Beaver Butts and Bugs: The BS Term ‘Natural Flavoring’ And How It Is Used to Trick You

Beaver Butts and Bugs: The BS Term ‘Natural Flavoring’ And How It Is Used to Trick You
The War Against Meaning Continues: How Big Food Uses ‘Natural’ Flavorings To Trick You Into Eating Garbage Food “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” –George Orwell George Orwell’s prescient thoughts ring true today–so true in fact that the man would probably stand in stark bewilderment at how insincerity and obfuscation have come to dominate the language of the 21st century.… Read the rest

What Do Those Food Labels Mean Anyway: An Examination Of Words Like ‘Non-GMO,’ ‘Organic, and ‘Natural’

What Do Those Food Labels Mean Anyway: An Examination Of Words Like ‘Non-GMO,’ ‘Organic, and ‘Natural’
‘Non-GMO, Organic and All-Natural:’ What On Earth Do Our Food Labels Mean Anyway? There’s no two ways around it: we live in a deceitful age. Blame politics, blame advertising, blame the internet–the truth is we can’t escape from a certain amount of flat-out bullshit in our lives. You could go so far as to say that if modern humans were fish, bullshit would be the medium we swim in.… Read the rest

Indigenous Groups In Mexico Win Victory Over Monsanto, Biotech Giant Has GMO Soy Permit Suspended

Indigenous Groups In Mexico Win Victory Over Monsanto, Biotech Giant Has GMO Soy Permit Suspended
Monsanto Loses Key Battle Against Mexican Indigenous Groups Over Planting Its GMO Soy It’s difficult to overstate just how fiercely the game is rigged in favor of the powerful and wealthy. Just in case you weren’t paying attention: in 2008 Wall Street got bailed out of a mess of its own making to the tune of trillions of dollars while millions of Americans got nothing and lost their homes; the Supreme Court ruled that unlimited money is allowed in political contributions, and Big Pharma continues to make headlines by continuing to gouge the sick, as evidenced by the latest, the EpiPen scandal and its 600 percent price hike.… Read the rest

Closed Circle: Documentary Circle Of Poison Shows How Even Banned Pesticides Come Back To Haunt Us

Closed Circle: Documentary Circle Of Poison Shows How Even Banned Pesticides Come Back To Haunt Us
A Perfect Circle: New Doc Circle Of Poison Paints Alarming Picture Of Pesticides Coming Back To Us Even After They’re Banned “Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies…” “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” You may have heard some variation of this child’s rhyme growing up–heck, your own children may know it. It’s a seemingly innocent chant that is part of a game in which children hold hands and dance in a circle until it’s time for the falling down part, or in some cases a bow or a curtsey.… Read the rest

How A Massive $10 Billion Dairy Merger Is Going To Affect Your Milk– And Your Grocery Bill

How A Massive $10 Billion Dairy Merger Is Going To Affect Your Milk– And Your Grocery Bill
How A $10 Billion Dannon Bid For One of the U.S.’s Largest Organic Dairy Manufacturers May Affect Your Bottom Line Mergermania is back, and bigger than ever, when it comes to your food. First we had agrichemical giant Bayer AG bidding for another gas giant of the agriculture and chemical industry, Monsanto, in a buyout bid worth some $60 billion. That was rebuffed, but investors and people with an interest in the food industry and how the GMO purveyors are moving forward paid close attention.… Read the rest

Roundup Ingredient May Kill Human Cells: And You Thought Glyphosate Was Bad

Roundup Ingredient May Kill Human Cells: And You Thought Glyphosate Was Bad
Roundup Ingredient May Kill Human Cells: And You Thought Glyphosate Was Bad It’s been two decades since glyphosate sales really hit their stride, with products like Monsanto’s Roundup taking the lead in the herbicide wars. And although its taken a long time, finally the news seems to be out that glyphosate is a dangerous chemical, not only to humans who prefer not have cancer, but also to honeybees, butterflies, fish, birds and life on earth in general.… Read the rest

Ancient Food Turns Trendy: Seaweed And Other Ocean-Grown Plants Find New Life As Both Staple And Delicacy

Ancient Food Turns Trendy: Seaweed And Other Ocean-Grown Plants Find New Life As Both Staple And Delicacy
Weeds From The Deep Wind Up on Plates In Five-Star Restaurants–And Fill The Stew Bowls Of The World’s Poorest A different kind of weed has top-notch chefs across South America seeking it out in obscure locales–but you wouldn’t want to smoke it. For one thing, it is likely to be pretty damp; it is harvested from the ocean after all. Chef Rodolfo Guzman of the award-winning Santiago, Chile restaurant Borago, makes regular trips to the Pacific coast, searching for cochayuyo, a protein-rich, indigenous species of seaweed that he uses in his dishes, along with several other types of sea plant.… Read the rest

Your Taxpayer Dollars At Work: UC-Davis Fighting Release Of Records Pertaining To GMO Work It Did

Your Taxpayer Dollars At Work: UC-Davis Fighting Release Of Records Pertaining To GMO Work It Did
California Role: UC-Davis Tries To Cover Up Its Role In GMO Research In Tandem With Big Agrichem Corps Funny thing about open records requests: when they pertain to something potentially embarrassing or illegal, they suddenly become much, much harder to comply with. That is the situation consumer rights activist group U.S. Right to Know has found itself up against in an ongoing fight with the University of California at Davis over records pertaining to the university’s close ties with big agrichem giants like Monsanto and work the university’s employees may or may not have done on genetically modified crop research.… Read the rest

Monsanto Encourages Farmers To Use New Seeds Resistant To Powerful New Herbicide, Causing Widespread Destruction

Monsanto Encourages Farmers To Use New Seeds Resistant To Powerful New Herbicide, Causing Widespread Destruction
Death And Destruction Follow In Their Wake: Monsanto Ruining Farmers Crops By Encouraging Illegal New Herbicide Use If there were ever a company you could count on to do the wrong thing, it would be Monsanto. The fact that there is one single corporate entity responsible for so much damage–saccharin and its cancer-related problems, PCBs and the global spread of human and animal damage they have caused and are still causing as municipalities struggle to clean them up, Agent Orange, genetically-modified crops and the glyphosate and other chemicals they require to live being spread by the billions of tons around the world–the fact that it hasn’t been put down like a rabid dog speaks to the insanity of the current system under whish we live.… Read the rest

They War On Weeds And Going Nuclear, Monsanto-Style: How The Agri-Chem Company’s Next-Gen GMO Soy Is Actually Not Going To Help Farmers At All

They War On Weeds And Going Nuclear, Monsanto-Style: How The Agri-Chem Company’s Next-Gen GMO Soy Is Actually Not Going To Help Farmers At All
Dicamba And Monsanto’s War On Weeds (And On Everybody): How The Agri-Chem Giant’s Next-Gen GMO Soy Is The Terrifying New Nuclear Option If you know anything at all about Monsanto, you know the company has a history of inventing products, then doing just enough–in-house testing, and hiring of friendly outside researchers, making political payouts, and doing some regulatory arm-twisting–to get its products to market, without worrying too much about long-term consequences.… Read the rest