On the subject of food processing, one type of grain processing is of special concern: puffed grains. The high heat and pressure used in the puffing process alters the molecular structure of proteins in the grains, making them toxic enough to kill laboratory animals. Absolutely avoid puffed wheat, puffed millet and puffed rice (including rice cakes), and any other puffed grains. This warning does not include popcorn, which is not subjected to such high temperatures and pressures. In his book,
Fighting the Food Giants,
Paul Stitt reported an experiment in which rats were fed either whole wheat or puffed wheat. The rats eating the whole wheat lived over a year while the rats eating puffed wheat died within two weeks.
To avoid health problems created by processed grains, choose whole grains such as millet, oats, quinoa, spelt, barley, amaranth, teff, kamut and brown rice. Many people do not realize that white rice is also a processed grain and, therefore, a poor food choice. Buckwheat, not strictly a grain, can be cooked like whole grains. Organic whole grains are readily available at health food stores. Cook grains in a pot of water as you would cook rice. A rice-cooker will also work. In the real world, often we are forced to make less than ideal choices. At the very least, choose minimally processed whole grains (such as whole-wheat flour or oatmeal) instead of highly refined and stripped grains, such as white flour, white rice and pasta made from white flour.
Misleading Choices
When I told Elizabeth, the woman I introduced you to at the start of this chapter, that if she wanted to get well and stay well she would have to eliminate sugar from her diet, she replied, “I don't eat any sugar,” going on to explain that she rarely
added
sugar to anything. What she meant was, she rarely took white sugar out of the sugar bowl and added it to her foods and beverages. She was not considering the massive amounts of sugar already present in her diet from foods as mundane as ketchup, breakfast cereal, dinner rolls, soup, salad dressing, bottled fruit juices and soft drinks, not to mention chocolates, ice cream, cookies, pies, cakes, snack foods and pancake syrup. Elizabeth was quite surprised when I added up all the sugar she was consuming.
Elizabeth and I also talked about white flour. She did not realize that most of the starches she was eating (including pastas, breads and breakfast cereals) were made from white flour and other processed grains. Thinking about what she should perhaps be eating instead, she made another mistake: Elizabeth proudly showed me a package of the “healthy” multigrain bread she had purchased. I shook my head as I read the ingredient list and explained to her that such bread is not healthy. First, bread is a highly processed food, and this bread's number-one ingredient was unbleached flour, a highly processed flour that is only marginally better than white flour (it has not undergone the final bleaching process). This supposedly “healthy” bread also contained a health-damaging sugar (corn syrup), hydrogenated oils and toxic preservatives.
Elizabeth had been misled into believing this bread was a healthy foodâperhaps because of the false advertising on the package, claiming it to be “healthy,” and the fact that she had purchased it in a health food store. Many people have a difficult time learning how to discern good foods from bad ones. The simplest explanation is to think of the concepts of
real
foods
and
make-believe foods.
The more a food is changed from the way nature would normally provide it, the more make-believe it becomes.
Some Truths about Processed Fats and Oils
A widespread misperception in America today is that to be healthy we must eat a low-cholesterol, low-fat or nonfat diet. Rather, you need fats and oils, but they must be the right kinds of fats and oils, not the processed fats and oils so prevalent in our diets today. Despite our society's obsession with and fears about fats and oils, these nutrients are an incredibly important part of a healthy diet.
Each of the trillions of cells in your body is surrounded by a permeable cell membrane. Fats and oils are the primary building materials used to create those cell membranes. Cell membranes are critically important because all the nutrients your cells need and all the toxic waste products they must eliminate need to pass through it. If you eat the right kinds of fats and oils, your cell membranes properly regulate the passage of materials; eating the wrong kinds causes your cell membranes to work against you. When your cell membranes are not working correctly, your cells will malfunction, which can manifest into just about any disease you can imagine.
Essential fatty acids
is the term used to describe the “right kind” of fats and oils. They are essential because the body needs them but cannot make them, so we must obtain them from food. These essential fatty acid molecules have a specific shape that is critical to the way they work in forming cell membranesâlike bricks that fit perfectly together to build cell walls. (Chemists use the term cis-fatty acids to describe the natural, healthy shape of essential fatty acid molecules.)
When oils are heated above 392°F (as most supermarket oils are), the cis-fatty acid molecules change shape, turning into a different and toxic category of fats called trans-fats. The shape of trans-fats does not work properly for building cell membranes. These improperly shaped “bricks” build a cell wall with holes it. Cell membranes constructed from trans-fats become leaky (allowing substances inside cells to leak out, and vice versa) and brittle (like the shell of an egg, rather than the elasticity of a balloon). If cells throughout your body are leaky and brittle, you have a serious problem.
Because of the way oils are processed, trans-fats (and other toxins) are found in virtually all oils sold in supermarkets and health food stores, including canola, corn, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed and soybean oils, along with food products containing hydrogenated oils, like margarine and vegetable shortenings. Consider the vast numbers of products made with these toxic oils, such as salad dressings, breakfast cereals, crackers, chocolates, candy, potato chips and fried foods such as french fries. The solution? Eat essential (good) fats and avoid hydrogenated and other (bad) trans-fats.
More chemistry that is vital to your health: The two most important essential fatty acids are linoleic acid (omega-6 fatty acids) and linolenic acid (omega-3 fatty acids). For good health, these fatty acids must be consumed in sufficient amounts and in the correct balance with each other. It has been estimated, however, that 60 percent of our population gets too much omega-6s and that up to 95 percent gets too little omega-3s; this imbalance causes disease. Avoid processed, supermarket oils and food products containing them, which perpetuate this imbalance, and supplement with oils combining a healthy balance.
Pioneers in medical research are curing a number of chronic problems (such as depression, heart disease and cancer) by giving their patients the right kinds of fats and oils. But most people have no idea that the bad fats and oils damage cell membranes and therefore cause disease, which explains why society at large is not demanding alternatives.
As with many of our modern foods, we created technologies that are solely designed to produce the highest amount of oils using the smallest amount of raw materials (seeds, beans and grains) in the shortest period of time with maximum shelf life. Time and money are the driving forces, not health and nutrition. Today, oils are extracted using huge, powerful presses that generate a lot of heat, which, in the presence of oxygen, oxidizes oils, making them rancid and toxic. Yet these now-toxic oils can still be labeled as “cold-pressed” because no heat was added during the pressing process; the heat is an unintentional result of the high-pressure extraction process.
This is why cold-pressed is a meaningless term and is not useful
for you in determining what to eat and what to avoid.
Harsh solvents are used to extract oils, which remain in the oil as a residue. These solvents also destroy nutrients in the oils. In addition, processed oils are typically bleached and deodorizedâ destroying more nutrients and creating toxins.
To put healthful oils in your diet, eat high-quality olive oil and flaxseed oil. Also, beneficial fatty acids can be found in organic, fresh, unprocessed food in its natural state, such as raw seeds, raw nuts and avocados. High-quality eggs, meat and fish are also good sources of fatty acids. Keep in mind, though, that essential fatty acids are readily damaged by heat. Use the minimum heat necessary to cook these foods. Supplement your diet with a high-quality essential fatty acid supplement.
To avoid chronic disease and slow down the
aging process, dietary supplementation of essential fatty acids
(from flaxseed oil, for example) is necessary; deriving enough
of the right fats and oils from the foods that are available
today is difficult.
Check your kitchen and refrigerator shelves. Discard your processed oils, particularly hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils (margarine, vegetable shortening, etc.), and products made with those oils, including many baked goods, crackers, chips, peanut butter and nondairy creamer. Instead, use primarily high-quality olive oil, organic butter or ghee, and essential fatty acid supplements (see appendix C for suggestions).
Myths About Milk
The final failure food on my Big Four list is one that is usually touted as necessary to good health for adults and children: milk products. Milk's reputation as a highly nutritious food is undeserved; in reality, modern milk is a highly toxic and allergenic make-believe food. The United States may produce a lot of milk, and the dairy boards may try to convince us to drink lots of milk, but milk does not do a body good.
According to pediatrician Russell Bunai, M.D., in a 1994 issue of
Natural Health,
the one single change to the U.S. diet that could provide the greatest health benefits is the elimination of milk products. In the 1992 edition of his book
Don't
Drink Your Milk,
Dr. Frank Oski, former director of the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said, “We should all stop drinking milk. . . . It was designed for calves, not for humans.” This claim is not what your mother told you (because she herself was misled), and it is not what the dairy industry would have you believe, but it is true. The idea that milk is a necessary and healthy part of the human diet is a myth. As I lecture across the country, recommending (among other things) that people not drink milk, I am always amazed at how many times people will call me months later to say that they took my advice, stopped consuming dairy products, and their health problems disappeared.
Most of the world's population (about 70 percent) does not drink milk or consume other dairy products (including cheese, yogurt, ice cream and sour cream), for good reasons. Mother's milk is a perfect foodâfor infants, not for adults. In nature, no animal drinks milk after weaning, nor does any species drink the milk of another species. Granted, we humans have managed to domesticate our livestock, but this accomplishment does not change the fact that each species (and their milk) is unique. Feeding elephant milk to cats, mouse milk to giraffes or cow milk to humans is not a good idea.
Cow milk, especially in the forms found in your supermarket, is not a good food. Cow milk contains proteins and fats that are difficult for humans to digest, and cow milk does not supply nearly the amount of calcium that its reputation suggests. Also, statistics from the World Health Organization show that the countries consuming the most milk products also have the highest rates of osteoporosis, breast cancer, allergies and diabetes.
Actually milk can deplete nutrients from our bodiesâacting as an antinutrient, just like sugar and white flour. Metabolizing some of the fats in milk (particularly when the milk is pasteurized, and virtually all of it is) uses up essential fatty acids, one of our most serious nutritional deficiencies. For all these reasons, foods containing pasteurized milkfats are at the top of the list of “foods to be avoided.” Additionally, if pasteurized milkfats are not properly metabolized (because of an essential fatty acid deficiency, which most Americans have), then the fat may be deposited in arteries, contributing to cardiovascular diseases.
A prime factor contributing to the health problems caused by milk is pasteurization (heating), which both destroys nutrients and creates toxins, thereby contributing to each of the two causes of disease. Animals fed pasteurized milk exhibit poor skeletal development, weak bones, osteoporosis and tooth decay. Calves fed raw milk remain healthy, but calves fed pasteurized milk typically die within eight weeks! If a calf cannot benefit from pasteurized milk, how can a human?
The Rest of the Story
Upon hearing that they should not drink milk, people invariably ask, “How will I be able to get enough calcium if I don't drink milk?” My response is, “Where does a cow, a horse, or an elephant get its calcium?” They get it from plants, which are rich in all kinds of mineralsâincluding calcium. Dark green vegetables such as broccoli, chard and kale are rich sources of absorbable calcium.
Cow milk is also rich in calcium, containing about 1,200 mg of calcium per quart while human milk contains about 300 mg. However, an infant absorbs far more calcium from a quart of human milk than from a quart of cow milk, even though human milk contains less calcium. Cow milk contains a lot of phosphorous, which prevents calcium absorption. Also, cow milk is low in magnesium, which humans need in order to utilize calcium. In short, your body is not able to use the large amount of calcium present in cow milk. You do not use the calcium, so instead it can build up and form kidney stones, bone spurs, gout and atherosclerotic plaque.