pElAgUS' 

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS
EXPLAINED IN PLAIN LANGUAGE
WITH RHIO
Author of Hooked on Raw
 
 
 

SATURDAY OCTOBER 28th, 2006 --- 4:00 PM TO 6:00 PM
 
$ 10.00 PER PERSON   //   SPACE IS LIMITED
ADVANCE RESERVATION REQUIRED
 
 
 
Genetically Engineered Foods Explained in Plain Language

 
In this lecture, you will learn the who, what, why, where and how of GE issues. You will also learn what other countries have done to protect their citizens and the environment, and what we can do here to get the same protections and rights.  At least 70% of all GE foods are grown in the US, with Canada and Argentina making up most of the balance. The food fight of the century began in the US and what happens here will be pivotal to defeating this technology worldwide.
 
After learning about the threat to the integrity of Mother Nature and human and animal health posed by the genetic engineering of seeds/plants, Rhio attended numerous lectures to learn about the subject.  As a layperson, she found it difficult to decipher the scientific language used by the geneticists, but she stayed the course until she had an understanding.
 
Rhio found the arrogance and greed that comprises most of the biotechnology industry and the information about what they are doing to be so shocking and abhorrent that she decided to break it down into plain language so that anyone could understand it and she has been sharing the information ever since.
 
The evening will begin with some original songs sung by Rhio and her partner, Leigh.
 
 
*********************************************************************


Rhio is a singer and author, as well as an investigative reporter in the area of health and environmental issues. Rhio is of Hungarian-Cuban descent, raised in the U.S., but completely fluent in Spanish. Her first book, Hooked on Raw, is about living a life more closely aligned with Nature by adopting a raw/live food lifestyle. The 358-page book also covers many reasons for making these healthy lifestyle changes, as well as more than 350 raw gourmet recipes in all categories.
 
As a performer Rhio has appeared on over 50 TV shows. Currently she is completing her third and fourth CD albums, one of which will tackle environmental issues.
 
CNN and American Journal aired stories on raw foods featuring Rhio.  She is considered an expert in the area of raw and living foods.
 
Rhio hosts an internet radio show called Hooked on Raw which can be heard worldwide at: www.TribecaRadio.net
 
A website: www.rawfoodinfo.com also provides extensive information on the raw/live food lifestyle, as well as organic agriculture, environmental, human rights, civil rights, globalization and economic justice issues.
 
Rhio lectures both on the raw/live food lifestyle and the genetic engineering of seeds/plants.
 
On the horizon: Rhio and her partner Leigh, are fledgling eco farmers in Upstate New York with a focus on growing edible wild foods, leafy greens and lettuces, fruit and nuts. 
 
 

LOCATION:  42 NEW ENGLAND DRIVE, RAMSEY, NJ 07446
(North of Paramus, 40 minutes from New York City)
 
RESERVATIONS: KHRANZI@AOL.COM – PHONE (201) 934-1758
 

 

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2003. I agreed to have the original incisional biopsy, which determined breast cancer, but without a clear margin. I then agreed to a second surgery to remove the lump and to have a sentinel node biopsy. I was told that I had stage 2 breast cancer. The doctors wanted me to have radiation and a mastectomy, or radiation and chemotherapy. I also was diagnosed with cancer cells on my cervix.

I am a chiropractor who has never agreed with the traditional medical approach, but wasn't sure what to do this time.

A friend of mine who I hadn't seen in about nine years showed up and told me that I needed wheatgrass and that I needed to go to the Creative Health Institute for help. I agreed to try it and went to CHI for two weeks in December 2003. I was still recovering from the second surgery when I arrived, and I also had a coffee addiction to conquer.

I graduated from the two-week program at CHI, went home for six weeks, then returned for three months to participate in the Energy Exchange program. I have followed the program taught at CHI nearly 100%.

I had no idea at first if this would help my breast cancer or how much it would change my life. Now, a year later, I would like to list the exciting "side effects" of my new lifestyle:

- shed excess fifty pounds easily!
- complexion has improved
- joint pains disappeared
- hair growing faster and improved color
- sleeping better
- went through menopause this year with NO symptoms!
- no longer have chest pains or shortness of breath when climbing stairs or walking
- feel calmer, more peaceful - no more constipation (was severe)
- no more cravings for coffee or sugar
- increased stamina
- no more phlegm problems
- skin tans more easily without burning (I'm fair skinned and normally burn easily)
- fibromyalgia-type symptoms gone (a year ago, I could barely walk because my feet hurt so badly)
- bees didn't bother me this summer! (I hope that continues!)
- latest pap smear showed only mild dysplasia. Each test has improved significantly. The doctor keeps saying to me that I need to keep doing whatever it is I'm doing.
- I don't feel "old" anymore
- and best of all, I had an AMAS cancer antibody test in August which was NORMAL.

Thank you CHI, Don, Jeanie and all the staff for supporting me and teaching me what I needed to restore the quality of my life! I am so grateful to my loving family and many friends who have also been very supportive of my efforts.

Mary Lou
- You can talk to Mary Lou by calling Creative Health Institute - (866) 426-1213 - she now works in the office.

Congratulations, Mary Lou, for sticking in there! You're a winner!
- The original copy of Mary Lou's letter is available for examination at the offices of Creative Health Institute.
- Read more testimonials to the healing powers of Raw Living Foods at CreativeHealthInstitute.us/testimonials.htm.

Granted, there's plenty that's praiseworthy about Whole Foods. John Mackey, the company's chairman, likes to say, "There's no inherent reason why business cannot be ethical, socially responsible, and profitable." And under the umbrella creed of "sustainability," Whole Foods pays its workers a solid living wage—its lowest earners average $13.15 an hour—with excellent benefits and health care. No executive makes more than 14 times the employee average. (Mackey's salary last year was $342,000.) In January, Whole Foods announced that it had committed to buy a year's supply of power from a wind-power utility in Wyoming.

But even if Whole Foods has a happy staff and nice windmills, is it really as virtuous as it appears to be? Take the produce section, usually located in the geographic center of the shopping floor and the spiritual heart of a Whole Foods outlet. (Every media profile of the company invariably contains a paragraph of fawning produce porn, near-sonnets about "gleaming melons" and "glistening kumquats.") In the produce section of Whole Foods' flagship New York City store at the Time Warner Center, shoppers browse under a big banner that lists "Reasons To Buy Organic." On the banner, the first heading is "Save Energy." The accompanying text explains how organic farmers, who use natural fertilizers like manure and compost, avoid the energy waste involved in the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers. It's a technical point that probably barely registers with most shoppers but contributes to a vague sense of virtue.

Fair enough. But here's another technical point that Whole Foods fails to mention and that highlights what has gone wrong with the organic-food movement in the last couple of decades. Let's say you live in New York City and want to buy a pound of tomatoes in season. Say you can choose between conventionally grown New Jersey tomatoes or organic ones grown in Chile. Of course, the New Jersey tomatoes will be cheaper. They will also almost certainly be fresher, having traveled a fraction of the distance. But which is the more eco-conscious choice? In terms of energy savings, there's no contest: Just think of the fossil fuels expended getting those organic tomatoes from Chile. Which brings us to the question: Setting aside freshness, price, and energy conservation, should a New Yorker just instinctively choose organic, even if the produce comes from Chile? A tough decision, but you can make a self-interested case for the social and economic benefit of going Jersey, especially if you prefer passing fields of tomatoes to fields of condominiums when you tour the Garden State.

Another heading on the Whole Foods banner says "Help the Small Farmer." "Buying organic," it states, "supports the small, family farmers that make up a large percentage of organic food producers." This is semantic sleight of hand. As one small family farmer in Connecticut told me recently, "Almost all the organic food in this country comes out of California. And five or six big California farms dominate the whole industry." There's a widespread misperception in this country—one that organic growers, no matter how giant, happily encourage—that "organic" means "small family farmer." That hasn't been the case for years, certainly not since 1990, when the Department of Agriculture drew up its official guidelines for organic food. Whole Foods knows this well, and so the line about the "small family farmers that make up a large percentage of organic food producers" is sneaky. There are a lot of small, family-run organic farmers, but their share of the organic crop in this country, and of the produce sold at Whole Foods, is minuscule.

A nearby banner at the Time Warner Center Whole Foods proclaims "Our Commitment to the Local Farmer," but this also doesn't hold up to scrutiny. More likely, the burgeoning local-food movement is making Whole Foods uneasy. After all, a multinational chain can't promote a "buy local" philosophy without being self-defeating. When I visited the Time Warner Whole Foods last fall—high season for native fruits and vegetables on the East Coast—only a token amount of local produce was on display. What Whole Foods does do for local farmers is hang glossy pinups throughout the store, what they call "grower profiles," which depict tousled, friendly looking organic farmers standing in front of their crops. This winter, when I dropped by the store, the only local produce for sale was a shelf of upstate apples, but the grower profiles were still up. There was a picture of a sandy-haired organic leek farmer named Dave, from Whately, Mass., above a shelf of conventionally grown yellow onions from Oregon. Another profile showed a guy named Ray Rex munching on an ear of sweet corn he grew on his generations-old, picturesque organic acres. The photograph was pinned above a display of conventionally grown white onions from Mexico.

These profiles may be heartwarming, but they also artfully mislead customers about what they're paying premium prices for. If Whole Foods marketing didn't revolve so much around explicit (as well as subtly suggestive) appeals to food ethics, it'd be easier to forgive some exaggerations and distortions.

Of course, above and beyond social and environmental ethics, and even taste, people buy organic food because they believe that it's better for them. All things being equal, food grown without pesticides is healthier for you. But American populism chafes against the notion of good health for those who can afford it. Charges of elitism—media wags, in otherwise flattering profiles, have called Whole Foods "Whole Paycheck" and "wholesome, healthy for the wholesome, wealthy"—are the only criticism of Whole Foods that seems to have stuck. Which brings us to the newest kid in the organic-food sandbox: Wal-Mart, the world's biggest grocery retailer, has just begun a major program to expand into organic foods. If buying food grown without chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers has been elevated to a status-conscious lifestyle choice, it could also be transformed into a bare-bones commodity purchase.

When the Department of Agriculture established the guidelines for organic food in 1990, it blew a huge opportunity. The USDA—under heavy agribusiness lobbying—adopted an abstract set of restrictions for organic agriculture and left "local" out of the formula. What passes for organic farming today has strayed far from what the shaggy utopians who got the movement going back in the '60s and '70s had in mind. But if these pioneers dreamed of revolutionizing the nation's food supply, they surely didn't intend for organic to become a luxury item, a high-end lifestyle choice.

It's likely that neither Wal-Mart nor Whole Foods will do much to encourage local agriculture or small farming, but in an odd twist, Wal-Mart, with its simple "More for Less" credo, might do far more to democratize the nation's food supply than Whole Foods. The organic-food movement is in danger of exacerbating the growing gap between rich and poor in this country by contributing to a two-tiered national food supply, with healthy food for the rich. Could Wal-Mart's populist strategy prove to be more "sustainable" than Whole Foods? Stranger things have happened.

For all the Race--Car driving fans...

Nascar driver reverses Stage IV Melanoma

Raw Foods News Magazine profiles professional driver Jerrod Sessler's journey and explorations in eating raw and reversing his cancer:

In 2000 Jerrod’s doctors delivered the gut-wrenching news that he had stage IV melanoma.

“They told me that I had about a five percent chance of living 10 years," Jerrod says. They told him his treatment options were chemotherapy, radiation, interferon or simple ‘monitoring’. "They said that these treatments or combinations of them would improve my odds up to 15 percent or so,” Jerrod said.

Doctors also warned him that the chemical treatments and radiation made it unlikely that he and his wife would be able to have children.

Following a period of intense research, discernment, and prayer, Jerrod and his young wife Nikki decided against traditional treatments and opted for radically changing Sessler’s diet.

It took them weeks and month to do an “extreme makeover” of their diet to revamp their habits and their pantry. The result was what they still follow today: a strict vegan diet, mostly raw foods that haven’t been processed, with no dairy or meat.

Today all Sessler family members are healthy and thriving, including three new additions to the family; two boys and a girl whose ages range from eight months to four years old.

Jerrod is thrilled to have defeated his cancer and happy to continue racing cars, a lifelong passion that started at age four when he announced that he wanted to be a race car driver. He raced go-karts as a boy and raced stock cars professionally in l998.

Keep reading at rawfoodsnewsmagazine.com

 

http://www.rawfoodsnewsmagazine.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=175

 

• Before you leave town, review your eating schedule and anticipate your needs.
• Invest in a soft-sided cooler or even a child’s lunch box that will fit into a wider brief case. Consider cooler for the hotel room.
• For emergencies, keep raw vegan snack bars on hand and a cooler full of fresh produce.
• Don’t give into pressure from others who don't understand your lifestyle.
• Note dining out times and take the time to make arrangements to order vegetarian meals. Make up your own vegan meal request cards for banquets.