I have to agree with JustMe, Mandycat, and catmom5+.  If you try to follow every bit of advice out there to avoid this and that, you will do nothing but make yourself crazy.  Plus you'll be dead of starvation, because if you look hard enough, you can read something bad about everything you could possibly eat.  I too have lived long enough to see that today's health food is tomorrow's poison--look at margarine as an example!

Mandycat said it perfectly--moderation and common sense.  And that includes moderation in what you feed your mind, as catmom5+ pointed out so well.  Constant stress is a bigger threat to anyone's long-term health than an occasional McDonald's!  That's why, while I respect people's rights to their opinions, most of the time I don't bother to read these threads at all.  And when I do, I do so with a healthy skepticism.

Everyone has said it all so well, I can only add, I agree, you have to do the best you can, and make sure you get the right nutrition. And there must be a good natural practitioner somewhere around you; you may have to travel a little distance but it would be worth it.

Are these beets the same as what is used in canned vegetables too and fresh beets in the produce section? Have already been buying organic sugar for the past year due to them turning the sugar beets into adulterated, toxic food.

Look at this newsletter I received from Growers for Biotechnology.  It will probably be available on their website tomorrow; I couldn't find it today:



Marketing Threatens Technology That Could Help Feed the World
July 31, 2008


Growers for Biotechnology recently participated in a forum sponsored by AFACT (American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology).

Several speakers gave presentations that clearly drive home the need for more agriculture productivity from existing lands.  The most impressive message came from Dr. John Fetrow, a professor at the University of Minnesota.  He showed a video that illustrated how global population has increased since the time of the Roman Empire.  As a meter clicked off the passing years, dots of light appeared on a map of the world for each one million people.  For centuries, dots appeared very slowly, primarily in India and China.  Not until the 1600s were there any dots in the New World.  Then, in the last century dots began to appear rapid-fire. Today, world population increases by 80 million people per year. When the video ended in 2030, the entire globe was lit up to represent 9 billion people, an increase of 50 percent over today's population.  The video is available for purchase at www.populationconnection.org.

The big challenge:  How will we feed those people?  And what catastrophes will occur if there is not enough food to go around? The professor painted a gloomy picture of potential war and upheaval if people can't find enough food. With grain shortages this year, we may already be seeing how grave the challenge may be.

Against that backdrop, we also learned about the trends that threaten the advancement of technologies that can help feed the world.  These trends are being driven by short-sighted marketers who try to appeal to "green"-minded and largely ignorant consumers.  These companies portray their food products as natural, organic, free of pesticides, free of synthetic hormones, non-GMO and so forth. These claims may help sell products, but they also create fears that will sidetrack the advancement of technologies that we need NOW.

Most of the members of AFACT are dairy producers concerned about the loss of rBST, which enables them to produce more milk with fewer cows. First one milk company marketed its milk as rBST-free, hoping to make consumers feel their milk was safer than milk from treated cows. Other companies felt they had to follow suit. Today nearly every major dairy has told its producers to stop using the technology.  {and they honestly think this kind of successful opposition to a megapower like Monsanto is brought on by ignorance!}

Could the same thing happen with biotech crops?  It certainly could {I hope it can--are they worried, or just greasing the legislative wheels to later/sooner outlaw organic labelling or something.  Must they protect us--and the world--from our wreckless ignorance?} if companies continue to tout low-yielding organic production as somehow safer and better. It is vitally important that food companies, grocers and restaurateurs understand how their marketing games may have a devastating effect on global population. Farmers need all the tools of today and the future to meet this critical challenge.


Growers for Biotechnology Commentary:

Biotech crops directly related to higher yields  -- Anti-biotech groups ignore the facts -- biotech helps growers produce more food with less environmental impact.

same source as above, one article down about nanotech foods:

In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, 53 percent of Americans said they wouldn't buy genetically modified foods.

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That should mean something to the above assertion that Americans do not care.

That's the only ignorance I could think of when I saw the article claiming "largely ignorant consumers" threatening technological advancements in agriculture.  They definitely want to keep us ignorant so we won't question their products' safety.  It's like none of this is even happening.  I think their favorite consumer is an ignorant consumer.  Just shut up and eat it!

http://www.bakingbusiness.com/news/daily_enews.asp?ArticleID=95582

SASKATOON, SASK. — The National Research Council Canada and the Oil Crops Research Institute of the Chinese Academy have signed an agreement to collaborate on research to improve canola production, the two groups said Aug. 5.

"This collaboration will help Canada and China develop higher yielding canola, increasing both our countries’ reputations for scientific excellence in agricultural research and creating a competitive advantage for Canadian and Chinese agricultural producers."

Dr. Han-zhong Wang, director of the Oil Crops Research Institute, said, "Food and energy shortages are an escalating problem and increasing canola productivity is something that can help these global issues."

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They must be looking at canola for energy sources because I don't see how growing more canola will help solve food shortages.  I think if anything, it may cause them by growing biofuel--instead of food crops.  Pretzel logic, again?

http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php
See Aug 7

India: Sheep death: no test for Bt toxin done

The Hindu, 7 August 2008. By R. Prasad.

"The facility for detection and estimation of Bt toxin is presently not available with us," notes the diagnostic report dated March 3, 2008 of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Izatnagar, U.P.

And by stating its inability to test for Bt toxin, the institute has confirmed the worst fears about how genetically modified crops are tested for biosafety in the country.

IVRI is one of the main institutes for testing samples to know the possible cause of death in sheep. It is also required to test tissue samples of dead sheep sent by NGOs.

The story of the institute coming out in the open about its inability to test Bt toxin started last year. It started when hundreds of sheep started dying in 2007 in two districts of Andhra Pradesh after grazing in Bt cotton fields.

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I wonder why the NGO's would not send the tissue samples out of the country if need be.  Or is it that there is not a test developed/available yet to check tissue samples as opposed to the pure substance.  This was what we saw with the melamine and cyanuric acid poisonings of our pets--I believe it was more the cyanuric acid test which was not yet perfected before the Melamine Safety Assessment rigamaroll with the hogs and chickens and ppm, ppb not being quantified.  Is it perfected even now?  And then they did not actually look into the interaction of the two, and who knows for sure how all that plays out with biochemistry once in the system. 
I will watch for more news will follow; this has been an ongoing, although often poo-pooed story.