Archive for the ‘food and nutrition’ Category

Spring Into Wellness

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Whole Foods Market Plymouth Meeting
500 W. Germantown Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462
phone 610-832-0020
wholefoods.com/stores/plymouthmeeting

Thursday, March 18th
6 pm – 7 pm
FREE!
Please join us in welcoming Doctors of Naturopathy, Jackie and Angel Giordano, as they invite us on a journey on how to enhance your well being in preparation for spring! This class will cover the basics on how to support the healthy structure of your body through the use of nutritional supplements, diet, and lifestyle, as well as clearing the congestion in your personal space to enhance optimal living conditions. There will be a 15 minute personal tour of the Whole Body Department immediately following the class! Sign up required.

An Afternoon at the Spa
Saturday, March 20th
12 pm – 3 pm
FREE!
Come discover one of the best kept secrets at Whole Foods Market Plymouth Meeting – our Whole Body Department! You’ll have the chance to chat with vendors and sample their unique products while snacking on light fare right in the department. You can even enter to win a spa goodie bag, packed with all of our favorite Whole Body Department products! You don’t want to miss this educational, relaxing event.

Country Life – Vendor Lecture
Tuesday, March 23rd
6 pm – 7 pm
FREE!
Join us in our Community Room for an hour-long information session with a representative from Country Life. Learn all about their products, so your next trip to our Whole Body Department will be even better! Sign up required.

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AntiCancer – A Way of Life

Friday, February 5th, 2010

From TheDailyPaul.com

Submitted by Michael Nystrom on Fri, 02/05/2010 – 10:30
in Daily Paul Liberty Forum

This is for all of us – whether you are suffering from cancer, know someone who is, or don’t have it. All of us have cancer cells in our bodies, but not all of us develop cancer. This is an interview with David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PHD, who beat his own cancer, speaking about how to help our natural defenses to prevent and fight the disease.

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Health Starts Here(TM) Launches at Whole Foods Market

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Companywide Healthy Eating Initiative Features Educational Tools, Recipes & Programs to Improve Health; Team Member Support & Additional Store Discounts Provide Incentives for Optimum Employee Health

Press Release Source: Whole Foods Market On Thursday January 21, 2010, 10:30 am EST

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — To help shoppers and Team Members who want to improve their health easily and naturally, Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI), a leader in natural and organic foods, announced today that it has launched its “Health Starts Here” initiative at all 289 locations in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“We opened our first store 30 years ago to provide natural foods as a delicious and healthy alternative to the increasing amounts of highly processed foods with artificial ingredients,” says Margaret Wittenberg, global vice president of quality standards and leader of Health Starts Here at Whole Foods Market. “Over the years, we realized that providing the healthiest foods available is simply not enough. We are now deepening our commitment to healthy eating by providing education and support tools to inspire interest in foods that help improve and maintain health and vitality.”

Health Starts Here is the first major program to be launched since Whole Foods Market added a new core value to its mission in October 2009: “Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education.” The new program is based on these simple principles for everyday healthy eating:

* Plant-based – Focus on fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds. Get healthy fats in moderation from fresh plant sources such as nuts and avocados.
* Nutrient-dense – Eat foods with high nutrient content in comparison to total calories. Build menus around plant-based foods to emphasize nutrient-rich meals containing a variety of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants. These foods are naturally lower in fat.
* Whole foods – Choose foods that are real, fresh and natural. When possible, opt for food that is organic, local and seasonal. Avoid highly processed and refined foods, and those with artificial ingredients.

Healthy Eating Partners

Whole Foods Market is featuring two unique third-party healthy eating partner programs to provide easy-to-follow guidance for shoppers and Team Members. Both offer 28-day “getting started” plans while providing plenty of room for personal choices to help those who are interested in starting on their own journey down the road to optimum health.

* Eat Right America’s Chief Medical Officer, Joel Fuhrman, M.D., has discovered through years of research on thousands of patients that a body rich in micronutrients will quickly seek its ideal weight and stay there, while reversing most diet-related chronic conditions. He has also equipped patients with eating plans to help improve their overall health, conquer food cravings, reverse chronic conditions and have more energy. The secrets of superior nutrition, along with many menus and delicious recipes, are offered in a series of books, including “Eat for Health,” as well as audio CDs and DVDs. Also available at Whole Foods Market, or online at www.eatrightamerica.com/wfm, is Eat Right America’s personalized nutritional assessment tool, called “Nutrition Prescription,” which offers individual nutrition and health assessments combined with personalized eating plans.
* The Engine 2 Diet is a plant-strong plan that can help with weight loss, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of disease. Rip Esselstyn, former pro athlete and firefighter, outlines the plan in his “Engine 2 Diet” book and has always taken great interest in achieving optimal health through food. In his book, he combines the wisdom of some of his medical heroes — including his father, the renowned heart specialist, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn — with the real-life account of Rip helping his former firehouse colleagues change their health for the better by eating differently. The book can be purchased at all Whole Foods Market stores. More information can be found at www.engine2academy.com.

In-Store Education

Whole Foods Market will feature free information, recipes, in-store lectures, events and support groups. A selection of supporting educational books and cookbooks will also be for sale alongside the “Engine 2 Diet” book and “Eat Right America” program materials. To help shoppers identify healthy, nutrient-dense foods, stores will post signs with Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) scores. Created by Dr. Fuhrman, ANDI scoring scale evaluates levels of micronutrients, including vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and antioxidants per calorie in various foods. The higher the concentration of micronutrients in a food, the higher that food will score. For instance, a serving of kale, a dark leafy green, scores 1,000, placing it at the top of the index, while a serving of soda only scores 1.

“We are excited to promote wellness and encourage healthier lifestyles by emphasizing the value of eating nutrient-rich foods and showing people how simple it can be, no matter what dietary path you follow. I like to think of it as ‘Take charge, eat well, feel great,’ as eating for health can truly be delicious, nutritious and enjoyable,” says Wittenberg.

Team Member Support and Incentives

To reiterate the company’s commitment to its newest core value and its long-time “Supporting Team Member happiness and excellence” core value, Whole Foods Market’s Health Starts Here initiative also includes two internal programs for Team Members.

* The Team Member Healthy Discount Incentive offers increased discounts for full- and part-time Team Members (enrolled in the company’s medical plan) who do not use nicotine products and satisfy certain healthy biometric criteria for blood pressure, total cholesterol (or LDL) levels and Body Mass Index (BMI). Team Members already receive a 20 percent discount on purchases at Whole Foods Market stores as an employment benefit, but now, those who voluntarily opt to participate in the incentive plan could receive up to an additional 10 percent discount.
* The Total Health Immersion Program offers Team Members intensive health and wellness education programs geared toward sustaining long-term, positive lifestyle changes, including healthy eating, fitness and empowerment. There will be two rounds of immersion programs offered annually at three different locations in the United States. Participating in the immersion program will allow Team Members, who qualify and who are ready to take charge of their own health, to receive more direct support in making positive lifestyle and dietary changes under the guidance of a medical professional, and at no cost to them.

Shoppers can expect to see information in some stores immediately, while other locations will incorporate this initiative throughout 2010. More information about Health Starts Here can be found now at www.wholefoodsmarket.com/healthstartshere.

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Bayer Admits GMO Contamination is Out of Control

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Greenpeace International, Dec 8, 2009

EXTRACT: Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices [to stop contamination]‘(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.


$2 million US dollar verdict against Bayer confirms company’s liability for an uncontrollable technology

Greenpeace welcomes the United States federal jury ruling on 4 December 2009 that Bayer CropScience LP must pay $2 million US dollars to two Missouri farmers after their rice crop was contaminated with an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing in 2006.

This verdict confirms that the responsibility for the consequences of GE (genetic engineering) contamination rests with the company that releases GE crops.

Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite ‘the best practices [to stop contamination]‘(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

A report prepared for Greenpeace International concluded that the total costs incurred throughout the world as a result of the contamination are estimated to range from $741 million to $1.285 billion US dollars.(2) The verdict indicates that Bayer is liable for what could turn out to be a large proportion of these costs, as it awards damages in the first two of more than 1,000 currently pending lawsuits. The decision must be used to support all claims for losses incurred by other US farmers whose crops have suffered from GE contamination.

(1) Bayers Defense lawyer, Mark Ferguson as reported in Harris, A. 2009.
Bayer Blamed at Trial for Crops ‘Contaminated’ by Modified Rice. Bloomberg News 4th November 2009, available at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aT…

(2) E.N. Blue (2007) Risky Business. Economic and regulatory impacts from the unintended release of genetically engineered rice varieties into the rice merchandising system of the US. Report prepared for Greenpeace International, available online at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press….

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Fooling Our Bodies, Fooling Ourselves

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

America has become the greatest “Pop” culture in the world… as in popping pills to make us feel better. Got a headache? Take an aspirin. Can’t sleep? Take a sleeping pill. Depressed? Take an anti-depressant, and so on. Men over 40 are urged to pop a “love pill” in order to be able to “perform” in bed. The mantras of the pharmaceutical industry are being chanted to us over and over again; each time we turn on the TV we are bombarded with commercials that tout the miraculous effects of such-and-such a drug, followed by a myriad of
possible side effects, including death! But the mantra goes on, chanting us into a dangerous illusion that everything will be alright if we just take that pill…

Wait a minute… Is there not something terribly wrong with this picture? Are our bodies so innately dysfunctional that we have no other choice than to hope the doctor will figure out which drugs or surgery are going to solve our problem? The answer to the last question is NO. I have nothing personal against doctors – in fact, I probably wouldn’t be here today without them. However, the system into which they have been trained – and entrained – more often than not, doesn’t respect the natural healing mechanism of our bodies, assuming instead that when a function goes wrong it must be “fixed” by drugs or surgery. Diet
and nutrition are wholly underestimated in the healing process, as are lifestyle and relationships. Medicine has become so compartmentalized and specialized that we tend to concentrate on the details of a particular ailment and lose the greater picture of what is actually happening for the patient. The myth that the medical industry has all the answers is so prevalent that the bodies that it is supposed to heal have little or no say in their own healing process.

Yes, I did say “bodies”, and not “people”. The point I am trying to make here is that we tend to forget that our bodies are not just machines that could use an oil change from time to time. They have their own “consciousness”, and often try to tell us things that we don’t necessarily want to hear. When our body experiences pain, it is telling us that something is wrong and needs to be attended to. Annoying as it can be, pain serves a vital function and must be respected for the message it conveys. Which is not to say that nothing should be done to alleviate the pain, once the message has been acknowledged.
This is a dilemma that modern medicine has created, since it is based on symptomology, which dictates that we treat symptoms instead of taking a look at the bigger picture and figuring out “the cause of the cause of the cause”, just as Hippocrates once stated. Instead of running around trying to put out the fire wherever it pops up, we need to find the reason behind it, whether it be purely physiological, mental, emotional, or even “energetic”. Some of us believe that disease has an energetic cause, meaning that it originates in the energetic field of the person. Looking at health in this way is called a “holistic” view. This term has been overused and abused, but it still has a meaning that no other word can convey: “whole”. And this is the way that we came into this world, as “whole” beings, not just a digestive tube or a nervous system, or a bunch of limbs, a trunk and a head. We are Whole beings, complete with our own unique energies that enable us to function as physical, mental, emotional and spiritual beings.

Looking at things from a greater perspective, one could make the analogy between how our cells work together to create harmony in our bodies (homeostasis) and how our human societies work. As long as our bodies, and our societies, have the necessary elements (healthy food, clean air and water, shelter and clothing, good relationships with self and with one another), both bodies and societies can live in harmony. In our bodies, our cells work hard to build new cells, create tissues, organs and systems, get rid of waste, etc. However, at this time in history, they are constantly being bombarded with new and strange chemicals that they don’t recognize and have no clue what to do with them. Communicating amongst each other, stressed and overworked, they find solutions to deal with these chemicals, such as creating specific, delineated areas to dump the toxic waste, that we call tumors. But when the toxic waste becomes so abundant that the cells can’t even perform their basic functions, the “toxic waste dumps” become overloaded and run into the rest of the body, which could be what we call metastasis. If enough toxic waste overruns the vital systems, the organism shuts down and dies. This is an oversimplified
representation, its purpose being to demonstrate movement and flow, not to prove a point.

In a similar way, human societies are dealing with an overload of unnatural stimuli (drugs, alcohol, toxic TV, artificially imposed work hours, etc.), which push a certain number of us into erratic, unhealthy behavior, such as addiction and violence. Wanting to stop the damage, the system puts those individuals who cannot cope with the system’s constraints into delineated areas (prisons, mental institutions, special schools) but doesn’t realize that its own obsessive behavior (imposition of rules dictated by a few to control the masses) is the cause of the diseased society in the first place. If the cells of the brain suddenly
decided to dictate to the kidneys what they are supposed to do, the body would disintegrate into chaos. It is actually the cells of the kidneys that inform the brain of the levels of sodium and potassium, as well as the blood volume; the brain cells in turn produce hormones to regulate those levels. But one cannot work without the other, and a brain cell has no more importance than a kidney cell to the life of the organism.

This brings me to the crux of this article, which has to do with vaccinations. Vaccinations are the ultimate example of how we, in this society, have been fooling our bodies, and thus fooling ourselves into believing that we are doing something good for our bodies, and thus for society, by getting vaccinated. According to Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com, there is no hard scientific evidence supporting the idea that vaccines can somehow trick our bodies into protecting us from disease. Most of the diseases that we receive vaccines for have disappeared, not because of the vaccines, but because of improved hygiene. Take a look at some vaccine history, gathered from reputable sources like “The Lancet” and “Journal of the American Medical Association”, appearing here thanks to Natural News:

In the 1970`s a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)

In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk, who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 “Abstracts” )

‐ In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People`s Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)

‐ In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness. Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times! (BMJ 283:696‐697, 1981)

‐The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine.

‐ In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to $11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged children and children who
died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994, Nambour, Qld)

‐ In Oman between 1988 and 1989, a polio outbreak occurred amongst thousands of fully vaccinated children. The region with the highest attack rate had the highest vaccine coverage. The region with the lowest attack rate had the lowest vaccine coverage. (The Lancet, 21/9/91)

‐ In the USA, from July 1990 to November 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration counted a total of 54,072 adverse reactions following vaccination. The FDA admitted that this number represented only 10% of the real total, because most doctors were refusing to report vaccine injuries. In other words, adverse reactions for this period exceeded half a million! (National Vaccine Information Centre, March 2, 1994)

The yearly influenza vaccines are prepared using guesswork, not knowing at all which strains of the virus will be predominant. Many people receiving the flu shot do actually get the flu, and often experience flu symptoms more severely than those who are not vaccinated. There have been thousands, if not millions, of vaccination-related accidents, resulting in death or serious impairment of mental and/or physical capacities. These accidents are not always documented, as we saw in the statement released by the National Vaccine Information Center, and never publicized by the drug companies, whose financial interest comes before public welfare. Again, I have nothing against the individuals working for these companies, who are just trying to do a good job and make a
living in a system that caters to the rich and tricks the rest of us into believing we somehow have a chance to “make it rich”. However, the people at the heads of these pharmaceutical giants need to take responsibility for their actions, and instead of asking the Secretary of Health for blanket legal immunity in case of adverse reactions from the H1N1 vaccine, should be taking every precaution to make darned sure that no one will ever have an adverse reaction of any kind to their flu shots. Cut to 25 year-old Desiree Jennings, victim of a flu shot that
robbed her of her ability to walk forward, or to speak coherently. She can walk backwards and run forward, and incidentally when she runs forward her speech becomes normal. Even a one-in-a-million chance of this happening should never be tolerated!

There are many ways of helping our bodies improve their natural immunity, without having to inject toxic waste into them. Eliminating artificial molecules found in our diets and medicine is a good start – drinking clean water is essential, and of course breathing fresh, clean air. Even if we don’t necessarily have access to a totally natural, organic diet and clean water and air, we can still help our bodies to build their own immunities by making sure that we deal with our stress, by getting enough exercise and sunshine, and by learning to breathe in a slow and rhythmic way. Consciousness is the key to living a
healthy, happy life. Becoming conscious of our movements, our bodies, our thoughts and feelings, will help us to go within and listen to our bodies, listen to ourselves. For we have the answers to all of our questions, if only we allow ourselves to go to that place where they are found, in the center of our being where all exists, and all is one.

I realize that this may be difficult for many of us, but I must insist on the fact that most of the difficulty resides in the mind. Our minds are fabulous instruments, but only when they serve our greater purpose, and not the other way around. The analogy I evoked earlier applies here as well: one group of people in power does not serve the greater good very well. In our society, the intellect has been propelled into an all-important role, leaving intuition and emotional intelligence in the dust. By putting the intellect back in its place and giving our other mental and emotional functions their due respect, we increase our chances of becoming happy, healthy individuals, and thus helping to create a more just, healthy and happy society.

So popping pills is not the answer. Nor is getting a vaccination. The only real answer to questions about our health lies within ourselves, and within Nature, who has provided us for millions of years with all the remedies we could ever dream of. We walk upon the Earth, who has supported our lives and our societies for generations, and has never asked for a thing in return. Perhaps we owe her some respect, recognition for all that has been offered to us, instead of
pillaging and raping all that can be exploited from her. In native societies, rape does not exist. Women are treated with the respect that the Mother Earth deserves, and gets. We would do well to learn from these native societies, and treat our bodies, and ourselves, with the respect that we deserve.

Sarah Dickinson Murray,
Medical Intuitive and Natural Health Consultant

Wilmington, Delaware
October 28th, 2009

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Staying Healthy during Flu Season

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

NOV 4 Conshohocken: Dr. Linda Baker, Holistic Pediatrician
(Staying Healthy during Flu Season)

Please join us in Conshohocken for a timely seminar:
How to Keep Your Family Healthy During Flu Season

A free health education series

How Strong Is YOUR Immune System?

-Staying healthy during Flu Season -
presented by
Linda Baker, MD
Homeopathic Pediatrician

Founder of Wellspring Center in Plymouth Meeting, a holistic health practice, Dr. Baker treats and provides health education programs for adult patients and children who want to use natural ways to optimize their health. She devotes a significant part of her practice to children with developmental disorders and chronic health conditions. In addition to using herbs and homeopathy, Dr. Baker places great emphasis on nutrition. In her words: “Sound nutrition is necessary for healing and for disease PREVENTION”.

Due to hectic lifestyles, poor food choices, STRESS and over reliance on meds, our families are being diagnosed, more than ever, with immune dysfunction, e.g., Influenza. Other preventable diseases, like obesity and diabetes, are reaching epidemic proportions. We can reverse the trend. Join us for this insightful program.

Wed., November 4th – 7 p.m.
(Doors open at 6:30 PM)

Spring Mill Corporate Center Auditorium
1100 E. Hector St., Conshohocken, PA 19428

Safe, convenient parking directly in front of
entrance at 1100 E. Hector St.

For information and/or complimentary tickets please contact:
Mercedes at 215-681-5369 or mercedescapizzi@yahoo.com
RSVP no later than Monday November 2.
Seating is limited to 50.

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Earth matters – Tackling the climate crisis from the ground up

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Some things have not changed much since da Vinci’s time, 500 years ago. For many, soil is a mix of dirt and dust. But in reality soils are one of Earth’s most amazing living ecosystems. Millions of plants, bacteria, fungi, insects and other living organisms – most of them invisible to the naked human eye – are in a constantly evolving process of creating, composing and decomposing organic living matter. They are also the unavoidable starting point for anyone who wants to grow food.

Soils also contain enormous amounts of carbon, mostly in the form of organic matter. On a global scale soils hold more than twice as much carbon as is contained in terrestrial vegetation. The rise of industrial agriculture in the past century, however, has provoked, through its reliance on chemical fertilisers, a general disrespect for soil fertility and a massive loss of organic matter from the soil. Much of this lost organic matter has ended up in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the most important greenhouse gas.

The way that industrial agriculture has treated soils has been a key factor in provoking the current climate crisis. But soils can also be a part of the solution, to a much greater extent than is commonly acknowledged. According to our calculations, if we could manage to put back into the world’s agricultural soils the organic matter that we have been losing because of industrial agriculture, we would capture at least one third of the current excessive CO2 in the atmosphere. If, once we had done that, we were to continue rebuilding the soils, we would, after about 50 years, have captured about two thirds of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. In the process, we would be constructing healthier and more productive soils and we would be able to do away with the use of chemical fertilisers, which are another potent producer of climate change gases.

Via Campesina has argued that agriculture based on small-scale farming, using agro-ecological production methods and oriented towards local markets, can cool the planet and feed the population (see Box 1). They are right, and the reasons lie largely in the soil.

Read The Rest…

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Putting the Last First – The Organic Answer to Food Security For All

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, October 12, 2009

On the occasion of the World Food Day, agro-industry proposes a second green revolution based on genetic engineering. This suits their interests but does not contribute to feeding the poor. Organic Agriculture based on its encouraging concepts, experience and examples proposes a paradigm-shift in food security policies to ensure that hunger is history by 2050.

In 2009, the number of undernourished people reached one billion, three quarters of them live in rural areas . This is more than ever before. Despite the fact that the world produces 125% of the required food for all, 15% of people are hungry; and most of them are women and children. Global agriculture production today fails to feed the world’s poorest people since they lack access to income and resources such as fertile land, water, seeds and knowledge for a farming system adapted to local conditions and the demands of markets. The green revolution accomplished a lot but failed to combat hunger. It focused only on technology and relied on huge quantities of climate damaging inputs such as agro-chemicals.

Putting the last first IFOAM advocates for a paradigm shift in agricultural policies and offers its practices and systems to policy makers for adoption especially in the global south and for regions with food insecurity. Organic Agriculture puts the needs of rural people and the sustainable use of natural resources at the centre of the farming system. Locally adapted technologies create employment opportunities and income. Low external inputs minimize risk of indebtedness and intoxication of the environment. It increases harvests through practices that favor the optimization of biological processes and local resources over expensive, toxic and climate damaging agro-chemicals . Organic Agricultural practices bring land degraded by unsustainable farming practices, severe drought and soil erosion back into production . And in response to a frequently asked question: Yes, the world can be fed by the worldwide adoption of Organic Agriculture. The slightly lower yields of Organic Agriculture in favorable, temperate zones are compensated with approximately 10 – 20% higher yields in difficult environments such as arid areas .

For more information call Markus Arbenz, IFOAM Executive Director: +49 160 804 15 57

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How We Became a Society of Gluttonous Junk Food Addicts

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

By Arun Gupta
AlterNet, August 5, 2009
Straight to the Source

Every chef is said to have a secret junk food craving. For Thomas Keller, chef-owner of Per Se and The French Laundry, two of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country, it’s Krispy Kreme Donuts and In-N-Out cheeseburgers. For David Bouley, New York’s reigning chef in the ’90s, it’s “high-quality potato chips.”

“Father of American cuisine” James Beard “loved McDonald’s fries,” while Paul Bocuse, an originator of nouvelle cuisine, once declared McDonald’s “are the best French fries I have ever eaten.” Masaharu Morimoto is partial to “Philly cheese steaks,” and Jean-Georges Vongerichten confesses a weakness for Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich. Other accomplished but less-famous chefs admit to craving everything from Peanut M&Ms, Pringles and Combos to Kettle Chips and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Having attended culinary school and cooked professionally, I can wax rhapsodic about epicurean delights such as squab, Beluga caviar, black truffles, porcini mushrooms, Iberico Ham, langoustines, and acres of exceptional vegetables and fruits. But I also have an unabashed junk food craving: Nacho Cheese Doritos. Sure, there are plenty of other junk foods I enjoy, whether it’s Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream or Entenmann’s baked goods, but Doritos are the one thing I desire and seek out regularly. (Not that I ever have to look that hard; I’ve encountered them everywhere from rural villages in Guatemala to tiny towns in the Canadian Arctic.)

For years I wondered why I craved Doritos. I knew the Nacho Cheese powder, which coats your fingers in day-glo orange deliciousness, was one component, as were the fatty, salty chips that crackle and melt into a pleasing mass as you crunch them. I figured there was a dollop of nostalgia in the mix, but an ingredient was still missing in my understanding. Then I read a spate of articles about “umami,” designated the fifth taste, along with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, means “deliciousness” in Japanese and is described as “a meaty, savory, satisfying taste.”

I knew some foods — parmesan cheese, seaweed, shellfish, tomatoes, mushrooms and meats — were high in umami-rich compounds such as glutamate, inosinate and guanylate. (Most people know umami from the much-maligned MSG, or mono sodium glutamate.) And I knew combining various sources of umami — such as the bonito-flake and kombu-seaweed broth known as dashi, the foundational stock of Japanese cuisine — magnified the effect and delivered a uniquely satisfying wallop of flavor.

What I didn’t know was that “Nacho-cheese-flavor Doritos, which contain five separate forms of glutamate, may be even richer in umami than the finest kombu dashi (kelp stock) in Japan,” according to a New York Times article from last year.

Mystery solved. Now I knew that whenever the Doritos bug bit me, I was jonesing for umami. I had to admit it: I am a junk food junkie and Frito-Lay is my pusher-man.

I am hardly alone. Frito-Lay is the snack-food peddler to the world, with over $43 billion in revenue in 2008. The 43-year-old cheesy chip is a “category killer,” dominating the tortilla chip market with a 32 percent share in 2006, and number two in the entire U.S. “sweet and savory snacks category,” just behind Lay’s potato chips.

$1.7 billion in annual sales in the U.S, is big business. Behind the enigma of Doritos’ dominance, and the lure of junk food to even the most refined palettes in the world, are the wonders of food science. That science, in the service of industrial capitalism, has hooked on us a food system that is destroying our health with obesity-related diseases. And that food system is based on a system of factory farming at one end, which churns out cheap, taxpayer-subsidized commodities like corn, vegetable oil and sweeteners, and the giant food processors at the other, like Frito-Lay, that take these commodities and concoct them into endless forms of addictive junk foods.

Steven Witherly begins his book, Why Humans Like Junk Food, by noting in studying the “psychobiology” of Doritos he consumed the “food intake and chemical senses literature — over five hundred research reports and four thousand abstracts — in order to discern the popularity of Doritos.” Witherly coined the term “Doritos Effect” to explain its popularity and in his book outlines 14 separate ways in which Doritos appeals to us.

There’s the “taste-active components,” sugar, salt and umami; ingredients like buttermilk solids, lactic acid, and citric acid that stimulate saliva, creating a “mouth-watering” sensation; the “high dynamic contrast” of powder-coated thin, hard chips that melt in the mouth; a complex flavor aroma; a high level of fat that activates “fat recognition receptors in the mouth increases levels of gut hormones linked to reduction in anxiety activates brains systems for reward, and enhances ingestion for more fat”; toasted, fried corn that triggers our evolutionary predilection for cooked foods; starches that break down quickly, boosting blood levels of insulin and glucose; and so on.

Witherly explains that some umami sources like MSG don’t have much taste by themselves, but when you add salt,”the hedonic flavors just explode!” And Doritos has plenty of both. The tiny 2-oz. bag of Doritos I’m holding, which in the past would be a warm-up to a Nacho Cheesier dinner, lists MSG near the top, before “buttermilk solids,” along with nearly one-sixth of my recommended daily intake of sodium.

One aspect of Doritos that whet my curiosity was, how much does Frito-Lay spend on goods like corn, oil and cheese? Not surprisingly, this data was nowhere to be found in the annual report of Pepsico, Frito-Lay’s parent company. But I gleaned a clue from a 1991 New York Times article. In it, a Wall Street analyst stated that Frito-Lay’s profit margin, around 19 percent in those days (which is close to its margin of late), approached that of Kellogg’s. The analyst, an expert on the food industry, said: “Kellogg buys corn for 4 cents a pound and sells it for $2 a box.” That’s a markup of nearly 5,000 percent over the base ingredient.

I’ll save you the math, but Frito-Lay may do even better than Kellogg’s. If it uses two ounces of cornmeal in my 99 cents bag of Doritos, it apparently costs the snack-food giant less than one measly penny. And here’s a critical point about the food industry. The more they can process basic food commodities, the more profits they can gobble up at the expense of farmers. In The End of Food, Paul Roberts writes that in the 1950s, farmers received about half the retail price for the finished food product. By 2000, “this farm share had fallen below 20 percent.”

This is the result of the global food system constructed by the U.S. and other Western powers under the World Trade Organization. Countries that once strived for food security by supporting their domestic farmers are now forced — in the name of free trade — to open their agricultural sectors to competition from heavily subsidized Western agribusinesses. By the mid-1990s, according to rural sociologist Philip McMichael, 80 percent of farm subsidies in Western countries went to “the largest 20 percent of (corporate) farms, rendering small farmers increasingly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a deregulated (and increasingly privately managed) global market for agricultural products.”

The WTO-enforced system and government subsidies enables food giants — such as Pepsico, Kraft, Mars, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Burger King and Wal-Mart — to source their ingredients globally, giving them the power to force down prices, which drives more and more farmers off the land in the global North and South alike. Then the food companies turn around and manufacture high-profit products that seem like an unbelievable bargain to us. In fact, they make this a selling point, and not just with “Dollar Menus.”

Last year, in the wake of the economic meltdown, KFC launched the “10 Dollar Challenge,” inviting families to try to recreate a meal of seven pieces of fried chicken, four biscuits and a side for less than its asking price of 10 bucks. Of course this is a virtually impossible feat, apart from dumpster diving. But KFC isn’t hawking alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast at that price. Witherly, in Why Humans Like Junk Food, writes that “high energy density food is associated with high food pleasure.” The corporate food’s revenue model is based on designing products oozing with fat, salt, sugar, umami and chemical flavors to turn us into addicts.

While food companies can trot willing doctors, dieticians and nutritionists who claim that eating their brand of poison in moderation can be part of a balanced diet, the companies are like drug dealers who prey on junkies. As Morgan Spurlock explained about McDonald’s in Supersize Me, the targets are “heavy users,” who visit the Golden Arches at least once a week and “super heavy users,” who visit ten times a month or more. In fact, according to one study, super heavy users “make up approximately 75 percent of McDonald’s sales.”

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911 Call for Farmer’s Markets and Food Groups/Co-ops

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Fund Announces New Affiliate Membership Program In Celebration of National Farmer’s Market Week

Offering Legal Services to Rapidly Growing and Increasingly Regulated Direct-to-Consumer Groups

Falls Church, Virginia (August 7, 2009) – Even as the USDA commends Farmer’s Markets in the week-long National Farmer’s Market Week, August 2 – 9, 2009, State and local health and agriculture departments are making participation difficult and expensive by cracking down on participating farmers.

Some Farmer’s Markets have become a victim of their own success, as regulators swarm over these events and nit-pick the farmers for fees, licenses and permits.

“We are seeing farmers quit the markets because they are besieged with burdensome regulations and overlapping licensing requirements that make doing business at the farmer’s market too costly,” said Fund President Pete Kennedy, Esq. The Fund seeks to support Farmer’s Markets and other direct-to-consumer food outlets with a new Affiliate Membership program that provides affordable, accessible legal guidance for these organizations.

“When Farmer’s Markets are open early in the morning or on the weekend, their Market Manager can call our Emergency Hotline to talk directly with legal counsel about a market problem” says Kennedy.

“When I joined the Fund I never thought I would ever need to call to the Emergency Hotline. In less than thirty seconds there was Pete Kennedy calling me back”, says Pam Lunn, owner of the Dancing Goat Dairy in Tampa, Florida. Pam had been ordered to stop selling milk by a misinformed inspector at the Saturday Market. “The money I spent on joining was the best money I have ever spent in a lifetime!”

Farmer’s Markets are the flagship of the innovative and rapidly expanding direct-to-consumer food trend fueled by the public demand for fresher, more nutritious food that is produced closer to home. Millions of food-savvy consumers are bypassing the grocery stores and flocking to innovative outlets like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), Cow-Share Programs, Private Buyers Clubs and Food Co-ops to access food for their families which is not available elsewhere in their communities. Because of the many recent food recalls, the draw to these outlets is fresh, safe, nutritious and non-toxic foods from known sources – local sustainable farmers.

The USDA reports that direct-to-consumer market is the fastest growing sector of the agricultural economy: “Over the past decade, the growth of direct-to-consumer food marketing across all regions far exceeded the growth of total agricultural sales. From 1997-2007, direct-to-consumer food marketing grew by 104.7 percent in the United States, while total agricultural sales increased by only 47.6 percent.” (USDA Facts on Direct-to-Consumer Marketing, May 2009).

“As our name suggests, the Fund was originally created to support the Farmer and the Consumer. Now, we feel it’s essential to support the “to” in our name, the non-profit groups and local food entrepreneurs who are recreating the way that America shops for food,” says Kennedy.

“Our Affiliate Membership Program is the next critical step in our mission to expand and encourage direct-to-consumer trade and ultimately provide our neighbors and communities with easy access to local, fresh and safe sustainably farmed products.” Candidates for Affiliate Memberships include Farmer’s Markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), Cow or Goat-Share Programs, Private Buyers Clubs and Food Co-ops.

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund defends the rights and broadens the freedoms of sustainable farmers, and protects consumer access to raw milk and local, nutrient-dense foods. Concerned citizens can support the Fund by joining at www.farmtoconsumer. org or by contacting Fund at 703-208-FARM (3276).

The Fund’s sister organization, the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation works to promote consumer access to raw milk and local, nutrient-dense food, and support for farmers engaged in sustainable farm stewardship. Visit www.farmtoconsumerf oundation. org.

Contact:

Taaron G. Meikle

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund

703-860-1010

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