Here’s what she thought:

I don’t know about you, but I seem to be dragging lately. I do think all this sun is helping me, thank goodness, but I have been a little tired lately. I was really excited when Pomology sent me their energy drink to try. At this point, I could use a little energy boost. We had rain for 9 days straight and I am a solar powered gal!

Overall, I liked the drink and will continue to use it. It did give me a boost of energy on those rainy days and it was great if I used it before my workouts!

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Pomegreat, a Gloucestershire-based company that sells pomegranate juice to UK supermarkets, has made a commitment to purchase 500 tons of concentrate and 500 tons of fresh fruit from Omaid Bahar Ltd, Afghanistan’s first fruit processing facility.

It is a business deal that Adam Pritchard, chief executive of Pomegreat, says he has long been waiting to achieve.

“The Afghan pomegranate is the best in the world and in ten years working with pomegranates from many countries, I have never previously encountered juice of the quality Omaid Bahar is offering,” he said.

“My long-term aim is for pomegranates and other fruit juices from Afghanistan to become a valuable and valid commodity that can be exported around the world.”

Pomegreat says the fruit grown in Afghanistan is of the highest quality available

Mr Pritchard acknowledges that the decision to source fruit from Afghanistan is not without its difficulties, and that it is a relationship that will need to be reviewed on an annual basis.

Nevertheless, he says, it is very much a long-term relationship.

“The country is landlocked, and it’s a longer distance from factory to port, so there are some logistical challenges,” he told Sky News.

“We’ve also had to make sure we get the documentation and paperwork correct, and identify which Afghan ministry does what.

“These are challenges we think we’ve overcome, though, and I have been over to Kabul to meet the factory owner and talk about his long-term ambitions.”

He went on: “Initially we’ll use a percentage of Afghan pomegranates in out product, but we aim to make this 100% in future years.”

The Omaid Bahar factory in Kabul has just shipped its first pomegranates to the UK

The state-of-the-art Omaid Bahar fruit processing facility, based in Kabul, opened in October 2009 with the support of the American government agency USAID.

Its first batch of juice is expected to arrive in the UK during March 2010.

Mustafa Sadiq, owner of Omaid Bahar said: “I am proud to have built this factory and the commitment from Pomegreat gives me great hope for the future that I can fulfil the needs of international markets with our superior production of juice.”

Afghanistan was once famous for its pomegranates, before years of war cut trade routes and forced the loss of traditional markets.

Many of the nation’s farmers are now engaged in opium poppy cultivation, a trade that has been growing since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

International efforts have been made to offer poor farmers incentives to grow other crops - including pomegranates, to control the production of opium, from which heroin is obtained.

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Pomegranates could help speed up childbirth - and may reduce the number of emergency Caesarean sections performed as a result of long labour. Research carried out at the University of Liverpool shows that the seeds of the fruit contain high levels of a steroid, betasitosterol. When the researchers added this natural extract to uterus tissue in laboratory tests, they found it increased muscle activity. Every year, around a quarter of babies born in England - 155,000 - are delivered by Caesarean. More than half the Caesareans performed are emergency procedures due to problems during labour.

It’s thought that the increasing number of obese women may be partly to blame. The Liverpool team hope that the pomegranate- seed extract could help reduce the number of Caesareans. However they stressed there is no evidence that drinking pomegranate juice will have the same effect. Source

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Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or herbal product. This means no deaths at all from blue cohosh, echinacea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava kava, St. John’s wort, valerian, yohimbe, Asian medicines, ayurvedic medicines, or any other botanical. There were zero deaths from creatine, blue-green algae, glucosamine, chondroitin, melatonin, or any homeopathic remedies.

Furthermore, there were zero deaths in 2008 from any dietary mineral supplement. This means there were no fatalities from calcium, magnesium, chromium, zinc, colloidal silver, selenium, iron, or multimineral supplements. Two children died as a result of medical use of the antacid sodium bicarbonate. The other “Electrolyte and Mineral” category death was due to a man accidentally drinking sodium hydroxide, a highly toxic degreaser and drain-opener.

No man, woman or child died from nutritional supplements. Period.

61 poison centers provide coast-to-coast data for the U.S. National Poison Data System, which is then reviewed by 29 medical and clinical toxicologists. NPDS, the authors write, is “one of the few real-time national surveillance systems in existence, providing a model public health surveillance system for all types of exposures, public health event identification, resilience response and situational awareness tracking.”
Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 154,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 56 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.
If nutritional supplements are allegedly so “dangerous,” as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?

Those who wonder if the media are biased against vitamins may consider this: how many television stations, newspapers, magazines, and medical journals have reported that no one dies from nutritional supplements?

Reference:
Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2008 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 26th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2009). 47, 911-1084. The full text article is available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2008annualreport.pdf . Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1052-3. Minerals, herbs, amino acids and other supplements are in the same table, pages 1047-8.

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According to Reuters, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh followed 2,000 men and women in their 70s for two years. Participants were surveyed about their eating habits and had their grip strength tested in the beginning and at the end of the study period.

They found what they call a “significant” link between the intake of vitamins C and E and an increase in muscle strength, regardless of initial strength levels.

Lead researcher Dr Anne Newman told Reuters it’s not clear whether the antioxidant-rich vitamins preserved muscle strength or if they’re just indicative of an overall healthy diet. “Since they’re in the food, they could be directly related, or they could be marking diets high in fruits and vegetables and low in sodium – all of which would have beneficial effects,” she said.

Newman and her team previously found that physical activity and protein were important in preserving strength. She said these findings prove that a healthy, balanced diet is imperative for people to avoid becoming frail in old age.

According to WebMD, vitamin C is found in food sources like berries, citrus fruits, red and green peppers and sweet potatoes. Dietary sources that are high in vitamin E include broccoli, carrots, nuts and spinach. Both vitamins are also widely available in nutritional supplement form.

Source: drcutler.com

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