Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (22 page)

For more information, I recommend brendadavisrd.com.

Okay, it’s time for a rant.
Now, don’t get me wrong. If you’re going for 60/40 and you’ll just snap and dump the CSD altogether if you can’t add a bit of raw goat cheese (from a safe, quality source) to your salad, then by all means fit it in. I’d rather you ate a small portion of better-quality dairy and stayed on track. However, I’ve got a beef with the dairy industry, and maybe after you read this section you’ll have one too. Good-bye creamer, hello hemp milk!

The meat and dairy industries spend a fortune to keep their products synonymous with good health. They do it directly to consumers through sophisticated ad campaigns using lots of glam celebs, but they also do it indirectly by influencing government. Industry executives become government regulators then become industry executives again, like one big revolving door swirling with crazy money. As a result, the official regulations and guidelines that are so influential to public health are often compromised. While confusion and misinformation benefit stockholders, they don’t always protect our best interests or our children’s.

Take, for example, federal school lunch programs. They have two conflicting aims: better health for kids and boosting agriculture industries. Unfortunately, under the current system, the lion’s share of spending goes to the unhealthy meat, dairy, and egg products. So is it any surprise that these government meals routinely fail their own government nutritional standards? In an attempt to buck this BS, in 2009 Baltimore city schools decided to participate in the popular “Meatless Monday” campaign—the first in the country to do so. What’s the problem with a little veggie chili? Well, the mad cowboys went on a cable news butchering spree. The American Meat Institute had the balls to imply that their products were the only real source of protein and that one meatless meal per week was putting our kids in harm’s way. Last time I checked, childhood obesity and diabetes are more dangerous than a bowl of veggie chili.

Sophisticated marketing campaigns and manipulative language have an enormous impact on the foods we buy. “Got milk?” or how about “Milk: It does the body good.” You’ve probably seen those ads a gazillion times. Here’s some poetry for ya: “Milk is milk.” Huh? Yeah, those three little words are supposed to convince us that there is no difference between “natural” milk and milk from cows injected with Monsanto’s genetically engineered growth hormones.

What if I told you that you’ve been eating lies and propaganda? Would you get mad? I certainly would. I certainly am. When I was a kid, schoolteachers drilled the importance of tits and ass into my head. The food pyramid ruled. Well, guess who supplied our classrooms with teaching materials? The National Dairy Council.

Today the National Dairy Council invests millions of dollars every year in the “Got Milk” campaign. The message: If you drink from the almighty animal mammary, you too can be rich, skinny, and successful, just like your favorite celebrity. It’s dangerous when uninformed celebrities don the mustache and lead the masses down an unhealthy road. Where are the actors, athletes, and rock stars willing to stand up for broccoli? Can you imagine what would happen if Leo and Clooney wore
EAT KALE, NOT COW
tees on the red carpet? How about a
GOT NUT MILK
? hoodie? I’d love to see Gwen Stefani or Fergie stroll to her workout in one of those.

Leonid Shcheglov

A cow drinks cow’s milk when it’s a baby. A bunny drinks bunny’s milk when it’s a baby. Beyond a certain age, even they know that it’s freaky to suckle. And do you ever see them switch and swap? The only time milk is essential for good health is when we are babies, being breast-fed by human mothers. Human breast milk is nature’s perfect formula for human babies. It’s rich in good fats like DHA for brain development, but it’s relatively low in protein. Cow’s milk contains more than three times as much protein as breast milk. That’s because baby cows need a lot more protein. They grow to between 1,500 and 2,000 pounds. Is that your desired weight? If so, hello reality TV!

While the protein in human milk is designed for human bodies, much of the protein in cow’s milk is difficult for humans to digest. Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, is a pioneering researcher in the investigation of the diet–cancer link. Put his book
The China Study
on your must-read list today! It clears up the fallacies of our modern diet and provides a thought-provoking look at what really causes cancer. Here’s the CliffsNotes version: One of the biggest contenders is a diet containing more than 10 percent protein (that’s about 50 grams of protein if you’re consuming 2,000 calories per day). Americans eat way more than that (an average of 17 percent total protein, of which 12 to 13 percent is animal-based!). Dr. Campbell found that the protein that consistently creates and promotes cancer is casein, which makes up 87 percent of the protein in cow’s milk.

His research verifies that the types of protein that don’t promote cancer, even at high levels of intake, are the safe proteins from plants. Dr. Campbell writes, “In fact, dietary protein proved to be so powerful in its effect that they could turn on and turn off cancer growth simply by changing the level consumed.” Did you read that correctly? Turn off cancer cells, go veg! Dr. Campbell estimates that “80 to 90 percent of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet.”

Forget spooky, life-threatening diseases, let’s talk about simpler pickles. Ever pass a kidney stone? If you have, then you know that it’s incredibly painful—sorta feels like you’re shitting an elephant through your pee hole! How about Crohn’s disease, a veritable pain and inflammation blow-out sale? Both of these not-so-happy afflictions have been linked to dairy consumption. Allergies, eczema, asthma, arthritis, inflammation, and zits can all be linked to dairy. What about skim milk or nonfat milk? They’re just as bad. For me, cheese was the hardest thing to give up, but once I did, my weird rashes and forehead bumps disappeared. I also started to breathe easier—a pretty important change for a gal with cancer in her lungs. Perhaps this is too much
information, but my poo changed, too. It came out regularly and stopped being coated in mucus. (More on that in chapter 5, lucky you!)

How about tummy pain and intestinal gas and bloating? Well, there may be a good reason for your belly’s aching. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, around 75 percent of the world’s adults can’t digest milk (they’re lactose-intolerant). Among some populations, such as Native Americans and Asians, the figure is close to 100 percent. Beyond childhood, most people stop producing the enzyme lactase, which is needed to digest lactose (the sugar in milk). Yeah, your body thinks you should wean, too. I’ve never met someone who didn’t feel better once they removed dairy from their diet. Sorry folks, but all good things come to an end.