I just resurrected a San Francisco Chronicle clipping from March 17 that was an Open Forum article written by T Colin Campbell and Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. titled
It all starts with diet. Cornell University professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry Campbell is the co-author of the most comprehensive study ever done on human nutrition
The China Study, published in 2005. Right up front the authors state that the most ignored scientific fact on health is that a whole-foods plant-based diet can prevent and in many cases reverse heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other chronic diseases. While most of you on this forum are going "well - duh!", the average person is clueless because in today's health care debate the focus has almost nothing to do with what makes people sick and everything to do with who gets medical care and who pays for it. Why is this so? Because the Fox has been guarding the hen house. In this case the Fox is a politically powerful conglomerate of commercial industry interests - meat, dairy, sugar, pharmaceuticals and surgery. Their focus is to get people to ignore the nutritional causes of the current health crisis and focus on increasing access to drugs and surgery.
What would make a difference other than a bloody terrorist war on the corporate scoundrels and their government lackeys who put profits ahead of the general welfare of the population? Campbell and Esselstyn offer 3 points for President Obama to implement.
One: Reform the way government dietary guidelines are set. Right now commercial interests have perverted the U.S. Government 2002 Food and Nutrition Board's guidelines to the point that they say it's acceptable to have a diet that includes 35% fat calories, 35% protein calories, 25% added sugar calories.
The Deadly 35/35/25 Diet! And get this! The Board says this diet will reduce degenerative diseases. I'm not joking! This is from the most widely publicized government dietary recommendations on the planet.
Here's what a day on the 35/35/25 Diet looks like. Breakfast: 1 cup Fruit Loops cereal, 1 cup skim milk, 1 package of M&Ms, fiber and vitamin supplements. Lunch: grilled cheddar cheese hamburger. Dinner: 3 slices of pepperoni pizza, a 16 ounce soda, 1 serving of Archway sugar cookies.
Is it any wonder why 12 year old children are developing thickening of the carotid arteries to the brain. When 20 year old combat casualty U. S. soldiers are autopsied 80 percent are found to have coronary artery heart disease! The 35/35/25 Diet is a slow and insidious holocaust.
Two: Establish a new division of the National Institute of Health dedicated to exploring the link between diet, health and disease. Of the 27 existing divisions none are devoted to nutrition.
Three: Require all medical schools receiving Federal Government support to offer residency programs on dietary approaches to preventing and treating disease. People do not understand the importance of nutrition to health because their doctors don't. Why? No one is teaching the doctors.
These three things are relatively inexpensive and easy to implement with a huge payback by the money saved by increasing peoples health.
If history has told us one thing it's that all great civilizations have crumbled from within. Health-wise, the Roman empire poisoned the power structure with the fad in food and drink utensils made from lead. Looks like we're on our way to doing it to ourselves with our modern diet.