Health Stuff You Need to Know – Page 12

Boycott Kellogg’s!

Someone needs to spank Kellogg’s on its sugar-frosted hiney. And If I bought Kellogg’s products I would join the call to boycott them. How does a company devoted to setting little kids on the path to Type 2 diabetes get all sanctimonious about Michael Phelps and a bong hit? His behavior is inconsistent with its image, the company says. Huh? How can that be? Tony the Tiger is generally the first pusher of addictive substances in a child’s life. That’s the American way.

Take Frosted Flakes. The company recommends a 3/4-cup serving, but come on that’s like eating a handful of sugary air. A real bowl is about two to three times that amount. That means kids can start the day with up to 36 grams of sugar, or about 9 teaspoons per bowl. Multiply that morning after morning.

Then there are Crack-its, or rather, Cheez-its. I don’t care what the serving portion is, can anyone stop at anything under half a box? Anyway, the larger point is this: He’s a 23-year-old young man who got caught doing what 23-year-old young men do. Phelps has apologized. He can still be president. And most of his other sponsors, like Speedo, seem to be sticking with him.

Why is Kellogg’s hyperventilating over this? Frankly, I think the company is shooting itself in its frosted foot. It will never find a better pitch man. The message was streamlined and simple: eat this food and you too will have to swim 17 hours a day.

Anyway, over on Huffingont Post, Lee Stranahan takes a different tack. He argues that Kellogg’s is alienating its most devoted adult client base, the stoner crowd. Here are snippets from his petition calling for boycott:

1) Kellogg’s is a major manufacturer of cereal and junk food products including but not limited to Frosted Flakes, Pop Tarts, Cheez-Its, Froot Loops, Keebler’s Cookies, Rice Krispies, Eggo Frozen Waffles, Famous Amos Cookies and many other products known to be a part of the diet of many marijuana using Americans

2) Kellogg’s has profited for decades on the food tastes of marijuana using Americans with the munchies. In fact, we believe that most people over the age of twelve would not eat Kellogg’s products were they not wicked high.

3)That Kellogg’s has decided to end their relationship with Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps after pictures of him surfaced doing exactly what most Kellogg’s customers do right before enjoying a bowl of Rice Krispies mixed with Keebler Cookies with an Eggo on top.

The rest is pretty funny and worth a read.

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

DEA continues pot raids Obama opposes. President vowed to end policy.

Stephen Dinan and Ben Conery THE WASHINGTON TIMES Thursday, February 5, 2009

Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical
marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama’s campaign
promises to stop the raids.

DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart

The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr.
Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush
administration holdovers.

“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to
circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to
fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review
their policies with that in mind,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Medical use of marijuana is legal under the law in California and a dozen
other states, but the federal government under President Bush, bolstered by
a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, argued that federal interests trumped state
law.

Dogged by marijuana advocates throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly
said he was opposed to using the federal government to raid medical
marijuana shops, particularly because it was an infringement on states’
decisions.

“I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent
state laws on this issue,” Mr. Obama told the Mail Tribune newspaper in
Oregon in March, during the Democratic primary campaign.

He told the newspaper the “basic concept of using medical marijuana for the
same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by
doctors, I think that’s entirely appropriate.”

Mr. Obama is still filling key law enforcement posts. For now, DEA is run by
acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee.

Special Agent Sarah Pullen of the DEA’s Los Angeles office said agents
raided four marijuana dispensaries about noon Tuesday. Two were in Venice
and one each was in Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Ray — all in the Los
Angeles area.

A man who answered the phone at Marina Caregivers in Marina Del Rey said his
shop was the target of a raid but declined to elaborate, saying the shop was
just trying to get back to operating.

Agent Pullen said the four raids seized $10,000 in cash and 224 kilograms of
marijuana and marijuana-laced food, such as cookies. No one was arrested,
she said, but the raid is part of an ongoing investigation seeking to trace
the marijuana back to its suppliers or source.

She said agents have conducted 30 or 40 similar raids in the past several
years, many of which resulted in prosecutions.

“It’s clear that the DEA is showing no respect for President Obama’s
campaign promises,” said Dan Bernath, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy
Project in Washington, which advocates for medical marijuana and for
decriminalizing the drug.

California allows patients whose doctors prescribe marijuana to use the
drug. The state has set up a registry to allow patients to obtain cards
allowing them to possess, grow, transport and use marijuana.

Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group
in California, called the raids an attempt to undermine state law and said
they were apparently conducted without the knowledge of Los Angeles city or
police officials.

He said the DEA has raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in the state
since Mr. Obama was inaugurated and that the first took place on Jan. 22 in
South Lake Tahoe.

“President Obama needs to keep a promise he made, not just in one campaign
stop, but in multiple speeches that he would not be spending Justice
Department funds on these kinds of raids,” Mr. Hermes said. “We do want to
give him a little bit of leeway, but at the same time we’re expecting him to
stop this egregious enforcement policy that is continuing into his
presidency.”

He said he is aware that Mr. Obama has not installed his own DEA chief but
that new Attorney General “Eric Holder can still suspend these types of
operations.”

The Justice Department referred questions to the White House.

NORML Responds To Phelp’s Pot-Smoking Controversy

Washington, DC: Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps and tens of millions of other successful Americans have smoked marijuana; America’s laws should reflect this fact not deny it, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano wrote on The Hill.com’s influential Congress blog this week.

The Hill is a popular Washington, DC publication that is widely read by members of Congress and their staff.

Armentano writes: Sure, there will be some who will say that this latest chapter in Phelp’s life is deserving of criticism because the 14-time gold medalist is sending a poor message to young children. And what message would that be? That you can occasionally smoke marijuana and still be successful in life. Well sorry if the truth hurts.”

Earlier this week, Phelps acknowledged that he used marijuana while attending a college party in November. A photograph of Phelps smoking cannabis at the party appeared in a British tabloid on Sunday.

To date, more than 200 readers have posted feedback to NORML’s commentary, making it one of the most commented on essays in Hill.com history.

Full text of Armentano’s editorial, Why condemn Phelps when we ought to condemn the laws that brand him a criminal,” is available online at: http://tinyurl.com/b2aqg3

ETHANOL MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY COSTLY THAN GAS & DIESEL

ENN – Some biofuels cause more health problems than petrol and diesel, according to scientists who have calculated the health costs associated with different types of fuel. The study shows that corn-based bioethanol, which is produced extensively in the US, has a higher combined environmental and health burden than conventional fuels. However, there are high hopes for the next generation of biofuels, which can be made from organic waste or plants grown on marginal land that is not used to grow foods. They have less than half the combined health and environmental costs of standard gasoline and a third of current biofuels.

The work adds to an increasing body of research raising concerns about the impact of modern corn-based biofuels.

Several studies last year showed that growing corn to make ethanol biofuels was pushing up the price of food. Environmentalists have highlighted other problems such deforestation to clear land for growing crops to make the fuels. The UK government’s renewable fuels advisors recommended slowing down the adoption of biofuels until better controls were in place to prevent inadvertent climate impacts.

Using computer models developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the researchers found the total environmental and health costs of gasoline are about 71 cents (50p) per gallon, while an equivalent amount of corn-ethanol fuel has associated costs of 72 cents to $1.45, depending on how it is produced.

Voter Power makes the News! Initiative 28 MMJ

Voter Power’s recent events have garnered good media attention for both Initiative 28, the Regulated Medical Marijuana Supply System Initiative and medical marijuana in general. Voter Power’s efforts to help all patients have access to medicine and generate additional revenue for the state were featured in both the Oregonian and local Fox affiliates.

To see the Fox coverage of the symposium at Southern Oregon University regarding the conflict between state medical marijuana laws and the federal government, go to: http://kdrv.com/page/86075

The Oregonian covered the Ed Rosenthal Seminar in Portland and the entire story is reproduced below. For more info, please visit www.votepower.org

‘YOU’RE ALIVE; YOU’RE NOT LIVING’

Marijuana Could Prevent Alzheimer’s, New Study

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 27, @09:36AM

from the that’s-just-like-your-opinion-man dept.

Chickan writes “‘A puff a day might keep Alzheimer’s away, according to marijuana research by professor Gary Wenk and associate professor Yannic Marchalant of the Ohio State Department of Psychology. Wenk’s studies show that a low dosage in the morning of a certain cannabinoid, a component in marijuana, reversed memory loss in older rats’ brains. In his study, an experimental group of old rats received a dosage, and a control group of rats did not. The old rats that received the drugs performed better on memory tests, and the drug slowed and prevented brain cell death.’ My fine university’s dollars at work!” Maybe it works even better in combination with brain-preserving sips of coffee.

Dr. Rima Recommends: Divest the FDA!

I’ve posted another detailed example of why the FDA must be divested of its food authority before its mismanagement causes even more harm on our Health Freedom Blog (http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=1961). The Federal Government’s obscene “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding GMO (genetically modified organisms) “food” creates the conditions for a mega-disaster of unimaginable severity.

Plant Based Vaccines Under Development World Wide

Once genetic material migrates from a modified plant or animal into other plants, animals, insect, or what have you, that migration is permanent except for one thing: the DNA is not stable so it literally “jumps around” causing novel proteins to be expressed.

Novel proteins, or proteins which have never existed before during the course of all life on this planet, have novel impacts. Read that as “infertility”, “sterility”, “cancers”, “auto-immune diseases”, “Joint and connective tissue diseases”, “neurological diseases”, “fetal death”, “failure to thrive”, “infant mortality”, etc. Babies in utero are particularly susceptible to the impact of these “novel proteins”, but no one is immune.

Worse, the genes have no stable place to reside in the DNA of whatever cell they are working in this week so they move from place to place to place inside the nucleus of the cell, causing the resident genes to change their functions and produce yet more novel proteins…

Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to tell Congress that you want GMOs safety assessed, GMOs clearly labeled and GMOs impact on the environment studied before GMOs do more damage.

Click here (https://hq-salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/hq/campaign/edit.jsp?table=campaign&key=26314) to help divest the FDA of its food regulation requirement.

SYNTHETIC CHEMICALS TIED TO INFERTILITY

Clive Cookson, Financial Times – A study of Danish women has found the first evidence that synthetic chemicals widely used in consumer products cause infertility. In a study to be published in the medical journal Human Reproduction, US scientists say they found that women with higher levels of perfluorinated chemicals in their blood took longer to become pregnant. Since the 1950s PFCs have been incorporated in many everyday items, including food packaging, textiles, upholstery, carpets and personal products. They are coming under increasing suspicion for having damaged human health – and particularly for causing infertility – by disrupting hormones. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, who carried out the study, claim they are the first to provide statistical evidence that PFCs have an effect on people. Chunyuan Fei of UCLA said: “Animal studies have shown that these chemicals may have a variety of toxic effects on the liver, immune system and developmental and reproductive organs. Very few human studies have been done.”

Much High Fructose Corn Syrup Contaminated With Mercury, New Study Finds

Press Release
Brand-Name Food Products Also Discovered to Contain Mercury
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), Jan 26, 2009
Straight to the Source

Minneapolis – Mercury was found in nearly 50 percent of tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), according to a new article published today in the scientific journal, Environmental Health. A separate study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) detected mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brandname food and beverage products where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient-including products by Quaker, Hershey’s, Kraft and Smucker’s.

HFCS use has skyrocketed in recent decades as the sweetener has replaced sugar in many processed foods. HFCS is found in sweetened beverages, breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS. Consumption by teenagers and other high consumers can be up to 80 percent above average levels.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms,” said IATP’s David Wallinga, M.D., and a co-author in both studies. “Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply.”

In the Environmental Health article, Dufault et al. found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS. Dufault was working at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration when the tests were done in 2005. She and co-authors conclude that possible mercury contamination of food chemicals like HFCS was not common knowledge within the food industry that frequently uses the sweetener. While the FDA had evidence that commercial HFCS was contaminated with mercury four years ago, the agency did not inform consumers, help change industry practice or conduct additional testing.

For its report “Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup,” IATP sent 55 brand-name foods and beverages containing HFCS as the first or second ingredient to a commercial laboratory to be tested for total mercury. Nearly one in three products tested contained detectable mercury. Mercury was most prevalent in HFCScontaining dairy products, followed by dressings and condiments. Attached is the summary list of the 55 products and their total mercury content.

In making HFCS, caustic soda is used, among other things, to separate corn starch from the corn kernel. For decades, HFCS has been made using mercury-grade caustic soda produced in industrial chlorine (chlor-alkali) plants. The use of mercury cells to produce caustic soda can contaminate caustic soda, and ultimately HFCS, with mercury.

“The bad news is that nobody knows whether or not their soda or snack food contains HFCS made from ingredients like caustic soda contaminated with mercury,” said Dr. Wallinga. “The good news is that mercury-free HFCS ingredients exist. Food companies just need a good push to only use those ingredients.”

While most chlorine plants around the world have switched to newer, cleaner technologies, many still rely on the use of mercury cells. In 2005, 90 percent of chlorine production was mercury-free, but just 40 percent of European production was mercury-free. Four U.S. chlor-alkali plants still rely on mercury cell technology. In 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama introduced legislation to force the remaining chlor-alkali plants to phase out mercury cell technology by 2012.

The Environmental Health article by Dufault et al. can be found at: www.ehjournal.net.

“Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup,” by David Wallinga, M.D., Janelle Sorensen, Pooja Mottl and Brian Yablon, M.D., can be found at: www.iatp.org.

IATP works locally and globally at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems. www.iatp.org