Atkins, South Beach, Dukan—now “The Paleo Diet”

Posted on 07/13/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

For all the meat lovers of the world

Once again, Dr. John McDougall (as he has been doing for years) does a thorough job of reporting on topics affecting our health. In his June newsletter (See link below), he reported on The Paleo Diet. Sometimes known as the “caveman” diet, it features lots of meat and not many carbohydrates. It works like the Atkins Diet in helping people lose weight, but (also like Atkins) is not a practical solution relative to the pursuit of vibrant health. In Dr. McDougall’s article, The Paleo Diet Is Uncivilized (And Unhealthy and Untrue), he leads off:

John McDougall, MD

Low-carbohydrate (low-carb) diets are fueling the destruction of human health and our planet Earth. “Low-carbohydrate” means a diet high in animal foods and low in plant foods. Only plants synthesize carbohydrates (sugars).

The body parts of animals, including red meat, poultry, seafood, and fish, and eggs, contain no carbohydrates. Animal secretions (like mammalian milk) contain sugars synthesized by plants (the cow eats the grass that made the sugar). The original Atkins Diet is the ultimate in low-carb eating. This diet works by starving the human body of carbohydrates in order to induce a state of illness (ketosis), which can result in weight loss. People become too sick to eat too much.

The Paleo Diet (also referred to as the Paleolithic Diet, the Paleodiet, the Caveman Diet, the Stone Age Diet, and the Hunter-Gatherer Diet) is the most recent and popular approach to weight loss, improved health, and longevity, and is accomplished by eating large amounts of animal-derived foods (which are no-carbohydrate, and high-protein and/or high-fat foods). The Paleo Diet consists mainly of meat, poultry, shellfish, fish, and eggs; non-starchy orange, green, and yellow vegetables; and fruits and nuts. This approach forbids starches, including all grains, legumes, and potatoes. To its credit it also excludes dairy products and refined sugars. Salt and processed oils (with the exception of olive oil) are also excluded.

(For Dr. McDougall’s complete article, see link below)

Looking for clarity over confusion, read the works of Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr. — Bill Clinton did, and it probably saved his life.

Keeping it simple. Back in 2002, when I first began researching this topic, I read about 100 books during the first year—in my search for the truth. Ultimately, I found the credibility that I was seeking when I discovered the works of Dr. T. Colin Campbell and the collective works of the five pioneering medical doctors (including John McDougall) that are featured in our book.

For a plethora of reasons, the whole foods, plant-based diet simply made total sense to me. And when I discovered that Dr. Esselstyn had successfully used it to reverse heart disease in 100% of his original 17 terminal heart patients at the Cleveland Clinic, I decided that his recommended diet-style was good enough for me.

The debate continues. As you may know, those five doctors in our book don’t agree on everything. They disagree on a few things like vitamin supplements, starch vs. nutrient-density, juicing, fish oil, omega 3, etc. But they all agree on Dr. Campbell’s premise upon which we built our 4Leaf Program:

“The closer we get to consuming a whole foods, plant-based diet, the better off we will be.”

Meat and Unsustainability. A few days ago, a friend told me that he and I (both in our late sixties) were born 50 years too early. He added that someday there will be genetic solutions to ALL of our health problems—meaning that we could continue to eat whatever we wanted. And like the Paleo, Atkins, South Beach, Dukan and all the other meat-eating regimens out there, my friend was not aware of one major issue with our continued consumption of meat—GROSS UNSUSTAINABILITY. It is inevitable that our love affair with meat and dairy will end in the not-too-distant future.

Phillip Wollen—argues in Australia for taking meat off the menu.

My new friend in Australia (Philip Wollen) described it this way. “If everyone in the world ate the western diet (meat and dairy) we’d need to two planet Earths to feed everyone. We only have one—and she is dying.” (See link below to his video)

The Bottom Line. Confusion over clarity will continue to reign for the foreseeable future, but the fact of the matter is that the simple solution to so many of this world’s problems can be boiled down to two words: Whole Plants. 

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 M.D.s---Health-Promoting, Sustainability, Weight-Loss | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“The World According to Monsanto” (a documentary)

Posted on 07/12/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

2008 French Documentary—banned in the USA until now

What about genetically modified organisms (GMO) in our food supply? What do they mean for our health? What do they mean for our planet?

These are good questions that deserve a lot of attention. Far more attention than I have been giving them up to this point. My entire focus up until now has been regarding the dual topic of:

  • The power of whole, plant-based foods to reverse chronic disease and promote vibrant health
  • The incredible harm, waste, cruelty and sheer unsustainability of our toxic western diet of meat, dairy and highly processed foods three meals a day

But there is another elephant in the room and it appears to be quietly and systematically in the process of taking over the world’s food supply. At least that is the message in this powerful documentary. So what prompted my interest in this topic? A professor at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.

Southern CT State University

Professor Rosalyn Amenta, PhD, sent me a link to the video that I have provided below. It is entitled, “The World According to Monsanto” and was produced in France in 2008. She said that she was going to show it to her students and thought that I would find it interesting.

FYI, I will be speaking to one of her classes on July 17, 2012. My topic for that lecture is: The Right Food for the Human Race — with particular emphasis on three topics  of particular interest to women. Professor Amenta specifically requested that I tailor my presentation for a mostly female class.

As for the 2008 documentary

The French documentary called, “The World According to Monsanto” and directed by independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin, paints a grim picture of a company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals.The two hour long documentary that aired on French television was never going to be aired in America.

Originally banned in America, it is now available and provided here for your convenience. Since it’s almost two hours long (108 minutes), you should schedule a time for yourself to view this important film sometime soon.

My reaction. After watching the above documentary, I wrote the following note to Dr. T. Colin Campbell. He had told me earlier that a French film team had visited with him in Ithaca several years ago but that he had never seen their documentary.

Dear Colin, Just finished watching The Monsanto video. You did not appear in it and were not mentioned.

Unlike our issue with meat, dairy and eggs, there doesn’t appear to be a clear solution for how to deal with the GMO, transgenic revolution that is wiping out the small farmer all over the world.

After the “intentional transgenic contamination” takes place, the small soybean farmer in Paraguay, for example, is forced to buy the GM seeds from Monsanto—and along with them, the fertilizer and herbicides that enable them to grow. As they point out, this is taking place to grow soybeans to feed the pigs, cows and chickens of Europe and other faraway markets.

It’s scary to think that Monsanto can quietly contaminate the local seeds around the world such that the locals can’t make a living with their own seeds anymore. It would seem that Monsanto is on track to own the “food” of the world—and thereby control the world. The whole situation sounds very scary. I look forward to hearing your take on things. And what can be done about it? A sad story taking place around the world to be sure.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell — author of The China Study and the world’s leading authority on health promoting, plant-based nutrition.

Dr. Campbell’s reaction after watching the film himself.

As of today, I don’t have his full statement on this troubling matter but he did agree that this is a “helluva” situation and that my “take on control is right on. It’s sick.”

The Bottom Line. We should all learn more about what’s going on here. Google can help you find millions of documents, like this 2-7-12 piece in the New York Times (see link below) It turns out that we’re already eating a whole lot of GMOs:

Last year, according to the Department of Agriculture, about 90 percent of all soybeans, corn, canola and sugar beets raised in the United States were grown from what scientists now call transgenic seed. Most processed foods (staples like breakfast cereal, granola bars, chicken nuggets and salad dressing) contain one or more transgenic ingredients, according to estimates from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, though the labels don’t reveal that. (Some, like tortilla chips, can contain dozens.)

Common ingredients like corn, vegetable oil, maltodextrin, soy protein, lecithin, monosodium glutamate, cornstarch, yeast extract, sugar and corn syrup are almost always produced from transgenic crops.

In the USA, the GMO products have been approved based on the concept of “substantial equivalence,” a definition that has not been very thoroughly tested. Likewise, we remain one of the few developed countries that doesn’t require GMO labeling. I look forward to hearing your reaction after watching the videos and reflecting on the following:

Short Video posted by Max Keiser (March 2012). In case you didn’t have time to watch the full-length documentary, here is a 4-minute summary of the Monsanto Monopoly:

Max Keiser is a TV presenter, radio host, entrepeneur, broadcaster and journalist. He is the inventor of the  virtual specialist technology / prediction markets, Hollywood Stock Exchange,  Karmabanque, and Pirate MyFilm (PMF) He is presenter of “The Oracle with Max Keiser” on BBC World News, which aired every Friday from 9 January 2009 through March 2009. Max also presented films for AlJazeera English and is a blogger for Huffington Post.

The narrator in the above video is Dan Dicks (not Jim Hicks). In 2006, Dan started an alternative media group based in Toronto known as Press For Truth. On the website pressfortruth.ca, they describe their mission, “We are dedicated patriots who are committed to covering issues which the mainstream media is not willing to touch. We make documentary films and also videos for youtube in an effort to educate the public about a variety of issues.” Email: dan@pressfortruth.ca

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, Genetically Modified (GMO) | 4 Comments

Mainstream media is failing us when it comes to health.

Posted on 07/11/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

Basically reporting all the “news” from our dysfunctional “system.”

And that adds up to a steady stream of “confusion over clarity” every single day. On July 10, 2012, an article in Sci-Tech Today caught my attention. Heart Disease in Men Can Be Fought Head-On (See link below). The article was written by Nanci Hellmich, who also writes frequently for USA Today.

My immediate thought was hopeful—thinking that maybe the mainstream media is actually beginning to tell us the truth about reversing heart disease. NOT. The article led off with this worthless, lame advice from a cardiologist who would be out of business if everyone got healthy:

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of men (and women) in the USA, so it’s no wonder that cardiologist Gordon Tomaselli dispenses direct, no-nonsense advice: “Get up and move more, don’t smoke, make sure you control your blood pressure and cholesterol, and don’t ignore symptoms of heart disease, particularly if you have a family history.”

No-nonsense advice? What about diet? Mentioned in one sentence, but not explained. Not in the first paragraph—not ANYWHERE in the article. Does our media not watch television? Have they not seen “The Last Heart Attack?” Do they not know how President Clinton reversed his heart disease by following the dietary advice of Campbell, Esselstyn and Ornish? Do they not know about how Dr. Esselstyn reversed heart disease in 95% of his patients at the Cleveland Clinic by changing ONLY their diet?

Nanci Hellmich, USA Today

So who is Nanci Hellmich and why does she not even mention the overwhelming importance of food in an article that’s supposed to help men learn how to fight heart disease? What is it with the mainstream media in America? It’s almost like they’re being paid by the countless pieces of our “system” whose livelihood depend on us being sick.

From her LinkedIn page, I found that Ms. Hellmich is a Nutrition and Fitness Reporter for USA Today and that she’s been widely recognized for her excellence in reporting—for the last 25 years.

Two media excellence awards from the American Dietetic Association (1987, 1993), an award for excellence in reporting on obesity as a chronic disease from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000), the nutrition science journalist award from the American Society for Nutrition (2006) and the Atkinson-Stern Award (2008) from the Obesity Society

After reading her heart disease article and reading about all her awards for excellence, I decided to take a look at some of Nanci’s other work. That didn’t take long as I immediately found her article entitled “Americans need to try harder to eat fruits, vegetables” in USA Today (also on July 10, 2012, see link below).

Try harder to eat fruits and vegetables? It only took one or two paragraphs to realize that Nanci is nothing but a parrot for the USDA guidelines and our entire dysfunctional “system” of health care (disease management). “Confusion over clarity” reigns supreme in her work without ever offering any true health-promoting information. The USA Today article led off:

No one said eating enough fruits and vegetables was going to be a piece of cake — even if you’re giving it your best shot.

The majority of Americans say they’ve been trying to eat more fruits and vegetables over the past year, according to a poll of 1,057 adults for the International Food Information Council Foundation.

But most people are consuming less than half of what the government recommends.

What the government recommends? The media is not telling the general public EXACTLY what they need to do to take charge of their health. They generally preach the USDA “balanced diet” food pyramid—which has been solidly in place during the recent explosion of obesity and type 2 diabetes in this country. Are there any journalists out there who are consistently reporting the powerful truth about nutrition?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, an emerging leader in the grassroots revolution to re-claim our health through plant-based nutrition. A part of the SOLUTION.

Sanjay Gupta of CNN has done some powerful work in the past few years and I truly believe that he really “gets it.” His Last Heart Attack documentary that aired around the time of Hurricane Irene last August was perhaps the very best piece of work—ever—from the mainstream media.

Given all that’s on the line in terms of our health, the cost of health care and the host of environmental and social issues driven by our toxic western diet, it would be great to see Sanjay start doing this kind of work on a full-time basis.

As for writers, I believe that Mark Bittman of the New York Times is the best that we have right now. As I reported yesterday in my blog, he recently announced to the world that he has given up dairy products—as a test. And so far, he likes what he sees. I am confident that he will continue to enjoy the benefits of plant-based eating and that he will eventually begin delivering the consistent clarity that the world so desperately needs. Of course, you remember what happened to Oprah when she announced on her show that she would “never have another burger?” She got sued by the meat producers.

Jane E. Brody — New York Times

Another great reporter is Jane Brody, also with the New York Times. She was the one that coined the term “Grand prix of epidemiology” (5-8-90) to describe Dr. Campbell’s work in China–fifteen years before The China Study was published in 2005. But like Mark Bittman, even though she occasionally reports powerful, health-promoting truth; often she flip-flops more than Mitt Romney when she writes a pro-dairy article.

The Bottom Line. Our media is failing us. Maybe it’s the way whole industry is structured. Maybe a hard-hitting reporter of truth can’t make it in the big leagues of journalism in the land of the free anymore. But thank God for the blogosphere where we can easily find the life-saving information that we need—every day. And we don’t have to deal with the “confusion over clarity” that prevails in the mainstream. Here, we can boil the whole discussion down to two words: Whole Plants. Presto! Take charge of your health—save the planet!

Just in case you want to read more from Nanci Hellmich:

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 Heart Disease | 5 Comments