Month: September 2018

Consumer advocates and non-GMO food experts have criticized the non-GMO certification of Cargill’s EverSweet sweetener by NSF’s Non-GMO True North program because the product is derived from a genetically engineered yeast and should be considered a GMO.

Sold by Cargill, EverSweet is described as a “next generation, zero calorie sweetener.” It is derived through a fermentation process using a GMO yeast, which produces the compounds Reb M and Reb D similar to those found in a stevia leaf. NSF says the yeast is not in EverSweet.

But Dana Pearls, senior food and technology policy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said the True North non-GMO verification of EverSweet “sets a dangerous precedent for greenwashing other GMO products.”

“All products derived from genetic engineering, including the GMO EverSweet, must be regulated, assessed, and labeled,” she said. “Ingredients like EverSweet that are derived from genetic engineering are the new GMOs, and labeling must be honest and transparent.”

Tom’s take:

Those of us who read the book 1984 can almost hear George Orwell calling from his grave, reading from his book, “War is Peace, Lies Are Truth.” After which he adds, “I warned you about this and you did not do enough to prevent it. It is well past time you woke up your fellow travelers on this mud ball before it becomes uninhabitable.”

https://www.ecowatch.com/eversweet-non-gmo-certification-2603754941.html

If your health history happens to be filled with family members who died of heart disease, don’t just throw your hands in the air and assume it’s inevitable that you’ll succumb to the same fate. New research shows that keeping fit can help ward off cardiovascular disease no matter what your genetic risk may be.

This study out of Stanford University provides evidence that despite your genetic risk level, keeping fit will make a difference no matter what that history is: ‘It’s basically indicating that you can make some lifestyle changes [and] be more physically active and it can make a difference to your long-term health.’

Among those considered at high genetic risk for heart disease, high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness were associated with a 49 percent lower risk for coronary heart disease and a 60 percent lower risk for atrial fibrillation compared with study participants with low cardiorespiratory fitness.

A 100 year old doctor from Loma Linda California (the only “Blue Zone” in the US, where a much larger percentage of people than average live to be 100) quotes the study as providing the evidence that climbing a flight of stairs 20 times a week contributes to a 46% decreased incidence of death from heart disease.

Keeping fit fights off genetic risk for heart disease, Stanford study finds

You may remember when the MSG powder called “Accent” first hit the U.S. market. Well, it was many decades prior to this, in 1908, that monosodium glutamate was invented. The inventor was Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese man who identified the natural flavor enhancing substance of seaweed.

Taking a hint from this substance, they were able to create the man-made additive MSG, and he and a partner went on to form Ajinomoto, which is now the world’s largest producer of MSG (and interestingly also a drug manufacturer).

Chemically speaking, MSG is approximately 78 percent free glutamic acid, 21 percent sodium, and up to 1 percent contaminants.

It’s a misconception that MSG is a flavor or “meat tenderizer.” In reality, MSG has very little taste at all, yet when you eat MSG, you think the food you’re eating has more protein and tastes better. It does this by tricking your tongue, using a little-known fifth basic taste: umami.

Umami is the taste of glutamate, which is a savory flavor found in many Japanese foods, bacon and also in the toxic food additive MSG. It is because of umami that foods with MSG taste heartier, more robust and generally better to a lot of people than foods without it.

The ingredient didn’t become widespread in the West until after World War II, when the U.S. military realised Japanese rations were much tastier than the U.S. versions because of MSG.

In 1959, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled MSG as “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS), and it has remained that way ever since. Yet, it was a telling sign when just 10 years later a condition known as “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” entered the medical literature, describing the numerous side effects, from numbness to heart palpitations, that people experienced after eating MSG.

Today that syndrome is more appropriately called “MSG Symptom Complex,” which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies as “short-term reactions” to MSG.

More on those “reactions” to come…

From the Doctors Are Dangerous Team www.doctorsaredangerous.com