Like millions of people, you’ve probably been trained by medical practitioners to accept a growing list of ailments as just “part of the aging process.”

Only a handful of those practitioners will tell you that many of the degenerative conditions you’ve come to accept as normal could in fact have as much to do with what you eat, as they have to do with how old you are.

When it comes to the health of your eyes, blindly following your doctor’s storyline about macular degeneration and aging could leave you, well, blind.

In this week’s video, Dr. Chris Knobbe, ophthalmologist and author of “Ancestral Dietary Strategy to Prevent and Treat Macular Degeneration,” talks about the link between the western diet and macular degeneration, a condition forecast to affect 196 million people by 2020.

Knobbe tells Dr. Mercola:

“Today, 20 percent of the world’s diet is wheat. In the U.S., 85 percent of that is refined, meaning, it’s nutrient-deficient, kind of like sugar in a lot of ways. If you advance to 2009, those four foods—sugar, refined white wheat flour, polyunsaturated vegetable oils and trans fats—make up 63 percent of the American diet. This is the recipe for disaster. This is what sits at the base of all of this metabolic disease, including macular degeneration.”

Will your doctor tell you that the best way to avoid going blind is to change the way you eat? Probably not, according to a new study from the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic.

Reporting this week on the Harvard study, the New Food Economy wrote:

Culturally and politically, we’re increasingly acknowledging that what we eat plays a major role in our health. Which is why it’s especially strange that healthcare providers know so little about it.

All the more reason to take control of your own health—starting with what you eat.

Watch ‘Using Diet to Treat Macular Degeneration’

Next week, as we have twice every year for the past couple decades, OCA will send a representative to the bi-annual National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting.

We’ll present tens of thousands of signatures from consumers demanding that the NOSB crack down on Big Fake Organic dairies that cheat the system.

We’ll present thousands of signatures from consumers telling the NOSB that any ingredient used to process meat that causes that meat to become carcinogenic should be banned from organic.

We’ll press for stronger, not weaker, organic standards. 

We’ll argue that independent, authentic organic producers, motivated by fairness and a commitment to consumers and to being good stewards of the land, should write the rules for organic standards—not giant corporations, pressured by shareholders to increase stock values.

We take seriously our role as protector of organic standards. It’s an important piece of the work we do.

We wish we could bring all of you with us to Pittsburgh next week.

But we’ll settle for bringing your signatures, and your values and your spirit.

Your voices will be heard. We’ve got your back.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby, OCA’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm (not tax-deductible)

Click here for more ways to support our work

When you buy certified organic processed meats (bacon, ham, salami, etc.) with the words “uncured” and “no nitrates” on the package, you can safely assume you’re avoiding cancer-causing substances, right?

Not if the meat you buy also contains non-organic celery powder produced with chemical nitrate fertilizer.

When members of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) convene in Pittsburgh this month, they’ll address several controversial issues, including this one: Should celery powder be allowed in certified organic processed meats?

Celery powder? Controversial?

Surely something so harmless as celery powder couldn’t have anything to do with the carcinogens found in processed meat from factory farms, could it?

It could. And it’s time the NOSB did something about it.

Read what OrganicEye has to say about it

SIGN THE PETITION: Get carcinogenic nitrosamines out of organic meat by banning celery powder!

Welcome back to “The Jungle.” That’s how writer Kim Kelly ends the article she penned recently for The New Republic.

“The Jungle” refers to Upton Sinclair’s exposé-disguised-as novel, published in 1906, which revealed the atrocious conditions in U.S. slaughterhouses.

The book ultimately led to federal regulations (within four months of the novel’s publication) forcing the owners of meatpacking plants to improve the dangerous and disgusting working conditions endured by those unfortunate enough to work in the animal slaughter business.

“Welcome back” refers to the Trump administration’s success in turning back the clock, making conditions worse—for workers in corporate-owned slaughterhouses and for consumers who eat the meat processed there.

Kelly’s article is one of two recent news stories that shine a light on the darkest of industries—industrial meat—and reveal how our federal regulatory agencies continue to enable industrial meat producers to thrive in what Pulitzer Prize-winning Chris Hedges recently referred to as the “Age of Radical Evil.”

October 16 was World Food Day. So we thought it fitting to remind consumers why it’s critical to boycott industrially produced meat, and why we should never give up the battle to end factory farming, once and for all.

Read ‘On World Food Day: Let’s Boycott and Ban Factory Farms’