We All Knew This Was Coming
While at the airport, a contributor to the site happened upon something very interesting. So, he took a picture with what was available and sent it along.
Now, I don’t know much except that, as advertized, it is “limited time” and a co-promotion with Delta ONLY. But, you have to know more things like this will be on the way.
please understand the severity of this
I have re-typed this opening sentence about five times now, because I do not have the words to explain how important it is to STOP DRINKING SODAS!!! (Here’s hoping the all caps gives the effect I’m looking for.)
You can go to many a link on this page about High Fructose Corn Syrup or Crystalline Fructose and read about the disease issues related to both of these chemicals…. (yes, CHEMICALS. Make no mistake about it, despite what the Corn Bureau may say, these are chemicals. They are not natural. They are not “just like sugar”). To continue… first off, sodas are bad because of HFCS and the associated diseases.
However, I have a second, and maybe a more important reason why I am on my knees begging you to stop. And, even if you do not want to stop, if you have a child… please have them stop.
I have written about the dangers of BPA and you can go to the dedicated section to read more. But to summarize:
1.) BPA is used in the synthesis of plastic to make it more flexible. It is used in canned goods as a “protective” liner to stop contact between the content and the metal.
2.) BPA is known to leach during heat (in plastic) and under acidic conditions (metal). (Sodas and energy drinks are HIGHLY acidic materials).
3.) BPA is a known hormone mimicker causing serious developmental problems in children leading to diseases such as cancer, insulin resistance, sterility, other fertility related illnesses such as spontaneous miscarriages, and the list goes on.
4.) In studies, it has been found to cross the blood brain barrier, resulting in cancers in less than 30 days of exposure
In other words, this is a chemical that we are all exposed to, however, due to its influence during developmental stages children are more affected by it than adults. There has been a push to create BPA free baby bottles and toys, which is great and necessary.
Until now, there had been very little research done on its levels in soda.
I can’t tell you what to do or how to raise your children. I will tell you that I think in America we are not only in an epidemic of obesity and food related illnesses, but we are harming our children in ways unimaginable. Children today are exposed to much more than anything even 20 years ago… and I am not talking about racy music videos. I do feel it is up to the parents to stop being friends and start being parents, again, to their children and take control of how they eat and drink.
If someone doesn’t start acting soon, it may be too late.
crystalline fructose
The body doesn’t handle large amounts of fructose well. You can maintain life with intravenous glucose, but not with intravenous fructose; severe derangement of liver function results. There’s also evidence that a high intake of fructose elevates levels of circulating fats (serum triglycerides), increasing the risk of heart disease. I never use fructose in my home. dr. andrew weil
So, there is a new criminal in town. Seems to be the next generation of high fructose corn syrup. But this guy is even more devious placing himself in “healthy” drinks.
I am referring to crystalline fructose. It is produced by allowing HFCS to crystallize. It is then dried and milled into the desired particle size for packaging. As a result, it is 100% fructose.
Fructose is not the best thing for your body. Fructose exists in foods as either a monosaccharide (free fructose) or as a disaccharide (sucrose). Free fructose does not undergo digestion; however when fructose is consumed in the form of sucrose, digestion occurs entirely in the upper small intestine. As sucrose comes into contact with the membrane of the small intestine, the enzyme sucrase catalyzes the cleavage of sucrose to yield one glucose and fructose unit. Fructose, passes through the small intestine, virtually unchanged, then enters the portal vein and is directed toward the liver.
I know that is a lot of information, so lets see if I can make it a bit more understandable. When fructose is in the presence of sucrose, your body has a better chance of understanding what to do with it in terms of breaking it down and processing it. When it stands alone, your body does not know how to metabolize the molecule, so it sends it right to your liver. This results in the fattening of the liver, or cirrhosis. So, why is this important. Well, HFCS is a blend of 45% sucrose and 55% fructose. Therefore, to an extent your body knows what to do in its presence. In contrast, crystalline fructose is 100% fructose. This means you have an even higher chance of developing fatty liver.
(edit. note.: I do not want this to be used as justification for allowing consumption of HFCS. HFCS has its own list of harmful reasons to stop ingesting it. In this example, I am just focusing on the metabolism of the fructose molecule.)
Here is another reason to avoid crystalline fructose…. arsenic. Yes. The processing of this molecule allows for acceptable levels of arsenic, heavy metals, lead and chloride. Again, these are toxic chemicals that your body is unable to process. The impact on your health is immeasurable. While, a simple serving of the drink might not be bad, over time the build up of any one of these components can lead to death.
The biggest reason this particular molecule is so bad is because of the products it is being placed in: health drinks. Vitamin Water seems to be the most popular of the beverages, but other examples are FUZE, Mistic, SoBe, Snapple and W20 for Women.
There is an entire category of beverage, marketed as healthful for you and your body, most commonly encouraged to drink after your work-out. In reality, you would be better off drinking a Coke after a hard exercise routine, as compared to Vitamin Water.
This is just another example of how the food industry and the corn industry have managed to get a toxic substance into the food you eat. As people get away from HFCS, there is something to easily replace it. And as people become more aware of CF, there will be another substitution. This is an ongoing process that is damaging the health of Americans.
mercury rising
New data shows that mercury is present in high fructose corn syrup, which is the sweetener used for almost all of the products on the shelves of your neighborhood mega-mart. The study was released through Environmental Health.
Mercury has been linked to learning disabilities in children and heart disease in adults. It is thought that the mercury is entering the sugary substitute during processing, thinking that it comes from the hydrochloric acid that is used to manufacture the product. The toxin was detected in just under 50% of the total samples taken.
It is believed that, on average, Americans consume 12 teaspoons of HFCS, daily. Although, it is expected that children ingest more than adults.
There is no established safe dose for elemental mercury, the type discovered in corn syrup. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says an average-sized woman should limit her exposure to 5.5 micrograms a day of methylmercury, the kind found in fish. If that same woman regularly ate corn syrup contaminated at the highest level detected in the study—0.57 micrograms per gram—the researchers estimated that she could end up consuming an amount of mercury that is five times higher than the EPA‘s safe dose.
Given that HFCS is found in a very high percentage of products, it is safe to assume that we will be exposed to mercury, which was once thought to only be transferred through fish. Now, it seems that anything we eat will do more harm than good.
news-in-brief, 1/9/09
In Obama’s Team, Two Camps on Climate, via The New York Times
Today, as the climate-change debate once again heats up, Mr. Summers leads the economic team of the incoming administration, and Ms. Browner has been designated its White House coordinator of energy and climate policy. And Mr. Gore is hovering as an informal adviser to President-elect Barack Obama.
As Mr. Obama seeks to find the right balance between his environmental goals and his plans to revive the economy, he may have to resolve conflicting views among some of his top advisers……
This CAFE Is Closed: Bush admin. won’t implement fuel efficiency rules, via GRIST.org
The administration’s move drew a sharp reaction from one of the biggest congressional backers of CAFE. “Apparently the Bush administration was too busy giving midnight regulatory handouts to its corporate cronies to complete its work on fuel economy standards for consumers,” said Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “I look forward to working with President Obama to implement this landmark CAFE legislation and get our national energy policy back on track.”
The new administration of president-elect Barack Obama takes over on January 20. Obama has selected Republican representative Ray LaHood to head the agency.
US judge dismisses pollution case against Cargill, via MSNBC
The Cargill lawsuit alleged the company used chemicals linked to illnesses including lung congestion and organ damage, and that the hazardous substances eventually reached the groundwater and several private wells.
Cargill processed and stored agricultural seed at the plant from 1981 to about 2000.
For those who don’t know, Cargill is one of the main manufacturers of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Many credit Cargill and Monsanto as being the leading corporations that has turned our agriculture away from food farming and into commodity farming.
Tehran looks to the skies for cheap power from the sun, via The Guardian UK
Mention energy and Iran in the same sentence and you’re duty-bound to express some concern about the country’s ambitions for nuclear power and, as a result, raise dangerous questions about weapons. But while that are-they-aren’t-they game has been going on between the country’s leaders and the wider international community, renewable energy experts in Iran have been quietly working on capturing sunlight to power their country.
According to officials, Iran has started 2009 by inaugurating a pilot solar plant in Shiraz, Fars province. It is a concentrating solar power (CSP) system, using parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight onto a tube of water that is super-heated to make steam that is then used to turn electricity-generating turbines.
they aren’t “super”markets, they’re “corn”markets
November 11, 2008 by cshells58
Filed under Food, environment science
Even though it may seem contradictory to what “see” in the market, a huge percentage of our farming is commodity farming, specifically corn farming. In fact, when people talk about farms being subsidized, it is not all farms, it is only commodity farms (soy, cotton, wheat, and corn).
Corn is the biggest. As we know it is used as a sweetener and an ethanol, but did you know it goes into the box that your cereal is in? And, by the way, the cereal, too? In fact, corn is in everything. There is not one aisle, except ironically the produce aisle, where you do not see corn on a daily basis.
Even your meat.
What? You think I am insane, don’t you?
Some brief history… in the past, our livestock was raised eating grass, or worms, or our extra food. It benefits us for them to eat this way. Take the cow, for example. Grass is an amazing plant high in fiber and nutrients, like omega oils. We want those nutrients but it is nearly impossible for us to digest grass to get those things out. The cow has evolved over centuries to be ruminants just to be able to digest this food. The nutrients are absorbed into its cell tissue, we eat the cow, we get nutrition that we would otherwise have no access to. It is the circle of life. Cows were healthy walking around all day long, munching on clover, not standing in its own waste.
And then, demand for cow went up and farmers needed to get it raised, killed and out to market in the shortest time possible. Grass became a limitation and so they started working with the surplus from the corn growers and gave that to the cattle. But, they aren’t designed to eat the corn. So they get sick… hence, an increase in antibiotics. Not to mention that they are now contained, standing in inches deep of their own fecal material, so they need even more antibiotics.
Oooh… and, here’s a fun fact. Did you know that grass fed cattle does not have “marbling”? That this is a consequence of grain/corn fed cattle, and as a result ranchers heavily marketed to the USDA to make “marbling” a positive quality and a rating system, when in fact it is a sign of a diseased animal. Yum.
Why am I bringing this up? I just read an interesting article from some scientists out of Hawaii that studied the chemical composition of food from restaurants all over the country.
“The pair found that 100% of the chicken in these three chains had been reared on corn alone. Some 93% of the beef came from cows that had been fed a corn-only diet.” And, “the team was even able to determine what type of oil the fries had been cooked in – a mixture of vegetable oils at McDonald’s and Burger King, corn oil at Wendy’s. In fact, of 160 products purchased at Wendy’s, the researchers did not find a single one without some corn component.”
One conclusion: …notes that government subsidies that favour corn have encouraged pesticide- and fertiliser-intensive monoculture farming in the US. “We are using corn in ways that are completely unsustainable,” says Hird.
And, I hope he doesn’t mind, but I also really liked this comment:
The problems with corn also include nitrogen fertilizer runoff that has been cited in several scientific reports and a number of news articles as causing expanding dead zones off the USA Gulf Coast and in the Atlantic. What should be done for animal feed is turning to alfalfa and related legumes with some soybean meals as soybeans also give oil perhaps to be used as fuel or made into a butter. Soybean milk substitutes would avoid cows that belch methane.
But the one certain step needed is to forget biofuels. Why? Because they are only a carbon dioxide recycling process that removes not one carbon atom from the balance of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. We need to get a shift for hydrogen, which seems to be getting ignored especially by big energy tangled with big oil that fears several trillion dollars in refineries and oil field investments will be wiped out. We should also be expanding windmills for electricity as they would be recovering some of the energy lost by burning fossil fuels causing global warming.
Dr. J.Singmaster, Fremont, CA, USA
“Vote with your fork. You get three votes a day.” – Michael Pollan, Food Fight
HERE is the article
update on my nemesis
October 2, 2008 by cshells58
Filed under Uncategorized
New research came out about High Fructose Corn Syrup.
I beg of you… STOP PUTTING THIS CRAP IN YOUR BODY!!!
“When fructose was present in the sweet drink, whether it was at 50 percent of its concentration, or 75 percent, we found that the fat synthesis rate was more than twice, almost three times the rate as when we just fed glucose alone. In a nutshell, high-fructose corn syrup produces fat in your body at more than double the rate of sugar.”
Do not believe the commercials, the ads, nor the AMA… HFCS does not, and will never, equal sugar.
** excerpt from www.grist.org, full article here.
***my articles about HFCS can be found HERE and HERE.
lies, lies, lies, yeah… they’re gonna get you
There are so many reasons this is horrifying, in some ways I do not know where to start.
Please watch these two commericals:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEbRxTOyGf0]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVsgXPt564Q]
So first off, if you want to know what is so bad about HFCS then please go here, because I have written about why this stuff is killing us, as well as doing a disservice to our farming industry. You can also go here and read about the medical bills associated with the western diet.
I think, however, the worst thing about these commercials is where I saw one for the first time. THE FOOD NETWORK!!! So, here is this channel dedicated to getting people to eat at home, to cook healthfully, to buy organic, to eat light… I can’t tell you how many times I hear one of their chefs say…. “this way, you can control what you eat”.
But, you see, when it comes right down to it, even this network is willing to compromise itself and lie to its viewers about the reality of high fructose corn syrup, if it means getting money in their pockets. As much as they may put on their shows that they care about you, I just can’t believe it and neither should you. If they cared they would not allow for an advertiser that gives you false information and is in such conflict with everything else they, supposedly, stand for.
I have always enjoyed watching the Food Network and have learned some from their shows. However, I also believe that turning off the network will show who has the power in this relationship. If they continue to put on blatantly false advertising, then I will not watch this network, and I encourage you to do the same. I also would encourage you to write a letter to the owners of the network, by going here.
I am going to.
lies, lies, lies, yeah… they’re gonna get you
There are so many reasons this is horrifying, in some ways I do not know where to start.
Please watch these two commericals:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEbRxTOyGf0]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVsgXPt564Q]
So first off, if you want to know what is so bad about HFCS then please go here, because I have written about why this stuff is killing us, as well as doing a disservice to our farming industry. You can also go here and read about the medical bills associated with the western diet.
I think, however, the worst thing about these commercials is where I saw one for the first time. THE FOOD NETWORK!!! So, here is this channel dedicated to getting people to eat at home, to cook healthfully, to buy organic, to eat light… I can’t tell you how many times I hear one of their chefs say…. “this way, you can control what you eat”.
But, you see, when it comes right down to it, even this network is willing to compromise itself and lie to its viewers about the reality of high fructose corn syrup, if it means getting money in their pockets. As much as they may put on their shows that they care about you, I just can’t believe it and neither should you. If they cared they would not allow for an advertiser that gives you false information and is in such conflict with everything else they, supposedly, stand for.
I have always enjoyed watching the Food Network and have learned some from their shows. However, I also believe that turning off the network will show who has the power in this relationship. If they continue to put on blatantly false advertising, then I will not watch this network, and I encourage you to do the same. I also would encourage you to write a letter to the owners of the network, by going here.
I am going to.
oh my ears!
I am not sure where to start with the discussion of food, because this is the issue I am the most passionate. I feel this subject is inextricably linked to issues with the environment and our economy, and possibly the leader in creating our future demise.
Let’s start with the substance that is a very close second to oil as a commodity that we are addicted to… High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Simply, HFCS is a sugar that is added to almost every single food item that is manufactured. The obvious is sodas, cookies, and chocolate. The not so obvious is ketchup, pretzels, and green tea…. oh yes, you bottled green tea drinkers. You think it’s healthy? READ LABELS!!!
HFCS is made by converting corn kernels into corn starch, and then through the additional of enzymes and a chromatography step it is converted from glucose into a highly concentrated fructose. Yum. Oh, and if you are a consumer that tries to avoid genetically modified food… you might want to stay away from HFCS… cause two of the three enzymes the manufacturers use are GMO. (This brings up a much larger discussion of GMO food, which 80% of the corn industry is made from GMO seeds by Mansanto. But that deserves its own discussion, later.)
There are numerous health issues affiliated with HFCS. First off, HFCS is blamed by most people in the health professional to be the major cause of obesity. One theory being that your liver, not knowing what to do with this engineered product, turns the fructose into fat. Another issue is that it doesn’t switch the trigger in your body that tells you that you are full. So, you can drink a liter bottle of soda, which is the caloric equivalent of a Thanksgiving dinner, not feel full and so you continue to consume even more food. Research has also found a direct link between fructose and higher levels of diabetes and high cholesterol. I think, however, the most shocking information is that, last year, HFCS surpassed alcohol as the leading cause of cirrhosis of the liver. SURPASSED.
Look…. you would no sooner put strychnine in your body because of the effects and resulting death… it just happens quicker. However, the general population has no problem guzzling it down as soda or bread or ketchup or fruit juice, creating the same effect… death… it just takes longer.
Why did HFCS become the commodity it is? It has a long history starting with a Farm Bill, subsidizing corn, in the 80’s which also coincided with self imposed limitations of importing sugar. Essentially we have created a system in which the cost of importing sugar is artificially high, and the price of corn is artificially low. In addition, we have an abundance of corn. I’m sure some person who is a part of the “powers that be” realized that, because of the overabundance, we were subsidizing a product that we inevitably threw away. Why don’t we do something with it? Let’s make a fake sweetener out of it, put it EVERYTHING, and make some money back.
Of course, the farmers see none of the reward. It costs $3.20 to make a bushel of corn. This includes seed cost, equipment, labor, etc. The farmer makes back $2.20 on that same bushel. This creates another issue affecting the environment. Because of the high cost, low reward, it is only beneficial to the farmer to have huge plots of land. This results in having to buy huge pieces of equipment that burn fossil fuel. In addition, as any good farmer knows, soil needs turn over. It doesn’t do well with one crop, over and over and over again. The corn industry is creating large areas of land that are dead zones. The soil cannot grow food. Without the plants, there are no insects, without the insects there are no birds and so on and so on and so on. Currently, it is estimated that each American has access to 1.2 acres of cultivated food per year. Most scientists estimate that in 5 years…. really let this sink in…. 5 YEARS… each American will only have access to 0.6 cultivated acres. Half of what we have now, in 5 years!! (I bet most of you reading this have plans for five years that you think are reasonable expectations. Do you want to rethink your plan?) The reason behind the 50% decrease in food… more farms converting to industrialized crops like corn, soybean, and canola combined with an ever increasing population.
You think that’s bad…..
Here’s an ironic twist. As discussed, it is making us sick. But because YOUR tax dollars are subsidizing the corn industry, we don’t have the tax dollars to supplement the health care which is needed because we are consuming so much HFCS and getting fat and sick.
Links:
The Future of Food
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
The End of Food by Paul Roberts
Mansanto Watch
Stumble it!