Science & The Institute of Manufactured Consensus

It seems like one of the core tenets of the common skeptics of unconventional, non-mainstream lifestyle advice such as the kind blogged about here, is that one must have the weight of SCIENCE to back up one's assertions or you're just a bloviating blowhard, advocating lunacy to the detriment of those foolish enough to follow such advice.

Advice like avoiding GMO-grain based foods; getting regular sun exposure without sunscreen at mid-day; refraining from ingesting fluoride in toothpaste and fluoridated public water supplies; or eating saturated fats, whole-fat dairy, salt, red meat and mercury-laden ocean fish etc., will all usually be met with at least a few folks saying "Wheres your links to peer reviewed science?"

Here's the problem with these SCIENCE based attacks on such advice...if one spends enough time doing relevant key word searches on PubMed, one can almost find seemingly corroborative evidence from research articles, abstracts, journal entries and other peer-reviewed documents on any topic they like. 

I received the following comment on my old Fluoride post back in 2010 :

"Just some evidence fluride works. I could spam research all day at you HL. Typing 'water fluridation' into PubMed (with filters for systemic reviews and clinical trials) produces over 5000 results."

All one needs to do, is to begin actually reading the contents of a few of those results to discover that in fact all 5000 results do not prove that "fluoride works." What you do in fact find, is a wide variety of results indicating all sorts of recommendations and conclusions. What one really needs to consider when reading PubMed articles are the following variables: 1) Who is financing and conducting the study; 2) what was the methodology used in carrying out the study (statistical chicanery or the actual use of the scientific method?); 3) what was the conclusions drawn from the study; 4) do the conclusions actually match the results of the experiment or study?

Read enough PubMed abstracts and peer-reviewed articles, and you'll begin to see a pattern. You can find articles that will state a hypothesis to justify the research, read the methodology involved in conducting the research, and in fact see that the research either corroborates or disqualifies a particular hypothesis...and the conclusion will be vague or inconclusive, often concluding that further research is required. This is very common when the topic you are researching is already widely considered to be "settled science." But not always. Sometimes, you can find PubMed articles that clearly support a politically incorrect hypothesis and it draws conclusions that go against the prevailing wisdom of conventional, consensus-derived wisdom.

Other means of corrupted and compromised PubMed studies involve studies with blatantly corrupted variables - such as conflating margarine and butter in a single categorical designation as "fats" or studying  red meat consumption by surveying respondents on how much pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers they've eaten in the last year.  Using experiments with such categorical errors is common, but usually does not inhibit "science journalists" and "professional nutritionists" in making recommendations based on conclusions from such inherently flawed studies.

Beginning with the topic first referenced by Anonymous comment five years ago, let us take a closer look at how PubMed does in fact contain corroboration for a few of the more common "conspiracy theory" topics regarding health and nutrition.

Fluoride
 

Developmental Fluoride Neurotoxicity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

"A recent report from the National Research Council (NRC 2006) concluded that adverse effects of high fluoride concentrations in drinking water may be of concern and that additional research is warranted. Fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in laboratory animals, including effects on learning and memory (Chioca et al. 2008; Mullenix et al. 1995)."

Exposure to fluoridated water and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder prevalence among children and adolescents in the United States: an ecological association

"Parents reported higher rates of medically-diagnosed ADHD in their children in states in which a greater proportion of people receive fluoridated water from public water supplies. The relationship between fluoride exposure and ADHD warrants future study."

Additional research is warranted! In the meantime, I'll take a pass and continue to avoid fluoridated toothpaste.

Genetically Modified Organisms  

 

There's a lot of mis-formed dis-information on the topic of GMOs. Mice genes spliced with jellyfish genes to create rodents that glow in the dark, or papaya crops genetically modified to resist crop destroying diseases are all aspects of the topic of genetically modifying organisms for various, purported reasons. Some of these GMO experiments have indeed given some supposed benefit to humanity...but that's neither here nor there.

All you really need to concern yourself with when it comes to this topic is simple: It's all about GLYPHOSATE.

The majority of the Big Agricultural Industrial Complex feed producers that manufacture 95% of the ingredients found in all processed - fast - convenience - junk food, is based on GMO crops, modified to survive repeated glyphosate pesticide spraying. If you really do a thorough search of PubMed, you'll find a lot of articles documenting the real problems with GMO's and what they are doing to human health.


Major pesticides are more toxic to human cells than their declared active principles.

"Despite its relatively benign reputation, Roundup {glyphosate} was among the most toxic herbicides and insecticides tested."

Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases II: Celiac sprue and gluten intolerance

"Celiac disease, and, more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5% of the population now suffers from it. Symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, skin rashes, macrocytic anemia and depression. It is a multifactorial disease associated with numerous nutritional deficiencies as well as reproductive issues and increased risk to thyroid disease, kidney failure and cancer. Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup(®), is the most important causal factor in this epidemic.Fish exposed to glyphosate develop digestive problems that are reminiscent of celiac disease. Celiac disease is associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria."

Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases III: Manganese, neurological diseases, and associated pathologies.

"Manganese (Mn) is an often overlooked but important nutrient, required in small amounts for multiple essential functions in the body. A recent study on cows fed genetically modified Roundup(®)-Ready feed revealed a severe depletion of serum Mn. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup(®), has also been shown to severely deplete Mn levels in plants. Here, we investigate the impact of Mn on physiology, and its association with gut dysbiosis as well as neuropathologies such as autism, Alzheimer's disease (AD), depression, anxiety syndrome, Parkinson's disease (PD), and prion diseases."

Glyphosate induces human breast cancer cells growth via estrogen receptors

"Glyphosate is an active ingredient of the most widely used herbicide and it is believed to be less toxic than other pesticides. However, several recent studies showed its potential adverse health effects to humans as it may be an endocrine disruptor....

...These results indicated that low and environmentally relevant concentrations of glyphosate possessed estrogenic activity. Glyphosate-based herbicides are widely used for soybean cultivation, and our results also found that there was an additive estrogenic effect between glyphosate and genistein, a phytoestrogen in soybeans."

Sure seems like there's a lot more to this topic than just the fevered rantings of my fellow Conspiritards who believe in Food Magic and are consumed with paranoia about Biotech in the food supply...

Seafood, Mercury & Selenium

Let us consider another topic near and dear to my palate, the mercury content of seafood:

Selenium and mercury in pelagic fish in the central north pacific near Hawaii

"Protective effects of selenium against mercury toxicity have been demonstrated in all animal models evaluated. As interactions between selenium and mercury and their molar ratios in seafood are essential factors in evaluating risks associated with dietary mercury exposure, considering mercury content alone is inadequate."

Omega-3 fatty acids, mercury, and selenium in fish and the risk of cardiovascular diseases

"Fish consumption is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Some fish species also contain methylmercury, which may increase cardiovascular risk, as well as selenium, a trace element that could counter the effects of methylmercury or have beneficial effects itself. These potentially conflicting effects have created public confusion about the risks and benefits of fish consumption in adults. We examined the evidence for cardiovascular effects of fish consumption, particularly effects of marine omega-3 fatty acids, methylmercury, and selenium. Compelling evidence indicates that modest fish consumption substantially reduces cardiovascular risk, in particular cardiac mortality, related at least partly to benefits of omega-3 fatty acids."

 
As I told you before...eat more mercury!




 

Sun Exposure, Sunscreen and Vitamin D 

Of all the ideas I ever try to discuss with other people in teh real life regarding politically incorrect health and nutrition topics, this one is the hardest to try and overcome the average sheeple's regularly scheduled programming.

The Sunscreen Industrial Complex is the most formidable front in the war on Vitamin D and good health. You can find 10000000000+ articles on PubMed regarding sun exposure and skin cancer, or the efficacy of sunscreen in preventing sunburn etc. But hidden amongst all the pro-solarphobia articles, you will still find a few that make the same arguments I've made in the past for prioritizing proper sun exposure as a key measure in attaining good health:


Sunlight and vitamin D for bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease.

Although chronic excessive exposure to sunlight increases the risk of nonmelanoma skin cancer, the avoidance of all direct sun exposure increases the risk of vitamin D deficiency, which can have serious consequences.

Sunlight, UV-radiation, vitamin D and skin cancer: how much sunlight do we need?

"Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin for good reason. During exposure to sunlight, the utraviolet B photons enter the skin and photolyze 7-dehydrocholesterol to previtamin D3 which in turn is isomerized by the body's temperature to vitamin D3. Most humans have depended on sun for their vitamin D requirement. Skin pigment, sunscreen use, aging, time of day, season and latitude dramatically affect previtamin D3 synthesis. Vitamin D deficiency was thought to have been conquered, but it is now recognized that more than 50% of the world's population is at risk for vitamin D deficiency. This deficiency is in part due to the inadequate fortification of foods with vitamin D and the misconception that a healthy diet contains an adequate amount of vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency causes growth retardation and rickets in children and will precipitate and exacerbate osteopenia, osteoporosis and increase risk of fracture in adults. The vitamin D deficiency has been associated pandemic with other serious consequences including increased risk of common cancers, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases and cardiovascular disease. There needs to be a renewed appreciation of the beneficial effect of moderate sunlight for providing all humans with their vitamin D requirement for health."

The takeaway from all this, is that PEER REVIEWED SCIENCE as referenced by those who consider PubMed to be the holy scripture and the be-all-end-all arbiter of authoritative proscriptions for human health and nutrition, is never "settled." One can always find conflicting reports to back up whatever assertions they wish to prove with PEER REVIEWED RESEARCH.

The ultimate point is to manufacture consensus to produce a coordinated narrative that cannot easily be fact-checked, so as to confuse interested laymen and laywomen researchers with a plethora of conflicting articles and abstracts, so as to hide the truth amongst a blizzard of mis- and dis- information. It's hard to discern what is truth and what is lie when their are 5000+ conflicting search results to sift through, so most sheeple take the path of least resistance and comply with our regularly scheduled programming.

But if you look carefully through all the doctrine and scriptures of the Holy Church of Peer-Reviewed Consensus, you can find enough heretical content to justify and rationalize anything....which is why I usually don't bother with citing articles on PubMed as a means of proving anything to skeptics.

No matter how many search results can be referenced in the archives at the Institute of Manufactured Consensus, I'll continue to stick with my conspiritard food magic and avoid fluoridated water and toothpaste (no cavities yet), I'll continue to avoid GMO feed as much as possible (I've never felt better,) I'll continue to get sun exposure at mid-day with no "protection" (haven't been sunburned in years,) and I'll continue to eat as much seafood as I damn well please (no apparent signs of mercury poisoning other than the existence of this blog chock full of raving lunacies...).

As always, take this all with a grain of salt, N=1, your mileage may vary, etc.

Don't take it from me, I am no Doctor...I only play one on teh Interwebz.

Genetically Modified Childhood

Yet again I was asked recently by someone I had not seen in a long time what my "secret" was for losing all that extra weight I used to carry around.

Used to be, anyone asked, I'd just say I did the "Paleo Diet" and if they were interested, I'd tell 'em to just check out marksdailyapple.com. But before I could even do that, the question was followed up with "You're not one of those caveman-paleo diet fanatics, are you?"

Okay. Hearing that from this particular person convinced me once and for all: the PALEO DIET has jumped the shark.

So I answered: "I'm not on a diet, I just don't eat GMO."

"That's all you had to do?"

"Yup. Thing is, once you start looking into just how much of the food we eat is sourced from GMO crops, you find yourself eating like a caveman."

Heh.

While it does appear that the Paleo diet  has indeed been co-opted, subverted and marginalized in popular consciousness, I like to think that it went through a reformation once the most influential bloggers and writers of the Paleo blogosphere eventually rejected the idea that "low carb" and "zero carb" dieting is a key component to the praxeology.

It took years to get rid of the commonly accepted idea that carbohydrate consumption itself was the reason for the rising rates of obesity and sickness of the citizenry all across the bloated plains. Same goes for various versions that involve measuring the ratios of fats to protein in your primal meals. This is because when many of us who first discovered the "paleo diet" blogosphere found successful weight loss and improved health and vitality after adopting the proscriptions, it was only too easy to credit the "low carb-high fat" theory as to why this "diet" seemed to work miraculously.

But now that many of the luminaries of the Paleo blogposphere have moved on to studying the importance of gut bacteria, gut health and the role resistant starch and fermented pre and pro biotics plays in the immune system and over all health, a new angle on just how malevolent GMO crop feed is to human health emerges.

At this point in time, when one gains a true understanding of how our modern, industrialized corporate food production system works, I can now confidently attribute it to the consumption of all three categories, for the entire feed industry is based off of manufacturing products from carbohydrates, proteins and fats...all derived from GMO plant crops. It's the GMO itself and how it affects the gut bacteria of not just we the sheeple, but any living organism that ingests it on a regular basis.

Most folks who discover the "Paleo diet" after years of ill health and weight management issues.  For the early adopters, while the low-carb paradigm has since been proven fallacious, nevertheless it does prove effective, because limiting carbohydrate intake means largely limiting your intake of GMO sourced feed.

But for most people today, it takes a health condition or weight management problems to get them to look more closely at exactly what they are eating. But I see an even bigger problem that is going to manifest in an even worse outcome in the next decade or so with regards to kids being raised from birth on GMO feed products.

Sadly today, I note that many parents in society today are feeding their children a steady diet of GMO processed feed products like cereal, chips, crackers, cookies, cakes, pastries, and all sorts of snack foods designed to make the kids stop whining and crying about their hunger for a few minutes.

Most folks never make the connection between their children's behavior and the snacks and breakfast cereals they are feeding them, and if they do, they invariably blame the sugar content. Sugar most certainly does have an effect...but that is only part of the story.

For instance, while the following article focuses on the possible link between autism and GMO feed, I found an interesting angle on the topic with regards to behavior of test animals regularly eating GMO feed:

When Dr. Huber visited an ongoing research project utilizing rats, he said those animals fed non-GMO feed were “as passive as can be. You can take them out. You can put them on your lap. Treat them almost like a pet cat.” Not so with the rats eating genetically engineered food: “You can hardly catch the rats that have received the GMO feed for a month and a half to two months,” he said. “They go off by themselves. They’re irritated. Crawl up the cage. . . . [They] don’t get along with each other.”

Farmers are reporting the same thing with pigs raised on GMO corn. According to Dr. Huber, a farmer told him that “his pigs just seem to be always irritated. They can’t get along with the other pigs.” Veterinarian Don Skow described similar odd behavior in the pigs of his client. “They would get cannibalistic. They would consume each other—ear biting and tail biting.” And when put in nurseries after weaning, he says, some “would get a condition like Alzheimer’s. They would lose the ability to know where the feed was. A lot of them would die.” Although many of these odd behaviors had been dismissed as normal stress responses for confined animals, when farmers switched to non-GMO feed and the problems went away, the real cause became obvious.

Similar antisocial patterns that Huber described were observed by a Dutch college student more than a decade ago when comparing mice fed GMO or non-GMO soy and corn. He wrote, “The mice fed on GM food seemed less active while in their cages. The differences in activity between the two cages grew as the experiment progressed.” The differences were most striking when he moved the mice to weigh them: “The mice from the GM cage were noticeably more distressed by the occurrence than the other mice. Many were running round and round the basket, scrabbling desperately in the sawdust, and even frantically jumping up the sides, something I’d never seen before. They were clearly more nervous. . . . For me this was the most disconcerting evidence that GM food is not quite normal.”^[2]

Dr. Irina Ermakova, PhD, a senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, reported to the European Congress of Psychiatry in March 2006 that male rats fed GM soy exhibited anxiety and aggression, while those fed non-GMO soy did not ^[3]. Ermakova reported the same behavior in GM soy-fed female rats and their offspring in her study published in Ecosinform. The animals “attacked and bit each other and the worker."^[4]

I know parents who are at wits end with their children's behavior. From my point of view, they love their children, but don't really like to spend time with them because of their incorrigible behavior. And they often remark at the stark contrast with my own progeny who is calm, well behaved and easy to babysit. Mind you, my kid is not "perfect." But the differences are readily apparent enough for many folks to comment. And they always tell me that I'm "lucky." At this point, I say it with full confidence that luck has nothing to do with it. 

Family who knew me as a kid are especially amazed at my offspring's demeanor, attitude and behavior, given how much of a little ADD/ADHD/ODD hell raiser troublemaker I was. My wife likes to take credit for her genes being the primary factor there, and there may be something to that. But I've seen it one too many times now, how little kids attitudes and behavior changes for the worse, sometimes in mere minutes after eating or drinking GMO-based junk feed.

When I try to suggest that maybe parents should feed their kids nutritious, home-cooked food instead of eating processed feed, they all say the same thing - there's no time for that. Everyone has got to fight traffic jams to get to school and work, so it's coffee for the adults, and breakfast cereal and snack foods while riding in the car. Then the kids get their GMO-based feed from their school vending machines, nearby convenience stores and the cafeterias. By the time working parents and school kids are home in the evening, everyone is too tired to cook, so they eat fast food or restaurant take out. It's no exaggeration to say that for many folks in our Brave New World Order, when it comes to their diet, it's all GMO, all the time.

Having read the product labels and researched the brands of much of the "kid snacks" many parents are feeding their kids (not to mention the regularity of eating fast food meals,) everything they eat is inevitably sourced from one of these 6 major corporate feed brands, who are also the primary backers for funding the opposition to several mandatory GMO-labeling initiatives that got voted on earlier this month in the mid-term elections of several States. They spent millions to fund propaganda to prevent them from having to label their GMO feed accordingly. 

Here are 6 huge conglomerates aiming to ruin your right to know what is in your food. 

1. Pepsi-Co (Including Frito-Lay and Doritos)

This behemoth has hardly been touched by consumer frustration with GMOs, even it is just as guilty as many other companies when it comes to food secrets. This is also the company who had to settle a $9 million class-action lawsuit over Naked Juice false advertising – claiming the products were ‘all natural’ and ‘100% juice’ when they are actually full of GMOs. Pepsi-Co was also revealed as one of the big spenders behind the anti-labeling campaigns illegally filtered through the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association. The company topped the list with a $1,620,899 donation to keep you in the dark about GMOs.

2. Kellogg’s
This company is downright shady. Kellogg’s company recently paid $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit for falsely labeling Kashi products as “All Natural” or “Nothing Artificial.” They have also contributed a total of $1.6 million to defeat GMO labeling initiatives. In a consumer lab test, it was also found that Kellogg’s uses 100% GMO corn in several of their breakfast cereals and other products. Kashi products even made it onto the Non-GMO project’s list of safe foods, but they aren’t safe at all. 

3. General Mills

GM says: “We don’t use genetically modified ingredients in original Cheerios. Our principal ingredient has always been whole grain oats – and there are no GMO oats. We use a small amount of corn starch in cooking, and just one gram of sugar per serving for taste. But our corn starch comes from non-GMO corn, and we use only non-GMO pure cane sugar.”

This is only in one type of cereal they sell, though. Only two percent of the company’s shareholders favor a complete GMO ban. GM’s CEO says, he “sees no reason within the United States to bar ingredients grown from biotech crops.”

4. Nestle/Gerber Co

This company puts GMOs in baby food. Need I say more? The company removed GMOs from baby formulas in South Africa after public pressure forced them to, but it continues to put them in American-sold versions. Formulas like Good Start and others contain GM soybean oil, GM soy lecithin, and GM maltodextrin, as well as corn syrup derived from GM crops. Along with Pepsi-Co and Coca-Cola, the company spent over $1 million to defeat GMO labeling in Washington, and more to defeat labeling in Oregon.

5. Hershey’s

Just how much will you like that chocolate bar after finding out that Hershey’s donated $800,000 to defeat California’s Prop 37 and Washington’s I-522, and another $500,000 to defeat this year’s initiatives in Oregon and Colorado? The company has only one organic brand—Dagoba. Time for a boycott? After all, there are hundreds of non-GMO fair-trade chocolate makers out there. Try some of these non-GMO sweets instead.

6. Coca-Cola

This soda empire has contributed more than $1.5 million to keep your teeth rotting from consuming their GMO-filled sodas. They also utilize high fructose corn syrup that is almost entirely GMO-corn derived. Here are other sodas that contain GMOs, too.

I know of kids for whom it seems their entire diet is based on the products of these corporate GMO feed conglomerates. While the article I posted urges a boycott of the products of these corporations, I urge parents to boycott these products for your kids health, your peace of mind, and your sanity in trying to simply raise them.

It's That Time Again

Greetings sheeple! Once again, it's time to join in with the NFL, the American Cancer Society, and some of the world's largest corporations to get together and raise awareness!

Hot Pink football gear is here!

After all, this is a cause we can all agree on, right? Who doesn't want to protect and preserve some of the most beautiful specimens found anywhere in nature?

Long time readers know that I've previously helped raise awareness by highlighting some issues regarding breast cancer, like the ABC connection, and how the American Cancer Society's directors have close financial ties to the mammography machine manufacturing industry.

Since I've blogged about this topic so much in the past, I've decided to make this post a round up of all the issues behind this major Cancerous Corporation-driven media push to raise awareness and get all the ladies to schedule their yearly annual appointment to radiate their breasts in the name of Brea$t Can$er Prevention.

* Women who have had abortions and have never carried a baby to full term are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer.  

The Abortion/Breast Cancer Connection

A teenager, who has an abortion between 9 and 24 weeks, has a 30% chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime. If that same teenager also has a family history of breast cancer, the risk increases so much that one study showed all such women developed breast cancer by the age of 45.

* Women who get a yearly mammogram are actually exposing their breasts to potential cancer-inducing radiation.


The Food And Drug Administration Admits Risks Of Medical Radiation While Ignoring Dangers Of Mammography 

Thus, premenopausal women undergoing annual screening over a ten-year period are exposed to a total of at least four rads for each breast, at least eight times greater radiation than FDA's "cancer risk" level.

* Most women "diagnosed" with breast cancer via mammography never had a cancer problem to begin with.

Check out this article from The New England Journal of Medicine:

Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence

The introduction of screening mammography in the United States has been associated with a doubling in the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer that are detected each year, from 112 to 234 cases per 100,000 women — an absolute increase of 122 cases per 100,000 women. Concomitantly, the rate at which women present with late-stage cancer has decreased by 8%, from 102 to 94 cases per 100,000 women — an absolute decrease of 8 cases per 100,000 women. With the assumption of a constant underlying disease burden, only 8 of the 122 additional early-stage cancers diagnosed were expected to progress to advanced disease. 

After excluding the transient excess incidence associated with hormone-replacement therapy and adjusting for trends in the incidence of breast cancer among women younger than 40 years of age, we estimated that breast cancer was overdiagnosed (i.e., tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms) in 1.3 million U.S. women in the past 30 years.

We estimated that in 2008, breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed. 

*  The Mammography Manufacturing Industry is part of a coalition of global corporate enterprises who's only real motive in promoting Awareness every October, is PROFITS, not women's health.

Corporate Sponsors Control Mammography Industry Warns Cancer Prevention Coalition

 ACS has received contributions in excess of $100,000 from a wide range of “Excalibur donors.” Some of these companies were responsible for environmental pollution with carcinogens while others manufactured and sold products containing toxic and carcinogenic ingredients.

These donors include:

• Petrochemical companies (DuPont, BP and Pennzoil)
• Industrial waste companies (BFI Waste Systems)
• Big Pharma (AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Company, and Novartis)
• Auto companies (Nissan and General Motors)
• Cosmetic companies (Christian Dior, Avlon, Revlon, and Elizabeth Arden)
• Junk food companies (Wendy’s International, McDonalds’s, Unilever/Best Foods, and Coca-Cola.
• Biotech companies (Amgen and Genetech)

There's a very good reason why our mass media driven society goes all out every October to raise awareness and get women to go get exams done... fear-based MARKETING.

Now, of course, none of this should detract from the fact that Breast Cancer is a very real disease that afflicts, kills and maims women all over the world.

But we need to be aware of the financial motives of an industry that exists to profit off of the fears of a real disease....and to understand that getting regular, annual Mammograms can actually cause the very disease women are trying to prevent!

So we need to take a different approach here, and encourage non-radioactive methods for helping to prevent the proliferation of this dread disease.

Vox offers his own suggestion for such a campaign:

As the NFL ceaselessly works to remind us, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  So, in the spirit of the month, I'd like to encourage everyone, male or female, to fight breast cancer the next time you are in line at the supermarket or the mall behind a woman.

Just reach out with both hands and give the woman in front of you a thorough breast exam. You never know, you just might save a life! And while she might seem a little surprised at first, show her your pink ribbon and warn her about the dangers of that terrible, terrible disease. It's all about awareness, after all.

 
I concur wholeheartedly!

Let's all do our part!

Don't forget that manual inspections are not the only non-radioactive tool we have in fighting this dread disease...visual inspections can be potentially life-saving too!

Together, we CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

 

Biotech is Godzilla

It's been called the Paleo diet, the Primal diet, the caveman diet among other things. There's also a number of  labels, smears, and libels that proliferate in the mass media and on teh Interwebz, all designed to make the average person form an impression in their minds that the "paleo" diet phenomenon is some bizarre re-enactment lifestyle that only kooks and morons are promoting...just another kooky, fad diet.

Here's a new name: call it the Anti-Monsanto diet. If you went out of your way to avoid eating or drinking any feed products that have ingredients manufactured by this evil corporation, you're basically following the same guidelines as the Paleo or Primal diet anyhow. When it comes to making the base ingredients for sheeple feed aka "processed food," Monsanto is King.

click to enlarge

 Anyone can look at this list of sheeple feed companies and connect them to popular food items found in grocery stores, convenience stores, vending machines and checkout stands all across first world countries. Don't forget the fast food, franchise restaurants and even most fine dining establishments obtain their ingredients from these feed manufacturers as well.

In fact, if you look at the following diagram showing the Corporatization of the Sheeple Feed industry, you could say it's missing the central hub:

click to enlarge

Put this logo smack dab in the middle and connect all those brands to it, and  you'll have a more accurate diagram.

 

All of those companies buy their manufactured base ingredients, produced by the crops genetically engineered, subsidized by the Federal Government and turned into thousands upon thousands of different sheeple feed products. Have a look at the prominent members of their board of directors. The President of McDonalds Corp. USA, the retired CEO and Chairman of the Board for the Sarah Lee Corp., the CFO of Proctor and Gamble.

Other members of Monsanto's Board include former executive officers from Lockheed and Martin, CISCO, and other energy and technology companies. The more you look into it, the more you realize that all of the "Industrial Complex" corporations are all interconnected with each other, and connected to the top appointments of all the regulatory agencies in the Federal Government. With this kind of influence, they've been able to saturate the entire food chain with their poison. Sound crazy? Start reading your food labels. you'll notice certain common ingredients found in most of it.

Monsanto's GMO soybeans are used to make Soybean oil and GMO rapeseeds to make Canola oil, both of which are commonly used in deep fat fryers, salad dressings, mayo, potato chips amongst other things.

Partially Hydrogenated "Vegetable" Oil (aka GMO Soybean or Rapeseed) is used to make margarines and shortenings, which is then used to manufacture a near endless supply of baked products, snack foods, deserts, cakes, pastries, breads, buns, tortillas, crackers and condiments.

High Fructose Corn Syrup. Corn oil. Dextrose. Maltodextrin. Corn meal. All key ingredients in the sheeple feed industry. All derived from the genetically modified, pesticide drenched fields grown all across the fruited plains.

If FDA ingredient listing requirements called for listing sources of those ingredients, the big M would be on almost everything.

To go on the Anti-Monsanto diet, would be to essentially avoid almost any foods that come in a package, box or can that has an ingredient listing on it. Given the ubiquity of Monsanto derived ingredients in so much of the world's feed supply, could it really be hyperbole to link this Global Corporate Conglomerate of Corpulence, Disease and Death,  with the worldwide rise in obesity?

People regularly try to pinpoint a single vector in trying to attribute blame on the obesity epidemic. High Fructose Corn Syrup. Deep fried fast food. More sedentary lifestyles. Meh. If you want to try and point the finger at a single source, I don't think it's too outlandish to focus on these dastardly bastards.

Here's another thought to consider: an anti-Monsanto diet, would also leave out all of the factory farmed meats in which the cows, chickens and pigs are all fed Monsanto's genetically modified, Round Up drenched grains. Grass fed. pasture raised animal products are the only way you can assure you're not eating anything produced by Monsanto.


As J. Stanton of gnolls.org points out:

It’s clear that it’s far more profitable to sell us processed grain products than meat, eggs, and vegetables…which leaves a lot of money available to spend on persuading us to buy them. Are you starting to understand why grains are encased in colorful packaging, pushed on us as “heart-healthy” by the government, and advertised continually in all forms of media?

And when we purchase grass-fed beef directly from the rancher, eggs from the farmer, and produce from the grower, we are bypassing the entire monumentally profitable system of industrial agriculture—the railroads, grain elevators, antibiotics, growth hormones, plows, combines, chemical fertilizers (the Haber process, by which ammonium nitrate fertilizer is made, uses 3-5% of world natural gas production!), processors, inspectors, fortifiers, manufacturers, distributors, and advertisers that profit so handsomely by turning cheap grains into expensive food-like substances.

All these additives, fillers, oils and by-products of their grains may be bad enough as it is, but all of these things produced by Monsanto may also have a multiplier effect on destroying the health of people that eat their feed. It's the great sheeple feed ROUND UP.

Here's a recently published study on the effects of glyphosate on the human gut biome (your gut bacteria, you know, the key to your immune system). Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Round Up, the herbicide that all Monsanto crops have been genetically engineered to withstand repeated spraying to kill weeds, insects and rodents?

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup^®, is the most popular herbicide used worldwide. The industry asserts it is minimally toxic to humans, but here we argue otherwise. Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat. Glyphosate's inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body.

Here, we show how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We explain the documented effects of glyphosate and its ability to induce disease, and we show that glyphosate is the “textbook example” of exogenous semiotic entropy: the disruption of homeostasis by environmental toxins.

All the processed food, all the feed lot grain, gardens, lawns and golf courses have been inundated with glysophate.

Mmmm....looks appetizing!

 How did we get to this point in time, where a large, multi-national Agricultural corporation is able to infiltrate their poisons into nearly every food consumed nowadays? Simple. They've worked their way into the halls of power in Sodom by the Potomac.

The revolving door of FDA/USDA appointments and Federal Government administrative personnel has been well documented. And bit by bit, piece by piece, we the sheeple get sold out by the politicians who approve the poisoning of our food supply by this corporate behemoth.

The Republican party? The Democrat party? Try the Monsanto party.

Government for the sheeple, by the Multinational Agricultural-Chemical-Pharmaceutical Corporation. They own and run this feedlot we call society.

Aren't you glad you have the freedom to vote? A vote for a Democrat Jackass or a vote for a Republican Pachyderm, is a vote for the Monsanto Jachyderm.

Well, I'm not interested in voting for this incorporated monstrosity. Therefore I don't vote with my ballot, and I don't vote with my dollars when making my purchasing decisions. Go to your local farmer's markets. Buy organic. Boycott the bastards.

All images obtained from a Googliath Image Search for "Monsanto is the devil"