“GMO” foods? What's the big deal, anyway?

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RePosted courtesy of the Sentinel Source, Keene, NH
by Rebecca Montrone SentinelSource.com  Submitted by Rebecca Montrone, www.wondrousroots.com

I am as sick as you are of all of the “health scares” out there!  I wish I could just ignore it all and go on my merry way, don’t you?  It seems everyday, however, our environment closes in a bit more, leaving even those of us among the most vigilant with fewer choices for promoting truly optimal health.  As a health practitioner, I am confronted too often with the sobering reality that we simply can’t just ignore it all.
The most recent big scare has been nuclear radiation fallout in Japan and its potential threat to health due to radiotoxicity and around the globe to the safety of the food supply.  I’m actually having difficulty locating sources for one of the supplements I have regularly recommended to my clients for years, a combination of iodine and potassium iodide!  I’ll be talking about all of this soon, but first…
An unsettling concern that has been in the nutritional headlines for a longer period of time is that of “genetically modified organisms,” commonly referred to GMOs or GM foods.  Vaguely, we all get the idea that they aren’t good for us for one reason or another, but when it comes time to buy groceries, we tend to simply rely on our usual purchasing habits and hope for the best.
Genetically modified foods are foods that have been changed in their genetic structure for the sole purpose of making them more capable of tolerating higher doses of pesticides.  The big name in all of this is Monsanto, the company that makes the pesticide RoundUp.  With crops able to live and thrive in spite of gross contamination with pesticide application, Monsanto is able to enjoy financial gain not only through the sale of RoundUp but through the sale of its genetically modified seed.
Unfortunately, Monsanto hasn’t figured out a way to make genetically modified people yet!  We – who consume their GM foods – have not been altered in our genetic structure to be able to withstand the heavy pesticide contamination of RoundUp!
THE “ROOT” OF THE PROBLEMThe active ingredient in RoundUp is isopropylamine salt of glyphosate.  This ingredient contains dioxane, which is carcinogenic and known to damage the liver, kidneys, brain, and lungs.  Dioxane is an estrogen “mimic” known as a xenobiotic.  It is the agent all the fuss is about when we talk about shampoo and sodium laurel sulfate and cancer, etc.  Herbicides and pesticides are a significant source of hormonal disruption, with all of the health issues that come with it, including the increase of hormonally-driven cancers.
Eating foods that are xenobiotic rich contributes to the growing problem of widespread obesity we observe in our country, affecting insulin resistance and blood sugar regulation.  Synthetic estrogens abundant in our entire food supply are being attributed to many health problems, from precocious puberty, to polycystic ovarian disease, fibroids and fibrocystic breasts, infertility in both men and women, and cancers of many kinds, including colon cancer and the more predictable hormonal cancers of the prostate, ovaries, and breasts.
Compounding the problem and multiplying our consumption of GMO foods is the fact that most of the nations poultry, meat, and dairy supply is from animals raised on GMO foods.
HOW CAN I PROTECT MYSELF AND FAMILY?• Purchase as “clean” as you can, choosing organic produce and “clean” meat, dairy, fish, and poultry products.  Of course, by now the ground water of our agricultural regions are polluted from years and years of toxic pesticides, it isn’t a perfect world.  But, we can at least try for as pure a food supply as possible.
• Avoid the most heavily GMO-influenced crops:  corn, soy, and sugar beets (unless organic, of course).
• Wash produce well.  There are a number of suggestions for helping better get rid of the toxins; one is to soak in a 50/50 percent vinegar/water solution for ten minutes then rinse.
• Avoid packaged, processed foods entirely.  This will be a boon to your health for many more reasons than simply avoiding GMOs; you will also be avoiding hidden sweeteners, modern soy additives that impede thyroid function, inflammatory polyunsaturated oils, “excitotoxic” food additives (hidden sources of MSG), and more.
• Boost your glutathione levels.  Glutathione is a peptide made by all of our cells and found to be low in virtually every disease process.  Glutathione detoxifies the body of mercury and other heavy metals, but it also detoxifies PCBs and other hormonally-based contaminants such as dioxane.  Further, once our cells are glutathione rich, they resist further intoxication.
Until quite recently our only significant resources for raising glutathione levels were N-acetyl-cysteine as a precursor to glutathione, or IV or nebulized glutathione.  N-acetyl-cysteine as a precursor has problems of its own and doesn’t sustain higher glutathione levels for long.
Simply taking a glutathione capsule is worthless as it is destroyed by the acid in the stomach and never makes it into the cells.  Milk thistle contains Silymarin and is known for its liver-health promoting properties.  It works by modestly raising glutathione levels.  One of the primary functions of lipoic acid is to boost glutathione.  Methylating nutrients, such as vitamins B6, B12, folic acid; MSM (methylsulfonylmethane); trimethylglycine (betaine), and SaME also help boost glutathione levels.  Whey protein also helps with this.
I know of nothing more powerful, however, than the recently “invented” acetyl form of glutathione known as acetyl-glutathione.  This is taken in capsule form and passes through the stomach acid just fine, is easily taken up by the cells throughout the body, and has a very long half-life of action.  I have used high-dose acetyl-glutathione in serious disease and witnessed a sharp reduction in inflammatory markers and improved health.  Glutathione is the master anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detoxifier.  I take 200 mg daily myself as part of my own wellness program.
HOW CAN I MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE “BIG PICTURE?”Sign up for the Organic Consumers Association newsletter (www.organicconsumers.org).  Get involved with their grassroots effort to oppose Monsanto and others of their ilk; a very powerful force.  The big push from Monsanto right now is to protect food suppliers from having to indicate that their foods are genetically modified and/or that their foods were fed genetically modified foods on their labels.

Carts one of dirtiest places in grocery store

Professor Charles Gerba, the lead researcher, swabbed the handles of 85 carts in four states for bacterial contamination.

Gerba says 72% of the carts had a positive marker for fecal bacteria. When they examined some of the samples, they found Escherichia coli, also known as E. coli, on half of them.

Researchers say they actually found more fecal bacteria on grocery cart handles than you would typically find in a bathroom, mainly because bathrooms are disinfected more often than shopping carts.

Since most stores do not routinely wash and disinfect their carts, it's up to you to do it.

Scientists say this study helps explain why earlier investigations found kids who touch the handles, are more likely than others, to get infected with bacteria like salmonella.

Gerba also says you should pay attention to what you put in reusable shopping bags. Make sure your meats and veggies are wrapped because bags that are not washed on a regular basis can become a what he called a "bacterial swamp."

Yuck!

Dastardly Dandelion Facts

Demonizing dandelions gets our attention 
How about that dandelion-slashing graphic! And the "gulp!" at the very thought of doing anything to encourage such a dasdardly plant!  And here's another good one:  "We’re sick of dandelions and their weed masquerading as a flower."  Yeah, those treacherous plants are producing flowers just to trick us into - what, liking them?

Well indeed lots of people do, increasingly, as any gardenblogger who follows the subject of eco-gardening knows.  Cooks are concocting recipes for them, Paul Tukey at SafeLawns is one of their  biggest fans, and there's even a Facebook group Stop Killing the Dandelions. They're Pretty, which I just Liked for the hell of it.

What the campaign is selling
But this just gets weirder because the campaign isn't aimed at selling herbicides at all; its goal is to sell soil tests. And the connection (supposedly) is that only with a soil test will we choose fertilizers that feed our lawn but not the dandelions.  But how they do that I still haven't figured out.

However, the most popular fertilizers are super high in nitrogen, and while they’re formulated to green-up your lawn right away when the soil is still cool, they also yellow up lawns weeks later when the soil warms up. And they fertilize EVERYTHING, which includes weed seeds that exist in every yard.

If this doesn't make sense yet, here's more from their fertilizer facts page:

Dandelions thrive off of soils high in, you guessed it, Nitrogen, and have the ability to attack areas of your lawn that are weak or bare (e.g. insufficient root systems).

If proper nutrients are applied every six to eight weeks (which can only be understood properly through a thorough soil test analysis) then turf grass will become very healthy.

About that soil test
So, what does their $20 soil test test for?  Again the answer isn't easy to find but their "sample results" show amounts for organic matter, phosphate, potassium, % K: % Mg (whatever), calcium, pH, and sodium.
Which raises a couple of big questions.  First, the result shows a phosphate reading of 62, with the "acceptable level" shown as 16-35, which you'd think would alert the customer to stop adding phosphates, that dasdardly nutrient that's ruining our waterways.  But instead, here's what the results advise: "Phosphate level is High: Phosphate levels indicated will not hamper the effects of good turf growth."  No problem!
And the recommended product (which is the whole point of the soil test, right, that it directs users to the right fertilizers?) is "CIL Golfgreen Fall", either synthetic or organic (take your pick; they sure don't care) and after some searching I finally found out that its nutrient content is 28-3-6!
So here's my suggestion about soil tests:  use a university lab, like the one at U.Mass. that I used.  It costs $15 and gives far more information than the Stop Dandelions test.

A coalition of the selling
As a fan of coalitions, I was curious about this new one and here's what the website tells us about it:  "The Coalition to Stop Dandelions is dedicated to educating people caring for lawns and gardens about how to make a healthy lawn grow, and how to get the right soil test information that golf courses and farms have counted on for decades." And about WHO they might be we're told: "The Coalition to Stop Dandelions is a project of A Growing Necessity," whose About Us page doesn't actually tell us.

Too bad, coz it looks like an improvement
I finally got tired of following links that don't work or when they do, don't answer the questions they're supposed to answer, but my tentative conclusion is that this product MAY lead to an improvement over what some golf courses use - fertilizers that encourage top growth and weeds, plus lots of pesticides.  "This personalized nutritional management process reduced the need for reactive based products (such as pesticides) to less than 6%....amazing reduction!"  See, that much sounds good.

More bad marketing to gardenbloggers
The Stop Dandelions campaign is a nonsensical mess that's off-putting to the very people it's targeting, but it didn't need to be.  I'll bet that a random GardenRant reader could come up with a better approach than this one, created by - no surprise here - a marketing firm with no particular expertise in this area.

Rebloged from:  http://www.gardenrant.com

The Only Way to Feed 9 Billion Poeple

I've written about it once already, but I want to return to The Economist's recent special series about how industrial agriculture is the true and only way to feed the 9 billion people who will inhabit the world by 2050. The framing, I think, is extremely interesting.

 The widely revered magazine identifies two strains of thought on the food system's future: one serious and one frivolous.

The serious one -- made up of "food companies, plant breeders, and international development agencies" -- is "concerned mainly with feeding the world's growing population," which it plans to do "through the spread of modern farming, plant research and food processing in poor countries."

The frivolous one -- "influential among non-governmental organizations and some consumers" -- "concentrates more on the food problems of richer countries, such as concerns about animal welfare and obesity," The Economist writes. This group fixates on the question of "what should we have for dinner," but has little to say about feeding the globe's growing population.

And since The Economist's special report "concentrates on the problems of feeding the 9 billion," not the trivial omnivorous dilemmas of wealthy Berkeleyites, the magazine throws its lot in with the companies, plant breeders, and international development agencies -- the Serious People Looking for Real Solutions for Feeding the World.

Given these conflicting aims, it is not surprising that the food crisis has produced contradictory accounts of the main problem and radically different proposals for solving it. One group is concerned mainly about feeding the world’s growing population. It argues that high and volatile prices will make the job harder and that more needs to be done to boost supplies through the spread of modern farming, plant research and food processing in poor countries. For those in this group—food companies, plant breeders and international development agencies—the Green Revolution was a stunning success and needs to be followed by a second one now.

The alternative view is skeptical of, or even downright hostile to, the modern food business. This group, influential among non-governmental organizations and some consumers, concentrates more on the food problems of richer countries, such as concerns about animal welfare and obesity. It argues that modern agriculture produces food that is tasteless, nutritionally inadequate and environmentally disastrous.

It thinks the Green Revolution has been a failure, or at least that it has done more environmental damage and brought fewer benefits than anyone expected.  My son-in-law let me borrow a book espousing this view, Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma" which opened my mind  It starts by asking: “What should we have for dinner?” By contrast, those worried about food supplies wonder: “Will there be anything for dinner?”

Comments?

My Blog Is Coming Out Of The Closet!

Why is it that the best ideas come to some of us in the night? It is almost always relative to my Etsy shop or this blog.  I will wake up and jot down my latest epiphany and go back to sleep.  You know what happens...in the morning there is a lengthy scribble with little resemblance words. 

When opened my shop I knew I had to market it online, there are a ton of ways to go. I had to learn FaceBook, Twitter, SEO, keeping up with the Etsy interface, following threads and basically cramming my head more tech stuff than I could handle.  So, I did a little of all of them.  Not good.  Shotgunning your marketplace is ineffective. 

So, I started a blog to promote my shop.  After a while it evolved away from a marketing tool to a place where I wanted to say stuff. Eco-oriented topics, for the most part. That feels good........I like it.  As a result of all this indecision about what to blog about has resulted in an indecisive blog.  People don’t like that.  Makes us feel uneasy.

But every day I felt that I must put up a tutorial or some-such when I didn’t want to!  You have no idea how validated I felt when I read this  post on the Handmadeology blog written by John W. Golden “The Breakdown - 8,000 Etsy Sales  & Answering Your Questions” 2/2311.  One of the tips John gives us is that the better marketing tools are probably Facebook and Twitter.  Blogs, he says, maybe not so dependable. You really do have to have great content on a consistent basis to generate any kind of following. 

Then I read something about blogging without guilt.  That does it!  From now on, I am going to keep a weblog about what I am passionate about.  The blog roll and links will begin to change too. There will be an evolution here. Come along for the ride, if you like.

Note: Since I published this post, I have closed my Etsy Shop indefinitely.  This will be a green, food and whatever blog. 

An Eco Link For Just About Anyone....

• Food

  • Animal Welfare Approved
  • Brooklyn Grange Farm
  • Center for a Livable Future
  • Center for Animal Law Studies
  • Citizens Campaign for the Environment
  • Civil Eats
  • Community Food Security Coalition
  • Eating Liberally
  • Factory Farm Map
  • Farmers Legal Action Group
  • Food & Water Watch
  • Food Corps
  • Friends of Family Farmers
  • Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
  • Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food
  • La Vida Locavore
  • League of Conservation Voters
  • Local Food Hub
  • Meatless Monday
  • Permaculture Institute
  • Rodale Institute
  • Rooftop Farms
  • Slow Food USA
  • The Ethicurean
  • The Greenhorns
  • The Livable Future Blog
  • Union of Concerned Scientists

• Water

  • Alliance for Water Efficiency
  • Center for a Livable Future
  • Citizens Campaign for the Environment
  • Community Water Center
  • Eastern Environmental Law Center
  • Factory Farm Map
  • Food & Water Watch
  • League of Conservation Voters
  • Pacific Institute
  • Permaculture Institute
  • River Network
  • Riverkeeper
  • Union of Concerned Scientists
  • Water Footprint Calculator
  • Water Footprint Network
  • Waterkeeper Alliance
  • Webber Energy Group

• Energy

  • Alliance for Water Efficiency
  • Alliance to Save Energy
  • American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
  • Apollo Alliance
  • Citizens Campaign for the Environment
  • Eastern Environmental Law Center
  • Factory Farm Map
  • Greentech Media
  • League of Conservation Voters
  • Pace Energy and Climate Center
  • Renewable Energy Long Island
  • River Network
  • Solar One
  • Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
  • Sustainability Institute at Molloy College
  • Union of Concerned Scientists
  • Vote Solar
  • Webber Energy Group

51 Fantastic Uses for Baking Soda

51 Fantastic Uses for Baking Soda

I don’t mean to sound seditious here, but I have a rebellious plan to combat the ills that many corporations are perpetrating in the name of fighting grime and germs. My main gripe is about the environmental pollutants from cleaning and personal care products that we wash down our drains and into our water systems, resulting in situations like the chemical triclosan (a pesticide added to many products as an antibacterial agent) being found in dolphins.
So the simple plan is to encourage everyone to use baking soda in any of these 51 applications. Besides showing kindness to aquatic life, we can also protect ourselves from the array of toxins in household cleaning products. Conventional cleansers can expose us to multiple chemicals linked to asthma, cancer, and other documented health problems.
Baking soda also makes a perfect stand-in for many personal care products, which are adding their own twist to the toxic tangle of pollutants and personal health (mainly in the form of synthetic fragrance (and it’s almost all synthetic), sodium laurel sulfate, and parabens).
So exactly how does baking soda fit into my scheme to make the world a better place? Baking soda, aka sodium bicarbonate,  helps regulate pH—keeping a substance neither too acidic nor too alkaline. When baking soda comes in contact with either an acidic or an alkaline substance, it’s natural effect is to neutralize that pH. Beyond that, baking soda has the ability to retard further changes in the pH balance, known as buffering. This dual capability of neutralizing and buffering allows baking soda to do things such as neutralize acidic odors (like in the refrigerator) as well as maintain neutral pH (like in your laundry water, which helps boost your detergent’s power). It’s a simple reaction, but one that has far-reaching effects for a number of cleaning and deodorizing tasks. And so without further ado, I’ll remove my scientist cap, put on my rebellious housekeeper’s cap, and get this folk-wisdom revolution rolling…

posted by Melissa Breyer  Care2.com
Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/51-fantastic-uses-for-baking-soda.html#ixzz1J2ekqZFI