Cottonseed in Food
When you head out to parties, buy treats or otherwise just have a good time, look for “cottonseed” in some of the very fun-looking party foods–and walk the other way. Cottonseed is not fun! It can cause high cholesterol, Alzheimer’s and other problems.
Common treats, like the cakes and chips you see here–just as examples–can be devastating for your health.
According to Dr. Bruce Semon, Milwaukee-based doctor and nutritionist, they all have a slow poison that eventually can give you Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and a host of other problems. He explains in his new book, Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain, that the simple ingredient called “cottonseed” contains a toxin that infiltrates your diet, accumulates in your body, and has major health consequences.
You don’t need to go far to find this poison. Any time you get together with friends and relatives for the holidays; any time your office has a Christmas party; and any time you even take a quick trip to the grocery store, if you don’t look at the ingredients list, you will find cottonseed in foods ranging from holiday pretzels and tortilla chips to cake mixes and even canned cream of mushroom soup
“Cottonseed oil has become the darling of the food industry,” Dr. Semon explains. “It is cheap, readily available, and cooks at high temperature without adding off-flavors.” Whenever you see on a product’s list of ingredients a nebulous reference to oils, it could mean that 100% cottonseed oil, or no cottonseed oil at all, was used. But, since you’ll never know for sure, the best choice is to avoid that product.
Why is this so bad? Cottonseed is known to increase cholesterol in animals. “This is a problem for people, too,” Dr. Semon explains. In a recent study, Dr. Semon fed cottonseed poisons to rats, in about the same amounts as people eat over a lifetime. “I purposely did not exaggerate the amounts,” he states, “because I wanted know if even eating little bits over a long time is harmful.”
The results of the study were startling and terrifying, given that cottonseed pervades our food supply. The rats in Dr. Semon’s study developed high cholesterol, holes in their brains typical of Alzheimer’s, blood clots and strokes.
Cottonseed is also hidden in our food supply. Farmers feed it to animals, which store it in their fat. It passes to cows’ milk. We eat it. According to Dr. Semon, “Scientists have known for years that feeding high levels of cottonseed to animals kills them by causing them to bleed to death. So they limit the amount of cottonseed they feed. However, scientists also know that the poisons from cottonseed accumulate in the animals’ meat, fat and milk.” Nobody had ever studied what happens when animals eat the cottonseed in low levels over their lifetimes—until now.
Dr. Semon explains much more about this problem–and how you can avoid it–in his new book, Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain, available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and many other places.
In the words of one reviewer,
“This is a remarkable book on so many levels. Offering compelling evidence about one of the best-kept secrets that, once revealed, can change the course of our lives. The author doesn’t just argue about how and why cottonseed is linked to devastating diseases like Alzheimers, but this medical doctor has performed his own fascinating research with shocking findings that will change the way you eat and may ultimately save your life.”
So this holiday season, when you go to that holiday party, look at the labels and make sure that the food you eat won’t give you major problems later. Sure, they taste good, but every drop of poison contributes to problems later in life. When in doubt, stick to the familiar snack foods you’ve already vetted as cottonseed oil-free.
Find out how you can change your life now. Don’t wait!
To read more of our articles about Cottonseed, go to our menu bar at the top of this page and click on “Cottonseed Articles”
POST: ARE YOU SERVING POISON FOR PASSOVER?
Passover is the feast of freedom, a time when Jewish people all over the world celebrate freedom from Egyptian slavery thousands of years ago. Special foods are cooked. For our own family, it was the key to unlocking the secret behind Autism. You can read that story as well.
But many of the processed special foods contain toxins—in the form of Cottonseed Oil. For reasons that escape us, Cottonseed Oil has become the oil of choice for processed Passover foods. Why? We don’t know. This is what a typical Kosher for Passover section of the grocery store contains:
We advise NOT using cottonseed oil because cottonseed oil is known to cause major problems in animals, including high cholesterol and heart disease. Our new book, Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain, explains this in great detail.
But we do know that you have a choice. You can use other oils that are kosher for Passover, such as safflower, walnut, grapeseed and olive oils (but consult your own rabbi if you have questions). We advocate using olive oil or safflower oil.
We urge you to eat safely. Most of the recipes in Feast Without Yeast: 4 Stages to Better Health, and all of the recipes in Extraordinary Foods for the Everyday Kitchen, are great for Passover. Both books contain special Passover menus to make your menu planning easier! We also have some sample Passover Recipes on this website. You can order them from Amazon.com by clicking on the link to the right. They are available on Kindle as well.
