"No more than 10-20 percent of risk for the primary causes of death come from our genes," Wong writes. "Only about 5-10 percent of cancer cases are attributable to genetic defects, with the other 90-95 percent rooted in lifestyle and environment. Colon cancer, the second most lethal cancer in the country, is the cancer most directly affected by what you eat. According to WHO, 80 percent of all heart disease, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes can be prevented." (The book's extensive footnotes facilitate research by readers on the scientific and medical studies cited.)
"The reason we know cancers like colon cancer are so preventable is because rates differ dramatically around the globe," Dr. Michael Greger says in the film. "There can be a 10-, 50-, 100-fold difference in colon cancer rates, from some of the highest measured in Connecticut, down to the lowest rates in Kampala, Uganda, for example. There are places where colon cancer, our No. 2 cancer killer, is practically nonexistent. It's not some genetic predisposition that makes people in Connecticut die from colon cancer while people from Uganda don't. When you move to a high-risk country, you adopt the risk of the country. It's not our genes; it's our environment."
"We can change the expression of our genes--tumor-suppressing genes, tumor-activating genes--by what we put into our bodies," he goes on. "Even if you've been dealt a bad genetic deck, you can reshuffle it with diet."
In the film, Andersen visits the American Cancer Society website. In a section of the site called "Basic Ingredients for a Healthy Kitchen," recommended foods include extra-lean hamburger, ground turkey breast, chicken breast, fish, eggs and cheese.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) in its "Diabetes Meal Plans" was no better. The U.S. has the highest diabetes rate among 38 developed nations, according to the International Diabetes Federation. The ADA recommended to the estimated 29 million Americans with diabetes that they eat dishes such as "Moroccan Lamb Stew, oven-barbecued chicken, Asian pork chops and barbecued meatballs."
Eating one egg a day can triple the risk of death among diabetes sufferers. And consumption of eggs doubles the risk of prostate cancer progression among men with that disease. This is probably why, as the book points out, "90 percent of scientific studies on dietary cholesterol are currently paid for by the egg industry."
"Diabetes, of all the diseases, may be the most affected by meat," Dr. Garth Davis says in the film.
"There is probably more confusion around what causes Type 2 diabetes than around any other disease, among doctors, patients, and the media," says Dr. Michelle McMacken in the book. "People don't understand that high blood sugar is a symptom of diabetes. It is not the cause of diabetes. The foods most clearly linked to the development of Type 2 diabetes are processed meat, like bacon, hot dogs, cold cuts, salami, pepperoni, ham, sausage. There's a number of studies showing that the more processed meat there is in your diet, the more likely you are to get Type 2 diabetes. And of all the foods, whole grains are the most protective against the disease. The root cause of diabetes has to do with our insulin not working properly, which is very directly related to extra body fat. Until that message gets out, we're never going to break the cycle."
The American Heart Association posted recipes for "Grilled Chicken and Vegetables," "Pork Tenderloin Stuffed With Spinach" and "Steak Stroganoff," along with recommendations to eat low-fat dairy and skinless poultry and fish and to buy cuts of beef labeled "choice" or "select" rather than "prime."
Andersen and Kuhn found that these major health organizations received large donations from the animal agriculture industry, fast food chains such as McDonald's, soft drink companies such as Coca-Cola, and pharmaceutical corporations.
The American Heart Association, Wong writes, "has received money from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, National Live Stock and Meat Board, Subway, Walgreens, Texas Beef Council, Cargill, South Dakota Beef Industry Council, Kentucky Beef Council, Nebraska Beef Council, Tyson Foods, AVA Pork, Unilever, Trauth Dairy, Domino's Pizza, Perdue, Idaho Beef Council, and fistfuls of pharmaceutical companies--the usual suspects like AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Merck, which spent $400,000 to fund an AHA program teaching 40,000 doctors to 'treat cholesterol according to guidelines.' "
One of the main sponsors of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) is the National Dairy Industry. AND, which is the nation's largest trade group for registered dietitians, publishes so-called Nutrition Fact Sheets for the public. The food industry writes these Nutrition Fact Sheets for its own products and gives $20,000 for each of these sheets to AND.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, one of the lead scientists of the China-Cornell-Oxford Study, a 20-year study "that found 8,000 statistically significant correlations between eating animal protein and risk of disease in 65 counties in China," is emphatic about the danger of dairy products. He told The Guardian that "cows' milk protein may be the single most significant chemical carcinogen to which humans are exposed." Susan Levin, director of nutrition education for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, warned in the book, "Milk, because of what it is [a fluid designed to jump-start the growth of a 60-pound calf into a 1,500-pound cow], makes things grow faster, and that includes cancer cells. This is not a product even in its purest state that you want to consume."
The filmmakers confront spokespeople for the health organizations about funding from the animal agriculture industry, much as they confronted environmental groups in "Cowspiracy." They ask these spokespeople about peer-reviewed, scientific studies showing that plant-based diets dramatically lowered the risks for disease. The administrators in these health organizations, including Dr. Robert Ratner, the chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association, invariably canceled or terminated the interviews once they discover they would be asked about the link between diet and disease.
The idea that chicken is a healthful alternative to red meat is fictitious. A skinless chicken thigh, the book points out, contains more fat--including saturated fat, the most dangerous kind--than over two dozen different cuts of lean beef. Chicken is potentially the most fattening meat. Carcinogens form in chicken and other meats as they are cooked. Chicken is the top source of sodium for American adults because the chicken industry injects poultry carcasses with salt water to increase market weight and therefore prices, while still being able to label its product "100% natural." Chicken contains more cholesterol than a pork chop. And cholesterol is found primarily in lean parts of meat.
"The birds come through on hooks," Dr. Lester Friedlander says in the book in explaining the processing of chicken carcasses, "and then a mechanical arm goes up the cloaca [the opening through which the bird releases urine and feces] and pulls out everything inside the cavity. Unfortunately, when the mechanical arm pulls the intestines out, they often burst. Then all the fecal contamination is inside the bird. At the end of the poultry slaughter line there's a big chill tank to cool the birds down quick so they can get packaged and shipped out. If you have just one of those chickens with broken intestines and fecal contamination, the whole chill tank is contaminated. They call the water in the tank, 'fecal soup.' All the chickens throughout the day, if they don't change the water, are contaminated with feces. Hundreds of thousands of chickens go through that water. And while they're in the tank the chicken flesh soaks up that fecal soup. That's what they call 'retained water' on the chicken label."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
7
5
4
