Lose Weight | Get Healthy | Read Death by Supermarket by Nancy Deville

The new trend in food has caught on in politics

2009-07-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

Gavin Newsom the often thought of as wacky left wing mayor of San Francisco, has my attention. He’s thinking of the larger picture when it comes to health care—finally. Health care should not just be about needle sticks, insulin, bariatric surgeries, heart procedures, and other medical modalities. Yes, people need health care, but we need to address why people are getting so sick in the first place. And the reason is what we are eating. Not everyone can afford to shop at Whole Foods in the organic produce department. That’s why Newsom is doing something about it in San Francisco. I hope it’s a trend.

Newsom's fresh idea: mandates on healthier food
Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 9, 2009

(07-08) 20:10 PDT -- He's already banned spending city money to buy bottled water and mandated composting citywide. Now, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is taking on something as basic as water and trash: food.

Newsom on Wednesday issued an executive directive he hopes will dramatically change how San Franciscans eat.

All city departments have six months to conduct an audit of unused land - including empty lots, rooftops, windowsills and median strips - that could be turned into community gardens or farms that could benefit residents, either by working at them or purchasing the fresh produce. Food vendors that contract with the city must offer healthy and sustainable food. All vending machines on city property must also offer healthy options, and farmers' markets must begin accepting food stamps, although some already do.

The mayor will send an ordinance to the Board of Supervisors within two months mandating that all food served in city jails, hospitals, homeless shelters and community centers be healthy.

And effective immediately, no more runs to the doughnut shop before meetings and conferences held by city workers. Instead, city employees must use guidelines created by the Health Department when ordering food for meetings.

Examples include cutting bagels into halves or quarters so people can take smaller portions and serving vegetables instead of potato chips.

"We have an eating and drinking problem in the United States of America," Newsom said Wednesday. "It's impacting our health, and it's impacting our economy."

The directives are the product of an "urban-rural roundtable" of food experts from around California convened by Newsom last year. The group was charged with finding ways to get more of the food grown on farms within 200 miles of San Francisco onto the plates of city residents, especially those who depend on government meals.

The idea is to decrease the need to import food, reconnect people to homegrown food rather than processed food, and to provide more options in neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point that lack easy access to grocery stores.

Plan still lacks details

Many of the details have yet to be worked out, including how much it will cost. Newsom bristled when asked how it would be funded because there's no money to implement the food policy in the budget agreed to by the mayor and the board's budget committee just last week.

"We have plenty of resources," he said. "This is not a budget buster."

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, a member of the budget committee, said he likes the idea - and in fact, supervisors have been calling for the creation of an urban farm in San Francisco for years. He said that he wanted one included in the redevelopment of the former UC Berkeley Extension site on Laguna Street, but that the idea was never embraced by the mayor's administration.

"Even if it's a good idea, the timing's a little odd," Mirkarimi said of the unfunded proposal coming just days after the budget compromise. "I like the notion if we're able to get this at a very low cost."

It's also unclear how much land could be converted into community farms. The Public Utilities Commission has thousands of acres outside San Francisco that could be used, and the Real Estate Division and the Recreation and Park Department own some unused parcels in the city.

Model farm in Oakland

Newsom made the announcement Wednesday at a junkyard-turned-farm in West Oakland that could serve as a model for how land could be converted in San Francisco. A stone's throw from BART, it used to be home to old cars and one angry dog, but now is run by the nonprofit City Slicker Farms.

With a handful of staff members and scores of volunteers from the neighborhood, the nonprofit operates six small farms in West Oakland and sells the produce, along with honey and eggs, on a sliding scale to local residents at a Saturday farm stand.

The 2,000-square-foot former junkyard now produces 2,000 pounds of food every year, including lettuce, squash, tomatoes, parsley, sage, collard greens, grapes, cherries and plums.

"This speaks to people's soul," said Barbara Finnin, director of City Slicker Farms. "It's a place people can relax, be outside, and nourish themselves and their families."

Newsom toured the farm, biting off a piece of kale to taste, munching on an apricot and admiring sunflowers taller than him.

Back in San Francisco, it was apparent Newsom's idea may take some getting used to. Michael Summers, who operates a hot dog stand in Civic Center Plaza that contracts with the city, said the dogs made of tofu don't sell nearly as well as the old-fashioned meat kind. That was evidenced by the line of people ordering hot dogs just after noon - and not a tofu order among them.

New food rules

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is calling for city-funded food to be healthy and sustainable. His administration provided the following directives for what this means:

Safe and healthy: Avoids excessive pesticide use and has high nutritional value.

Culturally acceptable: Acceptable culturally and religiously to San Francisco's diverse population. An example would be providing Chinese seniors with bok choy and other vegetables they're familiar with at local farmers' markets.

Sustainable: Grown in a way that maintains the health of agricultural lands and advances self-sufficiency among farmers and farmworkers. An example would be using manure as a fertilizer rather than chemicals.

IF YOU THINK DRUG COMPANIES ARE NOT THE DEVIL, THINK AGAIN

2009-06-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

You know I have always said that the food industry fattens us up and that the diet and drug industries profit by trying to fix the problems that the factory produced food causes. If you owned a business that sold products with a profit in the thousands of percent, would you have any interest in urging people to change their behaviors that would mean less sales of your products? The answer is NO. Drug companies do not want you to be well. They want you to be sick so they can continue to make obscene profits. Think about it, then go and buy some real food for yourself and your family.

Celebrex:100 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $ 0.60
Percent markup: 21,712%

Claritin:1 0 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
Percent markup: 30,306%

Keflex:250 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
Percent markup: 8,372%

Lipitor:20 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
Percent markup: 4,696%

Norvasc:10 mg
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
Percent markup: 134,493%

Prevacid:30 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
Percent markup: 34,136%

Prilosec: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97
Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
Percent markup: 69,417%

Prozac:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.11
Percent markup: 224,973%

Tenormin:50 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0..13
Percent markup: 80,362%

Vasotec:10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
Percent markup: 51,185%

Xanax:1 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
Percent markup: 569,958%

Zestril:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) $89.89
Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
Percent markup: 2,809

Zithromax:600 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
Percent markup: 7,892%

Zocor: /B40 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27 Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63 Percent markup: 4,059%

Zoloft:50 mg
Consumer price: $206.87 Cost of general active ingredients: $1.75 Percent markup: 11,821%

AMERICAN PASTORAL

2009-06-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

You know how I’m always saying that if we increase demand for real food, that a lot of Americans would choose ranching and farming as a lifestyle? Clearly we can’t wait for the government to take away subsidies from BIG FOOD and give that money to struggling farmers. But guess what? People are giving up their day jobs and taking up farming and ranching and creating fabulous lives for themselves while they help feed the community.

Here’s one inspirational couple who you can buy organic meat from: Nature's Harmony.

Does anyone care what we eat? Yes, I think they do!

2009-05-17T08:37:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 84-year old Robert B. Choate, Jr. died. Who? Yes, that was my reaction too. But Mr. Choate was a frontrunner to all those who wish to see the end of “kid food” in this country.

Way back in 1970, this self-described “citizen lobbyist” testified before a Senate subcommittee for consumers that kids’ cereal was so much garbage. The cereal companies’ counterattack? Well, they whined, you have to dump sugar on everything or kids won’t eat it.

Mr. Choate made a dent, because some moms listened and stopped giving their kids the sugary poison. And now, the echoes of his championing are being heard finally by this new generation of moms.

A moment of silence for an unsung hero.

Read the New York Times article.

Link to the Virtuoso Life piece

2008-11-18T06:21:00.001-08:00

Here's a link to the Virtuoso Life piece that you were so kind to weigh in on. It has a circ of 250,000. Page 174.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a killer

2008-10-06T08:00:00.001-07:00

Feel like gagging? Watch the new ads put out by the High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) industry (below). The ads make Americans look like idiots if they don’t exactly know the science about HFCS. If anyone asks you, all you have to say is “HFCS is an unnatural sugar, and I want to put real foods into my body.”

If you want to know more, read on.

Scientists have long known the dangers of HFCS and are learning more as they research the reasons why Americans have grown so fat. The number one reason for our obesity epidemic is HFCS.

HFCS is a refined, artificial fructose made from cornstarch and fungus and chemical processing. HFCS goes directly to the liver to release enzymes that tell the body “store fat immediately!” This urgent fat storage phenomenon results in elevated triglycerides (fat molecules in the blood).

When we eat, insulin is secreted from the pancreas, and this secretion of insulin triggers a sensation of being full and so most people stop eating. But HFCS does not trigger the flood of insulin and so people keep eating and eating and eating. In fact, in the 1900’s people at one pound of sugar per year, today Americans eat up to 150 pounds, or more, and most of this sugar is HFCS.

HFCS is devoid of enzymes, vitamins, and minerals and so eating this substance means that your body must rob its stores of nutrients in order to metabolize the HFCS you just ate. This is why people who eat a lot of factory food garbage look pasty, puffy, and ill, and have got to feel like walking death. As long as we’re talking about death, we might as well segue there.

There is something called the Maillard reaction, which is the reaction between sugar and proteins, which is responsible for the change in color, or browning, when a food is baked. HFCS browns food much faster than regular white sugar, and this rapid browning results in a loss of amino acid residues, decreased protein digestibility, the toxicity of protein in the body, and can even have carcinogenic properties. In simple terms, HFCS products that are baked, or “browned,” cause rapid aging, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

With all of this HFCS consumption, people are not only aging faster, getting fat, type 2 diabetes, and cancer, but, since fructose is metabolized in the liver, they are also developing livers clogged with fatty deposits and cirrhosis. OK if you want the liver of a life-long alcoholic or pâté de foie grois anyone?

HFCS extends the shelf life of factory food products, so what does that tell you? Do you really want to eat something that sits around in warehouses for months?

If you want fruit, eat real fruit. If you want early, ugly death, eat HFCS.

Now Mediterraneans are fat like us

2008-09-24T13:55:00.001-07:00

I don’t completely agree with the Mediterranean diet. It worked fine when people were farming and roaming the hills tending sheep and they could burn off all the carbs from the grains. Now I think grains need to be eating in extreme moderation, according to how active you are. Nevertheless, the Mediterranean diet is leagues better than the American crap diet. But guess what? Greeks are now getting fat and their kids are obese. And we can all guess why. The handy-dandy food mongers are over there proliferating their hideous grease and toxin fast food drive thrus. Great. I rest my case. Factory produced food makes people fat and real food makes people thin. See the New York Times article "Fast Food Hits Mediterranean; a Diet Succumbs" here.

Love Thyself: That’s Sexy

2008-09-18T13:18:00.001-07:00

When mulling over the topic of my first post in my series “That’s Sexy” it immediately came to me that the prevalent trait of sexy people is self-confidence. I’m not talking arrogance or conceit. I’m talking about a healthy respect for oneself. That’s sexy.

If you don’t like yourself, your natural inclination is to abuse yourself. If you live alone, for example, you may eat microwaved Lean Cuisine for dinner with a Diet Coke, and then polish off a tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, then spend the rest of the evening watching stupid TV eating an entire bag of chips. You stop off in the bathroom before bed to brush your teeth and give yourself a tongue lashing in the mirror. Then you go to bed angry and stare at the ceiling, thinking more bad things about yourself.

If you genuinely like yourself, however, your natural inclination will be to do nice things for yourself, like make yourself a nice, dinner of real food with a glass of raw milk, or even a glass of a good wine. The rest of your evening will inevitably take a more enjoyable track.

But you can’t FORCE doing nice things for yourself like the Gestapo. The desire to treat yourself well comes from within. Begin by recognizing all the times during the day that you say hateful, disparaging things to yourself. You may be surprised at how harsh the inner voice is. Once you recognize this tendency, shut that voice down when you hear it by saying to yourself, “I recognize what you are saying, but I don’t agree. I love myself just as I am.” Say it a million times if you have to—even, and especially if you think you don’t deserve it. Even if you just ate that cookie dough ice cream. Especially if you just at that cookie dough ice cream.

Take a stand against self hatred and soon you’ll find a feeling of self love radiating from within yourself. Along with this newfound respect for yourself, you’ll find yourself relating to others in a more positive way. You’ll also find pleasure in treating yourself more thoughtfully, including feeding yourself healthy food, stopping the destructive cycle of dieting, and cutting down on all the prescription and OTC drugs.

Changes like that are truly sexy.

Dieters are learning how to enjoy food

2008-09-18T12:51:00.001-07:00

Finally, dieters are turning in mass away from the processed diet garbage that made them fat in the first place and are eating real food and losing weight without trying. Read more here.

Dieting in any form (low calorie, low fat, low carbohydrate) ultimately results in rebound weight gain. Studies on starvation victims have proven that deprivation results in a myriad of aberrant behaviors such as obsessing about food, hoarding food, bingeing, and then feeling shame and guilt for eating. This describes millions of Americans who have dieted themselves into starvation. Malnutrition is also caused by eating a diet of factory produced food, as the body does not recognize these substances as sustenance, rather as incoming toxins that need to be processed. Some are eliminated, other toxins end up lodged in brain and other cells of the body.

My book Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down, and Poisoning of America, explains how Big Food has made us fat, dumb, sick, and depressed, and now Big Diet and Big Drug industries are profiting.

The only way to be fit, healthy, smart, and sexy is to eat what I call an "historically eaten" diet of real food, stop dieting, and stop taking so many drugs. Real food is delicious and stops the cycle of craving and bingeing because it provides the body and brain with the nutrition necessary for survival and to thrive.

That’s Sexy—More to Come

2008-09-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

Americans are in trouble health-wise because we’ve fallen for the hype and devious tactics of Big Food. We didn’t used to be so gullible. But since the spin is coming from within—from sources that we used to trust—we were tricked. Now those very same sources—Big Corporations—seek to capitalize on our weakness by selling us more crappy food (labeled “healthy,” “natural,” and even (despicably) “organic.”

Last week Americans watched Hillary Clinton speak at the DNC. She said something that I thought was profound: “You know, America is still around after 232 years because we have risen to every challenge in every new time . . . . ”

I sincerely hope that’s true, Mrs. Clinton, because Americans need to rise to the challenge of the greed-mongers within and fight like hell to regain health and quality of life.

Americans need to start thinking of health care a different way if we’re going to be healthy and happy. We need to eschew the medical establishment’s program of factory food, cocktails of drugs, and dieting (especially low-fat dieting), and PREVENT disease by eating real food including cholesterol and good fats, never dieting again, avoiding unnecessary drugs, exercising, lowering our stress, getting enough sleep, having more fun (it is VERY hard to have fun when you are ill), meditating, being nicer to each other, quitting or cutting down on caffeine (but absolutely quitting diet drinks).

When I get back from vacation I’m going to start a series “That’s Sexy.” I’m going to talk about what it means to be sexy, and how you can be sexy, happy, healthy and have a better quality of life. In the meantime, watch Hillary’s speech, because that was sexy.

See Hillary Clinton's speech here.

Try this recipe for a fabulous & quick to prepare lunch or dinner

2008-08-27T08:13:00.001-07:00

Shrimp and Mushroom Fettuccini

Serves 2 with leftover pasta

Fresh Fettuccini pasta

2 tablespoons butter
4 handfuls crimini mushrooms, washed and thinly sliced
4 cups shrimp (I use frozen and defrost by dunking into boiling water)
2 garlic gloves, minced
½ cube butter
½ to ¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Boil a pot of salted water.

In a medium pan, sauté crimini mushrooms and garlic in butter till soft.

Defrost and drain shrimp then use a sharp knife to cut off tails.

Add shrimp and stir until they are heated through and coated with mushroom juices.

Meanwhile, cook pasta to al dente. Drain and toss well with butter and cheese. Salt and pepper to taste, top with mushroom, shrimp mixture and serve.

The Tragedy Of Being A Teenage Girl Today

2008-08-12T15:29:00.001-07:00

When I see ads for drugs on TV, I feel sad for the gullible adults who fall for the sales pitches. But when I see ads for the HPV virus vaccine, Gardasil, I feel heartbroken for the millions of teenage girls who are being subjected to an unproven, dangerous vaccine.

Gardasil supposedly protects against some, not all of the cancer-causing forms of the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV).

Merck’s efforts in lobbying the FDA resulted in the fast tracking of Gardasil to the market. And so now American girls and young women are taking part in a massive, potentially lethal experiment.

But what is even scarier is that Merck put millions of dollars into convincing state legislatures to mandate Gardasil to schoolgirls as young as eleven. One state, Texas, was swept into this so-called healthy initiative and millions of young girls got the Gardasil vaccination, thanks to payoffs from Merck to Governor Rick Perry of Texas.

Vaccines are scary in the first place. They are made in China and who knows what is being put in them? We do know some of the frightening ingredients in Gardasil: Four types of HPV proteins, aluminum neurotoxins (associated with multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease), polysorbate-80 (linked to infertility in mice), and sodium borate (the main ingredient in roach killer).

Cartoon by Mike Adams Source: www.NaturalNews.com

I decided to investigate and learn more about Gardasil after seeing a young girl on CNN who was suffering from an autoimmune condition, the onset of which occurred just months after receiving a Gardasil vaccine. She wiped away her tears as she admitted that there was “no way of knowing if Gardasil was to blame.”

We cannot know for sure. But according to the watchdog group Judicial Watch, the FDA received reports of adverse reactions (27 were life‑threatening), ten spontaneous abortions, and six cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (an inflammatory disorder of the nerves that can lead to paralysis).

Adverse effects of Gardasil include:

· Anaphylactic shock

· Coma

· Facial warts and warts on hands and feet

· Genital wart outbreak, even in patients who had tested negative for HPV and genital warts prior to vaccination

· Grand mal seizures

· Loss of consciousness

· Miscarriages and spontaneous abortion

· Paralysis

All this and the FDA still assures us that there’s no medical reason to be worried about the side effects of Gardasil. Go FDA!

In fact, Robert Ball, director of the FDA's office of biostatistics and division of epidemiology says, “We’re monitoring the safety of the HPV vaccine very carefully, and the only adverse event that causes some concern is fainting after the vaccine.”

According to the FDA there is no link between Guillain-Barre syndrome and Gardasil vaccination but the incidents that have occurred are pure coincidence.

OK FDA, so all this paralysis, grand mal seizure nonsense is just a coincidence. But, er, what about the deaths associated with Gardasil? The FDA does admit that the number of deaths associated with the vaccine is at least 18 and possibly as many as 20. One woman died within three hours of receiving the vaccine. Seven women died in less than two days. One 20-year-old woman died just four days after receiving Gardasil. Eleven women died less than a week after receiving the vaccine.

Meanwhile, as girls and young women are being harmed and killed, Merck, the makers of Gardasil, are making billions of dollars.

Why have parents bought into Merck’s fear tactics?

We fear HPV because it can lead to cervical cancer. But let’s take this one step at at time.

Cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of cancer death for women in the U.S. but in the past 40 years, cervical cancer and subsequent death has decreased because of the Pap test.

There are more than 100 types of HPVs, but only 10 to 30 of these strains lead to cervical cancer. In 90 percent of women infected, HPV clears up on its own within two years, at which point cervical cells go back to normal. It’s only when the HPV virus lingers for many years that these abnormal cells can turn into cancer. So the vast majority of abnormal Pap tests do not result in cancer. Even abnormal Pap tests clear by themselves without treatment 40 percent of the time. And out of the remaining cases only one percent progress to actual cancer.

This type of cancer usually develops in the late 20s to mid 30s but the (very limited) protection period of Gardasil is estimated to be only five years. So a ten‑year old who gets her first series of shots will need four additional booster shots to make it to her 30’s.

Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine was released on the consumer market when cervical cancer was already on a steady decline.

But what about HPV?

At least 50 percent of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives. However, what we are not told on the glossy commercials is that a healthy immune system typically fights off HPV.

Primarily the girls and women who are infected with HPV go on to develop cervical cancer are those who are immunocompromised (i.e. infected with HIV or are organ transplant-associated immunocompromise).

The following factors demonstrate increased risk of cervical cancer associated with HPV:

* Birth control use
* Douching
* Immunocompromise
* Not using condoms
* Nutritional deficiencies, especially vitamin A and folate, zinc, selenium, calcium and iron, which are all associated with eating factory products
* Smoking

Cervical cancer caused by HPV is not a high risk for healthy, immunocompetent girls and women.

Instead of pumping lethal vaccines into our bodies, the way to protect ourselves is to do everything we can to stay healthy and to protect and strengthen our immune systems.

Increase your immune function by:

* Decrease your use and exposure to chemicals
* Decrease the uses of prescription and OTC drugs
* Decrease or stop using toxic personal and household products
* Stop eating all factory food products
* Eat real, whole food, including cholesterol foods which are necessary for your body to synthesize sunshine into vitamin D
* Get safe sunlight exposure as often as possible so that your body has adequate stores of vitamin D
* Take quality, bioavailable supplements
* Get a lot of sleep every night
* Reduce your stress and have fun
* Quit smoking
* Limit alcohol consumption
* Get regular, fun physical exercise

Merck is now facing two major lawsuits. Merck and the FDA are denying the allegations.

Sources:

* U.S. News and World Report July 2, 2008

* A Judicial Watch Special Report: Examining the FDA’s HPV Vaccine Records June 30, 2008

I GUESS PEOPLE WILL REALLY BE HAPPY ABOUT THIS?

2008-08-04T06:35:00.001-07:00

A news article titled “Snack lovers, rejoice” writes, “Munching on potato chips just got a little healthier.”

OMG, really?

This article reinforces my belief that journalists do not dig for ALL the facts when it comes to nutrition. The reason is that journalists work for mainstream medias, which are owned by corporations. Wink. Wink.

The article went on to explain that lawmakers have been successful in forcing some companies to reduce dangerous levels of acrylamide in potato chips. Acrylamide, a carcinogen, is a natural by-product that forms when starchy foods are baked, roasted, browned, or fried and is found in potato chips and other starchy products.

We should all rejoice because four food manufacturers have agreed to reduce levels of this cancer-causing chemical in potato chips and French fries. Yay. In the mean time you can feel comforted knowing that these companies will face penalties if they don’t comply with a state requirement to post warning labels on products that contain carcinogens. Big whoop.

In Death by Supermarket I explain that the corporate food industry uses any approach to make us feel comfortable about eating their cancer causing products.

Big Food knows that you will feel so much better knowing that over the next three years these companies said they would try to reduce the levels of acrylamide in their products. According to Attorney General Jerry Brown, "Other companies should follow this lead," who also said it’s "a victory for public health." It’s more like a victory for big food companies.

Corporate food companies want you to feel better that they are trying to figure out how to lower levels of acrylamide without affecting the yummy taste of potato chips. And it’s very sad that many people would rather face cancer than stop eating chips.

If you’re ready for the unvarnished truth: It’s IMPOSSIBLE to make a factory produced food without producing carcinogens. The reason is that all factory foods go through prolonged heat and chemical processing.

On the contrary, when you eat real, whole food you 1) do not ingest carcinogens, and, 2) you provide your body antioxidants and other nutritional properties that combat carcinogens.

I encourage readers to get educated about nutrition instead of listening to corporate food and uninformed journalists. Make it a habit to read blogs and books by alternative health writers so that you’ll have the ammunition, argument, and power to resist the candy-coated (and carcinogen coated) false comfort ladled out by the powerful food and media corporations.

Yummy Roasted Pomme Frittes TO EAT OCCASIONALLY!

If you have heard me speak or read my book, Death by Supermarket, you know that I am not a zealot.

I believe we need to be realistic about our food choices, using discipline and willpower to construct a way of eating and a lifestyle that is healthy AND enjoyable. If not then we can continue to peel back the onion (so to speak) and find infinite reasons why food is bad—any food. For example, transfats are formed during normal metabolism of food. If a person wanted to avoid all transfats then the only course of action would be to not eat. Acrylamides, which are carcinogenic, are formed in starchy foods during browning, frying, roasting, baking, and microwaving. While I believe we should toss our microwaves, I do want to consume occasional roasted foods as part of a well-rounded, historically eaten diet.

In my historically eaten diet, I occasionally prepare French fries! Because coconut oil is a saturated fat, it does not create as many free radials when heated as polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils do. Fast food French fries have already gone through extensive heat and chemical processing to form the fries before being fried at very high temperatures in free radical, transfat laden vegetable fats.

So if you want to have an occasional fry, it’s best to enjoy them at home.

Cut up 3 large russet potatoes with skin on into French fry size pieces or larger (as pictured here)

In a large bowl drizzle 2 Tablespoons of gently melted coconut oil over potato pieces

Add sea salt and coarse ground black pepper to taste. Mix well.

Put on baking sheet and bake at 350 for about an hour or until done when tested with a fork.

TO EAT OR NOT TO EAT ANIMAL FOODS

2008-08-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

I want to share an editorial by Nicholas D. Kristof.

Since the turn of the last century we've entered a new era wherein humans do not have to go out and kill their own food. We now have the luxury to ponder what it means to eat another living being. This can cause us emotional pain but it does not change human physiology. That said, eating animal foods or not is a personal choice. I believe that if we choose to eat animals we MUST take responsibility for choosing only to eat animals that have been humanely raised and slaughtered.

See the editorial here.

Eating Locally

2008-07-04T13:06:00.001-07:00

As we examine our diet and resolve to make changes away from toxic food products, many of us are turning to a locally-grown-only diet. This is optimal of course, because food tastes better fresh, and eating locally also reduces one’s carbon footprint. However, let’s just take a look at the feasibility of such a plan.

The American diet has devolved from biodynamic-farmed food to a diet of factory-produced “products.” Just 150 years ago Americans were poised to become a utopia. That was when farmers relied on manure, compost, fermentation, earthworms, and crop rotation to enrich soil, as well as bats to fertilize and combat pests. Ranchers grazed cattle and milk cows in their natural environments. Now we are fat, dumb, and mired in disease as a result of the chronic poisoning that begins with GMO seeds, pesticides, animal hormones and lack of nutritive soil. It’s clear that we cannot continue to poison the earth and torture animals as we are seeing the results of this behavior with all of our food-related health and environmental problems.

Of course it’s not good for the planet for us to eat food that was shipped across country. However, when we get on an airplane the flight attendant reminds us that in the event of an emergency to put our oxygen mask on FIRST before helping others. Our country is in a code red state of emergency. We need to feed our bodies real, organic food regardless of where it came from. When we are healed we’ll be able to take the next steps, like focusing on eating locally.

Eating real food is the first step to making the radical switch from factory produced food products to a real food diet. People ask me, “What is real food?”, which I have to say threw me at first. So now I just make it simple: eat food that could (in theory) be picked, gathered, milked, hunted, or fished. If it’s in a box, say “organic cereal,” you have to ask yourself if you’ve seen cereal hanging off a bush lately.

If only we could open our mouths like big baby birds and have Mother Nature stuff in super fresh, organic food! The reality is that we have many strikes against us when it comes to eating—like government-empowered corporations that will stop at nothing to make sure that we eat their nutritionally dead, toxic products. That’s why I advocate taking a big breath and calming way down about food. Just eat any and all real food that you can obtain, whether it is locally grown or not.

To have a graphic demonstration of the adage “we are what we eat,” all you have to do are two simple exercises: One, go to a pharmacy and just sit there for a couple of hours and watch people come and go. Then go to a grocery store and stand at the checkout and inspect what people buy and what they look like. If people really did these exercises they would never again question if what goes in the mouth dictates health.

If you have access to locally grown food then by all means indulge. Otherwise simply focus on eating real food for your health and the health of the planet.

WHY LOVE YOURSELF?

2008-06-23T08:43:00.001-07:00

When the Buddha was enlightened under the Bodha tree, he immediately set out to share what he had learned with others. Love yourself, was his key theme. This is a major bump for a lot of people as we receive hundreds of messages every day via advertising that are designed to make us feel inadequate and unlovable. This is very good for factory food makers because if we feel down about ourselves then they can sell us anything and everything even if it’s not good for us, because we are desperate to feel better.

When we bring home and new baby or pet, we naturally think of ways to nurture that new creature. And this is how we should think of ourselves. With love and caring. And a primary part of loving ourselves is eating food to nurture our bodies and brains.

Eating food is a mystery today. I have had many people ask me “what is food?” (They actually say what is real food, but it’s more or less the same question.)

What is food then? Food is the substance that is used by the human body to replace, replenish and fuel our bodies. Without food, the human body will eventually consume all internal stores and then die.

I maintain that Americans are not eating food and so they are dying in an accelerated fashion. Eating factory food products supplies just enough nutrition to keep the body going in a very limited way. Meanwhile, these substances contaminate the body with poisons and xeno-hormones. In other words factory food products are delivery devices for toxins. So you have a nutritionally deprived body with a lot of poisons and that is a recipe for disease, heartbreak and early, ugly death.

When you get on an airplane the first thing you hear is the flight attendant admonishing you to think of yourself first if there is a loss of cabin pressure and the oxygen masks fall down from the overhead panels. Put them on first, she tells you, because if you can’t BREATHE then you will not be able to help the helpless around you. This is the same with food. Love yourself enough to feed your body, then you can love (feed) the others around you.

What seniors on limited budgets can do to eat healthier

2008-02-19T15:25:00.001-08:00

Seniors who want to eat healthy but are living on social security checks can’t afford organic produce and grass fed beef. It is a very sad state of affairs, but instead of getting mad, let’s try to think of ways to better senior’s diets.

First, like I told Lou on the Parthenia Izzard Show, eliminate all obvious toxic substances from your diet. Below is a list of they types of products I’m talking about. But basically, if it’s made with chemicals, it’s not good for you and not going to make you feel good either.

Anything made with refined white flour

Aspartame

Bacon bits

Barbecue sauces

Beef jerky

Bologna

Bottled salad dressing, especially diet dressings

Bouillon

Butter spreads (imitation)

Cake, brownie and cookie mixes

Candy

Canned breakfast drinks

Canned foods containing chemicals

Canned or bottled tea and coffee drinks

Canned or jarred gravy and sauces containing chemicals

Canned soup containing chemicals

Cereals (cold, sugary)—if you’ve heard me talk you know I have a thing about cereal!

Cheese (imitation)

Dehydrated soups

Doughnuts

Drive through foods

Egg substitutes

Flavor enhancers

Fried food

Hoisin sauce

Hot dogs

Hydrogenated oils

Instant cereals and other instant foods

Instant coffee

Instant meals—liquid breakfasts, dried noodle soups

Jams, jellies, preserves, marmalade with added sugar and chemicals

Ketchup

Low calorie foods

Low-fat foods

Low-fat yogurt with sugar or aspartame

Margarine

Marshmallow cream

Mayonnaise (imitation)

Meat extender

Meat tenderizer

Meats containing nitrates

Microwaveable and other imitation food snacks

Non-dairy creamers

Nuts and seeds roasted in hydrogenated oils

Oyster sauce

Packaged food helpers

Pasta, bagels, pretzels, pizza, most breads, croissants, muffins, scones

Popcorn popped in hydrogenated oil

Pork skins

Potato chips

Powdered fruit drinks

Powdered pudding mixes and pudding snacks

Powdered, canned or bottled mixes for making alcoholic drinks

Relishes

Saccharine

Sandwich spreads

Shortening

Sodas especially those containing caffeine and sugar substitutes

Some ice cream products

Sour cream (imitation)

Soy—anything made with or containing industrialized soy

Store bought cookies

Sugary snack foods

Syrups—fudge, corn, high-fructose corn syrup

Toaster pastries

Tortilla chips processed in hydrogenated oils

TV dinners

Whipped cream (artificial)

White sugar

Worcestershire sauce

Now you’re probably wondering what you can eat on your budget. You know what I preach: anything that can be picked, gathered, milked, hunted or fished.

Let’s take each category and think it through.

But before we go there, I suggest that you make an effort to look around in your community. Ask at stores that sell organic foods if they give senior discounts. Find out where you can buy slightly wilted produce or organic meats that are overstocked. Give out your phone number and make yourself available to pick up foods when stores call you. If you are interested in a product (like the blender I’m going to talk about in minute, or better quality supplements) write to manufacturers and ask them if they give discounts to seniors and to lower income families. In the case of supplement manufacturers write and ask them for compassionate use discounts for supplements you feel you could benefit from. Then read up and get educated and make reforming your diet and supplements a mission.

Now let’s talk about food.

Proteins

Seniors need protein as much as younger people because they need to keep their lean body mass (muscle and bones) strong and healthy.

Big ranch corporations that don’t want to spend the money ranching in sustainable ways, unfortunately, have contaminated animal foods. We all watched in horror this week the footage of sick cows being shoved around with fork-lifts. So we know all about mad cow and diseased animal flesh.

Seniors may want to try finding affordable sources of organic animal foods on www.eatwild.com. It’s better to eat a little organic, than a lot of polluted animal products.

If that is still too expensive, then see if you can find a local source of clean eggs. Farmers markets are often cheaper than grocery stores. Ask around to find out where the farms are in your community and then call them and find out how you can get discounts.

Another good protein source is poultry. If you are not buying organic, then remove all the skin as the poisons are harbored in the fat and commercial chicken is bathed in bleach to help prevent the spread of disease. Wash your poultry well and roast it in the oven.

Searing meat creates carcinogenic chemicals called heterocyclic amines, so it’s always best to roast.

Rice and beans make a complete protein, so shop around and see if you can find discounts on organic. If not, then they are still a better source of protein than contaminated beef.

Fats

Please do not buy into the nonsense that fat is going to harm you. Good fats will restore you to vitality while bad fat will kill you. Bad fats are those in the glistening bottles of oils in your supermarket. Those Omega 6 oils are causing Americans to die of cancer and heart disease. So eat olive oil—as much as you like—and use butter if you can afford it. My grandmother used to guzzle olive oil from the bottle and more on days when she wanted to “fix herself.” You can buy olive oil in the supermarket and even if it’s not organic it’s much, much better for you than omega 6 oils (canola, corn, safflower, sunflower and soy) which should never be consumed.

Vegetables

Again, big farm corporations are more interested in getting huge volumes of produce to market than they are in our health and so they used herbicides and pesticides.

If you can’t afford organic produce then you can rid some of the pesticides, herbicides, fungus and parasites from your produce by using a water/Clorox bath. Fill your kitchen sink with water and add 1 teaspoon of unscented Clorox per gallon of water. Then add your produce and soak for 15 minutes for more tender foods like lettuce and 30 minutes for tough tubers. Herbicides and pesticides are made so that they are hard to wash off. Clorox (and only this particular brand because Clorox does not contain chlorine) dissolves the junk so you can rinse about 85 percent of it away. (You can also soak meats and poultry but not ground meat obviously). Rinse thoroughly!

Because the nutrition in produce (both fruits and veggies) is locked behind tough cellular walls, then you have to break those walls by either chewing a lot more than you are used to—and I mean chew—cooking vegetables lightly, or blenderizing them. Unfortunately again, the blender that works the best the Vitamix 5200, is pricy (www.vitamix.com). But if you can twist a family member’s arm, it would be the best Christmas or birthday gift you could ask for. Or you can try finding one on Craig’s list. If you do happen to get a Vitamix, drink a glass of blenderized vegetable juice every day. This is a much better way to make fruit juices too, because you get the entire fruit or vegetable—pulp, skin and all.

Fruits

When seniors or any other age group, eats a lot of sugar, the desire for fruits goes down. So put the sugar aside and eat fruit instead.

I have found that Trader Joes and Whole Foods frozen organic fruits are really a pretty good value.

MacIntosh apples are usually available in the supermarket and (after washed)—according to Dr. Russell Blaylock, who is a leading authority on cancer prevention—MacIntosh apples afford the best prevention for cancer of all apples.

Again, supermarkets and other less expensive stores may have fruit that has a few bumps and bruises on it that are not pretty enough to sell. Ask if you can buy it at a discount—before they throw it away!

Caffeine

Cheap coffees are produced with a lot of poisons and so you are ingesting poison along with your caffeine. If you can, quit. If you don’t want to give up your ritual, try switching to tea, which contains plant flavonoids that protect from cancer.

Dairy

This is a tough one because commercial dairy is truly a poisonous brew. I cannot recommend that anyone drink commercial milk or consume commercial dairy products. Think of those sick cows being fork-lifted.

Again, you need to look around for more affordable sources, starting with www.eatwild.com. Then check around your community. You may be able to find organic goat milk at a better bargain that cow’s milk. But never, ever consume powdered milk, it is highly carcinogenic.

Grains

There is nothing more divine in life than a slice of fresh baked bread. I am not talking Wonder garbage. I mean real, whole grain bakery bread. There are bakeries all over the place now. Find them in your community and see if they sell day old bread. Buy more than one loaf because bread freezes really well. In fact, you can rejuvenate slightly stale bread by putting it into the freezer till frozen and then into a 350° oven till the crust is crunchy.

Instead of cold cereal have steel cut rolled oats for breakfast. A box of steel cut oatmeal goes a long way. Put butter and unrefined honey on it and have a couple of soft-boiled eggs for your protein source.

Legumes, rice and beans are good fillers and you can add them to homemade vegetable soups.

Supplements

I hate to break it to you, but all Big Box, supermarket and drug store supplements are filled with toxic binders and coated with shellac (as in furniture), they are compressed into hard little bullets so that they keep their shape and are nice and pretty when you open the bottle. But these bullets go right through you—or you better hope they do before they deposit any of their poisonous substances into your system.

If you truly can’t afford anything but these cheap supplements you are better off not taking anything at all and trying to get your hands on a blender so that you can get your vitamin and minerals through blenderized vegetables and fruits.

Supplements can be dangerous when taken in handfuls. All vitamins and minerals work synergistically. Many vitamins are put together in nature because they help each other from becoming oxidized (creating free radicals). So you do not want to take a handful of vitamin C or a handful of vitamin E alone. There are lots of books you can read to get a better understanding of what vitamin/mineral/enzyme, etc. complex is best for you. I recommend Dr. Russell L. Blaylocks’ book Health and Nutrition Secrets. There are three tiers of supplements 1) the Big Box, drug store and supermarket brands, I just described, that are poisonous, 2) middle of the road supplements, which are made by reputable manufacturers and these can be purchased on www.smartbomb.com at a discount (all of their products—at least at this writing—are reputable, and 3) the truly superior brands like Dr. Ron’s Ultra Pure www.drrons.com, the supplements in Dr. David Allen’s pharmacy www.drallmd.org, as well as www.bodywise.com, www.metagenics.com, and www.thorne.com, among others. Dr. Russell Blaylocks’ book Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients also lists many reputable sources.

Water

Our water supply is contaminated with fluoride and chlorine. Brita water filters can take out some toxic compounds but there is not affordable way to remove fluoride. Even so, you’re still better off filtering your water.

Household and self care products

See what chemicalized household and self-care products you can do without. Vinegar makes a good cleaner and baking soda is a lot healthier than commercial toothpaste that contains fluoride and aspartame, which are both highly carcinogenic.

Here is a great site for homemade cleaning products that will save you money and spare your health: http://www.eartheasy.com/live_nontoxic_solutions.htm.

Ask your doctor what drugs you can stop taking

Why are seniors taking so many drugs? All drugs have side effects. Find out from your doctor which drugs you can stop taking.

Some conditions, like high blood pressure can be addressed by simple methods like getting more exercise and therapeutic breathing.

You’ll want to determine your baseline blood pressure. Most drug stores offer blood pressure monitoring for free.

Then you can work on naturally lowering your blood pressure. A devise called Resperate teaches you how to breathe therapeutically. www.resperate.com, however Resperate costs $300 and most seniors can’t afford that. Here’s an alternative method (which is exactly what Resperate does). Put on soft music. Lie down in a comfortable chair where you can see a clock with a second hand. Watch the clock for one minute and count how many breaths you take. Now try slowing down your breathing a little—not too much because the whole idea is for this to be relaxing. Once you get into a deep, rhythmic pattern, watch the clock and keep breathing deeply and rhythmically for ten minutes. Once you get the hang of it you can do it with your eyes closed—you can do it at the grocery store or in a waiting room when you have time to kill. Best of all, you can do it when someone annoys you and so you can keep your blood pressure down!

Your blood pressure should lower and remain lowered throughout the day at about the third week of therapeutic breathing. This is a tremendously relaxing exercise and I know you will enjoy it.

Americans are in the habit of taking over the counter drugs for every little ailment. Instead, look for natural ways to treat yourself. If you are constipated, eat more fruit and salad, or try drinking olive oil, or if you can afford an organic chicken, roast it and then take the fat by spoonfuls. That will do the trick.

If you have trouble sleeping, get out and get more exercise in the fresh air. I have just moved to Boston from California and now I am even more convinced that all these excuses for not going outside in the winter are unfounded. There are plenty of sunny days when you can get outside and walk—and I do not mean the mall. Put on some warm clothing and walk around. If you don’t have anyone to walk with, then to the local humane society and sign up as a volunteer to walk abandoned dogs. You’ll sleep much better that night.

As you progress in feeling better, continue to ask your doctor what drugs you can stop taking. I’m sure he or she will be happy to accommodate you when you come in looking and feeling much better.

Lou, I really hope you checked in and I would love to hear from you or any other senior.

Take care and be well.

What seniors on limited budgets can do to eat healthier

2008-02-16T12:41:00.001-08:00

Today on the Parthenia Izzard Show, a man named Lou called and asked me what seniors on a limited budget can do to eat healthier if they can’t afford grass fed meats and organic vegetables. I gave Lou a few tips but there is more I can say. So I will be writing a post on this subject in the next couple of days. Please check back again soon.

MSG is in all factory food products

2008-02-04T16:59:00.001-08:00

If you are eating factory foods, you are most likely consuming MSG, a flavor enhancer that damages brain cells and leads to serious neurological diseases.

The additives that always contain MSG are hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, plant protein extract, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed oat flour.

Additives that frequently contain MSG are malt extract, malt flavoring, bouillon, broth, stock, flavoring, natural flavoring, natural beef or chicken flavoring, seasoning and spices.

Additives that may contain MSG or that can be high in naturally occurring glutamate are carrageenan, enzymes, soy protein concentrate, soy protein isolate and whey protein concentrate.[i]

The bottom line is that if you are reading labels, you are not eating real food. Real food doesn’t need flavor enhancers. It’s delicious on its own.

[i] Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Health Press, 1977), pp. 255-256.

Why sugar?

2008-01-29T11:38:00.001-08:00

Once there was honey, molasses, and maple syrup, which are all rich in vitamins, minerals and life-giving enzymes. These sugars were eaten sparsely on special occasions and actually contributed to health.

Then came cane sugar in rough brown chunks, followed by refined white sugar from cane and beets. One hundred and fifty years ago (I go that far back in my search for “historic” foods), Americans ate four or five pounds of sugar per year. Today we eat up to 150 pounds of sugar per person per year. The worst offender is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Refined white sugar and HFCS are devoid of the vitamins and minerals necessary to digest and metabolize these sugars, so the body ends up using any available vitamins and minerals from incoming food or from internal stores in order to digest them. This leaves most people with a deficit. In addition to garden-variety sugar-related health problems such as allergies, colds and flu, sugar feeds cancer cells, causes type 2 diabetes, and HFCS turns livers into pâté de foie grois.

And most people don’t realize that their sugar habit is the genesis of their depression and low self esteem. It begins with conditioning . . . like Pavlov’s dogs.

Eating sugar triggers the pancreas to secrete insulin. The secretion of insulin stimulates an excessive “rush” of stored neurotransmitters in the brain.[i] Thus the infamous sugar high. Since excess sugar damages cells, insulin’s primary directive is to stow that sugar away into cells. Now there isn’t enough sugar in the bloodstream to satisfy the brain’s need for an ongoing drip of sugar, so the brain demands more sugar—very likely an incoming donut or Big Gulp. And so more insulin is secreted, more good feelings are enjoyed, more storage of sugar occurs, more sugar cravings are experienced, more eating of sugar, etc. And this roller coaster goes on for some people all day long, every day.

Our society blames obsessing and binging on sugary foods on “emotional eating” and “emotional triggers.” Another way of looking at it is that we have been conditioned since birth to knee jerk react to every painful and upsetting event by eating sugar. Because our brains lack feel good neurotransmitters (that can only be replenished by eating a balanced diet of real food) we feel pain a lot. We crave, we feel insecure, unconfident, tired, cranky, depressed, obsessive and so on. And because we’ve conditioned our brains over and over again to associate ingesting sugar with a temporary high that makes us feel so much better, that bell of Pavlov’s dogs is always ringing.

So now we’re fat and, instead of eating a balanced diet to nourish our bodies and brains, we decide that eating fake sugar is the answer.

In November 1970 the popular artificial sweetener cyclamate, was linked to cancer and yanked from the market. Saccharin was subsequently put under scrutiny, opening the market wide open for the introduction of aspartame. (Saccharine has been around since the turn of the century. It has a science fiction metallic taste and is thought to cause cancer. However, although the rise of cancer has been spectacular in the last 150 years, the FDA has given this suspicious substance a pass.)

Aspartame, approved for all uses in the mid-1980s, is a compound made from three components: phenylalanine (an amino acid), aspartic acid (an excitotoxic amino acid) and joined chemically by a toxic alcohol, methanol. The methanol component metabolizes into formaldehyde, which is carcinogenic and also degrades cellular structures. That is why people who drink large amounts of diet sodas have a lot of cellulite and are jiggly. Formaldehyde also damages DNA leading to neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.

Aspartame is classified as an “excitotoxin” because high levels of the amino acid aspartate excite neural (brain) cells to death. This process also causes free radicals to reproduce. Free radicals kill cells, damage DNA, cause chromosomal damage, create arterial plaque, accelerate aging and are the key factor in almost every degenerative disease, including brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.[ii]

Splenda (sucralose) was FDA approved for use in food and beverage products in 1998. Splenda has been heavily promoted as “Made From Sugar, So It Tastes Like Sugar.” But actually it is more like chlorine than sugar. And chlorine is linked to cancer and autoimmune conditions.

Like regular old sugar, fake sugar triggers the release of insulin, which stows away any available blood sugar, causing hypoglycemia (low blood sugar attacks), craving and then ultimately, bingeing. [iii][iv] Studies show that people who use fake sugar are fatter than people who don’t.[v] Numerous studies have concluded that the hypothalamic damage caused by aspartate results in obesity on normal amounts of food.[vi]

All artificial sweeteners sabotage weight loss efforts because when your tastebuds register a sweet taste, your body’s natural ability to gauge food intake is flummoxed. This results in overindulging in sweet foods and beverages.[vii] And so your risk of obesity goes up 41 percent for every can of diet soda you drink.[viii]

I advocate that people eat a balanced diet of real “historic” foods—food that were eaten 150 years ago—foods that could be picked, gathered, milked, hunted, or fished. Then have a desert once in a while.

Make your own deserts from healthy sugars:

Unrefined honey contains healthy enzymes and antioxidants (which neutralize free radicals).

Sucanant or Rapadura are dehydrated cane sugar juice, which also contain minerals and are thus superior to refined white sugar.

Stevia rebaudiana, a South American herb, has the same science fictiony aftertaste as aspartame, but does not kill brain cells. Stevia is 200 times sweeter than sugar but does not trigger an insulin response or have any calories or carbohydrates.

A balanced diet brings freedom from craving and binging. A desert every once in awhile enhances the quality of life.

[i] R.J. Wurtman, J.J. Wurtman, “Brain serotonin, carbohydrate-craving, obesity and depression,” Obes Res., Vol. 3 Suppl. 4 (1995): pp. 477S-480S.

[ii] Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Health Press, 1977), p. 45.

[iii] H.J. Roberts, Aspartame (Nutrasweet®) Is It Safe? (Philidelphia, Pennsylvania: The Charles Press, 1990), pp. 49, 142, 143, 144, 148, 149, 150. HJ Roberts, “The hazards of very-low-calorie dieting,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 41 (1985): pp. 171-172. J.E. Blundell and A. J. hill, “Paradoxical effects of an intense sweetener (aspartame) on appetite,” The Lancet, Vol. 1 (1986): pp. 1092-1093.

[iv] R. J. Wurtman, “Neurochemical changes following high-dose aspartame with dietary carbohydrates,” The New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 309 No. 7 (Aug. 18, 1983): p. Correspondence. R. J. Wurtman, “Neurochemical changes following high-dose aspartame with dietary carbohydrates,” The New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 309 No. 7 (Aug. 18, 1983): p. Correspondence.

[v] 1986 American Cancer Society “Medical Self-Care.”

[vi] J. W. Olney, “Brain Lesions, Obesity, and Other Disturbances in Mice treated with Monosodium Glutamate,” Sci., Vol. 165 (1969): pp. 719-271. John Olney, “Trying to get Glutamate out of Baby Food,” Citation Classic, Current Contents, Clinical Medicine, Vol. 18, No.34 (1990): p.20. Jack L. Samuels, “The Obesity Epidemic: Should We Believe What We Read and Hear?” Website: http://www.westonaprice.org/msg/msgobesity.html. Accessed November 7, 2005. J.W. Olney, “Toxic Effects of Glutamate and Related Amino Acids on the Developing Central Nervous System,” Heritable Disorders of Amino Acid Metabolism (New York: John Wiley, 1974), p. TK.

[vii] T L Davidson and S E Swithers, “Pavlovian approach to the problem of obesity.” International Journal of Obesity, Vol. 28 No. 7 (2004): pp. 933-935.

[viii] Daniel DeNoon, “Drink More Diet Soda, Gain More Weight?” Website: http://www.webmd.com/content/article/107/108476.htm. Accessed Jan. 5, 06.

Nature is clever

2008-01-23T07:26:00.001-08:00

Nature is clever, and unlike mega food conglomerates who are more interested in taking our money than making us healthy, nature has very interesting ways of taking care of us. I have talked for some time about how real foods come conveniently packaged with all the symbiotic nutrients—unlike factory food products that never contain nature’s perfect ratios, but only contain arbitrary amounts of nutrients. And if a nutrient is in fashion then it will likely be added in astronomical amounts—synthetic of course.

Whole food signatures—nature’s guideposts are very interesting and worth knowing about. They make you feel warm and fuzzy about nature’s whole foods. So take a look and see how clever nature really is.

Whole Food Signatures

Get educated and stop believing drug company baloney

2008-01-15T08:00:00.001-08:00

If you have heard me speak or read my book Death by Supermarket you know that I advocate eating real food as a way of bringing your body into balance and using drugs only extremely judiciously when it is absolutely necessary. Drug companies, supported by the FDA, would prefer that we keep eating garbage so that we all sick and have to take their drugs. Drug companies do not have our best interests at heart.

Study Reveals Doubt on Drug for Cholesterol

By ALEX BERENSON

A clinical trial of a widely used cholesterol drug has raised questions both about the medicine’s effectiveness and about the behavior of the pharmaceutical companies that conducted the study, cardiologists said Monday.

Merck and Schering-Plough, which make the drug, Zetia, and a pill that contains it, Vytorin, said Monday morning that Zetia had failed to benefit patients in a two-year trial that ended in April 2006.

Merck and Schering repeatedly missed their own deadlines for reporting the results, leading cardiologists around the world to wonder what the study would show. At the same time, millions of patients have continued taking Zetia and Vytorin.

The drug companies blamed the complexity of the data for the delay. Now, barely a month after news articles noted the delay and Congress pressured the companies to disclose the study’s findings, the results are out.

In a press release, Merck and Schering said that not only did Zetia fail to slow the accumulation of fatty plaque in the arteries, it actually seemed to contribute to plaque formation — although by such a small amount that the finding could have been a result of chance.

Dr. Steven E. Nissen, the chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said the results were “shocking.”

“This is as bad a result for the drug as anybody could have feared,” said Dr. Nissen, a widely published researcher and senior consulting editor to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Millions of patients may be taking a drug that does not benefit them, raising their risk of heart attacks and exposing them to potential side effects, he said. Patients should not be given prescriptions for Zetia unless all other cholesterol drugs have failed, he said.

Both companies’ shares fell Monday. Sales of the two drugs were $5 billion in 2007, and they are important contributors to Merck’s and Schering’s profits.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating the delay, said in a statement Monday that the negative results added to suspicions that the companies had deliberately sat on their findings from the study, which was known as Enhance.

“In light of today’s results, which were released nearly two years after the Enhance trial ended, it is easy to conclude that Merck and Schering-Plough intentionally sought to delay the release of this data,” Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, said in the statement. Mr. Stupak is chairman of the committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale, said drug companies had a responsibility to release all their trial findings, positive or negative, as quickly as possible — even if the results might hurt sales.

“People may have been on this drug without the ability to know that there was additional data that may have thrown into question its effectiveness,” Dr. Krumholz said. “That’s extremely unfortunate, and that’s an understatement.”

Lee Davies, a spokesman for Schering, said the delay was unrelated to the negative findings and that the companies had not known the results until two weeks ago.

Dr. John Kastelein, a Dutch cardiologist who had conducted the Enhance trial for Merck and Schering, did not return calls or reply to an e-mail message seeking comment. Mr. Davies said that Dr. Kastelein would not comment until he formally presented the results at a cardiology conference in March.

In the trial, patients received either Zocor — an older cholesterol drug — or a combination of Zocor and Zetia, in the pill form known as Vytorin. About 60 percent of patients who take Zetia do so in the Vytorin form, which like Zetia is jointly marketed by Merck and Schering.

Worldwide, about one million prescriptions are written for Zetia and Vytorin each week, and about five million people are now taking the drugs worldwide.

The trial covered 720 patients and lasted two years. While it was relatively small, cardiologists have been were eager to see its results because they have far less data on Zetia than on other cholesterol-lowering medicines.

Statins like Zocor and Lipitor have been shown to lower cholesterol by 35 to 60 percent in most patients and have also been proved to reduce heart attacks. Zetia, which works by a different mechanism, reduces cholesterol 15 to 20 percent, but it has never been proved to reduce heart attacks.

The Enhance trial was meant to prove that Vytorin’s combination of Zetia and Zocor would reduce the growth of fatty plaque in the arteries more than Zocor alone. Instead, the plaque actually grew almost twice as fast in patients taking the combination.

Reducing plaque growth is crucial, because plaque formation — known as atherosclerosis — can lead to the blockages and blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes, said Dr. Howard N. Hodis, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California. That is why the trial’s finding is worrisome, Dr. Hodis said.

“Clearly, progression of atherosclerosis is the only way you get events,” Dr. Hodis said. “If you don’t treat progression, then you get events.”

The results of the trial require further investigation, Dr. Hodis said. “That just can’t be ignored.”

Dr. Michael Davidson, a cardiologist in Chicago who has conducted clinical trials of Zetia for Merck and Schering, said the Enhance results did not necessarily mean the drug did not work. Many of the patients in the trial may have been on statins for many years before the trial began, so adding Zetia may have had only marginal benefits compared with its use in a population not as extensively treated for cholesterol, he said.

Still, he said, patients should generally receive a statin before getting Zetia.

Beyond the Enhance trials, Merck and Schering recently began two large clinical trials intended to test whether the combination of Zetia and statin drugs actually reduces heart attacks and strokes when compared with statins alone. But the data from those trials will not be available until at least 2011.

Merck and Schering share profits from their joint marketing of Zetia and Vytorin. The drugs are important contributors to both companies’ profits, but more so to Schering, which is smaller and less profitable than Merck. Analysts estimate that about 70 percent of Schering’s earnings depend on Zetia and Vytorin .

Merrill Lynch on Monday reduced its rating on Schering’s stock from buy to neutral, warning that some doctors might move away from Zetia. Schering’s share price fell 8 percent , while Merck’s dipped 1.3 percent.

Because Zetia reduces cholesterol in a different way from statins like Lipitor and Zocor, doctors often prescribe it as an additional therapy for patients whose cholesterol remains high even after they are already taking statins.

But even before Zetia was introduced in 2002, some cardiologists argued that statins have positive cardiovascular effects that go beyond their ability to reduce cholesterol, and that Zetia lacks those effects.

The Enhance trial covered patients who have a gene that causes them to produce high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, commonly called LDL or bad cholesterol. Patients in the trial had LDL levels of about 320 milligrams per deciliter at the beginning of the trial, about three times the level cardiologists deem acceptable.

Over the two years of the trial, patients who took Zocor alone reduced their LDL by 41 percent on average, while patients who took Vytorin reduced their cholesterol by 58 percent. Yet despite the larger cholesterol reduction, patients taking Vytorin actually had more growth of fatty plaque in their carotid arteries than those on Zocor.

If you’ve read Death by Supermarket, you also understand that drug companies will do anything to get their drugs to market and they will do anything to keep their drugs on the market even if the drugs are killing people and destroying quality of life.

Today the paper reports: “Merck and Schering-Plough, which make the drug, Zetia, and a pill that contains it, Vytorin, said Monday morning that Zetia had failed to benefit patients in a two-year trial that ended in April 2006.”

You can read the full article here about these companies failure to report that these drugs actually backfire and cause plaquing of the arteries!

Now let’s look at how these drugs are marketed.

At the Vytorin website we see a pretty actress all dolled up to look like a sweet grandma. Next to Grandma is a big fat chocolate soufflé! We learn that our cholesterol problems have two sources: food and family. OMG!!

On the Zetia website we see a nice man at a county fair. He’s judging the produce—squeezing tomatoes and smiling. Here we learn that there is a different way to reduce cholesterol! Who knew!?

In this time of ugly subterfuge and outright lies, where the FDA—which is supposed to be protecting us—protects the drug companies bottom lines instead, we need to become educated. Please take it upon yourselves to read and learn how eating healthy foods containing cholesterol can improve the quality of your life by keeping your heart healthy, restoring hormone balance, producing happy neurotransmitters and strong bones.

Here are a few books you can read:

Death by Supermarket by Nancy Deville

The Protein Power Lifeplan: A New Comprehensive Blueprint for Optimal Health
by Michael Eades, M.D. and Mary Dan Eades, M.D.

The Cholestrol Myth: Exposing the Fallacy tha t Saturated Fat and Cholestrerol Cause Heart Disease by Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D.

What we can learn from Oprah Winfrey about losing weight

2008-01-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

Oprah has talked a lot over the years about her obsessing, craving and bingeing on food. There have been many shows and books written about “emotional eating” and “emotional triggers.” I think we have gotten off on an unhelpful track by using these terms. In fact, we are disabling people by labeling them as emotional eaters. I believe there’s a healthier way of looking at this problem that will enable people to conquer the so-called “emotional eating.”

First let’s look at why people obsess, crave and binge. There are two main reasons. First is conditioning. A diet of factory food products is a diet of sugar. If you were raised on factory food then chances are that every whimper or tantrum was quelled by handing you a baby bottle of Coke or juice, an animal cracker or cookie. Sugar instigates a dump of serotonin—a happy neurotransmitter—in your brain. And so you felt better immediately. Like Pavlov’s dogs, you became quickly conditioned to knee jerk react to every stressful, painful, disappointing or otherwise unhappy situation by eating something sugary.

The problem is that once the happy neurotransmitter was spent, you crashed. And so you progressed through your childhood reaching for something sugary every time you felt bad. You crashed and then you reached for more.

Now you are an adult and you label this conditioning “emotional eating,” which makes sense because you crave garbage food when you are sad or depressed or disappointed or feel a lack of self-esteem or any other unhappy emotion.

We have also been conditioned to believe that there is one model of beauty and that is thin—celebrities have an added burden to be thin. Oprah Winfrey has put herself under huge strain to be thin and to lose weight. This is enough stress to cause anyone to buckle. The truth is that millions of women would give anything to be as gorgeous as Oprah. But if you are like Oprah and you place unrealistic expectations on your shoulders, you are likely to feel unhappy enough to reach for something sugary. And now instead of a baby bottle of Coke, you down a tanker of mac and cheese, an XL pizza, a box of cookies or a bag of chips.

Let’s add a double whammy to the mix.

At the University of Minnesota in 1945, 20- to- 33-year old men were recruited to eat 1,570 calories a day for six months. (Back then 1,570 was considered “semi-starvation.”) When the volunteers were then given unrestricted amounts of food, researchers noted the following symptoms:

· Voracious appetites followed by large and rapid food intake
· Lack of control and distress over amounts eaten
· Complaints of hunger despite huge meals
· Belief that eating triggers hunger
· Cravings and preference (carbohydrates, fats, sweets)
· Obsession with food
· Secrecy and defensiveness over food
· New preoccupation with body shape and weight
· Impulsivity (shopping for nonfood items, self-harm, anger, violence)
· Scavenging or eating from garbage containers
· Stealing, hiding, hoarding food
· Manipulating others for food
· Making bizarre mixtures of food
· Eating unpalatable and inappropriate food (raw meat, scraps)
· Thickening foods (with flour, oatmeal)
· Excessive flavoring (e.g., with tea, coffee, lemon crystals)
· Excessive heating of food
· Excessive spicing of food
· Poor table manners (e.g., licking knives and bottle lids, collecting crumbs, gnawing at bones)
· “Souping” food and “filling up” with liquids
· Preferring to eat in isolation
· Self-induced and overeating-induced vomiting
· Dreading having to choose foods to eat
· Self-deprecation and negative affect from eating habits
· Taking drastic measures to resist binges
· Recidivist binge eating despite interference with quality of life[i]

If any of these habits sound familiar, take heart because you are not a hopeless case. Starvation causes extremely aberrant eating behaviors. This is part of a biological programming that is inherent in us as a survival mechanism. The experience of starvation compels us to binge in an attempt to provide our bodies with an abundant supply of nutrients necessary to heal from malnutrition. Even though most of us have not been subjected to true starvation, we overeat and engage in aberrant eating behaviors because our bodies are in a state of malnutrition as a result of eating artificial food that is filled with sugar and toxins (both require huge amounts of nutrients to metabolize and detox and thus deplete us even further of nutrients). A persistent state of malnutrition from a diet of factory food products is going to keep you bingeing on fake food, obsessing and ever seeking satiety.

And so we have two reasons why we crave, obsess and binge on food. One is because we are conditioned to respond to stress by eating sugar, and two is because we are malnourished and our brain demands we eat everything in sight to heal.

Overcoming cravings and obsessing about food does take some willpower. It begins with the knowledge of what is really driving you. If your mother conditioned you to crave and binge by feeding you mac and cheese with a Coke, then you need to acknowledge that conditioning. If you have been living on factory food, then you need to recognize you are malnourished. The knowledge of what is happening to our brains and body is a very good start in the process of overcoming craving, obsessing and bingeing.

The next most important step is to eat a balanced diet of real, whole, organically produced and raised food. Do not diet, but eat balanced. Have a good breakfast, then have a good lunch. End your work day with a good dinner.

In a very short period of time you will be astonished to admit to yourself that you no longer crave, obsess, or binge.

[i] M. M. Hagan, R. H. Whitworth, D. E. Moss, “Semistarvation-Associated Eating Behaviors Among College Binge Eaters: A Preliminary Description and Assessment Scale - Statistical Data Included,” Behavioral Medicine, Fall, 1999.

Make your kitchen a happy place

2007-12-24T09:04:00.001-08:00

On this Christmas Eve, I wish the gift of health for all Americans. To achieve this end, we need to get out of our doctors’ offices and get into the kitchen.

If your kitchen isn’t a happy place, then you may not find that thought very appealing. So make your kitchen into a place you want to spend time. When I’m cooking, I like to listen to CNN so I have a TV in our kitchen. I also like to listen to NPR in the morning, so we have a radio too. I put in a file cabinet so when I read the food section in the New York Times, I can rip out recipes and file them away for future use. I keep an old laptop in the kitchen to look up recipes online.

I’ve made it a priority to have the supplies I need in my kitchen so that cooking isn’t a challenge. But I’ve learned that (for me), less is more. I keep only the utensils and equipment that I use regularly—except for one cupboard that has more esoteric things like fondue pots that I use once in a great while.

I don’t pay bills in the kitchen and we don’t have discussions about finances in the kitchen. The kitchen is strictly and enjoyable place where we cook and eat casual meals around the island peninsula.

The kitchen should not be a staging area or a repository for all the garbage you don’t want in other rooms. Clean it out and make it comfortable to cook and eat in. Of course, get rid of all factory produced food products and fill your cupboards and refrigerator with real food. Real food is perishable, so eating real food requires that you shop regularly. This is a good thing if you tend to hoard rotting containers in your refrigerator. There is nothing less appetizing than seeing a fridge loaded with months old garbage.

If your placemats are clogged with grease and grime, get rid of them. Buy fresh flowers. Put some herbs in your kitchen window.

This Christmas Eve, when thoughts drift to the coming year, I hope you’re think of ways you can make your kitchen a happy place. And one year from now, I guarantee you will be a happier person. Merry Christmas.

How to stop so-called “emotional eating”

2007-12-17T06:45:00.000-08:00

We’ve blamed our emotions for eating but it’s not really our emotions that are driving us to eat. Americans are low in happy neurotransmitters. We feel depressed and we lack self esteem. We’ve learned—like Pavlov’s dogs—to react to every stressful event by eating sugary factory food products.

Eating sugar releases serotonin in the brain, which is a happy neurotransmitter. And so we feel better momentarily. Then we crash and feel worse and so we reach for another garbage sugary product. Years of conditioning has taught us to knee jerk react to stress and bad feelings, and to eat sugar.

But we can de-condition ourselves by providing our bodies with the nutrition we need to make an abundant supply of happy neurotransmitters. That way stressful events are not going to bring us down. We will stop craving, obsessing and then binging, followed by feeling shame and guilt about eating.

Eat real food to supply your body with materials to make happy neurotransmitters

Magnesium
Almonds
Apples
Avocados
Brewer’s yeast
Brown rice
Cod and cod liver oil
Flounder
Green leafy vegetables
Halibut
Salmon
Sesame seeds
Shrimp

Vitamin B-6
Brown rice
Chicken
Corn
Eggs
Green leafy vegetables
Legumes
Meat
Nuts
Peas
Poultry
Salmon
Shrimp
Soybeans
Spinach
Sunflower seeds
Tuna

Tryptophan
Almonds
Cottage cheese
Peanut butter
Peanuts and peanut butter
Shellfish
Tuna
Turkey

Omega‑3
Flaxseed oil (in small amouts)
Mackerel
Salmon
Sardines and oil
Tuna and oil
Walnut oil

Essential Fatty Acids
Omega‑6
Coconut oil
Chicken and chicken fat
Eggs
Flaxseed oil (in small amounts)
Grape seed oil
Turkey and turkey fat
Wheat germ oil

Gamma‑Linolenic Acid
Black currant oil
Bluegreen algae
Borage oil
Evening primrose oil