Researchers from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo have discovered that eating raw cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage has been found to decrease the risk of developing bladder cancer by 40 percent. What’s astonishing about this study is that the participants ate only three or more servings of cruciferous vegetables a month!

This study found these results among both smokers and non-smokers. In fact, non-smokers who participated in the study had a 73% lower chance of developing bladder cancer. The study also indicates that cooking these vegetables reduces and/or eliminates the cancer-fighting benefits.

Imagine what eating two or three raw servings of fruit and vegetables a day could do for you! What if 80% or more of what you ate was fresh, organic, raw fruits and vegetables?

Cruciferous Vegetables

• Horseradish
• Land cress
• Ethiopian mustard
• Kale
• collard greens
• Chinese broccoli (gai-lan)
• Cabbage
• Savoy cabbage
• Brussels sprouts
• Kohlrabi
• Broccoli
• Broccoflower
• Broccoli romanesco
• Cauliflower
• wild broccoli
• bok choy
• Komatsuna
• Mizuna
• Rapini (broccoli rabe)
• Choy sum (Flowering cabbage)
• Chinese cabbage, napa cabbage
• Turnip root; greens
• Rutabaga (swede)
• Siberian kale
• Canola/rapeseed
• Wrapped heart mustard cabbage
• Mustard seeds, brown; greens
• White mustard seeds
• Black mustard seeds
• Tatsoi
• Wild arugula
• Arugula (rocket)
• Field pepperweed
• Maca
• Garden cress
• Watercress
• Radish
• Daikon
• Wasabi

Recommended Reading:

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases
• Natural Diabetes Cure
• Cure Cancer Naturally

Stevia comes from the leaves of a tropical plant native to South America. Though it is 200-300 times sweeter than table sugar, stevia is not a sugar. Unlike other popular sweeteners, it has a glycemic index rating of less than 1 and therefore does not feed Candida (yeast) or cause any of the numerous other problems associated with sugar consumption. 

Stevia has been used as a sweetener for centuries, but as is often the case in our country, the interests of big business have superseded common sense and fair play. By law, stevia cannot be sold or labeled as a sweetener or food additive, only as a supplement. 

Some people complain of its strong licorice-like aftertaste, but now some companies claim to have a refining process that eliminates it. Even with its aftertaste, stevia is a perfect sweetener for strong sour flavors such as lemons. (It makes great lemonade!) You can also use stevia with other sweeteners to strengthen the sweetness of a recipe while still preparing a meal with relatively low sugar content. 

For more information about Stevia and the FDA’s decision not to allow stevia as a food additive, check out NaturalNews.com

Sometimes it doesn’t say organic, but it is. Sometimes it says organic, but it’s not. At least not by the definition you’d expect. When it says Certified Naturally Grown, wildcrafted, or organic, what do the labels really mean?

USDA Organic Certification

Unfortunately, some short-lived botanical sprays and a few herbicides and insecticides are sometimes allowed during organic cultivation.

Single-Ingredient Foods

Single ingredient foods are foods that are uncombined with other foods. Think fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, eggs, cheese etc. When these foods are labeled organic, we know the farmer met the USDA standards to achieve certification.

Multi-Ingredient Foods—Organic

Here’s where things get tricky. You’d think if your sausage was labeled organic it would be organic. But there are three USDA organic labels for multi-ingredient or processed foods. Their differences are not obvious at first glance.

100% Organic

This one is self explanatory. All of the ingredients are organic.

Organic or Certified Organic

95-99% of its ingredients by weight are organic. The sausage may be 100% organic, but if the processor could not find organic sausage casings, the casings aren’t. This label allows food processors to use a number of ingredients that are not readily available in organic form.

Made with Organic Ingredients

70-94% of the ingredients must be organic. The organic seal cannot be used on these food items.

Just a bit misleading, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but if I saw something that said it was made with organic ingredients, I’d think it was made with organic ingredients!

Certified Naturally Grown

Certified Naturally Grown is a non-profit, alternative, organic certification program. Nearly 500 farmers from 47 states are members. This group strives to preserve high standards for organic farmers while removing the financial and logistical barriers small

Wildcrafted

Wildcrafted plants are uncultivated plants gathered from their natural habitat. Care is taken to ensure sustainability, to take no more than the plant can give, the scatter a plant’s seeds, etc. Wildcrafted is superior to organic if picked where there is no runoff from polluted water or contamination from exhaust. Unlike organic produce, wildcrafted produce is never sprayed—with anything. Wildcrafted foods are pure—as nature intended.

When organic certification began, each state set its own standards. In time it was decided one uniform code was necessary. The USDA began a nationally recognized certification program in 1990.

Consumers think organic means organic. No pesticides. No herbicides. Nothing unnatural. Simple, right? Unfortunately, no. It’s not that simple. The organic label has quite a bit of wiggle room. It also has its share of controversy.

USDA organic certification requires time and money. Farmers are required to maintain documentation, to pay for inspections, and to pay for labs to test their produce. While it’s still true that food with an organic label is a superior product with more nutrition than its conventional counterpart, some farmers say USDA certification doesn’t guarantee strict adherence to the standards that originally defined organic and the label itself has become misleading.

In an Internet letter to their customers, the Whistling Train Farm, a fully organic farm in Washington State, goes into great detail explaining why they have chosen not to be certified as a USDA organic farm. Among their reasons are a number of practices allowed that they don’t agree with such as: “The use of blood and bone meal from non-organic livestock as fertilizers. We don’t feel safe using these products because of the BSE risk.” and “A long list of allowed substances, including broad-range botanical pesticides.”

As the Coleman Farm explains, “Among other things, certification would require us to keep records of input and output for each crop. We would have to pay for farm inspections and lab tests of our produce. For a farmer growing a thousand acres of broccoli the time required is insignificant. We raise and market nearly two hundred products, many of which yield only a few pounds a year. We think the time and money that certification would require is better spent working our farm and serving our customers.”

Vernon Mullins, the Organic Program Manager for the Georgia Department of Agriculture does not agree with the claim that documentation is a time consuming task. “Certification requires documentation,” he says, “but this can be done in a spiral notebook, on a calendar, or in an Excel spreadsheet.”

The forms available for download do look a bit overwhelming, though it appears a careful and complete set up of documentation would go a long way toward simplifying on-going record keeping. Organic certification is definitely not for scatterbrained types or for procrastinators. Careful due diligence is required.

Mr. Mullins also tells us the U.S. government has subsidized the costs of organic certification through the National Organic Certification Cost Share Program, which was originally available for farmers in 15 states. A second program included in a 2002 farm bill made financial assistance available to every state. Though funds are currently exhausted, a new bill is in appropriations awaiting funding.

Is the certification too expensive? Too time consuming? Is it meaningless because the standards are slipping?

There certainly appears to be contradictory opinions. OLM is going straight to the source. We’re going to ask the farmers. Look for our survey results in upcoming months.

In the simplest terms, any food grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides can be labeled organic. People who do not understand the organic food movement often argue that there is no significant difference between organic and so-called conventional food. There is however, a lot more to the argument than meets the eye.

For most of humankind’s history, food crops grew utilizing natural fertilizers such as animal manure, dung and decomposed plant materials, otherwise called compost. Creating good soil was the focus. Crops took nutrients from the soil and all crop refuse was returned to replenish the nutrients removed. Adding these natural elements back to the earth feeds not only the plants, but also the micro-flora and micro-fauna that provide micro-nutrients for the soil, which are subsequently extracted from the soil by the plants.

Pesticides were not necessary because strong, healthy plants, grown in healthy soil, were disease resistant. Predators attack the weak and ill formed. Plants grown in soil that is complete with all the nutrients nature provides grow strong, healthy, and are resistant to disease.

This changed in the mid 1800’s when Justus von Liebig, a German scientist, discovered nitrogen as an essential plant nutrient. This led to the invention of nitrogen-based fertilizer and the propagation of plants utilizing Liebigs’s “Law of the Minimum”. This principle states that the one essential mineral which is in the relatively shortest supply, limits a plant’s development. This concept determines the amount of fertilizer to apply in modern agriculture. Plant growth in conventional agriculture is controlled not by the total resources available, but by the scarcest resource. Minimal plant nutrient requirements are chemically synthesized and added to the dirt. The soil is no longer the source of plant nutrition, but only a receptacle for holding plant roots.

Subsequently, the plants themselves are weak and must be protected against attack from insects, funguses and other pests by the application of synthetic chemical insecticides and other toxic poisons. These poisons get into the food and cannot be removed. The toxins then enter our bodies through ingestion of the food and may lead to other health problems.

Food grown by conventional methods conforms to specific standards designed to meet a consumer demand subliminally created. Much of it is genetically altered or hybridized through genetic modification. All of the food looks the same. It is often picked unripe to aid storage and ease shipping, and then gassed with more chemicals to ripen the fruit before it is presented to buyers. The food is unblemished in appearance, but bland and tasteless. The nutrient content of conventionally grown food is limited and must be supplemented by vitamin and mineral tablets in order to maintain consumer health.

Organic growers use natural materials that are available in the environment around them to grow high quality food. The food is higher in quality because it contains all of the nutrients available from soil enriched by inclusion of natural materials. Equally important, organic food has no synthetic chemicals added as nutrients, to control pests or aid harvesting. This produces food that is better tasting with higher nutritional content. Sometimes organic food is not as pretty to look at like as “steroid food’ found at the local grocery store. However, to clearly know the difference, just eat some food grown organically. The absolute, unequivocal proof that organic food is superior to conventional food is simple. The proof is in the tasting!

Oh Organics, My Organics

“Organics” have arrived. They are more popular than ever, but what exactly is organic food? How does organic farming differ from conventional farming? How does the organic labeling process work? And, what does it all mean to you, the well-intentioned consumer? You might be surprised by some of the answers.

Over the past few decades, organics have moved from the “lunatic fringe” to the red carpet. Literally. This paradigm shift was most evident at the 2004 American Music Awards held in Los Angeles. Each year, celebrities, usually accustomed to receiving gaudy gift bags brimming with fancy fragrances and trendy technology, were instead presented with a more natural offering: “ecogift bags” filled with organic treats like Annie’s Homegrown Organic Macaroni and Cheese, Taylor Maid Farms organic coffee, and organic cotton tote bags from Patagonia.

Organics are not only en vogue among luminaries and de rigueur among foodies, middle America is going organic, too. The 2002 Organic Consumer Trends Report found that thirty-nine percent of the U.S. population uses organic products.

Organic food production is a $16 billion-a-year industry, according to the Organic Trade Association (OTA) – and it is rising precipitously. Even though organic still accounts for a mere 3% of overall food sales, it is growing at a sizzling rate of 17-20% per year as compared to a glacial rate of 2-3% for conventional foods.

“Once you have Kraft marketing an organic product, albeit through another brand, you really can’t be more part of the mainstream than that,” said Don Montuori, editor of Packaged Facts, an industry publication.

More people eating healthier food produced in safe and sustainable ways is all good, right? Well, not necessarily.

Double-digit growth can be a double-edged sword. Organic food production is growing so rapidly that it is straining the system. There are not enough organic farms and organically raised animals in the United States to meet demand.

When demand outpaces supply, things can go awry. For example, in 2006, The Cornucopia Institute, an organic watchdog organization, filed a legal complaint before the USDA against Dean Foods, the largest milk bottler in the United States. The complaint alleged that Horizon Organic Milk came from cows reared in factory farms that violated organic standards. Specifically, Horizon’s dairy cows did not have sufficient access to pasture and were kept in inhumane conditions. The case is still pending.

“As organics become more mainstream, the standards are at risk,” says Ronnie Cummins, a national director for the Organic Consumer Organization. “Mass market and organics aren’t always compatible,” he adds.

First, let’s get clear on the differences between organic and conventional farming –how and why the distinction was originally drawn.

In 1990, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Bill included The Organic Foods Production Act, which was created to establish uniform national standards for the production and handling of foods labeled as “organic.” The Act authorized a new USDA National Organic Program to set national standards for the production, handling, and processing of organically grown agricultural products.

The USDA National Organic Program now oversees mandatory certification of organic production. The Act also established the National Organic Standards Board which advises the Secretary of Agriculture in setting the standards upon which the National Organic Program is based. Producers who meet standards set by the National Organic Program may label their products as “USDA Certified Organic.”

Here is the technical definition of “organic food” according to the USDA National Organic Program website: “Organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation. Before a product can be labeled ‘organic,’ a Government-approved certifier inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards. Companies that handle or process organic food before it gets to your local supermarket or restaurant must be certified, too.”

Fairly clear cut, right? Unfortunately, things aren’t so clear. The ability to emblazon a food product with the word “organic” is a valuable marketing advantage. And, when a subtle advantage can be leveraged for financial gain, it’s a breeding ground for situational ethics — and compromised standards.

Organic certification is intended to protect consumers from misuse of the term, and to make buying organics more straightforward. However, as the demand for organics rise, some large food manufacturers are attempting to weaken organic standards. Even the slightest downgrade in those standards can represent a financial windfall to large food companies.

Some believe that the U.S. government is also seeking to undercut organic standards. For example, Congress passed a $397 billion spending bill that contained a buried provision which could jeopardize U.S. organic standards. The provision, which was slipped into the bill at the last minute without debate, would “permit livestock producers to certify meat and dairy products as organic even if the animals had been fed non-organic or genetically engineered grain.” The provision would override the NOP’s requirement that 100% organic feed be used to produce organic meat products.
While many forces seek to soften organic standards, others go above and beyond to safeguard and uphold them.

“We’re talking about people’s health here,” says Dr. Jack J. Singh, founder of Organic Food Bar, Inc. Health is our most precious asset. Food companies should protect that at all costs! When you run a food company, you are feeding families with children. It is incumbent on everyone in this business to do everything they can to protect people’s health, particularly now as we face a health care crisis in this country.”

What the big companies don’t quite grasp is that unflinching integrity is good for customers – and good for business, too.

• If you want to eat purely organic food, the label should read: “100% organic” and nothing less. Only products made entirely with certified organic ingredients and methods can be labeled “100% organic.”
• Products with at least 95% organic ingredients can use the word “organic” and can also include the USDA organic seal. The other 5% can be conventionally-grown ingredients.
• A third category, containing a minimum of 70% organic ingredients, can be labeled “made with organic ingredients.”
• In most cases, the word “natural” on a product label means very little because, unlike the designation “organic,” the word “natural” has no legal definition.
• Whenever possible, buy food produced closer to home. That way, you know your food is fresher — and you know where it comes from! The recent food scare with China, while unsettling, has compelled many Americans to examine the origins of their food. This is good. The fact is that locally-produced food is better for you, it’s better for your community — and, it’s better for the planet.

To learn more about organics, visit The Organic Trade Association at: http://www.ota.com

For more healthy living tips, visit: http://www.organicfoodbar.com

Super bugs live in soil? Yes, according to Harvard University researchers who discovered why antibiotics don’t build up in the soil. Bacteria are eating it; they thrive on doses 50 to 100 times greater than the equivalent therapeutic dose for humans.

Scientists are scrambling to find out how they do it before they teach their cousins, human pathogens, how to wine and dine on Cipro, gentamicin, and the next generation of man made antibiotics.

While we applaud Mother Nature for devising a means to remove antibiotic waste from the soil, the warning is clear. Will we listen? Will we stop polluting our water and our land with antiseptics and antibiotic run off? Will we stop feeding antibiotics like candy to our animals? To our children? To ourselves? Will we look for alternative treatments to strengthen immunity and help our bodies to heal? Or will we continue the evolutionary war on bacteria, creating new strains resistant to every known treatment?