Year: 2011

From the moment we first tasted lactose (a type of sugar) in milk as infants, humans have acquired a taste for sweetness and learned to regard it as a pleasure. Sugar and sugary food makers took advantage of this human taste tendency and turned sugar into the world’s very first mass consumer product. As we grew older, we began to satisfy our sweet liking with this product, sucrose (table...

Sugar destroys the body in many ways – planting disease, eroding health and ultimately shortening our lives. In short, sugar kills! Sugar is one of the basic elements found in starchy food. However, the refined white sugar, which we generally refer to using the term “sugar”, is industrially processed and really not suitable or safe for human consumption. It is devoid of nutrients and acts...

Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) is concerned that diabetes has reached very alarming proportions in the country. Almost 10%, or 2.6 million, of our population are believed to be suffering from Type 2 diabetes. The number of children with diabetes is on the rise with 1,305 cases reported in 2004, compared with 837 in 1999. The figures on diabetic cases are just the official reported cases....

The abuse of antibiotics by doctors has led to the creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which have become increasingly untreatable by modern medicine. The problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria was initially found only in hospitals. Today it has spread to communities. Schools had been closed in the USA because of the problem of CA-MRSA (Community-acquired Methicillin-resistant...

Toxic chemicals are linked to some cancers, birth defects and low birth weight, autism, and learning and behavioural disabilities. Many parts of the world today are seeing escalating health problems and more and more countries are linking this to the chemical legacy.In Canada, for instance, the government has found that 12% of children there have asthma, possibly a 4-fold increase since the...

Take swine flu — now renamed. We know it started in La Gloria, a little town in Mexico. We know a young boy suffering from fever in March became the first confirmed victim of the current outbreak, which, even as I write, has claimed some 42 people and affected 2,371 in 24 countries. What is not said is this ill-fated town is right next to one of Mexico’s biggest hog factories, owned by the...