tagged w/ Disease
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Taking a quarter of an aspirin with milk just before you go to bed every night could reduce your chance of dying in middle age by a tenth, the biggest study into the drug has found.
link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8184776/Aspirin-the-wonder-drug-fights-off-cancer-as-well-as-heart-disease.htmlTaking a quarter of an aspirin with milk just before you go to bed every night could... more
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“Ark” is an award-winning animated eight-minute short film by Polish director Grzegorz Jonkajtys, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival and won the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival in 2007. In this fantastic film, an unknown virus has destroyed almost the entire human population. Oblivious to the true nature of the disease, the only remaining survivors escape to the sea on massive ships in search of uninhabited land. The story focuses on one man as he struggles with his life and his new found knowledge of the voyage. As the spotlight shines on the man, you’re immediately pulled into his frame of mind, only to be shocked by the twist at the end.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, as well as the acclaimed short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/ark-the-exodus-of-earths-only-remaining-survivors/“Ark” is an award-winning animated eight-minute short film by Polish... more
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Hantavirus is a lung disease that is spread by carriers like deer mice. People contract the disease by breathing in the virus that has gotten into the air through rodent droppings and urine. http://weirdcorner.com/?p=95Hantavirus is a lung disease that is spread by carriers like deer mice. People... more
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- An attempt by a Kentucky water district to raise rates in order to meet clean water regulations has become political, with a local Tea Party organization stepping in and arguing that the county should simply ignore federal rules.
The Northern Kentucky Water District is seeking a 25 percent rate increase by January 2012, and according to The Kentucky Enquirer, a major reason for the raise is to comply with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regulations that are meant to prevent bladder cancer by "requiring that water utilities nationwide improve their treatment of drinking water to eliminate byproducts left over after chemical disinfection."
"The standard that we have to meet as to whether our water is safe or not is based upon the regulations that are set under the Safe Drinking Water Act and that are administered through the (Kentucky) Division of Water," said Northern Kentucky Water President and CEO Ron Lovan during a hearing last month. "Is our water safe? Yes, we feel it's safe based upon the current regulations. ... That's the standard that we've got to meet."
The EPA, however, is the arch-nemesis of many conservatives, who believe that it overreaches and imposes unnecessary regulations on states, localities and businesses.
But according to Lovan, if the local water district refuses to comply, it could face up to $25,000 per day in fines, the leadership could go to prison and the state Division of Water could possibly step in and take over. He added that the EPA regulations have been in the works since the 1990s and had significant public input.
"It's been years in the making, it was a very public process that they (EPA officials) took a lot of input from a lot of interest groups all around the country," said Lovan. "Whether the Tea Party folks believe that or not, it was a very open, public process before we got to the point where we are today."
During a hearing on the issue last month, Duane Skavdahl, an attorney representing the Tea Party group, lamented that "nobody will take on the EPA."
A Campbell County fiscal court judge recently told the Tea Party that if it was really concerned about the agency, it needed to take it up on the federal level. "What you're going to have to realize is that a federal mandate is the reason that we're involved in this conversation, and you're going to have to be talking to the federal people, and hopefully in a little bit different tone of voice and with different expectations than the way you're laying it out to us," said Judge Steve Pendery.
The Northern Kentucky Water District estimates that 80 percent of the $88 million increase is attributable to the new Safe Drinking Water Act regulations, but Northern Kentucky Tea Party member Garth Kuhnhein, who is a mining engineer, suspects that federal regulators were off on their cost projections.
According to the EPA, the regulations are intended to reduce not only bladder cancer, but also colon cancer, rectal cancer, and health risks to pregnant women and their fetuses. The Northern Kentucky Tea Party did not return a request for comment.
Tea Partiers are increasingly getting active locally, with groups in Arizona protesting changes in trash collection and a mandatory recycling program.- An attempt by a Kentucky water district to raise rates in order to meet clean water... more
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Heart disease could be cut by almost a fifth by forcing manufacturers cut the amount of salt they put in food, say scientists.
link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8102110/Salt-rules-would-cut-heart-disease.htmlHeart disease could be cut by almost a fifth by forcing manufacturers cut the amount... more
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Watch Dr. Jeff Fox, Features Editor for Microbe Magazine talk with Arturo Casadevall, MD, Ph.D., the editor-in-chief of mBio, the new online, open-access journal from the American Society for Microbiology, about an opinion/hypothesis article he co-authored suggesting that rising global temperatures will result in new fungal infections for mammals living in temperate climates.
This video was recorded live on May 24, 2010, at the American Society for Microbiology's 110th General Meeting in San Diego, Ca.Watch Dr. Jeff Fox, Features Editor for Microbe Magazine talk with Arturo Casadevall,... more
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Genetic analysis of tumours by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Johns Hopkins University suggested the first mutations may happen 20 years before they become lethal.
link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11639263Genetic analysis of tumours by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Johns Hopkins... more
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eva2
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Poor, battered and homeless, Haitians face new killer
By Richard Allen Greene, CNN
Cholera epidemic sparks fears in Haiti
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Children are suffering the most as cholera spreads
* They're weak, frail and scared, an aid worker says
* Aid agencies urge people to drink only clean water and wash their hands often
* Even regions not hit by the earthquake are suffering now
(CNN) -- Battered by a devastating earthquake, left for nearly a year without real homes, promised aid that failed to arrive, the people of Haiti now face a new killer, and the littlest children are among the hardest hit.
"The heart-wrenching piece of all of this is the children, who we have seen are suffering the most," aid worker Roseann Dennery said from the desperately poor Caribbean island nation.
She doesn't flinch in describing the effects of cholera; the water-borne disease has claimed at least 259 lives so far and is spreading quickly.
Children "are coming in with hard-to-control diarrhea and vomiting. Their little lives are frail, weakened. And so scared," she said in an iReport.
"Robens Jeune and his 2-year-old son came into the clinic. His little boy looked up with wide eyes and sat on the cot, scared and suffering. We started an IV and sat with him and his father to quiet his crying," said Dennery, who is with a Christian aid organization called Samaritan's Purse.
"Today, he just started throwing up," the boy's father told Dennery as he placed his hand on his son, Frantzley.
"I was on the way to the Saint-Marc hospital and someone told me that there was a clinic here, closer to home. So we came. And he has perked up, he is feeling better. I am hopeful he can live through this," Jeune told the aid worker at a rehydration clinic her group set up in Villard, near the center of the outbreak.
In theory, cholera should not be hard to control or to treat -- which is why aid organizations are racing to tell Haitians how to avoid it.
"First of all, drink clean water -- bottled, treated or boiled water," said Abdikadir Hassan, head of the Mercy Corps office in Mirabalais, downriver from the center of the outbreak.
The aid agency is telling people to "wash their hands every time they do something -- go to the toilet, eat. If you have enough water, wash the food before you eat. We're trying to give them soap and water treatments."
Mercy Corps is not waiting for Haitians to come to them for help.
"We put speakers on a van," Hassan said by phone from the town of Mirabalais. "We're going out to the community, we're at the market, we're at the schools."
They don't get to everyone in time.
When Hassan got to the local prison, he found it had 50 cases of cholera, of whom two had already died.
Next he went to the local hospital, where there were 800 cases, of whom 10 have died, he said.
"It started with children and then adults," he said. "In the past few days we have seen more children."
Mirabalais is a textbook case of how shock waves have rippled out from the earthquake since it struck in January.
It's on the central plateau in the center of Haiti, Hassan explained.
"It was not affected by the earthquake, but it received families that were," he said -- about 16,000 people made homeless came to stay with family members in the area.
More than nine months later, about half those people are still there, known officially as internally displaced persons and living with host families and relatives, Hassan said.
"We don't have IDP (internally displaced person) camps where I am," he said
"They are staying in villages, they are staying in towns -- but they are staying in... very small houses with eight or 10 people, houses that normally have four or five people," he said.
Those are exactly the kind of conditions that make it easy for disease to spread, and that's what worries aid workers.
"It would be irresponsible to plan for anything but a considerably wider outbreak," said Nigel Fisher, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Haiti.Poor, battered and homeless, Haitians face new killer
By Richard Allen Greene, CNN... more
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ST. MARC, Haiti, Oct. 22, 2010
Haiti: Suspected Cholera Outbreak Kills 135
Aid Groups Rush in Supplies as Deadliest Outbreak Since Earthquake Hits Refugees; 1,000 Said to be Infected
Photo: A sick child in central Haiti hooked up to an IV waiting for treatment, Oct. 21, 2010. (Operation Blessing International)
Victims await treatment at a medical facility in St. Marc, northern Haiti, amid an epidemic that has claimed at least 135 lives over the last few days, Oct. 21, 2010. (Getty Images)
(CBS/AP) At least 135 people have died in a suspected cholera outbreak, and aid groups are rushing in medicine and other supplies Friday to combat Haiti's deadliest health problem since its devastating earthquake.
The outbreak in the rural Artibonite region, which hosts thousands of quake refugees, appeared to confirm relief groups' fears about sanitation for homeless survivors living in tarp cities and other squalid settlements.
"We have been afraid of this since the earthquake," said Robin Mahfood, president of Food for the Poor, which was preparing to fly in donations of antibiotics, dehydration salts and other supplies.
Many of the sick have converged on St. Nicholas hospital in the seaside city of St. Marc, where hundreds of dehydrated patients lay on blankets in a parking lot with IVs in their arms as they waited for treatment.
Catherine Huck, deputy country director for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the Caribbean nation's health ministry had recorded 135 deaths and more than 1,000 infected people.
"What we know is that people have diarrhea, and they are vomiting, and (they) can go quickly if they are not seen in time," Huck said. She said doctors were still awaiting lab results to pinpoint the disease.
David Darg, international disaster relief director for Operation Blessing International told CBS News on Thursday it was the worst outbreak of disease he had seen since the earthquake, and many lying outside of the hospital were children.
The president of the Haitian Medical Association, Claude Surena, said the cause appeared to be cholera, but added that had not been confirmed by the government.
"The concern is that it could go from one place to another place, and it could affect more people or move from one region to another one," he said.
Cholera is a waterborne bacterial infection spread through contaminated water. It causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to dehydration and death within hours. Treatment involves administering a salt and sugar-based rehydration serum.
No cholera outbreaks had been reported in Haiti for decades before the earthquake, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Haitian officials, including President Rene Preval, have been pointing to the lack of severe disease outbreaks as a hard-to-see success of the quake response.
With more than a million people left homeless by the disaster, however, experts have warned that disease could strike in the makeshift camps with nowhere to put human waste and limited access to clean water.
At the hospital, some patients including 70-year-old Belismene Jean Baptiste said they got sick after drinking water from a public canal.
"I ran to the bathroom four times last night vomiting," Jean Baptiste said.
The sick come from across the Artibonite Valley, a starkly desolate region of rice fields and deforested mountains. The area did not experience significant damage in the Jan. 12 quake but has absorbed thousands of refugees from the devastated capital 45 miles south of St. Marc.
Trucks loaded with medical supplies including rehydration salts were to be sent from Port-au-Prince to the hospital, said Jessica DuPlessis, an OCHA spokeswoman. Doctors at the hospital said they also needed more personnel to handle the flood of patients.
Elyneth Tranckil was among dozens of relatives standing outside the hospital gate as new patients arrived near death.
"Police have blocked the entry to the hospital, so I can't get in to see my wife," Tranckil said.
The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince issued an advisory urging people to drink only bottled or boiled water and eat only food that has been thoroughly cooked.ST. MARC, Haiti, Oct. 22, 2010
Haiti: Suspected Cholera Outbreak Kills 135
Aid... more
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"Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, has claimed the 10th victim in California, in what health officials are calling the worst outbreak in 60 years.
Since the beginning of the year, 5,978 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of the disease have been reported in California.
All of the deaths occurred in infants under the age of 3 months, says Michael Sicilia, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health. Nine were younger than 8 weeks old, which means they were too young to have been vaccinated against this highly contagious bacterial disease.
"This is a preventable disease," says Sicilia, because there is a vaccine for whooping cough to protect those coming in contact with infants, and thereby protect the infants.
However, some parents are choosing to not vaccinate their children. In other cases, previously vaccinated children and adults may have lost their immunity because the vaccine has worn off.
The vaccine "does not protect you for life," explains Alison Patti, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sicilia says California Health Department epidemiologists estimate 50 percent of the children who have gotten sick were infected by their parents or caregivers."
More in the link."Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, has claimed the 10th victim in... more
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The symptoms of the Huntington’s disease can very but the common symptom of Huntington’s disease is unsteady body movement and lack of coordination. With the advancement of the Huntington’s diseaseThe symptoms of the Huntington’s disease can very but the common symptom of... more
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eva2
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The main reason of Sickle Cell Anemia is the less amount of the hemoglobin the blood cells. Sickle Cell Anemia basically refers to the wrong shaped red blood cells in very lower quantity.The main reason of Sickle Cell Anemia is the less amount of the hemoglobin the blood... more
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mky786
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1 year ago
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In her new book “Yellow Dirt,” Judy Pasternak writes of a harrowing tale from Navajo country: how the U.S. government allowed uranium companies to walk away from hundreds of radioactive mines across the reservation. Not told of the danger, Navajos built their homes from the leftover ore and tailings. As Pasternak tells LOE’s Steve Curwood, four generations of people were sickened and are still being buried.
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GELLERMAN: It's Living on Earth. I'm Bruce Gellerman. Judy Pasternak, a former investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times, has written an epic story about US efforts to obtain uranium during the cold war. Her book, Yellow Dirt, chronicles how mining companies walked away, leaving radioactive ore and tailings behind. And 60 years later Americans in the southwest were still being exposed. Judy Pasternak spoke with Living on Earth's Steve Curwood.
CURWOOD: You begin your story in Indian country in Arizona in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and you found that some Navajo suspected that they might have some special rocks that outsiders coveted. What had they noticed?
PASTERNAK: They noticed these yellow stripes in the rock, powder-yellow stripes. And, really, the first people who settled this one valley that's the central setting for my book- thought that this was gold.
CURWOOD: So, this is an area that white people call "Cane Valley," where people noticed, the Navajo noticed these rocks. And, one of your main characters in this story of 'yellow dirt' tells his children, 'Never ever tell any of the white men about these rocks.' But, I guess, temptation eventually overtakes one of them.
PASTERNAK: Yeah, (laughs), his son, in fact, his favorite son. And, that was well before atomic bombs were being developed. But, later, during WWII, one of the Indian traders put some rocks, some samples, out on his counter, and he told the son, who was a customer, that this could be worth a lot of money.
CURWOOD: And, the son immediately goes out and...
PASTERNAK: Yeah...so...yes. So then he gathered up some of these rocks that were on the mason, and then brought them in.
CURWOOD: And it turns out this isn't just any old uranium deposit, Judy, but this is the mother load of powerful uranium. Very rich uranium. What, hundreds of mines are blasted and tunneled across the land as a consequence as this.
PASTERNAK: Yeah, the Navajo reservation as a whole, really has world-class deposits of uranium. And, the mesa that rose above Cane Valley was the hottest, richest, most productive uranium mine on Navajo land.
CURWOOD: We know a fair amount about the miners- the health effects on them- but your book also documents, I think, for the first time...I've read this...maybe it's in other material, about the broad range of suffering that the whole Navajo community suffered as a function of exposure. Tell us about the watering holes that were left from the surface mining, for example.
PASTERNAK: There were huge open-pit uranium mines in the western part of the reservation because the deposit was so shallow- they could just blast it right out of the ground. When the mining companies left, according to their contract, they were supposed to return the land in as good condition as received. But nobody asked them to fill in these pits.
And, what happened was- they collected rain. And, these pits, some of them were half a mile long. They looked like lakes in the desert, they looked like oasis. So, shepherds who were coming by were actually pretty grateful for their presence because all of a sudden here was a water supply in the desert. And, so, they would drink. They would water their herds there and they would drink themselves.
CURWOOD: And, in Navajo culture, the shepherds are often women.
PASTERNAK: That's right, and some of those women were pregnant.
CURWOOD: What happened to them?
PASTERNAK: There is a correlation between women who drank contaminated water while they were pregnant and a syndrome that's known as 'Navajo Neurapathy'. Children who have this, generally the average age of death is ten. Some lived into their thirties. They had fused, stiffened, fingers and toes that were kind of like claws. Many of them had liver damage- also they had problems with the nerves in their corneas, so often it was hard for them to see.
CURWOOD: The average age of death was ten?
PASTERNAK: That's right.
more at the link.In her new book “Yellow Dirt,” Judy Pasternak writes of a harrowing tale... more
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Portable devices with painless laser beams could soon replace X-rays as a non-invasive way to diagnose disease.
Researchers say that the technique could become widely available in about five years.
The method, called Raman spectroscopy, could help spot the early signs of breast cancer, tooth decay and osteoporosis.
Scientists believe that the technology would make the diagnosis of illnesses faster, cheaper and more accurate.
Raman spectroscopy is the measurement of the intensity and wavelength of scattered light from molecules.
It is already being used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. For instance, Raman lasers are used to measure flame characteristics. By studying how fuels burn, pollution from the products of combustion can be minimised.
Michael Morris, a chemistry professor at the University of Michigan, US, has been using Raman for the past few years to study human bones.
So far, he has been working on cadavers, but he says that Raman could prove effective in living patients.
"You can replace a lot of procedures, a lot of diagnostics that are out there right now. The big advantage is that it's non-invasive, pretty fast - much faster than classical procedures - and more accurate," he told BBC News.
When a person is sick, or about to become sick, the chemical mix in the tissue is quite different from that in healthy tissue, scientists say. So the Raman spectrum changes depending on the tissue it analyses, Professor Morris explained.
"Raman gives you a molecular fingerprint, a composition of whatever it is you're measuring," he said.
"In diseased states, the chemical composition is either slightly abnormal or very markedly abnormal, depending upon the diseases."
More @ Link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11390951Portable devices with painless laser beams could soon replace X-rays as a non-invasive... more
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Nature strikes back.
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mik661
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1 year ago
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New York City is known for having excellent tap water, but why does it taste so good? It might be the microscopic shrimp.
Tiny copepods were discovered after a reddit user uploaded photos of what they found through the other end of a microscope after adding H&E stain to New York tap water. According to blog Gizmodo, copepods are added to water to eat mosquito larvae, keeping water sources clear.
But besides a serious "ick" factor, the copepods are technically crustaceans, which means they aren't kosher for the city's large Orthodox, observant Jewish population. Reports of requests by the Jewish community to have the water "purified" surfaced in 2004, but according to the Department of Environmental Protection, extracting the creatures wasn't possible, claiming that they deliver health benefits to water reservoirs. "When it comes to delivery, if there is a spike and you are not comfortable with what you see in your water, all we can recommend is a commercial filter, which will effectively filter them out," DEP spokesman Charles Sturcken told Water & Waste Digest.
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/31/drink-up-nyc-meet-the-tiny-crustaceans-not-kosher-in-your-tap-water/?iid=nfmostpopular#ixzz0yENoBioS
And I'm traveling to NY soon.New York City is known for having excellent tap water, but why does it taste so good?... more
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These obsessive compulsive disorder support blogs will help you cope with your own OCD tendencies if you notice them getting out of control and also give you the perspective of those who suffer from OCD so you can help loved ones who deal with it.
link: http://www.mastersincounseling.com/50-great-blogs-for-ocd-supportThese obsessive compulsive disorder support blogs will help you cope with your own OCD... more
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eva2
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In the article linked below, author Michael Pollan reviews five books that address the heart of the food movement:
•Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front, by Joel Salatin
•All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?, by Joel Berg
•Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer
•Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities, by Carlo Petrini
•The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society, by Janet A. Flammang
Food in America has been more or less invisible, politically speaking, until very recently. However, according to Pollan, writing in AlterNet, these books show that:
"... Food is invisible no longer and, in light of the mounting costs we've incurred by ignoring it, it is likely to demand much more of our attention in the future, as eaters, parents, and citizens. It is only a matter of time before politicians seize on the power of the food issue, which besides being increasingly urgent is also almost primal, indeed is in some deep sense proto-political."
Sources: AlterNet July 29, 2010
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
The food system in the United States is in desperate need of an overhaul, and with resources like Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin and others -- who are either getting the word out through books and the media or are working right in the field to grow food according to the laws of nature -- the tide may finally begin to turn.
At the forefront of any revolution is knowledge, and that is the stage many are at right now with regard to the food system. Finally, many are realizing that the bulk of the packaged, processed foods found in supermarkets are not real "food" at all, but conglomerations of excessive subsidized farm crops and chemicals manipulated to taste and look edible.
In many parts of the United States, the small farmers who once prided themselves on supplying wholesome foods to neighboring towns have long since closed their doors, replaced by giant CAFOs -- Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations -- and expansive fields of genetically modified corn, soy, cotton and canola.
Why are these crops making up the majority of U.S. farmland? U.S. food subsidies are grossly skewed, creating a diet excessively high in factory-farmed "corn-fed" meats, grains and sugars, with very little fresh fruits and vegetables or healthful fats from nuts and seeds.
U.S. Government Subsidizes Junk Food
The food crops currently subsidized are corn, soy, wheat and rice. With these crops making up the bulk of the harvest, what do you end up with?
A fast food diet!
If growers of subsidized fresh vegetables were in a clear majority, you might start to see some fine advertising campaigns promoting the consumption of those veggies …
Unfortunately, the Department of Agriculture is deeply entrenched with agribusiness, and current legislations protect the profits of these large industries at the expense of public health.
In fact, the agriculture lobby is more powerful than even the pharmaceutical industry! You don't hear about it as often, but the ramifications of their political influence are just as hazardous to your health as that of Big Pharma.
As this recent New York Times article states, "Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that we're supposed to eat less of."
continuedIn the article linked below, author Michael Pollan reviews five books that address the... more
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