The War On Coconut Oil

Prior to World War II coconut oil was a common cooking oil and an ingredient in many food products. During World War II the Japanese occupied the Philippines and other South Pacific islands. They cut off the U.S.’s supply of coconut oil, and so, American manufacturers used vegetable oils instead. The vegetable oil industry then used advertising to promote vegetable oil as the healthier alternative to tropical oils.

For some time now science has been urging us to rethink our coconut oil stance, and many now consider it a heart-healthy ingredient. But companies selling coconut oil are finding themselves being attacked for claiming that coconut oil is healthy. The FDA does not allow such a claim, even if scientific studies and public awareness back it up. Companies are facing class actions lawsuits as attorneys take advantage of the FDA’s Ruling on Saturated Fats.1

Related: 35 Things You Could Do With Coconut Oil – From Body Care to Health to Household

Lawsuits – Businesses Affected

American Heart Association’s Presidential Advisory

The main sources of saturated fat to be decreased are dairy fat (butter), lard (pork), beef tallow, palm oil, palm kernel oil, and coconut oil. Polyunsaturated fats are contained in canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and walnuts. However, original high-linoleic varieties of safflower and sunflower oils are uncommon. High-oleic varieties of safflower and sunflower oil, olive oil, avocados, and tree nuts such as almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, pistachios, and pecans have mainly monounsaturated fats and are low in saturated fat. – AHA

Recommended: How Himalayan Salt Laps Work

What’s Wrong with the AHA’s Stance?

Saturated fats are not the problem. They got it wrong when we linked saturated fats to heart disease. There are pros and cons to animal saturated fats, and science is working it out, but saturated fats from plants like coconut oil do not seem to have any health drawbacks.

In the 1940’s farmers tried coconut oil to fatten their animals but discovered that it made them lean and active and increased their appetite. Coconut oil stimulates the thyroid.” – HealthStatus

What Science Says About Coconut Oil

  • Promotes weight loss, raises metabolism 2
  • Helps balance cholesterol 3
  • Does not clog arteries 4
  • Supports your immune system 5
  • Supports the endocrine system 6
Recommended: Diatomaceous Earth – Mother Nature’s Secret Weapon: What Is It, How to Use It, Where to Find It

While research shows coconut oil contains higher amounts of saturated fat and does increase total cholesterol, those amounts do not increase your heart attack or stroke risk. In fact, one study among lean, heart disease- and stroke-free Pacific Islanders who consumed up to 63 percent of their calories from coconut fat found total cholesterol rose but so did their “good” HDL. Other studies found lipid profiles improve on high-fat diets containing coconut oil. Researchers concluded it wasn’t saturated fat from coconuts that negatively impacted cholesterol profile. Instead, the coconut oil’s overall effect raised HDL while lowering triglycerides and small LDL cholesterol particles, which is definitely a good thing.” – Dr. Hyman

Recommended Reading:
Sources:
  1. War on Coconut Oil: California Companies Attacked to try and Prevent the Sale of Coconut Oil – Health Impact News
  2. How Coconut Oil Can Help You Lose Weight and Belly Fat – HealthLine
  3. Is Coconut Oil bad for Your Cholesterol? – Dr. Mark Hyman
  4. Does saturated fat clog your arteries? Controversial paper says ‘no’ – CNN
  5. Three Ways Coconut Oil Can Boost Your Immune System – Primal Paleo
  6. Will Coconut Oil Help with Thyroid Problems? – Wellness Mama


Can Eating Crickets Solve Two Sustainability Issues at Once?

Finland has approved bread made from cricket flour to sell in supermarkets. Before you say ewww or gross, think about it for a minute. We live on a rapidly changing planet with an increasing number of people, and we need food. Our current system is flawed and overwhelmed, and easily manufactured alternatives to resource hungry, unhealthy factory farmed meat are desperately needed. Are crickets a healthy, sustainable, and most importantly palatable alternative to our current problematic proteins?

Healthy Protein

When it comes down to the numbers, crickets are a nutritional powerhouse. A serving of cricket flour provides more than twice the protein of a steak, contains almost a fifth of the daily recommended value of B12, and is rich in calcium and iron. Whole crickets have the additional benefit of chitin, their exoskeleton. The chitin is a prebiotic, benefiting already existing good bacteria. They also offer a high-protein, gluten-free flour substitute. The image above is pasta made with cricket flower.

Sustainability

Here is where the debate about how beneficial crickets actually are gets interesting. Crickets need less water, space, and food than any of the animals we currently farm for food. They are also able to eat a more varied diet and lead to decreased rates of methane gases, deforestation, and toxic animal waste. The bugs also convert what they eat to an edible product 12 times more efficiently than cows and twice as efficiently as chickens. But if crickets farmers are looking only for efficiency, they are missing a chance to achieve a higher level of sustainability with their product.

For crickets to reach the size required for harvest in the shortest period of time, they need to be fed a grain diet. But this is problematic, as all it does is repeat the same cow, pig, and chicken system that isn’t sustainable. With a different diet of food waste, cricket production is only slightly more efficient than chicken farming. Yet Americans throw away a full third of all food grown in the country. The most exciting possibility here is that crickets farmed correctly have the ability to ameliorate two serious issues facing the world – hunger and food waste.

The -Ick Factor

Many information sources on crickets and other edible bugs used to focus on whether or not anyone would eat them. As of 2017, that ship has sailed, and articles now focus on what’s going to win the new food race – bugs or lab meat. Never mind that bugs have and still are eaten by more than 2 billion people worldwide on a daily basis.

Americans and much of the food popularized here is easy, aesthetically pleasing food. A chicken is no longer comprised of bones and tendons and skin. It comes pale and perfected wrapped in plastic or processed and put back together in a nugget shape. We become so accustomed to fruit or vegetables in a single form that anything that deviates from that is treated as an absurdity.

But this is exactly why we should be eating crickets. Where before bugs required a strong stomach and a minimal gag reflex, they are now an easy food. Like milkshakes? There’s a fast food chain that offered one with crickets. Finland is offering bread at the supermarket. Multiple companies offer a cricket protein powder for smoothies or various cricket snacks for a boost during the day.

Get in The Game

People in the tropics are more likely to consume bugs, as the colder Northern weather makes it difficult for a population to depend on bugs as a food source. Good news, it’s getting warmer!

All (not funny) kidding aside, crickets have the potential to feed the world. We have the opportunity to steer the production of a potentially major part of the food supply. Give crickets a try, and see if you can surprise yourself. But most importantly, be picky about the quality of crickets you consume. We’ve already seen where the factory farming model takes us. Let’s learn something from it.

What are your thoughts? Would you eat food with crickets as an ingredient? What could go wrong?

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Constipation Remedies

Does the simple act of reading that word make you squirm? How often do you find yourself squatting on the porcelain throne, tears streaming down your face, as you strain and push, hoping you aren’t giving birth to hemorrhoids or anal fissures? Do you poop several times a day, or do you go days between the urge?

Are you’re looking for that one thing, that one trick, that one pill that’s going to have you defecating easily without having to change your diet? We highly recommend permanent, well-researched diet changes with lots of raw produce to permanently alleviate constipation, but for those who don’t feel like this is an option, or for those on medications that slow bowel movements, the one you’re looking for is Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse Formula.

What is Constipation?

Constipation can be defined as having hard, dry, difficult-to-pass stools or by the frequency (or rather infrequency) of passing stools. It can also be indicated by the appearance of the stool and whether the stool is completely evacuated from the rectum after a bowel movement.

You may have heard that it’s within the “healthy range” to have three bowel movements a week or even one a week. We beg to differ. While there will naturally be some variation in frequency, a healthy gut processes food fairly quickly and consistently. A healthy body is efficient when it comes to ridding itself of waste.

Preferably, you want to have a minimum of 1-3 soft, but well-formed, easy to pass bowel movements a day. We contend that the ideal is one bowel movement for every meal. After one eats a meal, the urge for a bowel movement typically comes shortly after food begins to leave the stomach to enter the small intestine. If that sounds like too many, imagine having one bowel movement a week after eating 3 meals a day for 7 days. You’ve been packing that food into your intestines before eliminating any of it. How gross is that? What about 3 day’s worth? That’s still a lot of food waste packed and crammed into your body. Also, when defecation is easy it’s generally very fast. Frequent poopers probably spend less time on the toilet overall than those who need a book to do their business.

Healthy Poop

Healthy poop is well-formed but soft. The Bristol Scale offers a visual of normal stool, constipation, and diarrhea. It’s not always accurate; there are other variables thank can affect density and size, but it’s good to know:

Conventional Relief from Constipation

These methods are just a way to treat the symptoms, not the cause.

Glycerin Suppositories

Glycerin suppositories are tapered pieces of hardened glycerin that are inserted into the rectum. Once inside, body heat melts the glycerin, which provides lubricant to aid in passing the bowel movement.

This seemingly innocuous treatment, which has long been prescribed for babies, may not be as benign as once thought. There are drug interactions, allergic reactions, and other side effects with glycerin, and suppositories are known to weaken the bowel muscles if done repeatedly.

Mineral Oil Enemas

Like with suppositories, there are drug interactions, allergic reactions, and other potential side effects with glycerin.

Other Enemas

Enemas are also known to weaken the bowel muscles if done repeatedly. Body Ecology recommends a variety of enemas to cleanse the colon such as enemas with apple cider vinegar, burdock tea, lemon juice, etc, but we do not recommend regular enemas for health maintenance. Instead, we recommend enemas for acute care only, and we recommend cultivating a healthy ecosystem that does not need to be washed away for health reasons.

Herbal Teas Known to Help with Constipation

  • Spearmint Tea
  • Senna Tea
  • Dandelion Tea
  • Licorice Root
  • Black Tea
  • Peppermint
  • Burdock Root Tea
  • Green Tea
  • Clove Tea
  • Tulsi Tea

Exercise

Exercise is crucial to physical health, and it may also help alleviate your constipation. If you are a couch potato, get up and move. Walk, swim, rebound, squat, get moving. If you can squat, squats can help alleviate constipation and other issues as well. If you can’t squat try laying on the floor, getting up off the floor, lying back down, and repeating while alternating how the legs are used. And of course, there’s yoga! meet Adrian. Then follow her on YouTube and do her 30-day challenge. It’s life-changing. A few weeks later and you will love her and you’ll love yourself for doing it.

Eliminate Chronic Constipation For Good

The two most common causes of constipation are the two things most easily remedied – dehydration and a poor diet. If you want to rid yourself of constipation, you must drink enough water, and you must eat a diet filled with real food, optimally, a diet consisting of 80% fresh, raw, organic produce. Yes, real food, not processed garbage out of a box, a can, a jar, or a plastic tray you pop in the microwave. Ok, maybe it’s not an “easy remedy.”

The Constipation Elimination Diet

The recommended daily intake of water varies with gender, age, and other factors including how much raw produce a person eats. Check out this article at Healthline for more on water intake. An additional way to increase your fluid intake is drinking by cranberry lemonade throughout the day. Cranberry lemonade will also help you detox your liver and kidneys, boost your immune response, and improve all major bodily functions.

Raw produce provides the fiber and bulk to create healthy stools, and it provides the fiber needed for a healthy gut. Beneficial gut bacteria thrive when 80% of your diet is made up of raw, organic, produce. And a healthy gut is essential for overall health, proper digestion, and proper elimination.

If you think the 80% number sounds too difficult, eat one super salad each day filled with a variety of vegetables. Your body will thank you. Not only will you be filling your body with nutrient dense foods, you will be naturally detoxing on an ongoing basis through the food you eat. And in between meals, eat a piece of fresh, raw, organic fruit. For more on diet:

For extra help add several prunes and/or figs to your daily diet.

Posture on the Throne

We weren’t built to poop on a chair. We were built to poop from a squat. You can either squat in the woods or improvise. The knowledge that a squatting position is best for elimination is not news (I learned about it more than 40 years ago). But the idea is gaining in popularity to the point that posture aids, called squatting potties or toilet stools, are now readily available for purchase. Basically, these are footstools designed to raise your feet when you sit on the toilet and slide back out of the way when not in use.

For an immediate fix, try any low footstool you have on hand or make one with books or magazines. The point is to mimic the squatting position, which aligns the large intestine and rectum for ease of elimination.

Invest in a bathroom stool whether constipation is an issue or not. Correct posture will certainly help to avoid straining and aid in proper elimination.

Supplements That Eliminate Constipation

Dr. Shillington offers the Intestinal Detox and the Intestinal Cleanse formulas for detoxifying the bowels. If you need to move your poop, there’s nothing more effective than Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse formula. It also kills parasites, heals the intestinal tract, and is a healthy means to promote bowel movements for those who have trouble defecating. Shillington’s Intestinal detox draws out old fecal matter from the walls of the intestine, while it removes poisons, toxins, heavy metals such as mercury and lead, and more (heavy metals are another common cause of constipation). Due to the charcoal and clays in the Intestinal Detox, it actually slows things down a bit, and the two also work very well together to heal the gut.

Abzorb is another big recommendation. It’s a systemic enzyme, so the capsule does not release until it is inside the gut. It’s also a probiotic, and an effective one at that. Taken with food Abzorb makes for a very effective digestive aid. Taken without food, Abzorb will begin to clear away old fecal matter, and it offers a host of other benefits (read more about enzymes here).

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Sugar Industry Has Had Evidence Linking Sugar to Heart Disease for Nearly Half a Century

Project 259 is a study that linked sucrose, a common sugar product, to heart disease and bladder cancer and would have revolutionized the way we think about sugar in regards to our health. Or at least it would have…if the sugar industry hadn’t stopped funding it halfway through the project in 1971. The project was discovered by a team of researchers at the University of California San Francisco who have been in the news for other reports on the sugar industry’s unsavory practices.

Details of the Project

Project 259 was launched by the Sugar Research Foundation in 1968. The project was in two halves, and only one of them was completed. The finished portion of the project looked at rat’s gut bacteria after rats consumed sucrose compared to starch. Early results showed that the sucrose caused gut microbes to throw off those rodent metabolisms, increasing their levels of triglycerides. Elevated triglycerides clog arteries and increase a person’s predisposition for cardiovascular disease. Project 259 also found that in a comparison to high-starch diet, a high-sugar diet boosts the activity of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme linked to bladder cancer, when compared to a starch diet.

These discoveries were reported to Sugar Research Foundation in 1970. The results accompanied a request for 12 additional weeks of funding to finish the second half of the project, which was outlined as a deeper look at the effects of starch. Within a month, the Vice President of the Sugar Research Foundation declared these findings as nil and the additional funding never materialized. Project 259 was abandoned in 1971.

Related: Healthy Sugar Alternatives and More

Who Tells The Story

The sugar industry does not see this as a story. According to Courtney Gaine, the president and CEO of the Sugar Association, “They never called us. We would have let them look at the archives. I would let them look tomorrow. The story we have in our archives is a lot better than the story they’ve been telling,” She asserts that this study was lost in a bureaucratic shuffle, and emphasizes the industry’s ongoing interest in negative claims.

The sugar industry has a vested interest in controlling the story of sugar and health’s relationship. More than anything, Project 259 disrupts a narrative that was already being put into place.  The same researchers who found this study also uncovered a letter in the Harvard library that revealed the truth of that. Two prominent and now deceased Harvard researchers, Harvard nutritionists, Dr. Fredrick Stare and Mark Hegsted, were responsible for disproving studies that implicated sugar and concluded that there was only one dietary modification — changing fat and cholesterol intake — that could prevent coronary heart disease. Their work was published in 1967 and didn’t require disclosure of industry funds, although these newly found records state that the sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye. Yes, the sugar industry wants to know about negative studies but not to offer an informed choice.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Most Frustrating “What If” Ever?

Sugar (especially the way we process and refine it) is more detrimental to the human body than anyone had previously thought, but what would our quality of life look like if this study was published? What would our sweetener options even look like?

Rates of heart disease, the number one cause of death in the world, would be far less than they currently are, and the ripple effects from consuming less sugar would be huge. Would we be facing the same level of antibiotic-resistant bacteria crises? While the majority of the blame for that coming storm can be placed at the factory farming industry’s doorstep, sugar feeds infection like no other food. Would doctors and dentists need to prescribe antibiotics at the rate they currently do?

This is all speculation. Infuriating speculation, at that, as that potential future is gone.

Related: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

We Should Be Angry

Not everyone who has heart disease has a history of heart disease in their family, but through the over-consumption of sugar, we have bred that predisposition into millions of people’s genetics. Anger and outrage are a daily occurrence in the current news cycles though and making this another cause for anger doesn’t send a strong enough message.

What if you stopped and said no more to products with large quantities of added sugar? Chose a different salad dressing or committed to figuring out a quick and tomato sauce recipe that kept you from reaching for the sugar-laden, jarred version on the shelf? Instead of choosing foods that create problems while willfully ignoring them, dictate your own health and choose foods that heal.

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The Key to Happiness is Going Vegan, Affirms World Happiness Expert

Matthieu Ricard is a former French genetic scientist, Tibetan monk, and author of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. His designation as the world’s happiest man is the result of a scientific research done on him and other advanced meditation practitioners in 2012, where during a meditation on compassion, 256 sensors on his skull measured levels of gamma rays in his brain never before reported in the history of neuroscience. Even though Matthieu is widely known and respected, the wise monk shows no sign of ego, as he kindly shares with the world the secret to finding true happiness.

Why We Cannot be Happy Eating Animals

On a video Matthieu participated in for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), he demonstrates how the act of buying and eating animals creates a domino effect of negativity in all aspects of our life.

First of all, the animals, with 60 billion land animals and a trillion sea animals killed each year. Next, the environment, since the whole chain of factory farming involved in meat production today is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases nowadays, after homes and before transportation. Poverty in the world: 800 million tons of grains that could feed 1 billion people are sent from developing countries towards rich countries for meat production.

“So the first victims are, of course, animals, but everyone else loses too! Even human health! The WHO (World Health Organization) published a report showing that the regular consumption of meat was bad for health.”

Recommended: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

So let’s be logical. If we ask the people of every nation whether they would like to live in a world filled with beauty, safety, prosperity, joy, kindness, love, peace, laughter, justice… most are likely to say yes. But to truly create such reality we must produce more of these acts (beauty, peace, love, justice and etc.) individually, so that this may turn into a ripple effect, creating this new collective reality. But how will we achieve such life when we are taking away innocent beings from their families and societies, forgetting that they are capable of feeling the same emotions we do, such as trust, love, joy, and fear and then serving them on our plates?

According to Matthieu,

…When you see the intensive conditions in which dairy cows are raised, for instance, it’s absolutely unimaginable. They are confined to stalls during their short lives, unable to see the sky, and when they become less productive, they are eliminated. When you know that 10 to 15 percent of them, sometimes more, are cut up into pieces while they were still conscious because they were improperly stunned, they die little by little, it’s unimaginable. But this is the reality of their lives, every day, all year long.”

So we must urgently ask ourselves, can any kind of death bring true happiness? Is it ethical and just? Will this act bring more fulfillment into our individual lives or consequently to our collective experience?

That’s right, the answer is no.

The Key to Happiness

Matthieu reveals the key to happiness and it´s simpler than we thought.

He says: “True happiness can be attained when we avoid causing pain to others…”

Matthieu’s wise words become even more interesting when we take a look at the results from the 2010 happiness survey done on Harvard´s class of 1980. It turns out that the number one item listed as one of utmost importance to achieve happiness is doing good for others.

This strongly correlates to what Matthieu has shared with us. Happiness is to think of others (people and animals) and keep from bringing them suffering, it is to think of the world and the future generations, the environment and ourselves (our health) doing what is morally correct.

Related: How to Be Happy

How Meat Consumption is Hurting our Health and Planet

“The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future—deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease.” Says the World Watch Institute.

But how much in numbers are we truly talking?

The millennium ecosystem assessment shows that meat and dairy products are responsible for:

  • 70% of global freshwater consumption

It takes around 147 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of corn. A single beef steer or a heifer can eat 1,000 or more pounds of feed over a few months (since they are often fed corn and soy feed to achieve a speedier growth), consuming large amounts of water that could be preserved instead.

  • 38% of total land use

In various nations of the world, you see lands being taken over, Amazonian forests cut down for soy production for cattle, banks of wild streams muddied and trampled by grazers in New Zealand, countries like Greece that were rich in woodlands are now dry and taken over by goats.

  • 19% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

Because cows chew on grass, and their digestive system works differently than ours, they end up releasing a lot of methane into the air and atmosphere. So, the more meat-eating humans, the more cows, the more methane, the more greenhouse gasses, and the worse it will be for the planet.

A scientific study that was done also indicates that the long-term consumption of red meat, and specially processed meat, is associated with an increased risk of mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer in both women and men.

But this isn’t the only source to share such information.

Dr. Marco Springmann from the Oxford Martin School, says: “Imbalanced diets, such as diets low in fruits and vegetables, and high in red and processed meat, are responsible for the greatest health burden globally…”

All of the above data show us that this lifestyle is extremely harmful to our health and for the planet, as it’s not sustainable. As the world population increases, the tendency is for the demand of meat production to increase, which could mean that we are looking at an unavoidable worldwide point of no return.

Watch this video for a quick 3-minute summary.

How a Vegan Lifestyle can Change the World

According to the recent 2016 Oxford study, a vegan diet could bring various benefits, such as:

  • Save 8 million lives by 2050 – The study concludes that almost half of the avoided deaths would be due to the reduction of the consumption of red meat as the other half would be a result of an increased fruit and vegetable intake as well as calorie reduction causing fewer people to be obese or overweight.
  • Save money on healthcare – About 700 to 1.000 billion US dollars.
  • Avoid climate-related damages – Which would have otherwise cost 1.5 trillion dollars.
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2/3 – By adopting vegan dietary guidelines we could cut out 70% of these emissions which would bring an economic benefit of as much as 570 billion US dollars.

To summarize on the greenhouse gases matter, Nick Hewitt, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in the Department of Environmental Science at Lancaster University says “The biggest lifestyle choice you could make to reduce greenhouse gasses is to stop eating meat. It’s hard to think of another single lifestyle change we could make that would have the same effect.”

Bringing Happiness to the World

We have enough scientific evidence supporting the numerous problems within the animal-based product industries, as well as we are aware of how it negatively affects our health, our environment and the animals themselves. For those of you who comprehend this and are asking yourselves what you can do now, the answer is simple — Take action! Be the example, and exclude meat products from your plates, choose vegetarian and vegan options, bring awareness to your friends, family, and colleagues. Your actions will bring about a ripple effect, that will turn our collective reality into one free of suffering, full of environmental restoration, better human and animal health, which inevitably brings about greater feelings of joy, purpose, and love. Happiness takes courage and effort, so the Tibetan monk and former scientist, a true master of happiness and compassion, humbly makes a plea— he asks that we become vegan like him.

Blessings to all.

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Why the U.S. Washes and Refrigerates Eggs, & Why Other Countries Don’t

American eggs are federally required to be washed and sanitized and then refrigerated. There are a few reasons for this, but the main reason is that our factory farms are disgusting. In Europe, eggs sold in supermarkets are not legally allowed to be washed.

I live in Mexico and one of the first things I noticed at the grocery stores here is that they do not refrigerate the eggs. They’re sold on a shelf with dry goods generally, like sugar or canned milk products. There are many options from tiny spotted ones to big brown ones, but they’re unwashed and unchilled. – Lily Da Vine

The FDA states that eggs must be sterilized and chilled to reduce the likelihood of salmonella infections. Much of the world focuses on, and/or legislated to place emphasis on, producing cleaner eggs. American chicken factories, on the other hand, are legendarily filthy, and we don’t seem motivated to change that.

Abysmal factory farming conditions are what create the problematic salmonella superbug (the same is true for eColi). Eggs become contaminated with salmonella in one of two ways, by either contaminating the egg internally upon production (due to a chicken with infected ovaries), or when the egg becomes in contact with contaminated chicken manure, and salmonella sticks to the porous shell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbqv1SuQJ0s

So the United States, in typical fashion, has decided that instead of regulating the farms to produce healthier food, we need to wash, sanitize, and cook our eggs. If you like raw eggs, be sure they aren’t factory farmed, and especially not American factory-farmed!

So what about real farm fresh eggs from a healthy farm where the eggs have room to run around, and they all get a healthy natural diet? Those eggs should be gently cleaned off, but not washed or made wet. There is a protective coating around the eggs that you want to preserve. If the eggs do get washed they should then be refrigerated or used shortly thereafter.

If you can’t produce your own eggs try finding a local farmer who does not wash or chill their eggs, and simply leaves them on the counter when you get home. Wash them just before you use them (if you want).

Other Common Egg Questions: Shell and Yolk Color

The color of the yolks are determined by diet and the freshness of the egg. Hens that get a variety of foods including lots of plants, alfalfa, bugs, for instance, are healthier than hens that have a restricted diet.  Healthy chickens have a darker yellow-orange yolk. Factory farmed chickens in the United States typically have diets of wheat, barley, or white corn which produces pale yellow yolks.

Shells are different colors because different chickens lay different eggs.

…egg color is determined by the genetics of the hens. The breed of the hen will indicate what color eggs she will produce. For example, Leghorn chickens lay white eggs while Orpington’s lay brown eggs and Ameraucana produce blue eggs. An Olive Egger, a chicken that lays olive green eggs, is the product of a cross between a hen and rooster that are from a brown egg and a blue egg laying breed. An interesting tip is to look at the chicken’s ear lobes; typically those with white ear lobes produce white eggs.” – Michigan State

Recommended Reading:
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Sulfites Kill Beneficial Bacteria According to New Study

The first scientific study to test the effects of food preservatives on beneficial bacteria has been published, and the results do not bode well for our health. Researchers from the University of Hawai‘i Maui College have found that sulfites in food preservatives, generally recognized as safe for consumption at levels of 5000 ppm (parts per million) or less, killed or inhibited the growth of beneficial bacteria at levels of 3780 ppm or less. In the words of lead researcher Dr. Sally V. Irwin,

Studies show a significant increase over the past 40 years in food allergies, obesity, and metabolic disorders that have a direct correlation to disbiosis, or changes in the microbiome…In trying to understand what in our environment may be causing this change, the use of many food preservatives and their effects on beneficial bacteria came to mind.”

What They Found

Sulfites are a food preserver found in dried fruits, wine, beer, bottled lemon and lime juices, processed meats, canned goods, and occur naturally in sauerkraut and its brine. Common sulfites include sulfur dioxide, potassium bisulfite, sodium sulfite, and sodium bisulfite. They are frequently used to stop fermentation, which is why they are most commonly associated with fermented beverages like wine.

Related: The Gut-Brain Connection – How it Affects Your Life

For this study, researchers chose four known beneficial bacteria, Lactobacillus species casei, plantarum and rhamnosus, and Streptococcus thermophilus, and tested their reactions to two different preservatives, sodium sulfite and sodium bisulfite. The sulfites were in concentrations from 10 to 3780 ppm and exposed to the bacteria for six hours. After only two hours of exposure to sulfites concentrated at 250-500 ppm, all four types of bacteria tested showed no increase or a substantial decrease in cell numbers when compared to the sulfite-free control.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

These results should not be surprising, as this is what sulfites are designed to do. They are added to stop fermentation, the development of bacteria. Many modern innovations do what they are designed to do, but there is often a resistance to believe that what they do could also be harmful. Antibiotic-resistant superbugs are on track to kill more people than cancer by 2050, a result of our indiscriminate love affair with antibiotics, that miracle of modern medicine.

The Implications

This is a preliminary study in that its subjects are lab-grown bacteria and were exposed to the sulfites for a fraction of the time that occurs during real-world digestion. Yet the damage to that beneficial bacteria was clear.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

We depend on our beneficial bacteria. Without it, we are more vulnerable to serious infections, autoimmune disease, obesity, and numerous other damaging health conditions. This study solidly links what is in our food with one of the most serious health issues we face – the decline of our gut microbe diversity. It’s also the only study directly dealing with the effect of food additives on beneficial bacteria.

But there used to be one guy talking about the damage antibiotics do. Now we have a wealth of information confirming just how much damage messing with the gut microbiome can do.

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