Reuters News Wire, November 16th, 2007

Reuters News Wire, November 16th, 2007

Fat Nap Link

Eating just a few meals loaded with fat could be enough to throw off the body’s internal clock, starting a vicious cycle that could lead to obesity and diabetes, Northwestern University researchers said yesterday.
They reported in the journal Cell Metabolism that mice fed high-fat foods showed marked changes in their diet and sleep patterns, sleeping longer and eating when they should be sleeping.

Reuters, News Wire November 16th, 2007

Fat Health Woes at 7

Children who are on the path toward obesity have some worrisome cardiovascular disease risk factors as young as age 7, according to researchers.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center researchers measured the body mass index of 308 kids every four months after age 3. They then examined several cardiovascular characteristics of the children at age 7.
A key element of the study was the “BMI rebound.”
Between birth and around age 4, tots become taller and leaner. Usually between ages 4 and 7, children start putting on weight in a way that increases their BMI.
The study showed that children who reached this BMI rebound early-experienced cardiovascular red flags by age 7.

End

The amazing fact facing America is that few obese people really gives a damn about being fat. I meet and talk with plenty of fat people and they do not think they are fat. That’s right. They also think a bowl of Hagan Daz at 10PM is just fine. Last, but not least, these people think fried rice and general Tzo’s chicken will give children all the nutrition they need and a Diet Coke will certainly trim a few unnecessary calories.

The simple reason 6 of 10 fat people think this way is because they are toxic. Their children are toxic. Just what is toxic? Toxic is when the body retains chemicals in its cell walls including fat cells. The toxic chemicals are from meat, McDonald’, Popeye’s Chicken, Applebee’s and 80% of what is found in our supermarkets. Especially the frozen food sections.
Our general source of food is loaded with chemical additives that when consumed on a regular basis actually leaves the body craving more of the same. Like a drug addict, the body needs its daily dose of toxic food.

Infinite Health Resources is associated with an organization called Isagenix. Isagenix has taken the idea of cleansing the body to the total body cleanses. The cell cleanse.

Almost 3 years ago I discovered a natural colon cleanse, unlike the Isagenix total body cleanse, which allowed me to become less toxic. It was a three-week program. By the end of the second week I saw fat melt away. However, I really did not see major weight loss. Although the weight did finally come off and it has stayed off. I did make major changes in my eating habits, which leave me missing nothing. More on that later.

Back to the melting fat. The fat melted away because I was ridding my body of all the chemicals that acted like a layer of insulation over my 35 pounds of fat. I might add that 10 pounds of the 35 pounds were easily locked up inside my colon. Pretty disgusting. During the 3-week cleanse, I laid off the meat, chicken, cold cuts and ate veggies with pasta and tomato sauce in a garlic and virgin olive oil base. Just incredible.

The Isagenix Cleanse for Life system is used by professional athletes, Olympic athletes and, you guessed it, obese folk. What makes Isagenix so incredible is the level and quality of research and physician participation is its use as an alternative to drug treatments and diet fads.

Incredibly, I consumed, and still do today, complex carbohydrates and stay slim. I have never avoided carbohydrates and no one should. The New York Post, November 7th, 2007 published a released study by the University of Maryland that clearly shows the danger of low carbohydrate high protein dieting.
There really is no such thing as a diet. Eating is a lifestyle. Either you eat to live or you eat to die.

The Isagenix Total Body Cleanse is helping thousands. The level and quality of testimonials are breathtaking.
Visit www.infinitehealthresources.isagenix.com to see for yourself.

The Isagenix product line is complete with skin care as well. Remember, what you put on your body is as important as what you put in your body.

I own and operate www.infinitehealthresources.com and we offer thousands of non-toxic and organic products including environmentally friendly products. However, I am convinced that a cellular cleanse or a colon cleanse is the place to kick start anyone’s life into a path to good health and weight loss. Please note, a lean body does not guarantee a toxic free body. Click on recipes at www.infinitehealthresources.com and continue eating toxic-free once your Isagenix Total Body Cleanse is complete.
Every Isagenix Total Body Cleanse comes with a real life coach who has been successful with the Isagenix Total Body Cleanse For Life.

E-mail us at info@infinitehealthresources.com to arrange to speak with someone.

Visit www.infinitehealthresources.isagenix.com for the kick start we all need to live the healthy lifestyle.

Sincerely,
Thomas Affatato
Infinite Health Resources

The New York Post Editorial Page, November 15th, 2007, Thomas Sowell touched a subject that is fast becoming a national epidemic. Autism.
Striking mostly white, middle class and up. This terrible heart breaking disease is no more understood today than it was 20 years ago.
Now, thanks in large part to our drug dealing pharmaceutical industry, testing and screening has been widely recommended often leading to tragic results.
Read Mr. Sowell’s editorial.
Count the Casualties Before You Crusade
Autism is a devastating condition, both for those who have it and for their parents. At this point, its causes are unknown – and if there is any cure, that is unknown as well.There are many ways of coping with tragedies. One of the less promises, and often dangerous, ways is to launch a crusade.Crusades may be emotionally satisfying, politically popular and welcomed by the media. But crusaders are not known for caution, for weighing evidence or for counting the costs, which may extend well beyond the cost in money.The crusade against autism has already led to many casualties – and there may be far more if recent recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics are carried out to have every child tested for autism twice by age 2.Think about: How many people are qualified to diagnose autism? Enough to test every child in America? Not bloody likely.Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University has tested and treated children with autism for more than 20 years. “While it is relatively easy to identify a 5-year-old as autistic,” he says, “it’s much more difficult to reliably diagnose a preschooler or toddler.”The word “reliably” is crucial. Anyone can unreliably diagnose autism, just as anybody can unreliably predict the weather or the stock market.The consequences of unreliable diagnoses of autism can be traumatic for parents and children alike.I’ve written books about late-talking children and their parents (the latest being “The Einstein Syndrome”). As a result I’ve encountered more than a hundred parents with stories of emotional devastation after their children were diagnosed as autistic – diagnoses that the passing years have shown to be false more often than not.Camarata has a far larger group of parents of late talking children, since he specializes in studying and treating speech disorders, and he has likewise found numerous cases of false diagnoses of autism among children who are late in beginning to talk.It’s not just the needless emotional stresses on the parents. Many of the treatments inflicted on children diagnosed as autistic, would be called child abuse if they weren’t done as medical procedures – and they can set back or distort a child’s development.The “autistic” label can follow a child into schools and beyond, causing him or her to be treated differently by teachers, nurses and others.Too many people refuse to reconsider any evidence contrary to the label, however blatant that evidence becomes or however much that evidence increases over the years.The initial evidence on which a diagnosis of autism was based may be nothing more than a checklist of characteristics of autistic children – often administered by someone with nothing more to go on than that checklist.But many items on such a checklist can apply to many children who are not autistic. A study of gifted children, for example, found many of them showing the kinds of characteristics found on checklists for autism.Says Camarata, “Because there are no reliable biomedical makers for autism, diagnosis must rely on subjective rating scales – making it difficult if not impossible to conduct accurate screening in toddlers or preschoolers.”But it is precisely the checklist approach that is being urged by those who are crusading for every child to be diagnosed for autism before age 2. Like most crusaders, they seem unwillingly to consider the possibility of errors, much less the consequences.The very definition of autism has been expanded in recent years to include what is called “the autism spectrum.” Among other things, this means there is now more wiggle room for those whose diagnoses have proved to be wrong, who refuse to admit it, and who are now even more unaccountable than ever.
End
New York’s Nassau and Suffolk counties are on a speech therapy crusade that has turned into a multi million business. Thousands of children, 4, 5 and 6 years olds are in speech therapy. Could it be possible, that one of the most educated and affluent location in the U.S. be giving birth to children requiring speech therapy? If so, something is terribly amiss.
Listen folks, at www.infinitehealthresources.com we have spent 2 years writing about the effects of out toxic food system, toxic watersheds and just loony dieting. Both for the obese and athletic. Incredibly and as usual, this country will diagnose and treat with big pharmaceutical company drugs rather than find the cause and cure.
Let me take you back 10-15 years. ADHA, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, diagnosis’s by the thousands being recognized as incorrectly diagnosed. Further more, a recent SUNY Buffalo Study that tracked 600 kids since the early 1990s concluded that drugs like Ritalin and Concerta worked for a while but not after 3years. The co-author of the report, Dr. William Pelham said he believes the earlier beneficial impact if the medication were grossly exaggerated.
The pharmaceutical industry saw a drug patient for life. Many of these children are now 18-22 year olds and continue on not one, but several drugs. A financial bonanza. For the pharmaceutical industry and a multi-million dollar drain on our health care system.
Dr. Pelham went on to say, “We had though that children medicated longer would have better outcomes. That didn’t happen to be the case.”Instead, he said, the kids “had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren’t growing as much as other kids, both in terms of their height and in terms of their weight. “In the short run, [medication] will help the child behave better, in the long run it won’t. And that information should be made very clear to parents,” he said.
So what are we to expect with early testing and treatment for autism? The health establishment in the U.S. is completely focused on diagnosis and treatment. Not the cure. Ladies and Gentlemen, Parents and Grandparents, please wake up to the fact that something is clearly very wrong, and it may not be with our children. Our environment and health system may be the problem.
At www.infinitehealthresources.com we continue to present fact upon fact how proper nutrition throughout a person’s whole life can and will prevent many of today’s illnesses and life threatening diseases. That’s right, prevent. Prevention can be the cure.
What you put on you body is as important as what you put into your body. Non-toxic shampoos, lotions, nail polish, nail polish removers and filtered shower water and drinking water are essential to healthy living.
Are new and expecting mothers depriving their bodies and then the bodies of their unborn of the essential nutrients for proper brain development? Could the thousands of diets that we all try and fail at, coupled with fast food, be causing our level of nutrition to fail our offspring and us?I certainly do not have these answers. Isn’t it about time some serious discussion begin about autism, ADHD, breast cancer and so many modern disorders that are destroying lives, creating heart ache and pain and the premature death of our loved ones and friends.
This is a stand we must take together, we must unite. Our politicians would never rise to the task. They are owned by the pharmaceutical and processed food industries with billions in political action committees.
Wake up America and take a stand on your families’ health.
Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com and learn more on nutrition, disease, recipes and healthy products. Read the newsletters from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, The Cancer Project and The Organic Consumers Association.
Learn the truth about living a healthy lifestyle.
Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com

Sincerely,
Thomas Affatato

Superbug and Your Food

Superbug and Your Food

All week, every major news outlet talked up a storm about the infections killing teens and others. The antibiotic resistant infections are long overdue and very little can be done to stop them.

The food chain in the U.S. is contaminated and loaded with antibiotics. These foods are beef, chicken and pork. The second tier of foods are eggs, milk, cheese and coldcuts, from the same source.

Our cattle are fed other cattle. Mainly none edible parts such as heart, stomach, intestines and other organs. Our cattle, therefore, are fed huge amounts of antibiotics to kill any infection caused by this cannibalism. Chicken, one very dirty and nasty piece of meat, ubiquitous in every New York deli, in no less than 10 different recipe preparations, is also loaded to the max with antibiotics.

Pork, long considered swine and the filthiest of creatures by many of the world’s population, such as Jews and Muslims, see they do have things in common, may be the least harmful as far as antibiotic use goes. They have been genetically altered to be more lean and grow faster and smaller. That will pass on a whole new series of human health issues soon to be uncovered.

American people are toxic, constipated, obese and yes, antibiotic resistant. There is no end in sight. I will attempt to lay out a little guidance that over time, I am not sure how much time, years possibly, to bring the body back to normal and become non-toxic.

For starters, stop eating any meat that is not organic. What does that mean? Organic simply means no antibiotics, pesticides, insecticides or animal parts were used in the raising of any animal slaughtered for human consumption.

The U.S. beef and poultry industry monitored under the FDA and USDA require all animals, several days before slaughter, to be removed from antibiotic use so the level of these drugs falls within limits set up of course by none other than the FDA and USDA. I do not know what the acceptable limits are for us humans to consume in our daily diet of McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC.

Only 5% of the U.S consumes organic produce, meat, fruits and liquids. I suggest to most parents, eat your organic veggies and organic beans to get a good dose of protein. Cut all meat consumption to once or twice per week. Eat organic meats only.

Now, to be fair to the U.S. meat industry, I will point to another industry that abuses the dispensing of antibiotics. Doctors!

Ear infections are quite common among toddlers. Their cause and cure is a lengthy subject to be covered another day. I remember my oldest son from the ages of 4-6 was on and off antibiotics for two years. I admit I knew little of what I know today, however, I learned quickly he was the only child ever to go through such a long period of antibiotic drug use of my four children. This is just one example of the abuse our health system perpetrates daily, starting at such a young age.

Yes diet and alternative methods of dealing with ear infections helped me with my other three children.

We are bombarded all year by several of the largest industries in America with contaminated food and a drug dealing health industry.

Wake up America! Aids, car accidents, DWI, breast cancer and many other causes of death will become three times less a cause of death. Our food chain and daily diet is becoming the number 1 cause of disability, diabetes II, stroke and obesity. Now death to superbugs.

America shouldn’t fear global warming, at least not yet. America should fear the big corporations who feed us, provide health care for us and the governmental agencies that monitor those corporations. Wake up America!

Learn more about the healthy lifestyle. Concerning hundreds of health topics. Non-meat recipes and more.

Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com.

FDA Approves Anti-Psychotic Drug for Teens

FDA Approves Anti-Psychotic Drug for Teens

The Food and Drug Administration approved expanding use of Johnson & Johnson’s anti-psychotic drug Risperdal to include adolescents suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, a move likely to heighten the already-fierce debate over pediatric prescriptions of such of such powerful drugs.Some doctors are concerned about the safety of treating children whose bodies are still growing with Risperdal and similar medications. They point out that the FDA’s decision is based on short-term studies. Risperdal and competing drugs have previously been tied to serious side effects including increased blood sugar, a potential precursor to diabetes.“ We definitely need to have longer-term follow-up to learn the full extent of the side-effect liabilities,” said Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University in New York gets research funding from drug companies.The FDA approval, which is limited to schizophrenic youngsters 13 –17 years old and short-term treatment of bipolar patients who are 10 – 17, also comes as experts continue to disagree over what symptoms justify prescribing anti-psychotics to teens and children.Risperdal is the first of the newer-generation anti-psychotic drugs known as “atypical” to win FDA approval for those conditions in young people. It was already sanctioned for irritability in pediatric patients with autism.Doctors are allowed to prescribe marketed drugs for any use they wish, even if it isn’t specifically approved by the FDA, and the use of anti-psychotics in young people is already growing rapidly. Overall, the drugs have roughly $15 billion in yearly sales, with Risperdal ringing up $4.18 billion last year. The number of doctor visits by patients 20 years and younger that included an anti-psychotic prescription grew to an estimated 1.2 million in 2002, from about 201,000 in 1993.

Here is where I must stop and ask, what happened between 1993 and 2002 that caused bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to increase in teens?

Was it Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky affair? Was it the tech bubble of 200? Or was it September 11th, 2001?

Here is what I think. Perhaps it was because of the disconnection between parent and child. Let’s face it. No 13-year-old is going to get a prescription for such a dangerous drug without the parent or parent’s consent.

Are these the same 5-7-year-old children, who were prescribed Ritalin for ADD? Wow, what a pharmaceutical company dream come true!

A drug addict for life. Once this child is of the legal age, 18 in most states and 21 in others, well, they can now ask for any psychotic drug they want. In addition to five other or so drugs to counter all the side effects from the childhood years of drug abuse. Well, is it really drug abuse if I allow my doctor to prescribe a drug for my child that will allow him or her to be a more attentive student, be more sociable with others while I am working 12 hours a day, golfing, doing yoga and pilates, or is it child abuse?

I have four children. If they so much take a Tylenol over a six-month period I am upset. They all seem ok. They do well in school. They seem to follow instructions well.

I am simple man. I believe a little family participation, playing a little ball in the park, good food, sunlight and exercise can do a child a lot of good.

I am, however, a little afraid for them and myself. I am afraid that one of these abused children will forget to take his or her medication one day or two and snap. In the process, hurt someone in my family and other innocent children. Unfortunately, I do see children in our community who are troubled and are on these drugs. Frankly, I am bit more than afraid. I am terrified at the thought.

If you are one of these parents or know someone who is, get help. Learn how proper nutrition, exercise and tender care can be more powerful than any drug.

I am aware that there are truly some troubled children out there. I do not believe there are millions of troubled children out there in the U.S.

Thomas Affatato
www.infinitehealthresources.com

The Death of Environmentalism

The Death of Environmentalism

There has finally came a book that dares to actually speak the truth about global warming.
Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Authors Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger break from the Sierra Club and Al Gore mentality and really do tell the truth inconvenient truth.

The major point made in this book that Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth farce barely gave 60 seconds to, is that China and India could well be solely responsible for all Global Warming by 2050. Here’s what Shellenberger had to say.

“If China burns all the coal that is set to burn between now and 2050,” Shellenberger says, “We are super-deeply fucked.”

The fact hardly ever talked about by most hard left wing environmentalists is that China fires up a new coal burning plant every 7-10 days with no pollution control measures whatsoever. India isn’t very far behind them.

Here is a fact made evident in the book, Breakthrough. Even if every American SUV owner were to buy a hybrid tomorrow, that wouldn’t come close to offsetting the environmental change being perpetrated around the globe. In fact all the standards, cap and trade limits, and emission reduction standards that environmentalists have been pushing for may slow, but will never reverse global warming. That is Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ inconvenient truth.

Hollywood and Al Gore have put together a convenient lie at making the U.S. the bad guy, again, for the world’s global woes.

Consider this. Evidence shows, since the Kyoto agreement, many of the 36 industrialized countries that committed to reducing emissions from many of the 36 nations have gone up not down.

These two men have realized a new way of thinking about global warming has come. For the past 10 years, Nordhaus and Shellenberger toiled in the green movement as political strategists and consultants, each wanting to have an impact on society.

Breakthrough takes accurate aim at the environmental movement’s biggest leaders, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Al Gore. “If this book doesn’t piss off a lot of Liberals, we’ve failed,” Nordhaus says.

I, Thomas Affatato, am personally against big government and higher taxes. However, I do believe global warming is real. The proof for me came two years ago when I was introduced to chemtrails in the sky. Those ubiquitous long plumes that criss-cross each other and expand into a hazy cloud cover. The Discovery Channel had a segment on it this year. I realized then, that this concerted effort by the world’s industrialized nations to filter the sun’s rays is possibly a last minute effort to save the plant. This is quite alarming. There are hundreds of thousands of health issues, although unproven at this time, related to the chemicals dispersed by these high flying unmarked tankers.

I do not believe that the meteoric rise of asthma in children over the last decade is the result of food allergies and peanuts.

Breakthrough contends it is the government’s responsibility to fund in an unprecedented way, to find the technology needed to eliminate carbon emissions. They call for a $300 billion investment that could lead to another $200 billion investment by private enterprise.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger contend this is the next revolution in technology. They call it the $300 billion Manhattan Project.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger make a good point. Intel and Google wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t massive federal spending on Computer Science for the military and many tech firms like them figured a way to take this technological revolution to the masses.

For Christ’s Sake! We have spent this money on Iraq to date. Sad to say, it may well be a $300 billion mistake and waste. More importantly are the thousands of young men and women who have been killed and mamed in the process. For what?
To protect the fuel source every air conditioned, lighted home, restaurant, factory, airline, office building and car owner throughout the world, so deeply depends. You do not see the U.S., Nato or Russia in Africa with the same zeal. Because frankly, in the world’s scheme of things. Africa does not matter.

Breakthrough will stop terrorism in its tracks. The day the Middle East and places like Venezuela are not needed we will have literally cut the head off the industrialized world’s enemies. In the process, the next technological revolution will lift billions of people out of poverty, pollution and misery.

Let’s all listen to the inconvenient truth in the new book, Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.

Thomas Affatato

For more on the environment and the healthy lifestyle visit www.infinitehealthresources.com

Bush Signs FDA Drug Safety Bill

Bush Signs FDA Drug Safety Bill

President Bush signs a measure that gives the Food and Drug Administration more power and money to police dangerous side effects from prescription drugs after they reach the market. The signing averts the possibility of massive layoffs at the FDA by extending and increasing industry fees that help pay agency staff salaries. The money had been set to run out on September 30.

~End~

The key point here is the sentence, “. The signing averts the possibility of massive layoffs at the FDA by extending and increasing industry fees that help pay agency staff salaries.”

The mere fact that we have one government agency the oversees Food and Drugs, when one has nothing to do with the other is mind-boggling.

I guess if you and your family eat in McDonald’s and KFC several times a week, then you and possibly a few family members may be on Diabetes Type II drugs and Lipitor for high cholesterol.

McDonald’s and KFC have serious side effects just like drugs. So I guess the FDA, Food and Drug Administration makes sense.

Here’s a little food for thought. The pharmaceutical companies and many food companies contribute as much as $500,000,000.00 annually to the operation of the FDA. Visit the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to see how our government agencies get funded.

Now, if I ran a public corporation the way the government runs the FDA, funded by the same corporations is what set up to oversee. I would be sent to jail.

So it is no surprise that we are deluged with Drug commercials and Fast Food commercials. Otherwise, how will these major corporations get the $500,000,000.00 annually required to fund the state sponsored FDA, Food and Drug Administration.

Just Mind-Boggling!

Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com for more information on living the healthy lifestyle for you and your family.

Emergency Radios

I recently came across an Ad by the American Red Cross. They are selling Emergency Radios, American Red Cross Radios by Eton. These radios are a light source, cell phone charger, radio and renewable energy source. A tool in the event of emergencies like tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, blackouts, earthquakes, wild fires and terrorist attacks. Prices start at $50.00 and I am sure the American Red Cross is receiving some donations from the proceeds.

You can also download your Free Preparedness Guide at www.etoncorp.com.

Courtesy of www.infinitehealthresources.com

Are Food Ads Tied to Childhood Obesity?

A recent poll reprinted in ADWEEK, September 10th, 2007, originally taken from the Wall Street Journal, asked people if they thought Food Ads aimed at kids are a major contributor to childhood obesity?

40% Responded Somewhat
38% Responded Most Definitely
12% Responded Disagree Somewhat
6% Responded Disagree Strongly
3% Responded Not Sure

I think I fall into the 6% respondents, Disagree Strongly. I find it hard to believe a 6year old child or even 10-year-old children are out grocery shopping on their own. I mean few people even shop with cash anymore. I use debit or credit. So there is no way grocery shopping is done by children. Which leaves me with one conclusion.

In our busy, high-tech, overdrive world, most parents get their children exactly what they want to shut them up. Of course Nabisco and Kraft know this, but when do we as adults, parents, teachers of our youth start parenting? When do we start showing our intellect?

I am no fan of Food and Drug Ads on TV in the least bit. I think they should go the way of alcohol and cigarette Ads. When do we take control of our destiny? Quite frankly, I think it is an insult to anyone’s intelligence who lets a child, because of a TV commercial, become obese.

No one is to blame but you.

Learn more about the healthy lifestyle at www.infinitehealthresources.com

Thomas Affatato

Farm Bill Reform

Farm Bill Reform

Congress is currently revising the Farm Bill, which helps determine what foods are available in schools, nutrition programs, and the entire food economy. There is a direct link between America’s high rates of cancer and other chronic diseases and our access to cheap and unhealthy food products that are high in fat and cholesterol.
Now more than ever we must focus on moving government subsidies away from animal agriculture. In 2005, the federal government purchased more than $385 million of beef and cheese for food assistance and spent only about $50 million on fresh fruits and vegetables.

Here’s how you can help:

· Call your senators today and ask them to reduce or eliminate subsidies for meat, dairy, and feed crops through the Farm Bill. Phone calls are an extremely effective way to communicate with Congress. Find your congressional representatives by visiting www.SourceWatch.org and clicking on “Congresspedia.”
· If you belong to an organization that works on health and nutrition issues or on cutting health care costs, please let that organization know that you want agricultural policy to be high on its agenda.

Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com for more information on the Healthy Lifestyle.

Food Allergies

Food Allergies

Please Don’t Pass the Nuts
www.AllergicGirl.blogspot.com

“It’s a shame that so many have no clue about something so basic as allergies,” writes New York-based “Allergic Girl” in this blog about her travails navigating severe allergies to tree nuts, fish and several other foods, as well as allergic asthma. This well-written blog aims to educate and advocate “with charm and persistence.” It provides a list of allergen-free foods, reviews of allergy sensitive restaurants in New York and other places the author has traveled, and interviews with chefs on their tips for diners with allergies.
While most of the blog deals directly with the author’s dietary experiences, she includes posts about her social life and travels, or reviews of movies or plays she has seen. But it’s all connected. The blog, she writes, “is a testament to going out despite being afraid of getting allergic to something; leaving my safe zone to try something new despite the risk I may get sick.”

Finding Snacks for Kids with Allergies

Finding Snacks for Kids with Allergies
More than 12 million Americans are allergic to certain kinds of food, like peanuts and wheat, according to non-porfit Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. Out of that population, 2.2 million are school-age children - and 1 in 17 kids under age 3 has food allergies. Not surprisingly, a growing number of companies have srouted up to help, offering everything from egg-free waffles to wheat-free pasta. While parents can increasingly find such offerings at gourmet grocery stores like Whole Foods, they can find an even wider range of products online.
Here Are Some of The Few Better WebsitesCherrybrook Kitchenwww.cherrybrookkitchen.com: --Premade mixes for cakes, brownies and pancakes. Free of wheat, gluten, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy and eggs.--The mixes are easy to prepare and bake up tasty treats.Divvieswww.divvies.com--Focuses on sweets like popcorn, cupcakes, cookies and candy. Free of peanuts, tree nuts, eggs and dairy.--The responsive customer service and yummy cookies makes this a worthwhile trip.Gak's Snackswww.gakssnacks.com--A small menu of cookies, coffee, cakes and baking ingredients. Free of peanuts, tree nuts, eggs and dairy. Some products are free of wheat and gluten.--The coffee cake was delectable, but was pretty expensive ($27.95 not including shipping)Ener-Gwww.ener-g.com--A wide selection of sweet and savory items, including brown rice flour and crisp wafer cookies filled with dairy-free chocolate filling. Depending on the product, free of wheat gluten, eggs, dairy, nuts and corn.--A wonderful find with products that are affordable.
Allergy Grocerwww.allergygrocer.com--A huge selection of fresh and dried goods, from breads to condiments. Free of everything from wheat and gluten to corn and potato, depending on the product.--The comprehensive selection makes it a good first stop for food-allergy sufferers.

21 Things You Did Not Know You Can Recycle

1. Appliances: Goodwill accepts working appliances, www.goodwill.org, or you can contact the Steel Recycling Institute to recycle them. 800/YES-1-CAN, www.recycle-steel.org.
2. Batteries: Rechargeables and single-use: Battery Solutions, 734/467-9110, www.batteryrecycling.com.
3. Cardboard boxes: Contact local nonprofits and women's shelters to see if they can use them. Or, offer them up at your local Freecycle.org listserv or on Craigslist.org. If your workplace collects at least 100 boxes or more each month, UsedCardboardBoxes.com accepts them for resale.
4. CDs/DVDs/Game Disks: Send scratched music or computer CDs, DVDs, and PlayStation or Nintendo video game disks to AuralTech for refinishing, and they'll work like new: 888/454-3223, www.auraltech.com.
5. Clothes: Wearable clothes can go to your local Goodwill outlet or shelter. Donate wearable women's business clothing to Dress for Success, which gives them to low-income women as they search for jobs, 212/532-1922, www.dressforsuccess.org. Offer unwearable clothes and towels to local animal boarding and shelter facilities, which often use them as pet bedding. Consider holding a clothes swap at your office, school, faith congregation or community center. Swap clothes with friends and colleagues, save money on a new fall wardrobe and back-to-school clothes – then donate the rest.
6. Compact fluorescent bulbs: Take them to your local IKEA store for recycling: www.ikea.com.
7. Compostable bio-plastics: You probably won't be able to compost these in your home compost bin or pile. Find a municipal composter to take them to at www.findacomposter.com.
8. Computers and electronics: Find the most responsible recyclers, local and national, at www.ban.org/pledge/Locations.html
9. Exercise videos: Swap them with others at www.videofitness.com.
10. Eyeglasses: Your local Lion's Club or eye care chain may collect these. Lenses are reground and given to people in need.
11. Foam Packing peanuts: Your local pack-and-ship store will likely accept these for reuse. Or, call the Plastic Loose Fill Producers Council to find a drop-off site: 800/828-2214. For places to drop off foam blocks for recycling, contact the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers, 410/451-8340, www.epspackaging.org/info.html
12. Ink/toner cartridges: Recycleplace.com pays $1/each.
13. Miscellaneous: Get your unwanted items into the hands of people who can use them. Offer them up on your local Freecycle.org or Craigslist.org listserv, or try giving them away at Throwplace.com or giving or selling them at iReuse.com. iReuse.com will also help you find a recycler, if possible, when your items have reached the end of their useful lifecycle.
14. Oil: Find Used Motor Oil Hotlines for each state: 202/682-8000, www.recycleoil.org.
15. Phones: Donate cell phones: Collective Good will refurbish your phone and sell it to someone in a developing country: 770/856-9021, www.collectivegood.com. Call to Protect reprograms cell phones to dial 911 and gives them to domestic violence victims: www.donateaphone.com. Recycle single-line phones: Reclamere, 814/386-2927, www.reclamere.com.
16. Sports equipment: Resell or trade it at your local Play It Again Sports outlet, 800/476-9249, www.playitagainsports.com.
17. “Technotrash”: Easily recycle all of your CDs, jewel cases, DVDs, audio and video tapes, cell phones, pagers, rechargeable and single-use batteries, PDAs, and ink/toner cartridges with GreenDisk's Technotrash program. For $30, GreenDisk will send you a cardboard box in which you can ship them up to 70 pounds of any of the above. Your fee covers the box as well as shipping and recycling fees. 800/305-GREENDISK, www.greendisk.com.
18. Tennis shoes: Nike's Reuse-a-Shoe program turns old shoes into playground and athletic flooring. www.nikereuseashoe.com. One World Running will send still-wearable shoes to athletes in need in Africa, Latin America, and Haiti. www.oneworldrunning.com.
19. Toothbrushes and razors: Buy a recycled plastic toothbrush or razor from Recycline, and the company will take it back to be recycled again into plastic lumber. Recycline products are made from used Stonyfield Farms' yogurt cups. 888/354-7296, www.recycline.com.
20. Tyvek envelopes: Quantities less than 25: Send to Shirley Cimburke, Tyvek Recycling Specialist, 5401 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Spot 197, Room 231, Richmond, VA 23234. Quantities larger than 25, call 866/33-TYVEK.
21. Stuff you just can't recycle: When practical, send such items back to the manufacturer and tell them they need to manufacture products that close the waste loop responsibly.

FDA Probes Popcorn Flavor’s Cancer Link

Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2007

FDA Probes Popcorn Flavor’s Cancer Link

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration is evaluating whether consumers, like workers in popcorn plants, can develop lung disease from inhaling a chemical additive used for butter flavoring in microwave popcorn.

A Denver physician said in a letter to agency in July that a patient who had eaten several bags of extra butter flavored popcorn each day for several years had developed symptoms similar to those of some microwave popcorn-plant workers.

The one case “does not present evidence” that consumer exposure to vapors of the chemicals diacetyle, generated by microwaving popcorn, causes lung disease, said FDA spokesman Michael Herndon. He said the agency is studying the situation, and “carefully considering the safety and regulatory issues it raises.”

ConAgra Foods Inc., the nation’s largest maker if microwave popcorn including the Orville Redenbacher’s and Act II brands, said it is eliminating “within a year” diacetyl from its microwave popcorn.

“While we are fully confident that microwave popcorn is safe for consumers to prepare and consume, we plan to eliminate the use of added diacetyl I products in order to eliminate even the perception of risks for consumers and to provide our employees who handle large quantities of diacetyl regularly with the safest possible work environment,” said spokeswoman Stephanie Childs.

The industry in 2004 sold more than three billion bags, with sales totaling more than $1 billion, ConAgra said.

In 2000, a physician reported to the Missouri health department that eight workers from a microwave popcorn factory developed lung disease. Studies conducted by the national Institute for Occupational Safety and Health concluded that cumulative exposure to diacetyl vapor overtime has the potential to cause serious lung damage and a condition known as bronchiolitis obliterans.

In April the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said workers at factories that make food flavorings as well as popcorn factories are at risk of contracting the hard-to-treat condition.

NIOSH has recommended hat manufacturers substitute the chemical with less-dangerous ones, and that workers don masks and other protective gear. Link between the chemical and lung disease have been less clear in consumers, and the agency has labeled the chemical “generally considered safe.” Last year, David Michaels, a professor at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, petitioned the FDA to drop the designation.

Thomas’s Comments:

I sound like a broken record in my mind. I write weekly on the hazards of the junk sold in our supermarkets as food.

One has to wonder why autism, infant heart disease, obesity, diabetes is at epidemic proportions across all races and financial classes.

IT IS OUR FOOD AND ENVIRONMENT!!!

At www.infinitehealthresources.com we offer advice on healthy living and sell natural and organic products. Why? Because it increases your chances of living a drug free healthy life.

If what we put into our bodies is making us sick, then you can only imagine what happens when you apply thousands of skin care products to your body. Try reading the ingredients. I bet you will not be able to pronounce half of what you read. I cannot.

We live in a toxic world. Made worse by the constant bombardment of environmental spraying of chem-trails in the sky and pollution.

The only chance we have to live healthy is to eat right and apply non-toxic creams, shampoos, etc., to our bodies.

Now, there are many sources of information on healthy living.

At www.infinitehealthresources.com we do not sway from the natural and organic lifestyle one bit. The Resource Center at www.infinitehealthresource.com is loaded with information from top organizations like Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine, The Cancer Project and the Organic Consumer’s Association to name a few.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Young and Old. Wake up! Eighty percent of the products sold as food in our supermarkets are toxic.

Read food labels. Cook fresh food. Start slowly. Feel the difference in a few short weeks and pick up the pace as you go. Watch the pounds shed naturally.

There is no such thing as a diet. There is only a lifestyle. No tricks, no gimmicks. It’s Free!

Thomas Affatato

New York Post, August 21, 2007
Headline P। #3 – Fatso Virus Found

Flab Vaccine Eyed

Louisiana State University released data that a virus called (Adenovirus-36) may have a link to obesity.
I tell you folks, this has the tell tale markings of a pharmaceutical company funded university research effort. The drug industry spends billions to research new ways to bring in cash.
Another vaccine for the nation to consume! What a money windfall. I will post the article after a few comments.
Obese people are overweight because 95% eat junk, junk and more junk. Obese people have obese children because they feed their perfectly healthy children the same junk they eat. I know this to be a fact. Obese people marry obese people. The only cure is a lifestyle change. Not administering another vaccine to perfectly healthy children.
When I go to the supermarket, which is practically every evening, obese people pile onto the cashier’s ramp donuts, frozen waffles, frozen pancakes, bags and bags of fried greasy snacks, soda’s and frozen pizzas. I never see hell of a lot of fresh foods, vegetables and fruits.
My health insurance cost is through the roof. Why? Because obese people line up at the emergency room, doctor’s office and pediatrician’s office to get loads of medications. Why? Because they are diabetic, have high blood pressure and lots of other things wrong with their entire families.
I know this sounds a bit mean. However, I have first hand experience with obesity.My brother for 20 years or so was 100 pounds overweight. This man ate huge amounts of food and tons of junk. My brother was the type of guy who would eat the whole package of English Muffins. He ate junk all day. This November 2007 will be 9 years that he lies in a coma. The man was on so many medications; it was horrible. The side effects from all these medications were slowly killing him. His state of coma is not completely related to his obesity, but it sure was an ingredient. No doubt something psychological was at work. God bless you Joseph. You are in my prayers daily.
Obesity is on the rise in many western nations. It is a concern throughout Europe. I have noticed one interesting fact. I reside in New York City and New York City is overwhelmed with tourists from across the globe, especially Europe. This is a good thing. I visit Central Park often on the weekends and my wife and I noticed that obesity among the Europeans is quite low. Not withstanding the British that is. They have the same epidemic us Americans do. These Europeans from Italy, France and the Netherlands are not fat. Although that may change in the future. It is a fact today. Why? They still enjoy good healthy food.
There is only one cure for obesity. It is a lifestyle of good eating. Vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, fish, more vegetables, fruits, nuts and fish. The rise in obesity is now putting all children at risk because of a new vaccination that may be forced upon us by law. As is the case now, or our children cannot enter school. No nation in the world administers more vaccinations to its children than the US. Obesity, the selfish lifestyle is now a danger to my healthy children and yours.
I at one time was 30-40 pounds overweight. It happened between the ages of 41-45. I was a mess. I had high cholesterol and elevated blood pressure was squeezing into a 38 waist. Finally, I said no more. My doctor advised me if I didn’t make a decision soon, I would be on no less than 3 medications, and could be facing that male mid life heart attack. What really was the icing on the cake was when I could not perform my bedroom obligations. I am now 50 years old and in great shape. No diets, no drugs. Good healthy living and eating. Find out how at www.infinitehealthresources.com. People forgot what good cooking and eating is. Our society is being laid waste to fast food, processed food and way too much junk food. Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com. Learn how to eat properly. Visit out Recipe section. Visit our Resource Center where there are thousands of articles on healthy living.
As for the pharmaceutical companies, well, what is to be said? Vaccines are big business. Look what they are doing to young girls, mostly minority. Human Papillomavirus is a sexually transmitted disease. Doctors say it is responsible for 70% of cervical cancers. Gardasil, the vaccine developed my Merk, is targeted at girls 9-17 and women up to 26.
A recent ad in the U।S. News and World Report states the vaccine does not prevent all types of cervical cancer. There is also little proof it even works and it has some serious side effects. Why not teach our young daughters to refrain from sex at a young age and multiple partners and that unprotected sex is, well, dangerous.

Ladies and gentlemen, take care of yourselves। Your doctor and the pharmaceutical companies just might be the enemy.

Okay। Here is the article from the New York Post.Good health to all!

Fatso Virus FoundFlab Vaccine Eyed

In the buffet of reasons for why Americans are getting fatter, researchers are piling more evidence on the plate for one still-controversial cause: a virus। New research announced yesterday found that when human stem cells – the blank slate of the cell world – were exposed to a common virus they turned into fat cells. And they didn't just change – they stored fat, too. If the research is confirmed, it could lead to the development of a vaccine that could prevent, but not reverse, obesity. While a "fat virus" may be a guilt-free explanation for putting on pounds, it doesn't explain all or even most of America's growing obesity problem. But it adds to other recent evidence that blames expanding waistlines on more than just super sized appetites. For several years, researchers have looked at a possible link between obesity and this common virus, called adenovirus-36, from a family of viruses that cause colds and pinkeye in people. They had already found that a higher percentage of fat people had been infected with the virus than nonfat people. They had exposed animals to the virus and got them to fatten up, and even found a gene in the virus that causes animals to get obese. But ethical restraints kept researchers from exposing people to the virus to see what happens. So they did what would be considered the next best thing, said Nikhil Dhurandhar, who headed the research at Louisiana State University. They took fat tissue from people who had liposuction, removed adult stem cells from the tissue, and exposed the cells to the virus in the lab. Adult stem cells can regenerate and turn into different types of specialized cells to help the body heal itself. More than half the stem cells exposed to the virus turned into fat cells and accumulated fats, while only a small percentage of the non-exposed stem cells did the same. "It's the first time we see an effect in human cells," said Dr. Magdalena Pasarica, Dhurandhar's co-researcher. If a viral cause of obesity can be confirmed, a vaccine could be developed, maybe within five to 10 years, to prevent the virus from making some people fat, Dhurandhar said. But it wouldn't help people already obese, he said.

End

Here is a brief news article from a prominent Wall Street Investment Daily, “Investor’s Business Daily।” The title reads: “Extended Hours Aid Burger King.”The article states that extended hours featuring late night meals are growing sales and profits. However, it did not say that Burger King is growing the average American waistline and a host of other health issues. I can’t believe they actually call this food a meal. There just is no end in sight for this health crisis in America. People either are not listening or they do not care or are they suicidal.

Here is the article dated August 24, 2001, by Investor’s Business Daily।

Extended Hours Aid Burger King

The No।2 burger chain said Q4 earnings rose 61% ex items to 29 cents a share, beating views by 2 cents. Sales lifted 11% to $590 million, above forecasts. Burger King cited breakfast sandwiches and late night meals for its successes. Global same store sales grew 4.4%. But Burger King sees 6%-7% fiscal ’08 sales growth vs. 9% in ’07. Burger King shares, up early, closed down 3%.

End

Please visit www.infinitehealthresources.com and start changing your lifestyle today and get healthy. The universe wants it that way.

Child Abuse Prevention Program

Child Abuse Prevention Program

I would like to take a moment of everyone’s valuable time and introduce an organization I have been supporting since 2001. The Child Abuse Prevention Program. These are some really outstanding people who visit schools and teach children about the dangers of sexual abuse. They teach children about the dangers of online predators and pedophiles.
While I dedicate much of my writing to a healthy lifestyle. One thing is for sure, a child who is abused will abuse themselves. Whether it be with food, drugs or sexual promiscuity or worse, suicide. A healthy lifestyle is fostered when our children are young. We must protect our children.
Please join me in supporting the Child Abuse Prevention Program.

Child Abuse Prevention Program’s Quarterly Updates:During the 2006-2007 school year, September through June, CAPP increased outreach efforts through our award-winning Child Safety Workshop by more than 10 percent. Here are the results:
24,669 8 and 9 year olds taught how to recognize, resist and report abuse.
228 workshops completed
135 schools visited

The following is an accounting of children/schools visited in each borough:
Brooklyn: 6766/35
Queens: 9650/52
Staten Island: 1225/5
Bronx: 4702/26
Manhattan: 2176/15
Outer borough: 150/2

Schools qualify to participate in CAPP’s Child Safety Workshop by participating in Our Professional Training program. This full-day program is offered to school guidance counselors and other school professionals.

Professionals trained through CAPP’s full-day Professional Trainings:
Guidance Counselors-143
Physiologists- 57
Social Workers- 61
Other Professionals- 13


Want to make a donation to CAPP?
Now making a donation at CAPP (Child Abuse Prevention Program) is easier than ever
Visit http://www.childabusepreventionprogram.org/, click on “Donate Now through Network for Good” button and use a credit card to make donation. Help CAPP reach more children during the next school year. If you would like to make a donation you may do so through their website.

Sincerely,
Thomas Affatato

Advancing Cancer Prevention And Survival through Nutrition Education and Research

Advancing Cancer Prevention And Survival through Nutrition Education and Research

I am an advid supporter of The Cancer Project and Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine. I support and donate a portion of our proceeds generated at my two websites; www.infinitehealthresources.com and www.celebratelifegifts.com. www.infinitehealthresources.com is where I began and it is where I can offer and share with the public my strong beliefs that good health is a lifestyle and not diet when it comes to the food we consume. Below is a copy of The Cancer Project’s most recent communication to me, Thomas Affatato.

July 26, 2007

Dear Mr. Affatato:

Thank you for your feedback on The Cancer Project’s survey questionnaire. As a token of our appreciation for your time, please find the enclosed bookmarks featuring The Cancer Project recipes and delightful photographs from artist Saxton Freymann.

As a nonprofit organization dedicated to cancer prevention and survival through nutrition education and research, The Cancer Project provides resources such as:

Food For Life Nutrition & Cooking Classes – nationwide free courses on eating for cancer prevention and survival. We are also recruiting new nutrition and cooking instructors; please visit our Web site to apply.
The Survivor’s Handbook: Eating Right For Cancer Survival – this book contains hundreds of recipes, nutritional information, and scientific research resources. Our accompanying DVD provides lectures on the link between diet and cancer.
Communications – subscribers can opt to receive our free quarterly newsletter in print or electronic format, and/or our Recipe of the Week e-mail.
Free Brochures – Healthy Eating for Life, Nutrition For Your Kids, and various fact sheets on nutrition and cancer.

Please visit our Website at www.CancerProject.org to find the above information and to learn how you can support the great strides we are making in the fight against cancer.

Best Regards,
Lauray MacElhern
Managing Director

5100 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Suite 400
Washington, DC 20016
Phone: 202-244-5038
Fax: 202-686-2216
www.CancerProject.org

Weighing Health Risks From Lead

Weighing Health Risks From Lead

Clayton Cowl, an environmental medicine specialists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota explains lead poisoning and the health implications of the recall of nearly one million toys that may contain hazardous levels of lead paint.

What is lead poisoning?
When lead is ingested, the body will naturally take it out of an active form in the blood stream. The problem with children is it tends to be deposited into the brain and the nerves. The brain of a child develops rapidly, so as a result the results are magnified. Lead can cause cognitive and developmental abnormalties - certain types of learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder.

How much lead exposure does it take for these problems to occur?
They would be seen more commonly in children who are raised in environments, for example, there is lead-based paint on the walls and on the siding on the outside of the house, and they have repeatedly ingested it. This happens in some children with a condition called pica, where they like to chew on nonfood products.But as time has progressed studies have shown clinical effects of lead exposure at lower and lower levels. That makes it critical that environmental exposures are limited - not completely eliminated, because it may not be possible to competely eliminate all lead exposures.

What are the risks for a child who had one of the toys that was recalled?
Parents need to keep things in perspective. Simply having a single toy in the home does not pose an acute medical risk to the child - even if the child was to have ingested one small paint chip. But it is vitally important that all lead exposures are removed from any child's world as soon as possible.
If a parent is aware of a tainted toy that has been in their home, and the child has been playing with it, and the child is known to have a pica or some sort of developmental delay where they put things in their mouth a lot, those would be children that should be seen by their physician and a blood test considered. If the child doesn't have pica, the key is just removing the toy from the home.

Fast Company, July/August, 2007 Issue

Fast Company, July/August, 2007 Issue

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of lugging around bottles of water, cases of water, 5-gallon containers of water for my office water cooler.
Just lifting the large jug for the office water cooler and hoisting up to replace the empty jug and making a damn mess is an art in and of itself.
I must have $200 per month on bottled water. That is nuts!
I have filtered water at home. I even sell some of the best water and shower filters the market has to offer at www.infinitehealthresources.com, Health Store.
Funny thing is that my wife and I are now searching for the perfect reusable bottle for our four children’s lunch bag. I mean, what the heck? I hate filtered tap home. Why am I wasting $2,000 to $3,000 annually for something that is well, free? I pay probably $500 per year to replace the filter cartridges in my home’s water filter system.
I want to share some interesting facts in the July/August issue of Fast Company’s article on bottled water. I feel like an idiot spending all this money on something that is free.

Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.
Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.
Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need. That tension is only complicated by the fact that if we suddenly decided not to purchase the lake of Poland Spring water in Hollis, Maine, none of that water would find its way to people who really are thirsty.
And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.
The water aisle in a suburban supermarket typically stocks a dozen brands of water--not including those enhanced with flavors or vitamins or, yes, oxygen. In 1976, the average American drank 1.6 gallons of bottled water a year, according to Beverage Marketing Corp. Last year, we each drank 28.3 gallons of bottled water--18 half-liter bottles a month. We drink more bottled water than milk, or coffee, or beer. Only carbonated soft drinks are more popular than bottled water, at 52.9 gallons annually.
We buy bottled water because we think it's healthy. Which it is, of course: Every 12-year-old who buys a bottle of water from a vending machine instead of a 16-ounce Coke is inarguably making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn't healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world's $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four--the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico--that has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is impressively safe. It is monitored constantly, and the test results made public. Mineral water has a long association with medicinal benefits--and it can provide minerals that people need--but there are no scientific studies establishing that routinely consuming mineral water improves your health. The FDA, in fact, forbids mineral waters in the United States from making any health claims.
And for this healthy convenience, we're paying what amounts to an unbelievable premium. You can buy a half- liter Evian for $1.35--17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren't paying attention.
In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
Taste, of course, is highly personal. New Yorkers accepted, Americans love to belittle the quality of their tap water. But in blind taste tests, with waters at equal temperatures, presented in identical glasses, ordinary people can rarely distinguish between tap water, spring water, and luxury waters. At the height of Perrier's popularity, Bruce Nevins was asked on a live network radio show one morning to pick Perrier from a lineup of seven carbonated waters served in paper cups. It took him five tries.
We are actually in the midst of a second love affair with bottled water. In the United States, many of the earliest, still-familiar brands of spring water--Poland Spring, Saratoga Springs, Deer Park, and Arrowhead--were originally associated with resort and spa complexes. The water itself, pure at a time when cities struggled to provide safe water, was the source of the enterprise.
In the late 1800s, Poland Spring was already a renowned brand of healthful drinking water that you could get home-delivered in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago. It was also a sprawling summer resort complex, with thousands of guests and three Victorian hotels, some of which had bathtubs with spigots that allowed guests to bathe in Poland Spring water. The resort burned in 1976, but at the crest of a hill in Poland Spring, Maine, you can still visit a marble-and-granite temple built in 1906 to house the original spring.
The car, the Depression, World War II, and perhaps most important, clean, safe municipal water, unwound the resorts and the first wave of water as business. We had to wait two generations for the second, which would turn out to be much different--and much larger.


What is The Environmental Impact?

The label on a bottle of Fiji Water says "from the islands of Fiji." Journey to the source of that water, and you realize just how extraordinary that promise is. From New York, for instance, it is an 18-hour plane ride west and south (via Los Angeles) almost to Australia, and then a four-hour drive along Fiji's two-lane King's Highway.
Every bottle of Fiji Water goes on its own version of this trip, in reverse, although by truck and ship. In fact, since the plastic for the bottles is shipped to Fiji first, the bottles' journey is even longer. Half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water is transportation--which is to say, it costs as much to ship Fiji Water across the oceans and truck it to warehouses in the United States than it does to extract the water and bottle it.

Environmental Impact

That is not the only environmental cost embedded in each bottle of Fiji Water. The Fiji Water plant is a state-of-the-art facility that runs 24 hours a day. That means it requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity--something the local utility structure cannot support. So the factory supplies its own electricity, with three big generators running on diesel fuel. The water may come from "one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth," as some of the labels say, but out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze.
Each water bottler has its own version of this oxymoron: that something as pure and clean as water leaves a contrail.
San Pellegrino's 1-liter glass bottles--so much a part of the mystique of the water itself--weigh five times what plastic bottles weigh, dramatically adding to freight costs and energy consumption. The bottles are washed and rinsed, with mineral water, before being filled with sparkling Pellegrino--it uses up 2 liters of water to prepare the bottle for the liter we buy. Pellegrino chooses its CO2 carefully--it is extracted from super carbonated volcanic spring waters in Tuscany, then trucked north and bubbled into Pellegrino.
Poland Spring may not have any oceans to traverse, but it still must be trucked hundreds of miles from Maine to markets and convenience stores across its territory in the northeast--it is 312 miles from the Hollis plant to midtown Manhattan. Our desire for Poland Spring has outgrown the springs at Poland Spring's two Maine plants; the company runs a fleet of 80 silver tanker trucks that continuously crisscross the state of Maine, delivering water from other springs to keep its bottling plants humming.
In transportation terms, perhaps the waters with the least environmental impact are Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani. Both start with municipal water. That allows the companies to use dozens of bottling plants across the nation, reducing how far bottles must be shipped.
Yet Coke and Pepsi add in a new step. They put the local water through an energy-intensive reverse-osmosis filtration process more potent than that used to turn seawater into drinking water. The water they are purifying is ready to drink--they are recleaning perfectly clean tap water. They do it so marketing can brag about the purity, and to provide consistency: So a bottle of Aquafina in Austin and a bottle in Seattle taste the same, regardless of the municipal source.
There is one more item in bottled water's environmental ledger: the bottles themselves. The big spring water companies tend to make their own bottles in their plants, just moments before they are filled with water--12, 19, 30 grams of molded plastic each. Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person. Durable, lightweight containers manufactured just to be discarded. Water bottles are made of totally recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, so we share responsibility for their impact: Our recycling rate for PET is only 23%, which means we pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year--more than $1 billion worth of plastic.
Some of the water companies are acutely aware that every business, every product, every activity is under environmental scrutiny like never before. Nestlé Waters has just redesigned its half-liter bottle, the most popular size among the 18 billion bottles the company will mold this year, to use less plastic. The lighter bottle and cap require 15 grams of plastic instead of 19 grams, a reduction of 20%. The bottle feels flimsy--it uses half the plastic of Fiji Water's half-liter bottle--and CEO Jeffery says that crushable feeling should be the new standard for bottled-water cachet.
"As we've rolled out the lightweight bottle, people have said, 'Well, that feels cheap,'" says Jeffery. "And that's good. If it feels solid like a Gatorade bottle or a Fiji bottle, that's not so good." Of course, lighter bottles are also cheaper for Nestlé to produce and ship. Good environmentalism equals good business.
Water is, in fact, often the perfect beverage--healthy, refreshing, and satisfying in a way soda or juice isn’t. A good choice.
Nestlé Waters' Kim Jeffery may be defending his industry when he calls bottled water "a force of nature," but he's also not wrong. Our consumption of bottled water has outstripped any marketer's dreams or talent: If you break out the single-serve plastic bottle as its own category, our consumption of bottled water grew a thousand fold between 1984 and 2005.
In the array of styles, choices, moods, and messages available today, water has come to signify how we think of ourselves. We want to brand ourselves--as Madonna did--even with something as ordinary as a drink of water. We imagine there is a difference between showing up at the weekly staff meeting with Aquafina, or Fiji, or a small glass bottle of Pellegrino. Which is, of course, a little silly.
Bottled water is not a sin. But it is a choice.
Packing bottled water in lunch boxes, grabbing a half-liter from the fridge as we dash out the door, piling up half-finished bottles in the car cup holders--that happens because of a fundamental thoughtlessness. It's only marginally more trouble to have reusable water bottles, cleaned and filled and tucked in the lunch box or the fridge. We just can't be bothered. And in a world in which 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, and 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water, that conspicuous consumption of bottled water that we don't need seems wasteful, and perhaps cavalier.
That is the sense in which Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, and Singer, the Princeton philosopher, is both right. Mackey is right that buying bottled water is a choice, and Singer is right that given the impact it has, the easy substitutes, and the thoughtless spending involved, it's fair to ask whether it's always a good choice.
The most common question the U.S. employees of Fiji Water still get is, "Does it really come from Fiji?" We're choosing Fiji Water because of the hibiscus blossom on the beautiful square bottle; we're choosing it because of the silky taste. We're seduced by the idea of a bottle of water from Fiji. We just don't believe it really comes from Fiji. What kind of a choice is that?
Once you understand the resources mustered to deliver the bottle of water, it's reasonable to ask as you reach for the next bottle, not just "Does the value to me equal the 99 cents I'm about to spend?" but "Does the value equal the impact I'm about to leave behind?" Simply asking the question takes the carelessness out of the transaction. And once you understand where the water comes from, and how it got here, it's hard to look at that bottle in the same way again.

End

That was pretty interesting I must say. Here is another foolish thing about water. Go to a decent restaurant and if you are foolish enough to say yes to the bottled water, then you just threw $15 down the drain. Pardon this pun.
Now at www.infinitehealthresources.com we write plenty about the benefits of drinking plenty of good, clean water daily, including bathing in it. In New York where I live, our water comes from upstate in the Catskills. Damn good water, the problem is the addition of fluoride and chlorine. Two more words that require separate discussion in them. However, I will not let my family drink that chemical laden water. Where there is not a municipal water system, chances are the water table is probably loaded with the chemicals from your beautiful lawn.
The pipes in New York City’s older office buildings deliver brown water, the pipes are so old, and so what is one to do?Simply put. Buy your own container. Buy a water filter and you have just added $2,000 to your bottom line. I don’t know about you, but $2,000 is a lot of money to me.

Investors Business Daily July 31, 2007

Investors Business Daily
July 31, 2007

I start me day with The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and New York Post.
What I love about the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily is the news concerning hot stock sectors such as drugs, energy, war, security and as of late environmentally friendly.
I must admit, although I am for living a healthy lifestyle, at times I might invest in a sin stock to make a few bucks. God Bless America if more and more people start taking the advice we offer on healthy living at www.infinitehealthresources.com, Resource Center. However, I will have fewer opportunities to make a buck. Investors Business Daily, however, is not so green, organic and so on.

Alternative Fuels: Environmentalists want us to use corn to run our cars. But the effort to keep the seas from rising may be killing the life in them from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.
The earth in indeed getting greener lately, particularly the coastal waters of the U.S., thanks to agricultural runoff due to a mandated surge in ethanol production fueled by an odd combination of environmentalists and politically connected agribusiness.
A recent study from the World Resources Institute says the development of a corn based ethanol market will only worsen problems already associated with large scale corn production, including groundwater depletion, soil erosion, and algae blooms, as well as dead zones in waterways receiving pesticide and fertilizer runoff.
Of the country’s entire corn crop for 2007, 27% is earmarked for our cars and trucks, up from 20% in 2006. Not only is that demand raising the price of food across the board almost as fast as gasoline; the increased use of fertilizer and water to meet it ironically is killing the environment in order to save it. An oxygen poor dead zone, created by oxygen sucking algae fed by nutrients used to grow corn and other biofuels in the Midwest watershed of the Mississippi River, already exists in the Gulf of Mexico. The 7,900-square-mile area with almost no oxygen, a condition called hypoxia, is about the size of Connecticut and Delaware together.
More corn grown for fuel means more agricultural runoff from farms of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous, which feed algae blooms. As the algae die, they sink to the sea floor, and the bacterial breakdown of the organic matter consumes the oxygen fish, crabs and other sea creatures need to live.
Ethanol from corn sounds like an energy panacea, but the devil is in the details. It takes 4,000 gallons of fresh water per acre per day to replace evaporation in a cornfield. Each acre requires about 130 pounds of nitrogen and 55 pounds of phosphorous.
Never mind the fossil fuel used by farm equipment that plows, cultatives and harvests the crop. Then the corn must be refined into a product that produces 20% to 30% less energy than gasoline and transported around the country by the truck.
The Gulf of Mexico isn’t the only body of water affected by the biofuel frenzy. An article in the Washington Post warns of ecological damage to Chesapeake Bay as a result of the surge in demand for ethanol.
A Virginia Tech study predicts that farmers in the bay watershed will plant 500,000 new acres of corn in the next five years. The study estimates that such an ethanol driven increase in cornfields could add an additional 8 million to 16 million pounds of runoff pollution to Chesapeake Bay.
“Corn-based ethanol hasn’t been pursued because this is the best solution,” says Scott Cullen of the Network for New Energy Choices. “It’s been because this has been pushed the hardest.” Even if all corn in the U.S. was used for fuel, Cullen reckons, it will offset only about 15% of the country’s gasoline use while causing significant environmental change.Farm state senators have indeed pushed ethanol, and it is not irrelevant that Iowa is the first stop for presidential wannabes. If Idaho was the first primary state, we might be making ethanol from potatoes. But at what environmental cost?

End

Here is something else to note. It is estimated that it took ¾ of a gallon of oil to make 1 barrel of ethanol. Al Gore, Monsanto and every other Big Corp name that sees big money have shoved this ethanol thing down our throats.
The price of food has gone up 20-30% in the last six months with ethanol production taking much of the blame. Why? Last crop acreage to corn. High fertilizer costs and rising farm labor costs.
Once again we are made fools of.

Diabetes

Last week, I wrote about the hysteria in all the major N.Y. papers about the $500 million Diabetes epidemic in New York City.
I mentioned an article I wrote for www.infinitehealthresources.com Resource Center in 2005. which respected weekly investment paper, Barron’s. Barron’s noted how an investor can and has capitalized on the diabetes epidemic in the U.S.
When billions are to be made from a disease, that is 95% preventable, something is seriously wrong with our society.

Please, read on.

Diabetes
October 28, 2005 by Thomas Affatato

Diabetes Summer 2005 sent home for me, the plight of America’s health and many parts of the Industrialized world. Barrons, the respected financial weekly, which influences Monday morning stock market openings, ran an investment opportunity headline. Diabetes Blues along side the picture of B.B. king, Blues' great. Who appears in diabetes test kit commercials? The article begins with a frightening fact; “Twenty five years from now, as many as 360 million people are likely to be afflicted with diabetes”, a huge increase from current levels, which currently in the United States, average about 18-20 million with type 2 diabetes. The front page ends with this line; “as healthcare companies scramble to help, here’s what investors need to know.” The article then began its lengthy discussion on investment opportunities. Barrons’ has no interest in a diabetes epidemic other than making money. I am in no way criticizing Barron’s. My point here, if Barrons is writing on such a colossal investment opportunity, then you better believe diabetes will attack 360 million people. According to the Harvard School of Public health, worldwide, the number of adults with type 2 diabetes will increase from 135 million in 1995 to 300 million in the year 2005. Barron’s is on the money, excuse the pun.
In the United States, the number of people with diabetes will go from about 14 million in 1995 to 25-30 million in 2005. The numbers mask the real horrors of this disease. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness and kidney failure among adults. Diabetes causes, mild to severe nerve damage that coupled with diabetes-related circulation problems, often lead to the loss of a leg or foot. Diabetes significantly increases the risk of heart disease. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, directly causing over 60,000 deaths each year.
What is truly incredible, diabetes is largely preventable. That’s right. Probably 90% of all type 2 diabetes is preventable. Nine out of ten cases could be avoided by taking several simple steps: exercise more, eat a HEALTHY DIET, which you can learn more about here at Infinite Health Resources and lastly, don’t smoke.
As the country gets fat and ages, diabetes threatens medical and economic disaster. This epidemic is in the making today, right now, and will cost $200 billion. The peripheral suffering, that which family members go through caring and watching this disease consume their loved ones cannot be calculated. One can be sure, the cost is huge, both emotionally and monetarily.
Forty one million Americans today, are pre diabetes according to the Harvard School of Public Health. More than three of all new cases appear in children and teens for the type 2 diabetes. Ninety percent of all diabetes cases are from obesity, lack of exercise, and poor diet. People, we must get control of our lives and our children’s lives. This information provided here at Infinite Health Resources is not meant just to inform, it is meant to frighten you into action.
We must take control. We must be responsible. It is a change of lifestyle. Start gradually. I guarantee, in a few months you will look and feel better. Infinite Health Resources will help everyone adjust and adopt this lifestyle. There are no diets that will help you, other than a diet prescribed by a licensed medical professional.
Diets do not work they never did and they never will. Diets fail because they are such a dramatic and immediate shift in what you are accustomed to that they become impossible to deal with. Forget Atkins, South Beach, and Weight Watchers.
Visit our menus and get started on the lifestyle that will bring you and your family gradually back to health. The main cause of type 2 diabetes epidemic is fat. The Nurse’s Study over a 25-year period showed obesity caused a 40% increase in the development of type 2 diabetes. Because diabetes increases due to obesity, doctors call it a lifestyle disease.
We at Infinite Health Resources implore you to change that lifestyle. Eliminate saturated fats, trans fats and start exercising. A diet rich in plant food, legumes, whole grains and fruits is the only answer. Nothing else will work.

Type 2 Diabetes

Our cells depend on a single simple sugar, glucose, for most of their energy needs. That's why the body has intricate mechanisms in place to make sure glucose levels in the bloodstream don't go too low or soar too high.
When you eat, most digestible carbohydrates are converted into glucose and rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. Any rise in blood sugar signals the pancreas to make and release insulin. This hormone instructs cells to sponge up glucose. Without it, glucose floats around the bloodstream, unable to slip inside the cells that need it.
Diabetes occurs when the body can't make enough insulin or can't properly use the insulin it makes. One form of diabetes occurs when the immune system attacks and permanently disables the insulin-making cells in the pancreas. This is type 1 diabetes, once called juvenile-onset or insulin-dependent diabetes. It affects about one million Americans.
The other form (type 2) tends to creep up on people. It takes years to develop into full-blown diabetes. It begins when muscle and other cells stop responding to insulin's open-up-for-glucose signal. The body responds by making more and more insulin, essentially trying to ram blood sugar into cells. Eventually, the insulin-making cells get exhausted and begin to fail. This is type 2 diabetes.

Simple Prevention

Making a few changes can dramatically lower the chances of developing type 2 diabetes. The same changes can also lower the chances of developing heart disease and some cancers.
Control your weight. Excess weight is the single most important cause of type 2 diabetes. Being overweight increases the chances of developing type 2 diabetes seven-fold. Being obese makes you 20 to 40 times more likely to develop diabetes than someone with a healthy weight. Check you weight in our BMI Tool.
Losing weight can help if your weight is above the healthy-weight range. Losing 7-10% of your current weight can cut in half your chances of developing type 2 diabetes.
Get moving. Inactivity promotes type 2 diabetes. Every two hours you spend watching TV instead of pursuing something more active increases the changes of developing diabetes by 14%. Working your muscles more often and making them work harder improves their ability to use insulin and absorb glucose. This puts less stress on your insulin-making cells.
Long bouts of hot, sweaty exercise aren't necessary to reap this benefit. Findings from the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study suggest that walking briskly for a half hour every day reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 30%.
This amount of exercise has a variety of other benefits as well. And even greater
cardiovascular and other benefits can be attained by more, and more intense, exercise.

Mandatory Lifestyle Change

Tune-up your diet. Two dietary changes can have a big impact on the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Choose whole grains and whole-grain products over highly processed carbohydrates. White bread, white rice, mashed potatoes, donuts, bagels, and many breakfast cereals have what's called a high glycemic index. That means they cause sustained spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels. Carbohydrates that aren't as easily digested cause lower, slower increases in blood sugar and insulin. As a result, they stress the body's insulin-making machinery less, and so help prevent type 2 diabetes. Such foods have a low glycemic index. Examples include whole wheat, brown rice, other whole grains, most beans and nuts, and whole grain breakfast cereals.

Choose good fats instead of bad fats. The types of fats in your diet can also affect the development of diabetes. Good fats, such as the polyunsaturated fats found in tuna, salmon, liquid oils, such as olive and canola, and many nuts, can help ward off type 2 diabetes. Trans fats do just the opposite. These bad fats are found in many margarines, packaged baked goods, fried foods in most fast-food restaurants, and any product that lists "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" on the label. If you already have diabetes, eating fish can help protect you against a heart attack or dying from heart disease.

If you smoke, try to quit. Add type 2 diabetes to the long list of health problems linked with smoking. Smokers are 50% to 90% more likely to develop diabetes than nonsmokers.
Alcohol now and then may help. A growing body of evidence links moderate alcohol consumption with reduced risks of heart disease. The same may be true for type 2 diabetes. Moderate amounts of alcohol - a drink a day for men, a drink every other day for women-increases the efficiency of insulin at getting glucose inside cells. And some studies indicate that moderate alcohol consumption decreases the risk of type 2 diabetes. If you already drink alcohol, the key is to keep your consumption in the moderate range. If you don't drink alcohol, there's no need to start you can get the same benefits by losing weight, exercising more, and changing your eating patterns.

In Summary

The most efficient way to prevent type 2 diabetes, and it is preventable, is this: STAY SLIM AND LEAN AND GET ACTIVE. Your life depends on it.
Please view our articles on “Obesity and Healthy Weight” and check out our Health Tools.

End

For more information on this preventable epidemic, diabetes, go to: http://www.infinitehealthresources.com/Store/Resource/Cat/1-4-8/3.html

New York Post, Monday, July 23rd, 2007

New York Post, Monday, July 23rd, 2007

Headlines for every major newspaper reprinted the findings published in the journal, “Circulation,” that folks who drank one soda a day had about a 50% higher risk of metabolic syndrome, excessive fat around the waist, lowers good cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and things of that nature.
Well, we did it again at www.infinitehealthresources.com. We wrote much about this other nasty condition that soda has an impact on our body.
First of all, with all the hoopla about drink your milk for a great source of calcium for strong bones – forget it – no country in the world drinks more milk than in the USA and we have the highest bone fracture rate in the world.

Soda, all soda contains phosphoric acid. This dandy ingredient causes calcium depletion in our bones at an incredible rate. The calcium leaves our body through our urine.
Soda contains high fructose corn syrup. This miracle made ingredient was a food manufacturer’s dream come true. HFC suppresses a hormone that signals the brain it has eaten enough. Never mind that it is grain with genetically modified corn seeds. God knows what the heck is going on in there.
Drink lemon water, real water with real lemon added.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Thomas Affatato, www.infinitehealthresource.com

New York Post Wednesday, July 25, 2007

New York Post Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Page 2 of the New York Post headlined the $500 million diabetic shock for New York City. My website www.infinitehealthresources.com has several articles dedicated to this dreaded disease. I wrote a piece whose idea came from Barron’s, the Wall Street king of financial papers, how an investor can parlay this epidemic into some serious bucks.

My articles noted have Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately affected. I can tell you this – Big Corp Food and Big Corp Pharma are making a killing on the backs of the Black and Hispanic populations throughout America.
However, wake up Black and Hispanic America. You’ve got no one to blame but yourselves. Start eating vegetables and fruits.
Fast food just ain’t gonna cut it.

Then as if by script. The New York Post Thursday, July 26th, 2007 page 2 claims presidential hopeful Mrs. Clinton and a few other New York City politicians are asking for $120 million to combat the $500 million cost to treat diabetes. I have the answer! All the minority areas, but hardest by this preventable dreaded disease should have McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Church’s Fried Chicken and KFC closed and banned within 5 miles of any Black and Hispanic neighborhood. Wait a minute! That should be 5 miles out of the city limits. That would of course mean less campaign donations from Big Food Corp and Big Pharma. Oh well! What can I say, I’ve always been a dreamer.

Thomas Affatato, www.infinitehealthresources.com

I have had the pleasure of writing for the Fight Girls, featured on Oxygen TV, on eating healthy. The complete article could not be posted to the Fight Girls Oomph website due to its size. I found it difficult to write a brief article for the Fight Girls to eat healthy and any other fight girl out there. So I have posted it here for you all to read. At www.infinitehealthresources.com there is plenty more where this came from.

Fight To Stay Fit

Building a fit, healthy body and focusing on a nutrition plan is harder today than it was fifty to seventy-five years ago.

Obesity, Obesity, Obesity. That is all we hear. The diet business is a multi billion-dollar business with thousands of diets that have no one plan that actually works. These thousands of diet plans fail to provide one basic element common sense eating. Common sense and a little education about food can last a lifetime. However, the diet industry would no longer be a billion dollar industry. So forget about any revelations from them.

So, I am going to give it to you straight, fast and simple. This plan works. I know, my family, wife and four children eat and live this way, always. Obesity, sickness and pharmaceutical drugs are practically non-existent in our home. I could easily right 300 pages on the subject. These brief words about many food topics hopefully inspire you to act and learn more and do more.

The U.S.D.A., (United States Department of Agriculture) provides us with a food pyramid consisting of dairy and meats and having the heaviest concentration at the top with fruits, and grains. Ironically, some of the healthiest people and longest living people in the world have a food pyramid completely inverse to ours. They are the people of the Mediterranean and Asia.

The Mediterranean diet gets a lot of hype in many health magazines. However, this fabulous diet gets little attention in the U.S. mainstream media.

The people of the Mediterranean, Italians, Greeks and French have the second longest lifespan after Japan. Japan, by the way, does not view our food pyramid as life sustaining like their Mediterranean food loving partners.

One has to say, why is this? Well, the U.S.D.A. receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the meat and dairy industries, towards funding for the U.S.D.A.’s daily operations. After all, the U.S.D.A. is there to regulate and maintain the dairy and meat industry. Why shouldn’t those industries pay for all those salaries? The controversy exists, however, as to the favorable status given to those good will industries by the U.S.D.A.

Let me begin with dairy, milk.

We are the largest milk-consuming nation in the world. Yet, our elderly female population has the highest hip fracture ratio than any other non-dairy consuming nation. I thought milk made strong bones! Well, the fact of the matter is, we have been mislead by the American Dairy Council.

The Italians, Greeks, French and Japanese drink little milk. Hip Fractures are minimal in postmenopausal woman compared to their American counterparts. However, the Italian and French do consume cheese. Every ounce of cheese is equal to and 8oz glass of milk. However, they don’t eat cheese everyday. The Mediterranean diet is rich in nuts, vegetables and fish, which contain calcium. In addition, a half hour a day in the sun and some strong physical activity help to build strong bones. The sun’s natural vitamin D is the vitamin that allows the body to absorb the calcium it has consumed.

If you must drink milk or think I am crazy, please drink organic milk-no fat organic milk preferably. Our dairy cows are given such large quantities of drugs-BGH, Bovine Growth Hormone, and anti-biotics – that the benefit of drinking any milk is not worth the health risk. Many children and African Americans are dairy intolerant and often misdiagnosed by many physicians. Pediatricians have found an animal protein in cow’s milk that can actually cause calcium depletion when digested and released through urine.Please note – soda contains phosphorous. Phosphorous depletes bones of calcium. Lose the soda.
Source: Don’t Drink Your Milk: Dr. Frank A. Oski, MD

Let’s talk about meat.

The majority of 500 million or so cows in North America are fed the body organs of other cows. That’s right, and the U.S.D.A allows this. As a result, these animals are given massive amounts of drugs and antibiotics. Before slaughter they are taken off the drugs two to three days to allow the animals to dissipate the toxins before entering the slaughterhouse and our food system. By the way, the U.S.D.A. and FDA approve the levels of drugs considered acceptable. Ever wonder why we have human infections that are immune to many antibiotic drugs dispensed in our hospitals? Infection is the second leading cause of death in an American hospital after malpractice.

Meat provides protein and folic acid. Folic Acid is lacking in a vegetarian diet. Protein is abundant in legumes (beans), fish such as salmon and sardines, which are packed with EFA’s, Essential Fatty Acids, the omega 3, 6 and 9, necessary for excellent cardiac and vascular health as well as healthy body joints and mind. Folic acid can be derived from fortified whole grain cereals.

When eating meat, keep it to once a week. Regular meat consumption can slow down bowel movements. Bowel movements should be no less than once a day, preferably two to three times per day. Please note that all disease originates in the colon. The digestive process and nutrient extraction take place here. When we are not regular, toxins get released through the intestinal wall into our bloodstream and cause us harm, lack of energy and enhance harmful free radical growth, which is the foundation of cancer.

Grilled chicken – the most cancerous meat of all. Sorry to inform the many chicken lovers of this fact. All grilled meat has some level of carcinogenic content. Grilled chicken is the worst.

Grilled Chicken Contains Cancer-Causing Compounds

Health-conscious consumers have long steered clear of the fat and cholesterol in fried chicken. But grilled chicken may be even worse. Cancer-causing chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) have been found in chicken, and the very highest concentrations occur when it is grilled.

Fried chicken is every bit as bad as you thought: A KFC chicken breast harbors 135 milligrams of cholesterol and gets more than half its calories from fat. A typical KFC chicken breast holds 400 calories and 24 grams of fat, including 6 grams of saturated fat, the type associated with high cholesterol levels, breast cancer and insulin resistance. And you don’t want to eat chicken undercooked. At retail stores, salmonella and campylobacter are commonly found on chicken products. These live bacteria easily transfer to cooking surfaces, utensils and hands and can cause a serious intestinal illness. Many consumers have imagined that grilled chicken is a healthier option. But scientific evidence suggests that, when it comes to cancer risk, grilled chicken could be among the worst choices.

Source : Jennifer Reilly, R.D.
www.pcrm.org

Okay. Let’s talk about the diet that will rocket any competitor to the top of their game.

Organic foods need some explaining. Though organic foods are not widely available, you should seek it out whenever possible. Organic simply means a food is grown or an animal is raised without the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer and chemical laden feed or genetically modified feed. In addition to this, crops are rotated to preserve the soil, thereby preserving the natural nutrients found in the soil.

Corporate farming is grown year round and depletes the soil of vital nutrients. A non-organic head of broccoli vs. an organic head of broccoli contains up to 50% less nutrients than its organic equivalent. Organic food may cost more but you will benefit greatly from it. Also, organic food tastes better. Try it and see for yourself.

Conventional foods that contain all those chemicals are a drag on your body. The toxins found in these foods put stress on the body and all of its parts. By eliminating these toxins, our energy level skyrockets as well as all our senses. One must wonder why is it we have the highest cancer rates in the Western World?

Lastly, eat your veggies and fruits any way you can get them.

The argument that Americans are living longer holds true for the folks born in the 1920s, thirties, forties and maybe the fifties. Why? Well, these people did not have McDonalds, Burger King and Apple Bees. These folks ate a well balanced diet. Many ate the food grown from their backyards. This country was largely filled with immigrants from Europe. These people brought those customs and recipes with them. The average man today at age 45 is on at least one pharmaceutical drug, if not, two. By the time he is 55 he will be on four to six pharmaceutical drugs. Why? Because the side effects from pharmaceutical drug use is to give you more drugs to counter-act these effects. Few medical practitioners will never recommend treating disease with proper dieting. They are taught no to do this. By the way, many medical colleges are recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the pharmaceutical industry.

So, getting back to that 55-year-old man, will he make it to eighty or ninety? Time will tell. It is impossible to feel your best while toxicity from pharmaceutical drug use permeates your body. A forty-five year-old man on life long drugs, such as cholesterol and high blood pressure, deteriorates his health. What kind of shape will that person be in at age seventy-five after twenty-five to thirty years of daily drug use? If illegal drugs cut life short, how can legal drugs extend life?

The people of the United States have forgotten how to cook and eat well. That is it. Period. It is never too late to change ones unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy lifestyle.

Begin by reading labels on the products you purchase to eat at your local supermarket. When I was a young boy, thirty to forty years ago, the average supermarket had eight to ten aisles. Today’s supermarket has no less than twenty-four aisles. I can tell you this as a fact. Eighty percent of what is sold in today’s supermarket is bad for our health. The food industry has created so many products the last thirty to forty years to satisfy corporate shareholders. WE are slowly dieing from all the choices available.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

A food manufacturer’s dream came true by inventing High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) – that was developed by a scientist. HFCS neutralizes a chemical receptor in the brain called leptin that receives a signal from the stomach that it is full and to stop eating. Add in the fact that it is a genetically modified seed with built in pesticides by Monsanto and you have the beginning of our obesity epidemic. Coincidence - maybe? HFCS is in every product that contained real sugar. Read the labels. It is in English muffins, breadcrumbs, soda, pancake syrup and regular breads. The list can go on and on.

FD&C Food Coloring Red, Yellow and others. Put it back on the shelf. Poison!

Hydrogenated vegetable oil is another boon to the food industry. This chemical lengthens the shelf life of foods. It is also found in just about everything. This ingredient by itself could survive a nuclear war. There is no end to its life in a solid state.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. You will never be in any kind of good condition if fast food is part of your diet. However, you can reward yourself on the weekends. A little junk as one or two meals over the weekend can be your reward for living well the other five to six days a week.

Eat to Live.

Start your day with and switch it up every other day with whole grain cereals and berries, organic oat bran cereal with blueberries or strawberries. Other days have an egg sandwich, no cheese or bacon, on whole grain bread. Never eat white bread again for the rest of your life.

White flour has all its nutrients removed and the nutrients are then added back in. This is called enriching. Enriched bread - lose it! Also, white bread is high on the glycemic index. No one should ever be eating high glycemic foods.

Mid morning snack should always be fruits such as granny smith apples and more berries. Lunch should be a vegetable dish with beans such as chickpeas, kidney beans, and soybeans and pasta. Stay hydrated all day – eight maybe ten 8oz. glasses of water.

Dinner is a fish with vegetables. Dinner is also another vegetable with beans and pasta. Forget low carb. I eat pasta two times a day everyday. That goes for my entire family. I lost thirty pounds three years ago and have not looked back. Every dinner should be followed by a salad – Romaine Lettuce. You may add cucumbers and tomatoes. The dressing should be oil and vinegar, balsamic vinegar, or oil and lemon. Drink lemon water with your dinner. It is refreshing and helps clean your blood.

The after dinner salad is an absolute must for digestion and bowel movement. Romaine lettuce is loaded with vital nutrients and calcium as well.

Almonds are a great 9 p.m. snack. I roast mine a little bit. No salt. It is a great source of calcium and fiber. Very filling as well.

Always cook with extra virgin olive oil. Canola oil is okay for frying because it smokes at a higher temperature therefore it cooks faster. It is okay to use extra virgin olive oil for everything. You shouldn’t be frying very much. Get in the habit of cooking fresh lunch every morning. Pack lunch, save money.

If you rotate ten to twelve recipes shown on our website and tips on cooking it can get you started today to live life. You will need to reach your maximum level of strength, endurance, determination and spiritual power. Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com. click on recipes and take it from there. Find out what a serving really is. Learn how to cook.

Please remember. Always go organic whenever possible. Remember this also. Get your veggies and fruits any way you can.

What you put on your body is just as important as what you put in it. Cosmetics are loaded with toxins. Use non-toxic cosmetics. Underarm creams, deodorants and feminine sprays can be loaded with chemicals. Breast cancer is through the roof. All the walking and marching in the world will not stop this nightmare. Individually we can all make a difference. Knowledge is power. Live well, never stop learning. Avoid chemicals in every way humanely possible.

Good luck and good health!

Sincerely,Thomas Affatato
www.infinitehealthresources.com

Referencesr. Earl Mindells, Unsafe at any Meal
Food For Life, Dr. Neal Barnard, MD
What’s In Your Cosmetics, Aubrey Hampton
The Cancer Project, www.cancerproject.org