Stupidly Simple Rules For Lifelong Health

1 ©2008 Adria Mooney and James Dipadua

STUPIDLY SIMPLE RULES FOR LIFELONG HEALTH

By Adria Mooney and James DiPadua


Chapter

Introduction 3

1. Startling Facts 17

2. What Do The Experts Say? 27

3. Food Basics - Macronutrients 32

4. Diseases of Affluence – A Closer Look 51

5. Nutrition - Stupidly Simple Key #1 To Good Health 65

6. Exercise – Stupidly Simple Key #2 To Good Health 83

7. Goals – The First Step to Success 95

8. Conclusion 97

Glossary/Index 100

Bibliography 107


Introduction

America is a sick nation. Despite a generally high standard of living, access to food, clean water and shelter, Americans are plagued with health problems and disease. Believe it or not, heart disease has killed more people than the Black Plague. Literally billions of dollars are spent each and every year for the health care, fitness, and pharmaceutical industries to research and combat our health problems. With pills, treatments, surgeries, diets, equipment and information of all kinds, we’re as confused as ever about food, nutrition and how to care for ourselves.

Why is that after so much money and years of costly research do we as a nation fail to improve our health? The answer is simple. The solution is simple. The rules to lifelong health are known, proven, replicable, attainable, and stupidly simple.

So why don't you already know and already practice the rules to lifelong health?

As strange as it is, there are actually barriers standing in your way and not all of them have to do with your own will power. No matter how hard you try, if you are not given the right information, you will never achieve optimal results. First, we need to identify all the barriers standing in the road to lifelong health. After that, it will be smooth sailing because you will be in control!

In this book we are going to look at the Diseases of Affluence (heart disease, cancer, and diabetes) and a provide solution to this 100 year nightmare.

Who is this book for?

Simply put, this book is for everyone who’s a little (or a lot) overweight, just diagnosed with diabetes or struggling with high blood pressure and cholesterol. This book is also for the average American athlete in “really good shape” who exercises daily because recent studies and events show that they are not immune to the Diseases of Affluence. Unfortunately, as Runner’s World points out in a 2008 article, exercise alone does not

"The entire system--government, science, medicine, industry and media--promotes profits over health, technology over food and confusion over clarity. The confusion about nutrition is created in legal, fully disclosed ways and is disseminated by unsuspecting, well-intentioned people, whether they are researchers, politicians or journalists...it is a silent enemy that few people see and understand." (T. Colin Campbell)


eliminate the risk of heart disease. Many athletes die “suddenly” of heart attacks.

Whether you are sick, old, overweight, overworked, this book will give you the tools and facts you need to get healthy fast and, more importantly, get healthy permanently. You will not need expensive treatments, equipment, or even specialized knowledge to get healthy and follow the suggestions in this book. All you need is to understand the basics of how your body works and how to give your body what it needs. There is no magic or mystery about it. The fact of the matter is people have been living healthy, long lives around the world for thousands of years doing what we recommend in this book. More surprising still:

Over 70% of the world’s population still lives on a diet similar to what we recommend, avoiding heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

Hundreds of scientific studies compiled over the past 100 years, especially the last 20, guide and serve as a basis for the recommendations in this book. We’re going to break it down for you, make sure you’re ready to get started on your new lifestyle as well as provide you with the information you need to help others make the same transition away from debilitating and devastating lifestyles.


What is this book about?

The goal of this book is to present the most proven diet and exercise methods in a concise and clear way. In fact, you will be surprised at how stupidly simple our recommendations are. We want you to see right away why America is so unhealthy and how incredibly quickly you can gain control of your health, no matter how unhealthy you are.

How will it help me?

The recommendations in this book have been shown to:

• prevent disease

• reverse disease

• burn fat

Chapter Exercise #1 Many books have activities to help the readers work through particular points. The first exercise is real simple -- and it's going to be your own personal litmus test.

Read this statement aloud with conviction.

"I will complete the exercises in this book because I know and believe they will help me get my health on track and extend my lifetime by years. The information and the exercises in this book enable me to control my life. Therefore, I commit myself today to read this book with an open mind and to complete each exercise. When completing future exercises, I will be sincere and honest with myself."

If you haven't already, read the statement aloud with conviction and belief. Read it aloud two times.

If you cannot complete this simple task, then the litmus test results are: you fail. Unfortunately, this book is not for you at this time.

If you have completed this task, then you're ready. Let’s get started!


• build muscle

• increase energy

• increase metabolism

• improve sleep

• improve sex (reduction in impotency)

Using the recommendations in this book, you will be able to quickly and permanently regain your health without drugs, surgery, or expensive diet programs. How quickly? Depending on your starting point, you could lose 15 pounds in only a matter of weeks. Even our most active readers will be surprised at the results. Only YOU have the power to improve your health permanently. It's time to stop feeling frustrated, tired, sick, and take control of your life for good. We’re here to help you do that.

1. Science

The healthiest and most long-lived peoples of the world are not informed by scientific knowledge relating to health, nor do they even necessarily have access to modern medicine. Long-lived individuals simply lead active lifestyles and eat a wide variety of extremely fresh fruits and vegetables. You don’t need to have scientific knowledge in order to stay healthy. The human body is a near-perfect system, designed and proven to thrive in a wide variety of environments. However, human-driven industry and society has rapidly changed the world —and our diets have changed as well. We now suffer from diseases at increasing rates because we changed how and what we eat faster than our bodies could adapt, not because we’re simply living longer. (Our average lifespan has increased but the maximum age limits have not increased.)

There is not one single scientist who completely understands all our bodies’ interactions with food and the environment. There are simply too many variables to be absolutely sure. Although scientists have made great strides in understanding how our bodies work, the reported results of scientific studies all too often confuse what the public really needs to know about their bodies and their health.

“I was on the inside of the system for many years, working at the very top levels, and saw enough to be able to say that science is not always the honest search for truth that so many believe it to be. It far too often involves money, power, ego and protection of personal interests above the common good. Very few, if any, illegal acts need occur. It doesn't involve large payoffs...not a Hollywood story; it's just day-to-day government, science and industry in the United States." (T. Colin Campbell)


By design, scientific studies are complex interactions of variables. For practical purposes, scientists typically try to reduce all the variables into as few manageable components as possible. The main problem with this situation is not unknown to the scientific community: Oversimplifying complex processes produces oversimplified results and isolated scientific studies produce isolated results that by themselves do not paint a holistic picture of how the body functions and how it can best be cared for.

But the real problem with science is not the scientific method itself, or the complexity of understanding results of studies. The real problem is the corrupting influence of industry.

It’s true. Some scientists are heavily funded by corporate interests and enjoy extremely high salaries and “perks” as a result of their cooperation. The studies in major scientific medical journals are frequently funded by pharmaceutical companies, who maintain veto power over whether findings can be published. This means that results not in alignment with the “corporate strategy” are suppressed. Even worse, there is no easy way to tell which studies are funded by corporate interests, so the hunt for unbiased truth becomes even more convoluted. As unlikely as we’d think it to be, the complexity of scientific research and the publication process act as barriers to your health.

2. Industry

If everyone found out they could actually treat diseases and stay healthy simply by changing their diets and exercising, some of the largest and most powerful industries in the world would be in trouble. Fortunately for these industries, they have the power to pay scientists to conduct research that supports their findings. They have the power to "educate" school children about the benefits of their food products. They have the financial reach to influence government into making policies in their favor and censor scientific reports that may harm them.

“Much lip service is paid to the importance of prevention, but the healthcare industry, being an industry, stands to profit more handsomely from new drugs and procedures to treat chronic diseases than it does from a wholesale change in the way people eat.” (Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma)

“The vast majority of scientists are honorable, intelligent and dedicated to the search of the common good rather than personal gain. However, there are a few scientists who are willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder. They may not be high in number, but their influence can be vast.” (T. Colin Campbell)


Industry associations garner quite a bit of power in D.C., and the results of studies are sometimes "softened" in government reports when the findings are not favorable to powerful industries. Companies also often use scientific findings to market and justify use of their products. When you hear about scientific findings in the news, it is often the result of a public relations, a segment of marketing departments. The marketing and public relations industry is structured to maintain contacts at news publications for the purpose of placing new information to the public. It is quite easy for scientific research to seem contradictory or confusing to consumers because it is so often contextually misplaced by marketing departments and journalists that are not necessarily qualified to analyze and communicate scientific findings. (To the media industry’s credit, many reputable newspapers do hire science-journalists who specialize within a sector of research; however, this does not make that individual immune to biased or misleading results). The lack of scientific understanding—which is very different from the business of news publication—is another major barrier to better health. If the journalists responsible for communicating results to the community do not understand the results themselves, there is little likelihood of the public receiving accurate coverage of pertinent information.

To solve this issue, we're going to share the results of the overwhelming majority of studies on health with you in this book. When you’re finished, you will have a clear picture of the American nutrition and health landscape—a picture that isn’t as cozy and good intentioned as you would like. In fact, readers who take the information in this book seriously may be angered and disturbed by the behavior condoned by politicians and carried out by profit-driven, cash-laden corporations.

Healthcare/Pharmaceutical Industry

Cutting edge treatments, surgery, and drugs to treat diseases of affluence (the main killers of Americans) mean literally trillions of dollars a year for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. These industries have a deeply invested interest in making sure you stay unhealthy. It cannot be underemphasized that the companies’ business models rely on your inability to obtain sustained health.

In 2008, the top 20 healthcare companies alone amount to approximately 1.2 to 1.6 trillion dollars worth of assets and operations. That is a lot of money! To give you an idea of just how much, those 20 companies represent MORE than the US government spent on defense, social security, and Medicare in 2007. It is also about double the 2008 bailout package for the financial sector.


Figure 1 Percentage of GDP Spent on Health CareChina Study)

Physicians are taught early on to cooperate with drug integiven to medical students by pharmaceutical companies, dprescribing pills to patients, and medical research is focused on drug trials (because these studies are heavily funded) rather than on seeking more natural paths to health. Drugs are pushed onto consumers more easily than you would expect, or care to know. 20% of all new drugs have serious, unknown side effects, and more than 100,000 Americans die each year from taking such medications! on Osama bin Laden and the Global War on Terror, the real threat to our national safety is right here at home in our healthcare industry.

The modern healthcare and pharmaceutical industries depend on developing new and expensive treatments in order to make money year after year.industries do not care about your individual health.

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Percentage of GDP Spent on Health Care

Percentage of GDP Spent on Health Care (Adapted from T. Colin Campbell's The

Physicians are taught early on to cooperate with drug interests: gifts and incentives are nts by pharmaceutical companies, doctors are rewarded for

edical research is focused on drug trials (because these studies are heavily funded) rather than on seeking more natural paths to health.

consumers more easily than you would expect, or care to know. 20% of all new drugs have serious, unknown side effects, and more than 100,000

each year from taking such medications! While we’re all busy focused al War on Terror, the real threat to our national safety

industry.

The modern healthcare and pharmaceutical industries depend on developing new and expensive treatments in order to make money year after year. Do not be fooled. These industries do not care about your individual health.

1997

Percentage of GDP Spent on Health Care

Percentage of GDP Spent on HealthCare


Diet/Fitness Industry

Even if you are ready to stop yo-yo dieting and get healthy once and for all, how do you know what to do? What information can you trust? As we just, there is a powerful industry invested in making sure you don't find out how stupidly simple it is to be in control of your own health and avoid disease.

The diet and fitness industry makes billions of dollars a year selling the next "quick fix” to overweight, frustrated, sick Americans. Whether it's a magic fat burning pill, an exercise contraption, or a miracle diet, the results are always the same: A little bit of loss in the first month or two, a lot of gain within a year, and you're off to buy the next product. It's time to break this cycle! We’re going to help you do that and provide you the mental ammunition you need to do so.

What's wrong with current diet programs out there? Why are people trying so hard to lose weight and continuously failing? Why do people continue to shell out thousands of dollars for "proven" diets that don't give lasting results?

1. They are designed to make money. They depend on selling you related "products" in order to assist in your weight loss. You should never have to depend on a product for your health. Real food and exercise is the only thing that will make you permanently healthy. (We don’t believe that knowledge is a product.)

2. They are gimmicky. Diets are usually designed to be appealing to you as a consumer in some way. They sound easy, let you eat certain foods that you love in exchange for giving up others — such as giving up “carbs” in exchange for more meat. It’s almost as though Eric Cartman from South Park came up with the Atkin’s Diet; it is that ridiculous.


3. They are complicated. Many diet programs do not admit to the simple truth that there are some types of foods that you simply should rarely eat, for your whole life. They do not admit to the simple truth that you have to exercise regularly, for your whole life. They cleverly design ways for you to balance calories in and calories out in order to lose weight in the short term while you are on the diet. In the end, when the complicated formulas or over-restrictive diets get tiresome or too expensive to maintain, you stop the “diet” and backslide to previous habits and weights.

What is Nutrition? Aside from the science of nutrition, nutrition is the conglomeration of substances in our food that fuels our bodies. Whereas diet refers to our habits of eating, nutrition refers to the "stuff" in food that ultimately provides us with the tools necessary to maintain life.

Without even considering anything but the two definitions provided here, which do you think is more important?

1. Diet, the general habit of what we eat. 2. Nutrition, the actual food and beverages we consume.

While it's true that you are what you eat (most of the time), our nation's obsession and extreme fixation on diet led us astray of what's really important about food--it's what you actually eat and how you fuel your body that ultimately makes the biggest impact on your weight. Whereas we Americans are going on "doctor prescribed milkshakes", Jenny Craig's, Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, and Zone (to name only a few), we should be examining ways of bettering our understanding of the processes driving our bodies' fluctuations in weight (and shape). Maybe it's just our culture. Are we too lazy to "get" nutrition? Maybe so but that’s highly doubtful. Americans just suffer from misplaced trust. We have a lot of trust that when we pay for a service, such as diet advice, we're getting expert information. We expect the person to know all the ins and outs of their recommendations, despite the fact that we live in a profit driven society and the fact that nobody can know all there is to know.

In the rest of this book, we will use the term 'diet' but we don't want to elicit thoughts of Atkin’s, South Beach or any other fad you may have heard of. The stupidly simple truth to lifelong health starts with understanding the nutritional requirements of the body. It is important that our readers understand that nutrition comes first, diet second. Diet is just something we all have; a nutritional understanding of what's driving our diets is optional. Electing to have that information is going to make the difference between the reader who avoids a life of pain, suffering and financial hardship and the reader destined to a life free of these issues.


The stupidly simple truth is you cannot continue your life going on and off various diets, yo-yoing your way from sickness to health and back again. You have to embrace the fact that you are a human being. Your body needs to consistently receive the nutrients and energy of healthful foods and consistently engage in rigorous exercise to use that energy. If your body is allowed to do what it is supposed to do (that is, what it’s been doing over the course of millennia), it will not develop diseases of affluence. Your body will look healthy, you will feel healthy, and you will feel ALIVE. There’s no other word for it.

It’s time to stop being lazy about your health habits. It’s true. Many of us are overworked and overly tired. We also all too easily fall into the habit of “It’s 5pm, time to head home, grab some takeout and watch TV for 4 hours.” That’s the very lifestyle that is killing us with tragic and debilitating diseases as well as the healthcare costs that risk bankrupting of our social system. Rather than giving up and making excuses, it’s time to make some simple changes to your daily habits that will have permanent positive effects on your life.

Food Industry

Food consumption is intrinsically a stagnant market; people eat approximately the same amount of food every day, every year. As Michael Pollan illustrates in Omnivore’s Dilemma, the food industry is able to make significantly greater rates of return by selling processed foods.

So how do large food companies increase their profits? By making new food-like products and selling them for more than the sum of their parts are actually worth. Most packaged foods are made of incredibly cheap, abundant ingredients like corn and sugar, and other chemical compounds. Moreover, the food industries play a role in making sure you don't change your eating habits for the better. By chemically engineering their products to “taste” better while also using ingredients with little to no real nutritional value, mega-corporations are pulling off the greatest heist in human history. We are not only consuming more and more surplus food but we’re doing so with zeal and rabid lust for these “food” products.

The dairy, meat, sugar, corn and soy industries, the largest food industries and producers of the industrial diet, also have a strong economic interest in obscuring information about the harmful effects of their food products from consumers. Most people don’t even realize how money-hungry corporations are subverting the health of the populace at large. Most people also don’t realize that they’re actually physically addicted to the foods that lead directly to highly increased risks of diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

We call this a heist because large food corporations profit handsomely by taking


advantage of government subsidized raw materials such as corn and soy to bolster their bottom-lines. They also profit by marketing these products heavily (especially to children), creating lifelong addictions to highly sweet, fatty, and salty foods. They secure their profits by ensuring through government lobbying and paid research studies that information about the health dangers of their food products never leaks to the public. They also allow the public to shoulder the economic costs and ramifications of diets and industrial processes that result from these subsidized activities.

Translation: This is a pretty cushy business model and a lot of money and effort is put into keeping it that way.

Real food is not new, not in packages, not expensive, and not as profitable to big business. Real food is what you should be eating.

3. Government

Although it is not necessarily the responsibility of the government to make sure its citizens lead healthy lifestyles, the government is entrusted with providing unbiased and accurate information for public use. Unfortunately, when it comes to issues about food and health, this is often not the case.

Industry has its hands in some of the government programs we trust to care for our most needy vulnerable citizens: children, the poor, and elderly. The Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) is a government organization responsible for research and reporting that influences food decisions related to the Food Pyramid, the Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch Program, the Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Feeding Program (WIC), and Medicare hospital food programs, as well as food labeling. In all, at least 35 million Americans are fed directly by these programs every day. What’s so scary? Simple: the fact that academic scientists of the FNB receive financial compensation from corporate sponsors including M&M Mars, Coca Cola, Taco Bell, and Burger King (a shortened list to be sure). Many of the members of the FNB have ties to the dairy industry and major dairy companies such as Dannon and Nestle. The findings of the 2002 FNB report sided heavily with these interests, literally guaranteeing that our nation’s vulnerable citizens will be force fed unhealthy doses of sugar, fat, processed foods, meat and dairy, all under the guise of a “balanced diet.” Balanced to what? Balanced to maintain the profits of food industries? Or balanced toward long life and health?

School lunch and other government food programs, the food pyramid, and many other government reports and programs on health and nutrition are influenced by powerful industries. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for formulating the US Dietary Guidelines and the Food Pyramid. It’s major office holders are previous employers of the meat and dairy industry, and many of them are still


compensated by these industries. As a result, USDA dietary recommendations fall more in line with the food industry interests than in the public’s interest.

It is no coincidence that the American government allows up to 25% of your daily calories to come from sugar, whereas the World Health Organization recommends that no more than 10% should come from sugar. The simple truth is that consuming 25%, or even 10% of daily calories from sugar—rather than from whole food, complex carbohydrates—is reckless and absolutely divergent from the needs of any human. Once again our elected representatives and entrusted scientists in government felt compelled to bow down before the profit-alters of industry and recommend a diet structure that is ultimately detrimental to the entire populace.

The dairy industry, for example, is an extremely powerful interest and has more influence than most imagine. The marketing budget for the dairy industry association was $165 million in 2003. One of their main target markets is children, and they have the clearance to market to kids via government channels, our public schools! The dairy industry’s stated mission is to increase demand for dairy products by making children “life-long consumers of dairy products.” They “teach” children about the benefits of dairy by providing educational kits, posters, videos and other materials to schools. Lesson plans developed by the dairy industry are taught in schools to millions of kids each year. What’s so bad about that – milk is good for you, right? When profit-driven industry has its hands in public education, it is no longer education. It is indoctrination and propaganda. We will discuss the effects of dairy products on health in more detail later.

“Evil industry”, “big government”, and “confusing science” are not the only barriers standing in our way to achieving lifelong health. It is always easier to place blame on a scapegoat rather than admit our own part in the game. The truth is, our culture is also part of the problem.

4. Culture

We build our worldviews based on what we see and experience over our lifetimes, much of which includes the influence of our parents and community. We all grew up eating foods prepared a certain way, and we may even cook the same way our parents did. We have strong feelings and prejudices about foods that we may not even be fully aware of—at least not until we are faced with a challenge to our beliefs. When it’s our lifestyles, habits, and food preferences that are challenged, we tend to justify our actions with excuses, objections, and denial, ignoring any potentiality of the information being correct.

Our lives are constantly bombarded with images, smells, and messages about food products. Take a minute to imagine the sound of a soda can opening, the smell of a


burger and fries, the smell of a fresh donut, or the latest McDonald’s jingle. How about completing this sentence: “Milk, it does a ___ ___.” Easy, right? Now try imagining the smells, images, and sounds of vegetables. Maybe not so easy; nutritious foods are not heavily marketed, and therefore not as present in our culture and daily thinking about food.

Cultural bias about food is present at all levels, from consumers to scientists. We are reluctant to accept evidence that challenges our way of life, and the things we like to do. That is a perfectly normal way to react. It’s fine for a moment or two, but ultimately we need to have an open mind and consider what could impact our lives for the better. At the end of the day, it is a personal choice what we eat and whether we exercise or not; failure to make the correct choice does have consequences, and often these consequences end our lives prematurely.

It is true that the rules to living a healthy life are stupidly simple; this does not mean they’re easy. People may not want you to know how simple it is to live a healthy life and maybe YOU don't even want to know. You may insist on finding some magical solution in which you continue to lie on the couch and stuff yourself with chocolate cake while the pounds just melt away.

Well, that is never going to happen. The problem with that solution (stuffing your face and taking a “magic pill”) is that it’s not replicable. In fact, most of the diet programs on the market are so complicated (or costly if you count gastro-bypass or angioplasty or any other elective medical treatment), that these programs are not replicable. We’re going to show you what’s not only stupidly simple but also replicable. Meaning, no matter your age or starting health, you can obtain a healthy body and lifestyle. Simply said, it's time for you to change your life for the better, once and for all. The suggestions in this book may be tough to swallow at first, but if you embrace our recommendations with an open mind, nothing will stop you from achieving a long, healthy life. More importantly, it's time for you to stop relying on others to solve your problems. It's time to stop feeling hopeless. It's time to take action and make a difference in your life and the lives of your family and friends. The solution to your health and weight problems is stupidly simple:

Eat Right and Exercise Regularly

There you have it. That's it! You probably feel cheated for buying this book because you've heard that before. We told you it was stupidly simple though. We also said it’s not easy. That’s why we are going to discuss exactly what “eat right and exercise regularly” means and how incredibly powerful doing it right can actually be. “Eat right” does not mean go hungry or count calories—that’s a huge waste of time. “Exercise


regularly” does not mean spend hours on a treadmill, stationary bike or become a gym rat. Before we get into our lifestyle recommendations in more detail, first you need the background information to prepare yourself to accept the recommendations. In the next chapter, we’re going to start looking at the facts that led us to writing the book. We’ll cover the economic toll—numbers you’ve probably never seen—and also touch on the actual figures of our health epidemics in America.

Chapter Exercise #2 Take out a blank piece of paper. Turned so it's longer from left-to-right (rather than up-down, as normal), fold the paper into fours. About an inch down from the top of the page (still turn on its side), draw a line, creating a "row". Within each fold and above the line, write Overweight, Diabetes, Cancer, and History of Heart Disease.

Fold the paper such that you only see one of the words (doesn't matter which you start with). Below the heading, write the names of each person that fits that description. Start with you, your family, friends, coworkers, etc and move outward (with yourself as the 'closest' proximity to you yourself). Feel free to use celebrities or politicians or whomever you think of during this exercise (but make sure to move outward from yourself). Use these definitions as the criteria:

Overweight: Body mass index of over 25. If you don’t know, make a subjective guess – stomach fat, large waist size, or massive thighs are obvious visual cues.

Diabetes: Type 2 diabetes

Cancer: Currently diagnosed, recovered, in remission, or passed away (note which kind if you know)

History of Heart Disease: High blood pressure, cholesterol, heart attack, stroke, arrhythmia, angina

After you complete one column, go on to a new column. When you're completed, circle the names of people that repeat. Finish this exercise by simply reflecting on what each of the circled people has in common. Feel free to jot down any notes that occur to you as you think this over.

Save this page with any notes you took for an exercise later in the book.


Ch. 1 Startling Facts

The simple fact of the matter is that Americans have been suffering from higher rates of diabetes, obesity, cancers and heart disease over

the last 100 years, not less.

America is getting fatter and unhealthier every year.are heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. These diseases are or a result of the body breaking down over time.shown to statistically appear in developed nations up to developed nations! Why? (It is what we eat and how much we move our bodies).

Figure 2 Obesity in America (Center of Disease Control)

Less developed nations suffer from diseases caused by a lack of nutritious food, clean water, and basic hygiene (diseases of poverty). developed nations today do not generally die from typhoid, malaria, diarrhea, tuberculosis, or measles. Developed nations suffer from diseases called "diseases of affluence" (heart disease, diabetes, cancer) caused by too much energy

The simple fact of the matter is that Americans have been suffering from higher rates of diabetes, obesity, cancers and heart disease over

the last 100 years, not less.

America is getting fatter and unhealthier every year. The leading killers of Americans are heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. These diseases are not natural causes of old age or a result of the body breaking down over time. In fact, these diseases have been shown to statistically appear in developed nations up to ten times or more than in less

and how much we move our bodies).

Obesity in America (Center of Disease Control)

Less developed nations suffer from diseases caused by a lack of nutritious food, clean Americans and people from other

generally die from typhoid, malaria, diarrhea, Developed nations suffer from diseases called "diseases of

affluence" (heart disease, diabetes, cancer) caused by too much energy-rich food and


too little exercise.

The facts and statistics below will quickly show you how bad the problem is. Read this section. Reflect on it. Note: skimming over the facts is what got our nation into this predicament in the first place. As a whole, Americans are overweight, we do not exercise, we do not eat right, we spend more money on healthcare than any other nation in the world and it’s all for naught. Meaning, we suffer from diseases and health problems related to our lifestyle and we ultimately die more frequently because of it.

It’s time to face the dirty secret of American health problems: the key to our sickness and our health is in our control. It’s time to keep an open mind and start truthfully and critically evaluating how our daily habits are slowly eroding away our health.

Healthcare in America

• There were 1.5 million deaths in 2000 due to diseases of affluence. At that rate, we are losing the equivalent of the entire population of Philadelphia…each and every year!

• Americans spend far more per person on healthcare than any other nation in the world

• Americans spend one out of seven dollars on healthcare -- 300% more than only 40 years ago

• 81% of Americans take prescription drugs every week

• Medical error (adverse drug effects and surgical errors) is the third leading cause of death in the US, right behind heart disease and cancer

• The number of uninsured American citizens without healthcare has increased for six consecutive years and is not slowing

• In 2005, the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey found that the rate of patients without insurance outnumbered insured individuals by 2 to 1 (twice as many)

• In 2006, 14.8 percent of all American citizens lacked health insurance; that’s 43.6 million people—an increase of 18.9% from 2005 (only one year!)

• Of those 43.6 million people, 36.5 million of them were working age (18-64)


Figure 3 Uninsured Americans (National Health Interview Survey, 2006)

Diet

• In 1996 approximately 42% of Americans ate cakes, cookies, pastries or pies on ANY GIVEN DAY, while only 10% ate green leafy vegetables

• Americans consume more meat and added fat than 30 years ago

• Americans consumed 32 teaspoons of added sugars per day in 1996 (that's 525 calories, or close to the 25% of government recommended total daily calorie intake!)

• 3 vegetables account for over half of Americans' vegetable consumption - potatoes, head lettuce, and tomatoes… “Burger and fries" anyone?

Weight

• 64% of Americans are overweight (is your list from chapter exercise #2 looking a little short?)

• 31% of Americans are obese

• The average American man's waist size is 38.8 inches

• Males with waists larger than 35 inches have double the risk of developing heart disease

• Individuals with a waistline of 37-40 inches have a significantly increased risk of respiratory problems, so they're less likely to work out because it's "difficult”

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Adult

Children


Physical Activity

• Close to half the US population is perpetually sedentary

• Over half of Americans age 65 and older lead a sedentary lifestyle

• One-third of young people in grades 9-12 do not regularly engage in vigorous physical activity

• In 1999, less than 60% of American 11th graders exercised regularly

• In 2007, less than half of Americans aged 35-44 exercised regularly

Heart Disease

• Heart disease is the #1 cause of premature death in the US--and it has been for almost 100 years!

• Heart failure will kill 40% of Americans

• 82% of American adults have at least one risk factor for heart disease

• Over the next 24 hours, 3000 Americans will have heart attacks, roughly the same number of people who died in the 9-11 attacks

• 50 million Americans have high blood pressure

• People who develop heart disease and suffer from a heart attack have an overwhelming risk of dying from heart disease

• The average American blood cholesterol level is 215 mg/dl, putting those individuals at extremely high risk for developing heart disease

• 100 million Americans have high cholesterol – that’s 33% of the total population!

Cancer

• Americans have over a 1 in 3 chance of getting cancer

• Approximately 500,000 Americans will be diagnosed with some form of cancer this year

• 6% of Americans get colon or rectal cancer (close to 16 million people)

• Developed nations have 300% more colorectal cancer death rates than "less developed" nations

• Cancer death rates have increased since 1974, despite advancements in medicine, treatment techniques, and earlier prognosis methods


• Men who consume the most dairy have double to quadruple the risk of developing prostate cancer

• 1 in 8 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime

• Increased estrogen exposure increases risk of breast cancer (is in fact the main cause of breast cancer)

• Diets high in animal-products are linked to elevated levels of estrogen

Diabetes

• 15 million Americans have diabetes - that's 5% of the total population

• 8% of American adults are diabetic

• Diabetes increased 33% from 1990 to 1998

• Japanese men living in the US have a four times higher rate of diabetes than Japanese men living in Japan

What are the causes of these startling statistics? Why do we continue to be overweight, diabetic, cancer-ridden, and develop heart disease despite advances in medicine? The stupidly simple answer is that a “pill” or “surgical method” is not enough to solve these problems.

Despite efforts by the food and pharmaceutical industries to guide scientific research and control public opinion, there is an overwhelming body of research with consistent findings on diet and health: Proper nutrition and exercise prevents and even reverses many of America's most common health problems.

We can say with 100% confidence that reducing consumption of animal products and industrial foods to zero will nearly eliminate your chances of developing a disease of affluence (cancer, heart disease, diabetes). Just as important, removing these foods from your diet can actually reverse these diseases after they have been diagnosed.

It is that stupidly simple. The countries with the highest intakes of animal fat and animal protein have the highest incidences of diseases of

affluence.

We know you're thinking, "But why don't I know this? Why wasn’t I told? That must not be right. These vegetarians have an agenda they’re trying to push on me." (We know you're thinking that because we were thinking the same thing when we first learned of these findings). Two words sum up why these findings never make it to the front page of the daily paper: Big Business!


The following statistics illustrate how much money there is to be made on diseases of affluence, and how simple (and affordable) treatments can be with diet and exercise alone.

Heart Disease

Heart disease is big business for the healthcare/pharmaceutical industries, but treatments are expensive and dangerous for patients: • 1 out of 750 Americans received a voluntary heart bypass operation in 1990

• 70-80% of patients who undergo elective bypass surgery procedure, costing about $46,000, do so for angina relief (chest pain caused by clogged arteries)

• Within three years of the operation, up to one third of the patients will again suffer from chest pain

• Within ten years, half of the bypass patients will die, have a heart attack, or again experience chest pain

• 1 in 16 patients will experience an "abrupt vessel closure" during angioplasty, leading to death, heart attack, or an emergency bypass operation – angioplasty is also a voluntary procedure

• 40% of the arteries opened during the angioplasty will close again, nullifying any previous achievements

• No surgery, treatment or drug currently has the ability to CURE heart disease (though there is a cure). Procedures only ease symptoms and are not guaranteed to prolong life spans

• The American Heart Association recommends a cholesterol level below 200 mg/dl, yet 35% of heart attacks strike Americans who have cholesterol levels between 150 and 200 mg/dl; a truly safe level is below 150 mg/dl. Three renowned cardiologists (Dr. Castelli, Dr. Roberts, and Dr. Esselstyn) admit they have never seen a heart disease fatality among patients with blood cholesterol levels below 150 mg/dl.

Curing heart disease with diet alone would mean lost money for the healthcare, pharmaceutical industries and high-paid surgeons (wouldn’t you defend and justify a six-figure income?) Medical professionals are highly rewarded for prescribing drugs and performing expensive surgeries. Fortunately, there are a few “renegade doctors,” whose patients have achieved amazing results from diet and exercise programs alone.

Dr. Esselstyn's 100% plant based diet completely reversed the affects of heart disease for patients who stayed on the program. The diet also resulted in significant reversal in heart disease symptoms after just a few weeks. Dr. Ornish sees a sustained elimination of chest pain for 60% of his patients on a low-


animal-food diet. Dr. Ornish has had such amazing results over the years that insurance companies are beginning to accept the costs of his program because it saves the insurance company thousands of dollars per patient per year.

Diabetes

The total economic toll for diabetes in the US is over $130,000,000,000 per year. In 2007, medical costs attributed to diabetes include $27 billion for care to directly treat diabetes and $58 billion to treat the portion of diabetes-related chronic complications that are attributed to diabetes. The largest components of medical expenditures attributed to diabetes are hospital inpatient care (50% of total cost), diabetes medication and supplies (12%), retail prescriptions to treat complications of diabetes (11%), and physician office visits (9%). People with diagnosed diabetes incur average expenditures of $11,744 per year. People with diabetes have medical expenditures averaging 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes. $1 in $5 health care dollars in the U.S. is spent caring for someone with diabetes. Studies have shown that within weeks, type 2 diabetics (over 90% of diabetics are type 2) that switch to a whole foods, plant based, low-fat diet were able to dramatically reduce—if not eliminate—their insulin shot dependence.

Cancer The estimated overall annual cost of cancer in 2007 was $219.2 billion, $89.0 billion of which were direct medical costs. Just under five percent of all U.S. spending for medical treatment is spent on cancer.

Between 1995 and 2004, the overall costs of treating cancer increased by 75 percent. According to Cancer Facts & Figures 2008:

• 1 in 5 people with health insurance who are diagnosed with cancer use all or most of their savings because of the financial cost of dealing with cancer. (So much for the “safety net” of insurance).

• Cancer patients, who have no insurance or not enough health insurance, have higher medical costs and higher rates of death.


Obesity

Obesity, caused largely by poor diet, goes hand in hand with the major diseases of affluence. When obesity rates increase, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer increase as well. The overall effect has been sky rocketing health care decades, bankrupting Americans in the process. “Since 2000, an estimated five million families have filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of serious medical problems. The current health care finance system is bankrupting hard-working, play-by-the-rules American familiesHarvard Law bankruptcy expert). In general, about half of bankruptcy filings can be attributed to medical causes.

Figure 4 Percent Obese Population (adapted from T. Colin Campbell’s

The American Obesity Association estimates that the economic costs of hundred billion dollars per year ($100,000,000,000),additional $30,000,000,000-$40,000,000,000 (billions) spent on fad diets and quick fixesIt’s time to wake up! That is a lot of money being spent on perpetuating our bad habits and false beliefs about health—especially since the “secrets” of lifelong health are stupidly simple.

A mountain of sound scientific studies sends a clear and consistent message about the effects of diet on health: Eating a balanced diet of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables combined with frequent exercise is THE KEY to lasting good health

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

1976-1980 1988-1994 1999-2000

Percent Obese Population

hand in hand with the major diseases of affluence. When obesity rates increase, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer increase as well. The overall effect has been sky rocketing health care decades,

Since 2000, an estimated five million families have filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of serious medical problems. The current health care finance system is

rules American families” (Elizabeth Warren, bankruptcy expert). In general, about half of bankruptcy filings can be

adapted from T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study)

The American Obesity Association estimates that the economic costs of obesity are one hundred billion dollars per year ($100,000,000,000), and that doesn't include the

$40,000,000,000 (billions) spent on fad diets and quick fixes. It’s time to wake up! That is a lot of money being spent on perpetuating our bad habits

especially since the “secrets” of lifelong health are

ies sends a clear and consistent message about the Eating a balanced diet of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables

combined with frequent exercise is THE KEY to lasting good health.




So, what are we eating?

Most Americans eat what can be described as an "industrial diet." An industrial diet is comprised of foods produced using industrial processes (chemicals, refining, and processing). Refined/processed food has been altered from its "whole" state and reproduced into a new food "product," losing its original nutritional integrity in the process. An industrial diet is also high in animal products because they are readily available and affordable due to reduced production costs. Production costs are reduced by “mass producing” livestock in ridiculously small areas and sustaining animals on cheap food (such as other animal parts, blood, and government-subsidized corn and grain).

In addition to being highly processed, the industrial diet is extremely energy rich. This simply means industrial foods are high in fat, protein, carbohydrates and therefore calories per unit of food weight. Although extremely energy rich, these foods are devoid of most of the nutritional components that keep us healthy (fiber, vitamins, antioxidants). Due to the nature of the food industry (supported by subsidies and designed to make profits), meat, dairy, and highly processed carbohydrates are the cheapest and most heavily marketed foods. Since the human body has a natural addiction to meat, dairy, and sugar, they are also the foods which we most enjoy eating. Before humans had access to enough food, it made sense to seek out energy-rich food. It is a natural attraction. However, now that we have more than enough food available at all times, it no longer makes sense for us to "eat efficiently." It is incredibly easy to eat hundreds more calories per day than necessary simply because industrial food is so efficient (calorie-dense).

In an industrialized society, we must actually eat "inefficiently" (eat foods that are NOT calorie-dense) in order to prevent weight gain and a host of other health problems.

NOT CALORIE DENSE: 100 calories of spinach has 12 grams of protein and weighs 15 ounces

CALORIE DENSE: 100 calories of porterhouse steak has 13.5 grams of protein and

"The supermarket had become the only place to buy food, and real food was rapidly disappearing from its shelves, to be replaced by the modern cornucopia of highly processed food-like products...there was really only one kind of food on the national menu, that was whatever industry and nutritionism happened to be serving." (Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food)


weighs 1.73 ounces (the 12-oz steak should sound a bit ridiculous by this point—that would be 692 calories and 92 grams of protein—about double your daily protein requirement!)

The next section will introduce you to the health experts behind our recommendations. We have compiled the findings and experience of the world's most renowned health experts and pioneers in health research. The evidence pointing towards these recommendations is rock solid and has stood the test of time. We are not recommending anything new, crazy, untested, or unproven.

You can trust this information and use it to regain control of your life and achieve lifelong health.

Chapter Exercise #3 Write down everything you eat and drink for three days. Be completely honest. Be relentless; try to catch yourself forgetting to take note of it.

Save this list for later; you will need it.


Ch. 2 What Do The Experts Say?

The doctors, scientists, and experts described here are anything but “quacks” or dogmatic zealots hell bent on pushing their worldview on others. To the contrary, these people were raised on traditional American diets and began their careers as mainstream scientists and doctors. It was only because of their open minds, deep commitment to human health, and willingness to stand behind the implications of their research that they changed their lives. Each of these experts is a maverick in his own right, standing against the status quo that values profits over health. They practice what they preach, and they are passionate about helping others to improve their lives.

Dr. Campbell

T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., a nutritional biochemist, has been at the forefront of nutrition research for more than 40 years. His culminating work, the China Study, is in large part based on his research project “The China Project”, one of the most comprehensive studies of health and nutrition ever conducted: 6,500 adults were studied across 65 counties in China. The study was the product of a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine which generated over 8,000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet and disease.

Some of the findings of the China Study include:

• The average calorie intake, per KG of body weight, was 30% higher among the LEAST active Chinese than among AVERAGE Americans. Yet, body weight was 20% lower.

• Fiber consumption was at least three times higher in China than in the US.

• American men died from heart disease at a rate almost seventeen times higher than Chinese men. This means that for every one Chinese heart disease fatality there are 17 American deaths due to heart disease.

Dr. Campbell has conducted original research both in laboratory experiments and in large-scale human studies, has received more than 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding, and has authored more than 300 research papers.

Dr. Ornish

Dean Ornish, MD, is the founder, president, and director of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.


For the past 28 years, Dr. Ornish has directed clinical research demonstrating that comprehensive lifestyle changes can reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery. Dr. Ornish showed that a low-fat, plant based diet and regular exercise could not only stop the progression of coronary artery disease but could actually reverse it.

The results of his study, the Lifestyle Heart Trial, showed that 82% of heart disease patients who followed his strict diet and exercise program saw total regression of their heart disease within one year. Over 90% of the patients also had a reduction in chest pain. In contrast, the control group (those that did not follow his program), experienced a 165% INCREASE in chest pain and an increase in artery blockages.

Dr. Ornish is the author of five best-selling books, including New York Times’ bestsellers Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease, Eat More, Weigh Less, and Love & Survival.

His work has been featured in virtually all major media, including cover stories in Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report.

Dr. Ornish has been a physician consultant to The White House and to several bipartisan members of the U.S. Congress. He is listed in “Who’s Who in Healthcare and Medicine,” “Who’s Who in America,” and “Who’s Who in the World.” He was also chosen by LIFE magazine as “one of the 50 most influential members of his generation.”

http://www.pmri.org

Dr. Esselstyn

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn has been associated with the Cleveland Clinic, the nation’s most renowned heart center, since 1968, where he started as a heart surgeon. He served as President of the Staff and as a member of the Board of Governors. He was named one of the "Best Doctors in America" in 1994-1995. He has authored over 150 scientific publications and several books.

Dr. Esselstyn became frustrated with the poor results of heart surgery and procedures and began recommending dietary changes to his patients, resulting in far higher recovery rates. Through diet alone, he was able to eliminate chronic heart disease in his patients. He has treated many of his fellow cardiologists who were formerly wary of his unorthodox approach to treating heart disease.

In 1995 Dr. Esselstyn published A strategy to arrest and reverse coronary artery disease: A 5 year longitudinal study of a single physician's practice, quickly becoming a benchmark for long-term nutritional research on arresting and reversing coronary artery

http://www.pmri.org/


disease. That same study was updated at 12 years making it one of the longest longitudinal studies of its type. ALL of his patients who follow the diet recommendations still experience the benefits of reversed heart disease symptoms—and these were the “untreatable” bunch.

Dr. Esselstyn and his wife, Ann Crile Esselstyn, have followed a plant based diet for more than 20 years.

http://www.heartattackproof.com/

Dr. McDougall

Dr. John A. McDougall has been studying, writing and speaking out about the effects of nutrition on disease for over 30 years.

Dr. McDougall has cared for thousands of patients over almost 3 decades of medical practice and has run a highly successful live-in program for more than 17 years.

Dr. McDougall is the author of several national bestsellers including: The McDougall Plan: 12 Days to Dynamic Health, McDougall's Medicine: A Challenging Second Opinion, The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss, The New McDougall Cookbook, The McDougall Program for Women, and his latest ground breaking book, The McDougall Program for a Healthy Heart.

Dr. McDougall advocates a low-fat, plant based diet that promotes lasting health benefits and can also reverse serious illness without drugs or surgery.

http://www.rightfoods.com

www.drmcdougall.com

Dr. Barnard

Dr. Neal Barnard grew up in Fargo, North Dakota in a family of cattle ranchers and physicians. He received his M.D. from George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

In 2003, he was awarded a US$350,000 research grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the effect of a low-fat, vegan diet on diabetes. The study results, published in Diabetes Care, found that a low-fat, vegan diet gave the greatest improvement in glycemic and lipid control in type 2 diabetic patients.

http://www.heartattackproof.com/

http://www.drmcdougall.com/


Neal Barnard is the author of dozens of publications in scientific and medical journals as well as numerous nutrition books. He is frequently called on by news programs to discuss issues related to nutrition, research issues, and other controversial areas in modern medicine.

He has lectured for the American Public Health Association, the World Bank, the National Library of Medicine, the Franklin Institute, the American Medical Writers Association, the Association of Healthcare Journalists, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, among other state dietetic associations.

He founded the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in 1985. PCRM has since grown into a nationwide group of physicians and supporters that promotes preventive medicine and addresses controversies in modern medicine. As president of PCRM, Dr. Barnard has been instrumental in efforts to reform federal dietary guidelines.

In 2004 Barnard founded the Washington Center For Clinical Research, a nonprofit subsidiary of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that aims to conduct research into the role of nutrition in health.

http://www.nealbarnard.org

Chapter Exercise #4 What did you do at the gym last? In addition to writing down the activities, next to each activity, write down why you did it. Also answer these questions: did you do any long, slow cardio? Did you do much "isolation" work (like bicep curls or "butt" exercises)? Did you do really light weights and lots of reps? Did your workout "kick your ass"? Again, looking over your list of what you did at the gym last and the reason for doing it, make sure you didn't forget anything that stands out. Somewhere with a bit of space write down one of these statements in big letters as best fits your sentiment right now about what you did at the gym: "This works!" or "This Doesn't Work!"

It's only one or the other; we'll let you decide. Again, like all the exercises in this book, you have to be completely honest with yourself.

Save this page for later.

http://www.nealbarnard.org/


What Doctors Measure When the body digests food, all the chemical compounds are broken down into smaller parts. Our body uses these basic pieces to rebuild into compounds useful for the cells and tissues.

One example of this is the breakdown of fats into cholesterol. When you eat a piece of steak, the body breaks down the protein and fat within the meat. The fat compounds in the steak are strings of lipids and fatty acids with a particular structure that is not soluble in blood. For this reason, the compound is deconstructed and then reassembled.

Cholesterol is an essential compound for all human cell functions. Because the chemical compounds of undigested fat are almost identical to the chemical compounds of digested fat, doctors can estimate a person's cholesterol intake by measuring the residual cholesterol in the blood. When doctors measure the blood cholesterol levels, they measure three types of fat compounds: HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

So, next time you go to the doctor and he or she measures your cholesterol, you'll understand that the doctor is looking for a loose relationship between what's in your blood and what you typically eat.

The same process of measuring cholesterol is applied to measuring blood sugar too. Whereas there are three types of fat measured by a blood test, there is only one sugar relevant to blood and/or urine tests: glucose. Glucose is the digested form of many types of sugars, fructose to sucrose to high-fructose corn syrup. There are a number of health consequences to having improperly balanced blood sugar levels.

It's stupidly simple: humans, like all animals, shouldn't need to worry about 'blood sugar' or 'high cholesterol;' these terms are only important for humans living in an unbalanced, manufactured and highly refined world.


Ch 3. Food Basics - Macronutrients

Food is made up of three macronutrients: proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. The body needs to take in a large amount of macronutrients every day to live and function. Micronutrients refer to vitamins, which the body needs in small amounts. This section will introduce you to the three macronutrients and how they affect the body.

About Protein

Protein is a polypeptide, a string of repeating molecules built from amino acids, making amino acids the basic building blocks of protein. Amino Acids:

Amino acids make up 75% of the human body. They are essential to nearly every bodily function. Every chemical reaction that takes place in your body depends on amino acids and the proteins that they build. A total of 20 different kinds of amino acids form our proteins. Nine of the amino acids cannot be created by the body in the digestive process—these are called essential amino acids. Essential amino acids must be ingested through food.

Simply said: When you eat food, the dietary protein in the food is broken down into smaller amino acid “pieces” and then rebuilt into protein chains that your body can use. Failure to obtain enough of the essential amino acids through food results in degradation of the body's proteins in order to obtain the amino acid that is needed. Meaning, we start to literally eat our own bodies to access the protein needed to sustain us. Unlike fat and starch, the human body does not store excess amino acids for later use—amino acids must be ingested in food every day.

What is high quality vs. low quality protein?

High quality protein sources contain the right proportions of all the essential amino acids our bodies need, making the protein an efficient source for accessing properly balanced nutrients. Examples of high quality protein sources are all meat/dairy products, as well as soy, spirulina, quinoa, hempseed, amaranth and buckwheat. Low quality protein sources contain one or more amino acids that are not in the right proportion for the body. This might make you think that you should avoid “low quality proteins.” Don’t worry though, the only common cases of protein-deficiency occur among undernourished populations (America is not one of them). Most plant sources of


protein are technically considered low quality, but that does not mean you should worry about not getting enough protein. Keep in mind two things: (1)because the body doesn’t store protein for later use, we need to eat it every day and (2) as long as you eat enough variety every day with adequate portions (meaning, you’re not going hungry), you will get more than enough protein.

One way to make sure that your meals contain enough protein is to combine different foods together so you get all the essential amino acids in the right proportions. Combining any grain with nuts or beans will create a high quality protein (e.g. rice and beans, pita and hummus, peanut butter on whole wheat bread). Vegetables also have protein and can combine with grains and beans to create an incredibly nutritious, high quality protein meal.

Though the usage of “high quality” versus “low quality” at first glance looks like a clear delineation between what we should and should not eat, the terminology turns out to be merely a bias in how we view food. How much protein do you need? Karl Vogt, an early German nutrition researcher, calculated that an adult male only needed 44.5 grams of protein per day. Nonetheless, he felt a "civilized" diet should consist of approximately 118 grams per day (the USDA currently recommends approximately 55 grams per day). It may be difficult for most Americans to imagine a time when meat was a rarity—and an expensive one at that. To avoid an overly complex discussion of culture and history, it will suffice to say that “civilized” meant meat. Meat was culturally associated with wealth, power, and masculinity. In this context, the more meat, the better the person.

In addition to being influential himself, Karl Vogt mentored two prominent American researchers, Max Rubner (1854-1932) and W.O Atwater (1844-1907). Atwater went on to become director of the USDA as well as started the first nutritional laboratory of the USDA. As director, he recommended 125 grams of protein per day. Though these figures have since declined, the concept of animal protein as the cornerstone of not only a strong, healthy "man" but also of a "normal, civilized" diet are still pervasive in society today. Our bias toward meat and dairy is so strong in America that only 16% of Americans would agree to give up meat and dairy for one week for $1000. Would you give up meat and dairy for one week for $1000? After finishing this book that will be an easy question to answer. The RDA (recommended daily allowance) says that about 10% of our daily calories should come from protein (about 50-60 grams). The more active you are, the more protein your body needs. If you consume too much protein, however, excess protein


will be excreted in the urine and not used by your body. You might think that you’ll need to eat more protein to keep the body healthy and strong because you lead an active lifestyle. Take note, studies indicate active strength trainers gain muscle mass on 10% calories from protein. Be wary of protein supplements, especially from animal sources (whey, casein, and egg white are all animal protein supplements). Your body probably gets more than enough protein as it is. More importantly though, the body does not need animal protein to function properly and gain muscle. This is a common misconception for many individuals.

We can now expand our stupidly simple rule to living a long, healthy life: eat a balanced diet of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables combined with frequent exercise.

We don’t actually mention animal protein anywhere in that sentence. In fact, the reason we don’t is that animal protein consumption is directly linked with increased rates of a slew of human diseases, specifically, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

How does eating animal protein cause disease?

Several landmark studies have shown that animal protein plays a huge role in the promotion of cancer cells in the body after exposure to carcinogens. Higher doses of animal-based protein promote DNA mutations, which can lead to cancer. The studies showed that after exposure to carcinogens, the development of cancer in the body was almost entirely dependent on how much protein was consumed, regardless of how much of the carcinogen the person was exposed to. Maintaining low levels of animal protein actually prevented the cancer from developing.

When we look at heart disease, the connections between meat consumption and heart disease development are clear but the process is still under scrutiny by researchers. What we do know is that it doesn’t matter if you consume “fat free”, “low fat” or “full fat” animal products; the end result is the same: an increased risk of heart disease. Data indicates that sticking to a whole foods, plant based diet with minimal added fats is the most effective method of reducing and eliminating your risk of heart disease. In fact, as our survey of heart disease costs, death tolls, and post-treatment results indicate, a whole-foods, plant based diet is the only method of reducing and eliminating heart disease.

Recent research is also beginning to paint a picture of how animal proteins lead to an increase in auto immune disease incidence (diabetes and multiple sclerosis are examples of auto immune diseases). Current thinking is along these lines: Semi-digested animal proteins escape the intestines and are absorbed into the blood stream, where they become identified as "foreign" invaders. Because animal proteins closely resemble our body's proteins, the immune system can become "confused" about which proteins are normal and which are foreign, resulting in an immune system that attacks


itself (i.e. auto immune disease). This is not a swift process in most cases, developing over the course of years.

In Norway, there is evidence that inland, dairy-consuming areas have higher rates of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) than coastal, fish-consuming communities. Dr. Roy Swank conducted a trial on 144 MS patients for thirty-four years. He hypothesized that MS was not a result of genetics or viruses or other environmental factors but diet, and cow's milk in particular. His clinical study focused on reducing total saturated fat intake, and so animal product consumption in general. Remember, there is little-to-no saturated fat in plant based foods.

Some patients followed the recommendations, others did not. Dr. Swank had ample evidence to delineate between "good dieters" and "bad dieters," and after thirty-four years 80% of the "bad dieters" had died while only 5% of the "good dieters" had. Moreover, 95% of the "good dieters" were able to postpone the serious affects of MS, being only partially disabled by the disease. If you know anyone with MS, this is a startling finding and cannot be ignored.

How does milk consumption result in more disease occurrences?

Just like you, we learned in school that milk is good for growing bones because it's a rich source of calcium. This leads us to our first question about milk.

If milk is so good for building healthy bones, why is it that Americans, who consume more cow's milk and its products than most populations in the world, have some of the highest rates of hip fractures in the world? Are we just naturally clumsy?

The claim of milk being good for developing bones because of the calcium levels in milk is at best a half-truth. Animal-based proteins cause an acidic increase in the blood. Calcium, a main ingredient in milk, is a base and can neutralize this increase in acidity. That is, theoretically milk consumption should help offset the acid load while also contributing to rapid muscle and bone development. It turns out that the calcium levels in milk aren't significant enough to offset the increase in acid loads. So while the milk does contribute to faster bone development--and so a greater density than non-milk consuming people—over time that added density doesn't prevent a weakening of the bones that results in the disease osteoporosis.

So, what is osteoporosis? Osteoporosis is caused by weakened bones, often resulting in fractures or breaks later in life. Unlike plant protein, animal protein causes bodily acid loads to increase. The daily acid load in the body is comprised primarily of foods containing acid. The daily addition of acid to the body must be excreted to maintain acid base balance. In an effort to reduce the acid load, the body begins to secrete calcium directly from the bones. This is why, despite high consumption of calcium via dairy


products, the bones of life-long milk drinkers are still highly susceptible to osteoporosis.

You might know that calcium is required to absorb protein so you would think that the calcium in milk is helpful for the body to metabolize the protein in the milk. True, calcium is required to absorb protein but at too high of levels, the process is inhibited so the protein is not completely absorbed. Also, numerous studies indicate that dairy protein is linked to increased calcium excretion in urine. High calcium levels in the urine are closely associated with kidney stone development.

During an episode of Seinfeld, the character Kramer is diagnosed with having a kidney stone—he also learns that the only way to get rid of a kidney stone is to “pass it,” meaning pee it out.

Kidney stones are extremely sharp, dense rocks of calcium and other mineral-deposits that develop in the kidneys over time. The body’s solution for this problem is to pass the stone. In some cases the stone is too large to pass and advanced medical treatment is necessary.

Toward the end of “The Comedian,” Seinfeld and Kramer go to see a circus performance. Kramer goes to the restroom during the performance and begins to scream at the top of his lungs while standing at the urinal. He’s screaming so loudly that the tightrope walker falls and breaks his leg. Kramer was screaming because passing a kidney stone is one of the most painful things a human can ever experience.

So, now that you know you really, really don’t want a kidney stone, how do kidney stones form?

Remember dairy and animal-product consumption leads to an increase in body acid loads, and that our body’s way of offsetting the increase in acid is to secrete calcium directly from our bones. The function of the kidneys is to filter blood of harmful, metabolic residue. Because there is an increased concentration of calcium in the blood, the kidneys become a natural collection-depot for the excess calcium secreted by the bones. Though much of the calcium is simply urinated out of the body as it’s filtered from the blood, small amounts of calcium remain in the kidneys where the stone eventually forms.

There’s another nasty little secret about milk consumption:

Vitamin D, produced by the body, helps prevent cancers as well as bolster the immune system. Consumption of animal proteins prevents the body's production of Vitamin D. This is also true of people with increased calcium levels. So, people who consume more dairy are actually at risk of getting sicker (cold, flu, etc) than non-dairy consumers. What we see is that not only do people who consume dairy and meat in large quantities


have higher trace levels of calcium in their blood, the same individuals have the highest levels of bone fracture late in life. By the way, the only nations with higher rates of bone fracture than the US are New Zealand and Norway, two notoriously milk-focused nations. There's no coincidence here.

We do need protein and proteins are more accessible during digestion if coupled with calcium. Lucky for us, there are a plethora of veggies with calcium and protein available for the body to use in the digestive process so there's no biological need for consuming large quantities of milk in order to strengthen bones or build muscle--despite what the milk industry would lead us to believe. Their stated goal is to increase consumption of milk and to make lifetime milk drinkers. With the help of beautiful Hollywood milk drinkers and school milk programs in addition to our own national bias toward milk consumption, this isn't that hard for the industry to accomplish.

The National Dairy Checkoff, the marketing arm of the dairy industry, was established in 1983 to increase national milk consumption. Their stated mission:

“By funding programs to help increase demand for and sales of U.S. dairy products and ingredients, dairy producers get a long-term value for their investment by helping to increase consumption and build loyalty for dairy” (www.dairycheckoff.com).

The dairy checkoff has succeeded in increasing per capita milk consumption from 522 pounds to 605 pounds since 1983. How? By marketing heavily to children:

"As the best avenue to increase fluid milk consumption long-term, children are without a doubt the future of dairy consumption. [That's why the dairy checkoff] began examining how improved packaging, additional flavors, coolers with merchandising and better temperature regulation can affect fluid milk consumption and kids' attitude toward milk both in and out of school" (2001 Dairy Management, Inc. annual report).

Isn’t that a sweet way to talk about children?

But don't people who eat more protein get taller and bigger?

Yes, but they also have the highest rates of cancer and heart disease! However, greater plant protein intake is also closely linked to body growth, but does not have any correlation with higher rates of cancer and heart disease. You or your children can develop equally well on plant based protein as on animal-based (even though our cultural bias says that “meat is better”).

Eating protein is not what causes increased muscle development. High intensity exercises that challenge the body, requiring muscle repair, is what stimulates growth. Protein provides our bodies with the building blocks needed to build the muscle but


that growth is triggered by challenging the body. Just eating a lot of protein is only going to result in expanded waistlines, heart disease, cancer or other debilitating and tragic diseases.

"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!"

What is it about ice cream that is so darn good? Creamy, sweet, cold, and just great to have on a hot day. It’s creamy (high in fat) and sweet (high in sugar). No secrets there.

We all know that our bodies naturally gravitate toward foods high in fat and sugar. Most of us also have a firm understanding that it was a byproduct of natural selection that developed this propensity for fat and sweetness--because fat and sugar (carbohydrates) are two of the three macronutrients required for our bodies' survival.

Despite what most people think, humans did not consume diets high in animal foods for the vast majority of history; we mostly ate plant based foods. The societies with the most centenarians (100 years or older) still consume diets high in plants, low in animals.

Plant based diets don't contain calories in the same magnitude of density as ice cream (soy ice cream is still ice cream). Essentially, the "creation" of new food stuffs, whether ice cream, cake, or cheese-stuffed portabellas, lead to the creation of a new type of food.

The apple became mixed with butter, eggs, refined flour and sugar and we named it a "pie." What was a nutritional and safe sweet snack (a plain apple) became a calorie-dense spare-tire-generator.

Our bodies are amazingly efficient systems, constantly operating on near-autopilot. When we eat something, we don't have to do anything to ensure proper digestion and conversion of food into energy. But, ultimately, the body's auto-pilot can be a two-edged sword.

We cannot safely eat anything dense in calories: fried chicken, German chocolate cake, mashed potatoes with butter n' gravy, or New York cheese cake. Our bodies simply are not designed to deal with energy dense food like this.

As strange as it may sound, in our world of overabundance and easy access to calorie-dense foods, one of the stupidly simple rules is to eat inefficiently--that is, to eat foods less dense in calories.


About Carbohydrates Carbohydrates are the body's fuel; they are sugars (also known as "starch") consumed as food to be used for energy. When we eat a carbohydrate, our bodies digest it and break the compound down into glucose, a simple sugar that our body uses as energy to fuel physical activity and other body functions. Complex Carbohydrates

Complex carbohydrates are made of chains of multiple sugars bonded together. Whole grains (such as whole grain pasta, flour, and rice), beans, fruit and vegetables are the main sources of complex carbohydrates. Our body's digestive enzymes have to work harder to break the bonds of these chains to convert the sugars to glucose. For this reason, digesting complex carbohydrates takes place over an extended period, providing the body with a steady and even supply of energy.

Complex carbohydrates are also high in fiber, which is the cellulose content of the plant. If you’ve ever used a juicer, the cellulose is all the stuff that comes out the back of the juicer as ‘waste,’ whereas the water and sugars come out as juice. That’s why juice is not nearly as good for you as fresh fruit. The fiber slows digestion of the fruit, preventing a surge of easily accessible energy. Although fiber itself is not digested by the body (it comes out the other side), consuming high-fiber foods helps keep you full longer because of the added volume. As you may have heard, fiber is also linked with lower colorectal cancer rates. There is no fiber in meat and other animal products (which is why Atkin’s dieters often experience severe constipation). Eat your fruit and veggies, and eat a lot of them! Simple Carbohydrates

Simple carbohydrates are found in sugar (including syrups, honey, fructose, sucrose, dextrose) and any food product sweetened with sugar (cake, pastries, cookies, candy, soda). Simple carbohydrates are high in energy, and this energy is quickly and easily accessed during the digestion process. The body can only use so much energy at once though. There is a good mechanism for the body to store unused energy until later...it turns into fat!

You might be wondering why we call that a “good mechanism” for storing energy. You’re right that it is a bit unfortunate for us now, considering fat is the new culprit to our health issues. This is an instance of human-capacity for overcoming natural barriers faster than our bodies could adapt. As concerns our health and these over-abundant times, we actually need to focus on being “inefficient” rather than maximizing food


efficiency. This means reducing, if not eliminating simple carbohydrate consumption (except in the form of whole foods—the apple, banana, cucumber or squash). Sweet fruit also naturally contains simple sugar, though in quantities much smaller than pure sugar, since fruit is composed of mostly water and fiber. Sweet fruit is a great snack to eat just before a workout to give you a burst of energy your body can use while exercising. Also, the fiber in fruit helps spread the sugar levels through the workout, making you feel strong from start to finish. Unlike pure sugar, it is not really possible to eat enough whole fruit to make you fat. Just making a switch from “sugary deserts” to whole fruits (NOT juice) will have a dramatic impact on your body, without even exercising. Refined Carbohydrates

Refined carbohydrates are created by processing food, and refer to complex carbohydrate sources that have been stripped of their fiber and most of their non-sugar nutritional content. Sources of refined carbohydrates include white flour and all white flour products (crackers, chips, pretzels, baked goods, pasta, pizza dough), juice, and sweetened dairy products.

Refined carbohydrates have a similar effect on the body as simple carbohydrates; however, the refining process makes the sugars even more accessible to the body, surging it with energy it cannot effectively use. As a result, consuming refined and simple carbohydrates leads directly to fat gain. What's worse, refined carbohydrates have no fiber (so refined-carb foods don't keep you full), and very little natural vitamins and minerals.

Refined Carbohydrates and Disease

Consuming refined grains raises levels of triglyceride levels in the blood, which leads to heart disease. High triglycerides contribute to a hardening of the arteries — which increases the risk of stroke and heart attack.

Triglycerides are fats that circulate in your blood and provide your body with energy. One way triglyceride levels rise in the body is from the consumption of refined carbohydrates. Calories ingested in a meal and not used immediately by tissues are converted to triglycerides and transported to fat cells to be stored.

Studies also link consumption of refined carbohydrates with diabetes. The results of studies show that those who consume more refined carbohydrates are significantly more likely to develop type 2 diabetes – also known as “insulin resistance syndrome.” The function of insulin is to supply energy to the body. Insulin resistance is caused by the consumption of refined carbohydrates, which leads to surges of insulin in the blood.


After years of higher than normal insulin levels, the body develops a resistance to it, resulting in diabetes. How many carbohydrates should I eat?

If you haven't already guessed, you should minimize simple carbohydrates and avoid refined carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are an essential part of a healthy diet, since they are the richest sources of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and provide a steady stream of usable energy to fuel the body.

Complex carbohydrates (whole grains and whole grain products, whole fruits/vegetables) can make up anywhere from 40-80% of your total calories. As long as you avoid animal products and refined/simple carbohydrates, you will naturally get a good amount of healthy carbohydrates to fuel your body. Do “carbs” make you fat?

A carbohydrate in and of itself does not make you fat. It is unused energy stored for later use that makes you overweight. Refined carbohydrates and simple sugars are the only sources of carbohydrates that have the ability to flood your body with so much unusable energy. Meaning, consumption of refined carbohydrates is what makes you get thunder thighs, spare tires and badunka-dunk in the trunk. What about potatoes?

Potatoes are a special case in the vegetable kingdom, as they contain high concentrations of starch and cause a similar response in the body as refined carbohydrates. That being said, they are still a natural food and can be part of a healthy diet. Small and colorful potatoes are better than large baking potatoes, which are higher in starch. As long as you eat a variety of other vegetables with your potatoes and avoid refined carbohydrates, you need not worry…but avoid French fries!

Now that you’ve got the facts straight about carbohydrates and protein, it’s time to understand fat, the macronutrient that has more than twice as many calories as protein and carbohydrates. About Fat

Fat is a nutrient that is essential for normal body function, but most people consume more than enough fat each day. Each gram of fat has 9 calories, whereas each gram of protein or carbohydrate only has 4 calories, making eating too much fat an easy way to go over your daily caloric needs.


Fats are molecules made of fatty acids. Omega-6 and omega-3 are essential fatty acids, meaning they can't be produced by the body (like essential amino acids) and need to be consumed via dietary fat in food. Both essential fatty acids are unsaturated fats and can only be produced by plants. There is no need to consume saturated fats (the stuff found in animal products) as the human body does not need them.

Essential fatty acids come from plants, not animals. They are the only fats our body needs. Saturated fats primarily come from animals, and our body does NOT need them. Seeds and grains are the primary sources of omega-6 fatty acids.

Green leafy vegetables are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids, although flaxseed is among the best sources.

Early Homo sapiens consumed approximately equal parts of omega−3 and omega−6 essential fatty acids. There has been a huge increase in omega-6 fat in the human diet in the last 50 years, due to cattle being fed grains rather than their natural diet of grass, and as vegetable oil and corn consumption increased as the main ingredients in industrial food. Currently, the ratio of omega−6 to omega−3 fatty acids in the American diet is 20−to−1 or more, and in some cases as high as 50-to-1. Research has shown that this imbalanced essential fatty acid ratio leads to increased rates of diseases of affluence.

To get a healthy ratio of essential fatty acids, all you have to do is eat a wide variety of WHOLE plant foods. Concentrated foods such as oil and refined corn products and grain-fed meat throw your essential fatty acid ratios out of balance.

There are three types of fat: Unsaturated fat: highest in vegetable oils, nuts, seeds, olives, avocado, fish Unsaturated fat comes in two types, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. These fats are commonly regarded as "good fats" because they do not raise blood cholesterol levels.

However: several major studies on both humans and animals showed that consuming unsaturated fat progressed heart disease just as much as saturated fat, even though blood cholesterol levels were lower. This data is the basis for Dr. Esselstyn’s recommendation that heart disease patients completely avoid vegetable oils and nuts in addition to animal products.


Saturated fat: highest in meat, dairy and coconut oil. Foods high in saturated fat raise our blood LDL cholesterol, which leads to heart disease. Reducing saturated fat intake without reducing overall animal-product intake does not have the same health benefits as eliminating animal products altogether. This cannot be emphasized enough so we repeat:

There is no health benefit to exclusively reducing saturated fat intake without also reducing animal-product consumption in general. Simply focusing on saturated fat results in no net-change in risk. Reducing animal-product consumption is the only way to reduce your blood cholesterol levels. Trans fat: found in industrial food (this is primarily a man-made fat). Trans fat is the worst kind of fat; avoid it completely.

In food labeling, “partially hydrogenated vegetable oil” is the ingredient containing trans fat. The industrial process of hydrogenating vegetable oil was developed in the early 1900s and first commercialized as Crisco in 1911. The use of hydrogenated vegetable oil increased steadily in the 1950s and 1960s due to its low cost and long shelf life. Consuming trans fat increases the risk for coronary heart disease more than any other nutrient.

Trans fat is a man-made fat found in processed foods such as margarine, cookies, chips, crackers, frozen dinners, dips, sauces, fried food, and fast foods (including pizza). The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) states that "from a nutritional standpoint, the consumption of trans fatty acids results in considerable potential harm but no apparent benefit" and has concluded that there is no safe level of trans fat consumption. On July 25, 2008, California became the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants. We’ll go into more detail on this at the end of this chapter but keep in mind that this is an example of the body’s reaction to chemicals it is not adapted to handle. Dying from the failure to adapt to environmental conditions (in this case, our diet) is a basic tenet of evolution called “selection pressure.” The significant changes in human dietary patterns combined with significant increases in disease and death rates show that humans are not immune to natural selection. How much fat do I need?

You don't need to worry about how much fat you "need" since fat is in most foods and you already get more than enough.

Most of your fat intake should be from unsaturated fats. The less fat you eat, the more


food you can eat throughout the day, since fat is more than twice as calorie-dense as protein and carbohydrates. For example, one tablespoon of olive oil has 14 grams of fat (126 calories), whereas one whole cup of chopped broccoli has no fat and only 30 calories. Adding fat to your food piles on calories without adding much benefit.

Scientists and nutritionists do not agree on how much dietary fat is acceptable. Dr. Ornish, Dr. Esselstyn and other health experts recommend no more than 10-15% of daily calories should come from fat, whereas the government Recommended Daily Allowance allows up to 30%. We suspect profit, bias and misinformation guide the government’s recommendations.

The truth is that as long as you avoid animal products and minimize added fats (oils), you should not worry about how much fat you eat daily; you will have adequate consumption of your needed fats.

It is possible to cook extremely delicious meals with little to no oil. The only way to find out is to try.

Don’t recent studies show there is no connection between fat intake and heart disease?

There are several large, heavily funded research projects underway in the US, namely the Nurses' Health Study and the Women's Health Initiative, that routinely find no correlations between fat intake and heart disease or cancer. Why would that be? Why after decades of cumulative research costing hundreds of millions of dollars is there no evidence to show everything we claim in this book? The answer is tragic in its simplicity: study flaw.

One of the things to keep in mind about these two American health and nutrition studies, among many others, is that they are comparing Americans to other Americans. Our diets are fairly homogenous across the entire nation, reducing the statistical significance of the studies. If you’ll recall from the first chapter, we mentioned that scientists attempt to reduce any study down to as few variables as possible. A part of that process is to create a set of “control” variables—variables that won’t be altered by the researchers so they have a “normal case” to contrast their work against. When all the participants in a nutrition study have the same diet, everyone is the control group. There’s no “contrast” group.

What do some of the critics of the Nurses' Health Study and the Women's Health Initiative say?


Translation: Since NONE of the women studied in the Women's Health Initiative consumed a low fat diet, the study was not able to find a connection between disease rates and fat intake. With all the study participants consuming high fat diets, they all had comparably high rates of disease.

Translation: the study never accounted for animal protein as a factor in and of itself. The nurses may have lowered their fat intakes, but they offset their reduction in fat consumption with increases in animal protein (fat-free cheeses and skim milk). As we emphasized earlier, there are no health benefits to exclusively reducing saturated fat intake without also reducing animal consumption.

Translation: the study is so fundamentally flawed in its emphasis on remembering specific food intakes that really getting reliable information is unlikely.

Since you completed “Chapter Exercise #3,” feel free to pull out your sheet and look over what you ate in just three days. Did you remember everything? Could you have you remembered everything if we asked you today to recall the details from those three days?

“To try to fill out the food-frequency questionnaire used by the Womens’ Health Initiative…is to realize just how shaky the data on which all such dietary studies really are. The survey…starts off with some relatively easy questions…But the survey soon became harder…I would hope they’d take my answer with a grain of salt because I honestly didn’t remember…what sort of fat [my okra] was fried in…Now that we spend half or our food dollars on meals prepared outside of the home, how can respondents possibly now what type of fats they’re consuming?” (Michael Pollan).

“When women in America, such as those in the Nurses’ Health Study and the billion-dollar Women’s Health Trial, reduce their fat intake, they do not do it by reducing their consumption of animal-based foods. Instead, they use low-fat and nonfat animal products,” (T. Colin Campbell).

“The women who were supposedly consuming a low-fat diet were actually getting 29 percent of their daily calories from fat. For those on the front lines of nutritional research, that is not low-fat at all,” (Caldwell Esselstyn).


Taking studies carried out worldwide, research clearly shows a relationship between animal food consumption and diseases of affluence. In many countries, fat intake and animal food consumption correlate evenly (since animal food is naturally fatty).

Your opinion and purchasing decisions do make a difference though. The industrial food system responded to consumer concerns about fatty foods by producing low fat and fat free meats and dairy (either through processing, refinement or genetic manipulation). As a result, American animal food intake is higher than ever, whereas fat intake is the same or lower. It is much more appealing to industry experts and shareholders to "fix" their product rather than admit it is simply not good for people. The industrial food system strikes again!

Children of Survivors

Before moving on, we felt it important to briefly discuss evolution and how it affects humans and disease. In the process, we’ll shed a bit of light on what's going on in our society (and bodies) as a result of our actions and social institutions (such as cultural bias toward meat, dairy and profits). We also feel it’s important to discuss evolution because far too much time is spent blaming “bad” genes for diseases. First off, our bodies developed all of its tools (digestion, eye-sight, hearing, etc) over the course of thousands of millennia. It was through selective pressure that the human body evolved to what it is today. A selective pressure is an event, or series of events, that change the conditions in which one lives. A simple example is a prolonged draught that results in extended food shortages. A situation where an entire region is stressed by low-food stores results in individuals and animals with less efficient digestive systems to perish first. The individuals surviving the prolonged draughts and food shortages are said to have better fitness. Fitness is a gauge that is relative to the dying individual--hence the term "survival of the fittest." Fitness can be expressed in many ways: the slower antelope is “less f it” than the faster, the quieter leopard is more fit than the loud if it’s able to catch food better, etc. Efficient digestion was not a prerequisite for humans until the conditions were created under which it was needed for survival. Selective pressures such as drought, fire, etc—resulted in some dying and a few surviving. The remaining

“Technology may greatly reduce what otherwise would be powerful selection pressures (as it does in many societies where eyeglasses can correct what in earlier times would have been fatal nearsightedness), but it will not eliminate many selection pressures and may even exacerbate some” (Paul and Anne Ehrlich).


individuals are left to breed and pass on all of their genetic endowments to future generations, even things that may be “less fit” in new situations. We live in a world where there are many more plants than there are animals. Plants are the most abundant source of food for humans, just as they are the most abundant food source for most living animals. The general rule of thumb is that there are 90 percent more plants than herbivores (measured by weight, not “number”) and about 90 percent more herbivores than carnivores. Although we culturally cling to the idea that ancient humans spent the majority of time hunting, in actuality we spent the vast majority of our history (approx. 5.9 million years) consuming plants. Statistically, most people on the planet still consume mostly-plant based diets. The tools needed for appropriately hunting food weren't even prolific in human cultures until around 400,000 years ago, and those only wooden spears. Have you ever tried to kill an animal with a wooden spear? It’s not going to be easy. In the end, humans are significantly more predisposed to plant consumption than animal consumption. In other words, there are no selective pressures guiding humans toward meat consumption. In order to segway back to modern society and how our diets are affecting everything on the planet, we need to understand one more concept: Coevolution. What affects one life form, affects another. This means that the selective pressures put on humans--the foods we successfully digest and the bacteria and viruses that we can resist—are reciprocal. The perfect examples of this are domesticated plants (corn, wheat, rice and soy) and domesticated animals (cattle, pigs, goats, etc). Currently, humans produce major corn surpluses, and we also feed this corn to livestock. What's the problem with that? Very few animals consume a diet solely based on one food--this would be a very precarious position ecologically. Cattle are often referred to as ruminants because of an enzyme in their bodies allowing for the digestion and processing of grasses. The stomachs of cows, and other ruminants, have a genetic disposition to consume large amounts of grasses because previous selective pressures created a fitness for grass consumption (not grains like corn). The current result of cattle consuming grain is a proneness to disease and infection. The vast majority of cattle are incapable of properly digesting corn and the result is undernourished, infection-prone cattle that under normal ecological conditions would not survive. These infections and sicknesses are treated through heavy antibiotic usage. Bacteria, the main cause of infections, are among the oldest genetic entities in existence. That means bacteria have been exposed to the selective process for a far greater time period than humans--or any other mammal on the planet, making them in many ways much more flexible and adaptable than other life-forms. Through heavy exposure to antibiotics (i.e. selective pressure), illness-causing bacteria are beginning to


form resistance to our most powerful antibiotics. This is exactly what we would expect under the evolution model: most individuals of a species die from the selective pressure (antibiotics), leaving behind a select few who are (a) resistant to the selective pressure and (b) remain behind to breed, creating a high concentration of antibiotic resistant offspring. This means that animals and humans are at risk of dying from antibiotic resistant bacteria. When thinking about society, our exposure to new chemicals, new drugs, new food-production methods and evolution in general, it is extremely important that you keep the timeframe in mind. Human evolution, which gave us massive brains and powerful immune systems, occurred over hundreds of millennia, not just a few generations. Modern agricultural techniques, usage of antibiotics and newly developed chemicals (such as high fructose corn syrup or trans fat) are less than 100 years old. The results are clear; we cannot survive under the conditions presented by modern society. Current research also indicates it is highly unlikely that your genes possess all the genetic conditions necessary to develop a disease. Meaning, very few humans experience the results of "bad genes." In fact, there are so many variables within the human body that the genes don’t even control everything we develop; the genes are mere “guides” for how the body should develop. It is only when our genes interact with the environment around us that conditions are met to develop diseases. As the research supporting the arguments in this book indicate, we can control the course of development (or non-development) of many of the diseases plaguing our society through diet alone.

Now that you understand the basics of food and how it affects the body and have a bit more perspective of the road humans took to get here, let's take a closer look at the main diseases of affluence (cancer, heart disease, and diabetes).


Chapter Exercise #5 Fold a piece of paper in half

• In one half of the page, list the rough times or dates you drove your car for distances up to one mile (in one way distance) over the last week

o across the street to a new store, a new place on the “other side” of a parking lot, drop something at a friend's house "real quick," etc; it all counts

• Next to the time or date (in the same '1/2' of the page where you started your list), write where you went and about how far you traveled.

• On other half of the page list the times or dates you walked or rode a bike to the grocery store or the last time you went anywhere without a car, if you’ve never walked or biked to the store.

• On this same half, list any activities you knowingly did to ‘offset’ the elimination of physical activity (due to driving, not walking or biking)

If you're like most people, one of your lists will be significantly longer than the other. We've not met many people who even think in terms of "offsetting" a short drive; it's just a matter of everyday life for Americans.

What is important about this exercise is understanding that our outlook on the world needs to change. In some instances, to save us from ourselves, we need to do what's less efficient. We need to be "impractical" but it's only impractical from the perspective of a failed paradigm. You can, no matter how old you are, walk for most of your activities. There's no need to drive everywhere. Your body is supposed to be active, propelling itself forward--not being driven around for every little activity. (NOTE: Some areas are admittedly too remote or too dangerous to make this possible. A distance of 5 miles or more is an example of too remote for walking, and the absence of sidewalks or bike lanes may make some trips dangerous. If you think your neighborhood is dangerous, you just need to go outside more. Sidewalk usage is shown to dramatically reduce crime.)


"How can it taste good without butter?”

"I'd burn boiling water."

Those two statements sum up many Americans' cooking perspectives.

Sure, fat has flavor. It's a bit greasy and somewhat appealing but ultimately very few people will elect to eat a stick of butter or sip on a cup of oil by itself. What do we typically mix butter and oil with anyway?

Veggies and fruits. Whether it's a pie, mashed potatoes, or buttered carrots, something else is the focus of the dish. It's as though we understand instinctively that fat and fat alone will not sustain our bodies. And it won't.

So as stupidly simple as it is, fruits and veggies are actually what taste good, not butter and oils. Overloading your taste buds with fat and salt deadens their ability to taste the subtleties of real food.

Let's get back to the "I'd burn boiling water" crowd.

Get over it. Stop letting fear, laziness and excuses cripple your ability to accomplish the most basic of all life processes: feeding yourself. Eating every meal at restaurants will cripple and limit your ability to eat a truly healthy diet.

It's important to keep in mind when entering a lifestyle change that there can be no shortcut to learning. You cannot rush learning. You will make mistakes and failure-dinners that are not edible. That's the nature of the beast. But if you're careful, take your time and start with some recipes, you will pick up the skills needed in no time. In fact, it won't be long before you come up with new methods and dishes without the help of a step-by-step guide. Like riding a bike, with a bit of practice, the method of preparing a meal becomes second nature. You will also find that it doesn’t take as much time to cook at home as you thought.


Ch. 4 Diseases of Affluence – A Closer Look

Heart Disease

There is nobody in the US who hasn't heard of Heart Disease. We're always asked by doctors if we have a family history of heart disease, any strokes or chest pain. The doctors typically nod their heads in a sagely manner when we tell them that "my father died at 54" or "my grandfather had a massive heart attack at 46" saying “that puts you at increased risk. Are you watching your diet at all?" The doctor says this knowing full well that you are 40 lbs overweight, have a 37 inch waist, are borderline diabetic and working 50 hours per week on top of a daily 3 hour commute to and from work. "No" would be the simple answer. "Trying to, Doc" is about all you can muster. The physician will probably tell you what some of the risk factors are, politely reminding you that you need to exercise and reduce your fat intake...but that's it! Why is it that from years and years of study, doctors have so little advice for us?

One reason is that medical school (and continuing education for doctors) does not emphasize the effects of nutrition on health. Surveys indicated as early as 1968 that doctors were not confident in their level of nutritional understanding--and that hasn't changed in the last 40 years. Doctors focus most of their studies on the technical aspect of their job; slicing and dicing. Why?

The big money is in surgery and procedures. Top heart surgeons earn literally millions of dollars a year, and heart procedures are among the main sources of revenue for many hospitals. No wonder some doctors don’t want you to know heart disease can be prevented with diet alone. We certainly don’t mean to imply that money is the only draw for people entering the medical professions. Let’s all be realistic and accept that money is an important factor for nearly everyone, and that many people enter while-collar professions like medicine, law, accounting and hedge fund management because of money.

The problem with medical treatments also comes back to the emphasis on technological fixes to our problems. In most instances, this is an over-reliance on chemical treatments. Our medical institutions treat the effect rather than the cause. It’s like bailing out a sinking boat rather than patching up the leak.

What is high cholesterol?

Despite its bad reputation, cholesterol is essential to human cellular activity. It is what makes cells permeable (meaning, the cholesterol actually helps to aid the cellular-level absorption of nutrients).


Remember we explained that dietary cholesterol refers to cholesterol found in foods. When your doctor checks your cholesterol, she checks your blood cholesterol levels. Blood cholesterol is produced in the body, after dietary cholesterol (the kind we eat) has been consumed. Research over the past 50 years indicates there is an extremely strong correlation between high blood cholesterol levels and heart disease. What you may not know is that those same correlations occur for every disease of affluence, such as diabetes and Alzheimer's. There are two types of blood cholesterol, LDL and HDL. But what's the difference between HDL and LDL Cholesterol? HDL cholesterol is produced by the liver to help metabolize the various enzymes and nutrients we consume. LDL cholesterol is a variation of cholesterol that is not produced by the body. This type of cholesterol can be found in only one location. Up for a guess? Animals. Animal fat is the only source of LDL cholesterol. The "bad" cholesterol. That is why the medical industry suggests cutting back on red meat consumption (a considerably denser source of LDL cholesterol than chicken) and reducing egg consumption. Elimination of LDL cholesterol was also the original rationale for switching from butter to margarine (a vegetable based fat). Unfortunately, trans fat laden margarine turns out to be worse for your body than butter.

The recommended dietary solutions to avoiding heart disease, cutting back on saturated fats (the fat from animals), ended up confusing the issue. Trans fat is shown to increase total saturated fat and triglyceride levels as well as act as a potential clotter in the blood. Furthermore, cutting back on saturated fat without cutting back on animal products in general does not prevent heart disease.

Animal-based foods increase blood cholesterol levels whereas plant based foods reduce blood cholesterol levels.

Heart disease is caused by a buildup of plaque in the arteries. Plaque is a greasy layer of proteins and fats (including cholesterol). Higher levels of blood cholesterol lead to gradual buildup in the arteries—this is the stuff people pay tens of thousands of dollars to have "squished" to the walls of the artery during angioplasty. If you have plaque buildup in your coronary arteries, you have some degree of heart disease. As the blood cholesterol levels build up in the form of plaque, the blood moving through the veins also seeps through the plaque, so buildup in veins and arteries that are 90% clogged are actually riddled with small tributaries where the blood is able to flow (collateral flow), albeit obstructed and slowed by the plaque.

Though the body is able to develop collateral blood flow, the blood moving over and through the plaque is erosive. Just as waterfalls have smooth edges because of the


constantly flowing water, plaque slowly erodes down until a small piece breaks off the artery lining, releasing a slurry of rotten blood and fats directly into the blood stream. To counteract the threat of blood loss, the body begins to create a clot over the exposed gap. If the clotting occurs too quickly, the vein or artery ruptures from the rapid increase in blood pressure (and the lack of time to develop a collateral flow around or through the blood clot).

Unfortunately, if the initial rupture doesn’t kill you, the danger still isn’t over.

Due to the clotting, the heart is now receiving less blood than it would normally, causing parts of the heart muscle to fail (and die) from lack of oxygen. Heart attack victims feel a crushing pain or severe shooting pain down their left arm because of the “suffocating” heart muscle. Victims who survive the first stage of heart attack are still not out of the clear. The rapid decrease in blood flow to the heart affects the entire body and the brain in particular: more than half of patients exhibit a significant decrease in mental capacity after a heart attack.

ONE OUT OF THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE A HEART ATTACK DIE.

We’ve covered quite a bit of ground so far, so let’s just review what we know about heart disease, animal products and their connection.

• People who eat the most animal based product (cheese, milk, chicken, pork, beef or fish) have higher rates of cholesterol

• Saturated fats raise blood cholesterol, which builds up into plaque

• Plaque buildup is the cause of heart attacks

• Severe plaque buildup (clogged arteries) causes other risks such as angina (severe chest pain) and breathing difficulty in particular

• There are medical procedures for “bypassing” sections of arteries and veins to alleviate angina. These procedures, though helpful in alleviating the symptoms of heart disease, do not change the factors contributing to their initial development

That’s why it shouldn't surprise us that 50% of patients who undergo heart bypass or angioplasty still die of heart disease or experience severe chest pain again within 10 years of the procedure. Skilled surgeons are removing the symptom of heart disease; they are not curing heart disease. When a person experiences angina to such a degree that he cannot sleep lying down, the procedure may be justified if that's the only solution. Fortunately, bypass and angioplasty are not the only solutions available to people suffering from heart disease. Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish have consistently achieved a reversal of heart disease in patients who converted to strict low fat, plant based diets. If you suffer from chest pain or are "at risk" for developing heart disease,


converting your diet from an industrialized, animal-based diet to a plant based diet will work wonders for you, guaranteed.

The stupidly simple solution to our cholesterol problem, and our high rates of heart disease, is to reduce or eliminate animal product

consumption.

What is a safe level of cholesterol?

Based on 50 years of clinical research and studies, maintaining a total cholesterol level below 150 mg/dL will ensure that you will not die of heart disease.

Despite this, the American Heart Association states that 200 mg/dL is a “desirable level that puts you at lower risk for coronary heart disease.” The US government also recommends 200 mg/dL or below as a safe cholesterol level (200 mg/dL is the average for Americans). The problem is that one third of heart disease patients in the Framingham Heart Study had cholesterol levels between 150 and 200 mg/dL. Moreover, 35% of all heart attacks occur in patients with blood cholesterol levels between 150 and 200 mg/dL! Why merely lower your risk when you can eliminate your risk?

The point here is that blood cholesterol levels between 150 and 200 mg/dL still put you at considerable risk for developing heart disease. Above 200 mg/dL puts you at HIGH risk for heart disease. Below 150 mg/dL puts you at ZERO risk of dying from heart disease and can be easily achieved by switching to a plant based, whole foods diet.

Cancer

Before we get into too much detail about the cancer preventive strategies in this book, it's important to understand how cancer develops. There are three stages to cancer development: initiation, promotion, and progression.

1. Initiation: the carcinogen is introduced to the body. The initiation period can be very short, even just minutes or slower over the course of years. A carcinogen is a chemical that causes the DNA in blood cells to mutate and subsequently develop into cancer.

2. Promotion: A simple analogy for understanding this stage is to think of a seed planted in soil (the initiation stage) and if given the right conditions the seed may grow and flourish. If not provided those conditions, the seed simply lies dormant and will not cause cancer to fully develop. Promotion is the development stage for what may lead to cancer. It is all about the conditions you create that ultimately control whether cancer develops or not.


3. Progression: The final stage of cancer development, progression, is when the damage from DNA mutated genes is no longer isolated. The cancer cells begin to "wander" away from the initial site and invade neighboring or even distant body tissues. Cancer at this stage is said to be malignant. It's because cancers don't immediately begin invading other tissue groups that cancer is generally classified according to the tissue from which the cancerous cells originate, the primary tumor, as well as the cell type they most resemble such as lung or skin cancer. Late in the progression stage cancer is referred to as metastasizing when it actually breaks away from its initial home and starts mutating in new parts of the body. This stage of cancer results in death.

Causing or Stopping Promotion: The dietary factors determining the promotion conditions are called promoters, which feed cancer growth, and anti-promoters, which slow cancer growth. Cancer growth flourishes when there are more promoters than anti-promoters.

The initiation stage consists of the carcinogen interacting with the DNA of a cell, at which point it slightly mutates the DNA. The body's cells are constantly in flux, copying and splitting. So when a damaged or mutated cell splits, the altered DNA structure splits into two copies, making two mutated cells rather than only one.

From the last paragraph, one might conclude that there's not much we can do about cancer and that the cells are going to mutate and split regardless of what’s done. Fortunately, DNA damage is repairable and is also a relatively fast process. Also, and more importantly, if we have more anti-promoters than promoters, the promotion stage can be completely halted. Let's think of our anti-promoters like a "negative Nancy" always bringing the carcinogen party down; too many negative Nancys on the invite list and the carcinogen DNA-mutation party will be a complete dud – which is good for us.

Anti-promoters are extremely abundant in many foods worldwide. (One of them is not the steak, sorry). In fact, anti-promoters in high enough concentration are strong enough to not only slow the promotion stage but to STOP it. Dr. Campbell explains, "promotion is reversible, depending on whether the early cancer growth is given the right conditions in which to grow." Do we have your attention? Cancer is not inevitable; you're not doomed because of your genes. It’s our diet and lifestyle which is 100% within our control. We confidently make this statement based on research conclusions which happen to coincide well with our society’s deepening understanding of genetics. A plant based whole foods diet will significantly reduce your risk of developing cancers of all types.

The industrial diet is rather young, only 100 years old; meanwhile, heart disease, cancer, and all the other diseases of affluence have been growing epidemics for the last 100 years. The human reaction to these changes is near-textbook for describing a change in


“punctuated equilibrium.” This simply means that the conditions (our diets and lifestyles) have changed to such a degree that the species is forced to ‘change or expire.’ As shown in the long list of statistics covering health in chapter one, humans are dying, not adapting to the industrial diet.

Over our lifetime, we absorb carcinogens left and right from chemicals in the air, water, and other things we come into contact with every day (thanks largely to industrial activity). We not only mutate a bunch of our DNA, in say... our renal system, we're also ingesting a bunch of promoters (cancer-cheerleaders) without inviting any of the anti-promoters (negative Nancys). Slowly, the mutated DNA-cells outnumber the non-mutated cells, and a tumor develops. The current lifestyle and diet of highly processed, high-fat, high-animal, highly sweetened food products will not alleviate this problem—especially if we keep looking for chemical substitutes to counteract the poisonous-chemicals we ingest.

Cancer represents about 25 percent of all deaths in America! Below is a breakdown of the different cancers that are plaguing the United States—and largely all industrialized nations – and likely to affect you.

Male Female

Most common

(by occurrence)

Most common

(by mortality)

Most common

(by occurrence)

Most common

(by mortality)

Prostate cancer (33%)

Lung cancer (31%)

Breast cancer (32%) Lung cancer (27%)

Lung cancer (13%) Prostate cancer (10%)

Lung cancer (12%) Breast cancer (15%)

Colorectal cancer (10%)




Bladder cancer (7%) Pancreatic cancer (5%)

Endometrial cancer (6%)

Ovarian cancer (6%)

Cutaneous melanoma (5%)

Leukemia (4%) Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (4%)

Pancreatic cancer (6%)

Table 1 (adapted from T Colin Campbell ‘s The China Study)

As you can see, cancer development rates are fairly consistent between the genders—where prostate cancer is in males, we have breast cancer in females. This is a clear sign that both genders are not adapted to the conditions we subject ourselves to day after day. We can’t even claim that our society is making much headway in our most common cancers (prostate and breast) as the lower mortality rate isn’t a result of scientific breakthrough. Though early prognosis helps the odds of survival, there is no


guarantee early prognosis will save your life.

We’ve covered the basics of the three stages of cancer, shown some scary statistics on developing cancer (32 percent of women are at risk of developing breast cancer—there’s no mystery why we dedicate an entire month to recognizing this problem). We can move on to looking at the links between diet and promotion—because that's the stage we can most easily control with diet alone.

A well documented carcinogen, and an extremely potent one at that, is aflatoxin. It's most commonly produced as a byproduct of a mold that grows on peanuts or corn. We're going to look at how the consumption of animal protein interacts with aflatoxin to cause cancer in humans.

Two important studies (among many similar studies) found that animal protein digested in normal ranges was a significant contributor to the development of cancer foci after exposure to aflatoxin (cancer foci are points of cancer-cell development). Because peanuts are an excellent source of protein, essential fats and micronutrients, peanuts were considered as the Holy Grail for ending world hunger during the 1960s. However, because mold developed on the peanuts, creating aflatoxin, many of the people intended to gain nourishment from the peanuts were in fact digesting one of the more deadly carcinogens known to man.

But only some of the people died of cancers. Studies later showed that higher doses of animal-based protein acted as a promoter for the aflatoxin-DNA mutations. Remember, if promoters outnumber anti-promoters, the mutated DNA has a higher likelihood of developing into cancer. What else did the data indicate? As protein consumption goes up, cancer rates increase in individuals exposed to carcinogens.


Figure 5 Carcinogen Dose vs Protein Intake (adapted from T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study)

There are two conclusions within these studies: (1) not only does a higher rate of animal based calories increase the risk factors of developing aflatoxin-related cancers but (2) consuming a diet high in plant based calories acts as a preventative. "Foci development was almost entirely dependent on how much protein

was consumed, regardless of how much aflatoxin was consumed" (T. Colin Campbell)

Looking at the Figure 5, we see that even the subjects receiving low doses of aflatoxin exposure yet still consuming high protein diets had a dramatic increase in cancer foci development whereas the high-dose, low-protein subjects had a 10-fold reduction in foci development. Meaning, even at low exposure levels, your diet has a greater affect on your rate of cancer-foci development than exposure to carcinogens. To quote Dr. Campbell and his team, "Foci did not develop with up to about 10% dietary protein. Beyond 10%, foci development increased dramatically with increases in dietary protein."

0

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70

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90

100

Protein Intake and Aflatoxin Exposure

Cane

r Foc

i Dev

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men

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Carcinogen Dose vs Protein Intake

High AF exposure, low protein

Low AF exposure, high protein


Figure 6 (adapted from Campbell ‘s The China Study) Figure 6 resembles an exponential graph, with a low-slope in the beginning, moving rapidly into a “fertile environment” for cancer foci development after crossing 10 percent of calorie consumption derived from protein.

What should Americans keep in mind about animal protein and cancer?

About 9% of calories (about 50 grams of protein) need to originate from protein in order to maintain healthy human operations. After that daily need is exceeded, cancer foci have a significant increase in development rates. If we only need about 9% of our calories to come from protein, we can immediately see that the 15-16% of calories originating from animal protein that most Americans consume daily puts them at significant risk of increased cancer foci development.

Meaning, we develop cancer precursors at a faster rate because our protein consumption exceeds 10% of daily calories.

How bad is it really? Let's do some math:

According to standard labeling in the US, there about 173 calories, 23.1 grams of protein and 8.2 grams of fat in a three-ounce porterhouse. Getting the 10 ounce steak comes out to just under 77 grams of protein; 150% more than the daily need. That’s just the protein. There’s also 27.33 grams of fat, of which about 50% is saturated fat. The total calories in the steak is over 575 and that doesn’t count the potato with butter and sour cream; even worse is that's just one meal! Hopefully you can see with this simple

Adequate Protein

For Body Growth

0102030405060708090

4 6 8 10 12 14 20Fo

ci D

evel

opm

ent

% Dietary Protein

Cancer Foci Promotion by Dietary Protein

4

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14

20


illustration exactly how easily and quickly our animal-based protein consumption levels could shoot through the roof, along with an unhealthy promoter/anti-promoter ratio.

Dr. Campbell concludes simply that "lower protein intake dramatically decreased tumor initiation."

So what’s the stupidly simple catch? Not all proteins are created equal. Dr. Campbell and his team also found that "plant protein did not promote cancer growth, even at the higher levels of intake...Gluten, the protein of wheat, did not produce the same result as casein, even when fed at the same 20% (of total dietary calories) level." (Campbell, The China Study)

To summarize, animal protein consumed at levels higher than 10% of total daily calories is linked to higher cancer rates. Plant protein, no matter how much is consumed, does not have this same correlation.

Before moving onto the specifics of how we can prevent diseases of affluence with diet alone, let's first look at one last major chronic disease crippling our society.

Diabetes

Diabetes is an auto immune disease. An auto immune disease causes the auto immune system to attack itself, causing breakdowns in proper body functions. There are two main types of diabetes: type 1 which was at one time called "Juvenile Onset Diabetes" and type 2 diabetes, formally called "Adult Onset Diabetes." These terms have fallen out of favor as children have begun developing type 2 diabetes at increasing rates.

Both diseases begin with a dysfunction with the metabolism of blood-sugars (glucose). Let's first make sure we understand normal digestion before we look at a "dysfunctional" diabetic. The normal digestion process:

1. Food is eaten

2. Food is digested, broken down into simple sugars (glucose)

3. Glucose enters the blood, triggering insulin production by the pancreas to distribute glucose throughout the body

4. Insulin, through complex systems of hormonal triggers, acts as a guide for the glucose, ushering it to different types of cells in the body


The digestion process for a diabetic (type 1):

1. Food is eaten


3. Glucose enters the blood, BUT no insulin is produced to distribute the energy throughout the body

• In the type 1 diabetic, the pancreas is actually partially destroyed by the auto immune system--so there simply isn't any insulin to transport the glucose throughout the body

The digestion process for a diabetic (type 2):

1. Food is eaten


3. Glucose enters the blood, insulin is produced

• In this instance, the body ignores the insulin that's produced. That's why type 2 diabetes is also often referred to 'insulin resistant diabetes'

8% of American adults are diabetic (21,600,000 people)

Diabetes catapulted by 33% from 1990 to 1998

Those are some scary numbers, especially when we keep in mind that adults with diabetes typically suffer from other diseases of affluence, too.

Effects of Diabetes: 1. 2-4 times more likely of dying from heart disease

2. 2-4 times more likely of experiencing a stroke

3. 70% of people with diabetes have high blood pressure

4. Diabetes is the leading cause for blindness in adults

5. Diabetes is the leading cause of end-stage kidney disease

6. Over 100,000 diabetic patients had either dialysis or a kidney transplant in 1999

7. Between 60-70% of diabetics experience severe nervous system damage

8. Over 60% of all lower limb amputations are connected to diabetes complications

9. More likely to experience pregnancy complications

10. The economic bill caused by diabetes in the U.S. is over $130 billion per year.


What Causes Diabetes?

There is overwhelming statistical evidence that suggests high blood cholesterol levels, excess body fat, and high animal-product consumption lead to a much higher incidence of type 2 diabetes. Sound familiar? There is new evidence also indicating that cow's milk leads to an increase of type 1 diabetes in children. In 1925, the Japanese derived close to 90% of their energy directly from rice consumption. At that time, Americans derived 50% of calories from carbohydrates and 40% from fat, and had 7.5 times (750%) more diabetics than Japan.

Because consuming a diet high in refined carbohydrates causes insulin spikes in the blood, many researchers conclude that the constant exposure to high levels of insulin leads to insulin resistance (Type 2 diabetes). Dr. Neal Barnard points out a little known fact that meat consumption causes insulin spikes even higher than those caused by consuming carbohydrates, "Protein is a powerful stimulus for insulin release, just as sugar is.... Beef and cheese cause a bigger insulin release than pasta."

A lack of fiber is also a problem. Diets high in refined foods and animal products are by definition low in fiber (since fiber only comes from plants). Fiber helps keep insulin levels normal by slowing the release of sugars from the food.

Several breakthrough studies show that a whole foods, plant based diet will not only reduce your chances of developing diabetes but also improve, alleviate and potentially eliminate the debilitating effects of diabetes. Typically seen as less treatable than type 2 diabetes because of the extensive damage caused to the pancreas, one study found that the type 1 diabetics reduced their insulin shots by 40% after just three weeks on a whole foods, plant based diet. Three weeks! As for the type 2 diabetics, the more "treatable" bunch? 24 of 25 of the participants completely discontinued insulin shots. This is just in a matter of weeks! There is hope for a life free of insulin monitors and shots, doctor’s visit, blood tests and the threat of an early, painful demise.

A whole foods, plant based diet helps to eliminate the most damaging symptoms of being a diabetic: high blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels--the two leading indicators of heart disease and stroke. Dr. James Anderson, an extremely prominent diabetes researcher, found that diet alone could reduce total cholesterol levels by 32% in a little over two weeks!

What we want you to clearly understand after the sections on food and disease is that diet is the main factor of your likelihood of developing a disease of affluence. Chronic diseases that plague the US and other developed countries (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, etc.) will be nearly eliminated by eating a low-fat, plant based diet.


High consumption of animal protein, animal fat, and refined foods is the main cause of ALL diseases of affluence

Nutrient Plant based Foods* Animal-Based Foods**

Cholesterol (mg) NA 137

Fat (g) 4 36

Protein (g) 33 34

Beta-carotene (mcg) 29,919 17

Dietary Fiber (g) 31 NA

Vitamin C (mg) 293 4

Folate (mcg) 1168 19

Vitamin E (mg_ATE) 11 .5

Iron (mg) 20 2

Magnesium (mg) 548 51

Calcium (mg) 545 252

Table 2 (adapted from T. Colin Campbell) Nutrient Composition of plant and animal-based foods (per 500 calories) *Equal parts tomatoes, spinach, lima beans, peas, potatoes ** Equal parts beef, pork, chicken, whole milk

Just looking at Table 2, it is obvious there’s a huge distinction between the nutrient levels of plant foods and those derived from animals. It’s almost laughable to compare the charts because of the overwhelming superiority of plants to animals. There is no justification we can see for claiming animal-based products to be better than plants, especially on the grounds of “needing protein” since there is almost no difference per 500 calories.


Chapter Exercise #6 Walk or ride a bike to the grocery store. It can be for just something small but we recommend doing a week's worth of shopping. Bring someone with you if you can't carry it all yourself; it's more fun that way anyway. We also recommend bringing a backpack or two to carry your food. It's significantly easier than carrying bags by hand.

When you get home and have everything unpacked, sit down and write down your experience. Was it hard? If so, what was difficult about it? Be honest with yourself.

This exercise, practiced consistently (week after week) over a few months, will give you a new understanding of the perspective of walkers. One thing we have noticed over the years is that people tend to be fairly reckless in areas where walkers are because they don't ever walk. Drivers really don't know how absolutely ridiculous they look when they drive really fast toward a red light or stop sign. What all day-in-day-out drivers also don't realize is how much longer many of the 'short drives' take compared to walking or riding a bike. They don't seem to count "traffic" or "parking" as part of the process. This exercise is meant to help reframe the paradigm you have about 'daily tasks.'

Also, keep in mind that most of the humans on this planet today do not have cars available to get supplies and often travel significantly further than a few miles one way to fulfill their life needs.

So, get your pen and paper out, write down your grocery list and walk on over to the grocery store.


Ch 5. Nutrition - Stupidly Simple Key #1 To Good Health By now we hope you're convinced that there is a strong correlation between diet and health. It's true, you can lose weight, prevent and even reverse diseases by making a drastic and permanent change in your diet and lifestyle.beginning, leading a healthy lifestyle is stupidly simplechange. As we mentioned in the end of chapter one, most Americans consume what we call the industrial diet. How did we move so far away from a healthy diet in Ameriplace?

The Industrial Diet

Before industrialization, most people lived in rural communities and ate food directly from the farm (or personal garden). The advent of the Industrial Revolution brought more and more people away from farms and into the cities to work in factories.in factories began to get less exercise and lead more sedentary lifestyles.stayed in rural areas were then set to the task of growing food not only for themselves, but for the growing city populations. As a result, farms needed to grow more food

efficiently and transport that food to faraway places without it spoiling.

One method of protecting food from spoiling was to refine grains. Milling out the bran and the germthat contain fiber, fat, and vitamins) makes the flour unto rodents, insects, and bacteria.sweeter, lighter taste and texture, making it more appealing to human taste buds. Unfortunately, refinemost of its nutritional content.grain products are cheaper and more widely available than their whole grain counterparts, placing consumers at risk of selecting price over health.

The refinement process resulted in a drastic change in American sugar consumption since 1909, when the USDA first began tracking. Currently, 40-60% of the American diet is composed of carbohydrates, of which 90% are refined. The result is a diet that is at least half sugars--calories providing energy that the body cannot use fast enough and is subsequently converted into fat.

Unused energy, regardless of its source, causes body fat. Refined sugars in particular overwhelm the body with energy it cannot use fast enough.

Stupidly Simple Key #1 To Good Health

By now we hope you're convinced that there is a strong correlation between diet and It's true, you can lose weight, prevent and even reverse diseases by making a

drastic and permanent change in your diet and lifestyle. As we've mentioned from the stupidly simple...if you are willing to make a

As we mentioned in the end of chapter one, most Americans consume what we call the How did we move so far away from a healthy diet in America in the first

Before industrialization, most people lived in rural communities and ate food directly The advent of the Industrial Revolution brought

ore people away from farms and into the cities to work in factories. People in factories began to get less exercise and lead more sedentary lifestyles. Those who stayed in rural areas were then set to the task of growing food not only for themselves,

As a result, farms needed to grow more food efficiently and transport that food to faraway places without it

One method of protecting food from spoiling was to refine Milling out the bran and the germ from grains (the parts

that contain fiber, fat, and vitamins) makes the flour un-enticing to rodents, insects, and bacteria. Refined flour also has a sweeter, lighter taste and texture, making it more appealing to

Unfortunately, refined flour is stripped of most of its nutritional content. In our grocery stores, refined grain products are cheaper and more widely available than their whole grain counterparts, placing consumers at risk of selecting

cess resulted in a drastic change in American sugar consumption since 1909, when the USDA first began

60% of the American diet is composed of carbohydrates, of which 90% are refined. The result is a diet that

calories providing energy that the body cannot use fast enough and is subsequently converted into fat.

Unused energy, regardless of its source, causes body fat. Refined sugars in particular overwhelm the body with energy it cannot use fast enough. Nutrients that are “easily


accessed” by the body during digestion are classified as “efficient.” As a consequence of our prosperity (cheap, abundant food) Americans do not need to be efficient when it comes to eating. We need to be “inefficient” eaters, consuming naturally present fiber that slows the digestion process, providing an even supply of energy (that won’t go straight to our butt, stomach or heart).

Nutrition Whole Wheat Flour (1 cup) All Purpose Bleached White Flour (1 cup)

Calories 407 455

Protein 16.44 g 12.9 g

Carbohydrate 87 g 95.4 g

Fiber 14.6 g 3.4 g

Fat 2.24 g 1.2 g

Cholesterol 0 mg 0 mg

Table 3 Nutrition Facts of Flours (USDA standards) The process of industrialization (as well as research done during WWI and WWII) brought the technology of fertilizer and pesticide use to increase crop yields and prevent crop loss due to insects. While these technologies have indeed enabled us to produce more than enough food, the negative health effects of commercial fertilizers and pesticides on the land, animals as well as humans is well documented. Currently, the industrial agricultural cycle is so efficient that the number of full-time farmers in the US account for only 0.7% of the population or about 161,000 people (out of over 300 million). In many respects, this is an amazing accomplishment and we aren’t suggesting we throw the entire system out. We simply need to collectively understand what our bodies need. Refined grains and processed foods lead directly to the diseases of affluence. Corn, one of the most efficient crops, is another problem of increased efficiency that has wide reaching effects on the American diet today. In the 1920s the average corn yield was 20 bushels per acre per year. Currently, the yields are approximately 180 bushels per acre per year. Not only did production levels increase but the labor involved in producing the corn was reduced. The flood of corn led to severe price decreases. To help offset the risk of major farm foreclosures, the US government currently subsidizes production. Regardless of what the price of corn is, the US government will subsidize $0.23 per bushel of corn. In addition to that guaranteed subsidy, there's an average price set for corn in an area.


Green County, Iowa for example had a target price of $1.87 per bushel (circa 2005), and when the price fell to $1.45 per bushel, the government paid out an additional $0.28 to make the difference, giving a farmer in Green County a total of $1.96 per bushel. So what's the problem?

A 2005 study concluded that it costs approximately $2.50 per bushel for the farmer to produce. Meaning, year after year farmers are losing money but are trapped in a cycle of debt that can only be “solved” by growing even more corn! Meanwhile, corporations and their shareholders benefit from lower and lower costs for their main ingredients: corn, soy and wheat. The American tax payer is essentially paying companies to make huge profits while destroying our national health in the process.

A grain is a grain is a grain? Refined grains, in contrast to whole grains, refer to grain products that have been significantly modified from their natural composition. The modification process generally involves the mechanical removal of bran and germ. Further refining includes mixing, bleaching, and brominating. Even though some refined grains are “enriched” with nutrients to make up for those lost, refined grains are nutritionally inferior to whole grains.

The bran is an hard outer layer of the grain containing dietary fiber and omega fatty acids in addition to significant quantities of protein and micronutrients.

The germ is the "heart" of any grain constituting the "embryo" for reproduction. The germ is highly concentrated with protein and complex carbohydrates.

The endosperm is an outer tissue surrounding the germ, the largest portion of the grain and contains the highest concentration of protein and carbohydrates.

The first step in the refinement process is milling. Milling is a form of "grinding" that crushes the entire grain (bran, germ and endosperm) into flour. There are a number of different methods from stone to hammer to steel rolled. Because everything in the grain is just crushed all together, few of the nutrients are actually lost in this process.

For most flours in the US, milling is merely one step in the process. After milling, the flours are further separated to remove the bran and germ from the flour mixture. In addition to that, most flours are also bleached in order create a more enticing appearance of the end product.

So, if you thought that flour was just sometimes "white" and sometimes "brown" you now know that the 'white bread' is merely bleached flour with only a fraction of the nutritional values of normal whole wheat flour.


But what happens to all this corn? The current annual yield of corn in the US is over 13 billion bushels (approximately 1.3 trillion pounds). A large portion of our corn consumption occurs in just a few places: sodas, processed foods and meat (via animals fed corn). Dr. Ted Dawson of UC Berkeley did an analysis of a few McDonald's foods, looking for carbon residues which could be traced directly back to corn. (The corn grown in the US has a specific “carbon structure” that persists throughout the refinement and digestion processes).

Here's a list of those findings: 1. Soda: 100% corn 2. Milkshake: 78% corn 3. Salad dressing: 65% corn 4. Chicken nuggets: 56% corn 5. French fries: 23% corn The main ingredient in soda is high-fructose corn syrup, a refined corn product that is cheaper and sweeter than sugar. A 32-oz soda has about 86 grams of high-fructose corn syrup, derived from 1/3 lb of corn and 344 empty calories. An “empty calorie” is pure energy and provides no nutrients to the body – these are the calories that make you fat. High-fructose corn syrup is also the main sweetener used in most packaged and processed foods. So, if consumers drink more soda and buy more processed food, that is a very efficient and profitable outlet for the corn surplus. Any surprise why so much money is pumped into advertising candy, snacks, and soda?

Using the equation of “1/3 lb of corn for a 32-oz soda”, let’s look at how much profit a company can expect from processing corn into a soda (or any other product). There are 56 lbs per bushel of corn (USDA standardized). If one bushel costs about $1.45 on the open market (the unsubsidized price since the US tax payer foots the difference) and there are 56 pounds in a bushel, we know that we can make 168, 32-oz sodas. If each bottle of soda is sold for about 30 cents (the price a wholesaler might give a corner store), we get a total of about $50 for the 168 sodas. That’s 50x the cost of the material. Sure, there’s marketing and refinement costs, etc. The point is that this is an extremely effective way to increase corn consumption while providing a cheap “raw material” for corporations to make products. (We all know people who drink soda after soda, making this “absorption” of corn relatively easy).

Another lynchpin of the industrial diet was the discovery of how to hydrogenate vegetable oil in the 1930s. Vegetable oil is cheaper than animal fat and the hydrogenation process makes the oil virtually indestructible, allowing the food industry to produce products with ridiculously long shelf lives. Cheap, storable food was good for consumers and the food industry...that is until we learned about the negative health effects of hydrogenated vegetable oil (trans fat). We now know that trans fat is extremely dangerous and tremendously magnifies the risk of heart disease and other


health problems. Despite this knowledge, hydrogenated vegetable oil continues to be a main ingredient in many processed foods.

The last cornerstone of the industrial diet is high meat consumption. Throughout human history, meat has never been as affordable and available as it is now, and as a result people in the developed world eat more meat than any humans ever before. On a traditional, diverse subsistence farm, livestock is only slaughtered once a year. The animals are allowed to breed, feed and grow naturally. Furthermore, since animals require more land and feed to produce, livestock make up a smaller portion of a farm’s total food production than fruit and vegetable crops. Under these conditions, meat is not always available for daily consumption. In the industrial food system, livestock is produced just as an ear of corn: stuffed into as small a space as possible, fed food it is not naturally meant to eat, and injected with chemicals to ‘stabilize’ the precarious conditions under which the livestock are forced to live. The result is cheap, low quality meat for everyone to consume daily – to the detriment of our health.

So if the industrial diet is the problem, then what is the solution?

Alternative to the Industrial Diet

The life expectancy in the US and the rest of the developed world is in the late 70s to early 80s. There are a few areas in the world that have an unusually large percentage of centenarians (people 100 years or older). These people are not “vegetables” hooked up to breathing tubes either; they are active, healthy people free of the diseases, poor vision, and memory loss that plague the elderly in developed nations.

Dr. Alexander Leaf was commissioned by National Geographic in the early 1970s to study three regions each rumored to be the longevity capitals of the world. The following are some of his findings, along with observations of subsequent researchers and doctors studying the elderly people of these regions.

Abkhazia is an autonomous republic in Georgia. It lies in between the Black Sea and the Caucasus mountain range. The region is extremely mountainous, and daily life traversing steep terrain keeps the rural Abkhazians active and fit. 80% of Abkhazians over age ninety are in sound mental health and 96% have perfect eyesight. Comparatively, 21.7% of Americans aged 75 years and over have some vision loss—that’s a 15-year difference and over 17% more in the US.

For breakfast, Abkhazians usually eat a salad of fresh garden vegetables. Most vegetables are eaten raw, or lightly steamed. Because of the mild climate and fertile soil, fresh fruit is also available much of the year. They do not eat sugar and rarely eat butter.


Vilcabamba is a fertile, subtropical valley in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. Researchers studied 338 elderly Vilcabambans and found all of them free of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s. “People in their 80s and 90s appear almost common. And the Ancient Ones, as they are called, maintain their health and vitality right to the end.” (John Robbins, Healthy at 100)

Nutrition Characteristic Abkhazia Vilcabamba Hunza United States

Percent of calories from carbohydrates

65 74 73 50

Percent of calories from fat 20 15 17 35

Percent of calories from protein

15 11 10 15

Overall daily calories (adult male)

1900 1800 1900 2200

Percentage of diet from plant foods

90 99 99 Roughly 70

Percentage of diet from animal foods

10 1 1 Roughly 30

Salt consumption Low Low Low high

Sugar consumption 0 0 0 20 tsp/day

Processed food consumption 0 0 0 high

Incidence of obesity 0 0 0 127 million

Table 4 (adapted from John Robbins’s, Healthy at 100 and other sources)

Vilcabambans walk everywhere across the hilly terrain; there are no cars, horses, or bikes. Elderly people rarely fall, limp, or break bones. The Vilcabamban diet is mostly vegetarian, and no butter is eaten. They eat whole grains including corn, quinoa, and wheat. The lush climate provides an abundant variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, picked and eaten fresh from the trees.

Hunza is an isolated region in northern Pakistan, a fertile valley among the Himalayan Mountains averaging 20,000 feet in altitude. The people of Hunza are free of disease


and exhibit extraordinary health and vitality into old age. Researchers studied a group of elderly Hunzans ranging 90-110 years old, and found them completely free of heart disease and cancer, with 20-20 vision and perfect teeth. It is common for Hunzans to walk 20 miles a day over incredibly steep terrain.

The Hunzan diet consists of whole grains like wheat, barley, millet and buckwheat. They also eat beans, fresh vegetables, fruit and greens. 80% of their diet is consumed raw and freshly picked. Freshly ground flax is eaten with almost every meal. Meat and dairy makes up only one percent of the Hunzan diet.

As you can see, expensive health care, technology, and wealth (not to mention the industrial diet) do not make us healthy. The traditional lifestyles of the people of these regions paint a pretty clear picture that it’s all about diet and exercise!

The industrial diet has led Americans to consume a range of foods vastly different from the long living peoples of Abkhazia, Vilcabamba and Hunza (as shown in Tables 3 and 4).

Food Percentage of total energy consumed (by Americans in the study)

Sweets, desserts, soft drinks 19.4

Meat + dairy 23.1

Bread, rolls, crackers* 8.7

Mixed dishes 8.2

Vegetables 6.5

Fruit, juice 3.9

Alcohol 4.4

Table 5 (based on National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2000) *30% of Americans NEVER eat whole grains, and the average American eats less than one serving daily of whole grains (1 slice whole wheat bread)

As you can see from the chart above, many Americans consume the vast majority of their daily calories in the form of sweets, sodas, animal products and refined grain products. Not good!

Eat a whole foods, plant based diet, while minimizing the consumption of refined foods and added fats.


Now that you know how much difference diet can make, let’s look a bit closer at how a whole foods, plant based diet is defined.

Whole foods diet defined:

Whole foods: no refined foods such as white bread or pastas, vitamin supplements or pills, candy, chips or soda; those are highly refined food stuffs.

Plant based: it doesn't come from an animal. Period. No meat of any kind, no fish, no eggs, no milk, no yogurt, no ice cream, no butter, no cheese.

Minimize fats: Use oils (and fats from any source) VERY sparingly. Remember, oil is 100% fat. You'd be surprised how much you can decrease added fat in the foods you prepare without any compromise in taste.

A low-fat, whole-foods, mostly plant based diet, combined with frequent exercise has been found to:

• Reduce weight by 2 to 5 pounds after 12 days (without any exercise)

• Approximately 10 lbs in three weeks (without exercise)

• 16 lbs in twelve weeks and 24 lbs in one year (again, without exercise)

• In a study of 4,500 patients, the Pritikin Center found that a plant- based diet and exercise resulted in an average loss of 5.5% of body weight (a 250 pound person would lose approximately 14 pounds)

• Dramatically decrease colorectal cancer rates

• Prevent osteoporosis

• Prevent kidney stones

• Prevent blindness in old age

• Prevent memory loss and Alzheimer's disease

• Reduce risk of heart disease

• Reduce risk of cancer

• Reduce and frequently eliminate the need for insulin shots


3 Principles of Good Health

1. Eat the WHOLE Food

• Nutrition represents the combined interactions of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and no amount of gimmicky marketing or well-funded research can supplement the naturally occurring bounty of the whole food

• It isn’t the fiber or any individual nutrients that protect you from disease, it is the synergy effect of all components together when consumed as a WHOLE FOOD

• Avoid supplements, they are unnecessary, expensive, and have dubious benefits

• Juices, extracts, and processed foods will NEVER have the same benefits of their WHOLE counter parts – eat the whole food

2. Good nutrition creates overall body health

• Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support overall health. No need to over-complicate things!

• Good nutrition will prevent disease in its early stages as well as halt or reverse disease in its later stages

• Good nutrition substantially controls the adverse effects of toxic chemicals we come into contact with

3. Diet AND Exercise

• This next one is going to have many American athletes writing us nasty letters but it’s simply a FACT: exercise cannot erase bad diet habits, (you cannot run a marathon or train for a century ride simply so you can eat more cookies and steaks). It’s self-defeating and only marginally affects the overall risks of disease.

• Good nutrition does not eliminate the need to exercise

• In order of importance: DIET, SLEEP, EXERCISE

• Good nutrition gives you the health and energy needed to exercise


Organic: What's the big deal? By focusing our agriculture systems on two main crops (corn and soy), we've pushed the soil to its limits through abusive practices that limit the nutritional value of our foods and deplete the soil necessary to grow these foods. Historical studies have shown that societies that deplete their fertile soils (as we are doing at an alarming rate), eventually collapse.

In order to offset the decrease in naturally present nutrients, Nitrogen in particular, we use an artificial fertilizer derived from petroleum. Because the artificial fertilizer is all at the top layer of the soil, the roots bunch heavily near the surface. Failure to reach deeply within the earth is one major cause of low nutrient levels.

It's true, the produce may cost relatively more than "conventionally grown crops," however, keep in mind that "you now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940 apple," calculates Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food. One simple equation is then, "is the organic option 3 times as expensive?"

Our preferred method of obtaining fresh, organic produce has been participation in CSAs--Community Supported Agriculture. By “subscribing” to a participating farm in your area, you can get a portion of the farm’s crops delivered to a pickup station near your house for an affordable monthly fee.

The first CSAs started in the 1960s in Germany, Switzerland and Japan. The main driving force behind a CSA is the concept of "shared risk and reward." This means that the community accepts that there is risk involved with farming—anything from droughts to floods to pests.

Reducing the distance that our food travels from farm to table is a simple, peaceful way of reducing reliance on imported oil. It's also the best way to get organically grown produce and cut the middle man out so both consumers and farmers are ultimately better off.

One last note: keep in mind that when we say "conventional" we only refer to "marketing-lingo" because a practice that is less than 100 years old is hardly conventional. In fact, most modern, organic agriculture techniques are merely revisits to the real conventional farming techniques of our past.


Diet and Metabolism

What is Metabolism? The body's metabolism is a network of hormones and enzymes that convert food into energy and affect how efficiently the energy is burned. In other words, metabolism is the rate at which we burn calories—which ultimately affects how easy it is to lose or gain weight. The faster the body's metabolism, the faster calories are burned, and the more calories we can eat and not gain weight. Therefore, the slower your metabolism, the less you can eat if you don't want to quickly start packing on pounds. The rate at which you burn calories (metabolic rate) is influenced by your age, sex, and genes, which are factors obviously beyond your control. However, there are a couple things you can do to increase your metabolism and maximize your weight loss or maintain a healthy weight, regardless of your starting age or physical condition. 1. Eat more often The trick is to supply your body with a constant and even supply of energy it can use. Remember what we learned about carbohydrates: Flooding your body with energy it cannot use will result in that energy turning into fat. Similarly, when you eat a large meal and don't eat again for 6 hours, your metabolism will slow down (burn calories at a slower rate) in order to conserve energy during the time you are not eating. Since you have essentially tricked your body into thinking it is starving, these extra calories will also turn into fat to “store for winter”. Eating small, frequent meals keeps your metabolism in high gear so that you will burn more calories throughout the day. Eating snacks between meals will also prevent you from over-eating at meals and keeps your cravings in check because you will never feel overly ravenous. We recommend following this eating schedule to boost your metabolism for maximum weight loss: 1. Breakfast within 30 min of waking up 2. Mid-morning snack 2 hours before you plan to eat lunch 3. Lunch 4. Afternoon snack 2 hours before you plan to eat dinner 5. Dinner 6. Evening snack 2 hours after dinner (never go to bed hungry!) 2. Weight Training Every pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day just to maintain itself. The more lean


muscle mass you have, the more calories you will burn every day, even when you are not exercising. This is why many trainers recommend strength training as an effective weight loss strategy when their clients are not getting results from aerobic exercise alone. While you might burn 100 calories during rigorous aerobic exercise, you will burn that same amount of calories every day (on top of any calories you burn during exercise) by gaining 2 pounds of muscle. The slight gain in muscle weight will be more than offset by the loss of body fat weight. Don’t worry, you won’t bulk up!

Diet Misconceptions, Myths, and Objections

If this is the healthiest diet, then why are some vegetarians still fat?

• Consumption of refined carbohydrates will still result in higher than average weights

• Vegetarians who replace meat with either more dairy-based products or refined carbohydrates will not lose weight or experience a healthier life

• Vegetarians that do not exercise or lead a sedentary life-style will also not lose weight

How is it possible to eat more and still weigh less? You don't need to count calories or watch how much you eat if you eat a whole foods, low fat, plant based diet. Studies show that those who consume this diet typically consume MORE calories than the typical "industrial diet" eater and are still thinner and healthier! Many of the Chinese citizens studied by Dr. Campbell ate about 700 more calories per day than the average American, and still weighed less. How’s that possible?

Nutrient China United States

Calories (kcal/day) 2641 1989

Total fat (% of calories) 14.5 34-38

Dietary fiber (g/day) 33 12

Total protein (g/day) 64 91

Animal protein (g/day) 0.8 10-11

Total iron (mg/day) 34 18

Table 6 (adapted from T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study)

Raising your body's metabolism while at rest by eating healthy and exercising allows your body to burn calories as body heat in addition to repairing the muscle tissues,


rather than storing everything as fat. A small increase in metabolic rate results in a large number of calories burned throughout the day.

How come some people eat whatever they want and never gain weight?

Everyone knows somebody who seems to live on bacon and ice cream and is still thin as a rail. They probably say it’s because they exercise so much or because they have a high metabolism. Instead of feeling envious of this person’s fast metabolism (some people have naturally high metabolisms that make it difficult to gain weight), you should be mindful that outward appearance is not the only gauge of fitness and health.

There are countless examples of thin, toned, “super fit” people that die of heart attacks or cancer every year. A tragic example is Jim Fixx, the “God Father” of the running revolution in the 1970s. He was an avid long distance runner and author of the bestselling book, The Complete Book of Running. He didn’t start exercising until age 35 and was previously an obese pack-a-day smoker. Although running made him appear physically “in shape,” he did not give up his unhealthy eating habits. Fixx died of a heart attack while running at age 52. The point is that exercise alone, or being naturally skinny, does not protect you from diseases of affluence. Diet is important.

In fact, vigorous exercise does not strengthen the heart or lungs. Exercise merely affects the body’s ability to process oxygen. This is important to understand, as it is the main reason that exercise cannot erase poor diet. Doctor Paul Thompson, chief cardiologist at the Hartford Hospital, claims that when people over age 35 die while running (e.g. Jim Fixx), the cause is almost always congestive artery disease—that is, cholesterol deposits that rupture, resulting in a heart attack.

So don’t get discouraged if losing weight is harder for you than for others. Just maintain the confidence that if you eat right and exercise, you will be healthy.

Don't you have to eat meat to build muscle?

No. Rigorous exercise with proper rest periods and steadily increasing intensity will result in muscle growth as long as you are meeting your body's protein requirements. On a per calorie basis, plant food sources deliver the same amount of protein as animal food sources. This is important to understand because it essentially means there’s no tangible advantage to meat consumption.

No matter what kind of body you want to have or what kind of activities you want to do, you can achieve it with plant based nutrition. NFL defensive end Art Still maintained a muscular 270 pound physique while on a plant based diet. Carl Lewis, a track and field


star with multiple world championships and Olympic victories, achieved acclaim (and new world records) while on a plant based diet.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that you need to eat meat to get enough energy, protein, or to build muscle. It is simply not true.

Changing Your Diet:

Avoiding diseases and maintaining a healthy weight will involve a serious lifestyle change for many Americans. Fad and crash diets will NEVER give you permanent results, so stop wasting your time with them. The ONE diet that has been scientifically proven over and over again to prevent disease and weight gain is a plant based, whole foods diet. Eliminating animal products and processed/refined foods from your diet will be hard at first, but it is the only sure fire way to permanently maintain good health.

You can trust that this diet will work wonders for you, so you should do it, no matter how difficult or unappealing it seems at first. The stupidly simple truth is that if you are seriously overweight or suffering from a disease of affluence, this diet is the best thing you could possibly do for yourself and your loved ones. No other solution will work as well and be as affordable or free of side effects.

Subtle Addictions

You are in control, but you have a lot of work to do to overcome bad eating habits. Sugar, cheese, and meat contain highly addictive chemicals that actually cause a reaction in your brain similar to opiate drugs. Really, it’s true! So, not surprisingly, it will be somewhat like recovering from drug addiction to change your diet.

The good news is, it will only take a few weeks to get over the addiction, and then your body will no longer crave these foods so intensely. After 12 weeks off meat, dairy, and added oils, your body will lose its craving for fat completely. Your body will also lose its craving for sugar after just a few weeks. Once your body adjusts to eating different kinds of foods, you can eat as much as you want, all time, and never have to worry about “dieting” again.

“While a single study might be found to support almost any idea under the sun, what are the chances that hundreds, even thousands, of different studies show a protective benefit of plant based foods and/or harmful effects of animal-based foods for so many different diseases? We can't say it's due to coincidence, bad data, biased research, misinterpreted statistics or ‘playing with numbers’" (T. Colin Campbell).


You have nothing to lose except your health, and possibly your life. Your health is in your hands: you have the means, the power, and the ability to improve your lifestyle permanently, if you are willing to make a permanent change in your diet. Within the first month of changing your diet you will:

• Discover great new foods

• Experience a change in your taste buds

• Lose Weight (a lot of it)

• Feel better and have more energy

• Realize it was easier than you thought

• Experience an amazing feeling of success

Some bumps you may experience along the way (but you can overcome them!)

• You may have some stomach discomfort during the first week as you adjust to new foods (individuals who previously had low fiber diets will likely experience this, but the sensation is your guts being cleaned out)

• It will take some time to adjust to new shopping and meal routines

• You may have to give up some of your favorite dishes and restaurants

• Your friends and family may not be supportive at first (because they’ll throw out every objection under the sun at you), but these people should probably be participating in the lifestyle change too!

Don't be afraid. You can do it! All your fears, doubts, and apprehensiveness will melt away when you see and feel the results.

How To Eat

Eating was not meant to be complicated. Eating is a natural thing your body knows how to do (as long as it has access to the right foods). It’s as natural as breathing. You should not have to count calories, weigh food, take supplements, or starve yourself in order to be healthy and physically fit. As long as you avoid animal products, refined grains, and excessive sugar, you will lose fat and minimize risk of disease. Again, studies show that whole foods, low-fat, plant based eaters typically consume more calories than the typical "industrial diet" eater, and are still thinner and healthier! Don't worry if you don't think vegetables are as exciting as chocolate cake and finger lickin' ribs. Your taste buds are accustomed to a high fat, high salt, high sugar diet after


years of eating highly addictive foods. Fortunately, your taste buds will become reprogrammed after only a couple weeks of eating real food. Fresh fruit will taste better to you than candy and cookies, and a savory vegetable dish will offer more excitement to your taste buds than a pile of salty French fries. We promise!

In a nutshell: Eat when you are hungry, eat until you are full, and eat lots of variety.

Most diets focus on restricting calorie intake as the main strategy for weight loss. When restricting calorie intake, the first way the body reacts is to let muscle tissue waste away because muscle tissue requires the most energy to sustain. So on a low-calorie diet, your body burns away muscle and will actively seek to convert higher ratios of energy directly to fat. If you go off your diet, you'll start to put weight back on...as fat. It has also been repeatedly shown that dieters are unable to forcibly reduce food intake over extended periods.

Restricting how much you eat will lead to:

• Loss of energy - you will be too tired to exercise!

• Irritability - hunger and low blood sugar leads to irritability

• Cravings - you will feel hungry!

• Binges - you will be susceptible to excessive over eating

• Lower metabolism - your body will not burn as many calories at rest

• Loss of muscle - results in a further lowering of metabolic rate resulting to an increased susceptibility to binging!!

• Depression and thoughts of failure or “trapped” by lack of sustained progress

Restricting calorie intake is not a good strategy for losing weight and keeping it off. It is much easier and more effective to control what you eat instead of how much you eat. As long as you eat a variety of the right foods, avoid the bad foods most of the time, and eat often (6 times a day is ideal), you will be healthy. By sticking to a plant based, WHOLE foods diet, your body will naturally burn excess calories away as heat, you will never feel hungry, and you will have more energy to exercise.

This brings us to a new way for you to think about nutrition and your health: You are what you eat MOST of the time. Don't worry if you are put in a situation every once in a while where you have to eat animal products, refined grains, or sweets. Enjoy the holidays (within reason), vacations, or special occasions. Respect your family and friends if they offer you food you wouldn't normally eat. As long as eating these types of foods does not become part of your daily (or even weekly) routine, you will be


healthy. If your job requires excessive travel or dining out, bring healthy snacks to eat alone and be more selective and experimental with your restaurant choices.

But holiday bingers beware: Dr. Neal Barnard found that Americans gain their weight during the holiday months and then spend the rest of the year trying to lose that weight. Each year, more weight is gained than lost, eventually leading to obesity. So maybe “just one more piece of pie” isn’t a good idea.

Points to remember:

EAT ENOUGH Whatever you do, don't go hungry (we're very serious about this one!). When you first make the switch, you will notice that you have to eat a lot more food than you used to. Enjoy it!

EAT WELL Try ethnic restaurants like Vietnamese, Indian, Thai, Middle Eastern or Ethiopian to find tasty and interesting vegetarian, non-dairy dishes. Be experimental at the store and while cooking until you can make things you love to eat.

EAT A VARIETY Eat all the colors of the rainbow for maximum nutrients! Not only does it taste great but it will look beautiful and you won’t get bored of your food.

Habit Percentage Change in Obesity Risk

Eating at least one midday snack -39%

Eating dinner as your biggest meal of the day +6%

Waiting more than 3 hours after waking up to eat breakfast

+43%

Eating more than a third of your meals in restaurants

+69%

Going to bed hungry +101%

Eating breakfast away from home +137%

Not eating breakfast +450%

Table 6 (Adapted from Zinczenko’s The Abs Diet) Table 6 shows illustrates how daily eating habits significantly impact your risk of obesity, which correlates strongly with Heart Disease, Diabetes, Cancer, Alzheimer’s, MS—and many others.


Chapter Exercise #7 Implement the diet recommendations in this book for two weeks (14 days). Done correctly, you should notice an immediate change in your body.

During the last three days of the diet, write down everything you eat. Be relentless about it.

Finish this exercise on day 14 by comparing the last three days of this diet versus the three days of meals you wrote down previously.

Did you have a weight change? Did you have more control over cravings? If you are diabetic, did you have an improvement in your blood sugar levels?

Take a moment to reflect on anything that might be different.


Ch 6. Exercise – Stupidly Simple Key #2 To Good Health

Benefits of a strong, healthy body:

• Thinner waistlines lead to longer life spans

• Prevent back pain and other pains

• Less risk of injury

• Increased balance

• Get sick less often

• Better sex life

• Burn more calories at rest

• Reduce depression and anxiety

• Sleep better

• Have more energy

Exercise – A Long Life Habit

We’re sure you've heard many times before how important it is to exercise often. We’re sure you probably also know how easy it is to make excuses not to exercise and to sit on the couch instead. The human body naturally tries to conserve energy and rest whenever possible in order to be ready to search for food, fight wild animals, carry heavy loads, etc. On the flip side, the human body is also designed to be constantly in motion—walking, climbing, bending down, lifting and carrying. That's why it feels so great to exercise. No matter how lazy or tired you feel, no matter how many excuses you can come up with, once you get off your butt and do it, you will NEVER, EVER say "I wish I didn't just exercise. I wish I had sat on the couch instead." If you force yourself to exercise, you will feel energized, exhilarated, refreshed, and happy with yourself every time. Getting up and doing something is NEVER a mistake.

That being said, exercise must be a lifelong habit, something that is part of your daily life. There is simply no way around it. Your body must exercise or your muscles will waste away, body fat will increase, energy levels and metabolism will decrease, and your health will go into decline. As you age, failure to properly maintain your physical fitness level will result in trouble walking, balancing, getting out of bed, opening jars, and doing all the things you used to do with ease. You will feel old. Then it will be even harder to exercise. You will say "I'm too old to start now." You will justify not exercising because of your old age, and you will just sit on the couch and clip newspaper coupons


getting older and more decrepit every day. How depressing! But, THAT’S NOT HOW IT HAS TO BE and it’s never too late! It's time for you to wake up! You aren't dead yet! It is not too late for you, no matter how old or overweight you may be. Your age does not have to control your life. You should feel great every day until the day you die. The long, steady decline in health as you age is not inevitable, and does not need to happen to you.

If you haven't exercised in years, we have some “warm up” exercises that you can do for a few weeks to get your body in the swing of things before picking it up to a more intense routine. Keep in mind that you need to be continually challenging your body in new ways. Some exercises will be difficult; you’ll feel out of breath, tired, and unable to go on. Just don’t give up. If you are seriously obese, over 65, or have a history of disease or injury, you may want to start with a personal trainer who can assess your fitness level and start you out slow. The workout section of this book contains a few simple exercises that anyone can complete.

But I'm too busy to work out

This is a huge excuse for career people and parents. Your day is jam packed from the second you wake up until the second your head hits the pillow. We can sympathize with that, but we cannot accept it. The simple fact is your body is the most important commitment in your life. If you are not healthy, you cannot make money, you cannot take care of your kids, and you will not live as long to enjoy the dreams you’ve worked for over your lifetime (such as retirement!). Honestly, what is the point of spending your life slaving away to provide a good life for your family if you die from heart disease at age 45? Your spouse and kids don't care about money or security as much as they care about you. Your career may seem like the most important thing to you. Fair enough. But if you take the time to exercise, you will sleep better, have more energy, and get sick less often, resulting ultimately in higher productivity at work – which will lead to greater success!

Besides work and family responsibilities, take a serious look at what you are doing with your free time. Americans spend nine times more time watching TV than they do on physical activity, according to a National Human Activity Pattern Survey of 7515 American men and women.

There are only benefits in taking the time to exercise. It is simply a question of priorities. The good news is it really only takes a few minutes (15 – 30) of high intensity exercise most days to get enormous health benefits. We’ll go over the workouts in more detail in the next section.


Exercise - What's Right For Me?

One main problem with exercise in America is the sheer volume of information out there about various types of exercise and exercise programs. How do you know what is right for you? We’re going to layout some fairly specific methods of gaining the healthiest body possible (as well as the sexiest); however, if you tend to be head-strong and want to do “what you want to do,” just know that any exercise is better than no exercise (but not all exercises are created equal). Moving your body in any kind of way is a step forward, especially if you are sedentary or severely overweight. Cleaning out your attic or garage is a good start. What about gardening? Walking around your neighborhood? Whatever it is, get started today! What is the best type of exercise?

There really is no "best" type of exercise. As long as the exercise is high intensity, it will succeed in burning fat and keeping you lean. If you are not ready for high intensity exercise, work up to it gradually. It should be your goal. Slow walks or lifting light dumb-bells forever will not give you results. Continually setting higher and higher exercise goals for yourself will set you on the path for long lasting health. Why does intensity matter?

Our bodies are designed to perform physical activity in bursts of exertion followed by recovery, or stop-and-go movement instead of steady state movement. High intensity interval training (known as HIIT) is designed to mimic this type of movement, conditioning the body in the process. A basic example of a HIIT workout would be to jog for 5 minutes to warm up and then perform 6 sets of alternating intervals of sprinting for 60 seconds and jogging for 60 seconds. After a nice 5 minute cool down, you completed a very intense workout in only 22 minutes! Some interval programs can give you extremely rigorous workout in as little as 10 minutes. There is even a four minute workout that researchers in Japan found elevates metabolism for up to 36 hours. What a deal!

Exercising for long periods at low intensity is harder on your joints and can cause muscle wasting. High intensity intervals boost your metabolic rate much higher than low intensity, allowing you to burn more energy after the exercise is finished. This type of exercise also conditions your heart to respond to rapid changes in heart rate from high to low, instead of just one steady pace.

When you workout at the same pace the whole time, your body adjusts itself to the speed you are going and tries hard to conserve energy (i.e. burn less calories). You can think of this as adapting to the “expected” or even as your body finding ways to “cheat”


by conserving energy for later—there are a lot of bodily systems in place for accomplishing this. The constant change in intensity during an interval workout enables you to avoid this and burn more calories both during and after exercising.

Many sports are naturally composed of high intensity intervals such as soccer, basketball, racquetball, tennis, badminton and ultimate Frisbee, to name a few. You can make most forms of exercise into a high intensity interval workout.

High intensity interval workouts provide the following benefits:

• Burn more calories for 36 to 48 hours after exercising

• Improve the cardiovascular and respiratory systems

• Improve stamina and endurance

• Burn fat

• Reduce muscle loss

What are ‘Cardio’ and Aerobic Exercise?

Cardio stands for cardiovascular exercise, which is any movement that increases your heart rate and pumps blood throughout your body. All exercise actually utilizes the cardiovascular systems, although people commonly associate the word ‘cardio’ with jogging, treadmills, and elliptical machines. Before the word cardio became popular, it was more common to hear the word "aerobic" exercise. Aerobic exercise is any activity that uses oxygen as the primary catalyst in metabolizing glucose. A typical aerobic exercise consists of a short warm up period, a continuous exercise for at least 20 minutes at moderate pace, followed by a short cool down period. Walking, jogging, swimming, aerobic dance/step and biking are common forms of aerobic exercise because they are performed at a moderate level of intensity over an extended period of time. Aerobic exercise does not build muscle, nor does it significantly increase your basal metabolism. There are numerous benefits of aerobic exercise though:

• Improves the body’s ability to process oxygen

• Improves circulatory system efficiency

• Increases overall endurance and stamina

• Reduces heart rate at rest

• Improves blood circulation and lowers blood pressure


Contrary to popular belief, aerobic exercise alone is NOT the best strategy for weight loss. Aerobic activities are a great way to stay active and maintain a healthy heart and respiratory system, but a sound exercise program should also incorporate anaerobic exercise for fat loss and strength building. As we mentioned earlier, your exercise habits cannot, and will not, erase your bad eating habits.

There is often a focus on the benefits of exercise as a method for controlling health threats. Steven Blair, for example, is an exercise epidemiologist who has been running daily for over 30 years, including regular participation in marathons. He’s not the “ideal” image of a runner: at 5’5’’ and 195lbs, Blair describes himself as “short, fat and bald.” Blair is overweight and has undergone angioplasty and heart-bypass surgery. This means that despite his decades of aerobic exercise experience, he is at high risk of premature death. Runner’s World quotes him saying, “I do what I can. If it weren’t for my fitness, I might have needed the surgery 10 years earlier.” We say, if it weren’t for your diet, you would never have needed the surgeries. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2004 showed that even the “most fit” individuals only reduce their chances of dying from a heart attack by 50%. This is a significant amount but it is certainly not an end-all. What are Strength Training and Anaerobic Exercise? Anaerobic means “without oxygen” and refers to the fact that anaerobic exercise is not fueled by oxygen intake like aerobic exercise but rather by stored energy (glycogen) in your muscles (aerobic exercise also slowly depletes the glycogen levels in the muscles but at a significantly slower rate).

Weight lifting is the classic example of anaerobic exercise. Other forms of anaerobic exercise include sprinting, tennis, basketball, and badminton.

For maximum fat loss, you should include both aerobic and anaerobic exercise in your workout program.

Many people are intimidated by the thought of lifting barbells and dumbbells. That type of exercise if just for oiled up beef cakes, right? Wrong!!! Weight training is a highly beneficial form of exercise for people of any fitness level.

One of the greatest benefits of weight lifting is that as you build more muscle, you'll burn more calories throughout the entire day. This means losing weight becomes easier and faster as you get stronger. What’s even better is that as you get stronger, you do acquire muscle that will make you faster, more agile, and better in bed!

The more lean muscle you build, the easier it becomes to keep fat off and maintain a healthy weight.


A common misconception about exercise in general is that it is the calories we burn during exercise that allow us to lose weight. Isn’t it depressing to think that after that long arduous workout you just “gained back” all the calories you lost by eating a small snack? The fact is you don’t really burn that many more calories during exercise than you do when you are just “living.” It takes a lot of calories just to keep you standing up, breathing and thinking (90% of energy is used to maintain the brain).

This means, it is much more important for weight loss to increase your overall metabolic rate, not just more exercise. Weight training and other high intensity forms of exercise increase your metabolism for many hours after you exercise, so that you really lose weight.

Benefits of Anaerobic Exercise

• Boosts metabolism

• Builds lean muscle mass

• Strengthens bones, preventing osteoporosis

• Strengthens joints, preventing injury

• Increased energy (bigger muscles can store more energy in your body)

• Builds muscle (the body loses 6 pounds of muscle every 10 years!)

• Prevents dietary sugars from being stored as fat

• Lowers blood sugar

What is Isometric Exercise?

Isometric exercise has been practiced for thousands of years and is the precursor to modern body building. Charles Atlas, one of the most famous body builders of all time, named "The World's Most Perfectly Developed Man” in 1922, practiced isometrics to build his body.

Isometrics involves training the muscles by holding a stationary, flexed position. You may remember “wall sits” from gym class, a classic example of an isometric exercise. Some other simple isometric movements include pressing your palms together, pressing your hands or feet against a door frame, and calf raises.

Isometric exercise is different than other forms of exercise because it doesn’t require much movement at all, even though the muscles are being worked intensely. This type of exercise does not impact the body or strain the joints, making a great alternative for people recovering from injury or just getting back into exercising.


The benefits of isometric exercise include:

• Intense workout in a short amount of time

• Build muscle and power

• 32% better than dynamic exercises at increasing muscle power

• Strengthens joints (and is non-impact)

A caveat of isometric training is that it only strengthens the muscle at one angle, rather than the full range of motion when performing a dynamic exercise. It is therefore best to combine isometric training with dynamic (movement-based) exercises. Another thing to be careful of if you have high blood pressure is it is best to avoid isometric exercise until you have lowered your blood pressure to a safe level. The reason being, blood pressure is significantly raised during the flexing portion of an isometric exercise.

How often should I exercise?

It is possible to exercise too much, but easily avoidable as long as you have a lot of variety in exercise and allow for rest days in between high intensity workouts.

30-45 minutes of weight training 2 or 3 days a week combined with 20-40 minutes of high intensity aerobic exercise 2 or 3 days a week (for a total of 4-5 days a week) is plenty of exercise to lose fat and maintain a strong, healthy body.

Alternatively, you could alternate a HIIT with an isometric workout for intense but short sessions of 20 minutes or less (3-4 days a week). Throw in a longer jog, bike, or brisk walk once a week and you can stay in great shape and only spend 2 hours a week exercising!

NOTE: if you currently have any medical condition such as high blood pressure, angina, or diabetes that prevents you from exercising, just concentrate 100% on your diet for four weeks. After this period, you will most likely be ready to ease into exercising. Consult a doctor before starting to exercise if you are in precarious health. This does not mean you are off the hook though!

Exercise Misconceptions, Myths, and Objections

I don't want to "bulk up"

Maybe your goal is to give Arnold Schwarzenegger a run for his money. If so, then you have a long road ahead of you. Building muscle mass is extremely difficult, and involves increasingly intense, heavy weight lifting combined with increased calorie intake. The


reality is, if you are just interested in losing body fat and maintaining a strong, healthy body, you do not have to worry about “bulking up.” Whether you are a man or a woman, weight training workouts will not turn you into the Hulk, but they will improve your overall fitness level and allow you to lose lots of fat.

Body builders and misguided weight lifters perform isolated muscle exercises such as bicep curls, shoulder shrugs, and sit ups to “sculpt” specific parts of their bodies. This is time consuming and mostly ineffective for the average person (meaning, it is very niche). For the average person looking to get in shape, it is most effective to work large muscle groups. Remember, building muscle will enable you to burn more fat. Our workouts focus on strength training exercises that work combinations of your largest muscle groups and mimic movements that your body is actually designed to do. This type of strength training will allow for maximum fat loss, development of balance, and lean muscle mass while also reducing risk of injury.

Exercise doesn't work for me

Be honest with yourself. You have to combine exercise with good nutrition. You cannot eat whatever you want and expect to “work it off” through exercise. You also cannot exercise every once in a while, or start a rigorous program just to quit after two weeks and expect results.

That being said, everybody is different. People respond differently to different exercise programs. Try different types of exercise until you find what works for you. The key is to never give up and to be consistent. Being consistent doesn’t mean doing the same thing every day; it just means doing some form of exercise most days, for the rest of your life.

Remember, to really see results you have to challenge yourself. Work up to faster sprints, heavier weights, more reps, higher levels on the stair stepper, longer intervals etc. Adding variety and continually increasing the challenges in your workouts will end in great results.

I thought cardio was the best way to lose weight

It is common for people to associate cardio (jogging on the treadmill or elliptical for hours on end) as the only way to lose weight. This mentality comes from the misconception we mentioned earlier – that is, it is the calories burned during exercise that matter. Understandably so, while going nowhere on the treadmill there isn’t much to think about besides the “calories burned” slowly accumulating on the LCD screen.

Now you know better. Adding a variety of shorter but higher intensity workouts to your exercise program, including weight training, will really kick-start your weight loss more


than low intensity cardio.

I'm too weak to lift weights

The thought of exercising in any way can be incredibly daunting after being sedentary for so long. That’s ok. It’s ok to start slow, as long as you start now. You will be surprised at how incredibly quickly you will build strength if you just start doing something.

You can build up to lifting weights by performing isometric exercises and dynamic body weight exercises (similar movements to weight lifting, but using your body only). Even regular body weight exercises can be modified to the point where ANYONE can do them.

Consider the pushup. The pushup is one of the most challenging and effective exercises, and it involves absolutely no equipment. You can modify the pushup by using your knees, or even by performing it leaning against a wall. After enough days of modified pushups, you will be able to do one real pushup. After you do one, you can do two, three, etc. Eventually, you will able to do more difficult pushups such as t-pushups, explosive pushups, or decline pushups. Start slow and the sky is the limit! No matter how weak you are now, you CAN lift weights.

I’m scared to go to the gym

Many people—even "average weight" people—are too shy to jump into workout clothing and head down to the gym. We ourselves were hesitant at first about working out in the gym. It's intimidating. It's where the "fit people" are.

To avoid this discomfort (and excuse), we highly recommend investing in a home gym. The equipment needed is minimal and it is a one-time cost since the equipment will last forever.

Here is a check-list of the basic equipment you'll need:

Dumbbells

2x 5lbs

2x 8lbs

2x 10lbs

2x 15lbs


We highly recommend sticking with dumbbells rather than barbells. They are more affordable, can easily be stacked out of the way and don't require any "additional contraptions" for use.

The dumbbells will be the highest per-item cost. They are worth every penny. Don't bother with the 2 or 3 pound weights. They don't do anything and are a waste of money. Some women might be thinking "Uh, I'll stick with the 3lb weights, thanks." Seriously, you won't bulk up, so DON'T get 3lb weights. The caveat to this would be if you are a senior citizen with serious muscle atrophy. In this case, buy lighter weights if necessary. If you are concerned about cost, you can work up to heavier weights and buy them as needed.

Floor mat (optional; you can just use a blanket)

Pull-up bar (the kind that go in the doorway; it's unobtrusive, just make sure you put it high enough in the doorway that you're not ducking every time you go in or out of the room)

Yoga ball (use the sizing charts provided by the manufactures so you get the right sized ball for your height)

Other equipment you may look at investing in:

Step (Like they use in aerobics classes)

Medicine Ball

Heavier Dumbbells (20, 25, 30, 35lbs, etc)

I'm not good at sports

Another common excuse for avoiding exercise is you feel uncoordinated, you always hated gym class, and you just don’t see yourself as an athlete. You are more of the “couch jockey” type. Regardless of the myths circulating within your head-space, your body is designed to move.

The human body can move in incredible ways, as demonstrated by the hundreds of sports, dances, circus tricks, and martial arts we perform. Our muscles can be trained to perform difficult and complex movements to the point where they become second nature to us. Some people are more suited to different types of exercise and movement than others. However, every person has the natural ability to learn and perform sports.


There are so many things to try, just get out there and get involved. Don’t be afraid about what others think of you, just try something new. You might be pleasantly surprised at yourself. Exercising is about you, and the pleasure and pride you will feel by getting better every day is YOURS to enjoy.

Exercising alone at home or in the gym is all you really need to stay fit. You can perform simple bodyweight workouts combined with sprinting or swimming and continually challenge yourself physically, without the need to learn any special skills. HOWEVER, don’t be so quick to discount the additional value that can be had from group exercise and the challenge of sports.

Getting involved in some sort of group exercise or sport will enable you to meet other active people who can help keep you motivated. You will also get excited about the new skills you learn and the excitement of a game. It also gives a wonderful sense of community and comradary to play team sports. Get out there and play!

By now we hope it’s crystal clear that the stupidly simple rules to lifelong health are:

Eat a low fat diet of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Exercise with high intensity, at least 3 days a week, focusing on the major muscle groups and natural body movements.

Make these rules your daily, lifelong habits.

But we aren’t going to let you loose quite yet. We want to make sure you have the confidence and resolve to make this momentous lifestyle change.


Chapter Exercise #8 Workout for 5 weeks consistently (3x per week). That's only 15 times. You can keep a tally.

Since it is only 15 times, take out your calendar or whatever you use to keep yourself organized, and write down the days you'll be working out. Plan ahead.

If you don't have a calendar, then write down and repeat aloud with conviction, "I commit myself to workout 3x per week, on Day A, B, and C for the next 5 weeks."

Now you're committed.

Select one of the workout cycles from the workout section to complete, choosing accordingly for your fitness level. If you're elderly and just getting started, start with the exercises designed for you. Feel free to change the workout routine after 3 weeks if you’re ready for a change or new challenge. You still have to do 5 weeks though.

After your 15th workout session, write down the workout you just completed from our book and why you did it.

Answer these questions: did you do any long, slow cardio? Did you do much "isolation" work (like bicep curls or "butt" exercises)? Did you do really light weights and lots of reps? Did the workout "kick your ass"? Again, looking over your list of what you did at the gym last week and the reason for doing it, make sure you didn't forget anything that stands out.

Write down one of these statements in big letters as best fits your sentiment right now about what you did at the gym: "This works!" or "This doesn't work!"

It's only one or the other; we'll let you decide. Again, like all the exercises in this book, you have to be completely honest with yourself.

Take out the page you completed in chapter exercise #4 and compare the lists

If you like to be punk-rock about things like James, then make copies of your exercises and post them up where you can see them. Bathroom, next to the computer, the office refrigerator, etc. (Why the office refrigerator? Because like you 5 weeks ago, all your coworkers are working out like you used to, simply wasting their time. Sharing is caring).


Ch. 7 Goals – The First Step To Success

Now that you have the tools you need to get healthy once and for all, before you start making serious life changes it’s important that you start out right. Clear, written goals are the single most important thing you can do to make sure you succeed.

Have you ever written down your weight and body goals? Have you ever written down your eating goals? Last question: Have you ever written down what you eat and what you do?

Let's start with the last question. If you don't actually write down what you eat for a few days—without lying—you'll never know what you really eat. This is important because if you don't actually know what you're doing, you can't identify the areas that need improvement. So whereas the actual diet you follow will have the largest impact on your general health and well-being, this won't be possible without one other crucial ingredient: a goal.

Bestselling author Steven Covey has an exercise that we find particularly powerful. It's a mental exercise in which you imagine for a moment that you are attending your own funeral. Now, extend the scene to include what the eulogists will say about you. Will they say that "it was a tragedy that he was taken from us so suddenly"? Or that "the lifelong pursuit of health paid off. At age 100, he died peacefully, and not for a moment was he dependent on others or drug prescriptions"? Steven Covey's point is simple: "Begin with the end in mind." Failure to know what you want is certainly a combination for disaster.

But how will you reach your goals? To answer this question, we turn to Brian Tracy, a renowned productivity and business coach. "Think on paper," says Brian Tracy, "when you write down your goal, you crystallize it...on the other hand, a goal or objective that's not written down is merely a wish or a fantasy. It has no energy behind it. Unwritten goals lead to confusion, vagueness, misdirection and numerous mistakes."

We can attest to the power of written goals. We've both struggled with obtaining goals in the past and in the end the problem was as simple as "misdirected actions." We knew where we wanted to get – sorta – but we had no idea how to get there. Not only does writing the goal out help define more clearly what your goal is; it helps you identify what steps are needed to get there. This is where knowing what you really do will benefit you. If you've taken the time to honestly evaluate your life based on food and exercise, when you begin "thinking on paper" you will immediately see what has to change and what steps are needed to get there.

One common mistake is that we write down our goals once—maybe twice. While writing your goals down once is better than not at all, the true benefits to goal setting


come through repetition and daily evaluation. Why is that? Simply said, our lives are never the same two days in a row. Situations change rapidly in this world—from injury to new projects at work—and so evaluating where we are in the over arching process of obtaining our goals helps us make sure we're doing the right thing every day. The secret is simple: have a long term goal, write it down, and then write down everything needed to reach that goal. And of course, get started immediately.

Napoleon Hill, author of the internationally bestselling book, Think and Grow Rich, lays out six simple steps you can do to obtain your goals. Although he focuses on wealth creation, the process of building wealth is exactly the same as building a healthier lifestyle.

• "First fix in your mind the [exact goal] you desire." Since we're talking about weight, be specific. "I want to lose a lot of weight" or "I want to get in better shape" is not good enough.

• "Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for [obtaining your goal.]" This may mean giving up meat (well, our suggestion is to absolutely give up meat, dairy, and added fats). But in the end, it's worth the exchange. You have to believe that the sacrifice is worth the end result. If you're worried about weight, heart disease, cancer, etc, then the 'end result' is a longer life. And that's absolutely worth more than a hamburger!

• "Establish a definite date" when you'll reach your goal. Losing 72 lbs in 12 weeks may seem impossible but as Bronson Black, the winner of the TV Show "Student Body" will attest--it is possible. His goal? He made a deal with his mother that if he lost the weight, she'd quit smoking. He sacrificed and strived over and over for his goal every day –and he obtained it.

• "Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action." What are you waiting for? Get started already!

• "Write out a clear, concise statement" of what you look to obtain, the time limit, what you will give in return and "describe clearly the plan through which you intend to" accomplish it.

• "Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. As you read--see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of" your goal. Like a professional athlete training for an important event, you need to project the sense of accomplishment onto your mind.

The last point on the list is extremely important. There will be adversity. There will be a challenge to your goals and you need to project a sense of confidence and inner-belief that you can reach your goals. You can do it!


Ch. 8 Conclusion

Now that you are ready to embark on your journey to lifelong health, we want you know why we felt compelled to share the information we’ve gained through our studies. We are not scientists conducting major research paving the way for a better, healthier America. We’re just two concerned citizens who want everyone to know that lifelong health is obtainable for everyone.

We want everyone to understand that it is our lifestyles that are slowly eating away at our true national treasure: the people.

How long can our society go on skirting the issue of national health? We Americans continually look for the “quick fix” and often rely on technology for that fix. We are wasting our intellectual potential and resources on drugs and procedures for diseases caused by bad eating and exercise habits. These expensive “solutions” to major diseases of affluence are the main cause of rising health care costs. In turn, rising health care costs are a major cause of jobs going overseas and financial hardship and insecurity in America (Medicare, Social Security, Pension funds, etc).

How many times are we going to keep making this mistake? When will we learn that technology always “improves” our lives for a cost? When will we finally understand that each and every one of us has the power to improve our lives and the lives of others?

Case in point: industrial agriculture

Because industrial farmers continually dump fertilizers on their crops and the vast majority of famers are growing only two crops, corn and soy, the natural cycle of growth and decay that created our bread basket in the Midwest is rapidly deteriorating. Breeding for size, growing too close together, and heavy use of pesticides exacerbates the problem. USDA surveys and other agriculture studies indicate that the nutrient levels in foods produced with artificial fertilizers have decreased by up to 50% (depending on the specific nutrient).

Technology has given us more food, but it has less nutritional value. Each calorie of food contains fewer nutrients than in the past. So was there a gain?

Organic farming with high diversity of crops is healthier for the land and its people. Farmers have the knowledge to produce more than enough food without the use of harmful chemicals and detrimental farming techniques. Organic produce is higher in nutrients and organic farming also improves the health of the soil rather than deplete it.


Case in point: pharmaceutical drugs

Earlier in this book we mentioned that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US. Very often, doctors prescribe drugs to treat various ailments. In some cases the dose may be too high, resulting in harmful side effects. In other cases, a patient is prescribed a drug to treat one condition then requires another drug to treat the side effects of the first drug (you see where this is going). It is extremely difficult to anticipate the various interactions between different drugs due to the inherent complexity of the chemicals and that of the human body. The result is that Americans are frequently treated like guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies.

Drug manufacturers do their best to cover up the harmful results of their drugs too. Vioxx and the cover up by Merck is a clear example that when we start playing with chemicals to fix health problems caused by lifestyle, we are indeed opening Pandora’s Box.

Merck and the US Food and Drug Administration contributed to nearly 30,000 cases of heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths that resulted from the use of Vioxx between 1999 and 2003. Merck sought to cover up the danger of its own drug, aided by the US government, which approved sale of the drug without conducting any serious investigation into potential harmful consequences of its use. This may sound like an extreme example but incidents like this are not that unusual.

Nobody, not a single person on this planet, fully understands all the chemical and hormonal interactions occurring in the body at any given

time. If that’s the case, why do we Americans so blindly take the advice of our doctors when it includes expensive drugs and procedures?

We certainly do not want to discount the work doctors do. Modern medicine saves and improves lives when it comes to emergency care and treating many illnesses. But when it comes to preventative care for diseases of affluence, we do not need doctors. Diseases of affluence can be prevented by our own lifestyle choices. Healthy daily habits, backed by statistical and scientific research, are all we need to overcome America’s current health epidemics.

We authors both have family members and friends who are constantly challenged by their weight and health. We imagine you do too. Our hope is that by taking baby steps to educate those around us, we as a nation will return to healthy lifestyles that will keep us smiling and active long into our 80s, and 90s, and beyond.


Chapter Exercise #9 Take out the list you completed in chapter exercise #2. Looking at each name and visualizing the person say, "I promise that I will speak with you and share what I know."


Glossary-Index

Acid loads (35-36) - Refers to the general acidity within the blood. A higher acid load is associated with weakened bones later in life due to calcium excretion from the bones to offset the acidity.

Aflatoxin (57 - 58) - A naturally occurring mycotoxin (literally, carcinogen produced from fungus), one of the more toxic substances known. The fungus can be found on corn and peanuts.

Alzheimer’s Disease (52, 62, 70, 72, 81) - The most common form of dementia originally "described" by Alois Alzheimer in 1901. There are an estimated 26.6 million people worldwide afflicted by Alzheimer's.

American Heart Association (22, 54) - A non-profit in the US organized to reduce the disabilities and deaths caused by cardiovascular disease and stroke.

American Obesity Association (24) - A non-profit organization in the US founded in 1995 with the goal of educating and researching obesity as a disease as well as change public policy to reduce the affects of the epidemic.

Amino acid string//Amino Acids (32-33, 42) - A molecule (or string of molecules) found in all forms of life. These are the basic building blocks of all proteins. Amino acids not produced by the body (humans in this instance) are classified as "essential" amino acids; there are eight (8) essential amino acids for humans.

Auto immune diseases (34-35, 60-61) - Refers to a failure in an organism to recognize its own constituent parts, eliciting an immune response against those cells and tissues.

Anaerobic Exercise (87-88) - An exercise intense enough to trigger an "anaerobic metabolism;" these forms of exercise are used for non-endurance purposes, building power and muscle mass in particular. The muscles develop differently and are focused on increased performance for short-duration, high-intensity activities lasting up to 2 min.

Antioxidants (25) - Plants' internal mechanism for combating free-radicals (the oxidization of molecules). Plants have an increased need for antioxidants because the photosynthesis process creates an abundance of opportunity for free-radical production which threaten cellular integrity. Antioxidants provide the color and pigmentation of plants, and are produced during the photosynthesis process. Antioxidants are usually colored because the same chemicals that "sponge" up free-radicals also produce color.

Humans are completely unable to produce antioxidants (because we do not conduct photosynthesis). Antioxidants within plant based foods are accessible to humans during the digestive process. Animals do not produce antioxidants.


Blood cholesterol (20, 22, 31, 42-43, 52-54, 62) - The cholesterol measurable by a blood test. Refers to cholesterol that has been reprocessed from its original "fat" form into a form usable by the body.

Cancer (3, 4, 12, 17-18, 20-21, 23-24, 34, 36-39, 44, 48, 54-60, 70-72, 77, 81 ) - Refers to a class of diseases in which a group of cells divide beyond normal limits, invade adjacent tissues and sometimes spread to new locations in the body.

Cardiovascular exercise// Aerobic (86-87) - Exercise type that requires oxygen consumption by the body. Aerobic means "with oxygen".

Carcinogen (34, 54-58) - Term refers to any substance that is directly involved in the promotion of cancer or the facilitation of its propagation.

Colorectal cancer (20, 39, 56, 72) - This is a type of cancer with origination in the colon, rectum and appendix. It is the third most common form of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in developed nations.

Calcium (35-37, 63) - A chemical element [Ca]. Calcium is primarily located in the bones and provides strength/sturdiness. Calcium is secreted from the bones to offset increased acidity loads with measurable differences in the urine between animal- and plant based dieters.

China Study (9, 24, 27, 56-59, 76) - A book by T. Colin Campbell, Cornell University. Also refers to the "China Project" a more specific survey of 65 Chinese Counties, 130 villages and 6500 adults, amounting in over 8000 different statistical associations.

Coevolution (47) - A theory illustrating how a change in one species' characteristics or behaviors (such as eating habits) affects the evolutionary trajectory of another species' characteristics or behaviors (better camouflage, for example).

Colon Cancer - see Colorectal Cancer

Complex Carbohydrates (14, 39-41) – unrefined form of foods; they are the whole food. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are the healthiest foods to consume and they are primarily made of carbohydrates.

Diabetes (3, 4, 12, 16-17, 21, 23-24, 29, 34, 40-41, 38, 52, 60-62, 70, 81, 89) - An auto immune disease characterized by a disordered pancreas which either results in malfunctioning insulin or a failure to produce insulin.

Dietary cholesterol (52) - this is a pre-digested form of cholesterol found in food products

Disease of Affluence (3, 8, 12, 17, 18, 21-22, 24, 42, 46, 48, 51-52, 55, 60-63, 66, 77-78, 97-98) - Diseases which statistically appear more frequently as a "result" of increased


general wealth in a society. Contrasted with Disease of Poverty

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) (34, 54-57) - A "nucleic acid" that contains the genetic information used by the body in the development and maintenance of all living organisms as well as some viruses.

Dr. Neal Barnard (29-30, 62, 81) - An American physician, author and researcher. Advocates a low-fat, plant based diet.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell (27, 55-56, 58-59, 60, 63, 76) - Author of The China Study, nutritional biochemist with Cornell University, co-director of the China Project. Lifetime findings indicate a plant based diet is the key to [easily] avoiding a slew of diseases caused by affluent living.

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn (22, 28-29, 42, 44-45, 53) - Prominent cardiologist, headed the "Cleveland Institute" as well as Olympic gold-medalist in rowing (1956)

Dr. John McDougall (29) - Physician, author and nutrition expert who advocates better health through diet.

Dr. Dean Ornish (22-23, 27-28, 44, 53) - Physician well known for preventing and reversing heart disease through The Ornish Diet.

Essential fatty acids (42 ) - Fatty acids that cannot be constructed by an organism without other components consumed as food. For humans, there are two essential fatty acids, Omega-3 and Omega-6.

Fiber (25, 27, 39-41, 62-63, 65-67, 73, 76, 79) - Fiber is found only in whole plant based foods (not juice). Although it is not actually digested by the body, it is important for the body's overall health.

Foci (56-59) - The number and location of DNA- adducts mutated by a carcinogen (see adducts)

Glucose (31, 39, 60-61, 86) - A monosaccharide, or simple sugar. Glucose is an important carbohydrate in biology since all living cells use it as a source of energy.

HDL Cholesterol/High-density lipoprotein (31, 52) - Responsible for enabling lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides to move within the water based solution of the bloodstream. It is often referred to as "good cholesterol" because HDL appears to remove cholesterol from the arteries and transport it back to the liver for reprocessing.

Heart Disease (3, 4, 12, 17, 18, 20-22, 25, 27-29, 34, 37-38, 40, 42-44, 48, 51-55, 61, 62, 68, 70-72, 81, 84, 96) - An umbrella term for a variety of different diseases affecting the heart. It is the leading cause of death in the US, England, Canada, and Wales. One person dies from heart disease every 34 seconds in the US alone.


High blood pressure/Hypertension (3, 16, 20, 61062, 89) - A medical condition in which the blood pressure of an individual is chronically (always) elevated.

High quality protein (32-33) - A term used by biochemists to classify protein qualities. A higher quality rating is associated with a faster utilization of the protein-string by the body for its growth and maintenance needs. It can be misleading since the linguistic implications are that ‘low quality’ protein is undesirable when it only implies a relation of “completeness” for human use and makes no mention of suitability.

High cholesterol/Hypercholesterolemia (20, 51) - The presence of high levels of blood cholesterol. It is not a disease but a metabolic derangement that is secondary (i.e. not the primary cause) to other diseases, most notably cardiovascular disease.

High intensity interval workout/ HIIT (85-86) - All exercises are performed with a high level of effort/intensity where it stimulates the body to produce an increase in muscular strength and size.

Industrial diet (12, 25, 55-56, 65, 68, 69, 71, 76, 79) - A diet composed of highly processed foods as well as high in animal-product and fat intake.

Industrial food (21, 25, 42-43, 46, 69) - Term referring to a highly processed food-like-substance containing essential nutritional substances (such as protein, carbohydrates and fat) but completely reprocessed from its original form such that the constituent parts of the food-substance are no longer recognizable/identifiable OR a term referring to food products that have been industrially scaled to such an extent that the cost-per-foodstuff has dropped so significantly that consumption rates have dramatically increased.

Initiation (54-55, 60) - The first stage of cancer development characterized by an initial exposure of DNA to a carcinogen, in which the mutated adducts remain in the DNA until removed by repair mechanisms (if that occurs at all).

Insulin (23, 40-41, 60-62, 72) - A hormone-enzyme, comprised of amino acids, responsible for signaling cells to absorb glucose as well as signal a number of other metabolic processes. Insulin is also a manufactured substance used by diabetics to treat diabetes (invented circa 1923).

Isometric Exercise (88-89, 91) - Strength exercise done in static positions, rather than dynamic (movement through a range of motion).

Karl Vogt (16) - German physiologist and dietitian (lived 10.31.1831 - 01.31.1908). Often considered the "father" of modern dietetics, calculating the "protein turn over" by measuring the nitrogen levels excreted in urea (a by-product of metabolism located in urine).

Kidney Stone (36, 72) - Also known as renal calculi, are solid concentrations of dissolved


minerals, including calcium, phosphate, oxalic acid and uric acids.

Macronutrients (32, 38, 41) - carbohydrates, protein, fat. All foods are made up of a combination of these macronutrients.

Max Rubner (33) - (1835-1917) A German physiologist studying under Carl von Voit made famous from his research into metabolism, energy physiology, and hygiene. He also made an important connection between metabolic rates and the "surface area" of mammals

Michael Pollan (7, 12, 25, 45, 74) - American professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley where he is director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. He is author of a number of books critical of agribusiness in America.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (34-35, 62)- Also called disseminated sclerosis or encephalomyelitis disseminata is an autoimmune condition focused within the central nervous system.

LDL Cholesterol (43, 52) - A lipoprotein responsible for transporting cholesterol and triglycerides from the liver to the peripheral tissues. In most cases, an elevated LDL level (in blood tests) is an indication of cardiovascular disease--hence being called "bad" cholesterol.

Low quality protein (32) - Research term used to refer to protein strings that lack one or more essential amino acids necessary for the human body to completely use during metabolic processes. Two low quality proteins from different sources typically combine to make a high quality protein.

Metabolic Rate: (75, 77, 80, 85, 87) - (or Basal metabolic rate, BMR) The total amount of energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate environment. This is typically measured in the "post-absorptive state" (meaning the digestive system is inactive, which requires about 12 hours of fasting in humans). Increased muscle mass increases the BMR and will decreases with age and the loss of lean body mass.

Metabolism (6, 60, 75-77, 80, 83, 85-86, 88) - Refers to the chemical reactions that occur in living organisms in order to maintain life, including growth and reproduction, responding to environmental changes as well as food digestion.

Nurses' Health Study (44) - A long-term, epidemiological study established in 1976 by Dr. Frank Speizer, tracking 121,700 female registered nurses to asses risk factors for cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Omega-3 (42) - One of two essential fatty acids (for humans), found in the "family" of unsaturated fatty acids. "-3" refers to the position of the chemical bond within the fatty acid. Omega-3 plays an anti-inflammatory role in the body as well as stimulates blood flow and provides some of the components necessary for normal growth and


developments.

Omega-6 (42) - One of two essential fatty acids (for humans), found in the "family" of unsaturated fatty acids. "-6" refers to the position of the chemical bond within the fatty acid.

Osteoporosis (35-36, 70, 72, 88 ) - A bone disease leading to an increased risk of bone fracture, characterized by a reduction in bone mineral density, disruption of the micro-architecture of the bones. Osteoporosis is most common in post-menopausal women.

Progression (pg )- A stage in the development of cancer tumors in which the tumors grow locally (at the point of origin). These localized tumors are often considered to have "metastatic potential" and so localized surgery is often suggested.

Promotion (34, 54-55, 57) - Second stage in cancer development typified by conditions which either allow the DNA-adducts (mutated DNA-cells) to either further develop (spread) or be repaired.

Protein (21, 25-26, 32-38, 41, 44-45, 52, 57-60, 62-63, 66, 70, 76-78) - Large organic compounds made of amino acids which act in most cases as enzymes that catalyze (initiate and guide) biochemical processes and reactions. Proteins are a macronutrient necessary for human development. Proteins play an important role in metabolism, participating in every process within cells.

Punctuated Equilibrium (56) - A theoretical model in evolutionary biology consisting of long periods of stability within a species' genetic makeup as well as the reproductive and dietary habits. The framework allows for "moments" of change where a species is forced to change due to a rapid change in ecological conditions. Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed this model (versus the "gentle, consistent change model" proposed by Darwin) based on evidence within the fossil record.

RDA (recommended daily allowance) (33, 44) - Developed during WWII by the United States National Academy of Sciences in order to investigate issues of nutrition that might affect national defense. The recommendations would be used by the armed forces, civilians as well as for overseas populations in need of food relief.

Refined Carbohydrates (40-41, 76) - A source of carbohydrate that has been broken down by industrial processes. Fiber and nutritional content is low, and energy is high and easily digested.

Refined Food (62-63, 71-72, 78) - A food product that has been made by industrial processes. It may contain added sugar, fat, sodium (salt), chemicals, preservatives, and flavors.

Saturated fat (35, 42-43, 45, 52-53, 59) - A fat consisting of triglycerides containing only saturated fatty acids--fatty acid bonds that contain hydrogen atoms in the chemical


bond.

Selective Pressure (46-48) - A cornerstone of evolutionary theory showing that the conditions in which a species exist are under pressures from the biosphere (predators, ecological change, food scarcity, etc). These pressures cause some individuals to perish where others survive. The selective pressure includes the reproductive potential: dying individuals within a species do not reproduce whereas the surviving individuals do.

Simple Carbohydrates (39-41) - Sugar, refined grains and sweets, juice

Trans fat (43, 48, 52, 68) - May be either a monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat; in either case the fatty acid is industrially produced--aside from a class of trans fats, vaccenic acid, occurring naturally in trace amounts within meat and dairy products from ruminants. The fatty acid is partially- or wholly-hydrogenated. This is what makes the fatty acid artificial as unsaturated fats do not contain hydrogen atoms naturally.

Triglycerides (40, 52) - Or Triacylglcerol is a chemical-compound composed of three fatty acids and is the main constituent of vegetable oil and animal fats. These fatty acid chains play an important role in the metabolic processes of animals (including humans) being transporters for dietary fat and containing twice as much energy as carbohydrates and proteins.

Unsaturated fat (42-43) - A fat or fatty acid that is either monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. These fatty acid compounds are called "unsaturated" because in the chemical bonding process the "hydrogen atoms" are eliminated--thus saturated fats are merely fatty acids with hydrogen atoms bonded to the chemical compound.

Vitamin D (36) - Produced by the body, helps prevent cancers as well as bolster the immune system. Consumption of animal proteins prevents the body's production of vitamin D. This is also true of people with increased calcium levels.

Whole grains (24, 34, 39, 41, 65, 70-71, 93)- Cereal grains that retain the bran, germ and the endosperm--contrasted with refined grains which only retain the endosperm.

W.O Atwater (33) - (05.1844 to 11.1907) An American chemist known for his research into human nutrition and metabolism; he was the first professor of chemistry at Wesleyan University.


Partial Bibliography

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Barnard, Neal. Breaking the Food Seduction. 2003.

Campbell, T. Colin, Campbell, Thomas M. The China Study. 2006.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "National Diabetes Fact Sheet: National Estimates and General Information on Diabetes in the United States, Revised Edition." Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1998.

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 1989.

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Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich. 1960.

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