Hi group,

Hope everyone is healthy and happy. It's nice to see the group
continuing to grow.

I checked out a book at the library entitled Breast Cancer Prevention
Program by Samuel Epstein, M.D. Take a look at these excerpts
involving our food supply:

Breast cancer rates continue to climb, with this disease striking
more women every year, and yet information about known risks and
prevention strategies is not reaching you. The cancer establishment
has a vested interest in keeping you focused on early detection,
treatment, and basic genetic research rather than on reducing the
risks for developing the disease. This book provides all the
medically sound and scientifically documented information currently
available about known risk factors for this devastating disease and
offers equally sound advice about how to avoid these risks in your
own life.

The popular theory that eating fatty foods during adulthood greatly
increases cancer risk is losing ground. Converging lines of evidence
including animal studies, wildlife reports, test-tube experiments and
human studies make one fact clear: it's not the fat itself that
increases the risk, it's what's in the fat. What the cancer
establishment isn't telling you is that dietary fat contains a wide
range of contaminants—pesticides, industrial pollutants, and sex
hormones known to cause breast cancer and/or to have estrogen-like
affects.

The food industry has developed and continues to use potent and
potentially toxic chemicals to grow and market enormous quantities of
agricultural and other products and sell them at a huge profit. The
most important of such chemicals are: pesticides that kill crop pests
as inexpensively as possible, but then leave residues that pose
hazards to consumers; sex and growth hormones that bolster meat and
dairy products; plastic wrapping and packaging products; food
coloring dyes; and radioactive pollutants from nuclear power plants.

Every type of food you eat may be contaminated with pollutants that
could significantly raise your risk of developing breast cancer.
Beef and dairy products are the most contaminated products we eat,
with residues of DDT and other chlorinated pesticides, antibiotics,
veterinary drugs, and growth-stimulating sex hormones.

Pork products are relatively lean meats and, as such, contain much
lower levels of pesticides than beef. However, supermarket pork
products such as ham and bacon contain nitrite preservatives that
combine with other chemicals in the meat or in the human body to form
nitrosamines, which are very potent cancer-causing chemicals. Sulfa
drugs—known to be carcinogenic to the thyroid gland—are also likely
to contaminate pork products.

Pesticides can also be found in chicken, though again at much lower
levels than in beef due to the lower fat content of poultry. Low
levels of antibiotics, which can cause allergic reactions as well as
breed super-resistant strains of bacteria, also taint chicken.

Turkey, however, is the least contaminated type of meat, containing
no detectable pesticide residues due to its extremely low fat
content. Wild venison and wild boar tend to be safe as well.

Fish of all types in the United States may be contaminated as well.
Fish from industrialized waterways, including the Mississippi and
Missouri rivers, the Great Lakes, and the inland waters of New York,
Ohio, and New Jersey, contain a wide range of pseudoestrogens and
breast carcinogens.

Considering the amount of pollution in our waterways, it should come
as no surprise that carcinogenic pesticides and other industrial
pollutants also contaminate our drinking water. An Environmental
Working Group conducted a recent sampling of water in the Midwest,
Maryland, and Louisiana found that tap water in 28 of 29 cities
contained atrazine, a pseudoestrogenic herbicide known to cause human
ovarian cancer, as well as breast cancer in rodents. About one
million Californians consume water with detectable concentrations of
the breast carcinogen dibromochloropropane.

Even fruits and vegetables may be highly contaminated. Endosulfan, a
pesticide related to DDT, is found on many fruits and vegetables and
represents the seventh most commonly detected pesticide residue in
food. Recently, the United States Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and
Rodenticide Act gave a green light to California raisin and
strawberry growers, as well as to Washington state apple growers, to
use the DDT-containing pesticide dicofol on food crops.

It's not only the food you eat that might put you at risk for breast
cancer, it's also how the food is packaged. Packaging material such
as styrene cups, trays for microwaving prepared foods, and the lining
of canned foods also may contain pseudoestrogens and carcinogens that
migrate into foods, particularly when stored for long periods or
heated at high temperatures.

The use of carcinogenic food colors, specifically Red Dye No. 3,
remains widespread, and may be one reason that breast cancer rates
continue to mount. The food industry uses Red Dye No. 3 to color
marachino cherries, bubble gum, and a wide range of snack foods and
baked products. In 1990, the FDA discontinued the use of all "lake"
forms of Red Dye No. 3—the form used to make external drugs and
cosmetics—because of reports that the chemical caused thyroid cancer
in rats, but still allows its use as a food dye.

What can you do?

 Eat certified organic meats and poultry, which are free of hormones
and pesticides.

 Consume organic dairy products.

 Your best choices of fish are deep-sea species like Arctic char,
halibut, orange roughy, red snapper, sea bass, and tuna. Wild shrimp
and lobsters from Australia, California, Mexico, and New Zealand are
also safe.

 Opt for organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible.

 Research your drinking water to make sure you are not exposing your
body to contamination. Request a water quality report from your
municipality. If you find your water is indeed contaminated, you
might want to purchase a treatment unit.

 Whenever possible, avoid buying canned foods or foods wrapped in
plastic. If you cannot do this, make sure you remove the foods from
the packaging as soon as possible. Use glass cookware for oven or
microwave.

I'VE HEARD ALL OF THESE RECOMMENDATIONS SOMEWHERE BEFORE, HOW ABOUT
YOU? WAPF!!!

P.S. - The book contains other recommendations related to the use of
prescription drugs, mammograms and other medical x-rays, alcohol,
tobacco, pesticides in and around our homes and workplaces, hair dyes
and silicone gel breast implants.