Health Spectator

Whole Foods is among those companies marketing GMO foods as All Natural

Consumers are still being taken in by alternative phrases used by industry to get around the USDA-certified Organic label. A favorite is All Natural, which implies that the product bearing the label contains wholesome and pure ingredients. Some products bearing that label are in fact 50% or more genetically modified. Whole Foods private-label (store-brand) corn flakes, for example, are in this category, containing 50% or more genetically modified corn, according to a report recently released by the Cornucopia Institute in Cornucopia, Wisconsin. However, other brands long trusted by consumers, such as Kashi GoLean scored even higher, approaching 100% GM ingredients in their breakfast cereals.

What makes it worse is that these products are enrolled in the Non-GMO Project. Isn’t it just a little bit misleading for something labeled Non-GMO Project to be 50% to 100% GMO in content?

We think so.

On Tuesday, August 30 actress and activist Daryl Hanna was arrested in front of the White House for sitting in against the Keystone XL oil pipeline. That pipeline, if built, would transport oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands fields to Texas at the Gulf of Mexico.

What does that have to do with our health? you might ask. Indeed, that is a logical question.

First, the oil in question is extremely dirty crude oil. Its carbon content is exceedingly high. In fact, tar sands oil produces 82 percent more greenhouse gas than conventional crude oil. So not only is it much more expensive to convert to, say, gasoline than conventional crude, it also has a far worse effect on the environment even if it doesn’t spill.

But when it spills, it spells disaster. Residents of Michigan can tell you about that. An existing pipeline extends from these same oil fields to refineries in Oklahoma. Now barely a year old, that pipeline has leaked twelve times in twelve months. In July 2010 it spilled one million gallons of tar sands crude into a Kalamazoo River tributary. Forty miles of river are still contaminated with the oil more than a year later. In part, that’s because tar sand sinks in water. Of course, it still coats and kills fish and wildfowl.

So if you don’t want crude oil contaminating your waterways and drinking water or excess carbon, sulfur and mercury polluting your air and soil, there must be cleaner energy alternatives. Or maybe we just have to cut back on our use of energy and our miles of driving, perhaps using electric cars (which still require us to produce that electricity in the first place—we know).

But that soil, air and water pollution don’t really affect us, right? Breast cancer is still on the rise wordwide. Of course, that’s because of “Western” lifestyles, right? According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there will be 20 million new cases of cancer per year by 2030, up from 12 million new cases in  2008. But if the cause were simply our Western lifestyle as so much of the media assure us, shouldn’t the cancer rate reach a steady state, at least in the U.S.? How do we blame a continuing increase in cancer rates worldwide on our Western lifestyle? Has life changed that radically in India and Southeast Asia?

Incidentally, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) reports that the current increase in cancer translates into approximately 56% more cancer in men and 22% more cancer in women over the course of a single generation. The NCI reports that one in two men or women will experience cancer in their lifetime. And it expects the cancer rate to double by 2050. In Ireland, a report just out states that cancer cases have risen 50% since the 1990s. Has Ireland become that much more “Westernized” since 1990?

If this is purely the result of a Western lifestyle, which presumably means inadequate exercise and a diet of processed foods, why do the rates keep rising? Once one does not exercise and one’s diet consists entirely of processed food—which is, unfortunately, the case for many of us—how can you justify further increases in cancer?

The only explanation, we believe, is a continuing deterioration in our environment, with subsequent ill effects on our health. And the  Keystone XL pipeline is one more giant step in that direction.

Cream has never struck me as a relative term. But recently, I came to realize that it is. I’m talking about the cream that floats on the top of cow’s milk. As it comes from the cow, milk readily separates into milk and cream. The cream rises to the top.

But you already knew that. It’s the stuff of clichés and metaphors.

That’s ostensibly why homogenization was invented. Homogenization keeps the milk and the cream from separating. One would think that was for the purpose of keeping a certain amount of fat content (cream) inside the milk. But now that I’ve come to question the absolute concept of cream, I’ve begun to question that notion too.

You see, for a few years now I’ve bought my dairy products from an Amish farm. That means that I was able to purchase unhomogenized, unpasteurized milk, butter and cream. The cream I obtained from the farm, while far more expensive than what’s available in your local store, is not even remotely similar to the stuff delivered in those cardboard cartons. In fact, you wouldn’t even be able to get it out of them, because it almost doesn’t pour. In fact, when suitably stirred together–even cream itself tends to separate into layers of different densities–it pours about like blackstrap molasses. When you first remove the lid from its plastic container, the cream on top has to be spooned out. That’s why we tend to mix it with the slightly thinner cream on the bottom.

But even that thinner cream exceeds the thickness of so-called “heavy cream” obtained from the supermarket. Mystified by this, I began to do some research. After all, we already know that everything is figured to a cost-benefit ratio in manufacturing. If it costs more to do a recall and make the repair on a defective auto, for example, than it does to settle the resulting lawsuits for deaths and injuries, then the recall doesn’t happen voluntarily.

So presumably someone somewhere is paid to figure out just how much milk they can put in that carton labeled “heavy cream” before it steadfastly refuses to whip when you beat it with your average mixer. As for putting it in our coffee, most of us are pushovers. We’ll use milk–even skim in some cases–so half-and-half is as much like cream as most people ever expect.

Personally, I’ve been avoiding drinking coffee in public–whether Starbucks or otherwise–in part because I’ve learned to drink my coffee with real cream, not the watered-down stuff.

The classifications, please…

Sure enough, there are several classifications of cream based on how it was prepared the old-fashioned way. I can still remember that when we milked the cows on my grandparents’ farm, the milk got poured from those big stainless-steel buckets into the separator. A separator is simply a centrifuge designed to spin the milk, separating out the cream. Then the cream went into a churner–whose mechanism I can no longer recall–and became butter.

The point is, nowadays we “make” cream, or really separate it from the milk using mechanical processes that are a bit more hi-tech, possibly, than my Amish farm uses. The old-fashioned way to make cream is to pour the fresh milk into shallow pans and wait for the cream to rise to the top. After 12 hours, you have what is called “single cream.” And after 24 hours–probably as long as you would want to let fresh milk sit around–you have la crème de la crème, so to speak: “double cream.” That, it turns out, is what I’d been paying a premium for while enjoying real cream from the Amish farm.

It is also a real snap to make into so-called whipped cream. Simply add a bit of sugar and, if you’re being fancy, a bit of cocoa powder, and by the time you’ve mixed the ingredients, it’s what you’d call whipped cream. No need for an electric mixer, simply stirring by hand will do it. Whip it too much, in fact, and you’ll quickly get butter. (I don’t think you’ll have much luck making butter from the “heavy cream” sold in your grocery store, but go ahead and give it a try if you’re curious.)

Another way to make cream is by clotting the milk, which must be unhomogenized, of course. That means heating it in a pan so that the cream rises to the top. This actually provides an even richer cream than “double cream,” which has about 48% milk fat.

In case you are avoiding using these real creams for fear of dropping dead because of a heart attack, keep in mind that the French still liberally use this stuff, and their coronary health is to be envied by the majority of Americans.

How do you eat locally in the winter? The answer may surprise you. If you live far enough north that winter time ends the normal growing season, the choices are going to be considerably more limited than if you live in California, southern Florida, or, say, Costa Rica. But you may be surprised to find out that there generally are crops available late in the fall and early in the spring.

The best place to find these? Your local farmer’s market, friendly local farms, or a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) cooperative. Our local CSA has just offered an extension of  the summer CSA fruits and vegetables program into the middle of December. Of course, the vegetables offered are mainly tubers and root vegetables—carrots, rudabagas, cabbage, several varieties of potatoes and sweet potatoes, turnips, beets, winter squash and winter greens such as kale, chard, bok choy, spinach, mustard, and collard greens. There are more.

So if you haven’t yet tried joining a CSA, you might want to look into it. Our list of Useful Links is on the left sidebar, maybe about 1/3 the distance down the page. There, at the top of the list you will find Eating Locally, which is a link for the site Local Harvest. (We first wrote about it here.) If you are interested in eating locally (and you should be!) this is your site. You can search for local farms, farmers markets and CSAs, even for yarns and fleece for knitting, crocheting and spinning projects!

If you need a bit of convincing, read our original story and watch the video below, which will give you some motivation for seeking out local harvests. Remember that fresh produce in your supermarket travels an average 1,500 to 2,000 miles—and that’s not even necessarily organic. Organic food is not just about eating what’s healthier for your body, it’s also about what’s healthier for the planet. Sustainability is key. All else being equal, sustainable agriculture is local agriculture.

Most of us think of pigs as being fat; indeed, in our culture the word “pig” is synonymous with overeating and overweight. However, in recent years leanness has become a prized porcine property.

For about fifteen years, the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, has been marketing lean pork as a healthier alternative. Indeed, the pork industry in general is marketing pork to compete with chicken as a lean white meat. But the methods used to make pork lean should give consumers pause.

In China, feeding pigs chemicals is an ongoing scandal, with nearly 9,000 cases of additive abuse detected this year alone, according to a report from the National People’s Congress Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee picked up by thePigSite.com. More than 80 people in Guangdong province were stricken with stomach aches and diarrhea last February after consuming pig organs contaminated with Clenbuterol, an illegal pig feed additive that not only is harmful to humans, but can be fatal, since it accumulates in organs such as the liver and lungs. Clenbuterol, of course, keeps the animals lean.

In Shanghai in 2006, 336 people were hospitalized after eating pig meat and organs contaminated with the additive.

According to 2007 statistics from the China Meat Association, pork accounts for about 65 per cent of the meat consumed in China. Per capita consumption has doubled in 16 years, starting from 1990. And leaner pork commands a higher price, though pork in general has declined in price since the H1N1 “swine flu” epidemic began. According to the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, the price of pork in July was down 28.3 per cent year over year. Similar price reductions have been reported elsewhere, including the United States. Lynne Hoot, Maryland Pork Producers Council executive director, has said that since swine flu became the popular name for the H1N1 influenza virus, sales of pork to Americans have fallen.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the six leanest cuts of pork are 16 percent leaner and 27 percent lower in saturated fat than they were 15 years ago.

This excellent video combines many of the themes we have discussed here at Health Spectator. We have warned about the dangers of genetic modification (The allure of genetic modification) and extolled the virtues of organic and locally grown foods.

All in all, the movie gives excellent coverage of the range of issues (political, economic, social and technological) involved in growing and distributing our daily bread—or virtually any other food, for that matter.

With a tip of the hat to David Corthell, who pointed this one out to us.

With all the news about the autism epidemic and talk of mandatory flu vaccinations this fall, many parents and parents-to-be are distraught at the notion that their children will have to be vaccinated. What to do?

Here is sound advice from Leila Masson, MD, MPH, a pediatrician who specializes in autism. She covers pre-natal issues as well as how to care for your child during those critical first years.

While you are waiting to read our exposé on factory farming and swine flu (which should finish final editing in the next 24 hours) you can watch this video from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

As we hope to show in greater detail over coming weeks,  the trend in agriculture toward large farms has changed our rural landscape and is affecting not only our national health, but the health of humans globally along with their environment.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 40 percent of people in rural areas lived on farms in 1950. Now USDA statistics reveal that less than 10 percent of the rural population lives on farms and that only 14 percent of the rural workforce is employed in agriculture.

Some rural areas thrive as they become home to commuting professionals, but some just sink deeper into isolation. This helps to explain why in 2003 14.2 percent of the population living in rural America were poor, while the poverty rate in metropolitan areas was 12.1 percent, a disparity that has been constant for several decades.

As for the farming trends themselves, in 1980, approximately 65,000 farmers in the state of Iowa raised hogs, with an average of 200 hogs residing on each farm. By 2002, the number of farms with hogs had fallen to about 10,000, but the average number of hogs per farm had risen to 1,400. Similar trends toward industry concentration have been in effect in North Carolina, which is the second largest pork producer in the U.S. As early as 1993, 13 percent of the producers in North Carolina were responsible for 95 percent of that state’s total swine production.

There is evidence that the polyphenols found in green tea may slow the progression of prostate cancer, according to a study published recently in Cancer Prevention Research,¹ a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

According to researcher James A. Cardelli, PhD, professor and director of basic and translational research in the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center, LSU Health Sciences Center, Shreveport, LA, men with prostate cancer who consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression.
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15 swine-flu deaths in U.S. as of May 29

According to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data released at 11 am, Friday, May 29, the number of H1N1 (“swine flu”) cases in the U.S. is rapidly approaching the 10,000 mark. (see table) In fact, it likely will have reached that level by the time you read this, given the rate at which cases have increased over approximately the past week.

Meanwhile, health officials seem intent upon emphasizing the relatively mild symptoms of this so-called “new” or “novel” H1N1 influenza, as the CDC calls it. At the same time, the U.S. government has entered into a deal to acquire swine flu vaccine for persons it deems most worthy. (more…)