Sometimes doctors have to be a bit blunt in order to make a point. My organization recently produced a TV spot that shows a dead man on a gurney clutching a half-eaten cheeseburger. The golden arches appear above his feet. The ad ends with the words, “I was lovin’ it.” The commercial has aired in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and it has been viewed more than 1.4 million times on YouTube.
This ad is definitely morbid. But over time, a burger-and-fries diet leads to heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and other serious risks. Researchers have found that even a single fatty meal can raise blood pressure, stiffen major arteries and cause the heart to beat harder. As a physician and nutrition researcher, I think it’s critical that Americans know the dangers.
Cardiovascular disease kills thousands of Americans every day, and early signs of heart disease are showing up in children. In fact, one in five teens already has abnormal cholesterol levels. One in three children born in 2000 will develop diabetes at some point in life.
McDonald’s continues to fill its menu with the very foods that have led to our country’s obesity and heart disease epidemics. The Big Mac, the chain’s signature sandwich, packs a walloping 540 calories and 29 grams of fat – but it is hardly the most unhealthful item on the menu. Even many McDonald’s items that consumers may believe are healthful – salads, for example – are generally high in calories, fat and sodium. Some of the chain’s kids’ meals have about as much sodium as a child should consume in an entire day.
Fast-food consumption is strongly correlated with weight gain and insulin resistance, according to a 2005 study in the journal The Lancet. This suggests that fast food consumption could lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes, which are both heart attack risk factors. Mortality and admissions for acute coronary syndromes are higher in regions with more fast food restaurants, according to a 2005 study in the Canadian Journal of Public Health.
Our ad encourages viewers to consider eating less fast food and more vegetarian meals. That’s because conclusive scientific evidence finds that vegetarian and vegan diets can help prevent and even reverse heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some other chronic diseases. And unlike prescription drugs, plant-based diets have only positive “side effects.” Diets made up of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes have been shown to help people maintain a healthy weight, lower their cholesterol and lower their blood pressure.
Our commercial may not please fast-food industry executives, but we will keep spreading the message about good nutrition because consumers deserve to understand how what they eat affects their health and well-being.
This summer, I cooled off with an excursion to a local water park featuring water slides, and a cool wave pool. I grabbed my bathing suit, packed a lunch and headed to Jersey. This day trip meant planning my meals ahead of time, which consisted of two Norwalk pressed green/vegetable juices from the best juice joint in NYC called, ‘Liquidteria,’ packed in a cold storage insulated bag with a cold pack, germinated sunflower seeds, sliced vegetables, and a lemon Lara Bar. Also, my friend made me an awesome coconut shake sweetened with stevia to drink during our car ride to the park. Delicious!
We arrived at the park and were stopped at the gate. “No Food is Permitted in the Park,” we were told! Caught! Poor shame, my innocent veggie food was condemned. The park offered an array of fake food offerings to choose from consisting of hot dogs, pizza, ice cream, and fried chicken. What’s a health nut to do? Answer: I argued! I declared, “My doctor has me on a special diet and I must eat my own food.” They allowed me to leave our food just outside the park on a picnic table under a large tent. Good enough. Hopefully, the woodchucks would leave my sunflower seeds alone while unattended!
When these situations arise I feel like the world is an insane place and that we have become so disconnected with what should be considered ‘normal’ and ‘natural.’ To me ‘normal’ means taking the best care of myself and eating natural food that comes from the earth. ‘Normal’ would never exist in a deep fryer.
Onward to the fun! Water slides are so cool! I am a fearless water slide warrior! I even went on the tallest water slide in the park! I could feel the cool change in temperature up at the top!
Any entertainment park holds lines of people that wait their turn for a thill ride, and there was plenty of time to observe and contemplate the crowd. Since this was a water park, there was a grand opportunity to get a good view of people in their bathing suits. My personal journey of eating primarily raw food for 20 years, practicing periodic cleansing methods and being a Colon Hydro-therapist has awarded me with some wisdom on the subject of toxicity. By no means am I perfect and prefer not to be so, and would not impose perfection onto anyone. This personal journey toward wellness takes much effort and consciousness to sustain daily. I feel great compassion toward all beings that struggle with weight issues, any physical/emotional dilemmas, ignorance or lack of discipline. All the work that I do is in support to help others overcome these struggles.
Obesity is an epidemic in this country. Over 58 million Americans are overweight. I witnessed an overwhelming amount of overweight people at the park. In particular, many of these people looked very bloated in their mid-section. The cause ranges from over-consumption of food, too much animal protein and refined food, imbalances in the body, lack of food combining principles, and poor food choices. These bellies ranged from a little pouch, to bloated, to pregnant sized gut, to a completely descended colon that is impacted with layers of mucus, waste and toxic gases collecting for years. We are becoming a toxic, weakened, numb, over-stimulated, addicted, medicated, sick society. This water park asked me to keep my veggies outside the park, yet offers these already sick and abused bodies more grease. Is it ‘normal’ to live this way?
There were many families at the park and the number of overweight children present was alarming. How will these children cope with keeping a healthy weight when they only know to live in a heavy body that causes their little hearts, and lungs to work excessively hard to carry around all that excess weight. The digestive system is burdened and overwhelmed. All organs, glands and systems are stressed. The cellular body becomes clogged. Their parents overfeed them with unhealthy food that creates their little arteries to clog at a young age. Their relationship to food begins now and becomes fixed. What will the future bring?
Finally, I saw some young people at the park in their twenties and early thirties. Most were an average weight and physically fit but my discerning Colon Hydro-therapist eye detects a level of toxicity found in the tissue. When the body becomes flabby, fleshy or loose we can guess that the tissue contains toxins, poisons, and gases along with fat. This level of toxicity stored away in the cells is found in our skin and soft tissue. The waste and gases age the body and will make the tissue quality sag.
Excessive fat cells may remain in the body forever. Dieting only works temporarily. Eating healthier and less food is the only solution. Statistics reveal that only 5% of people are successful on diets. A change in lifestyle is key to any long-term success. Looking to have a youthful body and to feel great at any age? It is essential to practice eating a super healthy diet along with periodic cleansing. Yes, you got it. Please include colonics as part of your health program and you’ll be on your way!
Food, Inc. is opening tomorrow, but it’s already creating quite a buzz. If you would like the chance to participate in a live Twitter chat on Friday, June 19th, with the director, Robert Kenner, read more here. If you want to learn more about what the Food Inc. team is up to, you can read their blog, follow the “Take Part” tweets, and check out the Food Inc.’s Facebook page. CSL’s blog posse member, Kristen Suzanne, saw the film in NYC last week and you can read her review here. Kristen’s review includes an enlightening Q & A session with Robert Keener following the screening she attended! To find a theater near you, check out this list. Spread the word!
Since its beginnings in the 1950s, The Humane Society of the United States has always taken aim at farm animal abuses. The only difference now is our greater sense of urgency, since confinement, transport, and slaughter systems have become needlessly harsh and because the number of animals raised for food is so staggeringly large.
If the howls from leaders within the big agribusiness sector are solid indicators, we are making some meaningful progress. And never more so than in 2008, when we broke our Hallmark/Westland slaughter plant investigation and also led the charge to pass Proposition 2 in California.
In late May, Wendy’s agreed to start purchasing a modest but meaningful portion of eggs from cage-free producers. And two weeks ago, one of our staff members spoke at a McDonald’s shareholder meeting urging the company to align itself with other fast-food giants and begin to phase in the use of cage-free eggs at its American outlets, or even to mirror its action in Europe, where McDonald’s has already agreed to switch to 100 percent cage-free whole eggs by next year.
We also had major votes on farm animal welfare issues in California—and with great results, thanks in part to the political aftershocks generated by the landslide passage of Prop 2. The California Senate, by a vote of 27-12, approved a bill to ban the painful mutilation procedure of tail docking of dairy cattle—and that’s especially significant because California is the largest dairy state in the nation, with 1.8 million of the nation’s 9 million dairy cows. And the California Assembly passed A.B. 1437, a bill to ban the sale of eggs from battery cage operations, for both humane and health reasons.
Both bills have a ways to go, needing approval by the other legislative chamber and then the governor, but these are exciting advances.
There’s also an uptick in publishing on food and farm animal issues, and I’ve just read two books on the subject. The first, “The Face on Your Plate,” is by Jeffrey Masson, author of a number of books on the emotional lives of animals. Masson lays out the case against industrial animal agriculture methodically, focusing chapters on the global environmental costs of meat consumption; the emotional capacities of animals raised for food and the cruelty imposed upon them throughout their lives; the disturbing business of fish farming as a source of cruelty and environmental despoliation; the psychological mechanisms by which we shield ourselves from the reality of animal suffering; and his personal experience with what he calls a “veganish” diet.
I found Masson’s chapter on denial most provocative, drawing as it does on his training as a psychoanalyst. Having created a stir in the psychoanalytic community some years ago with his criticisms of Sigmund and Anna Freud, he is no stranger to provocation. When it comes to farm animals, he believes, the range of empathy on the part of the general public is still quite narrow, and he is blunt about the self-deluding practices that many consumers engage in when it comes to thinking about animal welfare and diet. Masson argues his case with passion and intelligence, and “The Face on Your Plate” is an important contribution to a growing body of work on farm animals.
The second work, Amy Hatkoff’s “The Inner World of Farm Animals,” focuses on the social, emotional, and intellectual capacities of farm animals, and I provided an afterword for it. I read this fine work in draft form while in the midst of the Prop 2 campaign in California, and I was glad to have before me such a compelling case for improved treatment of farm animals during that crucial time.
Hatkoff’s book is aimed at young audiences, and, drawing on the latest scientific evidence available, it really fills a niche. In chapters devoted to chickens; geese, ducks and turkeys; cows; and pigs, sheep and goats, the author intersperses general accounts with charming vignettes of individual animals.
These books, and all of the other activity on farm animal issues, are markers of a national movement to re-examine where our food comes from, to assess the economic and non-economic costs of industrial animal agriculture, and imagine ways of doing better. As individuals, we must be conscious consumers, and we can do our part to educate ourselves, to influence corporate practices, and to influence policy. When millions of us take collective action like that, there can be no other outcome except forward movement for farm animals.
