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If you are concerned about growth hormones such as rBGH and rBST in the milk, then go for organic milk.
More Dairy Foods May Boost Fat Burning
Thursday, November 6, 2008 9:53 AM
Eating plenty of dairy foods may help people who are trying to maintain their weight to burn more fat and eat more calories without putting on excess pounds, according to new research published in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism.
The study, funded by the National Dairy Council, didn’t find that eating the recommended three servings of dairy food each day made any difference in helping people keep off the weight that they had lost, but it did show that they were able to consume more calories without gaining weight compared with people who consumed less than one dairy serving daily.
Being able to eat more calories may make it easier for people to stick to a weight-maintenance diet, suggest lead researcher Dr. Michael B. Zemel of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and his colleagues.
Zemel has received grants from the National Dairy Council, and also holds patents on the use of calcium in weight management.
Previous studies have shown that high calcium diets can reduce weight gain and fat accumulation in overfed rats, and may help the animals burn off fat and pounds when their diet is restricted, Zemel and his team note. Some studies in humans have also found that calcium promotes fat loss, possibly by making it harder for the body to hold on to fat cells.
However, no studies in humans have looked at whether calcium and dairy foods help people maintain their weight. To investigate, researchers had 338 obese men and women cut their calorie intake for 3 months.
Study participants who lost at least 10 percent of their weight or 10 kilograms were then randomly assigned to eat less than a single serving of dairy daily or more than three servings a day for the next 6 months.
During the weight maintenance portion of the study, weight and body composition were similar in both groups. However, people in the high-dairy group were eating 9 percent fewer calories than they were at the study’s outset, compared with 22 percent fewer calories for the low-dairy group.
“This suggests that diets with recommended levels of dairy may be higher in energy content (calories) while producing similar effects on body weight and fat as diets low in dairy,” the researchers write.
Men and women in the recommended dairy group also had lower blood levels of calcitriol, the active form of vitamin D, which blocks the breakdown and oxidation of fat cells.
They conclude that people who what to maintain their weight loss, dairy products can be added to their diet without contributing to weight gain.
SOURCE: Nutrition & Metabolism, online October 24, 2008.
© 2008 Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
Will the socialized healthcare plan mandate that you get an ID chip implant? If the government makes having an ID chip implant as a condition of having compulsory healthcare, then the sheeple will be chipped.
Senator to introduce measure to require health insurance for all Americans
John Byrne
Raw Story
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008
Senate Finance Committee Chairman and Montana’s Democratic senator Max Baucus will introduce a sweeping healthcare measure today intended to ensure healthcare coverage for all Americans.
The move is short on financial specifics. But its introduction will immediately move healthcare into the spotlight, putting pressure on President-Elect Barack Obama to bump medical coverage to the top of his priority list. Asked in an interview four days before the election what would be the priorities of his incoming Administration, Obama has named healthcare third after the economic crisis and energy independence.
Baucus’ healthcare proposal differs from Obama’s in one key respect: he would mandate all Americans to have health insurance. In that respect it is more like Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary proposals.
In addition to mandating coverage, the bill would bar insurance companies from charging higher premiums or denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. The measure enjoins businesses to provide coverage to their employees.
“Under the Baucus plan, most employers would be required to offer insurance to their workers or pay into a fund, with the contribution based on the size of the firm and its annual revenue,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. “Small employers would get a tax credit if they offer insurance, with the size of the credit based on the size of the company and its earnings.”
The plan “doesn’t provide a cost estimate, and a Baucus aide declined to give one,” the paper added. “The plans proposed by Sens. Obama and Clinton were each estimated to cost about $100 billion a year, not accounting for savings they hoped to generate through new efficiencies in health-care delivery.”
Baucus’ plan would also expand coverage in Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and allow people from 55 to 64 to “buy in” to Medicare by paying the premium cost. It would also loosen eligibility requirements for some federal assistance programs.
Read the full Journal article here and the NY Times’. description of the proposal here
New report warns of corporate concentration, commodification of nature; highlights global resistance grounded in “Food Sovereignty”
ETC Group today releases a 48-page report, “Who Owns Nature?” on corporate concentration in commercial food, farming, health and the strategic push to commodify the planet’s remaining natural resources.
In a world where market research is becoming increasingly proprietary and pricey, ETC Group’s report names names, discloses market share and provides top 10 industry rankings up and down the corporate food chain. Not all the corporations identified in ETC Group’s new report are household names, but collectively they control a staggering share of the commercial products found on industrial farms, in our refrigerators and medicine cabinets.
An international advocacy organization based in Canada, ETC Group has been monitoring corporate power in the industrial life sciences for the past 30 years. The report reveals that:
From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales From dozens of pesticide companies three decades ago, 10 now control almost 90% of agrochemical sales worldwide From almost 1,000 biotech start-ups 15 years ago, 10 companies now account for three-quarters of industry revenues The top 10 pharmaceutical companies control 55% of the global drug market
With collapsing systems – eco, climate, food and financial – as the backdrop, Who Owns Nature? warns that, with engineering of living organisms at the nano-scale (a.k.a. synthetic biology), industry is setting the stage for a corporate grab that extends to all of nature.
“About one-quarter of the world’s biomass has already been commodified,” explains ETC Group’s Pat Mooney. “With extreme genetic engineering, we’re seeing new corporate strategies to capture and commodify the three-quarters of the world’s biomass that has, until now, remained beyond the market economy.”
Advocates of synthetic biology – the creation of designer organisms built from synthetic DNA – are promising a post-petroleum future where fuels, chemicals, drugs and other high-value products depend on biological manufacturing platforms fuelled by plant sugars. In the 21st century “sugar economy,” industrial production will be based on biological feedstocks (agricultural crops, grasses, forest residues, plant oils, algae, etc.) whose sugars are extracted, fermented and converted into high-value products. Synthetic microbes will become “living chemical factories” that require massive quantities of plant biomass. ETC Group warns that corporations are poised to appropriate and further commodify biological products and processes in every part of the globe – as well as destroy biodiversity, deplete soil and water and displace marginalized farmers.
ETC Group’s report highlights similarities between the current financial and food crises. “Corporate-controlled food systems, suffering from decades of deregulation, have resulted in a cornucopia of calamities making us sicker, fatter and more vulnerable,” says ETC’s Research Director Hope Shand. Ongoing food contamination scandals, the global obesity burden and ocean “dead zones” caused by fertilizer pollution are among the food chain disasters cited in Who Owns Nature? “Unhealthy and hazardous food products are constant reminders of a corporate food chain broken to bits,” adds Shand.
Governments are working hand-in-hand with corporations to deny the root causes of the crises and sidestep structural reforms. “Despite the implications for democracy and human rights, no international body exists to monitor global corporate activity and no UN body has the capacity to monitor and evaluate emerging technologies,” says ETC Group’s Kathy Jo Wetter. “The ongoing food emergency and imploding global economy testify to the need for monitoring and oversight of corporations, as well as social control of powerful new technologies.”
Who Owns Nature? reports on daunting trends in corporate concentration and technology convergence, but it also points to a very different reality and a powerful contrast to the corporate-controlled life sciences. Although a single company – Monsanto – accounts for almost one-quarter of proprietary seed sales, about three-quarters of the world’s farmers routinely save seed from their harvest and grow locally-bred varieties. Wal-Mart may be the world’s largest buyer and seller of retail food, but 85% of global food is consumed close to where it is grown – much of it outside the formal market system.
“There is vast and growing resistance to the dislocation and devastation caused by the agro-industrial food system,” points out Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group. “In the global struggle for Food Sovereignty, the playing field isn’t level, but the scope of resistance is massive – peasant farmers, fisher people, pastoralists and allied civil society and social movements are fighting for locally controlled and socially just food and health systems.”
Precipitous Rise of Kidney Stones in US Children
Oct 29 at 5:05pm by Aileen
More Melamine in Chinese Food Products
Melamine.jpg
It seems like the entire month of October has been one big Halloween Trick (not Treat) as the grotesque and blatantly illegal ‘melamine in food’ imported from China horror just keeps getting worse and worse. Some might wonder why all food products from China weren’t immediately banned back when tainted pet food cause the painful deaths of thousands of dogs and cats last year, once it was confirmed that Chinese state-owned food processors were adding the industrial plastic to wheat gluten to fool tests for protein content in this ubiquitous protein additive. Alas, imports were not banned, and now this dangerous adulterant is in hundreds of common food items.
http://www.sciencenewsreview.com/precipitous-rise-of-kidney-stones-in-us-children/
Hong Kong finds more tainted eggs
By David Barboza
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
SHANGHAI: Hong Kong officials said that for the second time in a week they had found a batch of eggs imported from China that contain high levels of melamine, the same industrial chemical that has been blamed for contaminating China’s milk supplies.
The announcement, which came late Tuesday from the territory’s food safety agency, is adding to concerns that melamine contamination may be more widespread in China’s food supplies.
While Hong Kong officials cautioned that children and adults would have to eat a large number of tainted eggs in a single day to fall ill, the report is another blow to China’s agriculture industry.
China is already struggling to cope with a milk scandal that has sickened over 50,000 children and caused the deaths of at least four infants this year after they consumed melamine-tainted baby milk formula. That case triggered a global recall of foods made with Chinese dairy products.
The Chinese government has tried to move boldly to deal with the crisis, promising to overhaul the nation’s food safety system, announcing dozens of arrests and sacking high-ranking government officials, including the head of the nation’s top quality inspection agency.
The government has attributed the dairy scandal to organized groups of scam artists who regulators say were intentionally adding melamine to watered-down milk to artificially boost its protein reading in quality tests.
Chinese regulators say they are now investigating how melamine got into eggs. The government is also doing spot checks in supermarkets in some cities, like Shanghai.
Zhang Zhongjun, an official in Beijing with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said he met Wednesday with officials from China’s Agriculture Ministry and was told they believed the problem eggs in Hong Kong were probably contaminated by melamine-tainted animal feed.
But Zhang said the government told him the source of the contamination was not yet known. “It’s not clear whether the melamine was added by humans or by pollution,” he said.
Some food safety officials say that if chicken feed is contaminated, it is possible hog and fish feed could be also.
The chemical, which is used to produce some plastics and fertilizer, was blamed last year for contaminating Chinese feed ingredients that were exported to the United States and eventually sickened dogs and cats. The case led to a major pet food recall.
On Monday, Wal-Mart Stores said some of its stores had pulled the Hanwei brand of eggs from shelves in China as a precaution after the Hong Kong government finding.
The first batch of eggs that tested positive for high melamine levels by the Hong Kong Center for Food Safety came from a company in Dalian, in northeast China. Officials from the region told Xinhua, the government news agency, that the contamination may have come from local poultry farms.
According to a notice posted on the web site of the Dalian Hanwei Food Co., regulators learned on Sept. 27 that some eggs were contaminated. The company said it was ordered to recall eggs, and exports to Hong Kong were halted by regulators in early October.
The second batch of tainted eggs found in Hong Kong was from the Jingshan Agriproducts Company in Hubei Province. Pan Fengxia, the company’s general manager, confirmed by telephone Wednesday that eggs tested in Hong Kong were found to have higher levels of melamine than permitted, but she did not know why. “I never heard that melamine was added into feed or my products,” she said. “Never.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/29/asia/china.php
Hong Kong finds melamine in fish feed from mainland China
12 Nov 2008, 1029 hrs IST, AP
HONG KONG: Hong Kong says it has found the industrial chemical melamine in a sample of fish feed from mainland China.
The Center for Food Safety says that the feed contained melamine at a concentration of 6.6 parts per million. It says a Hong Kong fish farmer bought the feed in mainland China and delivered it to the city.
Melamine is found in plastics and fertilizer. The chemical has recently turned up in dairy products and other foods. It has been blamed for the deaths of four infants and for sickening more than 50,000 in mainland China.
The statement issued Tuesday says eight fish at four farms that have used the contaminated feed were tested. No ill effects were found. It was not clear if any fish that ate the tainted feed had been sold to markets.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Hong_Kong_finds_melamine_in_fish_feed_from_mainland_China/articleshow/3702929.cms
1. Promoting your heart health
2. Promoting weight loss when and if you need it
3. Supporting your immune system health
4. Supporting a healthy metabolism
5. Providing you with an immediate energy source
6. Helping to keep your skin healthy and youthful looking
7. Supporting the proper functioning of your thyroid gland
etc. etc.
http://1phil4everyill.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/coconut-oil-the-healthiest-oil-on-the-planet/
This is essentially a tax on life itself. What will happen to you if you cannot afford to buy your own insurance or refuse to do so? There are not enough jails to keep people who refuse to buy mandatory healthcare coverage. Maybe that’s why they have the FEMA camps.
Also, this healthcare reform will probably be used to give Big Pharma an ABSOLUTELY monopoly. Couple this with Codex Alimentarius which is set to go into effect next year on December 31, and you have a medical dictatorship where ALL alternatives to Big Pharma are illegal. What will happen under this healthcare reform plan if you use alternative medicines or alternative treatments? If Big Pharma has its way, your healthcare coverage will be turned off, and you will be effectively rendered an unperson if employers are forced to make healthcare coverage as a condition of employment. Imagine being fired from your job for taking a load of vitamin C to treat the flu instead of going to the doctor for a flu shot.
This just shows that the Democrats are just as much shills for the corporate pigs as the Republicans. We are under a Republicrat neocon/neolib one-party dictatorship. When will you wake up and realize that?
Senate Finance Chairman Calls for Mandatory Health Insurance
Tiffany Gabbay
CNSNews
November 13, 2008
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee unveiled a health-care reform plan Wednesday that incorporates many of the provisions of President-elect Barack Obama’s plan, but goes one step further — it would require everyone to eventually buy insurance coverage.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) proposes that medical insurance cover pre-existing conditions, as Obama’s plan does, and would set up an insurance exchange to help people and businesses find insurance if they need — but don’t have — coverage.
“Americans are acutely aware of problems in the country’s health care system and they are ready for change,” Baucus said at a Capitol Hill news conference announcing his “Call to Action: Health Care Reform 2009” proposal.
Senate Finance Chairman Calls for Mandatory Health Insurance
Tiffany Gabbay
CNSNews
November 13, 2008
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee unveiled a health-care reform plan Wednesday that incorporates many of the provisions of President-elect Barack Obama’s plan, but goes one step further — it would require everyone to eventually buy insurance coverage.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) proposes that medical insurance cover pre-existing conditions, as Obama’s plan does, and would set up an insurance exchange to help people and businesses find insurance if they need — but don’t have — coverage.
“Americans are acutely aware of problems in the country’s health care system and they are ready for change,” Baucus said at a Capitol Hill news conference announcing his “Call to Action: Health Care Reform 2009” proposal.
