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Does the above look familiar? Medical bills that seem extreme? Well, today
in health, the desire for profits distorts the truth. Few people,
including physicians, are able to see through these distortions.
At the
beginning of the twentieth century, heart disease was almost unknown. Now
heart disease is rampant, and the medical establishment is telling us that
fat is the cause. If we would only cut our fat intake, our health would
return, they say. However, fat intake in 1900 was greater than it is
now. Where was heart disease then? Around that time, hydrogenated
trans-fatty acids began to make their way into the American diet. This was
a tragic instance of messing with nature, and plays a large part in the
causation of heart disease. It is not fat, per se, which causes the
problem, it is the type of fat. Saturated fats and hydrogenated (trans)
fatty acids are key players in heart disease, along with vitamin C
deficiency. The monounsaturated fats, such as virgin olive oil, have been
shown over and over to protect the heart from atherosclerosis. For a
detailed article regarding fats, go
here and also continue
reading below.
Since 1955, when fat phobia got its start, Americans have cut their fat
intake by more than five percent, yet more people are obese (33% versus
25%) and more people have vascular disease and cancer, both supposedly
associated with eating fat. Does this make sense to you? What kind of
health system are we living in if it does not encourage us to distinguish
the different types of fat? Are we supposed to be too stupid to grasp the
notion that not all fats are the same?
Average life expectancy at birth is greater now than at the turn of the
century. The medical establishment tells us, "Oh, of course people live
longer now, and therefore they live long enough to develop vascular
disease." However, an examination of the facts reveals that if you reached
age fifty in the year 1900, you could expect to live (on average) another
25 years. Now, in the 1990s, if you live to age fifty, you can expect to
live another 26 years. Big difference, huh? So this line of reasoning
explains nothing about why so much vascular disease is now present.
Since the year 1900, the industrial revolution has come to full fruition.
People flocked to cities to work in factories in great numbers, leaving
the countryside to be farmed by fewer people, using more efficient
equipment. Large farm cooperatives, and later incredibly large food
production companies, were created to fill the vacuum left by millions of
farmers who had migrated to cities to participate in the industrialization
process.
The desire for profits on the part of these food companies dovetailed
nicely with the busy life of city folks, and the fast food revolution was
born. Now you could go to the store and buy "food" to which you only
needed to add water and/or heat, and the meal was ready. To achieve this,
food was "processed," a term which covers a multitude of sins, including
the addition of preservatives to increase the shelf life of this "food."
The processing of food sacrifices its nutritional value. Adding chemical
preservatives to food throws another joker into the deck, because no one
knows the exact results these chemicals have on the human body over a
lifetime. Of course, it is in the farmer's best economic interest to
produce the highest yield of food, so he takes advantage of herbicides and
pesticides to eliminate the competition of weeds and critters. There are
standards set to tell the consumer the safe levels of these things in
their food, when no one knows if any level is safe, over a lifetime.
Also, as you may know, many foods are considered "commodities" and as such
the market price goes up and down. Sometimes grain is stored, the farmer
hoping the price will rise. This storage often goes on for months and
years. Meanwhile the grain deteriorates, the oils contained going rancid.
When the price goes up and the grain is sold, it is made into bread and it
arrives on your table. Fresh bread is not really fresh, but rather months
or years old.
As the modernization of farming technology took place, food for farm
animals began to be manufactured rather than grown directly on the farm.
"Animal feed," which the farmer could buy cheaper than he could grow
animal food, was invented. Meat, eggs and milk products began to contain
even higher levels of herbicides and pesticides than vegetables and
fruits, thus contaminating the food supply on the other side of the plate.
And guess where in their bodies animals store toxins? Same place you do:
in the fatty tissues. Most herbicides, pesticides and preservatives are
fat soluble, so they naturally end up in the fat tissues.
It's not the fat, folks its the type of fat, and it's what is in the fat
that accounts for the three-fold increase in the incidence of cancer since
the turn of the century. The real culprit behind vascular heart disease is
the increased intake of carbohydrates in proportion to proteins
since the medical establishment came out with that recommendation
in 1955, and the increased intake of processed foods containing, among
other things, hydrogenated, trans-fatty acids, and the continued intake of
animal (saturated) fat.
And even though you've been told to eat a low-fat diet, this concept is
now being challenged by the medical community. Some would dismiss the idea
that dietary protein can have any influence upon cardiovascular disease
with the argument that there is no difference in cardiovascular heart
disease (CHD) incidence in populations consuming high vs. low-protein
diets.
Global surveys of the world's populations indicate a remarkably limited
range of protein consumption that varies from about 10 to 15% of total
calories [Speth 1989]. Further, except for reports of Inuit and Eskimo
diets, I know of no references showing any contemporary populations
consuming 15-20% of their calories as protein, much less high-protein
diets in the 30-40% range of consumption such as our ancestors or recent
hunter-gatherers have sometimes eaten. Speth [1989]
has extensively studied protein intakes in worldwide populations and notes
that most human populations today obtain between 10-15% of their total
energy requirements from protein. This data clearly demonstrates the
relative similar protein consumption levels amongst global populations.
That protein consumption may have anything to do with the
atherosclerotic process and hence cardiovascular heart disease
is an obscure topic which has been rarely examined by the medical and
nutritional communities. It is not surprising that few are aware of the
literature which supports this concept. However, there are now at least
three human clinical trials [Wolfe et al. 1991; Wolfe
et al. 1992; Wolfe 1995] demonstrating that calorie-for-calorie
substitution of protein (ranging from 17-27% of total daily calories) for
carbohydrate reduces triglycerides, VLDL, LDL, and total cholesterol while
increasing HDL cholesterol. Further, acute consumption of high levels of
beef protein without carbohydrate evokes an extremely small rise in
insulin levels [Westphal et al. 1990]. This acute response
would tend to be associated with a reduced risk for CHD.
Lastly, in animal models, high levels of protein are known to dramatically
inhibit liver
VLDL synthesis [Kalopissis et al. 1995]. VLDLs are
the precursor molecules for LDL cholesterol.
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