In article <42h3101tsk48v0luebbp3oqf36huh6uv15@4ax.com>,
taurusrc@aol.com posted:

Since obese people negatively impact others, the solution
becomes everyone's business.  Visit the Physicians Committee
for Responsible Medicine web site for excellent food recommendations:

http://www.pcrm.org

Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti

Rudeness by a different poster deleted.

What you eat can affect how much you eat (or want to eat). High glycemic
foods (such as white bread buns, fried potatoes and sugared drinks) can
raise you blood sugar levels, which can raise your insulin levels, which can
make you hungrier.

Karl (who enjoys the occasional buger, fries & pop) Johanson

In article <4015a736.12611734@news.individual.de>,
yeltrabnhoj@email.com posted:

Better education for her:

DIET AND MEDICINE REVOLUTION

----------------------------------
SPECTRUM, Number 24, May-June 1992
----------------------------------

Dr. Neal Barnard is President of The Physicians
Committee For Responsible Medicine, a nationwide group
of physicians that promotes preventive medicine and
addresses controversies in modern medicine. In April
1991, he and three other doctors unveiled a proposal to
replace the old Four Food Groups concept initiated in
1956.

In his book, "The Power of Your Plate," Dr. Barnard
documents the scientific evidence supporting a low-fat,
vegetarian diet as the most potent regimen to reduce
risk of heart disease, cancer, weight problems and
food-borne illness. Aside from serving as a practicing
physician on the faculty of the George Washington School
of Medicine, he is also an Associate Director for
Behavioral Studies at the Institute for Disease
Prevention.

Spectrum: Could you tell me a little about your
background?

Neal Barnard: I grew up in North Dakota, and I was
completely oblivious to nutritional issues. I ate the
pork-chop-and-roast-beef diet that everybody else eats
in that neck of the woods. My father was a doctor, and
my grandfather was a doctor, but we have four people in
my family that are cattle raisers. I think all of us,
both the people that were eating cattle and the people
that were interested in medicine, really didn't
appreciate the links between diet and illness.

I had a job at McDonald's in high school, but my first
year of medical school I started to become sensitive to
a lot of issues, one being the relationship of diet and
disease. I would say this awareness was aided and
abetted by a realization of what animals go through in
agriculture, which is grotesque. Most people don't see
it, but I did growing up. Only later did it start to
make sense to me, and in the first year of medical
school I became a vegetarian.

I started the Physician's Committee For Responsible
Medicine in 1991 with an aim of taking on lots of
issues, not just preventive medicine. In that area, for
example, we publish a magazine called the Guide to
Healthy Eating. Its goal is to provide user-friendly
nutrition information, with little recipe cards in every
issue that you can tear out and put in your recipe file.
The magazine is also used as a hand-out for patients in
doctors' offices.

We have a nutritional program for businesses called the
Gold Plan. If you're working at IBM, or wherever, at
lunch time in the cafeteria you can get nutrition
information on healthy, totally vegetarian foods.

--------------------------------------------------------
The key is that we have to go beyond the recommendations
that most conservative medical organizations have been
using . . . I'm not discouraging people from getting
medical care when they really need it, but I am
encouraging people to take advantage of what they can do
on their own . . .
--------------------------------------------------------

As I mentioned, our organization has taken on other
issues. We've done quite a lot to promote alternatives
to animal research. We've done some work against
unethical human research, and made trouble in various
other ways. You can make a lot of friends and a lot of
enemies doing this kind of work.

Spectrum: Should people sometimes think twice about
going to the doctor? What are some important ways you
think that people need to take responsibility for their
health care?

Neal Barnard: The first key is to recognize that your
power is far greater than the power that a physician
might have. By that I mean that once you have heart
disease, the capacity that your doctor may have to limit
it, or reverse it, is far less than the power you had to
prevent it from occurring in the first place, or even to
reverse it through lifestyle measures. I'm not
discouraging people from getting medical care when they
really need it, but I am encouraging people to take
advantage of what they can do on their own, which is
phenomenal.

Even two, three, or four years ago, we did not know that
the plaques in your coronary arteries could actually
dissolve with lifestyle measures alone. We now know that
they can. Dr. Dean Ornish has established beyond any
reasonable doubt that a combined program of vegetarian
diet, modest exercise, stress reduction, and not smoking
can accomplish this. That sort of regimen will actually
make those plaques start to disappear without medicine,
without surgery, and, relatively quickly. Within one
year he achieved demonstrable changes in most of the
patients he studied.

The key is that we have to go beyond the recommendations
that most conservative medical organizations have been
using. By that, I mean the American Heart Association,
the American Cancer Society -- their recommendations
will not reverse heart disease. A 30% fat diet with lean
meat, chicken and fish is not going to reverse anybody's
heart disease, nor will it prevent it. You can look at
such a diet and know that that's the case. Chicken, fish
and lean meats have cholesterol and saturated fat in
them; they have no fiber or complex carbohydrates.

Spectrum: Recent studies showed that fat reduction down
to 30% did not help much. Because of this, some people
now are saying that you don't really need to worry about
fats.

Neal Barnard: Yes, that is actually one of the most
devastating effects of poorly done research, or maybe
poorly interpreted research For example, there was a
very large, and I believe well-done, study of nurses
done through Harvard University, but I think that its
results were so poorly interpreted as to have the effect
that you've just described. The results were as follows:

It has been known for a very long time that animal fat,
and to a lesser extent, all fats, increase the risk of
breast cancer. The reason is that fats increase the
production of estrogen in the body, and that, in time,
over-stimulates the cells of the breast and they become
cancerous. There are other reasons, also.

In this Harvard study, thousands and thousands of nurses
were tracked year after year -- what they ate, their
incidence of illnesses, and so forth. During a four-year
period, the researchers noticed that those who had
somewhat less fat in their diet, as well as those who
had more fat, had the same risk of breast cancer. They
interpreted that to mean that changing your diet doesn't
help.

If you look more closely, those who were eating the
least fat were still eating about 29% of their calories
as fat. That's not very far under the average in
America. But compare that to Japan. When Japan was at
its very lowest incidence of breast cancer, Japanese
women were eating 7% or 8% of their calories as fat.
That would be about the typical amount found in a
low-fat, vegan diet.

The fat intake of nurses in the study ranged from 29%
and up. All of them are at high risk of cancer. It's the
equivalent of saying, "if I'm smoking two packs of
cigarettes a day, and I cut down to one, will that
reduce my risk of having lung cancer?" And, you may find
it doesn't. If you, then, interpret that to mean that
smoking doesn't matter, you've made a grave error.

----------------------------------------------------
The meat-eating women are eight times more likely to
have breast cancer. The genetics are the same...so
that's not a factor.
----------------------------------------------------

Likewise, there was a study recently where they did a
statistical analysis of the benefit of reducing the fat
in your diet to about 30%, and they concluded your
average person would gain only a month or two of life,
overall. Well, that doesn't mean diet doesn't work, it
means that modest changes in your diet don't work.

So, that's the message I want to get out to people. If
you change your diet, and do it very vigorously, you
have enormous power. You can reverse heart disease. You
can prevent it. You can, I believe, prevent most cases
of cancer if you combine dietary changes with avoiding
tobacco. You could prevent probably 70% or 80% of
cancers, just by those steps alone. And, obviously,
there's a whole host of other diseases that you would be
able to live without.

Spectrum: I've talked to some people who dispute those
studies indicating the superior health of traditional
Japanese people. These critics say that a lot of
Japanese died young because their lives were harder or
less sanitary, and this left only the healthier ones to
be counted in the studies. Or, that their longevity
might be due to some kind of genetic effect. People come
up with all kinds of reasons why this epidemiological
information isn't accurate, but I assume the researchers
controlled for those variables.

Neal Barnard: The fact of the matter is, there is not
just one, but many, many studies, and not only looking
at the Japanese in their own society, but looking at
them as they changed their diet, and adopted ours.

Spectrum: When they come to America?

Neal Barnard: When they come to America, or even wealthy
Japanese women living in Tokyo or Osaka eating a western
diet with meat every day, compared to poorer people in
the same area who are not eating meat. The difference in
breast cancer risk between a Japanese woman eating meat
every day, and a Japanese woman who isn't, is a factor
of eight. In other words, the meat-eating women are
eight times more likely to have breast cancer. The
genetics are the same in these cases, so it's not a
factor.

If a Japanese family comes to the U.S., their children
eating a Western diet will have the same risk of breast
cancer as the Caucasians living around them, and here
again it is not an effect of genetics.

The other things that you mentioned -- sanitation and so
forth -- the Japanese put us to shame in this area, and
their longevity is greater, not less than ours.

Diet has to be one of the reasons for their good health.
That's not to say that I think everyone should adopt a
Japanese diet wihout thought. Throng
with the diet. In some cases there is too much salt and
too many pickled foods, and so forth. But you can take
the best of both worlds.

Spectrum: I first heard about your work in the
newspapers. I believe the U.S.D.A. had developed a
"pyramid" of foods to replace the Four Food Groups. Your
association then proposed a new, entirely vegetarian
Four Food Groups. Can you tell our readers a little
about what your intentions were, and about your Four
Food Groups? What kind of reaction did you get from the
medical establishment?

Neal Barnard: The old Four Food Groups are meat, dairy,
grains, and vegetables/fruits. That's a prescription for
premature mortality. That's a prescription to kill off a
sizable percentage of the population and it's the
prescription that all of us learned as we were going
through school. It started in 1956, after years of other
various schemes that the Department of Agriculture had
developed. There used to be more food groups than four.
Science has come a long way in the 36 years since.

Spectrum: What was behind the development of the
original Four Food Groups? Was there any political or
economic thrust behind it, or was it concerned totally
with health?

Neal Barnard: I think the original idea probably stemmed
from a desire to educate people about simple steps they
could use to stay healthy However, it has been used
essentially as a promotional campaign for agricultural
products. Dairy products got their own group, and it was
prominently featured. If you look at the fine print on
the posters that are in schools, it indicates that the
Dairy Council has put these out. They print the posters,
and they still promote the old Four Food Groups because
it increases sales of their products. It's the same with
the meat producers.

The original Four Food Groups is completely out of sync
with all the science that has gone on since that time.
We now know that people who eat no meat at all -- who
violate the Four Food Groups - - live longer. They have
less incidence of disease and they are thinner. People
who avoid dairy products, far from showing signs of ill
health, are healthier than people who consume dairy
products.

We felt that we had to rewrite the Four Food Groups --
continue to use the idea of a simple tool that kids
could learn in school, but have it be something that is
in sync with modern science. The new Four Food Groups
are grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes -- legumes
meaning anything in a pod, such as peas, beans, lentils.
If that were the basis of nutritional teaching, we could
revolutionize the health in this country.

When we first made this proposal, it wasn't just me
standing up at the podium and waving this around, we had
Dennis Burkitt with us, the British doctor who
discovered the value of fiber. He spent years in Africa
comparing different diets, and is one of the most widely
respected cancer researchers in the world. He came to
Washington and said "Yes, the new Four Food Groups could
save a lot of lives."

Colin Campbell, the head of the China health study, also
came to Washington and endorsed it, as did Oliver
Alabaster, a cancer researcher. So, we felt we were on
very solid ground with this, and, we certainly are.
There's a wealth of research behind it.

By the way, the new Four Food Groups is going to come
out as a curriculum for seventh and eight grades a
little bit later this year. So if teachers want to teach
it, and throw out the old Four Food Groups, I would be
honored.

There was a good deal of response to our new Four Food
Groups, and it differed depending on who was giving it.
The press was, by and large sympathetic to it, and, so
was the public. They would raise appropriate questions,
such as, "Will you have strong bones without dairy?" and
the kinds of things that people wrestle with when
they're first looking at this. But, lets face it, the
press has known for years that heart disease is not a
question of bad luck or genetics. It's a question of
what's on your plate. So, it was no big surprise.

People have been criticizing the meat industry for
years, but the criticisms of dairy products were new to
many people, and I was surprised at how well-received
that was as well.

The only real criticism I think came from conservative
medical organizations who have been promoting weaker
diets for years, and certain agricultural producers. The
fruit and vegetable growers were delighted. The rice
growers thought this was the best thing they ever heard
of. But, the livestock producers naturally fought it
with the same venom that the tobacco growers have fought
tobacco legislation.

That happens, you expect it, but you've got two choices.
If you were going to try to reform, to help America, you
can be honest and expect the flack you're going to get
and accept it, or you can sellout and lie to people. To
me the choice is very clear. You have to tell people the
truth, and they will gradually accommodate to it, and
hopefully see its wisdom.

We knew when we did this that the Department of
Agriculture would not say, "Oh, great idea, we'll change
the Four Food Groups." We knew it would be a long
process of acceptance, but we know we're right. What we
wanted to do, then, was kick off the process by getting
the public involved, getting them writing letters to the
editor and complaining. We wanted to work our way
eventually into the consciousness of the government, and
I think that process has begun, and I don't think it's
reversible.

-------------------------------------------------------
The press has known for years that heart disease is not
a question of bad luck or genetics. Its a question of
what's on your plate.
-------------------------------------------------------

Let me say a few things about the recently proposed food
"pyramid." The pyramid was the Department of
Agriculture's plan to say that you should eat less meat,
but still eat it everyday. You should eat more grains,
vegetables and fruits, and de-emphasize the meat and
dairy, but still eat it. So, they created a pyramid of
foods.

At the very top, in the smallest part of the pyramid,
was sugars and oils, and that was supposed to be
something you have only rarely. That's why they gave it
the small part of the pyramid. And then, under that was
meats, which you're supposed to have more of than the
sweets and oils, but not as much as grains. Then, I
think, it was dairy, and then under that was vegetables
and fruits, and then the grains.

The visual image was supposed to emphasize grains, but
one problem with it was that it had meats near the top,
so meat looked like the pinnacle of nutrition. Before
they released it, they experimented with turning the
pyramid upside down, so that meat would be near the
bottom, but the Department of Agriculture claimed that
"female consultants" felt it looked unstable that way,
so they decided to keep it right side up.

We knew the pyramid was coming when we released our new
Four Food Groups, and we thought the pyramid was
virtually no better than the original Four Food Groups.
The pyramid, how ever, was embraced by a lot of
dieticians, because it did de-emphasize meat.

The pyramid lasted three weeks. Department of
Agriculture went back to the drawing board because the
livestock producers wouldn't stand for it. They lobbied
very heavily, and it was pulled back.

Spectrum: In my travels or reading I have discovered no
culture in the world that ate a truly vegan diet (no
meat or dairy). Everywhere I have been or read about,
the diet contained small amounts of animal foods, so I
wonder if small amounts might be necessary. Should the
new Four Food Groups eliminate meat and dairy entirely?

Neal Barnard: The Four Food Groups, as we presented it,
wasn't trying to say what the totality of the diet
should be. It only said what the basis, the foundation
of the diet should should be -- grains, legumes,
vegetables, and fruits. Anything else is an option. So
if a person has a bowl of ice cream once a month, that
isn't violating the new Four Food Groups.

With the new Four Food Groups, there's a whole range of
possibilities, some of which are healthier than others.
If you ask me, as a doctor, what's the healthiest diet,
I would say it is a low fat vegan diet, without any
animal products included. It's true that almost all
cultures, maybe all cultures, do have some animal
products in them, although they might vary a little bit
as to what that would be and with the amount. I suspect
the reason is not a nutritional need for it, however. I
really don't think so. This is because animal products
are something that was not part of our evolution as a
species.

As I say in my book, The Power of Your Plate, prior to
the Stone Age, we didn't have the capacity to hunt
animals. We didn't have spears, axes, or bows and arrows
until about two million years ago. Yet, we have lost our
canine teeth that would help, say a chimpanzee, if they
want to get hold of a little monkey and tear it to
shreds. They could do that because they have long,
protruding canine teeth. Those were lost to our species
at least three and half million years ago. So, during
the critical phase of our evolution as we were
differentiating from other primates in becoming the
species we are now, it is almost certain that we were
eating a vegan diet.

Was there some inclusion of insects or something? Who
knows, but we almost certainly must have been vegan,
eating a diet very similar to what other primates were
eating.

All that changed when we acquired the technology of
tools. Once you have the capacity to have something that
was not part of your evolution, your capacity to
regulate it goes haywire. So, in America now, people
have the capacity to eat meat. People tend to crave it,
I think because of its grease content or because of some
other characteristic. People do tend to crave it, even
though they pay a health price in the long run.

The same is true of alcohol. Look what happened to the
American Indian population when alcohol wa introduced.
It had not been part of their evolution, hadn't been
part of anybody's evolution, obviously, and alcoholism
became a very serious problem. The same is true of
sugary foods, cocaine, tobacco -- anything we don't have
built-in mechanisms to cope with. I think that's true of
meat.

-------------------------------------------------------
If you ask me, as a doctor, what's the healthiest diet,
I would say it is a low fat vegan diet, without any
animal products included.
-------------------------------------------------------

How do I know that people are healthy without it? There
are studies that have compared ovo-lacto vegetarians to
meat-eaters, and the ovo-lacto's do better than the
meat-eaters do in terms of incidence of cardiovascular
arrest. There are also studies of pure vegetarians
(vegans) -- no milk, eggs or meat -- comparing them to
ovo-lacto vegetarians, and the vegans tend to do better.

I think B-12 is an interesting issue though, because
there isn't B-12 in plants, so where were people getting
that?

B-12 isn't made by plants, and it's not made by animals.
It's made by one-celled organisms -- bacteria, and so
forth. Obviously, as we were evolving as a species, our
foods had a fair amount of natural contamination with
bacteria. You can imagine us picking up root vegetables,
shoots, leaves, and fruits, and so forth, and back then
we weren't sterilizing these things and processing them.
Nor were we brushing our teeth. There has been a fair
amount of research showing that even the bacteria that
live in people's mouths can produce some B-12. Was that
the source? I don't know.

Keep in mind that the daily requirement for B-12 is
extremely small. The RDA is only 2 micrograms per day --
not grams, not milligrams, just 2 micrograms. The actual
amount you need is only about a half of a microgram
daily, and that amount could well have been supplied by
bacterial sources.

Nowadays, in modem culture, everything is sterilized.
Even the miso you buy in this country is all
pasteurized, and it's dead. In Asia, miso is loaded with
B-12 because of the bacteria that are involved in its
production. Meat eaters do get B-12, but my hunch is
that meat probably was not the source as we were
evolving.

Spectrum: There are many different kinds of "vegetarian"
diets. Some types include dairy, some fish, some even
chicken. Can you talk briefly about all of them?
Particularly, why do you recommend against dairy food?

Neal Barnard: I have ten main reasons why dairy food is
not good for health.

The first reason why I don't consume dairy products, and
why I think other people should not, is the fat content.
The fat in dairy products is saturated fat. Now, it is
true there are skimmed milk products: skim milk, skim
yogurts, and maybe one or two low-fat cheeses. But just
on fat alone, you've ruled out butter, cream, sour
cream, ice cream, nearly all cheeses, and whole milk
products. The fat is saturated fat, and you may as well
be eating beef tallow. The fat in these dairy products
encourages heart disease and numerous other problems.
It's a risk factor for some forms of cancer as well.

Number two is the cholesterol content of dairy products.
It's the same story as the saturated fat. Number three
is that dairy products really are not effective in
slowing osteoporosis. This was their big selling point
for years, but studies have been done measuring bone
density, particularly of post-menopausal women, the
group that is at highest risk. There is no correlation
between bone density and the intake of dairy products,
or, for that matter, any other sources of calcium. In
other words, women have progressed to severe
osteoporosis in spite of consuming a large amount of
milk.

Now any first year medical student would say, "Well, of
course, we know that bone density, the calcium content
of bones, is not something you could change just by
eating certain foods. It is hormonally regulated." There
are things that certainly do affect bone density, but
calcium intake probably is not one of them. A recent
study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
showed that this is not only true for older women, but
even for young women and men as well. There really isn't
a good correlation between how much calcium you take in
and the strength of your bones as you reach adulthood.

Next is the milk sugar. The natural sugar in milk is
lactose. It's what we call a disaccharide, a double
sugar. It breaks down in the body to glucose and
galactose. Galactose is a simple sugar that infants can
break down effectively, because they have a variety of
enzymes in the body to do that. As you age, you lose
those enzymes to a degree. Different people lose them
more quickly than others. What that means is that
galactose can have a certain toxicity as you age, and
for women, it attacks the ovaries.

------------------------------------------------------
I don't consume dairy products...and I think other
people should not either. I have ten main reasons why
dairy food is not good for health.
------------------------------------------------------

Daniel Kramer, at Harvard University, published an
elegant study comparing women with cancer of the ovary
and women who did not have cancer. The differentiating
factor between these two groups was their consumption of
dairy products. Does that mean that every women that
consumes yogurt is going to get cancer of the ovary? No,
but it is elevating one's risk.

By the same mechanism, or a similar mechanism, galactose
is linked to cataracts. It enters the body, probably
through dairy products in ms, and can be
absorbed into the lens of the eye. Infants who are born
with a genetic defect in their capacity to break down
galactose get dense cataracts within the first year of
life. I believe that dairy products are probably a
contributor to cataracts in older folks. I say that
because there are epidemiologic studies showing that the
incidence of cataracts is not uniform across cultures.
It is much higher in countries where dairy products are
consumed. There are other contributors, such as
ultraviolet B and others, but dairy seems to be one of
the principal suspects here.

Another issue with dairy is lactose intolerance. This is
something which does not affect most Caucasians, which
is why all the Dairy Board advocates you see are all
fair-skinned people, the only people who drink milk.
Asians and Africans and many others have trouble
consuming dairy products; they can't digest the milk
sugar.

Spectrum: Yet, people living in these countries eating
the traditional diet have very strong bones.

Neal Barnard: Exactly. They do not have osteoporosis
with the same incidence that we do.

Milk is the number one cause of food allergies. There
are other causes, such as wheat, corn, and with some
people, soy products, but milk is number one, and any
pediatricians experience would agree with that.

Insulin-dependent diabetes is much more common in
countries where dairy is consumed. The putative link is
that the dairy protein kicks off an autoimmune reaction
in which antibodies attack the dairy protein,
inadvertently damaging the cells of the pancreas that
produce insulin.

Milk is extremely low in iron, and if you're concerned
about iron deficiency, milk is not a food you want to
consume.

Babies get colicky from drinking milk, and they're also
colicky if their mother is consuming milk. We now know
that the cow's antibodies can be absorbed into the
mother's digestive tract, and through the bloodstream
reach her milk, then baby. I believe it was the April
1990 issue of Pediatrics that laid this out and said
that the baby will be colicky if the nursing mother is
consuming milk.

So there are several reasons not to drink your milk.

Spectrum: What about chicken and the different kinds of
fish?

Neal Barnard: Number one, chicken is not a health food
by any stretch of the imagination. The poultry industry
has been trying to capitalize on the criticisms that
beef is now getting and they tell people to eat their
products. But there are several reasons not to.

Number one, chicken has the same cholesterol content as
beef. This always stuns audiences when I tell them,
although it doesn't stun dieticians who write
nutritional analyses -- they've known this for years.
Every four ounce serving of beef has 100 milligrams of
cholesterol in it. A four ounce serving of chicken has
exactly the same -- 100 milligrams of cholesterol. It
can be somewhat lower in fat, but not a lot lower in
fat.

The leanest beef has 30% of its calories as fat. The
very leanest chicken is about 20%. Compare that to
beans, with 5% of calories as fat. Rice is even less,
maybe around 7% or 8%. A 20%-fat food with no fiber, no
complex carbohydrates, and a fair load of cholesterol is
not a healthy food, and that's what chicken is. Even
selecting only the white meat and taking the skin off,
it is not a low-fat food.

What is worse is that chicken and meat displace the
healthy foods in our diet. I mean, if you're eating 300
calories of chicken, that's three hundred calories of
rice or whole grain products or green vegetables that
you're not eating. So it's not just the bad stuff it
gives you, it's the good stuff that it pushes off the
plate.

--------------------------------------------------
Chicken is not a health food by any stretch of the
imagination . . . Chicken has the same cholesterol
content as beef.
--------------------------------------------------

Another interesting thing, and this is getting press
everywhere, one out of every three chickens at the
retail store has live salmonella bacteria growing under
the plastic. The reason is that every chicken goes into
the slaughter operation after having lived its
eight-week life in a factory situation -- a big steel
building with ten, twenty or thirty thousand chickens
all swimming in chicken feces. Nobody sweeps around them
during their entire life. They're just boxed up and sent
to slaughter.

Salmonella lives in chicken feces, and the process of
slaughter actually tends to push this fecal
contamination in the skin of the chicken. At the end
of the slaughter procedure, their heads are cut off,
their corpse goes through a cold water bath to cool it
down so it doesn't rot, and the water bath...it might be
kind of clean for the first thousand or so corpses that
go through it, but eventually it becomes what CBS News
called "fecal soup."

People get the chicken home, slit open the plastic, and
you know that little bit of juice that dribbles down on
your counter, people think that's chicken juice.
Chickens are not fruits, they do not have juice. That is
the water bath stuff that the chicken absorbed, along
with a little blood and serum, etc. One out of three
packaged chickens has live salmonella. That causes maybe
four million or more cases of salmonella poisoning a
year, and about nine thousand deaths.

I think if people can't wean themselves of chicken, they
ought to leave it on their steps outside their house,
and go outside and eat it, because once you bring it in,
it contaminates surfaces. You can't see the salmonella
bacteria, You can get it on a sponge, and the
contamination of utensils is the biggest problem. The
greatest incidence of salmonella comes from cross
contamination to infants. Three month old babies
actually get more salmonella than anybody else.

Spectrum: What about fish?

Neal Barnard: There are several things about fish. I
don't eat fish, and there are many reasons why I don't.
The good things you can say for fish is that some of the
the species are lower in fat by a long shot compared to
meat and even poultry, and some have a little bit less
cholesterol. Some have more cholesterol, however, like
lobster and shrimp. Some actually are higher in fat,
while some are lower. That's the entire extent of the
good news about fish.

The bad news about fish is that it all has cholesterol
and fat, and the fat is not the kind that anybody needs.
These omega-3 fats that people talk about are also
available in beans. In the American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition, there was a recent series of letters and
commentaries saying that people should probably get
their omega-3 fats from vegetables and not from fish,
because the omega-3 fish oils do seem to have a variety
of negative effects, one of which is that they promote
the production of free radicals. Free radicals can
damage your tissues and lead to cancer.

There is also a contamination problem with fish. The
February cover-story of Consumer Reports talked about
this. The contamination problems with fish are ghastly.

Salmon and other kinds of swordfish are very
contaminated. There are even warnings that women who are
intending to become pregnant any time in the next
several years shouldn't consume several species of fish.
The EDB content is so high, and it is stored up in human
tissues. There was a study at Wayne State University on
women who had given birth to babies. Those who never ate
fish were compared to those who did eat fish. The latter
group, even those who ate fish once a month or more, had
a higher incidence of babies who were sluggish at birth,
who had small head circumferences, or who had a variety
of learning problems.

Fish is a concentrated protein, and if anything we need
less protein. High protein in the the diet leads to
osteoporosis and kidney problems.

You don't need fish.

Spectrum: If it's not a good idea to eat fish and
poultry, and we are no longer consuming wild vegetables
as did the people in traditional societies, do you
recommend a B12 supplement or any other kind of
supplement?

Neal Barnard: I do recommend a B12 supplement for
anybody who, like me, is on a vegan diet. If you start a
vegan diet, you have about a three-year supply of B12 in
your body. But after three years, or even before, people
should supplement with B12. I suggest you take a form
that says "B12" on it, or the chemical name,
cyanocobalamin. Some of the forms that people thought
were active, like chlorella or spirulina, may not have
active B12 in them.

--------------------------------------------------------
Women who are intending to become pregnant any time in
the next several years shouldn't consume several species
of fish.
--------------------------------------------------------

If you get a One-A-Day, or any common multivitamin, it
will have B12 in it. You don't need to be especially
careful about it. And, there are vegetarian supplements
made of algae that are perfectly fine. It's not
something you need to worry about or take every day. Get
the smallest size you can. Probably 50 micrograms is the
smallest size the store will sell you, and take it 2-4
times per week. By the way, I don't recommend other
supplements.

Spectrum: You are saying all these things that suggest
radical changes in the way Americans eat, citing several
studies to back up your views. Yet most doctors, who are
supposedly in charge of protecting our health, will be
eating a steak tonight or going out with the kids to
McDonald's. What's the problem? Is the research you are
citing debatable, or is it that it's hard to accept
something new? Why don't people eat this way?

Neal Barnard: I think things are starting to change.
Things change slowly, and doctors are creatures of
habit, and they'll probably be the last to change,
unfortunately. But there are some terrific new faces on
the horizon that are becoming widely accepted, such as
Dr. Dean Ornish, who has done brilliant, carefully
controlled research. He has received a tremendous amount
of attention from the medical community.

People doing work with diabetics, and certainly with
cancer, are getting a lot of attention for vegetarian
sorts of diets.

Regarding being vegetarian, I don't think the common
reaction anymore is that you must be in some sort of
bizarre religious cult. If I'm sitting on a plane and
get the vegetarian meal that I've ordered, the person
next to me will always say, "I'm pretty much a
vegetarian" or "I'm going that way." They want to be
vegetarian. Even if they're not that way, they know they
should be.

Doctors, like everybody else, are subject to the habits
they grew up with. It tends to cause a predictable
pattern -- sort of rationalization and resistance.

There's no doubt about it, however, we're going to win,
and there are lots of reasons. For example, there are
all these HMOs who are trying to give medical care at
fixed cost. It's going to be just a matter of time
before they realize that for every coronary bypass they
prevent, it saves them $20,000. Prevention is the key,
and the two biggest factors are changing diet and
avoiding tobacco.

The National Restaurant Association recommends having a
vegetarian section on the menu. One out of every five
restaurant-goers considers the ability to obtain a
vegetarian meal important when choosing a restaurant.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) now
has these "V" stickers for restaurants. They will be
displayed alongside the Visa and MasterCard emblems.

-------------------------------------------------------
All these HMOs who are trying to give medical care at
fixed cost, it's going to be just a matter of time
before they realize that for every coronary bypass they
prevent, it saves them $20,000. Prevention is the key.
-------------------------------------------------------

The demand for vegetarianism is there, and I'm very
optimistic, not just about the distant future, but the
near future.

Spectrum: Health am is a big political issue now in the
presidential campaign. Can you comment on the situation?

Neal Barnard: Many people have been occupied with
something that I think is important, but secondary --
how do we have equitable distribution of health care.
That's an important issue, but I think it misses
something more powerful that could help solve the
problem.

Health care costs are simply accumulated health care
bills. The reason you have health care bills is because
you have sick people going to see their physicians. Now,
it is true that about 90% of heart attacks, and a
similar percentage of bypasses and some transplants, and
so forth -- none of these would be needed if people took
good care of themselves. Eighty percent of cancer is
preventable, or at least is tied to identifiable factors
that we know about. This is the National Cancer
Institute's estimate. Thirty-five percent of cancers are
due to smoking and 35% to 55% are due to diet. Other
causes are x-ray exposures, drugs, etc. We can control
these cancer factors if we choose to.

If we do that, we can keep people healthy. They won't
have to go see their doctor, there won't be a health
care bill generated, and the costs to private insurance,
to individuals, and to Medicare and Medicaid could all
plummet.

Spectrum: Doctors will have to become less wealthy.

Neal Barnard: Doctors should become less wealthy.

I think that the availability of insurance has insulated
doctors from their patients. My grandfather, when he
treated someone, might have gotten some vegetables as
payment, and his bills were low. Now, because of the
wide availability of insurance, doctors unabashedly
charge enormous rates because they know that the patient
actually isn't going to pay it. The patient does pay it
right away -- they pay it in the insurance premiums that
have been extracted from their paychecks, but it's been
smoothed out over the course of the year, and the
patients don't really mind these exorbitant fees.
Doctors are driving BMWs and Mercedes. I consider it
unethical, and frankly, it's becoming more grotesque
with time.

What I want to se in the future  reduced demand for
health care. I want doctors to focus on people that
already are healthy, and ask what they can do to
maximize their health, because, hopefully, there won't
be sick people coming to see them and they need
something to do.

Spectrum: Do we need a new type of health profession,
given what we now know about the causes of disease? You
don't need as much training to help people prevent
illness as to cure it. Why have a doctor, who is trained
in complex operations and other disease treatments, give
people lifestyle counseling on how to stay well? It's a
waste.

Neal Barnard: Also, people like you are doing this.
Through an article you write, you are reaching a lot
more people than I would reach in a typical day. People
like you are the lifesavers, too. You take information
that other people have developed through research and
make it available to large numbers of people. My hat's
off to you and everybody like you who's getting the word
out.

(Dr. Neal Barnard is the President of the Physician's
Committee for Responsible Medicine, P.O. Box 6322,
Washington, DC 20015. USA. Telephone (202)-686-2210).

------------------------------------------------------
              Courtesy of Donald Graft
------------------------------------------------------

    We have started perhaps the nation's only government-
sponsored campaign in Hawaii to include more plant-based foods
in our diet.
    The taxpayer-funded nutritional education program targets
kids and parents alike in our public school system.
    What is more, the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine, Washington, D.C., has concluded that not only is an
animal-based diet unnecessary, but is actually harmful.
    In Bharat (also known as India), large-scale efforts are
being undertaken to educate both medical practitioners and the
general population about the benefits of a vegetarian
lifestyle.
    The benefits of the healthy, plant-based food culture
contrast sharply the terrorism the animal-eating habit wages
on our body, others and the environment.  That is a future
with which we can all live.

Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti

Good point :-)

FYI Note: I am aware that I am responding to a cross-posted message.
Because the author of the message to which I am responding did not
request that the header be trimmed, I have not trimmed it.  If you are
upset about reading this message, a few suggestions:

(1) Yell at Tom ;-)
(2) Report Tom ;-) to his ISP
(3) Killfile this thread.
(4) Killfile me.
(5) Read about free speech <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

This discussion(s) is related to the 2 pound diet approach (2PD) which
is described completely at:

http://www.heartmdphd.com/wtloss.asp

Though Dr. Chung invented this approach, he did not initiate the
Usenet discussion(s).  His participation in this discussion(s) has
been voluntary and has been conducted in the spirit of community
service.  His motivation has been entirely altruistic and has arisen
from his religious beliefs as a Christian.  Jesus freely gave of
Himself to better the health of folks He touched:

http://www.heartmdphd.com/healer.asp

From the outset, it has been clear that there are those who are
vehemently opposed to the 2 pound diet approach.  They have debated
Dr. Chung on every perceived weakness of the 2 pound diet approach and
have lost the argument soundly at every point:

http://www.heartmdphd.com/wtlossfaqs.asp

These debates are archived on Google in their entirety within this
discussion thread(s).

However, instead of conceding gracefully that they've lost the
argument(s), certain parties have redirected their hatred of the 2
pound diet approach toward its author.  The rationale appears to be
"if you can not discredit the message then try to discredit the
messenger."

Initially, these folks accused the messenger of "trolling."  A "troll"
is someone who posts under the cloak of anonymity messages with no
redeeming discussion value and with the sole purpose of starting
"flame" wars.

These hateful folks lost credibility with this accusation when the
following observations were made:

(1) Dr. Chung has not been posting anonymously.
(2) The 2PD has been on-topic for the Usenet discussion groups hosting
the discussion(s).
    (a) Those who are failing low-carbing can dovetail LC with the
2PD to achieve near-ideal weight.
    (b) Obese diabetics improve their blood glucose control when
their weight becomes near-ideal.
    (c) For (b) see:  http://makeashorterlink.com/?V5D042C47
(3) Dr. Chung did not start the discussion(s).
(4) The 2 pound diet approach is 100% free (no profit motive).
(5) Dr. Chung's credentials are real and easily verified on-line
(including jpegs of the actual diplomas).

Full of hatred, frustration, and desperation, certain individuals have
tried to attack Dr. Chung's credentials knowing full well that they
were attempting to libel him.  One notable example is Mr. Pastorio:

http://www.heartmdphd.com/libel.asp

When the full light was cast on Mr. Pastorio's libelous statements,
the hateful folks hiding in the darkness of anonymity only hissed
louder in support of their fallen hero.

Fortunately, those who have been following this discussion(s) either
actively or as lurkers can easily dismiss the hisses, for what they
are, using the on-line third-party resources at:

http://www.heartmdphd.com/profile.asp

where Dr. Chung's credentials can be verified many times over and
libelous claims that credentials were bought are easily and summarily
debunked.

Moreover, readers need only make the following observations concerning
the anon posters who continue to hiss (ie JC Der Koenig and Mack):

(1) They are anonymous and thus they expect to have no credibility (or
accountability).
(2) They are by their Usenet history courtesy of Google, unsavory
characters.
(3) They have not added anything to the discussion(s) except to
deliver one-sided insults.
(4) They complain about alleged cross-posts from Dr. Chung by
cross-posting.
(5) They do not complain about cross-posts from folks who attack the
2PD or its author.

and conclude that these anon posters deserve only their kill file.

It is my hope that the above brings new readers of this thread up to
speed.

It will remain my pleasure to continue the discussion(s) about the 2PD
above the din of hissing from the peanut gallery.

Servant to the humblest person in the universe,

Andrew

--
Dr. Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
Board-Certified Cardiologist
http://www.heartmdphd.com/

--
Who is the humblest person in the universe?

http://makeashorterlink.com/?L21532147