Tag: America

Theosophy ~ GIANTS AND THE ASTOUNDING CONTRADICTIONS OF ARCHÆOLOGY

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The modern archæologist, though speculating ad infinitum upon the dolmens and their builders, knows, in fact, nothing of them or their origin. Yet, these weird, and often colossal monuments of unhewn stones — which consist generally of four or seven gigantic blocks placed together — are strewn over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups or rows. Stones of enormous size are found placed horizontally and variously upon two, three, four, and as in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People name them “devil’s altars,” druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of Carnac in the Morbihan, Brittany — nearly a mile in length and numbering 11,000 ranged in eleven rows — are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The Conical menhir of Loch-Maria-ker in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length and nearly two yards across. The Menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises thirty feet above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such dolmens and prehistoric monuments are met with in almost every latitude. They are found in the Mediterranean basin; in Denmark (among the local tumuli from twenty-seven to thirty-five feet in height); in Shetland, and in Sweden, where they are called ganggriften (or tombs with corridors); in Germany, where they are known as the giant tombs (Hunengraben); in Spain (see the dolmen of Antiguera near Malaga), and Africa; in Palestine and Algeria; in Sardinia (see the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei giganti, or tombs of giants); in Malabar, in India, where they are called the tombs of the Daityas (giants) and of the Râkshasas, the men-demons of Lanka; in Russia and Siberia, where they are known as the Koorgan;in Peru and Bolivia, where they are termed the chulpas orburial places, etc., etc., etc.

There is no country from which they are absent. Who built them? Why are they all connected with Serpents and Dragons, with Alligators and Crocodiles? Because remains of “palæolithic man” were, it is thought, found in some of them, and because in the funeral mounds of America bodies of later races were discovered with the usual paraphernalia of bone necklaces, weapons, stone and copper urns, etc., hence they are declared ancient tombs. But surely the two famous mounds — one in the Mississippi valley and the other in Ohio — known respectively as “the Alligator Mound” and “the Great Serpent Mound,” were never meant for tombs 1 (Vide infra). Yet one is told authoritatively that the Mounds, and the Mound or Dolmen Builders, are all “Pelasgic” in Europe, antecedent to the Incas, in America, yet of “not extremely distant times.” They are built by “no race of Dolmen Builders,” which never existed (opinion of De Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp) save in the earlier archæological fancy. Finally Virchow’s opinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now accepted as an axiom: “The tombs alone are gigantic, and not the bones they contain” — says that German biologist; and archæology has but to bow and submit to the decision. 2

That no gigantic skeletons have been hitherto found in the “tombs” is yet no reason to say there never were the remains of giants in them.Cremation was universal till a comparatively recent period — some 80, or 100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned with Atlantis. Nevertheless, the classics, as shown elsewhere, often speak of giant skeletons still excavated in their day. Besides this, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton ever yet found is older than between 50, or 60,000 years, 3 and man’s size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, ever since the third sub-race of the Aryan stock, which sub-race — born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions — had become European. Since then, as said, it has steadily been decreasing. It is truer therefore to say, that the tombs alone are archaic, and not necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them; and that those tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants, 4 or rather the ashes of generations of giants.

Nor were all such cyclopean structures intended for sepulchres. It is with the so-called Druidical remains, such as Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge in Great Britain, that the travelling Initiates above alluded to had to do. And these gigantic monuments are all symbolic records of the World’s history. They are not Druidical, but universal. Nor did the Druids build them, for they were only the heirs to the cyclopean lore left to them by generations of mighty builders and — “magicians,” both good and bad.

It will always be a subject of regret that history, rejecting a priori the actual existence of giants, has preserved us so little of the records of antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every mythology — which after all is ancient history — the giants play an important part. In the old Norse mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom the sons of the gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of deities and men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants to be the brethren of the dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the gods to the history of the development of the Aryan race, will only receive credence amongst the believers in the Aryan theory, as expounded by Max Müller. Granting that the Turanian races were typified by the dwarfs (Dwergar), and that a dark, round-headed, and dwarfish race was driven northward by the fair-faced Scandinavians, or Æsir, the gods being like unto men, there still exists neither in history nor any other scientific work any anthropological proof whatever of the existence in time or space of a race of giants. Yet that such exist, relatively and de facto side by side with dwarfs, Schweinfurth can testify. The Nyam-Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs, while their next neighbours (several tribes of comparatively fair-complexioned Africans) are giants when confronted with the Nyam-Nyams, and very tall even among Europeans, for their women are all above 6 ½ feet high. (Vide Schweinfurth’s latest works.)

In Cornwall and in ancient Britain the traditions of these giants are, on the other hand, excessively common; they are said to live even down to the time of King Arthur. All this shows that giants lived to a later date amongst the Celtic than among the Teutonic peoples.

If we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants at Tarija on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated gods and men. These old beliefs, which term certain localities “Los campos de los gigantes“ — “the fields of giants,” are always concomitant with the existence of pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of pliocene raised beaches. “All the giants are not under Mount Ossa,” and it would be poor anthropology indeed that would restrict the traditions of giants to Greek and Bible mythologies. Slavonian countries, Russia especially, teem with legends about the bogaterey (mighty giants) of old; and their folklore, most of which has served for the foundation of national histories, their oldest songs, and their most archaic traditions, speak of the giants of old. Thus we may safely reject the modern theory that would make of the Titans mere symbols standing for cosmic forces. They were real living men, whether twenty or only twelve feet high. Even the Homeric heroes, who, of course, belonged to a far more recent period in the history of the races, appear to have wielded weapons of a size and weight beyond the strength of the strongest men of modern times.

“Not twice ten men the mighty bulk could raise,
Such men as live in these degenerate days.”

If the fossil footprints from Carson, Indiana, U.S.A., are human, they indicate gigantic men. Of their genuineness there can remain no doubt. It is to be deplored that the modem and scientific evidence for gigantic men should rest on footprints alone. Over and over again, the skeletons of hypothetical giants have been identified with those of elephants and mastodons. But all such blunders before the days of geology, and even the traveller’s tales of Sir John Mandeville, who says that he saw giants 56 feet high, in India, only show that belief in the existence of giants has never, at any time, died out of the thoughts of men.

1 We take the following description from a scientific work. “The first of these animals (the alligator) designed with considerable skill, is no less than 250 ft. long. . . . . The interior is formed of a heap of stones, over which the form has been moulded in fine stiff clay. The great serpent is represented with open mouth, in the act of swallowing an egg of which the diameter is 100 ft. in the thickest part; the body of the animal is wound in graceful curves and the tail is rolled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is 1,100 ft. This work is unique . . . . and there is nothing on the old continent which offers any analogy to it.” Except its symbolism, however, of the Serpent — the cycle of Time — swallowing Kosmos, the egg.
2 It might be better, perhaps, for FACT had we more Specialists in Science and fewer “authorities” on universal questions. One never heard that Humboldt gave authoritative and final decisions in the matter of polypi, or the nature of an excrescence.
3 57,000 years is the date assigned by Dr. Dowler to the remains of the human skeleton, found buried beneath four ancient forests at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi river.
4 Murray says of the Mediterranean barbarians that they marvelled at the prowess of theAtlanteans. “Their physical strength was extraordinary (witness indeed their cyclopean buildings), the earth shaking sometimes under their tread. Whatever they did, was done speedily. . . . . . They were wise and communicated their wisdom to men” (Mythology, p. 4).

The Secret Doctrine, ii 752–755
H. P. Blavatsky

Health ~ Drug-Resistant Superbug Infections Explode Across U.S. Hospitals: 500% Increase Foreshadows ‘New Plague’ Caused By Modern Medicine

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Patient-Doctors-Hospital-Urgent-Care(NaturalNews) Drug-resistant superbug infections have reached near-epidemic levels across U.S. hospitals, with an alarming 500% increase now documented in a study just published in the August issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology (the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America).

Learn more by clicking on the image, above.

Health ~ Nutrition Can Save America

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carved watermelon salad

Nutrition can save America … But from what, exactly?

Every day, it seems, there are more signs of the accelerating decline of the American Empire. The economy is tanking, the currency is being abandoned by other nations, health care remains a disastrous failure, unemployment is atrociously high, prisons are filled to capacity, public education is failing yet another generation of children, and the population seems to be getting more diseased with each generation.

The question, though, is why?

Why is our population so diseased? Why is unemployment so high? Why can’t our kids learn well in school? Why is America losing its leadership position in the world? Why are so many jobs being offshored to other countries?

What if there were a single underlying reason that answered all these questions? As you may have guessed, there is:

Nutrition.

Poor nutrition destroys any nation. Good nutrition saves it. And in this NaturalNews special report, you’ll learn why nutrition plays such a powerful role in the rise or fall of any nation.

It’s also a warning message for America: If we don’t make immediate, radical changes in the available food supply — and the marketing of foods to consumers — we won’t survive much longer as a nation. America will fall, brought down by the inevitable consequences of a nutritionally deficient, chronically diseased population.

But to understand why this is the case, you first have to see why food has such a powerful impact on everything that matters in society: Health, happiness, employment, productivity, education and even freedom. To explain all that, let’s start with a lesson on poor nutrition.

 

What’s a bad diet?

You are what you eat. It’s a saying as old as written history. Throughout every culture, people have known this simple truth since the dawn of Man (and Woman). But before we can even talk about the consequences of “bad” food choices for a nation, we have to engage in some honest talk about what “bad” foods really are.

It’s a sobering discussion, too, because most people follow atrociously bad diets… Including many people who think they eat a fairly healthy diet. Perhaps 90 percent of the U.S. population eats a “bad” diet right now.

The official government definition of a bad diet is nonexistent. The USDA wants Americans to eat more of everything: More dairy, more meat, more grains, and even more sugar. That’s because these are the industries served by the USDA. In their minds, “poor nutrition” just means people aren’t eating enough dairy, meat, grains and sugar. The USDA remains stuck in the mindset of the 1930’s when people were literally starving from a lack of calories. So their policy incessantly remains “Eat More!”

But Americans don’t need to eat more. They need to eat less. A lot less. And especially less of the highly toxic, disease-promoting foods described below.

Here are the characteristics of a bad diet:

• Primarily consists of dead foods (cooked, microwaved, etc.)

• Primarily consists of processed foods (milled, bleached, etc.)

• Lacks large quantities of fresh, living fruits and vegetables.

• Avoids adequate water hydration (and focuses on manufactured beverages).

• Very high in processed sugars and processed carbohydrates.

• Contains genetically-modified foods such as corn, soy or sugar from GM sugar beets.

• Includes a large amount of processed, pasteurized dairy products such as cow’s milk.

• Is made with hundreds of different chemical food additives from MSG and aspartame to chemical preservatives.

• Is packaged in toxic food containers, including plastics and epoxy resins that contaminate the food with BPA.

• Primarily consists of conventionally-grown, pesticide-contaminated foods.

• Contains a large quantity of unhealthy oils such as corn oil, soy oil or partially-hydrogenated oils.

• Consists of a large number of fried foods or foods cooked at very high temperatures that destroy nutrients while creating carcinogenic compounds.

• Is made with many modified, unnatural ingredients such hydrogenated oils, refined sugar (which removes the minerals), homogenized milk fats, and so on.

• Consists of a large quantity of animal products.

As I mentioned, perhaps 90 percent of the U.S. population currently eats a diet that’s largely consistent with the above description. As you’ll soon see, this is destroying our nation.

Junk food and consequences

The diet previously described is a diet of death that delivers physical and mental impairment. Here’s an accounting of some of the major consequences of pursuing such a diet:

Personal Health: This diet causes rapid aging and the aggressive development of degenerative disease: Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, etc. The population also remains highly susceptible to infectious disease.

Health Care Costs: In a nation that follows a bad diet, health care costs spiral out of control, eventually consuming a quarter (or more) of the GDP, driving the nation into bankruptcy.

Education: Growing up on this bad diet, children suffer severe cognitive impairment and are unable to learn in school. In time, academic achievement of the nation falls sharply, and the great “dumbing down” of the population accelerates.

Employment & Economy: A sick, diseased population is very expensive to maintain on the payrolls of Corporate America. Poisoned by processed food diets, workers suffer from repeated sick days and poor cognitive performance at work (inability to focus, failure to learn, failure to create new ideas, etc.), all of which make the workforce increasingly expensive for corporations to maintain. Not surprisingly, this causes yet a further shift of jobs to other nations where workers are more productive, healthier and less expensive.

Violent Crime: With their brains fueled by junk foods (and with failed education giving them few options for earning an honest living), more people turn to crime. In time, the prisons become filled with people incarcerated for behavior that could have been at least partially prevented with proper nutrition.

Happiness: With disease rates skyrocketing, violent crime on the rise, education failures rampant and health care costs bankrupting families, happiness plummets to all-time lows.

Genetic Integrity: As junk food consumption continues through multiple generations, the genetic integrity of the population erodes. Birth defects increase while fertility rates plummet. The population increasingly becomes haunted with unhealthy genetic mutations that promote yet more disease in future generations.

Economic Productivity: Poor nutrition leads to disastrous economic productivity. Powered by junk foods, the population becomes virtually useless as a workforce. Instead of producing new ideas, new products and new innovations that improve the world, people sit around eating Fritos and watching YouTube videos. Economic productivity plummets, and employers shift jobs to overseas markets where people often demonstrate much higher levels of productivity.

World Leadership: With its population falling behind the world academically and economically, the nation loses its leadership position on the world stage and begins to lose its leverage for maintaining the dominance of its currency.

Democracy & Freedom: When the voters subsist on a bad diet, their minds are clouded and child-like. They are easily manipulated to vote for politicians who are essentially “entertainers” — people who look good on TV but have no real ability to improve the long-term situation for the country. Voters on junk foods elect the very people who continue to drive the nation into disease and disaster.

The problem with medication

As you can see, the problems caused by poor nutrition can literally destroy a nation. They reach into every area of society: The economy, education, health care, global competitiveness and even Democracy itself.

And yet, instead of treating these nutrition problems with a sound nutritional program, the United States of America has chosen to ignore the problem and treat people with chemical prescription drugs.

This widespread use of prescription drugs to mask the symptoms of nutritional imbalances causes the following problems that further erode the strength of any nation:

Public Safety: Medicated drivers are unsafe drivers. In the United States today, as much as one-third of all traffic accidents involve medication-impaired drivers. Instead of being alert with the help of healthful foods, our drivers are mentally compromised by meds.

Impaired Cognitive Function: This impaired cognitive function continues at work, too, where medicated workers make mistakes, suffer reduced productivity and ultimately fail to perform to their full potential.

Deterioration of Democracy: Along with impaired cognitive function comes the inability to vote intelligently, causing voters to repeatedly elect disastrously unqualified representatives to Congress (and other offices). This, in turn, erodes the bedrock of Democracy as dishonest or unqualified politicians betray the future of the People for their own personal gain.

More Disease: Medications used to treat one disease today end up causing more diseases in the future (virtually all medications cause some level of liver and kidney damage, and many promote brain and heart damage at the same time). For example, common over-the-counter painkillers cause the deaths of several thousand Americans each year just from gastrointestinal bleeding (http://www.naturalnews.com/019945_d…).

Huge Increase in Health Care Costs: During all this, the monopoly pricing of medications causes health care costs to continue skyrocketing, further threatening the financial stability of the nation.

Environmental Destruction: After all those medications pass through the bodies of consumers, they end up in the sewage systems, where they are eventually dumped into rivers and other waterways. (Most drugs, such as HRT drugs, are not filtered out by water treatment systems.) These potent chemicals pose a huge threat to aquatic ecosystems and contribute to the destruction of coral reefs and ocean life.

Do you see where all this is heading? Higher costs and lower productivity. Increased rates of disease and decreased economic productivity. Environmental destruction. It’s not difficult to extrapolate this pattern and see where such a nation might be headed. The accelerating downfall of the United States of America is a textbook example of how a nation rapidly deteriorates under the influence of excessive medication and disease-promoting processed foods.

The good diet

Fortunately, there’s a solution to all this: Any nation that wishes to remain strong and successful must follow a “good” diet. What is a good diet?

• Consists primarily of fresh, unprocessed plants (fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds) which can be made into a variety of delicious recipes (raw food chefs are especially good at this craft).

• Minimizes consumption of meat or animal products (including dairy).

• Avoids virtually all processed, manufactured foods and beverages, or only uses them sparingly.

• Consists of a wide variety of different foods so that phytonutrient diversity is high, providing consumers with a steady supply of plant-based medicine that prevents disease.

• Includes substantial time outdoors, in nature, where vitamin D can be created and stored in the body.

• Minimizes or eliminates all refined sugars and carbohydrates (like white flour).

• Eliminates GMOs from the food supply in order to avoid the health damage caused by GM foods.

• Minimizes consumption of foods sprayed with chemical pesticides or fungicides. This not only helps prevent disease caused by such chemicals; it also protects the environment from chemical contamination.

• Incorporates adequate hydration from clean water (while avoiding dubious liquids such as sodas and sports drinks).

• Includes nutritional supplementation to correct nutritional imbalances or deficiencies. (This can be accomplished through superfoods, food-based vitamins, etc.)

This diet, as you might guess, is rarely pursued by the average American consumer. Only highly health-conscious individuals even attempt such a diet, and it does require extra time, effort and money to make a reality. But the benefits are worth it. They can, in fact, save a nation from destruction!

Benefits of a good diet

Here are some of the many benefits that will be experienced by any nation pursuing a healthy diet:

Personal Health: With a healthy diet, degenerative disease rates plummet by as much as 90 percent. People live longer and happier, with far greater productivity. Disease industries go bankrupt as their customer base vanishes.

Health Care Costs: Health care costs plummet by 90%, saving the nation trillions of dollars in sick-care treatment costs. People who used to have jobs in the sick-care industry can now dedicate their professional efforts to something more useful to the economy.

Education: On a healthy diet, children are far easier to educate. Their minds work better, so grades go up, test scores improve, behavioral problems are reduced and the nation once again starts to compete with academic achievers from other nations.

Employment & Economy: A healthy, nutritionally-supported workforce is highly productive. With improved mental and physical health, people are easily able to find and keep productive jobs. Unemployment rates plummet. Employees’ increased productivity makes them more competitive from the point of view of employers, so fewer companies outsource jobs, effectively bringing more jobs back to the U.S. Remember: Employers want to hire healthy workers, but they tend to shun unhealthy workers.

Violent Crime: With increased job opportunities and improved mental health due to a good diet, violent crime rates plummet. Prisons become ghost towns as the prison industry suffers “downsizing.” Cities save money by needing fewer cops. Many people who might have been criminals while eating bad diets become job-holding, tax-paying citizens under a good diet. (This isn’t an oversimplification. Crime and nutritional deficiencies are strongly correlated. Check the medical literature to learn more…)

Happiness: A healthy population is a happy population.

Genetic Integrity: On a healthful diet, the genetic integrity of the population remains well-protected. So the genetic future of the population stays intact.

Economic Productivity: Economic productivity skyrockets. A healthy, productive workforce remains globally competitive while creating long-term job security.

World Leadership: With a healthy, productive and innovative workforce, the nation has a strong economy which translates into greater opportunities for world leadership. The nation has more influence over international trade, diplomacy, problem resolution, global resource allocation, and so on.

Democracy & Freedom: A healthy, happy and well-educated population can participate in Democracy in a thoughtful way. As a result, voters make wiser choices by assessing politicians for their skills and ideas rather than their TV presence. Democracy gets healthier as the voters apply critical thinking skills (and strong educational backgrounds) to their voting decisions. A healthy Democracy with intelligent voters helps create and protect a more free society.

As you can see, a good diet positively impacts virtually every area of importance to a nation, from the economy and happiness to freedom itself.

Every nation has a choice about what sort of diet it promotes to its People. What choice has your nation chosen?

What diet has America chosen?

It’s obvious from looking around any grocery store (or watching any TV broadcast) in America that the nation has chosen to pursue a disastrously bad diet. The vast majority of “food” products sold at grocery stores are manufactured, processed foods made with chemical additives, cooked at high heats that produce dangerous byproducts, and then packaged in toxic packaging materials like plastics containing BPA.

America is addicted to fast foods and junk foods. People eat to fill their bellies and entertain their tongues, not to nourish their minds and bodies. Food has devolved from something that nourishes the body to a chemically-altered sensory addiction fabricated in a factory somewhere.

So instead of food being medicine, it has become a source of disease. And America is paying a dear price for choosing this route. All the negative repercussions of choosing a bad diet are now coming true in America: Increased crime and chronic degenerative disease, reduced cognitive function and productivity, huge increases in health care costs, rising infertility, increases in birth defects and mysterious neurological disorders, and so on.

These negative consequences of a bad diet are causing the rapid erosion of America’s economy. Faced with the burden of carrying tens of millions of sick people who could otherwise be productive if they had chosen the path of nutrition, the U.S. economy is dragged down by the weight of sickness and disease. Its competitiveness is drastically reduced by the suppressed cognitive function caused by processed foods and chemical additives. Its education system has fallen far behind world standards, thanks in large part to the brain-slowing junk foods children are fed at home and at school.

The result? A nation that can’t compete. And that sets off a chain reaction of offshoring, downsizing, and job sector reconfigurations that see millions of U.S. jobs shifted overseas where workers offer higher productivity at lower costs… and where health care is a fraction of the price of the United States. Taiwan, for example, offers a nationwide, universal health care solution for just $21 per month (http://www.naturalnews.com/027133_h…).

In the U.S., the annual health insurance premium for a family of four is anywhere from $10,000 – $15,000, and that doesn’t even include out-of-pocket expenses for doctors’ visits, medications and deductibles. Poor nutrition has put America into a debtor’s prison when it comes to health and medicine. All the diseases caused by the consumption of unhealthful foods have made American workers virtually unaffordable for global businesses due to outrageous health insurance costs.

All of this could have been prevented with a better diet for America. So let’s get to it!

Creating a strong, healthy nation

In order to sell more products, food and beverage companies have mastered the art of engineering food-like substances that exploit the hard-wired taste preferences of the human tongue. Humans can primarily taste sugar, salt and fat, and not coincidentally, those are the three primary things that food companies put into factory foods that are marketed to the public.

Food is fabricated specifically to be addictive, much like crack. And a surprisingly large portion of the population will always seek out such addictive, synthesized food tastes in much the same way that a heroin-addicted lab rat will keep pushing the drug lever to self-medicate with even more heroin. (This metaphor is eerily accurate when it comes to junk foods and human behavior…)

There are only really two ways to prevent such people from seeking out and consuming such foods:

Method #1) Educate people about junk foods and health so that they can make better-informed decisions about what to eat (or what to avoid). (The “Free Choice” approach.)

Method #2) Restrict access to junk foods to prevent people from making food consumption decisions that are not in their own best long-term interests (the “Nanny State” approach).

A nation that wishes to be strong and healthy must, in my opinion, pursue both of these methods. Here are some of the ways in which these goals can be pursued:

Method #1 – Educate People

• Teach real nutrition in public schools.

• Require doctors to learn the principles of nutrition and teach them to patients.

• Require all broadcast media outlets (cable, TV, radio, etc.) to dedicate some small percentage of their airtime to airing pro-nutrition public service announcements (as an exchange for the right to use FCC-regulated airwaves).

• Put very high taxes on all processed foods and junk foods, then use those tax dollars to fund public service announcements teaching consumers to avoid those foods. (I’m not a huge fan of using taxes in this way, but it’s one idea worth considering.)

• Tax the key ingredients used in processed foods such as high-fructose corn syrup or refined white sugar. Then use that money to fund pro-nutrition public service announcements.

• Require all food retailers to place public service educational booklets in or near aisles where food is purchased. Those booklets should provide honest information about the dangers of processed foods and chemical additives, including mentioning the diseases they cause: Cancer, diabetes, depression, etc.

• Require prominent food labels that warn consumers about the diseases caused by the particular ingredients used in processed foods. This is similar to the lung cancer warnings on cigarette packages. A box of sugary breakfast cereal, for example, should carry a large red warning label that reads, “WARNING: This product contains ingredients known to promote diabetes.”

 

Method #2 – Restrict access

Here are some ideas that could be pursued to restrict consumers’ access to disease-promoting foods:

• Ban ALL advertising of processed foods, factory-made foods or non-natural foods of any kind. This includes TV, radio, internet, sporting sponsorships, etc.

• Ban disease-promoting ingredients from the food supply altogether: High-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, trans fats, artificial colors, sodium nitrite, etc.

• Hit food retailers with draconian new food display laws that forbid junk foods from being displayed on end caps, near checkout counters, at eye-level on the shelves, etc. (I normally don’t go for “Draconian” anything, but this is one idea to be considered.)

• End government subsidies on corn and sugar, as these are the sources from which cheap, nutritionally-depleted foods are made.

• Place heavy taxes on food manufacturers for producing unhealthful foods and beverages. This will have the same effect as raising retail taxes on those items, but it’s easier to administer this tax at the manufacturer rather than at retail.

• Use tax money raised from taxing junk foods to subsidize fresh produce, thereby making fresh fruits and vegetables more affordable to American families. (Again, I’m generally against using the tax code in such ways, but it’s an idea worth debating.)

Food taxes and subsidies

Economically speaking, using taxes to alter consumer behavior does work. Consumers are price sensitive, so making unhealthful foods ridiculously expensive while making healthful foods more affordable seems to make sense if you wish to use taxes to shape behavior. But in a free society, it’s always better, in my opinion, to rely on public education and limits on advertising to allow consumers to make their own informed decisions about what they wish to purchase and consume.

If consumers were really aware that hot dogs cause brain cancer, for example, (because of sodium nitrite), or that high-fructose corn syrup promotes diabetes and obesity, they might make far better decisions about what they wish to feed themselves and their children.

At the same time, you can’t discount the impact of interventionist tax policy to alter point-of-purchase prices. Imagine taking this to the extreme: What if a bag of fresh apples cost one penny, while a box of apple-flavored Pop-Tarts cost $10? How would that alter consumer behavior?

Most families, out of sheer economic necessity, would opt for the far cheaper fresh produce while avoiding the extremely high cost of processed foods. The cost of subsidizing the healthful foods would be easily earned back by the nation in terms of greatly reduced health care costs and increases in economic productivity (not to mention improved happiness, lower rates of disease, improved results in education, etc.).

In fact, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that in a progressive, health-conscious nation, all fresh produce might be fully subsidized by the taxpayers, effectively making their purchases (virtually) free. Imagine ten cents for a pound of carrots, or fifty cents for a bunch of organic broccoli. This could be done through taxes subsidies, if desired.

There would be fraud in the system, of course. Growers would try to claim more subsidies than they are due, so you can expect some waste overhead to exist.

You would also see Americans making “junk food border runs” to Mexico and Canada where junk food items are sold at market prices instead of the high-tax prices enacted in the USA. In effect, you would see “junk food smugglers” bringing in truck-loads of Pop-Tarts and Frosted Flakes in order to make a profit undercutting the high-tax retail prices in the U.S. The scope of this activity would be directly proportional to the difference in prices between the U.S. vs. Mexico (or Canada).

As is typical of Big Government, the feds would then criminalize the covert importation of junk foods and start running raids on junk food smugglers. You could literally go to prison for getting caught with a van full of Pop-Tarts!

That’s why taxes and subsidies are a messy business. Nations must tread carefully in this area. If taxes on junk foods are too high, they will inevitably create a very large underground market for smuggled junk foods, resulting in a rather large “criminal” operation of junk food smugglers and the widespread avoidance of the very taxes intended to be imposed.

But beyond taxes and subsidies, there’s a bigger question in all this:

Who profits from disease?

Of course, if you really want to create a healthy nation, you have to be prepared to see widespread job losses across the industries that currently profit from sickness and disease.

Those industries include the pharmaceutical industry, agriculture giants, junk food retailers and even the mainstream media. If America gets healthy with good nutrition, each of these industries would suffer considerable losses in jobs and revenues. They depend on disease for their very existence, of course, so eliminating (or greatly reducing) disease will have a devastating impact on them.

But that’s a good thing for America. Every job that treats disease is a job wasted from a big picture civilization point of view. Without disease, that worker could be doing something far more productive such as contributing to a brighter future as an educator, artist, engineer, writer or some other noble profession. It’s not that being a doctor or nurse isn’t noble (nursing, in particular, is quite a noble calling), but wouldn’t it be better for the economy as a whole if all the jobs focused on disease could be rendered obsolete by healthy people who don’t need such services? Under such a scenario, all the “disease jobs” could be shifted to something else (like researching renewable energy technologies, for example).

Unfortunately, every industry fights for survival in our economy, even if it only offers products or services based on sickness and disease. And for many of these industries, the real financial windfall only occurs when the population is kept in a state of ongoing chronic disease. A healthy population means disaster for these industries. Here are some of the big ones:

The Pharmaceutical Industry – Big Pharma would lose a fortune if the population got healthy with nutrition. It sells billions of dollars worth of drugs every year and depends on disease to sell them. All the pharmacies that retail those drugs would also go out of business: CVS, Walgreen, Wal-Mart, Safeway, etc.

The Medical Industry – All those hospitals, doctors’ offices and emergency rooms also depend on a steady stream of diseased, malnourished Americans to guarantee their job security and incomes. A drop in disease would mean the rapid downsizing of hospitals and clinics.

The Food & Agriculture Giants – The Big Food and Big Ag companies bet their profits on the continued purchasing of processed, nutritionally-depleted food and beverage products that directly contribute to degenerative disease. High-Fructose Corn Syrup, for example, is a very profitable ingredient to use in processed foods. Never mind the fact that it promotes diabetes and obesity… it’s cheaper than sugar!

The Mainstream Media – The MSM, meanwhile, depends on the advertising dollars of drug companies, soda companies and junk food companies to keep its own financial lifeline intact. If junk food and pharmaceutical advertising were both banned, the media would suffer enormous losses in ad revenues. It’s all those nutritionally worthless, disease-promoting products that keep the MSM in business! Remember, the MSM is in the business of “junk food news,” meaning they produce a “diet” of junk news for human consumption (http://rense.com/general88/paid.htm).

The Health Insurance Industry – This industry realizes huge financial gains from sickness and disease. The more people are sick, the higher the insurance premiums (and the more profit is mathematically built in). Furthermore, the more people get sick, the more they feel they need to buy insurance, so more disease inevitably leads to higher revenues across the health insurance industry.

Junk Food Retailers – This includes your local grocery store, by the way, which is stacked to the hilt with processed, disease-causing junk foods. It’s the same story with Costco or Sam’s Clubs. Wal-Mart and even local pharmacies are also chock full of disease-promoting junk foods that nutritionists know are linked to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, kidney stones, depression and many other problems. But selling junk food is big business and grocery stores aren’t about to restrict the products they sell just because they happen to promote disease.  Pharmacies still sell cigarettes!

Disease Non-Profits – Never forget how much money is collected by the disease non-profit groups like the American Cancer Society. These “rich” non-profits depend entirely on the continuation of their sponsored disease in order to stay in power. In a world without cancer (to reference G. Edward Griffin’s book title), there’s no need for the ACS. Nor for the Susan Komen cancer group with all its ridiculous pink ribbons that pretend we can all cure cancer by going shopping. For every significant disease affecting the western world today, there’s an associated disease group depending on that disease for its own survival.

In all, these industries represent anywhere from one-quarter to one-half of the entire U.S. economy. Unleashing a wave of nutrition and health in America would therefore destroy a significant portion of the U.S. economy as currently configured. It would put rich, powerful corporations out of business and send hundreds of thousands of works out onto the streets to look for new jobs.

And yet, it’s still a good thing for America, because all that economic activity (focused on disease) is really a net LOSS to America, not a net gain. Economists don’t differentiate good from bad when it comes to GDP, but the truth is that every dollar spent treating someone’s disease is actually a dollar wasted on something that could have been prevented for a nickel’s worth of nutrition.

Nutrition is a good investment in America. Why spend dollars treating disease when you can spend nickels keeping people healthy? Putting the disease industry out of business is a good thing, because if sick-care isn’t getting much business, that means the People are getting healthier, happier and more productive. And that’s what keeps a nation strong and successful in the long run.

12 steps to save America

So how can we really save America with nutrition? It all starts with you and your family. Follow these 12 steps to unleash a new era of health and wellness in your own life:

Step 1) Stop rewarding manufacturers of processed foods, junk foods, sodas and pharmaceuticals. Simply refuse to buy their products.

Step 2) Greatly increase your purchases of fresh, organic produce. Get yourself a juicer (I like the Breville brand) and drink a fresh juice smoothie every day. Teach your children to eat more fresh produce.

Step 3) Supplement your diet with health-enhancing superfoods and nutritional supplements. You may wish to include nutrient-dense algae products like spirulina, blue-green algae, chlorella and astaxanthin.

Step 4) Greatly increase your intake of Omega-3 oils. I take Moxxor’s Green-Lipped Mussel oil as well as consuming wild salmon from time to time.

Step 5) Get a lot more sunshine: Your body (and your mind) needs sunlight. It generates the vitamin D that helps prevent cancer, depression, diabetes and heart disease.

Step 6) Boost your physical exercise. Studies repeatedly show that even moderate exercise (walking 3 times a week, for example), has a drastic reduction on rates of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Step 7) Exercise your brain: Learn a new language, play strategy games, read books or do something active with your brain to keep all the neurons firing. This is all much easier when your brain is powered by superfoods, by the way.

Step 8) Avoid medications. Prescription drugs are poison. If you’re currently taking meds, work with a naturopathic physician to safely get off those meds and heal your body through nutrition (or other natural therapies).

Step 9) Avoid hospitals. A hospital is one of the most dangerous places you can go. They’re filled with antibiotic-resistant superbugs, for one thing. Your risk of being harmed at a hospital is much higher than what you might expect. Unless you’re suffering from an acute, dangerous condition requiring emergency medical care, make an effort to stay away from hospitals.

Step 10) Embrace your own natural healing potential! Recognize that your immune system is a technological miracle. Your body is a self-repairing biological marvel. When given the right resources (nutrition, superfoods, etc.), your body can work healing miracles.

Step 11) Thank yourself for taking the time to invest in your own good health by reading this report. Give yourself a healing reward such as a glass of fresh orange / carrot juice or a delicious superfood smoothie.

Step 12) Forward this special report to 3 friends, family members or coworkers you know who might benefit from this information. Spread the word about nutrition and you’ll be taking part in a wave of healing that can sweep across our planet as people reawaken to the healing powers of plant-based nutrients. (The web address to forward to your friends is displayed below.)

Thank you for reading!

 

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About the author: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, currently lives in Vilcabamba, Ecuador where he grows and consumes a large assortment of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables (http://www.naturalnews.com/photos.html). The creator of the Health Revolution Petition (www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org), Adams believes in individual liberty, personal responsibility and natural healing. His mission is to share natural health secrets with the world with the hope of unleashing of a new golden age of health and healing that uplifts human civilization. He founded NaturalNews in 2003 and remains its editor today.