U.S. Dairy Industry Petitions FDA to Approve Aspartame as Hidden Additive
By Mike AdamsNatural News
February 26, 2013
You probably already know that the FDA has declared war on raw milk and even helped fund and coordinate armed government raids against raw milk farmers and distributors.
Yes, it’s insane. This brand of tyranny is unique to the USA and isn’t even conducted in China, North Korea or Cuba. Only in the USA are raw milk farmers treated like terrorists.
But now the situation is getting even more insane than you could have imagined: the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have filed a petition with the FDA asking the FDA to alter the definition of “milk” to secretly include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose.
Importantly, none of these additives need to be listed on the label. They will simply be swept under the definition of “milk,” so that when a company lists “milk” on the label, it automatically includes aspartame or sucralose.
And if you’re trying to avoid aspartame, you’ll have no way of doing so because it won’t be listed on the label.
This isn’t only for milk, either: It’s also for yogurt, cream, sour cream, eggnog, whipping cream and a total of 17 products, all of which are listed in the petition at FDA.gov.
As the petition states:
IDFA and NMPF request their proposed amendments to the milk standard of identity to allow optional characterizing flavoring ingredients used in milk (e.g., chocolate flavoring added to milk) to be sweetened with any safe and suitable sweetener — including non-nutritive sweeteners such as aspartame.
This is all being done to “save the children,” we’re told, because the use of aspartame in milk products would reduce calories.
Milk industry specifically asks to HIDE aspartame from consumers
Astonishingly, the dairy industry is engaged in extreme doublespeak logic and actually arguing that aspartame should be hidden from consumers by not listing it on the label. Here’s what the petition says:
IDFA and NMPF argue that nutrient content claims such as “reduced calorie” are not attractive to children, and maintain that consumers can more easily identify the overall nutritional value of milk products that are flavored with non-nutritive sweeteners if the labels do not include such claims.
Further, the petitioners assert that consumers do not recognize milk — including flavored milk — as necessarily containing sugar.
Accordingly, the petitioners state that milk flavored with non-nutritive sweeteners should be labeled as milk without further claims so that consumers can “more easily identify its overall nutritional value.”
In other words, hiding aspartame from consumers by not including it on the label actually helpsconsumers, according to the IDFA and NMPF!
Yep, consumers are best served by keeping them ignorant. If this logic smacks of the same kind of twisted deception practiced by Monsanto, that’s because it’s identical: the less consumers know, the more they are helped, according to industry.
And it’s for the children, too, because children are also best served by keeping them poisoned with aspartame.
Consumers have always been kept in the dark about pink slime, meat glue, rBGH and GMOs in their food. And now, if the IDFA gets its way, you’ll be able to drink hormone-contaminated milk from an antibiotics-inundated cow fed genetically modified crops and producing milk containing hidden aspartame. And you won’t have the right to know about any of this!
The FDA confirms this “secret” status of aspartame, stating, “If the standard of identity for milk is amended as requested by petitioners, milk manufacturers could use non-nutritive sweeteners in flavored milk without a nutrient content claim in its labeling.”
FDA requests comments
The FDA is requesting comments on this petition. You have until May 21st, 2013 to submit your comments. Click here for instructions.
This is a clue to stop drinking processed milk and milk products altogether
There’s a bigger story here than just the industry hoping to get FDA approval to secretly put aspartame in milk products while not listing aspartame on the label.
The bigger question is this: If an industry is pushing to hide aspartame in its products, what else is it already hiding?
How about the pus content of its dairy products? How about its inhumane treatment of animals who are subjected to torture conditions and pumped full of genetically engineered hormones? How about the fact that homogenization and pasteurization turn a whole food into a dietary nightmare that promotes obesity, autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular disease?
There are lots of dirty little secrets in the dairy industry of course, and that doesn’t even get into the secret closed-door conversations to encourage the FDA to destroy the competition of raw milk.
The only rational answer to all this is to stop buying and consuming processed dairy products, period!
I gave up ALL milk products many years ago and have never looked back. I drink almond milk, not pus-filled pasteurized cow’s milk. (Click here for a recipe to make your own almond milk at home.) I don’t eat yogurt.
If I want probiotics, I get them from tasty chewable probiotics supplements such as Sunbiotics. I parted ways with processed dairy products many years ago, and as a result, my cardiovascular health, skin health, digestive health and stamina have all remained in outstanding shape.
There’s also a philosophical issue here: Don’t buy products from an industry that habitually LIES about everything. The dairy industry is like a mafia.
They actively seek to destroy the competition, keep consumers ignorant and monopolize the market. They run highly deceptive ads with ridiculous claims like, “drinking milk helps you lose weight” and other nonsense.
The U.S. dairy industry is steeped in deception at every level, and now they want you and your children to unknowingly drink aspartame that’s secretly blended into the product.
The dairy industry is to food as Lance Armstrong is to sports. It’s all a big lie, laced with secret chemicals and false claims.
Stop drinking milk. Stop financially supporting the food mafia.
Recommended videos:
Raw Milk Rover (hilarious animation)
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=273C2497DFDE9F61CB9E8867113CA5CA
Got a PUStache? (satire)
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=C463AA940B9AEBA5D294F87FF0716579
Jonathan Emord raw milk freedom speech:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=F8DF9A42CC5479D8829A2445C56AFEF3
Farmageddon interview with Kristin Canty
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=3340FCCC93B2C17EEFA43C7E6296728D
Sources for this article:
This petition was originally brought to our attention by a reader who says it was covered on Activist Post. I haven’t yet read that article but may update this article with a link to that article once I identify the URL.
FDA petition page:
http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/02/20/2013-03835/flavore…
“Eating Well Could Help Spread Disease”, Water Flea Study Suggests
Science Daily – Feb. 26, 2013 — Plentiful food can accelerate the spread of infections, Edinburgh scientists have shown in a study of water fleas.
Epidemic spread
“If we have an idea of which individuals transmit a lot of disease, we will be better able to stop its spread,” said Dr Pedro Vale, School of Biological Sciences.
Scientists say the discovery highlights that, under certain conditions, some individuals may be more prone to spreading disease than others.
Their findings could help inform ways to monitor and control the spread of infections, such as epidemics, in large populations.
Poll: Many Americans Don’t See Their Kids as Overweight
MONDAY, Feb. 25 (HealthDay News) — Many American parents fail to see that their children are overweight or obese, a new poll finds.
Only 15 percent of parents said their children are a little or very overweight, but national statistics suggest that 32 percent of kids are overweight or even obese, according to the researchers.
In addition, only 20 percent of children in the survey had a parent who was worried that his or her child will be overweight as an adult. However, an estimated 69 percent of American adults are overweight, including 36 percent who are obese and 6 percent who are extremely obese.
The poll results suggest that many parents underestimate their children’s current risk for being overweight or obese, and how that risk could continue to affect them as adults, the researchers said.
The survey, conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Harvard School of Public Health and NPR, asked parents about their children, ages 2 to 17.
“We know that nearly one in three kids in America is overweight or obese, and that’s a national emergency,” Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a foundation news release.
Researchers Link MSG to Weight Gain, Obesity
February 24th, 2013 | Updated 02/25/2013 at 3:46 am
Monosodium glutamate is a food additive used in many foods to enhance taste, but this additive is also toxic. Known as an excitotoxin – which ‘excites’ the cells of the body into overproducing a particular chemical, thus burning them out prematurely – MSG is thrown in everything from Ramen noodles to potato chips, all to “enhance” the flavors in these quasi-foods. But while MSG is said to improve taste, it has many—more sinister—effects. Many people know that MSG can sometimes be blamed for headaches and possibly even ADHD, but the link to obesity often goes unrecognized.
From animal research to studies in humans, scientists have consistently demonstrated that there is a link between the consumption of MSG and obesity.
In Spain, researchers found that rats who eat MSG experience an increase in appetite of 40%. This is dramatic. And because the food’s flavors are enhanced, there’s a good chance that humans are eating more of them too.
But more than just tasting good, some scientists have suggested that MSG actually interferes with leptin, responsible for controlling our appetites. One study showed that those people who eat the most MSG also have the most leptin, perhaps creating an environment of leptin resistance, or one where the appetite becomes more or less uncontrollable.
Interestingly, MSG could be causing obesity even without increased food consumption. The link between MSG and weight gain or obesity holds true even when excess calories are accounted for.
In the United States, it’s estimated that the average person consumes about a half a gram of MSG daily, and for many sensitive people, this is enough to trigger a migraine. But, it’s minimal when compared with the amount consumed in some Asian countries. It’s estimated in countries like Japan that MSG consumption is anywhere from 1.5 to 10 grams per day.
Are the Government’s Dietary Guidelines Making Us Obese?
Margie KingCan the dietary guidelines be to blame?
Many experts believe that the USDA and other government agencies have stubbornly disregarded the science and continued a 30-year long nutrition experiment on Americans that has had disastrous results.
Nutrition experts from The Healthy Nation Coalition, which includes the Weston A. Price Foundation, the Salt Institute, and the Nutrition and Metabolism Society, have voiced concerns about the current USDA Dietary Guidelines issued in 2010. They criticize the guidelines for perpetuating the wrong-headed advice to eat a low-fat diet, high in processed grains and cereals, which has contributed to the current obesity and health crisis.
What’s wrong with the government’s nutrition advice?
Dietary guidelines are a creation of politics and not science. Critics claim that the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee ignored scientific research that validates low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss and improved health. Low-carb diets generally recommend 60 to 120 grams of unprocessed carbohydrates per day, although some provide more, and some as little as 20 grams.
Besides encouraging people to eat processed carbohydrates such as cereal, rice, pasta and bread, the guidelines have made Americans fearful of eating real natural whole foods such as whole milk, cheese, red meat, eggs, salt, butter and full-fat yogurt. As a result, Americans have stocked their pantries with processed fake soy meats, vegetable oils, margarine and skimmed dairy products, all of which are depleted or completely devoid of key nutrients, such as vitamins D, A, K and choline.
The Campaign Against Saturated Fats
Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, faults the guidelines for continuing to demonize saturated fats based on unsound science. The most recent guidelines reduce the recommended intake of saturated fats from 10% of calories to less than 7%.
The proposed 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines perpetuate the mistakes of previous guidelines in demonizing saturated fats and animal foods rich in saturated fatty acids such as egg yolks, butter, whole milk, cheese, fatty meats like bacon and animal fats for cooking. The current obesity epidemic emerged as vegetable oils and refined carbohydrates replaced these healthy, nutrient-dense traditional fats. Animal fats supply many essential nutrients that are difficult to obtain from other sources,” explained Ms. Morell in a press conference sponsored by the Healthy Nation Coalition.
Ms. Morell noted that for the past 60 or 70 years, saturated fats have been blamed for clogging arteries, and for causing heart disease, diabetes and even multiple sclerosis. None of these accusations is based on sound science she says.
Health Benefits of Saturated Fats
On the other hand, Ms. Morell points out the critical roles that saturated fats play in the body, including:
- Make up 50% of cell membranes
- Help the body put calcium in the bones
- Lower Lp(a), a marker for heart disease
- Protect the liver from alcohol and other poisons
- Are required for lung and kidney function
- Enhance the immune system
- Work together with essential fatty acids
- Support the body’s detoxification mechanisms
The government’s rationale for promoting a low-fat diet is the belief that fat makes us fat. Ms. Morell cites, however, the famous Framingham Heart Study which demonstrated that those eating more saturated fat, more cholesterol and more calories actually had lower blood serum cholesterol levels, weighed less and were more physically active.
In addition, a 1965 British heart study showed that heart attack survivors eating a saturated fat diet lived longer than those eating a diet of polyunsaturated or mono-unsaturated vegetable oils.
Finally, she cites a study of European countries which found that countries in which the population ate a diet high in saturated fats had lower rates of heart disease and those eating a low saturated fat diet had higher rates of heart disease.
The government and nutrition experts often lump saturated fats in with trans fats. Even worse, the fear of saturated fats has led many to replace the butter in their diets with trans fat laden margarines. Since 1926, Ms. Morell points out, use of butter in the U.S. has plummeted and at the same time rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease have skyrocketed.
- Other “grave concerns” with the guidelines include
- Restriction of dietary cholesterol to 300 mg per day (less than 2 eggs);
- Restriction of sodium to 1,500 mg per day (2/3 of a teaspoon of salt);
- Promotion of low-fat milk and lean meats;
- Use of meat substitutes in federally funded school lunches; and
- Absence of any restrictions on refined carbohydrates and sweeteners in school meals.
Ms. Morell warned that the harm resulting from these misguided recommendations fall disproportionately on the nation’s children who will be fed these nutrient poor, fat inducing diets every day at school. And that is a tragedy.
Margie King is a holistic health coach and graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition®. A Wharton M.B.A. and practicing corporate attorney for 20 years, Margie left the world of business to pursue her passion for all things nutritious. She now works with midlife women and busy professionals to improve their health, energy and happiness through individual and group coaching, as well as webinars, workshops and cooking classes. She is also a professional copywriter and prolific health and nutrition writer whose work appears as the National Nutrition Examiner. To contact Margie, visitwww.NourishingMenopause.com.
This article first appeared here at GreenMedInfo.com
Mediterranean diet cuts risk of heart attack and stroke: study
By Denis Campbell, The Guardian
Monday, February 25, 2013 21:01 EST
Following a Mediterranean diet rich in either extra-virgin olive oil or nuts reduces the risk of people at risk of a heart attack or stroke suffering either event or dying of a heart condition by 30%, new research reveals.
The findings, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, offer hope to those in danger of a heart attack or stroke because they smoke, have type 2 diabetes or exhibit other unhealthy characteristics. They also confirm that the diet common in southern European countries, which involves consuming a lot of fruit, vegetables, fish and wine, and only small amounts of red meat or dairy products, offers protection against heart problems.
“A causal role of the Mediterranean diet in cardiovascular prevention has high biologic plausibility. The results of our trial might explain, in part, the lower cardiovascular mortality in Mediterranean countries than in northern Europe or the United States,” the authors conclude.
The risk of those on the diet having a stroke was significantly reduced, they found.
Polluted America: GMO Manmade Biological Threats, Plant Diseases, Germ Warfare
In the United States everything is polluted.
Democracy is polluted with special interests and corrupt politicians.
Accountability is polluted with executive branch exemptions from law and the Constitution and with special legal privileges for corporations, such as the Supreme Court given right to corporations to purchase American elections.
The Constitution is polluted with corrupt legal interpretations from the Bush and Obama regimes that have turned constitutional prohibitions into executive branch rights, transforming law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of government.
Waters are polluted with toxic waste spills, oil spills, chemical fertilizer run-off with resulting red tides and dead zones, acid discharges from mining with resulting destructive algae such as prymnesium parvum, from toxic chemicals used in fracking and with methane that fracking releases into wells and aquifers, resulting in warnings to homeowners near to fracking operations to open their windows when showering.
The soil’s fertility is damaged, and crops require large quantities of chemical fertilizers. The soil is polluted with an endless array of toxic substances and now with glyphosate, the main element in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide with which GMO crops are sprayed.
Glyphosate now shows up in wells, streams and in rain.
Air is polluted with a variety of substances, and there are many large cities in which there are days when the young, the elderly, and those suffering with asthma are warned to remain indoors.
All of these costs are costs imposed on society and ordinary people by corporations that banked profits by not having to take the costs into account. This is the way in which unregulated capitalism works.
Our food itself is polluted with antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, and glyphosate.
Glyphosate might be the most dangerous development to date. Some scientists believe that glyphosate has the potential to wipe out our main grain crops and now that Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, Thomas Vilsack, has approved genetically modified Roundup Ready alfalfa, maintaining sustainable animal herds for milk and meat could become impossible.
Alfalfa is the main forage crop for dairy and beef herds. Genetically modified alfalfa could be unsafe for animal feed, and animal products such as milk and meat could become unsafe for human consumption.
On January 17, 2011, Dr. Don Huber outlined the dangers of approving Roundup Ready alfalfa in a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack. Huber requested that approval be delayed until independent research could evaluate the risks. Vilsack ignored the letter and accommodated Monsanto’s desire for monopoly profits that come from the company’s drive to control the seed supply of US and world agriculture by approving Roundup Ready alfalfa.
US farmers flood fields with dangerous poison to fight Monsanto superweeds
by Jon Rappoport
February 25, 2013
You’re a farmer. Season after season, you watch your fields being taken over by Monsanto superweeds, which are resistant to the herbicide Roundup.
What are you going to do? You’re locked in. You’re buying your GMO seeds from Monsanto, and the food crops that grow from those seeds are supposed to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup, so that’s what you spray on your crops.
But the weeds aren’t resistant. They spread and they grow taller. They’re taking over.
So you, along with many, many other US farmers, go to a strategy called “burndown,” which is just as bad as it sounds. You use something a lot stronger than Roundup to kill those weeds: Paraquat, for example, which has been banned in 32 countries.
You drench your fields with it in the fall. You kill anything growing. And you drench the fields again in the spring, before you plant. Then, just as you’re going to plant, you hit the fields a third time with the poison.
This is in addition to all the sprayings with Roundup, which is toxic, too.
Then you harvest the crops and you sell them. And consumers eat the food along with all the poison.
Even 90% of French Wines Contaminated with Heavy Pesticides
Heather Callaghan
According to Farming News:
The wine industry in France uses a proportionately high volume of chemical products on vines, accounting for 20 percent of all agricultural chemicals for products grown on 3 percent of the agricultural area.
More tragic, International Business Times reports:
Dozens of French grape farmers have been struck by illnesses that have been traced back to the pesticides they used. One farmer named Yannick Chenet died in 2011, seven years after he accidentally inhaled toxic fumes from his spraying machine. Other farmers have suffered Parkinson’s disease and various types of cancer. Studies have shown that farmers and laborers on vineyards in France tend to die from brain cancer at higher rates than the general population, and also are more likely to develop dementia.
A previous study from European Pesticide Action Network (PAN) found even more contamination from multiple EU countries with up to 24 chemicals in the wines (up to 10 in one bottle), classified as ”carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic or endocrine disrupting”.
This must be an unfortunate black eye for the world’s Wine Country for another reason as wine connoisseurs can tell you – everything affects the taste of wine – everything. Even a hint of a flower fragrance in the air that season adds nuance. If getting a piece of cork in the bottle can ruin it, imagine what heavy pesticide dousing can do to the flavor when it’s in the crushed grapes themselves. Health and quality are more important than taste, but imagine what can happen to the wine industry if this isn’t ameliorated.
Excell laboratories organized a conference to talk about “new perspectives” in growing. In January, the EU called for changes in pesticide use to protect declining bee colonies. France’s government plans to halve the amount of pesticides by 2018 but expect mega opposition from the ag industry.
Seafood Freakshow: 59% Of Tuna Mislabeled, Fake Tuna Linked to ‘Anal Oil Leakage’
Do you enjoy the taste of tuna? If you answered yes to that question, there’s a very large chance that you actually enjoy the taste of many bizarre and exotic imposter ‘fake tuna’ fish types that have been peddled and mislabeled by the seafood industry and restaurants alike — even a ‘snake mackerel’ fish linked to side effects like anal oil leakage.
The new genetic testing campaign kickstarted and funded by the nonprofit organization known as Oceana, a group whose mission statement involves protecting the world’s oceans, reveals that 59% of tuna is not only mislabeled but is almost entirely compromised of a fish once banned by the FDA. Sushi restaurants were the worst offenders by far, but the tests spanned throughout restaurants and grocery stores alike. Altogether, the findings oust over half of tuna fish as fraudulent.
As you can see for yourself in the report by Oceana, the numerical breakdown of tuna fraud (especially ‘white tuna’) paints a picture of just how far companies will go to deliver rubbish products and deceive the consumer:
- Between restaurants and grocery stories in the US alike, 59% overall of the tuna tested was definitely not tuna as found by genetic testing.
- Sushi restaurants had the worst record, with every single restaurant’s ‘tuna’ tested in major cities like DC, Chicago, Austin, and New York City coming back as fraudulent.
- A whopping 84% of ‘white tuna’ was actually escolar, the snake mackerel fish that causes oily anal leakage and was banned by the FDA until 1992. It is still banned in Japan, Italy, and requires warning labels regarding the leaky discharge in Canada, Sweden, and Denmark.
Oceana also offers a graphical breakdown:
Rampant Food Mystery Ingredients | From Fake Tuna to Horsemeat
The blatant lack of knowledge regarding the actual ingredients in so-called ‘tuna’ products is reminiscent of recent food ingredient disasters such as the Burger King horsemeat incident, in which Burger King was forced to admit that consumers had been eating either horse or donkey meat in their juicy Whoppers for who knows how long. An admission that not only grossed a lot of people out and emotionally touched a lot of horse lovers, but brought up a great consideration: we really don’t even know what we’re putting into our mouths.
Dead, Lifeless Food
Brad Jordan
Activist Post
FDA aims to sterilize our food through the Food Safety Modernization Act
After two years of delay, the Food Safety Modernization Act is finally about to go into effect. The FDA is moving forward with rules that are supposed to make food in the United States the safest in the world.
Hailed as the most sweeping overhaul of farm and food policy since the Great Depression, some fear the law will actually make our food supply less safe by regulating small, organic farmers out of business and leaving it in the hands of a few mega farmers and processors.
“So what exactly is the government going to do to make our food safer?” I was wondering the other day. While I hoped for the labeling of GMOs and the removal and the word “natural” from products that aren’t natural, I knew the FDA would come up with an idea like putting port-a-potties with sinks in the middle of farm fields. And sure enough, that’s exactly what they did. With that, they also want food heated at higher temperatures to kill any bacteria that may be present, good or bad, and a host of other ill-conceived ideas that will prevent us from accessing nutrient-dense foods.
I recently spoke with Judith McGeary, founder of Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rights of independent farmers, ranchers, and homesteaders. Judith is also an attorney, a farmer, and a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader in Austin, Texas.
McGeary has been following the Food Safety Modernization Act since it was first proposed a couple of years ago. Initially she feared the coming food safety regulations would be so costly for small farmers that they’d go out of business. Since then, farms with less than half a million dollars in annual sales have been exempted from the legislation.
But after reviewing the FDA’s proposed rules, she is still leery for several reasons.
Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss – review
A damning investigation into the junk food industry is both chilling and contentious
New York Times journalist Michael Moss spent three-and-a-half years working out how big food companies get away with churning out products that undermine the health of those who eat them. He interviewed hundreds of current and former food industry insiders – chemists, nutrition scientists, behavioural biologists, food technologists, marketing executives, package designers, chief executives and lobbyists. What he uncovered is chilling: a hard-working industry composed of well-paid, smart, personable professionals, all keenly focused on keeping us hooked on ever more ingenious junk foods; an industry that thinks of us not as customers, or even consumers, but as potential “heavy users”.Four tips to cut processed foods from your diet for good
(NaturalNews) They’re convenient, they’re enticingly packaged, and for some people they’re so addictively tempting that indulgence is a constant, uncontrollable urge. But processed foods are a collective Trojan horse of bad health just waiting to rear its nasty head when you least expect it, sometimes immediately and sometimes later on down the road, which means they’re definitely something you want to cut out of your diet for good.Wanting to cut the junk food habit and actually doing it; however, are two completely different animals. Many people, it turns out, find themselves constantly straddling the line between the desires of their heart and the desires of their flesh when it comes to consuming processed foods. But the good news is that if you are one of the millions of people trying to rid your diet of processed foods, you are not alone, and you can succeed.
