Showing posts with label Foods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foods. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Tell Tyson to Stop Torturing Pigs


For three weeks I lived a lie to expose the truth while working undercover at a Tyson hog factory farm in Oklahoma. What I saw was a living nightmare.

Thousands of pregnant pigs spent nearly their entire lives crammed into cages so small they could barely move. They couldn’t turn around, walk or even lie down comfortably.

 I saw pigs with open wounds and bloody pressure sores from rubbing against the bars of their metal cages or lying on hard concrete.

Pigs would constantly ram their heads against their tiny stalls or spend hour after hour, day after day, biting the bars of their cages out of frustration.

 These intelligent and social animals were literally driven mad in these hellish conditions.

I also saw workers violently slamming piglets headfirst into the concrete and leaving them to suffer and slowly die.

 Some of the piglets were spiked against the ground like footballs.

 I found one piglet still conscious and breathing in a pile of dead piglets. Nobody bothered to make sure she was dead before just throwing her away.

Piglets had their tails cut off and their testicles ripped out of their bodies without any painkillers.

 Sick and injured pigs with severe, bleeding wounds or infections were left to languish without veterinary care.

I saw workers gouge the eyes of pigs, violently hit them with wooden boards, and in one case, even throw a heavy bowling ball at a pig’s head.

 Such sadistic cruelty was widespread at this Tyson factory farm.While this brutality and neglect is shocking,

 I think the worst abuse these animals endure is being immobilized in tiny, maggot-infested gestation crates.

 Animal welfare experts around the world agree that these crates are inherently cruel and should be phased out. In fact, gestation crates are so cruel they have been banned in nine U.S. states, as well as in the entire European Union.
Responding to consumer concerns, nearly every major food provider in the country, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Chipotle, Safeway, Kroger, Kmart and Costco, have demanded their suppliers do away with these cruel crates.
Major pork producers, such as Smithfield and Hormel, have committed to phasing out gestation crates, and Cargill is already 50 percent crate-free.
But not Tyson.

Tyson continues to torture pigs by cramming them in cages barely larger than their own bodies for nearly their entire lives.

Thank you.

"Pete"

Undercover Investigator

Okay, so exactly where is Animal Control or any of the animal rights groups here on this?  Why are they ignoring these kinds of issues but making issues out of areas that are not real issues at all against regular people?  Because it's all a smoke screen?  The above is the reason we are supposed to have animal rights groups.  Bottom line here is we are talking about food.  We should be taking better care of the stock of food we eat.  There is no reason to torture pigs, in fact it's unhealthy for us that we do so as it does cause a contamination of our food supply.  

  The answer here is simple.  Never buy Tyson pork products.  Put them out of the pork business.  It's not up to government to do something about this.  It's up to the people who are informed to vote with our dollars the correct way.  If you support this kind of behavior, buy Tyson pork.  If you do not support this kind of behavior, do not buy Tyson anything.  Constitutional law prevents the government from getting involved here, but they do it anyway.  Government is not supposed to recognize groups of any form, yet we all know that this right of the people has been well usurped.  That does not mean we are still not in control.  Again, do not buy Tyson products if you do not support this kind of behavior.

  
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Oreos Are Found to Be as Addictive as Cocaine

English: Double Stuf Oreos, by Nabisco.
English: Double Stuf Oreos, by Nabisco. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When you eat refined processed sugars, they trigger production of your brain's natural opioids -- a key ingredient in the addiction process. Your brain essentially becomes addicted to stimulating the release of its own opioids as it would to morphine or heroin.
This addictive nature of sugar and processed food has again been confirmed by a psychology professor and a team of students at the College of Connecticut,1, 2who showed that Oreo cookies are just as addictive as cocaine or morphine.
The study, which was designed to investigate the potential addictiveness of high-fat/high-sugar foods, also found that eating Oreos activated more neurons in the rat brain’s pleasure center than exposure to illicit drugs did. According to professor Schroeder:
“Our research supports the theory that high-fat/ high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do. It may explain why some people can’t resist these foods despite the fact that they know they are bad for them.”
The idea for the study originated with neuroscience major Jamie Honohan, who wanted to know how the high prevalence of junk foods in low-income neighborhoods might contribute to the obesity epidemic.
Indeed, it’s quite revealing to note that, in contrast to third-world countries, in the US the poorest people have the highest obesity rates. This seeming contradiction is, I believe, a clear indication that the problem stems from the diet itself.
Something in the cheapest and most readily available foods is creating metabolic havoc, and that’s exactly what researchers keep finding. As reported by Connecticut college:
“...Oreos activated significantly more neurons than cocaine or morphine. 'This correlated well with our behavioral results and lends support to the hypothesis that high-fat/ high sugar foods can be thought of as addictive,' said Schroeder.
And that could be a problem for the general public, says Honohan. ‘Even though we associate significant health hazards in taking drugs like cocaine and morphine, high-fat/ high-sugar foods may present even more of a danger because of their accessibility and affordability,’ she said.”
Please note that I do not agree with the comment that everything that is considered high-fat is bad for you. Oreo cookies and virtually every other processed snack are bad because they use highly processed omega-6 vegetable oils, the wrong type of fat. However it is possible to make a healthy high-fat snack using oils like coconut oil.

Processed Foods Are DESIGNED to Be Addictive

Indeed, scientific research into the addictive nature of certain foods, combined with shocking “insider” exposés,3 tells us that Americans are not necessarily lacking in self control when it comes to their food consumption. Rather, food companies have perfected food concoctions that are addictive. And they know it.
Most people blindly believe that food companies will do the right thing; that they would never produce food that might be toxic or harmful. This, we’ve learned is not the case.
The food industry is well aware of its role in creating obesity, and they’re not ignorant as to the reason why Americans can’t seem to get enough junk food. They even insist on selling foods to the American market with ingredients that have been banned for health reasons in other countries...
Most processed foods are actually created to be addictive—whether we’re talking about cookies or pasta sauce—through the masterful use of addictive ingredients like salt, fat, sugar and a wide variety of proprietary flavorings.
In a previous New York Times article,4 investigative reporter Michael Moss wrote about the extraordinary science behind taste and junk food addiction, and how multinational food companies struggle to maintain their “stomach shares” in the face of mounting evidence that their foods are driving the health crisis.
In it he mentions a 1999 meeting between 11 CEOs in charge of America’s largest food companies, including Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars, where their role in the increasingly poor health of Americans was addressed head-on. Moss writes in part:
“James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury... was engaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly grim picture of the public’s ability to cope with the industry’s formulations —

From the body’s fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns.“

SHOCKING! EU Approves Health Claim for Fructose

With everything we now know about the metabolic disaster that is fructose, it’s absolutely SHOCKING to learn that the European Union has approved a health claim for fructose,5 slated to take effect as of 2014. Many of my readers are scattered through the EU nations, and for you, understanding the ramifications of this label is crucial.

As of 2014, food manufacturers that replace at least 30 percent of the glucose and/or sucrose content in their food with fructose will be allowed to put a health claim on their product, stating that it has a positive effect on carbohydrate metabolism and insulin sensitivity.
There’s no doubt in my mind that such a health claim will promote an avalanche of chronic disease, as food manufacturers start switching from the lesser to the greater of two evils... As reported by Ingredients Network:6
“[F]ood and beverage manufacturers can expect a healthy upward surge in sales for products with fructose from the 2nd of January 2014 when the European Union’s fructose health claim comes into effect. ...[T]he fructose declaration promises to be truly ground breaking for food and beverage manufacturers. Manufacturers who substitute at least 30 percent of glucose or sucrose with fructose can now claim that
‘Consumption of foods containing fructose leads to a lower blood glucose rise compared to foods containing sucrose or glucose.’ ...fructose’s ability to emphasize fruity flavors also makes the news particularly favorable for manufacturers of beverages, fruit preparations, fruit flavored ice-cream, yogurts and more.

Since the EU’s game-changing step, validating fructose benefits, the industry’s attention has focused with increased urgency on the opportunities presented by incorporating non-GMO crystalline fructose into different food and beverages products...”

Why Fructose Is Worse for You Than Other Sugars

One of the primary problems with refined fructose is that it is isocaloric but not isometabolic. What this means is that while you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or any other nutrient, including glucose, the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count.
While it is true that refined fructose creates a lower glycemic response immediately after eating it, compared to sucrose or glucose, to say that it is therefore healthier for you is a gross and seriously misleading claim that wholly ignores its overall metabolic consequences.
In short, the fact that refined fructose produces a lower immediate glycemic response is completely irrelevant, because the overall metabolic effects are far more destructive. In my view, this label is dangerous, and may set the EU up for an out-of-control spiral of chronic disease.
Refined fructose actually affects your body in ways similar to alcohol, hence the rise in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease—and, again, addictionFructose and ethanol both have immediate, narcotic effects associated with their dopaminergic properties. In the same way that alcohol can lead to the downward spiral of compulsive overconsumption, fructose tends to generate an insatiable and intense sensation of pleasurable sweetness, often driving us to consume far more than our body can handle; even while it damages multiple organ systems.
The EU Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies even spells out the consequences in their Opinion paper,7 while still agreeing with the proposed health claim for fructose:
“The Panel considers that in order to bear the claim, glucose or sucrose should be replaced by fructose in sugar sweetened foods or beverages. The target population is individuals who wish to reduce their post-prandial glycaemic responses. The Panel notes that high intakes of fructose may lead to metabolic complications such as dyslipidaemia, insulin resistance and increased visceral adiposity.“ [Emphasis mine]

What You Need to Know About Fructose versus Glucose Metabolism

Again, while refined fructose creates a lower glycemic response in the short term, compared to other sugars, in the long term, it causes greater metabolic havoc than sugar. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in scientific studies. One of the most recent ones, published in the journal Nature,8 again concluded that while refined fructose and glucose have the same caloric value, they are metabolized differently, and fructose causes more harm of the two. Below is a summary of the main differences between glucose and fructose metabolism, which explains why I keep repeating that fructose is by far the worst type of sugar there is:
With fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percentWhen you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!
Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is "burned up" immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fatThe metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout
The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat, both in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetesGlucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin, resulting in overeating
Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do thisIn addition to fructose's dopamine modulating activity, there appears to be afructose-opiate connection. While both glucose and fructose are capable of creating pain killing effects, researchers have found that fructose is more potent than glucose in accomplishing these effects, suggesting it may be more addictive

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/10/30/oreos-fructose-consumption.aspx  Visit Mercola for more information and videos on this topic.
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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

GMO Wheat Found - Detrimental To World Health?

A variety of foods made from wheat.
A variety of foods made from wheat. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Wheat
Wheat (Photo credit: Big Grey Mare)
By Dr. Mercola
Monsanto has really done it this time.

As recently reported by CNBC1 and other media outlets,23 an unapproved strain of genetically engineered (GE) wheat has been found growing on a farm in Oregon. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the anomaly on May 29.
As it turns out, the Roundup Ready (i.e. glyphosate-resistant) strain of wheat was developed by Monsanto and field tested in 16 different states between 1998 and 2005.
Plans to bring it to market were abandoned due to opposition against genetically engineered wheat. Many countries importing US wheat do not permit GE ingredients in their food, or require such foods to be labeled.
About 50 percent of the wheat grown in the US is exported. The finding of illegal GE wheat contamination may dramatically alter this ratio however.
Japan and Korea has already suspended orders of US wheat4 in response to the findings. The EU has ordered member states to test imported wheat for contamination.

The economic impact to wheat farmers could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Washington and Kansas wheat farmers have already filed lawsuits against Monsanto due to the immediate harm this disaster has created.

The effects will not be limited to wheat, as importing countries question what other genetic experiments may have escaped the lab and contaminated natural varieties. Monsanto has clearly stated they will leverage the fact they followed government protocol and therefore cannot be held accountable for this mess. The biotech industry is also defending Monsanto, suggesting 'activists' must have set them up.

The biotech industry has so strongly infiltrated and influenced the government agriculture and 'health' agencies they should be considered subsidiaries.

How Did Unapproved GE Wheat Survive More than a Decade After Last Field Trial?

Monsanto and other biotech companies have repeatedly promised that their creations will not escape its intended confines. Today, after hundreds of farmers have been sued for patent infringement after Monsanto’s patented seeds were found growing where they weren’t supposed to, we know how ridiculous such assertions are.
The present situation is even more disturbing, as it shows that field trials alone might have the potential to cause permanent cross-contamination. During a seven-year period, between 1998 and 2005, field tests were conducted in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming.5
Monsanto resumed field trials of Roundup Ready wheat last year, planting 150 acres in Hawaii. Furthermore, according to a report by Bloomberg:6
“Another permit allows Monsanto to test wheat with multiple traits, including Roundup tolerance, on 300 acres in North Dakota this year. Monsanto said May 29 in a statement that it ended its program to develop Roundup Ready wheat nearly a decade before the USDA announced this week that the experimental crop was discovered growing on an Oregon farm. The Roundup Ready wheat in the new field trials is 'an entirely different event' than the escaped crop reported by the USDA, Monsanto said.
'This research is still in the very early phases and at least a decade away from commercial approval,' Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said in an e-mail response to questions today. 'The Roundup Ready wheat project that is the subject of the USDA report was previously discontinued.'”
So, by their own admission, Monsanto agrees that the presence of GE wheat in Oregon is not due to any recent activity on their part, but must be the result of escaped wheat going back to field tests well over a decade ago! I wonder if they even realize how significant such an admission is as it seems to be proof positive that they have no control over what happens to their products. No GE wheat seed was ever permitted to be sold, and the last field trial in Oregon was in 2001. As to how the farmer made the discovery in the first place, NPR7 reports:
“About a month ago, a farmer in eastern Oregon noticed some wheat plants growing where he didn’t expect them, and they didn’t die when he sprayed them with Roundup. The farmer sent samples of these curious plants to Carol Mallory-Smith, a scientist at Oregon State University who has investigated other cases in which genetically engineered crops spread beyond their approved boundaries. She found that this wheat was, in fact, genetically engineered. She passed samples on to the US Department of Agriculture, which confirmed her results.”

Good Going Monsanto... US Wheat Exports Now at Risk

In 2006, traces of unapproved genetically engineered rice were discovered in the American rice harvest. This led to several countries banning US grown rice and exporters lost millions of dollars as a result. Bayer CropScience, the company responsible for developing and field testing the GE rice ended up agreeing to pay $750 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by 11,000 American rice farmers.
The export market for wheat is far larger than that for rice, and while Steve Mercer with the US Wheat Associates has gone on record saying that “there’s no indication” that wheat exports will be affected in a similar fashion, his statements appear to have been premature. As mentioned earlier, Japan—frequently the top export customer of US wheat—has already canceled orders of white wheat originating in the Pacific Northwest8 and other importers are keeping a close eye on the matter. Japan also canceled orders on some feed-grade wheat.
According to Mercer, the GE wheat issue is confined to “a few isolated plants growing in eastern Oregon.” Or is it?
The day after the USDA’s announcement, the organic food blogger and activist Vani, aka Foodbabe, reported9 that one of her British readers had sent her a photo of the label on a Kraft Mac & Cheese box imported from the US, and in addition to informing buyers of the presence of artificial colors linked to attention disorders in children, the label clearly states that it’s made with genetically modified wheat.
Now... since GE wheat is not, and never was, approved for commercial planting in the US, how could Kraft’s Mac & Cheese, manufactured in the US, be made with GE wheat? Vani notes: It is uncertain at this time who places this label on products once they are imported into the UK. And this is something I am still investigating.” Lynne Galia, a spokesperson for Kraft Foods, released the following10 statement to MSN News:
"Genetically engineered (GE) wheat is not available for commercial use. We do not use genetically engineered wheat in KRAFT Mac & Cheese or any other Kraft product. So anyone who is saying or implying there is GE wheat in KRAFT Mac & Cheese or any other Kraft product is wrong. In addition, we don’t export Mac & Cheese to the UK and have no authorized distributor there. The company that has applied this sticker is not authorized by Kraft to sell our products. They are not a customer of Kraft. They are getting the product from someone else and reselling our product in the UK. We’re continuing to investigate, but because we are not dealing with authorized distributors of our products, we may not get to the bottom of this issue anytime soon."
Make no mistake about it. The USDA recognizes what a major problem this could be for the US economy. As much as 90 percent of wheat grown in Oregon is sent overseas,11 and in 2011, the state’s wheat crop sold for $492 million. According to US Wheat Associates, US wheat exports totaled $8.1 billion in 2012. 12
Many if not most countries do not permit GE wheat (along with many other genetically engineered crops), so this contamination is going to have massive implications for wheat growers. All the while, Monsanto just shrugs and says they don’t know how their product escaped their well-controlled labs, and the USDA and FDA backs Monsanto up by pretending to know there are absolutely no potential safety issues involved. Truly, the situation is unacceptable.

As Worldwide Activism Against Monsanto Increases, US Government Shields Big Biotech

May 25 saw activists rallying against Monsanto in 36 countries across the globe. In Europe, activists are concerned that the company is trying to overturn EU disclosure laws, and many in the US hit the streets to voice their opinion about the "Monsanto Protection Act" that was silently slipped into the 2013 Federal Appropriations Bill. This is an act that gives biotech immunity from federal prosecution for planting illegally approved GE crops.
Mainstream media took little notice of this global phenomenon. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that just two days prior to the worldwide protests, US senators overwhelmingly voted against the right of states to pass their own GMO labeling laws.13 Best to keep news of Monsanto’s poor image at bay while legislators are hard at work protecting the beast’s rights to continue its wanton slaughter of human rights.

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/11/unapproved-gm-wheat.aspx  Link to original article.


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