The well-nourished American is a myth. Despite the high level of education and the abundance of available food, many people make poor food choices and are badly nourished. . . . The average human diet, nutritionally unfit for rats, must be equally unsatisfactory or even more so in meeting human needs.
—Carl Pfeiffer, M.D., Ph.D.,
Mental and Elemental Nutrients
The most basic weapons in the fight against disease are the most ignored by modern medicine: the numerous nutrients the cells of our bodies need. If our body cells are ailing—as they must be in disease—the chances are excellent that it is because they are being inadequately provisioned.
—Roger J. Williams, Ph.D.,
Nutrtion Agiainst Disease.
This first of two Nutrition Pathway chapters addresses what not to eat. While many modern foods fail to deliver the nutrition your body requires, certain foods are not only poor sources of nutrition, they are toxic and do you harm. By avoiding these toxic foods, you will go a long way toward improving your health. In fact, the improvement can be truly dramatic.
You are what you eat! There is no way of getting around this biological fact of life. Your body is made out of the building blocks you supply to it. If you eat junk, you will be made of junk. Good nutrition keeps you in good repair and working order. Yet, because we don’t practice good nutrition, we have come to accept as normal the need for a knee or hip replacement or the likelihood that we may end up in a nursing home, unable to care for ourselves.
Today, more and more people complain of feeling sick and tired, while they continue to eat toxic, make-believe foods that do not and cannot support human health. Each of the trillions of cells in your body must be supplied with its daily needs or you cannot be healthy. Because we are not doing this, we are getting sick more often, getting old sooner, and becoming dependent on prescription drugs and replacement parts.
We need to turn this around. The simple solution is to change your eating habits. Eat better to live better. By choosing a better diet, you will boost your body’s defenses, become stronger, and live longer. It is actually possible to live a disease-free life, never having as much as a cold. Try it; you will be sure to like it.
Deficiency is one of the two causes of all disease. Cells have a long grocery list of nutrients that you must deliver. Some nutrients, such as oxygen and water, are more urgent and must be delivered constantly or you will die within minutes or days. Most nutrients are less urgent, but must nonetheless be consistently delivered, or your cells will malfunction, and you will get sick. That’s why eating a good diet is the single most important thing anyone can do to be healthy. Yet the biggest impediment to improving health is that most people think they are already eating a good diet. The fact that only a small percentage of us actually eat a good diet helps to explain why chronic disease is rampant.
Dr. Michael Colgan, author of The New Nutrition, had this to say: “Every year over 97% of your body is completely replaced, even the structure of the DNA in your genes, reconstructed entirely from the nutrients we eat. The quality of those nutrients determines the quality of your renewed cellular structure, the level at which it can function, and its resistance to disease.”
To be healthy, each day, old worn-out cells must be replaced with new ones, and each new cell must perform all its intended functions. To build healthy new cells and have them carry out their many essential tasks, you need to supply the correct raw materials. To get those raw materials, you need to eat the right foods—foods whose calories are packed with the nutrients required to build and operate healthy cells. A diet consisting of processed foods does not and cannot supply what you need. If your diet includes foods such as ice cream, doughnuts, bread, pasta, potato chips, pizza, French fries, and coffee, you are making yourself sick. These so-called foods offer few nutrients and are loaded with toxins. To get what your body needs, each calorie you consume must be packed with nutrients and free of toxins.
Remember that a chronic shortage of even one nutrient will eventually make you sick, and most Americans are chronically short of at least several. You may be unaware that you are deficient, particularly at the early stages. However, when shortages are chronic, the body will no longer adequately repair and self-regulate. At some point you will become aware that all is not well, yet never stop to think that your poor diet is to blame. Then when you develop arthritis, cancer, diabetes, or some other chronic disease, your doctor will almost certainly blame your genes and your age, not your diet.
Building healthy cells starts in a mother’s womb. If an embryo suffers from a shortage of building materials or the presence of toxins, a child with birth defects will be the result. During pregnancy, certain parts of the fetus are being constructed during specific weeks—such as the brain and nervous system, the circulatory system, and the digestive system. If essential raw materials are unavailable at that crucial time or toxins are present, any of these systems can be affected, perhaps manifesting as heart defects, digestive problems, lower IQ, attention deficit disorders, and so on. If any body system is not constructed properly in the first place, it will never work as well as it should. In extreme situations, the mother’s body realizes that it is creating a defective product and rejects it. The construction process is shut down, and the fetus is aborted—an ever-increasing occurrence in our society. A 2010 study in PLOS Genetics concluded that a mother’s nutrition in the days and weeks around the time of conception could have a lifetime effect on the way genes function in the child. Nutritional deficiencies in the fetus will affect its lifelong health.
A newborn baby’s health is the product of the genetic material from both parents, plus the quality of available building materials (nutrients), minus the presence of toxins during gestation. People wrongly assume that genetics is the sole explanation for the health or disease of their children. Congenital defects (those present at birth) are not necessarily the result of genetics. For example, a 2001 Lancet reported a study regarding supplemental vitamins taken during pregnancy. Mothers who had taken both folic acid and iron supplements during pregnancy gave birth to children who were 60 percent less likely to develop the most common form of childhood leukemia. Eating right is especially important for expecting moms. Like any disease, leukemia doesn’t “just happen.” We create these diseases.
Trouble begins when your cell factories are supposed to be making some essential chemical but are not making enough of it because of a nutritional deficiency or toxicity. For example, if cells lack the raw materials to make sufficient antibodies for the immune system, we become more susceptible to infections. When cells lack the nutrients to make sufficient neurotransmitters, mental function suffers. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals generated by nerve cells that send information throughout the nervous system, allowing us to think, learn, and remember.) Hormones are another important part of the body’s communications network. Hormones are chemicals that keep the body in regulation by traveling through the blood and lymph systems to bring messages to other parts of the body. When nutrient deficiency and toxicity prevent sufficient hormones from being produced or interfere with their operation, the body goes out of regulation. Today, hormone imbalance is epidemic.
Although each cell is a living entity unto itself, bodily systems can be regulated and controlled only when cells are able to communicate with each other. Impairment of cellular communications is one of the most basic common denominators of disease, no matter how the disease happened or what it is called. Cellular communication and feedback systems regulate everything from body temperature to immunity to movement. When these systems break down gradually, as they often do in disease, we may not notice until the condition is advanced. We are more familiar with sudden and severe breakdowns in bodily communication, such as spinal injuries that cause paralysis. We fail to recognize how subtle communication breakdowns precipitate chronic health problems.
As your body makes its hundreds of billions of new cells each day, it can make healthy cells or defective cells. Each time you order at a restaurant, each time you reach into your cabinet for a cooking oil, and each time you plan your day’s meals, you are deciding whether you will build strong cells or weak ones. It is that simple, and the choice is yours to make. Are you going to maintain a strong body or cause it to become diseased and fall apart?
The Bad Four—What Not to Eat
Certain foods are so toxic that they damage the body faster than it can be repaired. This causes aging and disease. The easiest way to make your body fall apart is to eat a lot of what I call the Bad Four. The incidence of chronic disease has steadily increased along with the increased consumption of the Bad Four. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is loaded with the Bad Four, which is why the SAD does not support healthy life, even in laboratory rats. The Bad Four are sugar, wheat, processed oils, and dairy/excess animal protein. Let’s have a look at these four deadly food choices.
Sugar
If you care about your health, get the sugar out of your life. Sugar either causes or contributes to every imaginable disease, from the common cold to cancer to Alzheimer’s. It is a dangerous metabolic poison that makes you old and sick. Every time you consume sugar, you are doing damage to your body. It is difficult to think of a single food that is more dangerous, more destructive to human health than sugar. Dr. Linus Pauling, a chemist and twice Nobel laureate, once said, “Sugar is the most hazardous foodstuff in the American diet.”
Sugar negatively affects every item on your Maintenance List, which is why getting it out of your life is so beneficial. Here is some of what sugar does:
• Damages energy production
• Causes inflammation
• Upsets normal pH
• Interferes with digestion
• Throws hormonal balance into chaos
• Causes platelet stickiness
• Causes overweight
Sugar is more damaging to health than alcohol or tobacco, yet children are allowed to purchase candy, ice cream, sodas, and other products containing this deadly toxin. Sugar has been found to be more addictive than heroin. Unlike other hazardous substances, sugar is unregulated—and even subsidized by the federal government with price supports. Shame on our elected officials! Eating refined sugar is a relatively new development in the history of the human diet, and the body is not designed to handle it. When forced to metabolize it, the body compensates to the best of its ability, but the results are catastrophic for your health. For example, high blood sugar causes a variety of brain malfunctions, and some researchers now refer to Alzheimer’s as type 3 diabetes.
Even one teaspoon of sugar will damage your health, and most Americans eat and drink about twenty-two teaspoons of sugar every day—triple what they consumed just three decades ago. Teenage males consume about thirty-four teaspoons. It adds up quick. A glass of orange juice has six teaspoons of sugar. A serving of sweetened cereal has five teaspoons, and typical granola has six. Sodas are the largest single source of sugar in the American diet, yet sweetened yogurts can have more sugar than a can of soda. Most people are unaware of the various ways sugar sneaks into their diets, hiding in breads and cereals and processed foods. Oftentimes, it appears in disguise on food labels under names like sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, hydrolyzed starch, invert sugar, corn syrup, and honey. About 80 percent of processed foods contain added sugar.
A teaspoon or two of refined sugar is sufficient to disrupt normal body chemistry and throw you into biochemical chaos for a period of six to eight hours. Fat, carbohydrate, and protein metabolism; vitamin and mineral chemistry; immunity; digestion; hormonal balance; and homeostasis are all thrown into chaos every time you eat sugar. Eating sugar several times throughout the day, as most people do, keeps your body in biological chaos all day, every day. Chaos is disease! Because sugar is so fundamentally disruptive to our chemistry, it can promote or cause almost any disease. It even interferes with the predigestive action of saliva, causing digestive problems.
Refined sugar is absorbed quickly, rapidly elevating the sugar level in the blood. Elevated blood sugar creates a biochemical emergency, and the body responds by secreting insulin from the pancreas. One of insulin’s normal functions is to regulate blood sugar by signaling cells to absorb sugar and either burn it for energy or store it as fat. However, when blood sugar increases rapidly, excess insulin is produced, and your blood insulin level remains abnormally high for hours thereafter, which is one of the most damaging things you can do to your body.
Excess insulin creates a cascade of negative effects, starting with reducing blood sugar too much, causing hypoglycemia. This causes the brain to secrete glutamate, and high glutamate levels cause anxiety, agitation, anger, depression, panic attacks, and an increase in suicide risk. The hypoglycemia and emotional response to glutamate can create cravings, which often result in even more sugar being consumed. Producing excess insulin puts stress on the pancreas and interferes with digestion. Insulin is a powerful stimulator of fat storage and inflammation, as well as cancer growth and metastasis. Some researchers believe that insulin may be the single largest cause of chronic disease. Dr. David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale Medical School and author of Nutrition in Clinical Practice, had this to say: “Is insulin the master control of all disease? I don’t know, but it’s certainly a candidate for that role.” People who live the healthiest and longest eat the least sugar and have the lowest insulin levels.
Eating sugar is worse than eating nothing! In A History of Nutrition, Elmer McCollum cited experiments in which animals fed water alone lived substantially longer than those fed sugar and water. The body requires certain nutrients to metabolize the sugar you eat, including B vitamins, calcium, magnesium, chromium, and zinc. Refined sugar does not contain these nutrients, so the body robs them from your reserves, which creates deficiencies and throws the body out of balance, creating disease. The purpose of food is to supply nutrients, but sugar robs you of nutrients.
Sugar is acid-forming in the body, throwing your normal pH out of balance. Sugar is so rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and distributed to body cells that insufficient oxygen is available to effectively burn and metabolize the sugar. The result is incomplete burning and formation of a toxic acid called pyruvic acid. When eaten daily, sugar causes the body to become too acidic, and the body pulls precious minerals such as calcium and magnesium from the bones and teeth to neutralize the acid, which can lead to osteoporosis. Meanwhile, pyruvic acid accumulates in the brain and nervous system, causing neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Sugar interferes with vitamin C metabolism and depresses immunity by 50 percent within two hours after eating it. Sugar and vitamin C have a similar chemical structure and compete with one another to enter cells. When a lot of sugar is present, it wins, creating an artificial shortage of vitamin C inside the cell. Infection-fighting white blood cells require fifty times as much vitamin C as do other cells. When they don’t get it, you become susceptible to colds, flu, and all types of infections as well as cancer. Sugar not only helps to cause cancer, it drives cancer once you have it because sugar is fuel for the cancer cells; the more sugar you feed them, the faster they grow.
Another way sugar damages our health is through a process called glycation. Glycation happens when a sugar chemically bonds to proteins, fats, enzymes, and even the DNA in your cells to form advanced glycation end products (AGEs). AGEs form inside the body and increase dramatically whenever you increase the sugar content of the blood. Glycation fundamentally changes functional proteins so that they can no longer accomplish their mission in the body, and the damage is permanent. Glycation stiffens joints, hardens arteries, weakens heart muscles, and causes skin to wrinkle and lose its elasticity. Glycation ages you, and it happens every time you eat the deadly metabolic poison we call sugar.
It has been known for decades that diabetics, due to their high blood sugar, age faster than nondiabetics, suffering problems related to their eyes, brains, vascular systems, and kidneys. However, you don’t have to be a diabetic for glycation to damage you. Eating even a teaspoon of sugar is sufficient to raise the sugar content of your blood and create a lot of AGEs. A breakfast of eggs and orange juice puts sugar and protein into the blood at the same time, forming AGEs. A protein meal followed by a sugary dessert creates AGEs. AGEs are absorbed into various body tissues, where they remain for long periods, initiating inflammation and causing oxidative damage to the body, increasing your risk of Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, neurological deterioration, cataracts, retinal damage, and vision loss.
Immune cells try to get rid of AGEs. However, if you eat a lot of sugar and create too many AGEs, the immune system becomes overworked, making you more susceptible to infections and cancer. Glycation also damages enzymes. Disabled enzymes shut down critical functions inside cells, including energy production and DNA repair.
AGEs are produced internally, but you can eat them as well. Every time you eat foods that have been caramelized or meats that have been browned, you increase the amount of AGEs in your body. Any protein-containing meal that is prepared at high temperatures is loaded with AGEs. AGEs form in foods during the cooking process, particularly as foods brown. If you must cook food, cook at lower temperatures, as in steaming, poaching, stewing, and slow cooking. Avoid high-temperature cooking, as in barbecuing, broiling, frying, grilling, and roasting. Do not brown or blacken foods. Common foods that are high in AGEs include bacon, hot dogs, cured and smoked meats, baked beans, and toast. Most restaurant foods are loaded with AGEs, and most processed foods contain ready-made AGEs.
Any food that spikes your blood sugar causes glycation, including natural sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, and fruit juices—even those 100 percent pure or fresh-squeezed. Fresh whole fruit is okay in moderation. The fiber in whole fruit slows down sugar’s entrance into the bloodstream, making whole fruit safer than juice.
Although all sugars contribute to disease and aging, the latest research shows fructose to be uniquely damaging to our health. Fructose, the sweetest of the three simple sugars found in nature, is the predominant sugar in most fruits. It is also a main ingredient in most refined sweeteners, such as table sugar, honey, agave nectar, maple syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, and crystalline fructose. Fructose is in almost every kind of processed food.
All of the fructose you eat is broken down in the liver, compared to only 20 percent of glucose (another common sugar). That’s a lot of work for your liver! What’s more, fructose metabolism creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and can cause gout. Metabolized fructose turns into VLDL (“bad” cholesterol) and triglycerides, which get stored as fat. The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and then to type 2 diabetes. And, as if all the fat you gain from eating fructose wasn’t enough, fructose interferes with leptin, the hormone that suppresses appetite, causing you to overeat. In addition, fructose causes a net loss of energy from the body. Metabolizing fructose requires the conversion of fructose to fructose-1-phosphate. This reaction is energy intensive and it drains ATP from the cell, lowering energy levels throughout the body. Fructose appears to be favored by cancer cells, speeding up the growth and spread of cancer.
The upshot is that our modern diet is literally supercharged with fructose, and we are seeing the consequences in our skyrocketing rates of chronic and degenerative disease. If you want to stay biologically young, maintain a healthy weight, and radically reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, then you must eliminate all refined sugars from your diet and keep your daily consumption of fructose to a minimum. Limit your consumption of fructose to 25 grams or less per day. An average orange has about 6 grams, a banana 7 grams, and an apple 10 grams.
It is worth taking a closer look at high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). HFCS is in just about all processed foods manufactured in the United States, including breads, breakfast cereals, lunch meats, yogurts, soups, sodas, condiments, and desserts. It is used to improve the flavor of most packaged “make-believe” foods, and it is so cheap that the incentive to use it is enormous. As long as it remains legal (and, remarkably, subsidized by the federal government), there is no reason for the processed food manufacturers not to use it. However, there are excellent reasons for you not to eat it if you care about your health. On top of being a refined sugar, HFCS—which is made from genetically modified, chemically processed corn—comes with its own unique set of poisons. One such poison is glutaraldehyde, which is one of the chemicals used to turn GMO corn into cornstarch and then into HFCS. Glutaraldehyde is so dangerous that small quantities can burn holes in the human stomach.
Between one-third and one-half of all HFCS-containing products on the market have tested positive for mercury contamination. Two of the chemicals frequently used in HFCS production contain mercury. In some cases, the level of mercury was high enough that a woman eating the average amount of HFCS in the American diet could ingest more than five times the maximum recommended upper limit of mercury. Mercury causes Alzheimer’s, cancer, and many other diseases. In the hunt for sources of mercury toxicity, here’s a big source that hasn’t even been on the radar. A simple solution is to stop eating high fructose corn syrup.
One of the easiest things you can do to quickly improve your health is to eliminate all soda and sweetened beverages from your life. Americans consume about 160 pounds of added sugar every year, and a third of that is from soft drinks. Eliminating them is possibly the single best thing you could do to reduce your sugar consumption. Then, since most processed foods also contain HFCS, avoiding as many processed foods as possible is your next step.
I say eliminate all soda, because even though HFCS is clearly something you want to avoid, it may not be as bad as artificial sweeteners found in diet sodas. Aspartame, used in most diet sodas, is known to be particularly toxic. One of the breakdown products of this molecule is formaldehyde. Formaldehyde accumulates in our cells, where it damages DNA and causes cancer. Drinking even one can of diet soda can cause DNA damage that leads to cancer, and your risk increases with each can consumed. It is now well established that aspartame, an excitotoxin, causes brain cancer, lymphomas, and leukemias in experimental animals. Aspartame can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and damage the brain and nervous system. Aspartame also increases your risk of strokes and heart attacks. The FDA—which once listed ninety-two side effects from consuming aspartame, including seizures, sexual dysfunction, and sudden cardiac death—has received more complaints about aspartame than any other substance.
Another common sweetener is Splenda. Splenda is an unnatural, man-made chemical that affects the body in numerous ways. The side effects of Splenda include skin rashes/flushing, paniclike agitation, dizziness and numbness, diarrhea, swelling, muscle aches, headaches, bladder issues, and severe gastrointestinal problems. Animal studies show that Splenda reduces the amount of good bacteria in the intestines by 50 percent, increases the pH level in the intestines, and contributes to increases in body weight. Artificial sweeteners are not an option!
If we look at the diets of primitive peoples around the world, we find that human beings have thrived on a wide variety of different diets without suffering from the diseases of civilization we see today. Eskimos did quite well on a diet of primarily blubber, as did the Bantu on a primarily vegetarian diet. However, one thing common to all of these traditional diets is the absence of sugar.
A very inconvenient truth is that sugar is highly addictive and destructive. However, knowing this is like pulling back the curtain on the great mystery of why so many in our society are sick, suffering, and dying prematurely. You do not have to be one of them. If you don’t want to make yourself old and sick, avoid sugar.
Wheat
To be healthy, get wheat out of your life. Wheat is another so-called food that negatively affects every item on the Maintenance List. Most people are aware that white flour is not the most nutritious food they can eat. Surprisingly, even products labeled as “whole wheat” or “whole grain” often contain mostly white flour. To make white flour, the whole grain is stripped of over twenty essential nutrients, including 72 percent of its zinc and 85 percent of its vitamin B6. Almost comically, when a handful of these nutrients are added back, the flour is called “enriched,” when it is really impoverished. White flour is inflammatory and enormously damaging to human health, disrupting vitamin, mineral, and hormonal balance. The average American consumes about 200 pounds of this deadly junk food every year.
White flour is mostly starch, and it quickly metabolizes into sugar, causing all the same problems as sugar. Like sugar, white flour causes an increase in blood sugar and insulin, producing a flood of pro-inflammatory chemicals and free radicals. In fact, wheat contains an unusual type of carbohydrate called amylopectin-A, which has been found to spike blood sugar even worse than table sugar. For that matter, wheat-based foods such as breads and cereals cause higher blood sugar spikes than many other carbohydrate foods.
While the problems with white flour are well known, most people are unaware that grains themselves are a problem, and that wheat is the worst and most dangerous grain of all. Until about 10,000 years ago, humans didn’t eat grains. Now, just eight grains provide over half of all the calories and half of all the protein consumed on the planet. Importantly, the wheat we eat today differs significantly from what our ancestors ate. Wheat has been hybridized to achieve higher yield per acre and higher protein content, and hybridized wheat was introduced into commerce without anyone questioning its safety. But small changes in the structure of a protein molecule can spell the difference between a healthy nutrient and a toxin, and modern wheat proteins are having a toxic effect.
A big problem with wheat is a protein called gluten, which is found in all types of wheat and in barley and rye. Gluten is a gluey substance that provides elasticity and structure to dough, but it is highly allergenic and inflammatory and can affect digestion and assimilation of nutrients. Historically, gluten was not the problem it is today. Small occasional amounts were tolerated. But today’s hybridized, high-protein wheat contains up to 90 percent more gluten than traditional wheat, and we are eating wheat multiple times per day. As a result, the number of people with gluten sensitivity has skyrocketed, causing massive problems. Celiac disease is the most extreme reaction to gluten. However, even if you are not allergic to gluten, it can damage your gut by causing the space between the cells of the intestinal wall to expand. This effect dramatically increases the permeability of the gut, causing a condition called leaky gut. Researchers have estimated that as much as half the population may now be metabolically reactive to gluten. Gluten reactivity manifests as a wide range of health problems, including chronic depression, chronic fatigue, common colds, eczema, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus, thyroid disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. Meanwhile, most people suffering from gluten sensitivity are completely unaware of the root cause of their symptoms.
No one should be eating wheat or other gluten-containing grains. Immune reactions to gluten produce free radicals and chronic inflammation. They also make the body more acidic, changing your pH balance. Choosing a diet that does not promote inflammation is essential for a long, disease-free life. Eliminating gluten is a foolproof way of getting a powerful inflammation promoter out of your life.
However, another problem may be even worse than gluten. Wheat and other grains contain a class of proteins called lectins. Hybridized wheat, with higher protein content, also contains higher levels of lectins than the wheat our ancestors ate. Research presented in a 2008 FASEB Journal, a 2000 Gut, a 1999 Lancet, a 1995 Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, a 1993 British Journal of Nutrition, and numerous other sources indicate that lectins may be the biggest problem with grain consumption. Lectins are powerful natural insecticides that plants use to protect themselves. Lectins attach to receptor sites on the cell membranes of bacteria and fungi and disrupt their function. This protects wheat and other grains from insects and infection. But humans have the same receptor sites! Consuming hybridized, high-lectin wheat is having a devastating effect on human health.
When we eat wheat, the lectins damage our gastrointestinal tract, creating holes in the gut tissue, causing a leaky gut. Undigested molecules, including gluten, are now free to enter into the bloodstream. The immune system sees these molecules as invaders and attacks them, creating inflammation and allergies. Increased intestinal permeability is now recognized as causing a wide variety of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune syndromes, including inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, and eczema. In fact, lectins can do direct damage to the majority of tissues in the human body, which helps to explain why chronic inflammatory diseases are more common in wheat-consuming populations. Even at exceedingly small concentrations, lectins stimulate the production of pro-inflammatory chemicals such as interleukins 1, 6, and 8 in intestinal and immune cells. The inflammation created by lectins damages DNA and accelerates aging.
Lectins damage the thymus gland, which is essential to immunity, and they directly damage immune cells in the blood. They damage the thyroid gland. Lectins have the ability to pass through the blood-brain barrier and directly damage brain cells by attaching to, and thus damaging, the myelin sheath coating on nerves. Lectins also exhibit insulinlike properties, which can cause insulin resistance (diabetes) and weight gain. Lectins damage joints by binding strongly to their connective tissues. Lectins also stimulate platelet stickiness and blood clots, contributing to the risk of heart attack and stroke. Moreover, lectin blocks hormones that regulate food consumption, leading to eating more and becoming overweight.
Unfortunately, lectins are highly stable molecules. They survive cooking, sprouting, fermentation, and digestion. We are now consuming a lot of high-lectin wheat, and the lectins are accumulating in our tissues, putting a continuous toxic load on us. Whole wheat contains more lectins than white flour, and ironically may be an even bigger threat to your health.
In the last 130 years, grain consumption has sharply increased and so have our rates of chronic disease. Now grains represent about half of all the food consumed. All plants contain natural toxins to protect them from viruses, bacteria, fungi, and predators. Our genes are well adapted to handle the toxins in fruits and vegetables, but not so for the relatively recent addition of the special toxins in grains. Anthropological evidence indicates that when we started eating grains about 10,000 years ago, our health declined—infant mortality increased, life span shortened, infectious diseases increased, and bone disorders and dental decay appeared. One reason is that grains contain phytic acid, which prevents the absorption of calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, and zinc, causing mineral deficiencies. Eating grains also causes insulin to spike, prompting a cascade of harmful reactions in the body.
Grains do contain useful nutrients, but cooking is usually necessary to make grains edible, and cooking diminishes nutritional value. Baked goods that contain yeast present a special problem. Many studies have linked bread and other bakery products with cancer because of the carcinogenic mycotoxins that baked products contain. Mycotoxins are metabolic waste products of the yeast used to make bread. Another problem with baked goods is the formation of carcinogenic acrylamides in the browned portions of baked goods.
Most people think of wheat as a good food. However, sufficient evidence exists that wheat is instead a toxin and a major cause of disease. Anyone with a chronic illness should avoid all products containing wheat and other gluten-containing grains like barley and rye. Corn has also been hybridized and genetically modified to where it is highly toxic. Corn is rich in lectins that are known to damage gut tissue and reduce absorption of key nutrients. Certain lectins are capable of killing brain cells, and the lectins in corn can be especially toxic to people with brain diseases such as autism. High-fructose corn syrup is also neurotoxic.
In the interests of living a long, disease-free life, most people would do well to either eliminate or at least minimize the consumption of all grains—most especially wheat. The safest choices would be occasional servings of buckwheat, amaranth, and quinoa.
Processed Oils
Oils are essential building materials to construct healthy cells and to create numerous chemicals the body needs. The correct oils in the correct amounts create healthy cells and a healthy you. The wrong oils have a bad effect on your maintenance list: energy production, inflammation, platelet stickiness, hormonal balance, and fat storage. That’s why you need to know this: almost any oil you buy at the supermarket is the wrong oil. Likewise, the oils in processed foods or served in most restaurants are also the wrong oils. When you put the wrong oils into your body, it’s like putting the wrong oil into your car’s engine—you are going to damage the engine. The wrong oils include canola, corn, cottonseed, peanut, safflower, soybean, and sunflower oils; all hydrogenated oils; and even most olive oils. Putting the wrong oils into your body affects all of your biochemistry, making it difficult for anything to work right—this is disease. If you want to be healthy or recover from a chronic illness, you need an oil change.
Cell membranes (the wall separating the interior of the cell from the rest of the world) are constructed with oils. But they must be exactly the right oils because these membranes perform many critical tasks, including regulation of what goes in and out of a cell—the delivery of essential nutrients and removal of metabolic wastes. These complex tasks can only be performed well if the membranes are constructed of the correct oils. An extremely critical function of cell membranes is the storage of electricity. Properly constructed cell membranes act as capacitors (electrical components that store electrical energy), which allow a cell that normally operates at –20 to –25 millivolts (mV) to build up and store the much higher –50 mV voltage required to construct a healthy new cell. If you want to keep your body in good repair, this fact is critical. If you are eating the wrong oils, you will not be able to store sufficient voltage to create new cells. If you are unable to replace old cells with new ones, you will eventually fall apart, become disabled, and need others to care for you. Nursing homes are filled with such people.
To keep ourselves in good repair, we build millions of new cells every second of every day. Unless the correct cellular building materials are available, your body makes your new cells out of what is available. Think of building a new house out of cardboard instead of high-quality plywood because the plywood is unavailable, but the cardboard is. Building a cell membrane with the wrong oils interferes with the transport of nutrients into cells and of toxic wastes out of cells, which causes deficiency and toxicity and results in cellular malfunction and disease. Almost all the processed foods we eat—salad dressings, baked goods, chips, breakfast cereals, fast foods, and restaurant foods—are made with biologically incorrect oils.
Humans need specific oils called essential fatty acids (EFAs). There are two categories of EFAs: omega-3 and omega-6. We need both types, and both are healthy, but these oils need to be consumed in the proper ratio to each other. Humans evolved on a diet that had a near equal 1:1 ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 fats, and these specific oils must be available when new cells are constructed. However, most Americans consume far too much omega-6 and far too little omega-3. The current ratio in our diet is about 20:1, and for some people it’s as bad as 50:1. It’s so bad that about 90 percent of the U.S. population is deficient in omega-3 fatty acids. A 1991 study in the World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics showed that 20 percent of us have so little omega-3 in our blood that standard tests cannot measure it. Biologically speaking, this is a disaster, not only for adults, but also for the unborn. A mother whose diet is deficient in omega-3 fats produces babies with impaired immunity and increased risk of developing allergies, as well as impaired brain development and cardiovascular health.
Omega-3 oils have a measurable effect on brain performance. A 2011 study in Neurology confirmed that people with diets high in omega-3 fatty acids and in vitamins C, D, E, and B had higher scores on thinking tests and were less likely to have the brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer’s disease than people with diets high in trans-fats. A 2012 study in PLOS ONE found that blood levels of omega-3 DHA predicted how well schoolchildren were able to concentrate and learn. Those with the lowest omega-3 levels had the poorest reading and memory skills and the most behavioral problems.
The imbalance of omega-6 and omega-3 oils in our diet causes chronic inflammation, and chronic inflammation causes chronic disease. Both classes of EFAs produce body chemicals called prostaglandins. Inflammatory prostaglandins are produced from omega-6 fatty acids; they suppress the immune system and increase inflammation, heart disease, cancer, and aging. Excess omega-6s dramatically lower the amount of vitamin E in the body, which increases free-radical damage to DNA and tissues, promoting the growth and metastasis of tumors. In addition, fatty acid imbalance causes the clumping of red blood cells, which slows down blood flow, restricts blood flow to the smaller capillaries, and results in poor oxygen delivery to cells. When sufficient omega-3 oils are present, anti-inflammatory prostaglandins are produced, and these offset and balance those prostaglandins from the omega-6s. Anti-inflammatory prostaglandins from omega-3s suppress inflammation, tumor development, blood pressure, water retention, blood platelet stickiness, and cholesterol levels.
While the primary reason for the enormous imbalance of 6s and 3s in the American diet is the excessive consumption of the supermarket oils, a secondary reason is the decrease in the consumption of real fish, meat, and eggs. For example, most of the salmon and many of the other fish available today have been farmed in artificial environments. Farmed fish are fed grain, as opposed to the normal diet they would consume in their native oceans and rivers. As a result, they contain the wrong fatty-acid ratios because grains are high in omega-6s. The same holds true for beef and chicken, which are fed grains that change their fatty-acid ratios. Consider that a real egg, from a hen eating a natural diet, contains about 300 milligrams (mg) of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). Standard, grain-fed, supermarket eggs average only 18 mg of DHA, and they are high in omega-6s.
These omega-3-deficient, industrially produced foods are damaging our health. To compensate, we need to increase intake of omega-3 fatty acids. Flaxseed oil is one of nature’s richest sources of EFAs. Flaxseeds, freshly ground in a small coffee grinder, make an excellent addition to fresh salads and smoothies. Other rich sources include wild-caught fish, green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, and EFA supplements.
Although cattle graze on grass for most of their lives, nearly all cattle are shipped to feedlots prior to slaughter to fatten them up on grain. If you eat this grain-fed beef, as most Americans do, you worsen your omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio. Natural beef (grass fed and grass finished) is rich in omega-3s, but grain-fed beef is rich in omega-6s. If you choose to eat beef, eat grass-fed/grass-finished, organic beef. Just eating organic meats is not good enough. That just means the animals were fed organic grains. The meat contains fewer pesticides but still has the wrong fatty acid ratio—grass-fed/grass-finished is what you want.
Another major problem with supermarket fats and oils is that commercial processing subjects them to heat, chemicals, and oxidation, significantly changing their molecular structure and making them toxic to the body. Most supermarket oils undergo a bleaching and deodorizing process to make them crystal clear and extend shelf life. This process usually takes place at high temperatures, at which massive trans-fat formation occurs and powerful toxins called lipid peroxides are formed. There is no safe level of lipid peroxides or trans-fats. Also, because processed oils are stripped of their natural antioxidants, manufacturers add preservatives, which are toxic. Yet another problem is that about 40 percent of these oils, especially soy and corn oil, contain solvent residues from their manufacture, contributing to our toxic overload.
The fats we call hydrogenated oils are uniquely dangerous, and they are found in everything from baked goods to breakfast cereals to peanut butter. These liquid vegetable oils have been chemically altered to make them solid at room temperature. Such man-made fats contain unnatural molecules, including trans-fats that are toxic to your body. Some products are now being labeled as “trans-fat free,” but this claim can be deceptive. Trans-fats have to be disclosed on the label only if the food contains more than 0.5 grams per serving. Even that amount is toxic, but to avoid listing trans-fats, or to claim “trans-fat free,” on their labels, food manufacturers simply adjust the serving size until the trans-fat content falls under 0.5 grams per serving. Thus, modern food labels often have serving sizes that are much smaller than the amount you would normally consume. Be sure to read food labels carefully. Never eat anything containing any hydrogenated oils, which are sometimes listed as “margarine” or “vegetable shortening.” A much better choice is coconut oil, which is a clean source of needed saturated fat and resists oxidation and degradation at higher temperatures.
Cells must create energy by combining a fuel (usually fats, sometimes carbohydrates) with oxygen. Enzymes play a crucial role in this process, and they are designed to fit and interact with very specific molecules. The problem with overprocessed supermarket oils is that processing changes the shape of the molecules, and the misshaped molecules do not fit the appropriate enzymes, so they cannot be processed into energy. You are supplying the wrong fuel!
Avoid supermarket oils, all hydrogenated oils, and all food products containing these oils. Avoid grain-fed animals, eggs, and fish; they are too rich in omega-6s. Instead, fill your grocery cart with fresh organic vegetables, fruits, raw nuts, wild-caught fish, and organic grass-fed meats. Choose olive, coconut, flaxseed, and fish oils, but these must be minimally processed, high-quality oils, and most brands do not measure up. Unfortunately, most olive oil is adulterated with toxic oils. Without the correct oils in your diet, aging is accelerated and you will get sick. If you want to prevent or reverse chronic disease, you need an oil change. (See Appendix A for acceptable oils.)
Dairy/Excess Animal Protein
Most of us have been brought up to think that milk is a good and necessary food. Wrong! We have been terribly misled into consuming milk and dairy products and far too much animal protein. Americans are among the world’s highest consumers of milk products, and we consume about ten times too much animal protein.
Consuming milk is both unnatural and unhealthy. Nowhere in nature does one species drink the milk of another or drink milk after weaning. Only humans do these unnatural things, and we suffer the consequences with heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, infections, arthritis, allergies, and cancer. Most Americans have been brainwashed when it comes to dairy products. I certainly was. I grew up believing that milk, cheese, and yogurt were vital parts of a healthy diet. The first time someone suggested to me that dairy products were not healthy, I thought he was crazy.
When I tell people not to drink milk, they often ask, “Where will I get my calcium?” Seventy percent of the world’s people do not drink milk. Where do they get their calcium? They get it from plant foods. Green vegetables, such as kale, broccoli, and collard greens, are loaded with calcium.
Milk and dairy products are not part of a healthy diet. Even back when most of us were farmers, traditional milk from one’s own cow was not a healthy food choice, but it wasn’t a deadly poison either. Modern milk, on the other hand, is a highly processed and allergenic make-believe food that is a threat to anyone’s health.
Commercially produced milk is a toxic soup loaded with fifty-nine biologically active hormones, dozens of allergens, up to fifty-two powerful antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, PCBs, dioxins (up to 200 times the safe levels), blood, pus, feces, solvents, viruses, excessive bacteria, and even radioactive compounds. Of those fifty-nine hormones contained in milk, one is the powerful growth hormone IGF-1 (insulinlike growth factor 1). IGF-1 is like rocket fuel for cancer. It instructs cells to grow. Instructing cells to grow may be fine for the calf, for which the milk is intended, but in adults, it promotes cancer. IGF-1 is known to be a factor in the rapid growth and proliferation of breast, colon, and prostate cancers, and most likely plays a role in all cancers. Men who consume two or more servings of milk per day have a 60 percent increased risk of prostate cancer. Ice cream is far worse. IGF-1 gets concentrated in the cream, and one serving of ice cream gives you twelve times as much IGF-1 as you would get in one serving of milk. Most men suffering from chronic prostatitis improve their condition by removing dairy from their diet. Another cancer promoter in milk is casein, the predominant protein in cow’s milk. Casein promotes cancer at every stage in the cancer process. No one should be drinking milk or consuming products containing milk.
Virtually all milk is pasteurized and homogenized. This processing substantially changes the chemical and physical properties of the milk and, for many reasons, makes it less nutritious, more toxic, and more carcinogenic. Pasteurized milk is an acidic food. Most Americans are eating too many acidic foods already, and milk throws your pH balance further out of whack. In Fit for Life: A New Beginning, author and nutritionist Harvey Diamond states:
It is a well-established fact that the high protein content of meat and dairy products turns the blood acidic, which draws calcium out of the bones. This causes the body to lose or excrete more calcium than it takes in. The deficit must be made up from the body’s calcium reserve, which is primarily the bones.
Millions of us have paid a very high price for the misguided advice put out by the dairy industry. Advertising by the Milk Advisory Board and articles presented as news driven by the same interests tell us to drink milk to ensure proper calcium intake. Calcium is indeed needed, but drinking milk causes net calcium losses and osteoporosis. Yet people with osteoporosis are instructed to consume more milk! Vitamin D is critical for calcium metabolism, which is why most milk is “fortified” with vitamin D. However, a study in a 2001 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who consume the most milk actually have the lowest vitamin D levels. Industrial milk is not a good source of either calcium or vitamin D. Americans are among the biggest milk consumers in the world, and like other countries that have high consumption of dairy products, we pay a price with the world’s highest rates of osteoporosis, diabetes, heart attack, allergy, and cancer.
Paul Nison, author of The Raw Life, stated, “Dairy is the cause of most disease in the world today.” When a prominent Washington, D.C., pediatrician was asked in an interview what single change to the American diet could provide the greatest health benefits, Dr. Russell Bunai replied, “The elimination of milk products.”
Excess Animal Protein Makes You Old and Sick
Protein is an essential nutrient, required to construct hormones, enzymes, and other indispensible molecules, as well as structural tissue. Without protein, life cannot be sustained. However, animal protein, in excess of the amount needed for growth, promotes aging and disease. Unlike plant protein, the animal protein in milk and meat metabolizes to strong acids—disrupting your acid/alkaline balance, lowering the pH of your cells, robbing your teeth and bones of minerals, and making your cell batteries weaker.
The Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) for total protein is 50 to 60 grams per day. Many Americans get twice this amount. Our average consumption of animal protein alone is about 70 grams per day—more than the RDI for total protein. By contrast, most rural Chinese, who are far healthier than we are, average 7 grams of animal protein per day (about the amount contained in one egg). Averaging 7 grams or less per day of animal protein is a worthy goal—approximately one egg or a piece of fish or meat the size of the palm of your hand. The remainder of the RDI should be plant protein from vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouts, legumes, and avocados.
Excess animal protein promotes kidney, eye, and brain diseases; autoimmune disorders; obesity; heart disease; diabetes; osteoporosis; and cancer. A 2014 study in Cell Metabolism found that people who ate a diet rich in animal proteins were more than four times as likely to die of cancer as those who ate a low-protein diet. In addition, those who consumed diets high in animal proteins were several times more likely to die of diabetes, as well as 74 percent more likely to die prematurely from any cause. A high-animal-protein diet disrupts hormonal balance by increasing the ratio of estrogens in the body, which stimulates cancer. People who are on high-protein diets to lose weight need to be aware of this danger. Animal protein is also rich in a fat called arachidonic acid, which studies have linked to promoting tumor growth and metastasis.
Animal protein can be consumed safely and beneficially in small quantities. However, the source is important. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that a daily meal of hot dogs, bacon, or hamburgers raises the risk of dying from heart disease or cancer by as much as 21 percent. If you choose to eat meat, make sure it’s unprocessed and organic. The fish you eat should not be farmed, and the eggs should be organic as well. A good rule is to use animal protein as a condiment, not as a main course. You do not need to consume animal protein at every meal or even every day. Most of your protein should come from plant-based foods. People have been so conditioned to think of meat and dairy as their sources of protein that they don’t even think about the protein in plant foods. Who would guess that, calorie for calorie, spinach has as much protein as beef?
Excess animal protein is an important factor in causing chronic disease, including kidney and eye disorders, obesity, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Plant protein does not have a cancer-promoting effect, and large amounts can be safely consumed.
Here are some ways to cut down on animal protein:
• Introduce more primarily vegetarian meals.
• Build meals around fresh raw salads as the main course. You can add a small amount of high-quality animal protein or protein-rich sprouts to your main-course salad.
• Avocados contain protein and good essential fats; they can be used to replace meat in meals.
• Nuts and seeds (raw and soaked/sprouted) are a good source of protein and healthy fat.
• Lentils can be easily adapted to replace ground beef in Mexican recipes, shepherd’s pies, meatballs, and stuffed peppers.
If you do eat meat, make sure it is not grilled, charred, or blackened in any way. When fat drips into an open flame, dangerous carcinogens called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are formed. All proteins cooked at high temperatures contain several chemicals proven to cause cancer in laboratory animals. Barbecuing is the worst way to prepare meat because of both the open flame and higher temperatures. When I cook meat, I slow cook it at a low temperature using a crockpot.
You can improve health and reverse aging by lowering the amount of animal protein in your diet. At least 90 percent of your protein should be derived from plant foods such as vegetables, gluten-free whole grains, legumes, lentils, seeds, nuts, and sprouts. Fish and seafood are healthy forms of animal protein. Unfortunately, seafood is becoming increasingly toxic and dangerous to consume. An occasional small portion of fresh fish would be okay, but farmed or canned fish is not a good option. Farmed fish contain a lot of toxins and the wrong fatty acid ratios. Canning depletes nutrients and introduces toxins.
Other Poor Choices
Beyond the Bad Four, other poor dietary choices include excessive amounts of salt, food additives, and genetically modified foods. To be healthy, these too must be avoided.
Excess Salt
Salt is sodium chloride, and eating too much salt results in excess sodium in your body. Sodium is an essential nutrient, and we need it to help our nerves function properly, to aid nutrient absorption, and to maintain the right balance of water and minerals in our bodies. But sodium works in tandem with potassium, and things go wrong when we upset the normal ratio of the two. Mother Nature tells us the balance of sodium and potassium we need. Human milk contains three times as much potassium as sodium, yet we get it wrong and average four times as much sodium as potassium.
The human body requires only about 220 mg of sodium per day. One teaspoon of refined salt contains 2,300 mg of sodium—about ten times what we need. The USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommends consuming less than 2,300 mg and acknowledges that older people, African Americans, and people with hypertension, diabetes, or kidney disease should limit their intake to 1,500 mg per day. Only about 5 percent of us are actually doing that.
Upsetting your sodium/potassium balance has serious biological consequences.
Excess sodium in the diet is a disaster for your electrical system. Salt has an acidic effect on the body, lowering pH, altering the acid/alkaline balance, and forcing more sodium into cells. The result is weakened cell batteries, a damaged electrical system for your body, and, among other problems, heart palpitations.
Natural foods that are rich in potassium and low in sodium are what we were designed to eat. Unfortunately, we have changed to a sodium-rich diet of processed foods, and it is making us sick. Even eating at a “healthy” salad-bar restaurant can be a health hazard. Consider this: If you have a bowl of split-pea soup, you consume 1,430 mg of sodium. A serving of a typical “healthy” nonfat Italian salad dressing adds another 1,350 mg. Two “healthy” low-fat muffins add another 1,400 mg. A serving of mushroom marinara sauce on your hot pasta adds another 318 mg. Choosing a couple of the salad offerings adds another 400 mg, and chocolate pudding for dessert adds another 177 mg. This adds up to a whopping 5,075 mg of sodium—at just one meal—more than twice the USDA guideline.
Some of the biggest sources of sodium are products made from grains, such as bread, pasta, and pizza crust. Tomato sauce and cheese add even more sodium. One slice of whole-wheat bread typically contains about 100 mg of sodium. There are 200 mg in one cup of cornflakes, and 709 mg in two ounces of turkey-breast lunch meat. Still more can be found in processed vegetables, including vegetable-based soups and sauces and canned vegetables, not to mention potato products such as chips and fries. There are 390 mg of sodium in a half-cup serving of canned peas and 780 mg in one cup of canned vegetable beef soup. One cup of low-fat milk contains 107 mg of sodium, and one ounce of cheddar cheese contains 180 mg.
When your sodium intake is too high, your bones get weak. For every 2,000 mg of sodium you eat, you will lose about 25 mg of calcium in your urine. Unless you replace the lost calcium—and most people don’t eat enough bioavailable calcium to do that—then eating an average of 5,000 mg of sodium per day could result in calcium losses as high as 2.5 percent of your skeleton annually. At that rate, you will lose 25 percent of your bone structure in only ten years. Since bone loss is progressive, older people tend to have weak bones, and today even young people suffer from weak bones. Osteoporosis is just one more “disease of aging” that we ourselves create and can easily prevent.
Excess sodium also increases the risk of high blood pressure, which is a major cause of heart disease and stroke. In fact, people who consume more than 4,000 mg of sodium per day double their risk of stroke compared to those consuming less than 1,500 mg. Other ramifications of excess sodium include chronic fatigue, neurological disorders, cancer, weight gain, impaired immune function, platelet stickiness, and premature aging. Research reported in a 2013 Nature concluded that excess salt triggers an abnormal immune response, which is capable of causing autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Fast foods are loaded with salt. It takes a lot of awareness to eat a low-salt diet, but you can do it. In restaurants, soups often contain a lot of salt: Avoid them. Many restaurants use too much salt: Request less. Read labels carefully. To increase potassium, eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Foods that are high in potassium include bananas, oranges, avocados, tomatoes, broccoli, lima beans, melons, cucumber, papayas, mangos, kiwi, and spinach. These same foods contain many other nutrients that our bodies need to stay healthy and biologically young.
Food Additives—A Toxic Mix
In Diet for a Poisoned Planet, author David Steinman describes an experiment in which four sets of rats were fed different diets. The first set ate natural foods and drank clean water. Throughout the three-month experiment, these rats remained alert, calm, and social. The second set was fed the same food as the first, with the addition of hot dogs. These rats became violent and fought each other aggressively. The third set ate sugarcoated breakfast cereal and drank fruit punch. These rats became nervous, hyperactive, and aimless. The fourth set was fed only sugar doughnuts and cola. These rats had trouble sleeping, became extremely fearful, and were unable to function as a social unit. The poor nutrition of these foods, plus the effects of the toxic colors, flavors, preservatives, and other additives they contained, had a profound effect on the behavior of these animals. Why, then, are we surprised that our children are struggling with hyperactive, antisocial, and even violent behaviors? Why, then, when children commit violent acts, we jump to blame the gun or whatever weapon they used but never question their diets or the mind-altering prescription drugs they may be taking?
Avoiding toxic food additives is simple. Eliminate processed foods from your diet.
Glutamates
Glutamates are chemicals used in processed foods, fast foods, and restaurants to enhance the flavor of the food. They are among a class of compounds known to act as excitotoxins, exciting nerves to stimulate the sensation of flavor. The best-known form of glutamate is monosodium glutamate (MSG). Glutamates damage the brain and nervous system, causing problems such as migraines, seizures, learning disorders, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. Glutamates also cause diabetes, obesity, overweight, and heart attacks. Glutamates produce enormous amounts of free radicals in the body, resulting in inflammation. Regular consumption of glutamate-containing foods damages your brain and your health.
Most of us are exposed to glutamates daily because they are in about 80 percent of all processed foods. Glutamates are cleverly disguised on food labels with words such as “natural flavors,” “spices,” “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” “vegetable protein,” “caseinate,” “textured protein,” “soy protein extract,” “glutamic acid,” and others. A restaurant menu or label that says “No MSG” may still be serving you food loaded with glutamates. Even baby formula can contain glutamate in the form of caseinate. When you start to look for it, you may be shocked at how often you will find glutamates. They are everywhere. Commercial pizza and most fast foods are known to have a lot.
GMO Foods—An Unfolding Disaster
Foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been prohibited in countries around the world for a good reason: they are dangerous. Yet Americans are consuming them by the ton in the form of corn, soy, canola oil, cottonseed oil, sugar from sugar beets, and papayas grown in Hawaii. These find their way into all kinds of processed foods, including popcorn, soy sauce, tofu, frozen pizza, frozen dinners, breakfast cereals, baby formula, canned soups, cookies, and ice cream. Almost all processed foods at the supermarket contain at least some GMO components, unless they are 100 percent USDA Organic.
GMO foods are a threat to human health and to all life on the planet. Unlike natural plant breeding, genetic engineering happens in a lab, where cells undergo a gene insertion process that couldn’t happen in nature. It can change the nutritional content of food, make the food more allergenic, and even create unique toxins, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. GMO crops appear to be an unfolding nightmare.
Every generation of GMO crops interacts with more organisms, creating more opportunities for unwanted side effects for every living thing on the planet. Yet this damage may take years to manifest and is difficult to trace back to the GMO food. Worse, it is not reversible. Recent studies have found accidentally inserted viral fragments in commercial GMO crops that have unknown and perhaps dire potential consequences for both agriculture and human health.
Animal studies from around the world have shown GMO crops to be extremely dangerous, causing damage to the liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, adrenal glands, intestines, spleen, and pancreas. They shorten life and promote massive tumors. GMO soy and corn fed to test animals cause stomach inflammation, thinning of intestinal walls, hemorrhagic bowel disease, and higher rates of miscarriage. The introduction of foreign genes changes the entire nature of plant biology, turning food into a disguised poison that can potentially contaminate the genetic code of other plants and animals, including us.
Genetically modified plants can be designed to produce internal pesticides that we then eat. Such is the case with Monsanto’s GMO corn. The corn’s DNA is equipped with a gene from soil bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) that produces the pesticide Bt-toxin. Monsanto claims the toxin is harmless to humans because it’s destroyed during digestion. It isn’t. Bt-toxin has shown up in the blood of pregnant women and their babies.
Another problem with GMO foods is they contain glyphosate residues. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup—the most common weed killer in the United States. If you are consuming foods containing wheat, sugar, corn, or soy, unless they are organic, they will contain glyphosate residues. Glyphosate is a hormone disrupter and has been clearly linked to infertility and miscarriage in cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry that are raised on GMO feed. Glyphosate has been linked to hormone-dependent cancers, even at extremely low levels. A 2013 study in Entropy concluded that glyphosate may be “the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies.” The study further concluded that glyphosate may “enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions [including gut bacteria] and induce disease.”
Glyphosate is a strong chelator, meaning it immobilizes critical micronutrients, making them unavailable to a plant that has been sprayed. As a result, the nutritional content of GMO plants is profoundly compromised, and the health of people who consume the plant is compromised as well. Essential micronutrients such as iron, manganese, and zinc can be reduced by as much as 80 to 90 percent in GMO plants.
Glyphosate can accumulate and persist in the soil for years, where it kills off beneficial microbes and stimulates disease-causing pathogens. It is even causing the emergence of superweeds that the glyphosate can’t kill. When applied to crops, glyphosate becomes systemic throughout the plant, so it cannot be washed off. Once you eat this crop, the glyphosate ends up in your gut, where it can decimate your beneficial bacteria. Just as glyphosate kills soil bacteria that are crucial for plant health and nutrient uptake, it also kills beneficial bacteria in your gut, which can wreak havoc with your health, as 80 percent of your immune system resides in your gut and is dependent on a healthy ratio of good and bad bacteria. Glyphosate damages digestive health—a seriously overlooked mechanism by which it damages human health overall.
Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require GMO foods to be labeled or tested for safety, the simplest way to avoid them is to buy whole, certified organic foods. By law, foods that are certified organic must never intentionally use GM organisms and must be produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers. Certified organic animals must be reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters, or other drugs. Unfortunately, even organic crops are now being unintentionally contaminated with GMOs, which is why organic soy and corn are not necessarily safe to eat. As a practical matter, all U.S.–produced corn and soy should no longer be considered foods fit for human consumption. Drastically reduce your exposure to GMO foods.
Genetic engineering is mad science, and it’s absolutely unnecessary. Safe organic farming methods allow us to grow sufficient food without poisoning our environment and our bodies.
Alcohol
Alcohol is not a food. It is a toxin. Alcohol is extremely toxic to virtually every organ system; it poisons and impairs the function of the brain, heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, gut, and pancreas. It depresses the central nervous system and impairs judgment and functioning, causing accidents and injuries. A 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health found that alcohol is to blame for one in every thirty cancer deaths in the United States. The connection was especially powerful with breast cancer, where 15 percent of those deaths are alcohol related, and 30 percent of these alcohol-related deaths were linked to drinking 1.5 or fewer drinks per day.
Dr. Judith Hall, a geneticist at the University of Washington, estimates that alcohol-related birth defects may be as high as one or two per 100 births. As few as two drinks per day has been associated with low birth weights and a higher rate of stillbirths. Even social drinking can be a problem, producing defects of varying severity such as hyperactivity and learning problems. In fact, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Since many women are not aware of their pregnancy for two months or more, and since the first trimester is a particularly critical time, women wishing to have children must be especially careful. Would-be fathers must also not drink alcohol. Alcohol can damage the quality and structure of sperm, potentially causing birth defects.
While alcohol is a toxin, the body can handle a small amount of it. For most people, an occasional glass of wine at dinner or a cocktail at a social event does not appear to be harmful.
Coffee
More than 80 percent of Americans drink coffee. While some studies show benefits from drinking coffee, drinking more than a small amount of it is a bad idea. A 2013 study in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings found that in men under the age of fifty-five drinking four or more cups per day increases the risk of premature death by 56 percent.
