Category: Mainely Tipping Points: Essays

Essays

Mainely Tipping Points 25: TAPPED: Bisphenol A

Mainely Tipping Points 25

This essay is the final essay in a series of three essays around the documentary TAPPED.

 

TAPPED:  Bisphenol A

 

In the documentary TAPPED, Dr. Frederick Vom Saal says Bisphenol A, or BPA, is “one of the most toxic chemicals known to man.”  BPA, explains Vom Saal, is “the poster child chemical that is going to dismantle the entire regulatory process and demand a re-analysis of all chemicals.”  “BPA,” says Vom Saal, is “frightening to the regulatory community because of the magnitude of the error they have made.”    

BPA leaches into water from water containers made of hard, polycarbonate plastic, stamped with #7 on the bottom of the product.  Examples of problem water containers are the five-gallon hard plastic water jugs used with water cooler systems, baby bottles, and sports bottles. 

Other examples in the general food system include containers for liquid baby formula and the linings of beverage and food cans.  Elaine Shannon of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that because plastics made with BPA “break down easily when heated, microwaved, washed with strong detergents, or wrapped around acidic foods like tomatoes, trace amounts of the potent hormone leach into food from epoxy lacquer can linings, polycarbonate bottles and other plastic food packaging” (Shannon, “What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know,” September 2008, http://www.ewg.org/report/what-chemical-industry-doesnt-want-you-know).  Wikipedia notes that as of April 2010, General Mills had developed a BPA-free alternative can liner that works even with tomatoes.  But, writes Wikipedia, General Mills is only planning on using this new liner with their organic food subsidiary, Muir Glen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bispjhenol_A).   

Polycarbonate plastics are ubiquitous today.  BPA, explains Wikipedia, is used in “sports equipment, medical and dental devices, dental fillings and sealants, eyeglass lenses, CDs and DVDs, and household electronics”—like, notes, computers and cell phones.  BPA, details Wikipedia, is used to make other plastics; it’s a “precursor to the flame retardant tetrabromobisphenol A”; it was “formerly used as a fungicide”; it’s the “preferred developer in carbonless copy paper and thermal paper,” including sale receipt paper; it’s used in foundry castings and to line water pipes”   

BPA mimics estrogen in the body, which is something scientists have known since 1930.  Regulatory bodies have determined what they believe to be safe levels for humans by using an idea, explains Vom Saal, dating from the sixteenth century:  “the dose makes the poison.” 

However, Vom Saal says this premise is false for any hormone and explains that  recent studies are showing that even minute levels of BPA are unsafe. 

Vom Saal says in TAPPED that 700 peer-reviewed, published studies show BPA to be dangerous.  He explains that the 38 internationally recognized scientists who served on a 2006 National Institutes of Health panel (Chapel Hill) determined that current levels of BPA pose risks for humans.  Shannon notes in “What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know,” that The National Toxicology Program accepted much of the Chapel Hill panel’s thinking and wrote that low doses of BPA may affect development of the prostate gland and brain and may cause behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children.

Shannon notes that Vom Saal, working with Wade Welshons at the University of Missouri-Columbia, “turned up the first hard evidence that miniscule amounts” of BPA “caused irreversible changes in the prostates of fetal mice” in 1997, or 14 years ago.  By 2008, writes Shannon, the global chemical industry was producing 6 billion pounds of BPA annually, which generated “at least $6 billion in sales” 

In order to protect its BPA turf, the chemical industry has followed the very successful tobacco industry model, which Devra Davis details in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER (2007).  The tobacco industry spent astonishing amounts of money to advertise tobacco use, to delay negative decisions, to hide negative science, to craft favorable legal decisions, to obfuscate science with problematic studies from paycheck scientists, and to fire or discredit anyone saying tobacco use was unhealthy.  The chemical industry is currently running what Shannon calls a “scorched earth” campaign that includes such actions as an “industry email to food banks charging that a BPA ban would mean the end of distributions of canned goods for the poor.”  

Vom Saal describes in TAPPED how a representative from Dow Chemical Company showed up in his and Welshons’ Missouri lab to dispute the data and to declare “`we want you to know how distressed we are by your research.’”  Vom Saal revealed that Dow tried to stop papers critical of BPA from being published.  Shannon describes how the American Chemistry Council attempted to prevent Vom Saal from speaking at a convocation at Stanford University because his work was “`very controversial, and not everybody believes what he’s saying.’”  Shannon quotes Welshons as saying that chemical industry officials made “` blatantly false statements about our research’” and “`they were skilled at creating doubt when none existed.’ “

TAPPED shows footage from a Senate hearing investigating the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) use of biased studies produced by the chemical industry’s paycheck scientists.  Senator John Kerry castigates FDA’s Dr. Norris E. Alderson for not asking for independent studies.  Senator Kerry concludes that the FDA is not protecting citizens, and TAPPED concludes that industry has captured the FDA and other regulatory agencies. 

Lyndsey Layton of “The Washington Post” reported that as of 2009, 93 percent of the U.S. population had detectable levels of BPA in their urine (“High BPA levels linked to male sexual problems,” November 11, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111017411).  Layton’s article discusses a November 2009 study of 634 male workers from four factories in China showed that exposure to high levels of BPA caused erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems after a few months on the job. 

Vom Saal, in TAPPED, links the following health problems to BPA:  childhood diabetes, obesity, prostate and breast cancers, brain disorders like ADHD, liver disease, ovarian cancer, uterus disease, and low sperm count in men.  Layton lists infertility in general and early-onset puberty. 

Shannon discusses some of the dozens of other scientists who are also studying BPA and who concur with Vom Saal and Welshons.  Patricia Hunt, a reproductive scientist (molecular biologist) from Washington State University, was stunned by what she saw under her microscope after a caustic floor detergent used to clean her lab released BPA into her animals’ food and water.  Hunt said “`Like most Americans, I thought, my government protects me from this kind of stuff.”  She began studying BPA, and, after a decade, determined that “exposure to low levels of BPA—levels that we think are in the realm of current human exposure—can profoundly affect both developing eggs and sperm.” 

A Yale University medical school research team led by Csaba Leranth discovered that BPA affects the neurological system in African green monkeys.  In humans, reported team member Tibor Hajszan, the devastating effect on synapses in the monkey brain could translate to memory and learning problems and depression.      

In September 2010, Canada banned BPA as a toxic substance.  Eight states have banned BPA in children’s’ products:  California, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.  In October 2010 the Maine Board of Environmental Protection held hearings on a ban on BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups.  The Board postponed any decision until it studied expanding the ban.

Here’s what you can do:  don’t wait for our government to protect you.  Don’t buy canned foods or beverages unless the container says “BPA free,” avoid the combination of plastic and foods, don’t heat plastic, and don’t reuse plastic containers.  Do buy, cook, and preserve locally grown, organic, nutrient-dense whole foods available in your region.

Mainely Tipping Points 24: Tapped: The 8 X 8 Glasses of Water Myth

Mainely Tipping Points 24

Note:  This essay is the second in a series of 3 essays on water, which started with viewing the documentary TAPPED and reading Elizabeth Royte’s BOTTLEMANIA.

 

TAPPED:  The 8 x 8 Glasses of Water Myth

The documentary TAPPED traces the history of how the bottled water industry successfully encouraged people to drink a whole lot of water every day, which translated into people buying easily transportable single-serve bottles of water.  The prevailing dictate insuring daily hydration for the average person is 64 ounces, or eight, eight-ounce glasses of water a day, or 8 X 8.    

But, this recommendation, which is repeated by even such an august mainstream medical organization as the Mayo Clinic, not only has no scientific backing whatsoever, it could be dangerous for some people (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/water/NU00283).  Mayo notes the lack of science, but includes the 8 X 8 recommendation without qualifying until near the end of its posting the fact that much of the 64 ounces can come from ingested food.  Other liquid sources, like coffee, tea, fruit drinks, and, even, soda, also contribute.   

Elizabeth Royte, in BOTTLEMANIA (2008), surfaces the work of Heinz Valtin, a retired professor of physiology from Dartmouth Medical School who specialized in kidney research (35).  Karen Bellenir discusses Valtin’s work also in a “Scientific American” article that appeared on 4 June 2009:  “Fact or Fiction?  You Must Drink 8 glasses of Water Daily” (www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eight-glasses-water-per-day.com).  Bellenir notes that Valtin “spent 45 years studying the biological system that keeps the water in our bodies in balance” and that Valtin can find “no scientific evidence supporting the notion that healthy individuals need to consume large quantities of water”—though Valtin acknowledges that for people with specific health concerns, like kidney stones or chronic urinary tract infections, drinking more “can be beneficial.”

Bellenir reports that in 2004 a panel of the Food and Nutrition Board “revisited the question of water consumption” and concluded that “ `the vast majority of healthy people adequately meet their daily hydration needs by letting thirst be their guide.’ ”  In 2008, Bellenir writes, Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb reviewed the evidence about water intake for the “Journal of the American Society of Nephrology” and determined that there “ `is no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water.’ ” 

Royte and Bellenir both write that the 8 X 8 myth likely started in 1945 with a recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, which now functions under the auspices of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine.  This board recommended about 64 ounces of water for the average person, but noted that much of the daily need for water is met with the water content in ingested food.  How did the back end of this statement get so thoroughly lost and how did the resulting unscientific and, even, dangerous, 8 X 8 get so thoroughly embedded in our culture? 

Royte notes that Valtin says he’s “tired of trying to prove a negative.”  He believes that the “burden of proof that everyone needs eight by eight should fall on those who persist in advocating the high fluid intake without, apparently, citing any scientific support” (35-36).  Royte notes also that Valtin analyzed “published surveys of healthy populations and found that most people weren’t drinking that much” (35).  Valtin, writes Royte, said “ `The body can’t store water.  If you have more than you need, you just pee it away.”

Drinking too much water leads to all sorts of problems, the most serious being death.  Drinking large amounts of water in a short period of time can lead to hyponatremia, or “water intoxication,” where the kidneys cannot excrete enough excess water and where the electrolyte (mineral) content of the blood is diluted, which results in low sodium levels in the blood (Royte, 36; Mayo Clinic).  Royte notes that hyponatremia can lead to “brain swelling, seizures, coma, and then death” (36).

Dr. Ben Kim, in “Why Drinking Too Much Water Is Dangerous,” notes that consistently imbibing too much water can damage the kidneys.  Further, excess water increases blood volume within a closed system, which places an unnecessary burden on your heart and blood vessels.  Kim is a chiropractor, but he has a wonderfully succinct analysis of this issue   (http://drbenkim.com/drink-too-much-water-dangerous.html). 

Dr. Thomas S. Cowan, an MD who is also a homeopath, in THE FOURFOLD PATH TO HEALING (2004), has an extended, excellent explanation of how the heart and the blood system interrelate (137-147).  Cowan, like Kim, writes that “increasing total volume in the system makes it harder to move the blood because the excess water volume makes it heavier.”  What you eat, combined with the presence of oxygen in the blood, helps the body release the water it needs.  Specifically, the metabolism of healthy fats, especially saturated fats, liberates more water than either protein or carbohydrates.  Thus, people who exercise and eat a diet “consisting plentifully of healthy fats and low in carbohydrates” have “the healthiest hearts and circulatory systems” (145).  Fat deficiency, writes Cowan, cannot be solved by drinking more water; this practice “only makes the circulation more sluggish” (146).    

Kathryne Pirtle, in “Acid Reflux:  A Red Flag,” “Wise Traditions,” Summer 2010, 35-43), writes that too much water dilutes stomach acid, which leads to acid reflux.  (Yes, low acid, not high acid causes problems, so, if needed, take hydrochloric acid with pepsin to increase acid in the stomach.)  Pirtle says that in addition to mineral depletion and imbalances, too much water intake “can contribute to digestive disorders, as well as kidney disease, degenerative bone disease, muscular disorders and even cardiac arrest from electrical dysfunction.”  She also notes, that “paradoxically, over-consumption of water may cause constipation” because “when too much water is added to a high-fiber diet, the fibrous foods swell and ferment in the intestinal track, leading to gas, bloating and other uncomfortable digestive symptoms” (39).

Pirtle notes that “traditional peoples did not drink large quantities of water.”  Rather, “they stayed hydrated with raw milk, fermented beverages and bone broth soups, which have incredible nutrient qualities and do not upset the body’s homeostasis.”  And, like Cowan, she notes that traditional people “also consumed plenty of traditional fats like butter, cream, lard and coconut oil” as “fats render much more water during metabolism than proteins or carbohydrates” (39). 

The efficacy of thirst with regard to adequate hydration is a hotly debated topic.  Both Royte and Bellenir note that some elderly have trouble experiencing thirst some time.  Bellenir notes that “some drugs can cause problems with thirst regulation.”  Processed foods, with their heavy loads of salt, sugar, bad fats, and chemical brews, create thirst.  And, thirst is the body’s way of  trying to cleanse itself.  But, such cleansing can form a vicious cycle if constantly repeated because nutrients are flushed out as well.

TAPPED and Royte both trace the growth of bottled water as an industry.  Real growth starts in the late 1970s when the French company Perrier began creating an American niche market for its distinctive dark green bottles of spring water.  Perrier’s $6 million advertising budget targeted urban professionals.  In 1978, sales were $20 million; in 1979, after an Orson Wells television ad, sales were $60 million (Royte 30).

In 1989, Coke and Pepsi got into the game.  They put water into lightweight, clear plastic bottles and spent, TAPPED reports, “hundreds of millions of dollars telling us to `drink more water.’ “  They associated bottled water with celebrities, told us drinking water would make us thinner, and told us bottled water is “purer” and, thus, “safer,” than tap water.  And, we did “drink it up.”  By 2007, bottled water was an $11.5 billion business.

Bellenir writes that Dr. Barbara Rolls, professor of nutrition sciences at Pennsylvania State Unversity, argues that “ `drinking water and waiting for pounds to melt away does not work.”  Further, “ `hunger and thirst are controlled by separate systems in the body.’ “  So, people do not confuse hunger for thirst. 

Barbara Lippert, an Adweek Media critic, observed in TAPPED:  “We’ve become like big toddlers.  We’ve got the nipple to our lips constantly.  We constantly need to know there’s something there just for us and that we can just throw away.  We want everything individualized, personalized.  We don’t want to wash it or take care of it.  And we want it immediately available.”  TAPPED punctuates Lippert’s comments with pictures of grown people walking with and regularly swigging from water bottles.  

 “Tapped” punctuates Lippert’s analysis with film of grown people on urban streets carrying and regularly swigging from water bottles.  These people are metaphors for how industry advertising reduces us to individualized infants—a reduction that reduces also the power of community.

Mainely Tipping Points 23: TAPPED: Bottled Water

Mainely Tipping Points 23

Note:  This essay is the first in a series of 3 essays on water, which started with viewing the documentary TAPPED and reading Elizabeth Royte’s BOTTLEMANIA.

TAPPED:  BOTTLED WATER

The movie TAPPED demonstrates that drinking water and bottled water are much more complex issues than I had realized.  I had been somewhat aware of industry’s ongoing attempts to commodify water.  I was aware that an argument was raging about whether access to drinking water is a human rights issue.  (Only one percent of available water worldwide is drinkable.)  Apparently the World Bank places the global water market’s value at $800 billion. 

I was beginning to hear more arguments about local watersheds being part of the public “commons.”  Indeed, TAPPED  begins with the history of Nestle massively pumping water from local springs in the Fryeburg, Maine, area, bottling it, and selling it under the Poland Springs label.  This pumping is draining the local watershed.  The Fryeburg municipal water system has experienced periods when its system goes dry suddenly.  And, the property values of local people living alongside a steadily diminishing lake have dropped.  Nor is Fryeburg benefiting financially as Nestle’s business is wholly private. 

Battles like the one between Nestle and the citizens of Fryeburg are happening in small communities all across the United States as industry tries to legally define its control of local water.  Nestle alone sells the following regional brands:  Ice Mountain, Zepher Hills, Deer Park, Ozarkia, and Arrowhead.  By 2007, bottled water in America had become a $11.5 billion business for, mostly, three big corporations:  Nestle, Coke, and Pepsi.    

Much bottled water is pumped from municipal tap water (40 percent) or its sources.  Industry then sells tap water back to consumers at 19 times the cost of their tap water.  Remember, those same consumers have already paid municipal water taxes. 

Sometimes, industry pumping of municipal water occurs nonstop during severe droughts where local people are living with necessarily stringent water mandates.  Pepsi pumped 400,000 gallons a day of municipal water in Raleigh, NC, during the 2007-2008 drought.  Coke, during Atlanta’s 2007-2008 Level IV drought, pumped 118 million gallons of water from a local lake source of Atlanta’s water.  The pictures in TAPPED of what’s left of this lake show the enormity of what has occurred. 

Industry employs both misleading bottle labels suggestive of pure water and expensive advertising campaigns to convince citizens that bottled water is cleaner than tap water.  Barbara Lippert, an Adweek Media critic, observed in TAPPED:  “Bottled water is the greatest advertising and marketing trick of all time.”  And Susan Wellington, president of Quaker’s U. S. beverage division, is quoted in TAPPED saying that “when we’re done, tap water will be relegated to showers and doing dishes.”        

But, is bottled water safe?  TAPPED covers the three major issues:  the nonexistent government regulation of bottled water, the water inside the bottle, and the bottle itself.  The latter two issues conflate since the bottle can and does taint the water it contains.

First, bottled water is largely unregulated.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no jurisdiction over bottled water produced and sold inside a single state.  It’s no accident that most bottled water is produced and sold within single states; that’s why there are so many local brands.  Further, the FDA has only one person overseeing all regulations over bottled water, and that person has other responsibilities as well.  Also, the bottled water industry is not required to submit reports to the FDA and is not required to report internal testing.   

Tap water, on the other hand, is highly regulated and is tested many times a day.  Yes, it may contain fluoride and chlorine mixtures, but those chemicals can and should be filtered out.  And, the practice of adding fluoride—a known toxin—could be stopped. 

Second, TAPPED reports that the National Resources Council tested the water in over 1,000 bottles of water and found bacteria and chemicals, including arsenic, in unsafe levels.  Another independent test of seven brands in two separate labs was analyzed by Dr. Stephen King, an epidemiologist and toxicologist at the University of Texas.  Dr. King found the results to be “horrifying.”  The labs found benzene, vinyl chloride, styrene, and toluene—all highly dangerous carcinogens which are also capable of adverse reproductive outcomes.  Toluene, used in gasoline and paint thinner, is a neurotoxin. 

The two labs found three different types of phthalates, all of which pose dangers to unborn babies and to both males and females.  Phthalates are endocrine disrupters.  Dr. King said bottled water was particularly risky for pregnant women and young children.  Plus, as TAPPED documents, there have been many bottle water recalls over the years.

The water bottles themselves have major issues.  Extreme health problems occur within people living near manufacturing plants, the toxicity of the bottles’ material components is not fully known, and the pollution caused by careless bottle disposal is colossal. 

Eighty percent of plastic water bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate derived from crude oil.  Labeled PET or PETE on the bottom of the bottle, this chemical is in the benzene family.  Devra Davis, in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER (2007) devotes many pages to the terrible dangers for humans from the benzene family and from vinyl chloride.  So, when we buy a water bottle, we become partners with industry in harming people living near manufacturing plants or working within them.   

The 2007 work of William Shotyk, director of the Institute of Environmental Geochemistry at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, shows that PET bottles leach a deadly toxin called antimony which has chemical properties similar to arsenic (Randy Richmond, “Toxin leaches into bottled water in PET containers,” http://medicine.org/toxin-leaches-into-bottled-water-in-pet-containers; Adam Voiland, “The Safety of PET Bottles, July 26, 2007, U.S. News and World Report News). 

Antimony can cause headache, dizziness, and depression in small doses.  In large doses, it is lethal in a few days.  PET bottles, Shotyk reveals, continuously shed antimony, so the longer water is in the bottle, the higher the levels of antimony. 

Critics pose that the levels of antimony are below accepted safety levels, but recent work on Bisphenol A (BPA) by University of Missouri-Columbia scientists Frederick Vom Saal and Wade Welshons shows that miniscule amounts of BPA are dangerous for humans.  BPA, note, is used to make hard plastics, like the 5-gallon water bottles used in water coolers and baby bottles. 

So, in short, we do not know exactly how dangerous antimony is or if other chemicals are being leached into bottled water on a regular basis.  Additionally, Wikipedia analysis poses that antimony might be an endocrine disrupter.   

Reusing plastic water bottles is not wise.  Water bottles with narrow necks makes washing difficult and can result in both the build-up of unsafe bacteria levels and in increased leaching of toxic chemical from the plastic.  

Third, Americans consume 80 million single-serving bottles of water daily, but only 30 million end up in landfills.  Once in landfills, municipalities and taxpayers—not industry–have to pay to process them.  The rest of the bottles—50 million of them daily–are massively polluting the environment, especially the oceans.  (

States with bottle deposits do get more returned bottles, but they still have to fund disposal.  This situation is a classic example of how industry externalizes its costs.  And, I’m beginning to understand that if a product is cheap, elsewhere, other people are paying personally the actual costs of production.  

I bought a stainless steel water bottle with a narrow neck a few years back.  But, it seems, some metal bottles have plastic coatings inside.  I’m going to replace this bottle with one of the glass water bottles that has a reinforced webbing on the outside that helps prevent shattering.

One thing is for sure:  I’m never buying bottled water again.

Mainely Tipping Points 22: Consumer Christmas: Just Saying No

Mainely Tipping Points 22:  January 1, 2011

Consumer Christmas:  Just Saying No

About ten years ago, I just said “no” to participating in what I think of now as Consumer Christmas.

After I hit my forties, I began to grow increasingly troubled by how I and my family celebrated Christmas.  It seemed to me as if we were caught up in a cultural vortex that was almost impossible to escape–a whirlpool of unrelenting advertising, shopping, and spending.  I felt as if I were being dragged further under water emotionally with each succeeding year.  

Trying to find the perfect gifts for my loved ones–who in actuality did not need a thing–gifts that showed how powerfully I loved them and how intimately I knew them—was, I began to see, an impossible task.  Early on, I often erred on the side of “more is better” just to make sure I was communicating my love and care sufficiently. 

Then, there was the work and expense of Christmas.  There was the decorating of the home, inside and out.  There was at least one whole day wrapping the presents.  When I think of all that paper now, I want to cry at the heedless waste.  There was all the shopping and cooking for all the special meals and for the cookies and candy to deliver to neighbors.  There was the buying and addressing of the hundred or so Christmas cards, each with a handwritten note.  (Using computer labels and creating Christmas letters to insert are relatively recent events in this forty-five year saga.)  Afterwards, there was the clean-up.  Most years, I also worked full time, or was in school full time, or both.

Most of this Christmas work and emotion falls on women’s shoulders.  I can relate countless conversations stretching over many years where women indicated their frustration with Christmas.  They hated it when the special presents were not received as being perfect, when the desired emotions, therefore, were not communicated.  They hated it when the presents they themselves received showed little knowledge of who they really were or of their desires.  It’s unsettling when one realizes that the street traffic of Christmas—the giving and the receiving–does not seem to be running both ways.  Though, likely, I think now, the giving task is just as impossible for other family members as it is for the woman at the heart of the holiday.  Women hated it, too, when the bills appeared in January, since by then each was fully aware of the excess, of the failures. 

Christmas, early in the industrial era, used to be about giving presents to people in your community who actually did need things, like food, warm clothes, warm bedding, shoes, a book to read, a good job.  Christmas was not about buying things for people who had, already, comforts and privileges.  Christmas was not about people going into debt in order to consume things.    

Now, our national well-being is predicated strongly on how much our corporations sell over the Christmas season.  And, Christmas has eaten away more and more of the fall.  Christmas decorations now routinely appear around Halloween.  And, Thanksgiving weekend is eclipsed by the Friday “early bird” sales that start in the wee hours of the morning and kick off the Christmas season. 

Consumer Christmas has developed since World War II.  It is a creature of a material economy that is selling us dreams that are not necessarily of our own dreaming and that are not necessarily good for us, our communities, our nation, or our world.  The dreams involve buying things advertised as having the power to create happiness.  Annie Leonard’s twenty-minute video, “The Story of Stuff,” available on UTube, details brilliantly the hidden problems.  This system is abusive towards people and the environment.  This system is in crisis because the earth has finite resources and because this system must have a continuation of our consumption patterns to exist.  Sadly, Leonard relates that 99 percent of the total materials passing through this system are trashed within six months.  In other words, only 1 percent of the “stuff” we purchase is being used after six months.

 Just saying “no” was really hard.  My family did not want anything substantially changed.   So, first we tried scaling back by putting monetary limits on gifts.  But, I still felt disturbed.  I began to realize that what was troubling me was the cultural equation measuring love with a gift purchased or made inside a powerful economic dictate that had jettisoned recognition of the needy. 

Worse, Consumer Christmas had confused getting and giving.  I realized I was teaching my children a market idea of Christmas, rather than teaching them about the season itself, about what lay–or used to lay–behind not only Christmas, but behind why most of the other traditions celebrated at this darkest time of the year. 

Sure, I had been giving to my loved ones.  But what was it that I was giving?  Often I had to cruise stores to see what was “in” this year that they might like.  I was giving a sense of entitlement to having “stuff.”  And, I was giving myself the possibility of perfectly showing my love.  In reality, I was spending myself on shopping and wrapping and trying to make things perfect as defined by the material economy.  Meanwhile, my children were not learning about giving and sharing or about noticing who was without and where real neediness existed.  They were learning about getting, about spending, about unwrapping, and about ripping up paper and throwing it into the trash.  Most of all, what they were not getting as they opened individual gifts was the sharing of communal experiences that truly bind relationships together.  

Finally, I announced that I was all done with Consumer Christmas.  For the next few years, my children still sent presents.  Gradually, they quit.  Occasionally, one will send something they know I will especially like, but they are likely to do that at any time of the year.  As, do I.   

The holiday stress of too much work or of failed expectations.is gone.  And, I feel such a sense of freedom.  I now have time to truly appreciate and to be grateful for this quiet, dark, restful time of the year.  I treasure the warmth of being with friends and loved ones, especially around a dinner table or in a room where good food and candlelight is shared.  I love hearing news from old friends, so we–not just me–still send out the hundred or so cards.  And, we each write one side of our shared Christmas letter so our distinct voices are shared.   

Sometimes we buy a living tree that has been raised locally.  To share light in the darkness of this season, we usually put the tree outside on the porch and decorate it and the porch with lights.  Inside, we place candle lights in the windows.  We place locally made wreaths outside.    

I like to think there have been positive outcomes to my just saying “no.”  Two years ago, both of our sons and their families left the hectic Washington, DC., area and moved to Charleston, SC.  Our two daughters-in-law left lucrative, but time-intensive jobs.  The families live now two blocks from each other and two blocks from the beach. 

This year, Mike and Tamara, parents of four of our grandchildren (7, 6, 4, 3 years), put their Christmas tree outside.  The family spent nearly a week decorating it with sand dollars, starfish, flotsam and jetsam from the beach, and strings of cranberries and popcorn for the birds.  The only presents the children received from their parents came in their stockings. 

And, this year, our daughter-in-law Corinne, once out of the rat-race and rested, conceived and gave birth to a beautiful baby daughter at Thanksgiving.  She made time to bake Christmas cookies with her nephews and nieces.

Mainely Tipping Points 21: Stevia: Is It Safe?

Mainely Tipping Points 21

Stevia:  Is it Safe? 

Stevia is a powerful sweetener, and is virtually calorie free.  But, is it safe for human consumption?  Safety may depend upon how the plant is used.

 Jim Earles in “Sugar-Free Blues:  Everything You Wanted to Know About Artificial Sweeteners” (2004) (www.westonprice.org/modern-foods/570-sugar-free-blues.html), notes that stevia rebaudiana is a member of the sunflower family and is a native of Paraguay where it has been used for centuries.  The leaves are about 30 times sweeter than sucrose, and the whole leaves contain many beneficial compounds.  Traditional societies used whole stevia leaves to sweeten teas and herbal medicines.   

  Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Earles continues, a number of United States companies began to use stevia leaves, including Celestial Seasonings, Lipton Tea Company, Traditional Medicinals, and a host of smaller firms like Sunrider International.  These firms utilized a provision in federal law allowing the food industry to make a “self-determination of Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status for items with a long history of `common use in food’ prior to 1958, providing that it enjoyed widespread use without any apparent adverse health effects.”    

  In 1985, writes Earles, apparently prompted by protests from the NutraSweet Company, maker of aspartame, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forced Sunrider International to burn its supply of stevia, calling it “adulterated.”  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused to even test stevia samples from Wisdom Natural Brands.  Earles reminds that NutraSweet’s newly acquired patent on aspartame was extremely lucrative and that no patent would be awarded to a naturally occurring substance.

 Next, Earles continues, the FDA targeted Celestial Seasons and refused to process that company’s petition to give stevia GRAS status.  And in 1991, the FDA banned the importation of stevia.  The FDA began raiding health food stores “suspected of selling stevia products” and ordering “the confiscation of books which refer to stevia’s potential use as a natural sweetener.”

 The Traditional Medicinals herbal-tea company, the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), and the Lipton tea company all tried to present studies to the FDA to no avail.  The FDA “ignored their usual protocol and refused to even file the petitions for approval.”  Earles writes that this action “would have left the FDA in the position of having to publicly defend its actions, something which they were unwilling to do.”

Meanwhile, Earles continues, scientists discovered individual sweet compounds (called glycosides) within the plant, to include stevioside, steviobioside, rebaudiosides A, B, C, D, and E, and dulcoside.  These purified substances are between 50 to 450 times sweeter than sucrose.  But, these extracted substances no longer contain the many nutrients present in whole stevia leaves.   

 Earle relates that the Japanese, beginning in the early 1970s, “began to take a distinct stand against artificial sweeteners, especially aspartame, due to their possible health risks.”  They conducted “extensive tests on stevia and stevioside” and “accepted it as a safe alternative.”  By 2004, stevia had “reportedly captured over 50% of the Japanese sweetening market, even though the Japanese technically classify it as a food additive.”  Earle does acknowledge that FDA officials, occasionally, when pressed,  indicated that they were worried about two issues:  toxicity and a “possible adverse effect on fertility.”  Earle discounts these allegations because he cannot find studies that prove them.    

 In 1995, Earle relates, after efforts from many parties, the FDA revised their 1991 import alert and allowed stevia to be imported, but limited its use to a dietary supplement, which meant that stevia could not be used as a sweetener.  And, the FDA granted stevia GRAS status in late 2008, which allows stevia to be used as a no-calorie sweetener in foods and beverages.

 Why?  My guess is big industry saw stevia’s sweetener potential when their existing non-nutritive chemical brews were increasingly being questioned.  Both Pepsi and Coke immediately introduced zero or low-calorie beverages featuring the stevia   extract rebiana, a highly purified rebaudioside A.  Coke’s rebiana is called Truvia, and Pepsi’s is called OPureVia.  One of Coke’s stevia products is Sprite Green.  Pepsi introduced a grouping of stevia-flavored waters called SoBe Life.     

 At this point, the story, like the FDA’s stance on stevia, flips.  Apparently there are reasons to worry about stevia purified extracts and, maybe, the leaves.    

 The Glycemic Research Institute (GRI) delisted and banned stevia in 2008 because “various scientific commissions have determined that Stevia’s potential for toxicity renders it an inappropriate sweetener in humans” (www.glycemic.com/SteviaReport.htm).  The GRI cites a 2007 study published in “Food Chemistry Toxicology Journal” showing that stevia glycosides exhibit genotoxicity, which means the substance can affect the well-being of a cell’s genetic structure, causing the genetic material to mutate, or, be mutagenic.  The GRI cites a National Academy of Sciences concurring determination. 

 Further, the GRI notes that the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food issued an “Opinion on Stevioside as a Sweetener” in 1989 and 1999, which found that “stevioside extracts from Stevia rebaudiana leaves “ to be considered as toxicologically not acceptable” because existing tests have not followed “Good Laboratory Practice,” because tests for fertility and teratogenicity (fetal malformation) have not been done, and because questions about the metabolism of stevioside and the mutagenicity of metabolites remain. 

 The GRI determined also that “beverages that contain stevia and/or steviol glycosides do not qualify for the `Certified Natural Beverage’ mark.”

 The GRI report on stevia includes information from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) and refers to a report by toxicologists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), showing stevia sweetener causes “mutagens and DNA damage, which raises the prospect that it causes cancer.”  Both CPSI and the UCLA experts wrote the FDA asking the agency to call for more independently conducted tests and noting that “the FDA’s guidelines advise testing prospective major new food additives on two rodent species, usually rats and mice.”  Rats have been tested, but not mice.  CPSI and the UCLA scientists recommended a lifetime study of mice in order to fully evaluate risks.  Current tests accepted by the FDA have been performed by Cargill, which owns Coke. 

 Additionally, CPSI’s statement on stevia safety notes that current tests on rats demonstrated the reduction of sperm production and an increase of cell proliferation in the testicles.  Tests on pregnant hamsters demonstrated fewer and smaller offspring.       

 The Mayo Clinic web site notes that stevia’s side effects are “generally mild”:  nausea and a feeling of fullness.  Mayo cautions that stevia is likely safe in moderate doses, but acknowledges that more research is needed and that until “we have more research, women who are pregnant or breast-feeding should probably avoid using stevia.”  Mayo further cautions that “people taking diabetes or blood pressure drugs should use stevia with caution because of the risk that it might cause hypoglycemia or hypotension when combined with these drugs” (www.mayoclinic.com/health/stevia).

 So, is Stevia safe?  We don’t know. 

I, personally don’t like the taste of stevia, which is a problem many people have.  If I did like it, I think I’d grow the plants, which are in most nurseries in the spring now, and harvest and dry the leaves for use in tea because of its nutrients.  That way I’d be using a whole food, which is how the plant is used traditionally.  In the end, I much prefer a local, nonheated honey in my tea for sweetening.      

 Beware the small sweetening packets of stevia.  That form is highly processed and adulterated with additives like maltodexterin, which is a highly processed carbohydrate, usually from corn, that raises insulin levels.  Often, maltodexterin is the first ingredient, which means you’re only getting a whiff of stevia.  Or, as with Stevita, xylitol is added as a “flowing agent”; yet, xylitol is a wood alcohol sugar, so I’m suspicious as to its inclusion.  Perhaps it’s there to improve the taste?

Tipping Points 20: Chemical Brews: Non-Nutritive Sweeteners

Chemical Brews:  Non-Nutritive Sweeteners

The American Dietetic Association groups sweeteners into two major categories:  nutritive and non-nutritive.   Nutritive sweeteners provide energy to the body; non-nutritive sweeteners do not, which means they sweeten without calories.  Thus, non-nutritive sweeteners have been the backbone of the diet industry. 

The FDA currently approves five non-nutritive sweeteners:  aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, sucralose, and neotame.  The FDA banned cyclamate in 1969 and has never approved alitame, which is similar to aspartame.

Aspartame, or 1-aspartyl 1-phenylalanine methyl ester, was discovered by accident when James Schlatter, while working on creating new drugs to treat ulcers, accidentally licked his fingers in order to pick up a piece of paper.  Aspartame is 80 times sweeter than sucrose, or table sugar.  And, according to Jim Earle in “Sugar-Free Blues:  Everything You Wanted to Know About Artificial Sweeteners,” February 2004 (http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-foods/570-sugar-free-blues.html ), aspartame            is the most widely used non-nutritive sweetener.  By 1992, Earle writes, Americans were using 8.4 million pounds of aspartame yearly, which represents 80 percent of world demand.  About 70 percent of aspartame is used in soft drinks, but it is added also to “more than 6,000 foods, personal care products, and pharmaceuticals.”  Aspartame is sold under several brand names, including NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonfuls, Canderel, Bienvia, NatraSweet, and Miwan.

Earle explains that during digestion, aspartame degrades into methanol, or wood alcohol, and two amino acids:  phenylalanine, the largest component by weight, and aspartic acid.  Methanol is a known, lethal poison that can cause, Devra Davis notes in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER (2007), blindness and brain damage.  And, she notes that methanol content of aspartame is “a thousand times greater than most foods under FDA control” (421). 

Phenylalanine, Earle notes, is dangerous to people with phenylketonuria (PKU), an inherited condition.  And, he notes that the FDA recommends that pregnant and lactating women, people with advanced liver disease, and phenylketonurics avoid aspartame.   

The FDA admits also, writes Earle, that “aspartic acid has the potential to cause brain damage,” but the FDA limits the danger to very high doses.  Earle notes that Dr. Christine Lydon, an aspartame researcher, explains that phenylalanine and aspartic acid are amino acids found naturally in foods, but in foods they are eaten alongside other amino acids.  Separated, each enters “the nervous system in abnormally high concentrations, causing aberrant neuronal firing and potential cell death”—which, in turn, is linked to “headaches, mental confusion, balance problems and possibly seizures.” 

Earle notes that Dr. Lydon warns that phenylalanine decomposes into diketopiperazine (DKP) a known carcinogen, when exposed to warm temperatures or prolonged storage.  At cold temperatures, methanol “spontaneously gives rise to a colorless toxin known as formaldehyde.”  Jim Turner’s timeline detailing the history of aspartame’s approval by the FDA notes that aspartame’s unstable nature prompted The National Soft Drink Association (NSDA) to petition the FDA in July 1983 to delay approval “pending further testing because aspartame is very unstable in liquid form” (http://www.swankin-turner.com/hist.html).     

Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon Morell, in NOURISHING TRADITIONS (2000), write that “aspartame…is a neurotoxic substance that has been associated with numerous health problems including dizziness, visual impairment, severe muscle aches, numbing of extremities, pancreatitis, high blood pressure, retinal hemorrhaging, seizures and depression.  It is suspected of causing birth defects and chemical disruptions of the brain.”  And, Enig and Morell report that in 1992 Utah State University researchers reported “that even at low levels aspartame induces adverse changes in the pituitary glands of mice.  The pituitary gland is the master gland upon which the proper function of all biochemical processes depend” (51).     

Davis notes that the U.S. military, in two publications, “warned that aspartame can cause serious brain problems in pilots” (422).  And, Davis points to the flaw in tests that kill and exam rats before they have lived out their natural lifespans—an important factor since cancer can often take decades to develop and killing rats early derails detection of cancer formation.  She cites test results in 2001 showing the development of cancer in multiple organs of rats allowed to live out their natural life spans–even though dosages were well under those allowed in America (50 mg daily).  Davis notes that one can of diet soda contains 200 mg of aspartame (424-425).  She further notes that there is “no evidence at all” that those who use aspartame actually lose weight.  Actually, there is “some indication” that aspartame “creates a sugar deficit” which leads “people to seek more sugar from other sources” (423). 

Earle reports that as of 1995 over 75 percent of the adverse reactions reported to the Adverse Reaction Monitoring System (ARMS) of the FDA were due to aspartame.  Davis notes that the FDA stopped gathering adverse reaction reports in 1995 (422). 

Saccharin, from the Latin for “sugar,” is 300 times sweeter than sugar.  Saccharin, Earle notes, was also discovered by accident in 1879 when a Johns Hopkins scientist spilled some and noticed the sweet taste.  Saccharin, until 1915, was first used as an antiseptic agent and food preservative.  In 1901, John F. Queeny, started the Monsanto corporation, manufactured saccharin, and shipped it to a Georgia company,  Coca-Cola. 

Saccharin is “the holy grail of the artificial sweetener industry,” writes Earle, because it “is not metabolized by the human body and is excreted rapidly through the urine.”  This kind of compound, Earle explains, tastes sweet, is stable in prepackaged foods and beverages, is thought to be “so foreign to the human diet that our digestive systems cannot metabolize them to create any dietary calories,” and is “dirt cheap to produce in bulk.

World War II brought sugar shortages, but cyclamate, discovered in 1937 when a graduate student at the University of Illinois working on anti-fever drugs accidentally tasted it, came to the rescue and was the chemical of choice.  Saccharin’s original chemical classification lists it as an O-toluene sulfonamide derivative.  Toluene is a colorless liquid hydrocarbon distilled from coal tar, which may, Earle suggests, account for saccharin’s “bitter, metallic aftertaste.”  In 1958, Maryin Eisenstadt mixed saccharin with cyclamate and introduced Sweet’n Low, which we have today, without the cyclamate.    

Dr. Nathanael J.  McKeown, a medical toxologist, writes that “toluene (methylbenzene, toluol, phenylmethane) is an aromatic hydrocarbon (C7 H8) commonly used as an industrial solvent for the manufacturing of paints, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and rubber. …Toluene is found in gasoline, acrylic paints, varnishes, lacquers, paint thinners, adhesives, glues, rubber cement, airplane glue, and shoe polish.  At room temperature, toluene is a colorless, sweet smelling, and volatile liquid” whose fumes are highly toxic (“Toluene, Toxicity,” http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/818939-overview).  (These fumes, sniffed by some to get high, as with glue, affect the Central Nervous System.) 

Saccharin is now, Earle explains, manufactured by a more cost-effective method developed in 1950 that begins with synthetically produced methyl anthranilate.  Wikipedia explains that anthranilic acid successively reacts with nitrous acid, sulfur dioxide, chlorine, and then ammonia to yield saccharin.  Another route, Wikipedia continues, begins with o-chlorotoluene. 

And, Wikipedia notes that saccharin is also known as ortho sulfobenzoic acid.  Earle notes that as saccharin is a sulfonamide, some people have allergic reactions to it.  Further, saccharin-sweetened infant formula has produced severe, largely muscle, reactions in some babies. 

In 1969, the FDA proposed banning saccharin with cyclamate until its safety was proved, but, Earle notes, significant opposition from a public now concerned with calories saved saccharin.  Canada, however, did ban saccharin in 1977 as a carcinogen.  The US Congress put a two-year moratorium on any ban, but mandated a cautionary label warning of possible health hazards, including cancer.  For the next 26 years, numerous studies (2374) have been performed to prove or disprove saccharin safety until, in 1991, the FDA gave saccharin, as Earle notes, “something of a probationary status,” though the FDA still classifies saccharin as an“anticipated human carcinogen.” 

Acesulfame-K, or acesulfame potassium, or 5,6-dimethyl-1,2,3-oxathiazine-4(3H)-one-2,2-dioxide, or ACK, was also discovered by a German chemist in 1967 when he licked his fingers to pick up a piece of paper.  ACK is, Earle writes, 200 times sweeter than sugar and is thought not metabolized by the body so is excreted unchanged in the urine.  The FDA approved ACK  in 1988 for use in” baked goods, frozen desserts, alcoholic beverages and candies” and, in 1998, for “all other general sweetening purposes.”  ACK has been marketed under the brand names Sunett, Sweet One, Swiss Sweet, and Sweet & Safe.  Pepsi used it in Pepsi One upon its FDA approval.  And, ACK is often blended with aspartame, as it is in Twinsweet. 

Earle notes that there is very little information about ACK.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI), he writes, concluded that the safety tests were of mediocre quality.  And, that “large doses of acetoacetamide, a breakdown product, have been shown to affect the thyroid in rats, rabbits and dogs.  ACK, he notes, stimulates insulin secretion which can possibly aggravate hypoglycemia, or low-blood sugar.    

Sucralose, or 1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-BETA-D-fructofukranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-alpha-D-galactopyranoside, was discovered, Earle writes, as a sweetener in 1976 when a grad student misunderstood “testing” for “tasting” and discovered that “many chlorinated sugars are hundreds or thousands of times sweeter than sucrose.”  Splenda is the brand we know. 

Johnson & Johnson claims sucralose is exceptionally stable and that sucralose passes through the body without being broken down.  But, Earle notes, sucralose “has the fewest independent scientific tests to its credit of all non-nutritive sweeteners.”  And, “independent reviewers of Johnson & Johnson’s tests have found them to be inadequate and methodologically flawed.”

Earle notes that “several pre-approval tests still indicated potential toxicity.”  And, research is now showing some alarming physical reactions, including  shrinking of the thymus gland, enlargement of the liver and kidneys, decreased red blood cell count, and decreased fetal body weights.   Earle notes that the FDA’s “own research has shown that 11 to 27 percent of sucralose is absorbed in humans.”  Japanese tests show that as much as 40 percent of sucralose is absorbed.  And, the FDA considers sucralose to be “weakly mutagenic” in some mouse studies.

These effects, Earle notes, are “not fully understood.”  But, detractors are pointing to the chlorinated molecules, which are also “used as the basis for pesticides such as DDT” and which “tend to accumulate in body tissues.” 

Nor is sucralose stable.  Prolonged storage, especially at high temperatures, causes breakdown into chemicals which have not been “specifically tested in terms of safety for human ingestion.” 

Neotame is produced by The NutraSweet Company and is known as “superaspartame.”  It is synthesized from a base of aspartame and 3,3-dimethylbutyraldehyde.    It’s chemical name is N-[N-(3,3-dimethylbutyl)-L-a-aspartyl]-L-phenylalanine 1-methyl ester.  It is 8000 times sweeter than sugar.  Earle poses that The NutraSweet Company is positioning neotame to replace aspartame whose patent rights expired in the 1990s. 

None of these accidentally discovered chemical brews have been shown to be safe for humans.  Many may be, in fact, quite dangerous.  The pattern of FDA approval fits the pattern Davis establishes in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER:   a profitable but potentially dangerous product appears; industry denies and demonizes science pointing to problems; industry produces flawed studies that obfuscate the safety issues; industry manipulates the legal and political mechanisms meant to protect citizens; industry buys massive advertising to sell the product; and industry achieves a profitable status quo.

Here’s three things you can do.    Stop eating these products.  Buy local, organic, whole foods and cook them yourself.  And recognize that we have to change the values that put profit before people.

Mainely Tipping Points 19: The History of Aspartame: An American Story

The History of Aspartame:  An American Story 

 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aspartame in 1981.  The decision was made solely by a political appointee, Dr. Arthur Hayes, Jr., despite the fact that since 1973 FDA scientists had consistently and repeatedly refused to recommend aspartame because industry safety studies were inadequate.  Indeed, since the early 1970s the research of scientists not connected to industry has demonsed that aspartame is seriously dangerous for humans in multiple ways.    

Devra Davis, a preeminent cancer epidemiologist and environmentalist, tells the aspartame story in her book The Secret History of the War on Cancer (2007).  For Davis, the aspartame story is yet another illustration of how successful American corporations have been in their quests to sell products they know to be poisonous for humans, but which can and do make huge profits.  The story of how industry got aspartame approved without demonstrating conclusively its safety is worth reviewing because it is, unfortunately, a common story in America, though not one many Americans know since they assume wrongly that their government organizations are acting to protect them.    

Mr. James Schlatter created Aspartame in 1965 while working on new drugs to treat ulcers.  Schlatter licked his fingers to pick up some papers and tasted the intense sweetness of the chemical compound he had just created.  G. D. Searle of the pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle & Company owned the patent, and Searle’s company did the original research on aspartame—research which claimed to show aspartame to be safe for humans (Jim Earle, “Sugar-Free Blues:  Everything You Wanted to Know About Artificial GSweeteners,” February 2004, http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-foods/570-sugar-free-blues.html).      

The context surrounding the battle to win approval for aspartame includes the fact that in November 1970, cyclamate, the most commonly used low-calorie sweetener, was removed from the market because some scientists had associated it with cancer.  At the same time, the safety of saccharin was being questioned.  Aspartame, thus, could become a replacement artificial sweetener for a market searching for lucrative diet products (Jim Turner’s timeline, http://www.swankin-turner.com/hist.html). 

In February 1973, Searle applied for FDA approval of aspartame.  But, Davis reports, Martha Freeman, an FDA scientist, determined that “the information submitted on the safety of aspartame was not adequate.”  Freeman recommended that aspartame not be allowed on the market.  Nevertheless, in July 1974, the FDA gave its first limited approval to aspartame for use in dry foods (420).  Searle called the product NutraSweet. 

Immediately, in August 1974, two men filed an objection against aspartame’s approval:  Jim Turner, a consumer advocate who had helped remove cyclamate from the market, and Dr. John Olney, a research neurologist and psychiatrist whose pioneering research with monosodium glutamate (MSG) enabled removing it from baby foods.  Turner and Olney’s protest spurred an FDA investigation of the Searle studies (Turner). 

Turner’s timeline notes that Searle knew that Olney’s research had shown that aspartic acid, an ingredient in aspartame, caused holes to develop in the brains of infant mice because Olney personally told him so.  And, that one of Searle’s researchers had “confirmed Dr. Olney’s findings in a similar study.” 

Davis writes that Dr. Olney told her that in 1969 Searle asked Harry Waisman to study aspartame in seven infant monkeys.  In one year, one monkey died and five had “suffered severe epileptic seizures.” Waisman died in the spring of 1971, so his research was not completed.  Olney’s research, however, showed that aspartame paired with monosodium glutamate (MSG) produced brain tumors in rats (420).

In January 1977, the FDA Chief Counsel, Richard Merrill, formally asked the U.S. Attorney’s office to convene a Grand Jury to investigate G. D. Searle for knowingly misrepresenting the material facts about the safety of aspartame. This request marks the first time in FDA history that the FDA requested a criminal investigation of a manufacturer (Davis).  

In March 1977, Searle hired politically powerful Donald Rumsfeld as CEO of G. D. Searle & Company.  Rumsfeld had been Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense for Gerald Ford and would become Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush.  In July, Samuel Skinner, the U.S. Attorney in charge of the Grand Jury investigation, took a job with Searle’s law firm.  His replacement, William Conlon, joined Skinner fifteen months later.        

 In August 1977, the FDA released the Bressler report on Searle’s studies claiming the safety of aspartame.  This report, notes Davis, “depicted a stunning number of irregularities”—an assessment senior FDA investigator Jacqueline Verrett, a toxicologist, later seconded in 1987 testimony to the U.S. Senate (420-421).  Verrett’s summation was that it “ `is unthinkable that any reputable toxicologist…could conclude anything other than that the study was uninterpretable and worthless, and should be repeated’ ” (Verrett in Davis, 421).  Turner writes that the “report finds that 98 of the 196 animals died during one of Searle’s studies and weren’t autopsied until as much as one year later.”  And, that growths found in the animals were neither reported nor diagnosed. 

Mark D. Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center, in a January 2003 request to withdraw approval of aspartame, covers the full range of the Searle safety studies’ irregularities:  http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/Jan03/012203/02P-0317_emc-000202.txt.  Gold’s history of the aspartame history is worth a look.

In December 1977 the Grand Jury investigation was dropped.  Skinner’s withdrawal and Conlon’s inactivity stalled the investigation sufficiently that the statute of limitations ran out.  Davis writes that “expert legal advice” from former FDA officials who now worked for Searle helped “Searle run out the clock.”  She notes that on October 12, 1987, United Press International reported that “more than ten American government officials who had been involved in the decision to approve aspartame were now working in the private sector with or for the aspartame industry” (422).  Davis further notes that “scientific evidence became irrelevant” in the FDA’s approval process (422).     

In June 1979, the FDA established a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) to rule on safety issues surrounding NutraSweet.  In September 1980, the PBOI concluded that NutraSweet should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals (Turner, Davis 421-422). 

The turning point came in November 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the Presidential election.  Rumsfeld told a Searle sales meeting that he would get aspartame approved within the year (Davis 422, Turner Timeline).  Turner writes that Rumsfeld said he would use his political pull in Washington to get the job done rather than using scientific means.

In January 1981, Rumsfeld was part of Reagan’s transition team.  Turner writes that Rumsfeld “hand-picked” Hayes to be the new FDA Commissioner.  The day after Reagan’s inauguration, Searle reapplied to the FDA for approval for aspartame.  Hayes was appointed to the FDA in April 1981.    

In March 1981, Gold writes, a five-person FDA commissioners’ panel was created to review issues raised by the PBOI.  Three members were going to vote for disapproval, so Hayes brought in a toxicologist to the panel, and the members split 3 to 3.  Gold takes this part of the story from an investigation done by Gregory Gorden of United Press International that included the irregularities involved in this panel’s determinations. 

In July 1981, “as one of his first official acts,” Hayes overruled the PBOI and ignored the intent of the original five-member FDA commissioner’s panel.  Gold notes that Hayes ignored  ”the law, Section 409(c)(3) of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 348), which says that a food additive should not be approved if tests are inconclusive (Federal Register 1981, Farber 1989, page 38).”  Davis writes that the initial approval is for use in dry products, but that approval was extended for liquids and vitamins within a year (422). 

Turner writes that in September 1983 Hayes resigned from the FDA “under a cloud of controversy” regarding taking ”unauthorized rides aboard a General foods jet.”   Hayes winds up at Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Searle and Monsanto, which, in 1985, buys Searle’s aspartame business, The NutraSweet Company.   

Turner writes that when Hayes approved aspartame for dry use, he said that aspartame “has been shown to be safe for its proposed uses” and that “few compounds have withstood such detailed testing and repeated close scrutiny.”  Davis, however, repeatedly demonstrates in her book that tests performed by industry are not reliable—which is a key factor in what is wrong with our regulatory process.  Davis describes, also, how  in 1996 Ralph G. Walton, a professor of clinical psychology at Northeastern Ohio University, for the news show 60 Minutes, surveyed 165 separate aspartame studies published in medical journals over a twenty-year period.  Walton, writes Davis, found the following:  “All of the studies that found aspartame safe happened to be sponsored by industry” and “every single one that questioned its safety was produced by scientists without industry ties” (423).

You must decide if aspartame is safe or not, if the approval process was corrupt or not, or if all of the information above is just a huge conspiracy theory, as the government and industry claim.  I’m going to believe Davis, especially after reading her book about this old, repeated American story of the collusion of our government and industry.   

(Note:  There are at least three aspartame timelines online.  The most complete—and the one the other two likely use–is Mark D. Gold’s, which was submitted to the FDA in 2003:   http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/Jan03/012203/02P-0317_emc-000202.txt).  Jim Turner and Rich Murray have the other two timelines.

Mainely Tipping Points 18

Mainely Tipping Points 18

 A New Kid on the Block:  Agave Nectar

 

In 2008, Rami Nagel decided to investigate agave nectar, a new kid on the sweetener block.  He discovered that agave nectar first appeared in 1995 at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California.  Sellers were advertising agave nectar as being an organic, all natural raw food with a low glycemic index; as being kosher; as being  grown in nutrient-rich soils; as being fair-traded; and as being sustainably harvested (Rami Nagel, “Agave:  Nectar of the Gods?,” WISE TRADITIONS, summer 2008, ). 

However, it is now clear that despite advertising hype and mislabeling issues, all commercial agave nectar sold in this country is highly refined fructose syrup like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  It is also clear that commercial agave nectar is particularly dangerous for diabetics.  Finally, it is also clear that agave nectar contains high levels of saponin, a toxic steroid derivative which can cause miscarriages, and should have warning labels.

Agave is not a cactus, but a succulent in the lily family.  Agave syrup is made from either the large, starchy root, which is shaped like a pineapple, or from the sap that appears when its bloom appears and is removed.  Both processes happen when the plant is about eight years old.  Both processes use industrialized practices—though the Nekutli company, whose brand is Madhava Agave Nectar 100% Natural Sweetener, claims otherwise.  Nagel notes that Nekutli vacuum evaporates the raw nectar and uses enzymes to hydrolize it, all of which removes the natural salts and amino acids and creates a high fructose syrup (“Agave:  Nectar of the Gods?”). 

Nagel discovered that some traditional people in Mexico do make an agave sweetener, called aquamiel, by boiling down nectar collected from the agave plant, much as we boil down maple syrup.  Nagel writes that this mineral rich syrup is thick and has a “characteristic smell and strong flavor.”  Aquamiel, however, ferments into sour and smelly fermented pulque within 36 to 48 hours.  And, traditionally made pulque is difficult to find, even in Mexico, as locations of the rare sources are closely guarded secrets and as pulque does not transport well (Nagel, “Agave:  Nectar of the Gods?”). 

The commercial development of agave nectar, Nagel learned, may have begun as a way to use waste products from tequila production, which also uses the agave plant (“Agave:  Nectar of the Gods?”).  In any case, refining agave nectar produces very high levels of fructose:  up to 84 percent (“Sugar by Any Other Name,” NUTRITION ACTION HEALTH LETTER, Jan/Feb 2010, page 4). 

This manmade fructose, as is true for HFCS, is “unbound” because it is no longer part of a plant’s other components, like its fiber and nutrients.  And, this manmade fructose has a different chemical structure than natural fructose.  Research is showing that as our bodies do not know how to manage this unbound fructose, they are turning it into fat, particularly fat that settles unhealthily around the abdomen.  In your body, explain Sally Fallon Morell and Rami Nagel in a 2009 article, agave nectar “may cause mineral depletion, liver inflammation, hardening of the arteries, insulin resistance leading to diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and obesity”  (“Worse Than We Thought,” WISE TRADITIONS, Spring 2009, 44-52).

Morell and Nagel interviewed Russ Bianchi, Managing Director and CEO of Adept Solutions, Inc., which is a “globally recognized food and beverage development company.”  Bianchi says agave nectar and high fructose corn syrup are made the same way, by “ `using a highly chemical process with genetically modified enzymes.’ ”  The process also uses “ `caustic acids, clarifiers, filtration chemicals and so forth in the conversion of agave starches’ “ (“Worse Than We Thought”). 

Morell and Nagel also heard from Dr. Martin Stutsman of the FDA’s Office of Labeling Enforcement, who explained that while corn syrup which is treated with enzymes that enhance fructose levels has to be labeled HFCS, the FDA does not require the label “High Fructose Agave Syrup.”  Dr. Stutsman did note that agave should be labeled as “hydrolyzed inulin syrup.”  So, Morell and Nagel conclude that labeling what is clearly a syrup a “nectar” is a misnomer the FDA is ignoring.  They also conclude that the difference between starches in corn and agave, when each is processed the same way, means that “agave syrup labels do not conform to FDA labeling requirements” and that the result is a “deepening” of the “false illusion of an unprocessed product.”  They further conclude that “if a sweetener contains manufactured fructose, it is neither safe, nor natural,” especially at such high fructose levels.

On October 2009, the Glycemic Research Institute (GRI) halted all agave trials, delisted agave, and banned agave products for use in foods and beverages—which means, according to the GRI web site, that “manufacturers who produce and use Agave and Agave Nectar in products are now warned that they can be held legally liable for negative health incidents related to ingestion of Agave” (www.glycemic.com/AgaveReport.htm). 

These actions were taken because diabetics in the test who had ingested agave nectar had life-threatening reactions and had to be hospitalized (Laura Johannes, “Agave Syrup May Not Be So Simple,” “The Wall Street Journal,” 27 Oct. 2009). GRI researchers believe that the “refined fructose in  Agave Nectar is much more concentrated than the fructose found in High Fructose Corn Syrup” (www.glycemic.com/AgaveReport.htm). 

GRI had performed three earlier trials, but none had included diabetics.  The second trial used agave from Western Commerce Corporation in California and researchers discovered that the agave syrup was adulterated with high fructose corn syrup to increase profits.  When the FDA came calling, company officials had left the country with millions of dollars in assets (www.glylcemic.com/AgaveReport.htm).  In the fourth trial that was halted, GRI used agave nectar from Volcanic Nectar, and it included a “significant amount of maple syrup” (Johannes). 

According to Morell and Nagel, yucca species (in the agave genus) contain “large quantities of saponins,” which are “toxic steroid derivatives, capable of disrupting red blood cells and producing diarrhea and vomiting.”  The saponins in agave should be avoided “during pregnancy or breastfeeding because they might cause or contribute to miscarriage by stimulating blood flow to the uterus.”  At the “very least,” conclude Morell and Nagel, agave products should carry a warning label indicating that the product may cause miscarriage” (“Worse Than We Thought”).

Morell and Nagel also warn that “since the FDA makes no effort to enforce food-labeling laws, consumers cannot be certain that what they are eating is what the label says it is.”  It’s a good warning to heed.  Read labels, question advertising claims, google strange ingredients, and share learning.  Remember, too, that labels change, so keep checking them.   And, avoid using products with lots of ingredients with chemical names.  Instead, use local, organic, nutrient-dense, whole foods and do your own cooking.          

For me, Agave Nectar is too risky.  For something sweet, I eat and cook a lot of local, organic fruit.  Honey Crisp apples are here this week!  I grow and gather and freeze organic, local berries for the winter.  Raw, unheated honey (the label should say unheated) from as local as possible is my sweetener of choice, followed by organic maple syrup.  I choose label-specified unheated honey from away if I cannot get local unheated honey.  I use sugar very sparingly for celebratory baked products.

Mainely Tipping Points 17: High Fructose Corn Syrup

Mainely Tipping Points 17

High Fructose Corn Syrup

 Despite the food industry’s attempt to tell us so, all food calories do not have the same impact on our bodies.  Nor are all sugars equal.  Most sweeteners are formed from three different sugars (sucrose, glucose, and fructose), and each has a different impact on the body. 

 Sugars are carbohydrates, and, according to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride in GUT AND PSYCHOLOGY SYNDROME (2004), all carbohydrates are made of tiny molecules, called monosaccharides, or monosugars.  Glucose and fructose are monosugars, so do not need digestion.  They enter the gut directly.  Sucrose is a disaccharides, or double sugar, and it and other double sugars (lactose from milk and maltose from starches) require “quite a bit of” digestive work in a healthy body to reduce them to absorbable monosugars.  Unhealthy bodies harbor these undigested sugars in the gut, and an unfortunate chain of disease begins as these sugars feed “pathogenic bacteria, viruses, Candida and other fungi,” which themselves begin to produce toxic substances that “damage the gut wall and poison the whole body” (79-81).        

Most sweeteners have different sugar compositions.  High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is typically 42-55 percent fructose and 45-55 percent glucose.  Honey is 50 percent fructose, 44 percent glucose, and 1 percent sucrose.  Only raw sugar is 100 percent sucrose  (“Sugar by Any Other Name,” NUTRITION ACTION HEALTH LETTER, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Jan/Feb 2010, page 4).  But, as Sally Fallon Morell and Rami Nagel explain in WISE TRADITIONS (Spring 2009), the type of fructose in HFCS is not the same as fructose from fruit and our bodies do not know how to process it into energy (“Worse Than We Thought,” 44-52).

Industry creates HFCS from corn starch, which largely comes from genetically modified corn.  For an amusing, but serious explanation of how HFCS is made, take a look at the movie KING CORN (2007).  A not-so-funny fact surfaced recently according to Morell and Nagel :  nearly 50 percent of samples of commercial HFCS contained mercury, which was found also in nearly one-third of “55 brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient” (47).

 Fructose in fruit, report Morell and Nagel, is “part of a complex that includes fiber, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals.”  The fructose in HFCS is a free, unbound fructose with an important chemical difference.  Most fruit fructose is D-fructose, or levulose, but HFCS fructose is L-fructose, an artificial compound which has “the reversed isomerization and polarity of a refined fructose molecule.”  Thus, the fructose in HFCS is “not recognized in the human Krebs cycle for primary conversion to blood glucose in any significant quantity, and therefore cannot be used for energy utilization.”  Instead, HFCS, like all refined fructose sweeteners” is “primarily converted into triglycerides and adipose tissue (body fat).”  

Indeed, report Morell and Nagel, a new study published in the “Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, “found that obese people who drank a fructose-sweetened beverage with a meal had triglyceride levels almost 200 percent higher than obese people who drank a glucose-sweetened beverage with a meal.”  Chronic, high triglycerides, remind Morell and Nagel, cause increased insulin resistance, inflammation, and heart disease (47).

Nancy Appleton and G. N. Jacobs, in WELL BEING JOURNAL, reported that two published studies (2010) from Princeton University demonstrated that HFCS causes obesity in rats The researchers think that HFCS is more fattening than sugar because it is not bound to anything, which, in turn, allows it to be processed in the liver into fat—substantially abdominal fat—a risk factor for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.  Sucrose is” metabolized by insulin from the pancreas and is more readily used as an energy source.”  Additionally, HFCS bypasses the body’s ability to create satiety, or feeling full (“High Fructose Corn Syrup and Obesity,” WELL BEING JOURNAL, Sept/Oct. 2010, 9-10).  Morell and Nagel note that since all fructose is metabolized in the liver, the livers of test animals “fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrhosis, similar to problems that develop in the livers of alcoholics (48).”

Rats aren’t humans.  But epidemiologist Devra Davis in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER (2007) notes that industry has been very adept at both decrying and promoting animal studies:  “Where animal studies on the causes of cancer exist, industry faults them as not relevant to humans.  Yet when studies of almost identical design are employed to craft novel treatments and therapies, the physiological differences between animals and humans suddenly become insignificant” (xii).  So, Davis argues, dismissing animal studies is a type of reasoning that is both “morally flawed” and “ignores one simple fact:  the same basic structure of DNA is found in all mammals (8)”  Davis writes that she has witnessed in her professional life “the maturing of the science of doubt promotion,” or “the concerted and well-funded effort to identify, magnify and exaggerate doubts about what we could say that we know as a way of delaying actions to change the way the world operates” (xii).  Thus, “treating people like experimental animals in a vast and largely uncontrolled study,” while ignoring data from animal studies showing direct cause-and-effect data, is ”morally indefensible” (8).

Morell and Nagel report that HFCS entered the market in the early 1970s, but the FDA did not grant it GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status until 1996, “after considerable pressure from the industry” (mainly Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill) as negative research begin to emerge.  Nevertheless, “HFCS represents the major change in the American diet over the last forty years” as it has replaced more expensive sugar in most soft drinks and is “increasingly replacing sugar in baked goods, bread, cereals, canned fruits, jams and jellies, dairy desserts and flavored yoghurts.”  This substitution is occurring despite research showing that while refined sugars have “empty, depleting, addictive calories,” HFCS is “actually worse for you” (44-45).

 The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) notes that industry has added so many sugars to processed foods that “the average American swallows 350 to 475 calories’ worth of added sugars each day,” all of which are empty calories (“Sugar Overload,” NUTRITION ACTION HEALTH LETTER, Jan/Feb 2010, 3-8).  Dr. David A. Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, in THE END OF OVEREATING (2009), focuses on how industry has added sugar, salt, and bad fats to processed foods, which is changing a pattern where “for thousands of years human body weight stayed remarkably stable” (3). 

The HFCS story gets worse.  A team of researchers at the University of California Los Angeles Jonsson Cancer Center released a study on 2 August 2010 revealing that pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate.  Dr. Anthony Heaney said that tumor cells thrived on glucose, but used fructose to proliferate.  He specifically referred to Americans’ use of refined fructose consumption.  Our use of HFCS has increased 1000 percent between 1970 and 1990 (Maggie Fox, “Cancer Cells Feed on Fructose, Study Finds,” 2 Aug. 2010, Reuters).         

HFCS can cause high blood pressure.  A study from the University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center recorded the eating habits of over 4,500 adults to determine that amount of HFCS each was consuming.  Those consuming “more than 74 grams of HFCS (the equivalent of 2.5 servings of soft drinks) exhibited `significantly increased risk of developing hypertension.’ “  Indeed, “the study concluded that HFCS consumption can raise blood pressure in adults with no history of hypertension, independently of any other causes” (“High Fructose Corn Syrup = High Blood Pressure, WELL BEING JOURNAL, March/April 2010, 6).   

 Connections are being made between HFCS and gout.  Fructose increases uric acid, and uric acid causes gout.  A study of about 46,000 men who got “at least 12 percent of their calories from fructose” were” twice as likely to be diagnosed with gout” (“Sugar Overload,” NUTRITION ACTION HEALTH LETTER, Jan/Feb 2010, 7). 

 I found much more information showing that HFCS is a dangerous product that is causing humans significant harm.  It’s also likely that industry knows how dangerous it is, but uses it anyway because it is sweet and cheap.  Remember that industry is legally organized to behave this way.  What you can do is to eat nutrient-dense, organic, local foods to maintain your health.

Mainely Tipping Points 16: WOLF TOTEM

Tipping Points 16

WOLF TOTEM

 Millions of Chinese have purchased Jiang Rong’s novel WOLF TOTEM (2004), published in the west in 2008.  The novel, according to its English translator, sparked a heated debate about the national character of the Chinese people.  I would argue that Rong’s metaphors apply to Americans as well.

 In 1969, student Rong took part in Mao’s Cultural Revolution where up to 20-million young city dwellers relocated to rural areas.  Rong went to a remote grassland, Inner Mongolia’s East Ujimqin Banner, and for 11 years lived with and grew to love deeply the traditional herdsmen.  Called Olonbulag Banner in the novel, this grassland produced Genghis Khan and the famed Mongol hordes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries who overran Rong’s Han ancestors. 

Rong experiences the moment when the Chinese people, who are agrarians, occupy the grassland, try to farm it, and in the process destroy the delicate balance of shepherds, sheep (the right animal for the grassland), and the predator wolves that are the linchpin of this system.  In scant months, the wolves are hunted with military vehicles and slaughtered with rifles.  In a few years, a lush portion of the pristine grassland is fouled by farmers and turns to desert.  In a few decades, the whole grassland becomes a desert, and the herdsmen are penned into individually owned, fenced enclaves and a lifestyle that is a parody of their traditional culture.  

What has been lost is what one Chinese student in the Olonbulag, Zhang, calls “the middle way.”  The Han Chinese, he says, prefer extremes where the east wind overpowers the west wind, or vice versa.  But, the grasslanders use the contradictions inherent in their world, specifically the wolf, who controls the “big life” of the grassland by being a strong predator of the “little lives.”  What derives is a balanced, sustainable system where all within the system must be strong to survive (376).     

 The Han Chinese, says Zhang, “know nothing about life on the grassland.  All they care about is quantity, quantity, quantity.  In the end, they’ll lose everything by being single-minded.”  And, predicts Zhang, “millions of peasants keep having babies and reclaiming the land.  The population equal to an entire province is born every year.  Who can stop all those people from coming to the grassland?” (376).

Rong’s character in the novel, Chen Zhen, visits 30 years after his departure.  Zhen sees that the grassland can no longer support the life it once supported and that livestock numbers are being reduced.  The grassland cannot even support the horses whose “hooves once shook the world” (510).  Motorcycles have to be used instead.  “Mice,” says Zhen, “are kings on the wolfless grassland” (511).  

Zhen fears, when he sees an area supporting huge, penned sheep flocks, that what he is seeing is “a false prosperity,” experienced just before the Inner Mongolian grassland dies off (514).  He discovers that much pasture land is leased to outsiders by Mongolians who have become drunks.  One of the old-timers reports that these “outsiders” from farming-herding areas “don’t give a damn about capacity, so they raise two or three thousand sheep on land that can only support five hundred.  Their sheep graze the land for a few years and turn it into sand; then they get out of their lease, sell their sheep, and go back home to do business with the money they got here” (518).

 Zhen, whose career has been spent studying system models, economic politics and urban and rural issues in China, makes the following assessment:  “We’ve witnessed the `impressive victory’ of an agrarian society over a nomadic herding society.  Current government policy has developed to the stage of `one country, two systems,’ but deeply rooted in the Han consciousness is still `many areas, one system.’  It doesn’t matter if it’s farmland or pastureland, forest or river, city or countryside; all they want to do is mix them all up to create a `unified’ flavor.  With the `impressive victory’ has come a tremendous amount of subsidies, but the grassland could not return even if the subsidies continued for the next century” (510). 

Already, too, children are detached from the workings of nature.  A teenager riding a motorcycle is seen killing a hawk with a rifle.  He is oblivious to the fact that the hawk kills the mice whose overpopulation is helping to kill the grassland.  Once powerful and necessary hunting and guarding dogs, if they are kept at all, have become pampered pets (512). 

 In the spring of 2002, Zhen gets a call from his old friends on the Olonbulag.  Eighty percent of the pastureland is now desert.  The whole area, say the callers, will now be changed from “settlement herding to raising cows and sheep, more or less like the animal pens in your farming villages.  Every family will build rows of big houses” (524).

 Zhen did not know what to say.  But, Rong ends the novel with a “yellow-dragon sandstorm” that “rose up outside his window, blocking the sky and the sun.  All of Beijing was shrouded in the fine, suffocating dust.  China’s imperial city was turned into a hazy city of yellow sand” (524).  The sand storm embodies the national character of the Han Chinese:  they are destroying their habitat because they refuse to understand and live within nature’s mechanisms.     

Dan O’Brien, in an article for EATING WELL magazine (“Buffalo Are Back,” March/April 2009, 49-59), writes that Americans killed 60 million buffalo in the late 1800s.  By 1900 only 400 survived.  Today, writes O’Brien, “the Plains are broken up by fences that hold cattle destined for feedlots.  Most of the native prairie has been plowed under, leaving the land bare to the ravages of wind and water erosion.  Native grasses have been replaced with government-subsidized commodity crops, such as corn, cotton, and wheat.  These crops grow with the aid of petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that run off into the water.  With less available habitat, native animals and birds are being squeezed out.  To complete the circle, most of the subsidized corn is fed to the cattle that replaced the buffalo” (the right animal for the grassland). 

Lierre Keith, in THE VEGETARIAN MYTH (2009), notes that 99.8 percent of our native prairie is gone, planted to industrially raised corn, wheat, and soy (40).  Nature, she writes, sees bared soil as an emergency and responds with quick-growing annuals (32).  Industrial agrarians plow the soil, creating long rows of one plant separated by bared soil, which results in topsoil loss and a lack of nutrients in industrial food. 

History shows clearly, writes Keith, that the repeated result of grain-based systems is population growth, topsoil loss, and the eventual collapse of a bioregion.  The “last people who know how to live sustainably—how to integrate themselves into the living landscape of grasslands and rivers—are [being] pushed off by the agriculturalists, to disappear into a hostile world where, like the [native] animals, they will surely die” (51).     

The world population is too great; there is no more “new” land.   Keith says, “we’re out of topsoil, out of water, out of species, and out of space in the atmosphere for the carbon we can’t seem to stop burning” (51). 

We are all in Rong’s space of “false prosperity.” The sand storm made by our national character has already arrived.  Minimize local impact by supporting organic (sustainably grown), nutrient-dense foods.  

If you’re looking for more information, see David Montgomery’s DIRT:  THE EROSION OF CIVILIZATIONS (2010) and DIRT!  THE MOVIE.