The FDA has approved the active ingredient in FFO because of the farm industry. It needs it to keep livestock healthy. But the FDA is not your friend as more people are finding.

Read the flowing article and hang on tight to your garlic.

Why organized medicine wants to outlaw nutrition and turn healers into criminals
How about some truth for a change about the Food Supplements Directive in the European Union? The proponents of this directive say that it's about protecting patients from all these dangerous vitamins, minerals, supplements, plant extracts and antioxidants that are so dangerous for people. They say, "We're going to keep you safe!" Let me tell you what I think. It's an attempt to outlaw nutrition. It is an attempt to criminalize those who would offer nutritional products that can actually prevent and even treat chronic diseases.
Why would anyone want to do this? Well, look at what it's trying to ban. One of the things it's trying to ban is tocotrienols, which are various forms of vitamin E. These are naturally occurring antioxidants that are found in the plant world. You can find them in whole grains, nuts, seeds and a variety of different plants. Why would they want to ban these ingredients and make it a crime to sell these to people?
Well, think about it folks. These ingredients prevent chronic disease better than prescription drugs, without the side effects, and without the profitability of prescription drugs. If people really knew just how much they could prevent chronic disease with these plant extracts, medicinal herbs, vitamins, minerals, and supplements, the pharmaceutical industry would collapse overnight.
The defenders of "Big Pharma" and of organized medicine have realized that they can't win the information war. They can't prevent people from finding out how to be healthy. Believe me, they've tried! They've tried through censorship, oppression, influence, and even attempts to regulate medical information on the internet. They have tried to create a total blackout of information, but they've failed. Thank God we live in a (relatively) free society where the internet still operates and people have access to independent information. As people are increasingly finding out that prescription drugs actually kill you, while vitamins, nutrients, and plant-based supplements actually save your life, organized medicine had to go to Plan B. Plan B is to outlaw nutrition, which is what the European Union Food Supplements Directive is all about.
Let's take this one step further here. Let’s assume they succeed in outlawing this nutrition. It's suddenly illegal to buy any amount of vitamin C over 50 mg, for example. It's illegal to buy various minerals, such as vanadium or boron. It becomes illegal to buy tocotrienols, or other antioxidants derived from plants. Well, what's the next step? It is, of course, to outlaw medicinal foods entirely!
Can you imagine a world in which it would be illegal to purchase and consume garlic? It sounds ridiculous, right? You say, "Oh, come on, that's just exaggeration!" But is it really? Garlic is one of the most medicinally potent foods in the world. This is a product that prevents and treats topical and internal cancers. Raw garlic juice is one of the most potent anti-cancer supplements you can consume. You can go to a grocery store right now, buy garlic, and make this yourself. This is more powerful than many drugs out there. It's a broad-spectrum antibiotic. It's antiviral, antibacterial, anti-cancer and anti-tumor. This is an amazing healing food.
Would they try to outlaw that? Right now, they're trying to outlaw extracts from different plants. It's only a small step for them to actually outlaw these foods. You'd have to have a prescription to buy garlic. It would be a controlled substance, and if you grew it in your own garden, you'd be arrested as a criminal. Don't believe me? Just try to grow omega-3-rich hemp seeds in your backyard and see how long it takes for the DEA to show up at your doorstep.
You have a great number of foods out there that actually treat, not just prevent, chronic diseases. Molasses, for one, is a nutrient-rich sweetener. It's made from the byproduct of whole grain processing. If people ate more molasses or used it in their cooking or their oatmeal, they would get more B vitamins, more magnesium, more zinc. They would be healthier. We'd see a drop in the rate of Alzheimer's disease, nervous system disorders, and behavioral disorders, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and other so called "behavioral diseases."
You may think it sounds crazy that these foods would some day be banned. But I think it's crazy to ban extracts of these foods. They're trying to ban these natural ingredients right now. Beyond the fact that I think it is unethical to do so, it is a crime against humanity to restrict people from access to the gifts provided by Mother Nature. As human beings, we have a God-given right to eat plants, to use the medicinal herbs found in our natural environment, and to heal ourselves using these gifts provided by nature. I believe any attempt to criminalize our connection with nature is itself a crime, and should be treated as such.
Nutrition is bad for you, didn't you know?
The Food Supplements Directive (in Europe) and this whole effort by the FDA (in the U.S.) to outlaw certain medicinal herbs and eventually nutritional supplements is based on the outlandish premise that prescription drugs are good for you and nutrition is bad for you. This is such a reversal of reality that it's absolutely astounding they can get away with even talking about it without being laughed off of the television show or radio interview.
If you think about it, prescription drugs are what's killing people. Prescription drugs are extremely dangerous, even according to the statistics put out by organized medicine. We have one class of drugs, Cox-2 inhibitors, which, all by itself, is responsible for at least 144,000 heart attacks in the United States alone. Over 40 percent of those are fatal. The FDA admitted all of this information, yet said, "That's not dangerous enough for us. Let's put this drug back on the market." They rubber-stamped it "APPROVED BY THE FDA." This is now safe for consumption, according to the FDA.
Meanwhile, a Chinese herb, ma huang, or "Ephedra," as it's better known, is blamed for the death of a few dozen individuals who overdosed like crazy trying to lose weight. A few dozen people and the FDA said, "This is dangerous! We have to take this off the market! It's unregulated. It's a Chinese herb. It will kill you!" It is now a crime to sell Ephedra. They're criminalizing medicinal herbs, while legalizing the drugs that kill you. This is what's going on today.
It's really about control
There's a lot at stake here -- a lot of power, control, and, of course, a whole lot of money. The people at the top of organized medicine's hierarchy, the FDA, the American Medical Association, top doctors, surgeons, hospitals, and so on, have all realized that if nutrition succeeds, and if people become educated about how to prevent disease through simple, easily available foods, then they are going to lose a lot of money. They're going to lose a lot of patients, whom they're depending on. You have drug companies looking at the coming wave of Alzheimer's and jumping up and down with joy, thinking, "Look how many customers we're going to have. Let's come up with an Alzheimer's drug!" Research then comes out showing that Alzheimer's drugs cause dementia. Yes, it's true. Pain drugs cause heart attacks, antidepressant drugs cause people to pick up automatic weapons and blow away their classmates; you can just go on down the list. These drugs are designed to treat disease and improve people's lives but they only destroy lives. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop the drug companies from being excited about the opportunity to sell these drugs to people.
It's all about selling the drugs. Really, the FDA is just one gatekeeper by which these drugs can be sold. The FDA is being exploited and controlled by drug companies. The FDA rubber-stamps drugs that are highly toxic and extremely dangerous. These drugs continue to be sold to people all around the world at ridiculously high prices. It's a big scam, and there's big money at stake.
That's why they've got to attack nutritional supplements. They've got to outlaw vitamin C, vitamin E, and minerals that prevent disease. They've got to criminalize them. Their strategy right now is to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry. This whole Food Supplements Directive in Europe is really nothing more than an attempt to protect profits. By doing that, they're committing a crime against humanity, in my belief. They're trying to say that it should be illegal for people to choose foods, medicines, and healing compounds provided by nature.
A crazy idea: let's outlaw dangerous pharmaceuticals
I have an idea, which may be crazy, but which I'll throw out there just in case. What if we outlawed all the drugs that killed people? What if we made it illegal to sell dangerous prescription drugs that actually cause chronic disease, that cause people to go crazy, or that cause people to have heart attacks and die? How about that? Now, there's a crazy idea. Then, what if we banned drug advertising so these drug companies can't run highly deceptive ads on television that get people running to their doctors' offices asking for drugs by name, even when they have no idea what those drugs do? Patients demand, "Give me the drug!" The doctor asks, "What do you need it for?" "I don't know, but those people on TV look really happy!" This happens every day. Any general practitioner will tell you the same thing.
Let's educate the public
So let's ban everything that actually harms people. Let's then spend some taxpayer money on public education campaigns to teach people how to be healthy. We could start with foods. We could start by teaching expectant mothers how to have good nutrition so that they give birth to healthy babies with healthy nervous systems, babies who aren't born predisposed to diabetes, schizophrenia, or other disorders. From there we can teach our nation's youth how to make healthier food choices.
While we're on a roll, why don't we take all the disease causing foods out of our school lunch programs. Why don't we ban fast food restaurants from hospitals. Let's put some healthy foods in people's mouths. Let's visit the nursing homes around the country, look at their diets, and say, "No wonder these people are half-mad. Look at what they're being fed." Let's put some healthy foods into their diets.
Let's teach people about the real health potential of sunlight. Let's teach them that if you get sunlight on your skin, you can prevent prostate cancer, breast cancer, and type 2 diabetes. You can prevent osteoporosis, schizophrenia, mental depression, and many other diseases and disorders just by getting some natural sunlight.
So this is my crazy idea: Let's ban the things that kill people, while supporting the things that improve people's quality of life, keep people healthy, and prevent chronic disease. Now, I know it's a radical idea and it would have terrible side effects, such as plummeting health care costs, increased longevity, increased quality of life and happiness across the entire population. It would have all these terrible side effects; for example, we wouldn't have such violent behavior in our young adults. I don't know if society can handle these side effects; but if it can, this could be a good route to go.
One more side effect would be that many corporate executives of pharmaceutical companies would find themselves out of work. That would just be terrible. Maybe we could have a government subsidy program to find new jobs for these people, or train them on something useful like web page design. They'll need some real jobs, right? If you can't sell drugs any more, you've got to do something useful for society.
The national doctor re-education program
The same would hold for all the doctors as well, the general practitioners who practice old school medicine. They wouldn't have as much work either. I think we'd have to retrain them. We could start by actually giving them a real education in health. We could start by teaching them about nutrition. The fact is they never learned that in medical school. Med schools don't teach nutrition. These doctors are clueless about it unless they went outside mainstream medicine and learned on their own.
When doctors find that they're out of work because people are healthy, because they're avoiding prescription drugs, eating healthy foods, and using medicinal plants, we might retrain those doctors to become health coaches. They could go into nursing homes and schools, and be hired as health coaches teaching people how to be healthy. There's an idea! Why don't we have our healthcare professionals actually teach health instead of being experts in disease?
From the history of medicine comes the idea: "First, do no harm." Today organized medicine is doing tremendous harm. Until we make a change, they have no right to call themselves doctors at all. They're not doctors, they're drug dealers. A true doctor is someone who teaches according to the Latin root of the word, which means "teacher." If you call yourself a doctor, but you're not teaching your patients about nutrition and lifestyle changes, you're living a lie. On the other hand, if you are teaching it, good for you. You should get more patients. You keep your patients healthy; they could tell more friends and bring you more business. You deserve to be rewarded for helping people stay healthy.
Conveniently forgetting the true history of medicine
One more point relevant to the history of medicine and the European Union Food Supplements Directive: The word "pharmaceutical" has as its root "pharm," which of course means "plant." Pharmaceuticals have their origins in plant-based medicine. That's where all pharmaceuticals originally came from. If you think about it now, things have gone 180 degrees! The pharmaceutical industry itself is trying to outlaw plants. How bizarre is that? It is a total disconnect from nature and from the history of medicine. It is a disconnection between those selling the drugs and the patients who take them. It's all about disconnection out there in organized medicine. A lot of doctors won't even touch their patients. It unnerves them.
Let's turn to natural healing, where we have connections, we have openness and we believe in health freedoms. We believe in freedom of choice. We believe in education. And we believe that individuals should have the right to choose what medicine, herbs, and supplements they wish to take to treat or prevent their own diseases or disorders, or just to stay healthy or enhance their health.
Healers and patients can have a connection. The patient, however, is the only real healer. The doctor or practitioner can only really educate and support the patient's own healing process. These are the beliefs of natural health. These are the beliefs which, frankly, organized medicine doesn't want you to ever adopt. They want you to believe that nature has no answers for you whatsoever. They want you to believe that an R&D lab, with its synthesized chemicals, is the only place where you should get your healing chemicals or compounds. They think that man is smarter than nature. They think that a man-made lab can produce smarter disease prevention chemicals than the lab which has been running for millions and millions of years out there called Mother Nature.
Covertly stealing from Mother Nature
Secretly, however, behind closed doors, all these pharmaceutical companies have people across the world trying to find medicinal plants to look for answers. They are basically stealing them from the native healers, the indigenous tribes in the rainforest, the deserts of Australia, you name it. They're stealing all these plants, then taking them back to the laboratory and trying to synthesize them. That's what they're doing behind closed doors. They know that the answers are in the plant. Publicly, however, they want to outlaw those plants. You see how they work this con?
I say to all of you out there reading who want to be healthy: Bypass all of that. Bypass the pharmaceutical industry. Bypass the profit, the greed and the control. Bypass the heavily bureaucratic FDA, which is dishonest and is operating in collusion with the drug companies. Bypass a traditionally trained medical doctor, and bypass all the costs and medical bills and bankruptcy that go along with being involved with organized medicine. Instead, go straight to nature.
You do that by hooking up with a naturopath. You do that by relying on plants, foods, natural environment, sunshine, fresh water, clean air, and by getting grounded with the earth. That's how you get healthy. I've done it, along with thousands of others who have done it. Organized medicine has no benefit whatsoever in modern society, except if you've been in a car crash or something. If an iron girder from a steel building falls on you and you need some surgery, then definitely get some surgery. American surgeons are some of the best in the world. They can stop the bleeding from gunshot wounds and put you back together. However, they can't prevent chronic diseases and they have no clue how to treat them.
Don't believe me? Observe this for yourself...
If you're skeptical of everything I've said so far, here's a little experiment you can run. Go out and find yourself people who are steeped in organized medicine. Find people who take a lot of pharmaceuticals, who get surgical procedures every time their doctor says they need one. Check these people out and see how healthy they are.
Are they fit and trim? Are they happy? Are they emotionally stable? Do they have healthy relationships in their life? How do they look? Do they look energetic? What's the color of their skin? Is it pale and yellowish? Do they have bags under their eyes? Is it discolored? What do they look like?
Afterwards, find yourself a bunch of people who follow natural health. Find people who do yoga, who get acupuncture, who eat well, who supplement with superfoods and supergreen supplements. Find people who take vitamins and use medicinal herbs. Find the kind of people you'd find in health food stores. Look at those people and ask yourself the same questions. How do they look? What kind of health do they seem to be demonstrating? If you compare these two groups, it becomes immediately obvious that the results you get are based on the belief system you follow.
If you follow organized medicine, take those prescription drugs, go get those surgical procedures, and you believe all those doctors, the FDA, and everything the drug companies tell you, you're going to be quite diseased. You're going to be miserable. You're going to have a shortened lifespan. You're going to have a shortened quality of life. You're probably going to be in chronic pain, and you'll have multiple side effects from all the prescription drugs you're taking. You'll have skyrocketing medical bills. You might end up in medical bankruptcy, and you'll be no better off than having done nothing.
If you follow natural health, on the other hand, you can be a healthy, happy person. You can be energetic, have fantastic mental clarity, and be free of chronic pain. You can reverse diseases such as type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and osteoporosis. You can avoid dementia, Alzheimer's, and all these so-called "diseases of aging." You can be healthy and happy. That's the world of natural health.
Stop trying to justify organized medicine
Some people think they can straddle these two worlds. They say, "I'm going to get chemotherapy, but I'm going to take some chlorella together with it. That way, I'll be practicing integrated medicine!" Integrated medicine is a huge hoax. It's basically a way for organized medicine to try to keep up with the times, to say that you can use these herbs only as a minor part of this traditional health procedure. They want to relegate everything that's alternative into the fringes of treatment. Integrative medicine is a joke.
Alternative medicine, or what I call "advanced medicine," is where the real healing power is. That's where you make a choice and say, "I'm not going to follow organized medicine any more. I'm going to get healthy. I'm going to start by taking responsibility for my health outcome. I'm going to fire my MD, and go get an ND, a naturopathic doctor. I'm going to start working on my foods, my nutrition, my supplements, and my lifestyle. I'm going to change my life and take responsibility for the outcome." That's where you get healthy. That's where you can bypass all that organized medicine.
Again, this is the kind of information that organized medicine hopes you never hear. They don't want people to bypass their system. They want people to run through their system like a factory. "Here, take these pills -- we'll make a dollar every day for each pill." But I believe you don't need that system. All you need is a naturopathic physician, a naturopathic approach to life, herbs, good nutrition, healing foods, natural sunlight, and the list goes on. These are easy things to accomplish. The answers are quite obvious.
Your health freedoms are at stake right now
Returning to the Foods Supplements Directive in Europe, it's really just the tip of the iceberg. The effort to outlaw plant extracts, certain vitamins, and certain minerals is just an extension of the philosophy that nutrition should be criminalized. It's part of the belief that people should be controlled and forced into a system of organized medicine based on huge egos, high profitability, control, and limiting people's access to information and choices regarding what they can use to improve their health.
That's why it is important for all of us that the Food Supplements Directive fails and is ruled illegal. Only when that happens can we create a system of more freedom, more awareness and more healing. People need choices. They need to have access to nature and to nutrition. The very idea that this Food Supplements Directive was even under consideration is quite maddening. Hopefully, sanity will prevail and the European Union will not outlaw nutrition.
Here in the United States, we can also hopefully move in the same positive direction by keeping nutrition freely available, and by making sure that DSHEA remains in place so that nutritional supplements remain legal and prescriptions are not required. Hopefully, we can get some criminal convictions for the real criminals out there: the people running these pharmaceutical companies, the decision makers at the FDA, and the people at the top of the hierarchy in American organized medicine, who are directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans each and every year.
If we can put those people behind bars, we can reform the FDA. We can then start educating people about the real causes of health, about how to take charge of their health outcome and be healthy for a lifetime. We can create a whole new society, a whole new generation of healthy young people who can learn, be creative and be happy. We can see health care costs plummet in this country. That's really what we need to see if we're going to be competitive in the global marketplace.
The alternative is to continue down the path of organized medicine. We will just get sicker, more miserable, and truly more insane as a nation if things continue. As if we're not insane enough already in this country, it could get even worse! We've got to reverse that, and it all starts with nutrition and access to nature.
Don't let the criminals running the organized medicine con outlaw your access to nature's healing gifts. They want to criminalize nutrition, and turn healers into convicts. If they succeed, only their own highly toxic drugs will remain legal, and the only health choice you have left will be to pick your poison.



About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. He is the writer and singer of 'I Want My Bailout Money,' 'Don't Inject Me' and other popular hip-hop songs on socially-conscious topics. He's also a veteran of the software technology industry, having founded a personalized mass email software product used to deliver email newsletters to subscribers. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and pursues hobbies such as Pilates, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org

Top 10 Pet Toxins of 2010

One I did not see in the following is the toilet bowl stickon cleaners. Dog will seek out the toilet bowl when ever he can.

Both known and unknown toxins can be found hiding in our houses and yards. In 2010, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) in Urbana, IL, fielded more than 167,000 phone calls about pets exposed to possibly poisonous substances.
Human MedicationsHuman medications are once again at the top of the list of pet toxins for 2010. Almost 25 percent of our calls concerned human medications accidentally ingested by pets. The most common culprits include over-the-counter medications (ibuprofen, acetaminophen), antidepressants and ADHD medications.
Insecticides
About 20% of the calls to the APCC are about insecticides. Insecticides are commonly used on our pets for flea control and around our houses to control crawling and flying bugs. The most serious poisonings occurred when products not labeled for use in cats were applied to them. Always follow label directions.
Rodenticides
Baits used to kill mice and rats are mostly grain based. Not only does this attract rodents, but it attracts dogs and cats. There are several different types of rodenticides that can cause seizures, internal bleeding or kidney failure. Always make sure these items are placed in areas that pets cannot access.
People Food
Xylitol, grapes, raisins, onions and garlic are commonly ingested by our pets. Grapes and raisins can cause kidney failure in dogs, while onions and garlic can cause anemia if enough is ingested. Xylitol, a sugar alcohol used to sweeten sugar free gums and mints, can cause low blood sugar and liver failure in dogs.
Veterinary Medications
Many medications made for our pets are flavored for ease of giving. Unfortunately, that means that animals may ingest the entire bottle of medication if they find it tasty. Common chewable medications include arthritis and incontinence medications. Contact your veterinarian if your pet ingests more than his proper dose of medication.
Chocolate
Chocolate contains methylxanthines, which act as stimulants to our pets. The darker the chocolate, the more methylxanthines it contains. Methylxanthines can cause agitation, vomiting, diarrhea, high heart rate, muscle tremors, seizures and death.
Household Toxins
Cleaning supplies, such as bleach, acids, alkalis and other detergents, can cause corrosive injury to the mouth and stomach. Other household items such as batteries and liquid potpourri can cause similar problems. Always keep these toxins behind securely locked doors.
Plants
Both house plants and outdoor plants can be ingested by our pets. Lilies can cause life-threatening kidney failure in cats, while sago palms can cause liver failure in dogs and cats. Keep house plants and bouquets away from your pets.
Herbicides
Many herbicides have a salty taste, and our pets will commonly ingest them. Always follow label directions and keep pets off treated areas until they are dry.


Antifreeze, fertilizers and ice melts are all substances that animals can find outdoors. Keep these items in securely locked sheds or on high shelves where pets cannot get to them.
If you have any reason to suspect your pet has ingested something toxic, please contact your veterinarian or the Animal Poison Control Center’s 24-hour hotline at (888) 426-4435.

Groundbreaking report shatters myths of vaccine industry‏

Vaccines: Get the Full Story
Doctors, Nurses and Scientists on Protecting Your Child and Yourself
Nicola Antonucci, MD Todd M. Elsner, DC Alexander Kotok, MD, PhD Máximo Sandín, PhD
David Ayoub, MD Jorge Esteves, MD Eneko Landaburu, MD Len Saputo, MD
Nancy Turner Banks, MD Edward "Ted" Fogarty, MD Luc Lemaire, DC Michael Schachter, MD
Timur Baruti, MD Jack Forbush, DO Janet Levatin, MD Viera Scheibner, PhD
Danny Beard, DC Milani Gabriele, CRNA, RN Thomas Levy, MD, JD Penelope Shar, MD
Françoise Berthoud, MD Sheila Gibson, MD, BSc Stephen L'Hommedieu, DC Bruce Shelton, MD, MD(H)
Russell Blaylock, MD Mike Godfrey, MBBS Paul Maher, MD, MPH Debbi Silverman, MD
Fred Bloem, MD Isaac Golden, ND Andrew Maniotis, PhD Kenneth “KP” Stoller, MD
Laura Bridgman, FNP, ND Gary Goldman, PhD Steve Marini, PhD, DC Terri Su, MD
Kelly Brogan, MD Garry Gordon, MD, DO, MD(H) Juan Manuel Martínez Méndez, MD Didier Tarte, MD
Sarah Buckley, MD Doug Graham, DC Sue McIntosh, MD Leigh Ann Tatnall, RN
Rashid Buttar, DO Boyd Haley, PhD Richard Moskowitz, MD Adiel Tel‐Oren, MD, DC
Harold Buttram, MD Gayl Hamilton, MD Sheri Nakken, RN, MA Sherri Tenpenny, DO
Lisa Cantrell, RN Linda Hegstrand, MD, PhD Christiane Northrup, MD Renee Tocco, DC
Lua Català Ferrer, MD James Howenstine, MD Amber Passini, MD Demetra Vagias, MD, ND
Jennifer Craig, PhD, BSN, MA Suzanne Humphries, MD Ronald Peters, MD, MPH Franco Verzella, MD
Robert Davidson, MD, PhD Belén Igual Diaz, MD Jean Pilette, MD Julian Whitaker, MD
Ana de Leo, MD Philip Incao, MD Pat Rattigan, ND Ronald Whitmont, MD
Carlos de Quero Kops, MD Joyce Johnson, ND Zoltan Rona, MD, MSc Betty Wood, MD
Carolyn Dean, MD, ND A. Majid Katme, MBBCh, DPM Chaim Rosenthal, MD Eduardo Ángel Yahbes, MD
Mayer Eisenstein, MD, JD, MPH Tedd Koren, DC Robert Rowen, MD
The above signatories represent a spectrum that includes pediatricians, family physicians, brain surgeons, and professors of pathology, chemistry, biology and immunology. All have independently researched the real science and have come to the conclusions you will read about in this document. MD, DO, MB, MBBCh all indicate a doctor of medicine. ND indicates a medically trained and licensed doctor in some areas. FNP indicates a family nurse practitioner.
Ever wonder why doctors can’t find the cause for many diseases? It’s because they are conditioned to ignore the relationship between illness and vaccines. These are some of the diseases that have documented associations with vaccines:
Allergies and eczema
Arthritis
Asthma

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Autism
Acid reflux requiring an infant to take proton pump inhibitors, which have many side effects
Cancer
Diabetes (infant and childhood)
Kidney disease
Miscarriages
Long list of neurological and autoimmune diseases
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
And many, many more

These are some known vaccine side effects, documented in medical literature and/or in package inserts:
Arthritis, bleeding disorders, blood clots, heart attacks, sepsis
Ear infections
Fainting (with reports of broken bones)
Kidney failure requiring dialysis
Seizures/epilepsy
Severe allergic reactions, such as hives and anaphylaxis
Sudden death
Many common diagnoses given for hospital admissions.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, (NVICP) has awarded more than $1.2 billion in damages to children and adults injured by vaccines.

Autism is associated with vaccines.
Autism was rare until the mass vaccination programs were accelerated in 1991, with the introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine and the HiB (meningitis) vaccine. Tens of thousands of parents will attest that autism appeared in their children very soon after they were given these, and other, vaccines.
Study the information on the website www.fourteenstudies.org. You will find the studies denying the association between autism and vaccines to be highly questionable.

Drug companies, insurance companies and the medical system get rich when you get sick.
Vaccines do not give life‐long immunity, which means booster shots are recommended.
Each booster shot increases the risk of more side effects.
Vaccine side effects can make you sick for the rest of your life. Conveniently, there are many drugs to treat the side effects caused by vaccines.
In the U.S., neither drug companies nor doctors can be sued when something bad happens from a vaccination. Both are protected by the 1986 National Child Vaccine Injury Act. This law, signed into effect by then‐president Ronald Reagan decreed: “No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine‐related injury or death.” (Public Law 99‐660)

Many doctors and health‐care practitioners do not get vaccinated and do not vaccinate their children. Why not?
They know vaccines are not proven to be safe or effective.
They know vaccines contain dangerous substances.
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They know vaccines cause serious health problems.
They have treated patients with serious side effects from vaccines.

The only people who benefit from being healthy are you and those you care about.
Drug companies have infiltrated and seized control over the entire healthcare system, including medical schools, medical journals, hospitals, clinics and the local pharmacy. A doctor’s very livelihood thus depends on blind faith, without questioning any aspect of any vaccination. Even when obvious evidence of vaccine damage occurs right before a doctor’s eyes, s/he is usually unwilling to consider a vaccine as the cause. Though uncorrupt science and medicine support rejection of vaccines, doing so can be considered professional career suicide. The signatories to this document boldly risk this end for the safety of you and your child.
Hospitals benefit financially from hospitalizations and tests.
Drug companies make billions of dollars from vaccines.
Drug companies make tens of billions of dollars from drugs given to treat side effects and life‐time illnesses caused by vaccines.
Vaccines are the backbone of the medical system. Without vaccines, healthcare costs would go down because we would have a healthier overall society. We have exchanged chicken pox for autism, flu for asthma, ear infections for diabetes. The list goes on and on. In the zeal to eliminate a short list of relatively benign microbes, we have traded temporary illnesses for pervasive, life‐long diseases, disorders, dysfunctions and disabilities.

How many vaccines are there?
If U.S. children receive all doses of all vaccines, they are injected with up to 35 shots that contain 113 different kinds of disease particles, 59 different chemicals, four types of animal cells/DNA, human DNA from aborted fetal tissue and human albumin.
If you think you don’t have to worry about vaccines because your children are older, think again. There are at least 20 more vaccines currently in the development pipeline for release in the next few years, mostly targeting adolescents and adults.

Some Vaccine Ingredients: How is it possible that vaccines will not be harmful to your health?
Stray viruses and bacteria from the animal cell cultures that vaccines are made in.
Mercury, a well‐documented neurotoxin, is still in the multi‐dose flu vaccines throughout the world. Trace amounts remain in several other vaccines.
Aluminum, a poison that can cause bone, bone marrow and brain degeneration.
Animal cells from monkeys, dog kidneys, chickens, cows, and humans.
Formaldehyde (embalming fluid), a known carcinogen.
Polysorbate 80, known to cause infertility in female mice and testicular atrophy in male mice.
Gelatin, from pigs and cows, known to cause anaphylactic reactions, is found in large quantities in the MMR, chickenpox and shingles vaccines.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) in inhaled flu vaccines, is known to cause metabolic disturbances (e.g. diabetes), seizures and other neurologic disorders.
4
Conflicts of Interest
The same people who make rules and recommendations about vaccination profit from vaccine sales. For example, Dr. Julie Gerberding, who was in charge of the CDC for eight years, is now the President of Merck Vaccines. Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice(ACIP), developed and patented his own vaccine.
According to the CDC, the average U.S. 10‐doctor pediatric group has over $100,000 of vaccine inventory in their office to sell. These doctors make money from office visits and from giving your children vaccines, and also from follow up office visits for assessing reactions.

U.S. pediatricians reportedly make quarterly bonuses from the HMOs they work for by maintaining high vaccination rates in their practices and have reportedly been reprimanded by insurance companies if their vaccination rates fall.

Is there any research that shows the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated children? The Cal‐Oregon project sponsored by Generation Rescue surveyed parents of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated U.S. children. Of the 17,674 children included in the survey, the results showed:
Vaccinated children had 120% more asthma.
Vaccinated boys had 317% more ADHD.
Vaccinated boys had 185% more neurologic disorders.
Vaccinated boys had 146% more autism.

Girls represented only 20% of the total number of children in the survey. To read the full study for yourself, go to www.generationrescue.org/pdf/survey.pdf. To read a report on the low incidence of autism among unvaccinated Amish children go to http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/quick‐compare‐2. More studies on autism are found here http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/japvaxautism/ and here http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/britvaxautism/
Vaccine Exemptions in the U.S.
You do have the right to refuse. Use it.
Your child does not have to be vaccinated to attend public school.
Every state has exemptions giving you the right to refuse unwanted vaccines. http://exemptmychild.com/10752
Find a healthcare provider who agrees with your choice to not vaccinate and will respect you at www.vaccinationcouncil.org/providers.pdf

Many choose health and safety by saying no to vaccines.
Groups that generally do not vaccinate include holistic practitioners, chiropractors, parents who home school, and those who belong to certain religions.
Thousands of testimonies written by parents of non‐vaccinated children about the state of their children’s robust health are available many places online.
Vaccination decisions are between you and your spouse/partner. No one else needs to know. It is not the business of your family members, your neighbors, or your in‐laws.

To have vibrant health, you will need to take the initiative to learn some new things. 5
The safe choice is to say no to vaccines. You have control over health choices you make for yourself and your children. You have no control over the outcome of a vaccination.
You do not need a pediatrician to simply weigh and measure your child and give shots. Consider a naturopathic doctor, a pediatric chiropractor, a doctor of oriental medicine, or a homeopathic doctor. You may find that family doctors of osteopathic medicine are more open‐minded about vaccine‐free choices.
Babies are born with powerful, natural defenses. If this were not so, all would die shortly after birth. Enormous cascades of complex immune processes start with the first cry. This needs to occur naturally, without the interruption caused by the injections of toxic substances.
Learn about the “vaccine preventable” diseases. Your children will never come in contact with most of them and if they do, nearly all healthy and unvaccinated children recover uneventfully, with long term immunity. Health cannot come through a needle.
Learn about the importance of fever, how to take care of it at home and when it is time to call the doctor. Most fevers resolve on their own, with care and support, in just a few hours. www.drtenpenny.com/fever.aspx
Understand that your child can be vaccinated and still contract the illness you are wishing to prevent. Vaccines may not provide the protection that people assume they do. Health cannot come through a needle.
Learn that the primary keys to health are good nutrition, pure water, adequate sleep, routine exercise and happiness.
Learn some simple information about vitamins, especially the critically important information about vitamin D3. Learn how to use basic herbs and basic homeopathy for health and for addressing minor illnesses.
Learn more than your doctor about vaccines. Your medical doctor has probably never read anything about vaccines except drug‐company and CDC‐sponsored publications that support their use.
Know that healthcare is something you pay for; sick care is covered by insurance. Your insurance will pay for drugs and vaccines.
Budget accordingly to stay healthy. Your life depends on it.

Web resources for more information and help
International Medical Council on Vaccination (free webinars) www.vaccinationcouncil.org
Example IMCV regional sites www.imcv‐wi.org, www.imcv‐me.org
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny www.drtenpenny.com, Facebook www.facebook.com/vaccineinfo
ThinkTwice Global Vaccine Institute www.thinktwice.com
Vaccination Liberation www.vaclib.org
U.S. doctors who don’t vaccinate www.novaxdoctors.webs.com
Holistic Moms www.holisticmoms.org
Moms Like Me www.momslikeme.com

Books for more information and a place to start
Saying No To Vaccines – Sherri Tenpenny, DO
Make an Informed Vaccine Decision For the Health of Your Child – Mayer Eisenstein, MD, JD, MPH
Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? – Neil Miller
Child Health Guide – Randall Neustaedter
6
Childhood Vaccinations: Questions All Parents Should Ask – Tedd Koren, DC
How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor – Robert Mendelsohn, MD
Jabs, Jenner and Juggernauts – Jennifer Craig, PhD, BSN, MA, Dhom
Natural Alternatives to Vaccination – Zoltan Rona, MD
The Crime of Vaccination – Tenison Deane, MD
The Sanctity of Human Blood: Vaccination is Not Immunization – Tim O’Shea, DC
Vaccination – Gerhard Buchwald, MD
Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research – Viera Scheibner, PhD

Medical doctors(MD,DO, 4yr ND), Doctors of Chiropractic, health care workers who work in a conventional setting, and holistic practitioners wishing to participate in future versions of this document or who would like to join our group, please send an e‐mail to sayno@vaccinationcouncil.org
International Medical Council on Vaccination www.vaccinationcouncil.org www.facebook.com/vaccinationcouncil
2011‐02‐01

TAXING OUR SAVINGS AND TAKING OUR VITAMINES?!

A lot of what i send come from NaturalNews. These guys know their stuff. Check out what the Government is trying to do to vitamines and the following taxes on your property and savings. Makes sick just thinking about it and without vitaamins to help cope with the stress...well, you get the picture.

Use the link to tell congress to leave you vitamines alone!

Organic Jan


Health care reform to tax all home sales and savings income


Dear NaturalNews readers,
The U.S. health care reform bill seems to turn up all sorts of new, shocking surprises on a regular basis.
The latest surprise is a 3.8% tax on income from home sales, rental income and other sources -- all due to take effect in 2013.
And where does this tax money go? It goes directly into the pockets of drug companies, cancer clinics, vaccine manufacturers and other industry giants in the "sick-care" industry who prey on Medicare funding to line their pockets.
Read more in my weekend update:
http://www.naturalnews.com/029849_health_care_reform_taxes.html

Your vitamins and supplements are under attack in Washington, but some new bills aim to restore and protect your freedoms. We need your help to send a message to legislators on these important proposed laws:
http://www.naturalnews.com/029840_free_speech_nutritional_science.html

Check this out: Depressioncan be treated with electromagnets(and it works better than drugs):
http://www.naturalnews.com/029848_depression_electromagnets.html

Considering a mammogram? New evidence reveals they really don't work:
http://www.naturalnews.com/029839_mammograms_risk.html

P.S.Check out this brilliant and genuine video from Magnus Mulliner who talks about sugar as a "class A drug" (while holding his beautiful baby):
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=066E7E0755551223669F7ADF931B65A3

More news continues below on the benefits of green tea, the healing powers of coconut, news about the upcoming Franken-potato, how to support your adrenalswith vitamin Cand much more (see below)...


Today's Feature Stories:

Obama health care reform imposes 3.8% tax on all home sales and home rental income
(NaturalNews) The news about Obama's health care reform just keeps getting worse -- and we only find these things long after the bill has passed, of course. The newest revelation concerns a 3.8% tax on home sales and home rental income which will...
Depression can be treated with electromagnets (better than drugs)
(NaturalNews) A therapy known as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which involves inducing electromagnetic fields in the brain, may ease the symptoms of depression in hard-to-treat patients better than antidepressant drugs, researchers...
Schoolchildren have access to milk and sugary drinks at lunch, but not water
(NaturalNews) Some school districts around the country have taken drastic measures to improve childhood health by banning sugary soda beverages from their cafeterias, but according to the Los Angeles Times millions of California schoolchildren...
Researchers in India unveil Franken-potato
(NaturalNews) Mad food scientists are at it again, this time targeting potatoes with altered genetics that they say improve the starchy vegetable's nutritional value. Subhra Chakraborty and her team from the National Institute of Plant Genome Research...
Unnecessary stomach drugs exposing millions to side effects
(NaturalNews) Widespread overprescription of potent and expensive stomach drugs is unnecessarily exposing millions of patients to potentially devastating and even fatal side effects, according to a study conducted by researchers from the San Francisco...
The Hormone Pregnenolone is a Memory Enhancer and Healer
Pregnenolone is a hormone produced by the glands, the liver, skin and retina and in the brain itself. Pregnenolone is made from cholesterol in the cells of both the adrenal gland and the central nervous system. Studies have identified pregnenolone...
Green Tea and DHA: Nutrients Promote Health and Assist Weight Loss
Green tea and the Omega-3 fatty acid DHA combine to provide a powerful natural shield against certain forms of cancer, heart disease, stroke and dementia while assisting weight loss and maintenance. Both of these nutrients directly target...
How to Use Vitamin C for Adrenal Support
Many alternative health experts consider vitamin C to be the most important nutrient for adrenal fatigue recovery. Healthy adrenal function requires vitamin C, and some of the highest concentrations of vitamin C in the whole body are found...
Discover the Superfood Power of Coconut
Foods that have an incredible array of health benefits that go well beyond just their nutrient value are considered 'super-foods.' Mothers' milk is considered the most perfect food on the planet for human consumption do to its ideal nutritional...
Help end criminalization of vitamin, supplement makers in America
(NaturalNews) Telling the truth in America is currently illegal... at least as far as food and supplements are concerned. You see, for decades the federal government has suppressed the free speech rights of food and supplement manufacturers, preventing...
Mammograms don't really work, say researchers
(NaturalNews) You now have another good reason to skip that next mammogram, based on new research out of Norway. According to findings by Dr. Mette Kalager and his team from Oslo University Hospital, getting a mammogram appears to cut the risk of dying...
Urban pollution found to raise blood pressure
(NaturalNews) Exposure to urban pollution may be a cause of high blood pressure, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Dusiburg-Essen in Germany and presented at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society. "Our results...
Have you noticed mainstream health news getting crazier lately?
(NaturalNews) Mark your calendars. This week goes down in history as the most bizarre health news weeks in the history of the mainstream media. I've noticed more truly strange and illogical health stories this week from the conventional press than ever...

New Food as Medicine...Cocoa and Avacado....

No, not together...

...Painless cholesterol cure
works in just 7 days—and drives
the "food police" crazy!

Want to lower your cholesterol so fast it'll make your head spin? It's a breeze, just eat guacamole—or any dish containing avocados!
Most health experts and nutritionists will tell you this rich, delicious Mexican dish is BANNED from any cholesterol-watcher's menu. But not Dr. Steven Pratt. That's because new research shows eating avocados can lower your cholesterol even faster than drugs... without the side effects!
One study found after just 7 days on a diet including avocados, LDL ("bad") cholesterol and triglyceride levels dropped by 22 percent. Meanwhile, HDL ("good") cholesterol shot up 11 percent—something most cholesterol-lowering drugs won't do!

More new on the FFO front:

The active ingredient in FFO is used in toothpaste and as a polisher for class products. It's save to assume, adding FFO to your pets food will also help keep their teeth clean.
There's a product for dogs that cleans tarter and prevents gum disease. There is no such product for humans. I have do some research and it appears this product works well on humans. Check it out...Plaque Attack.

Sugar: Continued from Part 1.

Continued from Part 1.
What if you were to learn that every day, 25 percent of your calories came from a poison, disguised as a food?
And what if you discovered that this chemical imposter was responsible for your insulin resistance and weight gain?
And elevated blood pressure ...
And elevated triglycerides and LDL ...
And depletion of vitamins and minerals ...
And even gout, heart disease and liver damage?
What if you were to discover that this toxic substance had been dumped into your food in gradually increasing quantities for the last thirty years, with the full knowledge and blessings of the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the USDA and the FDA?
Would you be angry?
I wish I could tell you that this is just a dramatic plot from some fiction novel, but it’s actually a shocking reality.
The substance dealing such a crushing blow to your health and responsible for many, if not most of the chronic diseases that are so rampant in our society, is sugar -- and more specifically, fructose.
We now know without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all its myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll on the health of this nation.
By the end of this article, you will have a solid understanding of how and why this has happened. In order to really grasp this material, you’ll have to learn a little of the biochemistry of energy, which is rather technical. But hang in there -- the knowledge you’re about to gain, and the impact it will have on your health, will be well worth the effort.
I will try my best to make the more technical aspects as simple as I can for you.
Big Gulp, Meet Big Belt
We are eating far more than we were 25 years ago.
On average, men are consuming 187 more calories per day, and women 335 more calories. People who were never heavy before are becoming overweight, and the obese are becoming more so. We are now a “supersized” population.
But why?
Modern science has shown that the obesity epidemic isn’t simply about lack of self-control, but rather a phenomenon driven by biochemical changes that have altered the way your body regulates energy.
Something has caused your appetite regulation system to go awry. Leptin, the hormone responsible for satiety, isn’t working. It isn’t simply a matter of calories in and calories out. Six-month old babies are the latest victims of the obesity epidemic--diet and exercise cannot explain that.
So, what are you eating now that you weren’t eating thirty years ago? What are you doing to yourself that started the day you were born?
Studies show that all of those extra calories are coming in the form of carbohydrates.
What carbohydrates in particular?
Sugar -- specifically, sugared drinks. Soft drinks (41 percent) and fruit drinks (35 percent) make up the majority of these extra calories.
Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In fact, the average American drinks 60 gallons of soda every year.
High Fructose Corn Syrup Has Only Been Around One Generation!
HFCS was invented in 1966 in Japan and introduced to the American market in 1975. Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup when they discovered that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was far cheaper to make -- sucrose costs about three times as much as HFCS.

HFCS is about 20% sweeter than table sugar. HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose, and sucrose is 50% fructose, so it's a wash in terms of sweetness.

Still, the switch from sugar to fructose drastically altered the average American diet. The statistics are beyond alarming:
• Corn syrup is now found in every type of processed, pre-packaged food you can think of. In fact, the use of HFCS in the U.S. diet increased by a whopping 10,673 percent between 1970 and 2005, according to a report by the USDA[i].
• The current annual consumption of sugar is 141 pounds per person, and 63 pounds of that is HFCS.
• Adolescents are taking in 73 grams per day of fructose, mostly from soft drinks and juice drinks -- and 12 percent of their total caloric intake is from fructose alone.
• In the past century, fructose consumption has increased 5-fold.
• Processed foods account for more than 90 percent of the money Americans spend on meals.
You’ve probably heard the statistic that one soda a day is worth 15 pounds of fat per year. However, one soda today does not equal one soda of yesteryear. The original coke bottle was 6.5 ounces. Now, you have 20-ounce bottles and a 44-ounce Big Gulp.
Tragically, many infant formulas are more than 50 percent sugar -- 43 percent being corn syrup solids. You might as well be giving your baby a bottle of Coke or Pepsi.
No wonder there is an obesity epidemic.
The War on Fat
Sugar’s rise to power was really an accidental by-product of three political winds, beginning with the Nixon administration:
1. In 1972, Richard Nixon wanted to reduce food costs as part of his “war on poverty.” He partnered with the USDA to do whatever means necessary to bring food costs down.
2. In 1975, HFCS was introduced, replacing sugar because it was cheap and readily available.
3. In the mid 1970s, dietary fats were blamed for heart disease (more about this later), giving rise to the “low-fat craze.” Market response was an explosion of processed convenience foods, all nonfat and low fat, most of which tasted like sawdust unless sugar was added. Fructose was used to make fat-free products more palatable.
In 1982, the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) reduced fats from 40 percent of your diet to 30 percent. You eagerly complied, believing you were lowering your risks for both obesity and cardiovascular disease.
Yet, as the low-fat craze spread, so did rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity -- the very illnesses you thought you were preventing. Clearly, the plan wasn’t working.
Justification for Low-Fat Diet
But how did the war on fat start, in the first place?
It began with a study called the Seven Countries study by Ancel Keys[ii], a Minnesota epidemiologist who used multivariate regression analysis to examine diet and disease. He compared the diets of seven countries, and his main conclusion was that saturated fats were responsible for cardiovascular disease. After much heated public debate, this notion that saturated fats caused heart disease was widely adopted, especially once he made the cover of Time Magazine in 1980.
Keys’ study laid the foundation for nutrition science, education, and public policy for the next three decades.
There was only one problem. His conclusions were dead wrong.
Keys’ neglected to perform the converse analysis demonstrating that the effect of saturated fat on cardiovascular disease was independent of sucrose. In other words, sucrose and saturated fat were co-mingled into his data. In retrospect, it is impossible to tease out the relative contributions of sucrose versus saturated fat on cardiovascular disease in this study because the original data is long gone and Keys has passed on.
Additionally he never separated out the issue of how the fat was consumed. There is a major difference in raw and cooked animal fat, especially fat cooked at high temperatures, which clearly produces known carcinogens.
Nevertheless, lowering fat (without regard to sugar) became the nutritional model that persists to this day, despite copious evidence that it doesn’t work.
As your fats went from 40 percent to 30 percent, your carbohydrates went from 40 percent to 55 percent. And this carbohydrate increase was of the worst possible kind: SUGAR.
Proof that Sugar Cause Obesity
The American Beverage Association claims there is “no association between high fructose corn syrup and obesity.”[iii]
However, a long lineup of scientific studies suggest otherwise:
• Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital did a study of the effects of sugar-sweetened drinks on obesity in children[iv]. He found that for each additional serving of a sugar-sweetened drink, both body mass index and odds of obesity increased in the children he studied.
• Dr. Kelly Brownell of Yale University did a systematic review and meta-analysis of 88 studies about the association between soft drink consumption and health outcomes[v]. He found clear associations between soft drink consumption and higher body weight.
• The Fizzy Drink Study in Christchurch, England explored the effects on obesity when soda machines were removed from schools for one year. In the schools where the machines were removed, obesity stayed constant. In the schools where soda machines remained, obesity rates continued to rise[vi].
• A study by Schulze in JAMA in 2004[vii] provides further evidence that sugared drinks cause type II diabetes.
• A similar study in 2008 of African American women[viii] demonstrated higher intake of both sugar-sweetened soft drinks and fruit drinks leads to higher rates of type II diabetes.
• In a very recent study[ix], sixteen volunteers were fed a controlled diet including high levels of fructose. Ten weeks later, the volunteers had produced new fat cells around their hearts, livers and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. A second group of volunteers who were fed a similar diet, but with glucose replacing fructose, did not have these problems.
But it doesn’t stop at soft drinks.
Sweetened fruit drinks are contributing to your expanding waistline as well. High fruit juice intake (sucrose) is associated with childhood obesity, especially in low-income families[x].
What is it in soft drinks and juice drinks that is damaging your health?
Primarily, it’s the fructose. Read on to discover exactly how and why this is so.
Fructose is NOT the Same as Glucose
Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium -- and in fact, every living thing on the Earth -- uses glucose for energy.

Fructose is not the same molecule. Glucose is a 6-member ring, but fructose is a 5-member ring. Sucrose (table sugar) is 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose, and HFCS is 42-55 percent fructose.
If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day -- a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets as a bolus from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate the negative metabolic effects.
It isn’t that fructose itself is bad -- it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.
Before you can understand the differences between how your body metabolizes glucose and fructose, you have to have a basic understanding of LDL.
There are Two Types of LDL -- and Only One is Bad
In the 1970s, low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) were discovered. LDLs were found to be higher in people with cardiovascular disease, so the focus of medicine and nutrition became lowering your LDLs.
One of the crucial pieces of the puzzle that wasn’t recognized at the time was that there are two kinds of LDL: Pattern A and Pattern B.
1. Pattern A LDLs are large, light, buoyant “floating” LDLs that don’t get under your endothelial cells, and they don’t cause plaque formation. They are harmless.
2. Pattern B LDL (or VLDLs) are smaller, denser LDLs that are able to wedge themselves under your epithelial cells and therefore roughen surfaces and stimulate plaque formation. These are the bad guys.
Unfortunately, when you get a standard lipid profile at your annual check-up, the LDL measured is a combination of both types. Lab measurements lump them together unless you have a very specialized panel, which most physicians don’t order.
To decipher whether or not you have an excess of the bad type, you can look at your triglycerides and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels. (HDL, or “high density lipoprotein is commonly called “good cholesterol.”)
Here is a simple way to determine if you have too much bad LDL:
1. If your triglycerides are low and your HDL is high, then the LDL you have is the good variety.
2. If your triglycerides are high and your HDL is low, then the LDL you have is the bad variety. The triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is a far better indicator of cardiovascular disease than the total cholesterol-to-HDL ratio that everyone uses.
Now, here’s the bottom line: Dietary fat raises your large, buoyant LDL -- the one that is harmless. Dietary sugar raises your small, dense LDL -- the one that correlates with heart disease!
So, what has happened over the past 30 years was that sugar was added to our low-fat foods to improve palatability -- in the form of either HFCS or sucrose -- and a high-carb, high-risk diet was created -- simply the worst combination for your health.
And the fiber was eliminated.
Fiber Foregone
Fiber is an important nutrient (although not acknowledged as such by the government) and offers many health benefits, particularly if the fiber comes from vegetables.
A high-fiber diet may offer some protection from colorectal cancer, although the research is unclear exactly how this works and what all the factors are. The benefits of vegetable fiber are not yet completely understood. We do know that the risk of colorectal cancer is lower among populations with high intakes of vegetables and fruits, and there is some evidence that vegetable fiber may offer some protection from prostate cancer.
Fiber has three important roles:
• It reduces the rate of intestinal carbohydrate absorption, reducing your insulin response.
• It increases the speed of transit of intestinal contents to your ileum, which speeds up release of satiety hormones.
• It inhibits absorption of some free fatty acids to your colon, which would become short chain fatty acids, which suppress insulin.
Thousands of years ago your ancestors likely consumed 100 to 300 grams of fiber every day. Now, you are lucky to get 12 grams daily.
Why is this?
• Fiber-less foods are cheap.
• They have a longer shelf life and are easier to ship. This makes them easier to export to other countries.
• Fiber-rich foods take too long to prepare and eat, and are often less appealing to the general public.
The standard American diet (SAD) is typically loaded with processed foods full of sugar, and devoid of most nutrients and fiber. Sounds like the perfect recipe for an explosion of chronic disease.
The Molecule that Makes Fat Stick to You
Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation. But what regulates fat accumulation?
Fat is a metabolically active tissue. Your adipose tissue is in a perpetual state of flux with free fatty acids (FFAs) being converted into triglycerides and back again, in an ongoing cycle.
FFAs can move in and out of your cells, across cell membranes, but triglycerides (three fatty acid molecules plus one glycerol molecule) are too big to cross. Fat enters and exits a cell as FFA, but is stored as a triglyceride. When fuel is needed, the triglyceride is broken down into FFAs, which can then be burned as fuel.
The glycerol molecule, which is a primary component of a triglyceride, comes from something called glycerol-3-phosphate (g-3-p), or “activated glycerol,” which originates from the metabolism of glucose. The amount of G-3-p you make determines the rate that FFAs are “esterified” into triglycerides inside your fat cells[xi].
The rate of deposition of fat into your fat cells is dependent on the presence of g-3-p. The more g-3-p that is available, the more fat is deposited.
Carbohydrate Biochemistry 101
I promised you a crash course in biochemistry -- so here we go.
Much of the following information comes from the important work of Dr. Robert Lustig[xii] Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco.
In order to appreciate just how damaging fructose is to your body, it is crucial to have a basic understanding of how different types of carbohydrates are metabolized.
We’ll start with glucose since it’s the basic carbohydrate energy source for all living cells.
I. Glucose Metabolism
Glucose is the basic fuel for living organisms, from bacteria to humans, and is the primary energy source for your brain. It is a product of photosynthesis and is found in rice, corn and other grains, and bread and pasta.
Once you take in glucose from a meal -- like, say, from two slices of bread -- 80 percent of it is used by all of the organs of your body -- every single cell. The remaining 20 percent goes to your liver to be metabolized and stored.
The following is what happens to that 20 percent, once it reaches your liver:
• Whatever glucose your body doesn’t need immediately gets converted into glycogen for storage in the liver. Glycogen is your body’s non-toxic short-term energy storage package, where it can be easily converted to energy when you need it. Your liver has no limit to how much glycogen it can store without detrimental effects. (That is what athletes take advantage of when they “carbo-load.”)
• A small amount of pyruvate is produced, which ends up being converted to ATP (the chemical storage form of energy) and carbon dioxide. An even smaller quantity of citrate is produced from this process through the “citrate shuttle,” which ends up as VLDL (very low density lipoproteins, the bad ones) in a process known as de novo lipogenesis -- but we’re talking about a very small amount (less than one calorie from two slices of bread).
• Insulin is released by your pancreas in response to the rise in blood glucose (i.e., blood sugar), which helps the glucose get into your cells. Without insulin, your cells would not be able to process the glucose and therefore would have no energy for movement, growth, repair, or other functions. Insulin is key to unlocking the door of the cell to allow the glucose to be transferred from the bloodstream into the cell.
• When you consume 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie contributes to adverse metabolic outcomes.
This is all very normal, and it’s how you were designed to operate.
II. Ethanol Metabolism
Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is the favorite carbohydrate of many. But it is also a carbohydrate that undergoes a very different metabolic process, leaving in its wake a trail of toxins a mile long.
Ethanol is an acute central nervous system toxin and a chronic hepatotoxin due to the fact that it must be metabolized almost completely in the liver.
After consuming an alcoholic beverage, 10 percent of the ethanol gets broken down by the stomach and intestine as a “first pass” effect, and another 10 percent is metabolized by the brain and other organs. The fact that ethanol is partially metabolized in your brain is the reason you experience that familiar “buzz.”
The remaining 80 percent hits the liver, where it must be broken down. This is four times the load on the liver as the same number of calories from glucose.
But the metabolic process in the liver is quite different from that of glucose.
This metabolic cascade can be summarized as follows:
• The liver converts ethanol to aldehydes, which produce free radicals that damage proteins in the liver.
• Some of these aldehydes are converted to glucose, but a large amount of excess citrate is formed in the process, stimulating “junk chemicals” that result in free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL and triglycerides. As compared to the 1 calorie from glucose that was converted to VLDL (see previous section), the same caloric intake from ethanol produces 30 calories of VLDL that are transported to your fat cells and contribute to your obesity, or participate in plaque formation. This is what leads to the dyslipidemia of alcoholism.
• The resulting lipids, together with the ethanol, lead to an enzyme that begins an inflammation cascade, which in turn causes hepatic insulin resistance, liver inflammation and cirrhosis.
• Fat globules accumulate in the liver as well, which can lead to fatty liver disease.
• Free fatty acids (FFAs) leave the liver and cause your skeletal muscles to become insulin resistant. This is a worse form of insulin resistance than hepatic insulin resistance and can lead to type II diabetes.
• After a 120-calorie bolus of ethanol, a large fraction (about 40 calories) can contribute to disease.
Why am I including a discussion of ethanol metabolism in a report about fructose?
Because, in nearly every way, fructose is metabolized the same way as ethanol, creating the same toxins in your body.
III. Fructose Metabolism
Now we finally come to fructose.
When you consume fructose, 100 percent of it goes directly to your liver to be metabolized. This is why it is a hepatotoxin -- it overloads the liver. Fructose metabolism creates the following adverse effects:
• Fructose is immediately converted to fructose-1-phosphate (F1P), depleting your liver cells of phosphates.
• The above process produces waste products in the form of uric acid. Uric acid blocks an enzyme that makes nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is your body’s natural blood pressure regulator, so when it is blocked, your blood pressure rises -- leading to hypertension. Elevated uric acid levels can also cause gout.
• Almost all of the F1P is turned into pyruvate, ending up as citrate, which results in de novo lipogenesis, the end products of which are FFAs, VLDLs, and triglycerides. The result -- hyperlipidemia.
• Fructose stimulates g-3-p (activated glycerol), which you will recall is the crucial molecule for turning FFAs into triglycerides within the fat cells. Remember, the rate of deposition of fat into fat cells is dependent on the presence of g-3-p. The more g-3-p that is available, the more fat is deposited. Fructose is the carbohydrate most efficiently converted into g-3-p11. In other words, fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate.
• FFAs are exported from the liver and taken up in skeletal muscle, causing skeletal muscle insulin resistance.
• Some of the FFAs stay in the liver, leading to fat droplet accumulation, hepatic insulin resistance and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)[xiii][xiv].
• Insulin resistance stresses the pancreas, which pumps out more insulin in response to rising blood sugar as your cells are unable to get the sugar out of your bloodstream, and this can progress to type II diabetes.
• As with a bolus dose of ethanol, a 120-calorie bolus of fructose results in a large fraction (again, about 40 calories) that directly contributes to disease.
Do these symptoms sound a bit familiar to you? Hypertension, lipogenesis and dyslipidemia, obesity, inflammation, insulin resistance, and central nervous system leptin resistance?
If you are thinking it sounds a lot like classic metabolic syndrome, you are dead on!
The point to take away is: consuming fructose is consuming fat. Fructose is not really a carbohydrate -- a high fructose diet is a HIGH FAT diet. A high-fat diet that creates a vicious cycle of consumption that won’t turn itself off.
You can see by comparing the metabolism of fructose with the metabolism of ethanol that they are very similar. In fact, when you compare the metabolism of 150 calories of soda with 150 calories of beer (a 12 ounce can of each), about 90 calories reach the liver in either case. Fructose causes most of the same toxic effects as ethanol because both come from sugar fermentation.
Both ethanol metabolism and fructose metabolism lead to visceral adiposity (belly fat), insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
Studies are accumulating that bear this out.
For example, high-fructose diets were shown to cause dyslipidemia in healthy people with and without a family history of type II diabetes, a recent study showed[xv].
Two other studies were done using medical students, both looking at biological responses to fructose loading. In the first, the med students were given either a large glucose load or a large fructose load. In the students given fructose, almost 30 percent of the calories ended up as fat. In the students given glucose, almost none ended up as fat.
In the second study, medical students were given a high-fructose diet for 6 days. In just that short time, their insulin resistance and triglycerides doubled!
The Neurochemical Basis for Gluttony
You eat as a result of the activation of the “reward pathway” (also known as the hedonic pathway) of your brain.
Your brain’s pleasure center (aka ventral tegmental area, or VTA, and nucleus accumbens, or NA) is the root of all behavior, driven by chemical messengers that are intimately tied into the energy processes I have outlined above.
The part of your brain that responds to what you eat is the same part that responds to nicotine, morphine, amphetamine, ethanol, sex and exercise! That is why people taking narcotics tend to overeat.
Leptin and insulin are modulators of these reward responses, decreasing this VTA-NA activity. In other words, leptin and insulin cause your brain to send you signals to stop eating.
Fructose undermines these normal satiety signals, increasing caloric consumption both directly and indirectly:
1. Fructose does not stimulate a leptin rise, so your satiety signals are diminished.
2. Glucose suppresses ghrelin (the hunger hormone—it makes you want more food), but fructose does not.
3. By raising triglycerides, fructose reduces the amount of leptin crossing your blood-brain barrier.
4. Fructose increases insulin levels, interfering with the communication between leptin and your hypothalamus, so your pleasure signals aren’t extinguished. Your brain senses starvation and prompts you to eat more.
5. Fructose decreases the production of malonyl-CoA, which may help promote a sense of energy adequacy.
Along with causing insulin resistance, fructose alters the hedonic response to food thereby driving excessive caloric intake, setting up a positive feedback loop for overconsumption.
Big Fat Lies From the Corn Industry
Now that scientific studies have shown the metabolic similarity between HFCS and sucrose, the Corn Refiners Association has embarked on a vociferous campaign to convince the public that their product is equal to table sugar, that it is “natural” and safe.
Of course, many things are “natural” -- cocaine is natural, but you wouldn’t want to use 141 pounds of it each year.
The food and beverage industry doesn’t want you to realize how truly pervasive HFCS is in your diet -- not just from soft drinks and juices, but also in salad dressings and condiments and virtually every processed food. The introduction of HFCS into the Western diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry.
Now the corn industry has come up with another product it’s using in beverages called “crystalline fructose.” This is produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup, resulting in a product that is 99.5 percent pure fructose -- a fructose level twice as high as regular HFCS!
Clearly, all the health problems associated with HFCS could become even more pronounced with this product.
Making matters worse, crystalline fructose may also contain arsenic, lead, chloride and heavy metals -- a virtual laundry list of toxic agents you should clearly avoid. In fact, more than one study has detected unsafe mercury levels in HFCS[xvi]. If you have children, all of these contaminants can impact your child’s development and long-term health.
Why doesn’t the FDA regulate fructose since it poses the same health risks as ethanol -- and it regulates ethanol?
The FDA doesn’t touch chronic toxins. They regulate only acute toxins, and ethanol falls into that category because it produces immediately toxic neurological effects. Fructose doesn’t get metabolized in the brain, so it’s effects, although damaging, are cumulative and magnify over time.
Also realize that nearly all HFCS is made from genetically modified corn, which comes with its own set of risks.
The FDA classifies fructose as GRAS: Generally Regarded As Safe. Which pretty much means nothing and is based on nothing.
It is interesting to note that soda taxes[xvii] have recently been proposed both in New York and California, and legislation for the removal of soft drinks from schools has been enacted in several states.
What’s a Sugarholic to Do?
Ideally, I recommend that you avoid as much sugar as possible. This is especially important if you are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.
In fact, I believe that the positive health impacts of breaking the country’s sugar addiction would be even greater than if everyone stopped smoking, because elevated insulin levels are the foundation of nearly every chronic disease known to man, from cancer and arthritis to cardiovascular disease.
I also realize you don’t live in a perfect world, and following rigid dietary guidelines is not always practical or even possible.
If you want to use a sweetener occasionally, this is what I recommend:
1. Use the herb stevia
2. Use organic cane sugar in moderation
3. Use organic raw honey in moderation
Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than HFCS.
And I don’t recommend agave syrup since it is a highly processed sap that is almost all fructose. Your blood sugar will spike just as it would if you were consuming regular sugar or HFCS. Agave has gained meteoric popularity due to a great marketing campaign, but any health benefits present in the original agave plant are processed away.
Be sure to eat your sugar with fiber ... as in a piece of fruit. As Dr. Lustig says, “When God made the poison, he packaged it with the antidote: fiber.”
Wait 20 minutes before second portions at meals, giving your brain a chance to receive satiety signals.
And exercise regularly. Dr. Ludwig recommends you “buy your screen time with physical activity.”
Exercise is important for several reasons, some of which might surprise you:
• Exercise improves skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity (insulin works best in your muscles)
• Exercise reduces stress and lowers cortisol, which decreases appetite
• Exercise suppresses ghrelin, thereby decreasing appetite
• Exercise speeds up metabolic cycles, reducing citrate levels, thus reducing fat production
• Exercise can make you sharper, reduce arthritis, lift your mood, strengthen your bones, and even slow down aging
Avoid so-called energy drinks and sports drinks because they are loaded with sugar, sodium and chemical additives.
Rehydrating with pure, fresh water is a better choice.
If you or your child is involved in athletics, I recommend you read my article Energy Rules for some great tips on how to optimize your child’s energy levels and physical performance through good nutrition.
A Word of Warning About Infant Formula
And finally, be extremely careful about the infant formula you are feeding your baby. Nearly all infant formulas have as much or more high fructose corn syrup than a can of soda -- in addition to many other things that are extremely detrimental to your baby’s health and development.
You have learned that, metabolically, there is very little difference between ethanol and sugar, so by giving your infant formula, you might as well be giving him a bottle of beer or soda!
And studies have shown that the earlier you expose kids to sweets, the more they crave them later.
It is important for pregnant women to keep their blood sugars well managed not only for their own health, but also for the long-term health of their children.
Researchers have found that children born to mothers with gestational diabetes (high blood sugar during pregnancy) had an 82 percent chance of becoming obese between the ages of 5 and 7 through a phenomenon called “metabolic imprinting.” Even mothers with elevated blood sugar, short of gestational diabetes, had children with a significantly increased risk for obesity.[xviii]
I advocate breastfeeding if at all possible -- it is by far the healthiest option.
One of the most clear-cut, non-debatable topics in health care is that breast milk is the best source of nutrition for newborns. The benefits to the baby and the new mom are enormous. Breastfed infants have shown lower obesity rates in later childhood[xix].
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Robert H. Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at University of California, San Francisco, for sharing his incredibly important insights, without which this article would not have been possible. Much of the above information came directly from Dr. Lustig’s work related to central regulation of energy balance, and I am very grateful for his willingness to share it with me so that I can pass it along to you.

________________________________________
[i] Wells H.F. and Buzby J. c. “Dietary assessment of major trends in U.S. food consumption, 1970-2005. USDA Economic Research Service, Economic Information Bulletin Number 33, March 2008.
[ii] “Ancel Keys—villain or hero?” Stop Trans Fats.
[iii] American Beverage Association, News Release, March 25, 2004
[iv] Ludwig D.S., Peterson, K.E. and Gortmaker, S.L. “Relation between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and childhood obesity: a prospective, observational analysis” The Lancet Feb 17, 2001 Volume 357, Issue 9255, pp 505-508
[v] Vartanian L.R., Schwartz M.B. and Brownell K.D. “Effects of soft drink consumption on nutrition and health: A systematic review and meta-analysis” AJPH April 2007, vol 97, No. 41, pp 667-675.
[vi] Esterbrook J. “Schools that can soda cut obesity,” CBS News Health April 23, 2004
[vii] Apovian C.M. “Sugar-sweetened soft drinks, obesity, and type 2 diabetes” JAMA 2004;292:978-979
[viii] Palmer J.R., Boggs D.A., Krishnan S., Hu F.B., Singer M., and Rosenberg L. “Sugar-sweetened beverages and incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in African American women” Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(14):1487-1492.
[ix] Stanhope K.L., et al. “Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans” J Clin Invest. 2009 May 1;119(5):1322-1334
[x] Faith M.S., Dennison B.A., Edmunds L.S., Stratton H.H. “Fruit juice intake increased adiposity gain in children from low-income families: weight status by environment interaction” Pediatrics 118:2066-2075.
[xi] Taubs G. Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, 2007, Knopf; and Medical Grand Rounds presentation, Datmouth-Hitchcock,
[xii] Robert H. Lustig, MD: UCSF faculty bio page, and YouTube presentation “Sugar: The bitter truth” ; and “The fructose epidemic” The Bariatrician, 2009, Volume 24, No. 1, page 10)
[xiii] Lim J.S., Mietus-Snyder M.L., Valente A., Schwartz J.M., and Lustig R.H. “Fructose, NAFLD, and metabolic syndrome,” Dept. of Pediatrics and Medicine, University of California, San Francisco 2009
[xiv] Ouyang X., Cirillo P., Sautin Y., McCall S., Bruchette J.L., Diehl A.M. Johnson R.J., Abdelmalek M.F. “Fructose consumption as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease” J. Hepatol. 2008 Jun;48(6):993-9
[xv] Le K.A., Ilth M., Kreis R., Faeh D., Bortolotti M., Tran C., Boesch C., and Tappy L. “Fructose overconsumption causes dyslipidemia and ectopic lipid deposition in healthy subjects with and without a family history of type 2 diabetes” Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Jun;89(6):1760-5
[xvi] “Why is the FDA unwilling to study evidence of mercury in high-fructose corn syrup?” 20 Feb 2009, Grist
[xvii] Brownstein J. “Public health leaders propose soda tax” ABCNews/Health, September 17, 2009
[xviii] Hillier T.A., Pedula K.L., Schmidt B.A., Mullen J.A., Charles M., Pettitt D.J. “Childhood obesity and metabolic imprinting: The ongoing effects of maternal hyperglycemia” Diabetes Care September 2007 vol. 30 no. 9 pages 2287-2292
[xix] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center (ECLKC) “Prevention of overweight and obesity in infants and toddlers”

Part 1 of Sugar is Bad but Sweetners are Deadly...

This is part one. If you've already read it, then go to part two. I have separated them for your concenience.

Sugar is Bad but Sweeteners are Deadly!

Scientists have proved for the first time that fructose, a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis.
Fructose, a sweetener usually derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.
Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

Sources:
Grist December 15, 2009
J Clin Invest 2009
Times Online 2009


Dr. Mercola's Comments:

This study takes its place in a growing lineup of scientific studies demonstrating that consuming high-fructose corn syrup is the fastest way to trash your health. It is now known without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all it’s myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll.
And fructose in any form -- including high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and crystalline fructose -- is the worst of the worst!
Fructose is a major contributor to:
• Insulin resistance and obesity
• Elevated blood pressure
• Elevated triglycerides and elevated LDL
• Depletion of vitamins and minerals
• Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout
A Calorie is Not a Calorie
Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium -- and in fact, every living thing on the Earth--uses glucose for energy.
If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day -- a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate any negative metabolic effects.
It isn’t that fructose itself is bad -- it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.
There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:
1. Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.
2. People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.
Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of HFCS.
Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, it’s about 20% sweeter than table sugar.
HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose, and sucrose is 50% fructose, so it's really a wash in terms of sweetness.
Still, this switch drastically altered the average American diet.

By USDA estimates, about one-quarter of the calories consumed by the average American is in the form of added sugars, and most of that is HFCS. The average Westerner consumes a staggering 142 pounds a year of sugar! And the very products most people rely on to lose weight -- the low-fat diet foods -- are often the ones highest in fructose.
Making matters worse, all of the fiber has been removed from these processed foods, so there is essentially no nutritive value at all.
Fructose Metabolism Basics
Without getting into the very complex biochemistry of carbohydrate metabolism, it is important to understand some differences about how your body handles glucose versus fructose. I will be publishing a major article about this in the next couple of months, which will get much more into the details, but for our purpose here, I will just summarize the main points.
Dr. Robert Lustig[i] Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. His work has highlighted some major differences in how different sugars are broken down and used:
• After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent.
• Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is “burned up” immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat.
• The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.
• Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this.
• When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!
• The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.
• Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain’s communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.
If anyone tries to tell you “sugar is sugar,” they are way behind the times. As you can see, there are major differences in how your body processes each one.
The bottom line is: fructose leads to increased belly fat, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome -- not to mention the long list of chronic diseases that directly result.
Panic in the Corn Fields
As the truth comes out about HFCS, the Corn Refiners Association is scrambling to convince you that their product is equal to table sugar, that it is “natural” and safe.
Of course, many things are “natural” -- cocaine is natural, but you wouldn’t want to use 142 pounds of it each year.
The food and beverage industry doesn’t want you to realize how truly pervasive HFCS is in your diet -- not just from soft drinks and juices, but also in salad dressings and condiments and virtually every processed food. The introduction of HFCS into the Western diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry.
The FDA classifies fructose as GRAS: Generally Regarded As Safe. Which pretty much means nothing and is based on nothing.
There is plenty of data showing that fructose is not safe -- but the effects on the nation’s health have not been immediate. That is why we are just now realizing the effects of the last three decades of nutritional misinformation.
As if the negative metabolic effects are not enough, there are other issues with fructose that disprove its safety:
• More than one study has detected unsafe mercury levels in HFCS[ii].
• Crystalline fructose (a super-potent form of fructose the food and beverage industry is now using) may contain arsenic, lead, chloride and heavy metals.
• Nearly all corn syrup is made from genetically modified corn, which comes with its own set of risks.
The FDA isn’t going to touch sugar, so it’s up to you to be proactive about your own dietary choices.
What’s a Sugarholic to Do?
Ideally, I recommend that you avoid as much sugar as possible. This is especially important if you are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.
I also realize we don’t live in a perfect world, and following rigid dietary guidelines is not always practical or even possible.
If you want to use a sweetener occasionally, this is what I recommend:
1. Use the herb stevia.
2. Use organic cane sugar in moderation.
3. Use organic raw honey in moderation.
4. Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than fructose.
5. Avoid agave syrup since it is a highly processed sap that is almost all fructose. Your blood sugar will spike just as it would if you were consuming regular sugar or HFCS. Agave’s meteoric rise in popularity is due to a great marketing campaign, but any health benefits present in the original agave plant are processed out.
6. Avoid so-called energy drinks and sports drinks because they are loaded with sugar, sodium and chemical additives. Rehydrating with pure, fresh water is a better choice.
If you or your child is involved in athletics, I recommend you read my article Energy Rules for some great tips on how to optimize your child’s energy levels and physical performance through good nutrition.
Read More in Part 2 of the this story.

________________________________________
[i] Robert H. Lustig, MD: UCSF Faculty Bio Page, and YouTube presentation “Sugar: The bitter truth” and “The fructose epidemic” The Bariatrician, 2009, Volume 24, No. 1, page 10)
[ii] “Why is the FDA unwilling to study evidence of mercury in high-fructose corn syrup?” 20 Feb 2009, Grist


Related Links:
Dramatic Example of How the Food Industry Lies to You About Corn
Guess Who Funds High Fructose Corn Syrup Studies?
Sugar is Back on Food Labels—This Time as a Selling Point