Michelle, it’s time to tell the world about “meat & dairy.”

Posted on 06/24/2011 by J. Morris Hicks

Dear Michelle,

I love what you’re trying to do regarding the health of the children. I am just wondering when you think you might be ready to tell the world the truth about the “low-fat dairy” and “healthier meats” that you mention in your Forward Motion article in the Amtrak magazine? If you want to achieve your “one big goal to end the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation,” you’re going to need to tell their parents exactly what they should feed those children — and exactly what they should not be feeding them.

I also like what you say about the “salad bars and more fruits & vegetables,” but when are you going to tell the citizens of America what they deserve to know about our food supply? For example, when are you going to tell the world that the casein in cow’s milk is a carcinogen?

Michelle tossing an apple on the cover of the "Arrive" magazine on Amtrak this month

From your article, it appears that you may not have read The China Study, and may not yet be aware of our harmful, wasteful and unsustainable diet-style of meat and dairy three meals a day. It is admirable that you are promoting better school lunches and healthier foods in WalMart; yet at the same time, you say nothing at all in your article about the harmful meat and dairy products that are promoting cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes and driving our outrageously high cost of health care.

I know it would be nearly impossible for a sitting President of The United States to take a stand against the mighty meat and dairy lobbies; but you’re not the president. However; as first lady, your ability to influence the world is perhaps even greater than the president’s on this topic — an ability to help the children, help America and help the rest of the western world move back toward the natural diet for our species.

Speaking of health for the children, my friend Dr. Colin Campbell wrote The China Study at the urging of his wife Karen; who said that he must tell his story “for the children of the world.” So he did just that in January of 2005, and that “story” has changed millions of lives — children and adults — in America and beyond.

Michelle Obama seems to have the ear of the former president in this picture; just think what they could accomplish if they teamed up to tell the world the truth about nutrition.

One of those “lives” was a former resident of your house, President William Jefferson Clinton; who read The China Study last year and has heeded its advice. He announced in September of 2010 on CNN with Wolf Blitzer that he had adopted a plant-based diet-style in order to enable his body to heal itself.

In the same session, he also announced that he was no longer eating any meat or dairy and that he would very rarely have a piece of fish.

For a former president of The United States to make such a powerful public announcement is incredible; particularly in a country whose entire health “system” is delivering nutritional advice to the public that is counter to the diet-style that he has chosen for himself.

How great would it be if you and Mr. Clinton got together soon for a long lunch meeting, making sure that you read The China Study beforehand? How great would it be for you and the former president to have a dialog on the “truth” about nutrition that he has applied to his own life — and the responsibility of those in power to share that complete truth with the innocent and unsuspecting public?

Millions of lives are lost each year in this country simply because we are eating the wrong food for our species. How many millions of kids’ “futures” depend on what you tell their parents? The world is ready to listen Ms. First Lady, please take your uncanny influence to the next level and do the right thing — Mr. Clinton will probably be willing to lend a gigantic hand to your noble efforts.

J. Morris Hicks, "the big picture guy" promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth -- simply by returning to the natural diet for our species.

Worried that your actions might cost your husband his 2012 re-election bid? What is more important, him being president for four more years — or saving the children? Maybe it’s time to put the health and welfare of the children ahead of politics.

You’ve got the global stage for at least the next 18 months — don’t let this opportunity pass. You are in a position to make a HUGE difference. I am praying that you will. Like you said in the very beginning of your Amtrak article:

Let’s give our children the happy, healthy futures they deserve. That’s what keeps me moving every single day.

Thanks for listening and God bless you for what you are trying to do. Sincerely,

—J. Morris Hicks

If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com

PS: Occasionally an unauthorized ad may appear beneath a blog post. It is controlled by WordPress (a totally free hosting service). I do not approve or personally benefit whatsoever from any ad that might ever appear on this site. I apologize and urge you to please disregard. 

Arrive Magazine – May/June, 2011 – Page 44-45

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Remember when your doctor smoked cigarettes?

Posted on 06/23/2011 by J. Morris Hicks

Not only did most of them smoke; they regularly appeared in cigarette ads.

It’s hard to imagine a physician that smokes today, but it’s not hard to imagine a physician who participates in a much more deadly regimen — eating meat and dairy products three meals a day.

Someday an image like this one with a medical doctor eating a big plate of bacon and eggs may seem more outrageous than this.

Unlike cigarettes, which we never thought were good for us (just that they weren’t hurting us), over 90% of the American population truly believes that we must eat animal protein to be healthy.  And rare is the person today in the USA (including our medical doctors) who understand that our daily meat and dairy habit is by far the leading cause of disease, premature death, and the cost of health care in America.

Back in the day, it seemed like almost everyone smoked. But now, over half a century since cigarette smoking hit its peak, the U.S. government is finally getting serious about trying to stamp out this deadly habit. In a front-page USA Today article by Gary Strauss (6-22-11), the headline read:

Graphic cigarette labels, will they work?

Will graphic images of corpses, cancer-ridden lungs and a guy exhaling smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his neck stub out cigarette consumption? The Food and Drug Administration — which has chosen nine such images to be

Hopefully, during my lifetime, there will be similar ads illustrating the consequences of eating our typical western diet.

placed prominently on cigarette packs sold in the USA after September 2012 — hopes they’ll provide ample shock value.

The Food and Drug Administration — which has chosen nine such images to be placed prominently on cigarette packs sold in the USA after September 2012 — hopes they’ll provide ample shock value.

The article (see link below) pointed out that cigarette consumption had dropped by 50% from 1965 to 2003 but has leveled off since then — now standing at about 21% of the population. So what motivated our government to strengthen their anti-smoking message now?

It could very well be the fact that our 11th and 12th grade children are now more likely to be smoking than their parents. As this chart shows, the 2009 statistic for adults who smoked in the United States was 21%; for juniors and seniors in high school, it was nearly 24%.

Similarities and Contrasts

There are some similarities between smoking and eating a toxic diet; but there are also many things that are very different; here are a few that come to mind:

  • No parent ever encouraged their children to smoke. But with our typical western diet, most parents for many years have truly believed that our bodies need all of that meat and dairy to be healthy.
  • With the exception of a little second hand smoke, when you smoked, you were harming no one but yourself. With our wasteful, harmful and unsustainable western diet, we are polluting the water, wasting our land, disrupting the fragile harmony of nature, and driving up to 80% of our health care dollars. We also torture and kill 60 billion animals a year so that less than 2 billion of us in the western world may dine on their flesh.
  • Schools of Medicine and Schools of Nutrition never endorsed smoking as a healthy activity. Individual doctors may have appeared in ads, but they never actually thought that smoking was necessary for your good health. Now most of them eat the typical western diet themselves and recommend it for others.
  • Cigarette warnings began long ago.  They first appeared appeared in the U.S. in 1966 — Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health. With our entire “system” of medicine and nutrition actually promoting the continuation of the typical western diet, it may be another twenty years before we even see our first warning label on a carton of good old cow’s milk.

The fight to end smoking has been arduous. The fight to end the far more deadly typical western diet has hardly begun. And given all the above, it is going to far more arduous.

Sadder even than teens smoking is watching them innocently follow the lead of their parents AND doctors in the consumption of the deadly western diet.

Maybe the love for our children will help speed the inevitable process? Not only are our children beginning to smoke more than their parents; they’re also not eating as well as their parents. We all know about the lack of any healthy choices on most kids menus, and we know about the corresponding meteoric rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes among our young people — but we’re not doing much about it.

While virtually all parents would say that nothing is more important to them than the welfare of their children; 95% percent of them are still influencing those children to consume a very harmful diet. That’s because they simply don’t yet know the truth about nutrition. Just last week, Dr. Ornish explained that simple truth in his endorsement for our book:

“What’s good for you is also good for our planet.  Although heart disease and diabetes kill more people each year worldwide than all other diseases combined, these are completely preventable and even reversible for at least 95% of people today by changing our diet and lifestyle.  This book shows you how.”

—Dean Ornish, M.D., Founder, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Clinical Professor of Medicine, UC San Francisco, author, The Spectrum and Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease

Handy 5-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Why should we be eating mostly plants? The “big picture” in 4 minutes.

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf 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

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

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

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, visit our 4Leaf page and also enjoy some great recipes from 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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—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies

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Wisdom of T. Colin Campbell — foundation of our 4-Leaf Program

Posted on 06/22/2011 by J. Morris Hicks

Whole, plant-based foods (the natural diet for our species) is the answer

Since I first began studying this topic in 2002, Dr. Campbell has been my hero. Not only did he have the finest Cornell educational credentials; he also had an incredible track record in nutritional research coupled with decades of experience in food policy at the highest levels.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of "The China Study" -- offers a rare "big picture" perspective of nutrition when it comes to promoting optimal health for humans.

And unlike the vast majority of nutritional researchers, Dr. Campbell focused on the “big picture” of what goes on in the human body. He has described it as a “symphony” of millions of chemical processes working together to promote health. In his Huffington Post article of 10-25-2010, he explains the importance of whole, plant-based foods:

If we are to understand the true value of nutrition, we must begin by considering the health value of whole foods, not the nutrient parts extracted from them. In that context it is whole, plant-based foods that express an effect that is far more than the sum of its parts.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell and J. Morris Hicks review the manuscript of "Healthy Eating - Healthy World" and the "4-Leaf Program" in Ithaca, NY, December of 2010. After this meeting, he agreed to write the foreword to our book.

In a nutshell, that single paragraph defines exactly why we decided to emphasize the importance of maximizing the percentage of calories from whole, plant-based foods in our 4-Leaf Program. Most vegetarians and vegans place the primary emphasis on “what they’re avoiding,” which misses the point.

While avoiding all animal products, many of them are loading up on highly-processed foods; heavy in fat, sugar, white flour and sodium. And that’s why they’re not enjoying the vibrant health and effortless weight-loss that only the natural foods for our species can deliver. What could be simpler?  Two words — Whole Plants!

Dr. Campbell continues in the article as he talks about one of his favorite topics, the almost total absence of nutritional research funding at the National Institutes of health:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the most influential research funding agency in the world, is comprised of 27 institutes, centers and programs and not one is named the Institute of Nutrition. Research funding is a mere pittance in a couple of the institutes and most of this is dedicated to the study of individual nutrients that I consider pharmacology, not nutrition.

So, where is the average citizen supposed to learn the truth about nutrition? Although a handful of prominent scientists (like Dr. Campbell) and physicians (like Dr. Esselstyn) have been speaking out regarding the importance of whole plants for over twenty years, the “system” that controls that kind of information in this country hasn’t changed very much. That means that the medical schools and the schools of nutrition still have not embraced the wisdom of health-promoting whole plant foods. As he says…

There is not a single medical school in the country that teaches nutrition as a basic medical science. At best, a few may have an elective course that treats the subject in a most superficial manner. Public citizens, therefore, are left to fend for themselves against the hyped up claims of the food and drug industries.

This powerful movie opened in theaters all across the USA on 5-13-2011.

In their recent movie, Forks Over Knives, Dr. Campbell and Dr. Esselstyn and others do an outstanding job of explaining the world-changing power of plant-based nutrition. But our “system” is still rolling along doing its best to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are suffering the consequences of the failures of that “system” to properly inform the citizens of this nation. As Dr. Campbell pointed out in the article:

When done right, advanced heart disease can be cured, type 2 diabetes stopped and reversed, cancer can be prevented and, with some newer evidence, controlled after it appears. The range of diseases that can be prevented is more than impressive. The breadth and rapidity of the nutritional effect not only prevents disease but actually treats many of these diseases while restoring and maintaining health. The totality of these health effects are far more than almost anyone knows.

It is terribly frustrating when I know these effects, I know the savings in health care costs that can be had and I know the personal responses that virtually everyone experiences when they try this for a week or so. I also know that, historically, we have been slaves to a nutrition-less health information system that, in effect, is designed to keep us in mental chains, thus to maintain the status quo.

Bill Clinton making a point about his "plant-based" diet to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. You can see this video on the Video tab of this website.

Light at the end of the tunnel. In the article, he wraps up talking about former President Bill Clinton on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. Influenced by The China Study and the heart-disease reversal work of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and Dr. Dean Ornish; Mr. Clinton told his truly impressive results to the world on CNN.

Dr. Campbell concludes the article by saying, “I am not sure he knows how far reaching is his contribution. It is time for the rest of the public to get to know this as well. This information is on the right side of history! Mark my word.”

A permanent, health-promoting diet-style with lots of flexibility. All of the emphasis is on what you ARE eating -- not what your are avoiding.

For the complete article on Huffington Post, see link below.

If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com

PS: Occasionally an unauthorized ad may appear beneath a blog post. It is controlled by WordPress (a totally free hosting service). I do not approve or personally benefit whatsoever from any ad that might ever appear on this site. I apologize and urge you to please disregard. 

T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.: Nutrition: The Future of Medicine

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