Food: Healing Body, Mind, Spirit Part One
The evils of the Western diet
I reversed heart disease with a modified diet, meditation, and exercise and became obsessed in following the latest discoveries in 
food and nutrition science. As a scientist and biotechnology executive I was intimately involved in the food industry for over a decade and visited agricultural sites in over a dozen countries on four continents. Food certainly plays a role in healing body, mind, and spirit and this series will address misconceptions concerning food and nutrition and their role in wellness, disease, mental acuity, and spirit. Our environment and economy is damaged by Western food. Your comments on experiences, questions, and suggested topics will help determine the content of future posts in this series.
The big picture
Food has a giant impact on the environment and modern agriculture has harmed the environment. The economic impact of food and agriculture is enormous. The marketing of new food products is a $30 billion dollars business. Diet-related diseases are killing the majority of us. To combat this onslaught of aliments we are spending over $240 billion dollars a year in health care costs. Health insurance and who pays for it is a leading economic issue on the road to the White House .
Currently, I am involved in companies whose quest is the discovery of novel treatments for disease. Yet, in my opinion, convincing the public to modify their diet and lifestyle would surpass the next 20 major discoveries of drug companies as to impact on survival and quality of life!
Michael Pollan’s latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, is an easy and compelling read. Like a trial lawyer explaining the evils of the Western diet to a lay jury, his well referenced book should convince anyone serious about their health to examine their diet. Pollan’s message is simple: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Why? What are the scientific facts? This series is focused on explaining food and nutrition science as we know it today.
Seemingly endless misconceptions about food, nutrition, and health
I find it incredible that with the tens of thousands books published each year on cooking, food, diet, and nutrition that so many myths persists with the public. Is the Atkins diet really healthy? Does genetics play a role in choosing an optimum diet? Can we enjoy eating and still maintain ideal weight and optimum health? If we have an illness or a genetic predisposition for disease can we use diet for recovery or prevention? In my opinion, all the answers to the questions above are yes—except for the first question.
Here are just some of the false gospels:
Fat is fat. Carbohydrates are bad. We simply need to balance the consumption of calories from carbohydrates, fats, and protein for an optimum diet. A healthy diet is boring. Vegetarians generally don’t consume processed foods. Vitamins supplements are worthless. Modern agriculture efficiently produces healthier foods than a century ago. Food animals today are more nutritious than a century ago. In general, our health problems are caused by too many calories not the particular foods we consume.
These are but a few of the subjects I will address in the series. What items do you want to add?
Photographer: Thomas Northcut Getty image
October 13th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
The Lifestyles Group (LSG) is dedicated to the development of distinctive products for the mind, body and spirit. Excess
October 13th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
If assuming ordinary present-day food is “worse” than the so-called “organic” food.
How much better are they? If produce is grown in soil that’s had decades of man-made chemicals/fertilizers applied, how long does it take to “purify” that soil?
The same with “organic” meat. Besides having “hormones”? to produce heftier animals, aren’t they also fed from this soil?
Also, the same questions for the so-called “natural” vitamins. How can they be “natural”
if produced in pill, tablet, capsule form?
And doesn’t every body use or not use in entirely individual quantities?
October 14th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
[...] Original post by Best Health and Biofeedback Solutions [...]
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
More than 20 years ago, I reversed a very serious illness by changing my diet and eliminating carbs. It took me 6 more years before I found out that I had an asymptomatic form of celiac disease. I understand how powerful making correct food choices can be. Surely you have come across the theory of Old World foods versus New World foods. I feel comfortable with that theory, that we need to eat the foods that we evolved eating. For example, beans. Beans have a 45 -50 day growth cycle, so they can be sown successively over the summer. Start your crop in April and you can begin to harvest in late June. Beans can be dried. With multiple sowings, you can get a crop all summer. With wheat, I think you can get a crop maybe twice a year. If you look at the Mediterranean diet and a French country diet, you see they incorporate a lot of beans into their cooking. Why is this important? Beans are a rich source of lysine. I am suggesting that Western man evolved on a more lysine - rich diet. (Lysine is one of the essential amino acids). Comparing wheat to beans, wheat is relatively low in lysine. My thought is that the Western diet, with its emphasis on grains, causes a deficiency in lysine. Your thoughts?
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:41 am
What is really a major concern is the genetically altered foods created by Monsanto. It’s proven to have devastating affects on lab animals. The Blackfield microscope (based on a book “How to cure cancer in 21 days” - sorry I can’t remember the author) used by the alternative medical doctors who treats the cause of their patient’s illness rather than treating the symptoms, found mold in the blood they believe was caused by genetically altered grapes and watermelon. Never mind the rest of their genetically altered foods. This is definitely what the mainstream medical & pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to know about. This is something the majority of people need to know about. At least the organic foods are not grown from Monsanto’s seeds. If so, then we all need to pray because we won’t know how it will affect us until years down the road.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Let’s talk about genetically altered seeds from the perspective of the farmer. I have friends in the business.
The American consumer wants food that is cheap, blemish - free, and grown without chemicals.
Here’s the farmer’s dilemma. He has to pay taxes on his land. He has to achieve a threshold of productivity and show it on his taxes, or the state may decide he’s not a serious farmer, and reduce the agriculture exemption, which means he would pay the same tax rate as a residence… when you have acres of land, that alone could be crippling. That’s how it is in my state.
Then you have the cost of labor. Just like any other business, you need to maximize your gain while keeping your costs low. That means you can’t have guys who talk on their cell phones when they should be picking tomatoes or cutting asparagus. This is why migrant labor (which the average American thinks should be illegal) is preferred. Migrant workers have the work ethic down. They work hard and fast, to their credit. They get the job done. I live in a rural county in NY. There was a big flap last spring about letting these guys get driver’s licenses… but how, in a rural county, do you expect them to get to work and feed you? Another aspect of it was accountability and insurability in the event of an accident. This raised such a furor last spring that the governor backed off.
So, it’s difficult to get good, reliable, cost - effective labor. So the pressure is on the farmer to mechanize as much as he can. We have tractors, but they run on diesel fuel. Luckily, farmers can buy diesel at lower prices than you pay at the pump, but it’s not cheap, either. Believe it or not, fertilizer is an oil by-product, and with the rising cost of oil, the cost of fertilizer rose also. Sprays. A gallon of spray can cost over $300.00. The farmers I know grow grapes under contract. They must keep to a spray schedule. If they don’t, the crop isn’t accepted. One class of sprays is for fungicides. This is to prevent types of mildew that will weaken and kill the crop. The farmer is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t spray. If this is your livelihood, and it means you are going lose the crop and lose the farm if you can’t pay the taxes, what would you do? So every time it rains, you go out on the diesel - burning tractor, and you re-apply the spray. Mostly, farmers use fungicides.
But here’s another example: You all like your sweet corn, right? But if you are buying your corn, you don’t want a cob with worm damage, right? That’s another spray that needs to be applied regularly, or the whole field gets infested. People today don’t get how to use a knife to cut out the damaged portion. They strip the ear and if they don’t like it, they toss it aside. That ear of corn becomes unsaleable, because who wants to buy an ear of corn that’s been rejected. (We have a produce stand, and I’ve actually asked people why they strip the corn). Through a little worm into the mix and some folks positively freak out. Like I said, they want the produce cheap, perfect and organic. Yet that spray that kills the cornworm contains atrazine, which can get into the water table. Out in the corn growing regions you can be drinking a by-product of corn spray.
Back to Montsanto. It is a big seed producer. Consider it the premier seed source for North America. The farmer may be buying seed from a commercial supplier like Harris Seed, but Harris may be getting the seed from Montsanto.
I was a long - time subscriber to Organic Gardening, especially during the early 90’s, when the editor was really proactive on the Monsanto “Round - up ready” GMO seeds. And if you’ve read this far, I hope you realize that I can’t argue for or against, I can just tell you how the farmer gets squeezed. A lot of this stuff gets sold without being identified as GMO. it might be called “enhanced” or “resistant to (plug in your problem). I remember when Montsanto got a black eye when it went to court against Mexican peasant farmers who saved their corn seed and replanted the next year. It could even be native corn, but because it was planted next to a field of GMO corn, it picked up the genetic marker through pollination through the wind. I won’t defend Montsanto. But they are the only game in town for the farmer to buy seed, and they are doing the “better living through chemistry” thing, the farmer’s choices are limited. So I hope people gain an understanding that this is not a black and white issue. For the farmer, it’s gray. You might want to consider volunteering to hand - weed 40 acres of tomatoes. or be willing to buy fruit that is small and somewhat blemished, or god forbid, corn with worms or lower crop yields (more expensive for the consumer). If you’re willing to do with less than perfect, it’s cheaper for the farmer. Then, maybe, the farmers wouldn’t have a need for what Montsanto is selling. Just a thought.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
What is really a major concern are the genetically altered foods created by Monsanto. It’s proven to have devastating affects on lab animals. The Blackfield microscope (based on a book “How to cure cancer in 21 days”) used by the alternative medical doctors who treats the cause of their patient’s illness rather than the symptoms, show mold in the blood of their cancer patients. They believe this is due to genetically altered grapes and watermelon. They won’t know what the rest of Monsanto genetically altered foods will cause. Only time will tell. This is what our government, the mainstream medical profession & Monsanto don’t want us to know. This is something the majority of people need to know. At least the organic foods are not grown from Monsanto’s seeds. If this is not the case, then we all need to pray because we won’t know how it will affect us until years down the road.
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I believe that the government is deliberately forcing the farmers to buy from Monsanto knowing full well what consuming their products will cause. They did this with Aspartame, Monosodium Glutamate and Fluroide. It’s obvious that the FDA is under the control of the government. It makes you think that we’re only here to be the sacrificial lamb on the altar as guinea pigs for all their experiments. Heaven knows. Bush passed a bill back in 2005 saying regardless of what these products can cause, we’re responsible for what we put into our bodies. Therefore we cannot make any of the manufacturer responsible. This tell me Bush is in on it too. Who knows how many levels are corrupted and how many are lining their pockets. I guess big bucks can get you want you want in the end despite all the warnings and history of horrific side effects in many of citizens.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
[...] First, we need a strategy to attack the principle cause of death and illness in the US—the Western…We need to have a multi-prong approach to get the highest risk groups to modify their ideas about food. The general public, scientists, health care providers, insurance companies, as well as all those industries involved in the food chain need to have the impetus for such change. [...]
November 18th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Prior to the middle of the 19th century, European peasants tended to stay in the vicinity of their ancestral villages. They ate local food. Cabbage, root vegetables, beans and grains. This is what their bodies adapted to and thrived on. The nutrients from these foods are what our bodies evolved with. Cabbage keeps well over the winter, and it is an excellent source of Vitamin C. Dried beans are a great source of carbs and fiber. The Catholic practice of abstaining from meat and dairy during Lent might have evolved from farming practices. Surely you wouldn’t want to kill off your herd when the hens start laying, the sheep/goats/cow start birthing. A farmer would need to manage his resources. So most meals would have to come from vegetative sources, maybe with some fish from the local river occasionally added. I do think that there is something to the discussion about Old World foods and New World foods.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
While not a big fan of cabbage myself, I have to concede that during long winter months, cabbage probably prevented a lot of Northern European peasants from suffering from scurvy. It is rich in vitamins C and K. K is a very interesting vitamin, we’ll talk about it later. When I browse the net, I’m just as likely to read up on nutritional stuff as anything else. We truly are what we eat. I once did a whole study of lysine and all its functions in our bodies. Lysine is an essential amino acid, it’s an amino acid that the body can’t be synthesized. I personally think that a deficiency of lysine plays a significant part in course of type II diabetes, but the big chunk today is Linus Pauling and his approach to reversing cardiovascular disease. In a nutshell, Pauling explained cardiovascular disease as a form of scurvy. (That’s the nod to cabbage). His theory was that the plaque that is seen in CVD is a physiological response to a connective tissue disorder specific to arteries. His remedy, Vitamin C, proline and lysine, is the formula for making collagen. Connective tissue. Over the years, I’ve read a few discussions about Pauling’s theory. I thought this discussion was as good as any:
http://www.vrp.com/articles.aspx?ProdID=art798&zTYPE=2
Other sites I’ve read say that this approach is too simplistic and there are other factors to consider in CVD. I think the easy way to start to prove/disprove this would be a database of say, 1,000 people with CVD. How many of them have collagen disorders? We could include defects of the cornea, because the cornea of the eye has layers of collagen. Perhaps the health of the cornea is a predictor of the health of the connective tissue.
December 5th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I’ve been researching on Monoatomic for Agriculture. Monoatomic elements have shown to be a positive force in our well-being, cure for many ailments and currently now used in agriculture. When used, whatever crops grown, it’s been shown to grow your crops in shorter time, yield larger crops, can survive longer in draught conditions and contain more nutrients than typically found in your fruits & vegetables. I believe that it can also correct the soil, same for what it does for your body, and eventually bring back what nature intended. I’m excited to start planting my own foods to see if what I’ve read and research about this product is true or not. If so, we may have at least one course of action to reverse what Monsanto have effectively set all the farmers back. I would so look forward to companies like Monsanto going out of business. Some of the stories heard from third world farmers are simply terrifying. It’s like selling your soul to the De….