Weird Science In Your Food: Trademarked Experiments

(photo by Nutraflora [tm] )

My good friend Noel in NYC called me last night and told me her concerns about a cereal she had bought at the health food store...

She said aside from the fact that it "tasted like poison" when she tried to eat it, in the ingredient list there was something called "Nutraflora" (TM) which had been trademarked. Trademarked food? Assuming that any trademarked food must either be...

1. Chemical/creepy man made & bad for you (aka not food)

2. Trademarking some process of how they got that 'food' , maybe?

So she looked it up, here... where the whole website described a type of food fiber that helps you "absorb calcium". A "prebiotic" they say occurs naturally... but only in the tiniest amounts.

Really? Naturally occurring... then how can they trademark it? I mean my donkey poop naturally occurs from my donkey but I can't trademark donkey poop across the world. Can I?

Is this really going to start happening already, have any of you seen natural foods that have been trademarked at the grocery, such as fruits and veggies? This really smacks of some Monsanto monopoly type crap, where they have claimed their TM'ed seeds, and even seeds that insects accidentally pollinated miles down the road...(destroying other people's farms for their greed & seed!)

How can you claim seeds OR naturally occurring foods as a trademark?

Maybe Nutraflora (tm) can trademark it because actually what it does in your body is not at all natural....

" For example, to get the same benefits offered in one serving of NutraFlora-enriched yogurt, you would have to eat about 22 bananas, 15 onions, 16 tomatoes, or 383 cloves of garlic."
Um WHAT? I don't know about you, but hell if I would ever eat 383 cloves of garlic in one meal..... muchless 22 bananas, 15 onions, 16 tomatoes all on the same plate. That is not what the human body was made to do. Period.
To me this is a vitamin product, not a "naturally occurring" food that belongs in Noel's cereal.
And if you wanna know the real deal, this strange shit is in foods you'd never guess...
How about your Horizon organic milk? Or your Silk Soy Milk? Look at the labels.
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Why is so much food a trademarked experiment these days? And doctors sit around perplexed by all their patients with strange chronic diseases, and food allergies. I believe the mass scale altercation of food through farming AND processing is slowly breaking down the natural abilities & defenses of the human body...
who can say they don't know someone these days who has diabetes, cancer, allergies, arthritis, thyriod disorder, etc. In my opinion it went from minority sick to majority chronically pushing their way through life.
We have made some great break throughs in science, major technological advances. But the altering of what we eat is an experiment we will surely regret. The human body has evolved on foods provided by the earth, not by science labs. The human-like diseases which our pets and animals have begun to have from our man made foods (leukemia, AIDS, diabetes, cancer, tumors) for them is just a small proof of what we are creating for our own now and future.

For good health, eat whole real foods made by nature!



Xoxoxo
PS--- this blog post is the opinion of the author. Don't sue me. Sue Noel, she's the one who brought it up. ;)

Why I Don't Like Group Hugs...

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Cause I am the one who is just the height of all your armpits.
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xoxo

The Pope: A Health Hazard?

Remember a few years back when the former Pope John made some statements about activities such as yoga being against church beliefs? I was pretty stunned, maybe even giggled and thought it was quite a lame little health hazard. I figured he was slightly absolved from saying something so silly when polluting the earth was later declared a "sin". But the new Pope, Mister Benedict XVI made recent statements about the AIDS crisis in Africa that make my toes curl, my lips curl, and cringe at the pure ignorance that could cause a major religious based health hazard.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. "On the contrary, it increases the problem." (read the rest of the article that has me pissed off here.)

With the lack of education & modern resources I imagine that Africa looks like a great place to go in and brainwash some people on how to get to heaven, in only the style the pope knows how. Abstinence. I suppose if he isn't getting any play, then no one should? What are you telling us Pope B? Just inform these people not to have sex, not to be humans, not to follow biological needs, to not do what inevitably WILL be done - and suggest that the one preventative contraceptive available and cheap isn't going to help the problem as good as your abstinence plan? Kind of like how Prez Bush took out sex education here in the US, replacing it with abstinence only programs that actually increased the percentage of teen pregnancies, and therefore STD's. Pope B, I have to ask, was this a statement directed towards your hunger for religious respect, fame and controversy - at the price of people's lives & health? I can not even fathom the numbers of people saved from terminal and terrible STD's using condoms since our knowledge of AIDS has increased. Not to mention pregnancies that were unwanted or unable to be cared for properly. And maybe you also forgot about things like misogyny and how possibly another culture differs from your micro Vatican white bread world in how they relate to their sexuality and relationships.

I am beyond disgusted that anyone is such power would propose statements that effect the minds of many people throughout the world, including impressionable and sexually active teens in the united states as well. In the real world people have sex- in fact, they have sex quite a bit - and once they get started they really aren't gonna stop because you said so - but maybe they won't have that condom in their hand to protect themselves because they couldn't get it from the government or they were too humiliated by the social & cultural rules you are perpetuating.
It's like you want to have blood on your hands - the blood of unwanted pregnancies, of people dieing of AIDS, people taking tons of STD meds that end up in our drinking water - while you sit pretty on your supposed moral high horse telling people not to be what they are (humans) as a solution.
Purity is in nature, not in selfish moral statements that have the weight to damage lives.

PS- Pope Benny, I would bet my life on the fact that you have your own F buddy - let's hope they use a condom (or vice versa) and don't give you AIDS.

Toxic Chemicals, Love Canal, and Our Health

"Today, nearly half of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of one of EPA’s 1304 active and proposed Superfund sites, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group dedicated to investigative journalism."

I found a fascinating article via the Canary Report about Love Canal... have you ever heard of it? The name was most appropriate before the residents of the area were given an emergency evacuation due to a gumbo of chemicals that began bubbling out of the ground in the school yard and seeping out multi colored goo from their basement walls, causing birth defects and illness to double in their area. It took a few years and a huge community rising to get the government to buy out all their houses and clean up the mess- for quite a while these residents were told that there was no evidence that it was harming their health.

"... one-quarter of the waste was benzene hexachloride, the main component of the pesticide lindane, a neurotoxin. There were chlorobenzenes (used in the synthesis of DDT) and dozens of other organic chemicals, many of which were known to be toxic. The waste also contained an estimated 120 pounds of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, commonly called dioxin, which is a byproduct of trichlorophenol manufacture. At the time dioxin was buried at Love Canal, it was not thought to cause disease, but it is now known as one of the most carcinogenic chemicals in the world. "

When the community tried to speak out the government said their testimonials to what was happening in their area was "useless housewife data".

This was back in 1978.

Now we are in 2008 nearly 30 years later and much of the same environmental crisis is going on- much of which is on a large & mysterious scale. One of the major problems for Love Canal was that no matter how people tried to use their voices to say something was wrong, the government only would act on substantial data that they could measure by standards they made up. Tests which couldn't measure much of anything at the time, and unfortunately have scarcely been updated in 30 years. Which is where the major problem lies since the standards of the EPA are , ehem , let's say not in the people's favor as much as they are in industries favor. Marketing & money now talks the talk and educates the masses, with nothing but nonsense to make a sale, to get us all to buy into their products and consumerism. Most of the products we buy have never been tested for chemical exposure safety, how they mix with other common products and what's worse is how they are manufactured is polluting our basic needs too- when the US wants even looser restrictions it just outsources their factory to a poor country and poisons their land & people instead. Some of which that very air pollution is blowing back our way.

While standards for toxic dumping (like what happened at Love Canal) have tightened some, we are still behind the times for testing the mixture of chemical products we bring into our home, build our home with, and shop for in stores. If you are questioning whether we are brainwashed into toxic consumerism and educated by marketing and not with real knowledge just look to the tragedy at Walmart where the worker was trampled to death by swarms of anxious customers convinced they had to get a good deal on Black Friday (at the expense of killing someone and injuring others). This type of tragic acceptance & anxiety on a mass scale is what leads to the environmental disaster that is taking place. I am not even speaking about global warming, or animals going extinct, glaziers melting, or trees being cut down at alarming rates - those are the issues that half the country seems to think are silly "treehugger" ideas. The disaster is right under your nose, under your kitchen sink, filling your washer machine, spewing into the air, on your walls and in your bottle of shampoo. The mixing of all the chemical fragrances (perfume, shampoo, lotion), bleach, household cleaners, detergent chems, preservatives & additives in your food, the paint out gassing on your walls that now contains anti-mildew chems too - stop and think about how you are mixing all these each day, and stop to think of how many people you know with chronic, re-occurring, mysterious health problems, ones that are just achy and the ones that are dieing of cancer.

In reality when we buy into the marketing bullshit we are paying big corporations & big pharma to destroy our health, so that they can fly in their private jets, wear expensive clothes, live in huge houses, and buy more destructive junk being sold by another rich company - continuing a cycle of the rich sickening (or killing) the poor for their own luxuries. We are paying their way and paying all the consequences, and the government sits back and let's it happen because these giant companies are paying government officials too. We all know it is happening, so why are we letting it?

Even in economic strife we must stay strong on demanding the health standards we deserve. And not buy into the big corporation's brainwash, because following their lead is creating a mini Love Canal in each of our homes, schools, and workplace - and in the air we breathe, the soil we grow food, and the water that is vital to our life.

Do you live near a Superfund site? Go HERE to check.

Want to learn more about where the stuff you buy really comes from? Go HERE to watch The Story of Stuff.

Watch a Documentary on Love Canal HERE.