The problem with this marketing campaign is not that it is wrong, but that it is far too vague. Medical specialists, including doctors, registered nurses, medical assistants and nutritionists will all tell you if you ask that all those “natural” foods that you spend so much of your time searching for are in fact “processed”. The fact is that unless you have a back yard garden, us no pesticides, and pick your food yourself and eat it directly, there will be some “processing” involved. The foods we buy in supermarkets and even farmers markets, has all been subject to the use of chemicals to protect them from infestation while growing and in many cases chemicals to cause them to grow larger. Preservatives are used too keep them fresh while they are on the way to the market and while they are sitting on the shelves. In the case of meats, livestock, including beef, pork and chicken, are often injected with growth hormones that have severe effects on young, still developing bodies, causing children as young as 10 to begin puberty.

So how do Americans address this serious problem? We can compare nations and see what happens. More than 30% of Americans are considered obese while only 3.2% of Japanese and 8.5% of Italians are considered obese. The Japanese are easy to understand because their diet is primarily fish and vegetable and usually in much smaller portions than what we serve in the West. But what about Italy? Italy is famed for its food and nearly all Italian dishes contain some form of pasta, which is starch heavy and Italians are known for eating big meals. The difference is how the food is prepared in Italy. Pasta is usually hand made, using flour, and has no preservatives. In both cases we see a big difference. Both the Japanese and the Italians prefer to use 100% natural ingredients in the food that they feed their families, preferring to spend the extra preparation time to having bad health. When we stop doing things like classifying things like pizza as vegetables we might start seeing slimmer waist lines.

Tobacco smoking causes you to take more than 4,000 chemicals into your body with every puff. While most of these chemicals are highly toxic, the one that causes addiction is nicotine. The moods that we have, how we look at and interact with the world, are controlled by biochemical processes in the brain. People who are calm and happy for instance will have high levels of scopolamine in their system. The problem with nicotine mimics the effects of the natural chemicals in your brain. Because an overdose of these chemicals can cause serious problems the brain measures them and if they are too high, it cuts back production. When the brain lowers its production your body still needs them so you unconsciously begin to smoke more and more and an ugly cycle is created.

The good news is that the brain will respond and begin to produce these necessary chemicals once again. The bad news is that the process of reengaging the brains production is a slow one. If you try to quit “cold turkey”, with no assistance, you are likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, even paranoia for sometimes as long as two weeks. In some cases the symptoms have been so severe as to prevent people from working or even leaving home for several days. Understanding that the symptoms can be treated in many ways because of their chemical nature is the first step toward quitting. There is no magic bullet for this and one method will not work for everyone. Calling 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669) or visiting www.smokefree.gov will get you a ton of information. Talking to a medical assistant or registered nurse, even if you have to go to a free clinic, will get much more information.

The State of California has the longest running stop smoking program in the country. The program was begun in 1988 and has cut the number of smokers in the State by 50% and cut the number of cigarettes smoked by each person by 67%. Along with this benefit the State, in health care costs has also saved $86 billion and the entire cost of the program has only been $1.8 billion. The highest levels of smokers come from both the poor and less educated demographics. This means that using taxpayer money to create stop smoking resources in these areas will not only save money (and lives), but will actually earn a return on its investment, if California can be used as an indicator of the possibilities.

Last year the Churches Charities in Illinois decided to close its doors rather than follow the State law that allowed same-sex couples to adopt. The law required all organizations that accepted State or Federal money to comply and the Church was perfectly free to refuse the money. These funds that are the bone of contention are received by the Church under its claim to being a “non-profit”, “charitable” organization. The Church claims that it is a religious organization and same-sex relationships are against its beliefs. This year the Church protested when the President ordered that anyone accepting Federal money be required to offer contraception as part of employee health coverage. The Church also used the same reason: It was against their religious beliefs.

This means that if the Church cannot show that it is not a real “charity” then it is not allowed to make these claims and must obey the law like everyone else. The statue that the Catholic Church, and all other “charitable” organizations like churches, operate under is 501(c)(3), of the Tax Code. This law gives these organizations not only tax exempt status but also allows them to apply for federal assistance. This statute has certain requirements however that, if not met, will immediately disqualify an organization from tax-exemption and assistance. If an organization knowing violates any of these requirements it can be seen as fraudulent activity.

So what are these requirements that the Church, most churches in fact, are breaking? According to the law no earnings “may inure to any private shareholder or individual”. The statute also says that it may not function as an “action” organization, i.e. it “may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates”. We can start with the money. Adoption costs at private adoption agencies range in cost from $4,000 to as much as $30,000, including all legal and medical fees. These agencies set their prices with a motive toward profit and get no tax breaks or government assistance. The Catholic Church however charges $20,000, exclusive of medical or legal fees, way toward the high end of the scale, many of its employees are volunteers who work for free and they do not have to pay to find children. All of this increases the amount of money the church brings in by a great deal. When we consider that the money is pure profit and very little of it goes back out to improve programs for the needy, the only place all this money could be going is to benefit the Church leaders, who create the policies.

In the State of Illinois, in 2010 for State level politicians had a meeting with Catholic leaders in the State to “discuss their views on issues important to the Church”. The reason for this is so that the Church could inform its members of these views and contrast them with the views of Catholicism. How is this not political activism by the Church. This was not one priest or Bishop, these was a group of Church leaders in the area, representing the Church itself. During the 1980´s Protestants had dug so deeply into the White House that Reagan had the National Security Advisor give the Reverend Jerry Falwell a briefing on the our nation´s national strategic readiness.

There are many good, well intentioned Christians in the world today. Many people who really want to live by the words of Jesus and help their fellow man, be their brother´s keeper. But the Christian Church, all of them, are morally bankrupt, criminal organizations that are involved in a naked drive for power and control. The Church may have more rights than the rest of us but they are not above the law. A team of IRS and FBI Special Agents could at least investigate to find out exactly how they are using these massive, and untaxed, profits are being used.

The Conservatives in Congress chose to completely ignore these disturbing statistics. Nations that use a single payer system spend less money on health care and live healthier lives over all. The arguments against using these systems are that no one should be forced to pay for someone else´s health care, especially if other people are getting treatments that are morally objectionable. They also claim that it would require raising taxes, which would cost more money. A new report however raises the problem to an entirely different level. This study, conducted by Dr. Jennifer DeVoe, found that while health care spending has been increasing faster than household income since the 1960´s, beginning in the year 2000 and lasting through 2009 the gap became drastically wider. During that point the average household income increased 2.1% while health care costs increased an average of 8%.

One of the problems causing the rise in costs is the rise in salaries for health care workers. American health care workers earn nearly twice as much as other nations. A Registered Nurse in the US, upon graduation from school, will earn nearly $40,000 a year. The same nurse in Great Britain will earn less than $25,000 a year. Even non-medical personnel working in the industry, such as cooks, Administrative Assistants, sanitation or maintenance, earn at least 30% more than they would in most other industries. But according to J.D. Kleinke, op-ed contributor at the Wall Street Journal, observed that the problems really began when private insurers started selling plans with higher deductibles and co-pays at the same time the Bush Administration was experimenting with health savings accounts. These accounts allow tax payers to get large tax breaks for medical expenses and it was the perfect bait for insurance companies who wanted to take advantage of “free money”.

One of the biggest distractions used by the diet industry is the focus on cutting carbohydrates and calories. While cutting both of these is important, if you cut them out without understanding the proper way to replace them, your body will not have the proper tools to properly process the food you do eat. We can use the average pancake breakfast as and example. A breakfast of blueberry pancakes contains 1,100 calories, 29gm fat (half of which are saturated), 200 gm carbohydrates, 100 gm sugars but only 20 grams of protein. Protein used to break down and efficiently process nutrients and in this case it is simply overwhelmed. Most of the food that is not processed will end up stored in the fat cells. Exercise alone is not enough to restore balance to this equation. This breakfast is the equivalent of eating nearly 10 ice cream bars in one meal. If your breakfast is a Swiss cheese, bacon, mushrooms and spinach omelet you will find it more filling than the nearly empty calories of the pancakes. With only half of the calories (400), half the sodium (500), 8gm carbs, 1gm sugars and 35gm protein it is easy to see how the balance is restored. Light exercise will remove all of the unnecessary sodium and sugars and you are adding more protein, allowing more building blocks to be built.

But we are seeking a rational solution, not an argument. The idea that a government cannot run an efficient health care system simply does not hold water. Canada and most of Western Europe, including America´s lapdog, Britain, have much better health care systems than the US and most of them are government run. The fact that this would be difficult in the United States is not a reflection on the efficiency or effectiveness of the programs, but and indictment of the American political system. Our elected leaders are too busy trying to pass tax breaks for the wealthy and making life cushy for Multinational corporations, the people that get them elected, to worry whether or not Medicare or Social Security works. The people that they work for do not need either and can pay for private doctors. There is simply too much evidence that government run Universal Health Care does work to believe these claims by the right. They also claim that it would increase taxes and lower the standard of care. They claim that the government would organize “death panels” to decide who lives and who dies based on cost. What do these people think an HMO does every day? These organizations cancel policies for terminal patients all the time for financial reasons. And again, this does not happen in other nations who have had Universal Health care for generations.

The most interesting aspect of this argument is that “liberals” are generally portrayed as “Atheists”, while conservatives generally portray themselves as “Christians”, and claim to have a high moral platform. But the mere suggestion that someone must give money to heal the sick and help the poor sends them into near convulsions. These “Patriotic”, “Moral”, Christians have booed a gay soldier, for being gay, while he was in a combat zone defending his country. They cheered when Rick Perry when he said he lost no sleep over killing an innocent man during his bloody reign in Texas. Finally they cheered at the thought of letting an uninsured person die rather than pay for his care. There were doctors and registered nurses, ministers, and public leaders at that debate who cheered these things. We may be Progressives and Conservatives but we are all Americans. Two sides of the same coin. We should find the ideas that work, even if they are not ours, and put them into practice. Whether it is health care, financial/political systems, religious systems, or criminal justice systems, we can find and use the best to make ourselves stronger and a better people.

A few months ago voters in the most conservative of States, Mississippi, voter down the first of the “Personhood” laws in the Nation. These laws seek to legislate the exact point at which consciousness, i.e. life, begins. By stating that life begins at “conception” these laws not only eliminated the possibility of an abortion in any case, including cases involving rape or incest or to protect the life of the mother, they made any form of hormonal birth control, effectively forcing women to either quit having sex or remain constantly pregnant, and eliminating the possibility of ending an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy. The State of Virginia jumped into the national spotlight this week with a new law that is even more extreme. If a woman requests an abortion the doctor is required to preform a trans-vaginal ultrasound without permission from the woman, which falls well within the legal definition of force-able rape under Virginia and Federal laws. The important thing to remember about this procedure is medically unnecessary and is being ordered for no other reason than to shame its victims. In other words, rape by definition.

The attacks have not been isolated to simply passing draconian new laws. Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of woman´s health services in the world. This organization is supported by both government and individual donations and while it does perform medically necessary abortions these procedures only amount to less than 3% of their business and none of Federal money is used to pay for these procedures. These facts have deterred attacks on all levels by Republicans on this nearly 100 year old organization. The very first Bill introduced into the US House is HR 1 eliminates the entire nations family planning programs, or Title X. This Bill, signed into law by Republican Richard Nixon, provided cancer screenings, birth control, HIV testing, and testing and treatment for other sexually transmitted infections, all at little or no cost, to millions of women nationwide each year. Representative Mike Pense, with the full support of House Leaders, like Boehner and Cantor, plans to remove all funding from Planned Parenthood, the organization that administers these programs.

 Rick Santorum has repeatedly told the media that he is fundamentally opposed to contraception in any form and Santorum is leading in both the polls and the number of States he has won in the primaries for Presidential nominee and Virginia Governor Bob McDonald, who is also openly anti-contraceptives, is on the short list for Vice Presidential nominee. The American people have been allowing these people more and more control with each passing election. The Party of “small”, less intrusive, government is anything but. When a group of people desires to control the government so that they will have the power to force citizens to accept having their bodies penetrated, do we really want them with that kind of authority? Freedom of religion does not mean that religious people are allowed to force their beliefs on the rest of the people and does not eliminate, or even equal, privacy rights.

According to CNN Money health care costs will increase more than 5% again this year alone and the past two years have seen nearly 10% increases. Medicare spending on the other hand has increased less than 1% a year. In fact, according to the bi partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the the gap between medicare/medicaid spending, and all other health care in the US, will widen nearly exponentially during the next 50 years under current policies. This essentially means that, dollar for dollar, government financed health care is a great deal more cost efficient than private health care. The CBO projects that medicare/medicaid will grow from 3-4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is expected to grow to 8-10% before 2035. Private health care expenditures on the other hand are expected to grow from 13% of GDP to more than 30% of the GDP. Determining which method is the most cost efficient is simply a matter of looking at the numbers and doing some simple arithmetic.

But not only does our primarily private health care industry incapable of bringing American health care costs down to the level of the rest of the Industrialized world, but they also seem unable to keep up with the production of vital drugs. This is a problem any pharmacy technician in American can tell you about. There have been a large number of reports during the last few years about shortages of life saving drugs in the United States and many stories about people needing to travel to Canada or Mexico, or order online, just to buy the medications they need to stay alive. In 20ll the number of prescription drugs that are in short supplies grew to 267, a number that is 4 times larger than it was in 1995. The reason for this is simple: Under the private system made on an as needed basis. The medical and pharmaceutical industry will not manufacture a single medication that they think that they might not be able to sell, leaving only limited amounts in warehouses. When needs spike however they are caught short. Government control of health care however would require manufacturers to stockpile medications, especially those with life saving implications and most drug shortages would immediately disappearance.

The main argument against Universal Health Care is that would require an increase in taxes. This is a specious argument however. Of course taxes will increase. But if you are already paying the currently huge medical costs now (a healthy family of three will pay several thousand dollars a year on health care alone), and having this system would remove those costs, then paying a few dollars more in taxes seems to make better sense. Especially since all of the numbers actually demonstrate that the government can operate a health care system much more effectively than private industry can hope too.

While some of the problem comes from too much table salt, or too many chips and popcorn, these are only the tip of the iceberg. Many Americans, and people in the West as well, consumes great gobs of salt that they are not even aware of. A slice of white bread for instance can have as much as 230 milligrams and while a single slice is not harmful, if you eat several slices a day it adds up quickly and since salt, being a mineral compound, is hard for the body to process efficiently. According to the report the recommended daily allowance of salt is 2,300 milligrams, for healthy individuals under 51 years old and as low as 1,500 milligrams for anyone older or with health problems. Americans however consume, on average, 3,500 milligrams per day.

A large part of the problem is the amount of processed food that Americans eat trying to keep up with a fast paced lifestyle. This problem kills nearly 1 million people each year and adds a quarter of a trillion dollars a year to national health care costs, according to Thomas Frieden, CDC Director. There are many different foods that are problem foods. Processed meats, soups, pizza, pasta, meats, potato chips and pretzels, cookies. More than half of this this food comes directly from products that we buy at the store and the rest comes from restaurants and fast food chains. School cafeterias are also guilty of loading up on sodium laced products, simply because they are less expensive. Some food giants, like Kraft Foods and Leprino Foods are saying that they are actively working to cut at least 10% of the current amount of sodium from all of their products. But when you consider that most Americans consume nearly 100% of the recommended amount it is far from enough. The CDC says the lowering salt intake by just 400 milligrams will save nearly 30,000 lives each year and $7 billion in health-care costs.

But despite the dangers of eating disease tainted meat, the chances of an individual actually eating this meat is quite high, simply because of the large numbers of people who eat at these restaurants. Not all meat is tainted or even a significant part of it. But one thing that every customer at these restaurants consumes a tremendous amount of food additives. The animals are injected with hormones during their entire lives and these hormones are eaten by our children, which causes them to develop much faster than nature intended. When the meat is processed it is injected with sodium, to increase the plumpness of the cut, preservatives, to keep the meat fresh, and food coloring to give the chemically loaded meat a more natural look.

While “primitive” cultures, like Native Americans, are known for using every part of an animal they kill, even these cultures, with zero scientific knowledge, understood that it is dangerous to include every part of the animal as food. In the United States however, one of the most scientifically advanced societies in history, with the Food and Drug Administration in place to protect us, we allow these fast food restaurants to use parts of animals that have ruled as unfit for human consumption. They take these scraps, formally used only in pet food, and “wash” it with ammonium-hydroxide, a chemical more commonly found in products like household cleaners, fertilizers and even explosives. The meat is then further treated with food coloring and turned into the ground beef that until recently was served in every hamburger sold at McDonald’s restaurants. It does not take a registered nurse or any medical professional to understand that ingesting the same chemicals used in fertilizers and explosives is just not a good idea.

While the FDA seems unable to make appropriate decisions about issues like this, the general public is not. Led by celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver, a months long campaign against using “pink slime”, a name given the concoction by the industry itself, to human beings and charging them as if this were real meat. Public pressure from the campaign has forced at least this one chain from using this poison but the company maintains that it was not Oliver´s efforts that led to the decision. They use the FDA’s confusing position that using the same chemical used in fertilizers and explosives is “generally safe” practice, yet they give no explanation why, after decades of use, they suddenly decided to stop.

The simple facts are that unless industries are monitored tightly by the Government, they will do whatever it takes to make money. How many of the executives of these huge corporations actually eat the food their company regularly sells to the general public? How many of them, knowing how this food is processed, allow their children to eat it? Nearly 70% of all meat processed in the United States is loaded with these, or comparable, chemicals and these chemicals are used by companies for two purposes. They either want to use parts of animals that are proven to be dangerous, or they want to increase their profits by forcing animals to become larger, heavier, than is natural for them. In either case these companies are playing with the health of all Americans for the sake of a few dollars more profit.