“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.”
~ Thomas Edison
It is well known that America’s health has drastically turned to sh!t. We like to pride ourselves on a fantastic health-care system with state-of-the-art research facilities and renowned doctors. While all of this may be true, the fact remains that we rank as one of the sickest countries among the industrialized nations of the world. As a nation, we are on the cusp of an evolutionary health disaster. Something has got to change.
Today, 70 percent of deaths in this country are attributed to chronic diseases.1 These diseases were almost unheard of a mere one hundred years ago. The leading chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes used to be confined to an aging population, as evidenced by their definition as “degenerative” chronic diseases. Yet now we are seeing them in an increasing number of school-age children. This generation of children has the highest rate of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, attention deficit disorders, and autism. One in three children are obese, and this is the first generation of children who will have shorter life spans than their parents. Today, one in two Americans die from heart disease, one in eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and the chance of being diabetic in America is now one in three.2 Although we turn to technology to “fix” our health problems, we are no further ahead in our quest for wellness.
So where are we going wrong? It is really quite simple. We are heavily consuming the wrong foods. In the 1900s, Americans got 70 percent of their protein from plant-based foods. Today we get 70 percent of our protein from animal-based foods.3 Americans consume more meat per person than anywhere else in the world.
As meat and dairy prices have fallen, we have moved to gorging on animal products and processed foods while fruits, vegetables, and whole grains have been largely relegated to the sidelines. We have essentially switched a diet filled with fiber and nutrients and low in cholesterol to one high in saturated and trans fats and cholesterol and devoid of fiber. It is not surprising then that as our meat consumption has nearly doubled and our dairy consumption (particularly of cheese) has quadrupled since the 1950s, so too have our waistlines, health problems, and health-care costs. We have twice the obesity rate, twice the rate of diabetes, and three times the cancer rate than the rest of the world.4 Although we love to blame our genetics or look to the “history of disease” in our families, it’s time we look at our All-American recipes.
We Aren’t Meat-Eaters!
Most people can agree that factory-farmed meat is bad for our health. (If you don’t, we suggest you reread Chapters One and Four.) Laden with genetically modified organisms, toxins, chemical fillers, growth hormones, ractopamine, arsenic, and antibiotics, this meat is a recipe for health problems. This growing knowledge has spurred nationwide campaigns for “local,” “grass-fed,” and “organic” beef. While these are nice sentiments, the problem is that meat by its very nature is a disaster for our health. The added toxins are just the icing on the cake. The reality is that we were never meant to subsist on meat.
We are led to believe that eating meat and dairy are the building blocks for good health. We think we are doing right for our bodies by filling up on lots of animal protein and drinking cow’s milk. The Paleo Diet is the newest fad that professes we are designed to be meat-eaters. Really? Where did they get that idea? Although the Paleo Diet does rightly state that we need to eat more natural and less processed foods, the fact is that meat is actually not natural for humans to consume.
Our bodies are designed to live on plant-based foods. We are actively poisoning ourselves every time we eat animal products, whether they are 100 percent local and grass-fed or from Smithfield’s industrialized factory.
Why are meat and dairy so bad for us? In short, meat and dairy are pro-inflammatory—meaning they produce inflammation. Inflammation is the genesis of every chronic disease. Just like we strive to keep a balance between work and play, our bodies need to maintain an optimal pH balance (slightly alkaline) to be healthy. Meat and dairy are highly acidic and disrupt this balance, creating an ideal environment for disease to thrive. Cancer loves the acidic environment created by a meat and dairy diet. Every bite of meat and dairy is akin to a drop of poison that our bloodstreams carry throughout our bodies—affecting each and every system, from our respiratory, immune, and endocrine to our musculoskeletal. Additives from factory farms such as growth hormones and antibiotics are just added abuse.
Let’s examine some important anatomical differences between us and carnivores that place us firmly in the herbivore category. If we compare carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores, our anatomy most closely resembles that of plant-eating apes and chimpanzees. Firstly, we have blunt teeth, not fangs for ripping meat. Most carnivores are capable of swallowing ripped chunks of raw meat whole. If we tried to do the same, we would end up choking. Secondly, we have long digestive tracts, whereas carnivores have very short digestive tracts.5 When we eat meat, it putrefies in our digestive systems, leading to disease. With a short digestive tract, natural carnivores avoid meat putrefying in their colon and digestive tract.
Finally, we aren’t meant to function on protein, especially animal protein. Despite marketing myths, protein is not the most efficient or effective energy source. In fact, protein often tires us. Many of us have experienced a “food coma” after a heavily animal-protein meal. What are our bodies most efficiently designed to process? Carbohydrates. That’s right. Unlike carnivores, our stomachs produce amylase, an acid used to break down carbohydrates found in plants. Marketing has pitted carbohydrates as the enemy, but the truth is that our bodies thrive on glucose from carbs. This is the energy that fuels our brains. This does not mean we can eat cake all day. The type of carbohydrate is important. We need complex carbohydrates like whole grains for energy.
For over fifteen years, it has been well established in medical literature that just one meal high in animal fat, such as a typical American breakfast of sausage, scrambled eggs, and cheese, can damage our arteries.6 When our arteries become inflamed, they are less flexible and become stiff. It takes about four to six hours for our body to combat this inflammation. By that time, it is already time for lunch. When we continue to eat meat and dairy products, we flood our body with acid, creating an acid overload. It is a vicious cycle that keeps our bodies in a perpetual state of chronic, low-grade inflammation that sets the stage for disease, one meal at a time.
Today, doctors, not just in the United States but from around the world, are confirming that our compounding health-care problems and escalating health-care costs are primarily linked to our consumption of meat and dairy products. Study after study and physician after physician (who aren’t paid by the meat and dairy corporations) are showing that dairy and meat products are disease-producing. Four out of the ten leading causes of illness and death in the United States are linked to our meat and dairy-based diets. A mere three-ounce steak can increase our risk of dying by 13 percent!7 Researchers at both Harvard and Cornell University issued statements saying that the optimal amount of meat in our diets is zero!
Our high rates of chronic conditions stem from our decision to directly go against our plant-eating roots. We can think of our bodies as cars. We can fill our tanks with soda, and the car will run for a while, but eventually it will malfunction. Similarly, we can feed our bodies the wrong fuel, but eventually they will break down.
Let’s review three of the most common American afflictions: heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes, to see why we can ditch the pills for plants.
The American Diet Is a Heartbreaker
Too many of us think that heart disease is our fate. Popping cholesterol pills has become the new normal. In the United States alone, six hundred thousand people die each year from heart disease, and there are five hundred thousand new cases each year.8 The American Heart Association estimates that heart disease will cost the United States $818 billion dollars in health care per year by 2030.9 Our health-care system might not be able to keep up with this astronomical climb in disease. Consider this: almost all males over fifty-three and females over sixty-six who have grown up eating the traditional American diet are already suffering from some form of heart disease.10 An even bigger problem is doctors are now seeing hardening of the arteries, a disease called atherosclerosis that is a precursor to heart disease, in children as young as eleven.11 Most of us don’t even realize we have heart disease until we suffer a heart attack or stroke. More worrying is that most first heart attacks are often fatal. The real tragedy is that heart disease is completely preventable. This “household” name should not even exist.
Heart disease is really a misnomer, as the entire body, not just the heart, is affected. Know this: if you have clogged arteries anywhere, you probably have clogged arteries everywhere. For example, guys, having a problem getting it up? One of the first signs of heart disease in men is erectile dysfunction. As we travel south, our arteries get smaller, making the penal arteries the first to be affected. Although companies have created billion-dollar empires around this “soft” issue, pills are only temporary solutions to your sexual woes and won’t help your heart either. Want to fix your bedroom problems? Take a hard look at your “manly” meat-and-dairy diet.
In simplest terms, the cause of heart disease is plaque or fatty deposit buildup in the sixty thousand miles of veins and arteries throughout our body. Healthy arteries are lined with a smooth substance called endothelial tissue and are supposed to be strong and elastic. When we eat foods high in fat and cholesterol (i.e, meat, dairy, eggs, cheese, and butter), these endothelial cells become sticky and fatty deposits, or plaque, stick to our arteries and accumulate. This buildup of plaque is like the narrowing of a hose pipe. Eventually it slows blood flow and causes hypertension. A heart attack happens when this plaque buildup eventually ruptures and spills toxic contents into our bloodstream. In response, our platelets try to come to the rescue and fix the problem, but their help can actually deprive our heart muscles of vital oxygen, resulting in a heart attack or, in some cases, sudden death.
Let’s be crystal clear on the issue of cholesterol: excess cholesterol that forms plaque only comes from animal products. Plant-based foods do not have cholesterol. Researchers around the world have proof that eliminating animal protein from our diet can reverse and prevent heart disease. One landmark study—the Framingham Heart Study—demonstrated that lower cholesterol levels can protect a person from cardiovascular disease.12 Similarly, the renowned Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr.’s twelve-year study was one of the first to show the protective qualities of a plant-based diet.13 Of his eighteen subjects who followed this diet, none of them had cardiac events over the twelve years. Those that did not follow the diet continued to have cardiac events over the same time period. Not one drug, diet, or surgery has been able to replicate the same track record.
Thousands of Americans undergo risky bypass surgery, have stents placed, or live on cholesterol medication. For whatever illogical reason, simple solutions like dietary changes are considered more radical than having our chests cracked open. The bigger problem is that surgery and pills do not address the underlying cause of the disease. Think of your heart like a tire with a hole in it. We wouldn’t keep pumping air into the tire and driving on it in the hopes that it would magically fix itself. We know the tire would inevitably blow out, so logically we would change the tire. In this case, we can’t put a Band-Aid on heart disease with medicine; we have to fix the underlying cause, which is where the plaque is coming from in the first place.
For those skeptics out there that think we can’t “solve” heart disease through diet, let’s look at what would happen if we actually cut back on animal protein. Fortunately, one country decided to try this experiment. In the 1970s, Finland’s mortality rate from heart disease was the highest in the world (Sound familiar to America’s current heart disease epidemic?). In an effort to reduce heart disease, Finland’s government decided to cut back on all animal products, including meat, eggs, and dairy products. To gain support, the government implemented nationwide programs that reduced intake of saturated fat from cheese, chicken, cakes, and pork. They even assisted in switching dairy farmers to berry farmers. The result? There was an 80 percent drop in heart-disease deaths, and cardiovascular and cancer mortality was cut in half.14 This drastic change was from just reducing animal-product intake, not completely eliminating it. Impressive? We think so too. Heart disease doesn’t run in our families but rather in our family recipes. The mounting evidence is clear. We have the answer. It’s our choice between pills or plants. We will opt for the plants, please.
The Dirty “C” Word
An increasing number of families are devastated by cancer, especially hormone-related cancers such as breast and prostate cancer, each year. In the United States alone, there are 146,000 new breast cancer cases and forty-six thousand deaths from breast cancer each year.15 In the past this was something that only happened to postmenopausal women. Today it is now afflicting women in their early twenties and thirties.
Put simply, cancer is a faulty replication of our genes that mutates quickly if fertilized by carcinogens and unregulated. While genes do play a role in cancer development, what most people do not know is that diet can control our genes and essentially turn cancer on or off. All of us have cancer cells present in our bodies. Whether or not the cancer is expressed is determined, in many cases, by environmental and lifestyle factors such as diet. In fact, studies show that our genes play a very small part in our risk factor for cancer development. Only about 2 to 3 percent of all cancers are purely genetic. This means our chance of having cancer is primarily due to lifestyle and food choices. Cancer can be slow to manifest, meaning our childhood eating habits can set the stage for adult cancer.
Animal protein is one of cancer’s best friends. Animal protein, such as that found in meat, dairy, and eggs “changes our hormone levels, modifies vital enzyme activities, causes inflammation and cell proliferation and creates an acidic atmosphere in the body—all of which create an ideal environment for cancer to thrive.”16 Friends, our current diet is cancer-causing. Simply put, the more animal products we eat, the higher the probability we have of getting cancer.
The World Cancer Research Fund recently reviewed over seven thousand studies and declared processed meats dangerous for human consumption, as they can cause cancer.17 These include All-American favorites such as bacon, sausage, sandwich meats, and pepperoni. Why are these meats in particular cancer causing? Sodium nitrate used to give hot dogs that reddish color and MSG added to give a savory flavor to otherwise dead meat are known carcinogens or cancer promoters. Most Americas consume these foods every single day. Think one hot dog won’t hurt you? Think again. Studies find that fifty grams of processed meat, the equivalent of one hot dog per day, increases the risk of colon cancer by 21 percent!18 We can cut our risk of cancer by as much as 40 percent by eliminating meat and animal products from our diet.19 According to Harvard University studies, our risk of colon cancer drops by two-thirds if we stop eating meat and dairy products.20 Who knew diet could be so powerful?
Studies are also finding that it is not just eating meat that is cancer-causing. Cooking it produces carcinogens as well. On every menu or USDA guideline, we are constantly reminded that undercooked meats could be harmful and cause foodborne illnesses. However, it’s quite a catch-22, because cooking meat to the high temperatures required produces heterocyclic amines, or HCAs, which are known carcinogens. Cooking, grilling, frying, and oven broiling beef, pork, chicken, and fish even at normal temperatures produces these harmful mutagens. In particular, grilled chicken, which is touted as the “healthier white meat,” has been found to contain some of the highest concentrations of HCAs.21 Clearly, from cooking to eating meat, participating in this American habit is a significant cancer risk that we should rethink.
In particular, Dr. T. Colin Campbell has found that the most relevant chemical carcinogen identified is casein, the animal protein in cow’s milk. Casein makes up 87 percent of dairy products. Every time we reach for a glass of milk, slice of cheese, or a cottage-cheese breakfast, we are instigating cancer growth. This is because dairy is not only acidic but also contains the natural growth hormones’ insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1, that stimulate growth and consequently cancer proliferation. For example, studies have found that when IGF-1 is dripped onto human breast cancer cells, the mutated cells grow uncontrollably.22
The silver lining is that removing meat and dairy from our diets protects us from cancer. The Pritikin Research Foundation studied the blood from participants on different types of diets and found that those who consumed a plant-based diet in comparison to the typical meat and dairy-based SAD (Standard American Diet) had blood that was less hospitable to cancer.23 Blood from completely plant-based participants fought prostate cancer eight times better than those consuming meat and dairy products. Even better, in a mere two weeks a vegan diet was able to slow down and in some cases stop the progression of breast-cancer growth! Eating a plant-based diet can change about five hundred genes, “turning on genes that prevent disease and turning off genes that cause breast cancer, heart disease, prostate cancer, and other illnesses.”24 Ominously, the World Health Organization forecasted that the cancer rate will reach as high as twenty-two million cases a year over the next two decades.25 Prevention rather than treatment is our best option to combat these numbers. It looks like we need to start eating a plant-based diet and run for the cure with banners promoting the power of plant nutrition.
Don’t Blame the Sugar
Type 2 diabetes is becoming a national epidemic, especially among children. Since World War II, the rate of diabetes has increased by 700 percent, doubling almost every year for the past fifteen years since 1975.26 The chance of a newborn baby becoming diabetic later in life is now one in every three. In the United States, diabetes alone cost $245 billion dollars in 2012, a 41 percent increase since 2007.27
Diabetes is a serious problem. It is the leading cause of blindness in the United States and is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Other problems include nerve damage, cognitive decline, kidney failure, and amputations. The good news is that we can avoid losing our eyesight and save our kidneys by cutting the crap out of our diet.
Type 2 diabetes comprises 90 to 95 percent of diabetic cases in the United States.28 Since type 2 diabetes is directly related to obesity, it means our current diabetic epidemic is lifestyle related. In fact, cross-cultural studies can depict a diabetes map of the world. Those places that more closely follow America’s blind lead on diet have the highest rates of type 2 diabetes. America, we are self-inflicting this disease. This means we can stop it.
There has been a national outcry about the weight of the nation’s citizens, especially as it relates to diabetes and childhood obesity. In school nurse’s offices around the country, you can find insulin needles in every trash can as type 2 diabetes rates soar among children. Most of the efforts to address childhood obesity, such as the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” program, Katie Couric’s movie Fed Up, and New York’s move to ban supersized soda drinks, are well intentioned, but missing the larger picture. If anything, these efforts reiterate the lack of information surrounding the root of our health-care problems.
We think of diabetes as strictly a sugar problem. While diabetes is caused by elevated sugar levels in the bloodstream, the underlying cause is fat, hence its relationship to weight. In simplest terms, fat blocks our insulin receptors in the muscles, which pushes glucose into our bloodstreams and leads to an excess of sugar.29
Most medical and dietary guidelines for diabetics strictly focus on limiting carbohydrates, fruits, and sweets. The problem is that they continue to allow people to eat excessive amounts of animal protein and foods high in fat, which only serves to promote, rather than control, diabetes. No offense to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), but its guidelines have yet to reverse diabetes in those who follow it nor does it incorporate the scientific knowledge we know today. Continuing to eat chicken and turkey high in cholesterol will not help regulate your blood-sugar levels. Diabetes does not have to be a life sentence. Yet most people are told that they have to spend the rest of their lives controlling or managing their diabetes. Seems like a lot of work to us. Luckily, there is a better way.
By reducing fat intake, we can unclog insulin receptors and allow insulin to function normally again. A landmark study in 2006 found that those eating a low-fat, plant-based diet were better able to control diabetes and, in many cases, reverse their diabetes than those following the ADA guidelines.30
No More White Lies
What about dairy? Isn’t that natural at least? Every mammal has evolved to use the milk from its own mother to grow. Yet humans are the only species that chooses to drink the milk of another species. Nature never intended for us to continue drinking milk after weaning. This is why lactose intolerance is so pervasive around the world. After weaning, we naturally lose the enzyme that breaks down lactase in our bodies. Despite what we have been led to believe, cow’s milk was not part of our ancestors’ diet, and especially not in the amounts we consume today. We have been drinking milk only for the past six thousand years, which in evolutionary terms is the blink of an eye. Our bodies are not designed to consume cow’s milk. According to Harvard University studies headed by researcher Walter Willet, “Humans have no nutritional requirement for animal milk, an evolutionarily recent addition to the diet.”31
Of all foods, most people think that dairy is a perfect food for our health. Based on this assumption, Americans consume massive amounts of cheese, yogurt, milk, and other dairy products thinking that we are providing our bodies with a superfood. We have to hand it to the dairy companies when it comes to marketing. Dairy is a wonderful growth mechanism and the perfect food for baby cows. But dairy is the most imperfect food for human health, and it is linked to a host of health problems, including but not limited to: acne, arthritis, breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, heart disease, diabetes, autism, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.32
That’s right, dairy actually doesn’t build strong bones. If dairy did promote strong bones, then the United States wouldn’t have such high rates of osteoporosis and brittle bones as it currently does. We know this information goes against everything the dairy industry has been proclaiming for years, but “Got Milk?” doesn’t translate to “Got Strong Bones?” In fact, our obsession with calcium from dairy products actually weakens our bones and damages our joints. A more apt advertisement for the best sources of calcium would be “Got Kale?” or “Got Broccoli?” as these foods are superior to dairy products. Dairy products rich in saturated fat, hormones, toxins, industrial pollutants, and both natural and artificial growth hormones might just be one of the most contaminated and toxic foods that we could eat (For more on what’s hiding behind dairy’s angelic façade, read chapter six.).
A Weighty Problem
Eating healthy has become synonymous with lean-meat meals, the latest workout regimes, such as P90X and CrossFit, and calorie counting. Yet with every new fitness regime, diet pill, or diet fad such as Atkins, South Beach, or Weight Watchers, our waistlines have collectively continued to rise. Two in every three Americans are overweight and one in three Americans are obese. Just fifty years ago, only one in eight Americans were obese. If we were to look at the rise in obesity next to the rise in factory farms, the trends would mirror each other—an obvious relationship that our industries and government choose to overlook for the sake of promoting animal foods. Instead, marketing campaigns focus on sugary drinks and exercise. We use the gym as a place to “work off” our meals instead of keeping our bodies fit. Exercise is not the problem, collectively. Our increasing waistlines are directly linked to our heavy consumption of foods high in saturated fat and cholesterol, primarily from animal-based and processed foods.
Let’s take grilled chicken, the most advertised lean meat for “healthy” eating, as an example. According to recent data in Europe from the EPIC study, one of the most comprehensive studies on nutrition, grilled chicken is not correlated with weight loss, but rather weight gain. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the study found that weight loss was most associated with the decrease of meat consumption. Since obesity is the gateway to chronic disease, it is critical that we keep our weight in check. This is second nature on a plant-based diet, as it is low calorie and low fat. We can eat as much delicious food as we want and not have to count calories. Isn’t this the ideal diet we have been waiting for all along?
The American Ideal is SAD
For some reason, society has correlated eating meat and dairy as a sign of wealth. American culture that prominently features the Standard American Diet of excessive meat and dairy meals is an ideal that most citizens of other countries desire to replicate. When populations that previously had lesser financial means come into money, the first thing they do is change their diets to mirror the American one. Flattering? Why yes. Healthy? Far from it. Within a generation, these populations get their wish: they mirror the American diet and the health problems that go along with it.
For example, in the 1950s, the Marshall Islands were awarded a substantial sum of money from the United States after it tested a nuclear device there. The citizens went on shopping sprees and completely changed their previously plant-based diets to meats, cheeses, and fish. Until the 1950s, diabetes had been relatively unheard of in the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands now have some of the highest diabetes rates in the world.
Our high rate of disease is a homegrown problem that stems directly from our fast-food, high-meat, and processed-food diet. Studies on immigrants from China and Japan, raised on diets mainly consisting of rice and vegetables, show that within a generation of moving to the United States and adopting our SAD diet, those immigrants experience the same rates of prostate cancer! It’s hard to face these facts, but we can’t deny the science.
If America is one of the sickest countries, then what does one of the healthiest countries look like? The Blue Zones Project sought to answer this question. Researchers looked at societies that had the highest longevity around the world and found that those who lived the longest, such as the Okinawans in Japan and the Seventh-Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California, largely ate an almost completely plant-based diet.33 The question then is: is a plant-based diet really the healthiest or are there other cultural factors at play? Fortunately, there are rebels in every group, and the Seventh-Day Adventists have provided the ideal environment to actually test, as accurately as possible, how diet affects disease. The findings are astounding—those who stuck to the rule and avoided meat and dairy were the healthiest.34 The rebels who ate more fish, eggs, meat, and dairy had higher rates of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
Ditch the Junk Science
Since the 1970s, the government has been attuned to the fact that eating animals is a disaster for our health. As we steadily became overweight and saw an increase in heart disease, President Nixon organized the Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, led by Senator George McGovern, which researched three questions: Why are we getting sick? Why are we getting fatter? Why is heart disease increasing?35 The committee’s conclusion was that eating animals is bad for our health. So why has this information not been disseminated in society? Good question. When the committee came out with this recommendation, the meat and dairy industries had a field day and lobbied Congress. Along with voting McGovern out of office, the industry didn’t just stop Congress from issuing a statement concluding that our meat and dairy diets were the culprits of our rising rates of disease; they also passed food libel laws that made it illegal to say certain foods are bad for our health. We aren’t kidding. This happened. These food libel laws are still in effect today in one-fourth of the states.36
The meat and dairy industries have responded in full force to allegations against the harmful effects of their products. The animal-food industry even created the “Meat Myth Crushers” website to address the growing scientific literature that implicates animal foods as the primary culprits in our growing health crisis.37 One of the main issues they push to sell their product and discredit health claims is that we need animal protein. Ounce for ounce, we can get more protein (without side effects) from roasted pumpkin seeds.
The industry claims that the site seeks to remedy the problem that most Americans get their information about food from the news, media, books, and movies. According to the meat and dairy industries, these somehow aren’t credible sources. We are interested in learning how their site is apparently more credible and represents no conflict of interest.
The USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans is a prime example of industry sabotaging our health. Nine of the thirteen committee members issuing the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans all had ties to the food industry.38 These guidelines are the foundation for the USDA’s new MyPlate food “pyramid” that sets the federal nutritional standards and programs. Installing people on boards that have conflicts of interest is an American pastime for the animal-food industry. Current USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has ties to Monsanto. Gregory Miller, the president of the Dairy Research Institute, also serves as the Committee Chair for the American Society for Nutrition.39 Seems a little biased, doesn’t it?
This is why meat and dairy continues to be featured prominently on the USDA food pyramids. However, these food pyramids, ingrained into us since grade school, were designed as marketing schemes straight from the Dairy and Meat Councils. In fact, the studies promoting meat and dairy are paid for by the corporations themselves. Statistically, the research funded by an industry is four times more likely to reach a conclusion supporting that financial backer. Knowing that fact, consider this: the dairy council spends $58 million a year on marketing and research.40 That is a lot of studies showing the “benefits” of dairy.
Today other food pyramids designed by doctors put meat and dairy as the lowest priority on our plates or completely eliminate them. In fact, Harvard researchers do not endorse the USDA’s guidelines at all. They call out these guidelines as fundamentally flawed and rather “intense lobbying efforts from a variety of food industries.”41 We tend to side with Harvard on this one.
The various meat and dairy councils and associations have a particularly close relationship with the very institutions we turn to for nutritional guidelines. Corporate sponsors of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) include the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Dairy Council. As the nation’s health spirals downward, one would expect leadership from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition members, boasting over seventy thousand members. Yet this organization that should be promoting our health is completely infiltrated by the very industries it seeks to regulate. For example, at the 2012 Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, about 23 percent of the speakers had undisclosed ties to food industries.42 One of the most prominent sponsors is Coca-Cola, which oversees educational programming for the Academy. What was their take-home message? Teaching kids that sugar is not unhealthy and aspartame, a known carcinogen that also happens to be in some of their products, is perfectly safe. Clearly this is sound (and unbiased), nutritional advice for our nation’s children.
For over a decade, the Academy has enjoyed continued financial support from food giants such as ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Nestle, and Kellogg’s, as well as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.43 In particular, the Dairy Council is a premier partner and supporter. The “consume more dairy” message remains continuous year in and year out at the expo. Yet humans’ zero necessity for dairy is completely at odds with this propaganda. The Academy is supposedly a prestigious organization that holds merit and weight on scientific publications about our food sources. As the Academy has been hijacked by corporate interests promoting unhealthy food at odds with science, so has its credibility.
It’s not our fault that we have been eating wrong. It’s also not our doctors’ fault either. Doctors receive little to no education in medical school on the connection between diet and disease. Think about this: at one time, doctors endorsed smoking cigarettes. They recommended smoking to their patients to open their lungs and to improve overall health. Today this advice seems ridiculous. So why did the doctors promote it? First, there was a lack of information, and second, some doctors were paid by the tobacco corporations to promote their brand products.
The exact same phenomenon is happening with meat and dairy. Big pharma pays some doctors to keep their patients popping pills, and most doctors know very little about nutrition. Additionally, the USDA’s mixed messages on what to consume leave consumers and, sadly, even our physicians wondering which message is right. For instance, the USDA website’s “key message to consumers” is to switch to fat-free or low-fat milk.44 Yet when milk is stripped of the fat, all that is left is sugar and the cancer-causing casein protein.
Clearly, this isn’t healthy. More worrisome is that the USDA’s website lists under health benefits of dairy possible prevention of osteoporosis and definite promotion of bone health. The site also claims that “intake of dairy products is also associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, and with lower blood pressure in adults.”45 Really? These recommendations in no way match the plethora of scientific research that states the opposite. Fortunately, more and more doctors are waking up to the fallacy behind eating meat and dairy. Many now know that plant food, loaded with antioxidants and phytonutrients, is our best prescription for good health.
We are approaching an age where we have to take an active role in our health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fifteen of the sixteen leading causes of disease are lifestyle related.46 Friends, this is why our health-care system is broken. Our health is being bought by corporate interests. We can’t afford to keep traveling down this path of misinformation and poor diets. For too long we have fallen prey to marketing schemes that confuse us and don’t let us think for ourselves. We are smarter than this.
These largely preventable chronic diseases are consuming 75 percent of our national health-care budget.47 Consuming animal foods generates over $600 billion in health-care costs every two years. Consider this: the notorious tobacco industry only generated $400 billion in health-care costs over the course of five decades.48 We have admonished the tobacco industry and forced them to pay for their costs on our health. Why aren’t we doing the same with the animal-food industry?
We are putting dead, rotting, obese (and more likely than not, sick) animals into our mouths. How is that going to help us? The reason we feel like crap is because we are eating it! We aren’t supposed to live on prescriptions. Remember, what is on your plate is more powerful than anything at the bottom of a pill bottle. We have the answers to our health problems. It is time we make smart investments, and our bodies are our greatest investment. The power to change this paradigm rests on the end of our forks.
Know your Sh!t Solutions
1) Stop eating crap and you will stop feeling like crap! Eliminate meat and dairy from your diet as much as possible. Keep in mind that our bodies cannot differentiate between free-range and factory-farmed meat. Even though factory farmed meat has added harmful toxins, any type of meat damages our bodies when you eat it. Go meatless every Monday and completely meat free by taking out meat from your diet one meal at a time.
2) Eat more fruits, veggies, grains, and legumes. Eating a plant-based diet does not mean living on salads. Shake up your meals and try new recipes.
3) Get Informed. Read 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart by Dr. Neal Barnard, The China Study by Dr. Colin T. Campbell, and Rethink Food: 100+ Doctors Can’t Be Wrong by yours truly! We have over one hundred doctors from around the world all finding the same answer—the key to a disease-free, healthy life is a whole-food, plant-based diet.