Eat Your Heart Out, Felicity Lawrence expose on breakfast cereals and other
major junk food scams by global corporations, The Guardian, UK: Murray
2008.07.05
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.htm
Saturday, July 5, 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1548
___________________________________________________


http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,2285846,00.html

This is an edited extract from Eat Your Heart Out:
Why The Food Business Is Bad For The Planet And Your Health,
by Felicity Lawrence, to be published on June 26 by Penguin.
To order a copy for £ 8.99, with free UK p&p, call 0870 836 0875
or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop

Drop that spoon!

Britain is one of the world's largest consumers of puffed, flaked and
sugared breakfast cereals. How did that happen when many were said to
contain less nutrition than the boxes they come in?

Felicity Lawrence investigates

Saturday June 14, 2008, The Guardian

Cornflakes in a bowl with a spoon
Cornflakes with spoon: J Garcia/Corbis [ photo ]

How did it all begin? It was one of those things that crept up on us and we
still can't quite believe happened. Looking back, we'd been in denial for
some time. Then a friend who hadn't seen the family for a while blurted out
the bald truth. "God, Dodi's got rather fat. In fact, you know, I think that
might count as obese."

Once said, it had to be admitted. If you looked at Dodi from behind when he
was sitting down, you could see a substantial spare tyre around his
13-year-old middle. It bulged out from his hips and flopped down like a
muffin rising out over its baking case. He had become quite lazy, too,
preferring to lounge in front of the fire rather than play in the garden as
he used to. His excess weight was slowing him down. His joints seemed stiff
as he climbed the stairs.

He had been hooked on a particular brand of instant meal for ages.
Guaranteed real tuna, the packaging said. Enriched with omega-3 and 6 fats!
What was inside, however, did not have much to do with tuna -- 10% minimum,
according to the small print.

It was largely rendered poultry meal mixed with corn gluten meal, ground
rice, soya oil and dried beet pulp.

Dodi is our cat, and we know cats do not normally eat carbohydrates such as
ground rice or sugar, nor corn, nor vegetable oils. Nevertheless, that's
what we had been feeding him. It said on the packet that it was
"scientifically formulated", after all.

The absurdity of feeding an animal something that it never evolved to eat
and that actually makes it fat and sick ought to be easy enough to see.

But we had not been alone in our blindness, apparently -- feline diabetes
has risen dramatically in the past few years in the UK.

Where the human diet is concerned, a similar myopia seems to have descended
upon the British. Instead of relying on a food culture developed over
centuries, we have come to defer to the pseudo-scientific instructions of
professionals.

Where did it all go wrong?

The rise of breakfast cereal makes a revealing case study of the
evolutionary process behind the modern diet. One of the earliest convenience
foods, processed cereals represent a triumph of marketing, packaging and US
economic policy. They are the epitome of cheap commodity converted by
manufacturing to higher-value goods; of agricultural surplus turned into
profitable export. Somehow, they have wormed into our confused consciousness
as intrinsically healthy, when, by and large, they are degraded foods that
have to have any goodness artificially restored.

When the first National Food Survey was conducted in 1863, it questioned 370
families of the "labouring poor" and found that breakfast consisted
variously of tea kettle broth (bread soaked in hot milk and salt), bread and
butter, bread and cheese, milk gruel, bread and water, and oatmeal and milk
porridge. Today, however, the British and the Irish are the largest eaters
of puffed, flaked, flavoured, shaped, sugared, salted and extruded cereals
in the world. We munch an average of 6.7kg of the dehydrated stuff per
person per year in the UK, and 8.4kg each in Ireland.

The Mediterraneans, generally credited with a healthy diet, have so far kept
this form of instant breakfast down to an average 1 kg per person per year.
The eastern Europeans, deprived of marketing until the fall of communism,
consume only a few grams each a year. Yet the British have succumbed almost
entirely to this American invention, with the result that 97% of households
today have at least one packet of cereal in their cupboards.

How can such a radical change have come about? Was there something
peculiarly susceptible about the British that led to it? To find out, I went
to the US, to the midwest states that are the heartland of industrial corn
production and to the home of the first cornflakes.

Prepackaged and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals began with the American
temperance movement in the 19th century. In the 1830s, the Reverend
Sylvester Graham preached the virtues of a vegetarian diet to his
congregation, and in particular the importance of wholemeal flour.
Meat-eating, he said, excited the carnal passions. Granula, considered the
first ready-to-eat breakfast cereal, was developed from his "Graham flour"
by one of his followers, James Caleb Jackson. It was a baked lump of
slow-cooked wheat and water that had to be soaked overnight to make it soft
enough to be edible. It was sold at 10 times the cost of its ingredients.
The business motive for proselytising by breakfast cereal was established.

After Jackson's invention, the Seventh-Day Adventists took up the mission. A
colony of them had set up in a small town called Battle Creek near the
American Great Lakes in Michigan. There, in 1866, they established the
Western Health Reform Institute to cure hog-guzzling Americans of their
dyspepsia and vices. John Harvey Kellogg turned it into the famous Battle
Creek Sanitarium, where he set about devising cures for what he believed
were the common ills of the day, in particular constipation and
masturbation. In Kellogg's mind, the two were closely linked, the common
cause being a lack of fibre, both dietary and moral.

Kellogg experimented in the sanitarium kitchen to produce an easily digested
form of cereal. Together with his wife and his younger brother, William
Keith, he came up with his own highly profitable Granula, but was promptly
sued by Jackson, the original maker of Granula, and had to change the name
to Granola.

Around the same time, an entrepreneur called Henry Perky had also invented a
way of passing steamed wheat through rollers to form strands that could be
pressed into biscuits to make the first shredded wheat. JH Kellogg
experimented further with his team, and eventually they found a way of
rolling cooked wheat to make flakes that could then be baked. Cornflakes
followed when the Kelloggs worked out how to use cheap American corn instead
of wheat, although initially they had problems keeping them crisp and
preventing them from going rancid. This great leap forward is of a piece
with other major developments in the industrialisation of our diets: it is
usually the combination of technological advances and the right economic
conditions that lead to major changes in what we eat.

It was a chronically dyspeptic businessman and former patient of Kellogg's
at the sanitarium who unleashed the power of marketing on breakfast. Charles
Post set up the rival La Vita Inn in Battle Creek and developed his own
versions of precooked cereals. "The sunshine that makes a business plant
grow is advertising," he declared, promoting his cereals with paid-for
testimonials from apparently genuine happy eaters. He also cheerfully
invented diseases that his products could cure. Grape Nuts were miraculously
marketed at the time both as "brain food" and also as a cure for consumption
and malaria. They were even, despite their enamel-cracking hardness, said to
be an antidote to loose teeth.

By 1903, Battle Creek had turned into a cereal Klondike. At one point there
were more than 100 cereal factories operating in the town, many making
fabulously exaggerated claims about the health benefits of their products.
The symbiotic relationship between sales, health claims and the promotion of
packaged breakfast cereals has continued ever since.

The Kelloggs had tried unsuccessfully to protect their flaking process with
patents. When William Keith saw how much others were making from the new
foods, he launched his own advertising campaign, giving away free samples
and putting ads in newspapers.

Global expansion quickly followed. Britain saw its first cornflakes in 1924,
when the company set up offices in London and used unemployed men and Scouts
to act as a sales force for the imported cereal. By 1936 UK sales topped £
1m, and Kellogg's was ready to open its first British manufacturing plant in
Manchester in 1938.

The technology used to make industrial quantities of breakfast cereal today
is essentially the same as that developed from the kitchen experiments of
those fundamentalist healers, although new ways have been found to add the
sugar, salt and flavourings. Flavour and vitamins lost in processing may be
put back during processing or sprayed on to the finished cereal product.

Worries about the nutritional value of such highly processed grains surfaced
early. Post's company was one of the first to begin the heavy-duty
presweetening of cereals with sugar coating in the late 40s. The sales were
enviable. The Kellogg company, however, held back. The charitable Kellogg
Foundation, which by then had been set up to promote children's health and
education, was a major shareholder and was, it is said, concerned that
flogging sugar coatings to the young may not be compatible with its purpose.

Many of the health benefits claimed for breakfast cereals depended on
fortification rather than on micronutrients from the raw ingredients, most
of which were either destroyed by the process or stripped away before it.
The earliest fortification was with vitamin D, the so-called sunshine
vitamin, and acted as a marketing tool. Today, a new wave of fortification
is coming.

Inulin, a form of fibre from plants, known to the food industry until
recently as a cheap bulking agent, thanks to its ability to retain water and
mimic the "mouthfeel" of fats, is now added as a "prebiotic". What this
means is that it resists digestion in the upper gastrointestinal tract and
reaches the large intestine almost intact, where it is fermented by
bacteria, encouraging the production of friendly microflora. The inulin, in
other words, does what the fibre naturally occurring in wholegrains would do
if it hadn't been stripped out by overprocessing.

Companies are also looking at adding omega-3 fatty acids such as DHA. There
are technical difficulties with this, however, not least that since the DHA
tends to come from fish, it makes things taste fishy.

All the technology at their disposal has not helped the manufacturers deal
with one serious problem, though.

Industrial cereal processing produces acrylamide, a chemical compound that
is known to cause cancer in animals and was classified as a probable human
carcinogen in 1994. The trade magazine Food Manufacture wrote nervously in
2006 that acrylamide could be "the next food scare round the corner". Since
then, further research has confirmed a link between acrylamide intake from
food and cancer.

Those eating 40 micrograms of acrylamide a day were twice as likely to get
cancer of the ovary or womb as those who had low intakes.

Some other processed foods contain much higher doses of acrylamide, but even
so, tests by the UK's Food Standards Agency a few years ago suggested that a
serving of breakfast cereal could contribute about nine micrograms.

The FSA's advice to consumers on processed foods was blandly reassuring --
no need to change their diet, the industry would be working to reduce the
formation of acrylamide. The European food and drink industry association,
the CIAA, has compiled a toolbox on acrylamide for manufacturers, and from
it you get a sense of the huge effort that is going into industrial pilots
to see how acrylamide levels could be reduced. But there are no easy
answers, and sometimes the toolbox makes clear that the ways of lowering
acrylamide may just be incompatible with making these types of products.

That processed cereals had become little more than sugary junk with milk and
vitamins added was an accusation made as long ago as 1970, when Robert
Choate, an adviser to President Nixon on nutrition, told a congressional
hearing into breakfast cereals that the majority "fatten but do little to
prevent malnutrition". Choate was outraged at the aggressive targeting of
children in breakfast cereal advertising. He analysed 60 well-known cereal
brands and concluded that two-thirds offered "empty calories, a term thus
far applied to alcohol and sugar".

Rats fed a diet of ground-up cereal boxes with sugar, milk and raisins were
healthier than rats fed the cereals themselves, he testified to senators.

Battle Creek today is a backwater in Michigan, three hours' drive from
Chicago. There is not much sign now of the cereal gold rush that changed the
British palate, and the flake factories have mostly gone. But the legacy
lives on. In their place alongside Kellogg airport and the Kellogg
Foundation is Kellogg's Cereal City. Built in the shape of an old grain
store, the museum is a testament to the power of marketing that so maddened
Choate. Walking through the collection, I was struck by how much our
breakfast today is the child of advertising.

One of my favourite sections was the cabinet of boxes and pamphlets
recording the original health claims that anticipate today's persuasive
messages. "Keeps the blood cool!" "Makes red blood redder!" Then there were
the cereals that echoed today's claims for prebiotics: "Will correct stomach
troubles!" or indeed mirrored claims made on my cat food: "The most
scientific food in the world!"

Getting children hooked, making them associate breakfast cereal with fun and
entertainment, were among the main aims of competing manufacturers from the
early days. Kellogg's sponsored a children's programme called The Singing
Lady. In 1931, the artist Vernon Grant heard the programme and was inspired
to draw the Kellogg's Rice Krispies ad characters Snap, Crackle and Pop. His
cartoon characters were used in ad campaigns that catapulted Rice Krispies
sales up into the league of the more established cornflakes brands.

Cereal advertising likewise helped shape early television. Using
"motivational research" to work out how to appeal to women and children with
different kinds of packaging, Kellogg's broadcast the first colour TV
programmes and commercials for children. The result was that by the mid-50s
the company had captured nearly half the US processed cereal market and was
in a prime position to build its empire in Europe.

The UK market for cereal was worth more than £ 1.27 bn in 2005. It, too, has
been created and maintained by advertising. Kellogg's has consistently been
the largest advertiser of cereal in this country, spending roughly £ 50 m a
year in recent years, about twice as much as its rival, Cereal Partners (a
joint venture with Nestlé). Without advertising, we might never know we
needed processed cereal and revert to porridge or bread instead. Or, as
Kellogg's European president Tim Mobsby put it to MPs conducting an inquiry
into obesity in 2004, "If we were not to have that capability [of TV
advertising], there is a probability that the consumption of cereals would
actually drop."

The following spring I was one of a handful of reporters flown in a private
jet by Kellogg's to its Old Trafford cornflakes factory, as part of its
campaign to protect its portfolio and its ability to market it, particularly
to children. The ostensible reason for the trip was that Kellogg's was
launching a new product in the UK -- Kashi, a brand of mixed-grain puffed
cereal free of all additives. But criticism of the food industry for selling
products high in fat, salt and sugar had reached a head, and the cereal
manufacturers were the subject of unwelcome attention.

Before touring the factory, we were ushered past a giant Tony the Tiger
cutout and into the strategic planning department for a presentation on
nutrition policy and labelling. Here, the company nutritionist explained
how, in response to pressure from the FSA, the Association of Cereal Food
Manufacturers had reduced salt by a quarter in five years. Cornflakes were
even tastier than before because you could taste the corn more now. So why
was there so much salt in the first place, we asked. The managing director
of Kellogg's Europe, Tony Palmer, confessed that "if we'd known you could
take out 25 % of the salt and make cornflakes taste even better, we would
have done it earlier. But it's also about the interaction with the sugar --
as you take the salt out, you've got to reduce the sugar because it starts
to taste sweeter."

But isn't the target to reduce sugar consumption, too? Why not just cut down
on salt and sugar, we wondered. Well, sugar helps keep the crispness and is
part of the bulk, so that would be difficult, we were told. Palmer's
eyebrows started working furiously as he answered: "And the risk is, if you
take the salt out, you might be better off eating the cardboard carton for
taste."

The public relations team moved us rapidly on from this unfortunate echo of
Senator Choate's observations about rats to a presentation on the Kashi Way.
"We hold the spirit of health in all we do," one of them explained, echoing
this time the quasi-religious marketing babble of the founding cereal
makers. Since this was a puffed cereal, what levels of acrylamide did it
contain, I wondered. No one was sure, but they'd come back to me, they said.
They never did. Perhaps they thought I had lost interest.

The industry is adamant that its products are a healthy way to start the
day, and has recruited Professor Tom Sanders, head of the nutrition
department at King's College London, to defend "breakfast cereals served
with semi-skimmed milk" as "low-energy meals that provide about one fifth of
the micronutrients of children".

However, Cereal Reoffenders, a survey published by the consumer watchdog
Which?, took a rather different view. When it analysed 275 big-name
breakfast cereals from leading manufacturers on sale in UK supermarkets in
2006, it found that 75% had high levels of sugar while almost a fifth had
high levels of salt, according to criteria drawn up by the Food Standards
Agency for its traffic-light nutritional labels. Several cereals making
claims to be good for you got a red light, too. All-Bran was high in salt;
Special K got a red for sugar and salt. Some high-fibre bran cereals were
giving you more salt per serving than a bag of crisps. Some products may
have been reformulated since the report to reduce salt and sugar.

Back at Battle Creek's museum, you can see Kellogg's vision for the future.
Before exiting the exhibition into the shop, where visitors enter into the
spirit by sporting strings of Fruit Loops as headbands, I passed a section
on "global expansion". As well as advertising in new markets, it revealed,
Kellogg's has been sponsoring school nutrition programmes and health
symposia for professionals. This activity is part of a "massive programme of
nutrition education directed at improving the world's eating habits".

With 90 % of breakfast cereal consumed in just a handful of countries, the
company that helped to transform the British diet "has rededicated itself to
reaching 1.5 billion new cereal customers around the world in the next
decade".

Improving the world's eating habits has the attraction, as the 19th-century
American entrepreneurs discovered, of being what economic analysts call a
"high-margin-to-cost business". The raw materials of breakfast cereals,
commodity grains, have been kept cheap for decades thanks to government
subsidies (although biofuels, a new focus for support, has changed the
equation recently).

US agricultural subsidies totalled $ 165 bn (£ 83.75 bn) in the years
between 1995 and 2005. Just five crops accounted for 90 % of the money -
corn, rice, wheat, soya beans and cotton. If you want to understand why all
those commodities, cotton aside, make it in to most of the processed foods,
this is where you have to start.

One of the biggest costs in cereal manufacture is not the value of the
ingredients nor the cost of production, but the marketing.

About a quarter of the money you spend on breakfast cereal goes on the cost
of persuading you to buy it.

That still leaves room for gross profit margins on processed cereals that
are 40 % to 45 %.

Start selling this kind of processed diet to new consumers in China and
India, and your profits -- and those of the country that has dominated grain
exports and trading, the US -- will soar.


http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,2289278,00.h\
tml

Fred Pearce is the author of Confessions of an Eco Sinner (Eden Project
Books).

Politics, philosophy and society

Fat cats in our kitchen

Fred Pearce gets a glimpse inside the secretive world of the global food
industry

Saturday July 5, 2008, The Guardian

Eat Your Heart Out, by Felicity Lawrence, 352 p, Penguin, £ 8.99

With her last book, Not on the Label, the investigative journalist Felicity
Lawrence turned our stomachs: many people haven't eaten the same since.

Now she wants to exercise our frontal lobes by taking us on a journey to
find out who decides what we eat, and how they manage to foist so much
rubbish on us in the name of choice, health and, increasingly, the
environment.

It is a restless snap-crackle-and-pop ride, jaunty in places, rarely
preachy, always engaging. Lawrence is a guide we can trust, whether she is
in the Amazon soya fields or grabbing organic tucker at the local farmers'
market.

Defying the conventional boundaries of her trade, she is both sensible and
readable on everything from your bodily functions to Britain's archipelago
of tax havens, from American industrial history to the living conditions of
Italy's migrant workers (Médecins sans Frontières says these conditions
wouldn't be allowed in African refugee camps).

British businesses such as Tate & Lyle and Unilever feature frequently.

But three American combines turn up in every chapter. Cargill, the world's
largest privately owned corporation, Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge sit
like giant spiders in a web, brokering grain, soya, animal feed, cocoa,
biofuel, palm oil and chickens -- not to mention fertiliser, seeds and
cotton.

They provide the feedstock for the human race, and quality control is not
their strong point. They have, for instance, transformed the fats we eat,
with results we are still guessing about. The chemistry of the nerve cells
in our brains -- our fattiest organ, apparently -- is being reconfigured by
these godfathers of our industrialised diet.

Lawrence offers some good history, too. We learn how John Harvey Kellogg's
evangelical obsessions with constipation and masturbation, combined with a
keen commercial eye and Uncle Sam's Marshall Plan, brought cornflakes to the
masses. How margarine began as an adjunct to the soap industry, moved on to
waste beef tallow, then whale blubber and the products of King Leopold's
genocidal tyranny in the Congo -- all thanks to the British and Dutch
companies that eventually combined to form Unilever.

Then there is the story of how Kurt Berger, a British food technologist who
once employed Margaret Thatcher as an ice-cream innovator, went on to
persuade food manufacturers to put palm oil into almost every product you
eat. Goodbye, southeast Asia's rainforests. Persuasion is the name of the
game. Lawrence's dissection of the marketing of "probiotic" yoghurt drinks
is superb, revealing as dodgy a wheeze for extracting maximum "added value"
from milk as anything dreamed up by Kellogg.

Why do we buy this rubbish? Are we forced to? The supermarkets and food
combines insist we have never had so much choice, but the trouble is that
our senses of smell and taste and sight -- which have evolved to allow us to
decide what we eat -- are being deliberately confused and titillated by
modern processing and packaging.

Lawrence gives us some great journalistic set pieces. She spends a day with
Cow 777, a 10,000-litres-a-year milk-making machine in the Cotswolds. She
joins Polish peasant farmers waking up to the fact that joining the EU means
having an American industrial pig farm in your backyard. She tours
Midwestern cornfields in the wake of combine harvesters yoked one minute to
the world breakfast cereal business and the next to biofuels -- but always
to the task of turning a cheap commodity into a high-value must-have
product. She meets African migrants queuing for work in the tomato fields of
southern Italy. And she joins campaigners against a giant soya shipping
terminal in the Amazon that is speeding the destruction of the jungle in
order to feed Europe's chickens.

I would have liked to hear more from the people in the fields of the world.
The people who feed us, like the fruit farmers of Chile or the bean-growers
of Kenya. Not least because one of the subtexts of a book like this is that
we should go back to eating simple and eating local -- and cutting these
people and their products out of our lives.

But there is much to feast on as Lawrence journeys from her own fat cat
(page one finds her musing on the girth of her moggy) to find the fat cats
of the food business, laying bare mind-boggling madnesses, such as the
global pandemic of addiction -- there is no other sensible world for it --
to sugar.

"The genius of globalised capitalism," Lawrence concludes, "is not just to
give consumers what they want, but to make them want what it has to sell."
If this book has a fault it is that it does not get close enough to this
genius. But sadly this is a reclusive world. Lawrence never got through the
doors of Cargill, which has its European headquarters at Cobham in Surrey.

We all of us eat the products supplied by such companies every day of our
lives. Most of the molecules in our bodies come from them, but they won't
even talk to us about it.


http://www.whale.to/a/sanders_h.html

Professor Tom Sanders

[ T. A. B. Sanders BSc, PhD, DSc (London), Professor of Nutrition &
Dietetics, King's College London (University of London).

An 'expert' promoting aspartame.

This was in the end paragraph, called 'The Verdict', to an article looking
at aspartame. See: Dr Vincent Marks, who promotes sugar. ]

"The key point is that we can help people to live healthier lives if they
can reduce their calorie intake. Sweeteners (aspartame) have a valuable
role to play in the fight against obesity." -- Prof Tom Sanders, head of
nutritional science at King's College, London (Daily Mail Oct 12, 2004).

A real expert:

"How silly of you to think that Nutrasweet replaced sugar -- it didn't. It
increased the craving for sugar and the percentage of people overweight also
has increased. That couldn't be Nutrasweet's fault, could it? -- BEATING THE
FOOD GIANTS by Paul A. Stitt

Artificial Sweeteners Once Again Linked to Weight Gain -- Ditching your diet
foods could be one of the best weight loss moves you make.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/35570.aspx

http://www.whale.to/a/experts.html list of corporate "experts"

http://www.whale.to/a/medical_industry.html
The Medical Industry (aka Big Pharma, Medical Industrial Complex)

http://www.whale.to/ [ one-sided, but informative, rather conspiracy
minded ]
scu23@...;

http://www.whale.to/v/stitt_b.html

BEATING THE FOOD GIANTS
by Paul A. Stitt, Natural Ovens Bakery
4300 County Highway CR, Manitowoc, WI 54220
920-758-2500 800-558-3535

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, FOREWORD & INTRODUCTION
1. THE FIGHT BEGINS
2. INSIDE A FOOD GIANT
3. EXPERIMENT
4. "CAN'T EAT JUST ONE" SYNDROME
5. THE NATURAL REVOLUTION
6. HELPING YOURSELF
7. TEN EASY STEPS TO BETTER HEALTH.
8. BEATING THE FOOD GIANTS
9. RECIPES
APPENDIX 1
Why all bakers should make bread like Natural Ovens
Food, Teens & Behaviour
Why George Should Eat Broccoli
Why Calories Don't Count!
APPENDIX 2: [Media Oct 2005] Addiction Coke
APPENDIX 3: [Media Aug 2005] OREO. Craving the cookie

Ever wonder why you often don't feel good, can't think, can't remember,
can't sleep and don't feel like working either. If you want the answer, just
read "Beating the Food Giants." Paul Stitt gives a first hand account of the
inside workings of the giant food companies of America. He tells how they
program you to crave certain foods, to overeat every day, to make you feel
stuffed but hungry, and how this "mad energy" of the food industry is
destroying you and what you can do about it.

Stitt tells how you can feel 10 years younger, how you can restart your life
and slowly by example of his own life, how you might be able to start your
own business and help other people at the same time.

According to the Wall Street Journal (April 21. 1993), the president of
Coca-Cola makes $4,051,000 a year and the president of Pepsi-Cola makes
$11,136,000 by making a fool of you. Topping that, the president of Nabisco
makes $3,061,000 for making products like Oreo cookies that you can't stop
eating and Ritz Crackers (more fat per ounce than pork chops). The man who
gets the best grade of all in fooling people is the president of Budweiser.
He makes over $16,000,000 for making products that relieve your inhibitions,
then makes you fall asleep even while driving a car at high speeds. Do you
really want to keep these men living in the style in which they are
accustomed? If not, read this book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul A. Stitt was born on a farm near Verona, Illinois, Oct. 10, 1940, and
has devoted his entire life to human nutrition. From gathering eggs and
feeding pigs as a boy, to his four years as a food scientist for Tenneco
Corporation and the Quaker Oats Company, to his development of three
patented protein-synthesis techniques, and finally to the establishment of
his nationally recognized bakery, Natural Ovens of Manitowoc, Paul has been
working to produce better foods and to inform the world about the dangers of
our processed diets.

He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Beloit College in 1962,
and his Master of Science Degree in bio­chemistry from the University of
Wiscon­sin at Madison in 1968. From 1968 to 1970 he worked in protein
research for Tenneco. Paul then did exploratory re­search for Quaker until
he was fired for insubordination in 1972. As a food scientist he learned
that the American food industry was out to deceive the public. It was his
constant insistence that the Food Giants produce nutritious, non-addictive
foods that irritated his employer and led to his eventual termination.

Paul spent the following three and a half years in independent research, and
in 1976 founded Natural Ovens of Manitowoc Bakery to prove that commercial
production of nutritious foods is feasible. Today Natural Ovens is one of
the nation's largest and fastest growing distributors of whole-grain breads
and natural foods.

http://www.whale.to/v/stitt_h.html

http://www.naturalovens.com

Quotes
"I would drink chlorinated water only if the alternative was no water at
all."

"How silly of you to think that Nutrasweet replaced sugar -- it didn't. It
increased the craving for sugar and the percentage of people overweight also
has increased. That couldn't be Nutrasweet's fault, could it?" -- BEATING
THE FOOD GIANTS by Paul A. Stitt

The swelling ranks of diabetics can consider themselves victims of the Food
Giants. BEATING THE FOOD GIANTS by Paul A. Stitt

"There is a force in this country that's out to poison your food, to make it
addictive, to manipulate your very body chemistry. This conspiracy wants to
keep you overfed but undernourished. Who's behind this conspiracy? The
food giants."-- Paul Stitt

The public knows very little about nutrition. Instead, it pays attention to
the advertisements of the Food Giants. People buy what the food
conglomerates make them want. More than 70 % of weekday food advertisements
time is spent in hawking garbage. To the Food Giants, sales are more
important than nutrition. Mean­while, the customers are being brainwashed --
lulled into thinking that because we have a Department of Health and Human
Services that approves these processed foods, they must be good to eat.
They're tragically mistaken. The time has come for people to start reading
labels and paying attention to what they put in their bodies. BEATING THE
FOOD GIANTS by Paul A. Stitt

In his fascinating book, "Paradox of Plenty," Harvey Wallenstein give a
detailed explanation of the philosophy and growth of the food industry from
1930 to 1990. He lays out in explicit detail the corrupt thinking and proves
with thousands of referenced articles how the American food industry has put
packaging, flavor, advertising gimmicks, clowns, etc., ahead of the all
important reason for eating food -- nutrition. "Paradox of Plenty" is a
scholarly work that fully indicates the food industry as the super cause of
American obesity and runaway sickness costs. I recommend it as a "must
read." BEATING THE FOOD GIANTS by Paul A. Stitt

We'd shown that protein could be made from natural gas, that it could be
done successfully on a large scale, and that it could be done cheaply (a
pound would cost about 11 cents to produce, and would provide eight people
with 100 % of their protein needs for a day). And we had done it in one
year -- half the time we'd been allotted for completion! ......
When we were called into the vice president's office on the afternoon of
New Year's Eve, we expected a raise and a pat on the back. ......
"Gentlemen," he said nonchalantly, "the Board of Directors has decided to
terminate your project, effective immediately." ........They were actually
firing us! .......Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I marshalled my
courage and called the president of Tenneco. How could they do this
senseless thing?
"Friend," he told me, "if I had a whole mountain of protein, I wouldn't
have the slightest idea what to do with it. Who's gonna buy something like
that?"
I was dumb struck. What about the starving millions? Was the profit
motive all that counted for anything? I told myself that it could not be so,
that somewhere there must be a company which would embrace the project and
develop it to full potential. But I was still naive, and I still believed
that the best way to make money was to make things people really needed.
BEATING THE FOOD GIANTS by Paul A. Stitt

[2003] The Real Cause of Heart Disease Is Not Cholesterol by Paul Stitt
http://www.realcauseofheartdisease.com/aboutbook.htm

http://www.cbn.com/700club/guests/bios/paul_stitt_062504.aspx

... Paul says that is possible because the American food industry
deliberately makes food that does not satisfy. "It's hollow food, food that
has no substance to it," he says. That's why one feels hungry soon after
eating it. In their processing, the food companies take out the nutrients,
and add artificial flavorings and lots of sugar. They add stimulants that
create cravings. In the film Paul says Morgan eats 5,000 calories per day!
People can eat that many calories per day and still be hungry soon after
because the food is specially designed to do that. That seems to be
shortsighted on the part of the industry. Paul says they think in terms of
making as much money as they can today, not thinking about the long-term
effects of what they are doing.

Paul knows this subject firsthand because he worked for several major food
companies years ago and became alarmed at what he saw as unhealthy food
practices. Scientifically, he knew this was not the best way to process
food. When he voiced his concerns, he was ignored at best, called a crazy
radical at worst. He says they tried to ban him from speaking in the media
and on TV, but they could not since there is free speech in America.

He started his own company in 1976. "I predicted this epidemic of obesity 25
years ago," he says. "Now that there is an epidemic of obesity, many call me
now to speak at their conferences."

TRIED AND TRUE

In his film Morgan crosses the country talking to fast food customers,
visiting schools, and interviewing many experts. Paul says he came to
Morgan's attention when Morgan did a Web search to find a healthy school
lunch program. He found only one, which was the one in Wisconsin's Appleton
School District. In the movie Morgan shows what happens when things are done
right. This bright spot is the Peak Performance school lunch program created
by Paul and his wife, Barbara, which is now in its sixth year. "I am
delighted to be part of Super Size Me," he says. "Morgan has humorously
depicted in 96 minutes what has taken me 20 years to research."

Morgan highlighted an Illinois school lunch program where a plate of french
fries or a slice of pizza are daily fare -- much like the rest of the
nation's. Contrast that to Paul's program where burgers and soda machines
are out and salad bars and energy drinks are in. After removing every
vending machine, the school hired two cooks to prepare meals based on fresh
produce, whole grains, and energy drinks. School officials noted a decided
change in the students' behavior -- they are able to better focus in class
and they feel better.

"Kids are bombarded with fast food -- even in school," Paul says, "but I've
proven if you give them healthy alternatives, they'll make the right choice
and life-changing results will follow." Parents and educators need to accept
responsibility for our exploding childhood obesity problem. "So many kids
are suffering because they are obese and unhealthy," he says. In 1997 the
Stitts underwrote the $100,000 five-year program in Appleton's Central
Alternative High School for students identified as at-risk or with
discipline problems. The school district has plans to expand the program to
its 25 schools that serve 15,000 students.

VALUE

When asked if eating healthy costs too much, Paul puts this in perspective.
A loaf of whole grain bread averages $ 2.00 per loaf. Because this bread
feeds and satisfies the body, one slice per meal is enough. Three slices per
day (a loaf and a half) equals $ 3.00 per week, which totals $ 150 per year.
Whole grain bread provides 50 percent of all the nutrients you need. Add
some turnip greens, apples, bananas, chicken, or fish, and you have a
healthy, satisfying meal. Contrast that to spending at McDonald's (per the
movie) $ 27 per day on average -- that is $9 per meal -- and staying hungry.
That totals $ 850 per month. Paul says fast food gives you the perception of
being cheap, but it's not. To eat well you have to think ahead and plan. To
enjoy a healthy pot of beans, you have to start them the day before.

This is not high tech, he says, not gourmet, but just fresh fruits,
vegetables, and whole grains. Paul says the Lord put in food all we need to
stay healthy. We have to be wise in eating it.

Paul says he would like to encourage young people to start companies. Look
at the long-term benefits. All Natural Ovens' products are certified Kosher
Pareve by the Chicago Rabbinical Council Pas Yisroel.


http://clearingatkings.org/schools/biohealth/research/nutritional/staff/tsanders\
.html

Professor Tom AB Sanders BSc PhD DSc RPHNutr
Professor Tom Sanders Lecturer in Nutrition, Queen Elizabeth College/Kings
College London 1982- 1991
Reader in Nutrition, Kings College London 1991- 1994
Professor of Nutrition & Dietetics (established chair), Kings College London
October 1994-present

Head of the Department of Nutrition & Dietetics, Kings College London 1995-
2000
Head of Nutritional Sciences Division 2003-present
Tel: 44 (0)20 7848 4273, Fax: 44 (0)20 7848 4171,
E-mail: tom.sanders@...;
Franklin-Wilkins Building, 150 Stamford Street,
London SE1 9NH

Current Research Interests

The main focus of our research is on the mechanisms by which diet influences
risk of cardiovascular disease. Much of our research has been involved with
differentiating the effects of different types of fatty acids (trans fatty
acids, omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, oleic acid, and
different chain length saturated fatty acids) as well as the relative
proportions of fat and type of carbohydrate on cardiovascular risk factors.

In addition to the work on dietary lipids and carbohydrates we have an
interest in the biologically active components in plant foods such as
isoflavones and flavonoids.

Wherever possible, we try to take a holistic view with regard to dietary
intake and are interested in the effects of overall dietary patterns.

We have a long-standing interest in comparing the health of vegans with
vegetarians, who consume milk and eggs, and omnivores, who eat meat/or fish
in addition to milk and eggs.

We also have an interest in the acute effects resulting from the consumption
of certain foods as well as the longer term effects.

Our group has specific expertise in the measurement of polyunsaturated fatty
acids and other lipids including eicosanoids.

Perhaps what differentiates the work of our group from other groups working
on dietary lipids is that we have tended to focus on the interaction between
the effects of dietary lipids and changes in haemostasis.

Our work was among the first to show that meals high in fat induce
activation of clotting factor VII and impair endothelial function.

Our most recent work in this area indicates that meals high in oleic acid
may have adverse effects on procoagulant activity and endothelial function
compared with meals containing stearic acid.

We endeavour to foster cross-disciplinary research and seek to work with
people with expertise that complements our own. We have much experience in
the design and execution of controlled dietary intervention trials.

Recently completed research includes OPTILIP which was a six-months dietary
intervention in 258 older men and women which compared the effects of
long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids versus linolenic acid on
cardiovascular risk factors.

We also have an active programme of research investigating vegetarian
sources of long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids derived from algae.

We are currently running two large dietary intervention trials. The RISCK
study is evaluating the effects of different levels of fat intake and
changes in the glycaemic index on insulin resistance and features of the
metabolic syndrome including vascular function.

DRFRUITNVEG study is a randomized controlled trial evaluating the effects of
increasing intakes of fruit and vegetable intake versus increased potassium
citrate intake on blood pressure and vascular function.

Most recent publications:

1. Sanders,T.A., Lewis,F., Slaughter,S., Griffin,B.A., Griffin,M.,
Davies,I., Millward,D.J., Cooper,J.A., & Miller,G.J. (2006)
Effect of varying the ratio of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids by increasing the
dietary intake of {alpha}-linolenic acid, eicosapentaenoic and
docosahexaenoic acid, or both on fibrinogen and clotting factors VII and XII
in persons aged 45-70 y: the OPTILIP Study.
Am J Clin Nutr, 84, 513-522.

2. Sanders,T.A., Gleason,K., Griffin,B., & Miller,G.J. (2006)
Influence of an algal triacylglycerol containing docosahexaenoic acid (22 :
6n-3) and docosapentaenoic acid (22 : 5n-6) on cardiovascular risk factors
in healthy men and women.
Br.J.Nutr., 95, 525-531.

3. Morkbak,A.L., Hvas,A.M., Lloyd-Wright,Z., Sanders,T.A., Bleie,O.,
Refsum,H., Nygaard,O.K., & Nexo,E. (2006)
Effect of vitamin B12 treatment on haptocorrin.
Clin Chem., 52, 1104-1111.

4. Sanders,T.A. & Berry,S.E. (2005)
Influence of stearic acid on postprandial lipemia and hemostatic function.
Lipids, 40, 1221-1227.

5. O'Neill,F.H., Sanders,T.A., & Thompson,G.R. (2005)
Comparison of efficacy of plant stanol ester and sterol ester: short-term
and longer-term studies.
Am J Cardiol., 96, 29D-36D

6. Rosell,M.S., Lloyd-Wright,Z., Appleby,P.N., Sanders,T.A., Allen,N.E., &
Key,T.J. (2005)
Long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in plasma in British meat-eating,
vegetarian, and vegan men.
Am.J.Clin.Nutr., 82, 327-334.
___________________________________________________



re "A Few too Many", Joan Acocella, The New Yorker,
long review of hangover research 2008.05.26 -- same levels of
formaldehyde and formic acid in FEMA trailers and other sources
(aspartame, dark wines and liquors, tobacco smoke):
Murray 2008.06.05
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.htm
Thursday, June 5, 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1541

[ See also:
There really is no controversy, Adrienne Samuels PhD, letter re
evident toxicity of aspartame EJCN 2008.06.11:
Murray 2008.06.30
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.htm
Monday, June 30, 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1546

former key Hillary Clinton staff Mark Penn and Patti Solis Doyle
use much neurotoxic aspartame Diet Coke -- also many other
politicians: Murray 2008.06.30
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.htm
Monday, June 30, 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1545 ]


formaldehyde and formic acid in FEMA trailers and other sources
(aspartame, dark wines and liquors, tobacco smoke):
Murray 2008.01.30
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.htm
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1508

The FEMA trailers give about the same amount of formaldehyde
and formic acid daily as from a quart of dark wine or liquor,
or two quarts (6 12-oz cans) of aspartame diet soda,
from their over 1 tenth gram methanol impurity
(one part in 10,000), which the body quickly makes into
formaldehyde and then formic acid -- enough to be the major cause
of "morning after" alcohol hangovers.

Methanol and formaldehyde and formic acid also result from
many fruits and vegetables, tobacco and wood smoke, heater
and vehicle exhaust, household chemicals and cleaners, cosmetics,
and new cars, drapes, carpets, furniture, particleboard,
mobile homes, buildings, leather... so all these sources add up
and interact with many other toxic chemicals.

methanol impurity in alcohol drinks [ and aspartame ] is turned into
neurotoxic formic acid, prevented by folic acid, re Fetal Alcohol
Syndrome, BM Kapur, DC Lehotay, PL Carlen at U. Toronto,
Alc Clin Exp Res 2007 Dec. plain text: detailed biochemistry,
CL Nie et al. 2007.07.18: Murray 2008.02.24
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.htm
Sunday, February 24, 2008
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1524
___________________________________________________


"Of course, everyone chooses, as a natural priority, to enjoy peace,
joy, and love by helping to find, quickly share, and positively act
upon evidence about healthy and safe food, drink, and
environment."

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@...
505-501-2298 1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505

http://RMForAll.blogspot.com new primary archive

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/messages
group with 126 members, 1,548 posts in a public archive

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartame/messages
group with 1,121 members, 22,783 posts in public archive
___________________________________________________


http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_acocella?currentPage\
=all

Annals Of Drinking
A Few Too Many
Is there any hope for the hung over?
by Joan Acocella May 26, 2008 themail@...

"Wayne Jones, of the Swedish National Laboratory
of Forensic Medicine"
[ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1469
highly toxic formaldehyde, the cause of alcohol hangovers, is
made by the body from 100 mg doses of methanol from
dark wines and liquors, dimethyl dicarbonate, and aspartame:
Murray 2007.08.31 ]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1286
methanol products (formaldehyde and formic acid) are main cause
of alcohol hangover symptoms [same as from similar amounts of
methanol, the 11% part of aspartame]: YS Woo et al, 2005 Dec:
Murray 2006.01.20

Addict Biol. 2005 Dec;10(4): 351-5.
Concentration changes of methanol in blood samples during
an experimentally induced alcohol hangover state.
Woo YS, Yoon SJ, Lee HK, Lee CU, Chae JH, Lee CT, Kim DJ.
Chuncheon National Hospital, Department of Psychiatry,
The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea.
___________________________________________________