Showing posts with label industrial food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label industrial food. Show all posts
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
A Move to Outlaw Whistleblowing From the Industrial Food Industry
The American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative think tank backed by business interests has labeled those who interfere with animal operations “terrorists,’’ though a spokesman said he wishes now that the organization had called its legislation the “Freedom to Farm Act’’ rather than the “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act.’’
There is some dangerous precedent underway here. We live in a time where whistleblowing is one of the only real sources of news anymore. A bill like this could easily get adopted nationwide.
Stay vigilant on this one.
Read more about it here:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/05/28/2923420/how-the-ag-gag-bill-would-make.html
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/30/4075504/whistleblower-ban-bill-concerns.html
http://magicvalley.com/news/local/states-consider-banning-undercover-video-of-animal-cruelty/article_5a01003e-8f52-11e2-99ed-0019bb2963f4.html
http://newint.org/blog/2013/04/30/eco-terrorism-act-usa/
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Did You Eat Any Wood Today? Most Likely
FDA Fraud: 15 Food Companies That Serve You 'Wood'
The recent class-action lawsuit brought against Taco Bell raised questions about the quality of food many Americans eat each day.
Chief among those concerns is the use of cellulose (wood pulp), an extender whose use in a roster of food products, from crackers and ice creams to puddings and baked goods, is now being exposed. What you're actually paying for and consuming may be surprising.
Cellulose is virgin wood pulp that has been processed and manufactured to different lengths for functionality, though use of it and its variant forms (cellulose gum, powdered cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, etc.) is deemed safe for human consumption, according to the FDA, which regulates most food industry products.
The government agency sets no limit on the amount of cellulose that can be used in food products meant for human consumption.
[Note: Humans are unable to digest cellulose since we lack the appropriate enzymes to break it down. This is a food adulterant and another example of the wholly corrupt nature of the federal agency responsible for food safety but continues to prove itself more concerned with corporate profit.
Don't feed your children chicken strip, even the ones with "organic" wood in them!
More here:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11012915/1/cellulose-wood-pulp-never-tasted-so-good.html
The recent class-action lawsuit brought against Taco Bell raised questions about the quality of food many Americans eat each day.
Chief among those concerns is the use of cellulose (wood pulp), an extender whose use in a roster of food products, from crackers and ice creams to puddings and baked goods, is now being exposed. What you're actually paying for and consuming may be surprising.
Cellulose is virgin wood pulp that has been processed and manufactured to different lengths for functionality, though use of it and its variant forms (cellulose gum, powdered cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, etc.) is deemed safe for human consumption, according to the FDA, which regulates most food industry products.
The government agency sets no limit on the amount of cellulose that can be used in food products meant for human consumption.
[Note: Humans are unable to digest cellulose since we lack the appropriate enzymes to break it down. This is a food adulterant and another example of the wholly corrupt nature of the federal agency responsible for food safety but continues to prove itself more concerned with corporate profit.
Don't feed your children chicken strip, even the ones with "organic" wood in them!
More here:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11012915/1/cellulose-wood-pulp-never-tasted-so-good.html
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The Omnivore's Dilemma
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The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is by far one of the best books I have read to date on the topic of food, diet, and the evolution of industry as it relates to our health and culture. I highly recommend reading it and passing along a version specifically tailored for young readers along to someone you care about.
The book is packed with insight and I have compiled some of my reading notes here for quick reference and in the hope of sparking your interest in the book.
pg.67
Already in their short history CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) have produced more than their share of environmental and health problems: polluted water and air, toxic wastes, novel and deadly pathogens.
pg.68
The short, unhappy life of a corn-fed feedlot steer represents the ultimate triumph of industrial thinking over the logic of evolution.
pg.76
Lone of the most troubling things about factory farms is how cavalierly they flout these evolutionary rules, forcing animals to overcome deeply ingrained aversions. We make them trade their instinct for antibiotics.
pg. 78
Most of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed, a practice that, it is now generally acknowledged (except in agriculture), is leading directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
pg. 79
Feedlot wastes also contain heavy metals and hormone residues, persistent chemicals that wind up in waterways downstream, where scientists have found fish and amphibians exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.
pg. 82
(Cheap Food) doesn't take into account, for example, the cost to the public health of antibiotic resistance or food poisoning by E.coli O157:H7. It doesn't take into account the cost to taxpayers of the farm subsidies that keep Poky's raw materials cheap. And it certainly does not take into account all the many environmental costs incurred by cheap corn.
pg. 83
One-fifth of America's petroleum consumption goes to producing and transporting our food.
pg. 93
Nutrients, vitamins, and minerals are lost in the processing of food.
pg. 94
Food industries call this problem (that consumers can only eat but so much) "fixed stomach." Economists call it "inelastic demand."
pg. 95
Of a dollar spent on a whole food such as eggs, $.40 finds its way back to the farmer. By comparison, industrial farmers will see only $.04 of every dollar spent on corn sweeteners; ADM and Coca-Cola and General Mills capture most of the rest.
pg. 99
When fake sugars and fake fats are joined by fake starches, the food industry will at long last overcome the dilemma of the fixed stomach; whole meals you can eat as often or as much of as you like, since this food will leave no trace. Meet the ultimate - the utterly elastic! - industrial eater.
pg. 102
Three of every five Americans are overweight; one of every five is obese.
Because of all the health problems that accompany obesity, today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The problem is not limited to America: The United Nations reported that in 2000 the number of people suffering from over nutrition - a billion - had officially surpassed the number suffering from malnutrition - 800 million.
You hear plenty of explanations for humanity's expanding waistline, all of them plausible. Changes in lifestyle (we're more sedentary; we eat out more). Affluence (more people can afford a high-fat Western diet). Poverty (healthier whole foods cost more). Technology (fewer of us use are bodies to work). Clever marketing (supersized portions; advertising to children). Changes in diet (more fats; more carbohydrates; more processed foods).
pg. 103
Considering that human animal did not taste this particular food until 1980, for HFCS to have become the leading source of sweetness in our diets stands as a notable achievement on the part of the corn-refining industry.
pg. 104
HFCS was a few cents cheaper than sugar (thanks in part to tariffs on imported sugarcane secured by the corn refiners) and consumers didn't seem to notice the substitution.
pg. 108
Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.
pg. 110
These days, 19% of American meals are eaten in the car.
pg. 111
The generic fast-food flavor is one un-erasable smells and tastes of childhood - which makes it a kind of comfort food.
pg. 113
According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and a reproductive effector; it's also flammable.
TBHQ ( a form of butane derived from petroleum) is sprayed directly on Chicken McNuggets to "help preserve freshness." TBHQ can cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation and collapse. Ingesting 5 grams of it can kill.
pg. 119
Of all the species that have figured out how to thrive in a world dominated Homo sapiens, surely no other has succeeded more spectacularly - has colonized more acres and bodies - than Zea mays, the grass that domesticated its domesticator. You have to wonder why we Americans don't worship this plant as fervently as the Aztecs; like they once did, we make extraordinary sacrifices to it.
pg. 132
We're going to have to re-fight the Battle of Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate."
pg. 200
The ninety-nine cent price of a fast-food hamburger simply does not take account of that meal's true cost - to soil, oil, public health, the public purse, etc., costs which are never charges directly to the consumer but, indirectly and invisibly, to the taxpayer (in the form of subsidies), the health care system (in the form of food-borne illnesses and obesity), and the environment (in the form of pollution), not to mention the welfare of the animals themselves.
pg. 215
(on complexity)
To measure the efficiency of such a complex system you need to count not only all the products it produces (meat, chicken, eggs) but also the costs it eliminates: antibiotics, wormers, parasiticides, and fertilizers.
He takes advantages of each species' natural proclivities in a way that benefits not only that animals but other species as well.
pg. 243
Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water - of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. (blind accounting)
pg. 245
Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way for not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring - to the carelessness of both producers and consumers. Of course, the global economy couldn't very well function without this wall of ignorance and the indifference it breeds.
pg. 254
Reversing the damage done to local economies and the land by the juggernaut of world trade would take nothing less than "a revolt of local small producers and local consumers against the global industrialism of the corporation."
pg. 260
We don't need a law against McDonald's or a law against slaughterhouse abuse - we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse. - Joel Salatin
pg. 318
A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market.
pg. 410
(On hunted/gathered food vs. industrial fast/convenient food)
The two meals stand at the far extreme ends of the spectrum of human eating - of the different ways we have to engage the world that sustains us. The pleasures of the one are based on a nearly perfect knowledge ; the pleasures of the other on an equally perfect ignorance. The diversity of the one mirrors the diversity of nature, especially the forest; the variety of the other more accurately reflects the ingenuity of industry, especially its ability to tease a passing resemblance of diversity from a single species growing in a single landscape; a monoculture of corn. The cost of the first meal is steep, yet it is acknowledged and paid for; by comparison the price of the second seems a bargain but fails to cover its true cost, charging it instead to nature, to the public health and purse, and to the future.
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is by far one of the best books I have read to date on the topic of food, diet, and the evolution of industry as it relates to our health and culture. I highly recommend reading it and passing along a version specifically tailored for young readers along to someone you care about.The book is packed with insight and I have compiled some of my reading notes here for quick reference and in the hope of sparking your interest in the book.
pg.67
Already in their short history CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) have produced more than their share of environmental and health problems: polluted water and air, toxic wastes, novel and deadly pathogens.
pg.68
The short, unhappy life of a corn-fed feedlot steer represents the ultimate triumph of industrial thinking over the logic of evolution.
pg.76
Lone of the most troubling things about factory farms is how cavalierly they flout these evolutionary rules, forcing animals to overcome deeply ingrained aversions. We make them trade their instinct for antibiotics.
pg. 78
Most of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed, a practice that, it is now generally acknowledged (except in agriculture), is leading directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
pg. 79
Feedlot wastes also contain heavy metals and hormone residues, persistent chemicals that wind up in waterways downstream, where scientists have found fish and amphibians exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.
pg. 82
(Cheap Food) doesn't take into account, for example, the cost to the public health of antibiotic resistance or food poisoning by E.coli O157:H7. It doesn't take into account the cost to taxpayers of the farm subsidies that keep Poky's raw materials cheap. And it certainly does not take into account all the many environmental costs incurred by cheap corn.
pg. 83
One-fifth of America's petroleum consumption goes to producing and transporting our food.
pg. 93
Nutrients, vitamins, and minerals are lost in the processing of food.
pg. 94
Food industries call this problem (that consumers can only eat but so much) "fixed stomach." Economists call it "inelastic demand."
pg. 95
Of a dollar spent on a whole food such as eggs, $.40 finds its way back to the farmer. By comparison, industrial farmers will see only $.04 of every dollar spent on corn sweeteners; ADM and Coca-Cola and General Mills capture most of the rest.
pg. 99
When fake sugars and fake fats are joined by fake starches, the food industry will at long last overcome the dilemma of the fixed stomach; whole meals you can eat as often or as much of as you like, since this food will leave no trace. Meet the ultimate - the utterly elastic! - industrial eater.
pg. 102
Three of every five Americans are overweight; one of every five is obese.
Because of all the health problems that accompany obesity, today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The problem is not limited to America: The United Nations reported that in 2000 the number of people suffering from over nutrition - a billion - had officially surpassed the number suffering from malnutrition - 800 million.
You hear plenty of explanations for humanity's expanding waistline, all of them plausible. Changes in lifestyle (we're more sedentary; we eat out more). Affluence (more people can afford a high-fat Western diet). Poverty (healthier whole foods cost more). Technology (fewer of us use are bodies to work). Clever marketing (supersized portions; advertising to children). Changes in diet (more fats; more carbohydrates; more processed foods).
pg. 103
Considering that human animal did not taste this particular food until 1980, for HFCS to have become the leading source of sweetness in our diets stands as a notable achievement on the part of the corn-refining industry.
pg. 104
HFCS was a few cents cheaper than sugar (thanks in part to tariffs on imported sugarcane secured by the corn refiners) and consumers didn't seem to notice the substitution.
pg. 108
Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.
pg. 110
These days, 19% of American meals are eaten in the car.
pg. 111
The generic fast-food flavor is one un-erasable smells and tastes of childhood - which makes it a kind of comfort food.
pg. 113
According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and a reproductive effector; it's also flammable.
TBHQ ( a form of butane derived from petroleum) is sprayed directly on Chicken McNuggets to "help preserve freshness." TBHQ can cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation and collapse. Ingesting 5 grams of it can kill.
pg. 119
Of all the species that have figured out how to thrive in a world dominated Homo sapiens, surely no other has succeeded more spectacularly - has colonized more acres and bodies - than Zea mays, the grass that domesticated its domesticator. You have to wonder why we Americans don't worship this plant as fervently as the Aztecs; like they once did, we make extraordinary sacrifices to it.
pg. 132
We're going to have to re-fight the Battle of Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate."
pg. 200
The ninety-nine cent price of a fast-food hamburger simply does not take account of that meal's true cost - to soil, oil, public health, the public purse, etc., costs which are never charges directly to the consumer but, indirectly and invisibly, to the taxpayer (in the form of subsidies), the health care system (in the form of food-borne illnesses and obesity), and the environment (in the form of pollution), not to mention the welfare of the animals themselves.
pg. 215
(on complexity)
To measure the efficiency of such a complex system you need to count not only all the products it produces (meat, chicken, eggs) but also the costs it eliminates: antibiotics, wormers, parasiticides, and fertilizers.
He takes advantages of each species' natural proclivities in a way that benefits not only that animals but other species as well.
pg. 243
Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water - of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. (blind accounting)
pg. 245
Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way for not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring - to the carelessness of both producers and consumers. Of course, the global economy couldn't very well function without this wall of ignorance and the indifference it breeds.
pg. 254
Reversing the damage done to local economies and the land by the juggernaut of world trade would take nothing less than "a revolt of local small producers and local consumers against the global industrialism of the corporation."
pg. 260
We don't need a law against McDonald's or a law against slaughterhouse abuse - we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse. - Joel Salatin
pg. 318
A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market.
pg. 410
(On hunted/gathered food vs. industrial fast/convenient food)
The two meals stand at the far extreme ends of the spectrum of human eating - of the different ways we have to engage the world that sustains us. The pleasures of the one are based on a nearly perfect knowledge ; the pleasures of the other on an equally perfect ignorance. The diversity of the one mirrors the diversity of nature, especially the forest; the variety of the other more accurately reflects the ingenuity of industry, especially its ability to tease a passing resemblance of diversity from a single species growing in a single landscape; a monoculture of corn. The cost of the first meal is steep, yet it is acknowledged and paid for; by comparison the price of the second seems a bargain but fails to cover its true cost, charging it instead to nature, to the public health and purse, and to the future.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Global Government to Outlaw Natural Remedies for Big Pharma
In case you haven't been paying attention, Codex Alimentarius is making it's way around the world. If you think alternative, holistic medicine and whole food is expensive now, just wait until it is outlawed globally by the U.N.
New EU regulations on herbal medicines come into force
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13215010
Fears that EU rules on herbal medicines may put patients in danger
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/05/09/fears-that-eu-rules-on-herbal-medicines-may-put-patients-in-danger-91466-28657790/
New EU regulations on herbal medicines come into force
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13215010
Fears that EU rules on herbal medicines may put patients in danger
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/05/09/fears-that-eu-rules-on-herbal-medicines-may-put-patients-in-danger-91466-28657790/
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Genetically Modified Chaos
We are what we eat. In the past, food co-evolved with humans; food strengthened, nourished and empowered people. Modern, industrialized food production, however, has seriously compromised the safety and sustainability of our food supply, as graphically depicted in the recent documentary Food, Inc.In addition to unsanitary, unethical and non-nutritive food production practices, the rise of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in our food supply could potentially wipe out the existence of all natural seed varieties and foods, leaving us with nothing but Frankenfoods in our diet.
Hailed as "superfood" solutions to possible food shortages in the future, GMO foods are more resistant to pests, droughts and spoilage. However, genetically modified seeds, the majority of which are now patented and owned by Monsanto company, require regular application of Monsanto-owned pesticides in order to grow and be harvested and are not self-reproducing. New seeds and more pesticides must be bought annually. With the acceleration of GMO food production, natural varieties of seeds that took thousands of years to perfect are becoming extinct. In Imagine a World Without Butterflies(http://www.Amberwaves.org, 2009), author Alex Jack describes how thousands of varieties of brown rice have become extinct in India in just the past three years alone.
Unlike hybrids that use the same species for gene splicing, GMOs are created from insect, reptile, bacteria, fish, and mammal genes ― creatures that would never, and could never, combine in the wild. Each of these genes was once part of an organism that had entirely different evolutionary goals. Now they are spliced together into one food, struggling for dominance with each other within a life form that was originally designed with a different purpose, all with little or no scientific evidence about the long term effects ― a chaotic situation indeed!
In an August, 2010 letter to consumers on their website, Kellogg's announced that "biotech [GMO] ingredients are safe and have become common in the open market. Sixty to seventy percent of packaged foods in the US include biotechnology crops." Estimates suggest that as much as 90% of our food supply will be GMO (and corporately owned and patented) within three years unless consumers become educated and take action now. GMO foods are currently not required to be labeled in the US. Join the campaign to be part of the non-GMO tipping point by visiting http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com and following these guidelines:
1. Eat organic food, preferably purchased locally. Current regulations forbid GMO foods to be labeled organic.
2. Buy heirloom varieties of food. If you garden, use heirloom seeds. Do your part to keep more varieties of seeds in use.
3. Read labels of all packaged products, even in health food stores. Look for the words, “whole” before grains, and “certified organic” for products that contain soybeans. Some manufacturers voluntarily place “non-GMO” labels on items.
4. Purchase organic oils. Many oils are extracted from GMOs, specifically corn oil, canola oil, and soybean oil. If the label doesn’t say certified organic, assume a high likelihood of genetically modified foods.
5. Corn and soybeans are among the foods most suspect to genetic modification. They are in countless products such as high fructose corn syrup, lecithin, and soybean oil. Almost all (non-organic) soybean products come from Monsanto Roundup Ready soybeans.
6. Assume animals are fed genetically modified foods unless they come from a reputable source — one that will supply information about the type of feed used. Farm raised fish are no exception.
7. Unless you are certain of the integrity of a particular restaurant, assume they don’t use organic or non-GMO ingredients and use soybean oil for deep-frying, as it is cheap.
Contact your legislators and ask them to support H.R. 5577 Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act. Originally introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), this bill aims to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the Federal Meat Inspection Act, and the Poultry Products Inspection Act to require that food that contains a genetically engineerd material or that is produced with a genetically engineered material, be labeled accordingly. For up to the minute legislative updates on all issues and elected officials visit http://www.capwiz/grassrootsnetroots/home. Sign up for NaturalNews Insider Alerts from http://www.naturalnews.com and receive daily news and commentary on many natural health issues including GM food.
Information courtesy of Dennis Willmont, L.Ac, Visit http://www.willmountain.com. Read more GMO information in EarthTalk on page 24 this issue.
Stop Supporting Brutality
Here's what most emerican's are ignorantly supporting 3 times a day. The industrialized food complex takes many precautions to make sure consumers are unaware of these processes when making choices in the supermarket. The nicely packaged end product is designed to leave no trails back to its origin...and now you can see why:
Download this video and share it with everyone you know - particular McDonald-hungry children.
Download this video and share it with everyone you know - particular McDonald-hungry children.
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