Eggs, health, and animal rights—strange bedfellows indeed

Learn all about the new “corporatized advocacy and industry co-option.”

Eggs are big business in the western world and those parties in that business want to keep it that way.

Not only are animal foods bad for our health, they’re also equally as bad for the health of the planet. And up until recently, the primary opponents to the huge animal foods business has been the animal rights advocacy groups. Sadly that is beginning to change. Not only sad, it’s downright scary. Take a few minutes to learn what is happening.

First, the latest health news about eggs. From a CBS News report, (See link below):

A researcher at Western University in London said he’s found more evidence pointing to the harmful effects of egg yolks. He claims the cholesterol found in the yolk is almost as dangerous as smoking.

Dr. David Spence says Canadians are being duped by what he calls “propaganda” from the egg industry. His most recent study of more than 1,200 people found egg consumption accelerates atherosclerosis or plaque build up on arteries.

Congress rounds out the group of “strange bedfellows” bent on preserving our deadly animal foods business.

That’s the bad news. Are you ready for more bad news. Just last week, my friend Philip Wollen in Australia made me aware of a scary development involving those animal rights groups that have always fought for the farm animals—and challenged the food industry. It is called “corporatized advocacy and industry co-option.” From the second article listed below:

It would seem that systematic engagement in conflict of interest is no longer viewed as a betrayal of public trust, but rather, as the secret to success in the world of corporatized advocacy…

…This disturbing intermingling of affairs among seemingly adversarial players does not end there. Mr. Mackey also sits on theBoard of Directors of Farm Forward, a non-profit entity that serves to promote “humane” animal agriculture. Bruce Friedrich, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives for Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s largest farm animal rescue organization, was also sitting on the Farm Forward board last June when the group directed $151,000 toward expanding the “humane” turkey farm operation of a fellow Farm Forward board member, Frank Reese.

It’s hard to imagine how there could be any more conflicts of interest folded into this one transaction. But there are. Add to the equation that the ASPCA, yet another wealthy corporate animal charity that solicits donations for the purpose of helping animals, was the source of the funds for this grant. And where will the pricey flesh that comes from turkeys killed on Frank Reese’s farm end up? In the meat case at Whole Foods Market. (Interestingly, Farm Sanctuary VP Bruce Friedrich’s name was removed from the list of board members on the Farm Forward web site following public complaints by animal advocates that his participation represented a conflict of interest.

Is it any wonder that animal activists, much less the general public, can hardly tell the difference between animal advocacy “leaders” and their counterparts in the animal exploitation industry?

Let’s not forget our Congress. Now the animal rights people, the egg producers and our lawmakers are climbing in bed together so that we may all be able to enjoy eating cholesterol until we eat our species into extinction. This 3-minute video is downright scary:

The Bottom Line. Not only is our overall “system” that controls our unhealthy food supply not going away—it is getting progressively stronger. As more and more former enemies join forces to maintain the status quo, our only chance is a grassroots revolution that will choose to eat whole plants—in the interest of promoting health hope and harmony on planet Earth. 

Forget about writing your congressman—it’s way too late for that. Your best bet is to educate yourself, take action, and then tell everyone you know about what you’re doing and why.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

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Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Food Policy | 4 Comments

Now that the Augusta National Club has admitted two women…

Maybe it’s a signal to us that almost anything can happen.

Darla Moore and Condoleezza Rice, the first two female members in the history of the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club.

Anything? Who knows, maybe someday the USDA and our premiere schools of nutrition will base our dietary guidelines on the health of the people—instead of the “food system” and all of its money.

Augusta National announced its news on Monday, (8-20-12) after selecting Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore. It was the right thing to do. From the New York Times, this news is long overdue:

Augusta National Golf Club, the private club that hosts the Masters and has come under attack over the past decade because of its all-male membership, announced Monday that it had added two female members: Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, and Darla Moore, the South Carolina businesswoman.

The PGA Tour prevents courses with a discriminatory membership policy from hosting its tournaments, but in May (2012) the tour commissioner, Tim Finchem, said that when it came to Augusta National the Masters was “too important” to the tour’s interests.

Augusta National in the spring—One of the most beautiful places on Earth

The good news is that if you wait long enough that things will eventually change. And while this is very important news for women everywhere, it shrinks to insignificance when compared to our government not telling us the truth about what we should be eating.

Another right thing to do is for our food authorities to consider ONLY the health of the people when it comes to our dietary guidelines. This is a move that will eventually affect every living creature on our planet. We’re not just talking about our health anymore; we’re talking about the long-term sustainability of the human race.

The bad news is that we have a very large mountain to climb when it comes to changing our system. There are the habits of billions of people and there are trillions of dollars and millions of jobs riding on maintaining the status quo.

But what we have now is totally unsustainable for very much longer (maybe fifty years). And it is inevitable that we must eventually move back in the direction of living in harmony with our environment. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait for Mother Nature to take care of business—her way will likely not be too pleasant for all concerned.

Back to Augusta. Believe it or not, I actually wrote an article on this topic ten years ago—way back when the Martha Burk army was down there causing all kinds of trouble for Hootie and the gang at the Augusta National Club. It featured a creative solution for breaking the ice and admitting the first female member. I re-published it on this website during the Masters Tournament this year and you can find it listed listed below the source article from the New York Times.

Like to play golf? Take charge of your health now and you might still be playing when you turn 100.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

SHARE and rate this post below.

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Activism & Leadership | 2 Comments

What do you think our astronauts will be eating on Mars?

The same thing that we should be eating here today — Whole Plants

There won’t be two giraffes or two elephants on our modern Noah’s ark. But there will be lots of veggies, seeds and knowledge.

I saw a sci-fy doomsday movie recently that inspired me to think about what it would be like to be among a group of 2,000 humans who landed on planet Earth—five years after all human life had been destroyed by a huge comet.

On board our modern-day Noah’s Ark would be a great number of very smart people along with many gigabytes of scientific information that would enable us to build a new civilization on planet Earth.

One of the first orders of business on our new planet would be to establish a means of feeding ourselves. While on our journey, we would have been eating nothing but plant-based foods for the past five years. So what do you suppose we would want to start eating when we stepped off that spacecraft?

Do you think we’d start shooting deer and cooking them for our first big Thanksgiving feast? Do you think we’d start trying to domesticate a few million cows and chickens so that we could start drinking cow’s milk and eating chicken eggs?

The answer is NO. We’d simply establish a feeding model similar to the one that NASA had established for our five year journey. The same one that NASA is actually developing NOW for the first manned Mars mission (20 years from now), as described in two source articles below:

From TheWashington Post article: Already, Cooper’s team of three has come up with about 100 recipes, all vegetarian because the astronauts will not have dairy or meat products available. It isn’t possible to preserve those products long enough to take to Mars — and bringing a cow on the mission is not an option, Cooper jokes.

From the other article. Next time NASA sends astronauts to Mars in the 2030s they won’t be eating freeze dried food or liquid meals. That’s so last millenium. On their projected mission to Mars, NASA astronauts will eat 100% vegan meals complete with fresh fruits and vegetables grown on the spaceship.

The six to eight astronauts that will participate in the Mars mission will require enough food for three years. Mars is so far away that NASA won’t be able to send food every six months like they do for the International Space Station. Neither will they be able to preserve meat or dairy for such a long period. according to senior research scientist Maya Cooper.

Not gonna be any dairy cows, laying hens, pigs, turkeys or beef cattle on Mars—Nt now, not in 2030, NOT EVER.

Reading these articles got me to thinking about how simple it would be to develop a healthy, green and sustainable feeding model—if we were starting from scratch. Likewise, it would be easy to design a new healthcare model—if we were starting from scratch.

The problem is that there are billions of people’s habits to change and their are trillions of dollars on the line. And that makes things VERY, VERY COMPLICATED.

This 3-minute video illustrates the detailed planning that is now taking place for a mission to Mars in the 2030’s. Too bad there is no similar effort to transform the way we’re eating today—transforming it to a diet style that promotes health, eliminates 80% of our healthcare (disease care) system and enables our planet to sustain human life indefinitely.

The Bottom Line. You may notice that the researchers still have no clue that we don’t “need” animal protein. The only reason they’re not putting it into the Mars Menu is because there’s no way to produce it on the spaceship OR on the Mars surface. Although we think we are so smart; there is OH so much more that we need to learn—that we must learn—in order to preserve the longterm sustainability of the human race.

Guess what? We don’t need twenty years to decide what we should be eating now. We just need to get real serious about two words: WHOLE PLANTS. Do so now, your health will be rewarded and your future descendants just may have a chance to make it to the next millenium.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

SHARE and rate this post below.

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Sustainability | Tagged , | 1 Comment