Choose Your Poison

Addiction Commonality

Alcohol, Opiates, Fat and Sugar are all Addictive Substances: this blog is about that "addiction sameness".

Butter Pig Family

* A butter sculpture of a sow and her piglets

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

FARM SANCTUARY WARNS OF UNSAFE AND INHUMANE FOOD PROCESSING

YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ this new Huffington Post blog by Farm Sanctuary’s Senior Advocacy Director Bruce Friedrich titled “USDA Inspector General: Food Safety and Humane Slaughter Laws Ignored With Impunity.” 

Basically, according to a new report released last week by the USDA Office of the Inspector General (OIG),contaminated pork is pouring out of slaughterhouses. Surprisingly, perhaps because of the Farm Bill, there hasn’t been even one sentence written about the report in the media, beyond a few meat industry Blogs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/usda-inspector-general-fo_b_3333853.html

I hope you will consider writing about this extremely concerning report, or sharing a link to Bruce’s blog. Bruce Friedrich is available for interview any time.

Cheers,
Meredith
Meredith Turner
Media Relations Specialist
646-369-6212

Connect with Farm Sanctuary:
Facebook| Twitter | YouTube | FarmSanctuary.org

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Factory Farming

Factory Farming




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Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.  Anon.


Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?  Abraham Lincoln


Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.  La Rochefoucauld


Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.  Samuel Butler


Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.  Aristotle



To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know
what to do with one’s freedom.  Andre Gide


The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau


There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it. George Bernard Shaw


The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.  Abraham Lincoln


Write down your injuries in dust and your benefits in marble. Benjamin Frank


The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.  James Baldwin



Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Fosdick



There is truth in the high opinion that in so far as a man conforms, he ceases to exist.  Max Eastman


Great opportunities come to those who make the most of small ones.  Anon.


Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength. It is the interest you pay on trouble before it comes. CTBoom

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.  G.K. Chesterton




Wealth is a relative thing, since he who has little and wants less is richer than he who has much and wants more. C. Colton










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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

USDA Inspector General: Food Safety and Humane Slaughter Laws Ignored With Impunity.”


  Huffington Post blog by Farm Sanctuary’s Senior Advocacy Director Bruce Friedrich titled “USDA Inspector General: Food Safety and Humane Slaughter Laws Ignored With Impunity.” 

Basically, according to a new report released last week by the USDA Office of the Inspector General (OIG),contaminated pork is pouring out of slaughterhouses. 

Surprisingly, perhaps because of the Farm Bill, there has not been even one sentence written about the report in the media, beyond a few meat industry Blogs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/usda-inspector-general-fo_b_3333853.html

I hope you will consider writing about this extremely concerning report, or sharing a link to Bruce’s blog. Bruce Friedrich is available for interview any time.

Cheers,
Meredith Turner
Media Relations Specialist
646-369-6212


..........................

Connect with Farm Sanctuary:

Facebook| Twitter | YouTube | FarmSanctuary.org



............................................



USDA Inspector General: 

Food Safety and Humane Slaughter Laws Ignored With Impunity


by Bruce Friedrich, Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives, Farm Sanctuary



Food Safety , Humane Slaughter, Office Of The Inspector General, Usda, Green News

Two weeks ago, the USDA's Office of the Inspector General released a report that, once again, proves that our food system is broken: 

1.  FSIS does not meaningfully attempt to stop repeat violations of food safety laws. 

2. it has allowed a 15-year-old pilot program with faster slaughter and fewer inspectors to proceed without review. 

3.  it all but ignores its humane slaughter mandate. 

Remarkably, unless you read Food Safety News or the agricultural media, you will have missed this extremely damning report.

First, FSIS' food safety oversight system in pig slaughterhouses is completely broken. 

Out of 44,128 identified violations of food safety laws at 616 slaughterhouses over four years, there were just 28 plant suspensions, all brief. Over these same four years, FSIS didn't reach enforcement stage 5 or 6 even once.

OIG offers examples of illegal activity that warranted but did not receive suspension, including:

At a South Carolina slaughterhouse, FSIS issued more than 800 violations, including fourteen for egregious violations like "fecal contamination on a hog after the final trim," almost 100 "for exposed or possibly adulterated products that had 'grease smears' or 'black colored liquid substance' on processed meat," and 43 for "pest control problems, such as cockroaches on the kill floor." This plant was not suspended even once.

At a Nebraska slaughterhouse, FSIS issued more than 600 violations, which included 50 repeat violations for "contaminated carcasses that included 'fecal material which was yellow [and] fibrous' on the carcass." FSIS never even reached enforcement stage three, notice of intended enforcement, let alone suspension.

At an Illinois slaughterhouse, FSIS issued more than 500 violations, including 26 repeat violations for "fecal matter and running abscesses on carcasses."  

Nevertheless, FSIS never even got to stage three on its 6-stage plan.

Second, fifteen years ago USDA approved a "pilot program" to speed slaughter lines and reduce inspector numbers in some plants, but it never bothered to see how the program is working.

Remarkably, the slaughterhouse with the most violations was such a plant, "with nearly 50 percent more [violations] than the plant with the next highest number."

One of these plants doesn't even require manual inspection of viscera, a requirement at the other 615 pig slaughter plants, because "some signs of disease and contamination can be detected only through a manual inspection.  

Third, even top FSIS personnel don't understand what the Humane Slaughter Act requires of them.

Decisions are "inconsistent, lenient, and endorsed by district officials." OIG officials visited just 30 plants, each for no more than 30 minutes, and yet they still witnessed multiple instances of animals regaining consciousness after "stunning," for which the inspector-in-charge chose not to issue a report (as was legally required). "If this occurred when our audit team and FSI officials were present, we are concerned that this might be more prevalent when the plants and inspectors are not being observed."

The OIG also reviewed violation reports for these 30 plants and found that of the 158 violations, there were 10 egregious violations that did not result in suspension, as is legally required.

As just two examples:

At an Indiana slaughterhouse, a worker shot a pig through the head with a captive bolt, which "lodged in the hog's skull. The hog remained conscious and aware while the plant sent for another gun, which was about 2 minutes away.

The second gun also appeared to misfire causing the hog to squeal, but it remained conscious and aware.

The hog then managed to dislodge the first gun from its skull. Ultimately, a portable electric stunner had to be used to successfully render the hog unconscious. Following this incident, FSIS cited another violation for a hog regaining consciousness on the rail. The plant was not suspended for either egregious incident."

At a Pennsylvania slaughterhouse, "a hog that had been stunned and bled regained consciousness. The hog was able to right its head, make noise, kick, and splash water in reaction to being placed in a scalding tank."

Yes, this poor animal was placed, throat slit open but conscious, into scalding hot water. "The inspector only issued an NR. The plant was not suspended."

Additionally, OIG interviewed 39 inspectors at the 30 plants they visited; one-third said they would not even issue a noncompliance report if they witnessed a conscious animal on the bleed rail (which legally requires suspension).

OIG noted that similar inspector confusion regarding their basic legal obligations was clear in reports from GAO and OIG in 2010 and 2008, yet nothing has been done to rectify the situation.

Every year according to the CDC, there are tens of millions of cases of food poisoning, hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations, and thousands of deaths. 

The agency charged with reducing these numbers,  FSIS is doing, a pathetically bad job,according to its Office of the Inspector General, 

Every year, roughly 150 million cattle and pigs are slaughtered in our nation's slaughterhouses, and the one measly law that attempts to ensure some small decrease in their abuse is all-but-ignored by the agency charged with enforcing it. Even their top personnel don't understand what it says.

Want to stop eating contaminated food and take a stand for compassion at the same time?

Please consider eliminating meat from your diet.





Office of the Inspector General

To promote effectiveness and integrity in the delivery of USDA agricultural programs.




Too Many Repeat Violators in Hog Slaughter, IG Report Says

BY DAN FLYNN | MAY 16, 2013

Too many repeat violations are occurring at federally inspected pig slaughter plants, and the problem lies with inadequate enforcement, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General. The IG‘s conclusion is found in a recently released audit report on USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) inspection and enforcement activities at the nation’s swine slaughter plants.

“FSIS’ enforcement policies do not deter swine slaughter plants from becoming repeat violators of food safety regulations,” the IG report says. During a three-year period ending with 2011, the IG said FSIS issued 44,128 noncompliance records (NRs), but only 28 of the nation’s 616 swine plants ever faced suspension.

NRs are citations for violations of sanitation regulations. “Mission-critical” violations are suppose to be entered into the FSIS monitoring system known as the Public Health Information System (PHIS) and subject to more aggressive enforcement by district offices.

From issuing NRs, inspectors in swine slaughter plants are charged with taking regulatory control with such actions as retaining product, rejecting equipment or facilities and slowing or stopping the lines to take immediate corrective action.

Following regulatory control, FSIS district offices are empowered to suspend, withhold the mark of inspection or even withdraw inspectors from the plant. But the IG says suspensions are rare and in the four-year scope of its investigation, no withholding or withdrawing actions were ever taken.

“For the few plants that were suspended, the suspensions only briefly interrupted plant activity,” says the IG report.

The audit found that even when a pattern of NRs were linked by the PHIS and the number of repeat violations were high, FSIS officials “did not feel a need to pursue progressively stronger enforcement action” if there was no immediate public health risk.

“We disagree with this practice because the plants repeated the same serious violations with little or no consequence,” the IG report says. Examples cited included:

A South Carolina plant that slaughtered 2,700 swine per day with violations that included 43 NRs for pests, such as cockroaches, on the kill floor.
A Nebraska plant that slaughtered 10,600 swine per day with 607 NRs, including 214 repeats, among them 50 for contaminated carcasses with “fecal material which was yellow (and) fibrous.”
An Illinois plant that slaughters 19,500 swine per day with 532 NRs and 139, or 26 percent of them, including repeats for “fecal matter and abscesses on carcasses…”
“Since microbiological tests are performed only on a sample of carcasses (whereas visual and manual inspections are required on all carcasses), we questions whether this is a better measure for food safety due to its limited use,” the IG report says.

Further, the IG says FSIS does not distinguish between serious violations and minor infractions in its NRs. It points out how an NR for a document dating error and an NR for fibrous fecal material on a carcass are now given equal weight.

FSIS Administrator Al Almanza responded to the 11 recommendations from the IG largely by agreeing with them and outlining a work program for accomplishing them.

For example, the IG recommends progressively stronger enforcement actions against plants with serious or repetitive violations. Almanza said the agency will take stronger enforcement actions based on Food Safety Assessments by Jan. 1, 2014.

The IG also recommended that FSIS come up with a system to classify all food safety NRs, and the FSIS administrator is promising to implement such a system on PHIS, also by Jan. 1, 2014.

Also getting attention in the IG report was FSIS’ pilot program, known as the HACCP Inspection Models Project (HIMP) for swine.  HIMP for swine is limited to five large plants, but the IG said three of those five plants made the top ten for NRs.

“In the 15 years since the program’s inception, FSIS did not critically assess whether the new inspection process had measurably improved food safety at swine HIMP plants—a key goal of the HIMP program.”

FSIS has promised a complete evaluation of the HIMP hog program by March 31, 2014.

The IG’s findings on the HIMP in swine were quickly embraced by opponents of the program. Food & Water Watch said the report identified “major deficiencies” in HIMP, which it calls an ill-conceived privatization scheme. In addition to F&WW, unions representing meat inspectors oppose HIMP in both poultry and swine plants.

F&WW claims FSIS has spent $141 million on the PHIS system, which still has implementation problems.

Food Safety News
More Headlines from Government Agencies »
Tags: HIMP, Inspector General, swine slaughter, USDA



Source:
http://www.usda.gov/oig/

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/05/ig-report-says-too-many-repeat-violators-in-hog-slaughter/#.UaV_UUA3uyC

GOALS, STRATEGIES, and PERFORMANCE MEASURES


Goal 1:

Strengthen USDA’s ability to implement safety and security measures to protect the
public health as well as agricultural and Departmental resources.


Goal 2: 


Reduce program vulnerabilities and strengthen program integrity in the delivery of benefits 
to individuals.


Goal 3:

Support USDA in implementing its management improvement initiatives. 


Goal 4: 

Increase the efficiency and effectiveness with which USDA manages and exercises stewardship 
over natural resources. 



Strategies: 


For each of the above goals, OIG will: 


 Continuously monitor and assess risks in USDA operations and programs to identify those 
risks critical to the achievement of our goals. 

Target resources to address those critical risks.


Performance Measures: 


OIG will measure its performance under each of these goals by tracking the:

Percentage of OIG direct resources dedicated to critical risk or high-impact activities.

Percentage of audit recommendations where management decisions are achieved within 
1 year. 

Percentage of audits initiated where the findings and recommendations are presented to the 
auditee within established and agreed-to timeframes.

Percentage of closed investigations that resulted in a referral for action to the Department of 
Justice, State/local law enforcement officials, or relevant administrative authority. 

 Percentage of closed investigations that resulted in an indictment, conviction, civil suit or 

settlement, judgment, administrative action, or monetary result.


Goal 5:


Strive for a highly qualified diverse workforce with the tools and training necessary to 
continuously enhance OIG’s ability to fulfill its mission and communicate its accomplishments.


Strategies:


 Recruit, hire, train, develop, motivate, mentor, and effectively manage a diverse front-line, 
supervisory, and executive workforce with the technical and workplace skills necessary to 
facilitate succession planning and meet OIG’s strategic goals and annual plans.

Continuously acquire and deploy state-of-the-art technology, equipment, and other physical 
resources necessary to enable OIG to meet its strategic goals and annual plans.

Enhance internal OIG communication so that all staff understands OIG’s priorities and the 
contribution their work makes toward fulfilling OIG’s mission. 

Use our performance planning and appraisal processes to ensure that all OIG staff are aware 
of how their work ties to OIG’s strategic and annual plans, and that they are held accountable 
for how their work impacts the organization’s results and how they personally support OIG’s 
mission, vision, core values, goals, and performance targets.

 Provide timely and reliable legal and management advice, reports, and services to support the 
effective functioning of all OIG components.

Support the integrity of OIG operations by maintaining an effective quality assurance and 
internal review program.

Effectively communicate the outcome of our work to Congress, agency management officials, 
the press, and members of the public.

Performance Measures: 


Satisfaction rates reported in staff surveys, including biannual Organizational 
Assessment Surveys. 

OIG performance against goals set in annual plans. 

Performance of OIG management, legal, and quality assurance offices against timeliness 
standards set for their functions.

Assessment of stakeholder and customer feedback solicited through interviews, surveys, 
and other consultations. 


IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STRATEGIC PLAN



This Strategic Plan is the first step in an ongoing strategic and tactical planning process laid 
out in the Government Performance and Results Act and Office of Management and Budget 
guidance. Within USDA OIG, we will track implementation of this plan and ensure 
individual and office accountability for achieving our strategic goals by the following:

OIG will publish an Annual Performance Plan that sets specific targets for each of our 
performance measures for the coming fiscal year; lays out the audit, investigation, and 
management priorities for the year; and, where appropriate, discusses the specific projects that 
will be performed, as well as expected initiation dates. OIG will publish a biannual Recovery Act 
Plan that lays out specific targets for audit priorities and summarizes audit work to be performed.

OIG will report on its progress against the Strategic and Annual Performance Plans in the 
Semiannual Report to Congress for the applicable fiscal year. The report will cover our progress 
against the measures, priorities, and project initiation dates listed in the Annual Performance Plan 
for the corresponding year.

OIG will also link employee standards and ratings to the Strategic Plan. Currently, OIG has tied 
the performance standards of its Senior Executive Service members and its audit managers to the 

OIG Strategic Plan. By the end of fiscal year 2010, we expect to link the performance standards 
of every employee within OIG to the Strategic Plan. 

By linking the Strategic Plan to annual performance plans and reports, OIG will be able to 
maintain focus on the goals of the Strategic Plan while allowing enough flexibility to adapt to 
ever changing circumstances, such as unexpected new priorities that could arise from natural 
disasters, or the revised expectations of stakeholders (such as the shifting expectations regarding 
necessary audit and investigative work that came about with respect to the Recovery Act), or 
shifting Department priorities. 




http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/OIGStrat2010-2015.pdf






Food Safety and Inspection Service— Inspection and Enforcement Activities At Swine Slaughter Plants

Audit Report 24601-0001-41


Office of the Inspector General (OIG)  audited the Food Safety and Inspection Service  (FSIS) inspection and 
enforcement activities at swine slaughter 
plants:
to determine if they complied with food safety and humane handling laws.



What OIG Found


A. The Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) enforcement policies do not deter swine slaughter plants from becoming repeat violators of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA).

As a result, plants have repeatedly violated the same regulations with little or no consequence. 

B. We found that in 8 of the 30 plants we visited,

i) - inspectors did not comply with inspection requirements  (always examine the internal organs of carcasses in accordance with FSIS rules),or

ii)- did not take enforcement actions against plants that violated food safety regulations. 
(No fines or closed plants)
As a result, there is reduced assurance of FSIS inspectors effectively identifying pork that should not enter the food supply. 
(Result:contamination of the food supply!)

iii) - OIG also found FSIS could not determine whether the goals of a pilot program were met because FSIS did not adequately oversee the program.
{Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP)- based Inspection Models Project (HIMP)}

In the 15 years since the program’s inception,FSIS did not critically assess whether the new inspection process had measurably improved food safety at each HIMP plant, a key goal of the program.

iv)- Finally, OIG found that 
- FSIS inspectors did not take appropriate enforcement actions 
at 8 of the 30 (27%) swine slaughter plants OIG visited for violations of the Humane Method of Slaughter Act (HMSA). 

OIG reviewed 158 humane handling noncompliance records (violations) issued to the 30 plants and OIG found 10 instances of egregious violations where inspectors  did not issue suspensions. 

As a result:

1 - the plants did not improve their slaughter practices, and

2 - FSIS could not ensure humane handling of swine. 

FSIS concurred with all of our recommendations.


OIG’s Objectives were:

1) - to identify areas of risk in FSIS’ inspection of swine plants,

2) - to evaluate FSIS’ controls over food safety and humane handling, and 

3) - to determine if appropriate enforcement actions were taken against violators, 
plants that violated FMIA and HMSA.

OIG Reviewed:


FSIS inspects over 600 plants that have grants to slaughter swine.

For fiscal years 2008-2011:

1.  OIG reviewed enforcement actions taken against these plants. 

2.  OIG also conducted site visits at 30 plants.

OIG Recommends:

1. FSIS needs to develop a strategy to take progressively stronger enforcement actions against plants with serious or repetitive violations.
2. FSIS should determine: 

i - what measurable improvement has the HIMP program achieved? and 

ii - is it suitable as a permanent program?


3. FSIS should make a plan to:

i - minimize reliance on the inspectors’ judgment 
(to reduce inspection risk)

ii - to ensure inspectors consistently enforce laws.
(i.e., take stronger enforcement actions against repeat offenders)





Source:

http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/24601-0001-41.pdf

Source:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/usda-inspector-general-fo_b_3333853.html



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Sunday, May 26, 2013

Rethink health care.


 We pay the doctor to make us better when we should really be paying the farmer to keep us healthy.
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Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food


What ever happened to, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” ?  To be healthy in mind, body and spirit, eating a nutritious diet is an essential piece of the puzzle.  

Jo Robinson tells us that the food system has paid more attention to providing popular flavors than to providing wholesome fruits and vegetables.  

Consequently, we need to rethink our purchasing habits, if we want to obtain the nutrients with the potential to reduce the risk of four of our modern scourges: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. 



May 25, 2013
Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food


WE like the idea that food can be the answer to our ills, that if we eat nutritious foods we won’t need medicine or supplements. We have valued this notion for a long, long time. The Greek physician Hippocrates proclaimed nearly 2,500 years ago: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Today, medical experts concur. If we heap our plates with fresh fruits and vegetables, they tell us, we will come closer to optimum health.

This health directive needs to be revised. If we want to get maximum health benefits from fruits and vegetables, we must choose the right varieties. Studies published within the past 15 years show that much of our produce is relatively low in phytonutrients, which are the compounds with the potential to reduce the risk of four of our modern scourges: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. The loss of these beneficial nutrients did not begin 50 or 100 years ago, as many assume. Unwittingly, we have been stripping phytonutrients from our diet since we stopped foraging for wild plants some 10,000 years ago and became farmers.

These insights have been made possible by new technology that has allowed researchers to compare the phytonutrient content of wild plants with the produce in our supermarkets. The results are startling.

Wild dandelions, once a springtime treat for Native Americans, have seven times more phytonutrients than spinach, which we consider a “superfood.” A purple potato native to Peru has 28 times more cancer-fighting anthocyanins than common russet potatoes. One species of apple has a staggering 100 times more phytonutrients than the Golden Delicious displayed in our supermarkets.

Were the people who foraged for these wild foods healthier than we are today? They did not live nearly as long as we do, but growing evidence suggests that they were much less likely to die from degenerative diseases, even the minority who lived 70 years and more. The primary cause of death for most adults, according to anthropologists, was injury and infections.

Each fruit and vegetable in our stores has a unique history of nutrient loss, I’ve discovered, but there are two common themes. 

Throughout the ages, our farming ancestors have chosen the least bitter plants to grow in their gardens. It is now known that many of the most beneficial phytonutrients have a bitter, sour or astringent taste.

Second, early farmers favored plants that were relatively low in fiber and high in sugar, starch and oil. These energy-dense plants were pleasurable to eat and provided the calories needed to fuel a strenuous lifestyle.

The more palatable our fruits and vegetables became, however, the less advantageous they were for our health.

The sweet corn that we serve at summer dinners illustrates both of these trends. The wild ancestor of our present-day corn is a grassy plant called teosinte. It is hard to see the family resemblance. Teosinte is a bushy plant with short spikes of grain instead of ears, and each spike has only 5 to 12 kernels. The kernels are encased in shells so dense you’d need a hammer to crack them open. Once you extract the kernels, you wonder why you bothered. The dry tidbit of food is a lot of starch and little sugar. Teosinte has 10 times more protein than the corn we eat today, but it was not soft or sweet enough to tempt our ancestors.

Over several thousand years, teosinte underwent several spontaneous mutations. Nature’s rewriting of the genome freed the kernels of their cases and turned a spike of grain into a cob with kernels of many colors. Our ancestors decided that this transformed corn was tasty enough to plant in their gardens. By the 1400s, corn was central to the diet of people living throughout Mexico and the Americas.

When European colonists first arrived in North America, they came upon what they called “Indian corn.” John Winthrop Jr., governor of the colony of Connecticut in the mid-1600s, observed that American Indians grew “corne with great variety of colours,” citing “red, yellow, blew, olive colour, and greenish, and some very black and some of intermediate degrees.” A few centuries later, we would learn that black, red and blue corn is rich in anthocyanins. Anthocyanins have the potential to fight cancer, calm inflammation, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, protect the aging brain, and reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

EUROPEAN settlers were content with this colorful corn until the summer of 1779 when they found something more delectable — a yellow variety with sweeter and more tender kernels. This unusual variety came to light that year after George Washington ordered a scorched-earth campaign against Iroquois tribes. While the militia was destroying the food caches of the Iroquois and burning their crops, soldiers came across a field of extra-sweet yellow corn. According to one account, a lieutenant named Richard Bagnal took home some seeds to share with others. Our old-fashioned sweet corn is a direct descendant of these spoils of war. (like with tobacco, the Indians get the last laugh)

Up until this time, nature had been the primary change agent in remaking corn. Farmers began to play a more active role in the 19th century. In 1836, Noyes Darling, a onetime mayor of New Haven, and a gentleman farmer, was the first to use scientific methods to breed a new variety of corn. His goal was to create a sweet, all-white variety that was “fit for boiling” by mid-July.

He succeeded, noting with pride that he had rid sweet corn of “the disadvantage of being yellow.”

The disadvantage of being yellow, we now know, had been an advantage to human health. Corn with deep yellow kernels, including the yellow corn available in our grocery stores, has nearly 60 times more beta-carotene than white corn, valuable because it turns to Vitamin A in the body, which helps vision and the immune system.

SUPERSWEET corn, which now outsells all other kinds of corn, was born in a cloud of radiation. 

Beginning in the 1920s, geneticists exposed corn seeds to radiation to learn more about the normal arrangement of plant genes. They mutated the seeds by exposing them to X-rays, toxic compounds, cobalt radiation and then, in the 1940s, to blasts of atomic radiation. All the kernels were stored in a seed bank and made available for research.

In 1959, a geneticist named John Laughnan was studying a handful of mutant kernels and popped a few into his mouth. (The corn was no longer radioactive.) He was startled by their intense sweetness. Lab tests showed that they were up to 10 times sweeter than ordinary sweet corn. A blast of radiation had turned the corn into a sugar factory!

Mr. Laughnan was not a plant breeder, but he realized at once that this mutant corn would revolutionize the sweet corn industry. He became an entrepreneur overnight and spent years developing commercial varieties of supersweet corn. His first hybrids began to be sold in 1961. This appears to be the first genetically modified food to enter the United States food supply, an event that has received scant attention.

Within one generation, the new extra sugary varieties eclipsed old-fashioned sweet corn in the marketplace. Build a sweeter fruit or vegetable — by any means — and we will come.

Today, most of the fresh corn in our supermarkets is extra-sweet, and all of it can be traced back to the radiation experiments. The kernels are either white, pale yellow, or a combination of the two. The sweetest varieties approach 40 percent sugar, bringing new meaning to the words “candy corn.” 

Only a handful of farmers in the United States specialize in multicolored Indian corn, and it is generally sold for seasonal decorations, not food.

We’ve reduced the nutrients and increased the sugar and starch content of hundreds of other fruits and vegetables. How can we begin to recoup the losses?

Here are some suggestions to get you started. Select corn with deep yellow kernels. To recapture the lost anthocyanins and beta-carotene, cook with blue, red or purple cornmeal, which is available in some supermarkets and on the Internet. Make a stack of blue cornmeal pancakes for Sunday breakfast and top with maple syrup.

In the lettuce section, look for arugula. Arugula, also called salad rocket, is very similar to its wild ancestor. Some varieties were domesticated as recently as the 1970s, thousands of years after most fruits and vegetables had come under our sway. The greens are rich in cancer-fighting compounds called glucosinolates and higher in antioxidant activity than many green lettuces.

Scallions, or green onions, are jewels of nutrition hiding in plain sight. They resemble wild onions and are just as good for you. Remarkably, they have more than five times more phytonutrients than many common onions do. The green portions of scallions are more nutritious than the white bulbs, so use the entire plant. Herbs are wild plants incognito. We’ve long valued them for their intense flavors and aroma, which is why they’ve not been given a flavor makeover. Because we’ve left them well enough alone, their phytonutrient content has remained intact.

Experiment with using large quantities of mild-tasting fresh herbs. Add one cup of mixed chopped Italian parsley and basil to a pound of ground grass-fed beef or poultry to make “herb-burgers.” Herbs bring back missing phytonutrients and a touch of wild flavor as well.

The United States Department of Agriculture exerts far more effort developing disease-resistant fruits and vegetables than creating new varieties to enhance the disease resistance of consumers. In fact, I’ve interviewed U.S.D.A. plant breeders who have spent a decade or more developing a new variety of pear or carrot without once measuring its nutritional content.

We can’t increase the health benefits of our produce if we don’t know which nutrients it contains. Ultimately, we need more than an admonition to eat a greater quantity of fruits and vegetables: we need more fruits and vegetables that have the nutrients we require for optimum health.


By JO ROBINSON

Jo Robinson is the author of the forthcoming book:
 “Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health.”



Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-the-nutrition-out-of-our-food.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130526&_r=0




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Nutritional Weaklings in the Supermarket






Here is how heirloom varieties and wild species of produce have been found, in separate studies, to outshine their cultivated cousins. 













Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/26/sunday-review/26corn-ch.html?ref=sunday



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Friday, May 24, 2013

Bigger Portions Are More Calories


This video discusses what is the average calories needed per day, how many calories it takes to make a pound of body fat and an examination of the nutrition and calorie intake of 3 average daily American meals....







Source:  http://www.aarp.org/videos.id=2165636662001






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Depression: ‘Club Drug’ Ketamine Lifts Depression in Hours


The largest study to date confirms that ketamine — a “club drug” that is also legally used as an anesthetic — could be a quick and effective way to relieve depression.
The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association and represent growing excitement about ketamine’s potential. The study included 72 patients who had previously failed to respond to at least two other medications. After receiving a single intravenous (IV) dose of ketamine, 64% of patients reported fewer depression symptoms within one day compared to 28% of those given midazolam — an anesthetic drug that was used as a control.
“[This research] reports the largest controlled evaluation of the antidepressant effects of ketamine to date,” says Dr. John Krystal, professor of psychiatry at Yale, who published the first study in 2000 suggesting that ketamine could quickly lift depression, but was not associated with this trial.

Antidepressants typically take weeks to improve mood — and that’s a time when people with the disorder are at an especially high risk of suicide. “Among people who respond to antidepressants, it takes on average 7 weeks to produce this response,” Krystal says, “When simply getting through a single day can be difficult, waiting 7 weeks to get better can be daunting.” Ketamine— and similar drugs currently being tested by pharmaceutical companies could help relieve suffering faster and potentially reduce the suicide risk associated with the mood disorder.
And because the doses used were lower than those taken by clubbers or used in anesthesia, most patients didn’t have the extreme experiences of “out of body” sensations or profoundly distorted perceptions of reality.  “Nobody freaked out,” says Murrough, adding that most described the experience of the infusion as being similar to having had a few drinks. About 10%, however, did have some dissociative effects.  “One patient [reported] wondering whether time still existed during the infusion,” he says.
The results are especially noteworthy because ketamine was compared to another anesthetic with similar psychoactive effects, not just a placebo. Such comparisons are important because drugs that result in highly noticeable responses like sedation also tend to have strong placebo effects. Researchers had argued that without such a comparison, it would be difficult to tell whether ketamine was actually relieving depression.
“This design was elegant because midazolam briefly made patients feel better, but did not produce a real antidepressant effect,” Krystal says, “In contrast, ketamine produced the robust antidepressant effects that have been observed in every study of ketamine since our initial preliminary observations.  This is the first direct evidence that the antidepressant effects of ketamine are specific, increasing our confidence in importance of this clinical observations.”
MORE: A Mystery Partly Solved: How the ‘Club Drug’ Ketamine Lifts Depression So Quickly
Since the study has not been published, however, the results have not yet been subject to peer review. But Krystal and others are encouraged by the apparently lasting effects of the drug; the study showed that seven days after the infusion, 46% of those who received ketamine were still experiencing significant relief— compared to just 18% of those who received the midazolam.
The findings also follow about half a dozen smaller trials that tested the drug for depression or bipolar disorder. Murrough and his colleagues also published a study last year in Biological Psychiatry that could pave the way for broader use of the drug. In that analysis, his team examined whether ketamine could be used repeatedly for longer term results, perhaps as a replacement for, or addition to, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In that study, 24 patients with treatment-resistant depression who were not taking any other medications received several daily doses of ketamine; after 12 days, 71% of the patients showed a 50% reduction in depression symptoms, with relief typically coming within 2 hours of the treatment.  On average, the patients who responded remained well for 18 days following the last infusion.
But because ketamine distorts consciousness, it likely would not be practical as a daily medication, as Prozac is currently used. In cases of profoundly disabling depression, however, it might be helpful if given several days a week, the way ECT is now prescribed.  While ECT is the best existing treatment for cases of depression that do not respond to medication and therapy, the stimulation can interfere with memory and it requires general anesthesia. Murrough envisions ketamine could be administered in conjunction with talk therapy and in combination with other medications to try to maintain recovery.
In fact, since ketamine is already FDA-app


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/22/club-drug-ketamine-lifts-depression-in-hours/#ixzz2UBy23wGg
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

It’s High Time to Consider Legalizing Pot


Legalization is in the air...


LATIN AMERICA
OAS to White House and Hemisphere: It’s High Time to Consider Legalizing Pot
By Tim PadgettMay 22, 201315 Comments



MAURICIO DUEÃ’AS CASTAÃ’EDA / EPA

Organization of American States Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza, speaks after the organization presented its report about illicit drugs in the continent to the Colombian Government in Bogota, Colombia, on May 17, 2013.

On the Latin American street, the Organization of American States has always borne a reputation, often undeserved, as Washington’s lackey. But the OAS, based in Washington, just sent the western hemisphere a message the White House would rather not hear: It’s time to seriously discuss legalizing marijuana as one means of reducing harrowing drug violence. That conclusion, from a study presented last Friday in Bogotá, Colombia, by OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza, is one that a growing number of Latin American governments — including Uruguay, which might legalize marijuana this year — are urging the Obama Administration to accept. Having the motion seconded by Washington’s “lackey” makes it harder to ignore.

But even as Insulza and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos were hailing the OAS report last week, something else was brewing in Bogotá that could further undermine resistance to pot legalization. The Colombian capital is about to start a program that uses marijuana to wean junkies off bazuco, a cheap but fiercely addictive cocaine paste. It will mark one of the largest experiments to determine if marijuana — which legalization opponents still insist is a “gateway” to harder drugs like cocaine and heroin — is in reality an “exit” drug. If so, it will only serve to reinforce the argument, mentioned by the OAS study, that marijuana is a relatively benign drug, far more comparable to alcohol than it is, say, to crystal meth.

As Miami Herald South America correspondent Jim Wyss recently wrote from Bogotá, “For the most desperate [bazuco] users, the cannabis cure may be the only way out.” Or as one social worker told Wyss, “We want people to quit a substance that is very, very damaging and transition to something less dangerous and which will allow them to function in society.” Critics say the effort will just turn bazuco zombies into potheads. But for years now, similar projects in countries like Brazil, Jamaica and most recently Canada have indicated that marijuana is in fact an effective exit drug. In British Columbia last fall, a team of U.S. and Canadian addiction researchers determined that “clinical trials on cannabis substitution for problematic substance abuse appear justified.”

That doesn’t mean we should all start smoking herb like Harold and Kumar. The fact that a glass of hot bourbon can relieve common cold symptoms doesn’t mean we should all start drinking Manhattans, either. But affirming marijuana as an exit drug would lead us to reconsider one of modern society’s most glaring double standards: booze good, pot bad. It would reinforce the notion that moderate marijuana use is not more perilous than moderate alcohol consumption. According to studies, in fact, pot smoking in some cases can be a preferable alternative to drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco.

So why do we waste so many resources (almost $10 billion each year in the U.S. alone) as well as lives hunting down marijuana users and sellers? The OAS’s $2 million report “The Drug Problem in the Americas” seems to ask the same thing. It is not an outright call for marijuana legalization. It is, as Insulza said in Bogotá, “the beginning of a long-awaited discussion” about “more realistic [drug war] policies.” Most Latin American leaders — whose countries suffer the bloody brunt of the largely failed U.S.-led drug war — already made it clear to President Obama at last year’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, that it’s high time to ask whether marijuana legalization might help reduce drug cartel revenues and therefore drug cartel mayhem. (Studies indicate it could rob Mexico’s narco-mafias of a third of the estimated $30 billion they rake in each year.)

Insulza acknowledged the current “disposition” throughout the Americas to “deal with the legalization issue,” and he called for “greater flexibility” on the part of nations like the U.S. The 400-page OAS study itself concludes that trends in the hemisphere “lean toward decriminalization or legalization of the production, sale and use of marijuana. Sooner or later, decisions in this area will need to be taken.” Santos, who is widely considered Washington’s closest ally in Latin America today, has not yet endorsed legalization, but he said the report should help drug-war battered countries like his “seek better solutions” than the conventional interdiction strategy Washington still pushes.

Former presidents of three of Latin America’s largest economies — Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — have jointly called for marijuana legalization. In the U.S., the states of Washington and Colorado last fall voted to legalize pot. Now that the OAS has joined that chorus, both the White House and the U.S. Congress need to join the discussion with more open ears.


Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Uruguay legalized marijuana last year. It is still debating the bill, which Uruguayan President José Mujica supports.


Tim Padgett @TimPadgett2 


Source:  http://world.time.com/2013/05/22/key-regional-organization-pushes-white-house-to-debate-legalizing-pot/







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Compassion


"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

~Plato

What's Your Poison?

What's Your Poison?

Warren Zevon's Label

Warren Zevon's Label
Independent Music

About Me

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Robert Lewis and Jennifer Hodson
Jennifer believes we live in the garden of Eden and I believe that we are destroying it. Our saving grace is within ourselves, our faith, and our mindfulness. We need to make a conscious effort to respect and preserve all life.
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Poison

Poison
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