Banned in Europe

SEVEN FOOD PRODUCTS BANNED IN EUROPE STILL AVAILABLE IN THE U.S.
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Chow Blog

+NOTES FROM THE DIY FOOD REVOLUTION

+THE EVIDENCE AGAINST ALLERGY TESTS PILE UP

+KATIE COURIC LAYS INTO ANTIBIOTIC USE IN LIVESTOCK
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What's in it?

+BEEF LABEL DECODER

Pharma Fries

Health Canada Seeks Input on Adding Anti-Cancer Drug to Junk Food
[Yahoo.com - 12/22/09]
OTTAWA wants to know what you think about its unusual proposal to put a cancer-fighting drug into junk food.

Health Canada is inviting public comments until February 21 on its idea to have small amounts of the enzyme asparaginase put into foods like potato chips and french fries. On its website, Health Canada says its scientists have finished a detailed safety assessment on the enzyme and haven't found any health or safety concerns.

At issue is the chemical acrylamide, which is found as a cooking byproduct in the production of foods like french fries and potato chips and has been linked to cancer in animals.

Research suggests asparaginase reduces acrylamide production.

Health Canada notes the enzyme is used in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark, and has been given a favourable evaluation by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives. END

Cancer-Fighting Additive Weighed for Junk Food
"I thought Health Canada was supposed to encourage healthy eating habits," Judith Ryan told CBC News. "If the additive is used, people will think junk food is safe and eat more. The result will be more obesity, more diabetes and more heart disease, and eventually more costs to the health-care system. How smart is this?"

COMMENTS
Since asparaginase is already being used in much of Europe and the USA, I would like to know what products contain it, and what the European/US experience has been with it.

Millions of "test subjects" out there - why not find out how they're doing? Otherwise, we're all just providing knee-jerk reactions to a poorly explained proposal.

Canadians are denied the information concerning whether or not the food they consume is of GM origin and yet we are to trust Health Canada to put some beneficial additive in the food supply?

This is unacceptable! Drug used in chemo therapy for certain cancers, added to food staples: bread, flour and potato products? Seriously? I don't think so!

Big Pharma is going to benefit from it. They will have a huge nation wide trial study on unsuspecting citizens. In couple of years, it will be discovered that it was not such a good idea, and maybe even they will pay some damages. But, make no mistake, big pharma will make enough profit from sales of Asparaginase (and other drugs used to treat complications from Asparaginase consumption), so law suits cost will be peanuts to them.

Who is not going to benefit from it is YOU. Yes, you, the one reading comments now!

Search for "Say No To Asparaginase!" group on the FaceBook, Join and please, DO ACT.
Call your MP, write to Health Canada, call Bureau of Chemical Safety, anything else you can come up with.

Let's stop the madness!

How much more will it take for people to realize that fast food and most snack food is crap. Vitamins are already added back into that stuff just to make it qualify as food.
Now drugs might be added so it won't kill you. This is insane.

Asparaginase (Crisantaspase)
This page tells you about the possible side effects of asparaginase (also called crisantaspase and Erwinase).

ABOUT
Asparaginase is a chemotherapy drug that is used to treat acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). One form is made from a type of bacteria called escherichia coli. Another form of asparaginase is made from Erwinia chrysanthemi bacteria and is called crisantaspase. Asparaginase is an enzyme that breaks down another chemical in tumour cells. The tumour cells need this chemical to make protein - they need to make protein to make new cancer cells.

You may have asparaginase as an injection into a vein (IV). But you are more likely to have it as a series of injections into a muscle in your arm or leg (IM). [...]

COMMON SIDE EFFECTS
1. Fatigue
2. Feeling or being sick
3. High temperatures (fever) and chills
4. Bruising more easily
5. Increased risk of getting blood clots
6. Loss of appetite
7. This drug may be harmful to a developing baby so it is not advisable to get pregnant or father a child if you are having this drug.
8. Loss of fertility
9. Liver changes
10. Allergic reactions

OCCASIONAL SIDE EFFECTS
1. Rise in blood sugar
2. Change in mood or sleepiness.

RARE SIDE EFFECTS
With this drug, a few people have a temporary drop in the number of blood cells made by the bone marrow, leading to the following side effects:

1. Increased risk of getting an infection
2. Tiredness and breathlessness
3. Bruising more easily due to a drop in platelets

Some of these side effects can be life threatening, particularly infections. You should contact your doctor if you have any of these side effects.

OTHER RARE SIDE EFFECTS
1. Inflammation of the pancreas
2. Asparaginase can very rarely be toxic to your nervous system and cause drowsiness, loss of energy, confusion, agitation or hallucination - tell your doctor if you have any of these symptoms.
[...]

Bitter Pills

(gawker.com)

>Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda by Jacky Law

More info

"What's the difference between good journalism and honey? Not a lot. Both run smooth, hit the spot when it comes to taste; and both as they have no bitter aftertaste leave you wanting for nothing but more.

Big Pharma - a revelation of a book - is written with skill and concision. With the right facts supporting the most telling of arguments that just keep on coming. Over 250 pages of paragraph after illuminating paragraph making it a honey of a read. What Jacky Law has to report could have been just an eye-opener for the inside few, but her riveting, forceful and fair-minded telling of it, makes it a true `must-read' for us all."

>Bitter Pills by Stephen Fried
More info

"Bitter Pills started as a magazine story, inspired by Stephen Fried's wife's frightening reaction to an antibiotic. After he won a National Magazine Award for that article, he expanded his investigation into this book. What he has uncovered is astounding, starting with the fact that, in the U.S. alone, between 45,000 and 200,000 people die annually of reactions to legal drugs (2 to 9 percent of the 2.3 million Americans who die each year) versus the 5,000 to 10,000 who die of illegal drug use."

>Death by Prescription: The Shocking Truth Behind an Overmedicated Nation by Ray D. Strand, M.D.

More info

"This book was recommended to me by a nurse. I was having terrible side effects to cholesterol medication, and my doctor kept urging me to stay on it, despite the side effects. This book informed me that these side effects were nothing to mess with, and could cause serious harm to my liver and kidneys. I just hope I didn't find out too late...I really believe if I hadn't stopped the zocor when I did, I'd be dead."

>Inside the FDA: The Business and Politics Behind the Drugs We Take and the Food We Eat by Fran Hawthorne
More info

"For those who have ever wondered how the FDA makes decisions and how those decisions effect companies this is a great starting point. Hawthorne takes an objective stance towards the FDA and shows their faults along with the positives. She tracks several instances of FDA oversight and gives their results. I think the part that tracks the companies progress through the FDA's is the most instructive. One of my fields of study was health and pharmaceutical economics and this was a great way to start learning about the FDA."

>Murder by Injection: The Story of the Medical Conspiracy Against America by Eustace Clarence Mullins
More info

"This is a very fine book. Eustace Mullins is an expert researcher. Previous to this book he was the FIRST person to reveal the true nature of the Federal Reserve (which has nothing to do with Federal). In this book he details the history of how control of the medicinal market has been won by the FDA and the AMA (and similar organizations in other Nations), and how the healing of citizens has been put in the hands of the Government rather than in the hands of the citizens themselves. Their choices for treatment have been downsized to that of Allopathic medicine, a way of trreatment that is relatively new, only a few hundred years old, if at that, as compared to medicine that has been practiced for thousands of years. This book details the methods used by the Rockefellers to control the medicinal market to their advantage. It also guarantees a level of population control....read on! You will be surprised!"

>On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health by Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D.
More info

"I rarely write reviews, but in this case feel obligated to point out what a tremendous service Dr. Kassirer has provided. As a physician, I have always been concerned about the influence of gifts and outright payments to doctors and researchers in promoting pharmaceuticals and other healthcare. However, I had no idea how extensive and pervasive it is. Dr. Kassirer has done an outstanding job in giving us a picture of the truth. This is a very well written book. I strongly recommend that all medical students and physicians read it, and suggest that everyone interested in healthcare do so."

>Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by Jerome Abramson, M.D.
More info

"As a community health nurse, I have been observing the increasing commercialization of medicine and medical knowledge over the past decade. Dr. Abramson has hit the nail on the head - while the cost of health care continues to rise, the quality of the care and the outcomes have not increased. It is a travesty that the elderly and patients suffering from chronic conditions are being hoodwinked into choosing between food and pills , and that we are not focusing on lifestyle changes that will enhance and prolong the quality of life."

>Over Dose: The Case Against the Drug Companies by Jay S. Cohen, M.D.
More info

"This book should be required reading for every practicing physician as well as for everyone who takes medicine. After reading this book, a major regret is that it was not available to me when I was first starting out in practice.It shames me to think how completely brainwashed I was by the drug companies. And I was not alone. All doctors in my acquaintenance seemed to share my misguided reverence for drug company marketing ploys. The essence of Doctor Cohen's message in this book is that we are all different in our reactions to drugs and the one size fits all mentality used for convenience by the drug industry inevitably results in underdosing some and overdosing others, frequently with serious or even lethal side effects. Start low, go slow is the author's message to doctors and I heartily endorse it."

> Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients by Ray Moynihan
More info

"After oil production peaks, higher energy prices are likely to sink the world economy into a never-ending depression, so it will be important to stay healthy, because everything, and especially medical costs, are likely to be more expensive in the future. Before you incur high medical costs you can little afford, make sure you're even ill first. A great deal of fat could be cut out of the health care system right now and used instead to help people who are truly ill.

Getting healthy people to buy drugs they don't need, which won't cure what they don't have, and potentially have unpleasant to dire side effects, sounds like such a crazy premise, even Hollywood wouldn't buy it.
Yet that's just what's happened, as Moynihan and Cassels document in their book "Selling Sickness". The 500 billion dollar pharmaceutical industry has plenty of money to spend convincing us that our ordinary travails mask mental illnesses, and common aches and pains need treatment.
Americans represent five percent of the world's population, but we consume fifty percent of prescription drugs."

>The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Marcia Angell
More info

"I should start with a disclaimer. I'm a Vice President within one of the largest drug companies in the world and I have spent close to twenty years marketing drugs. So I guess I'm not supposed to like this book. But the truth is I thought it was fantastic.

First, for those of you who are not familiar with the healthcare industry, you should know that Ms. Angell is better capable of writing this masterpiece than any other author. She used to be Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, which is considered the most prestigious medical journal in the world. Don't let her credentials scare you off, though. This is easy reading and the book captures your attention like a true business thriller, only this is real life suspense."

>The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman by Peter Rost, M.D.
More info

"This is a fascinating read, very credibly told. It is really a business thriller, especially for anyone familiar with the workings of large corporations, a sort of David and Goliath epic. I picked it up to read the first chapter and literally could not put it down for about the first 130 pages, cliché notwithstanding. It moves fast, develops characters nicely and retains suspense as the story expands. For a book about business it provide a lot of action in a way that gives you insight into the drug industry, the greed of large drug corporations and their CEOs, the behavior of people in large organizations, the role of government institutions, big legal & PR firms and the media - and it does all of this not only painlessly but also interestingly. Quite a ride!"

>What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You by Ray D. Strand, M.D.
More info

"This book is very important for modern health concerns. It offers treatment for problems that conventional medicine is unable to address.

Arguments are presented in a clear professional manner that is convincing of their truthfulness. This is no pseudo medicine full of a quacks mumbo jumbo. The case histories are very helpful to illustrate and confirm the points.
Also the availability of online consultation, presented in the book, is of unique value.
I use this book as a reference with my friends who have health questions and problems."

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