Milk robs calcium from bones. The protein in cow milk metabolizes to strong acids, which can be harmful, so instead the body uses the calcium to neutralize those acidsâthereby robbing your bones and other tissues in the process. The United States, with only 4 percent of the world's population, consumes more dairy foods than the other 96 percent combined. If milk is really good for our bones, then we should have the strongest bones in the world. Instead, we have one of the highest osteoporosis rates in the world. We are not alone; all other countries with high dairy consumption also have high levels of osteoporosis.
A large percentage of the population is allergic to milk and dairy products, regardless of whether they realize it. Allergic reactions tax the immune system and lower resistance to infections and diseases. Milk allergies are the primary cause of ear infections in children. Given that constant allergic responses shorten your life (and constant use of allergy medications will, too), the answer is to avoid things you are allergic to in the first place. For most people, this means avoiding milk products. According to Dr. Oski, “At least 50 percent of all children are allergic to dairy.”
Milk is harmful to young children for another reason: It may trigger childhood diabetes in genetically susceptible children. More recently, milk has been linked to multiple sclerosis. Milk also causes localized inflammations in an infant's intestines and can result in low-level bleeding and iron-deficiency anemia. Because of the problems with allergies, anemia and diabetes, in 1992 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that cow milk not be given to babies during their first year of life because it damages health. Yet many mothers are not heeding this advice and still feed their children milk, thinking it is healthy. In September 1992, Benjamin Spock, M.D., (the famous “baby doctor”) lent his voice to the growing chorus warning against the dangers of cow's milk, urging parents to use breast milk exclusively. Breast milk, yes; cow's milk, no. Infants should be breast-fed for at least one, and preferably for two to three years. After that, no milk should be consumed.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors nursed their young for an average of three years, as compared to modern Americans, who nurse for an average of only three months. Introduction of infant feeding formulas has had a negative effect on children's health. Breast-fed infants are less likely to develop inflammatory bowel disease when they become adults than bottle-fed infants. Adults who were breast-fed as infants develop fewer allergies throughout life (even among people whose parents had a history of allergies).
Coffee: A Boost with a Big Price
In addition to the Big Four failures, one more dietary habit is worth mentioning because of its huge negative impact on health: drinking coffee. Coffee is popular because our society chronically suffers low energy and fatigue. The stimulating effects of coffee are used “to get through the day,” and they create dependency. The caffeine does not create or sustain long-term energy; it just hypes the system by overstimulating the adrenal glands, which ultimately carries a long-term price. Caffeine increases the amount of sugar in the blood and provides an energy lift, but it also throws body chemistry out of balance.
By doing so, coffee damages health in many ways. Coffee is acidic and contributes to overacidity in the American diet, changing the pH of our cells (and requiring calcium to be robbed from tissues to neutralize the acidity). A number of studies have linked caffeine to urinary calcium loss, which contributes to osteoporosis, hip fractures and death.
One of those studies, printed in a January 1994 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
found that women who drank two cups of coffee per day increased their risk of hip fracture by 69 percent. Coffee has also been linked to cancer. Coffee that is roasted forms a compound called 3,4-benzopyrene, a powerful carcinogen; an average cup of coffee contains 500 micrograms of known carcinogens. In 1981, professor Brian MacMahon of the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that coffee drinking was the cause of 50 percent of all pancreatic cancer, and that drinking three cups a day increased the risk of pancreatic cancer threefold.
Why we drink so much coffee is easy to understand. We eat the Big Four all the time, which causes our cells to function poorly and produce low energy levels. Then, we have deadlines to meet and schedules to keep, and coffee seems the only means to make it happen. Eat real food and eliminate “make-believe” food, and you may find that your “need” for coffee declines.
Nutrition Is Not in the Eyes
of the Beholder
Make-believe food lacks sufficient nutrients because it is highly processed, heavily cooked or commercially farmed. Yet because we grew up eating these foods, we are completely accustomed to them.
Within my lifetime, the practice of eating more make-believe foods instead of organic, fresh, unprocessed foods has increased enormously. For most of my life I lived in areas never more than twenty miles from an apple farm where, during harvest season, I could purchase fresh apples. Today, finding fresh apples is difficult, because most that are for sale have been in long-term storage since harvesting.
Produce such as apples, cucumbers, bell peppers and tomatoes are waxed to prevent loss of moisture during long-term storage; this wax is not good for you and often seals in toxic pesticide and fungicide residues as well.
Modern eggs are another example of make-believe food. A real egg contains a fatty acid called DHA (docosahexanoic acid), a nutrient that is a critical building component for cells in brain and eye tissue. A real egg supplies an average of 200 to 400 milligrams of DHA. Make-believe supermarket eggs contain an average of only 18 milligrams. Without adequate DHA, the body uses whatever substitute is available to build those cells, causing them to malfunction. DHA is sadly lacking in our modern diets, causing an epidemic of brain dysfunction, including depression, mood disorders, attention deficit disorder and a host of other medical problems. Similarly, a real egg contains ten times the vitamin E of a supermarket egg. To make matters worse, make-believe eggs are loaded with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and a host of other toxins.
We have few real eggs because we have few real chickens. Real chickens must be raised outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine, eating their natural diet of bugs, worms, pigweed, dandelions and other living foods. Most of today's chickens are cage reared, confined in factories where they do not obtain the benefits of exercise or sunlight and are fed nutritionally deficient, processed chicken feed. Neither the meat nor the eggs of these unhealthy animals support healthy human life.
Commercial chickens are fed an incredibly deficient and toxic diet. They are so malnourished and unhealthy that they must be fed a lifetime of antibiotics and other drugs to keep them alive. Ninety percent of commercial chickens have cancer at the time of their slaughter. If these chickens' cells are so malnourished and unhealthy, how can you expect your cells to be healthy when you eat their meat and eggs?
Pork is no different. Pigs are fed a diet of recycled waste, filled with toxins, and more than 80 percent have pneumonia at their time of slaughter. Likewise with beef, cattle fattened in feed lots are so malnourished and sick that they require a variety of drugs just to keep them alive. In
Diet for a New
America,
John Robbins described their typical diet:
[S]awdust laced with ammonia and feathers, shredded newspaper (complete with all the colors of toxic ink from the Sunday comics and advertising circulars), “plastic hay,” processed sewage, inedible tallow and grease, poultry litter, cement dust, and cardboard scraps, not to mention the insecticides, antibiotics and hormones. Artificial flavors and aromas are added to trick the poor animals into eating this stuff.
The animals are not the only ones tricked. The consumer is “tricked” into buying these make-believe foods and into thinking that they contain the nutrients required to support healthy life. Dr. Joseph Beasley in
The Kellogg Report
wrote that shortchanging nutrients over a period of time “is bound to involve human illness, particularly chronic conditions such as today's high-technology medicine can't seem to get a handle on.” Again and again, well-meaning parents go to the store thinking they are feeding their families fresh, wholesome foods, only to be fooled by the multitude of offerings of deficient, make-believe food products.
Carl Pfeiffer, Ph.D., M.D., related in
Mental and Elemental
Nutrients
an experiment at the University of California, Irvine. Healthy rats were fed foods that an average American would purchase in a supermarket: white bread, sugar, eggs, milk, ground beef, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, apples, bananas and coffee. The rats developed a variety of diseases. Dr. Pfeiffer concluded that if the average human diet could not support the health of rats, then it probably would not do much better for humans.
In
Diet for a Poisoned Planet,
David Steinman describes an experiment in which four sets of rats were fed different diets. The first set ate natural foods and drank clean water. Throughout the three-month experiment, these rats remained alert, calm and social. The second set was fed the same food as the first, with the addition of hot dogs. These rats became violent and fought each other aggressively. The third set ate sugar-coated breakfast cereal and drank fruit punch. These rats became nervous, hyperactive and aimless. The fourth set was fed only sugar donuts and cola. These rats had trouble sleeping, became extremely fearful and were unable to function as a social unit. The poor nutrition of these foods (not to mention the toxic food additives) had a profound effect on the behavior of these animals. Many children today struggle with hyperactive, antisocial and even violent behaviors. The time has come to consider how their diet may be causing this behavior.
More Unreal Than Ever
As if our foods were not “make-believe” enough, modern technology has taken another unhealthy leap. We now have totally artificial, synthesized products that are consumed as “food.” The food industry is creating products such as artificial sweeteners (saccharine and aspartame) and man-made fats, including margarine, Olestra and nondairy creamer. As Paul Stitt, author of
Fighting the Food Giants,
wrote, “An ever increasing proportion of the food we eat is no longer even food but is now a conglomerate of high-priced chemistry experiments designed to simulate food.” More and more Americans are eating these fabricated, imitation, processed foods; if you want to eat a good diet, you cannot subsist on foods that are not realâfoods that are completely foreign to the body.
What are the real foods that your body needs in order to become healthy and stay healthy? Your body needs nutrients: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential oils, oxygen, water, sunlight and fuel (calories). With the exception of water, air and sunshine, the nutrients necessary to keep your cells healthy must come primarily from the healthy plant and animal cells that you eat. If the fruits, vegetables, meats and other foods that you eat are not healthy, they cannot keep you healthy. If you are hoping for health, but eating a diet that is made up of unhealthy plants and animals, or foods so highly processed that they no longer resemble plants or animals, you are hoping for the impossible.
A professor of chemistry wanted to demonstrate the superiority of fresh foods to his class. He purchased “fresh” oranges at a local supermarket and measured their vitamin C content.
There was none!
Unpleasantly surprised, he traced the oranges back to their source. He found they had been harvested while still green, stored for two years and then artificially colored prior to being sold as “fresh fruit.” This is what the consumer is up against and why purchasing fresh, organic produce is so important.
One Size Does Not Fit All
The amount of nutrients required for optimal nutrition differs for every person and changes as a person's life progresses. We are not genetic cookie-cutter replicas of each other. In addition, individual factors can affect our nutritional needs, such as age, physical activity, climate, illness, injury, pregnancy or menstruation. Your need for calcium may be far higher than your neighbor's; your neighbor's requirements for vitamin C may differ widely from yours.
In his book
Nutrition Against Disease,
biochemist Roger Williams, Ph.D., reported on laboratory animals that were bred to have similar genes and, theoretically, have similar nutritional needs. Yet, some animals were found to need forty times as much vitamin A as others. Similarly, human nutritional requirements operate across a wide range. Williams described another study performed on healthy young men which demonstrated that their needs for calcium varied almost sixfold.
Does someone in your family catch colds and flus noticeably more often than everyone else? Have you considered that his or her need for vitamin C (vital for immune function) might be higher than everyone else's? Is vitamin C deficiency a problem for them, not because they get less of it, but because they need more? Researcher and Nobel laureate Linus Pauling was plagued with frequent colds and flu all of his adult life until he started taking high doses of vitamin C. Likewise, women have special nutritional needs (especially when pregnant or menstruating), as do elderly people, athletes and anyone who is fighting off an infection or suffering from a chronic disease. When it comes to nutritional needs, the “average person” does not exist.
Women are more likely to be nutritionally deficient than men. Why? Because women typically eat less food but still require roughly the same amount of nutrients. That women are more susceptible to certain diseasesâincluding osteoporosis, chronic fatigue syndrome and autoimmune diseasesâis no coincidence.