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A Word From Our Editor, Grace Sylke
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Part 2 of the Obesity In America Series finally got published; and my kitchen cupboard is emptier today than it was yesterday and my garbage can is fuller.
It was shocking to find how many products we were buying that had High Fructose Corn Syrup in them.
I'm actually a little embarrassed by the fact that I, a healthy food advocate, was so clueless about the horrors of High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Unlike with GMO's, we don't have the excuse of saying, "I didn't know I was eating it because it's not labeled." High Fructose Corn Syrup is labeled; and we all need to start reading those labels and saying NO to HFCS because it is a main cause of the Obesity Epidemic!
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Get Links to all of our 2014 Newsletters from our
December 2014 Edition. It's the one where you'll find Part 1 of this Series, Obesity In America.
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Here they are all in one place. Our first year of Newsletters full of incredible information about Aquaponics and our Food System.
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We declared April to be Food Revolution Month in honor of the Annual Food Revolution Summit sponsored by John and Ocean Robbins. Then we gave the history of Earth Day in Honor of that day, April 22, 2015.
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This is an informative look at all of the Food related Programs that we are running in the U.S. including who these programs serve and the costs of those services.
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This Newsletter is all about our enclosed growing and fish raising areas, which include our Growroom and Fishroom featuring our latest evolution in Seed Germination, the SIT (Seed Incubation Table).
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This Newsletter features our latest change in the Greenhouse, and it's a real innovaiton. Our retired aerospace engineer turned Aquaponics Systems Designer, Oliver Duffy, just keeps improving his designs never being satisfied to settle for almost great and certainly never following the pack. See what he's up to now in this informative Newsletter.
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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!
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 above Link to learn how/where to get the Ap for your iPhone and iPad.
Aquaponics Digest Magazine is a must read for any and all Aquaponics enthusiasts.
It features articles by the field's leaders like:
Sylvia Bernstein
Aaron Woolf
Glenn Martinez
and our own,
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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.
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It's full of original Art by our Editor, Grace Sylke, including the lead Pixton Cartoon she created for this Newsletter.
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It's still in production but coming out soon. It features famous food activists like Jeffery Smith, Vandana Shiva and we're in it. Click the Link and Check Out the Trailer.
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Obesity in America Part 2
Dear Subscriber:
In December of 2014, we started this Series with
Part 1 on Obesity In America. If you've been wondering if we were ever going to get around to Part 2, it's finally here. And now we're realizing there are going to be at least four Parts to this new Series because this is a really important subject.
Once again, our Editor, Grace, had fun creating her Pixton comic depiction of an obese family; but
Obesity is not a joking matter. In fact, it's one of the most egregious things that's happening in our country today. And it's main cause, High Fructose Corn Syrup, is worse than GMO's, aspartame, monosodium glutamate and fluoride all of which will get their turn in this Series.
Obesity is a manufactured disease that has been unleashed on millions of us on purpose. What's the purpose? Corporate greed, of course, coupled with our Government's desire to continue to export one of the only things we still do export, which is food and that means releasing the scourge of obesity on the rest of the world because
something is terribly wrong with our food production.
Our food is causing a health catastrophe and threatening to undo all of our gains in longevity statistics. In the U.S., nearly 1 of 5 deaths are associated with the Obesity epidemic; and the McKinsey Consulting Firm now estimates that almost half of the world's population could be obese or overweight by 2030 if current trends continue.
To get the full impact of this Series, go back and check out
Part 1, which emphasizes sugar consumption as a major contributor to the Obesity epidemic; but we must admit we were just looking at the tip of the iceberg when we wrote that Newsletter. To our credit, we explained we would be looking at one of the ubiquitous forms of sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, for Part 2; but at the time, we had no idea how full the can of worms we were about to open is.
In our research regarding High Fructose Corn Syrup known as HFCS, we have blown our own minds. We are now convinced that this additive, which is in all of our soft drinks and almost every processed food in our grocery stores, is the main cause of the Obesity epidemic; and our government agencies like the FDA and USDA are not regulating it in any way even though HFCS is killing us by the millions as it brings in millions for the Corn Producing and Processing Big Agri Corporations like Cargill and its national trade association, the
Corn Refiners Association based out of Washington D.C.
If you click over to the Home Page of the Corn Refiners Association, you'll see their "Who Are We" statement and within it they say this: "Corn refiners manufacture
sweeteners, ethanol
, starch, bioproducts, corn oil and feed products from corn components such as starch, oil, protein and fiber." And therein lies the rub because:
The Corn Refiners Association proudly list their sweeteners, the number one among them being High Fructose Corn Syrup, HFCS, right next to Ethanol; but they don't mention the well kept secret that the human body metabolizes this sweetener just like it metabolizes Ethanol, which is Alcohol. "
HFCS is Ethanol without the buzz." (Quote taken from Dr. Robert H. Lustig, MD's YouTube presentation,
Sugar: The Bitter Truth. This entire section is a paraphrasing of Dr. Lustig's YouTube presentation, which is below)
We all know Alcohol is a toxin in the body; and we have lots of regulations in place to keep people from toxing themselves out with it. Still thousands die of cirrhosis of the liver, alcohol poisoning and drunk driving because Alcohol is a poison to the body and the brain..
Unfortunately, most of us have no idea that an additive known as High Fructose Corn Syrup that is being placed in almost all of our processed foods and all of our sodas, acts like Alcohol in the body, is a toxic poison and is causing an epidemic of obesity in America and around the world.
In fact, HFCS is so deleterious to the brain that the brain loses its ability to determine that the fat cells in the body have been over worked and are satiated. The brain can't communicate with the hormone, Leptin, which tells the brain, "I'm done eating". That's why obese people eat beyond their satiation point. Their stop eating button is broken because there is something wrong with the biochemical negative feedback system that normally controls energy balance. That something is the toxic poison called HFCS. (Information taken from Dr. Robert H. Lustig, MD's YouTube presentation,
Sugar: The Bitter Truth)
How Did Our American Food Get So Toxic and
Why Isn't The FDA or the USDA Regulating HFCS?
This is a long story, which we're going to tell here in a highly truncated version.
It all started with Ansel Keys, a famous American Scientist who studied the influence of diet on health. He lived to be 100 years old so something he was doing was working for him personally; but his
Seven Countries Study has quite literally sent us all down a nutritional Dead End from which we have yet to recover.
"After observing in southern Italy the highest concentration of centenarians in the world, Keys hypothesized that a Mediterranean-style diet low in animal fat protected against heart disease and that a diet high in animal fats led to heart disease. The results of what later became known as the
Seven Countries Study appeared to show that serum cholesterol was strongly related to coronary heart disease mortality both at the population and at the individual level. As a result, in 1956 representatives of the American Heart Association appeared on television to inform people that
a diet which included large amounts of butter, lard, eggs, and beef would lead to coronary heart disease
." (Quote taken from
Wikipedia)
By the early 80's, this resulted in the American government recommending that people adopt a
low-fat diet in order to prevent heart disease and the American people were admonished to cut fat from 40% to 30% of their diet. Like good citizens, we did exactly that. However, there was a huge flaw in the Keys' hypothesis. He only looked at the fat consumed by the people of these Seven Countries. He did not look at the sugar consumption in those countries. We have based 35 years of nutritional policy on a flawed study; and we have not looked back to correct or review this policy right up to the present day.
Our American food producers began to give us low fat products. It quickly became apparent that low fat processed food tasted a lot like cardboard so as the fat content went down, the carbohydrate and sugar contents went up. We substituted fat with the worst thing we could have done--high carbohydrates and lots of sugar; and we haven't admitted the mistake nor have we corrected our course. Apparently, we think no one will notice the thousands of obese people living and dying prematurely in communities all over America and the planet as we continue to export this deadly food around the world.
HFCS came on the American scene in 1975; and this was the beginning of a perfect gastronomic storm, which Dr. Lustig calls "The Fructosification of America (and the World)". High Fructose Corn Syrup offered a sweetener that was half the price of sugar; and it soon found its way into just about everything.
Why isn't the FDA and the USDA regulating HFCS, which is a known toxin? The FDA stated in a document meant for the Tobacco Industry that they only regulate "acute" toxins. They do not regulate "chronic" toxins. "Acute" toxins kill you fast while "chronic" ones kill you slowly. The real reason that HFCS is not being regulated is we would be admitting that our multi-billion dollar food industry is producing toxic food that kills people and our food exports would plummet. So what's the solution?
Look at your Labels! Unlike GMO's (a topic for another Part of this Series),
High Fructose Corn Syrup, HFCS, has to be listed on the label. When you find it, throw out the offending product and never purchase it again. HFCS has been associated with obesity, diabetes, gout, hypertension, cardiovascular and non-alcohol related fatty liver disease. When you consume it, you're not consuming a carbohydrate, you're consuming fat.
As long as we keep buying and eating HFCS, the corporate food producers will keep feeding it to us until every one of us is Obese. We have to revolt with our wallets to turn this ill directed food policy course in a healthy direction.
To keep up with the latest news about this important topic, follow the website
SweetSurprise.com. It's a watch dog site designed to keep us all informed about this scourge in our food system disguised as a food additive.
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There Was A Time When Corn Was Nutritious And Innocent.
 The history of corn is a fascinating one as it took thousands of years to transform maize from a wild grass called Teosinte that originally grew in Central America 7,000 years ago into the staple food we recognize as corn today. Teosinte kernels were nothing like our modern corn. They were small and not fused together. Native Americans encouraged the formation of cobs on early maize by collecting and cultivating the Teosinte. Over several thousand years, cob length and size grew until it was possible for a family to produce food for the bulk of their diet for an entire year from a small area. This changed everything by allowing a family to live in one place and become farmers. For many years, corn was a common starch and a staple food for millions around the world and especially in North America. Then in 1966 a Japanese scientist named Yoshiyuki Takasaki invented a way to turn corn into a form of sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup was born. |
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What's The Difference Between Cane Sugar And High Fructose Corn Syrup That's Being Called "Corn Sugar"?
In spite of all the hype that is designed to convince us there is no difference between natural cane sugar and HFCS, there IS a difference and it's BIG! Cane sugar and the industrially produced corn sugar, HFCS, are not biochemically or physiologically the same. But it is the same old story they told us about GMO's being identical to natural foods; and it's another lie. Still, we need to understand that limiting cane sugar is almost as important as eliminating HFCS because they both contain the toxin, fructose.
"Then we need to realize that HFCS is an industrial food product, hence the barrel full of it. An industrial food product is far from natural and it's also far from a naturally occurring substance. To get HFCS you have to extract the corn sugars through a chemical enzymatic process. This process is so secretive that the manufacturers, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill would not allow the investigative journalist, Michael Pollan, to observe it for his book, The Omnivore's Delimma.
Some basic biochemistry will help you understand this. Regular cane sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together--glucose and fructose in equal amounts. The enzymes in your digestive tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the body.
HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Fructose is sweeter than glucose; and HFCS is cheaper than sugar because of the government's Farm Bill Corn Subsidies. Products with HFCS are sweeter and cheaper than products made with cane sugar"; and that made all the difference. (Quote taken from Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, 5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You)
The price of natural sugar went up as the price of corn went down; and the manufacturing of HFCS went parabolic. Since HFCS has fructose and glucose in an unbound form, "no digestion is required so they are more rapidly absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose can only be metabolized by the liver. No other cells in the body have any use for it. It goes right to the liver and triggers lipogenesis (the production of fats like triglycerides and cholesterol) this is why it is the major cause of liver damage in this country and causes a condition called none alcohol related "fatty liver" which affects 70 million obese people. When you consume fructose, you're not really consuming a carbohydrate, you're consuming fat.
"Glucose is innocent in this chemical stew. If you consume 120 calories of Glucose from two slices of white bread, 80% of those calories get used by the cells of the body. Glucose is the energy of life. 20% of those calories have to be processed by the liver where it is stored as Glycogen; and Glycogen is a non-toxic form of Glucose storage. We have a feedback loop between Glucose consumption, the liver, the pancreas and the brain to keep us in normal energy balance." (Quote taken from Dr. Robert H. Lustig, MD's YouTube presentation, Sugar: The Bitter Truth)
Fructose and Sucrose are a different story and both are toxins, fructose being the worst of the two. As you can see from the image below taken from Dr. Lustig's YouTube presentation, Sucrose is sugar; and sugar is 50% Glucose and 50% Fructose. Based on what we described above regarding Glucose, half of sugar's chemical make up is non-toxic Glucose. But the other half is Fructose, which is toxic to the body.
HFCS leads to increased metabolic disturbances that drive increases in appetite, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, and more. To learn more about this frightening subject like how our food system became so contaminated with this toxin, why nothing is being done about it and what you can do about it, watch Dr. Lustig's YouTube presentation, Sugar: The Bitter Truth below:
We have used two doctors as our Sources for information regarding HFCS. If we don't reference Dr. Lustig, we have gleaned our information from an article by Dr. Mark Hyman, MD entitled "5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You". Dr. Hyman conferred with Dr. Bruce Ames who did research on the subject of HFCS at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. Dr. Ames informed Dr. Hyman "that free fructose from HFCS requires more energy to be absorbed by the gut and soaks up two phosphorous molecules from ATP, which is our body's energy source.
This depletes the energy fuel source, or ATP, in our gut required to maintain the integrity of our intestinal lining. Little 'tight junctions' cement each intestinal cell together preventing food and bacteria from 'leaking' across the intestinal membrane and triggering an immune reaction and body wide inflammation.
High doses of free fructose have been proven to literally punch holes in the intestinal lining allowing nasty byproducts of toxic gut bacteria and partially digested food proteins to enter your blood stream and trigger the inflammation that we know is at the root of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia, and accelerated aging. Naturally occurring fructose in fruit is part of a complex of nutrients and fiber that doesn't exhibit the same biological effects as the free high fructose doses found in corn sugar." (Quote taken from Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, 5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You)
Fruit Juice Is Fructose and Fructose is Toxic!
And here's something else we all need to understand regardless of how crazy it sounds. Fruit juice without the accompanying fiber of the natural fruit is a toxic brew of fructose, which should never be consumed in that fiberless form. That's right. We should never drink fruit juice or serve it to our children because fructose without the fiber is a toxin. According to Dr. Lustig, "When God invented the poison, he packaged it in the antidote!" Feed your family lots of oranges; but never let them drink orange juice or any other fruit juice whether it's organic, pure or sugar sweetened.
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And It's Even Worse Than We've Already Shared!
HFCS isn't just a poison in its own right because it's toxic to the body, "HFCS contains contaminants including
mercury that are not regulated or measured by the FDA. A FDA researcher [she deserves acknowledgment] asked corn producers to ship a barrel of high fructose corn syrup in order to test for contaminants. Her repeated requests were refused until she claimed she represented a newly created soft drink company. She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that was used as part of the study that showed that HFCS often contains toxic levels of mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its manufacturing. Poisoned sugar is certainly not 'natural'.
When HFCS is run through a chemical analyzer or a chromatograph, strange chemical peaks show up that are not glucose or fructose. What are they? Who knows? This certainly calls into question the purity of this processed form of super sugar. The exact nature, effects, and toxicity of these funny compounds have not been fully explained, but shouldn't we be protected from the presence of untested chemical compounds in our food supply, especially when the contaminated food product comprises up to 15-20 percent of the average American's daily calorie intake?"
(Quote taken from Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, 5 Reasons High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Kill You)
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And Now For What's Happening At Aquaponics USA. We've Updated Our Website and It's Beautiful!
Complete with several pages of scrolling images of which this is one; and it's full of great information about Aquaponics. The more we write these Newsletters about our Food and our Food System, the more we realize that growing our own food is the only way to go.
It just stands to reason given what we now know about HFCS, we not only need to grow our own food, we need to can it and prepare it just like our Grandmothers used to do before Big Food took over.
Go to our new
Aquaponics USA updated website, to get started growing your own Food.
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This is the least expensive way to get one of our Food Forever? Growing Systems; and you can choose from three designs including our most popular modular Home & School model, the FFGS-20, pictured below.
When you purchase an
Aquaponics USA Quick Kit, you get everything you need to built the exact model you choose except for the Table Tops and Stands. We send you detailed instructions on how to build the Table Tops where to get the stands, where to drill the holes in your Fish Tank and Grow Beds and how to assemble the finished system.
The Quick Kits are priced less than our fully built models; but where you save the most money is
there are no Big Truck Freight charges. All the prices on the Quick Kit page include shipping.
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Coming in June. It's a Fast Food Culture!
In next Months Newsletter, we're going to take a deep dive into our Fast Food Culture and why it's contributing to our Obesity Epidemic. Don't miss it.
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Thank You for following our Newsletters. We so appreciate your interest in our two cutting edge Aquaponics Companies, Aquaponics USA and Aquaponics World, LLC. We'll continue to bring you important information about Aquaponics, our Food and our Food System.
Please remember to
Forward this Newsletter to your colleagues, friends and family who are ready to learn and change the way we grow our food, distribute our food and want to keep track of the unhealthy additives being put in our food because we are what we eat.
Let's turn the tables around and become the healthiest country on the planet instead of the sickest.
Aquaponics USA/World
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