It is also undeniable that the increase in statistics coincides with the increase of factory farms and the introduction of genetically modified produce as well as the increased use of Monsanto’s Roundup pesticides, bovine growth hormones and daily doses of antibiotics.

Not surprisingly, the increase in obesity among Americans, particularly among our youth, has erupted into an epidemic proportion following the same time line as the introduction of factory farming and the increase in synthetic chemical sweeteners and preservatives.

Multinational corporations, already profiting from the increased illness and disease in America by selling prescription and over the counter drugs, have no interest in addressing the underlying causes because to do so would reduce their bottom line profits.

To make matters worse, many American corporations, especially Monsanto, are in an unholy partnership with the U. S. Government to participate in the profits from the sale of drugs and the production of genetically modified foods that harm Americans.

The increase in Crohn’s, IBS and IBD are directly related to a person’s individual food sensitivity to the chemicals found in processed, packaged and farmed foods, including meat and poultry. These chemicals include but are not limited to Roundup pesticides, rGBH, antibiotics, nitrates, MSG, Maltodextrin, carcinogenic caramel food coloring and incredible amounts of genetically modified soy and corn byproducts.

MSG, genetically modified soy and corn are in every package. They are used as cheap fillers and to enhance the flavor of flavorless genetically modified foods.

A simple look at the ingredient’s label of a frozen food item will disclose as many as 150 different chemicals on the package. And where the label includes artificial or natural flavoring, those flavorings contain up to 300 different esters (artificial chemicals) that are not required to be listed on the package. Why? Because they are protected by the trade secrets of multinational corporations.

Our grandmothers didn’t have to put more than 150 ingredients into the food they served our families to make them yummy. Most Americans don’t have more than 20 spices in their spice cabinet. I doubt that you can find one American that can name more than 50 ingredients in their food, let alone 150.

Yet, American food manufacturers faced with tasteless genetically modified ingredients are compelled to add these chemical ingredients to fool your taste buds not only into buying their food but to become addicted to it.

As we note in our books, Doritos has more than 39 ingredients in their recipe. Yet, you only need three ingredients to make chips at home. So, what are the other 36 ingredients? Chemicals, chemicals and more chemicals.

Pepsi and Coke finally acknowledge that the synthetic caramel coloring in their soft drinks is carcinogenic and have planned removal of these ingredients by the summer of 2012. Now if the industry will only acknowledge the dangers of high fructose corn syrup and remove it from their soft drinks, the world could be a safer place to eat and drink.

For people with digestive diseases and syndromes, these chemicals upset their stomachs, inflame their colons, irritate their bowels and eventually lead to colon cancer. If you total up all of the chemicals off the ingredients labels on the packages of food you eat daily, you may find that you are eating and drinking the equivalent of five to six ounces of chemicals a day.

If you drink sugary soft drinks, that number may increase to as many as 20 ounces of some form of chemicals daily. Just imagine pouring yourself a tall glass of chilled chemicals every day and ask yourself what are they doing to your body?

Then ask yourself, how many days, weeks, months and years can you drink eight to 20 ounces of chemicals a day before it rots your insides out, causes Crohn’s, IBS, IBD, heart disease, diabetes or leads to cancer?

It is simple math that, when applied to infant children, is even more alarming. The ingredients of baby food now contain the same dangerous chemicals that adult food contain. Only, starting a child on chemicals almost immediately after birth has far reaching consequences on the future of our society. The recent increase in childhood maladies is dramatic proof of this.

Additional proof can be found in research conducted by UC Davis scientists found in an article in the Los Angeles Times, Groundwater Nitrate Contamination Grows in California Farm Areas, that cites nitrate pollution leaching into aquifers from fertilizers and manure applied to cropland as the cause of high levels of nitrate linked to cancer and reproductive disorders that can be lethal to infants.

The research also pointed out the long term danger when it said, “Because it can take years or decades for nitrate to migrate through aquifers, the authors warned that the effects of the rising volume of manure may not be evident for some time.”

Our water is polluted. Our food is polluted. And over time, our bodies will be polluted with these chemicals resulting in illness and disease. For Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowl syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease sufferers, it is a prescription for pain, suffering and ultimately colon cancer.

If you doubt it, go to various websites, including the CDC, FDA and other more independent sites, and chart the increases in these illnesses and diseases from 1994 until 2011. The numbers are increasing exponentially and are projected to increase even more dramatically in the next 25 years.

The only way to reverse this trend is to eat organic foods and demand that the U.S. government require full and complete disclosure of chemicals in the labels found on foods sold in markets. True disclosure will enable Americans to make their own decisions and not let our government, twisted and turned by political contributions and legalized bribes, make those decisions for us.

To do otherwise will be to condemn our children and grandchildren to a shorter life punctuated by obesity, illness and disease.

The study asserted that adding a daily serving of a hot dog or two slices of bacon caused a 20% higher risk of death. Past studies have linked the consumption of red meat, particularly processed red meat, with diabetes, heart disease and cancer. But this one goes much farther indicting meat as the principal cause of premature death.

The Harvard School of Medicine, whose studies are financed by multinational corporations with an agenda, concluded that the results suggest that, among the 37,698 men and 83,644 women who were tracked, as their meat consumption increased, so did their risk of mortality.

Mark Twain once said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Twenty years of studying 100,000 plus people is just not enough time or sufficient participants (approximately .0003% of the U.S. population) to project these results as affecting a population of 349 million people. The study’s conclusions are shortsighted and terribly flawed.

For example, did the study participants eat red meat fed with genetically modified corn, shot-up with bovine growth hormones and daily doses of antibiotics as well as containing chemical “pink slime” to avoid E. coli?

It is unlikely any of the study participants ate grass-fed organic beef which contains no harmful chemicals? Nor did the study identify whether the participants ate organic fruits and vegetables or conventionally grown fruits and vegetables that were no exposed to multiple applications of Monsanto’s Roundup.

There was also no mention of the amount of packaged and frozen foods that were consumed by study participants, many such products containing more than 150 chemical ingredients, mostly carcinogenic.

It should be noted that the “Greatest Generation” has outlived all others before it eating meat every day of the week. But the meat that generation ate, until the last two decades, was grass-fed organic meat. And the dairy that generation consumed was free of bovine growth hormones, daily shots of antibiotics and not fed genetically modified corn and soy.

The study data does not differentiate between the participants’ diets, nor does it trace the sugar or alcohol consumption of the participants. There was also no indication of how many of them smoked or how many of the ones who died smoked or worked in environmentally hazardous jobs or locations.

And how many of the 110,000 surveyed actually died. Twenty years does not seem adequate to truly understand the lifestyles of all those surveyed and what affected those who died.

Were there autopsies to determine whether the red meat was really a factor in their death as opposed to other causes such as accidents, metals poisonings or reactions to medicines. All common causes of death in our modern society. And there are a legion of other possible causes of death that render the study’s statistics flawed.

And what about those participants who did not die? No one knows how long the they will live and any projection of their life span based upon this small sampling of our population is terribly flawed. Isn’t the study just speculating at what will happen to the surviving study participants over their lifetimes?

There are more unanswered questions about the ages of the participants, how much daily exercise was involved and whether their jobs posed environmental and health hazards that would also eschew the statistics. Certainly their geographical location and the style of regional food have an impact on their longevity.

Did the participants drink sugary soft drinks? Were their family histories taken to determine their individual risk factors? How many were single? And how many lived at the poverty line?

Certainly a study group consisting of Americans’ living at the poverty level would provide different statistics than a study group consisting of well-educated upscale Americans who can afford to buy better quality meats and eat organic foods.

Any study group consisting of Americans living on fast foods will have increased mortality rates and statistics. Not to mention the high incidence of diabetes, heart disease, liver and kidney disease already chronicled in multiple studies in the last decade.

So what does this Harvard study really mean? Absolutely nothing without closely scrutinizing all of the parameters used to create the study group tested. And examining who funded the study and what their economic interest was in financing the study.

For example, was it intended to spur the sales of drugs or some other financially profitable remedy? It is difficult to believe that any for-profit multinational corporation financed this study out of the goodness of their corporate heart.

Without scrutinizing all of the missing information, this study has probably been twisted into whatever conclusion the grant money intended when it was provided. You can be assured that whoever paid for this study had an agenda.

To avoid the consequences of this study, it is important to avoid factory farmed meats and factory farmed dairy products, not to mention chemically polluted packaged and frozen foods.

 If you want to live as long as your grandma, you should consider eating like your grandma did in her younger days.

The internet is now flooded with disinformation and misinformation provided by doctors, scientists and drug companies to make you dependent on their drugs. Like all businesses their primary goal is to open up larger markets for purposes of selling more of their products.

Almost daily one media outlet or another offers information and advice from a newly published medical report or clinical study regarding sugar consumption, diabetes and the growing obesity problem facing Americans daily. In almost every case, the report or clinical study raises the bar on the number of diabetics and obese Americans and touts a drug product or miracle diet to save Americans from themselves.

You have heard and read it all. The sugary soft drinks, the donuts, the effects of fast food, higher blood sugar levels and the increase in the number of diabetics in the last decade from 17.7 million in 2000 to 25.8 million children and adults – 8.3% of the population.

But what you haven’t heard or read is how these clinical studies and reports are frequently “rigged” to give the test results desired by the studies sponsors. Controlling the result of tests and clinical studies is easy if you have a big checkbook and unlimited funds to spend.

We all remember the old axiom about statistics. They can say whatever it is that you want them to say. For a lot of money, statistics can outright lie. In the hands of a scientist or doctor paid millions to perform the tests that creates the statistics, the temptation is just too great.

Doctors and scientists, generally believed to be ethical and above corruption, are just like everyone else when a large corporation puts a lot of money in front of them to do a job. Everyone agrees that absolute power corrupts. Well, absolute power fueled by large sums of money corrupts faster that sulphuric acid dissolves newspaper.

In a market where jobs are a premium, a scientist cannot afford to loose his/her job over principals and then be blackballed throughout the industry. Such is the lot of any scientist or researcher who tells the truth.

In 2011, this was punctuated by Dr. Don Huber, a former Monsanto scientist and professor emeritus at Purdue University, writing a letter that exposed hidden truths about Monsanto’s GMO plants. See Dr. Huber explain his letter at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYlBLNnl_iM

He was immediately attacked and chastised by Monsanto who claimed he was always a problem despite paying him for twenty-five years. If Dr. Huber had not already retired, one could just imagine what would have happened to his career for telling the truth about Monsanto GMO plants.

To understand how these tests are manipulated, we will examine the basis of the deplorable methods of research used to create the tests the industry throws at you like a Cruise missel. This is how these tests are rigged to give food and drug companies statistics to back up their marketing claims.

The reason mice are a favored lab animal is that they share so many genes with humans – 15,187 of them, to be exact. But that genetic comparison was made between mice found in nature and humans and not between a genetically modified mouse created in a laboratory and humans.

So let’s talk about the mice used in sugar tests and clinical studies. Researchers use a popular, inbred genetically modified strain of mice known as C57BL/6J mice. We call them “Black Franken-mice”. According to the Jackson Laboratory, Black Franken-mice are the most widely used inbred strain of mice and the first to have its genome sequenced.

Along with being easy to breed, Black Franken-mice are genetically created to have a relatively low bone density, high blood sugar, insulin resistance, leptin resistance that make them ultra-susceptible to diet-induced obesity and Type 2 diabetes as well as hardening of the arteries. These black mice start their lives with “one foot in the bucket” toward diabetes and obesity.

They are the mice of choice among researchers because they are created with a genetic predisposition to become Type 2 diabetes, which make them particularly useful for clinical studies. All it takes to send them into a downward spiral of diabetes and obesity is some extra dietary fat.

The industry, clearly understanding the susceptibility of genetically predisposed Black Franken-mice, “rig” their clinical tests by throwing gasoline on the fires of diabetes and obesity with a diet unfit for any animal, let alone a mouse weighing between one and two ounces.

Essentially, the researchers drop a dietary “nuclear bomb” on them, consisting of carbohydrates and pure sugar to make certain that nothing can interfere with the scientists finding the “bought and paid for” result.

The “nuclear bomb” in the diets used in clinical studies and testing typically consist of the following:

100 grams (3.5 ounces) of fat

680 grams (or 24.29 ounces) of Maltodextrin derived from GMO corn (HFCS) and contains MSG

175 grams (or 6.25 ounces) of pure sugar

358 grams (12.8 ounces) of hydrogenated GMO soy and/or coconut oil

228 grams (8.1 ounces) of Casein (a disease-promoting amino acid

Derived from factory farmed dairy cows fed GMO corn and

soy, antibiotics daily and Bovine growth Hormones)

A total of 54.9 ounces of food a day.

To put this in prospective, a typical Black Franken-mouse weighs about one and a half to two ounces, but is fed up to twenty-five times their weight every day to make certain they become obese and have at least Type 2 diabetes.

Six and a quarter ounces of pure sugar are more then three times its weight in sugar every day. It would be equal to a 154-pound man or woman being fed about 453 pounds of sugar a day. It is like shooting a fly with a shot gun.

And, why are they using high omega-6 soybean oil which causes cancer? Or the cancer causing casein? The main calorie source is hydrogenated coconut oil. A quarter of this sugar-rich fat diet consists of refined carbohydrates? Where is the food? Absolutely nothing in this diet resembles real food. The simple fat is that hydrogenated oil doesn’t belong in the diet of any human or animal.

The natural diet of Mother Nature’s own mice is mostly grains not pure sugar and hydrogenated oil, unless they eat at McDonald’s or KFC. So how can tests on genetically modified Black Franken-mice be related to humans who may have diabetes or be concerned with getting diabetes in the future.

We think the primary reason why the industry created Black Franken-mice is because they get rapidly obese on high-fat diets while other mice remain lean on the same diet and are far more resistant to diabetes.

As Denise Minger, health, fitness writer and teacher, points out, “this deception is compounded by the fact that there is no standard for what ‘high fat’ means, and rodent researchers have thrown everything from 20%-fat diets to 60%-fat diets under the same ‘high fat’ umbrella. All of these diets also contain a hefty dose of sugar.”

As a result, these diets cause clinical studies to provide an incomplete and distorted picture of what the tests seek to accomplish. But isn’t that the purpose of manipulating the Franken-mice’s diet – to hide the truth with a trumped up conclusion that sells either the study-sponsor’s food or drugs?

Diabetes is the new cottage industry for food and drug companies. The National Diabetes Fact Sheet now claims that an additional 79 million American adults are pre-diabetics. The industry based their calculation of the number of persons with pre-diabetes by applying age-specific estimates from census estimates. This is akin to throwing a dart at a census map.

For drug companies, 79 million pre-diabetics is like the oil industry discovering an unlimited source of oil in the U.S. Now, the only question for the food and drug companies is how to mine more profits from these statistics.

But the tests that they rely upon to reach these conclusions and statistics are biased toward diagnosing you as a diabetic and selling you drugs. The tests are not honest. The manipulation of statistics is not honest. And the material parroted by your drug-company-trained doctor should be looked at with a jaundiced eye.

So the moral of this article is don’t believe all of the manipulated reports, studies and proclamations published in so-called medical journals and provided to television news shows sponsored by these same food and drug companies that sponsored the distorted and dishonest tests.

Before anyone accepts a diagnosis of diabetes Type 2, one should consider the following suggestions:

1. If your blood test discloses high blood sugar, don’t accept the initial diagnosis of diabetes Type 2 without additional testing and more information. Whether or not you have diabetes should not be decided by one test. If you have Type 1 diabetes, you will probably realize it by your symptoms with or without any testing.

2. Make certain that you have fasted overnight before your blood test to make certain that your blood test is not eschewed by a meal eaten within a few hours before your blood test.

3. Write down the contents of your meals the previous day for clues as to what may be contributing to any high blood sugar. Splurging on sweet desserts the day before a blood test can cause your blood sugar to be temporarily high. The same holds true for your cholesterol numbers. A meal of lobster, for example, will result in high cholesterol in any test taken with about 48-hours after consumption.

4. If after fasting, your blood sugar is too high, retest it a week later, and preferably three or four times before you make a decision regarding any diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes.

There are so many reasons why, including fasting too long before the test, why your blood sugar tests are inconsistent. The cost of additional tests is far less than the cost of diabetes medicine or the problems that a false diagnosis of diabetes will cause.

5. Look at your family history. Your family may have a history of having a higher than normal blood sugar with no family history of diabetes.

For some, there may be a family history of diabetes among family members who watch their sugar levels carefully. Sometimes in life, it is more important what your grandparents’ health problems were than the environment in which you live.

For example, one author has a history of cancer in his family and was diagnosed with malignant cancer. But there is no history of heart problems in his family and has no blocked arteries despite a history of higher than normal cholesterol levels.

A careful analysis of your family history can only benefit you and your doctor in making decisions regarding diabetes.

6. Study the history of diabetes diagnoses and learn how the numbers for determining whether a patient has Type 2 diabetes have been created and manipulated by the drug industry.

For example, every time the threshold for blood sugar determining Type 2 diabetes is lowered ten points by the industry, the number of diabetics increases by about five million people who now require drugs. This manipulation of numbers has also caused a dramatic increase in the sales of cholesterol-blocking Statin drugs.

Without carefully controlled, “bought and paid for” medical studies and clinical tests, the number of Type 2 diabetics may be significantly lower than organized medicine would like to admit.

We don’t profess to know the answers. But we can point out the problems and educate our readers into thinking and researching before making a decision regarding a diagnosis that dooms them to a lifetime of drugs and the terrible side effects of those medicines.

As we point out in the companion articles below, you can’t rely upon doctors, medical publications or the news for the truth:

Do You Know That Peer-reviewed Publications, Scientific Abstracts, Journal Supplements, Bound Publications, White Papers and Symposium Materials Published in Journals and Magazines Are Ghostwritten to Sell You Food and Drugs?

Although cocoa is largely produced in developing countries, it is mostly consumed in industrialized countries. A few multinational companies dominate both manufacturing and processing. The U.S., Germany and France make up more than half of the world’s cocoa consumption with the U.S. by far the largest consumer.

To no ones surprise, the list was topped by Kraft, Mars, Nestlé and Hershey. Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck recently said, “Now that people don’t have a new television or a new car, they eat a bit more chocolate.”

In 2009, British sales of chocolate grew 5.9%, while American sales grew by 2.6% . In Belgium, a country famous for its high-quality chocolate, sales went up 3.2%. Surprisingly, China and Ukraine, neither known for a large chocolate-eating population, sales grew 18% and 12%, respectively. In Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, more new chocolate products are being released and sold than at any time prior.

The Swiss spend $206 per person annually on chocolate. British and Belgian spend $106 and $90, respectively. By comparison, Americans spend $55 each. Yet Europeans do not look overweight or obese from eating this tasty treat.

For 2011, Cadbury is projecting a 4-6% growth. Hershey predicts sales growth in the range of 2-3%, after similar growth for the past two years. The increase in sales and future projections have opened up new markets and new concepts, including genetically modifying chocolate to make it grow faster and reach market sooner.

Chocolate’s nutritional value has been trumpeted by recent research claiming that dark chocolate is rich in antioxidants, flavinoids, epicatechin and other ingredients that shield against heart attacks, stroke, cancer and diabetes. Recent grant and funding disclosures suggest that the research supporting these so-called advantages was bought and paid for by the chocolate industry.

There was a time when chocolate candy bars were pure chocolate, sugar and something special like nuts, marshmallows or peanut butter. But not so anymore. Most chocolate consumed in America today is essentially a highly fattening mix of refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup and milk from factory farmed dairy cows with an overlay of chocolate flavoring made from inferior beans. How can this be healthy?

To paraphrase a G.M. commercial for Oldsmobiles in the 1990s, “new candy bars are not your father’s candy bars, anymore”. And it only gets worse.

Mars, the makers of Snickers, Mars and Milky Way, has already altered their candy bars from pure ingredients to a host of synthetic addictive chemicals. The once pure Snickers and Milky Ways now contain 24 ingredients, 95 grams of salt and about 100 grams of refined sugar in a normal-size candy bar.

But Mars is not alone. Butterfingers and Baby Ruth Candy Bars contain 115 mg salt and 100 grams of sugar, five different artificial food colorings, at least 32 ingredients containing seven different forms of sugars (including high fructose corn syrup) and 13 different forms of MSG’s. The ingredients on the labels of the two candy bars are the same – only their “look” and packages differ.

Now, Mars is leading the charge to plant GMO cocoa plants abroad. The USDA, along with Mars and IBM have mapped the chocolate genome for the alleged purpose of making a genetically modified chocolate that, according to them, “fights heart disease and diabetes and won’t make you fat.” The real reason is to eliminate pests, much like Monsanto’s GMO Bt corn, soy and wheat, while getting the product to market four to five years earlier that Mother Nature intended. But, history dictates that GMO plants need more pesticides and lead to the evolution of superweeds.

This unholy partnership includes scientists based at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the USDA as well as researchers working at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Berkeley, Virginia Tech, Utah State University and the University of Minnesota. The partnership permits the politically-corrupt USDA to fund part of the project (clearly pork barrel spending) to benefit the industry without the public knowing.

Mars warns that “unless more is done to promote sustainability”, there will be a shortfall of more than one million tons of cocoa in the next nine years. Pledging to use 100% certified sustainable chocolate by 2020, Mars finally admitted that its new cocoa “sustainability” drive is focused on “technology transfer that puts farmers first; innovations in agricultural science; and rigorous certification standards.” This sounds like a good mission statement but it is not true. It is not sustainable farming. It is GMO factory farming at its worst.

Sadly, this deceptive news release is translated into creating new genetically modified plants. If Mars were truly into organic “sustainable” farming, then how can it explain their role in mapping the cocoa genome and genetically modifying it. Rather than sustain farming, the “unholy” partnership intends to sell GMO plants around the world for profit.

Mars is involved in breeding projects in South America and Asia that, according to them, “will greatly speed up our process for evaluating and distributing new plant types [GMOs] that address common pests like cocoa pod borer.” This is the same language Monsanto uses to try to hide the fact that they are genetically modifying seeds with bacteria, toxins and viruses that require high volume applications of pesticides, despite corporate representations to the contrary.

At no time during any of its news releases does Mars ever disclose which bacteria, toxin or virus is used to split the genome for cocoa plants. It is likely either Bt toxin, E. coli bacterium or the Cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV). None of which any of us want in our candy bars.

Recent tests have already proved that these gene “promoters” cause bacterial residue in the human gut that leads to illness and disease. This is compounded by recurring problems with Salmonella in cocoa. Also, in 2011, tests revealed that the pesticides used on genetically modified plants lead to birth defects. Why would anyone want to eat a candy bar that puts bacterium in their gut and may lead to illness and disease in the future?

Advocating GMO cocoa plants is not an altruistic act to save the chocolate market as they are trying to portray. GMO foods are about corporate expediency and greed. Mars, IBM and the U.S. government will reap huge profits from the sales of genetically modified plants, especially if they can wipe out Mother Nature’s time-honored cocoa plants that have been the source of chocolate since time immemorial.

To speed the project, they released the findings of cocoa sequencing into the public domain in order to assist scientists to begin applying the findings immediately. Their results ave available on the Cacao Genome Database website. But the results read like an industry propaganda piece.

Researchers state that cocoa will no longer be an “orphan crop” compared to Monsanto’s GMO Bt corn, wheat, soy and rice in terms of focused genetically modification research. We guess all organic plants are now “orphans” in the world of genetic engineering.

If genetic scientists have their way, they will be saying the same thing about humans in a few decades. They have already genetically modified pigs and sheep and cloned cattle. The drug industry is now using human DNA mixed with animal DNA, artificially inseminated into goats, to extract milk containing drugs to be used on humans. All of this approved by the FDA.

But it is possible, following the present trend around the world to reject American GMO foods. For example, in June 2011, Peru declared itself to be a “territory free of transgenic and genetically modified organisms,” to protect the population’s health and preserve biodiversity and the environment. Other nations are following suit.

In the end, GMO chocolate may only be sold in the U.S. where its government is a principal partner in its development. The limitations of selling GMO chocolate globally is underscored by the comments of Dr. Howard-Yana Shapiro, global director of plant science and research at Mars, when he said:

• “Chocolate will become something quite different in 10, 15, 20 years, and we are on that track now. It is not something we can deliver tomorrow, but maybe in five years we can.”

Dr. Shapiro, who is also a professor at the University of California, got $9.6 million from Mars to fund the cocoa DNA project. Why change a good thing? Does anyone really want their favorite candy bar changed so the industry can make more money? Candy bars have already changed enough with the multiple ingredients, high fructose corn syrup and other unwanted sugars.

Mars, USDA and IBM intend to flood 70% of the global cocoa supply with GMO cocoa tree hybrids, despite clear warnings that most countries do not want it. In doing so, they are abandoning a unique method of cacao cultivation that dates back 250 years, presently employing more than 6.5 million people in Africa, South America and Asia, “in the name of science”.

Agroforestry in other countries operates in long cycles where trees yield their fruit or nuts for a hundred years or more without the farmer ever needing to plow the soil or cut the forests to harvest their bounty. Meanwhile, chickens, pigs and other domestic animals, that feed under the canopy of trees, can be raised and their manure used to fertilize both wild and domesticated tree crops. It is sustainable agriculture at its best. Scientists have proved that GMO plants destroy “sustainable” agriculture and everything around them.

Mars claims that the GMO cocoa will protect African farmers. Others, including the EU, the U.N. and many African nations vehemently disagree. Time and time again the UN has proven that GMO plants will not stop world hunger.

As one scientist noted, “Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.” This unholy partnership will do nothing but endanger chocolate, make it a sub-standard version of Mother Nature’s prized creation and threaten the health of mankind, not improve it.

Just because organic cocoa has some healthy ingredients doesn’t mean that it is ripe to “mine” as a new genetically engineered plant. Mars claims that GMO plants will curb losses caused by pests and plant disease, which they allege cause $700 to $800 million in crop damage each year. But is creating a bacteria-toxin-virus-based GMO the answer to losing an alleged $700 to $800 million when the total market is $67.587 billion (less than 0.001%)? A less than 1% loss in any business is considered excellent.

When and where will genetic modification of mankind’s most basic foods and needs be stopped? And, will it be stopped before it does permanent damage to Mother Nature’s creations and the genetic balance of mankind?

America is funding these and other GMO projects while the public is being told there is no money for health care, social security or to promote more jobs. Worse yet, America will continue to fund these projects long before there is any form of universal medicine or world peace.

Some things in life are sacred and chocolate is one of them. Many consider it the “Food of the Gods”. The only people who doubt the importance of a pure natural chocolate are the “mad” scientists in our society and their greedy corporate masters. If these people could find a way to genetically modify mothers’ milk to make humans one foot taller with longer arms to dunk a basketball, they would.

What’s next? A Minotaur? A Satyr? A Terminator with four arms to fight our battles? Sadly, the industry cannot alter the genes in humans to eliminate greed, avarice and stupidity, even among its best educated and most advantaged classes. Someone once said that it is mankind’s capacity for deception that separates it from the animal kingdom.

The disability benefits fund portion of Social Security will be exhausted in 2018 because the number of people receiving such payments is rising significantly. As a result, the fight over Medicare and Social Security benefits are being played out on the floor of Congress daily as the argument over increasing our nation’s debt limit goes on unabated. Medicare covers more than 47 million elderly and disabled Americans.

Before we address some of these issues, we should examine how Americans got into this mess in the first place. In 1968, against the howling opposition of the sixties antiwar generation, the government adopted a unified budget. The surpluses in Social Security trust funds were converted to the general fund and used to offset the national debt. Our national debt had been significantly increased by the war in Vietnam. By converting Social Security’s trust funds, it made the national debt appear to be much smaller than it really was.

The other purpose of the unified budget was to continue funding the war in Vietnam without having to raise taxes in the coming years. To get political support, the older generation was made the same hollow promise as was made to this generation of 55-year-olds on May 13^th. If the next generation of seniors supported the change, it would not affect them in their lifetime.

The sixties generation, now becoming seniors, was asked to pay for the war in Vietnam, despite its unanimous opposition. Now, the generation of under 50-year-olds lawmakers, conservative Republicans and members of the Tea Party have decided to “screw” the sixties generation again by taking away future benefits and offering “cheesy” vouchers.

This is because, for the first time, Social Security began paying out more in benefits than it collected in taxes and now faces insolvency in 2036.

This crisis only exists because Congress did not have the courage to face the realities of the war in Vietnam when they should have. Nor did the older generation at that time think for one moment about how their actions would effect their children and grandchildren. They were still caught up in Cold War fears of a communist “domino principal” that evaporated with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Now, the same short-sided view of the economics is haunting Americans after nine long years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. General Santayana once said, “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.” And here we are in the 21^st century facing the same problems as the late sixties.

GOP leaders used this latest report to push for more aggressive action to reshape the 46-year-old Medicare program which would include 44 million Americans losing Medicare coverage.

Instead of addressing the huge cost of the war and foreign aid to countries like iraq and Pakistan, which is the home to many terrorist groups, Congress prefers top cut benefit programs. The question is “Is it more important to conduct foreign wars and build hospitals in Iraq than take care of America’s elderly?”

For example, in 2010 and 2011, the U.S. gave more than $3 billion in aid to Mexico to educate prosecutors and the police while we are laying off teachers in our country and leaving veterans living on the streets. Our war veterans had to sue the U.S. government in Los Angeles in 2011 to get benefits!

Sadly Americans are paying for Mexico’s social programs on the backs of Americans addicted to drugs. The Mexican government prefers to do nothing to aid its population leaving them to cross our borders in search of health and education services. We pay for their medical treatment, offer them discounted tuition to our colleges and many other benefits not offered in their country.

The sum total spent by Congress in aid to Mexico and their illegal immigrants has had a major impact on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This is made worse by the fact that illegal aliens not only don’t pay taxes, they send their illegal earnings back to their families in Mexico. The cost of these benefits paid to illegal aliens from all countries severely impacts the cost of Medicaid which reduces dollars available for Medicare. In simple words, our seniors are being penalized because of the benefits paid for treatment of illegal aliens.

It is hard to believe that Americans are still providing foreign aid to Mexico at the same time that Americans are burdened with the huge cost of providing these benefits to people who are forced to escape the oppressive conditions fostered by the Mexican government.

So, the House Republicans’ plan would effectively privatize Medicare starting in 2022 by giving seniors vouchers to shop for commercial insurance plans instead of receiving the current guaranteed government benefit. In essence, the government would contribute to your insurance premiums and then you would be on your own. This plan would fail miserably.

Just look at the actions of insurers such as Anthem Blue Cross to get a preview of how Americans would be treated under a voucher system. In California, Blue Cross is being forced to refund $167 million to customers this year and another $10 million to doctors and hospitals. This underscores how much they have overcharged on insurance policies and how they have increased profits by cutting costs by denying valid claims.

Deductibles are going up and now Blue Cross has announced that your policy is going to be month-to-month with the ability to cancel you anytime they want. How will a voucher help when Blue Cross cancels a policy on one of your elderly parents? How can you trust them to protect your elderly family members?

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and not surprisingly, our government would save billions of dollars by shifting an increasing share of medical costs onto seniors. Under this plan, seniors, who could least afford it, would pay almost twice as much out of their own pockets — or more than $12,510 a year by 2022.

All this while members of Congress receive “sweet-heart” benefit packages and a lifetime income for serving just one term. There is clearly a double standard for how members of Congress and the elderly are treated. Why should they care? It will not affect their lives when they become seniors. While you are receiving vouchers, their health insurance policies will be paid by your taxes.

Would you trust private insurance companies to take care of your aging parents? What will children do when they discover that their elderly parents are not receiving either social security or the vouchers are ineffective? Will we have another generation of elderly move in with their children as they did in the Great Depression?

On the other hand, Democrats want to resolve the problem by a series of cuts to hospitals and other medical providers designed to spur increased efficiency. The report suggested that these efforts would slow the growth of Medicare costs by 25% over the next 75 years. Considering our government’s history of inspection and policing of hospitals, good luck with that.

According to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, chairman of the board of trustees of Medicare, “Americans are living longer, and healthcare costs are continuing to rise. And if we do not do more to contain the rate of growth in healthcare costs, then our commitments will become unsustainable.”

Jason Fichtner, former chief economist at the Social Security Administration, warned that “If we reform the program today, we can hold harmless people who are 55 and over. If we wait, we may have to reduce benefits for everyone.” Does anyone trust our government when they make promises like this?

Basically, our government is saying that if people over 55-years-old support this plan, we will exempt you. But people 55-years-old will only be 68-years-old in 2024 and just entering the system. How can this plan guarantee coverage to elderly Americans and still lower the costs? It is simply not logical.

These reports and plans offered by both parties have so many failed presumptions that their credibility is strained beyond belief. The reports and projections fail to measure many different and important factors:

• Employing their logic, the increase in the number of children reaching employment age, will likely exceed the number of deaths dramatically. Based upon their numbers, the increase should result in larger work force paying more payroll taxes. Inflation will increase the amounts deducted. The problem is not with the economy, the problem is that industry does not want to pay its fair share of contributions to Social Security or any other retirement benefits, for that matter.
• The population projections fail to factor in the reduced life expectancy of generations surviving on fast foods and other cheap packaged foods containing as many or more than100 different chemical ingredients. At the current rate of attrition in the sixties generation, the number of seniors will be reduced by the effects of the poor quality of foods sold today.
• Our leaders fail to factor in the effects of eating genetically modified foods from Monsanto seeds that carry pesticides, bacteria, toxins and viruses in each strand of DNA that will lead to more illness, disease and shorter life spans. In 1990, cancer afflicted only about 1 out 11 people. Now, 1 out of 2 men and 1 out of 3 women will suffer from cancer in their lifetime. Attrition from illness and disease may be higher than any other generation in the last 100 years.
• Certainly the mortality rates of obese young Americans including those who eat far too much MSG, high fructose corn syrup, sodium nitrate and other carcinogenic foods will have its effect. There are nearly 10 million overweight and obese children in the U.S. today. Sixty-eight percent of adults are categorized as overweight, one-third of them diagnosed as clinically obese. Increased disability means people no longer working and paying taxes.
• Then, there is the effect of eating factory farmed (CAFO) meats fed with Monsanto Bt corn and soy, stuffed with animal growth hormones, given antibiotics daily, sprayed with pesticides and the effects of standing in manure all day. More diabetes, heart disease, gastrointestinal illnesses, cancer and disease.
• The government also ignores the problems with our contaminated lakes, rivers, streams, aquifers and underground water sources caused by Manure Lagoons, pesticide run-offs, acid rain from disasters like the BP oil rig and other industrial chemicals which will ultimately shorten life spans.
• And, deaths resulting from the epidemic of the more than 250 forms of food-borne illness including Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria, with new and more deadly antibiotic resistant strains being discovered annually.

The decline in American health is undeniable. Just look around at the ages of people listed in the obituary columns daily. The stats supporting this decline are shocking and equally undeniable.

Whether you ascribe problems with Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare to economic decline or our government’s choice to spend more money on foreign aid and wars, it is clear that there are so many other factors affecting these statistics than the ones offered by our leaders. But, several actions and policy changes could reshape these statistics and reduce medical costs by improving the health of our nation:

(1) Cleaning up our waterways and sources of drinking water;

(2) Better inspection of food plants, egg farms, CAFOs and other meat sources;

(3) Banning MSG and the countless other addictive food additives contributing to obesity, illness and disease;

(4) Eliminating high fructose corn syrup from all soft drinks, packaged foods and fast foods;

(5) Compelling manufacturers of baby and children’s foods to meet a higher criteria for health and nutrition;

(6) Breaking up the unholy partnership between the U.S. government and biotech firms like Monsanto;

(7) Eliminating animal growth hormones for dairy cows;

(8) Blocking the use of cloned and transgenic meat and fish and the use of drugs developed in cloned or transgenic animals;

(9) Abolishing the use of genetically modified seeds and crops while we still have some heirloom seeds and plants to maintain nature’s pure foods;

(10) And, engaging in forms of preventive medicine instead of reacting to every problem after Americans die senselessly from industry mistakes.

But, if a recession and/or a depression continues for the next decade, history dictates that this country will be more concerned with a revolution by the poor – and maybe the disenchanted middle class, than vouchers. In either event, there will be radical changes in our government if there is no improvement in the job markets, health insurance and controlling greedy American Robber Baron corporations.

To understand and address the problems of Medicare, Medicaid, Disability and Social Security requires a closer look at the causes and not at politically motivated plans advanced by political parties with an agenda. It doesn’t matter which side of the political fence you are on, age, illness and death know no political party. An ounce of prevention is worth a billion dollars in budget cuts.

The study reported a ghostwriting rate for drug products as 7.9% in JAMA, 7.6% in The Lancet, 7.6% in PLoS Medicine, 15.3% in the New England Journal of Medicine, 14.3% in The Annals of Internal Medicine and 2% in Nature Medicine. Many consider these numbers the tip of the iceberg. For example, Dr. John Ioannidis, an expert on medical bias, has estimated that as much as 90% of the medical research doctors rely on to treat patients is flawed.

In the case of food, there is no clear information on how and who prepares industry articles trumpeting the benefits of their food and safety. But you can be sure those numbers are even higher than drugs because of the lack of adequate regulations to control the content of food articles.

Most scientific reports, abstracts, white papers and peer-reviewed publications are manipulated like play dough to achieve the desired goal of the company paying for the scientific test results and the articles and abstracts written in their support. For example, Mead Johnson will pay between $8 million and $12 million in infant formula and cash to settle false advertising claims set out in articles and other marketing releases.

A medical abstract is a summary paragraph included with each medical study published. It’s supposed to give the reader a quick overview of the study results. The problem is that these abstracts may or may not reflect the actual results of the study. In many cases, especially when expensive drugs are involved, the study abstract may give a summary that is the opposite of the actual results. Most doctors and other medical professionals don’t have time to read entire studies and therefore rely on the abstracts.

Like puppeteers or marionette manipulators, Big Food and Big Pharma control every potential comment made about their products. And there is no room for any criticism from independent scientists or reviewers. Dr. John Ioannidis also wrote, “There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false… Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”

While this is not new, the art of manipulating medical and food information first started with the Rockefeller family more than 100 years ago, and has become an art form used by America’s largest companies. Now, with the complicity of the U.S. government and universities, corporate America is as much in control of the content and flow of information as the Nazi’s were during their reign of terror in Germany.

The current trend first runs rampant in schools like Harvard and Iowa State where the universities and professors have routinely accepted payments from Big Food and Big Pharma to promote their products. For example, three doctors at Harvard accepted more than $4.2 million in unreported income to validate the off-label use of an untested drug for children. Monsanto contributed more than $4 million to Iowa State, Texas A&M and Florida to endow chairs in Monsanto related biotech research goals.

In some instances, the industry has used this control to create such shams as “Smart Choices” labels which deceived parents as to the contents of children’s foods and breakfast cereals. In other cases, the industry has carefully controlled the testing of genetically modified seeds by withholding the seeds from independent scientists while funding their own tests to confirm whatever theories Monsanto needs to foster the sales of its seeds. It is not a pretty picture.

At Harvard, more than 1,800 professors received payments that many in Congress construed as bribes, including bribes to teach medical students to sell Statin drugs. At the same time, Big Food has skillfully made payments to the above universities to fund studies, research and graduate-level research by young scientists.

The two industries perpetuate a shroud of industrial bribery and deception which they euphemistically call “editorial assistance”, while others prefer to call it a more friendly term, “publication planning”.

Publication planning is the process by which pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies produce and release articles in magazines and journals to promote sales. Ghostwriters are hired to create these materials in a marketing industry specializing in covert projects and public deception, much like the CIA.

As one example, DesignWrite boasts about their ghostwriting prowess on their website, stating that, for more than 12 years, it “… planned, created, and/or managed hundreds of advisory boards, a thousand abstracts and posters, 500 clinical papers, over 10,000 speakers’ bureau programs, over 200 satellite symposia, 60 international programs, dozens of websites, and a broad array of ancillary printed and electronic materials.” To our knowledge, DreamWrite is a marketing company not a research lab.

In addition to “full-length review articles”, DesignWrite offers marketing plans that include mini-reviews, case reports, editorials, letters and commentaries. It also helps companies decide what data to present, recruits “authors,” chooses journals, creates abstracts and posters for medical meetings.

Big Pharma sees these marketing tools as an efficient “means of placing important information about the therapeutic profile of an agent into the hands of influential physicians ….” DesignWrite then assists in submitting the paper to respected journals. The deception is that the papers are knowingly not truthful.

Do you wonder if you have ever bought a product that DesignWrite was responsible for marketing by its ghostwriting and untruthful clinical papers?

In the case of one author, DreamWrite’s deceitful conduct in preparing studies and articles for the prescription drug Vioxx resulted in a heart attack. After his doctor read all of the abstracts, pamphlets and clinical tests before prescribing the drug to his patients, the author’s doctor felt Vioxx was safe to prescribe for him. After about three months on Vioxx, this author suffered a heart attack.

After Vioxx was pulled from the market by the FDA and following an extensive investigation, the Justice Department prosecuted Scott S. Reuben, MD for falsifying clinical test results so that Merck could obtain FDA approval of Vioxx. This approval was then piggy-backed by Pfizer, who did no testing, to obtain approval of Celebrex by the FDA.

Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex became blockbuster drugs (sales in excess of a billion dollars) as a result of this deception. Why was Merck permitted by the FDA to control the testing of their own drug? And, why was Pfizer permitted to piggy-back the approval of Celebrex on the false tests of Vioxx? Because, the FDA supports the industry instead of protecting the general public.

As usual, it took litigation over the drugs, Premarin and Prempro, that harmed tens of thousands of women (300,000 women in Florida alone) to obtain confidential documents that exposed the truth about industry marketing practices. Why does it always take expensive litigation or a whistleblower to get any truth out of an American corporation? The two industries’ mantras are delay, use deep pockets to exhaust their opponents and continue to lie until getting caught. Doesn’t this sound much like our government’s policy on war and other important issues too?

Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman is the director of PharmedOut, a Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown University Medical Center who serves as director of the university-based project founded with public money from the Attorney General’s Consumer and Prescriber Grant program. She found that DirectWrite had been paid to ghostwrite the various articles, pamphlets, scientific abstracts sent to doctors and journal as well as writing the supplements, bound publications, white papers, slide kits, and symposium materials for such products as Premarin and Vioxx.

In her report, Dr. Fugh-Berman examined unsealed documents in litigation against Wyeth Laboratories to investigate the use of medical writing companies to produce ghostwritten manuscripts and place them into medical journals. She chronicled how more than 14,000 women became victims of breast cancer as a result of Premarin family of products in her 1,500 page study“HRT”. It is a damning report.

These documents were not made public until PLoS Medicine and The New York Times intervened in the Wyeth litigation. The following are some of the salient points contained in her study:

• Between 1997 and 2003, DesignWrite’s output for Wyeth on the Premarin family of products included “over 50 peer-reviewed publications, more than 50 scientific abstracts and posters, journal supplements, internal white papers, slide kits, and symposia…”. None of them were true.
• The practice of paying doctors and scientists to sign articles written by ghostwriters is so widespread that it is considered normal by many – an atmosphere of systemic deception.
• Dozens of ghostwritten reviews and commentaries published in medical journals and supplements were used to promote unproven benefits and downplay harms caused by these drugs.
• These marketing articles are not peer-reviewed. Nonetheless they are spread around the medical profession as gospel. Because there is no peer review, doctors are not afraid of being caught signing articles in exchange for money.
• The false truths advanced by these deceitful marketing tools have resulted in decades of carefully orchestrated deceptions adopted by an unknowing public.
• DesignWrite was assigned to write 20 secondary review articles in 1997 for $20,000 each, a price that later rose to $25,000 each. By 2011, they must cost much more.
• DreamWrite charged $4,000 for writing abstracts, $10,000 for editing manuscripts and $2,000 for editing abstracts to include deceptive materials provided by Wyeth.
• “Wyeth paid $413,140.60 for a supplement that was mailed to 128,000 physicians and Gynecology Editions of Women’s Health in Primary Care. Wyeth bought 1,500 additional copies for distribution to its sales force and distributed the supplement to media and ‘select thought leaders’, including well-positioned doctors [who could influence their peers].”
• When one author submitted a manuscript directly to a journal, DesignWrite was paid to influence the author into changing the article to a deceptive draft prepared by DreamWrite instead.
• Authors were considered interchangeable. If one author did not want to sign off on an article, another would be paid to do it.
• Ghostwriters also respond to editor and reviewer’s questions and comments to avoid direct contact with the paid-for author, who may have told the truth about the product’s failings when confronted.
• Ghostwriters defended their articles by attacking reviewers in contrary posts and letters.
• Ghostwritten articles were used to attack competing drugs and the efficacy of competing generics.

On June 15, 2011, outgoing Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said to Congress, “… all governments lie to each other.” What he should have said is that “all governments and big business lie to each other – and to their citizens and consumers.” Companies like DreamWrite are just capitalizing on the two industries’ predisposition to lie to promote sales.

On June 20, 2011, St. Louis Rams linebacker David Vobora was awarded $5.4 million by a federal judge in his lawsuit against a supplement maker after he was suspended by the NFL for four games in 2009 for using a contaminated product intentionally misrepresented by its manufacturer. I wonder who wrote the fraudulent sales material.

Another example is that it is illegal for pharmaceutical companies to promote a marketed drug for off-label uses, which are defined as uses other than those uses approved by the FDA. Nonetheless, the drug industry actively employs companies like DreamWrite to promote off-label uses ignoring the law.

Review articles in medical journals are crucial vehicles for encouraging off-label uses and promoting unproven benefits. Many prescription drugs would not be successful or become blockbuster drugs (a drug that has sold more than $1 billion) if it were not for off-label sales. The manufacturers know the FDA will do nothing to stop their lies unless or until a significant number of Americans die. So how many Americans must die before the FDA or USDA act to protect citizens?

According to Dr. Fugh-Berman, “DesignWrite helped to produce numerous ghostwritten reviews and commentaries, including articles designed to promote the off-label use of Prempro for preventing Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, age-related macular degeneration, and wrinkles.” Prempro has not been proved to affect any of these illnesses, but has been proven to cause breast cancer. It is amazing the lengths to which”editorial assistance” is used to sell food and drugs – even when the manufacturer and ghostwriter know the real truth.

Sadly, articles published in medical journals, newsletters and magazines are not considered as promotional marketing tools by the FDA. According to critics, “Peer-reviewed publications offer pharma companies shelter from often-stormy regulatory waters. FDA views published articles as protected commercial speech so [it] doesn’t regulate their content.”

This is clearly an FDA loophole created to benefit food and drug companies. This policy is certainly not intended to protect the general public.

The purpose of creating ghostwritten reviews and commentaries is to: (1) Mitigate perceived risks associated with the promoted drug; (2) Push unproven, but profitable, off-label uses; (3) Attack their client’s competitors; (4) Defend benefits despite the lack of studies and testing to support their client’s claims; and (5) Increase sales even when the product is ineffective or potentially harmful to patients.

DreamWrite was paid to manufacture lies and untruthful marketing materials on behalf of their clients at a substantial profit. While Wyeth’s attitude can be summed up in the words of one of its employees, Gerald Burr, who when faced with a problem with an uncooperative author, wrote, “You can’t just put another name on the article, but you can plagiarize the way we did when we wrote papers in college.” For many of their employees, the lying started early.

According to Dr. Fugh-Berman:

• “Ghostwriting has also been documented in the promotion of Paxil (paroxetine), “Fen-phen” (fenfluramine and phentermine), Neurontin (gabapentin), Vioxx (rofecoxib), and Zoloft (sertraline).”

Big Food and Big Agra employ a bevy of ghostwriters to put out untruthful information about genetically engineered seeds, genetically modified foods, the conditions of factory farms, the effects of MSG and other addictive chemical ingredients to promote the sales of their food products. They will never admit how many.

The evidence is overwhelming that Americans can no longer believe the information provided by Big Food, Big Agra and Big Pharma companies. Americans need to do more than just rely upon media ads, the information on food labels, the advice of the many bought-and-paid-for nutritionists, doctors and other paid-for spokespersons and do their own research to protect their families from the dire consequences of these foods and additives. As a result of false information contained in ghostwritten articles, both authors nearly died.

Be careful. Be watchful. And be vigilant to protect you and your family.

In this century, the biotech industry is pioneering ambitious new concepts on how to take control of food. Big Food and Big Agra are employing a stealth plan to dominate food and its worldwide markets, mirroring that of Big Oil.

The Food Revolution Papers – A Primer on What is in Your Food by Mannie Barling and Ashley F. Brooks will be published by Outskirts Press in September 2011. It is a compilation of blogs and essays chocked full of statistics, food politics, genetically modified foods, factory farms (CAFOs) and exposes on the deceptions and marketing practices of Big Food and Big Agra.

While the concept of a Food Revolution may seem radical or silly to many, there is ample precedent for this concept in American history because this is not the first Food Revolution in America. The first occurred in 1906 as a result of Upton Sinclair’s, seminal book The Jungle, which resulted in the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

It is a time-honored American tradition to revolt against the oppressive policies of American corporations and the American government through boycotts, petitions, pamphlets and on election day.

On June 16, 2011 at 12:00 Noon EST, 11:00 AM CST and 9:00 AM PST, and every Thursday thereafter, Mannie Barling, Ashley F. Brooks and Simon Barrett will explore the politics of food.

The podcast will continue the traditions of Edward R. Morrow and others who have exposed deceit and corruption in American life. No stone will be left unturned. No Big Food, Big Agra, FDA nor USDA secret will be left hidden from the public. We will name names and take no political prisoners, including lobbyists, politicians, researchers and their smug organizations.

We will expose the dirty little secrets of the industry from the likes of Monsanto, the Corn Refiners Association, Washington lobbyists, politicians to other cohorts of the food industry. This will include fees paid to lobbyists, paid off college professors, self-serving food tests and industry political appointments in the FDA and USDA. If you are bothered by one of our government’s dirty little secrets about food or drugs, call in and tell everyone about it. We welcome and appreciate all callers and all opinions. Don’t be shy.

The show is about politics and money and how it affects the food you eat every day. We will expose every deception we can find from what is missing from the labels on your foods, their contents and the political journey your food takes to market. No fast food chain, food processor or government agency will be safe from exposure.

We will have guests to talk about the politics of food in their states, political contributions, testing of foods, CAFOs, factory farmed meats and why they are all so dangerous to your health. No ingredient on a food label will be safe from our investigative efforts.

We will look at specific brands of foods, analyze their ingredients and discuss all of the hidden ingredients in so-called Clean labels, how sizes are “masked” and how the industry uses dirty little tricks like “modified atmosphere packaging”, ethylene spraying and the use of carcinogenic’s like sodium nitrate in foods.

The American food supply should not be controlled by a few uncaring greedy corporations using their economic and political might to squash their opposition. The financial ability to make campaign contributions and to hire a herd of lobbyists should not be the basis of gaining control over food in a democratic society. There is no greater danger to capitalism than destroying free markets. Control should remain in the hands of the American public in an American democracy.

American freedoms were worth fighting for in the American Revolution and they are worth fighting for now in The Food Revolution of the 21^st century. Granted we cannot carry guns or rifles in our quest. But we can equip ourselves with a pen, our voices and all of the benefits of the Internet.

If not, our country will become economic slaves to Monsanto, Cargil, Unilever, JBS and other Big Food and Big Agra companies much the same way Americans are now slaves to Big Oil. Only you can always, walk, ride a bus or take public transportation. But the human race can’t stop eating to survive.

The revolt is growing around the world. In Germany alone, more than 25,000 people attended a rally in opposition to Monsanto’s policies. In Belgium, more than 200 people stormed a field of genetically modified potatoes breaking through a security cordon in a raid that left police and 18 protesters injured. Not everyone in this revolution is acting peacefully, although they should. The number and frequency of anti-GMO rallies and their sizes are increasing worldwide. We will cover them all.

There is litigation in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C. The battle is now expanding to the aisles of your local markets over the differences between organic food and genetically modified foods. There is a growing awareness of the dangers of factory farming with laws passed in three states banning the use of animal crates and cages.

But our government continues to sell out its citizens by creating such industry-friendly programs as the new two-year pilot program that will permit Monsanto and other Big Food corporations to conduct its own environmental assessments, or alternately outsource the work to contractors. Another big fox in the FDA and USDA henhouses.

Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Centre for Food, observed that, “It’s like asking BP to write an assessment of an offshore drilling operation.” Self-regulation and in-house testing of food products has been and will continue to be a disaster because of the inherent self-interest involved. Consumers cannot expect otherwise.

An August 2009 article in Scientific American, states that “Agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers … Only studies that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of a peer-reviewed journal.” More than 800 scientists have signed an open letter expressing their concerns about genetically modified crops. They were ignored.

Then there are the weekly food recalls plaguing Americans with Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria and other food-bourne illnesses rarely announced to the general public and when announced, it is usually after all of the recalled foods have been sold and used by Americans. We will give recall information and websites where our readers can find this information for themselves.

Over the years, people have repeatedly asked us, “Aren’t the FDA and USDA there to protect us?” The answer is always, “No!” The FDA and USDA operate under the supervision of the executive branch of the government, the President of the United States. The agencies are influenced by the sitting president’s political affiliations and agenda. This means an application of the “spoils system” in which friends and campaign contributors are given jobs as a reward. It is not a merit system. This is one of the primary reasons for so many food recalls – mismanagement and political cronyism.

The industries’ political agendas are advanced by the application of immense pressure brought by their bevy of highly-paid in-house and Capital Hill lobbyists. It is no wonder that the FDA and USDA cannot protect the general public. The agencies support corporate interests on every issue until someone dies and the FDA and USDA are embarrassed. Such were the cases with the egg and Salmonella recalls of 2009 and 2010. It isn’t a pretty picture.

The American public has become so numb to self-interest and “power politics” that they rarely raise a voice in opposition to bills and laws that protect large corporate interests. Raising your voice to demand better food with no chemicals and free-range organic meats is the fuel that drives the current Food Revolution.

We are trying to give The Food Revolution as well as sustainable organic farmers a voice. Only by educating Americans about health and increasing public awareness about how the FDA and USDA are limited in protecting the public can the horrifying increases in cancer, diabetes and other illnesses and diseases be reduced or eliminated.

Only by voting with your checkbook can you affect change. We will offer suggestions on how to vote successfully and how to best achieve goals of forcing the industry to manufacture better and safer foods.

The new Food Revolution Papers podcast will be about truth in advertising, product disclosure, independent testing of food, truth in labeling, permitting independent scientific testing, unmasking deception, publicizing food recalls and protecting the health of all Americans from developing fetuses to the elderly.

You can sit at your desk with your morning coffee or at home in front of your computer and listen to valuable health facts that will help you navigate through the deceptions on market shelves and the smoke and mirrors marketing efforts of food manufacturers who are more concerned with selling their products than the health of Americans.

The information about food recalls, the chemical contents of packaged foods and the manner in which factory farmed meats are harvested is information that will impact your health, the health of your children and their children to follow.

We will also offer information that will help pregnant mothers safeguard the health of their fetuses, protect newborns from synthetic chemicals and children from food additives that contribute to or cause childhood diabetes, obesity, autism and other illnesses.

If Americans ignore this battle, it is likely that many will suffer from illness or disease caused by GMO and processed foods. And, sadly, many may die much younger than they should. In fact, this generation is already dying from increased cancer, diabetes and childhood diseases. We don’t want our listeners to become statistics too.

Much like Jack Webb’s character Joe Friday on Dragnet, it will be the truth and nothing but the truth. Where else can you find the truth about foods, uncensored by the food industry, the FDA or the USDA?

We will be passing out “torches and pitch forks” in the form of information to attack the companies that make genetically modified foods, Frankenfoods such as Franken-salmon and Enviropigs as well as Franken-medicines. It is truly a cause worth fighting for. Listen to our show and join The Food Revolution for the sake of your family, children and future grandchildren.

We look forward to speaking to you on Blog Talk Radio every Thursday morning. Bring your coffee and we will entertain you.

• “In medical school I had not received any significant instruction on the subject. I was not alone. Only approximately 6 percent of the graduating physicians in the United States have any training in nutrition. Medical students may take elective courses on the topic, but few actually do… the education of most physicians is disease-oriented with a heavy emphasis on pharmaceuticals — we learn about drugs and why and when to use them.”

Dr. Strand, also, observed that doctors usually make good teachers, but not good students. Most doctors fear not knowing the answers to medically-related issues and will try to present themselves with as much authority as possible.

Dietary supplements are a very foreign subject for most doctors, and most doctors show no interest in learning more about them. He opines that doctors are not taught much in medical school about the power of nutrition in medicine – only about the power of prescription drugs and surgery as treatment for diseases.

He agrees with our observation that the focus of a medical education is on treatment and not on prevention. According to Dr. Strand, it is this mind set that causes most physicians to be unreceptive to new ideas in medicine. Dr. Strand explains the effect that his medical education had on him for the first 23 years of his medical practice by saying:

• “To be honest, I knew next to nothing about nutrition or nutritional supplementation…. Because of the respect people have for doctors, they assume we are experts on all health-related issues, including nutrition and vitamins. Before my conversion experience with nutritional medicine, my patients frequently asked me if I believed their taking vitamins produced any health benefits…. Handing the bottles back, I’d say that the stuff was absolutely no use at all…. What I did not share with my patients was that I had not spent a minute evaluating the hundreds of scientifically conducted studies that proved the value of supplementation to health’.
• For the first twenty-three years of my clinical practice, I simply did not believe in nutritional supplements. During the past seven years, however, I have reconsidered my position based on recent studies published in the medical literature. What I’ve found is so astonishing, I have changed the course of my medical practice…
• Physicians seem content to allow the pharmaceutical companies to determine new therapies as they develop new drugs… physicians are simply too busy treating disease to worry about educating their patients in healthy lifestyles that help avoid developing degenerative diseases in the first place.
• As I have applied these principles in treating my patients the results have been nothing short of amazing.”

To counter the above argument, Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Central Soya Company, Inc., Clintec International Inc., Dannon Institute, Egg Board, Kellogg Company, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Dairy Council, Nestlé USA Nutrition Division, Quaker Oats Foundation and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories funded a survey soaked in self-serving conflicts of interest.

The survey claimed “Our findings proved that nutrition education is an integral part of the curriculum for the majority of US medical schools surveyed.” The survey cited as proof that “A number of medical schools have chosen to incorporate nutrition education into already established basic science and clinical courses.” To say otherwise would be to admit that doctors learn little or nothing in medical school about nutrition, vitamins and minerals. It would also affect corporate donations to medical schools.

Since the survey was sent to the heads of the medical schools, what answer did they expect to receive? This survey is about as independent as asking the fox how the chickens in the henhouse are feeling.　

Conflicts of interest are rampant at medical schools across the U.S. In 2008, Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, exposed conflicts of interest at Harvard Medical School and its teaching facility, Massachusetts General Hospital, when an investigation revealed that psychiatrists Joseph Biederman, Thomas J. Spencer and Timothy E. Wilens failed to report the full amount of their earnings from drug companies over the previous seven years. Dr. Biederman was a professor of psychiatry and Chief of Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General at the time.

Doctors Biederman and Wilens subsequently admitted to earning more than $1.6 million from pharmaceutical companies since 2000. According to the Congressional Record, the doctors had reported their drug company income as a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Senator Grassley revealed that drug companies, including those that make drugs Biederman advocates for childhood bipolar disorder, had paid Biederman $1.6 million in consulting and speaking fees between 2000 and 2007. The total unreported income for the three doctors topped $4.2 million.

As a result of Dr. Biederman’s test studies, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the FDA for that purpose and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.

Dr. Biederman’s own studies of the drugs he advocated to treat childhood bipolar disorder were, according to The New York Times experts, “so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive.”

Senator Grassley asked Pfizer to provide details of its payments to 149 faculty members at Harvard Medical School. In one case, a Harvard professor disclosed 47 financial relationships. A full 1,600 of 8,900 teachers at Harvard have reported at least one financial relationship in an area related to their teaching, research or medical practice. Harvard had failed to regulate or simply ignored the massive gifts and consulting fees paid to faculty members from food and drug companies.

Meanwhile, Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey S. Flier said that he does not want to jeopardize one of the school’s major sources of funding. Food and drug companies contributed more than $8.6 million in 2009 for basic science research and the $3 million for continuing education classes on campus separate and distinct from their direct payments to the doctors and professors.

Most of the money goes to professors at the Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and the dean’s office admitted that it does not keep track of the total. Senate investigative reports disclosed 149 Harvard-affiliated professors with financial ties to Pfizer and 130 with Merck. The FDA has yet to determine how much money is contributed to colleges by food manufacturers such as Tyson Foods which built and supports a test center on the campus of the University of Arkansas.

When you see or read of a test from the University of Arkansas regarding chickens, pigs or other livestock, ask yourself, “How much did Tyson Foods pay for that?”

First-year medical student David Tian said, “Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence [drug] companies had on medical education. And it’s something that’s purposely meant to be under the table, providing information under the guise of education when that information is also presented for marketing purposes.” The same pattern applies to food manufacturers that provide funding for agricultural colleges.

For example, Michael Pollan, best-selling author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma (named one of the five best nonfiction books of 2006 by The New York Times), who teaches journalism at UC Berkeley, has become the target of the factory farms and the genetically modified agricultural industry. The food industry would like to stop Mr. Pollan from teaching students the importance of organic foods and sustainable farming.

At the University of Wisconsin and Washington State University, Pollan’s appearances were protested and his readings canceled despite his book being part of a campus-wide reading project. Mr. Pollan notes that “It’s part of what appears to be a more aggressive industry push-back against critics of industrial agriculture.” The industry’s efforts to quash free speech and the open exchange of ideas reach far beyond the classroom.

In 2009, Mr. Pollan faced negative reactions from agricultural business alumni of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in Central California. When officials at Cal Poly were criticized for scheduling a free lecture by Mr. Pollan, he chose to participate in a panel discussion rather than be canceled.

Mr. Pollan asked this rhetorical question in an interview, “Is the principle of balance going to apply across the board? The next time Monsanto comes to speak at Cal Poly about why we need GMOs to feed the world, will there be a similar effort? Will I be invited back for that show?”

Mr. Pollan raised troubling questions about academic freedom when he said, “It’s an open threat to the university. The issue is really about whether the school is free to explore diverse ideas about farms and farming.” As long as the agricultural industry maintains its economic might, free speech will be limited on campus and a wider range of knowledge on nutrition will be denied to students. It does not bode well for our society when business suppresses or controls ideas.

Students say they are concerned that the same money that helped build their school’s status may be hurting its reputation and affecting the quality of its teaching. The students say they worry that the food and drug industry scandals in recent years which include some criminal convictions, billions of dollars in fines, proof of bias in research and publishing as well as false marketing claims.

First-year Harvard medical student Kirsten Austad said it best, “We are really being indoctrinated into a field of medicine that is becoming more and more commercialized.”

It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is, this mercenary misconduct just does not pass the smell test. A prosecutor could easily view the incest between medical schools and the food and drug industries to be criminal. We do not understand why persons who flagrantly violate the country’s trust are not sentenced to prison for long periods as an example to others. We also do not understand why Senator Grassley seems to be the only elected official that seems to care.

It is sad that doctors do not receive more education in the basics of nutrition. It is sad that commercial interests have so severely corrupted our educational system that medical students are receiving a limited and controlled education.

It is even sadder that specialists such as cardiologists and internists that treat coronary heart disease and diabetes are not more knowledgeable in the effects that genetically modified foods, factory farmed meats and dangerous chemicals in food ingredients have on their patients. The lack of medical doctors’ knowledge of nutrition has played into the plans of fast food restaurants, people who put more than fifty chemical ingredients in processed foods and the operators of factory farms (CAFOs).

We need to educate every American in the importance of nutrition starting in the First Grade. We need classes on nutrition offered in every grade, even if it is only a fifteen minute a day portion of another class. We need to compel medical schools to teach objective classes (not sponsored by a special interest) that include the importance of organic food and sustainable agriculture.

Education is the key to the future and the U.S. is failing at every level. Much of this failure is the result of poor teaching in medical schools and the political and financial interests of the country’s largest food and drug manufacturers.

One of the most dangerous food additives hidden in processed foods is sodium nitrite, which is a byproduct of sodium nitrate. Any amount of sodium nitrate added to meat breaks down into a poisonous form of nitrite. Although the words are spelled similarly (with only a change in letters), the differences between the two chemicals becomes the cause of cancer.

Nitrite occurs as part of the curing process during the manufacture of food and, if it doesn’t, it certainly occurs during your body’s digestion of sodium nitrate. One way or another nitrate decomposition results in nitrite residues in your body. Once nitrate breaks down into nitrite, it reacts with the ingested meat to produce compounds known to cause heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Sodium nitrate/nitrite contains up to 14% of MSG. It is also used as an ingredient in fertilizers, glass and enamels as well as in pyrotechnics, smoke bombs and as a solid-fuel rocket propellant.

In the food industry, sodium nitrate is used primarily to make non-organic gray-looking meat look fleshy red. It is added to non-organic bacon, sausages, hot dogs, pepperoni, deli meats and almost all other non-organic processed and/or cured meats. Any time the word “cured” appears on a label it means that there is sodium nitrate/nitrite in the product.

The highest amounts of sodium nitrate are to be found in those packaged meats used for children’s lunches, packaged meats sold in the deli section of your market and meats offered in fast food sandwich stores. With so many other addictive chemicals included, this is not a chemical cocktail that society should offer to children.

Nitrates/nitrites have been added to meat largely for their preservative qualities. When applied to the exterior of packaged meat cuts, the meat stays red for a long period of time. Nitrites also make meat turn reddish when cooked. The long curing of meat affects its flavor. Once you identify the taste, you will be able to identify it forever.

For example, cooked corned beef gets its classic reddish color from the sodium nitrite in the brine. Without it, corned beef comes out gray and many argue tasteless. Part of the distinctive flavor of corned beef comes from the length of time it is cured in nitrites. Most brine recipes require 2 cups of kosher salt and 4 teaspoons sodium nitrate. Sodium nitrate is also necessary when dry curing meats like pepperoni and dry salami, which are not cooked or refrigerated. This explains why so many Crohn’s, IBD and IBS sufferers cannot eat cured bacon or salami without becoming ill.

Sodium nitrite preparations are often called by the generic name “pink salt” because they are colored pink to avoid confusion with regular salt. The pink color is used because nitrite can be fatally toxic, if ingested in an amount equivalent to 4.6 grams (.16 or 1/6 of an ounce).

A brief chemistry lesson in how sodium nitrate converts to nitrites is in order. The nitrate (NO3) in sodium nitrate is converted to nitrite (NO2) by using bacteria as a catalyst, which then reacts to form nitric oxide (NO). Any bacteria in your stomach will convert nitrate into nitrite.

The nitrous oxide then bonds to the myoglobin in the meat turns the meat pink and prevents oxidation. Thus keeping the packaged meat looking red or pink for months whether the meat is on the verge of spoiling or has already spoiled.

It hides the time between slaughter and the time it takes to get the meat packaged and on the shelf. As a result, you can no longer tell whether meat is fresh solely by its color. Certainly a deceptive practice designed to fool shoppers into buying older meat.

Nitric oxide is also present when smoking meats. It gives that pink looking ring around the outside of smoked meats. You will find sodium nitrate on the “Ingredients Label” of most, if not all, packaged meats. But you will find no mention of nitrites because to do so is to open a can of worms, including the likelihood that the buyer will associate nitrites with statistics on heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Evidence shows that sodium nitrate has caused a 67% increase in pancreatic cancer, a 74% higher risk of leukemia and a 40% higher risk of diabetes. The American public remains largely in ignorance because there are no disclosures or warnings on food labels.

The term “processed meat” refers to any meat that is preserved by smoking, curing, salting or any process that contains additional chemical preservatives. One hundred percent of all processed meats sold in markets and delis across the U.S. come from factory farms where the livestock are fed Monsanto’s genetically modified Bt corn and soy. It is virtually impossible to avoid these products that so often constitute children’s school lunches, convenience store snacks and often full meals for the family.

Conventional wisdom has dictated that fat from red meat is a risk factor for heart disease, but a new analysis from Harvard researchers finds that it is the eating of processed meat – not unprocessed red meat – that increases the risk for heart disease and even diabetes.

A 2010 study published in the journal Circulation reveals that eating processed meat products with high levels of sodium nitrate significantly raises the risk of heart disease and diabetes. The report analyzed twenty different studies involving more than 1.2 million people from ten countries.

The study found that eating just two ounces of processed meat each day resulted in a 42% increase in the risk of heart disease and a19% increase in the risk of diabetes. That equates to one bite of a hot dog at a sporting event or two bites out of a processed meat sandwich in a deli, roach coach or convenience store.

The study also found that eating non-processed meats was not linked to the increased risk of disease. The study concluded that sodium nitrate and non-organic processed salt in the processed meats combined to cause the increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. Processed meats contain, on average, four times the amounts of sodium and twice the amounts of nitrate preservatives as unprocessed meats.

Renata Micha, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health who analyzed the data from the studies, said that “To lower [the] risk of heart attacks and diabetes, people should avoid eating too much processed meats — for example, hot dogs, bacon, sausage or processed deli meats. Based on our findings, eating up to one serving per week would be associated with relatively small risk.”

Micha added that, “A study of over 500,000 people found that people who ate the most processed meats had a higher risk of mortality, cancer and cardiovascular disease than those who ate lesser amounts of these foods.”

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at UCLA, says that “various studies have suggested that higher levels of consumption of red and processed meat is associated with higher risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and premature death.” Studies conducted by the World Cancer Research Fund confirm that sodium nitrate/nitrite in processed meat increases the risk of colon cancer.

The studies also found that the high consumption of processed meats led to elevated risks for colorectal, lung, esophageal and liver cancers, along with borderline higher risks for advanced prostate and bladder cancer. Much of the blame has been placed on the effects of sodium nitrite.

In the 1970s, the USDA actually tried to ban sodium nitrite from food, but was overruled by the political might of the meat industry which relies upon sodium nitrate to make packaged meat look visually more appealing. According to meat packers, it is necessary to treat meats with sodium nitrate/nitrite to keep them looking fresh until sold. The industry is afraid that people will not buy meat if it looks old or gray in color.

Meat industry research claims that appearance is the most important issue at the point of sale. If the meat doesn’t look good, it won’t sell. While this may be true, educating the general public about the health dangers of preservatives and color enhancers would be a safer choice. This is another example of the political might of Big Food triumphing over the health and safety of the American people.

It is also an example of how Clean Labels mask carcinogenic food ingredients instead of disclosing them. Americans would not eat as much smoked and cured meat if they knew it would increase their exposure to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. There should be sodium nitrate/nitrite warnings on all packaged food labels, especially processed meats. And, its use should be banned from all meats sold in butcher section of every market and butcher shop.

Consumers want that fresh looking red meat in the meat section to be fresh, not an older piece of meat “painted” red with sodium nitrate/nitrite. At the price that meat is being sold for today, we don’t believe that it is too much to ask the food industry to package our meats without carcinogenic chemicals.