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This is the weblog of
Raymond Powers.
Here I will be sharing what I find of import, humor, concern, inspiration and on the transformational edge
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A Quote:
"It takes a person who is wide awake to make their dream come true." (Roger Babson)
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Raymond lives in Ojai, where the time now is:
04:59AM
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domain. The quotes from other people's writings, and the pictures
used might or might not be copyrighted, but are considered fair
use. Thus the license here would best be described as:
Primarily Public
Domain.
Please ask permission if there is any question in
regards to public domain usage.
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| Tuesday, August 16, 2005 |  |
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16 Aug 2005 @ 05:08
Feds Subsidizing Obesity, not fruits and vegetables
[link],1,3504849.story?coll=sns-ap-healthmen-headlines
Feds Aren't Subsidizing Recommended Foods
By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer
11:56 PM PDT, August 10, 2005
WASHINGTON — The government says half your diet should be fruits and vegetables, but it doesn't subsidize the farmers who grow them. Instead, half of all federal agriculture subsidies go to grain farmers, whose crops feed animals for meat, milk and eggs and become cheap ingredients in processed food.
What's wrong with that?
"Obesity. That's clearly the problem, if you look at the outcome in today's society," said Andy Fischer, executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition, a Venice, Calif., advocacy group.
Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. People clearly are getting the calories they need and more, but they're not getting enough nutrition, diet and disease experts say.
The government's new food pyramid, unveiled in April by the Agriculture Department, aims to improve the nation's health. It recommends that people eat fewer calories and more fruit, vegetables, lowfat milk and whole grains. It also tells people to avoid foods made with partially hydrogenated oils and sweeteners.
Federal farm programs, on the other hand, aim to maintain the financial health of American agriculture. Subsidies encourage an abundant supply of corn, wheat, rice and soybeans. Much of the corn and soybeans is fed to livestock. Some also is turned into nutrition-poor ingredients in processed food for people. For example, toaster pastries contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil that gives them a flaky texture, and they contain high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten their fruit filling. That translates to lots of calories, lots of artery-clogging fat and little or no fiber.
Such foods are becoming progressively cheaper, while the price of fruit and vegetables is rising, said Adam Drewnowski, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington.
"If we tell a family, you really ought to be eating more salads and fresh fruit, and this is a low-income family, we're essentially encouraging them to spend more money," Drewnowski said.
Many groups are pushing to link farm programs, which are due for an overhaul in 2007, more closely to government nutrition goals.
"Here we are as a society, talking constantly about obesity and diets, and yet our farm policies are not structured to encourage the kind of diet that the food pyramid suggests we should adopt," said Ralph Grossi, president of American Farmland Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates conservation on farm and ranch land.
Here is what the food pyramid says you should eat, based on a 2,000-calorie daily diet:
* 3 cups of fat-free or lowfat milk or cheese.
* 2 1/2 cups of vegetables.
* 2 cups of fruit.
* 6 ounces of grains.
* 5 1/2 ounces of meat or beans.
Your plate would look quite different if it matched farm subsidies. Estimated to cost $17 billion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the breakdown of farm subsidies includes:
* $7.3 billion for corn and other feed grains.
* $3.5 billion for cotton.
* $1.6 billion for soybeans.
* $1.5 billion for wheat.
* $1.5 billion for tobacco.
* $686 million for dairy.
* $626 million for rice.
* $271 million for peanuts.
CLICK TO READ More >
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| Monday, August 15, 2005 | |
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15 Aug 2005 @ 23:42
Web sperm sites crackdown planned
Proposals to regulate internet sites trading in human sperm and eggs are set to be unveiled this week by ministers.
The plans are part of a wider consultation on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA) 1990.
Websites currently fall outside existing regulation, and so do not have to comply with the same safety and quality procedures as clinics.
The head of one of the sites said he would welcome it being accredited.
"It's better to have a medical involvement... You could spend several thousand pounds - go through several cycles and not know that your fallopian tubes were blocked for example"
Professor Ian Craft
London Fertility Centre
Clinics which carry out IVF treatment are monitored by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
But there is no such control for websites which deliver sperm and kits for insemination at home, or which match egg donors and surrogate mothers.
Because the companies operate databases, rather than actual clinics, they do not come within reach of the HFEA.
This means they are not inspected or obliged to screen donors for genetic problems or sexually transmitted infections such as HIV, which has led to concerns about safety.
The Department of Health has said there are a number of other concerns regarding how internet sites operate, including the fact that donors do not have the same legal protection as donors at regulated clinics.
This means website donors are regarded as the legal parent, unlike those who donate via clinics.
The consultation will ask if the law should be changed to make sure internet companies meet the same standards as fertility clinics - or whether the practice should be banned altogether.
'Stringent testing'
Health Minister Caroline Flint said the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act had served well, but the government wanted to ensure legislation kept up with the latest scientific developments.
John Gonzalez, chief executive of the Man Not Included website, said his business did screen donors for HIV and other infections.
It offered a "simple route" for people who wanted to conceive, he added.
He said he supported "some sort of accreditation", although not at the same level as fertility clinics.
"That would be like trying to saying you could have the same regulations governing the use of a tricycle to those for a Ferrari."
'Several thousand pounds'
Professor Ian Craft of the London Fertility Centre - a private firm which offers IVF - told the BBC: "I think it's better to have a medical involvement - it's not just man not included, it's man and doctor not included.
"You could spend several thousand pounds - go through several cycles and not know that your fallopian tubes were blocked for example.
"There are always health risks if you're not screened in the same way that you're screened in an HFEA approved centre."
Officials acknowledge they can target internet companies only if they are based in the UK. More >
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15 Aug 2005 @ 23:39
Folic acid 'cuts dementia risk'
Eating plenty of folic acid - found in oranges, lemons and green vegetables - can halve the risk of Alzheimer's disease, a study has suggested.
US National Institute on Aging experts monitored diets over seven years.
They found adults who ate the daily recommended allowance of folates (B vitamin nutrients) had a reduced risk of the disease.
UK researchers said the study added weight to previous suggestions folates could reduce Alzheimer's risk.
The evidence for the benefit of other vitamins in changing the prospects for somebody at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease is not consistent; the evidence supporting folate intake is very convincing
Dr Susanne Sorensen, Alzheimer's Society
The study is published in Alzheimer's and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.
Folates have already been proven to reduce birth defects, and research suggests that they are beneficial to warding off heart disease and strokes.
They have also been shown to help modify levels of homocysteine - an amino acid found in the blood.
Previous research has linked high levels of homocysteine to an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.
Dietary benefits
In this latest US study, doctors analysed data on the diets of 579 people aged 60 or over from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging to identify the relationship between dietary factors and Alzheimer's disease risk.
None of the participants were showing signs of dementia when the study began.
Over the course of the study, participants provided detailed diaries documenting their eating habits, including supplement intakes and calorie amounts for typical seven-day periods.
Researchers examined the amounts of nutrients including vitamins E, C, B6, B12, carotenoids and folic acid in people's diets.
Fifty-seven of the original participants went on to develop Alzheimer's.
The researchers found those who consumed at least the recommended daily amount of 400 micrograms of folic acid had a 55% reduced risk of going on to develop Alzheimer's compared to those consuming under that amount.
However, most of those were taking folic acid supplements, suggesting they did not consume sufficient quantities of the nutrient in their diet.
It is estimated that the average person in Britain consumes around 200mcg per day.
The US study found no link between taking vitamin C, carotenoids (such as beta-carotene) or vitamin B-12 and decreased Alzheimer's risk.
'Further evidence'
Dr Maria Corrada, who led the research, said: "Although folates appear to be more beneficial than other nutrients, the primary message should be that overall healthy diets seem to have an impact on limiting Alzheimer's disease risk."
Dr Claudia Kawas, who also worked on the research, said: "It is still possible that other unmeasured factors also may be responsible for this reduction in risk.
"People with a high intake of one nutrient are likely to have a high intake of several other nutrients and may generally have a healthy lifestyle."
Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the UK's Alzheimer's Society, said: "This study adds further weight to evidence that folates reduce the risk of people developing Alzheimer's disease.
She added: "Whereas the evidence for the benefit of other vitamins in changing the prospects for somebody at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease is not consistent; the evidence supporting folate intake is very convincing."
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| Friday, August 12, 2005 | |
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12 Aug 2005 @ 05:08
Consumers & Youth Look at Toxic Chemicals in Conventional Cosmetics & Body Care Products
The Argus - (Fremont, California)
08/07/2005
Youth raise awareness of cosmetic chemicals
By Momo Chang, STAFF WRITER
One by one, the 20 teenagers take beauty products from their backpacks and
purses: chapstick, sunblock, scented lotion, eyeliner, mascara and
deodorant.
Joanna Chung, 15, counts more than 12 products she uses every day, from
shampoo and conditioner to moisturizer and lip gloss. She gets her hair dyed
about four times a year < by her mom, who is a hair colorist < and plans on
getting blond highlights before school starts, where she will be a junior at
San Leandro High School.
Joanna and her peers are a part of Sisters in Action for Reproductive
Empowerment, or SAFIRE, a group for young Asian-American women that began
meeting this summer as part of Oakland-based Asian Communities for
Reproductive Justice where they are examining chemical ingredients used in
cosmetics.
Many are surprised to learn the products they use every day could contain
toxic ingredients. "I didn't know that most of the products have chemicals
inside that could affect my body," said Joanna.
The cosmetic products they are examining are in a gray area < not food we
eat nor the air we breathe. They are products most people use every day, but
the FDA does not have authority to regulate cosmetic products.
ACRJ's toxins and cosmetics project fits in with a larger effort in the Bay
Area and across the country attempting to address such regulation.
"People might assume that everything they buy at the store is safe," said
Judi Shils, founder of the Marin Cancer Project.
Her group started organizing teenagers in Marin County and recently
convened a safe cosmetics summit, bringing together a group of like-minded
people, including policy-makers and cosmetic company representatives
interested in making safer products.
Shils said the good thing about cosmetics safety is that alternative
products exist, and unlike the many other toxins in the environment, is
something consumers can control. "You can make changes overnight," she said.
Cosmetic industry representatives said their cosmetics are safe.
"That is what we strive to do every day, to make sure that we provide
products that are safe," said Randy Pollack, lobbyist for the Cosmetic,
Toiletry and Fragrance Association.
On the legislative end, a bill by state Sen. Carole Migden, D-San
Francisco, would require cosmetic companies to disclose any hazardous
ingredients used in cosmetics products sold in California. Senate Bill 484
does not ban any ingredients, nor does it require any labeling, but is seen
as a step in the right direction by safe cosmetics advocates.
Migden's bill has faced a lot of opposition from the $35 billion cosmetics
industry, particularly from the CTFA, which spent $550,000 in 2004
successfully lobbying against legislation that would have banned a group of
chemical compounds called phthalates, found in nail polish, moisturizer,
hairspray and other products.
The industry relies on the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, a self-regulatory
body funded by the industry, but only about 10 percent of the ingredients
used on products sold on the market have been tested, according to safe
cosmetics advocates.
Carcinogens in personal care products
Chemical ingredients found in personal care products that are linked to
cancer or cause reproductive harm, including birth defects, according to the
state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment under California's
Environmental Protection Agency:
-Coal tar < is a carcinogen and contains a number of toxic substances such
as napthalene and benzopyrene. Coal tar may be found in shampoos and hair
dyes.
-Formaldehyde < is a carcinogen and is a disinfectant found in nail polish,
deodorant, soaps, shampoo and shaving cream.
-Phthalates < Di-exyl-hexyl phthalate, DEHP, is a carcinogen; di-butyl
phthalate has been linked to birth defects in the male reproductive system
and is currently under consideration to be added to the Prop. 65 list; can
be found in nail polish, deodorant, fragrance, hairspray, lotions.
-Propylene glycol mono-t-butyl < is a carcinogen that is found in nail
polish and other products.
-Toluene < causes birth defects or other reproductive harm, found mainly in
nail polish and hair dye.
CLICK TO READ More >
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| Tuesday, August 9, 2005 | |
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9 Aug 2005 @ 06:13
Plenty of Food--Yet the Poor Are Starving
From
Published on Monday, August 1, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
Plenty of Food - Yet the Poor are Starving by Jeevan Vasagar
TAHOUA, Niger -- In Tahoua market, there is no sign that times are hard. Instead, there are piles of red onions, bundles of glistening spinach, and pumpkins sliced into orange shards. There are plastic bags of rice, pasta and manioc flour, and the sound of butchers' knives whistling as they are sharpened before hacking apart joints of goat and beef.
A few minutes' drive from the market, along muddy streets filled with puddles of rainwater, there is the more familiar face of Niger. Under canvas tents, aid workers coax babies with spidery limbs to take sips of milk, or the smallest dabs of high-protein paste.
Wasted infants are wrapped in gold foil to keep them warm. There is the sound of children wailing, or coughing in machine-gun bursts.
"I cannot afford to buy millet in the market, so I have no food, and there is no milk to give my baby," says Fatou, a mother cradling her son Alhassan. Though he is 12 months old he weighs just 3.3kg (around 7lbs).
Fatou, a slender, childlike young woman in a blue shawl, ate weeds to survive before her baby was admitted to a treatment centre run by the medical charity MSF.
This is the strange reality of Niger's hunger crisis. There is plenty of food, but children are dying because their parents cannot afford to buy it. The starvation in Niger is not the inevitable consequence of poverty, or simply the fault of locusts or drought. It is also the result of a belief that the free market can solve the problems of one of the world's poorest
countries.
The price of grain has skyrocketed; a 100kg bag of millet, the staple grain, costs around 8,000 to 12,000 West African francs (around £13) last year but now costs more than 22,000 francs (£25). According to Washington-based analysts the Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet), drought and pests have only had a "modest impact" on grain production in Niger.
The last harvest was only 11% below the five-yearly average. Prices have been rising also because traders in Niger have been exporting grain to wealthier neighbouring countries, including Nigeria and Ghana.
Niger, the second-poorest country in the world, relies heavily on donors such as the EU and France, which favour free-market solutions to African poverty. So the Niger government declined to hand out free food to the starving. Instead, it offered millet at subsidised prices. But the poorest could still not afford to buy.
At Tahoua market the traders are reluctant to talk about the hunger crisis affecting their countrymen as they spread their wares under thatched verandas jutting out from mud buildings. Snatches of the Qur'an from tinny tape players compete with Bollywood songs and the growl of lorries bringing sacks of rice and flour.
One man opens his left palm to display half a dozen tiny scorpions, a living advert for the herbal scorpion antidote he is selling in his other hand.
Omar Mahmoud, 18, who helps sell rice at his father's shop, blames the famine on drought: "I know there is hunger. It is because there wasn't enough rain. The price of millet has gone up because there wasn't enough rain last year."
Last month around 2,000 protesters marched through the streets of the capital, Niamey, demanding free food. The government refused. The same month, G8 finance ministers agreed to write off the country's $2bn (£1.3bn) debt.
"The appropriate response would have been to do free food distributions in the worst-affected areas," said Johanne Sekkenes, head of MSF's mission in Niger.
"We are not speaking about free distribution to everybody, but to the most affected areas and the most vulnerable people."
The UN, whose World Food Programme distributes emergency supplies in other hunger-stricken parts of Africa, also declined to distribute free food. The reason given was that interfering with the free market could disrupt Niger's development out of poverty.
"I think an emergency response should have started much earlier," says Ms Sekkenes. "Now we find ourselves in this serious nutritional crisis, with children under five who are suffering."
Three weeks ago the Niger government, its foreign donor countries and the UN did a volte-face, jointly agreeing to allow the distribution of free food. Aid is now being flown in from Europe and trucked from neighbouring countries.
A total of 3.6 million people live in the regions of Niger affected by the food crisis. According to the most reliable estimate, some 874,000 people now need free food to survive.
The food aid will arrive as children weakened by hunger face a new battle against disease. It is the rainy season in Niger, and the water helps spread diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea.
In the MSF treatment centre, a three-year-old girl called Aminata is suffering from a grotesque eye condition. Her eyeball is so swollen with fluid that it has popped out of her skull and bulges from her face. The doctors call it a retinal blastoma, the result of an untreated eye infection.
"The thing in her eye started off very small," said Aminata's mother, Nisbou. "I did not have money for hospital, so I treated it with herbs, traditional medicine."
The hunger crisis has struck communities which depend on a mix of subsistence farming and herding for their livelihoods. The stories told by the women in the treatment centre show that their plight began when locusts ate their crop and cattle fodder, but spiralled when the prices of food in the market shot out of reach.
In desperate times, adults can get by on the poorest of foods, weeds and the stubble of their crops, but mothers cannot make breastmilk on this diet and infants cannot eat weeds.
Amid the anxiety, there are unexpected moments of gaiety in the feeding centre. Asked her age, Nisbou, who is probably about 20, replied: "I am 100 years old." She burst out laughing at her own joke, then looked weary again, and tucked her baby's deformed face under a lace shawl. © 2005 Guardian Newspapers Ltd. More >
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| Thursday, July 21, 2005 | |
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21 Jul 2005 @ 20:12
MMmmm.... old news but worth repeating. I want to encourage you though, if you eat chocolate make an effort to buy organic and fairtrade. Cocoa is one of the slave crops that is causing a lot of poverty and distress amongst farmers and plantation workers. Check this link out to find a list of fairtrade / organic chocolate manufatureres
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Dark Chocolate May Sweeten the Way to Health
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, July 18 (HealthDay News) -- If it tastes good it must be bad, so the saying goes, but delicious dark chocolate may be the exception to the rule.
In addition to all the pleasurable sensations associated with the sweet, it may also help lower blood pressure by an average of 10 percent while improving the body's sensitivity to insulin, researchers report.
However, this benefit applies only to dark chocolate, which is rich in flavonoids -- the same antioxidant compounds found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains that are known to help lower blood pressure, according to the report in the July 18 online edition of Hypertension.
"It turns out that chocolate is not only a pleasurable food, but it fits in quite nicely with the other healthy recommendations," said coauthor Jeffrey B. Blumberg, a professor of nutrition and a senior scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. "We found that three ounces of dark chocolate per day over several weeks reduced blood pressure in patients with essential hypertension and also seemed to provide a benefit on their insulin sensitivity," he added.
In their study, Blumberg's team had 10 men and 10 women eat 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate every day for 15 days. All of these people had high blood pressure and none were taking blood pressure medications.
First, the researchers had five of the men and five of the women eat dark chocolate while the others ate white chocolate, which contains no flavonoids. Then after another week of no chocolate, the groups "crossed over" and ate the other chocolate.
In the 15 days they were eating dark chocolate, individuals displayed an average 11.9 mm Hg drop in their systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) and a 8.5 mm Hg drop in diastolic blood pressure (the lower number). However, there was no drop in blood pressure when they ate flavonoid-free white chocolate, the researchers found.
Given these results, Blumberg believes that dark chocolate can be good for you. "Dark chocolate can be included as part of a healthful diet in patients who have hypertension," he said.
However, he cautioned that you can't just add it on top of your diet. "It's still a high-calorie food. You don't want to have excess calories or put on weight if you have hypertension," Blumberg said. "But as part of a healthful diet, it is something that you can enjoy and not feel you are violating the principles of a healthful diet."
Blumberg thinks that being able to enjoy some chocolate can also make it easier to stay on a healthy diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
One expert sees this study as part of a body of evidence that shows that chocolate is good for us. "Dark chocolate may be health-promoting," said Dr. David L. Katz, an associate clinical professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.
Katz, who is doing his own research into the benefits of chocolate, noted that chocolate is rich in not only antioxidants, but also magnesium and fiber. "The predominant saturated fat in dark chocolate, stearic acid, does not raise cholesterol or harm blood vessels," he added.
"Milk chocolate and white chocolate do not offer any known health benefits, and provide more calories, sugar, and potentially harmful oils than dark chocolate," Katz said, but "dark chocolate may well prove to be health food."
According to Katz, there are many unanswered questions about chocolate: What is the optimal dose of dark chocolate? How high does the cocoa content need to be to offer health benefits? Who in the population stands to benefit from eating dark chocolate? Are the benefits of liquid cocoa and solid chocolate the same? Can people eat chocolate without gaining weight?
"These answers, and others, will come in time," Katz said. "For now, it's clear that not all chocolate is created equal. But it's delicious to think that indulgence and health may both reside beneath the same wrapper."
Another expert is more cautious. Without more definitive data on whether chocolate promotes weight gain that might outweigh its benefits, Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, the director of the Metabolic Support Service at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is hesitant to recommend it as a health food. "I would never tell a heart patient or a diabetic to eat more dark chocolate," he said.
For patients who do not have these health problems, Mechanick is more lenient. "Having a treat every once in a while is fine," he said. "My preference is that you have dark chocolate, because it's looking like maybe dark chocolate may have some benefit. But there are no data to support that it's truly beneficial. It's still unproven that it's beneficial and there could be risks involved."
Mechanick also warned that the data about the benefits of dark chocolate should not mean replacing other high blood pressure therapy with chocolate. "Chocolate is not an alternative to traditional lifestyle changes or to taking medications to reduce risk of heart disease or to treat diabetes," he said.
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| Monday, July 18, 2005 | |
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18 Jul 2005 @ 17:59
More & More U.S. Chefs Going Organic
BY TERRA WALTERS, For The Capital
Sodium acid pyrophosphate. Sodium bisulfite. Monoglycerides. Diglycerides.
In the past few years, local residents have joined a legion of people across the United States who have raised concerns about such ingredients on the labels of the foods they eat. More and more, diners are going for natural foods with recognizable healthy components.
In the past few years, local residents have joined a legion of people across the United States who have raised concerns about such ingredients on the labels of the foods they eat. More and more, diners are going for natural foods with recognizable healthy components.
As a result, there is a growing consumer demand in our area for organic foods, and suppliers are scrambling to meet that demand.
Even though stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Roots and Wild Oats have long had their following, mainstream grocers are jumping on the organic food bandwagon in a big way.
Giant Food, for example, responded to customers' interest in natural and organic foods by introducing its own label called Nature's Promise, said Jamie Miller, Giant's public affairs manager.
Meanwhile, Safeway is in the early stages of a market-within-a-market plan that will put a separate Natural Foods Market within every store, said Greg Ten Eyck, director of public affairs.
Jerry Usilton of Super Fresh in Arnold said consumers' interest in organic products has really turned up the dial in recent months.
"We have to restock the organic strawberries much more often than the regular strawberries," said Mr. Usilton.
More and more chefs also are making use of organic foods and ingredients in the dishes they prepare.
Mark Macuirles, owner-chef at Pampered Palate, has his own organic garden near the Pasadena restaurant.
He estimates that he usually uses about 50 percent organic ingredients at his restaurant, but that percentage rises significantly during the summer when the garden is in full bloom.
He said his customers are particularly fond of the organic tomatoes from his garden.
Chef John "JJ" Joseph of Annapolis' new Metropolitan restaurant on West Street likes to use organic herbs and produce, which he buys from Eco Farms in Lanham. Organic lamb and salmon also are on the menu at at Metropolitan, which opened last month.
Going organic has its price.
Mark Schek, owner-chef of the Rooster Cafe in Elkridge, said he pays about twice as much for the ingredients in the exquisite dishes he creates at his restaurant.
Mr. Schek has several established sources of the foods he uses, and shops almost daily to take advantage of seasonal foods.
His commitment to organic foods, combined with his refusal to use any frozen foods, puts limitations on his ability to plan the menu, but he said his customers appreciate the distinct difference in the taste and appearance of the organic food.
Mr. Schek's more than 30 years of involvement with organic food gives him a unique perspective on the current buzz about them.
"When I first became interested in this it seemed that most organic farms were communes and the farmers were considered to be hippies," he said.
He said today's diners have more savvy about recognizing the importance of what they eat, and he finds the growing interest in organic foods to be gratifying.
Mr. Schek, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, said relying on organic food is not without its perils.
He recalls a time while cooking at a well-known French restaurant in Whitepost, Va., where the maitre de cuisine was dedicated to organic food. The chefs were raising piglets out back according to their own strict standards, and they awaited the day when the pork could be served to the restaurant's discerning clientele.
Imagine their chagrin when one evening, just as the staff was moving into high gear with preparations for opening hour, one of the servers ran into the kitchen shouting that the piglets had gotten loose.
A sign was hastily hung on the front door announcing that the opening would be delayed while the staff tried to catch the pigs. Chuckling, Mr. Schek recalled that some of the patrons actually joined in the chase.
Although they might stop short of chasing piglets through a meadow, it's clear that more and more Annapolitans are taking an interest in organic foods.
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What are organic foods?
Generally, organic food is grown without artificial pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified organisms. It can include food from a supermarket, a backyard garden or the wild.
Certified organic food is grown under criteria established by governmental regulations.
The Maryland Department of Agriculture has been certifying products as organic since 1991 and is accredited as an organic certifier by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has established a fixed set of standards that must be met before the organic label can be affixed.
For example, meat sold as organic must have come from animals that were fed 100 percent organic feed containing neither growth hormones nor animal byproducts - and they must have had access to the outdoors.
For organic produce, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides can't be used, nor can irradiation, genetic engineering, antibiotics or sewage sludge.
There are three levels of organic designation:
ø 100 percent organic, which is just that.
ø Organic, with 95 percent of the ingredients organically grown and the remaining 5 percent from non-organic ingredients that have been approved on the USDA's National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. The list identifies synthetic substances that may be used.
ø Made With Organic Ingredients, which requires 70 percent organic ingredients and the other 30 percent from the National L
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| Saturday, July 16, 2005 | |
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16 Jul 2005 @ 06:32
Canada Health Official Warns Consumers to "Limit Cell Phone Use" Especially by Children
The Toronto Star July 12, 2005
Limit cell use: Health officer
Long-term phone risks aren't yet known, says agency head WHO conference looking at global `precautionary' approach By TYLER HAMILTON AND ROB CRIBB STAFF REPORTERS
The country's top public health officer says Canadians should consider moderating their use of cellphones - and their children's - until science overcomes nagging uncertainties about long-term health effects.
Dr. David Butler-Jones, in opening remarks yesterday to a three-day conference hosted by the World Health Organization, told more than 100 academics, public health officials and scientists from around the world that constantly changing technology has created a moving target, leaving scientists playing a game of catch-up.
"Our technology has passed our ability to understand what biological effects are positive or negative," said Butler-Jones, who heads the new Public Health Agency of Canada, often described as the Canadian equivalent to the United States Surgeon General.
"What would be the message? The message would be that moderation is a good thing," he said in an interview after his presentation. "Talking for two hours every night on cellphones, would I advise that? No." Butler-Jones said use of the devices in childhood could also have an impact on obesity and the way children interact socially with family and friends.
His comments, the first he has publicly made on possible health risks related to cellphones, follow a weekend Toronto Star investigation into the wireless industry's new marketing focus on children and what some scientists view as potential health effects that might take decades to prove or disprove as a problem.
Among the new crop of child-targeted phones already on store shelves or on their way are devices branded with such popular images as Barbie, Disney characters and Hilary Duff.
The conference, held in partnership with the University of Ottawa, is looking at the merits of what's often called a "precautionary approach" to public health policy.
The idea is to develop an international framework that member countries can adopt in cases of scientific uncertainty about potential health risks, such as cellphone frequencies or radiation from power lines.
"It's just good public hygiene to be precautionary," said Dr. Michael Repacholi, head of the radiation and environmental health unit of the World Health Organization. "Is there something we should be saying that we're not?"
Health Canada has remained quiet on the issue of children and the potential health risks of cellphones even as several European health experts and authorities have issued precautionary statements and messages to parents.Magda Havas, a professor of environmental studies at Trent University who has studied the impact of low frequencies on human health, said many in the scientific community outright dismiss studies that have shown biological effects on lab animals and cell cultures, effects that may hint at possible health risks.
"I think once again the health authorities aren't looking at the science, the same way they didn't with tobacco and asbestos," she said at the conference yesterday. "My concern is that this is actually going to hurt the cellphone industry. If they don't clean up their act ..., they're going to produce a generation that's so sensitive to these frequencies they won't be able to use the product."
She said evidence is already growing that certain people have "electrical hypersensitivity."
Joel Tickner, a research professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and an international expert on the precautionary approach, was scheduled to speak at the conference but backed out, saying the agenda has been watered down.
"Precaution is controversial; the cellphone industry doesn't want to hear about it," said Tickner, adding the industry doesn't want to be constrained from marketing its products. "As long as there's uncertainty in the science, we wait and don't do anything, which is unfortunate."
Peter Barnes, chief executive of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, says his industry's products are safe, and no links have been proven between the devices and health effects. He says all cellphones sold in Canada "meet or exceed" all emission standards set by Industry Canada, which acts on the guidance of Health Canada experts.
The overwhelming majority of readers who contacted the Star in connection with the series said Health Canada should publicly state the potential risks to Canadians, and industry should back off from its new marketing focus on children.
"Health Canada's minister and bureaucrats should be in the business of protecting the health of us taxpayers who pay their salaries rather than nesting in the hip pocket of the cellular communications industry, whose primary business is selling mobile phones," said Jane Holmes, who lives in Brighton, Ont.
Peterborough resident Matt Keefer said the wireless industry is "crossing the line" by marketing to children.
"Government needs to step in and protect the interests of our youngsters by making it illegal for companies to qualify them as consumers."
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| Sunday, July 10, 2005 | |
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10 Jul 2005 @ 15:39
America's Obesity Epidemic: Big Food Buys Politicians to Exempt Itself from Damages
From: The New York Times
July 7, 2005
The Food Industry Empire Strikes Back
By MELANIE WARNER
Late-night comedians had a field day in the summer of 2002 when a lawsuit
accusing McDonald's of making two teenage customers in New York fat and
unhealthy was filed.
But thousands of restaurant owners were not amused: Pelman v. McDonald's
was the second time in a month that lawyers had tried to hold food companies
responsible for America's obesity crisis.
Food and restaurant companies, fearing they would be hammered with enormous
judgments, as the tobacco industry was, immediately began fighting back,
waging an aggressive campaign to make it impossible for anyone to sue them
successfully for causing obesity or obesity-related health problems.
Almost three years later, they have had astounding success. Twenty states
have enacted versions of a "commonsense consumption" law. They vary slightly
in substance, but all prevent lawsuits seeking personal injury damages
related to obesity from ever being tried in their courts. Another 11 states
have similar legislation pending.
Although plaintiffs' lawyers are confident there are ways around the new
state laws, the measures, along with a class-action overhaul bill President
Bush signed into law this year, will probably make it harder for lawyers in
obesity cases to win the kind of large awards seen in tobacco cases.
The National Restaurant Association, based in Washington, and its 50 state
organizations, which represent large chains like McDonald's and small
independent businesses, led the campaign. In most states, lobbyists for food
companies and restaurants helped write the legislation and did much of the
legwork in state capitols.
Restaurant owners and food company executives personally visited state
lawmakers, testified at hearings and steered campaign contributions to
pivotal lawmakers. Executives from Kraft and Coca-Cola showed up in Texas,
for instance, to lobby for that state's commonsense consumption bill, which
was signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry last month.
According to data from the Institute on Money in State Politics, a
nonpartisan research group based in Helena, Mont., in the 2002 and 2004
election cycles, the food and restaurant industry gave a total of $5.5
million to politicians in the 20 states that have passed laws shielding
companies from obesity liability.
Adoption of commonsense consumption laws by almost half the states reveals
how an organized and impassioned lobbying effort, combined with a receptive
legislative climate, can quickly alter the legal framework on a major public
health issue like obesity.
Consumer advocates, who knew about the state efforts but were preoccupied
trying to prevent similar measures from being enacted on a national level,
are not pleased. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for
Science in the Public Interest, calls it "shameful" that food companies are
trying to get special exemptions from lawsuits.
"If someone is saying that a 64-ounce soda at 7-Eleven contributed to
obesity, that person should have his day in court," Mr. Jacobson said. "If
it's frivolous, the courts are accustomed to throwing those out."
CLICK TO READ More >
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| Wednesday, July 6, 2005 | |
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6 Jul 2005 @ 16:25
U.S. Food Giants Fund Fake Consumer Group to Say " Worrying AboutObesity is Unpatriotic"
From: THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER
JULY 4, 2004:
GIRTH OF A NATION
PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group financed by Coca-Cola, Wendy's and Tyson Foods, among others, has a Fourth of July message for you: worrying about the rapid rise in American obesity is unpatriotic.
"Far too few Americans," declares the center's Web site, "remember that the
Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and
drink. ... Now it seems that food liberty --- just one of the many important
areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots --- is
constantly under attack."
It sounds like a parody, but don't laugh. These people are blocking efforts
to help America's children.
I've been looking into the issues surrounding obesity because it plays an
important role in health care costs. According to a study recently published
in the journal Health Affairs, the extra costs associated with caring for
the obese rose from two percent of total private insurance spending in 1987
to 11.6 percent in 2002. The study didn't cover Medicare and Medicaid, but
it's a good bet that obesity-related expenses are an important factor in the
rising costs of taxpayer-financed programs, too. Fat is a fiscal issue.
But it's also, alas, a partisan issue.
First, let's talk about what isn't in dispute: around 1980, Americans
started getting rapidly fatter.
Some pundits still dismiss American pudge as a benign "affliction of
affluence," a sign that people can afford to eat tasty foods, drive cars and
avoid hard physical labor. But all of that was already true by 1980, which
is roughly when Americans really started losing the battle of the bulge.
The great majority of us (yes, me too) are now overweight, and the
percentage of adults considered obese has doubled, to more than 30%. Most
alarmingly, obesity, once rare among the young, has become common among
adolescents, and even among children.
Is that a bad thing? Well, obesity clearly increases the risks of heart
disease, diabetes, back problems and more. And the cost of treating these
weight-related diseases is an important factor in rising health care
spending.
So there is, understandably, a movement to do something about rising
obesity, especially among the young. Bills that would require schools to
serve healthier lunches, remove vending machines selling sweets and soda,
and so on have been introduced in a number of state legislatures. By the
way, Britain --- with the second-highest obesity among advanced countries
--- has introduced stringent new guidelines on school meals.
But even these mild steps have run into fierce opposition from
conservatives. Why?
In part, this is yet another red-blue cultural conflict. On average, people
living outside metropolitan areas are heavier than urban or suburban
residents, and people in the South and Midwest are heavier than those on the
coasts. So it's all too easy for worries about America's weight to come off
as cultural elitism.
More important, however, is the role of the food industry. The debate over
obesity, it turns out, is a lot like the debate over global warming. In both
cases, major companies protect their profits not only by lobbying against
policies they don't like, but also by financing advocacy groups devoted to
debunking research whose conclusions they don't like.
The pro-obesity forces --- or, if you prefer, the anti-anti-obesity forces
--- make their case in part by claiming that America's weight gain does no
harm. There was much glee on the right when a new study, using data from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared to reject the
conventional view that obesity has a large negative effect on life
expectancy.
But as officials from the C.D.C. have pointed out, mortality isn't the only
measure of health. There's no question that obesity plays an important role
in many diseases that diminish the quality of life and, crucially, require
expensive treatment.
The growing availability of such treatment probably explains why the strong
relationship between obesity and mortality visible in data from the 1970's
has weakened. But the cost of treating the obese is helping to break the
back of our health care system.
So what can we do?
The first step is to recognize the industry-financed campaign against doing
anything for the cynical exercise it is. Remember, nobody is proposing that
adult Americans be prevented from eating whatever they want. The question is
whether big companies will have a free hand in their efforts to get children
into the habit of eating food that's bad for them. [ July 4, 2005 ]
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| Saturday, July 2, 2005 | |
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2 Jul 2005 @ 20:19
This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital.
It seems to be on a siilaer subject as the post I made earlier from John Sherman.
It was sent by a medical doctor - Make sure to read what is in the closing
statement AFTER THE POEM.
SLOW DANCE
Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,"Hi"
You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't las! t.
When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift....
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.
--------------------
FORWARDED
E-MAILS ARE TRACKED TO OBTAIN THE TOTAL COUNT.
Dear All:
PLEASE pass this mail on to everyone you know -
even to those you don't know!
It is the request of a special girl who
will soon leave this world due to cancer.
This young girl has 6 months left to live, and as her dying wish,
She wanted to send a letter telling everyone to live
their life to the fullest, since she never will.
She'll never make it to prom, graduate from high
school, or get married and have a family of her own.
By you sending this to as many people as possible,
you can give her and her family a littl! e hope,
because wi th every name that this is sent to,
The American Cancer Society
will donate 3 cents per name to her treatment and recovery plan.
(Mmmm...but how do they track this?)
One guy sent this to 500 people! So I know that we can
at least send it to 5 or 6 ---
(just think ,it could be you one day).
PLEASE PASS ON AS A LAST REQUEST
Dr. Dennis Shields, Professor
Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology
1300 Morris Park Avenue
Bronx, New York 10461 More >
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| Friday, June 24, 2005 | |
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24 Jun 2005 @ 17:47
ABC News Killed Interviews with Robert Kennedy on Mercury in Children's Vaccines
Posted 6/24/05
ABC corporate executives at the network's highest levels ordered three interviews with Robert Kennedy Jr. pulled from ABC News programming.
The interviews all centered around Mr. Kennedy's investigation of thimerosal, a mercury based preservative, used in vaccines given to children and believed to be responsible for increasing cases of neurological diseases including autism.
Mr. Kennedy's interviews were slated for prime shows ABC World News Tonight, 20/20, and Good Morning America. Salon.com and Rolling Stone Magazine have exclusive rights to Mr. Kennedy's article and they embargoed his story on other networks because of his arrangement with ABC.
Mr. Kennedy's article was published today only in Rolling Stone and on Salon.com. The article links the CDC, FDA and Bill Frist to major drug companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth, and Aventis Pasteur that continued to include thimerosal in their vaccines despite studies showing the damage - and death - it caused in humans. In the 1990s the CDC and FDA recommended three additional children's vaccines laced with thimerosal, totaling twenty two federally recommended immunizations. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 from pharmaceutical companies, tacked on the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" as a rider to a 2002 homeland security bill. The protection act was later repealed by Congress after a public outcry. Senator Frist is making another attempt to harbor big pharmaceuticals from families with infected children.
He is appropriating the war on terror again by attaching a provision to the "Protecting America in the War On Terror" bill introduced to Congress this past January.
A 2001 Emory University Study watched ABC, CBS, and NBC in the Atlanta area for one week and found 907 advertisements for over-the-counter drugs and 428 advertisements for prescription drugs.
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| Monday, June 20, 2005 | |
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20 Jun 2005 @ 05:49
Big Pharma Knowingly Injected Infants with Mercury-Laced Vaccines that Have Led to an Autism Epidemic
Deadly immunity
When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
June 16, 2005 | In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal
-- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.
"We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done at all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."
In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.
Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to 11-year-olds.
The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003 -- but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.
Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self protection" and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"
CLICK TO READ More >
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| Thursday, June 9, 2005 | |
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9 Jun 2005 @ 17:49
Bush Administration Lets Big Tobacco off the Hook Despite Killing Millions of Americans
washingtonpost.com
Tobacco Escapes Huge Penalty U.S. Seeks $10 Billion Instead of $130 Billion
By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer June 8, 2005
After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry yesterday by asking for less than 8 percent of the expected penalty.
As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.
Before it was cut, the cessation program was the most significant financial penalty still available to the government as part of its litigation, which had been the largest civil racketeering and conspiracy case in U.S. history. The government contended that six tobacco companies engaged in a 50-year conspiracy to defraud and addict smokers and then conceal the dangers of
cigarettes.
"We were very surprised," said Dan Webb, lawyer for Altria Group's Philip Morris USA and the coordinating attorney in the case. "They've gone down from $130 billion to $10 billion with absolutely no explanation. It's clear the government hasn't thought through what it's doing."
The Justice Department offered little explanation for the figure. Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum Jr. and members of the trial team declined to answer questions as the court session ended. In 2001, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft tried to settle or shelve the government's racketeering case against the industry before a public outcry forced its revival.
"It feels like a political decision to take into consideration the tobacco companies' financial interest rather than health interests of 45 million addicted smokers," said William V. Corr, director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The government proved its case, but the levels of funding are a shadow of the cessation treatment program that the government's own expert witness recommended."
Sources and government officials close to the case said the trial lawyers wanted to request $130 billion for smoking-cessation programs but were pressured by leaders in the attorney general's office, particularly McCallum, to make the cut. Arguments within the Justice Department continued behind the scenes through yesterday morning, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the controversy over the matter.
When the case began in 2004, the government sought to force the tobacco industry to pay $280 billion in allegedly ill-gotten profits. But in February, a federal appeals court ruled that the administration could not seek that penalty.
Michael Fiore, the government expert who recommended $130 billion for cessation programs, is a medical professor and director of a tobacco research center who chaired the subcommittee on tobacco cessation in the Department of Health and Human Services' Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health.
His testimony was widely considered to represent the sum the government was seeking for a cessation program, though Justice Department lawyers had made no formal demand until yesterday.
The strength of the government's case hinged on a large collection of internal tobacco company documents, many of which were never before made public. The government began its case in September by showing on an oversized projection screen the written memos of tobacco executives and scientists as they described their plans to keep customers in the dark about whether their habit was addictive or dangerous and to encourage young people to smoke.
Facing those same internal documents in another suit,the tobacco industry in 1998 agreed to pay $246 billion to settle a lawsuit filed by states to recover their costs for the medical treatment of smokers.
Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson said the department could ask the court to force the industry to pay more in future years for cessation programs, which include a staffed help line for smokers, treatment programs and possibly free medications. She suggested the penalty was designed to comply with the recent appeals court ruling that such penalties could not be used to punish past fraud. Sources close to the case said the cessation program is either a valid penalty or it's not; the dollar figure should not change that.
"This proposal has been designed to be a forward-looking remedy to prevent and restrain future wrongful conduct consistent with the recent Circuit Court opinion in this case," she said.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who is presiding over the case, is expected to decide in the next few months whether the government proved its case of an industry-wide conspiracy and whether to order any penalties against the companies. Among the other remedies the government is still seeking are an industry-funded anti-smoking educational campaign and a court injunction to stop the companies from targeting youth in their marketing.
The government also wants the judge to appoint a court monitor to watch over industry practices and ensure that tobacco companies do not commit fraud in the future. Kessler has repeatedly expressed concern about how such proposals would work.
Defendants in the case include Philip Morris USA; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Brown & Williamson, which have merged to form Reynolds American Inc.; British American Tobacco; the Lorillard Tobacco unit of Loew's Corp.; and Vector Group Ltd.'s Liggett Group Inc. They began their closing arguments today.
Anti-smoking advocates assailed the decision as a self-inflicted blow that would help the tobacco companies' bottom line and miss a well-earned chance to help American smokers.
William B. Schultz, a former Justice Department official who oversaw the lawsuit under the Clinton administration, said that "it's disappointing, to say the least, that at the final stages of this litigation they have pulled their punches in such a significant way. This is the loss of a significant opportunity to advance public health. Smoking is the number one preventable disease. It kills 400,000 people a year."
Lead government attorney Sharon Eubanks had summed up the trial early yesterday, saying the government had proved the industry engaged in a "decades-long pattern of . . . misrepresentations, half-truths, deceptions and lies that continue to this day."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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| Tuesday, May 24, 2005 | |
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24 May 2005 @ 19:49
Connecticut May Become First State to Pass Strict Ban on Junk Food in Schools
Published on Monday, May 23, 2005 by the Associated Press
by Noreen Gillepsie
Lawmakers want to make sure Connecticut students aren't part of the Pepsi Generation. Connecticut is on the verge of adopting the most far-reaching ban in the country on soda and junk food in public schools, in an effort to curb rising rates of childhood obesity.
Similar but weaker proposals have been introduced in at least 17 states this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Policies are on the books in a few states, such as Arkansas and California. Advocates say Connecticut's ban would be the strongest because it is so broad, applying to all grades and all school sites where food is sold. "Connecticut would be the first state to apply those standards to high schools," said Margo Wootan, director of nutritional policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Most of the recently passed policies are limited in that they only apply to elementary and middle schools."
Last week, lawmakers in the House voted 88-55 after an eight-hour debate to pass a law banning soda and junk food in cafeterias, vending machines and school stores. It also requires 20 minutes of physical activity outside of gym for children in kindergarten through fifth grade.
The bill heads to the Senate this week where leaders expect it to pass.
"By no stretch of the imagination does it solve all the problems, but it's very important that we provide the right models in our schools," said Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr.
The topic was one of the most contested issues of the session. The lengthy debate outlasted discussions about the death penalty and a bill that allowed Connecticut to grant same-sex civil unions. Lawmakers confessed their personal weight problems and many lawmakers openly drank soda during the debate.
Soft drink companies lobbied fiercely against the bill, and many high schools worried they would lose money if sodas disappeared. In the end, weary legislators allowed a compromise that permits high school sales of diet soda and sports drinks on a limited basis.
"Diet sodas, while not particularly good for children, have zero sugar content and therefore do not contribute to the weight problem that we're trying to address," said Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford.
Opponents argue that the legislation crossed a line, implementing a "Big Brother"-style mandate better handled by local school districts. Rep. Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, said the legislation wouldn't affect the obesity crisis when school menus offer selections such as cheeseburgers, pizza, chicken nuggets and nachos.
"How many of you will stand there and say, 'If you have your share of sloppy joes and quesadillas, you're not going to put on a few pounds?'" Cafero said.
Many state schools have already taken steps on their own. Last year, New Haven Public Schools decided to make Nathan Hale Elementary School junk-free, taking soda out of vending machines and serving baked versions of french fries and tater tots. The initiative expanded this year.
Some are unconvinced the initiative is the right way to approach the obesity problem. Rep. Konstantinos Diamantis, D-Bristol, said he weighed 240 pounds as an eighth-grader and couldn't play sports because of weight
limits. He lost the weight through willpower.
"There's a host of things that go into it," he said. "Banning a particular food isn't going to teach a child a proper form of nutrition."
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24 May 2005 @ 19:42
Super Sized Americans: The Truth About McDonald's & Children
Common Dreams
Published on Sunday, May 22, 2005 by the lndependent/UK
The Truth about McDonald's and Children by Morgan Spurlock
Every waking moment of our lives, we swim in an ocean of advertising, all of it telling us the same thing: consume, consume. And then consume some more. The epidemic of overconsumption begins with the things we put in our mouths. The United States is the fattest nation on earth. Sixty-five per cent of American adults are overweight; 30 per cent are obese. In the decade between 1991 and 2001, obesity figures almost doubled.
But the truly shocking thing is that we've taught our kids how to be fat, too. Obesity rates in American children remained stable throughout the 1960s, but they began to climb in the 1970s. In the past 20 years, the rate of obesity has doubled in children and trebled in teenagers. Kids are starting to clock in as obese as early as the age of two. If we find that surprising, we shouldn't.
During the McMonth I endured for Super Size Me, in which I ate every meal at McDonald's, every day - taking up the option to have a Supersize portion whenever I was offered it - I couldn't get over how many kids there were in the restaurants almost any time that I walked in. Children with their parents. Gaggles of them stopping off for breakfast or for a pre-dinner snack in their cute little school uniforms. Kids in all the play areas. Kids as little as three and four having Happy Meal McBirthday parties. Or, in a McDonald's in Houston, at 9am, a mother with her two very overweight kids who, having just finished their fat-filled breakfasts, were now eating hot fudge sundaes.
Ray Kroc, the man behind the McDonald's empire, understood from Day McOne that youngsters were his target market. He had no sooner bought the company from the McDonald brothers than Ronald McDonald was brought in to attract the kiddies to the burgers and shakes.
The first Ronald was the TV weatherman Willard Scott in his younger, but apparently not leaner, days. Scott had been doing Bozo the Clown on local television. When the show was canceled, an enterprising McDonald's franchisee asked him to come up with a clown figure that would lure the kids into the restaurant. Kroc saw it, liked it and extended the idea to the whole country.
But first he canned Scott. Kroc understood the negative publicity implications of an icon who looks as though he's been eating too much of the company's food. To this day you'll never see Ronald McDonald eating the food; not in any commercial. He dances and sings, grins and giggles, and smiles at the kids while they stuff their faces, but he never touches the grub. Why? Presumably because, as the late Eazy-E said in the song "The
Dopeman": "Don't get high off your own supply."
Kroc also understood the value of promoting McDonald's as a caring, family-friendly sort of place, a place with a heart, not heart disease.
Early on, he began linking McDonald's with various children's charities. One executive told John F Love, author of McDonald's: Behind the Arches: "It was an inexpensive, imaginative way of getting your name before the public and building a reputation to offset the image of selling 15-cent hamburgers. It was probably 99 per cent commercial."
Thus the Ronald McDonald House Charities were born. They have now provided housing (and McMeals) for the families of more than two million seriously ill children. Never mind the fact that today an increasing number of children are going into hospital because of eating-related illnesses.
Talking of which, one of the most shocking things I saw during my McMonth was a McDonald's in Texas Children's Hospital - a hospital that is now stapling obese children's stomachs. To me, that seemed utterly irresponsible, a flagrant violation of the doctor's pledge of "Primum non nocere" (First, do no harm). In fact, hospitals across the US have fast-food franchises in them. The top-ranked pediatric hospital in the country, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has a McDonald's outlet. Why shouldn't there be one in Houston?
Recently, a combination of good information and bad publicity has encouraged some hospitals to reconsider their food-service contracts. But Ronald won't always leave without a fight. The Cleveland Clinic, for example, wants to rid America's leading heart hospital of its McDonald's.
But according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer of 22 November last year, the clinic's chief executive, Dr Toby Cosgrove, received a letter from a McDonald's corporate vice-president called Marty Ranft, which "defended the franchise, and vowed ... that 'McDonald's has no intention of terminating' the remaining 10 years on its lease".
The doctors at Texas Children's Hospital told me they had young patients who were dying of cancer, and it was hard to get them to eat anything. At least these poor kids would eat some fries, take a bite of a burger: food they were familiar with. It was junk that they had been eating all their
lives.
But it's not enough to get young people to come to your restaurants; you have to get them to keep on coming back. McDonald's operates something like 8,000 Playlands around America. They're especially attractive to children in neighborhoods in which playgrounds are scarce. Burger King has about 3,200 of its own. Then there's the Happy Meal, launched in the US in 1979. It cost a buck in those days. Inside a cardboard box with a circus theme, children found a McDoodler stencil, a puzzle book, a McWrist wallet, an ID bracelet and McDonaldland character erasers.
The meal-plus-toys packaging proved to be an instant hit, with the first Star Trek Happy Meals that very year. Soon, toy versions of all your favorite McDonald's mascots were included: Ronald, Grimace, Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, Big Mac, Birdie and Captain Crook. Later, toys would be themed for tie-ins with brands and films such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, The Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo and so on. By 2003, Happy Meals accounted for about 20 per cent of all meals sold (about $3.5bn in annual revenue).
And let's not forget the Mighty Kids Meal, introduced in America in 2001. McDonald's realized that by the time kids were eight or nine years old they felt they had outgrown the Happy Meal. Those were for little boys and girls. So the Mighty Kids Meal comes in a slightly more "grown-up" package. It offers bigger meals: a double cheeseburger, double hamburger or a six-piece chicken McNuggets, but still comes with a toy. We may be older, but we still like toys.
In 2004, McDonald's celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Happy Meal with a year-long barrage of promotions and advertisements. The company also launched a version for adults, the Go Active! Adult Happy Meal. This included a salad, a bottle of water, a book that told you how to exercise, and an adult "toy": a Stepometer, so you could measure how few steps it was from the counter to your car.
Good old Ronald. Under his smiling, caring guidance, an entire generation of overweight American adults who grew up following him into their local McDonald's are now raising their own overweight children to follow in their heavy footsteps.
Recently, the magazine Advertising Age cited Ronald McDonald as No 2 on its list of top 10 advertising icons of the 20th century. Who was No 1? It was the Marlboro Man.
* * *
Adults bear an enormous responsibility for the obesity epidemic among children. Yet there's also no question that even conscientious parents and guardians, who really do try to do well by kids and teach them healthy life choices, are not playing on anything like a level field. They're going up against billions and billions of dollars spent every year in corporate marketing, all aimed at teaching kids to make exactly the opposite sorts of
choices.
McDonald's and the other fast-food chains make no secret of the fact that kids are their primary targets. "We have living proof of the long-lasting quality of early brand loyalties in the cradle-to-grave marketing at McDonald's, and how well it works," James McNeal, a well-known children's marketing guru and the author of Kids As Customers, has said. "We start taking children in for their first and second birthdays, and on and on, and eventually they have a great deal of preference for that brand. Children can carry that with them through a lifetime."
Today, corporations spend more than $15bn every year on marketing, advertising and promotions meant to program American children to consume, consume and consume some more. Why? Because they realize that children not only have more expendable income of their own, but they influence how their parents spend their hard-earned bucks, too - to the tune of more than $600bn a year. What do children choose to buy with all that cash? What do you think?
Nor is it just their current expenditure that corporations want a slice of: they're looking at the long term. Brand logos for all sorts of crap now turn up on nursery blankets, crib toys and mobiles. In my office, I have a collection of baby bottles shaped like little bottles of 7 Up, DR Pepper and Pepsi. I found them on eBay. When we contacted the California manufacturer, Munchkin Bottling, they told us they had produced these things for a few years in the mid-1990s. They'd developed the concept themselves, then licensed the various drinks companies' names and logos. Think about the associations formed in infants' minds by these things. Think about the mentality that sees nothing wrong in marketing them.
Not to be outdone, McDonald's marketing genius M Lawrence Light - the guy who rolled out the "I'm lovin' it" campaign - wants to surround the youth of the world with McDonald's brand images. "Light wants to turn everything he can into an ad for McDonald's," wrote Business Week magazine in July 2004. "He's pushing the Oak Brook chain to open clothing shops so kids will walk around in T-shirts with the Golden Arches logo, just as they already do with Old Navy or Disney. He envisions a deal with the National Basketball Association to play the five-note tagline of the 'I'm lovin' it' ad in the stadium every time a player shoots a three-pointer. He's even toying with making the jingle available over the internet so it could be downloaded as a mobile phone ring tone."
Light chose China as the market in which to open the first McKids store. "There will be 25 McKids stores there," he told Business Week. "It's got a line of toys, a line of clothes, a line of videos, all directed at young kids." Why China? Because after years of communist rule, these children can't get enough American products. A company like McDonald's can easily swoop in and corrupt young consumers from the start.
This is adapted from 'Don't Eat This Book', by Morgan Spurlock..
© 2005 Independent Newspapers
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| Tuesday, April 26, 2005 | |
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26 Apr 2005 @ 16:49
THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS
by David Myers
Yes! Magazine
Summer 2004 Issue
[link]
What is the good life? The old American Dream offers an answer: It's
individually achieved affluence. It's the indulgences promised by magazine
sweepstakes: a 40-foot yacht, a deluxe motor home, a personal housekeeper.
("Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't spending it right," proclaims
a Lexus ad.) In a phrase, it's life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness.
Does money indeed buy happiness? Few YES! readers would answer yes. But ask
another question -- "Would a little more money make you a little happier? --
and many readers will sheepishly nod. There is, we assume, a connection
between fiscal fitness and feeling fine, an assumption that feeds what
Juliet Schor has called the "cycle of work and spend" -- working more to buy
more. According to one 1990s Gallup Poll, one in two women, two in three
men, and four in five people earning more than $75,000 a year say they would
like to be richer.
But we delude ourselves. The good life springs less from earning one's first
million than from loving and being loved, from developing the traits that
mark happy lives, from finding connection and meaningful hope in faith
communities, and from experiencing "flow" in work and recreation.
Rising materialism
Materialism surged during the 1970s and 1980s, as evident in the annual
UCLA/American Council on Education (ACE) survey of nearly a quarter million
entering collegians. The proportion considering it "very important or
essential" that they become "very well-off financially" skyrocketed from 40
to 74 percent, flip-flopping with the shrinking numbers who considered it
very important or essential to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life."
Materialism was up, spirituality down.
What a change in values. In the recent UCLA/ACE surveys, "very well-off
financially" has been the top ranked of 19 rated goals, outranking "becoming
an authority in my own field," "helping others in difficulty," and "raising
a family." And it's not just collegians. Asked by Roper pollsters to
identify what makes "the good life," 38 percent of Americans in 1975 and 63
percent in 1996 chose "a lot of money."
In Luxury Fever, economist Robert Frank reports that, with more people
having more money to spend, late-1990s spending on luxury goods was growing
four times as fast as overall spending. Thousand-dollar-a-night suites at
the Palm Beach Four Seasons Hotel were booked months ahead for weddings, as
were $5000-a-night suites at Aspen. The number of America's 100-foot yachts
doubled to 5,000 compared to a decade ago, and each may cost more than
$10,000 per hour of use. Cars costing more than $30,000 (in 1996 dollars)
increased during the 1990s from 7 to 12 percent of vehicles sold.
Does such unsustainable consumption enable the good life? Does being
well-off make for well-being? Would people -- would you -- be happier if you
could exchange a modest lifestyle for one with a world-class home
entertainment system, winter skiing from your condo along the Aspen slopes,
and being wined and dined on executive class travel? Social psychology
theory and research offer some clear answers.
Are rich people happier?
To a modest extent, yes, rich people are happier. Especially in poor
countries, such as India, being relatively well-off does make for greater
well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, and some sense of control over our
lives.
But in affluent countries, the link between wealth and self-reported
well-being is "surprisingly weak," notes researcher Ronald Inglehart. Once
able to afford life's necessities, more and more money provides diminishing
additional returns.
"People who go to work in their overalls and on the bus are just as happy,
on the average, as those in suits who drive to work in their own Mercedes,"
observes David Lykken, summarizing his own studies of happiness. Even the
very rich -- for example, the Forbes 100 wealthiest Americans in a 1980s
survey by psychologist Ed Diener and his colleagues -- are only slightly
happier than average.
Over time, does our happiness rise with our affluence? A recent windfall
from an inheritance, a surging economy, or a lottery win does provide a
temporary jolt of joy. But as soon as one adapts to the new wealth, the
euphoria subsides.
If personal happiness does not enduringly rise with our rising personal
affluence, does a rising economic tide lift our collective happiness? Are we
happier than in 1957, when economist John Galbraith was describing the
United States as The Affluent Society?
Compared to then, today's America is the doubly affluent society -- with
doubled real incomes (thanks partly to the doubling of married women's
employment) and double what money buys. Americans today own about twice as
many cars per person, eat out more than twice as often, and commonly enjoy
big screen color TVs, microwave ovens, home computers, air conditioning,
Post-it notes, and gobs of other goodies. Materially, these are the best of
times.
So, believing that it is "very important" to be very well-off financially,
and having seen our affluence ratchet upward little by little over four
decades, are we now happier?
We are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are "very
happy" has declined slightly, from 35 to 30 percent. We are twice as rich
and no happier. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide
rate has more than doubled, and increasingly our teens and young adults are
plagued by depression.
I have called this soaring wealth and shrinking spirit "the American
paradox." More than ever, we at the end of the last century were finding
ourselves with big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale,
secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living
but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but
yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In
an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger.
These facts of life lead us to a startling conclusion: Our becoming better
off materially has not made us better off psychologically. In the U.S.,
Europe, and Japan, affluence has not purchased the good life. The conclusion
startles because it challenges modern materialism: Economic growth in
affluent countries has provided no apparent boost to human morale.
It is further striking that those who strive most for wealth tend to live
with lower well-being, a finding that "comes through very strongly in every
culture I've looked at," reports psychologist Richard Ryan.
In The High Price of Materialism, Ryan's research collaborator, Tim Kasser,
concludes that those who instead strive for intimacy, personal growth, and
contribution to the community enjoy a higher quality of life. This concurs
with those from an earlier survey of 800 college alumni, which found that
those with "Yuppie values" -- those who preferred a high income and
occupational success and prestige to having very close friends and a close
marriage -- were twice as likely as their other former classmates to
describe themselves as "fairly" or "very" unhappy.
Pause a moment and think: What's the most satisfying event that you have
experienced in the last month? Psychologist Kennon Sheldon and his
colleagues put that question to samples of university students. Then they
asked the students to rate the extent to which 10 different needs were met
by the satisfying event. What were the three emotional needs that most
strongly accompanied that satisfaction? They were self-esteem, relatedness
(feeling connected with others), and autonomy (feeling in control). At the
bottom of the list of satisfaction-predicting factors was money and luxury.
A study by Ed Diener and Martin Seligman confirms that very happy university
students are distinguished not by their money but by their "rich and
satisfying close relationships." The good life is not primarily about money
and consumption.
A new American dream
If materialistic strivings do not entail the good life, then we can ask,
what's the point of luxury fever? "Why," wondered the Old Testament prophet
Isaiah, "do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor
for that which does not satisfy?" What's the point of accumulating stacks of
unplayed CD's, closets full of seldom worn clothes, three-car garages with
luxury cars -- all purchased in a vain quest for an elusive joy? And what's
the point of leaving significant inherited wealth to one's heirs, as if it
could bring them happiness, rather than applying it to a hurting world?
Ronald Inglehart, a social scientist who follows world values surveys, has
discerned the beginnings of a subsiding of materialism and signs of a new
generation maturing with increasing concern for personal relationships, the
integrity of nature, and the meaning of life (or the "search for spiritual
moorings," as George Gallup has called it).
If affluence and materialism are not major ingredients for the good life,
research indicates those that are:
- Close, supportive relationships. We humans have what today's social
psychologists call a deep "need to belong." Those supported by intimate
friendships or a committed marriage are much likelier to declare themselves
"very happy."
- Faith communities. Connection, meaning, and deep hope are often nourished
in congregations. In National Opinion Research Center surveys of 42,000
Americans since 1972, 26 percent of those rarely or never attending
religious services declared themselves very happy, as did 47 percent of
those attending multiple times weekly.
- Positive traits. Optimism, self-esteem, and perceived control over one's
life are among the traits that mark happy experiences and happy lives. Happy
people typically report feeling an "internal locus of control" -- they feel
empowered. When deprived of control over one's life -- an experience studied
in prisoners, nursing home patients, and people living under totalitarian
regimes -- people suffer lower morale and worse health. Severe poverty
demoralizes when it erodes people's sense of control over their life
circumstances.
- Flow. Work and leisure experiences that engage one's skills also enable
the good life. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed, and
the apathy of being underwhelmed and bored, lies a zone in which people
experience flow -- an optimal state in which, absorbed in an activity, they
lose consciousness of self and time. Flow theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
found people reporting their greatest enjoyment not when mindlessly passive,
but when unself-consciously absorbed in a mindful challenge. Most people are
happier gardening than power-boating, talking to friends than watching TV.
Low consumption recreations prove satisfying.
Sustainable joy
All this is good news. Those things that make for the genuinely good life --
close relationships, a hope-filled faith, positive traits, engaging activity
-- are enduringly sustainable. As Jigme Singye Wangchuk, King of Bhutan,
observes, "Gross national happiness is more important than gross national
product."
Fulfilling a new vision of an American dream need not romanticize poverty or
destroy our market economy. But it will require our seasoning prosperity
with purpose, capital with compassion, and enterprise with equity. Such a
transformation in consciousness has happened before; today's thinking about
race, gender, and the environment are radically changed from a half century
ago. And it could happen again.
............
Hope College social psychologist David Myers is author of The Pursuit of
Happiness (Avon) and The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of
Plenty (Yale). More >
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| Tuesday, December 14, 2004 | |
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Sounding Circle - Category: Health & Well Being
