You Are What You Eat -- Toxic and Dead

I was looking for a link to a serious article about the dangers of farm-raised tilapia and read the information on the link -- as I usually do. I was horrified.

Why would anyone eat farm-raised anything? Feed lots and pen-bred and raised fish are dangerous to your health -- and the corporation know that going in? The problem is not just the unhealthy conditions in which the animals and fish are raised. The problem is that the corporate mindset is focused solely on profit. How can they raise food that looks edible but is completely inedible and damaging to the consumer's health?

The enormous levels of antibiotics used to keep the penned animals healthy is a serious problem in and of itself because the introduction of massive amounts of antibiotics have contributed to creating Super Bugs that are resistant to those same antibiotics in the same way that prescribing antibiotics for viruses and every minor illness contributes to creating Super Bugs.

Bottom line? With the amounts of animal feces, E. coli, and toxins in the pens as well as the practice of feeding livestock and fish with the remains of slaughtered animals and fish, it is no wonder there is a rise in autoimmune diseases like lupus, hepatitis C, autism, chronic pain syndrome, etc. and epidemic levels of obesity. The food is tainted and unhealthy and, although profitable for the corporations that have taken over farming and agriculture from the family farms, is not fit for consumption for any species. Maybe that is the point after all and the current lack of fitness and increase in childhood and lifelong obesity, diabetes, and cardiac disease from inflammation is understandable when what on the slaughter list is humanity, the corporate hit list that aims to annihilate 95% of us so there is more room and more resources for THEM. In the meantime, the Corporate Powers That Be are willing to use 95% of us as lab rats while making profit off us in the meantime.

It used to be that eating healthy was easy. Fresh vegetables and meat from animals raised by the farmer down the road with the occasional indulgence at holidays and parties were all you needed. We know more about the chemistry and biology of what is in the food we eat than we ever did before when we stuck to the food served at home and we are suffering from diseases we never heard of and suffer constantly on a diet of drugs to fix what ails us. The only problem is that we cannot trust the food in the market or at our favorite fast food joints because all the food is tainted or toxic. The only answer is to grow our own food, keep chickens in the back yard, and make friends with the local farmers to make arrangements to buy meat from them. There is a problem with that as well since government keeps changing the regulations and making it illegal to grow your own food and buy from local farmers. Where the government has gotten to your area yet, the local Homeowners Association has already got them covered in the name of yards that conform to the HOA's rules and regulations about how your lawn should look and what you can put in your yard, driveway, or in front of your home, forcing you to sell up, move out, or conform. Your life is no longer your own -- even when you think it is. 

Between geo-engineering the weather, chemtrails, and  poisoning the population by injecting food animals with antibiotics to deal with serious overcrowding, toxic chemicals, and feeding the animals the remains of previously slaughtered animals, not to mention prescription drugs in the water, along with the usual fluoride, and the destruction of our oceans and rivers, we can no longer trust what is in our food. No wonder governments have capitulated and introduced socialized medicine and the cost of health care and drugs in countries without socialized medicine have skyrocketed. What better way to control the people than with the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe? 

While we have been busily saving the planet by recycling, the governments of the world have been busier destroying the water, the air, and the food we eat and suggesting we blame each other for not reducing our carbon footprint and keeping hiking trails clear of debris. All along, it has been those same governments destroying the planet and us while using the human population as lab rats while they annihilate us. 

We are running out of options as the Powers That Be have for centuries experimented on us to find out the best ways to control us, cut us off from the source of life, tainted our food and water, and made the air poisonous to all life on this planet all the while destroying our environment, our animals, and our diversity. It's time for us to put an end to Their Agenda and take back control . . . and we won't be able to take back control at the voting booth or by the usual methods of getting involved in local, regional, and national government because the game has always been rigged. The only way to take back control is to revolt and refuse the yoke of servitude the same way that free people have always made their voices known at Thermopylae, Bunker Hill, and Standing Rock. 

If we do not take back our homes and our planet, we will end up the same way 20 million Jews, Gypsies, and undesirable Christians did in Hitler's concentration camps -- dead. We will be better fed, or rather fatter, but dead all the same. 

That is all. Disperse. 

The Viral Staircase

Published originally in 1995 in Columbus Alive! newspaper. This was the first article I wrote professionally and the first to be nationally syndicated.

Headlines scream the end of the world: Flesh-eating bacteria. Salmonella poisoning from homemade ice cream, raw eggs, cheese and undercooked meat.

Diseases once conquered are reappearing. They are resistant to the antibiotics and drugs created to protect us and our families.

In every headline is a germ of truth. Hundreds of thousands are dying. They are the very old, the very young, the sick, and the frail, those already grappling with other diseases and a growing population of millions whose immune systems are faltering. These are the ones who've always died from plague, pox and disease since the beginning of time.

We conquered tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, and childhood diseases-we thought.  Why are they coming back?

Cleanliness may be next to godliness but it can also lead to extinction, it appears. Cleanliness and the use of antibiotics and vaccines have combined possibly to change the course of human evolution.

We have massacred hundreds of billions of microbes, viruses and bacteria with antibiotics. A fever remained, evolved and came back in concentrated forms, creating a new, mutant, antibiotic-resistant monster refusing to succumb to our best efforts and obsession with cleanliness. Like Victor Frankenstein we created a creature bent on destruction.

Dr. Calvin Kunin, professor of medicine at the Ohio State University, compares the emergency of drug-resistant microbes to Darwinian evolution-survival of the fittest. "We are seeing accelerated evolution before our eyes," said Kunin, who is chairman of the Infectious Disease Society of America's committee on antibiotics.

Throughout our lives we encounter bacteria and viruses on virtually everything we touch, taste and smell. Most are harmless. They help tip off our immune systems  to potential danger, responding by marking and attacking invaders.

Bacteria have their benefits. "They manufacture nutrients-biotin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, vitamin B12-stimulate the immune system to recognize threatening microbes, and stake out a territory that might otherwise be occupied by pathogenic [disease-causing] organisms," says holly Ahem, a microbiologist at the State University of New York at Albany.

Ricki Lewis, science writer, in September 1992s's FDA Consumer, explained that "[Microbes are] found in predictable places where bends in the body create warm, moist pockets, and where the body is exposed to the outside. [They] inhabit our armpits and groins, our eyes and ears, the entrances to our respiratory tracts, and the exits from our urinary tracts ... [and] our colons. ...From between our fingers to between our toes, many microbes call the healthy human body home."

We are host to trillions of bacteria. At birth we pick up hitchhiking bacteria in the birth canal. Lewis tells how "within 12 hours, several species [of bacterial life] are present in the intestinal tract, transferred from the mother, from food, and from the baby's fist to his mouth."

Although not necessarily dangerous, the teeming microscopic life forms help to stimulate the baby's immune system.

Immunologist suspect a parent's instinctive kissing and nuzzling introduce bacteria that serve to kick the body's natural defenses into high gear. Without that initial introduction our bodies would be unable to fight against the simplest infections and we would die-or be confined to a plastic, germ-free bubble.

The bugs normally within us are kept from multiplying to infective levels. "These organisms are confined to an area that is theoretically outside the body (because they exit directly to the outside)," says Charles Schable, chief to he Diagnostic Serology Section, division HIV/AIDS at the national Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Before Lister pioneered sanitary, hygienic conditions in hospitals and operating theaters, before Pasteur created his rabies vaccine, before modern science created antibiotics and changed the world, humans adapted to virulent diseases alone.

According to historians, in the past plagues efficiently controlled population growth, without respect to money, influence, position, or power. They treat all equally, cutting the frail and weak from the human herd, leaving only the strong to survive and pass their enhanced immune systems on to their children.

Christopher Columbus carried smallpox across the Atlantic Ocean to unsuspecting natives, where the population couldn't fight off plagues and childhood diseases commonplace to Europeans who had adapted over time and were largely resistant. Adventuring European sailors seeking wealth and spreading death mingled freely with the natives, unmindful of their recent illnesses, and sowed the seeds of destruction.

Each European incursion brought religion, confining clothing and more disease. The natives had no resistance to the new diseases and millions succumbed before their immune systems could fight back.

In the Pacific, centuries later, the guileless Polynesians welcomed near- extinction with open arms. Measles, an inconvenient childhood illness in the Old World ravaged the islands of the New World. The islanders were unprepared. They had no immunological resistance to their visits' average diseases. Missionaries wrote in reports and diaries how Polynesians threw themselves into the surf to cool their fevers, jumped off cliffs onto the rocks, and hung themselves to relieve their suffering, leaving a mere one-third of the original population to carry on.

Since those first dire days, Indians and Polynesians have built up immunities to those catastrophic illnesses. They have adapted. Their bodies now contain minute traces of the bacteria that drove them to the verge of extinction, according to  the immunologists and biologists at the CDC. Future generations have been endowed with the ruin of the past.

In the early 20th century a new twist on conquering disease occurred with the discovery of antibiotics. No longer satisfied with vaccinations of weakened strains of infectious diseases, we set our sights on total annihilation.

Medicine forced nature to retaliate and preserve the status quo. Undaunted, scientists looked for other avenues and have found a potential answer among cockroaches, generally considered one of the lowest forms of life.

Dr. Richard Karp, University of Cincinnati professor of biological sciences explains, "When you're dealing with roaches, which can live up to four years, what really gets extended is its adult life. A roach is more like a higher animal that wants a little quality of life during its long adult phase."

To combat incursions of insects and bacteria in the past, we salted, pickled, dried and froze our food before cooking. Now we eat fresher, centrally processed produce and meats that contain hardier strains of Salmonella and E. coli, in addition to insect infestations.

Eggs sunny-side up, raw eggs, undercooked and barely cooked eggs once stirred out palates; now they prompt our digestion to revolt. Cheese, teeming with bacterial colonies, veined and aged to perfection, graced our tables with color and rich flavor; now they color our insides with infection. Homemade ice cream, hand cranked on the back porch on lazy summer evenings, a treat anticipated and cheered is now barely tasted. Even salad bars with their bright display of color and texture, must beviewed with concern; you never know who has touched it or how clean they were.

Not so many years ago, before the Food and Drug Administration raised its standards, higher contents of rodent hairs, droppings and filth found their way into our processed foods. FDA inspectors tell how English and European exports are required to scrutinize food sent to America with stricter standards than those reserved for their own consumers.

Just a century ago, most food was grown at home or purchased from local farmers. It was hastily washed and processed and few people felt any ill effects. Then scientists, government officials and doctors tampered with the prevailing conditions in the name of better health, all to help us live longer. Manufacturers followed suit by convincing consumers that cleaning their homes, food, utensils and bodies wasn't enough. We must sanitize, purify, deodorize and disinfect everything. Pictures of teeming microscopic germs are 9% exterminated before their eyes.

Madison Avenue cranks out billions of dollars worth of ads to promote continued health and safety from germs. Not satisfied with using the same dishcloth or sponge or dish mop over and over again, products are used once and thrown away. Terry cloth towels hanging in the kitchen or bathroom are thrown out in favor of sanitary disposable towels. Cloths are sanitized, not just washed.

The national Centers for Disease Control reports that "From 1976 through 1991, the proportion of reported Salmonella isolates in the United States that were SE [Salmonella enteritidis, which causes severe, bloody diarrhea] increased from 5 percent to 20 percent...and to 21 percent for the first half of 1993."  All from food prepared in our homes.

Authors Marguerite Neill, Michael Osterholm and David Swerdlow reported in the July 1994 issue of Patient Care magazine, "Centralized processing of food increases the potential for widespread contamination...[and m]any consumers are not experienced in the proper handling and preparation of food...more of their meals are prepared by other who may be careless."

To combat the fear of contamination, corporations manufacture antibacterial sprays, lotions and powders for kitchen counters, appliances and food preparer hygiene. Hands are purified with antibacterial soap. Pani-inducing tabloids and national newspaper headlines report our homes are no longer safe until they're sterilized and germ-free.

Where will it all end? Can we live germ-free forever?

The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) from 1991 to the present has documented cases of viruses jumping from apes, horses and dogs to humans and causing severe illness and death. A new strain of pneumonia or localized infection of soft tissues has been documented as transferring from horse to human, and an illness  similar to Rocky Mountain spotted fever has jumped over from man's best friend, according to JAMA.

HIV, AIDS, and other previously unknown diseases such as Ebola fever, which is more than 97% fatal, baffle medical science. There is no cure. Killer viruses and bacteria, unfazed by antiseptic conditions, adapt faster than they can be documented, classified, studied, decontaminated and killed.

From Africa, birthplace of the AIDS virus, come whispering reports of prostitutes, and a scattering of anonymous people, resistant to infection - without the intervention of science or medicine. They are adapting - alone - in the questionable cleanliness of the Dark Continent's rural communities.

 

We Are What We Eat

The first new year's resolution on most people's lists is lose weight. James Strauss made a connection between the growing problem of obesity in the United States and the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in the food chain. I don't know why no one else has asked that question, but it is a good one.

A quick Google search provided me with some interesting information. Enhancing animal and poultry farms with growth hormones has been going on since the 1960s and factory farming really took off about the 1980s to become a widespread business, pushing out generations of farmers that worked the same land for decades, and even a couple of centuries in some cases. Fewer animals fed growth hormones to get the most meat, dairy products, eggs, and poultry out of the fewest animals. It sounds like a good idea unless you begin to connect the dots. Add antibiotics to the mix and the growth of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, like MRSA and MSSA, and a picture begins to form that no one, except James Strauss on one of his rants this morning, seems to have seen.

MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and MSSA (Methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus) are of nearly epidemic proportions in the U.S. and in the world, and no one is immune. Once these bacteria get into your system, treating the disease assumes the proportions of stopping a wildfire with bucket and shovel. And these are just two of the super bugs that have been spawned in recent decades.

I have read that these bugs and bugs like them are the result of the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. I think the problem goes deeper, right back to our food sources. Evidently, Europeans feel the same way because they have banned the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in food animals, but what about the effect on humans.

According to the studies I read this morning -- and I didn't get to all of them, there are just too many -- the amount of hormones and antibiotics remaining in tissue after it has been processed is negligible. First, I'd like to know what constitutes a negligible amount and, secondly, I want to know if there have been any studies connecting hormones to the current problem of obesity in humans.

I have seen photos of dairy cows with massive udders and pigs, chicken, beef, and lamb twice and even 3x the size of the same types of animals just a few decades ago. The animals are bigger and have more meat on their bones, and a considerable amount of fat. The animals eat less but their bodies grow and fill out faster, which means less money in feed for more meat on the hoof. That must make those corporate farming bean counters very happy. Unfortunately, it also seems to have a direct effect on humans.

Haven't you see children at the age of 5 or 6 that are bigger than 10- and 12-year-olds 30 or 40 years ago? I have, and it's frightening. More and more people point to sedentary lifestyles and eating more fast food, but I'm beginning to see a very different picture emerging. Sometimes it takes just one question in the right place to set the wheels in motion.

What I see is factory farmed animals and the eggs and dairy products from factory farmed animals full of growth hormones at the heart of the obesity problem facing most Americans. Some people seem to be more resistant to the growth hormones, but there are other additives in their causing equal problems, additives like steroids. Ever hear of 'roid rage? I'll bet there is a connection between steroid use in factory farming and the increase of violence and road rage in the past 30 or so years.

I eat less now than I ever have and weigh more than I ever have. I don't think it's the yo-yo diet syndrome, although I have been down that road a few times. I mostly eat organic, but spent too many years eating the same things everyone else eats, and I didn't spend a lot of money on fast food. Once upon a time, I ate more sugar, more fat, and a considerable amount of food, but I stayed in the plump region. Now I eat less and eat as healthy as my budget allows, but I keep gaining weight. It's not about how much I'm eating but what I'm eating, and the damage done to my body by factory farmed food. The weight increase has become worse in the past 20-30 years than it ever has been before, and I didn't have a weight problem until then. (I don't count baby weight as the problem I'm currently struggling with.)

It all goes back to one maxim. We are what we eat.

Look closer and more problems begin to shake out. The increase of autism, immune deficiency disorders, multiple sclerosis (MS), fibromyalgia, lupus, etc. Chronic diseases that were statistically rare in the population now affect more and more people every year. Add to that, the over use of antibiotics and the increase of super bugs and we probably need look no farther than the factory farms that produce the food we eat for the root cause of most of our modern ills.

We can give up eating fast food, go vegetarian, work out like we're planning to compete in bodybuilding competitions, and eat only organic, but the damage has already been done. It may take another generation before the tide is turned and the damage begins to heal.

Factory farms are profitable, but we were all healthier when our food came from family farms and not corporate farms focusing on making more money. I'm not saying that farms shouldn't be profitable. What I am saying is that profit should not be the only reason for a farm to exist. We need to ban the use of growth hormones, steroids, and antibiotics in the food chain and get back to the basics. Corporate farms may go the way of the dodo, and good riddance, but at least we won't be poisoning the well any more.

We are what we eat.

Think about it.