Got the Munchies?

The question is asked, quite frequently, what we (mostly I, for Lannie doesn’t have the munchies as often as me – I’m the late-night web surfer here) do to satisfy those urges to munch something and still stay within the confines of this fungi/mycotoxin-free boundary we have set for ourselves. First, a bit of history on “the munchies.” Let’s go backwards in time a few years…

Rich (a mythological creature used here as an example J ) is cruising the internet late at night. Absentmindedly, he reaches his hand out and grabs a bunch of Peanut M&Ms ® and stuffs them in his gob. Munch, munch... yummie. Rich stays fat, but he can’t quite figure out why, because he is convinced that the occasional handful of sweets can’t hurt anyone (advertisers wouldn’t lie to us, would they?). Rich also has extreme arthritis pain, for which he is on a couple prescription pain medications. The doctor has him convinced that this is normal with age and the fact that he has abused his body physically (skiing, spelunking, climbing, hiking, off-road motorcycling, etc.) He also has high blood pressure, but again, the doctor says this is typical of a high stress job like he has, managing an engineering department in a very competitive business. Then one night, while coming back from the barn (feeding horses), Rich has a stroke and ends up in ICU at the local hospital, then gets scheduled for brain surgery to block the aneurysm, during which he almost dies. He starts thinking he has just had a major wake-up call from a Higher Power.

Now we all know, today, that peanuts are universally contaminated with mycotoxins (remember, that word translates directly as “fungal poisons”) and the massive amount of sugar in commercial chocolate coatings feeds fungi like crazy. Rich did not know those things back then, but he knew he needed to lose some weight, yet still had no idea how to become pain free. OK, so he decides to knock off the candy.

(Side note here: I went on a label reading expedition a couple days ago, and looked at all the candy available in the typical small grocery store. Weeding out those with peanuts, I focused on those that appeared least likely to contain major toxins, picking KitKat ® as my example. After all, it’s just a few cookie wafers with chocolate on them, right? Here’s the list of what is in that candy bar. Sugar, wheat flour, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, chocolate, refined palm kernel oil, lactose (milk), milk fat, contains 2% or less of: soy lecithin, PGPR (emulsifier), yeast, artificial flavor, salt, and sodium bicarbonate. It also contained 440 calories, (1/4 the daily allotment for an average diet) 22 g of fat (14 g saturated), 50 mg sodium, 54 g carbohydrates (that’s an entire day’s allowance in one candy bar), 44g of which is from sugars. Hmmmm… cocoa butter and palm kernel oil? My wife uses those to make bath soap. Wheat flour? Possible mycotoxin source. Yeast? YEAST! Arrrrggghhh… you don’t need yeast to make cookies! Why the heck did they put yeast in there? OK, so the baking process might have killed any active yeast cells, but in the process of dying, they spew out massive quantities of mycotoxins! Sigh…) Back to the main story.

How about potato chips? Rich really liked BBQ chips, frequently eating them at the same time as his M&Ms ®, especially that one with the Mesquite flavor. And just how unhealthy can those be? I know they have starch, but potatoes are supposed to be generally OK, aren’t they?

Here’s the ingredients in Mesquite BBQ potato chips: Potatoes, vegetable oil (one or more of corn oil, cottonseed oil, and/or sunflower oil), sugar, dextrose, salt, paprika, natural flavor, tomato powder, onion powder, garlic powder, torula yeast, monosodium glutamate, spice, citric acid, caramel color. Um, what’s wrong with those things? From what you have already read in these newsletters, can you figure this out?

Even if the potatoes are not contaminated by molds, there’s this corn oil stuff (known to be contaminated), or cottonseed (also known to be contaminated); sugar (a major fungi feeder); salt (a blood pressure raiser); paprika (a safe spice), the various powders might add flavor, but because they are cooked, they contributed zero nutrients; MSG, citric acid (an old issue of this newsletter told you that is mostly made from Aspergillus mold grown on corn); and what the heck is this “torula yeast”?

First, let’s pick on MSG. Monosodium glutamate is processed free glutamic acid, which is created when protein is either partially or fully broken apart into its constituent amino acids, or glutamic acid is secreted from selected bacteria. A protein can be broken into its constituent amino acids in a number of ways (autolysis, hydrolysis, enzymolysis, and/or fermentation). In general, these processes are referred to as “hydrolyzation” of protein. When a protein is hydrolyzed, the amino acid chains in the protein are broken, and individual amino acids are freed. Acids, enzymes, and/or fermentation processes are used to hydrolyze protein. Today, the glutamic acid component of the food additive MSG is generally made by bacterial or microbial fermentation wherein the bacteria used are often, if not always, genetically engineered. In this method, bacteria are grown aerobically in a liquid nutrient medium. The bacteria have the ability to excrete glutamic acid they synthesize outside of their cell membrane into the liquid nutrient medium in which they are grown. The glutamic acid is then separated from the fermentation broth by filtration, concentration, acidification, and crystallization, and, through the addition of sodium, converted to its monosodium salt.

There are a number of straightforward bold-faced lies used by the glutamate industry in defending its contention that exposure to free glutamic acid found in processed food does not cause adverse reactions including hives, asthma, seizures, and migraine headache; could not possibly cause brain damage, learning disorders, or endocrine disturbances; and could not possibly be relevant to diverse diseases of the central nervous system such as addiction, stroke, epilepsy, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and degenerative disorders such as ALS, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Central to their argument is the lie that the processed free glutamic acid used in processed food is identical to the glutamic acid found in unprocessed, unadulterated food and in the human body. They are not the same! MSG is bad!

Beware processed food containing MSG, and do not think that when the label says “No MSG added” that the product does not have MSG in it. The MSG could have already been in the components used to create that packaged food – they just didn’t add any more of it. See http://www.truthinlabeling.org/ for more information on MSG.

OK, now, what about this torula yeast stuff? Supposedly, this is a flavor enhancer, but http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ gives the warning that it depletes your body of vitamin E. Another name for torula yeast, by the way, is Candida utilis. The word itself, torula, is Latin for fungus. It is known to cause nasty urinary tract infections and its only real usefulness is that it can utilize the pentose sugars from processed wood pulp used in making paper. What’s it doing in my potato chips? Back to the story.

Rich had also grown quite fond of another munchie: Doritos ®, particularly the Nacho Cheese flavored type. You wouldn’t believe the long list of what is in there, but you’re going to see it anyway. It starts with Whole corn, vegetable oil (one or more of corn oil, soybean oil, or sunflower oil), salt, cheddar cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), maltodextrin, wheat flour, whey, monosodium glutamate, buttermilk solids, Romano cheese from cow’s milk (part skim, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), whey protein concentrate, onion powder, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, corn flour, disodium phosphate, lactose, natural flavor (including Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40), citric acid, sugar, garlic powder, red and green bell pepper powder, sodium caseinate, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, non-fat milk solids, whey protein, and corn syrup solids. Phew! Obviously, the corn, corn syrup, corn flour, corn syrup solids, and citric acid make this one a potential killer. Again, like the potato chips, you also do not want the potential hazard of corn oil or soybean oil. Maltodextrin is often used as a flavor enhancer, but it is also a complex carbohydrate made from natural corn starch. Note the use of the word “enzymes” (twice) when explaining the sub-ingredients of cheese. They use that word because they do not want to admit that bacteria (not necessarily the good kind) have been deliberately put into your food. There are several varieties of sodium (disodium simply means the molecule has two parts sodium), which is, again, a wonderful way to raise your blood pressure. Why do they put dye in these corn chips? And more, why do they refer to those yellow and red dyes as natural flavors? Uh-oh, more citric acid. Nasty stuff, that. Sodium caseinate is a spray-dried milk protein for use in a variety of food and pharmaceutical applications where binding and emulsification properties are important. I don’t know if it is bad for you or not (yet). Disodium inosinate is a chemical that has a shady background. It is often used as a preservative in foods, especially foods in which people don’t want monosodium glutamate. Why? Because this chemical contains MSG. So it allows companies to put MSG into products and still (though illegally) label them as “No MSG Added.” Disodium guanylate is put in a lot of snack foods (no restrictions on its use) as a flavor enhancer (also chemically MSG) and is usually considered safe (Ha!) except for people suffering from gout and other conditions requiring avoidance of purines (i.e., if you have any kind of fungal issue, which everyone does). It is a fairly expensive additive, so it is not used independently of glutamic acid; if disodium guanylate is present in a list of ingredients but MSG does not appear to be, it is likely that glutamic acid is provided as part of another ingredient. So, basically, we appear to have three or four forms of MSG in this one product.

OK, so Rich has finally determined that he can’t have candy snacks and potato chips and his beloved Doritos ® are right out! How about nuts? Peanuts are a definite no-no, but even after we discovered this fungal/mycotoxin stuff, we were still of the belief that cashews were OK. After all, they are on the Phase II diet list of OK foods. True, they are high in calories, but supposedly free of mycotoxins, etc. But wait… cashews are not really even nuts, even though they look like nuts. Cashews are actually the kidney-shaped seeds that adhere to the bottom of the cashew apple, the fruit of the cashew tree, which is native to the coastal areas of northeastern Brazil. Cashews are only sold shelled and cooked because the interior of the shells contains a caustic resin, known as cashew balm, which must be carefully removed before the cashews are fit for consumption. This caustic resin is actually used in industry to make varnishes and insecticides (i.e., it is poison). And guess what cashews are cooked in? You got it: peanut oil. Look carefully at every can or jar of nuts in the store and see if you can find a proclamation somewhere that says “This product produced with the same equipment as peanuts” (or similar verbiage). Even if you can get them cooked in something besides peanut oil, likely the jar will contain tiny pieces of peanuts because they came down the same assembly line.

Now what? How about you just go outside to the garden and pick some carrots, some celery, and slice those up to chew on as snacks? You can even make a pretty safe dip with Ranch dressing mix and sour cream. Again, there is a fat issue here, but limit your intake (to avoid gaining weight) and you can stay out of the fungus/mycotoxin issue. If you don’t want store-bought Ranch dressing powder, which also contains some of the same questionable preservatives and flavor enhancers as mentioned above, Lannie is working up a recipe for homemade ranch dip and we’ll publish that later.

More than carrots or celery, I have discovered sweet onions, eaten raw. Now, I will be the first to admit that you couldn’t get an onion, cooked or raw, anywhere near my mouth prior to last summer. But I have this Persian friend who eats his Basmati rice with homemade yogurt on it and he dips his sweet raw onions in that (using the onion flake as a spoon, scoop up rice and yogurt, then bite the spoon too). At first I thought that was a truly revolting idea, but I finally got brave enough to try it and I admit now that it was delicious. OK, so my taste buds had been lying all these years. Either that, or the foods I had tried to eat before were never prepared correctly. Who knows? It could be that, in changing the types of foods I eat overall, I have detoxified my taste buds enough to be able to appreciate things I didn’t like before. The point is, today, I devour raw sweet onions (Mayan, Peruvian, Walla Walla), dipped in Lannie’s ranch dressing, or salsa, or pure sour cream with some spices added, and I have no desire for tortilla chips, potato chips, or candy. The picture above shows one of these onions, quartered. The next step is to flake it apart and break the larger flakes into “chip”-sized pieces. They make nice little scoopers for the ranch dip, salsa, sour cream, or even the yogurt. Not only are they safe, but satisfying and filling too. Try it, you’ll like it!

Oh, and all those pains and pills I was taking at the beginning of this story… well, most of the pains are gone and most of the medications are no longer necessary. I’d be willing to bet that when I am finally 100% toxin-free, I won’t be taking any medications. And I am already long since removed from the “obese” category and headed rapidly toward “skinny.” My wife (Lannie) is already complaining that I’m too bony now to be comfortable as her personal couch pillow.

Is Fat What Causes Fat?

There is a great debate amongst the various diet fads these days, whether we should eat a low carbohydrate diet or a low fat diet. My attitude is still primarily that too many calories, from whatever source, is what causes a weight gain. But that isn’t really what this particular article is about. I have read some insinuations recently that your body fat is not caused by eating fat foods. Instead, it has been suggested that the creation of a fat cell by the human body is a defensive mechanism. Defense against what?

One of them is metabolic – a defense against starvation. That is, when you consume way too few calories for your body’s needs, the body changes its metabolism and starts storing things as fat for later need. That’s a built in survival directive. At least, that is the explanation I get from dieticians and people who claim great physiology knowledge. But it is the second defense I am concerned about.

I suspect that the body creates fat as a way to isolate toxins from the system that it cannot readily flush through the normal methods. Because, once something is engulfed in a fat cell, it can no longer affect the body processes (other than the weight of all that fat crushing your heart and lungs). Could it be that those foods which we eat too much of that seem to automatically make us fatter are also those foods with the highest amount of toxins? And, is it possible that those toxins that are most readily available in our diet right now are mostly mycotoxins? Look around you at your neighbors and their children. Or look in the mirror. For those of you in my generation, look at your old high school yearbooks where everyone was thin, then look around you again. America has more fat people today than ever before, almost epidemic in numbers. Why? Lazy couch potatoes playing video games who won’t get off their butts and go out to do enough exercise? Or is it the vast amount of toxic fast/junk foods in our diets? The bad storage of our food crops? Nasty toxic pesticides and iffy fertilizers even on supposedly fresh foods? All those chemical preservative in processed foods?

This will be an ongoing research project and we’ll keep you posted. But for now, let’s talk about processed foods for a page or so.

Industrial Processing of Foods (from: http://www.consumerhealth.org/articles/display.cfm?ID=20011005222648 )

Unfortunately, in modern times we have gone from local artisan crafting of foods to factory and industrial processing, which actually destroys the food rather than making it more digestible as traditional processing did. Industrial processing depends upon sugar, white flour, processed and hydrogenated oils, additives, synthetic vitamins and an extrusion processing of grains. These are the tools of the food processing industry. Let’s have a look at the typical American breakfast of cereal, skim milk, and orange juice.

Packaged Cereals

These cereals are produced by a process called extrusion. They take the grains from the farmer, pay them a pittance for them, make the grains into a slurry and put them in a tank, a machine called an extruder. The grains are forced out of a little hole at high temperature and pressure and shaped into little o’s and flakes and shredded wheat and so forth, or puffed up. A blade slices off each little flake which is carried past a nozzle and sprayed with a coating of oil and sugar to seal off the cereal from the ravages of milk and to give it crunch.

Paul Stitt has written about the extrusion process used for these cereals, which treats every grain with very high heat and high pressure and destroys much of the nutrients in the grains. It destroys the fatty acids; it even destroys the chemical vitamins that are added. The amino acids are rendered very toxic by this process. The amino acid lysine, a crucial nutrient, is especially ravaged by extrusion. This is how all the boxed cereals are made, even the ones in the health food stores. They are all made in the same way and mostly in the same factories. All dry cereals that come in boxes (or bags) are extruded cereals.

The only advances made in the extrusion process are those that will cut cost regardless of how these will alter the nutrient content of the product. Cereals are a multi-billion dollar business, which has created huge fortunes. You would think there would be some studies on the effect on man or animals. There are no published studies and there are only two unpublished studies, which were done on rats.

The Rat Experiments

Paul Stitt wrote about an experiment conducted by a cereal company in which four sets of rats were given special diets. One group received plain whole wheat, water and synthetic vitamins and minerals. A second group received puffed wheat (an extruded cereal), water and the same nutrient solution. A third set was given water and white sugar. A fourth set was given nothing but water and chemical nutrients. The rats which received the whole wheat lived over a year on this diet. The rats that got nothing but water and vitamins lived about two months. The animals on a white sugar and water diet lived about a month. The company’s own laboratory study showed that the rats given the vitamins, water and all the puffed wheat they wanted died within two weeks – they died before the rats that got no food at all. It wasn’t a matter of the rats dying of malnutrition. Results like these suggested that there was something actually very toxic in the puffed wheat itself! Proteins are very similar to certain toxins in molecular structure, and the pressure of the puffing process may produce chemical changes, which turn a nutritious grain into a poisonous substance.

Another unpublished experiment was carried out in 1960. Researchers at Ann Arbor University were given 18 laboratory rats. They were divided into three groups: one group received corn flakes and water; a second group was given the cardboard box that the Cornflakes came in and water; the control group received rat chow and water. The rats in the control group remained in good health throughout the experiment. The rats eating the box became lethargic and eventually died of malnutrition. The rats receiving the Cornflakes and water died before the rats that were eating the box! But before death, the Cornflakes rats developed schizophrenic behavior, threw fits, bit each other and finally went into convulsions. Autopsy revealed dysfunction of the pancreas, liver and kidneys and degeneration of the nerves of the spine, all signs of insulin shock. The startling conclusion of this study is that there was more nourishment in the box than there was in the Cornflakes. This experiment was actually designed as a joke, but the results were far from funny. The results were never published and similar studies have not been conducted.

Most of America eats this kind of cereal. In fact, the USDA is gloating over the fact that children today get the vast majority of their important nutrients from the nutrients added to these boxed cereals. Many of them are at least 50% sugar; but there are many so-called health food cereals sold in the health food stores, and they are made by the same method. They use whole grains and they may use better quality sweeteners, but they are made by the same method. It might come as a shock to you, but these whole grain extruded cereals are probably more dangerous, because they are higher in protein and it is the proteins in these cereals that are so denatured by this type of processing.

The Extrusion Process

When we put these cereals through an extruder, it alters the structure of the proteins. “Seins,” which comprise the majority of proteins in corn, are located in spherical organelles called protein bodies. One study investigated change in protein body, shape, and release of encapsulated alphaseins as a result of the extrusion processing. During extrusion, they found that the protein bodies were completely disrupted and the alphaseins dispersed. The results suggest that seins in cornflakes, particularly extruded ones, are not confined to rigid protein bodies but can interact with each other and other components of the system forming new compounds which are completely foreign to the human body. The extrusion process breaks down the organelles, disperses the proteins and the proteins become toxic. When they are disrupted in this way, you have absolute chaos in your food, and it can result in a disruption of your nervous system.

For more info on this topic, Google Paul Stitt. You’ll get just over 500 hits. I particularly liked the SuperSize Phenomenon:

http://www.cbn.com/700club/guests/bios/paul_stitt_062504.asp

Turmeric Against Cancer?

Turmeric with some types of vegetables can actually help prevent and treat prostate cancer, says a new Rutgers study in the January 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research. Study authors say turmeric demonstrates “significant cancer-preventive qualities in laboratory mice.” When the seasoning is combined with phenethyl isothiocyanate, a naturally occurring substance in broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi turnips, and watercress, the combination of the two “could be effective in treating established prostate cancers,” say researchers.

Be Careful – Valentine’s Day is Near

Before your sweetheart takes a deep whiff of those roses you bought at the chain store down the street, you should know that the majority of cut flowers in the U.S. are imported from Colombia and Ecuador and have been sprayed with up to two dozen different toxic pesticides.

New Mexico to Ban Aspartame? You Go Guys!

Aspartame, also known as NutraSweet, is currently in 6,000 food products and in over 500 pharmaceutical preparations, despite over three dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies outlining its toxicity. Most recently, a study was published in the November, 2005 issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, demonstrating that rats consuming aspartame had a higher incidence of tumors, leukemia, lymphoma, and other cancers. In light of this evidence, legislation has been introduced in New Mexico that would ban aspartame. Introduced in the state Senate by Albuquerque Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino (D) as Senate Bill 250, and in the state House by Gallup Navajo Representative Irvin Harrison (D) as House Bill 202, the measure draws upon statutes that allow the state to regulate poisonous and deleterious food additives in the interest of public health. A successful bill of this type could set a powerful precedent for the whole country. In order for this bill to take the next step, an Executive Message must be given by Governor Bill Richardson.

Look Out, Farm Boy

A new study in the January 2006 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology has found that a pesticide byproduct found in the blood of 90% of U.S. men could be causing male sterility or other adverse effects in men. Researchers with the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took urine samples from 268 males undergoing treatment for low sperm counts. Researchers measured by-products of a pesticide, chlorpyrifos, and found that men with the lowest testosterone levels also had the most pesticide by-product in their systems.

It’s About Time Too

A well known national columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, Michael Fumento, has been canned after the press outlet discovered he had been taking money from corporations as incentive to bias his articles. The pro-biotech “journalist” has regularly released columns praising Monsanto as a savior of global agriculture. Two weeks ago, Scripps Howard News Service fired Fumento when they found out he had received a $60,000 “donation” from Monsanto.