Farming, environmental, and consumer groups have delivered a petition with over a million signatures to the Department of Justice asking them to block the merger between German pharmaceutical company Bayer and agricultural giant Monsanto. The petition was delivered days ahead of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on technology in agriculture and data-driven farming. The petition is in addition to two recent reports showing the damaging impact of the merger on both farmers and consumers.

The first report from is Consumer Federation of America, “Mega-Mergers in the U.S. Seed and Agrochemical Sector the Political Economy of Tight Oligopolies on Steroids and the Squeeze on Farmers and Consumers,” and examines the Bayer Monsanto merger as an oliogopoly and discusses how having only select companies in charge will effect our food system. The second report is from Friends of the Earth, SumOfUs and the Open Markets Institute and entitled “Bayer-Monsanto Merger: Big Data, Big Agriculture, Big Problems.” It looks at the implications of the Bayer Monsanto merger on competition and farmer choice, especially in the area of data-driven farming.

Bayer and Monsanto’s toxic mega-merger is a danger to our planet and everyone living on it. Over 1 million Americans have called on the Department of Justice to protect our farmers and families from the consolidation of corporate power. Bayer and Monsanto’s merger is a direct threat to the future of people and our environment. The Justice Department must put on the breaks and stop this merger.” – Erich Pica, President Friends of the Earth

Consumers are concerned and worry that this could become a damaging monopoly.

If the Bayer-Monsanto merger is approved, the new company would be the world’s largest vegetable seed company, world’s largest cottonseed company, world’s largest manufacturer and seller of herbicides, the world’s largest owner of intellectual property/patents for herbicide tolerant traits. Should the merger move forward, 77 percent of the corn seed in America would be controlled by two companies, Bayer-Monsanto and Dow-DuPont. – OCM

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• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet
• How to Make the Healthiest Smoothies – 4 Recipes
• Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

The United States Department of Agriculture has rolled back several healthy school lunch requirements. These changes include allowing schools to serve flavored milk, opt out of whole grain requirements, and more slowly reduce the sodium in their offerings. In the USDA’s press release, Sonny Perdue, Secretary of Agriculture, cited their reasons for the changes, “Based on the feedback we’ve gotten from students, schools, and food service professionals in local schools across America, it’s clear that many still face challenges incorporating some of the meal pattern requirements. Schools want to offer food that students actually want to eat. It doesn’t do any good to serve nutritious meals if they wind up in the trash can. These flexibilities give schools the local control they need to provide nutritious meals that school children find appetizing.”

Many of the issues cited by the USDA as problematic for school lunch providers are not actually a problem. A statement released by Center for Science in the Public Interest Vice President for Nutrition Margo G. Wootan:

Virtually 100 percent of schools are already complying with the final nutrition standards, including the first phase of sodium reduction…Nine out of 10 school-aged children are eating too much salt, which is why reducing sodium levels in school meals is so important. The USDA should be doubling down on helping schools reduce sodium, not slowing down progress, as the Trump administration proposed today.”

Diet is the foundation of health, and it’s fitting that the government making it easier to serve schoolchildren less nutritious lunches is also the administration dismantling the current healthcare system without a viable system to take its place. The USDA considers the school lunch program a part of its nutrition safety net. So why is it making it easier for vulnerable school children to eat poorly?

Nutrition Education and Healthy Choices

Today, one in five children between the ages of 6-19 is obese, and that number has tripled since the 1970s. More than one-third of Americans are obese. The healthcare costs for an obese person are nearly $1,500 higher for an obese person than a normal weight person. Our health nationwide is not improving because we are failing to properly educate kids about healthy food and healthy lifestyle choices. Only one in ten Americans eat enough vegetables. Combine that with a nutrition safety net willing to compromise health standards out of concern with program operators, school nutrition professionals, industry, and other stakeholders. It’s no wonder kids don’t know how important healthy food choices are, let alone how to make them.

Recommended Reading:

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet
• How to Make the Healthiest Smoothies – 4 Recipes

Sources:

• Trump’s USDA Just Made School Meals Less Healthy – Alternet
• USDA Publishes School Meals Rule, Expands Options, Eases Challenges – USDA.gov
• Trump Administration Announces Rule Rolling Back Progress on School Nutrition – Center for Science in the Public Interest
• Childhood Obesity Facts – CDC.gov

Finland has approved bread made from cricket flour to sell in supermarkets. Before you say ewww or gross, think about it for a minute. We live on a rapidly changing planet with an increasing number of people, and we need food. Our current system is flawed and overwhelmed, and easily manufactured alternatives to resource hungry, unhealthy factory farmed meat are desperately needed. Are crickets a healthy, sustainable, and most importantly palatable alternative to our current problematic proteins?

Healthy Protein

When it comes down to the numbers, crickets are a nutritional powerhouse. A serving of cricket flour provides more than twice the protein of a steak, contains almost a fifth of the daily recommended value of B12, and is rich in calcium and iron. Whole crickets have the additional benefit of chitin, their exoskeleton. The chitin is a prebiotic, benefiting already existing good bacteria. They also offer a high-protein, gluten-free flour substitute. The image above is pasta made with cricket flower.

Sustainability

Here is where the debate about how beneficial crickets actually are gets interesting. Crickets need less water, space, and food than any of the animals we currently farm for food. They are also able to eat a more varied diet and lead to decreased rates of methane gases, deforestation, and toxic animal waste. The bugs also convert what they eat to an edible product 12 times more efficiently than cows and twice as efficiently as chickens. But if crickets farmers are looking only for efficiency, they are missing a chance to achieve a higher level of sustainability with their product.

For crickets to reach the size required for harvest in the shortest period of time, they need to be fed a grain diet. But this is problematic, as all it does is repeat the same cow, pig, and chicken system that isn’t sustainable. With a different diet of food waste, cricket production is only slightly more efficient than chicken farming. Yet Americans throw away a full third of all food grown in the country. The most exciting possibility here is that crickets farmed correctly have the ability to ameliorate two serious issues facing the world – hunger and food waste.

The -Ick Factor

Many information sources on crickets and other edible bugs used to focus on whether or not anyone would eat them. As of 2017, that ship has sailed, and articles now focus on what’s going to win the new food race – bugs or lab meat. Never mind that bugs have and still are eaten by more than 2 billion people worldwide on a daily basis.

Americans and much of the food popularized here is easy, aesthetically pleasing food. A chicken is no longer comprised of bones and tendons and skin. It comes pale and perfected wrapped in plastic or processed and put back together in a nugget shape. We become so accustomed to fruit or vegetables in a single form that anything that deviates from that is treated as an absurdity.

But this is exactly why we should be eating crickets. Where before bugs required a strong stomach and a minimal gag reflex, they are now an easy food. Like milkshakes? There’s a fast food chain that offered one with crickets. Finland is offering bread at the supermarket. Multiple companies offer a cricket protein powder for smoothies or various cricket snacks for a boost during the day.

Get in The Game

People in the tropics are more likely to consume bugs, as the colder Northern weather makes it difficult for a population to depend on bugs as a food source. Good news, it’s getting warmer!

All (not funny) kidding aside, crickets have the potential to feed the world. We have the opportunity to steer the production of a potentially major part of the food supply. Give crickets a try, and see if you can surprise yourself. But most importantly, be picky about the quality of crickets you consume. We’ve already seen where the factory farming model takes us. Let’s learn something from it.

What are your thoughts? Would you eat food with crickets as an ingredient? What could go wrong?

Sources:

• Bread made of insects to be sold in Finnish supermarkets – AP News
• Cricket Flour Has 3x More Protein Than Steak + It Even Tastes Good – Dr. Axe
• Five Reasons to Eat Crickets – Huffington Post
• You’re going to be eating crickets, so just get over it – CNET
• Eating Insects Isn’t as Eco-Friendly As People Say – Time
• Half of all US food produce is thrown away, new research suggests – The Guardian

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), where too much fat accumulates in the liver without alcohol, has now been linked to greater than normal age-related brain shrinkage by a study published in JAMA Neurology. In the study, people with NAFLD from age 60 to 70 saw a reduction of brain volume equivalent to 4.2 years of aging, and patients under 60 averaged a brain volume reduction equivalent to 7.3 years of aging. The connection was notable even after other factors related to brain aging like heart disease, diabetes, blood fat levels, smoking, alcohol consumption, overweight, lack of exercise and menopausal status were accounted for in the study.

The Liver Brain Connection

When the liver isn’t able to properly filter the blood, toxins left behind can accumulate in the brain, causing memory loss, sleep disturbances, and trouble concentrating. The recently published study that found a link between a clearly unhealthy liver and higher levels of brain degeneration measured the overall brain volume of 766 middle-aged men and women with MRI scans and used abdominal CT scans to examine their livers. Nearly twenty percent of those examined had NAFLD. Even after other dementia risk factors were accounted for, research subjects of all ages experienced increased brain aging equivalent to at least a year. Lead author Galit Weinstein from School of Public Health at the University of Haifa concludes, “In turn, if one retains a healthy liver, his/her risk for other diseases, such as diabetes and heart diseases, is also reduced. In this study, we show that keeping a healthy liver may also be linked with a healthier brain.”

How to Support Your Liver

Experts agree that the best way to manage NAFLD is through diet and lifestyle, but what does that mean? This is good news because this means you can do something about it. Not all diets and lifestyles are the same, and recent science has found that environmental factors can also play a role in the development of NAFLD. Yet there are some simple steps and changes you can implement immediately that will decrease your risk of NAFLD and elevate your overall level of health.

Related: How To Reverse Fatty Liver Disease (Diet Plan Included)

Diet And…

First and foremost, when you have or are at risk of developing, NAFLD, sugar is not your friend. Sugar helps fat build up in the liver, and it aggravates a multitude of other problems in the body. It tastes really good. We’re biologically programmed to crave it. It’s probably one of the worst things you can have, especially if you’re at risk for a serious health condition. Consume your sugar in fruit form as the fiber slows the absorption of the sugar, but too much of any one kind of fruit can still lead to issues.

Next, rally your beneficial bacteria. Produce is the best way to give those helpers the fuel they need. That bacteria can then focus on properly digesting fat in the gut, keeping large fat molecules from overwhelming the liver. The key word here is produce. Among other things, fresh, raw vegetables and fruits have fiber, reducing the absorption of harmful lipopolysaccharides and sugars. Organic is also important, as NAFLD and brain cancer have both been linked to glyphosate. While it’s no longer possible to avoid the herbicide completely, organic produce gives you the least amount of exposure. Other liver boosting foods oily fish, avocado, olive oil, and nuts.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Up next? Vitamin c. The liver benefits greatly from vitamin c and its antioxidant properties. A dose as small as 500 mg of the vitamin can help prevent fatty buildup and other liver diseases, like cirrhosis. Turn that dose up to 5,000 mg and the vitamin c begins to flush fat from the liver. If you can get a nutrient from whole food sources, you should, and there are numerous fruits and vegetable rich in vitamin c. Load up on those, or if you prefer to drink your vitamins, check out this super simple lemonade with bonus cranberry action.

Exercise!

Finally, like any good healthy lifestyle advice article says, exercise. The good news here? It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise you chose. Previous studies found that both aerobic and resistance training-based exercise regimens reduce fat in the liver effectively. They also suggest that the intensity and amount of exercise makes a difference, but the best exercise is the one you do and do regularly.

Connections Are Crucial

Everything in life is about connections, yet it can be difficult to fathom just how connected the body really is. Your brain health absolutely depends on your gut. Now we find that your brain health, especially as you age, depends on your liver. And the liver depends on the gut, and how well the microbes there are able to do their job. A healthy gut makes all the other organs and systems it connects to healthier. Fix your gut, fix your health.

Recommended Reading:

• Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)
• Healthy Sugar Alternatives and More
• Sugar Industry Has Had Evidence Linking Sugar to Heart Disease for Nearly Half a Century

Sources:

• Fatty liver linked to a shrinking brain – Reuters
• Monsanto’s Glyphosate, Fatty Liver Disease Link Proven – Published, Peer-reviewed, Scrutinized Study – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• How To Reverse Fatty Liver Disease (Diet Plan Included) – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• 15 Health Problems Linked to Monsanto’s Roundup – EcoWatch
• There must be FIFTEEN WAYS TO LOVE YOUR LIVER – DoctorYourself
• New Study Indicates that Exercise Improves Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease – Elsevier

Project 259 is a study that linked sucrose, a common sugar product, to heart disease and bladder cancer and would have revolutionized the way we think about sugar in regards to our health. Or at least it would have…if the sugar industry hadn’t stopped funding it halfway through the project in 1971. The project was discovered by a team of researchers at the University of California San Francisco who have been in the news for other reports on the sugar industry’s unsavory practices.

Details of the Project

Project 259 was launched by the Sugar Research Foundation in 1968. The project was in two halves, and only one of them was completed. The finished portion of the project looked at rat’s gut bacteria after rats consumed sucrose compared to starch. Early results showed that the sucrose caused gut microbes to throw off those rodent metabolisms, increasing their levels of triglycerides. Elevated triglycerides clog arteries and increase a person’s predisposition for cardiovascular disease. Project 259 also found that in a comparison to high-starch diet, a high-sugar diet boosts the activity of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme linked to bladder cancer, when compared to a starch diet.

These discoveries were reported to Sugar Research Foundation in 1970. The results accompanied a request for 12 additional weeks of funding to finish the second half of the project, which was outlined as a deeper look at the effects of starch. Within a month, the Vice President of the Sugar Research Foundation declared these findings as nil and the additional funding never materialized. Project 259 was abandoned in 1971.

Related: Healthy Sugar Alternatives and More

Who Tells The Story

The sugar industry does not see this as a story. According to Courtney Gaine, the president and CEO of the Sugar Association, “They never called us. We would have let them look at the archives. I would let them look tomorrow. The story we have in our archives is a lot better than the story they’ve been telling,” She asserts that this study was lost in a bureaucratic shuffle, and emphasizes the industry’s ongoing interest in negative claims.

The sugar industry has a vested interest in controlling the story of sugar and health’s relationship. More than anything, Project 259 disrupts a narrative that was already being put into place.  The same researchers who found this study also uncovered a letter in the Harvard library that revealed the truth of that. Two prominent and now deceased Harvard researchers, Harvard nutritionists, Dr. Fredrick Stare and Mark Hegsted, were responsible for disproving studies that implicated sugar and concluded that there was only one dietary modification — changing fat and cholesterol intake — that could prevent coronary heart disease. Their work was published in 1967 and didn’t require disclosure of industry funds, although these newly found records state that the sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye. Yes, the sugar industry wants to know about negative studies but not to offer an informed choice.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Most Frustrating “What If” Ever?

Sugar (especially the way we process and refine it) is more detrimental to the human body than anyone had previously thought, but what would our quality of life look like if this study was published? What would our sweetener options even look like?

Rates of heart disease, the number one cause of death in the world, would be far less than they currently are, and the ripple effects from consuming less sugar would be huge. Would we be facing the same level of antibiotic-resistant bacteria crises? While the majority of the blame for that coming storm can be placed at the factory farming industry’s doorstep, sugar feeds infection like no other food. Would doctors and dentists need to prescribe antibiotics at the rate they currently do?

This is all speculation. Infuriating speculation, at that, as that potential future is gone.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

We Should Be Angry

Not everyone who has heart disease has a history of heart disease in their family, but through the over-consumption of sugar, we have bred that predisposition into millions of people’s genetics. Anger and outrage are a daily occurrence in the current news cycles though and making this another cause for anger doesn’t send a strong enough message.

What if you stopped and said no more to products with large quantities of added sugar? Chose a different salad dressing or committed to figuring out a quick and tomato sauce recipe that kept you from reaching for the sugar-laden, jarred version on the shelf? Instead of choosing foods that create problems while willfully ignoring them, dictate your own health and choose foods that heal.

Sources:

• Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago, researchers say – PBS
• How the sugar industry artificially sweetened Harvard research – PBS
• How the sugar industry tried to hide the health effects of its product 50 years ago – The Verge
• Uncovered Coca-Cola Emails Expose 3 Ways Big Food Casts Doubt on Science, Endangering Public Health – Alternet
• Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet – Organic Lifestyle Magazine

Have you ever wondered if your mobile phone is giving you cancer? Legally speaking, there is a link. Of course, that’s only true if you live in Italy.

Studies of the effects that cell phones have on the brain or examinations of the link between phone usage and certain cancers don’t have the same clarity. Where many studies find regular cell phone usage contributes greatly to the risk of cancer and brain tumors, other research finds the device benign. The Italian verdict is one of the first positive acknowledgments of that link. Much of that can be attributed to the Italian court’s refusal to consider studies funded by telecom industries,  but realistically there are too many variables to specifically link cellphone use to a specific condition. It is incredibly likely that cellphones are making us sick. However, they are only one aspect of a modern life designed without human health in mind.

Precedence Has Been Established

The court in the Italian town of Ivrea released an April 11th ruling ordering that a businessman receive a state-funded pension after too much phone use for work caused him to develop a benign brain tumor and resulted in the loss of his hearing. Rumors and theories surrounding the dangers of cell phone usage has swirled for years, and this is a big deal. The Italian courts had previously accepted the case of a sales manager who was on a cellphone five or six hours a day, that was subsequently rejected by a trial court. This paved the way for this ruling, as lawyers for the plaintiff, Stefano Bertone and Renato Ambrosio, pointed out “For the first time in the world, a court has recognised a causal link between inappropriate use of a mobile phone and a brain tumour…” While the court ruling is still subject to an appeal, the plaintiff in the case, Roberto Romeo, will receive 500 euros per month to be paid by INAIL, a national insurance scheme covering workplace accidents.

Recommended: How to Kill Fungal Infections

So How Much is Too Much?

Cell phones have been woven into the fabric of modern life and telling people to avoid them at all costs is not realistic. But there has to be a point at which more damage has been done that the body can recover from. In the case of the plaintiff in the Italian case, Roberto Romeo, he was required to use his company mobile phone for 3 to 4 hours of every working day for 15 years. A rat study found that rats exposed to cell phone radiation nine hours a day for a two year period were more likely to develop malignant brain tumors. Another paper found that a mere 30 minutes a day of cell phone over a ten year period increased the risk of gliomas (a malignant tumor in the brain that occurs on the side of the head) by 40 percent. Yet several other significant studies have found no causal link between cellphones and brain damage, although both the U.S. and the U.K. are in the process of conducting further long-term studies.

Recommended: Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included

Why Don’t We Have A Definitive Answer

There are many things that modern society will ignore in the name of progress, even past the point at which something needs to be done. Cell phones are an area with lots of fingers in lots of pies, and the conflicting narratives presented by these studies reinforce that. There is also science’s inability to keep up with phone technology. Before researchers have time conduct long-term studies, phone configurations have changed enough for either side to proclaim the findings of any study out of date.

Is there a clear link between cell phones and brain tumors? After eliminating all telecom funded studies, an Italian court decided there is.

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• How to Detoxify and Heal the Lymphatic System
• Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease
• Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases
• Hypothyroidism – Natural Remedies, Causes, and How To Heal the Thyroid

Sources:

• Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer or Not? – The Atlantic 
• How Safe Are Cell Phones? – Toronto Sun
• Mobile phones cause lethal type of brain cancer, major study expected to declare – What Doctors Don’t Tell You
• Brain Tumour Charity cautious about Italy mobile phone ruling – BBC
• How Cellphones Can Cause Brain Tumors and Trigger Chronic Disease – Dr. Mercola

How much would a chocolate company pay to know exactly when you or the lady in your life is experiencing PMS symptoms in an effort to more effectively target ads? If that level of corporate involvement in your medical records upsets you, you’re not going to like the new digital ingestion tracking system approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

This new tracking system is designed to address the issue of nonadherence, where patients do not follow through on prescribed medical treatments. The treatment, in this case, is called Abilify MyCite and it’s made by Japan-based Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. The actual medication portion of the Abilify MyCite system is brand-name aripiprazole, an antipsychotic drug used for treating schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and as an add-on treatment for depression in adults. “Being able to track ingestion of medications prescribed for mental illness may be useful for some patients,” said Mitchell Mathis, M.D., director of the Division of Psychiatry Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “The FDA supports the development and use of new technology in prescription drugs and is committed to working with companies to understand how technology might benefit patients and prescribers.”

How It Works

The pill part of the system is the simple part. Abilify MyCite comes with a web-based dashboard that allows a patient to track their actual drug ingestion, daily activity level and self-reported mood and sleep. The sensor that tracks that is roughly the size of a grain of sand and activates upon contact with fluid in the stomach. It detects and records the date and time the pill was taken and relays that to a patch worn by the patient. The patch then sends all of that to the patient’s smartphone. When the patient gives consent, caregivers or medical professionals are able to see all of this data, though the system does not register the ingestion in real time or emergencies. The patient is able to revoke those permissions at any time.

Is It Worth It?

The system itself does not actually increase drug compliance. Both Otsuka Pharmaceuticals and the FDA take care to note that the product does not fix nonadherence, and it remains to be seen if the patients with the first illnesses targeted by this medication will respond positively. While nonadherence is an expensive issue, schizophrenics and those with bipolar frequently skip medications because they don’t like the way they feel when on them or dislike the feeling of being controlled or manipulated. A pill that tracks their compliance is probably not going to change that.

Who Does This Product Work For?

Imagine a system where medical compliance is a condition of benefits without a way around it. Can a digital ingestion tracking system create a situation where your insurance charges you more for choosing not to take a prescription?

The more connected we become, the more difficult it is to keep information private. How secure will this data be? According to Kimberly Whitfield from Otsuka Pharmaceuticals public relations department, “the data is encrypted while it is stored in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant cloud environment, and the cloud service provider does not have a decryption key.” While all of these makes this information much more secure than your average social media profile, information leaks happen across every sector.

The company is clearly taking precautions, but can the information be stopped once it’s out there?

Recommended Reading:

• How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials
• How to Kill Fungal Infections
• Three Homemade Toothpaste Recipes – Better Oral Health for Less Cost

Sources:

• FDA Approves First Digital Pill That Can Track Whether You’ve Taken It – NPR
• FDA approves pill with sensor that digitally tracks if patients have ingested their medication – FDA
• FDA approves ‘trackable’ pill – BBC
• Experts raise eyebrows at digital pill to monitor patients with schizophrenia – Ars Technica