Obama Declares Swine Flu an Emergency

October 27, 2009

PrisonPlanet.com

by Paul Joseph Watson

President Obama’s declaration that the H1N1 outbreak represents a “national emergency” seems to be little more than a public relations stunt aimed at intimidating reticent Americans into taking a vaccine that is becoming increasingly unpopular and unnecessary.

Despite the fact that swine flu cases have seemingly peaked, allied to the fact that seasonal flu has proven far deadlier, on Friday night Obama declared a national emergency in order to “allow hospitals to better handle the surge in patients” by allowing them to bypass certain federal laws.

What “surge in patients”? Swine flu has killed just 0.2 people per thousand who have caught the virus, a far lower potency than the annual flu virus which kills one patient per thousand, meaning swine flu has proven to be around 400% less deadly than the regular flu.

Either the government is preparing for an engineered pandemic of which they have prior knowledge, or Obama’s announcement is a flagrant abuse of executive power and a ruse to coerce more people into taking the vaccine.

As we have exhaustively documented, polls out of the U.S., as well as globally, show that a rapidly growing number of health professionals and the general public are refusing to take the vaccine because they either think it is unnecessary or they are concerned about potential side-effects.

Despite a desperate $16 million media propaganda campaign on behalf of the federal government that is trying to brainwash Americans into rolling up their sleeves and taking the shot, a majority of people aren’t buying the hype.

The purpose of Obama’s declaration is to heighten fears surrounding swine flu and create the artificial impression that the vaccine is in demand, when the opposite is the true. The government hopes this will create a herd-like rush to take the shot amongst the general public.

Early indications are that the ruse may be working.

“I’ve already gotten a couple of calls from people today asking, ‘Where can I get the vaccine?’ whereas yesterday it was, ‘I don’t want that vaccine,’ ” said Arthur Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist. “I’m worried about people getting panicky and the vaccine being diverted away from those who need it most.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a research professor and chairman of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University, admitted that the term, “emergency declaration sounds more dramatic than it really is.”

The government has already emphasized the notion that the vaccine is now in short supply, despite the fact that they previously assured the public there would be enough batches to cover the entire population by September. By combining this artificial scarcity with the scary notion that the situation now represents an “emergency,” more of the sheeple will be intimidated into lining up and taking the toxic shot so as to soothe the underlying fear that a pandemic is around the corner and they might not be protected against it. That way the pharmaceutical giants get to inflate their already record profits to new levels of greed and the government gets to inject its otherwise worthless stockpile of vaccines into the idiot public.

Additionally, as Mike Adams and others have pointed out, classifying the situation as a national emergency triggers all kinds of tyrannical provisions that the feds have been waiting to unleash, while also empowering FEMA to lock down American cities under a state of medical martial law. Mandatory vaccinations, quarantines, curfews, involuntary kidnap, and warrantless searches and seizures are now just a heartbeat away because Obama’s order has in effect nullified the bill of rights.

We can only hope that this is not a precursor to a major biological attack or pandemic outbreak, but it would hardly be a surprise if it was. The government has been preparing to unleash full-scale martial law upon the American public for years but whether swine flu will be enough to realize that agenda remains to be seen.

At best, Obama’s Friday night declaration was a crude propaganda stunt designed to whip up fervor behind the H1N1 vaccine and corral millions of reluctant Americans into allowing their bodies to become a dumping ground for mercury, squalene, cancerous animal cells and God knows what other additives are in the shot, while the elite rest easy in the knowledge that they have privileged access to a clean version of the vaccine that contains none of these dangerous adjuvants.

Click here for the full report.

US Becoming Failed State

October 27, 2009

Infowars

By Paul Craig Roberts

Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.

One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and to advance their private interests.

Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.
The Banksters are still in charge.

Income inequality in the US is now the most extreme of all countries.  The 2008 OECD report, “Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries,” [PDF]concludes that the US is the country with the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that since 2000 nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the US.

The OECD finds that in the US the distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the distribution of income.

On October 21, 2009, Business Week reported that a new report from the United Nations Development Program concluded that the US ranked third among states with the worst income inequality.  As number one and number two, Hong Kong and Singapore, are both essentially city states, not countries, the US actually has the shame of being the country with the most inequality in the distribution of income.

The stark increase in US income inequality in the 21st century coincides with the offshoring of US jobs, which enriched executives with “performance bonuses” while impoverishing the middle class, and with the rapid rise of unregulated OTC derivatives, which enriched Wall Street and the financial sector at the expense of everyone else.

Millions of Americans have lost their homes and half of their retirement savings while being loaded up with government debt to bail out the banksters who created the derivative crisis.

Frontline’s October 21 broadcast, “The Warning,” documents how Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt blocked Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from performing her statutory duties and regulating OTC derivatives.

After the worst crisis in US financial history struck, just as Brooksley Born said it would, a disgraced Alan Greenspan was summoned out of retirement to explain to Congress his unequivocal assurances that no regulation of derivatives was necessary.  Greenspan had even told Congress that regulation of derivatives would be harmful.  A pathetic Greenspan had to admit that the free market ideology on which he had relied turned out to have a flaw.

Greenspan may have bet our country on his free market ideology, but does anyone believe that Rubin and Summers were doing anything other than protecting the enormous fraud-based profits that derivatives were bringing Wall Street?  As Brooksley Born stressed, OTC derivatives are a “dark market.” There is no transparency. Regulators have no information on them and neither do purchasers.

Even after Long Term Capital Management blew up in 1998 and had to be bailed out, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers stuck to their guns. Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, and a roped-in gullible Arthur Levitt who now regrets that he was the banksters’ dupe, succeeded in manipulating a totally ignorant Congress into blocking the CFTC from doing its mandated job. Brooksley Born, prevented by the public’s elected representatives from protecting the public, resigned.  Wall Street money simply shoved facts and honest regulators aside, guaranteeing government inaction and the financial crisis that hit in 2008 and continues to plague our economy today.

The financial insiders running the Treasury, White House, and Federal Reserve shifted to taxpayers the cost of the catastrophe that they had created.  When the crisis hit, Henry Paulson, appointed by President Bush as Rubin’s replacement as the Goldman Sachs representative running the US Treasury, hyped fear to obtain from “our” representatives in Congress with no questions asked hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars (TARP money)  to bail out Goldman Sachs and the other malefactors of unregulated derivatives.

When Goldman Sachs recently announced that it was paying massive six- and seven-figure bonuses to every employee, public outrage erupted.  In defense of banksters, saved with the public’s money, paying themselves bonuses in excess of most people’s life-time earnings, Lord Griffiths, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said that the public must learn to “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all.”[Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses, says Goldman Sachs vice-chairman]

In other words, “Let them eat cake.”

According to the UN report cited above, Great Britain has the 7th most unequal income distribution in the world. After the Goldman Sachs bonuses, the British will move up in distinction, perhaps rivalling Israel for the fourth spot in the hierarchy.

Despite the total insanity of unregulated derivatives, the high level of public anger, and Greenspan’s confession to Congress, still nothing has been done to regulate derivatives.

One of Rubin’s Assistant Treasury Secretaries, Gary Gensler, has replaced Brooksley Born as head of the CFTC.  Larry Summers is the head of President Obama’s National Economic Council.  Former Federal Reserve official Timothy Geithner, a Paulson protege, runs the Obama Treasury.  A Goldman Sachs vice president, Adam Storch, has been appointed the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Banksters are still in charge.

Is there another country in which in full public view so few so blatantly use government for the enrichment of private interests, with a coterie of “free market” economists available to justify plunder on the grounds that “the market knows best”?

A narco-state is bad enough.  The US surpasses this horror with its financo-state.

As Brooksley Born says, if nothing is done, “it’ll happen again.”

But nothing can be done.  The crooks have the government.

Click here for the full report.

Obese Create Much Larger Carbon Footprint

October 27, 2009

Natural News

By David Gutierrez

Editor’s note: NaturalNews doesn’t agree with all the conclusions reached by the scientists being covered in this article, but we thought it was important to bring you this story on one of the many ways in which climate change discussions might start targeting — or even criminalizing — individual eating behavior. Just yesterday, the world climate chief (Lord Stern) declared that in order to save the planet, everyone would have to stop eating meat. As a promoter of plant-emphasis in dietary habits, we here at NaturalNews believe there is a lot of validity to the idea that cattle ranching is extremely destructive to the environment, but we also believe that blaming obese people for climate change is a gross oversimplification of the real problems facing our global environment. Sure, food and environment are intertwined, but I think more blame rests with the Big Ag companies, junk food corporations, junk-food-pushing media giants and the utterly useless government health regulators who still won’t require honest food labeling that might help consumers make better dietary choices at the grocery store.

Researchers are increasingly warning that the obesity epidemic is contributing to global warming, with potentially devastating consequences for people and habitats around the world.

“Food production accounts for about one fifth of greenhouse gases,” said researcher Phil Edwards, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “We need to do a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness. It is a key factor in the battle to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change.”

According to Edwards’ research, the average overweight person is responsible for an extra ton of carbon dioxide emissions a year, compared with a person of healthier weight. Based on World Health Organization estimates, this translates into an extra one billion tons per year.

The bulk of this extra contribution comes from the fossil fuels required to produce the food needed to sustain a larger person. Meat, in particular, is highly fossil fuel intensive. According to a 2007 United Nations report, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than all forms of transportation combined.

“It is time we took account of the amount we are eating,” Edwards said. “This is about over-consumption by the wealthy countries. And the world demand for meat is increasing to match that of Britain and [the United States].”

In addition, heavier people are significantly more likely to drive than thinner people.

“Moving about in a heavy body is like driving in a gas guzzler. It is … much easier to get in your car and pick up a pint of milk than to take a walk,” Edwards said.

An estimated 33 percent of men and 35 percent of women in the United States are obese, defined as having a body mass index higher than 30. Worldwide, 400 million people are obese.

Click here for the full report.

Video: Girl Gets Flu Shot, Now Can Only Walk Backwards

The Harmful Effects of Ibuprofen

October 26, 2009

TimesOnline

By Dr. Mark Porter

A line in this column questioning why vaccine-related side-effects receive so much media coverage while thousands of deaths caused by the ibuprofen family of anti-inflammatory drugs go almost unreported has prompted a huge response from readers wanting to know more — so here is the story in more detail.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) alleviate pain, soothe inflammation and reduce fevers, making them a popular choice for treating everything from flu to back pain and arthritis. Aspirin was the first member of the family to be identified but today the most widely used NSAIDs are ibuprofen (in Nurofen, Brufen and Anadin Ultra) and diclofenac (Voltarol and Fenactol).

NSAIDs work by blocking the production of chemical messengers (prostaglandins) that prompt an inflammatory response when the body is attacked or injured. They moderate this response without seeming to have a significant adverse effect on the body’s ability to defend and repair itself — or, to put it another way, taking ibuprofen for your back pain won’t slow your recovery.

But prostaglandins play a crucial role in other processes in the body, particularly in the upper part of the gut, where they help to protect the stomach lining against corrosive digestive juices. And herein lies the problem: they weaken the stomach’s defences, leading to ulceration and stomach haemorrhages that kill as many as 2,500 people in the UK every year and put many thousands more in hospital.

Indigestion is often an early clue but in many cases there are no warning symptoms and a catastrophic bleed may be the first sign of trouble. One elderly patient of mine ended up in hospital with a bleed just 72 hours after I started him on diclofenac for his arthritic hip.

Cases such as this are unusual, and the vast majority of the millions of people who take NSAIDs will have no problems. But these drugs still exact a worrying toll that could be reduced significantly if the latest guidance were followed.

NSAIDs should be avoided in those at the highest risk (such as people who have had a previous stomach bleed) and prescribed with other drugs to protect the lining of the stomach in those deemed to be at above-average risk (such as anyone over the age of 65 and those already on low-dose aspirin).

The standard protective drug used in the UK is omeprazole, which reduces acid production, but studies suggest that about three quarters of people who should be prescribed it are not. If you think that you may be one of them, make sure you raise the issue when your repeat prescription comes up for renewal.

But bleeds are not the only worrying side-effect of NSAIDs. They also cause fluid retention and put a strain on the kidneys, which makes them a poor choice for anyone with high blood pressure, heart failure and/or weak kidneys. And they have been linked to heart attack and stroke.

Recent research that attempted to quantify the additional risk for people most likely to have a heart attack (those aged 65 or over) estimated that 1,005 of these highest-risk patients would have to take ibuprofen for a year for it to lead to one additional heart attack. The findings may change the prescribing habits of doctors faced with patients most likely to have a stroke or heart attack, but the rest of us need not be overly concerned. If you take ibuprofen on an ad hoc basis for back ache, hangovers, etc, there is no need to change your practice. Even if you are on a regular NSAID for a problem such as arthritis, the benefits of day-to-day relief from pain and stiffness almost certainly outweigh the small extra risk of heart problems.

NSAIDs have also been linked to miscarriage and sub-fertility. Prostaglandins play an important role in ovulation and the implantation of any resulting fertilised egg into the wall of the womb, so are best avoided by pregnant women and those trying to conceive. They also delay the onset of labour and increase its duration, and can sometimes alter the developing baby’s circulation, increasing the risk of long-term heart and lung problems. Paracetamol remains the painkiller of choice during pregnancy.

Click here for the full report.

Diet and Exercise to Kick Insulin

October 26, 2009

LATimes.com

By Marni Jameson

By harnessing the power of lifestyle, the following people are managing their Type 2 diabetes without insulin, and in some cases without any medication at all. Some made the commitment when they were first diagnosed, but others reversed a condition that had been spiraling downward for years. Here’s how they did it:

“I’m controlled, not cured, but I’m not going back.”

Aaron Snyder, San Diego

Age: 31

Occupation: Commodities analyst for Shell Oil

Diagnosed: 10 years ago. (Diabetes is diagnosed by a fasting blood sugar of higher than 126 and an A1C of 6.5 or higher.)

Weight then: 220 pounds

Height: 5 feet 6

Background: “I was a math major at UC Berkeley and the pressure was enormous. I solved a lot of problems with food.” One evening, after he went out to dinner with a diabetic friend, she tested his blood sugar out of curiosity. It was 215. His A1C was in the 7s. “I had a long family history of diabetes; I just never thought I’d be part of it.”

Lifestyle changes: Over the next year he lost 50 pounds on a low-carb diet, and 10 more pounds the year after that. His doctor put him on insulin and metformin, a non-insulin medication that decreases the liver’s output of sugar and boosts cells’ ability to metabolize insulin. He began exercising daily.

Today: He still weighs 160 pounds, and sticks to his low-carb diet. Two years ago, he stopped taking all his diabetes medications, and his blood pressure and cholesterol are normal. He works out every day, lifting weights four days a week, and riding a stationary bike 30 minutes three days a week.

Advice: “I wish people understood that what you eat now influences what you want to eat next. A low-carb diet is the best way to curb your appetite and maintain your weight.”

What keeps him on track: His great grandmother had a stroke and lost a leg to diabetes, and his grandfather went blind and died of kidney disease, also due to diabetes. Besides, he adds, “I like how I look now, and more important, how I feel.”

“I went from eating frequently from the vending machine to knowing where all the yoga classes and running trails are around town and shopping at the farmers market.”

Howard Yosha,

Laguna Hills

Age: 37

Occupation: Cable consultant for Time Warner Cable

Diagnosed: Six years ago

Weight then: 240 pounds

Height: 5 feet 8

Background: While working at a communications call center, Yosha developed gout in his legs and feet, which triggered a toe infection that wouldn’t heal. His doctor suspected diabetes. Tests revealed his blood sugar was 415 and his A1C was approaching 13. His doctor started him on Actos, a drug that helps reverse early diabetes and increase the body’s sensitivity to insulin. He put Yosha on a 1,400-calorie diet and sent him to a hospital-sponsored class.

Lifestyle changes: He took the six-week class “very seriously,” he said. He made losing weight a priority, joined e-diets and downloaded hundreds of healthy recipes. “I learned to cook and shop at the local farmers market.” He got on a strict schedule, and programmed his Palm Pilot to sound every time he was supposed to sleep, eat, check his blood or take his meds. He started walking 2 miles at lunch and after work. He eventually lost 65 pounds and started taking yoga.

Today: He’s medication-free and weighs 175; his A1C is 5.2 and his blood sugar stays around 98. He eats and sleeps at the same time every day. He takes two to four yoga classes a week and walks or jogs 2 to 8 miles a day. Last December, his employer sponsored him to run the O.C. half-marathon. He ran the 13-mile race again in May.

Advice: “Make moving more [of] a habit. I park on the top floor of my office’s parking structure . . . and I pick the farthest parking space at the shopping center.”

What keeps him on the program: “I will do anything to avoid that terrible foot pain I had. I had uncles lose limbs to diabetes. I never want that to happen to me.”

“Don’t underestimate the body’s potential to heal on its own.”

John Burgess, Irvine

Age: 43

Occupation: Accountant

Diagnosed: 18 years ago

Weight then: 220 pounds

Height: 5 feet 11

Background: For a long time Burgess controlled his disease with diet and exercise, but eventually he needed medication. He started taking metformin and Actos, and ultimately, in July 2007, insulin, which caused weight gain. By December 2008, he weighed 250, had become more insulin resistant and needed medications to manage blood pressure and cholesterol. His sedentary job didn’t help. He ultimately needed the strongest insulin available, five injections a day of U-500. In six months he gained 50 more pounds, peaking at 305. In July 2009, he saw Dr. Wei-An Lee.

Lifestyle changes: Lee put Burgess on a strict, 700-calorie-a-day diet. One week later he was off all insulin. After two weeks, he graduated to a 1,000-calorie diet, and added some exercise. He got a pedometer and aimed for 5,000 steps a day. He lost 84 pounds in 85 days. All his numbers, which he charts meticulously, have improved.

Today: He weighs 211 pounds, has dropped eight prescription meds in three months, including all his diabetes medications, two blood pressure medications, and medicine for his triglycerides. He’s halved his cholesterol medication. He does 5 1/2 miles a day on the elliptical and sometimes runs an additional half a mile on the treadmill, for a total of 6 miles. He focuses on carb control and relies on Lean Cuisine. “Last summer I couldn’t walk 100 steps; now I’m jogging.”

Advice: Because taking clients to lunch is part of his job, he looks at the restaurant’s menu online and when possible, the nutritional content of certain dishes, so he can decide in advance what to order. If he can’t get the nutritional information, he orders meat and vegetables.

What keeps him on track: Results. “The program sounds drastic, but sticking with it is easy when you understand the payoffs.”

“I’ve had plenty of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, plenty of cocktails; now I just want to live.”

To continue reading this report, click here.

Kids Need Vitamin D

October 26, 2009

SFGate

By Associated Press

At least 1 in 5 U.S. children ages 1 to 11 doesn’t get enough vitamin D and could be at risk for a variety of health problems including weak bones, the most recent national analysis suggests.

By a looser measure, almost 90 percent of black children that age and 80 percent of Latino kids could be vitamin D deficient – “astounding numbers” that should serve as a call to action, said Dr. Jonathan Mansbach, lead author of the new analysis and a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital in Boston.

The deficiency is a concern because recent studies suggest the vitamin might help prevent infections, diabetes and some cancers.

The new analysis, released online today by the journal Pediatrics, is the first assessment of varying vitamin D levels in children ages 1 through 11. The study used data from a 2001-06 government health survey of almost 3,000 children who had blood tests measuring vitamin D.

Click here for the full report.

Florida Becoming Prescription Drug Capital

October 26, 2009

NaturalNews

By David Gutierrez

Florida has become the nation’s capital for illegal acquisition of prescription medication, according to local and federal law enforcement officials.

“Broward County has become the Colombia for pharmaceutically diverted drugs,” said Hollywood police Capt. Allen Siegel, who directs a narcotics task force. “We’re supplying everywhere.”

Florida’s state laws have led to a thriving industry of clinics offering narcotic painkillers and other prescription drugs to anyone who walks in off the street, even from out of state. Some clinics advertise on bus benches, billboards or in weekly newspapers, while others offer incentives like coupons or even gasoline vouchers. Their patients come from all across the country, officials say.

“This medicine is about profit-making,” said Mark Trouville, special agent in charge of the Miami office for the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). “I hate to call them doctors. These people are just out to make money.”

The DEA has opened up two units devoted entirely to South Florida pain clinics.

Florida’s lax regulations not only allow walk-in prescriptions, they also allow doctors to distribute pills directly to patients, do not provide for tracking of prescriptions, and do not take away prescribing rights from doctors who have been convicted of crimes.

In the last six months of 2008, Broward County pain clinics alone distributed more than 6.5 million oxycodone pills, or nearly four for every county resident. The county is home to 33 of the top oxycodone prescribers in the country, and the top 50 are all in Florida. The state is the biggest distributor of the drug in the United States, beating out California (which has twice the population) by 40 percent.

Officials believe that the Florida clinics have contributed significantly to the state’s recent surge in deaths from prescription-drug overdoses. The number of these deaths increased by 107 percent between 2005 and 2007, and has continued to rise since then.

Click here for the full report.

Drugs That Change Taste Damage Metabolism

October 26, 2009

NaturalNews

By S. L. Baker

It’s not unusual to hear about herbicides having suspected toxic effects or prescription drugs producing side effects. But a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has found another negative and surprising way common herbicides and fibrate drugs (which are used to lower elevated blood lipids) impact the human body: they block a nutrient-sensing taste receptor on the tongue called T1R3.

So what’s the big deal about this? It turns out there’s emerging evidence these taste receptors are also found in hormone-producing cells in the intestine and pancreas. When working properly, these internal taste receptors in the gut trigger the release of hormones involved in the regulation of normal homeostasis (the ability of the body to maintain internal physiological stability) of glucose as well as energy metabolism. Simply put, screwing up the ability of T1R3 to sense certain nutrients could possibly wreak havoc on the human body in a variety of ways — from playing a role in unhealthy blood sugar levels to causing people to gain weight .

“Compounds that either activate or block T1R3 receptors could have significant metabolic effects, potentially influencing diseases such as obesity, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” said Monell geneticist and study leader Bedrich Mosinger, MD, PhD, in a statement to the media.

For their study, Dr. Mosinger and his research team tested the ability of two classes of chemical compounds to block the T1R3 taste receptor. These compounds were selected because they have strong structural similarities to lactisole, a sweet taste inhibitor that is known to block T1R3. Specifically, the researchers investigated fibrates (a class of drugs often used to lower blood cholesterol, especially triglycerides), and phenoxy herbicides.

Fibrate drugs are sold in the U.S. under several names including gemibrozil (brand name Lopid) and fenobribrate (brand name Tricor). Phenoxy herbicides are chemicals widely used in agricultural fields, on golf courses, rights-of-way and lawns to control broad-leaf weeds. The best known, called 2,4-D, is one of the most extensively used herbicides in the world. According to the Oregon State University Extension Service web site, popular brands of phenoxy herbicides include MCPA, Crossbow, Banvel, Garlon, Weed-B-Gone, and Brush Killer. They are also incorporated into a host of “weed and feed” and brush control products for use on grass.

In laboratory experiments, the researchers found that both classes of compounds were very potent in blocking activation of the human sweet taste receptors. Additional tests showed that this ability of both fibrates and phenoxy herbicides to block T1R3 is specific to humans.

“The metabolic consequences of short and long-term exposures of humans to phenoxy herbicides are unknown. This is because most safety tests were done using animals, which have T1R3 receptors that are insensitive to these compounds,” Dr. Mosinger said in the press statement. “Given the number of compounds used in agriculture, medicine and the food industry that may affect human T1R3 and related receptors, more work is needed to identify the health-related effects of exposure to these compounds.”
 

Click here for the full report.

Least Healthy Breakfast Cereals

October 26, 2009

ABC News

By Dan Harris, Joel Siegel, Christine Brouwer and Suzanne Yeo

Six hundred and forty-two times a year. That is how often the average American preschooler sees an advertisement for cereal, according to a new study by Yale University.

So it puts things in perspective when the same study says that cereals with the biggest marketing push also happen to be among the least nutritious, when analyzed using a nutrient profiling system developed at Oxford University.

“If one looks at the rank order list of the worst nutrition cereals it’s stunning how the worst cereals are marketed so aggressively to children,” Kelly Brownell, a co-author of the study, said.

ABC News obtained an advance copy of the study, which will be released Monday when the Obesity Society holds its annual meeting in Washington. The study’s authors are posting their findings at CerealFacts.org.

The scathing report by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity says it provides proof for parents that children will eat unsweetened cereals if they are offered.

“So, there are ways to train kids to eat healthier food, it’s all about what they’re exposed to,” Brownell said.
Co-Author: Children Are ‘Blitzed by Marketing’

Advertisers have found new ways to expose children to their products. At sillyrabbit.com, Trix cereal goes far beyond its old television spot featuring a bouncing rabbit and the slogan, “Trix Are for Kids!” The site gives children entree to a colorful “Trix World” where they can play a bowling game at “Fruitalicious Lanes” or explore a “Rabbitropolis” that has a movie theater showing “Trix Toons.”

“You could use the word ‘assault’ to talk about the way the marketing is going on,” Brownell told ABC News. “Children are just blitzed by marketing for the least healthy food products, and there’s very little marketing for healthy ones to offset it.”

Brownell added, “If you add up all the exposure, on the Internet, billboards, television, what they see in stores, sales, what they’re going to see in … the social media like Facebook, it’s just enormous exposure.”

Three years ago, the industry announced with some fanfare that it would police itself by setting new standards for the way it markets food for kids.

Under the industry’s new standards many of the least nutritional cereals qualify as “better for you” foods, something Brownell called a “demonstrable failure.”

“To hear Froot Loops advertised as a ‘better for you’ food is to me just laughable,” said David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

“There’s something seriously wrong with a nutritional rating system if Froot Loops comes out looking good. This is really like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Brownell says this only adds to the growing childhood obesity problem and calls today’s food environment “toxic” for children.
Industry Pushes Back Against Report

Elanie Kolish, of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative who oversees the industry’s self-regulation initiative, disagrees with Brownell’s findings.

“Well, I don’t know how they came to their conclusion that they are the least nutritional products. Because children’s cereals that are advertised in our program are low in calories & and they provide an important source of these nutrients for kids’ diets,” Kolish said. Kolish’s statement is echoed by others in the industry.

“From a calorie and nutrient standpoint, cereal may be the best breakfast choice you could make. In fact, kids who eat cereal more frequently, including presweetened cereals, tend to weigh less than kids who eat cereal less frequently — and they are better nourished,” said General Mills spokeswoman Heidi Geller. General Mills produces Reese’s Puffs, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix and Cookie Crisp, among others.

Kellogg spokesman Kris Charles said the company developed a Global Nutrient Criteria; children’s cereals that did not meet the new standard were reformulated, or the company stopped marketing them to children under 12. Charles added that from 2006-09, Kellogg reduced its advertising to children under 12 by about 50 percent. Among Kellogg’s cereals for kids are Corn Pops and Froot Loops.

PepsiCo, which owns Quaker and Cap’n Crunch, said it is working to further improve the nutrition profile of that cereal.

“As an industry leader in responsible children’s marketing, PepsiCo is making ongoing efforts to voluntarily apply a rigorous transformation of its portfolio to meet consumer needs, including products like Cap’n Crunch cereal,” spokeswoman Candace Mueller told ABC News.

Top ten advertised cereals to children with poorest nutrition rating, according to the Cereal F.A.C.T.S report
1. Reese’s Puffs
2. Corn Pops
3. Lucky Charms
4. Cinnamon Toast Crunch (tied)
4. Cap’n Crunch (tied)
6. Trix (tied)
6. Froot Loops (tied)
6. Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles (tied)
9. Cocoa Puffs
10. Cookie Crisp

Click here for the full report.

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