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Organic Insider

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All we hear from the chemical industry is that synthetic pesticides are safe to consume, and they will go to any length to make sure that Americans are exposed to as many chemicals as possible.

Here are a few examples.

* A pro-chemical group called The Alliance for Food and Farming attacked the Environmental Working Group‘s Dirty Dozen list, the list of the most pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables, and demanded that the EWG stop publishing it.

Living Maxwell

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Recently, I got a comment from a woman who felt guilty about feeding her kids pesticide-laden, conventionally-grown food and asked if she “should always feed them organic.”

As someone who is very passionate about organic, I am going to be biased about organic food, which should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Organic Insider

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If you haven’t noticed by now, organic is under constant attack in the media for one simple reason — healthy, organic food has become a serious threat to the business model of Big Ag and their chemical-laden GMOs.

That is why you will see pieces such as the recent Wall Street Journal op-ed The Organic Industry is Lying to You  and The Boston Globe’s article on agriculture which tells you to “learn to love” GMOs.

While critics will often say that organic is a waste of money and that the nutritional differences between organic and conventional are negligible, here are three reasons why you should completely dismiss their words — glyphosate, atrazine and chlorpyrifos.

Organic Insider

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Just the other week, I wrote about a California farming community that MUST buy bottled water because the tap water is so polluted from pesticides and other contaminants.

Well, the news about the horrid quality of our drinking water continues.

Trying to figure out why food allergies have exploded over the past 20 years, a team of researchers published a study in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology which said that there is a relationship between the use of a group of pesticides called dichlorophenols and food allergies.

TIME Magazine explained that the study’s participants who had high levels of dichlorophenols in their bodies were 80% more likely to have food sensitivity than those with lower levels, and the authors believe the exposure to the chemicals may be contributing to a hyper-sensitive immune system that recognizes even common food proteins as foreign.

Living Maxwell

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In the latest President’s Cancer Panel report, it was found that 41% of Americans are going to get cancer and 21% of Americans are going to die from cancer.

What makes these numbers even more sobering is that this data was from a decade ago, and I have heard doctors say that they now believe a minimum of 50% of the population will get cancer at some point in their lives.

Given how deeply cancer has permeated our society, it would seem to make sense that people should be doing whatever they can to avoid contracting this deadly disease.

And according to a recent study out of France, as reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, eating as much organic food as possible is an important strategy to accomplish this.

Organic Insider

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For those who didn’t see the recent announcement, which shouldn’t be a surprise because our government conveniently released it on the Friday before the July 4th weekend, the USDA said that genetically-engineered grass did not have to go through the normal regulatory approval, like most GE-crops do, and could be grown without any oversight whatsoever.

Yes, genetically-engineered bluegrass developed by Scotts will be coming soon to a lawn near you.

The first thing that popped into my mind, and I am sure that of many others as well, was “Why in the world do we need genetically-engineered grass? Could someone please explain this to me?”

Living Maxwell

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Each day, more and more news comes out about the harm that pesticides can do to our bodies.

This time, a report out of Europe says that pesticides can cause brain damage. Yes, brain damage.