I like reading Natural News, but I also know that things are often blown out of proportion over there. But, in the end, Agent Orange or not,  genetically engineered food is not natural and is not what our bodies need in any proportion. I just briefly scanned this article, got irritated and wanted to vent  ;)

Dow seeking deregulation of GE corn resistant to 2,4-D, a major component of Agent Orange by Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com

According to Wikipedia:
CCF was set up in 1995 by Richard Berman, executive director of the public affairs firm Berman and Company, with $600,000 from the Philip Morris tobacco company. Berman told The Washington Post that CCF is now funded by a coalition of restaurant and food companies as well as some individuals;^[2] according to the group’s website it is supported by over 100 companies and thousands of individual consumers.^[1] Sponsors are reported to include Brinker International, RTM Restaurant Group (the owner of Arby’s), Tyson Foods, HMSHost Corp, and Wendy’s.

I’ll let you read the rest of the Wikipedia article about this company. Needless to say, I’m not impressed with them at all. Anyone that thinks that Mercury and HFCS at any level are perfectly fine, well, they’re just not worthy of my time. I’m not saying they’re test results should be ignore, but let’s just say that they are anti-environmentalists and aren’t very supportive of the whole reusable bags movement anyway.

So, on to the bags. Yes, cheap reusable bags probably contain lead. What doesn’t these days?! It’s really no surprise honestly. It ranks right up there with the bacteria in reusable bags due to not washing them regularly. You have to be smart about what you’re using. Should we have to worry about this kind of stuff (lead, not bacteria), no, but it’s life.

How can you avoid the lead? Buy higher quality CLOTH bags. Wash them. We all know by now that anything plastic-y has the potential for lead. That includes our shopping bags. If you do have one of the bags that contains lead, discard the plastic bottom piece, in most cases, that was the source of the lead, and you’ll be fine. For the rest of the bags that contained lead, replace them with quality bags from Reuseit.com, they carry quite an assortment of bags, none of which contain lead. For more information on the lead containing bags, see this pdf at CCF.

So why don’t fast food burgers and fries decompose in the first place? The knee-jerk answer is often thought to be, “Well they must be made with so many chemicals that even mold won’t eat them.” While that’s part of the answer, it’s not the whole story.

via Why McDonald’s Happy Meal hamburgers won’t decompose – the real story behind the story.

And so goes HFCS. With all the bad news and the movements to eliminate High Fructose Corn Syrup, the Corn Refiners Association had to do something. Enter Corn Sugar. They have applied for permission from the federal government to use the new name on food labels. While the decision could take two years, the term is being used now.

I admit, they got me! Before I had read the news on this new change, I remember being in the store and picking up something to read the label. I said to myself, “Well, at least it’s corn sugar and not hfcs.”

Beware while you’re out shopping and add “Corn Sugar” next to “HFCS” on your Ingredient to Avoid list.

In this previous article, I found that the herbicide atrazine has been linked to transforming male toads to female toads. Pretty much the same is true here. While researchers haven’t been able to find one specific chemical responsible for the change, they do agree that the pollutants in the water are the cause. These chemicals range from birth control pills to antibacterial tissues, from perfumes to pesticides and fertilizers. More research needs to be done to narrow down the exact cause.

The hormonal system of all vertebrates are very similar. With that in mind, the effects on fish from swimming in these waters is very likely to happen to humans that drink the water. It’s not just drinking water, but also the water you bathe in and swim in as well.

Do you part and please try to eliminate as many toxic chemicals from your daily use as you possibly can. Do not flush your medications down the toilet, return your drugs to your local pharmacy for disposal instead. Do you part to help reduce watershed pollution before we end up in the same boat as the fish

Read more at NaturalNews.com

Table sugar is 50/50 fructose and glucose. HFCS is 55/45 fructose and glucose. Just that small amount of extra fructose and less glucose is enough to cause damage to your body. We’re not talking just weight gain either, but cardiovascular disease and diabetes, even liver damage.

As it is, I try hard to avoid sugar in my the food and drink I purchase for my children. The next thing I try to eliminate is HFCS. I think I’ve been going about it the wrong way. I think HFCS needs to be top eliminator, followed by sugar and then nitrates/nitrites.

Wouldn’t the world be better if we didn’t have to worry about all these little details?!

And so this year’s vaccines have begun to ship. This year’s season vaccine does contain the H1N1 vaccine. Before getting that shot, you might want to read up on the side affects of that H1N1. They weren’t at all pleasant.

You might also take note that at least one of the vaccines being used this year has been linked to high seizure rates in children. Apparently CSL Limited’s Afluria is not being shipped to the US, but you never know. Seizures are something no parent ever wants to experience.

Environmental Working Group did a study on paper receipts from various places and found BPA on 40 percent of them. Sometimes in amounts over 1000 times that found in the lining of cans. One thousand times?! How can that be allowed?

Think about it, we’re worried about drinking water from BPA containing water bottles and how that will get ingested and affect us. Here are receipts that we carry around for quite awhile sometimes, that we touch many times, many people and they contain even more BPA. I know I’m guilty of handing the receipt to my little ones as we exit a store, unknowingly exposing them to even more BPA than the water bottles I refuse to allow them to use.

Think about the store workers that spend all day handing out those receipts. What about business owners with stacks of receipts for tax purposes? How about the accountant? What other papers contain BPA?

I’m going to quote this paragraph from washingtonpost.com because I feel it really gets the point across:

Among those surveyed, receipts from Safeway supermarkets contained the highest concentration of BPA. A receipt taken from a store in the District contained 41 milligrams of the chemical. If the equivalent amount of BPA was ingested by a 155-pound adult, that would exceed EPA’s decades-old safe exposure limit for BPA by 12 times.

This very long article is worth a read. There’s also information about what store receipts were tested and what they contained. A study was released that shows that BPA does penetrate the skin, so we know we’re absorbing it from our receipts. EWG simply used a wet wipe on the receipt and then tested the BPA content. If it was that easy to transfer to the wipe, it’s that easy to transfer to our hands.

The type of receipts that contain BPA are thermal paper receipts. To check your receipt, rub it with a coin. Thermal paper will discolor, while normal paper does not. This type of paper is commonly used for store receipts, prescription labels, lottery and airline tickets.

Sometimes I feel like we should all just live in a bubble. Maybe I should drop my lottery habit.

At first thought, it looks perfectly fine and innocent. What a great picture, right? What a lot of us don’t realize is that those goals are actually quite dangerous. If not anchored properly, they can tip over and do at times result in death.

To quote Anchored for Safety, “A gust of wind…a young player…an uneven playing field…In their current design, only 22 pounds of force can bring a 400-pound goal crashing down, injuring – even killing – a player.”

Take a moment to educate yourself on the dangers of soccer goals. Then contact your club to make sure they’re doing what they can to keep all kids safe on the field, both during games and during practice.

Here’s my previous post – Soccer Safety

Atrazine is a widely used herbicide in the US, mostly for corn, sorghum and sugarcane.

In 2004, the European Union banned atrazine due to it’s groundwater contamination.

In 2006, the U.S. Geological Survey found atrazine in 75 percent of stream water and 40 percent of groundwater samples from areas tested between 1992 and 2001.

In 2002, a study found that atrazine was causing male frogs to develop female parts. These frogs were then able to reproduce as females.

Now, a group in Washington state is linking atrazine to birth defects.

It saddens me that the EPA refuses to see the signs. They just ignore the studies and let these things continue to exist and affect us all. This is just one more reason to go as organic as I possibly can for my family.