We have a lot of health issues, don’t we?  Look around and check out the people you see.  Look at yourself.  How happy are you with your appearance and mental/physical health, really?  Are you over-weight?  Do you drink too much Dr. Pepper?  Smoke?  Drink?  Sleep less that you should?  How’s the air in your home?  Do you have carpet, or hard floors?  What’s in your water?  What soap do you shower with?  What detergent do you wash your clothes in?  Use bleach?  Use body lotion?

Nutrition Can Save America!
Let’s take a look at something we eat all the time: chicken. This year, the Consumers Union conducted their annual survey of chickens and reports the following:

“For its latest analysis, Consumer Reports had an outside lab test 382 chickens bought last spring from more than 100 supermarkets, gourmet- and natural-food stores, and mass merchandisers in 22 states. Among the findings:

• Campylobacter was in 62 percent of the chickens, salmonella was in 14 percent, and both bacteria were in 9 percent. Only 34 percent of the birds were clear of both pathogens. That’s double the percentage of clean birds Consumer Reports found in its 2007 report but far less than the 51 percent in the 2003 report.

• Among the cleanest overall were organic “air-chilled” broilers (a process in which carcasses are refrigerated and may be misted, rather than dunked in cold chlorinated water). About 60 percent were free of the two pathogens.

• Perdue was found to be the cleanest of the brand-name chicken: 56 percent were free of both pathogens. This is the first time since Consumer Reports began testing chicken that one major brand has fared significantly better than others across the board.

• Tyson and Foster Farms chickens were found to be the most contaminated; less than 20 percent were free of either pathogens.

• Store-brand organic chickens had no salmonella at all, but only 43 percent of those birds were also free of campylobacter.

And then the melamine in baby milk…

“Washington, D.C – Consumers Union is deeply concerned about news reports that FDA has found traces of melamine and cyanuric acid in U.S. infant formula. Melamine is a chemical that has a number of industrial uses and is a common ingredient in some plastic products, but is not approved as an ingredient in human food in the U.S.

It is not clear, absent a Freedom of Information Act request by The Associated Press, whether the FDA would have released this information to the public. “Consumers Union calls on the FDA to immediately make public all of the results of its tests for melamine contamination in food, even if the only contamination detected was below the agency’s action level of 2.5 parts per million,” said Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives for Consumers Union. “We understand that the FDA has tested hundreds of samples for melamine. This information should be made available to consumers, who are no doubt concerned for themselves and their families,” added Halloran.

The FDA has in the past routinely published results of tests for the presence of mercury in fish, regardless of whether the test results were above or below the agency’s action level. Given the serious health consequences of melamine contamination in children, the agency should not withhold this test data.

Consumers Union also calls on infant formula companies to indicate the extent and results of testing they have done on melamine contamination in their products, and to recall any contaminated batches of the formula.

The FDA’s response to press inquiries, that parents should not necessarily stop feeding formula to their infants because only trace amounts of melamine were found in the formula, is of small comfort to parents and caregivers. This advice is especially troubling given the FDA’s September 12, 2008 health advisory telling caregivers “not to feed infant formula manufactured in China to infants,”

Anything from China is suspect.  Never put anything from China in your mouth or on your skin.  Did you know that the Chinese made baby beads from the chemical in the date rape drug Rophyenol and sold those beads in Wal-Mart?  Yes, babies ingested the beads and some folks in China got a big laugh out of it when the news came out.

But back to chicken.  There’s always something being discovered in our food.  Check this out…

(NaturalNews) According to a press release issued Thursday by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the nonprofit health organization is suing national fast food giants McDonald’s, Burger King, Outback, Chick-fil-A, Applebee’s, Chili’s and TGI Friday’s after laboratory tests revealed every restaurant sells grilled chicken products laced with a carcinogenic compound.

Samples of grilled chicken from each restaurant were tested and found to contain PhIPm, a compound from a group of carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs), which are often found in grilled meat, according to the press release. It adds that the federal government officially recognized HCA as a carcinogen in 2005, and PhIPm specifically has been named on the California governor’s list of chemicals known to cause cancer for more than ten years.