Month: July 2011

If you're eating hot dogs this Fourth of July, you're engaged in acts of nutritional tyranny against your own body. So if you eat meat, eat fresh meat, not processed meat. Here's why:

Read meat versus processed packaged meat
Countless scientific studies have concluded that eating red meat is bad for you. But in those studies, researchers routinely fail to differentiate between processed junk meat versus free-range, grass-fed organic beef which isn't processed with chemicals. And in doing so, they cast a dark shadow of doubt over all red meat when the reality is that there is a huge difference in the health impacts of fresh meat versus processed factory-made meat.

Just like the primary health risk of smoking cigarettes is from the chemical additives, not merely the tobacco; the primary health risk from eating red meat is from the chemical additives, not from the meat itself.

That's my conclusion after reading tens of thousands of news headlines, research reports and study abstracts: Red meat may be objectionable for lots of reasons — the ethics of raising animals in food factory concentration camp conditions, for example — but any focus on the health impacts of the meat must conclude that the chemicals are the real problem, not merely the meat. (Unless, of course, it's meat raised on genetically modified corn, in which case the meat probably is biologically toxic, and that's 95% of all conventional meat, just so ya know…)

Why I don't eat red meat
I don't eat red meat, by the way. That fact possibly gives this article even more impact, because it's not even being written by a routine red meat eater. (I tried a bit of organic free-range beef a month ago but just couldn't stomach it. Not my bag, baby!)

From an ethical standpoint, I personally don't wish to participate in the beef industry's treatment of cattle, yet at the same time I've found myself advocating grass-fed organic beef to those who still choose to consume beef for their own reasons. I'm not a food Nazi. People can eat whatever they want — I just try to help them make healthier choices, and all the evidence I've seen on this issue convinces me that it's the additives in processed meat that are killing people, not the consumption of fresh meat itself.

It doesn't take much sodium nitrite, for example, to greatly increase a person's risk of pancreatic cancer or colon cancer. And guess where you find that chemical? Hot dogs, bacon, sausage, pepperoni, ham, lunchmeat and even beef jerky. It's also in all the quick lunch trays for children, by the way. But never in the fresh meat.

People who eat fresh meat don't poison their bodies with sodium nitrite. Nor MSG (bacon, sausage, beef jerky) nor all the other chemical additives typically added to meat products. That's something to remember if you shop for meat of any kind. And don't forget that unless it's organic meat, it's almost certainly contaminated with GMOs, because cows, pigs and chickens are all fed genetically modified corn and soy as part of their diets.

If you're eating that stuff, you're committing slow suicide. And maybe not even that slow, come to think of it.

People who eat their own farm-fresh meat are remarkably healthy
One interesting angle in all this is that people who eat farm-fresh meat usually don't have all the chronic health problems of people who buy and consume processed factory-made meat. It's the quality of the meat that makes all the difference. I know people who eat their own chickens, cows and pigs, and their health is just great! (But they wouldn't dare eat GMO-contaminated pork sausage sold at the grocery store…)

When research says that "red meat" is linked to pancreatic cancer (for example), what they mean is processed red meat laced with chemical additives. We're never told this, of course, because the entire medical system is so nutritionally ignorant that modern medical researchers don't even recognize any qualitative difference between LIVE foods versus DEAD foods — nor fresh meat versus processed meat. To them, it's all the same. So their questionnaires simply ask study participants about "meat consumption" without breaking it out into "fresh" versus processed. That's why all meat gets a bad rap when it's really just the processed, GMO-contaminated meat that's the culprit.

Avoiding meat isn't a guaranteed health strategy, either
Interestingly, avoiding meat doesn't automatically make you healthier. While I personally follow a largely plant-based diet that's rich in superfoods and smoothies, I've also met quite a few sick vegetarians and vegans who are eating processed vegetarian foods (pastas, white rice, factory-made foods, etc.) that make them look like they're about to die from malnutrition. An alarming number of vegetarians, I've discovered, are chronically deficient in omega-3s and vitamin B12. They've taken on vegetarianism but never learned how to pursue a plant-based diet in a healthy way.

(Veganism, when done correctly, is undoubtedly the best diet for a sustainable planet, but personally I've found it impossible to follow as someone who works on a ranch and engages in a fair amount of physical work each day. For me, powering my work takes a small amount of fish, fresh farm eggs, some Moxxor omega-3s and other fish oils such as those from Living Fuel. Overall, my diet is probably 95% plant based. No dairy. I do buy grass-fed free-range beef bones for my dog Roxy who greatly

A recent report in the UK's Guardian explains that researchers there hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by producing fake meat in a lab, a prospect they suggest might encourage vegetarians and others concerned about abusive animal conditions to once again eat meat, as well as feed the world's hungry.

"The environmental impacts of cultured meat could be substantially lower than those of meat produced in the conventional way," said Hanna Tuomisto, lead author of the study from Oxford. She and her team claim that growing fake meat in the lab can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 96 percent, and require up to 45 percent less energy to produce meat than conventional methods do.

This may sound like a beneficial prospect, assuming anyone in their right mind would actually be willing to eat the stuff. But is growing meat in a lab really necessary when simply returning to traditional animal raising methods would do the trick? Tuomisto is correct in her assumption that conventional animal raising methods have a terrible environmental impact. But growing fake meat in a dish is hardly the logical next step in correcting the problem.

Last year, an article in TIME explained how converting conventional cattle-raising operations to natural, grass-fed operations is helping to not only decrease negative environmental impact, but also to improve environmental conditions by bolstering soil quality and restoring the integrity of grass and pasture lands (http://www.naturalnews.com/028182_g…).

Encouraging more small-scale, pasture-based farms will not only help to make individuals more self-sufficient, they will also reverse the negative environmental impact created by factory-scale farms that are polluting the environment, spawning deadly "superbugs," and ultimately making people and animals sick. In other words, if more farmers switch from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to open pastures, there will be no need to grow imitation meat in a lab.

A few weeks ago, NaturalNews reported that an electrical console at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Facility had caught fire, and that the plant's nuclear cooling pools had subsequently lost power for about an hour. Now, an AquaDam berm around the facility has reportedly been mysteriously punctured and deflated, which has sent several feet of flood water directly into the plant.

The unfolding situation at Fort Calhoun reads a lot like the Fukushima disaster. Officials have been downplaying the severity of the situation from the start, and yet it has only continued to get worse, despite their empty promises. First it was the fire, then the loss of power, then the establishment of a no-fly zone around the plant, then the breaking of the berm, and now the apparent flooding of various facilities with no end in sight.

A ten-mile evacuation zone has also been declared around the plant, despite the fact that little to no information about it can be found online or in the news.

According to a recent report by ENENEWS, flood waters have actually cut off the main power supply at the plant, which is now running on backup diesel generators.

Without power, of course, the plant's electrical systems will be unable to properly cool both the reactors and the spent fuel rods, which reports say are not effectively protected from flood waters.

The following video clip from KJKN-TV ABC 8 News in Lincoln, Neb., tells a sobering story all on its own. In it, you will see shocking, recent images of the Fort Calhoun plant completely submerged under water.

And like they did during the early days of Fukushima, officials here continue to repeat the mantra that everything is safe, and that nothing will go wrong. But based on their track record of honesty — not to mention the obvious disastrous conditions at the flooded, powerless facility — can they really be trusted?

Much of the snowpack from last winter's heavy storms has yet to melt, and what has already melted is responsible for much of the intense flooding that is currently taking place all across the Midwest, including in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and throughout the US states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri.

With more snowmelt and water surges on the way in July, as well as continued heavy rain and storms across the region, rising flood waters are far from over — and the already-at-capacity dams and levees that line the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers will more than likely not be able to hold it all.

At this point in time, there are still a whole lot of questions without answers. Why is the mainstream media spending most of its time focusing on corrupt politicians and upcoming election candidates when what appears to be the worst flood situation ever to hit North America is unfolding as we speak?

Why is nobody talking about the four major reservoirs along the Missouri River held by dams that are all virtually at maximum capacity and in dire straits? And why is there practically no mention by any major, or even local, news sources about the Fort Calhoun evacuation zone?

Those living along the river, and particularly in areas near the troubled nuclear facilities, may want to perform due diligence and prepare immediately for a worst-case scenario. It is clear that authorities and the media are not being forthcoming about what is actually happening, and they may flat out be lying to us all. With this in mind, it is important to be prepared for a worst-case scenario.

Stay tuned as we will do our best to mine all available information about this escalating crisis as it becomes available, and present it to you, our readers, for consideration.

If you agree with the above, you might also think the deadly radiation still spewing from nuclear reactor meltdowns in Japan is nothing to worry about, either. But the truth is always better than sticking your head in the sand, and this is exactly what the FDA seems to be doing when it comes to BPA.

Here's the latest breaking news on what has become an environmental nightmare for both humans and possibly wildlife while the FDA does nothing but express "some concern" that BPA might not be perfectly safe.

University of Missouri researchers have evidence that BPA causes male deer mice to lose their masculinity and behave more like females. In fact, female mice sense something isn't quite "right" about BPA exposed males and don't want to mate with them.

The scientists conclude that exposure to BPA during human development could also be wreaking havoc on hormones and distorting and disrupting behavioral and cognitive traits that are unique to each sex and important in reproduction.

"The BPA-exposed deer mice in our study look normal; there is nothing obviously wrong with them. Yet, they are clearly different," said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor in biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and investigator in the Bond Life Sciences Center, in a statement to the media. "Females do not want to mate with BPA-exposed male deer mice, and BPA-exposed males perform worse on spatial navigation tasks that assess their ability to find female partners in the wild."

"This study sets the stage for BPA researchers to examine how BPA might differentially impact the behavioral and cognitive patterns of boys versus girls," Rosenfeld added. "Investigators looking for obvious BPA-induced differences, such as chromosome deletions or DNA mutations, could be missing subtle behavioral differences that eventually lead to long-term adverse outcomes, including demasculinization of male behaviors with a decreased reproductive fitness."

For the new study, the researchers fed female deer mice a BPA-supplemented diet for two weeks prior to breeding and throughout lactation. The mothers were given a dosage equivalent to what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers a non-toxic dose for pregnant women to ingest.

When the deer mice offspring were weaned at 25 days of age, they were fed on a non-supplemented BPA diet. Then, after the rodents matured into adults, their behavior was tested to study each mouse's ability to navigate a maze to safety.

Male deer mice normally have an enhanced spatial navigational ability. It's important because it allows them to find female mates that are dispersed throughout the environment. Female deer mice do not need to search for mates so their navigational abilities have not been enhanced by evolution. But when the University of Missouri researchers tested the navigational skills of male mice that had been exposed to BPA early in their development, something was terribly wrong.

Each male mouse had two five minute opportunities per day, for seven days, to try to find their way in to a home cage through one of several holes placed around the edge of an open maze.

What's more, the maze was marked with a set of visible navigational cues to help the animals. Yet many of them could not find the exit. On the other hand, all the male mice who had not been exposed to BPA found the correct exit quickly – some on the first day.

Adding to the strong evidence that the BPA dramatically changed the ability of the male mice to navigate normally, the scientists found that the non-BPA exposed mice quickly learned the most direct approach to finding the correct hole, while the exposed males appeared to sort of randomly and inefficiently wander around looking.

The female deer mice also were turned off by potential mates who had been exposed to BPA. In a mate choice experiment, the scientists measured the females' level of interest in a stranger male by observing specific behaviors, such as nose-to-nose sniffing and the amount of time the female spent checking out her potential partner. According to Dr. Rosenfeld, both non-exposed and BPA-exposed females strongly preferred control males over BPA-exposed males.

"These findings presumably have broad implications to other species, including humans, where there are also innate differences between males and females in cognitive and behavioral patterns," Rosenfeld said in the media statement. "In the wide scheme of things, these behavioral deficits could, in the long term, undermine the ability of a species such as the deer mouse to reproduce in the wild. Whether there are comparable health threats to humans remains unclear, but there clearly must be a concern."

This research, which is set for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the latest in a mounting and damning array of studies showing the dangers of BPA. For example, as NaturalNews has covered extensively, BPA has been found to cause precancerous conditions, kidney and developmental problems in animals.

And research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that humans could be walking time bombs of health problems related to the ingestion of BPA, which is found in virtually all packaged foods. The JAMA study reported for the first time that the chemical might well be linked to the epidemic of heart disease and diabetes in this country.

Jin-Ran Chen and his colleagues from the Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center in Little Rock recently received funding from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to explore bone development in humans during infancy, childhood, and early adulthood. Part of this includes studying how blueberry compounds play a role in bone development.

In their first study, Chen and his colleagues observed that blueberry polyphenols, which are the pigments in the fruit that give them their bluish, purple, and red colors, are clearly associated with building strong, healthy bones. Rats fed freeze-dried blueberry powder as ten percent of their diets developed significantly more bone mass than rats not fed the powder, which spurred further research into which blueberry compounds were responsible for this amazing effect.

Blood samples taken from the blueberry-fed rats revealed high rates of phenolic acids, the antioxidant compounds believed to help improve bone development. When blood serum taken from the blueberry-fed rats was applied to lab cultures of osteoblasts, the cells responsible for forming bones, researchers noted that osteoblasts formed into mature, functional bone cells much more quickly than they otherwise would apart from exposure to the polyphenol-rich serum.

TCF and LEF, two types of human genes, promote the synthesis of beta-catenin, a type of protein. Beta-catenin is responsible for telling osteoblasts to form into fully mature bone cells, and it is blueberry polyphenols' interaction with these various human components that Chen and his team believe is responsible for improved bone synthesis.