(NaturalNews) While American consumers are running scared over the possibility of tainted peanut butter, it's worth pointing out that the number of people sickened by salmonella (529 at last count) is absolutely dwarfed by the number of people harmed or killed by toxic chemicals that are
intentionally put into the food supply.
But that hasn't stopped people from freaking out over peanut butter. They're demonstrating a kind of mania that I've dubbed, "Pervasive Peanut Butter Avoidance Disorder" (PPBAD) as a nod to the
disease mongers of modern psychiatry. You can generate your own disease names, too, at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mongering-engine.aspBut is this
peanut butter fear really warranted?
How many
children die of cancer each year from eating
sodium nitrite in hot dogs, bacon and
processed meat? Nobody has an exact number, but it's no doubt much larger than 529. Brain cancer and leukemia kill a lot of children, and much of it is caused by chemical
food additives. (
http://www.naturalnews.com/022288.html)
How many
adults suffer neurological impairment and ultimately die from drinking artificial chemical sweeteners? How many people get heart disease and die from
eating partially-hydrogenated soybean oil used in margarine, cookies and crackers? How many future adults are going to die early from all the caffeine-spiked energy drinks they're consuming right now?
And for that matter, how many U.S. adults have been killed by FDA-approved
pharmaceuticals? That number is at least 100,000 per year (
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm) and may be much higher. At 100,000 deaths per year, over 8,300 Americans are killed
every month by Big Pharma's medicines.
In contrast to all that, how many people have been killed by tainted peanut
butter?
Eight.
Yep: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Eight. I don't mean to minimize the value of those eight lives, but if we're talking about national public
safety, we have to keep the numbers in perspective here. Eight lives versus
eight thousand killed every month by pharmaceuticals.
That makes
pharmaceuticals 1,000 times more fatal than poisoned peanut butter. And that doesn't even count all the
suicides caused by psychiatric medications, most of which never get reported as anything other than suicides (the
drugs are usually left out of the explanation of death).
Screaming about peanut butter, but silent about deadly pharmaceuticals
So where's the outcry against deadly pharmaceuticals? Sodium nitrite in processed meats? Aspartame and MSG in beverages and foods?
The silence is disturbing. People are too busy freaking out over peanut butter to get their heads on straight and focus on the
real threats to the health of American
consumers.
The real threats are the use of dangerous
chemicals in foods, drugs and personal care products. Those chemicals are no doubt killing many hundreds of thousands of Americans each year and adding a huge burden to the medical expenditures by the federal
government (and state governments, too).
My question to the remaining sane people in
America is simply this:
If you're worried about the salmonella in the peanut butter, why aren't you worried about the sodium nitrite in the hot dogs?Or how about the artificial colors in the sports drinks and the hormone residues in
meat and milk? What about the mercury used in dental fillings, or the synthetic fluoride chemicals dumped into the public
water supply? How about the pharmaceuticals in the water supply, too?
We live in a
toxic world, overflowing with cancer-causing chemicals that are routinely promoted to us as being "beneficial."
Peanut butter is the least of our problems.
How to control the population: Spread irrational fear
But the public's focus on peanut butter certainly does show one thing: The complete insanity and irrationality of many consumers.
Fear mongering is highly effective at shoving the sheeple towards irrational behavior. It worked in the days following 9/11, it worked for the original bailout money fiasco (the stupid Bush bailout, not the stupid Obama bailout, which is even larger), and now it's working to get Congress to approve a new government bureaucracy: The proposed
Food Safety Management Administration (FSMA), a whole new layer of bureaucratic interference with
the food supply that's bound to end up doing to foods what the
FDA did to nutritional supplements.
America,
get your head on straight! If you're afraid of peanut butter, your priorities are completely askew. Yes, your
health is being seriously threatened today, but not by peanut butter. Your chance of being killed by tainted peanut butter is even less than being struck by lightning this year.
You can send all that recalled peanut butter to my house, by the way. I'll gladly eat it. Probably 99.999% of all the peanut butter being recalled right now is completely safe. And for the other point-zero-zero-one percent, I'm quite certain that a healthy immune system and the regular use of probiotics will allow me to survive a little salmonella consumption. I've eaten far stranger stuff as a kid in the public school system anyway…
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams launched NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
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