A new free app called ‘Buycott’ allows you to use your Android or iPhone to analyze products and determine if you’re supporting Monsanto’s GMOs, Big Food companies who are damaging your health, or simply low quality products.
Have you ever wished you could own a parrot that sat on your shoulder and said, “squak! don’t buy that’ as you ambled through a grocery store or retail shop, purchasing something like toilet paper or a box of macaroni shells that would add to the financial coffers of companies like Monsanto, or billionaire industrialist David Koch? While your local grocery store probably wouldn’t let you get much further than the pet food aisle, you can now download an App for your Android or iPhone that tells you exactly when you are about to purchase GMO corn or Dixie Cups, a product of one of the many subsidiary companies of Koch Industries, Georgia Pacific.
Think of the new App, championed by Darcy Burner, a former Microsoft programmer and congressional candidate, like an all-knowing friend who reminds you not to get that pair of yoga pants because Dupont Chemical (also a subsidiary of Koch) makes the lycra in them, or to choose that bag of carrots over this one, because there is no GMO in it. If you thought fair trade hang-tags were a way to keep a watchful eye on corporate greed and environmental negligence, then get a load of the app that just scans a barcode and tells you if its ‘safe’ or not.
Even better, you can scan your bag of chips and see if it was made by one of several dozen companies that gave millions of dollars to oppose mandatory labeling of GMO foods, and essentially, boycott them.
The app is similar to the many other initiatives currently mounting against Monsanto, as NaturalSociety Editor Anthony Gucciardi detailed a few days ago in his article ‘March Against Monsanto Is The Beginning of The End For Monsanto’.
Ivan Pardo, a 26-year old wiz kid is the freelance programmer who created the App. Thanks to inventions like Pardo’s, and the transparency his techno gadget offers, it will be harder for companies to hide behind their web of lies and convoluted oligarchy that allows just a few elite companies to rule the world with chemicals and illegal price-fixing schemes. If everything is rigged in favor of just a few billionaire industrialists, like Monsanto, then educating people about their purchases gives them the power to ‘vote’ with their dollar, and choose to purchase something else, instead. Such a simple way, to stick it to the companies who have been poisoning your food, dumping toxins in your air, water, and soil, and to support those who actually have the modicum of a moral compass when it comes to making a dollar (or several trillion) at the expense of millions of people’s health.
Let’s face it, remembering who the top 10 most unethical companies are when you are just trying to buy some dinner, or a new pair of pants shouldn’t mean you are inadvertently contributing to corporate greed and fraud. Fortunately, there’s an App for that, and it comes out in May, premiering on iTunes and the Google app store. Its free and its name is Buycott.
[Click HERE for other useful apps previously mentioned at Potent News.]
Countless individuals will soon assemble in small and large groups around the nation and the globe alike in protest against Monsanto’s genetic manipulation of the food supply. Organized under the May 25th movement known as the ‘March on Monsanto’, the massive new rally reveals how the grassroots public has truly had enough of Monsanto’s monopoly on the many staple crops that have quickly been sucked into Monsanto’s genetically modified tycoon.
It’s virtually impossible these days to enter a grocery store, even one bearing the title of ‘natural’, and not encounter at least a few items that contain genetically modified ingredients. And for quite some time, this fact was not even known to the large majority of the United States public. Many simply did not even know what a GMO was, or what it could potentially do to their bodies (or the bodies of the children who they were feeding with genetically engineered processed food).
This, of course, stems from the fact that the FDA and Monsanto have decided that you aren’t allowed to know if your food contains GMOs. Even despite the fact that peer-reviewed research has pegged Monsanto’s best selling herbicide Roundup (which is a key part of Monsanto’s Roundup-ready GMO crops) to around 37 associated diseases, the FDA says it’s perfectly safe. So safe that it’s not even necessary to label in your food. So very safe that the only study that ever examined how Roundup and GMOs affect rats throughout their lifetime found that the rats developed tumors so large that it impacted their very ability to move.
It’s madness that has been identified for a long time by alternative news writers and readers, but thanks to the success of Prop 37 and other initiatives it has now hit the general public — and they’re not happy.
Many of us do not have to be “sold” on the benefits of avocados—their silky texture and versatile flavor make them hard not to love. But when studies show that avocado-eaters are healthier overall than their counterparts, we feel justified in our love-affair with the green fruit. And the research may even convince some non-avocado-eaters to cross over to the other side.
Avocado-Eaters Found to Have Better Health than Non-Eaters
According to a recent study published in Nutrition Journal,eating avocados is associated with a lower body weight, lower BMI and waist circumference (a risk factor for heart disease and diabetes), higher “good” cholesterol, a lower intake of added sugars, better diet quality overall, and higher nutrient intake levels.
In other words, while the avocado itself provides many direct benefits, it also helps indirectly too.
The scientists looked at of over 17,000 U.S. adults, 347 ate avocadoes on a daily basis. Of these, they had more positive health indicators than those who did not. The average avocado consumption was about one-half of a medium avocado for women and a little more for men.
Avocado eaters had higher intakes of good fats and higher intakes of nutrients including fiber, vitamin E, magnesium, potassium, and vitamin K.
Avocado eaters had “significantly lower” BMI than others and weighed an average of 7.5lbs less.
The avocado-eaters also had smaller waist circumferences, on average 4 cm smaller, than the non-avocado eaters.
Avocado eaters had 50% lower risk for metabolic syndrome, which increases the risks of heart disease, stroke, and type-2 diabetes.
Avocados are nutritional powerhouses, and this study suggests that people who eat them make healthier choices overall.
As if that isn’t enough, there are numerous other studies on the health benefits of avocados. These indicate the little fruits are good for fighting inflammation, regulating blood sugar, fighting the signs of aging, and even preventing cancer.
Their high antioxidant concentration makes them powerful healers and protectors against cellular damage by free radicals. One thing that makes the antioxidants in avocados unique is their ability to actually penetrate the mitochondria (the cellular engines, so to speak), where they can have the most impact.
You don’t even have to like guacamole to enjoy avocados. They go great in salads and wraps, while also being delicious on their own. The softer ones make a great substitute for unhealthy mayonnaise and can also be added to smoothies.
Pollinators participate in the sexual-reproduction of plants. When you eat an almond, beet, w[youtubeatermelon or sip on coffee, you’re partaking of an ancient relationship between pollinators and flowers. But since the 1990s, worldwide bee health has been in decline and most evidence points to toxic pesticides created by Shell and Bayer and the loss of genetic biodiversity due to the proliferation of GMO monocrops created in laboratories by biotech companies like Monsanto.
But never worry, those real life pollinators—the birds and the bees, as they say—may soon be irrelevant to the food needs of civilization. Harvard roboticists are developing a solution to the crisis: swarms of tiny robot bees made of titanium and plastic that can pollinate those vast dystopian fields of GMO cash crops.
The Harvard Microrobotics Lab has been working on its Micro Air Vehicles Project since early 2009. Borrowing from the biomechanics and social organization of bees, the team of researchers is undergoing the creation of tiny winged robots to fly from flower to flower, immune to the toxins dripping from petals, to spread pollen. They even believe that they will soon be able to program the robobees to live in an artificial hive, coordinate algorithms and communicate amongst themselves about methods of pollination and location of particular crops.
Of course, published reports from the lab also describe potential military uses—surveillance and mapping—but the dime-sized cyber-bees have yet to be outfitted with neurotoxin tipped stingers.
(NaturalNews) The collective psyche of American society is long overdue for a major paradigm shift in its understanding of fats, inflammation, cholesterol, and the true cause of most chronic illnesses. Even many physicians, who should know better, still argue that cholesterol is evil and that sticking to a low-fat diet is good for health. But the fact of the matter is that avoiding fats is toxic to your health, and consuming the many food additives that commonly replace them – these include synthetic trans fats, refined sugars, and processed grains – are a primary cause of disease-causing inflammation.
It all makes sense if you just stop and consider the native role cholesterol plays in protecting arteries against lesions and other damage. Rather than being the cause of plaque buildup in the circulatory system, cholesterol is actually the healing agent the body sends to sites that have been damaged by inflammation. In other words, if you have too much cholesterol buildup in your arteries, your real problem is too much inflammation rather than too much cholesterol, and a whole different mitigatory approach is required to address the problem.
“It’s the inflammation in the vessels that starts the lesion,” says Dr. Beverly Teter, a lipid biochemist from the University of Maryland who has been researching fats and their affect on the human body for many years, as quoted by CBN.com. “The body then sends the cholesterol like a scab to cover over it to protect the blood system and the vessel wall from further damage.”
This runs completely contrary to the prevailing medical dogma, which still maintains that saturated fat and cholesterol are silent killers that can lead to heart disease, diabetes and other forms of chronic illness. As a result, millions of Americans have been duped into avoiding these necessary nutrients to their own demise, while they instead gorge on unhealthy vegetable oils, trans fats, sugars, grains, and phony low-fat junk foods.
“When choosing which fats to eat, pick the ones that are high in omega-3 fats and also choose natural saturated fats,” advises Lorie Johnson from CBN.com. “On the other hand, stay away from the fats that lead to inflammation, such as trans fats and omega-6 fats,” she adds, noting that most of the oils used in processed food are unhealthy vegetable oils posing as “nutritious.”
Saturated fat and cholesterol necessary for proper cellular function, brain health
What few people today realize is that their bodies actually require both saturated fat and cholesterol for proper metabolism, brain health, hormone balance and cellular homeostasis. Without these two important nutritional components, a cascade of health problems can ensue, including debilitating brain conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. This is especially true for people who take toxic statin drugs to artificially lower their cholesterol levels.
“People with high cholesterol live the longest,” says Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D. “Consider the finding of Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, who reported in 1994 that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol.”
Food rights activists from around North America will meet at the Sauk County Courthouse in this tiny town on May 20 to support Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger and food sovereignty. Hershberger, whose trial begins that day, is charged with four criminal misdemeanors that could land this husband and father in county jail for up to 30 months with fines of over $10,000.
The Wisconsin Department of Agricultural Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) targeted Hershberger for supplying a private buying club with fresh milk and other farm products.
DATCP has charged Hershberger with, among other things, operating a retail food establishment without a license. Hershberger repeatedly rejects this, citing that he provides foods only to paid members in a private buying club and is not subject to state food regulations. “There is more at stake here than just a farmer and his few customers,” says Hershberger, “this is about the fundamental right of farmers and consumers to engage in peaceful, private, mutually consenting agreements for food, without additional oversight.”
A little more than a year ago, food rights activists from around the country stood in support of Hershberger at a pre-trial hearing. They read and signed a “Declaration of Food Independence” that asserts inherent rights in food choice. This month after the trial each day, many of the same food rights activists plus others will gather at the Al Ringling Theater across the street from the courthouse and hear presentations by leaders in the food rights movement. Notable speakers include Virginia farmer Joel Salatin, Mountain Man show star Eustace Conway, and food rights organizer from Maine, Deborah Evans.
Hershberger, and other farmers around the country, are facing state or federal charges against them for providing fresh foods to wanting individuals. In recent months the FDA has conducted several long undercover sting operations and raids against peaceful farmers and buying clubs that have resulted in farms shutting down and consumers without access to the food they depend on.
It’s not likely that you are the victim of arsenic poisoning. But the average modern lifestyle could put you in contact with heavy metals through your food, the air you breathe, and the water you drink—not to mention the products you use in your home. These heavy metals can do significant damage to your body over time. Luckily there are completely natural ways to expel these metals from your body and therefore prevent the damage they are capable of causing.
Heavy metal chelation is often marketed as some major undertaking that requires bottles of various supplements and several days of free time to dedicate to the process. And while significant heavy metal contamination may warrant such an approach, your body can handle heavy metal removal with just some simple additions to your diet and lifestyle.
Drink Water
Firstly, stay hydrated. No toxins will be removed if you don’t provide the vehicle for them to exit on. In other words, water is the ultimate purifier and should be your first line against toxins of all kinds. Make sure your water is purified and free of fluoride and chlorine whenever possible. And don’t wait until you are thirsty to drink water; drink it when you first wake, with meals, throughout the day, and before bed. Drink water when you exercise and when you relax. Basically, drink it all the time.
Include these Specific Foods in Your Diet
Next, include foods that are naturally good at heavy metal chelation. I profiled six of them here in 6 Foods for Natural Heavy Metal Chelation. Foods like garlic, onion, and cilantro naturally bind with heavy metals to remove them from the body. Amino acids found in eggs and fish are particularly good to balance enzymes in the liver, crucial to detoxification. Charcoal is another good source of chelating benefits.
Omit these Specific Foods
Change what you eat. High fructose corn syrup often has high levels of mercury. If you are still eating processed foods that contain HFCS, it’s high time you stopped. Consumer reports also points to fitness protein shakes as a common source of heavy metals. But even things like non-organic produce, wines, and canned foods can be contaminated with heavy metals.
As with any unhealthy foods or toxins, you must pay attention to both what you take in and what you expel. From eating the right foods to practicing hydration and other methods to eliminate toxins, there are several naturally simple ways to reduce your exposure to heavy metals.
Countless individuals will soon assemble in small and large groups around the nation and the globe alike in protest against Monsanto’s genetic manipulation of the food supply. Organized under the May 25th movement known as the ‘March on Monsanto’, the massive new rally reveals how the grassroots public has truly had enough of Monsanto’s monopoly on the many staple crops that have quickly been sucked into Monsanto’s genetically modified tycoon.
Many of us do not have to be “sold” on 
By Russ McSpadden
Natural News
by Elizabeth Renter
PN 