* Study shows fructose used differently from glucose

* Findings challenge common wisdom about sugars

Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.

Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Kraft Foods (KFT.N) have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda. [ID:nN12233126]

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. “Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different,” Heaney’s team wrote.

“I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets,” Heaney said in a statement.

Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.

U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Source: Reuters

The junk food and poor eating habits affecting humans is also killing their four-legged pals, say veterinary surgeons and experts.

Allergies and obesity are reducing the life expectancy of Lassies and Mittens nourished worldwide on industrial foodstuffs, said Gerard Lippert, a Belgian acupuncturist for animals who has just completed a study on the diets of 600 dead dogs.

“Pets, like humans, are victims of junk food,” he told AFP.

Of the 600 furry corpses he examined “those fed on processed foods died three years earlier than those fed on food made in the home.”

Dogs, he added, “originally were omnivores who shared their food with humans.”

Rippert said he was increasingly called on to heal skin, motor and digestive problems as acupuncture was an all-embracing method enabling work on practically all organs.

“Dry dog food and cat food croquettes are over-heated, which destroys vitamins, trace elements and other basic nutritional elements,” he said.

“We don’t know the origin of the proteins in the foods,” he added. “And there’s an excessive amount of cereal, often genetically modified, and very little vegetables.”

“We’re turning our dogs and cats into ruminants,” he said.

Laurence Colliard, a veterinary surgeon and nutritionist located in the Paris suburbs, estimates that only five percent of French pet-owners cook food for their four-legged companions.

France is Europe’s top pet nation — with 7.8 million dogs and 10.7 million cats, according to a 2008 study by the Sofres/Facco polling institute.

“I’m seeing an increasing number of allergies, diarrhea, vomitting, skin dermatitis as well as cases of obesity, specially amid cats because of the excessively high energy content in industrially-produced cat foods,” said Colliard.

Pet owners tend to favour processed foods because of the difficulty of preparing nutritionally balanced meals, which in an ideal world should contain some 50 nutrients as well as meat, vegetables, rice and pasta. An animal’s age, weight and exercise routine also need to be taken into account.

The packs on offer on supermarket shelves also claim as a bonus to reduce nasty urine smells and modify the consistency of animal poop.

The pet food industry was born in England where James Spratt produced the world’s first dog biscuits in 1860.

Some 150 years later, many Internet sites are calling for a return to natural foods for pets.

BARF or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food is a type of pet diet that consists of raw meat, bones, and organs,” says www.barf.com. “It is the practice of feeding domestic pets their evolutionary diet as a way of maximizing their health and longevity.

“Dogs should not eat cooked or processed food,” it adds. “Instead, your pet should consume foods that are similar to a dogs wild ancestors. This includes bones, fat, meat, and vegetable materials.”

Likewise offers tips for natural home-made meals.

It’s only in the last 100 years we have we been led to believe that dogs cannot survive without packaged food. We are told it would be harmful if we were to give them the scraps from our own home cooked meals. This is pure poppycock!”Source: AP

You may already be aware of a new published study led by Princeton University researchers suggesting that high fructose corn syrup may play a more important role in the obesity epidemic than table sugar.

Bart Hoebel, who specialize in the neuroscience of appetite, found that of rats that drank the same amount of sugar and high fructose corn syrup (or HFCS), those that consumed the HFCS gained significantly more body weight than those drinking table sugar.

Furthermore, they found that drinking a HFCS solution for a long term, (which is the case of rats is six months), the rats experienced some signs of metabolic syndrome, such as abnormal increases in body fat and circulating blood fats called triglycerides.

This is an animal study. The results may not apply to humans; animals do not have the critical thinking skills to help them monitor their intake of sweeteners.

The Center for Consumer Freedom, the non-profit organization that often attacks research findings that may potentially hurt the food industry or the food service industry, issued a statement on March 26 claiming that “Every day, more people are pointing out flaws in last month’s Princeton University study finding that rats fed high fructose corn syrup gained more weight than rats fed sucrose.”

The Corn Refiners Association maintains that high fructose corn syrup is the same as table sugar nutritionally, and it launched a national TV campaign to educate consumers and extol the sweetener’s virtues, fooducate.com reported last year.

Some major food companies like PepsiCo have already decided to stop using high fructose corn syrup in their foods and beverages, due to the demand from food consumers for alternative sweeteners.

In 2007, Rutgers University researchers reported that high fructose corn syrup contains astonishingly high levels of reactive carbonyls, which can lead to oxidative damage of retinal proteins, according to Pennathur S and colleagues who published a study in the June 17, 2005 issue of Journal of Biological Chemistry addressing the potentially damaging effect of reactive carbonyls and polyunsaturated fattyacids on retinal proteins.

The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes.

Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices near Chicago and confronted Mr. Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a startling vein of corruption in the food industry. And because the scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, the case has raised serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.

Over the last 14 months, Mr. Watson and three other purchasing managers, at Frito-Lay, Safeway and B&G Foods, have pleaded guilty to taking bribes. Five people connected to one of the nation’s largest tomato processors, SK Foods, have also admitted taking part in the scheme.

Now, federal prosecutors in California have taken aim at the owner of SK Foods, who they say spearheaded the far-reaching plot. The man, Frederick Scott Salyer, was arrested at Kennedy Airport in New York City on Feb. 4 after getting off a flight from Switzerland. He was indicted last week on racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice charges.

The scheme, as laid out by federal prosecutors, has two parts. Officials say that Mr. Salyer and others at SK Foods greased the palms of a handful of corporate buyers in exchange for lucrative contracts and confidential information on bids submitted by competitors. This most likely drove up ingredient prices for the big food companies.

In addition, prosecutors say that for years, SK Foods shipped its customers millions of pounds of bulk tomato paste and puree that fell short of basic quality standards — with falsified documentation to mask the problems. Often that meant mold counts so high the sale should have been prohibited under federal law; at other times it involved breaching specifications in the sales contracts, such as acidity levels or the age of the product.

The scope of the tainted shipments was much broader than the bribery scheme, touching more than 55 companies. In some cases, companies detected problems and sent the products back — but in many cases, according to prosecutors, they did not, and the tainted ingredients wound up in food sold to consumers.

Prosecutors said that no one was sickened by the mold-tainted products and that they were not a health risk.

Benjamin B. Wagner, the United States attorney in Sacramento, whose office has led the investigation, said he was also looking at allegations of collusion and price fixing involving SK Foods and other tomato processors.

“If you have a couple of people who are willing to bend the rules and they set that tone from the top, that can spread very quickly in that company and in that niche of the industry, and that’s what happened here,” Mr. Wagner said.

Malcolm Segal, a lawyer for Mr. Salyer, said his client had done nothing wrong. “The allegations against Mr. Salyer are unsupported except by individuals who have pled guilty and who are seeking a personal benefit in the sentencing process,” Mr. Segal said.

Randy W. Worobo, an associate professor of food microbiology at Cornell University, said companies should learn from the SK Foods case that they must do a better job of monitoring their ingredients.

“There’s been a lot of hype about inferior-quality products being made in China and then sold to the U.S. consumer,” Mr. Worobo said. “This is exactly the same thing, but it’s based in the U.S.”

Read the rest of the story at: Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food (NY Times)

To farmers’ markets across the country they flock, foodies in search of free-range eggs fresh from the farm.

But they must move quickly because demand far outstrips supply. The eggs – laid by hens that roam free, eat bugs and live an existence that is antithetical to the life of the caged battery fowl that produce for supermarkets – sell out quickly. That is, unless you know who to ask and where to find them. Or, in some cases, the secret password.

Dawn Woodward, owner of Evelyn’s Crackers, an artisan baked-goods company in Toronto, will show up at the market at seven in the morning for farm-fresh eggs or drive an hour out of town to find them. When she’s leaving the city, she phones ahead to place an order with one of the hundreds of small farms in the country that sell pastured eggs.

“The flavour is better,” she says. “They are fresher and richer. They’re sweeter, a fuller flavour.” She prefers eggs laid by hens allowed to scratch and wander – when she can get them.

This longing for farm eggs has pushed the price of a dozen to about $5, roughly the same price you pay for organic eggs at the supermarket. In California, where alternative eggs have reached cult status and where the farmers who raise them are stars – starmers – a carton can cost $8 (U.S.). The eggs offer smaller producers a good revenue source. But this growing market for a different kind of egg is creating tension between the small farms that raise them and the egg marketing board that has helped to develop the mainstream egg industry in Canada and its large chicken farms.

This tension now is putting the future supply of this sought-after product in question as what some call the “egg police” crack down on the grey market.

“It’s a huge issue,” says Tom Henry, a Vancouver Island farmer and editor of the magazine Small Farm Canada. “The right to sell eggs is the small-farm equivalent of the right to bear arms.”

Egg farming is governed by a supply management system in Canada, which means provincial egg marketing boards control the number of eggs produced. This quota system maintains a constant price, and proponents say it ensures that farmers make a living and consumers have a steady supply of eggs. But the eggs produced on farms that hold the quotas are not the eggs that foodies desire. It’s the small, often organic operator who is supplying the fresh eggs to farmers’ markets.

Any farmer is permitted to keep 99 laying hens without buying quota, which is worth thousands of dollars, and they can sell their eggs from the farm gate without grading them, a process that evaluates quality. But they are forbidden from selling them elsewhere unless they are graded, which, for the small farmer, is a tough regulation to meet because grading stations are often a long way from the farm and it is expensive to set one up.

This has created a grey market for eggs. If you know the password, you can buy a verboten dozen at an Ontario health food store. Often those popular eggs at the farmers’ markets are kept out of sight – for a reason. “It’s more like Prohibition,” Mr. Henry says, “with far more people ignoring the regulations and selling eggs.”

But the risk may be high. There is talk of the “egg police” that keep track of who’s doing what and rumours of farmers getting in trouble for breaking the rules. In 2008, a farmer was fined $3,000 (Canadian) for selling eggs to Ottawa-area restaurants. And in a notorious case in Eastern Ontario in 2006, the egg marketing board, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and police officers raided one farm and pressed charges including unlawful possession of laying hens because the farmer allegedly owned more than the permitted 99.

Many small-scale farmers would rather not draw attention to their operations.

“I’d prefer not to be on the radar screen, period,” says one Ontario farmer who raises slightly less than 100 birds and tries to follow the rules. “It’s a bit frustrating because I know there is demand out there for the eggs we can produce.”

It is not only the income that draws the small farmer to raise hens, says Karen Maitland of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario. “They are part of the ecosystem when you look at a diversified farm,” she says, explaining that the birds add to a farm by producing fertilizer. Because quota is pricey, the system doesn’t work for small farms who keep a few chickens, she says.

“We have to be careful because this is our system,” says Laurent Souligny, chair of the Egg Farmers of Canada, regarding the rational behind the rules. “We have to make sure there are enough eggs out there and we don’t to flood the system.” Supply management keeps prices fair for both farmers and consumers because it controls the amount of product for sale. His organization is worried that too many eggs on the market could disrupt this balance.

Mr. Henry sees it differently. He believes the egg marketing boards aren’t anxious to make room in the marketplace for these alternative eggs because they invite the consumer to compare and contrast the two different products. “There are a lot of tough questions being asked of conventional egg producers because of an increased awareness of how chickens are raised,” he says.

The solution, however, is not to get rid of supply management, says the small farmer in Ontario, but to figure out how to fit this kind of operation into the existing system. He would like to be able to sell his eggs without having to grade them, as has recently been allowed on Vancouver Island after the health authority instructed its inspectors not to distinguish between graded and ungraded eggs. You can now buy the sought-after eggs at the store and they can be used in restaurants and commercial kitchens.

“It’s ultimately going to be a political decision to change this,” the farmer says. “If consumers could taste the alternative, they’d want more.”

Source: Globe and Mail

Jagadisan, who worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations, spoke against the new variety during the public consultation held in Bangalore on Saturday.

On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company “used to fake scientific data” submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India.

The former Monsanto boss said government regulatory agencies with which the company used to deal with in the 1980s simply depended on data supplied by the company while giving approvals to herbicides.

“The Central Insecticide Board was supposed to give these approvals based on the location and crop-specific data from India. But it simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto. They did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked,” Jagadisan said.

“I retired from the company as I felt the management of Monsanto, USA, was exploiting our country,” Jagadisan, 84, said from his home in Bangalore.

“At that time, Monsanto was getting into the seed business and I had information that a ‘terminator gene’ was to be incorporated in the seeds being supplied by the firm. This meant that the farmer had to buy fresh seeds from Monsanto at heavy cost every time he planted the crop,” he said.

Jagadisan said the parent company also retracted from the assurance given to then minister for chemicals and fertilisers, Vasant Sathe, on setting up a manufacturing unit in collaboration with Hindustan Insecticides for the herbicide butachlor.

“The negotiations went on for over a year and in the meantime, Monsanto imported and sold large quantities of the product and made huge profits,” he said.

Asked to comment on Jagadisan’s allegations, a Monsanto spokesperson said: “We have full faith in the Indian regulatory system, which has its checks and measures in place to ensure accuracy and authenticity of data furnished to them.” On approval of GM crops, the spokesperson said the regulatory process was stringent and “no biotech crops are allowed in the market until they undergo extensive and rigid crop safety assessments, following strict scientific protocols”.

Source: India Today

Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.

Read more at: Aspartame has been renamed and is now being marketed as a natural sweetener (Natural News)

The longer manufacturers use these additives, the more we learn about their impacts. While some additives may be harmless, others cause everything from hives and asthma to nausea and headaches in some people. Some experts recommend avoiding foods listing more than five ingredients or ingredients of longer than three syllables or purchasing foods that contain such natural additives as fruits and vegetables.

Our list of the top 15 chemical additives and their possible side effects will help decipher ingredient lists at your supermarket.

1-METHYLCYCLOPROPENE

This gas is pumped into crates of apples to stop them from producing ethylene, the natural hormone that ripens fruit. Commonly known as SmartFresh, this chemical preserves apples for up to a year and bananas up to a month. Sulphur dioxide serves the same purpose when sprayed on grapes.

ARTIFICIAL COLORS

Researchers in the early 1900s developed many artificial colors from coal-tar dyes and petrochemicals. Over the years, the FDA banned many of these chemicals as proven carcinogens (cancer-exacerbating agents). Today, the FDA only allows 10 colors in foods, four of which are restricted to specific uses. This restriction suggests some risks remain. Check out the color additives section of the FDA Web site for more information.

ARTIFICIAL FLAVORING

This blanket term refers to hundreds of laboratory chemicals designed to mimic natural flavors. For example, some imitation vanilla flavorings are made from petroleum or paper-mill waste. In fact, a single artificial flavoring can be created from hundreds of individual chemicals. New studies suggest artificial-flavoring additives can cause changes in behavior.

ASPARTAME

This sugar substitute is sold commercially as Equal and NutraSweet and was hailed as a savior for dieters unhappy with saccharine’s unpleasant after-taste. Unfortunately, one out of 20,000 babies is born without the ability to metabolize phenylalanine, one of the two amino acids in Aspartame. As a result, it’s not recommended for pregnant women or infants.

ASTAXANTHIN

Almost 90-percent of salmon sold in supermarkets today come from farms. The diet of farmed salmon doesn’t include crustaceans, which contains a natural astaxanthin that causes pink flesh in wild salmon. As a result, producers add astaxanthin to farm-salmon diets for that fresh-from-the-water appearance. Astaxanthin is manufactured from coal tar.

BENZOIC ACID/SODIUM BENZOATE

Often added to milk and meat products, these preservatives are used in many foods, including drinks, low-sugar products, cereals and meats. Both temporarily inhibit the proper functioning of digestive enzymes and cause headaches, stomach upset, asthma attacks and hyperactivity in children.

BHA (BUTYLATED HYDROXYANISOLE) AND BHT (BUTYLATED HYDROXYTOLUENE)

These antioxidants are similar but non-identical petroleum-derived chemicals added to oil-containing foods as a preservative and to delay rancidity. They are most commonly found in crackers, cereals, sausages, dried meats and other foods with added fats. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer considers BHA a possible human carcinogen.

CANTHAXANTHIN

Egg yolks don’t always come out golden yellow, so producers use this pigment to make them more palatable. Although the amounts used are very small, tests have shown greater quantities of canthaxanthin can cause retinal damage.

EMULSIFIERS

Emulsifiers, made from vegetable fats, glycerol and organic acids, extend the shelf life of bread products and allow liquids that wouldn’t normally mix, such as oil and water, to combine smoothly. Many reduced-fat or low-calorie products use emulsifiers. Commercial emulsifiers also are used in low-calorie butter, margarine, salad dressings, mayonnaise and ice cream. Emulsifying agents used in foods include agar, albumin, alginates, casein, egg yolk, glycerol monostearate, xanthan gums, Irish moss, lecithin and soaps.

HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP

This ubiquitous sweetener helps maintain moisture while preserving freshness. A little fructose isn’t a problem but the sheer quantity of “hidden” fructose in processed foods is startling. The consumption of large quantities has been fingered as a causative factor in heart disease. It raises blood levels of cholesterol and triglyceride fats, while making blood cells more prone to clotting and accelerating the aging process.

MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE (MSG)

There was much hue and cry years ago when the public learned Chinese restaurants commonly added MSG to Chinese foods as a flavor enhancer. We then learned MSG could be found in many other processed products, such as salad dressings, condiments, seasonings, bouillons and snack chips. Some reports indicate MSG causes tightening in the chest, headaches and a burning sensation in the neck and forearms. While MSG is made of components found in our bodies – water, sodium and glutamate (a common amino acid) – ingesting it is an entirely different matter.

OLESTRA

The FDA approved this fake fat for use in snack foods several years ago, over objections from dozens of researchers. Their concern was that Olestra inhibits our ability to absorb the healthy vitamins in fruits and vegetables thought to reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. Even at low doses, Olestra is commonly known to cause “anal leakage” and other gastrointestinal problems. Perhaps this is why the FDA requires foods containing Olestra carry a warning label.

PARTIALLY-HYDROGENATED OILS

Hydrogenation is the process of heating an oil and passing hydrogen bubbles through it. The fatty acids in the oil then acquire some of the hydrogen, which makes it more dense. If you fully hydrogenate, you create a solid (a fat) out of the oil. But if you stop part way, you create a semi-solid, partially hydrogenated oil with the consistency of butter. Because this process is so much cheaper than using butter, partially-hydrogenated oils are found in many, many foods. Their addictive properties have linked partially-hydrogenated oils to weight problems caused by a slowed metabolism and the development of diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

POTASSIUM BROMATE

Potassium bromate increases volume in white flour, breads and rolls. Most bromate rapidly breaks down to an innocuous form, but it’s known to cause cancer in animals – and even small amounts in bread can create a risk for humans. California requires a cancer warning on the product label if potassium bromate is an ingredient.

SODIUM NITRITE AND NITRATE

These closely related chemicals have been used for centuries to preserve meat. While nitrate itself is harmless, it easily converts to nitrite which, when combined with secondary-amines compounds form nitrosamines, a powerful cancer-exacerbating chemical. This chemical reaction occurs easily during the frying process.

Source (Fresnobee.com)