Rather Be Healthy

The Devil is in the Details… How Medicine Got the Wrong Idea about Fats

The incorrect idea that high cholesterol causes heart disease has led to the demonization of entire categories of extremely healthful foods (like eggs and saturated fats), and cholesterol has been falsely blamed for just about every case of heart disease in the last 20 years.

Fat and cholesterol are commonly believed to be the worst foods you can consume. Please understand that these myths are actually harming your health.

Not only is cholesterol most likely not going to destroy your health (as you have been led to believe), but it is also not the cause of heart disease.

Chris Kresser, L.Ac., an acupuncturist and a licensed integrative medicine clinician, has investigated risk factors for heart disease and promotes the use of a relatively novel way of assessing your heart disease risk based on your LDL particle number.

He’s currently writing a book about this topic for the Paleo ancestral health community. His interest grew from losing his grandfather to heart disease several years ago. His grandfather’s case was badly mismanaged, which spurred Kresser to learn more about what really causes heart disease.

A few years later, while in graduate school studying integrative medicine, he did a semester-long research project on the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease.

Since then, he’s read about 750 peer-reviewed studies, consulted with numerous experts in the field, and has challenged everything he thought he knew about the role of cholesterol in heart disease.

Over the last several years, he’s been sharing that information on his blog, in his podcast, and in educational seminars and programs.

The Problem with the Conventional Approach, in a Nutshell

For the past 50 years, you’ve been told that eating saturated fat and high-cholesterol foods will raise cholesterol serum levels. However, research published over the past 10 or 15 years suggests that neither of those statements are true.

Furthermore, the typical cholesterol tests your doctor prescribes, which are supposed to measure your risk for heart disease, don’t actually do a very good job of predicting your risk.

You can have low or normal LDL or total cholesterol and still be at high risk from heart disease. Alternatively, you can have high or normal total or LDL cholesterol yet be at low risk. Subsequently, many are not getting enough treatment, and others are getting too much.

“We’ve learned a lot about what causes heart disease over the past 10 years,” Kresser says. “But unfortunately, that knowledge hasn’t really trickled down into the mainstream yet. So, your average general care physician, primary care nurse, or even science writer that’s writing for the mainstream media is still operating on information from the old paradigm.

The other issue is that the current dietary guidelines that are offered for how to reduce your risk for heart disease are based on this information that’s still 30 to 50 years old. And they’re clearly not working. Cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer. One out of every three deaths is due to this cardiovascular disease, and it affects about 65 million people in the U.S. alone.”

The INTERHEART study, which looked at heart disease risk factors in over 50 countries around the world, found that 90 percent of heart disease cases are completely preventable by modifying diet and lifestyle factors. As Kresser points out, we clearly need a new approach that’s based on more current evidence.

“The problem, of course, that we face is that the old paradigm is so entrenched. The idea that cholesterol and saturated fat are bad for us is so deeply engrained in our society that a lot of us don’t even question that anymore.

One of the main problems there is the massive conflicts of interest in the medical profession. We have a situation where two-thirds of medical research is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. Eight out of nine of the doctors who are on the National Cholesterol Education program that write the guidelines for cholesterol receive money from pharmaceutical companies,” he says.

Conventional Tests are Not Accurate Predictors of Heart Disease

If you’ve had your cholesterol levels checked, your doctor most likely tested your total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides. But we now know those are not accurate predictors for cardiovascular disease risk. According to Kresser, a much more accurate predictor is testing your LDL particle number. He explains:

“To use an analogy: if you imagine your bloodstream’s like a river, the LDL particles are like the boats that carry the cholesterol and fats around your body. The cholesterol and fats are like cargo in the boats. Right now doctors are usually measuring the amount of cargo or cholesterol in the LDL particles. But what we should be measuring is the number of LDL particles, or the number of boats in the river, so to speak, because that’s a much more accurate risk factor for heart disease.”

As mentioned, it’s possible to have normal total or LDL cholesterol yet have a high number of LDL particles. This is completely missed using the conventional testing. On the other hand, you may end up being prescribed a statin drug to lower your cholesterol when in fact your LDL particle number is normal, placing you in the low risk category for heart disease. (As a general rule, regardless of your LDL particle number, chances are you do NOT need a statin drug to address high cholesterol. The only people who may truly benefit from a statin drug are those with the genetic defect called familial hypercholesterolemia.)

How to Test Your LDL Particle Number

Some groups, such as the National Lipid Association, are now starting to shift the focus toward LDL particle number instead of total and LDL cholesterol, but it still has not hit mainstream. Fortunately, if you know about it, you can take control of your health and either ask your doctor for this test, or order it yourself.

There are several ways to test for your LDL particle number. Kresser recommends using the NMR LipoProfile, offered by a lab called Liposcience. The test uses FDA approved technology for testing LDL particle number, and it’s the test used in most of the scientific studies on LDL particles.

“All the different lipoproteins have a unique magnetic signature, and this test uses a nuclear magnetic resonance technique to pick up on that signature. It can correctly identify the number of particles in each case,” he explains.

It’s easy to get and all major labs offer it, including LabCorp and Quest. Most insurance policies cover the test as well. Best of all, even if your doctor were to refuse to order it, you can order it yourself via third-party intermediaries like Direct Labs, or you can order the test online, and get blood drawn locally.

In Europe and other parts of the world, LDL particle number is more commonly measured using an indirect marker, apolipoprotein B (apoB). ApoB is a protein required for the formation of the LDL particle. About 90-95% of apoB particles are LDL particles, which makes apoB a fairly accurate measure of LDL particle number. If you live in a country where the NMR profile is not available, you can use the ApoB test to roughly determine your LDL particle number, and then use triglycerides, HDL, fasting blood sugar, blood pressure and waist-to-hip ratio to determine if you have insulin resistance.

The Devil is in the Details… How Medicine Got the Wrong Idea about Fats

Saturated fat has long been demonized as a heart attack waiting to happen, and many doctors still cling to this outdated view. Ironically, saturated fat is not only healthful fat, it’s one of the most important dietary factors to support health! There’s simply no way to calculate the harm inflicted by the low-fat craze. We now know that if you avoid saturated fats, you’re asking for trouble. Not only is saturated fat the optimal fuel for your brain, it also:

Provides building blocks for cell membranes, hormones, and hormone-like substances

Acts as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K

Is required for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, and for mineral absorption

Acts as antiviral agents (caprylic acid)

Helps lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)

Modulates genetic regulation and help prevent cancer (butyric acid)

The US Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines1 advises you to consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fats. I and other nutritional experts have warned that most people actually need upwards of 50-70 percent healthful fats, including saturated fat, in their diet for optimal health. How did medicine get this so wrong?

A combination of factors is likely to blame. There were early studies showing that saturated fat raised cholesterol levels in the blood, but they were almost always short-term studies. Since then, much larger observational studies, conducted for extended periods of time have been done, completely refuting earlier short-term results. Later studies have shown absolutely NO relationship between saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol levels.

“We’re talking about some really big, well-known studies that cover tens of thousands of people,” Kresser says. “In fact, there was research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that covered about 350,000 people in a follow-up period of five to 23 years. And there was no relationship at all between saturated fat intake and heart disease. And then a large Japanese study of about 58,000 people actually found an inverse association between saturated fat intake and strokes. So, in other words, the people who were eating the most saturated fat actually had the lowest levels of stroke.”

Another problem is that early studies did not differentiate between critically important omega-3 and less health-promoting omega-6 fats.

“There’s a study… that went back and looked at some data. Some of the early data suggested that replacing saturated fat with industrial seed oil or polyunsaturated fat would lower cholesterol and lower the risk of heart disease. But what they didn’t realize back in the ‘60s when they were doing those studies [was the difference between omega-3 and omega-6]; they thought all polyunsaturated fats were the same, so they would lump them together in the studies.

Now we understand that omega-6 has very different effects from omega-3. When you study them separately, you see that omega-6 actually doesn’t reduce the risk of heart disease and may increase the risk of heart disease when it’s studied independently of omega-3s.”

Today we have yet another complicating factor when it comes to omega-6 fats and that’s the fact that many of them now come from genetically engineered corn and soy. When you add that into the mix, the health hazards may be worse than we currently imagine.

Which Fats are Healthy?

Sources of healthful fats (and in some cases cholesterol) include:

Olives and Olive oil

Coconuts and coconut oil

Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk

Raw nuts, such as, almonds or pecans

Organic pastured egg yolks

Avocados

Grass fed meats

Unheated organic nut oil

Another healthful fat you want to be mindful of is animal-based omega-3. Deficiency in this essential fat can cause or contribute to very serious health problems, both mental and physical, and may be a significant underlying factor of up to 96,000 premature deaths each year. For more information about omega-3’s and the best sources of this fat, please review this previous article.

High Cholesterol is NOT the Cause of Heart Disease

There are two parts to this persistent myths relating to cholesterol and heart disease:
1.The idea that eating cholesterol and saturated fat raises cholesterol levels in your blood, and
2.That high cholesterol in your blood is what drives the risk for heart disease

Some of the healthful fat sources listed above are also sources of dietary cholesterol, such as eggs. Contrary to early studies, which suggested eating cholesterol-rich egg yolks raises your cholesterol levels, we now know that’s actually NOT true.

“’That’s been pretty thoroughly disproven in the scientific literature,’ Kresser says. ‘You have between 1,100 to 1,700 milligrams of cholesterol in your body at any given time. But only 25 percent of that actually comes from your diet, and 75 percent is internally produced primarily through your liver. Why would that be? Because cholesterol is so important to the proper function of your body that your body tightly regulates its production. If you don’t eat enough cholesterol, your body will make more. It needs more cholesterol, not less.

The other thing that most people don’t know is that only free or unesterified cholesterol can be absorbed from the diet through the intestines. Most foods have esterified cholesterol that can’t actually be absorbed.’

The first thing to understand is you don’t have a cholesterol level in your blood, actually. Cholesterol is fat-soluble, and blood is mostly water. For it to be transported around the blood, cholesterol needs to be carried by a protein, specifically by a lipoprotein. These lipoproteins are classified by density. So, you have very low-density lipoprotein or VLDL, low-density lipoprotein or LDL, and high-density lipoprotein or HDL, which are the main ones.

I mentioned before the analogy that our bloodstream is like a river. Remember that the lipoproteins are like boats that carry the cholesterol and fats around the body. The cholesterol and fats are like cargo in the boats.

So, here’s the really crucial point: up until about 10 or 15 years ago, we thought that it was the concentration of cholesterol in the lipoprotein (or the amount of cargo in the boat) that was driving the risk of heart disease. But recent research indicates that it’s the number of boats or the number of LDL particles that’s really the driving factor.”

So, it’s not the amount of cholesterol that is the main risk factor for heart disease, rather it’s the number of cholesterol-carrying LDL particles. Oxidized LDL can also be a greater risk factor for heart disease. When oxidative stress is high due to poor diet, insufficient exercise and sleep, and chronic stress, or when your antioxidant capacity is low (again usually because of a poor diet), then oxidative damage can occur. Oxidized LDL is more harmful than normal non-oxidized LDL because it’s smaller and denser. This allows it to penetrate the lining of your arteries, where it will stimulate plaque formation associated with heart disease.

“The more LDL particles you have, the more likely you are to have some oxidized LDL, and they can be more atherogenic. However, oxidized LDL loses their predictive value when it’s adjusted for LDL particle number. That suggests that LDL particle number may be an even more important risk factor and may need a high number of LDL particles before oxidation becomes a big problem,” Kresser explains.

What Raises Your LDL Particle Number?

If the primary cause of heart disease is not high cholesterol, then what is? Part of the reason why statins are ineffective for heart disease prevention (besides the fact that the drug causes heart disease as a side effect) is that drugs cannot address the real cause of heart disease, which is insulin and leptin resistance, which in turn increase LDL particle number via a couple of different mechanisms. While some genetic predisposition can play a role, insulin and leptin resistance is primarily caused by a combination of factors that are epidemic in our modern lifestyle:
•A diet high in processed and refined carbohydrates, sugars/fructose, refined flours, and industrial seed oils
•Insufficient everyday physical activity. Leading a sedentary lifestyle causes biochemical changes that predispose you to insulin and leptin resistance
•Chronic sleep deprivation. Studies have shown that even one night of disturbed sleep can decrease your insulin sensitivity the next day and cause cravings and overeating
•Environmental toxins. Exposure to BPA, for example, can disrupt your brain’s regulation of weight
•Poor gut health. Studies indicate that imbalances in your gut flora (the bacteria that live in our gut) can predispose you to obesity and insulin and leptin resistance. According to Kresser, gut inflammation can even affect your cholesterol more directly.

“There are some studies that show that lipopolysaccharide, which is an endotoxin that can be found in some types of bacteria in the gut… If the intestinal barrier is permeable, which shouldn’t be, of course, some of that lipopolysaccharide can get into your bloodstream. LDL particles actually have an antimicrobial effect. So, LDL particles will increase if there is some endotoxin going into the bloodstream… causing a direct increase of LDL particles.”

The culmination of the synergistic effect of these factors will put pressure on your liver to increase production of lipoproteins, more specifically: low-density lipoproteins (LDL), (i.e. more “boats in the river”), which increases your heart disease risk.

Another way leptin resistance contributes to increased LDL particle number, and hence increased heart disease risk, is as follows: When a cell signals that more cholesterol is needed for the cell to perform its function, LDL receptor activity increases. The LDL receptor sits on the outside of cells, and its job is to act as a docking station for the LDL particles floating around in your blood. Once “docked” into the LDL receptor, the LDL particle can deliver the nutrients it carries into the cell.

However, if you’re leptin resistant, the LDL receptor doesn’t get the message. It’s not sensitive enough to hear the signal. And without LDL receptor activity, the LDL particles floating around are never encouraged to “dock” into the receptor, and this too directly increases LDL particle numbers.

Besides insulin and leptin resistance, another common cause of elevated LDL particle number is poor thyroid function. T3 hormone (which is the most active form of thyroid hormone) is required to activate the LDL receptor, which is what takes LDL out of the circulation. If you have poor thyroid function or low T3 levels, then your LDL receptor activity will be poor, and you’ll have a higher number of LDL particles. The good news is, if this is the cause for your elevated LDL particle number, then addressing your thyroid problem will reduce it.

How Intermittent Fasting Can Help You Address High Cholesterol

I’m particularly fond of coconut oil because I believe it’s a useful therapeutic agent to help you implement intermittent fasting, which is perhaps one of the most valuable stealth strategies to get healthy—largely because it can radically improve your insulin and leptin resistance. In that respect, intermittent fasting is also a powerful way to address cholesterol and LDL particle number. Kresser explains:

“Insulin resistance and leptin resistance are widespread problems… and that’s one of the main driving forces in elevated LDL particle number. The reason for that is that LDL particles carry not only cholesterol, but also triglycerides, fat-soluble vitamins, and antioxidants… If you have high triglycerides, which you often will when you have insulin or leptin resistance, then that means a given LDL particle can carry less cholesterol, because it’s stuffed full of triglycerides. Your liver will then have to make more LDL particles to carry that same given amount of cholesterol around the tissues and cells in your body.

…Intermittent fasting is one of many ways to improve insulin sensitivity and leptin sensitivity, because there are certain processes in the body that engage after you haven’t eaten for a period of time. They’re all evolutionary mechanisms that are designed to help us survive in periods of food scarcity. You have an upregulation in metabolism basically, and… your insulin and leptin sensitivity improves.

It’s a really good way for people to lose weight, which again will improve insulin and leptin sensitivity, because obesity is both a cause and an effect of leptin resistance. I think it’s a really great strategy for most people; I do use it in my practice a lot.

The only kind of caution might be in people who have pretty severe fatigue, or are suffering from some kind of chronic illness, and need to eat more often. But for most people, I think it’s great.”

Coconut oil is most beneficial during the transition period from burning sugar to burning fat, as it will not upset insulin and leptin resistance. It’s neutral, yet it is rapidly metabolized and provides a good source of energy. Fatigue can be a real challenge, so if you want to try intermittent fasting but worry about flagging energy levels, coconut oil can be a useful tool. You can even have some coconut oil during your fasting period as it will not interrupt the beneficial processes that are happening while you’re fasting. It’s mainly protein and carbohydrate that will interrupt those processes. So having a little coconut oil in the morning might help you make it through until you break your fast for your first meal. Kresser recommends putting it in a smoothie, or even adding it to your tea or black coffee, if the idea of eating the coconut oil by itself is too unappealing.

Tying It All Together

Remember, the most important test you can get to determine your heart disease risk is the NMR lipoprofile, which measures your LDL particle number. This test also has other markers that can help determine if you insulin resistance, making it doubly useful. If you have insulin or leptin resistance, you’ll have an increase in LDL particle number and specifically the number of small LDL particles. The NMR lipoprofile measures that too, and gives you an objective score called the lipoprotein insulin resistance score or LP–IR. If your LP–IR is above the recommended reference range, chances are that you have leptin and insulin resistance.

Insurance usually covers the test, but if you order it yourself from Direct Labs or Access Labs, it costs about $100. If your LDL particle number is high, Kresser recommends searching for the cause. Again, two of the major ones are insulin and leptin resistance, which the NMR test will alert you to. The third common cause is poor thyroid function. Chronic infections could also be a factor.

Once you’ve determined the cause, you need to address those. Remember, statin drugs CANNOT address insulin or leptin resistance, and they do NOT affect particle size or particle number. They ONLY suppress cholesterol production in your liver, which can make your situation worse. Kresser advises paying careful attention to the following seven factors when addressing insulin and leptin resistance:
1.Diet: shifting toward the nutrient-dense-food-based diet with higher fat and lower carbohydrate intake
2.Intermittent fasting may be useful
3.Make sure you’re getting enough sleep
4.Exercise regularly, and make sure to incorporate high intensity interval exercises, as they are particularly effective for improving insulin and leptin sensitivity
5.Avoid sitting too much, as that can have a direct adverse effect on insulin and leptin sensitivity
6.Minimize your exposure to environmental toxins as much as possible
7.Optimize your gut health by eating fermented foods, soluble fiber that enriches the beneficial gut flora, and avoiding food toxins and things that harm your gut flora

As you can see, the things you need to do to treat your high LDL particle number are identical to what you would do to promote optimal health in general.

“To me, that just makes sense. The things that keep us healthy in one department or one area are more likely to make us healthy in another. And this is no different from that,”Kresser says.

For more information, see Kresser’s website: ChrisKresser.com. He also has an Internet radio show called Revolution Health Radio, available on his site and on iTunes, where he discusses these topics on a regular basis. His web site also offers educational programs, including a nine-week long self-guided multimedia course called The High Cholesterol Action Plan, which goes into a whole lot more detail on the subject.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Sugar-laced soda increases diabetes risk by 22 percent

Drinking a can of sugar-laced soda a day will raise your risk of developing diabetes by 22 percent! According to a new study out today evidence suggests that just one 12-ounce serving of a sugar-sweetened beverage can significantly raise the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

What’s interesting about this this is that since most of the research on the evil effects of soda has been done on people in the US, researches at the Imperial College of London set up to seek a link between soda consumption and type 2 diabetes in Europeans as well.

The British researchers used 15 years of data compiled from over 27,000 people from seven European countries. Over that 15-year period, more than 40 percent of those people developed type 2 diabetes and those who said they consumed at least one soda or similar sweet drink showed an 18 percent higher risk of developing the disease! When they took out factors such as weight and body mass index, the risk rose to 22 percent!

Coincidentally, these findings were right in line with the US studies showing a 25 percent percent increased risk of type 2 diabetes when consuming one soda per day. When the researchers looked at the diet soda drinkers in the group, they noticed something quite striking. When they factored in body weight and exercise, they healthy weight people in the group who drank diet soda were no more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than non-soda drinkers. This basically proves that you are at least 22 percent more likely to develop diabetes if you drink a can of soda each day. Scary stuff!

How can just one little soda do so much damage?
Sweetened drinks are the largest contributor to empty calories and processed sugar in both the American and European diets according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The sweeteners in these drinks along with artificial colors, flavors and phosphoric acid all have negative effects on the human body.

What about other sweet drinks like fruit juice?
Fruit juice consumption was not linked to diabetes incidence. In fact, natural drinks with sugars and flavors occurring naturally such as organic fruit juices have shown no evidence of increased risk of diabetes in otherwise healthy people.
Patrick Wolfe, a statistics expert from University College London who was not involved in the research, said the message from its results was clear.

“The bottom line is that sugary soft drinks are not good for you – they have no nutritional value and there is evidence that drinking them every day can increase your relative risk for type 2 diabetes,” he said in an emailed comment.
Clearly the proven negative effects of soda should be enough to scare you into reconsidering taking a sip of the potentially lethal surgery poison drink.

Sources for this article include:

http://abcnews.go.com

http://www.foxnews.com

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/259604.php

About the author:
Chris Sumbs is a natural health activist and enjoys writing about the natural lifestyle and healing benefits of holistic remedies. Visit his website www.undergroundhealth.com for more great articles on these topics. You can also shop for thousands holistic remedies in the Underground Health Natural Health Store or visit the Underground Health Facebook Page.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

The lemon detox diet – a recipe that really works

Ever since Beyonce Knowles was associated with the Lemon Detox diet, there has been a surge of interest in this particular program. Also known as the Master Cleanse, this detox diet has been around for almost 50 years and has seen variations on its recipe and program. It’s effectivity in breaking down built up toxins in the body while contributing to short term weight loss has made it a popular option for a spring detox.

Reviewing the Master Cleanse
The Lemonade Detox diet first became effective, strangely, when its creator, Stanley Burroughs, recommended it for the healing of stomach ulcers. In his book “The Master Cleanser”, he goes on to share how he first came to test the Master Cleanse diet on a patient who was suffering from ulcer for three years. Left with no other recourse, the patient approached Stanley who recommended that he undertake the cleanse. After eleven days, the patient was totally healed to the amazement of the doctors. Many other cases followed with same consistent and astounding results corrected within ten days. Of particular note also was that those undergoing the Master Cleanse also experienced a reduction in weight.

If there have been doubts as to the veracity of Stanley Burrough’s claim of the Lemon Detox diet’s effectivity, there have been testimonies over the years of its efficacy. Of recent vintage is Tom Woloshyn’s work, “The Master Cleanse Experience”, published by Ulysses Press in 2009. This book briefly mentions Woloshyn’s experience in advising clients who has undergone the Master Cleanse program and provides among other insights health benefits which include better sleep, positive outlook, clarity of mind and freedom from addictions. He, thus, advocates keeping a journal to monitor developments as well as a reference for future use when undergoing the program for the second or many more times over.

The Master Cleanse operates on the principle that, for disease to be addressed, cleansing must be undertaken. Simplifying and correcting disorders through this process is actually a way of correcting every disease. Developments in nutrition and science have clearly identified improper diet, negative mental attitudes and inadequate exercise as the factors that create the conditions to produce toxin build up over time. That is why the Master Cleanse is not an end to itself. It is actually just the tip of a long chain of healthy decisions of those who wish to undertake it. Observing a healthy diet, regular exercise as well as stress reduction is essential in maintaining the gains that the Master Cleanse Detox diet can offer.

Surrendering to the process
Undergoing a detox diet is just like preparing for a marathon. It is necessary to keep sight of your goals or you stand to be cast in the wayside, a victim of your doubts. Tom Woloshyn offers this delightful insight when encouraging first timers who wish to undertake the Master Cleanse, fully knowing its side effects firsthand. Defining the outcome after having identified where you are, and what you want to achieve is the next step to achieving the goal you have set for yourself.

According to Woloshyn, some people prepare themselves before undergoing the detox by going on a vegetarian diet. It’s less stressful on the body and makes the transition to the Master Cleanse easier. For those who regularly take coffee or soda drinks, a gradual reduction in intake are recommended as well as taking pantothenic acid (vitamin B-5) to help prevent the onset of headaches brought about by caffeine withdrawal.

People who have undergone organ transplants as well as those on immune suppressant drugs cannot take the fast. Woloshyn warns that the cleanse stimulates the immune system while effectively inhibiting the results of the drugs, this combination will most likely lead to the organ transplant being rejected by the body.

How to do the Master Cleanse
The Lemon Detox diet is a cleansing program and encourages only the intake of lemonade made from the following ingredients: lemons, pure maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water for a minimum of ten days only.

To create the mixture, mix the ingredients in the amount instructed by Burroughs and drink a minimum of at least six to twelve glasses of the concoction daily through out the day. Drink the lemonade whenever hunger pangs strike.

A laxative must be taken in the morning and then in the evening. Using a salt water flush instead of a morning laxative can also be availed of instead. However, be sure to observe at least three bowel movements in a day. This will ensure that the waste accumulated in the intestinal walls is totally removed.

Always enjoy the Master Cleanse lemonade drink fresh and do not subject it to microwave as doing so will minimize its effectiveness. For each successful day, the psychological need to eat is slowly overcome full, providing confidence and a sense of control that motivates the person undergoing the diet.

Breaking the Master Cleanse is just as critical as starting it. On day one coming off the fast, immediately after the end of the master cleanse, slowly introduce orange juice into the diet. Day two will see the introduction of vegetable soups and broths. Day three observe a diet of fruits and vegetables. Be careful not to overeat or eat too soon and drink plenty of water. Slowly ease your self to a normal diet and avoid meat, fish, milk and eggs.

After undergoing the Master Cleanse, it is advisable to eat wisely. The gains derived from the Master Cleanse diet will surely be a powerful foundation to change old habits and start a life free from disease.

The lemonade recipe
The original recipe by Stanley Burroughs produced fantastic results for almost 50 years. However, some have been promoting alterations of the original recipe. The problem with this arrangement is that they are done without understanding why the original ingredients work. Since the Master Cleanse is essentially a juice fast, adding shakes, cayenne pepper capsules or protein powder in an attempt to improve its efficacy is self defeating because it reduces the efficacy of the diet.

The purpose of the program is to give the digestive tract a ten day vacation, so adding things to be digested does not contribute to the objective of the diet. Stanley Burroughs in fact discourages the intake of supplements and vitamins during the program because it interferes with the body’s elimination system. Furthermore, the natural sources of vitamins and minerals already found in lemon and the maple syrup already provide for the body’s needs during the detox program.

Other alterations include mistakes in the ratio of water through modification of the original recipe and dilution. This modification defeats the purpose of the minimum 6 drinks a day because it is more than the amount of water required. It is best to remember that variations on the process and especially in the recipe will not produce the results that originally worked for the many that faithfully followed the original Master Cleanse program and lemonade recipe.

This is the classic single serve recipe provided in Stanley Burrough’s book:

2 (tbs). of lemon or lime

2 (tbs). of genuine maple syrup

1/10 tsp cayenne pepper

10 oz. water (hot or cold as preferred)

For those who cannot enjoy their lemonade, Tom offers this alternative:

1. Mix equal parts of lemon juice and maple syrup as a concentrate in a dark container. Keep this mixture cool.

2. Make enough concentrate for as long as you are incapable of making the fresh lemonade juice.

3. Every time you want a glass of lemonade, measure 4 tbs. of this mixture in a glass.

4. Add water and cayenne pepper, stir and drink. The maple syrup preserves the lemon juice and prevents oxidation of the vitamin C and enzymes.

Tom Woloshyn fondly recalled Stanley Burrough’s remarks. He was said to have repeated many times over a phrase most technical people use when instructing frustrated customers, “When all else fails, follow the instructions.” In order to ensure success and experience the benefits of the Master Cleanse Detox diet, it is essential to understand how to do the program properly. Faithfully following what has been prescribed is the first step in this direction.

Sources for this article:
http://www.b-organized.biz/download/master_cleanse.pdf
http://www.google.com.ph
http://themastercleanse.com/master-cleanse/lemonade-diet/
http://themastercleanse.org/the-lemonade-diet/

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

The U.S. government has, since at least 2004, used “professional actors” to depict victims in terror drills that simulate large-scale attacks.

According to this ABC News article from 2004, “professional actors will play the roles of victims.” In addition, a “virtual news network” will be created an operated in order to practice the dissemination of government propaganda during the event.

The use of “professional actors” to depict victims is especially telling, given that many Americans believe the government has used professional actors in events like Sandy Hook and the Boston marathon.

This analysis of the Boston marathon bombing claims a double amputee was an actor and that the blood on the scene was “Hollywood blood” designed to look bright red for the cameras. (Real blood is much darker…)

University professor James Tracy also argues that the Boston marathon bombing was pulled off with theatrical elements and wasn’t accurately portrayed in the media.

On the Sandy Hook side, many people say the “parent” Robbie Parker was an actor. This video appears to show him laughing and smiling while off camera, then magically transforming into a sad, tearful father once the cameras start rolling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKWgCRBR5qE

Here’s another compilation video showing Sandy Hook actors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_b9hh2lp3I

Regardless of whether you believe professional actors were involved in Sandy Hook or the Boston marathon bombing, the U.S. government openly admits they have used professional actors in nationwide terror drills.

Here’s another announcement from 2003 which also says:

Volunteers and professional actors will play the roles of victims, who will be rescued, diagnosed, decontaminated and treated.

Actors used to augment the propaganda
The use of professional actors doesn’t mean real people weren’t harmed or even killed in the staged attack. It only means that the actors are selected to appear on camera and give carefully rehearsed “testimony” that achieves the desired political goal of the event.

Sandy Hook, for example, was designed specifically to demonize all gun owners in America and ultimately repeal the Second Amendment. Because such a goal can never be achieved through reason and rational thinking, the strategy involved invoking raw emotion through the use of professional actors who played the role of bereaved parents.

In this way, professional actors are used to augment the propaganda, making sure the post-event news coverage delivers the desired message to the masses.

For example, the post-9/11 message under the Bush administration was that “America should give up its liberties to stop terrorism.” This message, propagandized through a number of theatrical events (such as the demolition of WTC building 7), was engineered to lead to the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, the DHS that still haunts us today was the spawned hellchild of 9/11 theatrics.

Flipping the script
Every false flag event in recent memory has been accompanied by a staged drill. In the middle of the drill, an actual bombing or other attack is carried out, and the script is suddenly flipped from a “drill” to a “terror attack.” All the assets that were set up for the drill — law enforcement presence, bomb-sniffing dogs and professional actors playing victims — suddenly become key elements in the national news broadcasts covering the “real” terrorist attack.

The drill-false-flag format is highly effective because patsies who are going to be blamed for the event are simply told, “You’re participating in a drill.” This is likely what happened to the two brothers accused of carrying out the Boston marathon bombings. Evidence clearly points to the possibility that they were FBI assets who were likely told they were taking part in a “drill.” We have already established that local law enforcement was informed of the existence of a drill… and that they shared this information with some participants in the marathon.

Even where drills aren’t used as a backdrop for carrying out staged false flag events, the drills still have the effect of indoctrinating the local populace to a police state presence. They get people used to seeing militarized goons running around pulling innocent people out of their homes in total violation of the Fourth Amendment.

It also gives the FBI insight on how local law enforcement will react to the terror plots actually being staged by the FBI itself. This is invaluable information necessary for formulating yet more domestic terror plots in order to keep the population in a never-ending state of unbridled fear and government obedience.

Whatever happens in the months ahead, just remember the government has already admitted, “professional actors will play the roles of victims.”

Yeah, we know.

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Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal the Obama administration is actively marketing the federal food stamp program (SNAP) to illegal immigrants. A Spanish-language flyer obtainer by Judicial Watch says, “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”

A copy of the document is viewable by clicking here.

“USDA is actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.

Although it’s far worse now, this has been going on for years. Back in 2006, Judicial Watch wrote in its Corruption Chronicles: “The United States Department of Agriculture is spending taxpayer money to run Spanish-language television ads encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for government-financed food stamps.”

Nearly $75 billion of taxpayer money is spent each year on federal food stamps, and it turns out some of that is alarmingly being handed out to illegal immigrants — people who contribute nothing to the federal tax base in America but who seem to be experts on collecting social welfare benefits of all kinds. If you are working for a living, you are buying food for illegals who are being actively recruited by Obama and the democratic party so that they will vote more democrats into office.

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) are reportedly working on a bill that would prevent the Obama administration from marketing food stamp benefits to illegals, reports Breitbart.com.

Food stamp expenditures explode under Obama
“Since President Obama came into office, SNAP participation has increased at 10 times the rate of job creation, the annual spending on SNAP has doubled, and one in seven Americans now participates in SNAP,” Thune said. “This explosive growth in both the SNAP enrollment and federal cost of the program is alarming and requires lawmakers to take cost-effective legislative control measures.”

As the U.S. government’s own website admits, the federal food stamp program (SNAP) has increased from just 2.8 million people in 1969 to nearly 47 million people in 2012. Expenditures have now reached nearly $75 billion a year.

As Natural News has previously reported, recipients of federal food stamp money can use it to buy soda pop, birthday cakes and even luxury seafood items. Soda companies are currently raking in $4 billion a year from federal food stamps.

As the grocery receipt on the right shows, people are using food stamps to purchase lobster and porterhouse steaks. Yep, it’s true: Food stamp recipients, who include illegal immigrants, are using taxpayer money to load up on lobster and steak.

It also turns out you don’t even need to be poor to collect federal food stamps. “A federal audit revealed last year that many who don’t qualify for food stamps now receive them under a new ‘broad-based’ eligibility program that disregards income and asset requirements,” reports Tom Fitton at Breitbart.com.

Food stamp recipients can buy all the junk food they want, but they are prohibited from buying vitamins or nutritional items. The big banks like JP Morgan Chase collect billions of dollars a year off the transaction fees supporting the SNAP program.

SNAP promotes junk food, big banks and illegals
The truth about the federal food stamp program is that it promotes junk food companies, transaction profits for big banks and of course illegal immigrants. JP Morgan, by the way, donated more than $800,000 to Obama’s 2008 election campaign, and after the election, Obama worked to explode the food stamp program, generating countless millions of dollars in transaction revenues for JP Morgan.

This program, administered by the USDA, is really nothing more than a nationwide handout program to bribe voters into voting for big government. While I have nothing against people relying on federal food stamps to help them through a temporary, short-term crisis, what we have today is generations of voters who live on food stamps and other welfare programs. Far from being programs of “compassion” to help those in need, these programs have ballooned into grotesque, unethical systems of lifelong dependency that destroy dignity and train voters to live like helpless victims rather than capable human beings.

But that’s the way the democratic party wants it, of course: the more people they can trap in a cycle of poverty living on handouts from big government, the more votes they can win at the ballot box. He who promises the most handouts wins the elections, it seems, and there’s no reversing it once the welfare hoards exceed 50% of the popular vote. We are dangerously close to that level right now, and once we cross it, there’s no turning back from financial suicide. The voters will simply vote themselves bigger and bigger handouts until financial parasitism guts the entire economy and leads us all into a financial apocalypse.

At that point, we’ll be dealing with what I call the food stamp zombie hoards — tens of millions of people who have no idea how to work for a living, partially lobotomized by junk foods and vaccines, roaming the streets in a desperate search for food because their government benefit cards stopped working. That scenario deserves another article altogether, so I’ll save the details for later.

But make no mistake: the Obama administration wants to put millions of illegals on federal food stamps, then it wants to grant them “amnesty” citizenship so that they keep voting more democrats into office. They, in turn, will keep pushing more and more handouts until the country finds itself trapped with an 80% tax rate (like France), a 50% unemployment rate, and a cultural invasion of former Mexican nationals who inherently support socialism, political corruption and the abolishment of individual liberties.

Spread the word: We must STOP the growth of SNAP and return it to sanity. For starters, no non-citizen should receive federal food stamp benefits. But that idea seems alien to today’s Washington bureaucrats who are trying as hard as possible to turn America into the next Mexico.

Read more
Corporate Cronyism and the Food Stamp Army
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/05/Corporate-Cronyism…

$7,000 worth of food stamps? And driving a Mercedes, too…
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/25/7k-worth-of-food-stamps-pe

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The intemperate, extreme nature of today’s education establishment just keeps getting more and more absurd, as evidenced by details of a recently filed lawsuit surrounding claims that a teacher was suspended after bringing garden-variety tools to class.

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, a civil rights-oriented public interest legal organization, filed the suit on behalf of Doug Bartlett, a 17-year veteran teacher, after he was suspended by officials at the Washington Irving Elementary School in Chicago for bringing wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers to class as part of a “tool discussion,” CNSNews.com reports.

Those tools, according to school officials, are weapons, you see, and as such, are not permitted on campus grounds.

‘Overreaction to a simple teaching demonstration
From the news site:

Despite the fact that all potentially hazardous items were kept out of the students’ reach, school officials at Washington Irving Elementary School informed…Bartlett, a 17-year veteran in the classroom, that his use of the tools as visual aids endangered his students. Bartlett was subsequently penalized with a four-day suspension without pay – charged with possessing, carrying, storing or using a weapon.

Again, you just can’t make this stuff up.

According to his complaint, Bartlett says he “suffered humiliation, embarrassment, mental suffering, and lost wages.” He is seeking “nominal compensatory damages,” as well as the removal of the suspension from his employment record.

“This school district’s gross overreaction to a simple teaching demonstration on basic tools such as wrenches and pliers underscores exactly what is wrong with our nation’s schools,” said Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead. “What makes this case stand out from the rest is that this latest victim of zero tolerance policies run amok happens to be a veteran school teacher.”

As stated, none of the students had any access to the tools. When they were not being used, they were secured in a toolbox on a high shelf that was clearly out of the reach of students. Bartlett’s only purpose in bringing them was to have a discussion with his students about their proper use.

Shame on him for wanting to teach kids how a screwdriver works.

“This is a suit for violation for Plaintiff’s constitutional due process rights resulting from the overzealous application of political correctness,” says the complaint, which also notes that two of the “tools” Bartlett brought with him were a pocket knife and box cutter – the “weapons,” per the school.

On August 8, 2011, in connection with a required “tool discussion” included in his teaching curriculum, Plaintiff displayed to his second-grade students several garden-variety tools, including a box cutter, a 2.25″ pocketknife, wrenches, screwdrivers, and pliers,” the complain says. “The visual aids were used in an effort to facilitate student understanding and remembrance of the curriculum. As he displayed the box cutter and pocketknife, Plaintiff specifically described the proper uses of these tools. Neither of these items was made accessible to the students.”

Be afraid. Be very afraid, kids.
It goes onto say that a complaint against Bartlett was lodged Aug. 19. He “was charged with possessing, carrying, storing, or using a weapon; negligently supervising children; inattention to duty; violating school rules; and repeated flagrant acts.”

The school’s definition of a weapon is extremely broad. According to the complaint, which quoted from the Student Handbook, a weapon is described as:

Any object that is commonly used to inflict bodily harm, and/or an object that is used or intended to be used in a manner that may inflict bodily harm, even though its normal use is not as a weapon.

Bartlett said he never had any intention of using any of his tools as weapons, nor did he think he was subject to suspension and other disciplinary action for bringing tools to his class for what turns out to be a mandatory part of school curriculum, according to the suit.

But in today’s breathless, hyper-paranoid “learning environment,” all we are really teaching our kids is to be afraid. Of everything.

That’s the real crime.

Sources for this article include:

http://cnsnews.com

www.rutherford.org

http://www.upi.com

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GE Crops Help Destroy Soil Fertility—Possibly Irreversibly

Genetically engineered crops and food products pose a threat to your health, resistance to disease, soil, and the global food supply. The biotech industry is riddled with corruption as companies clamor to sink their claws into the marketplace first, to get their seeds into farmers’ fields ahead of the rest.

This pervasive corporate rush to profit at any cost places all of humanity at risk, as the industry barrels ahead without even questioning the consequences of their technology. Industry leaders have failed to slow down long enough to even ponder the long-term consequences of irreversibly manipulating the DNA of your food. And what independent researchers are finding in this regard is truly disturbing and is probably just the tip of the iceberg in this genetics experiment of unprecedented scale.

When you see the term “biotech industry,” you might automatically think of Monsanto, the world’s Big Dog when it comes to GE seed. Monsanto has shown it will stop at nothing to bully its way across the globe, leaving a trail of planetary devastation in its wake.

Monsanto’s unsavory behavior even resulted in Forbes Magazine’s retraction of naming Monsanto “Company of the Year” in 2009, admitting they were “wrong on Monsanto… really wrong,” citing not only the problems with resistant superweeds but also investigations of antitrust issues and a potential flop in an expensive new variety of GE corn seed. But these high-tech seed wars have now gone global, extending well beyond our Western borders, and there is no better illustration than the latest scandal in India.

GE Scientists in India Found Guilty of Fraud and Cover Up

A group of scientists from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) have been found guilty of infecting and subsequently hiding the fact that indigenously created Bt cotton contained a Monsanto gene1. The variety, called BNBt, was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to the other Indian Bt cotton hybrids. Shortly after its release in 2009, its sales were suspended, and then hearings commenced.

It’s now been determined that the Indian scientists intentionally contaminated the GE cotton seed, because “accidental contamination cannot explain what happened.” ICAR condemned the scientists’ actions as “unethical, unscientific, and irresponsible.” It appears these shenanigans occurred in order to somehow speed up the seed’s release into India’s Bt cotton marketplace.2

The hearing’s outcome falls on the heels of a major decision in October 2012 by a committee, appointed by India’s Supreme Court, to end all GE field trials until certain conditions have been met. The Committee also recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all Bt food crops and a moratorium on field trials of herbicide-tolerant crops until an independent assessment has performed.

Perhaps India has finally had enough. Over the past 16 years, more than a quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide after being convinced to plant Monsanto’s genetically engineered seeds (especially Bt cotton), then having their crops fail, leaving them in financial ruin. Could this be a harbinger of times to come in the United States?

Latest Study Shows Roundup Creates Botulism Breeding Ground in Poultry

A new German study3 by the Institute of Bacteriology and Mycology examined the effects of glyphosate, the active agent in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, on the gut microbes of poultry. Some birds are heavily exposed to glyphosate when fed genetically engineered feed. The study’s findings are quite alarming. Researchers found that highly pathogenic bacteria resisted glyphosate, whereas beneficial bacteria likely succumbed to it.

What does this mean for you and me?

The essential implication is that poultry fed GE corn or soy would fall victim to dysbiosis, meaning unhealthy changes in their gut flora that threaten the health of the birds, as well as anyone consuming them. The good bacteria in the poultry gut, such as Enterococcus, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, are killed off, allowing the pathogenic or disease causing bacteria to flourish. Varieties such as Salmonella and Clostridium are very dangerous pathogens for humans. Clostridia bacteria are some of the deadliest, with strains including C. tetani (tetanus) and C. botulinum (botulism).

Chickens bred in CAFOs are already routinely fed antibiotics, arsenic, and even antidepressants, all of which have serious adverse health consequences. But this new study suggests CAFO chickens exposed to glyphosate may become breeding grounds for Botulism, Salmonella and other major pathogenic organisms.4

The implications of this become even clearer when you consider the recently released findings of a decade-long feeding study that showed GE feed can cause significant changes in the digestive systems, immune systems, and major organs (including liver, kidneys, pancreas, genitals and others) of rats, mice, pigs and salmon. If it’s doing all of that to animals and fish, what’s it doing to you? Clearly, the conventional agribusiness food system has emerged as a major threat to your health. But it may also be contributing to an even greater problem: the destruction of the world’s topsoil.

The World is Running Out of Topsoil

The world may be running out of usable topsoil, the layer that allows plants to grow. According to an article in Time World5, soil erosion and degradation rates suggest we have only about 60 remaining years of topsoil. Forty percent of the world’s agricultural soil is now classified as either degraded or seriously degraded; the latter means that 70 percent of the topsoil is gone. Our soil is being lost at 10 to 40 times the rate it can be replenished, and our food production systems are to blame, which epitomizes the term “unsustainable.” It takes decades or even centuries to regenerate significant levels of soil.

Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of our fresh water use. When the soil is unfit, water is wasted—it washes right through the soil and past the plant’s root system. We already have a global water shortage that’s projected to worsen over the next 20 to 30 years, so this is the last thing we need to compound it. Soil degradation is projected to cause 30 percent loss in food production over the next 20 to 50 years—while our global food demands are expected to increase by 50 percent over this span of time.

Many don’t realize that soil is alive and has an incredible diversity of microorganisms. One handful of soil contains more microbes than the number of people who have ever lived on our planet.

These organisms create a powerful synergy with the plants and recycle organic material, making the soil more resilient and better at holding water and nutrients, and better at nurturing plants. Microbes need carbon for food, and we’re depleting our soil of this element by using chemical fertilizers, overgrazing, over-ploughing, and burning stubble in fields to accelerate crop turnover. Add to this genetically engineered crops, and our soil is dealt another deathblow.

GE Crops Help Destroy Soil Fertility—Possibly Irreversibly

The latest science seems to suggest genetically engineered plant cultivation may seriously disrupt soil ecology by reducing microbial diversity, which decreases soil fertility over time—possibly irreversibly.6

As GE plants increasingly take over the major food-producing areas of the world, including the U.S., China, India, Argentina and Brazil, reduced soil fertility could lead to famine on a scale never previously seen. The mechanisms for this are just beginning to be understood, and what was recently only theory has inched closer to reality as science shines more light on the consequences of introducing genetically engineered organisms into the soil.

The mechanism goes something like this…

Special genetic elements (vector DNA) are present in all GE plants. This vector DNA enables unrelated microorganism species to mate, but can also be transferred to soil microorganisms. Soil fertility depends on the presence of a diverse blend of microorganisms, all serving different roles in balancing and optimizing the soil. But when unrelated species mate, the soil ecosystem loses diversity, which is proven to damage fertility.

Until recently, the transfer of genes between GE plants and soil bacteria was only theoretical. However, this mechanism has now been demonstrated by science, and it’s our soil’s worst nightmare. It should be noted that this same process of gene transfer has been shown to occur in your gastrointestinal tract when you eat GE foods—turning your intestines into a virtual pesticide factory.

Horizontal Gene Transfer Is Now Proven By Science

The following complications underscore the seriousness of the dangers introduced by cultivation of GE crops:
•DNA from GE plants is not readily broken down in the soil and can be taken up by soil particles and microbes. The accumulation of foreign DNA may lead to a cumulative loss of soil diversity over repeated harvests.
•Unlike the claims of Monsanto when it first approved GM crops, Bt genes (Bacillus thuringiensis) are not broken down, for the reasons already stated, so can accumulate in soil and potentially produce Bt toxins. These toxins may build up in the soil, further damaging the organisms crucial for soil fertility. Research from the New York University7 confirms that Bt toxins are not broken down by soil microbes and do indeed accumulate in soil; the toxins maintain their ability to kill insects, potentially creating superbugs that further endanger the ecosystem.
•GE DNA is able to merge with the DNA of other organisms to create new varieties of soil microorganisms that disrupt the ecological balance. These new organisms, if virulent enough, could spread widely via wind erosion and ground water to compromise soil fertility on a broader scale.
•A Swiss study8 showed that adult earthworms feeding on transgenic Bt corn lost 18 percent of their initial weight, suggesting GE DNA may have long-term toxic effects on earthworms. Earthworms are major decomposers of dead and organic matter in the soil and are major contributors to the recycling of nutrients. An earlier study9 showed that both earthworms and collembolans (another small soil-dwelling invertebrate) can be adversely affected by Bt crops.
•Its also been shown that glyphosate can be toxic to rhizobia, a nitrogen-fixing bacterium10. Nitrogen fixing bacteria are important because nitrogen is the nutrient most commonly deficient in soil.

GE crops are adversely affecting our soil biology in numerous ways. There are differences observed in the bacteria occupying plant roots and changes in nutrient availability. Many studies show glyphosate can have toxic effects on microorganisms and can stimulate them to germinate spores and colonize root systems. Glyphosate has also been shown to immobilize manganese, an essential plant nutrient. Overall, glyphosate diminishes the health and nutritional value of the plants it’s sprayed on, as well as the soil.

The two main types of GE foods—herbicide-tolerant crops and pesticide-producing crops—are both imprecise technologies riddled with unintended consequences, including hundreds to thousands of genetic mutations that have unknown effects on human health. Glyphosate and GE crops may be leading the human race over a cliff, as Dr. Don Huber explains in the following interview.

Download Interview Transcript

Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods

While California Prop. 37 failed to pass last November, by a very narrow margin, the fight for GMO labeling is far from over. The field-of-play has now moved to the state of Washington, where the people’s initiative 522, “The People’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act,” will require food sold in retail outlets to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients. As stated on LabelitWA.org:

“Calorie and nutritional information were not always required on food labels. But since 1990 it has been required and most consumers use this information every day. Country-of-origin labeling wasn’t required until 2002. The trans fat content of foods didn’t have to be labeled until 2006. Now, all of these labeling requirements are accepted as important for consumers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also says we must know with labeling if our orange juice is from fresh oranges or frozen concentrate.

Doesn’t it make sense that genetically engineered foods containing experimental viral, bacterial, insect, plant or animal genes should be labeled, too? Genetically engineered foods do not have to be tested for safety before entering the market. No long-term human feeding studies have been done. The research we have is raising serious questions about the impact to human health and the environment.

I-522 provides the transparency people deserve. I-522 will not raise costs to consumers or food producers. It simply would add more information to food labels, which manufacturers change routinely anyway, all the time. I-522 does not impose any significant cost on our state. It does not require the state to conduct label surveillance, or to initiate or pursue enforcement. The state may choose to do so, as a policy choice, but I-522 was written to avoid raising costs to the state or consumers.”

Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, they need support of people like YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply because we didn’t have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food companies. Let’s not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can, regardless of what state you live in.
•No matter where you live in the United States, please donate money to these labeling efforts through the Organic Consumers Fund.
•If you live in Washington State, please sign the I-522 petition. You can also volunteer to help gather signatures across the state.
•For timely updates on issues relating to these and other labeling initiatives, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.
•Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the Washington initiative.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

By Dr. Mercola

I’ve previously warned of the potential dangers of genetically engineered (GE) foods for many years now, pointing out that such crops might have wholly unforeseen consequences.

In recent years, such suspicions have increasingly proven correct, and now researchers have released yet another bombshell.

Genetic manipulation of crops, and more recently food animals, is a dangerous game that has repeatedly revealed that assumptions about how genetic alterations work and the effects it has on animals and humans who consume such foods, are deeply flawed and incomplete.

At present, the only way to avoid GE foods is to ditch processed foods from your grocery list, and revert back to whole foods grown according to organic standards.

Regulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently published a paper titled, “Possible Consequences of the overlap between the CaMV 35S promoter regions in the plant transformation vectors used in the viral gene VI in transgenic plants,”1 which has many questioning the safety of GE crops that have already been on the market for two decades.

One way to achieve a genetic modification in a plant is to piggyback a chosen gene on a plant virus, such as the Cauliflower Mosaic virus. Here, they discovered that the most commonly used genetic regulatory sequence (i.e. that which drives the gene expression within the plant), called CaMV 35S promoter, also encodes a gene fragment of the virus, in addition to the desired genetic trait being inserted.

The viral gene fragment in question is called Gene VI, and this encoding may have human health ramifications. According to EFSA,2 they’ve known all along that certain GE crops contained Gene VI, which belongs to the Cauliflower Mosaic virus.

This virus can infect a variety of different plants. It’s not a virus that can directly infect animals or humans. However, while the agency claims the virus poses no direct threat to animal or human health for this reason, others vehemently disagree.

According to an article in Independent Science News,3 written by plant pathology researchers Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson:4

“In general, viral genes expressed in plants raise both agronomic and human health concerns (reviewed in Latham and Wilson 2008.)5 This is because many viral genes function to disable their host in order to facilitate pathogen invasion. Often, this is achieved by incapacitating specific anti-pathogen defenses.

Incorporating such genes could clearly lead to undesirable and unexpected outcomes in agriculture. Furthermore, viruses that infect plants are often not that different from viruses that infect humans.

For example, sometimes the genes of human and plant viruses are interchangeable, while on other occasions inserting plant viral fragments as transgenes has caused the genetically altered plant to become susceptible to an animal virus…

Thus, in various ways, inserting viral genes accidentally into crop plants and the food supply confers a significant potential for harm.”

Hazard to Public Health has Not Been Ruled Out

GE crops affected include Roundup Ready soybeans, MON810 maize, and NK603 maize, the latter of which was recently linked to massive tumor growth and organ damage in rats in a French lifetime feeding study. All in all, 54 out of 84 approved GE crops contain the toxic gene.

According to the featured article, the EFSA researchers admit the Gene VI fragments “might result in unintended phenotypic changes,”6 as similar fragments of this gene have previously been demonstrated to have independent activity.

“In other words, the EFSA researchers were unable to rule out a hazard to public health or the environment,” Latham and Wilson write.7

“…In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in GMO crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has belatedly discovered that the most common genetic regulatory sequence in commercial GMOs also encodes a significant fragment of a viral gene (Podevin and du Jardin 2012).

This finding has serious ramifications for crop biotechnology and its regulation, but possibly even greater ones for consumers and farmers. This is because there are clear indications that this viral gene (called Gene VI) might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.”

Total Recall is ‘the Only Reasonable Course of Action’

Latham and Wilson go on to discuss how a regulatory agency could go about announcing such a monumental screw-up. After all, GE crops have been approved and deemed “safe” for some 20 years, and EFSA admits it has known about Gene VI for some time.

One option would be to recall all affected GE crops, which could effectively spell the end to crop biotechnology as a whole. We know this is not going to happen in the US as biotech, Monsanto specifically, has leveraged the revolving door between industry and the federal regulatory agencies that are responsible for this type of monitoring. The classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse and federal agencies are simply not going to act because of this.

Another possibility would be to do a retrospective risk assessment of the CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences, “and hope to give it a clean bill of health.” A third option would be to evaluate the seriousness of the hazard by monitoring reports of harm. Unfortunately, this option has been and still is impossible to pursue, as not a single country has carried out any type of GE monitoring. In the US, we still don’t even have GE labeling, so reporting adverse health effects is a logistical impossibility.

“Unsurprisingly, EFSA chose option two,” Latham and Wilson write. “However, their investigation resulted only in the vague and unreassuring conclusion that Gene VI ‘might result in unintended phenotypic changes’… This means literally, that changes of an unknown number, nature, or magnitude may (or may not) occur. It falls well short of the solid scientific reassurance of public safety needed to explain why EFSA has not ordered a recall.”

I recommend reading the featured article8 in its entirety, as the researchers go into some detail about the known functions of Gene VI, and why it might indeed have repercussions for human health. These concerns include but are not limited to:
•Gene VI is an inhibitor of RNA silencing, which leads to aberrant gene expression in GE plants, with unknown consequences
•As a unique transactivator of gene expression, Gene VI could presumably result in the production of a variety of random proteins within cells. Such proteins could include allergens and toxins, in addition to harmless proteins. The end result would differ for each crop species
•Gene VI has two mechanisms by which it interferes with plant anti-pathogen defenses — one of which was unknown to EFSA researchers at the time their findings went to press. According to Latham and Wilson, “the discovery of an entirely new function for gene VI while EFSA’s paper was in press, also makes clear that a full appraisal of all the likely effects of Gene VI is not currently achievable”
•Plants expressing Gene VI exhibit gene expression abnormalities, which indicate that the protein produced by Gene VI functions as a toxin. The known targets of Gene VI activity are also found in human cells, so there is potential for this plant toxin to also have toxic effects on humans

According to Latham and Wilson, the retroactive risk assessment performed by EFSA clearly shows CaMV 35S promoter-containing GE crops have the potential to harm human health. Therefore, the only course of action left is to order a total recall — option number one, as discussed above.

“This recall should also include GMOs containing the FMV promoter and its own overlapping Gene VI,” they write.

Never Assume Anything — Especially When Tinkering with Genes!

The authors of the featured story make a really important point in their article — one that you’d be well advised to remember when it comes to discussions about safety:

“No-one knows, for example, what quantity, location or timing of protein production would be of significance for risk assessment, and so answers necessary to perform science-based risk assessment are unlikely to emerge soon.”

If you don’t even know what might be of significance, then how can you possibly assess risks? And if you cannot assess risk, how can you proclaim something is safe? They continue:

“It is perhaps the most basic assumption in all of risk assessment that the developer of a new product provides regulators with accurate information about what is being assessed. Perhaps the next most basic assumption is that regulators independently verify this information. We now know, however, that for over 20 years neither of those simple expectations have been met.

Major public universities, biotech multinationals, and government regulators everywhere, seemingly did not appreciate the relatively simple possibility that the DNA constructs they were responsible for encoded a viral gene.

This lapse occurred despite the fact that Gene VI was not truly hidden; the relevant information on the existence of Gene VI has been freely available in the scientific literature since well before the first biotech approval… We ourselves have offered specific warnings that viral sequences could contain unsuspected genes…9 The inability of risk assessment processes to incorporate longstanding and repeated scientific findings is every bit as worrisome as the failure to intellectually anticipate the possibility of overlapping genes when manipulating viral sequences.

…Even now that EFSA’s own researchers have belatedly considered the risk issues, no one can say whether the public has been harmed, though harm appears a clear scientific possibility. Considered from the perspective of professional and scientific risk assessment, this situation represents a complete and catastrophic system failure.”

Monsanto Company Joins WBCS

Ironically, while their GE products are increasingly being revealed as far from suitable for human consumption, Monsanto joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).10, 11 According to their January 22, press release:

“Monsanto, a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products that aim to improve farm productivity and food quality, joins WBCSD and is offering the WBCSD’s Business Ecosystems Training (BET) course globally for employees. The BET course will enhance employees’ awareness and understanding of the links between ecosystems and business.

‘…In joining the WBCSD, Monsanto is taking an important step along a continuum towards developing a more sustainable agriculture system – one that improves our daily lives, respects our global environment and recognizes the importance of the world’s small-holder farmers,’ said Peter Bakker, President, WBCSD. ‘We must find new ways to protect soils, enhance ecosystems and optimize land use in ways that are environmentally sound…'”

I can’t think of a company less suited for the job… As pointed out by Latham and Allison:

“A further key point relates to the biotech industry and their campaign to secure public approval and a permissive regulatory environment. This has led them to repeatedly claim, firstly, that GMO technology is precise and predictable; and secondly, that their own competence and self-interest would prevent them from ever bringing potentially harmful products to the market; and thirdly, to assert that only well studied and fully understood transgenes are commercialized.

It is hard to imagine a finding more damaging to these claims than the revelations surrounding Gene VI.

Biotechnology, it is often forgotten, is not just a technology. It is an experiment in the proposition that human institutions can perform adequate risk assessments on novel living organisms. Rather than treat that question as primarily a daunting scientific one, we should for now consider that the primary obstacle will be overcoming the much more mundane trap of human complacency and incompetence. We are not there yet, and therefore this incident will serve to reinforce the demands for GMO labeling in places where it is absent.”

Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods

While California Prop. 37 failed to pass last November, by a very narrow margin, the fight for GMO labeling is far from over. The field-of-play has now moved to the state of Washington, where the people’s initiative 522, “The People’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act,” will require food sold in retail outlets to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients. As stated on LabelitWA.org:

“Calorie and nutritional information were not always required on food labels. But since 1990 it has been required and most consumers use this information every day. Country-of-origin labeling wasn’t required until 2002. The trans fat content of foods didn’t have to be labeled until 2006. Now, all of these labeling requirements are accepted as important for consumers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also says we must know with labeling if our orange juice is from fresh oranges or frozen concentrate.

Doesn’t it make sense that genetically engineered foods containing experimental viral, bacterial, insect, plant or animal genes should be labeled, too? Genetically engineered foods do not have to be tested for safety before entering the market. No long-term human feeding studies have been done. The research we have is raising serious questions about the impact to human health and the environment.

I-522 provides the transparency people deserve. I-522 will not raise costs to consumers or food producers. It simply would add more information to food labels, which manufacturers change routinely anyway, all the time. I-522 does not impose any significant cost on our state. It does not require the state to conduct label surveillance, or to initiate or pursue enforcement. The state may choose to do so, as a policy choice, but I-522 was written to avoid raising costs to the state or consumers.”

Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, they need support of people like YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply because we didn’t have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food companies. Let’s not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can, regardless of what state you live in.
•No matter where you live in the United States, please donate money to these labeling efforts through the Organic Consumers Fund.
•If you live in Washington State, please sign the I-522 petition. You can also volunteer to help gather signatures across the state.
•For timely updates on issues relating to these and other labeling initiatives, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.
•Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the Washington initiative.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Genetic engineering (GE) of our food supply amounts to a massive science experiment being performed on mankind, without consent or full disclosure. Although the biotech industry continues to claim GE products are safe, the truth is that no one knows what the long-term effects will be, because no one has done the necessary studies.

The loudest proponents of GE are the ones who stand to profit the most, and they don’t seem terribly concerned about the human or environmental costs.

What do we know for certain? We know genetic engineering is riddled with unpredictable effects… so we should expect the unexpected.

You may not realize that this reckless genetic experimentation is not limited to your food supply. Besides being used to create drugs and “Frankenfish,” they’ve also created vaccine-containing bananas, goats that produce spider silk in their milk, venomous cabbage, chemotherapy chicken eggs, and even glow-in-the-dark cats.1

As creepy as some of these things are, the application that may have the greatest potential for global disaster are GE trees created to serve the desires of the paper industry.

Deforestation is already an enormous problem, and the last thing we need is to further stress our precious native forests and the flora and fauna that depend on them.

The documentary featured above discusses how GE trees may adversely impact ecological systems on a grand scale, with potentially catastrophic effects. A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees is hosted by Dr. David Suzuki,2 an award-winning geneticist and author of 52 books.

‘The Greatest Threat to Native Forests Since the Chain Saw’

As Dr. Suzuki explains, the problem with genetic engineering has to do with the fact that GE plants and animals are created using horizontal gene transfer (also called horizontal inheritance), as contrasted with vertical gene transfer, which is the mechanism in natural reproduction.

Vertical gene transfer, or vertical inheritance, is the transmission of genes from the parent generation to offspring via sexual or asexual reproduction, i.e., breeding a male and female from one species.

By contrast, horizontal gene transfer involves injecting a gene from one species into a completely different species, which yields unexpected and often unpredictable results. Proponents of GE assume they can apply the principles of vertical inheritance to horizontal inheritance, and according to Dr. Suzuki, this assumption is flawed in just about every possible way and is “just lousy science.”

Genes don’t function in a vacuum — they act in the context of the entire genome. Whole sets of genes are turned on and off in order to arrive at a particular organism, and the entire orchestration is an activated genome.

It’s a dangerous mistake to assume a gene’s traits are expressed properly, regardless of where they’re inserted. The safety of GE is only a hypothesis, and in science, initial hypotheses typically end up being wrong. GE foods are promoted as if they’ve been found to be safe, which is the farthest thing from the truth.

Why this rush to apply this science before testing it? The simple answer is, those promoting it stand to profit enormously from it. The timber, pulp, bioenergy, and fruit industries are rushing ahead with GE trees, with only their paydays in mind. As the film states:

“Genetic engineering of trees is the greatest threat to the native forests since the invention of the chain saw.”

Why Genetically Engineer Trees?

Trees as being genetically engineered to give them unnatural characteristics, such as the ability to kill insects, tolerate toxic herbicides, grow abnormally fast, or have altered wood composition. The paper pulp industry has to remove lignin from wood pulp before it can be used to make paper, which is an expensive part of the process. So, the biotech industry is working to create trees with lower lignin content. The problem is, lignin is what gives trees their structural integrity.

It’s what allows trees to stand strong in wind and other weather, and to withstand diseases and damage from insect and animal browsing. Low lignin trees are weaker and less able to withstand these environmental stresses. Dead low-lignin trees also decompose faster, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere more quickly, which contributes to climate change.

The best thing for trees is to not use them for paper. Paper doesn’t need to be made from wood pulp, because there are more Earth-friendly materials such as agricultural wastes, recycled material, hemp, tobacco and even banana leaves.

Fruit trees are being genetically engineered for disease resistance. However, contamination of wild and organic fruit trees by genetically altered DNA has already had devastating consequences on nearby groves. For example, GE papaya plantations have contaminated much of the organic and wild papaya trees in Hawaii.3 Nearly 20,000 papaya seeds from the Big Island and Oahu revealed GMO contamination. Eighty percent of the seeds tested were from organic farms, and the remainder were from wild trees and backyard gardens.

Contamination with GE DNA has caused many organic Hawaiian papaya growers to lose their plantations and/or their organic certification. Hawaiian GE papayas have now begun developing black spot fungus, so they have to be heavily sprayed with toxic fungicides every 10 days.

This is so typical of what happens to GE plants — they are weaker and more susceptible to disease and end up needing massive amounts of chemicals, usually in the form of herbicides and pesticides — to remain viable. This is particularly tragic because there ARE so many far superior alternatives. Later this year, I will be reviewing many of the newer high performance agriculture techniques that far surpass virtually ANY benefit of GMO technology. I am currently identifying the leading experts in the US in this area.

It is crucial to have an alternative to the increasingly pervasive GMO technology as the list of adverse health effects from these toxic chemicals is growing all the time. For example, the herbicide glyphosate (the active agent in Roundup) has been linked to miscarriages, premature births, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The only winner in this scenario is the biotech industry because it manufactures both the GE seeds and the toxic chemicals required to grow them. The biotech industry has created the problem, as well as the “solution” that makes them rich.

The Spread of Seed and Pollen Is Uncontrollable. Period.

Genetically engineered trees vastly differ from other annual GE crops like corn and soybeans because trees can live for decades and even centuries in the wild. Once GE trees escape the confines of their plantation, they are extremely difficult to eradicate. For this reason, the risks, regulation and assessment needs of GE trees are even greater than those of agricultural GE products like corn and soy.

Disrupting forest ecosystems endangers the health of the entire planet. Native forests have been called the “lungs of the earth,” providing food and wildlife habitats everywhere. Forests absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, filter water and release it back into the atmosphere. Many tree species, such as pines and poplars, can spread their pollen and seeds over great distances. Pollen can blow hundreds or even thousands of miles, opening the door for native forests to be dusted with GE pollen.

The contaminating of native forests is both inevitable and irreversible, according to the Global Justice Ecology organization.4 Some tree varieties are widespread throughout the world, and some are able to interbreed with similar species. Some tree types are highly invasive, such as Eucalyptus, a “bully” that has spread out of control across California. Once wild tree species are contaminated, GE trees could take over vast geographical areas, and there is no do-over! You can recall a bad drug, but you can’t recall a bad tree.

Industry’s Answer to Cross-Contamination: The Terminator Gene

The biotech industry realized tree contamination would be a problem, so they developed the “terminator gene.” This gene causes the plant to produce a toxin that’s supposed to prevent its seeds from being viable, thereby preventing cross-contamination. Like the Terminator’s promise “I’ll be back,” Mother Nature trumps human ingenuity when it comes to nature’s drive to reproduce. Even the originators of the terminator gene admit it’s impossible to ensure 100 percent sterility.

The problem is, even a small amount of slippage can spread sterility to our native forests.

Consider the scenario of a native forest sitting adjacent to a GE tree plantation. Once contaminated, 95 percent of the native forest trees may become sterile, meaning they would produce no nuts, no seeds, no fruit, and no flowers or pollen. This renders the forest uninhabitable to native wildlife and rapidly degrades the soil. This phenomenon is already being seen around the 100 to 150 GE tree test plots5 in the southern part of the US.

Monsanto’s Love Child, ArborGen

GE tree plantations may threaten to destroy global ecosystems and local farmers’ livelihoods, but they promise to make the biotech industry rich. Genetically engineered trees and other crops become the property of the company that patented the seeds from which they grew. Monsanto has stolen more than 15 million dollars from farmers whose crops were contaminated by no fault of their own.

Once a farmer’s crop is contaminated, they can be sued by Monsanto, which manufactures the majority of the world’s GE seed. Even if only one percent of the crop is contaminated, patent law dictates that Monsanto gains possession of 100 percent of the crop. If this patent law goes unchallenged, ALL of the world’s natural resources could end up owned exclusively by biotech industry magnates.

The majority of GE research and development on trees has come from a company called ArborGen, the industrial “love child” from a tryst between Monsanto, International Paper, Westvaco and Fletcher Forests.6 Although Monsanto dropped out of the partnership early on, ties between Monsanto and ArborGen remain.

Barbara Wells, who was ArborGen’s CEO and President from 2002 to 2012, spent 17 years with Monsanto and headed its RoundUp Ready Soy division in Brazil. Similar parallels exist with ArborGen’s new CEO, Andrew Baum, and its VP of Business and Product Development, David Nothmann — who also happens to serve on committees in the Department of Energy and USDA.

The government has doled out numerous grants — well over $1 billion — to bioenergy companies and scientists to further the development of new bioenergies, many of which center on GE. The USDA is doing everything it can to hasten the approval of GE technology and silence the opposition. According to Global Justice Ecology:

“In April 2011, the USDA announced a new plan that would allow biotech companies to conduct their own environmental assessments. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the USDA is responsible for studying the environmental risks of GMOs. Part of the strategy of the USDA’s new plan is to speed up the deregulation process and take it out of the public arena, reducing the ability of GMO watchdog groups to weigh in. This plan is a direct result of the numerous cases that the USDA has lost in court due to their poorly conducted environmental assessments of potentially dangerous GMOs.

On February 22, 2012, the USDA announced a plan to cut in half the review time for new GMO products from 3 years to 13-16 months. Part of this acceleration would be accomplished by accepting public comments after making the final decision in the Environmental Assessment, eliminating any real ability for the public to have input.”

Final Thoughts

GE tree plantations threaten to spoil native forests, displace local farmers, and destroy sustainable economies. Self-sufficient communities will be forced to leave their lands and find livelihoods elsewhere. Pollen and seeds from GE trees are impossible to control, even with “terminator gene” technology, and find a way to cross-pollinate wild trees with grim ecological consequences. Pollen from GE trees may also cause brand new allergies that we may or may not be able to successfully address. Despite the obvious dangers, the profit-driven biotech industry, with the full backing of the US government, is pushing GE trees forward with ever-increasing zeal. That said, there are some things YOU can do to help preserve our precious native forests:
•Refrain from buying paper products made from trees/wood pulp; instead, buy recycled paper (toilet paper, tissue paper, writing paper, computer paper); Greenpeace and NRDC have handy downloadable guides for buying recycled, Earth-friendly paper products
•Eliminate your need for toilet paper altogether by installing in a bidet
•Say no to napkins, especially when you’re handed a stack of them; use cleaning cloths instead of paper towels
•Cut back on printing; ask yourself if you really need to print a document; use both sides of a paper before tossing it; use old receipts for notes; reuse wrapping paper, or make your own from newsprint or magazines
•Opt out of the yellow pages7

For more information about GE trees, visit Global Justice Ecology. To sign the Petition to Prohibit GE Trees, or Donate to the Global Justice Ecology Project, visit globaljusticeecology.org/petition.php. And be sure to support GMO labeling campaigns.

Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods

While California Prop. 37 failed to pass last November, by a very narrow margin, the fight for GMO labeling is far from over. The field-of-play has now moved to the state of Washington, where the people’s initiative 522, “The People’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act,” will require food sold in retail outlets to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients. As stated on LabelitWA.org:

“Calorie and nutritional information were not always required on food labels. But since 1990 it has been required and most consumers use this information every day. Country-of-origin labeling wasn’t required until 2002. The trans fat content of foods didn’t have to be labeled until 2006. Now, all of these labeling requirements are accepted as important for consumers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also says we must know with labeling if our orange juice is from fresh oranges or frozen concentrate.

Doesn’t it make sense that genetically engineered foods containing experimental viral, bacterial, insect, plant or animal genes should be labeled, too? Genetically engineered foods do not have to be tested for safety before entering the market. No long-term human feeding studies have been done. The research we have is raising serious questions about the impact to human health and the environment.

I-522 provides the transparency people deserve. I-522 will not raise costs to consumers or food producers. It simply would add more information to food labels, which manufacturers change routinely anyway, all the time. I-522 does not impose any significant cost on our state. It does not require the state to conduct label surveillance, or to initiate or pursue enforcement. The state may choose to do so, as a policy choice, but I-522 was written to avoid raising costs to the state or consumers.”

Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, they need support of people like YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply because we didn’t have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food companies. Let’s not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can, regardless of what state you live in.
•No matter where you live in the United States, please donate money to these labeling efforts through the Organic Consumers Fund.
•If you live in Washington State, please sign the I-522 petition. You can also volunteer to help gather signatures across the state.
•For timely updates on issues relating to these and other labeling initiatives, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.
•Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the Washington initiative.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

A class of insecticide chemicals commonly applied to rapeseed, also known as canola here in the U.S., as well as sugar beets, corn, and various other crops is killing off bee populations across the globe, and a prominent environmental watchdog group is now demanding that these insecticides be immediately pulled from the market. As reported by the U.K.’s Daily Mail, a report issued by the U.K.’s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) confirms that neonicotinoid insecticides are to blame for mass bee die-offs.

The declaration by this prominent government advisory group comes following the release of data out of the E.U. showing that neonicotinoids contain compounds that interfere with bees’ central nervous systems, and thus cause them to become confused while pollinating. Eventually, bees affected by these chemicals lose their ability to navigate back to the hive, forgetting where they are and how to get home, which results in them starving and dying en masse.

Back in January, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) determined that neonicotinoids, which have been in use since the early 1990s, are directly responsible for triggering an epidemic of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) all around the world. The agency went on to express opposition to the further use of neonicotinoid insecticides, particularly with regards to plants that are attractive to bees. But the European Commission was ultimately unable to garner enough votes to successfully implement a two-year ban on the chemicals, which has prompted EAC to issue its own call for a ban.

“If farmers had to pollinate fruit and vegetables without the help of insects, it would cost hundreds of millions of pounds and we would all be stung by rising food prices,” says Joan Walley MP, chair of EAC, referring to the devastating losses that will occur in the absence of pollinating bees. “Defra (Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs) Ministers have refused to back EU efforts to protect pollinators and can’t even come up with a convincing plan to encourage bee-friendly farming in the U.K.”

UK, Germany primarily responsible for enabling continued ‘armageddon’ on bees
According to earlier reports, the European Commission was roadblocked in its attempt to protect bee populations by both the U.K. and Germany, which at the last minute failed to vote in favor of a two-year moratorium. The winners in the proposal’s defeat, of course, are chemical companies like Syngenta and Bayer CropScience, both of which have a vested interest in neonicotinoids. The losers are not only bees, but the global population at large, which will suffer from crop failures and eventually starvation.

“Britain and Germany have caved in to the industry lobby and refused to ban bee-killing pesticides,” Iain Keith from the non-profit environmental group Avaaz is quoted as saying by the U.K.’s Guardian. “[The] vote flies in the face of science and public opinion and maintains the disastrous chemical armageddon on bees, which are critical for the future of our food.”

Sources for this article include:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk

http://www.naturalnews.com/035652_pesticides_honey_bees_ban.html

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.