(NaturalNews) This week, the CSPI released a "risky foods" list aiming to reveal the top ten riskiest foods responsible for most food-borne illnesses. Number one on the list is "leafy greens." Does this mean people should stop eating leafy greens? Of course not: The list itself is flawed from the very start.
There's nothing inherently "risky" about leafy greens.
There has never been a single food-borne illness caused by a leafy green. What causes food-borne illnesses are
the bacteria that get onto the leafy greens. Putting the focus on the
food item itself is not only scientifically inaccurate; it's also misleading to
consumers.
The real question is
how do
foods get contaminated with e.coli? And that answer involves
the growing and processing of those foods. Foods that are grown near
factory animal farms are far more likely to be contaminated with e.coli than those grown in more
natural settings. Foods grown using methods of
biodynamic gardening are far more likely to be free from e.coli than those grown as monoculture crops.
What really
causes foods to be contaminated are
conventional mass-agriculture farming practices, not the foods themselves. So buying leafy greens from a local organic market is completely different from buying leafy greens grown with a corporate-controlled monoculture approach.
Don't blame the veggies!
It's a shame to see
CSPI blame the veggies for all this, especially when
fresh produce is precisely what more Americans need to be
eating (or drinking as raw juice smoothies) in order to prevent degenerative disease and enhance their
health. By publishing this list,
the CSPI perpetuates the myth that only "sterile" food is
healthy. With this list, they are implying that
dead foods are better for you than
living foods, and yet that's completely the wrong conclusion from all this. Dead foods
lead to dead people. Only
live foods can keep you alive in a healthy way, and when you're dealing with live foods, there's a need for more mindful agricultural practices.
Raw
milk offers us a great demonstration of all this. Raw milk is far healthier for human
consumption than pasteurized, homogenized, processed milk (the stuff most people buy and guzzle down). But selling raw milk would require dairy farms to clean up their unsanitary practices, and that's just too much trouble, so it's easier for the whole industry to just continue with their unclean milk collection practices (with blood, pus and all) and then cook the
bacteria out of the milk while declaring it "safe" for human consumption.
The FDA wants to enact a similar death sentence for all
vegetables, requiring fumigation or
irradiation before any such items are allowed to be sold to consumers. Such a nefarious plan has already been put into place with California almonds (
http://www.naturalnews.com/021776_almonds_food_raw_almonds.html).
The ultimate goal? Irradiating all vegetables
Most of what you're hearing today about e.coli qualifies as just more "scare stories" (much like the swine flu) designed to get the public to
react by agreeing to a food irradiation plot (
http://www.naturalnews.com/023015_food_foods_USDA.html). Remember this: U.S. health authorities don't want anybody eating healthy,
living foods. They want the nation to subsist on
dead foods because that's what brings in the most repeat business for the drug companies.
Dead foods also happen to save the government a fortune by making sure people don't live long enough to collect much money on social security or Medicare. (Seriously.) In the minds of the people running the USA, longevity is the enemy of health care cost control.
Most of the people who die from eating e.coli, by the way, were already suffering from compromised immune systems caused by -- guess what? Eating too many dead, processed foods!
People don't need more sterilized, dead foods. What they need is more live foods, more fresh produce and more living enzymes (which you can only get from living foods). Live foods have their natural medicines intact -- the delicate phytonutrients that provide most of the plant's medicinal benefits. Heat processing (pasteurization, etc.) destroys that
natural medicine, transforming healing foods into dead, lifeless foods that are good for nothing more than a source of bland calories.
I find it astonishing that in an age when our national leaders are trying to figure out how to reform health, they would simultaneously be trying to figure out how to kill and sterilize the entire U.S. food supply.
E.coli is not the problem here. Disastrous
farming practices are.
Sources for this story include:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/10/the-point-of-a-risk...
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams created NaturalNews.TV, a natural living video sharing site featuring thousands of user videos on foods, fitness, green living and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and pursues hobbies such as martial arts, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body. 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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Saturday, October 10, 2009
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