(NewsTarget) Yesterday I posted shocking macrophotography pictures of processed meat products. Since then, over a quarter of a million people have viewed the photos in the first 24 hours, and word has spread all over the internet about these sick, graphic images of processed meats. I’ve already received numerous complaints of people vomiting (I’m not kidding)! More importantly, however, I’ve also received many comments from people who say they are no longer going to eat processed meat products at all. They’re either opting for fresh meats or thinking about going vegetarian. I have not yet heard from Kraft Foods or Jimmy Dean, although there’s not much they can say since these are accurate, honest pictures of the products they’re making and selling right now (the photos were not altered).Today I’d like to give you the behind-the-scenes story of how these photos came to be, along with a preview of some upcoming macrophotography projects you’ll be seeing soon here on NewsTarget.com.Do you really want to meet your meat?This processed meat idea hit me one day as I was driving past a local Wal-Mart grocery store and thinking to myself, “I wonder if people would really eat processed food products if they knew what they contained?” On an impulse, I turned into the Wal-Mart parking lot and decided to enter the store and buy some processed meat products with the intention of photographing them. This caused a concern, since I would never be caught dead buying processed meat products, and certainly not in a Wal-Mart. I was worried that a NewsTarget reader might spot me buying this garbage food, snap a camera photo, and I’d end up all over the internet holding a package of Oscar Mayer hot dogs with that deer-in-the-headlights look…So — get this — I put on a hat and sunglasses and actually stealthed my way through the Wal-Mart store, trying to buy these processed meat products without getting noticed! I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I’ve had people walk up to me in grocery stores before and start chatting about NewsTarget, and I didn’t want to risk giving someone the wrong impression about my own lifestyle. This is actually a very important point with me because I live the lifestyle I recommend. I eat superfoods, exercise regularly and follow an incredibly clean diet. I would even think of taking a single bite of an Oscar Mayer hot dog or Jimmy Dean sausage, and even holding those foods in my hands made me feel icky just from the energy of the flesh from the slaughtered animals used to make those products. So I sure didn’t want to get snapped by a camera standing in front of a Wal-Mart checkout lane with my hands full of junk processed meat products.After I completed my undercover meat purchase, I headed home and set up the macrophotography equipment. Since I’m experienced at this (I love to take nature pictures, especially of flowers), that was easy. I already had all the equipment and know-how necessary. The next part, however, was not so easy: I had to touch the meat products to prep them for the camera.For someone who never eats processed meats (and, in fact, eats relatively little meat at all, and never meat from mammals), this was an especially challenging task. It didn’t take long before the sickening smell of hot dogs, sodium lactate, sodium nitrite, beef hearts and pork parts filled my kitchen. And as I started taking the photos, there were several times I felt like gagging. My appetite was diminished and I actually started feeling angry at the meat processed industry for the way they manufacture and market these sickening products. But I intuitively felt this was an important documentary photo project and that the world needed to see these photos, so I continued on, tearing open the hot dogs, sausages and salami, arranging them for the camera, and searching for the most visually interesting elements to photograph.Way beyond “point and shoot”Macrophotography is a tricky thing. If you’ve ever tried it yourself, you probably know that you can’t just stick a camera up close to something, snap a photo, and expect it to look good. It involves a lot of specialized equipment, optics knowledge and a whole lot of light pointed at exactly the right spot. Depth of view is extremely limited at these ranges, so camera focus becomes critical (and there are no auto-focus professional-grade macro lenses, you have to do it manually). A lot of photos ended up being deleted because the focus was off, or the lens filter was dirty, or the exposure was wrong, etc. But if you stick with it — and you have the right equipment — you can snag some incredible shots of really tiny things.When you’re zoomed in that close on something, it’s also easy to get lost in the topography of the object. It’s like being a microscopic person walking around a huge moonscape, and sometimes it’s hard to find your bearings. For example, looking at a piece of salami with the naked eye, I could locate a giant fat blob that I wanted to photograph, but inside the viewfinder of the camera, it actually takes quite a bit of searching to find that same fat blob (it’s sort of like trying to find something on a slide under a microscope).Another interesting thing is that if you zoom in too much (like 5x magnification, which is really more like 50x by the time it gets on screen), the objects lose their context and just look like isolated blobs of anything. It could be a galaxy, or a molecule. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what you’re looking at if you’re in too close, right? I found the best magnifications were between 1x and 3x.Click here to see a particularly sick-looking photo of some salami at 3x magnification.Hilarious Google adsOur Photo Tours content rendering technology automatically places Google Adsense ads underneath the photos. Google chooses the content of these ads based on the text on the page. I found it hilarious seeing ads for “Kielbasa Sausage!” underneath pictures of some nasty-looking chunk of processed meat. Many of the ads that appeared were promoting organic beef and pork products, which also seemed a bit strange.Some ads were for food additives like phosphates, and others promoted things like, “Meals for Seniors” which are, no doubt, probably made of processed meats. Overall, I found the ads to be quite hilarious, and not really very useful to the topic. Here at NewsTarget, we constantly get complaints from readers about the Google ads, but that’s because those people don’t yet realize we don’t choose those ads! Google does, and sometimes their ad selection algorithm produces bizarre results.Coming next: Superfoods and plants!My next macrophotography project, which will be published here on NewsTarget.com, will bring you incredible photos of superfoods and fresh produce. You’ll see the amazing symmetry in nature, and you’ll marvel at the complexity in the construction of the plant fibers and structures. My aim is to show you the beauty in natural plant-based foods, epsecially in contrast to the sickening imagery of processed meats.Click the picture on the left to see an example of the kind of nature photography I’m talking about. I snapped this photo on the Big Island of Hawaii, and it’s an example of the kind of approach I take to photographing nature. When dealing with nature, you have to be mindful, delicate, even sensual!Nature is simply amazing, and most of the time we miss the miracles in nature because our eyes are too big and too far away to notice the detail. With this photography technology, however, we can alter our perspective and see nature from a whole new point of view, taking in the natural beauty, balance, color and symmetry. You’ll be inspired and amazed at what’s coming in the next NewsTarget Photo Tour!And I won’t have to sneak around Wal-Mart, shopping in disguise! I only need to buy fresh, healthy produce and let the camera show you just how amazingly beautiful and healing Mother Nature can truly be.If you want to be emailed when that Photo Tour is posted, just subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter. Click here to subscribe now, and you’ll receive an e-mail alert when these new superfood photos go live!By the way, when I’m walking through nature, or buying fresh produce, I see this kind of beauty and symmetry all around me. I’m always humbled by nature, and it will be a great honor to be part of bringing you this next round of macro photos of healing foods and plants. I can’t wait to fill my kitchen with the smell of citrus and broadcast healing images of Mother Nature’s healing foods!

Seven tips for tranquility
In this edition of DL Radio, we explore ways for you to manage stress and subdue anger more effectively

Choline in meat, dairy products linked to colon cancer risk in women
(NewsTarget) Researchers may have discovered a relationship between the risk of colorectal cancer in women and their consumption of choline, which has until now been thought to be an essential nutrient. The link was reported in a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.Choline is a nutrient found in eggs, meat (especially liver) and dairy products. It plays an important role in the functioning of cells and the distribution of nutrients through the body, including a process called one-carbon metabolism. Prior studies have shown that people with a high dietary intake of other nutrients involved in one-carbon metabolism, such as folate, have a decreased risk for colorectal polyps.Colorectal polyps are often-benign tumors that develop in the colon and can eventually lead to cancer. In the first study to examine the issue, researchers expected to find that consumption of choline, like folate, decreased a person’s risk of developing colorectal polyps.To their surprise, researchers found the opposite. In a survey of 39,246 women, researchers used food-frequency questionnaires to estimate the choline contents of participants’ diets. All the women had no cancer or polyps when the study began, and had at least one endoscopy between 1984 and 2002. Increased consumption of choline was found to be correlated with a higher risk of colorectal polyps.”Clearly, one-carbon metabolism and its role in [cancer development] is more complicated than originally anticipated, and our understanding of the underlying mechanisms is probably incomplete,” wrote Regina Ziegler and Unhee Lim, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, in an accompanying editorial.While a correlation does not necessarily mean that choline is to blame for the increased colon cancer risk, the authors speculated that it may indeed play a role.”Once a tumor is initiated, growth into a detectable [polyp] depends in part on choline availability, because choline is needed to make membranes in all rapidly growing cells,” they wrote.Prior studies have linked choline deficiency to fatty liver and muscle damage.

Apple Loses NBC Shows from iTunes
NBC Universal has told Apple Inc. that it would not allow its television content to be sold on iTunes following a dispute over pricing. NBC Universal-controlled television programming accounts for an estimated 40 percent of the video downloads on iTunes. The company’s contract to sell more than 1,500 hours of news, sports and entertainment programming on iTunes expires at the end of December. NBC was required to inform Apple by Friday if the contract would not renewed, said Amy Zelvin, spokeswoman for NBC Universal Digital. Apple was not immediately available for comment Friday. The companies are expected to continue negotiations. But NBC Universal’s hardball tactics, reported Friday in The New York Times, illustrates unrest among content providers concerning Apple’s pricing policies. iTunes offers songs for download at 99 cents and video for $1.99. Media companies want more say in pricing and, in NBC Universal’s case, is anxious to offer different packages by bundling programs together at different prices. Availability of Web-popular programs like USA’s “Psych,” NBC’s “30 Rock” and Sci Fi’s “Battlestar Gallactica” would all be affected. NBC Universal also wants iTunes to stiffen anti-piracy provisions so computer users would not have easy access to illegal downloads.

States Seek More Oversight of Microsoft
Ending court oversight of Microsoft’s business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of the new Windows Vista operating system, a group of U.S. states said in a filing. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who oversees Microsoft Corp.’s adherence to the terms of a 2002 antitrust settlement, asked the software maker, the Justice Department and a group of states led by California submit reports by Thursday on the effectiveness of the consent decree. The oversight aimed to make it possible for Microsoft’s middleware competitors — who build software that links the operating system with everyday programs — to compete fairly, even if Microsoft’s operating system monopoly persisted. “Microsoft has not directly contravened these provisions,” said the states’ report, which was submitted by the office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown. But the California group said the consent decree has not led to any more competition. The report cites Microsoft’s continued dominance in the operating system market and the fact that few, if any, PC makers have sold computers with non-Microsoft Web browsers set as the default, among other examples. One of the casualties of Microsoft’s business practices was Netscape. Its Web browser led the field until Microsoft started bundling its own Internet Explorer with Windows and restricting how PC makers installed competing products. It was eventually bought by AOL. Antitrust concerns about Microsoft began surfacing with news of a Federal Trade Commission investigation in 1991, and in 1994 the software maker agreed to modify its contracts with PC makers to ease restrictions, which ended renewed U.S. and European antitrust investigations. Another round of investigations led to a federal lawsuit that ended with a court declaration that Microsoft was using its operating system monopoly to squash middleware competition, and led to a settlement and the consent decree in 2002. The California group said…

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Vitamins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.