UnSymmetrical

New findings regarding the dangers to health by soft drinks has caused fear in the UK and is sure to cause concern in other parts of the world, according to a report published in the Irish Independent.

According to recent research, carried out by Sheffield University in the UK, a preservative that is commonly found in soft drinks can cause essential parts of human DNA to stop working, leading to serious health problems.

The health problems most commonly thought to arise from this preservative are not what most would associated with drinking a soda or fruit juice, but more with the aging process and excessive alcohol consumption.

Many of us know today that too much soda should be avoided as it can lead to dental problems. But the new research reveals that the preservative commonly found in soft drinks can also lead to cirrhosis and Parkinson's.

The head expert that worked on the study, Peter Piper, took a close look at this common preservative, known as E211, otherwise called sodium benzoate. Piper told the Independent that "these chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it, they knock it out altogether. The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously."

Continue reading "Study: Soft Drink Ingredient Sodium Benzoate May Lead to Cirrhosis, Parkinson's" »

Posted by Vitamin Z at 12:49 PM | Permalink

Even mainstream media is starting to link cancer to diet. Yet, strangely enough, western style "prevention" is still thought of as the only valid way to go.

Asia is bracing for a dramatic surge in cancer rates over the next decade as people in the developing world live longer and adopt bad Western habits that greatly increase the risk of the disease.

Smoking, drinking and eating unhealthy foods — all linked to various cancers — will combine with larger populations and fewer deaths from infectious diseases to drive Asian cancer rates up 60 percent by 2020, some experts predict.

But unlike in wealthy countries where the world's top medical care is found, there will likely be no prevention or treatment for many living in poor countries.

"What happened in the Western world in the '60s or '70s will happen here in the next 10 to 20 years as life expectancy gets longer and we get better control on more common causes of deaths," said Dr. Jatin P. Shah, a professor of surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who attended a cancer conference last month in Singapore.

Continue reading "Cancer Expected to Skyrocket in Asia" »

Posted by Vitamin Z at 12:07 PM | Permalink

An anti-bacterial agent commonly found in soaps and detergents has been found in water from streams and wastewater treatment plants in the Baltimore area, a Johns Hopkins researcher said Wednesday.

The chemical, triclocarban, was not found in well water or municipal drinking water, but was found in samples from six streams as well as wastewater treatment plants in the Baltimore area.

"We put out almost a million pounds of this [chemical] every year, and nobody ever bothered to take a look what happens to the stuff once we are done with it," said study author Rolf U. Halden, assistant professor of the School's Department of Environmental Health Sciences and founding member of its Center for Water and Health.

"We pick up a bar of soap, the material gets washed down, goes to the wastewater treatment plant, and a lot of it ends up in our surface water."

Continue reading "Chemical In Soap Found In Maryland Streams" »

Posted by Vitamin Z at 01:52 PM | Permalink

When I began researching the ingredients for Twinkies, I naively thought that their raw materials were extracted from nuts, beans, fruit, seeds or leaves, and that they came from the United States. I was looking to link places with foods - along the lines of California wine or Maine lobster, but for thiamine mononitrate. It turned out that I was way off.

Although eight of the ingredients in the beloved little snack cake come from domestic corn and three from soybeans, there are others - including thiamine mononitrate - that come from petroleum. Chinese petroleum. Chinese refineries and Chinese factories. And there are other unexpected ingredients that are much harder to trace. So much for the great "All-American" snack food.

When you bite into a Twinkie, you are chewing on an international nexus of suppliers. Most of our processed foods - salad dressing, ice cream, meal-replacement drinks - are processed with foreign additives: essential ones, like B vitamins for fortifying flour and the preservative sorbic acid, as well as Malaysian or Indonesian palm oil products, European wheat gluten, Peruvian colorants, Chadian gums and Swiss niacin, made from Swiss water, Swiss air (nitrogen) and North Atlantic or Middle Eastern oil. It's a nice contrast to recall that Champagne comes only from Champagne, France.

Continue reading "Food Makers Don’t Often Know Where The Chemicals In Their Products Come From" »

Posted by Vitamin Z at 12:44 PM | Permalink

"Baby" carrots are not actually young carrots, or even carrots that are grown specifically to be small. In fact, the concept of the baby carrot was born 21 years ago by a California farmer wanting to sell more of his carrots that he was throwing away due to imperfections -- they were too knobby, twisted or broken.

After cutting the less-than-perfect carrots down to a uniformly smaller size, they were fed through an industrial potato peeler to smooth the edges and remove the skin. This marked the birth of the "baby" carrot market.

These PROCESSED CARROTS (NOT "BABY") are essentially FREE raw material from the mega carrot grower to sell, for additional profit, with a few costs other than some machining, washing & bagging.

Many times these PROCESSED CARROTS are rinsed with preservatives like: sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, nitrates/nitrites, or salts (undeclared as 'aids to processing'); inert gases like carbon dioxide or nitrogen (like bagged washed lettuce brands).

Continue reading ""Baby" Carrots?" »

Posted by Vitamin Z at 12:40 PM | Permalink

In this video, Christopher Bryson, an award-winning journalist and former producer at the BBC, discusses the findings of his new book The Flouride Deception.

Posted by Vitamin Z at 09:10 PM | Permalink