Back in December, I was excited. The reason I was excited was because everybody's favorite über-Libertarian, New World Order conspiracy theorist quack, Mike Adams, a.k.a. The Health Ranger, had made an announcement. That announcement was that on January 6, 2014 Adams would announce astonishing "scientific findings" about food that would "revolutionize" nutrition and health. Given Adams' past history of doing hilariously off-base things with scientific instruments, such as putting Chicken McNuggets under a microscope and being amazed that things look a lot different when highly magnified, resulting in his misinterpreting dust and probably flecks of spice to be bizarre and alien fibers responsible for Morgellon's disease, I was hoping for, as I put it, comedy gold and blog fodder galore.

I was disappointed.

January 6 came and went, and all I saw over at Adams' repository of all things that quack, NaturalNews.com, were reports from the hilariously named Forensic Food Lab at NaturalNews.com finding heavy metals and all sorts of "toxins" in not just grocery store food, but organic foods and "superfoods." Holy hell, even vegan foods and seaweed and sea vegetable products were not immune from Adams' incompetent use of expensive scientific equipment to generate terrifying numbers for concentrations of lead, cadmium, and other heavy metals. However, it soon became apparent to me that Adams was clearly using his newfound ability to misuse actual scientific instruments to "find" horrifying levels of metals and various scary chemicals in a lot of the supplements and "superfoods" that you'd normally expect him to support. It was then that I started to realize that Adams' lunacy wasn't really about belief. Not really. Not this time. Rather, it was about eliminating his competition by testing their products and finding them to be "loaded" with various scary sounding chemicals. He even went so far as to publish an unstintingly funny (unintentionally, of course) article entitled Heavy metals discussions reveal striking state of denial in the minds of some natural products consumers, in which he had the chutzpah to state, "You can't pick and choose which laws of chemistry you want to be true," and then follow the section of his article following that title with a claim like, "There is also convincing evidence that at least some people are able to truly live off nothing more than sunlight and air."

Uh, the laws of chemistry and physics say that living off of nothing more than sunlight and air is impossible for a mammal like humans. Mikey really needs to take his own advice. But I digress...

Yesterday, the old Mikey was back. Gone was the Mikey ruthlessly trying to eliminate his natural foods competitors by "revealing" horrible chemicals and heavy metals in their products, and back was the utterly nutty conspiracy true believer that we've all come to know and love. The old Mikey was back in the form of an article entitled Battle for humanity nearly lost: global food supply deliberately engineered to end life, not nourish it. To drive the point home, right next to the title is a picture of a man wearing a hazmat suit and a gas mask. As if that weren't enough, the second paragraph basically reiterates the title, saying that because of his wondrous scientific experiments Mikey has come to the conclusion that humanity is nearly lost. Don't worry, though. He's only getting warmed up:

My lab has uncovered scientific proof that substances are intentionally formulated into dietary products to drive consumers mentally insane while causing widespread infertility, organ damage and a loss of any ability to engage in rational, conscious thinking. These toxic substances are being found across the entire food supply including in conventional foods, organic foods, "natural" products and dietary supplements. This goes far beyond the mere contamination of foods with heavy metals -- a subject which is grave all by itself. Rather, this is about the intentional formulation of toxic substances into products consumed by the masses on a regular basis. The result is what you see unfolding around you right now: mass insanity, incredible escalations of criminality among political operatives, clinical insanity among an increasing number of mainstream media writers and reporters, widespread infertility in young couples, skyrocketing rates of kidney failure and dialysis patients, plus a near total loss of rational thinking among the voting masses.

Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! Or so sayeth Mike Adams:

The long-term effects of this widespread food poisoning phenomenon will be the utter downfall of modern human civilization for numerous reasons ranging from economic non-sustainability to environmental destruction and the global rise of political violence as we are seeing right now in Kiev. As more and more lab results have been documented here at the Natural News Forensic Food Lab, it has become increasingly apparent to me that humanity cannot survive the mass engineered poisoning of the food supply.

Who knew Mike was so important to humankind? And what are these horrific chemicals that are poisoning us all, turning us into mindless zombie drones serving the pharmaceutical machine, plugging us into it much like the hapless humans were plugged into the Matrix. Key among these chemicals, apparently, is the now-infamous "yoga mat" chemical azodicarbonamide. You might recall that Subway buckled under pressure to remove this food additive from its bread because of a protest trumped up by a blogger named Vani Hari, better known as the "Food Babe." You remember the Food Babe, don't you? She's a particularly dim advocate of "natural" foods and remedies who first came to my attention when my good buddy Mark Crislip so amusingly deconstructed her particularly bad arguments in favor of skipping the flu vaccine last fall. About this horrible chemical, Adams rants:

The now-infamous "yoga mat chemical" used by Subway in their breads is also widely used across the fast-food industry. McDonald's, Chik-Fil-A, Wendy's, Arby's and many other restaurants also use the chemical azodicarbonamide which is linked to cancer. Importantly, this is not a contaminant. This is an ingredient which is intentionally added to the recipes in order for the chemical to be consumed by the masses.

in order for the chemical to be consumed by the masses. There is no logical reason why chemicals like azodicarbonamide need to be added to recipes of fast food breads and buns. The chemical serves no necessary functional or nutritive purpose. It seems to exists solely for the purpose of delivering the chemical to hundreds of millions of consumers by blending it into popular fast foods. The sandwiches in which this chemical is found are merely delivery mechanisms for toxic substances that harm human biology.

This is the dumbest form of "guilt-by-association" I've ever heard from a quack. Seriously, Mike, what's wrong with yoga mats? Don't you like yoga? Or do you only use natural, organic yoga mats made only from all-natural materials, like cotton. (If that's the case, I hope you wash them regularly. All that sweat from a good yoga workout. Yuck.) Certain basic chemicals are used for lots of purposes, ranging from industrial uses to plastics to pharmaceuticals to foods. In this case, the the chemical, azodicarbonamide, is what's known as a maturing agent. Basically, when it's added to flour, it makes bread dough rise better. It also improves the handling properties of doughs, yielding drier, more cohesive doughs that are more pliable, hold together better during kneading, and machine better.

Moreover, azodicarbonamide arguably not even in the final product. According to this article, once flour is wetted with water, reaction with azodicarbonamide with the constituents of flour is rapid. In the experiments described, it only took 30 minutes for all the azodicarbonamide to disappear, with trace amounts left. By 45 minutes, there weren't even trace amounts left. These guys even labeled azodicarbonamide with 14C radiotracer to determine where the azodicarbonamide ended up found that the azodicarbonamide is rapidly converted to biurea, which itself is demonized based on toxicology studies from the 1960s in which rats and dogs received diets containing up to 5% or 10% biurea. The animals died with massive, multiple kidney stones, bladder stones, and chronic pyelonephritis (inflammation of the kidneys). The stones were made of biurea crystals. Basically, in this study, the investigators gave the animals so much azodicarbonamide that it crystallized in their kidneys in the form of stones. Let's just put it this way, 10% is roughly equivalent to 100,000 ppm, and the highest concentration of azodicarbonamide used in flour is 45 ppm, or 2,222-fold less than the maximum these animals were being fed. But it's even less than that, given that almost no one's diet consists of just bread and baked goods.

Other aspects of azodicarbonamide frequently cited by fear mongerers like the "Food Babe" (and, of course, Mike Adams) include the observation that the chemical is a pulmonary irritant. That's an argument that workers at plants synthesizing azodicarbonamide should wear masks and that asthmatics shouldn't breathe it in, but it's not an argument not to use it in food. It's just like the case of formaldehyde in vaccines, actually. Just because formaldehyde is used in embalming fluid and to fix tissue and is toxic at high exposures does not mean that trace amounts in vaccines are harmful. They're not.

I know I just digressed a bit, but this whole "yoga mat chemical" nonsense has been irritating me for a while, and Mike Adams just gave me an excuse to address it. Let's get back to his pure looniness. I laughed out loud when I read this passage:

At our atomic spectroscopy lab, we have confirmed trace levels of aluminum in regular atmospheric air, confirming the fact that all agricultural soils are being inundated with aluminum which is literally falling out of the sky. This is not merely aluminum in our laboratory air, as many labs contain aluminum floors or furniture, causing an unusually high aluminum concentration in laboratory air. Rather, parts per billion concentrations of aluminum have been measured in regular atmospheric air sampled far from any building or laboratory. The result of this phenomenon is that aluminum levels are rising in nearly all soil-grown crops from which everyday food is derived. While aluminum is far less harmful than lead, cadmium or mercury, the repeated accumulation of aluminum is believed to be tied to degenerative brain disorders across the population.

Congratulations, Mike. You spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up a lab to find out that aluminum is everywhere. It's the most abundant metal and third most common element in the earth's crust. It makes up 8.1% of the earth's crust by mass. It's everywhere and in almost everything. Human beings evolved with it. At the concentrations typically found in foods and water, it's quite safe, and even high intake of aluminum from antacid for gastrointestinal ailments has not been reported to cause any adverse effects.

Of course, Mike can't finish without invoking apocalyptic imagery, along with Nazis. He compares this "food apocalypse" to World War I (chemical weapons, natch!) and World War II, pontificating that "today's chemical weapons are deployed via the food supply." Referring to the human race becoming a "race of near-mutants," Adams firmly grasps the crazy and charges right off the deep end with it:

What the United States Air Force did to Dresden in World War II via high-elevation bombing runs, the global chemical and food conglomerates are now doing to the world populations via the drive-thru window. But there are no bombs dropping out of the sky and there are no firestorms lighting up the cityscape at night. Instead, the silent, ignorant masses are simply marched to their deaths, one meal at a time, almost like a cargo train full of "useless eaters" clicking and clacking its way to Auschwitz. On the way to their own deaths, of course, they pay the mandatory tolls to the pharmaceutical giants, hospitals, cancer clinics, doctors and health insurance mandates. Much like victims of Nazi genocide had their gold fillings pulled out of their mouths before they were gassed to death, today's mainstream consumers are emptied of their bank accounts, assets and insurance policies before finally being discarded by the system.

Because food additives are exactly like the Dresden fire bombing and the Holocaust. And Auschwitz. Especially Auschwitz. I'm really surprised that Adams axercised a little restraint and didn't throw in the Rape of Nanking or the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for good measure.

Adams finishes with a plea for everyone to grow their own food. Of course, this sort of solution is rarely possible except for well-off entrepreneurs like Adams. There's another issue, too. If the soil is "contaminated" with aluminum and all sorts of other metals that have been in the soil since before the dawn of agriculture, one wonders how growing one's own food would obviate this chemical holocaust that is in what passes for Adams' mind being inflicted upon the world.