Recommended by More Natural Cures Revealed

It came as a total surprise and honor to discover our website (PlanetOrganics.net) had been recommended in Kevin Trudeau’s new book More Natural “Cures” Revealed (chapter 13, page 275). Kevin Trudeau is one of the nation’s leading consumer advocates and author of the New York Times best seller Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About. We love our products and believe that Miessence Certified Organic Skincare products are some of the highest quality products you can purchase anywhere in the world. It is wonderful to get this type of exposure and affirmation that we are doing the right thing. Help us send a message to the mega corporations by voting with your dollar (the only thing they really care about) and buying nourishing certified organic products.

Venezuela to Prohibit Transgenic Crops

President Chavez Announces Ban of Genetically Engineered Crops in Venezuela

From: BioX - China, July 8, 2006


Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias has announced that the cultivation of genetically modified crops will be prohibited on Venezuelan soil, possibly establishing the most sweeping restrictions on transgenic crops in the Western Hemisphere. Though full details of the administration?s policy on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are still forthcoming, the statement by President Chavez will lead most immediately to the cancellation of a contract that Venezuela had negotiated with the U.S.-based Monsanto Corporation.

Before a recent international gathering of supporters in Caracas, President Chavez admonished genetically engineered crops as contrary to interests and needs of the nation?s farmers and farmworkers. He then zeroed in on Monsanto?s plans to plant up to 500,000 acres of transgenic soybeans in Venezuela.

Pesticides exposure raises Parkinson?s Risk

Pesticides but not other environmental contaminants, may boost the long-term risk for developing Parkinson's disease by 70 percent, a new study suggests. Their finding does back up earlier animal studies linking pesticide exposure to motor function abnormalities and lower levels of the brain neurotransmitter dopamine. Declines in dopamine have long been associated with Parkinson's. "This is the first large human study that shows that exposure to pesticide is associated with a higher incidence of Parkinson's," said study lead author Dr. Alberto Ascherio, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. Ascherio and his colleagues discussed their work in the July issue of the Annals of Neurology. The authors reviewed lifestyle surveys completed in both 1982 and in 2001 by over 143,000 participants in the U.S. "Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort," launched in 1982. The researchers studied 413 participants who were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Exposed patients were twice as likely to be blue-collar workers and 14 times more likely to work as either a farmer, rancher, or fisherman. The Harvard team found that, regardless of occupation, pesticide exposure boosted long-term Parkinson's risk by 70 percent over the long-term. Robin Elliot, executive director for the Parkinson's Disease Foundation in New York City, described the findings as "important and solid." "This is certainly the biggest and most serious populations study on people, and it appears to be the best proof today that there is a general association between pesticide and Parkinson's among people," said Elliot. "It merits further investigation," he said. SOURCES: Alberto Ascherio, M.D., associate professor, nutrition and epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; Robin Elliot, executive director, Parksinon's Disease Foundation, New York City; July, 2006 issue of the Annals of Neurology.

Whole Kids

Extract from the article in Australian Organic Journal by James Meldrum, Co-founder of Whole Kids

With the increasing attention by parents, educators, nutrition experts and society in general on the role of school canteens in promoting healthy eating, can organics play a part in changing the school menu for our kids? Are there any examples from here or overseas we can learn from?

Healthy school meals can lead to better behaved students who are more alert in class, according to a report by the UK Soil Association. The report found that students who eat meals made with fresh (preferably organic), unprocessed ingredients have ?better concentration, improved attention spans, are less likely to be hyperactive, and are calmer and more alert in class. They also have an increased capacity to learn and are less likely to be absent from school? (Soil Association, 2004).

Even a small change such as switching to organic milk can help children?s concentration and behaviour. According to the researchers in Wales, ?organic milk contains 64% more Omega 3 fatty acids than non-organic milk. In some cases organic milk contains 240% more Omega 3 acids?. The researchers also claim that ?behaviour problems often improve if you switch your child to organic milk?and that organic milk consumption, compared to non-organic milk, can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer?s? (Medical News, 2004).

It Can Be Done ? Organics at the School Canteen
It is not just organic food companies that are encouraging a change to our canteen menus. Here and overseas, schools, organizations and governments are taking the initiative by removing junk food from canteens and introducing organic and healthy alternatives:

Since 2000, it has been obligatory to offer organic food in Italian schools. Although only 500 of 8,100 communities regularly offer organic meals or organic components for lunches for school children, more than 25% of Italian children eat organic, as most large cities adhere to the regulation. And in Emilia Romagna, legislation was passed requiring all day nurseries and primary schools in the region to offer exclusively organic meals to around 350,000 school children. (OCA, October 2004)

In France, around 300,000 organic meals are served each year in ten schools in Languedoc Rousillon and 400,000 a year in the Provence-Alpes-Cotes-d?Azur region (Soil Association, 2003)

South Africa has gone a step further through its EduPlant activities which promote the cultivation of organic food in schools across the country. EduPlant has reached 14,500 educators from over 12,000 schools around South Africa in the past nine years (OCA, September 2004).

At the University of California, USA, students can order organic salads prepared in the first-ever certified organic kitchen on an American college campus (OCA, April 2006)

Many schools in the UK have introduced organic food. For example, at St Peter?s Primary School in Nottingham, children still eat pizza, but the bases are homemade in the school kitchen using organic milk, organic oil and organic flour.

At the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a small, private graduate university in Monterey, California, with about 700 students from around the world, one activist student led the way to convert coffee sold on campus from conventional to about 90 percent organic and fair trade (OTA)

HEALTH:Produce has been losing vitamins and minerals over the past half-century

By Deborah K. Rich, Special to The Chronicle Saturday, March 25, 2006

The fruits and vegetables that our parents ate when they were growing up were more nutritious than the ones we'll serve our children tonight. On average, the produce we grow in the United States has lower levels of several vitamins and minerals today than it did 50 to 60 years ago. By growing or buying and eating organic produce, however, we can make up much of the difference. Organically grown fruits and vegetables are proving to have higher levels of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals than their conventionally grown counterparts.
Donald R. Davis, a research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, recently analyzed data gathered by the USDA in 1950 and 1999 on the nutrient content of 43 fruit and vegetable crops. He found that six out of 13 nutrients had declined in these crops over the 50-year period (the seven other nutrients showed no significant, reliable changes). Three minerals, phosphorous, iron and calcium, declined between 9 percent and 16 percent. Protein declined 6 percent. Riboflavin declined 38 percent and ascorbic acid (a precursor
of vitamin C) declined 15 percent.
A study of the mineral content of fruits and vegetables grown in Britain between 1930 and 1980 shows similar decreases in nutrient density. The British study found significantly lower levels of calcium, magnesium, copper and sodium in vegetables, and of magnesium, iron, copper and potassium in fruit.
The report concludes that the declines indicate "that a nutritional problem associated with the quality of food has developed over those 50 years."
The decline in our produce's nutritional value corresponds to the period of increasing industrialization of our farming systems. As we have substituted chemical fertilizers, pesticides and monoculture farming for the natural cycling of nutrients and on-farm biodiversity, we have lessened the nutritional value of our produce. Integrated
well-established organic farming systems can counter the decline.
Good science comparing the nutritional value of organic and conventional foods is accumulating rapidly. It isn't uncommon for researchers to find that the higher nutrient levels in organic produce completely offset the
declines Davis found in conventional produce. "What all our data shows," says Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center and a former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, "is that whenever there's been a valid comparison between conventional and organic, organic is virtually never lower than conventional and, in a significant number of cases, it's higher.
Sometimes it's significantly higher in several important nutrients."
For example, Virginia Worthington, a clinical nutritionist who earned her doctorate in nutrition at Johns Hopkins, published a review in 2001 of 41 studies comparing the nutritional value of organic and conventional produce. After tallying the data across all the studies, Worthington concluded that organic produce had on average 27 percent
more vitamin C, 21.1 percent more iron, 29.3 percent more magnesium and 13.6 percent more phosphorous than conventional produce.
Benbrook released a review in 2005 of the research comparing antioxidant levels in conventional and organic foods. In humans, antioxidants reduce damage to cells and DNA from free radicals (molecules generated by
metabolic processes within the body), and thereby promote cardiovascular health, inhibit the reproduction of cancerous cells, slow the aging process in the brain and nervous systems, and lessen the risk and/or severity of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. Benbrook found that in 85 percent of the comparable data points, produce from organic farms had higher levels of antioxidants than did produce from conventional farms. On average, antioxidant levels in organic produce were 30 percent higher.
Earlier this year, a Swedish team of scientists demonstrated that extracts from organically grown strawberries slowed the proliferation of colon and breast cancer cells to a significantly greater degree than extracts from conventional strawberries did. The levels of all the antioxidants analyzed by the team were higher in the organic
strawberries than in the conventional.
"As someone that has been involved with science and science policy for my whole life," says Benbrook, "I think the scientific case has been made for organic produce. The case has been made firmly enough so that it is appropriate and, indeed, irresponsible at this point not to tell consumers straight up that choosing organic fruits and vegetables probably delivers nutritional benefits because of the higher levels of antioxidants and vitamins and minerals."

To read the full and extensive article go to
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/25/HOG3BHSDPG1.DTL

EPA Scientists Pressured to Allow Continued Use of Dangerous Pesticides

Union leaders representing Environmental Protection Agency scientists and other specialists assert that agency managers and pesticide-industry officials are exerting "political pressure" to allow continued use of a family of pesticides that might be harmful to children, infants and fetuses.

In a letter to Stephen Johnson, EPA's administrator, the union leaders said scientists are being pushed to skip steps in their testing, and alleged that the "integrity of the science upon which agency decisions are based has been compromised."

The protest from unions representing some 9,000 EPA scientists and other employees about a pending agency determination is unprecedented and a professional rebuke to Mr. Johnson, himself a scientist and former assistant administrator in charge of the agency's program to test the harmful effects of pesticides.

The letter said the agency faces an August deadline to re-evaluate a family of 20 organophosphate and carbamate pesticides,many of them stemming from World War II research on nerve gas. They include malathion, commonly used to kill mosquitoes, and a variety of other chemicals that are used in agriculture, gardens, on golf courses and on flea collars and pest strips. Organophosphates, which attack the nervous system, were among the group given the highest priority for testing.

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, whose members include state and federal employees, said "the fact that this letter had to be sent at all is an utter disgrace."

Jennifer Sass, a toxicologist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, another environmental group, said there is "a lot of uncertainty" in scientific data about the pesticides and "newer, cleaner alternatives" are available. "This is old style chemistry and these [chemicals] should have been buried years ago."

After World War II, scientists discovered that insects were more sensitive to nerve gases than humans and it was felt that humans wouldn't be harmed by relatively low applications of the chemicals. According to a recent report by the EPA's Office of Inspector General, however, later studies showed that some pesticides can easily enter the brain of fetuses and young children and may destroy cells in the developing nervous system.

By OHN J. FIALKA
Wall Street Journal Page A4, May 25, 2006
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114852646165862757.html
Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved --

Organic Diets Keep Kids Pesticide Free

Children who switched their diets for only a few days to organic foods dramatically and immediately lowered the amount of toxic pesticides in their bodies, researchers report. Lead author Chensheng Lu of Emory University found that when kids eat organic foods, pesticides in their body plummet to undetectable levels — even when following the diet for only five days. “An organic diet does provide protective measures for pesticide exposure in kids,” said Lu, who presented his research at a panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis. His study appeared in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Lu designed a novel intervention study by substituting organic foods into the diets of 23 elementary school children in the Seattle area. All the kids, who were aged 3 to 11, had metabolites — or evidence of pesticides — in their urine at the study’s start. But as soon as they began eating organic foods, the concentration of metabolites dropped to essentially zero. Once they returned to their conventional diet, the pesticides levels bounced back up. Lu said he is confident that the pesticide reductions can be attributed to the kids’ diet, because the particular class of pesticides studied, called organophosphorus pesticides, or OPs, are not found in households. The kids ingested these pesticides from eating conventional foods, and not from playing in grass treated with chemicals, for example.

Lu and Fenske claim the health risks to children are still uncertain, although Lu points out that there’s no getting around the fact a pesticide is a neurotoxin. Since the chemicals disrupt enzymes in the brain which govern communication, exposure to pesticides could damage a child’s brain. These chemicals are developed, after all, to kill bugs by paralyzing or over-exciting their neurological systems. “In terms of the impact of these low levels of chemicals on a regular basis in a developing organism — and that’s what a child’s neurological system is — this is extremely important that we try to understand this,” Fenske said. The Environmental Protection Agency warns children may be sensitive to pesticides because their excretory systems are not developed enough to excrete pesticides, and that in relation to their body weight, kids eat and drink more than adults. Currently, researchers are studying whether conditions like attention deficit disorder, lowered IQs, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease can be linked to early exposure to pesticides. Children are most vulnerable to pesticides from formation of the fetus up to 2 years of age.

Charles Benbrook, the chief scientist of The Organic Center, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit encouraging the widespread adoption of organic foods and processes, says there’s enough consensus to act now to rid agriculture of pesticides. He mentioned the work of Robin Whyatt at Columbia University with pregnant women in New York. Whyatt found that birth weight and birth length is lower in children whose mothers were exposed to pesticides. Benbrook said he was amazed at how fast and how significantly the urinary metabolites fell in Lu’s study participants.

By CHRISTINE DELL’AMORE, UPI Consumer Health Correspondent

Full article at http://washtimes.com/upi/20060222-044543-1356r.htm

Compensation Plan Seminar with John Hunter

A golden opportunity for ONE Group Miessence Representatives and their Guests! Topics to be covered include: How Fast Start & Retirement Bonuses are calculated; The Pools; Ranks; Definitions; How to get off to a Fast Start. There will be plenty of time for questions and answers. If you have any quesitons please feel free to contact us. Hope to see you there.

Monday, 13 February 2006, 7pm - 10pm
The Red Lion Hotel
205 Coburg Road Eugene, Oregon

An Organic Valentine?s Day

“Love, truth, and the courage to do what is right should be our own guide posts on this lifelong journey,” wrote civil rights leader Coretta Scott King. The courage to love others drives both romantic relationships and social change. This year on Valentine’s Day, celebrate this spirit in those you love with gifts of hope that support fair and healthy conditions for workers and independent businesses.

Fair trade chocolates and organic flowers send the message that your love inspires you to change the world. Although these gifts may cost a bit more than their conventional counterparts, they offer the priceless gift of creating a society of greater equity, health, and peace — the sort of place you want your friends and family to live in. See below for resources to find fair trade and organic Valentine’s gifts near you.

In contrast, behind the facade of “perfect” conventional roses lies an industry based on labor exploitation and pesticide poisoning of women and children — a jarring disconnect from the noble feelings that drive demand for flowers on Valentine’s Day. The United States imports millions of roses every year from Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico. Because flowers are nonfood commodities, they are exempt from pesticide testing, allowing flower growers to rely heavily on toxic chemicals that also poison their workers.

As many as 70% of floriculture workers in Ecuador and Colombia are women, and in Ecuador another 20% are children. Young children and infants, whether exposed directly to pesticides in the fields and greenhouses or to residues in the home, are particularly vulnerable to pesticide exposure. A study of Colombian greenhouses documented the use of 127 different pesticides. The study also showed that mothers exposed to pesticides at work had higher rates of spontaneous abortion (2.2 times) and premature birth (1.9 times) than mothers not occupationally exposed to pesticides. In 2003, a particularly shocking episode of pesticide poisoning in a Colombian greenhouse sent 348 workers to the hospital with acute symptoms including fainting, strong headaches, nausea, swelling, rashes, diarrhea, and sores inside and around the mouth.

source: Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 110, Number 5, May 2002 - Special issue focusing on pesticides in the flower industry.

Asian Celebration

Please visit Eugene area Miessence representatives, Feb 18th & 19th, 2006 at the Asian Celebration in Eugene, Oregon.