Tag: Monsanto

January 17, 2024 /

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The Real Cost of Cheap Food

Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s afforded us the opportunity to eat food that was not processed. For the most part, it was free of most chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and genetic modification. Most food was purchased locally.

We weren’t at the doctor’s office unless we had something major going on and those events were not commonplace. Allergies were not common and in fact, peanut and gluten allergies were unheard of. If a neighborhood kid got the measles or mumps or chicken pocks, we had parties. No sense suffering with these viruses alone. Everyone got them at the same time and then it was over AND we were inoculated against future outbreaks all at the same time. It was a win win for everyone. We spent more on our food back then and we also spent less on medical issues and insurance. Overall, we were pretty healthy.

As time went on, food got cheaper and cheaper and we have gotten sicker and sicker. Is anyone paying attention? I can tell you as a retired health coach, I am and so is Don, my beloved husband and partner in this journey. It is all about education. Let’s dig a little deeper so I can explain what the real cost of cheap food is. Let’s take a look at where we are health wise and evaluate the effectiveness of our food intake against our overall health.

While these statistics are a few years old, the story they tell is the same and it is getting worse. 70 years ago, we spent twice as much on food. Using the latest data from the USDA’s long-time tracking of food expenditures, the information has been charted going back just over six decades. The trend is obvious. Out of our total disposable income, Americans are spending a much smaller share on food today.

The data is split into two categories: food consumed ‘away from home’ & ‘at home’. Each gives us insights into how times have changed. While food prices as a whole have dropped, the country is now eating out far more often (with the most notable rise during the ‘70s fast-food boom). Even still, eating out is cheaper today than it was in the past.

Just the opposite is true for health care expenses & insurance. The seven decades since 1950 have shown an extraordinary increase in health care expenditures. The U.S. health care’s share of the GDP quadrupled from 4.6% in 1950 to more than 17% in 2009; in most peer countries, the share is 9 to 11%.

In one report I found, the United States spent the most on health care per person — $9,237 – according to two new papers published in the journal The Lancet. Somalia spent the least – just $33 per person. The data covering 184 countries was collected and analyzed by the Global Burden of Disease Health Financing Collaborator Network, a network of investigators from around the world with expertise in various aspects of health care. And the numbers keep rising. Look at the chart that I found showing data for 2017.

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As expected, wealthy countries spend more on healthcare than do poor countries. Overall, where does the money come from? Low-income countries spend the least on health, & the sources of that little bit of funding are from international donors & people paying out of pocket. In middle-income countries, people still pay out of pocket, but the government is paying for some health care. In high-income countries, the money comes mostly from government and private insurance.

When paying out of pocket, the poorest people don’t get treatment — or they’ll have treatment only to be thrown into poverty because of medical costs. That’s mostly a problem for poor countries, though the U.S. stands out among high-income countries as having catastrophic medical expenditures that put people into poverty.

You’d think that with all of the increased spending & medical breakthroughs that take place, health outcomes would generally improve, but that isn’t the case. Just compare the U.S. and the U.K. Both are high-income, highly developed countries. The U.K. spends less per person ($3,749) on health care than the U.S. ($9,237). Despite its high spending, the U.S. does not have the best health outcomes. Life expectancy is 79.1 years in the U.S. and 80.9 years in the U.K. AND while the U.S. spends more on health care than any country in the world, it ranks 12th in life expectancy among the 12 wealthiest industrialized countries. This is last place! This is according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization focusing on health issues. Here is the link if you want to read more….. What Country Spends The Most (And Least) On Health Care Per Person? OR How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries?

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I realized, through my journey, that the more we consume poor quality, cheap food, the sicker we get in spite of the fact that we spend so much on trying to stay healthy or fight disease. Don & I felt that it was time to do something. Our lives, the lives of our family members and the future of our country and our planet are at stake.

We opened Soups On Main, in Hackettstown, NJ, as the culmination of our desire to help our community to thrive. In addition to trying to educate the public, we wanted to offer a solution to the epidemic of poor-quality food. Families are strapped for time now more than ever. Juggling parenthood responsibilities while providing food and shelter for their families is no easy feat. The stress of covering added expenses for insurance, health care, automobiles, education, fun time activities, etc., leaves little time for working parents to spend in the kitchen.

Cooking takes time. Shopping for food and cleaning up afterwards is also time consuming. Unfortunately for many, these tasks which are so vital to our health, have been left to the demise of the “big food industry”. Unfortunately, the “big food industry” is also married to the “big pharma industry” and they are in bed with the “big insurance industry”. And guess what? There is no money in health. The healthier you are, the less money “big companies” make. Big bucks and big profits are made from the processed food, pharmaceutical and insurance business sector. Because these three avenues of commerce are jointly owned by the few at the very top, they can afford to rob Peter to pay Paul. They can afford to make cheap garbage food at the expense of your health and our environment because they will make up the lost food profits on the medical side of the equation. For them it’s a win win situation.

Instead of pointing fingers and verbally complaining about the challenges we face today, Don and I decided to do something about it. We wanted to offer people an alternative to the typical “fast food” of today. But we too face challenges. One challenge is to change the “cheap food” mentality which is so common from people living in the United States today. People are used to large portions of food dished out at cheap prices. They are used to being able to buy processed food, ready to go, for pennies on the dollar. Big food manufacturers want you to keep coming back for more. They’ve engineered the food to be highly addictive, filled with salt, sugar and unhealthy fats.

If people would stop to consider what it took to get food to their dinner plate, they might realize it is humanly impossible to provide nutritious food at cheap prices. People might start to realize what the true cost of that cheap food really is from the standpoint of their health. And how about the health & welfare of the people that are helping to bring food to our table? How about the health and quality of life of the animals being raised to feed us? How about the cost to our planet from the chemicals and poisons that are incorporated into the growing of cheap crops? And more than that is the cost that we really pay when we start to experience ill health because of the lack of nutrition and the chemicals present in these cheap foods? Don’t believe me. Here are some links to documentaries and films that are bringing these abuses and atrocities to light:

This is just a small sampling of the information that is available that will tell us the truth about what is happening to our health, our food, our environment, our planet.

Questions? Feel free to email me at

do********@pr********.com











. Together we can and will make a difference in the lives of those living in our community and surrounding locales.

Ghostwriting Science, Corporate Malfeasance Lead to $80M Jury Decision in Second Roundup Cancer Trial

March 12, 2021 /

March 29th 2019 Written By: Jefferey Jaxen

A deeper look into the latest crushing defeat of Bayer/Monsanto in the tidal wave of upcoming Roundup Cancer trials…

$80 million in damages was the figure the jury arrived at in a unanimous verdict against Monsanto for failing to warn Edwin Hardeman of the cancer risks of the world’s most widely used herbicide product, Roundup. Bayer AG, who acquired Monsanto in 2018, has faced increasing public backlash both legally and in the court of public opinion. Dewayne “Lee” Johnson was the first person to take Monsanto to court alleging that exposure to their Roundup herbicide caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that the company covered up the risks. Johnson’s case made international headlines in 2018 after a unanimous verdict awarded him $289 million for damages from the company; which a judge later reduced to $78 million.

Attorneys for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman said in a statement, “It is clear from Monsanto’s actions that it does not care whether Roundup causes cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about Roundup.”

While Bayer released its own post-trial statement saying in part, “…this verdict does not change the weight of over four decades of extensive science and the conclusions of regulators worldwide that support the safety of our glyphosate-based herbicides and that they are not carcinogenic.” The company has attempted to remain scientifically stoic in the face of two unanimous legal losses and over 11,000 more cases waiting for their day in court. Yet outside the limited talking points and press soundbites offered by Bayer AG, court discovery documents,  testimony, and jury decisions have told a very different story about their glyphosate-based herbicide products.

The recent Hardeman case differed from last year’s Johnson case as Hardeman’s co-lead trial council Aimee Wagstaff stated, “…in the first phase of this case we looked just at the science and we separated the science from all of the bad conduct of Monsanto.” Phase two did focus on Monsanto’s conduct which led to $75 million in punitive damages awarded by the jury.

“At some point this company needs to come clean and own up to the fact that its product is dangerous,” said the plaintiff’s attorney Jennifer Moore. During the second phase, the jury heard evidence that between 1980 and 2012, Monsanto was aware of five epidemiological studies, seven animal studies, three oxidative stress studies and 14 genotoxicity studies that linked its Roundup products to cancer.

Coming to light in both court cases was the fact that for over 40 years, Monsanto failed to safety test its complete glyphosate-based Roundup formulation product. Instead, the company relied on now-questionable scientific data from just one component of the product, glyphosate. How have regulators across the world allowed Roundup to be sold and used so ubiquitously without requiring validation that the entire formulation was not carcinogenic? In the Johnson trial, discovery documents showed Monsanto’s Head Toxicologist Donna Farmer, PhD, when advising executives on public messaging about Roundup®, write in an internal email:

“…you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement.”

It was in 2015 when a working group of 17 experts from 11 countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization. The IARC experts looked at the available published scientific evidence to evaluate the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. Their findings led to the classification of glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A). IARC also concluded that there was “strong” evidence for genotoxicity, both for the “pure” glyphosate and for glyphosate formulations.

In 2016, the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology (CRT) published evidence to contradict IARC’s 2015 findings. Titled A review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate by four independent expert panels and comparison to the IARC assessment, the 2016 paper concluded,

“…the totality of the evidence…as judged by the Expert Panels, does not support the conclusion that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen” and…the Expert Panels conclude that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.” At the time, these findings were so significant they were picked up by major media outlets around the world.

The ‘Independent Expert Panel’ study stated under CRT’s “Declaration of interest” section that, “…each individual participated in the review process and preparation of this paper as an independent professional…Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel’s manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.”

However, internal Monsanto documents discovered and used in Dewayne Johnson’s trial showed that the study and its data were developed by Monsanto in an effort to discredit IARC. Although not disclosed by CRT, William F. Heydens, one of Monsanto’s top scientists, reviewed the manuscripts, helped draft them, and was actively involved in their editing.

Journalist Carey Gilliam was present reporting from the Hardeman trial. Eight days before the eventual $80M verdict she wrote, “The judge is allowing portions of a 2015 internal Monsanto email in which company scientist Bill Heydens discusses plans to ghostwrite a series of new scientific papers that will contradict IARC’s classification of glyphosate because in that email, Heydens remarks on how this plan is similar to the ghostwriting of a scientific paper published in 2000 that found glyphosate to be safe.” The findings and evidence of ghostwriting clearly had a significant impact on the jury’s decision and award amount.

Although not allowed as evidence in the Hardeman trial, deposition from Monsanto executive Sam Murphy shows Monsanto allocated “$16 or $17 million” in 2016 in an-all out effort to combat IARC’s 2015 study.

There will be no legal respite for Bayer AG as the third lawsuit against Monsanto has now begun in Oakland, California just one day after the Handeman verdict. This time the case will revolve around a married couple in their 70s who both claim to have developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide products. The Murphy deposition is expected to be introduced in the now ongoing Oakland trial. At the time of this writing, Bayer AG’s stock price has plummeted 19.92 percent over the last month.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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