Tag: food

Is America Finally Having Its Raw Milk Moment?

American media is abuzz with news of President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Seemingly every story mentions his controversial views on topics from vaccines to fluoride in the water to raw milk—a longtime libertarian cause célèbre. Though it’s hard to envision a more unlikely catalyst, RFK Jr.’s nomination may be the final push that gets raw milk across the legalization finish line.

Until the late 1800s, raw milk was simply known as “milk” and was the only game in town for Americans desiring a delicious dairy beverage. But when it was discovered that heating up products like milk could reduce the presence of potentially harmful bacteria, the pasteurization craze was underway. Given reports of thousands of babies dying from bacteria-riddled milk around this time period, pasteurization was seen as a remarkable public health breakthrough.

This set off a wave of 20th century state and local government mandates that required milk to be pasteurized. Finally, in 1987, a federal court cemented a federal ban on all interstate raw milk sales. But not long afterward, the modern organic food movement was born, and raw milk became a cult favorite among the crunchy political left. Now, raw milk has increasingly been adopted as a sort of culture war status symbol on the political right.

“Long a fringe health food for new-age hippies and fad-chasing liberal foodies, raw milk has won over the hearts and minds of GOP legislators and regulators in the last few years,” writes Marc Novicoff in Politico. In addition to its inherent deregulatory appeal, Novicoff recounts that “conservatives discovered that raw milk fit neatly inside a worldview that was increasingly skeptical of credentialed expertise.”

Over the last decade, numerous states have passed laws to legalize raw milk, leading food policy expert Baylen Linnekin to declare that the “raw milk restoration is underway.” Could it now be about to kick into overdrive, potentially even spreading to an overturn of the federal interstate sales ban?

Whatever one’s views of RFK’s potential adeptness—or lack thereof—at navigating the federal bureaucracy to pursue his agenda, he may not be the only member of Trump’s cabinet to be a raw milk enthusiast. Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who has run a bill in Congress for the last decade to overturn the federal ban, is heavily rumored to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.

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Major Dairy Supplier to Trial Potentially Toxic “Low Emission” Cow Feed

Major dairy suppliers and supermarkets are partnering with chemical company DSM-Firmenich to trial new “low-emission” dairy products nationwide.

Arla, a cooperative of over 2500 British dairy farms, is working with supermarkets Tesco, Aldi and Morrisons to market new “low emission” milk, butter and cheese.

A joint statement from supermarkets published on Arla’s website says:

Through collaboration as part of Arla’s FarmAhead™ Customer Partnership, we have the ability to address some of the climate challenges facing our food system. It is this collective approach that is really going to make a difference. Being involved in using a feed additive is a great way of testing out where we can drive change at scale to bring down emissions.”

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Joe Rogan EXPLODES on NYT’s Crazy “Fact-Check”

Joe Rogan ERUPTS on The New York Times for “fack-checking” RFK Jr. on toxic food ingredients while simultaneously proving him right.

“That made my brain hurt just reading it.”

The “fact-check” in question all started when The New York Times claimed RFK Jr. was “wrong” about differences in Froot Loops’ ingredients between Canada and the United States.

However, their own reporting admitted that the U.S. version contains harmful chemicals like Red Dye 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), while the Canadian version uses “natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots.”

“So they’re literally saying he was wrong, but he was right,” Rogan scoffed. “That is the f—king dangerous chemicals banned in Canada that we’re trying to get rid of in America!”

Rogan continued to question what possible motivation The New York Times could have to “fact-check” RFK Jr.’s efforts to remove toxic ingredients from the food supply.

“Like, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to remove all leftover credibility? Are you trying to k*ll it all?” Rogan asked. “Are you secretly working for the Chinese? Like, what are you doing?”

Rogan’s guest, Jimmy Corsetti, concluded, “It’s probably backed by Monsanto or something.”

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The Crucial Connection Between Animal Feed and Human Health

In our modern quest for optimal health, we often focus intensely on what we put on our plates. However, there’s a crucial aspect of nutrition that often goes overlooked: the diet of the animals we consume. (What we eat, eats) This oversight can have significant consequences for our health, particularly when it comes to our intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs).

Consider this startling fact: conventional chicken is now the highest source of linoleic acid, an omega-6 PUFA, in the American diet. This means that a food many consider to be a healthy, lean protein source is actually contributing significantly to our overconsumption of PUFAs.

But it’s not just chicken we need to be concerned about. Pork, another staple in many diets, can be equally problematic. When pigs are fed a high-PUFA diet, their fat can have the same PUFA concentration as canola oil — a fact that might make you think twice about having several pieces of conventional bacon every single day for breakfast.

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The Globalized, Industrialized Food System Is Destroying the World—We Urgently Need to Support Local Food Economies

We can thank small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers, and food and farming activists for advancing ecologically sound food production methods. Agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, and other methods can address many of the global food system’s worst impacts, including biodiversity loss, energy depletion, toxic pollution, food insecurity, and massive carbon emissions.

These inspiring testaments to human ingenuity and goodwill have two things in common: They involve smaller-scale farms adapted to local conditions and depend more on human attention and care than energy and technology. In other words, they are the opposite of industrial monocultures—huge farms that grow just one crop.

However, to significantly reduce the many negative impacts of the food system, these small-scale initiatives need to spread worldwide. Unfortunately, this has not happened because the transformation of farming requires shifting not just how food is produced but also how it is marketed and distributed. The food system is inextricably linked to an economic system that, for decades, has been fundamentally biased against the kinds of changes we need.

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If Common Chemicals Harm Frogs and Rats, What Are They Doing to Your Children?

The TED Talk below features Penelope Jagessar Chaffer, director of the documentary film “Toxic Baby,” and Tyrone Hayes, Ph.D., a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, who has dedicated most of his career to studying the health effects of the herbicide atrazine.

According to Chaffer, the average American woman today has 30,000 to 50,000 chemicals in her body that her grandparents did not have. Many of these chemicals have been linked to the rapidly rising incidence of chronic childhood diseases.

In her talk, Chaffer cites the following statistics, which are likely higher today, since this talk was given in 2010:

  • In the United Kingdom (U.K.), the incidence of childhood leukemia rose by 20% in one generation.
  • In Canada, the prevalence of asthma increased by 400% in 20 years; 1 in 10 children is now diagnosed with asthma.
  • In the U.S., childhood cancers have seen a similar rise as that of childhood leukemia in the U.K. Autism spectrum disorder has also increased by 600% in the past 20 years; the incidence of autism rose by 57% between 2002 and 2006 alone.
  • In the Netherlands, Rotterdam has seen a 400% increase in genital birth defects.

Obesity and juvenile diabetes have also skyrocketed, and while a high-sugar diet likely bears the brunt of the blame, there’s every reason to suspect that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) — many of which enter our system via processed foods — add to the metabolic dysfunction we now see.

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The emasculation of the American male: Testosterone-crushing chemical herbicide banned in Europe gets sprayed freely on U.S. crops and ends up in our food

We’ve all heard about the historic drop in male testosterone levels over the past 50 to 60 years but rarely does anyone delve into the causes of this disturbing trend.

A recent guest on the Joe Rogan podcast blew the whistle on a chemical herbicide widely used on large swaths American croplands that has wrought catastrophic effects on the reproductive hormones and organs of the American male.

Atrazine, a herbicide sold under various brand names such as Bullet, Lariat, Guardsman Max, Bicep II Magnum, Dual II Magnum, Medal II, and others, is proven to have harmful effects on boys and men of all ages.

Dr. Casey Means explained that atrazine is widely present in American foods. It has even found its way into some public water systems. This testosterone-crushing chemical is banned across Europe but not the United States.

What is atrazine, and how does it do this?

The Vigilant News Network reports that Atrazine is a widely-used herbicide sprayed on crops like corn and sugarcane to control weeds. It disrupts hormone function by increasing the activity of an enzyme called aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen.

In men, this can contribute to conditions like decreased muscle mass, low libido, and even feminization.

U.S. farmers spray 70 million pounds of this tasteless, odorless, chemical on our food, while it’s illegal to do so in Europe.

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‘An Act of War’: Big Food Intentionally Addicting Kids to Toxic Foods

Big Food targets young consumers in the U.S. to get them addicted to unhealthy products — which frequently contain ingredients banned by other countries — according to two food safety and nutrition advocates interviewed on SiriusXM’s “Megyn Kelly Show.”

Vani Hari, an author and blogger known as the “Food Babe,” and Grace Price, an investigative journalist and filmmaker who produced “Cancer: A Food-Borne Illness,” are calling on U.S. food manufacturers to change their practices and produce foods with the same healthier ingredients the companies use in identical products they sell in other countries.

Last month, Hari and Price participated in a Senate roundtable on nutrition and the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S.

“We have an opportunity right now to let the American public know” about unsafe ingredients in foods sold in the U.S., Hari said during the interview. “We are under a massive experiment. If any other country was doing this to us, it would be considered an act of war … We’ve got to do something about it.”

Price, who is 18 years old, said American food manufacturers are using tactics that Big Tobacco pioneered to market harmful products to youth. “My generation is so clearly being targeted by these Big Food companies,” she said.

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Government Can Fix neither Food nor Farm

With the national health crisis, food debauchery, and farm exploitation suddenly jumping to headlines via RFK, Jr., numerous people have offered solutions but nothing I’ve seen truly gets to the heart of the problem.

Recently RFK, Jr. gave his recipe but in general, it’s yet another request for government intervention in these fields (pun intended). Capping drug prices, prohibiting research grants from going to people with conflicts of interest, and reforming crop subsidies to incentivize healthier alternatives all sound nice. Eliminating SNAP (formerly food stamps) from being spent on high fructose corn syrup drinks ($9 billion annually) sounds good too. 

Who can disagree with requiring nutrition courses in medical schools and demanding government research grants go toward holistic and alternative health approaches? All of this sounds good in theory, but how? Goodness, we now have official government findings that Cheerios and Fruit Loops are more nutritious than beef. Who is going to make the kinds of U-turns within the bureaucracies that such changes would require?

I remember well when President Obama was elected and Michelle put a garden on the White House lawn. My friends in the organic farming community thought the country would enter ecological farming nirvana…until someone said, “Remember, 10 miles of USDA offices will not change.” Therein lies the Achilles’ heel of all this nice-sounding rhetoric.

Epoch Times carried a full-page column by pediatric Dr. Joel Warsh last week titled “America’s Health Crisis: Expanding on RFK Jr.’s Plan to Make America Healthy Again.” As much as his thoughts may sound good, they still suffer from the same old government interventionist mindset. He wants a “National Emergency Declaration of Health.” Can you imagine the wrangling, jet fuel, focus groups, and lobbying that would occur with such an initiative?

He suggests we should “recreate the food pyramid” with good food and pastured meat and eggs on the bottom instead of the top. You’d have to move the entire climate change, cow farts narrative to make this happen. Then yet more government mandates: corporations with more than 100 employees “should be required to offer wellness programs that include fitness classes, nutritional counseling, and mental health services.” Oh my, we’ve now exchanged one nanny for another.

He wants health education taught in all public schools, regulations banning junk food ads when children watch TV, and subsidies for organic and transitioning farms. This is just a sampling of his list and much of it would indeed be good…if it were possible. But it’s not. Simply put, to get a legislative and bureaucratic push on these kinds of agendas is insanity according to Albert Einstein’s definition: “trying to solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.” I believe we are where we are in all these areas due to government micro-management; asking for government to get us out is asking for all the agencies, all the politicians, all the lobbyists, all the Happy Meals addicts, all the Chick-fil-A cultists, to do a 180. Ain’t gonna happen.

So you ask “Well, it’s easy to be negative. What’s your solution?” I think when we engage in these kinds of same-thinking solutions, we obfuscate the simple and consistent argument that carries the most weight.

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Children’s Diets Are Now “Over 70%” Ultra-Processed Foods; Dietitian Warns

It looks like the “Make America Healthy Again” movement could be showing up right on time…

At least according to one registered dietitian nutritionist in Los Angeles, who recently took to Fox News to lay out the risks from ultra-processed foods in the American diet. 

Ilana Muhlstein said on Fox news that America’s diet is 60% ultra-processed, but that kids consume even more than that. 

“With children, it’s actually over 70%. That is really wild when you think about it,” she said. “What we eat defines how our cells work, how our organs work, and we’re seeing a strong decline in mental health and well-being.”

And a recent BMJ study found that 60% of Americans’ daily calories come from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which are linked to 32 poor health outcomes, including mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic issues like cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes, according to Fox.

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