework, treat others with kindness and teach them that drugs are harmful. Why is it then that we feed them poison? Because the corn refiners association will tell us it's "safe" and we believe them.....yes, we are believing 30 second sound bytes for the health of our children and the story below will confirm the dangers of consuming high fructose corn syrup.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2009) — A new study in mice sheds light on the insulin resistance that can come from diets loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener found in most sodas and many other processed foods. The report in the March issue of Cell Metabolism also suggests a way to prevent those ill effects.

The researchers showed that mice on a high-fructose diet were protected from insulin resistance when a gene known as transcriptional coactivator PPARg coactivator-1b (PGC-1b) was "knocked down" in the animals' liver and fat tissue. PGC-1b coactivates a number of transcription factors that control the activity of other genes, including one responsible for building fat in the liver.
"There has been a remarkable increase in consumption of high-fructose corn syrup," said Gerald Shulman of Yale University School of Medicine. "Fructose is much more readily metabolized to fat in the liver than glucose is and in the process can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease," he continued. NAFLD in turn leads to hepatic insulin resistance and type II diabetes.

Metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes have both reached epidemic proportions worldwide with the global adoption of the westernized diet along with increased consumption of fructose, stemming from the wide and increasing use of high-fructose corn syrup sweeteners, the researchers noted.

High-fructose corn syrup, which is a mixture of the simple sugars fructose and glucose, came into use in the 1970s and by 2005 the average American was consuming about 60 pounds of it per year. Overall, dietary intake of fructose, which is also a component of table sugar, has increased by an estimated 20 to 40 percent in the last thirty years.
Earlier studies had established that fructose is more readily converted to fatty acids than glucose and had also linked high-fructose diets to high blood levels of triglycerides (a condition known as hypertriglyceridemia), NAFLD and insulin resistance. While researchers had implicated a gene known as SREBP-1, a master regulator of lipids' manufacture in the liver, much about the underlying molecular connections between fructose and those metabolic disorders remained mysterious.

In the new study, the researchers zeroed in on PGC-1b, a gene known for boosting SREBP-1 levels. To test its role in the effects of fructose, they blocked its activity in mice fed a diet high in that sugar for four weeks.

Those treatments improved the animals' metabolic profiles by lowering levels of SREBP-1 and other fat-building genes in their livers. The mice also showed a reversal of their fructose-induced insulin resistance and a threefold increase in glucose uptake in their fat tissue.
"These data support an important role for PGC-1b in the pathogenesis of fructose-induced insulin resistance and suggest that PGC-1b inhibition may be a therapeutic target for treatment of NAFLD, hypertriglyceridemia, and insulin resistance associated with increased de novo lipogenesis," the researchers concluded.

The new study has "revealed the transcriptional coactivator PGC-1b as a missing link between fructose intake and metabolic disorders," wrote Carlos Hernandez and Jiandie Lin of the University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor in an accompanying commentary. "The findings …support the emerging role of gene/environment interaction in modulating the metabolic phenotype and disease pathogenesis. Thus, perturbations of the same regulatory motif may produce vastly different metabolic responses, depending on the specific combinations of dietary nutrients," they continued.

The researchers include Yoshio Nagai, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT , Howard Hughes Medical InstituteShin Yonemitsu, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT , Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Derek M. Erion, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Takanori Iwasaki, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; Romana Stark, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; Dirk Weismann, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT Jianying Dong, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; Dongyan Zhang, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT , Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Michael J. Jurczak, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Michael G. Loffler, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; James Cresswell, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; Xing Xian Yu, ISIS Pharmaceuticals, Carlsbad, CA; Susan F. Murray, ISIS Pharmaceuticals, Carlsbad, CA; Sanjay Bhanot, ISIS Pharmaceuticals, Carlsbad, CA; Brett P. Monia, ISIS Pharmaceuticals, Carlsbad, CA; Jonathan S. Bogan, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; Varman Samuel, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT and Gerald I. Shulman, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT , Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Journal reference:
Nagai et al. The Role of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor γ Coactivator-1 β in the Pathogenesis of Fructose-Induced Insulin Resistance. Cell Metabolism, 2009; 9 (3): 252-264 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2009.01.011

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Everything You Need To Know About Organic Foods

What is organic food?

What is organic food?

How to Fully Understand the Labels on Organic Foods

What Does the "Organic" Label Mean?

How to understand the different use of the term "Organic" on food labels.

Why did we need the April 2001 regulations of organic foods?

What is USDA certification?

How will "organic" foods be identified?

What are the federally mandated labels that identify "Organic" products?

How is the term "Certified Organic" used under the April 2001 regulations?

What does it mean if you see the word "transitional" on a food label?

What Foods Are Covered by the April 2001 Standard?

Are there any foods that are not covered by the federal organic standards?

Can you give me some examples of organically labeled foods?

Why Organic Foods are Better for Health

Can organic foods really improve my health?

How do organic foods benefit cellular health?

How can organic foods contribute to children's health?

Are organic foods nutritionally superior to conventionally grown foods?

What substances do we avoid by eating organic food?

Why Organicically Grown Foods Are Better for the Health of Our Planet

What are the environmental benefits of organic farming over conventional farming methods?

How do conventional farming methods affect water quality?

What is sustainable agriculture?

How to Understand the April 2001 Regulation of Organic Foods

Can you give me more details about federal regulation of organic farming?

What was the Organic Foods Production Act?

What is the National Organic Program?

What is the National Organic Standards Board?

Who actually gets certified in the organic certification process?

Is anyone exempt from certification?

How does the certification process actually work?

What if a farm only wants to be part organic?

What are the basic organic standards for plant crops?

What are the basic organic standards for livestock (animals)?

Are there basic organic standards for processing and handling?

What is the National List, and why has it been so controversial?

Who defines the National List?

How is The National List structured?

Why are there exceptions?

Why are there no brand names on The List?

Do organic farmers use any pesticides or pest control products?

When would an organic grower need to use a pesticide or pest control product?

What is the difference between IPM and organic production?

What synthetic materials does the NOSB recommend for use in crop production?

What are some of the natural substances that the NOSB recommends be prohibited?

Why are antibiotics allowed in organic livestock production?

What other drugs does the NOSB recommend for livestock health care?

Why are there non-organic ingredients in some organic food?

What are some of the non-organic ingredients recommended by the NOSB?

Does the Organic Foods Production Act have provisions for enforcement and penalties for regulatory violation?

Are there any foods that will not be covered by the federal organic standards?

Other Questions About Organic Foods

Do organic foods taste better?

Why do organic foods cost more?

How do you buy organic foods more inexpensively?

Why should we buy organic foods?

What is the dirty dozen?

How popular are organic foods?

What is the history of organic foods?

Where can I look on the Internet for more information about organic foods?

Who can I contact by phone regarding organic foods?

Why Organicically Grown Foods Are Better for the Health of Our Planet

What are the environmental benefits of organic farming over conventional farming methods?

How do conventional farming methods affect water quality?

What is sustainable agriculture?

How to Understand the April 2001 Regulation of Organic Foods

Can you give me more details about federal regulation of organic farming?

What was the Organic Foods Production Act?

What is the National Organic Program?

What is the National Organic Standards Board?

Who actually gets certified in the organic certification process?

Is anyone exempt from certification?

How does the certification process actually work?

What if a farm only wants to be part organic?