Avocado, along with organic rice and beans, would be more than enough to silence a meat eater's claim that you're not getting enough protein as a vegan or vegetarian. While avocados are wrongly disdained by weight watcher types for their fat content, almost everyone is ignorant of the avocado's high and complete protein content.

Avocado Fat Facts

It's important to understand that a body needs fats, as long as they're healthy ones. Omega 3 fatty acids are missing in the average western diet. And this missing fatty acid is behind lots of bad health and disease. It just so happens that avocados are high in omega 3 and omega 6. In fact, you can get all the omega 3 you need from daily avocado consumption.

There is no cholesterol in avocados. They are a rich source of non-toxic beneficial fats. The notion that avocados are fattening is false. Processed sugars and high fructose corn syrups in processed foods create obesity, along with cooked starches, pasteurized dairy, and factory farm meats.

You will be healthier and leaner by using avocados in your diet often.

Avocados Offer a Complete Protein

Unlike a cooked steak, from which it is difficult to digest and absorb its high protein content, avocados have predigested protein. The sun creates a process of breaking the protein into easily digested amino acids while the avocados are ripening in their trees.

Thus the avocado provides all 18 essential amino acids needed by a body to create complete protein. Proteins represented by amino acids are easier to digest.

Unlike meats, avocados don't putrefy in the stomach, and with avocados' high fiber content there's no threat of constipation. And avocados don't have the antibiotics, hormones, and GMO corn that are injected and fed to mass market cattle raised for mass slaughter to fill the meat counters of supermarkets.

Other Avocado Nutrients

Avocados are bursting with enzymes and rich in minerals, including the usually deficient master mineral magnesium, which is involved in over 300 metabolic functions of the body. They help provide the body with glutathione, the important master anti-oxidant that helps the liver replenish all other anti-oxidants.

Vitamins A, much of the B complex, K, E and C are also very available in avocados. The nutrient order of importance is enzymes, minerals, and vitamins. Vitamins won't work without minerals, and neither minerals nor vitamins get into your cells without enzymes.

There are not many tasty foods that are so easy to find packing as much nutritional value as avocados.

Avocado Edibles

You can tell when avocados are ripe by color and gentle squeezing. If the normally green skins are turning brownish and you can mush it slightly with a gentle squeeze, those are ready to eat. However, if you are not using them right away, pick the green hard ones and let them ripen at home. Like bananas, the ripe ones turn in a very few days.

Sliced for green salads is an ideal way of eating avocados easily and often. There are recipes for blending avocados and making dressings or sauces. But this party favorite is the big Kahuna for nutrition as well as taste: guacamole!

The combination of mashed avocado, olive oil, sea salt, pepper, a little chopped chili, chopped onions and mashed garlic creates a synergistic super food as well as a tasty treat.

Sources for more information include:

Guacamole May be the Ultimate Cancer Fighting Food
http://gracemedeirosmj.wordpress.co...

Avocado Nutrition Information
http://healthrecipes.com/avocado_in...

Health Benefits of Avocado (includes protein)
http://www.associatedcontent.com/ar...

Researchers from HUST recently performed a social experiment in which they deprived the university's entire 800-student population from using social media for a week. What they found is that social media addiction is similar to drug addiction, in that people go through similar withdrawal symptoms.

"The majority of students behaved much like smokers who sneak cigarettes after class," explained Eric Darr, provost of the college, in a recent Fox News article. "They would sneak off to check things on their smart phones."

Some students are so addicted to social networking sites like Facebook that they spend upwards of 21 hours a day connected to the site in some way, whether through their computers or through their mobile phones, leaving only a couple hours for uninterrupted sleep. Many have no time whatsoever for quality, face-to-face interaction with their friends and family members as a result.

But because of the experiment, many students came to the abrupt realization that social network addiction is destroying their health both physically and relationally. Some admitted that they need to make some radical changes in their daily habits.

"Students realized that social media, especially Facebook and instant messaging, if not properly managed, can take over their lives," emphasized Darr. "Only by stopping and paying attention can we understand. We may not even be aware that social media plays a big part in what we do and how we do it."

Sources for this story include:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/...

More than 25 percent of all children, including almost 30 percent of those between the ages of 10 and 19, are now taking at least one prescription drug for a chronic condition. And while rates of some diseases associated with children, such as asthma and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), have indeed increased, most of the effect is driven by conditions typically considered "adult" diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.

"What's surprising is the type of drugs these kids are taking. All these adult drugs are popping up in children, which is really disturbing," said Medco's Robert Epstein.

The use of type 2 diabetes drugs in children increased 5.3 percent in 2009, with a total increase of 150 percent since 2001. Among girls between the ages of 10 and 19, the increase was more than 200 percent. Use of cholesterol-lowering drugs increased 50 percent over the same time period, while use of blood pressure drugs increased 24 percent and use of acid reflux drugs increased 147 percent.

"The obesity problem is contributing not just to diabetes but to a lot of other problems," Epstein said.

"We've got to get our arms around some very fast lifestyle modification or we're going to have a real problem, having these adult illnesses show up in children who will have a changing life expectancy if they're going to be sick from a very young age."

The use of antipsychotics in children doubled between 2001 and 2010, but the use of antidepressants actually dropped after reports of increased suicide risk emerged in 2004.

While overall use of ADHD drugs did increase 9.1 percent in 2009, the major area of growth was not among children, as might be expected. Instead, the drugs became more popular among adults between the ages of 20 and 34, with a 21.2 percent increase in prescriptions.

Sources for this story include: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS....

Most concerns about genetically modified foods fall into one of three categories: environmental hazards, economic concerns and human health risks. This article will outline the environmental hazards of GMOs.

Environmental Hazards of GMOs
Out-crossing
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is a very real risk of out-crossing, which refers to the transfer of engineered genes (transgenes) from genetically modified crops to conventional, cultivated plants or to related crop species in the wild. This may happen by means of wind, insect pollination, or other transfer.

The foreign genes can cross with and contaminate these other species, resulting in a hybridization of the genetically modified crop plant with a non-GMO plant. This could radically alter entire ecosystems if the hybrid plants thrived.

Out-crossing can also have an indirect effect on food safety and security, as the contaminated species make their way into the food chain. In a September 2010 paper, for example, the World Health Organization reports an incident in which traces of a GM variety of corn that was only approved for use as livestock feed was found in corn products intended for human consumption in the U.S. market.

Increased Use of Herbicides and Pesticides
Scientists estimate that crops that are genetically modified to be herbicide-resistant tend to greatly increase the herbicide use. Knowing that their crops are more herbicide tolerant, farmers are more likely to use these often-toxic chemicals more liberally.

Many genetically modified crops are engineered to produce their own pesticides and may even be classified as pesticides by the EPA. This strategy, in turn, adds even more pesticides into our fields and food than ever before.

Unintended harm to Non-target Organisms
A 1999 laboratory study published in Nature showed that pollen from B.t. corn, a variety of GM corn, resulted in high mortality rates among monarch butterfly caterpillars. Even though these caterpillars feed on milkweed plants, not on corn, there is a concern that if pollen from the B.t. corn is blown into a neighboring field with milkweed plants, the caterpillars would consume it and perish. The potential risk posed to non-target organisms remains the subject of acrimonious debate.

Referrences
1. WHO: 20 Questions on Genetically Modified (Gm) Foods (Accessed 09/06/10)
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publi...
2. GMOS - What are the Dangers?
http://www.safe-food.org/-issue/dan...
3. Transgenic pollen harms monarch larvae (Nature, Volume 399, No 6733, Page 214, May 1999)
4. Frankenfish: Genetically Modified Salmon could Wipe out an Entire Specieshttp://www.naturalnews.com/029751_f...

Raman spectroscopes, as they are called, measure the wavelength and intensity of the scattered light emitted from molecules, and uses these measurements to identify the presence of the biological markers of disease. So in essence, the technology will one day be able to replace a host of other diagnostic procedures that are invasive, time-consuming and even risky to health.

"You can replace a lot of procedures, a lot of diagnostics that are out there right now," said Michael Morris, a chemistry professor at the University of Michigan, to BBC News. "The big advantage is that [the technology is] non-invasive, pretty fast -- much faster than classical procedures -- and more accurate."

Raman spectroscopy is already used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries for similar functions, but its potential in the medical industry makes it even more viable. Because the laser is able to identify even slight changes in the chemical mixes of tissues and bones, its uses are limitless.

"Raman gives you a molecular fingerprint, a composition of whatever it is you're measuring," explained Morris. "We turn on the laser and after we've collected enough signal in a few minutes, we turn it of. In principle, it will take a couple of seconds to interpret the results."

As opposed to traditional blood tests that involve drawing blood with needles, Ramen spectroscopes will simply be able to analyze blood through the skin, for instance. And instead of having to undergo mammograms, which expose them to repeated levels of dangerous radiation, women can instead be scanned with a Ramen spectroscope to identify the presence of benign or malignant tissue abnormalities.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-e...

Plenty has been said here on NaturalNews about all of the bad things associated with disposable diapers. Yet 84% of American babies are diapered with disposables and the average baby goes through about 6,000 disposables before being potty trained. Most of those diapers end up in a landfill where they do not degrade.1 This likely means that in a few thousand years when our descendants dig up our fossil remains to see how we lived, they'll think we must have really, really, really wanted our diapers to last..

Sitting down and doing the math, anyone can see that over the 6,000 diaper lifetime of a baby, the money spent could be equal to a car payment, a large mortgage payment, or more. Let's break it down.

In the first six months, a baby will go through about 1,200 diapers. From newborn through the first thirty days or so, baby averages 10 diapers per day (conservatively) and from one month to six months will average about 6 diapers per day (again, conservatively).

In the store, diapers for 0-6 months cost about $40 per 180 diapers (0.23/diaper). If you're a club member, then you might get them for 0.20 per diaper. That means $240-$276 in diapers in that first six months. Over the entire diapering period, those disposables cost your family from $1,200 to $1,380. Remember, these are conservative estimates.

Cloth diapers, on the other hand, range in price depending on your choice. The homemade cloth diapers your mom made might have run thirty cents each in today's money. For convenience, however, the better, higher-cost cloth diapers with snaps or velcro, cloth inserts, etc. run about $18 each. Sounds like a lot of money, right? If you buy the brands of cloth diapering systems that expand with your baby (through adjustable velcro or snaps), these diapers are a one-time purchase. A dozen of them will cost you $216 or so.

So, for less than you'd spend on disposables for the first six months, you can have a full set (12) of a good cloth diapering system. Spend the rest on extra inserts and you're even better off.

This means that instead of spending $1,380 on diapers, you could spend only $216. That's over a thousand bucks in savings over 3 years. That's a couple of car payments, a house payment.. with cash left over.

Most of these diapering systems work the same basic way. An outer waterproof shell (this is the visible portion, with the velcro/snaps) might have a removable waterproof liner inside. Inside that is the actual cloth diaper, which can easily be removed from the shell. This means you only wash the inside unless the little one has a "blowout," and you can use the same outer shell most of the day. So most parents get by with about 12 of these on hand, four to six of the smallest size (for newborns) and six or eight of the larger size for 6+ months. The liners usually work in both and can be bought separately at very low cost. Most systems come with at least two per already. There are even flushable paper inserts.

All of this means that these modern cloth diapers are much more convenient and require a lot less washing (there is less to wash). All at less than a quarter of the cost of buying disposables.

Resources:
1 - The Sustainable Baby, Diapers by Aaron Turpen, AaronsEnvironmental.com

2 - The Sustainable Baby, Diapers II by Aaron Turpen, AaronsEnvironmental.com

3 - Lessen Your Baby's Toxic Load (Part 1): Diapers by Patty Donovan, NaturalNews

4 - How Green Are Disposable Diapers? by Brian T. Horowitz, Fox News

5 - Diapers: Cloth vs. Disposables in Cost by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews.tv and Diapering: How the New Generation of Cloth Diapers Work by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews.tv

Wikipedia is an on-line international collaboration of volunteers who post, edit, and research a variety of topics. According to Wikipedia's Five Pillars, "articles should strive for a neutrality, cite verifiable, authoritative sources, and honor multiple points of view." Issues arise when solid, referenced information conflicts with another perspective and is edited mercilessly or deleted. Contributors have little or no accountability and can post, edit, or vandalize an entry anonymously or even under a false "expert" alias. This was seen when a prominent Wikipedia contributor was discovered to be a 24-year-old drop out posing as a tenured college professor.

Natural and alternative medicine articles appear to be particularly vulnerable to partisan misinformation on Wikipedia. According to ANH, a few of these abuses are seen in the following instances:

A libelous article on Dr. Julian Whitaker was flagged in December 2007 due to neutrality issues, yet the case still has yet to be resolved.

Supportive, science based information on Orthomolecular Medicine is repeatedly edited and replaced with critical opinions.

Misinformation under the Nutritionist entry implies that ADA-registered dietitians are the only experts. There is more information about dietitians in the article than nutritionists who are supposed to be the subject of the article.

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, is quoted on Wikipedia, saying alternative medicine is a "set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fails test," as well as "if a technique is demonstrated effective in properly performed trials, it ceases to be alternative and simply becomes medicine."

Larry Sanger, cofounder of Wikipedia, left the organization due to concerns about its integrity. He states: "In some fields and some topics, there are groups who 'squat' on articles and insist on making them reflect their own specific biases. There is no credible mechanism to approve versions of articles. Vandalism, once a minor annoyance, has become a major headache-made possible because the community allows anonymous contribution. Many experts have been driven away because know-nothings insist on ruining their articles."

Currently, there are several alternatives to Wikipedia for creditable information. Two examples are Citizendium and Wiki4CAM, the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Encyclopedia.

As noted by ANH, Wikipedia is an incredible and powerful force on the internet; therefore, the spread of misinformation regarding natural and alternative medicine is of particular concern for the health and wellness community.

Sources for this article:

http://www.anh-usa.org/wikipedia's-...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe...

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:W...

About the author

Carolanne enthusiastically believes if we want to see change in the world, we need to be the change. As a nutritionist, natural foods chef, and wellness coach-consultant, Carolanne has encouraged others to embrace a healthy lifestyle of organic living, gratefulness, and joyful orientation for over 13 years. Through her website www.Thrive-Living.com she looks forward to connecting with other like-minded people from around the world who share a similar vision.

Articles Related to This Article:

· Mainstream media criticizes Wikipedia because it represents a decentralization of their information monopoly

Until Montagnier's research, the bulk of mainstream doctors and scientist had maintained that there was no scientific way that multiple dilutions used in homeopathy could possibly work. In part, such views stemmed from lack of understanding. In larger part, such views likely stemmed from a desire to stem the rising popularity of homeopathy and eliminate it as a competition to mainstream medicine - much the same as happened in the United States a century ago.

One of the foundations of homeopathy maintains that the potency of a substance is increased with its dilution. Montagnier discovered that solutions containing the DNA of viruses and bacteria "could emit low frequency radio waves" and that such waves influence molecules around them, turning them into organized structures. The molecules in turn emit waves and Montagnier found that the waves remain in the water even after it has been diluted many times. To a lay person, that may not mean much, but to a scientist is highly suggests that homeopathy may have a scientific basis.

In Britain the market for homeopathy is estimated to be growing at around 20% a year. Over 30 million people in Europe use homeopathic medicine. Homeopathy is supported in Britain by Prince Charles and the physician to the Royal Family has been a homeopathic physician since the late 1800s.

While homeopathy is also experiencing a resurgence of popularity in the United States, it is far more popular in much of the rest of the world. In India, approximately 130 million people use homeopathy. In Brazil, homeopathy is a recognized medical specialty where 15,000 medical doctors are certified as homeopathic specialists

The latter half of the 19th century was homeopathy's heyday in the United States. Regular physicians could hardly compete. By 1902 homeopaths did seven times the business of allopaths and there were 15,000 practicing homeopathic physicians in the US. During the 1849 cholera epidemic, homeopaths from Cincinnati kept rigorous records showing that they lost only 3% of their patients, while allopathy lost 16 to 20 times more.

Many highly accomplished individuals past and present have chosen homeopathy as their therapy of choice, including several U.S. Presidents. Many of America's literary greats advocated for and often wrote about homeopathy, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain - as did European greats such as Goethe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Alfred Tennyson, and George Bernard Shaw.

At the turn of the 20th century, the AMA came right out and admitted that competition was destroying physicians' incomes. Thanks to funding from John D. Rockefeller and the Carnegie Foundation, the AMA was able to repress and ultimately eliminate homeopathy and other natural and alternative competition. The 22 homeopathic medical schools that flourished in 1900 dwindled to just 2 in 1923. By 1950 all schools teaching homeopathy were closed.

Ironically, John D. Rockefeller believed strongly in homeopathy. He referred to it as "a progressive and aggressive step in medicine." Rockefeller lived to the ripe old age of 99 using only homeopathy in the latter part of his life.

Sources included:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...
http://www.wddty.com/nobel-scientis...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2...
http://www.scnm.edu/homeopathy.html
http://www.tbyil.com/Managed_Illnes...

The study, published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs, concludes that people who make it a habit to read food labels and to exercise lose more weight than those who merely exercise. Even more interesting is that those who only read food labels and are sedentary lose more than those who exercise but ignore the food labels.

Not surprisingly, the study found that women between the ages of 37 and 50 years are more likely to read food labels than their male counterparts and are therefore more likely to lose weight.

The study's author, Bidisha Mandal, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the School of Economic Sciences at Washington State University, looked at four years' worth of data drawn from a National Longitudinal Survey of Youth which had 12,000 original participants born from 1957 to 1964. Over fifty percent of the study's participants were trying to lose weight and of these less than fifty percent were reading food labels on their first time purchase of a product.

Americans have been reading food labels since 1994 when the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act was passed requiring food manufactures to disclose nutrient and ingredient information on their packages. Recently states and the federal government have extended the disclosure requirements to chain restaurants and vending machines.

What should you be looking for when you are reading the small print on food labels? Here are six simple tips to reading a food label for weight loss:

1. Claims on the front, back, and sides of the box, except for the small print of the nutrition facts panel and the ingredient list, are advertising. Don't rely on those claims.
2. Remember that the first ingredient listed on the label is the largest by weight. If the first or second ingredient is sugar, the product is mostly sugar and it's best to pass on it. Sugar goes by many names, so keep an eye out for maltose, sucrose, dextrose and evaporated cane juice, just to name a few.
3. Check the ingredient list for anything that says "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated." This indicates the presence of trans fats. Even if the nutrition fact panel or the box claims "Zero Trans Fat," the product can contain up to one half gram and still make the claim of no trans fats. Avoid any product with those unhealthy fats in the small print ingredient list.
4. Check the ingredient list for "high fructose corn syrup," and avoid any products containing it.
5. If the ingredient list is really, really long with words you don't know, pass on that product. In general, the fewer the ingredients, the better the product is for you.
6. For breads, cereals and crackers, the first ingredient better say whole grain or whole wheat, not refined or enriched wheat or flour, and there should be at least 2 grams of fiber for each serving of 100 calories.

Source material:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/...