Junk food-addicted rats chose to starve themselves rather than eat healthy food

(NaturalNews) A diet including unlimited amounts of junk food can cause rats to become so addicted to the unhealthy diet that they will starve themselves rather than go back to eating healthy food, researchers have discovered. In a series of studies conducted over the course of three years and published in the journal Nature Neuroscience , Scripps Florida scientists Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny have shown that rats’ response to unlimited junk food closely parallels well-known patterns of drug addiction — even down to the changes in brain chemistry. “What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features,” Kenny said. In their first study, the researchers fed rats on either a balanced diet or on the same diet plus unlimited access to junk foods purchased at a local supermarket, including processed meats and cakes. Within a short time period, the rats on the junk food diet began to eat compulsively and quickly became overweight. “They’re taking in twice the amount of calories as the control rats,” Kenny said. The researchers hypothesized that the rats were eating compulsively because, like drug addicts, they had become desensitized to smaller amounts and needed more and more for the same rush of pleasure. Many recreational drugs work by directly stimulating the brain’s pleasure centers, particularly the dopamine receptor known as D2. Overstimulation of this receptor causes the body to start producing less dopamine, leading the addict to compensate by taking more of the drug. Since dopamine can also be released by pleasurable activities such as food or sex, Kenny and Johnson speculated that food addiction could develop in the same way. To test whether the rats had, in fact, become habituated to dopamine, the researchers took the rats from the first experiment and hooked their brains up to a device that would directly stimulate their D2 receptors when they ran on a wheel. Rats eating a junk food diet ran on the wheel significantly longer than rats fed a normal diet, suggesting that their receptors had indeed become desensitized. This “profound” desensitization occurred after just five days on a junk food diet. “They’re not experiencing rewards the way they should,” Kenny said. “When you experience that, one way of feeling better is to go back to the junk food.” “They lose control. This is the hallmark of addiction.” In another test of their addiction hypothesis, the researchers used a virus to block the D2 receptors in healthy rats. All those rats soon became compulsive eaters. “This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings,” Johnson said. Having established that the junk food rats had become addicted, Johnson and Kenny wanted to know how far this addiction would push them. So they took both junk-food addicted rats and rats that had not previously been exposed to such food, and exposed them to electrical shocks whenever they ate junk. Rats that had just been introduced to junk food quickly stopped eating it, while the addicted rats ignored the discomfort and kept eating. Perhaps the most shocking finding came when the researchers took away the addicted rats’ access to junk food and started feeding them only healthy rat chow again — the same diets the rats had eaten as pups. When junk food was no longer available, the rats simply refused to eat for two weeks. “They actually voluntarily starved themselves,” Kenny said. “It’s almost as if you break these things, it’s very, very hard to go back to the way things were before. Their dietary preferences are dramatically shifted.” The research strongly suggests that many modern humans also suffer from junk food addictions. Kenny notes, however, that unlike the rats, all humans with access to junk food do not become obese. He attributes this difference to the influence of health knowledge and social pressure in moderating people’s natural eating habits. “The rats don’t suffer from the same social pressures that we do,” he said. The idea of junk food addiction is not a new one, and the dopamine-junk food connection was actually put forward by former FDA Commissioner David Kessler in his best-selling book, The End of Overeating . “Certainly, we see this addictive pattern in humans,” nutritionist Sandy Livingston said. “They know they shouldn’t overeat, but they do it anyway.” Livingston expressed hope that better knowledge about the biochemical side of food addiction might result in lessened guilt and judgment surrounding obesity. “A lot of people blame themselves — ‘Why don’t I have any willpower?’” she said. “Food can be highly addictive,” said author and nutritional supplement producer Jordan Rubin. “When people describe overeating and weight loss as a battle, this is why.” He called for more research into which individual components of junk food, such as MSG, might be behind its addictive effects. Obesity researcher Ralph DiLeone of Yale University noted that more research is needed into the long-term effects of such addiction, even if an animal later switches its diet and loses weight. “They might be a normal weight, but how they respond to food in the future may be permanently altered,” he said. Suggesting yet another area for future research, Kenny has expressed hope that better biochemical understanding of food addiction might someday enable the development of a drug or vaccine as a treatment for compulsive eating. Johnson and Kenny’s research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Bank of America and The Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation. Sources for this story include: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/health/scripps-florida-addicted-rats-starved-themselves-rather-than-470310.html; http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48605/title/Junk_food_turns_rats_into_addicts.

Drew Carey loses 80 pounds and cures his own diabetes

(NaturalNews) In a recent People article, celebrity actor and host of The Price is Right Drew Carey shares about how he has shed 80 pounds — and counting — and cured his own diabetes by following a strict diet of no carbohydrates and getting plenty of exercise. The 52-year-old former host of The Drew Carey Show explained to reporters that he got tired of being fat and seeing himself on camera. So he embarked on a plan to cut the junk from his diet and begin a daily exercise routine. After losing nearly 80 pounds in about six months, Carey also cured himself of his type-2 diabetes. “I’m not diabetic anymore. No medication needed,” he explained. By sticking primarily to egg whites, yogurt, fruit, lean meats and water, Carey was able to drop from a size 44 pants to a 33-34. “I have cheated a couple times, but basically no carbs, not even a cracker. No bread at all. No pizza, nothing. No corn, no beans, no starches of any kind,” he said. Carey also maintained a cardio workout routine consisting of at least 45 minutes of exercise a day to get him where he is currently, and he plans to keep it up to get to a size 32 pants. Carey’s success story is an amazing testimony to the power of healthy eating and exercise in curing disease and maintaining good health. Rather than rely on pharmaceutical drugs like many do, Carey has raised the bar and set a good example for the public of how to achieve true health. Sources for this story include: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20406175,00.html

The war on raw milk (comic)

(NaturalNews) As a rule of thumb, I don’t drink anything that comes out of a cow. But for the last several thousand years, a large percentage of the human population has consumed cow’s milk — a substance that admittedly contains quite an impressive collection of nutrients. The problem today is that those nutrients are artificially modified through pasteurization (cooking) and homogenization (breaking down fat molecules) to create a ready-made, highly processed cow’s milk beverage with a long shelf life that can be sold to consumers as “milk.” In the history of food, pasteurized, homogenized cow’s milk is a relatively new thing. For most of recent history, milk has been consumed as a fresh, raw beverage , just hours out of the cow. Each day’s milk was usually harvested that very morning from the local cow, and most farms had at least one milk cow. (For many families, it was what kept them alive through the harsh winters…) During all these centuries, fresh cow’s milk was considered a nourishing, even lifesaving beverage that provided people with hard-to-find proteins and fats in times when calories were hard to come by. Pasteurization and the road to dead food This went on until roughly the end of the 19th century, when pasteurization was introduced to the milk industry as a way to increase the shelf life of milk by killing the bacteria that spoil it. By “cooking” the milk, large milk producers were able to centralize product production at distant locations (large-scale dairy farms) and then ship the product to consumers anywhere in the country. When kept at the right refrigeration temperature, this pasteurized milk now had a shelf life many times longer than raw milk. So the dairy industry grew profitable and large, and over the next few generations, Americans got used to “milk” meaning “pasteurized, homogenized milk” even though it was an unnatural alteration of the real milk that the country had grown up on. Raw milk rediscovered Fast forward to the 21st century: Now, more and more consumers are becoming aware of the health benefits of raw milk . It’s loaded with active probiotics, of course, which we now know increase skin health and digestive health while potentially even improving cognitive function. So naturally, consumers started purchasing raw milk from their local farmers and coops in order to benefit from this raw, unprocessed food. (Actually, lots of health-conscious people have been doing this since the 1960′s, but “raw milk” didn’t really become popular among near-mainstream consumers until just the last few years…) When people buy raw milk from local farmers, this of course takes away profits from the large corporate milk producers that are selling pasteurized, homogenized milk. So the dairy industry attempted to get the federal government to destroy the competition (the raw milk producers). But instead of just saying, “We want you to destroy our competition,” they made up an excuse, “Raw milk is dangerous!” Yep: The same beverage that America was raised on is now considered by the feds to be “too dangerous to drink.” Sure, you can drink diet soda laced with aspartame or high-fructose corn syrup — two ingredients known to cause degenerative disease — but you can’t drink raw, wholesome, fresh milk anyway because it’s “too dangerous.” The idiotic war against raw milk Now the war is on. State and federal regulatory agencies, spurred on by the monopolistic business practices of the dairy industry, have set out to criminalize the sale of raw milk . They’ve raided raw milk resellers, arrested raw milk marketers and seized countless gallons of raw milk to be destroyed. Raw milk, the bureaucrats say, is dangerous because it hasn’t been sanitized yet. Raw milk is “dirty” while cooked, pasteurized or irradiated milk is “clean.” And Big Brother thinks you’re not supposed to eat “dirty” foods like raw milk. Sure, you can smoke yourself into a lifetime of cancer — that’s fully approved by the government. You can slather your body with personal care products laced with cancer-causing chemicals, because that’s also approved by the government. You can drink brain-busting aspartame, chow down on diabetes-promoting MSG, or swallow any number of mouthfuls of processed foods laced with a thousand different synthetic chemicals that probably cause everything from cancer to Alzheimer’s. Go take a swim in the Gulf of Mexico and soak up some Corexit dispersant chemicals — the government doesn’t protect you from any of that. But raw milk? Well that’s just too dangerous. It’s all natural! And if you’re the whored-out U.S. government — now run by commercial interests — natural is bad! The secret government plot to kill all your food You see, food safety in America has come down to killing your food . Only “dead food” is “safe food” in the eyes of the FDA and state health authorities. That’s why they killed your almonds (there are no more raw almonds commercially available in the United States of America), and it’s the same reason why they’re gearing up to irradiate all your fresh produce. (http://www.naturalnews.com/023945_food_the_FDA_irradiation.html) The government wants to kill your food but it has nothing at all to do with food safety. If the government were really interested in food safety, it would ban the stuff that really promotes disease: Fried fast food, toxic chemical additives like aspartame, empty calorie ingredients like white flour and bleached white sugar… you get the idea. But none of those things have been banned at all. Instead, of all the thousands of things that are bad for your health, the government has chosen to single out raw milk as somehow deserving the most attention — even thought raw milk is arguably GOOD for your health and not bad in the least! So why does this matter to our freedom? Because now, not only is the government deciding what’s good and bad for your (and legislating laws against your free choice); but the government’s ability to determine what’s good or bad is flawed in the first place. Freedom of choice Like most freedom-loving Americans, I don’t think the government has any business telling you what to eat. (But then, neither do I think corporations should have Free Speech to advertise all their junk products, either, although that’s another topic altogether.) If some guy in Brooklyn wants to eat himself to death on hamburgers and corn syrup, that’s his right and his choice. The feds have no business criminalizing his food choices, even if they do seem rather poorly made. But even if the feds were to start enforcing its control over your food, it would only make sense to ban the most dangerous foods first… you know, the stuff that’s really causing epidemic disease in America. Stuff like high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, partially-hydrogenated oils, petrochemical-derived artificial food colors, dangerous chemical preservatives and so on. But none of those things are even being considered for any ban. And that means, by any reasonable logic, that the ban isn’t about your health. It’s not about “protecting you” from dangerous foods. The government, after all, approves the sale of cigarettes, alcohol, hair coloring chemicals and a thousand other things that are terrible for your health. They aren’t interested in protecting your health in the least. What they are interested in doing is protecting their corporate masters in the highly influential dairy industry. And that’s what this all comes down to: The war on raw milk is a juvenile attempt by the federal government to protect a profitable, powerful industry by destroying its competition regardless of the consequences to your health — and regardless of what freedoms they destroy in the process. Your right to buy what you choose has now been overthrown by the government’s desire to protect the processed-milk dairy industry. And that’s why the cow in my CounterThink cartoon sprays the bureaucrats with raw milk, shouting, “Take THAT, you bureaucrats!”

The government war on raw milk is an attack against food freedom

(NaturalNews) As a rule of thumb, I don’t drink anything that comes out of a cow. But for the last several thousand years, a large percentage of the human population has consumed cow’s milk — a substance that admittedly contains quite an impressive collection of nutrients. The problem today is that those nutrients are artificially modified through pasteurization (cooking) and homogenization (breaking down fat molecules) to create a ready-made, highly processed cow’s milk beverage with a long shelf life that can be sold to consumers as “milk.” In the history of food, pasteurized, homogenized cow’s milk is a relatively new thing. For most of recent history, milk has been consumed as a fresh, raw beverage , just hours out of the cow. Each day’s milk was usually harvested that very morning from the local cow, and most farms had at least one milk cow. (For many families, it was what kept them alive through the harsh winters…) During all these centuries, fresh cow’s milk was considered a nourishing, even lifesaving beverage that provided people with hard-to-find proteins and fats in times when calories were hard to come by. Pasteurization and the road to dead food This went on until roughly the end of the 19th century, when pasteurization was introduced to the milk industry as a way to increase the shelf life of milk by killing the bacteria that spoil it. By “cooking” the milk, large milk producers were able to centralize product production at distant locations (large-scale dairy farms) and then ship the product to consumers anywhere in the country. When kept at the right refrigeration temperature, this pasteurized milk now had a shelf life many times longer than raw milk. So the dairy industry grew profitable and large, and over the next few generations, Americans got used to “milk” meaning “pasteurized, homogenized milk” even though it was an unnatural alteration of the real milk that the country had grown up on. Raw milk rediscovered Fast forward to the 21st century: Now, more and more consumers are becoming aware of the health benefits of raw milk . It’s loaded with active probiotics, of course, which we now know increase skin health and digestive health while potentially even improving cognitive function. So naturally, consumers started purchasing raw milk from their local farmers and coops in order to benefit from this raw, unprocessed food. (Actually, lots of health-conscious people have been doing this since the 1960′s, but “raw milk” didn’t really become popular among near-mainstream consumers until just the last few years…) When people buy raw milk from local farmers, this of course takes away profits from the large corporate milk producers that are selling pasteurized, homogenized milk. So the dairy industry attempted to get the federal government to destroy the competition (the raw milk producers). But instead of just saying, “We want you to destroy our competition,” they made up an excuse, “Raw milk is dangerous!” Yep: The same beverage that America was raised on is now considered by the feds to be “too dangerous to drink.” Sure, you can drink diet soda laced with aspartame or high-fructose corn syrup — two ingredients known to cause degenerative disease — but you can’t drink raw, wholesome, fresh milk anyway because it’s “too dangerous.” The idiotic war against raw milk Now the war is on. State and federal regulatory agencies, spurred on by the monopolistic business practices of the dairy industry, have set out to criminalize the sale of raw milk . They’ve raided raw milk resellers, arrested raw milk marketers and seized countless gallons of raw milk to be destroyed. Raw milk, the bureaucrats say, is dangerous because it hasn’t been sanitized yet. Raw milk is “dirty” while cooked, pasteurized or irradiated milk is “clean.” And Big Brother thinks you’re not supposed to eat “dirty” foods like raw milk. Sure, you can smoke yourself into a lifetime of cancer — that’s fully approved by the government. You can slather your body with personal care products laced with cancer-causing chemicals, because that’s also approved by the government. You can drink brain-busting aspartame, chow down on diabetes-promoting MSG, or swallow any number of mouthfuls of processed foods laced with a thousand different synthetic chemicals that probably cause everything from cancer to Alzheimer’s. Go take a swim in the Gulf of Mexico and soak up some Corexit dispersant chemicals — the government doesn’t protect you from any of that. But raw milk? Well that’s just too dangerous. It’s all natural! And if you’re the whored-out U.S. government — now run by commercial interests — natural is bad! The secret government plot to kill all your food You see, food safety in America has come down to killing your food . Only “dead food” is “safe food” in the eyes of the FDA and state health authorities. That’s why they killed your almonds (there are no more raw almonds commercially available in the United States of America), and it’s the same reason why they’re gearing up to irradiate all your fresh produce. (http://www.naturalnews.com/023945_food_the_FDA_irradiation.html) The government wants to kill your food but it has nothing at all to do with food safety. If the government were really interested in food safety, it would ban the stuff that really promotes disease: Fried fast food, toxic chemical additives like aspartame, empty calorie ingredients like white flour and bleached white sugar… you get the idea. But none of those things have been banned at all. Instead, of all the thousands of things that are bad for your health, the government has chosen to single out raw milk as somehow deserving the most attention — even thought raw milk is arguably GOOD for your health and not bad in the least! So why does this matter to our freedom? Because now, not only is the government deciding what’s good and bad for your (and legislating laws against your free choice); but the government’s ability to determine what’s good or bad is flawed in the first place. Freedom of choice Like most freedom-loving Americans, I don’t think the government has any business telling you what to eat. (But then, neither do I think corporations should have Free Speech to advertise all their junk products, either, although that’s another topic altogether.) If some guy in Brooklyn wants to eat himself to death on hamburgers and corn syrup, that’s his right and his choice. The feds have no business criminalizing his food choices, even if they do seem rather poorly made. But even if the feds were to start enforcing its control over your food, it would only make sense to ban the most dangerous foods first… you know, the stuff that’s really causing epidemic disease in America. Stuff like high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, partially-hydrogenated oils, petrochemical-derived artificial food colors, dangerous chemical preservatives and so on. But none of those things are even being considered for any ban. And that means, by any reasonable logic, that the ban isn’t about your health. It’s not about “protecting you” from dangerous foods. The government, after all, approves the sale of cigarettes, alcohol, hair coloring chemicals and a thousand other things that are terrible for your health. They aren’t interested in protecting your health in the least. What they are interested in doing is protecting their corporate masters in the highly influential dairy industry. And that’s what this all comes down to: The war on raw milk is a juvenile attempt by the federal government to protect a profitable, powerful industry by destroying its competition regardless of the consequences to your health — and regardless of what freedoms they destroy in the process. Your right to buy what you choose has now been overthrown by the government’s desire to protect the processed-milk dairy industry. And that’s why the cow in my CounterThink cartoon sprays the bureaucrats with raw milk, shouting, “Take THAT, you bureaucrats!” Check out my CounterThink cartoon right here: http://www.naturalnews.com/029170_raw_milk_dairy_industry.html And if you’d like to watch my behind-the-scenes video which explains this cartoon, check that out right here: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=235

Choosing healthy foods now called a mental disorder

(NaturalNews) In its never-ending attempt to fabricate “mental disorders” out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they’ve invented yet: Healthy eating disorder . This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you’re “mentally diseased” and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, “Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder” and goes on to claim this “disease” is called orthorexia nervosa — which is basically just Latin for “nervous about correct eating.” But they can’t just called it “nervous healthy eating disorder” because that doesn’t sound like they know what they’re talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn’t). That’s where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means “bones with holes in them”). Getting back to this fabricated “orthorexia” disease, the Guardian goes on to report, “Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.” Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there’s something wrong with you . But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be “normal?” If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that’s okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently. What is “normal” when it comes to foods? I told you this was coming. Years ago, I warned NaturalNews readers that an attempt might soon be under way to outlaw broccoli because of its anti-cancer phytonutrients. This mental health assault on health-conscious consumers is part of that agenda. It’s an effort to marginalize healthy eaters by declaring them to be mentally unstable and therefore justify carting them off to mental institutions where they will be injected with psychiatric drugs and fed institutional food that’s all processed, dead and full of toxic chemicals. The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, “The obsession about which foods are “good” and which are “bad” means orthorexics can end up malnourished.” Follow the non-logic on this, if you can: Eating “good” foods will cause malnutrition! Eating bad foods, I suppose, is assumed to provide all the nutrients you need. That’s about as crazy a statement on nutrition as I’ve ever read. No wonder people are so diseased today: The mainstream media is telling them that eating health food is a mental disorder that will cause malnutrition! Shut up and swallow your Soylent Green It’s just like I reported years ago: You’re not supposed to question your food, folks. Sit down, shut up, dig in and chow down. Stop thinking about what you’re eating and just do what you’re told by the mainstream media and its processed food advertisers. Questioning the health properties of your junk food is a mental disorder, didn’t you know? And if you “obsess” over foods (by doing such things as reading the ingredients labels, for example), then you’re weird. Maybe even sick. That’s the message they’re broadcasting now. Junk food eaters are “normal” and “sane” and “nourished.” But health food eaters are diseased, abnormal and malnourished. But why, you ask, would they attack healthy eaters? People like Dr. Gabriel Cousens can tell you why: Because increased mental and spiritual awareness is only possible while on a diet of living, natural foods . Eating junk foods keeps you dumbed down and easy to control, you see. It literally messes with your mind, numbing your senses with MSG, aspartame and yeast extract. People who subsist on junk foods are docile and quickly lose the ability to think for themselves. They go along with whatever they’re told by the TV or those in apparent positions of authority, never questioning their actions or what’s really happening in the world around them. In contrast to that, people who eat health-enhancing natural foods — with all the medicinal nutrients still intact — begin to awaken their minds and spirits. Over time, they begin to question the reality around them and they pursue more enlightened explorations of topics like community, nature, ethics, philosophy and the big picture of things that are happening in the world. They become “aware” and can start to see the very fabric of the Matrix , so to speak. This, of course, is a huge danger to those who run our consumption-based society because consumption depends on ignorance combined with suggestibility. For people to keep blindly buying foods, medicines, health insurance and consumer goods, they need to have their higher brain functions switched off. Processed junk foods laced with toxic chemicals just happens to achieve that rather nicely. Why do you think dead, processed foods remain the default meals in public schools, hospitals and prisons? It’s because dead foods turn off higher levels of awareness and keep people focused on whatever distractions you can feed their brains: Television, violence, fear, sports, sex and so on. But living as a zombie is, in one way quite “normal” in society today because so many people are doing it. But that doesn’t make it normal in my book: The real “normal” is an empowered, healthy, awakened person nourished with living foods and operating as a sovereign citizen in a free world. Eating living foods is like taking the red pill because over time it opens up a whole new perspective on the fabric of reality. It sets you free to think for yourself. But eating processed junk foods is like taking the blue pill because it keeps you trapped in a fabricated reality where your life experiences are fabricated by consumer product companies who hijack your senses with designer chemicals (like MSG) that fool your brain into thinking you’re eating real food. If you want to be alive, aware and in control of your own life, eat more healthy living foods. But don’t expect to be popular with mainstream mental health “experts” or dieticians — they’re all being programmed to consider you to be “crazy” because you don’t follow their mainstream diets of dead foods laced with synthetic chemicals. But you and I know the truth here: We are the normal ones. The junk food eaters are the real mental patients, and the only way to wake them up to the real world is to start feeding them living foods. Some people are ready to take the red pill, and others aren’t. All you can do is show them the door. They must open it themselves. In the mean time, try to avoid the mental health agents who are trying to label you as having a mental disorder just because you pay attention to what you put in your body. There’s nothing wrong with avoiding sugar, soy, MSG, aspartame, HFCS and other toxic chemicals in the food supply. In fact, your very life depends on it. Oh, and by the way, if you want to join the health experts who keep inventing new fictitious diseases and disorders, check out my popular Disease Mongering Engine web page where you can invent your own new diseases at the click of a button! You’ll find it at: http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mongering-engine.asp Sources for this story include: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/16/orthorexia-mental-health-eating-disorder

To save America’s health, we must end nutritional illiteracy among doctors, patients

(NaturalNews) An obese doctor comes home to his wife at dinner time carrying yet another bag full of drive-through junk food from a local restaurant. Worried about his health, his wife asks, “Don’t you realize all that junk food you keep eating is destroying your entire body?” “That’s not my concern,” the doctor replies. “I’m only an ear, nose and throat specialist.” This joke illustrates an important point: That even the most brilliant scientists, doctors and researchers can seem downright clueless when it comes to their own health. And this joke isn’t really a joke at all: It’s a sad but true commentary about the blind spots in the knowledge of those who are among society’s most intelligent thinkers. I’ve known many brilliant people. Even a few geniuses. But rarely do I meet anyone whose knowledge of food and nutrition rises very far above outright ignorance. Perhaps one in a hundred people in the western world today have taken it upon themselves to actually learn about foods and health — the rest simply wing it, going along with the mainstream. (And the mainstream is diseased…) Brilliance in one field doesn’t always translate into nutrition But here’s the really interesting part: The more intelligent a person is in their own field of specialty, the more informed they think they are about foods and nutrition (even if they aren’t). A typical rocket scientist, for example, is so used to being right that when it comes to his dietary decisions and food shopping habits, he thinks he is right by the mere fact that he is the one making his food consumption decisions. Because he’s always right, then whatever decision he makes — whether it deals with food, finances or relationships — must also be the right decision. Making matters even worse, really smart people are especially susceptible to strategies of non-conscious persuasion — such as those used by food advertisers. Food companies don’t appeal to logic and reason when advertising their junk foods because there really isn’t much logic or reason behind consuming their products at all. Instead, they use emotional anchoring to unconsciously attach feelings to brands. That way, when you’re in the store shopping, you unconsciously experience a preference for a particular product or brand without knowing why . This gets the smart people every time, it seems. They may have superior logic and intellect compared to the rest of the world, but when you examine their grocery store receipts, they’re buying all the same junk as the guy with an IQ of 70 who lives next door. Having brains, it seems, doesn’t necessarily translate into making good decisions about food and health. And yet these people should know better. Food and consequences Most scientists, doctors and high-IQ people believe in The Law of Cause and Effect . Every action (a cause) results in some reaction (an effect). Every input has an output. Most people acknowledge this universal truth, and yet when it comes to foods and health, there’s a bizarre disconnect about this. People have been trained by the big food companies — and even government regulators to a large extent — that what they choose to eat has almost no bearing on their health outcomes. The establishment would rather have you believe that your genes control your health while glossing over the far more important point that it is your diet that controls the expression of your genes. They would rather ignore the truthful fact that vitamin D prevents infectious disease 500% better than a vaccine because this allows them to promote vaccines rather than teach nutritional responsibility. Even mainstream dieticians from the American Dietetic Association are taught that there is no difference between dead foods and living foods . A calorie is a calorie, they’re taught, no matter where it comes from or whether it’s in a plant from Mother Nature or a sugar factory made by Man. The nutritional ignorance in our culture is astounding, and as long as such ignorance remains so widespread, we will never achieve a health care system that’s both effective and affordable. As long as our doctors remain nutritionally illiterate, we will never have a health care system that values educating patients about what they put in their mouths. Ignorance is the enemy of lasting health , and sadly our own government institutions such as the FDA maintain policies of enforced ignorance that outlaw companies selling natural products from linking to scientific studies that discuss the health benefits of their products. Everything from cherries, green tea and walnuts have been under relentless attacks by the FDA, which threatens company founders with arrest and prosecution unless they remove their website links to point to scientific studies published in peer-reviewed science journals. (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html) One important victory over FDA censorship has just been achieved in the courts (http://www.naturalnews.com/028929_FDA_health_claims.html), but the FDA’s campaign of enforced ignorance continues. Nutritional ignorance may be fantastic for generating obscene profits for the drug companies, but it’s a terrible policy for public health. Americans will only achieve true lasting health when they are granted open access to truthful information about the healing capabilities of natural foods, superfoods, nutritonal supplements and herbal remedies. Until that day comes, we will remain a nation locked in a cycle of ignorance and disease that will ultimately bankrupt us at every level. Nutrition can help us break that cycle, but only if we can get past the ignorance and unleash a new era of nutritional literacy for our people. Read my related report, “Nutrition Can Save America!” for more details on how this might work: http://www.naturalnews.com/report_Nutrition_Health_America_0.html And keep reading NaturalNews.com to stay informed. We’ll keep bringing you more news about natural remedies, nutritional cures, and the dangers of synthetic chemicals. If you’d like these stories brought to your attention via email, just subscribe to our free daily email newsletter using the subscription form below. It’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Raw tahini, organic sun-dried figs and my health products philosophy

(NaturalNews) Tahini is one of the favorite foods used by vegans, raw foodies and everyday health-conscious people. But not everyone is familiar with tahini. What is it, exactly? Just like peanut butter is made from grinding up peanuts, tahini is made from grinding up sesame seeds! It is essentially sesame seed butter , with all the beneficial nutritional properties of sesame seeds. Tahini is used by food enthusiasts to make all sorts of amazing recipes, from salad dressings and dips to cookies. You can use it to make a glazing for baked tofu, or add it to garbanzo beans to make a delicious hummus. You can even use it in veggie burger recipes (mix it with black beans and mushrooms). Tahini is extremely versatile due to its complementary taste that seems to go well in both sweet and salty foods. Why raw tahini is simply better Most tahini, by the way, is roasted . And as you know, roasting or cooking nuts destroys some portion of their inherent nutrients. That’s why many people who eat tahini like to get it raw . But raw tahini is a bit difficult to find in the stores, of course. And even when it’s raw, it’s usually extremely expensive, costing anywhere from $19 – $21 a jar at health food stores. That’s where the NaturalNews Store comes in. Once again, we’ve scored a huge discount for you on raw tahini. And not just any tahini, but the “Living Tree” brand of organic raw tahini, which is the brand that’s best loved by those who know about raw foods. Through what can only be called really good timing (and some good fortune to boot), we were able to acquire several hundred jars of this organic Living Tree raw tahini at an extraordinary price. You see, even at online retailers, these jars normally sell for $14.95 each. But through this special, we’ve been able to offer them to you at just $8.95 a jar — that’s over 50% off the typical retail price, and over 40% off the typical online price. But it gets even better: When you purchase 3 jars of this organic, raw Living Tree tahini, the price drops to just $8.06 per jar! That’s 57% off typical retail price , and it’s the best price you’re likely to ever see on this extremely high-end raw tahini product. Take advantage of this remarkable pricing by clicking here. At this price, these jars of extremely high-end tahini will go quickly. Sundried, organic JUMBO Turkish figs Having lived in Ecuador for quite some time, I really came to enjoy eating fresh raw figs. They’re called “higos” in Spanish, and it’s pronounced like “egos.” So my neighbors and I would joke about how big we could grow our figs, and we’d accuse each other of having “the biggest egos in Ecuador” which always drew a laugh. In the U.S., I’ve never seen fresh, raw figs in the grocery stores. That’s because they don’t last very long. They’re good for about a day, and then they go soft and mushy. But if you catch them on that day, fresh off the tree when they’re dark purple, they’re amazing! I must have planted over a dozen fig trees on my ranch in the Valley of Longevity. You can see pictures of these huge figs from my ranch right here (along with other amazing plants): http://www.naturalnews.com/phototours/vilcabamba/index.html Anyway, in the USA the figs you buy are normally dried figs , and they’re really delicious, too! When properly dried, they concentrate their natural (delicious!) sugars while preserving most of their nutrients, too. They make an incredible, all-natural fruit snack. What’s really fun is to dip them in tahini ! I often use a spoon to pack some tahini on a dried fig, then I pop it into my mouth and enjoy. It’s a satisfying yet simple snack. A great discount on organic dried figs New in the NaturalNews Store, we’ve got one-pound bags of sundried organic Turkish figs at a great deal price (as you’ve come to expect of us!). Normally, a one-pound bag retails for $12.95. At times you can find it at $9.95 a pound. But now, through our special acquisition, we’re able to offer these to NaturalNews readers for $7.95 / lb. . That’s a savings of nearly 29% off the retail price. It gets even better when you purchase 3 bags of these organic Turkish figs, because the price drops to $7.16 / lb. , which is really just an extraordinary price for organic sundried Turkish figs. Sure, you can find conventional figs at that price, but almost never organic figs at this price. If you want some of these amazing organic sundried figs, click here to take advantage of this deal. My philosophy for recommending products Here at NaturalNews, we’ve gained quite a winning reputation for putting together some really fantastic deals on some of the healthiest food and superfood products available anywhere. Through these product offerings, we’ve saved NaturalNews readers many tens of thousands of dollars on top-notch products. I thought you might like to know how I choose what to offer through the NaturalNews Store, because these are decisions I take quite seriously. Here’s my philosophy: • I only recommend products I consume MYSELF and would openly recommend to my closest friends or family members. • I only recommend products that contain NO JUNK, no artificial ingredients, no chemical sweeteners, etc. • I tend to recommend products from companies that I know and TRUST. For example, our special offer on X-Balance superfood came out of my trust and friendship with Jan Lovejoy, the formulator of that product (who is a really wonderful human being on top of her great product formulation ability). • I always work hard to bring you an extraordinary price on everything. It’s usually the best price you’ll ever find on that item. You’ll never see me recommending junk like conventional soy protein, food bars made with Sucralose, watered-down fruit beverages made with fructose, etc. I would never eat those things myself, so I wouldn’t dare recommend them to you, either. You see, I take a different approach than most resellers. I’m not interested in selling low-quality items, regardless of how much profit they might deliver. Most retailers know that the lower quality products actually give them MORE profit. That’s why mainstream grocery retailers stack diet soda and Frito-Lay fried snack chips on the aisle end caps: They generate huge profits (because they’re made with highly refined, cheap ingredients). But I don’t believe in doing business that way. My primary concern is your health , and when I can help bring you health-supporting products, I’m thrilled to be able to have the buying power to deliver those products at really good prices. Every item you’ll see me recommend here on NaturalNews is a top-notch food, supplement, kitchen appliance or other health-related item that I know you’ll find to be immensely beneficial in your own quest for health and happiness. Thank you for your continued support of the NaturalNews Store, and we’ll keep doing our best to bring you more high-end products when we get find them at deep discounts for you. See the full list of our store specials by clicking here.

Why Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt is so much better for your health than processed table salt

(NaturalNews) If you’ve been reading NaturalNews for long, you’ve heard me talk about the importance of switching from processed table salt to a “full spectrum” salt. Table salt — or “white salt” — is to real salt as table sugar is to dehydrated cane juice. Both white table salt and white sugar are devoid of the full spectrum of minerals and other nutrients that protect and enhance your health. Here in Ecuador, I regularly drink jugo de caa , for example (fresh, raw sugar cane juice), but I would never think of eating refined white sugar. I don’t use refined white table salt, either. Instead, I use Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt because it contains the full spectrum of 84 minerals and trace elements just like Mother Earth intended. It is an unrefined, unprocessed “raw” salt that’s hand-mined from abundant salt caves that were formed 250 million years ago as ocean salt settled in certain geologic pockets around the earth. Most of the western world thinks of salt as sodium chloride — a highly refined, processed white substance that’s devoid of nutrients. Salt is so devoid of nutrients, in fact, that in the early 20th century, doctors noticed that people who ate white table salt started to suffer chronic degenerative diseases such as goiter . This was caused by the lack of iodine in the salt. Iodine deficiency, by the way, is the No. 1 most preventable cause of mental retardation . Eating processed salt that lacks iodine, in other words, can cause your offspring to be retarded. Now what’s really interesting about processed table salt is that it’s missing over 80 minerals . But they only put ONE mineral back in — iodine. That’s because iodine is the one mineral that causes the most obvious disease (goiter is sort of hard to not notice). Iodine is a naturally occurring mineral in the ocean. It’s abundant in seafood and in real sea salt, but it’s completely missing from refined white table salt. So they started adding iodine to table salt, creating “iodized salt.” But why would you want to eat salt that’s been artificially enriched with ONE mineral when you could be eating salt that naturally contains eighty-four minerals? Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt contains 84 minerals and trace minerals, including iodine! And below we share a link where you can get it at 33% off… Beware of the “sea salt” scam You’ve probably noticed a lot of processed salt companies now claiming to offer “sea salt.” The truth is, virtually all salt is sea salt because it all came from the sea at one time or another in the Earth’s history. The term “sea salt” is essentially meaningless. White processed salt can still be called “sea salt” even though it is devoid of full-spectrum sea minerals. The way to tell if your salt is really full-spectrum salt is to look at the color . If it’s pure white, it’s not full-spectrum. White salt is just like white sugar: It’s missing the key supporting minerals and nutrients your body needs. Full-spectrum salt always has a non-white color. Celtic Sea Salt, for example (which is really good salt) has a brownish sandy color. Our Pink Himalayan salt is a sort of sandy rose color. All the truly natural full-spectrum salts are sandy or brownish in color. Save 33% on our full-spectrum salt Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt normally sells for $14.95 per pound. With this week’s special for NaturalNews readers, we’ve discounted the one-pound bag to $12.95 (a 13% savings). When you buy three one-pound bags of Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt, the price drops to just $9.98 per bag. Three pounds of this full-spectrum salt are just $29.95 (a 33% savings!). Click here to take advantage of this NaturalNews discount on Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt. The 3-pack is our best price on full-spectrum salt, and if you don’t need all 3 pounds for yourself, they make fantastic gifts for family or friends! Some other things you may not know about full-spectrum salt: • This product stores for years. It’s naturally shelf-stable as long as you keep it relatively dry and unopened. Store in a dark, cool place for longest shelf life. • Full-spectrum salt is a crucial preparedness item . Your body cannot live without salt, and in a crisis situation, real salt may be very difficult to come by in many areas. Storing full-spectrum salt is not only good for your health today; it’s a type of nutritional insurance against future food shortages. • If you exercise a lot, juice a lot or live in a very hot climate, your body may actually need more salt than you’re getting. But processed salt doesn’t provide all the minerals your body needs to replenish. Only full-spectrum salt fulfills your body’s true salt needs. • A craving for junk foods is often just a craving for full-spectrum salt. When your body lacks minerals, it urges you to consume more. This is often mistranslated in your mind as a craving for salty snack foods. But consuming full-spectrum salt (in a reasonable amount) can often ease your junk food cravings. Pick up Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt today by clicking here. Where it comes from Our Himalayan Pink Crystal Salt comes from the Himalayan Region of the Karakoram mountain range located 400 miles from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakoram) Our salt is always stone ground . No metal ever touches the salt during grinding. All the salt is extracted by hand from the salt caves (ancient sea bed deposits). No salt from other sources is mixed with this salt. This is 100% from the Karakoram mountain range salt caves. These salt deposits are roughly 250 million years old, meaning they were deposited long before the earth became polluted with heavy metals, pesticides and PCBs. While there is really no such thing as “organic” salt, this is probably the most pristine salt you’ll find anywhere on the planet. Eating this salt is a lot like going back in time and consuming minerals from pre-industrial Earth. Get some for yourself by clicking here. This is the salt I use regularly. I actually add salt to raw foods recipes (like raw guacamole) in order to increase my mineral intake. That’s necessary because I eat very few packaged foods that are high in salt. Plus, I exercise regularly so I’m losing a lot of minerals through sweating. This is why salt intake is a regular part of my diet. To me, it’s actually a type of superfood, and I make sure I get enough full-spectrum salt on a daily basis. Note: If you have high blood pressure or eat a lot of salty processed foods, then obviously don’t add more salt to your diet. Instead, replace the junky processed salt in your diet with full-spectrum salt. Stop eating salty snack chips and canned soups (those soup cans are lined with BPA, too) and start eating fresh juice smoothies and homemade cuisine made with full-spectrum salt.

Naturally Reduce Your Chances of Getting Cancer, Part I

(NaturalNews) Mainstream health experts have estimated that up to 40% of all cancer could be prevented with more immunizations against diseases that increase cancer risks and with healthy changes in diet and lifestyle. Many natural health experts believe that the figure could be closer to 90% and could be achieved without the widespread immunizations called for by mainstream medicine – immunizations are themselves risk factors for cancer. Toxins and illness, especially viral illnesses, often result in prolonged inflammation that leads to a cellular defensive response that ends up resulting in cancer. Exposure to various forms of radiation can also lead to cancer. Avoiding those causes of cancer and taking measures to prevent them from causing cancer are the keys to preventing cancer. The immune system is our natural first line against cancer and illness, including illness that leads to cancer. In order for any illness to gain a foothold, it must first defeat the immune system. Consequently, it would appear obvious that building and maintaining a healthy and robust immune system would be an essential first step in avoiding cancer. Avoiding the toxins in our air, water and food supply is a second essential for avoiding cancer and a third one is avoiding radiation. In order to build a healthy immune system and avoid cancer causes, one should first build a healthy foundation. Keys to building a healthy foundation are replacing bad health habits such as smoking and a sedentary lifestyle with good ones and making sure that one gets all the nutrition needed for optimum health. For many of us, that means changing our diet from the unhealthy SAD diet of most Americans to one that exchanges the junk food and harmful processed food to a diet that includes mostly raw and mostly organic vegetables and fruits, as well as healthy seeds. The healthiest includes plenty of omega-3s, adequate iodine and other essentials, a minimum of processed and GMO foods, and modest portions of meat. Meat should either be cold water fish or small portions of organic free range meats that have not been subjected to feed lot practices; feedlot meats are likely to contain antibiotics and growth hormones that may promote cancer. Processed meats are the unhealthiest of all. It is virtually impossible to get even the minimum RDA of all essential nutrients from diet alone, much less the optimum daily amounts needed for the best health. Sadly, most of us are deficient in multiple nutrients thanks not only to our diets but also to our over-farmed soils, cold storage produce and foods on our grocers’ shelves that have had much of the nutrition processed out. Therefore, supplementation with specific nutrients, a good whole foods derived nutrient combination, and/or a good superfoods powder may be necessary to help achieve optimum health and immune systems. Other key considerations for building a healthy foundation include living an active lifestyle, getting plenty of life giving sunshine and elimination of all pesticides, herbicides, and other common household chemicals not found in nature. The above suggestions will go a long way towards avoiding cancer. Others, such as those who have a family history of cancer and those who have had a viral illness or other disease associated with higher cancer risk, may want to go even farther. In the concluding part of this series, we will take a look at extra measures people can take to give them the maximum protection against cancer and at why immunizations may not be the answer we’ve been told to believe.. For more information about building a healthy foundation, see: http://www.tbyil.com/healthy_foundation.htm Sources included: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6113PX20100202 http://www.naturalnews.com/022808_cancer_health_Oleander.html http://www.tbyil.com/healthy_foundation.htm About the author Tony Isaacs, is a natural health advocate and researcher and the author of books and articles about natural health including ” Cancer’s Natural Enemy ” and ” Collected Remedies “as well as song lyrics and humorous anecdotal stories. Mr. Isaacs also has The Best Years in Life website for baby boomers and others wishing to avoid prescription drugs and mainstream managed illness and live longer, healthier and happier lives naturally. He is currently residing in the scenic Texas hill country near Utopia, Texas where he serves as a consultant to the Utopia Silver colloidal silver and supplement company and where he is working on a major book project due for publication later this year. Mr. Isaacs also hosts the CureZone ” Ask Tony Isaacs ” forum as well as the Yahoo Health Group ” Oleander Soup “

Broths Contain Mysterious Ingredients

(NaturalNews) There’s a company that dominates the soup business, but its products are at best bland and mushy. You probably know who I’m talking about. Some of the company’s soups contain so much salt that they’re the human equivalent of a salt lick. For example, its chicken noodle soup dishes up a whopping 890 mg of sodium per serving, and 2,225 grams of sodium per can. This company also owns the leading maker of various chicken broths and stocks. Until recently, that subsidiary spiked its tasteless products with monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer. But MSG is well documented as a cause of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. I’m not joking. Every Chinese restaurant used to boost the flavor of its meals by adding MSG. But a fair number of customers complained of neck and muscle aches afterwards, the result of MSG. So now, a lot of Chinese restaurants don’t use MSG anymore. But I digress. The company recently introduced organic chicken, beef, and vegetable broths. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, the company’s website admits that the broths contain 550 mg of sodium for each one-cup serving. If you like to use a lot of broth, that could add up to 1,100 mg of sodium per real-world serving. And maybe one blood-pressure cuff. But no where on the company’s website is a full listing of the products’ other ingredients found. This is more than just peculiar, because all of the junk food and fast food companies you can think of list their product ingredients on their websites. So that left me wondering what the soup and broth company might be hiding. So I clicked to contact customer service and wrote a brief email asking for a complete list of ingredients for their organic products. Sounds simple enough, right? A few days later, some anonymous person emailed me back: “All of our products have nutritional labels that include the calorie, sodium, fat, cholesterol and carbohydrate content for a single serving. However, it is important to note that product recipes change frequently and ingredients are periodically added or replaced. Therefore, we suggest that you check each package for the most current nutritional information…” So I wrote back and said that they had NOT answered my question. And I also wondered, adding a list of full ingredients to the website can’t be all that difficult, could it? After all, it’s got to be easier to update a web page compared with…say, reformulating the ingredients in an industrial-size soup and broth manufacturing facility. Finally I went to both my local supermarket and health food store, but did not find any of the company’s organic broths on the shelf. So their ingredients remain a mystery to me. After all this, I can’t help but wonder: Why couldn’t the world’s biggest soup company just be more up front about its ingredients and list them on its website? Unless, they really want to hide what’s in them, that is. About the author Jack Challem, The Nutrition Reporter ™, is a personal nutrition coach and one of America’s most trusted nutrition and health writers. Based in Tucson, Arizona, he is the bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Stop Prediabetes Now, The Food-Mood Solution, Feed Your Genes Right, and The Inflammation Syndrome. Jack is a columnist for Alternative and Complementary Therapies and his scientific articles have also appeared in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Medical Hypotheses, and other journals. Free, downloadable excerpts from his books, and sample issues of his print newsletters are available at http://www.nutritionreporter.com.

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