Category: Health

A Million a Day in TV ads can buy lots of confusion

by Stacy Malkan/ Yes on 37 / October 15, 2012

The world’s largest pesticide companies are spending One Million Dollars a Day to confuse California voters about Proposition 37 — a simple label that will give us the right to know what’s in our food.

A Million a Day in TV ads can buy lots of confusion, but it can’t buy facts.

Here are the facts about Prop 37:

• No cost to consumers: Adding a few words to labels costs nothing. Labeling didn’t raise costs in 50 other countries and won’t raise costs here. It won’t add red tape or bureaucracy either, and the only independent study on Prop 37 confirms these facts. Read the Truth about Cost.

Alternet / By Steven Wishnia / Oct. 11, 2012

For the first time in two decades federal courts will consider the science behind medical marijuana — and today there is more evidence than ever.

Once again, medical-marijuana advocates are taking to the courts to eliminate the biggest barrier to legal use—the federal law that classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug with no valid medical use.

On Oct. 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the federal appeals court that usually handles cases involving government regulations, will hear oral arguments on Americans for Safe Access v. DEA. .

Due to hazardous stuff and pollutants being washed down from the streets and roads into the San Diego River and then onto local beaches, the San Diego County Department of Environmental health has issued an advisory for residents to stay out of the water at all local beaches. Material that is caught up in the rain-swept streets is not treated anywhere before it reaches the ocean.

The advisory is for the period of 72 hours after the last heavy rain, which was Wednesday and Thursday of this past week.

By Ronnie Cummins / Alternet / Oct. 4, 2012
Is it possible that Whole Foods wants to ride the GMO labeling popularity wave while it quietly works behind the scenes to prevent Prop 37, or any other GMO labeling law, from passing?

After months of pressure from the organic community, including thousands of its customers, the leadership of Whole Foods Market on September 11 endorsed Proposition 37, the California Ballot Initiative to require mandatory labels on genetically engineered foods. But the endorsement came with “reservations” and inaccuracies. It also included the false claim that company policy precludes Whole Foods and its executives from providing much-needed financial support to Prop 37, a campaign that consumers – the very people who have made WFM and its executives wildly profitable – overwhelmingly support.

Have you missed Judi Curry’s bloggings? We have.

Judi writes the Widder Curry column and often does restaurant reviews and other musings of life here in OB and on the Peninsula. Yet she has not been filing any columns of late.

And there is a darn good reason why she’s not writing these days – she just had surgery on her left hand and is left typing with only one hand for a while.

By Kenny Goldberg / KPBS / October 1, 2012

Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996. But today in San Diego County, many patients are having trouble getting their hands on the drug. That’s because all of the openly operating storefronts that sell marijuana have been shut down.

In response, activists in four local cities have placed measures to authorize medical marijuana dispensaries on the November ballot. But even if the measures win, patients might ultimately lose.

Vey Linville has severe emphysema. He needs bottled oxygen to survive. When Linville was first diagnosed, doctors told him without a double lung transplant, he’d soon be dead. Linville got his affairs in order.

A recent poll of Southern California residents found that most of them want to keep the troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant shut down . The poll also found that the residents don’t trust its majority owner and operator, Southern California Edison, to keep safety as its first priority at the nuke plant.

” A strong majority of Edison customers want to keep San Onofre shut down and almost half don’t trust Edison to put safety before profit,” environmental group Friends of the Earth reported on October 1.

Friends of the Earth (foe.org) commissioned David Binder Research to carry out the poll. The company talked to 700 registered voters in the counties San Onofre provides electricity to.

The results: “58% of respondents said they oppose reopening the plant…Only 32% said San Onofe should reopen,” Friends of the Earth reported.

Proposition 37 requires labeling foods you buy in the supermarket as GMO foods if they contain genetically modified ingredients. It also prevents labeling GMO foods as “natural.” Some foods can be exempted from the GMO label such as otherwise organic foods that have been unintentionally cross-pollinated from GMO crops. And Prop 37 does not require labeling at restaurants and in particular fast food restaurants – just the places that you can probably expect to be served GMO foods.

Stanford Universityreleased a study recently which claimed that there is little if any nutritional difference between organic and non-organic foods. While there may be little nutritional difference, that’s not the point. There may be a huge toxicity difference. Non-organics and especially GMOs (genetically modified organisms) have been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides so that while organic soy and corn products may differ little nutritionally from non-organics such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, the toxicity spread might be truly appalling.

Consider that Monsanto’s GMO soy or Roundup Ready soy seeds have been specifically developed to withstand a spraying with Monsanto’s herbicide and pesticide, Roundup. Roundup will kill every other plant in the field except Roundup Ready soy plants. So while nutritionally Roundup Ready soy may be the same as organic soy, it sure isn’t the same with respect to the toxicity it has been exposed to. Organic soy plants have not been sprayed with Roundup or any other herbicide or pesticide.

em> By Dr. Emily Gibson KevinMD.com / Originally published August 16, 2012

I must have missed the declaration of war on pubic hair.

It must have happened sometime in the last decade because the amount of time, energy, money and emotion both genders spend on abolishing every hair from their genitals is astronomical. The genital hair removal industry, including medical professionals who advertise their specialty services to those seeking the “clean and bare” look, is exponentially growing.

Hillcrest Banners Favor Prop 37 On Robinson Street Overpass

By Nadin Abbott and Frank Gormlie

It was close to 4pm on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street – Monday, September 17th – and the mood at the Canvas for a Cause headquarters in Hillcrest was expectant. As people started to arrive for the programed rally in favor of Proposition 37, Nadine Abbott had a chance to talk to Doctor Norrie Robbins of Women Occupy San Diego and a member of the singers Occapellas. Robbins is also Adjunct Professor at the SDSU Dept of Geological Sciences, and is retired from the United States Geological Service, DC office.

Robbins said: “I am worried about my food. I’m beginning to get weird allergies that do not run in my family.”

By Mercy Baron

Without a doubt, the gourmet food truck scene is one of the hottest trends rolling right now in the gastronomical world. Between the TV offerings of, The Great Food Truck Race on The Food Network, and Eat St on The Cooking Channel, to President Obama tweeting about his fave truck in D.C., (D.C. Empanadas) you just can’t get any more au courant with a hopefully, long lasting fad.

It all started just a short four years ago here on the West Coast, with the Kogi BBQ truck in Los Angeles. I remember reading about it when I still lived there and was hoping to catch up with it someday, but never did.

In the beginning of 2010, the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association (SoCalMFVA) was created, becoming the first organization started to protect the rights of gourmet food truck owners.

by Jill Richardson / PR Watch / August 28, 2012

A decade and a half after farmers began planting the first genetically engineered (GE) crops, the future is clear. The scientists who pioneered genetic engineering thought of themselves as environmentalists, creating products that could reduce pesticide use. Instead, they have simply perpetuated the same “pesticide treadmill” as their pesticide-peddling counterparts resulting in the application of a greater volume of ever more toxic pesticides.