Monsanto Wants the Omega-3 Fatty Acids Market

What’s the next phase in omega-3 fatty acid supplementation? If biotechnology and agricultural trading giants like Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and Cargill have anything to say about it, the future is soy and canola.

There is no way to meet the demand we currently have for fish oil.Peru, the world’s leader in fish oil and fish meal production, had a banner year in 2016, getting the highest recorded average price per metric ton. But those record numbers come at a time when production levels have declined 61% from the previous year. The production levels aren’t likely to improve either, as the United Nations reports 90% of the world’s fish are fully or partially overfished. Farm-raised fish are unlikely to be a good source of Omega-3s as they themselves are frequently fed other fish oils to boost their health. We are approaching the point where a big source for Omega-3s, wild-caught fish, will no longer be available, and farm raised fish currently require supplementation instead of providing it.

The Big Business Solution

The demand for fish oil products has created a 2.4 million dollar market, and many big companies have settled on grains as the solution to the problem left by dwindling fish oil supplies. One of the companies with ambitious plans in this area is Cargill, an agricultural trading company based in Minnesota. In a bid to create a fifth of current fish oil supplies, 159,000 metric tons, they’ve earmarked up to half a million acres of Montana farmland to grow their new strain of canola. Projected to be ready in 2020, the canola will contain long-chain omega-3 fatty acids from algae. Dow Chemicals has also jumped on the canola train, although they plan to grow their canola in Canada.

Monsanto, on the other hand, is sticking with what they know – soy. Soybeans are already a source of ALA (alpha-linolenic acids), and the company’s plan is to develop a soybean specifically meant to be processed into a soy oil for baked goods and soup. Other companies are launching omega-3 products with algae. Archer Daniels Midland in Chicago, a commodities trading and food processing company, created an algae-based product for fish supplementation. TerraVia Holdings Ltd is another company focused on algae, using it to convert sugar into omega-3s.

A Little People Solution

Omega 3 fatty acids are essential to any healthy diet, but other options are out there? Quality fish and fish oil are hard to find and hard to justify from an environmental perspective. Many of the proposed big businesses solutions focus on GMO crops. Both of these options are problematic.

Getting omega-3s in your diet doesn’t have to be all about fish oil. Algae is a great source of omega-3s, and it’s important to get different colors. Green algae like spirulina and chlorella, are a source of EPA. Brown algae like wakame and hijiki are sources of DHA, a key nutrient in supporting a healthy brain. Other vegetable based sources of omega-3s include flax, chia, and nuts, especially walnuts. The acids are also in a number of vegetables like spinach, winter squash, and brussels sprouts, though the amount is much less than what is found in seaweeds, nuts, and seeds.

The World is Not Enough

This is not the only important part of the food chain disappearing. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, close to 75% of plant diversity has been lost. Six different livestock breeds are lost every month. Our gut bacteria has been slowly losing its variety, leaving us more open to disease. From a health viewpoint and an environmental viewpoint, now is the time to look for different, diverse foods. How long will it be before whole nutrients groups disappear from our world like so many plant varieties or members of our gut flora?

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So Now It’s 10 Vegetables and Fruits Every Day? REALLY?!?

How many vegetables and fruits do you eat each day? Are you getting the maximum benefit from your food choices?

In the early 2000s, The World Health Organization (WHO) began a campaign to raise awareness of the connection between health and adequate fruit and vegetable consumption. The quality of health wasn’t the only issue. Mortality itself was measured in units of fruit and vegetable consumption.

WHO estimated 2.7 million lives could be saved each year if fruit and vegetable consumption was raised to a sufficient level. They stated that low consumption of fruits and vegetables was one of the top ten risk factors for global mortality. The recommendation equaled a minimum intake of 400g (14 ounces) of fruits and vegetables excluding potatoes and other starchy tubers. This is about 5 servings a day. This level of consumption reduced the risk of heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

The latest research says we should do better. Now the recommendation is 10 servings (800 grams or 28 ounces) of fruits and vegetables per day.

The study conducted by scientists from the Imperial College London, analyzed 95 studies on fruit and vegetable intake. It included “up to 2 million people,” assessing “up to 43,000 cases of heart disease, 47,000 cases of stroke, 81,000 cases of cardiovascular disease, 112,000 cancer cases, and 94,000 deaths.” Their conclusion was an estimated reduction of 7.8 million annual premature deaths if everyone followed this dietary advice.

When compared to not eating any fruits and vegetables, ten servings a day was associated with:

24 % reduced risk of heart disease
33 % reduced risk of stroke
28 % reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
13 % reduced risk of total cancer
31 % reduction in premature death

While we at OLM and many others promoting a plant-based diet agree with this conclusion, we believe there is more to healthy eating than the volume of vegetables. The study did say not all fruits and vegetable were equal, but it did not stress the need for a large variety of vegetables and fruits or to choose organic and mostly raw.

We’d also like to see five servings a day versus ten, and what about 15? When do the benefits wear off? Raw or cooked? Another question this raises for us is, are we needing to double our intake of produce because of nutrient depletion in our soil?

What we do know is that gut health provides the basis of our health. Gut health determines the strength and efficiency of our immune system, the intake of nutrients to fuel our entire body, the creation of many of our neurotransmitters, and the ability to detox. An unbalanced microbiome allows an overgrowth of one bacteria over others or an overgrowth of Candida or parasites. A leaky gut is like a sewer leaking filth and disease into the bloodstream.

We have always recommended a diet consisting of 80% raw, organic produce– a wide variety of vegetables and fruit, mostly vegetables. In addition, we recommend the elimination of all artificial colors, flavorings, and preservatives; refined sugar; trans fats; MSG; and GMOs. The perfect diet is all real food, with no packaged, processed concoctions added in. Real food doesn’t have an ingredient list. There are no added chemicals.

It is important that your vegetable and fruit consumption includes a wide variety. Every fruit or vegetable contains its own combination of nutrients. We need a variety to consume as many nutrients as possible. In addition, we don’t want to overfeed just one or a few of our friendly or not so friendly bacteria or yeast by favoring one food over others. We want to maintain balance in all ways. For instance, if all of our fruit choices are high sugar, Candida thrives. We need a diverse microbiome to fend off a wide array of pathogens and to achieve this, we need a wide variety of nutrients to feed a wide variety of helpful microbiome bacteria.

If you are ill or you don’t feel well, changing your diet will change your life. We’ve seen it over and over again. If we eat a perfect diet until all traces of disease are gone, we heal very quickly. No supplement can achieve the change of health we accomplish by eating one large, organic salad filled with 15 or more vegetables each day.

If you are ready to change your life, change your diet. Go for 10+ a day. And remember, variety is key! Check out the salad recipe in the first article below.

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Lawsuit Alleges that Monsanto Influenced the EPA’s Classification of Glyphosate

In 2015, the World Health Organization categorized glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. A new lawsuit, filed on behalf of cancer victims, claims the Environmental Protection Agency had the information to label glyphosate as carcinogenic two years earlier and instead chose to claim glyphosate was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

Marion Copley, now deceased, was a toxicologist at the EPA for 30 years. In 2013, she wrote a letter to Jess Rowland, the chair of the EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee (CARC), listing 14 reasons to classify glyphosate as carcinogenic. Copley also alleged that Rowland and other select colleagues changed important reports to benefit companies like Monsanto.

The lawsuit is demanding the release of Jess Rowland’s communications with Monsanto during his time on the CARC and his involvement with the release of the EPA’s memo declaring glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

Something Isn’t Adding Up

This is not the first time there have been questions surrounding the EPA and their treatment of glyphosate. A glyphosate risk report that found glyphosate was not likely to be carcinogenic to humans, a direct contrast to the WHO report, was released in 2016 on the EPA website on April 29, only to be taken down four days later. This is not the first time two different groups of scientists (the IARC and CARC) have taken a look at the same problem and come up with conflicting views. But the EPA sent officials to help conduct the IARC study. The discrepancy in results was enough for the House of Representatives Science Committee to request interviews with four different EPA officials, including Jess Rowland. While it makes sense for the chair of the CARC to be mentioned, the letter from Marion Copley makes the EPA’s findings seem more like a dictate from private interests than an independent government report.

Where is Monsanto in All of This?

It goes without saying that Monsanto is deeply invested in keeping glyphosate from being labeled as a health hazard. It’s easy to sound like a conspiracy theorist, accusing the EPA of being in Monsanto’s back pocket, that EPA scientists collaborated with the scientists who found that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen and then walked it back. Monsanto is now using the EPA’s official report to dispute the study that the found that glyphosate was harmful. In that light, Marion Copley’s allegations of changing study findings to favor industry are not so outlandish. Until we have a transparent system, we have to trust that government science has our best interests at heart. Do we matter more than Monsanto?

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Google Removed Natural News – Is This Alternative News Censorship?

Google has wiped NaturalNews.com and its published articles off its proverbial map. If you google Natural News the website does not come up in a search and neither do an estimated 140,000 articles published by the organization (as of 2/27/2017).

NaturalNews.com is not a small, inconsequential site. It is a website visited by an average of 7 million individuals a month. Yes, 7 million unique readers visit the website each month and 2 million have “liked” Natural News on Facebook.

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, is a well-known proponent and purveyor of “alternative” news. His site, NaturalNews.com, promotes alternative health care, nutrition, natural healing, and supplementation. He has taken a clear stand against vaccines, GMOs, fluoride in drinking water, environmental toxins, and the chemicals we put in our food.

Adams also freely shares his views on politics and daily life. He is a staunch conservative who denies manmade climate change and supports President Trump, the right to bear arms, and a prepper lifestyle. Recently, he has also been warning his readers about fake news and impending censorship of sites such as his.

On February 16^th, he reported the following:

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am being threatened with the complete destruction’of my reputation, my brand and my character by left-wing media operatives who have issued a new threat this week: ‘Destroy Alex Jones or we will destroy YOU.’

Alex Jones, of course, is the founder of InfoWars.com, one of the most popular multi-media publishers of pro-America news, videos and radio broadcasts in the world.

The warning implies that a barrage of left-wing media stories will target me personally — obviously spreading “fake news” lies — unless I agree to go public with “opposition research” targeting Jones that was previously delivered to me on a physical thumb drive.”

Adams also believes his support of President Trump has made him a target.

Malicious effort now under way to take out prominent Trump supporters and silence their support of our President.”

Google Wipes Out Natural News Content

On February 22, Natural News was “blacklisted” with no prior warning. All of its content is gone from the search engine. Adams states:

Some of the news now being censored by Google includes our laboratory testing of the U.S. water supply, where we conducted laboratory testing to discover that 6.7% of municipal water is contaminated with toxic metals. Google has also blacklisted our announcement of free laboratory testing services for Native American water supplies impacted by oil pipeline leaks. Also blacklisted is our exclusive coverage of the GlaxoSmithKline criminal indictment by the U.S. Justice Dept. and our interview with the whistleblower who helped achieved a record $3 billion settlement with the criminal drug company.”

No Response From Google

We emailed Google through the proper channels (the contact email reserved for media) on February 23rd. They did not respond to our inquiry.

The question is, why did Google do this? Was it because Adams supports Trump? Denies climate change? Exposes vaccines? Highlights fake mainstream news?

Two days after the event, Google sent an email to Mike Adams. Mike Adams told us,

Google is now citing a bullshit technical reason that was only concerning a dozen blog pages posted in 2013 – 2014.”

In an article, he wrote the following explanation about the email he received:

…a Google techie found an obscure third party advertising script running on a tiny number of articles published 3+ years ago under the blogs.naturalnews.com subdomain, where content is posted by outside bloggers. (Many websites host similar blogs, including the NY Times.) Google has so far provided us with ONE URL that they claim is a violation. (Yet they banned 140,000+.)”

This action by Google not only shuts down traffic driven to the Natural News website through web searches for specific words or information, it also will result in a loss of income. Mike Adams told us,

They shut this down without any warning, it silenced about 1.8 million clicks a month, at least.”

Search Engine Land Reported:

Google has confirmed the site was not removed for its political views but rather because of a webmaster guidelines violation. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land…” and they qouted Google:

We don’t comment on individual sites, but if we find that a site violates one or more of our Webmaster Guidelines we may take manual action against it. For webmasters who have questions about their own sites, our Webmaster team provides support through platforms such as the Webmaster Forums. Once a site has remedied the problem, the webmaster can submit the site for reconsideration.”

Mike is determined to win this fight. He says, “We will prevail!”

We, at OLM, do not always agree with Mike Adams. Most of us as the office today identify as progressive, not conservative or liberal. We supported Bernie Sanders, not Donald Trump. We do believe in manmade climate change and we aren’t so convinced that there is a shadow government planning a coup. On the other hand, we don’t know who really killed President Kennedy or the full story on 9/11. The mainstream media doesn’t show us what’s actually going on. We need alternative media. We need people like Mike Adams on both sides.

FYI: While they disagree politically, Michael Edwards considers Mike Adams a friend. This is not a title he bestows on many.

What we do know for sure is that censorship is dangerous. And while Mike Adams is very happy with the current administration, we grow increasingly concerned over censorship. And not only by government, but as we can see, big business has the ability to do massive damage to an organization like Natural News.

The Alzheimer’s Aluminum Connection

In 1982, I was a psychology major attending Georgia State University. One of my favorite professors told us, “If you don’t want to get Alzheimer’s, avoid aluminum. When the brains of Alzheimer’s victims were studied post mortem, the one thing they all had in common was aluminum in their brain tissue. Don’t drink from aluminum cans. Stop buying canned food. And stop cooking in aluminum pans.”

I went home and threw out all of my aluminum pots and pans. I had quite a few. And I took the rest of his advice to heart. From that day forward, I bought drinks in glass bottles and avoided canned foods.

I always imagined the aluminum connection was common knowledge, at least in scientific circles. But in recent years, I discovered there was no general consensus regarding the aluminum, Alzheimer’s connection. As a matter of fact, it seems to have been an issue of debate. But isn’t that always the case when big business is involved? If we malign the aluminum soda can and all that canned food, if we stop wrapping our food in aluminum foil, businesses will lose a lot of money.

A quick internet search revealed the Alzheimer’s Association’s stance. Their website shows the following:

Myth 4: Drinking out of aluminum cans or cooking in aluminum pots and pans can lead to Alzheimer’s disease.

Reality: During the 1960s and 1970s, aluminum emerged as a possible suspect in Alzheimer’s. This suspicion led to concern about exposure to aluminum through everyday sources such as pots and pans, beverage cans, antacids, and antiperspirants. Since then, studies have failed to confirm any role for aluminum in causing Alzheimer’s. Experts today focus on other areas of research, and few believe that everyday sources of aluminum pose any threat.

And yet, recent studies have refuted the claim that there is no link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s. Aluminum accumulates in the body. We are not only exposed through cans and cookware, we accumulate aluminum through cosmetics, antiperspirants, medications, and vaccines.

In Professor Chris Exley’s article published by The Hippocratic Post he states, “ In my view, the findings are unequivocal in their confirmation of a role for aluminum in some if not all Alzheimer’s disease.”

The following quotes reiterate what my professor told us in the 1980s.

We already know that the aluminum content of brain tissue in late-onset or sporadic Alzheimer’s disease is significantly higher than is found in age-matched controls.”

“Individuals who develop Alzheimer’s disease in their late sixties and older also accumulate more aluminum in their brain tissue than individuals of the same age without the disease.”

Why would the Alzheimer’s Association say “…few believe that everyday sources of aluminum pose any threat.”?

Professor Exley concludes, “We should take all possible precautions to reduce the accumulation of aluminum in our brain tissue through our everyday activities and we should start to do this as early in our lives as possible.”

One thing is certain – aluminum is a neurotoxin that should not be injected into our children’s bodies through dozens of vaccines. Check out How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children.

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Fast Food Packaging Contains Dangerous Chemicals According to New Study – As If the Food Isn’t Bad Enough!

A new study reports that fast food packaging contains concerning levels of certain perfluoroalkyls and polyfluoroalkyls (PFAs), a relative of the chemicals used in non-stick pans, furniture, packing tape, and waterproof clothes. Among the items tested for PFAs were dessert and bread wrappers, sandwich and burger wrappers, paperboard containers, and paper cups. The dessert and bread wrappers were the biggest offenders, with 56% of them containing PFAs. Not only do these PFAs break down slowly in nature, but they’ve also been linked to higher cholesterol, higher rates of kidney and bladder cancer, weakened antibody responses to vaccines in children, and suppressed immune systems.

It’s Not Just the Wrappers

Fluorosurfactants come in many forms. They can be called PFAs, PFOA, PFOS, and PFCs. These chemicals are in the majority of stain-resistant, waterproof, non-stick, and fire-retardant items. The plethora of acronyms make it difficult to understand which ones have been banned. This creates confusion companies can use to their advantage.

The EPA has established a safety limit for these products, but the government doesn’t regulate them beyond that. The FDA did ban three PFCs found in pizza boxes and microwave popcorn bags in 2016, and a form of PFAs, known as long chain PFAs, was banned in the early 2000s. All PFAs found in products like fast food wrappers are now short chain PFAs, which are the long chain PFAs minus a set of carbon molecules.

The Slow Takeover

In 2013, the Environmental Health Perspectives Journal published a study linking PFOAs in Teflon pans to thyroid disease. Many scientists have called for companies to stop using non-essential PFAs, while the FDA has approved nearly 100 new PFCs to use in food packaging in the last decade. The speed at which new fluorosurfactants are being developed makes it unlikely that scientific concerns will be taken as seriously as they should be.

Since fluorosurfactants take so long to break down in nature, they have plenty of time to migrate to water sources, release into the air, and contaminate soil. After looking at 36,000 water samples from more than 4,800 public water sources in 2016, Harvard University found that 16 million Americans are drinking water with PFAs. Of those water sources, 66 of them had levels at or above what the EPA considers safe.

Persistent Waste Creates Persistent Problems

One wonders where the ever growing number of PFAs will end up when they run out of space. No one seems to be clear on how they got in our water, and it doesn’t seem likely that anyone is going to step up and regulate them. PFAs continue to resist decomposition and mysteriously leach into water supplies and the food they are wrapped around unchecked, leaving us with a higher likelihood of thyroid disease, certain cancers, infertility, and developmental disorders in children. At some point, the advice to avoid fast-food wrappers, microwave popcorn, and nonstick cookware will only minimize the exposure to PFAs. True avoidance will no longer be an option.

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New Study Suggests Women Could, and Maybe Should, Eat While In Labor

Hospitals typically restrict women from eating and drinking during labor. Women are given ice chips and intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration. A review of previous studies looks at women who were allowed to eat before delivery and found that they had a slightly shorter labor than those who were restricted to ice chips and water.

Concerns go back to a 1940s study that showed women who delivered under general anesthesia were at risk of regurgitating and aspirating food that was inside their stomachs while they were under sedation. Fortunately, the use of general anesthesia during delivery is far less common today.

The information does not prove that eating caused deliveries to happen sooner, but we suspect there is at least a cause and effect happening like the way that eating can lead us to defecate sooner than if we had not eaten. There’s only so much room in there. Regardless of whether or not our theory is true, the woman’s uterus is mostly muscle. Our muscles need fuel. As anyone who has ever tried to run a marathon, ride a century (a 100-mile bike ride) or otherwise push their body to the physical limit knows, you will bonk, or hit the wall, if you run out of sugar. A long and intense labor is like completing an ironman triathlon and then going back for more. Even at its best, labor uses a massive amount of energy.

Monsanto Wants the Omega-3 Fatty Acids Market

The Big Business Solution

A Little People Solution

The World is Not Enough

Related Reading:

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So Now It’s 10 Vegetables and Fruits Every Day? REALLY?!?

Further Reading:

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Lawsuit Alleges that Monsanto Influenced the EPA’s Classification of Glyphosate

Something Isn’t Adding Up

Where is Monsanto in All of This?

Sources:

Google Removed Natural News – Is This Alternative News Censorship?

Google Wipes Out Natural News Content

No Response From Google

Recommended Reading:

The Alzheimer’s Aluminum Connection

Related Reading:

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Fast Food Packaging Contains Dangerous Chemicals According to New Study – As If the Food Isn’t Bad Enough!

It’s Not Just the Wrappers

The Slow Takeover

Persistent Waste Creates Persistent Problems

Related Reading:

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New Study Suggests Women Could, and Maybe Should, Eat While In Labor

Recommended Reading:

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