Rebel With a Fork Blog

Archive for February, 2010

 

That’s right. The USDA concluded that the possibility of contamination of organic fields is of no concern, since consumers won’t care if their organic food or milk contains genetically engineered components.

In other parts of the world, there has been public outcry, revolts, and boycotts. But in the US, barely a whimper.

Maybe its true. Maybe you don’t care.

Or maybe you don’t realize the full impact of what’s going on. If you’re not informed – go ahead and scroll down to read the recent posts here, and watch the videos I’ve provided for you – while you still can.

If you do care, your voice needs to be heard, and it needs to be heard NOW!

There is a ready made letter that you can click and send by clicking here –

I’ve doctored up my response. Here a copy of my doctored up letter. Feel free to use it if you like.

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I am writing in regard to Docket APHIS-2007-0044, and I demand that the USDA reject Monsanto’s application to market genetically engineered alfalfa. The USDA may not believe it matters if GE alfalfa contaminates organic and other non-GE crops, but I certainly do. I just threw out a bag of sugar when I found out it was from genetically modified sugar beets – not sugar cane.

Consumers must be able to avoid genetically engineered products. Farmers must be free of the threat of contamination and the USDA must not put organic farmers’ livelihoods at risk. The USDA admits that approval of GE alfalfa will make transgenic contamination inevitable. This is already happening around the world with corn and soybean crops. Once the crops are contaminated, the farmers owe royalties to Monsanto. This is unacceptable. With your help, soon Monsanto will own rights to every crop in the world.

We have no way of measuring the long term health effects of ingesting inbred pesticides, and by the time we do – there will be no crop on earth that is safe to eat.

Therefore, I urge you to reject not only Monsanto’s application to sell genetically engineered alfalfa, but all genetically engineered foods.

I leave you with one last thought – how will this affect your grandchildren? I would think long and hard about that.

Respectfully submitted,

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You vote everyday – whether it’s by silence, or by the products you buy to feed yourself and your family. What will your vote be today?

Members – Login and pick some delicious non-gmo dinner ideas for tonight!

 

The article in the New York Times yesterday about Obesity was infuriating!

The scientists quoted basically said -

We don’t think moderate exercise works

Calorie counting is an imprecise art

You have a preset weight determined at birth

Nothing you do matters, it’s all your mom’s fault.

“There are physiological mechanisms that keep us from losing weight,” said Dr. Matthew W. Gilman, the director of the obesity prevention program at Harvard Medical School/Pilgrim Health Care.

“And obesity, the terrible new epidemic of the developed world, is almost impossible to cure.”

 Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California said, “The meals we romanticize in the past somehow leave out the reality of what people were eating,” he said. “The average meal had whole milk and ended with pie…. The typical meal had plenty of fat and calories.”

“Nostalgia is going to get us nowhere,” he added.

That’s absolutely right Dr. The average meal did have whole milk and ended with dessert. The milk was not full of growth hormones and antibiotics. Neither was the meat that people ate every day. The dessert was not filled with trans fats, hydrogenated oils, and corn syrup.

As a matter of fact, heart disease was the number one killer. We ate a lot of fat, and we never have eaten enough vegetables. Maybe we could learn something here?

And yes, we are born with a predetermined weight range – and it’s not obese. I mean, suddenly 2/3 of the world population is suddenly predisposed to being obese? Give me a break.

I know quite a few people who have lost weight by walking. Moderate exercise does work, if you just get away from all the chemically laced foods and eat fresh real foods.

I honestly don’t get the point of the article. Do we really want to totally discourage people?

It’s not true. You were not born with a fat disease that is impossible to cure. You can lose the weight and enjoy a healthy lifestyle. Just look at the Success Stories at the National Weight Control Registry.

See, this simple stuff really does work. Sign in to the members area and start living in the world of the Thin & Healthy Rebels! (but we do have a cause)

It’s because we don’t do what everybody else does. (Loosely From He’s a Rebel)

(if you don’t get the rebel references – ask your parents

Ahhh, nostalgia…

What better way to relax on a weekend than to watch a horror flick?

The plot – there is a conspiracy to take over the world’s food supply. If this devious plan is not stopped fast, food as we know it will no longer exist. These mutated foods will cause death and disease, wiping out entire populations.

This one is so terrifying that I suggest you don’t watch while eating.

And unfortunately, this one is not fiction.

Each part is about 10 minutes long. If you’re short on time, watch parts 8 & 9.  Promise me you’ll watch them. This is important.

Part 1 - 

Part 2 - 

Part 3 - 

Part 4 - 

Part 5 -

Part 6 - 

Part 7 - 

Part 8 - 

Part 9 - 

Part 10 -

And if you haven’t seen it – scroll down and take a look at the veggie pets. That should give you nightmares!

Be sure to leave your comments…

And now, back to your regularly scheduled attack on vitamins.

Did you know that vitamins are not readily available in many countries? I find that shocking, don’t you?

And in a time when healthcare costs are on everyone’s mind – what better way is there to cut medical expenses than to eat a healthy diet, take your vitamins, get some exercise and enough sleep?

Oh, but we have illegal steroids being used… What does that have to do with legal vitamins?

This comes up every few years, and we have to raise our voice and kill it – until the next time. They are determined to slip this through someday. But Today isn’t going to be That Day!

Please read the following press release, and be a mouse warrior and click over and sign the petition.

Oh, and there is an option to personalize your comments. I added this at the beginning -

“I find it hard to believe that during the time that health care reform is on everyone’s mind, that anyone would consider taking away an affordable way for people to stay healthy. Do you take vitamins? I do. I’m 53. I’ve never been in the hospital except for childbirth. I take no prescription meds. Isn’t that what we should be striving for? We of all people should be a wellness nation.”

Here’s the letter -

Senator McCain Files New Bill That Attacks Your Access to Supplements and Repeals Key Sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act

TAKE ACTION AND TELL YOUR SENATOR NOT TO CO-SPONSOR THIS BILL

Senator McCain’s bill is called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA). It would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). DSHEA protects supplements if 1) they are food products that have been in the food supply and not chemically altered or 2) if they were sold as supplements prior to 1994, the year that DSHEA was passed. If a supplement fits one of these two descriptions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot arbitrarily ban it or reclassify it as a drug.

These protections are far from perfect. They discourage companies from developing new forms of supplements. New supplements may be arbitrarily banned by the FDA or adopted by drug companies in a way that precludes their further sale as supplements.

McCain’s bill would wipe out even the minimal protections contained in DSHEA. It would give the FDA full discretion and power to compile a discreet list of supplements allowed to remain on the market while banning all others.

Everyone knows that the FDA is friendly to drug companies (which pay its bills and provide good revolving door jobs) and hostile to supplement companies. Under this bill, this same Agency could quite arbitrarily ban any supplement it wished or turn it over to drug companies to be developed as a drug and sold for multiples of its price as a supplement.

The FDA will like this because it believes that it can more easily control a few industry giants. But isn’t it more likely that the industry giants will eventually gain control over the FDA?

The FDA is already misusing the adverse event reporting process that exists. Drugs rack up thousands of adverse event reports without any action. Just recently, the FDA yanked from the market a supplement product based on just a couple of alleged adverse event reports without even allowing the company (an old and respected firm) to provide any counter-evidence or counter-argument.

The bill also allows the FDA to yank a product (at the company’s expense) if there is a “reasonable probability” that it is “adulterated” or “misbranded”. Let’s remember that “adulterated” could mean there is a minor record keeping error on the producer’s part and “misbranded” can mean that the producer simply tells the truth about the product. An “adulterated” and “misbranded” supplement in Orwellian FDA speak may actually be both completely safe and effective.

We must prevent this bill from gaining traction! Protect your access to supplements by contacting your senators today and asking them NOT to co-sponsor the Dietary Supplement Safety Act but rather to oppose it.

TAKE ACTION

McCain’s Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) appears to be supported by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) which is funded by major league sports teams including baseball, football and others. The recent suspensions of NFL and other professional sports figures is much in the news, and the goal of the sports industry appears to be to shift the spotlight from their players to the supplements industry. In his comments, Senator McCain cited six NFL players recently suspended for testing positive for banned substances and purportedly exposed to these substances through dietary supplements.

The problem here of course is one of illegal sale and use of steroids. So why dismantle the supplement industry in order to control already illegal substances?

The FDA currently has complete and total authority to stop illegal steroids and, more broadly, to regulate dietary supplements. If the agency were doing its job, it could and would have prevented the sale of illegal steroids. The answer to this problem is not to give FDA more power. The Agency simply needs to do it’s job.

TAKE ACTION

Why would a bill be offered to solve an illegal steroid problem that does not really address the steroid problem but instead gives the FDA complete and arbitrary control over all supplements? The answer is simple.

There are a lot of vested interests which are threatened by supplements. Drug companies do not like them because they represent a low cost, safer, and often more effective alternative to drugs. The FDA does not like them because supplements do not come through the FDA approval process and therefore do not support the FDA budget.

Why not simply require that supplements be brought through the FDA’s drug approval process? Wouldn’t that create a level playing field?

That is probably the argument that Senator McCain has been sold. But it is a completely false argument. The FDA drug approval process costs as much as a billion dollars. It is not economically feasible to spend such vast sums on substances that are not protected by patent, and natural substances cannot legally be patented.

This is the great “Catch 22” of American medicine. The FDA, which is supposed to guard and promote our health, is hostile to the kind of natural medicine—based on diet, supplements, and exercise—that represents the real future of healthcare. The Agency has either been captured by drug interests or is trapped in a catastrophically expensive, toxic, and ineffective patented-drug model.

Senator McCain has no doubt offered this bill in good faith. But he has been sold a bill of goods by special interests. And he has been naïve enough not to know that he is being used.

TAKE ACTION

This exceptionally bad bill also requires the reporting of all minor adverse events related to supplements. This is in addition to the already existing requirement to report adverse events. This will further stack the deck against small supplement companies by creating new, unnecessary, even more cumbersome, and of course very expensive administrative hurdles. The result: the consolidation of the supplement industry into a few big companies.If passed, this bill will likely result in the disappearance from store shelves of many supplements currently on the market. In addition to fewer supplements, there would likely be much lower doses available. Unbridled authority would be handed to the FDA, an agency that needs a top to bottom overhaul, not ever more power over our lives.

If McCain’s bill passes, we can look to Europe for a snapshot of what we may be in for: EFSA, the European Food Safety Authority, has sharply reduced the list of available supplements and is in process of reducing potencies to ridiculous levels, such as less beta carotene than can be found in half of a large carrot. Europeans already look to the US to obtain their dietary supplements. If this bill passes, where will we obtain ours?

Please take action immediately. Tell your senators NOT to co- sponsor this legislation and to do everything in their power to defeat it. Then forward this to your friends and family and ask then to do the same!

Gretchen DuBeau
Legal Director, ANH Int.
Executive Director, ANH

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What better way is there to cut medical expenses than to eat a healthy diet, take your vitamins, get some exercise and enough sleep?

Login to the members area >>>

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• Legislation introduced by Sen. John McCain would require labeling of supplements (sports.espn.go.com)
• FDA Introduces A New Web Site Intended To Give The Public More Insight About Agency’s Work (drug-injury.com)
• FDA Official Joins Herbalife (eon.businesswire.com)
• Avoiding Health Problems When Eating Vegan (yearn2blog.com)

When you visit some of the popular diet, health, and nutrition sites, do you notice that they seem to be a bit swayed towards their advertisers interests? I know I’ve been shocked to see some of the nutrition advice at many of these sites.

Well, nothing I’ve seen holds a candle to what they talk about in this video!

Before you take any nutritional advice, you might want to check on who is paying them.

Food for thought…

Will veggie pets be the  new rage?

After getting pretty upset after viewing the last video, I have been doing more research to get a feel for how serious this threat really is.

It is true that many countries do not have access to vitamins and supplements. I’ve known that for years since many of my readers at my other blog are from all over the world. That is a real threat here as well. The FDA and the AMA have historically been anti vitamin. The FDA I could understand, but the AMA? Oh yeah, it’s about money…

I’ve known about the ‘Green Project’ since I was in high school in the mid 1970s. Yes, I’m old. But, I didn’t really give it much thought. There is not enough land left in the world to support enough natural food to feed everyone. But I don’t think anyone thought that the solutions would actually be causing disease and killing people.

But now this lady is saying that ‘they’ know full well, and even more insidious – they planned it that way as a means of population control.

Are we living in a friggin’ nightmare here? Can this be true?

And she says that floridated water makes people submissive and compliant. When you consider the wide-spread apathy – could that be true? I have well water.

I promise you that I will be making a greater attempt to keep informed on these issues, and pass the information on to you. There are 2 bills that I know of so far that have been sort of hanging out there with no real action happening – but something must be going on because there is this ground swell happening. I’m going to do my best to get to the bottom of it.

In the meantime – here is another video clip that explains the history of the issues we are facing. It is an older clip, but it will give you the shocking background.

Makes you want an organic salad with a side helping of C,E, and CoQ10, doesn’t it? Load up. It might be illegal soon.