In the United States, the first generation is growing, and it is sicker and will die at a younger age than its parents. For the first time in human history, life expectancy is declining. When and why did eating out of pleasure become a threat and our enemy number 1?
One of the few hot days at the Polish seaside this year. Next to me, the family – mum, dad, 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. Everyone, including the youngest offspring, was obese. Very. – Are you hungry? – Yes – replies the little one. – Then we will buy you an ice cream – says satisfied mother. They could have auditioned for a movie version of Barbapapa’s adventures, but that’s no fun anymore. Walking along the seaside promenade, I see people discovering their excess. Their bellies hidden under their clothes and fat pouring out from everywhere were released. Fat parents, fat children. We are getting better at acquiring kilos. Compared to other countries, Poland fares worse than a few years ago and already occupies one of the highest positions in the EU. Obesity and overweight are the cause of many chronic diseases (hypertension, heart disease, respiratory disease, type 2 diabetes) and premature death (nearly 3 million deaths worldwide are related to obesity each year). This condition shortens the life of a 25-year-old by 5 years, and in the UK Britain by up to 10 years. In the USA, every third child is overweight. It looks like we’ll make up for it soon. The UN reports that the number of people struggling with overfeeding problems has exceeded the number of people suffering from malnutrition, which is perhaps the greatest paradox today. How much time do we have left to understand the scale of the threat?
Where is the real food?
Excessive kilos are almost half of our community’s problem. These are those who sooner or later will develop one or more of the whole range of civilization diseases and, consequently, will die sooner. These are the ones who do not see the cause of their health problems in what they eat and what they feed their family. These are those who, by changing their lifestyle, would not have to swallow tablets that would ruin the body or undergo costly and burdensome operations (by-passes, reducing the volume of the stomach, insulin pumps, etc.). But what about the rest who also get sick? Because obesity is the number one problem, and another is food quality where, in short, less and less real food. The products processed and wrapped in toxic foil in our daily basket are usually an electrifying mixture of chemicals and preservatives. But this is our basket, we are all free, nobody tells us what to eat. The choice is ours, but our child will bear the consequences. And we.
Children’s sugar is not comforting
There has never been so much sugar in food today. From breakfast cereals, to flavored milk, white bread, cold cuts, ketchup, to sweetened drinks, flavored waters, tea and coffee (yes, coffee consumption among children and teenagers also tends to increase). A study of 1000 children under the age of 15 found that regular consumption of coffee and tea increases the likelihood of developing type 1 diabetes. Children who eat a lot of sugar are at risk of a multitude of health conditions (ADHD, anxiety, depression, tooth decay, ringworm, chronic sinusitis) and ears, bone fractures, weakened immune system, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome etc.). Drinks and foods high in sugar force the pancreas to constantly pump insulin. Over time, the pancreas weakens and is unable to produce the right amount of this hormone, which is essential for our cells. When they start to block the absorption of sugar, a problem arises. Weight gain. Every third child born today (in some nationalities even every second) will develop diabetes. Low blood sugar causes the same symptoms as choking: a copious release of adrenaline, followed by irritation and an appetite for sugar. 335 ml (a small bottle or can) of soda provides approximately 10 teaspoons of sugar. An average teenager drinks 710 ml of such a drink a day, which is 152 glasses or 30 kilograms of sugar per year.
Our daily bread
Wheat is no longer what it was long, long ago. It no longer produces healthy daily bread. Modified wheat today cannot survive in the wild without human support in the form of nitrogen fertilizers and pest control agents. Despite such radical changes in the genetic composition of wheat, no research has been done on the impact of new varieties on human health. It’s a pity, because wheat is second to none in terms of its effects on the brain and nervous system! It can have a pleasant effect on emotions, induce symptoms of drug craving after withdrawal, and is an appetite stimulant. It makes us want more – it never ends with one cookie or one slice of pizza. Celiac disease, a devastating disease that develops as a result of exposure to wheat gluten, is an example of a disease associated with this ubiquitous grain that is responsible for inflammation of the large intestine and affects 1% of people. children and adults. Foods with wheat dominate our diets and increase our sugar levels more than any other food, even sugar. In short, eating them leads to diabetes. And also to heart disease, arthritis, allergies and schizophrenic delusions. Clinical trials proved this decades ago, but never saw the light of day. The author of The Wheat-Free Diet, cardiologist William Davis, who has spent years researching grain and its effects on patients’ health, writes: we may be able to shake off the disaster called agriculture, but to take the first step in that direction, we need to see what we did. with what we call wheat.
Drink milk! Or better not
Studies of whole populations who consume the highest amounts of dairy products have the highest incidence of bone fractures and osteoporosis. In countries such as China and Japan, until the Western diet arrived, and with it milk, the disease was unknown. Dairy products increase the level of growth hormones in the blood. Insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) helps the calf to double its body weight within 2 months of birth, which is more than 3 times faster than in a human newborn. In humans, IGF-3 causes uncontrolled growth, and its high concentration in the blood is a significant factor in increasing the risk of developing cancer. Consuming dairy products early in life can lead to the development of type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune form of the disease that is usually diagnosed in childhood. In its course, the immune system attacks the cells of the pancreas, permanently destroying the organ’s ability to produce insulin. There are also large amounts of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat in dairy products, not to mention steroids and hormones that can be linked to cancer and other health problems. This chemical cocktail also contains residues of antibiotics, pesticides, veterinary drugs, fertilizers, synthetic preservatives, etc. In addition, contaminants such as viruses, bacteria and parasites can get into milk and all animal products during the production process. By giving them to a child, we contribute to the degeneration of the immune system, and hence the real epidemic of allergies. Remember that the main food allergen is milk. Why did we believe that it was better for our children than mother’s milk?
Butter is for eating and margarine is for sale
One of the first synthetic products to hit our menu is margarine. When the hypothesis of the harmfulness of lipids was born in the 50s (in living organisms they play a building function or are an efficient source of energy), processed food producers quickly realized that their product could be advertised and sold to people as better and healthier than butter.
The slogan sold great and margarine became a common bread supplement, a “better” butter, devoid of bad nutrients (cholesterol and saturated fat). In their place, vitamins and unsaturated fat were added to it. Only one is not foreseen. The hydrogenation method, whereby healthy vegetable fat was to be converted into solid fat resulted in it containing unhealthy trans fatty acids. Today it is known that they are more dangerous than the saturated fatty acids in butter, which margarine was supposed to replace. What does this mean for margarine eaters? According to clinical trials, they have an increased risk of heart attack and cancer. Professor Grażyna Cichosz devoted four years of work to margarine. And today, after studying 600 scientific publications, he believes that the hypercholesterol theory of atherosclerosis was invented in order to discredit animal fats and introduce much cheaper vegetable oils and margarines to the human diet (“Duży Format” 04.04.2010/XNUMX/XNUMX). Even if margarine has been obtained using other, safer methods, preservatives, dyes and various suspicious additives mean that daily consumption of this product has nothing to do with health.
You live longer without meat. And get healthier
There are places on earth where people live long and do not get sick. Okinawa in Japan, Nuoro Province in Italy, Ikaria in Greece, Loma Linda in California (the Seventh-day Adventist community lives there) and Nicoya on the Costa Rican peninsula. All these places are where the sun shines – and as we know, thanks to it, vitamin D is formed in our skin, which protects against osteoporosis and diabetes, and reduces the susceptibility to infections and cancer. What these places have in common is also diet. Fresh, unprocessed foods, fish, and a meat-free diet based on vegetables and legumes. Dr. T. Colin Campbell has been at the forefront of nutrition research for over forty years. His book, The China Study, is the most comprehensive and in-depth study of the effects of nutrition on health ever conducted. It proves that populations eating wholesome plant-based products do not suffer from cancer and other diseases of developed countries (mainly heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity). In his opinion, if the amount of calories in the diet absorbed from animal protein exceeds 10 percent, the destruction of the body begins and diseases appear. Western societies consume an average of 17 percent. calories from protein, which by far exceeds the safe limit. It cannot be ignored, and if we add the frequency and quality of consumed meat (hormones, antibiotics), the danger increases.
You are what you eat
Several years ago, with sinusitis, bronchitis and ear infections, I found a doctor. Before the visit, I visited a few others, each of them “examined” me for about 15 minutes. None of the three types of antibiotics plus one steroid worked. The visit at the doctor’s office lasted an hour, and the most important questions were whether I was breastfed and what my diet was. Instead of a prescription, I was instructed to conduct a monodiet, which consisted only of millet in quantities that ensure saturation and warming herbs. As I found out, after years of taking antibiotics, my immunity was at zero. I started a diet. After three days, most of the symptoms were gone, and after seven I was healthy. Miracle? For me yes. It turned out that my body was able to cope with the disease on its own. This year, in February, the New York Times published an article by the well-known American journalist Susannah Meadows, in which she described the story of her son. Shepherd, at the age of three, fell ill with rheumatoid arthritis, he was unable to walk for a short time, and he cried out of pain day and night. He was given the drug methotrexate, the side effects of which were destroying virtually every organ from the lungs to the liver. There was no improvement. The desperate journalist turned to Char Walker who deals with Chinese medicine (her son fell ill with arthritis when he was one month old. He cried every night until he could say that his legs and arms hurt – as it turned out, he had an asymptomatic type of disease. Char did not dare to administer methotrexate, but changed his diet which caused the disease to disappear). Susannah, with the approval of the child’s doctor, began a similar alternative therapy. She excluded gluten, sugar and milk from the child’s diet, adding supplements, incl. such as probiotics or omega-3 fatty acids. After six weeks, Shepherd got out of bed himself, which has hardly ever happened since his illness. After a few months, he recovered, catching up with his growth and weight. He runs, dances, practices karate. The symptoms of pain and swelling appeared several times after being given the antibiotic and when he accidentally ate the gluten, but disappeared within 24 hours. Susannah Meadows, in her much-discussed material, mentions an article that appeared 20 years ago in the medical journal The Lancet. It describes a group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis who were referred to a health farm, and after a week of fasting, fed a vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free diet. After four weeks, the health of all patients improved significantly.
In 2001, another experiment based on the same diet and these effects was reported in the Rheumatology magazine, and in 2011, The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine takes a closer look at Shepherd’s unusual case. Why am I writing about this? Because there are a lot of such cases in the records of doctors dealing with Chinese medicine, but no one writes about them. Fortunately, there are more and more such doctors, and doctors of conventional medicine are also beginning to be interested in the effects of diet on disease. Dr. Mark Hyman, author of The End of Diabetes and Obesity, writes: Billions of dollars have been wasted trying to invent healing pharmaceuticals while the solution lies right under our noses. This is a lifestyle and environmental disease, so medication will not cure it. I had barely touched on the topic of the river, which is nutrition. How to help yourself and teach your children to eat so that they do not have problems with obesity and diseases? I’ll steal three sentences from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: EAT REAL FOOD. NOT TOO MUCH. MOST OF VEGETABLE ORIGIN. This is the simplest recipe for health.
text: Iza Farenholz