Are Milk products just milk, or scarier things

Yes, it is all over the web, the FDA may approve the petition from the International Dairy Foods Association in conjunction with the National Milk Producers Federation.  The IDFA/NMPF filed the petition four years ago.  Wednesday the FDA published the petition in the federal register and asked for public comments.  For me, it is a pretty big thing.  If the FDA approves the petition, then it is just one more example of how we as Americans are losing our freedom of choice.


The petition is a big one, the IDFA/NMPF are requesting that they be allowed to add Aspartame to flavored milk products, and not put it on the label.  Their reasoning is "Milk flavored with non-nutritive sweetener promotes public health by offering children and adolescents a beverage they are more likely to consume than plain milk and that has all of the nutritional benefits of milk and less sugar than milk flavored with nutritive sweeteners,"   The petition also states that they want the FDA to amend the current regulations to allow the inclusion of up to five different non-nutritive sweeteners to seventeen other dairy products including powdered milk, sour cream, evaporated milk, whipping cream and yogurt.  According to the IDFA website, the FDA has already approved the use of these artificial sweeteners in frozen desserts.  

I'm sorry, but I want the choice of what goes into my body!

 Milk processors should NOT have the right to put cheap toxic chemicals into products that I purchase with the belief that they are wholesome, unadulterated and good for me.  If those processors CHOOSE to add cheap toxins to their products then they MUST be REQUIRED to put that crap on the label.  How many people out there have noticed that when they drink diet soda they get a headache?  How many have exercised their personal choices to cut out the toxins that have been PROVEN with scientific research to have detrimental side effects for humans?  Below are links to entries on my blog about each of the most popular artificial sweeteners.  Let's not forget that in an effort to make these chemicals sound more appetizing that processors refuse to call them what they are, ARTIFICIAL,  and instead call them non-nutritive.

(aspartame)   (Sucralose)  (Truvia/Nectresse)

Yes, I know, why are these poisons allowed into our food supply.  It is simple, money.  During the FDA approval process for any chemical additive the company that makes the additive produces scientific research showing that their proposed chemical is harmless.  Then in some secret and quite possibly money exchanging process, the FDA approves the chemical for use.  It takes MOMENTOUS research and data to remove a product from the status of allowable.  In fact, in the history of the FDA, the only chemical to be removed has been cyclamates.  Despite the mounting evidence of detrimental side effects of artificial sweeteners, GMO foods, herbicide and pesticide residues, these known toxins are still allowed into our food supply.  So many of them produce degradation of vital organs, mental faculties, sterility, and death

Our society dies out, not with a bang but with a whimper.

Becasue they can

I looked at the ingredients on a loaf of bread the other day, Roman Meal.  100% Whole Wheat.  I was shocked to see some of the things in the list.  Item number three, High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Then a bunch of fun stuff, Ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, calcium steryl lactalate, azodicarbonamide and calcium propionate.  That's a lot of crap poured into a product that right on the label expresses this very charming sentiment, "Natural Whole Grain Goodness"  Really, azodicarbonamide!  This is a plasticizer for industrial use to make rubber floor mats, shoe rubber and even carpeting softer.  You would have to eat a lot of it to die, but it is cumulative and it is listed as a CLASS 2 CARCINOGEN.  It is illegal to use in food products in very nearly every other country in the world.  But it is used here in the good ol' US of A.  It does the same thing to bread as it does to your sneakers, it makes them softer. This little tidbit is copied (article) 

As usual, the FDA is pretty clueless when it comes to azodicarbonamide. The FDA’s official database on food additives is called EAFUS, which stands for Everything Added to Food in the United States. EAFUS contains more than 3000 additives, including nearly 700 which have not been tested for toxicology. These untested additives are classified as EAF.
According to EAFUS, the classification for azodicarbonamide is NIL, which officially means, “Although listed as added to food, there is no current reported use of the substance, and, therefore, although toxicology information may be available in PAFA, it is not being updated.”

No reported use of the substance.  The FDA is clueless once again. 

Calcium Proprionate has been shown to exacerbate stomach ulcers and can permanently damage the stomach lining.  Ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides have been shown to cause genetic changes, birth defects, cancer, and severe allergic reactions.  Calcium steryl lactalate is a moisturizer for hand creams and has limited feeding studies done on it.

So what!

Food manufacturers everywhere put chemical additives into our food for a variety of reasons.  To make bread softer in this example; everywhere else they are added to extend shelf life, to enhance flavor profiles, to mask certain flavors from other chemical additives, to allow the use of cheaper ingredients, to combat low profit margins and to get the leg up on the competition.  The thing is, few people read the ingredient lists.  Even fewer know what the toxicity levels and carcinogenic factors are for most of the additives.  And the plain fact of the matter is that many, no, MOST of them are cumulative toxic poisons that slowly degrade the body's defense mechanisms and destroy your health.  So why add them to our food supply?

Because they can!

The plain fact of the matter is that since MOST of the agribusinesses manufacturing food in America today utilize these poisons, if any one individual, or groups of individuals get sick with degenerative long term illnesses, cancer, heart disease, strokes or anything else; they can't be sued.  How could they be sued when no single food manufacturer could be held accountable for the addition of these toxic substance to the products that they manufacture.  After all, this or that sick person did not live on a diet exclusively of their product only.  Commonality makes for immunity.  They add these toxic additives to our food supply because they can.   

Cigars

I recently joined the organization Cigar Rights of America.  CRA.  Yeah, tobacco, the world looks down on tobacco, and I am in the minority.  Cigars.  They stink, they are gross, disgusting, smelly and wives everywhere hate them.  Cigars have always had a bad reputation here in America, where it was once said that what we need is a good nickel one.

I really can't remember when I first smoked a cigar.  I smoked cigarettes after high school, and regret that now.  About two years of smoking ciggies, coughing and grossing out everyone around me.  Women, at least the ones that weren't drunk, were pretty grossed out as well.  So I stopped, brushed my teeth more often, got married and even stopped drinking alcohol and eating meat for a long time.  But then down the road a ways, when to culinary school, I took the wine appreciation class.  And it was interesting.  And tasty as well.  It was then that I began to realize that those old youthful feelings that I had some 15 years previous were about getting drunk, not about appreciating what it was that I was drinking.  I mean for the most part, the crowd I hung out with would on a rare occasion would spring for Mateus instead of Boone's Farm, or a dark beer instead of Coors, and even then, I recognized the difference.  Now, I thought that I did enjoy the flavor profiles of the wines and beers from class, but I felt that I did not want to ever go back to that time in my life where I drank myself silly most every night and lost a short procession of jobs because of it.  So actually, I guess that I began to realize the I liked the finer things in life.  And wanted to enjoy those things. Some where in there I formed my own personal rule about never drinking anything distilled, the temptation is too great to lose control, and also to enjoy a fine cigar.

A fine cigar is unlike anything else in the world.  And it is not strictly speaking, an all male pastime either.  Cigars, good ones, are hand rolled, carefully blended with a mix of specific qualities of tobacco leaves grown in differing ways to create individual flavor profiles.  And yes, different flavors really do come through and present themselves onto your palate when smoking.  Not cigarettes, yuch, those have no specific flavors.  Cigarettes have up to 27 different chemicals added to them to help them burn, Cigars have nothing but tobacco.  Tiny nuances of flavor, pepper, chocolate, cherry, clove all settle into your mind when you allow the smoke to lay in your mouth for a few moments.  A fine cigar is a thing of rich pleasure.

So, why CRA?  Well, I can't believe that the world has come to the place that it has.  I understand that there should be a ban on smoking in stores, and other public places; however, if a person wants to own a bar or restaurant and cater to smokers, why should they not be allowed.  If they have a bar, and deem it to be smoking, and you don't want to be around smoke, don't go in there.  Pretty simple isn't it.  In this country you can buy a gun, and go shoot kids in school and people everywhere stick up for their rights to do the same thing.  THEY ARE ADAMANT THAT THEY HAVE THAT RIGHT!!!!  But not to own a bar that allows smoking.  That is not a right anymore.  The RIGHT to make your own choice has been taken from Americans.  For their own good.

Tobacco causes cancer!  Hmmmm, I'm not so sure about that one.  Lung cancer was nearly unheard of until the forties.  And yet people smoked like crazy back in the old days.  What changed?  Well, tobacco has been changing, strains have been cultivated and bred for flavor, texture and quality.  Oh wait a minute, that's for cigar tobacco.  Regular ciggie tobacco has been grown for quantity and sprayed with insecticide to keep bugs off it.  And grown in mass quantities using modern farming techniques, monoculture, herbicides, pesticides, and petrochemical fertilizers.  Cigar tobacco is grown organically in most high end cigar grower fields.  Cigarettes are made with sugars, chemicals and extenders, over 27 in total.  Some of those, are in fact cancer causing.  Cigars are made with nothing but tobacco.  Well, at least high end ones are.  We don't have nickel cigars, but there are a whole class of cheap cigars out there that are made by machine, and have sugars and flavors added to them.  And probably cause cancer as well.

I smoke cigars.  I enjoy them.  I now belong to an organization that promotes the rights of cigar smokers, CRA. I suggest that everyone join this organization, not because you smoke, but because these guys have exactly the right attitude, protect your right of choice.  If you don't, then pretty soon more of your rights will disappear, for your own good.

Chocolate, now, GOOOOOD for you!

I don't mean just that mmm mmm good feeling you get when you eat really good chocolate.  And not the mmm nice feeling from a Hershey's bar, but mmmmmmm mmmmmmm GGGOOOOODDDD feeling from rich dark heavenly yummy chocolate.  Yeah, now there is real research into the stuff.  And it is good.  It seems a lot of research is going into finding out just exactly how chocolate is good for the heart.

Specifically it is coco flavanols act as vasodilators and allow for greater blood flow to the heart in a process thought to help maintain endothelium dependent vasodilation contributing to normal to greater blood flow.  Whew, nice.  What Barry Callebaut through a report to the European Food Standards Agency reported that just 2.5 grams of high flavanol chocolate (dark Chocolate) positively influenced blood circulation in the human body. 

Oh.

Well even I have to admit that is pretty cool.  I mean, I eat healthy, lots of raw and fermented vegetables.  Lots of brown rice, very little meat, a few fruits now and then.  But I like chocolate.  Now, I know why.  It is good for me. 

A Trillion Dollar Lawsuit, just need a shyster to do it.

Alright, I admit, I have a low opinion of attorneys.  Shysters.  When I was in Austin and even though the apartment complex manager admitted that there was black mold in my old apartment and they did not catch it when they replaced the flooring; I could not get an attorney to take on a lawsuit.  Yes, the apartments were owned by the City of Austin and therefore state law gave them a monetary limit for which someone could hope to sue and receive for damages.  And the amount was not enough to interest any attorney.  And I tried fourteen of them that handled mold cases.  So, I don't have much of an opinion of attorneys.

But I still need one.

I want to hire an attorney to take on a case with the world population as the plaintiff.  The defendants, Gene Tech companies Monsanto, Dow, Johnson and Johnson and others.  The amount, one Trillion Dollars.  And in a related suit, the people of the Unites States versus the FDA, the USDA and the Congress of the United States, for a grand total of One Hundred Billion Dollars.

This isn't just silly and foolish thinking, this money is needed to compensate every single person on the planet that will be affected by Genetically Modified foods.  And not just that, but also the money will be needed to clean up the environment.  Corn, soybeans, cotton, rape, and some others, will have to be removed from the environment.  Farmers will have to stop planting these GM plants for at least 4 years.  The loss to the economy will be significant.  Meanwhile teams of trained paid people will have to go out into the environment and look for, and destroy, any individual plant specimens that are found.  DESTROYED.  All the seed in storage, all the crops being held for production, all the products on the shelves containing any parts of any of the GM plants, will have to be destroyed as well.  After four years of carefully searching for any residual plants hiding anywhere in forests, fields, farms, backyards, on the coasts, or just waiting out on the tundra for a warm summer; then repopulation of the seed banks can begin. 

Stored seed can be brought out, tested for genetic markers of GM manipulation, and then the production of seed for planting can begin.  In the meantime, there must continue to be vigilance to protect the integrity of the new seed bank with continued inspection of the land for errant plants that volunteer.  After another two years then there should be sufficient seed stock for commercial planting to begin.  And then the new crops can be reintroduced.  The food business can begin again to produce High Fructose Corn Syrup, Canola oil, Cottonseed oil, and soy everything.  But can you imagine life without these products for 5 or 6 years.  Corn chips, tamales, new cotton clothing, and well, let's face it, just about EVERY PROCESSED FOOD ON THE MARKET IN STORES TODAY contains GM corn, soy, rape, or products from cotton.  These four crops and the products made from them account for over 200 billion dollars in sales every year. It is possible that some of the manufacturing companies can switch over to other food products, but think about the loss of income to business, the loss of jobs for the workers, the loss of available food products for a world demanding ever more and more foods to feed itself.  What happens when Americans don't have enough food to feed themselves?  Will the export of food stores to ANY other country continue?

WARS over food are a distinct possibility!

Those that have little and have for years depended on those that have a lot, won't like this new division of food within the world community.  In fact in order to completely eradicate the GM genes from the world, it will be necessary to go throughout the entire world and destroy the seed stores of each and every single one of the GM strains out there.  And all of the stores of seed and food of the subject species just to eliminate the possibility of migrant pollen contamination.

WARS over food are a CERTAINTY!

I think that a conservative estimate of the loss of life attributable to the removal of GM genes from the planet earth will be in the neighborhood of about 2 billion people.  More if one of the nuclear powers decides on retaliatory actions against the United States for perpetrating this abomination against the people of the planet.

Wait, I don't think a TRILLION is enough.

Then there is the human element.  GM foods have been on the market for not quite twenty years.  New studies show that lifetime feeding of GM food on mammals results in sterility, degradation of central nervous systems, liver, kidney and pulmonary functions.  And that is just the beginning of what more research might show in the future. How do you put a dollar value on loss of ability to bear children.  On loss of productivity because your systems have been slowly destroyed and you are just barely hanging onto life.  On your children not being healthy, or able to bear their own children.  On your premature death.  Or the big one, having to live through, and fight a war based on an industry desire to make money to the exclusion of the health of every single person on the planet.  How much is it worth?

Are the heads of these gene tech companies criminally liable for what will happen?  I believe they are.  And the FDA, EPA, and USDA along with the Senate and Congress are as well.  The hundred billion dollars is for punitive damages.  Hmmm. maybe more is needed.  And these people and organizations should be held for criminal charges as well.  I think that at the end of a long drawn out war involving the entire planet, with billions of people dead, the countries everywhere ravaged, nuclear fallout making land everywhere unlivable, starvation the normal mode everywhere; then I think that people will have a little different view on what to do with criminals.  I don't think that any of those on trial will survive.

If any of my readers knows a shyster out there wanting to take on Goliath,  give them my name.

Caffeinated Children

Caffeine.  It is a big part of life.  Just about every person out there ingests small amounts of the stuff every day.  It seems that it's a natural part of a lot of the things we eat and drink.  Coffee of course is a big one, tea, chocolate, most every soft drink, especially the artificially sweetened ones.  And the stuff shows up in ice cream, frozen waffles, jelly bellies, Cracker Jacks, beef jerky, energy bars and yes, even added to potato chips.  Yep, you read that correctly, it is an added ingredient to some brands of potato chips.

The fun part of all this is that the good ol' wonderful FDA does not require food and drink manufacturers to list on the label the amount of caffeine that they add to any of their products.  Hmmmm, let's see now, so if you were to slam down a couple of Starbucks venti's on the way to work, that's 830 mg caffeine, then get a couple of 5 hour energy drinks, along with a couple of hits of regular coffee, that's another 860 mg.  Then say a couple of chocolate bars and some chips for a reduced calorie but still enjoyable lunch, well, that's another 130 mg.  Hmmmmm, that's over 1800 mg of caffeine.  On what would be considered a regular day for some.  In the past 5 years, there have been 23 deaths directly attributed to people drinking caffeinated energy drinks.  There are no numbers to report how many there are in actuality.  I am pretty sure that there are a lot more, just no way to directly relate them.  Also there are no figures as to how many hospital visits there are for convulsions, hallucinations, heart attacks and other serious side effects from excess caffeine consumption.  Hospitals just don't care to find out why those things happen.

"The existence of an adverse event report does not necessarily mean that the product identified in the report actually caused the event."  FDA report "Energy Drinks and Supplements".  All about caffeinated beverages.  It's on the FDA website.

The whole problem comes down to marketing.  Now days, big companies are shifting their marketing of all of these products to kids.  Slick marketing ads with skateboarders doing their tricks, bike kids doing fancy wheelwork, all good looking young teens on the go, and drinking caffeinated beverages.

Marketing

How much caffeine is considered too much?  Most authorities state that for an average adult in good health, 400 mg of caffeine is the upper limit.  Per day.  Above that, and serious side effects can begin to be perceived.  Nervousness, heart palpitations, jitterynous, changes in visual acuity.  400mg.  How much does an average child from middle income families consume daily?  How about yours?

Personally, I like coffee.  Years ago I used to drink 3 or 4 pots of coffee everyday.  Yeah, I know, that's a lot.  I have also passed about 15 kidney stones in my life, and so I don't drink so much coffee anymore.  But the coffee I do drink, I make sure is exceptional.  And I don't invest in any of that other crap out there that has caffeine added to it in an effort to make people addicted to it.  I have this book, and it is pretty cool, it chronicles the world of coffee in ways you may not ever have thought.  Try it, if you love coffee like I do.

What's right vs What's LEGAL

So, is there a difference, a differentiation.  Certainly, there is a definite value judgement that can, or should, be placed on legality.  When heads of financial institutions make decisions that alter the course of events for not just themselves, but for hundreds of thousands of homeowners across the country.  When those same leaders ask the government for bailout money, money that was taken via an unfair system of taxation, and then the government gives that money to those institutions to pay bonuses to their employees for making poor decisions and nearly bankrupting and destroying a country; it was legal.  But was it right?  There is a conundrum there, and the problem doesn't lie with the wall street bigwigs or the institutions that were bailed out, the problem lies in the government who bailed them all out and didn't actually fix the problems when doing so.   That also was not exactly right, but it was legal because the very definition of legality is decided by the government itself, and therefore they pretty much can decide what they want to be legal when they need to change the definition of legality to suit, or rather cover, their actions.

 So what is legal and what is right today?  Monsanto and a few other large gene tech companies have achieved the legal status of monopoly.  And the reign of terror that they blast upon the people of this country is afterall, legal.  The destruction of our environment is, legal.  The introduction of Genetically Modified food that nearly twenty years after its introduction is now being found to cause degenerative illnesses, sterility, and long term complications is legal.

But is it Right?

This report is long, boring, and scary as all hell. (Report)  It is from the Center for Food Safety, and it is entitled "Food Giants vs. Farmers"  It details many of the lawsuits, tactics, coverups, illegal activities, and generally immoral activities of Monsanto.  It is worth the read.
This is also worth the time.  A movie that is a couple years old, but ever so true, and scary as well.


And this Washington Post article is a 75 year old Indiana farmer that is taking his case against Monsanto all the way to the Supreme Court.   (Washington Post)

It's late tuesday night and I have to work in the morning, I will add to this tomorrow night.