Life skills

The defibrillators give audible instructions to users on how to treat cardiac arrest patients

Continue reading the main storyRelated stories'Heart shock' machine on SnowdonAction plan to cut sudden death Passengers travelling through Heathrow have the opportunity to take a five-minute lifesaving skills lesson.

London Ambulance Service are offering to show people how to respond if they see someone suffering a cardiac arrest.

The demonstration includes instruction on how to use a defibrillator, a machine that can deliver a shock to restart a patient's heart.

Around 10,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest in Greater London each year.

The training is part of an initiative to provide defibrillators in public spaces which can be used by members of the public until emergency services arrive.

Across London 115 cardiac arrests have been treated with defibrillators installed by London Ambulance Service since they became involved in the scheme in 2006.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteYou don't have to be a professional to use a defibrillator machine. You can help get someone back and save a life.”

End QuoteGraham ClarkBritish Airways customer service agent The survival rate for patients in Greater London who receive defibrillation is around 29%, compared to just over 21% for those that are not treated with the machine.

'Save a life'

British Airways customer service agent Graham Clark suffered a cardiac arrest whilst at work in 2005 and had to have three shocks from a defibrillator to restart his heart.

Mr Clark said that the quick actions of colleagues and a Heathrow-based ambulance man saved his life.

"Without the paramedics of the London Ambulance service I wouldn't be here."

But he also encourages members of the public to take a few minutes to learn life saving skills.

"You don't have to be a professional to use a defibrillator machine. You can help get someone back and save a life".

Demetrios Geniris, a BAA service team leader, has twice used his training to successfully shock a patient's heart.

"You've just got to have the courage inside you to get the box out, put the pads on the patient and shock them if it tells you to.

"It's pretty simple, you don't have to be a medical professional. I've proven that," he added.

London Ambulance Service community defibrillation officer Martin Bullock, who is part of the team that carries out the training, said: "Five minutes is ample time to do the demonstration and show someone how to save a life."

The training instructs people to call 999 for an ambulance immediately, and then begin giving basic life support until medical professionals arrive.

Since January 2009, defibrillators have been used 16 times at Heathrow, with nine patients surviving to discharge.

Nobel Dad

Jenny (far left) with her mum and sisters in the early 1970s

Professor Robert Edwards is the physiologist who developed the IVF technique - along with his late colleague, Dr Patrick Steptoe. They established the world's first IVF clinic, Bourn Hall in Cambridgeshire.

Professor Edwards' second daughter Dr Jenny Joy and her four sisters are full of pride today. They have travelled to Sweden to celebrate their father being awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Friday.

Jenny, now 50, was 18 when Louise Brown was born.

'Waiting to pounce'

She remembers: "That moment was the pinnacle - but there'd been so many years of research leading to it.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteDad was totally dedicated - nothing was going to put him off. ”

End QuoteDr Jenny JoyDaughter of Professor Edwards "I just remember Dad going to the hospital in Oldham quite regularly - and then coming back elated.

"The press were camped out there waiting for the birth. There were huge celebrations.

"Having a healthy baby was the key thing - the critics were waiting to pounce.

"There had been pregnancies before and they hadn't gone full term. When the baby was born safely, everyone was ecstatic. There had been so many hurdles on the way.

"In the early days the press reports were often sensational. But Dad was totally dedicated to his cause and nothing was going to put him off.

"It was wonderful for Dad to have a big family of five girls. It made him appreciate what others were missing.

"He was well aware of the anguish of infertility, and he thought that having life and children was one of the most important things in the world."

Professor Edwards, 85, is too frail to travel to Sweden to collect the award - so his wife, Ruth Fowler, is collecting it on his behalf.

They met when she was studying for her PhD in Edinburgh, and she worked alongside him, helping produce scientific papers as well as looking after the family.

IVF is now a well-established technique, but in those days it was controversial.

Alien

The infertile women who were seeking treatment often had to keep their efforts secret from family and friends.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteDad considered standing as MP for Cambridge. We're glad he chose physiology!”

End QuoteDr Jenny JoyDaughter of Professor Robert Edwards Jenny said: "This idea of a test-tube baby was alien to most people's thoughts. People imagined them actually growing in test tubes.

"We grew up with the press on the phone, trying to talk to Dad.

"Now everyone knows someone who's had IVF. And for us, the programme has been part of our lives."

Jenny now works in butterfly conservation - but she was an auxiliary nurse at Bourn Hall when it opened.

She's keen to pay tribute to her father's determination, and his other qualities and interests.

She said: "Whatever the setbacks in his work on IVF, it never put him off.

Faster ride

More people than ever are cycling to work It's a no-brainer. Cycling is good for you. It keeps you fit, gets you out in the fresh air and is kind to the environment.

Cycling to work is more popular than ever, because it's an easy way of fitting exercise into the daily routine and it doubles as transport.

According to the government, "regular exercise like cycling halves your chances of suffering from heart disease, and helps to prevent strokes, diabetes, and some kinds of cancer.

"Your blood pressure and resting heart rate will be lower, and you'll feel more awake and less stressed."

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteIt's not always about getting there first.”

End QuotePhilip InghamBritish Cycling And it can save a fortune. Or can it?

Dr Jeremy Groves, a consultant anaesthetist at Chesterfield Royal Hospital and self-confessed cycling fan, discovered that, "spending a lot of money on a bicycle for commuting is not necessarily going to get you to work more quickly".

Dr Groves' set up a trial to test whether his new, lightweight carbon-framed bicycle.

Blood donations halted due to snow

Across the UK, thousands of blood donations have had to be cancelled because of the freezing weather and heavy snow.

There is now growing concern about blood supplies running even lower than they usually do at this time of year.

King Henri IV's head is the genuine article

Researchers have reconstructed the face of Henry IV, using the presumed skull Scientists say they have identified an embalmed head as belonging to King Henri IV of France, who was assassinated in 1610 at the age of 57.

The head was lost after revolutionaries ransacked the royal chapel at Saint Denis, near Paris, in 1793.

A head, presumed to be that of Henri IV, has passed between private collectors since then.

A team of scientists used the latest forensic techniques to identify features seen in portraits of the king.

A lesion near his nose, a pierced ear and a healed facial wound - from a previous assassination attempt - were among the marks that identified the head.

The methods used to embalm the head also matched techniques in use at the time of his death, said the scientists in a report published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

'Worth a Mass'

It was not possible to use DNA evidence to identify the head because it was impossible to find a sample from it that could be guaranteed to be uncontaminated.

"The human head had a light brown colour, open mouth and partially closed eyes," said the scientists, led by forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier.

UK given 'heart epidemic' warning

Case studies The UK needs to prepare for an epidemic of valvular heart disease, caused by a rapidly ageing population, say experts.

With four million people set to be aged 75 to 84 within a few years, surgeons see a rise in the number of transplants to replace worn out valves.

Latest audit data shows a sharp increase in all types of valve surgery in the UK, with some surgeons say it is now taking up 40% of their workload.

Experts say the UK is poorly prepared for more cases.

European and US data indicate that more than 13% of people aged 75 and above have valvular heart disease (VHD).

To some extent, it is part of ageing: as people get older, their valves become less flexible, and more stretched or torn.

And experts are concerned that the UK is poorly prepared for what is certain to be a big increase in cases.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteVHD has been relatively neglected by politicians, health economists and even by cardiologists”

End QuoteThe journal paper authors Data from the latest National Adult Cardiac Surgery Database for Great Britain and Northern Ireland shows wide variation in treatment provision.

More than a third of those undergoing surgery to repair their defective heart valves had advanced disease, significantly increasing their likelihood of complications, death, and ineffective symptom relief, researchers told Heart journal.

"These observations suggest that both initial diagnoses and subsequent follow up are currently inadequate and that patients are routinely referred late in the natural history of the condition, beyond the window where surgery is of maximum benefit," they said.

The surgeons were based at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, London's St Thomas' Hospital and the University Hospital of South Manchester.

Ageism and sexism also seem to be factors, with twice as many men undergoing aortic valve replacement as women, and patients over the age of 75 with moderate to severe disease half as likely to be treated surgically as their younger counterparts.

"Advancing age is often used to justify the decision to withhold surgery, but suitably selected patients may derive considerable improvement in symptomatic burden and overall quality of life, following successful intervention," they say.

Mr Ben Bridgewater, a heart surgeon from South Manchester University Hospital, and colleagues are calling for specialist centres to be set up, staffed by specialists with access to the right screening tests and equipment to treat patients with VHD.

Continue reading the main storyValvular heart disease symptoms

Some people may not experience any symptoms but common symptoms are:

being out of breath swelling of the ankles and feet being unusually tired "VHD has been relatively neglected by politicians, health economists and even by cardiologists," they say.

"National programmes already exist for heart failure and coronary disease. A similar coordinated approach to research, education, and clinical management is now needed to ensure improved outcomes for all patients with VHD."

Professor Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation said: "The authors of this paper are right to point out that the NHS will need appropriately skilled health care professionals to identify and deal with patients of all ages - particularly the elderly - with valve disease.

"It is well established that patients with all types of heart disease have a better chance of survival and quality of life when managed by an expert cardiological team.

"It is essential that all hospitals maintain and indeed expand their expert cardiac services over the coming years to avoid the financial and health costs of not dealing with the changing pattern of heart disease in an expert and timely manner."

UK 'lags behind Europe on health'

The UK is one of the unhealthiest nations in Europe for some health indicators, data suggests.

Figures from the Association of Public Health Observatories reveal the UK is the fattest EU member and has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies.

The UK also performs badly on female cancer survival and infant deaths.

But life expectancy figures in the UK are slightly better than for EU counterparts and the nation also excels at treating heart disease.

And our early action on smoking has had a very positive impact on health outcomes, the report authors say.

They compared all regions across 27 countries in Europe using 37 health indicators in 2006.

Hot spot

The UK as a whole scored particularly badly on obesity, being the fattest nation of all.

And within the UK it was the West Midlands that had the highest percentage of obese adults at 29% - nearly double the EU average of 14% and much higher than the 19% rate seen in Greater London.

The UK's female death rates from cancer were also among the worst in Europe.

Deaths in south-east England were the highest at 185 per 100,000, followed by Scotland at 179 per 100,000 and north-east England at 174. This compares with the European average of 139.5 per 100,000.

All parts of the UK had more teenage mothers than in most other European countries - but the North East of England came out the worst.

The researchers acknowledge the picture may have changed slightly since the data was collected, but they say their snapshot should be a warning to public health experts.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteI'm appalled by the figures and feel ashamed as a GP working in the West Midlands that this area has the highest percentage of obese adults in Europe”

End QuoteProfessor Steve FieldChairman of the RCGP Dr Claire Bradford and Professor John Wilkinson, who compiled the report, said the information could help the UK improve its track record.

Dr Bradford said: "This type of data allows us to compare not just between countries but within countries and to look at what is going well and what is not.

"People that are able to influence which way we are going as a nation should look at this to decide on priorities and actions.

"Our problem with obesity might be a good place to start."

Commenting on the data, public health expert, Professor Sir Michael Marmot said the report highlighted "stark differences" in health across the EU.

"The causes of health inequalities are socially determined," he said.

"The behaviours that lead to obesity and teenage pregnancy, for example, arise from social conditions.

"This knowledge informs what we as a society can do at a local, regional, national and international level to create the conditions for greater health equity."

'Appalled'

Professor Steve Field of the Royal College of General Practitioners said: "I'm appalled by the figures and feel ashamed as a GP working in the West Midlands that this area has the highest percentage of obese adults in Europe.

"Obesity is a major problem and predictor of ill health throughout a patient's life, causing serious illnesses.

"I hope we will be able to do more in the future to get people to take responsibility for their own health and take more exercise and eat sensibly."

A Department of Health spokesman said: "The government has made it clear that tackling health inequalities is a priority as part of its commitment to fairness and social justice.

"Action to tackle health inequalities is at the centre of our approach to public health.

"We will aim to use the least intrusive approach necessary to achieve the desired effect.

"We will seek to use approaches that focus on enabling and guiding people's choices wherever possible."

Fears over nurse eye assessments

Miss Holmes would not have lost any sight if a specialist had seen her earlier, her solicitors claim Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesNurses predict gloomy NHS futureCancer unit reopens after revampMental health nurse 'child risk' An eye specialist has voiced concerns about nurses making decisions that "go beyond their training", after a woman was left virtually blind in one eye.

Claire Holmes, 24, from Worcestershire, twice visited the minor injuries unit at Kidderminster hospital in 2008.

Nurses she saw prescribed ointments, but they did not refer her case.

Ophthalmologist Paul Chell said by the time she was referred she had lost 95% of the sight in her eye. The trust has now changed its referral policy.

E-mail warning

Miss Holmes wore contact lenses, which some doctors believe can increase the risk of developing a corneal ulcer that destroys vision, as the lenses can scratch the cornea.

Paul Chell, the clinical director of ophthalmology at Kidderminster General Hospital at the time, sent an e-mail to the chief executive John Rostill in which he said the case was indefensible.

The e-mail, obtained by the BBC, claims that Miss Holmes was the second eye patient who had been put at risk in two weeks in September 2008.

Brain clue to fighter pilot skill

Differences in white matter (pink) and the connections between those areas (orange and blue) Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesScans reveal autism brain secretsLibido problems 'brain not mind' Fighter pilots may owe their ability to perform under pressure to the way their brains are wired-up, scans suggest.

The study found differences in the white matter and connections of the brain's right hemisphere, compared with healthy volunteers who were not pilots.

It is not clear whether pilots are born like that, or develop the differences as a result of their training.

The research by University College London (UCL) is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Royal Air Force fighter pilots are trained to fly at supersonic speeds at low altitude, requiring fine control with very little room for error.

The discipline is considered to be at the limits of human cognitive performance, prompting doctors at UCL to study their brain function.

The research team looked at how 11 front-line RAF Tornado fighter pilots performed in two standard visual cognitive tests to assess their powers of thought.

Their test scores were compared with healthy people of the same age and sex who had no experience of piloting aircraft.

The subjects were also given MRI scans to look at the structure of their brains.

Continue reading the main storyCognitive tests The first test, known as the Eriksen Flanker, measures how quickly and accurately someone can respond to a target stimulus, while being distracted by symbols like arrows or letters. In the second test, participants have to respond as quickly as possible to the signal "go", unless they are told to change their plan before they have made a response. The two visual tests measure how quickly and accurately someone can respond to a target, while being distracted.

The pilots were found to respond more accurately than the control group in the first test, but there was no difference in the second test, suggesting their brain performance was highly particular to specific tests, say the authors.

Professor Masud Husain of the UCL Institute of Neurology and UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience said his research team was interested in the pilots as an expert group capable of making precision choices at high speed.

Born or bred?

He said their ability to perform more accurately in certain tasks was associated with differences in the wiring of the right hemisphere of the brain.

The findings suggested that optimal cognitive control is accompanied by structural alterations in the brain - not only are the relevant areas of the brain larger but connections between key areas are different, he said.

He told the BBC: "An interesting question is whether these pilots were born like that - and so are good as pilots - or have done this through training.

"There's a suggestion it may be they are born like that."

He said the team hopes to look at other professional groups, such as sporting stars and bankers, to see whether there were more differences in brain structure.

Fifth 'end primary school obese'

More than 1m children took part in the measuring scheme Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesChild obesity 'is levelling off'GPs 'struggle with child obesity'Obesity 'spreads among the young' Nearly one in five children in England leave primary school obese, figures show.

The data, from the school measuring programme, also showed one in 10 pupils start school obese.

The figures show small rises from previous years although as the scheme is voluntary it is hard to draw firm conclusions.

Predictions from a separate report last year suggested childhood obesity was levelling off.

In total, 18.7% of year six pupils were obese, the report released by the NHS Information Centre showed. The figure rises to 33.4% when overweight children are taken into account.

For the reception year, the figures are 9.8% and 23.1% respectively.

Rethink

All these measures show slight increases from 2008-9, although the NHS Information Centre which produced the report said they were not statistically significant.

This is mainly because parents can refuse to let their children take part in the programme - and one in 10 do.

Nonetheless, more than 1m children took part, making it the largest child weight survey of its kind.

Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre, said: "These statistics suggest that more needs to be done at a younger age to combat obesity within primary education and positively encourage healthy eating and participation in physical activity to reduce future health implications for these children."

Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, said the figures were shaming.

"The fact that obesity doubles during the primary school years from reception year shows that the government must rethink its recent proposals on school dinners and physical activity."

Dr Helen Walters, obesity spokesperson for the UK Faculty of Public Health, said she still believed the rise in obesity was beginning to tail off.

Bue she added: "The situation will take decades to sort out and as it stands, the picture remains bleak."

Ministers press on with NHS plans

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said a ''very large'' number of people are ''happy'' about change

Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesLeaders in 'broken promises' rowQ&A: The NHS shake-upNHS 'tested to limit by savings' The government has confirmed it is to push ahead with big structural changes to the NHS in England.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the reform agenda was "on track" following a public consultation, despite concerns from health unions.

Primary Care Trusts are to be abolished by 2013, when GPs will plan hospital care and manage budgets to pay for it.

In the Commons, the Labour leader Ed Miliband condemned the moves.

The Shadow Health Secretary John Healey said it was the wrong time to be making such big changes to the health service.

He said: "This is a massive upheaval and a massive distraction and it puts a pressure on the NHS which it could live without at the moment.

"And when the doctors don't want it, the health experts are warning against it, patients groups are concerned, this is really the last thing that the government needs to do."

Operating framework

The Department of Health has carried out a public consultation on reform plans set out in a White Paper, receiving some 6,000 responses.

Monsanto Pushing to Legalize Commercial Planting of GE Corn in Mexico

MEXICO CITY-Mexico, the birthplace of corn, is edging toward the use of genetically modified varieties to lower its dependence on imports, but strong opposition among some growers and environmentalists, who see altered corn as a threat to native strains, has kept the wheels turning slowly.

Monsanto Co., DuPont Co.'s Pioneer Hi-Bred unit and Dow Chemical Co,'s Dow AgroSciences recently completed small, controlled experiments in northern Mexico with genetically modified corn, and are seeking government authorization to enter a "pre-commercial" phase, expanding the growing area to nearly 500 acres from 35 acres.

The trials began in October 2009, four years after Mexico lifted an 11-year moratorium on genetically modified corn-or maize-to which scientists have added desirable traits like pest resistance.

Many farmers and environmentalists, however, fear that altered corn will cross-breed with the nearly 60 documented native maize varieties, transforming the biology of the grain, a dietary staple with deep cultural significance here. By contrast, genetically modified cotton, alfalfa and soybeans are widely accepted and cultivated on nearly 250,000 acres across the country.

"We are the children of corn. It's our life, and we need to protect it," said José Bernardo Magdaleno Velasco, a corn producer in Venustiano Carranza in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where he grows two native varieties. According to Mayan legend, the gods created humans from corn. The plant is still used in some indigenous religious rituals.

Two types of genetically modified corn are produced commercially in 16 countries, led by the U.S., but almost nowhere has their introduction met the resistance it has in Mexico.

Protests have been staged across the country, and a coalition of 300 groups has led a campaign called "Sin maiz no hay pais," or "Without corn there is no country."

Opening the doors to genetically modified corn, its opponents fear, would contaminate native varieties, such as the red Xocoyol or the black Yautsi, increase dependence on foreign companies and possibly harm the nation's environment and health. 

The Story of Agribusiness's Haitian Rice Racket

As we file this article, Port-au-Prince is thick with the smoke of burning tires and with gunfire. Towns throughout the country, along with the national airport, are shut down due to demonstrations. Many are angry over the government's announcement on Tuesday night of which two presidential candidates made the run-offs: Jude Célestin from the widely hated ruling party of President René Préval and the far-right Mirlande Manigat. This is another obvious manipulation of what had already been a brazenly fraudulent election. A democratic vote is one more thing that has been taken from the marginalized Haitian majority, compounding their many losses since the earthquake of January 12.

What is at stake in Haiti? What interests underlie the grab for power in the country? One answer is the large amount of aid and development dollars that are circulating. Among those benefiting handsomely from the disaster aid are U.S. corporations who have accessed U.S. government contracts. Below is the tale of one U.S. corporation and its subsidiaries, who have received contracts which involve both a conflict of interest and harm to one of Haiti's largest and most vulnerable social sectors, small farmers.

"We were already in a black misery after the earthquake of January 12. But the rice they're dumping on us, it's competing with ours and soon we're going to fall in a deep hole," said Jonas Deronzil, who has farmed rice and corn in Haiti's fertile Artibonite Valley since 1974. "When they don't give it to us anymore, are we all going to die?"

Deronzil explained this in April inside a cinder-block warehouse, where small farmers' entire spring rice harvest had sat in burlap sacks since March, unsold, because of USAID's dumping of U.S. agribusiness-produced, taxpayer-subsidized rice. The U.S. government and agricultural corporations, which have been undermining Haitian peasant agriculture for three decades, today threaten higher levels of unemployment for farmers and an aggravated food crisis among the hemisphere's hungriest population.

Two subsidiaries of the same corporation, ERLY Industries, are profiting from different U.S. contracts whose interests conflict. The same company that is being paid to monitor "food insecurity" is benefiting from policies that increase food insecurity. American Rice makes money exporting rice to Haiti, undercutting farmers' livelihoods, national production, and food security. Chemonics has received contracts to conduct hunger assessments and, now, to distribute Monsanto seeds.

Five Fish You Should Eat More Of

Our oceans are in a perilous state. Rampant abuse and rapacity has led us down a dangerous path; stories of overfishing, toxic contamination, and ocean acidification put consumers in a state of confusion and fear at the seafood counter. Luckily, all is not lost -- by making informed choices, we can enjoy healthy, delicious seafood while supporting fishermen that are doing their utmost to work in harmony with the planet. Here are five examples of sustainable, restorative seafood options that merit our support:

1. Sardines

First of all, I'm not talking about the unidentifiable, semi-fossilized fish paste that you find covered in oil or mustard sauce when you open up a sardine tin -- fresh sardines are a totally different animal. They are inexpensive, delectable indulgences that carry fabulous flavors, perform marvelously on a grill, and are used by top-level sushi chefs to make mouth-watering nigiri and sashimi dishes. Even better, these tiny delights are packed full of Omega-3 fatty acids while their short lifecycle keeps them relatively mercury-free. Unfortunately, we're using them in the worst possible way.

There's no excuse for the way we're treating our amazing sardine resource in this country. The vast majority of our sardines are sold to foreign bluefin tuna ranches, where they are used to fatten up juveniles that have been purloined from wild stocks. This is a problem on many levels: bluefin tuna are severely endangered, have little Omega-3 content, can be extremely high in mercury, and are exorbitantly expensive. We're using our sardines -- healthy, delicious fish that most Americans can afford -- to fuel a foreign industry that is harming the ocean in order to create a luxury good with dubious health benefits that is only available to the very wealthy.

Maude Barlow: A Healthy Environment Should Be a Human Right

Maude Barlow is a member of OCA's Policy Board. Yes! Magazine is a great publication that you should subscribe to if at all possible by clicking here.

In most legal systems, you have a right to freedom of speech or religion, but you don't have a right to breathe clean air or drink safe water.

Maude Barlow-author, activist, and former senior advisor on water to the United Nations-believes that those rights should be recognized. This past summer, she helped engineer a landmark victory: The U.N. formally adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to water (though the United States abstained).

Now, Barlow is part of an international movement-of governments, scientists, and activists-working to bring a focus on environmental rights to the ongoing United Nations climate negotiations. This week, she is attending the United Nations climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico.

The negotiations are thus far getting scant press attention, but thousands of people from all over the world are turning out in Cancún to voice their political views and hold alternative meetings and demonstrations outside the U.N. conference. Early this week, the international grassroots organization La Via Campesina led Barlow and hundreds of other grassroots leaders on a tour across the Mexican countryside to witness how climate change is already affecting rural communities. The tours converged in Mexico City where a few thousand people held a march to the Zócalo, the city's central plaza.

Activists in Cancún and Mexico City are rallying behind the idea of environmental rights. Many support a document called the "People's Agreement on Climate Change," which includes a "Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth." It's an idealistic name for a proposal that would sound either visionary or improbable, or both-if not for the fact that the declaration represents the work of representatives from 56 countries and of tens of thousands of people who attended a climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, last April. The document declares that everybody has rights to basics like clean water and clean air, but it also says something even more extraordinary: that the planet's ecosystems themselves have rights.

It's unlikely that the Cochabamba proposals will end up in any formal agreements to emerge from Cancún. But the idea of environmental rights is taking hold. In September 2008, Ecuador formally recognized the rights of nature in its new constitution. In the United States, a handful of local governments have passed resolutions recognizing that nature has rights, including, recently, the city of Pittsburgh.

Leaked Memo Sheds Light on Mysterious Bee Die-Offs and Who's to Blame

A new leaked memo from the EPA has the beekeeping world buzzing. Bad puns aside, the failure of the EPA to protect the environment -- in this case, bees -- jeopardizes beekeepers' ability to continue in their work. Beekeeper Tom Theobald, who exposed the leaked memo, says that beekeepers now lose 30 to 40 percent or more of their hives each year, and it takes two years to recover each one. Theobald has been a beekeeper in Boulder County, Colorado for 35 years, but now he says he's not sure he can continue. "I can't afford to subsidize this as a hobby. I'll fold the tent," he says. "Commercial beekeepers will work themselves to death," he continues, noting that it's only the passion and commitment of beekeepers that has staved off a complete collapse of the entire beekeeping industry this long.

The leaked EPA memo, dated November 2, 2010, focuses on Bayer CropScience's request to register (i.e. legalize) its pesticide clothianidin for use on mustard seed and cotton. Clothianidin was first registered in May 2003, but its registration was conditional on safety testing that the EPA said should be completed by December 2004. Only, as the latest memo points out, the study, when it was done (long after 2004), was inadequate in demonstrating that clothianidin does not pose a threat to honeybees. Unfortunately, with the EPA's failure to ensure clothianidin's safety before allowing its use on corn and canola, it fell to beekeepers to discover why their bees were dying, and how the EPA allowed clothianidin on the market.

For beekeepers like Theobald, the story starts in the 1990's. During the warm months of the year when flowers are blooming, honeybees forage for nectar and pollen, eating them and storing them for the winter. When all went well, the bees could successfully survive the winter on their stored honey and pollen. Prior to 1995, Theobald and other beekeepers in his area lost about two to five percent of their colonies each winter. In an extraordinarily bad winter, 10 percent of the colonies might not make it. Beginning in 1995, 20 to 30 percent of colonies began dying each winter. At the time, Theobald assumed the cause were varroa mites, a parasitic mite that attacks bees. The mites were first found in the U.S. in 1987, but they did not reach Boulder County, CO until 1995, the same year the winter losses of bees grew 

State Study: Low Levels of Perchlorate Affect Infants

A new analysis by state scientists found that low levels of a rocket fuel chemical common in Inland drinking water supplies appear to be more harmful to newborn babies than previously believed, prompting calls for a tougher limit for tap water.

Scientists with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment examined records of blood samples drawn from the heels of 497,458 newborns in 1998 as part of a California disease-screening program.

The researchers found that the babies born in areas where tap water was contaminated with perchlorate -- including babies in Riverside and San Bernardino -- had a 50 percent chance of having a poorly performing thyroid gland, said Dr. Craig Steinmaus, lead author of the study published in this month's Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Though perchlorate is in many Inland groundwater supplies, water providers aggressively treat and blend water to meet the state standard for the pollutant. The study's authors, however, said they saw thyroid issues in babies born in areas where tap water met the current state standard.

The finding is important because the thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland in the throat, produces the hormones fetus and babies need for proper nerve and brain development. Other studies have found that small declines in the production of thyroid hormone may negatively affect intelligence, Steinmaus said. 

The FDA Finally Reveals How Many Antibiotics Factory Farms Use - and It's a Load

Animals in factory farms get daily doses of antibiotics, both to keep them alive in their stressful, unsanitary conditions and to make them grow faster. What's the annual volume of antibiotic use on factory farms? The question is a critical one, because the practice has given rise to a novel strain of antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA), known as ST398, that's widely present in our vast hog and chicken factories.

Well, federal regulators have for years ignored the question and refused to release estimates of just how much antibiotics the livestock industry burns through. But that ended yesterday, when the FDA released its first-ever report on the topic. The answer: 29 million pounds in 2009. According to ace public-health reporter Maryn McKenna, that's a shitload. (I'm paraphrasing her.)

McKenna, author of the important book Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA and once a guest on my podcast show, puts it into context on her blog. She says that in lieu of official accounting of antibiotic use in industrial agriculture, NGOs have tried to fill the void. In 2000, she reports, the Animal Health Institute, a veterinary-drug trade group, estimated total use in livestock at 17.8 million pounds. The industry has been clinging to that number ever since.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which campaigns against industrial agriculture, put the figure at 24.6 million pounds in a 2001 study. But the UCS figure focused only on "non-therapeutic purposes" -- i.e.,  in McKenna's words, applications not designed to treat specific illnesses but rather to "make animals grow to market weight faster and to prevent them catching diseases in the close quarters of confinement agriculture." UCS figured the industry used another several million pounds for legit purposes of treating sick animals.

Assuming that factory farmers haven't dramatically ramped up antibiotic use over the past decade, the industry figure is woefully off -- about 40 percent lower than the real one. And the UCS estimate holds up well. I took another look at that classic UCS report, called "Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock." In it, the group estimates that total U.S. antibiotic production stands at 50 million pounds. Assuming that's roughly still correct -- again, the paper came out in 2001 -- that means factory animal farms hog a stunning 60 percent of U.S. antibiotics.

Importantly, McKenna says the FDA's report dovetails with the agency's "new effort to curb antibiotic use in agriculture." The first step to that effort, of course, is scrutiny and transparency. Margaret Hamburg's FDA deserves praise for finally delivering an accounting of how our animals factories are gulping antibiotics. 

An Organic Farmer Takes a Close Look at the Libertarian Politics of Ron Paul

Many of us organic farmers share an aversion to government interference in our affairs.  Although there has been some minor improvement lately, government ag programs and the Land Grants have not done much for organic agriculture.  Few politicians of either major party have ag programs that support local food systems in general and organic farming in particular. Tax laws on both the state and national levels favor corporations over the self-employed. What is even worse, department of agriculture regulations in many states function as discouraging obstacles to the production and sale of food produced by small-scale operations. The ignorance of the US public about microorganisms in particular and biological systems in general makes it easy for proponents of industrial agriculture to manipulate us into ever more regulations in the name of protecting public safety.   So it is not entirely surprising to find advocates of Ron Paul at organic farming conferences this winter.  Paul's rhetoric as a defender of the little guy and critic of big government speaks to our libertarian streak.  I was intrigued enough to check out his website.  I have to report that I am not happy with a lot of what I found there.

Paul is one of the very few politicians who criticizes the so-called "Free Trade" agreements. I congratulate him for publicly calling attention to the way the trade agreements and the WTO take power away from our elected officials and local governments and give them to trade bureaucrats.  But at the core of Paul's warnings lurks a paranoid isolationism that is unlikely to lead to peace and harmony in the world.  Paul denounces the trade agreements for endangering our borders, but offers no analysis of how free trade has allowed the big shippers of ag commodities to hold down prices to US farmers in order to flood markets in countries like Mexico. Paul borders on hysteria about the need to control immigration, but never makes the connection that it is those trade deals that are driving farmers from their own lands to risk their lives seeking work in the US.  Paul does not stop at attacking the WTO - he calls for US withdrawal from all international agreements, including dismantling the United Nations.  Whatever impatience we may feel about the maneuverings for power that go on at the UN, it is the only place where every country, large or small, gets to sit down and talk with all the others about our shared world.  The crisis of global warming and the danger of nuclear proliferation make this communication all the more urgent.  And let's not forget that it is the UN that provides for millions of refugees from every war zone.  Not many people in this country heard about the excellent conference the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN sponsored in May 2007 where the central topic was the contribution of organic farming to food security in developing countries.  

On the War in Iraq, Paul expresses a similar paranoia.  He supports bringing our troops home not to reduce the size of our military or to replace war with diplomacy.  He wants our troops in the US better to defend our borders.

Reduce taxes, Paul vociferates, always a welcome notion for us hard-pressed farmers.  Less government is better, Paul insists and attacks liberals and Democrats who inflate government spending and increase regulation. To his credit, he stands up to the Food and Drug Administration and demands unregulated freedom to use herbal supplements and natural medicines. But like his more orthodox Bushian Republican colleagues, Paul says nothing about reducing the largest sector of our government - the military with its huge and ever-swelling budget.  Paul directs his scathing words at spending for social programs, the tattered safety net that our rich society reluctantly hands out to the poor, sick and elderly.   Paul's stirring calls for freedom come down to unshackling corporations from government regulation while leaving ordinary citizens defenseless.  

Paul does stand up for the elderly and our right to the Social Security payments we were promised.  But in his very next sentence he endorses the freedom of younger taxpayers to stop paying into the social security system by choosing individual retirement investments.  Where does Paul think the money comes from to pay the seniors? As it stands, Social Security weighs heavily on the contributions of middle and lower income tax payers and the self-employed. By the most conservative estimates, the system is solvent for at least another 40 years, and the burden on lower income tax payers could be adjusted in a flash by taxing everyone's entire income.  

Paul is a big defender of our Constitution and especially the 2nd Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.  For obvious reasons, like many vegetable farmers, I appreciate the freedom to keep a rifle in my house.  But Paul outshines even the National Rifle Association (NRA) taking this freedom to the extreme of opposing the Brady Bill ban on hand weapons and crazier yet, the ban on assault weapons. At the same time, he would have us believe that he loves every single human life because he opposes women's right to choose abortion.

Like other farmers who have trouble affording health insurance, I enjoy hearing Paul declaim against the high cost of medical care.  His solution - Medical Savings Accounts - still leaves us out in the cold. The half-percent interest on what farmers can save in these accounts might pay for a broken finger, if we hold onto them for many years.  Paul would not like a single payer system like that in Canada or France that provides health coverage for everyone because it might cut into the freedom of insurance companies to scalp the public for every penny they can squeeze out of us.

Our uphill struggle to make a decent living as farmers makes most of us just a little paranoid.  Paul plays into this with his confident attacks on those who threaten to lower our standard of living.  But watch where he puts the blame - on illegal immigrants who raise our taxes by taking welfare and using other services that should be reserved for law-abiding taxpayers.  Deport them all, Paul exclaims.  No amnesty for the adults, no right to citizenship for their children born here.  Does this match the reality we see in the countryside?  The migrants I have seen work hard on our farms.  In Wayne County this past season, apples covered the ground on farms where the migrant workforce had been scared away by the Gestapo tactics of the INS.  A farmer friend rented a van to drive some unemployed people from Syracuse out to work on his farm - they lasted less than one day.  The crowds of US citizens demanding work on farms are some demagogue's fantasy.  Family-scale farmers in the US will not get our freedom by attacking the people driven to our fields by the same forces that make our lives difficult.

When it is hard to tell the difference between the major candidates on the issues that would make a difference for local organic agriculture, I am all for registering a protest by voting for a principled, outspoken candidate who stands no chance of winning. Paul's anti-corporate rhetoric may resonate with us.  When we look closely, however, it turns out to be just more political hot air because it isn't backed up by analysis that gets to the root of our problems.

We do need candidates who stand up for the freedom to opt out of the industrial food system.  Joel Salatin hits the nail on the head:

Our culture's current fear of bioterrorism shows the glaring weakness of a centralized, immunodeficient food system. This weakness leads to fear. Demanding from on high that we irradiate all food, register every cow with government agencies, and hire more inspectors does not show strength. It shows fear. Indeed, official policy views all these minority production and marketing systems that have been shown faithful over the centuries to be instead things that threaten everyone and everything. As a teepee dwelling, herb healing, home educating, people loving, compost building retail farmer, I represent the real answers, but real answers must be eradicated by those who seek to build their power and fortunes on a lie - the lie being that genetic integrity can be maintained when corporate scientists begin splicing DNA. The lie that, as Charles Walters says, toxic rescue chemistry is better than a balanced biological bath. The lie that farms are disease-prone, unfriendly, inhumane places and should be zoned away from people.
As Jim Hightower puts it, "There is no building so tall, even a small dog can't raise his leg against it."  Surely we can find a better little dog than Ron Paul.

Activists Submit 240,000 Petitions Demanding Action to Curb Food Monopolies

WASHINGTON - On the eve of the final Department of Justice/USDA public workshop examining the effects of corporate concentration in food and agriculture, a coalition of farm and food activists submitted almost a quarter of a million (nearly 240,000) petitions calling on both the Justice Department and USDA to take swift action to curb the abusive market power that a handful of corporations exert over farmers and consumers.

"While we're encouraged by the administration's year-long investigation, it's time to fulfill President Obama's 2008 election promise to end big food's antitrust abuses," said Dave Murphy of Food Democracy Now! "Hundreds of thousands of Americans from across the country stand behind this administration to reign in excessive concentration in agriculture and we expect real action to be taken to break up the biggest offenders."

"The way the current food system operates benefits big agricultural corporations, which are getting bigger all the time-at the expense of ordinary people and the environment," said Nikhil Aziz of Grassroots International. "Small farmers, farm workers and consumers alike are asserting their rights, which ultimately will ensure a more equitable food system and a cooler planet," he added. Over the past year, thousands of family farmers and consumers have packed the workshops on"Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues in Our 21st Century Economy," hosted jointly by the two Departments. From Ankeny, Iowa, and Normal, Alabama, to Madison, Wisconsin, and Fort Collins, Colorado, ordinary people have come forward to testify on panels and speak out about the handful of companies that control our food supply. The workshops have appropriately focused on farmers and livestock producers, but they are supported by thousands of consumers, food activists, antihunger advocates, and others who want a fair and equitable food system.

Seattle-Led Coalition Tells Gates Foundation to Change Approach

A coalition of groups led by Seattle-based activists has sent a letter and online petition to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, saying its current approach to agriculture in Africa is unlikely to solve problems of hunger, poverty and climate change, and may make them worse.

The letter, signed by 100 organizations and individuals from 30 countries, was released to coincide with protests at the UN climate talks in Cancun.

Led by the Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ), the coalition said the foundation and its private sector partners are pushing industrialized agriculture and genetically engineered crops at the expense of small farmers and the environment.

The Gates Foundation has made agricultural development one of its priorities in recent years, launching the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006.

The Gates Foundation spent about $316 million last year on agricultural development, which it says is part of a larger strategy to reduce hunger and poverty by giving small farmers tools and opportunities to boost their productivity and increase incomes.

The groups signing the letter, including environmentalists, academics and groups opposed to genetic engineering of food crops, said they're concerned the foundation's grants are "heavily distorted in favor of supporting inappropriate high-tech agricultural activities, ignoring scientific studies that confirm the value of small-scale agroecological approaches." 

Food Is Not a Partisan Issue

Several much-emailed articles recently have scrutinized how our food choices are deeply intertwined with class and culture. Writing in The New York Times Magazine, Judith Warner weighed the Obama administration's efforts to address obesity in the context of other government programs designed to change behavior, such as the World War II rationing program and the more recent anti-smoking efforts. Former Washington Post food reporter Jane Black and her journalist husband Brent Cunningham wrote a joint op-ed for the Post about moving to Huntington, W.Va. (site of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution show) and how surprisingly easy and affordable it is to eat healthily in "the nation's fattest city." And earlier this month, Christopher Anderson

Cancun Betrayal UNFCCC Unmasked as WTO of the Sky

Cancún, Mexico -- As representatives of Indigenous peoples and communities already suffering the immediate impacts of climate change, we express our outrage and disgust at the agreements that have emerged from the COP16 talks. As was exposed in the Wikileaks climate scandal, the Cancun Agreements are not the result of an informed and open consensus process, but the consequence of an ongoing US diplomatic offensive of backroom deals, arm-twisting and bribery that targeted nations in opposition to the Copenhagen Accord during the months leading up to the COP-16 talks.

We are not fooled by this diplomatic shell game. The Cancun Agreements have no substance. They are yet more hot air. Their only substance is to promote continued talks about climate mitigation strategies motivated by profit. Such strategies have already proved fruitless and have been shown to violate human and Indigenous rights. The agreements implicitly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies, and land grabs-anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions.

The Voices of the People Must be Respected Indigenous Peoples from North to South cannot afford these unjust and false 'solutions', because climate change is killing our peoples, cultures and ecosystems. We need real commitments to reduce emissions at the source and to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Because we are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change, we came to COP-16 with an urgent call to address the root causes of the climate crisis, to demand respect for the Rights of Mother Earth, and to fundamentally redefine industrial society's relationship with the planet. Instead, the Climate COP has shut the doors on our participation and that of other impacted communities, while welcoming business, industry, and speculators with open arms. The U.S., Industrialized nations, big business and unethical companies like Goldman Sachs will profit handsomely from these agreements while our people die.

Women and youth in our communities are disproportionately burdened by climate impacts and rights violations. Real solutions would strengthen our collective rights and land rights while ensuring the protection of women, youth and vulnerable communities. While the Cancun Agreements do contain some language "noting" rights, it is exclusively in the context of market mechanisms, while failing to guarantee safeguards for the rights of peoples and communities.

The failures of the UN talks in Copenhagen have been compounded in Cancun. From the opening day to the closing moments of the talks, our voices were censored, dissenting opinions silenced and dozens ejected from the conference grounds. The thousands who rallied outside to reject market mechanisms and demand recognition of human and Indigenous rights were ignored.

The Market Will Not Protect Our Rights Market-based approaches have failed to stop climate change. They are designed to commodify and profit from the last remaining elements of our Mother Earth and the air. Through its focus on market approaches like carbon trading, the UNFCCC has become the WTO of the Sky.

We are deeply concerned that the Cancun Agreements betray both our future and the rights of peoples, women, youth, and vulnerable populations. While the preamble to the Cancun Agreements note a call for "studies on human rights and climate change," this is in effect an empty reference, with no content and no standards, that will not protect the collective rights of peoples. The market mechanisms that implicitly dominate both the spirit and the letter of the Cancun Agreements will neither avert climate change nor guarantee human rights, much less the Rights of Mother Earth. Approaches based on carbon offsetting, like REDD, will permit polluters to continue poisoning land, water, air, and our bodies, while doing nothing to stop the climate crisis. Indeed, approaches based on the commodification of biodiversity, CO2, forests, water, and other sacred elements will only encourage the buying and selling of our human and environmental rights.

The Cochabamba People's Agreement Points the Way Forward There is another way forward: the Cochabamba People's Agreement represents the vision of everyday people from all corners of the globe who are creating the solutions to climate change from the ground up, and calling for a global framework that respects human rights and the Rights of Mother Earth.

If any hope emerges from Cancun, it comes from the dramatic demonstrations we saw in the streets and from the deep and powerful alliances that were built among indigenous and social movements. The Indigenous Environmental Network joined thousands of our brothers and sisters to demand real climate solutions based in the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the rights of Mother Earth, and a just transition away from fossil fuels. We will continue to stand with our allies to demand climate justice. The communities on the frontlines of the problem--those who face the daily impacts of the climate crisis--are also on the frontlines of the solutions. Community-based solutions can cool the planet!

The fight for climate justice continues. We are committed to deepening our alliances with indigenous and social movements around the world as we build in our communities and mobilize toward COP-17 in Durban, South Africa. Social movements in South Africa mobilized the world to overthrow Apartheid and create powerful, transformative change. The same mass-based movement building is our only hope to overturn the climate apartheid we now face. We look forward to working with our African brothers and sisters and tribal communities in Durban.

We only have one Mother Earth. As Indigenous Peoples, we will continue our struggle to defend all our Relations and future generations.

 Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a network of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions. IEN brought 17 indigenous leaders to Cancun as part of the Grassroots Solutions for Climate Justice -- North America Delegation uniting representatives from fossil fuel impacted communities who are on the frontlines of solving the climate crisis. A complete archive of the delegations statements and activities can be found at http://redroadcancun.com and http://grassrootsclimatesolutions.net

Top Organic Food and Farming Trends in 2011

The Economy: Wall Street may be recording record profits, but the job market is lagging. As such, hard-pressed consumers will continue to look for value. Core healthy lifestyles shoppers will be more discerning in their budgets for organic, and low-income families are particularly strained in finding healthful food alternatives. With people looking to save money, coupon redemption is up 25% this past year, and coupon use in the natural sector reflects a similar growth trend. Also, redemption rates for Internet coupons, while still small, account for the fastest growing segment in the business. Private label product sales also increased from 15% of total food sales before the recession to 18% this past year, according to research firm Booz & Company, which also reports that the new frugality may be here to stay, as consumers continue to feel they are on shaky ground. The natural and organic companies that can communicate value as well as benefits will continue to grow in a tough market.

Whole Foods and Trader Joe's Throwing Out Millions of Pounds of Edible Food

Wal Mart is the largest purchaser of organic food in the U.S. surpassing likelier suspects, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. And the retail giant has one-upped them again by enacting a company-wide donation policy on short-dated or mildly damaged foods while the top two natural food chains let perfectly edible products rot in dumpsters and landfills.

Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert directed the multi-award winning documentary, DIVE!, about the more than 95 billion pounds of edible food ending up in America's landfills each year.

After realizing his own local area grocery stores, mainly Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, were regularly pitching perfectly edible food in their dumpsters, he set out to see if he could feed his family with this reclaimed food and document it for a film project. What he found was not only could he feed his family, but there was enough food to feed the millions of hungry people in Los Angeles county, and millions more around the country.

In DIVE! Seifert makes repeated attempts to help Trader Joe's and Whole Foods adopt a policy that prevents food from ending up in their dumpsters and instead allocated to area food banks, homeless shelters and soup kitchens. To date, neither organization has made any commitment and both continue to throw away millions of pounds of food; a costly expense for taxpayers and the environment, all while homeless, veterans, children and millions of unemployed go hungry.

WebMD, Not the Independent Health Source You Expected

In a shocking report published earlier this year, BNET exposed how WebMD's online test for depression is rigged for profit:

"Feeling depressed? Cheer yourself up by taking WebMD's comical new depression test.

It's sponsored by Eli Lilly (LLY) - maker of the antidepressant Cymbalta - so they must know what they're talking about, right?

In fact, no matter which of the 10 answers you choose on the test, the result comes out the same:

You may be at risk for major depression."

But that's just the beginning. A number of questions about just how 'independent' a source WebMD is have since surfaced, and the answers are not what you'd expect. Sources: BNET February 22, 2010 BNET February 26, 2010 Policy and Medicine February 24, 2010 Boston.com March 2, 2010

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

This entire story reminds me of the old adage, "with friends like that, who needs enemies?"

If you didn't already know this, WebMD is the second most visited health web site on the entire web. The general belief is that it's a first-rate, trustworthy source of "independent and objective" information about health.

In fact, the only health site more popular than WebMD is the National Institutes of Health (NIH). You also might not realize that earlier this year Mercola.com, moved up to the third most visited health site on the internet. Mercola.com has been the most visited natural health site in the world for the last five years. 

Astroturf Libertarians are the Real Threat to Internet Democracy

They are the online equivalent of enclosure riots: the rick-burning, fence-toppling protests by English peasants losing their rights to the land. When MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Amazon tried to shut WikiLeaks out of the cyber-commons, an army of hackers responded by trying to smash their way into these great estates and pull down their fences. In the WikiLeaks punch-up the commoners appear to have the upper hand. But it's just one battle. There's a wider cyberwar being fought, of which you hear much less. And in most cases the landlords, with the help of a mercenary army, are winning.

I'm not talking here about threats to net neutrality and the danger of a two-tier internet developing, though these are real. I'm talking about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.

The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilisations but which has in reality been organised. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for instance, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country.

But many of them aren't upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays five mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write. Teams of these sock-puppets are hired by party leaders to drown out critical voices and derail intelligent debates.

I first came across online astroturfing in 2002, when the investigators Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews looked into a series of comments made by two people calling themselves Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek. They had launched ferocious attacks, across several internet forums, against a scientist whose research suggested that Mexican corn had been widely contaminated by GM pollen.

GE Mosquitoes Soon to be Released in Malaysia

Malaysia is on the brink of field testing GE mosquitoes in a small town in the state of Pahang, a short distance from Kuala Lumpur.

Preparations are said to be underway to release the GE mosquitoes, first, in an uninhabited area and subsequently, in an inhabited area. Another proposed site for the field experiment is in the state of Melaka.

This is despite an outpouring of concern by scientists, civil society organizations, local inhabitants and individuals who have expressed their reservations with regard to the health and environmental effects of this untested GE organism. Furthermore, the lack of transparency with regards the manner in which the process of field testing is conducted is also an issue of concern. As of date it is unclear if the inhabitants of the proposed site have given their consent, which is required under the terms and condition for the release.

Under the field trial, genetically engineered male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes (OX513A) will be released and studied and if the experiment is successful, the GE mosquitoes may later be used as part of a programme to curb dengue in Malaysia, a disease which is currently rampant in the country. The GE mosquitoes are genetically engineered to include two new traits: fluorescence and conditional lethality. The fluorescence trait acts as a marker for the GE mosquitoes. When the GE male mosquitoes mate with females in the wild, the conditional lethality trait will be passed on to the offspring and the resulting mosquito larvae will die, provided this happens in the absence of the antibiotic tetracycline.

Book Review of "Meat: A Benign Extravagance"

"This book is a masterpiece: original, challenging and brilliantly argued. Simon Fairlie is a great thinker and a great writer."

 -George Monbiot, Environmental and political activist, author and journalist

Meat is a groundbreaking exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical, and social issues surrounding the human consumption of animals, and the future of livestock in sustainable agriculture. Garnering huge praise in the UK, this book answers the question: should we be farming animals, or not? The answer is not simple; indeed, we must decrease the amount of meat we eat (both for the planet and for ourselves), and the industrial meat system is hugely problematic, but Simon Fairlie presents in-depth research in favor of small-scale, holistic, and integrated farming systems that include pastured, free-range livestock as the answer to the pro-meat or no-meat debate. George Monbiot, for example, a well-known environmental activist and supporter of veganism, has retracted his support for veganism after reading Meat. This is a life-changing book. 

 

Fat chance

Carrying extra weight has become the new "normal". Who are you calling fat?Some people 'too obese to help'Virus 'link' to childhood obesity When a woman asks: "Does my bum look big in this?" she has some insight that her derriere may appear larger than desirable.

But ask a woman if she thinks she is overweight and you may be surprised by the answer you get.

When US researchers asked 2,000 women this question, many were unable to give a correct answer.

A quarter of those who were overweight were unaware that they had a weight problem and perceived their size to be "average", even though they clearly were not.

In fact 1,000 of the women in the survey were found to be clinically obese or overweight.

Like this latest work in Obstetrics and Gynecology journal, UK researchers have also found many Brits have a skewed perception of what is fat.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteEverybody is getting heavier and, as a result, people think 'I'm not so heavy - look at her' and then fail to realise they themselves have a problem”

End QuoteTam FryNational Obesity ForumObese the new "norm" A YouGov poll of 2,000, carried out last year with Slimming World, found three in four obese people in the UK were unaware of their weight problem.

This survey found only 7% of people believed their weight was significant enough for them to be classified as obese, despite over a quarter of those interviewed fitting into this category.

Experts say part of the problem is that obesity is becoming normalised by society.

With two-thirds of UK adults now overweight or obese, the average size is no longer average.

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum says obesity is now so common-placed that we no longer see it.

"Everybody is getting heavier and, as a result, people think 'I'm not so heavy - look at her' and then fail to realise they themselves have a problem."

EU bans chemical in baby bottles

Baby bottle chemical is removed Baby bottle chemical concernHeart fears over common chemical The European Commission has announced a ban on the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic baby bottles from next year.

The commission cited fears that the compound could affect development and immune response in young children.

There has been concern over the use of BPA for some time, with six US manufacturers removing it in 2009 from bottles they sold in the US, although not other markets.

But a UK expert said he thought the move was "an over-reaction".

BPA is widely used in making hard, clear plastic and is commonly found in food and drink containers.

A European Commission spokesman said the proposal had been approved after being presented to a committee of national government experts on Thursday - months earlier than scheduled - and approved.

The European parliament had called for the ban in June.

Areas of uncertainty

John Dalli, Commissioner in charge of Health and Consumer Policy, said the ban was good news for European parents.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteI would be happy for a baby of mine to be fed from a polycarbonate bottle containing bisphenol A”

End QuoteProfessor Richard Sharpe,University of Edinburgh "There were areas of uncertainty, deriving from new studies, which showed that BPA might have an effect on development, immune response and tumour promotion," Mr Dalli said in a statement.

EU states will outlaw the manufacture of polycarbonate feeding bottles containing the compound from March 2011, and ban their import and sale from June 2011, the Commission said.

But Professor Richard Sharpe, of the Medical Research Council's Human Reproductive Sciences Unit at the University of Edinburgh, said the commission's decision must have been made on political, rather than scientific, grounds.

"I do not know of any convincing evidence that bisphenol A exposure, in the amounts used in polycarbonate bottles, can cause any harm to babies as not only are the amounts so minuscule but they are rapidly broken down in the gut and liver.

"Babies have the necessary enzymes and are able to metabolise bisphenol A just as effectively as adults."

He added: "Personally I think this is an overreaction, but if satisfactory replacements chemicals are available then this can be done to placate those calling for action, but scientifically it's a retrograde step.

"I would be happy for a baby of mine to be fed from a polycarbonate bottle containing bisphenol A."

And Professor Warren Foster of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Canada's McMaster University, said the EU had acted with "extreme caution".

Mimicking

The National Childbirth Trust is a British charity which has campaigned for the ban.

Its chief executive Belinda Phipps told the BBC: "When you put liquids into a bottle - particularly hot liquids or liquids containing fatty liquids - it leaches out of the plastic. And particularly as the bottle gets older and it gets more scratched, more and more leaches out and into the liquid."

Ms Phipps said that when a baby drinks from a bottle which contains BPA, the baby absorbs the leached chemical into its fat.

"It's a chemical that mimics oestrogens, but not in a good way," she said. "It interferes with oestrogens getting into the receptors, and it can have some very unpleasant effects - and animal studies have shown significant effects."

Canada was the first country to declare bisphenol A toxic in October, after it was concluded that the chemical might have harmful effects on humans, as well as the environment and "its biological diversity".

The Canadian decision was strongly opposed by the chemical industry.

Passive smoking 'kills 600,000'

The first global study into the effects of passive smoking has found it causes 600,000 deaths every year.

One-third of those killed are children, often exposed to smoke at home, the World Health Organization (WHO) found.

The study, in 192 countries, found that passive smoking is particularly dangerous for children, said to be at higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome, pneumonia and asthma.

Passive smoking causes heart disease, respiratory illness and lung cancer.

"This helps us understand the real toll of tobacco," said Armando Peruga, of the WHO's Tobacco-Free Initiative, who led the study.

'Deadly combination'

The study used estimates of the incidence of specific diseases and of the number of people exposed to second-hand smoke in particular areas.

The global health body said it was particularly concerned about the estimated 165,000 children who die of smoke-related respiratory infections, mostly in South East Asia and in Africa.

National List Not Spurring Innovation in Organic Ingredients

For related articles and more information please visit OCA's information page for All Things Organic and our Save Organic Standards campaign page.

The National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances details non-agricultural ingredients that are allowed to be used as ingredients in foods labeled organic or made with organic ingredients, and is reviewed every five years. It includes carrageenan and agar agar (both from seaweed), animal enzymes, mined calcium sulfate, and glucono delta lactone, among others.

The original thinking behind the establishment of a National List was that it would allow a wide range of USDA certified organic foods to come to market without being restricted by scarcity of minor ingredients.

"The NOSB (National Organic Standards Board) and NOP (National Organic Program) assumed that handlers would benefit from a "market incentive" and inclusion in this section would "drive innovation" of organic alternatives," the paper's authors wrote. " The hope was that as the organic food industry grew, demand for these minor ingredients would also grow and organic options would become available."

However, this has not been the case. Even though the organic industry has greatly expanded since the implementation of the National Organic Program, only one ingredient - rice starch - has been completely removed from the National List.

"Collectively, the evidence of this study suggests that the current review and petition process is at best not supporting the development of organic alternatives and at worst may actually be an impediment," the authors wrote.

Their study examines the extent to which non-organically produced agricultural ingredients are used in organic foods, questioning whether the National List works in the way it was initially intended. The authors tapped into Mintel's Global New Products Database for 2008 and found 1,017 food and beverage launches containing organic ingredients. Of those, the researchers examined a final sample of 629 products with full ingredient information. 

Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion

There is no hope left for achieving significant reform or restoring our democracy through established mechanisms of power. The electoral process has been hijacked by corporations. The judiciary has been corrupted and bought. The press shuts out the most important voices in the country and feeds us the banal and the absurd. Universities prostitute themselves for corporate dollars. Labor unions are marginal and ineffectual forces. The economy is in the hands of corporate swindlers and speculators. And the public, enchanted by electronic hallucinations, remains passive and supine. We have no tools left within the power structure in our fight to halt unchecked corporate pillage.

The liberal class, which Barack Obama represents, was never endowed with much vision or courage, but it did occasionally respond when pressured by popular democratic movements. This was how we got the New Deal, civil rights legislation and the array of consumer legislation pushed through by Ralph Nader and his allies in the Democratic Party. The complete surrendering of power, however, to corporate interests means that those of us who seek nonviolent yet profound change have no one within the power elite we can trust for support. The corporate coup has ossified the structures of power. It has obliterated all checks on corporate malfeasance. It has left us stripped of the tools of mass organization that once nudged the system forward toward justice.

Obama knows where power lies and serves these centers of power. The tragedy-if tragedy is the right word-is that Obama, after selling his soul to corporations, has been discarded. Corporate power doesn't need brand Obama anymore. They have found new brands in the tea party, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Obama has been abandoned by those who once bundled contributions for him by the millions of dollars. Obama and the Democratic Party will, I expect, spend the next two years being even more obsequious to corporate power. Obama clearly loves the pomp and privilege of statecraft that much. But I am not sure it will work. 

How Wal-Mart, Google and Other Corporate Giants Are Trying to Trick Progressive Consumers

The signature phrase of America's booming good food movement has been expanded from "organic" to "local and sustainable."

Good! The phrase suggests great quality, strong environmental stewardship and a commitment to keeping our food dollars in the local economy. If you support the local-economies movement, as I do, no doubt you'll be thrilled to hear that a new, local food store is coming soon to your neighborhood. In fact, it's even named Neighborhood Market.

Only, it's not. It's a Wal-Mart. Yes, the $400-billion-a-year retail behemoth, with 2 million employees laboring in 8,500 stores spread around the globe, now is putting on a "local" mask. The giant is promising to buy 9 percent of the produce it'll sell from local farmers. Big whoopie. This means that 91 percent of the foodstuffs offered in its "Neighborhood" chain will come from Wayawayland. Wal-Mart is to local what near beer is to beer. Near beer is not beer ... and Wal-Mart is not local.

But even the 9 percent number is a deceit, for Wal-Mart says that it defines "local" as grown in the same state. Excuse me, but in California, Florida, Texas and other such sizable states, that can be a mighty long truck-haul away.

Saying No to Monsanto in Manitoba

Monsanto has invited Manitoba Agricultural Minister Stan Struthers along with other government and industry representatives to a free lunch to celebrate the opening of the Monsanto Canada's new $12 million Canola Breeding Centre at One Research Road at the University of Manitoba. Not everyone was invited to the table. A group of citizens gathered outside the facility Tuesday morning to raise concerns about the risks of genetically engineered (GE) crops to farmers, human health, and the environment.

"The University of Manitoba has become home to one of the worst corporate citizens on the planet. Monsanto's operations poison the environment with chemicals, steal from farmers their age-old right to save seeds and threaten biodiversity by proliferating genetically engineered crops. There is nothing to celebrate with the opening of this new facility," said Alon Weinberg, a University of Manitoba graduate student.

Monsanto is the largest producer of GE crops worldwide. Canola is one of Canada's most valuable crops. GE canola has been grown in Manitoba since 1996. Almost all GE canola is herbicide resistant, allowing farmers to spray pesticides on the crops, killing weeds but not the plants. Since the 1990s, accidental crossbreeding between GE and non-GE varieties has become ubiquitous. Because contamination is so widespread, Manitoba farmers are unable to grow organic or conventional non-GE canola. Several markets including Japan, the European Union and much of the Middle East now have restrictions against Manitoba's canola exports.

In 2008, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, a United Nations sponsored multi-year expert study on the future of agriculture found that GE crops will not have a significant role in feeding the world, reducing poverty or protecting the environment. Investments in sustainable agriculture and organic farming will yield much greater rewards. 60 countries, representing two thirds of the world's population signed on to the report's conclusions.

"In light of what scientists and the international community have discovered, Monsanto's GE breeding facility in Manitoba will do nothing to advance the interests of farmers or increase food security. The province and the University should be putting investments into ecological agriculture and making food that Canadians and our export markets actually want to eat," said Weinberg.

GE labeling and tighter environmental and health assessments prevent Canada from exporting GE canola and other GE crops to many important markets around the world. On December 7th, MPs will vote on Bill C-474, a private member's bill to provide assessments of how new GE crops could affect export markets.  

Via Canadian Biotechnology Action Network

Fish Farms Begin Use of New Pesticide

New Brunswick salmon farmers have started the use of a restricted pesticide that fights sea lice on farmed Atlantic salmon.

The aquaculture industry faced questions in recent weeks when it was revealed that companies could use Alphamax to battle sea lice, which are parasites that attach themselves to salmon.

Alphamax, which has been approved for use between October and December of this year, contains a chemical called deltamethrin. Health Canada advises the chemical does not pose a risk to human health or the environment when it's used according to the label directions and under the federal agency's conditions.

Alphamax is restricted to cages that are covered by tarps or contained areas called well boats, where fish are given a bath in the deltamethrin treatment.

The Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association invited reporters out for a salmon farm tour in Passamaquoddy Bay on Wednesday.

At an aquaculture site at Hardwood Island, fish are pumped into a well, where a mixture of the pesticide and sea water is then flushed in.

Why We Shouldn't Cut Food Stamps to Pay for School Lunch

In the dying days of this Congress, food activists face an awful choice: Should we support the increased funding of children's school lunches, even if it means taking money from a family's food stamps? That is what's on the table in a version of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill passed by the Senate, in which an improved school meal program will be paid for by cutting back $2 billion in funding for food stamps in 2013.

No one disputes that poor children need to be better fed, but government food stamp entitlements are the last tatters of a safety net for many millions of people. Evidence? Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that 50.2 million Americans were food insecure in 2009, a mere 1 million more than the year before. Although that's still one in six people, the figure was a victory. Given the soaring rates of poverty and unemployment in 2009, there could have been considerably more food insecure people.

When the recession started, over 10 million more people were added to the ranks of the food insecure: The number jumped from 37 million in 2007 to 49 million in 2008. One of the reasons America didn't see another 10 million food insecure people in 2009 was that the stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, boosted the amount of money that poor households received in food stamps.

ACTION ALERT: Factory Farm Vegetable Lobbyists Go After Organic/Local Growers in Food Safety Debate

Agribusiness Shows Its True Colors!

Even though an agreement was reached on the Tester-Hagan amendment last week, by the leadership in the Senate, this issue in the food safety bill is still not over!

The Tester-Hagan amendment would exempt smaller, organic and local growers from expensive regulatory burdens.

For over a year, the big Agribusiness trade organizations have supported passage of S.510, the Food Safety Modernization Act. From agribusiness's perspective, the bill was a win-win: they could absorb the costs of the regulations because of their size; they'd gain good PR for supposedly improving food safety practices, gain some protection from legal liabilities-and hobble the competition-local food producers by crushing them with new regulatory burdens.

Their anti-competitive motivation was only speculation until now. But when the Senators agreed to include the Tester-Hagan amendment in the bill, to exempt small-scale direct-marketing producers from some of the most burdensome provisions, agribusiness revealed its true colors. Late last week, twenty agribusiness lobby groups fired off a letter stating that they would oppose the bill if it included the Tester-Hagan amendment.

If You Knew How Dangerous Cleaning Products Were, You'd Probably Go Back to Soap and Water

They're hiding under your sink, deep in the basement and out in your garage. They seem to be multiplying and most of them are green, for gosh sakes!

They are cleaning products. We have one for every conceivable job: floors, walls, dishes, laundry, windows, bathroom porcelain and ceramic tiles, wooden decks, cement surfaces, silverware, one for car paint and another for the chrome, and on and on.

Whatever happened to just plain soap? Well, it seems it wasn't fast enough for our busy lives. And these new cleaners certainly are fast. Just spray and wipe or swish with a mop and the job is done.

If you want really fast general cleaning products, commercial ones like Formula 409, Simple Green and Windex clean faster than any soap and water could. This is because they contain small amounts, usually in the range of 2-6 percent, of some members of the most powerful grease-cutting class of chemicals known: the "glycol ethers."

How to Stop the Killing: Livestock and Predators

One of the unquestioned and unspoken assumptions heard across the West is that ranchers have a right to a predator free environment. Even environmental groups like Defenders of Wildlife more or less legitimize this perspective by supporting unqualified compensation for livestock losses to bears and wolves. And many state agency wolf management plans specifically call for compensation to livestock producers-but without any requirements that livestock husbandry practices be in place to reduce or eliminate predation opportunity.

In a sense, ranchers have externalized one of their costs of business, namely practicing animal husbandry that eliminates or significantly reduces predator losses. Most of these proven techniques involve more time and expense than ranchers have traditionally had to pay, in part, because they have been successful in making the rest of us believe it was a public responsibility to eliminate predators and not a private business cost.

This is not unlike how power companies have successfully transferred one of their costs of doing business-namely reducing air pollution from burning coal-on to the public at large and the environment. Ranchers have been doing the same transfer of costs in the West for decades. And it is not limited just to predator control. When livestock trample riparian areas, destroy soil crusts, pollute waters, eat forage that would otherwise support native herbivores, spread disease that harms wildlife (as with bighorn sheep), and spread weeds, the environment, and ultimately the taxpayers and citizens of this country are absorbing the costs, while the ranchers gets the profits.

And so it is with predators. Killing predators to appease the livestock industry is nothing more than another subsidy to an industry that is already living off the public largess, in part, because most predator losses are completely avoidable with proper animal husbandry techniques. 

Trailer: Farmageddon, the Movie

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Raw Milk Action Center, our Breaking the Chains Campaign page, or our Food Safety Resource Center.

Farmageddon is a documentary about the escalating fight for food rights in America.

Farmageddon is truly the documentary movie that we've all been waiting for. It's about raw milk, farm families harmed by the overreach of government, food safety legislation, and consumer food rights. 

Farmageddon Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Farmageddon is anticipated to awaken consumers much as did "Food Inc", which was released in 2009. The 90 minute documentary includes Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund Board Members - Sally Fallon Morell, Gary Cox. Esq, Pete Kennedy, Esq., Judith McGeary, Esq., Tim Wightman, members Joel Salatin, Mark McAfee and raided farm families including the Stowers of Manna Storehouse, Mark and Maryanne Nolt of Nature's Sunlight Farm,  the Smiths of Meadowsweet, the Faillaces of Vermont and many others.

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund attorneys staffing the emergency hot line often receive calls from farmers during raids, and advise them of their rights during the raids.

Read more about farm raids.

Visit Farmageddon Website,  Facebook and Twitter pages.

Read more about Farmageddon.

UN Scientists Say Emission Pledges Fall Well Short of Halting Climate Change

UN research shows that the pledges and promises made last year by 80 countries to reduce climate change emissions fall well short of what is needed to hold the global temperature rise to 2C and avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

The findings by 30 leading scientists suggest that if countries do everything they have promised, there will still be a 5bn tonne gap per year between their ambition and what the science says is needed. This gap, said the UN, is the equivalent of the emissions released by all the world's vehicles in a year. Many countries have committed themselves to holding temperature rises to no more than 2C (3.6F) by 2080 but to achieve this global emissions must be reduced from 56bn tonnes annually today to 44bn tonnes by 2020.

If only the weakest pledges made last year in the Copenhagen accord are implemented, emissions could be lowered to 53bn tonnes a year by 2020, leaving a gap of 9bn tonnes.

In the best case, says the report, emissions could drop to 49bn tonnes, reducing the gap to 5bn. But if nothing is done, then the emissions gap would rise to 12bn tonnes by 2020 - roughly what all the world's power stations emit.

The Carbon Ranch: Fighting Climate Change One Acre at a Time

If you are concerned about climate change - and you should be - then these are not the best of times. The decision by the U.S. Senate to postpone climate legislation, perhaps indefinitely, coupled with the failure of the United Nations summit in Copenhagen last winter to produce an international treaty limiting greenhouse gases means Business-as-Usual continues to rule.

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen to 391 parts-per-million (ppm) - 40 ppm above what many scientists consider a level necessary to keep the planet from becoming ice-free. And it's rising at a rate of 2 ppm per year, far faster than at any time in the Earth's paleoclimate record.

What to do? Some see salvation in high technology, including the 'capture' of CO2 at its source, to be stored underground, or the 'scrubbing' of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by hundred of thousands of boxcar-sized filtering machines. The trouble is, these technologies, even if practical, are years away from deployment. And the climate crisis, as evidenced by recent headlines, is happening now.

Which leads to an idea: what about low technology? As I see it, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities.

There are only four natural sinks for CO2: the atmosphere, the oceans, forests and other perennial vegetation, and the soil. The atmospheric sink is overflowing with CO2, as we well know, and the oceans are fast filling up (and becoming alarmingly acidic as a result). Forests have a habit of being cut down, burned up, or die and decompose over time, all of which release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. That leaves soils.

The potential for CO2 storage in soils is three times greater than the atmosphere. And since two-thirds of the Earth's landmass is covered with grass, the potential impact on the climate could be gigantic. In fact, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, the nation's leading climatologist, postulates that 50 ppm of CO2 could be sequestered in soils over the next fifty years.

How? By employing the low technology of green plants, which pull CO2 out of the air and fix it into carbon compounds that are stored in the soil.

In my experience in the arid Southwest, there are six strategies that can increase or maintain the carbon content of grass-dominated ecosystems. They include: (1) planned grazing systems using livestock, especially on degraded soils; (2) active restoration of degraded riparian and wetland zones; and (3) removal of woody vegetation, where appropriate, so grass may grow in its stead. Maintenance strategies include: (4) the conservation of open space, so there is no further loss of carbon-storing soils; (5) the implementation of organic no-till farming practices; and (6) management of land for long-term ecological and economic resilience.

Fortunately, a great deal of the land management 'toolbox' required to implement these strategies has largely been tried-and-tested by practitioners and landowners. Over the past decade, these strategies have been demonstrated individually to be both practical and profitable.

Top 10 Food Additives to Avoid

Food additives find their way into our foods to help ease processing, packaging and storage. But how do we know what food additives is in that box of macaroni and cheese and why does it have such a long shelf life?

A typical American household spends about 90 percent of their food budget on processed foods, and are in doing so exposed to a plethora of artificial food additives, many of which can cause dire consequences to your health.

Some food additives are worse than others. Here's a list of the top food additives to avoid:

1. Artificial Sweeteners
Aspartame, (E951) more popularly known as Nutrasweet and Equal, is found in foods labeled "diet" or "sugar free". Aspartame is believed to be carcinogenic and accounts for more reports of adverse reactions than all other foods and food additives combined. It produces neurotoxic effects such as dizziness, headaches, mental confusion, migraines, and seizures. Avoid if you suffer from asthma, rhinitis (including hayfever), or urticaria (hives).Acesulfame-K, a relatively new artificial sweetener found in baking goods, gum and gelatin, has not been thoroughly tested and has been linked to kidney tumors.

Found in: diet or sugar free sodas, diet coke, coke zero, jello (and over gelatins), desserts, sugar free gum, drink mixes, baking goods, table top sweeteners, cereal, breathmints, pudding, kool-aid, ice tea, chewable vitamins, toothpaste

2. High Fructose Corn Syrup
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a highly-refined artificial sweetener which has become the number one source of calories in America. It is found in almost all processed foods. HFCS packs on the pounds faster than any other ingredient, increases your LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels, and contributes to the development of diabetes and tissue damage, among other harmful effects.

Found in: most processed foods, breads, candy, flavoured yogurts, salad dressings, canned vegetables, cereals

3. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG / E621)
MSG is an amino acid used as a flavor enhancer in soups, salad dressings, chips, frozen entrees, and many restaurant foods. MSG is known as an excitotoxin, a substance which overexcites cells to the point of damage or death. Studies show that regular consumption of MSG may result in adverse side effects which include depression, disorientation, eye damage, fatigue, headaches, and obesity. MSG effects the neurological pathways of the brain and disengaged the "I'm full" function which explains the effects of weightgain

Found in: chinese food ( Chinese Restaurant Syndrome ) many snacks, chips, cookies, seasonings, most Campbell Soup products, frozen dinners , lunch meats

4. Trans fat
Trans fat is used to enhance and extend the shelf life of food products and is among the most dangerous substances that you can consume. Numerous studies show that trans fat increases LDL cholesterol levels while decreasing HDL ("good") cholesterol, increases the risk of heart attacks, heart disease and strokes, and contributes to increased inflammation, diabetes and other health problems.

Found in: margarine, chips and crackers, baked goods, fast foods

How Do You Eat Well? Share Your 'Food Rules' With Michael Pollan

By Michael Pollan
Grist Magazine,

Last year I published Food Rules, a short book offering 64 rules for eating well. Food Rules struck a chord with many people, who found that it helped them navigate what has become a treacherous food environment, whether in the supermarket or restaurant. Many of the rules were submitted by readers, and since publication I have received a number of excellent new ones. So I've decided to publish an expanded edition, with additional rules and also illustrations, which the painter Maira Kalman has agreed to create.

The premise of Food Rules is that culture has much to teach us about how to choose, prepare, and eat food and that this wisdom is worth collecting and preserving before it disappears. In recent years, we've deferred to the voices of science and industry when it comes to eating, yet often their advice has served us poorly, or has merely confirmed the wisdom of our grandmothers after the fact. "Eat your colors," an Australian reader's grandmother used to tell her; now we hear the same advice from nutritionists, citing the value of including in the diet as many different phytochemicals as possible.

I've also found that many ethnic traditions have their own memorable expressions for what amounts to the same recommendation. Many cultures, for examples, have grappled with the problem of food abundance and come up with different ways of proposing we stop eating before we're completely full: the Japanese say "hara hachi bu" ("Eat until you are 4/5 full"); Germans advise eaters to "tie off the sack before it's full." And the prophet Mohammed recommended that a full belly should contain one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air. My own Russian-Jewish grandfather used to say at the end of every meal, "I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry."