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A Word From Our Editor, Grace Sylke
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Nothing like sending out our January Newsletter on the last day of the month.
But believe me, it's worth the wait as it's about one of the most devastating health crisis on our planet today, Diabetes.
As usual, I thought I'd be able to cover this important health topic in one Newsletter. NOT!
Diabetes is a complicated, multi-faceted disease; and I'm so glad we're addressing it here in our Obesity In AMERICA Series because it's affecting nearly 30 million people in the US and 171 million people worldwide.
Also, it's recently been discovered to be the 3rd biggest killer of Americans next to heart disease and cancer. In fact, researchers are discovering that heart disease is "intimately" connected to Diabetes. More on that in Part B in February.
If you're over weight, you may have Diabetes or Pre-Diabetes and not even know it. That's one of the dangers of this disease--it can hide.
Let's uncover this killer and CONQUER it together!
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Follow Grace on Instagram at
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This is a photo of Oliver, Grace's husband and business partner, pouring his Agave down the drain after reading our
March Newsletter.
Grace is an Aquaponics Entrepreneur, a Food Activist, a Brainwave Neuro-feedback Trainer and a Photographer. Yes, she's a very busy woman.
She often travels to Sedona, Arizona to conduct Brainwave Neurofeedback Trainings at the
So once she started her Instagram site, it became obvious that her travel Photos needed to play an important role on this fun site.
This explains why one day she's posting photos of her Vertical Food Forever™ Farm System, and the next day, she's posting photos of picturesque land/skyscapes. It certainly keeps her Instagram site interesting.
If you're on a desktop or laptop, just click this
to see what she's uploaded today!
If you're mobile, go to Instagram and Follow:
As a Food Activist, Grace is doing her best to create more Food Activists because if we sit around and do nothing, we'll all die sooner and lead lives of sickness with Big Pharma's pills flooding our medicine cabinets and Big Foods poison filling our cupboards.
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Get Links to all of our 2014 Newsletters from our
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Here they all are in one place. Our first year of Newsletters full of incredible information about Aquaponics and our Food System.
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Get Links to all of our 2015 Newsletters from our
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Here they all are in one place. Our second year, 2015, of Newsletters full of incredible information about Aquaponics and our Food System.
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Be sure to get the Ap for the
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Catch all 4 Parts of Grace's Series on the FOOD REVOLUTION! To read her Food Revolution Series in Newsletter format, click on our
and it will guide you to Food Revolution Parts 1-4.
The Aquaponics Digest Magazine features an advanced digital magazine and publishing and marketing platform for the 21st century; and it's just getting started.
Click on the Link to learn how/where to get the Ap for iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.
It features articles by the field's leaders like:
Sylvia Bernstein
Nate Storey
Susan Friend
Tim Mann
Rebecca Nelson
Colle Davis
Phyllis Davis
Aaron Woolf
Glenn Martinez
and our own
Grace Sylke
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This paper features articles about Aquaponics, our Food System, Health, Healthy Eating and much more.
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Aquaponics 101 is here and people are loving it! Get it FREE on our Aquaponics USA website under the Education Menu Bar.
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This is some of the best information you'll ever find about Aquaponics and How to build an Aquaponics System. It's on our website complete with Quizzes and a Certificate of Completion.
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We have several Videos on How To Do Aquaponics including two on installing our Food Forever Growing Systems in two schools in Tucson, AZ.
We'll soon be uploading the Video of the Installation of one of our STEM Food Growing Systems at ExplorOcean in Newport Beach, California.
And an entire new Series of Videos are on the way soon. Watch for them.
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It's full of Original Pixton Cartoon Art by our Editor, Grace Sylke.
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Watch for the new Food Documentary
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It's still in production but coming out soon. It features famous food activists like we discuss in this Newsletter including Jeffery Smith and Vandana Shiva and we're in it.
Click the Link to Check out the Trailer.
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And they're all about saving money on one of our Food Forever Growing Systems and saving money to get it shipped!
"You Build A Little,
We Ship A Lot For Less!"
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Visit the
E
xplorOcean
Website. Better yet, make an appointment to visit ExplorOcean in person. If you're a Teacher, bring eager, inquisitive students.
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One of our FFGS-20 STEM Food Growing Systems has been installed in their Ocean Literacy Center. Check it out along with other exciting interactive Ocean experiences.
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We Are Now Offering STEM Food Growing Systems.
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These are fully bundled Food Growing Systems that turn ordinary classrooms into STEM Classrooms, and they come with a 10% Discount!
To purchase a STEM Food Growing System, just scroll to the bottom of our Growing System pages at:
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Get the Links to all of our 2016 Newsletters from our
(they are located on the sidebar).
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2016 was an amazing year; and we've documented it by continuing our 16 Part Series on Obesity In AMERICA! You can catch them all by clicking on our
December 2014
December 2015 and
December 2016 Newsletters.
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This is War! And Diabetes is the Enemy. It must be identified, dealt with and then conquered! This 2-Part Newsletter is about how to wage this battle, and it is Part 17 of our Series on Obesity In AMERICA!
Let's start at the beginning and answer the obvious question: What Is Diabetes? The following Video will give you a good concept of what goes on in the body when the enemy, Diabetes, invades it. Don't let our terminology confuse you, Diabetes isn't a germ or a bad bug that actually invades the body. It's a condition that arises in the body as a result of insulin resistance.
The above Video is a visual explanation of what Diabetes is and what the symptoms are. The Video below is a verbal explanation of Diabetes by Dr. Sarah Hallberg, who claims that Type 2 Diabetes can be reversed and "the solution is simpler than you might think" in her Tedx Talk at Purdue University.
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What are the symptoms of Diabetes or Pre-Diabetes?
One of the most devastating facts about diabetes is that you can have it and not know it, or you can be what is called Pre-Diabetic and not know that. The above graph describes what the symptoms of diabetes are, and there are a lot of them. So to make sure you get the message, we're going to spell them out here:
1. You're always hungry
2. You're always thirsty
3. You're experiencing dizziness
4. You're experiencing unexplained weight loss or weight gain
5. You're experiencing frequent urination
6. You're experiencing numbness and/or tingling in your hands and/or feet
7. You're experiencing skin problems or wounds that heal slowly or not at all
8. You're experiencing a loss of libido and/or sexual dysfunction
9. You're experiencing blurry vision
10. You're experiencing grumpiness and anger
11. You're experiencing high blood pressure
12. You're experiencing high blood sugar measurements
13. You're experiencing extreme fatigue
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What happens when a patient is diagnosed with Diabetes!
Unlike Dr. Sarah Hallberg in her Tedx talk above, most doctors prescribe a drug for their diabetic patients. This is because most doctors have had very little training in nutrition and because we are a pharmaceutical controlled country where Big Pharma has a lot of influence. Big Pharma also charges more for their drugs in the U.S. than anywhere in the world so diabetes is a big money maker for Big Pharma. Unfortunately, the thought of reversing diabetes with nutrition and exercise doesn't really play a role in Big Pharma's world or in the thinking of most doctors.
We've spent some time researching how much money Big Pharma rakes in every year, but surprisingly, this appears to be a well-kept secret with specific data that stopped at 2002. Apparently, Big Pharma's profits got so huge after 2002, the drug companies decided to keep that information to themselves. "The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion) [in 2002]. Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself." (Quote taken from the Want To Know.info website article entitled "The Truth About the Drug Companies") Take special note that we are talking profits here. Profits that remain after costs of R&D, production and manufacturing, lobbying Congress and Marketing to the public and doctors.
So, it's not surprising that there are a lot of drugs prescribed for diabetes. The chart below describes the frightening story of diabetes in the U.S.
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You can't just ignore a Diabetes diagnosis!
Once you've been diagnosed with diabetes, you really can't just ignore it. The above info-graph tells you why. One of the biggest problems with diabetes is that the myriad symptoms actually can be ignored because they don't stop you in your tracks. Rather, they just seem to slow you down until they've gone on so long that they become lethal, and your doctor tells you that you're about to be quite literally stopped in your tracks because he's going to have to amputate your foot or your leg.
So whatever you do, don't ignore this disease! If you're not going to drastically change your diet and start a consistent exercise program, at least start taking one of the many diabetic drugs that are on the market. Or do both. This isn't a disease to mess around with. How ironic that we'd be recommending drugs! But, hey, it's better than a stroke, kidney failure or amputation.
There are 136 different drugs that have been created to fight diabetes. You can find the entire list and links to User Reviews over at the WebMD site under "
Drugs & Medications Search" specified for Type 2 Diabetes.
At the top of the list is Metformin, which is the drug that doctors most often prescribe. "In 2012, [after many studies that started in 1927]
diabetes experts in the USA and Europe declared that metformin is the drug of first choice for all patients with type 2 diabetes." (Quote taken from the News-Medical.net website article entitled "
Metformin History") The active ingredient in Metformin, galegine or isoamylene guanidine, came from the French Lilac and was first discovered in "medieval times, [when it] was used in folklore medicine to relieve the frequent urination accompanying the disease that is today known as diabetes mellitus, [Type 2 diabetes]. The plant was also given as a medicine in plague epidemics to promote perspiration of the affected individuals, and has been widely used to stimulate lactation in cows. Still, the plant was too toxic for widespread agricultural use."
"Early clinical experience with galegine sulphate was described by Muller and Reinwein in 1927. They experimented with self-administration of a 109 mg of galegine sulphate, after which blood glucose levels were followed for 25 hours. They subsequently expanded the study on other healthy individuals, and finally on patients with diabetes. In all three subjects, a hypoglycaemic effect [lowering of blood sugar] was noted (mild in the normoglycaemic subjects, but significant in diabetic patients)."
By 1957, another Type 2 diabetes drug by a similar name, Phenformin, was being manufactured and aggressively marketed by the Ciba-Geigy transnational pharmaceutical company at the same time as Metformin was in trials in Paris where it "showed adverse gastrointestinal effects". A small French pharmaceutical company started manufacturing Metformin about the time that Phenformin was causing lactic acidosis in greater and greater numbers.
"Lactic acidosis is a type of acidosis that occurs when the blood becomes too acidic due to the presence of excess lactic acid in the body. Blood pH is tightly controlled because even slight changes in your pH can have severe effects on many organs. Normally, your blood is slightly basic, or alkaline. Acidosis occurs when the blood becomes more acidic than normal. Medical conditions that can cause lactic acidosis include severe infections, kidney or liver disease, respiratory disease, heart disease, seizures, shock, cancer, severe anemia, and diabetes. Although rare, lactic acidosis can occasionally occur with metformin, a diabetes medication, and nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), medications used to treat HIV and AIDS. Lactic acidosis can be a serious condition leading to life-threatening complications such as shock. Seek immediate medical care (call 911) for serious symptoms, such as profuse sweating, bluish coloration of the lips and nails, chest pain, cold and clammy skin, rapid breathing, rapid heart rate, weakness, decreased or absent urine output, sweating, unusual anxiety, confusion, or unconsciousness." (Quotes in this paragraph have been taken from the Health Grades website article entitled "
What is Lactic Acidosis?")
Phenformin started killing people as it was causing lactic acidosis; and in 1977, it was removed from the market in the U.S. as well as many other countries. "The Australian Drug Evaluation Committee recommended severe restrictions on both phenformin and metformin, not taking into account the different pharmacokinetics of the two drugs. Phenformin is metabolised by the liver and can accumulate in the patients with certain genetic disorders, while metformin is excreted renally and only rarely results in lactic acidosis cases or death in patients who overdose or have an advanced renal failure."
"In 1995, the benefits of metformin were rediscovered. Many studies were performed, and among them the most influential has been the
UK Prospective Diabetes Study. It was a randomized, multicenter clinical trial that followed 3867 patients over 10 years. Independently of blood glucose control, metformin reduced the risks of myocardial infarction and mortality of all causes."
Again, let us emphasize, if you're not going to make drastic dietary changes or if you're only going to make minor dietary changes; and if you're not going to exercise consistently, or if you're only going to exercise inconsistently, we recommend you follow your doctor's orders and at least TAKE METFORMIN! Or make the drastic dietary changes and exercise AND take Metformin. You have to decide how to deal with diabetes, but whatever you do, DEAL WITH IT!
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Here's one thing that DEAL WITH IT means!
You have to take responsibility for tracking your Blood Glucose Levels and should be doing this daily. In order to track your Blood Glucose Levels, you need to know what the numbers mean.
First you need to know when the best time is to take your first blood glucose level reading and that's before breakfast. That reading tells you what your blood glucose level is after fasting all night while sleeping. Taking measurements after eating food could also be helpful as those measurements would let you know just how much certain foods are affecting your blood glucose levels. Those after eating measurements could help you kick certain foods that contain too much sugar and too many carbs that consistently spike your blood glucose levels.
Us Americans don't use the same measuring metrics as other countries and blood glucose levels are no exception.
"In the U.S., blood sugars are measured by weight in milligrams per deciliter, abbreviated as mg/dL. Most everyone else uses millimole per liter, abbreviated mmol. If you are in the U.S., look at the big numbers, most everyone else looks at the small numbers."
"In a person without diabetes, [before a meal] blood sugars tend to stay between 70 and 100 mg/dL (3.8 and 5.5 mmol). After a meal, blood sugars can rise up to 140 mg/dL or 7.8 mmol. It will typically fall back into the normal range within two hours." (Quote taken from the Diabetes Daily website article entitled "Is My Blood Sugar Normal?")
"In a person with diabetes, the story is much more complex: [It seems Diabetics make drastic swings from]:
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Low Blood Sugars (Hypoglycemia). When blood sugars drop below this level, you may start feeling hunger, shakiness, or racing of the heart. Your body is starved for sugar (glucose). This is below 70 mg/dL or below 3.8 mmol. |
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Normal Blood Sugar. In this range, the body is functioning normally. In someone without diabetes, the vast majority of the time is spent in the lower half of this range. This is 70 mg/dL to 140 mg/dL or 3.8 mmol to 7.7 mmol.
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Elevated Blood Sugars. In this range, the body can function relatively normally. However, extended periods of time in this zone put you at risk for long-term complications. This is 140 mg/dL to 180 mg/dL or 7.7 mmol to 10 mmol.
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High Blood Sugars. At this range, the kidney is unable to reabsorb all of the glucose in your blood and you begin to spill glucose in your urine. Your body may begin to turn to fat for energy and release ketones in your urine. (You can purchase strips to test your urine for ketones. Contact your doctor immediately if you have ketones in your urine.) This is above 180 mg/dL or above 10 mmol." |
We've all heard of Diabetic Comas. They happen when there have been "prolonged blood sugar extremes - blood sugar that's either too high or too low for too long - may cause various conditions, all of which can lead to a diabetic coma."
"If your blood sugar level tops 600 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), or 33.3 millimoles per liter (mmol/L), the condition is known as diabetic hyperosmolar syndrome."
"When your blood sugar gets this high, your blood becomes thick and syrupy. The excess sugar passes from your blood into your urine, which triggers a filtering process that draws tremendous amounts of fluid from your body."
"Left untreated, diabetic hyperosmolar syndrome can cause life-threatening dehydration and a diabetic coma. Diabetic hyperosmolar syndrome is most common in middle-aged and older adults who have type 2 diabetes." (Quotes taken from the Mayo Clinic website article entitled " Diabetic coma")
This is why taking responsibility for monitoring your blood glucose levels is very important. Below, we are sharing a smart, quick and easy way to monitor your blood glucose levels using your smart phone and the Dario Blood Glucose Management System.
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This is the Dario, a Simplified Blood Glucose Management System
that works with your Smart Phone.
The
Dario is so small it can fit in a pocket right next to your Smart Phone. We're not getting a kick-back for selling Darios. We just see how convenient and effective this meter can be because it's a multi-functional device that:
1. Embeds the lancing device, the meter and the strips into one pocket-sized, all in one device.
2. Automatically keeps a record of your entire diabetes history. You can monitor your progress by easily accessing your logbook, time-line and charts at the tap of a button.
3. Allows you to share your progress with family members or your health care provider.
4. Has a built in emergency hypo alert feature that sends a text message to up to four people with your blood glucose level plus a link to where you are using your smartphone's GPS coordinates.
5. Will do the carbohydrate counting for you with a database of nearly 500,000 food items.
6. Also includes a database with activities ranging from walking, biking, golfing, skiing, running and more so you can track your exercise. You can also track and tag your moods indicating if you're tired or stressed just to name a couple.
The
Dario can make measuring your Blood Glucose levels so simple that you want to do it often, which is how you DEAL WITH IT!
If you don't have a smart phone or if you're not interested in this high tech way of monitoring your diabetes, there are lots of other devices you can purchase to track your blood glucose levels. Just get some device that will do the job and start using it today. Below is a Video of how easy it is to use the
Dario.
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Now We're Going to Scare you into Action.
Our precious kidneys are so important that we've been gifted with two of them just in case we lose one. And, yes, humans can live with only one kidney. "But unlike the case with most other organs, we are born with an overabundant--or overengineered--kidney capacity. Indeed, a single kidney with only 75 percent of its functional capacity can sustain life very well." (Quote taken from the Scientific American website article entitled "How can you live without one of your kidneys?")
Your kidneys are part of the renal system and have many functions which includes "regulating blood pressure, producing red blood cells, activating vitamin D and producing some glucose. Most evidently, however, the kidneys filter body fluids via the bloodstream to regulate and optimize their amount, composition, pH and osmotic pressure. Excess water, electrolytes, nitrogen and other wastes get excreted as urine. These functions maintain and optimize the 'milieu interieur' (internal environment) of the body--the fluids in which our cells live. Life is incompatible with a lack of kidney function." (Quote taken from the Scientific American website article entitled "
How can youlive without one of your kidneys?")
Diabetes destroys your kidneys! Let us repeat this just in case you didn't get it--DIABETES DESTROYS YOUR KIDNEYS! And it doesn't do it one kidney at a time. It destroys both of your kidneys. This is called Diabetic Nephropathy. It is "a serious kidney-related complication of type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. It is also called diabetic kidney disease. Up to 40 percent of people with diabetes eventually develop kidney disease."40%! That isn't a statistic to mess with.
"Diabetic Nephropathy affects the ability of your kidneys to do their usual work of removing waste products and extra fluid from your body. The best way to prevent or delay Diabetic Nephropathy is by maintaining a healthy lifestyle and treating your diabetes and high blood pressure."
"Over many years, the condition slowly damages your kidneys' delicate filtering system. Early treatment may prevent or slow disease progression and reduce the chance of complications.
Your kidney disease may progress to kidney failure, also called end-stage kidney disease. Kidney failure is a life-threatening condition. At this stage your treatment options are dialysis or a kidney transplant." (Above quotes taken from the Mayo Clinic website article entitled "
Diabetic Nephropathy")
"Hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) is the driving force for the development of diabetic nephropathy.
It is well known that hyperglycemia increases the production of free radicals resulting in oxidative stress. While increases in oxidative stress have been shown to contribute to the development and progression of diabetic nephropathy, the mechanisms by which this occurs are still being investigated. Historically, diabetes was not thought to be an immune disease; however, there is increasing evidence supporting a role for inflammation in type 1 and type 2 diabetes." (Quote taken from the BioPortfolio website article entitled "
Relationship between Oxidative Stress and Infammatory Cytokines in Diabetic Nephropathy")
Diabetes got even scarier when a recent study done by the University of Pennsylvania showed that diabetes "is killing three times more people than previously thought". This means that diabetes "is the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Experts believe our current statistics are skewed by our tendency to wrongly attribute diabetes deaths to other illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease or kidney disease, which stem from diabetes."
Then there's this frightening statistic based on a well-known nationally representative database, the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey (NHANES). This study offered "a hemoglobin A1c measure, an objective biomarker indicating whether a person met diabetes criteria without needing that person's account of having such a diagnosis. It also captured those who didn't know they had the disease. The data showed that people with diabetes have about 90 percent higher death rates than people without diabetes. The researchers also found that diabetes as the 'underlying cause of death' had been grossly under-reported, giving the disease itself less weight as a major contributor to mortality patterns in the U.S." (Above three quotes taken from the Daily Mail website article entitled "
Diabetes causes 3 times more deaths than previously thought--making it the third biggest killer in the US")
Watch the video below about how Diabetes causes the complication called Renal Failure!
Have we scared you enough to see your doctor if you suspect you have diabetes? Have we scared you enough to implement the diet, exercise and drug program your doctor has prescribed? You just can't mess around with this disease. You have to DEAL WITH IT! And there's so much more. Don't miss Part B of this important information about the third biggest killer in America, DIABETES!
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And now, on the brighter side.
Our new Arizona Greenhouse is now very WHITE!
You can follow the progress of our new Greenhouse in every Newsletter from here forward. What you're looking at above is what was an existing covered porch. We tore off the roof (just in time for a snow storm. See the image on the right) added a few extra studs in the front and painted everything bright glossy white for the most reflection of light. We'll soon be covering the Greenhouse with state of the art Diffusing Greenhouse plastic that will cause the light on the inside to be bounced all over everywhere.
See our progress in our February Newsletter.
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In many ways and especially when it comes to Big Food, we are all David of David and Goliath--little men fighting the big, rigged cog controlled by huge corporations that are in bed with government. The fact that almost 30 million Americans have Diabetes is testimony that Goliath is still winning; but the war is far from over because us little people are legion and more and more of us are sharing the truth about the horrible state of our Food System.
Please FORWARD this email to your colleagues, friends and family who have Diabetes or whom you believe may be pre-Diabetic. They need to become aware of the dangers of Diabetes and the importance of healthy eating. We can't make the changes we need to make without first understanding why the changes are so important. We can save lives and our country with this information.
Thank You for following our Newsletters. We so appreciate your interest in our two cutting edge Aquaponics Companies, Aquaponics USA, LLC and Aquaponics World, LLC. We'll continue to bring you important information about Aquaponics, our Food and our U.S. Food System, which, right now, is broken and has turned us into subjects of the Big Food Sharks and the Biotechs.
Please help us turn the tables around so we can declare our Food Freedom again and become the healthiest country on the planet instead of the sickest.
Sustainably,
Aquaponics USA/World
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