Fasting and Eating for Health (8 page)

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Healthy Diet Food Pyramid

Rational Recommendations for a Healthy Society
Official Food Guide Pyramid

Issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
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A Healthy Society with Limited Medical Costs Is Possible
Diseases that plague our modern society are reversible if sufficient dietary and environmental stresses are removed from the picture. A good physician can help people recover their health by helping them discover and eradicate all possible impediments to healing.

Reversing disease through nutritional medicine and preventing cancer through diet are the most powerful weapons we have to fight and win the war on cancer and other degenerative illnesses that have taken over our country. Ninety percent of cancers can be stopped before they even start. If just half of the billions of dollars spent on cancer research were spent on educating the public on how to
avoid
disease, we would witness a powerful reduction in the incidence of most chronic diseases. Millions of lives would be saved from cancer.

If we look at heart disease alone, more than $150 billion a year is spent on expensive medical procedures that attempt to remedy the effects of our rich diets. Yet we ignore the reality that heart disease can be totally prevented by a low-fat (less than 15 percent of total calories), plant-based diet. The American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society still recommend a diet with 30 percent of calories from fat.

People are unaware that even 30 percent of calories from fat is an extremely high level when we look at diets consumed throughout human history. Scientific studies show that when this level of fat intake is consumed, there is no improvement in heart disease. On the other hand, it has been shown that at much lower levels of fat intake arterial blockages are easily reversible. When patients who have coronary artery disease are placed on diets containing less than 10 percent of calories from fat, improvement in their condition occurs in a predictable fashion.54

The ineffective dietary recommendations from most authorities are comparable to telling a smoker with lung disease that he will be taking care of his disease if he cuts back from three packs a day to merely two.

(Unfortunately, these American institutions are misleading the public by recommending diets with a level of fat that has been documented in the scientific literature to actually promote heart disease and cause cancer.) Instead, our government spends over $20 billion on price supports that benefit the dairy, beef, and veal industry.55 These dollars are given to farmers to artificially reduce the cost of crops used to feed cows and are also used to advertise and keep the prices down on dairy foods, fowl, and meat. Fruits and vegetables grown primarily for human consumption are specifically excluded from USDA price supports. Out of one pocket we pay billions of our tax dollars to support the production of expensive disease-causing foods. Out of the other pocket we pay medical bills that are too high because our population consumes too much of these rich, disease-causing foods.

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Because of animal agriculture's powerful lobbyists, these price supports are not even considered wasteful by our present and past administrations. Worse than wasteful, by keeping fatty foods artificially cheaper, we actually are paying to make our society sicker and keep our health insurance costs high.

Most Americans, though aware of the change in nutritional thinking, have not made substantial changes in their food choices or lifestyles. Why? Because most of us are physiologically addicted to food and assume it is difficult to change our diet. We are also confused, uncertain, and have an incomplete picture of how to maintain our health, so we resign ourselves to the way things are. We are unaware of what standards of health are possible for us.

If you have a chronic illness or medical problem, most likely you have been told there are no special diets that will help. This book will put an end to that outmoded, incorrect, and dangerous position, which denies you the chance to regain your health and regain control of your life. Unfortunately, if you try to improve your diet and make changes following the guidelines you have been given from the typical dietician or physician, you will not get better. These recommendations are almost always too liberal to achieve substantial risk reduction or disease reversal. As you will see as we discuss most of the major health problems in detail in later chapters, aggressive nutritional management of specific medical conditions can mean the difference between wellness and a life of chronic illness, multiple medications, and premature aging and death.

Vitamin Pills Will Not Give Us a Healthy Population
It is true that the American public is deficient in certain essential vitamins and minerals, as well as trace elements. Many people are concerned enough about their health to take vitamins, but unfortunately, this will not have a substantial impact on the wellness of our population. Today almost every medical problem patients are faced with is the result of years of dietary excesses they have consumed, not merely deficiencies.

The message people hear is that it is okay to continue with their present diet, as long as they supplement with vitamin pills or other nutritional supplements.

This is a powerful lie, but it is attractive because it is what people in general want to believe. However, you cannot achieve optimal wellness as long as present-day dietary habits continue.

Powerful industrial forces driven by economics, not science, are trying to convince us that it doesn't matter what we eat. Any amount of processed, chemicalized, so-called ―food‖ will allegedly meet our needs as long as we take vitamins, antacids, digestive aids, headache and allergy remedies, and other drugs.

The animal food industry has promoted the use of its products by false nutritional dogma for decades. We have heard this effective misinformation not only from advertisements, but also in the classroom, where it is taught that animal proteins, milk, and dairy foods are essential to good health.

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This has occurred as the result of billions of dollars spent by these industries to influence the information we receive. Prevailed upon by powerful lobbyists wielding tremendous economic power, our government has made dietary recommendations that have been at odds with nutritional science for decades.

Even with the USDA's latest food pyramid, which de-emphasizes dairy, meat, poultry, and other high-fat foods, the power of the food industry was evident: publication of this pyramid was held up for five years while these food producers negotiated for and won a weaker stance against their products.

These industries financially support and therefore bias the majority of nutritional research carried out by major universities and scientific institutions in this country. For instance, over the last 50 years the largest financial contributors to nutritional research done at Harvard have been the dairy, meat, and sugar industries. Even the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, which pub-Harvard Department of Nutrition

Funding Sources, 1942-198656

American Meat

International Sugar

Institute

Research Foundation

Armour & Co.

Kellogg Co.

Beatrice Food Co.

Kraft Corp.

Borden Co.

McDonald's Corp.

California & Hawaiian National Biscuit Co.

Sugar Co.

National Confectioners

Campbell Soup Co. Association

Carnation Co.

National Dairy Council

Coca Cola Co.

National Dairy Products

Dairy Council of

National Livestock and

California

Meat Board

Florida Sugar Cane Oscar Mayer and Co.

League, Inc.

Oscar Mayer Foundation

Frito-Lay, Inc.

Pet Milk Co.

General Foods

Pillsbury Co.

General Mills

Special Dairy Industry

Gerber Baby Food

Board

Co.

Sugar Association, Inc.

Hartford Foundation Sugar Research

(A & P Foods)

Foundation

H. J. Heinz

Swift & Co.

Hershey Foods Hunt-Swift and Co. Foundation Wesson Foods

Tuna Research

Foundation

lishes the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, discloses on the inside front page of the journal that it is supported by such companies as Coca Cola, Borden, Inc., Nabisco, NutraSweet, and various drug companies.

The result is that establishment nutritional advice does little more than reinforce the dietary errors people prefer to make. Much of the nutritional 46

information that is given to the public is misleading. Even food labeling is deceptive. Food producers are permitted to use portion size or weight to calculate fat information, which presents a lie to the unsuspecting consumer.

For example, is whole milk 4 percent fat? It does contain 4 grams of fat per 100

grams of milk, but since each 100 grams of milk contains 70 calories, and since fat carries 9 calories per gram, whole milk actually gets 50 percent of its calories (4 x 9/70) from fat. Even ―low-fat‖ dairy products still are high-fat foods. The dairy industry always presents nutritional ―education‖ in nutrient/weight terms to hide the fat content of its products.

The meat and fast food industry has even picked up on the dairy industry's mathematical subterfuge. McDonald's ―91 percent fat-free hamburger‖ contains 45 percent of calories from fat.

In spite of the continual onslaught of misinformation, a powerful opposition, and the desire of the majority to want to believe they can consume anything without paying the price, honest nutritional information will eventually reach more and more of the public. This is because we have become such a sickly society that more people are looking for answers.

The facts are that if animal foods are included in the diet in significant quantities, it is impossible to devise a diet consistent with the overwhelming bulk of evidence about food and health in the scientific literature. Society and individuals will pay the price in suffering due to chronic disease and increased rates of premature death.

The diseases most prevalent in our society will never be prevented just by taking vitamin or food supplements. The causes are multifactorial and most significantly the result of eating the wrong type of food. The diseases of affluent societies arc virtually unknown in societies of lesser economic strength, which live on natural-food, plant-based diets. When the effects of plant foods are compared to the detrimental effects of animal products, it becomes clear why these ―backward‖ societies have superior health. It is not merely the effects of fiber, vitamins, and minerals in the plant foods that are protective; it is plant foods as a whole.

Preventive Nutrition Is the Same as Nutrition to Reverse
Disease

The chicken, fish, and low-fat dairy eating that most people think is healthy for the heart may be a little better than the typical greasy diet, but it is a far cry from a good diet. It will never offer significant protection against or reverse heart disease or cancer. We now have a population of miseducated consumers who think they are on a low-fat diet and wonder why they continue to have high blood pressure and heart disease, not to mention all the other diseases resulting from this outmoded diet. Doctors tell them their illnesses must be genetic or idiopathic (no known cause), which covers up ignorance or inability to improve outcome. The patients are forced to take more medication.

These often ignored points must be emphasized. Even the lower-fat animal 47

products are linked to heart disease, cancer, and auto immune diseases. Also, extracted oils, even the least harmful of them, such as canola or olive oil, still promote obesity and diabetes and even increase the risk of cancer. Keep in mind that when food is not in its natural state (you never saw a jar of oil growing on a tree), it more than likely is a risky food to consume on a regular basis.

If we follow a dietary program that is rich in natural plant foods and eliminates or reduces the intake of refined and overly processed foods and high-protein, high-fat foods, the body remarkably begins to slowly heal itself.

The power of your food choices has astonishing effects since food is the most variable and the most substantial external agent that we are in contact with each day.

Fasting, like food selection, is a form of nutritional modification. It has broad biochemical effects on the body. While fasting, the healing process is accelerated. This enables the cells and tissues to clean out the excesses that already exist. Keep in mind, however, that if the message you glean from this book is to fast periodically to give your body a chance to rest and perform internal housecleaning, and yet continue to stress your system between the fasts, you will lose most of the possible benefits.

Rational Recommendations for a Healthy Society
To summarize, general dietary guidelines are suggested here: 1. Eat at least five pieces of fresh fruit a day and a large green salad daily. In addition, a large serving of dark green or yellow vegetable such as broccoli, string beans, or kale (which may be steamed or microwaved if desired) should be eaten daily.