Showing posts with label soy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soy. Show all posts

GMO - The Facts the FDA Doesn't Want you to Know - You Choose

If you think the pros and cons you've heard about GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are confusing, you are not alone. Is GMO good? Is it bad? Will it save the planet? Or, is it the blight of our time?

Well... here are the facts as presented by Jeffrey Smith in a video, plus an article by Dr. Mercola. They will surprise you.




  Warning: 
This Common Food Causes
Devastating Offspring Defects 
in 
New Research Study  
by Dr. Mercola 
(pub. 2010)

I strongly believe that one of the most obvious clues about the danger of GMO foods are that just about EVERY species of animal that is offered a GMO food versus a non-GMO food will avoid the GMO one. Many times they will do this to the point of starvation, as they have an intuitive sense of the danger of this food. 
Please listen to the interview as Jeffery expands on this point in great detail. It’s one you can use to effectively share with your friends and family who are not yet convinced of the dangers of GMO foods. 
If you have more time with them you can bring up the sterility argument that is expanded upon with these new research findings. You might have read this before that genetically modified foods may cause sterility in future generations but now the latest research from Russia provides shocking confirmation of this potential. 
This study, which was conducted by the Russian equivalent of the US National Association for Gene Security, has not yet been published, but its findings were recently announced. It’s anticipated that the details will be published later this summer.

Russian Scientists Find Third Generation of Hamsters Sterilized by GM Soy

The release of this new information provides yet another health risk, and confirmation on earlier problems related to fertility, birth weight of offspring, and infant mortality.
In this feeding study they used hamsters, an animal which has not been previously featured in GM safety studies. 
One group of hamsters was fed a normal diet without any soy whatsoever. 
A second group was fed non-GMO soy. 
A third ate GM soy. 
and a fourth group ate an even higher amount of GM soy than the third. 
Using the same genetically modified (GM) soy that is produced on over 90 percent of the soy acreage in the US, the hamsters and their offspring were fed their respective diets over a period of two years, during which time the researchers evaluated three generations of hamsters. 
First they took five pairs of hamsters from each group, each of which produced about seven to eight litters each, totaling about 140 animals. 
At first all went well, but serious problems became apparent when they selected new pairs from the offspring. 

The first problem was that this second generation had a slower growth rate and reached their sexual maturity later than normal. 
However, this second generation eventually generated another 39 litters:
  • The no-soy control group had 52 pups
  • The non-GM soy had 78
  • The GM soy had only 40, of which 25 percent died 
So these second-generation GM soy-fed hamsters had a five-fold higher infant mortality rate, compared to the 5 percent normal death rate that was happening in the controls.

Nearly All of the Third-Generation GMO Babies Were Sterile!

But then an even bigger problem became apparent, because nearly all of the third generation hamsters lost the ability to have babies altogether. 

Only a single third-generation female hamster gave birth to 16 pups, and of those, one fifth died. 
In short, nearly the entire third generation of GM soy eaters were sterile!
But it doesn’t end there. 

In the GM soy-fed groups they also found an unusually high prevalence of an otherwise extremely rare phenomenon – hair growing inside the animals’ mouths. (You can see the images here.)
Says Smith:
“… it’s a very rare phenomenon but he [study author, Dr. Surov] had never in his life seen more hair in mouths of hamsters than with these GM soy-fed, third generation hamsters.”
As you may know, genetically modified crops weren’t released until 1996, starting with GM soy, corn and cotton. Modified canola came about a year later. 

Please remember humans have MUCH longer life spans than rats and that GMO foods were only introduced in 1996.  This is LESS than one generation. 

So we’re still nowhere near seeing the full effects of these potential ramifications in humans, as we’re only about 15 years into it. But if the effects are anything like the effects on numerous types of animals, we could be looking at sterility on a grand scale as our great-grandchildren grow up and begin to try to procreate... 
The fact that the US is completely unwilling to implement the precautionary principle with regards to GM foods is incomprehensible in light of the findings we already have from animal studies. 

Additionally, some 800 genetically engineered food applications have been submitted to the USDA, but not one single environmental impact statement has been prepared. So not only are human health ramifications ignored, but the entire eco system is being jeopardized.

Rampant Conflicts of Interest Put You and Your Family at Great Risk

Unfortunately, it’s clear that the US government is not in a position to make reasonable and responsible decisions related to GMOs at this point, when you consider the fact that the Obama administration has placed former Monsanto attorney and Vice President, Michael Taylor, in charge of US food safety, and serious conflicts of interest even reign supreme within the US Supreme Court! 
That’s right. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is also a former Monsanto attorney, but refuses to acknowledge any conflict of interest as he’s hearing Monsanto’s third appeal for deregulation of genetically modified alfalfa seeds. 
After corn, soy and wheat, alfalfa is the most widely grown crop in the US, so allowing GM alfalfa to be deregulated could spell disaster in several ways. It’s easily cross-pollinated by bees and wind, and it’s a perennial, meaning GM alfalfa could live on for years, spreading their genetically modified traits far and wide for a long period of time.
It remains to be seen how Justice Thomas rules in this case… 
But in addition to conflicts of interest, we’re also dealing with government agencies that refuse to acknowledge the science produced by their own scientists. 

Closely tied to the production of GM crops is the use of the herbicide Roundup, which contains glyphosate. Monsanto’s Roundup is the most widely used herbicide in the world, and contrary to the popular belief propagated by industry, pesticide use has significantly increased – DOUBLED since 2005 -- rather than decreased with the use of GM crops. 
As it turns out, this is a serious problem for more reasons than one. Not only are GM food crops saturated with more pesticides than ever before, which naturally ends up in your body when you eat them, but glyphosate may also be killing the soil itself. 

This startling conclusion comes straight from one of the USDA’s own scientists, Dr. Kremer. However, his employer has opted to more or less ignore his findings, which, according to this article in Grist, include evidence that glyphosate causes:
  • Damage to beneficial microbes in the soil increasing the likelihood of infection of a crop by soil pathogens
  • Interference with nutrient uptake by the plant
  • Reduced efficiency of symbiotic nitrogen fixation
  • Overall lower-than-expected plant productivity

More Evidence of Reproductive Problems from Eating GM Foods

But let’s get back to the infertility caused in animals. 
The evidence of third-generation sterility in hamsters is just one link in a chain of studies that show evidence of this tragic side effect. 
For example, back in 2005, Dr. Irina Ermakova, one of the senior scientists with the Russian National Academy of Sciences, reported that more than 50 percent of the babies from mother rats that were fed GM soy died within three weeks, compared to a 10 percent death rate among the controls. 
Again, that’s a death rate five times higher than normal – identical to the findings in the hamster study above. 
Similarly, the rats were also growing more slowly, just like the hamsters, and their offspring also had lower birth weights. And again, when the rats’ offspring tried to reproduce, they too were found to be mostly sterile, but it happened sooner, with infertility striking the second generation of rats, as opposed to the third generation of hamsters.
Ermakova wanted to perform further studies to analyze the organs she’d collected from the study, but she never got the chance. Says Smith: 
“She told me as we were sitting at the EU Parliament after giving a presentation there, that her boss had been pressured by his boss.
So, she was told to do no more GM food study on animals, her documents were burned on her desk, samples were stolen from her laboratory, and one of her colleagues tried to comfort her by saying, “Well maybe the GM soy will solve the overpopulation problem on earth.”
She wasn’t impressed.”
Neither am I. 
However, she inadvertently stumbled upon further proof that GM soy wreaks havoc with reproductive health. She discovered that the rat chow being fed to all rats in the facility had been switched, so that all of it contained GM soy… Two months later she asked her colleagues whether or not they’d discovered any surprising changes in the infant mortality of their various studies, and yes indeed, they had! 
Inexplicably, infant mortality in the animal studies performed at the National Academy of Scientific Laboratory in Moscow had skyrocketed to over 55 percent, sometimes higher. 
There’s more evidence of reproductive health being harmed in various ways. Smith explains:
“[Ermakova] gave me a slide of a completely new study in which she fed male rats genetically modified soy, and it’s absolutely stunning. 

On the left side of the slide is a pink testicle. On the right side of the slide, is a blue testicle. 

She said that when the GM soy was fed to the male rats, it changed the color of their testicles from pink to blue, and you could see the cells on another slide, left to right, the structure of the cells in the testicle was different; a completely different blood flow. 

And this reminded me of what they had studied in Italy, where they fed mice genetically modified soy and they also had changes in their testicles, including damage to the young sperm cells. 
Now, if you’re damaging the young sperm cells, it could result in one of two things. They can result in infertility, or problems with the offspring.
Well, it appears that they may have had both. 

In fact, with the mice, they looked at the offspring and they took the embryos out of the pregnant mothers and looked at how the DNA was functioning. And they compared the DNA of those who were born to GM soy-fed parents versus those who were fed non-GM soy and the DNA functioned differently.
So we’re seeing a fundamental change in the offspring of mice that were fed genetically modified soy, whose parents were also fed genetically modified soy.”
Other feeding studies using GM corn have also produced similar results. For example, mice fed GM corn had increasingly fewer and smaller babies the longer they stayed on the GM diet. 
There are also plenty of reports about pigs, cows and other livestock having reproductive problems when fed genetically modified feed.

It’s Time to Save Yourself and Your Famiy Because White Knights Don’t Exist in Government

It’s important to realize that the key to ending the ongoing atrocity of GM foods lies not with government, but with you and me. 

Consumers are going to have to drive GM foods out, and we CAN do it. 
Through educating yourself, your family, friends and community about GMOs, and most importantly of all, through the food purchases you make, you can stop this unregulated science experiment. 
Once we reach the tipping point, which is probably as little as five percent of the US population, the market WILL respond. They can’t afford not to! 

Once enough people refuse to buy GM food products, it won’t be long before food manufacturers start switching their ingredients.

How to Sniff Out GMOs and Vote with Your Pocketbook

You CAN avoid GMOs, if you know what to look for.
First of all, remember there are eight genetically modified food crops:
  1. Soy
  2. Corn
  3. Cottonseed (used in vegetable cooking oils)
  4. Canola (canola oil)
  5. Sugar from sugar beets
  6. Hawaiian papaya
  7. Some varieties of zucchini
  8. Crookneck squash
Based on this list, anything containing soy or soy derivatives should be avoided, as well as anything containing corn, the most obvious ingredient being high fructose corn syrup.
The easiest way to avoid ending up with GM foods in your shopping cart is to do some pre-planning using this free non-GMO shopping guide. 
The Institute for Responsible Technology has also created a free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications. 

The shopping guide lists the various derivatives of each crop to be avoided, and even better, it lists hundreds of brand products in 22 food categories that are non-GMO, so if you’re still buying processed foods, at least you can easily select a brand that does not use genetically modified ingredients.

Tipping Point… If Europe Did it, the US Can Too!

Getting into a shopping habit of continually avoiding GM food products will create pressure on the marketplace, without which there is little hope. So take this one step! Download the shopping guide, and make note of which brands to buy and which ones to avoid like the plague that they are. 
Europe managed to reach their tipping point in April of 1999, ELEVEN YEARS AGO(!), within a single week of negative media which swayed the shopping habits of consumers enough for food companies to commit to stop using GM ingredients. 

The idea that consumers have tremendous power is not wishful thinking. It’s an absolute fact. 

Monsanto could probably be effectively bankrupted by the end of this year, if enough consumers were to take individual, proactive steps to avoid purchasing anything even remotely related to their business. 

Another point that validates the effectiveness of this consumer-driven strategy is the progress we’re now seeing with high fructose corn syrup. Within the last few weeks, several major corporations have declared they’re taking HFCS out of their products due to consumer demand.

More Educational Material

You can find loads of additional information about GMOs on the site www.ResponsibleTechnology.org. 

There you can also order additional guides to hand out to friends, health care practitioners, and decision makers within your community, along with free online videos, pod casts, and articles that you can repost and republish. 
Last but not least, I want to put out a call for a very special donation. 

The iPhone application was created by someone who generously donated their time to make it, and if you or someone you know is a competent Android developer who is willing to assist in this cause, please contact info@ResponsibleTechnology.org.
You can also make financial donations on their website to help accelerate the tipping point against GMOs.



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The Lie That is Soy - What You Have Not Been Told

Usually when people think of getting healthy or cutting out the "bad" foods from their diet, they immediately think of taking a break from eating meat and dairy. This of course usually means the introduction of soy substitutes, soy milk, and soy meats. In fact one can find a soy substitute for just about anything.

But the question arises, is soy actually better for you? Is it the healthier way?

There is some alarming data that says unequivocally, NO. Take a look at this article by Dr. Mercola, The Evidence Against Soy.
The Evidence Against Soy
by Dr. Mercola
Dow Chemical and DuPont, the same corporations that brought misery and death to millions around the world through Agent Orange, are now the driving forces behind the promotion of soy as a food for humans. They are financing anti-meat and anti-milk campaigns aimed largely at those concerned about animal welfare and the environment, trying to convince them that imitations such as "soymilk" are not only healthier than the real thing, but better for the earth too.
There is no evidence that consuming soy products can improve health, reduce environmental degradation or slow global warming. In fact, the evidence suggests quite the opposite. 
The studies below regarding the effects of soy on health are eye-opening, particularly the review by the American Heart Association -- which no longer supports the health claims about soy endorsed by the U.S. government.
Overall risks and benefits of soy assessed
Latest review by American Heart Association
Soy inhibits iron absorption
Poor iron bioavailability
Poor calcium bioavailability
Calcium and zinc absorbed better from milk than from soy -- even without phytates
Soy provides no benefits with respect to heart disease risk
Soy causes bladder cancer
Soy isoflavones during pregnancy increase breast cancer risk in female offspring
High levels of cadmium in soy formula
Soy linked to peanut allergy and increased risk for asthma
Whole milk vs. soy beverage -- asthma risk
Persistent sexual arousal syndrome associated with increased soy intake
Genistein: Does it prevent or promote breast cancer?
If you were to carefully review the thousands of studies published on soy, I strongly believe you too would reach the conclusion that any possible benefits of consuming soy are FAR outweighed by the well documented risks. 
Now, I’m not against all forms of soy. Properly fermented products like natto and tempeh have been consumed for centuries and do not wreak havoc in your body like unfermented soy products do. For example, the enzyme nattokinase—derived from natto--is a safer, more powerful option than aspirin to dissolve blood clots, and has been used safely for more than two decades.

Unfortunately, many Americans still believe that unfermented and processed soy products like soy milk, soy cheese, soy burgers and soy ice cream are good for them.
85 Percent of Consumers Believe the Lies About Soy
The rise of soy as a health food is in large part due to highly successful marketing to otherwise health conscious Americans who set the trend. According to the survey Consumer Attitudes About Nutrition 2008 (by the United Soybean Board), 85 percent of consumers now perceive soy products as healthy. 
The survey also found that consumers:

  • rank soybean oil among the top three healthy oils, with 70 percent recognizing soy oil as a healthy oil, and
  • depend on soybean oil, commonly sold as vegetable oil, as one of their two most frequent cooking oils
This is a tragic case of shrewd marketing of misinformation and outright lies taking root among the masses, which will likely take some time to undo. 
Ever since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a health claim for soy foods in 1999 (which said diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease), soy sales have skyrocketed. In the years between 2000 and 2007, food manufacturers in the U.S. introduced over 2,700 new foods with soy as an ingredient, including 161 new products introduced in 2007 alone. 
This has resulted in a booming multi-billion dollar business. From 1992 to 2007, soy food sales increased from a paltry $300 million to nearly $4 billion, according to the Soyfoods Association of North America. 
However, the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit nutrition education foundation, submitted a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in January of this year, asking them to retract its heart-health claim from soy in light of the inconsistent and contradictory evidence showing benefits, and its many proven health risks. 
What’s So Wrong With Soy?
Unlike the Asian culture, where people eat small amounts of whole soybean products, western food processors separate the soybean into two golden commodities--protein and oil. And there is nothing natural or safe about these products. 
Says Dr. Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story, 
“Today's high-tech processing methods not only fail to remove the anti-nutrients and toxins that are naturally present in soybeans but leave toxic and carcinogenic residues created by the high temperatures, high pressure, alkali and acid baths and petroleum solvents." 

Dr. Daniel also points out the findings of numerous studies reviewed by her and other colleagues -- that soy does not reliably lower cholesterol, and in fact raises homocysteine levels in many people, which has been found to increase your risk of stroke, birth defects, and yes: heart disease. Other common health problems linked to a high-soy diet include:

Most soy, perhaps about 80 percent or more, is also genetically modified, which adds its own batch of health concerns. 

Despite these findings, many people still want to believe the hype, thinking that these studies must somehow be wrong. But the content of soy itself should be a clue. For example, non-fermented soy products contain:
  • Phytoestrogens (isoflavones) genistein and daidzein, which mimic and sometimes block the hormone estrogen
  • Phytates, which block your body's uptake of minerals
  • Enzyme Inhibitors, which hinder protein digestion
  • Hemaggluttin, which causes red blood cells to clump together and inhibits oxygen take-up and growth
  • High amounts of omega-6 fat, which is pro-inflammatory
You’re Consuming Soy Whether You’re Buying “Soy Products” or Not
Even if you know better than to gulp down large amounts of soy milk, slabs of tofu, and other soy snacks, you are still consuming soy if you’re eating processed food, in the form of soybean oil and lecithin. So depending on your dietary habits, your (unfermented) soy consumption could really add up. 
In fact, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln at the National Institutes of Health told CNN.com he estimates that soybeans, usually in the form of oil, account for 10 percent of the average person’s total calories in the United States! When you consider that 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food goes toward processed food, this amount of “accidental” soy intake is not surprising. As a side note, I’d like to make a quick statement here to address some of my readers’ concerns about my reduced CoQ 10 supplement, ubiquinol, which also contain soy bean oil.  
Unfortunately, the reduced CoQ 10 (ubiquinol) – which is the optimal form of CoQ 10 that your body needs, especially if you’re over 25 – is only produced by a multi-billion dollar Japanese pharmaceutical company that holds ALL the world patents on it. Hence, there’s no way to replace the soy, even though that would have been my preference.
However, as in all things, moderation is key. If I thought there were ANY significant health risks from consuming this small amount of soy oil, then I would not personally take two a day – which I do. I do however avoid all processed forms of soy products, and severely limit my intake of other unfermented soy, which is easy to do by simply avoiding processed and “fast” foods. 
Which Soy Foods Should be Avoided … and How do You Avoid Them?
Because soy is so pervasive in the U.S. food supply, avoiding it is not an easy task.

The best way to completely avoid soy in the food supply is to buy whole foods and prepare them yourself. This may also be your only option if you’ve developed a soy allergy and need to eliminate soy from your diet entirely. 
If you still prefer to buy readymade and packaged products, for whatever reason, Dr. Daniel offers a free Special Report, "Where the Soys Are," on her Web site. It lists the many "aliases" that soy might be hiding under in ingredient lists -- words like "boullion," "natural flavor" and "textured plant protein."
Which Soy Foods DO Have Health Benefits?  
The few types of soy that ARE healthy are all fermented varieties. After a long fermentation process, the phytic acid and antinutrient levels of the soybeans are reduced, and their beneficial properties -- such as the creation of natural probiotics -- become available to your digestive system. 
The fermentation process also greatly reduces the levels of dangerous isoflavones, which are similar to estrogen in their chemical structure, and can interfere with the action of your own estrogen production.

So if you want to eat soy that is actually good for you, following are all healthy options:

  1. Natto, fermented soybeans with a sticky texture and strong, cheese-like flavor. It's loaded with nattokinase, a very powerful blood thinner. Natto is actually a food I eat regularly, as it is the highest source of vitamin K2 on the planet and has a very powerful beneficial bacteria, bacillus subtilis. It can usually be found in any Asian grocery store.
  2. Tempeh, a fermented soybean cake with a firm texture and nutty, mushroom-like flavor.
  3. Miso, a fermented soybean paste with a salty, buttery texture (commonly used in miso soup).
  4. Soy sauce: traditionally, soy sauce is made by fermenting soybeans, salt and enzymes, however be wary because many varieties on the market are made artificially using a chemical process.


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