Wow I just love this... First off I just love Maple Trees and well It turns out I was searching for a better Maple Syrup than the brands we currently use and I came across this webstite and I just love their story.
I had to share...
Small farms play a big role in preserving the health and character of our land. They help to protect ecosystems, conserve our resources, and keep an important lifestyle alive. Small farms also provide opportunities for us all to learn more about where the foods we eat come from - and how we can play a more direct, engaged role in determining how our food is produced, and how it gets to our table. When it comes to a sustainable agriculture, small is a big idea.
Coombs Family Farm
Monday, January 11, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Suzanne Somers talks about Big Pharma...
It is the interest of Big Business to teach this moneymaking protocol and from a business standpoint they have the perfect template in place: fund the students who will administer their medicines, fund the Hospitals to administer their medicines, lobby in Washinton D.C.. for a standard of care that revoloves around their medicines, make it illegal not to use their medicines, and ostracize doctors who don't toe the company line, calling them quacks, charlatans and frauds and running them out of town.
Pharma is not interested in anything that comes from Natur. Anything from Nature cannot be patented, and if it cant be patended, there is little revenue in it. This is why so often many natural alternatives to serious disease never see the light of day.
- Suzanne Somers
Her book "Knockout" is a must read.. very important and interesting there is so much information in this book.
Pharma is not interested in anything that comes from Natur. Anything from Nature cannot be patented, and if it cant be patended, there is little revenue in it. This is why so often many natural alternatives to serious disease never see the light of day.
- Suzanne Somers
Her book "Knockout" is a must read.. very important and interesting there is so much information in this book.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Didn't think the fast food industry could get any grosser - feces in Soda Fountains
Didn't think the fast food industry could get any grosser? Well it can.
This time, it's not the food, but the soda fountains to be worried about. According to Tom Laskawy, a media and technology professional and blogger for grist.org, a team of microbiologists from Hollins University found that 48% of sodas tested from the fast food fountains contain coliform bacteria, which is typically fecal in origin. And most bacteria found were antibiotic resistant, as icing on the cake.
The microbiologists published their findings in the International Journal of Food Microbiology. They tested 90 beverages from 30 soda fountains. Their abstract states:
...Coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. [...] More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli [E. Coli] and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested.
Laskawy notes that only one recorded outbreak linked to a soda fountain has occurred, and that was ten years ago. But on a smaller scale, these bacteria could cause sickness on an individual level that can go unreported.
This time, it's not the food, but the soda fountains to be worried about. According to Tom Laskawy, a media and technology professional and blogger for grist.org, a team of microbiologists from Hollins University found that 48% of sodas tested from the fast food fountains contain coliform bacteria, which is typically fecal in origin. And most bacteria found were antibiotic resistant, as icing on the cake.
The microbiologists published their findings in the International Journal of Food Microbiology. They tested 90 beverages from 30 soda fountains. Their abstract states:
...Coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. [...] More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli [E. Coli] and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested.
Laskawy notes that only one recorded outbreak linked to a soda fountain has occurred, and that was ten years ago. But on a smaller scale, these bacteria could cause sickness on an individual level that can go unreported.
Long-Term Physical Activity Has an Anti-Aging Effect at the Cellular Level
ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2009) — Intensive exercise prevented shortening of telomeres, a protective effect against aging of the cardiovascular system, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Researchers measured the length of telomeres -- the DNA that bookends the chromosomes and protects the ends from damage -- in blood samples from two groups of professional athletes and two groups who were healthy nonsmokers, but not regular exercisers.
The telomere shortening mechanism limits cells to a fixed number of divisions and can be regarded as a "biological clock." Gradual shortening of telomeres through cell divisions leads to aging on the cellular level and may limit lifetimes. When the telomeres become critically short the cell undergoes death. The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to researchers who discovered the nature of telomeres and how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
"The most significant finding of this study is that physical exercise of the professional athletes leads to activation of the important enzyme telomerase and stabilizes the telomere," said Ulrich Laufs, M.D., the study's lead author and professor of clinical and experimental medicine in the department of internal medicine at Saarland University in Homburg, Germany.
"This is direct evidence of an anti-aging effect of physical exercise. Physical exercise could prevent the aging of the cardiovascular system, reflecting this molecular principle."
Essentially, the longer telomere of athletes is an efficient telomere. The body's cells are constantly growing and dividing and eventually dying off, a process controlled by the chromosomes within each cell. These chromosomal "end caps" -- which have been likened to the tips of shoelaces, preventing them from fraying -- become shorter with each cell division, and when they're gone, the cell dies. Short telomeres limit the number of cell divisions, Laufs said. In addition, the animal studies of Laufs and colleagues show that the regulation of telomere stabilizing proteins by exercise exerts important cellular functions beyond the regulation of telomere length itself by protecting from cellular deterioration and programmed cell death.
In the clinical study, researchers analyzed 32 professional runners, average age 20, from the German National Team of Track and Field. Their average running distance was about 73 kilometers (km), a little over 45 miles, per week.
Researchers compared the young professional athletes with middle-aged athletes with a history of continuous endurance exercise since their youth. Their average age was 51 and their average distance was about 80 km, or almost 50 miles, per week.
The two groups were evaluated against untrained athletes who were healthy nonsmokers, but who did not exercise regularly. They were matched for age with the professional athletes.
The fitness level of the athletes was superior to the untrained individuals. The athletes had a slower resting heart rate, lower blood pressure and body mass index, and a more favorable cholesterol profile, researchers said.
Long-term exercise training activates telomerase and reduces telomere shortening in human leukocytes. The age-dependent telomere loss was lower in the master athletes who had performed endurance exercising for several decades.
"Our data improves the molecular understanding of the protective effects of exercise on the vessel wall and underlines the potency of physical training in reducing the impact of age-related disease," Laufs said.
The German Research Association and the University of Saarland funded the study.
Co-authors are: Christian Werner, M.D.; Tobias Furster, medical student; Thomas Widmann, M.D.; Janine Pöss, M.D.; Christiana Roggia, Ph. D.; Milad Hanhoun, M.D.; Jürgen Scharhag, M.D.; Nicole Buchner, Ph. D.; Tim Meyer, M.D.; Willfried Kindermann, M.D.; Judith Haendeler, Ph. D. and Michael Böhm, M.D.
Researchers measured the length of telomeres -- the DNA that bookends the chromosomes and protects the ends from damage -- in blood samples from two groups of professional athletes and two groups who were healthy nonsmokers, but not regular exercisers.
The telomere shortening mechanism limits cells to a fixed number of divisions and can be regarded as a "biological clock." Gradual shortening of telomeres through cell divisions leads to aging on the cellular level and may limit lifetimes. When the telomeres become critically short the cell undergoes death. The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to researchers who discovered the nature of telomeres and how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.
"The most significant finding of this study is that physical exercise of the professional athletes leads to activation of the important enzyme telomerase and stabilizes the telomere," said Ulrich Laufs, M.D., the study's lead author and professor of clinical and experimental medicine in the department of internal medicine at Saarland University in Homburg, Germany.
"This is direct evidence of an anti-aging effect of physical exercise. Physical exercise could prevent the aging of the cardiovascular system, reflecting this molecular principle."
Essentially, the longer telomere of athletes is an efficient telomere. The body's cells are constantly growing and dividing and eventually dying off, a process controlled by the chromosomes within each cell. These chromosomal "end caps" -- which have been likened to the tips of shoelaces, preventing them from fraying -- become shorter with each cell division, and when they're gone, the cell dies. Short telomeres limit the number of cell divisions, Laufs said. In addition, the animal studies of Laufs and colleagues show that the regulation of telomere stabilizing proteins by exercise exerts important cellular functions beyond the regulation of telomere length itself by protecting from cellular deterioration and programmed cell death.
In the clinical study, researchers analyzed 32 professional runners, average age 20, from the German National Team of Track and Field. Their average running distance was about 73 kilometers (km), a little over 45 miles, per week.
Researchers compared the young professional athletes with middle-aged athletes with a history of continuous endurance exercise since their youth. Their average age was 51 and their average distance was about 80 km, or almost 50 miles, per week.
The two groups were evaluated against untrained athletes who were healthy nonsmokers, but who did not exercise regularly. They were matched for age with the professional athletes.
The fitness level of the athletes was superior to the untrained individuals. The athletes had a slower resting heart rate, lower blood pressure and body mass index, and a more favorable cholesterol profile, researchers said.
Long-term exercise training activates telomerase and reduces telomere shortening in human leukocytes. The age-dependent telomere loss was lower in the master athletes who had performed endurance exercising for several decades.
"Our data improves the molecular understanding of the protective effects of exercise on the vessel wall and underlines the potency of physical training in reducing the impact of age-related disease," Laufs said.
The German Research Association and the University of Saarland funded the study.
Co-authors are: Christian Werner, M.D.; Tobias Furster, medical student; Thomas Widmann, M.D.; Janine Pöss, M.D.; Christiana Roggia, Ph. D.; Milad Hanhoun, M.D.; Jürgen Scharhag, M.D.; Nicole Buchner, Ph. D.; Tim Meyer, M.D.; Willfried Kindermann, M.D.; Judith Haendeler, Ph. D. and Michael Böhm, M.D.
AIDS HIV tests a hoax? Exclusive footage from House of Numbers documentary
Posted by Naturalnews.com
In this exclusive trailer for the groundbreaking new film, "House of Numbers" (www.HouseOfNumbers.com) you'll hear interview outtakes with some of the most knowledgeable (and controversial) people on the subject of AIDS. The most shocking quote of all? When Nobel Prize Winner and co-discoverer of HIV, Luc Montagnier, says that AIDS can be cured with nutrition.
This exclusive footage from the AIDS / HIV documentary House of Numbers reveals unedited conversations with two doctors who question conventional thinking about AIDS. Used with permission. See film trailers at http://www.houseofnumbers.com/
Shocking un-cut footage from Brent Leung's documentary "House of Numbers" reveals truth about AIDS as told by Dr. Luc Montagnier. AIDS can be reversed. Nutrition is the answer. Hear it straight from the co-discoverer of HIV. Posted by NaturalNews.com
In this exclusive trailer for the groundbreaking new film, "House of Numbers" (www.HouseOfNumbers.com) you'll hear interview outtakes with some of the most knowledgeable (and controversial) people on the subject of AIDS. The most shocking quote of all? When Nobel Prize Winner and co-discoverer of HIV, Luc Montagnier, says that AIDS can be cured with nutrition.
This exclusive footage from the AIDS / HIV documentary House of Numbers reveals unedited conversations with two doctors who question conventional thinking about AIDS. Used with permission. See film trailers at http://www.houseofnumbers.com/
Shocking un-cut footage from Brent Leung's documentary "House of Numbers" reveals truth about AIDS as told by Dr. Luc Montagnier. AIDS can be reversed. Nutrition is the answer. Hear it straight from the co-discoverer of HIV. Posted by NaturalNews.com
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Window cleaning chemical injected into fast food hamburger meat
NaturalNews) If you're in the beef business, what do you do with all the extra cow parts and trimmings that have traditionally been sold off for use in pet food? You scrape them together into a pink mass, inject them with a chemical to kill the e.coli, and sell them to fast food restaurants to make into hamburgers.
That's what's been happening all across the USA with beef sold to McDonald's, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants, according to a New York Times article. The beef is injected with ammonia, a chemical commonly used in glass cleaning and window cleaning products.
This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef "safe" enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn't seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.
This ammonia-injected beef comes from a company called Beef Products, Inc. As NYT reports, the federal school lunch program used a whopping 5.5 million pounds of ammonia-injected beef trimmings from this company in 2008. This company reportedly developed the idea of using ammonia to sterilize beef before selling it for human consumption.
Aside from the fact that there's ammonia in the hamburger meat, there's another problem with this company's products: The ammonia doesn't always kill the pathogens. Both e.coli and salmonella have been found contaminating the cow-derived products sold by this company.
This came as a shock to the USDA, which had actually exempted the company's products from pathogen testing and product recalls. Why was it exempted? Because the ammonia injection process was deemed so effective that the meat products were thought to be safe beyond any question.
What else is in there?
As the NYT reports, "The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles. Federal officials agreed to the company's request that the ammonia be classified as a 'processing agent' and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels."
Fascinating. So you can inject a beef product with a chemical found in glass cleaning products and simply call it a "processing agent" -- with the full permission and approval of the USDA, no less! Does anyone doubt any longer how deeply embedded the USDA is with the beef industry?
Apparently, this practice of injecting fast food beef with ammonia has been a well-kept secret for years. I never knew this was going on, and this news appears to be new information to virtually everyone. The real shocker is that "a majority" of fast food restaurants use this ammonia-injected cow-derived product in their hamburger meat. It sort of makes you wonder: What else is in there that we don't know about?
"School lunch officials and other customers complained about the taste and smell of the beef," says the NYT. No wonder. It's been pumped full of chemicals.
There are already a thousand reasons not to eat fast food. Make this reason number 1,001. Ammonia. It's not supposed to be there.
You can get the same effect by opening a can of dog food made with beef byproducts, spraying it with ammonia, and swallowing it. That is essentially what you're eating when you order a fast food burger.
It's almost enough to make you want to puke. If you do so, please aim it at your windows, because ammonia cuts through grease like nothing else, leaving your windows squeaky clean!
Sources for this story include:
NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/u...
ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wire...
That's what's been happening all across the USA with beef sold to McDonald's, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants, according to a New York Times article. The beef is injected with ammonia, a chemical commonly used in glass cleaning and window cleaning products.
This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef "safe" enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn't seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.
This ammonia-injected beef comes from a company called Beef Products, Inc. As NYT reports, the federal school lunch program used a whopping 5.5 million pounds of ammonia-injected beef trimmings from this company in 2008. This company reportedly developed the idea of using ammonia to sterilize beef before selling it for human consumption.
Aside from the fact that there's ammonia in the hamburger meat, there's another problem with this company's products: The ammonia doesn't always kill the pathogens. Both e.coli and salmonella have been found contaminating the cow-derived products sold by this company.
This came as a shock to the USDA, which had actually exempted the company's products from pathogen testing and product recalls. Why was it exempted? Because the ammonia injection process was deemed so effective that the meat products were thought to be safe beyond any question.
What else is in there?
As the NYT reports, "The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles. Federal officials agreed to the company's request that the ammonia be classified as a 'processing agent' and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels."
Fascinating. So you can inject a beef product with a chemical found in glass cleaning products and simply call it a "processing agent" -- with the full permission and approval of the USDA, no less! Does anyone doubt any longer how deeply embedded the USDA is with the beef industry?
Apparently, this practice of injecting fast food beef with ammonia has been a well-kept secret for years. I never knew this was going on, and this news appears to be new information to virtually everyone. The real shocker is that "a majority" of fast food restaurants use this ammonia-injected cow-derived product in their hamburger meat. It sort of makes you wonder: What else is in there that we don't know about?
"School lunch officials and other customers complained about the taste and smell of the beef," says the NYT. No wonder. It's been pumped full of chemicals.
There are already a thousand reasons not to eat fast food. Make this reason number 1,001. Ammonia. It's not supposed to be there.
You can get the same effect by opening a can of dog food made with beef byproducts, spraying it with ammonia, and swallowing it. That is essentially what you're eating when you order a fast food burger.
It's almost enough to make you want to puke. If you do so, please aim it at your windows, because ammonia cuts through grease like nothing else, leaving your windows squeaky clean!
Sources for this story include:
NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/u...
ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wire...
Monday, January 4, 2010
Top 10 Reasons to Go Vegan in 2010
Top 10 Reasons to Go Vegan in 2010 - from http://www.goveg.com/
"Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist."
- Natalie Portman
Many people's New Year's resolutions include losing weight, eating better, getting healthier, and doing more to make the world a better place. You can accomplish all these goals by switching to a vegan diet, and you'll enjoy delicious, satisfying meals as well. Here are our top 10 reasons to go vegan in 2010:
1. Slim Down While Feeling Good
Is shedding some extra pounds first on your list of goals for the new year? Vegetarians are, on average, up to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters. And unlike unhealthy fad diets, which leave you feeling tired (and gaining all the weight back eventually), going vegan is the healthy way to keep the excess fat off for good while feeling full of energy.
2. It's the Best Way to Help Animals
Every vegetarian saves more than 100 animals a year from horrible abuse. There is simply no other way that you can easily help so many animals and prevent so much suffering than by choosing vegan foods over meat, eggs, and dairy products.
3. A Healthier, Happier You
A vegan diet is great for your health! According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians are less likely to develop heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or high blood pressure than meat-eaters. Vegetarians get all the nutrients they need to be healthy (e.g., plant protein, fiber, minerals, etc.) without all the nasty stuff in meat that slows you down and makes you sick, like cholesterol and saturated animal fat.
4. Vegan Food Is Delicious
So you're worried that if you go vegan, you'll have to give up hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, and ice cream? You won't. As the demand for vegan food skyrockets, companies are coming out with more and more delicious meat and dairy product alternatives that taste like the real thing but are much healthier and don't hurt any animals. Plus, we have thousands of tasty kitchen-tested recipes to help you get started!
5. Meat Is Gross
It's disgusting but true: Meat is often contaminated with feces, blood, and other bodily fluids, all of which make animal products the top source of food poisoning in the United States. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tested supermarket chicken flesh and found that 96 percent of Tyson chicken was contaminated with campylobacter, a dangerous bacteria that causes 2.4 million cases of food poisoning each year, resulting in diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever. Learn more.
6. Help Feed the World
Eating meat doesn't just hurt animals; it hurts people too. It takes tons of crops and water to raise farmed animals-in fact, it takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal flesh! All that plant food could be used much more efficiently if it was fed to people directly. The more people who go vegan, the more we can feed the hungry.
7. Save the Planet
Eating meat is one of the worst things that you can do for the Earth; it's wasteful, it causes enormous amounts of pollution, and the meat industry is one of the biggest causes of global warming. Adopting a vegan diet is more important than switching to a "greener" car in the fight against global warming.
8. All the Cool Kids Are Doing It
The list of stars who shun animal flesh is basically a "who's who" of today's hottest celebs. Joaquin Phoenix, Natalie Portman, Tobey McGuire, Shania Twain, Alicia Silverstone, Anthony Kiedis, Casey Affleck, Kristen Bell, INXS lead singer J.D. Fortune, Benji Madden, Alyssa Milano, Common, Joss Stone, and Carrie Underwood are just a handful of the super-sexy vegetarians who regularly appear in People magazine. Check out our recent "World's Sexiest Vegetarians" for more hot, compassionate celebs.
9. Look Sexy and Be Sexy
Vegans tend to be thinner than meat-eaters and have more energy, which is perfect for late-night romps with your special someone. (Guys: The cholesterol and saturated animal fat in meat, eggs, and dairy products don't just clog the arteries to your heart; over time, they impede blood flow to other vital organs as well.) Plus, what's sexier than someone who is not only mega-hot, but also compassionate?
10. Pigs Are Smarter Than Your Dog
While most people are less familiar with pigs, chickens, fish, and cows than they are with dogs and cats, animals used for food are every bit as intelligent and able to suffer as the animals who share our homes are. Pigs can learn to play video games, and chickens are so smart that their intelligence has been compared by scientists to that of monkeys. Read more about these amazing animals.
Ready to get started? Make 'Go vegan' your resolution for 2010 and we'll help you every step of the way. Have a happy, healthy, and humane new year!
"Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist."
- Natalie Portman
Many people's New Year's resolutions include losing weight, eating better, getting healthier, and doing more to make the world a better place. You can accomplish all these goals by switching to a vegan diet, and you'll enjoy delicious, satisfying meals as well. Here are our top 10 reasons to go vegan in 2010:
1. Slim Down While Feeling Good
Is shedding some extra pounds first on your list of goals for the new year? Vegetarians are, on average, up to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters. And unlike unhealthy fad diets, which leave you feeling tired (and gaining all the weight back eventually), going vegan is the healthy way to keep the excess fat off for good while feeling full of energy.
2. It's the Best Way to Help Animals
Every vegetarian saves more than 100 animals a year from horrible abuse. There is simply no other way that you can easily help so many animals and prevent so much suffering than by choosing vegan foods over meat, eggs, and dairy products.
3. A Healthier, Happier You
A vegan diet is great for your health! According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians are less likely to develop heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or high blood pressure than meat-eaters. Vegetarians get all the nutrients they need to be healthy (e.g., plant protein, fiber, minerals, etc.) without all the nasty stuff in meat that slows you down and makes you sick, like cholesterol and saturated animal fat.
4. Vegan Food Is Delicious
So you're worried that if you go vegan, you'll have to give up hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, and ice cream? You won't. As the demand for vegan food skyrockets, companies are coming out with more and more delicious meat and dairy product alternatives that taste like the real thing but are much healthier and don't hurt any animals. Plus, we have thousands of tasty kitchen-tested recipes to help you get started!
5. Meat Is Gross
It's disgusting but true: Meat is often contaminated with feces, blood, and other bodily fluids, all of which make animal products the top source of food poisoning in the United States. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tested supermarket chicken flesh and found that 96 percent of Tyson chicken was contaminated with campylobacter, a dangerous bacteria that causes 2.4 million cases of food poisoning each year, resulting in diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever. Learn more.
6. Help Feed the World
Eating meat doesn't just hurt animals; it hurts people too. It takes tons of crops and water to raise farmed animals-in fact, it takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal flesh! All that plant food could be used much more efficiently if it was fed to people directly. The more people who go vegan, the more we can feed the hungry.
7. Save the Planet
Eating meat is one of the worst things that you can do for the Earth; it's wasteful, it causes enormous amounts of pollution, and the meat industry is one of the biggest causes of global warming. Adopting a vegan diet is more important than switching to a "greener" car in the fight against global warming.
8. All the Cool Kids Are Doing It
The list of stars who shun animal flesh is basically a "who's who" of today's hottest celebs. Joaquin Phoenix, Natalie Portman, Tobey McGuire, Shania Twain, Alicia Silverstone, Anthony Kiedis, Casey Affleck, Kristen Bell, INXS lead singer J.D. Fortune, Benji Madden, Alyssa Milano, Common, Joss Stone, and Carrie Underwood are just a handful of the super-sexy vegetarians who regularly appear in People magazine. Check out our recent "World's Sexiest Vegetarians" for more hot, compassionate celebs.
9. Look Sexy and Be Sexy
Vegans tend to be thinner than meat-eaters and have more energy, which is perfect for late-night romps with your special someone. (Guys: The cholesterol and saturated animal fat in meat, eggs, and dairy products don't just clog the arteries to your heart; over time, they impede blood flow to other vital organs as well.) Plus, what's sexier than someone who is not only mega-hot, but also compassionate?
10. Pigs Are Smarter Than Your Dog
While most people are less familiar with pigs, chickens, fish, and cows than they are with dogs and cats, animals used for food are every bit as intelligent and able to suffer as the animals who share our homes are. Pigs can learn to play video games, and chickens are so smart that their intelligence has been compared by scientists to that of monkeys. Read more about these amazing animals.
Ready to get started? Make 'Go vegan' your resolution for 2010 and we'll help you every step of the way. Have a happy, healthy, and humane new year!
Vote on the "Best of the Year" awards for superfoods, vitamin retailers, skin care and more
http://naturalnews.com/index-polls.html
NaturalNews) With 2009 now over, it's time to vote on the "Best of the Year" awards! If you'd like to cast your vote, simply go to the voting page at http://naturalnews.com/index-polls.html
You can cast one vote for each category. The categories include Best Food Bar, Best Herbal Product Line, Best Health Products Retailer, Best Natural Protein, Best Skin Care Line, Best Superfood Powder and Best Multivitamin.
NaturalNews) With 2009 now over, it's time to vote on the "Best of the Year" awards! If you'd like to cast your vote, simply go to the voting page at http://naturalnews.com/index-polls.html
You can cast one vote for each category. The categories include Best Food Bar, Best Herbal Product Line, Best Health Products Retailer, Best Natural Protein, Best Skin Care Line, Best Superfood Powder and Best Multivitamin.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
When medicines are approved as preventive "nutrients" FDA approves Crestor for people who have no health problem to correct
Thank you Mike Great Article!!
(NaturalNews) Big Pharma has been trending this direction for a long time: marketing medicines to people who don't need them and who have nothing wrong with their health. It's all part of a ploy to position prescription drugs as nutrients -- things you need to take on a regular basis in order to prevent disease.
The FDA recently gave its nod of approval on the matter, announcing that Crestor can now be advertised and prescribed as a "preventive" medicine. No longer does a patient need to have anything wrong with them to warrant this expensive prescription medication: They only need to remember the brand name of the drug from television ads.
This FDA approval for the marketing of Crestor to healthy people is a breakthrough for wealthy drug companies. Selling drugs only to people who are sick is, by definition, a limited market. Expanding drug revenues requires reaching people who have nothing wrong with them and convincing them that taking a cocktail of daily pharmaceuticals will somehow keep them healthy.
All this is, of course, the greatest quackery we've yet seen from Big Pharma, because once this floodgate of "preventive pharmaceuticals" is unleashed, the drug companies will be positioned to promote a bewildering array of other preventive chemicals you're supposed to take at the same time. Did you take your anti-cancer pill today? How about your anti-diabetes pill? Anti-cholesterol pill? Don't forget your anti-Alzheimer's pill, too.
Medications are not vitamins
The very idea that these drugs can somehow prevent a person from becoming sick in the future strains the boundaries of scientific credibility. Only natural therapies like nutrition can prevent the onset of disease, not patented chemicals that don't belong in the human body in the first place.
The logical argument of the drug companies who push these "preventive" prescriptions is essentially that the human body is deficient in pharmaceuticals, and that deficiency can only be corrected by taking whatever brand-name drugs they show you on television. Forget about deficiencies in zinc, or vitamin D, or living enzymes; what your body really needs is more synthetic chemicals!
The FDA agrees with this loopy logic. And why wouldn't it? Subscribing to this pharmaceutical delusion is an easy way to instantly expand Big Pharma's customer base by tens of millions. Overnight, the market for Crestor ballooned from a few million people with high cholesterol to the entire U.S. population of 300 million people.
If Crestor can help healthy people be healthier (which it can't, but let's play along with this delusion for the sake of argument), then it's only a matter of time before they start adding Crestor to infant formula. I mean, why not? If it's so good for healthy people, then it must make babies healthier, too, right?
So let's add Crestor to sports drinks. Let's sprinkle it into the iodized salt supply. Let's drip it into the municipal water! (Don't laugh: This idea of dripping cholesterol drugs into the water supply has already been suggested by more than one doctor.) Let's merge the pharmaceutical supply with the food supply and charge people prescription drugs prices for "functional" foods laced with these chemicals!
Pharmaceutical deficiency
That's really where all this is headed. When medicines are approved as preventive "nutrients" for the human body, it's only a matter of time before the industry starts talking about your "pharmaceutical deficiency."
Not taking any medications? You have a pharmaceutical deficiency, and it needs to be corrected by taking more prescription drugs. But don't bother with actual nutrition, because nutrients have absolutely no role in preventing disease, the FDA claims. No nutrient has ever been approved by the FDA for the prevention or treatment of any disease whatsoever.
The message from the FDA is quite clear on this: Nutrients are useless, and you should eat medications as if they were vitamins.
Patented Big Pharma chemicals, after all, provide all the nutrition you'll ever need!
(NaturalNews) Big Pharma has been trending this direction for a long time: marketing medicines to people who don't need them and who have nothing wrong with their health. It's all part of a ploy to position prescription drugs as nutrients -- things you need to take on a regular basis in order to prevent disease.
The FDA recently gave its nod of approval on the matter, announcing that Crestor can now be advertised and prescribed as a "preventive" medicine. No longer does a patient need to have anything wrong with them to warrant this expensive prescription medication: They only need to remember the brand name of the drug from television ads.
This FDA approval for the marketing of Crestor to healthy people is a breakthrough for wealthy drug companies. Selling drugs only to people who are sick is, by definition, a limited market. Expanding drug revenues requires reaching people who have nothing wrong with them and convincing them that taking a cocktail of daily pharmaceuticals will somehow keep them healthy.
All this is, of course, the greatest quackery we've yet seen from Big Pharma, because once this floodgate of "preventive pharmaceuticals" is unleashed, the drug companies will be positioned to promote a bewildering array of other preventive chemicals you're supposed to take at the same time. Did you take your anti-cancer pill today? How about your anti-diabetes pill? Anti-cholesterol pill? Don't forget your anti-Alzheimer's pill, too.
Medications are not vitamins
The very idea that these drugs can somehow prevent a person from becoming sick in the future strains the boundaries of scientific credibility. Only natural therapies like nutrition can prevent the onset of disease, not patented chemicals that don't belong in the human body in the first place.
The logical argument of the drug companies who push these "preventive" prescriptions is essentially that the human body is deficient in pharmaceuticals, and that deficiency can only be corrected by taking whatever brand-name drugs they show you on television. Forget about deficiencies in zinc, or vitamin D, or living enzymes; what your body really needs is more synthetic chemicals!
The FDA agrees with this loopy logic. And why wouldn't it? Subscribing to this pharmaceutical delusion is an easy way to instantly expand Big Pharma's customer base by tens of millions. Overnight, the market for Crestor ballooned from a few million people with high cholesterol to the entire U.S. population of 300 million people.
If Crestor can help healthy people be healthier (which it can't, but let's play along with this delusion for the sake of argument), then it's only a matter of time before they start adding Crestor to infant formula. I mean, why not? If it's so good for healthy people, then it must make babies healthier, too, right?
So let's add Crestor to sports drinks. Let's sprinkle it into the iodized salt supply. Let's drip it into the municipal water! (Don't laugh: This idea of dripping cholesterol drugs into the water supply has already been suggested by more than one doctor.) Let's merge the pharmaceutical supply with the food supply and charge people prescription drugs prices for "functional" foods laced with these chemicals!
Pharmaceutical deficiency
That's really where all this is headed. When medicines are approved as preventive "nutrients" for the human body, it's only a matter of time before the industry starts talking about your "pharmaceutical deficiency."
Not taking any medications? You have a pharmaceutical deficiency, and it needs to be corrected by taking more prescription drugs. But don't bother with actual nutrition, because nutrients have absolutely no role in preventing disease, the FDA claims. No nutrient has ever been approved by the FDA for the prevention or treatment of any disease whatsoever.
The message from the FDA is quite clear on this: Nutrients are useless, and you should eat medications as if they were vitamins.
Patented Big Pharma chemicals, after all, provide all the nutrition you'll ever need!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Jonathan Safran Foer - Eating Animals -- On Larry King & Ellen Show
Farm Forward Board Member and New York Times Bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer released his third book, Eating Animals, today. Foer’s first work of non-fiction is part memoir, part modern muckracking and the most important book on animal agriculture in decades. We say the most important because no other honest account of animal agriculture has ever addressed the issue on so many levels—something we believe is essential to creating lasting change.
Part of what makes Farm Forward unique is our insistence that how we raise farm animals is not simply an issue of animal welfare, ecological sustainability, or sound economics, but all of these and more. How we choose to feed our families and ourselves says a lot about who we are as individuals and as citizens. Our food choices are also statements of values. Foer’s book is so powerful in part because it recognizes that, “Food ethics are so complex because food is bound to both taste buds and taste, to individual biographies and social histories.”
Farm Forward is proud to have played a part in making Foer’s book possible. Speaking of the contributions of Farm Forward founder Aaron Gross, Foer writes, “It’s often said that such-and-such wouldn’t have been possible without so-and-so. But in the most literal sense, I wouldn’t have, and couldn’t have, written this book without Aaron.”
You may have already seen some of the fabulous reviews and coverage of Eating Animals. Here are just a few of our favorites:
* Farm Forward in the Huffington Post
* Natalie Portman on Eating Animals
* Dr. Andrew Weil on Eating Animals
* Rabbi David Wolpe on Eating Animals
* Excerpt from the New York Times Magazine
At Farm Forward we, of course, had high expectations for the book Foer would write. What we didn’t expect, though, was a book that articulates so much of Farm Forward’s own philosophy. For example, Foer singles out Frank Reese as the most important farmer in America. We’ve felt that way for years. Reese has the ability to recreate a more humane and sustainable poultry industry, which is why supporting Reese’s work is taking more of Farm Forward’s attention than any other project.
Lauded as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, Foer is uniquely positioned to raise awareness about the troubling state of animal agriculture and the impact of our food choices. He is exactly the kind of culture-maker America needs to help us remember why food and farming matter and to inspire us to action. His choice to speak out has already inspired many others. Natalie Portman exclaimed that “Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist.”
The ability to make conscientious food choices is predicated on awareness and understanding. Eating Animals will help increase public awareness as well as enrich the public discussion of the problems in animal agriculture. It may well open the most important discussion about food and farming in a generation.
Farm Forward will continue to support culture makers like Foer to help advance our mission to “promote conscientious food choices, reduce farm animal suffering, and advance sustainable agriculture.” Foer found our help indispensable, but our work can only continue with your support. Help us change the national discussion of food and farming, and be sure to sign up for the Farm Forward newsletter (the form is just below the animal buttons on the right)!
From - Farm Forward Website:
Factory Farming
Factory farms, also known as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) or IFAP (Industrial Farm Animal Production) facilities,1 can house up to 125,000 animals2 under one roof and are designed to produce the highest possible output at the lowest possible cost to the operator. These farms and their associated industrial slaughterhouses produce “cheap” meat, eggs, and dairy by externalizing their costs. The costs to the public from the ecological damage and health problems created by factory farms are not considered any more than the law requires, and companies have often found it less expensive to pay fines than to alter their methods. For this reason, the true cost of meat is never reflected in the price consumers pay. Animal suffering is given no meaningful consideration except in a few idiosyncratic cases.
Factory farming now accounts for more than 99 percent of all farmed animals raised and slaughtered in the United States.3 (Virtually all seafood comes to us by way of industrial fishing or factory fish farms.)
Farmed animals are remarkable creatures who experience pleasure (pasture-raised pigs, for instance, are known to jump for joy)4 and have complex social structures (cows develop friendships over time and will sometimes hold grudges against other animals who treat them badly).5 The cheap animal products churned out by factory farms come at a high cost to the animals themselves (many are confined so intensively that they cannot turn around or stretch a wing).6 The structure of factory farming ensures that even the animals’ most fundamental needs—clean air, sunshine, freedom from chronic pain and illness—are denied them.
The present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise for food.” –Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production
At the same time, factory farming’s industrial slaughterhouses have created worker conditions that Human Rights Watch describes as “systematic human rights abuses.”7 Employing illegal immigrants and underage workers is a common practice, in part because the vulnerability of these populations allows the industry to avoid compensating them for the numerous injuries and chronic pain that are equally standard in industrial slaughter. Processing-plant line workers in California interviewed by Farm Forward reported, to their shame, that it was not uncommon for them to be denied access to the bathroom in order to “hold the line” and maintain productivity.
The factory farm record on the environment is no better: World Watch, the Sierra Club, the Pew Commission, Greenpeace, and other major environmental watchdogs have singled out factory farms as among the biggest polluters on the planet.8 There is now a scientific consensus that animal agriculture is the single largest contributor to global warming—outstripping even the transportation industry in its production of greenhouse gases.9 A 2008 New York Times article reported that “if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan—a Camry, say—to the ultra-efficient Prius.”10
The disturbing nature of these problems can make it difficult for many people to accept the truth about factory farming when they are first confronted with it: “Surely,” one is tempted to say, “it can’t be that bad.” But once the scale of the devastation that this industry is wreaking on our health, the environment, and animals becomes clear, the most surprising aspect of factory farming is how effectively these problems have been hidden from the public in the first place.
There are more humane, more just, and more sustainable ways to eat, and, more than ever before, there are numerous, progressive alternatives to factory farms. With your help, we can find a better way forward.
1. 1. While “CAFO” is often used in newspapers to refer to factory farms in general, it is technically defined by the EPA as referring only to a subset of the largest factory farms. Thus, some smaller factory farms are officially not considered CAFOs. The term “IFAP” was coined by the Pew Commission to refer to all factory farming. When Farm Forward speaks about factory farming, we are referring to IFAP facilities.
2. 2. Environmental Protection Agency, Producers’ Compliance Guide for CAFOs, August 2003.
3. 3. Farm Forward calculation based on U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2002 Census of Agriculture, June 2004; and ibid.
4. 4. Jonathan Balcombe, Pleasurable Kingdom (New York: Macmillan, 2006).
5. 5. Jonathan Leake, “Cows Hold Grudges, Say Scientists,” The Australian, February 28, 2005.
6. 6. Bill Niman, Niman Ranch Cookbook (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2008).
7. 7. Human Rights Watch, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, 2004, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/usa0105/usa0105.pdf.
8. 8. Worldwatch Institute, Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry, August 2005; Sierra Club, “Water Contamination From Factory Farms,” Article here; Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Putting Meat on The Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, April 2008; Greenpeace, The True Cost of Food, March 2007.
9. 9. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2007.
10. 10. Mark Bittman, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler,” New York Times, January 27, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html.
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