The foods we eat may have more to do with our destiny than just getting us past the current craving.  Here is a look at what is impacting your body, your personal bio-machine that should carry you through life.  The older you get the more you want your body to respond to nutrients and be resiliant bouncing back from viruses.  How you treat it now will have a lot of bearing on how it will respond later in life 5, 10, 20 or 50 years from now.  There are many harmful chemicals in the food chain that can be affecting you now.  Continually ingesting them is only making matters worse for later in life.  Take a second look at what you are eating and may be doing to yourself, with the help of the FDA and the corporate giants of the food chain.  Consider what you are doing to your children, help them defend themselves and lead a healthy long life.  Food is not just something we eat it is a life style and it is part of our destiny.

Fructose stays with you far longer than most of us might imagine and the damage is not so sweet. 

The liver cannot process fructose directly to nutrients for the body; fructose stores directly as fat, we have discussed this before.  Part of your weight loss problem is fructose takes more energy to convert from fat to food than natural nutrients do.  Natural foods convert directly into nutrients our body can use; they are only stored as fat when we overeat.  Any fructose consumed goes directly to fat requiring exercise to become an energy source for the body.  What other food requires such additional effort?

According to a recent study of 46,000 males, if 12% of their calories come from fructose they are twice as likely to get gout.  If a typical male consumes 2,500 calories a day a Big Gulp or a 64oz drink from your favorite fast food will double the 12% indicated.   

Fructose inhibits the body’s ability to process uric acid allowing uric acid (waste) levels to build in joints increasing the risk of Gout.  Gout is not a disease of the rich and it is not a thing of the past.  Feeling brave, Gout is  one of the most painful conditions one will experience.  Impacting major joints, most often the ball joint behind the big toe it incapacitates one for weeks and often months at a time.  The pain is so extreme even a sheet is too much pressure on the inflamed joints.  Severely swollen joints that are inflamed with uric acid build up is bad, but the excess uric acid converts to uric acid crystals which the body has trouble converting back to a fluid the liver can excrete.  Joints become severely distorted and surgery may be needed to remove the enormous lumps of uric acid crystals. 

Ever read the signs, “no shoes, no shirt no service” well shoes of any type not matter how big or soft will be just too painful you are a prisoner held captive by your gout ridden joints.  And your feet are so swollen no decent shoe remotely close to your size will fit.  Not cared for gout can destroy joints, impacting other joints and eventually destroying the kidneys.   You don’t eat that much fructose; better look again at what you are eating, many foods besides sodas have fructose.  Pickles, ice cream, salad dressings, candy, many desert products, catsup, barbecue sauce, Miracle Whip, chewing gum, and breakfast juices, as well as cereals and snack bars usually incorporate fructose.  The list continues though out the food chain, over half of your caloric intake could be fructose. 

Okay you are not male so gout is not an issue.   It is true gout traditionally is predominately a male problem since female hormones protect the fairer gender.  That is until you start going through menopause and harmone levels drop.  Remember those birth control pills that lower your hormones.  Crash dieting and limited intake of fluids to stay all too thin increase the potential for gout as well.  Alcohol dehydrates the body limiting the livers ability to process uric acid.  In combination, any of these can create a situation where females of all ages can land with a serious case of gout when adding the magic ingredient fructose.

Fructose also impedes the hormone Leptin from functioning  normally in the body.  Leptin is a hormone that tells the brain you have eaten enough.  Denied this signal you will over eat time and again.  Not a problem for fast food restaurants, the snack food industry or the food industry at large they like the profit.  But it may be a problem for you as the Leptin signal gets weaker and the pounds rack up. 

Remember the law suit and the Bill Clinton “Cheese Burger” bill to protect fast food restaurants from such ridiculous claims of “you made my child fat.”  “If people can’t stop eating, it is their fault,” was the Fast Food defense.  Well without the harmone Leptin to signal when to stop eating and with fructose going straight to fat it may be a far more valid lawsuit that once imagined.  No wonder the fast food industry pressed for such a law.  Backed by lots of money and plenty of lobbyists storming our representatives to in-act the bill it had to pass.  Our politicians always looking for handouts to fund their campaigns willingly accepted and pushed the law through.  Aren’t you proud of our elected officials always looking out for us.

We often talk about chemicals added through the processing of foods and often do not speak of the chemical loading of foods at their origin.  Here are two examples of just how hard it is to find fresh food and the danger of ignoring the potential risk you face.

Nearly all corn based products sold in the United States are protected from pests by chemicals that include Dixons that were found dangerous as components of Agent Orange over 40 years ago when used in Vietnam.  Many Vietnamese and American military now suffer from a number of health issues due to this Dixon.  It has an eleven year half life which means it persist in the body for at least 11 years and is very insidious in nature.  It modifies the bodies RNA causing the body to develop thicker cell walls. 

Thicker cell walls mean more insulin is needed to transfer blood sucrose across this barrier to starving cells.  Typical Type I diabetics do not produce enough insulin.  Type II diabetics often have a genetic disposition where receptors signaling available blood sucrose in the blood stream are weak and do not react until far higher levels of blood sugar are reached.  This places a greater strain on the heart.  The Dixon initiated Type II Diabetes creates similar health problems with thicker cell walls.  Enough strain on the pancreas and it can fail.  High blood pressure is often a result from diabeties resulting it more danger to extremely fine arteries throughout critical organs. 

Eyes, kidneys, liver and pancreas are things you don’t want to do without.  With diabetes triglycerides sky rocket, requiring every bit of your good cholesterol to combat the problem.  With insufficient good cholesterol there is no controlling the bad cholesterol.  Sure you can take drugs to control these problems except most drugs do not attack the root cause and many drugs are now being pulled of the market as being too dangerous if not down and out deadly.

E-Coli one of those thinks that use to befall us when eating tainted meat, now is in spinach, tomatoes, lettuce and just about anything else that can grow in a field where run off from animal or human feces is possible.  It can’t happen where you shop, not in your food supply, that is what many think.  E-coli is dangerous, very dangerous!  One teenager will never walk again after eating a contaminated hamburger.  A four-year-old girl died after ingesting food tainted with E-coli.  Bloody diarrhea, kidney failure, seizures and violent convulsions are indicative of someone that has ingested E-coli.  If you eat out, if you buy from a super market, do you really know who was handling your food and where it came from.  The FDA does not require testing of meats from processing plants and there is no such testing for vegetables or fruit.

Genetically modified corn through independent studies in Europe now indicate it can cause liver and kidney problems with negative effects on the heart, adrenal glands and spleen.

Monsanto genetically modified the corn with proteins designed to kill pests that eat them (hmmm we eat them) and so that it would better withstand Monsanto’s pesticide Round up.  The farmer uses pesticides like Monsanto’s Round up and Monsanto’s genetically modified corn in the belief they can grow more crops on a single acre.  The truth is the farmer without realizing it hands these profits over to Monsanto to cover the cost of the Round up and genetically modified corn.  The only beneficiary of our poisoning is Monsanto.  By the way Monsanto was sued in the 80’s and lost $800 million dollars for the damages caused to veterans of the Vietnam war due to Agent Orange.  Round up uses the same Dixon and it is sprayed on corn and soy beans at the very least.  Corn and Soy beans are incorporated in almost every processed food.  Kinda makes you hungry for a second helping doesn’t it.  This means all of you well meaning ”health nuts” (no offense) may be ingesting an abundance of Dixons with every servering of soy or tufu.

Maybe Monsanto is not aware of the danger, they were just trying to do the right thing.  According to a report from Mother Earth News Monsanto’s meager research on rats indicated liver and kidney damage!  Well they are just trying to make a living and after all their kids are not eating this stuff.

“According to the nonprofit Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a project designed to facilitate dialogue about the pros and cons of genetic modification, ‘No single statute and no single federal agency governs the regulation of agricultural biotechnology products.’ And, compared with the battery of tests demanded of chemical pesticides (evaluation of chronic exposure, carcinogenicity, etc.), the testing requirements for genetically altered crops amount to little more than a polite suggestion. 

‘The corporations can pretty much submit whatever they want to the FDA,” says Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. “Some have done animal testing, some have not. The United States does not require more than acute toxicity tests where one high dose is fed to the animals once. Even in Europe, where standards are higher, tests of only 90 days are the longest that are required, which is inadequate.’”  (Genetically Modified Corn — Safe or Toxic?, By Amanda Kimble-Evans , http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Genetically-Modified-Corn-Safe-Or-Toxic.aspx).

And you thought the FDA was on your side.

It is not enough to buy brand name foods, shop in brightly lit stores, dine at fine restaurants or the brightly colored ones.  Unless you know the source of your food (the real source) and how it has been handled you are at risk of E-Coli.  You can buy local and buy from butchers that work with much smaller custom meat processors.  And you can stop consuming so much fructose.  You can also select corn and beans that are grown locally without dangerous Dixons.  Not doing so, is much like playing Russian roulette with the rest of your life and that of your family.

Our WEB site and others like us are here to point out the dangers, the culprits and how you can do more for yourself and your family.  Fighting the corporate giants is a battle we can win if we all work together.  We offer insight, sources of good food and recipes you will love; all you have to do is read, do a little research and decide for yourself.