U.S. FDA checks dictionary on corn syrup vs sugar

U.S. food and beverage makers who add high-fructose corn syrup to soda, breakfast cereal and other items will not be able to label it "corn sugar," under a decision by federal officials that frustrated corn processors but won praise from the sugar industry and some health advocates.

Both sides say they have consumers' interests at heart and are trying to minimize confusion about the term "sugar."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which decides what goes on food labels, has ruled against the corn groups. The agency said calling high-fructose corn syrup "sugar" would mislead people - and could harm them.

"FDA's approach is consistent with the common understanding of sugar and syrup as referenced in a dictionary," the agency said in a letter posted on its website late on Wednesday.

The United States is the biggest consumer and manufacturer of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was added to beverages such as Coca-Cola in the 1980s, but in recent years food makers have been trying out a return to sugar after some studies linked corn syrup to obesity.

Read More:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/31/us-fda-sugar-idUSBRE84U19V20120531

Healthy Habits Can Prevent Disease

Five new studies provide evidence to support simple steps we can take to prevent illness and improve our overall health. In the June issue of The American Journal of Medicine, researchers report on fish consumption to reduce the risk of colon cancer; the effectiveness ofhypnotherapy and acupuncture for smoking cessation; regular teeth cleaning to improve cardiovascular health; the effectiveness of primary care physicians in weight loss programs; and the use of low-dose aspirin to reduce cancer risk.

Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in the Western world. Research linking fish consumption and the risk of colorectal cancer has been inconclusive, although people who live in countries with high levels of fish consumption are known to develop the disease less frequently. Now, scientists from Xi'an, China, have reviewed the literature and find that eating fresh fish regularly reduces the risk of colorectal cancer by 12%. They evaluated 41 studies on fish consumption and colorectal cancer risk published between 1990 and 2011 and tracked cancer diagnoses. The protective effect of fish consumption is more prominent in rectal cancer than in colon cancer. The risk reduction for rectal cancer was as much as 21%, whereas the reduction for colon cancer was 4%.

"Despite the fact that colon and rectal cancer share many features and are often referred to as colorectal cancer,' they tend to demonstrate many different characteristics," notes lead author Daiming Fan, of the Fourth Military Medical University. "One possible reason for the difference may be because colon cancers are generally more molecularly diverse, whereas rectal cancers mostly arise via a single neoplastic pathway."

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120604125501.htm

Stephen Leahy - 24 Policies to End the Earth Emergency

Ecologically ignorant policies are largely responsible for the interlinked crises that are unraveling the planet's life support system.

World Future Council will present an emergency policy agenda consisting of 24 tipping-point policies that need to be implemented globally to preserve a habitable planet. The unintended consequences of such policies are climate change, desertification, biodiversity decline, ocean pollution and the destruction of forests, according to the policy advocacy organisation World Future Council.

The solution is to eliminate "bad" policies and implement policies that ensure a healthy planet for future generations. On World Environment Day, Jun. 5, the World Future Council will present an emergency policy agenda consisting of 24 tipping-point policies that need to be implemented globally to preserve a habitable planet.

"We are in an Earth Emergency. It's an unbelievable crisis. Policies are the most important tool we have to change this," Jakob von Uexkull, founder and chair of the World Future Council (WFC)."We are in an Earth Emergency. It's an unbelievable crisis. Policies are the most important tool we have to change this." --Jakob von Uexkull, founder and chair of the World Future Council (WFC).

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/06/05?print

Karl Grossman - An 80-Year License to Kill? The NRC's Latest Crazy Idea

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be holding a meeting this week to consider having nuclear power plants run 80 years—although they were never seen as running for more than 40 years because of radioactivity embrittling metal parts and otherwise causing safety problems.

“The idea of keeping these reactors going for 80 years is crazy!” declares Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy advisor at the U.S, Department of Energy and a U.S. Senate senior investigator. He is also an author of the book Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation. “To double the design life of these plants—which operate under high-pressure, high heat conditions and are subject to radiation fatigue—is an example of out-of-control hubris, of believing your own lies.”

“In a post-Fukushima world, the NRC has no case to renew life-spans of old, danger-prone nuke plants. Rather, they must be shut down,” says Priscilla Star, director of the Coalition Against Nukes.

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/04/an-80-year-license-to-kill/

Kevin Charles Redmon - China’s Growing Unhappiness Gap

In 1974, a University of Pennsylvania economics professor named Richard Easterlin published the innocuously titled study, “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?” (The conventional wisdom at the time being, “Duh.”) In it, he examined 30 surveys conducted in 19 countries, and came up with an unexpected conclusion: while income correlated closely to happiness within countries—richer Nigerians were happier than poorer Nigerians—it wasn’t clear that, on balance, richer countries were any happier than poorer countries. Happiness was purely relative.

The so-called Easterlin Paradox became a cornerstone of “happiness economics” and remains hotly contested. (Critics says its rubbish, and absolute $ = absolute ☺. Easterlin stands by his evidence.) Now, a new study (PDF) from Easterlin and his colleagues at USC builds on the theory. In the case of China, the authors found, a booming economy may be making everyone wealthier—but only a fraction of them are happier because of it.

For the last two decades, China has hewed closely to the old capitalist saw, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Across demographics and geographies—rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural—economic liberalization has meant higher incomes and standards of living for all Chinese. Per capita consumption has increased four-fold, the authors report, but “life satisfaction” hasn’t risen with it. Instead, a growing wealth gap has created a shadow happiness gap.

Read More:

http://www.psmag.com/culture/chinas-growing-unhappiness-gap-42517/?utm_source=Newsletter216&utm_medium=email&utm_content=0605&utm_campaign=newsletters

Ben and Jerry’s Co-founder: Time to Occupy Dollar Bills

Yahoo! News reports that Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, is teaming up with Move to Amend to “distribute rubber stamps with anti-corporate election spending messages so that the politically-minded can mark their dollar bills.”

Cohen plans to put a giant stamping machine on a national tour in August to encourage "thousands of people to buy rubber stamps and stamp any currency that comes into their possession."

Slogans like “Corporations are not people,” “Money is not speech” and “Not to be used for bribing politicians,” will now adorn currency in an Occupy cash campaign.

The goal of Move to Amend is to secure a constitutional amendment that says “corporations do not enjoy the same protected rights as individuals and that money is not a form of speech.”

Cohen’s attorney says that as long as the bills are still legible, it is legal to put the stamps on them.

Yahoo! News' Lookout reports:

Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and one of the deep pockets behind the Occupy movement, says he is helping launch a campaign this summer to highlight the influence of corporate money in American politics.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/06/04-3

Yoko Kubota - Japanese Manufacturers Are Reversing Everything That Made The Country An Economic Powerhouse

In a darkened industrial hangar in eastern Osaka, Yoshihiro Yamanaka is tearing up the rule book that once made Japanese manufacturing the feared global standard of efficiency.

At Fuji Spring, a company with one factory, one product and 18 workers, Yamanaka has dimmed the lights, allowed inventories to pile up and - most strikingly - shut off an automated part of his assembly to do more jobs by hand.

The goal is to slash power consumption in the face of possible electric shortages, a new uncertainty that has pushed Japan's already embattled manufacturers closer to the brink.

But in rejecting Japan's accepted industrial wisdom, Yamanaka is also accepting the do-or-die risk that customers will pay more for his springs.

"Until recently, my priority had been to cut people and unnecessary steps as much as possible. Unless we did so, we could not win the pricing battle," Yamanaka, 59, said on a recent tour of his factory, which makes springs that go into console boxes in the Nissan Leaf electric car and Panasonic Corp's fuel cells assemblies.

Read More:

http://www.businessinsider.com/tag:reuters.com,0000:newsml_L3E8H3067#ixzz1wv26IqGT

Robert Oak - You Can't Blame The Economy On The Weather

The pathetic jobs report has ushered in a whole new blame game on the weather. January through March 2012 had the warmest temperatures on record for the United States.

Most economic data, including the employment report, is seasonally adjusted. The algorithm is called X-12-ARIMA and is maintained by the Census. Without going into the mathematics, this algorithm takes past cyclical patterns that are predictable and adjusts those spikes, attributed to the seasons. The algorithm takes out of an economic data series those wild swings, so one can more easily compare real growth instead of, say, fall harvesting or Christmas hiring. Construction employment, for example, is highly cyclical due to the nature of the work. Below is a graph of not seasonally adjusted construction employment.

Read More:

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/you-cant-blame-economy-weather

Mike Adams - Aajonus Vonderplanitz PhD, key informant in prosecution of Sharon Palmer and James Stewart, found to have faked academic credentials

I am very saddened to bring you this report today. Following the publication of our investigative story about Sharon Palmer (Healthy Family Farms), James Stewart (Rawesome Foods), Aajonus Vonderplanitz (vocal critic of Sharon Palmer) and Larry Otting (title owner of the land on which the farm operates), we received what can only be called a flood of tips (and documents) from our readers. The irrefutable conclusion from these documents, shown below, is that Aajonus Vonderplanitz, PhD, has been using phony academic credentials. His "doctorate in nutrition" was acquired from a diploma mill.

This saddens me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Aajonus was, at one point, instrumental in advocating raw dairy consumption in California, and now that the truth about his academic credentials has come to light, it will be used by raw milk critics to further attack the industry. Aajonus was also a nutritional consultant who taught people to "think outside the box" when it came to food choice. Although his "Primal Diet" of consuming raw, rotten meat seems bizarre to many people, he at least taught people to question the official lies of the USDA and the CDC on issues like food safety. I don't agree with most of Aajonus' conclusions on diet and nutrition, but I do agree with his questioning of the status quo.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036076_Aajonus_Vonderplanitz_doctorate_nutrition.html

Trudy Lieberman - The New Medical-Credit Record - Patients Are Getting Medically and Financially Shafted

Reporter Lindy Washburn, at The Record in Bergen County, New Jersey, has revealed the latest shenanigans of unscrupulous members of the medical profession out to make a buck. Washburn, who is something of an expert on the business practices of health care providers, investigated the unsavory activities of New Jersey doctors, dentists, and chiropractors who pressure patients to sign up for credit cards, recommend more expensive treatments than necessary, and sometimes do not complete the treatments once the money lands in their pockets. Combine an old-fashioned consumer story with health care enterprise reporting, and you have a tale of greedy medical practitioners preying on consumers.

Washburn highlighted pernicious practices that take advantage of patients when they are vulnerable, in need of immediate treatment. She reported on the predicament of Allison DeBlois, "who signed a credit card application while in agony at her practitioner's office." DeBlois offered words of warning: "Even though you're in pain, you just ought to walk out the door and take some more Ibuprofen."

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-New-Medical-Credit-Rec-by-Trudy-Lieberman-120604-906.html