** More than twenty-five thousand chemicals are in the cosmetics sold in the U.S., yet less than 4 percent of these ingredients have ever been tested for toxicity and safety. **

Date:   10/10/2018 9:18:32 PM ( 6 y ago)

The Hundred Year Lie

April 30, 2007,
|By Randall Fitzgerald
| Categories: Our Favorite Books

How Food And Medicine Are Destroying Your Health

Book Reviewed by June Milligan, M.Ed., CHt |

In this book, former Wall Street Journal investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald provides a comprehensive look at the synthetic chemicals used by the processed foods, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries.

This is an excellent summary of what is currently in our food, water, vitamins, prescription drugs, childhood vaccines, and cosmetics. Fitzgerald quotes a range of articles, from science journals and government reports to interviews with scientists and environmentalists. He shows how synthetic chemicals – from artificial sweeteners to antidepressants, are endangering our health, and he gives suggestions as to what to personally do about it.

Human beings are fast becoming one of the most polluted species on the planet. The average American now carries a “body burden” of 700 or more synthetic chemicals, including Teflon residues, plastics and dozens of pesticides. A fire retardant chemical contaminates fish, pork, turkey, chicken, cheese, butter, milk, eggs and ice cream in most grocery stores. And a 2005 study of lactating women in eighteen US states found a toxic component of rocket fuel in essentially every mother’s breast milk.

Four common food additives – MSG, aspartame and two coloring chemicals – interact together to produce nerve damage, but foods containing these additives are marketed to children across the U.S. This is happening in a country where 15% of the economy is devoted to medical care. Yet the US ranks 46th in life expectancy and 42nd in infant mortality among all nations of the world. Even the American Medical Association has had to admit that our own medical system is ranked as the third cause of death in this country, behind only heart disease and cancer.

The FDA is supposed to protect us from dangers in our food, water, and medicines, but that agency has become the lackey of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The FDA accepts the pharmaceutical companies’ “tests” done on new drugs but does very few tests of their own – until people begin to sicken and die.

So over the past one hundred years, since the Pure Food & Drug Act was passed, humans have been guinea pigs in a vast and complicated chemistry experiment of which no one is in charge….except maybe the wealthy pharmaceutical, processed food, and chemical companies and their army of lobbyists in Washington.

Here are some things you should know right now:

• When you read “made with natural flavors” on a food label, you are probably being deceived, because natural flavors and artificial flavors usually contain the same synthetic chemicals.

• In large feedlots, 100% of the cattle are fed five or more sex hormones, such as progesterone and testosterone, to accelerate weight gain, and these hormones are known to cause reproductive dysfunction and cancers in humans. In the last few decades, the average sperm count has dropped 50% in American men.

• Many of our commercial dairy and meat products come from animals that consume livestock feed made from the remains of tens of millions of dogs and cats that were killed with euthanasia drugs at animal shelters and veterinary clinics all over America.

• Medical evidence is emerging that suggests: the artificial sweeteners in diet soft drinks may cause brain tumors and neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The occurrence of these diseases has risen dramatically in proportion with the expanded use of those synthetic sweeteners.

• At least 70 percent of the processed foods in your local grocery store contain at least one genetically engineered ingredient that has never been tested for its potential harm.

• More than three thousand synthetic chemicals are regularly added to U.S. food products, and hardly any have been tested for their synergistic (interactive) toxin-producing effects in the human body.

• Most vitamins and supplements sold in the U.S. that are advertised as natural are actually synthetic chemical concoctions that contain coal tar, preservatives, artificial colorings and a vast range of other potentially harmful additives.

• More than twenty-five thousand chemicals are in the cosmetics sold in the U.S., yet less than 4 percent of these ingredients have ever been tested for toxicity and safety.

• Within the nine or so vaccines given your children before they enter school is additives and preservatives, including mercury, aluminum, MSG, formaldehyde, and others linked to disorders ranging from brain and nerve damage to autism and attention deficit disorder.

Chemicals and additives are only tested “in isolation” by the pharmaceutical and food industries. Virtually no testing has been done to determine the effect of the many synthetic chemicals we ingest daily acting synergistically (reacting together rather than in isolation).

Pharmaceutical drugs are prescribed to mask our symptoms in the hope that, with time, our immune systems will do the actual healing. But our immune systems are being compromised by inadequate nutrition, overuse of antibiotics, and the chemical toxins our bodies absorb and store. We pass those immune system-weakening traits on to our offspring while they are still in the womb. And while we pretend that everything is normal, our toxic chemical legacy is producing ever-greater numbers of genetic defects in our species and in the animal life that surrounds us.

“Chemicals have replaced bacteria and viruses as the main threat to human health….the diseases we’re beginning to see as the major causes of death in the latter part of the last century and into the 21st century are diseases of chemical origin.” – Rick Irvin, a toxicologist at Texas A&M University

We CAN harness the power of positive, health-enhancing synergies from foods and herbs to strengthen our immune systems. Using food as medicine enables us to detoxify ourselves of chemical contaminants and cure ourselves of illness and disease.

There is an ancient legacy of naturally occurring health and healing which is based on thousands of years of human experience with wisdom traditions that follow the principles of nature. These natural cures are finally being affirmed by Western medicine in laboratory experiments that show them to be more effective, less costly and less toxic than most pharmaceutical drugs.

One thing you can do right now purchase a little 4”X5” paperback entitled Food Additives – A Shoppers Guide to What’s Safe & What’s Not. This is small enough to carry in your purse or glove compartment and puts the power of knowledge back into the hands of the consumer. From Amazon, it’s $4.95.

I have only barely touched on the information in Fitzgerald’s well-written, well-researched book. It would be a valuable addition to your health library. In the meantime, go to http://www.hundredyearlie.com to hear the author speak about issues that we did not have room to cover in this review.

For more information,
Please call June Milligan, M.Ed.,
CHT of Joyful Changes at (775) 786-9111.

 

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