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FDA responsible for U.S. Cancer Rate?
It’s no wonder that the health care system is in such disarray and healthcare costs are at an all time high considering the government subsidizes corn which Americans consume 672 million pounds per year. Where are the labeling rules from the FDA that make Americans aware of what is in their food, genetically modified or engineered, cloned or otherwise? Chances are that if you knew you probably would make better choices.
Considering that we live in a democratic nation where we nominate officials to make right decisions for us it’s hard to believe that the government has a hand in the demise of our health. Especially when we can see that these officials have historically made bad choices on our behalf. Take for example the tobacco industry. They have been in the back pocket of political officials for decades. Why else would we legalize something that has no known health benefit and is killing millions of people per year with heart attacks and cancer? The FDA took a mild stand in 2009 by illegalizing flavored cigarettes but menthol was excluded from this law which is the number one cigarette type sold to youth in the U.S. But the government’s contribution to our healthcare dilemma is taken even further when we look at how little the FDA has done about the food we put into our bodies. Unfortunately, thanks to the government, we don’t know what we’re eating.
We all know deep down that there are disgusting things about food that we would just rather not talk about or know the gory details. Long before the movie Food Inc. shined a light on how our food gets from the farm to our table; the government had been hard at work in subsidizing corn farmers for decades. Corn is a complex carbohydrate which turns into sugar. Sugar has been scientifically proven to feed cancer cells. No wonder 1.5 million Americans a year get cancer. Corn produces starches, corn syrups, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup and crystalline fructose. Dextrose, because of its purity, is very nutritious and easily digested by both humans and animals. It is used in the likes of products such as chewing gum, jams, jellies, preserves and icing mixes. The pharmaceutical industry is the single largest user of dextrose because it is the starting point for manufacturing vitamin C and is used in fermentation to produce penicillin and other antibiotics. Yet 70% of antibiotics produced in the U.S. are used on livestock.
By products of corn are in thousands of supermarket staple foods that we eat every day from canned vegetables to frozen foods in order to improve textures and enhance colors without masking natural flavors. Yet we are fooled by its presence because it is masked on the ingredients panel with a name you don’t normally associate with corn, like xanthan gum or maltodextrin.
Sure, corn has a benefit on the eco-system in that it produces fuel alcohol which makes gasoline burn cleaner and thus reduces air pollution. But, the farm-to-table timeline for corn has had significant increased yields per acre thanks to more new corn hybrids coming to market from being genetically engineered. In 2007, Monsanto’s genetically modified corn MON863 was said to cause kidney and liver toxicity in animal studies. Yet in 2009, 91% of all soybean and 85% of corn were genetically engineered.
Genetically engineered crops use pesticides to speed up the production and annual yield of a crop. According to the EPA over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the U.S. every year. Some of those pesticides are in genetically engineered corn and are certainly in all your food that you buy at the grocery store. Remember that old saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away? Well that might only be true if it’s an organic apple. According to the internet site, Whatsonmyfood.org, an apple at the super market has 42 residual pesticides, 5 of which are known or probable carcinogens.
There is also the impact of using cloned animals for meat and milk products which the FDA approved in 2008 without requiring the distinction on food labels. Current research states that 90% of attempted animal cloning fails and cloned animals are known to have more health problems and shorter life spans than those that are sexually reproduced. Unfortunately, without further research we don’t know how safe cloned livestock is for human consumption and thanks to the FDA now, we don’t know when cloned livestock is used in our food.
The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) state on their website that they take corn and strip it down off the cob (called shelled corn) and separate it into four respective categories: starch, protein, oil and fiber. From that they produce corn sweeteners, ethanol, starch, corn oil and feed products for animals to fatten them up. This process results in thousands of supermarket staple foods that we eat that are produced using byproducts of corn. For example, many of today’s instant and ready-to-eat foods are produced from byproducts of corn which help maintain the proper texture during freezing, thawing and heating.
Now in the area of corn syrups, corn syrups have many purposes other than just sweetening and it’s important to understand this so you understand how it’s in everything that you eat, even if it’s not sweet. CRA says that “corn syrup can depress freezing to prevent crystal formation in ice cream and other frozen desserts. Salad dressings and condiments pour at manageable rates because of corn syrups’ effect on viscosity. In lunch meats and hot dogs, corn syrups provide the suspension to keep other ingredients evenly mixed, and, like other corn products, the basic syrups can improve textures and enhance colors without masking natural flavors, as in canned fruits and vegetables.”
Our healthcare costs got out of control and now we are trying to educate about buying local, sustainable, organic and reading labels. It seems as if we are getting smarter. Unfortunately, it will take decades to repair the damage, but perhaps future generations will be better for it.
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I didn’t think it could happen to me
When the FDA approved the ban of flavored cigarettes last year, why were menthol cigarettes left out? They are the number one cigarette sold to youth. More people die from lung cancer every year than breast, colon or prostate cancer, yet it gets the least amount of federal and private funding. Why is that?
The stigma associated with lung cancer is not any different than the stigma that was associated with AIDS back in the mid-eighties, yet, AIDS has celebrity endorsement. Where are the celebrities endorsements for lung cancer?
In my opinion, the lung cancer community needs to come together, particularly the survivors. There is this internal conflict among those that got lung cancer who never smoked and those who formerly smoked or currently smoke. I ask you, does it really matter? Don’t you think that when the lung cancer community purposely calls out and makes the distinction that they smoked or not is in fact perpetuating the stigma? But because of the stigma out there already, never smokers feel the need to put a label on their cancer because they don’t want to feel the shame that goes along with being a smoker and getting lung cancer.
But why feel shame at all? There is nothing to be ashamed of if a smoker gets lung cancer. They knew the risks, they enjoyed their vice and they were well aware of the consequences but they were just betting against the odds. Can you blame them? We all bet against the odds every day of our lives. When we eat that piece of cake, we know the consequences that we’ll have to work out a little harder to burn it off. When we jay walk across the street, we’re aware we could get hit by a car, but bet against it. When we have a few glasses of wine at dinner, we’re aware of the affect alcohol has on our livers, but bet against that we’ll develop cirrhosis. When a runner trains for a marathon they know that the risk of pushing themselves could result in injury, but they bet against it and think it won’t happen to them. And when smokers have a cigarette, they are aware that it causes heart disease and cancer but they bet against it too. Everyone thinks, “it won’t happen to me,” about everything we risk our health and lives at, and then when it does, we feel shamed that we were naive to believe otherwise.
Hold your head high, take responsibility and don’t judge others because you just might find yourself in “I didn’t think it would happen to me” territory one day yourself.
