Monday Moaning

Whatever form

Soda – Soft Drinks, depends whether you are American or British, but that is immaterial, the question is what are they doing to our kids?

We have long known that soft drinks/soda are contributing to the current epidemic of obesity.

With ‘light‘ or ‘diet‘ drinks being the worst offenders; which just begs the question, why do so many people drink this shit?

There is new evidence coming to light. Evidence that soda/soft drinks are more evil, much more evil than imagined.

We have become preoccupied with conditions like ADHD (which I have just read is a hoax condition – for another time) and things like inattention at school, juvenile violence levels manifesting at kindergarten level, and worsening in the teens.

But there are definite suspicions as a result of an inconclusive survey by Columbia University epidemiologist Shakira Suglia and her colleagues that the culprit may well be our beloved sodas and soft drinks.

Read this article: Soft drinks’ side effects on Stuff.co.nz

And tell me, that we should be banning these products outright from our children’s diets. In fact governments should be banning these drinks from the young, just like they ban smoking.

Soda was once a luxury, you had a can maybe once a week, I was allowed one 7oz bottle of Coca-Cola on Saturdays; if I had behaved myself during the week.

But today, it is part of our kids food chain, a daily routine, sometimes more, a lot more than one can/bottle a day.

Our kids are overdosing on soda, it’s become a drug, its addictive. A recent case in NZ where a woman died drinking (to excess) Coca-Cola. That’s not a fantasy, it was a decision of the coroner’s court.

As a parent I want you to think about it, seriously. Is your child’s behaviour aggressive, or in any way manifesting some form of antisocial behaviour? Is he/she possibly a bully? Does he/she get irritable? Do they show an attention deficit?  Have there been complaints from school about his/her general behaviour?

Okay… now measure that against their intake of soda – BE HONEST!

Do you see a relationship?

There is a solution! BAN SODA AND SOFT DRINKS.

I have. I have returned to water.

 

Make you Fink on Friday

Fat profits: how the food industry cashed in on obesity

Ever since definitions of healthy bodyweight changed in the 1990s, the world has feared an obesity epidemic. But the food giants accused of making us fat are also profiting from the slimming industry

Weight-loss has become a huge global industry

When you walk into a supermarket, what do you see? Walls of highly calorific, intensely processed food, tweaked by chemicals for maximum “mouth feel” and “repeat appeal” (addictiveness). This is what most people in Britain actually eat. Pure science on a plate. The food, in short, that is making the planet fat.

And next to this? Row upon row of low-fat, light, lean, diet, zero, low-carb, low-cal, sugar-free, “healthy” options, marketed to the very people made fat by the previous aisle and now desperate to lose weight. We think of obesity and dieting as polar opposites, but in fact, there is a deep, symbiotic relationship between the two.

In the UK, 60% of us are overweight, yet the “fat” (and I include myself in this category, with a BMI of 27, slap-bang average for the overweight British male) are not lazy and complacent about our condition, but ashamed and desperate to do something about it. Many of those classed as “overweight” are on a near-perpetual diet, and the same even goes for half of the British population, many of whom don’t even need to lose an ounce.

When obesity as a global health issue first came on the radar, the food industry sat up and took notice. But not exactly in the way you might imagine. Some of the world’s food giants opted to do something both extraordinary and stunningly obvious: they decided to make money from obesity, by buying into the diet industry.

Weight Watchers, created by New York housewife Jean Nidetch in the early 1960s, was bought by Heinz in 1978, who in turn sold the company in 1999 to investment firm Artal for $735m. The next in line was Slimfast, a liquid meal replacement invented by chemist and entrepreneur Danny Abraham, which was bought in 2000 by Unilever, which also owns the Ben & Jerry brand and Wall’s sausages. The US diet phenomenon Jenny Craig was bought by Swiss multinational Nestlé, which also sells chocolate and ice-cream. In 2011, Nestlé was listed in Fortune’s Global 500 as the world’s most profitable company.

These multinationals were easing carefully into a multibillion pound weight-loss market encompassing gyms, home fitness, fad diets and crash diets, and the kind of magazines that feature celebs on yo-yo diets or pushing fitness DVDs promising an “all new you” in just three weeks.

You would think there might be a problem here: the food industry has one ostensible objective – and that’s to sell food. But by creating the ultimate oxymoron of diet food – something you eat to lose weight – it squared a seemingly impossible circle. And we bought it. Highly processed diet meals emerged, often with more sugar in them than the originals, but marketed for weight loss, and here is the key get-out clause, “as part of a calorie-controlled diet”. You can even buy a diet Black Forest gateau if want.

We think of obesity and dieting as polar opposites, but there is a deep relationship between the two

We think of obesity and dieting as polar opposities, but there is a deep relationship between the two

So what you see when you walk into a supermarket in 2013 is the entire 360 degrees of obesity in a single glance. The whole panorama of fattening you up and slimming you down, owned by conglomerates which have analysed every angle and money-making opportunity. The very food companies charged with making us fat in the first place are now also making money from the obesity epidemic.

How did this happen? Let me sketch two alternative scenarios. This is the first: in the late 1970s, food companies made tasty new food. People started to get fat. By the 1990s, NHS costs related to obesity were ballooning. Government, health experts and, surprisingly, the food industry were brought in to consult on what was to be done. They agreed that the blame lay with the consumer – fat people needed to go on diets and exercise. The plan didn’t work. In the 21st century, people are getting fatter than ever.

OK, here’s scenario two. Food companies made tasty new food. People started to get fat. By the 1990s, food companies and, more to the point, the pharmaceutical industry, looked at the escalating obesity crisis, and realised there was a huge amount of money to be made.

But, seen purely in terms of profit, the biggest market wasn’t just the clinically obese (those people with a BMI of 30-plus), whose condition creates genuine health concerns, but the billions of ordinary people worldwide who are just a little overweight, and do not consider their weight to be a significant health problem.

That was all about to change. A key turning point was 3 June 1997. On this date the World Health Organisation (WHO) convened an expert consultation in Geneva that formed the basis for a report that defined obesity not merely as a coming social catastrophe, but as an “epidemic”.

The word “epidemic” is crucial when it comes to making money out of obesity, because once it is an epidemic, it is a medical catastrophe. And if it is medical, someone can supply a “cure”.

The author of the report was one of the world’s leading obesity experts, Professor Philip James, who, having started out as a doctor, had been one of the first to spot obesity rising in his patients in the mid-1970s. In 1995 he set up a body called the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), which reported on rising obesity levels across the globe and on health policy proposals for how the problem could be addressed.

It is widely accepted that James put fat on the map, and thus it was appropriate that the IOTF should draft the WHO report of the late 90s that would define global obesity. The report painted an apocalyptic picture of obesity going off the scale across the globe.

The devil was in the detail – and the detail lay in where you drew the line between “normal” and “overweight”. Several colleagues questioned the group’s decision to lower the cut-off point for being “overweight” – from a BMI of 27 to 25. Overnight, millions of people around the globe would shift from the “normal” to the “overweight” category.

Professor Judith Stern, vice president of the American Obesity Association, was critical, and suspicious. “There are certain risks associated with being obese … but in the 25-to-27 area it’s low-risk. When you get over 27 the risk becomes higher. So why would you take a whole category and make this category related to risk when it isn’t?”

Why indeed. Why were millions of people previously considered “normal” now overweight? Why were they being tarred with the same brush of mortality, as James’s critics would argue, as those who are genuinely obese?

Read more

Opinion:

It’s beautiful…

The companies that make you fat, also make a profit from trying to make you slim… but you just keep getting fatter, so BigPharma step in with ‘pills’ and you still keep getting fatter.

The psychology is there for all to see.

Let’s look at pre-1980.

That was before the big companies started making so many prepared foods and recreational snacks.

You ate at home, you ate what your mother cooked, and you didn’t get fat.

Post-1980 mother had to go to work, she didn’t have time to cook, you started eating ‘TV Dinners’ and snacking outside the home, and you got fat.

Do you see the equation here?

It is simple.

Mothers at home, obesity goes, mothers at work, obesity prevails.

But of course that doesn’t work any more. Because the mothers at home have forgotten how to be pre-1980s mothers. Remember when Home Ec (home economics and cooking) used to be a subject at school, mandatory for all girls. What happened to Home Ec? It disappeared!

Who made it go ‘whoosh’?

Ah, this is where the skulduggery comes in. Lobbyists! Lobbyists lobbying for the food companies convinced the education department that Home Ec wasn’t necessary.

Of course it was vital that Home Ec disappeared, so that new mothers didn’t know they were feeding their families on corporate profit-making fat-generating shit!

Bring back 1950s mothers, bring back Home Ec it’s the only solution.

Here’s the crunch!

Everything that corporations try to sell you that is ‘diet’, ‘light’, ‘low cholesterol’, ‘zero calories’ is bullshit! Pure bullshit!

Because the artificial sweeteners they use are worse than the original products. Aspartame, sucralose, HFCS, these products are POISON! And they are in every diet product on the planet. They have adverse effects on every organ in your body, from your brain to your big toe.

But governments will never step in to prevent these products from being used, BECAUSE THE CORPORATIONS WON’T LET THEM!

The governments are a façade, the real owners of the world are corporations, the real owners of you are the corporations. The governments are just the puppets to make you slaves feel good; yes, you are slaves, you have lost control, you are controlled.

Wake up!

 

Smell the coffee!

… and I don’t mean Starbucks!

 

 

 

 

 

Monday Moaning

I’m not doing the moaning this morning… you are!

You’ll be moaning, wailing and gnashing your teeth, when you see the facts about sugar consumption.

Make you Fink on Friday

Grant Cornett for The New York Times

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.

More in the Magazine »

James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to talk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a tricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted the meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials. “C.E.O.’s in the food industry are typically not technical guys, and they’re uncomfortable going to meetings where technical people talk in technical terms about technical things,” Behnke said. “They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to make commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and autonomy.”

Grant Cornett for The New York Times; Prop Stylist: Janine Iversen

A chemist by training with a doctoral degree in food science, Behnke became Pillsbury’s chief technical officer in 1979 and was instrumental in creating a long line of hit products, including microwaveable popcorn. He deeply admired Pillsbury but in recent years had grown troubled by pictures of obese children suffering from diabetes and the earliest signs of hypertension and heart disease. In the months leading up to the C.E.O. meeting, he was engaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly grim picture of the public’s ability to cope with the industry’s formulations — from the body’s fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns.

The discussion took place in Pillsbury’s auditorium. The first speaker was a vice president of Kraft named Michael Mudd. “I very much appreciate this opportunity to talk to you about childhood obesity and the growing challenge it presents for us all,” Mudd began. “Let me say right at the start, this is not an easy subject. There are no easy answers — for what the public health community must do to bring this problem under control or for what the industry should do as others seek to hold it accountable for what has happened. But this much is clear: For those of us who’ve looked hard at this issue, whether they’re public health professionals or staff specialists in your own companies, we feel sure that the one thing we shouldn’t do is nothing.”

As he spoke, Mudd clicked through a deck of slides — 114 in all — projected on a large screen behind him. The figures were staggering. More than half of American adults were now considered overweight, with nearly one-quarter of the adult population — 40 million people — clinically defined as obese. Among children, the rates had more than doubled since 1980, and the number of kids considered obese had shot past 12 million. (This was still only 1999; the nation’s obesity rates would climb much higher.) Food manufacturers were now being blamed for the problem from all sides — academia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society. The secretary of agriculture, over whom the industry had long held sway, had recently called obesity a “national epidemic.”

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Mudd then did the unthinkable. He drew a connection to the last thing in the world the C.E.O.’s wanted linked to their products: cigarettes. First came a quote from a Yale University professor of psychology and public health, Kelly Brownell, who was an especially vocal proponent of the view that the processed-food industry should be seen as a public health menace: “As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.”

  Source: The New York Times Magazine Read more

Monday Moaning

Chemical defects ‘last generations’

Genetic changes may be passed down the generations

Scientists believe they have shown exposure to certain chemicals in the womb can cause changes that are passed through generations.

There is no firm evidence of this in humans, but Washington State University research showed a clear effect in rats.

They isolated defects linked to kidney and ovary disease and even obesity.

The work implicates a class of chemicals found in certain plastics, as well as one found in jet fuel.

The idea of “epigenetics” – that parents do not just pass their genes to their children, but subtle differences in the way those genes operate – is one of the fastest growing areas of scientific study.

The work of Dr Michael Skinner centres around the effects that certain chemicals can have on these processes, if the female is exposed at key points during pregnancy.

So far they have documented measureable effects from a host of environmental pollutants including pesticides, fungicides, dioxins and hydrocarbons.

However, they stress that the results are not directly transferable to humans yet, as the levels of chemicals used on the rats were many times more concentrated than anything a person would experience in normal life.

There is no data on even how an animal would respond at different doses, and no clues as to how the chemicals are causing these changes.

Environmental impacts

The studies, published in the journals PLoS One and Reproductive Toxicology, looked at the impact of phthalates, chemicals found in some forms of plastics, and a substance called JP8, found in jet fuel.

Rats exposed to phthalates had offspring with higher rates of kidney and prostate disease, and their great-grandchildren had more disease of the testicles, ovaries and obesity.

Female rats exposed to the hydrocarbon JP8 at the point in pregnancy when their male foetuses were developing gonads had babies with more prostate and kidney abnormalities, and their great-grandchildren had reproductive anomalies, polycystic ovary disease and obesity.

Dr Skinner said: “Your great-grandmother’s exposures during pregnancy may cause disease in you, while you had no exposure.

“This is a non-genetic form of inheritance not involving DNA sequence, but environmental impacts on DNA chemical modifications.

“This is the first study to show the epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of disease such as obesity.”

Andreas Kortenkamp, professor of human toxicology at Brunel University, said the results were “potentially very interesting”, but much more work would need to be carried out before any impact on humans could be considered.

He said: “This is an exploratory study, but the authors themselves are clear that the data do not allow the possible risk to people to be assessed.”

“There is a currently a lack of information about the dose-response relationship, and at this stage we are very unsure about the mechanisms that are involved.”

Opinion:

It appears that we are all nothing but guinea pigs for industry and agriculture.

They admit they don’t know, but at the same time they can’t rule these changes out.

Every year we are being exposed to more and more harmful substances and nobody knows if they are harmful or not. When they find out, it is already too late.

With this report it maybe that we have changed the human DNA, these changes maybe irreversible, they may actually now be a part of our future. The future is here, NOW! And it doesn’t look good.

 

Making You Stupid

The Common Food Ingredient That’s Making You Stupid

Lab studies show high-fructose corn syrup can actually sabotage your smarts in just 6 weeks.

Brain-harming high-fructose corn syrup hides out in unexpected places. Be sure to read the label.

Foods that appear to be nutritious could actually be destroying your brainpower. The culprit? A common ingredient slipped into many “healthy” foods, including baby food, applesauce, and oatmeal, a breakfast favorite. Researchers at UCLA found that ingesting foods and drinks containing the ingredient high-fructose corn syrup for just six weeks caused troubling changes in brain function. “Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think,” says Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, PhD, a professor of neurosurgery and integrative biology and physiology at UCLA. “Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information.”

While high-fructose corn syrup is rampant in soda and candy products, it also hides out in some seemingly innocuous items like bread, juices, ketchup, and instant oatmeal. (Previous studies have found high-fructose corn syrup is sometimes contaminated with mercury.) Most often associated with obesity and diabetes, this latest study, appearing in the Journal of Physiology, shows this industrial food ingredient can harm the brain, too.

Source: Rodale Read more

Salt: Villain or Super Hero?

Why Your Body Needs Salt: Unrefined natural salt provides two elements – sodium and chloride – that are essential for life. Your body cannot make these elements on its own; you must get them from your diet. Some of the many biological processes for which salt is crucial include:

* Being a major component of your blood plasma, lymphatic fluid, extracellular fluid, and even amniotic fluid

* Carrying nutrients into and out of your cells

* Maintaining and regulating blood pressure

* Supporting healthy glial cell populations in your brain, which are essential for forming the protective coating known as myelin that surrounds the portion of the neuron that conducts electrical impulses, as well as other vital neurological functions

* Helping your brain communicate with your muscles, so that you can move on demand via sodium-potassium ion exchange

Sodium plays a critical role in body physiology. It controls the volume of fluid in the body and helps maintain the acid-base level. About 40 percent of the body’s sodium is contained in bone, some is found within other organs and cells, and the remaining 55 percent is in blood plasma and extracellular fluids. Sodium is important in proper nerve conduction, in aiding the passage of various nutrients into cells, and in the maintenance of blood pressure.

Sodium-dependent enzymes are required for carbohydrate digestion, to break down complex carbohydrates and sugars into monosaccharides such as glucose, fructose and galactose; sodium is also involved in transporting these monosaccharides across the intestinal wall. Although salt is the most common dietary source for these essential elements, sodium is also available from various foods that contain sodium naturally. Chloride ions also help maintain proper blood volume, blood pressure, and pH of body fluids. Chloride is the major extracellular anion and contributes to many body functions including the maintenance of blood pressure, acid-base balance, muscular activity, and the movement of water between fluid compartments. Chloride is the major component of hydrochloric acid, which is needed for protein digestion. Symptoms of hypochlorhydria (low hydrochloric acid) include bloating, acne, iron deficiency, belching, indigestion, diarrhea and multiple food allergies. Chloride is available in very few foods, and adequate chloride must be obtained from salt.”

HFCS = Poison

Did Salt Get the Blame When Fructose Was Really at Fault? Many of you have likely heard of the DASH diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, and which is very low in salt, consisting largely of fresh vegetables and fruits, lean protein, whole grains, and low-fat dairy. This is the diet used in the DASH-sodium study – the ONE study that was conducted to determine whether or not a low-salt diet would control hypertension. People on DASH diets did show reduced hypertension, but researchers were so eager and personally invested in proving their salt theory that they completely overlooked other factors – like the fact that the DASH diet is also very low in sugar, including fructose.

Hypertension is actually promoted far more by excess fructose than excess salt, and the amount of salt Americans eat pales in comparison to the amount of fructose they consume on a daily basis. I’m convinced that sugar/fructose – rather than salt – is the major driving force behind our skyrocketing hypertension rates. (If you’re struggling with hypertension, you can read my full recommendations for normalizing your blood pressure ). Blood pressure drops as much in low-sugar studies as it did in the DASH-sodium study, but this fact has been conveniently ignored.

Is Salt Really Linked to Heart Disease? Last year a meta-analysis of seven studies involving more than 6,000 people found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or deathiv. In fact, it was salt restriction that actually increased the risk of death in those with heart failure. Furthermore, research in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that the less sodium excreted in the urine (a marker of salt consumption), the greater the risk of dying from heart diseasev. The study followed 3,681 middle-aged healthy Europeans for eight years. The participants were divided into three groups: low salt, moderate salt, and high salt consumption. Researchers tracked mortality rates for the three groups, with the following results:

1. Low-salt group: 50 people died

2. Moderate salt group: 24 people died

3. High-salt group: 10 people died

The risk for heart disease was 56 percent higher for the low-salt group than for the group who ate the most salt!

Dangers of a Low-Salt Diet: The simple truth is, there are very real risks from eating too little salt, and population-wide recommendations to restrict salt intake to very low levels could in fact increase rates of a wide range of diseases. WAPF explains, as reported by Globe Newswire: “Recent studies show a correlation of salt restriction with increased heart failure and with insulin resistance leading to diabetes. Studies show that even modest reductions in salt cause an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Higher incidence of inflammatory markers and altered lipoproteins are also found by researchers evaluating those on salt-reduced diets. These factors are precursors to metabolic syndrome, which predicts heart problems and diabetes.”

In one study by Harvard researchers, a low-salt diet lead to an increase in insulin resistance, which is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes – and the change occurred in just seven days! Other research has found salt restriction may play a role in:

* Increased death rates among people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes

* Increased falls and broken hips, and decreased cognitive abilities, among the elderly

* Giving birth to babies of low birth weight

* Poor neurodevelopmental function in infants

Drinking more wtare than your body can lose: Hyponatremia

There is also a condition in which you have too little sodium. This is known as hyponatremia, where your body’s fluid levels rise and your cells begin to swell. This swelling can cause a number of health problems, from mild to severe. At its worst, hyponatremia can be life threatening, leading to brain swelling, coma and death. But mild to moderate hyponatremia has more subtle effects that you or your health care provider may not even connect with a sodium-deficiency problem, including: Nausea, vomiting, and changes in appetite, headache, confusion, hallucinations, loss of energy, fatigue, urinary incontinence, nervousness, restlessness and irritability, and other mood changes, muscle weakness, spasms or cramps, seizures, unconsciousness, coma.

There are other dangers to salt restriction, too, which WAPF outlined in their report — dangers that many are apt to overlook:

Looks like salt, tastes like salt.... but it's NOT what your body needs

* Chemical salt alternatives: As food manufacturers seek to lower salt levels in their foods, salt substitutes like Senomyx are on the rise. Along with potential dangers from Senomyx itself (which does not require extensive testing and, as WAPF states, “would seem to be nothing more or less than a neurotrophic drug”), it’s possible that eating foods that taste salty but actually do not satisfy our sodium requirements may trigger us to keep eating more and more until these requirements are met … a recipe for obesity in the making.

* A loss of nutrient-dense foods: Certain nutritious foods, such as raw milk cheese and lacto-fermented vegetables, depend on high levels of salt for production. If salt becomes increasingly restricted, it could harm the production of these nutrient-dense foods.

Some Types of Salt Are More Dangerous: When you add salt to your diet, the type matters greatly. Today’s table salt has practically nothing in common with natural salt. One is health damaging, and the other is healing. Natural salt is 84 percent sodium chloride, and processed salt is 98 percent. So, what comprises the rest? The remaining 16 percent of natural salt consists of other naturally occurring minerals, including trace minerals like silicon, phosphorous and vanadium. But the remaining two percent of processed salt is comprised of man-made chemicals, such as moisture absorbents, and a little added iodine.

Iodised salt on your table

You might be tempted to think “salt is salt,” but even the structure of processed salt has been radically altered in the refining process. Refined salt is dried above 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, and this excessive heat alone alters the natural chemical structure of the salt. What remains after ordinary table salt is chemically “cleaned” is sodium chloride. The processed salt is not pure sodium chloride but is only 97.5 percent sodium chloride and anticaking and flow agents are added to compromise about 2.5 percent. These are dangerous chemicals like ferrocyanide and aluminosilicate. Some European countries, where water fluoridation is not practiced, also add fluoride to table salt. In France, 35 percent of table salt sold contains either sodium fluoride or potassium fluoride and use of fluoridated salt is widespread in South America.

More than 80 percent of the salt most people consume is from processed foods. Indeed, there is far too much sodium in processed foods. But you shouldn’t be eating those foods anyway – sodium is just one of MANY ingredients in packaged foods that will adversely affect your health. The salt added to these convenience foods is bleached out, trace mineral deficient and mostly sodium – as opposed to natural salt, which is much lower in sodium. The more you can move toward a diet of whole organic foods in their natural state, the healthier you’ll be – whether it’s veggies, meat, dairy products, or salt.

Natural Salt

Given that salt is absolutely essential to good health, I recommend limiting processed foods (most of which are high in processed salt) and processed salt and switching to a pure, unrefined salt. My favorite is an ancient, all-natural sea salt from the Himalayas. So, generally speaking, it is perfectly fine to salt your food to taste, provided the salt you’re using is natural and unrefined.

Source: “Salt: This Forbidden Indulgence Could Actually Spare You a Heart Attack”

by Dr. Mercola from the blog: Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly

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NB: I have not reproduced the entire article, but rather the more salient (excuse the pun) points.

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Opinion:

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So here we have another case where the government agencies are going off half cocked believing erroneous data from case studies that were reliant on vested interests.

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Doesn’t this sound all too common?

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What I construe from all this is that we need salt, any restriction in salt intake can cause quite a myriad of problems in the majority of people, while it is a distinct minority that benefit.

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The real enemies are fructose (High-fructose corn syrup – HFCS) and refined salt which is found on most tables and processed foods.

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To really balance the problem we have to eliminate HFCS and return to using natural salt.

Monday Moaning

Food firms ‘market to children online’

Most children use the internet at home

Unhealthy food is being “shamelessly” promoted to children online to get around bans on television adverts, campaigners have claimed.

The British Heart Foundation cited websites by Cadbury’s and Nestle as examples of “cynical marketing”.

Sites used childish language, games and free gifts to appeal to children, according to the report.

But an Advertising Association spokesman insisted online promotion to children was strictly controlled.

The vast majority of UK children now use the internet at home, often in preference to television viewing.

The Advertising Standards Authority’s broadcasting code prohibits adverts for unhealthy food within children’s television programmes, or any programme which appeals to under-16s.

However, this code does not extend to material on websites aimed at children, although a separate regulation forbids any advert which might encourage “poor nutritional habits” or an “unhealthy lifestyle” in children.

Despite this, the BHF, alongside the Children’s Food Campaign, says that this different approach gives firms more scope to promote unhealthy foods.

With a significant proportion of children overweight or obese, even at primary school age, they want the blanket ban on marketing extended to cover the web.

‘Preying on children’

Examples of websites cited by the campaign was a site promoting Nesquik – a milkshake powder high in sugar.

Titled the “Imagination Station”, the site is hosted by an animated rabbit character and including a quiz game and a guide to making a spacesuit.

Another site, for Cadbury’s Buttons, which contain 6.2g of saturated fat per packet, was called “Buttons Furry Tales”, and also involved animated characters, games and puzzles, although an “adult” year of birth had to be provided to gain entry.

A third, for Cheestrings, manufactured by Kerry Foods, involves a personal greeting from another cartoon character, and a list describing 101 things they can do before they are 11.5 years old.

Cheestrings fall foul of the children’s television ban because each portion contains a third more salt than an average pack of ready salted crisps.

Mubeen Bhutta, from the BHF, said: “Junk food manufacturers are preying on children and targeting them with fun and games they know will hold their attention.

“Regulation protects our children from these cynical marketing tactics while they’re watching their favourite television programmes but there is no protection when they are online.”

Opinion:

These companies and corporations need to be stamped on, and stamped on hard!

They are totally unscrupulous, they have no conscience that is not measured in money.

They will stoop to anything, they will exploit every loophole. They don’t care if the world’s children get fat, as long as the money keeps rolling in.

High rates of morbid obesity in Brazil

Obesity in children is a major plague on this planet, not only in the developed world but other places like Brazil. Here a large proportion of the children are obese (6.7 million), what is more alarming is the high rate of morbidly obese amongst them. Obesity is considered one of the ten major causes of death.

Yet, the companies and corporations are allowed to run amok.

There needs to be worldwide control of these companies.

Make you Fink on Friday

…Yes, I know I am a day late.

Outdoor play is an important source of exercise

Clock change ‘stops outdoor play’

Not putting the clocks back would help in the fight against child obesity, a study suggests.

According to research, children are more influenced by daylight than the weather when deciding whether or not to play outside.

UK researchers report that not changing the clocks would give more opportunities for active play.

It strengthens the public health arguments for proposed changes to daylight saving, they say.

The research, published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health, studied the activity levels of 325 children in south-east England aged between eight and 11.

The children wore accelerometers to record the amount of exercise they did, and kept a record of their activities in a diary.

A team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University College London found the children did more exercise outside on longer days, particularly at the end of the day during summer.

This happened regardless of the likes of rain, cloud or wind.

Outdoor play was a bigger factor in overall physical activity than other factors such as structured sport sessions and cycling or walking to school, the team says.

Co-researcher Dr Anna Goodman, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the BBC: “This provides the most direct evidence yet that changing the clocks so that there is more daylight in the afternoon could increase children’s physical activity.”

She added: “The fact that kids spend more time playing outdoors and are more physically active overall on these longer days could be important at a population level for promoting their fitness and in preventing child obesity.

Source: BBC News Read more

Opinion:

So what they’re saying is once the clocks are put forward for Daylight Savings, leave them there.

I would prefer they didn’t mess with the time. Put it forward and leave it, okay; Don’t put it forward and leave it, okay. BUT, stop messing around!

What do you think?

Monday Moaning

Brainwashing

Pure and simple brainwashing.

Who paid for these songs to be written?

Where were they played, on TV, dduring children’s programmes?

Now for the lyrics in case you didn’t get them…

.

Our kids are being brainwashed into becoming obese little zombies so the corporations can make a profit.